BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Near Eastern Languages & Cultures - UCLA - ECPv6.17.4//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Near Eastern Languages & Cultures - UCLA X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Near Eastern Languages & Cultures - UCLA REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20150308T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20151101T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20160313T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20161106T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20170312T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20171105T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20180311T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20181104T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20190310T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20191103T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20200308T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20201101T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20210314T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20211107T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20220313T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20221106T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20230312T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20231105T090000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220513T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220513T170000 DTSTAMP:20220412T183907Z CREATED:20220412T183907Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220412T183907Z UID:16891-1652457600-1652461200@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Gilgamesh and the Translation of Philological Crises DESCRIPTION:This year\, the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh celebrates the 150th anniversary of its modern rediscovery in 1872: since then\, the epic has swept like a Flood through the literary world\, and it continues to be celebrated as the oldest entry in the literary canon. \nIn this talk\, Sophus Helle offers an introduction to the epic and its modern afterlife\, focusing on the particular challenges that face the translators of premodern texts\, who must contend with the cruxes and crises that come with the manuscript medium. \nTranslators of such texts must confront the question of how to render philological problems—or\, as Helle terms them\, “crises of reading”—including fragmentary sections\, variation across manuscripts\, obscure words\, and the like. Helle argues that these philological problems can have their own poetics\, their own set of aesthetic effects\, which translators can engage with in creative ways. \n  \nCo-sponsored by The Center for the Study of Religion \n  \nSophus Helle is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. He previously translated Gilgamesh into Danish with his father\, the poet Morten Søndergaard. He is currently working on a book about Enheduana\, the first known author. \n  \n  \n  \n[gravityform id=”177″ title=”false” description=”false”] URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/gilgamesh-and-the-translation-of-philological-crises/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 365 CATEGORIES:Assyriology ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The_Newly_Discovered_Tablet_V_of_the_Epic_of_Gilgamesh_The_Sulaymaniyah_Museum_Iraq.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200305T134500 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200305T153000 DTSTAMP:20200227T182812Z CREATED:20200227T170438Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200227T182812Z UID:14914-1583415900-1583422200@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:People of Empire: Assyrianness Through the Looking-Glass of the Neo-Assyrian State DESCRIPTION:In the first half of the first millennium BCE\, the Neo-Assyrian state forged what Mario Liverani has called the world’s “prototype empire”. Empires are often associated with imperial peoples: a core population that maintains its distinctiveness and enjoys a privileged position within the imperial structure. Were the Assyrians such a people? The Neo-Assyrian state apparatus produced a great deal of textual material spanning many genres and purposes and covering much of its existence. A significant part of this material has been recovered and made available for scientific examination over the last two centuries. This rich body of evidence allows us to investigate how the Neo-Assyrian state understood “Assyrianness”. Who was regarded as Assyrian\, who was not\, and on what basis? \nI will argue that Assyrianness was not invested in a fixed differentiation between peoples within the empire. Assyrianness was instead bound up in the universal promise of empire. Assyrian imperialism sought to impose the divine order over the mundane world. Whatever conformed to the divine order was Assyrian by default: good\, proper\, “us.” Whatever did not conform to this order was the other: strange\, improper\, “them.” Refracted as it is through the looking-glass of the Neo-Assyrian state\, the evidence reveals an Assyrian identity located not in ethnonational constructs\, but in political subordination and modes of subsistence. This provides an interesting contrast with our understanding of other imperial peoples\, like those of Achaemenid Persia or of the familiar European colonial empires of the last few centuries. Assyrians were not an imperial people\, but the people of empire. \nEvent Flyer\n  \nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”162″ title=”false” description=”false”]\n  \n\n  \n  \n  \n  \nJonathan Valk \nLeiden University \n  URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/people-of-empire-assyrianness-through-the-looking-glass-of-the-neo-assyrian-state/ LOCATION:CA CATEGORIES:Assyriology,NELC ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/valk.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200227T134500 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200227T151500 DTSTAMP:20200222T003215Z CREATED:20200221T231102Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200222T003215Z UID:14861-1582811100-1582816500@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Creating the Cult of a Goddess: Politics and Religion at Mari in the Old Babylonian Period DESCRIPTION:Traces of ancient Mesopotamian religion have been discovered by archaeologists working across the modern Middle East—temples and other religious structures\, worn by time; small fragments of once-opulent cult statues and temple furnishings; clay tablets inscribed with stories of and hymns to the gods; and mundane records of administrators\, concerned with tracking the many cults that could inhabit a single city. While the Assyriologist A. Leo Oppenheim cautioned that these remains were capable of revealing “only a dim reflection” of Mesopotamian religious practice\, and should therefore not be used to write a history of Mesopotamian religion\, I contend that these mundane remains in fact offer rich insights into the pervasive and dynamic nature of religion in Mesopotamian history. \nOffering a critical re-examination of administrative records from the ancient city of Mari\, the presentation examines a body of texts that refer to a goddess by the name of Ishtar Irradan along with a pair of ritual texts\, all found in the city’s palace archives. While the presentation uses this evidence to construct a lively story of cultic innovation and political ideology during a period of foreign rule in ca. 1800 BCE\, the ideas and methods developed here have important implications for the classification of ritual texts and the study of Mesopotamian literature as well as modern approaches to the study of polytheism and “divine multiplicity.” Finally\, the presentation considers the value of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Mesopotamian history\, suggesting that the field of Assyriology and the training of Assyriologists can and needs to be driven forward by the engagement with the ancient material world—of which texts remain one crucial component. \n  \n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \nDr. Elizabeth Knott\nPostdoctoral Associate\, Babylonian Collection\, Yale University Research Affiliate\, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World\, NYU \n  \nEvent Flyer\nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”160″ title=”false” description=”false”] URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/creating-the-cult-of-a-goddess-politics-and-religion-at-mari-in-the-old-babylonian-period/ LOCATION:Fowler A222\, 308 Charles E Young Dr N\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90024\, United States CATEGORIES:Assyriology,NELC ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-21-at-3.16.59-PM.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200211T134500 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200211T134500 DTSTAMP:20200210T180748Z CREATED:20200204T171154Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200210T180748Z UID:14692-1581428700-1581428700@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Episodes from the Early History of Knowledge: Instruction Manuals in Cuneiform Scholarship DESCRIPTION:This talk examines the early history of the instruction manual\, focusing on cuneiform texts identified as technical procedures. Addressed to “you” as the grammatical subject\, procedures—in Akkadian\, nēpešum\, from the verb epēšu “to make\, compute”— encompassed topics ranging from mathematics\, glassmaking\, horse-training\, perfumery\, medicine\, and astronomy. Over the course of two millennia\, procedures would develop into one of the most long-standing vehicles for knowledge transmission in cuneiform cultures. However\, the longevity of the textual format\, which on its surface appears to transmit practical know-how\, belies a more dynamic history of linguistic innovation\, scribal hermeneutics\, and lexical ingenuity. From Old Babylonian school houses to Assyrian state archives\, procedures provided a textual space within which scribes could contemplate the material world\, numeracy\, lexicography\, writing\, classification\, and knowledge itself. Using instructions for perfumery\, horse-training\, and glassmaking as the starting point\, this talk presents a history and historiography of procedures in cuneiform scholarship with the aim of defamiliarizing what we know about procedures\, and in turn\, reassessing the broader impact of these early instruction manuals within the emerging field of history of knowledge. \n\n  \n  \n  \n  \nDr. Eduardo A. Escobar\nStevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge The University of Chicago \n  \nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”158″ title=”false” description=”false”]\n  URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/episodes-from-the-early-history-of-knowledge-instruction-manuals-in-cuneiform-scholarship/ LOCATION:Royce 243 CATEGORIES:Assyriology,NELC ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Escobar-golden-record-ver-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200206T134500 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200206T150000 DTSTAMP:20200206T160749Z CREATED:20200130T215333Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200206T160749Z UID:14611-1580996700-1581001200@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Resource Mobilization\, Social Engineering\, and Opportunism: The Revival of Larsa in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian State Project DESCRIPTION:When a Babylonian and Median coalition put an end to Assyrian domination over the Ancient Near East in the late 7th century BCE\, the Babylonian kings set about to revitalize the heartland of their new state\, the Neo-Babylonian empire. One of the cities that benefited from this imperial program of rebuilding and land reclamation was Larsa\, an ancient cult center of the sun god Shamash in what is now southern Iraq. The main architect of this project was Nebuchadnezzar II. Although he is most (in)famously known through the Bible\, he also left his imprint in numerous Babylonian sources. \nHowever\, because we have no state archives from that period\, temple and private records are the primary source for reconstructing modes of state intervention. Using an unpublished 6th century BCE private archive from Larsa and other textual sources\, I will show that Larsa and its temple were revived for a combination of economic\, political\, and religious reasons\, and that they were kept small and semidependent by design. Finally\, I will argue that Nebuchadnezzar opportunistically exploited this revival to cast himself in the figure of a state builder. In addition to contributing to our understanding of imperial state policies in the first millennium BCE\, this research highlights the use of everyday documents to reconstruct the socio-economic life of urban and non-urban populations in the Ancient Near East. \n\n  \nDr. Odette Boivin\nVisiting Assistant Professor\, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World\, NYU \n  \nEvent Flyer\nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”157″ title=”false” description=”false”] URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/resource-mobilization-social-engineering-and-opportunism-the-revival-of-larsa-in-nebuchadnezzars-babylonian-state-project/ LOCATION:365 Kaplan Hall CATEGORIES:Assyriology,NELC ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/od-e1580427986170.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20190926T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20190926T133000 DTSTAMP:20190823T222126Z CREATED:20190823T155911Z LAST-MODIFIED:20190823T222126Z UID:13744-1569499200-1569504600@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Applying for Jobs and Life After the Dissertation DESCRIPTION:Join NELC faculty Dr. Cate Bonesho\, Dr. Kara Cooney\, and Dr. Bill Schniedewind for a workshop and discussion of applying for jobs and life after the dissertation. \n  \nEvent Flyer\nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”137″ title=”false” description=”false”]\n  URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/life-after-the-dissertation/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 365 CATEGORIES:Ancient Near East & Egyptology,Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations,Arabic,Arabic & Islamic Studies,Armenian,Assyriology,Bilingual Lecture Series,Egyptology,Hebrew & Jewish,Hebrew Bible,Iranian,Israel Studies,Jewish Studies,Jewish Studies,Levantine,Levantine Studies,Middle Eastern Studies,Near Eastern Archaeology,NELC,Pourdavoud Center,Semitics,Turkic,Turkic Studies ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/resume.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20190128T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20190128T133000 DTSTAMP:20190115T193926Z CREATED:20181221T170043Z LAST-MODIFIED:20190115T193926Z UID:12097-1548676800-1548682200@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:John of Litharb (d. 738 CE)\, On the Soul: A Previously Unknown Syriac Treatise and the New Light it sheds on Islamic Kalām\, on Byzantine Theology\, and on Syriac Psychology DESCRIPTION:John of Litharb is a fairly well-known Syriac author from the turn of the seventh-and-eighth centuries\, who participated in a robust circle of intellectual Christian theologians\, historians and philosophers. Although he is known to have authored several important works\, due to the accidents of manuscript transmission\, only one very short letter of his was thought to have survived to this day. I have recently discovered a significant work of his On the Soul\, completely overlooked in previous scholarship. I seek to understand this work and contextualize it in terms of the information it provides pertaining to three areas of research: 1) the emergence of the Islamic rational-theological school of Kalām\, long claimed by some scholars to have had Christian roots; 2) current Byzantine debates about the soul\, with special attention to the question of its ability to intercede for the living in its post-mortem state; 3) subsequent Syriac works on the soul\, and their relations to this source. \n  \nDr. Yonatan Moss is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a BA in Classics and Linguistics from the Hebrew University and a PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. In 2016 Moss published Incorruptible Bodies: Christology\, Society and Authority in Late Antiquity (University of California Press)\, which analyzes the sixth-century Julianist controversy about the body of Christ in its late ancient social and cultural contexts. Moss’ interests lie in the intersections between theology\, politics\, technology and language in the late ancient and early medieval domains of the Abrahamic religions. His two current large-scale projects concern 1) Christian Greek literary production in Byzantine Palestine; and 2) West Syriac theological and exegetical culture in early Islamic Mesopotamia. \n  \n  \n  \nEvent Flyer\n  \nRSVP Below:\n[gravityform id=”103″ title=”false” description=”false”]\n  URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/john-of-litharb-d-738-ce-on-the-soul-a-previously-unknown-syriac-treatise-and-the-new-light-it-sheds-on-islamic-kalam-on-byzantine-theology-and-on-syriac-psychology/ LOCATION:Kaplan Hall 365 CATEGORIES:Assyriology,NELC ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://nelc.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/book.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20161201T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20161202T170000 DTSTAMP:20160929T021437Z CREATED:20160927T225359Z LAST-MODIFIED:20160929T021437Z UID:5215-1480618800-1480698000@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:New Light on the Egyptian Origin of the Hebrew Alphabet DESCRIPTION:The publication of a new inscription from Theban Tomb 99 sheds new light on the early history of the Hebrew Alphabet.  This ostracon is a bilingual “abecedary” written in Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Semitic.  It gives further evidence for an Egyptian connection to the origins of the early Hebrew alphabet. \nSponsored by the\nUCLA Near Eastern Languages & Cultures \nCosponsored by the\nUCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies\nUCLA College of Humanities\nKershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies\nCotsen Institute \n  \nComplete Program Schedule\n  \n\n[gravityform id=”15″ title=”true” description=”false” ajax=”true”] URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/new-light-egyptian-origin-hebrew-alphabet/ LOCATION:Young Research Library (YRL) Room 11360\, 280 Charles E Young Dr N \, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States CATEGORIES:Ancient Near East & Egyptology,Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations,Assyriology,Egyptology,Hebrew & Jewish,Hebrew Bible,Jewish Studies,Jewish Studies,NELC END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20161006T183000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20161006T193000 DTSTAMP:20161006T221429Z CREATED:20160929T164606Z LAST-MODIFIED:20161006T221429Z UID:5273-1475778600-1475782200@nelc.ucla.edu SUMMARY:I Can Hear The Barbarians DESCRIPTION: URL:https://nelc.ucla.edu/event/can-hear-barbarians/ LOCATION:NELC Seminar Room (Humanities 365)\, 365 Humanities \, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States CATEGORIES:Ancient Near East & Egyptology,Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations,Arabic,Arabic & Islamic Studies,Armenian,Assyriology,Egyptology,Hebrew & Jewish,Hebrew Bible,Israel Studies,Jewish Studies,Jewish Studies,Levantine,Levantine Studies,Middle Eastern Studies,Near Eastern Archaeology,NELC,Semitics,Turkic,Turkic Studies END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR