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The first comprehensive account of the rise and fall of what historians consider to be the world's very first empire: Assyria'A work of remarkable synthesis. The range of its sources is truly extraordinary . . . Frahm punctures a fair share of myths too' Pratinav Anil, The TimesAt its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria's wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield: their vast libraries and monumental sculptures, their elaborate trade and information networks, and the crucial role played by royal women.Although Assyria was crushed by rising powers in the late seventh century BCE, its legacy endured from the Babylonian and Persian empires to Rome and beyond. Assyria is a stunning and authoritative account of a civilisation essential to understanding the ancient world and our own.
A Companion to Assyria is a collection of original essays on ancient Assyria written by key international scholars. These new scholarly contributions have substantially reshaped contemporary understanding of society and life in this ancient civilization. The only detailed up-to-date introduction providing a scholarly overview of ancient Assyria in English within the last fifty years Original essays written and edited by a team of respected Assyriology scholars from around the world An in-depth exploration of Assyrian society and life, including the latest thought on cities, art, religion, literature, economy, and technology, and political and military history
A Companion to Assyria is a collection of original essays on ancient Assyria written by key international scholars. These new scholarly contributions have substantially reshaped contemporary understanding of society and life in this ancient civilization. The only detailed up-to-date introduction providing a scholarly overview of ancient Assyria in English within the last fifty years Original essays written and edited by a team of respected Assyriology scholars from around the world An in-depth exploration of Assyrian society and life, including the latest thought on cities, art, religion, literature, economy, and technology, and political and military history
The systematic study of written texts began, not in Biblical Israel or the classical world, but in ancient Mesopotamia. Nearly one thousand clay tablets from Babylonia and Assyria, dating from the eighth to the second century BCE, comprise the earliest substantial corpus of text commentaries known from anywhere in the world. Texts commented on by Mesopotamian scholars include literary works, rituals and incantations, medical treatises, lexical lists, laws, and, most importantly, omen texts. Frahm's book provides the first comprehensive study of the challenging and so far little studied Babylonian and Assyrian text commentaries. Topics discussed include the place of commentaries in the Mesopo...
A stunning guide to the treasures housed within the Yale Babylonian Collection, presenting new perspectives on the society and culture of the ancient Near East The Yale Babylonian Collection houses virtually every genre, type, and period of ancient Mesopotamian writing, ranging from about 3000 B.C.E. to the early Christian Era. Among its treasures are tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh and other narratives, the world's oldest recipes, a large corpus of magic spells and mathematical texts, stunning miniature art carved on seals, and poetry by the first named author in world history, the princess Enheduanna. This unique volume, the companion book to an exhibition at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natu...
Throughout history, many states have attempted to harness the attention of their populations for their own ends. This study argues that the Assyrian Empire in the year 672 BC is such a case. In 672 BC, Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, imposed a succession covenant (adê) on his subjects, the inhabitants of the Assyrian Empire. This covenant required the empire's population to monitor one another, and themselves, for signs of disloyalty to the monarch and his chosen successor, Ashurbanipal. This study examines the aims and outcomes, desired and undesired, of imposing this duty of vigilance across the Assyrian Empire. To consider the presentation and implementation of this duty of vigilance, the s...
This in-depth exploration of emotions in the ancient Near East illuminates the rich and complex worlds of feelings encompassed within the literary and material remains of this remarkable region, home to many of the world’s earliest cities and empires, and lays critical foundations for future study. Thirty-four chapters by leading international scholars, including philologists, art historians, and archaeologists, examine the ways in which emotions were conceived, experienced, and expressed by the peoples of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the kingdom of Ugarit, from the Late Uruk through to the Neo-Babylonian Period (ca. 3300–539 BCE). The vo...
Sennacherib and his ill-fated siege of Jerusalem fascinated the ancient world. Twelve scholars—in Hebrew Bible, Assyriology, archaeology, Egyptology, Classics, Aramaic, Rabbinic and Christian literatures—examine how and why the Sennacherib story was told and re-told in more than a dozen cultures for over a thousand years. From Akkadian to Arabic, stories and legends about Sennacherib became the first vernacular tales of the imperial world. These essays address outstanding historical issues of the campaign and the sources, and press on to expose the stories’ theological and cultural roles in inner-cultural dialogues, ethnic origin stories, and morality tales. This book is the first of its kind for readers seeking out historical and historiographic bridges between the ancient and late antique worlds. "This work will undoubtedly serve as an important resource on the Assyrian attack on Jerusalem in 701..." Song-Mi Suzie Park, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Horizons in Biblical Theology
The first book that systematically explores the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China.
Attested as both a human and a divine expression, the biblical Hebrew term qinʾâ is most often translated as “jealousy” or “envy.” In this study, Erin Villareal makes the case for reading qinʾâ as more than a simple reference to an emotion, instead locating the term’s origins in ancient Israel’s social and legal spheres. Jealousy in Context evaluates the socioliterary context of qinʾâ. Through a series of case studies examining this term as it is applied to residents, sister-wives, brothers, and husbands in biblical narrative passages, Villareal explains that qinʾâ is felt by people who experience a threat or disruption to their rights and status within a social arrangeme...