Weekly AGADE Archive February 22- February 28, 2015
Weekly AGADE Archive February 22- February 28, 2015
February 22 NOTICES: Agade resumption
CALLS FOR PAPERS: SBL Hellenistic Judaism Section, Atlanta 2015
WORKSHOPS: The First Writings of Iran in Their Own Context (Naples, March 10-11)
LECTURES: Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches (Nashville, Feb 24)
JOBS: 2, at the Berliner Antike-Kolleg
KUDOS: For Peter R. Brown and Alessandro Portelli (Dan David Prize)
OPINIONS: Relevance of ‘Oriental studies’
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Bible and Iberian Empire-building (SBL, Argentina)
BOOKS: Song of Songs JPS commentary
NOTICES: February Update from The British Institute for the Study of Iraq
LECTURES: "The New Excavations in the Necropolis of Himera" (NYC, March 12)
WORKSHOPS: Chronography of Julius Africanus
NOTICES: 10th ICAANE
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Reports on Current Excavations (ASOR 2015)
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma (SBL 2015)
CONFERENCES: Drink.Prey.Lust- Sexual violence in the Book of Esther (Nashville, Feb 24)
JOURNALS: Rivista di Studi Fenici 41/1-2, 2013
NEWS: Shrine of Ezra eREVIEWS: Of "The Revolutionary at the Heart of Traditional Judaism "
CALLS FOR AWARDS: BAS Publication Awards 2015
CALLS FOR PAPERS: "Archaeology of Lebanon" at ASOR
CONFERENCES: Homer: Translation, Adaptation, Improvisation (NYC, Feb. 27)
LECTURES: 1177 BC - The Year Civilization Collapsed (Chicago, Feb 25)
NEWS?: Marketing Assyrian god
JOBS: Several, via the EPHE
LECTURES: Archaeology in the Midst of War in Syria (Washington, Feb 27)
CONFERENCES: Archeomusicology: Representations of Musicians in the Coroplastic Art of the Ancient World (NYC, March 7, 2015)
eREVIEWS: Of "A Sociolinguistic History of the Jews"
LECTURES: The Cave of Anba Hadra at Dayr Anba Hadra (Berlin, March 9):
LECTURES: 3, on Ancient Israel (Rome, March 10-11)
LECTURES: "Second Isaiah - Prophet of Consolation" (Jerusalem, Feb 25]
CONFERENCES: Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge (Groningen, April 22-24)
INTERVIEWS: With Carol and Eric Meyers
NEWS: Gold coin cache from Caesarea
NEWS: Bankrolling terror
eREVIEWS: Of "Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia"
CONFERENCES: Medical Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Exchanges (Lisbon in July]
CALLS FOR PAPERS: ISBL Hellenistic Judaism (ISBL Argentina)-- New Deadline
February 23
CALLS FOR PAPERS: "The Text of Leviticus" (Fribourg, Oct. 8-9)
LECTURES: “Biblical Archaeology: Is It Really the Spade in One Hand and the Bible in the Other?” (Alexandria, VA; March 21) SCHOLARSHIPS: At the Qumran Institute (Groningen)
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Analog Life, Digital Image (RAI 2015)
CONFERENCES: "Archaeological Looting: Realities and Possibilities for New Policy Approaches" (Chicago, Feb 27-28)
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Anthropology, Archaeology and History in Biblical Studies (Córdoba, Spain, 12-15 July)
JOURNALS: “Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie” 7(2014)
LECTURES: "... The Cultural Heritage Crises in Syria and Northern Iraq" (NYC, March 11)
BOOKS: Mari: Capital of Northern Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium
LECTURES: "Sicily in the Age of Archimedes" (Nashville, February 26)
KUDOS: For Mark Weeden
CALLS FOR PAPERS: 9thTranseuphratene Colloquium (Paris, April 7-9, 2016)
February 24
LECTURES: "Tel Kedesh and the Maccabees" (Tel Aviv, March 10) eREVIEWS: Of "Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos"
BOOKS: Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God
BOOKS: Prophecy and Covenant (OBO 271)
NEWS: Oldest city in the world
CONFERENCES: "Terracottas in the Mediterranean through Time" (Haifa, March 23-26) eREVIEWS: Of "Les dialogues Adversus Iudaeos...."
INTERVIEWS: With Moulie Vidas
REPORTS: On the Kurdestan Region project
TIDBITS?: The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body NEWS: Burning books in the Mosul library
eREVIEWS: Of "The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity"
FEATURES: Indo-European origins
CALLS FOR PAPERS: “The Crazy Genius of Herod the Great” (Dublin, 29-31 May) eREVIEWS: Of "Re-presenting the Past: Archaeology through Text and Image"
February 25
NEWS: Blame game
REQUESTS: For information on an Assyriologist
LECTURES: "The Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Cambridge, March 4)
NEWS: Possible Ancient Judean Administrative Center eTEXTS & WEBS: Critical Catalogue of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals
NEWS: Sekhmet bust from Luxor eNOTES: Reaching for the Historical David
NEWS: Laser technology and archaeology at Jezreel
NEWS: Secret chamber in Sidon
CONFERENCES: Romanization of Sardinia (Cuglieri, Sardinia, 26-28)
PRIZES: For Iraq dissertations, 2013-2015
NEWS: Hyksos period pharaoh killed in battle
February 26
CONFERENCES: “The Colors of Imperial Rome: The Richmond Statue of Caligula & the Arch of Titus in Rome” (Los Angeles, March 11) BOOKS: The Commentators' Bible: Deuteronomy
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Senses and Culture in the Biblical World (SBL 2015)
BOOKS & KUDOS: From Gilead to Edom. Studies ... in Honor of Denyse Homès-Fredericq ....
eAUDIOS: The Eunuch in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity
REPORTS: New Italian Archaeological Project at Tell Surghul/Nigin
NEWS: Jack-hammering artefacts in Mosul
NOTICES: Change of deadline for IAA prize and subsidies
BOOKS: Cuneiform Texts in the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, I
KUDOS: For Shmuel Ahituv
February 27
eREVIEWS: Of "Antiochus the Great"
FEATURES: Sitting at the gate
NEWS: More on the Israel Prize
eVIDEOS & INTERVIEWS: With Zainab Bahrani
eREVIEWS: Of "Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts"
SCHOLARSHIPS: 2, MA Program in Maritime Civilizations (University of Haifa)
[agade] KUDOS: For Ilya Arkhipov
February 28
CONFERENCES: HB sessions at SECSOR (Nashville, March 6-8)
LECTURES: "...The gates of Azatiwataya" (NYC, March 6)
NEWS: More on the violent death of a pharaoh
BOOKS: Iranische Personennamen in der Hebräischen Bibel NEWS: Amateur archaeology
eNOTES: Idumaean in Judaea court
NEWS: 2, on the damage at the Mosul Museum
WORKSHOPS: Ethiopic Manuscripts and the Preservation of Ancient Jewish Material (Haifa, March 26)
NEWS: Unearthing the Arabian Peninsula’s Past
Feb 22
NOTICES: Agade resumption
You are about to be flooded by Agade postings, for which I apologize. When useful, I have set the date when a specific item was received.
I have not posted several notices referring to activities (mostly lectures) that have taken place by now: a good cue that such postings need to have reached me earlier.
(Vacation was splendid; with lots of opportunity to admire Shamash.)
CALLS FOR PAPERS: SBL Hellenistic Judaism Section, Atlanta 2015
Received Feb 16
From Lutz Doering [mailto:[email protected]]: ======
The SBL Hellenistic Judaism section is inviting submissions for an open session at the Annual Meeting, Atlanta 2015, on
"Alexandria and the Jews in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods."
For this session we invite papers on any aspect relating to the topic, but we are especially interested in submissions focusing on one of the two following issues: (a) "A growing intellectual hub: Alexandria and the Greek Torah as an Alexandrian book." The early Ptolemies claimed for Alexandria an intellectual role which would challenge that of Athens. The Jews arrived in the city when this project was in the first stages of its development; the translation into Greek of their book, the Torah, occurred at the same time as the formation of the library. Was the Greek Torah a Jewish book or an Alexandrian book? We invite submissions elaborating on the accessibility and knowledge of the Greek Torah outside Jewish circles in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. (b) "Where were the Jews in Alexandria?" The presence of the Jews in Alexandria is certainly historically documented, but archaeology has as of yet been of little help to substantiate the claim of the written sources. We invite submissions discussing the archaeological evidence of Alexandria in relation to the presence of a consistent and growing Jewish community on its territory.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Mar 4, 2015.
This year's Annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature will take place in Atlanta, GA, on November 21-24; information on the meeting and the link to submit the abstracts are to be found here: http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/AnnualMeeting.aspx.
Lutz Doering and Sandra Gambetti, program co-chairs
WORKSHOPS: The First Writings of Iran in Their Own Context (Naples, March 10-11)
Received Feb 17
From Gian Pietro BASELLO [mailto:[email protected]]: ======
CONFERENCES: First Writings of Iran at Naples
From: http://www.elamit.net/elam/20150310-11desset.pdf
The First Writings of Iran in Their Own Context
An intensive class held by FRANÇOIS DESSET (University of Tehran)
Naples, "L'Orientale" University
Tuesday 10th March 2015, Palazzo Du Mesnil 15:00-17:30 PE (Proto-Elamite) Writing
Wednesday 11th March 2015, Palazzo Du Mesnil 10:30-12:30 LE (Linear Elamite) and Jiroft Writings 14:30-16:30 The context: South-Eastern Iran in the 3rd Millennium BCE
FRANÇOIS DESSET received his PhD from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne with a dissertation entitled "Éléments d’archéologie du plateau iranien de la 2ème moitié du 4ème au début du 2ème millénaire av. J.-C." (2011) and has published the monograph "Premières écritures iraniennes" (Series Minor 76, Napoli: “L’Orientale”, 2012). He is currently researching in Iran.
The class is organized in the framework of the National Research Project “Sedi del potere, comunicazione politica e società nell’Iran achemenide” (PRIN 2009JHSEE7) directed by prof. Adriano V. Rossi.
Dottorato Asia Africa Mediterraneo Dottorato Turchia Iran Asia Centrale Dottorato Vicino Oriente Antico
Write to Gian Pietro Basello [email protected] for further details.
LECTURES: Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches (Nashville, Feb 24)
Received Feb 17
From David Michelson < [email protected]>: ======
The Warren Center Late Antiquity Seminar will meet on Tuesday, Feb 24, 12:10-1:00 pm, at the Warren Center. Lunch will be provided.
We will be have the opportunity to meet with Prof. Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, Assistant Professor of Theology, Marquette University, who will discuss "Hagiographical Portraits of Jacob Baradaeus," a chapter from her forthcoming book Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches (http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520284968).
Prof. Mellon Saint-Laurent is a scholar of Syriac Studies and Early Christianity, with special interests in hagiography and sacred narrative. She is also Assistant Director of Syriaca.org, The Syriac Reference Portal.
An advance copy of Prof. Mellon's paper is available to those who plan on attending. Please contact Mark Ellison to RSVP and get a copy of the paper: [email protected]
JOBS: 2, at the Berliner Antike-Kolleg
Received Feb 18
From Winny Henkel [mailto:[email protected]]: ======
The Berliner Antike-Kolleg is offering two jobs for research assistant. Both positions are part-time and time-limited until 31.12.2015. A two-year extension is, subject to eligibility by the third-party funding, possible.
Deadline for application is March 9th, 2015 and applications should be send via e-mail to
The job starts on April 1st, 2015. Place of employment is Berlin, Germany.
The posts and links to descriptions is at < http://berliner-antike-kolleg.org/news/stellenausschreibung/>.
Find more information about the Berliner Antike-Kolleg on our website
KUDOS: For Peter R. Brown and Alessandro Portelli (Dan David Prize)
Received Feb. 18 From
The Dan David Prize is an international prize which annually awards three prizes of US$ 1 million each for outstanding scientific, technological, cultural, and social achievements having an impact on our world. Each year fields are chosen within the three Time Dimensions - Past, Present and Future.
THE INTERNATIONAL DAN DAVID PRIZE ANNOUNCES 2015 LAUREATES Prof. Joseph Klafter, President of Tel Aviv University and Chairman of the Dan David Prize Board of Directors and Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, Chairman of the Dan David Foundation, announced the 2015 Dan David Prize laureates.
The 2015 Dan David Prize Laureates in the Three Time Dimensions are:
2015 Past - Retrieving the Past: Historians and Their Sources
1. PROF. PETER R. BROWN Peter R. Brown is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Professor Emeritus, the Department of History, Princeton University. Prof. Brown is one of the world’s most renowned humanists.
His early work (Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967) and Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (1971) and especially World of Late Antiquity (1971) created an entire new field. “Late antiquity” – the period between the second and the eighth centuries, which had long been a historical gap separating the decline of the Roman Empire from the Middle Ages – came into being as a dynamic and complex period of human history. No longer the Dark Ages, these centuries were recreated by Brown as a time of creativity, struggle, innovation, and emergence of new historical actors, from charismatic holy men to neurotic bishops. His subsequent works on the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the rise of the cult of
Saints, and more recently on understandings of poverty, leadership, and the shifting attitudes to wealthy in the waning centuries of Roman hegemony speak powerfully to readers about the tensions between power, privilege and redemption.
Peter Brown unearthed a unique range of source material in order to depict a “world” between the Iranian plateau and the Bay of Biscay at a time between great empires. The linguistic breadth ranges from expected sources in English, French, Italian, German to those in Syriac, ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Old Norse and more and the types of sources range from classical texts to archaeology. There are few scholars in the world with the skills to tap such a range of sources, and fewer still who can exploit them with such singular and prolific imagination.
Professor Brown has received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including the University of Chicago (1978), Trinity College, Dublin (1990), Wesleyan University (1993), Columbia University (2001), Harvard University (2002), and Kings College London (2008). He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1989), and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award (2001). In 2008, he won the Kluge Prize of the Library of Congress and in 2011, the Balzan Prize.
2. PROF. ALESSANDRO PORTELLI Prof. Alessandro Portelli is Professor Emeritus, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”. Prof. Portelli is the world’s leading practitioner of oral history.
His imaginative work demonstrates the value of an ethnographic approach to the modern past. The Death of Luigi Trastulli (1991) begins with the case of the 1949 killing of a trade union protestor as an as an opportunity to compare and juxtapose perspectives; it presents a conflicting collage of print reports to remind us that print is not more immune to falsehood than oral sources. In 1999, he published L’ordine e stato eseguito (the Order Has Been Carried Out) about the massacre of 355 Jewish and non- Jewish civilians by Nazis in a suburb of Rome in 1944. It is a legendary event in Italian collective memory. Portelli examined numerous oral accounts to reconstruct the horrific events and their political uses in subsequent decades. What made the book so striking was not just the myth-shattering story, but the fact that many of the witnesses got the facts wrong; memories and facts were so clearly at odds. Yet, instead of discarding their accounts, Portelli made the witnesses into what he called the “narrators” – re-shapers of the past whose “creative” recollection enriches our understanding of the way the past continues to live long after events have taken place. The book became one of the most influential models of oral history for historians everywhere. Guided by Portelli’s books and methodological essays, they began to deploy oral history as a powerful tool with which to recreate the past. In 2010, Portelli published They Say in Harlan County, a portrait of an American coal mining district in decline, a living chronicle of a fading provincial world coping with deindustrialization and globalization. Portelli broadens historical knowledge by offering a fresh and original look at hitherto neglected sources.
To Portelli, the slips, associations, and downright mistakes of witness and ethnographic accounts tell us more about the meaning of an event than simply what happened. No one has written more thoughtful, insightful, methodological reflections on the promise and perils of oral history. In our “age of memory” as some have called it, Portelli makes sense of its living sources as no other historian has done. He has highlighted the intimate link between oral histories and collective memories. For in oral history, people are sources and sources are people.
Prof. Portelli was awarded the Viareggio Prize as well as an Oral History Association award.
OPINIONS: Relevance of ‘Oriental studies’ [Received Feb 18]
From < http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/isis-shows-oriental-studies-are- essential/2018567.article>:
======
Isis shows ‘Oriental studies’ are essential
The University of Manchester could not have chosen a worse time to consider closing Middle Eastern language courses, writes Hugh Williamson
As Islamic State (Isis) plumbed even greater depths of depravity with the burning alive of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, the crucial importance of doing all we can to understand the Middle East became ever clearer.
In this context, recent news that the University of Manchester is considering closing Turkish, Persian and modern Hebrew programmes seems particularly jolting. Yet, to those of us long associated with what is still sometimes called Oriental studies, it has a depressingly familiar ring.
Without my knowing the details of the Manchester decision, it hardly needs saying that the languages concerned relate to countries of high strategic importance. Turkey is a member of Nato, an applicant for membership of the European Union and is located on the front line with Syria. If there is one country through which we might hope to be able to advance some of our most pressing international concerns in a rational and humane manner, then it is surely Turkey. Analogous claims could be made for Persian and modern Hebrew, regardless of how much sympathy we have for the modern states of Iran and Israel.
In 1992 and 1996, I chaired the Middle Eastern and African studies subpanel in the research assessment exercise. Manchester always scored well, partly because it taught these and other languages (such as Arabic) in an integrated manner. The languages of the Middle East cannot sensibly be dealt with in isolation because, historically, they are all so closely intertwined, through both religion and politics. As a panel, however, we reported that the teaching of Turkish in the UK was in a parlous condition, limited to four and then to three universities. Now it is set to reduce further.
These concerns are not historically unprecedented. After the Second World War, it was agreed that some knowledge of many different languages was necessary for various national purposes, including commerce, diplomacy and intelligence. So the Scarborough Report on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies, published in 1947, sought to ensure adequate teaching provision, saying that it should not all be left to Soas, University of London, important though that similar initiative from an even earlier generation remained.
But the 1961 Hayter Report noted a decline in provision and recommended a strongly “area studies” approach, with full provision for social science as well as the humanities. However, by the 1980s, things were declining again, so the 1986 Parker Report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, recommended a further injection of resources.
This sequence is obvious when you think about it. After 20 or 30 years, the people hired on the back of the previous cash injection retire and each university decides that the political scientists, anthropologists and geographers focused on the Middle East could be better replaced – in terms of responding to student demand – by colleagues with a more domestic focus. That seems sensible until you realise that it tends to be the same subjects that suffer in each university. And so the cry goes up for another report to rectify things.
There is also a newer problem. For a couple of decades, the Higher Education Funding Council for England awarded special funding to support the teaching of important languages that attracted only a small cohort of undergraduates. But, in the £9,000 fees era, the only remaining Hefce funding for “strategic and vulnerable” subjects relates to what one might call peripheral concerns, such as boosting recruitment, rather than supporting teaching and research itself. The result is that my faculty (Oriental studies) has lost hundreds of thousands of pounds of income annually. It certainly makes the university think hard about priorities.
I should also enter a further consideration. When I chaired the local faculty board years ago, some colleagues in the sciences became excited about cooperation (which also meant large sums of money) with an important Asian country. However, our teaching covered that country only tangentially, alongside its neighbours, and it was made clear to us that Oxford needed to show more cultural interest if approaches from the science side were to be successful. This gives the lie to the smug feeling that everyone now speaks English, so we do not need to bother with language learning and all that goes with it.
A lot of attention has been paid to the decline of language provision, and the British Academy runs a lively programme to highlight the need for language study and to encourage greater take-up in schools and universities. But the focus has inevitably tended to concentrate on European languages. While Middle Eastern tongues may be minority subjects in terms of undergraduate demand, you have only to open a newspaper to see that the strategic demand for them could hardly be higher. We cannot let the UK’s expertise in them die some Isis-style death by a thousand cuts.
CALLS FOR PAPERS: Bible and Iberian Empire-building (SBL, Argentina)
From Ana T. Valdez [mailto:[email protected]]: ======
The Bible and Iberian Empire-Building
The Society of Biblical Literature and the European Association of Biblical Studies are holding conferences this year in both Buenos Aires (21-24th July) and Cordoba (12-15th July). As well as more traditional biblical studies, both societies have a strong interest in the use, influence and impact of the Bible in a wide range of historical and social contexts. We are hoping to take advantage of our locations to organize coordinated and interdisciplinary panels on the use of the Bible in the context of the Iberian world, and particularly the narrower theme of the Bible within the Iberian experience of empire.
We would encourage both papers that focus on the specific uses of biblical texts and broader studies of the religious and political contexts in which the Bible was read and interpreted. Topics might include • The relationship between eschatology and exploration • The ways in which biblical and theological models informed colonial perceptions of indigenous peoples • Biblical motifs in colonial art, architecture and city building • The use of biblical models to shape Spanish and Portuguese justifications of their overseas empires, and in particular, the colonization and settlement of new territories. • The place of the Bible in representations of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism
If you are interested in presenting a paper at either Cordoba or Buenos Aires, please contact Ana Valdez (Yale University:[email protected]) or Andrew Mein (Westcott House, Cambridge: [email protected]) by 4th March 2015.
BOOKS: Song of Songs JPS commentary
From < https://www.jewishpub.org/product.php?id=519>: ======
The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs By Michael Fishbane PhD (author) Projected Publication: March 2015 ISBN-10: 0827607415 ISBN-13: 978-0827607415 $55.00
About the Book Song of Songs is a wondrous collection of love lyrics nestled in the heart of the Hebrew Bible-songs of passion and praise between a young maiden and her beloved. It is religious lyric par excellence. But what is its true meaning? Is it an expression of human love and passion, pure and simple? A celebration of the covenant between God and Israel? Or something else?
The latest volume in the Jewish Publication Society's highly acclaimed Bible Commentary series, Song of Songs provides a line-by-line commentary of the original Hebrew Bible text, complete with vocalization and cantillation marks, alongside the JPS English translation. Unique to this volume are four layers of commentary: the traditional PaRDeS: peshat (literal meaning), derash (midrashic and religious- traditional sense), remez (allegorical level), and sod (mystical and spiritual intimations). Michael Fishbane skillfully draws from them all to reveal the extraordinary range of interpretations and ideas perceived in this extraordinary biblical book. A comprehensive introduction, extensive endnotes, a full bibliography (traditional and modern), and additional explanatory materials are included to enhance the reader's appreciation of the work.
This original, comprehensive commentary on the Song of Songs interprets historical, critical, and traditional sources drawn from the ancient Near East, the entire spectrum of Jewish sources and commentaries, and modern critical studies.
Praise "Michael Fishbane, one of the most penetrating Bible scholars of our time, has surpassed himself in this magnificent study of The Song of Songs, combining scholarly erudition, poetic sensibility, theological depth, and an unmatched mastery of the history of interpretation of this most difficult yet lyrical testimony of love. A masterpiece of scholarship!" -Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, emeritus chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth.
"Fishbane's commentary on 'the great songbook of the Jewish soul' is a tour de force. There is nothing like it for opening up the inner depths of the biblical dialogue of love." -Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor emeritus, Divinity School, University of Chicago read more and buy
About Michael Fishbane PhD Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago, and served for many years as chair of its Committee on Jewish Studies. He is the author or editor of hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and encyclopedias and over 20 books, including JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot, and two National Jewish Book Award winners: Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel and The Kiss of God.
NOTICES: February Update from The British Institute for the Study of Iraq
[Received Feb. 19]
From Eleanor Robson [mailto:[email protected]]: ======
February Update from The British Institute for the Study of Iraq
BISI appoints a new co-editor of IRAQ We are delighted to announce that Dr Paul Collins (Jaleh Hearn Curator for the Ancient Near East at the Ashmolean Museum) has taken on the role of co-editor of IRAQ. He succeeds from Dr Michael Seymour (Metropolitan Museum of Art) who has done an exceptional job producing the four previous volumes of the journal. Read more about the appointment.
We should also take this opportunity to say that IRAQ 76 (2014) is about to go to press and that subscribing members can be assured that it will reach them in the next few weeks. We’re sorry to keep you waiting!
Volunteer with BISI Starting from March 2015, BISI is looking for volunteers to assist with the following projects: • The Online Publication of BISI’s Annual Reports, from 1932-to the present. Help us to scan and publish PDFs of these important documents charting the long history of the Institute. • Cataloguing BISI’s book collections. We receive many journals and book gifts throughout the year. We need volunteers to help us to prepare these collections for their eventual shipment to Iraq. • Visiting Iraqi Scholar Guides. From April – July 2015 we hope to welcome two scholars to London. To make their visits as enriching as possible, we are seeking volunteers to take the scholars on day-trips to museums and other cultural venues connected to their areas of research. Do get in touch with the Administrator if you are interested in helping out on [email protected]
Event Reminders – BISI’s 81st Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Annual Mallowan Lecture Thursday 26 February 2015, start time 6.00pm at the British Academy, London Don’t forget to register online for these events. You can read the AGM papers and statements of the 6 Council nominees via the website. The Annual Mallowan Lecture is a chance to hear Jonathan Watkins (Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham) talking about his experiences travelling in Iraq and curating the Iraqi Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
P.S. We thought you might like to hear about the following AMAR Foundation projects and events: • Spring Into Fashion! AMAR’s Afternoon Tea & Fashion Show, raising money for maternal & child healthcare in Iraqon Sunday 8 March 2015, 12.30pm at The Langham Hotel. Tickets: £65 • Art Fundraiser in association with Gulan - six unique prints, created by Kurdish artist Rebwar Saed Find out more
LECTURES: "The New Excavations in the Necropolis of Himera" (NYC, March 12) From Stefano Vassallo Superintendency of Palermo The New Excavations in the Necropolis of Himera Thursday, March 12, 2015, 6:00 PM The Institute of Fine Arts 1 East 78th Street New York City Please note that seating in the Lecture Hall is on a first-come, first-served basis with RSVP. There will be a simulcast in an adjacent room to accommodate overflow. Latecomers are not guaranteed a seat. About the Seminar: The Seminar on Greek and Roman Art and Architecture invites scholars to share their current research with the research community on Ancient Art and Archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts and in the metropolitan area, and to meet and talk with IFA graduate students. The study of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture is at a critical stage in its development. In recent years, this field has been characterized by an ever-increasing range of approaches, under the influence of various disciplines such as Sociology, Semiotics, Gender Theory, Anthropology, Reception Theory, and Hermeneutics. The scope of this Seminar is to explore key aspects of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, and to assess the current state of the discipline by reviewing and subjecting its current larger theoretical implications, methodologies, and directions of research to critical scrutiny. The Seminar on Greek and Roman Art and Architecture is sponsored by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, with invaluable support from James R. McCredie and the New York University Center for Ancient Studies. Faculty Coordinator: Professor Clemente Marconi Student Coordinator: Allison Kidd WORKSHOPS: Chronography of Julius Africanus Received Feb 18 From < http://www.topoi.org/event/28632/>: ====== Workshop THE CHRONOGRAPHY OF JULIUS AFRICANUS MULTILINGUAL TRANSMISSION OVER SPACE AND TIME In the early 3rd century Julius Africanus (ca. 160-240), the father of the Christian universal chronicle, composed his Chronographiae, a massive five-book universal history extending from Adam down to his own day. Encompassing over 5700 years, Africanus’ pioneering work survives only in scattered notices, excerpts and summaries. In 2008, Prof. Anna Totomanova published the text of a Slavonic chronicle once thought to be a translation of the Byzantine universal chronicle of George Synkellos (9th century) and provided evidence that the first part of the chronicle actually derived from Julius Africanus, and Prof. Totomanova is currently researching other problems related to the authorship of the translation. Because much of this material is unattested elsewhere, her findings should add significantly to our knowledge of the Greek text of Africanus’s Chronographiae. Since this discovery is an important example of Wissenstransfer and mulitilingualism over space and time, this workshop will examine the arguments for identifying Slavonic Africanus in comparison with the Greek text and will include the participation of the following scholars: Prof. Anna Totomanova, Professor of Cyrillo Methodian Studies at the University of Sofia; Prof. Dr. William Adler, Distinguished University Professor, North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC, USA; Prof. Dr. Martin Wallraff, Ordinarius für Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte, University of Basel; Prof. Dr. Christophe Guignard, EPHE, Paris; Prof. Dr. Umberto Roberto, Dipartimento di Scienze umane Università Europea di Roma; and Prof. Dr. Florentina Badalanova Geller, FU Berlin. Three of these scholars (Adler, Roberto, Wallraff) collaborated on the recently published critical edition and translation of Africanus’ Chronographiae (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte N.F. 15; Berlin, 2007), while the Slavonic text was published by A. Totomanova, Славянската версия на Хрониката на Георги Синкел. Издание и превод (Sofia 2008). PROGRAM 4.3.2015 09:50 - 10:00 Greetings Florentina Badalanova Geller – Topoi, Freie Universität Berlin Michael Meyer – Institut für Prähistorische Archäologie, Freie Universität Berlin 10:00 - 11:15 The Greek text of Africanus WIlliam Adler – North Carolina State University 11:15 - 11:30 Coffee break 11:30 - 12:45 The Slavonic Text of Africanus Anna Totomanova – Department of Cyril and Methodius Studies, University of Sofia San Clement Ohridski, Bulgaria 12:45 - 13:15 Tracking Apocrypha in the Slavonic text of Africanus Florentina Badalanova Geller – Topoi, Freie Universität Berlin 13:15 - 14:30 Lunch 14:30 - 18:00 Group Reading of the text of Africanus 5.3.2015 10:00 - 11:15 Quelques réflexions sur la date des Chronographiae de Julius Africanus Christophe Guignard – Section des sciences historiques et philologiques, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris 11:15 - 11:30 Coffee break 11:30 - 12:45 Julius Africanus’ Chronographiae and its Nachleben: some aspects and problems Umberto Roberto – Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università Europea di Roma, Italy NOTICES: 10th ICAANE From Angela Schwab, Angela [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Save the Date: 10th ICAANE April 25-29 2016 Vienna, Austria Austrian Academy of Sciences CALLS FOR PAPERS: Reports on Current Excavations (ASOR 2015) From Robert Homsher [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Call for papers: Reports on Current Excavations: Non-ASOR Affiliated at the 2015 ASOR Annual Meeting at the InterContinental Buckhead - Atlanta, Nov. 18-21. Deadline for abstract submissions extended until March 1st. Visit http://www.asor.org/am/2015/call- 2.html to submit an abstract, or contact Robert Homsher at [email protected]. CALLS FOR PAPERS: Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma (SBL 2015) From Christopher Frechette [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma SBL 2015 Atlanta Call for Papers This consultation will receive paper proposals for two sessions, each with its own topic. Proposals should indicate which of the two topics they are intended to address. In keeping with the aims of the consultation, all papers must define how “trauma” is understood, and explain why that understanding is helpful for interpreting the biblical text. We encourage papers that address New Testament texts as well as those that address Old Testament texts. The two topics are: (1) Contextual approaches to reading biblical literature through a hermeneutics of trauma: The aim of this session is to explore the application of trauma theory to biblical texts in the face of contemporary contexts and issues, with a particular focus on the implications of the hermeneutical lens utilized within the discussion. Papers may read texts in terms of the issues raised by contemporary contexts, or explore how people in contemporary experiences of trauma and disaster have actually found particular biblical texts helpful. We encourage papers that focus on the following populations but will also consider others: Latin American and African American ethnicities, inner city residents, and indigenous populations. (2) Ethical and moral dimensions of reading texts from the perspective of trauma: One of the consequences of reading biblical texts through the lens of trauma and trauma theory is a heightened awareness of the presence of both victims and perpetrators, traumatized and traumatizers, within the text. The aim of this session is to explore some of the theological, ethical and moral dimensions raised by such textual readings. The session will include a discussion as to the impact of differing theories of trauma on interpretation. Papers that explore divine involvement in portrayals of trauma, and the implications of narratives told from the perspective of perpetrators are also invited. Description of the consultation: This consultation studies methods for employing various definitions of trauma to interpret particular sets of biblical and extra-canonical texts, giving attention to the relationship between personal and communal dimensions of trauma, and to applying biblical interpretation in other theological disciplines. CONFERENCES: Drink.Prey.Lust- Sexual violence in the Book of Esther (Nashville, Feb 24) [Received Feb 19] From Lyndsey Godwin Vanderbilt University Program in Jewish Studies presents DRINK. PREY. LUST. SEXUAL VIOLENCE & THE BOOK OF ESTHER A TEACH-IN Tuesday, February 24 12:15-4:15 in Sarratt 189 (lunch served) 7:00-8:00 in Divinity 122 12:15 "NUDITY, DRUNKENNESS AND THE DEATH OF QUEEN VASHTI" Nicholas Schaser, Ph.D. candidate, History & Critical Theories of Religion Sarratt 189 1:15 "ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE? OR ATTEMPTED RAPE? FOR WHAT CRIME WAS HAMAN EXECUTED?" Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, Ph.D. candidate in Hebrew Bible Sarratt 189 2:15 "50 SHADES OF THE RABBIS" Prof. Philip Ackerman-Lieberman, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Law Sarratt 189 3:15 "TAKING BACK PURIM NIGHT: JEWISH AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE RESCUE OF VASHTI" Prof. Shaul Kelner, Associate Professor of Sociology & Jewish Studies Sarratt 189 7:00 "HAREM TALES AND HORROR STORIES" Prof. Amy-Jill Levine, Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies DIV 122 JOURNALS: Rivista di Studi Fenici 41/1-2, 2013 Received Feb 10 From Sergio Ribichini Peter VAN DOMMELEN - Andrea ROPPA (edd.), "Materiali e contesti nell'età del ferro sarda. Atti della giornata di studi, Museo civico di San Vero Milis (Oristano), 25 maggio 2012" = "Rivista di Studi Fenici, 41/1-2, 2013. ISSN 0390-3877, ISBN 978-88-6227-754-9. CONTENTS: Andrea Roppa - Peter van Dommelen, "Materiali e contesti nell'eta del Ferro sarda: una breve premessa"; Alfonso Stiglitz, "Dal torciere al workshop. L'età del Ferro a San Vero Milis"; Alessandro Usai, "Spunti di riflessione sull'età del Ferro della Sardegna"; Carlo Tronchetti, "Problematiche dell'età del Ferro"; Nicola Ialongo, "L'inizio dell'età del Ferro in Sardegna. Verso la definizione di una cronologia comparata"; Paolo Bernardini, "La rete fenicia: riflessioni sulle origini della presenza fenicia in Sardegna"; Raimondo Zucca, "I Sardi della prima età del Ferro e i codici scrittori mediterranei"; Stefano Santocchini Gerg, "'Mercato sardo' e 'mercato fenicio': materiali etruschi e interazioni culturali nella Sardegna arcaica"; Emanuele Madrigali, "Tempi e modi della presenza e stanzialità fenicia in Sardegna: una rilettura attraverso la documentazione archeologica"; Massimo Botto - Fabio Dessena - Stefano Finocchi, "Indigeni e Fenici nel Sulcis: le forme dell'incontro, i processi di integrazione"; Michele Guirguis, "Dinamiche sociali e cultura materiale a Sulky e a Monte Sirai"; Carla Perra, "Nuovi elementi per la definizione del sistema insediativo sulcitano dalla fortezza del Nuraghe Sirai"; Valentina Ligas, "Manufatti litici dall'officina artigianale della fortezza del Nuraghe Sirai. Studio tipologico e contestuale"; Maria Giuseppina Gradoli, "Le ceramiche di fine VII - prima metà VI secolo a.C. della fortezza del Nuraghe Sirai di Carbonia. Caratterizzazione petrografica e studio di provenienza delle materie prime"; Antonella Unali, "Sulky arcaica: il vano II G"; Gabriele Carenti, "Sulky: lo sfruttamento delle risorse marine durante l'età del Ferro"; Jacopo Bonetto, "L'insediamento fenicio di Nora e le comunità nuragiche circostanti: contatti e distanze"; Anna Ardu - Giandaniele Castangia - Paola Falchi - Marco Mulargia - Barbara Panico, "Al riparo dai venti: identità indigene e interazione culturale nell'area del Capo Mannu nel I millennio a.C."; Andrea Roppa, "Manifattura ceramica, interazioni e condivisioni artigianali nell'età del Ferro sarda: i materiali da S'Urachi-Su Padrigheddu (San Vero Milis)"; Elisa Pompianu, "Fenici e indigeni nel basso Oristanese"; Jeremy Hayne, "Considerazioni sul ruolo dei santuari della Sardegna settentrionale nell'età del Ferro"; Beatrice De Rosa, Anfore 'Sant'Imbenia' dal sito nuragico di Sant'Imbenia (Alghero, Sardegna): studi archeometrici"; Gianfranca Salis, "L'età del Ferro tra continuità e trasformazione: un contributo dal villaggio di Gennaccili (Lanusei, prov. Ogliastra)"; Salvatore Merella, "Indizi sull'esistenza di un luogo sacro nella valle del Rio Mannu di Porto Torres: S'Iscia 'e su Puttu-Usini (SS)"; Marco Milanese - Alessandra Deiana - Maria Chiara Deriu - Antonella Fois, "Tracce insediative della prima età del Ferro nel sito pluristratificato di Biddanoa (Siligo, SS)"; Peter van Dommelen - Andrea Roppa, "Conclusioni: per una definizione dell'età del Ferro sarda". http://www.libraweb.net/sommari.php?chiave=68CONTENTS: NEWS: Shrine of Ezra [Received Feb 16] From Islamists Seize Ezra's Tomb in Iraq Arab media last week reported that Islamist forces operating in the south of the country had seized control of an ancient shrine revered as the tomb of the biblical scribe and priest Ezra. Pan-Arab news website Al-Araby reported that the militants had destroyed large portions of the shrine, which included both a synagogue and a mosque, and now intend to use it as their headquarters in southern Iraq. According to Al-Araby, the terrorists had cut off all access to the Tomb of Ezra to prevent journalists from reporting on their conquest and destruction of the holy site. It would seem those efforts were wasted, as news of this latest Muslim assault on Judaism was mentioned by not a single major media outlet. Only the Jewish blog Elder of Ziyon and the Israeli news website Israel National News bothered to carry the report. After leading a major contingent of Jewish exiles back to the Land of Israel and instructing the people in the keeping of God's Word, on the orders of the Persian emperor, the Bible makes no indication that Ezra returned to what is now Iraq. Hundreds of years later, the Jewish historian Josephus recorded that Ezra had been buried in Jerusalem, which, along with Nehemiah, he had helped to rebuilt and re-sanctify. But later traditions likely started by the large Jewish community remaining in Mesopotamia asserted that Ezra had been laid to rest along the banks of the Tigris river. A shrine revered by both Jews and local Muslims was erected at the location. Even after the mass immigration of Iraqi Jews to Israel from 1951-1952, Ezra's Tomb, complete with its many Hebrew inscriptions praising the God of Israel, continued to be a place of pilgrimage for Arabs living in the area. eREVIEWS: Of "The Revolutionary at the Heart of Traditional Judaism " [Received Feb 20] From The Revolutionary at the Heart of Traditional Judaism ? By Daniel Davies FEBRUARY 3, 2015 Daniel Davies on Moshe Halbertal’s Maimonides: Life and Thought Moshe Halbertal Maimonides: Life and Thought Princeton University Press, 2013, 400pp., $35 The works and personality of Moses Maimonides are imprinted on almost all forms of Judaism and have been ever since the twelfth century. Today he’s known by religious and secular alike, having lent his name to schools and hospitals, fitting legacies for a rabbi and a renowned physician who served at the court of the great Saladin. In Jewish circles, RaMBaM (an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon) is well known as one of the preeminent Jewish legal authorities of all time and as a great thinker. Today, many seem to want to appropriate his authority for their own ideas. Some consider him a philosopher, forerunner of the rational enlightenment and precursor of reasoned responses to obscurantist superstitions. Others insist that he was a kabbalist, whether during his productive career or on a deathbed conversion. Since he is the single figure of medieval Judaism who looms largest over the subsequent tradition, it might be surprising to hear that he was a revolutionary. But that is exactly the claim of Moshe Halbertal’s welcome addition to the vast literature. Halbertal opens by explaining that Maimonides’s career can be characterized by attempts to bring about two major revolutions in Judaism. One is in the realm of Jewish legal study, halakhah. His fourteen-book legal code, the Mishneh Torah, was the first attempt to encompass the whole of Jewish law in a single work. Maimonides also transforms our understanding of religious consciousness, moving us away from the notion that religion aims at gaining God’s favor, and toward the notion that God acts through nature rather than through disruptions in the customary course of events. The two transformations are tied together, as Halbertal presents them, because Maimonides structured the Mishneh Torah according to the philosophical principles that drove his attempt to change the worldview of Judaism as a whole. Much of the book investigates the meaning behind these two revolutions and explains the ways in which Maimonides attempted to bring them about, giving a rich portrayal of the man as well as his work. Maimonides’s first major religious work (Book of the Lamp) was his commentary on the Mishnah, which reports many disagreements between rabbinic authorities and provoked a venerable debate about the nature and origin of the contradictory rulings. Book of the Lamp follows a midrashic comment in Sifre asserting that God revealed two Torahs to Moses at Sinai, one written and one oral. Divine authority undergirds not only the written law but also the oral law, meaning rabbinic legal rulings enjoy divine sanction. But well-informed rabbis often disagreed in their legal rulings, a situation that seems to indicate a problem with the transmission of revelation and calls into question the tradition’s authority. Halbertal explains Maimonides’ argument: when no clear ruling emerged in the rabbinic teachings, one must interpret the law in conformity with the revealed tradition. Disagreements can arise when sages argue over how to extend the tradition to cover new situations, but true revelation remains uncontroversial. The human element of halakhah is not problematic because reason can develop authoritative norms consistent with perfectly preserved revelation, and reason itself is authoritative. Even if the entire halakhah does not have the backing of revelation, Maimonides could still assert that it nevertheless remains authoritative. He argued that the Mishnah and the Talmud gained their authority from their universal acceptance by the Jewish community. With the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides announced that he wanted to provide a work sufficient to eliminate the need to return to earlier texts. Halbertal presents two possible explanations for such a statement. Maybe Maimonides tried to present a work that everybody could consult as a shortcut to knowing the correct rulings without having to study all of the debates that led to them, though scholars would and should continue to study the earlier canonical texts. Or maybe he meant to replace those earlier texts entirely by rendering them unnecessary for any knowledge of the law’s practicalities. The ambiguity may be intentional, and Halbertal suggests that one’s understanding of Maimonides’s self-perception would determine which alternative one would consider more likely: Did he consider himself capable of replacing all preceding texts of oral law, an assessment some would consider arrogant? Or did he have the more limited goal of wanting to help improve a problematic situation? Halbertal quotes correspondence in which Maimonides appears alternatively to support both interpretations, but these different statements probably just reflect different emphases. No doubt Maimonides hoped to provide a sufficient summary of the entire law, but he did not necessarily expect complete success. Likely he would have been happy for other scholars to check the Mishneh Torah against a previous respected code, that of Isaac Alfasi. One would need to delve further into previous texts only in cases of disagreement between Maimonides’s ruling and Alfasi’s. At the base of Maimonides’s revolutionary tendency is his attempt to set the Jewish religion as a whole on a philosophical foundation. Halbertal illustrates how that motivation shaped the Mishneh Torah as well as the more explicitly philosophical Guide, so the two revolutions are intimately connected. When attempting to reorient the people’s religious consciousness, Maimonides actively polemicized against belief in the supernatural. He objected to talismans, astrology, divination, and all forms of magic. Bound up with his fight against folk religion and superstition was his attempt to encourage people to develop their religious sensitivities by urging them to change the way they understand divine worship. At first, fear of punishment or desire for reward would probably motivate obedience, but the higher motivations involve love for God and love for his commandments. One develops love for God not only by fulfilling the commands but also by studying creation. Since God created everything that exists, appreciating God’s creation through scientific study is worship. Love of God is intellectual. Despite the clarity of Halbertal’s explanation, it is not clear to me that he follows Maimonides to his ultimate conclusion, which is important in his explanation of Maimonides’s approach to evil. Maimonides argues that evil is a lack of existence, and Halbertal quite rightly considers such an explanation to be a poor justification of evil and concludes that this is the weakest of Maimonides’s philosophical arguments. Today it is common to hear that religion is a delusional crutch, that it offers consolation for those who cannot face the meaninglessness of their lives and their sufferings. Halbertal’s presentation seems to view Maimonides’s response to evil in a similar way, as if Maimonides is trying to offer solace and reassurance that things are not as bad as they might seem. For Maimonides, Halbertal indicates, evil is not real. But that cannot be so. People regularly experience atrocious sorrows, and it is no help to point out that what is happening to them does not really exist. In my view, explaining Maimonides’ response to suffering in such a way misses the point of his wider argument. To deny the reality of evil because it does not exist in the same way as something good does would be a little like denying the reality of a hole in the ground because it is empty of the earth that surrounds it. Maimonides certainly did not wish to deny the reality of evil, or that humans inflict undeserved pain on others. When he defines evil as a lack of existence, he does not intend to diminish the importance of evil. He is trying to explain how evil can exist when God created everything that exists and existence itself is good. He adopts an argument common in the Middle Ages but dependent on ontological assumptions unfamiliar and uncomfortable to most philosophers today. If differentiating a good thing from a bad thing on the basis that they exist in different ways were a justification of evil, an attempt at theodicy, Maimonides’s approach would be lacking. But it is not his last word on the matter. He does not try to explain evil away at all, but rather encourages people to accept that it is simply a part of the created universe. Again, this seems to be part of the Maimonidean revolution, as it combats what Halbertal calls the “megalomaniacal view of man’s place in the universe.” If someone thinks that creation as a whole is not as good as it should be, Maimonides claims she is judging the entire creation from her own limited perspective, or from the perspective of humanity. But people are not the purpose of creation. Maimonides responds to those who think the world contains too much suffering by emphasizing that people are not as important as they tend to think, an understanding that seems to go along with awe and humility. One of the better known academic approaches to Maimonides distinguishes his popular works from the Guide for the Perplexed, which is aimed at the elite and contains his technical philosophy. The popular works are seen to encourage obedient actions, while the Guide inspires questioning and understanding. Whereas religion demands observance, the Guide teaches that mere observance is not enough. The aims of the Mishneh Torah and the Guide are therefore fundamentally opposed. Halbertal shows that this view is limited, and that the same ideals that are behind the Guide also drive Maimonides in his other endeavors, so the guiding principles of all his writings are one. But by the time Halbertal turns to the Guide, the work of explaining the philosophical principles behind the halakhah is done, and the final two chapters have a quite different character. He presents the Guide as a kind of garnish to the other works, which were, after all, aimed at a far wider audience but refrains from characterizing the book’s main message, instead summing up four approaches common in today’s scholarship, which he terms skeptical, mystical, conservative, and radical. FOUR APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING MAIMONIDES’S GUIDE: SKEPTICAL, MYSTICAL, CONSERVATIVE, RADICAL. The skeptical approach emphasizes that Maimonides draws strict limitations to what can be known about theological topics. His so-called negative theology is famously extreme, as he denies that any attributes can be used to express God’s essence, insisting that to call God “wise,” “good,” and even “existent” is mistaken, as all these words liken God far too much to beings in the world. Even denying any of these attributes of God won’t do, though, because that appears to attribute its opposite to God. Denying that God is “wise,” for example, could be taken to mean that God is foolish, but what Maimonides wants to say is that no human conceptions can be true of God and no words can refer to God. The best that can be done is to deny the negations of perfections without affirming the perfections themselves. Maimonides is skeptical about any claims to knowledge of God. In its extreme form, the skeptical interpretation involves arguing that Maimonides was skeptical of all claims to knowledge of truth. The mystical approach resembles the skeptical in that both focus on the limitations of reason, but adherents of the mystical view hold that some other, superior form of apprehension is possible. After progressing through the philosophical stages that purify someone’s belief in God, ridding it of idolatrous anthropomorphisms, a further “flash” can illuminate a person’s perception. Since the mystical apprehension is inexpressible, Maimonides could not explain it properly to his readers but relied on hints and on the reader’s own ability to reach this level of human perfection. Scholars of Avicenna, the seminal Islamic philosopher whose language Maimonides echoes, also debate whether the Muslim thinker considered such illumination possible. Perhaps the approach taken to one of these medieval philosophers could influence the interpretation of the other. Most of the debates that exercise scholars are between the conservative and the radical readings. Conservatives read Maimonides as a religious thinker who affirmed the creation of the world and other traditional beliefs, such as human free will or God’s knowledge of individuals. This approach assumes that Maimonides argued sincerely on behalf of these beliefs. The radical view holds that Maimonides only pretended to adhere to these traditional doctrines. Most of those who take this line argue that he covertly indicates his rejection of the traditional doctrines without openly stating his true position for fear of scandalizing the masses. In the case of most books, assuming that the author hints that her true position is the opposite of what she openly professes would be a strange approach to adopt. But the Guide is no ordinary book. Maimonides does state that he has something to hide; he explicitly warns his readers that contradictions are hidden in the Guide and that the masses ought not to be aware of some of them. To differing degrees, those who adhere to an interpretation other than the conservative have relied on this warning. The contradictions are often seen as those between the bible and philosophy, or between religion and science. When the two are in conflict, the enlightened few understand that science teaches true doctrines but the masses are led to believe the religious views. The net result of the radical reading, as Halbertal presents it, is to make Maimonides into a somewhat disappointing philosopher and the Guide into a rather uninteresting philosophical book. Maimonides’s deepest secrets may be philosophical but they are not particularly sophisticated. They are quite simple positions, and they remain secret only because they do not conform with the beliefs of most religious people. When encountering a problem that ought to encourage further reflection there is no need to think about how Maimonides’s positions might challenge some philosophical beliefs or preconceptions. One can simply assume that they do not. And it is far easier to understand a cruder philosophical position rather than refine it further by considering how that position might cohere with others that, at first sight, it appears to oppose. This assessment may not disturb some since, as Leo Strauss stated, the Guide is no ordinary philosophical book but a “Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews”; Strauss argued that it is driven more by political than natural philosophy or metaphysics, so one should not look for Maimonides’s most sophisticated ideas in his theological arguments. ※ For my part, I would argue that the conservative reading of Maimonides’s philosophy is justified, and that what Maimonides tries to hide is his interpretation of scriptural passages given great importance in the rabbinic tradition. Halbertal explains how forcefully Maimonides opposed many forms of popular religion. But elements of that same folk religion are key to understanding how Maimonides understands the deepest secret of the Torah, the account of the chariot in the book of Ezekiel. When explaining Ezekiel, Maimonides bases his interpretation on premises that conflict with the true scientific premises he employs elsewhere in the Guide. He only presents his interpretation of Ezekiel through hints and allusions, though, so it is difficult to spot, but I think that his exegesis accounts for the “contradictions” that hide something from the masses. It is not necessary to read a hidden philosophical message in the Guide in order to explain Maimonides’s secrecy. Despite Halbertal’s claim to present the opinions of other scholars rather than his own, he follows the line that the variety of interpretations may themselves reveal the secret message. On this reading, Maimonides did not teach any particular doctrine but presented alternative possible solutions to questions that admit of no definite answer. The different answers are so diverse that a coherent reading of the Guide is “doomed to failure.” Maybe the works of all or most great philosophers contain inconsistencies, and Maimonides would be no exception. But Halbertal presents too little evidence to establish his claim that these inconsistencies constitute the ultimate secret of the Guide. Such a reading might, however, make Maimonides appealing to today’s readers, and it points to another important and brilliant aspect of the Guide: its pedagogical excellence. Maimonides designed this single text to address students of different levels, and it continues to speak to modern readers with diverse interests from different religious traditions. Halbertal delivers on the promise of his book’s title, offering a graceful and beautifully written introduction to Maimonides’s life and thought, suitable for general readers. Scholars who focus mainly on the Guide will find an exceptional account of Maimonides as a whole. Halbertal ultimately judges Maimonides a failure in his two attempted revolutions. His legal works became central to the rabbinic tradition without replacing their predecessors, and his theology became one of a number of streams common in later Judaism. Many readers find extremely difficult his insistence on viewing Judaism as a rational religion. But Maimonides’s project retains vital. His followers today would consider the battle ongoing, and Halbertal is one of those carrying it forward. ※ [See a review of Josef Stern’s book on Maimonides by philosopher Dani Rabinowitz.] CALLS FOR AWARDS: BAS Publication Awards 2015 Received Feb 12 From Robin Ngo The Biblical Archaeology Society 2015 Publication Awards Call For Entries Nominations are invited for the 2015 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Awards for books published in 2013 and 2014. The biennial BAS Publication Awards for books about archaeology and the Bible have been presented since 1985. These prestigious awards have now been made possible by a grant from Samuel D. Turner and Elizabeth Goss of Washington, D.C., and Frederick L. Simmons of Glendale, California. Best Popular Book on Archaeology Judges: LARRY HERR Canadian University College 5415 College Ave. Lacombe, AB T4L 2E5 Canada STEVEN M. ORTIZ Charles D. Tandy Institute of Archaeology Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Post Office Box 22308 Fort Worth, TX 76122 ANDREW G. VAUGHN ASOR Executive Director Send books to: 8 Sally Cove Lane Little Deer Isle, ME 04650 Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology Judges: LARRY HERR Canadian University College 5415 College Ave. Lacombe, AB T4L 2E5 Canada STEVEN M. ORTIZ Charles D. Tandy Institute of Archaeology Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Post Office Box 22308 Fort Worth, TX 76122 ANDREW G. VAUGHN ASOR Executive Director Send books to: 8 Sally Cove Lane Little Deer Isle, ME 04650 Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible Judges: GUY DARSHAN Hebrew University of Jerusalem Dept. of Bible Send books to: 46 Williams Street, Apt. 2 Brookline, MA 02446 RICHARD ELLIOTT FRIEDMAN Department of Religion Peabody Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602-1625 PHYLLIS TRIBLE Emerita Professor, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, NC Send books to: 549 West 123rd Street, Apt. 21C New York, NY 10027 Best Book Relating to the New Testament Judges: BRUCE CHILTON Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion Bard College Annandale, NY 12504 URBAN C. VON WAHLDE Dept. of Theology Loyola University of Chicago 1032 W. Sheridan Rd. Chicago, IL 60660 Qualifications & Rules: (1) Nominations: Publishers or authors (or others) should send one copy of every nominated book to each of the judges in the relevant category. Please mark "BAS Publication Awards." One copy should also be sent to BAS Publication Awards, 4710 41st Street NW, Washington DC 20016; please specify the category in which your book is nominated. (2) Judges are entitled to nominate books. (3) All nominated books must have been published in English in 2013 or 2014. (Books translated into English from other languages are eligible to be considered for BAS Publication Awards.) (4) Nominated books must be received by April 24, 2015. At least 3 books in a category must be nominated for a prize to be awarded. (5) The judges' decisions are final. (6) The winning authors will receive an honorary citation certificate and a prize of $500. CALLS FOR PAPERS: "Archaeology of Lebanon" at ASOR From Helen Dixon [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== "Archaeology of Lebanon" American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Annual Meeting Atlanta, GA, November 18-21, 2015 The focus of this session is on current archaeological fieldwork in Lebanon. Summary of ongoing excavations, analysis of material culture resulting from excavations in Lebanon, or cross-site analysis of emerging archaeological patterns and data are all welcome contributions to this session. The extended deadline for submission of abstracts is March 1, 2015 (the $25 fee will be waived). Presenters can submit an abstract of 250 words or less via ASOR's Online Abstract Submission site: http://www.asor.org/am/2015/call-2.html Membership in ASOR and registration for the Annual Meeting is required in advance for participants (but please contact the session chair for questions or concerns about this). For more information on ASOR's annual meeting guidelines, please visit: http://www.asor.org/am/2015/call-1.html. Note that PhD Students are welcome to contribute, and may be eligible for funding from ASOR for their travel and registration: http://www.asor.org/am/2015/scholarships.html. If you have any questions, please contact session chair Helen Dixon ([email protected]). CONFERENCES: Homer: Translation, Adaptation, Improvisation (NYC, Feb. 27) From Evan Luke Jewell [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Please come and support one of the upcoming events in the world of Columbia ancient studies: In conjunction with The Classics Department and the Program in Hellenic Studies will host a one day international conference entitled Homer: Translation, Adaptation, Improvisation A Symposium with Francesco de Angelis, Ozlem Berk Albachten, Graeme Bird, Helene Foley, Emily Greenwood, Justine McConnell, Sheila Murnaghan, Patrice Rankine, Emily Wilson, and Nancy Worman. Friday, February 27, 2015 10am to 4:30pm Low Library, Faculty Room Columbia University Main Campus Free and open to everyone Registration is required For more information and to register for this event please go to Conference Schedule Adaptation and Translation 10am to 1pm The panel on adaptation and translation will explore the broader artistic, cultural, and political contexts of the work of Bearden and his contemporaries and the uses Homer is put. The four papers will address issues ranging from cultural politics to race and the reception of Homer in its modern iterations in the work of Derek Walcott, Ralph Ellison, and other Harlem artists as well as in the translations of the Iliad in Turkey. “Homer in Harlem and Harlem in Homer" Emily Greenwood, Professor of Classics, Yale University "Riffing Homer: Time, Myth, and Metamorphosis," Patrice Rankine, Dean of Humanities, Hope College “Either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation’: The Homeric ‘Collages’ of Derek Walcott and Isaac Julien." Justine McConnell, Leverhulme Postdoctoral Associate, Oxford University “Appropriation of Homer in Turkish translation history,” Ozlem Berk Albachten, Translation Studies, Bogazici, Turkey Q & A Moderated by Nancy Worman, Professor of Classics, Barnard College Improvisation and Translation 2pm to 4:30pm The panel on improvisation and translation will explore the reception of Homer in western art and the role of oral and visual improvisation and translation in that process. The first paper will address Homer in the post-Homeric visual arts culminating in Bearden’s work; the second will address the re-imagining of Homer in modern poetry; the third will discuss and read from a new translation of Homer; the fourth will address improvisation in oral poetry, starting with Homer, and jazz. “Homer in Ancient Art (and Beyond)," Francesco de Angelis, Columbia University Art History "Darker Threads: Modern Poets Read the Odyssey," Sheila Murnaghan, Classics, University of Pennsylvania "Reinventing the Nostos: Form, ideology and anachronism in translating the Odyssey,” Emily Wilson, Classics, University of Pennsylvania “Homer as Improviser: An Oral/Aural Comparison of Formulaic Poetry and Jazz Improvisation,” Graeme Bird, Classics, Gordon College Q & A Moderated by Helene Foley, Professor of Classics, Barnard College LECTURES: 1177 BC - The Year Civilization Collapsed (Chicago, Feb 25) From Foy Scalf [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The Oriental Institute, of the University of Chicago 1155 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637 Breasted Hall, Wednesday February 25, 7pm “1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed” A lecture by Dr. Eric H. Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology, Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University, in Washington D.C. For more than three hundred years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex international world in which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, and Canaanites all interacted, creating a cosmopolitan and globalized world-system such as has only rarely been seen before the current day. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Large empires and small kingdoms, that had taken centuries to evolve, collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages. It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today. Blame for the end of the Late Bronze Age is usually laid squarely at the feet of the so-called Sea Peoples, known to us from the records of the Egyptian pharaohs Merneptah and Ramses III. However, as was the case with the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of the Bronze Age empires in this region was not the result of a single invasion, but of multiple causes. The Sea Peoples may well have been responsible for some of the destruction that occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age, but it is much more likely that a concatenation of events, both human and natural — including earthquake storms, droughts, rebellions, and systems collapse — coalesced to create a “perfect storm” that brought the age to an end. Prof. Cline will be signing copies of his book of the same title at this event. The lecture will be recorded for subsequent viewing on the Oriental Institute’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesHenryBreasted Please register for this free event at http://collapse.eventbrite.com NEWS?: Marketing Assyrian god Received Feb 16 (not that it matters) From [NB] < http://www.theonion.com/articles/forgotten-assyrian-god-revived-to-name-sports- drin,2910/?fb_action_ids=10152775974826775&fb_action_types=og.shares> [Go there for pix] ====== Forgotten Assyrian God Revived To Name Sports Drink NEW YORK-Representatives from the sports drink manufacturer Powerade announced Wednesday that Nisroch, the ancient Assyrian god of agriculture, has been resurrected from the depths of Assyro- Babylonian mythology to serve as the key marketing figure for their newest product, Nisroch: Eagle Heart X-TREME WHIRLWIND! According to officials, the eagle-headed farming deity, once a source of strength and comfort to ancient Assyrians, is the perfect symbol for athletes looking to take their game to the next level. "The name Nisroch is synonymous with power," a statement from Powerade read in part. "And this drink, with its new X-TREME WHILRWIND!(tm) formula, will allow athletes to experience what it must have been like for Nisroch to soar over Assyria and bring those who dared to challenge him to their knees." "Just like Nisroch needed courage to protect all who worshiped him," the statement continued, "Eagle Heart will give you the eagle-like courage you need to produce extreme results on the court, on the baseball diamond, or in the weight room." According to Powerade executives, Nisroch, revered by ancient Assyrians for bringing rain to nourish their crops, will be used to represent such new product features as supernatural electrolyte replenishment and rapid liquid-energy delivery. Nisroch, symbol of power and electrolytes. Depicted in ancient art as an amiable figure sprinkling water on a sacred tree, the god is most famous among theologians as the deity King Sennacherib prayed to when he returned from his campaigns in Israel. Powerade representatives said it was Nisroch's pronounced calf muscle in various depictions from the eighth century B.C. that initially attracted them to the once highly revered farming idol. "We knew we definitely wanted to do something with eagles, and when we saw that image of Nisroch, he looked like he might as well have lightning bolts in his hands instead of a water pail," Mitch MacCavoy, creative director of the Nisroch advertising campaign, told reporters. "That's why we gave him lightning bolts." MacCavoy went on to say that he hired a design team to "sleek up" the Assyrian god and ordered them to make his feathers look like silver razor blades that "swirl around" all over the place. "Nisroch helped the Assyrians destroy any obstacle in their path, just like Powerade does for its athletes," MacCavoy said of the idol, who was commonly prayed to in times of drought. "That's why only a serious athlete should drink Eagle Heart. If you're not serious, not willing to work hard to reach your apex peak like Nisroch, you might as well just go home." In a commercial recently screened for test groups, a muscular eagle-like man, presumably Nisroch, is seen flying over what appears to be an ancient city. The eagle then plummets to the earth and plows through the roof of a building where men in loincloths are working out with modern weight equipment. After drinking an entire bottle of Eagle Heart X-TREME WHIRLWIND, Nisroch works out on various machines, pushing himself harder and faster as the X-TREME WHIRLWIND formula presumably kicks in. The commercial concludes with Nisroch destroying the gym with a lightning bolt, followed by the appearance of the tagline, "The Awesome Power of Ancient Assyria in a Single Bottle." Representatives at Powerade said they are excited to unleash Nisroch and will begin shipping it to stores next month. Initial product testing has reportedly exceeded expectations. "I don't know much about Assyria, but that bird on the bottle looks pretty cool," said Gold's Gym member Jarrod Keller, who was given a sample of the product before his workout Friday. "And I think that whirlwind stuff definitely helped me get in those extra few reps." JOBS: Several, via the EPHE Via Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== All the information below comes from this page: Deadline is very soon (March 10). Section : Sciences religieuses Les personnes intéressées pourront faire acte de candidature jusqu'au mardi 10 mars 2015 à minuit, le cachet de la poste faisant foi. . Directeurs d'études (DE) DE n° 5164 - Histoire du bouddhisme indien / History of Indian Buddhism DE n° 5184 - Gnose et manichéisme / Gnosis and Manichaeism DE n° 5187 - Religion de l'Egypte ancienne / Religion of Ancient Egypt DE n° 5192 - Philosophie de la religion / Philosophy of Religion . Directeur d'études cumulant (DECU) DECU n° 0253 - Religion égyptienne dans les mondes hellénistique et romain/ Egyptian Religion in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds . Constitution du dossier de candidature Contact administratif : [email protected] / Faouzia Ben Bouzid - Téléphone : 01.53.63.61.29 / Christine Ardiller - Téléphone : 01.53.63.61.28 ************** Section : Sciences historiques et philologiques Les personnes intéressées pourront faire acte de candidature jusqu'au mardi 10 mars 2015 à minuit, le cachet de la poste faisant foi. . 2 postes de Directeurs d'études (DE) DE n° 4026 - Histoire et philologie de la Chine classique / History and philology of classical China DE n° 4054 - Dialectologie grecque / Greek Dialectology . 2 postes de Directeurs d'études cumulants (DECU) DECU n° 4075 - Philologie italique / Italic Philology DECU n° 4080 - Linguistique romane / Romance Linguistics . Constitution du dossier de candidature Contact administratif : [email protected] - Téléphone : 01.53.63.61.32 LECTURES: Archaeology in the Midst of War in Syria (Washington, Feb 27) Received Feb 16 From Tobias Hoffmann [mailto:[email protected]] : ====== The School of Theology and Religious Studies of The Catholic University of America and Crossroads Cultural Center present In the Eye of the Storm: Archaeology in the Midst of War in Syria A talk by Giorgio Buccellati & Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA and Federico Buccellati, Goethe University While ISIS threatens the history and cultural identity of the populations under its control, people are fighting their influence in every way they can – including by defending their cultural heritage. The lecture will document how an important archaeological site in northeastern Syria, ancient Urkesh, is becoming a beacon of hope. Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 at 7:30pm, CUA, Hannan Auditorium Light refreshments will be served. http://www.crossroadsculturalcenter.org/events/2015/2/27/in-the-eye-of-the-storm-archeology-in-the- midst-of-war-in-sy.html CONFERENCES: Archeomusicology: Representations of Musicians in the Coroplastic Art of the Ancient World (NYC, March 7, 2015) From Representations of Musicians in the Coroplastic Art of the Ancient World: Iconography, Ritual Contexts and Functions Saturday, March 7, 2015, 9:00 AM - 8:00 PM The Institute of Fine Arts 1 East 78th Street New York City RSVP required: click here. Please note that seating in the Lecture Hall is on a first-come, first-served basis with RSVP. There will be a simulcast in an adjacent room to accommodate overflow. Latecomers are not guaranteed a seat. About the Conference: Terracottas figurines with representations of musicians are a privileged field of investigation in understanding the importance of music in both its production and performative contexts. Figurines of male and female musicians are emblematic of the close link between musical practice and the sacred and ritual spheres. They contribute not only to the reconstruction of what music and the production of music meant for ancient societies, but also provide information concerning the relationship of performance to the deities, and about which musical instruments were best suited to the particulars of diverse ritual occasions, including sacred and funerary contexts. The analysis of terracotta figurines will take into account the presence and characteristics of different musical instruments, gestures, positions, and the clothing of both male and female musicians. The goal is to understand the status of the musicians and to interpret their musical and symbolic significance. Additionally, the terracottas will be analyzed in relation to the development of musical culture and their wider historical and social context. These topics will be addressed through contributions by scholars working in various fields: archaeology, art history, musicology, history of religion, and anthropology. The organizing committee includes: Angela Bellia, Università di Bologna - New York University Claude Calame, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris Barbara Kowalzig, New York University Clemente Marconi, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Donatella Restani, Università di Bologna Jaimee Uhlenbrock, Association for Coroplastic Studies This conference is presented by: Public lectures at the Institute of Fine Arts are made possible by our generous supporters. Please make a gift today to help the IFA continue providing superior public programming for years to come. eREVIEWS: Of "A Sociolinguistic History of the Jews" From A Sociolinguistic History of the Jews – By Sarah Bunin Benor FEBRUARY 17, 2015 Sarah Bunin Benor on Bernard Spolsky’s The Languages of the Jews Bernard Spolsky The Language of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History Cambridge University Press, 2014 361pp., $36.99 Intellectual history. Political history. Cultural history. Economic history. There are so many lenses through which we can analyze the past. All of them have been applied to the study of the Jews, a transcontinental people with a history of migration, persecuted minority status, and cultural interaction with their neighbors. With his wide-ranging new book, Bernard Spolsky adds another lens through which to view this fascinating story: language. The Languages of the Jews takes readers on a world tour, from ancient Palestine to the contemporary State of Israel, with stops along the way in the Babylonian, Greek, and Roman Empires, North Africa, Yemen, Ethiopia, Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, India, and the New World. Jews in most of those locations picked up the local language and spoke and wrote a distinctive Jewish version of it. Spolsky subjects a few major exceptions to close scrutiny: Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 maintained a variety of Spanish for centuries in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, known today as Ladino, Judeo-Spanish, or Judezmo; and Jews in Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.) created a Germanic language with heavy influences from Slavic and Semitic languages, known today as Yiddish. In each of the settings Spolsky examines, we learn about migration and settlement patterns, communal structures, common professions and educational practices, governmental decrees regarding what Jews can and cannot do, and, often, persecutions and expulsions, all of which affect Jewish language practices. We meet noteworthy Jewish figures, mostly male scholars, and we get insight into how those both within and outside of the Jewish community felt about Jews’ distinctive language. A theme throughout this book is the special role that Hebrew has played in Jewish life in most of these communities: even when Jews were speaking Jewish versions of Arabic, Greek, and Venetian, they recited prayers in Hebrew, studied Hebrew texts, and sometimes wrote business documents in Hebrew. Because of the sacred status of Hebrew, many of the Jewish vernaculars were written in Hebrew letters and incorporated Hebrew words. Spolsky shows us the effects of historical developments on language. The advent of printing technologies led to collaboration between Jews and Christians and increased prestige of Hebrew, especially in Renaissance Italy. In nineteenth-century Russia, military conscription expedited the decline of Yiddish and the adoption of Russian. And in nineteenth-century France, the emancipation and mandatory primary education of Jews and other minority groups led to widespread adoption of French. In some cases we learn about governmental policies that specifically target Jewish language practices. Jews’ Dhimmi (second-class) status in Muslim lands in the seventh and following centuries included the restrictions “not to teach their children the Qur’an, nor to speak as Muslims do, nor to follow the Muslim custom of naming a man after his son (for example, Abu Musa).” Even if these policies were not uniformly enforced, they led to some degree of social isolation and the development of a distinctly Jewish variety of Arabic. In 1558, Jewish moneylenders in Venice were required to keep their accounts in Italian, not Hebrew. And in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, some Jews were jailed or fined for claiming Yiddish as their mother tongue on the 1910 census. Spolsky made a wise choice to organize Languages of the Jews both by era and by region. After an introduction dealing with Modern Hebrew, he treats ancient Palestine and surrounding areas, discussing Jews’ use of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. Then he deals with the Arabian peninsula and Africa and the spread of Islam in antiquity and the middle ages. Next he moves to medieval Europe, including France, Spain, Central Europe, Greece, Italy, and Slavic lands. Then he discusses the modern period, focusing on linguistic emancipation throughout Europe, Britain and its former colonies, the New World, and Islam and the Orient. He ends with a detailed discussion of the return to Hebrew with Zionism. While this organization can at times feel confusing (perhaps because of some instances of repetition and other minor editing problems), it makes for a mostly coherent narrative and allows readers to see commonalities between regions, as well as the prominence of communal multilingualism. The Greek-speaking Jewish community in early modern Corfu (Italy), for example, was absorbed by speakers of Apulian (an Italian dialect), but they preserved some Greek words and customs, such as reading Greek poems on the fast of Tisha b’Av. In early twentieth-century Cairo (Egypt), Jewish groups from several regions converged, yielding a meeting place of Egyptian Arabic, Arabic from other North African countries, Ladino, Yiddish, and Russian, in addition to Italian, French, and English, international languages adopted by middle- and upper-class Jews. At one point, Cairo even had two newspapers and a theater troupe in Yiddish. And even before the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, Jews in the Holy Land used Hebrew as a lingua franca; Spolsky gives the example of a Jew from Kabul and a Jew from California speaking Hebrew in mid-nineteenth-century Palestine. Jewish linguistic history involves a number of debated issues, such as how long Jews continued to speak Hebrew in antiquity, how much Greek the Talmudic rabbis knew, whether Ethiopian Jews are descendants of the Lost Tribes, and what role the Khazars, a medieval kingdom that converted to Judaism, played in the origin of the Yiddish language. Spolsky presents multiple perspectives, sometimes coming to his own conclusion (as when he rejects the innovative ideas of Paul Wexler on the origins of Yiddish), and sometimes leaving the question open by offering a term from rabbinic literature: “teiku,” meaning “the question remains unanswered” (which has the additional effect of demonstrating that Jews’ incorporation of Hebrew continues in contemporary Jewish English). His openness to multiple scholarly narratives — coupled with copious footnotes and an impressive bibliography — enables readers to learn about debates and come to their own conclusions. Milk Store, Toronto, 1903. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Milk Store, Toronto, 1903. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Spolsky, an internationally renowned scholar of the sociology of language, is the perfect person to write a sociolinguistic history of the Jews. His expertise in language policy led him to explore angles that might never have occurred to most historians or linguists, such as census data on self-reported language use, or the checkout histories for Yiddish and Polish books in Vilna libraries in the 1920s. He brings knowledge of contemporary language situations, like those in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, to bear on how we write ancient and medieval sociolinguistic history. And his impressive knowledge of Jewish history, as well as biblical and rabbinic writings, leads to important connections that another sociologist of language might not make. Spolsky’s biography is evident in his decision to feature Israeli Hebrew and the State of Israel prominently throughout Languages of the Jews. Late in the book he writes, “By now, I am sure you have become aware of my prejudices as I have recounted the sociolinguistic history of the Jews: my background as a Zionist modern orthodox Israeli brought up as a speaker of English and now living by choice in a Hebrew-dominated society.” Because of this orientation, he starts and ends his history with Modern Hebrew in Israel, suggesting a teleological narrative: vernacular Hebrew use is the destiny of the Jewish people. The Jewish people originated in the Land of Israel in biblical times and returned there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to create the State of Israel. The intervening years of Diaspora involved a series of migrations, persecutions, expulsions, and, in modern times, the threat of assimilation; the distinctive Jewish languages created during the Diaspora period are mostly endangered or extinct, while spoken Hebrew is thriving once again. I feel as much wonder as Spolsky does about the maintenance of Hebrew as a sacred language from antiquity to the present in diverse Jewish communities and its culmination in the revival of spoken Hebrew. But we all have our biases and, as a Jew living in the Diaspora, I wish to highlight an alternative sociolinguistic narrative: Jews have lived in many countries and spoken many languages, but they have always distinguished their language from that of their non-Jewish neighbors. The linguistic differences have variously been small, as in the case of medieval Judeo-French, or large, as in the case of Yiddish in Hungary. Jews throughout the world today, in countries as far apart as the United States, Argentina, Lithuania, Morocco, and Australia, continue this practice of distinction. Yes, Jews have been emancipated and enlightened and have shifted from language to language. But they maintain their tradition of linguistic distinctiveness, not just in contemporary Israeli Hebrew, but also in Jewish varieties of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, and other modern languages. JEWS HAVE LIVED IN MANY COUNTRIES AND SPOKEN MANY LANGUAGES, BUT THEY HAVE ALWAYS DISTINGUISHED THEIR LANGUAGE FROM THAT OF THEIR NON-JEWISH NEIGHBORS Spolsky does characterize English as “a major Jewish language,” and he mentions Jewish Dutch, Jewish Lithuanian, and other post-Emancipation Jewish language varieties. But he minimizes their distinctiveness and implies that he considers them qualitatively different from languages that developed in ancient or medieval Jewish communities. Near the end of the book, he writes about three options in Jewish linguistic history: “Jewish independence,” which involves the use of Hebrew (ancient and modern); “subordination and persecution following, or leading to, expulsion,” which involves “the development of specifically Jewish varieties or dialects of the co-territorial non-Jewish languages,” and which would include Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, etc.; and “an acceptance of Jews as equal citizens after an emancipation period,” which involves “assimilation and a loss of linguistic differentiation,” which would include the languages of contemporary Jewish communities, like English and Russian. As I have demonstrated in a paper and a book, the language of contemporary American Jews involves a good deal of differentiation. Even though Jewish English developed during a period of emancipation, and even though most (but not all) American Jews are able to speak English without distinctive features, insider-oriented Jewish English can incorporate enough influences from Hebrew and Yiddish to require subtitles in movies (as in “Trembling Before G-d”) and translation of lectures (as in the similar videos I discuss in Becoming Frum, one oriented toward Orthodox Jews and the other toward newcomers). It may be less distinct from American English than Yiddish is from Polish, but it is still distinct. Is Jewish English less of a “Jewish variety or dialect” than Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Berber, or Judeo-French? The distinctness of these three languages has been subject to much debate, but Spolsky, like many other scholars, refers to them as Jewish languages. He even characterizes Judeo-Malayalam, spoken by Jews in Kerala, India, as a “Jewish variety of the local language.” It is written in the same script as the surrounding language, is mutually intelligible with it, and contains Hebrew borrowings — all also traits of Jewish English. So why is Judeo-Malayalam considered a “Jewish variety” while “the existence of a Jewish variety of English is more controversial”? I believe it has to do with the period of development of these communities and their distinctive ways of speaking and writing. Many scholars will see Jewish groups that existed before the modern era as having a Jewish language variety and Jewish groups that fit into Spolsky’s third category — accepted in a post-emancipation society — as speaking the local language. Although I agree that emancipated Jewish communities are likely to speak more similarly to their non- Jewish neighbors than those in non-emancipated communities, I argue that these differences are of degree rather than kind. Yiddish and Ladino are among the few exceptions in the history of the languages of the Jews, maintained for centuries away from their lands of origin, surrounded by unintelligible languages of different linguistic families. Other languages, like Judeo-Arabic in Baghdad (which gets relatively little attention in the book), Judeo-Tajik (Bukharan), and Jewish English, may be different enough from their surrounding languages to be unintelligible to local non-Jews, but they still develop in contact with their “coterritorial” base languages, to use a term from Max Weinreich’s work. I would amend Spolsky’s typology to account for the existence of two different types of Jewish languages/dialects/varieties in addition to Hebrew, characterized by their relationship to the language spoken by local non-Jews: coterritorial ones like Judeo-Arabic and Jewish English and post-coterritorial ones like Yiddish and Ladino. Among coterritorial Jewish languages, we can talk about a continuum of Jewish linguistic distinctiveness. Using Spolsky’s book as a starting point, we can comparatively analyze the language practices of Jewish communities — past and present — to determine where they fall on this continuum. Despite my slight difference in approach, I feel that Spolsky’s book is an important addition to the literature of my field, a must-have reference for historians of the Jews and scholars of Jewish languages. I expect to return to the book often to find details about how a certain language came to be part of the Jewish repertoire or when I want references to learn more about a community’s history. The bibliography alone is a treasure, offering thirty solid pages of references on history, sociology, linguistics, and religious studies. In addition, the book will be of interest to the field of diaspora studies and to those who study Roma and other migratory populations. I hope Languages of the Jews will inspire similar histories of the Jews through other cultural lenses: music, art, architecture, food, clothing, etc. Each would tell a similar story of a diverse religious/ethnic group migrating around the world and regularly negotiating its integration versus its distinctiveness vis- à-vis neighboring peoples. If such historical accounts are as comprehensive and interesting as Spolsky’s book, readers will be grateful. LECTURES: The Cave of Anba Hadra at Dayr Anba Hadra (Berlin, March 9): From Felix Levenson[mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Hiermit möchte ich Sie herzlich zum Vortrag von Frau Dr. Getrud van Loon einladen. Sie wird zum Topoi Projekt Dayr Anba Hadra mit dem Titel Paradise of Saints. The Cave of Anba Hadra at Dayr Anba Hadra sprechen. Der Vortrag wird am Mo. 9. 03. 2015 um 18.15 Uhr im Hörsaal des Topoi-Hauses, Hittorfstr. 18, 14195 Berlin stattfinden. LECTURES: 3, on Ancient Israel (Rome, March 10-11) Received Feb 20 From Agustinus Gianto Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Zwickel (Chair of Old Testament and Biblical Archaelogy, University of Mainz) will deliver three lectures at the Pontifical Biblical Institute on history, archaeology, and geography in relation to Old Testament studies: Tuesday March 10, 2015, 09:25-10:30: AULA PAULINA "The early beginnings of Israel" Tuesday March 10, 2015, 11:25-12:15: AULA MAGNA "What can archaelogy tell about Israelite cult?" Wednesday March 11, 2015, 09:25-10:10: AULA MAGNA "Geographical background of the Old Testament Prophets" The lectures are sponsored by the Hebrew program and related studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Students and colleagues from other Institutions are welcome. Entrance: Pontifical Biblical Institute, Piazza della Pilotta 35, 00187 Roma. LECTURES: "Second Isaiah - Prophet of Consolation" (Jerusalem, Feb 25] From Anat Sella-Koren [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Lecture at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem Lecture Wednesdays | 19:30 | Free with Museum admission 25.2 - Second Isaiah - Prophet of Consolation Prof. Shalom Paul, Hebrew Univ., Hebrew Advance reservations required, place is limited: 02-5611066 CONFERENCES: Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge (Groningen, April 22-24) From Mladen M. Popovic [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Conference 22-24 April 2015 Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge Strategies of Acculturation and Cultural Resistance in Early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Traditions Department of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen For information and registration see: http://www.rug.nl/ggw/news/events/2015/sharing-and-hiding-religious-knowledge?useCache=no Programme Wednesday 22 April Venue: Groningen, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Old Courtroom 14:00-14:45 Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen): Title to be announced 14:45-15:30 Eleanor Robson (University College London): Sharing and Hiding Scholarly Knowledge in Cuneiform Culture 15:30-16:15 Mladen Popović (University of Groningen): Multilingualism, Competing Writing Systems and Knowledge Transfer in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Judaism in their Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Contexts 16:15-16:45 Break 16:45-17:30 Jacques van Ruiten (University of Groningen): Sharing and Hiding Knowledge in the Book of Jubilees 17:30-18:15 Wout van Bekkum (University of Groningen): The Elect and the Eclectic: The Poet’s Choice in Hebrew Hymns 19:00 Dinner Thursday 23 April Venue: Groningen, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Old Courtroom 9:00-9:30 Coffee/tea 9:30-10:15 Katell Berthelot (CNRS, Aix-en-Provence): Torah Between Revelation and Concealment in Rabbinic Traditions Pertaining to the Conquest of the Promised Land 10:15-11:00 Annette Yoshiko Reed (University of Philadelphia): Jewish Identity, ‘Jewish-Christian’ Succession, and the Rhetoric of Hidden Knowledge in the Epistle of Peter to James 11:00-11:30 Break 11:30-12:15 Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta (University of Groningen): Ancient Greek Patterns of Knowledge Transmission and their Continuity in Gnostic Esotericism 12:15-13:00 Delfim Leão (University of Coimbra): Alexandria, Diaspora and patrioi nomoi 13:00-15:00 Lunch 15:00-15:45 Daniele Pevarello (Trinity College Dublin): Early Christianity among the Mystery Cults, with Specific Reference to Mystery Terminology in Paul’s Letters (1 Cor 2.1-7, 4.1; Rom 16.25-27) 15:45-16:30 George van Kooten (University of Groningen): Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge in the Gospel of John: John’s Narratological Strategy in the Light of Heraclitus’s Axiom ‘The Lord whose prophetic shrine is at Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but signifies’ (fragm. 93) 16:30-17:00 Break 17:00-17:45 Mauro Pesce (University of Bologna): Towards an Understanding of the Transmission of Knowledge within the Johannine Community 19:00 Dinner Friday 24 April Venue: Groningen, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Old Courtroom 8:30-9:00 Coffee/tea 9:00-9:45 Clare Wilde (University of Groningen): ‘They wish to extinguish the light of God with their mouths’ (Q 9:32): A Qurʾānic Critique of Late Antique Scholasticism? 9:45-10:15 Break 10:15-11:00 Christian Lange (University of Utrecht): The Origins of Islamic Eschatology: Reflections on the Development of the Early Islamic Literature on Paradise and Hell 11:00-11:45 Paul Walker (University of Chicago): Techniques for Guarding and Restricting Esoteric Knowledge in the Ismaili Daʿwa during the Fatimid Period and before 11:45-12:30 Gerhard Böwering (Yale University): Sufi Qurʾan Exegesis from Iraq to Spain 12:30-13:30 Conclusion and lunch INTERVIEWS: With Carol and Eric Meyers [Posted on Feb. 10] From Biblical Archaeology: Whither and Whence Looking Back with Eric and Carol Meyers Hershel Shanks * 02/09/2015 GIANTS AT WORK. Biblical archaeologists Eric and Carol Meyers sit down with BAR's editor to discuss the past 40 years of archaeology in the land of the Bible. Photo: Robert Sugar. Duke professors Eric and Carol Meyers gained national prominence when they discovered the Torah ark at Nabratein, Israel, in 1981. But that's only part of their story. On December 22, 2014, I sat down and talked to them about their past 40 years in Biblical archaeology. HS: This is BAR's 40th birthday. Our first issue is dated March 1975. I'd like to talk to you about how the field has changed-or remained the same-during the past 40 years. I'll begin by asking you: Is it still as exciting as it was? Is it still as much fun as it was? Of course I'm thinking about the time 35 years ago when you posed for People magazine as Indiana Jones and his girlfriend Marion after you found the "lost ark." Would you do it again? CM: Oh, absolutely. I'll never forget. On July 2, 1981, at Nabratein we found the lost ark.a EM: The ark pediment was buried in a small wall that was part of an ancient synagogue bimah [podium]. It was clear from the back of the stone that it was carved and had been purposely placed upside down. I reached my hand underneath and felt the lion's paw. I could tell it was carved. I said, "Oh my God. We've got to lift this very carefully. It is a beautifully carved stone, and it is buried in this ..." CM: It was buried in this later construction. EM: We set up the winch, and the photographer got ready. The photograph of lifting and turning it over was in every magazine. CM: 1981 is a significant date. That was the summer that Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. When we got back to Duke, we typed something up and gave it to the press officer (this was before computers) if he wanted to do a press release about the Duke excavations. We hadn't heard about Raiders of the Lost Ark. When we gave this to him, he said, "You have to go see the movie." I said, "Well, I am trying to get laundry done; we're flying to New York tomorrow; I don't have time." He said, "Go to the movie." So we went to the movie, and the next day we flew to New York, rented a car and drove out to Shelter Island. We were not there two minutes and the phone started ringing, and it didn't stop. Reporters from all over were calling-People magazine, Good Morning America ... EM: Time magazine, you name it ... CM: We did agree to go on Good Morning America, but all we had in our suitcase were bathing suits and blue jeans, so we had to go out and buy a coat and tie and a dress in order to be presentable on Good Morning America. We told them what we found was not the Ark, the lost Ark of the Covenant. It was a Torah ark from an ancient synagogue. They said, "That's OK, as long as it's an ark." It was fun not only for the discovery itself, but for all the hoopla afterward. Actually I was scared about doing it. I was untenured, and I actually called the dean and said, "Is it OK for me to do this popular stuff? Will it hurt my chance of getting tenure?" She said, "No, go ahead and do it." CM: Yes. The so-called Mona Lisa of the Galilee, which we found at Sepphoris, was another very striking discovery.b The mosaic floor included scenes from the life of Dionysius. There was a lot of media interest in it. This was during the first Intifada. I'll never forget how Martin Fletcher from NBC news came up and was taking pictures. I said to him, "Why are you bothering with this when you have so much going on politically in Israel, in Jerusalem? Why are you bothering with an excavation?" He replied that it was wonderful to write about good stones-the mosaics stones-instead of the stones that Arabs and Jews were throwing at each other in the streets of Jerusalem and the West Bank. But let me say something about these kinds of exciting moments. Sometimes you have them, and sometimes you don't. As wonderful as it was for us to have that kind of experience and all the media attention, that's not really what archaeology is all about. It is not about the big finds; it's about putting together piece by piece all the small things to get some kind of picture of ancient society. But an especial thrill for us is excavating with students. We love being able to take 20, 30, 50- EM: -sometimes over 100- CM: -students and being with them 24/7 for six weeks. Learning about the past through their eyes, their questions and their ways of understanding things is always very exciting. It also means forming relationships with students that you can't get in a classroom. We're still in touch with many of those students 40 years later. EM: We just had a reunion-a diggers' reunion-sponsored by one of our students from years ago. Carol was very nervous about it, but it far exceeded anything that we could have anticipated. We had a guest lecture on Saturday morning, then open questions from the students. One of them commented after the discussion that it was a spiritual experience. One of the reasons I went into archaeology-aside from finding my mate-is that archaeology provides a unique perspective on the past that you cannot get from only literary evidence. HS: Let's go back 40 years when we started BAR. The most admired and beloved Biblical archaeologist was William Foxwell Albright at Johns Hopkins University. His definition of Biblical archaeology was very broad. Let me read his definition: "Biblical archaeology is a much wider term than Palestinian archaeology, though Palestine itself is of course central, and is rightly regarded as peculiarly the land of the Bible. But Biblical archaeology covers all of the lands mentioned in the Bible and is thus co-extensive with the cradle of civilization. This region extends from the Western Mediterranean to India, and from southern Russia to Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean. Excavations in every part of this extensive area throw some light, directly or indirectly, on the Bible."1 That's always seemed to me very powerful. CM: Albright also defined it as from the Chalcolithic period down to Islamic times. HS: I have always admired these definitions. But in my reading of developments since Albright's time, he's been swept under the rug, so to speak. Many archaeologists now feel that there is no such thing as Biblical archaeology. One of the leading American archaeologists, Bill [William G.] Dever, with whom you and I are good friends, at one time said we should call the field Syro-Palestinian archaeology, not Biblical archaeology; there is no such thing as Biblical archaeology, he said.c What was that all about? I don't know if Bill still holds that view. CM: I think he has come back a little bit. EM: I think he has done a complete circle on this, and he's more Biblically oriented than he has ever been. But let me respond to Albright's wide, broad definition of Biblical archaeology. I think it was far too broad, far too inclusive, and I don't feel any longer that it is relevant to the field of Biblical archaeology to go to either the geographical parameters or the chronological parameters. HS: Why? EM: First of all, the Bible takes root in an area much smaller. And the specialization of fields of research certainly makes it impossible for someone who's seriously into Biblical studies to become an Assyriologist and a Mesopotamian archaeologist and know all the languages and all that's happened since. HS: But aren't those relevant to Biblical studies? EM: They are relevant in part. HS: No one person can do all of this, but it's all relevant to Biblical archaeology. EM: Carol and I have always been comfortable with the term Biblical archaeology, but I would limit its parameters both chronologically and geographically to a much more confined area. HS: But you are clear that there is such a thing as Biblical archaeology? EM: Yes! 100 percent. CM: I would say that Biblical archaeology is any archaeological work that helps us understand the Bible and its context. But I would disagree with Eric a bit about excluding, say, Mesopotamian archaeology because the Bible is so important in Western culture and in Christian countries all over the world; the Bible looms so important. I think we can get an overblown view of what its cities and towns were like. I think we need to keep in mind Mesopotamian archaeology with its cities of a thousand acres and great wealth. We really need to keep that civilization in mind next to the very small tells in Palestine-Palestine is really small potatoes on the ancient landscape. I don't think that because the Bible is so important that we should necessarily think that ancient Israel was as important as these other megalopolises of Egypt or of Mesopotamia-the "land between the rivers." HS: Your position, Carol, reminds me of another quote from Albright that I have here and would like to read: "Every Biblical unit is either historical in content or reflects a given stage of history. No matter how little history a given Biblical book may seem to contain, it originated in a historical situation and reflects a definite stage in the history of religion, the history of ideas, the history of institutions and the history of the Hebrew language. Naturally, every historical approach has its limitations. We can never tell by the use of approved historical methods what the innermost thoughts of David were, any more than we can reconstruct the mind of Woodrow Wilson or John F. Kennedy."2 CM: I think that is basically correct. HS: For a long time I felt we at BAR were looked down upon by some scholars because we dealt with Biblical archaeology, and there was no such thing. CM: I'm not sure that debate is relevant anymore. I like to think of my field not so much as Biblical archaeology but as the archaeology of ancient Israel, that is, the archaeology that tries to understand through the material remains of a society what that society was like. This removes the idea of everything you do as somehow relating to the Biblical text. I'm not saying that this is not part of the process, but by calling it "the archaeology of ancient Israel," it focuses on a social group that existed at a point in time and then on the relationship of that group to whatever texts it produced, whether they are Biblical texts or other epigraphic materials. And the same thing would be true, for example, of the archaeology of the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament. HS: Let me give you another example. [Israeli archaeologist] Eliat Mazar studied the scholarship of her grandfather, the great Biblical scholar and archaeologist Benjamin Mazar. From his study of the text of the Bible, he identified the spot where King David's palace should be located. So Eilat went to that spot, and she dug there and found what is today called the LSS, the Large Stone Structure. There is some argument about whether this was David's palace or not. It may have been there before and David occupied it, but it is clearly the best candidate for David's palace. One of Israel's leading Biblical scholars, Nadav Na'aman, has openly supported Eilat Mazar-not only her identification of it as David's palace, but of the fact that she went to the Bible to find out where it was.d EM: In archaeology you don't set out in advance to try to find something. HS: But there is the proper use and the improper use of the Biblical text. Consider Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem. We have an account of that in the Bible (2 Kings 18-19; 2 Chronicles 32), and we have an account of that from Sennacherib.e No scholar would say, "Don't look at the Bible," and no scholar would say, "Don't look at Sennacherib." You look at them together, and you decide what is the most likely historical fact. Isn't that absolutely necessary with the Bible as with any other text? EM: I agree. It is just that in the past people have misused the Bible. This has put a negative spin on all this. This is why Bill Dever has said what he said, even though he is coming back now. This is why he and others express such reservations about Biblical archaeology. Because of the misuse of it over the years. If you go back to the 19th century, everyone was going with the Bible in hand-for example, Edward Robinsonf trying to match places on the map with places mentioned in the Bible.3 HS: But the Bible was very, very helpful to Robinson. He did a marvelous job of matching up places mentioned in the Bible with places on the ground. EM: I agree totally. HS: Eric, the major American scholarly organization of archaeologists of the Near East, of what we might call Biblical archaeologists, is the American Schools of Oriental Research, or ASOR. You have been president of that organization. CM: Three times. HS: Three times? And you have come to rescue it a few times. EM: Once. HS: For 60 years ASOR had a semipopular magazine called the Biblical Archaeologist. EM: Which I edited for ten years. HS: In 1998 some members of ASOR proposed to change the name of this magazine from Biblical Archaeologist to Near Eastern Archaeology. So the society decided the best thing to do was see what the members of ASOR wanted to do about this proposal. So they took a survey. More than 80 percent of the members said don't change the name; we like Biblical Archaeologist. So the leaders of the organization changed the name to Near Eastern Archaeology, and that is what it is still called today. EM: I was no longer president at that time. I want to make sure you know that. HS: My question is, what does that change represent? Does that change represent some turning away from what we have been talking about as Biblical archaeology? EM: It certainly does. And I voted against the name change. But in retrospect ... When you look at the attendees at our annual meeting, which now averages around a thousand people, the majority are not interested in Biblical archaeology. They are not comfortable with that name. They embrace the world of the larger Middle East. This is a relatively new phenomenon. I do think the change of name from Biblical Archaeologist to Near East Archaeology has enabled this to occur. You have to put this in the context of the larger struggle in Middle Eastern politics. For example, when the Ebla archives were discovered in Syria [in 1974-1975],g people in Syria were totally uncomfortable with the embrace of Biblical archaeology and how the texts related to the Bible. Biblical archaeology was thought to be the domain of Israeli archaeology and theologically inspired by Americans and Europeans. And it was. So, in order to move away from that paradigm, the name change gained a lot of supporters, and it kind of left Biblical archaeology in a corner, at least in ASOR. While Biblical archaeology still has its place, it's a limited place. This year we had a huge attendance at our annual meeting. We had Syrians, we had Kurds and we had a bunch of Iraqi archaeologists. There were more sections on Mesopotamian archaeology in our meeting this year than in the last ten years combined. CM: Ironically, I think in a sense this goes back to Albright's definition of Biblical archaeology. What we can learn about the wider area certainly enhances how we can understand that small part of it, the Biblical land of Israel. So in changing the name of the magazine to Near Eastern Archaeology and having meetings that pull in people from this whole area-Mesopotamia, parts of north Africa, Egypt, the lands of the Hittites-that ultimately contributes in some larger, perhaps in a more indirect, way to Biblical archaeology. HS: I made a proposal that hasn't been met with great warmth, but it seemed to me that there could be a compromise, to not completely push out the Biblical Archaeologist. I suggested that half of the issues be called Near Eastern Archaeology and half of the issues would retain the name Biblical Archaeologist. EM: I like that compromise. I like the suggestion. I supported it when you made it. I think it is a good idea. It would be good for ASOR, and it would be good for the people in the entire region. The Bible is not going to disappear; Biblical archaeology is not going to disappear. The Israelis are still the mightiest power in the field of archaeology in the Middle East and will remain so for the long term. There needs to be a dialogue that puts all of these issues you have raised with us into a proper framework. And ASOR is obviously the place where that is going to happen. CM: But would the political problem then reemerge if ASOR was publishing [Biblical Archaeologist]? EM: I think we are beyond that today. CM: I don't know. EM: When I edited the Oxford Encyclopedia (it came out in 1997, but the big editorial push was in the 1990s), Hershel, no one wanted to talk to one another. I wanted to get the various sectors of the Near Eastern archaeology community to communicate with one another. In secret, I remember even in the 1980s I got [Israeli archaeologist] Yigal Shiloh to meet a couple of my colleagues from Jordan that he had never met. We met in someone's private bedroom in one of the convention hotels. After that, I was like, wow, you see-they can talk to each other. They can learn from one another. CM: But didn't we have a name issue with the Encyclopedia? EM: Yes. CM: Oxford had wanted to call it the Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Archaeology, but in order to make sure we would get contributions from people working in Arab countries, they had to change the name of it [to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East]. EM: Our subeditors [responsible for encyclopedia articles covering archaeology in Arab countries] could not get anyone to agree to the name The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Archaeology. CM: Because they wouldn't be able to get contributions from Syria, etc. EM: That was the atmosphere of the 1990s ... CM: The same atmosphere as was behind the change of the name from Biblical Archaeologist. EM: That was the year after the appearance of the Oxford Encyclopedia. ASOR dumped the name Biblical Archaeologist. HS: Let's talk about Israeli archaeologists and Israeli archaeology a little bit. It is true that there is a certain pride of history in the attitude of Israeli archaeologists. Is this not true? EM: Absolutely. HS: It's kind of natural, especially in a young country. EM: What's happening in Israel today, however, is that the old generation has gone and no one has really emerged to pick up the sense of dynamism that [Avraham] Biran, [Nahman] Avigad, [Yigael] Yadin, [Michael] Avi-Yonah, and [Benjamin] Mazar had. Can you name a major university figure who enjoys the kind of prestige that Yigael Yadin enjoyed? HS: I also sense a little bit of nationalist exclusivity. It's pretty hard today, maybe impossible, for an American expedition to get a license to excavate in Israel without an Israeli codirector. EM: Yes, you need an Israeli codirector. CM: It's a sense of ownership of the materials. HS: This is also true now of other countries, such as Turkey and Cyprus. EM: And Jordan. CM: Archaeology, as you know, is not simply a matter of antiquarian interest. It feeds into present concerns and nationalism that are very powerful, especially in the Middle East. So it would be expected that any country would want to make sure that its own national heritage is figured prominently in the way excavations are carried out and published. From that perspective, it is not unreasonable to have one of your own nationalists as part of the leadership team of an expedition. HS: Let's talk for a minute about a subject that you may be an expert in, Carol, and that's women. We hear so much in America about the difficulty of women obtaining senior jobs, and as I look at archaeology in this connection, I am astounded at the female leaders of archaeology, not simply today, but going back to a wonderful older day. You have people like Trude Dothan-the expert on the Philistines-Clare Epstein, Ruth Amiran, Miriam Rosen-Ayalon. In England you had Kathleen Kenyon and her successor Crystal Bennett. These are major giants, or giantesses, so is there prejudice against women in leadership positions or as head of excavations, as archaeologists? I could easily name some other female leaders in the field, you among them, Carol. Have you experienced prejudice because you are a woman? CM: It is really hard to answer in terms of myself because I have always worked as codirector with Eric, so people could say that I just rode in on his coattails. Even going back to the beginning of modern archaeology in the Middle East, however, in the late 19th, early 20th century, there have always been very powerful female archaeologists. HS: Even earlier than that, you have explorers-Gertrude Bell.h CM: I am including her as one of them, actually. And she was certainly not a feminist, by the way. She was against suffrage, which shocks me when I read about it because she was such a "I'm a woman; I can do anything" kind of person herself. HS: Going back further, there was Helena.i EM: In the fourth century A.D. CM: There have always been women who because of their own passion and interest in something have managed to do what in general has been considered a man's field. In England most of them were women who had independent wealth. In the United States in the late 19th and well into the 20th century, there were a lot of women's colleges with very strong classics and art history departments, and there were women from those departments who led expeditions in Turkey, not so much in Israel, but in other parts of the Middle East. So there have always been important female archaeologists. In Israel itself those women you mentioned were all part of the founding generation when gender equality was supposedly an ideal. Both men and women serve in the army. Now we all know that it didn't boil down to true equality, but nonetheless it certainly opened the way for the fact that women who were passionately interested in something had every reason to suspect that they could do what they wanted to do, and in those days women did that. EM: You mentioned the passing of the giants. This affects both genders. I am not sure there will ever be another period of those kinds of stars. The academic environment in America has so changed in the last decade that we're experiencing a paradigm shift in higher education that is certainly affecting Biblical archaeology and Near Eastern archaeology in general and all the related fields that define archaeology. In my opinion, this is the greatest challenge that is facing us today along with that of repercussions of Syria and Iraq and all of that happening in the Middle East today. It is dramatically changing the facts on the ground and the dynamics of the field of archaeology in general-and not for the better. HS: Many scholars feel that the biggest change in archaeology in the past 40 years has been the introduction of scientific tools and methods. CM: I would agree. But I don't know where it is taking us. Certainly in fieldwork, digital record-keeping and so on is dramatically changing the way field operations are recorded, but the digging is still the same; it is manual with a patiche, a hoe and a trowel, but the way the data can be recorded, manipulated and studied is open. The electronic age is opening new vistas. It is too complicated for me to grasp. EM: Right. I think we are just at the beginning of how all this will play out. CM: I see two problems. First of all, it is extremely expensive, and your average archaeologist coming out of a small liberal arts college in the United States-unless you're really lucky to get some kind of fantastic grant-just is not going to be able to do it. It involves multimillion-dollar equipment and many scientists and technicians. It's just out of the reach of most projects. The second thing I would say is that it may be magical in putting you back and spatially reconstructing a structure that you have excavated, but it doesn't take you on the next step, which I think is the most important one: How do you interpret that space in terms of the lives of the people who lived in it and the society in which it was embedded? That is still going to be human brain power. The digital project may help us make connections better and envision things better, but I don't think it is going to add in some dramatic way to the interpretive process. HS: In your judgment, what was the one or two most thunderous finds in the field of Biblical archaeology in the past 40 years? EM: For Israel, I would certainly say Masada.j We both participated in its excavation years ago. Masada is enjoying a resurgence not only because of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the dig, but because of the interpretive challenges that have been mounted about Yadin's publications.4 And the restoration at Masada is second to none in the world. It's now a masterpiece of restoration. For Israel it's certainly one of the most important, if not the most important, dig. For Jordan, it is Petra.k The ongoing excavations in a variety of settings in Petra-the papyri, the palaces, the current restoration of the Great Temple directed by Martha Joukowsky, all the different excavations- I think define the magnificent potential of Jordanian archaeology. Jerusalem is certainly the largest dig in the history of the world with all of the money and support it has. HS: We have a department in every issue of BAR that is a question that is answered elsewhere in the magazine. Recently the question was how many excavations have there been in Jerusalem. CM: What was the answer? HS: As I recall 1,263.l CM: Israel is the most excavated country, and Jerusalem is definitely the most excavated site. HS: I think on that note it might be nice to end. Thank you both very much. Notes: a. Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, "Digs 2010: 28 Years Later Couple Recalls Finding 'Lost Ark,'" BAR, January/February 2010; Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, "Finders of a Real Lost Ark," BAR, November/December 1981. b. "1988 Excavation Opportunities: Prize Find: Mosaic Masterpiece Dazzles Sepphoris Volunteers," BAR, January/February 1988. c. Hershel Shanks, "Should the Term 'Biblical Archaeology' Be Abandoned?" BAR, May/June 1981. d. Nadav Na'aman, "The Interchange Between Bible and Archaeology," BAR, January/February 2014; Eilat Mazar, "Did I Find King David's Palace?" BAR, January/February 2006. e. Hershel Shanks, "Will King Hezekiah Be Dislodged from His Tunnel?" BAR, September/October 2013; Oded Borowski, "In the Path of Sennacherib," BAR, May/June 2005. f. Thomas E. Levy, "From Camels to Computers: A Short History of Archaeological Method," BAR, July/August 1995; Kathleen Ritmeyer and Leen Ritmeyer, "Temple Mount: Reconstructing Herod's Temple Mount in Jerusalem," BAR, November/December 1989; J. Maxwell Miller, "Biblical Maps," Bible Review, Winter 1987. g. Alan R. Millard, "Ebla and the Bible," Bible Review, April 1992. h. Past Perfect: "Under a Desert Sky," Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2000. i. Jan Willem Drijvers, "The True Cross," Bible Review, August 2003. j. Gwyn Davies, "The Masada Siege-From the Roman Viewpoint," BAR, July/August 2014; Hershel Shanks, "Masada-The Final Reports," BAR, January/February 1997; Ehud Netzer, "The Last Days and Hours at Masada," BAR, November/December 1991. k. Joseph J. Basile, "When People Lived at Petra," Archaeology Odyssey, July/August 2000; Avraham Negev, "Understanding the Nabateans," BAR, November/December 1988; Philip C. Hammond, "New Light on the Nabataeans," BAR, March/April 1981. l. Strata: "How Many?" BAR, July/August 2014. 1. According to Mrs. Ruth Albright, when she asked her husband, William F. Albright, about "his field," he responded by describing Bible lands as ranging from the Indus River to the Pillars of Hercules or to Gibraltar (she didn't remember precisely) and from south Russia to Ethiopia with an emphasis on the Fertile Crescent (Interview, June 7, 1972, Running Archive, about an undated conversation that one presumes occurred earlier rather than later in the marriage). 2. William F. Albright, "The Impact of Archaeology on Biblical Research-1966," in David Noel Freedman and Jonas C. Greenfield, eds., New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. 3. 3. Edward Robinson, Physical Geography of the Holy Land (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1865); Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Years 1838 & 1852 (London: J. Murray, 1856). 4. Masada: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963-1965, Final Reports (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989-1995). NEWS: Gold coin cache from Caesarea From < http://www.antiquities.org.il/Article_eng.aspx?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=4105>: ====== The largest treasure of gold coins discovered in Israel was found in recent weeks on the seabed in the ancient harbor in Caesarea National Park. The group of divers from the diving club in the harbor found the lost treasure. According to them, at first they thought they had spotted a toy coin from a game and it was only after they understood the coin was “the real thing” that they collected several coins and quickly returned to the shore in order to inform the director of the dive club about their find who in turn reported the discovery to the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority. After quickly organizing, divers of the Israel Antiquities Authority went together with the group of divers out to where the coins were found and using a metal detector discovered almost 2,000 gold coins in different denominations: a dinar, half dinar and quarter dinar, of various dimensions and weight. According to Kobi Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, this is fascinating and rare historical evidence of life in the past which was exposed during winter storms. “The discovery of such a large hoard of coins that had such tremendous economic power in antiquity raises several possibilities regarding its presence on the seabed. There is probably a shipwreck there of an official treasury boat which was on its way to the central government in Egypt with taxes that had been collected. Perhaps the treasure of coins was meant to pay the salaries of the Fatimid military garrison which was stationed in Caesarea and protected the city. Another theory is that the treasure was money belonging to a large merchant ship that traded with the coastal cities and the port on the Mediterranean Sea and sank there. In the Marine Archaeological Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority they are hoping that with the salvage excavations that will be conducted there, it will be possible to supplement our understanding of the entire archaeological context, and thus answer the many questions that still remain unanswered about the treasure. According to Robert Cole, an expert numismaticist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The coins are in an excellent state of preservation, and despite the fact they were at the bottom of the sea for about a thousand years, they did not require any cleaning or conservation intervention from the metallurgical laboratory. This is because gold is a noble metal and is not affected by air or water. The coins that were exposed also remained in the monetary circulation after the Crusader conquest, particularly in the port cities through which international commerce was conducted. Several of the coins that were found in the assemblage were bent and exhibit teeth and bite marks, evidence they were “physically” inspected by their owners or the merchants. Other coins bear signs of wear and abrasion from use while others seem as though they were just minted. Kobi Sharvit had this to say about the divers who found the treasure and reported it (Tzvika Feuer, Kobi Tweena, Avivit Fishler, Yoav Lavi and Yoel Miller). These divers are model citizens. They discovered the gold and have a heart of gold that loves the country and its history” Sharvit added, “The Law of Antiquities states that all antiquities belong to the state and that not reporting or removing antiquities from their location, or selling or trading them is an offense punishable by up to five years imprisonment. In this case the divers reported the find; but in many instances divers take the objects home and that way extremely important archaeological information is lost forever, which cannot be recovered. Therefore the discovery of the treasure underscores the need to combine the development of the place as a tourism and diving site with restrictions that will allow the public to dive there only when accompanied by inspectors or instructors from the diving club”. The Caesarea Development Company and Nature and Parks Authority welcomed the discovery of the treasure. According to them, “There is no doubt that the discovery of the impressive treasure highlights the uniqueness of Caesarea as an ancient port city with rich history and cultural heritage. After 2,000 years it is still capable of captivating its many visitors, of continuing to innovate and surprise again when other parts of its mysterious past are revealed in the ground and in the sea”. The Historical Background The earliest coin exposed in the treasure is a quarter dinar minted in Palermo, Sicily in the second half of the ninth century CE. Most of the coins though belong to the Fatimid caliphs Al-Ḥākim (996–1021 CE) and his son Al-Ẓāhir (1021–1036), and were minted in Egypt and North Africa. The coin assemblage included no coins from the Eastern Islamic dynasties and it can therefore be stated with certainty this is a Fatimid treasure. The great value and significance of the treasure become apparent when viewed in light of the historical sources. For example, the description of the traveler and geographer Ibn Jubayr who writes that the Muslim residents of the settlements were required to pay the Fatimid government half their agricultural produce at harvest time, in addition to payment of a head tax of one dinar and five carats (twenty-four carats equal one dinar, hence the method used to measure gold according to carats). Descriptions in the Cairo Geniza from the eleventh and twelfth century CE tell, among other things, of the redemption of prisoners, including Jewish captives from Ashkelon that were transferred to Egypt. According to the documents, the Jewish community paid a sum of about five hundred gold dinars to redeem and return them to Israel. NEWS: Bankrolling terror Received Feb. 10 From Culture Brigade Syrian 'Monuments Men' Race to Protect Antiquities as Looting Bankrolls Terror BY JOE PARKINSON, AYLA ALBAYRAK AND DUNCAN MAVIN TURKEY-SYRIA BORDER-In a hotel basement on the Turkish side of this combat-scarred frontier, a group of unlikely warriors is training to fight on a little-known front of Syria's civil war: the battle for the country's cultural heritage. The recruits aren't grizzled fighters but graying academics, more at home on an archaeological dig than a battlefield. For months, they have journeyed across war-torn regions of Syria, braving shelling, smugglers and the jihadists of Islamic State. Their mission: to save ancient artifacts and imperiled archaeological sites from profiteers, desperate civilians and fundamentalists who have plundered Syria's rich artistic heritage to fund their war effort. Art historians and intelligence officials say that antiquities smuggling by Islamic State has exploded in recent months, aggravating the pillaging by government forces and opposition factions. Looting, often with bulldozers, is now the militant group's second-largest source of finance after oil, Western intelligence officials say. Dutch archaeologist Rene Teijgeler, left, and Isber Sabrine, a Syrian-born archaeologist based in Barcelona, shown in a market in Gaziantep, Turkey, are helping train the Syrian monuments men how to catalog and preserve sites. ENLARGE Dutch archaeologist Rene Teijgeler, left, and Isber Sabrine, a Syrian- born archaeologist based in Barcelona, shown in a market in Gaziantep, Turkey, are helping train the Syrian monuments men how to catalog and preserve sites. PHOTO: AYMAN OGHANNA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "What started as opportunistic theft by some has turned into an organized transnational business that is helping fund terror," said Michael Danti, an archaeologist at Boston University who is advising the U.S. State Department on how to tackle the problem. "It's the gravest cultural emergency I've seen." In sessions at this secret location, the loose-knit band of academics is being trained how to fight back. They are instructed on how to get to key sites and document both what is there and what is already missing. Another skill: how to hide precious objects that may be at risk of looting and record the GPS locations so they can be retrieved at a later date. The group also uses disguises: posing as antiques dealers to take photographs of looted artifacts. The group is led by a portly, middle-aged archaeologist trained at Damascus University, who with his colleagues operates in secrecy because of the dangerous nature of the work. He likens his group to World War II's "Monuments Men": a small group of academics that helped save Europe's cultural heritage from the Nazis and became the subject of a 2014 Hollywood film starring George Clooney. "It's dangerous work. We have to get in and out of a site very quickly," he said, speaking in a dimly lighted basement room used for the training. "The looting has become systematic, and we can't keep up." The war in Syria has taken an epic toll, with more than 200,000 people killed since the uprising began in 2011. Alongside the human cost, the cultural damage has mounted. Ancient cities such as Homs and Aleppo have been reduced to rubble. Roman, Greek, Babylonian and Assyrian sites have been destroyed by fighting and looting, and five of the six Unesco World Heritage sites in Syria have been seriously damaged. Some of the country's grandest museums have been plundered or are at risk, including the Mosaic Museum in Idlib province, filled with Roman-era works. In the markets in southern Turkish cities like Gaziantep, Roman vases robbed from graves are being sold by the boxload. "We've seen a lot of artifacts turning up here.Ottoman-era coffee pots, and older coins and statuettes," said Harun Unvar, who runs an antiques store in Gaziantep's old bazaar, as he rejected a Turkish man's efforts to sell a marble bird's-head figurine for around $220. "Refugees try to sell small items, but the big stuff is stolen and sold privately for big money." Market traders say small items such as figurines and carved cylinder seals sell for prices varying from a few dollars to up to several thousand. Buyers range from locals picking up small pieces in Turkish and Lebanese markets to investors and collectors in the West, China and the Persian Gulf, according to antiquities specialists and U.S. officials. In the U.S. alone, government data show the value of declared antiques imported from Syria jumped 134% in 2013 to $11 million. U.S. officials estimate the value of undeclared pieces is many multiples higher. The total volume of illicit trade is impossible to accurately assess but is thought to have mushroomed to more than $100 million a year, according to U.S. officials. A key driver of the dramatic expansion in looting is the rise of Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Academics and government officials say the vast majority of the illicit trade is run by the group-whose worldview sanctions destroying artifacts considered idolatrous. In addition to selling oil, the group also makes money from hostage ransoms and racketeering, officials say. In neighboring Iraq, Islamic State is also looting and destroying ancient sites on an alarming scale, according to satellite imagery, archaeologists and government officials. In recent days, local activists reported that the militants destroyed a large portion of the ancient city wall at Nineveh in Iraq, which dates back 2,700 years and was once the capital of the Assyrian Empire. It is unclear whether Iraqi archaeologists are training and deploying into conflict zones to try to limit the damage to their cultural heritage. In Syria, satellite imagery updated in December by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Washington-based non-governmental organization, showed how the jihadists are methodically deconstructing and looting historical buildings in their headquarters of Raqqa, a Unesco World Heritage site with ancient shrines that Islamic State regards as sacrilegious. In Islamic State-controlled territory around the Mesopotamian city of Mari, a longtime trade hub founded in 300 B.C., more than 1,300 excavation pits have been dug in the past few months, according to satellite imagery and archaeologists. Researchers from Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, say much of the tomb raiding is being done by civilians encouraged by Islamic State leaders, who levy a 20% tax on any sales. Last year, an Iraqi intelligence official claimed Islamic State had made as much as $36 million from looting a single area around al-Nabek, a Syrian city that contains several early Christian sites known for their icons and wall mosaics. Willy Bruggeman, a former deputy director of Europol who is now president of the Belgian federal police council, said Islamic State is using its vast network and social-media savvy to bypass conventional middlemen and reach buyers directly. The looters store the booty in a secret location then circulate the photos directly to buyers in hard copy or via text message or the WhatsApp messaging service, law- enforcement officials say. The Wall Street Journal reviewed cellphone photos of a Bronze Age votive bust, possibly 5,000 years old, looted from Islamic State-controlled territory, being touted for sale to private clients and potentially sold for around $30,000. The limestone statues, depicting in detail the clothing and jewelry of the time, were placed in tombs to accompany the dead to the afterlife. Factions of Islamist fighters immediately take control of trafficking when gaining territory, one smuggler said. "They understand how lucrative this stuff is so they exploit it with sophisticated networks," said the smuggler from the Turkish border city of Hatay, who identified himself as Ugur. In the city of Manbij, which has become an artifact-trading hub, Islamic State established an office to handle looted antiquities and a market for equipment used in digging, including metal detectors and other remote sensing equipment usually used only by professional archaeologists, said Amr Al Azm, an expert in Syrian antiquities at Shawnee State. Stolen antiquities are usually sold to Islamic State approved dealers, with payments in U.S. dollars. "Once the sales are completed these approved dealers are then given safe passage through ISIS territory," Mr. Al Azm said. The quantity of items being looted is a bigger concern than a few high-value pieces, because the act of digging up the artifacts destroys their archaeological context, he said. Less than 1% of the pieces stolen by the militants from churches and ancient towns across Iraq and Syria has been recovered, Mr. Bruggeman said. Islamic State isn't the only group involved in the plunder. Grainy video published by a Syrian opposition media network on YouTube shows soldiers fighting for President Bashar al-Assad 's regime at Palmyra with delicate grave reliefs loaded onto a truck. And senior Free Syrian Army fighters, the secular opposition that has received aid from the U.S., have long conceded to Western media that looting antiquities is an important source of funding. Governments are wrestling with how to choke the trade. U.S. and European governments are mulling new antismuggling legislation, and European and U.S. spy agencies are investigating the supply chain that moves the artifacts from the war zone to market, according to Western counterterrorism and diplomatic officials. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council circulated a resolution to ban all trade in antiquities from Syria, expressing concern that Islamic State and other groups are generating funds from the trafficking. The council banned trade in artifacts from Iraq a decade ago. "The expanding link between antiquities looting and terrorist financing is raising political awareness. Governments should now work to ensure they are limiting this funding link to terrorism," said Mark Vlasic, a Georgetown University law professor who advises Congress on terrorism financing. Security forces in Lebanon and Jordan have stepped up raids on smuggling rings. In Turkey, special police antismuggling units conducted dozens of raids in Turkey's southern cities since last summer, confiscating thousands of artifacts, including Roman sculptures that are now locked in vaults in the museums of Gaziantep, Urfa, Hatay and Mardin. Officials say they plan to return the items when the war ends. Ancient sites in Syria and Iraq are being damaged by war and looted by Islamic State and others trying to cash in on the antiquities market. A group called Heritage for Peace is trying to stem the tide. Photo AFP/Getty Images. Syria's monuments men, a group of academics, archaeologists and volunteers, are seeking to halt the plunder at its source. Formed in 2012 by the Damascus University-trained archaeologist and another Syrian archaeologist colleague, the group started informally cataloging damage to sites in battle-scarred Idlib and Aleppo provinces. The founders enlisted Syrian colleagues and friends from universities, museums and government directorates, and later, European and American specialists joined as advisers. "Many of us knew each other before the war because we worked in the same field," said the second archaeologist, in an interview. "We started this because we believe so strongly it's the right thing to do." The group is now a 200-strong network stretching across rebel-held Syria, the archaeologists said. But unlike World War II's monuments men, the Syrian specialists have few resources and are seldom supported by armed units. Aided by smugglers and fixers, they travel unarmed through rebel-controlled territory, navigating a maze of armed groups including Islamic State; Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria's al Qaeda branch; the U.S.-backed opposition; and the Syrian regime. "The regime knows us and is looking for us," because of work done to expose looting by Syrian government loyalists, said the Damascus-trained archaeologist. "Other groups could kill us if they knew what we were doing, so we move in the shadows." To travel safely, the academics rely on friends, informers and sympathetic rebel commanders. Telephone communication is patchy because most networks in opposition-controlled regions have been cut by the regime. In December two of the archaeologists were almost killed by regime airstrikes as they snapped photos of damage at Serjilla and al-Bara, two preserved Byzantine-era towns known as "Dead Cities." The ferocity of the strikes at the turn of the year made the work conditions so dangerous that the archaeologists were unable to catalog any sites for two weeks. The archaeologists sketch out damage assessments and shoot images with a camera or cellphone. Sometimes they take photos or record video surreptitiously on their phones by pretending to take a call while discreetly circling a damaged area. In some cases they wrap and bury objects at risk of being looted and record the GPS location. Earlier this year, archaeologists in Aleppo spent 12 hours talking to Western specialists on Skype to correctly preserve and move 600 medieval manuscripts and astrological instruments at the Aleppo Mosque's library at risk from regime airstrikes. "We work as quick as possible. Sometimes there's a sniper close by, often on hilltops or in tall buildings," the Damascus archaeologist said. He said that senior members of the group have begun posing as antiques dealers to snare information on looted items. The disguised archaeologists contact looters and photograph artifacts, before emailing pictures to academics in Europe who pass information onto law enforcement agencies. Hundreds of looted artifacts have been photographed, including a 1,500-year-old mosaic of a bearded biblical figure in a green-and-blue striped tunic ripped from a wall of an Idlib church. In November, 30 senior members of the group were invited to travel to Turkey for training and technology after attracting the attention of NGOs and foreign governments. Only eight could make the trip because fighting with Islamic State blocked their route. The three-day training session in a secret location close to the Syria-Turkish border was run by Heritage for Peace, or HfP, a Barcelona-based NGO that sees heritage preservation as a way to bring warring parties to the negotiating table. Leading the instruction was Rene Teijgeler, a Dutch archaeologist and former lieutenant colonel in the Dutch army, who ran heritage preservation operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his partner, Isber Sabrine, a Syrian-born archaeologist based in Barcelona. "We are neutral. We adhere to the Red Cross code of conduct and we are very careful about who we operate with," said Mr. Teijgeler, pulling on a cigarette in a hotel cafe. "We vet them carefully. You don't want wild cowboys doing crazy things," he said. The training, partly funded by the Dutch government, focused on how to uniformly catalog damage at ancient sites like the Roman amphitheater at Palmyra or the crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers. Trainees were given laptops and cameras with powerful zooms to help improve their work. "These guys have to be skilled and quick because of the danger, but they have to be correct, which is hard when the bullets are flying round your ears," Mr. Teijgeler said. Special police antismuggling units have conducted dozens of raids in Turkey's southern cities since last summer, confiscating thousands of artifacts that are now locked in vaults in museums in Gaziantep and elsewhere. Above, nonlooted mosaics from the region at the Gaziantep museum. ENLARGE Special police antismuggling units have conducted dozens of raids in Turkey's southern cities since last summer, confiscating thousands of artifacts that are now locked in vaults in museums in Gaziantep and elsewhere. Above, nonlooted mosaics from the region at the Gaziantep museum. PHOTO: AYMAN OGHANNA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Just getting to the training camp was a challenge. At the border, the group was trapped between shellfire from warring Syrian factions and the rotating searchlights of Turkey's border guards. Dressed in suits, they sheltered face down in a muddy ditch for six hours before it was safe to be smuggled across the frontier into Turkey. A priority for archaeologists on the ground is to educate rebel groups to be more sympathetic to cultural heritage, including meetings with emirs of some Islamist groups. "We are trying to get a Fatwa [religious ruling] from Shariah judges to stop the looting. We are making progress," said the second founder of the monuments men group. "We don't talk to ISIS..They have a different approach." The Damascus-trained archaeologist said lack of resources and the dangerous nature of their work has limited what they can achieve on the ground. "This isn't just about history. It's about our future," he said. "Saving our heritage is the only thing that can help us rebuild an inclusive Syria after the war." -Benoît Faucon contributed to this article. eREVIEWS: Of "Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia" From < http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2015/2/18/pearce-and-wunsch-documents-of- judean-exiles-and-west-semites-in-babylonia-1 >: ====== The Ancient Jew Review February 18, 2015 Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer (CUSAS 28), by Laurie E. Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch. In their new book, Pearce and Wunsch publish 103 tablets from Babylonia, dating from roughly the years 572-477 BCE, but mostly from the 6th century BCE. These texts have been known for quite some time, but are here published with a transcription, English translation, notes and comments. They have been met with understandable excitement, and have been the subject of a number of conferences, one just a few weeks ago. Aside from the tablets in this book, there have only been a couple of previous publications of similar tablets – though not from al-yahudu - and more texts will be published by Pearce and Wunsch in a companion volume in the near future. A Hebrew translation of many of these texts intended for a more popular audience has been published by Wayne Horowitz, Yehoshua Greenberg and Peter Zielberg of Hebrew University, and the tablets are currently the prize objects in the new Bible Lands Museum exhibition "By the Rivers of Babylon." The lion’s share of the book is about 150 pages which contain a copy, transliteration, translation, some notes, and, at times, comments, on each of the 103 tablets. The book also has quite useful appendices: there is an almost 50 page prospographical index, as well as lists of named kings, named scribes, and theophoric names. There is a separate list of Yahwistic names from al-yahudu, Murashu and the Bible. Finally, there is a list of geographic sites, and a glossary of selected terms. The volume concludes with crystal clear plates of all the tablets. The volume is heavy, on laminated paper. While it has all the trappings of a library volume, it is under 70 dollars. These texts have received some attention in the press for tantalizing references to a river Chebar (Ezekiel 1:1) and for names like Yašub-Ṣidiqu, potentially a reference to a return from exile (and quite reminiscent of Isaiah 10:21). But these texts, viewed as a whole, can also tell us much about this community of Judeans in Babylonia. The documents seem to be divisible intro three archives: those from a place named al-yahudu, or Judahtown, those from bit Našar, and documents from or relating to a specific official. The identification of a place called Judahtown in Babylonia only a few years after the destruction of the First Temple is quite exciting. Indeed, "city of Judah" is a name for Jerusalem in 2 Chronicles 25:28, and al-yahudu is also how the Babylonians referred to Jerusalem. Judahtown, then, seems to have been the Jerusalem of Babylonia. The existence of a Judahtown illustrates a major difference between Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian policy of deportation. The Assyrians seem to have deported and scattered conquered peoples, whereas the Babylonians kept the conquered group together and installed them in underutilized or underdeveloped locations in which they were then motivated to develop, as it was their new abode, and would also pay taxes and provide other state needs, such as military service. Given their dates, these tablets precede the evidence from the well-known Murashu archive – which dates from as early as 450 BCE - by well over a century, and therefore provide evidence for the period between the Babylonian exile until Murashu for which we have few other sources. Moreover, while the Judeans in the Murashu archive were in the periphery, as witnesses or financially weaker parties in transactions, in the al-yahudu texts the Judeans are front and center. The content of the tablets are mostly sales or other kinds of business transactions, and they therefore provide an interesting glimpse into daily life. As the authors say, “Far from portraying a deported, old but impoverished, Judean elite, these documents provide glimpses into the lives of ordinary people in a rural setting: they till the land and build houses, pay taxes, and render services to the king” (p. 3). This quote could almost be a paraphrase of Jeremiah 29:5-6. The texts from al-yahudu give us information about one extended family for three generations, the first of whom was probably brought over in the exile. This family acquires much wealth, owns slaves, and by the third generation, begin partnering with others and becoming a kind of corporation, thus showing us the process of creation of a business partnership like we find in the Murashu archive (see chart on p. 8). Significantly, as the name of the volume indicates, these tablets are not just of Judeans, but of other West Semitic exiles as well. This helps to correct a tendency to view ancient Jewish history as sui generis. Like later Jewish diasporas, which have parallels in other diaspora groups (Gideon Bohak, “Ethnic Continuity in the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity,” pp. 175-192), the Judeans in Babylonia were surrounded by other West Semitic exiles who seem to share a similar background story with the Judean exiles. Indeed, some of these West Semitic groups also seem to have returned to their lands from Babylonia in the Persian period, which might be paralleled with the narratives of return found in Ezra-Nehemiah (p. 5 and fn. 8 there). The authors provide a useful short discussion about the “admixture of cultural backgrounds” based on onomastic evidence, and show how these tablets contain a blend of Babylonian, Egyptian, Western Semitic and Yahwistic Theophoric names (P 6). As the study of names is one of the central ways of teasing out meaning from these tablets, the authors dedicate 60 pages of analysis to all the names that appear in them. Given how important theophoric names are for distinguishing Judeans from other West Semitic peoples, this is quite helpful. The study of names once again highlights the truly remarkable plethora of groups that figure, whether centrally or peripherally, in these texts, as well as the long list of deities from various pantheons that appear in the theophoric names. Indeed, the tablets have both an Abdi-Ishtar and Abdi-Yahu! The authors also note some interesting examples of acculturation that can be seen by name combinations of Yahwistic elements with typically neo-Babylonian name features (p. 28-29). Of course, this volume is dedicated primarily to producing editions of texts, with helpful brief introduction, discussion, and useful appendices, all meant to aid the study of the tablets. It is the great achievement of this volume that it enables other scholars to integrate this new and exciting evidence into fuller accounts of the early Second Temple period. Simcha Gross is a PhD candidate at Yale University and an editor at AJR. @Simcha_Gross CONFERENCES: Medical Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Exchanges (Lisbon in July] From: Agnes Kloocke [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== BabMed – Fragments of Cuneiform Medicine in the Babylonian Talmud: Knowledge Transfer in Late Antiquity Medical knowledge in motion: BabMed on CHAM/Lisbon, July 2015 Lucia Raggetti, close collaborator of BabMed principal Investigator M.J. Geller, and BabMed team member Tanja Hidde will both present their work at the Lisboa CHAM conference this summer. The II CHAM (Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar) international conference at Lisboa, Portugal from July 15-18, 2015 will revolve around the theme Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Exchanges. The day-long panel Medical knowledge in motion: exchange, transformation and iteration in the medical traditions of the Late Antique Mediterranean world is convened by Christine Salazar, Matteo Martelli and Lennart Lehmhaus of SFB 980 – Episteme in Motion, Berlin. For further information and full panel programme please see the BabMed Blog: www.fu- berlin.de/babylonianmedicine CALLS FOR PAPERS: ISBL Hellenistic Judaism (ISBL Argentina)-- New Deadline From Ljubica Jovanovic [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Deadline extended New deadline February 25, 2015. Call For Papers: 2015 International SBL Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina ISBL Hellenistic Judaism Closes: February 25, 2015 Call For Papers: ISBL 2015 is in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is a long way from ISBL's more common European venues. In recognition of this move, Hellenistic Judaism especially welcomes papers on any aspect of Diaspora and, particularly, on the reception of Scripture in Diaspora. We will also continue to welcome proposals on any topic related to Hellenistic Judaism. In addition, we invite papers for a session on "Slavonic Apocrypha from Hellenistic Jewish literature," to be held jointly with the "Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha" and the "Apocalyptic Literature" program units. This is the first of two sessions (the other at ISBL 2016 in Seoul) that is expected to lead to the formation of a new ISBL unit devoted to the study of Slavonic Apocrypha for the 2017 ISBL meeting in Berlin. Program Unit Chairs Ljubica Jovanovic [email protected] Stephen Herring [email protected] Propose a Paper for this Program Unit If you are a SBL member, you must login before you can propose a paper for this or any other session. Please login by entering your SBL member number on the left in the Login box. SBL membership is required to participate in the meeting. In its efforts to foster biblical scholarship and to facilitate mutual cooperation among colleagues, SBL offers reduced membership rates to individuals from certain countries through the Society's International Cooperation Initiative (ICI). Individuals in these countries may pay the reduced fees of $15 for full membership and $10 for student membership. If you are a not a member of SBL but live or work in an ICI country and are interested in participating in the meeting, please consider becoming an ICI member. For all other persons wanting to propose a paper, you must communicate directly with the chair of the program unit to which you want to propose. Chairs have the responsibility to make waiver requests, and their email addresses are available above. SBL provides membership and meeting registration waivers only for scholars who are outside the disciplines covered by the SBL program, specifically most aspects of archaeological, biblical, religious, and theological studies. February 24, 2015 CALLS FOR PAPERS: "The Text of Leviticus" (Fribourg, Oct. 8-9) From Innocent Himbaza [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Call for papers The Institut Dominique Barhélemy of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland organizes an international colloquium on 8-9 October 2015 with the title "Le texte du Lévitique / The Text of Leviticus". Papers dealing with the study of Leviticus are welcome: textual criticism, history of the redaction of the text, comparison between textual witnesses such as MT, LXX and Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning of the text, intertextuality and history of the reception. The contributors' accommodation will be supported by the Institute. Appel à contributions L'Institut Dominique Barthélemy de l'Université de Fribourg, Suisse, organisera un colloque international les 8 et 9 octobre 2015 sur "Le texte du Lévitique / The Text of Leviticus". Toutes les contributions en rapport avec le domaine textuel du Lévitique sont les bienvenues: critique textuelle, l'histoire de la rédaction et du texte, la comparaison entre les témoins textuels comme le TM, la LXX ou encore les Manuscrits de la mer Morte, le sens du texte, l'intertextualité et l'histoire de la réception. Les frais d'hébergement des contributeurs seront pris en charge par l'Institut. LECTURES: “Biblical Archaeology: Is It Really the Spade in One Hand and the Bible in the Other?” (Alexandria, VA; March 21) Via Robin Ngo [email protected]: ====== I'm writing to share with you a lecture sponsored by the Catholic Biblical Association of America: “Biblical Archaeology: Is It Really the Spade in One Hand and the Bible in the Other?” Presented by Dr. Ellen White March 21, 2015, at 4 p.m. Virginia Theological Seminary 3737 Seminary Rd. Alexandria, VA 22304 The Biblical Archaeology Society is pleased to invite you on behalf of the Catholic Biblical Association of America to attend a lecture by BAS senior editor Ellen White titled “Biblical Archaeology: Is It Really the Spade in One Hand and the Bible in the Other?” Dr. White’s talk explores the history of Biblical archaeology, how it came to be and the archaeologists who made it happen. White will also examine the reasons why “Biblical archaeology” became a controversial phrase and the motives behind changing the discipline’s name. She will conclude with brief remarks about where the field is heading in the future. The lecture will take place on Saturday, March 21, 2015, at 4 p.m. at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. The lecture is free and open to the public. Here is a link to the lecture details: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/biblical- archaeology-spade-in-one-hand-bible-in-the-other/ SCHOLARSHIPS: At the Qumran Institute (Groningen) From Mladen Popovic [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Two Hebrew Bible/Early Judaism scholarships are available at the Qumran Institute, University of Groningen: 1. the Florentino García Martínez Research Master Scholarship 2015 2. the Dirk Smilde Scholarship 2016 For information and application, please visit: http://www.rug.nl/research/centre-for-religious-studies/qumran-institute/teaching/scholarships CALLS FOR PAPERS: Analog Life, Digital Image (RAI 2015) From Giulia Torri [mailto:[email protected]: ====== RAI Workshop 2015 Co-directors: A. Anderson ([email protected]), Sh. Gordin ([email protected]) R. Rattenborg ([email protected]), G. Torri ([email protected]) Title: Analog Life, Digital Image: recontextualizing social and material lives of Ancient Near Eastern communities. Where & When: Geneva, Tuesday June 23rd at 9-12.30 and 14-17.30 Deadline for Submission: before 15 March 2015. Abstract: Increased access to online textual and visual digital collections have enabled scholars to explore cuneiform corpora using tools and methods not available a mere few decades ago. Drawing on one of the largest bodies of historical documentation known, the application of digital tools to studies of the material and intangible aspects of social life of the Ancient Near East holds the potential to radically transform the way in which we approach and think of topics such as demography, quantity, social relations and the flow of things and ideas. The aim of this workshop is to bring together approaches to the cuneiform corpus integrating analyses of large, digitized datasets with philological, archaeological, and social research. We invite studies intent on recontextualising the expansive body of cuneiform documentation within analytical frameworks such as spatial mapping, social network analysis and modeling, scale and quantification, artifact reconstruction and related perspectives. Contributions may focus on material as well as social, qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of any part of the cuneiform record. We further welcome approaches traversing disciplinary boundaries. Interested participants will please send a provisional title and abstract (250 words), along with a short note on academic affiliation and background to the workshop organizers before 15 March 2015. We would like to consider the workshop papers for subsequent publication, and kindly ask contributors to inform us if having any reservations in this regard. A preliminary version of each paper should be sent to the organizers at least one week before the workshop. We believe that circulating contributions between speakers beforehand will facilitate the ensuing discussions and lead to more productive and thought-provoking sessions. The workshop will accommodate 12 speakers. Each speaker will be given 20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for comments, questions, and discussion. CONFERENCES: "Archaeological Looting: Realities and Possibilities for New Policy Approaches" (Chicago, Feb 27-28) From Fiona Greenland [mailto:[email protected]]: ======: "Archaeological Looting: Realities and Possibilities for New Policy Approaches" A two-day conference at the University of Chicago, Feb. 27-28, 2015 Keynote speaker: Dr. Neil Brodie, University of Glasgow: "Cultural Property Protection Policy Failure in Syria" The conference is free and open to the public Conference overview: Theft of artifacts and artworks from archaeological sites represents a tragic, growing percentage of crimes against art. This conference brings together leading authorities to tackle these key questions: Who loots, and why? What is the impact of looting on objects, archaeological contexts, and nearby communities? How can we take steps to protect ancient art? This two-day conference is hosted by University of Chicago professor Larry Rothfield and Neubauer Collegium Fellow Fiona Rose-Greenland. The conference program features diverse regional and temporal contexts. http://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/events/uc/archaeological_looting/ CALLS FOR PAPERS: Anthropology, Archaeology and History in Biblical Studies (Córdoba, Spain, 12-15 July) From Lukasz Niesiolowski- Spanò [mailto:[email protected]] and Emanuel Pfoh European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting Córdoba, Spain, 12-15 July 2015 CALL FOR PAPERS Anthropology, Archaeology and History in Biblical Studies Chairs Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spanò, University of Warsaw, [email protected] Alexander Fantalkin, Tel Aviv University, [email protected] Emanuel Pfoh, National University of La Plata & National Research Council – Argentina, [email protected] Programme We propose with this group to address topics related to anthropology, archaeology and history in relation to biblical studies and the history of the southern Levant, but at the same time we intend to make the range of perspective wide enough to include Eastern Mediterranean settings in antiquity in order to profit from comparisons and discussions. Accordingly, we propose to choose a thematic topic for each session and also invite scholars from outside the field of biblical studies to join in the discussion. Call for Papers For our first meeting in Córdoba, our chosen topic is state formation in the southern Levant during the Iron Age. The session is open to all relevant proposals. http://www.eabs.net/site/anthropology-archaeology-and-history-in-biblical-studies/ JOURNALS: “Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie” 7(2014) From Kristina Pfeiffer [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The Orient-Department of the German Archaeological Institute has published the new volume 7 of the journal “Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie”. It is posted at ZOrA covers all areas of archaeology, philology, epigraphy and ethnography as well as archaeo-sciences and the history of research. ZOrA furthermore reports on cooperation projects of DAI-affiliated researchers and other colleagues. In addition to discussing innovative and current research issues the journal also publishes preliminary and excavation reports. The contents of the journal are divided into the geographic fascicles “Mesopotamia and supraregional subjects”, “Levant” and “Arabian Peninsula and regionally related subjects”. Contents of ZOrA 7: Ricardo Eichmann – Margarete van Ess: In memoriam Klaus Schmidt MESOPOTAMIEN UND REGIONAL ÜBERGREIFENDE THEMEN -Katja Piesker: Göbekli Tepe. Bauforschung in den Anlagen C und E in den Jahren 2010–2012 -Sebastian Walter: Ungewöhnliche Tiere in der Kunst des frühesten Neolithikums (PPN A). Zu Arthropoden-Darstellungen aus Südostanatolien (Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe) und Nordsyrien (Jerf el Ahmar, Tell Qaramel) -Theodor Abt: Göbekli Tepe. Kulturelles Gedächtnis und das Wissen der Natur Rainer Michael Boehmer: Ein frühnächtliches Fest zu Ehren der Stadtgöttin von Uruk, Innana LEVANTE -Ulrike Siegel: Die Baugeschichte der prähistorischen Siedlung Tall Ḥujayrāt al-Ghuzlān, Jordanien - Ferhan Sakal: Jebel el-Hamam 2010. Final Report about the Syrian-German Survey -Klaus Stefan Freyberger: Die ´Ḫaznet Fir´ūn´ (´Ḫarābat ağ-Ğarra´) in Petra. Datierung, Funktion und Bedeutung -Karin Bartl – Ghazi Bisheh – Franziska Bloch – Claudia Bührig – Hussein Saleh – Thomas Urban: Qasr Mushash: "Wüstenschloss" oder Karawanenhalt? ARABISCHE HALBINSEL UND DER REGION VERWANDTE THEMEN -Christoph Gerber in collaboration with Philipp Drechsler, Deniz Yaşin-Meier, Helmut Brückner, Max Engel, David M. P. Meier, Thomas Götzelt, Julia Daitche, Dieter Hörwarthner, Adrian J. Lienig, Rosa Reising and Stefanie Tiltmann: The German- Qatari South Qatar Survey Project. The 2012–2013 Season -Philipp Drechsler: The Palaeolithic and Neolithic in South Qatar. Insights from Two Seasons in the Field -Max Engel – Helmut Brückner: The South Qatar Survey Project (SQSP). Preliminary Findings on Coastal Changes and Geoarchaeological Archives -Sarah Japp: Chronology of Sabaean Pottery. Some Remarks -D´Arne O´Neill: First Millennium BC South Arabian Terracotta Figurines from the Marib Oasis and Sirwah, Yemen -Mike Schnelle: Monumentalbauten des 1. Jahrtausends v. Chr. in Yeha (Äthiopien) und Vergleichsbauten in Südarabien. Architektur als Spiegelbild von Kulturtransfer LECTURES: "... The Cultural Heritage Crises in Syria and Northern Iraq" (NYC, March 11) From Allan Gilbert [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The seventh meeting of the Ancient Near Eastern Seminar for the 2014-15 academic year will be: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 Dr. Michael Danti, American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives and University of Pennsylvania Museum "The Erasure of Millennia: The Cultural Heritage Crises in Syria and Northern Iraq" Four years of civil war in Syria and the seizure of much of northern Iraq by extremists last year have precipitated what is currently the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. While the international community must focus foremost on ending the conflict and meeting basic human needs, protecting the region’s irreplaceable cultural heritage forms an integral and inextricable part of humanitarian efforts. Looting, deliberate destruction of heritage places by extremists, combat damage, and illegal development occur daily in Syria and northern Iraq and are obliterating the cultural patrimony of millennia. Extremists are systematically disassembling the heritage sector in the conflict zone and seek to stamp out cultural diversity in what is nothing short of a war on culture. These crimes threaten to proliferate and spread the conflict, complicate peace efforts, and erode future stability and prosperity. Cultural identities and the futures of countless vibrant communities hang in the balance. The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives seeks to preserve our shared global patrimony by documenting and reporting events in Syria and Iraq, engaging in public outreach and educational initiatives, and planning and implementing mitigation and remediation projects now and in the post-conflict period. The meeting will be held at the Columbia University Faculty House. We begin gathering at 5:00 PM, and the lecture will begin at 5:30 PM in a room indicated by signs in the first floor lobby, followed by optional dinner with the speaker at 7:00 PM in the Faculty House restaurant. If you wish to make dinner reservations and join us (we will need to report the number of guests), please contact our seminar rapporteur, Andrea Hinojosa [[email protected]], and for those without internet access, a phone call to me will be fine [(718) 817-3854]. The buffet dinner costs $25, and you must pay the rapporteur with a check. We must have your reservation request one week in advance. The remaining seminars for the 2014-15 academic year are: April 2, 2015 (Thursday) Claudia Glatz, Brown University and University of Glasgow April 22, 2015 (Wednesday) Agnete Lassen, Yale University BOOKS: Mari: Capital of Northern Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium From Mari: Capital of Northern Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium. The archaeology of Tell Hariri on the Euphrates [Hardback] Jean-Claude Margueron (Author) Special Price: £34.00 ISBN: 9781782977315 Published by: Oxbow Books 176p, H297 x W210 (mm) b/w illustrations According to archaeological evidence gleaned over more than 70 years, Mari appears to have been the most important city in northern Mesopotamia from its foundation at about 2950 BC to 1760 BC. Situated at the heart of a river system and progressively linked with an overland network, Mari was the city that controlled the relations of central and southern Mesopotamia with the regions bordering the Taurus and Zagros mountains to the north and east and the Mediterranean coastal zone to the west. Mari drew its power from this situation, and the role it played accounts for the particularity of its features, positioned as it was between the Syrian, Assyrian, Iranian, Babylonian and Sumerian worlds. The evidence shows that there was not one city of Mari, but three successive cities, each having specific features, although there is a striking permanence in the original forms. The first, City I, founded in about 2950 BC, was based on remarkable principles of city planning, including a broad regional development with the creation of canals for irrigation and transport, one more than 120 km long. In the 23rd century BC City II was founded using impressive technology in city planning. Probably destroyed by Naram-Sin of Akkad about 2200 BC, it was entirely reconstructed as City III by a new dynasty, the Shakkanakku. In the 19th century BC this was replaced by an Amorite dynasty, which ruled until Hammurabi of Babylon destroyed Mari in 1760 BC. The diversity of the information and material that has been recovered confirms Mari's place as one of the best sources for understanding the brilliant Mesopotamian civilisation that developed between the beginning of the 3rd and the end of the 1st millennium BC. Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements Chapter I: Presentation of the site The tell The environment History of the archaeological exploration Operations in the main excavation areas Conclusion: the history of Mari illuminated by archaeology Chapter II: The foundation of Mari and regional development The foundation of the city on the Holocene terrace The canals Organization of the kingdom of Mari Chapter III: The historical stages The foundation of Mari and City I (Early Dynastic I-II, 2950-2650[?]) The re-foundation of Mari and City II (Early Dynastic III and Akkadian 2550-2220) The reconstruction of Mari and City III (Shakkanakku and Amorite periods, 2200-1760) Chapter IV: The three cities and urbanism Morphological analysis of the tell The defensive system and its development The urbanism of City I The urbanism of City II The urbanism of City III under the Shakkanakku The modifications of the Amorite period Chapter V: The development of domestic architecture The houses of City I Urban domestic architecture in City II Houses and residences in City III Chapter VI: The religious monuments The religious organisation of City II The Mari model of the temple in City II The Massif Rouge and its temple-tower Activity in the temples of City II The religious reorganisation of City III From City II to City III: maintaining tradition The innovations of City III Development of foundation rites from City I to City III Conclusion: originality of the sacred architecture at Mari Chapter VII: The palaces The palace-sanctuary of City II The "phantom" palace (beginning of City III) The Great Royal Palace of City III The Little Eastern Palace of City III Chapter VIII: The development of funerary practices Burials in City I Burials in City II Burials in the period of the Shakkanakku Burials during the Amorite dynasty Burials in the Khana period Burials in the Middle Assyrian period Burials in the village of the Seleucid period Chapter IX: Objects and installations of everyday life Nature of the material found Importance of economic activities and artisanal production The intensity of relations and contacts woven by Mari Chapter X: Court art, sacred art, popular art Art in the period of City I Art in the period of City II Art in the period of the Shakkanakku (beginning of City III) Art in the period of the Amorite dynasty Art in the Middle Assyrian period Chapter XI: The historical data provided by archaeology Glossary Bibliography LECTURES: "Sicily in the Age of Archimedes" (Nashville, February 26) From Barbara Tsakirgis Please plan to join us on Thursday evening (26 Feb.) for a very special lecture. Professor Malcolm Bell will be here to speak on "Sicily in the Age of Archimedes" at 6:00 p.m. in the Parthenon. Mac is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Virginia and long-time director of the excavations at Morgantina, Sicily. Mac has recently been named the gold medal winner for 2016 by the Archaeological Institute of America. His talk will focus on the north baths at Morgantina where the principles of Archimedes appear to have been realized in the structure of bath's domed roof in the third century BCE. The talk is free and open to the public. A reception follows the lecture. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park, and Vanderbilt University's Department of Classical Studies and History of Art. In recognition of their generosity with our AIA lecture last month, the Yazoo Brewery and Taproom are honorary co-sponsors this month. KUDOS: For Mark Weeden From Andrew George [mailto:[email protected]]: [Mark Weeden can be reached at Following last autumn's search, SOAS University of London is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Mark Weeden as permanent full-time Lecturer in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Mark can be found at CALLS FOR PAPERS: 9thTranseuphratene Colloquium (Paris, April 7-9, 2016) From Josette Elayi [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== IXe COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL SUR LA TRANSEUPHRATÈNE À L'ÉPOQUE PERSE : UNITE ET DIVERSITE 7-9 AVRIL 2016 - Institut Protestant de Théologie de Paris - Secrétariat du Colloque (adresse pour tout courrier): Arnaud Sérandour, - Courriel : [email protected] Paris, le 20 février 2015 Nous avons le plaisir de vous faire savoir que le IXe Colloque International sur La Transeuphratène à l'époque perse, se déroulera les 14, 15 et 16 avril 2016, à l'Institut Protestant de Théologie de Paris. Il aura cette fois pour thème : Unité et diversité. Nous vous adressons ci-joint (fichier 1) les premières informations sur le contenu et les modalités de ce Colloque. Les Actes seront en principe publiés par nos soins dans la série Transeuphratène : remise des manuscrits définitifs au moment du Colloque ou, au plus tard, fin mai 2016, afin d'assurer une publication rapide. Si vous souhaitez y participer, nous vous saurions gré de bien vouloir nous renvoyer dès que possible le bulletin d'inscription ci-joint (fichier 2), en précisant si vous avez l'intention de présenter une communication. 9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE TRANSEUPHRATESIA IN THE PERSIAN PERIOD: UNITY AND DIVERSITY April 7-9, 2016 Institut Protestant de Théologie de Paris 83 Boulevard Arago, 75014 PARIS We are organizing the 9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE about Transeuphratesia in the Persian period that will be taking place next year in Paris. The chosen topic of this Conference includes: - Analysis of the political diversity in Transeuphratesia under Persian domination, - Unity and diversity in the societies of Transeuphratesia in the Persian period, - Unity and diversity in religions, - Unity in imperial economy and diversity in local economies, - Unity and diversity in the various trade networks. We welcome all specialized fields included, in order to implement this topic through multi- and interdisciplinary approaches. Organizing committee: Arnaud Sérandour (EPHE Sciences religieuses) Corinne Lanoir (Institut Protestant de Théologie) Thomas Römer (Collège de France) Josette Elayi (CNRS) ------ IXe Colloque international sur La Transeuphratène à l'époque perse : unité et diversité Institut Protestant de Théologie, 83 Boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris 7, 8 et 9 avril 2016 Organisateurs : A. Sérandour, C. Lanoir, T. Römer, J. Elayi « Crises et autres difficultés », tel était le titre très actuel de notre VIIIe Colloque international organisé en 2010. Force est de constater que la crise continue, affectant notamment la recherche et l'enseignement supérieur. Pourtant, notre programme de recherche sur la Transeuphratène à l'époque perse, entrepris en 1989 - il y a un quart de siècle ! - résiste toujours, soutenu par la communauté scientifique internationale qui a contribué à sa cohérence et à la qualité des résultats obtenus. Rappelons pour mémoire les huit Colloques internationaux et les deux Tables rondes qui ont structuré l'entreprise Transeuphratène sur les thèmes suivants : 1. Pouvoirs locaux et organisation du territoire (publié dans Trans 2 et 3, 1990) ; 2. Continuités et ruptures à la lumière des périodes néo-assyrienne et hellénistique (Trans 6, 1993 ; 7 et 8, 1994) ; 3. La Transeuphratène et l’Égypte (Trans 9, 1995) ; 4. Contacts et échanges culturels (Trans 12, 1996 et 13, 1997) ; 5. Économie, commerce et monnaie (Trans 19 et 20, 2000) ; 6. Religions, croyances, rites et images (Trans 21 et 22, 2001 ; 23, 2002) ; 7. Pouvoirs, sociétés et religions (Trans 28, 2004 ; 29 et 30, 2005) ; 8. Réflexions sur le ‘métier’ d’historien du Proche-Orient antique (Trans 31, 2006) ; 9. Frontières et courants d’échanges culturels (Trans 35, 2008 ; 36 et 37, 2009) ; 10. Crises et autres difficultés (Trans 39, 2010 ; 40, 2011 ; 41 et 42, 2012). Notre entreprise a toujours été accompagnée par une évaluation des résultats, une réflexion sur l’intégration des nouvelles données avec les réajustements nécessaires et une actualisation par rapport à la politique de la recherche menée par les gouvernements successifs. Citons quelques jalons : J. Elayi et J. Sapin, Nouveaux regards sur la Transeuphratène (Brépols, Turnhout 1991) ; Quinze ans de recherche sur la Transeuphratène à l’époque perse (1985-2000) [Gabalda, Paris 2000] ; Table ronde de prospective de recherche historique Réflexions sur le ‘métier’ d’historien du Proche-Orient antique (publiée dans Trans 31, 2006) ; et J. Elayi, « Ne pas laisser mourir les langues anciennes », article du Figaro, 18 mars 2013. Dans ces rencontres internationales, nous avons proposé chaque fois aux participants plusieurs pistes de recherche possibles pour traiter les thèmes choisis. Certaines pistes ont été très fécondes, d'autres ont été à peine effleurées ou n'ont pas été abordées. Pour ce IXe Colloque (et XIe Rencontre internationale), il nous a semblé fructueux de revenir sur ces pistes inexplorées afin de combler les lacunes subsistant dans notre programme de recherche sur la Transeuphratène à l'époque perse. Nous proposons d'aborder ces pistes sous un angle assez englobant : « Unité et diversité ». Ces deux concepts, à la fois antagonistes et complémentaires, devraient permettre de mieux comprendre la complexité de cette satrapie aux multiples facettes, unifiée par la seule volonté du pouvoir central perse. On passera en revue les principaux aspects du thème choisi, notamment politique, social, religieux, culturel, économique et commercial. I. Politique - Avec quelle stratégie idéologique s'est effectuée la conquête perse, en rupture ou en continuité avec la domination babylonienne ? - Comment fonctionnaient l'administration impériale et le système tributaire, quelles étaient les fonctions du satrape et des gouverneurs, et où étaient situés les lieux du pouvoir, les capitales et les cours satrapiques ? - L'organisation du territoire et le degré d'intégration des différentes régions de la Transeuphratène dans les structures de l'Empire perse. - La diversité des pouvoirs locaux et leurs différentes entités politiques, le statut des cités hégémoniques, des cités sous tutelle des cités-États, des associations et des fédérations. - La nature des liens politiques entre les pouvoirs locaux et le pouvoir central, la gestion des crises politiques et les transferts de pouvoirs après répression de révoltes. - La propagande politique au niveau central et sur le plan local. II. Société - Comment étaient réparties les populations urbaines et rurales, de la côte, de la montagne et du désert, sédentaires et nomades, étrangers de passage, résidents temporaires ? - En quoi les modes de répartition régionaux ont-ils évolué du fait de la dynamique propre des populations locales et sous l'effet de facteurs externes comme la domination perse? - Les structures sociales ont-elles été modifiées par la domination perse : hiérarchies, groupes dominants, groupes de pression et rapports de force ? - Les problèmes sociaux sont-ils identiques dans tout l'Empire perse ou résultent-ils de situations locales spécifiques : par exemple les inégalités, l'intégration et l'exclusion, la pauvreté, la dépendance, la marginalisation et l'emprisonnement pour dettes ? - Qu’en est-il des problèmes liés à la colonisation et aux déplacements de populations volontaires ou décidées par le pouvoir central ? III. Religions - Quelle a été l'attitude des Perses vis-à-vis des religions des États conquis ? - Où en est l'hypothèse de l'autorisation impériale ? - Une influence du mazdéisme sur le judaïsme naissant peut-elle être démontrée ? - Quel a été l'impact de l'hellénisme sur les populations locales ? - Les différentes réactions religieuses ou culturelles face à la nouvelle situation créée par la domination perse. - Les interactions entre pouvoirs et religions : fonction religieuse des chefs politiques, culte des divinités et des ancêtres dynastiques, rôle politique du clergé, théocraties, etc. - Le décalage entre croyances et pratiques populaires et cultes officiels. IV. Culture - Les modalités des contacts varient selon qu'ils se produisent entre sociétés hostiles, concurrentes ou amicales, et en situation d'échanges culturels spontanés ou d'acculturation contrôlée, planifiée ou non, par les dominants. - Quels étaient les rôles respectifs du pouvoir central achéménide, des pouvoirs locaux et de divers autres facteurs dans la création et l'évolution de telles situations ? - Le comportement des Aryens face au polycentrisme culturel des régions conquises. - Les lieux de contacts favorisés ou non par les Perses. - Les partenaires des contacts : entre groupes, entre individus, entre groupes et individus de cultures différentes. - Les processus d'échanges entre groupes culturels sont-ils très anciens ou nouveaux, ponctuels ou quasi permanents ? - Le problème des langues de communication et le développement de l'araméen comme lingua franca de l'Empire perse. V. Économie - Les différents types d'économies (agro-pastorale, palatiale, civique, mixte) et leur place dans le cadre de l'économie impériale perse. - Les rapports entre économie et pouvoir politique : expansion territoriale pour motif économique, rôle de l'économie dans les alliances et les conflits, organisation de l'approvisionnement des cités, travaux d'intérêt public. - Les rapports entre économie et société : taxes, tributs, dons, domaines royaux et autres. Que sait-on des difficultés économiques et des solutions adoptées pour y remédier ? - Les rapports entre économie et religion : revenus des temples, rémunération des personnels, financement des travaux de rénovation et construction des temples. - Le rôle variable de la monnaie dans les échanges en fonction des systèmes utilisés : troc, métal pesé, compté, etc. - Le contexte de l'apparition des premiers monnayages et la naissance de l'économie monétaire. - Les fonctions de la monnaie, sa circulation et les politiques monétaires. - Le rôle du pouvoir central et des pouvoirs locaux dans le choix des étalons, des systèmes d'équivalences, dans les dévaluations et réévaluations. VI. Commerce - Les centres de production et de distribution : marchés intra-régionaux, commerce à moyenne et longue distance. - La réalité du contrôle perse sur les routes commerciales, terrestres, fluviales et maritimes (routes royales). - Quels étaient les partenaires commerciaux : particuliers, groupes de marchands et entreprises d'État ? - Les rôles respectifs du pouvoir central et des pouvoirs locaux dans l'organisation du commerce, les modes de transport et de financement des entreprises, le droit commercial, les systèmes douaniers et la politique des frontières. Rappelons pour finir que notre approche est pluridisciplinaire. Toutes les disciplines sans exception sont a priori susceptibles de faire avancer le débat. Ce Colloque s'adresse aux spécialistes de toutes disciplines : historiens, archéologues, épigraphistes, numismates, biblistes, philologues, économistes, sociologues, etc. IXe Colloque international sur La Transeuphratène à l’époque perse : Unité et diversité 7-9 avril 2016 Institut Protestant de Théologie de Paris 83 bd Arago 75014 Paris BULLETIN D’INSCRIPTION Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur : Adresse : Ville : Code postal : Pays : Téléphone : Télécopie : E-mail : 1) Je désire participer au Colloque 2) Je présenterai une communication dans le cadre du thème retenu. Titre de la communication : Frais d’inscription : - 30 Euros pour les auteurs de communications et 40 Euros pour les autres participants. Accès gratuit pour les étudiants. - Ces frais donnent droit aux documents préparatoires. • Je verse dès que possible le montant de l’inscription au Compte Postal de l’ASPEP, 1703-19K Paris (en prenant en charge les éventuels frais bancaires). • Je paierai au début du Colloque. Logement : voir au verso Possibilités de logement : - Logement dans un Foyer d’accueil, à 5 minutes du Colloque : Chambre simple Chambre double (40 Euros) (50 Euros) - Hôtel 1 étoile à 10-15 minutes du Colloque : Chambre simple Chambre double (80 Euros) (90 Euros) - Hôtel 2 étoiles à 10-15 minutes du Colloque : Chambre simple Chambre double (120 Euros) (150 Euros) - Hôtel 3 étoiles à 10-15 minutes du Colloque : Chambre simple ou double (de 200 à 500 Euros) Prix approximatifs, petit déjeuner compris. • Je désire réserver une chambre d’hôtel par votre intermédiaire aux dates suivantes (en précisant le nombre de nuits) : Date : Signature : Toutes les informations complémentaires concernant l’organisation pratique du Colloque, ainsi que la brochure-programme, seront adressées en temps utile aux participants inscrits. February 24 LECTURES: "Tel Kedesh and the Maccabees" (Tel Aviv, March 10) From Oded Lipschits [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== You are invited to a lecture by Prof. Andrea M. Berlin, from Boston University, that will take place at Tel Aviv University, Monday March 10, 2015. The title of her lecture is: "Tel Kedesh and the Maccabees: A Collision between Site and Text." It will take place on Tuesday March 10, 2015 at Tel Aviv University, The Faculty of Humanities (Gilman building), Room 262, 12:15 - 13:45. It is open to all. The collision between 1 and 2 Maccabees' accounts of the Maccabean wars and the archaeological evidence raises a twofold question: 1) how does the archaeological evidence cast light on the text?; and 2) how does the recent literary analyses casting doubts on the historical reliability of the accounts of the Maccabean wars presented in 1 and 2 Maccabees affect the interpretation of the archeological evidence? eREVIEWS: Of "Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos" From < http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-02-45.html >: ====== Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.02.45 Dimitri Nakassis, Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos. Mnemosyne supplements. History and archaeology of classical antiquity, 358. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013. Pp. xiv, 448. ISBN 9789004244511. $171.00. Reviewed by Barbara Olsen, Vassar College ([email protected]) In this important monograph Dimitri Nakassis reexamines Pylian prosopography in a crucial and essential update to Margareta Lindgren’s landmark The People of Pylos: Prosopographical and Methodological Studies in the Pylos Archives (Uppsala, 1973). Named individuals have received far less scholarly attention than their titled counterparts – a critical weakness in the scholarship given that most words preserved in Mycenaean Greek are the personal names of men and women (ca. 1,930 out of 3,350). Nakassis’s narrative focuses on 800 of these names: the subset of names appearing more than once in the Pylos corpus. (An extensive appendix addresses all the Pylian names, including those appearing as hapax legomena.) In this study, Nakassis would approximate the tasks of the scribes themselves, who devoted more than half of their lexicon to personal names, by returning to the central focus of the texts themselves: the transactions of the palace and the individuals who interacted with it. The redirection of attention to individuals rather than institutional titles facilitates the recovery of the backgrounds and activities of named people, who occupied a wide range of social positions (from shipwright and herders to collectors and telestai). By focusing on those names mentioned more than once in the archive, Nakassis strikes new ground in his proposition that multiple mentions of the same name may refer to the same individual in the enactment of multiple roles. Chapter 2 establishes Nakassis’s methodology for identifying Mycenaean personal names and linking recurring names with distinct and discrete individuals. Names are identified from both linguistic forms and textual contexts, and sound strategies are offered to respond to textual homonymy (multiple words spelled with the same characters) and heteronymy (different spelling variations for the same name). Nakassis estimates that individuals named on the tablets likely constituted 2% of Pylos’s population or approximately 20% of those tracked by the palace scribes, which equates to around 6% of Pylos’s adult male population. (Women receive far less textual attention by name.) Having established his criteria for identifying named persons at Pylos, Nakassis turns to the broader question of prosopographical matching. Previous studies (Lejeune 1971, Lindgren 1973, Chadwick 1975) chose not to link multiple instances of the same name with specific individuals, especially where different toponyms were present. Nakassis is critical of this degree of skepticism, noting that these studies employed differential and inconsistent standards for identification. This criticism seems correct, especially in light of Chadwick’s and Lindgren’s willingness to accept prosopographical matches for figures of high rank and dissociation for those who seemingly belonged to the lower classes. But, Nakassis asks, what if named persons operated across multiple locales or came not only from the uppermost ranks? What might present a plausible case for identification? Nakassis establishes a prosopography where matching is achievable, by focusing on interconnections and interactions among the named. His is a preponderance-of-evidence strategy, using cumulative matches across tablets, series, locations, and functions to link names with single individuals, and to compile from these matches dossiers on the activities of specific men and women. In doing so, he offers four categories for the relative security of such matches: certain, probable, possible, and tenuous. (One might prefer more clearly identified criteria for these categories, and in places, sharper signposting between arguments based on certainty rather than probability and possibility.) Central to his argument is challenging geography as dissociative since geography serves as a conclusive determinant against prosopographical identification in only a very small number of cases. In Nakassis’s reformulation, then, prosopographical identification or dissociation of individuals should be based on lexical and contextual grounds. An example of a certain prosopographical identification would be the man Komāwens (ko-ma-we). The o-ka text An 519 places ko-ma-we among the watchers along the coast of Messenia; on this tablet ko- ma-we appears in conjunction with genitive de-wi-jo, a term which appears also on Aq 218.10, this time in conjunction with the personal name Pakhullos (pa-ku-ro2). As de-wi-jo occupies the same position on this tablet as at least four other patronymics, Nakassis argues that we should regard de-wi-jo as a patronymic with certainty. Nakassis notes the overlap of eight terms between Aq 218 and the o-ka texts and places *de-wo as the father of the (now recognized) brothers Komāwens and Pakhullos. This reading is further strengthened by the presence of both (brothers’) names on Jn 750, where they appear in close proximity. As such, Nakassis’s method is complex, but his linkages are defensible and plausible. While these are important connections per se, even more compelling are the doors they open. Kinship, for example, has remained one of the most elusive institutions of Mycenaean society. Nakassis’s work identifying these brothers and their father offers a new and tremendously exciting point of entry. Through addressing the transactional contexts in which Komāwens appears, the range of his activities can also be recovered. An 519 places Komāwens with a military detachment along the coast, and PY Jn 750 gives him a small allotment of bronze. The name appears again on Cn 925 as the name of a herder of pigs. No lexical connection is present so the case must rest solely on contextual evidence. The tablet lists three names, all with the toponym da-we-u-pi. Nakassis notes that one of the two remaining names e-do-mo-ne-u appears twice in the Jn series as a smith and once in the En/Eo series as a landholder. Nakassis further notes that while the terms ko-ma-we and e-do-mo-ne-u do not appear together on any single Jn text, both appear in the Jn series as smiths. From these convergences, Nakassis then examines the odds of random overlap of such names and notes a particularly high correspondence between the names of herders in the Cn series and the names of smiths in the Jn, concluding from this evidence that the likelihood of the pig-herder and the smith/military officer being the same person are more than probable, which would then place Komāwens as active at three different toponyms in three different capacities – a circumstance that he views as unlikely for a reading of Komāwens as a low-ranking individual because appearances at multiple sites tend to be a marker of high-status individuals. This example serves to illustrate Nakassis’s methodology – his argument rests strongly on cumulative circumstantial evidence, but his statistical analysis, logic, and thoroughness are compelling. This is a difficult path to walk, but Nakassis’s careful attention to detail creates a thoroughly compelling set of cases, and through them he offers the exciting possibility of rereading Mycenaean (regional and nonpalatial) elites. This work is nothing short of revolutionary. In two chapters, Nakassis notes considerable overlap between named individuals involved in smithing and herding (Chapter 3) and landholding and military affairs (Chapter 4). The Jn and Cn series each offer the largest cohesive sets of named individuals, with 263 and 199 names, respectively. Beginning with the smiths, Nakassis notes that strong linkages emerge between recurring names in the Jn series and those of herders in the Cn tablets, positing that many of same people were involved in both tasks. While earlier scholarship regarded most if not all of these names as distinct, Nakassis argues these dissociations were made from insufficient evidence: Jn series names recur too frequently for random homonymy. A likelier reading is that the same individuals were active at more than one site in the Pylian kingdom, suggesting that it is the individual rather than the location that should be considered the basic unit of Mycenaean production. As such then, (at least some) smiths should be thought of as mobile, operating at various locales within the Pylian state. When the 30 overlapping names between the Jn and Cn series are assessed, Nakassis finds significant overlaps between these smiths and herders beyond mere chance; it would be “highly probable” that the same men performed both tasks for more than 90% of the recurring names. From these connections, Nakassis proposes that rather than regard these smith/herders as men of low rank, these named men were important enough to have multiple responsibilities within the palatial administration and to be operating in several locations. Likewise, Nakassis notes possible and probable linkages between smiths and the men of the o-ka tablets and men in the An and E series, concluding that these smiths might have also doubled as military commanders, telestai, and a possible e-qe-ta and priest. Nakassis suggests most smiths may have been landholders. Herders, likewise, show similar patterns to smiths in their name recurrences. Twenty-seven can be matched (with certainty or strong probability) with smiths, suggesting similar social status and roles. Chapter 4 continues to apply this methodology based on lexical and contextual clues to names associated with military officers and landholders (alongside the names of those individuals who receive rations, textiles, and hides from the palace). While results here vary, nonetheless the general conclusions established in Chapter 3 seem to hold for these groups: once again strong arguments for prosopographical identifications can be made and named individuals can be tracked against a wide range of activities. A notable pattern sees the frequent repetition of named individuals of elevated standing with allocations from the palace in the form of land, skins, textiles, or foodstuffs. Some of these individuals hold religious office or appear in texts with religious associations and military matters; others also appear to provide important materials to the palace, such as payment of gold. Nakassis notes that many of the herders and smiths of Chapter 3 are involved in these activities as well, with many matching those classified in his “Certain” category. Nakassis interprets this as indicating that smithing and herding were not limited to the nonelite. From these circumstances, he draws one of his most important conclusions: that it is very difficult to generalize about any group of named individuals, even those bearing the same official titles: in addition to the previously discussed herders and smiths, even the activities of the hekwetai are quite variable on an individual level. From these observations, Nakassis concludes that no consistent pattern explains such prosopographical identifications on titular grounds and that this must indicate a lack of administrative design, leaving as the only option that such variations have to be the result of complex interactions between individuals, social groups, and the palace itself, and hence, that the categories of elites and nonelites were more fluid and complex than scholarship has previously envisioned. The text concludes with a discussion of the ramifications of detaching title as the primary marker of status in the Mycenaean world. If prosopographical dossiers are included as well, property, allocations, and responsibilities at multiple locales may serve as an equally important way of assessing – and redefining – palatial and regional elites, with a resultant major expansion of the latter category. Throughout, Nakassis argues that named individuals were not a homogenous group, but instead varied in status and importance. On the elite side we see a few individuals named across multiple tablets and involved with key affairs of the palace; on the low-ranking side are individuals appearing only in a single text with relatively minor responsibilities. Nakassis argues that his prosopography identifies some 200 individuals who fall between these extremes. This group can been seen operating in multiple economic spheres, often in different locales across Pylos; Nakassis identifies them as members of a broader elite, outside the palatial hierarchy of officeholders, who derive from wealthy families across Messenia, either performing themselves the activities recorded or supervising and delegating tasks to their dependents or kin. Overall, the work is most successful. Nakassis presents a largely persuasive argument for a near one- name, one-individual identification and for the operation of individuals in multiple locales. Moreover, his collection of multi-tablet dossiers for individuals allows the cross-referencing of a broader elite, with previously unrecognized responsibilities and spheres of operation. His index collecting all data on named individuals and their degree of prosopographical certainty opens new avenues for the analysis of previously explored topics, such as production and administration, and it provides a way to explore topics previously inaccessible to scholarship, perhaps most importantly the vital topic of kinship relations – arguably our largest remaining gap in Mycenaean studies. Highly recommended. BOOKS: Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God From < http://www.brill.com/products/book/tetragrammaton-western-christians-and-hebrew-name- god >: ====== Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century Robert J. Wilkinson €199,00 $277.00 ISBN13: 9789004284623 E-ISBN: 9789004288171 Hardback Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 179 The Christian Reception of the Hebrew name of God has not previously been described in such detail and over such an extended period. This work places that varied reception within the context of early Jewish and Christian texts; Patristic Studies; Jewish-Christian relationships; Mediaeval thought; the Renaissance and Reformation; the History of Printing; and the development of Christian Hebraism. The contribution of notions of the Tetragrammaton to orthodox doctrines and debates is exposed, as is the contribution its study made to non-orthodox imaginative constructs and theologies. Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Hermetic and magical texts are given equally detailed consideration. There emerge from this sustained and detailed examination several recurring themes concerning the difficulty of naming God, his being and his providence. Robert J. Wilkinson, Ph.D. (2004) in History, U.W.E. was before retirement Research Fellow at Wesley College and Visiting Fellow in Theology in Bristol. He is author of Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation and The Kabbalistic Scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible. (both Brill 2007). BOOKS: Prophecy and Covenant (OBO 271) From Christoph Uehlinger [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The editors of ORBIS BIBLICUS ET ORIENTALIS are pleased to announce the publication of the following new volume: OBO 271 Jean-Georges Heintz Prophétisme et Alliance Des Archives royales de Mari à la Bible hébraïque. Mit einem ‹Vorwort› von Manfred Weippert. Recueil d’études édité par Stephan Lauber, Othmar Keel et Hans Ulrich Steymans 2014. XXXVI-380 pp., 28 illustrations. 113 CHF, ca. 105 Euros, ca. 119 USD ISBN 978-3-7278-1765-6 (Academic Press Fribourg), 978-3-525-54396-2 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) This volume contains 19 articles by Jean-Georges Heintz, professor emeritus for Old Testament studies at the University of Strasbourg. The contributions deal with the origins, forms and functions of prophecy and prophetic literature in the West Semitic area and their relations to the theology of covenant and divine sovereignty. These fields are studied on the basis of Old Babylonian/Amorite texts from Mari and Syro-Palestinian literature, esp. the Hebrew Bible, in order to comprehend the evolution of institutions and traditions. A special interest is granted to the relations ancient Near Eastern iconography and the figurative language of the Hebrew Bible. A foreword in German by Manfred Weippert introduces the volume, providing an abstract and a critical analysis of each article. Jean-Georges Heintz (né en 1939), études de théologie et d’archéologie à Strasbourg, Aix, Genève et Jérusalem. De 1965 à 1978, chargé d’enseignement, puis de 1978 à 2008, Professeur d’Ancien Testament à la Faculté de Théologie Protestante de l’Université de Strasbourg, où il fonde, en 1969, le « Groupe de Recherches et d’Études Sémitiques Anciennes » (sigle : GRESA). De 1969 à 2000, chargé des conférences d’épigraphie sémitique à l’École du Louvre, Paris. Orders may be placed at - Academic Press Fribourg: http://www.paulusedition.ch/academic_press/category.php?id_category=82 or "Academic Press Fribourg" NEWS: Oldest city in the world From < http://tinyurl.com/p352zlc>: ====== What is the oldest city in the world? Mark Twain declared that the Indian city of Varanasi was 'older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend'. He was, of course, wrong. So which exactly is the world's most ancient continuously inhabited city? There was once a city called Crocodilopolis, where they worshiped the crocodile god Sobek. The people of Crocodilopolis paid devotion to an earthly representative of Sobek, a living crocodile they called Petsuchos and covered in gold and gems and kept in a temple, though it is unclear how they did this without loss of life or limb. When one Petsuchos died, they simply replaced him with another, like a fairground goldfish. Crocodilopolis was established on the Nile, southwest of Memphis, about 4,000BC. The Egyptians called it Shedet (it was the Greeks who, wise to the city's USP, gave it its snappy name), and it was possibly the most ancient city in ancient Egypt. It is now part of the modern city of Faiyum - which makes Faiyum possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. But only possibly. Beyond the easy task of immediately discounting every city in North America and Australasia, identifying the world's oldest continuously inhabited city is an uncertain business. There is a mess of claim and counterclaim, myth and legend, architectural digs and disputed evidence. One reason for the stickiness of this subject is the whole matter of deciding when a settlement becomes a city at all - some argue when it abandons simple self-sufficiency and establishes trade, others when it develops plumbing. There is also a long-running spat in academic circles about whether cities could predate agriculture. The ancient Roman theatre (built sometime between AD114-117) in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ancient Roman theatre (built sometime between AD114-117) in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Photograph: De Agostini/W Buss/Getty But even among places that are undisputedly cities, the claimants stretch from Varanasi, India to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Varanasi (once known as Benares) can count Mark Twain in its corner - "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together," Twain said - but its claim seems to rest on the legend that it was established by Lord Shiva in 3,000BC, while all the actual evidence suggests it was founded on the Ganges 2,000 years later. Plovdiv, meanwhile, has a far stronger case, with evidence of continuous settlement dating back to 6,000BC. But it is the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent that is the most, well, fertile area for antique urbanity. Not that this makes the job of firmly planting a flag on the oldest city any easier. Cities in this region have not shouted their claims, or investigated them, or tried to trade them for the tourist dollar, as energetically as have the big hitters in ancient city fame, such as Rome, Athens or even Cirencester. Iraq for instance has Kirkuk, once the ancient Assyrian capital of Arrapha, founded around 2,200BC, and with the ruins of a 5,000-year-old castle to prove its bona fides. Then there is nearby Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which claims settlements dating back to 6,000BC. Iran meanwhile has Susa, now the delightfully named Shush, administrative centre of Shush Country, which has an acropolis - a sure sign of ancient city status - that is carbon-dated to around 4,200BC, and evidence of permanent homemaking going back another 800 years. Susa's claims are somewhat dented, however, by the fact that it was downgraded to "small settlement" between the 15th and 20th centuries. Jerusalem and Beirut can both claim urbanisation going back to at least 3,000 BC, as can Jericho in the West Bank. Indeed, archeologists have found evidence of 20 successive settlements in Jericho dating back as far as 9,000BC. And they were already building walls around their proto-city: serious 12ft high, 6ft wide walls, a remarkable and unprecedented feat of defensive architecture. Jericho, as the Bible tells us, developed a thing about walls. The city later became a private estate for Alexander the Great, and Herod - that Herod - leased it from Cleopatra, who had been given it by Mark Anthony as a gift. What else do you give the woman who has everything? Again, though, Jericho has a tenuous grip on the "continuously inhabited" tag, having been largely abandoned for centuries on end. Byblos, a once groovy Mediterranean resort in Lebanon, is possibly the first Phoenician city, founded in 7000BC - not as old as Jericho, maybe, but at least it can claim continuous habitation since 5,000 BC. Damascus was once a (largely) undisputed shoo-in for oldest city. It was name-checked in Genesis, and there is evidence of settlement going back to 9,000BC. Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence of meaningful activity in what is now Damascus proper until the 2nd millennium BC - a bit like West Bromwich arriving seven centuries before Birmingham. (Herod, by the way, may also have been gifted Damascus. He was clearly doing something right.) Ironically, it is not Damascus but Aleppo, poor, benighted Aleppo, which is actually Syria's largest city and was once a mighty rival to Cairo and Constantinople, that has a far stronger case for being the world's oldest city. The evidence of settlement goes back to 6,000BC, but excavations north of the city suggest wandering nomads made domestic camps here 5,000 years before that. Written records show that Aleppo was an important city long before Damascus. It is really only since the opening of the Suez Canal that Aleppo has declined as a major trading city. Until the recent civil war, there had been serious efforts to preserve the citadel, which dates back to the first century BC, as well as Aleppo's mosques and its medieval hammams and souks. All that has now gone up in smoke, and Aleppo's old city is so much rubble and ruin. It may be impossible to say with any certainty what is the world's oldest city - for a very old argument, it is remarkably fluid, with new discoveries all the time - but for now it seems only right to give it to Aleppo, the oldest city currently being fought for and sacked, as all these cities have from the beginning. CONFERENCES: "Terracottas in the Mediterranean through Time" (Haifa, March 23-26) From Adi Erlich [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Conference: "Terracottas in the Mediterranean through Time" 23-26 March 2015 University of Haifa, Israel Eshkol Tower, 30th floor The conference is under the auspices of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, School of History, Department of Art History in the University of Haifa, and the Association for Coroplastic Studies. Monday, March 23 8:30 Registration and coffee 9:00-9:30 Opening remarks: Adi Erlich, University of Haifa Keynote: 2015, the Year of Coroplastic Studies Jaimee Uhlenbrock, President of the Association for Coroplastic Studies (ACoSt) 9:30-11:00 The Deconstructed Body: Heads, Protomai, Hands Chairperson: Jaimee Uhlenbrock, President of the Association for Coroplastic Studies (ACoSt) . Countenances of Clay: Isolated Heads and Terracottas in Pre-Roman Italy Keely Heuer, State University of New York at New Paltz . Gestures and Symbology of the Terracotta Hands from the Cave of the Nymph Koroneia, Boeotia, Greece Stavros Oikonomidis, Arcadia University, Glenside and Nelli Skumi, Ephorate of Paleoanthropology and Speleology, Athens . Votive Terracotta Protomai in Greek Sanctuaries and their Settings Sanne Hoffmann, the National Museum of Denmark and Aarhus University 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-13:00 Terracottas in Sanctuaries I Chairperson: Ofra Rimon, Hecht Museum . Fragments of Identities: The Goddess Parthenos, her Cult and Worshippers in Light of Terracotta Votives from her Sanctuary in Neapolis (Greece, Modern Kavala) Alexandra Prokova, University of Cologne . Figurative Terracottas from a Cave Sanctuary at Paliambela Vonitsas, (Akarnania), West Greece Aggie Karadima (on behalf of Evangelia-Miranda Chatziotou, Ephoreia of Speleology and Palaioanthropology of South Greece, Athens) . Terracotta Finds from the Demeter and Kore Sanctuary at Ancient Corinth Sonia Klinger, University of Haifa 13:00-14:30 Lunch Break 14:30-16:00 Terracottas in Sanctuaries II Chairperson: Sonia Klinger, University of Haifa . A Glimpse of Large-Scale Terracotta Figures from Gela Workshops in Late-Archaic and Classical Periods Marina Albertocchi, CNR-IBAM, National Research Council of Italy . The Function and Meaning of the Large Clay Statues from Despotiko Yannos Kourayos, Paros Archaeological Museum; Erica Angliker, University of Zurich and Kornilia Daifa, Greek Ministry of Culture . On Sacred Ground: Interpreting Diverse Depositional Contexts at the Pantanello Sanctuary at Metaponto Rebecca Miller Ammerman, Colgate University, Hamilton NY 16:00-16:30 Coffee break 16:30-18:00 Types, Meaning and Context Chairperson: Adi Erlich, University of Haifa . Hellenistic Grotesque Figurines: Societal Functions on Mainland Greece Heather Bowyer, Arizona State University . Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Terracottas from Secondary and Primary Contexts in Pergamon and its Region: a Confrontation Sven Kielau, Independent Researcher . Terracotta Figurines and Fertility Cult in Ashqelon in the Byzantine Period Fanny Vitto, Israel Antiquities Authority 18:00 Reception and general meeting of the Association for Coroplastic Studies (ACoSt) Tuesday, March 24 9:00-11:00 Technique, Production and Artisans I Chairperson: Assaf Yasur-Landau . From Production to Consumption: Life Histories of Figurines from Cretan Bronze Age Peak Sanctuaries Christine Morris, Trinity College Dublin and Alan Peatfield, University College Dublin . Understanding the Choices of Artisans in the Production of the Base-Ring Female Figurines from Cyprus Constantina Alexandrou, Trinity College Dublin . Judean Pillar Figurines and the Organization of Production:Evidence from Jerusalem and Beyond Erin Darby, University of Tennessee, Knoxville . Sculpture in Clay: The Techniques of the Ancient Coroplast Nancy Serwint, Arizona State University 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-13:00 Technique, Production and Artisans II Chairperson: Gerald Finkielsztejn, Israel Antiquities Authority . 'Made in Akragas', Moulded Figurines, an Archaeological Experiment Gerrie van Rooijen, Leiden University . A Technological and Compositional Study of the Hellenistic and Roman Terracotta Figurines from the House of Orpheus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, University of Cyprus; Giorgos Papantoniou, Trinity College Dublin; Demetrios Michaelides, University of Cyprus; Eleni Aloupi-Siotis, THETIS Authentics Ltd ; and Vassilis Kilikoglou, National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" . Relatives in Province: Sepulchral Appliqué from the 1st-2nd Centuries AD Bosporus - a Phenomenon of Terracotta Reliefs Reissued in Plaster Nadia C. Jijina, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg 13:00 Tour of Caesarea Maritima, the Carmel beach, and dinner in a Druse village on Mount Carmel Wednesday, March 25 9:00-11:00 Terracottas and Gender Chairperson: Ayelet Gilboa, University of Haifa . Gendering Figurines: Sex, Gender, and Ideology in Figurine Studies Erin Averett, Creighton University, Omaha and Erin Darby, University of Tennessee, Knoxville . Mycenaean Figures and Figurines as Gendered Bodies Ann-Louise Schallin, University of Gothenburg . Who Used the Judean Pillar Figurines? Raz Kletter, University of Helsinki . Motifs Defining Male and Female Images on Chalcolithic Ossuaries Dina Shalem, Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-13:30 Terracottas of the Late Bronze and Iron Age in the Southern Levant Chairperson: Tallay Ornan, the Hebrew University . New Figurines from Tell Jemmeh: Assessment of a Border Site David Ben Shlomo, Ariel University, Israel . Putting Together the Pieces: A New Look at the Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Figurines and Vessels from Samaria Daphna Tsoran, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . The Female Terracotta Figurines from the Iron Age II Found in Jordan Regine Hunziker-Rodewald, University of Strasbourg . The Megiddo-Ta'anach Figurines Revisited Laura Peri, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem 13:30-15:00 Lunch break and a free tour of the Hecht Museum 15:00-16:30 Between the Koine and the Regional Chairperson: Talila Michaeli, Tel Aviv University . The Effects of Miniaturization: Figurines and Social Change in Hellenistic Babylonia Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Southern Methodist University, Dallas . The Reclining Figurines from Seleucia on the Tigris: Transformation of Iconographies and Cultural Complexity in Seleucid and Parthian Mesopotamia Roberta Menegazzi, Centro Ricerche Archeologiche e Scavi di Torino per il Medio Oriente e l'Asia, Torino . Ritual Gestures and Bodily Communication: Exploring Religious Transformation in Cyprus during the First Millennium BC Giorgos Papantoniou, Trinity College Dublin 16:30-17:00 Coffee break 17:00-18:30 Interpreting Terracottas in the Greco-Roman Near East and Egypt Chairperson: Moshe Fischer, Tel Aviv University . "The Gesture of Blessing" on Near Eastern Clay Figurines of the Roman Period Renate Rosenthal-Heginbottom, Independent scholar . The Role of Greco- Roman Egyptian Terracotta figurines as Representatives of the Notion of "Divine Reflexivity": a Case Study of Figurines from the Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem Rachel Caine Kreinin, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem . Graeco-Egyptian Coroplastic Art: Interpreting Formal Consistency and Changes of Meaning Veit Vaelske, Humboldt-Universität Berlin 18:30 Closing remarks, Adi Erlich Thursday, 26 March 8:00-18:00 Tour of sites in northern Israel: Megiddo, Beth She'an (Nysa-Scythopolis), Sea of Galilee The participation in the conference is free of charge. Participation in the tours is subject to early registration and depending upon availability. To register for the conference and for inquiries please contact: eREVIEWS: Of "Les dialogues Adversus Iudaeos...." From < http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-02-31.html >: ====== Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.02.31 Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, Bernard Pouderon (ed.), Les dialogues Adversus Iudaeos: Permanences et mutations d'une tradition polémique. Actes du colloque international organisé les 7 et 8 décembre 2011 à l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne. Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité, 196. Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 2013. Pp. 428. ISBN 9782851212634. €46.00 (pb). Reviewed by Barbara Crostini, Stockholm University ([email protected]) [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.] This is an extremely wide-ranging, informative, and balanced collection of essays on a body of literature that is as important as it is sensitive in the current scholarly investigations of intercultural and interfaith relationships across the centuries. The individual contributions are of the highest level, displaying remarkable scholarship but also subtlety in reviewing the materials. While the weight of the evidence lies in the late antique period, which receives the greatest number of contributions in the volume (pp. 49–268), the perusal of this genre into the medieval period (pp. 269–384) and beyond (pp. 385–402) affords a better perspective by which to evaluate the earlier dialogues, whose context is necessarily constrained by our limited knowledge about the period. The collection focuses on the issue of continuity and change in attitudes towards the Jews as reflected in these literary Christian compositions, focusing on the evaluation of the historical accuracy of these fictional debates. Thus several contributions consider how far the dialogues must be considered the product of their author's imagination rather than the mirror of actual diatribes and whether or not they are based on current knowledge of the adversary's tradition and beliefs. While the typical analysis emphasizes the alienation of the Christian author from any real contact with Jewish believers and thus views his writing as a purely dialectical construction for the sake of debate (see in particular the vehement and detailed portrait of Justin's Trypho as his “homme de paille” (‘straw man’) in Munnich's lengthy contribution), the later evidence about official interactions between the two communities in specially staged contexts (such as the 1260 Barcelona trial) carries the echo of similar attitudes, arguments, and outcomes that—centuries before and with due distinctions—were captured in the earlier dialogues. Thus, to quote Bobichon's conclusion to his own essay, which stands as a summary to the book: “la "vérité" de l'échange n'est pas nécessairement liée à son historicité [...]. Le dialogue peut être plus authentique en ne se présentant pas comme tel” (p. 400). It is in itself remarkable that the production of this religious polemic extended without interruption from the centuries when Christianity originated to those in which it had become the dominant religion, at least in some regions. The variation in social and cultural importance of Christianity does not immediately register as a variation in tone or substance of the discourse with the Jews. At the same time, from the Jewish point of view, there may have been a difference between dealing with Christianity as a fledgling offshoot and later as a theologically well-developed contender bolstered by an elaborate institutional structure. The diachronic perspective has the benefit of placing such debates within the broader task of self-definition and affirmation of Christianity, as well as comparing their aims with those of other types of polemic, notably that against heretics and against Muslims. The sharpness of tone does not, in this perspective, appear ad hominem. Patrick Andrist, for example, points out how violently Cyril of Jerusalem attacked other adversaries, so that his lashes at the Jews are contextualized as part of his overall catechetical aims, whose vehemence revealed a special concern for his audience rather than just (to us) appalling rudeness. Anna Sapir Abulafia also remarks that “monastic disputations... were hardly characterised by polite exchange of ideas” (p. 340). Her point about the Christian self-serving purpose in staging these Christian-Jewish disputations is further borne out by the example of the Miroir de Moines analysed in the following contribution by Claire Soussen. The paradigmatic role of these arguments for Christian preaching fits the continued missionary impulse of this religion both near home and further afield. Surely, one aspect of the continued development and re-staging of the Dialogues 'aduersus Iudaeos' must be found in the fundamental role the Old Testament continued to play in Christian theology: as this volume argues, the interpretation of this text could not happen far from its Jewish audience. The common exegetical interest is expertly explored by Gilbert Dahan, who speaks of “exégèses qui s'influencent mutuellement” not only regarding content, but especially concerning methods: he argues that the medieval understanding of the four senses of Scripture is parallel to the Jewish methods of interpretation. A subtle and learned exegete such as Nicholas-Nektarios abbot of Casole in Southern Italy (d. 1235) provides a shining example of such engagement with Jewish exegetes of his time, while keeping in mind the whole tradition of translation of the Septuagint, including a re-evaluation of Aquila's, as Claudio Schiano explains (see esp. pp. 308–311). The biblical index at the end of the volume is a precious tool for anyone wishing to probe the use of specific passages in future research. Pierluigi Lanfranchi’s essay could have been foregrounded in the structure of the volume, since it addresses fundamental issues concerning the very notion of dialogue. Lanfranchi takes to task Simon Goldhill's The End of Dialogue in Antiquity, arguing that—despite the literary and artificial nature of the dialogic genre—the real voices of both protagonists and antagonists can be heard as coming with urgency from a cultural substratum where both such viewpoints mattered. This reflection on what can be reasonably expected from the sources and how to read the signs they contain is a question of method, which he exemplifies by considering passages from the huge corpus of Letters of Isidore of Pelusium, and papyri attesting to contacts between communities in Egypt. Lanfranchi points out how little we know of the spectrum of Judaism in different places, so that the circularity of the arguments judging the evidence from late antique dialogues on the basis of specific expectations is exposed. Moreover, the 'adversus' mode, which is supposed to fossilize the opponent into a convenient target, is undermined by the vitality Lanfranchi perceives in these literary exchanges, which ultimately present the Jews as “un partenaire culturel” at once distinct and similar, conditions that alone permit any form of exchange. As the introduction announces, a number of recent doctoral theses on the dialogues merited the attention of the participants in the conference that produced this volume. While hoping that the publication of the individual works will be forthcoming, this coherent and informative collection of essays offers an excellent starting point for approaching this corpus and represents a major contribution to the field. The index of authors contributes to laying the groundwork for research, though perhaps a bibliographical listing of the primary sources and of the rich secondary literature cited across the volume would have afforded a useful bird's eye view of the volume's scope and achievement. Table of Contents Sébastien Morlet, Olivier Munnich, Bernard Pouderon Avant-propos, 7–20 Sébastien Morlet, Les dialogues adversus Iudaeos: origine, caractéristiques, référentialité, 21–48 Justin de Néapolis Dan Jaffé, Adversus Iudaeos: la loi et les observances dans le Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo, 49– 66 Bernard Pouderon, La source de l'argumentation de Tryphon dans le Dialogue de Justin: confrontation de deux thèses, 67–94 Olivier Munnich, Le judaïsme dans le Dialogue avec Tryphon: une fiction littéraire de Justin, 95–158 Antiquité tardive Laetitia Ciccolini, La Controverse de Jason et Papiscus: le témoignage de l'Ad Vigilium episcopum de Iudaica incredulitate faussement attribué à Cyprien de Carthage, 159–174 Mickaël Ribreau, Quand deux allégories débattent devant les censeurs: fonctionnement rhétorique et argumentatif de l'Altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae, 175–198 Patrick Andrist, Polémique religieuse et dialogue adversus Iudaeos au service de la catéchèse, l'exemple de Cyril de Jérusalem, 199–224 Pierluigi Lanfranchi, L'image du judaïsme dans les dialogues adversus Iudaeos, 225–236 Christian Boudignon, “Les temos du saint baptême n'est pas encore venu.” Nouvelles considérations sur la Doctrina Jacobi, 237–256 Vincent Déroche, Les dialogues aduersus Iudaeos face aux genres parallèles, 257–269 Moyen Âge Immacolata Aulisa, La polemica aduersos Iudaeos nell'agiografia dell'Alto Medioevo, 269–295 Claudio Schiano, Il Dialogo contro i giudei di Nicola di Otranto tra fonti storiche e teologiche, 295– 319 Gilbert Dahan, Les questions d'exégèse dans les dialogues contre les juifs XIIe–XIIIe siècles, 319– 338 Anna Sapir Abulafia, The Service of Jews in Christian-Jewish Disputations, 339–350 Claire Soussen, La parole de l'autre, la prise en compte des arguments de l'adversaire dans la polémique anti-juive à la fin du Moyen Âge, 351–368 Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, Dialogues byzantins du XIVe s. entre des chrétiens et des juifs, 369–384 Philippe Bobichon, Persistance et avatars de la forme dialoguée dans la littérature chrétienne et juive de controverse: XIVe–XVIIIe siècles, 385–402 Index biblique, 403–408 Index des auteurs anciens et médiévaux, 409–426 Table des matières, 427–428 INTERVIEWS: With Moulie Vidas From < https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/interview-with-prof-moulie-vidas/>: ====== Interview with Prof Moulie Vidas Alan Brill Talmudic source criticism goes back to the nineteenth century philological method of reading texts where history, linguistics, and literary structure hold clues to a texts meaning. For Americans, Chaim Potok's novel The Promise immortalized the issues around layering the Talmudic text by linguistic strata, solving difficult passages by looking at variant manuscripts, and even reading Tannaic texts outside of their Talmudic context. For some, these methods are simply handmaidens useful for a clearer understanding of the Talmud, while for the specialists in the academy these topics are their prime focus. Once the world of academic Talmud was limited to Rabbinical seminaries and taught by those whose erudition and pedigree was identical with that of Rosh Yeshiva. Now, the study of the Talmud has fully entered the academy and is open to all similar to the study of other texts of antiquity such as those in Greek, Latin, Coptic, or Syriac. The new holder of the chair in Talmud at Princeton University is Moulie Vidas who graduated Princeton and after a brief stint at UC Davis returned to join the Princeton faculty in 2012. In an article celebrating his arrival in California, the local paper did a laudatory feature on him. "Here's a guy, a secular Israeli, who studied Talmud at Tel Aviv University," said fellow U.C. Davis faculty member David Biale, "and within a very short time came to master something that was considered only possible to people who went to yeshiva their whole lives." Though the Tel Aviv native never set foot in a yeshiva as a youth, he says his interest in Talmud stemmed from a desire to know "what the other side thinks. When I got to actually study these texts, the brilliance of the Talmud, the great erudition, attracted me to it. " Continuing his praise of Vidas, "He's an incredibly charming, very intellectually curious, open-minded person, " Biale said. "I think students are going to love him." His recent book, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud, (Princeton University Press, 2014) starts a new research agenda for Talmudic source criticism. For the entire Introduction- see here. The regnant approach to Talmudic source criticism is that there is a pristine early Amoraic layer in the Talmud and the later layer was an addition that changed the earlier material, making the discussion more abstract, or creating dialectics and justifications. This approach is usually associated with Shamma Freidman and David Weiss-Halivni who focus on the modern construct called the Stammaim. Both Friedman and Weiss-Halivni seek to restore the earlier strata since it represent a reliable corpus of traditions, unlike the conjectures of the later "give and take." Some rabbis, for example within the Kibbutz Hadati movement, will occasionally advocate for one of these excavated earlier positions as the true opinion of the Oral law. In contrast, Vidas assumes that the entire Talmudic argument, the entire sugya is one unit. A somewhat similar literary approach was taught by Abraham Weiss at YU and by Louis Jacobs in his books on the Talmudic Argument. However, Vidas' innovation is that the texts that seem like earlier texts are literary devices by the later era to create a sense of distance from themselves and the allowing for a creative opening. For him, demarcating opinions as traditional "can be used to invoke discontinuity" by fossilizing them as the past. He cites the Continental theorist Agamben, that quotations in a text do not transmit as much as distance; "the quotation at once... invests it with an alienating power." The Talmud is no longer a conservative repository of traditions, rather a literary "self-conception of its creators." There is no earlier opinion, just a later text presenting the topic as if there was a later and earlier layer. Vidas accepts the views stated by others that the Bavli was about dialectic, analysis, and abstraction, portraying itself as innovative and creative against those who are too conservative. All their innovations were to be considers as from Sinai. Who were the conservative alternatives? The Tannaim- the repeaters- were those who made the goal to consist entirely of memorization, transmission and recitation. Vidas conjectures that they did not have the secondary role of textual preservation assigned to them by the creative Amoraim, rather they were a competing and antagonistic group that advocated recitation as its own goal. Based on this dichotomy, Vidas situates the Heikhalot literature with their emphasis on correct memorization and recitation as allied or even associated with the tanaim. (Compare David J. Halperin, who situated the Heikhalot as outside of Rabbinic Judiasm entirely). The conclusion to Vidas' book offered an illuminating contrast of the Geonim who stressed the continuity of the Oral law, probably due to Islamic era concerns. Those parts of Orthodoxy which echo with the concept of continuity, may not see the Talmud for its creative analysis. As noted three years ago on the Talmud blog by those in the field, the specialization of rabbinic texts is no longer a provincial Rabbinic or Talmudist position, rather one is now a specialist in Judaism in late antiquity or Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. (Job seekers take note.) Saul Lieberman was proud that he never visited Columbia's Library since he limited his sights to an internal perspective, in contrast during the same years E. R. Goodenough wrote about a Jewish-Pagan synthesis without having to cite Talmud. Now, Talmud is integrated with the wider historical context, hence Vidas has important comparisons and contrasts between the Talmud's tension of recitation vs dialectics with those of Syriac Christians and Zoroastrians. In recent work, Vidas has written on priestly ritual law in comparative perspective and has edited a volume on ways of knowing in late antiquity. Vidas' work has already been subject to two online reviews. One at the Talmud blog here ( First, by examining closely the formal operation of [only] several substantial sugyot, Vidas wants to revise a picture of editorial activity that was built, by scholars like David Weiss Halivni, on hundreds, if not thousands, of such analyses... The book's first half has to be read as a scholarly program. Significant future analysis is needed. Vidas suggests we instead, at least sometimes, read sugyot as crafted, intentional wholes and ask: what literary effects did the editors intend? But such effects are culturally conditioned, and sometimes Vidas assumes that the irony or subversion a modern reader detects necessarily reflects authorial intention. To give one example, when Vidas asserts that punning associations between place names and problematic genealogical categories "seems in this context to be a parody of the arbitrariness of the production of genealogical stratification," he implicitly assumes the rabbis saw homophones as arbitrary coincidences. But the rabbis, who sometimes regard language as quasi-magical, may have been completely serious about the significance of puns. Vidas is currently working on a monograph on the emergence of Talmudic culture in Roman Palestine. How does the Bavli show its alterity, its past making? How does it show its distancization from earlier sources? The first half of the book argues that, while earlier scholarship has been correct in emphasizing how the Talmud projects continuity with its sources, there are pervasive stylistic features of the Talmud that are used, like air quotes, to mark (or produce - more on this later on) these sources' alterity. Consider how we use quotation marks in writing or air quotes in oral communication - we do that to mark a certain distance between ourselves and what we are quoting. The most important of those features is the layered structure, the division between "sources" and "interpretation" or "narration." The anonymous narrating layer of the Talmud that we encounter on almost every page guides us through the different "sources," introducing them and commenting on them and constructing various relationships among them. Often, we can very easily distinguish this voice and its sources because of stylistic features: the narration and commentary are almost always in Aramaic whereas the sources are almost always in Hebrew; and sources are introduced with citation terms, whether they are attributed ("Rabbi X says") or anonymous sources ("It was recited..."). These features are not necessary. Both types of materials, for example, could have been expressed in the same language. This is especially evident when the interpretation is interpolated or added into a statement - in those cases, the choice to express the interpretation in Aramaic marks off (at least ostensibly) the original source from the later interpretation. The Talmud could have (and sometimes does) re-formulate the statement in a way that does not indicate this distance. And indeed, in Tannaitic sources, that was probably the more common way to adapt rabbinic traditions - we can see this when we compare the Mishnah and Tosefta for example. My basic question was why the Talmud's creators chose not to do this but rather keep sources and interpretations separate. How is the Bavli not simply chronology but literary device? Some scholars might read what I just said and say: well, sure, but this distance is simply a result of how the Bavli came into being. Both Halivni and Friedman (to different degrees and in different ways) conceive of the layered structure as reflecting stages in the formation of the text and its sources. First, they say, the sources were produced; then, later rabbis came and weaved a narrative and interpretation around these sources. To the extent that we can observe a distance, then, it is simply because there actually was chronological distance between the sources and those who wrote the interpretation; and furthermore - these scholars suggest, the structure of the Talmud was meant to downplay, bridge, or even hide this distance. The second chapter of Tradition suggests that this distance is not always a reflection of the text's history. Rather, it is a feature of the text's self-representation, which may sometimes be the result of a literary construction. The chapter offers two instances in the Bavli in which, I think, the most plausible way to account for the layered structure is that it was imposed on the passage at a later stage. When we compare these Bavli passages to what is likely their earlier versions in the Yerushalmi, we can see that in the Bavli there is a move towards a layered structure: narrating and discursive functions which in the Yerushalmi are taken on by attributed statements are taken in the Bavli by the anonymous layer. That is, the texts went through a re-organization to fit the pattern of representation in which sources are attributed whereas interpretation and discussion is anonymous. This produces, rather than simply represents, the distance between sources and interpretation. I think there are good reasons to think that this process happened often. But regardless of their representative value, these cases allow us to re-think the layered structure. They allow us to think of this structure not as an inevitable consequence of rabbinic transmission, but as something that could be desired, a literary device that had an important function for those who used it. In a nutshell, my claim is that in a culture that prized both transmission and innovation, the layered structure epitomized both. By distinguishing between what is transmitted and what is innovated, it allowed those who presented lectures in the academy to model for their students the process of innovation instead of just showing them the conclusion of that process; and it also allowed them to claim both kinds of authority - they presented themselves both as faithful transmitters of tradition from the past as well as sophisticated, innovative interpreters of these traditions. How are the Heikhalot and magical circles connected to the Mishnaic recitation way of thinking? Hekhalot and non-Jewish sources give us a critical perspective on what the Talmudists were doing with tradition because, I think, they show us what other options were available for them at the time - what the Talmudists chose not to practice, and in fact what they chose to argue against. The argument in the book is that one way the "masters of talmud" defined themselves was to think of what they were doing as different from the reciters - the tanna'im or "masters of mishnah." Note, in this context, tanna'im does not mean the sages of the Tannaitic period and the Mishnah, but rather those who the focused on the recitation and transmission of rabbinic traditions. Several Talmudic passages take a fairly negative attitude towards these reciters. Following these Talmudic passages, traditional as well as academic scholars have portrayed these reciters as the mindless teaching assistants of the real scholars. My argument is that this understanding of the reciters is the result of ideological construction, and that what we see in the Talmud is one side of a debate about how to approach rabbinic tradition. Some of the sages of the period prized exacting analysis of rabbinic tradition that resulted in innovative commentary, while others focused on ritual recitation of the texts that bridged the gap with the past. The problem, however, is that a reading of Talmudic passages, even if it is very critical, gets us only so far - you can often reconstruct the democrat's view from a republican's, but it is far better if you have the republican's speech itself. This is where the Hekhalot and magical texts come into the picture. What I think we can see in them is something like the view that the Talmud does battle with - they emphasize a ritual approach to recitation of tradition, they de-emphasize critical analysis, and they present a rich discourse of memorization and retention that sees in these activities a goal in themselves and indeed likens them to the heavenly liturgy. 4. How is this similar to Zoroastrian, Syriac Christian, and Mishnah? The Zoroastrian and Syriac Christian materials I used, in part, for a similar purpose - to show that, even though the Talmud often presents recitation as simply an aid to intellectual study, in those (and other Jewish) sources, recitation is a ritual in which intellectual analysis is far from the most important component. Furthermore, we can see that both in the Zoroastrian tradition and in the Christian tradition there were similar - but very far from identical - debates about the relationship between analysis and ritual recitation. What may seem at first as a very internal Jewish debate was one inflection of a broader conversation in the period. 5. What is the approach of the Geonim? How has that led later readers to see the Talmud through Geonic lens? There were a number of developments in the Geonic period that I think really changed the way in which the Talmud and rabbinic tradition were understood. The most important is of course that the Talmud gradually became a fixed text early in this period - so talmud no longer meant an analytical engagement with rabbinic traditions but a study of a particular text, the Talmud. Geonic literature - especially the influential sources after the Karaites - promoted understandings of rabbinic tradition that emphasized continuity and traditionalism. The Geonim did not, of course, invented these positions out of nothing - they had strong sources in the rabbinic corpus. But they chose to deemphasize other sources, and occasionally they reverse the tone and value of talmudic sugyot on the subject. Scholars such as Jay Harris have already shown that the Geonim understood midrash to be supportive of existing traditions rather than creative of new ones, in contrast with the frequent representations of Midrash as creative in rabbinic sources. Let me give one example in which R. Sherira's approach can be contrasted with the Talmud's. I mentioned earlier how the Talmud is often negative towards tanna'im, and scholars have shown that at least some layers in the Talmud prefer the innovation-oriented scholar to the retention-oriented scholars. In tractate Sotah, Rav Nahman mocks the reciter who "does not know" what he recites, and the passage culminates in harsh words against such retention-oriented scholars who dare to issue legal instructions. Sherira takes almost completely the opposite approach. He acknowledges the importance of penetrating dialectical study, but then immediately goes on a long digression that asserts, unambiguously, the preference for conversation. Even though the retention-oriented scholars "does not know" how to extract logical implications, the Ga'on explains, he is more apt than the innovation-inclined scholar to issue legal instructions. 6. What does Talmud study offer the secular student? Part of what I think the Talmud can teach us is the limited value of questions about the value or purpose of learning. Of course, in some sense, such questions are important, and one can certainly ask them about the Talmud, and the answers will differ according to context. The Talmud offers students of late antiquity a very significant testimony of various aspects of the period from dinner formalities through legal thinking through mythology - so significant in part because of its sheer size (I think it is the largest single document from the period, if it can be thought of as a single document). For secular Jews or others in the community interested in reform, serious study of the Talmud can be part of undoing or criticizing repressive policies and views that have originated in the text or its commentaries. For the liberal arts student, it provides a fantastic experience of humanistic study which is at the same time similar and so obviously different from the Graeco-Roman tradition we practice; this de-familiarizing experience can truly broaden one's mind - especially when it is joined with the agility of mind that Talmudic study itself encourages. But again, the Talmud might also teach us the limits of questions about the value, utility or purpose of learning, because it shows us the enormous power and vitality of a leaning which almost completely suspended such teleological questions. Sure, that suspension may have originated in the sense that learning Torah was a divine directive and therefore valuable in itself. But I do not see a good reason it should not inspire those who do not obey or indeed believe in such directives. 7. What do you tell Orthodox scholars that think they own all access and interpretations of the Talmud? The surprising answer to this question is that I don't encounter this as often as I thought I would - and also mind it much less when I do! Of course, that is in part because the Orthodox people I meet tend to be those who are committed to cutting-edge work that is very critical of traditional understanding, and I realize that this is not precisely representative of the entire Orthodox community. But I'm pointing that out because it's interesting that in Talmud - unlike, say, in the case of other sacred texts - some of the most daring research frameworks have come from people who are also committed to Orthodoxy or Halakhah. I'm not sure what I'll say to someone who thinks that just because they are Orthodox it means they understand the Talmud better than someone with appropriate training who is not Orthodox. That position seems just so obviously wrong to me. But if, in order to understand the position you describe, I can try to read it more charitably, I will say that I understand why people can be suspicious of those who work in Talmud who do not have a traditional Yeshiva background. Now, that suspicion, like any prejudice or generalization, is very often proven wrong - there is a large number of highly-respected scholars who do not come from this background. But it's also true - and here I'm turning the critical light on my own community - that both secular Jews and Talmud academics have not been as successful as we might want in developing an apparatus that provides an alternative to the Yeshiva world in terms of training students. Studying Talmud without that background still requires an extraordinary personal commitment, and while many had this commitment and became leaders in the field, it is also true that we also see some bad work out there. Things are getting better and better, I think (with online databases, reliable dictionaries, better introductory texts, grammar books, etc). 8. Why does the knowledge of purity laws help define the scholar and canon? What made Mira Balberg and me curious about the purity laws was that the Bavli represents the study of purity laws both as something amazing - the pinnacle of difficulty and achievement, and at the same time as something suspicious - associated with bad moral character traits such as pride, distant from the divine, this-worldly. Our argument was that this representation was used by the rabbis as a self-portrait to describe what they saw the achievements and failures of their scholastic culture. We suggested that one of the reasons the study of purity in particular was apt for this purpose was a tension that was already there in Palestinian sources. On the one hand, the field of purity is perhaps the most "ontological" or descriptive of rabbinic fields: that is, it is concerned nor with what one should or shouldn't do, but with what things are or aren't - is this object pure? is it impure? On the other hand, the rabbis were very much aware that this description was very much dependent on a scholarly process of argumentation and reasoning - consider the disciple in Yavne who could render the sheretz pure and impure a hundred times. This tension between a field that on the one hand purports to say something about "reality," but in which reality is also very much susceptible to scholarly manipulation and deliberation (think about the oven of Akhnai), made it a good element in discussions of rabbinic scholarly ambition and its limits. 9. What does your forthcoming anthology show about knowledge among ancient Jews? The drive behind Late Ancient Knowing was to try new approaches to intellectual history in late antiquity. What we felt was - I think I represent both Catherine Chin and me when I say this - that after a great deal of work in questions of the social history of the period (questions on identity or community or the body) we can return, armed with a fresh perspective, to questions about knowledge. In part, we wanted to emphasize how knowledge was "practical" - how it allowed people not only to perceive the world but also to interact with it, and vice versa - how interaction with the world informed the way that people "knew" it. The rabbinic corpus was particularly good to think with about practical knowledge because, in a sense, rabbinic literature presents a very clear challenge to simple distinctions between "practical" and "theoretical": on the one hand, topics in anthropology or theology or epistemology are treated through the most mundane and practical questions (e.g., discussion of animal-related torts); on the other hand, these most mundane and practical questions are themselves often formulated in very theoretical and abstract way (and all that without even getting into the serious historical problem of whether and how people in late antiquity observed rabbinic law). They are a very good example of how knowledge was produced and experienced very much within, rather than apart, of daily life. 10. Are you descended from the Kabbalist Rabbi Eliyahu diVidas? I don't think so. Perhaps even more lamentable than the low probability that we are actually related, is the fact that no one in my family was knowledgeable enough or industrious enough to even claim that we are descended from him, as far as I know. REPORTS: On the Kurdestan Region project From John MacGinnis < [email protected]>: ====== For those interested in keeping track of the many field projects that have been inaugurated in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in recent years, we draw attention to an overview of these projects compiled for the Directorate of Antiquities of Kurdistan: Archaeological Projects in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq edited by K Kopanias, John MacGinnis and Jason Ur Erbil: Directorate of Antiquities A PDF can be downloaded from TIDBITS?: The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body From The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body Lauren Davis Mummification is a fascinating way to preserve a person's remains, whether to be worshipped or because they're planning on using that body at a later date. But some people have gone to incredible lengths to prepare their own bodies for mummification while they were still alive. Why have people practiced self-mummification? The most famous practitioners of self-mummification to modern readers are the sokushinbutsu—the Buddhas in the flesh—whose bodies have been found in Japan, primarily in Yamagata Prefecture. Some 24 individuals, mainly practitioners of Shingon Buddhism, have been found successfully self-mummified, their deaths dating between the 12th and early 20th centuries AD. However, the practice of self- mummification goes back further than that. In Science and Civilisation in China: Volume Five, the contributors speculate that self-mummification was originally a Taoist practice, and notes that, while the Japanese monks are the most famous self-mummifiers, cases of deliberate self-mummification have been recorded in China and India as well. The practice of self-mummification among the monks of Yamagata came to light in the 1960s, after Kosei Ando and a team of researchers at Niigata University published Nihon no miira, an account of Japan's mummies, and Matsumoto Akira helped form the Japanese Mummy Research Group. Mummies (miira) are not uncommon in Japan, but the far rarer practice of self-mummification, as you might imagine, is an extremely unpleasant one, attempted only by the most devoted of ascetics. So why go through all that trouble just to turn yourself into a particularly well preserved corpse? In Living Buddhas: The Self-Mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan, Ken Jeremiah points out that many religions, including Christianity, have viewed the incorruptibility of the corpse as a sign of special grace or supernatural ability. There are many accounts (many of them likely apocryphal) of highly spiritual individuals dying during prayer or meditation and failing to decay after several days. Where sokushinbutsu was concerned, a successful act of self-mummification meant the successful execution of a final spiritual practice. If, after an attempt at self-mummification, the attempted practitioner was found decayed, it was taken as a sign that the spiritual goal had not been achieved. So what was that spiritual goal? Jeremiah notes that the idea of preserving the body runs contrary to much of Buddhist scripture, which is less concerned with the physical body than with the spiritual component. However, it's important to remember that the sokushinbutsu of Yamagata were members of the issei gyonin sect of Shingon Buddhism, which married esoteric Buddhism with indigenous spiritual practices, and utilized aspects of Daoism and Hinduism. They were practitioners of shugendō, a spiritual practice closely linked with mountain dwellers, known as shugenja, who believed they attained special powers through ascetic acts. The biographies of successful sokushinbutsu (the ones that have known biographies; some information on the lives of sokushinbutsu have been lost or destroyed over time) include tales of everything from meditating under waterfalls and in caves to gouging out their own eyes. Taoist practitioners of self-mummification saw the practice not as suicide, but as a path to immortality, and similarly, the sokushinbutsu saw the process as transcendance rather than death. Kosei Ando linked the practice to the bodhisattva Maitreya—the future Buddha who, in the meantime resides in Tuṣita Heaven —suggesting that sokushinbutsu employed their practice to aid Maitreya. They would remain in their mummified state, which was viewed as a death-like trance, for 5.67 billion years until they would be called upon to assist Maitreya for the benefit of all humankind. However, in the essay "In Search of a New Interpretation of Ascetic Experiences" from the book Rethinking Japan, Massimo Raveri seems to prefer the interpretation of Miyata Noboru, who sees a sense of optimism in the worship of the sokushinbutsu, whom it is said, will wake to "acclaim the new reincarnation of the Buddha in the world" and perhaps are the bodhisattva themselves. Whatever the specifics of their spiritual quest, the sokushinbutsu would have undertaken self-mummification as a form of spiritual transformation for the benefit of others. Living Buddhas: The Self-Mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan Amazon.com: $33.25 Mummifying yourself is not a thing you do on the spur of the moment, especially in Japan's humid climates. In fact, there is a 3,000-day "training" process for turning an ordinary ascetic's body into a mummy's. The key element of the process is dietary; Japanese ascetics would commonly abstain from cereals, removing wheat, rice, foxtail millet, pros so millet, and soybeans. Instead, they would eat things like nuts, berries, pine needles, tree bark, and resin (which is why the diet of the sokushinbutsu was called mokujikyo, or "tree-eating." Over time, the diet would become more restrictive, starving the body of nutrients and eliminating the fat and moisture that can encourage bodily decay after death; X-rays of sokushinbutsu have even shown river stones in the guts of mummies. Jeremiah suggests that, beyond the weight loss, some aspects of the diet may have helped with the preservation of the body after death. For example, certain herbs and toxic cycad nuts may have inhibited bacterial growth. And at least some sokushinbutsu are said to have drunk a tea made from urushi, the sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, which is typically used to make lacquer. In addition to facilitating vomiting, the urushi may have functioned as a sort of embalming fluid, rendering the body toxic to potential flesh-eating invaders. Once the ascetic was prepared to attempt to become a sokushinbutsu, it's said he would step into a tiny burial chamber and has himself buried alive, with a small opening to allow air inside the chamber. There he would sit, chanting sutra and ringing a bell to signal that he was still alive. Once the bell stopped ringing, the chamber would be completely sealed, and after three years it would be opened again to see if the attempt at self-mummification proved successful. What happens after you try to mummify yourself? Hundreds of people are thought to have attempted this form of self-mummifcation, and it's not known how many were successful. However, you can visit some of the successful sokushinbutsu at their shrines. Famously, Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin, who mummified himself at the age of 96 in 1783, sits in the Ryusui-ji Dainichibou Temple in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. If, when your burial chamber was opened, your body was found preserved, then you could be worshipped as a sokushinbutsu. You could be dressed in robes and placed in a shrine where humanity could await your reawakening. Here, there is actually a small cheat in the self-mummification process; if the body was not decayed but not totally preserved, the skin would actually be treated with incense smoke to ensure it would last. However, changing mores and laws meant that not all successful sokushinbutsu were enshrined. When the priest and ascetic Bukkai Shonin died in 1903, he was interred and was supposed to be exhumed after three years, but exhumation was illegal in Japan at that point in time. When Bukkai was eventually exhumed, it was in 1961 by a team of researchers, who found the ascetic quite well preserved. And if your body was found rotting when the tomb was opened? Well, then no worship for your remains. An exorcism would be performed and the remains would be reburied. All those years of self- starvation those final days spent alone in a dark chamber, and your remains become an object of caution rather than worship. NEWS: Burning books in the Mosul library From ====== SIS Burns 8000 Rare Books and Manuscripts in Mosul By Riyadh Mohammed While the world was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, the people of Mosul were watching a different show. They were horrified to see ISIS members burn the Mosul public library. Among the many thousands of books it housed, more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts were burned. “ISIS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. They used improvised explosive devices,” said Ghanim al-Ta'an, the director of the library. Notables in Mosul tried to persuade ISIS members to spare the library, but they failed. The former assistant director of the library Qusai All Faraj said that the Mosul Public Library was established in 1921, the same year that saw the birth of the modern Iraq. Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq's first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century. During the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the library was looted and destroyed by mobs. However, the people living nearby managed to save most of its collections and rich families bought back the stolen books and they were returned to the library, All Faraj added. “900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes...and burned. One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning. Averroes told him... the ideas have wings...but I cry today over our situation,” said Rayan al-Hadidi, an activist and a blogger from Mosul. Al- Hadidi said that a state of anger and sorrow are dominating Mosul now. Even the library's website was suspended. “What a pity! We used to go to the library in the 1970s. It was one of the greatest landmarks of Mosul. I still remember the special pieces of paper where the books’ names were listed alphabetically,” said Akil Kata who left Mosul to exile years ago. On the same day the library was destroyed, ISIS abolished another old church in Mosul: the church of Mary the Virgin. The Mosul University Theater was burned as well, according to eyewitnesses. In al- Anbar province, Western Iraq, the ISIS campaign of burning books has managed to destroy 100,000 titles, according to local officials. Last December, ISIS burned Mosul University’s central library. Iraq, the cradle of civilization, the birthplace of agriculture and writing and the home of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Arab civilizations had never witnessed such an assault on its rich cultural heritage since the Mongol era in the Middle Ages. Last week, a debate in Washington and Baghdad became heated over when, how and who will liberate Mosul. A plan was announced to liberate the city in April or May by more than 20,000 US trained Iraqi soldiers. Either way, and supposing everything will go well and ISIS will be defeated easily which is never the case in reality, that means the people of Mosul will still have to wait for another two to three months. Until then, Mosul will probably have not a single sign of its rich history left standing. FEATURES: Indo-European origins From The Tangled Roots of English By NICHOLAS WADEFEB. 23, 2015 The peoples of India, Iran and Europe speak a Babel of tongues, but most - English included - are descended from an ancient language known as proto-Indo-European. Scholars have argued for two centuries about the identity and homeland of those who spoke this parent language, but a surprisingly sudden resolution of this longstanding issue may be at hand. Many origins have been proposed for the birthplace of the Indo-European languages, but only two serious candidates are now under discussion, one of which assumes they were spread by the sword, the other by the plow. Historical linguists can reconstruct many words of proto-Indo-European from their descendants. For example, there was probably a word "kwekwlos," meaning wheel, which is the ancestor of "kuklos" in classical Greek, of "kakra" in Old Indic and - because K shifts to H in Germanic languages - of "hweohl" in Old English, itself the ancestor of wheel in modern English. From the reconstructed vocabulary, the speakers of proto-Indo-European seem to have been pastoralists, familiar with sheep and wheeled vehicles. Archaeologists find that wheeled vehicles emerged around 4000 B.C., suggesting the proto-Indo-European speakers began to flourish some 6,500 years ago on the steppe grasslands above the Black and Caspian Seas. This steppe theory, favored by many linguists, holds that the proto-Indo-European speakers then spread their language to Europe, India and western China, whether by conquest or the appeal of their pastoral economy. This theory was challenged by Colin Renfrew, a Cambridge archaeologist who proposed in 1987 that the languages had been spread by the Neolithic farmers who brought agriculture to Europe. Under this scenario, the homeland of proto-Indo-European was in Anatolia, now Turkey, and its speakers started migrating some 8,000 to 9,500 years ago. Dr. Renfrew's proposal carried weight because the expansion of farming peoples is an accepted mechanism of language spread, and the migration of Neolithic farmers into Europe is well documented archaeologically. Linguists objected that proto-Indo-European could not have fragmented so early because the wheel wasn't invented 8,000 years ago, yet many Indo-European languages have related words for wheel that must be derived from a common parent. But Dr. Renfrew argued that, long after their dispersal, these languages could all have borrowed the word for wheel along with the invention itself. The standoff between the steppe and Anatolian theories of Indo-European origin persisted until 2003. Two New Zealand biologists, Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland, entered the fray with an impressive method of constructing datable trees of language descent. Historical linguists had drawn up trees of how proto-Indo-European had split into its daughter languages, based on sets of related words known as cognates. The word for water is "wasser" in German, "vatten" in Swedish and "nero" in modern Greek. The similar English, German and Swedish words are said to be cognates, derived from an inferred proto-Indo-European word "wodr," but the "nero" of modern Greek is not. Continue reading the main story Linguists had hoped that by comparing languages in terms of how many cognates they shared, the Indo- European tree could be dated. But after discovering that the rates of language change varied widely from one branch to another, they largely gave up. Dr. Gray and Dr. Atkinson realized that statistical methods developed by biologists for tracking the evolution of genes and proteins addressed many of the problems that exist in reconstructing trees of language descent. They represented each Indo-European language as a string of 1s and 0s, depending on whether it shared cognates for a list of words known to resist change. They then computed the likeliest of the many possible trees that would give rise to the observed data. Their preferred tree of Indo-European languages had the same shape as that constructed by historical linguists. But its lower branches could be dated from historical events like the split between Latin and Rumanian when Roman troops withdrew south of the Danube in A.D. 270. And with the lower branches anchored in time, they could date the root. Proto-Indo-European, they calculated, was spoken 7,800 to 9,800 years ago. That conclusion provided striking support for the Anatolian theory. Dr. Gray and Dr. Atkinson, with Remco Bouckaert and colleagues, dropped a second shoe in 2012 when they applied to the dispersal of proto-Indo-European a statistical model developed to track the geographical spread of viruses. It showed "decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin," the authors concluded in an article in Science. It seemed that with the biologists' help, the archaeologists' Anatolian theory had triumphed over the linguists' steppe hypothesis. But two findings reported this month have abruptly tilted the weight of evidence toward the steppes. Though some linguists had dismissed the Gray and Atkinson result, others realized their computational approach had much to offer. Andrew Garrett, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has teamed up with Will Chang, a linguist trained in computational techniques. They and colleagues noticed that in the 2012 article by Dr. Bouckaert and others, in eight cases where an ancient language is the widely assumed ancestor of a modern one, the modern language is shown as being descended from a hypothetical cousin of the ancient language. For example, the Romance languages are assigned to a hypothetical cousin of Latin, not Latin itself, and English to an inferred cousin of Old English. Dr. Garrett and Mr. Chang thought it would be more realistic for the tree to adopt generally accepted language ancestries, even though this required overruling its probability calculations. A second boost for the steppe theory has emerged from the largest study of ancient DNA in Europe, based on analysis of 69 people who lived 3,000 to 8,000 years ago. Patterns in the DNA bear evidence of a migration into Germany some 4,500 years ago of people from the Yamnaya culture of the steppes, the first to develop a pastoral economy based on wagons, sheep and horses. So extensive was this migration that three-quarters of the ancient people sampled in Germany bear Yamnaya-type DNA, says a team led by Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide, Australia, and David Reich of Harvard Medical School. Their report was posted this month on bioRxiv. If so much of the population was replaced, the newcomers' language probably prevailed, and the migration plausibly represents an expansion of Indo-European speakers from the steppes. "These results provide support for the theory of a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe," the authors say. The three oldest branchings of the Indo-European tree, according to Don Ringe, a historical linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, are first, languages such as Hittite once spoken in Anatolia; second, Tocharian, a language group of western China; and third, the Italic and Celtic language groups of Europe. Archaeological evidence attests migrations out of the steppe in these directions in the right order, say Dr. Ringe and David Anthony, an archaeologist at Hartwick College, writing in the Annual Review of Linguistics. They also note that proto-Indo-European has borrowed words from proto-Uralic, the inferred ancestor of languages such as Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and from languages of the Caucasus. A location in the steppes, but not in Anatolia, would make such borrowings geographically plausible. The evidence for a steppe origin of the Indo-European languages "is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be re-examined," Dr. Ringe and Dr. Anthony say. But the case is not yet closed. The two new pieces of evidence, Dr. Garrett's correction of the Bouckaert tree and the ancient DNA data, may not be as conclusive as they seem. Dr. Renfrew, the author of the Anatolian hypothesis, considers it a "strong possibility" that the migration from the steppes to Europe recorded in ancient DNA may be a secondary phenomenon. In other words, Indo-European could have spread first from Anatolia to the steppes and from there to Europe. And the biologists who draw up statistically probable language trees do not believe the Garrett team is justified in making the trees conform to ancestry constraints. "The Garrett and Chang model is overzealous in forcing ancient languages to be directly ancestral - the data don't support this," said Dr. Atkinson, referring to new tests he has done. One reason is that written languages tend to be fossilized, said Paul Heggarty, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology: Living languages are likely to be descended from a spoken language that diverged from the written version. "The seemingly innocent assumptions which Garrett introduces," Dr. Renfrew said, "turn out not to be so uncomplicated." eREVIEWS: Of "The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity" From Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.02.48 Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity. Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements, 10. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Pp. 340. ISBN 9783525550434. €99.99. Reviewed by Friedrich T. Schipper, University of Vienna ([email protected]) Preview Although the Second Temple period is an intensively researched period of Jewish history and although the Hasmonean rulers were key players for one and a half centuries within this period, only a few comprehensive portraits of the Hasmoneans and their time have been published in the past 10 years. Eyal Regev, professor of archaeology at Bar Ilan University, provides a very solid overview of various aspects of the Hasmonean rule and legacy, concentrating on ideology and identity and thereby filling a thematic gap in research on the Hasmoneans. Regev strives for a twofold interdisciplinary approach – historical and archaeological as well as text-oriented historical-critical and comparative socio- anthropological – “in order to see more clearly WHO the Hasmoneans actually were” and “HOW they ruled the Jewish people”. In his introduction Regev explains how he and other Judaic scholars tend to apply the unusual term “nationalism” in studying the Hasmonean state and he pursues this theme throughout his book.1 He also criticizes the “dichotomy between Judaism and Hellenism in the study of the Hasmoneans and their ethos as simplistic and anachronistic”, referring to previous scholarship often having failed to avoid “falling into the traps of both the critical outlook of ancient Greco-Roman authors on these rulers who shattered Greek cities and sanctuaries and the modern nationalistic Jewish-Israeli admiration of such acts”.2 His goal is to go beyond the canon of historical studies, not to reconstruct the nature of the Hasmonean rule along the “thin line between Hellenistic culture and Jewish identity” but to decipher the ideological matrix and symbolic language of the Hasmoneans that “created a new sense of Jewish identity”. The book falls into seven chapters and a very compact, three and a half page “conclusion”. The first three chapters deal with religion and the Hasmoneans as religious leaders while the next three cover government and the Hasmonean kingship; chapter 7 synthesizes these two perspectives. The “religious” part of the book establishes Hanukkah as the constitutional festival for the cleansed Hasmonean Temple, then examines the Temple as the real and ideal basis of Hasmonean ideology and its development and ends with the Hasmoneans acting at the Temple as priests and religious leaders as well as the authority of the Jews. Chapter 1 “discusses the Maccabean view of Hanukkah as a Temple festival for the renewal of ancient cultic traditions.” Regev discusses the cultic characteristics of Hanukkah as “the festival of Tabernacles”, first explaining how it relates to the days of millu’im in Ex 29 and Lev 8-9. He suggests that despite dissimilarities to its description in 1 Maccabees Hanukkah is essentially a millu’im ceremony, making his point clear with an elaborate treatment of the relevant text of 2 Maccabees. He finally attributes to Hannukah the function of a “political festival”, explaining it as an “invented tradition” in Eric Hobsbawn’s sense, that served as the point of departure of the development of all Hasmonean ideology.3 In chapter 2 Regev analyzes the Temple as the center of Hasmonean ideology. Step by step he discusses the relevant sources – 1 Maccabees, Eupolemos, Josephus, 2 Maccabees and Pseudo-Aristeas – to build his line of argument. Regev focuses on the payment of the Temple tax (or tribute) and the role of pilgrimage as two major innovative religious as well as legal practices. He finally adds a sub-chapter on Qumran’s “moral opposition” to the Temple as it is evident in the Psalms of Solomon, profiting from his former in-depth study on Qumran (2007). Chapter 3 deals with the development of the priesthood of the earlier Hasmoneans. After a short treatment of the High Priesthood in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, Regev analyzes the period of each single Maccabee in detail, starting with Mattathias the Zealot, Judah the Savior, Jonathan the Judge, Simon the elected High Priest, and ending with John Hyrcanus the Prophet. He synthesizes their rules in his overview on the Hasmoneans as religious leaders, including consideration of the priestly descent of the Hasmoneans and their lack of Zadokite descent, and finally offers a sub-chapter covering aspects of the transition from priesthood to kingship, discussing in particular the issues of the Hasmonean rulers earning Hellenistic honors and accumulating wealth. The “governmental” part of the book investigates Hasmonean kingship. Regev discusses the more basic and general issues in chapter 4 and elaborates his theses in chapter 5 dealing with Hasmonean coinage as political medium and chapter 6 dealing with the Hasmonean palaces at Jericho as architectonic reflection of their builders’ self-understanding. In chapter 4, Regev first sets out to explain the legitimacy of the kingship of the Hasmoneans. He analyzes the Hasmoneans’ royal ideology, suggesting that it resembles that of a “national monarchy” and comparing it with the idea of the “national” Macedonian monarchy. Regev examines the emergence of Hasmonean kingship against the backdrop of the idea of kingship in the Hebrew bible as well as of the quest for kingship in ancient Judaism in general in order to finally conclude with a rather crucial, elaborate and encompassing chapter on the pros and cons of Hasmonean kingship providing some useful aid for orientation in this complex discussion. In chapter 5, numismatic evidence is used to test and expand the research results gathered so far. Regev begins by briefly describing ancient money, numismatic studies and their methodological keys, thereby enabling laymen to understand his line of argumentation.4 He then explains the iconography (such as anchor, palm branch, star, helmet) and legends, personal names and titles as well as language and script of Hasmomean coinage in regard to their importance for the understanding of Hasmonean royal ideology and identity construction. Chapter 6 on the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho serves the same goal as the numismatic chapter. Again Regev first explains the basic methodological principles of archaeological interpretation before providing an overview of the size and function of the palaces themselves. He then turns to an access analysis of the palaces, as he had previously done for Qumran (2009).5 In the following sub-chapters he investigates different architectonic features of the palaces: the swimming pools and gardens, the bathhouses and the miqva’ot – all connected to the vital element of water. At this point an excursus is given on the problem of identifying the palaces of Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II.6 Regev then expands his archaeological observations to the pottery found, and finally discusses both categories – water installations and pottery – in terms of the observance of purity in the Hasmonean way of life. Relying on comparisons with other Hellenistic palaces, especially the Herodian palaces, Regev concludes that “internal modesty and external propaganda” were characteristic of the Hasmonean palaces. The final chapter draws together all previous results to provide a new explanation for the Hasmonean construction of Jewish collective identity. Here, Regev applies most of his sociological and anthropological approaches, including his excursion into political sciences in regard to nationalism research, but here replacing “nationalism” with “collective identity”. He concludes that the view observed in ancient literature, above all the scriptures of the New Testament but also the works of Flavius Josephus and Philo, that the Jews in the Second Temple period despite the emergence of religious sectarian groups formed a more or less uniform community in terms of religion (“devotion to the Temple, purity boundaries, the relationship between Judaea and the Diaspora and many others”), has been shaped by the long-term religious and political claims of the Hasmoneans. Thus the Hasmonean creation of a new Jewish collective identity was basically a partly intended, partly unforeseen result of the promotion and legitimization of their rule throughout the decades. I find very little worth criticizing beyond the paucity and poor image quality of the plates, possibly the responsibility of the publisher. Although the text is not always easy to read the book is easy to use. Each of chapters 2-6 begins with an explanation of what Regev intends to do and ends with a few pages of “conclusions”. This double service allows for a quick reading of his book if someone is looking quickly for specific information and makes up for the rather brief and compact general index. Regev’s book has the potential to receive as much attention as e.g. Mendels’ Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (1992). Notes: 1. One may comment that this very comprehensive and systematic and well structured study lacks a general political sciences (sub)chapter on this matter. 2. Not all modern scholarship on this topic is either Israeli or at least Jewish and therefore rather unlikely to be on the path of “nationalistic admiration”. I personally view much of recent Jewish-Israeli research on the Second Temple period in general and the Hasmonean period in particular as innovative and not circular as Regev insinuates. 3. Cf. Hobsbawn, E. 1983. “Introduction” in E. Hobsbawn and T. Tanger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: University Press, 1-2 and 9. 4. He skips some ongoing debates in Hasmonean coinage, like the current debate on chronology (cf. Ostermann, S. 2005. Die Münzen der Hasmonäer. Ein kritischer Bericht zur Systematik und Chronologie, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), in order to keep the chapter straightforward and compact. 5. Regev, E. 2009. “Access Analysis of Kh. Qumran: Reading Spatial Organization and Social Boundaries”, BASOR 355: 85-99. 6. There are seven different phases of Hasmonean palaces at Jericho and their attribution to certain Hasmonean rulers has been a matter of attention long before the final excavations reports were published. See Netzer E. 2001. Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho: Final Reports of the 1973– 1987 Excavations, Vol. 1: Stratigraphy and Architecture, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. CALLS FOR PAPERS: “The Crazy Genius of Herod the Great” (Dublin, 29-31 May) From Lidia Matassa [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Fourth Annual Conference The Irish Society for the Study of the Ancient Near East “The Crazy Genius of Herod the Great” Seen through the lens of his building programme, military strategy, contemporary texts, art and architecture, and political alliances. 29-31 May 2015 Dublin, Republic of Ireland Considering the enormous scale of his political ambitions and achievements during his lengthy reign, we shall be happy to receive submissions relating to any and all aspects of the rule of Herod the Great, including political connections, religious facets of his life and rule, propaganda, military campaigns and strategy, his innovative building programme, including the Temple at Jerusalem, art, architecture, numismatics, contemporary texts, and any other related matters. Presentation of papers at this conference will be 45 minutes within a one-hour slot, allowing time for discussion after each paper. We invite abstracts of no more than 400 words to reach us by email at [email protected] by 20 March 2015. (For further details, see the Hekhal website http://hekhal.wordpress.com/ eREVIEWS: Of "Re-presenting the Past: Archaeology through Text and Image" From < http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-02-33.html >: ====== Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.02.33 Sheila Bonde, Stephen Houston (ed.), Re-presenting the Past: Archaeology through Text and Image. Joukowsky Institute publication, 2. Oxford; Oakville, CT: Oxbow Books, 2013. Pp. xiv, 215. ISBN 9781782972310. $40.00 (pb). Reviewed by John K. Papadopoulos, University of California, Los Angeles ([email protected] ) [The reviewer apologizes for his tardiness in preparing this review.] This edited volume, originally conceived as a symposium connected to a seminar, was a long time in the making. The theoretical underpinnings of the volume, together with how it came into being, are outlined in Chapter 1 by the editors. Representation-or Re-presentation-in archaeology, whether written or graphic, is crucial, since the archaeological past exists only through intermediaries that vary widely in form and nature. Moreover, representation in archaeology in one form or another, and in this case specifically the issue of illustrative representation, goes back to at least 1717. As Stuart Piggott wrote in the opening sentence of his engaging book Antiquity Depicted: "In the first minute-book of the Society of Antiquaries of London, in 1717, William Stukeley, its first secretary, wrote: 'Without drawing or designing the Study of Antiquities or any other Science is lame and imperfect."1 Indeed, antiquarian illustration in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries is well dealt with by Sam Smiles in Chapter 2, entitled "Imagining British History: Patriotism, Professional Arts Practice, and the Quest for Perfection." In this paper, Smiles engages with the reflexivity of archaeological image-making, its sensitivity to modes of representing the past and its critical self-awareness. As he outlines so well, images possess "the power not simply to record but to invent and, as such, to attempt the retrieval of cultures that have vanished," and he illustrates the point with two oil paintings and an etching representing King Lear weeping over the dead body of Cordelia (Fig. 2.1), the institution of the Order of the Garter (Fig. 2.2), and Robert Havell's fabulous "A Briton of the Interior" (Fig. 2.3). In keeping with the intellectual interests of one of the editors, the third chapter, by Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines, is a well-illustrated overview of what the authors have previously written on, namely the various modes of representing monasteries. In "Re-presenting the Monastery: From Ordo to Google Earth," the authors, rather than tracing a historical survey, examine two genres of monastic representation: the panoptic and the synecdochal; the former being an image or text that aims at a comprehensive view of the monastery or monastic life, the latter being when a portion of the monastery, like the church, stands for the whole. Another paper dealing with the representation of things medieval is Thomas Devaney's "Re-presenting the Medieval Festivals of Jaén through Text, Enactment and Image" (Chapter 8). This is a very focused piece on a spectacle, arranged by the Constable of Castile, Don Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, in which-to cut a long story short-the Christian and Muslim faiths are pitted against one another in a sporting event involving the two teams of knights hurling light spears at one another, with the losing team having to convert to the religion of the victor. The result was predictable: the Christians staood victorious and the Muslim King of Morocco was ceremoniously baptized, together with his knights, while the Prophet Mohammed was unceremoniously thrown to the ground and then, with his Qur'an in hand, dunked into a fountain behind the church, a more theatrical form of baptism. What Devaney does is to recount the ways in which both contemporary and modern authors represented the Constable of Castile's spectacle of December 26, 1462. Much of this essay engages with the nuts and bolts of earlier scholarship of the spectacle, not least by Teofilo Ruiz, Angus MacKay, Philippe Buc, and Max Harris. There are three chapters reflecting the interests of the other editor: the world of the ancient Maya. In Chapter 4, Stephen Houston himself discusses representation in "Ping-Pong, Polygons, Virgins: Graphic Representation of the Ancient Maya," both among the Maya themselves and those representing them. As Houston states so well: "Without a doubt, provisos about the power of images apply to the ancient Maya, among the most graphically inclined of peoples in their fondness for image-making and . among the most imagined and imaged in popular and scholarly media" (pp. 35-36). This short and cogent piece explores the Maya and their archaeological remains as representational targets, together with the very precise ways scholars have represented them visually. The second paper of the Maya trilogy, by Barbara Fash ("Virtual Time Machines: Nineteenth-century Photographs and Museum Re-presentation in Maya Archaeology"), examines computer technologies and 3D scanning of old photographic records and replications from a century or so ago. Her belief is that "Untouched photographs can be trusted more than many other documentary tools, as the most accurate method and honest tools to re-represent and revive the past," at least aspects of the recent past. Her focus in largely, though not exclusively, on glass plate negatives, and the digitization of the Copan hieroglyphic stairway project, as well as the reconstruction of the stairway in the Copan Sculpture Museum. The last of the Maya essays, by Cassandra Mesick deals with "Of Imaging and Imagining: Landscape Reconstruction at Piedras Negras." The paper continues the digitization theme, describing, in detail, how the site of Piedras Negras has been imaged and especially the role of new technologies in creating archaeological maps. Various techniques are showcased, but the result is, rather predictably, "look what I can do with ArcGIS." Chapters 9 and 10 turn their attention to the heart of the Classical world. In the first of these, Christopher Witmore provides one of the most sophisticated discussions in the volume, spiraling back to the work of Martin Heidegger, Marshal McLuhan, and Bruno Latour, among many others. In "The World on a Flat Surface: Maps from the Archaeology of Greece and Beyond," Witmore focuses on something all archaeologists are familiar with: maps-so practical, so pervasive, so mundane. He cogently explores the tension between maps as flat projections of the material world and necessary modes of archaeological documentation and visualization: "Translate the material world onto a flat surface while maintaining something of its qualities without distortion and we have a key ingredient necessary not only for archaeology but also modern science" (p. 128). On the same page he notes: "It is remarkable, given the necessity of maps for the work of archaeology, that so little has been written on what it is they actually do in the context of archaeological knowledge production," (emphasis Witmore's), though he does point to some important recent contributions to the endeavor. By focusing on maps of the Greek coastline, the city of Athens, and the Peloponnese, he presents maps as things that facilitate the transportation of select properties of the locales they depict. He moves from the properties of maps to the powers of maps, and ends with an installation, Looking for the San Andreas Fault, which offered a different take on maps, mobility, and manipulation. This essay is important reading not only for those interested in things Greek. In the final chapter of the volume, "To be or not to be in Past Spaces: Thoughts on Roman Immersive Reconstructions," Diane Favro provides an overview of a field in which she has been a leading light, immersive virtual-reality simulations, often with sounds and movements- we still await smells-and in the process provides interesting discussions of corporality, the anthropology of the senses, subversion, conversion, diversion, and more. Her focus is, of course, on things Roman, both in Rome itself and elsewhere. In many ways, one of the most interesting papers in the entire volume (Chapter 7) is somewhat misplaced, as many of the things it covers belong either as an intellectual introduction to representation in archaeology, or else as a concluding chapter, wrapping up the discussion by returning to the intellectual underpinnings of the topic. In "A Political Economy of Visual Media in Archaeology" Michael Shanks and Timothy Webmoor shift the emphasis away from communication, iconology, and visuality, toward the manner in which visuality works in archaeology, "from visual media as material forms (graphics, maps, photographs) to the work that visual media perform in archaeology" (p. 85, emphasis mine). Shanks and Webmoor showcase the importance of media in archaeology; provide critiques of mimetic media; highlight correspondence and evaluation; discuss the case of Walter Scott and the anxiety of mediation; turn to maps as cognitive tools; and stress mediation, not representation, before ending with the potential of new digital media. Digital technology has certainly amplified the sheer amount of data now kept from an excavation, for example, but it is precisely this storage, retrieval and distribution, together with its creative re-mixing or fungibility, that are all magnified. Their concluding paragraph can serve as a fitting end of a volume on representation in archaeology: "The politics of this participatory heritage involve questions of access and control, of intellectual property and stakeholder interest, as well as questions of authenticity and expertise. We do not consider it an exaggeration to connect the profound changes associated with the emergence of the modern public sphere in the eighteenth century with these contemporary challenges to our archaeological desire to represent the past." Notes: 1. S. Piggott, Antiquity Depicted: Aspects of Archaeological Illustration, London 1978; see further J.K. Papadopoulos, The Art of Antiquity: Piet de Jong and the Athenian Agora, Athens and Princeton 2007, especially pp. 31-32. February 25 NEWS: Blame game From Syrian minister blames Turkey for looted antiquities DAMASCUS - Reuters The world will have to cooperate with Syria to halt the trade in looted antiquities that helps fund jihadist groups, Syria's culture minister has said, putting the onus on Turkey to stop the smuggling across their shared frontier. Syrian Culture Minister Issam Khalil said a U.N. Security Council resolution aiming to stop groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), from benefiting from the illicit antiquities trade would not be effective without the help of Damascus, a pariah to many Arab and Western states since Syria's war erupted in 2011. "We have the conclusive documents and evidence to prove our ownership of these antiquities and we also have the will and readiness to cooperate with any serious effort to prevent smuggling of Syrian antiquities abroad," Khalil said in Damascus. Khalil also criticized Turkey for "facilitating" smuggling across the 910 km border, which he said was the main route for antiquities leaving Syria illegally. "The United Nations knows for certain that the Turkish government is facilitating the smuggling of antiquities to the black market," said Khalil. Damascus and Ankara have been at odds since the eruption of the rebellion against President Bashar al- Assad in 2011, with Turkey supporting groups fighting the government. Damascus says Ankara has extended support to jihadist groups including ISIL, which has seized wide areas of northern Syria at the border with Turkey. Ankara denies that charge and says sealing the frontier completely is impossible. The U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Feb. 12 maintains that groups such as ISIL and al-Nusra, which is al-Qaeda's affiliate in the Syrian war, are generating income by selling antiquities looted in the conflict. Syria is a cultural treasure trove that includes six sites on the World Heritage list compiled by the United Nations' cultural arm, UNESCO. In the course of the war, four of those sites, including Palmyra and the Crac des Chevaliers, have been used for military purposes, the United Nations says. In a recent example of the damage being done, the Necropolis at Palmyra, where the ruins of one of the most important cities of the ancient world still stand, was looted in November, according to the UNESCO website. Khalil said the Syrian government was going to great lengths to protect antiquities: UNESCO awarded the head of Syria's antiquities and museums directorate a prize for his commitment to safeguarding Syria's cultural heritage last October. Historical Ottoman tomb new source of tension between Syria and Turkey Tension between Damascus and Ankara flared anew on Feb. 22 when Turkish forces crossed into northern Syria to evacuate around 40 Turkish soldiers who were guarding the historical Ottoman tomb of Süleyman Şah. In a move described by Damascus as "flagrant aggression," the Turkish forces relocated the tomb to a more secure area. Khalil said the operation showed the Turkish government's links to ISIL, which controls the area surrounding the site. "The tomb that was used as an excuse for this Turkish aggression ... was under the protection of the terrorists who destroyed [other] tombs, shrines, churches and mosques, but did not go anywhere near the Turkish tomb," he said on Feb. 23. REQUESTS: For information on an Assyriologist From Wayne Horowitz [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel, in response to the recent opening of the exhibitionm "By the Rivers of Babylon" at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, is looking for information regarding the life and works of Selim (Shalom) Levy who served as curator in the Iraq Museum until the early 1950s. Shalom/Selim's work may be best known to some of us by way of a joint article he wrote with Taha Baqir and S.N. Kramer in Sumer 4 (1948) on the Fragments of the Kurigalzu Statue in the Iraq Museum recently republished by Niek Veldhuis in JCS 60 (2008). He also wrote a number of articles which appeared in AfO and elsewhere in the journal Sumer. On behalf of the center, I would appreciate any information you might have concerning this now mostly forgotten Assyriologist, and or contact information for his family. LECTURES: "The Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Cambridge, March 4) From Nathan MacDonald [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The annual Tyrwhitt Lecture will take place at the University of Cambridge on March 4, 2015. Prof. Reinhard Kratz (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) "The Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls" The lecture will take place at 2.30pm in the Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. The lecture is open to all NEWS: Possible Ancient Judean Administrative Center From Popular Archaeology Tuesday, February 24, 2015 Archaeologists Unearth Possible Ancient Judean Administrative Center Finds include remains of what may be a governor's residence. An archaeological team has uncovered remains of what may have been an administrative center during the period when Judahite kings ruled out of ancient Jerusalem. Led by project director Avraham Faust, an archaeologist with Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, Israel, excavations at the site of Tel 'Eton located on the edge of the fertile Shephelah and the Hebron hill country to its east have revealed structures, artifacts, and fortifications that tell of an ancient city that historically straddled the eastern edge of the lowlands between the biblical kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem in the east and the cities of the Philistines on the Mediterranean coastal plains of the west. Among the finds was a large, 240 sq.m. 8th century BCE house structure built following a four-room plan typical of ancient Israelite dwellings, featuring high-quality construction and, with its location at the highest point on the mound, commanding a strategic view of all areas below. The ancient building, along with its town context, was strategically located at the cross-roads of important north-south and east- west routes, set above fertile agricultural country. "The structure was excavated, almost in its entirety, and was composed of a large courtyard with rooms on three sides," stated Faust. "The building was nicely executed, including ashlar stones in the corners and openings. Hundreds of artifacts were unearthed within the debris, including a wide range of pottery vessels, loom weights, many metal objects, botanical remains, as well as many arrowheads, evidence of the battle which accompanied the conquest of the site by the Assyrians." Near the end of the 8th century, in 701 BCE according to biblical and Assyrian records, invading armies under the Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed cities and towns throughout the Kingdom of Judah, sparing Jerusalem but utterly devastating the settlements of the Shephelah region, on the eastern edge of which Tel 'Eton is located. Faust and his colleagues suggest that the building may have been the residence of a Judean governor, responsible for administering a region under its control under the Judahite kingdom centered in Jerusalem. Tel 'Eton has also been identified with a more ancient Canaanite city known as Biblical Eglon (Josh 10:34- 36; 15:39), and Faust's team has uncovered evidence of occupation dating as far back as the third millennium BCE (the Early Bronze Age). But the most abundant finds for the early periods were dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550- 1200/1150 BCE). "Remains from this period were unearthed in practically every square in the section in which we dug deep enough," stated Faust, "and in-situ (left in-place by the early inhabitants) vessels were discovered even down the slopes, signifying that the town was large." The Late Bronze Age is well documented in Egyptian sources, such as the el Amarna letters, which are mostly diplomatic correspondence on clay tablets that have provided an historical accounting of the affairs, especially as they relate to Egyptian/Canaanite relations, during the Egyptian New Kingdom. In addition, Faust's team has uncovered a destruction layer dated to the Late Bronze Age town. "The evidence regarding the end of the Late Bronze Age town hints that it was destroyed, probably in the 1st half of the 12th century BCE," stated Faust in a recent report. "This was part of a wider wave of destructions throughout the region. The causes of the destruction are not clear, [but] various suggestions were raised regarding the identity of the responsible party, including the Israelites, the Philistines and the Egyptians." eTEXTS & WEBS: Critical Catalogue of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals From Greta Van Buylaere Greta [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== We are pleased to announce the latest addition to the online Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals: http://www.ccmawr.altorientalistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/ccmawr/ . The Critical Catalogue of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals (CCMAwR) is the backbone of the online corpus of Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft texts. It offers information on the different anti-witchcraft compositions/editions and their manuscripts/tablets. You can search the CCMAwR catalogue for tablets when you are looking for respectively: 1) information on a specific tablet; 2) a group of tablets (e.g., all anti-witchcraft tablets from a certain provenance or period); or 3) a tablet that was copied in a certain publication. The resulting page will give you information on the tablet's format, the language, script and period it was written in, and its archival context (if known). Links to CDLI and/or HPM are provided when available. Moreover, Schwemer's cuneiform copies can be accessed. If the tablet is edited in CMAwR vol. 1 or 2, links to information on the relevant composition(s) on CCMAwR and to their digital edition on Oracc (vol. 1) are given as well. You can also search the CCMAwR catalogue for compositions when you are looking for respectively: 4) information on a specific composition (by group and title as edited in CMAwR); 5) the composition(s) including certain incantations; or 6) a composition that was previously edited elsewhere (thus excluding CMAwR). The composition information is at present restricted to the compositions edited in CMAwR vol. 1 (complete) and vol. 2 (in progress). The retrieved data includes a link to the composition on Oracc (vol. 1), information on the content and synopsis of the text (vol. 1), previous editions (vol. 1) and relevant manuscripts (vol. 1 and 2). Included and forthcoming Data on the compositions and tablets edited in: - Tzvi Abusch - Daniel Schwemer, Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals, vol. 1, Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2011 (completed) - Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals, vol. 2 (in progress) - Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-witchcraft Rituals, vol. 3 (forthcoming) - Tzvi Abusch, The Magical Ceremony Maqlû, in press (forthcoming). Acknowledgements CCMAwR was created as part of the DFG-funded project Corpus babylonischer Rituale und Beschwörungen gegen Schadenzauber: Edition, lexikalische Erschließung, historische und literarische Analyse, directed by Daniel Schwemer at the University of Würzburg. NEWS: Sekhmet bust from Luxor From < http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/123833/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Busts-of-the- lioness-goddess-unearthed-in-Luxor.aspx>: ====== Busts of the lioness goddess unearthed in Luxor Two black granite busts of the ancient Egyptian lioness goddess Sekhmet un-earthed in Luxor Nevine El- Aref The European-Egyptian archaeological mission headed by famed Egyptologist Horig Sourouzian unearthed two busts of the lioness goddess Sekhmet at the north-eastern side of the pillar halls of King Amenhotep III's temple at Kom El-Hitan on Luxor's west bank. Sourouzian told Ahram Online that the temple's pillars hall is now a void area filled with dust and sand. He said that the mission is currently working there to see if there is anything to discover amidst the ruins. "This is not the first time statues of the lioness goddess have been unearthed at Kom Al-Hittan," said Sourouzian, adding that the mission previously un-earthed 64 statues of Sekhment in different shapes and sizes. Minister of antiquities, Mamdouh Eldamaty, told Ahram online that the first bust is 174 cm tall and depicts Sekhmet sitting on the thrown, while the second is 45 cm tall and features the face of the lioness god Sekhmet. Such a large number highlights the important role of the goddess during the reign of the 18th dynasty king Amenhotep III, father of the monotheistic king Akhnaten, and grandfather of the golden king Tutankhamun. Sekhmet was believed to be a protective goddess as she was also the goddess of war and destruction. "Some Egyptologists," pointed out Sourouzian, "believe that king Amenhotep constructed a large number of statue goddess Sekhmets in an attempt to cure him of a specific disease that he suffered during his reign." Sekhmet was well known for her supposed ability to cure critical diseases. Ten years ago, the archaeologists unearthed a large number of statues of Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiye, as well as some parts of the temple's walls. The team aims to produce a virtual reconstruction of the temple using the latest computer programs, she added, saying that this reconstruction would show the original position of every surviving piece within the original temple. eNOTES: Reaching for the Historical David From < http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2015/2/25/davids-kingdom-and-the-province-of- academic-and-popular-discussion>: ====== ANCIENT JEW REVIEW David’s Kingdom and the Province of Academic and Popular Discussion by Michael Press Stories about new biblical discoveries appear yearly in major newspapers around the world. These stories focus especially on King David. Thus, in recent years, Eilat Mazar (of Hebrew University) has announced that she found David’s palace in Jerusalem, and the tunnel he used to conquer the city; Yossi Garfinkel (also of Hebrew University) claimed that he discovered David’s provincial palace at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa; and last year, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) promoted the discovery of the Canaanite citadel in Jerusalem conquered by David. At the end of this past year, two new stories appeared: evidence for David’s kingdom at the site of Khirbet Summeily, announced by the excavation’s co-director Jimmy Hardin of Mississippi State University; and a new reconstruction of the historical context of David’s empire, from Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa. But do all of these announcements give an accurate picture of what scholars – of archaeology, epigraphy, or the Bible – actually do? Certainly, there has been major debate in recent years about the historicity of David’s kingdom. Long taken as a given, over the last two decades there have been significant attacks – from archaeologists like Israel Finkelstein, or historians like Mario Liverani – on the idea that David ruled over any significant portion of what is now Israel (plus the West Bank), let alone a major empire controlling most of the Levant. Such attacks have helped to show how recent scholarly attempts to find the historical David suffer from a lack of direct evidence and proper attention to method. In each step of the process of publicizing scholarship on the historical David – from academic discussion through press release to news article – these problems are increasingly minimized, and we end up with stories that mislead the public. In short, claims that are very much under debate are presented to the public as already proven. Let’s take a closer look at Galil’s reconstruction: it was first laid out in two articles inUgarit- Forschungen and Semitica that served as the basis of the press release.[1] In that reconstruction, David was the ruler of a major kingdom (as in the Bible) that included most of what is now Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, and southern Lebanon. David was in competition with two other major rulers of the Levant, Hadadezer of Zobah in southern and eastern Syria (known from the Bible), and Taita(s) of Palistin (made up of northern “Philistines” or Sea Peoples) in northern Syria (known from ancient inscriptions). Forming an alliance with the northern and southern Philistines in order to defeat the Arameans of Zobah, David ended up creating an empire that extended to the Euphrates. What is the basis for this reconstruction? One of the linchpins is the identification of Taita of Palistin with Toi of Hamath (a city in northern Syria) of 2 Samuel 8:9, based on the location of the site and the apparent similarity of the names. As neither David’s name nor the names of these other rulers (Hadadezer and Toi) appear in contemporary inscriptions, it is therefore important to argue that one of these kings can be found in primary sources. The identification was first argued in detail by Charles Steitler in 2010 and further promoted by Brian Janeway,[2] but this identification ignores an important problem: it is not at all certain that Toi is the original name in the text. While the name Toi appears in some ancient versions, others give the name as Tou.[3] In addition, the passage in 2 Samuel (8:9-10) is paralleled in 1 Chronicles (18:9-10); and there, all versions of the text – including the Hebrew – have Tou. Text criticism therefore suggests that the original form of the name was very likely Tou, and that Toi was a scribal error. This sort of textual analysis is essential to scholarly use of the Bible, but it is missing from this reconstruction of David’s empire. When we conduct it, we see that the names Tou and Taita have nothing in common beyond the first letter, and so we lose the only possible primary source for any of the kings of 2 Samuel. Another key foundation of the reconstruction is the identification of Palistin, the kingdom in northern Syria, with the Philistines (known otherwise only from the southern coastal plain of Israel).[4] However, only one inscription out of seven mentioning this kingdom gives the name as Palistin. In five others it is Walistin, and in the last the first half of the name is missing. Galil’s presentation of this evidence is misleading: he does not give a tabulation of the different forms, and he presents the reconstructed form without noting the difficulties of the reconstructed Pa. Instead of downplaying this lack of attestation of “Palistin,” we should ask whether this single occurrence can be seen as reliable.[5] The ending -in is an additional problem: It does not appear to be a suffix but an essential part of the name, one missing from all contemporary forms of the word “Philistine” (the English is misleading: the Hebrew term is pileshet, the Egyptian plst, the Assyrian and Babylonian palashtu, pilashtaya, etc.).[6] Even if Palistin is a reliable form, its root is not the same as “Philistine.” Therefore, any attempt to link this kingdom to the Philistines is merely guesswork. To justify his reconstruction of a Davidic empire controlling a large portion of the Levant (as “possible, and even reasonable”), Galil points to other large kingdoms and empires that existed in the Levant: Palistin, Carchemish in the 12th century BCE, as well as the brief Aramean kingdom of Hazael in the late 9th and early 8th centuries (centered on Damascus). But all of these examples were based in Syria.[7] The largest kingdoms in the southern Levant are the Hasmonean kingdom, and perhaps the kingdom of Josiah (although there is no clear extrabiblical evidence for it). But each of these kingdoms was much smaller – covering only large portions of Israel and the West Bank plus a small part of western Jordan. Indeed, before the modern period, the states of the southern Levant lacked the manpower and resources to control large areas, as was possible in the northern Levant. It is therefore hardly reasonable to suggest such a kingdom for David. As may be clear by now, a major problem with this reconstruction is the lack of critical historical methodology in reading sources. Proper historical analysis involves at its very core the evaluation of sources and their reliability. But here, each source is treated in the same way, as equally reliable. Royal inscriptions from the time of the ruler in question are approached no differently from the biblical texts, which consist of extended literary narratives extensively edited, if not written, centuries after the events they purport to describe, and preserved only in divergent manuscripts dating centuries later still. The main underlying assumptions here are that these sources must fit together as part of a single world, a historical one; therefore, the Bible is represented essentially as a historical document. This is a flattening of the huge differences in genre, audience, and goals of each text. It represents a naïve, and ultimately misleading, approach to reading texts. * * * When we turn to the press releases, we see that the discussion is even further simplified. The result is that the public is shortchanged and misled: it gets a highly distorted view of the reliability and certainty of this scholarship. For instance, we see the difficulties of identification glossed over. In the Haifa press release, Taita becomes “Tai(ta)”. This may seem like a small change, but it is very misleading. The name always occurs in the inscriptions as Taita(s) – the ta(s) element is never reconstructed or questionable; and it is not an optional suffix but an integral part of the name. But writing the name as “Tai(ta)” presents the questionable identification of Tou (Toi) and Taita as a given. Similarly, in the press release Walistin is never even mentioned. The name of the kingdom is simply Palistin. More broadly, the press releases play up David even more than the scholarly articles do. For example, in the Mississippi State case, the possible relevance of the data for David’s kingdom is emphasized by the excavation co-director in the press release. Yet the original article in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, which serves as the basis of the press release, David is never mentioned.[8] But what is most problematic about these press releases is that they present the public with a distorted view of what scholars in biblical studies, archaeology, and Semitic studies actually do. When viewed together, they make it appear that we spend our entire careers trying to evaluate (or, even worse, prove) the historicity of David’s great empire. In reality, most scholars in these fields are not concerned much if at all with these issues. Archaeologists who excavate these sites discover much about everyday life, how people lived, where they lived, what they ate, what sorts of communities they belonged to, how they cared for their dead, who they traded with, how they saw the world around them. Biblical scholars, meanwhile, are concerned with more sophisticated ways to interpret the texts (from comparative literature, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and many other fields). They are publishing a great deal of interesting work on how the biblical David is a later constructed David, attempting to find not the original David but the earliest David of memory. Or how the figure of David was understood in second-temple Judaism, where we see much interest in aspects of this figure that are absent from canonical biblical texts. It is therefore noteworthy that the Haifa press release labels Ugarit- Forschungen and Semitica “leading journals.” While they are respected, they are simply not the publications for groundbreaking work in biblical studies, archaeology, or ancient history. We see a similar but even bigger problem in the Mississippi State press release, describing Near Eastern Archaeology as “a leading, peer-reviewed journal” – when it is in fact aimed at a non-scholarly audience. So what can be done about communicating the results of this groundbreaking work to larger audiences? Much of the responsibility lies with us. Galil engages extensively with the public, through his many contributions to the ALMMG (Ancient Levant and Mediterranean Multidisciplinary Group) and elsewhere on social media. This type of engagement is to be applauded. As scholars, we have an obligation to interact with the public to let them know about the state of the field – but to do so responsibly. We need to be able to articulate our understandings of the past: not just details about our often narrow specialties, but a vision of what we imagine the ancient world and its people were actually like. Footnotes [1] Gershon Galil, “David, King of Israel, between the Arameans and the Northern and Southern Sea Peoples in Light of New Epigraphic and Archaeological Data,” Ugarit-Forschungen 44 (2013): 159-174; Galil, “A Concise History of Palistin/Patin/Unqi/‘mq in the 11th-9th Centuries BC,” Semitica 56 (2014): 75-104. [2] Charles Steitler, “The Biblical King Toi of Hamath and the Late Hittite State ‘P/Walas(a)tin’,” Biblische Notizen 146 (2010): 81-99. See also Amihai Mazar, “The Search for David and Solomon: An Archaeological Perspective,” in The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, by I. Finkelstein and A. Mazar, ed. Brian B. Schmidt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 137- 138. [3] The name Toi appears in the Masoretic Text, the Targums, and a couple of Septuagint manuscripts (as well as in the Roman-era historian Josephus); most manuscripts of the Septuagint along with the Vulgate and Peshitta have Tou. [4] This was first proposed by J.D. Hawkins, one of the leading experts on the Syrian inscriptions of Palistin, and again supported by Janeway. See Hawkins, “The Amuq, and Aleppo: New Light in a Dark Age,” Near Eastern Archaeology 72 (2009): 164-173; also “The Inscriptions of the Aleppo Temple,” Anatolian Studies 61 (2011): 35-54. [5] Hawkins argued that Palistin was the original form, and then it became Walistin later, but this is speculative. The only form of the name we can be sure of is Walistin. [6] See Matthew J. Adams and Margaret E. Cohen, “The ‘Sea Peoples’ in Primary Sources, in The Philistines and Other “Sea Peoples” in Text and Archaeology, ed. A.E. Killebrew and G. Lehmann (SBL Archaeology and Biblical Studies 15; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 662 note 19. [7] To these we can add later historical examples: the Seleucids (based in Antioch for most of the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE), the short lived empire of Queen Zenobia (out of Palmyra in the 3rd century CE), and the Umayyad caliphate (7th-8th centuries CE, with its capital at Damascus). The only possible exception I am aware of to this pattern is the Nabataean kingdom (of the early Roman period), extending over a sizable area but one that was largely desert. [8] James W. Hardin, Christopher A. Rollston, and Jeffrey A. Blakely, “Iron Age Bullae from Officialdom’s Periphery: Khirbet Summeily in Broader Context,” Near Eastern Archaeology 77 (2014): 299-301. Michael Press is a Visiting Scholar in the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. He received a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2007, and is the author of Ashkelon 4: The Iron Age Figurines of Ashkelon and Philistia (Eisenbrauns, 2012). NEWS: Laser technology and archaeology at Jezreel From Laser technology and archaeology at Jezreel Was the ancient landscape similar to what we see today? By NORMA FRANKLIN, JENNIE EBELING The site of Jezreel has a long and rich history that we are just beginning to understand. Although an important Iron Age military compound was brought to light on Tel Jezreel during excavations in the early 1990s, a comprehensive archaeological survey of the surrounding landscape, including the Spring of Jezreel located in the Jezreel Valley below, was not conducted. Members of the current Jezreel Expedition team had no idea of the extent of the site and any connection that may have existed between the tel and the spring when we decided to initiate new exploration of the site in 2012. Was the ancient landscape similar to what we see today? Landscapes are changing fast as modern agricultural methods, roads, railways, forestation and deforestation, housing projects, and other modifications to the landscape alter the topography and hide earlier remains, and we knew that time was running out for Jezreel. We thus decided to utilize new technology - LiDAR - to better understand the history of occupation, recognize human impact on the landscape of greater Jezreel, and assist us in choosing areas to excavate beginning in 2013. LiDAR had already been used with spectacular results at archaeological sites in Central America and in the United Kingdom. Although expensive, it is fast and serves as a base for future archaeological work. We used airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) rather than the terrestrial version and were the first archaeological expedition to do so. The LiDAR equipment is housed below a small engine aircraft, and a dense network of laser beams are directed vertically onto the ground. Point cloud data is collected and processed to produce a 'first pulse' DSM (Digital Surface Model) that includes the top of any vegetation and buildings and a 'last pulse' DTM (Digital Terrain Model) that reflects the actual ground surface. The result is an accurate geo-referenced 'map' of the terrain. The LiDAR 'map' data can be combined with historical maps and aerial photographs to produce an infinite variety of views of the site that provide clues regarding ancient use of the landscape and lead us to areas of the site to survey and excavate. The LiDAR scan we commissioned in February 2012 covered 7.5 square kilometers of greater Jezreel and we chose to carry out a traditional foot survey of a core area of approximately three square kilometers the following June with a small group of undergraduate archaeology majors from the University of Evansville. The results were dramatic. With the LiDAR mapping data in hand and armed with a GPS unit, cameras, chalkboards, and keen-eyed student surveyors, the Jezreel Expedition spent several weeks exploring Jezreel on foot. We focused primarily on the north-facing slope that runs from Tel Jezreel to a large agricultural terrace below and the area of a newly-identified lower site - Tel 'Ein Yizre'el - just above the spring. We discovered 361 features, including 60 tombs, 57 agricultural installations for processing grapes, olives and cereals, 21 ancient quarries, scores of walls, and nearly 100 cisterns and systematically collected pottery sherds and stone artifacts dating from the late Neolithic period to the 20th century. Combining LiDAR technology with old-fashioned foot survey confirmed that the site of Jezreel is much larger than previously thought. We identified a new lower tel, extensive cemeteries dating to a number of different periods, and a series of paths or roads that connected different parts of the site to the spring in the valley below. Building on the LiDAR scans and the results of our ground survey, our 2013 and 2014 excavations exposed several phases of an Early Bronze Age settlement; the remains of a monumental Iron Age building on the northern edge of the upper tel with bedrock masonry blocks and an impressive interior water cistern; an intriguing medieval building or monument on a promontory overlooking the valley; and a rock-cut winery complex and other installations that underscore the agricultural abundance that is traditionally associated with the Jezreel Valley. We will continue exploring Jezreel for the next several years in order to reconstruct the long and complex settlement history of this strategically-located site. The Jezreel Expedition is directed by Norma Franklin of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa in Israel and Jennie Ebeling of the University of Evansville in Indiana, USA. NEWS: Secret chamber in Sidon From < http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Feb-24/288518-archaeologists- discover-secret-room-in-ancient-sidon-temple.ashx>: ====== Archaeologists discover secret room in ancient Sidon temple Mohammed Zaatari SIDON, Lebanon: Dozens of workers were busy covering old Sidon's Frères archaeological site Monday, to protect a major new discovery unearthed by a delegation from the British Museum. "A small contingent of the British Museum/Directorate General of Antiquities of Lebanon team of archaeologists discovered a new deeply concealed room," read a statement released by the delegation. The newly discovered monumental room is believed to be an extension of the underground Temple of Sidon, which dates back to the Bronze Age. This finding comes as workers prepare the foundations of a new national museum, which will be established beside the archaeological site. Construction of the museum led to urgent excavations at the site last month. Ten years ago, the delegation discovered an underground "holy of holies" room, dating back to 1300 B.C., where ancient residents are believed to have worshipped their gods. The newly discovered room was found adjacent to it, and is thought to be an extension of the site's temple. It is believed to have been used by high-status members of the community. Claude Serhal Doumit, head of the delegation, described the finding as significant, and said the room had been concealed by later developments built over it. "Sealed by the imposition of a Persian period building constructed on top of it, this new room is of the highest importance in terms of its monumentality and untouched pottery material, both [domestically produced] and imported from Cyprus and Mycenae," read a statement released by the delegation. The British Museum delegation conducted excavations at the Frères site for nearly 17 years, after receiving approval from the Directorate General of Antiquities. The room's walls were constructed with monumental stones to a height of 4.5 meters, while the floor of subterranean room would have been 7.5 meters below street level. Archaeologists unearthed a number of artifacts inside. "Wooden material, pottery and utensils for ritual celebrations used for eating, drinking and mixing fluids were found," Doumit told The Daily Star. Sidon MP Bahia Hariri hailed the new discovery, saying it helped reveal the rich history of the ancient city. Hariri, who visited the Frères archaeological site Monday, praised the excavation work carried out by the Directorate General of Antiquities' Sidon office and the British Museum delegation. Sidon is a repository of many ruins, which reflect the various civilizations and cultures that inhabited the city. Hariri believes that the finding will contribute to the city's new museum, which in turn will revive south Lebanon's economy and culturally. Construction on the new national museum has been underway after workers broke ground in November of last year. Grants by the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development have helped provide financing for its construction. The Kuwaiti Fund has contributed $4 million to the project, while the Arab Fund has committed $850,000. The museum will showcase artifacts and ruins from the various civilizations that inhabited Sidon, some of which date back to 3000 B.C. "The dream of creating a museum is coming true," Doumit said. "This is will be one of the most important museums in the Middle East." The museum will be designed to preserve the site's archaeological ruins in situ. Pathways connecting ancient and modern Sidon will be created, in addition to a footbridge in the museum's basement level that will show visitors where the ruins were discovered. "The ruins will be displayed on the museum's upper floor," said Doumit, who also stressed that every new discovery helps raise the profile of the new museum. Over the years, the delegation has unveiled numerous archaeological ruins and artifacts, shedding light on the early history of Sidon. More than 1,000 such artifacts, dating from the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman period will be showcased in the new space. The landmark museum is expected to provide a boost to Sidon, the capital of the south, creating job opportunities for local residents and encouraging tourism in the region. A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on February 24, 2015, on page 4. CONFERENCES: Romanization of Sardinia (Cuglieri, Sardinia, 26-28) From Cristina Nervi [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Conference "Il processo di romanizzazione della provincia Sardinia et Corsica". Teatro dell'Ex Seminario Pontificio regionale, 09073 Cuglieri (OR), Sardinia. 26-28 marzo 2015 Organnizator Dr. Salvatore De Vincenzo (Dipartimento di Scienze dei Beni Culturali, Università degli Studi della Tuscia) /E-Mail: [email protected] Theme Al centro di questo convegno è la romanizzazione della provincia Sardinia et Corsica, analizzata nel suo sviluppo, a partire dalle sue fasi più antiche. Nel titolo si è voluto pertanto porre l'accento in particolare su due termini, "processo" e "romanizzazione", consapevoli che la romanizzazione non può essere intesa in modo unitario, bensì come un processo diacronico caratterizzato da varie fasi. I singoli interventi di questo incontro di studi focalizzeranno di conseguenza non esclusivamente l'età imperiale della provincia Sardinia et Corsica, quando la romanizzazione è giunta ormai a compimento, quanto piuttosto la fase repubblicana, periodo durante il quale tale processo ha invece inizio e si sviluppa concretamente. Giovedì 26 Marzo 17:30: Saluto del sindaco di Cuglieri, dott. Andrea Loche e degli organizzatori del convegno; 18:00: Attilio Mastino (Sassari): Cornus e il Bellum Sardum di Hampsicora e Osto: storia o mito? Contro un processo a Tito Livio; Venerdì 27 Marzo 09:30: Andrea Ghiotto (Padova): Aspetti dell'architettura e dell'edilizia nelle città sarde tra l'età repubblicana e la prima età imperiale; 10:00: Jacopo Bonetto (Padova): Nora da colonia punica a municipio romano; 10:30: Chiara Blasetti Fantauzzi (Göttingen): Osservazioni sullo sviluppo urbanistico di Tharros nell'età della romanizzazione; 11:00: Salvatore De Vincenzo (Viterbo): Peculiarità del processo di romanizzazione dei centri urbani di Sardegna; 12:00: Raimondo Zucca (Sassari): Le Aquae Ypsitanae tra la tarda repubblica e il primo impero; 12:30: Emiliano Cruccas (Cagliari): Spazi urbani ed entroterra della Colonia Iulia Turris Libisonis; 14:30: Giovanna Pietra (Cagliari): Alle porte della provincia Sardinia: la romanizzazione di Olbia; 15:00: Romina Carboni (Cagliari): Le torri e il grano. Culti agrario-fertilistici tra età ellenistica e primo impero in Sardegna; 15:30: Donatella Salvi (Cagliari): I percorsi della vita e della morte: la romanizzazione letta attraverso i rituali funerari; 16:00: Chiara Pilo (Cagliari): Pratiche funerarie e processi di romanizzazione in Trexenta; 17:00: Carla Del Vais (Cagliari): Sopravvivenze e influenze culturali puniche nella Sardegna romana; 17:30: Stefania Atzori (Sassari): Le vie del potere, i mezzi del controllo. Viabilità romana in Sardegna tra tarda repubblica e primo impero; 18:00: Cristina Corsi (Cassino): Fondare colonie, coltivare le terre, diventare romani. Agli albori della Corsica romana; 18:30: S. Menchelli - G. Picchi (Pisa): Il processo di "romanizzazione" della Corsica: alcune riflessioni dall'analisi dei reperti ceramici; Sabato 28 Marzo 09:30: Nadia Canu (Sassari): Tra Sarcidano e Barbagia. Spunti sulla romanizzazione in una zona di transizione; 10:00: Elisabetta Garau (Sassari): "Neapolitana": tra città e territorio; 10:30: Cristina Nervi: 1, 2, 3... prove di Romanizzazione. Il territorio di Nora tra Punici e Romani; 11:30: Antonio Ibba (Sassari): Sardi, Sardo-punici e Italici in Sardinia: la testimonianza delle iscrizioni; 12:30: Discussione finale PRIZES: For Iraq dissertations, 2013-2015 From < https://networks.h-net.org/node/7801/discussions/62258/cfsubmissions-american-academic- research-institute-iraq>: [Go there for embedded links] ====== CfSubmissions: American Academic Research Institute in Iraq dissertation prizes, July 1, 2015 Andrea Stanton's picture Discussion published by Andrea Stanton on Tuesday, February 24, 2015 0 Replies Editor's note: Reposting from H-AMCA in case this opportunity interests anyone on H-Levant: Dissertation Prizes for 2013/14 & 2014/15 Academic Years The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) announces its bi-annual prizes for the best U.S. doctoral dissertations on Iraq. Dissertations defended during the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 academic years are eligible and may come from any discipline for the study of any time period. The competition is open to U.S. citizens at any university worldwide and any student at a U.S. university. One award of $1,500 will be made for The Donny George Youkhana Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation on ancient Iraq. Another award of $1,500 will be made for the best dissertation on medieval or modern Iraq. Nominations and submissions should come directly from dissertation advisors. Advisors should submit a PDF copy of the dissertation manuscript and a letter explaining the importance of the dissertation. Please send all nominations/submissions, along with contact information for dissertation authors, by July 1, 2015, to The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII), [email protected]. Only electronic submissions will be accepted. For a list of previous winners, visit our website. Queries may be addressed to Dr. Beth Kangas, Executive Director, at [email protected]. NEWS: Hyksos period pharaoh killed in battle From < http://luxortimesmagazine.blogspot.com/2015/02/american-egyptologists-prove- pharaoh.html>: ====== American Egyptologists prove Pharaoh was brutally killed in a battle away from home Elementary studies on the skeleton of Senebkay that was discovered in Abydos last year by the Mission of University of Pennsylvania directed by Dr. Josef Wegner showed 18 injuries on the King's bones as well as vertical cuts in feet, ankles and the lower back beside many injuries on the skull which indicated that the King died in a battle at age between 35 to 49 years old. The King "Senebkay" was mentioned in Turin papyrus King List as a ruler of Abydos local ruling family for 4 and half years as a part of a family that didn't last for long (1650-1600 B.C.) contemporary to the period of the Hyksos in Delta. Dr. Josef Wegner, director of Pennsylvania University mission, said that the visible injuries refers that the King death was severe. Also the sizes of the skull injuries show the sizes of axes were used in that battle of the Second Intermediate Period. The angle and direction of the King's injuries suggest that he was at a higher place when he was injuries and he was close to his attackers. The injuries and cuts on the King's ankles, feet and lower back explain how his attackers managed to knock him down on the ground and also that he was killed far from his residence as it seems that he was mummified after a long time of his death." The King was probably on his horse when he was attacked and hit at his lower back then ankles till he got on the ground when the attackers brutally killed him with their axes on his skull. Even though using horses in battles were not common at that time but the ancient Egyptians showed good skills in horse riding during the Second Intermediate Period which is an indication of the great role horses played in the military actions during this period even before the chariots technology in Ancient Egypt. Dr. Youssef Khalifa, head of Ancient Egypt department in the MSA, said "The studies show that the King "Senebkay" was between 172cm to 182cm tall. The pelvic and legs bones suggest that the King used to ride horses a lot." Dr. Youssef Khalifa also adds "It is not clear yet if Senebkay died in a battle against the Hyksos, who were occupying Lower Egypt at that time, or not. If future studies proved it so this will make him the first warrior king who fought for liberation even before "Senakhtenre" the founder of 17th Dynasty and the grandfather of "Ahmos" who defeated the Hyksos." February 26 CONFERENCES: “The Colors of Imperial Rome: The Richmond Statue of Caligula & the Arch of Titus in Rome” (Los Angeles, March 11) From Steven Fine [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The University of California's International Museum Institute and Visual Culture of the Ancient World Initiative (IMI-VCAW) will host this mini-symposium on March 11, 2015 from 5-6:45pm (with reception to follow), Taper Hall 102 at USC. The Colors of Imperial Rome: The Richmond Statue of Caligula & the Arch of Titus in Rome Speakers: Peter Schertz, Jack and Mary Ann Frable Curator of Ancient Art, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond Ancient Polychromy & Colorizing the Virginia Caligula: A University-Museum Collaborative Project Steven Fine, Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University; Fellow, Getty Research Institute The Arch of Titus: Polychromy, Exhibition & the Experience of the Flavian Triumphus Parking on Campus ($10): Parking (P) Structures D (off Jefferson) or Structure X (off Figeuroa) Free street parking: Just north of Jefferson Blv. on Hoover St. or cross streets. BOOKS: The Commentators' Bible: Deuteronomy From The Commentators' Bible: Deuteronomy The Rubin JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot Edited, translated, and annotated by Michael Carasik hardcover 2015. 296 pp. 978-0-8276-0939-6 $75.00 [Discount code 6as15 gets you 20% off] First published five hundred years ago as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as Miqra'ot Gedolot have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. With this fourth volume of the acclaimed English edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval Bible commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers. Each page of this volume contains several verses from the book of Deuteronomy, surrounded by both the 1917 and the 1985 JPS translations and by new contemporary English translations of the major commentators. This edition also includes introductory material, a glossary of terms, a list of names used in the text, notes on source texts, essays on special topics, and resources for further study. Michael Carasik teaches biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania and presents the weekly Torah Talk podcast. He is the compiler and translator of the Rubin JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot Commentators' Bible series, and author of Theologies of the Mind in Biblical Israel and The Bible's Many Voices (JPS, 2014). "The JPS Commentators' Bible is one of the most useful resources I now have in my library. It opens the door to the wisdom of the classic commentators to Jewish students of all levels of Hebrew fluency. The translations are fluid and accessible, and this important work represents an invaluable invitation to join the centuries-long conversation of Torah commentary and interpretation. I eagerly await the completion of the remaining volumes of The Rubin JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot."-Rabbi Dan Levin, Temple Beth El, Boca Raton, Florida "Anyone who is unfamiliar with medieval commentary, or who is unable to study the commentators in the original Hebrew, will find The Commentators' Bible a worthy addition to their book shelves. Carasik has done a real service making this material available."-The Reporter CALLS FOR PAPERS: Senses and Culture in the Biblical World (SBL 2015) From Gregory Wayne Schmidt Goering [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== I invite you to submit a paper proposal to the Senses and Culture program unit of the SBL for the November 2015 meeting in Atlanta. Our formal CFP follows. We have one open session on the Song of Songs, for which we invite your proposals. Our unit promotes sensory analyses of texts, practices, and objects from the biblical world (broadly construed), as well as studies of the senses in the ancient Near East, early Judaism, ancient Christianity, and their milieus. As an interdisciplinary unit, we welcome a diverse range of approaches to the study of the senses, including (but not limited to) philological, anthropological, psychological, linguistic, cognitive, literary, and phenomenological methods. The deadline for proposals is March 5, and you may submit your paper abstract. Call for Papers: Senses and Culture in the Biblical World Program Unit We plan to hold two sessions in 2015. First: As a love poem, the Song of Songs is arguably the most sensual book in the Hebrew Bible. For an open panel, we invite paper proposals that offer a sensory analysis of the Song or of any element in the reception history of the Song. Papers that relate the sense(s) under investigation to larger questions about social order, cosmology, cognition, or cultural values are especially welcome. The abstract should state the paper's thesis, outline the approach that will be taken, and identify the primary texts to be discussed. Second: With the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity seminar, we are sponsoring a joint session exploring the non-visual senses. While sight is often the most prominent of the senses deployed by biblical and cognate texts, sensory language involving hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, proprioception, pain, or any other sense demands our attention as well. The papers in this session will examine the use of this language by examining how and why the rhetoric of the texts employs such sensory language. As sensory experience is culturally mediated, interpretation of sensory language in ancient texts will also require us to attend to the cultural meanings the different senses evoked in their indigenous contexts. Moreover, since the senses are more often than not simply assumed by the texts, attending to how they function when they are explicitly engaged will help us to understand these texts better. This session will consist of three invited papers and one respondent. BOOKS & KUDOS: From Gilead to Edom. Studies ... in Honor of Denyse Homès-Fredericq .... From < http://www.akkadica.org/pdfs/AJ_promotion-Akkadica%20Suppl.12.pdf>: [I have this email for Denyse Homès-Fredericq We are happy to present our newest publication in the series Supplementa ad Akkadica which will be of interest to all scholars specialized in Near Eastern Archaeology: I. M. Swinnen and E. Gubel (eds.), From Gilead to Edom. Studies in the Archaeology and History of Jordan, in Honor of Denyse Homès-Fredericq on the Occasion of Her Eightieth Birthday [Akkadica Supplementum XII], Wetteren: Cultura, 2014. Format 4° (21 x 30 cm), paperback, 247 p. - Price in Euro: 70,- + postage Contents: Preface INGRID MORIAH SWINNEN Introduction ERIC GUBEL Bibliography COMPILED BY INGRID MORIAH SWINNEN 1 The Fat of the Land: Neolithic Origins of “Wealth” in the Southern Levant GARY ROLLEFSON 2 The Chalcolithic Period (c. 4900-3800/3700 BCE)): In the Southern Transjordan Plateau, the Southern Ghors, the Northeast ‘Arabah, and the Faynan Region BURTON MACDONALD 3 Curvilinear Domestic Structures in the Prehistoric Eastern Mediterranean Region and Evidence from the Early Bronze I Period at al-Lahun in Jordan INGRID MORIAH SWINNEN 4 Taking an Axe to Cypriot Prehistory: Jordan and Cyprus in the Early Bronze Age STEPHEN J. BOURKE 5 ‘Tell Barakat’ Revisited: a Kernos Ring from Central Jordan KAY PRAG 6 The Hyksos and the Middle Bronze Age IIB-IIC/III in Jordan: What imported Egyptian Seals tell us VANESSA BOSCHLOOS 7 Lion Hunt during the Late Bronze Age in Northern Jordan : Who was the Hunter ? ZEIDAN A. KAFAFI 8 Toward a Socionatural Reconstruction of the Early Iron Age Settlement System in the Wadi al-Mujib Canyon BENJAMIN W. PORTER 9 Tell Abu al-Kharaz, Jordan valley : The Iron Age Architecture PETER M. FISCHER 10 The Black Burnished Pyxis from Khirbat al-Mudayna (Thamad) P.M. MICHÈLE DAVIAU 11 On the Interaction between Ammon, Moab and Edom with the Phoenician Coast : Some Addenda and Afterthoughts ERIC GUBEL 12 Monumental Tombs along the Arabian Caravan Routes BRUNO OVERLAET AND ERNIE HAERINCK 13 Museum of Jordanian Heritage – Yarmouk University, Jordan MOAWIYAH M. IBRAHIM eAUDIOS: The Eunuch in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity At The Eunuch in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations for at least three thousand years. Eunuchs were typically employed as servants in royal households in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity. In some civilisations they were used as administrators or senior military commanders, sometimes achieving high office. The tradition lingered until surprisingly recently, with castrated singers remaining a feature of Vatican choirs until the nineteenth century, while the last Chinese eunuch of the imperial court died in 1996. With: Karen Radner Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London Shaun Tougher Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University Michael Hoeckelmann British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at King's College London Producer: Thomas Morris. REPORTS: New Italian Archaeological Project at Tell Surghul/Nigin From In February 2015 ended the first excavation campaign to Tell Surghul/Nigin in the ancient State of Lagash. The Italian archaeological mission is the result of a joint research project between Sapienza the University of Rome (Davide Nadali) and Perugia University (Andrea Polcaro). The first season concentrated on two main areas: Area A and Area B. In the first, a room of a Late Uruk Period building was discovered, containing at least forty flower pots, entire and fragmentary, spouted jars, and other vessels some with the remains of food rations (grain and fishes). In the second area, archaeologists uncovered the northern and western mud-brick walls of a large public building with an external facade decoration of recess and buttress dated to the Ubaid 4 Period. On the associated floor, there were at least five complete censers (one of them painted with geometric and wave motifs), similar to the ones found in Temple VI of Eridu. The next season, to be carried out around autumn 2015, will extend the two areas of excavation. A third operation will be opened on the top of the main mound to recover the chronological sequences of later periods (Early Dynastic and Neo-Sumerian). In the just concluded campaign, several inscribed bricks and cones of King Gudea of Lagash were collected from the surface: the inscription refers to the construction of the main temple Sirara for the goddess Nanshe. NEWS: Jack-hammering artefacts in Mosul From Islamic State 'destroys ancient Iraq statues in Mosul' The Islamic State (IS) group has released a video showing the destruction of statues in Iraq. The video shows statues being smashed using sledgehammers in what appears to be a museum in the city of Mosul. Statues are also shown being destroyed reportedly at an archaeological site known as the Nergal Gate. One of the militants in the video describes the artefacts as "false idols" and seeks to justify their destruction in religious terms. In the video released via IS social media sites, black-clad men push over statues, smash them with sledgehammers and use a pneumatic drill to destroy the rubble. The video shows a black-clad man drilling through and pulling apart what appears to be a stone winged- bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th Century BC. Analysts say the artefacts are unique and priceless although the museum does also house copies of some items. IS have controlled Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, since June 2014. The US military have said that an assault on the city by the Iraqi army could happen within months.The region under IS control in Iraq has nearly 1,800 of Iraq's 12,000 registered archaeological sites. The reported destruction of the statues follows recent reports that IS burnt down Mosul Library, which housed over 8,000 ancient manuscripts NOTICES: Change of deadline for IAA prize and subsidies From Wilfred van Soldt [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The number of applications for the IAA Prize and the IAA Subsidies is quite small this year. The Board decided that for these two competitions the deadline will be shifted to April 1, 2015. Please send in your applications as soon as possible, preferably by email to [email protected]. For the rules and regulations, see our website, http://iaassyriology.org/contest-award/. NOTE: The deadline for the De Gruyter award for the best Assyriological PhD dissertation will NOT be changed, it remains March 1, 2015! Many of our members have not yet paid their annual dues for this year. The board urges the IAA members to pay the dues as soon as possible. If we do not receive them we will not be able to continue our prizes and subsidies programs. You can pay either by bank transfer or by Paypal, see the website: http://iaassyriology.org/membership-notes-and-payment/ BOOKS: Cuneiform Texts in the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, I From < http://paleog.com/pcoll.html>: ====== Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow) and Paleograph-Press are pleased to announce the publication of the first volume of the series Cuneiform Texts in the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: Administrative Texts from Tello from the Ur III Period B. Perlov , Yu. Saveliev Cuneiform Texts in the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, I. 2014. Xxiii, 217 pp., including 67 plates with tablets copies. ISBN 978-5-89526-024-1. Price: 62.00 Euro / 72 00 US $ (+postage) In this first volume 251 tablets from Tello are published. All of them are originated from N. Likhachev collection and never have been published before. All the texts are transliterated, and autographs are provided. There are also general indexes and indexes of anthroponyms, theonyms, and toponyms, as well as seal legends, chronological tables, and a concordance of the catalogue numbers and the museum inventory numbers. The volume also includes Introduction with provenance and detailed description of the Museum cuneiform collection. KUDOS: For Shmuel Ahituv From At the Carta website is this notice about him Shmuel Ahituv is a true Renaissance man. Versed in many fields and a man of many talents, Bible interpretation and commentary, Hebrew paleography and epigraphy, ancient Egypt and a host of other subjects, Shmuel moves from one subject to the other with intimate knowledge, grace and ease. Shmuel has lectured on all these subjects mainly but not only at Ben-Gurion University. He has written a number of books. He has also extended invaluable advice to a number of authors who profited from his keen eye and deep knowledge of biblical and other subjects. Of Shmuel Ahituv it can be said that he is an editor's editor. A great many scholars have reached out to him for help and advice in their publications. Having honed his skills in the epic Encyclopedia Hebraica and Bible for Israel commentary series, he is currently editing a number of important publications. A welcome addition to his academic achievements and literary prowess is his kind and pleasant personality. Ever willing to jump into the breach when asked, Shmuel does so with great humanity, much humor and sharp wit as will be attested by all those who enjoyed his help, always graciously given. Feb 27 eREVIEWS: Of "Antiochus the Great" From Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.02.53 Michael J. Taylor, Antiochus the Great. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2013. Pp. xviii, 190. ISBN 9781848844636. $39.95. Reviewed by Filippo Canali De Rossi, Liceo Classico Dante Alighieri ([email protected]) Il libro è una biografia di Antioco III inserita nella storia della dinastia dei Seleucidi, a partire dal fondatore Seleuco I Nicatore fino agli ultimi epigoni. È la storia di un grande impero sovranazionale e delle strategie messe in atto per la sua creazione e successiva espansione, conservazione e difesa della sua esistenza. Nel primo capitolo l'autore traccia un panorama della estensione territoriale del dominio di Antioco III, e ne fa risalire la genesi al fondatore Seleuco I che, insediatosi nella satrapia di Babilonia dopo la uccisione del reggente Perdicca, ne fu cacciato dal nuovo aspirante al dominio universale Antigono. Seleuco, rifugiatosi presso Tolemeo, contribuì alla vittoria su Demetrio Poliorcete a Gaza e, con l'aiuto del sovrano lagide, riuscì a reimpadronirsi di Babilonia. Una rottura nell'asse con Tolemeo intervenne nel momento in cui quest'ultimo, assente nella battaglia di Ipso vinta dalla coalizione dei diadochi su Antigono, ne approfittò per impadronirsi della Celesiria, che resterà attraverso le generazioni un motivo di contesa fra le dinastie. Seleuco, da parte sua, provvedeva ad assicurarsi sul confine orientale tramite un accordo con il sovrano maurya Chandragupta, che gli fornì 500 elefanti in cambio di concessioni territoriali. La storia delle successive generazioni passa attraverso la figura della regina Stratonice, figlia del Poliorcete, la cui mano venne ceduta da Seleuco al figlio Antioco I. Dopo la vittoria di Seleuco I su Lisimaco e la morte ad opera del traditore Tolemeo Cerauno, il regno passò definitivamente sulle spalle del rampollo Antioco I. Questi si guadagnò un credito personale grazie alla vittoria sui Galati, ai quali impose lo stanziamento in una zona circoscritta dell'Asia minore. Suo figlio Antioco II, succedutogli attorno al 261 a.C.1 indebolì il regno con una imprudente politica matrimoniale, passando dall'unione con la cugina Laodice a quella con la principessa egiziana Berenice. Alla morte di Antioco II, avvenuta nel 246 a.C., vi fu la presa del potere da parte di Seleuco II, figlio avuto dalla prima moglie Laodice, e la conseguente invasione del regno da parte di Tolemeo III per difendere i diritti del nipote, figlio della seconda moglie Berenice. Intanto la rivolta dei satrapi della Partia e della Battriana, Andragora e Diodoto, preludeva alla formazione di regni orientali indipendenti. Un altro elemento di sofferenza nel regno di Seleuco II fu la rivolta del fratello Antioco Ierace in Asia minore. Da Seleuco II nacque il nostro Antioco, che succederà al breve regno del fratello maggiore Seleuco III (226- 223 a.C.), deceduto nel tentativo di sloggiare dall'Asia minore Attalo I di Pergamo. Dopo una disamina sullo stato del regno alla accessione di Antioco III, l'autore passa in rassegna i principali eventi storici del suo dominio, a cominciare (capitolo II) dalla usurpazione di Molone, satrapo della Media. A questa si associò la rivendicazione di indipendenza di Acheo cugino di Antioco, cui era affidata l'Asia minore, e la guerra contro Attalo di Pergamo. In tale frangente Antioco III venne però indotto dall'interessato consigliere Ermia ad occuparsi soltanto della guerra contro Tolemeo per la Celesiria. Inizialmente pertanto Molone colse alcuni successi sui generali incaricati di condurre la guerra, ma una volta venuto a capo degli intrighi di corte, Antioco III mosse personalmente contro Molone, sbaragliandone l'esercito ed inducendolo al suicidio. Instaurata una tregua con il cugino Acheo (i cui soldati si erano rifiutati di seguirlo in una impresa contro il re), Antioco fu libero di affrontare con decisione la contesa con l'Egitto, iniziando con la riconquista di Seleucia Pieria. L'autore pertanto, che oltre ad avere una esperienza accademica ha anche militato con l'esercito americano in Kosowo, Kuwait ed Iraq, passa in rassegna le istituzioni, e soprattutto le forze militari a disposizione di Antioco III in questo momento cruciale (cap. III). Lo sforzo bellico condotto contro Tolemeo IV, anch'egli da poco succeduto al trono, culminò nella battaglia di Raphia del 217 a.C. (cap. IV), per la quale il re egiziano per la prima volta aveva reclutato un largo contingente di nativi, decisivo nella risoluzione dello scontro. La pace che seguì lasciava però Antioco in possesso di Seleucia Pieria ed egli si volse così ad affrontare l'usurpazione del cugino (cap. V), che venne assediato nella sua capitale Sardi, fino a che la città venne espugnata con un colpo di mano e lo stesso Acheo mutilato e decapitato. Il capitolo VI è dedicato alla cosiddetta anabasi di Antioco III, la spedizione verso le alte satrapie del suo regno, intrapresa nel 212 a.C. Essa, attraverso una serie di tappe intermedie (Armenia, Media, Partia), lo portò ad affrontare l'usurpatore greco della Battriana, Eutidemo. Un ambasciatore inviato da quest'ultimo al campo di Antioco ebbe modo tuttavia di presentare il dominio di Eutidemo come vantaggioso per Antioco: questi a sua volta promise in moglie al futuro sovrano della Battriana, Demetrio, una delle sue figlie. Ultima tappa della spedizione orientale fu l'incontro con Sofagaseno, erede della dinastia Maurya di Chandragupta ed Asoka, il quale concesse ad Antioco una nuova fornitura di elefanti. Infine nel ritorno Antioco ebbe occasione di visitare alcune località del golfo Persico, fra cui Gerrha. Nell'insieme la spedizione rinforzò la posizione del sovrano procurandogli, in imitazione di Alessandro, l'appellativo di 'Grande'. Antioco era così pronto ad affrontare la sfida con i Romani, già vincitori del suo collega macedone Filippo, sfida che avrebbe deciso il destino del suo regno (cap. VII). Prima che si arrivasse ad una dichiarazione di guerra, i due stati navigarono a lungo in uno stato di latente ostilità (la cosiddetta 'pace infida'), dovuta alla esistenza, vera o presunta, di un patto segreto fra Antioco III e Filippo V di Macedonia per dividersi le spoglie del dominio dei Tolemei, approfittando della immatura età del nuovo sovrano Tolemeo V. Antioco assistette perciò da spettatore interessato alla guerra dei Romani con Filippo e, attraverso un gioco di scambi diplomatici,2 cercò di mettere piede in Europa senza lasciarsi intimorire dai Romani, a loro volta sollecitati da alcune città d'Asia a garantirne la libertà dalla ingerenza seleucide. A scatenare senz'altro la guerra fu l'iniziativa presa dagli Etoli di invitare Antioco in Grecia, da poco sgomberata dalle forze di Flaminino, invito al quale il re né si sottrasse, né si presentò con forze adeguate (cap. VIII). Insediatosi nella città euboica di Calcide, Antioco III indulse poi a nuove nozze con la figlia di un notabile locale e, presentandosi di fatto come il successore di un esautorato Filippo, rese gli estremi onori alle ossa lasciate insepolte dei caduti macedoni di Cinoscefale. La guerra venne poi risolta in Grecia dalla battaglia delle Termopili, ed ebbe un seguito in Asia, preceduto dagli scontri navali di Side, Cisso, Mionneso. Lo sbarco dei Romani in Asia fu accompagnato da trattative, in cui Antioco III si mostrava ora pronto a concedere ai Romani le loro richieste iniziali, inclusa la liberazione di alcune città, mentre il console Lucio Scipione e suo fratello Publio esigevano l'evacuazione di tutta l'Asia minore al di qua del Tauro. Pertanto, rifiutando Antioco tali condizioni si addivenne allo scontro finale presso Magnesia al Sipilo (cap. IX): la descrizione della battaglia da parte dell'autore è molto dettagliata, con la presentazione dei luoghi e delle forze in campo. Probabilmente la disfatta ebbe inizio dal movimento disordinato di alcuni elefanti che scompigliò la falange macedone, esponendola all'assalto delle legioni, cosicché, a detta di Livio, le perdite risultarono in oltre 50.000 uomini dell'esercito seleucidico contro poche centinaia di Romani. In seguito alla battaglia, attraverso una serie di intermediari, nuovamente Antioco intavolò trattative con Scipione in Apamea, da cui scaturirono severe condizioni di pace, che includevano la consegna dei consiglieri etoli e, in particolare, del cartaginese Annibale. Antioco poté conservare il suo regno e cercò di rafforzarlo come poteva, incontrandò però difficoltà finanziarie alle quali si sforzò di rimediare attingendo alle risorse templari. Durante uno di questi tentativi, nel 187 a.C. egli venne assassinato in Elam, all'età di 53 anni. Segue un capitolo in cui l'autore descrive i successivi eventi della dinastia, nei quali erano destinate ad avere peso le trame intessute da Roma, dove alcuni dei futuri sovrani seleucidi a lungo dimorarono come ostaggi, in conseguenza degli accordi di Apamea. Si tratta, come si può vedere, di un libro denso di avvenimenti e di altre notizie, qui riassunte solo in maniera parziale, che l'autore narra in uno stile avvincente, senza imporre ai fatti una visione marcatamente ideologica della storia. Il libro è corredato da una serie di illustrazioni in bianco e nero stampate su carta lucida e presenta una serie di carte geografiche (pure in bianco e nero) ed alcune appendici dinastiche e cronologiche. Sia per la veste che per il taglio narrativo, il libro appare indirizzato ad un pubblico di lettori colti piuttosto che ad un ambito specialistico di ricerca.3 Non mancano però saggi di analisi più approfondita (in particolare per quanto riguarda la storia militare, nella quale anche editorialmente il libro si iscrive) e riferimenti alla bibliografia più recente.4 Accanto alla ricchezza degli aspetti informativi dobbiamo però anche lamentare una certa sciattezza linguistica ed editoriale,5 che si manifesta in particolare nella grafia dei nomi antichi,6 ma anche in alcune sviste di ordine storico.7 Notes: 1. Taylor (p. 161) anticipa l'accessione di Antioco II al 264 a.C., ma non trovo riscontri per questa data. 2. Rinvio alla mia recente trattazione in Le relazioni diplomatiche di Roma, IV. Dalla 'liberazione della Grecia' alla pace infida con Antioco III (201-194 a.C.), Roma 2014. 3. L'autore evidenzia questa scelta rimandando gli specialisti all'opera in tedesco di H.H. Schmitt, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Antiochos' des Grossen und seiner Zeit, 1964. 4. J. Ma, Antiochus III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor, Oxford 1999 è citato a p. 71. L'opera di Aperghis sulla economia seleucidica è citata in maniera diversa nel testo (p. 50 e n. 36: G.G. Aphergis, Seleucid Economy) e nella bibliografia (p. 184: Makis Aperghis, Seleukid Economy). 5. Alcune espressioni in lingua inglese sembrano viziate da errori tipografici: p. 101: according to an inscription from King Antiochus to Ilium; p. 127: the pleb(e)ian consul; p. 128: it would brought the total number; p. 149: all grievances are (to) be submitted; p. 159: he was stood triumphant; p. 157: every private household (was) filled with gloom. 6. P. 18: Politeia, non Politikon; p. 29: Ct(e)siphon; p. 37: BASILEW(S) ; p. 40: Ptolem(ai)c; p. 57, 67, 68, 87: Sosib(i)us; p. 74: Anaiti(s); p. 77: S(y)r(i)nx; p. 77: Hectambylos = Hecatompylos? P. 78, 145: archi(e)re(u)s; p. 82: Mayaran = Maurya?; p. 82: Sophag(a)senus; p. 83: Dra(n)giana; p. 92: Aetoli[e]an; p. 99: Is(t)hm(i)an; p. 107: Flamini(n)us; p. 110: Philopoem(e)n; p. 122: A[n]thamanian; p. 132: Semp[e]ronius; p. 152: Pharn(a)ces; p. 152, 153: Philomet(o)r; p. 153: Popilius Laen(a)s; p. 156: Her(a)clides; p. 157: la grafia Mithradites mi sembra inusuale. 7. A p. 19, l'autore attribuisce a Cartagine (piuttosto che alla iniziativa personale di Annibale) lo sforzo bellico intrapreso contro Roma. A p. 83-84 egli sostiene che Antioco avrebbe popolato Antiochia in Perside con coloni della Tessaglia, ma nel documento (anche in Iscrizioni dello Estremo Oriente Greco, nr. 252) si parla espressamente solo di Magnesia al Meandro. Della legazione inviata dai Romani ad Antioco III (p. 92) nulla sappiamo circa l'arrivo ad Antiochia; cfr. ora Le relazioni IV cit., nr. 808; i legati non avevano facoltà di proclamare Antioco 'amico ed alleato del popolo Romano': sarà un pronunciamento del senato (ibid. nr. 889) a farlo. P. 99: la proclamazione ai giochi Istmici è dell'anno 196 a.C.; p. 102 chiaramente Ptolemy è una svista per Philip; p. 109: Demetrio era il figlio più giovane di Filippo, non il più anziano. P. 123: le Termopili lasciavano al passaggio non poche centinaia ma solo pochi metri. P. 140: comandante delle legioni romane a Magnesia fu il legato Gneo Domizio (console del 192 a.C.) piuttosto che Lucio Scipione. P. 153: la commissione era di dieci (non dodici) legati. FEATURES: Sitting at the gate From Archaeology When King David sat 'in the gate,' what did that mean? 'Gates' in biblical Israel weren't just a doorway into the city. They were where prophets cried out and kings judged, and people met, like in the ancient city of Dan. By Mike Rogoff "Lot was sitting in the gates of Sodom," relates the book of Genesis. To modern ears, the description "in the gates" sounds curious, but in biblical times a gate (or "gates") was not just a passageway through the defensive wall surrounding the city. It was typically a massive and often complex structure, consisting of an outer gate and an inner one providing a second line of defense, with a space in between. It was the space between those two gates - sometimes just a corridor with recessed guardrooms, sometimes a more spacious courtyard - that the Bible calls "in the gates." Much life took place within that gate area. Based on biblical references and archaeological finds, that space served as a combination of town hall, ad hoc law court, Hyde Park Corner, marketplace and park bench. Witnesses in pre-literate societies It was in the city gate, through which people constantly flowed, that agreements were verbally sealed in the presence of witnesses, a necessity in an era before the written contract. In Hebron, south of Jerusalem, sometime in the 2nd millennium B.C.E., the Hebrew patriarch Abraham negotiated the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah as a tomb for his wife Sarah: And "it passed to Abraham as a possession in the presence of... all who went in at the gate of his city" (Genesis 23). The agreement was witnessed; the deal was done. The Hebrew Bible records another negotiation, in the gate of nearby Bethlehem of Judah, several centuries later. A certain Boaz wished to exercise his familial right to marry Ruth, the young Moabite widow of a kinsman. But Boaz was not first in line, and the match was only possible if another male relative, closer on the family tree, publicly waived his prerogative. "Boaz took ten men of the elders of the city" and sat them down in the gate. When the exchange between the two kinsmen ended to Boaz's satisfaction, - Boaz addressed the crowd: "Today you are witnesses .... Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said, 'We are witnesses" (Ruth 4). Half a country away, the Israelite gate at Tel Dan - the site of the biblical city of Dan - has an ancient stone bench with, tellingly, seating for precisely ten people. 'Justice in the gate' The gate of the city was also a podium for the Israelite prophets of old, the feisty social reformers of their day. "Hate evil and love good," declaimed Amos, "and establish justice in the gate." As the maxim has it: not only must justice be done, it must be seen to be done. And for the ancient Israelites, the one place in the city where transparency was guaranteed was the city gate. It was an extraordinarily progressive judicial system for its day, but apparently could not entirely prevent official corruption. "They hate the one who reproves in the gate," Amos scathingly noted, presumably referring to himself; and he raged against those "who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate" (Amos 5). The Israelite gate at Dan A well-preserved example of the city gate can be found at Tel Dan, a huge 70-acre mound in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. Excavation of the site, conducted over decades by the late Dr. Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College, exposed an impressive Israelite city-gate complex. Biran dated the Israelite gate to the early 9th century B.C.E., the time of King Ahab. From outside the city, a cobblestone approach-way ascends to the outer gate. Beyond the door-jambs, threshold and door-stop is the courtyard, on the far side of which is the inner gate, similar to the first. There seem to have been upper-story structures overlooking the vulnerable entrance to the city, presumably part of its defenses. The Israelite gate at Tel Dan has another interesting feature: a raised square platform, with two steps ascending to it. Round, decorated stone sockets at the corners of the platform were possibly designed to hold the poles of a canopy. While it is possible that the platform had a cultic function - alongside it is an unadorned "standing stone," often understood as an abstract representation of a deity - scholars are inclined to see it as the base of the king's seat in the city gate. Here he might sit in judgment, or simply to demonstrate his majesty. Remarkably for the period, the Israelite king - almost a constitutional monarch in an age of absolutism - would go out to see and be seen by his subjects. By the way, ancient Dan also has a famous Canaanite-era gate, one of the oldest of its kind still standing in the world, dating from the Bronze Age: http://www.haaretz.co.il/st/inter/Heng/news/images/RuthS/teldancanaan.jpg [large, further enlargeable picture] An intriguing biblical example of this royal phenomenon - though it did not take place in Dan - concerns the rebellion against King David by his son, Absalom, in the early 10th century B.C.E. Absalom's initial success forced David to flee across the Jordan River and find refuge in Mahanaim. At the climax of the revolt, loyalist and rebel forces clashed in the forest of Ephraim, where David's army carried the day. The king "was sitting between the two gates" of the city (presumably Mahanaim), anxiously waiting for news from the battlefield. The victory is complete, a runner tells him; but Absalom is dead: "The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept." David's troops were dispirited, the Bible relates, their victory "turned into mourning." Joab, David's general, angrily burst in on the king, upbraiding him for indulging his personal sorrow and ignoring his men, and warning him of disaster unless he reasserted his royal presence. "Then the king got up and took his seat in the gate. The troops were all told, 'See, the king is sitting in the gate'; and all the troops came before the king" (2 Sam 18 & 19). Allegiance was restored; and the rest, as they say, is history. NEWS: More on the Israel Prize A fuller notice on Shmuel Ahituv and the Israel prize is at BGU Prof. Shmuel Ahituv Wins Israel Prize for Bible Studies The Ministry of Education announced today that Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Prof. (Emer.) Shmuel Ahituv has won the 2015 Israel Prize for Bible Studies. The prize committee was led by Prof. Edward Greenstein. Ahituv is a past head of the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies and was the founder of the BGU Press, which he led for 14 years until shortly before his retirement. The prize committee cited Ahituv as one of the foremost Bible researchers in Israel and the world. The prize citation notes that he has made many important contributions to the study of the history of the Jewish people in the Biblical age and to Biblical literary commentary. Among his contributions, he deciphered ancient Hebrew inscriptions and presented them in an accessible format used by scholars and students in Israel and around the world. Prof. Ahituv promoted and promotes research into Biblical literature through a series of commentaries that he established and edits, they wrote. The other members of the prize committee included: Prof. Gershon Brin, Tel Aviv University, Prof. Gershon Galil, University of Haifa, and emer. Prof. Sara Japhet, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Ahituv was born in Tel Aviv in 1935 and grew up in Rishon Lezion. He served in the IDF from 1953- 1956. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, during which time he joined the staff of scholars compiling the Biblical Encyclopedia eventually becoming the editor who finished that monumental work. Upon the encyclopedia's completion, he initiated the "Biblical Encyclopedia Library," which has published 25 volumes so far and continues to do so. In the mid-1980s, he began the series of scientific commentaries "Bible for Israel" with Prof. Moshe Greenberg. He has been the sole editor of this enterprise since 1990. Ahituv continues to sit on a number of professional committees. eVIDEOS & INTERVIEWS: With Zainab Bahrani At The interview is also available for print download. Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archaeology at Columbia University. Her most recent book is called The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity. eREVIEWS: Of "Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts" From Susanna Drake. Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 184 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4520-2. Reviewed by Gail Labovitz (American Jewish University 15) Published on H-Judaic (February, 2015) Commissioned by Matthew A. Kraus According to the Flesh: Sexual Slander as a Tool of Early Christian Anti-Jewish Rhetoric Two decades ago, Daniel Boyarin took the title of his book Carnal Israel from Augustine's Tractate Against the Jews, where in the course of interpreting 1 Corinthians 10:18 ("Behold Israel according to the flesh"), Augustine describes the Jewish people as "indisputably carnal." Stating at the outset that "Augustine knew what he was talking about," Boyarin therefore announced his intent to "assert the essential descriptive accuracy of the recurring Patristic notion that what divides Christians from rabbinic Jews is the discourse of the body, and especially sexuality."[1] In this new book, however, Susanna Drake returns to the rhetoric itself. Although she cites Augustine, and Boyarin's interpretation of his words, as "the initial provocation for the present study" (p. 112, n. 8), her concerns are not the accuracy, but the intent and implications of such accusations made by Christian writers against Jews in late antiquity: what did it mean not only for Augustine, but for a number of early Christian writers--and those for whom they wrote--to accuse Jews of carnality? Her questions are: How did the figure of the "carnal Jew" come to function as a topos of early Christian literature? When did this topos first appear, and what purposes did it serve? How did the stereotype of the carnal Jew serve Christian leaders as they forged the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy, Christianity and Judaism? And what can the development of this topos tell us about ancient understandings of gender and sexuality (p. 2)? To this end, she examines "the sexualized representations of Jews in writings by Greek church fathers from the first through fifth centuries CE" (p. 2); the authors she focuses on are the unknown author of the Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Origen, Hippolytus, and John Chrysostom. The period in which these writers were active was one in which Christian leaders were seeking to establish the boundaries of the newly emerging religion: boundaries between Christian and pagan, between Christian and Jew, and between orthodox Christian and heretic. Attributing negative sexual and gender stereotypes to one's ideological opponents served (not only for Christians but for many groups in the world of late antiquity) as a common means, then, to separate and distinguish oneself from such others. It also played a role in constructing internal norms of ideal attitude, practices, and social norms (and as Drake notes as an aside, often still does; p. 3). Because Jews and Christians shared origins and sacred texts, the boundary between Judaism and Christianity could be especially troublesome, and was often linked to discourse over heresiology as well (that is, perceived, accused, and/or actual "Judaizing" among those who claim to be Christians becomes a signifier of heresy). Sexual slander thus spoke to early Christians not just about who Jews were, but also how Jews read and (mis)interpreted sacred scripture, interacted with Christians, and threatened the purity of the Christian community. Among the particularly intriguing elements (for this reader, at least) of the materials that Drake surveys are that different authors, and even the same authors in different works, deploy gendered and sexualized imagery in multiple and not always compatible ways, with varying degrees of stability and effectiveness. Finally, as Christianity and imperial power became aligned at the end of this time period, such slander could further serve as rhetorical justification for coercion and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. Methodologically, Drake's touchstones are works of postcolonialism (Homi Bhaba, Judith Butler) and (religious) cultural studies (Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus), in which identities (such as Christian or Jew, orthodox or heretic, male or female) are recognized as socially constructed categories, constantly influenced by and reacting to forces and circumstances both external and internal in a complex web of power relations. Boundaries are typically less impermeable than some would wish, and "hybridity" threatens "purity." Particularly influential here is Homi Bhaba's analysis of the stereotype as a means to fix the identity of the colonized as "Other" and distinct from--typically meaning also inferior to--the identity of the colonizer, and thus to justify domination and colonization and to discourage undue mixing. Sex and sexuality, then, become a prime realm of metaphor for the simultaneous desirability of the Other and the threat of the "mongrel" who both results from and abets the process of blurring of boundaries between categories. Because several later writers invoke Paul as part of their rhetoric, Drake begins in chapter 1 with an examination of the image of "Israel according to the flesh" and the deployment of sexual slander in the New Testament works attributed to Paul. The two are not directly connected at this point. While Christians are to be distinguished in their practices of chastity (or even celibacy), self-mastery, and shunning of porneia, the sexual Other for Paul is not the Jews, but idolatrous gentiles. In this, Paul draws on and develops similar trends in earlier and contemporaneous Jewish discourse regarding gentiles. Only once, Drake notes, does Paul attribute sexual sin (adultery, in Rom. 2:22) to a Jew, and in context the concern is as much hypocrisy (preaching against a variety sins while committing them oneself) as the particular sin itself (p. 24; also 28). "Israel according to the flesh" (and similar expressions), meanwhile, is bound up in the duality of "flesh" and "spirit," and Paul's privileging of the latter over the former for Christians and the Christian community. "Flesh," however, has multiple and not always consistent associations for Paul, some more morally neutral than others. It may be associated with unruly, sinful physical desires including but not limited to the sexual, but also with the this-worldly sphere: procreation, kinship, and ethnic particularity; observance of the law as religious practice; and literalism in hermeneutics while missing the inner spiritual and allegorical meaning of scripture. Thus when second-century Christian writers begin to turn sexual slander against Jews, as in the Epistle of Barnabas and Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho, they at first do so "[a]part from Paul and in contradistinction from him" (p. 19). Both do, however, associate Jewish literalism with Jewish sexuality, and with particularly Jewish "lusts of the flesh." As Drake writes of Justin Martyr, "[h]is argument depends on a tautology ... : Jewish misunderstanding of scripture is rooted in Jewish lust; simultaneously, Jewish lust is rooted in and authorized by Jewish (mis)understanding of scripture" (p. 33). These ideas and images carry over into the works of Origen, who was active in the third century and whose work is the subject of chapter 2. Many of Origen's writings were composed in Caesarea in Roman Palestine, a city of cosmopolitan reputation and diverse population at the time, and thus the dangers of hybridity and Judaizing among Christians also emerge as a critical theme in his homilies and commentaries. The particular importance of Origen's works in the history of Christian sexual slander against Jews, however, Drake argues, is his turn to and reinterpretation of Paul to further this discourse. The distinction between flesh and spirit that functioned in Pauline literature as a boundary between an old way of (Jewish) life prior to Christ and a new "life of the Spirit" open to believers of all ethnic origins alike (as well as a series of other dichotomies attributed to Paul), is mapped in Origen's thought onto an essentialist difference between "Jew" and "Christian"--a difference that is "both interpretive and embodied" (p. 49). The "interpretive" and the "embodied" are further connected in that one supports the other: the truest spiritual interpretation of scripture can only come from the subjugation of the flesh to the spirit in the bodily discipline of the (Christian) interpreter, while (Jewish) fleshiness and indulgence in desires of the flesh on the one hand, and literalist hermeneutics on the other, are mutually reinforcing "adulterous" (in the multiple meanings of the word) practices. And in one final turn, these dichotomies are gendered, such that Christian spirituality is rational, self-controlled, and masculine, but Jewish fleshiness is uncontrolled, carnal, and feminine. It should be noted that Drake makes an unusual, or at least insufficiently explained, choice in this chapter (and also in the next) to present the representative texts--and hence the development of Origen's thought--out of chronological order. Instead, her intent appears to be to first establish the rhetorical matrix of Jewishness, fleshiness, and literalism (in both interpretation and practice) in Origen's writings, and then to discuss the ways in which Origen re/misreads Paul (and works attributed to Paul) "to depict Paul as the original and legitimating source for his representation of Jewish literalism and Jewish carnality" (p. 49). Origen also figures in chapter 3, along with the early third-century Roman theologian Hippolytus (and several other writers, briefly), as Drake analyzes their commentaries to the story of Susanna and the elders, one of the Greek additions to the book of Daniel. In contrast to the deployment of gendered rhetoric discussed in the previous chapter, in which Christian chastity and Christian spiritual exegesis are associated with masculine self-discipline, in this case it is the vulnerable woman (Susanna) who is linked with chaste Christians subject to the predations of sexually aggressive male antagonists, Jewish and/or gentile; the story becomes (among other things) an allegorical prefiguration of the persecution of the early church and even Christian martyrdom at the hands of religious and imperial oppressors. Origen, more so than Hippolytus, focuses on Jews as the villains of the tale. Moroever, he "collapses the difference between the sexually corruptive elders in the Susanna story and the textually corruptive elders of his own day" (p. 69), once again drawing links between sexuality and exegetical practices. The Christian exegete in Origen's model is trapped, as Susanna is between submitting to the elders or being falsely accused of adultery: "either he submits to the Jews and follows the literal sense of the law, or he follows the spirit of the law and is persecuted by the Jews on account of it" (pp. 71-72). Drake concludes the chapter with a quick survey of other Christian writers of the second through fourth centuries who presented Susanna as a model of piety and chastity for Christians and particularly Christian women, but did not focus on role of the elders, or hold them out as examples of opponents of the church. A similar trope appears in Adversus Iudaeos, the sermons of John Chrysostom, which are the subject of chapter 4. While others have approached the sermons with an eye to the historical and social realities that might underlie and be reflected in Chrysostom's rhetoric, Drake's interest is in the sermons as a means of constructing reality: "identities, differences, communities, and boundaries in late fourth- century Antioch" (p. 79). In this case it is heretical and Judaizing (these being overlapping categories) elements in the Christian community who are cast as (sexual) aggressors (sometimes quite literally; in the first sermon, Chrysostom relates an episode in which he himself rescued a faithful Christian woman from a "Christian" man attempting to force her into a synagogue to take an oath); Jews themselves are deviant and threatening in other ways as well. Among the metaphors and images that Chrysostom musters, Jews are demonic, a disease, animalistic (Chrysostom especially invokes animals associated with brutish and overtly sexual behavior), prone to drunkenness and gluttony, sexually unrestrained, gender-deviant. The synagogue is like a theater--a site "disruptive of social hierarchies and 'natural' order" (p. 86)--and full of "soft" men (malakoi) and whorish women (pornai). Bestial Jewish bodies are indeed fit for suffering, violence, and even slaughter--or as Drake cleverly puts it, not only carnal but to be "treated as carne" (p. 93). Drake thus concludes with a brief discussion of the deployment of rhetoric such as Chrysostom's in the fourth and fifth centuries to sanction legal discrimination against Jews and Jewish practice in imperial legislation, and actual violence against Jews even when nominally opposed by imperial authorities. The import of these discursive topoi is that rhetorical and physical aggression "were not merely coincidental": "Early Christian leaders' recourse to sexual and gendered invective ... helped create the conditions for programs of dehumanization and violence" (p. 103). The actual text of this book is not long--105 pages of text and just over 30 more of notes--and is hence quite dense, in the most positive sense of that word. There is a risk of missing the complexity of the discourse(s) Drake is examining and of her explication of her materials in an overly quick read. But for the careful and conscientious reader, there is much to be learned from this book. Note [1]. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1, 2. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl. Citation: Gail Labovitz. Review of Drake, Susanna, Slandering the Jew: Sexuality and Difference in Early Christian Texts. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. February, 2015. SCHOLARSHIPS: 2, MA Program in Maritime Civilizations (University of Haifa) From Assaf Yasur-Landau [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== Two scholarships Available: MA Program in Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa The International Maritime Civilizations MA Program provides students with an understanding of the sea and maritime civilizations and prepares them for research in their chosen areas of specialization. Haifa's coastal location and the Mediterranean region's rich maritime history provide the ideal backdrop for this field of study. International MA Program The University of Haifa's international master's degree in Maritime Civilizations offers a unique interdisciplinary curriculum. Students will have an exceptional opportunity to explore the history, archeology and fabric of maritime societies, as well as the natural environment in which they developed and currently exist. Students will examine a variety of fields pertaining to maritime civilizations and the marine environment including coastal and underwater archeology, marine biology and ecology, maritime history, and maritime geology and geomorphology. Special emphasis will be placed on harbors, ships and seafaring as part of the maritime heritage of the Mediterranean. Moreover, the program sheds light on the ecological and geomorphological dynamics in the eastern Mediterranean and their influence on the interaction between man and the sea in ancient and in modern times. This program is based on ongoing, active research carried out in the field and in laboratories at the Department of Maritime Civilizations and the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies. The curriculum offers advanced knowledge and research training to students interested in exploring human interactions with the sea in a dynamic learning environment in which theory is combined with hands-on scientific experience in the field and in the laboratory. Culminating in a capstone project, the normal program can be completed in one-year of full-time study taught over three consecutive semesters from October until September. Students wishing to qualify for the Ph.D. program at the University of Haifa will need to complete a research thesis in the semester or year following the completion of their coursework. Upon completion of the program, students will be awarded a master's degree in two general areas in maritime studies: history and archeology, and the natural sciences. Field Work Field activities are an integral part of the program. They expose students to hands-on, applied science, a variety of research methods, offer them first hand acquaintance with the sea and introduce them to the challenges of marine studies. The curriculum includes weekly field trips as well as field-based courses and research. Students will also be required to participate in a summer internship program during which they will work on a project under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Program Objectives: . To provide students with an understanding of the sea and maritime civilizations and to prepare them for research in their chosen areas of specialization; . To train a new generation of scholars, researchers and educators in the field of marine sciences; . To provide students with specialized knowledge of the effects of human interaction with the Mediterranean Sea; . To offer an excellent academic program that combines classroom study with hands-on scientific exploration. Program Structure and Scope The program offers two tracks of study: Track A: involves preparation of a research thesis and consists of 32 credits, including three introductory courses, a survey course, two seminars, 10 elective credits and an eight-credit summer project. A thesis is required for those students planning to continue on to doctoral studies, which is normally completed in the semester or year following the completion of coursework. Track B: encompasses 36 credits (no thesis), including three introductory courses, a survey course, three seminars, 10 elective credits and an eight-credit summer project. Scholarships available Two $5000 scholarships in this program will be offered to two prospective students, based on academic excellence and previous field experience For additional information: www.uhaifa.org http://marsci.haifa.ac.il/en/academics/-/international-program E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +972-4-824-0766 Fax: +972-4-824-0391 Skype: haifainternationalschool [agade] KUDOS: For Ilya Arkhipov At Scroll down some and you will find (under #8) the name of our Russian colleague Ilya Arkhipov (Institute of General History, Russian Academy of Sciences). He is cited in the category "Humanities and social Sciences" for his "Series of studies in the material culture of ancient Mesopotamia." Several of his papers (in French, English, and Russian) are downloadable at His mail address is: Ilya Arkhipov Feb 28 CONFERENCES: HB sessions at SECSOR (Nashville, March 6-8) From Jim West [mailto:[email protected]: ====== Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) March 6-8, 2015 Nashville Airport Marriott, 600 Marriott Drive, Nashville, Tennessee 37214. Full program at FRIDAY, MARCH 6 2:00–8:00 PM Registration Book Exhibits 5:00–5:30 PM AAR/SBL/ASOR (SECSOR) Joint Business Meeting All members of the societies are invited Randall Bailey, Interdenominational Theological Center, presiding FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 6 6:00–8:00 PM SESSION I SBL: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament I Theme: Open Session Phillip Sherman, Maryville College, presiding Edmon Gallagher, Heritage Christian University The Nature of the Major Expansions in the Samaritan Pentateuch Tyler Kelley, University of Georgia Were the Shilonite Priests Mushite? A Critique of Cross’s Priestly Houses of Israel Jason Bembry, Emmanuel Christian Seminary The Rashomon Lens and the Levite’s Concubine in Judges 19: The Viewpoints of LXX A, B, Josephus and MT P. Scott Henson, Asbury Theological Seminary Moving Beyond Deuteronomy 18 and 34: The Prophetic Characterization of Moses throughout Deuteronomy 8:15–9:30 PM AAR/SBL Plenary Session Sandra Hack Polaski, SECSOR Executive Director, presiding Announcement of Student Awards Presidential Addresses SBL David A. Garber, McAfee School of Theology The Sins of Your Sister Sodom: Social Justice and the Book of Ezekiel 9:30–11:00 PM Conference Reception SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 7 9:00–10:45 AM SESSION II SBL: New Testament II/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament II Theme: Disability in the Bible Doug Hume, Pfeiffer University, presiding Jeremy Schipper, Temple University The Overrepresentation of Disability in Biblical Studies Bryan Bibb, Furman University, responding Annie Tinsley, Shaw University, responding 11:00 AM–12:00 PM Plenary Session Anne Blue Wills, Davidson College, presiding Julia Watts Belser, Georgetown University Beauty, Danger, and Disablement in Rabbinic Destruction Narratives: Disability Studies and the Devastation of Jerusalem SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH 7 1:30–4:15 PM **** SESSION III ****Note that for the Hebrew Bible Section this is a session beginning at 1:30 and not 2:30 SBL: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament III Theme: Doug Knight and Jack Sasson Jim West, Quartz Hill School of Theology, presiding Jonathan Redding, Vanderbilt University An Economic Ideological Reading of Adapa Jennifer Williams, Vanderbilt University The Woman Wielder of Flames, the Lightning Man, and The Divine Judge: Engaging and Expanding Dr. Jack Sasson’s Analysis of Judges 4-5 Ellen Lerner, Vanderbilt University (Re)considering the Israelite Tribe – Manasseh as a Case Study Nicholaus Pumphrey, Baker University Creating a ‘Lack’: A Reexamination of Jack M. Sasson’s Proppian Model of Ruth Open Discussion and Q&A with Knight and Sasson, with remarks by the same. And perhaps anecdotes in their thousands. 4:30–6:00 PM SESSION IV SBL: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament IV Theme: Open Call Jim West, Quartz Hill School of Theology, presiding David Schreiner, Asbury University Torn Garments and History: Rethinking a Hezekian History Carson Bay, Florida State University Old Greek Daniel’s Chronology: Papyrus 967 and Nebuchadnezzar’s Second (?) or Twelfth (?) Year Ralph Hawkins, Averett University in Josh 6:20-21 ִמנַּ ַער ַוְעד ֵזָקן The Translation of the Phrase Business Meeting SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 8 7:15–8:45 AM Section Chairs Breakfast XX, presiding 8:00–11:00 AM Registration Book Exhibits LECTURES: "...The gates of Azatiwataya" (NYC, March 6) From Evan Luke Jewell [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The Center for the Ancient Mediterranean (CAM) invites you to attend it's next lecture for the Spring semester, which will be delivered by Professor Asli Ozyar (Bogazici University, Istanbul): "Monument and Memory in Iron Age Cilicia: The gates of Azatiwataya” The lecture will be held on Friday, March 6th, 11am in the level 5 seminar room, The Italian Academy, Columbia University. A short reception will follow. All are welcome! Please find an abstract of Professor Ozyar's talk below: "After the ancient world order known as the Eastern Mediterranean Balance of Powers collapsed around 1200 B.C. multiple new city states or petit kingdoms filled the void left by the destroyed Hittite Empire. This lecture investigates how emerging Iron Age elite employed in their monuments local traditions alongside maintaining memories of migrant ancestors to stake their claim in a world of fierce rivalry over land and access to resources. This presentation explores the sculptural program and bilingual inscription of one fortress built on the frontiers of a small kingdom in the plain of Cilicia. In the displayed bilingual text, the longest in early alphabetic Phoenician and the latest surviving in Hieroglyphic Luwian, the patron of the citadel tells of his deeds and his affiliation. Among the reliefs engraved onto the gates of the citadel, there are several scenes and figures that are unparalleled in contemporary Syro-Hittite monumental representation. It is proposed that some of these puzzling images betray an Aegean origin. Recent discoveries of further inscribed monuments in the region confirm the apparent residue of long suspected Greek settlers who came to Cilicia during the turbulent times after the end of the Bronze Age." NEWS: More on the violent death of a pharaoh From < http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-01012015/article/more-on-the-violent-death-of- pharaoh-senebkay >: [Go there for many good pix and cartouche] ====== More on the violent death of Pharaoh Senebkay Fri, Feb 27, 2015 Newly discovered pharaoh at Abydos, part of a forgotten Egyptian dynasty, offers new answers and more questions about Egypt 3,600 years ago. More on the violent death of Pharaoh Senebkay He may have led a king's life, but new forensic evidence gleaned from the remains of Pharaoh Senebkay indicates that the Egyptian ruler died in battle-the earliest known pharaoh to have done so-viciously attacked by multiple assailants. Last year, the tomb of king Senebkay (ca. 1650-1600 BCE) was discovered at the site of Abydos by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Museum working in association with Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. Now the team led by Dr. Josef Wegner of the Penn Museum has completed a detailed study of Senebkay's skeleton, as well as the remains of several other kings whose tombs have been discovered nearby. The 2014-15 research is supported by the Penn Museum, with additional support from the National Geographic Society Expeditions Council . "Forensic analysis has provided some new answers about the life, and death, of this ancient Egyptian king," noted Dr. Wegner, "while raising a host of new questions about both Senebkay, and the Second Intermediate Period of which he was a part." A Warrior King Pharaoh Woseribre Senebkay, who lived during the later part of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650-1550 BCE), is now the earliest Egyptian pharaoh whose remains show he died in battle. Detailed analysis by Dr. Maria Rosado and Dr. Jane Hill of Rowan University has documented an extensive array of wounds on Senebkay's skeleton showing he died aged 35-40 years old during a vicious assault from multiple assailants. The king's skeleton has an astounding eighteen wounds that penetrated to the bone. The trauma includes major cuts to his feet, ankles, knees, hands, and lower back. Three major blows to Senebkay's skull preserve the distinctive size and curvature of battle axes used during Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. This evidence indicates the king died violently during a military confrontation, or in an ambush. Emerging Role of the Horse The patterns of wounds to Senebkay's body suggest he was attacked while in an elevated position relative to his assailants, quite possibly mounted on horseback. Another surprising result of the osteological analysis is that muscle attachments on Senebkay's femurs and pelvis indicate he spent a significant amount of his adult life as a horse rider. Another king's body discovered this year in a tomb close to that of Senebkay also shows evidence for horse riding, suggesting these Second Intermediate Period kings buried at Abydos were accomplished horsemen. Senebkay and other royal remains at Abydos provide valuable new insight into the early introduction of the horse (Equus ferus caballus) to Egypt. Although use of horseback riding in warfare was not common until after the Bronze Age, the Egyptians appear to have been mastering the use of horses during the Second Intermediate Period. Horseback riding may have played a growing role in military movements during this era, even before the full advent of chariot technology in Egypt, which occurred slightly later, at the beginning of Egypt's New Kingdom (ca. 1550 BCE). A Battle with Whom? The death of Senebkay in battle appears to have taken place at considerable distance from his burial place at Abydos. The king's body also shows that significant time elapsed between his death and preparation of the body for burial. What remains a mystery is where the king died and who Senebkay's opponents were. Possibly the king died in battle fighting against the Hyksos kings who at that time ruled northern Egypt from their capital at Avaris in the Nile Delta. However, Senebkay may have died in struggles against enemies in the south of Egypt. Historical records dating to Senebkay's lifetime record at least one attempted invasion of Upper Egypt by a large military force from Nubia to the south. Alternatively, Senebkay may have had other political opponents, possibly kings based at Thebes. Who was Senebkay? Tombs of seven other kings have now been excavated at Abydos opening a new window onto one of Ancient Egypt's most obscure periods. It appears probable that Senebkay and these other rulers form a short-lived dynasty who chose Abydos as their burial ground. Continued excavations of the Penn Museum researchers in collaboration with the National Geographic Society hope to shed light on Senebkay and the other kings buried near him. Abydos and the Penn Museum Penn Museum scholars have been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1967, as part of the Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts/NYU Expedition to Abydos. Abydos is located on the western side of the Nile in Upper Egypt and was a religious center associated with the veneration of the funerary god Osiris. Dr. Josef Wegner has been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1994. Excavations in the area of South Abydos have revealed a thriving royal cult center that developed around the subterranean tomb of pharaoh Senwosret III located at the area called Anubis-Mountain, where Senebkay's tomb and other Second Intermediate Period tombs have been found. BOOKS: Iranische Personennamen in der Hebräischen Bibel From < http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/Iranisches-Personennamenbuch-Band-7-Faszikle-2-Iranische- Personennamen-in-der-hebraeischen-Bibel >: ====== This new fascicle of the "Iranische Personennamenbuch" (founded by Prof Manfred Mayrhofer in the 1970s) covers 71 names of the Hebrew Bible which have been taken as "Iranian" in the history of study. The critical evaluation shows that only 54 names are Iranian. Due to the style of the other volumes of the "Iranische Personennamenbuch", for every name the (often rather limited) information on prosopography is discussed, but the main section covers the linguistic interpretation of the names. Manfred HUTTER: Iranische Personennamen in der Hebräischen Bibel Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2015 Iranisches Personennamenbuch Bd. 7 / Faszikel 2 = Iranische Onomastik 14 = Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-historischen Klasse 860. Euro 19.--, ISBN 978-3-7001-7593-3. Der Band verbucht insgesamt 54 Namen der Hebräischen Bibel (einschließlich der Abschnitte in Aramäisch), für die eine iranische Deutung sicher oder plausibel ist; ferner werden 17 Namen kritisch diskutiert, für die in der Forschung unterschiedliche iranische Herleitungen vorgeschlagen wurden, die jedoch abzulehnen sind. Mit dem Band liegt somit ein verlässliches Referenzwerk vor, durch das die Einträge dieser Namen in Ferdinand Justis "Iranischem Namenbuch" (1895) und die Analyse von Isidor Scheftelowitz ("Arisches im Alten Testament I", Königsberg 1901), auf die in Studien zur Bibel im letzten Jahrhundert regelmäßig verwiesen wurde, überholt sind. Für alle 71 Namen werden - soweit eine Entsprechung vorliegt - für spätere Studien die Namensform der Septuaginta sowie die Belege nachgewiesen. Nach in der Regel kurzen Angaben zur Prosopographie liegt der Schwerpunkt des Textes in der Diskussion der etymologischen Deutungsmöglichkeit(en), wobei auch Herleitungen der Namen aus semitischem Sprachgut evaluiert werden. Ausführliche Register erschließen das onomastische Vergleichsmaterial. Neben dem Ertrag für die Iranistik ist der Band von besonderem Interesse für die Bibelwissenschaften. NEWS: Amateur archaeology From Israel struggles to stop archaeological site raids Yuval Avivi The staff of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) gets very nervous whenever news breaks that a large archaeological treasure has been found. That is what happened Feb. 17, when amateur divers discovered a treasure trove of rare, ancient coins near the ancient port town of Caesarea. "We know that the discovery of a treasure of this size, and the publicity that such a find receives in the media causes people to think that they can find treasures just about anywhere," Eitan Klein, deputy director of the Unit to Prevent Antiquities Theft at the IAA, told Al-Monitor. Klein said, "People take the law into their own hands and set out to find antiquities themselves, even though this means breaking the law and causing destruction to important archaeological sites. For the most part, they don't even find anything. What was discovered last week is the kind of thing that happens just once every 50 years." Israel has been considered a major crossroads of international commerce throughout almost all of human history. As such, it is full of archaeological sites. The IAA estimates that there are about 30,000 such sites in the country, most of them not even fenced off. Anyone who wants to can start digging. And as it turns out, a lot of people do. The IAA believes that the discovery of some 2,000 gold coins dating to the year 1000 at the bottom of the sea, in the submerged ancient port of Caesarea, will send the imagination of the country's antiquities robbers into overdrive. Just last December, a gang of six Palestinians was caught stealing antiquities in the Cave of Skulls in the Judean Desert. They were hoping to find ancient scrolls from the Second Temple period, and were carrying numerous artifacts including a lice comb from the Roman era. In another case, a gang of gold robbers was uncovered in the Hefer Valley, in the coastal central region of the country, while excavating a cave from the Roman-Byzantine period, 1,800 years ago, as well as Ottoman artifacts from 500 years ago, hoping to find gold there. On Feb. 1, robbers were caught breaking into ancient tombs in the Tel Ashkelon area. In their defense, they claimed that they were "just looking for worms to use as fishing bait." "It is only natural that there would be a lot of folk tales in Israel," Klein said. "Most of them revolve around treasures that the Ottomans supposedly left in the country, but I have yet to hear about a real treasure that was actually discovered. That is why it is important to get the message across that these are just folk tales." The robbers are eager to excavate Ottoman era sites, as well as sites of Jewish settlement and burial from the Second Temple period, in the hope of finding rare coins from the Great Revolt (66-73) and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135). The IAA estimates that the price of a single ancient coin on the black market could reach as much as $300,000. In August 2014, during work on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, a trove of 114 bronze coins from the Great Revolt was discovered. Luckily, the coins were found by IAA representatives. Those coins would have sold for a king's ransom on the black market. Even late Minister and Gen. Moshe Dayan, one of Israel's most esteemed national heroes, was considered to be quite an antiquities thief. He conducted numerous illegal excavations that left him with an impressive private collection of antiquities. After his death, the collection was sold to the Israel Museum for some $1 million. Klein distinguishes between two types of antiquities thieves in Israel. The first group consists mainly of individuals who purchase a metal detector and set out into the field to go treasure hunting. Klein said that just being on a site containing antiquities with a metal detector is a violation of Israel's Antiquities Law. "Yet this particular phenomenon is becoming more and more widespread. While these people may be amateurs, they cause enormous damage to archaeological sites. Just recently, we caught a resident of Beit Shemesh. During a search of his home we found over 800 ancient coins, which he had found in the area surrounding the town. Each one of these coins is part of a puzzle. Each one is connected to the site where it was found, and it is our job to understand that context. If we don't know where it was originally found, we are unable to place it within its historical context, and we are left with no way to conduct the necessary research to uncover the story behind it." The second group is far more dangerous. "Every year we catch 40 to 50 gangs of professional thieves, most of them Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. These are people who understand archaeology, know how to act in the field and know how to read the signs and clues indicating where antiquities are likely to be found. Each gang consists of five to 10 people who are trying to find as many antiquities as possible in as little time as possible, without giving any thought as to how to preserve the existing site," Klein said. Klein described the very sophisticated methods used by these gangs, and how they employ scouts near the excavators to warn them if the IAA is approaching. "Whenever they find something, they hide it so that if they are caught no antiquities will be found among their tools. We watch them using night vision equipment, as well as day vision equipment, and document their activities while they are at work," he said. Klein described these gangs' activities as a "cultural [terrorist] attack." He said, "They are destroying archaeological information, which is, effectively, the legacy and heritage of the Land of Israel. Once one of these gangs has been through a site, there is nothing left for archaeologists to do there anymore. The site has been completely ruined and the damage is irreversible." In 2013, four antiquities thieves were caught with a bulldozer in southern Israel while in the midst of an illegal excavation. Inevitably, they caused serious damage to an important site. Klein said, "But even without destruction on that scale, the very collection of these antiquities constitutes enormous damage." After last week's discovery of the ancient treasure trove of coins, the amateur divers immediately reported their find to the authorities, but that was a rare occurrence. "The divers in Caesarea were law- abiding citizens who knew that they should report the find to the Department of Maritime Archaeology at the [IAA]," Klein said, adding, "Thanks to them, an archaeological excavation will be launched, which will certainly lead to other finds and tell the complete story of the treasure that was already found." In other countries, people who discover antiquities are usually rewarded handsomely. In Israel, however, the IAA relies on proper education and a sense of ethics of the population. "Israel is rich in antiquities. They can be found just about anywhere. But antiquities belong to the state, and not to some specific citizen or other. They belong to all of us," Klein said. But then he refers to the case of the divers from Caesarea, saying, "Obviously, the [IAA] will grant them a certificate and a token gift. It's the least we can do to show our appreciation." eNOTES: Idumaean in Judaea court From < http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2015/02/mar398003.shtml >: ====== Full House: Idumaean Preeminence in the Court of Judaea The power struggles among these Idumaean nobles, which probably originated long before the Hasmonean annexation, were no longer simply local fights between petty elites. Instead, they were transported from a local Idumaean context to the national stage of the Judaean royal court and the Roman Near East. By Adam Kolman Marshak Gann Academy Waltham, MA February 2015 One of the hallmarks of the Hellenistic and Republican Levant was the active and close interaction of multiple ethnic groups within one kingdom and the merging of their social norms and identities together into new and innovative hybrids. Hasmonean Judaea was no exception. Far from being a uniquely and exclusively Judaean and Jewish kingdom, the Hasmonean realm and especially its royal court were an active "melting pot" in which multiple ethnicities participated equally and formed new relationships that had not existed previously. There is, perhaps, no better example than the family of Herod the Great, who are called the Antipatrids after Herod's father Antipater. It was not alone, however. Indeed, Idumaean factions not only were present, but dominated the court of the last Hasmonean high priest and ethnarch, John Hyrcanus II, a political reality that demands we move beyond overly simplistic understandings of Hasmonean Judaea and its ethnic make-up to a deeper understanding of the complex ways in which ethnicities coexisted and interacted with each other in the ancient Greek East. Building on the work I have done in several articles and in my monograph, The Many Faces of Herod the Great, I will present two case-studies that show just how integrated the Idumaeans, and in particular the Antipatrids, were within the court of John Hyrcanus. By the end of his reign, Idumaean aristocrats and their power struggles had moved from the local stage to national prominence within the royal court. It would not be unreasonable, therefore, to assert that Idumaean power struggles had become Judaean power struggles, conflicts that ultimately resulted in the rise of a mixed Idumaean/Judaean (Herodian/Hasmonean) dynasty, a truly Graeco-Roman institution, which was an ideal ally and friend to Rome. Malichos The Hasmoneans under John Hyrcanus I, Judah Aristobulus I, and Alexander Jannaeus (ca. 134-76 BCE) were able to expand their territory significantly, and as a result, annexed large regions populated by non-Judaeans. As they expanded, they ruled their new territory through native vassals or "Friends," known as philoi (Seth Schwartz, 2001, 70-72). Idumaea was one of these annexed territories. Along with a conversion to Judaism and allegiance to the Jerusalem Temple, Idumaea's elites became a trusted and loyal part of the Hasmonean regime within a few generations. In particular, Herod's father, Antipater, rose to become the most powerful man within the Hasmonean court largely because of his military and political skill; he had helped Hyrcanus win a civil war against his brother, Judah Aristobulus, and had aided Julius Caesar in his civil war with Pompey the Great, specifically reinforcing Caesar's troops outside of Alexandria. In so doing, Antipater gained the support of Rome and its leaders. By the time Herod had entered public life, his family dominated all others. Nevertheless, during these the early years, his family's hold on power was not entirely secure, and it competed for influence with a rival faction led by the courtier Malichos. Our only sources for this individual, Josephus' Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, never tell us precisely of Malichos' origins. An onomastic analysis suggests a Nabataean context (Abraham Schalit, 1969, 749- 750). However, while Nabataea and Judaea were certainly allies during the reign of Hyrcanus II, Josephus provides us no additional indications of any other Nabataeans in the Judaean court. But, there are several examples of Idumaean courtiers, and Idumaea had long been a part of the Judaean kingdom. As Aryeh Kasher has argued persuasively, Nabataeans began expanding into Idumaea during the Persian period (Kasher, 1988, 6-10). Thus, it is possible that Malichos and his family were Idumaean by geography but Nabataean by ethnicity. If so, Malichos' rivalry with Antipater and Antipater's clan may have been a continuation of a longstanding struggle for power and influence between two Idumaean aristocratic families who had become the preeminent factions within the court of Hyrcanus II. As we will see, the behavior of these two courtiers strongly supports such a picture. As the Roman world erupted into civil war following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the court in Jerusalem experienced its own internal struggle. During this upheaval, Antipater and his family sought the approval of the preeminent Roman official in the East at the time, Gaius Cassius Longinus (lead conspirator in the assassination of Caesar). Additionally, each side recruited a private army to defend its interests and attack the position of the other. Ultimately, Malichos was able to poison Antipater, but his victory was short-lived, as Herod and his brother Phasael were able to secure Cassius' approval to execute Malichos. Although Malichos' partisans attempted to avenge his death by attacking the Antipatrids and their supporters, Herod and his brother were able to suppress the Malichean faction and assume their father's place as the preeminent men at court. This entire story of the rivalry between the Antipatrids and Malichos is one of intense courtly rivalry that disintegrated into armed conflict and ultimately political murder. Each side was angling for greater power and influence within the court of Hyrcanus. As we have seen, the Antipatrids triumphed primarily because of their Roman support, a theme that would reoccur in all of the major courtly conflicts within the next decade; whoever befriended Rome controlled Judaea. More importantly for our analysis of the Judaean court, this story also shows quite clearly the preeminence and dominance of the Idumaean factions within the court of John Hyrcanus II. As stated above, local Friends had long been the link between annexed territory and the Hasmonean center. The family of Malichos and the Antipatrids are two examples of these philoi. Although never explicitly stated, it is likely that these two families had been feuding and struggling for power even before Idumaea came under the control of the Hasmoneans. Their rivalry was thus transferred from a local Idumaean context onto the Judaean political stage, and victory by one faction over the other meant more than just control of Idumaea; it meant domination of the entire Judaean kingdom. This theme of Idumaean conflicts becoming larger Judaean ones and Idumaean rivals threatening the security of Antipatrid dominance reappears in our next case study, the Kostobaros Affair. In this episode, Herod has become king, but rival Idumaean nobles are still a threat to him. This time, the threat comes from an unexpected corner: his brother-in-law. Kostobaros and the Sons of Baba Under Herod's leadership, the Antipatrids were able to destroy their rivals, and in 40 BCE, the Romans appointed Herod king of Judaea, a position he secured with his defeat of the Hasmonean Mattathias Antigonus in 37 BCE. Following this victory, Herod ruthlessly eliminated any members of the Hasmonean family who he felt threatened his throne. By 29 BCE, all such Hasmonean were gone, except the Sons of Baba. These elusive figures appear within Josephus' discussion of the plot to detach Idumaea from Judaea. In this plot, Kostobaros, who had married Herod's sister Salome and been appointed strategos (governor) of Idumaea, sought to remove Idumaea from Judaean control. In his efforts, he had enlisted the support of Cleopatra, Herod's rival in Egypt. Furthermore, according to Josephus, he appealed to an Idumaean particularism in order to secure the support of local nobles. Kostobaros' family had been priests of the god Qos, as is indicated in his theophoric name, and one of his stated goals was removal of the Jerusalem cult and the resumption of the traditional Idumaean religious practices. The Sons of Baba seem to have participated in this plot, although exactly what role they played is unclear. When Herod captured Jerusalem in 37 BCE, he ordered Kostobaros to block the city's exits and capture any fleeing Hasmoneans. Instead, Kostobaros allowed the Sons of Baba to leave the city and offered them refuge on his estates in Idumaea. They remained there in hiding for more than a decade until he and they were hunted down and executed. Why was Kostobaros so willing to help these Sons of Baba? We can begin to answer that question by determining their ethnicity, which, as Eliezer Oren, Uriel Rappaport and Israel Ronen have theorized, was Idumaean (Oren and Rappaport, 1984, 114-153; Ronen, 1988, 214-220). They would therefore represent yet another Idumaean clan that, like Herod's, had married into the Hasmonean family. Marriage into the ruling family would suggest a relatively high status for the Sons of Baba and provide another example of an Idumaean family at the center of Judaean politics. Like Malichos and his family, the Sons of Baba opposed the Antipatrids, having sided against them in the civil war with Antigonus. Evidence for their proposed ethnicity comes from their decision to hide on the Idumaean estates of Kostobaros. While it is possible that they could have remained undetected for twelve years regardless of their geographical origin, it certainly would have been easier for them to hide amongst their own people. An additional support for this theory is the existence of funerary inscriptions found in an explicitly Idumaean context in a necropolis in Marisa. In particular, a group of inscriptions mention a Babatas and Babas, a brother and sister, the children of Kosnatanos, son of Ammoios (Oren and Rappaport, 1984, 114-153; Peters and Thiersch, 1905, 45, nos. 10-11). Even if the Sons of Baba who appear in Josephus are not related to these two individuals, the appearance of these specific names in Marisa supports the theory that the Sons of Baba were of Idumaean origin. Like Herod when he first seized the throne of Judaea, Kostobaros initially would have lacked any real legitimacy and would have needed support to succeed in his revolt. Besides Cleopatra's aid, he might have hoped that the Idumaean and Hasmonean Sons of Baba would help him gain the allegiance of elites within Idumaea and the acquiescence of disaffected nobles within Judaea. The combined support of the extremely powerful Egyptian queen and the Sons of Baba, the only remaining important Hasmonean opposition, would have been enough to unite those opposed to Herod's rule and would have helped Kostobaros secure his new regime. Perhaps an independent Idumaea under his control was Kostobaros' price for hiding the Sons of Baba until they could depose Herod and regain the throne for the Hasmonean family. If so, he had been planning his revolt for more than a decade before he actually attempted to carry it out. Regardless of Kostobaros' aims, his plans ultimately failed, and Herod successfully crushed the conspiracy. This episode is important for our purposes because it highlights the power and centrality of Idumaean aristocrats within the Judaean kingdom and its political intrigues. In this case, Kostobaros, whose family had been Idumaean nobility long before Idumaea's annexation to the Hasmonean kingdom, sought greater power through an alliance with Cleopatra and a rebellion against Herod. Additionally, he formed an alliance with the Sons of Baba, who seem to have been Hasmoneans of Idumaean origin. While described by Josephus within a Judaean context, this alliance was one Idumaean elite attempting to enlist the support of other Idumaean nobility in his quest for autonomy and an Idumaea independent of Judaean control. Another one of these Idumaean nobles who conspired against Herod was the courtier Dositheos. His background and story shed even more light on the various interests involved in Kostobaros' scheme. Dositheos had been a member of the Hasmonean court even before Herod ascended the throne. In the early days of Herod's tetrarchy (42 BCE), Dositheos' family had sided against Herod and his brother Phasael and, in a delegation to Marc Antony at Tyre, attempted to persuade him not to support the Antipatrids. The delegation failed, and Dositheos' family members were executed. Although we do not know for sure that Dositheos supported his family's petition, Josephus strongly suggests that he did (A.J. 15.169). Despite the family's initial animosity towards the Antipatrids, they must have made their peace with Herod. Less than a decade later, Dositheos' brother Joseph married Herod's sister Salome, becoming strategos of Idumaea in the process and achieving significant influence within the Herodian court. After a short marriage, however, Salome accused Joseph of impropriety with Herod's wife Mariamme, and he was executed. Dositheos himself survived his brother's fall and remained at court, but Joseph's death must have left him on the periphery and disaffected with the regime. As a result, he was the logical choice to act as an intermediary with the Nabataean king when John Hyrcanus and his daughter Alexandra were attempting to flee Judaea and seek refuge in Nabataea. Unfortunately for them, Dositheos saw this attempted flight as an opportunity to regain his former status within the Herodian court, and he revealed the plans to Herod. With this act of betrayal, he must have regained some of his lost status because he was important enough, even if only in Idumaea, that Kostobaros sought him out as a co-conspirator, perhaps playing on Dositheos' unstable position as the brother and relative of several individuals whom Herod had executed. In the end, his plotting accomplished little in the way of tangible gains, and he was executed along with Kostobaros. While this plot of a few Idumaean nobles may have receded into the background of a much larger Herodian narrative, their story offers us a glimpse of the courtly machinations that went on during the reign of Herod the Great. In this particular incident, it was a group of Idumaean nobility in the Judaean capital of Jerusalem plotting against another Idumaean (i.e. Herod) for control of their homeland. Family rivalries and animosities seem to have played a large role in Kostobaros' and Dositheos' actions. With the added involvement of Cleopatra, as well as Roman interests in the Levant, this conflict, which originated in an Idumaean context, moved far beyond its local origins and transferred to the larger stage of the Judaean kingdom and the Roman Near East. Conclusion What have we learned from these two particular case studies? Like many royal courts in the Graeco- Roman world, the Judaean one was composed of individuals representing several different ethnic groups and identities including: Jewish Judaeans, Hellenized and non-Jewish Syro-Phoenician, Babylonians, Egyptians and even Romans. The two case studies we have examined illustrate an important period in the political history of Judaea (i.e. the reigns of John Hyrcanus II and Herod the Great) when the preeminent powers at court were not in fact ethnic Judaeans but actually Idumaeans. The power struggles among these Idumaean nobles, which probably originated long before the Hasmonean annexation, were no longer simply local fights between petty elites. Instead, they were transported from a local Idumaean context to the national stage of the Judaean royal court and the Roman Near East. In the first case, whichever faction, Antipatrid or Malichean, could defeat the other would control the Hasmonean court and the throne. In the second case, Kostobaros, an ambitious Idumaean, enlisted the help of other Idumaean nobles, most notably the Sons of Baba and the courtier Dositheos, to rebel against the authority of another Idumaean noble, Herod the son of Antipater, who had managed to become king of Judaea. Thus, both cases show the thorough integration and pervasive dominance of Idumaean nobility within Judaea. The ramifications of such analysis are extensive: perhaps this integration of Idumaeans into the Judaean world explains why only one hundred years after these conflicts, Idumaeans flocked to Jerusalem to defend the Temple and the city from Roman conquest. This integration might also explain the fraternal conflict between Hyrcanus and his brother Judah Aristobulus II. In this context, Hyrcanus' support and utilization of Idumaean nobility at the expense of ethnic Judaeans would have infuriated the "old guard," specifically conservative Judaean Sadducees, who were the foundation of Aristobulus' power base and who would have resented these Idumaean "New Jews." From this perspective, the conflict between the two Hasmonean brothers becomes a fight between the old Judaean priestly aristocracy and the new Idumaean nobility with the ultimate result being the ascendancy of Herod and the elimination of any aristocrats, Idumaean or Judaean, who opposed him. Select Bibliography Kasher, Aryeh. Jews, Idumaeans and Ancient Arabs: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with Nations of the Frontier and the Desert during the Hellenistic and Roman Era (332 BCE-70 CE). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1988. Marshak, Adam Kolman. "Rise of the Idumaeans: Ethnicity and Politics in Herod's Judaea." In Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba. Edited by Benedikt Eckhardt. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012, 117-129. -. The Many Faces of Herod the Great. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015. Oren Eliezer D. and Uriel Rappaport. "The Necropolis of Maresha-Beth Govrin." IEJ 34 (1984), 114-153. Peters John P. and Hermann Thiersch. Painted tombs in the Necropolis of Marissa. Edited by Stanley A Cook. London, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1905. Rocca, Samuel. Herod's Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Ronen, Israel. "Formation of Jewish Nationalism Among the Idumaeans." In Aryeh Kasher, Jews, Idumaeans and Ancient Arabs: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with Nations of the Frontier and the Desert during the Hellenistic and Roman Era (332 BCE-70 CE). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1988, 214-220. Schalit, Abraham, König Herodes: der Mann und Sein Werk. Rev. ed. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001. Schwartz, Seth. "Herod, Friend of the Jews." In Jerusalem and Eretz Israel: The Arie Kindler Volume. Edited by Joshua Schwartz, Zohar Amar and Irit Ziffer. Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum and The Ingeborg Center For Jerusalem Studies, 2001, 67-76. NEWS: 2, on the damage at the Mosul Museum 1. From < https://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/assessing-the-damage-at-the-mosul- museum-part-1-the-assyrian-artifacts/>: [You will need to go there for the pix mentioned in the report] ====== Assessing the Damage at the Mosul Museum, Part 1: The Assyrian Artifacts FEBRUARY 27, 2015 Yesterday ISIS released yet another propaganda video, this time showing what has been feared since the fall of Mosul last summer: the destruction of ancient artifacts of the Mosul Museum. By now most of the world has seen this video, which has been featured in all the world’s major newsagencies. This post and those following it will attempt to identify what has been lost and assess the damage. As in several of the group’s past videos, a spokesman for the group appears in the video to explain the rationale for the destruction. International Business Times has provided a translation: "These ruins that are behind me, they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah. The so-called Assyrians and Akkadians and others looked to gods for war, agriculture and rain to whom they offered sacrifices…The Prophet Mohammed took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries." The video then shows a montage of ISIS fighters toppling sculptures, smashing them with sledgehammers and using jackhammers to pulverize the faces of some statues. Most of the destroyed artifacts fall into two categories: Sculptures from the Roman period city of Hatra, situated in the desert to the south of Mosul, and Assyrian artifacts from Nineveh and surrounding sites such as Khorsabad and Balawat. This post will focus on the Assyrian artifacts and a later post will discuss the artifacts from Hatra. The Nergal Gate The scene with the narrator was shot at the Nergal Gate, one of the gates on the north side of Nineveh. The entrance to the gate was flanked by two large winged human-headed bulls known as lamassu in Akkadian. The gate and its lamassu were first excavated by Sir Austen Henry Layard in 1849 but then re- buried. The left lamassu (seen above behind the ISIS narrator) was uncovered again sometime before 1892, and a local man paid an Ottoman official for the top half of it, cut it off and broken down over a fire in order to extract lime. The right lamassu remained buried until 1941 when heavy rains eroded the soil around the gate and exposed the two statues. The gate was later reconstructed around them and they have remained on display ever since.[1] The gate was built during Sennacherib’s expansion of Nineveh sometime between 704 and 690 BC. The video stops at 2:26 to emphasize the sign which states that “this gate is related to the god Nergal, the god of plague and the lower world.” The left lamassu, already missing its upper half, does not seem to have been targeted. The right lamassu had its face chiseled off with a jackhammer, likely causing irreparable damage. Here is a photo of the Nergal Gate prior to its destruction for comparison. There is no indication that the reconstructed gate itself was damaged. Here is a map of Nineveh showing the location of the gate. Inside the gate there are two additional lamassu which were less well preserved than the lamassu on the outside of the gate. Both were heavily cracked, and the one on the left was missing his head above the nose and the one on the right was missing everything except its head. The lamassu on the left was broken apart with sledgehammers into large chunks. The head on the right was broken apart with a jackhammer. The Balawat Gates The video briefly shows segments of the bronze gates of the city of Balaway (near modern Qaraqosh). Three such gates were excavated, two by Hormuzd Rassam in 1878 which are now in the British Museum, and another by Max Mallowan in 1956 which were put on display in Mosul. Rassam’s gates were built during the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883-859 BC) and Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC). Mallowan’s gates were also from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II. The bronze bands held the wood beams of the doors together and attached them to the posts. The beams were decorated with ornate scenes from Assyrian military campaigns. Around thirty panels from the Mosul gates were looted in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion before American troops were able to secure Mosul. The gaps where the looted pieces once sat can be seen in the image above. Nothing in the video shows the gates being destroyed or damaged. As they are portable, it is possible they may be sold on the antiquities black market. To help recognize them if they appear, I add the following photographs of the Balawat gates found in the British Museum: Reconstruction showing how the Balawat Gates would have looked when installed on wooden doors. From the British Museum. Photo by Author. Other lamassu At 1:10 of the video, two additional lamassu can be seen. These are an earlier type with a lion’s body instead of a bull’s. They are not shown being destroyed although by the end of the video all immovable sculptures in the museum seem to have been destroyed so there is little hope for their survival. Relief Sculptures At 1:19 a partially reconstructed relief identified by its sign as coming from Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad) can be seen. The city was constructed by Sargon II sometime after 716 BC and abandoned upon his death in 705. This sort of relief usually shows tribute-bearers seeking an audience with the king and in this case one of the supplicants is holding a model of a fortification. Relief from Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) in the Mosul Museum, 1:19 of ISIS video. UPDATE: Here is a better photo of the relief in the Mosul Museum sent in by reader Hubbert Debasch. This appears to be a heavily reconstructed but genuine relief from Khorsabad: Palace relief from Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) in the Mosul Museum. Photo (c) Hubert Debbasch. Similar scenes can be seen in reliefs from Khorsabad held in other museums, such as the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago: Relief from Dur-Sharrukin in the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago showing a similar scene. Photo by Author. Another relief from the Mosul Museum (1:26 of the video) shows a king kneeling before a god and goddess. Similar scenes are found in other Near Eastern art including on the stele of Hammurabi. UPDATE: Prof. Paolo Brusasco has pointed out that the above image is a copy of the Maltai rock relief, which is carved into the side of a cliff near Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. It shows Sennacherib worshiping the gods Ashur, Ninlil, Sin, Anu, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar. Maltai rock relief near Dohuk, showing Sennacherib worshiping Assyrian gods. (source) Another at 1:28 shows a siege scene where one soldier is counting the heads of enemy dead while others attack a fortified wall with scaling ladders: Something seemed slightly “off” to me about both the color and the level of detail in this relief. Initially I believed it to be a plaster cast of a relief held somewhere else but I have not been able to identify an original. It is definitely in an earlier style typical of the 9th-10th centuries. This may be a replica. Another relief shown at 1:42 shows a dying lion from the famous lion hunt reliefs of Ashurbanipal (r. 668-627 BC): Lion hunt relief in the Mosul Museum, seen at 1:42 of video. This is clearly a replica taken from the reliefs in the British Museum: Lion hunt relief in the British Museum. Photo by Author. Today the British Museum issued a press release stating in part that “We can confirm that none of the objects featured in this video are copies of originals at the British Museum.” However, as can be seen from the above comparison this is not the case, as there is at least one that was either cast directly from the British Museum original or more likely was made as a replica in imitation of it. At 1:43 the camera pans to a relief showing two archers and a battering ram: This is a replica of the right half of a relief from Nimrud held in the British Museum: Relief from the Central Palace of Tiglath-Pileser III from Nimrud, in the British Museum. Photo from the British Museum. Therefore, I believe it is safe to say that a number of the Assyrian reliefs seen in the video are not originals. Statue of Sargon (?) At the 1:44 mark the video showed a fallen, broken statue identified by a museum sign as a statue of Sargon II of Assyria (r. 722-705 BC): The broken sections of this statue clearly indicate it is made of plaster. The shape of the statue and the pattern of folds in the robe resemble the statue of Ashurnasirpal II from the British Museum. However the hat on the above image means it is not a copy of that artifact, and the ringlets on the beard more closely match the following sculpture from the British Museum: Lamassu-style head from the British Museum. Photo by Author. This statue may be a reconstruction based on an original base. Similar statues of the god Nabu were found at Dur-Sharrukin. It is not, however, a statue of Sargon II but merely one from his reign: Statue from the Temple of Nabu in Dur-Sharrukin. From the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Photo by Author. Conclusions It is worth noting that in 2003 around 1,500 smaller objects from the Mosul Museum were relocated to the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad in order that they may be better protected. Nevertheless, many statues otherwise too large or delicate to be moved remained. When it comes to the Assyrian artifacts, by far the most important losses are the lamassu at the Nergal Gate, one of which was exceedingly well preserved. They were some of the few lamassu left in their original locations to greet visitors to Nineveh the same way they would have greeted visitors in ancient Assyria. As for the items inside the museum, a number are replicas of originals held elsewhere, while others are likely genuine. The destruction of sculptures from Hatra appears to be even more devastating, and I will have another post on this damage shortly. References: [1] J.P.G. Finch, “The Winged Bulls at the Nergal Gate of Nineveh,” Iraq 10, No. 1 (Spring 1948): 9-18. Article and relevant images © Christopher Jones 2012-2015. ************************** 2. From ISIS Onslaught Engulfs Assyrian Christians as Militants Destroy Ancient Art By ANNE BARNARD FEB. 26, 2015 ISTANBUL — The reports are like something out of a distant era of ancient conquests: entire villages emptied, with hundreds taken prisoner, others kept as slaves; the destruction of irreplaceable works of art; a tax on religious minorities, payable in gold. A rampage reminiscent of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in reality, according to reports by residents, activist groups and the assailants themselves, a description of the modus operandi of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate this week. The militants have prosecuted a relentless campaign in Iraq and Syria against what have historically been religiously and ethnically diverse areas with traces of civilizations dating to ancient Mesopotamia. The latest to face the militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of northeastern Syria, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some speaking a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Assyrian leaders have counted 287 people taken captive, including 30 children and several dozen women, along with civilian men and fighters from Christian militias, said Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist who had just toured the area, in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Qamishli. Thirty villages have been emptied, he said. The Syriac Military Council, a local Assyrian militia, put the number of those taken at 350. Reached in Qamishli, Adul Ahad Nissan, 48, an accountant and music composer who fled his village before the brunt of the fighting, said a close friend and his wife had been captured. “I used to call them every other day. Now their mobile is off,” he said. “I tried and tried. It’s so painful not to see your friends again.” Members of the Assyrian diaspora have called for international intervention, and on Thursday, warplanes of the United States-led coalition struck targets in the area, suggesting that the threat to a minority enclave had galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat did in the Kurdish Syrian city of Kobani last year. The assault on the Assyrian communities comes amid battles for a key crossroads in the area. But to residents, it also seems to be part of the latest effort by the Islamic State militants to eradicate or subordinate anyone and anything that does not comport with their vision of Islamic rule — whether a minority sect that has survived centuries of conquerors and massacres or, as the world was reminded on Thursday, the archaeological traces of pre-Islamic antiquity. An Islamic State video showed the militants smashing statues with sledgehammers inside the Mosul Museum, in northern Iraq, that showcases recent archaeological finds from the ancient Assyrian empire. The relics include items from the palace of King Sennacherib, who in the Byron poem “came down like the wolf on the fold” to destroy his enemies. “These are some of the most wonderful examples of Assyrian art, and they’re part of the great history of Iraq, and of Mesopotamia,” he said in an interview. “The whole world has lost this.” Islamic State militants seized the museum — which had not yet opened to the public — when they took over Mosul in June and have repeatedly threatened to destroy its collection. In the video, put out by the Islamic State’s media office for Nineveh Province — named for an ancient Assyrian city — a man explains, “The monuments that you can see behind me are but statues and idols of people from previous centuries, which they used to worship instead of God.” A message flashing on the screen read: “Those statues and idols weren’t there at the time of the Prophet nor his companions. They have been excavated by Satanists.” The men, some bearded and in traditional Islamic dress, others clean-shaven in jeans and T-shirts, were filmed toppling and destroying artifacts. One is using a power tool to deface a winged lion much like a pair on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has presented itself as a modern-day equivalent of the conquering invaders of Sennacherib’s day, or as Islamic zealots smashing relics out of religious conviction. Yet in the past, the militants have veered between ideology and pragmatism in their relationship to antiquity — destroying historic mosques, tombs and artifacts that they consider forms of idolatry, but also selling more portable objects to fill their coffers. The latest eye-catching destruction could have a more strategic aim, said Mr. Azm, who closely follows the Syrian conflict and opposes both the Islamic State and the government. “It’s all a provocation,” he said, aimed at accelerating a planned effort, led by Iraqi forces and backed by United States warplanes, to take back Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. “They want a fight with the West because that’s how they gain credibility and recruits,” Mr. Azm said. “They want boots on the ground. They want another Falluja,” a reference to the 2004 battle in which United States Marines, in the largest ground engagement since Vietnam, took that Iraqi city from Qaeda-linked insurgents whose organization would eventually give birth to the Islamic State. The Islamic State has been all-inclusive in its violence against the modern diversity of Iraq and Syria. It considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and has destroyed Shiite shrines and massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi soldiers. It has demanded that Christians living in its territories pay the jizya, a tax on religious minorities dating to early Islamic rule. Islamic State militants have also slaughtered fellow Sunni Muslims who reject their rule, killing hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern Syria in one clash alone. They have also massacred and enslaved members of the Yazidi sect in Iraq. The latest to face its wrath, the Assyrian Christians, consider themselves the descendants of the ancient Assyrians and have survived often bloody Arab, Mongolian and Ottoman conquests, living in modern times as a small minority community periodically under threat. Thousands fled northern Iraq last year as Islamic State militants swept into Nineveh Province. Early in February, according to Assyrian groups inside and outside Syria, came a declaration from the Islamic State that Christians in a string of villages along the Khabur River in Syrian Hasaka Province would have to take down their crosses and pay the jizya, traditionally paid in gold. That prompted some to flee, and others to take a more active part in fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish militias, helping take back some territory. Islamic State militants hit back, hard, driving more than 1,000 Assyrian Christians from their homes, some crossing the Khabur River, a tributary of the Euphrates, in small boats by night. Local Assyrian leaders are negotiating with the Islamic State through mediators, said Mr. Dawoud, the deputy president of the Assyrian Democratic Organization. The Assyrian International News Agency, a website sharing community news, said that Arab tribal leaders were mediating talks to exchange the prisoners for captured Islamic State fighters and that the Islamic State had agreed to free Christian civilians but not fighters. Mr. Nissan, the accountant, described how he and others crammed into a truck, paying exorbitant rates, to escape. Earlier, he said, Nusra Front fighters and other Syrian insurgents had looted the village without harming anyone, but he feared ISIS more because “they consider us infidels.” “I made a vow, when I return I want to kiss the soil of my village and pray in the church,” he said, adding that he had composed a song for the residents of Nineveh Province when they were displaced a few months ago. “I called it ‘Greetings from Khabur to Nineveh,’ ” he said. “Now we’re facing the same scenario.” Hwaida Saad and Maher Samaan contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Karen Zraick from New York. A version of this article appears in print on February 27, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: ISIS Onslaught Overruns Assyrians and Wrecks Art. WORKSHOPS: Ethiopic Manuscripts and the Preservation of Ancient Jewish Material (Haifa, March 26) From Asaf Gayer [mailto:[email protected]]: ====== The Haifa Center for Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls invites you to a workshop: “Ethiopic Manuscripts and the Preservation of Ancient Jewish Material” (26.03.2015) Speakers: Loren Stuckenbruk and Ted Erho (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Jonathan Ben- Dov (University of Haifa), Ran Hacohen (Tel-Aviv University) Thursday, March 26th 2015, 2-5 PM Venue: University of Haifa, Education Building, Room 677. Please RSVP – [email protected] 14:00 Greetings 14:15 – 15:15 Ted Erho New Findings on the Early History of the Ethiopic Bible Coffee break 15:30 – 16:30 Loren T. Stuckenbruck Text-Critical Challenges in the Production of an Edition to 1 Enoch 16:30 – 17:00 Jonathan Ben-Dov and Ran HaCohen An Astronomical Ethiopic Manuscript: BNF 64 For more information please see - http://megillot.haifa.ac.il/images/pdf/Ethiopic_workshop_Haifa.pdf NEWS: Unearthing the Arabian Peninsula’s Past From By Questioning Conventional Wisdom, Archaeology’s Peter Magee Unearths the Arabian Peninsula’s Past Posted February 27th, 2015 at 11:26 am . When most archaeologists look at a map of the Middle East, they’re drawn to hot excavation spots such as Mesopotamia and Egypt. Not Bryn Mawr’s Peter Magee. The 47-year-old professor of Near Eastern archaeology prefers the Arabian Peninsula, an area that many scholars have ignored. Arabia, the argument has long gone, was nothing more than miles of “dreary desert,” as one academic put it in 1889. In other words, the region’s past seemed to offer little for scholarly exploration. It certainly didn’t have the complex social states of Mesopotamia or the hieroglyphs of Egypt. When Magee, however, studies that same map, he sees something entirely different. “I kept looking at the map,” he says of his undergraduate days at the University of Sydney, “and thinking, ‘It’s very unlikely that there’s nothing there.'” As an expert on the ancient Near East, Magee argues that the conventional dismissive view of the region is ‘simultaneously ethnocentric and stereotypical.’ ‘I think, really, to be a good scholar you need to be constantly questioning what you’re taught,” he says “Was it actually that way? To me, it is very, very interesting to interrogate the past and what we think about the past—and to shift it a little bit.” For nearly a quarter century, Magee has worked to bring understanding and attention to the Arabian Peninsula, a vast area that takes in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. His groundbreaking research on the region’s unique irrigation systems and on the domestication of camels has added to the growing record that Arabia has a rich archaeological history. For the eighth year over winter break, Magee took Bryn Mawr students on a four-week field study to excavate at Tell Abraq about 20 miles outside Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His ambitious recent [2014] book, The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (Cambridge University Press), is fast becoming the definitive source on Arabia’s past. Currently on sabbatical, Magee is editing his next book, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Arabia (Oxford University Press). Images from the field “He is without question one of the leading scholars on the Iron Age of Eastern Arabia,” says D.T. Potts, a professor of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. A leader in the field himself, he was Magee’s doctoral thesis adviser and first exposed him to the UAE’s Tell Abraq and Muweilah digs in the early 1990s. “I think he clearly wants this area taken note of by archaeologists working in other parts of the world,” Potts says. “The way I see the world, and Peter sees the world, is not black and white. It’s much more a mosaic of cultures.” Magee wants to break apart assumptions about the way of life in the ancient Near East. Major excavation sites point to a hierarchical state society in the wider region. Those models, though, don’t account for settlements such as Tell Abraq and Muweilah. These villages and towns, Magee posits, sought social cohesion and actively resisted the structured, hierarchical systems of their neighbors. “These are societies that are vastly different,” he says. “What it suggests to us is that there are a myriad of different ways in which people can exist.” Many scholars, though, have doubts or simply lack interest in an area without a complex state, Magee allows. At a major 2012 congress on the ancient Near East, only eight of 250 papers—just 3 percent— reported on the Arabian Peninsula. Clearly, progress toward shifting opinions is painstakingly slow, figuratively sand grain by sand grain. But this skeptic’s skeptic who is most intellectually invigorated when he’s challenging the mainstream also has an optimist’s bent. “I have no great desire to work anywhere else at the moment,” Magee says. “We are on the cusp of really pushing this region to much better exposure. So I want to stay on it while that process unfolds.” Magee, who teaches courses as varied as Introduction to Near Eastern Archaeology, The Archaeology of Middle Eastern Cuisine, and graduate seminars on archaeometric techniques, brings to his classroom his questioning mindset—and encourages the same in his students. Rather than use a single textbook, he has them read divergent viewpoints, discuss topics, and write a term paper. “He really likes to question archaeology dogma,” says Lara Fields ’17 from Houston whose double major is in anthropology and classical and Near Eastern archaeology. “It’s not us just taking on what he believes is an accurate representation of the past, but actually creating our own.” Fields was one of four undergraduate and two graduate students on the Tell Abraq field study. The experience, she says, both opened her eyes to the hard work of archaeologists and affirmed her choice of major. “We excavated from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.,” Fields says of her first dig, which included excavating a collapsed section of a massive fortification wall. “It was a lot of manual labor, shoveling. But it was exciting because you found stuff, sherds of pottery, lumps of bronze, a couple of camel figures.” The professor was particularly excited about those camel pieces. In 1994, at the Muweilah dig, Magee himself unearthed a terracotta camel with a saddle. To this day, it is considered the most complete such figurine—and, he says, it is arguably the best-dated representation of a domesticated dromedary in the world. The Sharjah Archaeological Museum in Dubai uses a depiction of that camel on its front gates. Currently, Magee is collaborating on DNA work on camel bones to more definitively determine whether dromedaries were domesticated in the area (as his earlier work has suggested) or introduced from elsewhere. “It’s turning up some tantalizing evidence,” he says, unable to reveal more until the publication of the results. But needless to say, the very question itself challenges the norms. “That’s the way,” Magee says, “society moves forward.”