Sumerian Religious and Magical Texts

Catalog description

This self-contained course sets the Sumerian language, writing system and use of writing in their social and historical context. The aim is to provide students of ancient history and culture from diverse disciplines with a good grounding in Sumerian culture, familiarity with the Sumerian language and cuneiform writing system and the requisite knowledge for critical assessment of published translations and of the secondary literature. The course is organized as two threads, culture on the one hand and language on the other. The two threads are united by taking examples in the language exercises, vocabulary assignments, etc., as far as possible from the domain of the week' cultural topics. The net effect is to examine the culture both through contemporary secondary literature and through direct contact with elementary primary texts of relevance to the various topics of discussion. The language component of the course will be carried out in a combination of transliteration and cuneiform, with an expectation that all students will gain familiarity with at least the core 80 syllabic signs, and about 100 additional logographic signs.