This Week in the Ancient Near East

New Jerusalem Inscription Points to (Previously Known) Iron Age Spice Trade, Or, Solomon and Sheba Get Spicy?

The discovery of an Iron Age pot in Jerusalem with an inscription in a South Arabian language has us flustered. We knew there was an ancient spice trade between the Levant and Yemen, but does this mean that Solomon and Sheba were real? It’s a spicy discussion with breathless notes of labdanum. Come for the world systems theory, stay for all the aunts in a cloud of Shalimar!

The Book of the Dead Club, Or, If a Lion-Hippo-Crocodile Comes to the Door, Don’t Open It.

A 52 foot long Book of the Dead sounds like a super deluxe edition, but if you’re traveling from death to judgment and into the afterlife you can’t be too careful. But did anyone in ancient Egypt actually believe this stuff? What about the non-believers? Where did they fit in? Our contestants slide effortlessly into Spinoza mode, but still worry a little about Ammit, devoureress of the dead.

It’s This Week in the Ancient Near East at the Movies! The Special Inadvertent Pre-Holiday Biblical Epic Edition!

In 1923 Cecil B. De Mille made The Ten Commandments on a huge Egyptian set in the California dunes, which archaeologists have excavated. So obviously we’re asking, what’s the deal with Biblical movies? Ripping yarns or morality tales with Nazi punching? And would a picture about the backbreaking scientific tedium of real archaeology be a crowdpleaser? With a special shoutout to our friends Donny Osmond and Walter Benjamin!

The Archaeology of Ancient Fingerprints, or Profiling Potters for Fun and Profit

Fingerprints on ancient pottery? Like from the potters? Ok, we’re not cops but we are a little curious. Who are these potters at Byzantine Moza, Tell Leilan, Tell en Nasbeh, Tell es Safi, and other Bronze and Iron Age sites around the Near East? Who's producing what and why are they using child labor to decorate pottery? Maybe we really should call the cops. 

A Mediterranean Metal Mystery, or, Those Tin Ingots from Uzbekistan? Yeah, Well, They’re at the Bottom of the Ocean

Central Asian tin in a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at the bottom of Mediterranean raises questions like, “who brought the tin thousands of kilometers west from what’s now Uzbekistan,” and “who’s tin was it when the boat sank.” Ok, they’re not questions like, “what is best in life” or “are you going to eat that sandwich” but they’re what we’ve got.

How I Made Your Mummy, Or, A Special Blend of Herbs and Spices with a Side Order of Sun Dried Crocodiles

The discovery of a 26^th Dynasty mummification workshop has shown that exotic ingredients came from as far as India and Africa. Is this just an early version of Goop, rich people getting sold on weird ingredients just because the poors were catching up? But then how do we explain the sun dried crocodiles? Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Crime Grips Uruk, Sheep and Tunic Stolen!, Or, Law and Order: Neo-Babylonia

This is the city, Uruk. I was working the day shift out of the Eanna Temple when the call came in about a missing sheep and tunic. We picked up the perp pretty quickly and he started to sing, so we rolled up 39 of his pals. But word came down that the great and the good were putting up bail. That’s when the king got involved and things got interesting.

What’s Cooking in the Middle Paleolithic and Is It Toxic? Or, Soak, Pound and Char Your Way to Better Health!

In the Middle Paleolithic dinner included plants like bitter vetch and mustard. The problem is these plants are toxic. So who figured out that you had to soak, pound and char them before eating? More importantly, what happened to the folks who didn’t figure it out? Come for the helpful cooking hints, stay for the incisive comments on wraps!