Search results for ""Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures""
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt
This companion volume and catalog to the exhibit that opens on February 9, 2009, traces the life of Meresamun, whose mummy, dating to about 800 B.C., is one of the highlights of The Oriental Institute museum in Chicago, IL. The text introduces the historical and cultural setting of Egypt during her time. Essays and artifacts examine the role of music and of musicians in Egyptian temple cults, their training, and the types of musical instruments that Meresamun would have used. The life of Meresamun outside the temple is explored, with emphasis upon her social and legal status, what other professions were available to her, and what home life was like. The study of the life of this individual is augmented by forensic evidence obtained with the newest generation of CT scanners that sheds life on Meresamun's life and death.
£21.53
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond
This volume represents a collection of contributions presented during the Third Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, held at the Oriental Institute, February 23-24, 2007. The purpose of this conference was to examine more closely concepts of kingship in various regions of the world and in different time periods. The study of kingship goes back to the roots of fields such as anthropology and religious studies, as well as Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology. More recently, several conferences have been held on kingship, drawing on cross-cultural comparisons. Yet the question of the divinity of the king as god has never before been examined within the framework of a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary conference. Some of the recent anthropological literature on kingship relegates this question of kings who deified themselves to the background or voices serious misgivings about the usefulness of the distinction between divine and sacred kings. Several contributors to this volume have pointed out the Western, Judeo-Christian background of our categories of the human and the divine. However, rather than abandoning the term divine kingship because of its loaded history it is more productive to examine the concept of divine kingship more closely from a new perspective in order to modify our understanding of this term and the phenomena associated with it.
£22.43
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Daily Life Ornamented: The Medieval Persian City of Rayy (OIMP 26)
Archaeologists work with broken fragments to build pictures of life in past societies. In many excavations, the most abundant fragments we work with are broken pieces of ceramic vessels and objects (we call them "sherds"), which we find by the thousands in a typical dig. These sherds can tell us quite remarkable things about the past: when a site was occupied in history, what trade contacts it had, and what kinds of everyday activities people were doing there. We can also learn about technologies and how artisans learned and adopted technologies across large areas. The finest ceramics, of course, are true works of art that convey an aesthetic sense that we can appreciate hundreds or thousands of years later. Daily Life Ornamented: The Medieval Persian City of Rayy shows how archaeologists work with sherds at the same time that it portrays aspects of life along the Silk Road during the ninth - fourteenth centuries. It must be said that although the catalogue is based largely on sherds, they are not only interesting as documents of medieval Islamic civilization, but they are also among the most beautiful sherds in the collections of the Oriental Institute. This catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, also represents an opportunity to re-examine the pioneering work of Erich Schmidt, who excavated the ancient site of Rayy during the mid-1930s.
£23.34
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: Volume 19, Letter T [Tet]
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.
£85.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives
This volume addresses the topical interest in Islam, studying the process of its spread throughout the medieval world and the process of conversion to this religion and adoption of its cultural life. The evidence is presented in a series of essay reports on archaeological approaches in current Islamic Archaeology. These papers are the result of a seminar that attempted a comparative analysis of widely different regions and periods, based on archaeological monuments or artefacts, exploring processes of adaptation or adjustment to local cultural complexes. Islam may be seen as a religion, political system, and cultural complex, a trinity of inseparable aspects. The introduction of these variable characteristics of Islam, during initial contact and afterwards, resulted in changes in identity approached as a sort of "cognitive" archaeology. In each specific case, the author assesses the nature of the pre-Islamic regional tradition, the resulting plurality of cultures as a "multi-cultural" society, and finally a resultant normative condition as a regional or cosmopolitan culture. This exposure to unfamiliar subjects and archaeological perspectives offers a potential for more abstract, comparative modelling in future historical research.
£17.90
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Catalog of Demotic Texts in the Brooklyn Museum
This catalogue is intended to be only a checklist of the Brooklyn Museum's collection of 212 Demotic Egyptian texts. The catalogue provides both the Museum and Demoticists generally with a list of all the pieces plus only such information as would make the list useful. It is not intended to be a complete publication of the texts with the usual full transliteration, translation, notes, and photographs or drawings. Rather, samples of each type of text (papyri, ostraca, inscribed stone and wooden pieces) are illustrated on the plates and only the more interesting passages in the texts are given in transliteration and translation. The book concludes with key word, name, title, and geographical name indices.
£66.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 2: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Amar-Suena
A sequel to the author's Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Aulgi (OIP 115), this volume is the main publication of the 605 cuneiform tablets in the Asiatic Collection of the Oriental Institute Museum that were found at the site of the ancient administrative center Puzria-Dagan (Drehem) and date to the reign of Amar-Suena (2046-2038 b.c.), the third ruler of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112-2004 b.c.). Presented in an arrangement based on both date and contents, these administrative documents are indispensable primary sources for socio-economic, political and religious history during the reign of Amar-Suena. The volume has an annotated typology of Drehem administrative records from the reign of Amar-Suena, detailed philological commentaries on individual texts and text groups, transliterations of all documents, a complete glossary, extensive analytical charts, as well as illustrations (hand copies and photographs) of selected cuneiform tablets. The sealing practice as attested on the sealed objects within this corpus is analyzed in an appendix by Clemens D Reichel.
£112.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations at the prehistoric mound of Chogha Bonut, Khuzestan, Iran: Seasons 1976/77, 1977/78, and 1996
This volume presents the results of three seasons of excavations at Chogha Bonut, Lowland Susiana, in the modern-day province of Khuzestan, southwestern Iran. Susiana was a major contributor to the cultural development of the ancient Near East, and thanks to more than a century of archaeological investigation, it is also the best known region in the entire area. Excavations at numerous sites, but primarily at Susa and Chogha Mish in Susiana, have provided a long sequence of archaeological phases that span some 8,000 years, from early prehistoric times to the early Islamic period. The initial phases of the colonization of Susiana by early farmers, however, remained unknown until a series of excavations at Chogha Bonut pushed the earliest period of occupation of Susiana to the aceramic phase, ca. 7200 BC. The results of these excavations add to the already rich picture of cultural development in the region, the initial chapter of human adaptation in the early phases of village life in the Near East.
£85.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 14, R
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.
£77.50
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Scripts and Scripture: Writing and Religion in Arabia circa 500-700 CE
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.
£37.50
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Tell Abada: An Ubaid Village in Central Mesopotamia
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.
£120.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Discovering New Pasts: The OI at 100
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.
£108.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Bir Umm Fawakhir 3: Excavations 1999-2001
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.
£26.06
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Ayla: Art and Industry in the Islamic Port of Aqaba
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.
£9.28
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Subsistence, Trade, and Social Change in Early Bronze Age Palestine
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.
£35.12
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 8: Meroitic Remains from Qustul Cemetery Q, Ballana Cemetery B, and a Ballana Settlement
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.
£120.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 9: Noubadian X-Group Remains from Royal Complexes in Cemeteries Q and 219 and Private Cemeteries Q, R, V, W, B, J, and M at Qustul and Ballana
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.
£62.50
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Part 7: Twenty-Fifth Dynasty and Napatan Remains at Qustul Cemeteries W and V
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.
£23.34
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Uch Tepe II: Technical Reports
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.
£23.34
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor
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].
£57.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures A Neolithic Village at Tell el Kowm in the Syrian Desert
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.
£27.41
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations Between Abu Simbel and the Sudan Frontier, Parts 2, 3, and 4: Neolithic, A-Group, and Post A-Group Remains from Cemeteries W, V, S, Q, T, and a Cave East of Cemetery K
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.
£35.12
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Volume L-N, fascicle 3 (miyahuwant- to nai-)
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.
£23.34
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 2, B
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.
£49.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 6, H
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.
£58.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Volume 7, I/J
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.
£49.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Inscriptions from Tell Abu Salabikh
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.
£57.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Excavations in the Plain of Antioch Volume II: The Structural Remains of the Later Phases: Chatal Hueyuek, Tell Al-Judaidah, and Tell Tayinat
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.
£39.50
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson
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.
£80.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Adventures of Inanaka and Tuni: Learning to Write in Ancient Babylonia
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.
£7.78
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Second Cataract Fortress of Dorginarti
The best-known sites along the length of the Nile River's Second Cataract are the ruins of Egyptian towns and fortresses occupied during the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. One of the fortresses in the Second Cataract region, Dorginarti existed in a later era than the better-known Middle and New Kingdom forts. The earliest ceramics found at the site date from the later tenth or early ninth century BC, and those from a later occupation stem from the early eighth century. The latest phase of occupation did not extend far beyond the first phase of Persian dominance in Egypt beginning in the last quarter of the sixth century BC. This volume is the final report of the emergency excavations undertaken at Dorginarti for five months in 1964 by the University of Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures as part of the UNESCO Nubian salvage project necessitated by the building of the Aswan High Dam. Following a description of the fortress's landscape and resources, the book describes Dorginarti's architecture in detail and then presents the selection of artifacts brought back from the Sudan and stored in the ISAC Museum. The picture that emerges from the archaeological record shows the continuing importance of Lower Nubia after the withdrawal of Egyptian control in the late second millennium BC and before the rise of the Kushite empire in the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.
£127.50
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut: Occasional Proceedings of the Theban Workshop
This volume publishes the proceedings of the Theban Symposium that took place in May 2010, in Granada, Spain, at the Institute for Arabic Studies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), on the general theme of "Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut." The volume contains nineteen papers that present new perspectives on the reign of Hatshepsut and the early New Kingdom. The authors address a range of topics, including the phenomenon of innovation, the Egyptian worldview, politics, state administration, women's issues and the use of gender, cult and rituals, mortuary practices, and architecture. Groundbreaking for the study of Hatshepsut's reign and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, this volume will become an important reference for scholars and lay readers interested in the history, culture, and archaeology of the time of Hatshepsut and the early New Kingdom.
£26.06
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Our Work: Modern Jobs - Ancient Origins
Our Work: Modern Jobs - Ancient Origins is the catalog for a photo-based exhibit that reveals that many modern professions originated in the ancient Middle East. Artifacts from the Oriental Institute Museum were paired with a baker, farmer, manicurist, brewer, poet, boat builder, judge and other professionals to show the antiquity of these jobs. The portraits are accompanied by commentary on the contributions of the ancient Middle East to life today and new insights into how members of the public view their relationship to the past. This volume will be of interest to educators, historians, and those interested in fine-arts photography.
£11.51
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Slaves and Households in the Near East
The seventh in the Oriental Institute Seminar Series, this volume contains papers that emerged from the seminar "Slaves and Households in the Near East" held at the Oriental Institute March 5-6, 2010. Despite widespread mention of enslaved people in historical records from the ancient, medieval and early modern Near East, scholars struggle to understand what defines this phenomenon in both particular contexts and in general. The purpose of the seminar was to seek new understandings of slavery through scholarly exchange and exploration of new approaches. In particular, contributors examined slavery in the context of households, an approach that allows scholars to expose different dimensions of the phenomenon beyond basic economic questions. Households, whether domestic units, temples or the building blocks of political organisations, can be used as the prism through which to view the dynamics among enslaved people and their immediate contacts. The volume contains micro-historical examinations of slavery in contexts spanning almost four millennia.
£22.43
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Ancient Israel
On January 29, 2005, the Oriental Institute celebrated the official public opening of the Haas and Schwartz Megiddo Gallery. This occasion marked the return of some of the most extraordinary artifacts ever excavated in the southern Levant to permanent public display. The Oriental Institute's prolific history of exploration in the region is testament to a long-standing scholarly passion for discovery and the pursuit of knowledge. This volume draws from the momentum generated by the opening of the Megiddo Gallery and present a selection of highlights from the Institute's greater Israel collection.
£11.51
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18-22, 2005.
Selection of papers presented at the 51st meeting of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale—International Congress of Assyriology & Near Eastern Archaeology.
£65.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary: Studies Presented to Robert D Biggs
Robert D Biggs joined the staff of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) in 1963 after receiving his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. In June 2004, he celebrated his 70th birthday and retired from the University of Chicago as Professor of Assyriology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; his service to the CAD, however, will continue until the final volume appears. To acknowledge and honour his forty-one years of extraordinary service to the Assyrian Dictionary as collaborator, associate editor, and editorial board member, contributions from some of his former and current CAD colleagues are assembled into the volume. It is fitting to revive this series, as the first volume, From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary: Studies Presented to A Leo Oppenheim , appeared forty years ago, in June 1964, and Biggs's contribution there was his first published article.
£32.86
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Amuq Valley Regional Projects, Volume 1: Surveys in the Plain of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey, 1995-2002
The results of the Amuq Valley Regional Projects (AVRP) presented in this volume are the outcome of eight seasons of intensive fieldwork (1995-2002) representing the first phase of a long-range, broadly-based archaeological investigation in the Hatay region of southern Turkey. From its inception the research was conceived as a series of coordinated field projects. The detailed and expansive scope of the regional project originated from a number of theoretical and methodological considerations. Encouraged in part by its potential for providing the examination of interactions between technological developments, complex social institutions, natural resources, and the environment, the original Oriental Institute project (then called the Syro-Hittite Expedition) in the 1930s was formally reactivated in 1995. The strategy of taking a regional approach with a series of linked field projects established an unusual multi-institutional laboratory to research key themes that it is hoped will provide explanations about regional and interregional relationships. The initial stage of the research strategy focused on contextualising the settlements by survey, followed by site-specific investigations prior to the resumption of new excavations. The regional surveys targeted the Amuq Valley (the plain of Antioch, today Antakya) and the delta of the Orontes River (today Samandag). Artifactual and micro-scale studies were the focus of the third scale of investigations.
£90.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands in Memory of Douglas L. Esse
The studies in this impressive volume of over 700 pages are presented in memory of Douglas L. Esse, an archaeologist and assistant professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago until his untimely death at the age of forty-two on October 13, 1992. The majority of the thirty-four chapters in this volume are concerned with the study of the Early Bronze Age, and some chapters deal with periods and issues that pre-date and post-date the Early Bronze Age, as all of the forty-six authors selected to contribute to this volume were either colleagues or students of Esse and some were not primarily Early Bronze Age specialists. Chapter One includes three "Tributes" to Esse by L. E. Stager, A. Ben-Tor, and D. Saltz that assess the impact of Esse's scholarship, excellence in fieldwork, and the friendship he showed to all of those with whom he worked. Many of the chapters are concerned with ceramic studies from various historical periods, while other chapters deal with burial customs, cult, chronology, social organization, cylinder seal impressions, faunal studies, metrology, architecture, radiocarbon determinations, and maritime trade. The Israelite sites that figure prominently in these studies include Tel Maahaz, Tel Dor, Megiddo, Arad, Ai, Tel Yaqush, Nahal Tillah, Beit Yerah, Illin Tahtit, and Ashkelon. The geographical areas that are investigated include the Soreq Basin, the Akko Plain, the Jezreel Valley, the Dead Sea Plain, and the Carmel Coast and Ramat Menashe regions in Israel and Jordan; external studies are concerned with material from Egypt, the site of Alishar Höyuek in Turkey, Tell el-Umeiri in Jordan as well as with pottery connections in Arabia. One chapter is concerned with the latest historical periods, which discusses the Persian and Muslim conquests in Palestinian archaeology.
£26.06
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Scarabs, Scaraboids, Seals and Seal Impressions from Medinet Habu
Medinet Habu in western Thebes (modern Luxor, Egypt) is dominated by the great mortuary temples of King Ramesses III (ca. 1182 BC), and Kings Aye and Horemheb (ca. 1324-1293 BC). It served as the seat of the regional government in the Late New Kingdom, and an important Coptic Christian community grew up within its great fortification walls. For nearly 1,500 years Medinet Habu played a central role in Egyptian religion, life, and politics. In 1924, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago began the documentation of Medinet Habu, but the last facet of the documentation - the publication of thousands of objects excavated at the site - was interrupted by World War II. This book, the first of a projected multiple volume series, marks the resurrection of the project to publish the small finds. It includes a catalogue of 349 scarabs, scaraboids (including lentoids, cowroids, and buttons), heart scarabs and their Sons of Horus amulets, heart amulets, seals, and seal impressions on bullae, vessel stoppers, amphora handles, mudbricks, and funerary cones that date from approximately 1470 BC to the eighth century AD. Each object is described and illustrated and, whenever possible, placed in its original archaeological context. These scarabs and scaraboids comprise one of the largest groups of such material excavated from any site in Egypt.
£85.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Bir Umm Fawakhir Survey Project 1993: A Byzantine Gold-Mining Town in Egypt
The Oriental Institute continued its survey of Bir Umm Fawakhir, a site lying half way between the Nile and the Red Sea, with a short season in January 1993. Located close to the famous bekhen-stone quarries and graffiti of the Wadi Hammamat, the 1992 project took the form of a geological study of the area of Bir Umm Fawakhir. The presence of these mineral resources in this otherwise barren hyper-arid desert, explains why the Bir Umm Fawakhir town was established in this area. By far the most valuable resource was the gold carried in white quartz veins in the local granite, and the mountainsides around Bir Umm Fawakhir are riddled and trenched with ancient mines. This report reflects on the aims of the 1993 season which was to continue mapping the site, to expand the pottery corpus, to seek for some specific features not found in 1992 such as defensive structures and churches, and to carrry out a more general survey of the site's immediate vicinity.
£35.12
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Oriental Institute Hawara Papyri: Demotic and Greek Texts from an Egyptian Family Archive in the Fayum (Fourth to Third Century B.C.
The papyri published here, chiefly in the collection of the Oriental Institute Museum, comprise part of a large family archive from the town of Hawara in the Egyptian Fayum. Written in Demotic and Greek, the documents (annuity contracts, donations, sales, mortgage agreements, loan repayments) are an excellent source of information about the Egypt of the fourth to third century b.c. Professor George R. Hughes had worked on the ten Oriental Institute Hawara papyri for a number of years, but sadly, it was not possible for him to finish the manuscript before his death in December 1992; he did, however, prepare preliminary transliterations and translations of the papyri, including the Rendell Papyrus published in the Appendix. Discussions, commentaries, and glossaries are included. Richard Jasnow completed the manuscript with the assistance of James Keenan, who prepared the Greek texts. The book is of interest to Egyptologists, Hellenists, and all of those concerned with the economic and social history of the Late period in Egypt.
£44.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Seen Not Heard: Composition, Iconicity, and the Classifier Systems of Logosyllabic Scripts
Traditionally, writing—a graphic, multidimensional form of communication—has been approached as a vehicle for representing, and therefore conveying, the spoken word. Moving beyond this manner of analysis, this volume interrogates writing as a medium that is not simply a handmaiden to oral and aural exchange but a communication system that is richly layered and experienced. To exploit this aspect of visual code, scholars from the fields of Egyptology, Sinology, Hittitology, and Assyriology, together with Mesoamericanists, art historians, and a sign language specialist, are brought together in this volume. In its pages, these contributors incorporate into their analyses methods more commonly used in linguistics and semiotics, communication studies, art historical analysis, and traditional philology to new ends to form original trajectories of inquiry. Each contribution either lays bare explicit exploitation of visuality in scribal production as a means to cementing power, reveal the mystical, induce humour or expose clandestine views, or locates implicit knowledge schemes and cultural maps underlying and informing these same productions. The pioneering investigations presented in Seen Not Heard reveal that although writing may be heard, the fact that it can also be seen affects its reception and therefore the meaning of any transported phonological units.
£32.86
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Where Kingship Descended from Heaven: Studies on Ancient Kish
From 1923 to 1933, the Chicago Field Museum and the University of Oxford conducted archaeological excavations at the site of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River in modern Iraq approximately 80 kilometres south of Baghdad. Over the course of ten years of work, the expedition explored seventeen different mounds both inside and outside the ancient boundaries of Kish. The finds were divided at the end of each season, with the Iraq Museum retaining half of the objects and any one-of-a-kind items and the two excavating institutions splitting the remainder. Beginning in 2004, the Field Museum undertook a re-evaluation of its Kish holdings. To highlight new research and insights into the material culture from Kish and our understanding of the importance of the site to Mesopotamian archaeology, the Field Museum held a symposium in 2008 that brought together an international group of scholars who presented papers on various aspects of the ancient city. This volume, which grew out of that symposium, presents a wide array of studies on the excavated material remains from Kish, including cuneiform texts, animal figurines, human remains, lithics, figural stucco wall decorations, and more.
£80.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Beads from Excavations at Qustul, Adindan, Serra East, Dorginarti, Ballana, and Kalabsha: A-Group, Post-A-Group, C-Group, N-Type, P-Type, Pan Grave, Kerma, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom
This book presents a comprehensive corpus of beads and pendants found during excavations undertaken by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago between 1960 and 1968 at the Lower Nubian sites of Qustul, Adindan, Serra East, Dorginarti, Ballana and Kalabsha and stored in the Oriental Institute Museum. This vast, illustrated catalogue organises the finds first chronologically according to the main periods of Nubian history and then by cultural units, beginning with the A-Group and ending with modern times. The present volume—the first of two—comprises beads from Early Nubian (A-Group, Post-A-Group), Middle Nubian (C-Group, Pan Grave, Kerma, Middle Kingdom), and New Kingdom sites. The discussion of each cultural unit begins with background information and develops into a fascinating story of the most characteristic types that form part of that group's identity, though types and materials often cross chronological and regional borders. The story is also one of jewellery fashions and the wealth and long-distance contacts of Lower Nubia, which lay at the crossroads of ancient routes in this part of the world. More specialized information on bead types, ordered by the materials from which the beads were made, is given in the second section of each cultural category. An outline of the preserved beadwork and an anthropological analysis of the remains of the beads' owners, together with references to parallels known from relevant literature and museum research, are also provided. The book concludes with illustrated synoptic and concordance tables that allow the reader to switch easily between catalogue, Oriental Institute Museum, and Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition find numbers.
£121.00
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Damascus Psalm Fragment: Middle Arabic and the Legacy of Old Higazi
The Damascus Palm Fragment investigates Arabic's transformative historical phase, the passage from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period, through a new approach. It asks, What would Arabic's early history look like if we wrote it based on the documentary evidence? The book frames this question through the linguistic investigation of the Damascus Psalm Fragment (PF), the longest Arabic text composed in Greek letters from the early Islamic period. It is argued that its language is a witness to the Arabic vernacular of the early Islamic period, and then moves to understand its relationship with Arabic of the pre-Islamic period, the Qur'anic Consonantal Text, and the first Islamic century papyri, arguing that all of this material belongs to a dialectal complex that we call Old Higazi. The book concludes by presenting a scenario for the emergence of standard Classical Arabic as the literary language of the late eighth century and beyond. This is the second volume to appear in the new Oriental Institute series - Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East (LAMINE) - which 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.
£35.12
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Late Third Millennium in the Ancient Near East: Chronology, C14, and Climate Change
During the late third millennium BC one of the biggest transformations of the ancient Near East took place, affecting almost all regions from Egypt to Anatolia and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iranian plateau. This period not only saw the collapse of urbanization in the southern Levant at the end of the Early Bronze Age III and the following pastoral Intermediate Bronze, and the rise and decline of the Akkad empire in the Upper Euphrates region, but also the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom in the Nile valley. In recent years it has been argued that climatic reasons, especially rapid climate change in the late third millennium BC (the so-called 4.2 ka BP event) might have triggered this supraregional collapse in western Asia and Egypt, linking it to a period of aridification and cooling. This volume compiles papers presented at the tenth annual Oriental Institute Postdoctoral Seminar, held on March 7-8, 2014. Three major topics are covered: The radiocarbon evidence for the mid to late third millennium BC Near East, the chronological implications of new dates and how historical/archaeological chronologies should/could be adapted, and - based on this evidence - if and how climate change can be related to transitions in the late Early Bronze Age. Furthermore, written sources concerning late Early Bronze Age Near Eastern interrelations and/or transformation and collapse from Egypt to Syria/Mesopotamia are taken into account.
£13.82
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures The Ritual Landscape at Persepolis
There are, perhaps, no more contentious issues within the study of Achaemenid Persia than those surrounding its religion(s) and religious iconography. Owing to the role that fire plays in Zoroastrian beliefs in later periods in Iran, almost any discussion of the subject of Achaemenid religion will eventually turn to the identification of sacred fire, fire temples, fire worship, and fire altars in the archaeological, epigraphic, and literary records. The focus of this book is a corpus of glyptic imagery preserved as impressions on two large archives of administrative tablets from Persepolis, the Persepolis Fortification archive (509-493 BC) and the Persepolis Treasury archive (492-457 BC). The glyptic imagery here published concerns representations of what have been traditionally termed "fire altars" and/or "fire temples." Most of this glyptic evidence has never been published; many of the structures and the scenes in which they occur are strikingly original. The goals of this study are to introduce a new corpus of visual imagery concerning religious ritual in the Achaemenid period and to explore the significance of this visual language for our understanding of ritual traditions emerging within the heart of the empire at its most critical formative period, the reign of Darius I. This study seeks also to use the Persepolitan glyptic evidence as a springboard to re-visit the most famous "fire altar" depicted in Achaemenid art, that on the tomb relief of Darius I at Naqs-e Rostam. This study is an initial step in the development of a religious topography for the zone encompassing Persepolis and Naqs-e Rostam, both a topography on the imaginary level (through images) and a topography on the physical level (through the built space). The glyptic images assembled in this study are the most numerous, the most visually complex, and the best dated and contextualized evidence that currently exists for the study of fire in ritual, and religious ritual more broadly, in early Achaemenid Iran.
£26.06