Wordplay in Ancient Near Eastern Texts

Wordplay in Ancient Near Eastern Texts 

Scott B. Noegel 

ISBN 9781628372939

ANEM 26

Publication Date

July 2021

The first comprehensive taxonomy of functions and types of “wordplay” in ancient Near Eastern texts

This book from Scott B. Noegel offers a comparative, in-depth study of “wordplay” in ancient Near Eastern texts. Noegel establishes comprehensive taxonomies for the many kinds of devices that scholars label as wordplay and for their proposed functions. The consistent terminology Noegel proposes offers students and scholars of Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic a useful template for documenting and understanding the devices they discover. The book concludes by suggesting potential avenues for future research.

Scott B. Noegel is Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington. He has authored, coauthored, and edited ten books and more than ninety articles on diverse topics related to ancient Near Eastern languages, literature, and culture, including Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (2007) and Solomon’s Vineyard: Literary and Linguistic Studies in the Song of Songs (coauthored with Gary A. Rendsburg, 2009).

This is Ancient Near East Monographs 26. See more available volumes in the ANEM series.