Word: mittani
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...quote comes from a tablet currently on display at Harvard's Semitic Museum. It is part of an exhibit on the excavations of the town of Nuzi, a small provincial city in northern Mesopotamia that was once part of the Mittani kingdom, a Near Eastern world power from around 1500 B.C.E. The tablet is one of 14 preserved from the deposition of Kushshi-harbe, the mayor of Nuzi, during investigations into his sexual misconduct and criminal behavior...
...rest of the exhibit shows scraps of writing exercises by Mittani students, contracts between shepherds, court records from civil cases, stone weights, beaded jewelry, ritual objects and a heck of a lot of broken plates. It's a neat display. The work that went into it is impressive. It's exciting to know that we can learn such things about lives so distant from our own. But if you're looking for the lessons of history, the Semitic Museum's message might not be one you'd expect...
...farmer-poet Mohammed Said and his wife and children. A few weeks ago, during the brief brush with freedom, he had allowed a display of ethnic pride: "I am the rose of Eden, I am the flame that lights the Kurdish darkness, I am the offspring of the Mittani, the Kassites, the Hurrians and the Medes. I am cousin to Alexander the Great, and the juice of the pomegranate drips from my lips like wine." Finally, he said, the suffering of his people was over. "We could not speak our language or play our music for fear of death...
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