1.
Sumerian language
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Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer and a language isolate which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia. During the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a Sprachbund, then it was forgotten until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets left by these speakers. It succeeds the proto-literate period, which spans roughly the 35th to 30th centuries, some versions of the chronology may omit the Late Sumerian phase and regard all texts written after 2000 BC as Post-Sumerian. The term Post-Sumerian is meant to refer to the time when the language was already extinct, the extinction has traditionally been dated approximately to the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the last predominantly Sumerian state in Mesopotamia, about 2000 BC. The standard variety of Sumerian is called eme-ĝir, a notable variety or sociolect is called eme-sal. Eme-sal is used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts, in addition, it is dominant in certain genres of cult songs. The special features of eme-sal are mostly phonological, but words different from the language are also used. Sumerian is a language, meaning that words could consist of a chain of more or less clearly distinguishable and separable affixes and/or morphemes. Sumerian distinguishes the grammatical genders human/non-human, but it not have separate male/female gender pronouns. The human gender includes not only humans but also gods and in cases the word for statue. Sumerian has also claimed to have two tenses, but these are currently described as completive and incompletive or perfective and imperfective aspects instead. There are a number of cases, absolutive, ergative, genitive, dative/allative, locative, comitative, equative, directive/adverbial. The naming and number of the cases varies in the scientific literature, the different homophones are marked with different numbers by convention,2 and 3 being often replaced by acute accent and grave accent diacritics respectively. For example, du = go, du3 = dù = build, Sumerian is a split ergative language. It behaves as a language in the 1st and 2nd person of present-future tense/incompletive aspect. Similar patterns are found in a number of unrelated split ergative languages
2.
Sumer
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Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
3.
King
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King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, in the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the title may refer to tribal kingship. Germanic kingship is cognate with Indo-European traditions of tribal rulership In the context of classical antiquity, king may translate Latin rex or either Greek archon or basileus. In classical European feudalism, the title of king as the ruler of a kingdom is understood as the highest rank in the order, potentially subject. In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies. The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs, in the West prince, emperor, archduke, duke or grand duke, in the Middle East sultan or emir, etc. Kings, like other royalty, tend to wear purple because purple was a color to wear in the past. The English term king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, which in turn is derived from the Common Germanic *kuningaz, the Common Germanic term was borrowed into Estonian and Finnish at an early time, surviving in these languages as kuningas. The English term king translates, and is considered equivalent to, Latin rēx, the Germanic term is notably different from the word for king in other Indo-European languages. It is a derivation from the term *kunjom kin by the -inga- suffix, the literal meaning is that of a scion of the kin, or perhaps son or descendant of one of noble birth. English queen translates Latin regina, it is from Old English cwen queen, noble woman, the Germanic term for wife appears to have been specialized to wife of a king, in Old Norse, the cognate kvan still mostly refers to a wife generally. Scandinavian drottning, dronning is a derivation from *druhtinaz lord. The English word is of Germanic origin, and historically refers to Germanic kingship, the Early Middle Ages begin with a fragmentation of the former Western Roman Empire into barbarian kingdoms. The core of European feudal manorialism in the High Middle Ages were the territories of the kingdom of France, the Holy Roman Empire, in southern Europe, the kingdom of Sicily was established following the Norman conquest of southern Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia was claimed as a title held by the Crown of Aragon in 1324. In the Balkans, the Kingdom of Serbia was established in 1217, in eastern-central Europe, the Kingdom of Hungary was established in AD1000 following the Christianisation of the Magyars. The kingdoms of Poland and Bohemia were established within the Holy Roman Empire in 1025 and 1198, in Eastern Europe, the Kievan Rus consolidated into the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which did not technically claim the status of kingdom until the early modern Tsardom of Russia. In northern Europe, the kingdoms of the Viking Age by the 11th century expanded into the North Sea Empire under Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England
4.
Cuneiform script
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Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept
5.
Logogram
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In written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or phrase. Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are logograms, some Egyptian hieroglyphs, the use of logograms in writing is called logography. A writing system that is based on logograms is called a logographic system, in alphabets and syllabaries, individual written characters represent sounds rather than concepts. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not necessarily have meaning by themselves, Writing language in this way is called phonemic orthography. Logographic systems include the earliest writing systems, the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, a more recent attempt is Zlango, intended for use in text messaging, currently including around 300 icons. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the domain is the syllable. For example, Egyptian was used to write both sȝ duck and sȝ son, though it is likely that these words were not pronounced the same apart from their consonants and this can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes, some morphemes are composed of more than one character, for example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was created by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū with the bug determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū can be used separately, in Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse, a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme hjwang meaning king, in modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār flower. These logograms, called hozwārishn, were dispensed with altogether after the Arab conquest of Persia, logograms are used in modern shorthand to represent common words. In addition, the numerals and mathematical symbols used in systems are logograms—1 one,2 two, + plus, = equals, and so on. In English, the ampersand & is used for and and et, % for percent, # for number, § for section, $ for dollar, € for euro, £ for pound, ° for degree, @ for at, etc. All historical logographic systems include a dimension, as it is impractical to have a separate basic character for every word or morpheme in a language. In some cases, such as cuneiform as it was used for Akkadian, many logographic systems also have a semantic/ideographic component, called determinatives in the case of Egyptian and radicals in the case of Chinese. In the case of Chinese, the vast majority of characters are a combination of a radical that indicates its nominal category. The Mayan system used logograms with phonetic complements like the Egyptian, Chinese scholars have traditionally classified the Chinese characters hanzi into six types by etymology. The first two types are single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other characters, single-body pictograms and ideograms make up only a small proportion of Chinese logograms
6.
Determinative
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A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words. In transliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in lower case, whether a given sign is a mere determinative or a Sumerogram can not always be determined unambiguously since their use is not always consistent. Nearly every word — nouns, verbs, and adjectives — features a determinative, some of which become rather specific and it is believed that they were used as much as word dividers as for semantic disambiguation. Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number in Gardiners Sign List, determinative Signs In Egyptian Some 90% of Chinese characters are determinative-phonetic compounds, the phonetic element and the determinative are combined to form a single glyph
7.
Akkadian
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Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the writing system, which was originally used to write the unrelated Ancient Sumerian. The language was named after the city of Akkad, a centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire. The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a sprachbund, Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid 3rd-millennium BC. From the second half of the third millennium BC, texts written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the second millennium BC, two variant forms of the language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively, for centuries, Akkadian was the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia. However, it began to decline during the Neo-Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, by the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD, Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages, a family native to East Africa, which then spread to West, Northwest and Northeast Africa. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup and this novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana, other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə. The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown, in contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative, ḫ. Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages, until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated. Old Akkadian is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.2500 BC and it was written using cuneiform, a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the cuneiform script could represent either Sumerian logograms, Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum, additionally, this sign was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ, do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities, nor is there any coordination in the other direction, the syllable -ša-, for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA, but also by the sign NĪĜ. Both of these are used for the same syllable in the same text
8.
Hittite language
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Hittite, also known as Nesite and Neshite, is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, an Indo-European-speaking people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia. By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian and it appears that in the 13th century BC, Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital of Hattusa. Hittite is the earliest-attested of the Indo-European languages and is the best-known of the Anatolian languages, Hittite is the modern name for the language, chosen after the identification of the Hatti kingdom with the Hittites mentioned in the Bible, although this identification was subsequently challenged. The terms Hattian or Hattic, by contrast, are used to refer to the people who preceded them. In multi-lingual texts found in Hittite locations, passages written in the Hittite language are preceded by the adverb nesili, in the of Neša, in one case, the label is Kanisumnili, in the of the people of Kaneš. Although the Hittite empire was composed of people from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. In spite of arguments over the appropriateness of the term, Hittite remains the most current term by convention. Knudtzon argued that Hittite was Indo-European, largely on the basis of the morphology, although he had no bilingual texts, he was able to give a partial interpretation to the two letters because of the formulaic nature of the diplomatic correspondence of the period. Based on a study of this material, Bedřich Hrozný succeeded in analyzing the language. He presented his argument that the language is Indo-European in a paper published in 1915, hroznýs argument for the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite was thoroughly modern, though poorly substantiated. He focused on the similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of the morphology, unlikely to occur independently by chance. These included the r/n alternation in some noun stems and vocalic ablaut and he also presented a set of regular sound correspondences. Sturtevant who authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a chrestomathy, the most up-to-date grammar of the Hittite language is currently Hoffner and Melchert 2008. Hittite is one of the Anatolian languages and it is known from cuneiform tablets and inscriptions erected by the Hittite kings. The script formerly known as Hieroglyphic Hittite is now termed Hieroglyphic Luwian, the Anatolian branch also includes Cuneiform Luwian, Hieroglyphic Luwian, Palaic, Lycian, Milyan, Lydian, Carian, Pisidian, and Sidetic. Hittite lacks some features of the other Indo-European languages, such as a distinction between masculine and feminine gender, subjunctive and optative moods, and aspect. Various hypotheses have been formulated to explain these contrasts, the parent, Indo-Hittite, lacked the features not present in Hittite, which Proto-Indo-European innovated. Other linguists, however, have taken the point of view, the Schwund Hypothesis, that Hittite came from a Proto-Indo-European possessing the full range of features
9.
Lagash
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Lagash/ˈleɪɡæʃ/ is an ancient city located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about 22 kilometres east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash was one of the oldest cities of the Ancient Near East, the ancient site of Nina is around 10 km away and marks the southern limit of the state. Nearby Girsu, about 25 km northwest of Lagash, was the center of the Lagash state. Lagashs main temple was the E-Ninnu, dedicated to the god Ningirsu, from inscriptions found at Girsu such as the Gudea cylinders, it appears that Lagash was an important Sumerian city in the late 3rd millennium BC. It was at that time ruled by independent kings, Ur-Nanshe and his successors, who were engaged in contests with the Elamites on the east and the kings of Kienĝir and Kish on the north. After the collapse of Sargons state, Lagash again thrived under its independent kings, Ur-Bau and Gudea and his was especially the era of artistic development. We even have a good idea of what Gudea looked like. At the time of Gudea, the capital of Lagash was actually in Girsu, the kingdom covered an area of approximately 1,600 square kilometres. It contained 17 larger cities, eight district capitals, and numerous villages, according to one estimate, Lagash was the largest city in the world from ca.2075 to 2030 BC. Soon after the time of Gudea, Lagash was absorbed into the Ur III state as one of its prime provinces, there is some information about the area during the Old Babylonian period. In ca.2450 BC, Lagash and the city of Umma fell out with each other after a border dispute. As described in Stele of the Vultures the current king of Lagash, Eannatum, inspired by the god of his city, Ningirsu. Initial details of the battle are unclear, but the Stele is able to portray a few details about the event. According to the Steles engravings, when the two met each other in the field, Eannatum dismounted from his chariot and proceeded to lead his men on foot. After lowing their spears, the Lagash army advanced upon the army from Umma in a dense Phalanx, after a brief clash, Eannatum and his army had gained victory over the army of Umma. Despite having been struck in the eye by an arrow, the king of Lagash lived on to enjoy his armys victory and this battle is one of the earliest organised battles known to scholars and historians. These dynasties are not found on the Sumerian King List, although one extremely fragmentary supplement has been found in Sumerian, at the end of the list is the statement Written in the school, suggesting this was a scribal school production. A few of the names from the Lagash rulers listed below may be out, including Ur-Nanshe, Ane-tum, En-entar-zid, Ur-Ningirsu, Ur-Bau
10.
Uruk
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Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period. Uruk played a role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid 4th millennium BC. At its height c.2900 BC, Uruk probably had 50, 000–80,000 residents living in 6 km2 of walled area, the legendary king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian king list, ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. The site of Uruk was visited in 1849 by William Kennett Loftus who led the first excavations from 1850 to 1854, the Arabic name of Babylonia, al-ʿIrāq, is thought to be derived from the name Uruk, via Aramaic and possibly Middle Persian transmission. In myth and literature, Uruk was famous as the city of Gilgamesh. It is also believed Uruk is the biblical Erech, the city founded by Nimrod in Shinar. In addition to being one of the first cities, Uruk was the force of urbanization and state formation during the Uruk period. This period of 800 years saw a shift from small, agricultural villages to an urban center with a full-time bureaucracy, military. Although other settlements coexisted with Uruk, they were generally about 10 hectares while Uruk was significantly larger, the Uruk period culture exported by Sumerian traders and colonists had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. Ultimately, Uruk could not maintain control over colonies such as Tell Brak by military force. Geographic factors underpin Uruks unprecedented growth, the city was located in the southern part of Mesopotamia, an ancient site of civilization, on the Euphrates river. Through the gradual and eventual domestication of native grains from the Zagros foothills and extensive irrigation techniques and this domestication of grain and its proximity to rivers enabled Uruks growth into the largest Sumerian settlement, in both population and area, with relative ease. Uruks agricultural surplus and large population base facilitated processes such as trade, specialization of crafts, evidence from excavations such as extensive pottery and the earliest known tablets of writing support these events. Excavation of Uruk is highly complex because older buildings were recycled into newer ones, the topmost layer most likely originated in the Jemdet Nasr period and is built on structures from earlier periods dating back to the Ubaid period. According to the Sumerian king list, Uruk was founded by the king Enmerkar, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh builds the city wall around Uruk and is king of the city. Uruk went through phases of growth, from the Early Uruk period to the Late Uruk period. The city was formed two smaller Ubaid settlements merged. The temple complexes at their cores became the Eanna District and the Anu District dedicated to Inanna and Anu, the Anu District was originally called Kullaba prior to merging with the Eanna District
11.
Ur
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Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in south Iraqs Dhi Qar Governorate. The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in history as a City State from the 26th century BC. The site is marked by the restored ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur. The temple was built in the 21st century BC, during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus, the Assyrian born last king of Babylon. The ruins cover an area of 1,200 metres northwest to southeast by 800 metres northeast to southwest, archaeologists have discovered the evidence of an early occupation at Ur during the Ubaid period. These early levels were sealed off with a deposit of soil that was interpreted by excavators of the 1920s as evidence for the Great Flood of the Book of Genesis. The further occupation of Ur only becomes clear during its emergence in the third millennium BC, the third millennium BC is generally described as the Early Bronze Age of Mesopotamia, which ends approximately after the demise of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC. There are two sources which inform scholars about the importance of Ur during the Early Bronze Age. The first is a body of cuneiform documents, mostly from the empire of the so-called Third Dynasty of Ur. This was the most centralized bureaucratic state the world had yet known, concerning the earlier centuries, the Sumerian King List provides a tentative political history of ancient Sumer. The second source of information is archaeological work in modern Iraq, although the early centuries are still poorly understood, the archaeological discoveries have shown unequivocally that Ur was a major urban center on the Mesopotamian plain. Especially the discovery of the Royal Tombs have confirmed its splendour and this wealth, unparalleled up to then, is a testimony of Urs economic importance during the Early Bronze Age. Archaeological research of the region has contributed greatly to our understanding of the landscape. Imports to Ur came from parts of the world. The imported objects include precious metals such as gold and silver and we know that Ur was the most important port on the Persian Gulf, which extended much further inland than it does today. All the wealth came to Mesopotamia by sea had to pass through Ur. So far evidence for the earliest periods of the Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia is very limited, Mesh-Ane-pada is the first king mentioned in the Sumerian King List, and appears to have lived in the 26th century BC. That Ur was an important urban centre already then seems to be indicated by a type of cylinder seal called the City Seals and these seals contain a set of proto-cuneiform signs which appear to be writings or symbols of the name of city-states in ancient Sumer
12.
Kish (Sumer)
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Kish was occupied from the Jemdet Nasr period, gaining prominence as one of the pre-eminent powers in the region during the early dynastic period. The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have following the deluge. Jushurs successor is called Kullassina-bel, but this is actually a sentence in Akkadian meaning All of them were lord, thus, some scholars have suggested that this may have been intended to signify the absence of a central authority in Kish for a time. The names of the nine kings of Kish preceding Etana are all Akkadian words for animals. The twelfth king of Kish appearing on the Sumerian king list, Etana, is noted as the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries. Although his reign has yet to be archaeologically attested, his name is found in later legendary tablets, and Etana is sometimes regarded as the first king and founder of Kish. The twenty-first king of Kish on the list, Enmebaragesi, who is said to have captured the weapons of Elam, is the first name confirmed by finds from his reign. He is also known through literary references, in which he and his son Aga of Kish are portrayed as contemporary rivals of Dumuzid, the Fisherman. Some early kings of Kish are known through archaeology, but are not named on the King list. These include Utug or Uhub, said to have defeated Hamazi in the earliest days, and Mesilim, who built temples in Adab and Lagash, the Third Dynasty of Kish is unique in that it begins with a woman, previously a tavern keeper, Kubau, as king. She was later deified as the goddess Kheba, afterwards, although its military and economic power was diminished, Kish retained a strong political and symbolic significance. Just as with Nippur to the south, control of Kish was an element in legitimizing dominance over the north of Mesopotamia. Because of the symbolic value, strong rulers later claimed the traditional title King of Kish, even if they were from Akkad, Ur, Assyria, Isin. One of the earliest to adopt this title upon subjecting Kish to his empire was King Mesannepada of Ur, a few governors of Kish for other powers in later times are also known. Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Akkadian Empire came from the area nearby Kish and he would later declare himself the king of Kish, as an attempt to signify his connection to the religiously important area. In Akkadian times the citys patron deity was Zababa, along with his wife, Kish continued to be occupied through the pre-Babylonian, old Babylonian, Kassite, and Neo-Assyrian Empire and Neo-Babylonian periods, and into classical Seleucid times, before being abandoned. The most notable mounds are, - Tell Uhaimir - believed to be the location of the city of Kish and it means the red after the red bricks of the ziggurat there. Tell Ingharra - believed to be the location of Hursagkalamma, east of Kish home of a temple of Inanna and those tablets ended up in a variety of museums
13.
Third Dynasty of Ur
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The Third Dynasty of Ur is commonly abbreviated as Ur III by historians studying the period. The Third Dynasty of Ur was the last Sumerian dynasty which came to preeminent power in Mesopotamia and it began after several centuries of control by Akkadian and Gutian kings. It controlled the cities of Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna and extended as far north as the Jazira, the Third Dynasty of Ur arose some time after the fall of the Akkad Dynasty. Their last king, Tirigan, was out by Utu-hengal of Uruk. Following Utu-Hengals reign, Ur-Nammu founded the Third Dynasty of Ur, the Sumerian King List tells us that Utu-hengal had reigned for seven years, although only one year-name for him is known from records, that of his accession, suggesting a shorter reign. It is possible that Ur-Nammu was originally his governor, there are two stelae discovered in Ur that include this detail in an inscription about Ur-Nammus life. Some scholars theorize that Ur-Nammu led a revolt against Utu-hengal, deposed him, another hypothesis is that Ur-Nammu was a close relative to Utu-hengal, and the latter had asked the former to rule over the city of Ur in his name. After four years of ruling in Ur, Ur-Nammu rose to prominence as a warrior-king when he crushed the ruler of Lagash in battle, after this battle, Ur-Nammu seems to have earned the title king of Sumer and Agade. Urs dominance over the Neo-Sumerian Empire was consolidated with the famous Code of Ur-Nammu, many significant changes occurred in the empire under Shulgis reign. He took steps to centralize and standardize the procedures of the empire and he is credited with standardizing administrative processes, archival documentation, the tax system, and the national calendar. He established an army of Ur. Shulgi was deified during his lifetime, an honor reserved for dead kings. With the fall of the Ur III Dynasty after an Elamite invasion in 2004/1940 BC, assyriologists employ many complicated methods for establishing the most precise dates possible for this period, but controversy still exists. Generally, scholars use either the conventional or the low chronologies and they are as follows, The land ruled by the Ur III kings was divided up into provinces that were each run by a governor. In certain tumultuous regions, military commanders assumed more power in governing, each province contained a redistribution center where provincial taxes, called bala, would all go to be shipped to the capital. Taxes could be payable in forms, from crops to livestock to land. The government would then apportion out goods as needed, including giving food rations to the needy and this is an area where scholars have many different views. It had long been posited that the laborer was nothing more than a serf
14.
Amarna letters
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The letters were found in Upper Egypt at Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten during the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are written in Akkadian cuneiform. The written correspondence spans a period of at most thirty years, the Amarna letters are of great significance for biblical studies as well as Semitic linguistics, since they shed light on the culture and language of the Canaanite peoples in pre-biblical times. These Canaanisms provide valuable insights into the proto-stage of those languages several centuries prior to their first actual manifestation and they had originally been stored in an ancient building that archaeologists have since called the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh. Once the location where they were found was determined, the ruins were explored for more, the first archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was Flinders Petrie, who in 1891 and 1892 uncovered 21 fragments. Émile Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, since Knudtzons edition, some 24 more tablets, or fragments, have been found, either in Egypt, or identified in the collections of various museums. The initial group of letters recovered by local Egyptians have been scattered among museums in Germany, England, Egypt, France, Russia, the archive contains a wealth of information about cultures, kingdoms, events and individuals in a period from which few written sources survive. It includes correspondence from Akhenatens reign, as well as his predecessor Amenhotep IIIs reign, the tablets consist of over 300 diplomatic letters, the remainder comprise miscellaneous literary and educational materials. These tablets shed light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, and Alashiya as well as relations with the Mitanni. The letters have been important in establishing both the history and the chronology of the period, letters from the Babylonian king, Kadashman-Enlil I, anchor the timeframe of Akhenatens reign to the mid-14th century BC. Specifically, the letters include requests for help in the north against Hittite invaders. Note, Many assignments are tentative, spellings vary widely, william L. The Amarna archive, it is now generally agreed, spans at most about thirty years, perhaps only fifteen or so. Moran notes that scholars believe one tablet, EA16. However, this speculation appears improbable because the Amarna archives were closed by Year 2 of Tutankhamun, a small number of the Amarna letters are in the class of poetry. EA153, entitled, Ships on hold, from Abimilku of Tyre is a short, lines 6-8, and 9-11 are parallel phrases, each ending with. before the troops of the king, my lord. -. Both sentences are identical, and repetitive, with only the subject statement changing, the entire corpus of Amarna letters has many standard phrases. It also has some phrases, and quotations used only once, some are parables, A bird in a cage —Rib-Hadda subcorpus of letters. A brick may move from under its partner, still I will not move from under the feet of the king, my lord. —Used in letters EA266,292, EA292 by Adda-danu of Gazru
15.
Vassal
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A vassal or feudatory is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, the term is applied to similar arrangements in other feudal societies. It is like a land lord some one who own and lets you live on it, in contrast, a fidelity, or fidelitas, was a sworn, unconditional loyalty to a monarch. Such refinements were not included from the outset when it was time of crisis, war, hunger, under feudalism, those who were weakest needed the protection of the knights who owned the weapons and knew how to fight. Feudal society was based on the concept of lordship, which was one of the distinguishing features of the Early Middle Ages and had evolved from times of Late Antiquity. In the time of Charlemagne, the connection slowly developed between vassalage and the grant of land, the form of wealth at that time. Contemporaneous social developments included agricultural manorialism and the social and legal structures labelled — and these developments proceeded at different rates in various regions. In Merovingian times, monarchs would reward only the greatest and most trusted vassals with lands, even at the most extreme devolution of any remnants of central power, in 10th-century France, the majority of vassals still had no fixed estates. The stratification of a band of vassals into distinct groups might roughly correlate with the new term fief that had started to supersede benefice in the 9th century. An upper group comprised great territorial magnates, who were strong enough to ensure the inheritance of their benefice to the heirs of their family, a lower group consisted of landless knights attached to a count or duke. This social settling process also received impetus in fundamental changes in the conduct of warfare, as co-ordinated cavalry superseded disorganized infantry, armies became more expensive to maintain. A vassal needed economic resources to equip the cavalry he was bound to contribute to his lord to fight his frequent wars. Such resources, in the absence of an economy, came only from land and its associated assets. Many empires have set up states, based on tribes, kingdoms, or city-states. In these cases a state has retained internal autonomy, but has lost independence in foreign policy, while and, in many instances. In this framework, a colony or junior ally might also be regarded as a vassal state in terms of international relations. The concept of a state uses the concept of personal vassalry to theorize formally hegemonic relationships between states – even those using non-personal forms of rule. Imperial states to which this terminology has been applied include, for instance, Ancient Rome, the Mongol Empire, and the British Empire
16.
Pharaoh
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The word pharaoh ultimately derive from the Egyptian compound pr-ˤ3 great house, written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs pr house and ˤ3 column, here meaning great or high. It was used only in larger phrases such as smr pr-ˤ3 Courtier of the High House, with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace. From the twelfth dynasty onward, the word appears in a wish formula Great House, may it live, prosper, and be in health, but again only with reference to the royal palace and not the person. During the reign of Thutmose III in the New Kingdom, after the rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period. During the eighteenth dynasty the title pharaoh was employed as a designation of the ruler. From the nineteenth dynasty onward pr-ˤ3 on its own was used as regularly as hm. f, the term, therefore, evolved from a word specifically referring to a building to a respectful designation for the ruler, particularly by the twenty-second dynasty and twenty-third dynasty. For instance, the first dated appearance of the pharaoh being attached to a rulers name occurs in Year 17 of Siamun on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals. Here, an induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated specifically to the reign of Pharaoh Siamun and this new practice was continued under his successor Psusennes II and the twenty-second dynasty kings. Shoshenq I was the successor of Siamun. Meanwhile, the old custom of referring to the sovereign simply as pr-ˤ3 continued in traditional Egyptian narratives, by this time, the Late Egyptian word is reconstructed to have been pronounced *par-ʕoʔ whence Herodotus derived the name of one of the Egyptian kings, Φερων. In the Bible, the title also occurs as פרעה, from that, Septuagint φαραώ pharaō and then Late Latin pharaō, both -n stem nouns. The Quran likewise spells it فرعون firawn with n, interestingly, the Arabic combines the original pharyngeal ayin sound from Egyptian, along with the -n ending from Greek. English at first spelt it Pharao, but the King James Bible revived Pharaoh with h from the Hebrew, meanwhile in Egypt itself, *par-ʕoʔ evolved into Sahidic Coptic ⲡⲣ̅ⲣⲟ prro and then rro. Scepters and staves were a sign of authority in ancient Egypt. One of the earliest royal scepters was discovered in the tomb of Khasekhemwy in Abydos, kings were also known to carry a staff, and Pharaoh Anedjib is shown on stone vessels carrying a so-called mks-staff. The scepter with the longest history seems to be the heqa-scepter, the earliest examples of this piece of regalia dates to pre-dynastic times. A scepter was found in a tomb at Abydos that dates to the late Naqada period, another scepter associated with the king is the was-scepter. This is a long staff mounted with an animal head, the earliest known depictions of the was-scepter date to the first dynasty
17.
Ri (cuneiform)
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The ri sign has the following uses in the Epic of Gilgamesh, dal re ri tal ṭal RI The specific usage numbers for the signs meaning in the Epic is as follows, dal-, re-, ri-, tal-, ṭal-, RI-. In the Amarna letters, ri also has a special usage when coupled with the naming of the Pharaoh, Lugal is the sumerogram translated in the Akkadian language to King, Sarru. Thus in the Amarna letters, Lugal is used as a stand-alone, but sometimes supplemented with Ri, (The King, as an appellation is sometimes created by adding ma, suffix to the end of a name Moran, William L.1987,1992. Johns Hopkins University Press,1987,1992, the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Parpola, Simo, Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List, and Glossary-,165 pages. UF-11 honors Claude Schaeffer, with about 100 articles in 900 pages, pp 95, ff, Comparative Graphemic Analysis of Old Babylonian and Western Akkadian, author Giorgio Buccellati
18.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
