“Democratizing the American University” argues for a more democratic approach to academic appointments within the US academy.

During the third millennium B.C.E., Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, expanded to include an extensive outer city. A variety of investigations in the outer city reveal a complex urban environment: a mix of planned and unplanned activity with the environment and large municipal works acting as constraining factors on more localized activity.

This article examines the description of Persepolis, one of the capital cities of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca. 550–330 BCE), by Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri (1651–1725) in his illustrated travelogue Giro del mondo (1699–1700). Gemelli Careri’s extensive description of the site—some twenty pages of text accompanied by two plates en…[Read more]

Document written by current and former CLIR postdocs providing insight and advice for applicants to the CLIR postdoctoral fellows program. You can learn more about the program here:

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

The relationship between the ‘Two Brothers’ Nakhtankh and Khnumnakht has been heavily debated since the discovery of their mummies in 1907. Re-examining the coffin inscriptions of these two individuals reveals that Nakhtankh and Khnumnakht were likely uncle and nephew.

A brief technical re-examination of a paper by George Mann on the Qau skeletons in the Duckworth collection is undertaken. Taking into account the original data and technical aspects of skeletal sexing, it is shown that old data on skeletal sexing may not always be as unreliable as previously thought. Factors that may introduce errors into this…[Read more]

The motif in the centre of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (ca. 2000-1900 BCE) concerns a star that fell to earth and caused the extinction of a population of giant serpents on an enchanted island, whose location is traditionally ascribed to the Red Sea. These creatures could apparently breathe fire, but they themselves…[Read more]

This essay examines the issue of David’s (lack of) clothing in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 15. It asks: what potential meanings would be at play for ancient readers of these texts? Drawing on research into social memory and “forgetting,” it argues that Judean readers would partially warrant Michal’s distaste for David’s dressing-down, while still…[Read more]

Ancient pseudo-histories may contain kernels of geographic truth. In the Sumerian King List (SKL) the long and south-focused antediluvian era may reflect a combination of the Ubaid and Uruk periods, while the initial post-Flood period, which was short and ruled from the north, may reflect the Jemdet Nasr phase. The SKL’s subsequent return of k…[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]