This volume comprises the proceedings of the 2014 Conferences on Zoroastrianism in the Levant and the Amorites, held at Oxford, Oriental Institute.

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, written by a distinguished international team of experts to explore Gnostic movements from the distant past until today. These themes are examined across sixty-seven chapters in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, and also with new religious movements, such as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This comprehensive handbook will be an invaluable resource for religious studies students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history.

The Neo-Aramaic dialects are modern vernacular forms of Aramaic, which has a documented history in the Middle East of over 3,000 years. Due to upheavals in the Middle East over the last one hundred years, thousands of speakers of Neo-Aramaic dialects have been forced to migrate from their homes or have perished in massacres. As a result, the dialects are now highly endangered. The dialects exhibit a remarkable diversity of structures. Moreover, the considerable depth of attestation of Aramaic from earlier periods provides evidence for pathways of change. For these reasons the research of Neo-Aramaic is of importance for more general fields of linguistics, in particular language typology and historical linguistics. The papers in this volume represent the full range of research that is currently being carried out on Neo-Aramaic dialects. They advance the field in numerous ways. In order to allow linguists who are not specialists in Neo-Aramaic to benefit from the papers, the examples are fully glossed.

Beholders of Divine Secrets provides a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, the Jewish mystical writings of late antiquity. Vita Daphna Arbel delves into the unique nature of the mystical teachings, experiences, revelations, and spiritual exegesis presented in this literature. While previous scholarship has demonstrated the connection between Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and parallel traditions in Rabbinical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalyptic, early Christian, and Gnostic sources, this work points out additional mythological traditions that resonate in this literature. Arbel suggests that mythological patterns of expression, as well as themes and models rooted in Near Eastern mythological traditions are employed, in a spiritualized fashion, to communicate mystical content. The possible cultural and social context of the Hekhalot and Merkavah mysticism and its composers is discussed.

Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Even before its rediscovery in the eighteenth century it had gained legendary status because of its third-century CE Queen Zenobia, who had rebelled against the Romans and expanded Palmyra's territory into that of an Empire, stretchingfrom what is modern eastern Turkey into Egypt. The city and its queen featured in European art and literature already in the century. Zenobia's Palmyra already existed as a mirage in the minds of the educated Europeans. Even though Zenobia's reign and extensive power was a fairly short interlude andthe Romans struck hard against the Palmyrenes devastating the city, this path to imperial power was one which tells us an immense amount about Palmyrene identity in the period before the devastation. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she hasserved as a political symbol for Syria's president As'ad (a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus), the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored.With the current situation in Syria, a researched-based narrative is urgently needed to communicate the importance of this site to the general public. Palmyra has over the last years been used as a symbol of the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS over the region, as well as the supremacy ofthe Syrian state. UNESCO and the Russians have together with the Syrian state taken a particular interest in Palmyra and in monopolizing the potential rebuilding of the site after the destruction and looting of the past several years have subsided. We are, so to speak, standing at yet anotherturning point in Palmyra's long history, where history is being reinvented actively by several parties. There can be no doubt that the time is ripe for a book on the archaeology and history of Palmyra, as well as an analysis of the current situation, including the destruction and illicit traffickingof material remains from Palmyra. These three main topics will together highlight the ways in which this fascinating site has again and again captured the world's focus.Organized in nine chapters, this compact book will set out to provide an introduction for students and general readers. Following two overview chapters, the next six will give a chronological narrative of Palmyra from the late Hellenistic period through to Rome's destruction in 273 CE and itssurvival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a shorter conclusion chapter, which will summarize the most important findings and conclusions of the chapters of the book and will set out a number of lines of enquiry which could be taken up in research and culturalheritage management over the coming years. The result will be the best and most up-to-date account of Palmyra in English.

This book promotes the study of material spatiality in late antiquity: not just the study of buildings, but of the people, dress and objects used within them, drawing on all available source material. It seeks to explore the material world as it was lived in late antiquity, in an interpretative inquiry, rather than simply describing the evidence that has survived until today. The volume presents a series of comprehensive bibliographic essays which provide an overview of relevant literature, along with discussions of the nature of the sources, of relevant approaches and field methods. The main section of the book explores domestic space, vessels in context, dress, shops and workshops, religious space, and military space. Synthetic papers drawing on a wide range of archaeological, art-historical and textual sources are complemented by case-studies of context-rich late antique sites in the East Mediterranean and elsewhere, including Pella, Dura-Europos, Scythopolis, and Sagalassos.

The Proceedings of the 14th International Conference for Nubian Studies are published in the research journal Kush for its 20th issue. Sixty articles are presenting the advances of international research on Middle Nile Valley archaeology and highlighting the richness and importance of Sudanese sites along the different phases of its Prehistory and History i.e. kingdoms of Kush (Kerma, Napata, Meroe), Medieval, Post-Medieval and Modern Periods. The eighty authors are coming from different disciplines: archaeology, linguistic, bio-anthropology, museum studies, etc. Their contributions are showing the nowadays implication of research in site management, cultural heritage and museums, especially in the frame of the bilateral programme Qatar Sudan Archaeological Programme.

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.