Download or read book Climate Environment and Agriculture in Assyria in the 2nd Half of the 2nd Millennium BCE written by Hervé Reculeau and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the result of a two-year post-doctoral research conducted at the Cluster of Excellence TOPOI (Berlin) under the direction of Prof. Dr. Hartmut Kuhne. It focuses on potential environmental changes and/or climatic fluctuations, and their impact on the agrarian economy of Assyria during the 13th to 10th centuries BCE. Being intersected in two parts the first three chapters present a state-of-the-art compendium of palaeo-ecosystems and climatic as well as archaeological conditions of Upper Mesopotamia during the Late Holocene, i.e. the 2nd Millennium BCE, while the last four chapters analyze the cuneiform evidence of the 13th century BCE of cereal yields in relation to dry-farming and/or irrigation, field locations, productivity, and metrology. It is suggested that the overall poor yields documented at Middle Assyrian cities like Assur and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta or provincial towns like Dur-Katlimmu, Harbe, Tall Sabi Abyad or sibanniba cannot be interpreted in terms of an opposition between dry-farming vs. irrigation agriculture, but rather reflect the poor efficiency of Assyrian agriculture during an arid episode which prevailed in Upper Mesopotamia in the whole Late Bronze Age.
Download or read book Society and the Individual in Ancient Mesopotamia written by Laura Culbertson and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-10-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of social life in ancient Mesopotamia, bringing together leading experts to survey key social domains of daily life as well as major non-dominant social groups. It serves as a point of entry to the current research in this field.
Download or read book The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East written by Karen Radner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 1001 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a diverse, international team of leading scholars whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. The third volume examines the period from 1600 to 1100 BC or in archaeological terms, the Late Bronze Age. Twelve chapters survey the history of the Near East and discuss the Hyksos state of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, and the Nubian kingdom of Kerma prior to the unification that resulted in the creation of the New Kingdom, the geo-political super power of the period. Contemporary imperial powers-the Hittites in Central Anatolia and Mittani in Upper Mesopotamia-are discussed, as are the appearance and growth of Assyria, the kingdom of Kassite Babylonia, the Elamites of southwestern Iran, and the Mycenaeans in the Aegean. Beyond the narrative history of each region considered, the volume treats a wide range of critical topics, including the absolute chronology; state formation and disintegration; the role of kingship, cult practice, and material culture in the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies; and long-distance trade-both terrestrial and maritime-as a vital factor in the creation of social, political, and economic networks that bridged deserts, oceans, and mountain ranges, binding together the extraordinarily diverse peoples and polities of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia.
Download or read book Middle Babylonian Texts in the Cornell Collections Part II written by Elena Devecchi and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume completes the publication of Middle Babylonian texts from the Rosen Collection that date to the Kassite period, a project that was initiated by Wilfred H. van Soldt with CUSAS 30 in 2015. In this book, Elena Devecchi provides full transliterations, translations, and extended commentaries of 338 previously unpublished cuneiform tablets from Kassite Babylonia (ca. 1475–1155 BCE). Most of the texts are dated to the reigns of Nazi-Maruttaš and Kadašman-Turgu, but the collection also includes one tablet dating to the reign of Burna-Buriaš II and a few documents from the reigns of Kadašman-Enlil II, Kudur-Enlil, and Šagarakti-Šuriaš, as well as some that are not dated. The tablets published here are largely administrative records dealing with the income, storage, and redistribution of agricultural products and byproducts, animal husbandry, and textile production, while legal documents and letters comprise a smaller portion of the collection. Evidence suggests that these documents originated from an administrative center that interacted closely with the provincial capital Nippur and must have been located in its vicinity. They thus expand significantly our previous knowledge of the Nippur region under Kassite rule, hitherto almost exclusively based on sources that came from Nippur itself, and provide substantial new data for the study of central aspects of society, economy, and administration that traditionally lie at the core of research about Kassite Babylonia.
Download or read book Irrigation in Early States written by Stephanie Rost and published by Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irrigation has long been of interest in the study of the past. Many early civilizations were located in river valleys, and irrigation was of great economic importance for many early states because of the key role it played in producing an agricultural surplus, which was the main source of wealth and the basis of political power for the elites who controlled it. Agricultural surplus was also necessary to maintain the very features of statehood, such as urbanism, full-time labor specialization, state institutions, and status hierarchy. Yet, the presence of large-scale or complex irrigation systems does not necessarily mean that they were under centralized control. While some early states organized the construction, operation, and maintenance of irrigation works and resolved conflicts related to water distribution, other early governments left most of the management to local farmers and controlled only the surplus. The cross-cultural studies in this volume reexamine the role of irrigation in early states. Ranging geographically from South America and the southwestern United States to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they describe the physical attributes and environments of early irrigation systems; various methods for empirical investigation of ancient irrigation; and irrigation's economic, sociopolitical, and cosmological dimensions. Through their interdisciplinary perspectives, the authors-all experts in the field of irrigation studies-advance both methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding irrigation in early civilizations.
Download or read book Material Worlds Interdisciplinary Approaches to Contacts and Exchange in the Ancient Near East written by Arnulf Hausleiter and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleven contributions in this book address the history of contacts and exchanges in the Bronze and Iron Ages within West Asia, extending far beyond the boundaries of the previously defined contact zone of the ‘Ancient Near East’.
Download or read book Climate Change Environment and Civilization in the Middle East written by Arie S. Issar and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey of ancient levels of lakes, rivers and sea, and changes in stalagmites and sediments shows an astonishing correlation between climate change and rise and fall of civilizations in the Middle East. Warm periods were characterized by aridization, economic crisis and mass migration. Cold periods brought abundant rain, prosperity and settlement. The authors conclude that climate change was the decisive factor in the origins of the "cradle of civilization".
Download or read book Proso Sorghum Tiger Nut written by Aron Dornauer and published by PeWe-Verlag. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so called Fertile Crescent was home of some founder crops important in early agriculture: einkorn, emmer, barley, flax, chick pea, pea, lentil, and bitter vetch. However, research on the proportions and ubiquity of cultivated, measured, delivered, processed and consumed food crops shows a dramatic dominance of the cultivation of barley. Thus, one could assume that there was no significant interspecific but only intraspecific crop diversity and that Mesopotamian agriculture was a kind of a barley monoculture. In contrast, the plenty of cuneiform terms for cereal-like and legume-like plants might indicate some kind of biodiversity. Indeed, some cuneiform scientists specializing in crop plants and vegetables consider that some of the Sumerian še compounds, as well as their Akkadian equivalents, might be identified with millets, with some kinds of pulses such as bitter vetch and cowpea, or with some kind of tuber plants. Against this background, this study undertakes research on some Sumero-Akkadian taxa: In the first part of this study I evaluate some terms which several specialists propose to be millet or sorghum varieties: še'eštub (še-eštub) = arsuppu, šemuš (še-muš(3/5)) = šeguššu, šezahgebar (še-ne-ge-bar), šegunu (še-gu-nu, še-gunu3) = šegunu, še-ka, še-ka sig-ga = arsikku, še-ud-e-de3 = duhnu. In this context, the question that has to be asked is if it is possible that millets were cultivated in Babylonia as early as the late third millennium BC. To address this issue, the contribution of the Bronze Age Gulf trade in exchange for domesticated crops, including African and Asian millets, will be examined. Finally, the study discusses why, despite their excellent heat and drought tolerances, none of the millet species in arid Babylonia could displace the winter sown main crops. The second part addresses the question of whether the recently proposed identification of the Akkadian crop (se/u'qayyātu with Cyperus esculentus, a plant that has been demonstrated to have been present in ancient Egypt but not in Mesopotamia, is supported by the cuneiform evidence. I undertake some more detailed ecotrophological research on the use of qayyātu as an intermediate in the production of beer and foodstuff. In this context, I also study some other semi-baked and fermented intermediates.
Download or read book Extreme Klimaereignisse und Hungerkatastrophen in den Prophetenb chern written by Sara Kipfer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diese Monographie legt einen historisch und exegetisch fundierten Referenzrahmen für die Wahrnehmung, Deutung und Bewältigung extremer Klimaereignisse in den Prophetenbüchern und leistet damit einen Beitrag zu den environmental humanities aus biblischer Perspektive. This monograph lays out a historically and exegetically grounded frame of reference for perceiving, interpreting, and coping with extreme climate events in the prophetic books, thus contributing to the environmental humanities from a biblical perspective.
Download or read book First Civilizations written by Robert Chadwick and published by Equinox Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Civilizations is the second edition of a popular student text first published in 1996 in Montreal by Les Editions Champ Fleury. This much updated and expanded edition provides an introductory overview of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. It was conceived primarily for students who have little or no knowledge of ancient history or archaeology. The book begins with the role of history and archaeology in understanding the past, and continues with the origins of agriculture and the formation of the Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia. Three subsequent chapters concentrate on Assyrian and Babylonian history and culture. The second half of the book focuses on Egypt, begining with the physical environment of the Nile, the formation of the Egyptian state and the Old Kingdom. Subsequent chapters discuss the Middle Kingdom, the Hyksos period, and the 18th Dynasty, with space devoted to Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, the Ramesside period. The text ends with the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia and Egypt. First Civilizations also contains sections on astronomy, medicine, architecture, eschatology, religion, burial practices and mummification, and discusses the myths of Gilgamesh, Isis and Osiris. Each chapter has a basic bibliography which emphasizes English language encyclopedias, books and journals specializing in the ancient Near East.
Download or read book Introduction Introducing Assyria Assyrian places Assyrians at home Assyrians abroad Foreigners in Assyria Assyrian world domination Chronology Glossary References Further reading Index written by Karen Radner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From city state to empire, in the early 2nd millennium BC to the end of the 7th century BC, Assyria was one of the most influential kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. Using archaeological discoveries from across the Middle East, Karen Radner demonstrates the vast, socially diverse, multicultural nature of Ancient Assyria and the Assyrian Empire.
Download or read book The Sumerians written by Samuel Noah Kramer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them. Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world. "There are few scholars in the world qualified to write such a book, and certainly Kramer is one of them. . . . One of the most valuable features of this book is the quantity of texts and fragments which are published for the first time in a form available to the general reader. For the layman the book provides a readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture. For the specialist it presents a synthesis with which he may not agree but from which he will nonetheless derive stimulation."—American Journal of Archaeology "An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity."—Library Journal
Download or read book Ancient Assyria A Very Short Introduction written by Karen Radner and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assyria was one of the most influential kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. In this Very Short Introduction, Karen Radner sketches the history of Assyria from city state to empire, from the early 2nd millennium BC to the end of the 7th century BC. Since the archaeological rediscovery of Assyria in the mid-19th century, its cities have been excavated extensively in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Israel, with further sites in Iran, Lebanon, and Jordan providing important information. The Assyrian Empire was one of the most geographically vast, socially diverse, multicultural, and multi-ethnic states of the early first millennium BC.Using archaeological records, Radner provides insights into the lives of the inhabitants of the kingdom, highlighting the diversity of human experiences in the Assyrian Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Ancient Mesopotamia written by A. Leo Oppenheim and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
Download or read book Nineveh the Great City written by Lucas Pieter Petit and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly illustrated volume contains more than 65 chapters by international specialists, providing a detailed and thorough study of the Ancient city of Nineveh, the once-flourishing capital of the Assyrian Empire in present-day Iraq.
Download or read book Near Eastern Archaeology written by Suzanne Richard and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 2003 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Filling a gap in classroom texts, more than 60 essays by major scholars in the field have been gathered to create the most up-to-date and complete book available on Levantine and Near Eastern archaeology. The book is divided into two sections: "Theory, Method, and Context," and "Cultural Phases and Topics," which together provide both methodological and areal coverage of the subject. The text is complemented by many line drawings and photographs. Includes a foreword by W.G. Dever.
Download or read book Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States written by Andrew Monson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the new fiscal history, this book represents the first global survey of taxation in the premodern world. What emerges is a rich variety of institutions, including experiments with sophisticated instruments such as sovereign debt and fiduciary money, challenging the notion of a typical premodern stage of fiscal development. The studies also reveal patterns and correlations across widely dispersed societies that shed light on the basic factors driving the intensification, abatement, and innovation of fiscal regimes. Twenty scholars have contributed perspectives from a wide range of fields besides history, including anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. The volume's coverage extends beyond Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East to East Asia and the Americas, thereby transcending the Eurocentric approach of most scholarship on fiscal history.
