Artifact overview
CBS 13908 is an artifact (Clay Tablet) related to the mythological story named 'Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld.' The artifact's condition is Just OK and it is currently located at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, United States of America, catalogued as record number CBS 13908. The language of the text contained is Sumerian (Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform writing system). Its estimated date is 1900—1600 BCE, which is a range based on available data and scholarship. The mythology associated with this artifact includes the Sumerian belief system and related deities: Inanna.
About this artifact
Basic details
| Type | Tablet Clay material |
| Condition | Just OK |
| Date created | 1900—1600 BCE |
| Language | Sumerian |
| Writing system | Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform (script) |
| Location | Penn Museum University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology · Philadelphia, United States of America |
| Digital access | CDLI No. P268918 Fully digitized |
| Myth portion | Lines 52-47 and 76-97 |
Provenience
| Discovery | Nippur, Sumer Present-day Al-Qādisiyyah, Iraq |
Museum record data
Penn Museum
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology · Philadelphia, United States of America
Item specifications
| Museum No. | CBS 13908 |
Mythological contents
Sumerian Religion
The contents of this artifact may depict or reference the following myths and deities associated with this belief system.
Associated myths and deities
| Myths | Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld |
| Deities | Inanna |
Cuneiform Digitial Library Initiative data help_outline
Core CDLI data
| CDLI record No. | P268918 |
| Composite No. | Q000343 |
| Period | Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC) |
| Provenience (origin) | Nippur, Iraq |
| Primary publication | CDLI Literary 000343, ex. 017 |
| Author/date | CDLI/2014ff. |
CBS 13908 (clay tablet) is a clay cuneiform tablet containing lines 52-74 (obverse) and 76-97 (reverse) of the Sumerian afterlife myth titled "Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld." This artifact is housed at the Penn Museum in Pennsylvania and was first documented by a Sumerian scholar named Edward Chiera. It belongs to the Old Babylonian collection and was later re-published by several new scholars like Samuel N. Kramer and William R. Sladek.
The tablet is highly fragmented and the obverse side of it is classified as destroyed due to the wear and tear of time.
Discovery and publication
CBS 13908 was discovered during the Nippur excavations in modern-day Iraq between 1899-1900. Several excavations took place jointly between the University of Pennsylvania and the Ottoman Museum in Turkey. [1] The artifacts sat in boxes at the Pennsylvania Museum until Edward Chiera (1885-1933)[2], a Sumerian scholar who did lots of work on artifacts related to "Inanna's Descent," started publishing pictures of the fragments.
Before passing away in 1933, Chiera was working on publishing his artifact discoveries at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. His work was posthumously published in 1934 in Sumerian Epics and Myths[3] In this publication were the first images of CBS 13908 (as plate number 48). Because Chiera only published sketches of the artifacts, it would take several years before other scholars would translate what they meant.
Importance for "Inanna's Descent"
In 1942, Samuel Kramer published a translation (and collation) of "Inanna's Descent," where the line numbers were carefully mapped out for this artifact.[4] This publication is referred to as PAPS 85 in citations, short for the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society; however, the journal seems to have gone defunct in 2015.[5]
Kramer also published a revised translation of these artifacts in 1951 (in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies) as part of his many revisions to the myth's decipherment.[6] This 1951 version of "Inanna's Descent" would remain as the main version of the myth until William R. Sladek published a revised translation in 1974.
Notes
Extended artifact data for CBS 13908
See detailed information about this artifact from the entity that has access to it.
Location description
- Penn Museum Philadelphia, United States of America
Full address: Penn Museum, 3260 South St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States of America
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Archaeology and Anthropology
The Penn Museum is the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Archaeology is the study of objects made by humans. From the first traces of our earliest human ancestors to 21st...
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Record numbers
| No. | Unknown |
| Digitized record | CDLI No. P268918 |
| Artifact access | By request |
Full artifact data
| Museum No. | CBS 13908 |
| Period | Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC) |
| Material | Clay |
| Genre | Literary |
| Usable Lines | ca. 50 |
| Language | Sumerian Cuneiform |
| Provenience (Origin) | Nippur, Iraq |
Record notes
About these data
| Retrieval date | Aug. 10, 2022 |
| Copyright | Penn Museum |
Render
See a rendering of the artifact in images, text, and other form factors. Where available, a translation is included.
Digital scan
OMNIKA Reader
Good news. This original artifact is digitized and available in the OMNIKA Library.
Text: "ETCSL 1.4.1: Inana's Descent to the Nether World"
Sumerian ⟶ English a
| Line # | Translation |
|---|---|
| Source a Black et al., "ETCSL 1.4.1: Inana Netherworld." More info launch | |
All texts
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Mythological contents
This artifact contains mythological contents associated with Sumerian Religion. The main narrative mentioned may be Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld, a Afterlife myth. The deities depicted or mentioned in the artifact may be: Inanna.
Parent belief system
- Sumerian Religion · PolytheisticHeads up. This Religion belongs to the Mesopotamian collection on the basis of shared myths and deities.
Sumerian religion refers to spiritual beliefs practiced from ca. 4500-1900 BCE in Mesopotamia, or modern-day southern Iraq. Many deities were diffused into other Mesopotamian cultures.
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Associated myth
Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld Afterlife mythNuthsell
Inanna descends from the great above to the great below. She abandons several temples and heads for open country. She gives precise instructions to her companion—Ninsubur: Inanna says "if I don't return in three days, go to the temples and plead on my behalf." At the netherworld she enters and goes through seven gates before she is turned into a corpse. Ninsubur follows the instructions and tells Inanna's father Enkil what happened. He helps her by sending two a-sexual creatures to sneak in and bring her back to life. Once Inanna is alive she ascends while being escorted by demons from the netherworld. The demons allow her to trade her husband Dumuzi in her place.
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Deities depicted
CDLI data for P268918
The artifact named CBS 13908 is listed in the CDLI database as record number P268918. It belongs to composite number Q000343 .
About the CDLI
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Est. 1998The Cuneiform Digitial Library Initiative (CDLI) is a collaborative project among the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin, Germany). The project is funded by various universities and donors in the hopes of cataloging, translating, and digitizing artifacts with text in cuneiform script.
Record numbers
Record notes
About these data
| Retrieval date | Aug. 10, 2022 |
| Copyright | CDLI @ UCLA |
Artifact condition
The artifact named 'CBS 13908' is appraised as being in Just OK condition based on how much reliance is placed on other resources to make it complete and readable.
| Condition | Excellent | Just OK | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  | |
| Completeness | More than 80% | 50 - 80% | Less than 50% |
| Fragmentation | Minor | Moderate | Significant |
| Damage | Minor | Moderate | Significant |
| Legibility | Highly readable | Somewhat readable | Unintelligible |
What's a 'joined' artifact?
A joined artifact is one that was originally part of the other and was broken or fragmented at some point in time. Joins are common among clay tablets because they may get broken during discovery and transportation. The join is notated with the + sign. For example, if tablets A000 and Z999 are joined, we would express this relationship by grouping them as A000 + Z999 to indicate they are related.
If the fragments are owned, maintained, and cataloged by separate museums then classifying the join relationship is critical for accurate translations.
Cite this page
OMNIKA Foundation Contributors. "CBS 13908 (Clay Tablet)." OMNIKA – World Mythology Index, OMNIKA Foundation, 01 May. 2019, omnika.org/stable/117. Accessed 10 May. 2024.
OMNIKA (2019, May 01). CBS 13908 (Clay Tablet). Retrieved from https://omnika.org/stable/117
OMNIKA Foundation Contributors. "CBS 13908 (Clay Tablet)." Las Vegas, NV: OMNIKA Foundation. Created May 01, 2019. Accessed May 10, 2024. https://omnika.org/stable/117.
