Ancient Near Eastern Religions

For about 150 years, scholars have attempted to identify the language of the world’s first alphabetic script, and to translate some of the inscriptions that use it. Until now, their attempts have accomplished little more than identifying most of the pictographic letters and translating a few of the Semitic words. With the publication of The World’s Oldest Alphabet, a new day has dawned. All of the disputed letters have been resolved, while the language has been identified conclusively as Hebrew, allowing for the translation of 16 inscriptions that date from 1842–1446 BC. These inscriptions expressly name 3 biblical figures and greatly illuminate the earliest Israelite history in a way that no other book has achieved, apart from the Bible.

Catalogue of the Exhibition in Venice, Palazzo Loredan, Campo Santo Stefano, January 30, 2017 – April 25, 2017. Catalogue edited by Adriano Favaro. Texts by F.M. Fales and R. Del Fabbro (Chs. 1-9: subdivision given on frontispiece), with brief essays by S. de Martino, P. Matthiae, P. Odifreddi, D.I. Owen. Prefaces by I. Ligabue, F.M. Fales, G. Ortalli, A. Favaro.  Photographs by V. Grier Dufournier, Nicola Facchini. Translated from the Italian original by R. Battista, L. Culver, L. Filippone, C. Frost. Pp. 272; 58 Figs.;193 photographs of catalogued pieces. Low resolution searchable scan. SEE ALSO UNDER "TALKS" FOR A VIRTUAL VISIT TO THE EXHIBITION.

Disgusted with ISIS, some Kurds turned away from Islam following the fall of Mosul in 2014. Many became atheists, while others sought comfort in Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, according to converts, was the “original” religion of the Kurds before they embraced Islam. In 2015, two Zoroastrian centers opened in Sulaimani, both of which are recognized by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Notably, neither has tried to recreate Zoroastrianism the way it is currently and has been historically practiced in Iran and South Asia. Instead, they have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal. Kurdish Zoroastrians argue that the reason Kurds are “backward” is Islam. They seek to rectify the present situation through a Kurdish “authenticated” and “original” form of Zoroastrianism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at these two centers, the present article examines this new religious movement in Sulaimani, an important city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It analyses the rise and distinctiveness of Kurdish Zoroastrianism looking at how Zoroastrian Kurds articulate their views on Islam, women’s rights, human rights, and Kurdish independence.

Much ink has been spilled on the examination of Mesopotamian conceptions of the divine in the past, and the topic has received renewed attention in the present. The following article offers yet another synthetic analysis of the Mesopotamian divine sphere, amassing in one place a vast array of data and the scholarly assessments of that data. More particularly, after examining what constitutes a god in ancient Mesopotamia and the essential and characteristic qualities of Mesopotamian deities, the article attempts to sort the divine sphere, focusing on the relationship between the various beings that populate the divine world and between a single deity and its various aspects. However, although synthetic, the present contribution offers several new insights. Most prominently, it posits the concept of divine constellations as a model for understanding Mesopotamian deities, in which the major Mesopotamian deities are presented as a constellation of aspects that may be treated as (semi-)independent beings or as a unity depending on the context.

Since Max Weber who denied that the Oriental cities were "real" cities , effforts of many scholars have been aimed at establishing a connection between the city form and its socio-political structure.1 It has often been claimed that the city plan mirrors a city's political organisation.2 The lack of preconceived public spaces in the Near Eastern cities as opposite to the city-states of the Classical Antiquity was one of the focuses of these discussions (Liverani 1997, 91-93; May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume).

There are many elements at play in the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, all of which instigated a multitude and diverse range of interpretations. However, the text has only rarely been interpreted as possibly having a link to an ancient ritual. Remarkably, all of the elements present in the tale of Adam and Eve can be found in several Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean sources, many of which have been interpreted as being associated with rituals. What I propose for this thesis is that the written account of the Eden narrative could be both a record of an historical ritual, and an attempt to standardize a choice women's rite of passage that was used to attain an exalted status within the Israelite religious and social institutions. For this, I investigate the development of the sacred marriage ritual in the nations surrounding Israel by defining its history, its purpose, and its main religious experts. I then explore the Israelite religious landscape around the time the text was composed to find the proper circumstances that would lend themselves to the existence of a Judahite sacred marriage rite akin to that of these other ancient cultures. Finally, using a comparative approach to the Eden text, that mainly relies on the Ritual School, I briefly explore the many elements at play in the tale and define their purpose in the ritual.

According to the  prevalent history of Bharata varsha as told by western scholars the Indus valley civilisation belonged to the
Dravida/Munda people and the vedic people(Aryans) reached India around 1900 BCE only . But in reality the Indus civilisation is vedic and the vedic people were in the Indus Valley at least from 6000BCE as seen from the excavations.
If an unknown script can explain the known myth and known history of a nation,what more proof is required to show that the script belongs to the same people.The script of Egypt explains
their myth and history.The script of Sumer,Akkad or Elam does the same.So it is natural for the Indus script to denote the myth
and history of the Hindu/Sindhu / Sarasvati/ vindu/vipra/sura/ bhuusura/bhudeva/bharata/kuru/pancala/Somaka  people.Hence in this article we shall try to understand a bit of Indian history through the Indus script.We shall presently see  a few evidences pointing to the existence of the Aryans in the Indus Valley several millennia prior to the so called Aryan
arrival in the Indus valley.
In the last  article we have looked into the writing of the Harappans in the early Ravi/Kot Diji phases and concluded that they are the same vedic people of the mature Harappan phase.
We have also compared an inscribed  Ravi sherd showing  presence of the Pancalas/ Bharatas in the Indus valley before 3300BCE and a Taxila coin showing their presence in Taxila around 200 BCE confirming the continuity of the vedic civilisation in the Indus Valley from the early Harappan days.We have also seen how an indus seal
portray the story of Ahalya described in later literature.
In this article we are exploring the universal idea of the mount of the dead Concept In The  Worship Of The Sun God -Pancala-Bharata-Somaka-Moksha-Kosala-Kurukshetra-Dharmakshetra concept-in the solar worship as was practised in the IVC and elsewhere. What are the linquistic and ritual logics employed in the practice? Religions are dependent on rituals and rituals are dependent on languages.Hinduism depends on Bharata/pitR/ deva/rava/veda/Sanskrit/Jina-kshetra/pan-caala language.Budhism depends on the Paali/vaaNi /heli language.Judaism depends on Hebrew/bruuhi language.Christianity depends on Greek/Latin Lnaguage.Islam depends on Arabic languge.All the religions of the world were dependent on words formulated by the priests of those religions as linquistics played a key role in formulating the belief and ritual tenets of their followers.All these religions and the languages owe a great deal to one religion and langage which was the religion of Gobekli Tepe and its language which is the pitR/Bharata /deva/veda language.The Bharatas of Pancala Ruled The known Ancient World By Using The Mound Of The Dead Concept In The  Worship Of The Sun God.

Place, Memory and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments investigates the complex and deep histories of places, how they served as sites of memory and belonging for local communities over the centuries, and how they were appropriated and monumentalized in the hands of the political elites. Focusing on Anatolian rock monuments carved into the living rock at watery landscapes during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, this book develops an archaeology of place as a theory of cultural landscapes and as an engaged methodology of fieldwork in order to excavate the genealogies of places.

Advocating that archaeology can contribute substantively to the study of places in many fields of research and engagement within the humanities and the social sciences, this book seeks to move beyond the oft-conceived notion of places as fixed and unchanging, and argues that places are always unfinished, emergent, and hybrid. Rock cut monuments of Anatolian antiquity are discussed in the historical and micro-regional context of their making at the time of the Hittite Empire and its aftermath, while the book also investigates how such rock-cut places, springs, and caves are associated with new forms of storytelling, holy figures, miracles, and healing in their post-antique life. Anybody wishing to understand places of cultural significance both archaeologically as well as through current theoretical lenses such as heritage studies, ethnography of landscapes, social memory, embodied and sensory experience of the world, post-colonialism, political ecology, cultural geography, sustainability, and globalization will find the case studies and research within this book a doorway to exploring places in new and rewarding ways.

""This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200–850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments, and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural, and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history, and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

Excerpt
http://www.cambridge.org/servlet/file/store6/item7256988/version1/9781107027947_excerpt.pdf""

Abyssinianist historiography is notorious not only for its hypostatization, anachronism and de-Africanization of everything that is of Ancient Black African civilization but also that it leaves no stone unturned to counterfeite, misappropriate, dismantle our social epistemology and make it so difficult for us to trace our (pre)history. For the old Solomonic Ethiopia and "lost Ge'ezites" narrative is no more palatable to a new generation of Ethiopians, another mystification has recently been brewing dancing around the hitherto low profile "lost" communities like "Harla". This 'community' is always ascribed the ethno-/social-archeological finds of Eastern Ethiopia of Hararqee/Hararghe, where numerous pre-historic rock arts and material cultures are found, though they are rare objects of evolutionary multi-disciplinary research. The interjection is to mystify the socio-cultural origin and significance of these resources and, this alienating epistemology has quite successfully excluded the autochthonous Cushites. It has preempted any question as to why can't they be possible agents or their traditions can't be (potential) analytical devices for understanding the mechanism that generated or the meaning and significance that underlie these arts.

This article analyzes how Zoroastrian holy sites as celebrated in the Avesta or elaborated in later, related traditions, emerged as important architectural and ritual centers in late antiquity. Instead of ancient foundations whose details were lost in the depths of time, this paper argues that some of the holiest sanctuaries of the Zoroastrian religion, including Ādur Gušnasp, Ādur Farnbāg, Ādur Burzēn-Mihr, Ādur Karkōy and Lake Kayānsīh, emerged no earlier than the Arsacid era, and were actively manipulated and augmented by the Sasanian dynasty. These 'Avestan' sites of memory emerged at locales with no previous Achaemenid monumental construction, but did benefit from beautiful and dramatic natural features. In late antiquity these natural features, usually mountains or lakes, took on the names and significance of the sacred geography of as found in the Avesta. The Sasanian dynasty in particular built grand monumental complexes as its sovereigns sought to take control of these ancient Iranian traditions.

Many literary texts portray the Mesopotamian netherworld as unrelievedly bleak, yet the archaeological evidence of grave goods suggests that there may also have existed an alternative way of thinking about the afterlife. An analysis of the types of objects found in burials indicates that many people may have anticipated a less harsh form of existence after death. Furthermore, iconographic allusions to the goddess Inana/Ishtar in certain burials raise the possibility that this deity may have been associated with the descent of human dead to the netherworld. The occasional presence of her image and iconography in funerary contexts does not necessarily imply a belief that Inana/Ishtar would personally grant the deceased a happy afterlife, but it may provide an allusion to her own escape from the undesirable netherworld of literary narrative. Inana/Ishtar’s status as a liminal figure and breaker of boundaries also may have encouraged Mesopotamians to associate her with the transition between life and death.

The land Purušhanda was connected with the Luwian culture and religion. It appears to be a part of the Land of Luwiya. This book describes three phases of the history of the kingdom:  the rise of a kingdom, the great kingdom and Purušhanda as a principality under the realm of Hattusha.

With written sources dated to the end of the fourth millennium B.C., Sumerian is the most ancient language so far documented and remained the language of education in scribal circles for over three millennia. In the Late Bronze Age the dissemination of Sumerian literature, which is best known from Old Babylonian sources, reached the Western periphery, i.e. Syria and Anatolia. This book investigates the transmission of Sumerian literary texts to the Western periphery and offers a comprehensive study of Sumerian literature in the Late Bronze Age.

The ancestor cult was a common feature of pharaonic society, aiming to provide social cohesion to extended families as well as close intermediaries with the netherworld. As active members of their respective households, ancestors were objects of veneration and care but were also subject to social obligations toward their kin. However, the continuity of such cults was not exempt from threats, from gradual oblivion to destruction of tombs. Furthermore, tensions between individual strategies and customary duties toward one's kin were another source of instability, especially when officials sought to create their own funerary services and to transfer them to their direct descendants. Such tensions are particularly visible in social sectors close to the king. The assertion of royal authority depended on the elimination of potential sources of political counterweight, and also on the weakening of kin solidarity among members of the elite. As such, the promotion of the cult of royal ancestors, granting individual rewards to selected members of the court and developing personal contact with gods, was part of this strategy. In other cases, " cultural ancestors " provided prestigious links with golden ages of the past, for instance when authorship of sapiential texts was attributed to famous officials of the past or when scribes wrote graffiti in their tombs. Finally, ancestors and ancestral memories were also invented and manipulated for ideological purposes, such as providing legitimacy in periods of political division or prestigious links with the royal palace and the values it promoted. Ancestor worship thus appears as an active, multifaceted social activity, operating at different levels (individual, domestic/family, community, palace), whose distinctive idiosyncrasies depended on the context in which it operated. Tensions but also mutual influences permeated all these spheres, thus making ancestor cults a dynamic manifestation of social values, political practices, and religious beliefs in pharaonic Egypt.

This is the original English version of this article, which appeared in a somewhat abbreviated, French version in C.Calame and P. Ellinger (eds), Du récit au rituel par la forme esthétique. Poèmes, images et pragmatique cultuelle en Grèce ancienne, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017, 271-304. But note that the most recent version of this article has appeared in my Becoming a Man in Ancuient Greece and Rome, Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021, 107-123.

When the Akkadian empire lost its pre-eminence during the chaotic rule of the last kings of the Akkade Dynasty, the Gutians became the most important rulers and the dominant element in Mesopotamia. The paper discusses and interprets different available sources that allow making conclusions about the formation of the Neo Sumerian state. It is concluded that the versions of the Sumerian King List and the Sumerian Temple Hymns that considered Eridu the first city might all have been developed as an ideological programme for confirming the legitimate status of the city of Ur as the seat of kingship and for underlining the Ur III dynasty’s certain divine genealogical relations. It is argued that it seems stange that the Sumerian King List does not mention any dynasty of the powerful Lagašite kings. The complete omittance of Lagaš leads to the conclusion that the list might have been composed by an ideology that considered Lagaš as its enemy or rival. As testified by the Utu-hegal inscriptions and the later incorporation of the state of Lagaš under the control of the centralized Ur III empire, the kings of Ur had a serious rivalry and most probably violent confrontation with Lagaš.

Most scholars in the late 20th and early 21st century believed that cultic activity in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was practiced in various temples that were scattered throughout the kingdoms. Still, a detailed study of the archaeological evidence on Israelite cult reveals that Israelite cultic buildings were extremely rare, both in absolute terms and when compared to other ancient Near Eastern societies, suggesting that cultic activity in temples was the exception rather than the norm and that typical Israelite cult was practiced in the household and in other, non-temple settings. Hence, the evidence suggests that rather than viewing temples, like the one in Arad, as exemplifying typical cultic activity, they should be viewed as exceptions that require a special explanation. The first part of the article develops and updates the suggestion, first raised about ten years ago, that Israelite temples were indeed extremely rare. Given the ancient Near Eastern context, however, such practices seems to be exceptional, and the second part of the article will therefore explain why was such a unique pattern not identified in the past, and will suggest a possible explanation as to how was such an outstanding practice developed and adopted.

Despite the late date and dubious veracity of the Deuteronomistic history, and despite the Bible’s status as the only Bronze or Iron Age text which indisputably refers to Dagon in a southern Canaanite geographical context, scholars have traditionally accepted 1 Samuel 5:1–8’s portrayal of Philistine cult in the Iron Age I as being centered on this deity and his temple at Ashdod.

This study marshals archaeological and historical evidence to assess the level of support for the presence of Dagon in Iron I Philistia, and for a temple at Ashdod  as described in the biblical account.

Also considered, through comparison with the materially analogous situation in the Bronze Age Aegean, is the critical role that a textual complement to physical evidence (or, in the case of the Philistines, the lack thereof) plays in cultic analysis and pantheonic reconstruction.

A lot has been said and written about the so-called Ethiopic civilization said to have been built by unspecified white South Arabians into Black Africa, chiefly the Horn, in the 3 rd century Christian era. While such colonial mentality has gradually ebbed away in this (pot-)modern era, its vestige is yet thriving in Ethiosemitic circles. Scholars have hardly subjected this narrative to critical analysis. Only Ayele Bekerie has significantly destabilized this century-old phantasmagorical history. He explicated that it was but an hegemonic epistemology imposed upon African Ethiopians by few Indo-Semitic external paradigm that, in turn, continued to miseducate Abyssinian historians originating out of monastic education. Yet, Bekerie himself falls short of a paradigm-shifter role, since he, among other fallacies, could not make a break with the unexplained Ge'ez or Ethiopic speaking 'people'. This paper critically and multidisciplinarily analyzed both Bekerie's skeptic and Indo-Semitists' de-Africanizing discourses in the name of 'Ethiopic'. It showed that 'Ethiopic' was a colonial era conspiracy fabricated by means of dogmatic translation/transliteration and/or systematically distorted re-construction with the intention to misappropriate the autochthonous peoples' social epistemological texts, linguistic or non-linguistic, and ultimately left them physically, nationally and ideologically ever divided and 'historically' disoriented. This not only disrupted their civilization but also pulled them back to pre-classical times of 'nation-building'. This conspiracy is also partly responsible for unending tendencies of separationism, ethnocentrism, fundamentalism, and theocracticalautocratic-militarist totalitarian states and, consequently, unending and equal share of impecuniousness. This paper explicates how and why Ethiopic has neither been engineered by a social history of their own (Ethiosemites or Abyssinians) nor of by their South Arabic 'ancestors'. It also shades lights on how this miseducation is significant area of further critical inquiry for future young researchers on Ethiopian and Horn of African history from postcolonial, open-mind, deconstructivist and reconciliatory and peacebuilding perspective.

More than 20 years after presenting his first interpretation of the mosaic from the House of Aion in a paper entitled “Uwagi na temat mozaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr)” (Meander 9/10, 1987, p. 421-438, in Polish, and translated to English: « The Immortality of the Human Soul and the Dionysiac Mysteries in the 4th Century Allegory [in Connection with the Interpretation of the Mosaic from the “House of Aion” at Paphos in Cyprus]»), where he proposed reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 3. The Dionysian thiasos; 4. Apollo and Marsyas; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis, the author now enhances his initial interpretation with numerous reflections concerning the historical context of this work of art, created in the years 320-360.
If, according to the author, the mosaic is a “Hymn” in honour of the pagan gods, Man (his soul) and his place in the (pagan) universe, then at the same time it polemicises with the Christian faith and its God, Jesus Christ.
The author puts forward numerous new solutions relating to the mosaic’s iconography and iconology. Analysis of the mosaic also leads him to propose a solution to the as-yet unanswered question regarding the absence of images of the crucified Christ in Christian art of the 3rd and 4th centuries, up until 420/430, when the first images of Christ on the cross appear.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Research to-date (recap)
2. Description of mosaic (recap)
2.1. Composition of five mythological scenes
2.2. Brief iconographic description of mythological panels
2.3. Outline of individual iconographic elements and their respective roles
2.4. The pagan gods’ air of majesty and dignity as an expression of piety
3. A few words about the pagan reaction
4. An apology of pious human life according to pagan principles and a polemic on the Christian model of Man and his theological idol, Jesus Christ
4.1. Divine intervention in the act of human conception (allusion to/polemic on the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary)
4.2. The Epiphany of Dionysus (an allusion to the Epiphany of Christ – Theou Pais)
4.3. The procession and dissemination of Dionysian order (allusion to/polemic on Christ’s entry into Jerusalem)
4.4. The error of Marsyas (polemic on/allusion to the error of Jesus the Messiah): arrest, sentencing for arrogance and lack of piety (asebeia) and condemnation to a martyr’s death
4.5. The anabasis (or anagoge psyches) of a ‘beautiful soul’ (allusion to/polemic on the Ascension of Christ)
5. A few words on the mosaic programme prior to final conclusions
Final conclusions

Ever since the Hittite city of Boğazköy was discovered in 1834, Hittite people, their culture, and society have been a great source of both archaeological and historical interest. Their kings, known as one of the three Great Kings of the Ancient Near East in the Late Bronze Age, has fascinated scholars and readers alike. Hittite religion, and recently their magic rituals, have also recently captivated academic and public interest. However, there has been no definitive scholarship concerning Hittite women. This essay will provide a perspective on the role of Hittite women. It will provide an in-depth analysis into the lives of Hittite women of all classes, beginning with aspects of a Hittite woman's life from birth, through to marriage, and death. It will also examine the lives of Hittite royal women and the so-called Wise Women, who played an important role in the lives of Hittite people. In the process, it will show that women in Hittite society had an important role to play in many aspects of life.

Das vergriffene Buch enthält diverse Erstpublikationen von altorientalischen Primärquellen und wertvolle, eigenständige Artikel, etwa zur hebräischen Onomastik, zur Haustierwerdung und zu theriomorphen Gottesauffassungen im Alten Orient und in der Bibel, nebst den Herausgebern von Susanne Bickel, Ingrid Glatz, Hildi Keel-Leu, Max Küchler, Madeleine Page Gasser, Silvia Schroer, Ursula Seidl und Christoph Uehlinger.

Baal and the Politics of Poetry provides a thoroughly new interpretation of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle that simultaneously inaugurates an innovative approach to studying ancient Near Eastern literature within the political context of its production. The book argues that the poem, written in the last decades of the Bronze Age, takes aim at the reigning political-theological norms of its day and uses the depiction of a divine world to educate its audience about the nature of human politics. By attuning ourselves to the specific historical context of this one poem, we can develop a more nuanced appreciation of how poetry, politics, and religion have interacted – in antiquity and beyond.

Devotion to the goddess Tanit/Tinnit, a permutation of Astarte, took place in Mediterranean cave sanctuaries and on Phoenician ships. Employing both material and textual evidence, it is argued that her worship at sea and at port required a degree of religious competency of seamen that served as crew and combatants on trading vessels and military vessels, respectively. With the Phoenician priesthood centered in cities, coastal inhabitants would have depended on part-time officiants to supervise and perform certain rites. Reasons for the lack of mention in the literature of this non-elite class are proposed.

Zum Geleit (Preface to Wd0 43/2)
Die Herausgeber der „Welt des Orients“ freuen sich, dass mit dem vorliegenden Faszikel über „Permutations of Astarte“ nach WdO 40/2 (2010) bereits das zweite Themenheft der WdO erscheinen kann. Anders als das Themenheft von 2010 (Excavations at Qubur al-Walaydah, 2007–2009) ist das vorliegende Heft religionsgeschichtlich ausgerichtet. Unser Dank gilt
den Herausgebern des Themenheftes Prof. Dr. Mark Christian (Nashville) und Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schmitt (Münster) für die Zusammenarbeit sowie dem Verlag, vertreten durch seinen LektorHerrn Jörg Persch und Frau Friederike Lonz, für die Unterstützung bei der Realisierung des Heftes.

Mainz, Heidelberg, Berlin undWürzburg am 1. Oktober 2013
Sebastian Grätz, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Bernd U. Schipper
und Daniel Schwemer
DieWelt des Orients, 43. Jahrgang, S. 149, ISSN 0043-2547
© 2013 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
"""

Building on an earlier article on Mesopotamian conceptions of the divine (Hundley 2013a), this piece turns to the complex world of Hittite deities and offers a synthetic analysis with Mesopotamia as a conversation partner.  While many commonalities emerge, the Hittite divine world is also distinct in important ways.  Most notably, while Mesopotamian gods, especially Marduk and Assur and before them Enlil and Ninurta, tend to collect attributes, the Hittites themselves collect gods, proudly boasting of the thousand gods of Ḫatti.  Likewise, Hittite deities tend to overlap without redundancy, such that each overlapping (weather) god is an independent actor with an essential role to play, whose absence could signal the dissolution of order.  The article also posits various modern analogs like franchises, which although imperfect, help the modern mind to grasp the ancient complexity.

Places are small, culturally significant locales that exist within a landscape. They are meaningful to specific cultural groups through everyday experience and shared stories associated with them. Places therefore gather a vast range of things in their microcosm: both animate and inanimate entities, residues, materials, knowledges, and stories. The material residues and cultural associations that cluster around places run deep in their temporality. Places are then generated and maintained by a spectrum of locally specific practices, from the situated activities of daily users of space, on the one hand, to the grandiose interventions of the political elite on the other. Combined, these social practices continually produce hybrid material forms and spatial configurations over time, and anchor communities to particular locales with a sense of cultural belonging. They become assemblages of shared memories, always pregnant for improvised events, despite the common essentialist notion of local places as static or conservative. Places thus serve as meaningful nexuses of human interaction, and as sites of immediate everyday experience. This edited volume is the outcome of a workshop/colloquium that tookplace at Brown University in March 2008, with the title Drawing on Rocks, Gathering by the Water: Archaeological Fieldwork at Rock Reliefs, Sacred Springs and Other Places. That event was intended to bring together academics who worked on similar questions concerning archaeological landscapes across the globe and specifically to focus on the making and unmaking of places of human interaction such as rock reliefs, sacred springs and lakes, cairns, ruins, and other meaningful places. The colloquium also provided a platform to discuss the experiences, the challenges, and the theoretical implications of working in the field and specifically at such unusual sites and landscapes. The intention was to bring to the table new archaeological perspectives on working at geologically and culturally distinctive locales where the particular geologies are encountered and uniquely reworked by local practices. This chapter is an introduction to the anthology of articles gathered under this topic.