The "essential formula" of the rabbinic writ of divorce is a phrase that releases the woman "to go and marry any man that you please." This phrase has antecedents in Aramaic marriage contracts from Elephantine and can be traced back to originally Akkadian formulations. [This paper was published in JNES 2001].

Students of Mesopotamian culture in the 1st millennium BC, in general, and of law, in particular, have noted that the transition between native Babylonian rule and Persian hegemony did not affect the legal culture. The proposed paper will illustrate this continuity by examining the administration of justice, particularly through the office of royal judge.
From its very beginnings, the ideology of Mesopotamian kingship has placed great emphasis on the role of the monarch as 'king of justice'. In the Neo-Babylonian period, the office of 'judges of the king' (dayyanu sa sarri) concretizes this ideological association between the king and the courts of law. In her study Die Richter des Nabonid (AOAT 252, pp. 557-595), Cornelia Wunsch collects the names of the different men who served in judicial councils (Richterkollegien) as 'judges of Nabonidus' and describes their office. Wunsch herself notes that some of the judges of Nabonidus continue their service as judges of Cyrus.
The proposed study will build on Wunsch's observations by examining the office of royal judge during the reigns of Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius I. It will present the evidence available from the cuneiform archives of both private families and temples in Achaemenid Babylon, Sippar and Uruk. In doing so, it hopes to shed descriptive light on the judiciary in Mesopotamia during the period of Persian domination.

This paper argues that the prefix n, which is characteristic in the Semitic N-stem, is related to the central meaning of the stem. It consists of three parts: 1. the historical development of the three allomorphs of the prefix, na, n, and hin; 2. the pronominal background of the prefix n in Biblical Hebrew, the Semitic languages, and the bigger language group of Afro-Asiatic phylum; 3. the central meaning of the Semitic N-stem.
This paper concludes that the subject or the object of the base construction is expressed in the Semitic N-stem by the n-morpheme, and that the central meaning of the N-stem as the middle is related to the characteristic n-prefix of the stem. It follows that the subject or the object of the G-stem is expressed vaguely in the N-stem and ignored by the speaker, focusing on the remaining referent only.
In the course of time, the linguistic development of the passive from the middle voice in the Indo-European languages occurred in the Semitic languages as well. Thus, even though the doer of the action had already been noted in the verb itself, the agent in the Niphal passive came to be specified by mans of a prepositional phrase in b (Deut 33:29), l (Gen 31:15) or min (Gen 9:11). However, the central function of the middle is preserved even in the developed passive voice of the Semitic N-stem. As Steven Boyd said, "the difference between middles and passives is the presence of an external agent in the semantic structure in passive constructions."

Ilu is the highest god of Ugarit. Like other kings of gods, he has many epithets. One of the most frequently used epithets is Thoru (toru). It seems that there are two well represented competing views about the ancient Near Eastern symbolism of the bull. According to the one, the title tr signifies that Ilu is a fertility god. The other view is that the ancient bull symbolizes the strength and might of Ilu, rather than fertility. This paper begins with the Held's methodological principle zero, "all internal Biblical evidence must first be examined exhaustively before even beginning the
philological investigation of the comparative Semitic evidence for the word in question." According to this principle, this paper examines all internal Ugaritic evidence first before making inferences. The consequence of a thorough scrutiny of the Ugaritic literary data is that Ilu?fs epithet Thoru indicates that Ilu is a fertility god of Ugarit. Bull symbolizes might or strength in other areas of the ancient Near East and beyond, but when the epithet is used to describe Ilu of Ugarit, it consistently signifies the aspect of fertility of the highest god of the city.

This paper explores the divine travels and their religious and cultural significance. According to the extant bodies of literature, they venerated the god Ilu as the highest god in the ancient Syrian state of Ugarit, while the Israelites worshiped YHWH as the God Most High. Many scholars maintain that Ilu of Ugarit was the original god of the Israelites, who pronounced his name El in the southern dialect, before YHWH appropriated his status and traits. In this theory, the identification of Ilu with El is taken for granted.
The travel of gods sheds new light on the issue. In Ugarit, when a particular deity travels, it is a mark of his/her rank in the pantheon. The messenger gods who travel the most usually belong to the lowest rank, while the highest god, Ilu, most often sits enthroned and is honored by the deities who visit him. In Israel, YHWH is also represented as sitting on the highest throne. However, unlike Ilu of Ugarit, he himself travels before his people in the wilderness, leading them to the Promised Land and beyond. On the other hand, El of Israel also travels throughout the Levant and even down into Egypt. Therefore, the traveling pattern of El of Israel is similar to that of YHWH, but at variance with that of Ilu of Ugarit. This study will provide a new piece of evidence that should be taken into consideration.

For many years, Mesopotamia was thought to be the birthplace of writing, though often others had tried to illustrate the early development of Indus or Egyptian writing traditions. Since 1963 however, Transylvania in southern Romania, has tried to claim its right to be called the earliest location of writing. Initial finds date from the 6th millennium B.C. and were excavated at the site of Tartaria. The writing found on the few Tartaria Tablets as well as figurines and spindle whorls is known as Old European, but questions remain as to whether this script should be considered writing. What we may more easily and confidently be convinced of, is that the signs found on these tablets and other objects from the Vinca culture are comparable to the early economic signs of Mesopotamia. At the same time, these signs stem from an entirely different motivation than the Mesopotamian system and stop being used during the mid 4th millennium. Rather than having an economic motivation, Old European signs are mostly associated with objects having ritual and domestic connotations. Yet these items remain obscure in the fields of early writing and additional analyses of the objects involved are needed in order to more clearly understand the role of signs in Vincan practices and daily life. The three main questions still to be answered are: "Are these signs a script?", "Does there need to be an economic impetus for the creation of a representational system?", and "Why did this language never seem to evolve into the type of writing used in Mesopotamia?".