Gone Jackal's New Writeups

Euphrates (place)

2003-06-27T22:45:24Z

The river Euphrates is the first of the two great streams of the Middle East which gave rise to and determined the historical course of the Land between the Rivers, Mesopotamia. I intend to give only a brief survey of the river, its nature, and its effect on civilization there.

Let's start, following Webster with the name and etymology. The earliest names, the "Sippar River" or simply "the River" in the oldest sources, soon gave way to the names "Burananu" and "Purattum". With a prothetic vowel of uncertain origin, found in Arabic and Syriac, the name was transformed by the Greeks to the form "Euphrates", by which it is known today in most western languages.

The Euphrates proper is formed through a confluence of the rivers Kara Su and Marat Su in south central Anatolia, fed by mountain rivulets. Cutting its way sharply through valleys and gorges it finally reaches the high plain of Syria at Samsat, continuing more than 1,400 kilometers to the borders…

Masora (thing)

2002-10-12T12:15:11Z

Approximately "the obligatory, the binding", in the general sense the name for the collective tradition of Biblical textual commentary and Hebrew grammatical systematisation which reached its most productive period in the early middle ages. The most important work of the Masorite scholars was the fixed vocalisation of the consonant-text of the Hebrew Bible. Narrowly defined, the Masora is the collected text which resulted from this work.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that in his time, some centuries after Hebrew had died as a living language, the Sopherim, or scribes, no longer dared to edit or correct the text of the Old Testament; in effect, the text of his time was the sacred, unchangeable basis of scripture. But there were two problems. Firstly, Hebrew used an originally consonant-only script, in which only long vowels, by employing semi-vocalic consonants, can be indicated. Secondly, since Hebrew had long since been replaced by Aramaic as a…

Ashurbanipal (person)

2002-09-10T21:48:16Z

King of Assyria from 668 to 631 B.C. (though the latter date is disputed), under whom the Assyrian empire reached the height of its power in the ancient Near East. Numerous military victories allowed at least temporary control over most of Mesopotamia as well as Egypt, Elam, and southern Asia Minor. His library at Nineveh provides one of the most illuminative sources for Akkadian literature.

"I am Ashurbanipal, offspring of Assur and Belit, the oldest prince of the royal harem...in my reign there was fulness to overflowing, in my years there was plenteous abundance." (Rassam Cylinder)

We can generally divide the reign of Ashurbanipal into three distinct periods: the beginning of his reign (669-653), the uprising in Babylon (652-648), and the peaceful pax Assyrica lasting from 648 to 631.

Before Ashurbanipal's father, Esarhaddon, died in 669 while on campaign in Egypt, he had taken great care to ensure a smooth succession within the…

Chaldea (place)

2002-07-27T15:17:47Z

Designation used from the 8th century B.C. for the land (kur kal-du) in the southeastern territory of Mesopotamia, including the borders of Elam in the Zagros mountains and the "Sealand" around the Persian Gulf. It was named after the "Chaldean" people (lu kal-du or kal-da-ay-ya), a semi-nomadic west semitic tribe which had most likely moved into the region some time between the 10th and 9th centuries B.C. They assumed a role of champions of Babylonian independence (naturally, under Chaldean rule) against the Neo-Assyrian empire, and provided the famous rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar of the Neo-Babylonian empire. Chaldea and Chaldeans in the Bible and classical sources generally refer to the land or people, respectively, of Babylonia as a whole, or to their function as priests and astrologers, specifically.

Chaldeans are first attested in the time of the Assyrian king Assurnassirpal II, around 878. When they first…

A Babylonian water clock (thing)

2002-07-04T12:01:54Z

There are two main phases of Babylonian mathematics, during the Old Babylonian (roughly 1800-1500 B.C.) and the Seleucid (roughly 300-100 B.C.) periods. Besides astronomical texts, we find two main genres: collections of geometrical and algebraic word problems and tables of multiples, fractions, etc. Our sample text here belongs to the former. An Old Babylonian text, Akkadian with many Sumerian logograms, excerpted from a collection of mathematical school exercises, now kept in the British Museum:

^GISHDIB.DIB ip-te-e-ma 1/2 SÌLA ^GISHDIB.DIB
IGI-4-GÁL 10 SHU.SI qa a-na i-si-iq-tim
u-ul i-sa-an-ni-iq qá-qá-rum UGU qá-qá-rum
en-nam SUKUD; ZA-E 1,40 SUKUD ^GISHDIB.DIB du₈-a
36 ta-mar 36 a-na 30 i-shi 18 ta-mar.
18 a-na 2/30 i-shi 45 ta-mar KI UGU KI DIRI
ki-a-am ne-pé-shum

And, the (literal) translation:

A water clock is opened. 1/2 Litre (of water) is in the water clock.…

Sinkashid (person)

2002-06-22T19:02:39Z

Sinkashid ("Sin (the Mesopotamian lunar god) has arrived...", or similar) was king of the city-state Uruk in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period approximately from 1865-1860, and the founder of the Sinkashid Dynasty, the last period of independence for the city.

During the time of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (a.k.a the Ur III period, ca. 2100-2000 B.C.), the city of Ur controlled an empire stretching across the entire Mesopotamian plain. As all things do, this empire eventually found its end around the turn of the millenium, due at least partly to wars with the Iranian city of Elam and the invasion of nomadic tribes called Amorites, most likely from the West, in Syria and Palestine. The following period, from 2000-1800 B.C., until the rise of Babylon under king Hammurabi, is defined by various city states trying to pick up the pieces by asserting regional control. As in ancient Greece in the 5th century, these nominally independent cities formed loose political…