The scribes’ interest in Sumerian scholarly writings is also demonstrated by the presence in the Central Archives [of the palace of Ebla] of three “mathematical” texts. Catalogue number 322c is a list of composite signs for expressing large quantities in the sexagesimal system (used by the Sumerians). The first case expresses the number 36,000 as […]
Harper, Prudence O., et al. The Royal City of Susa- Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. New York- Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992. See also- Mathematical Tablet from Ebla, c.2350-2250 BCE Mathematical Tablet, c. 1790 BCE The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, 1575 BCE Mathematical Cuneiform Tablet, 19th century BCE Tell Harmal Mathematical Tablets Polygon Tablet
Kaaper as a corpulent middle-aged man, from his tomb at Saqqara Wood, h. 110 cm, 43 ¼ in. Egyptian Mueum, Cairo Malek, Jaromir, Egypt; 4000 years of Art. London- Phaidon Press, 2003.
Jacob Seal from Shiqmona Jacob Seal currently in Berlin The hieroglyphs in the center of the scarab seal above spell out Y‘qb-HR, the Egyptian transliteration of the Semitic Yaqub (Jacob). Found in 1969 at Shiqmona, a site near Haifa, Israel, the “Shiqmona scarab” dates to before 1730 B.C. […]
The Sumerian flood story cannot serve as the basis for independent meaningful comparison with the Bible for it has survived only in a very fragmentary state. The first 38 lines are missing, and there are long gaps in the narrative. As a result the outlines of the story must be reconstructed from the other […]
“Six days and seven nights the wind and storm flood” – Gilgamesh XI,127 Gilgamesh Epic Three different Babylonian stories of the flood have survived- the Sumerian Flood Story, the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, and the Atrahasis Epic. Of these, the best known is Gilgamesh XI, which was one of the earliest cuneiform texts […]
King Ashurbanipal built a royal library in Nineveh in the 7th century BCE. British archaeologists, headed by Austen Henry Layard, found about 20,000 clay tablets beginning in 1849. The tablets were shipped to the British Museum, where they lay for close to 50 years before Assyriologists were able to decipher them. Found among these tablets […]
The Sinai Turquoise Mines The ruins of Serabit were first discovered by Carsten Niebuhr, a member of an early Danish expedition, in 1162. Later they attracted the attention of numerous scholars, the most famous of whom was Sir Flinders Petrie, who explored the site in 1905. In 1935 the Czech scholar Jeroslav Cðerny made a […]
Findings from the Burial Cave Chalcolithic Era (4500-3200 BCE) burial cave. The cave was unearthed in 1995 when a bulldozer accidentally broke through its ceiling during construction of a road in the upper Galilee village of Peqi’in. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) discovered tens of thousands of pottery fragments strewn about the 50-foot-long […]
From 1974-1976 the Ebla tablets were unearthed at Tell Mardikh in northern Syria. Paolo Matthiae from the University of Rome headed the expedition and dates the tablets between 2580–2450 BCE. “Assessing Ebla,” BAR Dec 1976, “The Promise of Ebla,” BAR March 1978. See also- Mathematical Tablet from Ebla, c.2350-2250 BCE Ebla Update, BAR 6-03, May-Jun […]