Examines letters from the Tell el-Amarna archive in Egypt, written between Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations ca. 1360-1334 B.C. Uses material and chemical analysis for provenance information and historical geography.

Originally published in 1939, this book contains an assessment of the historical evidence provided by ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets. The text is accompanied by a number of photographs of the tablets, as well as of important archaeological sites and Babylonian artefacts. Chiera's enthusiasm for his subject is clear, as the text is accessibly written and contains many Babylonian legends and assesses their relationship to biblical texts. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Assyriology and the ancient Middle East.

When the ancient city of Ebla was unearthed, archaeologists discovered the well-preserved royal library containing more than 15,000 clay tablets and fragments. At digs in modern-day Syria, the Ebla tablets provide unique insight into the culture and and history of ancient Mesopotamia.

This volume presents recent research on the relationship between the material format of text-bearing artefacts, the texts they carry, and their genre. The essays cover a vast period, from the counting stones of the late 4th millennium BCE to the time of the Great Hittite Kingdom in the 2nd millennium BCE. The breadth of substantive focus allows new insights of relevance to scholars in both Ancient Middle Eastern studies and the humanities.

The cuneiform script, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, was witness to one of the world's oldest literate cultures. For over three millennia, it was the vehicle of communication from (at its greatest extent) Iran to the Mediterranean, Anatolia to Egypt. The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture examines the Ancient Middle East through the lens of cuneiform writing. The contributors, a mix of scholars from across the disciplines, explore, define, and to some extent look beyond the boundaries of the written word, using Mesopotamia's clay tablets and stone inscriptions not just as 'texts' but also as material artefacts that offer much additional information about their creators, readers, users and owners.

The introduction of writing enables new forms of literature, but these can be invisible in works that survive as manuscripts. Through looking at inscriptions of poetry on garbage and as graffiti, we can glimpse how literature spread along with writing. This study uses these lesser-studied sources, including inscriptions on pottery, architecture, and especially wooden tablets known as mokkan, to uncover how poetry, and literature more broadly, was used, shared and thrown away in early Japan. Through looking at these disposable and informal sources, we explore the development of early Japanese literature, and even propose parallels to similar developments in other societies across space and time.

Ferrara offers the first comprehensive examination of an ancient writing system from Cyprus and Syria known as Cypro-Minoan, and presents an analysis of all the inscriptions through a multidisciplinary perspective that embraces aspects of archaeology, epigraphy, and palaeography.