{"it":{"id":"TX042","kind":"text","sub":"Mesopotamian","name":"Uruk List of Kings and Sages","place":"Baghdad","date":"165 BCE (Seleucid)","oldest":"165 BCE","inst":"W 20030,7, Iraq Museum (from Uruk)","lang":"Akkadian","src":[240,570],"lat":33.329,"lon":44.383,"tags":["Near East","Near East"],"sum":"A tablet written at Uruk in 165 BCE lists kings beside the sages who advised them; the first seven sages are half-man, half-fish from before the flood.","why":"It is the clearest ancient statement that civilisation was taught by named sages, written by a scholar who claimed to descend from them.","nfacts":0,"nsrc":2,"yt":"Compare with Berossus.","rel":["TX008","MES-007"],"hook":"On 16 May 165 BC a priest at Uruk listed the sages back to the Flood, then signed it 'by his own hand'."},"S":{"240":["en.wikipedia.org","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu"],"570":["Uruk List of Kings and Sages (W 20030,7), English translation (attalus.org)","http://attalus.org/docs/cuneiform2.html"]},"rec":{"id":"TX042","alias":[],"ms":[],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA143","a":"Sages = NHI teachers.","who":"Temple; AA writers","main":"Seleucid scholarly tradition linking sages to kings; confirms Berossus independently.","ms":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu","st":"unresolved","n":"interpretive claim; no measurable data","nl":1}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"pas":[{"ref":"W 20030,7 obv.","q":"U-An (Oannes) listed as apkallu under king Ayalu. [paraphrase]","exact":"no","tr":"van Dijk 1962","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu","mo":"sage teacher"}],"tr":[],"mo":[{"v":"teachers_of_civilization","ev":"P028","n":"independently corroborates Berossus","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu"}],"tl":[],"wit":[],"tx":{"mainstream_reading":"Seleucid scholarly tradition linking sages to kings; confirms Berossus independently.","alternative_reading":"Sages = NHI teachers.","alt_proponent":"Temple; AA writers","mistranslation_or_dispute":"Independent cuneiform corroboration of Berossus' Oannes.","key_theme":"7 antediluvian apkallu incl. U-An (Oannes) paired with kings","language":"Akkadian","physical_object_institution":"W 20030,7, Iraq Museum (from Uruk)","composition_date":"165 BCE (Seleucid)","oldest_ms_date":"165 BCE","b":"V"},"sub":[],"src":[{"id":"S0424","t":"en.wikipedia.org","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu"},{"id":"S2571","t":"Uruk List of Kings and Sages (W 20030,7), English translation (attalus.org)","u":"http://attalus.org/docs/cuneiform2.html"},{"id":"VTX042-3","t":"Helle 2018, The role of authors in the “Standard Babylonian” Gilgamesh epic (PDF)","u":"https://sophushelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/helle-2018-role-of-authors.pdf"}],"sum":"# The Uruk List of Kings and Sages: A Priest's Line of Wisdom Back to the Flood\n\nOn the 16th of May 165 BC, in the old city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, a priest named Anu-belshunu sat down and wrote out a list of names. His king, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV, was preparing a military expedition from which he would not return. The king's sudden illness and death would open a period of instability that eventually brought Seleucid rule to an end. Anu-belshunu, as the Assyriologist Sophus Helle notes in his study of the tablet, could not have known any of that. He was busy with his list: thirty-two famous kings and sages from the long history of cuneiform culture.\n\nThe tablet he made is known today as the Uruk List of Kings and Sages. It survives in only one copy, a single-column clay tablet, and it is one of the clearest ancient statements of an idea that runs through Mesopotamian thought: that civilisation was taught to humanity by named sages, beginning before the Flood.\n\n## Where it was found\n\nThe tablet was excavated in 1959 to 1960 in the Bit Resh, the great temple of the sky god Anu at Uruk, among a cluster of ritual texts belonging to the lamentation priests. It carries the excavation number W 20030,7, was first published by Jan van Dijk in 1962, and is now in the Baghdad Museum. It is written in a slanting Late Babylonian hand, with some odd spellings and some deliberately archaic words.\n\nIts author came from a long line of lamentation priests, the kalû, whose songs were meant to soothe angry gods. These priests also worked as astronomers, timing their rituals by predicting the movements of the planets. Anu-belshunu's grandfather, who had the same name, was a prolific astronomer. The grandson, Helle observes, left not a single mathematical or astronomical tablet. His interests were the history, training and rituals of his own profession.\n\n## What it says\n\nThe list is laid out in sections divided by ruled lines. The first is the time before the Flood. It pairs seven kings with seven sages, each line following the same pattern:\n\n\"[In the time] of king Ayyalu: the sage was Oannes. [In the time] of king Alalgar: the sage was Oannes-duga.\" And so on, through Enmeduga, Enmegalama, Enmebuluga, An-Enlilda and Utu-abzu.\n\nThese first sages, in Helle's description, are semi-divine creatures that rose from the sea to lay the foundations of civilisation. In Mesopotamian sources they are called apkallu, a word meaning \"wise\" or \"sage.\"\n\nAfter a ruling that presumably marks the Flood comes one more sage, Nungal-pirigal, in the reign of Enmerkar. He is fully human, and he is the only figure in the list given a story. \"He brought down [Ishtar] from the heavens into the Eana-temple. [He made] a balag-drum of bronze... by the craft of Ninagal,\" and set it up \"in Anu's presence.\" Following work by Claus Ambos, Helle reads this as a memory of a change in Uruk's cult, from the sky god Anu to the goddess Ishtar, with the drum and its lamentation songs invented to soothe the god who had been pushed aside. Uruk's priests in Anu-belshunu's day were working to restore Anu's cult.\n\nThen a double ruling, and a list of kings paired with human scholars, each known from other sources as the author of famous cuneiform works. The first is \"[Gilgam]esh?: the scholar was Sin-leqi-unninni,\" the man credited with the standard version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The last, under the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, is \"Aba-Enlil-dari, [whom] the Arameans call Ahiqar,\" a sage whose fame spread well beyond Mesopotamia.\n\n## The signature\n\nThe final section is the colophon, the scribe's note. \"[Tablet] of Anu-belshunu, son of Nidinti-anu, descendant of Sin-leqi-unnenni, [lamentation] priest of the gods Anu and Antu, an Urukean. By his own hand. Uruk, month Ayyar, day 10, year 147, king Antiochos IV. He who fears Anu will not remove it!\"\n\nTwo details stand out. Tablets at Seleucid Uruk were usually written by apprentice scribes, and the phrase \"by his own hand\" appears in only three colophons, all of them Anu-belshunu's. And he claims descent from Sin-leqi-unnenni, the author of Gilgamesh, whom his list places first among the human scholars.\n\nHelle points to a careful symmetry: eight sages before the double ruling and eight scholars after it, with one scholar serving two kings to keep the numbers even. The authors are set out as later mirrors of the mythical sages. The list is focused on Uruk. Tradition held that Oannes built the very Bit Resh temple where the tablet was found, and that the seven sages laid the foundations of Uruk's walls; Esarhaddon, the last king named, had rebuilt the Bit Resh.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nBabylonian literature was overwhelmingly anonymous. A list that puts named authors beside mighty kings and mythical sages, Helle argues, was a fundamental break with that tradition, made out of respect for it. By 165 BC Akkadian was no longer a living language, cuneiform learning had shrunk to a small circle of temple scholars, and Babylon shared its authority with a Greek colony. As the culture waned, the figure of the author grew, as a way to preserve it.\n\nThe tablet gives the sages names but no bodies. The picture of them as part fish comes from elsewhere: from figurines used in protective rituals, which include fish-man hybrids representing the seven sages, and from the Babylonian priest Berossus, writing in Greek, who described fish-men sent by the gods to teach humanity, Oannes first. A ritual series called Bit meseri gives a similar list, and the two agree.\n\nWriters in the ancient-astronaut tradition read the fish-men literally, as outsiders who came from the sea and brought civilisation. That is interpretation; there is no measurable evidence for it. Scholars read the list as Seleucid temple learning that tied a priest's own family to a line of wisdom running back before the Flood. Because no other copy survives, it is impossible to know whether Anu-belshunu copied an older text or composed it himself.\n\nPicture him at the end of it: a lamentation priest in a temple that a sage from the sea was said to have built, writing his own name last, under the names of his ancestors, and warning anyone who feared Anu not to take it away.","qs":["The tablet gives the sages names but no bodies; the fish-men come from Berossus and temple figurines. Which source should shape how we picture them?","Anu-belshunu put his own ancestor in the list. Is it history, a family claim, or both?","Mesopotamians said wisdom came from sages out of the water. Memory of real teachers, or a way of saying knowledge is sacred?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png/1280px-Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png","title":"Chaos Monster and Sun God.png","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"editor Austen Henry Layard , drawing by L. Gruner","cap":"Black and white crop of full engraving plate scan - from Plate 5 of the work \"A second series of the monuments of Nineveh: including bas-reliefs from the Palace"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/A_pair_of_protective_spirits%2C_Apkallu%2C_from_Nimrud..JPG/1280px-A_pair_of_protective_spirits%2C_Apkallu%2C_from_Nimrud..JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_pair_of_protective_spirits,_Apkallu,_from_Nimrud..JPG","title":"A pair of protective spirits, Apkallu, from Nimrud..JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)","cap":"Wall reliefs depicting 2 human-headed and winged men, Apkallu (Sage). Note the horned head cap and the elaborate dress. From the North-West Palace of Ashurnasir"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Detail_of_the_embroidered_dress_of_a_male_Apkallu%2C_showing_a_kneeling_winged_Apkallu._From_Nimrud%2C_Iraq._883-859_BCE._Ancient_Orient_Museum%2C_Istanbul.jpg/1280px-Detail_of_the_embroidered_dress_of_a_male_Apkallu%2C_showing_a_kneeling_winged_Apkallu._From_Nimrud%2C_Iraq._883-859_BCE._Ancient_Orient_Museum%2C_Istanbul.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_the_embroidered_dress_of_a_male_Apkallu,_showing_a_kneeling_winged_Apkallu._From_Nimrud,_Iraq._883-859_BCE._Ancient_Orient_Museum,_Istanbul.jpg","title":"Detail of the embroidered dress of a male Apkallu, showing a kneeling winged Apkallu. From Nimrud, Iraq. 883-859 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)","cap":"A zoomed-in image of the embroidered dress of a standing male Apkallu, depicting a kneeling winged Apkallu. Alabaster bas-relief. From the North-West Palace at ","alt":"A zoomed-in image of the embroidered dress of a standing male Apkallu, depicting a kneeling winged Apkallu. Alabaster bas-relief. From the North-West Palace at"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Detail_of_the_embroidered_dress_of_an_Apkallu%2C_showing_a_kneeling_winged_eagle-headed_Apkallu._From_Nimrud%2C_Iraq._883-859_BCE._Ancient_Orient_Museum%2C_Istanbul.jpg/1280px-thumbnail.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_of_the_embroidered_dress_of_an_Apkallu,_showing_a_kneeling_winged_eagle-headed_Apkallu._From_Nimrud,_Iraq._883-859_BCE._Ancient_Orient_Museum,_Istanbul.jpg","title":"Detail of the embroidered dress of an Apkallu, showing a kneeling winged eagle-headed Apkallu. From Nimrud, Iraq. 883-859 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)","cap":"A zoomed-in image of the embroidered dress of a standing male Apkallu, depicting a kneeling winged eagle-headed Apkallu. Alabaster bas-relief. From the North-We"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Nimrud_Apkallu.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nimrud_Apkallu.jpg","title":"Nimrud Apkallu.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"Anonymous (Nimrud)Unknown author","cap":"","alt":"Uruk List of Kings and Sages: Nimrud Apkallu"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"165 BCE (Seleucid)","h":"Date","s":[318]},{"v":"165 BCE","h":"Oldest surviving copy","s":[318]},{"v":"Akkadian","h":"Language","s":[318]},{"v":"W 20030","h":"Where the physical copy is held: W 20030,7, Iraq Museum (from Uruk)","s":[318]}],"hs":{"318":["en.wikipedia.org","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/TX042.webp","w":1280,"h":944,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png/1280px-Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}