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Hello everyone! I come from a fairly small country and didn't have any options to study Assyriology in university. I am in my third year of an engineering degree and decided to pursue my dreams and finally get a degree in Assyriology. I've been studying Sumerian and Akkadian for over 10 years, by myself, using every single university dictionary/research paper I could find, then worked on the logograms and tablets and so on. I always treated the languages as spoken languages and tried to learn them in a conversational manner. This, besides studying the rest (history, cultic literature, legal systems etc.) Since my financial situation is limited and I've been studying for at least 5 hours a day everyday for the past 10 years, what would the best option be? I want a degree in Assyriology (mostly as a legal proof for my studies + access to more research) but also cannot afford much. Thank you all in advance.

I have a PhD in Assyriology but the job market being what it is, I teach history and religion at a prep school. I push my best students to consider Near Eastern Studies degrees at university and teach a Gilgamesh course but I am wondering:

What are some good resources for teaching about Mesopotamia in high school?

Is there (or could there be) a group (maybe even an IAA working group) for secondary educators?

Hello,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this kind of thing. I'm a self-teaching myself Akkadian using the Zondervan Basics of Akkadian book. I tried to reach out to the publisher, but never heard back.

I'm just a dork doing this for fun, so any other resources (free or below like $50 lol) would be appreciated.

And if not what troubles do ai's face when translating

I read that Gilgamesh's real name might be Nabu? Is this true?

http://gilgameshepic.com/about.html#:~:text=In%20fact%20his%20actual%20first,Babylonian%20Edition%20(provided%20below).

I'm not sure about any of the following.

I was reading some things about the Sumerian King List, and it struck me that some of it makes more sense if the dynasties overlap, rather than being consecutive. For instance, Kug-Bau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List#Rulers_in_the_Sumerian_King_List is the only member of the Third Dynasty of Kish, but another text describes her as contemporaneous with Puzur-Nirah, the fourth member of the next dynasty. It occurs to me that this would make sense if, rather than the first king of each dynasty defeating the previous dynasty, the dynasties overlapped. For instance, it might be that each dynasty starts from when that dynasty started to rule in that city, and defeats the previous dynasty and rises to be rulers of all of Sumer only part-way through, before being defeated themselves.

What do you think? Is this a possible theory? Are there other pieces of evidence that are against it? Are there other pieces of evidence that are in favour of it? I don't know much about it, for all I know this is the standard theory, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

Hi. I'm currently looking for an Uni to study Assyriology in Germany (or Ancient Near East Philology/Studies).

I looked up some infos and found that there's Heidelberg and Tübingen, which offers Assyriology.
Also I can find some infos about Heidelberg well, but there's not much about Tübingen.

Does anyone know about Assyriology in Tübingen?
Which subject / language is strong point of that University?

I would be really happy if I can get any advices.

Thanks !!

I want to learn sumerian and hittite, which order should i follow and should i learn akkadian first, although i dont have interest to akkadian.

also, which book are proper to a beginner about teaching grammar.

What colleges have good programs for Ancient Mesopotamia (for undergrad and grad)? I know UChicago's is pretty well known, but is there any other ones that have decent teachers/overall programs? Ideally with some sort of emphasis on the Akkadians or Assyrians, but I'm not sure how specific teachers and programs tend to get when it comes to Mesopotamia.

I'm just starting to learn it. Right now I'm more comfortable with transliteration but I'm doing my best to learn cuneiform. I'm just looking for someone to engage in brief conversations with me on a regular basis to help me get used to the language. I want to start with transliterations, and then progress to cuneiform as I become more accustomed. DM me, and we can determine what time/day of the week works best.

Thanks for looking at my question!

Huehnergard's Grammar of Akkadian says "In verbal clauses, the enclitic particle -ma may occur on parts of speech other than the verb. In such instances, -ma is not a conjunction, but rather an emphasizing particle..." (p325)

So "sarrum-ma mari ina kakkisu imhas" would go as "it was the king who struck my son with his weapon." Putting -ma after the word for sword or son would emphasize those instead, while putting -ma after imhas would link the phrase to the following phrase.

In the Prologue of Gilgamesh we have

[iḫī]ṭ-ma mitḫāriš par[akkī]

-ma is attached to the verb so we would expect it to link the phrase after it. However, Foster translates it as an emphasis instead:

"He it was who studied seats of power everywhere."

Is Foster taking liberties here, or are there circumstances where -ma can emphasize the person who is performing the verb? And if that's the case, are there rules for knowing when it's a conjunction and when it's an emphasis?

Whats Assyrian territory on the modern map, also, any opinions on the libration of Syria here..? If relevant

The ETCSL only has transliterated words, and the ePSD doesn't have the cuneiform for many Emesal words.

Hi I am looking for the cuneiform for melammu (awe-inspiring radiance) from what I have researched. Thank you

As I've posted here before, I ordered a book from Ugarit-Verlag, "Ancient Mesopotamian Religion: A Descriptive Introduction," back on August 29th. I paid $39 for the book, and $49 for international shipping from Germany to the United States.

I had sent e-mails to Dr. Thomas Kämmerer, (who owns it? runs it?), and only got a response from him after I threatened to post about it here. This was after quite a lot of time had passed. Ugarit-Verlag itself had indicated I should track the purchase on the Shop app; that only showed me the online receipt for it, and indicated (after more than 2 months had passed) that it was "being readied to be shipped." He said that he would contact Herold Fulfillment to get in touch with me (they never did). After a few weeks of waiting, I went ahead and made my first post here about this.

Now, the purchase doesn't appear on the Shop app any more, and (I checked!) my purchase hasn't been refunded. On December 4, I sent another e-mail to Dr. Kämmerer, telling him all these things, and asked him to tell me something about what's going on with my order. I mean, after all, it'll be 4 months on the 29th!

Nothing. Crickets.

Is this anyone else's experience, lately?

Egypt & it's studies & field is called Egyptology but why Mesopotamia has various names or common names like ancient near East & not a particular name just depicting only the history of sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, Mesopotamia. Ancient near East depicts a lot of countries history in that particular term in that area!

All the stuff in the British Museum and Lourve, amongst others. Is there an Assyrian repatriation movement of any kind? Like for instance India has been campaigning for the repatriation of the Kohinoor for years.

Recently I have begun learning Sumerian using primarily Hayes' third edition manual from 2019. I also know some Latin and try to pronounce it correctly.

I wanted to do the same for Sumerian but a lot seems quite uncertain. I myself am mostly interested in the period of the third Ur dynasty, which does seem to be a period with less problems than e.g the earlier periods, as some sources seemed to suggest if /u/ and /o/ were seperate they would have merged by then.

So far I have taken a look at Jagersma's section on phonology, Hayes' section on phonology, and Edzard's section on phonology as well as a literal handful of papers in order to craft a picture of the pronunciation of Sumerian during this period. There does seem to be a lot of consensus on the consonants and the problematic ones seem to have vanished by then; It seems that stress rather than tone is now assumed, and vowel length seems to be quite accepted now.

The vowels seem to be the real problem. My question is if anyone has ever tried to reconstruct a Sumerian pronunciation scheme from this period by comparing the literature and if not, if you could give me some pointers for further research. I have seen some bleak statements like that our Sumerian would've been unintelligible to that of a native Sumerian speaker. I don't really care about infallibility since this doesn't seem possible but I'd like to explore it further both because I find it fascinating and would love to incorporate the latest research and not just wing it. Thanks in advance!

To give an example concerning the vowels, Hayes says that "dumu" most likely was pronounced as "domu", but doesn't really say why. Jagersma doesn't appear to accept an "o", and yet another source said that "by the Ur-III period, /u/ and /o/would already have merged.""