Research source

This indicated to him the possibility that their contents were similar

Date of account: Ancient traditions presented in a work published 1916
Source: Myths & Legends of Babylonia & Assyria
Reference: Myths & Legends of Babylonia & Assyria · selected passage 14
Rights: public_domain
Language: English synthesis of Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian material
Translation: Lewis Spence, with cited translations and retellings
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

This indicated to him the possibility that their contents were similar. A certain word appeared very frequently in the inscriptions, but it seemed to have two forms, a longer and a shorter, and this Grotefend, adopting a suggestion of Hunter's, took to mean 'king' in the short form and 'kings' in the longer, the juxtaposition of the two signs thus being taken to signify 'king of kings.' In both the inscriptions studied by Grotefend he found that this expression 'king of kings' was followed by the same word, which he took to mean 'great.' But there were no definite facts to support these hypotheses. Turning to certain Sassanian inscriptions which had recently been deciphered, he found that the expression 'great king, king of kings' inevitably occurred, and this strengthened his opinion that it was present in the inscriptions he studied. If this was so, thought he, the two texts under his observation must have been set up by two different kings, for the names were not the same at the beginning. Moreover the name with which text No. I began appears in the third line of text No.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a passage from a historical religious or interpretive text. Its genre, manuscript history, translation and place within its own tradition are part of the evidence and must remain visible.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice can compare the passage's descriptive features with later reports, but resemblance does not turn a vision, angel, mythic creature or sacred narrative into a modern incident report.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.