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

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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How did Islam's sacred scripture, the Arabic Qur'an, emerge from western Arabia at a time when the region was religiously fragmented and lacked a clearly established tradition of writing to render the Arabic language? The studies in this volume, the proceedings of a scholarly conference, address different aspects of this question. They include discussions of the religious concepts found in Arabia in the centuries preceding the rise of Islam, which reflect the presence of polytheism and of several varieties of monotheism including Judaism and Christianity. Also discussed at length are the complexities surrounding the way languages of the Arabian Peninsula were written in the centuries before and after the rise of Islam-including Nabataean and various North Arabian dialects of Semitic-and the gradual emergence of the now-familiar Arabic script from the Nabataean script originally intended to render a dialect of Aramaic. The religious implications of inscriptions from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic centuries receive careful scrutiny. The early coalescence of the Qur'an, the kind of information it contains on Christianity and other religions that formed part of the environment in which it first appeared, the development of several key Qur'anic concepts, and the changing meaning of certain terms used in the Qur'an also form part of this rich volume.

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In the winter of 1978, an extensive archaeological campaign was launched in the Hamrin Basin area in the east-central part of Iraq to salvage many archaeological sites before their flooding, due to the construction of a large dam. This volume documents the excavations carried out in two of the sites-Tell Abada and Tell Rashid-dating back to the Ubaid period in the fifth millennium BC. The first site (Tell Abada) is of particular importance; it is an almost complete village with three occupational levels unearthed. Several residential houses and buildings with distinctive architectural features are exposed. Industrial workshops dedicated to the manufacture of pottery vessels are present. Of express interest was the first-time discovery of pottery-making equipment, notably the potter's wheel. An equally exciting discovery is the presence of many fire installations dedicated to pottery vessels' burning. The pottery products are enormous, varied, and richly decorated, reflecting aesthetic features and agility. The presence of the pottery in a very well stratified sequence enhances our understanding of Ubaid pottery, clarifies its chronological classifications, and establishes cultural links with other Ubaid sites in the region. Among other remarkable discoveries are many infant burial urns, granaries, water ducts, and proto-tablets. The varied aspects of the cultural material revealed throughout the excavations provides significant insight into daily life, settlement patterns, craft specialization, religious practices, and socioeconomic status, and sheds new light on the Ubaid period in general in Mesopotamia.

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In celebration of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago’s centennial year, over sixty different authors and contributors have come together to provide a personalized history of the OI's work past and present. In these pages we invite you to join us on an adventure. Explore the legacy of James Henry Breasted and the institute he founded. Discover the inner workings of the OI and its museum. Travel across multiple continents to learn about ground-breaking research. Enjoy a unique collection of nearly six hundred images, all in one publication for the first time. Learn the story of the Institute's development—from being one man's dream to becoming one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on over ten thousand years of human civilization.

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Bir Umm Fawakhir 3 is the last of the final reports on the archaeological surveys and excavations at the Byzantine site of Bir Umm Fawakhir in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt; it remains the only intensively studied ancient Egyptian gold-mining operation, and one of very few completely mapped towns of the era. Along with other recent excavations and surveys, it demonstrates the Byzantine empire's continuing activities in the Eastern Desert, not abandonment, as had long been believed. Four survey seasons, in 1992, 1993, 1996, and 1997, succeeded in dating the site to the fifth- and sixth-century Coptic/Byzantine period, mapping in detail the main settlement and one of the fourteen outlying settlements, and determining that it was a gold-mining operation. The goals of the 1999 excavations and the 2001 study season reported in this volume were to answer questions about the site and its occupants that surveys alone could not address, primarily the history of occupation of the site and the status of its occupants. The 1999 excavations of a sample of the houses and middens were undertaken to provide more information about the occupants and their well-being or lack thereof. Two houses, two middens, and one single-room outbuilding were excavated. Like the earlier Roman-period stone quarries in the desert, the miners seem to have worked intermittently and abandoned, or nearly so, the sitebetween mining campaigns. The pottery study extends the corpora published with previous seasons, and the chapter on small finds discusses the wine jar dockets (dipinti), coins, jewelry, emeralds, metal, glass, and other objects. Analysis of the faunal material during the 2001 study season supports the picture of a town well provided with meat, not only sheep and goats but also an unusual amount of beef. The volume is rounded out by an archaeobotanical study and the conservators' reports, including the construction of a barricade at the entrance to the site to help preserve it. A final chapter summarizes what can now be said about life and work at ancient Bir Umm Fawakhir.

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Featured are thirty-seven illustrations that highlight the magnificence that was the great Islamic port of Ayla on the Gulf of Aqaba. The site is located in modern Aqaba, Jordan and has been excavated by the Oriental Institute under the directorship of Donald Whitcomb since 1986.

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This volume comprises a study of both the site and the surrounding hinterland of one of the earliest and largest Early Bronze Age (3500-2300 b.c.) cities of the Levant. The site of Beth Yerah, located in the Jordan Valley of Israel on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, was excavated by the Oriental Institute in 1952/53 and 1963/64. This regional survey incorporates archaeological, geological, and phytogeographical evidence, as well as more recent records from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries a.d., to establish the environmental setting and the subsistence base for the beginnings of civilization in northern Palestine. Using Beth Yerah and northern Palestine as a casestudy, the emergence of intraregional and international trade during the Early Bronze Age and its effect on the growth of urban centers and the development of social hierarchies is explored.

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This volume, the fifth to publish the results of Seele's two seasons of excavations in Nubia, presents Meroitic materials from two large cemeteries and a small settlement at the southern end of Egyptian Nubia. The compactness of the cemeteries and diversity of their materials encouraged the use of a distribution study to distinguish four chronological phases extending from the second century b.c. to the end of the third century a.d. Many complete groups that were found in the cemeteries can be used to trace cultural changes in a region of considerable diversity. A wide range of pottery (especially painted pottery) and small objects trace important developments in the minor arts. Tabular registers detail each group with illustrations selected to help researchers develop new patterns of connection and understanding in Lower Nubia. A chapter on Meroitic inscriptions by Nicholas B. Millet is included.

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The excavations at these cemeteries provide a full range of X-Group objects, dated to the fourth through sixth centuries a.d. Of special interest is the military equipment, including many decorated quivers, parts of several unusual light composite bows, and a saddle date to the late fourth century. The most important discoveries were the complexes of chapels and animal sacrifice pits found beside royal tombs at Qustul. The arrangement of these Noubadian royal funerary complexes can be related to others in Sudan indicating the existence of a widespread and long-lasting funerary tradition.

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A number of burials excavated by the Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition revealed pottery, objects, and burial customs that are dated to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and Napatan periods (ca. 750-200 b.c.), a poorly known phase in Lower Nubia. The rulers of this great age of Kush left monuments in the region, but almost nothing could be found of the ordinary people. The burials are compared with others published from the region to reconstruct a substantial period of settlement in Lower Nubia.

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This volume is the second of three final reports on the joint expedition of the Oriental Institute and the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in the Hamrin Salvage project of Iraq. The technical reports consist of neutron activation and chemical studies on pottery, mudbrick, and other materials, as well as a discussion of the function of the Round Building at Razuk, relying on stratigraphy, architecture, and distribution of faunal material.

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As a number of Professor Kantor's publications stand as models of their kind, elegant, precise, erudite and stimulating, it is a challenge to contribute to a volume in her honor. There are many who, though never formally taught by her, have been encouraged by the "limitless patience and an unswerving devotion to humane learning," noted in Janet H. Johnson's foreword, and inspired by the standards she sets. The twenty-five contributors to this volume are but a fraction of those indebted to her; but between them they pay appropriate tribute in a handsomely produced book, which includes a "bibliography of the publications and communications of Helene J. Kantor (through June 15th 1988)" compiled by Charles E. Jones. [From a review by P. R. S. Moorey in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993) 49-51].

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This monograph presents plaster, stone, ceramic, flint and bone remains from one of the largest pre-classical Tells in Syria. An appendix details the Neolithic plant remains.

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This volume, the second to publish the results of Seele's two seasons of excavations in Nubia, presents Neolithic, A-Group, and Post-A-Group remains from Qustul, Ballana, and Adindan. Neolithic remains were only found in a cave behind the village of Adindan and consist of sherds, some implements, a human skull, and fragments of decorated ostrich eggshell. The cave is comparable to caves found deep in Sudan and represents a northern extension of the cultures well known in the area of the second cataract. Also included in this volume are A-Group remains from cemeteries other than Cemetery L and Post-A-Group remains from two burials, dated between the end of A-Group and the beginning of C-Group, that can be compared with others in the region to identify a limited occupation in a period where none has been thought to exist in recent years.

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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 publishes all of the cuneiform tablets excavated at Tell Abu Salabikh in 1963 and 1965 with the exception of a very few fragments considered illegible. All other tablets are represented by a copy, by a photograph, or by both. Except for the copies of especially fragile tablets made in the field, preliminary copies were prepared from casts and photographs. Subsequently they were checked against the original tablets in the Iraq Museum.

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The second volume of The Excavations in the Plain of Antioch describes a series of excavations in the Syro-Palestinian region. The three sites included in the report are Catal Hueyuek, Tell al-Judaidah and Tell Tayinat, all situated in the central part of the Amuq valley around the city of Rihaniyyah.

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This volume honours McGuire Gibson and his years of service to the archaeology of Mesopotamia, Yemen and neighbouring regions. Professor Gibson spent most of his career at the University of Chicago's Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department and the Oriental Institute. Many of his students, colleagues and friends have contributed to this volume, reflecting Gibson's diverse interests. The volume presents new research in areas such as landscape archaeology, urbanism, the ancient languages of Mesopotamia, history of Mesopotamia, the archaeology of Iran and Yemen, prehistory, material culture and wider archaeological topics.

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Journey back in time 3,800 years to Nippur, a city in ancient Babylonia, as a girl sets out on a quest to become a scribe. Follow along as Inanaka learns how to make a tablet and write her name, solves the many puzzles of the cuneiform writing system, and prepares with her family for a festival, all with the help (some of the time, at least) of her dog, Tuni.

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Reports on the work of the Oriental Institute during the academic year (July 2011-June 2012), including twenty project, seven research support, eleven museum, seven public education and volunteer, and five development and membership reports.

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Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920, the catalogue of the Oriental Institute special exhibit of the same name, highlights the interconnected stories of an important figure in intellectual history - James Henry Breasted - and the beginnings of American scientific archaeology in the Near East at a crucial turning point in world history. At the end of World War I, Breasted and a small team of scholars set sail for the Near East on what would be an eleven-month odyssey across the region. The fascinating mix of politics, scholarship, and history (both ancient and modern) as seen through a focus on the larger-than-life persona of James Henry Breasted lies at the heart of Pioneers to the Past. Breasted's letters and photographs from his trip provide a window into the engagement of modern scholarship with the ancient world, in a highly charged setting of power politics in the early twentieth century. The essays in this catalogue explain the historical, legal, and political context in a way that greatly enriches our understanding of Breasted's journey and its aftermath.

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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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This publication of the photographic registry of the Oriental Institute's Epigraphic Survey in Luxor provides scholars with a quick reference to the photographic documentation contained in the Survey's primary archival holdings. Organized alphabetically by site and by the Nelson numbers keyed to temple decoration (devised by Harold H Nelson, the Survey's first field director), the Registry lists all negatives available for thousands of individual scenes in Theban temples and tombs. A reprint of Nelson's thirty-eight key plans in reduced format appears as a separate plate section for convenient reference.

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Although C-Group sites in the area had been thought to be poor or plundered, Cemeteries T, K, and U yielded large amounts of undisturbed material that provided a valuable opportunity to check the chronology of C-Group by plotting the occurrence of various objects and practices in the cemetery. Some objects, for example, sandals, provide new evidence for the development of crafts in Nubia. The depictions of cattle on two incised bowls are the finest of their kind and offer valuable insight in the relationship of C-Group people and their cattle, a special relationship that is widespread in Sudan.

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This volume presents transliterations of texts in the Ashmolean Museum, most of which are from Kish and Umm-el-Jir, near Kish. A few texts of unknown origin have also been included. The majority of these tablets are standard administrative texts such as are found in other great collections of Sargonic texts from Gasur, the Diyala region, Lagash, and Susa. A small but important group of texts consists of contracts or memos concerning contractual agreements. Other types of texts are also represented, including letters, orders, school exercises, and one incantation. This is the first collection of Sargonic texts from northern Babylonia. One of the most important contributions of the Kish and Umm-el-Jir texts is the light they shed on the geography and ethno-linguistic background of Babylonia; forty geographic names are mentioned, the most common being Mugdan, which may represent the ancient name of Umm-el-Jir. Indices of proper names and a catalogue of texts are included. One hundred and thirteen tablets are presented in photographic reproduction.

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Muzahim Hussein's 1989 discovery of tombs of Neo-Assyrian queens in the palace of Ashurnasirpal in Nimrud (Kalhu/Calah) was electrifying news for archaeology. Although much is known of the Assyrian kings (8th/9th century B.C.), very little was known about the queens, with the exception of semi-mythical Semiramis. Now, for the first time, not only were actual remains and burial objects of Assyrian queens discovered, but also names and attempts through curses to protect the burials. Elaborate gold jewelry and other items in the tombs rivaled in quality and quantity that found in Egyptian royal tombs. A short scholarly publication of a few items, as well as limited coverage in the world's press, gave only hints of the importance of the objects in the tombs. Planned international exhibitions of the treasures from the tombs had to be cancelled due to war and sanctions. Hussein and Amer Suleiman published Nimrud: A City of Golden Treasures, in 1999, under extraordinarily difficult conditions, that could not do justice to the objects. The present volume, a joint publication of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the Oriental Institute, is a new version of the finding of the tombs and their contents, giving much additional information derived from Hussein's continued analyses of classes of artifacts, accompanied by numerous full color plates.

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This report completes prior publications by Clarence S. Fisher (1929), P. L. O. Guy (1931), Robert M. Engberg and Geoffrey M. Shipton (1934a), and P. L. O. Guy and Robert M. Engberg (1938) on the earliest utilization and occupation of the slope at the southeast base of the high mound of Megiddo (Tell el-Mutesellim). That area, labeled by the excavators the "East Slope," and identified by them in their notations as "ES," was excavated by the Oriental Institute between the years 1925, when work commenced, and 1933, when the last of it was apparently cleared down to bedrock. While the primary focus of this report is on Square U16 (an area of 25 25 m), where most of the early remains (i.e., of the Early Bronze Age and earlier) excluding tombs were encountered, this work also deals with the later remains within that same, limited precinct.

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The manuscript consists of seven papers presented at the Theban Workshop, 2006. Within the temporal and spatial boundaries indicated by the title, the subjects of the papers are extremely diverse, ranging from models of culture-history (Manning and Moyer), to studies of specific administrative offices (Arlt), a single statue type (Albersmeier), inscriptions in a single temple (DiCerbo/Jasnow, and McClain), and inscriptions of a single king (Ritner). Nonetheless, all the papers are significant contributions to scholarship, presenting new interpretations and conclusions. Two papers (DiCerbo/Jasnow and McClain) are useful preliminary reports on long-term projects. The cross-references in Arlt and Albersmeiers and in Mannings and Moyers papers attest to value added by presentation at the workshop.

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

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Writing, the ability to make language visible and permanent, is one of humanity's greatest inventions. This book presents current perspectives on the origins and development of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, providing an overview of each writing system and its uses. Essays on writing in China and Mesoamerica complete coverage of the four pristine writing systems - inventions of writing in which there was no previous exposure to texts. The authors explore what writing is, and is not, and sections of the text are devoted to Anatolian hieroglyphs of Anatolia, and to the development of the alphabet in the Sinai Peninsula in the second millennium BC and its spread to Phoenicia where it spawned the Greek and Latin alphabets. This richly illustrated volume, issued in conjunction with an exhibit at the Oriental Institute, provides a current perspective on, and appreciation of, an invention that changed the course of history.

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The Oriental Institute 2008-2009 Annual Report The Oriental Institute Annual Reports contain yearly summaries of the activities of the Institute's faculty, staff, and research projects, as well as descriptions of special events and other Institute functions. The reports are complimentary to Members and Donors of the Oriental Institute and are here offered to a general audience for the first time.

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With this volume, the Epigraphic Survey returns to its series of publications dedicated to the reliefs and inscriptions of the Medinet Habu complex, a series inaugurated in 1930 with the publication of the war scenes and earlier historical records from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III ( Medinet Habu 1. Earlier Historical Records of Ramses III , The Epigraphic Survey, Oriental Institute Publications 8, 1930). The Ramesside temple and the High Gate were to occupy the efforts of the Survey for the next four decades, ending in 1970 with the appearance of Medinet Habu VIII . In resuming the Medinet Habu series, the Survey initiates what is envisioned to be a sequence of several volumes documenting the Eighteenth Dynasty temple of Amun and subsequent additions thereto, beginning with this publication of the reliefs in the six innermost rooms of the temple. These chambers were begun during the co-regency of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III and completed by the latter king during his sole reign.

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Between 2003 and 2005, various remains of sculpture and fragments of an important inscription in the Old Phrygian language were unexpectedly found during excavations at the sixth century BC walled city on Kerkenes Mountain in the highlands of Central Turkey. These unusual finds have a significant role to play in the interpretation of the site and the interpretation of Phrygian history and culture. Large-scale sculpture in the round and small reliefs have distinctive characteristics so far unattested within territory inhabited by Phrygian speakers, while the extensive inscription names individuals so far unknown. Together, they attest to an ambitious and distinctive identity of power at this relatively remote mountaintop city, which may be equated with the strongly fortified place of Pteria mentioned in Herodotus, and which may have flourished for a brief period between the death of King Midas of Gordion and the conquering of Anatolia by the Persian King, Cyrus the Great. This volume presents these striking new finds, all of which come from the Monumental Entrance to a sector of the city known as the Palatial Complex. An introduction to the archaeological context is followed by a detailed catalog of the sculpted fragments, associated architectural fragments, and the inscribed fragments. Within the catalog there is erudite discussion of comparanda aimed at placing the unique material in its wider cultural and historical context, as well as a tentative reconstruction of the major pieces into a single monument. Rounding off the work is a commentary on the Phrygian inscription by Prof. Claude Brixhe. The volume is profusely illustrated with line drawings and photographs of every fragment together with a set of color plates that highlight the violence done to the monuments when the city was looted and burnt in the mid-sixth century BC. A Turkish summary is provided.

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The present publication is the final report on the eleven seasons of excavations at Chogha Mish. In addition to the materials and records from Chogha Mish, Alizadeh uses the data available from the excavations of the neighboring sites of Chogha Bonut and Boneh Fazl Ali to augment his reconstruction of Susiana prehistoric development. Together, these three sites cover a long period from ca. 7200 to 500 B.C. While most researchers see the fourth millennium as a pivotal period in the development of state organizations in southwestern Iran as a result of intra-regional competition between various local polities, Alizadeh traces the onset of the conflict of interest between the settled agricultural communities of the lowlands and mobile pastoralists of the highlands to the fifth millennium b.c. In doing so, Alizadeh considers a much more substantial role for the ancient mobile pastoralists of the region, placing Chogha Mish in a much wider regional context and arguing that at the beginning of the fifth millennium BC, as the local elite were rapidly developing, lowland Susiana shifted its orientation from Mesopotamia to highland Iran, where most of the material resources are located. He attributes this shift to the development of mobile pastoralism in highland Iran and considers the ancient mobile pastoralists as the agents of contact between the highlands and the lowlands. Database of faunal remains available online.

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The late prehistoric Bakun A culture in Fars is a major source of information on the initial development of the evolutionary path which vertical mobile pastoralists of highland Iran may have taken to develop state organisations. Long before the appearance of administrative technology and physical segregation of administration, production, storage, and residential units in urban centers of the second half of the fourth millennium BC, Tall-e Bakun A, near Persepolis in the Marv Dasht region of Fars, stands as one of the precursors to the complex societies of the fourth millennium BC early urban centres. The present publication presents the final report of the last season's excavations at Tall-e Bakun A. The archaeological materials from this season are combined with the results of other pertinent data from surveys and excavations in the Near East to provide a foundation upon which pre-state social evolution in late prehistoric highland Fars has been reconstructed and interpreted. Based on the analysis of the available archaeological data as well as historical and ethnographic sources, Alizadeh argues that the specialised manufacture and administrative aspects at Tall-e Bakun A indicate the existence of differential status at the site, where a few families or ranking individuals controlled the manufacture and flow of goods.

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This is the first volume (text and plates) of the analytically legible seals (ca. 1,162) retrieved through many thousands of full or partial impressions preserved on the 2,087 Elamite administrative tablets recovered during the 1930s excavations at Persepolis, Iran, and published by Richard T Hallock (OIP 92) in 1969. The tablets are dated by date formulae in the texts to the years 509-494 BC in the reign of Darius the Great. Volume I introduces the archive and documents the 312 seals of heroic encounter (retrieved via 1,970 impressions) with high quality composite drawings and a separate volume of 291 halftone and line plate illustrations presented at a scale of 2:1. Entries provide commentary on administrative, social, stylistic, and iconographical features of the seals as well as systematic analysis of seal application patterns. The thirty-four seal inscriptions are presented by Charles E Jones. Twelve appendices synthesize formal and iconographical data and integrate the seals with their associated texts. Volume I is in two parts: Part 1: text 562pp; Part 2: plates 1-291 318pp

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The city on the Kerkenes Dağ in the high plateau of central Turkey was a new Iron Age capital, very probably Pteria. Founded in the later seventh century BC, the city was put to the torch in the mid-sixth century and then abandoned. Excavations at what we have identified as the Palatial Complex were conducted between 1999 and 2005. The stone glacis supporting the Fortified Structure at the eastern end of the complex was revealed in its entirety while the greater portion of the Monumental Entrance was uncovered. Portions of buildings within the complex were also excavated, notably one-half of the heavily burned Ashlar Building, one corner of the Audience Hall, and parts of other structures. This volume documents as fully as possible the results of those excavations with the exception of sculpture, some bearing Paleo-Phrygian inscription, already published (OIP 135). The location of the complex, its development from foundation to destruction, and its architecture are discussed and illustrated. Within the Monumental Entrance were extraordinary, unexpected, semi-iconic stone idols, and other embellishments that include stone blocks with bolsters, bases for large freestanding wooden columns, and stone plinths. Extensive use was made of iron in combination with timber-framed façades and large double-leafed doors. Objects of gold, silver, copper alloys, and iron attest to former splendor. Organization of the volume is roughly chronological, beginning with the Fortified Structure, and concluding with the Monumental Entrance. Presentation of material culture is organized with an emphasis on context. Specialist chapters report on alphabetic and nonalphabetic graffiti and masons' marks, animal bones among which was found the jawbone of a dolphin, and a Byzantine-period burial. This volume provides further dramatic and surprising new evidence for the power, wealth, and sophistication of an eastward expansion of Phrygian culture exemplified by architecture, cultic imagery, Paleo-Phrygian inscriptions and graffiti, pottery, and artifacts. The brief existence of this extraordinary city, hardly more than one hundred years, together with the excellent stratigraphic context provided by the destruction level, offer an unparalleled window onto the first half of the sixth century BC on the Anatolian Plateau.

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This special edition of Highlights of the Collections of the Oriental Institute Museum commemorates the 2019 centennial of the Oriental Institute and presents 100 highlights from ancient Mesopotamia, Syro-Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Nubia, and Persia in the collections.

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This Oriental Institute Museum exhibit catalog looks at how the living commemorated and cared for deceased ancestors in the ancient Middle East. The focus of the exhibit is the memorial monument (stele) of an official named Katumuwa (ca. 735 BC), discovered in 2008 by University of Chicago archaeologists at the site of Zincirli, Turkey. Part I of the catalog presents the most comprehensive collection of scholarship yet published on the interpretation of the Katumuwa Stele, an illuminating new document of ancestor cult and beliefs about the soul. In Part II, leading scholars describe the relationship between the living and the dead in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant (Syria-Palestine), providing a valuable introduction to the family and mortuary religion of the ancient Middle East. The fifty-seven objects cataloged highlight the role of food and drink offerings and stone effigies in maintaining a place for the dead in family life.

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When Georgianna Maynard went to Turkey in 1939 with her husband, Dick Maynard, she expected romance but found reality. The expected five year stay was extended to seven with the outbreak of World War II. The day-to-day struggle to cope with life as a young, married couple trapped in a foreign country is reflected by Mrs. Maynard's correspondence home. These letters, from the Maynards' first seven years in Turkey, describe visits to several of the great cities of the Middle East, from Alexandria to Istanbul, while portraying the rigors of organizing and operating a high school and running a household - all against the backdrop of world war. Her experiences in Turkey kindled in Georgie an interest in the history of the Near East, which led her to serving as a docent of the Oriental Institute for almost twenty years.

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This latest in the series of publications of the field work of the Epigraphic Survey is certainly the crowning achievement of the seventy years the Oriental Institute's artists and epigraphers have labored at the walls of the temples and tombs of Luxor, recording the inscriptions and reliefs in facsimile for posterity. Not only is The Festival Procession of Opet the Survey's largest volume to date, it is also the most sophisticated in terms of the finesse of the rendering of the facsimile drawings with indications of the different types of man-made and environmental damage suffered by the complicated surviving Luxor Temple Colonnade Hall reliefs indicated in minute details - which must have taken countless hours of inking by the many Survey artists (eighteen by actual count) who worked six months in the field each year recording the Opet Festival reliefs from 1974 to 1992. [From a book brief in KMT 5:4 (1994/95) 86]. The portfolio of large drawings is accompanied by a text booklet, which has a list of plates, transliterations and translations of the texts, commentary and glossary.

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This volume provides lavish details on the New Kingdom remains from the Nubian sites of Qustul and Adindan. Nubia prospered, as it was more closely tied to Egypt during this period of its history than at any other time. The Egyptian influence and Nubia's prosperity are clearly depicted in the burials. William J. Murnane contributes a chapter on inscribed stela; Lanny Bell aids in a unique presentation of inscribed coffin fragments; John Darnell lends his expertise in the reading of the glyptic on scarabs; and Emily Teeter's advice on presentation makes this volume an extremely valuable addition to an Egyptologist's library.

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This two-volume account of archaeological investigations in central and eastern Luristan reflects work carried out over 50 years in the remote area of western Iran, north of the Zagros Mountains. Included are excavation reports on the Chalcolithic site of Kamtarlan and on an Iron Age shrine on the slopes og Surkh Dum-I-Luri mountain.

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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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