A diachronic survey of the Sumerian ideas about Beginnings __ cosmogony, theogony and anthropogeny __ is described. Third millennium Sumerian texts describe the 'marriage' of the primaeval pair an... Show moreA diachronic survey of the Sumerian ideas about Beginnings __ cosmogony, theogony and anthropogeny __ is described. Third millennium Sumerian texts describe the 'marriage' of the primaeval pair an and ki __ Heaven and Earth, thereafter the sky god An and the mother goddess Nin__ursa_a __ and the birth of their children: gods. From the second millennium onwards the Sumerian culture disappeared, except from the scribal schools; there was an increasing Semitic influence. The beginning became a primaeval ocean, Namma who gave birth to an-ki. Later the pair Aps_ and Ti'amat produced heaven and earth __ not yet in their final form __ and the ancestors of An. Aps_ and Ti'amat were killed. Marduk gave heaven and earth their final appearance with both halves of Ti'amat's body. In the Sumerian myth 'Enki and Ninma__', man is created with the aid of clay (Enki's idea), and borne by Namma. In the Akkadian text atra-__as_s a god is killed; with his flesh and blood together with clay man was created. The purpose of the creation of man was always the same: the gods do not want to provide for themselves; the maintenance of the gods is man's daily duty. Show less
Sumerian is an ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken in what is now southern Iraq. It is known to us from numerous inscriptions and clay tablets written in cuneiform, a script invented by... Show moreSumerian is an ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken in what is now southern Iraq. It is known to us from numerous inscriptions and clay tablets written in cuneiform, a script invented by the Sumerians in the late fourth millennium BC. Although Sumerian became obsolete as a living language about four thousand years ago, it continued to be used as a language of scholarship and cult until the end of the first millennium BC. Sumerian is a language isolate. Its position in a remote corner of the Near East shows it to be a last remnant of the languages that preceded the arrival of Semitic languages in the area. This grammar describes the Sumerian language on the basis of written sources dating from about 2500 to 2000 BC. Show less
