Books I've read on Sumer
Sumer Public
Created by mouse
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The Oldest Cuisine in the World by Jean Bottéro
In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottero presents the first extensive look at the delectable …
mouse says: Excellent deep dive into Sumerian food and cooking
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Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein
A fresh retelling of the ancient texts about Ishtar, the world's first goddess. Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. …
mouse says: Wolkstein's translation is compelling and evocative, and I found the appendix which explains the illustrations surprisingly great. As a caveat, this is much more interpretive than anthropological, which I think works but it's important to view it through the lens of what Wolkstein is bringing to it.
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Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures by Sabrina Ramet
"Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures" is a collection of specially commissioned essays taking a cross-cultural and cross-historical look at the …
mouse says: This book has one chapter on Sumerian gender reversals that serves as an excellent, levelheaded alternative to heternormative writing that totally ignores it, without getting into queer hype
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Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottéro
Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, based on articles originally published in L'Histoire by Jean Bottéro, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, …
mouse says: Not the most engaging book I've ever read, and I found the chapters a little uneven, but it does what is says on the tin and gives a high-level survey of aspects of daily life in Sumer.
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The Sumerians by Samuel Noah Kramer
The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later …
mouse says: Honestly, it's a bit of a slog, but there's some interesting content and some delightful translations of Sumerian texts underneath it all
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First Impressions by Dominique Collon
The Ancient Near East has a fascinating and unique source of pictorial information in the form of miniature reliefs produced …
mouse says: I love this book and I wish I had a copy but be warned that it is solely descriptive, not interpretive, so there's no explanation how the imagery on the seals might have fit into Sumerian culture and mythology.
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mouse says: This is another, earlier book that describes cylinder seals in immense detail. It's seminal, but quite out of date and hard to find. I'd suggest Collon's First Impressions if you're going to get one book on cylinder seals, since it's more contemporary.
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The Exaltation of Inanna by William W. Hallo, J. J. A. Van Diyk, Enheduanna
4 stars
Consists of Enheduanna's hymn, Nin-me-sar-ra, reconstructed from Sumerian cuneiform tablets, in transliteration, with English translation and commentary.
mouse says: Solid translations of poetry for the goddess Inanna
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A Manual of Akkadian by David Marcus
3 stars
A self-teaching manual of Akkadian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), this unique text is designed for beginners with …
mouse says: This is notably not a book about Sumer, but it's the only self-directed book on Cuneiform Ancient Near East language I could get my hands on, and I've enjoyed it so far. It certainly doesn't hold your hand through the translation exercises and expects you to be comfortable with a lot of jargon.
