The mortal sin of the academic world is plagiarism, that is, using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own.  During the past few days friends have sent me emails concerning sites that sell Old Testament papers to students (topics include: Messiah in the OT, Women in the OT, and OT Prophecy), Alan Jacobs reflected on plagiarists’ lame excuses, the New York Daily News may have plagiarized a story from the Daily Mail, and the New York Times published a piece on the “blurring lines” of plagiarism among students.

What’s all the fuss about?

We live in a very odd culture that extends ownership rights to non-tangible things like ideas and words.  However, these are relatively modern inventions.  Within the ancient world there was no such thing as “intellectual property” or even “authorship” as we understand it.  Literature was composed not by individuals but by communities–whether these communities were sitting around campfires recounting stories real or fiction or in between or whether the communities were scholars writing for other scholars.  Within the ancient world literature developed over time and subsequent generations of composers used previous work in order to fashion their own accounts.  Hardly any scholar put their name on their work (there are a couple exceptions of acrostic poems which spell out a scribe’s name).

All this fuss about plagiarism has me thinking–are students merely reverting to an ancient view of authorship?

Jan 1 is a time when many people draw up resolutions for the next year.  It is popular for people to commit to reading through the Bible in a year’s time and the M’Cheyne Bible Calendar is one of the most common schemes that are used.  I’m all for reading the Bible, however, the Bible is a contextual document–it was produced by a particular people at a particular time in a particular cultural milieu.  If you do not have an understanding of the culture from which the Bible came you will likely misunderstand much of it.

So, along with your Bible reading plans I have provided my version of a plan to read the Context of Scripture three volume set. I tried to match up more exiting readings with more mundane so you’re not stuck reading a bunch of seal inscriptions for days on end. CoS provides many texts that give background and cognate information that will help you understand the Bible better.  Furthermore, if you are a pastor or student interested in biblical studies then this is a must read.  Context of Scripture is not cheap but if you look around you can sometimes find some deals.

Click here for the COS in 1 Year reading plan

Here are several places you might want to check for purchasing the COS volumes:

Eisenbrauns

Amazon

Electronic version via Logos

Electronic version via Accordance

CDLJ has two more recent articles worth checking out, particularly since they are available as free downloads.  Magnus Widell published two Ur III texts and provides voluminous commentary on them and topics related to the contents of the tablets.  One of Widell’s most fascinating discussions is his interaction with Steinkeller’s hypothesis that many accounting tablets were written after, sometimes long after, the events that they record transpired.  Steinkeller posits para-writing devices such as counting sticks that helped jump-start the scribe’s memory when he wrote the information down.  Widell critiques this theory as lacking support and suggests that scribes merely wrote notes on small lumps of clay and then transferred these notes to tablets at a later time.

Here is the abstract of Robert McC. Adam’s essay, “Old Babylonian Networks of Urban Notables:”

§1.1. An argument is made for detaching a greater part of the field of concern in Mesopotamian historical studies from the presently uniform and narrow constraints of successively rising and falling dynasties. It is better considered instead within a more cumulative framework giving greater stress to shifts in the breadth and makeup of actively participatory social groups. The original 4^th millennium “Urban Revolution” probably should also be viewed in this light, as might the mid-3^rd millennium shift in the direction of more secularized forms of dynastic rather than theocratic government. However, this article concentrates on the following transition, whose character can be more readily and unambiguously defined. In traditional terms, it can be described as falling between the later Ur III and the Old Babylonian periods, at around the end of the 3^rd millennium.

§1.2. This is seen as a time of increasing privatization in most fields of social, economic and to some extent even political activity. A new, in large measure urban-based “proto-middle class”—its leading elements herein described as “notables”—was becoming recognizable in a time of dynastic weakness and rivalry. Not abruptly, but gradually, it assumed control or ownership of many productive forces and forms of property formerly thought of as largely within the royal orbit. It added its own forms of management and exploitation of the still mainly inert, larger part of the population to the continuing demands and exactions of dynastic overlords. A crucial technological means by which this was achieved was the modification and adoption to its own ends of growing new uses of cuneiform writing, which earlier had been very largely held under royal control.

Hmmm, looks to me like Tiamat cut in half and her blood spilling out to form human beings…

See the controversy in NYTimes piece.

Robert Eglund’s article in CDLJ entitled “The Smell of the Cage” is now available for free download.  (This article is numbered 2009:4 but there is presently no 2009:3 so presumably there should be another free article to come shortly.)  This article examines personal names in Late Uruk “slave lists.”  Here is a selection from one of the concluding paragraphs:

We might suspect that as in later periods, and as the designations SAG+MA and ERIM_a, as well as seeming prisoner scenes on many Late Uruk seals might tend to support, the chattel slaves were above all taken from foreign populations, their names thus in some non-Babylonian language. But frankly, it would surprise me if the Uruk overlords did not rename their foreign slaves with terms comprehensible to the local population, much as did the buyers of African slaves shipped to the Americas, since it is difficult to imagine that those engaged in the exchange and exploitation of humans, of whole families judged as little better than local livestock, would have made an effort to retain their native names. I can offer only indirect evidence that this may have been true. Contracts of the sale of chattel slaves in the Ur III period followed a standard format that included the name of sold persons in the form “one (slave type), PN his/her name, his/her price n shekels of silver …”

The Italians have given the world a tremendous gift by putting together the Virtual Museum of Iraq.  It is a fantastic site with a wealth of information.  You can learn about the history of ancient Iraq through historical summaries, timelines, as well as pictures and descriptions of artifacts.  It covers the pre-historic through Islamic periods and is very worth a visit.

I would love to add two books recently out by Brill to my library, however, as is often the case will Brill books the price is prohibitive.  I really love physical books, but when the price point gets into the hundreds of dollars I think that the books should be released electronically.  It’s doubtful that many libraries will even acquire a $400 book that isn’t vital to it’s collection–especially after endowments have been decimated.  Furthermore, the Hallo book is a compilation of essays which would be handy to have but I already have copies of many of his articles and for $270 I’ll gladly round up the rest through JSTOR or inter-library loan and send off the packet to a bindery if I care about having them in one cover. I know that the weak dollar is part of the problem with Brill, but seriously, these prices are ridiculous. In any case, here are the books that I’ll longingly look at through the window…

On Art in the Ancient Near East
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East – CHANE 34
by Irene J. Winter
Brill Academic Publishers, 2009
English
Cloth
ISBN: 9789004175006
List Price: $400.00
Your Price: $380.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/WINONARTI

The World’s Oldest Literature
Studies in Sumerian Belles-Lettres
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East – CHANE 35
by William W. Hallo
Brill Academic Publishers, Forthcoming April 2009
vi + 736 pages, English
Cloth
ISBN: 9789004173811
List Price: $287.00
Your Price: $272.65
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/HALWORLDS

Here’s a review of mine that was recently published in BBR:

Nele Ziegler. Les Musiciens et la musique d’après les archives de Mari. Florilegium marianum IX. Mémoires de N.A.B.U. 10. Paris: SEPOA, 2007. Pp. 343. ISSN: 0959-5671. $75.

Nele Ziegler teaches Akkadian literature at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes which is affiliated with the Sorbonne, however, this volume was completed while she was a researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Many topics mentioned in the Bible are discussed in tantalizingly little detail.  In these instances the biblical scholar is usually left only with an “educated imagination” to reconstruct a fuller picture.  However, there are situations in which cognate texts can provide breathtaking context to biblical accounts and the area of music and musicians is certainly one of these.  The Bible often touches upon the topic of music, the Psalter is even devoted exclusively to musical texts, but many issues of music are left unaddressed.  Thankfully, the records of the ancient Syrian city Mari (ca. 18th Century BC) give us an incredibly rich picture of musicians and music.  While we must allow for differences between ancient Israel and Mari, there was probably a great deal of similarity with respect to music and musicians and therefore the records from Mari can be used to provide context to biblical accounts.

In this volume Ziegler presents 74 Akkadian texts (photograph, transliteration, and French translation) interspersed into a narrative that covers topics ranging from the organizational structure of royal musicians, musical training, female musicians from the harem, cultic music, instruments, the correspondence of the chief musician as well as treatments of other musicians.

Ziegler discusses many fascinating details of music and the lives of musicians.  For instance, while some male singers were castrated, presumably to prevent the effects of puberty upon their voice, many males were not as evidenced by the existence of musical families in which all members—father, mother, and children—were singers (20-21).   Prominent musicians enjoyed a high standard of living provided by the king and some were bold enough to forcefully complain when they felt that they did not receive an ample supply of gifts (26).  Furthermore, in an instance in which an official title did not necessarily connote official function, a musician led a royal envoy to Eshnunna (27-31).

While a full picture of music and the cult is not possible, several texts reveal the highly liturgical nature of religious ceremonies at Mari.  A tablet outlines the Celebration of Ishtar including the precise positions of participants, garments and utensils that participants were required to wear or possess, the specific times in which different songs were chanted, when participants sit and stand, and the timing of offerings and libations (57-63).  One can assume that the Israelite temple contained documents such as this that outlined specific liturgies of which certain Psalms likely were mentioned and incorporated into celebrations and rituals.  Also, some priests at Mari functioned as lamenters and they were under the authority of the chief musician (64-5).  Lamentation-priests not only performed at the temple, but also marched out in front of the army on a campaign to Ekallatum (65).

Overall the photographs of the tablets are excellent and allow one to read directly from them.  Additionally, Ziegler’s treatment is elucidating, careful, and thorough.  Since French translations are provided for all of the ancient texts, one does not need to know Akkadian in order to use this volume with great profit.  Because of her fine work Ziegler has greatly enhanced our understanding of music and musicians in Mari and beyond.

I just stumbled upon an audio lecture that Tonia Sharlach gave to the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard University entitled: “Women in the Religion of Iraq in the Twenty-first Century BC.”

This morning I stumbled upon an interview of Eva von Dassow in which she talks about the ancient city of Ur.  It is worth a listen.