Ornamental Wall Painting in the Art of the Assyrian Empire /
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This study brings together the archaeological record and the pictorial documentation of ornamental wall painting produced in Assyria, from the thirteenth to the seventh centuries B.C. Nimrud, Khorsabad, Til Barsip, and Tell Sheikh Hamad, are among the ancient sites where impressive wall paintings were discovered; unfortunately most of these discoveries now exist in drawings and photographs only. Ornamental wall painting created a colorful and meaningful visual impact to the rooms of residences belonging to the Assyrian kings. The assembled material demonstrates that the polychrome and black-and-white decorated bands of geometric, floral, figural, and animal motifs were arranged into a variety of formulaic designs. Particular attention is given to the changing trends in the selection and combination of motifs, some of which had symbolic meaning. The chronology of the wall paintings at Til Barsip and the accompanying discussion of textile patterns are of special interest to the art historian. This book illustrates the ornamental wall paintings as recorded in the excavation reports.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047406594
9789004141544
Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship : Toward a New Understanding of Iraq's Royal Cemetery of Ur /
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At the beginning of Mesopotamia's Early Dynastic period, the political landscape was dominated by temple administrators, but by the end of the period, rulers whose titles we translate as "king" assumed control. This book argues that the ritual process of mourning, burying, and venerating dead elites contributed to this change. Part one introduces the rationale for seeing rituals as a means of giving material form to ideology and, hence, structuring overall power relations. Part two presents archaeological and textual evidence for the death rituals. Part three interprets symbolic objects found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, showing they reflect ideological doctrines promoting the office of kingship. This book will be particularly useful for scholars of Mesopotamian archaeology and history.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416791
9789004146358
Early Islam between Myth and History : Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship /
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This volume examines the process through which a historical character named al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was transformed into a myth by several groups in medieval Islam. Al-Ḥasan lived in the city of Basra, southern Iraq, and was famed for his piety, which attracted to him a large number of disciples who went on to play important roles in the formation of several religious trends. The literary corpus (sayings, stories and letters) ascribed to him has been used as a window into early Islamic religious and intellectual thought. But as this study shows, this corpus was largely forged in different periods, in some cases even a thousand years after al-Ḥasan's death. It tells us more about the beliefs of those who forged the sayings, stories and letters rather than about al-Ḥasan's thought and time.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416708
9789004148291
The new Babylonian diaspora : the rise and fall of the Jewish community in Iraq, 16th-20th centuries C.E. /
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The New Babylonian Diaspora: Rise and Fall of Jewish Community in Iraq, 16th-20th Centuries C.E. provides a historical survey of the Iraqi Jewish community's evolution from the apex of its golden age to its disappearance, emergence, rapid growth and annihilation. Making use of Judeo-Arabic newspapers and archives in London, Paris, Washington D.C. and other sources, Zvi Yehuda proves that from 1740 to 1914, Iraq became a lodestone for tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Kurdistan, Persia, the Mediterranean Basin, and Eastern and Central Europe. After these Jews had settled in Baghdad and Mesopotamia, they became "Babylonians" and 'forgot' their lands of origin, contrary to the social habit of Jews in other communities throughout history.
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"Published in partnership with The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (BJHC)." :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004354012 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The legal methodology of late Nehardean sages in Sasanian Babyloni a
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This book consists of a systematic analysis of the halakhic/legal methodology of fourth and fifth century Nehardean amoraim in Babylonia (as well as their identity and dating). The book uncovers various distinct characteristics present in the halakhic decision making and source interpretation, and demonstrates how certain amoraim can be characterized as portraying consistent interpretive and legal approaches throughout talmudic literature. Understanding the methodological characteristics that distinguish some amoraim from other amoraim can aid the talmudic interpreter/scholar in clarifying the legal foundations of their rulings, the proofs that they bring within talmudic discourse, as well as their disputes and interpretations. This allows a better understanding of the development of Jewish Law and the legal system in talmudic Babylonia.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004193826 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The seal of the sanga : on the old Babylonian sangas of Šamaš of Sippar-Jaḫrūrum and Sippar-Amnānum /
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This study assembles and examines all available documentation on the first and second sangas of Šamaš of the Ebabbar temple in Old Babylonian Sippar as well as on those in the Edikuda temple in neighbouring Sippar-Amnānum. Their succession, family links and the length of their careers are discussed and newly completed drawings of their seals are provided, described and analyzed. The author addresses the evolving patterns of sealing and the changes in the seal legends, which yield information on the growing influence of the Marduk circles and thus of the kings of Babylon. The seal stones have been reconstructed from the impressions and conclusions are drawn concerning the choice of seal scenes by the different sangas as well as the use of family seals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047443889 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Annals of the caliphs' kitchens : Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq's tenth-century Baghdadi cookbook /
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Written nearly a thousand years ago, al-Warraq's cookbook is the most comprehensive work of its kind. This traditional cookbook with more than 600 recipes from the luxurious cuisine of medieval Islam is also a rare guide to the contemporary culinary culture. Its numerous anecdotes and poems unfold the role of food in the politics of Islam's golden era. Introducing this elegant translation is a thorough survey of the period and its food culture. An extensive Glossary, in Arabic and English, of medieval ingredients and dishes, and an Appendix of historical figures provide the necessary reference tools for this work. Making this key resource available in English for the first time to scholars and the general reader fills a gap in the cultural history of medieval Islam. Over 30 color illustrations.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [843]-849) and indexes. :
9789047423058 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
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.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047443490 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
East and west of Zagros : travel, war and politics in Persia and Iraq 1913-1921 /
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C.J. Edmonds published articles in orientalist journals and co-authored with Taufiq Wahby A Kurdish-English dictionary (Oxford, 1966). He published his memoirs of Iraq, Kurds, Turks, and Arabs : politics, travel and research in North-Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925 (London - New York, 1957), but his Persian memoirs remained unpublished. It tells how, after studying oriental languages in Cambridge, he became Consular Officer in Bushire, participated in British campaigns in Mesopotamia during First World War. As a Political Officer in Luristan Edmonds was in charge of the oil fields' security and was sent to Northern Persia after the war, a direct witness of the Jangal upheaval and the 1921 coup d'Etat.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 335-338) and index. :
9789047426905 :
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.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047443490 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
L'eau, enjeux politiques et théologiques, de Sumer à la Bible /
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This book investigates a corpus of royal inscriptions and literary texts, with special emphasis on those that are mythological and biblical, stretching over several millennia from the early days of Sumer to the Biblical period, in order to determine the ways in which the concept of water was used, in particular the way it functions in the political and theological ideology of the time. Three literary motifs are the object of a careful study : the crossing of water, the flood and the water of abundance. Though their study shows diversity in evolution, transmission and reception, it appears that their function is common at the heart of the Mesopotamian political theology of royal mediation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [613]-672) and indexes. :
9789047441335 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
In the path of the moon : Babylonian celestial divination and its legacy /
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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.
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.
A Jewish philosopher of Baghdad : 'Izz al-Dawla Ibn Kammuna (d. 683/1284) and his writings /
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For a long time, the study of the life and work of the Jewish thinker ʿIzz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) remained limited to a very small number of texts. Interest in Ibn Kammūna in the Western Christian world dates back to the 17th century, when Barthélemy d'Herbelot (1624-1695) included information on two of Ibn Kammūna's works - his examination of the three faiths ( Tanqīḥ al-abḥāth li-l-milal al-thalāt ), id est Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and his commentary on Avicenna's al-Ishārāt wa l-tanbīhā t - in his Bibliothèque orientale . Subsequent generations of Western scholars were focused on Ibn Kammūna's Tanqīḥ al-abḥāth , whereas his fame in the Eastern lands of Islam was based exclusively on his philosophical writings. These include a commentary on the Kitāb al-Talwīḥāt by the founder of Illumationist philosophy, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) and numerous independent works on philosophy and logic. Since most of the manuscripts of Ibn Kammūna's philosophical writings are located in the public and private libraries of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, they were (and are) out of reach for the majority of Western scholars. The volume gives a detailed account of the available data of Ibn Kammūna's biography, provides an outline of his philosophcial thought and studies in detail the reception of his thought and his writings among later Muslim and Jewish philosophers. An inventory of his entire œuvre provides detailed information on the extant manuscripts. The volume furthermore includes editions of nine of his writings.
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Includes editions of 9 texts by Ibn Kammuna, in Arabic. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-263) and indexes. :
9789047409632 :
0169-8729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Opening the tablet box : Near Eastern studies in honor of Benjamin R. Foster /
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This volume is a scholarly tribute to Benjamin R. Foster, Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and Curator of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University, from some of his students, colleagues, and companions, in appreciation of his outstanding achievements and in thanks for his friendship. Reflecting on the remarkable breadth of the honoree's research interests, the twenty-six original papers in this Festschrift cover a wide range of topics in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian literature, economic and social history, as well as art and archaeology.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004186569 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The meaning of color in ancient Mesopotamia /
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In The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia, Shiyanthi Thavapalan offers the first in-depth study of the words and expressions for colors in the Akkadian language (c. 2500-500 BCE). By combining philological analysis with the technical investigation of materials, she debunks the misconception that people in Mesopotamia had a limited sense of color and positions the development of Akkadian color language as a corollary of the history of materials and techniques in the ancient Near East.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004415416
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.