Briefly Noted

Dictionary of the Ancient Near East

Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard, eds. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) 342 pp., $49.95

The next time you recommend “the hair of the dog” to someone nursing a hangover, you might nonchalantly add that the treatment was first mentioned in an Ugaritic text from the Late Bronze Age. Remedies for drunkenness, Hittite law codes, the role of eunuchs in Assyrian society and Mesopotamian dream interpretation—along with the more usual topics of architecture, religion, literature, culture and economics—are all briefly addressed in this new reference book about the various cultures of the ancient Near East. Edited by 12 scholars of international standing, the dictionary contains some 500 entries—from “Achaemenids” to “Ziwiye” (a site in modern Iran)—and black-and-white photographs and maps.

7000 Years of Seals