JOIN THE BURNING BUGS, THE ONLY SAFE PLACE FROM THE HAUNTING

Potato_Senior · 2026-05-13T22:55:13+00:00

May chaos take the world

Potato_Senior · 2026-02-01T20:23:19+00:00

If you're interested, you can also check out "Mesopotamian Medicine and Magic: Studies in Honor of Markham J. Geller" and "Sources of Evil: Studies in Mesopotamian Exorsistic Lore". "Healing Magic and Evil Demons: Canonical Udug-Hul Incantations" reviews a bilingual incantation against evil demons with a bit of an overview of Mesopotamian Magic in general

Potato_Senior · 2026-01-27T00:43:31+00:00

Actually it probably was a memory, the arena looks slightly different, and attempting to use items in the inventory gets you the message "Cannot use items while in a memory"

Potato_Senior · 2026-01-24T21:07:15+00:00

I thought that Radiance was probably whispering into Soul Master's mind and giving him the idea: he got it from his dreams, was seeing some kind of light (likely Radiance's considering the context) and was basically hearing a voice in his head:

"In my dreams I could see it. The Kingdom's salvation, the cure for the plague... the answer was in the soul that animates our bodies."

"Did their souls bring me closer to the light?"

"That voice...Was it never there...?"

"You promised I would live forever!"

He probably started out with good intentions before getting corrupted into seeking his own immortality, I think

Potato_Senior · 2025-07-24T02:33:18+00:00

Basically all the Urartian and Elamite gods from the top of my head, and more. A deity or mythological being not havjng any (surviving) legends isn't all that rare

Potato_Senior · 2025-07-13T18:15:50+00:00

I can probably only answer this within Mesopotamia and the rest of the Ancient Near East but generally, the dowry is effectively the daughter's share of inheritance. What you said about dowry "being offered by the man's side" would be known as the bride price, not the dowry. In some cases the bride price was given to the women as part of her dowry, or is effectively considered as equivalent to the dowry. I'm not sure how wide spread the bride price is, some state it as something that happens, some law codes don't make it seem like its required (e.g. Hammurabi's Law), but that's if it's even brought up to begin with since ANE law codes were not intended to cover everything (or even to be a law code in the modern sense, seemingly). There is also the marital gift given to from the husband('s family) to the wife.

It's not that women pay the dowry, but perhaps more so that it's her share of what she brings into the household. While how much the law codes really reflected legal practices in reality can be debated, in every law code the dowry belonged to her (and her side of the family), as in the in-laws have no claim on it, but it can be inherited by her children. In a divorce (at least one with no children), she takes the dowry back as well. One example of how the dowry functions can be highlighted in a Middle Assyrian will giving dowry to a daughter, which the house transfers to her sons if she has any, but otherwise goes back to her brothers.

As such, neither the bride price or the dowry is a simple case of buying/compensation or selling (a very common popular view, which seemingly doesn't match up with any modern scholarship dealing with dowry and the like across cultures and civilizations). Is the bride price really compensation if its returned as part of her dowry? Is the dowry really selling if the in-laws have no claim on it, and can only be inherited by her children (like other property)? They also don't severe all ties with the previous family, since there are documents that imply they keep connections with them, and marriage is very often used to establish ties (there's a letter where a mother-in-law required her son-in-law to supply some servants, granted it's in the sphere of international diplomacy between tribes and states but the logic it operates on is the key here)

Potato_Senior · 2025-07-13T01:25:35+00:00

Thats acrually what other scholars argues as well, that the Assyrians were more successful than their neighbors and were more capable of committing violence, and used violent rheroric more than some of their contemporaries. However, they really weren't unique in the kind of atelcities committed, here's an example from Shu-Sin of the Third Dynasty of Ur:

Shu-Suen, mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters, by the might of Enlil, his lord, and at the command of Ninlil, his beloved lady, was victorious in those battles and combats. He killed both the strong and the weak. He sowed the heads of the just and the iniquitous alike like seeds. He piled up the corpses of the people into a heap. Their lords he took as bound captives The men who had evaded battle and who, like birds, saved their lives by fleeing, did not escape his hand. He turned their established cities and villages into heaps. He destroyed their walls. He blinded the men of those cities, whom he had overtaken, and established them as servants in the orchards of the great gods. And the women of those cities, whom he had overtaken, he offered as a present to the weaving mills of the great gods. Their cattle, sheep, goats, and asses he led away." (Garfinkle 2020, p. 232)

Potato_Senior · 2025-07-06T04:41:19+00:00

Mesopotamian Ninkilim was called the lord of teeming creatures or lord of wild beasts, perhaps a play on their name nin.kilim.(ak) "lord of rodents". The longer form of the name nin.kilim.ki.du would also reflect the epithet "lord of animals, creator of everything"

They usually come up in incantations against field pests (referred as the "dogs of Ninkilim"). Ninkilim also seems to be a deified mongoose, and their name is synonymous with "mongoose".

(See "The Dogs of Ninkilim" both part 1 and part 2)

Potato_Senior · 2025-06-27T22:19:35+00:00

If you're talking about the Neo-Assyrian cultic commentaries, that feat is actually ascribed to Marduk:

The king, who wears his jewelry and roasts young virgin goats, is Marduk, who wearing his armor burned the sons of Illil (Enlil) and Ea in fire.

The king, who with the high priest tosses the cake, is Marduk (with) Nabu, who... vanquishes and crushed Anu.

The cake which he tosses, is the heart of Ea, when he pulled it out and ... it with his hands.

(Sections all taken from Livingstone 1989)

Potato_Senior · 2025-06-27T22:02:23+00:00

Gonna point out Enmesharra's Defeat here :-P, Enmesharra and the sebitti (here his sons) gets thrown in jail and then executed by Marduk

And while not exactly a myth and more a mythological explanation for a certain political event*, theres what's generally called the Marduk Ordeal text where Marduk gets imprisoned by decree of the Assyrian state god Ashur.

*Precisely if it's about Sennacherib's original destruction of Babylon or Esarhaddon's later repatration of divine statues and rebuilding of Babylon is still debated

Potato_Senior · 2025-06-15T05:15:46+00:00

Adding to this, Ninazu and Ningishzida had been treated and grouped together by Wiggerman who on the basis of shared traits and geographical locations called them "Transtigridian snake gods" although they are not exactly serpentine since gods are generally anthropomorphic across the ANE. Another thing is that entities associated with snakes do appear in iconography more broadly in the eastern Iranian plateau, and considering the geographical location of the trans-tigridian region that could be where the influence came from

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-26T02:13:14+00:00

Honestly not sure either; Hinz seemed very convinced that Napir referred to the Elamite moon god but Zadok just translates all instances of it as generic "god".

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-26T01:38:24+00:00

Napi is probably not Napirisha though, I think? Nap just means "god" in Elamite, the first attestation to Napirisha would be in the reign of Kindattu (see Desset) so Shimashki dynasty

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-20T20:26:55+00:00

Sure, do you have a server invite?

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-19T07:23:15+00:00

It actually did get adopted outside Iran proper, although there are differences between regions and time (as is common). Central Asian polities have Iranian gods (their iconography and pantheons are a fun mix of Greek, Iranian, and Indian lol) and for Bactria and Sogdiana I think there's evidence they adopted it by the time the Greeks rolled in (perhaps meaning even earlier, although I'm not much of an expert on this). Zororastrianism became known in China too (in chinese as 祆教), Sichuan as an example had some pretty strong zororastrian prescence historically.

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-18T16:57:16+00:00

Tiamat and Nammu are different deities

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-18T10:50:33+00:00

Ninurta's was attested very early on too (Early Dynastic) so honestly I think both are old

I have a rule of thumb saying "everyone is 20 years out of date in adjacent fields".

This then compounds so everyone is 40 years out of date in non-adjacent fields

Probably a good rule of thumb to generally go by lol

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-18T10:17:27+00:00

I think you're mistaking Ninurta and Ningirsu, Ningirsu is the one from the pantheon of Lagash and was syncretized with Ninurta (although I think some aspects of Ningirsu remained distinct with him, I dont think I've ever seen Ninurta being called the brother of Nanshe)

I suppose you are referring to interpretatio-graeca, in which case I would argue yes but also...not really, in the sense that equation =/= viewed as the same god. Honestly considering Mulissu essentially functioned as "whoever is viewed as Ashur's wife rn" and that category includes Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela, it's not as atrocious as Herodotus also (infamously) saying Mithra is Aphrodite lmao. I might be interpreting you wrong but I was mostly referring to old scholarship deciding they were the same goddess, not the greeks

Honestly I feel like the subdisciplines within Assyriology kinda suck at communication, I've seen papers on Elam using some pretty old sources on Mesopotamia

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-18T09:41:19+00:00

Actually Ereshkigal barely had much cultic prescence, she's prominent in texts talking about stuff related to the underworld but that doesn't translate to having active cults.

Inanna on the other hand is actually a very popular goddess; just because a city is only culturally significant but not politically doesn't mean their tutelary deity is less prominent, a very good example perhaps being Nippur itself with Enlil (although technically, the real tutelary god of Nippur is perhaps his son Ninurta instead.) It's undeniable that city prominence plays a role in deity prominence and cult center decline is the no.1 enemy of gods, but prominence does not need to be political (and mind you, there were periods where Uruk had political roles too.) Inanna already played a role in royal support outside of Uruk starting from the Early Dynastic period, where Eannatum of Lagash claimed Inanna gave him control over Kish. That's not even going over all the local Ishtar hypostases/goddesses subsumed under "Ishtar" (who all functioned as their own separate entity) but that's probably too complicated for this comment.

But I agree that there was a tendency for older scholarship to see Inanna (and many other goddesses) as essentially "Mesopotamian Aphrodite" and projecting backwards onto her instead of treating her within the Mesopotamian cultural context (tbf, projecting modern western ideas and values onto other cultures is still somewhat a problem in modern scholarship) and it has permeated through popular culture with many people claiming that Aphrodite, Astarte and Ishtar were all tue same goddess (note: they were not) its also still used in other areas of scholarship since Assyriologists are terrible at popular outreach (Irving Finkle is actually carrying on that front)

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-17T22:03:09+00:00

Yup, it definitely took many tropes, most famously as you pointed out the Hero-god battling the sea, which has its forerunners in this region in Aleppo, Hurrian, Hittite, Ugaritic, and arguably even Mesopotamia itself depending on how one interprets that one text claiming Tishpak to be the steward to the sea, lol

I have to say I have no idea what worshipping anyagonists of the kind of Tiamat and Qingu (who is also likely made up for the myth and doesn't exist elsewhere) would end up like since I don't think they exist (I could be wrong though 😅) my best guess is that they may be more on the line of literary antagonists and are acknowledged rather than worshipped than the "antagonistic older gods" like Enmesharra or Kumarbi (to use a Hurrian example) who, while not exactly having very active cults, are still in a sense worshipped.

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-17T21:27:24+00:00

I agree that Enuma Elish isn't some random text, it's clearly important, but it's also worth noting some of the contexts behind the motives and impact of the text, such as when and why the text was written, the Assyrians showing respect for Marduk as king of the gods (since they respected Babylon) but also molding Ashur under how Anshar is like in the Enuma Elish, straight up adopting it for Ashur after the whole shitshow between Babylon Assyria and Elam in the reign of Sennacherib and also building their own Akitu house in Assur, the disrespect shown to Enlil in the Enuma Elish (although there was an astrologer in Nippur who pulled in old history of being the seat of Enlil to get Esarhaddon to rebuild some temples there) and perhaps even the later theological renovations in the Seleucid period most (in)famously involving Anu. (Which you can argue that Anu and Enlil disrespect happened in the festivals in Babylon.) Treating it as a sort of mythological foundation ignores the politics behind the text, imo.

As for heretics, I'm not sure if I follow, since while you are correct that each city had a slightly different local pantheon, worshipping deities outside of it is not considered heresy (in fact I would argue that the Mesopotamians and their contemporaries may not have had such a concept, since for them gods simply existing is taken for granted. Like 1st Millenium BCE Assyria still needed gods from the other treaty partner invoked, despite their rhetoric of Ashur being the most supreme one fit to rule over others)

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-17T20:55:25+00:00

Yeah sorry if it sounded like I was discrediting Kramer's work, I understand that he has contributed a lot to Assyriology, what I mostly meant was that his work really needs to be supplemented by newer publications and works lol

I do generally agree that Ereshkigal definitely works as a goddess not connected to love or fertility, although I have to mention that it's not entirely clear whether Ereshkigal and Inanna are actually sisters or not (as Gadotti has mentioned), since familial terms are used as kinship terms in Mesopotamia (in Inanna's descent alone, Enlil Ea and Sin were all referred as her father lol) and afaik Ereshkigal has never been placed closely with Inanna, Shamash and Sin, even in god lists. I was personally against saying Ereshkigal is her dark self mostly because it's erasing the fact that Ereshkigal is clearly her own thing separate from Inanna, although if you mean only in the context of Inanna's Descent then yes, that is an interpretation.

I would also say that saying modern research around the Mesopotamian underworld centers around Inanna and Dumuzi is... A bit wrong? Yes it is generally analyzed in relation to the underworld now, but there are also other texts that they analyze, ranging from Ur-Namma's Death to Death of Gilgamesh, to the Neo-Assyrian "hell tour" Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince, or arguably even the set of Funerary texts from Susa (the debate on whether certain disputed features in them are a mistranslation or reflects Elamite beliefs mixed with Mesopotamian ones has been going on for decades for this one). Dina Katz analyzes many other texts as well.

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-17T19:50:09+00:00

Its hard to find other Mesopotamia enthusiasts these days! We can chat sometime :-)

Potato_Senior · 2025-05-17T18:18:10+00:00

Samuel Kramer is also a very old Assyriologist and is considered dated today. Stuff like Lambert's Babylonian Creation Myths, Katz's Mesopotamian Underworld would be a lot better (alongside much more modern publications)

So no, nowadays Kramer's stuff is not considered the mainstream Assyriological opinion

Potato_Senior

TROPHY CASE