An authoritative guide to the Ancient Middle East as seen through the lens of cuneiform writing, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia. Written by a team of international scholars, with chapter bibliographies and numerous illustrations, the Handbook is a state-of-the-art guide to the discipline as well as offering pathways for future research.

I. Materiality and literacies 1: Jonathan Taylor: Tablets as artefacts, scribes as artisans 2: Robert K. Englund: Accounting in proto-cuneiform 3: Grégory Chambon: Numeracy and metrology 4: Niek Veldhuis: Levels of literacy 5: Brigitte Lion: Literacy and gender II. Individuals and communities 6: Benjamin R. Foster: The person in Mesopotamian thought 7: Frans van Koppen: The scribe of the Flood Story and his circle 8: Hagan Brunke: Feasts for the living, the dead, and the gods 9: Michael Jursa: Cuneiform writing in Neo-Babylonian temple communities 10: Eva von Dassow: Freedom in ancient Near Eastern societies III. Experts and novices 11: Yoram Cohen & Sivan Kedar: Teacher-student relationships: two case studies 12: Dominique Charpin: Patron and client: Zimri-Lim and Asqudum the diviner 13: Michel Tanret: Learned, rich, famous and unhappy: Ur-Utu of Sippar 14: Nele Ziegler: Music, the work of professionals 15: Silvie Zamazalová: The education of Neo-Assyrian princes IV. Decisions 16: Sophie Démare-Lafont: Judicial decision-making: judges and arbitrators 17: Karen Radner: Royal decision-making: kings, magnates and scholars 18: Andreas Fuchs: Assyria at war: strategy and conduct 19: Anne Löhnert: Manipulating the gods: lamenting in context 20: Daniel Schwemer: Magic rituals: conceptualisation and performance V. Interpretations 21: Ulla Susanne Koch: Sheep and sky: systems of divinatory interpretation 22: John M. Steele: Making sense of time: observational and theoretical calendars 23: Fabienne Huber Vulliet: Letters as correspondence, letters as literature 24: Eckart Frahm: Keeping company with men of learning: the king as scholar 25: Heather D. Baker: From street altar to palace: reading the built environment of urban Babylonia VI. Making knowledge 26: Eleanor Robson: The production and dissemination of scholarly knowledge 27: Steve Tinney: Tablets of schools and scholars: a portrait of the Old Babylonian corpus 28: Mark Weeden: Adapting to new contexts: cuneiform in Anatolia 29: Francesca Rochberg: Observing and describing the world through divination and astronomy 30: Geert De Breucker: Berossos between tradition and innovation VII. Shaping tradition 31: Frans Wiggermann: Agriculture as civilization: sages, farmers, and barbarians 32: Barbara Böck: Sourcing, organising, and administering medicinal ingredients 33: Nicole Brisch: Changing images of kingship in Sumerian literature 34: Caroline Waerzeggers: The pious king: royal patronage of temples 35: Philippe Clancier: Cuneiform culture's last guardians: the old urban notability of Hellenistic Uruk

Restores coherence and context to the study of Assyriology through its emphasis on textual sources which are at the same time material artefacts Written by an outstanding team of international scholars Disciplines of archaeology, history, and philology are combined to produce an integrated picture More than 100 illustrations, including maps and timelines, provide easy access to key information

Karen Radner (PhD Vienna 1997, Habilation Munich 2004) is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich. Her main research interests are in Assyria, especially the period from the 9th to the 7th centuries BC, on whose political, social, economic, legal, and religious history she has published extensively. Her books include editions of Middle and Neo-Assyrian archives and a study on how awareness of man's mortality shaped Mesopotamian culture (Die Macht des Namens: altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung, 2005). She directs an AHRC-funded research project on the correspondence between the Assyrian kings and their magnates in the 8th century BC (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon). Eleanor Robson is Professor of Ancient Middle Eastern History at University College London. Her research focuses on the socio-political contexts of intellectual activity in ancient Mesopotamia and the online edition of cuneiform texts. She is the author of Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History (2008) and director of the AHRC-funded research project, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia, 700-200 BC (http://oracc.org/gkab).

Restores coherence and context to the study of Assyriology through its emphasis on textual sources which are at the same time material artefacts Written by an outstanding team of international scholars Disciplines of archaeology, history, and philology are combined to produce an integrated picture More than 100 illustrations, including maps and timelines, provide easy access to key information