Artifact overview
CBS 15212 is an artifact (Clay Tablet) related to the mythological story named 'Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld.' The artifact's condition is Poor 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 15212. 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 | Poor |
| 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. P269767 Fully digitized |
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 15212 |
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. | P269767 |
| Composite No. | Q000343 |
| Period | |
| Provenience (origin) | Nippur, Iraq |
| Primary publication | CDLI Literary 000343, ex. 003 |
| Author/date | CDLI/2014ff. |
CBS 15212 (clay tablet) is a cuneiform tablet that contains lines 145, 147-149, 150-177 (obverse), and 180-207 (reverse) of "Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld," a Sumerian afterlife myth. The artifact was discovered in Nippur (modern-day Iraq) during excavations in the 1890s and 1900s on behalf of the British Museum. Samuel Noah Kramer, a Sumerian scholar, published various journal articles that contained pictures, sketches, and translations of the artifact in 1940 and 1942, respectively.
The clay tablet is extremely fragmented and difficult to decipher in many areas. Despite this, scholars have been able to make out the meaning of over half of the obverse side of it.
The artifact is currently located at the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia and was discovered in the 1890s during a joint expedition between the University of Pennsylvania and the government of Turkey. A sketch and translation of CBS 15212 was published in 1940 by Samuel N. Kramer in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.[1] Kramer subsequently published several more version of the myth, and included photographs of CBS 15212, in his 1942 publication in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.[2] Since Kramer's time, Sumerian scholars have also consistently cited CBS 15212 as an important artifact for the translation of "Inanna's Descent."
Notes
Extended artifact data for CBS 15212
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
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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. P269767 |
| Artifact access | By request |
Full artifact data
| Museum No. | CBS 15212 |
| Period | Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC) |
| Material | Clay |
| Genre | Literary |
| Usable Lines | ca. 60 |
| 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 P269767
The artifact named CBS 15212 is listed in the CDLI database as record number P269767. 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 15212' is appraised as being in Poor 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 15212 (Clay Tablet)." OMNIKA – World Mythology Index, OMNIKA Foundation, 02 May. 2019, omnika.org/stable/121. Accessed 4 Jul. 2024.
OMNIKA (2019, May 02). CBS 15212 (Clay Tablet). Retrieved from https://omnika.org/stable/121
OMNIKA Foundation Contributors. "CBS 15212 (Clay Tablet)." Las Vegas, NV: OMNIKA Foundation. Created May 02, 2019. Accessed July 4, 2024. https://omnika.org/stable/121.
