Much of the surviving text of the Epic of Etana tells the story of an eagle and a snake. The eagle and snake are extraordinary creatures, and their story abounds with mythological subtext. This paper argues that the Neo-Assyrian recension of Etana was amended to include explicit references to the eagle and the snake by the names of their…[Read more]

The article examines the role of the seas in Sumerian and Akkadian royal inscriptions and literary texts from the third millennium BCE onwards. By tracing the presence of the sea in these texts, it becomes clear that the Upper and Lower Sea – or the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, though the former could shift geographically – could stand as…[Read more]

This essay provides an introduction to the topic of demons and the means of opposing them in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third to late first millennia BCE. Demons and witchcraft were integrated aspects of the Mesopotamian
world. They could threaten individuals, often causing illness or ill fortune, as well as target society as a whole,…[Read more]

The following essay considers the ways in which masculinity and femininity can be seen as potentially fluid, rather than rigid, categories in the ancient Near East, and furthermore understood as part of shifting nexus of power and agency – or lack thereof. Specifically gendered insults exploited the fluidity of these categories by focusing in p…[Read more]