Category موضوعي
Evidence and research methods
Reading evidence, comparing interpretations and assessing the limits of inference.
Advanced search →Artifact 9 Entity 197 Period 2 Person 52 Site 17 Study 82 Ancient text 10
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Original photograph
Entity
Namma
A goddess who asks Enki to relieve the gods’ labor in Enki and Ninmah.
Clay tablet of Atraḫasīs at the British Museum. The photographer identifies it with the flood tradition, not the human-creation lines. Photograph: SpeakingArch, 2026 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and converted to WebP for display
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Enki and Ninmah
A Sumerian composition preserved in Old Babylonian copies: human creation relieves divine labor, followed by scenes about bodies and fates.
Clay tablet of Atraḫasīs at the British Museum. The photographer identifies it with the flood tradition, not the human-creation lines. Photograph: SpeakingArch, 2026 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and converted to WebP for display
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Original photograph
Study
Adapa and Adam: wisdom, the food of life, and the limits of comparison
Is Adapa the source of Adam’s story? Sumerian and Akkadian witnesses, Genesis’ two trees, Qur’anic promise and repentance, and the different roles of obedience examined.
Adapa fragment A, MLC 1296, Neo-Assyrian, about the seventh century BCE, Morgan Library & Museum. Preserves the opening; not Amarna EA 356 or a portrait of Adapa or Adam. Photograph: Daderot, 2020; CC0 1.0
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Original photograph
Artifact
Adapa fragment MLC 1296
Neo-Assyrian clay fragment written in Akkadian, preserving the beginning of Adapa’s story in the Morgan Library & Museum.
Adapa fragment A, MLC 1296, Neo-Assyrian, about the seventh century BCE, Morgan Library & Museum. Preserves the opening; not Amarna EA 356 or a portrait of Adapa or Adam. Photograph: Daderot, 2020; CC0 1.0
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Adapa and the South Wind
Mesopotamian tradition in Sumerian and Akkadian about wisdom, wind and heavenly ascent; its differing witnesses are not one tablet.
Adapa fragment A, MLC 1296, Neo-Assyrian, about the seventh century BCE, Morgan Library & Museum. Preserves the opening; not Amarna EA 356 or a portrait of Adapa or Adam. Photograph: Daderot, 2020; CC0 1.0
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Original photograph
Entity
Adapa
Wise figure of Eridu associated with Ea; multiple texts recount his ascent to Anu and refusal of offered food.
Adapa fragment A, MLC 1296, Neo-Assyrian, about the seventh century BCE, Morgan Library & Museum. Preserves the opening; not Amarna EA 356 or a portrait of Adapa or Adam. Photograph: Daderot, 2020; CC0 1.0
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Original photograph
Study
Moses and Sargon: the child in the basket and the limits of comparison
Basket, bitumen, water and adoption: what actually connects Exodus 2 and Sargon’s legend? Witness dates, disputed dependence and the Qur’anic account examined separately.
K.3401 from Nineveh, a Neo-Assyrian witness to Sargon’s birth legend, British Museum. A copy later than the king, not Moses’ basket or an image of the infant. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5
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Original photograph
Artifact
Sargon birth tablet K.3401
Akkadian clay tablet from Nineveh preserving Sargon’s birth story in the Neo-Assyrian period, many centuries after the king’s lifetime.
K.3401 from Nineveh, a Neo-Assyrian witness to Sargon’s birth legend, British Museum. A copy later than the king, not Moses’ basket or an image of the infant. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Sargon Birth Legend
Akkadian account of a rescued infant’s ascent to kingship; surviving witnesses postdate Sargon of Akkad.
K.3401 from Nineveh, a Neo-Assyrian witness to Sargon’s birth legend, British Museum. A copy later than the king, not Moses’ basket or an image of the infant. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5
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Original photograph
Person
Moses
Central figure in Exodus, Torah traditions and the Qur’an; childhood accounts differ in detail.
K.3401 from Nineveh, a Neo-Assyrian witness to Sargon’s birth legend, British Museum. A copy later than the king, not Moses’ basket or an image of the infant. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5
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Original photograph
Study
Genesis and Enuma Elish: creation, parallels, and the limits of borrowing
A detailed comparison of waters, heaven, humanity, and rest, separating textual evidence from proposed transmission and seven Tablets from seven days.
Enuma Elish tablet K.3473, from Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian period; British Museum. A witness to the poem’s transmission, not its first composition
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Original photograph
Entity
Qingu
Tiamat’s commander, whose blood forms humanity in Enuma Elish.
Enuma Elish tablet K.3473, from Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian period; British Museum. A witness to the poem’s transmission, not its first composition
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Original photograph
Entity
Apsû
Primordial waters and divine progenitor in Enuma Elish.
Enuma Elish tablet K.3473, from Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian period; British Museum. A witness to the poem’s transmission, not its first composition
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Original photograph
Study
Hammurabi and the Covenant Code: parallels and the limits of borrowing
What happens when an ox kills someone, or an enslaved person’s eye is injured? Reading Hammurabi and Exodus 21 to explain parallels, differences and possible legal transmission.
An inscribed face of Hammurabi’s stele, Louvre SB 8, eighteenth century BCE. This photograph shows cuneiform, not the upper king-and-Shamash relief. Photograph: Rama; CC BY-SA 3.0 France
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Original photograph
Entity
Shamash
Mesopotamian god of the sun and justice, shown before Hammurabi on an eighteenth-century BCE stele preserved in the Louvre.
Relief at the top of the Sun-God Tablet from Sippar, ninth century BCE. Shamash sits before a solar disc; a Babylonian king and two intermediary figures stand to the left. British Museum, 91000. Photograph by Prioryman, 22 January 2012
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Covenant Collection
Scholarly name for laws in Exodus chapters 20–23, within the Torah, addressing service, injuries, property and worship. Their composition date is debated.
Folio 44r of the Leningrad Codex, from the early eleventh century CE. It contains Exodus 21:18–22:6, within the collection known as the Covenant Code. The date of this manuscript copy differs from the composition date of the laws it preserves
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Laws of Hammurabi
An eighteenth-century BCE Babylonian legal text in Akkadian, presenting property, family, labor and injury provisions within Hammurabi’s account of justice.
An inscribed face of Hammurabi’s stele, Louvre SB 8, eighteenth century BCE. This photograph shows cuneiform, not the upper king-and-Shamash relief. Photograph: Rama; CC BY-SA 3.0 France
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Original photograph
Person
Hammurabi
King of Babylon in Mesopotamia, reigning around 1792–1750 BCE. A celebrated legal text preserved on a stele and cuneiform copies bears his name.
A limestone votive monument from Sippar, showing Hammurabi with his left arm raised. The British Museum dates it to his reign, 1792–1750 BCE; object 22454. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen, 2012
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Original photograph
Study
Jericho’s Plastered Skulls: Faces of the Dead and the Limits of Ancestor Interpretation
From bone and plaster to imaging and facial reconstruction: evidence for mortuary treatment and hypotheses about memory, kinship and worship.
Plastered skull from Jericho, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, displayed at the British Museum. An ancient modeled face on human remains, not a modern facial reconstruction
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Original photograph
Entity
Plastered skulls
Human skulls with material added to model a face, sometimes with shell eyes; postmortem treatment distinct from modification during life.
Plastered skull from Jericho, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, displayed at the British Museum. An ancient modeled face on human remains, not a modern facial reconstruction
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Original photograph
Site
Jericho / Tell es-Sultan
Archaeological mound near present-day Jericho in Palestine’s Jordan Valley, preserving early Neolithic settlement and Bronze Age layers.
Plastered skull from Jericho, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, displayed at the British Museum. An ancient modeled face on human remains, not a modern facial reconstruction
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Original photograph
Study
Mesha and Chemosh: How a King Narrates Sacred War
A reading of the Moabite inscription through divine anger, Yahweh’s vessels, violence and construction, separating evidence from royal rhetoric.
Mesha Stele, basalt from Dhiban, ninth century BCE, Louvre AO 5066. The displayed monument is reassembled with restored missing areas
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Original photograph
Entity
Chemosh
Prominent Moabite deity whose anger and favor explain defeat and recovery in Mesha’s royal inscription.
Mesha Stele, basalt from Dhiban, ninth century BCE, Louvre AO 5066. The displayed monument is reassembled with restored missing areas
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Illustration
Study
Resemblance Does Not Establish Borrowing
From Moses and Sargon to flood narratives and the heavenly council: historical comparison, dates of traditions and copies, relationship and direction, common origins, mediation and independent development.
A working tool for this study, not an automatic test or universally weighted checklist
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Illustration
Entity
Oral transmission
Circulation through performance and hearing, potentially involving change.
Distinct claims: population contact alone does not prove reading or narrative transfer
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Illustration
Entity
Epic of Gilgamesh
Mesopotamian literary tradition whose standard Tablet XI contains Utnapishtim’s flood.
Compare specified witnesses; flood narratives do not share every detail
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Illustration
Entity
Literary motif
Recurring narrative element whose presence alone does not establish dependence.
Placement at the bank differs from release into the current; no scene is reconstructed
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Illustration
Person
Sargon of Akkad
Third-millennium BCE king associated with later birth and ascent traditions.
The protagonist does not date the story; the copy does not identify its first formulation
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Illustration
Entity
Dating texts
Distinguishing narrated time, composition and surviving copy.
The protagonist does not date the story; the copy does not identify its first formulation
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Illustration
Entity
Parallelomania
Exaggerating parallels into insufficiently supported dependence.
A working tool for this study, not an automatic test or universally weighted checklist
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Illustration
Researcher
Samuel Sandmel
Scholar whose influential “Parallelomania” appeared in 1962.
A working tool for this study, not an automatic test or universally weighted checklist
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Illustration
Entity
Independent development
Similar elements arising without historical transmission between them.
Alternatives can overlap; this diagram does not document a particular narrative’s route
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Illustration
Entity
Shared tradition
Inherited material reaching several texts without direct dependence between them.
Structural continuity proves neither a copied Ugaritic tablet nor a deity-to-angel identity
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Illustration
Entity
Literary dependence
A relationship explaining a text’s composition through another text.
Relationship, source, direction and route can have different levels of support
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Illustration
Entity
Literary borrowing
Use of material from an earlier text or tradition in a new work.
Alternatives can overlap; this diagram does not document a particular narrative’s route
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Illustration
Study
From the Embodied God of Ancient Texts to Philosophical Transcendence
From Genesis and Exodus to Philo, Maimonides, Augustine, Aquinas, Avicenna and kalām: changing rules for reading body and emotion, with distinct doctrines of incorporeality, immutability and simplicity and diverse schools.
Three distinct axes, not one historical transition or a doctrine shared by every school
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Illustration
Person
Al-Ghazālī
Eleventh- and twelfth-century Muslim thinker distinguishing treatments of attributes by audience.
Different interpretive patterns, not a fixed one-method-per-school table
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Illustration
Entity
Bi-lā kayf
Affirming attribute language without specifying modality or creaturely likeness.
Different interpretive patterns, not a fixed one-method-per-school table
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Illustration
Entity
Kalām
Islamic traditions of doctrinal reasoning with diverse approaches to attributes and transcendence.
Different interpretive patterns, not a fixed one-method-per-school table
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Illustration
Person
Thomas Aquinas
Thirteenth-century theologian linking incorporeality, simplicity and immutability through philosophical premises.
Positions in specific texts, not a consensus of early or later Christianity; no portraits depicted
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