Authors

Professor of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, since 1978, Simo Parpola (“Sons of God”) has also taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Padua, Italy. He is a former editor-in-chief of the State Archives of Assyria text series and has published on a wide range of topics, including inscriptions from the Indus civilization, Mesopotamian religion and science, Assyrian prophesies, Akkadian cuneiform, Gilgamesh and Maya script. Parpola’s “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy” appeared in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993).

When not enjoying bread and olives at a dig site, Robert Schick (“The Image Destroyers”) is the Islamic Studies Fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He is currently at work on a corpus of Byzantine churches in Jordan and a study of archaeological sites and monuments in Jerusalem.

Larry F. Ball (“A Great Empire’s Beating Heart”) is associate professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. A former Mellon fellow at the American Academy in Rome, he has published numerous papers on Roman imperial architecture, including a study of Nero’s palace in Rome. He is currently participating in excavations of the central forum at Pompeii.