Showing posts with label Assyria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Assyria. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Open Access Monograph Series: Ivories from Nimrud

 [First posted in AWOL 9 June 2014, updated 3 July 2019]

Ivories from Nimrud

Equestrian Bridle-Harness Ornaments: Catalogue & Plates

Front cover of IN 1/2
Author: J.J. Orchard
Volume: I/2
1967
Format: x+48 pp., 46 pls., hardback
Price: £9.95

Ivories in the Assyrian Style

Front cover of IN 2
Author: M.E.L. Mallowan & L.G. Davies
Volume: II
1970
Format: v + 60 pp., 46 pl., hardback
Notes: Out of print.
pdf
Ivories in the Assyrian Style

Furniture from SW 7, Fort Shalmaneser

Front cover of IN 3
Author: M.E.L. Mallowan & G. Herrmann
Volume: III
1974
Format: 120 pp., 111 pls., hardback
ISBN: 0-903472-02-3
Price: £9.95

Ivories from Room SW 37, Fort Shalmaneser, part I

Front cover of IN 4/1
Author: G. Herrmann
Volume: IV/1
1986
Format: 276 pp, hardback
ISBN: 0-903472-10-4
Notes: Text. Out of print.
pdf
Ivories from Room SW 37 Fort Shalmaneser part I

Ivories from Room SW 37, Fort Shalmaneser, part 2

Front cover of IN 4/2
Author: G. Herrmann
Volume: IV/2
1986
Format: 472 pls., hardback
Notes: Plates. Out of print.
pdf
Ivories from Room SW 37 Fort Shalmaneser part 2

The Small Collections from Fort Shalmaneser

Author: G. Herrmann
Volume: V
1992
Format: xiv + 145 pp., 104 pls., hardback
ISBN: 0-903472-12-0
Price: £19.95

Ivories from the North West Palace (1845-1992)

The front cover of Ivories from Nimrud, vol. VI
Author: G. Herrmann, S. Laidlaw & H. Coffey
Volume: VI
2009
Format: 168 + 138 pp, 138 b/w, 24 colour plates, hardback
ISBN: 9780903472265
Price: £75.00
Notes:
The great, ninth century palace which Ashurnasirpal II (883-859) built at his new capital of Kalhu/Nimrud has been excavated over 150 years by various expeditions. Each has been rewarded with remarkable antiquities, including the finest ivories found in the ancient Near East, many of which had been brought to Kalhu by the Assyrian kings. The first ivories were discovered by Austen Henry Layard, followed a century later by Max Mallowan, who found superb ivories in Well NN. Neither Layard nor Mallowan was able to empty Well AJ: this was achieved by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, who retrieved arguably the finest pieces found at Nimrud. Finally, an interesting collection of ivory and bone tubes was found by Muzahim Mahmud, the discoverer of the famous Royal Tombs, in Well 4.
This volume publishes for the first time the majority of the ivories found in the Palace by location. These include superb examples carved in Assyria proper and across the Levant from North Syria to Phoenicia and provide an outstanding illustration of the minor arts of the early first millennium. In addition ivories found in the Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III and fragmentary pieces found in the domestic contexts of the Town Wall Houses are also included.
In addition to a detailed catalogue, this book also aims to assess the present state of ivory studies, discussing the political situation in the Levant, the excavation of the palace, the history of study, the various style-groups of ivories and their possible time and place of production. This volume is the sixth in the Ivories from Nimrud series published by BISI.

Ivories from Rooms SW11/12 and T10 Fort Shalmaneser, parts 1-2

Front cover of IN 7/1
Author: G. Herrmann and S. Laidlaw
Volume: VII/1-2
2013
Format: Hardback, 2 vols.
ISBN: 9780903472296
Price: £90.00
Notes:
The attached PDF contains the text of volume I: Chapters 1-6 and the Appendices. The full contents, including the Catalogue and Colour & Black and White Plates, are available as print only and can be ordered from Oxbow Books for £90.00. BISI members receive a 20% discount. 
About Ivories from Nimrud VII - The Lost Art of the Phoenicians 
Fifty years have passed since the British School of Archaeology in Iraq raised the last ivory from the soil of Fort Shalmaneser. Literally thousands were found, many of which have already been published in Ivories from Nimrud I-V, while VI recorded the outstanding pieces from the North West Palace. Ivories from Nimrud VII, Ivories from Rooms SW11/12 and T10 completes the publication of the assemblages in the Fort, as far as records permit. The ivories of Room SW11/12 are similar in character to those of Room SW37 and probably represent another consignment of booty, while those of T10 in the Throne Room block include pieces from all four traditions, as well as some entirely new ones.

With the primary publication completed, it is now possible to look at these remarkable ivories as a whole rather than studying them by prov­enance, as is discussed in detail in the Commentary. Not surprisingly, it immediately becomes apparent that the majority can be assigned to the Phoenician tradition. There are at least twice as many Phoenician ivo­ries than the other Levantine and Assyrian ivories. They form therefore an incredible archive, recording the lost art of the Phoenicians, long famed as master craftsmen.

The Phoenician ivories can be divided into two; the finest, the Clas­sic Phoenician, often embellished with delicate, jewel-like inlays, and the other examples still clearly Phoenician in style and subject. While the Classic pieces were probably carved in a single centre, possibly Tyre or Sidon, the others would have been carved in a variety of dif­ferent Phoenician centres, located along the Mediterranean seaboard.

Designs on Syrian-Intermediate ivories are versions of some Phoe­nician subjects, employing different proportions and styles. They may represent the art of the recently-arrived Aramaean kingdoms, copying their sophisticated neighbours, while North Syrian ivories are entirely different in subject and character and derive from earlier Hittite traditions.

The ivories found at Nimrud present a unique resource for studying the minor arts of the Levantine world.
pdf
Ivories from Rooms SW11/12 and T10 Fort Shalmaneser


Friday, April 20, 2018

kmz files from Assyrian empire builders

Assyrian empire builders links to a set of useful External Resources. Among these is:
Explore the locations of Assyrian cities using our content for Google Earth. Download all Google Earth content (KMZ files) used in People, Gods & Places (12KB). Follow these instructions to download Google Earth for your computer.
The identification of ancient places with modern sites is not always certain. We have followed the certainty codes 1-4 in Parpola and PorterHelsinki atlas (2001), and coloured the pins in the Google Earth (KMZ) files accordingly:
  1. Yellow: definitely known location (no "probably/perhaps/possibly" in People, Gods & Places).
  2. Green: "probably" known to be a modern location.
  3. Aqua: "perhaps" known to be a modern location.
  4. White: "possibly" known to be a modern location.



 

Friday, December 15, 2017

State Archives of Assyria Online

[First posted in AWOL 1 July 2010. Updated 15 December 2017]

State Archives of Assyria Online (SAAo)
A pair of Assyrian scribes filing reports after the conquest of a Babylonian city, Nimrud, 8th century BC (BM ANE 118882)
State Archives of Assyria Online (SAAo) is an open-access web resource that aims to make the rich Neo-Assyrian materials found in the royal archives of Nineveh, and elsewhere, more widely accessible.
Based on an existing ASCII text database created by Simo Parpola and his team at the University of Helsinki, the online transliterations and translations are those of the standard editions in the series "State Archives of Assyria". All of the published volumes are accessible online, in addition to volume 2 of the companion series "State Archives of Assyria Studies", the edition of the Eponym Lists and Chronicles. The web presentation and linguistic annotation are carried out using tools and standards developed by Steve Tinney (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)...
Online portals provide context and explanatory materials for SAAo. Hence, the website "Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire", created by Radner, Eleanor Robson (University of Cambridge) and Tinney with funding from the British Higher Education Academy, is dedicated to the 7th century letters, queries and reports exchanged between kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal and their scholarly advisors; the companion corpus is http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/corpus/. Another such portal, "Assyrian Empire Builders" is devoted to the 8th century political correspondence as part of the UCL research project, with a companion corpus at Assyrian Empire Builders. Further portals are planned.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Revised and Corrected Texts of Walker and Dick's Induction of the Cult Image in Mesopotamia (2001)

 Revised and Corrected Texts of Walker and Dick's Induction of the Cult Image in Mesopotamia (2001)

Updated Critical Edition of Mīs by Michael B. Dick
What follows are thoroughly updated files based on the Walker & Dick 2001 Critical Edition. These are temporarily available on this Siena College Web Page; eventually they will be part of the University of Pennsylvania’s Oracc collection. The files here are in PDF format. Some editing on them continues, e.g. I am continuing to place the English translation side by side with the Akkadian/ Sumerian rather than following as in the Book.Though these texts show page numbers, they do not correspond to those of the 2001 book.
  • Use of these texts in scholarship should follow the Budapest Convention of November 2001.
  • I ask you to send me corrections, new readings, new bibliography, and new texts for incorporation (with due credit to you): dick@siena.edu
  • For incantation Tablet V, I have also included the Word 2010© file so that somebody familiar with Oracc’s *.ATF file format might help me in my gradual converting the text to that standard. If some kind soul could please send me several files or parts of that file showing the various steps in that conversion so I can use that as a template n all the files.


Texts and Photos:

Monday, April 24, 2017

RINAP: The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period

[First posted in AWOL 16 July 2011. Most recently updated  24 April 2017] 

The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period
Esarhaddon Text 98

Numerous royally commissioned texts were composed between 744 BC and 609 BC, a period during which Assyria became the dominant power in southwestern Asia. Eight hundred and fifty to nine hundred such inscriptions are known today. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, under the direction of Professor Grant Frame of the University of Pennsylvania, will publish in print and online all of the known royal inscriptions that were composed during the reigns of the Assyrian kings Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC), Shalmaneser V (726-722 BC), Sargon II (721-705 BC), Sennacherib (704-681 BC), Esarhaddon (680-669 BC), Ashurbanipal (668-ca. 631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (ca. 631-627/626 BC), Sîn-šumu-līšir (627/626 BC), Sîn-šarra-iškun (627/626-612 BC), and Aššur-uballiṭ II (611-609 BC), rulers whose deeds were also recorded in the Bible and in some classical sources. The individual texts range from short one-line labels to lengthy, detailed inscriptions with over 1200 lines (4000 words) of text.
These Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions (744-609 BC) represent only a small, but important part of the vast Neo-Assyrian text corpus. They are written in the Standard Babylonian dialect of Akkadian and provide valuable insight into royal exploits, both on the battlefield and at home, royal ideology, and Assyrian religion. Most of our understanding of the political history of Assyria, and to some extent of Babylonia, comes from these sources. Because this large corpus of texts has not previously been published in one place, the RINAP Project will provide up-to-date editions (with English translations) of Assyrian royal inscriptions from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC) to the reign of Aššur-uballiṭ II (611-609 BC) in seven print volumes and online, in a fully lemmatized and indexed format. The aim of the project is to make this vast text corpus easily accessible to scholars, students, and the general public. RINAP Online will allow those interested in Assyrian culture, history, language, religion, and texts to efficiently search Akkadian and Sumerian words appearing in the inscriptions and English words used in the translations. Project data will be fully integrated into the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) and the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc).
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the RINAP Project research grants in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2015 to help carry out its work. The publications of the RINAP Project are modeled on those of the now-defunct Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) Project and carry on where its Assyrian Periods sub-series (RIMA) ended.

    Tuesday, January 24, 2017

    Open Access Monograph Series: Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts

    Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts
    Cover
    Der Gesamtbestand der zu publizierenden Keilschrifttexte literarischen Inhalts aus Assur wird in voraussichtlich 20 Bänden vorgelegt, welche die Monographienserie ‚KAL‛ (‚Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts‛) bilden. Er besteht einerseits aus Texten, die eindeutig lesbar sind und bestimmten inhaltlich definierten Textgruppen oder ‚Textsorten‛ zugewiesen werden können, andererseits enthält er stark fragmentierte Texte, die gleichwohl für die weitere Textrekonstruktion von großer Wichtigkeit sind. Es erschien deshalb als sinnvoll, die Reihe so anzulegen, dass in einem Teil ihrer Bände die Texte vorgelegt werden, die den inhaltlich definierten Textgruppen zuweisbar sind, und in einem zweiten, kleineren Teil der Bände die weniger gut erhaltenen Textbruchstücke.
    Angesichts der großen Menge an Texten, die inhaltlich klassifiziert werden können, empfiehlt sich für die Präsentation dieses Textmaterials eine Ordnung, die einer Einteilung in inhaltlich definierte Textgruppen folgt. Eine solche Sortierung des Textbestandes liegt im Wesentlichen auch den älteren Editionen zugrunde. Deren Einteilung in eine große Gruppe solcher Texte, die religiösen Inhalts sind, und in eine ebenfalls sehr große Gruppe von Textdokumenten zur Pharmakologie und Medizin wird jedoch in KAL aufgrund ihrer mangelnden Tragfähigkeit nicht weitergeführt. Für die altorientalische Literatur ist diese Einteilung nicht zuletzt deshalb wenig sinnvoll, weil sie auf dem ‚aufgeklärten‛, westlichen Konzept einer zwischen ‚Religion‛ und ‚Wissenschaft‛ bestehenden grundsätzlichen Differenz beruht. Anstatt dessen beruht die Systematisierung des Textbestandes für die Edition in der Reihe ‚KAL‛ im wesentlichen auf einer Einteilung in Textgruppen, die sich an inhaltlichen, strukturellen und formalen Gemeinsamkeiten orientiert und so der typologischen und funktionellen Vielfältigkeit der altorientalischen Keilschriftliteratur eher gerecht werden dürfte. Auf eine allzu scharfe Grenzziehung zwischen den einzelnen Textcorpora wird dabei bewusst verzichtet. Das Gros des für die Publikation in ‚KAL‛ vorgesehenen Textbestandes ist folgenden Textgruppen zugewiesen:
    • Divinatorische Texte
    • Ritualbeschreibungen und Gebete
    • Historische und historisch-literarische Texte
    • Mythologische Texte
    • Festbeschreibungen und Liturgien
    • Lexikalische Texte
    • Sumerische und zweisprachige sumerisch-akkadische Texte


     Band 1: Heeßel, Nils P. [Hrsg.]: Divinatorische Texte: I. Terrestrische, teratologische, physiognomische und oneiromantische Omina, Wiesbaden, 2007
    Band 2: Schwemer, Daniel: Rituale und Beschwörungen gegen Schadenzauber, Wiesbaden, 2007
    Band 3: Frahm, Eckart: Historische und historisch-literarische Texte, Wiesbaden, 2009
    Band 4: Maul, Stefan M. [Hrsg.]; Strauß, Rita [Hrsg.]; Schwemer, Daniel [Bearb.]: Ritualbeschreibungen und Gebete, Wiesbaden, 2011

    Thursday, October 6, 2016

    The Melammu Project: The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East

    [First posted in AWOL 22 September 2011. Update 6 October 2016]

    The Melammu Project: The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
     http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/layout/melammulogo.jpg

    The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian and Ancient Near Eastern culture from the third millennium BCE through the ancient world until Islamic times. It has two main activities: to organize conferences, and to provide resources relevant to the project on its website.
    Melammu Symposia are held regularly and serve to promote interdisciplinary research and cross-cultural studies by providing a forum in which cultural continuity, diffusion and transformation in the ancient world can be assessed systematically on a long-term basis. The emphasis is on continued interchange of ideas between specialists in different disciplines, with the goal of gradually but steadily increasing the number of participants and thus breaking down the walls separating the individual disciplines. Although each symposium focuses on a different theme, since the primary purpose of the symposia is to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation per se, papers and posters not necessarily related to a specific theme but contributing to the overall scope of the project are welcome at every meeting. 
    The on-line resources provided by the Melammu Project include a database, a bibliography, a PDF library, and links to websites relevant to the project's focus. The database aims to collect textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence concerning the heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East and to make it easily accessible on the Internet. All resources are open-ended, and everyone is invited to contribute new information through the website's submission forms.
     The Melammu Project
      
       General description
       Search string
       Browse by topic
       Search keyword
       Submit entry
      
       About
       Open search
       Thematic search
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       Ancient texts
       Dictionaries
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    Thursday, April 16, 2015

    Online resources related to Nimrud

    Online resources related to Nimrud a component of Oracc: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus

    One of the Nimrud Project's aims to bring together online resources related to Nimrud. This page lists bibliographic material available online, plus web resources and other online content.

    Books on Nimrud published by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq

    PDFs are downloadable from the BISI website; follow the links below and see the terms of use. These publications were digitised as part of the Nimrud project.

    Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN)


    Ivories from Nimrud (IN)


    Other publications


    Articles on Nimrud (Kalhu/Calah) from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq's journal Iraq (ordered alphabetically by author)


    Articles on Nimrud available via JSTOR (ordered alphabetically, requires subscription)


    Articles on Nimrud available via Scopus (ordered alphabetically, requires subscription)

    • Brown, B. "Kingship and Ancestral Cult in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud." Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 10, no. 1 (2010): 1-53. doi:10.1163/156921210X500495.
    • Cassar, M. "A Flexible Climate-Controlled Storage System for a Collection of Ivory Veneers from Nimrud." Museum Management and Curatorship 5, no. 2 (1986): 171-81. doi:10.1016/0260-4779(86)90047-6.
    • Geller, M.J. "Fragments of Magic, Medicine, and Mythology from Nimrud." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 63, no. 3 (2000). doi:10.1017/S0041977X00008429.
    • Herrmann, G., and J. Curtis. "Reflections on the Four-Winged Genie: A Pottery Jar and an Ivory Panel from Nimrud." Iranica Antiqua 33 (1998): 107-34. doi:10.2143/IA.33.0.519126 .

    Books on Nimrud available online (ordered alphabetically)


    Other web resources on Nimrud (ordered alphabetically by provider)


    British Museum


    Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI)


    Factum Arte


    Learning Sites Inc.

    • The Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III at Nimrud
      Digital resource (created 2002) on Tiglath-pileser III's PGP  Central Palace PGP , based on excavations of the site conducted by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology between 1974 and 1976. Contains excavation photographs, site plan drawings and computer model renderings.
    • The Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud
      Digital resource (created 1997) on the Northwest Palace, based on excavations of the site conducted by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology from 1974 to 1976. Contains reconstructions of the Palace and computer model renderings.

    Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

    Content last modified: 05 Feb 2015.