2023 – 08 - The Ancient Near East Today

August 2023

Vol. 11, No. 8

Figure 3. Detail of Chapter 125 of the 19th Dynasty Book of the Dead of Hunefer (British Museum EA 9901,3) showing the mummiform Osiris enthroned under a kiosk. Photo by the Author.

The Egyptian Conceptualization of the Otherworld

August 31, 2023

The linear alphabet continued to be written irregularly through the 11th century BCE; note that the alefs in the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription from Judah face no less than three different directions! Adapted by S.L. Sanders from drawing by A. Yardeni in Khirbet Qeiyafa 1: Excavation Report 2007-2008 (2009).

Who Really Invented the Alphabet?

August 24, 2023

The Capitolium, Dougga, constructed in the 2nd century. (Photo by John Whitehouse).

Local Communities and Archaeological Sites: A Case Study at Dougga in Tunisia

August 17, 2023

Figure 2: Drawing of a cylinder seal showing examples of standards with decoration on the shaft. Akkadian Period. Metropolitan Museum L.1992.23.5 (van Dijk-Coombes 2023: 334 A48).

Ceremonial Standards in the Visual Culture of Early Mesopotamia

August 10, 2023

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Breugel the Elder (1563). While famous throughout European history because of the biblical story, no one knew what the Tower of Babel might have looked like until the 19th-century rediscovery of Mesopotamian ziggurats. In this painting, Bruegel imagined a building like the Colosseum in Rome reaching high into the sky, but unfinished.

Before and After Babel

August 3, 2023

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