This article discusses about an aspect of the role of Ešnunna in the international trade during the first half of the Old Babylonian period. Powerful city states in this period have been expanding their sovereignty over environs, not only having conquered their neighbours with weapon, but also having keened to control international caravan routes passing through their domains. And Ešnunna was certainly one of such successful states, expanding her territory along the Diyala river till Hamrin Basin. Among her advantages of this affair, we could count a fact that Ešnunna by nature functioned as an intermediate market at the cross-roads connecting Babylonia, Subartu (Assyria), Elam, and Mari.
Actually several important commodities (mainly silver, slave, textiles, and tin) could be figured up as having been transmitted from one country to another via Ešnunna (see Chart 1 in p. 25), that is now traced and proved by philological evidences, texts from elsewhere but Ešnunna in combination:
Silver was expected in the market of Ešnunna by merchants from Sippar, who came there to sell textiles and others for it (for instance, AbB 1 130, VS 8 81). Larsa obtained silver from Ešnunna, too, probably in exchange for harvests, whereas Elam also imported it in exchange for tin (see below, cf. Leemans, Foreign Trade, 77).
Slaves from the north, including Subartians who were also popular among citizens of Aššur as their household (CCT 3 25), were traded at the market, and they were further brought into Babylonia (AbB 11 143).
As for tin, we now know that Ešnunna kept a position to control the distribution of tin from Elam, not only to Babylonia (for instance, CT 8 37), but also to Mari (ARM 23 355, 555 and so on; cf. Michel, Amurru 1, 390f.). In connection with them, furthermore, an Old Assyrian text (AKT 3 74) acquainted us with the fact that a caravan from “the Lower Country” (mat šapiltim) was expected to bring both tin and textiles to Aššur. The present author suggests that the country was indeed Ešnunna, since it seems to be quite reasonable solution that the silver available in Ešnunna was imported there from Aššur in exchange for tin and textiles, both of that Assyrian merchants required for their own relation in trade with Anatolia.

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In the Jahiliya period, sanctuaries that enshrined various idols existed all over the Arabian Peninsula, and the Arab tribes who guarded the sanctuaries organized and ran various festivals and annual markets. A sacred month was fixed as the pilgrimage period (it was also the time for trade) in the peninsula to ensure the safety of pilgrims coming from a great distance. Since it was necessary to maintain this system and furthermore to trade with merchants outside the peninsula, the pilgrimage event was held in a particular season every year. Since the lunar calendar of 12 months results in a discrepancy with the solar calendar every year, a leap month was inserted into a year approximately every 3 years to adjust this discrepancy. This makes 13 months a year.
The sixth to seventh century, when the Prophet Muhammad was active, was an era when Meccan people were under the influence of Judaism and Christianity. We cannot examine the calendar of that time without taking into account the leap system in the Jewish calendar or the movable feasts of Christianity. At the time when the Prophet Muhammad started propagating Islam in Mecca, a leap month was inserted into a year in the same period as in the Jewish calendar. Therefore, I consider that it is possible to determine the cycle of the leap year in this era from this.
Starting in the first year of the Islamic calendar, there were three leap years until the 10th year of the Hijra when the prophet abolished the leap month. The Islamic calendar's New Year's Day was April 18, 612 AD. I conjecture that it was June 28th, the day of the summer solstice when Muhammad arrived at Medina.
Knowing the fact that the pilgrimage was carried out during Pesach and Easter in the spring and that they introduced the Judaic and Christian systems into the calendar, combined with the worship of Abraham in the surrounding area of Mecca in the Jahiliya period, the author conjectures that these facts laid the groundwork for the birth of a new religion, i. e. Islam, in this region. The Prophet Muhammad destroyed the idols and the function of the pilgrimage spread in various places of the peninsula and introduced the pure lunar calendar. In addition, he nullified the conventional pilgrimage cycle of the peninsula and the Arabic order associated with the conventional pilgrimage cycle, and simultaneously eliminated the influence of Judaism and Christianity. He brought forth a new Islamic order in which Mecca was worshipped as the sole pilgrimage ground.

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Aswan was located on the border of the “Corridor to Africa” even in late antiquity. The cultural aspects of the area reflected the character of the economic network, which had once included Aswan city itself. Therefore, one of the most conspicuous cultural artifacts that indicates the transformation of the economic network would be the so-called Aswan ware, of which production became prominent in the Roman-Byzantine period and continued through the early Islamic period.
Under the Byzantine economic network, Mediterranean ceramic centers promoted the production of Aswan factories, and the ware was distributed to the whole area from the Delta to the Nubian region. Aswan ware imitated Roman ware, which was attributed to the cultural framework of the Mediterranean world in late antiquity. Besides Aswan ware, Late Roman Wares from North Africa and Cyprus, and local Marl and Silt ware, ranged like a mosaic patchwork of the distribution.
The archaeological evidence from al-Tod and al-Fustat indicates that even after Islamic power became prevalent, “Late Roman” or “Coptic” elements remained, as they could be observed in the traditional techniques of forming and decorating Aswan ware and Silt or Marl goblets, pots, and stored jars. This leads us to suspect that the traditional social system itself remained, as in the case of pottery production, transportation, and consumption.
The third stage is remarkable because the transformation of Aswan ware becomes evident with Nubian elements accepted in forms with a vertical body and painted decoration with various colored pigments. Then its distribution covered the whole country, and it could be dated in the early Fatimid period. The production of traditional ware such as “Late Roman” styled Aswan ware and amphorae, seemed to decline and new styles flourished, which symbolized the Medieval Islamic Culture, such as Marl ware Qulla, and the glazed ware called Fayyumi ware.
Thus the transformation of Aswan ware is suggestive, showing the remnant of Byzantine cultural aspect in the earlier Islamic period, and also that another cultural element from over the border became involved in Aswan ware and ranged widely. This seems to be concerned with the economic development of Christian Nubia, but it also seems to indicate the transformation of the economic system from the traditional Byzantine network to the newly established Islamic network.

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In the middle ages, the great concern of the Jewish exegetes was to identify the plain sense of the text (peshat) as freed from the rabbinical hermeneutics of the Bible (derash). It was partly due to the rise of the schools of Hebrew grammarians in the ninth century, that was not unrelated to the science of Arabic language which had developed already among Muslim in the late Umayya and early Abbas period. In its effect, as seen in Ibn Ezra's Torah commentary, the wide respect for Hebrew grammar was soon rendered into the exegetical belief that the correct grammatical knowledge of Hebrew would lead people to sole peshat.
However, one should not forget that Hebrew grammar was still flexible in those days, as Hebrew itself was still a language of communication, and alive enough to tolerate different understandings in details. Therefore, the quest for peshat in the middle ages by no means signifies the process of unifying different understandings of the text according to a standard Hebrew grammar. On the contrary, the understanding of the plain sense of the biblical text was rather complicated than simplified to the extent of the interest in the grammar of Hebrew language.
The paper attempts to illustrate such a case through the understanding of Rashi regarding Hitpael in the contrast to that of Ibn Janah and Ibn Ezra. Those scholars of the Spanish school considered that Hitpael can be both transitive and intransitive, while Rashi rejected the view and insisted on interpreting Hitpael only in the intransitive sense even in the occurrences where the verb accompanies the direct object marker ('et). It seems to reflect Rashi's criticism to the attitude of those scientific grammarians that tends to blur a semantic uniquness of Hitpael from other transitive verb stems such as Qal, Piel, and Hiphil.

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This paper aims to conduct a basic research of Turkish word accent and to investigate one of its acoustical character, duration in correlation with phonetic stress. It is said that Turkish word accent basically realizes as stress on the final syllable, and that stressed vowels are prolonged. In the final syllable, in addition, stressed vowels undergo final lengthening. Since final stressed vowels are doubly lengthened, their duration does not accurately have an effect on word stress. In order to determine whether duration correlates with stress, it is necessary to compare examples that include final stressed vowels with ones that include non-final stressed vowels.
Since the present study is a basic research, and focuses on extracting default phonetic patterns of duration in correlation with phonetic stress, an optimal informant was deliberately selected with due consideration for essential factors such as birth place, native dialect, and voice quality. Speech samples were recorded, and the intensity and duration of stressed vowels was calculated.
The conclusions are as follows:
(1) In non-final syllables the duration of stressed vowels is longer by 10.7-17.1msec. than that of unstressed vowels. In final syllables, on the other hand, the duration of stressed vowels is longer by -8.3-4.4msec. than that of unstressed vowels, since final lengthening worked in this environment.
(2) The results of t-test showed a significant difference between the nonfinal pairs, e. g. i of mi in miser and i of Mi in Misir. But the results of t-test on the final stressed pairs didn't show a significant difference.
(3) The results of this experiment show that in non-final syllables, where final lengthening is not applicable, the duration of stressed vowels is longer than that of unstressed vowels, and that the difference is statistically significant. However it is questionable whether the difference in duration can be perceived by native speakers and a stressed syllable is psychologically longer than unstressed one, since the difference in duration between lexically short and long vowels such as ‘i’ and ‘ig’ is clearly much greater (about 40msec.).

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Since 1555 the Jesuits began missionary work in the Ethiopian Plateau, which was under the rule of the Solomonic Dynasty. P. Paez, a Spanish Jesuit, succeeded in inducing King Susneyos (r. 1607-1632) to be converted to the Roman Catholic. But the opposition to the activities of the Jesuits had grown so intense among the people that, in 1632, Susneyos was forced to proclaim the return to the faith of the Ethiopian Church. After that, King Fasilädäs (r. 1632-1667) banished the Jesuits.
In the reign of Susneyos, the leader of the pro-Catholic party was Se'elä Krestos, a half brother of this king. Se'elä Krestos patronized the Jesuit missions more eagerly than the king. According to the chronicle of Susneyos, in 1617, he appointed Se'elä Krestos to the office of Beht wäddäd, i. e. prime minister. But Se'elä Krestos could not dissuade the king from revoking the adherence to Roman Catholic. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the political role of Beht wäddäd on the weakning of Se'elä Krestos' political power in the end of the reign of Susneyos.
In conclusion,
(1) In the reign of Susneyos, Beht wäddäd was the highest office, and in addition, this officer held the office of the provincial governor. One of the duties of Beht wäddäd was to participate in the national administration, but it did not always have influence on the decisions of the king;
(2) Talallaq blattenoc g^weta was virtually the most influential office in the court. This officer was responsible for military and non-military affairs;
(3) In the end of the reign of Susneyos, the anti-Se'elä Krestos party increased its power in the court. Most of Talallaq blattenoc g^weta belonged to this party. Though Se'elä Krestos was Beht wäddäd, he held the office of the provincial governor concurrently, and did not always have influence on the decisions of the king. Therefore, he was placed at a disadvantage in the political dispute in the court. Such disadvantage led to the political weakness of Se'elä Krestos in the end of the reign of Susneyos.

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In the Emar texts, the references to years can be divided into two types, i. e., year names and eponymous references. Recent publication of new texts has provided more data on the year dates. Taking these also into account, the present writer has reexamined how the Emariote scribes used the year dates (in the Syrian type documents).
The new data has confirmed the view that the ‘urban scribes, ’ who worked for the urban authority (^dNIN. URTA and the elders), usually used eponymous years (with month names). On the other hand, although the ‘royal scribes’ used year names when they indicate the year, they seldom do. However, this would not mean that the royal scribes were uninterested in indicating the date, since they sometimes refer to a month name (without year date) at the end of their documents (e. g., Emar VI 4; RE 14). In this respect, it is worth noting that in the royal documents they wrote a king or prince is referred to as the first witness. Based on this, we may suppose that such references functioned as indicator of time, i. e., during the reign of a certain king, so it was not considered necessary to indicate the year.
When the documents which concerned both the royal authority and the urban authority were drawn up, it was usually the task of the royal scribes. However, a document (TS 1) of this type written by the urban scribe Dagan-belu is known, and this enables us to try to synchronize the eponymous years with the reigns of kings.
Among the thirteen different eponymous years so far known, three are used by Dagan-belu himself, and six more probably date to the same period. Hence these nine years must be approximately contemporary with king Iasi-Dagan and his son Balu-kabar, who appear as witnesses in TS 1. If the currently accepted reconstruction of the Emar dynasty is really correct, these nine years are to be dated to the early period of the Emar texts.

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This is a report concerning the field work undertaken in the Hamlet of Qisq al-Shamali, east of Aleppo in Syria. I conducted my research over there during the months of July and August, 1996, in cooperation with the archaeological research team. While the team concentrated upon the research of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic site of Tell Kosak Shamali at the village, I conducted interviews with the men of the village in order to clarify its history, to obtain information that could come in useful for archaeological research, and to explore the possibility of a general survey of the area on the basis of multi-disciplinary viewpoints. This is merely a preliminary report, because the time spent on my research was not long enough and because the cooperation is still underway. In this paper, the analysis of the social institutions, households, family names, descent groups, and oral traditions, led to the conclusion that the present village was founded in the not so distant past, presumably in the 19th century.

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