Hemp! Thread, cloth and a calendar

Hemp cultivation and hempen cloth is the main theme of this paper. Iron Age textile fragments from the Southern Levant indicate that most textiles were made of some kind of plant fiber. Traditionally this region was regarded as linen territory, and indeed most textile finds were registered as such. The difference between linen and hemp is difficult to tell even with a regular microscope. But when using a scanning electron microscope, the difference becomes visible. This technique sheds new light on the use of bast fibers in the region. A piece of fabric from Tell Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley was the first item that could be registered as hempen cloth from the Southern Levant. The textile fragment was found amidst the loom weights of the loom on which it was woven, which raises new questions. Was the textile made of local hemp grown in the Jordan Valley? To answer this question, the cultivation of hemp will be discussed in relation to soil and climatic conditions of the central Jordan Valley. To investigate if growing hemp would fit into the farmers year course a ‘Deir Alla Agricultural Calendar’ was designed, based on the Gezer Calendar, a Hebrew inscription on limestone dated to ca. 925 BCE. Finally stalks of fiber hemp and examples of hempen thread and fabric will reveal how the material looks and… feels.

The “poisonous water” (mê rʾōš) in Jer 8:14 and the “bewitched water” (mê kaššāpūti) in Maqlû i 103-104: witchcraft in the book of Jeremiah

Some scholars consider the biblical phrase mê rʾōš (“poisonous water”) a metaphor for the venom of a snake, others interpret it as a poisonous substance produced by pressing herbs and still, others believe it to be a metaphor for the destruction of the people Israel and their land. In the book of Jeremiah in particular, the phrase mê rʾōš appears three times (8:14, 9:15, and 23:15) and in all cases, it appears in execratory contexts. Numerous studies have put this phrase in relation to the trial ordeal in Numbers 5:11-31, and have therefore recognized its execratory nature, yet, to my knowledge, no one has ever studied it against the background of the Neo-Assyrian magical tradition. Accordingly, the expression “poisonous water” may have magical nuances attached to it. For example, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that curses could be passed to the victim by means of food or drink. In this analysis, I argue that the expression mê rʾōš may have the function that the Akkadian phrase mê kaššāpūti (“bewitched water”) has in Assyrian anti-witchcraft rituals where the administration of a poisonous drink symbolized the nullification of a curse as it was believed that the bewitched potion given to the evildoer returned to him the evil he had intended for his victim. In my talk, I will analyze the theme of the transfer of the curse through liquids and food in select Assyrian literature. I will then show how the book of Jeremiah redeployed this Assyrian theme to articulate its theological offensive against the harmful effects of the oracular utterances of illegitimate Prophets.

The Goddess on the Vezirhan Stele

The stele from Vezirhan (Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 6219+71.27) is best known for its Old Phrygian and Greek inscriptions (B-05). However, its reliefs also pose an interesting challenge. They include a boar hunt, a ritual banquet scene, and a human figure, commonly identified as a goddess, with lions, birds, and a palmette-like motif “sprouting” from her head. The stele is dated to the late 5th–early 4th century BC. The hunt and banquet scenes clearly belong to this time (and find many parallels on votive and funerary reliefs and seals of Hellespontine Phrygia). The image of the goddess, however, continues a different tradition, one that possibly stems from an earlier period. The Vezirhan goddess doesn’t have a singular prototype, but displays connections to a wide variety of iconographical schemes and details. Most are found in the 7th–6th centuries BC arts of Anatolia and the Aegean. By examining this corpus, with special focus on the Potnia theron iconographic type, we understand that the Vezirhan goddess is related to other deities attested in Anatolia (in fact, her name might have been a variation of Artemis, according to line 3 of the Phrygian inscription). Yet, she cannot be identified with any of them directly. For all matches, there are also differences. A certain creative effort was made to distinguish the goddess from her peers, possibly to reflect her local cult. In my talk, I would like to unfold this synthetic image, examine its components, and try to put them back together – and hopefully gain some insight into how the Vezirhan goddess’ iconographic scheme came to be.

The Hittite Notion of Border. A practical view

The Hittite cuneiform texts (16th-12th cent. BCE) contain a number of detailed descriptions of borders of various countries and territories. Such fragments, mainly found in the international treaties as well as the annals of the kings, clearly reflect the particular formal interest on the part of the Hittite rulers in specific delimitation of political territories. Although the Hittite listings of the topographical points, which make up a frontier can extend over many lines of texts, one never finds any use of cardinal directions which would indicate the position of these points. Instead, the Hittite scribes applied a peculiar internal reference system that combines the position of the speaker and another point of reference in order to locate a specific part of the border. The talk will briefly review the corpus of the Hittite border descriptions and discuss how such fragments were conceptualized. It will also tackle the question, whether they reflect a ‘bird’s eye’, cartographic view of the land, or rather a ground-level, hodological perspective.

Onomastic interferences in Lycia: Greek reinterpretation of Lycian personal names

As is well known, Lycia, located on the south-western coast of Asia Minor, was a multicultural and polyglossian area, especially during the second half of the Ist millennium B.C. From the 4th century B.C. onwards — that is before Alexander’s conquests — Greek writing and language became more and more predominant in that region, as a language of prestige, to the detriment of Lycian, which is an Anatolian language related to Luwian and Hittite. Although most of the indigenous personal names persisted in Lycia until the first centuries A.D., as evidenced by their large number found in Greek inscriptions from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, some of them underwent a little transformation in order to look like Greek names. This process, which is common in a context of language contact, consists in adopting a homophonic or phonetically similar name or element of the name, called “cover name” or, in French, “nom d’assonance” (see Dondin-Payre and Raepsaet-Charlier 2001; Coşkun and Zeidler 2005). One famous example of this type of onomastic adaptation from one language to another is the name of the Mede general who invaded Asia Minor, known in the Greek sources as Ἅρπαγος (Harpagos): the underlying Iranian name is derived from the adjective arba- “small, young” (cf. Sanskrit arbha-) with the hypocoristic suffix -ka-, but it has been slightly modified in its Greek adaptation in order to get it closer to the Greek substantive ἁρπαγή (harpagē) “pillaging”, so the enemy conqueror is reduced to a simple plunderer. I intend to present and discuss some Lycian names adapted as cover names in Greek, like Purihimeti ⁓ Πυριβάτης, with a second element -βάτης (-batēs), cf. verb βαίνω (bainō) “to walk”, and well attested in typical Greek personal names (Bechtel 1917: 92). The other names that will be interpreted are Kuprlle/i- ⁓ Κοπριλις (Koprilis), cf. Κοπρύλος (Koprulos), but also Κύβερνις (Kubernis), Mizu- ⁓ Μεσος (Mesos), cf. μέσος (mesos) “middle”, and Xddazada- ⁓ Κτασασας (Ktasadas), cf. Κτᾱσι- / Κτησι- (Ktāsi- / Ktēsi-).

Ionians and Carians in an Aramaic Letter from Saqqâra: Notes for a Tentative Interpretation of NSaqPap 26

This paper aims to present preliminary textual and historical observations towards a more comprehensive interpretation of a late 5th-4th cent. BC fragmentary letter of a Persian official from the corpus of Aramaic papyri of Saqqâra (NSaqPap 26). The understanding of this document, which deals with some situation of turbulence arisen between the Persian administration at Memphis/Saqqâra and the Ionians and Carians who lived and worked on the spot, is rendered complicated by the poor conditions of preservation of the papyrus, whose top and right portions are lost. Apart from the editio princeps by J.B. Segal (Aramaic Texts from North Saqqâra, London 1983, no. 26) and few additional notes in the reviews of it by J. Teixidor (JAOS1985) and S. Shaked (Orientalia1987), specific contributions on the piece are lacking. More in particular, despite its relevance to the study of the long-established communities of Greeks and Carians in Egypt, the letter has not received yet an adequate treatment from the historical point of view. Following a lexical and syntactical revision, I provide a new tentative translation of the text, with the aim to reach as thorough and coherent an interpretation of the document as possible, and to shed further light on the living conditions of the communities of Ionians and Carians in Egypt under the Persian rule. By further contextualizing the events described in the letter with the aid of external sources, I argue for a mercenary revolt that affected the storehouses at the port of Memphis as the situation that prompted the response of the local Persian administration.

The Mountain Fortresses of Rabana-Merquly in Iraqi-Kurdistan

The twin fortresses of Rabana-Merquly are situated on the western side of Mt. Piramagrun, one of the most prominent massifs in the Zagros Mountains. A defining feature of these adjoining settlements are their matching, approximately life-size rock-reliefs depicting a ruler in Parthian dress, which flank the entrance to both sites. Behind the perimeter walls several structures have been recorded including a citadel and a sanctuary complex. The combined intramural area is in excess of 40 hectares. Based on the style of relief sculptures, and the material culture of their associated intramural settlements, occupation is dated to the early first millennium A.D. Investigations at Rabana-Merquly are a collaboration between Heidelberg University and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities. This talk gives an overview of the main fieldwork results to date, emphasizing the relationship between the fortified settlements and the wider landscape of the central Zagros highlands.

On the Aramaic Onomasticon in the Cuneiform Text Corpus

Most of the Aramaic onomasticon is not located in extant alphabetic sources, but instead can be found in cuneiform sources. In order to learn more about the reach of Aramaic through the individuals using it as a spoken language during the first half of the first millennium BCE, we must attend to the Aramaic personal names that appear in this much larger corpus of texts and inscriptions. Using a method that considers both linguistic and conceptual criteria, this paper compiles and analyzes possible Aramaic names that appear in the cuneiform text corpus and culminates with an updated list of the genuine Aramaic onomasticon. Ultimately, this paper provides insight that may be used in identifying West Semitic and other foreign onomastica in the cuneiform text corpus. My talk presents the results of this paper, which emerges from a much larger study of Aramaic names in the first millennium BCE.

Mesopotamian medical information in the divination series Šumma ālu

The proposed communication aims at presenting the preliminary results of my pilot research project “Mesopotamian medical notions in the divination series Šumma ālu”. Thanks to the endowment of a Henri Frankfort Short-Term Fellowship, I have conducted this study at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (January-April 2019). The aim of this research was to conduct a first survey of all medical-related information comprised in the terrestrial omens of the series Šumma ālu. Medical sources provide useful information to the reconstruction of Babylonian scientific and intellectual history; however, if considered alone, they do not allow us to understand various aspects of medical rationale. For this reason, scholars have been interested also in sources outside the medical corpus. I decided to follow their footsteps by focusing on Šumma ālu, which has been labelled as an encyclopaedia for every aspect of ancient Mesopotamian everyday life. This line of enquiry has never been attempted before, as the medical corpus has been compared usually with magic, not divination. Moreover, the difficulties embodied by the processes of the textual edition of the divination series have slowed its accessibility. However, the edition of the first half of Šumma ālu has been completed recently, and two ongoing projects (Geneva, Vienna) are aimed at completing this task. The communication will present the general context of this pilot project, its preliminary results and its possible future developments.

The Materiality of Cylinder Seals

In the 1980ies Dr. Julia Asher-Greve conducted chemical and mineralogical material analysis on cylinder seals as a part of her SNF-funded project „Naturwissenschaftliche und typologische Untersuchungen an Rollsiegeln“. 1017 seals have been analysed using the non-destructive methods of EDS-XFA (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis) for chemical classification and XRF (X-ray diffraction) for mineralogical classification. This was one of the first large scale projects on Mesopotamian glyptic with its main focus on materiality rather than style, iconography or inscription as was usually the case when working on cylinder seals. Since then much work on the materiality of seals has been done, mostly by institutions such as the British Museum. This is because those institutions have access to large seal corpora and they either have the funds to pay for the costly analysis or possess the means to analyse the seals themselves. As I ‘inherited’ the unfinished project of Dr. Asher-Greve including the analysis (which still need to be interpreted), I am painfully aware of the difficulties and problems to be encountered with such old analysis. In my 10-minute talk I will give an insight to the chances and limitations of scientific material analysis on archaeological artefacts. For especially small and precious objects like cylinder seals need to be treated with the uttermost care and under no circumstances should they take damage in the process of being analysed.