Bøger om Babylonien

"Describes how we should imagine the intellectual and physical formation of the text in the 6th century CE. This is achieved by way of comparison with other more or less contemporary books, thereby describing the work as a product of its own time rather than as its authors aiming at what the Talmud ultimately became: the basis of orthodox Judaism"--

"A ground-breaking analysis of the origins of Western linguistic thought, exploring how ancient Greek and Mesopotamian thinkers saw the relationship between human symbols and the universe. By examining neglected primary sources, the book offers fresh reconstructions of how these thinkers conceived the interrelation of language and reality"--

The book contains first editions of thirty-three cuneiform tablets from the Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection, dating to the second half of the second millennium and the first millennium BCE, as well as duplicates and parallels from other museums. The majority of the edited tablets stem from the city of Nippur, but the book also includes manuscripts from Assur and Babylon. The tablets comprise literary, magic, and divinatory texts, as well as fifteen Middle and Neo-Babylonian school manuscripts with excerpts from various compositions.The literary texts include a large prayer invoking blessings of Nippur gods upon the king, known in other cities as well; a wisdom monologue, and a manuscript of The Exaltation of IStar. The magic section includes Middle Babylonian versions of anti-witchcraft incantations previously known in the first millennium, as well as exorcistic spells, and formulas to be recited upon the consecration of Nippur priests. Extispicy, hemerologies, and physiognomy are among the divinatory texts edited. The school tablets contain excerpts from several texts previously unknown to have survived into the respective periods, such as a Middle Babylonian version of Tamarisk and Palm and a first-millennium version of the wisdom text Hearken to the Advice.The introduction of the book contains an overview of Nippur history, as well as a discussion of the provenance of the tablets and their social and school contexts. The city of Nippur, whose scholarly production circulated widely in Antiquity, is strangely bereft of scholarly manuscripts, a fact that the book seeks to explain.

This volume presents a group of articles that deal with connections between ancient Babylonian, Iranian and Jewish communities in Mesopotamia under Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, and Sasanian rule. The studies, written by leading scholars in the fields of Assyriology, Iranian studies and Jewish studies, examine various modes of cultural connections between these societies, such as historical, social, legal, and exegetical intersections. The various Mesopotamian connections, often neglected in the study of ancient Judaism, are the focus of this truly interdisciplinary collection. Contributors:Jonathan Ben-Dov, Yaakov Elman, Irving Finkel, James Nathan Ford, Eckart Frahm, Uri Gabbay, Yishai Kiel, Reuven Kiperwasser, Maria Macuch, Shai Secunda, Dan D. Y. Shapira, Prods Oktor Skjærvø, Caroline Waerzeggers, Nathan Wasserman, Abraham Winitzer, Ran Zadok

Bent Haller har med sin omskrivning af det episke heltedigt ”Gilgamesh” vendt pennen mod det gamle Mesopotamien. I landet mellem floderne Eufrat og Tigris vokser den unge Gilgamesh op. Som enebarn af den gamle konge Lugalbanda og kongedatteren Inanna er han idoliseret af både sin far og af folket, og det gør de gamle guder misundelige. Især guden Enil er så forbitret over Gilgameshs popularitet, at han lokker den unge gudinde Aruru til at skabe et menneske ud af vand, mudder og en magisk sten, der er stærkere end nogen mand og derfor kan slå Gilgamesh ihjel. Men da Gilgamesh og Enkidu mødes i duel, viser det sig, at de er lige stærke, og de to bliver i stedet venner. I raseri henvender Enil sig til overguden Ba-bel, der slår Enkidu ihjel. I stor sorg drager Gilgamesh derefter ud på en farefuld færd for at finde kilden til evigt liv.Bent Haller (f. 1946) er en dansk forfatter og billedkunstner. som debuterede i 1976 med romanen ”Katamaranen”, der handlede om en gruppe børns opvækst i et socialt boligbyggeri. Selvom han har skrevet bøger for voksne, er han dog mest kendt for sin børne- og ungdomsbøger som ”Blåfolket” (1986), ”Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven” (1990), ”Silke” (1991) og ”Kaskelotternes sang” (1983), der er hans til dato mest berømte bog. Haller har vundet flere priser for sine romaner, deriblandt Kulturministeriets Børnebogspris i 1978 og Nordisk Børnebogspris i 2000.