Wonderful Books

[us4-he2-gal2]

Thread Orientation: At the moment the concept of this thread is very liberal, I am always coming across ANE books whose very titles promise alot, and Im worried I wont come back to them. Some are un-deniable specialized and intriguing.. So currently I intend just to begin documenting those un-misable title's, and in time hope to organize this thread to have a utilitarian purpose - categorization.

Books listed here more likely will be non-magical as the 'pool the resources' thread covers that adequately. I will list out of print books as they can sometimes be obtained by soem means. Feel free to add you own up-datable list in a reply below. cheers.

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• Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions I: PreSargonic Inscriptions by J.S. Cooper [1986]. Description - For the first time English translations of the earliest body of non-utilitarian texts are made available in this book. Here early Royal inscriptions are presented, and the volume Includes the Reforms of Uruinimgina (once Urukagana).
  ISBN: 0-940490-82-X
  Availability: Out of print.
  
  
  *Below - Drooling over the Eisenbrauns Ancient Near East Catalogue 2007-2008*
  
  
• Babil, The City of Witchcraft and Wine: The Name and Fame of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Geographic Texts. by C. Janssen [1995]
  Availibility: Out of stock at Eisenbrauns
  
  
• Pre-Sargonic Period (2700-2350 BC) by Douglas Frayne. This book is from the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia series (RIME), produced by the University of Toronto.
  ISBN: 0-8020-3586-8
  Availibility at Eisenbrauns: (Nov.13: Forthcoming)
  
  
  
• Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts From Babylonia: Volume 6, Goal Year Texts by Hermann Hunger (ed.) [2006]
  ISBN: 3-7001-3727-3
  Availability: Out of stock - Domestic at Eisenbrauns (Nov. 17)
  
  
• Analysing Literary Sumerian: Corpus Based Approachs by Jarle Ebeling and Graham Cunningham [2007]
  ISBN: 1-84553-229-5
  Availability: Out of stock - Domestic at Eisenbrauns (Nov. 17)
  
  
• Reading Sumerian Poetry by Jeremy Black
  ISBN:0-8014-3598-6
  Availability: In stock at Eisenbrauns (Nov.17)
  
  
• Gilgamesh and Akka by Dina Katz [1993]
  ISBN: 90-72371-67-4
  Availbility: Out of Stock - Domestic at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 2)
  
  
• Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars by Alasdair Livingstone [2007]
  ISBN: 1-57506-133-3
  Availability: In Stock at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 2)
  
  
• Literature of Ancient Sumer by Jeremy Black [2004]
  ISBN: 0-19-929633-2
  Availability: 1 in stock (Dec. 2)
  
  
• Mesopotamian Civilization: The Material Foundations by D. T. Potts [1994]
  ISBN: 0485930013
  Availability: ?
  
  
• Approaches to Sumerian Literature: Studies in Honor of Stip (H.L.J. Vanstiphout) by Piotr Michalowski and Niek Veldhuis (eds). [2006]
  ISBN: 90-04-15325-X
  Availability: 1 in Stock (Dec. 02)
  
  
• Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization by A. Leo Oppenheim and Erica Reiner [1977]
  ISBN: 0-226-63187-7
  Availability: 1 in Stock (Dec. 02)
  
  
• Death Rituals, Ideology, and the development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship: Toward an Understanding of Iraq's Royal Cemetary of Ur by Andrew C. Cohen [2005]
  ISBN: 90-04-14635-0
  Availability: Out of Stock - Domestic at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 2)
  
  
• Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen by Tzvi Abusch (ed.) [2002]
  ISBN:1-57506-061-2
  Availability: In Stock at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 2)
  
  
• Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East by Michael B. Dick [1999]
  ISBN: 1-57506-024-8
  Availability: In Stock at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 3)
  
  
• Epics of the Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta by Herman L. J. Vanstiphout (2003)
  ISBN: 1-58983-083-0
  Availability: 5 In Stock at Eisenbrauns (Dec. 3)
  
  

[xuchilpaba]

"Babil, The City of Witchcraft and Wine: The Name and Fame of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Geographic Texts. by C. Janssen [1995]
Availibility: Out of stock at Eisenbrauns "

Hows this book?

The introduction to Near East studies looks intriging.


**Admin : Oh I should clarify these are books I am eager to buy or borrow sometime, a 'wishlist' of sorts. By posting such a list here, Im mainly aiming to share what I come across and more then that add visibility to these titles. I recommend reading official reviews of these publications before purchasing, for example Amarsin has led me to a review of the Introduction to near east studies and it was so bad Ive just removed it from the above list. More to be listed shorly.

[us4-he2-gal2]

I've just got Eisenbruans Feb. 2008 "Scholars Source" catalogue in the mail, and it contains a number of very interesting new titles Ive mentioned below. I'm especially commited to the first *drools* - woah! tasty.

• Evil Demons: Canonical Utukku Lemnutu Incantations, SAACT 5 by M.J. Geller
  ISBN: 9521013311
  Availability: In Stock (Mar. 29)
  
  
  
• Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting
  ISBN: 952101332X
  Availability: In Stock (Mar.29)
  
  
• The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History of Interpretations by
  Mariana Giovino
  ISBN: 3-7278-1602-3
  Availability: Out of stock - foreign (MAr.29)
  
  
• Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East by Scott B. Noegel
  ISBN: 0-940490-20-X
  Availability: In Stock (Mar. 29)
  
  
• Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Isreal, SAAS 19 by Alan Lenzi
  ISBN: 9521013303
  Availability: Not yet published (Mar. 29)
  
  
  
  

[madness]

Also, on page one of the latest Scholar's Source is

Sacred Marriages
The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity
Edited by Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro
ISBN 157506118X
Forthcoming May 2008


Martti Nissinen is the author of a few books on Ancient Near Eastern prophecy.

[us4-he2-gal2]

I am taking a moment here to share a book I recently borrowed from the library - It is the most exquiste looking Assyriological book I have picked up and so I had to borrow it even if I'm somewhat limited in perusing it.. Well it is Friedrich Delitzsch's 1912 "Assyriscsse Lesestuecke" - or.. I think it is. heheh Well, the title is written in such an old fashioned gothic sort of script I'm having trouble making it out.. On top of that the entire thing is in German so of course I struggle with the language and that most of it is written in a handwritten scrawl which is tiny - however I may be able to make some of it out and benefit from some of the Cuneiform analysis (with adequate determination.) Other than that is the aesthetic of this yellowed tomb of early Assyriological knowledge that pleases me and I've long had an admiration for the author - his academic excellence as well as his willingness to piss off the entire world, providing perhaps the sole instance when the mystery of the ancients have through Assyriology directly reached out and challenged people - some would say threatened. Delitzsch was quite an island in that way, one has to wonder why.

Earlier reading about this author is noted here

[madness]

Some years ago I had posted in a Sumerian e-group my frustration in trying to define the nature of the gods themselves, and with general enquiries about Mesopotamian magic.

Well that discussion soon turned sour when a particular person came in, questioning everyone's spirituality, accusing members who worship gods as being deluded, stating that all of the gods are false and are just deified human kings, that he has a 3660 year memory (!!) and understands Sumerian concepts better than anyone else, etc. By then it seemed that everyone was at each other's throats. I'm sure someone here remembers this, as he had eloquently put, "mutated into a train wreck of a conversation."


I had more or less put the issue to the back of my mind. Until now. Today I received this recently published book:

www.eisenbrauns.com/item/PORWHATIS

What Is a God?
Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia
Edited by Barbara Nevling Porter

Contains four essays. Herman Vanstiphout on Sumerian gods; Francesca Rochberg on divine celestial bodies; Tallay Ornan on anthropocentric perception; and Barbara Porter on worshipped cult objects.


Just read the introduction so far, which I found amusing, as during the conference the participants themselves came into conflict since each had his or her own significantly differing meanings to words such as "god" and "anthropomorphic." So I'm thinking, if even the experts can't agree as to what we think are simple concepts, it's no wonder the rest of us argue so vehemently about it.

But of course that is what this book aims to address, to explore the multifaceted view that the Mesopotamians had as to what a "god" is. Anyone interested in an answer to this deceptively simple question will certainly want to pick up a copy of this book.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Sounds very enjoyable Madness - I think I remember the sorts of conversations which irritated you some years ago. I think that you have long put down such arguments, if not in attacking their precise focus (the specific question of Mesopotamian divinity), than by vastly overtaking their methodological processes - if someone like that has had one mere notion about Mesopotamian religion than you have had a thousand study point about the same. To find a work which will suffix as a definitive edition on this question is the outgrowth of what is already a methodological success

[Tiamat4Lilith]

Hey Guys Um didn't know where to post this, feel free to move if in the wrong place. The book is on babylonian starlore which is quite an intresting read thought id post it so you guys can have a look, quite intresting if your intrested where modern astrology came from

Babylonian Star-lore: An Illustrated Guide to the Star-lore and Constellations of Ancient Babylonia By Gavin White



www.amazon.co.uk/Babylonian-Star-lore-Illustrated-Constellations-Babylonia/dp/095590370X

Paperback: 324 pages
Publisher: Solaria Publications; 2nd Revised edition edition (10 May 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 095590370X
ISBN-13: 978-0955903700
Product Dimensions: 24.2 x 18.8 x 2.2 cm

[us4-he2-gal2]

Tiamat4lilth: This is a nice book from what I can see. The author is not in the field I don't believe, and so some caution is advisable - yet I took a look at the content pages and from that much it would appear that he has put together a discussion on the subject with considerable depth and thoroughness. If he has succeeded in collecting the best details from the field as a hole, this would be a valuable presentation.


cheers ;]

[madness]

Two books that recently have come into my possession:

Mehmet-Ali Atac, The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art (Cambridge University Press 2010).

This book is based on part of his Harvard PhD dissertation. As the title reveals, Atac looks at the Assyrian kings from Ashurnasirpal II to Ashurbanipal, and examines the mythology involved with each king. Special focus is given to the sacred tree, the apkallu, and the flood (and shows that these concepts are interrelated), thus this book is certainly a must have for anyone interested in those topics.


Balaji Mundkur, The Cult of the Serpent: An Interdisciplinary Survey of its Manifestations and Origins (State University of New York Press 1983).

A slightly dated book that is out of press. The evidence that Mundkur draws upon is from a large variety of sources: Mesopotamian, Mesoamerican, Egyptian, European, Islamic, Asian, Australian, and more; and from all times periods from Neolithic to modern era. After looking at the evidence, Mundkur then explains how ophidiophobia comes about in both human and non-human primates (fear experiments performed on apes and monkeys make this section interesting), and how the serpent develops through the subconscious and through anxieties. His book then explains the fear of serpents through anthropological, psychoanalytical, and holistic perspectives (the holistic section looks at drug use, hallucinations, dreams, etc.).

[us4-he2-gal2]

Ah, new stuff on the scared tree hm? I wonder if Mehmet-Ali Atac will how something to tip the scale on that mountain of perspectives you've documented

[Meslamtaea]

Alright, so I don't know if I'm totally late to the party on this one, but I found some very pleasurable reading and wanted to write something of a recommendation. I'm sure most of you have come in contact with these books and this scholar before, and it's hard not to imagine that the ideas within these books aren't controversial and highly theoretical for those of us studying the field, but they got me thinking about Mesopotamia in a lot of new ways, and I think they're a good intermediary between the study of Mesopotamian history, as we understand it, and the minuteness of Mesopotamian culture as it is.

I've just finished reading all of Zainab Bahrani's small canon of art history books dealing with theories of interpretation in Mesopotamian visual culture, and I'm advocating them here as great texts for exploring and grasping the sheer otherness of Mesopotamian thought. I'm not entirely sure if I feel like I came out of reading her works with a mass of new knowledge, but I think as people studying a culture in which our subjects are mostly silent, we may have a tendency to fall into a sort of complacent malaise about the intellectual and cultural gap which separates us from the past.

Approaching Mesopotamian studies from scholarly synthesis can allow us an undue degree of comfort in the distillation of ancient knowledge into something comprehendable to modern sensibilities. You can open up any introductory text about ANE studies and find yourself looking at a relatively simple narrative of kings, empires, armies, and propaganda. The language and concepts used to describe this narrative seem largely familiar to us, they mirror both European historical archetypes and present day realities of politics, globalization, and power exploitation, giving you the sense that very little has really changed about human beings in 5,000 years.

The first half of Bahrani's core theoretical book, The Graven Image, is a criticism of this narrative which persists as a form of Orientalism: A compartmentalization of reality which serves to present an unchanging and unchallenging image of the Mesopotamian past. Bahrani then introduces the complex Akkadian concept of 'Tsalmu' or "image, representation" that typifies the assumptions at work in the Mesopotamian visual arts. Bahrani expounds upon Tsalmu using both art historical terms, rendering the European critical paradigm of mimesis to be fundamentally innapropriate to the study of Mesopotamian artworks, and then presents the assumptions in Tsalmu using postmodern theories of signage and symbol. The Graven Image is a largely theoretical book, and by the end of it some of Bahrani's ideas seem not entirely convincing. The book is so concerned with theory that it lacks enough concrete example for her points to really sink in. However, moving on to her next book, Rituals of War she utilizes her theories to explain monumental works in Mesopotamia dealing with war and violence, usually explained by archaeologists and Assyriologists as examples of propaganda. By the end of the book, this simple explanation seems very lacking, and you begin to perceive that, outside of the historical narrative we've construed, the Mesopotamian invention of history and recording itself was practically psychedelic. The whole idea that events and individuals could be preserved in the material world for future generations, and potentially for eternity, was so profound that it shaped the very foundations of Mesopotamian culture.

I had a very enjoyable experience reading these and they got me to think about the material record in a lot of new ways. Bahrani's first book which I haven't mentioned, Women of Babylon, was well written as well, although I don't think I was really as satisfied coming away from it. There may be better discussions of women in Mesopotamia out there, but it certainly did a great job hammering in the sheer ineptitude of assuming every depicted naked woman in the Ancient Near East is a fertility fetish!

The Books are (and I recommend them in this order):

The Graven Image by Zainab Bahrani [2003]
ISBN-13: 978-0812236484

Rituals of War by Zainab Bahrani [2006]
ISBN-13: 978-1890951849

Women of Babylon by Zainab Bahrani [2001]
ISBN-13: 978-0415619387

[madness]

These ones slipped past my radar
BOTH by Tzvi Abusch


The Anti-witchcraft Series Maqlû
A Student Edition and Selected Commentary
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 11

Apparently published late last year?

www.eisenbrauns.com/item/ABUANTIWI


and


The Witchcraft Series Maqlû
SBL Press 2015

=====

Finally we can discard the horrifically out of date version by Gerhard Meier.

[hukkana]

I see us-he-gal's mention of the Delitzsch book and it's nothing to be ashamed of. I've been able to speak German for years and yet I still struggled with a book from the 40's published in that font.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Always good to see you Madness, and interesting - didn't know about this student edition! I have been fortunate to meet Prof. Abusch a few times now, nice fellow. He is now working with people in Würzburg, Germany (where his partner D. Schwemer is based) and to some extent witchcraft is also researched in Israel where N. Wasserman is based. I have yet to really shift my attention to late incantations, but the time is better than ever to do so. As for the Delitzsch, still a charming edition from a visual standpoint, yes

[svladu]

Hello all. This would be an interesting one: „Handbook of Ancient Mesopotamia". If it ever came out... But i cannot find any references to it, except these two.

1. In his CV, Gonzalo Rubio mentions: Sole editor of the Handbook of Ancient Mesopotamia, under contract for publication with Walter de Gruyter and consisting of 73 chapters by over 60 different contributors, and ca. 2,600 pages in two volumes. The chapters were assigned in Fall 2010, and the expected publication date is 2013.

2. Then, van de Mieroop says, in the 3rd edition from 2015 of his „History of the ANE": „All dates indicate period of rule and are to be taken as approximate as they are often uncertain, especially in the earlier centuries. They are based for rulers of Mesopotamia (Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian) on Regine Pruzsinsky’s list in Gonzalo Rubio, ed. A Handbook of Ancient Mesopotamia (Boston and Berlin: de Gruyter, in press).

On the other Hand, on de Gruyter's site he appears as editor of the Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records series and that's it. No mention of this handbook. Does any one know more information about this? Is is still going? Has it changed its publisher?

[hukkana]

Apr 8, 2018 4:43:35 GMT -5 @genesis10 said:

NEW books on Mesopotamian History:

Hello everyone; NEW RESEARCH BOOKS for ancient Near Eastern studies: See Amazon or reply for free PDF review copies.
    Here are some excellent books on the history of Ancient Mesopotamia, and her colonies; i.e. for the Biblicist, "Pre-Abrahamic history. Deals with absolute chronology, and historical events - 'time line' from earliest beginnings, Camps of the T & E. Valley cities, Nomes of Egypt, to beginnings of City States, 1st Kish onward through Sumerian King list rulers to Insin. Interprets Gundestrup Caldron as an iconographic description of the original eight (panels) originators 'Patriarchs and Matriarchs' (Pantheon gods and goddesses) of Mesopotamian civilization. See Amazon under these titles or reply to this post for requests of free PDF copies for review.
By Dr. John D Pilkey: "A Designed World", "A Postdiluvian Timeline", "A Continuous Narrative of Postdiluvian [Mesopotamian] History" "Noah's Family Speaks", "Kingship at Its Source,” and "The Genesis 10 Patriarchs.” All deal with comparative mythological pantheons, gods, goddesses, correlated with the Hebrew mythology or history? as depicted Genesis chapters 10-14. Follows older Euhemerists approach to interpreting pagan Gentile traditions and identifying the mythical gods and heroes with the Biblical Patriarchs [Jacob Bryant, Agernon Herbert, George Faber, Antoine Banier, William Jones, Colebrook, W. Hales, Samuel Shuckford, Thomas Blackwell, etc.].

Two points about this.

Number one, you are John Pilkey, as evidenced by you posting your own paper in the Member's Papers section.

Two, you realise this approach is completely backwards ? You are trying to retrofit literary and mythological characters which we can prove predate the oldest extant text of the old testament by upwards of a thousand to two thousand ish years. The traditions of these Patriarchs only comes into verifiable existance many centuries later, and that's not counting the fact of the direct religious influence on the later Hebrews by the also much earlier polytheistic Ugarites.

Any correlations you find are verifiably a result of the Hebrews being the ones influenced, not the other way around.