#babylonia — Public Fediverse posts

Babylonian frog-shaped weight, Iraq, 2000-1600 BCE

https://piefed.social/c/historyartifacts/p/2047537/babylonian-frog-shaped-weight-iraq-2000-1600-bce

Babylonian frog-shaped weight, Iraq, 2000-1600 BCE

https://piefed.social/c/historyartifacts/p/2047537/babylonian-frog-shaped-weight-iraq-2000-1600-bce

Babylonian frog-shaped weight, Iraq, 2000-1600 BCE

Babylonian frog-shaped weight, Iraq, 2000-1600 BCE

Babylonian frog-shaped weight, Iraq, 2000-1600 BCE

https://piefed.social/c/historyartifacts/p/2047537/babylonian-frog-shaped-weight-iraq-2000-1600-bce

Gold Babylonian pendants and beads, Iraq, 18th-17th century BCE

https://piefed.social/c/historyartifacts/p/2047043/gold-babylonian-pendants-and-beads-iraq-18th-17th-century-bce

View of excavated remains at Babylon (1913) by Robert Koldewey, from Das Wieder Erstehende Babylon: Die bisherigen Ergebnisse der deutschen Ausgrabungen.

Source: California Digital Library / Internet Archive

Available to buy as a print.

https://pdimagearchive.org/images/5cac382a-5bf4-46c4-84fa-ce1a7836e474

#archeology #babylonia #monuments #iraq #architecture #ruins #art #publicdomain

Haven't done one of these in a while. Let's talk about calendars of the ancient Near East.

1/?

#Caledar #Calendars #History #Timekeeping #Sumer #Assyria #Babylon #Anatolia #Mesopotamia #Babylonia

**The Hoax of Semi-Freedom in Babylonia**

"_Declaring dependent groups, such as non-priestly temple personnel or foreign deportees settled on royal land, to be “semi-free,” despite being qualified to own and bequeath property, live in families, and perform state duties, limits the number of “really free” individuals considerably, basically, to male heads of wealthy households and noble descent only._"

Wunsch, C. (2025) The Hoax of Semi-Freedom in Babylonia. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, Vol. 12 (Issue 1), pp. 189-206. https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2024-0021.

#OpenAccess #OA #Article #History #Histodons #Ancient #Babylonia #Slavery #Manumission #Freedom #Hoax #Academia @histodons

**Babylonia and Across the River**

🔗 https://www.bookandsword.com/2025/05/31/babylonia-and-across-the-river/.

#Ancient #Babylonia #History #Histodons @histodons

💥Announcement! Sunday 18.05.2025💥

📖 Reading with Harry Stürmer: The Terrorist's Dog 📖

Sunday, 18.05.2025 | 06:00 pm | Babylonia Cuvrystraße 23a, 10997 Berlin

Arrival: U1, U3 Schlesisches Tor | Bus 165, 265 Falckensteinstraße

📣 Call: https://www.babylonia.de/allgemein/lesung-mit-harry-stuermer/

#b1805 #Babylonia

From the 1968 Essen Song Days to the high-security wing in Celle to Babylonia in the 80s:

The autobiography of ex-Babylonista Harry Stürmer - pardon, the account written by dog Sheila - makes an interesting contribution to West German and West Berlin movement history.

Where we came from, what we are.

💥Ankündigung! Sonntag 18.05.2025💥

📖Lesung mit Harry Stürmer: Der Hund des Terroristen📖

Sonntag, 18.05.2025 | 18:00 Uhr | Babylonia Cuvrystraße 23a, 10997 Berlin

Anreise: U1, U3 Schlesisches Tor | Bus 165, 265 Falckensteinstraße

📣 Aufruf: https://www.babylonia.de/allgemein/lesung-mit-harry-stuermer/

#b1805 #Babylonia

Von den Essener Songtagen 1968 über den Celler Hochsicherheitstrakt zu Babylonia in den 80er:

Die Autobiografie des Ex-Babylonista Harry Stürmer – Pardon, der von Hündin Sheila geschriebene Bericht – leistet einen interessanten Beitrag zur westdeutschen und westberliner Bewegungsgeschichte.

Woher wir kamen, was wir sind.

🔴 **Idolatry, God(s), and Demons among the Jews of Sasanian Babylonia**

_“The frequent engagement with themes relating to the supernatural and the divine in the Babylonian Talmud, when read alongside the Jewish magical evidence from Babylonia and other contemporary sources, suggests a degree of anxiety about the fact that the rabbis were grappling with the appeal of a multiplicity of deities and forces present among the inhabitants of Sasanian Babylonia and that they were actively seeking to clarify how their notions of the divine differed from those of their neighbours.”_

Herman, G. 2021. Idolatry, God(s), and Demons among the Jews of Sasanian Babylonia. In: Kiperwasser, R. and Herman, G. ed. Expressions of Sceptical Topoi in (Late) Antique Judaism. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 85-100. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671483-006.

#OpenAccess #OA #DOI #History #Babylonia #Theology #Religion @religion

⭐ How Did the Babylonian Exile Shape Judaism?

"The Babylonians also changed the names of the Israelite nobles to reflect the Babylonian gods instead of the God the Israelites served in Jerusalem. They were also required to eat from the table Nebuchadnezzar had set before them. Babylonian cuisine went contrary to Israelite traditions and faith."

De Jager, Eben. "How Did the Babylonian Exile Shape Judaism?" TheCollector.com, https://www.thecollector.com/babylonian-exile-shape-judaism/ (accessed September 28, 2024).

#Theology #Judaism #Exile #Babylonia

🔴 📖 Daily Life in Ancient Babylonia: Insights from the Temple of Ishtar

“The tablets reveal a vibrant picture, illuminating the lives of the people who lived and worked within the temple walls. From accounting and logistics to addressing personal dramas, these tiny, dried mud tablets uncover a complex web of bureaucracy, craftsmanship, and personal stories that bring the ancient world to life in a uniquely vivid way.”

🔗 https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2024/08/06/daily-life-in-ancient-babylonia-insights-from-the-temple-of-ishtar/

#Ancient #Babylonia #History #Histodon #Histodons #MiddleEast #Asia #Read #Reading #Nonfiction #Book #Books #Bookstodon @histodon @histodons @bookstodon

New sources for Sennacherib’s first campaign

“The article presents an edition, based on manuscripts from Nineveh, Ashur, and Tarbisu, of Sennacherib’s earliest accounts of its first campaign, waged against Marduk-aplu-iddina and his southern Babylonian allies in 704-702 BCE. It provides an overview of the Aramean tribes and Chaldean towns attacked by the Assyrian troops, and a discussion of many have been the author of the inscriptions hat celebrate the campaign.”

Frahm, E. (2016) «New sources for Sennacherib’s first campaign», ISIMU, 6, pp. 129–164. doi: https://www.doi.org/10.15366/isimu2003.6.008.

#Research #DOI #Ancient #History #Histodon #Histodons #MiddleEast #Asia #Assyria #Babylon #Babylonia #Academia #Academic #Academics @histodon @histodons

No, it’s from Tiberias.

For the past millennium or so, the entire Jewish world has made use of the text of the Hebrew Bible as vocalized by the Tiberian Masoretes. Two great recent (Open Access!) books on the Tiberian tradition are Khan (2020) on the Tiberian pronunciation tradition as a whole and Hornkohl (2023) on the date when the forerunner of the Tiberian reading tradition was fixed. Current thinking is that once the reading tradition took a firm shape in the Second Temple Period, it was orally transmitted during the centuries before it was fixed in writing.

But where was it transmitted?

I think everyone’s implicit assumption, mine included, is that the Tiberian tradition was transmitted, well, in Tiberias, or somewhere in Galilee at least. Tiberias was a major centre of Jewish learning in the late Roman period, it was a major centre of Jewish learning in the early Middle Ages… just connect the dots. But recently, I’ve started to wonder how plausible that is.

Under the Eastern Roman Empire, with Nicene Christianity as its state religion, things weren’t so great for the Galilean Jews. A reliable-looking Wikipedia page with sources I haven’t checked informs me that besides earlier legal restrictions, the greatest Eastern Roman emperor, Justinian I (527–565), ordered the conversion of all synagogues in the empire to churches and forbade the reading of the Torah in Hebrew. While these laws may not have been followed in practice, this does not seem like a very conducive atmosphere for meticulously preserving the pronunciation of every word of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. A failed revolt against Heraclius in the early seventh century is also said to have devastated the Jewish communities of Palestine. All this after a law by Theodosius I at the beginning of the Eastern Roman period that (once again as per Wikipedia) harshly outlawed the consecration of rabbis, which might explain why Palestine sees basically no rabbinic activity at all during the fifth century (Cohen 2022, paywalled).

The Jews of Babylonia, meanwhile, were doing pretty OK, admittedly with some disturbances in the late sixth century. And we know that a precursor of the Babylonian reading tradition, which is very similar to the Tiberian one, was already in place at that time because of the way Bible quotations are spelled in Late Antique magic bowls (Molin 2023). As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in this evidence that precludes the tradition reflected here from being an ancestor of the Tiberian tradition.

After the “missing” fifth century, contacts between the Jews of Palestine and Babylonia are restored, and we practically always find influence going from Babylonia to Palestine, especially in the form of scions of important Babylonian families gaining positions of power in the Palestinian community (Mar Zutra as ‘Head of the Convocation’; others as Gaon of the Palestinian Yeshiva, once that gets established). I don’t think we see that kind of influence in the other direction at any point later than the third century.1

Like I said, the Tiberian and Babylonian reading traditions are very similar. Kantor (2023) classifies these two traditions together, separate from every other Jewish reading tradition from Antiquity:

While Kantor thinks this may reflect a “Proto-Masoretic” vs. “vulgar” social distinction, it is interesting that the “vulgar” traditions are all from Palestine, while the Babylonian magic bowls show no sign of vulgarity. We could also explain the data by saying that Tiberian and Babylonian just share a more recent ancestor than the one they share with the (other) Palestinian traditions. Given the usual direction of transfer, I think it’s more likely that someone took this ancestor from Babylonia to Tiberias than vice versa. The Palestinian pronunciation tradition (especially evidenced in the very Palestinian and non-Babylonian genre of piyyut!) would then be more indigenous than the Tiberian one and have been given up over time in favour of the prestigious new import.

A Babylonian pedigree for Tiberian Biblical Hebrew can also be marginally supported by a comparison to Rabbinic Hebrew. While we find Rabbinic Hebrew in both Palestinian and Babylonian sources, there’s some linguistic differences between these two corpora. Many don’t apply to Biblical Hebrew, but one I can think of involves the plural of nouns in –ūṯ, like malḵūṯ ‘kingdom’: Palestinian Rabbinic Hebrew has forms like malḵiyyōṯ, Babylonian has malḵūyōṯ. The Babylonian form is what we find in Tiberian Biblical Hebrew (Dan 8:22).

The Tiberian tradition probably shows some influence from Greek, both in the consonants (Kantor & Khan 2022, paywalled) and in the vowels (Suchard 2021). That can hardly have happened in Babylonia, and sure enough, the Babylonian tradition doesn’t show these contact effects. If the Tiberian tradition was imported from Babylonia, it would be nice for that to have happened during the Eastern Roman period, when Greek was still the official language, but that brings us right back to the problem of the hostile environment. I guess Greek stayed around long enough in the early Islamic period that it could have happened then. It weakens the argument, but I think it still works.

So, was the Tiberian reading tradition imported from Babylonia? For now, I think the evidence leans towards כֵּן/כ̈ן. I’m still reading up on a lot of the historical background, so if you have any arguments pro or con, please do let me know in the comments.

1. R. Saadia Gaon also imports a lot of Palestinian traditions to Babylonia, but that’s far too late to explain the similarities between the Tiberian and Babylonian reading traditions. ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/05/02/is-tiberian-hebrew-from-babylonia/

#Babylonia #Bible #Greek #Hebrew #linguistics

"Studying texts from the cities and countryside and tracking developments over time, Alstola shows that there was notable diversity in the Judeans’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society."

Alstola, T. (19 Dec. 2019). Judeans in Babylonia, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Available From: Brill https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004365421 [Accessed 29 April 2024]

#OpenAccess #OA #Brill #DOI #Ancient #History #Histodon #Histodons #Judaism #Religion #Babylonia #Read #Reading #Academia #Academic #Academics #NonFiction #Book #Books #Ebook #Ebooks #Bookstodon @histodon @histodons @bookstodon (79)

Andra spel som det är värt att nämna:
🎲 #Go / #Baduk / #Weiqi. Är alltid nämnvärt
🎲 #Babylonia av Reiner Knizia
🎲 #PeoplePower, Insurgency in the Philippines 1981-1986

Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia

Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#archaeology
#SocialGeography
#cuneiform
#knowledge
#Assyria
#Babylonia

Ancient Knowledge Networks:
A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/125022 #OpenAccess #OA #Book #Books #Bookstodon #Ebook #Ebooks #Reading #Ancient #Cuneiform #Assyria #Babylonia #History #Histodon #Histodons @bookstodon @histodon @histodons

I got up at 3:50 today to attend (virtually) the launching of eBL (the “electronic Babylonian Library”), created by a Munich team led by Enrique Jiménez https://www.lmu.de/de/newsroom/newsuebersicht/news/spiel-mit-dem-anfang-der-weltliteratur.html #cuneiform #Mesopotamia #Babylonia

Want some truly #traditional #cooking? Maybe these 4000 year old #Mesopotamian #clayTablets that turned out to contain ancient #recipes are just the thing for you: https://text.npr.org/r.php?id=779930201

While the #NPR article gives a nice overview of the these tablets and their history, if you want an example of some of the recipes, you'll have to head over to #LaphamsQuarterly for the source article: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopotamian-tablet-cookbook

#Mesopotamia #Babylonia #cuneiform #GojkoBarjamovic #Syria #Iraq #Turkey #recipe

Want some truly #traditional #cooking? Maybe these 4000 year old #Mesopotamian #clayTablets that turned out to contain ancient #recipes are just the thing for you: https://text.npr.org/r.php?id=779930201

While the #NPR article gives a nice overview of the these tablets and their history, if you want an example of some of the recipes, you'll have to head over to #LaphamsQuarterly for the source article: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopotamian-tablet-cookbook

#Mesopotamia #Babylonia #cuneiform #GojkoBarjamovic #Syria #Iraq #Turkey #recipe