Experiencing power, generating authority : cosmos, politics, and the ideology of kingship in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia /
: "The work contained in this volume is the result of a four-day workshop entitled 'Experiencing power--Generating Authority : Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia' held in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology November 2007."--Page [xxvii]. : xxx, 448 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. : Includes bibliographical references and index. : 9781934536643
Heralds of That Good Realm : Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions /
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This volume examines the transmission of biblical pseudepigraphic literature and motifs from their largely Jewish cultural contexts in Palestine to developing gnostic milieux of Syria and Mesopotamia, particularly that one lying behind the birth and growth of Manichaeism. It surveys biblical pseudepigraphic literary activity in the late antique Near East, devoting special attention to revelatory works attributed to the five biblical forefathers who are cited in the Cologne Mani Codex : Adam, Seth, Enosh, Shem, and Enoch. The author provides a philological, literary, and religio-historical analysis of each of the five pseudepigraphic citations contained in the Codex , and offers hypotheses regarding the original provenance of each citation and the means by which these traditions have been adapted to their present context. This study is an important contribution to the scholarly reassessment of the roles played by Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Christian sectarianism, and classical gnosis in the formulation and development of Syro-Mesopotamian religious currents.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004439702
9789004104594
In the path of the moon : Babylonian celestial divination and its legacy /
:
Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multi-faceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, Classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy. \'The collected essays in this volume, successive steps in an ordered path, constitute an invaluable contribution to a better understanding of Babylonian divination.\' Lorenzo Verderame, \'Sapienza\' Università di Roma \'The reader interested in the multifaceted presentation of the problems related to the explanation of Babylonian celestial divination and well equipped with the knowledge of Akkadian will certainly be rewarded by the study of Rochberg's latest publication.\' Henryk Drawnel, SDB
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004189614 :
1566-7952 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Pax Assyriaca : the historical evolution of civilisations and the archaeology of empires /
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This volume provides a study of the evolutionary process of ancient civilisations, stressing the comparison between theoretical principles and relevant historical and archaeological evidence. For this reason, the study focuses on the origin, development and collapse of the first stage of the 'Central Civilization', which was the result of the merger of two primeval civilisations, Mesopotamia and Egypt, during the 'Near Eastern phase' of this Central Civilisation. This merger seems to have been the result of the political expansion of an imperial entity coming from Mesopotamia under the aegis of the so-called Neo-Assyrian Empire from 1000 BC to 600 BC - better known as the Pax Assyriaca - although the process of full integration with Egypt seems to have been concluded, according to the archaeological records, only by the successor empires of Assyria circa 430 BC.
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Also issued in print: 2022. :
1 online resource (viii, 213 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps (black and white, and colour) :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9781789690637 (PDF ebook) :
The British Museum's Excavations at Nineveh, 1846-1855 /
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Geoffrey Turner has written the definitive study of the mid-19th century excavations sponsored by the British Museum at the ancient Assyrian site of Nineveh in Iraq. Based on exhaustive analysis of unpublished archives combined with his own extensive knowledge of Assyrian architecture, Turner's work documents the complete history of these excavations. Turner also draws on the archives and numerous additional sources to provide a detailed reconstruction of the architecture and relief sculpture in the building that was the primary focus of these excavations, the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib (ruled 705-681 BC). The result constitutes the final report both on the results of these excavations and on the original appearance of one of the ancient world's most famous buildings.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004435377
9789004435360
The Amorites : A Political History of Mesopotamia in the Early Second Millennium BCE /
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This study of the political history of Mesopotamia - today's Iraq and Syria - in the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) is the first comprehensive historical synthesis of this kind published in English after many decades. Based on numerous written sources in Sumerian and Akkadian - royal inscriptions, letters, law collections, economic records, etc. - and on up-to-date research, it presents the region's political history in a meticulous geographic and chronological manner. This allows the interested academic and non-academic reader an in-depth view into the scene of ancient Mesopotamia ruled by competing dynasties of West Semitic (Amorite) origin, with a complex web of political and tribal connections between them.
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1 online resource (597 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004547315
Life at the bottom of Babylonian societ y servile laborers at Nippur in the 14th and 13th centuries, B.C. /
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Life at the Bottom of Babylonian Society is a study of the population dynamics, family structure, and legal status of publicly-controlled servile workers in Kassite Babylonia. It compares some of the demographic aspects proper to this group with other intensively studied past populations, such as Roman Egypt, Medieval Tuscany, and American slave plantations. It suggests that families, especially those headed by single mothers, acted as a counter measure against population reduction (flight and death) and as a means for the state to control this labor force. The work marks a step forward in the use of quantitative measures in conjunction with cuneiform sources to achieve a better understanding of the social and economic forces that affected ancient Near Eastern populations.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004207042 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Aramaic graffiti from Hatra : a study based on the archive of the Missione Archeologica Italiana /
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Graffiti are an often neglected but crucial witness to everyday life of ancient civilizations. The Aramaic graffiti from Hatra (North Iraq) can make an invaluable contribution in this sense, distributed as they were in various buildings throughout this city which flourished between the 1st and the Third century AD. Thanks to an effective interaction between epigraphy and archaeology, Marco Moriggi and Ilaria Bucci offer a thorough analysis of the Aramaic graffiti from Hatra as documented by the Archive of the Missione Archeologica Italiana (Turin). In addition to the edition of 48 published and 37 unpublished graffiti, this study further includes the concordances of numbers of all Hatran texts published so far and full archaeological information about the graffiti.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004397644
Sons and descendant s a social history of kin groups and family names in the early neo-Babylonian period, 747-626 B.C. /
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Sons and Descendants represents the first comprehensive study of Babylonian family names. Drawing primarily on evidence from legal documents from the early Neo-Babylonian period (747-626 B.C.), the book examines the presence of large, named kin groups at the major Babylonia cities, considering their origins and the important roles their members played as local elites in city governance and temple administration. The period of Neo-Assyrian ascendance over Babylonia marks the first for which there is adequate textual material to allow for a study of these groups, but their continued presence and prominence in Babylonia under the native Neo-Babylonian dynasty and the Persian Empire means that this work is an important contribution to Assyriological understanding of Neo-Babylonian society.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [297]-310) and indexes. :
9789004189645 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The revival of the Anu cult and the nocturnal fire ceremony at late Babylonian Uruk /
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In The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk , Julia Krul offers a comprehensive study of the rise of the sky god Anu as patron deity of Uruk in the Late Babylonian period (ca. 480-100 B.C.). She reconstructs the historical development of the Anu cult, its underlying theology, and its daily rites of worship, with a particular focus on the yearly nocturnal fire ceremony at the Anu temple, the Bīt Rēš. Providing the first in-depth analysis of the ceremony, Julia Krul convincingly identifies it as a seasonal renewal festival with an important exorcistic component, but also as a reinforcement of local hierarchical relationships and the elite status of the Anu priesthood.
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Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universität Münster, 2014. :
1 online resource (xiii, 310 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-290) and indexes. :
9789004364943 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar /
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The Aramaic language has continued to be spoken in various dialects down to modern times. Many of these dialects, however, are now endangered due to political events in the Middle East over the last hundred years. This work, in three volumes, presents a description of one such endangered neo-Aramaic dialect, that of the Assyrian Christian community of the Barwar region in northern Iraq. It is a unique record of the dialect based on interviews with the surviving older generation of the community. Volume one contains a detailed grammatical description of the dialect, including sections on phonology, morphology and syntax. Volume two contains an extensive glossary of the lexicon of the dialect with illustrations of various aspects of the material culture. Volume three contains transcriptions of numerous recorded texts, including folktales, ethnographic texts, songs, and proverbs.
:
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047443490 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The neo-Aramaic dialect of Barwar /
:
The Aramaic language has continued to be spoken in various dialects down to modern times. Many of these dialects, however, are now endangered due to political events in the Middle East over the last hundred years. This work, in three volumes, presents a description of one such endangered neo-Aramaic dialect, that of the Assyrian Christian community of the Barwar region in northern Iraq. It is a unique record of the dialect based on interviews with the surviving older generation of the community. Volume one contains a detailed grammatical description of the dialect, including sections on phonology, morphology and syntax. Volume two contains an extensive glossary of the lexicon of the dialect with illustrations of various aspects of the material culture. Volume three contains transcriptions of numerous recorded texts, including folktales, ethnographic texts, songs, and proverbs.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047443490 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A grammar of neo-Aramaic : the dialect of the Jews of Arbel /
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Being direct descendants of the Aramaic spoken by the Jews in antiquity, the still spoken Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects of Kurdistan deserve special and vivid interest. Geoffrey Khan's A Grammar of Neo-Aramaic is a unique record of one of these dialects, now on the verge of extinction. This volume, the result of extensive fieldwork, contains a description of the dialect spoken by the Jews from the region of Arbel (Iraqi Kurdistan), together with a transcription of recorded texts and a glossary. The grammar consists of sections on phonology, morphology and syntax, preceded by an introductory chapter examining the position of this dialect in relation to the other known Neo-Aramaic dialects. The transcribed texts record folktales and accounts of customs, traditions and experiences of the Jews of Kurdistan.
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1 online resource (xx, 586 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004305045 :
0169-9423 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Corpus of Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals.
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Among the most important sources for understanding the cultures and systems of thought of ancient Mesopotamia is a large body of magical and medical texts written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. An especially significant branch of this literature centres upon witchcraft. Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals and incantations attribute ill-health and misfortune to the magic machinations of witches and prescribe ceremonies, devices, and treatments for dispelling witchcraft, destroying the witch, and protecting and curing the patient. The Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals aims to present a reconstruction of this body of texts; it provides critical editions of the relevant rituals and prescriptions based on the study of the cuneiform tablets and fragments recovered from the libraries of ancient Mesopotamia. This is the first volume in the three-part Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals series . Volumes two and three are expected in 2015 and 2018 respectively. \'Even in its incomplete form, Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals is a major contribution to the study of witchcraft, supernatural belief, folk medicine (both supernatural and non-supernatural), theories of magic, incantations, and ritual. This edition is required reading for any scholar with an interest in these topics.\' David Elton Gay, Indiana University
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004214897 :
1566-7952 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Le Devin historien en Mésopotamie
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Le devin historien en Mesopotamie is a combined study of divination and historiography. More than mere custodians of historical memory, diviners approached omens as written signs and developed a sophisticated semiology to recognize and order them. Diviners perceived omens as potentially rich in various meanings and cultivated an elaborate hermeneutic for working these out using hypothetical and inductive reasoning. Even if omens were removed from the recorded facts, diviners endowed them with a wide range of possibilities. Divination sought to establish links among historical, cosmic, and natural events because it investigated at once the past, present, and future. The first study of its kind since 1946, when only about 60 historical omens were known, this work presents 385 in a comprehensive edition.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004390065 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Mesopotamian divination literature : its organizational framework and generative and paradigmatic characteristics /
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In Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics , Abraham Winitzer provides a detailed study of the Akkadian Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1600 BC) omen collections stemming from extispicy, the most significant Mesopotamian divination technique for most of that civilization's history. Paying close attention to these texts' organizational structure, Winitzer details the mechanics responsible for their origins and development, and highlights key characteristics of a conceptual framework that helped reconfigure Mesopotamian divination into a literature in line with significant, new forms of literary expression from the same time. This literature, Winitzer concludes, represents an early form of scientific reasoning that began to appreciate the centrality of texts and textual interpretation in this civilization's production, organization, and conception of knowledge.
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1 online resource (xxi, 489 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 460-477) and index. :
9789004347007 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Corpus of Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals /
:
Among the most important sources for understanding the cultures and systems of thought of ancient Mesopotamia is a large body of magical and medical texts written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. An especially significant branch of this literature centres upon witchcraft. Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals and incantations attribute ill-health and misfortune to the magic machinations of witches and prescribe ceremonies, devices, and treatments for dispelling witchcraft, destroying the witch, and protecting and curing the patient. The Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals aims to present a reconstruction of this body of texts; it provides critical editions of the relevant rituals and prescriptions based on the study of the cuneiform tablets and fragments recovered from the libraries of ancient Mesopotamia. \'Now that we have the second volume, we the more admire the thoughtful organisation of the entire project, the strict methods followed, and the insightful observations and decisions made.\' Martin Stol, Bibliotheca Orientalis lxxIV n° 3-4, mei-augustus 2017
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1 online resource : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004318557 :
1566-7952 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sources of evil : studies in Mesopotamian exorcistic lore /
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Sources of Evil: Studies in Mesopotamian Exorcistic Lore is a collection of thirteen essays on the body of knowledge employed by ancient Near Eastern healing experts, most prominently the 'exorcist' and the 'physician', to help patients who were suffering from misfortunes caused by divine anger, transgressions of taboos, demons, witches, or other sources of evil. The volume provides new insights into the two most important catalogues of Mesopotamian therapeutic lore, the Exorcist's Manual and the Aššur Medical Catalogue, and contains discussions of agents of evil and causes of illness, ways of repelling evil and treating patients, the interpretation of natural phenomena in the context of exorcistic lore, and a description of the symbolic cosmos with its divine and demonic inhabitants.
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1 online resource (xiii, 382 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004373341 :
1566-7952 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Image of Mesopotamian Divine Healers : Healing Goddesses and the Legitimization of Professional asûs in the Mesopotamian Medical Marketplace /
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"This volume exposes one of the world's oldest medical marketplaces and the emergence of medical professionalization within it. Through an unprecedented analysis of the Mesopotamian healing goddesses as well as asûs, a diverse group of "healers", Irene Sibbing-Plantholt demonstrates that from the Middle Babylonian period onwards, the goddess Gula was employed as a divine legitimization model for scholarly, professional asûs. With this work, Sibbing-Plantholt provides a unique insight in processes of medical competition and legitimization in ancient Mesopotamia, which speak to similar processes in other societies"--
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Based on author's doctoral dissertation at Unviersity of Pennsylvania in 2017. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004512412
9789004512405
The Image of Mesopotamian Divine Healers : Healing Goddesses and the Legitimization of Professional asûs in the Mesopotamian Medical Marketplace /
:
"This volume exposes one of the world's oldest medical marketplaces and the emergence of medical professionalization within it. Through an unprecedented analysis of the Mesopotamian healing goddesses as well as asûs, a diverse group of "healers", Irene Sibbing-Plantholt demonstrates that from the Middle Babylonian period onwards, the goddess Gula was employed as a divine legitimization model for scholarly, professional asûs. With this work, Sibbing-Plantholt provides a unique insight in processes of medical competition and legitimization in ancient Mesopotamia, which speak to similar processes in other societies"--
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Based on author's doctoral dissertation at Unviersity of Pennsylvania in 2017. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004512412
9789004512405