Essays On Ancient Anatolia And Syria In The Second And Third Millennium B C

The Iron Age, i.e. the period between c. 1200 and 300 B.C., is a crucial period in Mediterranean and Near Eastern history. Syria especially saw one of the most flourishing moments of its history in the early first millennium B.C. New kingdoms emerged which developed an intense cultural life and took advantage of their geographical location to gain a dominant position in interregional relations. As a consequence, Syria became the main target of Assyrian expansion. It also became an intermediary between Asia and the Mediterranean world. Twenty-two essays, aiming to reflect essential aspects of on-going research, review major historical, archaeological and linguistic aspects of Syria in the Iron Age. Interaction between Neo-Hittites and Arameans, new forms of art, changes in political and social structures, linguistic conservatism and innovation, regional particularism, impact of Assyrian expansion are some op the topics dealt with in the volume.

This fourth volume in the Archaeology of Anatolia series offers reports on the most recent discoveries from across the Anatolian peninsula. Periods covered span the Epipalaeolithic to the Medieval Age, and sites and regions range from the western Anatolian coast to Van, and on to the southeast. The breadth and depth of work reported within these pages testifies to the contributors’ dedication and love of their work even during a global pandemic period. The volume includes reviews of recent work at on-going excavations and data retrieved from the last several years of survey projects. In addition, a “State of the Field” section offers up-to-the-moment data on specialized fields in Anatolian archaeology.

In Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia Matthew Rutz explores the relationship between ancient collections of texts, commonly deemed libraries and archives, and the modern interpretation of titles like ‘diviner’. By looking at cuneiform tablets as artifacts with archaeological contexts, this work probes the modern analytical categories used to study ancient diviners and investigates the transmission of Babylonian/Assyrian scholarship in Syria. During the Late Bronze Age diviners acted as high-ranking scribes and cultic functionaries in Emar, a town on the Syrian Euphrates (ca. 1375-1175 BCE). This book’s centerpiece is an extensive analytical catalogue of the excavated tablet collection of one family of diviners. Over seventy-five fragments are identified for the first time, along with many proposed joins between fragments.