Exploring life, death, and the afterlife in Mesopotamia, Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman examine how life and death experiences continually developed over the course of nearly three millennia of Mesopotamian history. To achieve this, the book follows the life cycle of the people of the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys from 3000 BCE to 300 BCE, from birth, through death, and beyond. This book is the first to interrogate the relationships between living and dying through case studies and primary evidence. Including letters written by both women and men, the book allows readers to enter the minds of the ancients. First, the authors focus on life through topics such as the rituals surrounding birth, marriage, and religion. The authors then examine the common causes of death, the rituals associated with death, and the Mesopotamian views of the netherworld, its gods, and inhabitants. Concepts of gender fluidity, both in life and death, are considered alongside evidence from epigraphic data. Illustrating daily life as a multifaceted subject affected by time, space, location, socioeconomics, and gender, this book creates a window into the conditions and concerns of the Mesopotamian people.

These studies take up several themes that the author has pursued in addition to his work on witchcraft literature and Gilgamesh. The volume contains general articles on Mesopotamian magic, religion, and mythology; studies, synchronic and diachronic, on Akkadian prayers; treatments of literary classics; comparative studies of terms and phenomena; and examinations of legal texts.

This volume is about the history, literature, ritual, and thought associated with ancient Mesopotamian witchcraft. With chapters on the changing forms and roles of witchcraft beliefs, the ritual function, form, and development of the Maqlû text (the most important ancient work on the subject), and the meaning of the Maqlû ceremony, as well as the ideology of the final version of the text. The volume significantly contributes to our understanding of the Maqlû text, and the reconstruction of the development of thought about witchcraft and magic in Mesopotamia.

A broad introduction to a major turning point in human development, this book guides the reader through the emergence of civilization in Mesopotamia, when city life began and writing was invented. Covering Mesopotamia from around 3000 BCE to the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE, Mesopotamia and the Rise of Civilization: History, Documents, and Key Questions combines narrative history material and reference entries that enable students to learn about the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia and its enormous influence on western civilization with primary source documents that promote critical thinking skills. The book provides essential background via a historical overview of early development of society in Mesopotamia. This introduction is followed by reference entries on key topics; 4,000-year-old primary sources that explore Mesopotamian civilization through voices of the time and bring to light the events of a schoolboy's day, the boasts of kings, and personal letters about family concerns, for example; and a section of argumentative essays that presents thought-provoking perspectives on key issues. While the intended readership is high school students, the book's authoritative coverage of intriguing subject matter will also appeal to the wider public, especially in these times of heightened focus on the Middle East.

Tania El Khoury's Live Art is the first book to examine the work of Tania El Khoury, a "live" artist deeply engaged in the politics and histories of the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region. Since the 2011 Syrian uprisings, El Khoury has conceived and created works about lived experiences at and across international borders in collaboration with migrants, refugees, and displaced persons as well as other artists, performers, and revolutionaries. All of El Khoury's works cross borders: between forms of artistic practice, between artists and audiences, and between art and activism. Facilitating critical dialogue about the politics of SWANA and the impact of globalization, her performances and installations also test the boundaries of aesthetic, political, and everyday norms. This interdisciplinary and multimedia reader features essays by artists, curators, and scholars who explore the dynamic possibilities and complexities of El Khoury's art. From social workers to archeologists to archivists, contributing authors engage with the radical epistemological and political revolutions that El Khoury and her collaborators invite us all to join.

Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today's scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world. Found in the Bible and in writings from as far a field as Egypt, China, Indonesia, Greece, and Russia, ring composition is too widespread to have come from a single source. Does it perhaps derive from the way the brain works? What is its function in social contexts? The author examines ring composition, its principles and functions, in a cross-cultural way. She focuses on ring composition in Homer's Iliad, the Bible's book of Numbers, and, for a challenging modern example, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, developing a persuasive argument for reconstruing famous books and rereading neglected ones.

The articles in this volume of collected essays, written over the last two decades and all revised, updated, and supplemented with unpublished material, are grouped around two themes: Divine Secrets and Human Imaginations. The first essays deal with the production, initiation, use and function, the abduction, repatriation, and the replacement of divine images, their outer appearance, and the many facets of the divine presence theology in Ancient Mesopotamia. The essays on the second topic deal with human imaginations, human constructs, and constructed memories, which assign meaning to the past or to things or experiences that are beyond human control. Thematically, several aspects of the human condition are examined, such as the ideas associated in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East with death, corporeality, enemies, disasters, utopias, and passionate love.

30 bloodcurdling and bone-chillingly real-life zombie encounters. Not recommended for reading when a virus hits! Paranormal researcher extraordinaire and author of hundreds of books on the mysterious and unknown, Brad Steiger provides an alarming chronicle of zombie history, and stories of first-person encounters. Along with the bloodcurdling stories, Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse explores spells and hexes; ceremonies and initiations; ghouls and wendigos; sacred zombie and voodoo-related sites; zombies and monsters of the Bible; and zombie traditions in China, Japan, the Pacific, India, Persia, and Native America. Some of the topics and stories chewed over in this fascinating book include... Zombies versus Vampires Damballah Wedo and the African Pantheon Black Cat Mama Couteaux and the Great Zombie War The Devil Baby of Bourbon Street Recipes for Hungry Ghosts Eating Human Flesh as a Religious Experience Hitler’s Quest to Zombify the World The CIA Experiments to Create a Zombie Nation Golems and Tulpas—Psychic Zombies Zombies and Voodoo Magic around the World And many, many more hair-raising stories! Highlighting news articles, historical accounts, and first-person interviews, Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse will leave you worried about whether man can survive the next plague.

This book is mostly a collection of true stories about demonic beings frightening, torturing, and creating chaos among humans. The first reason I authored this book was because I simply enjoy this topic. Yes, I am a bit odd. I find topics that are strange, mysterious, and diabolical to be interesting. The second reason is because we are in a spiritual battle, and I find many Christians that I know seem to be almost oblivious to this fact. My hope in this book is to make you more aware of the battle going on around us and that we can and should be ready to defend and battle Satan and his demonic army. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” Ephesians 6:12.