Martin Worthington is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the Al Maktoum Centre for Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. [1] He was formerly senior lecturer in Assyriology at the University of Cambridge, and British Academy Research Fellow in the Dept of Near and Middle East at SOAS, University of London, with his research focused on Babylonian poems from the first millennium BC. [2] From 2006 to 2010 Worthington was a junior research fellow in Assyriology at St John's College, Cambridge. In 2011 Worthington was awarded the Sir George Staunton Prize from the Royal Asiatic Society. [2] In 2018 he directed the world’s first Babylonian-language film, The Poor Man of Nippur, which was shortlisted by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the 2019 ‘Research in Film’ award. [3]
Worthington worked with Marvel for the movie The Eternals, by providing them translations and recordings for part of the script in Babylonian. [4]
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: CS1 maint: location (link)Gilgamesh was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified. His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2900 – 2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, some of which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur. These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates back to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, Shūtur eli sharrī. Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates to somewhere between the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru. Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
Ziusudra of Shuruppak is listed in the WB-62 Sumerian King List recension as the last king of Sumer prior to the Great Flood. He is subsequently recorded as the hero of the Eridu Genesis and appears in the writings of Berossus as Xisuthros.
Edward Hincks was an Irish clergyman, best remembered as an Assyriologist and one of the decipherers of Mesopotamian cuneiform. He was one of the three men known as the "holy trinity of cuneiform", with Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and Jules Oppert.
Archibald Henry SayceFRAS was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research. He was a contributor to articles in the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Assyriology, also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".
Siduri, or more accurately Šiduri, is a character in the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is described as an alewife. The oldest preserved version of the composition to contain the episode involving her leaves her nameless, and in the later standard edition compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni her name only appears in a single line. She is named Naḫmazulel or Naḫmizulen in the preserved fragments of Hurrian and Hittite translations. It has been proposed that her name in the standard edition is derived from an epithet applied to her by the Hurrian translator, šiduri, "young woman." An alternate proposal instead connects it with the Akkadian personal name Šī-dūrī, "she is my protection." In all versions of the myth in which she appears, she offers advice to the hero, but the exact contents of the passage vary. Possible existence of Biblical and Greek reflections of the Šiduri passage is a subject of scholarly debate.
Simo Kaarlo Antero Parpola is a Finnish Assyriologist specializing in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki.
Alexander Heidel (1907–1955) was an Assyriologist and biblical scholar, and a Member of the Research Staff of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Henry William Frederick Saggs was an English classicist and orientalist.
Andrew R. George is a British Assyriologist and academic best known for his edition and translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Andrew George is Professor of Babylonian, Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Aga commonly known as Aga of Kish, was the twenty-third and last king in the first dynasty of Kish during the Early Dynastic I period. He is listed in the Sumerian King List and many sources as the son of Enmebaragesi. The Kishite king ruled the city at its peak, probably reaching beyond the territory of Kish, including Umma and Zabala.
Wilfred George Lambert FBA was a historian and archaeologist, a specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology.
Ancient Near East studies is the field of academic study of the ancient Near East (ANE). As such it is an umbrella term for Assyriology, in some cases extending to Egyptology.
John Nicholas Postgate, FBA is a British academic and Assyriologist. From 1975 to 1981, he was Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. From 1994 to 2013, he was Professor of Assyriology at the University of Cambridge. He is a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Stephanie Mary Dalley FSA is a British Assyriologist and scholar of the Ancient Near East. Prior to her retirement, she was a teaching Fellow at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. She is known for her publications of cuneiform texts and her investigation into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and her proposal that it was situated in Nineveh, and constructed during Sennacherib's rule.
Mesopotamian divination was divination within the Mesopotamian period.
Frances Reynolds is a Shillito Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute St Benet's Hall, Oxford. Her speciality is in Babylonian and Assyrian intellectual history, literature and religion, with an emphasis on the late second and first millennia BC.
Hildegard Lewy was an Assyriologist and academic. Having originally trained as a physicist, upon her marriage to Julius Lewy she moved into Assyriology; she specialised in cuneiform texts and Babylonian mathematics. She translated, commented on, and published a number of texts from Nuzi and Mari. She also contributed two chapters to The Cambridge Ancient History. She was a professor of Assyriology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.