ANATOLIAN LANDSCAPE AND FAITH TOURISM: ANCIENT TIMES TO PRESENT (İNANÇ TURİZMİ)

Seton Lloyd's lively account of Turkey's early history is for the ever-increasing number of people visiting the ancient sites of this fabled land. Written by an archaeologist who has spent much of his life in the Near East, the book is not a conventional "guide" to the antiquities of Anatolia, nor is it a textbook. It is instead Lloyd's attempt to share his profound interest in an antique land, its inhabitants, and the surviving monuments that link the present to the past. Lloyd traces the many different cultures that have been a part of Turkey from prehistoric times to the Christian era. He recounts the exploits of the Hittite kings, the confrontation of Croesus and the Persian king Cyrus, the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Mithridates' epic resistance against Rome. Archaeological landmarks discussed include the discovery of the Alaca Hyk tombs, the attempts to establish the location of Troy, and the opening of the Tomb of Midas. Lloyd shows how each successive culture has left its mark on an astonishing variety of sites, from the shrines of atal Hyk to the temples of Ephesus and the churches founded by St. Paul.

Recent efforts to engage more explicitly with the interpretation of emotions in archaeology have sought new approaches and terminology to encourage archaeologists to take emotions seriously. This is part of a growing awareness of the importance of senses—what we see, smell, hear, and feel—in the constitution and reconstitution of past social and cultural lives. Yet research on emotion in archaeology remains limited, despite the fact that such states underpin many studies of socio-cultural transformation. The Archaeology of Anxiety draws together papers that examine the local complexities of anxiety as well as the variable stimuli—class or factional struggle, warfare, community construction and maintenance, personal turmoil, and responsibilities to (and relationships with) the dead—that may generate emotional responses of fear, anxiousness, worry, and concern. The goal of this timely volume is to present fresh research that addresses the material dimension of rites and performances related to the mitigation and negotiation of anxiety as well as the role of material culture and landscapes in constituting and even creating periods or episodes of anxiety.

This study illuminates the social, political, economic, and religious lives of those to whom the apostle Paul wrote. It articulates a method for bringing together biblical texts with archaeological remains.

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.

"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.

In the early 1880's dissension arose among the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of al-Karak, east of the Dead Sea. Up to that time the believers of both religions had lived peacefully together in the city. Problems arose and the Christians decicded to move. They were allowed to settle at Madaba. The government gave permission to build churches, but exclusively on those spots where churches had existed in Antiquity. The immigrants removed the debris from still partially visible foundation walls of the ancient churches. During this work they discovered in 1884 a marvelous mosaic map. It had been part of the floor of a large cathedral. The surviving fragments were roughly repaired and incorporated in the floor of the new St. George's church. It took nearly a hundred years and many admirers to have the map finally restored. This book is an introductory guide and can be a help to different kinds of people, such as visitors, students, and professors teaching first level archaeology, bible, and Umwelt. Numbers on the sketch included in the guide, refer the reader to appropriate information in the booklet. A colour reproduction of the map and a black/white sketch is included.

Drawing on a diverse array of published and archival sources, Nicholas L. Danforth synthesizes the political, cultural, diplomatic and intellectual history of mid-century Turkey to explore how Turkey first became a democracy and Western ally in the 1950s and why this is changing today.