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This paper is intended as the first of a series of studies aimed at a reclassification and re-evaluation of Urartian glyptic. In this specific contribution we have chosen to firstly analyse exclusively that group of seal impressions that have short cuneiform inscriptions attributable to the royal and palatine sphere of Urartu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is to examine the stages of accounting, from its emergence to today, in terms of social roles and cultural change. For this purpose, we tried to evaluate accounting in terms of both social roles and characteristics of the periods. For this reason, our evaluation focused mainly on which roles accounting played in each of the periods under study. The topic is discussed under three main headings: the need for account keeping (social identity), the use of account stones/writing (public identity) and double-sided book-keeping technique (institutional identity). It has been observed that social needs and events imposed different identities on accounting during the specified periods and accounting was evaluated for different purposes under the influence of these identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The beginnings of the history of Mesopotamia date back to the mid second millennium before Christ. Various peoples settled down in that region and created more or less stable state organisms which, as the centauries passed, demonstrated and shared common cultural and civilizational heritage. Amongst the nations which made an enormous contribution to the development of medicine in Mesopotamia are Babylonians and Assyrians. The evidence of their achievements in medicine is found in the Code of Hammurabi and on clay tablets covered by cuneiform which were discovered in Nippur. In those days medicine was mainly of magical nature.

At the end of 48 millennium BCE, small clay tablets include economic records used for some centuries and played a significant role in administrative control. Sometimes these tablets also bear impressions of seals which comprise the most extensive dataset of imagery from this period. The importance of scaling is clear from its junction and pictorial information. but on the economic tablets it has new significance allowing us to identify possible specific specializations and the responsible institutions for the economic document. In this study I focus on l'our unpublished sealings on four different Proto-Elamite clay tablets which are kept in the National Museum of Iran. At first, a description will be presented for each sample, which in turn will be used to group them according to both the content of the image and the text. Finally, I will use this sorting to propose a possible relation between each specialized administration unit and some scenes which they used for their seals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first publication of the astronomical diary BM 30617 from Babylon. This clay tablet shows an example of "preliminary diaries", which record primary observations of the sky and, if any, the Euphrates for one month or less. The cuneiform text of BM 30617 shows the primary day-by-day observations of the sky over the first four days of the Babylonian month IX (Kislīm). The recorded phenomena are dated to an unknown year during the joint kingship of Antiochus and his son (or stepson), also named Antiochus, of the Seleucid dynasty. Some clues in the diary, however, help us to narrow down the candidates for the year to which our month IX belongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of early urbanism, elite groups developed the world's earliest writing in Mesopotamia, 3200–2750 BC, comprising administrative documents in the form of inscribed clay tablets. How did these proto-literate urban communities engage with each other and what strategies did they employ to address major challenges to their survival? The 'city seal' evidence survives as seal impressions on clay bureaucratic artefacts, both inscribed tablets and impressed sealings. These impressions feature signs representing the names of Mesopotamian cities, many of them identifiable with known sites. The documents stand at the threshold of history, as the earliest evidence for inter-city engagement. Using an innovative methodology and interpretive framework of cultic resilience, the authors integrate archaeometric, iconographic and functional analyses of the earliest stages of writing and sealing, to argue that the city seal evidence provides unique insights into inter-city cooperation by Mesopotamian cities during a critical episode of early urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An appendix is presented of the MLC 1884, a fragmentary Late Babylonian clay tablet from the Yale Babylonian Collection, which contains descriptions of how to draw celestial constellations.

Knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern history is largely based on written records preserved on clay tablets, but tablets have often been separated from other archaeological artefacts, with erratic consequences. This paper discusses the treatment, distribution and evaluation of tablets since the first major discoveries in 1850, the problems and potential advantages of identifying clay sources and methods of manufacture, the challenges of preserving and recording tablets found in different conditions in the field, and the development of cleaning and long-term conservation techniques. Early experiments in firing tablets at the British Museum and at Babylon were followed by the systematic work of Friedrich Rathgen in Berlin around 1900. While his methods were gradually accepted in principle, there was limited communication among specialists, and independent procedures evolved. The debate on best practice continues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent, twentieth-century research on the history of the development of book-keeping indicates that it originated with the development of the Sumerian civilization in the third millennium BC. The necessity to control the property of the temple and of the palace, which was entrusted to breeders, farmers, merchants or craftsmen contributed to the creation of a very sophisticated method of documenting the events concerning these possessions. The article aims at identifying the reasons behind the emergence of book-keeping in Mesopotamia, discusses its instances in the form of inscriptions on clay tablets and analyzes examples of settlements concerning entrusted property, which, balancing debts and liabilities, have the characteristics of book-keeping. These settlements are primarily characterized by a personal approach – the one to whom the property has been entrusted is on the debit side. It was already in this period that the balancing method was employed in the case of factory or ‘budget’ book-keeping in redistributing the bala tax, as it is illustrated with examples of settlements concerning cattle breeders, merchants and craftsmen. In this article I refer to such publications as the proceedings of periodic academic conferences (Oxford University, 1998; Columbia University, 1998, British Museum, 2000) on the economy of the ancient Middle East as well as Marek Stępień’s (Warsaw University) works concerning the issues of taxation in Sumerian times.

The stamping of bread dough before baking is an ancient practice, performed from the Neolithic period up until recent times. The stamped breads were imprinted with a wide range of symbols and used for different occasions and purposes. The clay bread stamp presented here was found at Khirbet et-Tireh, a site lying approximately 16 km northwest of Jerusalem. The design carved into the stamp face consists of a cross and other simple geometries. This object, which we have dated to the Late Byzantine-Early Islamic period, is notable both for its workmanship and for surviving almost completely intact. Based on the monastic context of the find, plus the stamp's relatively small size, it was probably used to decorate small individual loaves, perhaps as sacramental bread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mankind has been expressing the breeding topic for thousands of years. Reproduction is the primary instinct of human beings and it is a social, cultural, medical issue. Demographic infertility is one of them, which is defined infertility as the inability to become pregnant with a live birth, within five years of regular sexual contact based upon a consistent union status in marriage maintaining a desire for a child with the lack of contraceptive use and non-lactating. A first mentions about infertility and surrogacy is discovered on a 4000-year-old clay tablet of marriage contract belonging to the Assyrian period exhibited at Istanbul Archeology Museum in Turkey. In conclusion, there are many different ways to solve infertility problems like surrogacy as mentioned even 4000 years ago in this Assyrian clay tablet of marriage contract as the first time in the literature. Medical treatments in relation to human infertility will continue to be the focus of social and cultural debates. Hence, more legislation and regulation will come in many countries to control the unauthorized exploitation of the patient. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a first edition of a new clay tablet in Neo-Assyrian language and cuneiform script. The fragmentary text was found in 2013 at the site of Qalat-i Dinka in the Peshdar Plain, Sulaymaniyah Province, Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. It documents the sale of a slave woman in the year 725 BC, when the area was part of the Assyrian Empire and quite possible of the Province of the Palace Herald. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In deep excavation construction, improved soil layers consisting of overlapping cement-admixed columns formed by deep mixing method or jet grouting are often used to stabilise an excavation in soft soils. The purpose of such soil layers is to resist lateral compression generated by movement of the retaining wall. Cement-admixed soils are well known to have high heterogeneity in strength. In this paper, the heterogeneity in strength and Young's modulus are studied using random finite-element analyses, considering three sources of variation: namely, a deterministic radial trend in strength and Young's modulus; a stochastic fluctuation component due to non-uniform mixing; and positioning errors arising from off-verticality of the mixing shafts. The results show that positioning errors have the largest effect on the strength of the slab as a whole, whereas the radial trend has the smallest effect, when normalised by the volume-average strength. Based on the results obtained, methods are proposed which allow equivalent homogeneous mass strength and modulus of the improved slab to be determined for a chosen percentile of exceedance or reliability index, which can be used in deterministic finite-element analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors of 31 white male rats Wistar outbred breeding evaluated the effect of the internal receiving 2.5% glauconitic clay slurry on the state of detoxification mechanisms. The results showed that emotional stress, immobilization with weights situational causes endogenous intoxication, due to inactivation of the detoxification function of the liver caused by the imbalance of power supply processes of life and the reduction of renal excretory function. Internal use of 2.5% suspension of glauconitic clay improves the detoxification function of the liver in animals by stress caused by endogenous intoxication due to the recovery of renal excretory function and a significant improvement in energy production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The engineering behavior of marine clay is very different than that of the moist and dry clay because of its structural and mineral composition [1]. Marine structure is subjected to the waves which create a cyclic stresses inside the soil mass [2]. The huge storage tanks experiences a heavy wind and current load which produces a adverse effect in the soil settlements. In this paper a cylindrical reinforced cement concrete tank with diameter 100 m and 40 m height founded on soft marine clay of undrained shear strength of 10 kPa is considered for the analysis. The huge pile group is modeled by equivalent pier method and interaction factor method for the full and empty loading conditions. Settlement including the soil pile interaction has been estimated for both the cases mentioned above for different pile configuration including pile length, diameter and spacing of piles in a group. It has been observed that the spacing of the piles plays a vital role in estimating the settlements and stresses. With the comparison of the equivalent pier method (EPM) [8] and interaction factor method (IFM) for settlement estimation, the later is found to be more suitable for interaction analysis to achieve the safety of the tank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo discurre sobre el juego de pelota, un ritual de las indígenas en la época prehispánica. El autor describe cómo el juego alude a los mitos y ritos mexicanos como el sacrificio y comenta sobre las antigüedades del sitio Tajín en México incluyendo los tableros. El artículo provee varias imágenes de las antigüedades.

The reconstruction of fragmented artefacts is a tedious process that consumes many valuable work hours of scholars' time. We believe that such work can be made more efficient via new techniques in interactive virtual environments. The purpose of this research is to explore approaches to the reconstruction of cuneiform tablets in the real and virtual environment, and to address the potential barriers to virtual reconstruction of fragments. In this paper we present the results of an experiment exploring the reconstruction strategies employed by individual users working with tablet fragments in real and virtual environments. Our findings have identified physical factors that users find important to the reconstruction process and further explored the subjective usefulness of stereoscopic 3D in the reconstruction process. Our results, presented as dynamic graphs of interaction, compare the precise order of movement and rotation interactions, and the frequency of interaction achieved by successful and unsuccessful participants with some surprising insights. We present evidence that certain interaction styles and behaviours characterise success in the reconstruction process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the preliminary assessment of the archaeological landscape around Tell Mardikh-Ebla (Syria). The ERC funded Ebla Chora Project allowed to conduct a systematic collection of findings from the site and its surrounding neighbors. The information from previous surveys was combined with the data from spatial datasets (topographical maps, aerial photos, satellite images, DEMs) in order to provide a first inventory of sites of the Eblaite chora. A preliminary interpretation of the development of settlement pattern and territory exploitation is now possible, especially for the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) when Ebla was the capital of a vast kingdom. Many potential sites were also detected, however their validation requires a field inspection which is currently suspended because of the civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the allocations of HORD to the texts ma-ka and de-qo-no in Thebes Fq tablets from the ancient city of Thebes. Topics discussed include the argument that the amounts of HORD were issued as supplemental rations in exchange for services, the observation that the amounts were distributed on religious occasions and the possible equivalence between the allocations to ma-ka and other entries on each tablet.

The article examines the fractional signs and food rations in Linear A clay tablets issued during the Late Bronze Age in Crete, Greece. Topics discussed include the numerical value of klasmatograms which represent fractions, the interpretation of the fractional signs and the tablets from Hagia Triada Site dealing with food rations.

The article discusses observations on the Ug series of tablets, the first Linear B inscriptions found from the Platon-Touloupa excavation in Thebes, Greece in 1960s to 1970s. Topics include the typical features of the tablets, the attempts to interpret the tablets and the proposed hypothesis for the identification of the scribal hands of the Ug series.

The article examines the consonant-stem dative-locatives in -i of the clay tablets at Knossos, a Bronze Age archaeological site in Crete, Greece. Topics discussed include the two Greek inflexions of the dative-locative singular of C-stem nouns, the hypothesis of scholar Ivo Hajnal on proterodynamic inflexion and the identifications of the consonant-stem dative-locatives.

The article examines the methods of classifying the four Cypro-Minoan inscriptions, composed of three clay tablets and one clay cylinder, found in Enkomi, Cyprus. Topics include the proposed numerical classification for the different groups of inscription, the characteristics of the inscriptions and the similarities of the clay tablets. Also compared are the different syllabograms of the tablets and clay cylinder.

The article analyzes a new ordering of Adena tablets based on an examination of the McKensie Tablet. It explores the origins of engraved Adena tablets from Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Also discussed are the association between refined Adena clay tablets and late Early Woodland to early Middle Woodland dates and the myths behind the inner, outer, and enfolded heads of the composite being on the McKensie Tablet.

Dispilio is the only excavated Neolithic lakeside settlement in Greece. Archaeological research provided evidence that the site was continuously used from the Early Neolithic (~6000 BC) to the Late Chalcolithic period (~1200 BC, Mycenaean period). During several archaeological campaigns, a portion of the settlement has been excavated that enabled a sufficient understanding of the architectural layout of homes, the building materials, and the organization of space, while the finds (fragments of pottery, stone and bone tools, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic clay figurines, miniature representations of objects also on clay, animal and fish bones, charred cereal grains, and other fruits) provided information on the everyday lives of the Neolithic inhabitants. A series of charcoal and wood samples, originating mostly from the Middle and Late Neolithic layers of the site, were radiocarbon dated and their dates range from ~5470 to 4850 BC. The most unexpected of the finds, a wooden tablet from the lake bearing engraved symbols, was 14C dated to 5260 ± 40 BC. In addition, clay tablets and pottery vessels engraved with similar symbols were also unearthed from layers dated to the same period. If this proves to be a primary source of written communication, the history of writing should be reconsidered and Neolithic societies should not be considered "societies without writing." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an edition of a new royal inscription of the Kassite king Kaåtiliaåu. The inscription is preserved on a clay tablet and deals with the digging of the Sumundar canal. In the following discussion we identify the king in the inscription as Kaåtiliaåu III, known from the Synchronistic King List. The genealogy of the king in the inscription is compared to that known from the Synchronistic King list and other sources. The article also deals with the location of the Sumundar canal and with the religious ceremonies which were connected to royal canal digging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper arises from research undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded project, 'Communication, Language and Power in the Achaemenid empire: the correspondence of the satrap Arshama'. The project enabled a reengagement with the letters, sealings, and bag purchased in the 1940s by the Bodleian Library from the estate of the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. The discussion explores two parallel approaches to reconstructing the three-dimensional function of Achaemenid letters. First, technical variations in letter format and state of preservation reveal a range of physical interactions with letters, both open and closed. Second, Greek prose representations of Persian history imagine letters as objects working with their messengers within Achaemenid (usually royal) communications. This focus on the letter as object prompts us to hypothesize social, performative, and oral elements within the epistolary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly the most basic element is information in the development of civilization. In this context it is obvious the importance of the book as a information source. The book showed different levels of development early ages up to this day. The emergence and development of the book shaped various cultural, political, economic, and geographic factors. Today, the book been in existence in both print and electronic formats and continues to be the main information source. To know the history of the book will shed light on future assessments. In this context, the aim of this study to present an overview the formation and development of the printed book in the historical process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text analyses the emergence of digital publications designed for the new portable devices with touchscreen. If in the last 30 years the universe of written text went through a mutation from paper to screens, now we are seeing a further stage of this process that recombines these interfaces, the old devices dialogue with the new ones and texts reside in new 'species' of hybrid media. The arrival of the emagazines is analysed from a perspective that integrates semiotics of interfaces and media ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]