The article reconstructs lines 75–80 of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgameš. It offers a re-edition of all the extant sources and uses as a recourse verses 9–12 in Chapter 4 of the Book of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes). It then demonstrates how close the passage in the Epic of Gilgameš and the verses of the Book of Qohelet are. The article concludes with a brief discussion about the relationship between the Epic of Gilgameš and the Book of Qohelet.

This publication presents the results of the excavation in 1960 of a group of Minoan tombs on the lower slopes of Ailias, on the east side of the River Kairatos, in an area almost opposite the Temple Tomb at Knossos. One or two of these tombs were built in Middle Minoan times. Tomb I was used again for four burials in Late Minoan II–IIIA, the period when the other three tombs (II–IV) appear to have been exclusively used. The publication presents the excavation's ceramic and other small finds and offers a detailed study of the skeletal remains. Of special interest are the following aspects: (1) the excavation's careful documentation – particularly by the standards of the time – with considerable attention paid to stratigraphy and the production of section drawings; (2) the tombs’ architecture; (3) the use of wooden coffins; (4) the lack – to a large extent – of finds in association with the bodies buried in these tombs; and (5) the funerary sequence in one of the few locations in the Knossos valley where both Neopalatial as well as Final Palatial use is attested. The proximity to and (re)use of Neopalatial tombs during the Late Minoan II–IIIA period and the need of some members of the local society to associate themselves with pre-existing burial structures are discussed. This publication contributes to ongoing discussions on bone and object manipulation, plus the numbers of burials per tomb, while revisiting the ‘richness’ levels of the Knossian tombs. It also places emphasis on taphonomy, the transition from Late Minoan I to II, and the funeral experience. It is argued that burying the dead in a purposefully formed space (i.e., in a rock-cut tomb) may have constituted an action of particular social and/or religious importance even in burials lacking any significant quantities and/or a diverse range of objects. The most important ramifications stemming from this study are assessed at the end of the paper.

The writings of George Finlay are usually viewed through the lenses of philhellenism and the Greek Revolution. This work seeks instead to locate them in the transnational intellectual canvas of the nineteenth century, principally in relation to the writings of George Bancroft, in whose History of the United States Finlay left extensive marginalia. Finlay's comments on Bancroft's work exemplify two disparate styles of historiography in the period. This study attributes such a divide to Finlay's and Bancroft's divergent worldviews, conflicting methodologies and contrasting motivations as historians working on either side of the Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions. The analysis of the dialogical exchange between the two scholars has much to contribute towards a global history of historical thought during a liminal period for history as a discipline. Finlay's annotations offer much for our understanding of Bancroft's reception outside of the United States, especially in ‘peripheral’ regions like the Eastern Mediterranean that are often overlooked when studying intellectual exchanges between Europe and America. Further, owing to the connection that he draws between national institutions and the writing of history, Finlay's marginalia give a clear indication of his vision for the optimal socio-political organisation of post-revolutionary states like the United States and the Kingdom of Greece. In this article, I suggest that Finlay's work was thus essentially didactic in contrast to Bancroft's teleological method of historical enquiry, giving greater insight into the different methods and purposes of historical writing in the nineteenth century.

Recent archaeological and remote sensing research in the Maya Lowlands has demonstrated evidence for extensive modification of the landscape in the forms of channeled fields and upland terraces. Scholars often assume these measures were taken primarily to intensify maize production; however, paleoethnobotany highlights a greater diversity of crops grown by the precolonial Maya. This study combines the growth requirements of 18 crops cultivated by ancient Maya farmers with lidar and other geospatial data in a suitability model that maps optimal areas for growth. These 18 crops cluster into five groups of crops with similar growth requirements. Across the study region, different groupings of crops had different suitability in and around different ancient Maya centers and agricultural features. This spatial variation in suitability reflects the heterogeneity of land resources and adaptations and contributes to existing conversations about economic and settlement organization in the study area. The results of this study serve as a foundation for future field studies and more complex spatial models.

This article presents the preliminary results of investigations at the site of Qach Rresh on the Erbil Plain of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, conducted by the Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia project (RLIIM). The site of Qach Rresh is estimated to have been founded in the mid–eighth century B.C.E., at the height of the Assyrian Empire, and continued to be utilised in varying capacity until the onset of the Hellenistic period (c. 320 B.C.E.). Magnetic gradiometry survey and excavations currently suggest that Qach Rresh served as a rural administrative/storage center during the Assyrian Empire, which fell into disrepair following the empire’s collapse. The following post-Assyrian/Iron Age III period then saw several of its large buildings repurposed as refuse areas containing debris from largely domestic contexts. Qach Rresh is the first rural settlement investigated within the Assyrian imperial heartland. The results from this project seem to indicate a high degree of Assyrian state or elite involvement in the countryside, serving as a critical first foray into assessing the relationship between urban governing centers and their “hinterlands”.

In recent years, scholars have drawn particular attention to the existence in the ancient world of permanent, specialized market buildings, macella or μάκɛλλοι, which offered dedicated facilities for the processing and sale of luxury commodities such as fish and meat. However, important questions remain about the typologies, architecture, and “end-users” of these structures. Here, I outline a basic model for how the total and average wealth and traffic of settlements increases with estimated populations, before exploring the relationships between the total footprints and wider architectural characteristics of macella and estimated populations of sites. This reveals that there is a series of relationships between these measures that are not only consistent with wider theoretical and empirical expectations, but also have the potential to alter dramatically our understanding of macella by revealing the connections between the sizes and capacities of these structures and the wealth, connectivity, and integration of settlements.

The gesture of the pointing finger performed by the Assyrian king and, sometimes, his officials and depicted on several monuments is commonly labelled by scholars as ubāna tarāṣu (to extend the finger and point), and variously interpreted as a gesture of homage, or prayer, or adoration to the deities. The article questions this generally accepted reading and proposes to interpret the pointing finger gesture as a simple deictic gesture, thus deprived of any religious connotation. It is concluded that the gesture had not intrinsic meaning but was intentionally used to point at and highlight important elements outside the monument or within the carved inscription or the image.

Previous research has suggested that horse breeding, with the army as the intended buyer, was an important part of the local agrarian economy in the Roman Dutch eastern river area. Since it is very difficult to trace the origins of horses by traditional archaeozoological methods, strontium isotope analysis was used to investigate the origins of horses in both military and rural sites. These new data are integrated with data on horse frequencies and size to assess the economic importance of horses in rural communities in the eastern river area and further investigate possible supply networks. Both horse frequencies and horse size increase from the Early Roman period onwards, reflecting the significant economic importance of horses in this region. The laser ablation 87Sr/86Sr ratios show evidence for mobility in military horses but not in rural horses.

This paper unfolds in three steps. First it draws attention to how the import of Babylonian and Assyrian belles lettres can be affected by the manner in which the utterances are ‘voiced’. Second, it highlights interruption as a particular instance of this, proposing cases where characters are likely to be interrupting each other (the first treatment of this issue in Assyriology). Finally, it argues that the distribution of speech formulae in Gilgameš associates one such formula with interruption and aggression more than another.

An abundance and diverse range of prehistoric fishing practices was revealed during excavations between 2012 and 2022 at the construction site of the Femern Belt Tunnel, linking the islands of Lolland (Denmark) and Femern (Germany). The waterlogged parts of the prehistoric Syltholm Fjord yielded well preserved organic materials, including the remains of wooden fish traps and weirs, and numerous vertical stakes and posts driven into the former seabed – evidence of long term fishing practices using stationary wooden structures from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age (c. 4700–900 cal BC). Here, we present the results of a detailed study on these stationary wooden fishing structures, making this the most comprehensive and detailed description of prehistoric passive fishing practices in Syltholm Fjord to date. The exceptional scale of the excavated area (57 ha) and abundance of organic materials encountered during excavations provides us with a rare opportunity to identify individual weir systems and information on their construction, maintenance, and use. To contextualise further, we provide an up-to-date compilation of comparable finds in the Danish archaeological record, including a dataset of directly dated specimens, based on both published and unpublished sources. Our results show that stationary wooden fishing structures are an invaluable archaeological resource, and their study, combining landscape reconstruction, ethnographic analogy, and fishing technology, together with artefactual evidence and radiocarbon dating, allows us to reconstruct prehistoric fishing strategies in depth. Due to the long chronology and diversity of the study materials, our results complement previous research on the many nuances and regional specificities of the persistence of fishing practices in the western Baltic Sea over time, despite introductions of new cultures, populations, and livelihoods. Finally, we emphasise that the Neolithisation process in Northern Europe was not as straightforward and uniform in terms of subsistence as commonly assumed.

The paper posits a link between the Standard Babylonian Version of Nergal and Ereškigal and the Jacob Cycle in Genesis (Gen 25-35), one anchored by the former story’s cosmic stairway and the stairway with its top in heaven appearing to Jacob in his famous dream. It is argued that the proper understanding of the motive for that specific parallel opens the door to a considerably broader one, which offers important insight on the two traditions. This broader parallel informs on different aspects of Nergal and Ereškigal, including theological and historical issues that appear to stand behind that story. Such contact, it is suggested, challenges established Assyriological thinking about the place of comparative perspectives in the study of Mesopotamian literature.