steven pyatt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Damian you're very eloquent despite your confusion
> and for that i thank you.

Lol, talk about backhanded compliments!

> Here's the thing though
> If bilgames/gilgamesh's family court and retainers
> had been ritually killed to accompany him to the
> netherworld then surely it would mention the
> fact.

Why? Perhaps it was fairly self-evident to the poet's audience?

> Surely saying that they lay down is the sumerian
> equivalent to saying that they are dead.

Well, curiously "The Death of Bilgames" states that Bilgames' "beloved wife" et al. "were laid down in their places", while Bilgames "lay himself down". Now, not being able to read Sumerian for myself, but being wholly dependent on those dodgy modern translators, I guess we shouldn't read too much into the nuanced use of language here, but either way I guess dead is dead at the end of the day.

> Not that they were poisoned.

True enough. The suggestion of a poison draught was based principally on the presence of pottery cups and cauldrons next to the bodies in Woolley's Ur excavations (not forgetting the obvious fact that there were lots of additional dead bodies to account for as well, of course!). The idea of a poison draught, though, is just a tad different from Woolley's own suggestion: "[it is] most probable that the victims walked to their places, took some kind of drug - opium or hashish would serve - and lay down in order; after the drug had worked, whether it produced deep sleep or death, the last touches were given to their bodies and the pit was filled in".

Woolley named the
> place he made his discoveries the royal
> graveyard.
> If you dug into any graveyard you'd find the same
> thing. Lots of contempories buried next to each
> other.
> No one's saying that they were ritually killed.
> why not it presents the same evidence.
> We KNOW that people in the graveyards around us
> weren't ritually killed
> Why do we presume that the sumerians were.

The "royal graveyard"? In fact, the sixteen substantial graves Woolley excavated at Ur formed part of a much larger cemetery.

Here's a helpful description from Gwendolyn Leick's Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (2001) that puts Woolley's excavations into some (clearly) much needed context:

"Woolley's most famous and spectacular discoveries were made in the cemetery area, which lay outside the walls of the old town. The first cemetery belonged to the Jemdet-Nasr and the earlier Early Dynastic period (first third of the third millennium), in which the dead were deposited in pits, usually on their sides in strongly flexed positions. The grave goods give important clues to the cultural horizons of the epoch [...].

"Another of Woolley's extramural soundings revealed eight continuous layers of organic refuse, interspersed with seal impressions. They belonged to the Early Dynastic I period. An unusual number of door sealings were found, occurring here for the first time in Mesopotamian history. In the next level, the area began to be used as a cemetery and retained that function until post-Akkadian times. It contained more than 2,500 graves and seemed contemporary with the seal-bearing strata. Most of the bodies were wrapped in reed matting and put in simple pits, as in the Jemdet Nasr cemetery, and were given some grave goods, though quite a number were buried without. It was among these modest burials that Woolley made his most famous discovery, the sixteen elite tombs he identified as the 'Royal Graves'. They were proper chambers of mudbrick and even stone, elaborately vaulted with an apsidal end, and situated in a deep pit approached by a ramp. After the main burial had taken place in the chamber, the pit was used for offerings and subsequently filled with earth.

"A unique feature of these graves was that they continued what appeared to be the principal body as well as the bodies of men and women interpreted by Woolley as 'servants' and perhaps sacrificial victims. The wealth and quality of the objects buried with the deceased was and still is astonishing. Nothing like it had been found in Mesopotamia before [...]" (pp. 112-113).

> Arguing about the way an old sumerian text is
> worded isn't evidence because it's been worded by
> modern translators not the original scribes

Silly me. Excuse me for asking, but how do we propose discussing Sumeria at all, if that's the case?

> Human sacrifice in sumeria was the exception
> rather than the rule.

Hey, I'm cool with that.

> you'd have thought they'd have mentioned it.

Not necessarily. Perhaps it was the exception for the some, but the rule for others?

> Actually as you may have guessed i am a poor but
> enthusiastic student of sumerian culture.

Well, the enthusiasm's certainly apparent.

> my field of expertise really covers the early
> babylonian period from
> Ammi-ditana 1683-1647 Ammi-saduqa 1646-1626 and
> Samsu - ditana 1625-1595 bce

Impressive. I'm not sure I'd even know how to pronounce those names.

Damian