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"Mesopotamia."
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Ancient Mesopotamia
\"In Ancient Mesopotamia, readers discover the history and impressive accomplishments of the ancient Mesopotamians, including their extraordinary cultural achievements and technological wonders. Engaging text provides details on the civilization's history, development, daily life, culture, art, technology, warfare, social organization, and more.\"--Publisher's web site.
Book
Melothesia in Babylonia
This book examines the Babylonian backgroundof melothesia, the science of charting zodiac influences on the human body, which transformed older divination by connecting astrology with medical techniques. Special attention is given to a text from late-5th-century Uruk, which is argued to be an important representative of this new approach to the healing arts, previously only known from Greek and medieval astrology.
eBook
A tale of two plantations : slave life and labor in Jamaica and Virginia
\"This book reconstructs the individual lives and collective experiences of some 2,000 slaves on two plantations--Mesopotamia sugar estate in western Jamaica and Mount Airy Plantation in tidewater Virginia--during the final three generations of slavery in Jamaica and the USA. It also compares Mesopotamia with Mount Airy to demonstrate the differences between slave life in the British West Indies and slave life in the Antebellum US South. The chief difference was demographic. Mesopotamia had a continually shrinking slave population, with many more deaths than births, which was standard throughout the British Caribbean. Mount Airy had a continually expanding slave population, with many more births than deaths, which was standard throughout the Old South. At Mesopotamia the slaveholders imported their laborers from Africa, worked them to death and replaced them with new Africans, so that family life was perpetually stunted. At Mount Airy, where the slaves were all American-born, the slaveholders sold their surplus people or moved them to distant work sites, so that families were routinely broken up. On both plantations numerous individual slaves are observed in action, a mix of leaders and followers, rebels and conformists. A principal theme is slave motherhood and intergenerational family formation; another is the impact of field labor upon health and longevity. The Mesopotamia people engaged with Moravian missionaries and responded to two major Jamaican slave rebellions, while 218 of the Mount Airy people migrated to Alabama as cotton hands. The book concludes with emancipation in Jamaica and the USA. Never before have two slave communities from differing regions in America been portrayed over a long time period in such full detail\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
EGYPTIAN HYBRID NAMES IN CUNEIFORM TEXTS FROM THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BCE
This article focuses on Egyptian hybrid names, specifically on personal names in cuneiform texts from the first millennium BCE that consist of one Egyptian element (generally the name of an Egyptian deity) and a non-Egyptian element (generally a Semitic phrase). The absence or presence of Egyptian contexts, such as Egyptian ethnonyms and fully Egyptian personal names, is evaluated to determine whether these hybrid names indicate the diffusion of Egyptian cults abroad or the partial integration of Egyptians living in Western Asia. After identifying and presenting 27 attestations from Neo-Assyrian to Parthian times, it is concluded that the name-bearers in question likely consisted of both foreigners who had adopted Egyptian cults and ethnic Egyptians.
Journal Article
Precise timing of abrupt increase in dust activity in the Middle East coincident with 4.2 ka social change
The extent to which climate change causes significant societal disruption remains controversial. An important example is the decline of the Akkadian Empire in northern Mesopotamia ∼4.2 ka, for which the existence of a coincident climate event is still uncertain. Here we present an Iranian stalagmite record spanning 5.2 ka to 3.7 ka, dated with 25 U/Th ages that provide an average age uncertainty of 31 y (1σ). We find two periods of increased Mg/Ca, beginning abruptly at 4.51 and 4.26 ka, and lasting 110 and 290 y, respectively. Each of these periods coincides with slower vertical stalagmite growth and a gradual increase in stable oxygen isotope ratios. The periods of high Mg/Ca are explained by periods of increased dust flux sourced from the Mesopotamia region, and the abrupt onset of this dustiness indicates threshold behavior in response to aridity. This interpretation is consistent with existing marine and terrestrial records from the broad region, which also suggest that the later, longer event beginning at 4.26 ka is of greater regional extent and/or amplitude. The chronological precision and high resolution of our record indicates that there is no significant difference, at decadal level, between the start date of the second, larger dust event and the timing of North Mesopotamia settlement abandonment, and furthermore reveals striking similarity between the total duration of the second dust event and settlement abandonment. The Iranian record demonstrates this region’s threshold behavior in dust production, and its ability to maintain this climate state for multiple centuries naturally.
Journal Article
Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia
Cities generate challenges as well as confer advantages on their inhabitants. Recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have revealed extensive settlements with diverse populations, institutions, extended hinterlands, and mass production by the early fourth millennium BC, comparable to well-known evidence for cities in their traditional homeland of southern Iraq. However, early northern Mesopotamian cities incorporated low-density zones and flexible uses of space not yet identified in southern Mesopotamia. Evidence for violent conflict in northern Mesopotamian cities also raises questions about urban sustainability; cities succeeded despite new sources of social stress.
Journal Article
Humans as Donations and the Question of Temple Slavery in Early Mesopotamia
This paper examines the practice of donating people to deities in southern Mesopotamia between 2600 and 2000 BC. It offers a diachronic analysis of Early Dynastic, Old Akkadian, and Ur III sources and considers Old and Neo-Babylonian evidence to address questions raised in Gelb’s (1972. “The Arua Institution.”
66: 1–32) foundational study. This paper demonstrates, first, that donors and recipients were rarely close relatives, as the dedicatees often included foreign captives, former slaves, orphans, and incomplete families temporarily under patronage prior to donation. Secondly, despite becoming temple “servants” (performing mostly unskilled labor like water-drawing, weaving, and, rarely, cult-related tasks), officials recorded the names of the donors of many dedicatees. In some cases, this was because the dedicatees were former slaves who continued living with their former masters after donation (and manumission), supporting them in old age as part of the
arrangement. Other dedicatees may have lived with temple officials and employees or even within temple complexes. Third, the paper challenges the “temple slaves” model in interpreting the status of dedicatees in early Mesopotamia. Although third-millennium sources describe them as a deity’s “servants,” similar to how slaves in private households were referred to as someone’s “servants,” the dedicatees faced a social and legal dead end: temple officials could neither sell nor release them because their master or mistress was a deity. In effect, third-millennium dedicatees became part of a broader “menial” class of full-time temple dependents. Their status resembled that of the Neo-Babylonian oblates (
), who were legally free but subject to strict temple control. Finally, building on Patterson’s (1982.
. Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press) model of slavery as a substitute for death, this paper argues that the donation of humans to temples in southern Mesopotamia functioned as an alternative to slavery. For the local impoverished population, donating family members to temples provided an option other than outright sale into slavery. Additionally, donating foreign captives to temples served as a more effective method of control and integration than enslavement.
Journal Article
MONITORING THE SHIFT OF RAINFED LINE OF 250 mm OVER IRAQ
This study was aimed to analyze the annual rainfall and study the changes in the borders of rainfed regions in Iraq. Monthly rainfall data for 39 meteorological stations affiliated with the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation /Iraqi Meteorological Organization and Seismology have been used. These data represent a Long-term Climate Records from January 1980 to December 2020 have been used to calculate the mean annual rainfall in Iraq over the 41 years. The resultes showed significant spatial and temporal variability in the annual mean rainfall, with higher values in the northern areas of Iraq and lower values in the southern regions. It was examined the succession of the rainfed line at 250mm. The results indicated that there have been clear changes in the rained line of 250 mm during the four different decades (1980–1990, 1990–2000, 2000–2010, and 2010–2020). Iraq was located between the 100 mm rain line at the south and the 1277 mm rain line at the far northeast. Iraq became located between the 100-1000 mm rain line. During the four time periods, the area of the rainfed agriculture region, which depends on a 250 mm rainfall line, amounted to 20.38%, 20.17%, 14.91%, and 17.01%. In general, the area of the region decreased in the southeast and north during the first, second, and third time periods and then expanded slightly during the fourth time period.
Journal Article
Irrigation of World Agricultural Lands: Evolution through the Millennia
Many agricultural production areas worldwide are characterized by high variability of water supply conditions, or simply lack of water, creating a dependence on irrigation since Neolithic times. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the evolution of irrigation of agricultural lands worldwide, based on bibliographical research focusing on ancient water management techniques and ingenious irrigation practices and their associated land management practices. In ancient Egypt, regular flooding by the Nile River meant that early agriculture probably consisted of planting seeds in soils that had been recently covered and fertilized with floodwater and silt deposits. On the other hand, in arid and semi-arid regions farmers made use of perennial springs and seasonal runoff under circumstances altogether different from the river civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and early dynasties in China. We review irrigation practices in all major irrigation regions through the centuries. Emphasis is given to the Bronze Age civilizations (Minoans, Egyptians, and Indus valley), pre-Columbian, civilizations from the historic times (e.g., Chinese, Hellenic, and Roman), late-Columbians (e.g., Aztecs and Incas) and Byzantines, as well as to Ottomans and Arabs. The implications and impacts of irrigation techniques on modern management of water resources, as well as on irrigated agriculture, are also considered and discussed. Finally, some current major agricultural water management challenges are outlined, concluding that ancient practices could be adapted to cope with present challenges in irrigated agriculture for increasing productivity and sustainability.
Journal Article