BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH PROJECTS
ANCIENT NEAR EAST, JUDEA AND EGYPT
Dr. John Lewis
October 24, 2005
General Histories: Mesopotamia (sometimes, Egypt and Hebrews, and even into Greece / Rome)
Bacharach, J. L. A Near East Studies Handbook (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974). AU DS61 .B3.
Cassin, E. The Near East: The Early Civilizations (NY: Delacorte Press, 1967). Sem Circ DS62.2 .C3213 1967.
Cook, J. M. The Persian Empire (NY: Schocken Books, 1983).
Freeman, C. Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Frye, R. N. ed. The Near East and the Great Powers (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1969). AU DS63 .F7 1969.
Grimal, N. A History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988).
Hall, H. R. The Ancient History of the Near East : From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis (London : Methuen, 1963). Sem DS62.H176 A5 1963.
Hallo, W. W. and Simpson, K. S. The Ancient Near East: A History 2nd edn. (Belmont, CA.: Thompson Wadsworth, 1998).
Hitti, P. K. The Near East in History, a 5000 Year Story (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961). AU DS62 .H68.
Kramer, S. H. History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History 3rd revised edn. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1981).
Leick, G. Who’s Who in the Ancient Near East (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
Nagle, D. B. The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History (NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002).
Parpola, S. and Porter, M eds. The Helsinki Atlas of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian period (Helsinki: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2001). Sem Ref G2206.S1 H44 2001.
Podany, A. H. and McGee, M. The Ancient Near Eastern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). An illustrated history.
Pollock, S. Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden that Never Was (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001).
Pritchard, J. B. ed. The Ancient Near East: Volume I, An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956).
Stiebing, Jr., W. H. Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture (NY: Addison Wesley Longman, 2003).
Van de Mieroop, M. A History of the Ancient Near East (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004).
General Histories: Egypt
Cline, E. H. and Rubalcaba, J. The Ancient Egyptian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). (an illustrated history)
Grimal, N. A History of Ancient Near East (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
Robins, G. The Art of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Shaw, I. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
General Histories: Hebrew
Miller, J. M. and Hayes, J. H. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press,1986).
Shanks, H. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple (Washington: Prentice Hall, Biblical Archaeology Society, 1999).
de Vaux, Roland Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (NY: McGraw Hill, 1961). Sem Circ DS112 .V313 1961.
Primary Literary Materials: Egypt
Breasted, J. H. Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I: The First through the Seventeenth Dynasties (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 2001).
Primary Literary Materials: Mesopotamia
Beckman, G. Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd edn., (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999).
Frayne, D. R. The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Ur III Period (2112-2004) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
Lewis, B. The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth (Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980).
Parpola, S. and Watanabe, K. eds., State Archives of Assyria, Vol. 2: Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (Kelsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project and the Helsinki University Press, 1988).
Roth, M. T. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd edn. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). (from a series)
Archaeology
Richard, S. Near East Archaeology: A Reader (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003). Sem DS56 .N395 2003.
Near East Archaeology (Journal). (Atlanta: Scholars Press). Sem PER N27. (Formerly Biblical Archaeologist)
Languages
Andrews, C. The British Museum Book of the Rosetta Stone (NY: Dorset, 1981).
Chiera, E. They Wrote on Clay: The Babylonian Tablets Speak Today (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1938 [1969]).
Norman, J. Ancestral Voices: Decoding Ancient Languages (NY> Barnes and Noble, 1992).
Zauzich, K-T. Hieroglyphs without Mystery A. M. Troth tr. (Austin: University of Texas, 1992).
Mythology, Literature and Readers
Arnold, B. T. and Beyer, B. E. Readings from the Ancient Near East: Primary Sources for Old Testament Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002). Sem Circ BL1060 .R42 2002.
Cunningham, G. et al Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford: Oxford University, 2006).
Gray, J.Near Eastern Mythology (Hamlyn: Feltham, 1969). Sem Pf Lib qOH G793r PF. LIB.
Martinez, F. G. and Luttikhuizen, G. P. eds. Interpretations of the Flood (Leiden: Brill, 1998). Sem BS658 .I58 1998. (incl. Gen. 6:5-9:17 in its Near East context).
Maspero, G. Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).
Wolkstein, D. and Kramer, S. N. Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (NY: Harper and Row, 1983).
Society and Culture
Young, T. C. Near Eastern Culture and Society: A Symposium on the Meeting of East and West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951).Sem, Pf Lib MP 20 Y87n PF. LIB.
Roaf, M. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Abington: Andromeda Oxford Ltd., 2004).
RESEARCH PAPER TOPICS: History 304: The Ancient Near East
The assignment: write a research paper, approximately 4500 words (fifteen double-spaced pages), on a topic selected from one of the following categories. Use one or more primary texts (or photos) as your central historical source(s); use secondary readings to support your interpretation. The paper must have a clear theme, a clearly stated direction of approach, and must be clear in its use of the primary sources.
What follows below are suggestions: neither exhaustive nor dogmatic. I have stated a question or questions for each of the topics below. It is not necessary to use any one of these questions—and you should certainly not use it as the title of your paper! Use it only as you need it, as food for thought, or to help set a direction in a difficult subject.
It is appropriate to choose, as your primary focus, either Egypt or the area of Mesopotamia. But the best paper might come from the intersection of these two areas—perhaps through a textual connection, one of the numerous wars or conquests, or through connection to the Old Testament.
Mesopotamian Political Developments:
How might the geography of the Euphrates / Tigris River valleys—or the rivers themselves—affect the cultures of the area? What evidence can you find for this? To what extent must one rely on speculation or inference to draw such conclusions?
What does evidence connected to Mesopotamian rulers suggest about the nature of political rule at various times? How did Mesopotamian and Egyptian kings viewed themselves, in relation to each other? What is revealed in the diplomatic records of a specific time?
Egyptian Political Developments:
How might the geography of the Nile River—or the river itself—valley affect the cultures of the area? It is easy to say that the flooding of the Nile helped unify Egypt—but can you find actual evidence for this? When does Egypt reveal, in its political history, periods of disintegration or even chaos?
Religion and Mythology:
How might the attempted political reforms of Akhnaten have affected relations between the Pharaoh and the priestly class? What political implications are there for the role of the priesthood in Egypt?
Or, consider the mythology associated with Mesopotamian and Egyptian literary works, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the story of Inanna. What view of the world is revealed by such works? What view of man? What moral values? What view of the afterlife?
Art and Architecture
Pick a temple, monument, stele or artwork and analyze. When was it done, for what purpose, in what cultural and political context, and how can we use as a historical evidence?
Hebrew texts and Near Eastern History
Focus the paper onto carefully selected sources from both Hebraic and Mesopotamian periods. Perhaps you might take two accounts of the same event and compare them. What purposes are revealed in these texts? What attitude might an historian adopt to them?
Egyptian Art
What political and cultural clues can you find in Egyptian art? One might pick a specific work and reveal its context in some depth, or pick a narrow aspect of art that is revealed in multiple works and discuss its cultural - religious implications.
John Lewis
classicalideals@yahoo.com