Amazons--fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world--were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons. But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons--Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China. Driven by a detective's curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.

In The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk, Julia Krul offers a comprehensive study of the rise of the sky god Anu as patron deity of Uruk in the Late Babylonian period (ca. 480-100 B.C.). She reconstructs the historical development of the Anu cult, its underlying theology, and its daily rites of worship, with a particular focus on the yearly nocturnal fire ceremony at the Anu temple, the Bit Res. Providing the first in-depth analysis of the ceremony, Julia Krul convincingly identifies it as a seasonal renewal festival with an important exorcistic component, but also as a reinforcement of local hierarchical relationships and the elite status of the Anu priesthood. "With this study, Krul adds significantly to the research on Babylonian temple rituals in general, providing a useful methodology and survey of secondary sources....This book offers an excellent in-depth analysis of the nocturnal fire ceremony as it could have been celebrated at Hellenistic Uruk. It forms a good starting-point for comparison with and further study of other Late Babylonian rituals from both Uruk and Babylon." - Celine Debourse, Vienna, in: Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes 109 (2019) "The book is essentially a commentary on a late cuneiform text from 3rd-century BCE Uruk describing a nocturnal sacrificial ritual held annually on the winter solstice (16 Tevet). The text itself is well known, having first been published by F. Thureau-Dangin in his classic work Rituels accadiens (1921), but this book is the most comprehensive far-reaching commentary on this important text, with valuable extraneous information [...]. There is much valuable data in this book regarding late Babylonian ritual practice, couched in an informative narrative." -Markham J. Geller, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43.5 (2019)

Hieroglyphs are sacred carvings incised, to convey rebus substantive messages in Meluhha. Symbols associated with divinities and tree of life are Meluhha sacred carvings. Many carvings relate to specific varieties of plants, buds, flowers which are associated with sacredness because they connote -- rebus -- metal artifacts of a kole.l 'smithy/forge' which is, kole.l 'temple'. Archaeological evidences from Ancient Near East point to the practice of worship in temples of divinities associated with these hieroglyphs. Kabbalah of the Ancient Near East is a synonym of agama of Indian tradition with the roots found in Meluhha as a visible language. Both traditions venerate altars as models of temples. What lessons can be learnt from the evidences to delineate the roots of religious experiences of our ancestors? This inquiry primarily based on archaeologically attested artifacts is an incomplete religious inquiry. Kabbalah is a school of thought, a magnificent statement resulting from an intense inquiry into the nature of phenomena including living and non-living forms and cosmic order. One thought is apparent and central. There is some energy which permeates the universe and a name ws given to this energy, calling it by various appellations includes divine creation which can only be modeled on hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs then become attributes of that divinity manifested in the cultural world order. When the king kneels in adoration in front of an altar which has as the center-piece a mere staff or pole, how did he vocalise the phenomenon which the sculpture has created? Is the sculpture an attempt at representing thought resulting from the inquiry? Or is it just a limited manifestation of the sculptor's life-experience? Or, is it a model of the ziggurat, the temple itself? Ziggurat as a temple is a leap in inquiry. It is a mere accumulation, a piling up of dhatu, earth forms containing minerals and what is left of minerals, may be ashes, after the processes in the crucible, smithy and forge. Or, is it a memory of accumulated memories bequeathed by ancestors in a life-continuum? The agama tradition in ancient India also has its roots in inquiry resulting in representation of attributes in human and non-human forms in an architectural model of a temple. The story of the agama and the kabbalah has to be fully told to understand the boundaries of the sacred observed and practised as religious experience. What is the difference between hakira (philosophy) and darash (inquire, seek ) Is the darash traceable to the Indian traditions of dars'ana? How do Rabbinic meanings ( midrashic) explain the traditions evolved over time, narrated in Tanakh? Is there a cosmic law? The sememe dars'an has its root dRs', 'to see'. Is the seeing mere visual experience or an experience of the conscious mind? The beholding could be a series of flashes or glimpses seen by the inquirer. The cognate wor darash thus becomes a series of events, related or unrelated. events of conscious thought of the devotee. A fantastic metaphor emerges in the Vis'warupa, divine, wondrous manifestation holding many weapons, ornamented with celestial flowers and perfumes. Before such a form, the devotee kneels down in adoration, like Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-1207 BCE), King of Assyria or like Arjuna in front of Sri Krishna as narrated in the Mahabharata and the Gita. Is there any significance or meaning assignable, from a narrative, which refers to artifacts of gypsum, strong copper and the Magilum boat of Meluhha fame, apart from Anzu who had stolen the tablet of destiny? It appears that Meluhhan artificer who created a writing system referred to strong copper by using the rebus metaphor of the sunflower, karaDa which also connoted 'strong copper' or hard alloy. When copper was hardened by alloying, it became 'useful' or 'meaningful' as a resource for making weapons and tools or as a resource for engaging in trade transactions using the Magilum boat.

"The Saga of the Volsungs" is an Icelandic epic of special interest to admirers of Richard Wagner, who drew heavily upon this Norse source in writing his "Ring Cycle" and a primary source for writers of fantasy such as J.R.R. Tolkien and romantics such as William Morris. A trove of traditional lore, it tells of love, jealousy, vengeance, war, and the mythic deeds of the dragonslayer, Sigurd the Volsung. Byock's comprehensive introduction explores the history, legends, and myths contained in the saga and traces the development of a narrative that reaches back to the period of the great folk migrations in Europe when the Roman Empire collapsed.