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Author : Barbara N. Porter
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book Ritual and Politics in Ancient Mesopotamia written by Barbara N. Porter and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : Andrew C. Cohen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004146350
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)
Download or read book Death rituals, ideology, and the development of early Mesopotamian kingship written by Andrew C. Cohen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of Mesopotamia s Early Dynastic period, the political landscape was dominated by temple administrators, but by the end of the period, rulers whose titles we translate as king assumed control. This book argues that the ritual process of mourning, burying, and venerating dead elites contributed to this change. Part one introduces the rationale for seeing rituals as a means of giving material form to ideology and, hence, structuring overall power relations. Part two presents archaeological and textual evidence for the death rituals. Part three interprets symbolic objects found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, showing they reflect ideological doctrines promoting the office of kingship. This book will be particularly useful for scholars of Mesopotamian archaeology and history.
Author : Lauren Ristvet
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107065216
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)
Download or read book Ritual, Performance, and Politics in the Ancient Near East written by Lauren Ristvet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Lauren Ristvet rethinks the narratives of state formation by investigating the interconnections between ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East. She draws on a wide range of archaeological, iconographic, and cuneiform sources to show how ritual performance was not set apart from the real practice of politics; it was politics. Rituals provided an opportunity for elites and ordinary people to negotiate political authority. Descriptions of rituals from three periods explore the networks of signification that informed different societies. From circa 2600 to 2200 BC, pilgrimage made kingdoms out of previously isolated villages. Similarly, from circa 1900 to 1700 BC, commemorative ceremonies legitimated new political dynasties by connecting them to a shared past. Finally, in the Hellenistic period, the traditional Babylonian Akitu festival was an occasion for Greek-speaking kings to show that they were Babylonian and for Babylonian priests to gain significant power.
Author : A. Leo Oppenheim
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022617767X
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)
Download or read book Ancient Mesopotamia written by A. Leo Oppenheim and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
Author : Paul Delnero
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 1501512943
Total Pages : 793 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (15 download)
Download or read book How To Do Things With Tears written by Paul Delnero and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to other traditions, cultic laments in Mesopotamia were not performed in response to a tragic event, such as a death or a disaster, but instead as a preemptive ritual to avert possible catastrophes. Mesopotamian laments provide a unique insight into the relationship between humankind and the gods, and their study sheds light on the nature of collective rituals within a crosscultural context. Cultic laments were performed in Mesopotamia for nearly 3000 years. This book provides a comprehensive overview of this important ritual practice in the early 2nd millennium BCE, the period during which Sumerian laments were first put in writing. It also includes a new translation and critical edition of Uruamairabi (‘That city, which has been plundered’), one of the most widely performed compositions of its genre.
Author : Tzvi Abusch
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004318550
Total Pages : 657 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)
Download or read book Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals written by Tzvi Abusch and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the most important sources for understanding the cultures and systems of thought of ancient Mesopotamia is a large body of magical and medical texts written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. An especially significant branch of this literature centres upon witchcraft. Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals and incantations attribute ill-health and misfortune to the magic machinations of witches and prescribe ceremonies, devices, and treatments for dispelling witchcraft, destroying the witch, and protecting and curing the patient. The Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals aims to present a reconstruction of this body of texts; it provides critical editions of the relevant rituals and prescriptions based on the study of the cuneiform tablets and fragments recovered from the libraries of ancient Mesopotamia. "Now that we have the second volume, we the more admire the thoughtful organisation of the entire project, the strict methods followed, and the insightful observations and decisions made." - Martin Stol, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXIV n° 3-4 (mei-augustus 2017)
Author : Tammi J. Schneider
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0802829597
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (28 download)
Download or read book An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion written by Tammi J. Schneider and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at ancient Middle Eastern religious belief and practice
Author : Mehmet-Ali Ataç
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521517907
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (215 download)
Download or read book The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art written by Mehmet-Ali Ataç and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Mehmet-Ali Ataç argues that the palace reliefs of the Neo-Assyrian Empire hold a meaning deeper than simple imperial propaganda.
Author : Alan Lenzi
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)
Download or read book Secrecy and the Gods written by Alan Lenzi and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secrecy and the Gods is a comparative mythological study of the human reception and treatment of divine secret knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia and biblical Israel. The human royal council was the social model for ancient ideas about divine knowledge being secret - just as human kings had secrets so too did the gods. Diviners who received this knowledge from the gods in an on-going, ad hoc manner were an essential link between the divine assembly and the human royal council for whom such knowledge was intended. Scribes eventually adapted the ad hoc divinatory means of receiving divine communications to their culturally significant texts. By discursively asserting a historical connection between themselves and unique mediators with a close divine affiliation (the apkallus and Moses), the scribes constructed myths that legitimated their texts as divine revelation and claimed these were received in history through normal scribal channels. In this manner, scribes fixed the secret of the gods permanently among humans in textualized form that valorized their own position within society. Although the origin of divine secret knowledge was rooted in a common mythological idea of the divine assembly, its treatment was quite distinct. The Mesopotamians guarded divine secret knowledge through various scribal means, including the attachment of a Geheimwissen colophon to certain tablets (treated exhaustively), whereas biblical Israel published it openly. The contrast in treatment of divine secret knowledge was directly related to different mytho-political self-understandings: Mesopotamia's imperial aspirations versus biblical Israel's vassaldom. As vassals to Yahweh, the divine imperial king, the kings of Judah and Israel as presented in the biblical material were not to formulate secret orders; they were only to obey them.
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004502521
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)
Download or read book Conceptualising Divine Unions in the Greek and Near Eastern Worlds written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an interdisciplinary investigation and contextualization of the various concepts of divine union in the private and public sphere of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.
Author : Zainab Bahrani
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book Rituals of War written by Zainab Bahrani and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rituals of War is an investigation into the earliest historical records of violence and biopolitics. In Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq (ca. 3000–500 BC) rituals of war and images of violence constituted part of the magical technologies of warfare that formed the underlying irrational processes of war. In the book, three lines of inquiry are converged into one historical domain of violence, namely, war, the body, and representation. Building on Foucault’s argument in Discipline and Punish that the art of punishing must rest on a whole technology of representation, Zainab Bahrani investigates the ancient Mesopotamian record to reveal how that culture relied on the portrayal of violence and control as part of the mechanics of warfare. Moreover she takes up the more recent arguments of Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power and biopolitic to focus on the relationship of power, the body and violence in Assyro-Babylonian texts and monuments of war. Bahrani brings together and analyzes facets of war and sovereign power that fall under the categories of representation and display, the aesthetic, the ritualistic, and the supernatural. Besides the invention of the public monument of war, and the rituals of iconoclasm, destruction, and relocation of monuments in war, she investigates formulations of power through the body, narrative displays in battle, the reading of omens before the battle, and historical divination through the body and body parts. The author describes these as the magical technologies of war, the realm of the irrational that enables the ideologies of just war in the distant past as today.
Author : Karen Radner
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019161761X
Total Pages : 838 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture written by Karen Radner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-22 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cuneiform script, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, was witness to one of the world's oldest literate cultures. For over three millennia, it was the vehicle of communication from (at its greatest extent) Iran to the Mediterranean, Anatolia to Egypt. The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture examines the Ancient Middle East through the lens of cuneiform writing. The contributors, a mix of scholars from across the disciplines, explore, define, and to some extent look beyond the boundaries of the written word, using Mesopotamia's clay tablets and stone inscriptions not just as 'texts' but also as material artefacts that offer much additional information about their creators, readers, users and owners.
Author : Marc J. H. Linssen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9789004124028
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (24 download)
Download or read book The Cults of Uruk and Babylon written by Marc J. H. Linssen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication provides new information about the temple ritual texts from ancient Mesopotamia, in particular from the cities Uruk and Babylon, and shows how important the public cults were in Hellenistic times, at least until the first century B.C.
Author : Brian A. Brown
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 1614510350
Total Pages : 842 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (145 download)
Download or read book Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art written by Brian A. Brown and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 842 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume assembles more than 30 articles focusing on the visual, material, and environmental arts of the Ancient Near East. Specific case studies range temporally from the fourth millennium up to the Hellenistic period and geographically from Iran to the eastern Mediterranean. Contributions apply innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to archaeological evidence and critically examine the historiography of the discipline itself. Not intended to be comprehensive, the volume instead captures a cross-section of the field of Ancient Near Eastern art history as its stands in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The volume will be of value to scholars working in the Ancient Near East as well as others interested in newer art historical and anthropological approaches to visual culture.
Author : Guillermo Algaze
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226013782
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)
Download or read book Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization written by Guillermo Algaze and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia are widely known as the “cradle of civilization,” owing to the scale of the processes of urbanization that took place in the area by the second half of the fourth millennium BCE. In Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization, Guillermo Algaze draws on the work of modern economic geographers to explore how the unique river-based ecology and geography of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvium affected the development of urban civilization in southern Mesopotamia. He argues that these natural conditions granted southern polities significant competitive advantages over their landlocked rivals elsewhere in Southwest Asia, most importantly the ability to easily transport commodities. In due course, this resulted in increased trade and economic activity and higher population densities in the south than were possible elsewhere. As southern polities grew in scale and complexity throughout the fourth millennium, revolutionary new forms of labor organization and record keeping were created, and it is these socially created innovations, Algaze argues, that ultimately account for why fully developed city-states emerged earlier in southern Mesopotamia than elsewhere in Southwest Asia or the world.
Author : Nathaniel B. Levtow
Publisher : Eisenbrauns
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)
Download or read book Images of Others written by Nathaniel B. Levtow and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 2008 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Nathaniel Levtow articulately interacts with Mesopotamian and Israelite iconoclastic traditions, locating Israelite polemics against cult images among a spectrum of ancient West Asian literary genres and ritual practices that target the embodied deities of political opponents. Levtow argues that Israelite parodies of Mesopotamian iconic cult were not unique expressions of aniconic monotheism but assertions of Israelite political potency during and shortly after the Babylonian Exile. By interpreting Israelite icon parodies in this context, Levtow rejects the idea of "idolatry" as a static, native Israelite descriptive category and highlights the ability of Israelite writers to compose authoritative classifications of cult that profoundly influenced ancient and modern understandings of iconic worship practices. He concludes that biblical representations of iconic cult reveal dynamic acts of Israelite social formation and exemplify the enduring power of the cult image in ancient West Asian societies.
Author : Robert Chadwick
Publisher : Equinox Publishing Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9781904768784
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (687 download)
Download or read book First Civilizations written by Robert Chadwick and published by Equinox Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Civilizations is the second edition of a popular student text first published in 1996 in Montreal by Les Editions Champ Fleury. This much updated and expanded edition provides an introductory overview of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. It was conceived primarily for students who have little or no knowledge of ancient history or archaeology. The book begins with the role of history and archaeology in understanding the past, and continues with the origins of agriculture and the formation of the Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia. Three subsequent chapters concentrate on Assyrian and Babylonian history and culture. The second half of the book focuses on Egypt, begining with the physical environment of the Nile, the formation of the Egyptian state and the Old Kingdom. Subsequent chapters discuss the Middle Kingdom, the Hyksos period, and the 18th Dynasty, with space devoted to Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, the Ramesside period. The text ends with the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia and Egypt. First Civilizations also contains sections on astronomy, medicine, architecture, eschatology, religion, burial practices and mummification, and discusses the myths of Gilgamesh, Isis and Osiris. Each chapter has a basic bibliography which emphasizes English language encyclopedias, books and journals specializing in the ancient Near East.
