History of the Akkadian Language offers a detailed chronological survey of the oldest known Semitic language and one of history’s longest written records. The outcome is presented in 26 chapters written by 25 leading authors.

This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the field of language contact and multilingualism in ancient Egypt before the Greco-Roman period (4th millennium BCE–4th c. BCE). It gives a survey of the historical evidence of linguistic interference of Egyptian with languages in Africa, the Near East and the Mediterranean, discusses the different attested phenomena of language contact and offers a case study of foreign language communities in ancient Egypt. Detailed indexes makes this book a rich source of linguistic information for general linguistics and neighboring disciplines.

The historical Bhagavad -Pyhäkaavat (Bhagavad Gita) is a collection of letters mostly written by Achaemenids ́ vassals dating back to the pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe. Letter writing begins in Greek Anatolia in 480 B.C.E. and continues in North Europe. Ancient Veda texts are astonishing, historical first- hand information about northern kingdoms established by the Achaemenid dynasty. Previously, it was not known that the Persian sphere of influence even extended to the territory of present-day Finland. Cyrus the Great was aptly titled ́King of the Four Corners of the Earth ́. The Achaemenids were a common factor between Vedic India and Vedic North Europe. Their power also extended to Caria and Ionia in Anatolia. These people spoke and wrote in the Carian or Arian language, the language that is called the Finnish Karelian dialect nowadays. The Bhagavad Gita letters also provide valuable information about their ancient Baptist religion. Many of its features were transferred to modern religions.

The first comprehensive survey of the world's oldest known legal systems, this collaborative work of twenty-two scholars covers over 3,000 years of legal history of the Ancient Near East. Each of the book's chapters represents a review of the law of a particular period and region, e.g. the Egyptian Old Kingdom, by a specialist in that area. Within each chapter, the material is organized under standardized legal categories (e.g. constitutional law, family law) that make for easy cross-referencing. The chapters are arranged chronologically by millennium and within each millennium by the three major politico-cultural spheres of the region: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia and the Levant. An introduction by the editor discusses the general character of Ancient Near Eastern Law.

The El-Amarna Correspondence offers a completely new edition of the Amarna Letters based on personal inspection and reading of all the extant tablets. This edition includes new transcriptions and a translation along with an extensive introduction and glossary of the Amarna Letters.

First published in 2004. The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences is an annual four volume publication covering Economics, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology. It is compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science under the auspices of the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation. Some 100,000 articles (from over 2,700 journals) and 20,000 books are scanned each year in the process of compiling the International Bibliography. Coverage is international with publications in over 70 languages from more than 60 countries. All titles are given in their original language and in English translation

This book explores multilingualism and multiscriptism in a great variety of writing cultures, offering an in-depth analysis of how diverse languages and scripts seamlessly intertwine within written artefacts. Insights into scribal practices are particularly illuminating in that respect, especially when exploring artefacts originating from multicultural communities and regions where distinct writing traditions intersect. The influence of multilingualism and multiscriptism on these writing cultures becomes evident, with essays spanning various domains, from the mundane aspects of everyday life to the realms of scholarship and political propaganda. Scholars often relegate these phenomena, despite being frequently encountered, to the status of exceptions compared to the more prevalent monolingualism and monoscriptism. However, in daring to challenge this viewpoint, this book emphasises the profound significance and relevance of multilingualism and multiscriptism in shaping the development of languages, cultures, and societies across Asia, Africa, and Europe. It caters to a diverse readership keen on delving into the intricacies of these phenomena within this rich tapestry of writing cultures.

A groundbreaking history of the ethics of war in the ancient Near East Origins of the Just War reveals the incredible richness and complexity of ethical thought about war in the three millennia preceding the Greco-Roman period, establishing the extent to which ancient just war thought prefigured much of what we now consider to be the building blocks of the Western just war tradition. In this incisive and elegantly written book, Rory Cox traces the earliest ideas concerning the complex relationship between war, ethics and justice. Excavating the ethical thought of three ancient Near Eastern cultures—Egyptian, Hittite and Israelite—he demonstrates that the history of the just war is considerably more ancient and geographically diffuse than previously assumed. Cox shows how the emergence of just war thought was grounded in a desire to rationalise, sacralise and ultimately to legitimise the violence of war. Rather than restraining or condemning warfare, the earliest ethical thought about war reflected an urge to justify state violence. Cox terms this presumption in favour of war ius pro bello—the “right for war”—characterizing it as a meeting point of both abstract and pragmatic concerns. Drawing on a diverse range of ancient sources, Origins of the Just War argues that the same imperative still underlies many of the assumptions of contemporary just war thought and highlights the risks of applying moral absolutism to the fraught ethical arena of war.