Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

It must be said that they were lucky this time. After only reading three cargo lists, he found that the fourth clay tablet he found was an important clay tablet.

"What's written here?" Seeing Liang En staring at the screen, Jeanne asked curiously. "Is this thing very important now?"

"It's very important, because the record above is a legend." After quickly translating the text on the clay tablet, Liang En explained to Joan of Arc, "A legend that tells the origin of this city."

There are two protagonists in the entire legend, one is the aforementioned Inanna, also known as Ishtar, and the other is Enki, the water god from the Sumerian era to the Babylonian era.

Unlike Ishtar, who appears in many current TV shows, movies, anime and games, Enki is basically unknown among ordinary people today, but in fact his status in history is not low.

According to Sumerian legend. The main god Enlil felt that humans were too noisy, so he sent floods, droughts and plagues to destroy them. However, Enki taught Atrahasi the knowledge of irrigation, grain storage, and medicine, and humanity survived.

Enlil was very angry and decided to secretly summon several gods to send a huge flood to completely exterminate mankind. However, Enki still found out and arranged for Utana Pizim to take refuge in a boat.

After the great flood, he gave Utanapizim the power of eternal life and told him to live in seclusion in the mountains. Enlil was furious at this incident and accused Enki of hindering his plans.

Enki explained to him that for the sake of necessary balance, innocent humans should not be completely exterminated, and the remaining humans should be allowed to undergo birth control.

However, on the other hand, if humans do not believe in gods and fall, they can let the gods slaughter them. Obviously, this is the earliest version of a similar story about Noah's Ark.

What's more, modern archaeological discoveries and linguistics indicate that Enki's Akkadian name Eah was called lahu in the mythology of the Western Semitic tribe (Canaanite) and may later have been spelled Yahweh.

Many images and legends of Enki therefore entered Judaism, and then gradually entered early Christianity, such as the prototype of the famous Noah's Ark story.

The story described on the clay tablet that Liang En is looking at now is a very long hymn related to these two gods, describing the story between the two gods.

According to what is said in the poem, Enki was the god who lived in Eridu, the first city of the Sumerians and one of the five cities before the flood.

Ishtar is the embodiment of civilization and the protector of Uruk. She went from Uruk to the city of Elidu to meet her father God Enki, hoping to obtain the secrets kept by him.

The secret here is written as Me in the language of the time, which represents the power of sacredness and civilization, including various skills and royal power. One of Enki's jobs is to protect this treasure.

Ishtar's purpose in doing this is also very simple, that is, to make the city-state she protects prosperous. Enki got drunk at the party and was completely smitten with Inanna, so he asked her to take away the secret.

Inanna loaded the secret onto the ship and set sail quickly. After Enki sobered up, he sent his god Abgallu (Ab=abyss gal=大lu=人) to take a boat to search for traces of Inanna along the Euphrates River. .

There were seven stops from Eridu to Uruk, and there were fierce battles at each stop, but Inanna eventually transported the secret to Uruk. From then on, Enki lost his secret forever, and Inanna became the representative of civilization.

From a historical perspective, this is actually a metaphorical record using mythology, which represents the transfer of Sumerian kingship from the oldest Eridu to Uruk further north.

However, this story is not just a record of a period of history. At least from the wording and sentence construction, it should be a hymn sung when offering sacrifices to the gods.

"Could it be——" Seeing this, Liang En had a guess, but in order to ensure that his guess was correct, he immediately contacted the Chinese archaeological team using a walkie-talkie.

"What else did you find this time besides these clay tablet fragments?" After a brief greeting, Liang En asked Professor Wang opposite.

"Indeed, some other things besides some clay tablet fragments were found in the ash pit." After listening to Liang En's inquiry, Professor Wang immediately answered.

"The most important discovery among them is several cylinder seals mixed in the broken clay tablets, but because there are no words on them, there are only some patterns of crops and animals, so I didn't think it was important before and didn't mention them."

Cylinder seals can be regarded as a specialty of Sumer. , unlike the flat seals in other civilizations, the Sumerians used a cylindrical seal that left an imprint on the ink pad by rolling instead of pressing.

In Mesopotamia, seals may have originated from decorative items such as amulets in prehistoric times. This kind of protective ornament is usually engraved with simple linear patterns, and in people's daily life at that time, it had the dual role of amulet to pray for blessings and prevent misfortune and ornamental decoration.

According to scholars' archaeological excavations in the Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia, the earliest physical seals were several small round stones from the early 6th millennium BC. They were engraved with dots, rings and cross-line patterns, and some had prominent perforations. handle.

It can be inferred from the imprints of the remaining roller-printing clay tablets that the cylinder seal was first used in 4000 BC by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia in the southern Mesopotamia and the Elamites in southwestern Iran. Later, it was gradually Spread to other areas of Mesopotamia.

Even varying numbers of lapis lazuli roller seals were found in the Thoth culture near Thebes in Egypt and in the Mycenaean culture in ancient Greece, which shows that the use of cylinder seals has expanded beyond the Mesopotamia to other regions. .

For example, during the follow-up inspection of the sites around Crete and the ancient city of Mycenae discovered by Liang En, the archaeological team discovered several such seals.

However, as clay tablets were gradually replaced by papyrus invented in Egypt, these cylindrical seals gradually withdrew from the stage of history. However, for this reason, this thing also became a representative of Sumerian civilization.

There is also a lot of content on these cylindrical seals, but from an archaeological perspective, these cylindrical seals are not actually valuable as personal identification, so it is normal that Professor Wang did not take them over just now.

As for Liang En now, he only needs to be sure that such a thing exists, and he does not need to know the contents clearly.

"What did you find this time?" After Liang En ended the call, Jeanne looked at him operating the computer and asked curiously. "Is it an important discovery?"

"Yes, but before that I need more examples." Liang En said while sending a word composed of cuneiform characters into the system. "If I could find one or two more examples, it would prove where this is."

As he spoke, Liang En typed in the word and hit the Enter key. Soon, the computer selected four clay tablets from the ones that had just been sorted out.

This word appeared on four clay tablets, and after a brief inspection, he found that these four documents contained both official records and commercial records.

Although these records seemed very ordinary, after simply analyzing and refining the above information, Liang En quickly found some interesting things in them.