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