#sumerian resources

[sumerianlanguage]

Hey y'all, just a heads up that the ePSD2 has been down for a few days now. If you've sent in an ask and I haven't replied, it's probably because I want to cross-reference with the ePSD2 before answering - I appreciate your patience! (And if anybody knows of a mirror or backup site, do let me know.)

[sag-dab-sar]

📚Resources for The Ancient Near East📚

With a focus on religion

Getting Started On Research

JSTOR Guide LINK

Lumenlearning Guide LINK

Center for Online Education Guide LINK

Layman's Guide to Online Research by @/sisterofiris LINK

How to Vet Sources by me LINK

Websites for ANE Study

ETCSL | The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/catalogue.htm

ePSD | The Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary — http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd-frame.html

ORACC | Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus — http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/

ORACC's Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses Project — http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/amgg/abouttheproject/index.html

ETANA | Electronic Tools & Ancient Near East Archive — http://etana.org/

CDLI | Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative — https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/about

CAD | The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago — http://www.aina.org/cad.html

Livius' Babylonian Section — https://www.livius.org/category/babylonia/

Multi Source Websites

Internet Archive Library — https://archive.org/details/texts | How To Use LINK

JSTOR — https://www.jstor.org/ | How To Use LINK

Google Scholar — https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html

Google Books — https://books.google.com/googlebooks/about/index.html

Academia — https://support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/categories/360003163373-Academia-Free-Features

DOAJ Index of Open Access Journals — https://www.doaj.org/

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook — https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/asbook.asp

Met Museum Publications — https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications

Holy Books — https://www.holybooks.com/about/

Internet Sacred Text Archive — https://sacred-texts.com/

Deepdyve is a website of academic journal articles that isn't free but it isn't outrageously expensive for what it offers if you are heavily invested in new research — https://www.deepdyve.com/

Please leave a comment if a link breaks I'll do my best to find a new one

I'm planning to probably break these down into their own post due to link limit!

Books

*When using older books be aware that there may be inaccuracies and out of date information. If at all possible cross-reference and synthesize with newer materials. I have added years for this reason.

Books Specifically on Religion

Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion by Tammi Schneider (2011) Google Books | Good overview, 130ish page easy read.

Gods Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia by Jeremy Black and Anthony Greene (1992) Internet Archive

Ancient Near Eastern Mythology by Gwendolyn Leick (1991) Internet Archive | This & Black's dictionary are good starting off points but I always use additional source's because some of Leick's info tends to be more out of date than other authors.

The Ancient Gods by E O James (1960) Internet Archive

The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East by Mark Cohen (1993) PDF

Preforming Death Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Medditarian edited by Nicola Laneri (2007) PDF

Mesopotamian Ritual-prayers of “Hand-lifting”(Akkadian Šuillas) by Christopher G Frechette Internet Archive

When Gods Were Men: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature by Esther Hamon Internet Archive

Stories From Ancient Canaan by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith (1901) 1st Edition Internet Archive | 2nd Edition Google Books

A Handbook to Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East (2021) Google Books

The City of the Moon God by Tamara Green (1992) Google Books

The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by Stephanie Lynn Budin (2008) Google Books

Books on ANE History in General

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Stephen Bertman (2005) Google Books | Highly recommended, easy read

Ancient Mesopotamia Portrait of Dead Civilization by A. Leo Oppenheim (1964) Internet Archive

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000- 323BC by Marc Van de Mieroop (2016) Internet Archive

Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottero (1992) Internet Archive

Women in the Ancient Near East by Marten Stol (2016) Open Access

Chapter 3 Elamite from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient World Languages edited by Roger Wooard (2004) PDF

Sumerian Art by Andre Parrot (1970) Digital Library

Dictionaries of Civilization Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians by Enrico Ascalone and Simona Schultz (2007) Publisher Website Entry

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells edited by Hans Dieter Betz PDF (If that link breaks Google Books)

Babylon: Mesopotamia and The Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek (2012) Google Books

Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat (2002) Google Books

Mesopotamia to Iraq A Concise History by Hans Nissen (2009) Google Books

In the Land of A Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World by Christian Marek (2016) Google Books

Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick (2002) Google Books

Palmyra by Paul Veyne (2017) Google Books

The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC Volume 1 by Amélie Kuhrt (1995) Google Books

The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC Volume 2 by Amélie Kuhrt (1995) Google Books

The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources by Diana Katz (2003) Google Books

Journal Articles

Mesopotamian Pandemonium by Frans Wiggermann LINK

Nergal A by Frans Wiggerman LINK

The Four Winds and the Origins of Pazuzu by Frans Wiggermann LINK

Sumerian Texts Involving The Netherworld and Funerary Offerings by Jeremiah Peterson LINK

The Sexual Union of Enlil and Ninlil: an uadi Composition of Ninlil by Jeremiah Peterson LINK

New Year Ceremonies in Ancient Babylon: 'Taking Bel by the Hand' and a Cultic Picnic Religion Jeremy A Black LINK

Phenomenon of God-nap in Ancient Mesopotamia A Short Introduction Erika D. Johnson LINK

Preforming Death Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Medditarian edited by Nicola Laneri LINK

Tablet of Destinies and the Transmission of Power in Enūma eliš by Karen Sonik LINK

Theology and Worship in Elam and Achaemenid Iran by Koch LINK

Evil against evil. The Demon Pazuzu by Nils P Heeßel LINK

New Readings in the Amarna Versions of Adapa and Nergal and Ereshkigal by Shlomo Izre'el LINK

The Origin of the Mystical Number Seven in Mesopotamian Culture: Division by Seven in the Sexagesimal Number System by Kazuo Muroi LINK

Athirat: As Found at Ras Shamra Justin Watkins LINK

Two Remarkable Vocabularies: Amorite-Akkadian Bilinguals! by Andrew George, Manfred Krebernik. Unfortunately now I can only find a paywalled version.

From Beyond Ereškigal? Mesopotamian Magic Tradition in the Papyri Graecae Magicae by Daniel Schwemer LINK

The Phoenician Presence in the Aegean during the Early Iron Age : Trade, Settlement and Cultural Interaction by Edizioni Quasar LINK

Invoking the God: Interpreting Invocations in Mesopotamian Prayers and Biblical Laments of the Individual by Alan Lenzi LINK

The Two Steles of Sargon: Iconology and Visual Propaganda at the Beginning of Royal Akkadian Relief by Lorenzo Nigro LINK

Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving? Susan Ackerman LINK

Ancient Ethics by Gerald Larue LINK

Early Bronze Age Graves at Gre Virike (Period II B): An Extraordinary Cemetery on the Middle Euphrates by A. Tuba Ökse LINK

The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia by Marie-Louise Thomsen LINK

Web Articles

Living Deities: Ancient Mesopotamian Patron Gods & Their Statues by Iilias Luursema on The Collector LINK

Armana Letters by Elizabeth Knott on Met Museum. LINK

Translations

*ETCSL is all translations of Sumerian literature!

Ishtar's Decent Translation & Recited in Akkadian LINK

The Harps That Once by Thorkild Jacobsen Google Books

The Project Gutenberg Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms by Stephen Langdon PDF

Project Gutenberg's Sumerian Hymns, by Frederick Augustus Vanderburgh LINK

Ancient Near East Anthology of Texts and Pictures edited by Pritchard 1st Edition Internet Archive

A Hymn to Tammuz (Cuneiform Texts from the British Museum, Tablet 15821, Plate 18) J. Dyneley Prince (1909) JSTOR

Ludlul Bel Nemegi by Alan Lenzi the Akkadian "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer" LINK

The Flood Myths LINK

Enūma Eliš Translations: L W King Translation 1902 LINK | ETANA Translation LINK | Composite Translation LINK

Code of Ur-Nammu LINK

Code of Liptin Ishtar LINK

The Legend of Sargon of Akkadê, c. 2300 BCE LINK

Other

Google Drive shared on Tumblr LINK

Dissertation: Personal Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia as shown in Akkadian Texts by Maurice Noil Leon Couve De Murville, University of London PDF

[lilith-vodkaaunt-of-demons]

In an unmarked laboratory in North Eastern Kansas.

Breathing heavily, Cass stood up and took a look at her handy work, swiping copper curls away from her eyes. It had taken some effort, creativity, and lots and lots of cursing, but the room was finally finished. Mere months ago it had been a vague image of a dream of an idea, but now it was finally complete. Her friends and colleagues all laughed at her. Her parents had even gone back on their word to fund her Graduate School, telling her they had agreed to fund her schooling for a career, not a dead end obsession. But look at her now! In a laboratory! With real equipment! And funding! It didn't matter that she'd never heard of the government department those two bozos in their ridiculous white monkey suits claimed to be from, they'd handed her a functionally bottomless grant, all the equipment and time she needed, and told her only one thing.

"Report everything to us. No matter how miniscule you think it is, no matter how insignificant. If your coffee tastes different after an experiment, report it." What a bunch of weirdos.

"Ha...haha...hahaha hahaha! Finally! Now that the room is finished, all I need to do is start the process!" Cass crowed gleefully, giddy with excitement and anticipation. She once again looked at her work. She had to admit...it looked like the room of a person suffering from unmedicated schizophrenia. In the center of the 15x15 room was a circle, about 4 feet in diameter, inside the circle were symbols, sigils, and diagrams from Alchemy to the Zodiac. Just outside that circle was a ring of solidified salt, pressed into an impression on the floor. Spreading out from that across the floor, up the walls, and even on the ceilings were words in every language from Aztec to Sumerian, and religious iconography from every religion from Christianity to Zunism.

Cass had spent years preparing for this. Using every cent, every favor, every resource and scrap of goodwill she could find in preparation for this. She was finally going to prove to everyone that she wasn't some obsessed lunatic. She was going to prove the existence of Higher Beings. And to do it, she was going to summon a demon. Now all she had to do was start the process.

It was easy. She stepped up to the center of the circle. The focal point of the entire array of binding spells, prays, and words of power she'd inscribed in every surface of the room save for this cirlce, the one clean spot. She pulled out a scalpel and sliced the inside of her forearm, letting the blood bead up, then drip down and pool on the floor. She'd never understood the idea of cutting your hand. You used those. This was much easier to take care of, and you still had the use of both hands. After a few moments of letting the blood collect, Cass wrapped her arm in a towel, pressing down to make the bleeding slow, and stepped back out of the salt circle.

She briefly left the room, going to the first aid kit she left just outside the door to see to the minor laceration. After all, she didn't want dripping blood to ruin her sigils and protection charms. Once the bleed stopped, she returned to the room, a notebook in hand. She opened the notebook and began to chant.

400 miles away, at the Kent's Farm...

A young man, not dissimilar to Clark Kent when he was younger, was helping Pa Kent fix up the old tractor while Ma Kent tended to the animals. It seemed the pair had figured out what was wrong with it, but it was in a particularly hard to reach place.

"Sounds like we're gonna need to pull the whole engine out to fix this." Pa Kent said, a bit of disappointment in his voice, "That's gonna be pricey. Might have to wait a while." He mumbled to himself, one hand rubbing his jaw, leaving a trail of oil along his face, "Gonna be tough getting the crop in without ol' Bessie."

"Naaaah, don't worry about a thing. I can patch her up well enough to get the harvest in, then we can take out the engine over the winter." Danny said, his hand turning opaque. He then slid his hand through the chassi of the tractor, "Hold on," He continued, his face suddenly turned similarly opaque, "Better see what I'm doing here." He said as he shoved his face into the chassi of the tractor as well, "Yup! We were right! Duct busted. I can patch it up nicely, should last until the harvest is brought in!" He called from inside the tractor.

Pa Kent shook his head and chuckled, "Even with everything Clark did, I don't think I'll ever get use to that. Go ahead and patch her up. Then we can head in for lunch before tackling the field." He said, giving Danny a pat on the back. Suddenly a bright green glow emenates from the inside of the tractor before Danny pulled his head and hand back out.

"Let it cool, and it should be good an' patched." He said proudly, soot and oil covering his entire face and one hand.

"You uh, got somethin' on your face, Danny."

"Oh? Where?"

"Uh. there." Pa Kent said, pointing to the entirety of Danny's face before tossing him a rag, and turning to head into the house. Danny began to wipe his face off, then started coughing a bit, "Yeah, that oil can taste somethin' awful if it gets in your mouth." Pa said, thinking Danny had just tasted some of the oil, but Danny kept coughing, and the coughing got worse until Pa turned around to see Danny on his knees, one hand over his mouth, another around his throat like he was choking. Black frost and steam poured from Danny's mouth like he'd just run a mile on a freezing December morning, but it was the middle of the day in early September, nearly 90 degrees out in an open field. Pa ran over to Danny, and knelt down in front of him, "You okay, boy?" He asked, worry plain on his face.

Danny shook his head and gasped, "Something!...Big!...Coming!" Was all he could get out before, in a flash of light, he'd transformed into his alter-ego, Danny Phantom, and in a streak of green, blasted off into the sky, soon followed by the telltale boom of super sonic flight.

Danny was already about a mile above the ground, still coughing up what he could only describe as frost mixed with soot and rotten eggs. It was like his Ghost Sense had gone into overdrive, and happened to run through a Coal Mine and a Landfill on it's way out. Even Pariah Dark hadn't made his Ghost Sense react like that, especially not at this distance. Whatever it was, he needed to get there yesterday, because it, whatever it was, was absolutely massive and even from there, Danny could feel the hostility radiating from it. Bad News didn't even begin to cover whatever this thing was.

Meanwhile, back at the Laboratory...

Cassi began chanting the invocation she'd pieced together. It had been like figuring out a puzzles who's pieces had been hidden all over the world. Words from disparate languages that fit together to make an ancient call to those Outside. But Cass had managed to find the words and put them together. She hoped she'd put them together in the correct order, otherwise who knew what she was calling out to.

At first, it didn't seem to be working. No crack in the ground or air appeared. No red skinned, horned imp appeared in a puff of crimson smoke. The lights didn't even flicker as she read the incantation. Cass was about to stop when she saw a ripple run across the surface of the pool of her blood in the center of the inner circle. First a small ripple, like a drop of water hitting the surface of a puddle. Cass continued chanting. Then another ripple, from left to right, like something skimming the surface. Cass continued chanting. Then it seemed to stop.

Cass chanted for a minute or two, spurred on by the unusual behavior of the blood. Right as her throat was beginning to ache, a hand burst through the surface of the blood, pale skin stained red and rivulets of blood ran down the arm that followed. The hand gripped the edge of the pool of blood like it was much deeper than it could possibly be. Then another hand burst forth, also followed by a pale arm.

Cass stopped chanting, what she had called had obviously already broken through, and was now simply pulling itself out. She watched in fascination that slowly mixed with a bit of fear as she realized that the being that was pulling itself out of a pool of her blood looked exactly like her, save for it's eyes, with black sclera and yellow iris. Cass watched with matched Fascination and Fear as the being continued to pull itself from the pool, and she realized that the more of the doppleganger that was out of the blood, the less blood there appeared to be.

Cass also noticed, with some surprise, that while she had initially the creature to be naked, it (she?) was in facted, clothed. She wore a strapless, low-cut black ball gown that clung to her (Cass's?) body in all the right places to accentuate her feminine form in ways Cass rarely did.

Once the woman (demon?) had completely pulled itself through, and the puddle of blood completely disappeared, she stood up, smiling at Cass in what she assumed was it's purposefully unnerving way. She had to admit, this is not what she had expected. In truth, she hadn't really known what to expect, but this wasn't it. She had thought there might be a chance that whatever she summoned might try to imitate her form, but in a more threatening manner. Boils, pustules, sores, and lacerations, things to make her terrified, or perhaps a more perfect version of herself, with the things she considered defects or unattractive about herself washed away.

She was not prepared for a rather normal looking, though perhaps less desheveled and better dressed, version of herself. She was actually so distracted by the pure mundanity of the entity before her that she jumped and screamed when the creature spoke.

"D̷̺̉o̷͍̎ ̵̥̏y̸͔͗o̸̡̾u̵̹͠ ̶̟̀k̵͎͌n̴͙͗ȯ̶̟ẅ̴́͜ ̶͚̀w̵̭͘h̵̻͝y̶͓̌ ̵͎́p̴͍̿e̸̮͛o̵̠͝p̶̩̓l̶̡̃è̵̮ ̵͖̈́ȃ̵̳l̶̹̂w̵̞̋a̸͛ͅy̷͉͒ş̷̇ ̴̪͐s̶̥̉u̶̞̅m̵̻͑m̷̢͒ò̸̤n̵̬̏ ̸̨̈ǘ̸̳ș̷̃ ̵͙͌b̸͙͑y̵̹͆ ̴̣͐ǩ̷͎i̷͖͒l̶̺͛l̴͎͛ị̴͂n̷̞͗g̵̮̍ ̴̌͜a̷̮͠n̶͕̚ ̷̩͝a̶̧͐n̵̽͜i̴̥̽m̶͉̑a̸͓͌l̴̤̓?̶̼̂" It asked, it's voice like a thousand people speaking almost in unison, making it a bit hard to understand.

Cass, after screaming and jumping so hard she almost fell over, took a deep breath and reoriented herself, "I...What?" She asked, between the synchronicity and her being startled, she hadn't processed the question.

The creature repeated itself, this time the effect is lessened a bit, "D̷o̵ ̴y̶o̵u̶ ̶k̶n̵o̷w̸ ̷w̶h̷y̴ ̴p̵e̵o̸p̸l̵e̶ ̷a̸l̶w̵a̷y̶s̶ ̶s̶u̴m̴m̴o̶n̵ ̵u̶s̵ ̵b̵y̴ ̵k̵i̶l̶l̵i̶n̴g̷ ̶a̷n̷ ̴a̵n̴i̷m̸a̸l̸ i̵n̷s̸t̷e̵a̶d̷ ̶o̶f̸ ̶o̵f̶f̴e̵r̸i̸n̴g̵ ̸h̸u̵m̵a̸n̸ ̸b̶l̷o̴o̵d̶?̷" As it asked the question, it lightly stepped to the edge of the circle, lightly touching something unseen with one of Cass's fingers.

Cass blinked, then looked down at her notebook. She flipped through a few pages before looking back at the woman with her face, "Um...No. Why?" Cass asked. This wasn't what she was expecting at all. Something felt...off. Like maybe she'd made a mistake that she wasn't quite aware of. But whatever that may have been, she was sure she was right about the sigils, the protective charms, the binding spells. There was no way the entity could escape.

Almost as if it could read Cass's mind, it grinned, "Connection. A Goat. A Lamb. A fowl of some sort." Now the entity was speaking in Cass's voice, which only served to cause her more discomfort, "They cut it's throat, release it's....delicious life blood, and summon us. Giving us Horns. Hooves. Wings....mmmmflesh." It purred, running it's hands up and down it's, Cass's, body, "Giving us...Connection."

"Connection to here? To Earth?" Cass asked. She was having trouble following. Her brain was being sluggish for some reason. She couldn't seem to put thoughts together in her head, and the entity wasn't making any sense.

"The smarter ones leave the sacrifice dead in the circle. The less smart ones kill but leave the body out of the circle, and dead bodies are so easy to manipulate." The Entity explained, stepping over the edge of the circle, "But it's the Smartest ones that make the same mistake over and over, because you don't want money, or power, or anything like the rest of them. You just want answers." It continued as it walked up to Cass, wrapping an arm around her waist. Cass, meanwhile, felt a pang of fear jolt through her, but she couldn't quite remember why. Something about words and circles. Boundaries? "In the end, it's your pacifism, your mercy that kills you. Had you just beheaded a chicken, or disembowled some livestock, you might have lived to tell others not to seek these answers." It whispered to Cass, "But you've handed me the keys to your body, and oh, I am going to make myself right at home."

"My...blood...." Was all Cass could say. Demon, Devil, whatever it was, it was exerting some kind of anesthetic influence on her, slowing her body and her mind, but she was still able to make the connection. The sigils, the symbols, the protection charms and spells. None of them had worked because Cass had used her own blood. Whatever it was, it had bypassed them all because Cass was outside the barrier.

Not Cass giggled delightedly, "It makes it all the sweeter that you figured out what you did wrong too little too-"BOOM! Not Cass began to say, but was interrupted by the sound of something that had been moving very fast hitting a Warded Steel Wall. Slowly, as if reaching through thick mud, a white-gloved hand slid through the wall, then another, and a boot, then another. Finally, a very red, very unhappy face slid through after it.

"What in the fu-Whoa!" Danny said, his ghost form flickering, half reverting him to human, "What is up with this room? First, it acts like a non-newtonian liquid despite me being intangible, and now this? What's going WHOA!" Danny shouted, just noticing the pair inside with him. His vision flickered between two women and a woman and some kind of vile chimera beast starting to overshadow the woman.

The Not Woman smiles as she looked Danny up and down, "Well, aren't you an interes-OOF!" It started to say before getting interrupted by Danny tackling it, separating it from the woman it was trying to overshadow. "My, you're stronger than you look, Ghostling!" It cackled, "Maybe we can have some fun!" It struck out at Danny, the human fist reinforced by the power of the beast hiding behind it. It wasn't the hardest Danny had ever been hit, but it certainly wasn't a Box Ghost Punch either.

"Look Lady, I don't know what your whole deal is, but around here, we don't just overshadow people for shits and giggles. And we certainly don't let people with your kind of vibes just hang around, either!" Danny said, wrapping the beast in ecto-energy while fending off the Not Woman. Something not dissimilar to a Ghost Portal was still open on the floor, but Danny could feel from just looking at it that whatever was on the otherside was nothing like the Ghost Zone.

"Oh ho! You really are impressive!" The Not Woman growled, a grin on her face, but it was clear that she was struggling with the ecto-shield he'd wrapped around her true body, "But you don't know what you're meddling with, Daniel. Beings such as yourself are easy to influence!" She said, sucking the strange creature into her body, freeing her from the ecto-shield he'd wrapped around it. She launched herself at Danny, and opened her mouth, a vile, black sludge ejecting all over Danny's face.

"How-Eugh! Forget it, I don't even want to know how you know my name! I've had more than enough of you! Time. To. Go. Home!" Danny roared, wrapping the Not Woman in a bear hug as she continued to vomit the black sludge on him. Then he spun towards the portal, and used all of his might to slam her down into it, knocking her off of him and into the portal. Using his portal powers, he grabbed the edges of the tear, and began to force it shut.

As he's closing the portal, black hands reached through and pull him against the half-closed portal, and a screeching voice shrieked, "You and I are not finished, Child of Thanatos! Descendant of Azrael! You will seek me out soon enough!" It screeched, grabbing at Danny as he struggled to close the portal.

Danny eyes briefly flashed red and he growled back, "Enough! I don't know who you are, but go back to where you came from!" He shouted, slamming the portal shut with all his strength. The entity gone, the portal shut, Danny was suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion, his Ghost Form fully reverting back. He fell to his knees, he head swimming as the effects of the room finally began to effect him. Only then did he notice the searing pain from the left half of his face, where the Not Woman had vomited the nasty black sludge on him. Knowing what was coming next, Danny reached into his pocket and pressed the emergency button on his phone before passing out.

Somewhere...

Danny floated in a black void. It wasn't the first time he'd had a dream like this, though he couldn't rightly recall the first time he'd had one. It was actually somewhat of a relief, since most of his dreams had to do with a cavalcade of rogues from his rogues gallery. Or so he'd thought. Something was different this time. This time, it didn't feel like he was alone in the black void. He could hear movement, whispers, feel eyes on him. Something was there with him. He goes to rub his eyes, and feels scale-like skin on his face. Suddenly he's looking at his own face, except half of it isn't his, it's monsterous.

"I TOLD YOU I WASN'T FINISHED WITH YOU, GHOSTLING!" A familiar, shrill voice screeched and cackled. Danny screamed, and sat up from the hospital bed he was in, his heart, ususally much slower than normal, nearly beating out of his chest. He looked around, and quickly recognized the medical floor of the JL Watchtower. His emergency call must have gone through. He sighed with relief, and laid back in the hospital bed. He attempted to relax, but that dream continued to bug him.

Soon enough, a doctor came in, "Well, given your...unique biology, we can't say anything for certain, but now that you've stabilized, you should be fine." The doctor said, looking through some chart, "Though, there is one thing we should probably look into..."

"Hold on." Danny said, holding up a hand, "Stabilized? I passed out because of the funky stuff in the weird room, what do you mean Stabilized?"

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous gesture, "Well, Daniel...when the WatchTower emergency crew found you, you seemed to be having some sort of...episode? You kept changing into a ghost and back to your human form. In fact, you were doing it the entire time you were unconscious, and only stopped shortly before you woke up." The doctor explained, "And then there's..."

"And then there's....what, doc? What's going on." Danny asked, a bit exasperated.

"It might be better for you to see it."

"See. What. Doctor." Danny ground out. The Doctor held out a mirror. At first Danny hesitated, the dream coming back to him briefly, but then he grabbed the mirror from the doctor and held it up and...nothing. He looked completely normal, black hair, blue eyes. Skin was fine, "I look fine."

"Transform, Daniel."

Danny did as he was told, and transformed, then gasped and dropped the mirror, his hands flying to his face. It wasn't the same as the nightmare, exactly, but it wasn't good, either. Starting at about the half-way point across his forehead, the skin of his forehead began to turn black and hard, pulling up until it all came together in an unmistakable black horn coming out from his left temple. The Sclera of his eye partially black, highlighting the neon green even moreso. Whatever that thing was, it had done this to him, whatever this was. And it had been right, that wasn't going to be the last time they saw each other.

[goldrushenthusiast]

The Hunger Games characters have some unique names based on many cultures we've lived in today.

What's your favourite character names from THG world? What's their names meaning?

Bonus questions :

If you're a fanfic writer writing about characters who lives in Panem, what's their name gonna be?

If you're a reader, what's a name you read in a THG fanfic that stuck with you?

Thank you, @curiousnonny

Got to be Sejanus. By far who his name is based off of and who is is just…perfect.

Copied straight from the Wikipedia page, the very first paragraph;

“Lucius Aelius Sejanus (c. 20 BC – 18 October AD 31), commonly known as Sejanus (/sɪˈdʒeɪnəs/),[1] was a Roman soldier, friend, and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Of the Equites class by birth, Sejanus rose to power as prefect of the Praetorian Guard (the Roman imperial bodyguard), of which he was commander from AD 14 until his execution for treason in AD 31.”

Like ok come on now Suzanne at least make me have something more to interpret!!

What’s interesting about him though is the fact that he is district born, and as we see in Katniss, Gale, Primrose, Madge, Mayfair, Carine (Katniss’ mom), Rue, Delly, and any non career district, district kids typically have fairly normal names or names related to their districts (Reaper the farming name from D11, Coral & Mizzen, sea & ship names from d4). While their names still have something to do with their character, they make more sense with district kids and are less obvious (will explain later).

However, with Sejanus, he was born in district two. His parents were from district two. Strabo even can be related to Strabo’s character but that’s for later.

Sure, it can be argued that district two is a career district, but Katniss & Coriolanus’ accounts together hint that this process took decades to be sure of and to really benefit from. District two would be a bit better off after the first revolution, but not much.

I just find it funny it’s so clear with Sejanus what he was always meant to be.

Strabo’s name is a bit more a stretch, but Strabo was an Ancient Greek geographer. He was mostly known for being, and I quote;

“historian whose Geography is the only extant work covering the whole range of peoples and countries known to both Greeks and Romans during the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE)”

He specialized in geography. District two is full of mountains (that Ma loves), and he literally moved his whole family. As I said, a bit of a stretch, but still there’s SOMETHING there.

Even the family’s last name, Plinth, means a heavy base supporting a statue or vase. Every part of Sejanus’ name includes some type of support, and it’s so apparent with just one google search. I love it, and we know so much about his character so it’s easier to make these inferences than it will be with the Ring Twins or Remus Dolittle, yet I will. This answer might have to be two parts lol.

Now onto other characters that we know just a bit better: Tigris, Persephone, Iphigenia, Vipsania, Arachne, and saving last for last, Coriolanus.

Firstly; Tigris! Tigris was the easternmost river out of two that defined Mesopotamia, one of (or maybe the) the earliest civilizations/cultures, dating back to 14,000 BC as the time period when people originally started settling. Because I’m not here to give a history lesson I’m not gonna explain the importance of a river to a civilization, but I went through 6th grade geography and suffice to say she was important as hell.

Tigris was believed to have been created by the God Enki, the Sumerian god of knowledge, crafts, and creation among other things. Tigris is continually proven to be resourceful, creative, and gives very much DIY girlie vibes, which sound a lot like Enki.

As I said before, the Mesopotamian region was one of the first civilizations. Many have theorized that mankind as we know it wouldn’t exist without Mesopotamia, and what would Mesopotamia not exist without? Tigris.

Tigris provided opportunities for the Mesopotamian region (Coriolanus) to grow, get stronger, become innovative, and provided for them. If that doesn’t scream Tigris I don’t know what does.

Now, Persephone! My favorite capital names are the ones from Greek mythology (I am a Percy Jackson fan page) or ancient mythology, because it’s less work to find connecting factors. Honestly I had no clue who Sejanus was, I just googled his name, and my mom is a Shakespeare fan which is how I know Coriolanus.

Anywho, for y’all who are normal, Persephone was the daughter of the farming/harvest goddess who was kidnapped by the death god. All versions of this myth agree on that. Some say that it was part of a deal with Zeus that Hades (the death god) knew about, but Demeter (farming/harvest goddess) didn’t. Of course these are definitely a very simple and quick way to describe Hades & Demeter, but it gets my point across.

The funny thing is, we don’t know much about Persephone in canon. I don’t know if Suzanne did this on purpose like she clearly did with Sejanus, but I find it interesting that whenever Persephone Price is brought up, so is cannibalism.

See, Nero Price, Persephone dad and Coriolanus was the main example that Coriolanus used to show how bad things were during the war. Coriolanus and Tigris saw him one snowy evening sawing off the leg of a maid with a large knife, wrapping it in the skirt from her waist, and going on his way. It makes Coriolanus question if he could ever be seen as edible, which is kinda funny to me lowkey, but the whole scene is on page 31-32.

Persephone. She is literally torn between the harvest (farmers food & stuff) and the underworld, the realm of the dead. Part of her myth is she stays there for 3 months and in the realm of the living for the other 9 because she ATE 3,pomegranate seeds. She ate something she wasn’t supposed to. Let me also mention, in different versions of the myth she wanted to leave or didn’t. When Festus and Persephone are getting close, Coriolanus questions if Persephone ever knew what was on her plate.

Now Iphigenia!! If y’all didn’t remember Persephone, I doubt yall will remember Iphigenia, as I only did combing the list of names Coriolanus had for interesting ones and finding her. She’s a very minor character- we don’t know much about her hobbies or likes and dislikes or her personality. But I’ll get to TBOSAS Iphigenia in a second.

I’m sure of y’all at least know the Trojan war. If anyone studied it specifically, you probably know Agamemnon. Here’s the paragraph explaining the story from Wikipedia;

“In the story, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis on his way to the Trojan War by hunting and killing one of Artemis' sacred stags. She retaliates by preventing the Greek troops from reaching Troy unless Agamemnon kills his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, at Aulis as a human sacrifice. In some versions, Iphigenia dies at Aulis, and in others, Artemis rescues her.”

You’re probably wondering, “wow, what could such a minor character have to do with that tale?”

When I say we get very little from her, I mean it. I don’t mean we get very little from her in the same way as I do when talking about Festus, or any other classmates. We know she doesn’t know if district 5 girl’s (her tribute’s) name is Sol or Sal (it’s Sol).

There’s one piece of information on her that stands out though. I’m going to paraphrase Coriolanus on page 252 when I say this- “her father oversaw food stuff in Panem, but she always looked almost malnourished. Clemensia had once said it was the only revenge she could take on her father but didn’t give any other details,”

boy oh boy. Because of this one, small little paragraph, Iphigenia has always interested me. When Clemensia doesn’t give any other details, she means it. NO details appear afterwards and Iphigenia is maybe mentioned once ever again. Trust me, I know. Every time I reread TBOSAS I look for different things, which is part of the reason I reread it sm.

We never know why Iphigenia takes revenge. We never know anything about her relationship with her father. There are so many possibilities (abuse, Iphigenia the rebel, etc), and considering her namesake’s issues with her father it’s just crazy the amount of detail Suzanne put into such a minor character.

Next, Vipsania- there’s actually not much I can say about her, I just thought it was a funny coincidence this is what came up when I googled her;

“Vipsania Agrippina (/ˌæɡrəˈpaɪnə, -ˈpiː-/; 36 BC – 20 AD) was the first wife of the Emperor Tiberius.”

Two things- first, recognize what emperor she married? Yep! Tiberius- aka the emperor Sejanus was a friend and confident of. I think Suzanne might’ve gone down a Tiberius rabbit hole, because her last is familiar as well- Professor Agrippina. She was the gym teacher, and Sejanus’ mentor. This little circle of names and relations is just funny to me is all, although there’s not much on VA in history or much to say about Vipsania.

Arachne!!! Gosh I love her. Well, I love how plain the connection is between her character in TBOSAS and her character in mythology. Really she’s pretty disrespectful and a jerk in both lol.

In Greek mythology, Arachne is a woman-turned spider, the first spider. Arachne believed she could win a weaving competition against Athena, goddess of crafts, because of how beautiful her work was and how much everyone complimented her.

Athena, hearing this hubris, disguised herself as an old woman and told Arachne not to boast like that. Arachne then challenged Athena, and told the old woman the only reason Athena hadn’t gone against her herself was she was too scared.

Of course Athena then revealed herself, and they battled. Athena’s weaver thing showed the Greek gods doing good stuff, Arachne’s showed the gods in their most unfavorable aspects. Due to this disrespect, and in some versions because it was better (tho I personally don’t believe that), Athena turned Arachne into a spider so she could weave forever.

The pride?? The taunting until it becomes serious?? The permanent change?? The rage that prompted the act?? Arachne as Arachne is the most perfect name on here, because who else would she be?? Another great one of Suzanne’s names. Genius.

Before we get to the last name, Coriolanus himself, let me point out I have no district people on here. Let this show just how interesting Strabo & Sejanus’ names are.

Finally!! The last one!! Coriolanus.

Coriolanus is actually quite disappointing compared to Sejanus or Arachne, but there’s still something here so I’m going to paste the Wikipedia on Coriolanus, the man Shakespeare based his play after & what happened in the play.

“Coriolanus is the name given to a Roman general after his military feats against the Volscians at Corioli. Following his success he seeks to be consul, but his disdain for the plebeians and the mutual hostility of the tribunes lead to his banishment from Rome. In exile, he presents himself to the Volscians, then leads them against Rome. After he relents and agrees to a peace with Rome, he is killed by his previous Volscian allies”

Now, unlike many of these other characters, Coriolanus’ relationship to his namesake mirrors his relationship to another character (Lucy Gray) more than his personality.

Coriolanus wants to be with Lucy Gray, but eventually due to his hatred of the districts and love of the capital, he ends up turning against her. He starts out wanting to help her, yet his own disgust only ends up hurting him.

Coriolanus is eventually killed by his former allies, what he’s created. That’s what happens in the original hunger games series. When Coin does the faked bomb drop, everyone he worked so hard to make love him turn against him quickly. He revolutionized the capital and they turned against him.

He almost changed his own feelings about district people and it ended up almost taking his life and career.

Help I forgot there was another part to the question 😭. Anywho if I was gonna write some, I’d probably just use random names or if I had a really good and accurate name (or totally opposite name) from mythology or a poem or something I’d use that and make it correspond to the character.

This is embarrassing, but a lot of the names from crimson rivers, a hunger games/marauders au stuck with me! Nothing specific, but anything that wasn’t a marauders character always made me go “huh! I like that!”

In conclusion though, Suzanne is a genius. As I said, I might have to reblog this later with more names if I ever think of any. This is probably my most researched answer, due to all the mythology and Wikipedia searches I had to do, so sorry that it took longer! Usually I just remember things and explain them lol.

Thank you for the question @curiousnonny, and as always, feel free to debate in the comments/reblogs but please don’t argue. I always enjoy answering and dissecting questions, so anyone feel free to ask!

[thechekhov]

So I just recently got caught up on WD!Steven and that little rant that Pearl went on about humans speaking sumerian and using animate/inanimate gender classes to refer to gems (EE Bomb: Friday) and I was wondering if you had resources where I could read more about that? It seems super interesting.

Hey! So I'm assuming you mean this comic.

In terms of resources, I'm afraid all I've got for you is basic work-ups on Sumerian as a language. I believe at this point it's pretty much agreed that Sumerian had two grammatical genders - human and other. (source 1)

I extrapolated a lot, for the sake of the comic because I am admittedly not well versed in ancient Sumerian grammar, but it felt fun to me to consider the idea that ancient humans initially saw gems as something so OTHER that they did not even place them in the same category as human-classified nouns.

It should be noted, of course, that simplifying Sumerian nouns into simply animate and in-animate is not altogether accurate, as per this paragraph from Daniel A. Foxvog's “Introduction to Sumerian Grammar” (Source 2)

Sumerian features a kind of grammatical gender which has nothing to do with the natural gender categories masculine vs. feminine. Instead, nouns are viewed as either personal, referring to individual human beings, whether singular or plural, or impersonal, usually referring to persons viewed as a group (collectives), animals, places, or things. Some grammars use the linguistic terminology "animate" vs. "inanimate," which can be misleading, since the impersonal category is used not only for lifeless objects, but also for animals, groups of persons, and "objectified" individual persons referred to scornfully or dismissively such as slaves – all of which are certainly animate, living things. (*emphasis mine)

My initial thought was admittedly just based on the gems' inhumanity, but another interpretation could be made that the gems, which function as a mass unit and often come in near-identical groups of the same gem, were thus interpreted by the Sumerians as a collective rather than another individual.

Aside from that, the rest is just me speculating. If you're asking for sources from the canon text (original SU) then I'm afraid I've got nothing - that whole comic was just speculative! I made it all up.

As for genders in grammar - if you're asking this as a general curiosity, I do want to mention that Sumerian isn't particularly WEIRD for this. Grammatical gender is not the same thing as cultural and social gender, and is a whole other beast of its own. Many non-Western-European languages classify what we call 'genders' in grammar by things that have very little to do with masculine and feminine traits. You can read about it more on the Grammatical Gender wikipedia page!

Cheers!

Sources Sited:

http://www.eltereader.hu/en/kiadvanyok/english-gabor-zolyomi-an-introduction-to-the-grammar-of-sumerian (Lesson 1, Page 15, page 167)

2. https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/articles/cdlp/2.0.pdf (Page 22)

[tanadrin]

@snazzyjazzsounds

it’s weird how for much of human history “democracy” was just like. technologically unfeasible within a medium sized state.

on the one hand i’m a big fan of, like, material conditions as an explanatory factor for social and political structures. on the other, i’m wary of letting the dicks of history off for their dickishness, as if it was impossible to know or nobody ever suggested that war and slavery and exploitation were bad, because, y’know, they did.

i think the paucity of something we might call democracies in the ancient world is due to several factors:

1) states originating as wealth-extraction machines. the earliest states seem to have approximately in common the monopolization of a valuable resource, as in hydraulic despotism, and a degree of keeping people in place by force, so elites can glean the excess of farmers and live without having to do food production themselves. sometimes this supports things people consider to be socially valuable activities, like the upkeep of temples, and sometimes not. but if you want to live in an egalitarian society, even one with villages and farming and whatnot, your best option is the extremely vast territory outside the control of organized states, which at least back in the beginning of Sumerian civilization is, like, most of the Earth. States compete over resources and optimize for better resource extraction, and more sophisticated hierarchies and ideologies that enable them to control larger territories, but the goal of “roughly egalitarian society without a ton of coercion” is exclusive with the goal of “live within the boundaries of a state.”

and i think a lot of ancient commentators noticed this; this is why the Tao Te Ching seems so down on the whole idea of statecraft to begin with, and why it paints the picture of an ideal society being one where the people of one state can hear the dogs barking in the next state over, but have never met those people face to face in their lives. because it was written in a period of fierce inter-state competition, and it did not escape the authors’ notice that states were mostly a bad deal for the people who lived under them.

(as we might also notice of the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece, even “democratic” forms of government were ways of brokering power-sharing between elites; most people living in ancient democracies had no ability to participate in their political systems.)

2) infrastructure is expensive, communication is hard. as you note, how the fuck do you coordinate a medium-sized democracy when it takes days to get a message from one end of your state to the other? on the one hand, yes, very big states did exist in this period, like persia. as did states with comparatively well developed apparatuses, like rome. but a lot of how big states operated historically was delegating to local elites--you tax the big men in the province you just conquered, and trust them to figure out how to get the most money out of their peasants. our modern idea of democracy is in many ways predicated on our modern idea of a state, which is somewhat different an animal than an axial-age kingdom!

and a big part of why this is so difficult i feel like has to be linked to the small size of towns, which is linked to the fact that most of the population had to be farming, because the amount of extractable surplus from the rural population was small.

for centuries--longer than the industrial revolution itself, maybe since the late middle ages--my sense is that the yield per farmer has been gradually increasing, which in addition to the population growth enabled since the industrial revolution itself has really vastly increased the amount of time we can spend on things other than producing food. and i suspect that that means states have a lot bigger pool of manpower available to them to assist in their administration, and gives them the capacity to do things like be run for the benefit of a larger subset of their population--and in turn for the population to demand that they be run that way.

3) i suspect lots of ancient societies were run in ways we would approve of, i.e., comparatively egalitarian, not terribly exploitative. i also suspect these societies didn’t look much like (their neighboring) states. you’re not building pyramids for the pharoah if you don’t have pharoahs after all. your court officials are not writing histories of your dynasty if you have no court and no dynasts. so these societies, along with very many others, leave less of a historical impression.

but i don’t want to overly romanticize the past; lots of societies that left no lasting historical record also probably sucked ass. slavery is observed even among hunter gatherers. humans can be real dicks, and we have, as terry pratchett noted, a really unfortunate tendency to bend at the knees.

[aronarchy]

Anthropologists and philosophers have asked whether agriculture could have been the tipping point in the power balance between men and women. Agriculture needs a lot of physical strength. The dawn of farming was also when humans started to keep property such as cattle. As this theory goes, social elites emerged as some people built up more property than others, driving men to want to make sure their wealth would pass onto their legitimate children. So, they began to restrict women’s sexual freedom.

The problem with this is that women have always done agricultural work. In ancient Greek and Roman literature, for example, there are depictions of women reaping corn and stories of young women working as shepherds. United Nations data shows that, even today, women comprise almost half the world’s agricultural workforce and are nearly half of the world’s small-scale livestock managers in low-income countries. Working-class women and enslaved women across the world have always done heavy manual labour.

More importantly for the story of patriarchy, there was plant and animal domestication for a long time before the historical record shows obvious evidence of oppression based on gender. “The old idea that as soon as you get farming, you get property, and therefore you get control of women as property,” explains Hodder, “is wrong, clearly wrong.” The timelines don’t match up.

The first clear signs of women being treated categorically differently from men appear much later, in the first states in ancient Mesopotamia, the historical region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Around 5,000 years ago, administrative tablets from the Sumerian city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia show those in charge taking great pains to draw up detailed lists of population and resources.

“Person power is the key to power in general,” explains political scientist and anthropologist James Scott at Yale University, whose research has focused on early agrarian states. The elites in these early societies needed people to be available to produce a surplus of resources for them, and to be available to defend the state—even to give up their lives, if needed, in times of war. Maintaining population levels put an inevitable pressure on families. Over time, young women were expected to focus on having more and more babies, especially sons who would grow up to fight.

The most important thing for the state was that everybody played their part according to how they had been categorised: male or female. Individual talents, needs, or desires didn’t matter. A young man who didn’t want to go to war might be mocked as a failure; a young woman who didn’t want to have children or wasn’t motherly could be condemned as unnatural.

As documented by the American historian Gerda Lerner, written records from that time show women gradually disappearing from the public world of work and leadership, and being pushed into the domestic shadows to focus on motherhood and domestic labour. This combined with the practice of patrilocal marriage, in which daughters are expected to leave their childhood homes to live with their husbands’ families, marginalised women and made them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse in their own homes. Over time, marriage turned into a rigid legal institution that treated women as property of their husbands, as were children and slaves.

Rather than beginning in the family, then, history points instead to patriarchy beginning with those in power in the first states. Demands from the top filtered down into the family, forcing ruptures in the most basic human relationships, even those between parents and their children. It sowed distrust between those whom people might otherwise turn to for love and support. No longer were people living for themselves and those closest to them. Now, they were living in the interests of the patriarchal state.

This is interesting.

[lady-of-heaven]

How to Read Sumerian Cuneiform

Silim!

It is relatively difficult to translate between Sumerian and English in an exact, 1:1 way, so it requires a degree of creativity and contextual comprehension that AI and computer programmes have yet to achieve. I would like to demonstrate the process by which Sumerian can be translated into modern English in a way that still sounds coherent to a native English speaker. 

I will use a line from one of my recent posts as an example. First, the cuneiform:

𒀉𒌫 𒈾𒉘𒉣𒈨𒋳𒍫𒉉𒉉 𒈾𒉘 𒊮𒋤𒀀𒁀 𒈾𒆪

This can be broken down into modern transliterated sign names

A2.UR2 NA.AG2.[NUN.ME.TAG].ZU5.[NE x A].[NE x A] NA.AG2 ŠA3.SUD.A.BA NA.KU

NA.AG2 is the emesal version of NAM (𒉆)

[NUN.ME.TAG] is how the word GAŠAM is written. Together, these signs form the word naŋgašam, which means “craftsmanship” (being the abstracted version of gašam, which means “expert, craftsman”)

ZU5.[NE x A].[NE x A] can be read as zu.ne.ne, which is the 2nd person plural possessive suffix. Altogether, this gives us naŋgašamzunene, which means “Your craftsmanship.”

NA.AG2, as with NAM, can also mean fate, destiny, determined order, will, testament, or in this case, concern. 

ŠA3.SUD is how the word šagsug is spelt, which means “empty.”

A.BA is a locative addition that means “back” or “behind.”

A2.UR2…KU can be read a’ur dab, which means “to hide”

NA before 'dab' acts as a negator, making it “to not hide” or “not to hide,” or in this case as an imperative, “do not hide.” This gives us literally: “Your craftsmanship concern empty behind do not hide.”

We can rearrange this into English word order and get: “Do not hide your craftmanship behind empty concern.”

This is where the creativity and context come in. Craftsmanship can be interpreted as actions, deeds, or works. Empty concern can be understood as meaningless sentiment or a dishonest façade or performance. 

This would make it: “Do not hide your actions behind meaningless sentiment.”

Or: “Do not hide your deeds behind a dishonest façade.”

All of this can be more easily communicated in English by simply saying “Practice what you preach.”

If you would like to dive in to this more, here are some links to some very good resources I’ve found online that try to reconstruct Sumerian:

Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary:

http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/epsd2/index.html

Šašková Cuneiform Sign List:

Sumerian Grammar

I am also working on compiling all of this information into a more approachable format with the hope of laying the foundation for resurrecting the Sumerian language in the 21st Century. 

I will also be posting an English translation of my earlier post eventually, but I want to see if anyone takes a stab at translating it on their own first. If you think you've got it, feel free to message me your translation!

©️𒀭𒀹𒁯 2024

[missanthropicprinciple]

Do you know where the pentacle symbol came from? I'm basically starting from the ground up in terms of not trying to appropriate anything. (Please feel free to ignore this if you don't have time.)

I'm happy to shed light on this as best I can! It's a huge topic in itself and it's not something I'm an expert on, but I will do my best. It depends on what pentacle it is. I wouldn't worry about cultural appropriation too much with this one. However, six-sided pentacles are of Hebrew origin, like the Key of Solomon. Five-sided pentacles are pentagrams. Pentagrams are widely used by Wicans, mainly as a result of them being featured on the Minor arcana of most tarot cards, particularly the Pamela Colman Smith deck, since 1909.

Five-sided pentagrams date back to 3500 BCE, used by Sumerians and later, Greeks. Inverted pentagrams are used with Satanism. Generally, pentagrams can be used for whatever you want them to be used for, as they are still used as talismans and amulets, and in grimoires. Here's another good resource on pentagrams. I hope that helps!

[thebindingofpillo]

Lilith

Some of you are about to get real mad at me.

While Lilith is traditionally considered Adam’s first wife, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, her status as mother of all demons is also false because Lilith is not a demon at all, she’s a monster. Or at least she was, before making a deal with Satan, we will explain everything in due time. I wanted to make a separate post about the differences between demons and monsters, but there’s not much to say about them, so I’ll condense everything here.

Monster = mortal, weaker than demons (but still stronger than a human though), their magic is more specialised and requires physical things like blood ad flesh (usually human blood and flesh) to work. Unlike demons, who are naturally evil, monsters can be more morally grey, and while there’s a lot of them who eat and kill humans for whatever reason, friendly monsters do exist.They are born, not created, and are native to Earth. Monsters were incredibly common on Earth in the ancient times, but were progressively driven out of their habitats by humans, which brought most of them to extinction. Nowadays monsters are very few, tend to stick to their own communities or blend into human society and fly under the radar. This is what Lilith does, she’s a preschool teacher and lives a quiet life with her Incubus. Demon = immortal, have access to more magical powers (and brimstone!) and are born in hell, which is on a different plane of existence. They can still visit Earth, but it takes time and energy. And also they’re all evil. Sorry.

Lilith is a Hebrew word, that might derive from the Akkadian Lilitu, which might derive from the Sumerian Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke (or just lil). All of these words describe a type of female monster that lives at night and preys on men (If you’re a nerd like me, here’s the handy video that started this whole thing lmao). The noun (yes, noun) “lilith” is used exactly once in the Bible (Isaiah 34:14) and is translated as “lamia” in the Greek version of Symmachus (dated around 200 c.e.) and the Latin Vulgata, which is another type of female monster that feeds on children and kills men after seducing them. Everything fits. King James’ bible translates lilith as “screeching owl” so I decided to co-opt that for her design, and give her some feathers.

And now for the actual lore, the preamble is done I swear.

Note: I’m gonna use “lamia” when talking about the creature, and “Lilith” when talking about the character What are lamias (in my AU) Lamias are a type of female monster whose powers revolve around illusions and transformation. Their normal state is usually of half-bird women with pronounced snake features (like Lilith in her normal form), but they can turn into full snake ladies if they need to (usually to protect their territory, or fight off other lamias). Doing so requires a lot of energy, and is a difficult form to maintain, even for the oldest, most powerful ones. Lamias can also turn into beautiful women to better attract men, their main source of food. They are also known to feed on human children, who are usually kidnapped from their homes and eaten whole. Lamias can feed on women and cattle too, but this is quite uncommon and usually only done in dire situations, like after a war. They are all females. Male lamias do not exist. This is another reason why they need men: they cannot reproduce by themselves.

Lamias usually live in family groups, composed by a matriarch and her (often many) daughters and her granddaughters. Once the matriarch dies, the eldest daughter takes her place, and so on and so forth. These groups can get quite large! So much so that sometimes, the oldest daughters might leave their mother to create their own pack somewhere else (usually due to lack of food and resources).While lamias prefer forest terrain and hotter climates, any place with a lot of hiding spots and a decent dry season is enough for them. It’s not uncommon to find them chilling amongst abandoned buildings, or in the mountains, in caves etc. they’re very adaptable, and while their wings might seem small, they’re still able to travel long distances to find a perfect place for them. Note: their wings are usually only accessible in full snake form.

Lamia culture is usually passed down orally from mother to daughter. They worship the Earth as the First Mother, from which every creature came, and to which every creature will return after death. Their rituals usually revolve around fertility, love, abundance of preys etc. I still don’t know if they believe in the afterlife, but they probably believe that once dead, they return to the womb of the First Mother, where they can rest in eternal bliss and be loved forever. With deforestation, poaching and human being less afraid of monsters in general, lamia population has greatly decreased, and with them being mortal, there could be a very concrete possibility that Lilith is the last lamia alive.

Lilith time for real this time Lilith is a sweetheart. A big softie and a hopeless romantic, perfectly content in her quiet life of preschool teacher. She likes cheesy romcoms, long walks and hot chocolate, but it wasn’t always that way for her. Born a little after the birth of the Roman Empire (around… 40/45 AD, she’s the youngest of the immortals), Lilith used to live in a secluded forest with her mother and sisters (and her daughters too, even if she didn’t have that many yet), occasionally luring men in, eating human flesh and generally having a good time. Think… Libia. Around there. I don’t know. Somewhere with both trees and Roman occupation, I’m not gonna pour more hours into this character PLEASE I’m doing all of this for free. Anyway, life was good for her and her family, until one day Cain passed through that forest, looking for a new place to live after he was exiled for the umpteenth time. Lilith immediately noticed the man and tried to entice him, but Cain (who had at least a couple of millennia more of experience) was not having it. He just wanted to leave the forest behind and find a new home, he didn’t have time to entertain a lamia, so he booked it out of there as soon as he could. Unfortunately, Lilith took that as a challenge and started chasing after him, hoping to tire him out enough to pounce him and put an end to his existence. The chase lasted two whole weeks by the way, but at that point Lilith was too stubborn to let it go. Cain was smart enough to always stop in densely populated areas as to lose his scent and get some extra protection (lamias and monster in general were already close to extinction at the time, and usually steered clear of human cities) but even with the best precautions, Lilith managed to corner him and finally get to him, but she was also exhausted after two weeks of constant chase, and could only knock him down and give him a couple of nasty bites. Cain still has the scars to this day. Sadly, Lilith was not aware of the other, worse part of Cain’s curse, so when she hurt him, her destiny took a turn for the worst. The man managed to wiggle free of her grasp, and while Lilith would have gladly chased after him some more, she realised she had been away from home for way too long, so turned back, only to find her beloved forest and family gone forever. In the weeks she was away, a Roman troop had levelled the forest, cutting down all the trees, killing her mother and sisters and selling her youngest daughters into slavery. She was desperate, and vowed to take revenge on the whole humankind, and that’s when things got even worse! Hearing her cries and pleads for revenge, Satan himself, king of hell, decided to pay her a visit. He offered her eternal life, a chance at taking back what was hers, and in return she would become his, in body and soul, and help him grow his army even further (which is a very fancy way of saying Lilith would become his wife, give him children, and he could also do whatever he wanted to her). Now, Lilith would have never accepted such a rotten deal, but she was incredibly desperate and in a very vulnerable position, and Satan knew that. He played her and used her trauma as an excuse to grow closer to her, promising her he would help her take revenge on the people who wronged her, and would even help her save some of her family, if there was anything to be saved.

Anyway, Lilith accepted the deal, and thus became immortal. Her new home was in Hell, ruling at Satan’s side… only he didn’t really want her ruling anything at all. He was a terrible husband, let me tell you. Once he secured the deal, Lilith was just another unfortunate soul to exploit, so he relegated her somewhere in Hell, and only came to visit once in a while, to check in on her and maybe send her on some errands. Pretty soon, Lilith became restless, and started pushing for her husband to hold up his end of the deal, only Satan wasn’t really planning to. In a fit of rage, he gouged out her eyes, and left her helpless and without sight. Luckily Lilith was immortal now, and losing her eyes didn’t kill her. She could even put them back in again, if Satan let her, but he usually kept her eyes hidden on him all the time, in a little satchel around his neck, only letting her have her sight back if he needed Lilith to run some errands for him. Satan kept her blind to control her better. After enough time, Lilith decided that a life of servitude to a man she didn’t even love wasn’t cutting it, so she walked out of Hell. She was strong, she could handle being blind, and even managed to snatch one of Satan’s little minions on the way out, her trusted Incubus. It was a meagre victory, but at least now she was free, and the Incubus useful enough. Sadly, there wasn’t much she could do about her revenge now. The Roman Empire had fallen while she was in hell, and the men who killed her family were already long dead and forgotten. She managed to meet Cain again after a while, in a different place, as different people, and the two actually became friends. This friendship would only grow stronger over the centuries, Lilith being one of the very few people Cain could be fully open, and while Cain could be considered the source of Lilith’s misery, she was quite understanding of the nature of his curse, and while it took some time, she came to understand that it wasn’t his fault.

Where is Lilith now. As said before, Lilith is now enjoying a quiet life. She works as a preschool teacher (children have always been her passion). She lives in the same city as the majority of the rest of the cast (her and Maggy are coworkers too!) and maintains a close friendship with Cain. Her magic has greatly diminished over the millennia because she firmly refuses to consume human flesh. She doesn’t really see the point in it anymore, since her whole family is gone and monsters are incredibly few. What little of her magic remains, she uses to keep a human form during the day, so she can work and run errands without much trouble. She could theoretically return to her full powers (and even transform fully into a lamia) with some generous blood donations, but it’s not really something she has any desire to do. Over the years she’s ha many relationships, some even quite serious, but tried her best not to have children. She doesn’t know if her immortality would be transferred to her daughters and doesn’t want to run the risk of seeing her children die. Incubus is still with her after all these years, and while she can’t exactly take him out like a normal pet, he can still follow her everywhere by hiding in her poofy hair. He loves it.

Other stuff that I couldn’t fit anywhere else

Lilith is not her real name! That’s just another name for her species, like calling someone “human”. Her real name is unpronounceable by a human mouth, and with lamias being basically extinct, she’s made her peace with the fact nobody will ever call her that again. While “Lilith” is not an ideal name (she prefers going by “Lily”) it’s still okay.

Can sustain herself with human food too! Just prefers her meat extra rare. This is how she maintains that little magic she needs to turn human.

Incubus is sentient, but to a lesser degree. He’s like a very intelligent animal (his ref is coming eventually I didn’t have time for it UGH)

I hope you enjoy her! I did not proofread anything of this, just take it.

[official-linguistics-post]

how best to convince someone to learn sumerian instead of japanese

doesn't it sound exciting to always have a dearth of pedagogical resources?? you'll always be on your toes!

[sumerianlanguage]

Do you take donations? Also, any chance another YouTube video will ever be released?

Hello, and what excellent book choices! I have thoroughly worn my beloved copies of Edzard & Halloran - I've only read Foxvog digitally but appreciate how approachable his text is.

Currently, the only way I've set up to support me & the project financially is to subscribe on Twitch. I've thought about setting up a Kofi or Patreon or another donation platform. Would that be of interest to y'all? You can let me know in the replies, or fill out this survey which I use to decide what to prioritize on here.

Also, I'm (perpetually) working on my setup for filming more videos. I do have plans for a comeback video, a compilation of my best Sumerian moments on Twitch, and possibly a rescript/reshoot of some of my earlier videos, but I've yet to actually do any filming. If there's a particular kind of video you'd like me to prioritize, my survey is the best way to let me know. Stay tuned!

[sag-dab-sar]

Namma/Nammu

𒀭𒇉

Sumerian Goddess, primarily from the city of Eridu

Mother of the Gods. Creator of Mankind, specifically in Eridu, elsewhere this role went to Nintur or Ninmah

—How to use internet archive link

🔵 Information

From Gods Demons & Symbols by Black [Internet Archive Link]

"Nammu was a goddess who was considered, in some traditions, to have given birth to An (heaven) and Ki (earth) and to many more of the more ancient gods. Especially she was regarded as the mother of Enki. She came to be thought of as one of the mother goddesses. Her name is written with the same sign as engur, a synonym of abzu, and it is probable that she was originally a personification of the subterranean ocean." [p134]

Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology by Leick [Internet Archive Link]

Her name is usually written with the sign engur which was also used to write Apsu. In ancient times she personified the Apsu as the source of water and hence fertility in lower Mesopotamia. She may well have been worshipped in Eridu before Enki, who took over most of her prerogatives and functions. Significantly he was called the son of Nammu. In spite of her decline following the superiority of Enki, during the Neo-Sumerian period, at least at Ur, she was still considered important enough to have statues commissioned in her honour and she also features in the name of the famous king Ur-nammu. In mythology, Nammu appears as the primeval Mother-goddess in Enki and Ninmah who 'has given birth to the great gods'. She has the idea of creating mankind as a help for the gods and it is she who goes to wake her son Enki, asleep in the Apsu, that he may set the process going. [p 124]

Handbook of Gods & Goddess of the Ancient Near East [Google Books Link]:

"Namma: Sumerian goddess of the primeval, subterranean ocean. In the lexical series Diri the name has a syllabic rendering na-am-ma. In some traditions she was the mother of the sky god An, the earth goddess Ki, and a number of other deities. Enki/ Ea, the god of freshwater and wisdom, was considered her son. In the myth of "Enki and Nin-mah," when the other deities began complaining about how hard they had to work, it was Namma who awakened Enki from his sleep to urge him to create more creatures to take on the work of the gods. However, he delegated the task to Namma, who then received the credit for creating human beings. There was a shrine to the goddess in Marduk's great temple at Babylon, and at least one other of her sanctuaries is known"[p222]

Excerpt from Oracc [Link]:

"Very little is known about Namma, who belongs to the oldest generation of Mesopotamian deities and is associated with the pantheon of Eridu. She is mainly known for her role in the cosmogony of early Mesopotamia and her importance in magic, which is restricted to texts written in Sumerian [...]. According to the god list An-Anum, tablet I line 28 [...], Namma bears the title "mother who gave birth to the heavens and the earth. Because this goddess's name is written with sign for "(cosmic) subterranean waters" (Sumerian: engur) Wiggermann [..] has called her the "Cosmic Ocean. [...] In the Sumerian poem of Enki and Ninmah (ETCSL 1.1.2, line 17 link) Namma is called the "original mother who gave birth to the gods of the universe", again according her primary status among all the gods and describing her role in Mesopotamian cosmogony"

Section from Enki & Ninmah (ETCSL 1.1.2) [Link]

*Bolded part that explains her mother of Gods role, and also her creating man (different deities depending on myth)

*How deity, people, and place names are spelled is wildly inaccurate in the ETCSL, they don't even follow their own rules. But I still did not change the quote

"The gods said, weeping: "He is the cause of the lamenting!" Namma, the primeval mother who gave birth to the senior gods, took the tears of the gods to the one who lay sleeping, to the one who did not wake up from his bed, to her son: "Are you really lying there asleep, and ...... not awake? The gods, your creatures, are smashing their ....... My son, wake up from your bed! Please apply the skill deriving from your wisdom and create a substitute for the gods so that they can be freed from their toil!" At the word of his mother Namma, Enki rose up from his bed. In Hal-an-kug, his room for pondering, he slapped his thigh in annoyance. The wise and intelligent one, the prudent, ...... of skills, the fashioner of the design of everything brought to life birth-goddesses. Enki reached out his arm over them and turned his attention to them. And after Enki, the fashioner of designs by himself, had pondered the matter, he said to his mother Namma: "My mother, the creature you planned will really come into existence. Impose on him the work of carrying baskets. You should knead clay from the top of the abzu; the birth-goddesses will nip off the clay and you shall bring the form into existence. Let Ninmah act as your assistant; and let Ninimma, Cu-zi-ana, Ninmada, Ninbarag, Ninmug, ...... and Ninguna stand by as you give birth. My mother, after you have decreed his fate, let Ninmah impose on him the work of carrying baskets."

The Harps That Once by Jacobsen [Google Books Link]

"Namma, Enki's mother, was probably seen as the power in the riverbed which, empty or nearly empty in summer, gives birth to the fresh waters, to Enki, in the spring flood. This interpretation gains a measure of support from the fact that the cuneiform sign with which her name was written served also, if supplemented with the sign for "water," to write the word for "river." Etymologically the name Namma goes back to Nin-imma (nin-immaran-amma nama›namma) "lady female genitals," a personification of the numinous power to shape, mature, and give birth to the child, and it is as birth goddess generally, rather than as goddess of the riverbed, that the text here characterizes her. That latter aspect she may conceivably have acquired because the mythopoeic imagination conceived of the great gash in the earth which the dry riverbed presents as the genitals of Mother Earth herself, and the prototype of all female parts everywhere. Namma's role as birth goddess generally and as the one who gave birth to man probably represents a local tradition, perhaps at home in Eridu. Elsewhere it is the goddess Nintur, or Ninmah as she is called in this composition," [p 158]

From Wiggermann "Nammu" [PDF Link]

*He disagrees with Jacobsen on Nin-imma, but Wiggmann addresses many other authors both agreeing and disagreeing but its too densely written for me to even remotely understand the back & forth between the Assyriologists.

"Nammu is an ancient goddess of Eridu, who plays a part in the local (and early national) mythology as creatrix/mother goddess and as supporter of Enki in Magic. Most references relate to either of these two roles [...] Only her epithet "(^munus)agrig-zi-é-kur-(ra-)ke", "true housekeeper of Ekur" points outside Eridu to the pantheon of Nippur, but it may be due to a confusion with Nin-imma, Enlil's scholar and scribe." [p 137 Column 2]

🔵 Titles / Epithets

*I did not use š, ḫ, or ĝ when typing these for ease of reading. See Sisterofiris' posts on transliterations [link] & normalizations [link]. Page numbers correspond to Wiggermann's Nammu PDF, linked above.

🔹Amaùtuanki — "Mother who gave birth to Heaven and Earth" (p137 column 2)

🔹Ama-palil-ù-tu-dingir-shár-shárra-ke-ne — "Mother, who gave birth to all the gods" [I kept dashes so it can be read] (p138 column 1)

🔹Amarhusheke — "Compassionate Mother" (p138 column 2)

🔹Amagal — "Great Mother" (p138 column 2)

🔹Agrigziékurrake — "True housekeeper of Ekur" (p137 column 2)

🔹Amadingirdingira | Modern— [Link]

"Mother of (the) Gods" in Sumerian

𒂼 — Mother, ama [Link]

𒀭𒀭— Many Gods, dingirdingir [Link]

𒀝 - "of" genetive case suffix, .a(k) [Link]

🔵 Iconography

She has no known iconography that has been found yet according to Oracc.

I made these tonight on my phone. Left has an ocean as its background to represent the "Cosmic Sea" aspect.

Its the Mesopotamian horned cap/crown of divinity then her name 𒀭 (diĝir) and 𒇉 (engur)

(click on right its not cut off as mobile shows)

[fatehbaz]

On wishful thinking and the absence of megafauna beasts:

"We know that ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. were familiar with large charismatic megafauna that are now extinct in the region, because Asian elephants, Caspian tigers, Asiatic lions, Persian cheetahs, Syrian ostriches, and more creatures used to naturally live in Mesopotamia and Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent until historic times. But were rhinos and giraffes also living in Southwest Asia during the past 10,000 years?"

No. But, within the Holocene, the Sahara desert region used to be much wetter. The "Green Sahara" period allowed white rhinoceros and African elephants and giraffes to lives across North Africa within the past 8,000-ish years. Petroglyphs across the Sahara attest to the presence of rhinos and giraffes in modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt.

But this doesn't mean giraffes persisted in some hidden enclave in the Levant, unnoticed and unrecorded by Assyrians or Babylonians or something.

The record-keeping of states, even in the Bronze Age and Old Kingdom, were detailed and meticulous enough to account for landscape, environmental anomalies, large animals, etc.

When there is wishful thinking for the survival of extinct species, I think that people can struggle to understand the scale of ecological degradation, or people can struggle to comprehend the meticulous record-keeping of states. Today, with panoptic satellite technology and aerial imagery of remote corners of the planet, states and corporations poke and prod every physical space, searching for resources to capture, manipulate, sell, employ, etc. Big creatures do not go unnoticed. Even when unseen, they leave detectable ecological signs, hints, traces. This is, for example, how we’re sure Megalodon is extinct. We can hardly see or detect the vast majority of the undersea world(s), but we can still perceive these megafaunal absences.

Even in the ancient world(s) of the Fertile Crescent, states kept good records. In fact, the ancient Fertile Crescent is partially famous to us specifically because of their good record-keeping and story-telling regarding deforestation, agriculture, plants, rivers, floods, etc. Think Gilgamesh, the felling of the Lebanese cedars, the sea-derived purple dyes of the Phoenician textiles, Noah's Ark, the flooding of the Nile riverbanks, Assyrian kings hunting elephants, the display of tigers and lions for sport and pleasure, the elephant ivory paid in tribute to Memphis and Thebes, etc.

Ancient people of the region were so good at keeping records about landscape that it may surprise modern observers.

We (modern observers) have a pretty good idea of the landscape of the so-called Fertile Crescent from the time of Ur, Eridu, Lagash, and the Egyptian Old Kingdom onward. For example, we know which tropical animals, in certain quantities, were shipped by Punt northward through the Red Sea as tribute to Egypt. We know how many gazelles were hunted, elephants captured in pit-fall traps, and big cats ensnared by Assyrian royal hunting parties. And a creature as conspicuous as the giraffe would not go unnoticed in Egypt, Akkad, the Phoenician realm, Babylon, etc.

The giraffe is absent from all of these accounts of ancient Southwest Asia. Sad.

However, as a consolation, to provoke wonder, consider that, even in the Mediterranean, the sea so thoroughly manipulated by agriculturalists and seafaring traders and state-building empires over thousands of years, a few animal surprises could stay hidden, like treasure. There may have been a unique lineage of North African elephants, known to Carthage, in the Atlas mountains or interior Algeria, as late as 200 AD. And yet biologists, taxonomists, and historians argue to this day as to whether or not there was a unique subspecies of African elephant living on the Mediterranean coast when Rome destroyed Carthage, with convincing arguments for and against. How could an elephant of all creatures elude description by the record-keepers of such an empire? And yet, these creatures existed.

Lions prowled mainland Greece until at least 400 BC. Today, perhaps 400 endemic monk seals continue to swim in the Aegean Sea. Jackals continue to wander the Balkans. We may no longer live alongside woolly mammoths. But underground, in Croatian caves, the olm still survives swimming silently.

[offshoreoilrig]

The Sumerian Game is an early text-based strategy video game of land and resource management. It was developed as part of a joint research project between the Board of Cooperative Educational Services of Westchester County, New York and IBM in 1964–1966 for investigation of the use of computer-based simulations in schools. It was designed by Mabel Addis, then a fourth-grade teacher, and programmed by William McKay for the IBM 7090 time-shared mainframe computer. The first version of the game was played by a group of 30 sixth-grade students in 1964, and a revised version featuring refocused gameplay and added narrative and audiovisual elements was played by a second group of students in 1966.

The game is composed of three segments, representing the reigns of three successive rulers of the city of Lagash in Sumer around 3500 BC. In each segment the game asks the players how to allocate workers and grain over a series of rounds while accommodating the effects of their prior decisions, random disasters, and technological innovations, with each segment adding complexity. At the conclusion of the project the game was not put into widespread use, though it was used as a demonstration in the BOCES Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York and made available by "special arrangement" with BOCES into at least the early 1970s. A description of the game, however, was given to Doug Dyment in 1968, and he recreated a version of the first segment of the game as King of Sumeria. This game was expanded on in 1971 by David H. Ahl as Hamurabi, which in turn led to many early strategy and city-building games. The Sumerian Game has been described as the first video game with a narrative, as well as the first edutainment game. As a result, Mabel Addis has been called the first female video game designer and the first writer for a video game. In 2024 a recreation of the game, based off of the available information, was released for Windows.

[lazlolullaby]

the body, the mind, the heart, and the breath of Kur (The Secret Saturdays fanon)

hey you know that Artifact that Argost couped and killed a King of Kumari Kandem for? The Amulet with the Breath of Kur that was just used for unlocking the Tomb of Kur and nothing else?

...I'm gonna weave so much headcanon Lore about that.

Spoilers for the two major plot twists of the Secret Saturdays.

TL;DR Kur was split into several pieces. The Breath, which was an attempt to Kill Kur that didn't completely work. Then the Sumerians and Lemurians making a plan to actually separate and destroy Kur, splitting them into parts; The Body, aka Big Red that was buried in Antarctica, the Mind, that the Lemurians took to the Himalayas, And finally the Heart in the Kur Stone.

First Kur was an immortal God that created and controlled the cryptids. It's not clear what Kur was actually like, if he was unfair or just acting as a warrior king would. But some cryptids and humanity rebelled; they tried to steal the Breath of Kur and store it in an Amulet. So he'd stop breathing and die, or would have to negotiate for his own ability to breathe and talk back. The first body of Kur dies. People think that Kur is really dead and start to prepare a tomb.

But you don't kill Gods that easily. Kur is now a spirit that latches on to his cryptid progeny, controlling their bodies and minds, hopping around to whoever he can. Kur is pissed and decides. "Fine. You think I'm bad? I'll be bad." And gathers enough resources and energy to make a large cryptid to lay waste to the people that killed him. It's about this time that the Kur Detector artifact is created - to find Kur with whatever body he was in.

The Big Red cryptid is created, and Kur digs himself fully in, not expecting anyone to want to fight him.

So. Of course they fought. Of course they split Kur from his new body, and decided to seal Kur's spirit into a funerary tablet to bury in his Tomb, aka the Kur Stone.

Kur, of course, is still very manipulative and convinces some arrogant Lemurians to keep him closer in their Himalayan mountain range city. They split Kur again. Kur's mind is hidden in burial jewelry - a clunky necklace that "didn't fit his style".

The plan changes. The Tombkeepers believe that Kur has finally gone mad from defeat, only acting on instinct and is incapable of being reasoned with. They don't know the mind was removed, and now all that's left is just the core of Kur. The Heart.

To prevent anyone from taking control of their insane God, they layer the Tomb with traps and security measures, then use Kur's madness to scatter the keys beyond where any one person could travel in one lifetime.

Kur is just chilling at this point, every so often checking on his cryptid kids. He can't directly communicate or influence them unless they touch the jewelry, but it's fine. It's peaceful, no one prays to him, expects any favors or demands power.

Hundreds of years pass. The Lemurians either decline on their own or Kur stirs the pot, probably both.

Argost, being a Yeti of the Himalayas, and bored as hell even with killing people and taking their stuff, goes exploring. He finds the Lemurian ruins and the necklace.

Kur doesn't explain that he's Cryptid God, just that he's an ancient spirit who's seen the rise and fall of Kur. Kur imparts wisdom; mostly his knowledge of bug cryptids, trying to bait Argost into getting a Devonian annelid to swap into a better piece of jewelry - the Blue Tiger just received some gorgeous jade hair pins and he's feeling jealous.

Argost goes for a hunt, but can't enjoy it because Kur could control him - Argost wants to be the one in control. So he asks the spirit for a mask that could block Kur's senses - prevent cryptids and humans from seeing him as a Yeti. Then the jewelry is tucked away in Argost's cave. Argost uses his Cryptid Bug knowledge to make prosthetic scorpion legs for Baron Finster.

The Kur Stone is dug up. Kur's mind does register it as a large wave of energy coursing through his cryptid kids. Zak absorbed the Heart of Kur, being an empty body with no mind yet. Kur's Heart is entrenched in Zak and to remove the Heart would kill Zak.

Events of the show happen. Kur's mind can see when Zak draws on his powers, but any kind of thoughts are blocked to him - this changes slightly after "Ghost in the Machine" where Zak was mixed and split with Fisk and Komodo. Kur's mind also influenced Fiskerton to pick Antarctica, where Big Red was buried.

Because Big Red was the Created Body that Kur used, the energy was hanging around and Zak absorbed it, boosting his powers. Kur's mind can see more of what's going on, and influenced Zak in the 2nd season premiere. Kur said they were in Hong Kong. The Nagas were actually in New York. And there's not much Kur's mind can do about the War of the Cryptids.

...now if, post series if someone were to go through Argost's cave...and Zak happened to touch that burial necklace...that would be fun.