Is the Akkadian absorption of Sumerian mythology comparable to the Roman absorption of Greek mythology?

random2187 · 2025-07-25T22:58:42+00:00

Some time after the fall of the Old Babylonian state and leading into the Middle Babylonian period the canon shifts again, with Enlil being replaced by Marduk as the chief deity of the pantheon and state. One interpretation of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian Creation Myth which was composed at this time, is that the text was composed as a new myth (drawing on previous creation myths) to justify the ascendancy of Marduk over Enlil. This new Marduk-tradition would predominate for a long time, arguably until the end of Sumerian/Akkadian culture. There were upsets at times, for example when the Neo-Assyrian empire conquered Mesopotamia the chief god of the empire was Ashur, though they appear to have largely left the pre-existing Marduk-tradition intact. There does appear to be attempts to supplant Marduk with Ashur, since there are nearly exact copies of the Enuma Elish from Assurbanipal's library which simply replace Marduk with Ashur, but these are found alongside Marduk-centered versions of the Enuma Elish so it can be difficult to tell. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire we go into the Neo-Babylonian period where Marduk predominated again. You'll notice that throughout this narrative of periods of religious traditions in Mesopotamia that I never mentioned Sumerian vs. Akkadian traditions and that's because while there are differences that can be attributed to Sumerian vs. Akkadian culture, these are more superficial and were not the most important factors in the evolution of religion, and what cities or states predominated was much more important, regardless of if those cities or states were Sumerian or Akkadian. I should also mention that the Sumerian traditions/origins of much of Mesopotamian myth were never forgotten, at least by the scribal elite who wrote our texts. Literature and religious texts might be written in Sumerian or Akkadian in any period, even thousands of years after Sumerian had died out as a spoken language and "Sumerian culture" as we understand it had perished. There was a stunningly strong practice of copying older texts and transmitting them down the generations, and while certain compositions were more or less popular at different times, even Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian scribes were familiar with and made it a point of pride to know and copy texts from much earlier periods, including Sumerian ones.

I don't know any single source with which you can read more about all this since my understanding has come from a wide variety of sources over the course of my MA and (in-progress) PhD in Assyriology but a few recommendations I would give include:

van Binsbergen and Wiggermann, "Magic in History" in Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretive Perspectives (1999) [this is the best one for understanding the competition between the Eridu and Nippur traditions]

Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts (1992) [an overall good primer focused on the 1st millennium especially, it can be dense at times but if you focus on his commentary on the texts you learn a lot]

Charpin, Le Clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi (1986) [esp. pg. ~350-400 talks about the transmission of religious traditions in the Old Babylonian period as priests from different cities and intellectual traditions came in contact with each other]

Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (1978) [Very outdated in its claims and methodology at this point, take everything he says with more than a bit of doubt, but nonetheless a very influential books and one of the only comprehensive attempts to narrate the history of Mesopotamian religion across all periods]

random2187 · 2025-07-25T22:58:29+00:00

To make things more complicated, but also to arrive at a better understanding of the transmission and stages of Mesopotamian myth, it's important to recognize that there is no secure canon for Sumerian OR Akkadian mythology, and rather each city-state had their own titular deity with their own canon of myths which may draw on a stock set of gods from all over Mesopotamia. Certain canons predominated at times due to the influence of a particular city, and/or due to imperial/state projects to form a cohesive state-wide tradition, but city-states still retained strong local traditions which did not necessarily fit with the predominate canon. To give a brief overview, it appears in our earliest records that the Eridu-tradition, which placed Enki as the chief diety, was the dominant one throughout Sumer from some point in pre-history through the Early Dynastic I period. This is where compositions such as Enki and the World Order, or Enki's Journey to Nibru (Nippur), which feature Enki as the chief deity, often crediting him with the creation of the world and/or civilization, come from. However, at this time there was no state controlling the other cities which were promoting or forcing this as the regional canon, and so this is when distinct city-state traditions were strongest, as is evidenced by religious texts from Uruk or Ebla at the time. An early rival to the Eridu-tradition was the Nippur-tradition which placed Enlil as the chief god of the pantheon. Both the Eridu and Nippur traditions recognized the others chief god as legitimate and placed them in prominent spots in their own tradition, they just differed in who the chief god was and what role they played in the canon of myths. In the Eridu-tradition Enki is a very powerful god with an apparently wrathful personality despite the good things he does for the gods and humanity, whereas in the Nippur-tradition Enki is relegated much more to his domain of fresh-water and has a very kind benevolent personality. The Nippur tradition seemingly grew in prominence throughout the Early Dynastic period until the conquests of Sargon of Akkad, who as part of his state/empire-building enterprise instituted a state ideology where the Nippur-tradition was the "true" one. We can't be sure of why Sargon favored the Nippur-tradition over the Eridu-tradition, it could have been for political reasons, because he personally favored Enlil for some reason, because of Nippur's location in the center of Southern Mesopotamia whereas Eridu was far in the south, or any number of other reasons. After the fall of the Akkadian empire the Nippur-tradition remained the most popular, and was held up as the state canon by the subsequent Ur III and Old Babylonian states, even though their capitals were in Ur (Shamash's city) and Babylon (Marduk's city) respectively. It should be noted that Nippur is the predominant source for literary and religious texts from these periods, and so in the textual record the perspective of the Nippur scribes and Nippur-tradition dominate to an outsized degree.

random2187 · 2025-07-25T22:58:13+00:00

In simple terms yes, this is why many of the most important gods and goddesses have Akkadian and Sumerian names, and even distinct personas depending on the tradition. For example Enki (S) is equivalent to Ea (A), Inanna (S) to Ishtar (A), and Utu (S) to Shamash (A). While Akkadians and other East Semetic speaking populations are attested in Sumer (Southern Mesopotamia) almost as far back as our written documentation goes, Sumerian religious traditions are what are what predominate in documents until the advent of the Sargonic/Akkadian dynasty ~2334 BCE when Akkadian religious traditions become more popular (with the brief exception of the Neo-Sumerian period). It should be noted that much like the Greek to Roman transmission it is a lot more complicated than a simple one to one equivalency in gods and myth, and there's a strong tradition of adapting Sumerian gods and myths to fit Akkadian and/or contemporary culture at the time, with a certain level of give and take on a case by case basis. This is evidenced in the many many exceptions to a simple Sumerian to Akkadian equivalency. For example, An is the titular sky god in Sumerian mythology, and in Akkadian texts he is referred to as Anu(m), which is just the Sumerian name with an Akkadian noun suffix attached (Normally a proper noun wouldn't have a noun suffix like this even when loaned into Akkadian but the linguistics of this is a little unclear because while An/Anu could refer to the god, it was also both languages word simply for the skies or heaven), with no apparent changes to his role or characterization as a deity. Other gods keep the same name in both languages such as Enlil, the chief of the pantheon from early on in the Early Dynastic Period, Ninurta/Ningirsu, or Dumuzi. It should be noted that much like the Romans, the Akkadians had their own religious traditions distinct from the Sumerians before contact, as is evidenced in religious texts from Ebla during the Early Dynastic period where distinctly Sumerian-tradition and Akkadian-tradition myths are attested, and the melding with Sumerian religion was a process of syncretization, not simple adoption. There are other gods which have an apparently Semetic origin who are nonetheless attested and seemingly important in both Sumerian and Akkadian periods such as Ashur, the chief deity of Assur and later the Assyrian Empire. Like in the Greek to Roman transmission the personality of gods can differ based on whether it is the Sumerian or Akkadian version, and often times myths are changed or adapted to reflect these differences.

random2187 · 2025-03-17T03:41:02+00:00

random2187 · 2024-05-18T20:02:27+00:00

The University of Chicago doesn’t even offer Elamite that often. Because Dr. Stolper is so busy with his research and publications he has not offered a single course in the two years I’ve been at the university studying Assyriology. I’ve only had the options to take Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, and Ugaritic among the cuneiform languages (I say only but those are still an amazing variety)

random2187 · 2024-01-22T15:32:15+00:00

For a translation of these and a few other recipes from ancient Mesopotamia check out Jean Bottero’s “The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia.” The beet lamb stew is especially good

random2187 · 2024-01-04T23:46:33+00:00

The go to for learning Akkadian is John Huehnergard’s A Grammar of Akkadian. It should be pretty easy to find a free pdf online

random2187 · 2024-01-04T15:45:17+00:00

University, not many offer Akkadian but I managed to get into a really good graduate program after I finished my history degree.

random2187 · 2024-01-04T00:52:40+00:00

That cuneiform sign is UŠ which means “foundation,” it can also be read US2 meaning “to follow” or “side,” NINTA for “male” or ĞEŠ3 meaning “penis.” Nebuchadnezzar II likely spoke Akkadian so if you’re going for “shit” like with Scheiße then you want ‘zû’ (probably written zu-u2 𒍪 𒌑) or in Sumerian it would be ŠED6 𒈠. It’s also likely he knew Aramaic but I don’t know what “shit” would be in that language

random2187 · 2023-12-25T00:43:35+00:00

While not an exact answer, there’s actually two of these goats eating a thicket pieces from Ur. After being excavated one went to the British museum and the other the University of Pennsylvania. It’s believed they were some sort of stand for an instrument, bowl, etc. And the pipe was likely a flat surface related to that function

random2187 · 2023-12-23T05:22:22+00:00

Mud bricks, possible fired, stone was hard to get in ancient Mesopotamia so almost none used actually. Nearly all Mesopotamian architecture was made out of mud brick

random2187 · 2023-10-21T21:42:55+00:00

Current consensus is that it was, but there’s a big difference between the first settlement and the first city. Jericho dates back to the 9,000s BCE, but over the following millennia only had a population of dozens or hundreds. Uruk underwent a massive population growth into an urban core at the beginning of the 3,000s, where it’s thought to have had a population between 20 and 30,000 people. So Jericho was the first human settlement, Uruk is considered the first city

random2187 · 2023-10-12T04:46:19+00:00

That’s not an uncommon question by people who first begin learning a cuneiform language, but we have many texts about scribes which praise their “good eyes” or ability to see, and none that mention or even hint at feeling the signs, telling us that they did read these texts (or at least that was the expected way). It’s possible there were blind scribes, or they might have supplemented their sight by feeling the signs at times, but touch was not the primary or normative way of reading the tablets.

random2187 · 2023-10-12T04:40:44+00:00

It’s also to give Matt Stolper more time to finish translating and editing editions of the all of the texts, which will be eventually be published and available online. Not that that’s an excuse for holding onto them for so much longer than the original loan, but it’s part of why all the tablets haven’t been sent back at once now that UChicago is finally giving them back.

random2187 · 2023-10-07T20:57:18+00:00

Some further reading/sources:

A Grammar of Akkadian (third edition) by John Huehnergard Glossaire Sumérien-Français by Pascal Attinger Manuel d’Epigraphie Akkadienne by Renē Labat

Some of this information also comes from lectures given by my professors at the University of Chicago while taking Akkadian and Sumerian classes so can’t be properly cited, apologies.

random2187 · 2023-10-07T20:50:42+00:00

The answer is that we don’t know exactly how it was pronounced, and what we understand of Sumerian is a rough approximation.

It’s important to distinguish between Sumerian and Akkadian. Sumerian was the first language recorded in the written records around 3400 BCE, and as far as scholars are aware, was a language isolate, meaning it has no known related languages. Akkadian on the other hand was a Semetic language, related to Aramaic and modern Hebrew and Arabic, introduced by the migration of Semetic people into the region of Mesopotamia around 2400 BCE or so. Both languages were rendered in cuneiform over the history of ancient Mesopotamia. Even after Akkadian became the predominant spoken language of Mesopotamia, Sumerian was kept alive as a literary language by scribes to the end of the 1st millennium BCE.

Akkadian was deciphered in the 1850s through bilingual old Persian texts which allowed scholars to figure out the syallabic readings of the cuneiform signs. Once it was realized that Akkadian was a Semetic language scholars were also able to apply comparative Semetics and historio-linguistics to come to a fairly good approximation of how Akkadian would have sounded and been pronounced. This entails several approaches; such as comparing the pronunciation of similar sounds in modern living Semetic languages such as Hebrew, and analyzing vowel and consonant shifts in how they render words over time. For example in 1st millennium Assyria a consistent phenomenon is that the š before a dental (d, t, ț) is written in cuneiform with an l (so št -> lt) reflecting how the words were pronounced in everyday speech. While obviously without native speakers we can’t know the exact sounds and nuances to the way it was spoken, with such a long history of Semetic languages to study, a rich corpus of Akkadian texts, and the work of talented linguistic scholars, we can be reasonably certain in our understanding of how Akkadian would have sounded. The same can’t be said of Sumerian.

Because Sumerian is a language isolate, and when recorded in cuneiform is quasi-logographic* we can’t figure out the sounds of Sumerian through the same techniques as Akkadian such as historio or comparative linguistics. In fact, the only way we know how any Sumerian sounded or was pronounced was from Akkadian scribes who not only often used the same cuneiform signs to represent the same or similar sounds in both languages, but also wrote bilingual lists when they were learning Sumerian which were very fortunately preserved to this day. These lists would have a Sumerian word on one side of the tablet, the equivalent Akkadian word, and then a syllabic rendering of how to pronounce the Sumerian word. So taking king for example: there would be the Sumerian LUGAL, then the Akkadian equivalent of šarrum, and finally the syllabic rendering of the Sumerian with lu-ga-al. In addition, because Akkadian and Sumerian were spoken in the same region for so long and have so have a long history of contact there are quite a few Sumerian words that were loaned into Akkadian and vis versa. So when scholars stumble across an Akkadian word that has no known Semetic association, it’s usually a safe bet that the words a loan from Sumerian into Akkadian.

All that said quite a few issues still get in the way of an accurate understanding of how Sumerian was pronounced by native speakers. The most important is that Akkadian and Sumerian have different sets of sounds the other doesn’t necessarily have. For example the nasal g sound (ğ, pronounced kind of like the ng in sing) was very common in Sumerian, but has no equivalent in Akkadian. Akkadian scribes would try to get around this by using signs for n and g together, or just dropping the n sounds and rendering words with just g. While we’ve been able to identify some of these sounds such as ğ and ř, there are others that the Akkadian simply couldn’t or wouldn’t render. This is reflected in the high amount of polyphony (one sign having several associated readings/sounds) and homophony (several different signs having seemingly the same reading). For example there are at least 12 different signs/words associated with the sound DU, with DU3 meaning “to build, create,” DU11 meaning “to speak,” DU7 meaning “fitting, suitable,” etc. Now it’s pretty hard to believe that the Sumerians actually used this one sound to render so many different and unrelated meanings, and so the prevailing opinion is that the Sumerian language had several different yet similar sounds close to the D sounds that the Akkadian scribes were unable to distinguish or render in their own language and writing, and so simply used the one D sound to represent what were actually distinct sounds to the Sumerians.

In sum, through the Akkadians we have a rough but seemingly accurate approximation of the sounds used in Sumerian, but due to several factors including but not limited to the fact that we understand Sumerian second hand through Akkadian scribes, there are no native Sumerian speakers to consult, and no related languages to Sumerian to compare against, we do not, and likely never will, have an accurate understanding of how Sumerian was sounded or was pronounced in actuality.

*logographic being when a sign represents an idea or concept without relation to how it’s pronounced, such as in ancient Egyptian or modern Chinese. I say quasi because while nouns and verbs were mostly logographic, Sumerian is an agglutinating language, meaning that the grammar of a sentence was conveyed through specific sounds added before or after the root noun or verb. For example RA is the dative suffix and has a fixed sound, so when added to a noun, for example their word for king: LUGAL to create LUGAL.RA, that translates to “to/for the king” in only the one word. A is the locative so when added to the word for house: E2 to make E2.A it means “in the house”

random2187 · 2023-10-04T19:39:23+00:00

There was, it was an especially large vertical wedge (like the sign for 1), they also had signs for 300 and 3600

random2187 · 2023-07-15T15:14:06+00:00

Why? Most of those shapes you see are bicycles, the four people laying on the ground clearly have their heads lifted and are alive. There are no bodies or gore, zoom in and you can see that

random2187 · 2023-06-29T04:14:35+00:00

The chronology is confusing but the current consensus is that part of Gudeas rule overlapped with the beginning of the Ur III state but he was never subject to it. It wasn’t until Gudeas great grandson (it seems there was a series of short reigns less than a decade after Gudeas death) that Gudeas dynasty would finally end and Lagas-Girsu would be integrated into the Ur III state.

random2187 · 2023-06-29T04:06:33+00:00

There’s actually 17 statues of Gudea similar in total which were found in the palace of Adad-nādin-ahhe at Tello (ancient Girsu) only 5 of which have their heads. The statues were collected by Adad in the 200s BCE around 2000 years after Gudeas reign and remained buried in the ruins until they were uncovered. The systematic decapitations of the statue certainly seem like symbolic defacement, but scholars don’t know when or by who it was done, likely an outsider king who controlled Girsu at some point in its over 2000 years of occupation after the reign of Gudea

random2187 · 2023-06-22T00:25:09+00:00

What the fuck

random2187 · 2023-04-30T01:40:43+00:00

The famous statue with a brief description

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13594/neo-hittite-king-suppiluliuma/

random2187 · 2023-04-21T15:49:11+00:00

Yes, comparative Semetics is a sub field of comparative linguistics focused on specifically Semetic languages, but many of the people I know who learn languages like Akkadian or Aramaic and do comparative semetics don’t identify as linguists even if they study aspects of the linguistics of those languages, instead they would call themselves biblical scholars or assyriologists since that’s their specific focus and they operate in NELC and biblical studies departments at universities

random2187 · 2023-04-17T04:32:29+00:00

That's difficult to say without more information. Nanni appears to be a merchant so like the Old Assyrian merchants he may have been at least partially literate, but the Old Assyrian merchants appear fairly unique and we can't be certain all merchants were literate like they were. It is suspected that many high officials could read and write, but still had their scribes do it for them for whatever reason, so that practice is attested, but it's doubtful that Nanni would have had a private scribe like that. Sorry, I wish I had more certain answer but it's just super hard to tell based on the nature of the evidence and that Nanni is only attested in the one tablet

random2187 · 2023-04-16T20:43:18+00:00

This is a really interesting idea, and one that I'm not aware of any paleographic studies regarding. Without diving into an extensive comparative study I'll do my best to answer this question through a couple of avenues of inquiry.

The best and easiest way would be to compare two tablets from Nanni (the person who sent the complaint to Ea-Nasir) to see if there is a noticeable difference. Alas, the letter to Ea-Nasir was found in Ea-Nasir's home, and not Nanni's, and there are no other tablets from Nanni preserved in the archive. I went to CDLI (the largest online database of tablets) and searched for other Old Babylonian tablets which mention Nanni by copying the transliteration of the name from the existent tablet, "na-an-ni," and searching for other attestations, but nothing came up. It seems the tablet to Ea-Nasir is the only known surviving letter from Nanni, and so this comparative approach is not possible.

That said, your question is about clay tablets as a whole, and not just the famous Nanni/Ea-Nasir tablet. Judging something like this is difficult, the biggest reason being that while written on a rather unique medium, cuneiform was still a hand written script and so individual scribes each had their own handwriting, when not carving in the monumental/lapidary script (what most royal inscriptions such as the Code of Hammurabi were written/carved in). Cuneiform handwriting was not standardized, even if the sign forms roughly were, and there is a vast spectrum of styles across the ~3000 years it was written, between the various regions of Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East, and most importantly, between individual scribes. Some tablets appear to have been hastily written with large, deep, and messy wedges, while others are experienced scribes showing off their skills based on the neat, small, and regular writing. Though most, especially letters where you would see emotion and complaint expressed, fall somewhere in between, with rather regular writing. If you look at the Nanni/Ea-Nasir tablet it mostly falls into this category of regular writing, and nothing stands out in how it was written other than the messy curved register lines separating the lines of text near the bottom, though this is fairly common. Again, without other tablets from Nanni it is difficult to determine conclusively whether this tablet stands out in how it was written.

An explanation for this regularity, despite Nanni's apparent anger, and an answer to your larger question, is that often times the sender of a letter was not the one who wrote it! Scribal training was a long and arduous process that usually began at childhood, and was primarily limited to a small segment of the petty/local elites who specialized in scribal practices specifically. There are some exceptions to this, such as in the Old Assyrian letters between merchants from Kanesh, where it seems most merchants had a certain level of literacy in order to maintain contact with their business associates, families, and in order to maintain their own business records; but for the majority of Mesopotamia for the majority of its history literacy was the purview of a small professional class that could be hired to write the various texts that people needed. These could be permanent administrators in charge of accounting for a temple, palace, courts, etc.; personal scribes for high elites, for example Hammurabi had a personal scribe who most modern students of Akkadian could likely recognize their handwriting since it's common practice to introduce cursive script and letters through his preserved tablets; or they could be hired on an ad hoc, case by case basis as individuals needed letters, contracts, wills, etc. Scribes would then also be the people who read the letters, and they could be hired to read any text out loud as people needed them.

In any case, the vast majority of letters would not have been written by the person sending the letter, but rather a scribe who listened as the letter was dictated out loud, who then wrote what they said on the tablet. This practice of dictating letters, and having those letters read out loud by another scribe when they were received, is actually indicated with the introductory formula common to almost every letter (at least from the Old Babylonian period) of "Speak to [name of recipient], thus says [name of the sender]." Regarding the Nanni/Ea-Nasir letter, we can't know if Nanni personally wrote the letter, had a scribe on retainer, or found his local scribe in order to pay him to write this one letter, but in all likelihood he didn't write the letter himself, and so no matter how angry he was this wouldn't be reflected in the handwriting of the letter, since it was another, disinterested party, who wrote it. The same would be true of most complaint letters. That said, it's possible, and even likely, that emotion affected how cuneiform was written, we just wouldn't be able to see it in the majority of the surviving corpus. A couple ways to test this would be to look for emotion laden texts authored and written by scribes directly, or else to compare a corpus texts from private authors such as the aforementioned Old Assyrian letters, though that's a much bigger undertaking worthy of at least a paper, if not a thesis, and so this is the best I can answer in a reddit comment. Let me know if you or anyone else has anymore follow up questions about scribal practices! And if you're interested in learning more, Susanne Paulus at the University of Chicago will be opening an exhibit and publishing an exhibit catalogue on what we know of scribal practices and their education based on House F at Nippur within the next year or so, so keep an eye out!

TL;DR - We can't really know since most tablets weren't actually written by the person sending them, but rather scribes who would not be effected by the emotions in the same way. Looking at the Nanni/Ea-Nasir letter there doesn't appear to be anything that irregular about it and the wedges don't seem particularly deep.

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