Early Jewish writings are replete with narratives of warfare and collective violence. Yet relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to how these accounts of violence affected the way Jews structured their festal calendar. This essay examines the festivals described in 1 and 2 Maccabees that serve to commemorate the most impressive m…[Read more]

This Open Access volume reveals how violent pasts were constructed by ancient Mediterranean societies, the ideologies they served, and the socio-political processes and institutions they facilitated. Combining case studies from Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, Israel/Judah, and Rome, it moves beyond essentialist dichotomies such as “victors” and “va…[Read more]

This article is a report of a roundtable discussion organised by the authors at the UK Classical Association conference, Cambridge, April 2023, under the aegis of #WCCWiki, the Women’s Classical Committee’s Wikipedia-editing project. It presents a summary of the participants’ wide-ranging uses of Wikipedia editing at schools, universities, and…[Read more]

Research into emotions is a developing field within Assyriology, and NLP tools for Akkadian texts offers new perspectives on the data. We use PMI-based word embeddings to explore the relationship between parts of the body and emotions. Using data downloaded from Oracc, we ask which parts of the body were semantically linked to emotions. We do this…[Read more]

Research into emotions is a developing field within Assyriology, and NLP tools for Akkadian texts offers new perspectives on the data. We use PMI-based word embeddings to explore the relationship between parts of the body and emotions. Using data downloaded from Oracc, we ask which parts of the body were semantically linked to emotions. We do this…[Read more]

Beards were part of a visual matrix of expressing masculinity during the NeoAssyrian period (ca. 934–612 BCE). But masculinity does not exist in isolation and interacts with other aspects of identity. I will examine the beard as an indicator of masculine status during the Neo-Assyrian period. This will be done through investigating the visual a…[Read more]

During the Neo-Assyrian period (approximately 934-612 BCE, based in modern Iraq) the annals and royal inscriptions of several kings mention women with a curious title: ‘Queen of the Arabs’. These women have been included in previous discussions regarding Assyrian interaction with the ‘Arabs’, but a full investigation into their roles as rulers…[Read more]

This is the final post of a series of 12 blog posts discussing 10 open problems in computational diversity linguistics.

This is the eleventh of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the typology of semantic promiscuity.

This is the tenth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the typology of sound change.

This is the ninth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the typology of semantic change.

This is the eighth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of statistical proof of language relatedness.

This is the seventh of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of simulating sound change.

This is the sixth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of simulating lexical change.

This is the fifth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of automatic phonological reconstruction.

This is the fourth of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of automatic sound law induction.

This is the third of a series of 12 blog posts published in 2019, discussing open problems in computational diversity linguistics. It discusses the problem of automatic borrowing detection.