This paper presents a newly funded international project for machine translation and automated analysis of ancient cuneiform 1 languages where NLP special ists and Assyriologists collaborate to create an information retrieval system for
Sumerian. This research is conceived in response to the need to translate large numbers of administrative texts…[Read more]

Uses social poetics to analyze talk in the Bible of looking at Yahweh’s face

The Rosen Vocabulary is an Old Babylonian bilingual text. Through an edition of this text, I argue that the ad-hoc mixed vocabularies known from the Old Babylonian period feature citations or allusions to literary compositions as well as subsequent analogous expressions, both in Sumerian and in Akkadian.

Sumerian lexical and literary compositions both emerged from the same social sphere, namely scribal education. The complexities of inter-compositional dependence in these two corpora have not been thoroughly explored, particularly as relevant to questions of text-building during the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800–1600 bce). Copying practices e…[Read more]

In Old Babylonian Sumerian literature, the temporal phrases u₄-ba and u₄-bi-a typically occur in complementary distribution. Previous analyses have focused on morphological disparity to differentiate the two. The present paper considers pragmatic functions within a larger discourse structure, analyzing them as discourse markers, specifically tem…[Read more]

Sumerian and Akkadian language contact in the early part of the second millennium BCE. The article discusses prevalent language ideologies based on native metalinguistic discourse in comparison with language use in practice with the phrase mu—pad₃ = nīš—itma ‘(s)he swore an oath’ as a case study.

This paper evaluates the recent upsurge of interest in the scribal processes underlying the composition of Hittite ritual text and the implications of this evidence for understanding the compositional history of biblical rituals.

This paper evaluates the recent upsurge of interest in the scribal processes underlying the composition of Hittite ritual text and the implications of this evidence for understanding the compositional history of biblical rituals.

A brief report on my dissertation research.

Edition of cuneiform tablet excavated at Büklükale on the western Kızılırmak in 2010.

Argues that, reversing the trope of subjects visiting the magnificent, the Elohistic history has Yahweh interested in the simplest, flimsiest altars only, which he will visit when and where he is invited to do so. The implication rules out temple-altars and temples for their royal sponsorship.

Analyzes Isaiah 40–48 as a single literary work through levels of speakers (frame and subordinate) with implications for its construction of divine potency and communication.

A re-assessment of what we know about women known as hetairai in Classical Greece within the context of the elite women from the 6th and early 5th centuries BCE.

Encyclopedia entry on the concept of the “Neolithic Package”.

A short history of work at Göbekli Tepe and an overview of the UNESCO Worls Heritage List nomination process.

An extensive preliminary report on Göbekli Tepe´s Enclosure H – in German.

This article analyzes the primary terms for purity in Biblical Hebrew, Ugaritic, Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite. Building on insights from cognitive linguistics and embodiment theory, this study develops the premise that semantic structure – even of seemingly abstract concepts– is grounded in real-world bodily experience. An examination of pur…[Read more]