The missing piece in so many histories of Mesopotamian technical disciplines is the client, who often goes unnoticed by present-day scholars seeking to reconstruct ancient disciplines in the Near East over millennia. The contributions to this volume investigate how Mesopotamian medical specialists interacted with their patients and, in doing so, forged their social and professional identities. The chapters in this book explore rituals for success at court, the social classes who made use of such rituals, and depictions of technical specialists on seal impressions and in later Greco-Roman iconography. Several essays focus on Egalkura: rituals of entering the court, meant to invoke a favorable impression from the sovereign. These include detailed surveys and comparative studies of the genre and its roots in the emergent astrological paradigm of the late first millennium BC. The different media and modalities of interaction between technical specialists and their clients are also a central theme explored in detailed studies of the sickbed scene in the iconography of Mesopotamian cylinder seals and the transmission of specialized pharmaceutical knowledge from the Mesopotamian to the Greco-Roman world. Offering an encyclopedic survey of ritual clients attested in the cuneiform textual record, this volume outlines both the Mesopotamian and the Greco-Roman social contexts in which these rituals were used. It will be of interest to students of the history of medicine, as well as to students and scholars of ancient Mesopotamia. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Netanel Anor, Siam Bhayro, Strahil V. Panayotov, Maddalena Rumor, Marvin Schreiber, JoAnn Scurlock, and Ulrike Steinert.

The city of Ur—now modern Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq, also called Ur of the Chaldees in the Bible—was one of the most important Sumerian cities in Mesopotamia during the Early Dynastic Period in the first half of the third millennium BCE. The city is known for its impressive wealth and artistic achievements, evidenced by the richly decorated objects found in the so-called Royal Cemetery, which was excavated by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania from 1922 until 1934. Ur was also the cult center of the moon god, and during the twenty-first century BCE, it was the capital of southern Mesopotamia. With contributions from both established and rising Assyriologists from ten countries and edited by three leading scholars of Assyriology, this volume presents thirty-two essays based on papers delivered at the 62nd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale held in Philadelphia in 2016. Reflecting on the theme “Ur in the Twenty-First Century CE,” the chapters deal with archaeological, artistic, cultural, economic, historical, and textual matters connected to the ancient city of Ur. Three of the chapters are based on plenary lectures by senior scholars Richard Zettler, Jonathan Taylor, and Katrien De Graef. The remainder of the essays, arranged alphabetically by author, highlight innovative new directions for research and represent a diverse array of topics related to Ur in various periods of Mesopotamian history. Tightly focused in theme, yet broad in scope, this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists and archaeologists working on Iraq.

Mesopotamia is often considered to be the birthplace of law codes. In recognition of this fact and motivated by the perennial interest in the topic among Assyriologists, the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale was organized in Ghent in 2013 around the theme “Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East.” Based on papers delivered at that meeting, this volume contains twenty-six essays that focus on archaeological, philological, and historical topics related to order and chaos in the Ancient Near East. Written by a diverse array of international scholars, the contributions to this book explore laws and legal practices in the Ur III, Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods in Mesopotamia, as well as in Nuzi and the Hebrew Bible. Among the subjects covered are the Code of Hammurabi, legal phraseology, the archaeological traces of the organization of community life, and biblical law. The volume also contains essays that explore the concepts of chaos/disorder and law/order in divinatory texts and literature. Wide-ranging and cutting-edge, the essays in this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists, especially members of the International Association for Assyriology.

This volume addresses the nexus of religion and geography in the ancient Near East through case studies of various time periods and regions. Using Sumerian, Akkadian, and Aramaic text corpora, iconography, and archaeological evidence, the contributors illuminate the diverse phenomena that occur when religion is viewed through the lenses of space and place. Gina Konstantopoulos draws upon Sumerian literature to understand mythicized and semimythicized locations. Seth Richardson and Elizabeth Knott focus on the Old Babylonian period, with Richardson addressing the interplay between law, location, and the gods, while Knott turns from text to image, relocating the reader to Syria and realizing the potential of royal iconography when situated in the “right” space. Shana Zaia moves forward to the first millennium, following the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as it shifted from city to city, with divine implications. Finally, Arnulf Hausleiter and Sebastiano Lora focus on northwest Arabia, unearthing a local pantheon and situating it among the various influences in the region from the second millennium onward. Covering a broad geographical and temporal scope while maintaining a cohesive focus on the theme, this book will appeal especially to Assyriologists, scholars of the ancient Near East, and specialists in historical geography.

"The characteristics of possession are numerous and vary between different socio-cultural and historical contexts. Different ideas of possession can be observed within different cultural and social contexts both past and present. This makes defining possession all the more difficult. Various approaches to "ideas of possession" in different academic disciplines and in different cultural contexts allow the discourse(s) to benefit from insights that would otherwise remain confined to the society under discussion or the field that determines the method of study. The introduction presents an overview of recent interdisciplinary research on possession and scholarly attempts at a working definition, followed by a brief outline of the individual case studies in this volume"--

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?