It is suggested that the progressive and destructive aridification during the Old Kingdom was recognised by ancient Egyptians as a sun-driven phenomenon, and that this awareness may have contributed to the rise of the solar cult in the 5th Dynasty.

Linguistic studies in Egyptology, Assyriology and Biblical Studies harbour a persistent trope in which the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East and Egypt are believed to have visualised the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Analyses of the spatial conceptualisation of time in language have revealed that the opposite is true…[Read more]

Linguistic studies in Egyptology, Assyriology and Biblical Studies harbour a persistent trope in which the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East and Egypt are believed to have visualised the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. Analyses of the spatial conceptualisation of time in language have revealed that the opposite is true…[Read more]

An ancient Sumerian proverb may be read as “good fortune [is embedded in] organisation and wisdom.” The present centennial survey is solely about organizing the last one hundred years of scholarship for a Sumerian afterlife myth named “Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld.” The initial discovery of artifacts with snippets of the myth can be dated…[Read more]

The practice of a king appointing his daughter as the High Priestess and consort of an important male deity arose independently in the Ancient Near East and Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the prime example of such an appointee was the EN-priestess of Nanna (EPN) at Ur; in Egypt, its most important embodiment was the God’s Wife of Amun (GWA) at Thebes. B…[Read more]

The practice of a king appointing his daughter as the High Priestess and consort of an important male deity arose independently in the Ancient Near East and Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the prime example of such an appointee was the EN-priestess of Nanna (EPN) at Ur; in Egypt, its most important embodiment was the God’s Wife of Amun (GWA) at Thebes. B…[Read more]

In 1st Dynasty Egypt (ca. 3000 BCE), mudbrick architecture may have been influenced by existing Mesopotamian practices such as the complex niching of monumental façades. From the 1st to 3rd Dynasties, the niches of some mudbrick mastabas at Saqqara were painted with brightly-coloured geometric designs in a clear imitation of woven reed matting.…[Read more]

In 1st Dynasty Egypt (ca. 3000 BCE), mudbrick architecture may have been influenced by existing Mesopotamian practices such as the complex niching of monumental façades. From the 1st to 3rd Dynasties, the niches of some mudbrick mastabas at Saqqara were painted with brightly-coloured geometric designs in a clear imitation of woven reed matting.…[Read more]

This study examines the euhemeristic interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4 as it appears in Ephrem
of Nisibis’ Commentary on Genesis and its influence on Syriac and Ethiopic commentary
traditions. I suggest that Ephrem’s attempt to mitigate the angelic interpretation of Genesis
6 ironically mirrors his own angelology. The distinctive components he ad…[Read more]

An exploration of the paradoxical celebrity of ascetic renunciants in early Christianity, using the example of Simeon Stylites, the pillar saint.

This article treats late ancient rabbinic texts (ca. 1st-early 3rd cents. CE), reading them as biology, and following their ideas about the limits and possibilities of reproductive and species variation. I read sources from the tractates of Niddah, Kil’ayim, and Bekhorot, in the Mishnah and Toseta, as expressions of a science of generation, or a b…[Read more]

In spite of renewed scholarly interest in the religion of Judeans living on the island of Elephantine during the Persian period, only one recent study has addressed the religious significance of the fired clay female figurines discovered there. The present article seeks to place these objects back on the research agenda. After summarizing the…[Read more]

D. Kruisheer, ‘A Bibliographical Clavis to the Works of Jacob of Edessa (revised and expanded)’, in B. ter Haar Romeny (ed.), Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day (Monographs of the Peshitta Institute Leiden 18; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 265–293.

D. Kruisheer, ‘Ephrem, Jacob of Edessa, and the Monk Severus. An Analysis of Ms. Vat. Syr. 103, ff. 1–72’, in R. Lavenant (ed.), Symposium Syriacum VII (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 256; Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1998), 599–605.

D. Kruisheer, ‘Reconstructing Jacob of Edessa’s Scholia’, in J. Frishman and L. Van Rompay (eds.), The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation. A Collection of Essays (Traditio Exegetica Graeca 5; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 187–196.

D. Kruisheer, [Review of] H.G.B. Teule (ed. and transl.), Gregory Barhebraeus, Ethicon (Mēmrā I) (CSCO 534, 535, Syr. 218, 219; Leuven: Peeters, 1993), Bibliotheca Orientalis 53.5/6 (September-December 1996), 815-818.

D. Kruisheer, ‘Theodore bar Koni’s Ktābā d-’Eskolyon as a Source for the Study of Early Mandaeism’, Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap “Ex Oriente Lux” (Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society “Ex Oriente Lux”) 33 (1993-1994), 151-169.

Writing Demetrias: Ascetic Logic in Ancient Christianity

The Seleucid Antiochus IV profoundly intervened in the cult of Jerusalem in 168 BC. Under the leadership of the Hasmoneans, an uprising developed against these interventions, which led to the restoration of the cult, the establishment of the Hasmoneans as high priests and the independence of Judea. Against the background of widely differing…[Read more]

The fourth-century Syriac corpus known as the Demonstrations, attributed to Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, provides a unique window into the early development of Christianity among Syriac-speaking communities. Occasionally these writings attest to beliefs and practices that were not common among other contemporaneous Christian communities, such as…[Read more]