The present paper analyses the mutual influences between Egypt and the city of Karkemish (present Jarabulus) during both the 2nd and the 1st Millennium BC. This Syrian city was indeed an important site located on the Euphrates river, along the border between modern Turkey and Syria and is surely better known for its strong relationship with the…[Read more]

A brief reflection on the concept of pre-classical antiquity square, analyzing some archaeological and textual sources.

Review of Kings, Countries, Peoples: Selected Studies on the Achaemenid Empire, by Pierre Briant, translated by Amélie Kuhrt. Oriens et Occidens, vol. 26. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Pp. xxv + 633. €99.

This paper discusses a letter found in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which contains the earliest documented reference to the Artaxerxes phialai first published by Ernst Herzfeld in 1935.

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]

Ages of patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11 are usually interpreted as literal, symbolic or fictional. We suggest alternative interpretation of literal one. In Genesis 5 not only age of patriarch is abnormally long but also the ratio of maximal age to minimal begetting age is unrealistic from common human experience (the ratio is approximately 15).…[Read more]

This is the first page only. Full article is available at https://doi.org/10.3764/aja.124.4.0523 (JSTOR subscription required) or https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/310940 (open access).

Abstract:
A wide variety of edits can be identified in the Linear B administrative documents from Mycenaean Greece. The writers of these documents…[Read more]

Whilst gold is the metal that is most commonly associated with Mycenae -mostly because of Homer’s reference to that city, but also because of the fabulous death masks that were uncovered by Schliemann in the shaft graves of Grave circle A, relatively little is known about the role and appreciation of silver in the Mycenaean world. Silver artefacts…[Read more]

Review of the 6th edition of the Linear B tablets from Knossos in transcription.
This is the accepted manuscript; the published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2020.32.

I wrote the first version of this guide in the summer of 2018. For the first time in my career I had received a multi-year fellowship, and I had been told that the position had a good chance of continuing beyond the initial fellowship period, if not of becoming permanent. So, since I did not expect to have to search for employment again, it seemed…[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]

This chapter examines the ways in which the Linear B ‘extra’ signs – syllabograms which can in certain circumstances replace the ‘core’ signs of the Linear B syllabary – are often used as evidence for the process by which this writing system was created from its parent writing system, Linear A, and thus, by extension, for reconstructing aspects of…[Read more]

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

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]

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]

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]

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

On Babylonia in the Seleucid Empire