Nicole Brisch(PhD University of Michigan 2003 ) is an independent scholar. Her
research interests include Mesopotamian literature, the socio-economic history of the
Ur III period, and Mesopotamian religion. She is the author of Tradition and the Poetics
of Innovation: Sumerian Court Literature of the Larsa Dynasty (c. 2003 – 1763 BC) ( 2007 )
and the editor of Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond
( 2008 ). She is currently preparing a study of ritual and divinity in early Mesopotamia.Robert Carterspecialises in the archaeology of Arabia and Mesopotamia, with par-
ticular interests in the Ubaid period and early seafaring. He has previously published
extensively on maritime trade networks of the Ubaid period and the Bronze Age, but
has broad interests that extend from the Arabian Neolithic to the Late Islamic period,
encompassing archaeological ceramics, interregional interaction, cultural transmission,
urbanism, state formation and pearl fishing. He has recently taken up a new role as
Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of the Arab World, at UCL Qatar, a new campus
of University College London, which is part of Hamad bin Khalifa University.Paul Collinsis Assistant Keeper for Ancient Near East at the Ashmolean Museum,
University of Oxford. He has a Ph.D. from University College London and has worked
as a curator in the Middle East Department of the British Museum and the Ancient
Near Eastern Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Lisa Cooperis an Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests include the material
culture of the Bronze and Iron Ages of Syria, as well as the history of archaeological
exploration in Mesopotamia during the twentieth century. Her book Early Urbanism
on the Syrian Euphrates( 2006 ) investigated the appearance and demise of urban
settlements in the Upper Euphrates River Valley of Syria during the third millennium
BC.Harriet Crawfordspecialises in the later prehistory of Mesopotamia. She has worked
extensively in Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait. She taught at the Institute of Archaeology,
UCL, and remains an Honorary Visiting Professor there. She is also a Senior Fellow
at the McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge. Her publications include Sumer
and the Sumerians( 2004 ) andDilmun and its Gulf Neighbours ( 1998 ).
Graham Cunninghamis a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, specializing
in the linguistic and cultural history of the ancient Middle East. In addition to his own
publications, he has contributed to three major collaborative projects: A Concise
Dictionary of Akkadian, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literatureand the Corpus
of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship.
Benjamin R. Fosteris Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and
Curator of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University. He is author of a number of
books on the social and economic history of early Mesopotamia and Akkadian
literature. Publications include Before the Muses(third edition, 2005 ), The Epic of
Gilgamesh( 2001 ), Akkadian Literature of the Late Period( 2007 ) and Civilizations of
Ancient Iraq( 2009 ).
–– Contributors ––xvi