About
How this is made
Sources
Translations and transliterations are drawn from peer-reviewed editions and open scholarly corpora: the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), Thorkild Jacobsen's "Eridu Genesis," Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia, and Lambert & Millard's critical edition of Atra-αΈ«asΔ«s. Each tablet page links its own source list.
Scholarship vs. speculation
Sumerian texts attract a lot of modern mythmaking β most of it built on Zecharia Sitchin's "ancient astronaut" reading, which Assyriologists reject. We treat the academic consensus as the default voice of the site. Every tablet page carries a "myth vs. fact" sidebar that names the popular claim and what the text actually says.
Alongside the tablets we keep an atlas of Worlds β real ancient cities (Derinkuyu, Petra, more to come) reconstructed at their peak, plus a clearly-labeled mythic wing for invented places. Every page ends with a panel naming what's documented, what's reconstructed, and what's invented.
Artwork
Photographs of museum artifacts are typically copyrighted by the holding institution. Rather than risk that, all imagery on the site is generated to evoke Mesopotamian motifs β horned crowns, inlaid eyes, cylinder seal compositions, ziggurat silhouettes β without depicting any specific catalogued object or imitating any named living artist's style.
Cultural care
Mesopotamian religion is ancient, but its descendant cultures and languages are not. We aim to present the gods with the same dignity any living tradition would expect: no caricature, no ridicule, no fringe re-framing offered as fact.