Even Briefer

Writings from Ancient Israel: A Handbook of Historical and Religious Documents

Klaas A. D. Smelik (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 200 pp., $19.95.

These translations and discussions of 70 major Hebrew texts, dating from 1000 B.C. to 500 A.D. and found in present-day Israel and Jordan, range from the famous—the Gezer Calendar—to the obscure—an ostracon with an appeal by a farm laborer to a governor for the return of his cloak. Tax records, letters and curses are among the accounts written on such varied surfaces as gemstones (seals), papyrus, plaster and clay. This book places the texts it describes in a cultural context to provide insight into the Bible and the history of ancient Israel.

Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning and the Gods

Jean Bottéro, trans. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992), 326 pp., $39.95.

In related essays about Mesopotamia, Bottéro discusses the academic discipline of Assyriology; the origins, influence and deciphering of cuneiform writing; and institutions and attitudes about reasoning and religion. Vast numbers of cuneiform tablets make it possible to examine Mesopotamian ways of thinking, analyzing and organizing the universe. Transmitted through Biblical and classical channels, these concepts have influenced the foundation of our own culture. Extensively reworked from first publication, these essays represent the accumulated wisdom of an eminent French scholar.

Egypt and Nubia