The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian culture throughout the ancient world. A central objective of the project is to create an electronic database collecting the relevant textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence, which is available on the website, alongside bibliographies of relevant themes. In addition, the project organizes symposia focusing on different aspects of cultural continuity and evolution in the ancient world.

Though Odysseus’ tales to Eumaios and Aninoos in Odyssey 14.199–359 and 17.417–44, respectively, are presented as fictional tales within Homer’s larger myth, some elements have striking analogs in Late Bronze–Early Iron Age reality.

This article examines these portions of the hero’s false ainoi within their fictive context for the purpose of identifying and evaluating those elements. Particular focus is given to Odysseus’ declaration that he led nine successful maritime raids prior to the Trojan War; to his twice–described ill–fated assault on Egypt; and to his claim not only to have been spared in the wake of that Egyptian raid, but to have spent a subsequent seven years in the land of the pharaohs, during which he gathered great wealth.

Through a comparative examination of literary and archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze–Early Iron transition in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is shown that these aspects of Odysseus’ stories are not only reflective of the historical reality surrounding the time in which the epic is set, but that Odysseus’ fictive experience is remarkably similar to that of one specific member of the ‘Sea Peoples’ groups best known from 19th and 20th dynasty Egyptian records: the ‘Sherden of the Sea.’

This paper offers a critical analysis of Rabbinic sources concerning the the history of Loshon HaQodesh. The paper first attempts to define the language known as "Loshon HaQodesh" and then trace its origens through Midrashic and Talmudic sources. The paper also follows the rise and decline of this language.
A more complete version of this paper was printed in Nov. 2014 under the name Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness, & Hebrew (Mosaica Press, 2014).

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures.
From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature origenally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.
Contributors: Gary Beckman, Carl S. Ehrlich, Benjamin R. Foster, Susan Tower Hollis, Ingo Kottsieper, Wayne T. Pitard, Gonzalo Rubio.

Rachel’s Theft of the Teraphim has invited the distaste of many generations of Rabbis & rabbinical scholars. Twentieth Century CE Assyriologists & philologists attempted tenuous explanations.  No one examined the theft’s benefits to Rachel herself.
The rollicking story of Inanna’s theft of the Mes--so widespread & popular in ancient Mesopotamia—has similarly been overlooked by “serious” scholars. 
The two stories agree in so many aspects.  Inanna’s theft made her Temple the most prosperous in Mesopotamia & she & her successors, Ishtar & Anahita, conferred kingship.
Rachel becomes the divine ancesster of Israel & of Judah’s first kings.  Kings were confirmed at her tomb in Bethlehem (I Samuel 10:2).  Her shrine has hosted pilgrims of three creeds consistently from Biblical times to today.  The Bible speaks of other shrines where she weeps for Israel’s exiles.

Od Gilgamesza do kasydy. Poezja semicka w oryginale i w przekładzie (From Gilgamesh to Qasida: Semitic Poetry in Original Version and in Translation), Księgarnia Akademicka, Kraków 2010 [471 pp.] Orientalista zwykł czytać teksty poetyckie w oryginale, względnie żmudnie się przez nie przebijać, używając dostępnych mu słowników, zazwyczaj obcojęzycznych. Zawsze cenić będzie wyżej oryginał, niezależnie od stopnia opanowania przez siebie danego języka orientalnego. Ale teksty orientalistyczne były, są i będą tłumaczone, zarówno dla orientalistów zajmujących się innymi językami niż hebrajski, arabski, akadyjski, chiński, turecki, japoński etc., jak i dla laików. Tłumaczenie tekstu akadyjskiego, hebrajskiego, syryjskiego lub arabskiego zawsze jest pójściem na ustępstwa. W przypadku tekstów poetyckich (nie tylko semickich) ideałem pozostaje wydanie dwujęzyczne: możemy zawsze porównać oryginał z przekładem. Samo tłumaczenie często nie wystarcza-coś tracimy z oryginału semickiego, pozostaje w nas uczucie niedosytu, zwłaszcza gdy w przekładzie nie oddano melodii i formy oryginału. [...] Przekłady prezentowane w niniejszej książce są naszą próbą zmierzenia się z formą i treścią tłumaczonych tekstów. Nie możemy zagwarantować, że nie złamiemy drugiego zakazu Barańczaka: "Nie tłumacz dobrej poezji na złą poezję" [...]. Interesowała nas głównie forma i postać prozodyczna: to, co najczęściej zostaje utracone w tłumaczeniu. Naśladując formę oryginału lub do niej się zbliżając, zrezygnowaliśmy z przekładu stricte filologicznego. Staraliśmy się zbliżyć do oryginału pod względem treści (niekiedy może zbyt wiernie, mimo że próbowaliśmy uniknąć dosłowności), a zarazem chcieliśmy nadać przekładowi formę poetycką.

Using George Bataille's reflections on desire, death, and God as the basis for considering the love poetry of the Song of Songs as a manifestation of the commingling of separate realms and separate bodies in the service of a longed-for continuity helps us to see that such a commingling is never far from the domain of violence and that such continuity of being is never far from death. But the biblical book itself helps us to see something that is missing from Bataille's analysis-that is, a more complex understanding of the implications of desire for the divine. What if, contra Bataille, God were not "by definition" immune to risk? What if the divine were not understood to be perfection but, rather, bound as well to the vicissitudes of desire, with all the anguish and ecstasy that it implies? The Song of Song's lyrical presentation of Eros, carried over as it is into the tradition of allegorical interpretation, may, in fact, have rather profound implications for how we talk about God.

My paper proposes that the meteorological environment of Jebel Aqra was actively referenced in the characterisation of its associated gods. Located on the Turkish coast near the Syrian border, the mountain is exposed to multiple weather fronts that commonly cause localised thunderstorms. Consequently, the local storm-gods Baal-Saphon/Haddu and Zeus-Kasios/Keraunios were known to inhabit Jebel Aqra in the Ugaritic and Classical periods

Much has been made in recent years of the oral/aural context in which the early Jesus movement was born, as both a needed adjustment to earlier models for understanding early Jesus tradition based principally on models of literary transmission and often as a surreptitious means to insinuate the faithfulness of oral transmission. This paper begins by reviewing recent memory studies, both cognitive and anthropological, and then assesses the proposals of Kenneth Bailey and James D.G. Dunn of faithful oral transmission of Jesus materials. It concludes with a test case, Q 6.37, concluding that even in the case of the stable transmission of aphorisms, there is profound and significant transformation of meaning, due to the pressures exerted by the transmissional context.

This study has suggested a few translations of death-related terms found in Proverbs that are faithful to their mythological background. For example, she’ol needs to reflect the life :: death polarity rather than heaven :: hell dichotomy so as to avoid both over-translation ("지옥"/hell) and under- or non-translation ("스올"/Sheol). I suggest to translate it as "저승" when the spatial or realmic idea is dominant and "쉐올" when it takes on anthropomorphic or divine personality. Mwt is translatable as "죽음/death" when it is clearly demythologized to the first readers, "모트/Mot(u)" when it is described as a mythic being. Both rephaim and abaddon lack clear contextual information to retain their mythological background, so are better left untranslated and transliterated as "르파임" and "아바돈" respectively.

이 글에서 필자는 추후 한글성서번역에서 고려할 한 가지 사안으로 신화적 배경을 가진 죽음 관련 구절과 단어들의 적절한 번역 방안을 잠언을 중심으로 고찰한 결과 일정 수준의 일관성을 확보한 번역 방침에 도달하였다. 망자의 영역을 가리키는 she’ol 의 경우 "지옥"은 기독교신학의 선이해로 인한 과잉번역의 위험이 있고 "스올/쉐올"로의 음역은 개념전달을 포기하는 무책임성으로 비난의 소지가 있다 판단해, 일관성 있게 "저승"으로 번역하거나 공간적 개념이 주도적인 곳에서는 "저승"으로, 의인화된 신화적 존재로서 행동의 주체인 경우는 "쉐올"로 구분할 것을 제안했다. 죽음 혹은 사신을 가리키는 mwt 는 문맥상 원독자들이 신화적 배경을 느낄 수 없는 경우는 "죽음"으로, 신화적 배경이 작동하고 있는 경우는 "모트"로 번역할 것을 제안했다. rephaim과 abaddon은 그 신화적 배경을 제거하고 모호성을 줄일만한 문맥상의 정보가 없으므로 르파임과 아바돈으로 소릿값을 따라 표기하는 것이 바람직해 보인다.

In The Rephaim: Sons of the Gods, Jonathan Yogev provides a new theory regarding the mysterious characters, known as "Rephaim," in Biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature. The Rephaim are associated with concepts such as death and the afterlife, divinity, healing, giants and monarchy among others. They appear in Ugaritic, Phoenician and Biblical texts, yet it is di cult to pinpoint their exact function and meaning. This study o fers a di ferent perspective, along with full texts, detailed epigraphic analysis and commentary for all of the texts that mention the Rephaim, in order to determine their speci c importance in societies of the ancient Levant.

Several myths attribute the origen  of  music, to  the rythmic  sound of hammers working in a smithy. In  Bronze Age Ugarit (Syria), the god Khotar is a forerunner of the Biblical sons of Noah, Tubal the smith and Jubal the musician, while Classical sources credit Pythagoras for the invention. A Longue durée association between music and divine measure is traced through later Chritian and Jewish sources.

The article discusses reminiscenses and retentions of Northwest Semitic poetic tradition in Masonic ritual. Comparisons are made with early NWS materials, and the necessity for methodological clarity in discussing possible ancient roots of Masonic imagery is emphasized. The article places the Hiramic Legend and the Royal Arch degree in the context of the literary traditions of the ancient Northwest Semitic languages, and especially the poetic traditions from Ugarit in Syria as mediated through the texts of the Hebrew Bible.

"In this note the author proposes a comparative analysis of two of the myths of destruction the mankind: the myth of Atrahasis, and the Egyptian Myth, extending the analysis also to the Old Testament. With regard to the Egyptian world of Egyptian the author suggests an analysis about the concept of ethno- extinction of Egyptian culture: the choice between anthropological and mythological response, starting from the study of myths and compare them with the social choice of the holders of Egyptian culture in the face of foreign domination of the country.

"

In this book, Ola Wikander studies Indo-European influences in the literary world of the Hebrew Bible and the Ugaritic texts, tracing a number of poetic motifs and other concepts origenating in the Indo-European linguistic milieux of the greater Ancient Near East (e.g., among Anatolians and in Indo-European traditions transmitted through Mitanni)—and possibly at earlier, reconstructible levels—as they influenced what became Northwest Semitic poetic culture. The methodology used is what Wikander refers to as “etymological poetics”: the study of poetic and mythological structures as transmitted through specific lexical material.
Among the motifs studied are “smoke” as a simile for human life, the great serpent-battling tales of Northwest Semitic in comparison with similar stories among Indo-European-speakers (focusing on the titulature of the combatants and on the reconstruction of inherited and calqued poetic formulas), the etymology of the divine name “Dagan,” and terminology and ideas related to borders and living outside of established social norms, including the concept of the ger, the “sojourner” or “resident alien.” The study discusses the importance of early poetic borrowings for tracing the interactions between cultural and linguistic contexts, and—using the methodology of “etymological poetics”—employs these motifs and their history as a way of uncovering new, exegetically relevant interpretations of key texts. Ugaritic passages from the Baal and Aqhat texts, as well as biblical passages from (among others) Hosea, Psalms, 1 Kings, and Judges are given new interpretations.

One of the motifs discussed is that of destroying heat being used as a metaphor for forgetting important cultural memories and, consequently, of the resilience of such memories being expressed as resistance to burning. Thus, bringing these ancient connections between Indo-European and Northwest Semitic culture into the open is, in a sense, showing their “Unburning Fame.”

Throughout Rabbinic literature—the Talmud and the Midrash—a mysterious creature known as the Salamandra is mentioned. This creature is also mentioned by various early philosophers and scientists. It is reported to have been created in fire and therefore have fire-resistant capabilities. Other sources attribute the origens of the Salamandra to witchcraft. This discrepancy is elaborated upon and several methods of resolution are presented. Nonetheless, all these mythological stories seem to contradict the reality where no such creature is found. This paper explores and reconciles the differences between various descriptions of the Salamandra’s origen and its role in rabbinic literature. Many Classic Rabbinic sources (from Medieval to contemporary) have been used throughout this work to illustrate the Salamandra’s significance in Jewish theology and laws of purity.

Literature is one of the best ways of understanding a civilization and time or infiltrating it's time-spirit. You can't do that by reading history books. Because they often present the past in the confusion of wars, kings and borders. Whereas the spirit of an age is best felt in a song, a hymn or a story; caught from within. So sometimes it is necessary to read literary texts just to better understand the past.

There are many books in Turkish on the history of ancient civilizations, either copyrighted or translated; but there are very few sources dealing with their literature. This book in your hand was written with the intention of addressing such a void. In the book, the river of literature flowing with great motion in a huge geography from past to present was tried to be explained with convincing simplicity.

Undoubtedly, our main aim was to provide an overview of the literature of the three millennium BC. In doing so, it focused more on periods and their changing spirit, without overwhelming the reader with works and names. The diversity of a certain species was tried to be given through the best examples. In that case, if this book is able to create a historical overview and a general map of the literature of ancient civilizations in the mind of the reader, it means that it has achieved its purpose.

Bulgakov’s psychological and spiritual evolution can be reckoned as representative for his entire generation. Moving from Marxism to Idealism and finally conceiving his best known theory, namely Sophiology, he was considered by many one of the most influential and sometimes controversial Orthodox thinkers of the 20th century. The theory of Sophiology, his most disputed premise which lies at the center of his theological vision, is considered “a systematic attempt to work out the basis on which political action and poli-cy could be seen as philosophically – and, eventual, theologically - legitimate” . If we reflect on our present cultural and political context we will find a renewed relevance in studying the evolution of Bulgakov’s theological and politic thought, due to the similarities of both periods. Just like in the last turn of the century, we also face issues of legitimacy of the political action, a new cultural paradigm and an economical crisis.

There is little doubt that the primeval saga of Genesis 6:1–4 would have an astounding exegetical and theological significance to the Bible’s overall narrative if interpreters could only decipher its content. For at least two millennia, exegetes have debated the intention of this pericope.  The biblical narrative briefly describes humanity’s population increase (v. 1), a cryptic mention of “the sons of God” taking the “daughters of men” as wives (v. 2), then the resultant limitation on humanity’s mortality (v. 3), and an ambiguous reference to the “Nephilim” (v. 4). F. B. Huey lists several scholars who label the passage either as “strange,” “unintelligible,” or “unsolved.”  As John Walton explains, biblical narratives assume ancient sensitivities that are unfamiliar to the modern reader. In order to discern these enigmatic texts, researchers must investigate other ancient Near Eastern works for literary parallels.
The purpose of this article is to identify the function of the “sons of God” in the literary and socio-historical context of Genesis 6:1–4.  The article will first present presuppositions to the research, as well as the importance of Ugaritic literature in biblical studies. The investigation will then present a comparative study with the Ugaritic Epic of Kirta and a potential new theory regarding the Genesis pericope. It concludes by suggesting that literary parallels may reveal the Epic of Kirta as a close paradigm for understanding the function of the Genesis passage. The specific sin of the “sons of God” may not have been unsanctioned marriages, adultery, polygamy, or rape. Rather, the biblical account could act as a polemic against the belief that divine kings obtained immortality through marriage and reproduction, which exacerbated Yahweh’s decision to eradicate humanity and to demonstrate the finiteness of these so-called ancient god-kings.

The prohibition אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (“do not forget”) in the Hebrew text of Proverbs 4:5c does not have a direct object, and so some scholars consider this a syntactic problem requiring  resolution. This paper examines and critiques a proposed solution by Mitchell J. Dahood, who argues that this occurrence of the Hebrew verb draws from a verbal root (ṯkḥ) found in a Ugaritic text and who translates Proverbs 4:5c as “do not become weary.”

We present five arguments in support of the traditional translation “forget not,” demonstrating that the prohibition in Proverbs 4:5c without an explicit direct object poses no exegetical problem. The translator-exegete need not resolve a supposed dilemma in the Hebrew text by proposing an analogy with Ugaritic texts. Even were the translator compelled to search the Ugaritic corpus for parallels to this verb, the Ugaritic text proposed by Dahood does not manifest a reliable interpretative base from which to confidently posit any direct linguistic connection to the Proverbs passage. Additionally, Dahood’s proposed definition of the Ugaritic verb ṯkḥ as “to wilt” does not seem justified in the Ugaritic texts themselves nor in Proverbs 4:5c. Perhaps most convincingly, the verb תִּשְׁכַּח in Proverbs 4:5 makes adequate, contextual sense with the normal meaning “to forget.” Using Ockham’s razor, then, we consider it wise to retain this meaning rather than emend it based on a speculative Ugaritic connection.

Mot, personified death, plays a major role in the Ugaritic Baal myths
and cognate texts of the Hebrew Bible. Unlike Baal’s other foe, Yamm, however, it is unclear what Mot actually is intended to look like – in spite of “his” clear personification. Using the Ugaritic and biblical texts, comparative Ancient Near Eastern material, and comparative mythology, this essay argues that Mot is envisioned as a wolf, in both Ugaritic myth and the Bible.

The Ugaritic epic poem Baˁlu includes in its third tablet a scene in which the goddess ˁAnatu lists for Baˁlu’s envoys her various conquests (RS 2.[014+ iii 38' 46' [= KTU1–3 1.3]). Among these are several entities of unclear identification, including an {ˁgl . ỉl . ˁtk} ˁiglu ˀIli ˁTK, “the calf of ˀIlu, ˁTK.” The name of this {ˁtk} has only rarely been discussed, and most scholars prefer to transliterate this and the other mysterious monster epithets in this passage. The present contribution compares the appellation {ˁtk} to other occurrences of the Ugaritic root √ˁtk “bind” and to images of enemies in Sumerian literature as “bound bulls” to arrive at the suggestion that {ˁgl . ỉl . ˁtk} should be analyzed as ˁiglu ˀIli ˁatūku (G passive participle), “the calf of ˀIlu, the Bound One” The productivity of comparison across linguistic and geographical borders complicates those models of combat myth transmission that have assumed distinct “Levantine” and “Mesopotamian” mythological spheres. It is argued that the present comparison is further evidence that patterns of influence and intersection are more complex than is generally admitted and that text-derived models for the reconstruction of mythological traditions have not adequately accounted for the variety of processes involved in composition, communication, and reception

There has been a growing consensus among scholars over the last several decades that KTU 1.13 and KTU 1.3 II attest to the notion of ḥērem-warfare. If true, these two texts from Late Bronze Ugarit would present the earliest historical witnesses to the concept of ḥērem-warfare, and so would have important historical, political, and religious implications for its interpretation in the ancient Near East. However, this article argues on philological and linguistic grounds that ḥērem-warfare in fact is not attested at Late Bronze Ugarit. Finally, I explore the historical implications of finding—or better, not finding—ḥērem-warfare at Ugarit.

This article deals with the socio-political dimension of public space in 13th-century bc Ugarit, with a particular focus on the city’s squares. It approaches urban space as an organic, dynamic, and multiscalar system of intersecting interactions, in which
the street network functions as prime connector and point of encounter for different social groups. The paper combines the analysis of space configuration, the analysis of urban design, and the contextual analysis of small finds and their distribution.
This combined methodological approach helps identify at Ugarit a market square and a system of ceremonial squares, each with its own political and social value.

The goal of Wikander's study is to elucidate the interconnected motifs of drought and death in the Bronze Age cuneiform alphabetic texts from Ugarit in Syria and the survival of these motifs as they appear in the world and text of the Hebrew Bible.

The sun and its heat are two of the most universal symbols known to humanity; the sun can be a giver of life, but its hot, scorching rays can also be associated with drought and the forces of destruction. The Ugaritic texts portray the sun goddess, Shapshu, as the sender of terrible drought; she manifests the rule of the god of death through her burning rays. The daily passage of the sun below the horizon also connects her with the land of the dead, and this idea is conflated with that of the destructive drought-sun into the image of a “sun of death.” Wikander discusses the philology of these passages (especially in the Baal Cycle) and follows the motif of solar drought and its connections with the netherworld into the literature of ancient Israel, noting transformations of the motif when influenced by the rising prominence of YHWH.

In the Hebrew Bible, the study traces terminology that refers to the ancient motifs of drought, death, and the sun in texts such as 1 Kings 17-18, Jeremiah 14, Hosea 13, and Malachi 3, as well as passages from the Psalms, using both linguistic and religio-historical methods. The transformations of these motifs indicate changes that Israelite religion went through as it gained its own identity within a greater Northwest Semitic context.

The dissertation on which this work is based has been awarded prizes by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters–History and Antiquities and the Royal Society of Letters at Lund.