Near East
Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: William B. Hafford
Mesopotamian City Life: Four Thousand Years Ago
Modern cities have neighborhoods, shops, factories, religious centers, and cemeteries. They have transportation networks along streets and alleyways, and drainage […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: William B. Hafford
A Spectacular Discovery: Burials Simple and Splendid
Of more than 2,000 total graves, only 16 had the structure, wealth, and evidence of human sacrifice that convinced the […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Holly Pittman
Highlands and Lowlands: The Interaction of Communities
As it is today, southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), in the deep past, was a distinctive landscape. It provided, in abundance, […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Katherine Burge and Lauren Ristvet
Last Day at Hasanlu: An Iron Age City Frozen in Time
In the summer of 1958, a young archaeologist by the name of Robert H. Dyson, Jr., led a team from […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Renata Holod
Locus of Civilization: Cities of the Islamic and Persianate World
Ibn Khaldun, the great 14th-century CE historian and philosopher, stated that without the city (Arabic: madina) there can be no […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Brian Spooner
Globalization and The Ancient World
Globalization began in the Middle East. It is the story of larger and larger numbers of people connecting and interacting […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Brian Spooner
Nomads in The Middle East
Nomads are mobile tent-dwelling pastoralists in areas of the arid zone (which stretches from Morocco to China, with the area […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Lynn Grant
Foundational Work: Conservation and The Middle East Galleries
Conservation is involved very early in the process of creating new Penn Museum galleries and exhibitions. When the curators and […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Jessica Bicknell and Ellen Owens
From the First Cities to Our City: Connecting Philadelphians to The Past, One Tablet at a Time
Aspects of our everyday lives as city denizens have been shaped by—and in some cases, stem directly from—the first cities […]
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Vol. 60 / No. 1
By: Marie-Claude Boileau
Analyzing Slipper Coffins from Nippur: In the Labs
The opportunity to analyze, with my students, amazing glazed ceramic coffins from Nippur—some of the iconic objects featured in the […]
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