This is what happens when a
5,000-year-old technology meets the digital age. Researchers from the National
Museum of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have analysed, identified
and digitised a large collection of cuneiform tablets. Credit: Troels Pank
Arbøll
For over 100 years, the National
Museum has housed a large collection of inscribed tablets from the earliest
civilizations of the Middle East—many over 4,000 years old and written in
languages that are now extinct. The tablets have led a quiet existence, but now
researchers have deciphered them and discovered fascinating texts about magic,
kings and good old-fashioned bureaucracy.
Around 5,200 years ago, people from
ancient cultures in Iraq and Syria began carving characters onto clay tablets.
This new system of communication gradually made it possible to develop advanced
urban societies with complex administrative systems.
Over the course of 100 years, the
National Museum has built up a large collection of these early historical
sources, written in cuneiform script in languages long since extinct. The
collection has not been studied in recent times, but now researchers from the
museum and the University of Copenhagen have, for the first time, analyzed,
identified and digitized all the ancient texts in the project Hidden Treasures: The National
Museum's Cuneiform Collection.
No to witches in Hama
When the researchers began to
examine the collection more closely, it turned out that it contained a wide
variety of texts, ranging from accounts and letters to medical treatments and
magical incantations.
A small group of texts originate
from the Syrian city of Hama, which was studied by a Danish expedition in the
1930s. In 720 BC, the city was destroyed and plundered by Assyrian warriors,
who took the spoils back to their capital, Assur, in what is now Iraq. In their
haste, however, they left behind some of the clay tablets, which are now housed
at the National Museum of Denmark.
"The texts in the collection
that originate from Hama are almost 3,000 years old and deal with medical
treatments and magical incantations. They had been left behind in the remains
of what we believe must have been a large temple library. All other texts were
gone," explains Assyriologist Troels Pank Arbøll, who has been part
of the Hidden Treasures project.
According to him, the Hama texts
are entirely unique, as virtually no other cuneiform texts on these subjects
have been found from the same region during this period. And one text in
particular caught his attention:
"One of the clay tablets
turned out to contain a so-called anti-witchcraft ritual, which was of enormous
importance to the royal authority in Assyria because it had the remarkable
ability to ward off misfortunes—such as political instability—that might befall
a king," says Pank Arbøll.
The ritual, which took a whole
night, involved the burning of various small figures made of wax and clay,
while an exorcist recited a series of fixed incantations. Given the ritual's
central role in Assyria, the researchers were also surprised to find this
particular text so far from the capital of the Assyrian Empire and the rich
literary cultures of Babylonia. Hama was, after all, far out on the periphery
of these regions.
Regnal lists, letters and bureaucracy
Among the collection, researchers
have discovered a copy of a very famous regnal list, which describes both
mythical and historical kings.
It is an important political
document that lists kings dating back to before the Noah and the Flood. The
specific tablet found at the National Museum is a school text, and it mentions
kings who reigned at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Other copies also
mention the legendary King Gilgamesh, whom some may know from the famous Epic
of Gilgamesh.
"That makes this regnal list
one of the few relics we have that suggests Gilgamesh may have actually
existed. We had no idea we had a copy of that list here in Denmark. It is quite
spectacular," says Pank Arbøll.
Another group of texts in the
collection originates from the Danish excavations at Tell Shemshara in 1957 in
what is now northern Iraq. The texts from Tell Shemshara consist of a
correspondence between a local chieftain and an Assyrian king from around 1800
BC, and a series of administrative documents which, along with many others of
their kind from various other periods, were a significant part of the reason
why cuneiform was originally invented.
"A great many of the cuneiform tablets we have today bear witness to a highly developed bureaucracy. There was a need to keep track of the advanced societies that were being built, and we have found a large number of cuneiform tablets containing practical information, such as accounts and lists of goods and personnel. It is therefore not surprising that one of the tablets in the National Museum's collection contains something as commonplace as a very old receipt for beer," concludes Pank Arbøll.
Provided by University of
Copenhagen
Source: 4,000-year-old clay tablets inscribed with magical spells… and beer tabs
No comments:
Post a Comment