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Product Description
Product Description
Book Description:
"The Sumerians were a non-Semitic, non-Indo-European people who lived in southern Babylonia from 4000-3000 B.C.E. They invented cunieform writing, and their spiritual beliefs influenced all successive Near Eastern religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They produced an extensive body of literature, among the oldest in the world. Samuel Noah Kramer spent most of his life studying this literature, by piecing together clay tablets in far-flung museums. This short work gives translations or summaries of the most important Sumerian myths." (Quote from sacred-texts.com)
Table of Contents:
Publisher’s Preface; Preface; Introduction; The Scope And Significance Of Sumerian Mythology; Myths Of Origins ; Myths Of Kur; Miscellaneous Myths; References And Notes; Supplementary Notes; Endnotes
About the Publisher:
Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, Esoteric and Mythology. www.forgottenbooks.org
Forgotten Books is about sharing information, not about making money. All books are priced at wholesale prices. We are also the only publisher we know of to print in large sans-serif font, which is proven to make the text easier to read and put less strain on your eyes.
"The Sumerians were a non-Semitic, non-Indo-European people who lived in southern Babylonia from 4000-3000 B.C.E. They invented cunieform writing, and their spiritual beliefs influenced all successive Near Eastern religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They produced an extensive body of literature, among the oldest in the world. Samuel Noah Kramer spent most of his life studying this literature, by piecing together clay tablets in far-flung museums. This short work gives translations or summaries of the most important Sumerian myths." (Quote from sacred-texts.com)
Table of Contents:
Publisher’s Preface; Preface; Introduction; The Scope And Significance Of Sumerian Mythology; Myths Of Origins ; Myths Of Kur; Miscellaneous Myths; References And Notes; Supplementary Notes; Endnotes
About the Publisher:
Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, Esoteric and Mythology. www.forgottenbooks.org
Forgotten Books is about sharing information, not about making money. All books are priced at wholesale prices. We are also the only publisher we know of to print in large sans-serif font, which is proven to make the text easier to read and put less strain on your eyes.
About the Author
About the Author:
"Kramer was born in 1897 in the Ukraine. In 1905 as a result of the anti-Semitic pogroms of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, his family emigrated to Philadelphia, where his father established a Hebrew school. After graduating from high school and obtaining a bachelor's degree, Kramer tried a variety of occupations, including teaching in his father's school, becoming a writer and becoming a business man.
He later stated in his autobiography, concerning the time when he began to approach the age of thirty, still without a career: "Finally it came to me that I might well go back to my beginnings and try to utilize the Hebrew learning on which I had spent so much of my youth, and relate it in some way to an academic future." [citation needed]
He then enrolled at Dropsie College of Philadelphia for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, and became passionately interested in Egyptology. He then transferred to the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania, working work with "the brilliant young Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, who was to become one of the world's leading figures in Near Eastern Studies."[citation needed] Speiser was trying to decipher cuneiform tablets of the Late Bronze Age dating from about 1300 BC; it was now that Kramer began his life-long work in understanding the cuneiform writing system.
Kramer earned his Ph.D. in 1929, and was famous for assembling tablets recounting single stories that had been distributed between different institutions around the world. He retired from formal academic life in 1968, but remained very active throughout his post-retirement years.
In his autobiography, published in 1986 he sums up his accomplishments as follows: "First, and most important, is the role I played in the recovery, restoration, and resurrection of Sumerian literature, or at least of a representative cross section . . . Through my efforts several thousand Sumerian literary tablets and fragments have been made available to cuneiformists, a basic reservoir of unadulterated data that will endure for many decades to come. Second, I endeavored . . . to make available reasonably reliable translations of many of these documents to the academic community, and especially to the anthropologist, historian, and humanist. quot; (Quote from wikipedia.org)
"Kramer was born in 1897 in the Ukraine. In 1905 as a result of the anti-Semitic pogroms of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, his family emigrated to Philadelphia, where his father established a Hebrew school. After graduating from high school and obtaining a bachelor's degree, Kramer tried a variety of occupations, including teaching in his father's school, becoming a writer and becoming a business man.
He later stated in his autobiography, concerning the time when he began to approach the age of thirty, still without a career: "Finally it came to me that I might well go back to my beginnings and try to utilize the Hebrew learning on which I had spent so much of my youth, and relate it in some way to an academic future." [citation needed]
He then enrolled at Dropsie College of Philadelphia for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, and became passionately interested in Egyptology. He then transferred to the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania, working work with "the brilliant young Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, who was to become one of the world's leading figures in Near Eastern Studies."[citation needed] Speiser was trying to decipher cuneiform tablets of the Late Bronze Age dating from about 1300 BC; it was now that Kramer began his life-long work in understanding the cuneiform writing system.
Kramer earned his Ph.D. in 1929, and was famous for assembling tablets recounting single stories that had been distributed between different institutions around the world. He retired from formal academic life in 1968, but remained very active throughout his post-retirement years.
In his autobiography, published in 1986 he sums up his accomplishments as follows: "First, and most important, is the role I played in the recovery, restoration, and resurrection of Sumerian literature, or at least of a representative cross section . . . Through my efforts several thousand Sumerian literary tablets and fragments have been made available to cuneiformists, a basic reservoir of unadulterated data that will endure for many decades to come. Second, I endeavored . . . to make available reasonably reliable translations of many of these documents to the academic community, and especially to the anthropologist, historian, and humanist. quot; (Quote from wikipedia.org)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Samuel Noah Kramer was a well-known and well-respected expert in the field of Sumerology with a real passion for his subject, so the content is excellent as far as it goes. Unfortunately it doesn't always go as far as the end of the sentence before being interrupted by the description of an illustration that isn't even on the same page. As you can imagine, this makes it rather difficult to read, especially since the end of these descriptions isn't marked in any way, so in order to carry on you have to scan ahead for what looks like the second half of the sentence. The illustrations themselves are far too small to be of any use; fortunately I was only really interested in the text.
I give it two stars for the actual content, bearing in mind that it was first published in 1944 and a lot more work has been done since then. I wish I could give it more because it's a real shame that the presentation is so bad; I appreciate that they're a small independent publishers that specialise in otherwise out of print books, but it's like they didn't even care. At least it isn't very expensive, which serious books on this subject tend to be.
I give it two stars for the actual content, bearing in mind that it was first published in 1944 and a lot more work has been done since then. I wish I could give it more because it's a real shame that the presentation is so bad; I appreciate that they're a small independent publishers that specialise in otherwise out of print books, but it's like they didn't even care. At least it isn't very expensive, which serious books on this subject tend to be.
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful
I bought this because I am really fascinated by the Ancient Sumerians ; my interest having been sparked off by Zechariah Sitchkin... and I wanted to know how much truth there is in what he says. BUT this book really didn't advance my knowledge much; partly because it is very dry (OK the material was written thousands of years ago) but ALSO because it is so incredibly badly produced and presented. I would like to take it apart, put the captions with the illustrations they refer to (which is almost never) and increase their size so I could see what they are supposed to be representing. I kid you not - the book is APPALLING. You are completely lost because the narrative stops abruptly on almost every page and the next thing you come across is a caption referring partly or in whole to an illustration that is either missing or comes a few pages further on. I was incredibly disappointed. I had hoped for so much insight into these ancient peoples and all I got was a book like a kid's scrapbook.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Should have just copied this from my browser into a txt file.
10 Jun 2010
Amazon Verified Purchase
While the text of this book seems interesting, the format is beyond chaotic. Captions that are intended for images too small to see appear as normal text and confuse the reader. At first it seems that whole sections of the book are missing as the captions usually fill two or three pages with the images inserted randomly adjacent. I'd have gotten the same experience if I had simply dumped the text into a file and used my e-reader to view it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Sumerian Mythology
31 Jan 2011
Amazon Verified Purchase
Fascinating information and well documented.
Only disappointment was the minute size of the photographs of the tablets.
Too small to make much out on them. Need full page reproduction.
Only disappointment was the minute size of the photographs of the tablets.
Too small to make much out on them. Need full page reproduction.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
poor republication quality control
5 Nov 2009
Amazon Verified Purchase
This historic work by a pioneer in the field has been republished with new typesetting - and errors galore. Entire paragraphs and sections appear out of place. It takes a Kramer to reconstitute the original flow. Editor's pre-printing notes and instructions remain in the text. Find a used copy.
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