King Ashurbanipal ruled from 669-631 BCE. A 34 mile aqueduct was constructed to carry water into Nineveh, an advance in the technology of this empire. ![]() Several uprisings challenge the armies of King Ashurbanipal. During this time, Assyrians are dominating Mesopotamia, with a vast army comprised of over 50,000 mixed infantry calvary and chariot divisions. The Flood Tablet comes from the Neo-Assyrian culture of 7th Century BCE Mesopotamia, modern day northern Iraq. He is said to have "jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself." Local Historical Context In 1872, George Smith discovered this piece of the Epic of Gilgamesh among the bits of rubble. It was then shipped to the British Museum with other broken bits of pottery and similar pieces. The Flood Tablet was discovered in the mid-19th century by a Turkish Assyriologist named Hormuzd Rassam during the excavation of Kuyunjik, a "fallen, ransacked city" 13 miles wide. Cuneiform has existed for around 5000 years and was about 2500 years old when The Flood Tablet was written. The Flood Tablet is written in Akkadian, the language of the Neo-Assyrian empire. Several forms of cuneiform exist each form is written in a different language. A blunt reed called a stylus is used to impress wedge-shaped writing onto wet clay and the tablet is allowed to cure either by baking outside in the sun or being fired in a kiln. ![]() The Flood Tablet is a ceramic tablet (made of clay) writen in cuneiform. Made (roughly) in the 7th Century BCE during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it was discovered in Nineveh, now part of Northern Iraq. This historical object is The Flood Tablet, part of the greater series of tablets known as the Epic of Gilgamesh which relates the story of the Great Flood. 1 Brief Identification: The Flood Tabletīrief Identification: The Flood Tablet.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without the express written permission of AncientPages. Sutherland Staff WriterĬopyright © All rights reserved. Their contribution formed the foundation of our knowledge of Sumer, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires, all native to Mesopotamia. Many thousands of cuneiform tablets have been discovered and one example can be the discovery of 30,000 clay tablets found in Nineveh, one of the most important sources of knowledge about ancient Mesopotamia.īy the end of the 1850s, Hincks and Rawlinson had successfully provided a working decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform. The first early attempts at decipherment of the cuneiform tablets were largely unsuccessful also because it was difficult to determine the origin of many works. Many of these texts were copied and new ones were created but these works remained anonymous. In legacy, the Sumerians left numerous magical and historical texts, mathematical-natural, philological, astrological-astronomical textbooks. When the Sumerian state ceased to exist, the entire cultural heritage was taken over by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. ![]() By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in the 19th century. This is due to the fact that clay tablets had much better durability than the Egyptian writing material – papyrus.Ĭuneiform writing was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BC). It is worth adding that more Sumerian texts could be preserved compared to the Egyptians. The basic material on which the records were made was clay, which was abundant in Mesopotamia. The cuneiform writing system was used for more than 3000 years and during at least 2000 years, the system underwent considerable changes. The Sumerian script was also adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and became an inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet and Old Persian cuneiform. Photo credit: Jastrow/Louvre Museum - Public Domain From the excavations supervised by Gaston Cros, 1904. 2400 BC, found in Telloh (ancient Girsu). Letter sent by the high-priest Lu’enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat. However, literature was not intended for a wide audience, but rather for the royal collections and school libraries, where it was used for studies and teaching. Also, the earliest known dictionaries in the world developed when people needed to translate words in Sumerian into Eblaite, since Ebla was a major educational center.
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