Download or read book Nuzi Texts and Their Uses as Historical Evidence written by M. P. Maidman and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2010 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Assyria and Arrapha in peace and war -- Corruption in city hall -- A legal dispute over land: two generations of legal paperwork -- The decline and fall of a Nuzi family -- The nature of the ilku at Nuzi

Download or read book General Studies and Excavations at Nuzi 10 2 written by David I. Owen and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monographs and collections of essays on the history, religion, social life, and literature of northern Mesopotamia during the second millennium B.C., when the Hurrians, a people with their own language and culture dominated much of northern Mesopotamia. Contains a new trilingual (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian) tablet from Ugarit, contributions to the Hurrian lexicon and personal names, observations on the Mittani letter, and extensive studies in Hurrian grammar and Nuzi society. This volume also contains 109 new Harvard Semitic Museum texts and fragments in copies, as well as additions to previously published copies of JEN texts and many new joins.

Download or read book Law and Dis Order in the Ancient Near East written by Katrien De Graef and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mesopotamia is often considered to be the birthplace of law codes. In recognition of this fact and motivated by the perennial interest in the topic among Assyriologists, the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale was organized in Ghent in 2013 around the theme “Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East.” Based on papers delivered at that meeting, this volume contains twenty-six essays that focus on archaeological, philological, and historical topics related to order and chaos in the Ancient Near East. Written by a diverse array of international scholars, the contributions to this book explore laws and legal practices in the Ur III, Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods in Mesopotamia, as well as in Nuzi and the Hebrew Bible. Among the subjects covered are the Code of Hammurabi, legal phraseology, the archaeological traces of the organization of community life, and biblical law. The volume also contains essays that explore the concepts of chaos/disorder and law/order in divinatory texts and literature. Wide-ranging and cutting-edge, the essays in this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists, especially members of the International Association for Assyriology.

Download or read book Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East written by Catherine Breniquet and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Ancient Near East covers a huge chronological frame, from the first pictographic texts of the late 4th millennium to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 BC. During these millennia, different societies developed in a changing landscape where sheep (and their wool) always played an important economic role. The 22 papers presented here explore the place of wool in the ancient economy of the region, where large-scale textile production began during the second half of the 3rd millennium. By placing emphasis on the development of multi-disciplinary methodologies, experimentation and use of archaeological evidence combined with ancient textual sources, the wide-ranging contributions explore a number of key themes. These include: the first uses of wool in textile manufacture and organization of weaving; trade and exchange; the role of wool in institutionalized economies; and the reconstruction of the processes that led to this first form of industry in Antiquity. The numerous archaeological and written sources provide an enormous amount of data on wool, textile crafts, and clothing and these inter-disciplinary studies are beginning to present a comprehensive picture of the economic and cultural impact of woollen textiles and textile manufacturing on formative ancient societies.

Download or read book Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia written by Matthew Rutz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia Matthew Rutz explores the relationship between ancient collections of texts, commonly deemed libraries and archives, and the modern interpretation of titles like ‘diviner’. By looking at cuneiform tablets as artifacts with archaeological contexts, this work probes the modern analytical categories used to study ancient diviners and investigates the transmission of Babylonian/Assyrian scholarship in Syria. During the Late Bronze Age diviners acted as high-ranking scribes and cultic functionaries in Emar, a town on the Syrian Euphrates (ca. 1375-1175 BCE). This book’s centerpiece is an extensive analytical catalogue of the excavated tablet collection of one family of diviners. Over seventy-five fragments are identified for the first time, along with many proposed joins between fragments.

Download or read book Defining the Sacred written by Nicola Laneri and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-05-08 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is a phenomenon that is inseparable from human society. It brings about a set of emotional, ideological and practical elements that are pervasive in the social fabric of any society and characterizable by a number of features. These include the establishment of intermediaries in the relationship between humans and the divine; the construction of ceremonial places for worshipping the gods and practicing ritual performances; and the creation ritual paraphernalia. Investigating the religious dimensions of ancient societies encounters problems in defining such elements, especially with regard to societies that lack textual evidences and has tended to lead towards the identification of differentiation between the mental dimension, related to religious beliefs, and the material one associated with religious practices, resulting in a separation between scholars able to investigate, and possibly reconstruct, ritual practices (i.e., archaeologists), and those interested in defining the realm of ancient beliefs (i.e., philologists and religious historians). The aim of this collection of papers is to attempt to bridge these two dimensions by breaking down existing boundaries in order to form a more comprehensive vision of religion among ancient Near Eastern societies. This approach requires that a higher consideration be given to those elements (either artificial -- buildings, objects, texts, etc. -- or natural -- landscapes, animals, trees, etc.) that are created through a materialization of religious beliefs and practices enacted by members of communities. These issues are addressed in a series of specific case-studies covering a broad chronological framework that from the Pre-pottery Neolithic to the Iron Age. (Cover illustration © German Archaeological Institute, photo N. Becker)

Download or read book Proceedings of the 53th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale written by Leonid E. Kogan and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 1252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second half of the proceedings, City Administration in the Ancient Near East, is available here. A workshop volume is available here. In July 2007, the 53rd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (the annual meeting of the International Association of Assyriologists) was held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. In Moscow, several hundred Assyriologists enjoyed the hospitality of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Dozens of papers on the topic “Language in the Ancient Near East,” were delivered at the University. More than 50 of those papers are published in this 2-volume set.

Download or read book Making Ancient Cities written by Andrew Creekmore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates how the structure and use of space developed and changed in cities, and examines the role of different societal groups in shaping urbanism.

Download or read book Mittani Palaeography written by Zenobia Sabrina Homan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mittani Palaeography, Zenobia Homan analyses cuneiform writing from the Late Bronze Age Mittani state, which was situated in the region between modern Aleppo, Erbil and Diyarbakır. The ancient communication network reveals a story of local scribal tradition blended with regional adaptation and international political change, reflecting the ways in which written knowledge travelled within the cuneiform culture of the Middle East. Mittani signs, their forms, and variants, are described and defined in detail utilising a large digital database and discussed in relation to other regional corpora (Assyro-Mittanian, Middle Assyrian, Nuzi and Tigunanum among others). The collected data indicate that Mittanian was comparatively standardised – an innovation for the period – signifying the existence of a centralised system of scribal training.

Download or read book Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East written by Alfonso Archi and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-01-23 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In July, 2011, the International Association for Assyriology met in Rome, Italy, for 5 days to deliver and listen to papers on the theme “Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East”. This volume, the proceedings of the conference, contains more than 40 of the papers read at the 57th annual Rencontre, including 3 plenary lectures/papers, many papers directly connected with the theme, as well as a workshop on parents and children. The papers covered every period of Mesopotamian history, from the third millennium through the end of the first millennium B.C.E. The attendees were warmly hosted by faculty and students from the Università di Roma “La Sapienza”.

Download or read book Representations of Political Power written by Marlies Heinz and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007-06-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representation of political power seems to have been necessary at all times in all complex urban societies. To secure order—to construct a certain social, ideological, religious, economic, and cultural stability—seems to be one of the main intentions of representation. When order breaks down or is threatened, political power comes under threat and the cohesion of the community is also in jeopardy. In times of impending change, crisis, or disorder, special effort is required to reassure the community of the rulers ability to maintain stability. What those in power did to convince the affected communities of their qualities as rulers, that is, their representational strategies — especially in times of change — is the subject of this book, explored through examination of case studies drawn from the ancient Near East. The volume is divided into three thematic parts: “Reestablishment of Order after Major Disruption,” “Changing Order from Within,” and “Perceptions of a New Order.”

Download or read book Brotherhood of Kings written by Amanda H. Podany and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda Podany here takes readers on a vivid tour through a thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history, from 2300 to 1300 BCE, paying particular attention to the lively interactions that took place between the great kings of the day. Allowing them to speak in their own words, Podany reveals how these leaders and their ambassadors devised a remarkably sophisticated system of diplomacy and trade. What the kings forged, as they saw it, was a relationship of friends-brothers-across hundreds of miles. Over centuries they worked out ways for their ambassadors to travel safely to one another's capitals, they created formal rules of interaction and ways to work out disagreements, they agreed to treaties and abided by them, and their efforts had paid off with the exchange of luxury goods that each country wanted from the other. Tied to one another through peace treaties and powerful obligations, they were also often bound together as in-laws, as a result of marrying one another's daughters. These rulers had almost never met one another in person, but they felt a strong connection--a real brotherhood--which gradually made wars between them less common. Indeed, any one of the great powers of the time could have tried to take over the others through warfare, but diplomacy usually prevailed and provided a respite from bloodshed. Instead of fighting, the kings learned from one another, and cooperated in peace. A remarkable account of a pivotal moment in world history--the establishment of international diplomacy thousands of years before the United Nations--Brotherhood of Kings offers a vibrantly written history of the region often known as the "cradle of civilization."

Download or read book Constituent Confederate and Conquered Space written by Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mittani empire is one of the most enigmatic political structures in Mesopotamian history. Reconstructing the emergence and the organisation of this state, whose territory encompassed Upper Mesopotamia touching the Levant and the piedmont plains of the Zagros in the East at the height of its power, is exceedingly difficult. Cuneiform specialists, archeologists and historians discuss the Mittani state with regard to modes of spatial organisation co- and preexisting in the region.

Download or read book A Companion to the Ancient Near East written by Daniel C. Snell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of the popular survey of Near Eastern civilization from the Bronze Age to the era of Alexander the Great A Companion to the Ancient Near East explores the history of the region from 4400 BCE to the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. Original and revised essays from a team of distinguished scholars from across disciplines address subjects including the politics, economics, architecture, and heritage of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Part of the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, this acclaimed single-volume reference combines lively writing with engaging and relatable topics to immerse readers in this fascinating period of Near East history. The new second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include new developments in relevant fields, particularly archaeology, and expand on themes of interest to contemporary students. Clear, accessible chapters offer fresh discussions on the history of the family and gender roles, the literature, languages, and religions of the region, pastoralism, medicine and philosophy, and borders, states, and warfare. New essays highlight recent discoveries in cuneiform texts, investigate how modern Egyptians came to understand their ancient history, and examine the place of archaeology among the historical disciplines. This volume: Provides substantial new and revised content covering topics such as social conflict, kingship, cosmology, work, trade, and law Covers the civilizations of the Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Israelites, and Persians, emphasizing social and cultural history Examines the legacy of the Ancient Near East in the medieval and modern worlds Offers a uniquely broad geographical, chronological, and topical range Includes a comprehensive bibliographical guide to Ancient Near East studies as well as new and updated references and reading suggestions Suitable for use as both a primary reference or as a supplement to a chronologically arranged textbook, A Companion to the Ancient Near East, 2nd Edition is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, instructors in the field, and scholars from other disciplines.

Download or read book Cultures in Contact written by Joan Aruz and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2013 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The exhibition "Beyond Babylon : Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," held in 2008 - 2009 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrated the cultural enrichment that emerged from the intensive interaction of civilizations from western Asia to Egypt and the Aegean in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. During this critical period in human history, powerful kingdoms and large territorial states were formed. Rising social elites created a demand for copper and tin, as well as for precious gold and silver and exotic materials such as lapis lazuli and ivory to create elite objects fashioned in styles that reflected contacts with foreign lands. This quest for metals--along with the desire for foreign textiles--was the driving force that led to the establishment of merchant colonies and a vast trading network throughout central Anatolia during the early second millennium B.C. Texts from palaces at sites from Hattusa (modern Bogazköy) in Hittite Anatolia to Amarna in Egypt attest to the volume and variety of interactions that took place some centuries later, creating the impetus for the circulation of precious goods, stimulating the exchange of ideas, and inspiring artistic creativity. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence for these far-flung connections emerges out of tragedy--the wreckage of the oldest known seagoing ship, discovered in a treacherous stretch off the southern coast of Turkey near the promontory known as Uluburun. Among its extraordinary cargo of copper, glass, and exotic raw materials and luxury goods is a gilded bronze statuette of a goddess--perhaps the patron deity on board, who failed in her mission to protect the ship. To explore the themes of the exhibition--art, trade, and diplomacy, viewed from an international perspective--a two-day symposium and related scholarly events allowed colleagues to explore many facets of the multicultural societies that developed in the second millennium B.C. Their insights, which dramatically illustrate the incipient phases of our intensely interactive world, are presented largely in symposium order, beginning with broad regional overviews and examination of particular archeological contexts and then drawing attention to specific artists and literary evidence for interconnections. In this introduction, however, their contributions are viewed from a somewhat more synthetic perspective, one that focuses attention on the ways in which ideas in this volume intersect to enrich the ongoing discourse on the themes elucidated in the exhibition.

Download or read book The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume III written by Karen Radner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 1001 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East offers a comprehensive and fully illustrated survey of the history of Egypt and Western Asia (Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran) in five volumes, from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander of Great. The authors represent a highly international mix of leading academics whose expertise brings alive the people, places and times of the remote past. The emphasis lies firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities under investigation. The individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, giving special attention to the most recent archaeological finds and how they have impacted our interpretation. The first volume covers the long period from the mid-tenth millennium to the late third millennium BC and presents the history of the Near East in ten chapters "From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad". Key topics include the domestication of animals and plants, the first permanent settlements, the subjugation and appropriation of the natural environment, the emergence of complex states and belief systems, the invention of the earliest writing systems and the wide-ranging trade networks that linked diverse population groups across deserts, mountains and oceans"--

Download or read book Kardunia Babylonia under the Kassites 2 written by Alexa Bartelmus and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karduniaš, as the kingdom of the Kassites in Babylonia was called in ancient times, was the neighbor and rival of great powers such as Egypt, the Hittites, and Assyria. But while our knowledge of the latter kingdoms has made huge progress in the last decades, the Kassites have until recently been largely ignored by modern scholarship. Recently a number of scholars have embarked on research into different aspects of Late Bronze Age Babylonia. The desire to share the results of these new investigations resulted in an international conference, which was held at Munich University in July 2011. The presentations given at this meeting have been revised for publication in the current volume. This book gives an overview of current research on the Kassites and is the first larger survey of their culture ever. An invaluable introduction by Kassite expert Professor John A. Brinkman is followed by seventeen specialist contributions investigating different aspects of the Kassites. These include detailed historical, social, cultural, archaeological, and art historical studies concerning the Kassites from their first arrival in Mesopotamia, during the period when a Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylonia (c. 1500-1550 BC), and in the subsequent aftermath. Concentrating on southern Mesopotamia the contributions also discuss Kassite relations and presence in neighboring regions. The book is completed by a substantial bibliography and a detailed index.