Description
Book SynopsisThe cuneiform literature of ancient Mesopotamia is vast, ranging from economic texts, other sorts of record-keeping documents, and letters through texts that modern readers consider literary, including one category that is often considered esoteric. The latter works appear to be attempts on the part of the ancient scribe-scholars to explain parts of their own culture, to elucidate their own traditions. In the mid-1980s, Alasdair Livingstone studied these texts and then published the collection he had gathered. These texts demonstrate that the Assyrian and Babylonian scholars responsible for their creation had their own distinctive ideas about the function of myth and ritual.
Livingstone’s study was first published in 1986 by Oxford University Press but has been out of print for a number of years. Eisenbrauns is happy to make it available once again, in a quality hardback reprint.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Conventions
List of Tablets edited and discussed
Publications cited by initials, short titles, tablet signatures
Part One. Mystical Explanatory Works
Chapter One. Expositions of Mystical Mathematics and Philology
Chapter Two. Groups of Deities and Parts of the World
Chapter Three. The God Description Texts: A Mystical Representation of a Deity
Part Two. Mythological Explanatory Works
Chapter Four. Works in Standard Babylonian Explaining State Rituals in Terms of Myths
Chapter Five. Other Babylonian Explanatory Works on Rituals
Chapter Six. Works in Neo-Assyrian Explaining Rituals in Terms of Theology and Mythology
Appendix I. Miscellanea
Appendix II. Colophons
Notes
Plates
