March 2015
Vol. 3, No. 3
Welcome to The Ancient Near East Today, Vol. III, No. 3! For our two-year anniversary, we’re pleased to take you from Mesopotamia to the Galilee, from high tech approaches to cuneiform tablets, to a careful look at some post-Biblical texts.
Lucinda Dirven takes us to the recently destroyed Parthian city of Hatra, with its impressive temples, elaborate sculpture and many inscriptions. Susan Docherty introduces the Pseudepigrapha, post-Biblical texts that provide a look into the mind of the early Jewish world. Jessica Dello Russo takes us on a tour of recently discovered Roman tombs in the Galilee and Robert Englund brings us up-to-date on the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, which makes images of tablets available online. In our podcasts, ASOR president Susan Ackerman, and Syrian Heritage Project leaders Michael Danti and Scott Branting, bring us up to date on efforts to document destruction of sites in Syria and Iraq. As always, we’re also pleased to present reports from students who have received ASOR scholarships.
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Hatra Image Gallery
Please take a look at the bellow photo gallery of Hatra circa 2009 and 2010. Brought to you by The Ancient Near East Today. With a special thank you to the photographers, Suzanne Bott and Col. Mary Prophit, US Army.
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From Banning to Changchun: Cuneiform Studies Online, Today and Tomorrow
By: Robert K. Englund
Paper publication of cuneiform artifact photographs has not progressed much since I was a graduate student in Germany in the 1980s. Instead, the advent of web-based text documentation has resulted in the availability, to cuneiform researchers and others.
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Introducing the Pseudepigrapha
By: Susan Docherty
The term “pseudepigrapha” is rather off-putting, conjuring up an image of ancient and difficult to understand texts that have little relevance to people today. In fact, this fascinating and wide-ranging literature, dating from approximately 300 BCE to 100CE.
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Hatra, The Lesser Known Splendors of a Parthian Frontier Town
By: Lucinda Dirven
With threats to the antiquities of Syria and Iraq growing daily, so too does the imperative to document fast disappearing sites. But in January 2015 what historians and archaeologists had feared since IS took possession of Mosul finally happened.
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Tomb Tracking: A New Burial Survey of Roman Galilee (1st-6th cent. CE)
By: Jessica Dello Russo
Eldad Keynan, a native of Israel’s Galilee region, finishes a lunch of hummus and pita on the outskirts of the Christian town of Mailia, and engages in the customary post-prandial coffee with none other than the restaurant owner, an agile widow in her mid-seventies who keeps a baby stroller below the counter and faded posters of Italian soccer stars on her eatery’s inner walls.
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The Ancient Near East Today features contributions from diverse academics, a forum featuring debates of current developments from the field, and links to news and resources. The ANE Today covers the entire Near East, and each issue presents discussions ranging from the state of biblical archaeology to archaeology after the Arab Spring.
