Crim i càstig a Mesopotàmia

En aquest article recollim el text de la conferència que va donar Miquel Civil el dia 15 de novembre del 2001 a la sala de juntes de la Facultat de Filologia de la Universitat de Barcelona. L'acte fou organitzat per l'associació Eridu. Societat Catalana d'Amics del Pròxim Orient Antic.In this article we publish the text of the lecture given by Miquel Civil on November 15, 2001 in the boardroom of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Barcelona. The event was organized by the Eridu. Catalan Society of Friends of the Ancient Near East

Teaching Sumerian: Text Corpus, Cuneiform Script and Grammar

editorial reviewedOur textbook of Sumerian resulted from a lucky coincidence: the two authors discovered that they had worked on an introduction to Sumerian, Laurent starting with cuneiform and the texts, Walther with the grammar. We combined forces, and in the course of our work, we came across aspects we want to share and discuss, including the following ones: (a) Sumerian is only transmitted in specific kinds of texts written in a specific style, phraseology, and grammar. (b) Reading Sumerian texts can not be based on grammar and lexicon alone, but it includes knowledge of the cuneiform script. (c) Should we teach ancient languages in international English only or in different tongues (including German, French, and Arabic)

Gathering the Shepherds. Uses and Meanings of Pastoral Imagery and Shepherding Metaphors between 3rd and 6th Centuries.

This work is a study of the shepherding metaphors and their use in visual and verbal Early Christian rhetoric in the centuries from the third to the sixth. A discourse on imagery in a wide sense, in spite of the narrower field of images, puts this work among the cultural studies, rather than the art-history or literary ones. The work is divided in two parts, Visual and Verbal, mirroring respectively the two main parts of cultural imagery. In this work images and texts will be taken into account as cultural products likewise, without the idea of dependency of one on the other. Both the sections are organized in a first part of structural analysis and a second part of interpretation. The structural analysis is a necessary premise for the disentanglement of some misinterpretations: for example, the structural analysis of the kriophoros figure leads to highlight the differences from the image of the so-called Good Shepherd. Verbal imagery is approached from a structural point of view likewise: the first part of the verbal section approaches pastoral vocabulary and lexicon, with a special attention to the roots of words and their relations. Successively, pastoral vocabulary will be considered in its meanings, stressing the importance of its cultural uses. The parallel analysis of visual and verbal products of pastoral imagery highlights the uses of pastoral imagery and what messages and ideas these metaphors were supposed to convey: for example the figure of the Christ, the rising institution of the Church, the establishment of episcopal hierarchy. Pastoral imagery was the most fortunate pool of images (both visual and verbal) employed by Early Christianity to express a certain type of sovereignty and leadership, such as the clergy’s one, and the paradoxical role of the Christ as both sacrifice lamb and shepherd of God’s flock

An introduction to the grammar of Sumerian

Készült az ELTE Felsőoktatási Struktúraátalakítási Alapból támogatott programja keretében

Gilgamesh and the Great Goddess of Uruk

DEDICATION This book is dedicated to Richard A. Henshaw Simply the MasterAs early as five thousand years ago the Sumerians who were developing a complex city-state based on plow agriculture and animal husbandry in what is now southern Iraq illustrated their culture in great vases, one band of which can be interpreted as a “Sacred Marriage” between the highest power in the universe, the Great Goddess “Inanna” (in Semitic Babylonia and Assyria “Ishtar”). In the very complicated scene at the topmost band of the Uruk Vase the goddess raises the status of her human lover to semi-divine status. The position he held the Sumerians called en, and on the vase he is seen receiving from the goddess a symbolic wrap and a cap that indicate his new status. The most famous of the Sumerian ens was an Urukean known a “Bilgamis” later “Gilgamesh,” and his exploits are recounted in a variety of poems, epics as important to his people as Odysseus and Achilles were to the ancient Greeks. From the 4th millennium BCE Uruk Vase to the 1st millennium BCE versions of Gilgamesh poems the peoples of Mesopotamia celebrated the often combative relationship between the en and the Great Goddess.SUNY BrockportSUNY Brockport eBook

A escola e a educação na Suméria: o papel da edubba na sociedade suméria

No final do quarto milénio a.C., no rescaldo da invenção da escrita (c. 3300 a.C.), surgiu nos templos sumérios a primeira educação letrada, vocacionada, sobretudo, a formar administradores para a gestão das transacções comerciais aí praticadas e sacerdotes para os seus deveres litúrgicos e criação hínica. Não muitas décadas se passaram até surgirem as primeiras escolas seculares, que se designariam por edubba’s, as «casas das tabuinhas». Contudo, foi só em meados do terceiro milénio a.C. que as escolas seculares proliferaram e ganharam maior relevo que as primeiras. A partir desta altura, operaramse desenvolvimentos no plano curricular e pedagógico, assim como transformações no corpo docente e discente, para além das mudanças na envolvência política, social e cultural, como o decurso da linha cronológica exige. Assim, as edubba’s atravessaram vários estágios ao longo da História da Suméria: o terceiro milénio a.C., que viu a formação destas escolas, assim como os primeiros currículos e métodos pedagógicos; as primeiras grandes reformas na instituição durante a III dinastia de Ur, no âmbito do propositado renascimento cultural sumério; os grandes avanços curriculares aquando da ascensão dos Estados amoritas, principalmente durante a dinastia de Isin; e, finalmente o modelo paleo-babilónio, que materializou o produto acabado de mais de mil e quinhentos anos de desenvolvimento escolar. Para além da parte curricular, a edubba, enquanto instituição de grande especificidade, representou uma idiossincrasia na sua sociedade, catapultando algumas transformações e expectativas no seu contexto. A edubba foi um produto e um produtor de cultura, e um agente activo de metamorfoses na Suméria enquanto meio de mobilidade social, produtor de literatura fundamental, criador de novas profissões, ou formador da classe administrativa, legisladora e burocrata das cidades-estado.Abstract: At the end of the fourth millennium BC, in the aftermath of the invention of writing (c.3300 BC), the first form of literate education appeared in Sumerian temples. It was dedicated primarily to train administrators for the management of commercial transactions conducted there, as well as priests for their liturgical duties and hymnal creation. Not many decades passed, began to appear the first secular schools, which would be designated by edubba's, the «house of tablets». However, it was only in the middle of the third millennium BC that secular schools proliferated and became more important than the original ones. From this point on, as the course of the timeline demands, they were responsible for developments in the curricular and pedagogical plane, as well as changes in the teaching staff and students, in addition to changes in political, social and cultural surroundings. Thus, the edubba's went through various stages throughout the history of Sumer: the third millennium BC, which saw the formation of these schools, as well as the first curriculum and teaching methods; the first major reforms in the institution during the Third Dynasty of Ur, under the purposeful Sumerian cultural renaissance; the major curricular advances during the rise of the Amorite States, especially during the dynasty of Isin; and finally the paleo-Babylonian model, which materialized the product of more than fifteen hundred years of academic development. In addition to the curricular part, the edubba, as an institution of great specificity, represented an idiosyncrasy in their society, catapulting some changes and expectations in its context. The edubba was a product and a producer of culture and an active agent of metamorphosis in Sumer as medium for social mobility, producer of fundamental literature, creator of new professions, or as a trainer of the city-states' managerial, lawmaker and bureaucrat class

The Transmission of Courtly Lifestyles in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean

This thesis offers and applies a new theoretical and methodological framework for understanding the diplomatic relationships between the ancient court societies in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean (Egypt, Upper Nubia, Levant, Anatolia, and the Aegean) with particular focus on the Middle Bronze Age covering first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Previous scholarship on diplomacy has largely concentrated on the philological analyses of Late Bronze Age diplomatic texts and the artistic styles of luxury visual arts, attempting to identify the origins of specific artistic styles and correlate gift lists with actual material objects. This thesis departs from these prior studies by adopting a more firmly sociological and anthropological approach, focusing on the social and ceremonial contexts of diplomatic activity. In particular, the role of etiquette (ritualized and codified forms of behavior) in diplomacy is the primary focus. Via a holistic analysis incorporating material culture, texts, and art, the thesis discusses how forms of etiquette can be reconstructed from the archaeological record, if forms of etiquette transmission can be identified, and the extent to which these transmissions can be used to reconstruct diplomatic relationships