X-Nico

unusual facts about Ancient Mesopotamia



Deep history

The concept of prehistory is thus recast as an arbitrary boundary that limits the longue durée perspective of historians, and which rests upon outmoded assumptions that history follows a teleological path beginning with the origins of civilization in Ancient Mesopotamia.


see also

Angim

The work known by its incipit, Angim, “The Return of Ninurta to Nippur,” is a rather obsequious 210-line mythological praise poem for the ancient Mesopotamian warrior-god Ninurta, describing his return to Nippur from an expedition to the mountains (KUR), where he boasts of his triumphs against "rebel lands" (KI.BAL), boasting to Enlil in the Ekur, before returning to the Ešumeša temple – to “manifest his authority and kingship.”

Grimoire

The earliest known written magical incantations come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), where they have been found inscribed on various cuneiform clay tablets excavated by archaeologists from the city of Uruk and dated to between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.

Mount Nisir

Mount Nisir (also spelled Mount Niṣir, and also called Mount Nimush), mentioned in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, is supposedly the mountain known as today as Pir Omar Gudrun (elevation 9000 ft.), near the city Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ninkasi

In ancient Mesopotamia the brewer's craft was the only profession which derived social sanction and divine protection from female deities/goddesses, specificially: Ninkasi, who covered the production of beer, Siris, who was used in a metonymic way to refer to beer, and Siduri, who covered the enjoyment of beer.

Paul-Alain Beaulieu

Reviewer Robert D. Biggs writes that "this is a major contribution to the study of ancient Mesopotamia" while M. A. Dandamayev calls it "an enormous step in the study of Babylonian religion".

Stephen Glanville

Both of these works are set in ancient Mesopotamia, and Christie herself acknowledged in her autobiography that neither of these works would have been possible without Glanville.

Tara Jaff

Along with Fran Hazelton and June Peters she founded Zipang, a storytelling group which focuses on stories from ancient Mesopotamia.