As to the dynastic changes in the kingdom of Israel, the historiographers in the Books of Samuel and Kings differentiate the two types of seizure one from the other by the two different formulary expressions. The first type carried out by the people who helped their war-leader to the throne is expressed by the formula wayyamlîkû 'otô, with either kol-ha'am or kol-yisra'el as the subject. The second type executed by usurpers who conspired against their lords is expressed by the formula wayyiqšor 'alâw. The dynastic founders of the first type were made kings by the people under arms, but the usurpers of the second type could not win broad support from the people. At irregular successions in the kingdom of Judah, the people called 'am y^ehûdah or 'am ha'ares intervened four times in determining the royal successor. They were also the people under arms whose action is formulated by the same expression wayyamlîkû 'otô. We may conclude that this formulary expression is used as a definite technical term for king-making as a political action in the historiographical sources in the Books of Samuel and Kings. At the same time, it becomes clear that there was a contrasting development between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah concerning the people under arms as a determining factor at the establishment of the royal throne.

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Ancient Egyptian ‘Letters to the Dead’, addressed to the deceased by the member of the bereaved family, are very important materials showing the image that Ancient Egyptians called up concerning the dead.
The aim of this paper is to show such an image of the dead, considering the character of the dead in the letters to the dead which belong to the period from the Sixth to the Twentieth Dynasty.
The letter was written mostly for asking the addressee, the deceased, to help the member of the bereaved family, including the addresser, being suffered from some trouble, containing sickness, nightmare, and the evil act by the other living person. These troubles, even the acts of the living, were attributed to the malice of the evil dead, and the addressees were asked to fight, or to report to the court in the Netherworld against the evil dead. In some letters, the addresser even half-threatened the addressee with the stop of the funerary service in order to make him/her help his/her family on the earth.
The addressee could also be regarded as the culprit being responsible of the trouble of his/her bereaved family. In that case, the addressee was blamed, and even threatened by the addresser.
In any case, the dead in ‘Letters to the Dead’, including the addressee, were used one-sidedly by the living to explain various troubles on the earth, or to acquire their solutions or compensations.

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The particle -apa in Hittite has so far been considered as a sentence particle denoting local relation (“Ortsbezug”). However, there is no positive evidence to attest this fact. It is very probable that -apa is an emphatic particle designating consecutive, additional or incidental nuance in the second sentence. Thus this word may be translated into English with terms like “so, so that, then or therefore”. Syntactic particles of other Anatolian languages also show a similar development, but obviously they imply their own peculiar innovations : C. Luw. pa-, -pa-; Pal. -(p)pa; H. Luw. -pa(-wa); Mil. (Lyc.) -be; Lyd. fa-. It is probable that Hitt. -apa and these particles have been derived from a common element *aba in Proto-Anatolian. Furthermore, this word will be analyzed into *a and *ba, which surely indicate an IE. deictic demonstrative pronoun *e/o- and an IE. assertive or emphatic adverbial form *bho respectively. Of course, the formation of *aba from *e/o-+*bho is to be considered as representing a peculiar innovation of the Anatolian branch in Indo-European.

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Ibn Taimiya (d. 728/1328) is known as a detractor of the ijma'. The previous studies have concluded that Ibn Taimiya recognizes only the validitiy of the ijma' of the sahaba with textual evidences from the Qur'an and hadith. But the survey of his usage of the ijma' in one of his major works, the Minhdj as-sunna, shows that he refers to various kinds of ijma', such as that of scholars (‘ulama’), wisemen (‘uqala’) and others in addition to that of the sahaba all with affirmative judgement. This result does not conform to that of the previous studies. In order to understand integrally his thought, his texts from which the conclusion is drawn should be interpreted otherwise. The texts in which he discusses the ijma' of the sahaba and which are used by the previous scholars as the proof for their thesis are essentially of apologetic nature, and his aim is to demonstrate that the sahaba (and ahl al-hadith) are the sole legitimate heir of the impeccable Prophet, and accordingly that the sahaba as a whole is infallible. He does not discuss the ijma' in general, but the ijma' of the sahaba in particular. What Ibn Taimiya intends to prove is the infallibility of the sahaba, not of the ijma'. The discussion of the ijma' in general is out of his concern, for such a discussion is specific to the kaldm-oriented usul al-figh which he criticizes severely.

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The research on the Levantine Neolithic has long focused on the districts more or less favored by the Mediterranean climate, such as coastal regions, Jordan valley, or upper Euphrates basin. In this decade, however, the informations on the prehistory of inland Levant have increased at an accelerating tempo owing to some area studies carried out in Azraq basin, Palmyra basin, Transjordan Black Desert, and so on, which present some new, important problems. That is the case of the so-called “kite site” or “burin site”. In this paper the author introduces some new data and makes a short discussion on the former type of interesting site.
“Kite site”, hunting trap in desert, consists of two main parts: an enclosure and two (or more) long guiding walls converging to it. It shows very wide distribution from inland Syria, Black Desert, to Sinai or northern Saudi Arabia. According to the flint remains such as Amuq or Byblos type points collected inside or just around the enclsure, it is quite possible that some of kites are dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, as is in the case of “burin site”.
In contrast to the rather limited perspectives so far described on the neolitization of the Levant, it is now more and more clear that the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the later stage in particular, consists of the following three versions interacting with one another; firstly, more or less sedendary farmer communities in fertile regions penetrated from the northern Syria and eastern Anatolia, secondarily, temporary harvester/hunter groups around the oases in the intermediate areas, and lastly, migrating, but, flourishing hunters of gazelle and other steppic games in inland step who seem to have been influenced from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmer communities in the western regions, but basically originated in the preceeding Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A gazelle hunters.

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This paper intends to analyze the philosophical speculation of Akhond-zade (1812-78) known not only as one of the earliest play wrights in Azerbaidzhan but also as a vigorous advocator of a reform of the Arabic alphabet. Although he was a government emploee of the Tzarist Russia, he keenly sympathized with Persian nationalists and their movement. In his highly controversial speculative work, the Maktubat-e Kamal al-Dowle, he severely criticized Islamic fanaticism (Ta'assob-e Eslami) as a main obstacle to the diffusion of Western Civilization, which he understood in an unrealistic manner. He also, in his work, shows a nationalistic heart harbouring anti-'Arab sentiments.
He was admittedly a materialist: yet he took advantage of Persian mysticism, especially, its pantheistic monist concept of unity of existence to systematize his own claims. The world, according to him, is a total and complete Being, that is “Complete Force”, which manifests itself in diverse forms regulated by the law of Nature. Moreover, this complete force, he asserts, could be considered as an existence realized when a “whole” and a “part” are integrated, both of which have neither beginning nor end. There is no difference between them, for which he declares that they exist as one like a human body.
Thus, nominally advocating the breakout of the “prison” of metaphysics, he developed this unique materialist “ontology”. It paved the way for denouncing the justice of the Quranic God and the Creator for the 'Arab as well.

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