Thesiss

1 Kings 21:1-16 tells the story of Naboth, who loses his life and inherited vineyard through the subversion of his town's judiciary processes by royal hands and local political corruption. The narrative raises larger questions about power over land, particularly the relationship…

This dissertation analyzes the transmission and reception of Mesopotamian scholarly texts at the city of Emar in Syria at the close of the Late Bronze Age. It begins by setting the wide socio-historical context, explaining that Mesopotamian scholarly texts were transmitted all a…

Both the textual record and the archaeological record from the ancient Mesopotamia provide evidence for a rich array of human activities over more than three millennia. The vast majority of known cuneiform tablets lack secure archaeological provenience, and few large groups of t…

Most inclusively translated as “fate” or “destiny,” the Akkadian word shimtu, occurring widely throughout ancient Mesopotamian literature, discloses a world view wherein one's fate was regarded as having been predetermined in the impersonal primordial cosmos. The tuppi shimti, m…