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17吃瓜EXCEEDS PARTICIPATION GOAL OF 450 DONORS

• First, we had to demonstrate that we were all behind ASOR鈥檚 many initiatives by securing 450 unique donors by June 30, 2019. When we received this challenge on February 1st, we had about 200 donors for the fiscal year, so we had to receive gifts from 250 new donors in just five months. A tall order; yet, our members came through (once again).
• Second (and separate from the participation goal), we must raise $225,000 in new gifts and pledges for the building by December 31, 2019. To date, we have received gifts and pledges of $171,402 for this challenge鈥攕o we only need $53,598 more. Now that we’re completed the participation challenge (see below), we will focus on raising the last $53,500+ that we need to pay off the building debt and exceed our goal.

For now, we are thrilled to announce that we exceeded the participation portion of the challenge. As of July 2nd, we had 461 donors, and we are still waiting for the mail to arrive over the next week with gifts postmarked by June 30th. We set an all-time high for both dollars donated and for participation in Fiscal Year 2019, and we are so thankful for all of your support.[/vc_column_text][mk_divider][vc_line_chart style=”modern” x_values=”FY2011; FY2012; FY2013; FY2014; FY2015; FY2016; FY2017; FY2018; FY2019″ values=”%5B%7B%22title%22%3A%22Number%20of%20Donors%22%2C%22y_values%22%3A%22235%3B%20282%3B%20353%3B%20417%3B%20400%3B%20405%3B%20402%3B%20457%3B%20461%22%2C%22color%22%3A%22blue%22%7D%2C%7B%22title%22%3A%22Gifts%20and%20Private%20Grants%20(in%20%24000’s)%22%2C%22y_values%22%3A%22157%3B%20241%3B%20350%3B%20404%3B%20295%3B%20288%3B%20357%3B%20483%3B%201261%22%2C%22color%22%3A%22turquoise%22%7D%5D” title=”Donor Participation Since 2011″][mk_divider][vc_column_text responsive_align=”left”]

Why does high donor participation matter?

This large number of donors (more than 1 in 5 of our members) is something that distinguishes 17吃瓜from all other learned societies. And it matters, as the high level of donor participation from our membership engages the attention of foundations and major donors outside 17吃瓜and helps us attract gifts and support from them.

Your donations also enable 17吃瓜to carry out our mission. Subscriptions and memberships only account for about a quarter of our annual budget, so we rely on grants and donations from our members and friends. Even modest gifts add up to create significant support for ASOR, Truly, every donor is important, and every gift is meaningful.

If you are one of the people who made a gift to 17吃瓜in Fiscal Year 2019, thank you so much for your support. Indeed, because of the cost of relocating to our new home in Alexandria, VA, your support has never been more beneficial.

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Table of Contents for Journal of Cuneiform Studies听71 (2019)

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Pp. 3鈥�9: “A Double Date Formula of the Old Akkadian King Manishtusu,” by Nashat Alkhafaji

This article provides a preliminary edition of an unprovenienced Old Akkadian tablet located in the Iraq Museum that must have originated in Umma or its environs. This account of equids is unique in that it is the first 鈥渕u-iti鈥� type that carries a year name; this is also the first known such year name from the reign of Manishtusu, the third ruler of the Sargonic dynasty of the late third millennium BCE.

17吃瓜Members with online access: navigate to the token link email sent to you before attempting to read this article. Once you have activated your member token, to access the above article on The University of Chicago Press Journals’ website.

Pp. 11鈥�34: “How to 鈥淚nstitutionalize鈥� a Household in Ur III 臏irsu/Laga拧: The Case of the House of Ur-DUN,” by Palmiro Notizia

Aside from the institutional households, a good number of 鈥減rivate鈥� estates are known from Ur III sources. These private households were usually named after their owners (members of the royal entourage, the military or the local elite, merchants, cultic officials etc.), and controlled extensive resources, but were only rarely mentioned in the administrative documents from the provincial archives. One of the best-documented private estate is the one that belonged to a certain Ur-DUN. His estate was located in the 臏irsu/Laga拧 province and played an important role in the raising of slaughter animals and wool production. The aim of the present paper is to describe the economic activities of the Ur-DUN household according to the available sources and to highlight how this private household interacted with the provincial economy and the crown/military sector.

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Pp. 35鈥�52: “On the Location of Irisa臐rig Once Again,” by Maurizio Viano

The recovery of a few royal inscriptions at T奴l奴l al-Baqarat (Iraq) by the archaeological mission of the University of Torino has made it possible to propose the identification of the site with ancient Ke拧. The present contribution reexamines the location of Irisa臐rig in light of its well-known textual connections with and physical proximity to Ke拧.

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Pp. 53-76: “The Structure of Prices in the Ur III Economy: Cults and Prices at the Collapse of the Ur III State,” by Eric L. Cripps

The production of a barley surplus by the Ur III economy was vital for the operation of its commodity money system. The standardizing bi-monetary equivalence of a gur measure of barley and a shekel of silver stabilized commodity prices for the thirty-five years before the reign of Ibbi-Suen. In Ibbi-Suen鈥檚 early years, the collapse of the barley supply induced an excessive devaluation of the barley to silver ratio leading to a near hyperinflation in the prices of staple commodities and bovids required for cult and other purposes. This article analyzes the inflation in prices of animals and staples correlated with the precipitous fall in the barley to silver price ratio. Data is primarily from the Ur texts dated to the seventh year of Ibbi-Suen鈥檚 reign concerned with the purchase and delivery to state institutions of animals. Importantly, an analysis of these events demonstrated the central function of a barley surplus in the Ur III monetary system.

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Pp. 77-83: “A Cylinder Seal with an Amorite Name from Tepe Musiyan, Deh Luran Plain,” by Mohsen Zeynivand

The archeology of the Deh Luran plain was documented by the work of Frank Hole and his associates in 1960s and 1970s. While these investigations were mostly dedicated to the study of the village periods, the presence of early state formations on the plain was also documented by their surface surveys. Tepe Farukhabad was an exception, but because it was only a small settlement in the third and second millennia BCE, the excavations there did not yield fruitful results for this period. Based on their systematic surface study of Tepe Musiyan, Wright and Neely argued that during the third and second millennia BCE, this settlement played a central role in this strategic plain due to its location on the route from Susa to Der (Badra in Iraq). Recently, our team again surveyed the Deh Luran Plain. Our visit to Musiyan provided us with a cylinder seal discovered by one of the locals. The inscription reveals the owner as a person with an Amorite name who may have been present in Musiyan sometime during the early centuries of the second millennium BCE, contemporary with the end of the 艩ima拧ki period, which in Mesopotamia extends from late in the Third Dynasty of Ur until the early Old Babylonian period.

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Pp. 85-109: “Unfinished Business: The Relief on the Hammurabi Louvre Stele Revisited,” by Tallay Ornan

A reexamination of the relief on the Hammurabi鈥檚 鈥淟aw Code鈥� stele reveals that the type of beard worn by Hammurabi听and 艩ama拧 does not conform to the Old Babylonian beard type. Moreover, the linear workmanship of the lower part of the king鈥檚 beard suggests that the relief was never finished. Considering the troubled history of the stele鈥攎ade and erected in Babylonia in the late fifties of the eighteenth century BCE and carried away to Susa in the mid twelfth century鈥攊t is proposed that the resculpting of the Stele was undertaken by 艩utruk-Na岣�岣玼nte or his son Kutir-Na岣�岣玼nte upon the Elamite capture of the monument with the goal of making it their own. An attempt to clarify the circumstances and motivation of this reworking is offered in the article.

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Pp. 111-120: “An Uprising at Karkar: A New Historical-Literary Text,” by Elyze Zomer

This paper offers a new edition of the Middle Babylonian bilingual fragment VS 17, 43 (VAT 1514) together with the duplicate lines found on the obverse of the Kassite period exercise tablet CBS 7884. The text is of historical-literary content and depicts an otherwise unknown uprising at Karkar. A first edition of the text is offered together with a brief introduction regarding its problematic historical setting.

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Pp. 121-132: “Fate Strikes Back: New Evidence for the Identification of the Hittite Fate Deities and Its Implications for Hieroglyphic Writing in Anatolia,” by Willemijn Waal

In 2014, I proposed that the GUL-拧别拧 deities may have to be identified with the Kuwa(n)拧别拧 deities, a suggestion that has met with severe criticisms.听Since now new evidence has come to light that confirms the equation of these deities, it seems opportune to re-address this debate, which also has important consequences for the use of hieroglyphic writing in Anatolia. In this article, I will present the new evidence, counter the critiques that have been given, and address the wider implications.

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Pp. 133-152: “War in Anatolia in the Post-Hittite Period: The Anatolian Hieroglyphic Inscription of Topada Revised,” by Lorenzo d鈥橝lfonso

This article presents a new transcription and translation of the TOPADA inscription. According to the new interpretation, the inscription narrates the events of a four-year-long war between a western coalition led by an unnamed Phrygian king and a coalition of post-Hittite rulers from south-central Anatolia, led by Great King Wasusarma. The careful study of paleography, scribal practice, script development, and literary aspects yields a dating of the inscription to the late tenth or early ninth century BCE. In view of the growing archaeological evidence for the central Anatolian Dark Ages, the new interpretation of the inscription has far-reaching implications for the overarching historical picture of the early first millennium BCE in Western Asia. It also provides the earliest attestation for the kingdom of Phrygia, and the sole occurrence of the toponym Phrygia and derivatives outside of the western Greco-Roman sources.

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Pp. 153-157: “Another Exemplar of Esarhaddon鈥檚 Uruk B Cylinder (NBC 2511),” by Shana Zaia

The Yale Babylonian Collection contains a partial cylinder, NBC 2511, that preserves a hitherto听unknown example of Esarhaddon鈥檚 Uruk B inscription. While this exemplar does not deviate in translation from those already published in RINAP 4, there are some orthographic variations. This article presents an edition of NBC 2511 with some comments regarding its differences from the published exemplars and its parallels with other Esarhaddon Uruk cylinders.

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Pp. 159-180: “A拧拧ur and His Friends: A Statistical Analysis of Neo-Assyrian Texts,” by Tero Alstola, Shana Zaia, Aleksi Sahala, Heidi Jauhiainen, Saana Sv盲rd, and Krister Lind茅n

Large digital datasets of cuneiform sources lend themselves to computational analysis that can complement听and improve upon traditional philological work. The present article applies social network analysis to an electronic corpus of 1,532 texts to study the god A拧拧ur and his position in divine networks in the Neo-Assyrian period. Our results show that the performance of social network analysis can be improved by using a small window size and calculating tie strengths with pointwise mutual information. This allows us to study the co-occurrences of gods in semantic contexts. From a network perspective, A拧拧ur is not a very central god in our corpus despite his importance in Assyrian royal theology, but he rather joins the existing networks of gods without altering them.

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Pp. 181鈥�190: “An Early Ma拧拧artu-List from the Eanna Temple in Uruk,” by Reinhard Pirngruber

This article presents editions of two ma拧拧artu lists from the Eanna-temple in Uruk now housed in the Yale Babylonian Collection and in the Princeton Theological Seminary. Not only are NCBT 660 and PTS 2232 among the very few completely preserved examples of such lists, they also belong to the earliest known specimens of their genre, dating to the third (602/1 BCE) and first (604/3 BCE) year of Nebuchadnezzar II. These texts are valuable additions to the rather sparse dossier containing information on the Eanna cult during the formative phase of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; moreover, they are related to a text that concerns Nabonidus鈥檚 cultic reforms in the Eanna.

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Pp. 191-207: “Critical Review,” by Pascal Attinger

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Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 82.2 (June 2019)

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Pp. 67-74: “The Mainstream Media and the ‘Shocking Bad Art’ from Cyprus: 1870s New York Reacts to the Cesnola Collections,” by Ann-Marie Knoblauch

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art first opened the doors of its Fifth Avenue building on March 30, 1880, the majority of the exhibition space was occupied by Cypriot art purchased by the Met鈥檚 trustees from Luigi Palma di Cesnola in two lots, one in 1872 and another in 1876. The two collections amounted to around twenty thousand objects, all finds Cesnola had acquired while serving as US Consul on the island from 1865鈥�1876. After the acquisition of the second collection, Cesnola left Cyprus to become the first director of the Metropolitan Museum, a position he held until his death in 1904. New Yorkers in the 1870s were most intriguing by the works of limestone sculptures from the sanctuary at Golgoi. In the 1880s these objects would become embroiled in a scandal because of the claim that Cesnola had performed intentionally misleading restorations, but before that disgrace and through much of the 1870s, New Yorkers were processing the arrival of an enormous volume of ancient Cypriot objects in a relatively short amount of time.

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Pp. 75-81: “Imagining Henenu,” by Carlos Gracia Zamacona

The Middle Kingdom Theban Project, begun in 2014 under the auspices of the Freie Universit盲t Berlin, represents the resumption of the archaeological activities in the Middle Kingdom necropolis of Deir el-Bahari and Asasif. The site had previously been excavated under the auspices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, initiated by Herbert Eustis Winlock in 1912 with survey activities followed by excavations from 1921鈥�1922 until 1928 (Arnold 1996: 59). Winlock鈥檚 excavations had been preceded by Howard Carter鈥檚 in 1910鈥�1911 (Morales et al. 2016: 258). The current excavations began in 2015, and have continued annually through 2018 (Morales et al. 2016, 2017, and 2018) under the auspices of the Universidad de Alcal谩 (Madrid, Spain), with a fifth season scheduled for October 2019.

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Pp. 82-88: “Two Punic Stelae Rediscovered in Philadelphia,” by Jean MacIntosh Turfa

In the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, two small, fragmentary Punic stelae were found in storage by Asian Section Keeper Stephen Lang.1 They were remnants from a large donation, made over a century ago, of part of the variegated collection of Maxwell Sommerville, perhaps best known for engraved gems of all kinds, and also much Asian material. Sommerville (1829鈥�1904) was an affluent Philadelphia businessman who devoted his later life (and funds) to world travel and the collection of antiquities in Europe, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa as well as China, Japan, India, Burma, and Thailand. He published memoirs of his travels and catalogues and discussions of the gems and seals. His collection, originally exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1888鈥�1891), was placed in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (1891) and remained there upon his bequest (see Berges 2002: 11鈥�19). Although Sommerville鈥檚 memoir Sands of Sahara (1901) describes some of his North African travels, there is no reference to his acquisition of the Punic artifacts.

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Pp. 90-101: “A New Jewelry Hoard from Eleventh-Century BCE Megiddo,” by Eran Arie, Elisabetta Boaretto, Mario A. S. Martin, Dvory Namdar, Orit Shamir, and Naama Yahalom-Mack

A magnificent new jewelry hoard was uncovered on July 11, 2010 in Area H of the northwestern sector of Tel Megiddo. This site in the Jezreel Valley (Israel) is one of the most important in the southern Levant thanks to four archaeological expeditions that have thoroughly excavated the mound and rapidly published the results of their digs (Ussishkin 2018). All expeditions unearthed hoards of different types from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages (Hall 2016). This new hoard was unearthed in a destruction debris, securely dated to the Early Iron Age I, ca. 1070 BCE (local Level H-11, which equals University of Chicago鈥檚 Stratum VIIA). During this period, part of a building (remnants of two rooms and an inner courtyard surrounded by three large open courtyards) was found in this area (figs. 1鈥�2; Finkelstein et al. 2017: 267鈥�69). The building is positioned only about 30 m from Canaanite Palace 2041 of the city of Stratum VIIA. This article offers a preliminary publication of the hoard; a full report will soon be published in the Megiddo VI volume (Arie forthcoming a).

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Pp. 102-113: “Identifying a Dionysian Community in Ashkelon鈥檚 Eastern Cemetery,” by Davida Eisenberg-Degen, Ilan Peretz, and Eriola Jakoel

Ashkelon鈥檚 Eastern Cemetery was in continuous use for more than half a millennium, from the Hellenistic through Late Byzantine periods (fig. 1). Several excavations carried out in Ashkelon鈥檚 Eastern Cemetery reveal simple hewn graves alongside burial structures (Eisenberg-Degen 2017; Peretz 2017 and references listed there). Grave goods were found in several burials dating to the Roman period. Depositing funerary offerings was a common practice in the Roman era. Roughly a third of the excavated Eastern Cemetery (fig. 2, n=24) contained grave goods (Eisenberg-Degen 2017). Taking into account that some pilfering and plundering most likely took place, this figure is consistent with percentages noted in other Roman-period burials (Findlater et al. 2013: 69鈥�80; Winter 2015: 82鈥�87).

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Pp. 114-123: “Joseph鈥檚 Tomb: A Model of Traditional Islamic Shrines in Palestine,” by Loay Abu Alsaud and Amer Al-Qobbaj

Joseph鈥檚 Shrine is located on the outskirts of the eastern side of the city of Nablus (fig. 1), near Tell Balatah, the site of the Canaanite City of Shechem, and 300 m northwest of Jacob鈥檚 Well (Pummer 1993: 139; Bruce 1994: 102). Joseph鈥檚 tomb has been venerated throughout the ages by Samaritans (for whom it is the second-holiest site), Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The total area of Joseph鈥檚 Shrine is 661 m虏 and it is located in Block 5, parcel 10, according to early Islamic Immovable Property Records from the Department of Al Awqaf Al Islamyah (Jordanian Islamic Endowments), Nablus (fig. 2). Originally situated on an agricultural plain, it is now surrounded by buildings, due to expansion of housing and schools in central Balata.

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Table of Contents for Bulletin of ASOR听381 (May 2019)

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Pp. 1鈥�19: “The Terra-cotta Figurines from a Lamp Workshop at Khirbat Shumeila near Beit Nattif, Israel,” by Benyamin Storchan and听Achim Lichtenberger

In 1934, excavations conducted at Beit Nattif, in the Judaean Shephelah region, uncovered a rich assemblage of waste from a terra-cotta lamp and figurine workshop. The items produced at the workshop, which are now known by the name of the site, are dated to around 300 c.e. and can be considered a hallmark of the regional material culture of the Late Roman period, a time of wideranging cultural influences. Recent excavations at Khirbat Shumeila, located in the immediate Beit Nattif region, have uncovered the remains of a Beit Nattif lamp workshop. The Khirbat Shumeila workshop can be dated to the late 4th century c.e. During the excavations, a number of typical Beit Nattif figurines and a figurine mold were uncovered, providing an opportunity to analyze the stylistic and morphological development of the figurines over 100 years. While the new workshop was focused primarily on lamp production, figurine production existed as a secondary industry, further implying the existence of multiple parallel workshops in the region.

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Pp. 21-40: “Correlated Change: Comparing Modifications to Ceramic Assemblages from Qizlar Qal示eh, Iran, and Ancient Merv, Turkmenistan, during the Seleucid and Parthian Periods,” by Gabriele Puschnigg, Maria Daghmehchi, and Jebrael Nokandeh

From the Seleucid period onward, substantial transformations occurred in the ceramic assemblages from Qizlar Qal示eh on the Gorgan Plain and ancient Merv (modern Gyaur Kala). Using quantitative and archaeometric analyses, we assess and compare modifications in vessel repertoires, production techniques, and material sources across both sites to understand the nature and chronology of these changes. Similar technological developments are observed at Qizlar Qal示eh and Merv, and are examined with regard to a potential Hellenistic reception in the ceramic material. Variations in the chronological distribution of innovations and assemblage composition help us to elucidate the neighborhood relations between eastern Iran and western Central Asia at this time. Our comparisons point toward a common cultural environment for both sites especially during the Early Parthian period, which is demonstrated in the many analogies of manufacturing techniques and vessel shapes. At the same time, we see different continuing local traditions, highlighting the flexible mode in which ceramic repertoires are adapted to the changing requirements under Hellenistic rule.

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Pp. 41-56: “Four Judean Bullae from the 2014 Season at Tel Lachish,” by Martin G. Klingbeil, Michael G. Hasel, Yosef Garfinkel, and N茅stor H. Petruk

The article presents four decorated epigraphic bullae unearthed in the Level III destruction at Lachish during the 2014 season, focusing on the epigraphic, iconographic, and historical aspects of the seal impressions.

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Pp. 57-81: “Uninscribed Amethyst Scarabs from the Southern Levant,” by Arlette David

Prompted by the discovery of a schematic uninscribed amethyst scarab at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in the Upper Galilee, an overview of such scarabs found in the southern Levant is provided, with a typological analysis and a tentative dating and origin of these pieces.

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Pp. 83-105: “Foreign Food Plants as Prestigious Gifts: The Archaeobotany of the Amarna Age Palace at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel,” Ehud Weiss, Yael Mahler-Slasky, Yoel Melamed, Zvi Lederman, Shlomo Bunimovitz, Shawn Bubel, and Dale Manor

In contrast with the relatively rich documentation from the el-Amarna archive related to the main city-states of the southern Levant in the Amarna Age (Late Bronze Age IIA; 14th century b.c.e.), archaeological data from these sites is still wanting. This unfortunate situation highlights the importance of the ca. 60,000-item plant collection from the recently exposed Late Bronze Age IIA palace at Tel Beth-Shemesh. Room L1505 in the palace鈥攁pparently a pantry due to its contents of foodstuffs and vessels for food preparation and consumption鈥攃ontained eight deposits of carbonized crop plants. Deposits of almost pure grains and very low numbers of weed seeds were found, indicating that these stored food plants were ready to be used in food preparation. Of special interest is the presence of a sizeable amount of two rare pulses in Levantine archaeobotany鈥攆enugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) and Cyprus vetch (Lathyrus ochrus)鈥攐nly found in two other Bronze Age royal contexts: Tutankhamun鈥檚 tomb in Egypt and the Late Minoan II Unexplored Mansion in Knossos. Thus, in addition to attesting to the agricultural practices and culinary preferences of a Canaanite ruling court during the Amarna Age, this botanical assemblage also hints at prestigious royal gift exchanges of exotic food plants.

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Pp. 107-144: “Tel Yaqush鈥擜n Early Bronze Age Village in the Central Jordan Valley, Israel,” by Yael Rotem, Mark Iserlis, Felix H枚flmayer, and Yorke M. Rowan

This article highlights the results of five excavation seasons at Tel Yaqush, Israel, conducted between the 1989 and 2000 on behalf of The Oriental Institute at The University of Chicago. Tel Yaqush was a medium-sized village, inhabited during the entire Early Bronze Age period, from the mid-4th to the mid-3rd millennia b.c.e. The excavations exposed a dense settlement begun in the Early Bronze Age (EB) I, which ended in a severe conflagration. Apparently rebuilt at the beginning of EB II, the village remained a small site and technically non-urban throughout the period. Destroyed at the end of EB II, it was renewed in EB III, coinciding with the arrival of people bearing the Khirbet Kerak Ware ceramic tradition. This preliminary report includes new observations following recent studies of Tel Yaqush finds, including a new sequence of 14C dates from EB I to III (published in detail elsewhere). The excavation results summarized here reveal the unique role Tel Yaqush played during the shift to urbanism, and its contribution to our understanding of Early Bronze Age village society in the central Jordan Valley.

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Pp. 145-162: “‘Crossing the Lines’鈥擡laborately Decorated Chalcolithic Basalt Bowls in the Southern Levant,” by Rivka Chasan, Edwin C. M. van den Brink, and Danny Rosenberg

The Late Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant shows a marked increase in symbolic expression. While most Late Chalcolithic basalt bowls are undecorated, notable amounts of these were adorned, and their decorations typically conform to a few canonized conventions. A small amount of the decorated Late Chalcolithic basalt bowls are further incised with unconventional, unique designs on their exteriors. These elaborately decorated basalt bowls stand in sharp contrast to the conventionally decorated ones, thus signifying their different roles. This article discusses their geographic distributions, frequencies, and characteristics, and offers further suggestions as to their position within the Late Chalcolithic symbolic and prestige item systems. The analysis reveals regional patterns鈥攖he elaborately decorated basalt bowls are constrained to south of the Yarkon River鈥攕uggesting that the function and symbolic value of these bowls were probably geographically restricted. Their limited distribution underlines the exclusivity of these elaborately decorated bowls during the Late Chalcolithic period.

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Pp. 163-191: “Canaanite Re岣�ob: Tel Re岣�ov in the Late Bronze Age,” by Amihai Mazar, Uri Davidovich, and with an Appendix by Arlette David

Tel Re岣�ov, identified with Re岣�ob, was one of the largest Canaanite cities in the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (15th鈥�13th centuries b.c.e.). Unlike many other Canaanite settlements, the city was founded in the 15th century after a hiatus beginning in Early Bronze Age III. In this article, four major Late Bronze Age occupation strata are described. Notable is a monumental structure dated to the 14th century b.c.e. with unusual architectural features that could be either the residence of a high-ranking family or an administrative building. During the 13th century b.c.e., this building was replaced by a new structure containing a metalsmith鈥檚 workshop, inspired by Egyptian 19th Dynasty techniques, while later building phases belong to the final stages of the Late Bronze Age. No destruction layers were found, and the Late Bronze Age city was rebuilt and continued to thrive throughout the Iron Age I. Five Late Bronze Age plaque figurines, some of particular interest, are also described. An appendix discusses a rare funerary scarab of an Egyptian high official found in the 14th-century b.c.e. edifice.

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Pp. 193-202: “Abracadabra, or ‘I Create as I Speak’: A Reanalysis of the First Verb in the Katumuwa Inscription in Light of Northwest Semitic and Hieroglyphic Luwian Parallels,” by Timothy Hogue

Previous translations of the Katumuwa Inscription have either rendered the first verbal phrase (qnt ly) 鈥淚 commissioned for myself,鈥� or 鈥淚 acquired for myself.鈥� No scholars have yet defended the possibility that it simply means 鈥淚 made.鈥� In fact, this is likely the case given the typical monumental rhetoric of Northwest Semitic and Hieroglyphic Luwian monumental inscriptions. In particular, a comparison with verbs of monumenting in Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions suggests that the monumenting phrase in the Katumuwa Inscription was calqued on a Luwian phrase. This difference is significant because it reveals an important aspect of the inscription鈥檚 monumentality and the Syro-Anatolian conception of the stele. The stele that Katumuwa created was not understood merely as the inscribed object. Rather, the monument was the conjunction of material object, ritual engagement, and the resultant manifestation of the monument鈥檚 commissioner. There was no monument apart from Katumuwa, whose voice was preserved in the inscription and whose presence could be reactivated through ritual. Therefore, Katumuwa did in fact 鈥渃reate鈥� the stele as he spoke through it to his monument鈥檚 users.

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Pp. 203-210: “An Inscribed Sherd in Aramaic Script from Barikot, Pakistan,” by Michael Zellmann-Rohrer and Luca Maria Olivieri

This article discusses a sherd inscribed with a text in Aramaic script from Barikot in Pakistan. The site, known in classical sources on Alexander the Great, has been regularly investigated over the last 40 years. In recent excavation campaigns, new evidence of the earliest phases of the city (500鈥�50 b.c.e.) has been discovered, including the sherd treated here, among other inscribed pottery in Greek and Br膩hm墨.

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Pp. 211-236: “An Eighth-Century b.c.e. Gate Shrine at Tel Lachish, Israel,” by Saar Ganor and Igor Kreimerman

Excavations conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority at Tel Lachish exposed the southern half of the six-chambered gate in Level III. In the eastern chamber, a gate shrine was uncovered. The shrine was split in two: a larger northern room and a smaller southern room. The southern room, which served as the holy of holies, had a niche in its southern wall in front of which a double altar was placed. Dozens of bowls and oil lamps were revealed inside the shrine. At some point, evidently prior to the destruction of Level III by Sennacherib in 701 b.c.e., the shrine was desecrated and sealed. This act was evident in the breakage of the altar鈥檚 horns and the placement of a latrine in the holy of holies. The available data suggests that the desecration of the shrine should be associated with Hezekiah鈥檚 cultic reform (2 Kgs 18:4).

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