Sumerian Religion: Did you mean...?

This hymn to the goddess Ishtar is written in Sumerian; after every line in Sumerian, the text is translated in Akkadian. Such translations have been invaluable to modern scholars. They reflect how the Sumerian language had become difficult...

Enheduanna (circa 2300 BCE) is the world's first author and was the daughter (either literally or figuratively) of the great empire-builder Sargon of Akkad (reign 2334-2279 BCE). Her name translates from the Akkadian as "high priestess of...

Mesopotamian education was invented by the Sumerians following the creation of writing circa 3600/3500 BCE. The earliest schools were attached to temples, but later schools were established in separate buildings, in which the scribes of ancient...

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...

Zarathustra (also given as Zoroaster, Zartosht, Zarathustra Spitama, l. c. 1500-1000 BCE) was the Persian priest-turned-prophet who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism (also given as Mazdayasna “devotion to Mazda”), the first monotheistic...

This is a detail of the so-called "War Scene" of the Standard of Ur. This detail is part of the left half of the middle register. Here, six Sumerian soldiers stand and stride to the right. They wear leather head caps and cloaks as well as...

The Weld-Blundell Prism, the most complete version of the Sumerian King List extant, from Larsa, c. 1827-1817 BCE. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Carved stone cuneiform tablets in Sumerian. Left: Temple of Ningirsu, Girsu. Right: Temple of Nindara, Ur. Dating around 2141-2122 BCE.

This fragment of a stone inlay was found in Kish. It depicts an incised design of a man wearing the typical Sumerian long robe, carrying a pole on his shoulder. This is probably from a battle scene. The overall depiction of this man is very...

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning "between two rivers") was an ancient region located in the Near East (Middle East) bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to modern-day...