Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land - a collection of articles that deal with Holy Places from Antiquity to the present; from the lands of the Fertile Crescent to Europe, India, Japan and Mexico; from mountains and seas to temples, cities and countries; from the construction, perception and functioning of sacred sites to the psychotic breakdowns they bring on some visitors.

The way we understand particular spaces is mediated by our perceptions of the difference between the sacred and the profane. Throughout history, different peoples have revered vastly diverse spaces as sacred for vastly diverse reasons. In Sacred Spaces, Benjamin Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky have compiled a wide-ranging collection of essays exploring a broad array of ancient and contemporary holy places. The book reviews sacred spaces of the ancient religions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Indian and East-Asian Religions--and discusses how these spaces have been conceptualized and experienced. Chapter topics include an investigation of the role of charismatic dreams in the creation of sacred sites in present-day Israel; an analysis of cities as cultic centers in Germany and Italy during the Middle Ages; a history of the sacred Mount Hiko in Japan; and a study of the Muslim holy cities as foci of Islamic revivalism in the eighteeth century. Sacred Spaces provides readers with original and illuminating examples of the myriad ways in which we perceive and construct sacred space.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The city and its regulations: Unexpected margins -- Part I Space and state regulation: The urban interstices -- 2 Markets and marginality in Beirut -- 3 The tremendous making and unmaking of the peripheries in current Istanbul -- 4 Resilient forms of urbanity on the margins? Al-Kherba: A vivid market in a damaged section of the medina of Tunis -- 5 Whose margins? Marginality, poverty and the moral geography of pre-Soviet Bukhara -- 6 On the margins of the city: Izmir Prison in the late Ottoman Empire -- Part II Diversity and moral policing: Making claims through marginalisation -- 7 'Texas': An off-centre district at the heart of nightlife in Odienné -- 8 The Manyema in colonial Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) between urban margins and regional connections -- 9 On the margins: Suburban space and religious deviancy in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur -- 10 Ethnic differentiation and conflict dynamics: Uzbeks' marginalisation and non-marginalisation in southern Kyrgyzstan -- Index

In this broad-ranging inquiry into ritual and its relation to place, Jonathan Z. Smith prepares the way for a new approach to the comparative study of religion. Smith stresses the importance of place—in particular, constructed ritual environments—to a proper understanding of the ways in which "empty" actions become rituals. He structures his argument around the territories of the Tjilpa aborigines in Australia and two sites in Jerusalem—the temple envisioned by Ezekiel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first of these locales—the focus of one of the more important contemporary theories of religious ritual—allows Smith to raise questions concerning the enterprise of comparison. His close examination of Eliade's influential interpretation of the Tjilpa tradition leads to a powerful critique of the approach to religion, myth, and ritual that begins with cosmology and the category of "The Sacred." In substance and in method, To Take Place represents a significant advance toward a theory of ritual. It is of great value not only to historians of religion and students of ritual, but to all, whether social scientists or humanists, who are concerned with the nature of place. "This book is extraordinarily stimulating in prompting one to think about the ways in which space, or place, is perceived, marked, and utilized religiously. . . . A provocative example of the application of humanistic geography to our understanding of what takes place in religion."—Dale Goldsmith, Interpretation

Mit Pax Hethitica erscheint die Festschrift fur Itamar Singer, langjahriger Professor an der Universitat Tel Aviv und fuhrender Hethitologe und Historiker des Alten Orients. Die Festschrift enthalt 34 Beitrage von seinen Kollegen aus der Altanatolistik und Altorientalistik vor allem zu hethitologischen, aber auch zu assyriologischen, syrischen, indogermanischen und agaischen Themen. Die vielfaltigen Beitrage entsprechen den umfassenden Forschungsinteressen des Jubilars, die weit uber die Grenzen Anatoliens und der Hethitologie hinausreichen. Mit Beitragen von: A. Altman, A. Archi, T. Bryce, B.J. Collins, L. d'Alfonso, S. de Martino, A. Dincol, B. Dincol, Y. Feder, M. Forlanini, M. Giorgieri, S. Gordin, J.D. Hawkins, V. Haas, S. Heinhold-Krahmer, H.A. Hoffner, Jr., C. Karasu, H.C. Melchert, C. Mora, N. Oettinger, I. Peled, F. Pecchioli Daddi, M. Poetto, M. Popko, A.F. Rainey, E. Rieken, D. Schwemer, O. Soysal, I. Tati'vili, P. Taracha, G. Torri, T. van den Hout, G. Wilhelm, I. Yakubovich, A. Yasur-Landau und R. Zadok

This volume deals with the cuneiform tablets discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in his excavation at Atshana, as interpreted by D.J.Wiseman, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities of the British Museum. The book forms an appropriate companion to No. 1 of this series, The State of Idri-mi, by Professor Sidney Smith, which was published in 1949.