Over the course of three centuries, Yale has been actively and seriously engaged in Near Eastern learning, in both senses of the term-training students in the knowledge and skills needed to understand the languages and civilizations of the region, and supporting generations of scholars renowned for their erudition and pathbreaking research. This book traces the history of these endeavors through extensive use of unpublished archival materials, including letters, diaries, and records of institutional decisions. Developments at Yale are set against the wider background of changing American attitudes toward the Near East, as well as evolving ideas about the role of the academy and its curriculum in educating undergraduate and graduate students. In the case of the Near East, this also involves considering how several of its disciplines made the transition from biblically motivated enterprises to secular fields of study. Yale has notable firsts to her credit: the first American professional program in Arabic and Sanskrit; the first American learned society and periodical devoted to Oriental subjects; the first American research institutes in Jerusalem and Baghdad; the first American university to have endowed funds to establish and curate one of the world's largest collections of cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. Yet at the same time, especially over the past half-century, Yale has found it challenging to deal administratively with a small humanities department whose standards and philosophy of teaching and learning seemed increasingly at odds with trends in the university as a whole. This book places these tensions in the context of Yale's responses to post-World War 2 interest in the modern Middle East, the rise of government-supported "area studies," and the consequences of American military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Numerous illustrations, many of them previously unpublished and drawn from a wide range of source material, round out the portrait of three centuries of Near Eastern learning at Yale.

This book is the first authoritative and up-to-date survey of the history of Iraq from earliest times to the present in any language. It presents a concise narrative of the rich and varied history of this land, drawing on political, social, economic, artistic, technological, and intellectual material. It also includes excerpts from works of ancient, medieval, and modern literature written in Iraq, some of which are translated for the first time into English.The final chapters provide an introduction to the history of archaeology in Iraq, set in the wider context of the development of archaeology into a scientific discipline. A special section highlights selected objects from the Iraq Museum, with emphasis on their cultural significance and current status in the aftermath of the looting in April 2003. The last chapter offers a unique guide to the complex international and national legal regimes for the protection of cultural heritage.The American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq are a turning point in Iraq's modern history, with important cultural consequences for all periods of its past. For all who seek to understand more fully the current situation, this book includes discussion of cultural and legal issues of the war and occupation, placing recent events in their full context.

Bolin analyses biblical and extra-biblical traditions and motifs in the book of Jonah, and argues that the book's portrayal of the relationship between God and humanity, much like those of Job and Ecclesiastes, emphasizes an absolute divine sovereignty beyond human notions of mercy, justice, or forgiveness. God is understood as free to forgive, yet he still punishes, and is unfettered by the constraints imposed by attributes of benevolence. The only proper human response to God is fear at his power and acknowledgment of him as the source of welfare and woe.

Named a Notable Book for 2005 by the American Library Association, One with Nineveh is a fresh synthesis of the major issues of our time, now brought up to date with an afterword for the paperback edition. Through lucid explanations, telling anecdotes, and incisive analysis, the book spotlights the three elephants in our global living room-rising consumption, still-growing world population, and unchecked political and economic inequity-that together are increasingly shaping today's politics and humankind's future. One with Nineveh brilliantly puts today's political and environmental debates in a larger context and offers some bold proposals for improving our future prospect.

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200–900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

This book shares papers from a conference taking a deeper look at the victims of ISIS and beyond that all religious minorities of Iraq. This is the first book that considers all the religious minorities that existed in modern Iraq, including both historic communities and new groups that recently came with labour migration, especially to the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. The book resulted from a conference in 2018 organized exactly at the site of the Simele Massacre in 1933. The campus of the American University of Kurdistan is located on the site of the first big massacre against a religious minority in Iraq. The conference entitled ‘Beyond ISIS: Minorities and Religious Diversity in Iraq and the Future of Êzîdî, Christians, Shabak, Yarsan, Mandeans and other Religious Minorities in the Middle East’ brought together Iraqi and international scholars, activists, and religious and community representatives. This book contains papers presented at the conference that included contributions on Iraq’s religious diversity and the historical and contemporary consequences of genocide and persecution on the religious minorities of Iraq.

Man has been intrigued by the origin of pearls, sensitive to their beauty, and convinced of their medicinal value for at least 5 cent. A mixture of folklore and observation preceded the earliest scientific inquiries. Fishing and trade commenced in S. Asia, between India and Sri Lanka and around the Persian Gulf. In W. and Central Europe, Inner Asia and China, and N. Amer. Freshwater pearls were probably known and treasured before those of marine origin. A refined nomenclature points to a long familiarity with etymologically related words for 'pearl'. Pearls were prominent among the luxury products of world trade and were high among the objectives of expeditions to the eastern and western Tropics. Illustrations.

This book explores the history of visual technology and archaeology and outlines how the introduction of interactive 3D computer modelling to the discipline parallels very closely the earlier integration of photography into archaeological fieldwork.

Original essays demonstrate that sociology, history, anthropology, and psychology all leave their mark on theology and open new paths to understanding, and that theology in turn provides significant questions and perspectives for the social sciences. By providing archeological data, sociological theory, demographics and economic data, psychological insights, and new methods of historical interpretation, the social sciences can open the way for a more sophisticated understanding of the social nature of human existence. Theology challenges the social sciences through moral and transcendental questions as well as informs the social sciences through its larger and deeper perspectives. The symbiotic nature of this relationship is described in the lead-off essays by John Coleman and Gregory Baum. The rich conversation between theologians and sociologists that follows moves from Von Balthasar’s use of the social sciences and Rahner’s approach to ecumenism to the roles of psychology and neuropsychology in understanding religious events.

A detailed exploration of Layard's famous lithograph of the interior of an Assyrian palace