This collection of twelve papers, dedicated to Professor Israel Finkelstein, deals with various aspects concerning the archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Although the area under discussion runs from southeastern Turkey (Alalakh) down to the arid zones of the Negev Desert, the main emphasis is on the Land of Israel. This collection provides the most recent evaluation of a number of thorny issues in Israeli archaeology during the Bronze and Iron Ages and specifically addresses chronology, state formation, identity, and agency. It offers, inter alia, a fresh...

In 1910 Ernesto Schiaparelli, along with the Italian Archaeological Mission on behalf of the Regio Museo di Antichita Egizie, excavated the area where, during the Eleventh Dynasty, King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep erected a chapel to the goddess Hathor at the site of Gebelein. Some of the blocks belonging to this chapel had already been moved to the Cairo Museum during the nineteenth century, and finds during Schiaparelli's campaign were taken to the Egyptian Museum at Turin. In this work, Elisa Fiore Marochetti presents documents from these two museums and gives an architectonic and decorative...

The Ritual of Astu, a text found at the Hittite Capital of Hattusa, shows strong influence from southern Anatolia and describes a Hurrian-Hittite ritual against witchcraft and sorcery. The following study provides detailed philological treatment of the 13th-century fragments found at Hattusa, from which the ritual is known, including transcription, translation, and commentary of all manuscripts, as well as special emphasis on the Hurrian passages of the ritual. Reconstruction of the more fragmentary sections is undertaken through comparison to other rituals. The study concludes with an...

This volume of collected essays brings together for the first time the range of Winter's pioneering studies related to Neo-Assyrian relief sculpture and seals, Phoenician and Syrian ivory and bronze production, and inter-polity connections across the various cultures of first millennium B.C.E. from the Aegean to Iran. Consistent threads are an emphasis on the potential for art historical analysis to yield 'history' in the broadest sense; the importance of making the theoretical frame of interpretation explicit; and the necessity of textual evidence being brought to bear upon elements of...

In 30 BCE, Egypt became a province of the Roman empire. Alongside unbroken traditions--especially of the indigenous Egyptian population, but also among the Greek elite--major changes and slow processes of transformation can be observed. The multi-ethnical population was situated between new patterns of rule and traditional lifeways. This tension between change and permanence was investigated during the conference. The last decades have seen an increase in the interest in Roman Egypt with new research from different disciplines--Egyptology, Ancient History, Classical Archaeology, Epigraphy,...

Walls of the Prince offers a series of articles that explore Egyptian interactions with Southwest Asia during the second and first millennium BCE, including long-distance trade in the Middle Kingdom, the itinerary of Thutmose III's great Syrian campaign, the Amman Airport structure, anthropoid coffins at Tell el-Yahudiya, Egypt's relations with Israel in the age of Solomon, Nile perch and other trade with the southern Levant and Transjordan in the Iron Age, Saite strategy at Mezad Hashavyahu, and the concept of resident alien in Late Period Egypt. These are complemented by...

Current research on ancient historiography concentrates on the relation between history and ideology, while the archaeology of the Southern Levant is more and more viewed as a discipline of its own. What happens when these new directions are applied to the historiography of Israel's settlement in Canaan? This study offers a fresh analysis of scholarly debate, a synchronic and diachronic reading of Joshua 9:1--13:7, and a critical evaluation of all the relevant archaeological evidence. This leads to a new historical picture of the Late Bronze - Iron Age transition in the Cisjordanian Southern...

Sons and Descendants represents the first comprehensive study of Babylonian family names. Drawing primarily on evidence from legal documents from the early Neo-Babylonian period (747-626 B.C.), the book examines the presence of large, named kin groups at the major Babylonia cities, considering their origins and the important roles their members played as local elites in city governance and temple administration. The period of Neo-Assyrian ascendance over Babylonia marks the first for which there is adequate textual material to allow for a study of these groups, but their continued...

This book publishes a previously unknown collection of hieratic ostraca from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The texts include a broad range of genres, including wisdom literature, religious hymns, magical texts, medical recipes, private letters, administrative notes, scribal exercises (Kemit), and copies of tomb inscriptions. Each ostracon is presented with photographs, facsimile drawings and hieroglyphic transcriptions, as well as translations and brief philological commentaries. Many of the texts can be linked to the village of Deir el-Medina on internal evidence, and the book...

The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion to his son - preserved in a single Syriac manuscript (7th. cent. CE) - still speaks to its readers, evocatively depicting the dramatic situation of a nobleman imprisoned after the Roman capture of Samosata, capital of Commagene. The letter is best known today for a passage on the "wise king of the Jews," which may be one of the earliest pagan testimonies concerning Jesus Christ. Ongoing controversy over the letter's date, nature, and purpose has, however, led to the widespread neglect of this intriguing document. In the present volume, Merz and Tieleman have...