I'm Screaming. How Did I Not Know About This? They've Actually Found A Temple Of Nisaba And Haya?! I

I'm screaming. How did I not know about this? They've actually found a temple of Nisaba and Haya?! I NEED ALL OF THE INFO. Also the lion is cute.

The raging crown of Summer,

Livid over maddened eyes-

The heady burn of dry air

Poised on the precipice

Of swallowing whole

Half the country in a blinking

and the other half in terror

of the too-green arms that strangle

Gentle blossoms in their beds.

All that, child’s play,

A matchbox world in idle hands

As they fiddle with the package

Fray the edges soft with age

And remember of an evening

When the sky is black with soot

The loam-dark halls beneath the earth

That welcomed his fury, and gave birth

To the fiery death of melancholy

As the smoldering fields of war

Swallowed the heads he piled

on the doorstep of Death

And the welcoming graves split the earth

As a lover welcomes

Her soldier home.

(He caresses her in the trenches,

Kisses her steel,

Breathes in her cyanide perfume

And laughs at the way the earthworks growl as he leaves their cold embrace.

Soon, love, soon,

And when I come to bed at last

I will grip you

As the roots of the hanging tree

Grip the veins of the earth,

And love you

As surely as the fire loves a witch,

As the sweet rotting contagion

Loves a warm bosom

In which to sleep

and strengthen anew.)

Round and round the butcher’s block,

The dog chases her own tail.

The master said ‘twas all in good fun-

Hissing, the wheel grinds.

My girlfriend is currently doing a Near and Middle Eastern studies course, and her birthday is coming up soon. Could you tell me what the symbols for "I love you" are?

That’s awesome! Hope I’m not answering this ask too late — I was on vacation for a few days so didn’t see it till today!

In Sumerian, “I love you” is ki murangen! It’s written

By the way, I’ve done a previous post on “happy birthday” in Sumerian, which you can find here.

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

Hello there! I had a quick question about a thing. Context: I've been typing up a set of medical manuals for a medicine woman, since my eyes are young and hers are not. I've been given the chance to put a couple of words of farewell at the end. As an absolute nerd and a devotee of Nisaba on top of that, have you come across any common closing statements in your Sumerian/Akkadian/etc translations, like how we end letters with "Sincerely" and so on?

First, that project sounds amazingly cool.  Second, I have mixed news for you.  On the one hand, as you can see in the selection I’ve translated, Akkadian letters didn’t tend to end with a closing statement; they simply stopped at the end of the message.  I scanned through other letters from various time periods and places, and I didn’t see a common closing phrase.

But!  If you want a nice phrase, there are wishes of wellbeing that often appear near the beginning of letters.  Here are a couple variants:

šulumka maẖar bēliya u bēltiya lu dāri“May your wellbeing last forever before my Lord and Lady.” (spoken to a man) (PBS 7 105:10)

bēlki u bēletki liballiṭuki“May your Lord and Lady keep you healthy.” (spoken to a woman) (CT 29 19:4 and elsewhere)

If you wanted to personalize them with Nisaba and address them both to a woman, then they would be:

šulumki maẖar Nisaba lu dāriNisaba liballiṭki