NMC102H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Manishtushu, City Map, Grave Goods
23 Jan 2018
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Main text categories: everyday, literary/scholar, royal inscriptions, school texts. Rti imaging of cuneiform tablets, technique that enables us to decipher more quickly and also reads the tablets that humans may not be able to read. From the tablet, we can approximate the location of the house, we also know the exact date of the transaction, normally inscribed with the place where the tablet was written, also gives us name of king. Administrative documents: often bear a heading, ration lists (beer, barley), income and expenditure, monthly/yearly accounts (sheep), lists of people (soldiers, workers, deportees) Omen texts: if a city is set on a height, the story mainly says that if a house is not flashy, but ordinary, then the people living there will have a better fortune, underlying message is be humble. Myths and epics: epic of gilgamesh: will look at this next week, epic of creation: flood story, etana: ascended to heaven on the back of an eagle.
