ReViews

I have been fortunate enough to have known Hayim and Miriam Tadmor since the end of my days as a graduate student at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where they spent two memorable years in the mid-1950s, and where we became instant friends. I may have encountered Miriam even earlier, in 1951, when she was digging at Rosh Haniqra and I, a summer volunteer at the nearby kibbutz of Matzuva, came to gawk at the excavations. Her report on these excavations, both in English and in Hebrew, leads off the list of her more than 40 publications. Hayim’s bibliography includes nearly 60 Hebrew and 70 English entries published since his earlier anniversary volume (Ah, Assyria ... Studies in Assyrian and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography, [1991]).

This new Festschrift—a collection of articles in honor of a scholar—is unusual in two ways. First, rather than being dedicated to either Tadmor, the volume is dedicated to both as a couple. The second is its size. The editors note that it is “among the largest to be produced in the Eretz Israel series, both in terms of number of pages [560 in all] and scope.” Even after disqualifying all the contributors to the earlier Festschrift, this one attracted 55 contributions (25 in Hebrew, 28 in English, one in French and one in German) from 59 authors and coauthors.