Category موضوعي
Texts and their transmission
Inscriptions, manuscripts, editions, translations and the transmission of texts.
Advanced search →Artifact 10 Entity 180 Period 1 Person 99 Site 28 Study 79 Ancient text 17
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Original photograph
Entity
Gudea
Ruler of Lagash in the late third millennium BCE, whose inscriptions document temple construction and the name Anunna.
Statue of Gudea, Met 59.2, ca. 2090 BCE. The human ruler of Lagash, not a deity or an image of the Anunna collective
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Illustration
Concept
Igigi
Collective divine name in Akkadian sources, attested from the Old Babylonian period; its relationship to Anunnaki varies by text.
Labour, revolt and human creation at the opening of Atrahasis, as summarized by ORACC’s Igigi entry. Modern literary-context diagram, not historical events or fixed membership
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Illustration
Concept
God lists
Texts collecting divine names for preservation, teaching and classification, with varying theological organization.
First six names in SF 1 according to CDLI’s current reading. Modern transliterated-name diagram, not a photograph or copy of the tablet’s signs; order applies to this witness
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Illustration
Concept
Anunna / Anunnaki
Collective designation for gods in Mesopotamian texts, with variable scope and membership; earliest known attestations belong to the late third millennium BCE.
Two textual uses of Anuna: the land of Lagash in Gudea’s cylinder, and seven judges in Inanna’s Descent. Modern diagram, not divine images or a fixed membership count
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Original photograph
Study
Did Writing Appear Suddenly at Uruk?
From tokens, envelopes and seals to Uruk’s tablets: how proto-cuneiform emerged, and why fuller linguistic representation took centuries.
Grain account, Met 1988.433.2, ca. 3100–2900 BCE; probably from Uruk, not the first known tablet. Display copy removes empty background around the object
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Illustration
Concept
Rebus principle
Using a word sign for its sound in another similarly pronounced word, extending writing beyond depictions of things towards language.
Modern English rebus example: an eye image represents I through the shared sound /aɪ/. Teaching diagram, not a Sumerian sign or ancient artifact
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Original photograph
Concept
Proto-cuneiform
Early Mesopotamian writing of the late fourth millennium BCE, combining numerical notation and signs, predominantly accounts with limited phonetic use.
Grain account, Met 1988.433.2, ca. 3100–2900 BCE; probably from Uruk, not the first known tablet. Display copy removes empty background around the object
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Original photograph
Concept
Cylinder seal
Engraved cylinder rolled over clay to produce a continuous design; used for documentation, identification and authority, without necessarily encoding language.
Cylinder seal and modern impression, Met 1983.314.1, Late Uruk, ca. 3500–3100 BCE. The museum interprets a procession before a temple facade; no deity’s name is identified
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Original photograph
Concept
Clay envelopes
Hollow clay envelopes, sometimes enclosing tokens and bearing seals or numerical impressions; fourth-millennium administrative recording devices.
Sealed clay envelope and tokens in a museum display, Susa; Louvre SB 1932, ca. 3500–2900 BCE according to the museum record. A recording device, not a written linguistic sentence
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Original photograph
Concept
Clay tokens
Small clay objects of varied shapes; some supported counting, but Neolithic examples do not establish one accounting system or function for all.
Clay tokens from Susa, Uruk period, Louvre; group includes SB 4966, SB 4977 and others. Fourth-millennium examples, not the earliest Neolithic tokens
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Original photograph
City
Uruk
Ancient city at Warka in southern Iraq, a major urban centre around 3200 BCE that preserved early writing and accounting tablets.
Architectural remains at Uruk/Warka, photographed by David Stanley, 9 April 2016. The sign is modern; its claim about first writing is not independent evidence of global priority or an exact invention date
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Original photograph
Concept
Stamp seal
A carved surface pressed into soft material to leave an impression that may distinguish a person, object or procedure. Unlike a rolled cylinder seal; imagery alone makes it neither writing nor evidence of a creed.
Ubaid stamp seal and modern impression; Syria or Anatolia, sixth–fifth millennium BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984.175.13. The rectangular block on the right is a modern impression, not an ancient tablet
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Original photograph
Inscription
Merneptah Stele
An Egyptian royal inscription containing an early external attestation of the name Israel.
Merneptah Stele, JE 31408; photographed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2003. Perspective-corrected Wikimedia Commons version, reused unchanged
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Original photograph
Concept
Cuneiform
Writing with wedge-shaped signs, developed from Mesopotamian recording traditions and used for several languages from the third millennium BCE.
Fragment of an incomplete Ugaritic alphabet tablet, c. 1400–1200 BCE; Louvre, AO 19992 / RS 10.087. Evidence of Ugaritic writing
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