JaphethJapheth ˈdʒeɪfɛθ (יֶפֶת Yép̄eṯ, in pausa Yā́p̄eṯ; Ἰάφεθ ; Iafeth, Iapheth, Iaphethus, Iapetus) is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, and elsewhere. In medieval and early modern European tradition he was considered to be the progenitor of the European peoples, while Islamic traditions also include the Chinese people among his descendants.
BorsippaBorsippa (Sumerian: BAD.SI.(A).AB.BAKI; Akkadian: Barsip and Til-Barsip) or Birs Nimrud (having been identified with Nimrod) is an archeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. The ziggurat is today one of the most vividly identifiable surviving ones, identified in the later Arabic culture with the Tower of Babel. However, modern scholarship concludes that the Babylonian builders of the Ziggurat in reality erected it as a religious edifice in honour of the local god Nabu, called the "son" of Babylon's Marduk, as would be appropriate for Babylon's lesser sister-city.
InannaInanna is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine law, and political power. She was known by the Akkadian Empire, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar (and occasionally the logogram ). Her primary title was "the Queen of Heaven", and she was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her early main cult center.
SemiramisSemiramis (səˈmɪrəmɪs,_sɪ-,_sɛ-; ܫܲܡܝܼܪܵܡ Šammīrām, Σεμίραμις, سميراميس Samīrāmīs, Շամիրամ Šamiram) was the legendary Lydian- Babylonian wife of Onnes and of Ninus, who succeeded the latter on the throne of Assyria, according to Movses Khorenatsi. Legends narrated by Diodorus Siculus, who drew primarily from the works of Ctesias of Cnidus, describe her and her relationships to Onnes and King Ninus. Armenians and the Assyrians of Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, and northwest Iran still use Shamiram as a given name for girls.
NabopolassarNabopolassar (Babylonian cuneiform: Nabû-apla-uṣur, meaning "Nabu, protect the son") was the founder and first king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from his coronation as king of Babylon in 626 BC to his death in 605 BC. Though initially only aimed at restoring and securing the independence of Babylonia, Nabopolassar's uprising against the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had ruled Babylonia for more than a century, eventually led to the complete destruction of the Assyrian Empire and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in its place.
EberEber (ʿĒḇer; Éber; ʿĀbir) is an ancestor of the Ishmaelites and the Israelites according to the "Table of Nations" in the Book of Genesis () and the Books of Chronicles (). Eber was a great-grandson of Noah's son Shem and the father of Peleg, born when Eber was 34 years old, and of Joktan. He was the son of Shelah, a distant ancestor of Abraham. According to the Hebrew Bible, Eber died at the age of 464. In the Septuagint, the name is written as Heber/Eber ( ̔́Εβερ/Ἔβερ), and his father is called Sala (Σαλά/Σάλα).
EtemenankiEtemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in the ancient city of Babylon. It now exists only in ruins, located about south of Baghdad, Iraq. Although Etemenanki has sometimes erroneously been identified with the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 in the Bible, the archaeological record is incompatible with the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, particularly because Etemenanki was built in tribute to the god Marduk and because the existence of many languages in the region predates its reconstruction.
Semitic peopleSemites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics. First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen School of History, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites. In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.
Genesis RabbahGenesis Rabbah (Hebrew: , B'reshith Rabba) is a religious text from Judaism's classical period, probably written between 300 and 500 CE with some later additions. It is a midrash comprising a collection of ancient rabbinical homiletical interpretations of the Book of Genesis (B'reshith in Hebrew). It is expository midrash to the first book of the Torah, assigned by tradition to the amora Hoshaiah (or Osha'yah), who flourished in the third century in Roman Syria Palaestina.
Ancient Mesopotamian religionMesopotamian religion was the original religious beliefs and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia between circa 6000 BC and 400 AD. The religious development of Mesopotamia and Mesopotamian culture in general, especially in the south, were not particularly influenced by the movements of the various peoples into and throughout the area. Rather, Mesopotamian religion was a consistent and coherent tradition, which adapted to the internal needs of its adherents over millennia of development.
