Not Only History: Proceedings of the Conference in Honor of Mario Liverani Held in Sapienza–Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, 20–21 April 2009

In 2009, Mario Liverani celebrated his 70th birthday and retired from teaching at the Sapienza in Rome, although his book Antico Oriente: Storia, società, economia remains in wide use and is still foundational for anyone studying the ancient Near East. The Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche e Antropologiche dell’Antichità, where Mario Liverani was a leading specialist since the department’s inception, celebrated Liverani’s milestone birthday and retirement with a conference held in his honor, and this book publishes the papers that were read at the conference on April 20–21, 2009. The title chosen for the conference was “Not Only History/Non solo storia,” which alludes to Liverani’s multiple interests and forays into the field of the ancient Near East and Egypt. A select group of scholars and colleagues was chosen to represent Prof. Liverani’s fields of interests, because it was impossible to include all of the Italian and international colleagues who could have been invited. Even so, the list of eminent contributors in the fields of ancient Near Eastern history, art, linguistics, and archaeology is more than adequate to recommend acquisition of this fine collection: John Baines (Oxford), Dominique Charpin (Collège de France), Joaquín María Córdoba (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Jerrold Cooper (Johns Hopkins), Jean-Marie Durand (Collège de France), Peter Machinist (Harvard), David Mattingly (University of Leicester), Piotr Michalowski (University of Michigan), Nadav Naʾaman (Tel Aviv University), Nicholas Postgate (Cambridge), Johannes Renger (Free University of Berlin), Marc Van de Mieroop (Columbia University), Irene Winters (Harvard), and Norman Yoffee (University of Michigan). Contents 7 Preface/Presentazione 9 Curriculum vitae 12 Bibliography of Mario Liverani 14 Abbreviations 37 Sull’armonia tra la storia e l’archeologia del Vicino Oriente 39 Weber—Polanyi—Sraffa: A Consideration of Modes of Production 53 The Court Banquets of Sargon II of Assyria: Commensality as a Positive Affirmation of the (Successful) Hunt and Battle 73 Was Uruk the First Sumerian City? 91 City and Countryside in Ancient Mesopotamia 95 Mesopotamian Cities in Comparative Perspective, Briefly: An Appreciation 105 Du texte à l’histoire 115 State and Society: Flight in the Near East during the Old Babylonian Period (20th–17th Centuries BCE) 129 The Ur III Literary Footprint and the Historian 143 On Egyptian Elite and Royal Attitudes to Other Cultures, Primarily in the Late Bronze Age 165 The Garamantes and After: The Biography of a Central Saharan Oasis 400 BC–AD 1900 185 The “Kenite Hypothesis” in the Light of the Excavations at .orvat .Uza 209 “Ah, Assyria . . .” (Isaiah 10:5ff.): Isaiah’s Assyrian Polemic Revisited 221 Measuring Middle Assyrian Grain (and Sesame) 257 "La 4e de couverture indique : In 2009, Mario Liverani celebrated his 70th birthday and retired from teaching at Sapienza-Università di Roma, although his book Antico Oriente: Storia, società, economia remains in wide use and is still foundational for anyone studying the ancient Near East. The Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche e Antropologiche dell'Antichità, where Mario Liverani was a leading specialist since the department's inception, celebrated Liverani's milestone birthday and retirement with a conference held in his honor, and this book publishes the papers that were read at the conference on April 20-21, 2009. The title chosen for the conference was "Not Only History/Non solo storia," which alludes to Liverani's multiple interests and forays into the field of the ancient Near East and Egypt ..."