Ziggurats, Colors, and Planets: Rawlinson Revisited

Abstract

The meaning of the word m e is among the most debated of the Sumerian lexicon. Terms such as "power" or "decree" are currently preferred; for a discussion see Averbeck (2000: 418 n. 2). Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon black rich red brown bright red gold yellow blue silver 4. The outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars) are given in their correct order, starting with the most distant from the Earth, and are correctly separated from the inner planets Venus and Mercury. The Moon is in its correct position as the nearest body to the Earth. 5. His brother George experimented with a weekday sequence of planets for Ecbatana but similarly had to conclude that Herodotus had "accidentally reversed the places of black and white, and of scarlet and orange" (1858: 242).

Beyond Heaven and Earth

“…The story recounts some of the early struggles between gods and humans, and describes how the creator god is stressed by his own creation. Because it is so interesting, many commentaries on this story have been written over the years (see Kramer 1968;DeWitt 1979;Brueggemann 1982;Derrida 1991;Walton 1995;Seely 2001;Hiebert 2007;James and van der Sluijs 2008;Strong 2008;Kugel 2009;LaCocque 2010;Sherman 2013;Giorgetti 2014;Sherwin 2014;Keating 2016). Within the narrative of Genesis, the story comes just after Yahweh saves only Noah and his family among the humans from destruction in the flood.…”

Myth and Geology

“…Concurrent with the burgeoning interest in geomythology, however, the astronomical elements in mythological traditions have enjoyed renewed scholarly attention in recent decades, and ought to be seen as an interdisciplinary exercise in their own right, which forms the natural complement to geomythology. As examples of this direction one could cite Bobrowsky and Rickman's edited volume on the reflexes of comet impacts in human society (2007); Peratt's on-going modelling of a high-energy density aurora in the early Holocene that was recorded in non-figurative petroglyphs, pictographs and geoglyphs around the world, and, arguably, in mythological traditions as well (Peratt, 2003;Peratt et al, 2007); or fresh indications that knowledge of the relative sequence of planets in space as far as Saturn was present in Egypt and Babylonia before the heyday of Greek science, where it may have found expression in the colour scheme of Neo-Babylonian ziggurats (James & Van der Sluijs, 2008). In order to avoid any undesired association of such recent developments with Pan-Babylonianists, it is here proposed that the study of meteorological and astronomical influences on human traditions be referred to as cosmomythology.…”