#sumerian
It’s Old Stuff Day! Take a moment to enjoy the oldest item in our collection - a cuneiform tablet from about 2,000 BCE. It was excavated from Umma in Mesopotamia and is written in Sumerian. (Pre-1650 MS 0218)
#specialcollections #rarebooks #cuneiform #mesopotamia #sumerian #oldstuffday
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Left: Illustrations of Sumerian garments from 2500 BC
Right: Dsquared2 dress from the Spring 2014 collection
It’s been a whole year since I started this project, and seeing it grow to the size it is today is amazing - I never imagined that it would ever get this popular! So to celebrate, I decided to take a look at some roast duck - based on some Sumerian cuneiform fragments.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
2kg duck
ground cumin
ground coriander
salt
pepper
1 leek, chopped
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic
750ml water (or stock)
butter
Method
1 - Prepare the Duck
To begin making this roast duck, we need to prepare our duck. I’m using a whole bird here, but you could just as easily cook this in pieces - it’s up to you! Start by scoring the breast with a knife a few times, to increase the seasoning surface area. The original fragment claims to be dealing with an unnamed bird, so I opted for duck - as wildfowl would have been a staple for Mesopotamia. But chicken or squab would have also been eaten around this time.
In any case, season your bird of choice using some salt, some freshly ground black pepper, some ground cumin, and some ground coriander. Rub this into the meat with your hands if you can handle it. Though I’m going to be dry-roasting this, it’s likely that the meat would have been boiled in a stew or soup broth for a while before being roasted in an oven.
2 - Roast the Duck
Place your seasoned bird breast-side down on a roasting rack. And then place this into the centre of an oven preheated to 200C / 400F for about two hours (based on a 2kg bird of course), flipping this over about 30 minutes before serving so the breast meat roasts perfectly. When you’ve flipped the bird, go and prepare your soup.
3 - Prepare the Soup
To pair with this, I made a quick and easy leek and herb soup. Start by chopping a leek into segments as thick as your thumb or so. Also chop an onion in half, and mince each half.
Toss some butter into a pot and put it onto a high heat. When the butter melts, toss in your leeks and onions. Return the pot to the heat, and let everything sauté away for a few minutes until the onion turns soft and translucent. At this point, toss in a few shakes of cumin and coriander, along with 750ml of water (or a soup stock of your choice). Into this, add some thyme and mint sprigs.
Let everything cook away for about 20 minutes, or until the leeks are practically falling apart.
Fish out your herb sprigs, and serve up alongside your duck!
The finished roast is super succulent, and very flavourful. The seasoning on the duck gave it a sharp zesty flavour, which paired very nicely with the herby, minty flavour of the soup. The meat itself has a lovely crisp skin, and tender flesh. This is a reconstruction of a fragmentary recipe from the Yale Cuneiform collection - others have postulated that it is separate to the pigeon stew recipe fragment, while others have claimed it to be a continuation of it. I chose to do a simple roast here, as ovens for cooking and baking would have been able to do this with little modification in antiquity (such as the use of a spit or shaft of metal or wood to cook the meat over a naked flame.
This week, I’m recreating some Akkadian bread, as seen in some cuneiform inscriptions, as well as visual representations in carved panels in Akkadian palaces.
The original bread has a striking similarity to modern Iraqi samoon - from it’s shape to it’s description in Akkadian!
In any case, let’s now take a look at the world that was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
1 cup wholemeal flour
2 cups plain flour
salt
water
active dry yeast (or 1/3 cup sourdough starter)
milk
sesame seeds
Method
1 - Preparing the Dough and letting it Rest
To begin with, we need to make a starter. The easiest way to do this today is to use some dry active yeast, opening a sachet, and placing it in a bowl with a bit of warm water. But if you have some sourdough starter, you can use 1/3rd of a cup of that instead! But keep in mind that the sourdough starter will affect how hydrated your dough is later on.
Pour in 1 cup of wholemeal flour, along with two cups of plain white flour into the yeasty mix, and mix everything together until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl cleanly. If it’s too dry and crumbly, add some water - little by little - until it comes together into a smooth ball.
When it’s ready, place a damp cloth or a bit of clingfilm over the top of your bowl, and let the whole thing prove in a warm area for a few hours - or until it’s doubled in size.
2 - Forming your Bread
When your dough has expanded hugely, tip this out onto a lightly floured worksurface, and get to kneading. Fold and twist this around for about 10 minutes, just to help develop a better texture of the loaf down the line. When you’re finished kneading it, roll the whole thing into a long snake of dough. Cut this in half, and these halves in half again, so you wind up with four roughly evenly-sized balls of dough.
Carvings of Akkadian banquets show off lemon-shaped loaves of bread, and modern samoon are formed in a similar way. So roll a ball of dough in your hand, leaving two nubs at either end of it. Flatten the centre of the loaf down, by stretching and pulling at the dough until it smooths down.
3 - Baking
When they’re formed, place them onto some baking paper, and cover them with a damp towel for about 20 minutes. After this, brush them with a bit of milk, before sprinkling some sesame seeds over the top of them if you want. Bake these in an oven preheated to 230C / 450F for 15-20 minutes, or until they turn golden brown.
Serve up warm, and dig in!
The bread is delicious and fluffy, with a nice crisp crust. The sesame seeds - if added to the top - become toasted and flavourful when baked.
The original name for this bread would have been “ninda ensu” - which literally translates to “the bread of the king/ruler”. “ninda”being a catch-all word for a variety of breads and cakes in the Akkadian language, so while it’s likely that “ninda ensu” referred to a savoury bread, it’s also likely that this may have been sweetened too!
Cuneiform tablet counting beer for the workers. Circa 3100-3000 B.C, from Uruk in what is now southern Iraq. Now in the British Museum.
The beer on the tablet is represented by a jar with a pointed base. Food is symbolized by a head eating from a bowl (bottom left). The semicircular imprints (possibly made by the edge of a finger) stand for the measurements.
~Hasmonean
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~ Bull’s head ornament for a lyre.
Period: Early Dynastic III
Date: ca. 2600–2350 B.C.
Place of origin: Mesopotamia
Culture: Sumerian
Medium: Bronze, inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli.
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Urfa, Balıklıgöl, (Halil-Ür Rahman Gölü) ve Kutsal Balıkları
İÖ 5-6. yüzyıllarda Urfa'ya giden Abtissen Aeteria, balıkların
gezegen Atargadis'e (Venüs) ait olduğu için yenmediğini belirtmiş.
Aynı kitap, s.211-213'te Urfa'da Güneş, Ay, Jüpiter, Merkür, Satürn ve Mars'a tapıldığı ve şehir kapılarından birinin adının Beth-Şemeş (Güneş Kapısı) olduğu ve Hristiyanlıktan önceki Urfa paralarında hilal şeklinde ay bulunduğu yazılıyor.
Edward Bacon, Versunkene Kulturen, eheimnis und Râtsel Friiher Welten, Köln. 1963,
Muazzez İlmiye Çığ
İBRAHİM PEYGAMBER
Sümer Yazılarına ve Arkeolojik Buluntulara Göre
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“An Extraordinary Discovery of Early Sumerian Sculpture.” Illustrated London News, May 19, 1934. Photo: Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
ViaInstitute for the Study of the Ancient World.
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The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God.
It was said by the Sorcerer of the Jura that in order to invoke the Devil it is only necessary to call him with your whole will. This is an universal magical truth, and applies to every other being as much as to the Devil. For the whole will of every man is in reality the whole will of the Universe.
It is, however, always easy to call up the demons, for they are always calling you; and you only have to step down to their level and fraternize with them. They will then tear you in pieces at their
leisure. Not at once; they will wait until you have wholly broken the link between you and your Holy Guardian Angel before they pounce, lest at the last minute you escape.
The Devil. is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes. This has led to so much confusion of thought that the MASTER THERION has preferred to let names stand as they are, and to proclaim simply thatAIWAZ the solar-phallichermetic, Lucifer, is His own Holy Guardian Angel, and .The Devil. SATANorHADIT of our particular unit of the Starry Universe. This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but HE who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade .Know Thyself!. and taught Initiation. He is .the Devil. of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection. The number of HisATUisXV, which is Yod Hé, the Monogram of the Eternal, the Father one with the Mother, the Virgin Seed one with all-containing Space. He is therefore Life and Love. But moreover his letter is Ayin, the Eye; he is Light, and his Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.
TheTEITAN whose number is the number of a man, six hundred and three score and six.unsubdued, consoled by Austral Asia and Panthea, must send forth constant showers of blessing not only upon Man whose incarnation he is, but upon the tyrant and persecutor. His infinite pain must thrill his heart with joy, since every pang is but the echo of some new flame that leaps upon the earth lit by his crime. For the Gods are the enemies of Man; it is Nature that Man must overcome ere he enter into his kingdom. THE TRUE GOD IS MAN. IN MAN ARE ALL THING HIDDEN. Of these the Gods, Nature, Time, all the powers of the universe are rebellious slaves. It is these that men must fight and conquer in the power and in the name of The Beast that hath availed them, the Titan, the Magus, the Man whose number is666.
Aleister Crowley
THE REVELATION OF JOHN THE DIVINE
CAP 13
1 And I saw a beast rise out of the sea, having seven heads, and ten horns, and
upon his horns were ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet like a bear, and his
mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power and his throne,
and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death, but his deadly wound
was healed, and all the world wondered and followed the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, and they
worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to war
with him?
5 And there was given unto him a mouth, that spake great things and
blasphemies, and power was given unto him, to do two and forty months.
6 And he opened his mouth unto blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his
Name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the Saints, and to overcome
them, and power was given him over every kindred, and tongue, and nation.
8 Therefore all that dwell upon the earth, shall worship him, whose names are
not written in the book of life of the Lamb, which was slain from the beginning of
the world.
9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.
10 If any lead into captivity, he shall go into captivity; if any kill with a sword,
he must be killed by a sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the Saints.
11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, which had two horns
like the Lamb, but he spake like the dragon.
12 And he did all that the first beast could do before him, and he caused the
earth, and them which dwell therein, to worship the first beast, whose deadly
wound was healed.
13 And he did great wonders, so that he made fire to come down from heaven
on the earth, in the sight of men,
14 And deceived them that dwell on the earth by the signs, which were
permitted to him to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the
earth, that they should make the image of the beast, which had the wound of a
sword, and did live.
15 And it was permitted to him to give a spirit unto the image of the beast, so
that the image of the beast should speak, and should cause that as many as
would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he made all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to
receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads,
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of
the beast, or the number of his name.
18 HERE IS WISDOM. LET HIM THAT HATH WIT, COUNT THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST, FOR IT IS THE NUMBER OF A MAN, AND IS NUMBER IS SIX HUNDRED THREESCORE AND SIX.
KabalisticallyTEITAN = 300 + 5 + 10 + 300 + 50 = 666
Teitan: is the form of the Chaldean SHAITAN, God-Devil of the ancient Sumerians, the Fiery Angel Melek Taus, the God of the Yazidis, whose secret name, according to Crowley, is AIWASS.
The right strength and terrible killing eternally abortions was appointed by the Jews Samuel, from the Eastern Satan, Lucifer by the Latins.
The Lucifer cabal is not an angel cursed and electrocuted; is the angel with fire illuminates and regenerates; are the angels of peace as the comet to the quiet stars of the spring constellations.
The fixed star is beautiful, radiant and calm; drinks are heavenly aromas and love watching the sisters in bright clothing, the front adorned with diamonds; smiles singing his song in the morning and evening, enjoys an eternal rest that nothing could disturb and proceeds solemnly along the way that the guardians of light have given her.
The rogue comet instead, bloody and disheveled rushes from the depths of the sky, rushes between quiet spheres as a war chariot of a procession of Vestal, dares to face the fiery sword of the guardians of the Sun and, as a bride who seeks the lost groom dreamed in his widows nights, comes up the tabernacle of the king of the day, then escapes exhaling the fires that devour and dragging along a fire; stars pale at his approach, the flocks grazing starry flowers of light prairie sky seem to escape his terrible breath. (…)
The uncreated light, which is the Divine Word, rays, because wants to be seen, and when he says, is light, open your eyes and creates intelligences:
When God said, Let there be light, the intelligence was made and the light appeared.
So Intelligence scattered by God with the breath of his mouth like a star detached from the Sun, took the form of a beautiful angel and the sky greeted him with the name of Lucifer. Intelligence awoke and all are included in hearing these words of the Divine Word: Let there be light!
She felt free because God had ordered her to be, and, raising his head and spread his wings, he replied:
“I will not be slavery.”
“You will be then the pain?” Asked the voice uncreated. “I will be the Liberty” said Light.
“The Pride will deceive you,” continued the voice uncreated “and thou shalt bring forth death.”
“I need to fight against the death to win the Life” still filming the Light created …
Eliphas Levi
In the cabal the number 6 is associated with the sephiroth Tipheret dominated by the sun, in the same plane lies the supreme self, or Guardian Angel. The 6 refers therefore, to the dual nature of the Logos as divine and human; the interlacing of the upright and averse triangles in the hexagram. It is
the first number of Sun, whose last number1 is 666, the number of a man..
The Sun being 6, a square 6 × 6 contains 36 squares. We arrange the numbers from 1 to 36 in this square, so that each line, file, and diagonal adds to the same number. This number is 111; the total of all is 666.
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Got asked to turn an ancient Sumerian devotional poem into a T-shirt today and honestly this is my new favorite hobby.
Sumerian Cuneiform tablet from ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to 2500 BCE. Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Photo by Babylon Chronicle
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A stone statue of Gudea, ruler of the Sumerian city of Lagash, dating back to 2120 BCE. Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Photo by Babylon Chronicle
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Sumerian gypsum statue of a male worshiper, dating back to 2400-2300 BCE. Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Photo by Babylon Chronicle
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Two weeks ago, I had the inclination to draw Gozer the Gozerian, aka Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, and Lord of the Sebouillia. Originally worshiped as a god by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and the Sumerians around 6000 BC. Gozer has two trusted minions that are harbingers of destruction and primary agents for Its coming: Vinz Clortho, The Keymaster and Zuul, The Gatekeeper. It took me a week to get around to starting the drawing, and another week to get around to finishing it. But I did it.
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Stray From the Path - The things you own end up owning you
