This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The remains of ancient societies often require decades to unearth, but much longer to interpret and understand. The methods of archaeology have progressed dramatically in recent years. Archaeologists have continuously refined their tools, methods, and techniques. Today archaeology is characterized by pottery identification, classification, and cataloging; disciplined excavation of "squares"; use of sophisticated electronics, such as GPS, infrared, and computer-aided design; and the integration of multiple methodologies, such as epigraphy, art history, physical anthropology, paleobotany, and climatology. The interpretation of ancient Near Eastern history and cultures has also progressed. An increasing number of documents has been unearthed. The vast document collections from Tel el-Amarna, Nippur, Mari, Nuzi, Ebla, Ugarit, and the Dead Sea caves are just some of the more spectacular examples. These provide an enormous amount of detail about royal administrations, business transactions, land tenure systems, taxes, political propaganda, mythologies, marriage practices, and much more. And things that sometimes seem unique about one culture at first look often fit into larger patterns of relationship when the surrounding cultures are better understood. The Ancient Near East: Classic Studies (ANECS) reprints classic works that have brought the results of archaeology, textual, and historical investigations to audiences of scholars, students, and the general public. While the discussions continue and the results of earlier investigations are continuously re-examined, these classic works remain of interest and importance. K. C. HANSON Series Editor

Astrology still flourishes today--a 4,000-year-old monument to human credulity. The purpose of Astrology: What's Really in the Stars? is not to assail astrology by offering statistical evidence showing that its claims lack support. Rather, Stewart points out discrepancies within horoscopic astrology's own frameworl to let the reader decide whether there seems to be any merit to this ancient scheme of things. Photos & illustrations.

Whether humans crossed the seas between the Old World and the New in the times before Columbus is a tantalizing question that has long excited scholarly interest and tempted imaginations the world over. From the myths of Atlantis and Mu to the more credible, perhaps, but hardly less romantic tales of Viking ships and Buddhist missionaries, people have speculated upon what is, after all, not simply a question of contact, but of the nature and growth of civilization itself. To the specialist, it is an important question indeed. If people in the Western Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere developed their cultures more or less independently from the end of the last Ice Age until the voyages of Columbus, the remarkable similarities between New World and Old World cultures reveal something important about the evolution of culture. If, on the other hand, there were widespread or sustained contacts between the hemispheres in pre-Columbian times, these contacts represent events of vast significance to the prehistory and history of humanity. Originally delivered at a symposium held in May 1968, during the national meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, the papers presented here, by scholars eminent in the field, offer differing points of view and considerable evidence on the pros and cons of pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New. Various kinds of data—archaeological, botanical, geographical, and historical—are brought to bear on the problem, with provocative and original results. Introductory and concluding remarks by the editors pull together and evaluate the evidence and suggest ground rules for future studies of this sort. Man across the Sea provides no final answers as to whether people from Asia, Africa, or Europe visited the American Indian before Columbus. It does, however, present new evidence, suggested lines of approach, and a fresh attempt to delineate the problems involved and to establish acceptable canons of evidence for the future.

Images of Nebuchadnezzar attempts to probe the diversity of cultural attitudes reflected in the characterizations of this famous king through an examination of both the original cuneiform sources as well as the accounts of chronographers written in Greek, Roman, and medieval times. Included in this revised and expanded second edition are two new chapters that examine both Nebuchadnezzar's administrative policies and the impact that his death had on both contemporary and later cultures. Both the positive and negative images of the king are explored, with conclusions being developed as to what the authors of the various surviving accounts actually thought the king really was. In the process, the whole nature of historiography in the ancient world is analyzed, and a number of broad conclusions are developed. Anyone who has ever read Second Kings or the books of Daniel and Jeremiah of the Old Testament is familiar with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon who conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed Solomon's temple. As the second member of the Chaldean dynasty of Mesopotamia (626-539 B.C.), he ruled for forty-three years (605-562 B.C.), during which time he also led military campaigns into Syria and Lebanon. He also organized a number of building projects that were to transform Babylon into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Among his noteworthy achievements were the construction of massive fortification walls around Babylon, the refurbishing of Marduk's temple in the city, and the building of huge palaces that served as the king's residences. Tales of these legendary achievements, as well as those of his father, Nabopolassar (626-605 B.C.), also found their way into the narratives of a number of Greek, Roman, and medieval historians and chronographers many centuries later. Unfortunately, much of the record of Nebuchadnezzar's achievements that was written in his own time has not survived. Instead, only secondary accounts of his military campaigns or his construction projects in Babylon written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic are available for analysis. These stories vary greatly in content and emphasis and, in many cases, distort much of what we know from Nebuchadnezzar's own sources. The Hebrews, for example, described Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem in such a way as to consider it something that should never again be repeated. The Greeks, on the other hand, saw the building projects in Babylon as evidence of almost superhuman achievements, as monuments that were the result of efforts by a king who was almost godlike. Why, then, is there such diversity in the characterizations of Nebuchadnezzar? This book proposes answers to these questions.