Lecture 2- Sources Flashcards
Benjamin of Tudela
- 1170 first Euro. study of Mesopotamia
- saw Ninevah outside of Mosul
Paul-Emile Botta
• Paul-Émile Botta (Mar 1843-Oct 44)
o Found many remains & wall reliefs
Later recognized as Sargon II’s castle,
centre of the “city of Sargon”
o Thought he was actually exploring Nineveh
caused lot of sensation in Euro
So British also sent their own (Layard) to
Mosul = started French vs. English
competition
Henry Layard
• Austen Henry Layard (Dec 1845 – Jun 47)
o Worked at Nimrud (another site not far from Mosul)
o Discovered NW palace of Ashurnasirpal II, South
palace of Esarhaddon, central palace of Tiglath-
Pileser II- many reliefs found overall
Kuyunjik/Corsova
- Excavated by the Germans
- First systematic arch. at Assur
Site of Telloh
Site of Telloh (1870s)
- Led to the understanding Sumerians - culture, lang,
his. all the way back to ~2500 BCE - Realized the Bible didn’t have memory of this -
Sumerians already lost to Bible times
o ** This started detaching Meso arch. from Biblical arch.
Tell Ajaja
- by Layard 1850’s
- Neo-Syrian sculptures and IA monumental sites
- Led to Syria being an offshoot of Meso.
Halaf
- by the Germans
- really important because the pottery
- 6th-5th mil. beyond Bible dating
Karkemis
- Lawrence of Arabia and Wooley
- arch. political and just for the Brit. museum
Robert Koldeway
- Babylon 1899
- starts second phase of Syrian arch.
- Look at cuneiform as source instead of Bible
Walter Andrae
- Assur 1903
- scientific approach rather than Bible
Characteristics of Second Phase (Syria)
• Consideration of historical problems – to be the
reason they go dig
o Problems raised by epigraphical sources
collected from the First Phase
• Refining excavation techniques
o Good technique affected the amount &
quality of data = so this was important
• Registration of each artefact (not just as art pieces)
• Attention to architectural superimpositions
o Almost like stratigraphy = the sequence of the
architecture was taken into account and
recorded (NOT the actual earth/geological
method)
Wheeler & Kenyon introduce the
geological way, later
Can see in literature this difference b/w
architectural stratigraphy & geological
stratigraphy
• Effective evaluation of context correlations = the
BIGGEST STEP (basis of arch. finds)
o Ex: taking into consideration where a
coin was found (in a home, a garbage pit,
a palace, etc.)
Tell Hariri
- Mari (1930’s)
Ras Shamra
- Ugarit (1930’s)
Al Mina
- by Wooley
Upper Khabur
- by Max Mallowan and Christie
Robert Braidwood
- Uni. of Chicago
- Amuq valley in the 1930’s and 1990s
Hama
- by the Danish
- established Syrian chronology
Salvage excavations
- started in the 60’s- 80s
- for the purpose of preservation
- focus on small sites and settlement distribution
- proto-Sumerian sites: Habuba Kabira, Jebel Aruda, Tel Qanas
First Phase in Anatolia
- focused more on Greek and Roman sites
- Ephesus, Miletus, Pergamum
Second Phase in Anatolia
- different than in Syria
- influenced more by Turkish politics/national identity
- artifacts need to stay in Turkey
- Less Biblical/ more scientific
Bogazkoy Hattusa
(1906-1912) excavation
• Very successful = 10,000 clay tablets, plans of state buildings (royal acropolis at Buyukkale), great temple, city walls w/ 5 gates
• Texts found = written in steel & sephred lang. attested into Armarn docs studied (???)
o Others in Akkadian known in Assyrian &
Babylonian texts
o Found this was the capital of Hatti
o Treaty b/w the king Hattušili III & Rameses II
(dated 21st year of the pharaoh)
• The discoveries showed the Kingdom of Hatti in LBA was equal to Egypt, Assyria, & Babylonia
Kingdom of Hatti (~1400 BCE) had violent end
o From LBA to EIA = chronology started to fall
into place
Tel Amarna tablets
- 1888 in Egypt
- showed mid 14th c. BC, king of Hatti made deals with 2 pharaohs
Karatepe
1947, discovery of bilingual text at Karatepe - helped decipher Hittite hieroglyphs
- Written in both Phoenician & Hittite
3 types of texts
- archival
- admin- could be thrown out after a few years
- monumental
- smaller collection but good for reconstruction of
history
- smaller collection but good for reconstruction of
- Literary (library texts)
- actually collection of religion, myth stories, local
traditions - ex. library of Ashurbanipal
- actually collection of religion, myth stories, local
Deeds/Annals of Hattusili I
- First example of analytic texts
o Records of deeds of the king each year (the wars/victories, etc.) - Usually these texts would be “Monumental texts”
o Inscription on his statue
o BUT we only have clay tablets - which are 13th c. copies of original from 16th c.
Preserved in archives over the centuries -so ARCHIVAL, not monumental exactly
Development of Cuneiform
- 3300 BCE/ created as a admin tool
- derived from clay bullae with symbols/ tokens
- growth of the centralised economy makes tracking of goods necessary so tokens turn into cuneiform
Cuneiform and Sumerian Language
• Writing was both logograms as well as phonetic pronunciations
o In the beginning = writing didn’t reflect “the
language” exactly – just script of ideas &
things
o BUT later = script distinctly represented
people who SPOKE Sumerian
• Akkadian had their phonetic script, but they also used some Sumerian logograms
o Similar to how we used 1 2 3
• There was change in orientation of script
o Started from top to bottom (right to left) - then
turned to horizontally from left to right
• The stylus also changed
Sumerian language
- 3000 -1900
- Don’t know origin
- Became like Latin to us
Akkadian language
- 2700-100- longest running
- Eastern Semitic
- different dialects like Eblaite, Babylonian, Assyrian
- different phases: Pre-sargonid (Mari), Sargonid (old Akkadian), Ur III Akkadian (Babylonian)
Hurrian language
- 2300-1350
- only lang related to Uratian
• Most texts of this lang. comes from Hittite archives in Anatolia
o The archive found at El Armarna (all letters in
Akkadian) – ONE LETTER IN HURRIAN
Letter from Mittani king to Amenhotep III
(~1380 BCE)
Examples of Hurrian text
- bronze lion from Urkes (oldest)
- trilingual text from Ugarit (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrin)
Hittite and other Indo-Euro Languages
• Different types of writing:
o Cuneiform – in different languages
All of them Indo-Euro language found in
Hittite archives
Also used non Indo-Euro
o Anatolian Hieroglyphs
o Alphabetic scripts (only in 1st. mill)
• Hittite (& Akkadian) = best known languages of NE
o Hittite is Indo-Euro
• Cuneiform was in Anatolia before the Hittites
o Written in Old Assyrian
Correspondence b/w Assyrian merchants
w/ their homeland
• Many bilingual texts in Hurrian & Hittite
• Cuneiform = Hittite official admin script
o When Hittite fell - cuneiform stopped
o BUT the hieroglyphic script continued
Alphabetic languages
- 2nd and 1st mil
• Mostly Semitic languages
• Alphabetic script invented in the Levant –
influenced by Egyptian demotic
• Anatolian Hieroglyph
o NOT influenced by Egyptian hieroglyph
o Writing system was the same as cuneiform,
A mixed script of logographic & syllabic
o Created probably by Luwians
• First alphabet attested from Ugarit
o Tablet with an abecedary Ugaritic alphabet
(14th-13th c.)
Cuneiform and the Persian Empire
** cuneiform so prestigious, Persians adopted it too **
• They created 2 cuneiform types
o To write in Old Persian (language of
Achaemenid dynasty) and Elamite (Old Iranian
language)
• BUT they also use Babylonian & Akkadian
cuneiform
Behistun inscription
- trilingual inscription on a relief of Darius (521)
- in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian w/Babylonian cuneiform
- helped decifer Akkadian and cuneiform
