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Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East
Hans J. Nissan, Peter Damerow and Robert Englund, translated by Paul Larsen
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1993), 169 pp., $34.95.
Anyone interested in the economic life of ancient Babylonia, or in the roots of science, mathematics and writing, would probably appreciate this book. Based on an exhibition catalog of previously unexamined tablets of proto-cuneiform script, it is illustrated with black-and-white photographs of nearly every tablet discussed in the text and with detailed explanatory drawings of their decipherment. This book reports on how the latest computer-assisted decipherment methods have revolutionized our understanding of the earliest writing systems—proto-cuneiform and cuneiform, developed in fourth millennium Babylonia (present-day southern Iraq). The information contained on these tablets reveals much about the social context and function of notation, including how the development of written records influenced patterns of thought, the concept of number and the administration of household economies.
Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies, Avraham Malamat Volume (24)
ed. Shmuel Ahituv and Baruch A. Levine
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993), 433 pp., $90.
Assembled to honor scholar Avraham Malamat (Hebrew University) on his 70th birthday, this latest volume from the Israel Exploration Society offers 59 papers on the archaeology and history of the land of Israel. Half of the papers are in Hebrew, a few are in French or German and the remainder are in English; English summaries are provided for all the non-English papers. BAR readers will recognize many of the contributors, including William Dever, Trude Dothan, Hanan Eshel, David Noel Freedman, Aharon Kempinski, Alan Millard, Anson Rainey, Ephraim Stern and David Ussishkin. Among the papers that might interest BAR readers are “Games in the Biblical World” by William Hallo, “The Exodus and the Israelite Historians” by Baruch Halpern and “The Tabernacle—A Bronze Age Artefact” by Kenneth A. Kitchen.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
verse rendition by Danny P. Jackson, illustrated by Thom Kapheim
(Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1992), 101 pp., $35 cloth, $15 paper.
“Fame haunts the man who visits Hell. … So like a sage, a trickster or saint, GILGAMESH was a hero who knew secrets and saw forbidden places, who could even speak of the time before the Flood because he lived long, learned much, and spoke his life to those who first cut into clay his bird-like words.” So begins this lyrical retelling of the oldest of epics, the 4,000-year-old Meso-potamian myth of the hero Gilgamesh, who fought with the gods, slew his best friend and searched for immortality in the lands beyond the seas (and who may have been a real ruler of the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk during the third millennium B.C.). Aiming to make this archaic story more accessible, the book features an introduction replete with black-and-white archaeological photographs to help create the context of the story; gorgeous colored woodcuts illustrate the text; and flowing, vivid verse enhances the translation. Presented as a finished literary work, this version does not contain any scholarly apparatus, alternative readings or ellipses to show gaps in the text.
Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East
