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Mesopotamian civilizations
Societies, cities and religious traditions in Mesopotamia.
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Original photograph
Ancient text
Ludlul bēl nēmeqi
Akkadian poem of a sufferer who praises Marduk after illness, lost standing and recovery; compared with Job, though its form and damaged guilt passage differ.
K.2518+DT.358 from Nineveh, a later, approximately seventh-century BCE witness to tablet II of Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, not the poem’s autograph. British Museum collection, displayed on loan at the Louvre. Photograph by Zunkir, 2020, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons; original image used without modification
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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
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
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
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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