Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Court decision on Gilgamesh Dream Tablet

COURT RULING: US Obtains 'Gilgamesh Dream Tablet' After Court Orders Forfeiture From Hobby Lobby. (Cammy Pedroja, Newsweek).
Federal authorities had already seized the tablet back in 2019, so apparently the court's ruling is to ratify that seizure. Or something like that. I am not a lawyer and you should not trust my efforts to describe legal issues.

As usual, the article garbles the question of the language of the fragment. The sentence about it mentions both Sumerian and Akkadian in a way that makes no sense and isn't even grammatical. The tablet fragment is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is written in Akkadian. There were also stories about Gilgamesh written in the very different Sumerian language, but this is not one of them.

Background here, here (underlying article no longer available), here and links.

For more on Gilgamesh and on his importance for ancient Judaism, see here and links and here.

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