The ancient civilizations of the Near East - Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittites and Canaanites - constituted the first formalized international relations system in world history. Holy wars, peace treaties, border regulations, trade relations and the extradition of refugees were problems for contemporary ambassadors and diplomats as they are today. Mario Liverani reconstructs the procedures of international relations in the period c.1600-1100BC using historical semiotics, communication theory and economic and political anthropology.

It is the quintessential nature of humans to communicate with each other. Good communications, bad communications, miscommunications, or no communications at all have driven everything from world events to the most mundane of interactions. At the broadest level, communication entails many registers and modes: verbal, iconographic, symbolic, oral, written, and performed. Relationships and identities – real and fictive – arise from communication, but how and why were they effected and how should they be understood? The chapters in this volume address some of the registers and modes of communication in the ancient Near East. Particular focuses are imperial and court communications between rulers and ruled, communications intended for a given community, and those between families and individuals. Topics cover a broad chronological period (3rd millennium BC to 1st millennium AD), and geographic range (Egypt to Israel and Mesopotamia) encapsulating the extraordinarily diverse plurality of human experience. This volume is deliberately interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, and its broad scope provides wide insights and a holistic understanding of communication applicable today. It is intended for both the scholar and readers with interests in ancient Near Eastern history and Biblical studies, communications (especially communications theory), and sociolinguistics.

Sixteen essays from the Albright conference held at the Johns Hopkins University charting the course of ancient Near Eastern studies in the twenty-first century. This landmark volume is essential reading for both students and scholars.

The fourth symposium in the series on Ancient Egyptian Royal Ideology was held at the British Museum in London in 2004, taking at its theme 'Egyptian Royal Residences: Structure and Form'. The scholars who participated in this gathering approached the subject from a broad range of perspectives. They embraced all phases of history from the foundation of the Egyptian state to the Late Period, and covered a variety of interrelated topics. These included the physical layout and architectural design of palaces, the activities which happened inside, and the ideological questions raised by the status of the king - his divine, personal and institutional functions. Beginning with these focal points, the papers and discussions ranged further afield to include the roles of members of the court, their relationship with the king and their activities at the residence. The papers published in this volume focus strongly on the Middle and New Kingdoms, since it is from these periods that the richest sources of data concerning the royal residence survive. Textual sources and archaeological traces of palaces have been carefully studied in conjunction to provide new insights and to open new avenues of research.