'In Context: the Reade Festschrift' is a collection of invited and peer-reviewed essays by friends and colleagues of Julian Edgeworth Reade, sometime Mesopotamia curator at the British Museum from 1975 to 2000. Here is fresh work from which any reader can gain a new appreciation of the importance of the ancient Near East.

In Context: the Reade Festschrift' is a collection of invited and peer-reviewed essays by friends and colleagues of Julian Edgeworth Reade, sometime Mesopotamia curator at the British Museum from 1975 to 2000. Here is fresh work from which any reader can gain a new appreciation of the importance of the ancient Near East.

The complete poems of the priestess Enheduana, the world's first known author, newly translated from the original Sumerian "Helle's translation feels urgent, incandescent, stripped of academic cladding. . . . The growing popularity of Enheduana gives all of us readers a chance to discover another lineage--and to bring this poet and her imagination flashing back to life again."--Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times Enheduana was a high priestess and royal princess who lived in Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, about 2300 BCE. Not only does Enheduana have the distinction of being the first author whose name we know, but the poems attributed to her are hymns of great power. They are a rare flash of the female voice in the often male-dominated ancient world, treating themes that are as relevant today as they were four thousand years ago: exile, social disruption, the power of storytelling, gender-bending identities, the devastation of war, and the terrifying forces of nature. This book is the first complete translation of her poems from the original Sumerian. Sophus Helle's translations replicate the intensity and imagery of the original hymns--literary time bombs that have lain buried for millennia. In addition to his translations, Helle provides background on the historical context in which Enheduana's poems were composed and circulated, the works' literary structure and themes, and their reception in both the ancient and the modern world. Unjustly forgotten for millennia, Enheduana's poems are essential reading for anyone interested in the literary history of women, religion, the environment, gender, motherhood, authorship, and empire.

This volume is a collection of paper by colleagues, friends and students, in honor of Jeffrey Chadwick. The papers cover the various topic that he has dealt with in his career, including biblical historical geography, and the archaeology and history of the Levant and its environs during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the Second Temple Period. Following a preface and introduction about the honoree, the volume is divided into 4 sections: Biblical Historical Geography; Bronze Age Canaan and its Neighbors; Iron Age Israel and its Neighbors; Second Temple Israel.

This book evaluates the evidence for indirect connections between the Aegean and the Indus extending back to the third and fourth millennia BCE, particularly commodities such as tin and lapis lazuli, and discusses recently discovered objects, new methods of materials analysis techniques and topics, as well as iconographic investigation.

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

Proceedings of the Broadening Horizons 6 conference (2019): Volume 1 presents 17 papers from Session 1: Entanglement. Material Culture and Written Sources in Dialogue; Session 2: Integrating Sciences in Historical and Archaeological Research; and Session 5: Which Continuity? Evaluating Stability, Transformation, and Change in Transitional Periods.

This Handbook is a state-of-the-field volume containing diverse approaches to sensory experience, bringing to life in an innovative, remarkably vivid, and visceral way the lives of past humans through contributions that cover the chronological and geographical expanse of the ancient Near East. It comprises thirty-two chapters written by leading international contributors that look at the ways in which humans, through their senses, experienced their lives and the world around them in the ancient Near East, with coverage of Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia, from the Neolithic through the Roman period. It is organised into six parts related to sensory contexts: Practice, production, and taskscape; Dress and the body; Ritualised practice and ceremonial spaces; Death and burial; Science, medicine, and aesthetics; and Languages and semantic fields. In addition to exploring what makes each sensory context unique, this organisation facilitates cross-cultural and cross-chronological, as well as cross-sensory and multisensory comparisons and discussions of sensory experiences in the ancient world. In so doing, the volume also enables considerations of senses beyond the five-sense model of Western philosophy (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), including proprioception and interoception, and the phenomena of synaesthesia and kinaesthesia. The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East provides scholars and students within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies new perspectives on and conceptions of familiar spaces, places, and practices, as well as material culture and texts. It also allows scholars and students from adjacent fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies to engage with this material, and is a must-read for any scholar or student interested in or already engaged with the field of sensory studies in any period.

In the Hebrew Bible and stories loyal to it, Goliath is the stereotypical giant of folklore: big, brash, violent, and dimwitted. Goliath as Gentle Giant sets out to rehabilitate the giant’s image by exploring the origins of the biblical behemoth, the limitations of the “underdog” metaphor, and the few sympathetic treatments of Goliath in popular media. What insights emerge when we imagine things from Goliath’s point of view? How might this affect our reading of the biblical account or its many retellings and interpretations? What sort of man was Goliath really? The nuanced portraits analyzed in this book serve as a catalyst to challenge readers to question stereotypes, reexamine old assumptions, and humanize the “other.”

This book presents the city beneath the surface of Abu Salabikh, southern Iraq. The archaeology and the textual data combine to reveal its architecture, agricultural and industrial enterprises, and social structure. Integrated with our wider knowledge of south Mesopotamia at this time it creates a vivid image of city life in 2600 BC.