Sepphoris was an important Galilean site from Hellenistic to early Islamic times. This multicultural city is described by Flavius Josephus as the “ornament of all Galilee,” and Rabbi Judah the Prince (ha-Nasi) codified the Mishnah there around 200 CE. The Duke University excavations of the 1980s and 1990s uncovered a large corpus of clay oil lamps in the domestic area of the western summit, and this volume presents these vessels. Richly illustrated with photos and drawings, it describes the various shape-types and includes a detailed catalog of 219 lamps. The volume also explores the origins of the Sepphoris lamps and establishes patterns of their trade, transport, and sale in the lower city’s marketplace. A unique contribution is the use of a combined petrographic and direct current plasma-optical emission spectrometric (dcp-oes) analysis of selected lamp fabrics from sites in Israel and Jordan. This process provided valuable information, indicating that lamps found in Sepphoris came from Judea, the Decapolis, and even Greece, suggesting an urban community fully engaged with other regional centers. Lamp decorations also provide information about the cosmopolitan culture of Sepphoris in antiquity. Discus lamps with erotic scenes and mythological characters suggest Greco-Roman influences, and menorahs portrayed on lamps indicate a vibrant Jewish identity.

This publication celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Collection of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities in the National Museum of Denmark. The Collection traces its roots back to the Royal Kunstkammer founded by King Frederik III around 1650 and to the private archaeological collection of King Christian VIII. On his death the two collections were joined and in 1853 a new one emerged, now named Cabinet of Antiquities, and open to the public -- a collection which over the ensuing 150 years has been constantly enlarged and enriched. In eight articles, various aspects of the history of the collection are tackled -- the authors taking their cues from highlights and humble objects alike: two marble heads from Athens, a mummy from Egypt, and a seemingly insignificant Syrian amulet which, nonetheless, can tell an intriguing tale from the past. We meet a largely forgotten 19th century Danish consul in Tunisia with an eye for antiquities, and accompany Danish archaeologists on expeditions to Hama in Syria and Luristan in Iran. New research in Corinthian pottery is presented and the reader is introduced to the principles employed in establishing the Greek and Roman galleries that were opened in 1994 together with plans for a new Cypriot gallery opened in 2002. The Collection of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities encompasses not only the story of ancient cultures but is, in its own right, part of the history of Denmark as it unfolds the story of the many relations between Denmark and the Mediterranean countries over the centuries.

This volume is dedicated to a small number of unique bronze 'bathtub' coffins found in 8th-6th century BC Babylonian, Assyrian and Elamite burial contexts. Usually treated as an incidental aspect of the burial process, these fascinating burial receptacles have until now garnered little in the way of academic interest. Here the author takes the opportunity to further explore the coffins, drawing together the widely dispersed information on their archaeological contexts, investigating the method and place of their manufacture, and establishing a possible date range for their production and use. To progress towards an understanding of the bronze 'bathtub' coffin burials within the broader context of regional funerary practices, they are then incorporated into an analysis of Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Elamite funerary ritual and belief. Finally the coffins are placed within the historical framework of these regions' socio-political interaction in an attempt to establish whether they represent a shared funerary tradition. Underpinning this study is the principle that mortuary evidence is the product of intentional behaviour; that the bronze 'bathtub' coffins represent a deliberate choice by the burying group and each would have featured in an emotionally and symbolically charged burial act.

Cited by al-Muqaddasi in c.985 and then by al-Idrisi in c.1150, the medieval port of Sharma was discovered in 1996 at the extremity of the Ra's Sharma, 50km east of al-Shihr on the Hadramawt coast of Yemen; it was excavated in 2001-2005. This unique site was actually a transit entrepot, a cluster of warehouses probably founded by Iranian merchants and entirely devoted to the maritime trade. It knew a rather short period of activity, between around 980 and the second half of the 12th century, which may be acknowledged as the Sharma horizon. Excavations proved that this settlement experienced six occupation phases, which are closely related to the political and economic developments in the region at that time. The material is mainly transit merchandises, small objects, resins, glass and pottery; some of the ceramics were locally made, in the nearby kilns of Yadghat, but most (70%) were imported, from all parts of the Indian Ocean from China to East Africa. The typo-chronological study of this closed assemblage brings very precise information on the dating and evolution of the various types recorded, and the historical analyse sheds new light on the history of the Islamic maritime trade in the 10th to 12th centuries. French text throughout.

Literary sources suggest that Mt. Carmel was a sacred site for the pagans, for the veneration and worship of Ba'al, as practiced there since the 9th century BCE through the erection of altars and temples/shrines in his honour. According to Iamblichus, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, on his way to Egypt, visited the mountain in the second half of the 6th century BCE and sought solitude in a temple, or perhaps in a temenos. In the days of the Achaemenid king of Persia Darius I (521-486 BCE), the mountain seems to have been sacred to Zeus. Artistic and epigraphic evidence suggest that Elijah's Cave, on the western slope of Mt. Carmel, had been used as a pagan cultic place, possibly a shrine, devoted to Ba'al Carmel (identified with Zeus/Jupiter) as well as to Pan and Eros as secondary deities. The visual representation of the cult statue (idol) of Ba'al Carmel, a libation vessel (kylix?) and the presumed figure of the priest or, alternatively, the altar within the aedicula, strengthen the assumption that the Cave was used in the Roman period, and perhaps even earlier. In addition, one of the Greek inscriptions, dated to the Roman period, indicates the sacred nature of the Cave and the prohibition of its profanation. When Elijah's Cave ceased to be used for pagan worship it continued to be regarded as a holy site and was dedicated to Prophet Elijah, presumably in the Early Byzantine period. Following the tradition linking Elijah (so-called el-Khader) with Mt. Carmel, it became sacred to the Prophet and was used by supplicants (Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze) to Elijah for aid, healing and salvation, a tradition that still persists to this day. There are no literary or historical sources which are recording the existence of Elijah's Cave on Mt. Carmel prior to the 12th century. The earliest written testimony is that of the laconic description of the Russian Abbot Daniel, who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1106-1107, followed by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the Land of Israel in 1165. Any earlier written material must have been lost over time, since it is unlikely that the Cave and its surroundings were entirely ignored before the 12th century.

This volume is primarily concerned with the re-analysis of the wall paintings from the Jordanian Chalcolithic period (ca. 4700-3700 BC) settlement site of Teleilat Ghassul, first excavated in 1929 by scholars from the Pontifical Biblical Institute Rome and latterly by Australians from the University of Sydney. The seven major paintings were re-analysed using a methodology based on contextualisation, digital reconstruction, experimental replication and subject analysis. A comprehensive theoretical framework was constructed from published and unpublished materials from the site, consisting of geographical and environmental datasets, topographic, settlement-location and structural contexts. These included material/artefactual associations, technological issues and a comprehensive symbolic regional comparative analysis of the artworks themselves. The interpretive structure, reconstructed and re-evaluated scenes, and replication studies, have revealed numerous insights into the artistic traditions and cultic practices of South Levantine Ghassulian Chalcolithic culture, with considerable relevance to the ongoing debate on such matters as prehistoric societal makeup and art historical scholarship. This study has provided intriguing glimpses into the lives of a brilliantly artistic and deeply ritualised society, shedding new light on this little-known and still mysterious people.

In this book Philip Bes summarises the results of his PhD thesis (Catholic University of Leuven) on the analysis of production trends and complex, quantified distribution patterns of the principal traded sigillatas and slipped table wares in the Roman East, from the early Empire to Late Antiquity (e.g. Italian Sigillata, Eastern Sigillata A, B and C, Candarli ware, Phocean Red Slip Ware/LRC, Cypriot Red Slip Ware/LRD and African Red Slip Wares). He draws on his own work in Sagalassos and Boeotia, as well as an exhaustive review of archaeological publications of ceramic data. The analysis compares major regional blocks, documenting coastal as well as inland sites, and offers an interpretation of these complex data in terms of the economy and possible distribution mechanisms.

The volume is the result of the Ninth Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute PostDoc Seminar, held on March 16-17, 2013. Twenty scholars specialized in the Old and New World from all over Europe and the US came together to find new approaches in the study of households in complex societies. The papers in this volume present case studies from the Near East, Egypt and Nubia, the Classical World, and Mesoamerica, including three comparative responses from the perspective of the different disciplines. By combining the archaeology record, scientific data and written documents the papers examine and contextualize different approaches and techniques in uncovering household behavior from the material record and discuss their suitability for the respective region and site. Building on the methodological groundwork laid out in a number of recent publications on household archaeology the volume contributes to the methodological and theoretical discussion, expands on the topics of society, identity, and ethnicity in household studies and opens up new avenues of research such as the perception of space in this innovative field. At the same time the papers reveal problems and disparities with which household archaeology is still struggling. It is hoped that the variety of case studies presented in this volume will further inspire the interested reader to establish new research agendas and excavation strategies that contribute to the development of the field in the various regions covered in the different papers and beyond.

Recent excavations on the border between Jordan and Syria have uncovered ancient building ruins that provide interesting materials revealing the domestic and working lives of the people who settled within the valley of Tall al Fukhar in Wadi ash-Shallale. The volume provides a detailed and thorough examination of the excavations conducted between 1990 and 2002. The Scandinavian expedition, located on a 375m natural spur, revealed a rare quantity of pottery, antiques and ancient building structures that provided archaeologists with an insight into the social, economic and material developments that emerged from the Early Bronze Age 3600 BC. Tall al-Fukhar commemorates centuries of historical artefacts that document the alternations mankind made to improve living standards, constructing modern day life as we know it.

The story of the duel of David and Goliath, the Philistine champion, is narrated in the Bible in several versions. While its symbolic importance in Judaism and later in Christianity gradually came to represent the battle between good and evil, true faith and paganism, attempts were made since ancient times to solve its ambiguities. In modern research, the story arouses many disputes. There is controversy about the degree of realism and fantasy in it and there is also no agreement as to the time it was composed. Some claim that this was close to the time when the event occurred at the beginning of the monarchy period. Others postpone the time of its writing to the end of the Judaean monarchy and even to Second Temple times by pointing out its similarities to Greek literature and the characteristics of Goliath as an Aegean hoplite. The purpose of the study is not only to shed light on the enigmas about the protagonists and the time of the story, but also to understand why the importance of its message did not lessen and in what circumstances the interest in it was prolonged. The study employs a textual analysis (literary and philological) of the story together with its comparison to Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian literary sources, historical analysis, and also a comparative analysis with archaeological findings. It examines sources which until now have not been included in research and suggests a new date, place and motive for the compilation of the duel story.

This volume presents the results of the Italian excavations and surveys carried out in Transjordan between 1927 and 1938. After a first excavation campaign conducted in 1927 on the Amman Citadel by Giacomo Guidi, the excavations were resumed in 1929 by Renato Bartoccini (Rome 1893-Rome 1963), who carried out four campaigns on the Citadel in 1929, 1930, 1933 and 1938. He also travelled across modern Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, taking photos and writing reports on several archaeological sites. Bartoccini published a few notes and reports, but almost all the original documentation of his work was still unpublished at the time this study was conducted. The main source of data is the Fondo Renato Bartoccini, i.e. the private archive of Bartoccini, today held by the University of Perugia, while other useful documents are kept in other archives in Macerata and in Rome. Furthermore, some decorated Islamic pottery from the excavations on the Citadel is held at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza. The retrieved photos, excavation journals, letters, and administrative documents make it possible to understand, after almost a century, how the Citadel of Amman appeared at the time of its first excavation.

This volume explores early complex society and nascent urbanism, based in studies of Mesopotamia during the fifth-fourth millennia bc. Urbanism in the Near East has traditionally been located in late fourthmillennium bc southern Mesopotamia (south Iraq); but recent excavations and surveys in northeast Syria and southeast Turkey have identified a distinctively northern Mesopotamian variant of this development, which can be dated to the early fourth millennium bc. The authors use multiscalar approaches, including material culturebased studies, settlement archaeology and regional surveys, to achieve an understanding of the dynamics of early urbanism across this key region. The book reveals the variety of social, economic and political relationships that are implicit within an urban centre and an urbanized society.

Arising from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in Palermo in 2012, this book includes 16 papers that explores points of contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic worlds between c. 1000 and c. 1250.

This book brings together a selection of twenty-eight previously disparate articles by Nicholas Postgate that represent some thirty years of engagement with the nature of Assyrian society and government. Most are broadly synthetic and deal with general issues; they are a tremendous body of work, and this will be an invaluable collection for everyone interested in Assyria.

In the years 1983-2013, an archaeological expedition under the auspices of the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology of Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, was active on Mount Carmel, Israel. The expedition comprised archaeologists, team members, students and other professionals, as well as pupils from schools in the Sharon and Daliyat el-Carmel. This book describes ten rural mountain sites through which it seeks to reconstruct the character of all the settlements on the mountain and at its foot, from the Persian through the Byzantine periods.

Excavations carried out by the Danish Moesgaard Museum on the island of Failaka in Kuwait in 1958-1963 produced a large collection of stone vessel fragments which have ever since puzzled scholars. The settlements excavated on Failaka, Tell F3 and Tell F6, belong to the 2nd millennium BC, but stone vessels of Serie Ancienne and Umm an-Nar styles of the 3rd millennium BC are well represented in the Failaka collection. Besides vessels of Wadi Suq and Late Bronze Age styles there is a significant group of figurative decorated stone vessels in a style completely unknown from anywhere else in the region, which may throw light on the mid 2nd millennium Dark Age in South Mesopotamia. The Failaka stone vessel collection is presented in all its details, and the significance of the many different vessel styles is discussed in the context of recent developments in our understanding of Arabian Gulf archaeology.

Our Work: Modern Jobs - Ancient Origins is the catalog for a photo-based exhibit that reveals that many modern professions originated in the ancient Middle East. Artifacts from the Oriental Institute Museum were paired with a baker, farmer, manicurist, brewer, poet, boat builder, judge and other professionals to show the antiquity of these jobs. The portraits are accompanied by commentary on the contributions of the ancient Middle East to life today and new insights into how members of the public view their relationship to the past. This volume will be of interest to educators, historians, and those interested in fine-arts photography.

This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200-850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

Introduction - The Nabataeans in focus (Laila Nehme & Lucy Wadeson); 1) Landscapes north of Petra: the Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey (Brown University Petra Archaeological Project, 2010-2011) (Susan E. Alcock & Alex R. Knodell); 2) Nabataean or Late Roman? Reconsidering the date of the built sections and milestones along the Petra-Gaza road (Chaim Ben David); 3) Reinventing the sacred: from shrine to monastery at Jabal Harun (Zbigniew T. Fiema, ); 4) Dating the early phases under the temenos of the Qa r al-Bint at Petra (F. Renel, M. Mouton, C. Auge, C. Gauthier, C. Hatte, J-F. Saliege & A. Zazzo); 5) A Nabataean shrine to Isis in Wadi Abu Ullayqah, in the south-west of Petra (Marie-Jeanne Roche); 6) The palaces of the Nabataean kings at Petra (Stephan G. Schmid, Piotr Bienkowski, Zbigniew T. Fiema & Bernhard Kolb); 7) The funerary landscape of Petra: results from a new study (Lucy Wadeson); 8) The International Aslah Project, Petra: new research and new questions (Robert Wenning in cooperation with Laurent Gorgerat).

What is sacrifice? How can we identify it in the archaeological record? And what does it tell us about the societies that practice it? Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East investigates these and other questions through the evidence for human and animal sacrifice in the Near East from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic periods. Drawing on sociocultural anthropology and history in addition to archaeology, the book also includes evidence from ancient China and a riveting eyewitness account and analysis of sacrifice in contemporary India, which engage some of the key issues at stake. Sacred Killing vividly presents a variety of methods and theories in the study of one of the most profound and disturbing ritual activities humans have ever practiced.

What are the political uses-and misuses-of archaeology in the Middle East? In answering this question, the contributors to this volume lend their regional expertise to a variety of case studies, including the Taliban's destruction of Buddhas in Afghanistan, the commercialization of archaeology in Israel, the training of Egyptian archaeology inspectors, and the debate over Turkish identity sparked by the film Troy, among other provocative subjects. Other chapters question the ethical justifications of archaeology in places that have "alternative engagements with the material past." In the process, they form various views of the role of the archaeologist, from steward of the historical record to agent of social change. The diverse contributions to this volume share a common framework in which the political use of the past is viewed as a process of social discourse. According to this model, political appropriations are seen as acts of social communication designed to accrue benefits to particular groups. Thus the contributors pay special attention to competing social visions and the filters these impose on archaeological data. But they are also attentive to the potential consequences of their own work. Indeed, as the editors remind us, "people's lives may be affected, sometimes dramatically, because of the material remains that surround them." Rounding out this important volume are critiques by two top scholars who summarize and synthesize the preceding chapters.|What are the political uses--and misuses--of archaeology in the Middle East? The contributors to this volume lend their regional expertise to a variety of case studies, including the Taliban's destruction of Buddhas in Afghanistan, the commercialization of archaeology in Israel, and the debate over Turkish identity sparked by the film Troy. In the process, they form various views of the role of the archaeologist, from steward of the historical record to agent of social change.

This is the first volume in a new series, Chicago Hittite Dictionary Supplements, designed to augment and supplement the work of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary project. Future volumes will continue to bring tablets written in the Hittite language to light. The volume presented here (ABoT II) is the continuation of the cuneiform edition Ankara Arkeoloji Muezesinde Bulunan Bogazkoy Tabletleri (ABoT) published by Kemal Balkan in 1948. The Hittite tablets, which were acquired by the Ankara Anadolu Medeniyetleri Muezesi by purchase and donations, or collected as surface finds, bear the siglum "AnAr." The best-preserved and attractive pieces of these tablets have been made accessible to the scholarly public through the publication of ABoT; the others, however, were not considered for publication at that time. Since the series of ABoT was later discontinued, such fragments, mostly still useful and in reasonable condition, remained untouched in the Ankara Museum for years. When Rukiye Akdodan decided to make copies of nearly four hundred AnAr fragments and publish them as ABoT II, an agreement of cooperation with Oguz Soysal for the preparation of the catalogue of this work was made in the year 2005. Although the cuneiform copies in other similar works like ABoT and IBoT I-IV were made by Turkish scholars (K. Balkan, M. C. H. Kzlyay, and M. Eren), the support of foreign scholars (H. G. Gueterbock and H. A. Hoffner) was still sought. ABoT II, on the other hand, is a fully Turkish cuneiform edition as a welcome result of a joint Ankara-Chicago effort. The small size of most of the fragments made it particularly difficult to determine the text genres and to place them in the text categories assigned in E. Laroche's Catalogue des textes hittites (CTH). Nevertheless, after two years of intensive work and with the support of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary Projects lexical files, it has been possible to find many duplicates of well-known compositions from Bogazkoy. This volume will certainly enrich the Hittite text corpus. The represented text genres herein include historical, administrative and technical, lexical, mythological texts, hymns and prayers, rituals, cult administration and inventory texts, divination documents, festival descriptions, and compositions in languages other than Hittite (Hattian, Hurrian, Luwian, Sumerian and Akkadian). With the present edition of 389 pieces in cuneiform copies, there are almost no more AnAr fragments remaining in the Ankara Museum that would be worth publishing.

Contents: Introduction: The development of Arabic as a written language (Christian Julien Robin); Ancient Arabia and the written word (M.C.A. Macdonald); Mount Nebo, Jabal Ramm, and the status of Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Old Arabic in Late Roman Palestine and Arabia (Robert Hoyland); A glimpse of the development of the Nabataean script into Arabic based on old and new epigraphic material (Laila Nehme); The evolution of the Arabic script in the period of the Prophet Mu ammad and the Orthodox Caliphs in the light of new inscriptions discovered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ('Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban); In search of a standard: dialect variation and New Arabic features in the oldest Arabic written documents (Pierre Larcher); The codex Parisino-petropolitanus and the ijazi scripts (Francois Deroche); The relationship of literacy and memory in the second/eighth century (Gregor Schoeler); The Use of the Arabic script in magic (Venetia Porter); The Old Arabic graffito at Jabal Usays: A new reading of line 1 (M.C.A. Macdonald).

Although the ancient Near East has been studied by anthropologists, archaeologists, philologists, and historians, no single work has explored issues of gender and social identity across the broad temporal and geographical range of Near Eastern civilizations. Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East thus makes a unique contribution to gender studies. The volume's contributors an international group of experts from Near Easern, European and American institutions look at the archaeological and other evidence to find out how gender roles were constructed in these ancient worlds and what they meant to the men and women who assumed them.

Nowhere in the world do ancient burial mounds dominate the landscape as they do in the Island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. This volume presents the results of the Danish Archaeological Bahrain-Expeditions excavation of 54 mound burials, with descriptions of the four mound cemeteries and the finds, as well as an evaluation of all available evidence from Bahraini burials.