Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exotic and very informative, January 27, 2000
By A Customer
This is one of those books that is not very accessible to the casual reader with no previous knowledge, but very well worth sticking with. It contains a large number of texts - history, myth, hymns, poetry of many kinds - from about 2000 BC to the the 4th century BC. Many of the texts are damaged, some more severely than others, and this is indicated in the notes and text. Those with an interest in the Old Testament should find it very valuable as a help to their understanding of the religions and cultures with which Israel interacted, but this selection deserves to be widely read. There are about 200 black and white photographs of archaeological finds, in the back of the book - which is almost worth buying for them alone. If you have ever wanted to know more about the Canaanites, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, in their own words, this is an excellent place to start. Those with an interest in comparative religion should find much of interest to them. What might put some people off, is that the texts do look a bit unsightly. Where words are missing, and impossible to restore with any certainty, plenty of dots appear. Italics, Roman type, square brackets, and dots, may make some texts look messy. But the damage should not be exaggerated. There is even a certain amountain of humour at times. And there is an index of Biblical references. There is a second volume as well, some of the texts in which fill up gaps in the texts printed in the first.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A useful compendium of original source material, September 30, 2004
I obtained this volume of translations of Ancient Near Eastern texts and pictures along with its companion Volume I - An Anthology of Texts and Pictures which was first published in 1958. This volume, which was published in 1975, includes translations of more recently discovered material selected from the 1969 anthology of Supplementary Texts and Pictures Relating to the Old Testament.This volume contains 72 texts and about 110 black and white photographs of artefacts from various and states and cities of Ancient Near East. The documents include myths, laws, treaties, inscriptions, hymns, letters, wisdom literature etc, from Egypt, and from the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and later periods of Mesopotamia. The format is similar to that of Volume I with cross references to the ANET text number. Translations have been made by 13 eminent scholars, most of whom have provided some explanation of the content and meaning of the texts they have translated. In general, however, there are fewer notes than in Volume I, and no cross references to illustration number or to any biblical passages. I found the translations to be generally quite readable, but, in the same way as for Volume I, they definitely had to be read with full care and concentration to understand them, and some, being somewhat fragmentary, are rather more difficult to follow than others. In reading the texts, I was, of course completely dependent upon the translations and the interpretations of the scholars themselves. In particular, I found the comments and notes by Professor S N Kramer on the various Sumerian Texts to be most helpful. I am happy to have read this book and its companion, because they have given me some direct insight into the cultures of the Ancient Near East. Whether it is better to obtain the larger parent anthologies is, I think, a matter of whether you are prepared over US$250 for the latest editions of these two volumes ( ISBN 0691035032 for the texts, and ISBN 0691035024 for the pictures). But if these smaller volumes are anything to go by, then they are probably worth it. I didn't want to spend that much on this subject at this stage of my studies. So for the moment, I have decided to be selective about next set of texts to read, and as a next step, will be studying Volume II and III of Miriam Lichtheim's translations of Egyptian texts, and William L Moran's translations of the Amarna Letters.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A useful compendium of original source material, September 30, 2004
I bought this book along with its companion: Volume II - A New Anthology of Texts and Pictures, because it was time for me to see for myself what the the original sources had to say about the Ancient Near East.This volume, which first was published in 1958 contains over 70 ancient texts and about 280 black and white photographs of artefacts from the Ancient Near East. The ancient documents include those from Mesoptamia, Egypt, Canaan, Israel, Assyria from the period about 2500BCE to about 500BCE. The editor states that the selection of texts was made from the point of view of relevance to the biblical Old Testament, having been taken from the original larger anthologies of texts (ANET) and pictures (ANEP) which were originally published in 1955 and 1954 respectively. The texts themselves have cross references to the original text number, the relevant illustration number, and the specific biblical passages where there seems to be some point of contact, The translations were made by 11 eminent scholars, all of whom have provided an explanation of the content and meaning of the texts which they have translated, as well as providing useful notes on aspects of the text which might require clarification I found the translations to be generally quite readable, but they definitely had to be read with full care and concentration to understand them. Some, being somewhat fragmentary, are rather more difficult to follow than others. In reading the texts, I was, of course completely dependent upon the translations and the interpretations of the scholars themselves, but at least I am now starting to have a fuller understanding of the cultures of the Ancient Near East. 3 of the 18 Egyptian texts in the book were included in Miriam Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, and I noticed that the translations in this book had been somewhat shortened. Except for a difference in style, however, I did not notice any significant differences and found it very interesting to compare the two translations. All in all, I am very happy to have read this book, which will probably serve me as a useful reference from now on. As so much work has been done on ancient text translations in the 35 years since the two parent volumes were published, and the price of these full anthologies was in excess of US$250, I am glad I chose to buy the shortened versions. That is not to say that I won't buy them sometime in the future, but in the meantime, I want to be selective about the next set of texts to read, and have decided, as a next step, to read Volume II and III of Miriam Lichtheim's translations of Egyptian texts, and William L Moran's translations of the Amarna Letters
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