This volume deals with temple ritual texts from ancient Mesopotamia, in particularfrom the cities Uruk and Babylon. Key question is whether they are a reliable source of information on the cult practices in Uruk and Babylon during the Hellenistic period.
In the book an extensive description is presented of the festivals, rituals, ceremonies and offerings in Hellenistic Mesopotamia. The appendix consists of a selection of the most important temple ritual texts, which are presented in transliteration, translation and with philological comments. Four plates with so far unpublished text...

This volume investigates the relationship between the central government and the provinces during the Ur III period (2112-2004 B.C.). Specifically, the book focuses on one system of taxation known as "bala," or "rotation," so called as provinces' payments rotated month by month throughout the year. This work is the first to take an interarchival approach, discussing Sumerian tablets from Umma, Lagash and Puzris-Dagan, and is the first major synthesis of what has long been recognized as a fundamental institution. The book contains six chapters and detailed appendices (including charts, the...

This book deals with the function of the so-called " local adverbs" in Hittite, and the relation between their use and the occurrence of so-called "sentence particles." The local adverbs have traditionally been explained as postpositions, preverbs or adverbs, depending on their position in the sentence. In this book, the function of the local adverbs is described in terms of their relation with the verb. Local adverbs belonging to the verb form a semantic particle. Independent local adverbs have no relation with the verb, but function as postpositions or independent adverbs. A new lexical...

Pliny wrote of Babylon that "here the creator of the science of astronomy was." Excavations have shown this statement to be true. This book argues that the earliest attempts at the accurate prediction of celestial phenomena are indeed to be found in clay tablets dating to the 8th and 7th centuries BC from both Babylon and from Nineveh. The author carefully situates this astronomy within its cultural context, treating all available material from the relevant period, and also analysing the earlier astrological material and the later well-known ephemerides and related texts. A wholly new...

Late Babylonian letters and documents are among the earliest cuneiform texts to have been published in the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies and form a major corpus of Akkadian texts, yet the language in which they were written has rarely been investigated. The present study paves the way for a comprehensive description of Late Babylonian by examining in detail two traditionally difficult subjects in Assyriology: morphology and syntax of numerals and the functions of verbal forms expressing " time." Using modern linguistic methods and illustrated by more than 1200 examples, it attempts to...