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In Bodies of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia Matthew Rutz explores the relationship between ancient collections of texts, commonly deemed libraries and archives, and the modern interpretation of titles like ‘diviner’. By looking at cuneiform tablets as artifacts with archaeological contexts, this work probes the modern analytical categories used to study ancient diviners and investigates the transmission of Babylonian/Assyrian scholarship in Syria. During the Late Bronze Age diviners acted as high-ranking scribes and cultic functionaries in Emar, a town on the Syrian Euphrates (ca. 1375-1175 BCE). This book’s centerpiece is an extensive analytical catalogue of the excavated tablet collection of one family of diviners. Over seventy-five fragments are identified for the first time, along with many proposed joins between fragments.

Divination --- Omens --- Assyro-Babylonian religion. --- Assyro-Babylonian literature. --- Cuneiform tablets --- History --- BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Divination / Fortune Telling --- BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Divination / General --- BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Prophecy --- Portents --- Prodigies (Omens) --- Signs (Omens) --- Superstition --- Signs and symbols --- Augury --- Soothsaying --- Occultism --- Worship --- Tablets, Cuneiform --- Clay tablets --- Cuneiform writing --- Religion, Assyro-Babylonian --- Religions --- Akkadian literature --- Babylonian literature

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This study is devoted to the Neo-Assyrian royal household as it emerges from the available cuneiform sources. It addresses the functions as well as the conditions of life and work of the royal household personnel. It clarifies which types of officials, professionals and other employees were active within or on behalf of the royal household. What were their tasks, and what was their position within the royal household and in relation to the king and his family? What departments were in place, and who were the managers? What was the role of lower-ranking personnel within this system? The study also investigates the social and cultural background of the personnel as well as their professional life, including their financial means, the quantity and type of their remuneration, and their career progression. Envisaged also as reference book, the book provides a prosopographical catalogue of the wide range of personnel discussed. As the personal household of the sovereign and the administrative and political centre of the empire, this study of the royal household opens up the immediate environment of the king and his family, but also to the governmental apparatus of the empire as a whole.

Akkadian language --- Cuneiform inscriptions --- Cuneiform tablets --- Royal households --- Kings and rulers --- Households --- Tablets, Cuneiform --- Clay tablets --- Cuneiform writing --- Inscriptions, Cuneiform --- Assyro-Babylonian literature --- Civilization, Assyro-Babylonian --- Achaemenian inscriptions --- Old Persian inscriptions --- History --- Akkadian language. --- Assyria (kingdom). --- Cuneiform inscriptions. --- Cuneiform tablets. --- Royal households. --- Iraq. --- Koningshuizen --- Syriac language [Modern ] --- Geschiedenis --- Bilād al-Rāfidayn --- Bilād --- Irak --- Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah --- Republic of Iraq