United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It describes how, when the land was suffering from drought and famine, Gudea had a dream, how Ninâ interpreted the dream to mean that he must rebuild the temple, and how Ningirsu himself promised that this act of piety would restore abundance and prosperity to the land.
How early this material was replaced by stone, we are not in a position to say. Gudea, who imports diorite from the Sinai Peninsula to make statues of himself, presumably uses a similar material for the sacred furnishings of his temples, though custom and conventionality may have maintained the use of the older clay material for some time.
In view of the importance of the texts and of the light they throw upon the religious beliefs and practices of the early Sumerians, a somewhat detailed account of their contents may here be given. The occasion on which the cylinders were made was the rebuilding by Gudea of E-ninnû, the great temple of the god Ningirsu, in the city of Shirpurla.
In his search for fitting materials for the building of the temple, Gudea journeyed from the lower country to the upper country, and from the upper country to the lower country he returned. The only other materials now wanting for the construction of the temple were the sun-dried bricks of clay, of which the temple platform and the structure of the temple itself were in the main composed.
He constructed a special dwelling-place for the sacred doves, and among the flowers of the temple garden and under the shade of the great trees the birds of heaven flew about unmolested. The first of the two great cylinders of Gudea ends at this point in the description of the temple, and it is evident that its text was composed while the work of building was still in progress.
This is indicated by the occurrence of the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea as early as the days of Gudea, and it is this triad which in the creation epic follows upon the older series symbolized by Anshar and Kishar.
It was not found in place, but upside down, and appeared to have been thrown with other débris scattered in that portion of the mound. On lifting it from the trench it was seen that the head of the statue was broken off, as is the case with all the other statues of Gudea found at Telloh.
Cros has sunk a series of deep shafts to determine precisely the relations which the buildings of Ur-Bau and Gudea, found already on this part of the site, bear to each other, and to the building of Adad-nadin-akhê, which had been erected there at a much later period.
Their system of writing, the general structure of their temples, the ritual of their worship, the majority of their religious compositions, and many of their gods themselves are to be traced to a Sumerian origin, and much of the information obtained from the cylinders of Gudea merely confirms or illustrates the conclusions already deduced from other sources.
It is interesting to note that Gudea mentions a hall of judgment in the temple to Nin-girsu at Lagash. The number of such buildings attached to the temple precinct varied, of course, according to the needs and growth of each place. In Nippur, the numbers appear to have been very large.
Word Of The Day