Historiae: an open access journal on ancient history

Historiae 

Click on the above link to read this open-access journal on ancient history (with a strong focus on the Ancient Near East) published by the the Universidad de la Rioja (Spain).

Volumes 1 (2004) to Volume 6 (2009) are available for free download. Browse by author to download individual articles. The articles are primarily in Spanish, with some material in other European languages.

Volume 7 (2010) will also shortly be released as open access content

Book review: Beyond the Qumran community

Review of John Collins' "Beyond the Qumran community: the Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Alex Jassen (University of Minnesota) in the H-Judaic pages of H-Net Online ("an international consortium of scholars and teachers")

Collins argues in support of the theory that the Khirbet Qumran site is a sectarian settlement. Jassen states that the book "advances considerably our understanding of the origins and identities of the communities of the Dead Sea Scrolls"

Find "Beyond the Qumran community" in SOAS Library at QI296.815 / 733599 (Level C, Stacks 95-96)

"Visible language" - exhibition and book

New York Times article on the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago's latest exhibition "Visible language : inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond" - looking at the evolution of writing in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica.

The "book of the exhibition" is on order for SOAS Library, but it is already available as a free open-access text. Go to the library catalogue entry and click on the link to download and view this book.

Ancient Near East Seminar series 2010

Ancient Near East Seminar Series on LITERATURES OF THE
ANCIENT NEAR EAST


Autumn term seminars take place in Room G51 (College Buildings, Russell Square) at 6 p.m. on the following Mondays

25 October
Yoram Cohen (Tel Aviv): “Where is Bazi? Where is Zizi?” The Ballad of
Early Rulers and the Mari Rulers in the Sumerian King List

15 November
Mauro Giorgieri (Pavia): The Songs and the Scribes: the Role and
Significance of Hurrian Literature in the Cultures of the Ancient Near
East

29 November
Robert Hawley (CNRS, Paris): The Earliest Known Alphabetic Literature:
Structure and Content of the Ugaritic Literary and Scholarly Tradition

13 December
Ian Rutherford (Reading) Near Eastern Literature and Greece: Contact
or Coincidence?

Scribes in Mesopotamia: YouTube video

Click to hear Theo van den Hout (Professor of Hittite and Anatolian languages) at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, talk about early Mesopotamian scribes

Listen to ancient Babylonian and Assyrian poetry

Babylonian and Assyrian Poetry and Literature:  An Archive of Recordings (Aural Akkadian)
This website collects recordings of modern Assyriologists reading ancient Babylonian and Assyrian poetry and literature aloud in the original language. The project is coordinated by Martin Worthington of SOAS's Department of the Near and Middle East and includes excepts from, among other works, the Codex Hammurabi, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ishtar's Descent to the Netherworld
You may have to download an additional font (Steve Tinney's Ungkam font) to view the transcriptions correctly. This is available free from http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/fonts/ 

Open Access journals in Ancient Studies

 700 open access journals on all aspects of the ancient world (including Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, and Hebraic studies as well as the "Ancient Near East") are currently available through this alphabetical list on the AWOL (Ancient World Online blog) from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University
Click here to link to the AWOL blog and keep up to date with new open access journals online and newly released networked content on the Ancient World

Index to archaeological sites in Israel

This A-Z cumulative index of Archaeological Sites in Israel is from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Click to view descriptions and photographs of sites and discoveries from Akko to Zippori

Welcome to SOAS

Welcome to all new and returning students

The Ancient Near East Library blog will give

• details of information skills training offered by Library staff
• Library updates
• details of new web resources and recommended websites
• and lots more !!

If you have not been on a Library tour yet, there are more tours running next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. 

The tours start from open area at the top of the stairs on the 3rd Floor of the School Building (near "Library Tours Start Here" sign !!)

Library training sessions run throughout the year. There will be general introductory sessions on a variety of topics during the first few weeks of term. 

Pick up a handout at the Enquiry Desk for further details of our introductory sessions - Getting started, Electronic journals and bibliographic databases, and Beyond Google: using the Internet for research

For further information on the Library and Library resources, go to the main Library website or go to the Information Skills section on the BLE

As your Librarian, I will be here to help. You can contact me on ms28@soas.ac.uk  or drop in to Room C3 in the Library