The Curse of Agade


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Legends of the Kings of Akkade


Book Description

The most impressive legacy of the Dynasty of Akkade (ca. 2310-2160 B.C.E.) was the widespread, popular legends of its kings. Dr. Westenholz offers an annotated edition of all the known legends of the Akkadian kings, with transliteration, translation, and commentary. Of particular interest to biblical scholars is the inclusion of "The Birth Legend of Sargon," which is often compared to Moses in Exodus.




The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean


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This book explores some of the most prominent literary responses to the collective trauma of a fallen city.




Understanding Collapse


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In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.




The Ancient Near East


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Two classic illustrated anthologies, now combined in one convenient volume James Pritchard's classic anthologies of the ancient Near East have introduced generations of readers to texts essential for understanding the peoples and cultures of this important region. Now these two enduring works have been combined and integrated into one convenient and richly illustrated volume, with a new foreword that puts the translations in context. With more than 130 reading selections and 300 photographs of ancient art, architecture, and artifacts, this volume provides a stimulating introduction to some of the most significant and widely studied texts of the ancient Near East, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Creation Epic (Enuma elish), the Code of Hammurabi, and the Baal Cycle. For students of history, religion, the Bible, archaeology, and anthropology, this anthology provides a wealth of material for understanding the ancient Near East. Represents the diverse cultures and languages of the ancient Near East—Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, and Aramaic—in a wide range of genres: Historical texts Legal texts and treaties Inscriptions Hymns Didactic and wisdom literature Oracles and prophecies Love poetry and other literary texts Letters New foreword puts the classic translations in context More than 300 photographs document ancient art, architecture, and artifacts related to the texts Fully indexed




The Age of Agade


Book Description

The Age of Agade is the first book-length study of the Akkadian period of Mesopotamian history, which saw the rise and fall of the world’s first empire during more than a century of extraordinary political, social, and cultural innovation. It draws together more than 40 years of research by one of the world’s leading experts in Assyriology to offer an exhaustive survey of the Akkadian empire. Addressing all aspects of the empire, including its statecraft and military, territory and cities, arts, religion, economy, and production, The Age of Agade considers what can be said of Akkadian political and social history, material culture, and daily life. A final chapter also explores how the empire has been presented in modern historiography, from the decipherment of cuneiform to the present, including the extensive research of Soviet historians, summarized here in English for the first time. Drawing on contemporaneous written and artifactual sources, as well as relevant materials from succeeding generations, Foster introduces the reader to the wealth of evidence available. Accessibly written by a specialist in the field, this book is an engaging examination of a critical era in the history of early Mesopotamia.





Book Description

The Apocalypse of Enoch and Bhuśunda The Apocalypse of Enoch and Bhuśunda challenges the underlying assumptions of the classical roots of civilization by restoring the original context of creation mythology. In this second volume of A Chronology of the Primeval Gods and the Western Sunrise, ancient myths from multiple geographies are correlated to spikes in cosmic rays over the past 120,000 years – as documented in ice core data. The chronology and content of these myths tell us that the primary forces behind these cataclysms were the most ancient gods - hyper-nova at the Galactic Center associated with Sgr A*(The Dragon), Sgr West (The Beast) and Sgr East (Hiranyâksha and Hiranyakas'ipu), with secondary supernova seen as the birth of new, destructive gods. Ancient myth has documented the cataclysmic destruction of the world on at least twenty occasions with four major geo-polar migrations, which has resulted in a shift of the earth’s equator on at least one occasion. Multiple myths are shown to represent a view of the sky that can only be seen from the Antarctic region. Multiple versions of the myths of Orion are analyzed, showing clear linkages between the Vedic myth of Trisanku, the Book of Genesis, Senmut's Tomb, and the myths of Prajāpati Daksa representing the oldest version of the Orion myth – older than Trishanku and Genesis by 20,000 years! The stunning conclusion explains how the “Watchers” of Enoch were the Vedic descendants of Ila and Iksvaku. These descendants of the seventh Manu had been observing and recording the stars as a source of cataclysm for at least 15,000 years prior to Enoch, thus allowing Enoch to prophesize a ‘new heaven.’ That prophecy became the foundation for St John’s Book of Revelations, which is shown to be a description of a series of cataclysms attributed to Sgr West. The book offers a new theory for explaining geo-polar migration. That theory suggests small shifts in the location of the earth’s center of gravity underlie each migration, but that there are multiple causes for the shifts.




The Gods of the Nations


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Daniel I. Block here explores the relationship between ancient Near Eastern nations and their respective deities. He demonstrates how this relationship was expressed in everyday life, national identity, and history. Israel's theocratic culture is illuminated in comparison to other Near Eastern cultures.




Of Dead Kings and Dirges


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The Fabric of Cities


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The Fabric of Cities presents an interdisciplinary collection of articles on urbanism in ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome, which focuses on the social dimension of cities' topographical features. The contributions of this book offer investigations of neighbourhoods, city gates, streets, temples and palaces drawing on textual and archaeological sources as well as art. The topics treated in this work encompass the diverse functions of public and marginal spaces in Mesopotamian cities and Rome, the role of agency in the development of Babylonian neighbourhoods, the relationship between public and private in Assyrian palaces, the connection between political strategies and temple building in Sumerian literary texts, and the communicative uses of language in Classical Greek texts to talk about urban space.