A blog full of Mesopotamian Polytheism, anthropology nerdery, and writer moods. Devotee of Nisaba. Currently obsessed with: the Summa Perfectionis.
987 posts
Mastabas-and-mushussu - Behold! Let There Be Nerd Rants. - Tumblr Blog
Nanshe
Nanshe (also known as Nanse, Nazi) is the Sumerian goddess of social justice and divination, whose popularity eventually transcended her original boundaries of southern Mesopotamia toward all points throughout the region in the 3rd millennium BCE. She became one of the most popular deities of the Mesopotamian Pantheon for her selfless devotion to the good of humanity.
Continue reading…
inspired by the works of @/mischievousdog (both on tumblr and twitter)
In Armenian, when we want to say “damn you” or “go to hell”, we use the expressions "գրողը քեզ տանի" [groxy qez tani] or "գնա գրողի ծոցը" [gna (kori) groxi tsocy], which translate to “may the writer take you away” or “go and get lost in the writer’s embrace” in English. You might wonder, “Who is this writer-person?” and “Why is it considered a curse?”
According to traditional Armenian belief, Grox (the writer) is a spirit who records a person's deeds during their lifetime, determining the purity of their soul. This concept may be linked to Tir, the god of writing and literature in Armenian mythology. In some interpretations, it was believed that anyone whose name Tir wrote in his notebook would die. This is where the curse "may the writer take you" originates.
During the Christian era, Grox was mistakenly represented as a Christian spirit who no longer recorded human deeds but instead determined each person's fate, inscribing it on their foreheads. Over time, Grox came to be depicted as an evil spirit, sometimes identified with Satan. Thus, the curse "get lost in Grox’s embrace," which originally signified death, took on a more negative connotation. However, this was not originally characteristic of Grox in Armenian traditional beliefs.
So, if you want to get creative with your curses, instead of saying “go to hell,” you can use the phrase “get lost in the writer’s embrace”.
WAKE UP BITCHES THEY FOUND NEW EURIPIDES FRAGMENTS
98 LINES, 80% COMPLETELY NEW MATERIAL
Ancient sumerian wheat demon who holds dominion over pestilence and crops
I've been asked to do a one-day workshop on poetry. Kind of a 101 basic "why do we care and how does it work".
What would normal people want out of a talk like that? Because I've never had to formally teach about it, though I have the knowledge part covered.
source
saw this on twitter rn, if you ever feel discouraged about writing fanfiction, read this again
to the beautiful writers that might see this, ao3 is currently being scrapped by an AI company called RIVD. this isn't your usual AI text scrapping, they are specifically targeting ao3 to feed their own AI / "tech-orientes" fanfiction site
their "takedown form" demands that you give them your full legal name and address. they do not say what they're doing with your personal details. there's no proof that this form works
until ao3 comes out with a proper statement or manages to lock their scrapped, just lock your fics for registered users
can i read your thesis i wanna know about how mesopotamians kept their loved ones close. i feel like there might be something about roots or foundations or grounding, connecting the family to the home & people to place both physically and metaphorically. gravesites are powerful powerful place connections and im really curious about what we know about a culture whose gravesites and homes were one and the same. i imagine they were pretty comfortable with death
so it's not online yet because i want to publish it first in a journal BUT i can tell you a bit about it. this is gonna be specifically about the old babylonian period (19-15th centuries BCE) because that's what my thesis is on, but with some changes it's pretty much applicable throughout mesopotamian history
so the basic thought behind burial under the houses is that the dead don't cease to part of the family. ancestor cult is an important aspect of mesopotamian culture and domestic religion. the netherworld is not a nice place, it's dark and dusty and all the spirits have for food is dust. but if you feed your ancestors (this is a ritual called the kispum which consists of food offering, libation and the calling of their names. it's a regular ritual that some sources say was done monthly, and others say it was during the yearly festival of the dead in the month of the god dumuzi/tammuz) then they'll have things to eat and drink in the afterlife! and if you are a spirit, the more descendants you have, the more your well-being is ensured! it's a symbiotic relationship. if your ancestors are satisified, they can help you out with things and act as sort of benevolent protective spirits over the household and the family, and also welcome you in the netherworld when you die. but spirits who were not properly buried or aren't given the proper offerings can wander, come back to haunt you and cause harm. if you would like to know more about this, i recommend dina katz's book, the image of the netherworld in the sumerian sources, an amazing read. the point is, the dead are part of the family, they have their metaphorical place in the family structure and a physical place in the home
people in the notes mentioned that moving probably was difficult. and it definitely was. some of the people buried in these houses were in underground tombs, built from burnt clay bricks, and some others were just in graves dug into the earthen floor, all around the houses. now these brick tombs are often found completely empty, no skeletons, nothing. which means that the family took them when they moved away. probably because they were in some way the most important ancestors, maybe the main lineage of the family? this part is not really clear because these bones are missing, they took them, we don't know anything about them. however, in ur, there are two examples of just the skull being buried and i think that means that family moved to this house from somewhere else and brought the skulls of their ancestors along and re-buried them. it's a very rare find though
from an anthropological perspective, the phyisical proximity of the graves in the same place where the living slept, ate, worked, raised children, etc, was a kind of constant reminder. of their shared ancestors, of their shared identitiy as a family and as a larger clan or kinship group. from a psychological point of view, it was a strategy of coping with grief
important to note also, that this was not practiced by every family. there are houses with no graves at all or just one or two graves, certainly not the whole household. this means that most likely there existed also cemeteries, burial grounds outside the cities. to my knowledge, no cemetary like this has been found yet. but it would be insanely interesting to see what they were like and how the people buried there were different from the people buried in the houses at the same time!
in the end, let me give you a quote from the myth of erra and išum (translated by karel van der toorn in the book mesopotamian magic). this is what a man says about his house:
"These are my living quarters, I have personally made them and will have my peace within them, and when fate has carried me off, I will sleep therein."
i said i can't write a poem about this. and i don't have to, because they already did and it's beautiful
Nine volunteers are ensuring anyone in the U.S. has access to over 1,200 books with LGBTQ themes and authors.
-Jay Valle, This Library is Offering Free LGBTQ Books Amid the Wave of School Bans
I swear I did research on this awhile ago, but I'm trying to clean my house and ADHD brain refuses to give me peace until I have the information again. So!
We've got a lot of information on what Roman house shrines would have looked like. But do we have similar information for the Sumerians, or other civilizations in the area? Based on the existence of funerary water pipes and such I assume they had something, but for the life of me I cannot remember where to find that information.
The Queer Liberation Library (QLL) is a digital treasure trove of over 1,200 LGBTQ books, providing a valuable resource for individuals across the country to access. This unique collection offers a diverse range of literature that celebrates and explores the LGBTQ experience in all its complexity. QLL has attracted over 50,000 readers, providing safe access to queer literature regardless of location or circumstances. Unlike traditional libraries, the Queer Liberation Library is specifically curated to center LGBTQ voices and experiences. With a focus on inclusion and representation, this digital catalog offers a wide range of genres, from fiction and poetry to memoirs and academic texts. While the collection is extensive, here are a few notable titles: "A Burst of Light" by Audre Lorde “One Last Stop” by Casey McQuiston: A contemporary novel with LGBTQ themes. QLL continually adds new titles to enrich its catalog and cater to diverse interests QLL was founded by a team of nine volunteers in response to state laws and school policies challenging books with LGBTQ themes. By providing access to a wealth of LGBTQ literature, the Queer Liberation Library offers readers the opportunity to explore diverse perspectives, gain insight into different lived experiences, and foster a greater understanding of the LGBTQ community. It offers free digital access to over 1,200 LGBTQ books for readers across the United States. Whether you are looking for resources for research, personal enrichment, or simply to broaden your literary horizons, this digital library has something to offer everyone. Representation matters, and the Queer Liberation Library plays a crucial role in amplifying LGBTQ voices and stories. Unlike many public libraries, QLL specifically curates books with queer themes or written by queer authors. By providing a platform for LGBTQ authors and their work, this digital catalog helps to create a more inclusive literary landscape and promotes greater visibility for the LGBTQ community. With over 1,200 books to explore, the Queer Liberation Library is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to learn more about LGBTQ history, culture, and identity. Whether you are a member of the LGBTQ community or an ally looking to educate yourself, this digital library is a rich source of knowledge and inspiration. 🌈 📚 Check it out HERE: www.queerliberationlibrary.org
@queerliblib
Where do you learn about sumerian magic? I'm really interested but can't find anything about it! thanks in advance!
Hell yeah, another Sumerian magic lover! I actually pulled out my notes for this one, because you're right. Sumerian sources are very hard to find because, well...they're so old.
Few written records on Sumerian magic have survived. Much of what we know comes from excavated clay figures and jewelry, most of which were protective. The Met has a lot of great articles about the ancient Sumerians.
But in terms of funerary rites and death spells, historians know quite a bit! The Sumerians believed that the dead should be consistently fed and nurtured. They had temporary spirit houses between the death and the funeral, extensive divination methods, and even funerary water pipes for their offerings.
The article "Soul Emplacements in Ancient Mesopotamian Funerary Rites" by JoAnn Scurlock details a lot of this. If you want to learn about afterlife beliefs and mythos, read Dina Katz's The Image of the Netherworld in Sumerian Sources. Dion Fortune's Through the Gates of Death has some info on Sumerian beliefs as well.
For first-hand accounts, we don't have a lot. The Maqlû tablets are the biggest, baddest, most well-known Akkadian magic source. Most of its contents are chants to guard one against malicious magic (often translated to "witchcraft").
Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin are a serious of cuneiform tablets that list omens, along with some divination tips. It's harder to find online, but researchers have translated it.
I hope this helps! Good luck!
Does anyone know what symbol this symbol is supposed to be below? I've been trying to find out and there is little to no information online.
𒀱
From what I can find, it seems to be a stylized rendering of the deity name Nisaba, Sumerian goddess of writing, scribes and grain agriculture. Nisaba is usually written 𒀭𒊺𒉀 or 𒀭𒉀. You can see if you look closely that this sign, 𒀱 (the top and bottom get cut off on tumblr, unfortunately!) contains the signs 𒀭𒉀 four times each in a criss-cross formation, with a stylized asterism at the center. I hope that helps!
I support piracy obviously but I double support academic piracy because there’s not even any argument to be made about taking away royalty money from academics, you don’t get paid for publications, you’re literally just submitting your work to a private publishing house that makes millions of dollars off of it
I know an awful lot of propals have me blocked, so I’m going to ask that while this post should be reblogged, if you know you have significant inroads in goyische Tumblr, copy/pasting or screenshotting this would be great, because we need all hands on fucking deck.
So for those who don’t know: we’ll start with “a whole bunch of articles on Jewish history and identity on Wikipedia have been vandalized, including but not limited to removing mentions of individuals being Jewish and referring to Jewish holidays as Palestinian holidays, and making Jewish holiday pages deliberately vague with such things as ‘it may mean’ or ‘it could represent’ as though real actual living Jews couldn’t tell you what it does or doesn’t mean.”
Next: the same thing started happening to articles about North American indigenous and First Nations people. When I say “the same thing,” I mean I actually contacted the person who brought this to my attention to be like “could these be linked? Because some of this verbiage sounds IDENTICAL.” And little surprise there, because guess what, at least two of the editors involved have been found across both sets of edits.
So at first I assumed this must be a group with some weird hate-on for indigenous groups.
BUT GUESS WHAT I FUCKING FOUND YESTERDAY.
I was on Marsha P. Johnson’s article doing some research for a Pride event, and someone has gone through the entire page replacing her pronouns with they/them.
Marsha used she/her pronouns. The Marsha P. Johnson Institute refers to her with she/her pronouns. Someone has decided that because she was gender nonconforming and called herself “a boy and a queen,” her pronouns should be what they feel are correct—not the ones she actually picked for herself.
They came for the Jews, they came for the North American indigenous groups, now they’re coming for the queers, WE NEED TO FUCKING TAKE WIKIPEDIA BACK.
I cannot encourage you strongly enough to become an editor. You don’t have to write entire articles (although you can). You can do cleanup, you can re-insert appropriate references, you can add sources. There are editing guides to help you and if you’re going “there are SO MANY ARTICLES, I don’t know where to start,” just hit the random article button and start fact-checking.
We cannot allow a group of five or six people to monopolize our identities and manipulate them as they see fit.
FIGHT BACK.
"Oh hell yeah finally some good information about Pythagoras and Goetia, this is really interes- what the fuck is snake-blasting."
It often seems like Sumerian writings have a sort of poetic rhythm to them, even when they're something as simple as someone berating her sister's penmanship. Is this accurate, or just a quirk of the translation? If so, why? Is it similar to how a lot of Victorian writings feel a lot more formal than modern-day messages?
Hello! I’m not a poetry expert, but here are my thoughts.
Rhythm in linguistics is a complex topic, but what I’ve gathered of the consensus is that in Sumerian, the emphasis (stress) would generally go on the last syllable of either a word or a word root, based on the fact that words borrowed into Akkadian (which had variable stress, like English) always had their emphasis on the last syllable. So a word like shakira “butter-churn” would be pronounced shah-kee-RAH, while ngarngarngar “hospitality” would be ngar-ngar-NGAR. Stress as it relates to suffixes is less clear: would shakirada “with the butter-churn” be shah-kee-rah-DAH or shah-kee-RAH-dah?
Based on that, our automatic idea of Sumerian “poetic rhythm” may not be what it actually was - try reading a line like this one with the emphasis on the end of every word and see if its rhythm changes!
As for the formal tone, I have two main explanations. One is that the materials in cuneiform we have preserved are generally more formal than average - poetry, hymns, and even letters are going to be written in a different style than a tumblr text post would be. However much I may joke that the letters to Ea-Nasir are the world’s oldest yelp reviews, they read more like an official complaint letter threatening a lawsuit than like a modern internet review. This is because writing in cuneiform was expensive; most people weren’t literate, so you’d have to hire a scribe, pay for the clay to be imprinted and the tablet fired, and then pay for shipping. It’s a much more laborious process than writing a postcard, so you’d want to be more precise as a result (you only get one shot for what you spend!)
The second reason is that our understanding of Sumerian vocabulary has been cultivated over a period of 150 years, dating back to the Victorian era! So when you see a translation, the person is working off resources (dictionaries, grammars, etc) often designed for translating Sumerian into, say, 1910s English rather than 2020s internet lingo. Work is always being done to “modernize” our translations and understandings in Sumerian and other ancient languages, for example with the new and updated Ancient Greek dictionary that tries to use contemporary, rather than 19th-century, definitions. But when reading a translation of Sumerian text, keep in mind when it was translated, and that someone more recent (like me) might always translate it differently.
Oh I love this so much
Ritual Magic makes a lot more sense when you understand that its basically live historical improv theater. It can be profound, cathartic, deeply important. And like most forms of live theater, it can be kinda cringe even if you're really good at it.
Margaret Atwood, from The Door: Poems; “Sor Juana works in the garden”