A History of Sumer and Akkad. L. W. King
in the pages of the "Revue Sémitique," but his followers have deserted him.
[3] The origin of the Great Swamp, or Swamps, called by Arab geographers al-Baṭiḥa, or in the plural al-Baṭâyiḥ, is traced by Bilâdhuri to the reign of the Persian king Kubâdh I., towards the end of the fifth century B.C. Ibn Serapion applies the name in the singular to four great stretches of water (Hawrs), connected by channels through the reeds, which began at El-Kaṭr, near the junction of the Shatt el-Hai with the present bed of the Euphrates. But from this point as far northwards as Niffer and Kûfa the waters of the Euphrates lost themselves in reed-beds and marshes; cf. G. le Strange, "Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc.," 1905, p. 297 f., and "Lands of the Eastern Caliphate," p. 26 f.
[4] According to Ibn Rusta (quoted by Le Strange, "Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc.," 1905, p. 301), in Sassanian times, and before the bursting of the dykes which led to the formation of the swamps, the Tigris followed the same eastern channel in which it flows at the present time; this account is confirmed by Yâkût.
[5] See the map at the end of the volume. The original courses of the rivers in the small inset map of Babylonia during the earliest historical periods agree in the main with Fisher's reconstruction published in "Excavations at Nippur," Pt. I., p. 3, Fig. 2. For points on which uncertainty still exists, see below, p. 10 f.
[7] See the plan of Warka by Loftus, reproduced on p. 33. It will be noted that he marks the ancient bed of the Shatt en-Nîl as skirting the city on the east.
[9] Cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1909, col. 205 f.
[10] See Clay and Hilprecht, "Murashû Sons" (Artaxerxes I.), p. 76, and Clay, "Murashû Sons" (Darius II.), p. 70; cf. also Hommel, "Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients," p. 264.
[11] Cf. King, "Letters of Hammurabi," III., p. 18 f.
[12] The Yusufiya Canal, running from Dîwânîya to the Shatt el-Kâr, was probably the result of a later effort to divert some of the water back to the old bed.
[13] Andrae visited and surveyed the districts around Fâra and Abû Hatab in December, 1902. In his map he marks traces of a channel, the Shatt el-Farakhna, which, leaving the main channel at Shêkh Bedr, heads in the direction of Bismâya (see "Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft," No. 16, pp. 16 ff.).
[14] Cf. King and Hall, "Egypt and Western Asia," pp. 292 ff.
[15] Cf. Delitzsch, "Wo lag das Paradies?" p. 200.
[16] Cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Journal asiatique," 1908, p. 131, n. 2.
[17] Cyl. A, Col. XI., l. 16 f.; see below, Chap. IX., p. 266.
[18] Ibid., Col. XXI., l. 25.
[19] Cyl. B, Col. XXII., l. 19 f.
[21] For this reading of the name of the city usually transcribed as Gishkhu or Gishukh, see below, p. 21, n. 3.
[22] See below, Chap. V., p. 127 f.
[23] The word kalam, "the Land," is first found in a royal title upon fragments of early vases from Nippur which a certain "king of the land" dedicated to Enlil in gratitude for his victories over Kish (see below, Chap. VII.). The word kur-kur, "countries" in such a phrase as lugal kur-kur-ge, "king of the countries," when applied to the god Enlil, designated the whole of the habitable world; in a more restricted sense it was used for foreign countries, especially in the inscriptions of Gudea, in contradistinction to the Land of Sumer (cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Zeits. für Assyr.," XVI., p. 354, n. 3).
[24] The ideogram Ki-en-gi, by which the name of Sumer, or more correctly Shumer, was expressed, already occurs in the texts of Eannatum, Lugal-zaggisi and Enshagkushanna (see Chaps. V. and VII.). It has generally been treated as an earlier proper name for the country, and read as Kengi or Kingi. But the occurrence of the word ki-en-gi-ra in a Sumerian hymn, where it is rendered in Semitic by mâtu, "land" (see Reisner, "Sum.-Bab. Hymnen," pl. 130 ff.), would seem to show that, like kalam, it was employed as a general designation for "the Land" (cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Die sumerischen und akkadischen Königsinschriften," p. 152, n.f.). The form ki-en-gi-ra is also met with in the inscriptions of Gudea (see Hommel, "Grundriss," p. 242, n. 4, and Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., pp. 100, 112, 140), and it has been suggested that the final syllable should be treated as a phonetic complement and the word rendered as shumer-ra (cf. Hrozný, "Ninib und Sumer," in the "Rev. Sémit.," July, 1908, Extrait, p. 15). According to this view the word shumer, with the original meaning of "land," was afterwards employed as a proper name for the country. The earliest occurrence of Shumerû, the Semitic form of the name, is in an early Semitic legend in the British Museum, which refers to "the spoil of the Sumerians" (see King, "Cun. Texts," Pt. V., pl. 1 f., and cf. Winckler, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1907, col. 346, Ungnad, op. cit., 1908, col. 67, and Hrozný, "Rev. Sémit.," 1908, p. 350).
[25] Akkad, or Akkadû, was the Semitic pronunciation of Agade, the older name of the town; a similar sharpening of sound occurs in Makkan, the Semitic pronunciation of Magan (cf. Ungnad, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1908, col. 62, n. 4). The employment of the name of Akkad for the whole of the northern half of the country probably dates from a period subsequent to the increase of the city's power under Shar-Gani-sharri and Narâm-Sin (see Chap. VIII.); on the employment of the name for the Semitic speech of the north, see below, p. 52. The origin of the name Ki-uri, or Ki-urra, employed in Sumerian as the equivalent of the name of Akkad, is obscure.
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