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Tag Archives: Sumerian

Rare Books welcomes NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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16th Century, blog, clay tablets, collections, college, community outreach, coursework, digtital exhibitions, exhibitions, exploration, Italian Renaissance, lectures, library, museum, presentations, publications, rare books, Rare Books Department, Sumerian, travel, university


Rare Books welcomes participants of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for College and University Teachers.

“The Book: Material Histories and Digital Futures” is hosted by Salt Lake Community College. Week One is being led by Nicole Howard and Johanna Drucker.

Today, participants take a field trip to Rare Books where they will have a hands-on opportunity to study pieces from our collections and learn how, for more than two decades, the Rare Books Department has used its collections to enhance college and university coursework; museum, library, and university exhibitions; and contribute to academic dialogue and community outreach through its presentations, exhibitions, digital exhibitions, lectures, conference papers, publications, and blog, Open Book.


From Sumerian clay tablets


to triumphs of Italian Renaissance printing and publishing


to accounts of exploration and travel


to first editions of Francis Bacon’s call for experimentation, empirical methodology, accurate observation and accumulation of reliable data


to the great 18th century French Enlightenment Encyclopedie, a vain attempt to collect all that data


to colonial American newspapers


to a now-obscure 19th century novel written by a Confederate politician


to an early 20th century fine press edition of Goethe’s Faust from a German press destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II


to a 21st century artists’ book of letters, poetry, essays, and pressed plants,

the rare book collections tell an infinite number of histories in a variety of ways, but always, the history of the “book.”

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Gilgamesh, King of Erech

09 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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ad Diwaniyah, clay tablets, Dorothea Braby, EPIC, Erech, Frank Lawrence Lucas, Gilgamesh, Golden Cockerel Press, Hebrew Bible, London, Luise Putcamp jr, Nippur, Pu-Abis, Sumerian, Ur, Urak, Ziusudra


“The white-haired Ziusudra gazes dreaming out to sea.
Above his white head, the tall palms dream also,
Undulating slowly the green indolence of their leaves.
The old man remembers
Long days, long since, when he watched other waves
Heaving like these, heaving onward eternally,
Yet never breaking
On any earthly shore;
For earth itself lay drowned.
Now he watches them breaking for ever,
Like the years;
The blue of his old eyes changes no more
Than the blue of ocean,
And his hoar locks blow like its foam.
Almost as ancient he seems as the rock of granite,
Of red granite, where he sits above the sea.
Yet still his immortal soul regrets
The brief years of his mortality.”

Gilgamesh, King of Erech
Frank Lawrence Lucas (1894-1967)
London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1948
PR6023 U3 G5 1948

The story of part man, part god hero Gilgamesh was first recorded on clay tablets well before 2000 BC. Gilgamesh was a historical king who reigned circa 2700 BC, the fifth in line of the founding first dynasty of Ur, centered around the ancient city of Urak, known in the Hebrew Biblle as Erech. The historical Gilgamesh built one of the first temples in the holy city of Nippur, now ad Diwaniyah, which is where two of our clay tablets are from. This edition is a free translation of the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, with twelve engravings by Dorothea Braby. Edition of five hundred copies, numbered. University of Utah copy is no. 263.


Excavations at Ur

Pu-Abis Burial Pit

No time, no tomb can hide what we have been.
See what the searchers have uncovered where
Hills are laid low in long-abandoned air,
Centuries swiftly sifted through a screen.
Bay leaves in circlet, gold instead of green,
Carnelian that this river land called rare,
Lapis bought dearly with some distant ware
Crown a crushed skull. Surely here lay a queen.

That future digger who can read the dead,
Build dynasties from what the past discards,
Dust and a different sunlight on his head,
Shaking my grave for artifacts and shards
Will bare no gold bedecking this brown bone
And rightly call a commoner’s skull my own.

———–

Clay Tablets

Molded like primal man from lumps of mud
And pressed with dents peculiar to old needs
The tablets tell of gods’ outlandish deeds,
Record the names kings bore before the Flood.
Now tufted hills lie where the city stood.
The kings eat endless earth and the wind feeds
On eyeless gods. The river stirs far reeds.
The clay alone survives long solitude

And even now some men can read its signs.
The double strokes say water, and the star
Signifies heaven. All the fragile lines
Hold meaning that millenniums fail to mar
While in a familiar alphabet my words
Today go meaningless as marks of birds.

–Luise Putcamp jr., 1964

Excavations at Ur published here by permission of the poet to whom we wish a happy 94th birthday.

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Seven Lines of Sumerian Cuneiform

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Amnanum, Babylonian, cuneiform, dedication, inscription, King Sin-kashid of Uruk, Mesopotamia, nomads, Palace, Renee Kovacs, Sumer, Sumerian, Uruk, West Semitic Amorite


Rare Books thanks Dr. Renee Kovacs for the following translation of our clay tablets.

Palace Dedication Inscription of King Sin-kashid of Uruk

Old Babylonian period, c. 1900-1700 BC

Seven lines of Sumerian cuneiform, six on obverse, one on reverse.

The text of the inscription is known from 174 duplicates (identified in scholarly literature as Sin-kashid RIM E4.4.1.2). Some are written on small clay cones, others on clay or stone tablets. They were intended for foundation deposits, and were immured in the walls of the royal palace in great numbers. There are also many  others expanded by a few lines of royal epithets.

Uruk was one of the most ancient cites of Sumer. The Amnanum were a tribe of West Semitic Amorite-speaking nomads who had come into southern Mesopotamia several centuries earlier.

An excellent reconstruction of the palace is shown at Artefacts: Scientific Illustration & Archeological Reconstruction.

Sin-kashid, mighty man, king of Uruk, king of Amnanum, built his royal palace (“a palace of his kingship”).

For detailed study of the palace and the related texts see the exhibition catalogue:

Fügert, A. and Sanati-Müller, S. 2013: Der altbabylonische Palast von Uruk und seine Texte, in: Crüsemann, N. et al. (editors), Uruk – 5000 Jahre Megacity. Ausstellungskatalog, Petersberg, 243-251.

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Beer libator

05 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Arad, beer libator, cult, cuneiform, Dr. Renee Kovacs, funerary banquet, grain, J. Willard Marriott Library, Kenneth Lieurance Ott, King Amar-Suen of Ur, libations, mill, Okanagan County Museum, priestesses, rare books, receipt, Special Collections, Sumerian, tablet, The University of Utah, Third Dynasty of Ur, Ur-mes, Washington

https://openbook.lib.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/65/2018/03/Tablet1080p11s.mp4

Photograph and stop motion by Scott Beadles.

Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet of Third Dynasty of Ur
PJ3824 B33
From the Kenneth Lieurance Ott Collection donated to the Okanangan County Museum, Washington, now in the Rare Books collection, J. Willard Marriott Library, the University of Utah.

Our thanks to Dr. Renee Kovacs for this translation.

This tablet will appear in the master database of cuneiform tablets, CDLI Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative  and the specialised database of administrative tablets of this period, the Third Dynasty of Ur: BDTNS Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts.

Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet of Third Dynasty of Ur

Administrative, receipt of grain

dated to King Amar-Suen of Ur, year 2 (ca. 2045 BC)

3.0 x 3.0 cm. The tablet is complete, 8 lines of Sumerian cuneiform, (6 obverse, 2 reverse).

The tablet records an amount of a grain (lillan”-grain) for provisions for the funerary cult of the former “lords”, that is the rulers, the en-priests and priestesses. The grain was issued from the mill by an official named Arad and received by an official Ur-mes with the title ‘beer libator”  This title was used specifically for an official who performed libations during the funerary banquet for the deceased rulers.

The English units of measure  in the translation do not reflect actual Sumerian volumes but merely the sequence of units, large to small, of the Sumerian.  The regnal years of kings were identified by assigning a  name for a significant event of that year.

1 0.2.2  4 silà (še <gur> lugal 2 “barrels”, 2 “gallons” 4 “quarts”  of lillan-grain
2 níg-dab5-en-en-ne provisions for the Lords
3 é-HAR-ta from the mill
4 ki Arad2-ta from Arad
5 Ur-mes kaš-dé-dé Ur-mes, libator for ritual meals,
6 šu ba-ti received.
rev 7 iti dLi9-si4 Month IX
8 mu Ur-bí-/lumki ba-hul Year (named) ” The year Urbilum was destroyed.”

 

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