From the table of contents: (73 contributions)E. Albrile, Il silenzio degli dei. Ermetismo, etnobotanica e altri mitiM. G. Amadasi Guzzo, Un'iscrizione fenicia da IbizaW. Arnold, Uber die Herstellung von Seide in Antiochien. Ein Text im arabischen Dialekt der Nus.ayrier von Yaqt.uA. Avanzini, To accompany a recently published Sabaic text: Historical and grammatical remarksS. Baldi, L'esperanto e la lingua hausaV. Barandovska-Frank, Internaciaj lingvoj en interretoF. Bellino, David Morkos frate della Custodia di Terra Santa e professore di arabo nella Torino dell'OttocentoJ. Blau, Some reflections on the disappearance of cases in ArabicP. Giorgio Borbone, L'autore della "Storia di Mar Yahballaha e di Rabban Sauma"R. Borghero, Some features of the North Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialect of AshithaA. Boucherit, De esperanto a espoir: remarques lexicalesE. Braida - S. Destefanis, L'alchermes: liquore cremisi o vermiglio? Divagazioni storico-etimologiche sull' origine di un coloreF. B. Chatonnet - A. Desreumaux - A. Binggeli, Un cas tres ancien de garshouni ? Quelques re. exions sur lemanuscrit BL Add. 14644V. Brugnatelli, Come si concludeva il poema di Aqhat?

This volume brings together a set of contributions, many appearing in English for the first time, together with a new introduction, covering the history of the Ethiopian Christian civilization in its formative period (300-1500 AD). Rooted in the late antique kingdom of Aksum (present day Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and lying between Byzantium, Africa and the Near East, this civilization is presented in a series of case studies. At a time when philological and linguistic investigations are being challenged by new approaches in Ethiopian studies, this volume emphasizes the necessity of basic research, while avoiding the reduction of cultural questions to matters of fact and detail.

This unique collection of essays by leading international scholars gives a profound introduction into the great diversity and richness of facets forming the study of one of earth’s most exciting areas, the Iranian and Caucasian lands. Each of the 37 contributions sheds light on a very special topic, the range of which comprises historical, cultural, ethnographical, religious, political and last but not least literary and linguistic issues, beginning from the late antiquity up to current times. Especially during the last decennia these two regions gained greater interest worldwide due to several developments in politics and culture. This fact grants the book, intended as a festschrift for Prof. Garnik Asatrian, a special relevance. Contributors: Victoria Arakelova; Marco Bais; Uwe Bläsing; Vahe S. Boyajian; Claudia A. Ciancaglini; Johnny Cheung; Viacheslav A. Chirikba; Matteo Compareti; Caspar ten Dam; Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst; Kaveh Farrokh; Aldo Ferrari; Ela Filippone; Khachik Gevorgian; Jost Gippert; Nagihan Haliloğlu; Elif Kanca; Pascal Kluge; Anna Krasnowolska; Vladimir Livshits; Hirotake Maeda; Irina Morozova; Irène Natchkebia; Peter Nicolaus; Antonio Panaino; Mikhail Pelevin; Adriano V. Rossi; James R. Russell; Dan Shapira; Wolfgang Schulze; Martin Schwarz; Roman Smbatian; Donald Stilo; Çakır Ceyhan Suvari; Giusto Traina; Garry Trompf; Matthias Weinreich; Eberhardt Werner and Boghos Zekiyan

In February 2006 the first international conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics (MACL) was held in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the MACL conference was to bring together scholars from various branches of applied linguistics with a shared interest in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. The conference thus fostered an exchange of knowledge and expertise among researchers from various disciplines, including educational linguistics, cultural linguistics, terminography, translation studies and studies of specialised languages. The present book is the second of two volumes containing a selection from the approximately 120 papers that were presented at that three-day event. The book comprises five chapters, reflecting different research perspectives on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. The first chapter covers research articles on metaphors and planned languages. The second chapter comprises articles dealing with language attitudes, language proficiency and language practices in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, communicative contexts. Chapter three features articles in the field of discourse-analysis research. In the fourth chapter research is presented that pertains to terminology and specialised languages. Finally, chapter five deals with translation studies.

This volume surveys the 'Syriac world', the culture that grew up among the Syriac-speaking communities from the second century CE and which continues to exist and flourish today, both in its original homeland of Syria and Mesopotamia, and in the worldwide diaspora of Syriac-speaking communities. The five sections examine the religion; the material, visual, and literary cultures; the history and social structures of this diverse community; and Syriac interactions with their neighbours ancient and modern. There are also detailed appendices detailing the patriarchs of the different Syriac denominations, and another appendix listing useful online resources for students. The Syriac World offers the first complete survey of Syriac culture and fills a significant gap in modern scholarship. This volume will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Syriac and Middle Eastern culture from antiquity to the modern era. Chapter 26 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

In Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles, Mariachiara Gasparini investigates the origin and effects of a textile-mediated visual culture that developed at the heart of the Silk Road between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. Through the analysis of the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and more than a thousand textiles held in collections worldwide, Gasparini discloses and reconstructs the rich cultural entanglements along the Silk Road, between the coming of Islam and the rise of the Mongol Empire, from the Tarim to Mediterranean Basin. Exploring in detail the iconographic transfer between different agents and different media from Central Asian caves to South Italian churches, the author depicts and describes the movement and exchange of portable objects such as sculpture, wall painting, and silk fragments across the Asian continent and across the ages. Gasparini’s history offers critical perspectives that extend far beyond an outmoded notion of “Silk Road studies.” Her cross-media work shows readers how certain material cultures are connected not only by the physical routes they take but also because of the meanings and interpretations these objects engage in various places. Transcending Patterns is at once art history, material and visual cultural history, Asian studies, conservatory studies, and linguistics.

This book offers a thorough, authoritative account of the branches of Semitic, among them Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic. It describes their history from ancient times to the present, geographical distribution, writing systems, classification, linguistic features, distinctive characteristics, and typological signicance.

The present volume deals with hitherto unexplored issues on the interaction of morphology and syntax. These selected and invited papers mainly concern Cushitic and Chadic languages, the least-described members of the Afroasiatic family. Three papers in the volume explore one or more typological characteristics across an entire language family or branch, while others focus on one or two languages within a family and the implications of their structures for the family, the phylum, or linguistic typology as a whole. The diversity of topics addressed within the present volume reflects the great diversity of language structures and functions within the Afroasiatic phylum.

In The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 C.E., Menahem Mor offers a detailed account on the Bar Kokhba Revolt in an attempt to understand the second revolt against the Romans. Since the Bar Kokhba Revolt did not have a historian who devoted a comprehensive book to the event, Mor used a variety of historical materials including literary sources (Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin) and archaeological sources (inscriptions, coins, military diplomas, hideouts, and refuge complexes). The book reviews the causes for the outbreak while explaining the complexity of the territorial expansion of the Revolt. Mor portrays the participants and opponents as well as the attitudes of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. He exposes the Roman Army’s part in Judaea, the Jewish leadership and the implications of the Revolt.

The Orion Center Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature (2000–2006) is the fifth official Scrolls bibliography, following volumes covering the periods 1948-1957 (W. S. LaSor), 1958-1969 (B. Jongeling), 1970-1995 (F. García Martínez and D. W. Parry), and 1995-2000 (A. Pinnick). The interdisciplinary cast of the Bibliography reflects the current emphasis in Scrolls scholarship on integrating the knowledge gained from the Qumran corpus into the larger picture of Second Temple Judaism. The volume contains over 4100 entries, including approximately 850 reviews; source, subject, and language indices facilitate its use by scholars and students within and outside the field. This work is based on the On-Line Bibliography maintained by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem.