Gordion is frequently remembered as the location of an intricate knot ultimately cut by Alexander, but in antiquity it served as the center of the Phrygian kingdom that ruled much of Asia Minor during the early millennium B.C.E. The site lies approximately seventy kilometers southeast of Ankara in central Turkey, at the intersection of the great empires of the East (Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites) and the West (Greeks and Romans). Consequently, it occupied a strategic position on nearly all trade routes that linked the Mediterranean and the Near East. The University of Pennsylvania has been excavating at Gordion since 1950, unearthing a wide range of discoveries that span nearly four millennia. The vast majority of these artifacts attests to the city's interactions with the other great kingdoms and city states of the Near East during the Iron Age and Archaic periods (ca. 950-540 B.C.E.), especially Assyria, Urartu, Persia, Lydia, Greece, and the Neo-Hittite city-states of North Syria, among others. Gordion is thus the ideal centerpiece of an exhibition dealing with Anatolia and its neighbors during the first millennium B.C.E. Through a special agreement signed between the Republic of Turkey and the University of Pennsylvania, Turkey has loaned the Penn Museum more than one hundred artifacts gathered from four museums in Turkey (Ankara, Gordion, Istanbul, and Antalya) for an exhibition titled The Golden Age of King Midas. The exhibition features most of the material recovered in Tumulus MM, or the "Midas Mound" (ca. 740 B.C.E.), which was the burial site of King Midas's father, as well as a number of objects found in a series of Lydian tombs. The Turkish loan has made possible a uniquely comprehensive and elaborate exhibition that also features a disparate group of rarely seen objects from the Penn Museum's own collections, particularly from sites in the Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Greece. With the historic King Midas (ca. 740-700 B.C.E.) as its guiding theme, the exhibition illuminates the relationships Phrygia maintained with Lydia, Persia, Assyria, and Greece. The accompanying catalog includes full-color illustrations and essays that expound on the sites and objects of the exhibition.

A notable contribution to North American archaeological literature, The Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast is the first book to integrate and interpret archaeological data from the entire Atlantic Northeast, making unprecedented cultural connections across a broad region that encompasses the Canadian Atlantic provinces, the Quebec Lower North Shore, and Maine. Beginning with the earliest Indigenous occupation of the area, this book presents a cultural overview of the Atlantic Northeast, and weaves together the histories of the Indigenous peoples whose traditional lands make up this territory, including the Innu, Beothuk, Inuit, and numerous Wabanaki bands and tribes. Emphasizing historical connection and cultural continuity, The Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast tracks the development of the earliest peoples in this area as they responded to climate and ecosystem change by transforming their glacier-edge way of life to one on the water's edge, becoming one of the most successful and longstanding marine-oriented cultures in North America. Supported by more than a hundred illustrations and maps documenting the archaeological legacy, as well as discussions of unanswered questions intended to spur debate, this comprehensive text is ideal for students, researchers, professional archaeologists, and anyone interested in the history of this region.

Sudan, now split into the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, boasts a rich cultural heritage that has in recent years become the increasing focus of an international community of archaeologists, anthropologists and historians. This volume brings together papers presented at the Third Sudan Studies Annual Conference, a unique forum for interdisciplinary work.

Offering new insights based on recent archaeological discoveries in their heartland of modern-day Lebanon, Mark Woolmer presents a fresh appraisal of this fascinating, yet elusive, Semitic people. Discussing material culture, language and alphabet, religion (including sacred prostitution of women and boys to the goddess Astarte), funerary custom and trade and expansion into the Punic west, he explores Phoenicia in all its paradoxical complexity. Viewed in antiquity as sage scribes and intrepid mariners who pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and as skilled engineers who built monumental harbour cities like Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians were also considered (especially by their rivals, the Romans) to be profiteers cruelly trading in human lives. The author shows them above all to have been masters of the sea: this was a civilization that circumnavigated Africa two thousand years before Vasco da Gama did it in 1498. The Phoenicians present a tantalizing face to the ancient historian. Latin sources suggest they once had an extensive literature of history, law, philosophy and religion; but all now is lost. In this revised and updated edition, Woolmer takes stock of recent historiographical developments in the field, bringing the present edition up to speed with contemporary understanding.

This is a short, illustrated introduction to the ever-fascinating topic of Egyptian mummies, by an international expert. It is a readable, short, but authoritative overview of Egyptian mummification. It deals with perennially popular topic. It is illustrated throughout in colour. The author, a world expert on Egyptian mummification, addresses the most frequently asked questions about Egyptian mummies: how and why they were made, the religious beliefs which underpinned mummification, the preservation of animals, and how the mummies have been treated from ancient times until the present day. He provides an up to date summary of the ancient evidence, and also considers modern attitudes to Egyptian mummies, emphasising their role as a major source of knowledge and understanding about past societies. The text and illustrations draw heavily on the rich collection of mummies and funerary objects in the British Museum, and the findings of a wide range of recent scientific investigations of this collection. The book will therefore reflect the important advances which have been made in the understanding of Egyptian mummies over the last few years. The Author John H. Taylor is a curator of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum.

What does archaeology tell us about Jesus and the world in which he lived? How accurate are the Gospel accounts of first-century Galilee and Judea? Has the tomb of Jesus really been found? Informed by the latest archaeological research, and illustrated throughout with photographs of key findings, this fascinating book opens up the subject for people of all religious backgrounds. It will help readers gain a much clearer and more accurate picture of life in the Roman world during first century, and enable them to understand and critique the latest theories - both sober and sensational - about who Jesus was and what he stood for.

The Phoebe A. Hearst Expedition to Naga ed-Deir, Cemeteries N 2000 and N 2500 presents the results of excavations directed by George A. Reisner and led by Arthur C. Mace. The site of Naga ed-Deir, Egypt, is unusual for its continued use over a long period of time (c. 3500 BCE-650 CE). Burials in N 2000 and N 2500 date to the First Intermediate Period/Middle Kingdom and the Coptic era. In keeping with Reisner's earlier publications of Naga ed-Deir, this volume presents artifacts in chapter-length studies devoted to a particular object type and includes a burial-by-burial description. The excavators' original drawings, notes, and photographs are complemented by a contemporary analysis of the objects by experts in their subfields.

This work focuses the social context of writing in ancient Western Arabia in the oasis of ancient Dadan, modern-day al-'Ula in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula between the sixth to first centuries BC. It offers a description and analysis of the language of the inscriptions and the variation attested within them. It is the first work to perform a systematic study of the linguistic variation of the Dadanitic inscriptions. It combines a thorough description of the language of the inscriptions with a statistical analysis of the distribution of variation across different textual genres and manners of inscribing. By considering correlations between language-internal and extralinguistic features this analysis aims to take a more holistic approach to the epigraphic object. Through this approach an image of a rich writing culture emerges, in which we can see innovation as well as the deliberate use of archaic linguistic features in more formal text types.

In The Iconography of Family Members in Egypt's Elite Tombs of the Old Kingdom,, Jing Wen offers a comprehensive survey of how ancient Egyptians portrayed their family members in the reliefs of an elite tomb. Through the analysis of the depiction of family members, this book investigates familial relations, the funerary cult of the dead, ancestor worship, and relevant texts. It provides a new hypothesis and perspective that would update our understanding of the Egyptian funerary practice and familial ideology. The scenes of family members are not a record of family history but language games of the tomb owner that convey specific meaning to those who enter the chapel despite time and space.

In Study on the Synchronistic King List from Ashur, CHEN Fei conducts a full investigation into that king list, which records all the kings of Assyria and Babylonia in contemporary pairs from the 18th to the 7th century BC. The texts of all the exemplars of the Synchronistic King List are reconstructed anew by the existing studies and the author's personal collations on their sources, and part of the text of the main exemplar is thus revised. The author also looks into the format of the Synchronistic King List and draws the conclusion that the Synchronistic King List was composed by Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, to support his Babylonian policy.

This book uses both succinct, informative essays and beautiful, detailed photography to reveal how recent archeological discoveries in the ancient country of Armenia have transformed our understanding of the origins of human civilization and humanity itself. It also tells the story of a heroic team of Armenian archeologists who have singlehandedly created a new golden age of archeology in their country. Their work demonstrates that Armenia has hosted a continuous human presence for at least 2 million years. They have succeeded in documenting the evolution of humanity and human culture across this vast span of time in minute detail. Their discoveries include the oldest known winemaking complex, the recreation of the first wines, the oldest known work of art, the oldest shoe yet discovered, and one of the oldest known religious documents. This book chronicles their achievements in a manner that lets the reader become part of the process of exploration and feel the excitement of discovery.

The chapters of Middle Kingdom Palace Culture and Its Echoes in the Provinces discuss the degree of influence that provincial developments played in reshaping the Egyptian state and culture during the Middle Kingdom. Contributors to the volume are Egyptologists from around the world who have developed their research following a conference held at the University of Jaen in Spain.

This book presents a new model for understanding the collection of ancient kingdoms that surrounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea from the Cilician Plain in the west to the upper Tigris River in the east, and from Cappadocia in the north to western Syria in the south, during the Iron Age of the ancient Near East (ca. 1200 to 600 BCE). Rather than presenting them as homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. The Syro-Anatolian City-States sheds new light via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including archaeological site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence reveal a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book is the first to specifically characterize the Iron Age city-states of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, arguing for a unified cultural formation characterized above all by diversity and mobility and that can be referred to as the "Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex."

The second volume of Excavations at Mendes furthers the publication of our archaeological work at the site of Tel er-Rub'a, ancient Mendes, in the east central Delta. Mendes is proving to be one of the most exciting sites in the Nile Delta. Occupied from prehistoric times until the Roman Period, Mendes reveals the nature of a typical Late Egyptian city, its distribution of economy, and demography. The discoveries reported on in this volume were wholly unexpected, and bear meaning fully on Ancient Egyptian history: these include the prosperity and size of the original Old Kingdom city, the major contributions of Ramesses II and Amasis to the monumental nature of the city, and the role of the city in the period c. 600-100 B.C. as an entrepot for Mediterranean trade.

Jewish temples stood in Jerusalem for nearly one thousand years and were a dominant feature in the life of the ancient Judeans throughout antiquity. This volume strives to obtain a diachronic and topical cross-section of central features of the varied aspects of the Jewish temples that stood in Jerusalem, one that draws on and incorporates different disciplinary and methodological viewpoints. Ten contributions are included in this volume by: Gary A. Anderson; Simeon Chavel; Avraham Faust; Paul M. Joyce; Yuval Levavi; Risa Levitt; Eyal Regev; Lawrence H. Schiffman; Jeffrey Stackert; Caroline Waerzeggers, edited by Tova Ganzel and Shalom E. Holtz.

The The Olsztyn Group in the Early Medieval Archaeology of the Baltic Region: The Cemetry at Leleszki deals with a much neglected problem of the archaeology of the early Middle Ages. Between the 5th and the 7th century, the region of the Mazurian Lakes in northeastern Poland witnessed the rise of communities engaged in long-distant contacts with both Western and Eastern Europe. Known as the Olsztyn Group, the archaeological remains of those communities have revealed a remarkable wealth and diversity, which has attracted scholarly attention for more than 130 years. Besides offering a survey of the current state of research on the Olsztyn Group, Miroslaw Rudnicki introduces the monographic study of the Leleszki cemetery (district of Szczytno, Poland) as one of the most representative sites. The prosperity and long-distance contact revealed by the examination of this cemetery shows that the West Baltic tribes had considerable influence in early medieval Europe, much more than scholars had been ready to admit until now.

The Cairo Genizah is considered one of the world's greatest Hebrew manuscript treasures. Yet the story of how over a quarter of a million fragments hidden in Egypt were discovered and distributed around the world, before becoming collectively known as "The Cairo Genizah," is far more convoluted and compelling than previously told. The full story involves an international cast of scholars, librarians, archaeologists, excavators, collectors, dealers and agents, operating from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and all acting with varying motivations and intentions in a race for the spoils. Basing her research on a wealth of archival materials, Jefferson reconstructs how these protagonists used their various networks to create key alliances, or to blaze lone trails, each one on a quest to recover ancient manuscripts. Following in their footsteps, she takes the reader on a journey down into ancient caves and tombs, under medieval rubbish mounds, into hidden attic rooms, vaults, basements and wells, along labyrinthine souks, and behind the doors of private clubs and cloistered colleges. Along the way, the reader will also learn about the importance of establishing manuscript provenance and authenticity, and the impact to our understanding of the past when either factor is in doubt.

In Ornamental Nationalism: Archaeology and Antiquities in Mexico, 1876-1911, Seonaid Valiant examines the Porfirian government's reworking of indigenous, particularly Aztec, images to create national symbols. She focuses in particular on the career of Mexico's first national archaeologist, Inspector General Leopoldo Batres. He was a controversial figure who was accused of selling artifacts and damaging sites through professional incompetence by his enemies, but who also played a crucial role in establishing Mexican control over the nation's archaeological heritage. Exploring debates between Batres and his rivals such as the anthropologists Zelia Nuttall and Marshall Saville, Valiant reveals how Porfirian politicians reinscribed the political meaning of artifacts while social scientists, both domestic and international, struggled to establish standards for Mexican archaeology that would undermine such endeavors.

Concepts in Middle Kingdom Funerary Culture presents a collection of archaeological and philological papers discussing how ancient Egyptians thought, and modern scholars may think, about Egyptian funerary practices of the early 2nd millennium BCE. Targeting the concepts used by modern scholars, the papers address both general methodological questions of how concepts should be developed and used and more specific ones about the history and presuppositions behind particular Egyptological concepts. In so doing, the volume brings to the fore occasionally problematic intellectual baggage that have hindered understanding, as well highlighting new promising avenues of research in ancient Egyptian funerary culture in the Middle Kingdom and more broadly. "New and insightful suggestions are made, many of which challenge the basic frames of reference of Western Egyptological study, from funerary practice to issues of identity. The methodological models should be of considerable interest to those studying aspects of the HB and ancient Levant related to funerary culture, where studies have often tended towards the etic." -David Beadle, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44.5 (2020)