Category موضوعي
Texts and their transmission
Inscriptions, manuscripts, editions, translations and the transmission of texts.
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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
Weighing the Heart in Egypt: Justice, Ritual and the Afterlife
Reading judgment before Osiris through Maat, the heart and the Book of the Dead: ethics, texts and ritual without assuming a single timeless scene.
Funerary papyrus fragment depicting judgment before Osiris, Egypt, ca. 230–150 BCE; Metropolitan Museum 66.99.142. The scale contains a small figure of Maat
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Egyptian Book of the Dead
Modern designation for funerary texts and images aiding the deceased in the next world; spells and their arrangement vary between manuscripts.
Funerary papyrus fragment depicting judgment before Osiris, Egypt, ca. 230–150 BCE; Metropolitan Museum 66.99.142. The scale contains a small figure of Maat
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Original photograph
Entity
Maat
Ancient Egyptian right order, truth and rectitude, also divinely personified; represented in heart-weighing by a feather or a goddess’s figure.
Funerary papyrus fragment depicting judgment before Osiris, Egypt, ca. 230–150 BCE; Metropolitan Museum 66.99.142. The scale contains a small figure of Maat
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Original photograph
Entity
Osiris
Egyptian deity associated with the dead and continued life, presiding over judgment in funerary papyri such as 66.99.142.
Funerary papyrus fragment depicting judgment before Osiris, Egypt, ca. 230–150 BCE; Metropolitan Museum 66.99.142. The scale contains a small figure of Maat
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Original photograph
Study
Inanna and Ishtar’s Descent: What Changes between the Narratives?
Seven gates, rescue, substitution and interrupted life: distinguishing the Sumerian and Akkadian narratives and the limits of comparison.
K.162, Akkadian copy of Ishtar’s Descent from Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh, seventh century BCE, British Museum. Not a tablet of the Sumerian Inanna composition
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Original photograph
Entity
Ninshubur
Inanna’s attendant in the Sumerian descent, following her instructions and seeking help during her absence.
K.162, Akkadian copy of Ishtar’s Descent from Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh, seventh century BCE, British Museum. Not a tablet of the Sumerian Inanna composition
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Original photograph
Entity
Ereshkigal
Ruler of the underworld in Mesopotamian traditions, exercising authority over death’s realm in the descent narratives.
K.162, Akkadian copy of Ishtar’s Descent from Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh, seventh century BCE, British Museum. Not a tablet of the Sumerian Inanna composition
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Original photograph
Study
Marduk’s Rise: Babylon and the Making of Divine Kingship
Enūma Eliš through battle, creation, recognition and fifty names: one god’s supremacy in a world that remains polytheistic.
Mušḫuššu dragon from Babylon’s Ishtar Gate decoration, Neo-Babylonian period; museum reconstruction using original bricks in Berlin. Associated with Marduk, not a confirmed depiction of Tiamat
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Original photograph
Entity
Tiamat
Primordial watery divine figure in Enūma Eliš, later Marduk’s opponent; her defeated body provides material for cosmic arrangement.
Mušḫuššu dragon from Babylon’s Ishtar Gate decoration, Neo-Babylonian period; museum reconstruction using original bricks in Berlin. Associated with Marduk, not a confirmed depiction of Tiamat
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Original photograph
Study
Yahweh’s Temple at Elephantine: Worship beyond Jerusalem
What does the petition of 407 BCE reveal about Yaho’s temple, its priests and their links with Judah and Samaria?
Modern view of Elephantine Island and the Nile near Aswan; geographical context, not the remains of Yaho’s temple
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Original photograph
Artifact
Elephantine temple-rebuilding petition
Aramaic petition of 407 BCE from Jedaniah and fellow priests to Bagohi, requesting the rebuilding of Yaho’s destroyed temple.
Modern view of Elephantine Island and the Nile near Aswan; geographical context, not the remains of Yaho’s temple
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Original photograph
Site
Elephantine / Yeb
Island near Aswan at the Nile’s first cataract; Persian-period Aramaic papyri document a Jewish community and Yaho’s temple.
Modern view of Elephantine Island and the Nile near Aswan; geographical context, not the remains of Yaho’s temple
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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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