Publications

This monograph is the product of Stern's two decades of excavation at Tel Dor on the Carmel Coast, a city that Egyptian sources indicate was ruled in the eleventh century BCE by a Sikil king. Near the end of the period during which he directed excavations there, Stern began to notice the unique material culture of the Northern Sea Peoples and connected this material with discoveries in adjacent regions and in the north of Israel. A related survey of the ‘Akko Valley conducted by Avner Raban resulted in a further accumulation of data that supported the conclusion that the Sea Peoples that Egyptian sources indicated had settled in this region had in fact left behind evidence of their presence. This realization preceded the appearance of additional information—both material culture and inscriptions—that reflected the presence of Northern Sea Peoples throughout portions of northern Syria and southern Anatolia.

Two main principles guide Stern's study. (1) Historical sources provide the best evidence for contemporary events—in this case, specifically, the evidence concerns the Sikils and Sherden, as well as biblical sources that refer to Northern Sea Peoples as "Philistines" and that recount their wars with Israel in the north of the land, in the Jezreel Valley, and in Gilboa. (2) Ethnic archaeology is a genuine concept: every people that settles in any area naturally leaves marks of its own culture. The conclusion that is traced here, then, is that the culture of the Northern Sea Peoples, though difficult to identify, nonetheless did leave clear evidence that becomes apparent when the relevant strata at sites along the coast from the Yarkon and farther north and in the 'Akko and Jezreel Valleys are examined.

In this volume Stern presents the most complete picture that can be drawn from the evidence uncovered in the past few decades. Lavish illustrations accompany the discussion.

Professor Huehnergard's key to his extensive Akkadian Grammar will be welcomed by teacher and student alike. Please note that this third edition of the key is a revision that complements the third edition of the Grammar, incorporating a number of corrections.

This study offers a synchronic and diachronic account of the Biblical Hebrew verbal tense system during the Second Temple period, based on the books of Esther, Daniel, and Ezra and Nehemiah, along with the non-synoptic parts of Chronicles. In analyzing the development of this system, Cohen discerns the changes that mark the transition from the classical era to the Second Temple period.

The book is divided into two main parts: a survey of previous research along with the methodology of the present study; and a descriptive analysis of the verbal system in late biblical prose literature. In the first section, the author discusses the eclectic nature of the biblical corpus, including the ramifications of this heterogeneity on linguistic efforts to for­mulate a synchronic structural account of its texts. Moreover, he surveys the principal linguistic concepts of tense, aspect, and mood, and the ver­bal paradigm’s complex nature. The second part of the book offers a synchronic account of the Second Temple period verbal system. It features a categorical breakdown and analysis of all the verb forms in the corpus’s prose texts. The author examines the reasons behind these changes by dint of a diachronic comparison with other strata of the Hebrew language—namely, biblical texts of the First Temple period, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the language of the Sages.

This book will be widely welcomed by students and scholars of Biblical Hebrew, Comparative Semitics, and linguistics.

In this volume, Dr. Michael D. Press publishes the complete Iron Age corpus of terracotta anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines from the Leon Levy Expedition. Adapting a methodology of typology, iconography, and iconology, Press lays out his theoretical framework for analyzing and understanding the figurines of Ashkelon and those from Philistine cultures. Throughout this study, which covers nearly six centuries of Philistine life, the well-dated archaeological contexts of the figurines are stressed as much as their form and decoration. With an uncanny eye for form and detail, Press succeeds in changing our understanding of Philistine iconography while providing a model of method and theory that could be applied to the coroplastic art of many cultures.

New: Seven high-resolutions scans are now available online for browsing key images of the pyramid of Unas in detail: Antechamber, North Wall (right) and West Wall | Antechamber, West Wall | Sarcophagus Chamber, East Wall | Sarcophagus Chamber, West Wall | Sarcophagus Chamber, West Gable, center | Antechamber, East Wall, upper | Antechamber, East Wall, lower

The earliest connected Semitic texts known to modern scholars are usually thought to be East Semitic texts from Mesopotamia, written in the cuneiform script. In this monograph, Richard C. Steiner deciphers Semitic texts that are even earlier--Northwest Semitic texts in hieroglyphic script that have been "hiding in plain sight" among the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom.

The Semitic texts are embedded in two series of Egyptian spells designed to protect the king's mummy against snakes. They are orthographically distinct from the rest of the Pyramid Texts, characterized by exceptional phonetic spelling reminiscent of the "group writing" used to write foreign names and texts in later times. Most editors of the Pyramid Texts have considered them unintelligible.

The Semitic and Egyptian passages in these spells are mutually elucidating. The Egyptian context contains phrases that reveal the meaning of corresponding Semitic phrases as well as clues that reveal the origin of the texts. The Semitic, in turn, helps to clarify the Egyptian, bringing a degree of cohesiveness and order to a group of spells that previously seemed like a hodgepodge. As Robert K. Ritner writes in his foreword to the monograph: "We have thus gone from a string of isolated invocations, many of them gibberish, to a coherent logically constructed, tripartite ritual with a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. This seems to me a remarkable advance."

In the third edition of A Grammar of Akkadian, changes have been made in the section on the nom­i­n­al morpheme -ån (§20.2) and the sections on the meaning of the D stem (§24.3) and the Gt stem (§33.1(b)); these revisions reflect recent scholarship in Akkadian grammar. For those who have earlier editions of the book, pdfs of these revisions are available here (PDF).

Other changes include minor revisions in wording in the presentation of the grammar in a few other sections; a number of new notes to some of the readings; additions to the glosses of a small number of words in the lesson vocabularies (and the Glossary and English–Akkadian word list); and updates of the resources available for the study of Akkadian, and of the bibliography.

A new appendix (F) has been added, giving Hebrew and other Semitic cognates of the Akkadian words in the lesson vocabularies. This appendix is also available here (PDF).

The pagination of the first and second editions has for the most part been retained, apart from the insertion of the new appendix and a few minor deviations elsewhere.

This book is the first wide-ranging study of the grammar of the Babylonian Aramaic used in the Talmud and post-Talmudic Babylonian literature (henceforth: Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic) to be published in English in a century. The book takes as its starting point the long-recognized problem of the corrupt nature of the later textual witnesses of Babylonian Rabbinic literature and seeks both to establish criteria for the identification of accurate textual witnesses and describe the grammar of Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic. The book is both programmatic and descriptive: it lays the foundations for future research into the dialect while clarifying numerous points of grammar, many of which have not been discussed systematically in the available scholarly literature.

Following a critical survey of the currently available scholarly tools, the book considers the rôle of the Yemenite textual and reading traditions in the study of Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic. While some previous authorities have regarded this tradition as a primary source for grammatical study of the dialect, by comparing the data of the earliest manuscripts to the forms employed in the Yemenite traditions, the present book demonstrates that the Yemenite traditions have been subject to secondary changes. Accordingly, it is concluded here that only the early eastern manuscripts preserve the dialect in its original form.

The next chapter considers the problem of linguistic variation within the corpus. It is well established that the Talmudic literature employs a wide range of alternative grammatical forms. Several explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. Some authorities have suggested that it arises from dialectal differences, while others have proposed that it represents the use of different literary registers. An alternative explanation is that the language was altered during the course of textual transmission. This study shows that none of these explanations can account for the wide extent of the phenomenon, which is found in the best textual witnesses and in ostensibly uniform contexts. It is argued that all of proposed explanations may partially account for the interchanges but, ultimately, the lack of a literary standard leads to the use of different forms.

Syntax is often regarded as being one of the linguistic areas least affected by textual transmission. However, the early manuscripts show that Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic employs a defined series of syntactic structures to mark the direct object. This clearly defined complimentary distribution is lost in the later textual witnesses, which use the structures interchangeably. It is thus shown that, for syntactic study, too, only a small group of textual witnesses can be regarded as reliable.

Ashkelon 3: The Seventh Century B.C, written by Lawrence E. Stager, Daniel M. Master, and J. David Schloen has won of the 2012 Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize. The Irene Levi-Sala Book prize award is dedicated by the Sala Family Trust, London, to the memory of Dr. Irene Levi-Sala, who was a gifted archaeologist and maintained a keen interest in the culture and archaeology of Israel. The purpose of this prestigious prize is to encourage and reward high quality publications, both scholarly and popular, on the archaeology of Israel against the wider context of Near Eastern history and archaeology.

The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon continues its final report series with a study of the city destroyed in the campaign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar in December of 604 B.C. In this era, Ashkelon’s markets linked land routes from the southeast to a web of international Mediterranean merchants, and this volume describes the Iron Age bazaar where shopkeepers sold the goods of Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Judah. In addition, in another part of the city, a winery produced a homegrown vintage for distribution abroad.

This volume spans more than 800 full-color pages illustrating the range of imported and local artifacts recovered by more than ten years of excavation. The twenty-eight chapters, by more than two dozen contributors, combine to describe Ashkelon’s pivotal role in the economy and politics of the late seventh century B.C. As such, Ashkelon 3: The Seventh Century B.C. is a indispensable resource for those interested in the Iron Age history of the Eastern Mediterranean and the study of trade and economy in the ancient world.

How do we understand the characteristically extensive presence of imagery in biblical prophecy? Poetic metaphor in prophetic writings has commonly been understood solely as an artistic flourish intended to create certain rhetorical effects. It thus appears expendable and unrelated to the core content of the composition—however engaging it may be, aesthetically or otherwise. Job Jindo invites us to reconsider this convention. Applying recent studies in cognitive science, he explores how we can view metaphor as the very essence of poetic prophecy—namely, metaphor as an indispensable mode to communicate prophetic insight. Through a cognitive reading of Jeremiah 1-24, Jindo amply demonstrates the advantage and heuristic ramifications of this approach in biblical studies.

One of the intriguing and insufficiently understood features of Biblical Hebrew is the use of an infinitive form alongside a finite verb of the same root. The function of this construction has generally been understood as serving to provide some kind of emphasis. However, neither translations nor grammars are consistently able to explain what is being emphasized by the use of this construction. This volume, which is a revision of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation at the Johns Hopkins University (2006), examines the tautological infinitive construction in Classical Biblical Hebrew (that is, the Hebrew written during the First Temple Period, more or less equivalent to the material in Genesis–2 Kings, excluding "P") in order to give a coherent and consistent explanation of its function. In a final chapter, Kim discusses the use of the tautological infinitive in Classical Biblical Hebrew in relation to its use in non-Classical biblical texts and Semitic languages in order to set it in a broader context.

The city of Emar, modern Tell Meskene in Syria, is one of the most important sites of the western ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age that have yielded cuneiform tablets. The discovery of more than one thousand tablets and tablet fragments assures Emar's position, along with Bogazkoy-Hattusa and Ras-Shamra-Ugarit, as a major scribal center. Ephemeral documents such as wills or sale contracts, texts about rituals and cultic festivals, school texts and student exercises, and inscribed seals and their impressions enable reconstruction of the Emar scribal school institution and provide materials for investigation into the lives of more than fifty scribes whose works were found in the city. The aim of this book is to place Emar's scribal school institution within its social and historical context, to observe the participation of its teachers and students in the study of the school curriculum, to investigate the role of the scribes in the daily life of the city (in particular within the administration), and to evaluate the school's and its members' position within the network of similar institutions throughout the ancient Near East.

As the first comprehensive study of fortification systems and defensive strategies in the Levant during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900 to 1500 B.C.E.), Walled up to Heaven is an indispensable contribution to the study of this period and of early warfare in the ancient Near East. Although archaeologists and ancient historians alike have discussed a variety of theories regarding the origin and cultural significance of the construction of earthen ramparts during the Middle Bronze Age, only this work addresses these questions in detail. In a tour de force, Burke traces the diachronic evolution and geographic distribution of the architectural features and settlement strategies connected with the emergence of Middle Bronze Age defenses in the Levant. By synthesizing historical and archaeological data from Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as the Levant, he reveals the interconnectedness of the Near Eastern world during the first half of the second millennium to an extent not recently considered. The result is a detailed employment of cognitive, social, and dirt archaeology to reconstruct the political, social, military, and cultural implications of the construction of monumental defenses and the development of defensive networks during the period of Amorite hegemony in the Levant.

Aaron Burke is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California at Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2004.

Semitic linguistics is arguably involved in its own version of a "maximalist versus minimalist" controversy with respect to verbal morphology. Dissent persists about whether and to what degree the Northwest Semitic verb paradigms underlying languages such as Biblical Hebrew and Amarna Canaanite (yaqtul, yaqtulu, yaqtula) are themselves determinative of tense-aspect-mood values, as opposed to extra-verbal structures ranging from syntax to discourse. To label a verb form as marked or unmarked for these values is to evoke a bountiful yet nebulous complex of theories about how language is built and employed. But Semitists have often unwittingly bleached markedness terms of their full historical and technical significance, reducing them to generic appellations that are invoked in sporadic and nearly random fashions. By applying markedness to Semitic morphology in a consistent and rigorous manner, this innovative book brings to bear a venerable linguistic construct on a persistent philological crux, in order to achieve deeper clarity in the structures and workings of Canaanite and Hebrew verbs. Korchin's arguments hold relevance for translating and interpreting nearly every sentence in ancient texts such as the Hebrew Bible and the Amarna letters.

Huehnergard's pioneering monograph investigated the essentially unvocalized nature of the alphabetic script used to write Ugaritic, which is, of course, a major hindrance to our attempts to understand the language and its texts. Without a clear picture of the vocalization of the language, we cannot understand its word structure and, thus, its morphology. Apart from the three aleph signs used in Ugaritic, the major source for the vocalization of the language is Ugaritic texts written in syllabic cuneiform.

This fine resource by Huehnergard was first published in 1987 and has been out of print for several years. In this revised edition, Huehnergard adds an appendix of 32 pages of new materials and corrections, all keyed to the original publication. A complete set of indexes—including texts cited and words in various Semitic languages—provides handy access to the wealth of data presented in the book. The revised edition thus brings this important reference work fully up to date and once again makes it available to students of Ugaritic specifically and Northwest Semitic in general.

Since 1985, the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, directed by Lawrence E. Stager of Harvard University, has been a leading American archaeological project in Israel. Now, the work of the project is being collected in ten final report volumes published by the Harvard Semitic Museum. The first volume, Introduction and Overview (1985-2006), spans more than 700 copiously illustrated pages, many in full color, and includes subjects ranging from microscopic DNA to monumental architecture. In addition, Volume 1 includes plans and descriptions of every architectural phase excavated during the course of seventeen field seasons and reveals the archaeological sequence of the site and aspects of the city plan from the Bronze Age to Crusader times, with special emphasis on Canaanite (Bronze Age) and Philistine (Iron Age) Ashkelon. The chapters in this volume, by more than three dozen contributors, combine to describe Ashkelon's cultural constants and contingencies over la longue durée (3000 BCE to 1500 CE).  As a result, Ashkelon 1: Introduction and Overview (1985-2006) will be an indispensable resource for investigating the maritime and terrestrial history of the southeastern Mediterranean littoral.

The seaport of Ashkelon flourished under Roman and Byzantine rulers. Its far-flung maritime connections are reflected in the imported pottery found by the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. Dr. Barbara L. Johnson brings a wealth of expertise and many years of experience to her study of this material, presenting and identifying a diverse array of vessels that illuminate the trading networks that knitted together the Mediterranean world.

The ancient myth of a battle between a Divine Warrior and a primordial monster undergoes significant development in postbiblical and rabbinic literatures. This development is the focus of the present study. In particular, it examines the monsters Leviathan and Behemoth, showing that the postbiblical and rabbinic traditions about them are derived from ancient sources that are not all preserved in the biblical texts.

In the Apocalypse of Abraham and the Ladder of Jacob, the monster Leviathan is placed at the juncture of heaven and the underworld. This cosmological focus appears in rabbinic literature in traditions concerning Behemoth, Leviathan, and the world rivers, and concerning Leviathan as the foundation of the axis mundi. These originate in the Divine Warrior's enthronement upon the vanquished chaos dragon.

A second role in which Leviathan and Behemoth appear in postbiblical literature is as food for the eschatological banquet. Whitney studies this in a variety of sources, among them 4 Ezra 6:47-52, 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 29:4, and 1 Enoch 60:7-9, 24, and a number of rabbinic texts. In one tradition, the battle between God and monster becomes an angelic hunt, described by the Greek word kynegesia. This sometimes referred to battles between beasts in the arena, and in a variant tradition Leviathan battles Behemoth in a fight to the death before the banquet. The "food for the righteous" motif possibly stems from the introduction of hunting imagery into the combat myth: the prevalence of hunting banquets gave rise to the expectation that these monsters, the prey in a divine hunt, would feed the righteous at the end of time.

This monograph is a corpus-based description of the modal system of epistolary Old Babylonian, one of the best attested Akkadian dialects, using the European structural method. The study strives to match a concrete exponent (i.e., an array of formal features, morphological and syntactic) with a semantic value, in using syntactic criteria. The book treats:

1. the asseverative paradigm (used for insistence, concession and oath), explaining the syntactic mechanism behind these forms;

2. the various precative-based paradigms in various syntactic conditions: the directive group, the wish group and the interrogative group;

3. the same forms occurring in special syntactic patterns-the sequential precative and the concessive-conditional precative;

4. the paratactic conditional; and

5. the modal nominal syntagm ša para:sim.

Together with this description, some additional problems are addressed for which solutions are developed: the focus system of Old Babylonian; the general linguistic issue of "emphatic assertion" (using an English corpus); and a way to describe the syntactic nature of paratactic conditional structures. 

This groundbreaking study examines the historical development of the Semitic languages from the point of view of grammaticalization, the linguistic process whereby lexical items and constructions lose their lexical meaning and serve grammatical functions. The author first provides an introduction to this process, followed by a comprehensive overview--with abundant examples from ancient and modern languages--of how it is exemplified in Semitic. Three successive chapters are devoted to in-depth studies of specific cases of grammaticalization: the definite article in Central Semitic, direct object markers across Semitic, and present tense prefixes in modern Arabic and Aramaic dialects. Drawing on evidence from many non-Semitic languages, from recent developments in the field of historical linguistics, and from traditional comparative Semitics, this book represents a major contribution to the field of comparative Semitics.