Mesopotamian Inventions: Did you mean...?

Tiamat is the Mesopotamian goddess associated with primordial chaos and the salt sea, best known from the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish. In all versions of the myth, following the original, Tiamat always symbolizes the forces of chaos, which...

The Hymn to Ninkasi is at once a song of praise to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, and an ancient recipe for brewing (though this claim has been challenged). Written down circa 1800 BCE, the hymn is no doubt much older, as evidenced...

The Legend of Cutha (also known as the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin, Cutha Legend, and Kutha Legend) is a fictional work dated to the 17th century BCE belonging to the genre known as Mesopotamian naru literature. It features the Akkadian king...

Syria is a country located in the Middle East on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and bordered, from the north down to the west, by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world with archaeological...

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first observed in Sumer in the Early Dynastic period (circa...

The temples issued workers with daily rations of barley beer, the staple drink of Mesopotamia. The tablet was impressed with five different types of numerical symbol. From Mesopotamia, Iraq. Late Uruk Period, 3100-3000 BCE. (The British Museum...

On this clay tablet, barley appears 4 times, depicted as a single stalk with ears at the top. Emmer wheat is different from barley, by writing numbers with extra strokes. Three different types of numerical symbol were used. From Mesopotamia...

Fragment of a Neo-Assyrian clay tablet, with 8 lines of bilingual text, including proverbs and riddles, from the Library of Ashurbanipal, Kouyunjik, Iraq. The British Museum, London.

This clay tablet fragment gives detailed measurements for the inner city wall called Imgur-Enlil at the start of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign. It names landmarks including Zababa and Urash gates. Modern surveys show that the figures are realistic...

Clay cylinder with Babylonian characters, recording the restoration of Sin's ziggurat at Ur and also asking him to protect Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar. From Ur, Southern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. Neo-Babylonian Period, reign of Nabonidus...