Bücher veröffentlicht von Pennsylvania State University Press

The corpus of Early Dynastic figurative monuments from ancient Mesopotamia is substantial.

The scholarly world first became aware of the myth of Adapa and the South Wind when it was discovered on a tablet from the El-Amarna archive in 1887. We now have at our disposal six fragments of the myth. The largest and most important fragment, from Amarna, is dated to the 14th century B.C.E. This fragment of the Adapa myth has red-tinted points applied on the tablet at specific intervals. Izre'el draws attention to a few of these points that were missed in previous publications by Knudtzon and Schroeder. Five other fragments were part of the Assurbanipal library and are representative of this myth as it was known in Assyria about seven centuries later. The discovery of the myth of Adapa and the South Wind immediately attracted wide attention. Its ideology and its correspondence to the intellectual heritage of Western religions precipitated flourishing studies of this myth, both philological and substantive. Many translations have appeared during the past century, shedding light on various aspects of the myth and its characters. Izre'el unveils the myth of Adapa and the South Wind as mythos, as story. To do this, he analyzes the underlying concepts through extensive treatment of form. He offers an edition of the extant fragments of the myth, including the transliterated Akkadian text, a translation, and a philological commentary. The analysis of poetic form that follows leads to understanding the myth as a piece of literature and to uncovering its meanings. This study therefore marks a new phase in the long, extensive research into this Mesopotamian myth.

At the first meeting of his class in Northwest Semitic Epigraphy at Harvard, Frank Cross would inform students that one of the things each of them needed was an ?eye for form.? By this, he meant the ability to recognize typological or evolutionary change in letters and scripts. Frank, like his teacher William Foxwell Albright, was a master of typological method. In fact, typology was the dominant feature of his epigraphic work, from the origins of the alphabet to the development of the scripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Indeed, he has written about the importance of typology itself. Because Frank Cross has so dominated the study of the ancient Near East in the last 60 years, Aufrecht once asked him what he considered his primary field of study to be. Without hesitation, he said, ?Epigraphy.? It seems, therefore, that the field that he loved and to which he contributed so much is an appropriate subject for this Festschrift in his honor, which is being presented by his colleagues, friends, and former students. Included are an appreciation by Peter Machinist and a contribution by the late Pierre Bordreuil.

More than 80 years have passed since Bauer and Leander's historical grammar of Biblical Hebrew was published, and many advances in comparative historical grammar have been made during the interim. Joshua Blau, who has for much of his life been associated with the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, has during the past half century studied, collected data, and written frequently on various aspects of the Hebrew language. Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew had its origins in an introduction to Biblical Hebrew first written some 40 years ago; it has now been translated from Modern Hebrew, thoroughly revised and updated, and it distills a lifetime of knowledge of the topic. The book begins with a 60-page introduction that locates Biblical Hebrew in the Semitic family of languages. It then discusses various approaches to categorization and classification, introduces and discusses various linguistic approaches and features that are necessary to the discussion, and provides a background to the way that linguists approach a language such as Biblical Hebrew-all of which will be useful to students who have taken first-year Hebrew as well those who have studied Biblical Hebrew extensively but have not been introduced to linguistic study of the topic. After a brief discussion of phonetics, the main portion of the book is devoted to phonology and to morphology. In the section on phonology, Blau provides complete coverage of the consonant and vowel systems of Biblical Hebrew and of the factors that have affected both systems. In the section on morphology, he discusses the parts of speech (pronouns, verbs, nouns, numerals) and includes brief comments on the prepositions and waw. The historical processes affecting each feature are explained as Blau progresses through the various sections. The book concludes with a complete set of paradigms and extensive indexes. Blau's recognized preeminence as a Hebraist and Arabist as well as his understanding of language change have converged in the production of this volume to provide an invaluable tool for the comparative and historical study of Biblical Hebrew phonology and morphology.

In the five decades since the publication of the second edition of Johannes Friedrich's "Hethitisches Elementarbuch" (1960), our knowledge of Hittite grammar has become more detailed and nuanced. This volume includes a CD-ROM that contains the entire text of the grammar in searchable, cross-referenced, and hyperlinked form.

A collection of essays on possible methodological and theoretical approaches to gender within the framework of ancient Near Eastern studies.

The Old Testament prophets did not hesitate to use the rhetorical conventions accessible to them when delivering their sermons of salvation and judgment. One source of comparison used frequently in the prophets and widely throughout the ancient Near East is the image of a tree. In Trees and Kings, William Osborne evaluates the cultural and cognitive setting that potentially gave rise to this figurative tree imagery, drawing on both comparative study with ancient Near Eastern tree imagery and the cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphor theory. Osborne examines tree metaphors that appear in the texts of Israel's writing prophets, specifically Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. He takes this material as largely reflective of the Israelite prophetic tradition from the 8th-6th centuries BC. Tree imagery in the Old Testament is certainly not limited to these prophetic books, and this study takes many of these texts into consideration in seeking to understand tree imagery in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel better. The question is rarely asked, why do the prophets often defer to the metaphorical use of the tree? The goal of this study is to answer this important question by comparing and contrasting tree metaphors in much of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament with tree imagery and metaphors encountered from the ancient Near East.

Examines myths concerning dragons and dragon-slaying throughout proto-Indo-European cultures, ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian traditions, Indian mythology, and the Bible.

Examines the ghost stories of writer and academic Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936). Focuses on the intersection between his scholarly work and his fiction, arguing that his two careers are intriguingly intertwined.

A study of the concept of artistic process in the Western tradition of the visual arts. Focuses on modern and contemporary art and analyzes the development of process as a discourse that increasingly locates the primary value of art in the artist's creative labor.

Explores the proliferation of spiritualist seances in mid-nineteenth-century Europe and the United States, and the connection to the contemporary evolution of the media entertainment industry.

Known in Pennsylvania Dutch as brauche or braucherei, the folk-healing practice of powwowing was thought to draw upon the power of God to heal all manner of physical and spiritual ills. This work examines the practice of powwowing and shows that, contrary to popular belief, the practice of powwowing is active.

Offers a vivid portrait of Pennsylvania's CCC program. This work combines administrative history with portraits of many of the men who worked in the camps. It draws on archival research in primary sources and on interviews with former CCC men.

This volume aims to sift through the polemics to make sense of religious belief and practice in late antiquity. It aims to describe the mechanisms of ritual with semiotic terms, so that we can better see how they worked and how they affected the social identities of their followers.

A collection of essays by leading feminist writers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland that represent the range of feminist critique ongoing within this important area of continental philosophy. The introduction puts the essays in context and shows what makes their contribution distinctive.

This text examines Swedish culture and mentality and draws upon statistics gathered over more than a decade of research. The author describes a range of factors influencing Swedish character, including population composition, rural background, and even climate.

An English translation of a sixteenth-century Spanish manuscript, by an Inca Jesuit, about Inca religion and the spread of Christianity in colonial Peru. Includes an introductory essay.

This overview of the Oxford Movement highlights five key areas in which the movement affected English society more broadly - politics, religion and theology, friendship, society, and missions. The thematic approach illuminatesthe wider political, social, and cultural impact of the movement.

Explores the question of how an art history of all cultures could be written or if it is even possible to do so. Examines the political and moral issues raised by the consideration of a multicultural art history.

Simone de Beauvoir identified the importance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's writings to feminist theory. But there has been little agreement on how Merleau-Ponty's ideas ultimately have an impact on feminist philosophy. The essays presented here attempt to situate Merleau-Ponty in the larger context of feminist theory.

This work shows how a historiographically sensitive rereading of contemporaneous documents about the 16th-century Spanish conquest and evangelization of Michoacan can challenge traditional celebratory interpretations of missionary activity in early colonial Mexico.

The 14 essays included in this collection clearly illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen understanding of Heidegger's philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources Heidegger's work can provide for feminist thought.

A translation of Guibert of Nogent's memoirs. Written around the year 1115 this book of "solitary songs" offers a look at the life of a monk in the Middle Ages. They portray an intense preoccupation with the sinfulness of the soul, and visions of demons and necromancy.

Julian of Norwich is recognized as one of the great speculative theologians of the Middle Ages, whose thinking about God as love made a permanent contribution to the tradition of Christian belief. This book presents Julian's writings in Middle English, for students and scholars and those with little or no previous experience with the language.