18 quotes found
"In those ancient days, when the good destinies had been decreed, and after An and Enlil had set up the divine rules of heaven and earth, then ... Enki, the master of destinies, ... founded dwelling places; he took in his hand waters to encourage and create good seed; he laid out side by side the Tigris and the Euphrates, and caused them to bring water from the mountains; he scoured out the smaller streams, and positioned the other watercourses."
"By hand Enten guided the spring floods, the abundance and life of the Land, down from the edge of the hills. He set his foot upon the Tigris and Euphrates like a big bull and released them into the fields and fruitful acres of Enlil. He shaped lagoons in the water of the sea. He let fish and birds together come into existence by the sea."
"After day had broken and Utu had risen, the of the Land lifted his head high. The king combined the Tigris with the Euphrates. He combined the Euphrates with the Tigris. Large vessels were placed in the open air, and he stood small vessels beside them, like lambs lying on the grass."
"All those who have done odious deeds will be seated here into the stocks, until the Euphrates dries up at its mouth and the Tigris changes its course, until all the seas dry up and all the rivers, brooks and springs have overflowed."
"In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."
"My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, 'This is jessamine, this violet, this rose'. But at last Dahoum drew me: 'Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all', and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace."
"Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine; A small Euphrates thro' the piece is roll'd, And little eagles wave their wings in gold."
"All the superior religions had their growth between the and the Euphrates."
"To the right is Manda ḏ-Hiia; he has erected a throne for Yušamin at the mouth of the Fraš-Ziwa (Euphrates)."
"Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin."
"The heavens were separated from the earth, … my father Enlil created me in a single day, and then the Tigris charged like a great wild bull."
"Tigris! Torrent of four thousand years, Millions, men of war sucking at your strength, Living in holes at your side, Agape as you broke bridges, sent ferrymen adrift! How many armies sought to cross you here, How muezzins lived and died, call’d to prayer; Yet you seemed aloof to all their striving, Your ripples looked indifferent to their stares, Their drinking, marching, gravities."
"...I will note, here, that proposals correlating [the Sarasvati] with other rivers in Afghanistan or elsewhere are unconvincing to my mind, as are attempts to argue that she ended in a terminal lake rather than the ocean."
"Irfan Habib, to whom the name Sarasvati is a kind of anathema... has his faith in an obscure nineteenth century opinion that the name Sarasvati was originally given to the Helmand river in Afghanistan and that was later transferred to the one near Kurukshetra in Haryana. This opinion which was ignored by people like C.F. Oldham and Aurel Stein seems to have found favour among some modern Sanskritists and government historians like Habib. The problem with the historical linguists and those who have faith in historical linguists/ comparative philology is that they apparently inhabit a world in which there is no need for independently testing a theory. One would , however, have thought that Habib as a historian would critically examine the source on which the idea that the Helmand was the original Sarasvati was based. In any case, the Sarasvati-phobia of this group of scholars is inexplicable. If they are upset by the density of distribution of Harappan sites in the region drained by the Sarasvati and get alarmed by the prospect of the Indus civilization being associated with ancient Brahmavarta, basically the land between the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati, that is their problem."
"[Burrow] suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran.... It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion."
"But it seems likely... that Sarasvati/Harakhvati was the name for the Helmand. Otherwise it is difficult to understand how Sarasvati could be put between Sindhu and Sarayu as the major intervening river in RV X, 64.9."
"Now, it would be ludicrous to claim that the IAs left the common Indo-Iranian habitat, as per the AIT, moved into Saptasindhu and turning the Haraχvaiti name into Sarasvatī gave it to a river there to remember their past while they proceeded to generate the root sṛ and its derivatives to accord with other IE languages. Occam’s razor, which here is conveniently ignored by AIT adherents, commands the opposite: that the Iranians moved away, lost the root sṛ and the name Sarasvatī in its devolved form Haraxvaiti was given to a river in their new habitat."
"(the Unappropriated Glory) which is coming over to Saoshyant Verethrajan who will rise from the area where the Kansayoya sea is situated by the (River) Haetumant and Mount Ushada around which the many watercourses meet, coming from the mountains."