Oxbow Spring 2013.pdf - Oxbow Books

The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia
A New Beginning for the Middle East
Irving Finkel (Author); John Curtis (Author); Neil MacGregor (Translator)
The Cyrus Cylinder is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient
world. The Cylinder was inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform on the orders of the Persian
King Cyrus the Great after he captured Babylon in 539BC. It is often referred to as
the first bill of human rights as it appears to permit freedom of worship throughout
the Persian Empire and to allow deported people to return to their homelands. This
catalogue is being published in conjunction with the first ever tour of the object to the
United States, along with sixteen other objects from the British Museum’s collection.
This book discusses how these objects demonstrate the innovations initiated by Persian
rule in the Ancient Near East and offers a new authoritative translation of the Cyrus
Cylinder by Irving Finkel. Two fragments of a cuneiform tablet show how the Cyrus
Cylinder was most probably a proclamation and not just a foundation deposit.
9780714111872, £18.99, April 2013
HB, 144p, 110 col illus., British Museum Press
Heaven on Earth
Temples, Ritual, and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World
Deena Ragavan (Editor)
The volume is the result of the eighth Annual University of Chicago Oriental
Institute Seminar, held on March 2–3, 2012. Seventeen speakers, from both the
US and abroad, examined the interconnections between temples, ritual, and
cosmology from a variety of regional specializations and theoretical perspectives.
The seminar revisited a classic topic, one with a long history among scholars of
the ancient world: the cosmic symbolism of sacred architecture. Archaeologists,
art historians, and philologists working not only in the ancient Near East, but
also Mesoamerica, Greece, South Asia, and China, re-evaluated the significance
of this topic across the ancient world.
19 chapters are divided into seven parts: Part I: Architecture and Cosmology; Part II: Built Space
and Natural Forms; Part III: Myth and Movement; Part IV: Sacred Space and Ritual Practice;
Part V: Architecture, Power, and the State; Part VI: Images of Ritual ; Part VII: Responses
9781885923967, £18.00, April 2013, PB, 460p, 189 illus., Oriental Institute Seminars 9,
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
Ancient Near East
20
Early Megiddo on the East Slope (The “Megiddo Stages”)
A Report on the Early Occupation of the East Slope of Megiddo. Result of the
Oriental Institute’s Excavations, 1925–1933
Eliot Braun (Author); Sariel Shalev (Author); David Ilan (Author); Ofer Marder (Author)
This report completes prior publications by Clarence S. Fisher (1929), P. L. O. Guy
(1931), Robert M. Engberg and Geoffrey M. Shipton (1934a), and P. L. O. Guy
and Robert M. Engberg (1938) on the earliest utilization and occupation of the
slope at the southeast base of the high mound of Megiddo (Tell el-Mutesellim).
That area, labeled by the excavators the “East Slope,” and identified by them
in their notations as “ES,” was excavated by the Oriental Institute between the
years 1925, when work commenced, and 1933, when the last of it was apparently
cleared down to bedrock. While the primary focus of this report is on Square
U16 (an area of 25 × 25 m), where most of the early remains (i.e., of the Early
Bronze Age and earlier) excluding tombs were encountered, this work also deals
with the later remains within that same, limited precinct.
9789491431074, £42, August 2012
9781885923981, £55.00, June 2013, HB, 156p, 138 figures, 120 plates, 21 tables
HB, 475p, Groningen Archaeological Studies 19, Barkhuis
Oriental Institute Publications 139, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago