Population boom, droughts contributed to collapse of ancient Assyrian Empire
Researchers draw parallels between decline of Assyrian civilization and today’s situation in Syria and Iraq
A brief journey into medical care and disease in ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptians suffered from a variety of diseases, both congenital and acquired, which developed as a result of their
cultural practices and environment.
Forerunners of the Hattusili-Ramesses treaty
The Hattusili-Ramesses treaty is known from two main sources. These are texts in Egyptian hieroglyphs preserved on the walls of the temple of Amun at Karnak and of the Ramesseum, and of some fragmentary cuneiform tablets in Akkadian, discovered at the Hittite capital of Hattusa, the modern site of Boghazk
Cassandra's Colleagues: Prophetesses in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
At the beginning of the second millennium BCE with the import of Amorite culture into Southern Babylonia, prophecy developed into the dominant instrument of royal ideology and politics
Virginity in Ancient Mesopotamia
‘A virgin body has the freshness of secret springs, the morning sheen of an unopened flower, the orient luster of a pearl on which the sun has never shone. Grotto, temple, sanctuary, secret garden – man, like the child, is fascinated by enclosed and shadowy places not yet animated by any consciousness, which wait to be given a soul: what he alone is to take and to penetrate seems to be in truth created by him.’
Aspects of ancient Near Eastern chronology (c. 1600-700 BC)
The aim of my thesis has been to investigate the chronology of the Near East during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age periods (c. 1600–700 BC) to see whether or not the current ‘conventional’ chronology is as reliable as its adherents maintain…
The Tower of Babel: archaeology, history and cuneiform texts
Such is the fame of the myth of the Tower of Babel related in Genesis 11 that the publication of a new monograph on the building generally thought to have inspired the myth is an important event.
The Athenian Empire (478-404 BC)
In this paper I raise 3 questions: (1) How, and how much, did the Athenian Empire change Greek society? (2) Why did the Athenian Empire (or a competitor state) not become a multiethnic empire like Persia or Rome? (3) In the long run, how much did the Athenian Empire’s failure matter?