Mesopotamian Chronicles: Dictionary

The Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles are historiographical texts from ancient Mesopotamia. Although they contain references to the earliest times, they deal especially with the second half of the second millennium and the entire first millennium down to the first century BCE (cf. this table).

Archaic name of Babylonia.

Litt: "Lord". The name of the Babylonian supreme god Marduk was almost never pronounced or written down. His temple was the Esagila; another important monument was the temple tower Etemenanki. Greek authors called this complex sometimes the tomb of Belus, sometimes the temple of Belus. The name is related to Ba'al.

The temple of Gula in Isin. Gula was the goddess of medicine.

The "House of the ordinances of heaven and underworld", the sanctuary of Bêlet-Ninua (a title that we might render as Our Blessed Lady of Nineveh), also known as Ištar.

One of the two temples of the moon god Sin in Babylon.

The very ancient temple of Enlil in Nippur. The name means "House of the Mountain".

The temple of Nergal in Cuthah.

The "House of (pleasant) rest": the temple of Sin in eastern Babylon.

An erased text on a clay tablet, often a writing error. Usually, traces of the old text can be read 'behind' the real text.

The temple of Ištar of Babylon, close to Esagila.

The temple of Nabû in Borsippa.

F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923- ): a large collection of fragments of Greek historians.

Originally, the Gutians lived in the Zagros mountains east of Babylon and north of Susa. In later cuneiform texts, the word Gutium can simply mean any land east of the Tigris.

Ha-ni-e is the name of a people and a kingdom (Hana) of the Old and Middle Babylonian periods situated on the middle Euphrates. In the Hellenistic period the term is apparently a metaphor of Macedonia, or by extension Greeks and Macedonians (Cf. Briant 1994).

Originally, the Hittite Empire, but after its disappearance in the twelfth century BCE, the name of the Neo-Hittite city states of Syria, which included the Phoenician towns. Hence: about everything in the west.

Assyrian name of Babylonia.

Temple council; its chairman is the Šatammu.

Determinative that indicates that the following name is that of a man or woman. A woman is indicated by the sign SAL, a man by a vertical wedge, which is sometimes confusing because this symbol can also indicate the number one.

The chairman of the temple council or kiništu. This council, which consisted of temple personnel and possibly prebend holders, was the governing body of the sanctuary and in Hellenistic time in effect the entire indigenous community of the city.

A sign resembling an angle bar or inverted L, which is made by pressing a stylus deep into the clay.