For Assyriologists and Comparative Semitics

Wolfram von Soden's Akkadisches Handwöterbuch (1965-1974), in a three-volume PDF. (The volumes are in German.)

Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Band I. A-L

Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Band II. M - S

Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Band III. S -Z

36.15 MB, German

New Book from the OI: Household Studies in Complex Societies

Some of the essays in this volume from the OI may bear on the maximalist/minimalist debate.

OIS 10. Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches Edited by Miriam Müller  Download Terms of Use The volume is the result of the ninth annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Postdoc Seminar, held on March 16-17, 2013. Twenty scholars specialized in the Old and New World from all over Europe and the U.S. came together to find new approaches in the study of households in complex societies. The papers in this volume present case studies from the Near East, Egypt and Nubia, the Classical World, and Mesoamerica, including three comparative responses from the perspective of the different disciplines. By combining the archaeology record, scientific data, and written documents, the papers examine and contextualize different approaches and techniques in uncovering household behavior from the material record and discuss their suitability for the respective region and site. Building on the methodological groundwork laid out in a number of recent publications on household archaeology, the volume contributes to the methodological and theoretical discussion, expands on the topics of society, identity, and ethnicity in household studies, and opens up new avenues of research such as the perception of space in this innovative field. At the same time the papers reveal problems and disparities with which household archaeology is still struggling. It is hoped that the variety of case studies presented in this volume will further inspire the interested reader to establish new research agendas and excavation strategies that contribute to the development of the field in the various regions covered in the different papers and beyond. Table of Contents Introduction: Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches. Miriam Müller PART I: Method and Theory 1. Investigating Traces of Everyday Life in Ancient Households: Some Methodological Considerations. Lynn Rainville 2. Activity-area Analysis: A Comprehensive Theoretical Model. Peter Pfälzner 3. How to Reconstruct Daily Life in a Near Eastern Settlement: Possibilities and Constraints of a Combined Archaeological, Historical, and Scientific Approach. Adelheid Otto 4. Ancient Egyptian Houses and Households: Architecture, Artifacts, Conceptualization, and Interpretation. Kate Spence 5. Artifact Assemblages in Classical Greek Domestic Contexts: Toward a New Approach. Lisa C. Nevett PART II: Perception of Space 6. Interaction between Texts and Social Space in Mesopotamian Houses: A Movement and Sensory Approach. Paolo Brusasco 7. Clean and Unclean Space: Domestic Waste Management at Elephantine. Felix Arnold 8. Creating a Neighborhood within a Changing Town: Household and Other Agencies at Amara West in Nubia. Neal Spencer 9. Crucial Contexts: A Closer Reading of the Household of the Casa del Menandro at Pompeii. Jens-Arne Dickmann PART III: Identity and Ethnicity 10. Private House or Temple? Decoding Patterns of the Old Babylonian Architecture. Peter A. Miglus 11. Hybrid Households: Institutional Affiliations and Household Identity in the Town of Wah-sut (South Abydos). Nicholas Picardo 12. Living in Households, Constructing Identities: Ethnicity, Boundaries, and Empire in Iron Ii Tell en-Nasbeh. Aaron J. Brody 13. Micro-archaeological Perspectives on the Philistine Household throughout the Iron Age and Their Implications. Aren M. Maeir PART IV: Society 14. Property Title, Domestic Architecture, and Household Lifecycles in Egypt. Brian P. Muhs 15. Late Middle Kingdom Society in a Neighborhood of Tell el-Dabʿa/Avaris. Miriam Müller 16. Family Structure, Household Cycle, and the Social Use of Domestic Space in Urban Babylonia. Heather D. Baker 17. Reconstructing Houses and Archives in Early Islamic Jēme. Tasha Vorderstrasse PART V: Responses 18. Social Conditions in the Ancient Near East: Houses and Households in Perspective. Elizabeth C. Stone 19. Multifunctionality and Hybrid Households: The Case of Ancient Egypt. Nadine Moeller 20. A Mesoamerican Perspective on Old World Household Studies in Complex Societies. Cynthia Robin Oriental Institute Seminars 10 Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2015 ISBN 978-1-61491-023-7 Pp. xlii + 470; 208 illustrations $25.95 [but free download]

Access JSTOR via MyJSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/action/registration

JSTOR is a huge aggregator of literature, including that which is related to Biblical Studies. Typically, one accesses it through one's institution. Without an institutional affiliation, however, there are paid and free means of accessing the database. The above link takes you to the free method: the "MyJSTOR" account. It allows read-only access to a maximum of 3 articles for two weeks. There is a bookshelf for "holding" articles during the two-week period.

40 Maps That Explain the Middle East

http://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east

This one overlaps only briefly with the focus of this blog, but I'm posting it because it is helpful in looking at the historical and contemporary relevance of the Middle East.

University of California E-Books Collection

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/

Many books are accessible for free, though not available for free download. The site has search options, and one can search within individual books.

Assyrian Empire Builders: Governors, diplomats and soldiers in the service of Sargon II and Tiglath-pileser III, kings of Assyria

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/

From the home page:

The correspondence between Sargon II, king of Assyria (721-705 BC), and his governors and magnates is the largest text corpus of this kind known from antiquity and provides insight into the mechanisms of communication between the top levels of authority in an ancient empire. His letters are supplemented by the smaller corpus of correspondence of his predecessor, Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC). This website presents these letters together with resources and materials for their study and on their historical and cultural context.

West Semitic Research Project

http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/

From the Information Page:
The West Semitic Research Project is an academic project affiliated with the University of Southern California School of Religion and directed by Dr. Bruce Zuckerman. For the past 32 years WSRP has used advanced photographic and computer imaging techniques to document objects and texts from the ancient world. In doing this we have built a vast collection of images that we are now making available to scholars, students, educators and the general public through a variety of ways.

Bruce Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg photographing the Leningrad Codex in the Russian National Library (Saltkov-Shchedrin) as part of a joint project between West Semitic Research and the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center in Claremont, California.

WSRP was started in the early 1980s by Bruce Zuckerman and his brother Kenneth. Bruce, a scholar and teacher of the Bible and ancient Semitic languages, was frustrated by the lack of good photographs of important ancient inscriptions. With the help of his brother, Ken, he set out to remedy the situation.
The study of ancient writing is called epigraphy. In this field it has been typical of scholars who read ancient texts to do their own reading, produce a drawing of the text and publish the drawing, translation and transcription as the main tool for study. Photographs, if provided, can rarely be used for study. The reason is that the photographs are either taken by scholars who know little about photography, or by photographers who cannot read what they are looking at and so may miss important data.
The most important principle that governs the work of the WSRP is the combining of good photography with knowledge of the scripts and languages. We believe in training scholars to be good photographers, or at least encouraging them to work closely with photographers to get the best possible results.