Search results for ""institute for the study of ancient cultures""

This volume—the companion book to the special exhibition Back to School in Babylonia of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago—explores education in the Old Babylonian period through the lens of House F in Nippur, excavated jointly by the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1950s and widely believed to have been a scribal school. The book’s twenty essays offer a state-of-the-art synthesis of research on the history of House F and the educational curriculum documented on the many tablets discovered there, while the catalog’s five chapters present the 126 objects included in the exhibition, the vast majority of them cuneiform tablets.

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The second volume of the Epigraphic Survey's series on Luxor Temple is devoted to the in situ reliefs and inscriptions of Tutankhamun's Colonnade Hall that were not documented in the first of the series, The Festival Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall (OIP 112). Included in this volume are reconstructions of the Eighteenth Dynasty facade of the hall, the northern and southern doorjamb reliefs, the upper register scenes, the decoration of the columns and their architraves, the dedicatory bandeau texts of the New Kingdom, graffiti from the later periods, and the three colossal statues that still stand in the northern end of the hall. The plates are accompanied by a booklet of translations and commentary on the iconographic and textual additions and revisions that were made by a long succession of Egyptian rulers and reflect the complex history of the monument.

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The Oriental Institute Annual Reports contain yearly summaries of the activities of the Institutes faculty, staff, and research projects, as well as descriptions of special events and other Institute functions.

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The Oriental Institute Annual Reports contain yearly summaries of the activities of the Institutes faculty, staff, and research projects, as well as descriptions of special events and other Institute functions.

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The Oriental Institute Annual Reports contain yearly summaries of the activities of the Institutes faculty, staff, and research projects, as well as descriptions of special events and other Institute functions. Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION; Introduction (Gene Gragg); In Memoriam; ARCHAEOLOGY; Amuq Valley Regional Project (K. Ashhan Yener); Diyala Objects Publication Project (McGuire Gibson); Epigraphic Survey (W. Raymond Johnson); Giza (Mark Lehner); Hadir Qinnasrin (Donald Whitcomb); Hamoukar (McGuire Gibson); Joint Prehistoric Project (Robert J. Braidwood and Linda S. Braidwood); Nippur (McGuire Gibson); Project for the Archaeology of Yemeni Terraced Agriculture (Tony J. Wilkinson); Tell Es-Sweyhat (Thomas A. Holland); PHILOLOGY; Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (Martha T. Roth); Chicago Hittite Dictionary (Harry A. Hoffner, Jr.); Conference on Electronic Publication of Ancient Near Eastern Texts (David Schloen); Demotic Dictionary Project (Stephen Vinson); RESEARCH; Individual Research; Computer Laboratory (John C. Sanders and Peggy M. Sanders); Publications (Thomas A. Holland); Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems (Tony J. Wilkinson); Research Archives (Charles E. Jones); MUSEUM; Museum (Karen L. Wilson); Museum Education (Carole Krucoff); Volunteer Program (Catherine Duenas and Terry Friedman); Suq (Denise Browning); DEVELOPMENT; Development (Tim Cashion); VISITING COMMITTEE TO THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE; HONOR ROLL OF MEMBERS AND DONORS; STAFF OF THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE; INFORMATION.

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In 1961/62 and 1963/64, the Oriental Nubian Expedition excavated cemeteries, the ancient fortress, and the late Christian town of Serra East in northern Sudan. This volume, the first in a series of reports, looks at the ancient burials and outlying structures. In the New Kingdom, Serra East was the site of an important center, one closely connected to the family of rulers of Teh-Khet. Just east of the fortress, the expedition excavated great tombs that probably belonged to forebears of princes Amenehmet and Djehutyhetep on the high desert and smaller chamber tombs cut into the side of a small wadi that would have belonged to members of the court. These cemeteries not only illuminate a great provincial household of the early New Kingdom, the great tombs mark an epoch in the history of architecture. Although the substructures were large chamber-complexes of Egyptian type, the earlier tombs had large low tumuli paved with bricks and surrounded by rubble and slab rings. The latest of the group was a brick pyramid. The great tombs of Serra thus illustrate a direct transition from tumulus to pyramid that anticipated the adoption of the pyramid by Kushite pharaohs many centuries afterward.

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Until recently, the lower Euphrates basin in southeastern Turkey had remained closed to research. The region was virtually unexplored, an archaeological terra incognita. This situation was particularly regrettable since downstream in northern Syria recent archaeological work along the Euphrates basin had demonstrated beyond doubt the historical importance of the area. A dramatic change occurred in the second half of the 1970s as a result of the announcement of plans by the Turkish government to build two additional dams on the Euphrates river as part of its long-term development program for southeastern Anatolia, the Güneydo©u Anadolu Projesi. This allowed comprehensive surveys to be made of the areas and sites to be destroyed by the reservoirs of the dams in question, the Karakaya and Karababa (now Atatürk) dams, and ultimately for the start of an international archaeological salvage effort within the reservoir areas. As part of this effort a number of Turkish and foreign expeditions were fielded, and as a result of their work a much clearer picture than was heretofore possible of the archaeological history of an important region of the northern periphery of the Fertile Crescent has begun to emerge. It is in this context that the Chicago Euphrates Archaeological Project of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago should be understood. It conducted excavations at one of the threatened sites, Kurban Höyük, and carried out surveys of its immediate environs. The site is located in the lower portion of the Karababa reservoir area and is one of several sites that hold the key for understanding the archaeological sequence of the lower portion of the Euphrates basin in southeastern Turkey.

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Report on excavations at the urban site of Idalion and the Neolithic site of Shali-Agridhi in Cyprus. Stratigraphic analyses of both sites as well as multidisciplinary studies of mining and metallurgy, fauna, human remains, pottery, coins and sculpture.

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This volume presents transliterations of all the unpublished Sargonic material in the Louvre Museum except that from Lagash and Susa. Nearly all the texts are administrative documents concerning animals (mainly sheep and goats, but also bovines) and grain (especially threshed barley). Twenty-one witnessed tablets make up a very important group of legal texts. One school exercise is included. Most of the texts come from clandestine excavations at Umma. Included in this volume are indices of proper names and a catalogue of texts. Fifty-eight tablets are presented in photographic reproductions.

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This book includes thirty contributions - twenty-nine papers and one artistic contribution - by John's colleagues, former students, and friends, on a variety of topics that represent John's versatility and many interests, including philology, history, natural history, and art. Many of the papers concentrate on the Akkadian speaking world, reflecting one of the major languages John Huehnergard has worked on throughout the years. Eran Cohen reviews and discusses the functional value of Akkadian iprus in conditional clauses in epistolary and legal texts. Lutz Edzard discusses the Akkadian injunctive umma, used in oath formulae. Daniel Fleming asks who were the 'Apiru people mentioned in Egyptian texts in the Late Bronze Age and what was their social standing as is reflected in the Amarna letters. Shlomo Izre'el offers a revised and improved version of his important study of the language of the Amarna letters. Leonid Kogan offers a comparative etymological study of botanical terminology in Akkadian, while Josef Tropper argues that Akkadian poetry, as well as Northwest Semitic poetry, are based on certain metric principles. Wilfred von Soldt lists and discusses personal names ending in -ayu from Amarna. A number of papers deal with Arabic grammarians and their concepts of language. Gideon Goldenberg discusses the concept of vocalic length in Arabic grammatical tradition and in the medieval Hebrew tradition that was its product. Wolfhart Heinrichs's contribution shows that Ibn Khaldun held innovative views of language and its evolution. Several other papers deal with Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. Steven Fassberg deals with verbal t-forms that do not exhibit the expected metathesis in Hebrew and Aramaic of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Randall Garr studies one class of denominal hiphil verbs and asks why these verbs are assigned to the causative stem despite their non-causative semantic content. Ed Greenstein suggests that the roots of biblical wisdom can be located in second-millennium Canaanite literature by identifying wisdom sayings and themes in the Ugaritic corpus. Jeremy Hutton sheds more light on tG forms in Biblical Hebrew. Paul Korchin explains occurrences of the cohortative in Biblical Hebrew that do not conform to the normative volitive function. Dennis Pardee provides a detailed study of the Hebrew verbal system as primarily expressing aspect, not tense. Gary A. Rendsburg argues in favor of Late Biblical Hebrew features in the book of Haggai. Four papers deal with linguistic aspects of non-Classical Semitic languages. Charles Häberl looks into predicates of verbless sentences in Semitic and particularly in Neo-Mandaic. Geoffrey Khan discusses the functional differences between the preterite and the perfect in NENA. Aaron D. Rubin provides Semitic etymologies of two Modern South Arabian words. Ofra Tirosh-Becker discusses the language of the Judeo-Arabic translation of the books of Prophets. Papers on comparative Semitics are likewise numerous. Jo Ann Hackett takes another look at Ugaritic yaqtul and argues for the existence of a preterite yaqtul on comparative grounds, among others. Rebecca Hasselbach tackles the evasive origin of the Semitic verbal endings -u and -a. Na'ama Pat-El continues the discussion of the origin of the Hebrew relative particle seC- from a syntactic and comparative perspective. Richard C. Steiner proposes a new vowel syncope rule for Proto Semitic. David Testen argues for a different reconstruction of the Semitic case system. Tamar Zewi shows that prepositional phrases can function as subjects in a variety of Semitic languages. Andrzej Zaborski suggests that Berber and Cushitic preserve archaic features that have been lost for the most part in the Semitic languages. There is one paper on an Indo-European language with important ties to Semitic languages in P. Oktor Skjaervo discussion of the Pahlavi verb *awas 'to dry.' Finally, Richard Walton contributes a paper about the jumping spiders of Concord, Massachusetts, a project he labored on with John Huehnergard. The book is beautifully decorated by the drawings of the artist X Bonnie Woods, who prepared special illustration for this volume, based on cuneiform.

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The eighth in the Oriental Institute Seminar Series, this volume contains papers that emerged from the seminar Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, held at the Oriental Institute April 8-9, 2011. The purpose of the conference was to analyze the cases of and reasons for mutilation of texts and images in Near Eastern antiquity. Destruction of images and texts has a universal character; it is inherent in various societies and periods of human history. Together with the mutilation of human beings, it was a widespread and highly significant phenomenon in the ancient Near East. However, the goals meant to be realized by this process differed from those aimed at in other cultures. For example, iconoclasm of the French and Russian revolutions, as well as the Post-Soviet iconoclasm, did not have any religious purposes. Moreover, modern comprehension of iconoclasm is strongly influenced by its conception during the Reformation. This volume explores iconoclasm and text destruction in ancient Near Eastern antiquity through examination of the anthropological, cultural, historical, and political aspects of these practices. Broad interdisciplinary comparison with similar phenomena in the other cultures and periods contribute to better understanding them.

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This fully illustrated catalogue of essays, descriptions, and commentary accompanies the Oriental Institute special exhibit Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East (on exhibit February 7 through September 2, 2012). Picturing the Past presents paintings, architectural reconstructions, facsimiles, models, photographs, and computer-aided reconstructions that show how the architecture, sites, and artifacts of the ancient Middle East have been documented. It also examines how the publication of those images have shaped our perception of the ancient world, and how some of the more "imaginary" reconstructions have obscured our real understanding of the past. The exhibit and catalog also show how features of the ancient Middle East have been presented in different ways for different audiences, in some cases transforming a highly academic image into a widely recognized icon of the past.

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The volume contains twenty-eight studies of various aspects of the case systems of Sumerian, Hurrian, Elamite, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Old Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Indo-European, the languages of the Bisitun inscription, Hittite, Armenian, Sabellic, Gothic, Latin, Icelandic, Slavic, Russian, Ouralien, Tokharian and Etruscan. The volume concludes with a paper on future directions.

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This volume represents a collection of contributions presented by the authors during the Second Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar "Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean," held at the Oriental Institute, February 17-18, 2006. The principal aim of the two-day seminar was to interpret the social relevance resulting from the enactment of funerary rituals within the broad-reaching Mediterranean basin from prehistoric periods to the Roman Age. Efforts were concentrated on creating a panel composed of scholars with diverse backgrounds - anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, art historians, and philologists - and the knowledge and expertise to enrich the discussion through the presentation of case-studies linked to both textual and archaeological evidence from the Mediterranean region. Fundamental to the successful realisation of this research process was the active dialogue between scholars of different backgrounds. These communicative exchanges provided the opportunity to integrate different approaches and interpretations concerning the role played by the performance of ancient funerary rituals within a given society and, as a result, helped in defining a coherent outcome towards the interpretation of ancient communities' behaviours.

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The present study forms part of the author's long-term research strategy that is aimed at examining the growth of towns, rural settlements, and the rural landscape over much of the last ten thousand years. Emphasis is upon the retrieval of information from surface surveys, and at the same time, the integration of cultural change within both the local environmental context and long-term environmental change. It must be emphasised that the surveys under discussion, collectively called the Sweyhat Survey, were small and rather detailed studies of some 60 sq. km of land around Tell es-Sweyhat, Syria, and the thirty sites therein on the east bank of the Euphrates River; the surveys were conducted in 1974, 1991, and 1992. The survey area is nested within a broader "area of interest," which comprises the area of the upper Lake Tabqa salvage project.

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The extensive history of excavations at Megiddo (Tell el-Mutesellim) attests to the site's cultural and historical significance and effectively chronicles the disciplinary development of archaeological research in the region. Virtually every generation has left its mark, and a vast portion of the site has been excavated in the process. This is particularly true of Stratum VI. While this report is concerned primarily with the results of the Oriental Institute excavations, any attempt to reconstruct the stratum, and the cultural and historical information that it contains, must incorporate the results of other projects that have been excavated at the site as well as with the aim of assembling a composite record of those projects that have produced published remains of Stratum VI. Ever since its discovery, there has been considerable debate and speculation both about the cultural character of Stratum VI, and the cause and date of its destruction. Whatever the precise historical case, it is clear nevertheless that Stratum VI represents the initial Iron Age (or Iron I) settlement at Megiddo.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The tombs and mortuary temples of Thebes have proved an enduring topic of interest thanks to a quickly expanding corpus of field materials and a series of conferences devoted to the subject. This volume, the fourth in a series of occasional proceedings from the ongoing Theban Workshop, presents new research on wall decoration in the Theban necropolis. Its thirteen essays, by an international array of leading scholars, attest to the wide and varied scope of the theme.

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This volume honors Dennis G. Pardee, Henry Crown Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and one of the preeminent experts in Northwest Semitic languages and literatures, particularly Ugaritic studies. The thirty-seven essays by colleagues and former students reflect the wide range of Professor Pardee's research interests and include, among other topics, new readings of inscriptions, studies of poetic structure, and investigations of Late Bronze Age society.

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These Hittite text fragments are part of a large collection found during the early Turkish-German excavations at the Hittite capital Hattusa before the Second World War. This book offers a large number of unpublished text fragments from the collection, both photographed and in transliteration, also providing philological notes to the fragments. The fragments were originally taken to the Staatliche Museen in Berlin (which fell to East Germany after the war) and were finally returned by the German Democratic Republic to Turkey (the Museum of Ancient Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara) in 1987. They were then divided among a team of eminent Turkish Hittitologists under the supervision of Sedat Alp, but most of the pieces remain unpublished. In 2010 a new team was formed, partly consisting of members of the former team, but also supplemented by several fine younger Turkish Hittitologists. The authors of the present monograph are among these new team members. Oguz Soysal, a Hittitologist, and Basak Yildiz Gulsen, a curator of the Ankara Museum, provide photographs and transliterations of each piece. Wherever necessary, the authors give philological notes to explain certain forms or to present relevant text variants. Each fragment, if possible, is accompanied by information on its assignment to a Hittite text or text genre, the date of the composition, the fragment's measurements, and previous bibliography. 316 illustrations (most in colour)

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Standing at the heart of Karnak Temple, the Great Hypostyle Hall is a forest of 134 giant sandstone columns enclosed by massive walls. Sety I built the Great Hypostyle Hall ca. 1300 BCE and decorated the northern wing with exquisite bas reliefs. After his death, his successor Ramesses II completed the southern wing mostly in sunk relief. This volume provides full translation, epigraphic analysis, and photographic documentation of the elaborate wall reliefs inside the Hall. This vast trove of ritual art and texts attest to the richness and vitality of Egyptian civilization at the height of its imperial power. The present volume builds upon and serves as a companion to an earlier volume of drawings of the wall scenes made by Harold H. Nelson in the 1950s and edited for publication by William J. Murnane in 1981. Volume 1, Part 2 452pp; Volume 1, Part 3 (figures and plates) 328pp.

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The papers in this first volume of the new Oriental Institute series LAMINE are derived from a conference entitled "Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the Umayyad State," held at the University of Chicago on June 17-18, 2011. The goal of the conference was to address a simple question: Just what role did non-Muslims play in the operations of the Umayyad state? It has always been clear that the Umayyad family (r. 41-132/661-750) governed populations in the rapidly expanding empire that were overwhelmingly composed of non-Muslims - mainly Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians - and the status of those non-Muslim communities under Umayyad rule, and more broadly in early Islam, has been discussed continuously for more than a century. The role of non-Muslims within the Umayyad state has been, however, largely neglected. The eight papers in this volume thus focus on non-Muslims who participated actively in the workings of the Umayyad government." This new Oriental Institute series - Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East (LAMINE) - aims to publish a variety of scholarly works, including monographs, edited volumes, critical text editions, translations, studies of corpora of documents - in short, any work that offers a significant contribution to understanding the Near East between roughly 200 and 1000 CE. "

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This companion volume to the exhibit examines the multicultural city of Fustat, capital of medieval Egypt and predecessor to modern Cairo. It explores the interactions of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities within urban city life. These three communities practiced their own beliefs and enacted communal self-government, but they also intermingled on a daily basis and practiced shared traditions of life. Essays by leading scholars examine the different religions and languages found at Fustat, as well as cultural aspects of daily life such as food, industry, and education. The lavishly illustrated catalog highlights a new analysis of the Oriental Institute's collection of artifacts and textual materials from 7th through 12th-century Egypt. Highlights include documents from the Cairo Genizah (a document repository) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue as well as never-before-published artifacts from archaeological excavations conducted at Fustat by George Scanlon on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt. The volume encourages discussion on the challenges of understanding religion through objects of daily life.

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This volume presents the results of the long-term co-operation of archaeologists from the University of Ghent and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago to establish the ceramic chronology for Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C. Drawing only upon pottery found in good context in well-conducted excavations, going back to the 1930s, but relying especially on the collaboration of other excavators who were working in southern Iraq from the 1960s onward, James Armstrong and Hermann Gasche, with the participation of cuneiformist Steven Cole and ceramic specialists Abraham Van As and Loe Jacobs, have created a typology of all major forms, showing the subtle changes that occurred in individual shapes through time at one site and at related sites. It also shows regional variations in shapes. Their graphic presention of the forms makes visible a centuries-long break in occupation of numerous sites in southern Iraq beginning in the time of Samsuiluna, the successor to Hammurabi of Babylon, and another break at the end of the millennium. There are detailed discussions of the forms and their geograhical distribution, as well as a treatment of the historical implications of the evidence.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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This volume is the first of twelve scheduled to present the materials excavated under the direction of Professor Keith C. Seele in a concession that extended from the Abu Simbel temples to the Sudan frontier in two seasons, 1962-63 and 1963-64. It presents, in detail, Cemetery L at Qustul, which is a small cemetery containing unusually large and wealthy tombs of A-Group. The tombs, badly plundered and fire damaged, contained pharaonic images on A-Group objects, indicating that they belonged to rulers from the period before Egypt's First Dynasty. Many finds are unique; decorated objects give direct evidence in context for the date of famous carved stone and ivory objects from early Egypt. This lavishly illustrated volume details the elaborate A-Group painted pottery and decorated objects as well as more common finds, with individual chapters on the tombs, pottery, small objects, epigraphy, and a discussion of the special importance of Cemetery L in early Nubia with its possible role in the development of pharaonic Egypt.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, usually with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and thus, in many ways, assumes the function of an encyclopaedia. Its source material ranges in time from the 3rd millennium BC to the 1st century AD and in geographic area from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has become an invaluable source for the study of the civilisations of the ancient Near East; their political and cultural history; their achievements in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, mathematics and linguistics; and not least, the timeless beauty of their poetry. Volume 21, alphabetically the last, was published in the early years of the project; Volume 20: U/W is the final volume and its publication marks the completion of the set.

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To date, no comprehensive treatment of Egyptian magic has focused on the practice of the magician. Both general studies and textual publications have emphasized instead the religious elements in the contents of recited spells, while the accompanying instructions, with their vignettes and lists of materials, instruments, and ritual actions, remained uninvestigated. This study represents the first critical examination of such "magical techniques," revealing their widespread appearance and pivotal significance for all Egyptian "religious" practices from the earliest periods through the Coptic era, influencing as well the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri. The author also discusses the "pagan-Egyptian" influence on Old and New Testament practices and in the lives of the Coptic Desert Fathers. The third edition is a reprinting of the second, which included minor corrections from the original edition. This volume is a significant revisionist approach to ancient Egyptian magic. As a result of a methodical analysis of both the textual and archaeological records, Ritner concludes that the boundaries between ancient Egyptian magic, religion, and medicine were not as strictly observed as modern commentators believe. Furthermore, he categorically denies the frequent attempts of moderns to define ancient Egyptian magic as a phenomenon dealing with the supernatural, practiced primarily for nefarious purposes sub rosa by strictly observed as modern commentators believe. Furthermore, he categorically denies the frequent attempts of moderns to define ancient Egyptian magic as a phenomenon dealing with the supernatural, practiced primarily for nefarious purposes sub rosa by individuals outside of the religious mainstream. Ritner's engaging prose style and felicitous exegesis of even the most arcane material make for easy reading. But more important still, the content of the work ensures that it will become a vital reference tool for all engaged in any aspect of ancient Egyptian religion. [From a review by R. S. Bianchi in Journal of the American Oriental Society 114 (1994) 513-14].

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Robert J. Braidwood set out with his wife Linda in the spring of 1948 to explore the field evidence for the transition from hunter-gatherer way of life to sedentary food production in the region surrounding the Mesopotamian Plain. This initial work started many archaeologists thinking about how the processes that lay behind this fundamental change, and ultimately other transitions, could be documented archaeologically. His pioneering effort to introduce specialists from the geological and biological sciences into work on relevant problems in this transition brought about a new set of standards for fieldwork in the Near East and a new appreciation of the richness of the multidimensional archaeological record that can result from these studies. This volume is the final report on the Braidwoods' initial phase of exploration from 1948 to 1955 in the Chemchemal Valley and adjacent regions of Iraqi Kurdistan. In this sense it is a work that can be viewed as the result of a study begun at a transition within archaeology itself, from the goals and techniques of the period between the wars to the methods and purposes that characterize the discipline at present. Approximately half the volume is devoted to reports on the architecture and artifacts recovered during three seasons of work at Jarmo, the first early village site with aceramic levels excavated in the Near East. Substantial sections are also devoted to reports on the earlier aceramic site of Karim Shahir and the later (Halafian) site of Banahilk. [From a review by Arthur J. Jelinek in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 265 (1987) 87-88].

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This volume is a collection of essays presented to George R. Hughes, Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. The articles deal with the art, history, language, literature, and religion of ancient Egypt, concentrating especially on the later periods of Egyptian civilization, which were Professor Hughes' special interest. Contents: The Funerary Texts of King Wahkare Akhtoy on a Middle Kingdom Coffin ( J. P. Allen ); Two Monuments of the First Intermediate Period from the Theban Nome ( E. Brovarski ); Shesmu the Letopolite ( M. Ciccarello ); The Oriental Institute Decorated Censer from Nubia ( C. E. DeVries ); Shipwrecked Sailor, Lines 184-85 ( M. Gilula ); The Royal Scribe Amenmose, Son of Penzerti and Mutemonet: His Monuments in Egypt and Abroad ( L. Habachi ); The Dialect of the Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden ( J. H. Johnson ); The Shortest Book of Amduat? ( L. H. Lesko ); The Naucratis Stela Once Again ( M. Lichtheim ); Papyrus Harkness ( T. J. Logan ); On the Accession Date of Akhenaten ( W. J. Murnane ); Ramesseum Sources of Medinet Habu Reliefs ( C. F. Nims ); The Sothic Dating of the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties ( R. A. Parker ); Of Myth and Santorin ( R. L. Scranton ); Pashed, the Servant of Amon: A Stelophorous Figure in the Oriental Institute Museum ( D. P. Silverman ); Cairo Ostracon J. 72460 ( E. Thomas ); A Chronology of the New Kingdom ( E. F. Wente and C. C. Van Siclen III ); Some Fragmentary Demotic Wisdom Texts ( R. J. Williams ); Mrs. Andrews and the 'Tomb of Queen Tiyi' ( J. A. Wilson ); Bibliography of George R. Hughes ( J. Eckenfels ).

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The volume is the result of the eighth Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar, held on March 2-3, 2012. Seventeen speakers, from both the US and abroad, examined the interconnections between temples, ritual, and cosmology from a variety of regional specializations and theoretical perspectives. The seminar revisited a classic topic, one with a long history among scholars of the ancient world: the cosmic symbolism of sacred architecture. Archaeologists, art historians, and philologists working not only in the ancient Near East, but also Mesoamerica, Greece, South Asia, and China, re-evaluated the significance of this topic across the ancient world.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, usually with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and thus, in many ways, assumes the function of an encyclopaedia. Its source material ranges in time from the 3rd millennium BC to the 1st century AD and in geographic area from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has become an invaluable source for the study of the civilisations of the ancient Near East; their political and cultural history; their achievements in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, mathematics and linguistics; and not least, the timeless beauty of their poetry. Volume 21, alphabetically the last, was published in the early years of the project; Volume 20: U/W is the final volume and its publication marks the completion of the set.

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This catalog presents the entire corpus of 272 baked clay figurines and votive beds excavated at Medinet Habu by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago during their 1926-1933 campaign. The figurines represent women, women with children, men, deities, and animals. They date from the sixteenth century B.C. to the ninth century A.D., illustrating permanence and change in themes of clay figurines as well as stylistic development within each type. The group of votive beds and the stela made from votive bed molds is among the largest and most diverse collections of such material. Each object is fully described and illustrated and is accompanied by commentary on construction, symbolism, and function.

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The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful context, often with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the cultural milieu and in many ways assumes the function of an encyclopedia.

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The excavation of area WF in the eighteenth and nineteenth seasons at Nippur (1988/89, 1990) was aimed specifically at delineating the transition between the Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods, and this goal has been realised. Augusta McMahon took on this task through two seasons, working tirelessly. Stratigraphic exposure of floor after floor of artefacts was slowed drastically by a complex stack of burials that took up almost half of the space in the pit. The pit was taken down until it reached Early Dynastic IIIa, and thus had the material to assess the passage from Early Dynastic to Akkadian in artifactual terms.

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The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (ca. 1650-1180 B.C.) which witnessed the rise, the floruit, and the decline of many political powers in the Near East. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD) is a comprehensive, bilingual Hittite-English dictionary. The CHD is not just a list of words and their meanings, but rather a dictionary that reflects and illustrates the ideas and material world of Hittite society through its lexicon. Published letter by letter, the CHD is a long-term project and the result of a painstaking process of cultural, historical, and lexical investigation for all those interested in Hittite culture and history. The CHD is the only such project in the English speaking world.

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The present publication is the second and concluding final report of T. A. Holland's expedition dealing with the archaeological finds from the site of Tell es-Sweyhat in Syria; the first report by T. J. Wilkinson deals with the settlement and land use around Sweyhat and in the upper Lake Tabqa area in north central Syria. This large two volume set (text and plates) represents the final publication of the archaeological excavations conducted at Tell es-Sweyhat in the Tabqa Dam region of the upper Euphrates River in Syria under the direction of T. A. Holland during the field seasons of 1973-1975 and 1989-1991. The text volume contains eight chapters that 1) provides information on the background of the excavations, 2) describes the soundings and excavations in the lower town and its defensive rampart, 3) details all of the work done on the main mound of the site, 4) analyses the pottery assemblages from the late Chalcolithic period, the Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, 5) records all of the small finds by periods, 6) discusses the potters' marks with their typology, 7) records all of the incised pottery into four main groups, and 8) gives a final summary of all of the excavation results. The text also has six appendices that provide 1) the loci and phases of all of the areas excavated, 2) a list of all pottery and small finds with their present distribution, 3) the distribution of shells and snails, with a contribution by Michael Roaf, 4) a correlation of the faunal remains that were previously published by Hilke Buitenhaus, 5) a list of all of the wall painting fragments that were recovered from Operation 5, and 6) an analyses of the metal objects by Martha Goodway. Part 1: text 629pp, Part 2: plates 1-334 808pp.

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The 173 texts contained in this volume were acquired by the Oriental Institute Tablet Collection over a long period of years from various sources. The texts are dated from 699 to 423 BC, during the Neo-Babylonian period. The more noteworthy subject matter of the texts includes an adoption document, sale of houses and a field (from the Nur-Sin archive), a "datio in solutum," a court protocol concerning a loan of silver with interest specified, a loan of silver with interest specified, proceedings in the assembly concerning personal status, a Mar Banutu text from the town of Hubat, a court record concerning the status of a freed person, a contract with fowlers to supply birds to Eanna, an inventory of the finery of the Lady-of-Uruk for craftsmen, a four-column list of precious objects, a two-column list of words, a tablet whose obverse records part of a contract and whose reverse is from Sb B, a fragment of an Akkadian religious text or medical or astrological commentary, and a fragment of a literary text. The book contains transliterations, translations, text notes, commentary, indices, and a mixture of hand-drawn copies and photographs of the tablets.

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This fully-illustrated catalogue offers highlights of the Egyptian collection at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. A brief history of the collection is followed by a catalogue of seventy-seven objects, which date from the early third millennium BC to the eighth century AD. Many of these objects have not been previously published. The artefacts include statues, stelae, tools, games, clothing, coffins, figured ostraca, and papyri; each item is described, and its function and symbolism are discussed. Brief texts are translated. Appendices give museum registration numbers, provenance, and bibliographies.

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