Land Of Firsts

The ritual of the substitute king, a custom reflected in numerous Sumerian texts. One of them is found on three cuneiform tablets now in the British Museum, published in 1958 in the article A part of the Ritual for the Substitute King by the Assyrian scholar Wilfred G. Lambert.

Because, as we said before, Assyrians and Babylonians thought that if an evil omen threatened the king, another (usually a person of low origin, a prisoner or a slave) should sit on the throne to receive that evil, leaving the true king safe.

It seems that the Persians kept the custom, since Herodotus tells how Xerxes, before invading Greece in 480 b.C. and harassed by terrible dreams, resorted to the same trick, sitting his uncle Artabanus on the throne.

And even in the time of Alexander the Great an absolutely exceptional event occurred for the Greeks.

It occurred on May 323 B.C., shortly before Alexander left Babylon for Arabia. The Greeks did not understand what had happened, but the explanation is simple: that man was not trying to usurp Alexander’s throne, on the contrary. Following the ancestral custom of the substitute king, he tried to attract upon himself any evil that could stalk the Macedonian.

How Sumerians named substitute kings during eclipses and the custom survived even in Alexander's time Between 1805 and 1799 B.C. (according to short chronology) or 1868 and 1861 B.C. (according to medium chronology) King Erra-Imitti ruled in the Sumerian city-state of Isin in present-day Iraq (about 20 miles south of Nippur). His name comes to mean something as a follower of Erra, who was a god o

A research published in the journal Science shows that climate change was the proverbial double-edged sword that first contributed to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then to its collapse.

Researchers found that the most significant expansion phase of the Neo-Assyrian state occurred during a two-centuries-long interval of anomalously wet climate, as compared with the previous 4,000 years. Called a megapluvial period, this time of unusually high rainfall was immediately followed by megadroughts during the early-to-mid-7th century BC.
These ancient dry conditions were as severe as recent droughts in Iraq and Syria but lasted for decades. The period marking the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire occurred well within this time frame.

In modern times, the same region that once constituted the Assyrian core has been repeatedly struck by multiyear droughts. The catastrophic drought of 2007-2008 in northern Iraq and Syria, the most severe in the past 50 years, led to cereal crop failures across the region.

Droughts like this one offer a glimpse of what Assyrians endured during the mid-seventh century BC. And the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire offers a warning to today’s societies.

Climate change fuelled the rise and demise of the powerful Neo-Assyrian Empire Numerous theorists have failed to explain the collapse of the superpower that flourished beginning 912 BCE. Now, we have an answer.

The Sumerian harp is 3500 years old and has nine strings. The human mind was advanced to invent these strings. Depending on the position, different sounds came out. The strings were made from the entrails of animals and the advanced lyre box, which emits the sound. The discovery was invented in the city of Ur.

The bull’s head represents an offering. There is a second blog that contains music that was played in temples, and folk ensembles containing male and female instrumentalists. The dance was in this situation as a physical state of expression that was imaginary. In truth, the harp is the only real object and all the rest of the details are imaginary. The blog in cuneiform contains a series that includes the possibility of tuning the harp. The base is made of lead, the rest is made of wood and mother of pearl. A person’s clothes are like those of that time, and the woman with her soft lines and swing describes the women of all times.

The circles contain other people and describe a memory tape that takes us from place to place, up to the time of the Modern. This shows us several historical projections. The people in the center and outside the circle are contemporary modern people, and the circle thus creates a slow motion so that the people are in a state of weightlessness.

The child with the balloon symbolizes life, and the expected joy and the coming surprise. The color white represents light and luminosity, which essentially shows the aesthetics of other colors. The color gray represents neutral graphics and purple is a sacred color found in icons (in the Byzantine icon). The dance is a movement, and the circle is a movement.

Sumerian art and dance painting from Nabil alsamman - Alefnooon Germany Buy high-quality oriental art prints in gallery quality at Alefnooon Germany! Sumerian art dance painting alu dibond! Order online! Free shipping!

These armies represent the warlike tribal clans of the Zagros Mountains to the north-east of Mesopotamia.

The Guti were the most notable of the three tribal groupings and their king list extends from 2230 BC to 2109 BC. Gutium, a mountainous area in south-west Iran, was a troublesome part of the Akkadian Empire and the year names of the kings of Akkad record campaigns against the region. Around 2200 BC, Gutian raiders descended to the Mesopotamian plain, conquering the weakened Akkadians as their empire began to fall apart.

For about one century, the Guti ruled, but they were ineffective at governing the civilized states of Mesopotamia.

The Lullubi were settled to the north-west of the Gutians, on the Sherizor plain in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. Said to be conquered by Sargon the Great, they fought both with and against their larger neighbor, Guti. Under their king Anubanini, they were most famously defeated by Naram Sin who raised his victory stele marking his success. As the Akkadian's grip on power became less effective, the Lullubi became more troublesome. They resisted rule by the Guti and the Neo Sumerian king Shulgi was forced to send up to nine expeditions into Lullubian lands to quell the unrest.

The Hurri were a people located to the east of the Tigris, north of the Lullubi. Not alot is known of them in the third millennium and it is believed they became allied to the Akkadians after the conquests of Sargon the Great. Their presence is most notable by the time of Ur III, but recent studies show that they may have existed much earlier than first thought and possibly even in urban centres such as Urkesh. For now, they remain an enigma and can be considered one of the surrounding tribal peoples that existed alongside the Mesopotamian plain.

Zagros Mountain (Guti, Lullubi and Hurri 2350 BC onwards) These armies represent the war-like tribal clans of the Zagros Mountains to the north-east of ...