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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Illustration
Concept
Tetragrammaton
Designation for YHWH written with four Hebrew letters; it does not settle the earliest pronunciation or etymology.
Modern diagram: El belongs to the Semitic word family for god; YHWH has four letters. Religious identification does not establish linguistic derivation of one name from the other. Not an ancient inscription or a solution to Yahweh’s etymology
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Illustration
Region
Midian
Name for groups and a wilderness-associated landscape in Hebrew narratives; Moses’s link to its priest supports a hypothesis, not proof of Yahweh worship’s transfer.
Modern diagram of names in poetry and narrative. It draws no Midianite borders or certain Sinai/Paran locations, and does not equate a divine appearance with the origin of worship
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People
Shasu
Egyptian designation for mobile pastoral groups; Yhw occurs in their lists without automatically identifying a deity or Israel.
Soleb temple in Sudan, from Amenhotep III’s reign; photograph by Hans Birger Nilsen, 2017. Context for the Egyptian list, not a photograph of the Yhw entry or a temple of Yahweh
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Original photograph
Concept
Baal Cycle
A group of Late Bronze Age Ugaritic religious texts recounting Baal’s conflicts, relationships with the gods and the building of his palace.
Baal Cycle tablet AO 16640 / RS 3.367 from Ugarit, about 1400–1200 BCE, associated with KTU 1.2; Louvre. Not the palace-authorization tablet KTU 1.4. A photograph of actual textual evidence, not imagined gods
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Illustration
Entity
Anat
An active and violent goddess in Ugaritic literature; pressures El over Baal’s palace and addresses him with paternal and wisdom language.
Modern diagram of the palace episode: Anat presses and petitions, Athirat intercedes, El grants permission, and Baal obtains the palace. Narrative summary, not a chronology of every line, a divine constitution or an archaeological reconstruction
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Illustration
Entity
Athirat
A high-ranking goddess commonly understood as El’s consort in Ugaritic texts; associated with the progenitress epithet and the palace intercession.
Modern divine-household diagram: El as father and king, Athirat as consort with the progenitress epithet, and divine-group designations. Baal is Dagan’s son and also addresses El as father. Not a definitive birth genealogy or identification of all Athirat’s sons as known biological sons of El
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Original photograph
Entity
Baal
Storm god and protagonist of Ugarit’s Baal Cycle; exercises active kingship while El retains importance and authorizes the palace.
Baal with Thunderbolt stela from Ugarit, limestone, Louvre AO 15775 / RS 4.427. The museum assigns a broad date of 2000–1150 BCE. This depicts Baal, not El, and does not prove that Baal overthrew him
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Illustration
Deity
Inanna / Ishtar
Prominent Mesopotamian goddess with a major centre at Uruk, whose parentage and cult traditions vary rather than forming one fixed genealogy.
Alternative parentage of Inanna in different traditions, according to ORACC. Modern teaching diagram, not three simultaneous branches of one family tree
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Illustration
Deity
Enlil
Prominent Mesopotamian god associated with Nippur and Ekur, highly ranked in Early Dynastic texts before the earliest known Anunna attestation.
Enlil, Nippur and Ekur: a principal cult association, not an exclusive location of worship. Modern teaching diagram, not a temple reconstruction or divine portrait
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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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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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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
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
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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