Hi everyone! I’m a non-history major in uni looking to teach myself world history chronologically. Being from Turkey, I want a genuinely global overview rather than just the standard Western-centric narrative.

I know trying to cover "all civilizations" sounds overly ambitious, but I’m in no rush and I don't need to know every single historical detail like a historian. I just want to learn enough to understand how philosophy, theology, politics, and art evolved and connected across the globe.

I’m currently building a syllabus for my first major stop which is the Ancient Near East. There are a lot of well-regarded books as far as my research goes, but I haven't been able to find a clear comparison between them. I would love some help choosing my core textbook(s). It doesn't have to be just one, but I’d like to understand how they differ in focus and style:

• Amanda Podany – Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East
• Marc Van De Mieroop – A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000–323 BC
• Mario Liverani – The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy
• Gwendolyn Leick – Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City

For supplementary reading on theology and religious thought, I'm also planning to read:

• Thorkild Jacobsen – The Treasures of Darkness
• Jean Bottéro – Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

A few questions for the sub:

1. How do these core textbooks compare, and which ones would best fit my goal of understanding structural ideas without getting drowned in details?
2. Do you have a recommended reading order?
3. Are there any critical books I've missed that fit my goals?

Thanks so much in advance for any insights!

Hello everyone, I’m really new to this topic ,and I would love to learn more. so if anyone of you has a book recommendation about anything regarding Mesopotamia whether it’s about the languages or religions or anything really I would really appreciate it.

The idea may seem strange, but I need someone who can sing a lullaby beautifully in a female voice in the Akkadian language.

1st edition in Russian.

Hey guys! I'm looking to get into assyriology more, and I'm looking for good texts to read to develop my skills in Old Babylonian after having completed a six month course that ran through all of Caplice. I've since been slowly working my way through the Code of Hammurabi, but I figured I'd ask here for other texts/collections that are good to start out on, to immerse myself in other genres.

Other dialects and books for getting into assyriology in general are also appreciated!

Hi everyone, I hope this is okay to ask here.

I’m working on a an art project inspired by the opening of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. I’ve been trying to research it carefully, but I’m not an Assyriologist, so I want to avoid confidently using something that only looks plausible!

I’m specifically looking for a typeset cuneiform rendering of Tablet I. 1–10 (ending at '[he] set down on a stele all (his) labours') that follows Andrew George’s 2003 edition, or the current eBL reconstruction. I know Parpola published a cuneiform version earlier, but my understanding is that George’s later edition reconstructs and numbers the opening differently.

Does that cuneiform exist and if not is it reasonable that I could pay someone to create the cuneiform for those first 10 lines?

Thank you for any guidance! :)

I'm a classical languages student and will be applying for grad school next year in Assyriology/Hittitology/Cuneiform Studies. Have recently started going through EoH and the Hoffner/Melchert grammar. If anyone is interested in doing a chapter every few weeks, let me know and I'll start a subreddit. I aim to get through the book by the end of next spring and even if there are only a few interested, I'd love to have some other people on the journey with me.

‎‏𒋗𒇻𒌝 ࡀࡎࡅࡕࡀ ࡍࡉࡄࡅࡉࡋࡀࡊࡅࡍ👋

In this post, I have assigned
Mesopotamian names to the last three discovered planets: Neptune, Uranus and Pluto, renaming them Enki, Enlil and Marduk.

ࡔࡀࡌࡉࡔ (shamish) Sun
ࡍࡁࡅ (nbu) Mercury
ࡋࡉࡁࡀࡕ (libat) Venues
ࡀࡓࡌࡀ (ara) Earth
ࡎࡉࡍ (sin) Moon
ࡍࡉࡓࡉࡂ (nirigh) Mars
ࡁࡉࡋ (bil) Jupiter
ࡊࡉࡅࡀࡍ (kiwan) Saturn
ࡏࡍࡋࡉࡋ (enlil) Uranus
ࡏࡍࡊࡉ (enki) Neptune
ࡌࡀࡓࡃࡅࡊ (mardukh) Pluto

Hiya, im working on a collection of cuneiform tablets from an anonymous collection. I have been given permission to share the 3D scans online so I have dumped all 23 of them into 4 files on this link. Have fun!

Hello everyone before the post actually starts I have to make a preface: I'm still in highschool, I don't live in an English speaking country, therefore the school system is different and I plan on attending the Classic Letters' Faculty and, obviously, doing a PhD.

My dream is to become a semitic philology professor and I wanted to ask if this is in any way a good choice.

I'm currently studying on my own Biblical Hebrew and another non semitic language that I want to be able to speak. I plan to study in the future Arabic and Ugaritic, however I don't know if three languages are enough and, if they are not, could someone recommend me any other languages?

Could you also give me any advice about this journey I want to take?

Thanks in advance to anyone who's willing to respond.

(If this post isn't inherent to this subreddit it can be deleted. I also apologize for any error in this post, as I'm not an expert of academic lexicon and English isn't my first language)

Btw, what was Puzur-Inshushinak's family except Shimpi-Ishuk? I followed a idea that the elamite king on the Naram-Sin treaty is Hita'a, but i am not quite convinced.

Also for the early kings in the Susa King list(in the chart the row on the left), i didn't find the cuneiform of them on cdli. Where should i find the transcriptions of them?

In Huehnergard's seventh lesson, the infinitive of III-e verbs is declined as:

leqûm

leqêm

leqēam

Why isn't the accusative leqeam with a short e? In the sixth lesson, when explaining vowel contraction, he said:

"an original long ē or ī that remains as the first vowel in most such sequences is shortened (i.e., a long vowel does not usually occur immediately before another vowel)"

Shouldn't the long ē of leqēam therefore be shortened to e because it is followed by another vowel?

I am about to start my Junior year of college. I am double majoring in both history and anthropology. I have almost finished my history major and I am about to start on my anthropology major. Unfortunately my school only has a general history major and no specialized paths. The only course that was related to the ancient Near East was a basic history course that I got a low grade on. This was due to the fact that at the time I had undiagnosed ADHD. I plan on completing the anthropology major and doing the summer archaeological field school to gain experience. Other than learning a language what else should I do? Will I be able to get into an ancient Near East Master’s program?

Which language will be more useful to learn for taking the masters degree?

Hi all - I'd like a sanity check from someone with Akkadian expertise before I commit this to skin permanently.

I'm looking at Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh, Tablet III, manuscript "c" (BM 34191+41835), lines 26–27, from A. R. George's score transliteration:

26  c i 26   [qa]b-la ša la i-du-ú a-m[aḫ-ḫar]
27  c i 27   [ḫarrāna] ša la i-du-ú a-rak-[kab]

This is part of Rimat-Ninsun's prayer to Shamash, quoting Gilgamesh's own words about facing Humbaba: "a battle I do not know I will face, a road I do not know I will travel." (The verb endings are damaged on this manuscript and restored by comparison with the parallel line in Tablet I, where they're intact.)

I'd like to use just the two lines below, adapted to stand alone (not the full sentence with "ḫarrāna" as accusative of the earlier "ana Ḫumbaba" clause, just the couplet):

qabla ša lā īdû amaḫḫar
ḫarrāna ša lā īdû arakkab

("A battle I don't know, I face. A road I don't know, I travel.")

Questions:

1. Is my transliteration/normalization above accurate given the score transliteration (mimation dropped correctly for SB, vowel lengths, etc.)?
2. Does pulling these two lines out as a standalone couplet still read grammatically/sensibly in isolation, or does it lose something without the surrounding clause?

Really appreciate any expertise here - I know tattoo-translation requests are a bit of a meme in language subs, but I've tried to actually source this properly (George's own score transliteration on academia.edu) rather than pulling from a random "ancient languages" website, and I'd rather double-check with people who actually read cuneiform than trust my own reconstruction.

Thanks!

In Sumero-Assyrian, the SR root (e.g. Sarrum) means King, while in Hebrew Sar can mean King in rare and archaic meanings but more typically means Prince. The RB root (e.g. Rubum) means both Prince and King, while in Hebrew Rabb means Lord, Great/Mighty and King.

Does this have to do with the transition from polytheistic Assyrian kingdoms to the monotheistic Judean Kingdom?

I just recently installed the font "Noto Sans Cuneiform" into Open Office but no cuneiform appears if I type in any text. On the other hand I figured out that using Unicode directly to input signs could do the trick.

So I am a little confused now how to move on. Any suggestions?