The Priesthood of Uruk in Late First Millennium BCE Babylonia
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YBC 16216
Sealed house sale - the Eanna temple purchases two built houses from the Šigûa family
© 2017, Yale Babylonian Collection, New Haven
Our research project revolves around the southern Mesopotamian urban centre of Uruk (Biblical Erech, modern Warka). It is known as one of the earliest cities in history, also believed in ancient mythology to have been ruled over by the legendary hero Gilgameš. In the ‘long sixth century’ (ca. 620 - 484 BCE) between the ascent of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom after the fall of Assyria and a major disruption of social and economic life in Babylonia after the Babylonian rebellion against the Persian king Xerxes, this city and its main temple the Eanna, sanctuary of the goddess Ištar, were key players in the regional and inter-regional network of people and goods that flowed south from Babylon along the Euphrates. The project aims to reconstruct an important facet of the religious and social landscape of Babylonia through a study of the Urukean clergy as attested in the Eanna archive and in the private archives from Uruk...
Click here for the current selection of texts from Uruk in the NaBuCCo catalogue