PhD Research completed

Date of completion: May 2011.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the socio-political function and influence Egyptian imports and local Egyptianizing objects had on the northern Levantine elites during the 2nd millennium BCE.

Various publications on the subject stress the importance of further study of this type of seal and its impact on Egyptian – Levantine relations. So far, specialists have mostly been concentrating on scarabs from the southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) but this study of scarabs from Syria and Lebanon hopes Read more…

Hematite, shadanu, was used for cutting small objects like beads, seals, weights. In metallurgy it was used as a flux in smelting copper and as a rich iron ore. As hematite is not indigenous in Mesopotamia, it had to be imported, like many basic materials. Combining archaeological, philological, metallurgical and geo-archaeological Read more…

Date of completion: 2011.

The Disseration aims at discussing all relevant sources for the presence of greek persons in Mesopotamia and Iran and determining the function of these people and changes in the role of greeks in the near east according to cuneiform as well as greek and latin sources.

The thesis compares various aspects of these collections and attempts to place the differences between them in their cultural/societal context. The results question the assumption of many that the ancient Near East shared a common culture. New insights on the comparative method in general are made as well as a Read more…

Date of completion: April 25, 2007