history and material culture of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BC. She
is currently working on a monograph on The Urban Landscape in First Millennium
BCBabylonia.
Paul-Alain Beaulieuis Visiting Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations in the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. His main
research interest is the history, culture, religion and intellectual life of Ancient Mesopo-
tamia in the first millennium BC. His publications include The Reign of Nabonidus,
King of Babylon ( 556 – 539 BC)(Yale University Press, 1989 ), and The Pantheon of Uruk
During the Neo-Babylonian Period (Brill-Styx, 2003 ). He is currently preparing two
monographs on Neo-Babylonian archives, one documenting a family of entrepreneurs
from Larsa in the sixth century, the other one detailing the contribution of the city of
Uruk to the construction of king Nebuchadnezzar’s North Palace in Babylon.
David Brownis currently researching the transmission of astral science in the pre-
Muslim period at the Free University of Berlin, funded by the German Research
Council. He was previously an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, a Lecturer in ancient
Near Eastern history at University College London for two years, and has taught
Assyriology at Oxford, Cambridge, and SOAS. His first degree was in physics.
Trevor Bryceis presently Honorary Research Consultant at the University of
Queensland, Australia. He has conducted research on the History and Civilization of
the Near East in the second and first millennia BC, with particular emphasis on
Anatolia. Recent publications include Life and Society in the Hittite World(Oxford
University Press, 2002 ), Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East(Routledge,
2003 ), The Kingdom of the Hittites(Oxford University Press, new edition, 2005 ).
Forthcoming are The Trojans and their Neighbours(Routledge), Hittite Warrior(Osprey)
and Dictionary of the Cities and Kingdoms of the Ancient Near East(Routledge).
Dominique Charpinhas taught at the Sorbonne since 1975 , then also at the École
Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He specializes in the Old Babylonian period and works
on archives from Iraq and Syria, especially Mari. He has recently published Mari et
le Proche-Orient à l’époque amorrite: essai d’histoire politique, Florilegium marianum V(Paris,
2003 ) (with N. Ziegler). His more popular book, Hammurabi de Babylone(Paris, 2003 )
has been translated into English and Italian. He has just edited a work called Lire et
écrire en Babylonie ancienne. Écriture, acheminement et lecture des lettres d’après les archives
royales de Mari and is about to publish Writing, Law and Kingship in Ancient Babylonia.
Petr Charvátwas born in 1949. He studied Assyriology and Archaeology at Charles
University, Prague, and has spent all his active research career in two Institutes of
the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
(after 1993 ): Archaeological ( 1975 – 1990 ) and Oriental. His main interest is the study
of the emergence of statehood and literate societies in prehistoric and ancient Western
Asia, based on archaeological and textual sources. His publications include On People,
Signs and States: Spotlights on Sumerian Society, c. 3500 – 2500 B. C.(Prague: The Oriental
Institute, 1997 ) and Mesopotamia Before History(London and New York: Routledge,
2002 ).
— Contributors —xv