Hittite Art
A REPRESENTATION of a bull in silver from recent excavations in Anatolia, and described as the most important work of art of Hittite origin yet discovered, is to be exhibited at the forthcoming Antique Dealers Fair to be held at Grosvenor House, London, W.I. The figure is seven inches high, and is mounted on bronze and inlaid with gold. It is dated tentatively at the third millennium B.C. As an evidence of high artistic culture, it is without parallel among Hittite antiquities. An obvious comparison with Sumerian bulls from Ur is suggested. To this, reference is made by Prof. Ernst Herzfeld, whose authority on Hittite objects is unquestionable. In an interview with a representative of The Times, which appears in the issue of September 16, he discusses the affinities of the Hittite bull with other finds from Anatolia and elsewhere, mentioning in particular the figurines from mounds in south Russia and the Caucasus, of which the best known are in the Hermitage Museum, and a terra-cotta bull (Bos primigenius) from Nihawand in his own collection, which belongs to the Early Bronze Age of the third millennium B.C. Prof. Herzfeld also directs attention to the principle, important in discussion of the qualities and characteristics of art in the ancient East, and of a relevance here, which will be immediately apparent to archaeologists, that down to Achaemenid times verisimilitude in line is frequently sacrificed to an artistic convention in attitude, which assimilates one species to another. This is apparent in this example in the manner in which the legs of a bull are represented in an attitude essentially capriform. It is thus evident that even at the early date to which this bull is assigned, an art, Hittite in all essentials, already conformed to a generalised eastern convention.
The Splintered Divine: A Study of Istar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East
This book investigates the issue of the singularity versus the multiplicity of ancient Near Eastern deities who are known by a common first name but differentiated by their last names, or geographic epithets. It focuses primarily on the Istar divine names in Mesopotamia, Baal names in the Levant, and Yahweh names in Israel, and it is structured around four key questions: How did the ancients define what it meant to be a god - or more pragmatically, what kind of treatment did a personality or object need to receive in order to be considered a god by the ancients? Upon what bases and according to which texts do modern scholars determine when a personality or object is a god in an ancient culture? In what ways are deities with both first and last names treated the same and differently from deities with only first names? Under what circumstances are deities with common first names and different last names recognizable as distinct independent deities, and under what circumstances are they merely local manifestations of an overarching deity? The conclusions drawn about the singularity of local manifestations versus the multiplicity of independent deities are specific to each individual first name examined in accordance with the data and texts available for each divine first name.
The micro-mechanical behaviour of artificially cemented sand particles under compression and shear
The mechanical behaviour of cemented sands at macro-scale has been widely studied in the past, while there is still a lack of laboratory test data for the micro-mechanical response. Therefore, a series of uniaxial compression and tangential shear tests on artificially cemented sand particles have been conducted using a microscope to observe their behaviour. First, the consistency of cemented particles with different cementing agents is discussed. Three breakage modes are proposed according to the images taken using a microscope camera. A new parameter named ‘local roundness at contact’ is introduced to emphasise the effect of contact morphology on sample strength. Moreover, the effect of bond thickness on the mechanical response of cemented particles has been investigated. Finally, the shear strength parameters of artificially cemented sand samples have been determined for two different sample diameters.