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2015 ASOR Annual Meeting Presentations [VIDEO]

At theASOR Annual Meeting, several of our members graciously volunteered to have their presentations recorded for ASORtv. Some presenters met with our Digital Media Specialist to read their papers, and some volunteers were recorded in session […]

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Damage to exterior of National Museum of Aleppo and unexploded mortar shell (DGAM; July 13)

4 Ways You Can Help Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is the closest thing we have to time travel. You can use cultural heritage to connect with past generations and with someone who you’ll never be able to meet. If this damage continues unchecked, we will lose more than just […]

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Military-Presence-Map

3 Things Threatening Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq

ISIL is not the only forces damaging the cultural heritage of Syria and northern Iraq. Check out these three things you may not realize are contributing to the threat of cultural heritage. […]

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Antiquities Coalition infographic.

Introducing the Digital Library of the Middle East

A successful Digital Library of the Middle East will present the stories of a diverse group of people whose culture is often misunderstood. We need look no further than the Cradle of Civilization to understand how important […]

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Collecting and the Power of Touch

In April, visitors to Trafalgar Square could touch a second century Roman triumphal arch – even though they were 4,000 miles away from where the arch was built, in the ancient city of Palmyra, now […]

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Gabriel Barkay at Ketef Hinnom

New Light on the Priestly Blessing from Ancient Judah

Since this text associates this blessing with the Israelite priesthood, both Jewish and Christian traditions refer to it as the “priestly blessing.” Jewish and Christian literature shows that the blessing came to hold a central place in the liturgies of both […]

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Hemispherical glass bowl (left) and bronze bowl with flared rim (right), from Nimrud. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Both these exquisite vessels were excavated in the North-West Palace at Nimrud: their appearance resembles closely the bowls used in Neo-Assyrian banquet scenes, as they were represented in reliefs and ivories.

The King’s Feast: Power and Propaganda at the Neo-Assyrian Royal Table

Banqueting is a powerful means of communication. Throughout human history, men and women have always done their best to enjoy food as much as possible in social settings in order to communicate […]

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(Fig. 3) Part of the LoNAP team performing artefacts collection in the lower town of a large site (background) not far from the modern city of Duhok.

The Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project: The Ceramic Repertoire from the Early Pottery Neolithic to the Sasanian Period

The present article discusses the preliminary results of the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project, an on-going […]

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The Daily Stew? Everyday Meals in Ancient Israel

What did the ancient Israelites eat and how did they cook? Unfortunately, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t contain as much information on daily cooking and meals as one would like. The limited amount of information […]

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Sue Ann McCarty with a single day’s excavation worth of pottery.  Photo by Andy Creekmore.

The Present and Future of Curating the Past

The corrugated steel garage door clamored as it rose. We stood on a dusty road in a small town in Turkey and peered into the darkness of our excavation depot. Anxious to get reacquainted with our artifacts […]

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Tomb 3 Asiatic scene. Carl Richard Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Leipzig, 1913

The Beni Hasan Tomb Painting and Scholarship of the Southern Levant

Sometimes a single image can be made to carry more weight than it was intended. For over a century, one painting in the Middle Kingdom tomb complex at Beni Hasan—located […]

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