Ancient Middle East Archive
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Rome and Parthia: Power Politics and Diplomacy Across Cultural Frontiers
Posted on April 4, 2013 | No CommentsPersia and Parthia were two of the great 'others' that shaped the limits of the Graeco-Roman world, and were also imagined worlds where European values were explored, excluded, and projected. -
Lessons from a Demigod
Posted on February 18, 2013 | No CommentsThe Epic of Gilgamesh has been read in the modern world for a little longer than a century, and, in that time, this oldest of stories has become a classic college text. -
Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Jacob Story
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsI will argue here that the Israelite author utilized -
Medicine, Surgery, and Public Health in Ancient Mesopotamia
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsMedicine in ancient Mesopotamia grew out of a folk tradition of what is usually called herbal medicine. In such traditions, plants and plant products, minerals, and animals and their products furnish the basic ingredients of the medications. -
How they farmed at Petra
Posted on January 10, 2013 | No CommentsNew archaeological research dates the heyday of terrace farming at the ancient desert city of Petra to the first century. This development led to an explosion of agricultural activity, increasing the city -
The Mandrake and the Ancient World
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsIt was frequently sought after by magicians and others who attempted the treatment of insanity in the ancient world, and was probably used most of all in the form of a potion. -
Pigs and Their Prohibition
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsBecause no single discipline or explanation seems adequate to understandthis practice, the search draws data from biology, anthropology, ancient history, mythology, religion, and ecology. Some have dismissed religious explanations as ar- bitrary and tautological, but the information provided in this article shows that religious beliefs are important. -
Vision, Folly and Balance: Imperial Approaches to Commerce and War in the Roman Near East, 27 BCE
Posted on January 1, 2013 | No CommentsWhen Emperor Marcus Aurelius died on the banks of the Danube in 180 CE at Vindobona, or Vienna, the Roman Empire he left behind was the largest transcontinental, transcultural, singular political entity in history before the rise of the European nation state some fifteen centuries later. -
Memorization and the Transmission of Sumerian Literary Compositions
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsIt is widely recognized that nearly all preserved copies of Sumerian literary compositions were copied by apprentice scribes as part of their training in the Sumerian language. -
New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe answer I propose is: (1) only at a certain point in human cognitive evolution did it become possible for Homo sapiens to transcend certain biological limitations of the human brain by cultural means; and (2) this increased mental facility was made necessary by the reliance on larger and more cohesive social groups, itself a product of hominin evolution.
