The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was exceptionally versatile, as becomes clear when studying its multiple uses both within Ancient Egypt and beyond its borders. Even the few cases discussed in this Element demonstrate that in the ancient world hieroglyphs appealed to a wide readership, which ranged from highly accomplished scribes, artists and priests, to semi-literate workmen, as well as to speakers of non-Egyptian languages. Creative processes within these different groups resulted in very different adaptations of regular hieroglyphic writing: highly specialized enigmatic compositions, less informed ad hoc orthographies, isolated uses of hieroglyphs as marks and emblems, and the development of new writing systems. Important reasons for the wide appeal and deep impact of hieroglyphic writing are the iconicity and cultural messages of its individual signs on the one hand, and its remarkable semiotic strategies in rendering human language on the other.

The Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500–3600 BCE) in the southern Levant represents the rise of regional polities, the metallurgical revolution, and a set of other significant socio-economic changes that distinguish it from the preceding Pottery Neolithic period. Central to these issues are the Phase II (1987–1989, 1993) excavations at Shiqmim, a large Chalcolithic settlement centre in Israel’s northern Negev desert.

The first phase of excavations at Shiqmim took place between 1979 and 1984 and were described in Shiqmim I, Parts i and ii (BAR Publishing, 1987). Shiqmim II reports on the second phase of excavations at this complex site and contributes to a greater understanding of its Chalcolithic stratigraphy, architecture, and chronology. It includes the project research design and history framed in an anthropological archaeology perspective, primary excavation data, and a Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates from Shiqmim presented in comparison with dates from contemporary regional sites.

Tell el-Hesi is located near the modern city of Qiryat Gat in the Southern District of Israel, 23 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. The site, which covers 35–40 acres, includes both an acropolis and a lower city. Occupation of the site began as early as the Neolithic period, and the city grew significantly during the Early Bronze Age before being abandoned until the Late Bronze Age. The latest phase of occupation occurred during the Hellenistic period. The acropolis was in use for almost two thousand years.
This volume is the first in a new iteration of the Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi series that builds on previously published volumes. It publishes a final report for part of one of Tell el-Hesi’s excavation fields; a reevaluation of the stratigraphic findings of the original 1891–1892 excavations on Tell el-Hesi, based on excavation work from the 1970s and 1980s; in-depth studies of groups of small finds from the tell; and zooarchaeological analyses that widen the investigative perspective to include the region around the tell.

Paying tribute to the long excavation history at Tell el-Hesi, the contributors to this volume employ state-of-the-art scientific methods that honor the careful work and findings of a century of excavations. Hesi After 50 Years and 130 Years will be an important reference for scholars researching the history and culture of southern Palestine.

The focus of this book is on temples in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-600 BC) and their transformations. In order to capture the long-term context, some significant sites with temples from the Late Bronze Age are also presented and discussed. The author traces both material culture related to the temples and the way in which the same themes are treated in Old Testament texts concentrated primarily on Israel and Judah. From the analysis of these texts, he deduces a threefold transformation of the form of memory in relation to the temples and the cult. The first concerns a contrastive reshaping (Philistia and other neighbouring political entities), the second an external (Israel) and the third an internal (Judah) silencing of the actual form of religious practice in the Iron Age.

The collection of essays in this book represents more than twenty years of research on the history and archeology of Judah, as well as the study of the Biblical literature written in and about the period that might be called the “Age of Empires”. This 600-year-long period, when Judah was a vassal Assyrian, Egyptian and Babylonian kingdom and then a province under the consecutive rule of the Babylonian, Persian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires, was the longest and the most influential in Judean history and historiography. The administration that was shaped and developed during this period, the rural economy, the settlement pattern and the place of Jerusalem as a small temple, surrounded by a small settlement of (mainly) priests, Levites and other temple servants, characterize Judah during most of its history.
This is the formative period when most of the Hebrew Bible was written and edited, when the main features of Judaism were shaped and when Judean cult and theology were created and developed.
The 36 papers contained in this book present a broad picture of the Hebrew Bible against the background of the Biblical history and the archeology of Judah throughout the six centuries of the “Age of Empires”.

This volume provides an overview of the excavations in two contiguous cemeteries of the Chalcolithic period, Quleh and Mazor (West), in the central coastal plain of Israel. The excavations were carried out as a salvage project on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority under the direction of Ianir Milevski, one of the editors of this volume. This volume presents in detail the excavated caves and the finds within them, including the pottery, ossuaries, lithic finds, human and faunal remains. The main issues in this volume relate to different analyses used for better understanding the site within its geographical landscape and chronological framework of the second half of the 5th millennium BC in the southern Levant. These analyses include the iconography, provenance and technological aspects of the ceramic vessels and clay ossuaries, and the distribution of the finds in the caves. In addition to being an excavation report, this volume includes synthesis studies of the distribution of settlements and cemeteries of the Chalcolithic Ghassulian Culture, and the relationships between both types of sites and the burial system of that period. These relationships are deciphered by means of petrography and viewshed analysis utilizing GIS systems. The volume emphasizes the anthropological and social aspects of the iconography of the Ghassulian Culture of the Chalcolithic period and a comprehensive view of the religious beliefs encompassed in these burial practices.

ישראל, כמו יוון, מקדשת את חורבותיה, ובעזרתן מעצבת "ארץ-ישראל" מדומיינת, מטוהרת מכל דבר שאינו יהודי. בשם הארכיאולוגיה הגדרנו את עתיקות ארץ הקודש – ובעיקר אלה מימי התנ"ך והבית השני – כמשאב בלעדי וכסיבת הסיבות לזכותנו בה, בעוד תושביה תוארו כפולשים בארץ לא-להם. מה, אם כן, נדרש כדי שנלמד לקבל את הריבוי הטמון בארץ הזו? האם נשכיל ליצור יצירה תרבותית מקורית ומקומית, שתשחזר את הסינתזות המופלאות של עברה הרחוק?


ארכיאולוגיה, אומה וגזע הוא דיאלוג נוקב, חי וסוחף בין שני ארכיאולוגים, המישירים מבט אל הגזענות והלאומנות שבבסיס הקיום המודרני בשתי מדינות שהארכיאולוגיה ממוקמת בלב הווייתן – ישראל ויוון. הם מציעים לכונן ארכיאולוגיה משחררת, המאששת את האמונה ביכולתם של אנשים וקהילות לפרש את עברם ולפעול לשינוי חייהם כך שהחורבות לא יהיו עוד עיקר תפארתה ובושתה של ארצם.

The figure of the god Osiris is paradigmatic of the ancient Egyptian culture, connected with both kingship and religion, whose analysis also today shed light on interesting aspects of the Egyptian world. This volume collects contributions presented during the two days International Conference “Rethinking Osiris” took place in Florence, Italy, from the 26 to 27 March 2019. Any article reflects the variety and complexity of the Osiriac topics discussed during the conference, providing a foundation for deeper research and questions, introducing new perspectives from which to reconsider Osiris pivotal and multifaceted function, which attracted so much interest during the millennia and rethinking Osiris at the dawn of the Third Millennium.

In July 2018 the 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) and the 12th Melammu Symposium were held together in Innsbruck. The topic of the conference, "The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East", represented one of the main scientific objectives of the Melammu Project and aimed to investigate the continuity, transformation, diffusion and legacy of Ancient Near Eastern cultures from the third millennium BCE until the rise of Islam and beyond. The conference, hosting more than 200 papers, was a unique opportunity to discuss various aspects of the main theme, as well as other topics related to organized workshops. The forty papers and two keynotes in this volume provide an excellent selection of the lively discussions that took place during the conference.

Contents:
1. Introduction: a brief history of 'Akko from the Early Islamic to the Ottoman periods and a survey of the archaeological research of the Crusader period / Edna J. Stern, Eliezer Stern
2. Overview: the Hospitallers and the Hospitaller Compound / Eliezer Stern, Raanan Kislev, Yael Fuhrmann-Naaman
3. The architecture / Eliezer Stern, Raanan Kislev, Yael Fuhrmann-Naaman
4. Crusader construction technology / Raanan Kislev, Yael Fuhrmann-Naaman
5. A petrographic analysis of its building stones / Vardit Shotten-Hallel, Lydia P. Grossowicz, Yossi Mart, Adrian J. Boas
6. A survey of mason's marks / Anastasia Shapiro
7. The excavations and stratigraphy / Eliezer Stern and Danny Syon
8. The ex-situ architectural elements / Jochai Rosen
9. The glass finds / Yael Gorin-Rosen
10. The metal objects / Elias Khamis
11. Radiocarbon dates of wood samples / Dror Segal, Israel Carmi
12. Tobacco pipes and nargile heads / Anastasia Shapiro
13. Ottoman gunflints / Anastasia Shapiro
14. Anemia in an Ottoman child skeleton / Yossi Nagar
15. The Hospitaller Compound: its layout and functions / Raanan Kislev, Eliezer Stern, Yael Fuhrmann-Naaman

Parasites have been infecting humans throughout our evolution. When complex societies developed, the greater population density provided new opportunities for parasites to spread. In this interdisciplinary volume, the author brings his expertise in medicine, archaeology and history to explore the contribution of parasites in causing flourishing past civilizations to falter and decline. By using cutting edge methods, Mitchell presents the evidence for parasites that infected the peoples of key ancient civilizations across the world in order to understand their impact upon those populations. This new understanding of the archaeological and historical evidence for intestinal worms, ectoparasites, and protozoa shows how different cultures were burdened by contrasting types of diseases depending upon their geographical location, endemic insects, food preferences and cultural beliefs.

This book presents a revised chronology for the Late Chalcolithic period in Western Syria. The new sequence of ceramics excavated in Tell Afis (Area E1) 1991-2000, a detailed revision of the partly contemporary corpus from Hama (periods M and L), and an overview of other pertinent sites, like Ras Shamra, sites in the Amuq valley, and Mersin-Yumuktepe, combine to suggest a more advanced, if still provisional, panorama of cultural developments in the Northern Levant in the 5th-4th Mill. BC. The volume, which is a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis, contains thorough analyses of the LC ceramic corpora from Tell Afis and Hama, presented in more than 100 plates and figures.