New online content from NABU

The bulletin N.A.B.U (Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires) - published by the Société pour l'Étude du Proche-Orient Ancien in Paris - is making its content on the 1st millenium BCE available online via the website Achemenet

If this link takes you to the site's front page - select Publications en ligne from the menu to access the NABU texts and other documents

The Library has print holdings of NABU at Per 5L / 617483

ETANA is back!

The ETANA (Electronic Texts and Near Eastern Archives) project is back with a new fully searchable database. 

The project has digitized and is continuing to digitize out-of-copyright texts (plus some that have been made available as open-access resources) on ancient Near Eastern Studies. There are currently over 350 texts available. 

A comprehensive listing of the core-texts is also available directly via the AWOL blog

New books in the SOAS ANE collection

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia, 10,000 - 323 B.C.E. / edited by Sharon Steadman and Greegory McMahan (and published this year by Oxford University Press) has just been received by the Library and will shortly be available at QF939.2 / 740084 


Click HERE to go to the Library catalogue

New books in the SOAS ANE collection

SOAS Library has recently received the following two volumes in the Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology series. These will shortly be on the shelf at L. QE890 / 985764

• Garšana studies / edited by David Owen (CUSAS 6)
• Early dynastic mu-iti cereal texts in the Cornell University cuneiform collections / Salvatore Monaco (CUSAS 14)

Medieval Hebrew poetry in Muslim Egypt: book review

J.M.S Yeshaya's Medieval Hebrew poetry in Muslim Egypt: the secular poetry of the Karaite poet Moses ben Abraham Dar'i is reviewed by Dr. Esperanza Alfonso (CSIC - Spanish High Council for Scientific Research) in the online Medieval Review

Find a copy of the book in SOAS Library at QN892.412DAR / 744272
Link to the Library Catalogue from here

Williams College Museum of Art: new content on Cuneiform Digital Library

Images and records for 45 items from the Assyriological collections at the Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts) have recently been uploaded to the Cuneiform Digital Library

Click here to view

Akkadian at Yale: interview with Professor Benjamin Foster

In an interview taken from the Yale Daily News, Katerina Karatza interviews Benjamin Foster, the Lattan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection.
Professor Foster talks about his exceptional students, extinct languages and the Yale Babylonian Collection

Amorites and Canaanites: two videos on ancient migrations

(1) Tracing the Amorites (1) - traces the movement of the western Semitic speaking Amorites from Arabia to the Levant

(2) The Semitic Amorites (2) - looks at the establishment of the Amorite peoples in northern Canaan (Phoenicia) between 1200 and 539 BC

Welcome to SOAS

Follow the Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica blog for updates on SOAS Library resources, book reviews, websites, news-stories and much more

You can go to the Information skills pages on the BLE for general research guides, guides to the various databases and subject specific research guides

You can also use the Subject Guide for the Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica  on the main Library website for internet resources selected by Library staff : http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/subjects/anesj/

If you have any queries about the Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica collections in SOAS Library, finding books and journals, or using any of the online resources, you can contact me:

Mary Seeley (Subject Librarian for History and Religions; Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica)
Room C3 (Library)
Email: ms28@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: 020-7898-4195

or
David Pearson (Subject Librarian for Anthropology and Linguistics, including languages and linguistics of the Ancient Near East)
Room C2 (Library)
Email: dp10@soas.ac.uk
Tel: 020-7898-4177

The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

Google have scanned five of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in partnership with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, made them available over the here.

The scrolls available are The Book of Isaiah, the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll, the Commentary on Habbukuk Scroll and the Community Rule Scroll.

They have been photographed at a resolution 200 times more than the average consumer camera. The result are images that show the minute details in the text and the parchment.

Find out more about the project from this Googleblog post:
"From the desert to the web: bringing the Dead Sea Scrolls online"

State Archives of Assyria Bulletin: new open-access content

 The State Archives of Assyria Bulletin now has full-text open-access content from Vol.1 (1987) to Vol.10 (1996) and is indexed fully to date
Click here to access the journal directly or connect via the entry on the Library catalogue

SOAS Library also has this journal in print at Per 5L / 547330 (shelved on Level B)

Orient: new open-access content

Orient: the journal of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (Nippon Oriento Gakkai) now has open-access content for Vol.1 (1960) - Vol.39 (2004)

Click here to access these volumes

The Library also has print holdings from 1960 to date at Per.5 / 278783

Ancient Mesopotamian recipes!

The Silk Road Gourmet offers some recipes for ancient Mesopotamian cuisine gleaned from and inspired by the Mari mersu recipe and the Yale Babylonian culinary tablets

Anyone for lamb with licorice and juniper berries, or a date and pistachio mersu?


(picture from Silk Road Gourmet)

ASOR Newsletter on open-access

The Newsletter of the American Schools of Oriental Research is now available on open access from 1996 onward.
It contains summaries and reports  of ASOR's research and activities in Amman, Jerusalem and Nicosia

Latest projects in Petra

Catch up on the International Khubtha Tombs Project at Petra - background, latest reports, further reading and great photos!
The project is directed by Dr Lucy Watson of Oxford University's School of Archaeology

Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie relocated

For your information, print holdings of the journal Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie have been relocated from the Ancient Near East reference section (Level B) to the journals collection in the Level F mobile stacks.
The classamark is Per 5 / 16472

Ancient Near East reference collection relocated

The stock moves in the Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica collection are now complete. The reference collection has now been reunited with the main collection on Level B. There is also a dedicated seating area for research

The Philistines were not so bad after all ...

Report from the Jerusalem Post's online edition on excavations at Gath (home town of the notorious Goliath) that throw a new light on Philistine culture and history

Stock moves in ANE section

All large and standard sized books in the Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica section have now been moved to their new location on Level B of the Library. This includes material on the Semitic languages of Ethiopia.
Reference books for these sections are still located on Level C for the time being. They will be moved up to Level B shortly

More on Ur

Report from Discovery News on the threats (both man-made and natural) to the archaeological sites at Ur, and on plans for future excavations and tourism in the region

News from the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project is back on-line.

We apologize for the unavailability of our system during the six weeks between early May and mid-June, 2011. The CAL server was struck by a hacker from an ISP in London, UK precisely on the day that Dr. Kaufman left the country, apparently simply because he or she wanted a complete copy of our online version of Sokoloff'sDJPA and wanted to save the $100 for the second edition and received instead an early draft of the first edition, while totally compromising the system. There is no indication that the identity of any of our users was looked for or their own privacy comprised in any way. The length of the delay is a direct function of the fact that we have failed to have any NEH funding renewed for many years now and the CAL continues on solely as a labor of love without any paid researchers.

Via: AWOL - The Ancient World Online (Charles Ellwood Jones) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Hear ancient Akkadian spoken ...

Dr Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper Ancient Mesopotamian (i.e. Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian) script, languages and cultures at the British Museum, gives his interpretation of the ancient Akkadian language in this video from the BBC World Service
Click HERE to watch and listen

The Ancient World in JSTOR

This is the full list of journals in JSTOR with substantial representation of the Ancient World

• The African Archaeological Review
• American Antiquity
• American Journal of Archaeology
• The American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts
• The American Journal of Philology
• The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures
• Anatolian Studies
• Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales
• L’Année épigraphique 
• The Annual of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem
• The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research
• The Annual of the British School at Athens
• Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 
• Archaeological Reports
• Archaeology in Oceania  
• Archaeology & Physical Anthropology in Oceania  
• Archaeology Ireland
• Archives of Asian Art 
• Arion
• Ars Islamica 
• Ars Orientalis
• The Art Bulletin
• Artibus Asiae
• Artibus Asiae. Supplementum
• Artibus et Historiae 
• The Athenian Agora
• Australian Archaeology  
• Berliner Museen
• The Biblical Archaeologist
• The Biblical World
• Biennial Review of Anthropology
• Britannia
• The British Museum Quarterly
• Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem 
• Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
• Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies
• Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London
• The Burlington Magazine
• The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
• Cahiers d'Études Africaines
• California Studies in Classical Antiquity
• Classical Antiquity
• The Classical Journal
• Classical Philology
• The Classical Quarterly
• The Classical Review
• The Classical Weekly
• The Classical World 
• Classics Ireland 
• Corinth
• Current Anthropology
• Dead Sea Discoveries
• Dumbarton Oaks Papers
• Études rurales
• Forschungen und Berichte
• Gesta
• Glotta 
• Goodwin Series
• Gnomon
• Greece & Rome 
• Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
• Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
• The Harvard Theological Review
• Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin
• Hebraica
• The Hebrew Student
• Hermes 
• Hesperia
• Hesperia Supplements
• Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte
• Historical Archaeology
• Human Ecology 
• Imago Mundi
• International Journal of the Classical Tradition
• Iran
• Iran & the Caucasus
• Iranian Studies 
• Iraq
• Isis
• The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal
• Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen
• The Jewish Quarterly Review 
• Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
• Journal of Biblical Literature
• Journal of Cuneiform Studies
• The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
• Journal of Field Archaeology
• The Journal of Hellenic Studies
• The Journal of Irish Archaeology 
• Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
• Journal of Near Eastern Studies 
• The Journal of Roman Studies
• Journal of the American Oriental Society 
• Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
• Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society
• Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 
• Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
• Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Journal of the National Association of Biblical Instructors
• Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
• Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
• Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis
• The Journal of the Walters Art Museum
• Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 
• Journal of the Warburg Institute
• Kerry Archaeological Magazine 
• Kiva
• Latin American Antiquity
• Man
• Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici
• The Maynooth Review / Revieú Mhá Nuad
• Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
• Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes
• Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology
• Metropolitan Museum Journal
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 
• Metropolitan Museum Studies
• MFA Bulletin
• Mnemosyne
• Muqarnas
• Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin
• Near Eastern Archaeology
• New Mexico Anthropologist
• Notable Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Novum Testamentum
• The Old and New Testament Student
• The Old Testament Student
• Oriens
• Osiris
• Papers of the British School at Rome
• Phoenix
• Phronesis
• Primitive Man
• Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature
• Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica
• Recent Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 
• Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University
• The South African Archaeological Bulletin
• Southwestern Journal of Anthropology
• Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur
• Studies in Conservation
• Supplementary Papers of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome
• Syria
• T'oung Pao
• Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
• Transactions of the American Philological Association (1869-1896)
• Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-)
• Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
• Ulster Journal of Archaeology
• Vetus Testamentum
• Vigiliae Christianae
• World Archaeology
• Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte
• Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Auction Catalogs (Beta)

JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Auctioncatalogs are vital for provenance research as well as for the study of art markets and the history of collecting.

Upcoming Content

• Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics
• Revue Archeologique

Via: AWOL - The Ancient World Online (Charles Ellwood Jones) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The Nimrud Ivories: online article

An article from the al-Arabiya News website on the Nimrud ivories, which are among the many treasures in the British Museum.
The article also looks at the discovery of the ivories and, in particular, the excavations that were carried out between 1949 and 1963 by Max Mallowan, assisted by his wife, crime-novelist Agatha Christie

Orientalia Suecana: new open-access content

Orientalia Suecana

This international journal of Indological, Iranian, Semitic, Sinological and Turkic studies (founded in 1952 and published by Uppsala University in Sweden) is now making recent content available online through open-access.

The open-access content begins with Vol.58 (2009). 

The Library has print copies also from Vol.1 to Vol.59 at Per 5 / 79769

You have to download each volume individually via the links on the journal homepage in order to view the full-text.

ORACC: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus

ORACC: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus

The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC) is a corpus-building cooperative which provides facilities and support for the creation of free online editions of cuneiform texts

It comprises a workspace and tool-kit for the development of a complete corpus of cuneiform whose rich annotation and open licensing support the next generation of scholarly research.

ORACC is made up of the following resources:

AEB: Assyrian Empire Builders
This website places the letters exchanged between Sargon II, king of Assyria (721-705 BC), and his governors and magnates in their historical and cultural context and provides resources and materials for their study.

Amarna: The Amarna Tablets

The Amarna corpus comprises transliterations of the 380 cuneiform tablets found at Tell el-Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) in Egypt. It contains diplomatic  correspondence and Akkadian scholarly works from the mid-14th century BC  and was kindly donated to Oracc by Shlomo Izre'el.

CAMS: Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian ScholarshipStarting with tablets from Huzirina, Kalhu, and Uruk for the Geography of Knowledge project, CAMS will eventually comprise editions and translations of a wide range of Mesopotamian scholarly writings.

CDLI: The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
The foundational online cataloging and archiving project for the cuneiform corpus. The Oracc presentation is based directly on public CDLI data which is updated nightly.

CTIJ: Cuneiform Texts Mentioning Israelites, Judeans, and Other Related Groups
CTIJ studies cuneiform texts and onomastic data pertaining to Israelites, Judeans, and Related Population Groups during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo- and Late Babylonian, and Achaemenid Periods (744-330 BCE).

DCCLT: Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical TextsDCCLT provides editions and translations of lexical texts (word lists and sign lists) from all periods of cuneiform writing.

DCCMT: Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Mathematical TextsDCCMT aims to present transliterations and translations of around a thousand published cuneiform mathematical tablets.

ePSD: electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian DictionaryThe PSD is preparing an exhaustive dictionary of the Sumerian language which aims to be useful to non-specialists as well as Sumerologists.

GKAB: The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia
The AHRC-funded GKAB project studies Assyro-Babylonian scholarship by editing the contents of four cuneiform libraries in the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship and by analysing their changing socio-political contexts.

HBT2: HBTIN L2
HBTIN presents the texts, iconography and onomastic data in the cuneiform documentation from Hellenistic Babylonia, primarily from Uruk. HBTIN texts form the demonstrator corpus of the Berkeley Prosopography Service (BPS).

HBTIN: Hellenistic Babylonia: Texts, Iconography, Names
HBTIN presents the texts, iconography and onomastic data in the cuneiform documentation from Hellenistic Babylonia, primarily from Uruk. HBTIN texts form the demonstrator corpus of the Berkeley Prosopography Service (BPS).

K&P: Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
This website presents Neo-Assyrian scholars' letters, queries, and reports to their kings in seventh-century Nineveh and provides resources to support their use in undergraduate teaching.

OGSL: Oracc Global Sign List
Provides a global registry of sign names, variants and readings for use by ORACC.

Qcat: The Q Catalogue
The Q catalogue provides a global registry of compositions rather than objects, supporting the creation of scores on Oracc.

SAAo: State Archives of Assyria Online
An open-access web resource that aims to make the rich Neo-Assyrian materials found in the royal archives of Nineveh, and elsewhere, more widely accessible. Portals include Knowledge and Power and Assyrian Empire Builders.

Was the world's first museum in Ur?

Report on Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur in the 1920's, focusing on the discovery of what seems to be the world's oldest museum, dating from around 530 BC.
Artifacts from Ur's earlier history seem to have been purposefully collected by Princess Ennigaldi, daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The article also discusses the motives for making such a collection. Ur in this last phase of its development was, according to Woolley, obsessed by its history. The rulers of the city preferred to dwell on past glories and not look to the threatening future ...

Archaeology along the Hittite Way

Read an account of discoveries old and new in Anatolia - the heartland of the ancient Hittite Empire - and how to make the most of a visit to the sites (from the Archaeology News Network blog)

Babylonian magic bowls : new database

The University of Southhampton's Virtual Magic Bowl Archive (VMBA) is launching a new database to record Jewish and non-Jewish personal names found in Babylonian incantation bowls from the 5th to 8th centuries CE, compiled as part of a British-Israeli research project (BIRAX).

Go to the VMBA website to find out about the new project and how to contribute.

You can also look at the results of a previous project - Aramaic Magical Texts from Late Antiquiry (AMTLA)

The royal cemetery of Ur: exhibition

For those of you who can't make it to the University of Pennsylvania on 30th April for the grand re-opening of the Penn Museum's "Iraq's ancient past" exhibition focusing on the discovery and excavation of the royal cemetery of Ur by C. Leonard Woolley in the 1920's, here's a link to the Museum's website for all the historical background and pictures of some of the treasures, including the famous bull-headed harp and the spectacular jewelery of Lady Pu-abi   
Archaeology website Past Horizons also discusses "Iraq's ancient past", with more photographs of the exhibits and of the excavations at Ur.

Cuneiform Digital Library: link and updates

The Cuneiform Digital Library is an initiative of the University of California at Los Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and is supported by an international group of Assyriologists and museum curators.  Catalogue records for and images of the cuneiform tablets housed in museums across the USA, Europe and the Middle East have been made available to view. Currently over 246,000 items have been catalogued

Recent projects involve:

• the digitization of the 61 items in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum Collection

http://tinyurl.com/3dm5uav

• the digitization of 42 items from the Saint Louis Art Museum 

http://tinyurl.com/3bodcdu

Are you missing the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary?

Dip into this valedictory post on the AWOL (Ancient World OnLine) blog, which contains links to a variety of documents (mostly open access) on the CAD, including the Annual Reports (from 1991), articles and the online CAD itself - all 21 volumes of it, from A-Z

Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago - complete!

This 21 volume lexicon of ancient Akkadian dialects, 86 years in the making, is finally complete. The first volume was published in 1956.
Martha Roth, Professor of Assyriology, and Editor-in-Charge for the past 11 years, discusses the final volume in this YouTube video

SOAS has access to the online version of the dictionary through the Library catalogue, and two sets in print at L. Ref QED413 / 106059 and 263535

Studying Assyriology at Yale

In this online article from the Yale Daily News, Nicolas Niarchos outlines his "Adventures in Assyriology" whilst studying at the University

Marriage gifts and social change in ancient Palestine: book review

Read about Tracy Lemos's book "Marriage gifts and social change in ancient Palestine" in Review of Biblical Literature
The reviewer is Professor Dr. Anselm Hagendorn of the Faculty of Theology at Göttingen's Georg-August-Universitat.

Find the book in SOAS Library at QJ956.9402 / 732934

ZIPANG day out tomorrow

DISCOVER MESOPOTAMIA THROUGH STORYTELLING


The next Zipang Day Out is tomorrow - Saturday 2nd April. The event comprises a heritage trail at the British Museum in the morning, and then Mesopotamian story telling and Iraqi music at the Poetry Café, Covent Garden, in the afternoon.


Click here for more details


This month's theme is The Matter of Aratta: how trade began and the first diplomatic letter was written

Rhetoric in Persian Israel: book review

Read the review of  "A palimpsest: rhetoric. ideology, stylistics and language relating to Persian Israel" (edited by Ehud Ben Zvi, Diana Edelman and Franck Polak) in Review of Biblical Literature

The reviewer is Bob Becking, Faculty Professor for Bible, Religion and Identity at Utrecht University.

Find the book in SOAS Library at QN418 / 732170

Gilgamesh: book review

 Scott Jones (Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Covenant College) reviews Daniel Fleming and Sara Milstein's "The buried foundation of the Gilgamesh epic: the Akkadian Huwawa narrative" in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (Vol.11, 2011)
The book follows the tradition history of the Gilgamesh epic from the Sumerian Huwawa tales to the Old Babylonian version

Read the book in SOAS Library at QED892.1 / 739772

Mesopotamian story-telling: ZIPANG Day Out at British Museum and the Poetry Café

DISCOVER MESOPOTAMIA THROUGH STORYTELLING
ZIPANG Day Out — Etana, the king who flew on the back of an eagle

Saturday, 12th March 2011
Morning in the British Museum, afternoon at the Poetry Café, Covent Garden

For details of when and where to meet, click here:
http://www.zipang.org.uk/pdfs/When&where.pdf

For a typical ZIPANG Day Out, click here:
http://www.zipang.org.uk/pdfs/TypicalZDO.pdf

Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals

Online article from Unreported Heritage News about anti-witchcraft rituals in ancient Mesopotamia, with translations from the original cuneiform texts by Professor Tzvi Abusch (Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.)

Journal of Near and Middle Eastern Studies: open-access journal

The Journal of Near and Middle Eastern Studies is a new annual, open-access publication from the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Students' Union at the University of Toronto.

It showcases undergraduate academic papers on all aspects of the history and culture of the region from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day.

Content of the 2010 issue ranges from "Death and the netherworld in ancient Mesopotamian thought" (Nisa Soeherman) to "The duality of structure between the IDF and Israeli society" (Matthew Ianucci)

Virtual tour of the James Simon Gallery (Museuminsel, Berlin)

In 2015, Berlin's Museuminsel ("Museum Island") will open the new James Simon Gallery as part of a scheme to unify the archaeological collections in Berlin's central museums. Mainly incorporated within the Pergamon Museum, it will showcase monumental architectural treasures from the ancient world.
 Click here for a virtual tour and a glimpse of some of the buildings on display such as the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate, the Market Gate of Miletus and the Palace of Mschatta.
You'll need Windows Media or Quick Time to view this.
For more on the project itself, click here

"The Marriage of Martu" : storytelling event

A suggestion for a day out on Saturday 12th February ! Come to the British Museum in the morning for a "Mesopotamian heritage trail" and the Poetry Café (Covent Garden) for story-telling with Iraqi music

The event is organised by Zipang on behalf of the Enheduanna Society, which aims at "popularising the literature of ancient Iraq through the art of oral story-telling".
Zipang run monthly events featuring different Mesopotamian stories. Click here for pictures of recent events.

Cuneiform Digital Library Journal & Bulletin : open access journals

The Cuneiform Digital Library Journal is part of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, set up by the University of California at Los Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
Content is from 2002 onwards, with articles available as PDFs
The front page of the journal website also links to the Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin

ORACC Portal

The ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus) portal has been created by the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Berkeley and Cambridge Univeristy to draw together websites, project data and online texts relating to cuneiform studies. Click on the abbreviations in the sidebar to link to specific sites and resources, including Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (K&P) and the State Archives of Assyria online (SAAo)

Divination and the interpretation of signs in the Ancient World: book review

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review has just published Kim Beerden's review of "Divination and the interpretation of signs in the Ancient World" - a revised collection of papers read at the 5th annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar "Science and superstition: interpretation of signs in the ancient world" in March 2009.
The collection of papers focuses on the Ancient Near East, with some consideration of China, Rome and Greece.
Kim Beerden is currently based in the Department of Ancient History at Leiden University.

"Divination and the interpretation of signs" is in SOAS Library at
QD133 / 734024

Studia Orontica : open-access journal

Studia Orontica is a French language journal published by the  Centre Syrien de la Recherche Archéologique in Damascus.
It is newly available on open access, and features articles and excavation reports on ancient Syria and its environs

Semitic inscriptions: new online resource

Semitic Inscriptions is website from the University of Strasbourg 

It comprises a database of ancient texts written in Semitic languages inscribed on a variety of media. Information about each inscription is given, and pictures, analysis and translations are also provided.

If you register for an account, you can access additional features such as bibliographies, photographs and maps (via GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth). You can also save your queries in your account space.

The website recommends a Firefox browser for full functionality, and you may need to downland the additional free Unicode fonts suggested by the website in order to view the texts properly.

A manual of Ugaritic: two book reviews

A Manual of Ugaritic, by Pierre Bordreuil (Institute Catholique de Paris) and Dennis Pardee (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) was first published in English by Eisenbrauns in 2009.
Read two recent reviews from the Society of Biblical Literature's online Review of Biblical Literature

• Ian Young and Lucy Davey (University of Sydney, 13th Janaury 2011)
• Jeremy Hutton (Princeton Theological Seminary, 25th September 2010)

and then have a look at the book in SOAS Library at Ref. QLB415 / 740019

ARCHIBAB: new open-access database

ARCHIBAB is a database from the Archives Babyloniennes in Paris

It currently gives access to some 2,300 documents, most accompanied by transcripts (blue hyper-linked text). at present, documents from Mari form the core of the collection, with over 400 texts from Ur and Larsa, about 100 from Isin and Nippur and 100 from the two Sippurs.

Content is in French, and it is updated every 3 months.

You need to "accept terms and conditions" before entering the database

New open access journals for Ancient History / Archaeology

Two new open-access titles:

Hallesche Beitrage zur Orientwissenschaft

This academic journal published by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (frequently in monograph format) covers a wide range of topics and countries (ancient history, archives, religions, Middle Eastern studies etc.)
It is currently available as digitized open-access texts from Vol.1 (1979) to Vol.44 (2007).

The current link address is via AWOL (Ancient World Online blog)

'Atiqot (Journal of the Israeli Antiquities Authority)

This journal covers the archaeology of "the land of Israel" from prehistory to Ottoman times. Open access coverage begins with Vol.60 (2008). You need to register first, but after that you will be able to login to view and share journal content.

Working with cuneiform tablets at UCLA: YouTube video

Watch a e-video on YouTube of UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures graduate student, Sara Brumfield, talking about cuneiform tablets in the University's collection and their use in study and teaching

Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale: open access journal

Selected articles from Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale up to 2008 are now available on open-access (PDF or HTML)