William W. Hallo

To propogate the invention of writing, the Sumerians established scribal schools which preserved and transmitted the accumulated wisdom of the past, usually in poetic form. The literature thus created has been studied by the author for half a century. His conclusions, often also important for biblicists, are here assembled in one volume for the first time.

Studies in Sumerian Belles-Lettres

The World's Oldest Literature

Piotr Michalowski

Scott G. Beld

Concordance and Bibliography

The Tablets of Ebla

Modern western culture owes much to ancient Near Eastern precedent. "Origins" documents that debt in specific terms, covering a variety of topics from the alphabet and its order to the system of dating by eras, and including many of the institutions most essential to contemporary life and most often taken for granted.

The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Some Modern Western Institutions

Origins

The Book of the People

Lawrence H. Schiffman

Baruch A. Levine

Robert Chazan

A huge festschrift comprising 41 essays exploring mainly textual perspectives on Ancient Near Eastern and Jewish history and religious practice.

Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine

כי ברוך הוא

Civilization and the Jews : Source Reader

Heritage

Literature begins at Sumer, we may say. Given that this ancient crossroads of tin and copper produced not only bronze and the entire Bronze Age, but also by neccesity, the first system of record-keeping and the technique of writing. Scribal schools served to propogate the new technique and their curriculum grew to create, preserve and transmit all manner of creative poetry. In a lifetime of research, the author has studied multiple aspects of this most ancient literary oeuvre, including such questions as chronology and bilingualism, as well as contributing fundamental insights into specific genres such as proverbs, letter-prayers and lamentations. In addition, he has drawn conclusions for the comparative or contextual approach to biblical literature. His studies, widely scattered in diverse publications for nearly fifty years, are here assembled in convenient one-volume format, made more user-friendly by extensive cross-references and indices.

William W. Hallo

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