Religion : Antiquities & Archaeology

For over threescore years Cyrus H. Gordon's scholarship and teaching have provided new directions to the study of the ancient Near East. This collection of 34 essays in honour of his 90th birthday, edited by three of his former pupils, celebrates his fascinating and remarkable achievements and reflects his broad command of ancient studies. The global impact of his research can be seen from the geographical dispersion of the outstanding scholars who have written here on the following topics: archaeology, Bible studies, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, Egypto-Semitic, the cuneiform world, Indo-European, Samaritan, the Graeco-Roman world, mediaeval studies. The inclusion of a complete bibliography of Gordon's works is of singular value. more...

Price: $200.00

The Cannibal Hymn forms a self-standing episode in the ritual anthology that makes up the Pyramid Texts, first appearing in the tomb of Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. Its style and format are characteristic of the oral-recitational poetry of pharaonic Egypt, marked by allusive metaphor and the exploitation of wordplay and homophony in its verbal recreation of a butchery ritual. Christopher Eyre examines the text of the Cannibal Hymn in its performative and cultural context: the detailed mythologisation of the sacrificial process in this hymn poses key questions about the nature of rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice in Egypt, and in particular about the mobilisation of oral accompaniment to ritual actions. more...

Price: $75.00

Divine images create their own world of theological reflection and religious practice. Pictorial representations have to reduce complexity, yet at the same time they create their own complexity. The present volume examines this phenomenon with papers on fundamental issues and presentations of material from the Ancient Orient, Greece and the Hellenic world. Papers on the contact between Christianity and Islam in the matter of the veneration of images make clear what compensation strategies are developed when pictorial representations are subject to theological censure. The volume contains eighteen contributions from internationally renowned researchers writing in German and English. more...

Price: $176.00

This book provides a comprehensive portrait of what we know about ancient Egypt today, examining in detail issues of religion, of beliefs and practices surrounding death, of everyday life and of literature. more...

Price: $115.00

This work is a cross-disciplinary study of Israel's first 'capital city' from topographical, archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Challenging William F. Albright's claim that the ancient city is to be identified with Tell el-Ful, the book develops the case for a location instead at modern Jeba, 9 km north-east of Jerusalem, a site-change that bears important consequences for several scholarly theories relating to Gibeah. Among these are the inquest into the historicity and literary composition of the story of the 'Outrage of Gibeah' (Judg. 19-21) and the origins and nature of Saul's kingship (1 Sam. 9-15). Both of these texts are treated thoroughly as preparation for a concluding investigation into the meaning of the prophet Hosea's references to Israel's sins 'in the days of Gibeah'. more...

Price: $130.00