Urbanism on the margins: third millennium BC Al-Rawda in the arid zone of Syria

Antiquity ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (313) ◽  
pp. 601-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Castel ◽  
Edgar Peltenburg
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Arid Zone ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Environmental Constraints ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc

The Fertile Crescent of the Ancient Near East is well known for its early cities in irrigated farming regions. Here the authors describe the recent discovery and investigation of a planned, circular, mid/late–third millennium BC city beyond the limit of rain-fed cultivation in the arid zone of inner Syria. Founded on the initiative of an unknown power and served by pastoralists and cultivators, the research at Al-Rawda demonstrates how environmental constraints were overcome in order to establish and sustain new centres in demanding regions at a time of maximum urbanisation.

Regime Change in the Ancient Near East and Egypt

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Islamic

The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet it is a subject that has largely been ignored by modern scholarship. These chapters, covering more than 4,000 years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran. Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from late third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for modern geopolitics.

scholarly journals Influences of Egyptian Lotus Symbolism and Ritualistic Practices on Sacral Tree Worship in the Fertile Crescent from 1500 BCE to 200 CE

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 256 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Water Lily ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Fertile Crescent

Many conventional features of world tree motifs in the ancient Near East—including stalked palmettes, aureoles of water lily palmettes connected by pliant stems, floral rosettes, winged disks and bud-and-blossom motifs—trace largely from Egyptian practices in lotus symbolism around 2500 BCE, more than a millennium before they appear, migrate and dominate plant symbolism across the Fertile Crescent from 1500 BCE to 200 CE. Several of these motifs were associated singularly or collectively with the Egyptian sema-taui and ankh signs to symbolize the eternal recurrence and everlasting lives of Nilotic lotus deities and deceased pharaohs. The widespread use of lotus imagery in iconographic records on both sides of the Red Sea indicates strong currents of cultural diffusion between Nilotic and Mesopotamian civilizations, as does the use of lotus flowers in religious rituals and the practice of kingship, evidence for which is supported by iconographic, cuneiform and biblical records. This perspective provides new insights into sacral tree symbolism and its role in mythic legacies of Egypt and the Middle East before and during the advent of Christianity. Closer scholarly scrutiny is still needed to fully comprehend the underlying meaning of immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia.

Early iron metallurgy in Anatolia

1999 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 177-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ünsal Yalçın
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Pure Iron ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc

The beginning of the Iron Age is generally dated to the last quarter of the second millennium BC in Anatolia and the Near East. The development of iron metallurgy allowed many tools and weapons to be produced in this period. The earliest iron finds, which are not more than a dozen, occur in the third millennium BC in Anatolia (Waldbaum 1980 discusses these early finds). Considering that pure iron occurs rarely in nature, the most important question is: what were these objects made of? Preliminary analyses of a few Bronze Age finds show that some of them contain nickel. Because of this it is generally accepted and frequently cited that these finds were made of meteoric iron.

Sumerian Theology and Ethics

1956 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Noah Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Systematic Philosophy ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Origin Of The Universe

The sumerians failed to develop a systematic philosophy in the accepted sense of the word. In particular it never occurred to them to raise any questions concerning the fundamental nature of reality and knowledge, and therefore they evolved practically nothing corresponding to the philosophical subdivisions commonly known as metaphysics and epistemology. They did, however, speculate on the nature and, more particularly, the origin of the universe, as well as on its method of operation. And there is good reason to infer that in the course of the third millennium B.C. there emerged a group of Sumerian thinkers and teachers who, in the course of their quest for satisfactory answers to some of the problems raised by their cosmic speculations, evolved a systematic cosmology and theology carrying such high intellectual conviction that they became the basic creed and dogma of much of the ancient Near East.

scholarly journals On grain, bones, and Khabur collapse

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 201-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Koliński
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Near East ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Proxy Data ◽  
Volcano Eruption ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc ◽  
Environmental Proxies ◽  
Accurate Reconstruction

A hypothesis on the total collapse of the settlement in Northern Syria at the end of the third millennium BC, put forward in 1993 by Harvey Weiss and his team, is one of the most disputed issues in the protohistoric archaeology of North Mesopotamia. Today it is obvious that the crisis has not been as general as Weiss believed. Also his original explanation of the cause of this event (volcano eruption in the Near East) is generally doubted. The author discusses the present state of knowledge of the archaeology of this period as well as proxy data used for environmental reconstructions, because an environmental crisis is considered to be the most likely cause of the decline in settlement. One of the aims of the paper is to propose new sources for environmental proxies, which may help in the formulation of a more accurate reconstruction of environmental trends in the Near East in general.

A Group of Terracotta Wagon Models from Southeastern Anatolia

1986 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 165-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Engin Özgen
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Technological Evolution ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Considerable Period

Four-wheeled wagons, which can be considered as one of the major breakthroughs of man's technological evolution and range over a considerable period of time, seem to appear as pictographic signs on inscribed clay tablets from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium B.C. These simple vehicles which are depicted with a roofed superstructure were probably drawn by a pair of bovids the existence of which is attested in the ancient Near East both by literary sources and osteologically. The evidence for four-wheeled wagons, this time without a roof, becomes extensive in the following millennium as represented on the “Standard of Ur”, the “Vulture Stele”, specimens of vase painting, sealing and seals, terracotta and metal wagon models and actual wagon remains. In the beginning of the third millennium B.C. they are depicted in military contexts, hence the name “battle cars”, whereas there is no evidence for a similar use towards the end of the period and following millennia. It seems that they were relegated to cult use in the later third millennium B.C. and continued to the early second millennium B.C.

scholarly journals Tainted ores and the rise of tin bronzes in Eurasia,c. 6500 years ago

Antiquity ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (338) ◽  
pp. 1030-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miljana Radivojević ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković ◽  
Marija Jovanović ◽  
J. Peter Northover
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Tin Bronze ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc ◽  
Culture Site

The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making byc. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.

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