Samuel Noah Kramer > Quotes

“They devised such useful tools, skills, and techniques as the potter's wheel, the wagon wheel, the plow, the sailboat, the arch, the vault, the dome, casting in copper and bronze, riveting, brazing and soldering, sculpture”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“to itself, is arid, wind-swept, and unproductive. The land is flat and river-made, and therefore has no minerals whatever and almost no stone. Except for the huge reeds in the marshes, it had no trees for timber. Here, then, was a region with "the hand of God against it," an unpromising land seemingly doomed to poverty and desolation. But the people that inhabited it, the Sumerians, as they came to be known by”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Si d'aventure, tel se prend à douter de la fraternité des hommes et de l'humanité commune à tous les peuples et à toutes les races, qu'il parcoure leurs adages et leurs préceptes : il se rassurera.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, La historia empieza en Sumer

“Sumer, the land which came to be known in classical times as Babylonia, consists of the lower half of Mesopotamia, roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. It has an area of approximately 10,000 square miles, somewhat larger than the state of Massachusetts. Its climate is extremely hot and dry, and its soil, left to itself, is arid, wind-swept, and unproductive. The land is flat and river-made, and therefore has no minerals whatever and almost no stone. Except for the huge reeds in the marshes,”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Dilmun is a land that is "pure," "clean," and "bright," a "land of the living" which knows neither sickness nor death. What is lacking, however, is the fresh water so essential to animal and
plant life. The great Sumerian water-god, Enki, therefore orders Utu, the sun-god, to fill it with fresh water brought up from the earth. Dilmun”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“One Archeology and Decipherment
Two History: Heroes, Kings, and Ensi's
Three Society: The Sumerian City
Four Religion: Theology, Rite, and Myth
Five Literature: The Sumerian Belles-Lettres
Six Education: The Sumerian School
Seven Character: Drives, Motives, and Values
Eight The Legacy of Sumer
APPENDIXES
A. The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing
B. The Sumerian Language
C. Votive Inscriptions
D. Sample Date-Formulas
E. Sumerian King List
F. Letters
G. Dit lla's (court decisions)
H. Lipit-Ishtar Law Code
1. Farmers' Almanac
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“After the sprout had broken through the (surface of) the ground," the handbook continues, the farmer should say a prayer to Ninkilim, the goddess of field mice and vermin, lest they harm the growing grain; he should also scare off the flying birds. When the barley has grown sufficiently to fill the narrow bottoms of the furrows, it is time to water it; and when it "stands high as (the
straw of) a mat in the middle of a boat," it is time to water it a second time. He is to water it a third time when it is "royal" barley, that is, when it has reached its full height. Should he then notice a reddening of the wet grain, it is the dread samana-dis- ease, which endangers the crops. If the barley is doing well, however, he is to water it a fourth time and thus obtain an extra yield of 10 per cent.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“consequences”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“no stone. Except for the huge reeds in the marshes, it had no trees for timber. Here, then, was a region with”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“The five subsequent volumes, as planned by the author, will consist primarily of source material, that is, they will contain the transliterated texts of the restored Sumerian compositions, together with a translation and commentary as well as the autograph copies of all the pertinent uncopied material in the University Museum utilized for the reconstruction of the texts. Each of these five volumes will be devoted to a particular class of Sumerian composition: (1) epics; (2) myths; (3) hymns; (4) lamentations; (5) "wisdom." It cannot be too strongly stressed that on the day this task is completed and Sumerian literature is restored and made available to scholar and layman, the humanities will be enriched by one of the most magnificent groups of documents ever brought to light. As the earliest creative writings, these documents hold a unique position in the history of civilization. Moreover, because of their profound and enduring influence on the spiritual and religious development of the entire Near East, they are veritable untapped mines and treasure-houses of significant source material and invaluable data ready for exploitation by all the relevant humanities.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology

“About this same time Abbe Beauchamp, vicar-general at Baghdad and correspondent of the Academy of Science, was making careful and accurate observations”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“proposed undertaking. The latter advises him first to acquaint the sun-god, Utu, with his plan, for it is Utu who has charge of the "Land of the Living." Acting on this advice,”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“of some ritual act by Eannatum, corresponding, for example, to the sending of doves in some of the”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“When man had not yet been created and the city of Nippur was inhabited by gods alone, "its young man" was the god Enlil; "its young maid" was the goddess Ninlil; and "its old woman" was Ninlil's mother, Nunbarshegunu. One day, the latter, evidently having set her mind and heart on Ninlil's marriage to Enlil, instructs her daughter thus:
In”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“First Dynasty”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“in classical times as Babylonia, consists of the lower half of Mesopotamia, roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“To be sure, the would-be decipherers did have one advantage. Long before Botta and Layard had begun their excavations, a limited number of inscriptions of one sort or another had found
their way to Europe, especially from Babylonian ruins, and the writing on them had been recognized as resembling Niebuhr's third class on the Persepolis trilinguals. But unfortunately this third class, which could be reasonably assumed to be a translation of the first class, defied all efforts at decipherment. In the first place, the Persepolis inscriptions were far too brief for any insight into the language. Moreover, even a superficial analysis of the then extant Babylonian inscriptions revealed that they consisted of hundreds of signs, while the first class of the trilingual had only forty-two characters, which made it impossible to mark off the names or words that might be expected to be identical. Finally, within the Babylonian documents themselves the very same signs seemed to show considerable variation in shape and form. No wonder, then, that the first attempts at the decipherment of the Babylonian writing proved to be futile.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Rosetta stone, did not come from Iraq but from Iran, although it is Iraq that is the home of cuneiform writing. And this brings us to the story of the explorations and excavations leading to the decipherment of the cuneiform script and the rediscovery of the Mesopotamian civilizations. It will here be sketched only briefly-it has been told repeatedly and in detail during the past decades (see Bibliography for specific works)-in order to give the reader at least a glimpse into the picture as a whole”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“bilingual and that the Semitic Babylonian words in them explained corresponding words in an entirely”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“dead seem to have been arranged in a hierarchy, like the living, and no doubt the highest seats were assigned to the dead kings and to high priestly officials who had to be taken care of with special sacrifices by such of the deceased as Gilgamesh and Ur-Nammu. There were all kinds of rules and regulations in the nether world, and it was the deified Gilgamesh who saw to it that the denizens of the nether world conducted themselves properly. Although in general one has the feeling that the nether world was dark and dreary, this would seem to be true only of daytime; at night the sun brought light to it, and on the twenty-eighth day of the month the sun was joined by the moon. The deceased were not treated all alike; there was a judgment of the dead by the sun-god, Utu, and to a certain extent by the moon-god, Nanna, and if the judgment was favorable, the dead man's soul would presumably live in happiness and contentment and have”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“path a bit in order to follow the step-by-step developments”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Archaeological discoveries made in Egypt and in the Near East in the past hundred years have opened our eyes to a spiritual and cultural heritage undreamed of by earlier generations.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer

“identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. It has an area of approximately 10,000 square miles, somewhat larger than the state of Massachusetts.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Throughout the rest of the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries numerous travelers, each with a different idea as to the identification of the various localities and ruins, journeyed to Mesopotamia, all trying to fit what they saw into the Biblical frame of reference. Between 1761 and 1767, there took place one of the most valuable of these expeditions, that of Carsten Niebuhr, a Danish mathematician who, besides”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“wish to express my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks to the Jayne Memorial Foundation and its board of trustees, which selected me as the annual lecturer for 1942 to speak on the subject of Sumerian mythology. I also acknowledge my gratitude to the board of managers of the University Museum; to Dr. George C. Vaillant, its director; to Mr. Horace H . F. Jayne, his predecessor; and to Professor Leon Legrain, the curator of its Babylonian section, for their scientific”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology

“12 Divine Retribution and National Catastrophe Jahweh's wrath and the humiliation and destruction of the people that incurs it constitute an often repeated theme in the Biblical books. Usually the national catastrophe comes about through a violent attack by some neighboring people, especially selected as Jahweh's scourge and whip. To this theme the historiographic document”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Babylonia,”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“Incredible as it may seem, however, this pinpoint historian, this Toynbee in reverse, has something of unusual interest (an "ace in the hole," as it were) to offer to the general reader. The Sumerologist, more than most other scholars and specialists, is in a position to satisfy man's universal quest for origins — for "firsts" in the history of civilization.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History

“claiming the entire Guedinna as his territory and domain.
The issue between Il and Entemena, however, was not decided by war. Instead, a compromise seems to have been forced upon them by a third party, probably once again the northern non-Sumerian ruler who claimed lordship over Sumer as a whole. By and large, the decision seems to have favored Lagash, since the old Mesilim-Eannatum line was retained as the fixed boundary between Umma and Lagash. On the other hand, nothing was said about compensation by the Ummaites for the revenue they had withheld; nor do they seem to have been held responsible any longer for ensuring the water supply of the Guedinna-this task was now left to the Lagashites themselves.15
Entemena was the last of the great ensi's of the Ur-Nanshe dynasty; his son Enannatum II reigned only briefly and achieved but little, to judge from the fact that only one of his inscriptions has been recovered to date-a door socket dedicated to the restoration of Ningirsu's”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

“in the service of the British army in Persia. He began to copy some of the trilinguals, especially the Mount Alvand inscription near Hamadan and the Behistun rock inscription about twenty miles from Kermanshah.”
― Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character