As the Pāṇḍava brothers move through the forest in the third book of the Mahābhārata, they hear stories of fantastic transformations and journeys: a band of gods all masked as the same prince, dice that become thieving birds, a sage turned into a hunted deer, a woman who traverses Yama’s realm. These tales recast and elucidate the condit…[Read more]

Recent research demonstrates that maternal grief functions paradigmatically to epitomize despair and sorrow in the Hebrew Bible. These literary uses of maternal grief reinforce the stereotype of womanhood, defined by devotion to children and anguish at their loss. In 1–2 Kings, narratives about unnamed bereaved mothers are used politically to c…[Read more]

Syllabus for a level 2 course on Health, Healing and Religion: Comparative Views. To be taught online Fall 2020.
Please contact me if you want more details of the online content (there are 4 short videos per module, plus other resources)

Overview of demons and monsters in Mesopotamia, highlighting works in the Yale Babylonian Collection.

Interview with Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, on her life, her anti-nuclear and peace activism, and ongoing trial as part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

The iconography of the Horus cippus, an amulet popular in Egypt from the late Third Intermediate Period to Roman times (8th century BCE – 2nd century CE), is unexpectedly recapitulated in bronze “goddess plaques” of the 7-8th centuries CE made by Permian peoples – Finno-Ugric groups from the Ural region of northern Eurasia. The likely expla…[Read more]

This essay is an examination of Udjahorresnet’s Persian identity. Best known from the inscription on his naophorous statue now in the Vatican, Udjahorresnet was a high-ranking courtier in Egypt under the Saite pharaohs Amasis and Psamtik III, and subsequently under the Persian kings Cambyses and Darius. While his statue’s form, function and ins…[Read more]

The International Style is a theoretical model used to describe various objects from the Eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age that exhibit hybrid diagnostic features (iconography, media, form). Resulting in the inability for archaeologists over the past 150 years to identify cultural source. This paper is a reprint of the chapter on colour…[Read more]

This is an Urdu translation of the work “Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law and Non-Muslims”

PhD thesis, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999. On political institution in the Phoenician coastal cities

On Babylonia in the Seleucid Empire

This paper is a new examination of the original find context of the Saqqara lion tables (CG 1321–2) in ‘Gallery C’, an underground structure in the Step Pyramid complex. The substructure may date to the 1st millennium BCE, and this structure was likely part of an embalming complex for the Apis or other sacred animals. The adjacent Western Galle…[Read more]

The Egypt Exploration Society archive contains unpublished pencil drawings by A. Klasens of seal impressions found in the Step Pyramid complex of Saqqara. Digitally inked versions of these drawings are published here for the first time. The seal impressions can be sourced to the Northern Galleries of the complex. The impressions were sealed on…[Read more]

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein shows us how to use the Hebrew language as a model for understanding the differences between similar words

I was intrigued by the title of this book. Finally, I thought, the Western academia has come to terms with the incorporeality of the individual soul as presented in Indian philosophy. Richard Swinburne’s introduction dispelled my delusions. He proposes that individuals are not bodies but are souls and implies that these souls have properties and t…[Read more]

Zusammenfassung – Prä-Astronautik oder Paläo-SETI präsentiert sich als grenzwissenschafliche Forschung über außerirdische Einflussnahme auf die menschliche Entwicklung. Sie beansprucht für sich, Anomalien in der Geschichte besser zu erklären als die einschlägigen Wissenschafen wie z. B. die Archäologie oder Indologie. Die Schrifen Erich von Dä…[Read more]

Ancient astronaut speculation (also called paleo-SETI), often labeled pseudoscience or modern myth, still awaits in-depth research. Focusing on Erich von Däniken and reconstructing his views on god and cosmology from scattered statements throughout his books, this article analyzes his attitudes toward science and religion as well as his concepts…[Read more]

Review of: Jan J. W. Lisman, Cosmogony, Theogony, and Anthropogeny in Sumerian Texts. Vol. 409 of Alter Orient und Altes Testament. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. In Rosetta 18 (2015)

Review of: Michael B. Hundley, Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East, vol. 3 in Writings from the Ancient World Supplements. Bethesda: Society for Biblical Literature Publications, 2013. In Rosetta 20 (2017).