In texts of ancient Mesopotamia figure both a female Dumuziabzu and a male Dumuziabzu. According to royal inscriptions, the goddess Dumuziabzu was the tutelary deity of Kinunir (or Kinirša) in Lagaš, whereas the god Dumuziabzu was the son of Enki in a god-list (An = Anum). In earlier studies, these two gods were considered to be identical, and the sex of this god/goddess was occasionally thought to be determined by location; for example, the god is female in Lagaš and male in Eridu. In this context comparison between Dumuziabzu and Dumuzi was also taken into account. Because of the common element dumu-zi in their names, a direct link between them was suggested earlier, but this view is now largely abandoned. In this study, evidence on Dumuziabzu has been thoroughly gathered from documents dating from the third to the first millennium BCE, in order to see as precisely as possible the relation between the female Dumuziabzu and the male Dumuziabzu.
 The following observations have been made. First, the female Dumuziabzu was an influential deity in Lagas in the third millennium BCE. Her worship disappeared almost totally with the decline of Lagaš after the Third Dynasty of Ur. However, her name and the district whose deity she was, Kinunir, were passed down in the literary texts after the Third Dynasty of Ur, even in the lamentations written during the first millennium BCE. Furthermore, a few literary texts indicate some confusion between Dumuziabzu and Dumuzi. It seems that Dumuziabzu came to be considered male since the name contains dumu-zi, and that, because of his association with abzu, he then came to be regarded as one of the gods in Enki’s circle.

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Since the pioneering work of H. J. Polotsky in 1944, the Late Egyptian i.sḏm=f-construction has been generally regarded as a construction with a focalized adverbial adjunct. Recently, P. Cassonnet called attention to an aspect of modality which this construction expresses; she analyzed its functions as follows:
 Focus: the adverbial adjunct
 Modality: “will (volonté),” “wish (souhait),” “injunction (injonction)” or “obligation (obligation)
 However, the currently accepted analysis seems to be observationally inadequate because there are examples where the adverbial adjunct contextually can not be interpreted as a focus (e.g. Taking of Joppa, 2, 11). This paper tries reanalyzing the i.sḏm=f-construction on the hypothesis that this construction corresponds to the Japanese modal no da-construction thus:
 Focus: the whole sentence
 Modality: explanatory modality, which is equivalent to that of the Middle Egyptian Spw-constructions (cf. BSNESJ 49/ 1).
 In order to examine this hypothesis, the following points are discussed in this paper:
(1) the semantic and functional correspondence between the i.sḏm=f-construction and the Japanese modal no da-construction,
(2) the negative form of the i.sḏm=f-construction,
(3) the i.sḏm=f-construction with an interrogative adverbial,
(4) the i.sḏm=f-construction without an adverbial adjunct (Wenamun, 2, 4-5).
The results of the examination indicate that the analysis suggested in this paper fits the data better than the currently accepted one.

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A stamp seal with complex religious motifs was unearthed from the tenth century BC stratum of Tel ‘En Gev, Israel. This seal will be a valuable source for understanding the largely unknown religion of Geshur, a kingdom on the north-east border of Israel. In this article we analyze it and set it in the religious history of the region. The seal is a steatite, conoid-type stamp seal, a type which was probably introduced into the southern Levant by the influence of the NeoHittite culture at the beginning of the Iron Age. In the upper part, a degenerated tree of life is depicted between two facing animals; this probably reflects an early stage in the gradual disappearance of the tree of life motif during the Iron Age. The tree of life was identified with the fertility goddess during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, but by the end of the Late Bronze Age, the goddess had disappeared from the iconography, and the relationship between the tree and the goddess was weakened. After Iron Age IIB, the tree of life itself became rare in the religious iconography of the region. Under the tree of life, a large horned quadruped suckling its young is engraved; this animal does not seem to be a recipient of the blessings of the tree of life, but rather an independent symbol of blessings. Two scorpions are also depicted; they were a symbol of fertility often used after the disappearance of the goddess. The combination of these figures suggests that a major religious change, especially with regard to the cult of the fertility goddess, was occurring during the beginning of the Iron Age, not only in Israel but also in the neighboring areas.

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In the Early Byzantine period (330-610), religious unrests frequently occurred. Traditionally, it has been said that monks provoked the people to create the unrests. However, T. E. Gregory and F. Winkelrnann have questioned this view.
 This paper examines the religious unrests in Constantinople in the time of the emperor Anastasius I (491-518), and attempts to correct the image of the monks as the sole catalysts behind them. The following points have been discussed: 1. To what extent did the monks involve themselves in the unrests? 2. How different were the attitudes of the monks and the people toward the patriarch Macedonius II (496-511), during whose term most of the religious unrests occurred? 3. Beside the monks, who could have provoked the people to riot?
 The conclusions are as follows: 1. Of the religious unrests that took place in 496, 508, 511 and 512, the monks were involved in two (511 and 512), but they either triggered these unrests or formed a coalition with the people rather than playing a main role. Some monks who opposed the unrests were even killed by the people in the riot of 512. 2. Although Macedonius was hesitant to hold a firm doctrinal position, the Chalcedonian people constantly supported him, while the monks did not. 3. In addition to the monks, the patriarch and the priests could have also provoked the people to riot.

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The relationship between the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites grew rapidly worse from the middle of the 5^th century. As a result, in the second half of the 6^th century, the latter established their own church hierarchy in Egypt. Previous scholars stressed that they were able to accomplish this because of the social severance between the cities, in which the Chalcedonians traditionally had their churches, and the rural areas, in which the Monophysites were based. But in recent years it has been pointed out that there was a close relationship between the cities and the rural areas, and it is possible in this environment that the territories of the bishops of the two sects were separated by fiat or by natural development.
 This paper analyzes the effect that this religious conflict, which originated in Alexandria, exerted on the society of Middle Egypt by looking at several Middle Egypt regions. It was found that these regions did not have parallel hierarchies. The results are as follows:
 Firstly, in both the Arsinoe and the Oxyrhynchus regions, the city was closely connected with the rural area. It was therefore difficult for the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites to avoid contact with each other. The episcopal sees were in the cities, but monasteries, which zealously participated in theological controversy, existed throughout the dioceses. In both regions it was always possible for the religious conflict to emerge. Therefore the bishops of those two regions and the Apions, who were the most influential family there, strove to inhibit the aggravation of the religious conflict by standing neutral and not supporting either sect. The local people were also able to strike a balance between faith and secular interests.
 Secondly, in the village of Aphrodito, the inhabitants dealt with the religious conflict as the people of Arsinoe and Oxyrhynchus did. Dioscorus, the headman of this village, sympathized with Monophysitism but put worldly profit before his belief and relied on powerful figures who were in no position to be favorable towards the Monophysites.

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‘Aḍud al-Dawla (d. 372H/983) was the most powerful ruler of the Buwayhid Dynasty. This paper aims to examine his view of his royal lineage as expressed in Kitāb al-Tājī, which was written by Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Ṣābi’ (d. 384H/ 994) at the express command of ‘Aḍud al-Dawla. It also aims to understand the book within the wider social and political context of the period when Buwayhid Dynasty was at its zenith.
 Section 1 provides an outline of the content of Kitāb al-Tājī and its background. The book was written when ‘Aḍud al-Dawla was just about to send a military expedition in 369H/980 against the Ziyārid and Sāmānid dynasties in the eastern regions of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate.
 Section 2 establishes the noble lineage of the Daylam and the Jīl people by reconstructing the contents of Kitāb al-Tājī, which is now available only in an excerpt version. I compare the excerpt with some later sources that quote directly from the original text of Kitāb al-Tājī. These sources suggest that not only the Daylam but also the Jīl were connected with the Buwayhid Dynasty through a marriage alliance.
 Section 3 further analyses how the writing of Kitāb al-Tājī was affected by the ongoing conflict between the Buwayhid and the Ziyārid. When ‘Aḍud al-Dawla ordered Abū Isḥāq to write Kitāb al-Tājī, his underlying agenda was to present his lineage in order to justify his reign vis-à-vis the Ziyārid and their allies.
 In conclusion: (1) Kitāb al-Tājī reflected ‘Aḍud al-Dawla’s view of his own royal lineage, and, crucially, it was written under his supervision. (2) He portrayed himself as the converging point of the two noble lineages of the Daylam and the Jīl. (3) His purpose was to justify to his own army and to the Daylamite and Jīlite principalities the legitimacy of his reign just before lauching his military expedition against the Ziyārid of the Jīl.

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This article examines the medieval Islamic understanding of the workings of the brain as represented in Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s (d. 873) Questions on Medicine and the eleventh-century commentary on that work by Ibn Abī Ṣādiq al-Naysābūrī.
 Medieval Islamic physicians classified the human faculties into three categories: natural, animal, and psychic. They further subdivided the psychic faculties into those of voluntary movement, sensation, and psychic activities proper (including imagination, cogitation, and memory), and ascribed these faculties to the workings of the brain.
 Like other Islamic physicians, Ibn Abī Ṣādiq knew that movement and sensation required nerves, and the brain with which the nerves are connected. He posited a fine substance called the “psychic pneuma” (rūḥ nafsānīya) as the medium for movement and sensation, and movement and sensation were explained in terms of the mechanical operation of this matter. Being a material process, movement, according to him, requires tough nerves to transmit its power to the organs which are to be moved, whereas sensation, which is thought of as the imprinting of the images of the sensed objects, requires nerves that are tender. Psychic activities were also interpreted as an operation of psychic pneuma in the brain. For these activities were reckoned among the psychic faculties together with movement and sensation. Since the processes of these activities differ, these faculties have different seats in the brain which are of different qualities. For its part, the quality of the matter “pneuma” was believed to affect the quality of these faculties.
 Thus, Ibn Abī Ṣādiq formed a mechanistic theory of psychic faculties, which was in line with the tripartite theory of brain in Greek medicine. But, unlike the Greeks, he emphasised the materiality of brain and pneumata, and so it seems that he intended to establish the link of brain and mind.

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As argued in my study in BSNESJ 53/2, the amīlūtu (LÚ.Ú.LU-) contracts found in the Emar texts are a type of debt contract of silver, in which the debtor himself enters into the household of the creditor as a ‘personal pledge of antichresis’(amīlūtu), while at the same time another security (surety or pledge) for the debt is set. This study deals with two terms, amīltūtu (MÍ.Ú.LU- and qātātu (security), asking what they denote. The term amīltūtu for a female amīlūtu appears in l. 3 of Subartu 17-T, a recently published Emar text. The present writer shows this text should be understood as a renewal with revisions of an amīltūtu contract, i.e., amīlūtu contract involving a woman. The latter term has been regarded as being able to mean either surety or pledge in texts both from Emar (including three amīl(t)ūtu contracts) and from Alalaḫ (MB). However, when the usage is reexamined, although it is reconfirmed that qātātu is used in both meanings in Emar, it becomes clear that no case of ‘surety’ is attested in MB Alalaḫ. In the appendix, the present writer submits revised versions of two contracts related to debts, Emar VI 205 and 209, as sources for comparison with the amīl(t)ūtu contracts.

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In 2009 Keio University resumed excavations at ‘En Gev for a period of three years. This paper reports on the Hellenistic pottery discovered at Area H in 2009.
 A Japanese team and Tel Aviv University excavated at ‘En Gev for eight seasons from 1990 to 2004 (final report in Japanese: Tsukimoto et al., 2009; English version forthcoming). These excavations revealed Iron Age strata (St. V and St. IV), Persian-period pits (St. III), a Hellenistic stratum (St. II), and Late Hellenistic structures and Roman lime kilns (St. I). Among those, the Hellenistic stratum (St. II) actually has more than one phase, though it is sometimes difficult to identify them because of erosion by modern activities and the reusing of buildings in the Hellenistic periods. Several analyses were done to identify the stratum of some of the rooms discovered and to identify the pottery shards from them (Makino’s paper in the forthcoming English report). The resumed excavation by Keio University shed light on the cultural transition from the late Iron Age to the Hellenistic period at ‘En Gev more precisely.
 The pottery shards found during the resumed excavation in Area H show that St. 1 is Late Hellenistic. Also, early to late Hellenistic transition pottery was found in St. 2a, and pottery shards of the Persian to Early Hellenistic periods were found in St. 3a and St. 2b. It is possible they are mixed due to later constructions. Shards of the 1^st century BC onward are rare. Thus, St 1 seems to end in the middle of the Late Hellenistic period.

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