A small steatite bowl with a tube carved with a hand design was unearthed from Stratum MIII by B. Mazar and colleagues at Tel ‘En Gev in 1961. Northern Syria is relevant to the manufacture of bowls of this kind, which are often assumed to have been brought into the Southern Levant after Assyrian domination during the seventh century BC. However, this study revisits their distribution pattern and date, and suggests that although these bowls were likely produced in the ‘Amuq Plain in northern Syria, they were already found in the Southern Levant from before the mid-ninth century BC, when they began to be manufactured in Syria. Therefore, these bowls from the Southern Levant, including that from Tel ‘En Gev, may reflect the Aramaean impact on the area, prior to the mid-nineth century BC.

The article commences with a concise historical overview of New Kingdom kingship and its primary forms of display. Subsequently, it revisits Egyptological perspectives on kingship, challenging modern interpretations of textual and visual representations of New Kingdom kings as propaganda or means of legitimizing individual rulers. Drawing on Graeber and Sahlins’ theory of kingship, this approach endeavors to comprehend ancient Egyptian descriptions of kings within their cultural context. The designation of kings as gods was not a propagandistic tool or a strategy to consolidate royal authority; rather, it formed a mythologically grounded constituent of Egyptian kingship, aligning with universal anthropological principles. Within the ancient Egyptian worldview, the king represented the gods on earth, ensuring divine immanence like divine statues or sacred animals. Like the gods themselves, kings were perceived as both beneficent and awe-inspiring. So-called “historical” inscriptions and royal eulogies, predominantly developed within temple contexts, were not meant to boast about a king’s deeds or character, but vehiculated a repetitive narrative emphasizing the country’s permanence and norm conformity.

The history of Sunni–Shiʿi relationship is usually characterized as one of opposition. The fundamental difference between these two confessions is explained that Sunnis support the Rightly Guided Caliphs after the Prophet Muḥammad, whereas Shiʿis support the Imams. However, it is known that not a few medieval and early modern Sunnis respected the Twelve Imams, the symbolic figures for Twelver Shiʿism, and several Sunni scholars compiled faḍāʾil (virtues) works on the Imams, like Shiʿis did. By analyzing faḍāʾil works written by Sunnis and Shiʿis in the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, this study investigates the interconfessional dialogue concerning the Imams and various understandings of the confessional boundary.

This volume of Orient features archaeological studies on the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods in the Near East, focusing on the results of Japanese expeditions.The Japanese contributions to this research area have grown and diversified since the pioneering works in the 1950s-60s by the University of Tokyo expeditions in Iraq, Iran, and Israel, which were augmented in subsequent decades by Paleolithic and Neolithic investigations in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan.More recently, since the late 2000s, new fieldwork by Japanese archaeologists started in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Saudi Arabia, targeting Neolithic and Mesolithic sites.This special issue consists of eight articles that present original new research, covering various geographic areas and topics including craft production technology, subsistence, and funerary practices.Two papers derive from Paleolithic investigations in southern Jordan by Nagoya University.Kadowaki et al. (2022) present the results of geological surveys for chert sources and discuss their roles in Paleolithic raw material procurement behaviors.Hirose et al. (2022) report Epipaleolithic faunal remains from Tor Hamar and examine diachronic and geographic variability in Epipaleolithic animal preys in the Levant.Six articles focus on the Neolithic.Arimura (2022) and Maeda (2022) commonly illustrate unique features in lithic technology and other material cultures at the transition from the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to the Pottery Neolithic period in northwest Syria, presenting records from Tell el-Kerkh and Qminas excavated by the University of Tsukuba.Human burial records from Tell el-Kerkh are providing key evidence for the study of diachronic changes in funerary practices discussed by Jammo (2022).Another expedition from the University of Tsukuba has excavated Hasankeyf Höyük, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in Turkey.Stone beads from this site are examined by Ishida (2022) using a scanning electron microscope to reveal techniques for perforation.The Neolithic in the Zagros and Caucasus regions is also covered by the special issue.As for the former, Odaka and Nieuwenhuyse (2022) show the eastern distribution of Halaf pottery by reporting their collection of Halaf pottery from Tell Begum in Iraqi Kurdistan.The Neolithization in the Caucasus is discussed by Ikeyama et al. (2022) based on the examination of obsidian blade cores collected from Göytepe and Hacı Elamxanlı Tepe, Azerbaijan, excavated by the University of Tokyo.As of January 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic has been impeding many of the Japanese ex-

University of Tsukuba and the Tsukuba International Congress Center between December 11 and 13, 2014.During the last few decades, many large-scale and individual editorial projects have published the up-to-date text editions.As a result, exact text editions brought by such projects have enabled researchers to undertake a variety of advanced research based on a combination of different types of historical sources.Riding on this tide, according to Yamada, the seminar was held to encourage participants to present their advanced research on their chosen topics.This book contains 14 articles that can be divided into three groups.The first group (Articles 1-8) deals with historical studies that require the use of various textual sources.The second group (Articles 9-11) contains comparative or contrastive literary studies of different genres.Finally, the third group (Articles 12-14) deals with the philological problems of royal inscriptions.In the text, I summarize the content of each article and provide my comments.1. Raija Mattila, "The Military Role of the Highest Officials, Magnates and Governors: Assyrian Royal Inscriptions versus Archival and Literary Sources" (pp.1-9).According to Mattila, "The high officials and governors, who fought under the king's command and at times even led the operations, are almost invisible in the royal inscriptions."Mattila initially highlights the limited information of their activities in royal inscriptions, presenting examples from the royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser III to Assurbanipal, and then arranges information from other historical sources such as administrative texts, eponym chronicles, letters, queries, and literary texts to show that these sources can make up for the lack of information in the royal inscriptions.Although the theme itself is noteworthy, in my opinion, this article contains some problems.As for the information from the royal inscriptions, I think Mattila should have collected all the data because it is relevant for the article setting.As a result, her presentation of data gives the readers an overemphasized impression that the royal inscriptions rarely describe the activities of the high officials and governors.However, to the best of my knowledge, there are more examples, that is, Mattila overlooks that turtnu has been already attested during the reign of Adad-nrr II (RIMA 2 A.0.99.2, 64) and missed several examples in the reign of [18][19] 20), and she does not mention the example during the reign of Esarhaddon at all (e.g.RINAP 4 no. 1 ii

As the viceroy of Ḫatti in Syria, the king of Carchemish was responsible for the Hittite rule of Emar as its direct overlord. In Emar he was held in awe, though not as an unapproachable man. Whereas in principle he ruled indirectly, allowing the continuation of the local dynasty, in some areas he ruled Emar directly, employing a part of the Emarites as his servants (‘Emaro-Hittites’) in civil and military affairs. As for international relations, it seems that he put Emar’s diplomacy and commerce exclusively under his control, depriving the local king of any right concerning them. On the other hand, in the religious affairs he ruled Emar only indirectly, using the family of Zu-Baʿla the diviner as his agent, though leaving room for activities by the local king.

Although many studies have argued for the frequency of cousin marriages and the significant role of marriage as an opportunity for employment or alliance between two families, extensive case studies on marriages within scholarly families have not been conducted. This paper is a case study on the marriages of four Meccan scholarly families from the mid-thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries: the Ṭabarī family, the Nuwayrī family, the Fāsī family, and the Ẓuhayra family. It aims to examine the basic characteristics of these marriages, including the rate of consanguineous marriages and cousin marriages, and to reveal what kind of marriage strategies each family employed. This study is based primarily on the biographical dictionaries composed by contemporary intellectuals.

This article aims to prove that the module system in the architectural design of Ancient Egypt was in use as early as the New Kingdom Period. I first extract the essence of the Egyptian module system evident in the elevation drawings of shrines on papyrus from the Late Period to the Greco-Roman Period, and I then extrapolate its use in works of earlier periods, mainly in depictions of shrines, furniture pieces and smaller wooden shrines, but also in a stone shrine from the time of Thutmose III. The result of this preliminary analysis shows that the use of the Egyptian module system can be traced to as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty and that more precise documentations for wooden and stone shrines known to us would be helpful to further clarify the principles of such design practice.