Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Palatial economic archives from various regions — from the Aegean world to Mesopotamia — and from various periods of the Bronze Age, attest to the use by palatial administrations of procedures in which workers were obliged to perform a task, whether craft or agricultural, on behalf of the palace. This article examines the possibility that such a procedure existed also in Ugarit, since a group of administrative texts relating to metals appear comparable to these systems of work-assignments. The material from Ugarit and the conclusions reached allow, then, a comparison with the system of work-assignment attested in the Mycenaean texts and called ta ra-si-ja. Mycenaean and Ugaritic documentations present typological, structural and chronological analogies, which add to the interest of the comparison.

The present contribution will focus on the information provided by the texts from Ugarit concerning the specific matter of the management of wine by the central administration of the kingdom, specially registers of vineyards, deliveries of wine to the administration, supplies of wine from the administration, and the storage of wine. It also comments on terms referring to vine, vineyards, (vine‑)stock, grapes, raisin, and measures of capacity. This information will be supplemented by archaeological and iconographical data, also considering the physical geography of the kingdom.

Eannatum’s Stele of the Vultures is one of the most famous stelae of third millennium BCE Mesopotamia. It records in text and image the victory of Lagash over Umma in a border conflict. The stele is decorated on two sides, named the “historical” side and the “mythological”
side by the nature of the scenes depicted. Only seven fragments of the stele remain, and various reconstructions of both sides have been proposed by academics such as Barrelet (1970), Winter (2010b) and Romano (2007). This paper seeks to further the discussion by proposing a reconstruction of one aspect of the stele – the object on the far right of the lower register of the mythological side of the stele (see fig. 4). This reconstruction influences the reading of other objects depicted on the same side of the stele, and these are also discussed and reconstructed.

Questions regarding the identity and ethnicity of the hapiru and other peoples known from second millennium BCE Near Eastern literature have been at the forefront of scholarly debate for well over a century. Western Asia, often considered to be the cradle of civilization, comprises the large landmasses of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the geographically fragmented Levant. The latter, forming the easternmost littoral of the eastern Mediterranean, served as a cross-cultural land bridge connecting the great empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, and was incorporated into these imperial spheres of influence throughout much of its history. The abundance of textual and archaeological evidence for western Asia provides a particularly rich assemblage of primary sources for the study of peoples, ethnicity, and their material culture expressions of identity in the ancient world. Among the most challenging to define are groups such as the Amorites, hapiru, and Aramaeans, who are often described in Near Eastern texts as semi-nomadic entities or peoples residing outside the framework of settled second millennium BCE societies. They have proven to be especially difficult to identify in the archaeological record. Other peoples, including the Canaanites, Israelites, and Philistines, who also appear in contemporary Near Eastern texts but are best known from the biblical account, have left a more distinctive, though at times ambiguous,  archaeological footprint.

The recovery of a few royal inscriptions at Tūlūl al-Baqarat (Iraq) by the archaeological mission of the University of Torino has made it possible to propose that the site be identified with ancient Keš. The present contribution reexamines the location of Irisaĝrig in light of its well-known connection and proximity to Keš.

Within a literary ontology, YHWH in the Hebrew Bible is technically also a fictional entity or object. In Hebrew Bible scholarship, a variety of philosophical issues surrounding fiction have received sustained and in-depth attention. However, the mainstream research on these matters tends to focus on the philosophical foundations of or backgrounds to a particular literary theory, rather than on metaphysical puzzles as encountered in the philosophy of fiction proper. To fill this gap, the present article seeks to provide a meta-theoretical overview of the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on the metaphysics of fictional objects. Three views (and their sub-currents) are discussed, namely possibilism, (neo-)Meinongianism and (literary) creationism. Each view’s theory is introduced and critically appropriated with reference to what is implied to be an answer to the question of what exactly the biblical character YHWH can meaningfully be said to be in the context of the metaphysics of fictional objects. In this way, the present study also goes beyond the traditional concern with the nature of God in Old Testament theology.

This is the first book-length study to explore the Hebrew Bible, and specifically the Pentateuch, as a coherent book of political philosophy.

In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

Introduction Appended

Performative engagements with specific, culturally significant places were among the primary means of configuring landscapes in the ancient world. Ancient states often appropriated symbolic or ritual landscapes through commemorative ceremonies and
building operations. These commemorative sites became event-places where state spectacles encountered and merged with local cult practices. The Early Iron Age inscriptions and reliefs carved on the cave walls of the Dibni Su sources at the
site of Birkleyn in Eastern Turkey, known as the ‘Source of the Tigris’ monuments, present a compelling paradigm for such spatial practices. Assyrian kings Tiglathpileser I (1114–1076 B.C.) and Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) carved ‘images of kingship’ and accompanying royal inscriptions at this impressive site in a remote but politically contested region. This important commemorative event was represented in detail on Shalmaneser III’s bronze repouss´e bands from Imgul-Enlil (Tell Balawat) as
well as in his annalistic texts, rearticulating the performance of the place on public monuments in Assyrian urban contexts. This paper approaches the making of the Source of the Tigris monuments as a complex performative place-event. The effect
was to reconfigure a socially significant, mytho-poetic landscape into a landscape of commemoration and cult practice, illustrating Assyrian rhetorics of kingship. These rhetorics were maintained by articulate gestures of inscription that appropriated an already symbolically charged landscape in a liminal territory and made it durable through site-specific spatial practices and narrative representations.

Keywords: mytho-poetic landscape; commemorative monuments; rock reliefs; place; performance; event; rhetorics of kingship; acts of inscription

This paper deals with a unique artefact currently on exhibit at the archaeological Museum of Jiroft (Kerman, Iran), a large-sized copper or bronze staff inlaid with shell mosaics of contrasting colours. Unfortunately, as it was confiscated with many other objects by the Iranian security forces from illegal excavators, nothing is known of the whereabouts or context of its discovery. It might be one of the largest copper artefacts ever found in Bronze Age sites of the eastern Iranian Plateau. Because of its form, such a unusually elaborated, costly and visually imposing staff must have performed a highly formal symbolic function, hence the hypothetical label of “royal sceptre” proposed in the title. The authors attempt a reconstruction of the original form and manufacturing sequence of this large artefact, discussing its role in the poorly known landscape of the protohistoric metallurgy of south-eastern Iran.

We present editions of five cuneiform tablets in the collection of Norwich Castle Museum and two held by Cambridge University Library. The Norwich tablets comprise three tablets from the well-known “Mesag archive” or “Umma C” from the Sargonic period; one small tablet from Ur III Umma; and a fragment of an unprovenanced Old Babylonian account. Those in Cambridge are both from Ur III Girsu: a wool receipt and part of a balanced labour account.

An estimate is made of the capacity of the hinterland of Seleucia on the Tigris and Babylon to feed their inhabitants. The estimate is made on the basis of archaeological surveys, data concerning the Babylonian yields, the size of the cities and irrigated area, data concerning famines. The conclusion is that Seleucia and Babylon could be fed by their own hinterlands even if we accept the highest figures for the population of Seleucia (600,000).

A fragment of a sculpted stone dish from Tello (ancient Ĝirsu), which had been found in the early excavations directed by Ernest de Sarzec, was studied by us in the frame of a wider research project on artifacts made of a peculiar dark grey limestone spotted with white-to-pink fossil corals of the genus Waagenophyllum. Recorded in an old inventory of the Louvre, the piece in question has quite surprisingly remained unpublished until now.
Special points of interest are:

1. The uncommon type of stone, which was presumably obtained from some place in Iran.
2. The finely carved lion image that decorates the vessel.
3. The mysterious symbol that is placed on the lion’s shoulder.
4. What remains of a Sumerian cuneiform inscription, which most probably contained a dedication to the god Ninĝirsu by Gudea. 

Close formal and stylistic comparisons with other artifacts of the same period from Tello make it clear that Waagenophyllum limestone, stemming probably from some Iranian source, was imported to Ĝirsu to be locally carved in Sumerian style in the palatine workshops. Mesopotamian objects made of this rare stone provide another element for reconstructing the patterns of material exchange between southern Mesopotamia and the Iranian Plateau in the late 3rd millennium B.C.

The contribution deals with the architecture of a virtual collection of cuneiform tablets, conceived as a complex system combining and integrating several domains of information obtained from various types of analyses. The collection, containing some 400 Old Assyrian tablets from the excavations of Bedřich Hrozný in Kültepe (Turkey, ancient Kanesh) and originating in a narrow chronological window (ca. 20th–19th century BCE), is a special type of pottery with additional layer of textual information in cuneiform script. The digitization of the collection includes the digital models of the artifacts (3D models, stereometric and standard photographs, Structure-from-Motion), but also additional data on individual objects (physical properties, such as dimensions, colour, shapes, composition). The textual part is made available via standard methods of corpus linguistics and philological data is grouped together for some important attributes (persons, goods, links). The data stemming from the collection is connected with external data, placing the database in the context of cultural and historical development.

This doctoral dissertation focuses on houses dated to the Graeco-Roman en Late Antique Period in Egypt. So far this subject has been largely approached from papyrological sources. On the level of archaeology, the existent literature is very limited, geographically as well as chronologically and merely descriptional. The importance of this research lies in the fact that a period of 11 centuries is approached in an analytical way. We base ourselves on a corpus of 284 excavated house plans from different geographical regions in Egypt. The research is focusing on the analysis of four aspects of the housing culture based on a thorough literature study. These different studies offer a different view on the everyday living circumstances of the common Egyptian citizen from the Ptolemaic Period untill the Arab Conquest. Every study has its own research questions and purposes. Study 1: Typological and comparative study of the ground plans. Based on a typology made up for the Karanis houses (Fayyum oasis) the plans of other sites are analyzed. The popularity of house plans and their regional and chronological spread is investigated. An important aspect is the search for the origin of the different layouts, were they Egyptian, Greek, Roman or the result of a cultural social melting pot ? Study 2: An archaeological study on locking systems and door keys, looking into how rooms and houses were locked. Based on a corpus of 134 locks and 158 keys from all over Egypt, a typology has been drafted and the different mechanisms analyzed. This makes it possible to functionally link certain key-types to lock-types and vice versa. We also look at the chronological and geographical spread. Based on the location of the locking-systems on the archaeological plans we detect whether there is a pattern in the lockability of certain rooms and whether they were closed from in- or outside. Since theft and house breaking occur frequently in papyrological sources, we look at how efficient the attested locking-systems were. Study 3: Through the method of 'access-analysis' of the ground plans, we investigate the accessibility of the houses as experienced by a visitor (visitor-inhabitant relation) and how the internal communication happened between the different rooms (inhabitant-inhabitant relation). The following aspects are focused on: the privacy of the rooms, the transit function of rooms in the internal communication, the social control over the main entrance, the level of social control of spaces over other spaces, the structural depth of the different entities within the house, the identification of main- and secondary transit spaces and the potential lockability of certain spaces. Based on a theory from the social and ethnographical sciences a totally new approach has been developed that is applicable to the research of archaeological source material. In the last part we focus on the accessibility and lockability of the largest room on the ground floor and do we investigate the identification and the function of this room, based on additional architectural and papyrological information. Study 4: A comparative study on the construction and use of the domestic bread ovens. Unrelated to the other studies, this aspect is nevertheless an essential aspect of domestic culture in the period under consideration. Bread ovens were an important instrument in the daily reality and closely connected to the houses themselves. The purpose of this study is to look at what types of ovens existed and how they were used, based on a corpus of 113 specimens from all over Egypt. We investigate whether they are chronologically distinct and whether we can detect a chronological or technological evolution from the New Kingdom onwards.

Megiddo's Palace 6000, traditionally attributed to the building activities of King Solomon, has long served as a hallmark of 10th-century BCE. monumental architecture. Following its initial discovery and excavation, Y. Yadin and others identified this building as one of several early southern Levantine examples of an Iron Age bīt ḫilāni. This term, appearing in Assyrian documents, has been interpreted by most scholars to refer to Iron Age royal residencies known from excavated sites in jorthern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. This paper presents a detailed stratigraphic and architectural analysis of Palace 6000 and examines the evidence regarding its identification as a bīt ḫilāni. We propose that Palace 6000 belongs to a group of southern Levantine Iron Age II public structures with a multipurpose “central hall tetra-partite” plan that could function as a residency, palace, citadel, and/or tower. In our opinion, the origin of this distinctive tetra-partite plan is local and should be understood as developing out of the ubiquitous Iron Age four-room house tradition. In contrast, the bīt ḫilāni building tradition was confined to northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. These two different architectural traditions, with their clearly defined geographical distribution, illustrate the regional character of Levantine societies and cultures during the early centuries of the first millennium BCE.

The history of relationships around the mid-fourth millennium BC between eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia is still poorly understood, especially in its earlier stages. The latest results of the excavations at Arslantepe and Sos Höyük are of invaluable importance in clarifying the subject. A set of ceramic analyses recently carried out on selected contexts from the Late Chalcolithic Phase VII at Arslantepe and from the Late Chalcolithic Phase VA at Sos Höyük, have thrown new light on these eastern Anatolian cultural dynamics. Assisting our interpretation are radiocarbon readings from certain Georgian and Armenian settlements that provide a new and different perspective on the Kuro-Araks culture and on its relationships with the nearby regions. The result is a framework within which the Upper Euphrates valley, north-eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasus were involved in reciprocal interaction from the middle of the fourth millennium BC. * * I wish to thank the following people for the help and kindness showed me in the development of this research and for allowing me to work on the materials they have excavated or for which they are responsible: Prof. Antonio Sagona and Dr. Claudia Sagona (University of Melbourne), co-directors of the archaeological excavations in Sos Höyük, who also provided the radiocarbon reading from Didube; Prof. Marcella Frangipane (Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"), director of the archaeological excavations in Arslantepe-Malatya; Dr Ruben Badalyan and Doc. Pavel Avetissian (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of Armenia) for material from Aparan III and T'alin (radiocarbon dates and samples included);

The alleged testimony of Alcaeus about the mercenary service of his brother Antimenidas in the Neo-Babylonian army has long served as the inspiration for a range of theories concerning the possible employment of Greek mercenaries in Near Eastern armies and their assumed role in the transfer of eastern influences to Greece during the Archaic period. A careful reassessment of Alcaeus' fragments and Strabo's testimony as well as the historical and archaeological evidence at hand suggests that there is little reason to believe that Antimenidas served Nebuchadnezzar II as a mercenary, and the evidence is certainly insufficient to conclude that Greek mercenaries were routinely employed in the Neo-Babylonian army.

First discovered in 1860, the monumental structure at Qazion and its late second-century CE Greek dedicatory inscription by Galilean Jews have been a focal point of scholarly debate. Did this building serve as a synagogue for the local community or was it a Roman temple constructed by Jews to honor Septimius Severus and his family? This article presents the results of the Hachlili and Killebrew archaeological survey of the Qazion cultic complex and a new interpretation of this site located on the border of Jewish and pagan Galilee.

In 2001, Manfred Görg published a new reading of a fragmentary name ring on a topographical pedestal relief in the Berlin Museum . Although the inscription had previously been listed in topographical studies, the reading of the fragmentary third name ring had not received adequate attention. Görg suggested reading the broken name as an archaic form for “Israel” and argued that it could have been copied during the Nineteenth Dynasty from an earlier list. As his publication was in German, his proposal has so far been unavailable to a wider English-speaking readership. The present authors republish the relief fragment here in English and include new evidence that appears to support Görg’s original reading.

Amidst various methodologies for the comparative study of the Hebrew Bible, at times the opportunity arises to improve on a method recently introduced into the field. In YHWH is King, Flynn uses the anthropological method of cultural translation to study diachronic change in YHWH's kingship. Here, such change is compared to a similar Babylonian development to Marduk's kingship. Based on that comparison and informed by cultural translation, Flynn discovers that Judahite scribes suppressed the earlier YHWH warrior king and promoted a creator/universal king in order to combat the increasing threat of Neo-Assyrian imperialism. Flynn thus opens the possibility, that Judahite scribes engaged in a cultural translation of Marduk to YHWH, in order to respond to the mounting Neo-Assyrian presence.

Year: 2014
Publisher: L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER
Series: Arabia Antica, 09
ISBN: 978-88-913-0680-7
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Size: 24 x 28 cm
Ancient Arabia has promptly been pictured as a vast empty desert. Yet, for the last 40 years, by digging
out of the sand buried cities, archaeological researches deeply renewed this image. From the second half of
the 1st millennium BC to the eve of Islam in East Arabia, and as early as the 8th century BC in South Arabia,
the settlement process evolved into urban societies. This study aims at reviewing this process in South and
East Arabia, highlighting the environmental constraints, the geographical disparities and the responses of
the human communities to ensure their subsistence and to provide for their needs.
Evolution was endogenous, far from the main corridors of migrations and invasions. Influences from
the periphery did not cause any prominent change in the remarkably stable communities of inner Arabia in
antiquity. The settlement process and the way of life was primarily dictated by access to water sources and
to the elaboration of ever-spreading irrigation systems.
Beyond common traits, two models characterise the ancient settlement pattern on the arid margins of
eastern and southern Arabia. In South Arabia, the settlement model for the lowland valleys and highland
plateaus results from a long-term evolution of communities whose territorial roots go back to the Bronze
Age. It grew out of major communal works to harness water. Into a territory of irrigated farmland, the south-
Arabian town appeared as a central place. Settlements constituted networks spread across the valleys and
the plateaus. Each network was dominated by a main town, the centre of a sedentary tribe, the capital of a
kingdom.
In East Arabia, the settlement pattern followed a different model which emerged in the last centuries BC
along the routes crossing the empty spaces of the steppe, in a nomadic environment. Each community spread
over no more than one, two or three settlements. These settlements never grew very large and the region was
not urbanised to the same degree as in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula. Permanent settlements were
places for exchanges and meetings, for craft productions, for worship, where the political elites resided,
where the wealth from long-distance trading was gathered, and where surplus from the regional economy
was held. Each town was isolated, like an island in an empty space.

Dr Hdr Michel Mouton
Archaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNR S), Michel
Mouton has been director of the French archaeological expedition in Sharjah
from 1991 to 1997 (excavations at Mleiha and al-Madam); director of the French
archaeological expedition in the Jawf-Hadramawt from 1995 to 2006 (excavations
at Qan' , Makaynn, and surveys of the Yemen territory) and head of the
project Early Petra from the National Agency for Research (2008-2012).
From 2000 to 2002, he has been general secretary of the French Institute in the
Near-East (IFPO, Damascus / Beirut / Amman), and deputy director in 2003. At
the present time, he is director of the French Research Centre for Archaeology
and Social Sciences in the Arabian Peninsula (CEFAS, Jeddah / Sanaa).

Dr Jérémie Schiettecatte
Archaeologist and researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research
(CNR S), in Paris, Jérémie Schiettecatte holds a PhD in Near-Eastern archaeology
from the Sorbonne University. He focuses on the study of the settlement process
in arid lands. His current interests lay in the analysis of the evolution of settlement

This article examines the gender image of the Mesopotamian cult attendant known as gala (Sumerian) / kalû (Akkadian) against the background of the theory of hegemonic masculinity, putting an emphasis on visual representations as sources of information. The gala/kalû was a performer in funerals, and later a professional lamenter in the cult of Inanna/Ištar. His gender identity has long been considered to have possessed ambiguous elements: effeminate, homoerotic, and the like. A more nuanced approach is offered here, whereby the gala/kalû’s gender image is analyzed as a social construct of a non-hegemonic type of masculinity. To this end, visual representations are considered in addition to textual evidence.

Place, Memory and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments investigates the complex and deep histories of places, how they served as sites of memory and belonging for local communities over the centuries, and how they were appropriated and monumentalized in the hands of the political elites. Focusing on Anatolian rock monuments carved into the living rock at watery landscapes during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, this book develops an archaeology of place as a theory of cultural landscapes and as an engaged methodology of fieldwork in order to excavate the genealogies of places.

Advocating that archaeology can contribute substantively to the study of places in many fields of research and engagement within the humanities and the social sciences, this book seeks to move beyond the oft-conceived notion of places as fixed and unchanging, and argues that places are always unfinished, emergent, and hybrid. Rock cut monuments of Anatolian antiquity are discussed in the historical and micro-regional context of their making at the time of the Hittite Empire and its aftermath, while the book also investigates how such rock-cut places, springs, and caves are associated with new forms of storytelling, holy figures, miracles, and healing in their post-antique life. Anybody wishing to understand places of cultural significance both archaeologically as well as through current theoretical lenses such as heritage studies, ethnography of landscapes, social memory, embodied and sensory experience of the world, post-colonialism, political ecology, cultural geography, sustainability, and globalization will find the case studies and research within this book a doorway to exploring places in new and rewarding ways.

People are drawn to places where geology performs its miracles: ice-cold spring waters gushing from the rock, mysterious caves which act as conduits for ancestors and divinities traveling back and forth to the underworld, sacred bodies of water where communities make libations and offer sacrifices. This volume presents a series of archaeological landscapes from the Iranian highlands to the Anatolian Plateau, and from the Mediterranean borderlands to Mesoamerica. Contributors all have a deep interest in the making and the long-term history of unorthodox places of human interaction with the mineral world, specifically the landscapes of rocks and water. Working with rock reliefs, sacred springs and lakes, caves, cairns, ruins and other meaningful places, they draw attention to the need for a rigorous field methodology and theoretical framework for working with such special places. At a time when network models, urban-centered and macro-scale perspectives dominate discussions of ancient landscapes, this unusual volume takes us to remote, unmappable places of cultural practice, social imagination and political appropriation. It offers not only a diverse set of case studies approaching small meaningful places in their special geological grounding, but also suggests new methodologies and interpretive approaches to understand places and the processes of place-making.

From the mid-20th century onwards, consolidated study of the merchant archives from the Old Assyrian trading colony at Kaneš (Kültepe) has not only transformed our understanding of the social, economic and political dynamics of the Bronze Age Near East, but also overturned many preconceived notions of what constitutes pre-modern trade. Despite this disciplinary impact and archaeological investigations at Kultepe and elsewhere, our understanding of this phenomenon has remained largely text-based and therefore of limited analytical scope, both spatially and contextually. This book re-assesses the Old-Assyrian trade network in Upper Mesopotamia and Central Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1970 – 1700 BC) by combining in some analytical detail the archaeology (e.g. material culture, settlement data, etc.) of the region both on its own terms and via a range of spatial approaches. The author offers a comparative and spatial perspective on exchange networks and economic strategies, continuity and discontinuity of specific trade circuits and routes, and the evolution of political landscapes throughout the Near East in the Middle Bronze Age.

For over forty years the dominant view within scholarship has maintained that Deuteronomy 13 is a composition of the seventh century BCE. Remarkable similarities of language and norms exist between the apostasy laws of Deuteronomy 13 and the disloyalty provisions set out in section 10 of the Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon of 672 BCE. So compelling are the parallels of phraseology, so clearly defined is the historical setting, that Richard Nelson speaks for the consensus when he writes in his Deuteronomy commentary, “[Deuteronomy 13] breathes the atmosphere of Assyrian treaty documents, paralleling the requirements for loyalty found in them… The similarities between this chapter and VTE are so close that a deliberate imitation of Assyrian forms is nearly certain.” In this paper I propose that a more compelling backdrop for the apostasy laws of Deuteronomy 13 can be located in the Late Bronze Hittite vassal treaty tradition. Although Hittite treaty forms were a subject of keen interest in the 1960’s, crucial material has come to light since that has been largely ignored by the scholarship until now. I will draw attention to the sedition stipulations of the Hittite treaties that closely match the apostasy laws of Deuteronomy 13. In case after case we may see that the Hittite parallels are closer in content and in form to the laws of Deuteronomy 13 than are the parallels from the Neo-Assyrian tradition.

The end of the Hittite Empire and the destruction and abandonment of Alalakh represents a cultural break between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the ‘Amuq Valley.

In the Iron I, a population with clear ties to the greater Aegean world, perhaps related to the Philistines of southern Canaan, established an agro-pastoral settlement at Tell Ta‘yinat and the surrounding area. This occupation, marked by Field Phases 6 through 3 at Ta‘yinat, was both materially and chronologically ephemeral, and should be viewed as a cultural outlier sandwiched between the Hittite–controlled LBA and later Iron I. This intrusive population lived alongside the indigenous inhabitants of the ‘Amuq, bequeathing to the region a toponym – Palastin – that would far outlast their own relevance and archaeological visibility.

By the First Building Period at Tell Ta‘yinat, which immediately followed the Aegean-related phases, the site was home to a dynasty overseeing a typical Neo-Hittite state, with its toponym all that remained of the ‘Sea Peoples’ presence that occupied it at the beginning of the Iron Age.

Documents written in cuneiform script are one of the largest sources about ancient history. The script is written by imprinting wedges (Latin: cunei) into clay tablets and was used for almost four millennia. This three-dimensional script is typically transcribed by hand with ink on paper. These transcriptions are available in large quantities as raster graphics by online sources like the Cuneiform Database Library Initative (CDLI). Within this article we present an approach to extract Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in 2D from raster images as we previously did from 3D models. This enlarges our basis of data sets for tasks like word-spotting. In the first step of vectorizing the raster images we extract smooth outlines and a minimal graph representation of sets of wedges, i.e., main components of cuneiform characters. Then we discretize these outlines followed by a Delaunay triangulation to extract skeletons of sets of connected wedges. To separate the sets into single wedges we experimented with different conflict resolution strategies and candidate pruning. A thorough evaluation of our methods and its parameters on real word data shows that the wedges are extracted with a true positive rate of 0.98. At the same time the false positive rate is 0.2, which requires future extension by using statistics about geometric configurations of wedge sets.

During the 2009 survey season in the Plain of Iskenderun, a storage jar handle with a seal impression bearing Anatolian hieroglyphic signs was found on the lower western slopes of Dağılbaz Höyük (Site 45), located located near the Kişla Köy village southeast of the modern city of İskenderun. The impression, which is quite well preserved, belongs to a flat, round stamp seal. It consists of five Anatolian hierglyphic signs in two columns and dates to 15th–14th centuries BCE. This would indicate that in the İskenderun Plain the adoption of the Anatolian hieroglyphic script predates the Syrian campaigns of the Great King Šuppiluliuma I to the region and is not directly connected to the installation of the imperial provincial administration south of the Taurus Mountains.