Biblical Archaeology Review

Walter Andrae, Das wiedererstandene Assur (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1938; revised by Barthel Hrouda, Munich: Beck, 1977), figs. 42–45.

For the most penetrating commentary on the Song of Songs, profusely illustrated, see Keel, Song of Songs.

David Stronach, “The Garden as a Political Statement: Some Case Studies from the Near East in the First Millennium B.C.,” Bulletin of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan 1 (1984), pp. 171–180; “The Royal Gardens at Pasargadae: Evolution and Legacy,” in L. De Meyer and E. Haerinck, eds., Archaeologia Iranica et Orientalis (1989), pp. 475–495.

For photographs of the relief, see Richard D. Barnett, Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (London: British Museum Publications, 1976), pl. 23; Julian Reade, Assyrian Sculpture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), p. 36, fig. 48. For line drawings, see Stephanie Dalley, “Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Resolved,” Garden History (1993), p. 10, fig. 2; Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 169, fig. 100.

Compare J.N. Postgate, The Governor’s Palace Archive (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1973), pp. 239–240; A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C., vol. 2 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 290; D.J. Wiseman, “Palace and Temple Gardens in the Ancient Near East,” Bulletin of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan 1 (1984), p. 38.

See Jean-Claude Margueron, “Mari: A Portrait in Art of a Mesopotamian City-State,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 2, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), pp. 892–893.

E.A. Speiser’s translation, in Genesis, Anchor Bible 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), p. 14.

Critical Bible scholarship divides the Pentateuch into four authorial strands, conventionally labeled J, E, P and D. J is the oldest and is characterized by the use of Yahweh (Jahweh in German, hence J) as the name of God.

See R.J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament, Harvard Semitic Monographs 4 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972); and Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Enquiry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985).