Writing in Early Mesopotamia: The Historical Interplay of Technology, Cognition, and Environment

The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics of writing in ancient society, with a special focus on Mesopotamia. In particular, using the so-called Uruk phenomenon as a case study, I argue that writing emerged, developed, and contributed to the shape of the environment and society in a reciprocal feedback process within the Mesopotamian context. The Uruk phenomenon derives its name from the city where urban culture first originated, roughly by the middle of the fourth millennium BCE, in present day southern Iraq. The cognitive implications of this writing technology, as well as its impact on subsequent modes of human interactions documented from epigraphical and archaeological records, are also discussed

A Collation to the Early Dynastic Manuscript of the Instructions of Shuruppak

The article provides a new reading for a difficult passage of the so-called "Instructions of Shuruppak", an remarkable composition belonging in the corpus of wisdom literature, dating back to the third millennium BCE. The text is historically very important for our understanding of society and culture in early Mesopotamia, as emerging from popular sayings quoted in it

Administration at Girsu in Gudea’s Time

The book offers the edition of all presently known administrative texts from Girsu (modern Telloh, Iraq), dated to the Lagash II period (XXII century BCE). The evidence consists of roughly 600 cuneiform tablets – including 34 published here for the first time – that are presently scattered over various collections (mostly in London, Paris, Istanbul, Strasbourg, Dublin). They are of enormous historical value, in that they provide unique information for the reconstruction of urbanization, political affairs, and social developments in Mesopotamia at the time of Gudea, the most notable figure of his dynasty, and of his son Urningirsu II

Dendritic cell vaccination in metastatic melanoma turns \u201cnon-T cell inflamed\u201d into \u201cT-cell inflamed\u201d tumors

Dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccination effectively induces anti-tumor immunity, although in the majority of cases this does not translate into a durable clinical response. However, DC vaccination is characterized by a robust safety profile, making this treatment a potential candidate for effective combination cancer immunotherapy. To explore this possibility, understanding changes occurring in the tumor microenvironment (TME) upon DC vaccination is required. In this line, quantitative and qualitative changes in tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes (TILs) induced by vaccination with autologous tumor lysate/homogenate loaded DCs were investigated in a series of 16 patients with metastatic melanoma. Immunohistochemistry for CD4, CD8, Foxp3, Granzyme B (GZMB), PDL1, and HLA class I was performed in tumor biopsies collected before and after DC vaccination. The density of each marker was quantified by automated digital pathology analysis on whole slide images. Co-expression of markers defining functional phenotypes, i.e., Foxp3+ regulatory CD4+ T cells (Treg) and GZMB+ cytotoxic CD8+ T cells, was assessed with sequential immunohistochemistry. A significant increase of CD8+ TILs was found in post-vaccine biopsies of patients who were not previously treated with immune-modulating cytokines or Ipilimumab. Interestingly, along with a maintained tumoral HLA class I expression, after DC vaccination we observed a significant increase of PDL1+ tumor cells, which significantly correlated with intratumoral CD8+ T cell density. This observation might explain the lack of a significant concurrent cytotoxic reactivation of CD8+ T cell, as measured by the numbers of GZMB+ T cells. Altogether these findings indicate that DC vaccination exerts an important role in sustaining or de novo inducing a T cell inflamed TME. However, the strength of the intratumoral T cell activation detected in post-DC therapy lesions is lessened by an occurring phenomenon of adaptive immune resistance, yet the concomitant PDL1 up-regulation. Overall, this study sheds light on DC immunotherapy-induced TME changes, lending the rationale for the design of smarter immune-combination therapies

Current Approaches towards Ancient Near Eastern Textual Sources: Some Remarks on Contemporary Methodologies for Philological Research

The article highlights methodological issues and operational difficulties in the implementation of current research projects concerned with the reconstruction of ancient Near Eastern history, as emerging from textual data. The paper argues that the theoretical framework for Digital Humanities research must be expanded, in order to overcome the fact that digitization often remains an impressionistic affair, lacking of a full digital spirit

The Old Akkadian Letter Corpus: New Interpretations and a Possible Addition

The corpus of Old Akkadian letter-orders is rather small, but very significant in terms of both linguistic and historical reconstructions. The present article offers a re-examination of two Sargonic letter-orders from Southern Mesopotamia (Adab and Girsu), whose understanding can be improved on the basis of new restorations and philological analysis. In addition, this contribution draws attention on a hitherto neglected fragment from northern Syria (Tell Leilan), which may also be framed in the same text corpus. These new interpretations provide further insights on the administrative issues that the Akkadian empire was to face toward the second half of Naram-Suen’s reign. The management of specialized workforce by the central institutions appears to be problematic, because of local priorities on task assignments, and lack of prompt communication with the central agencies. The bureaucratic apparatus seems equally inadequate for dealing with urgent matters, such as travel provisions to be assigned to a messenger for the delivery of news. The unfriendly, imperative tone attested in these letters fits well in the scenario of an administration still under development, and sometimes incapable of dealing with the social, economic and political complexity brought about by the first world empire

SUL VALORE PONDERALE DEL SICLO "DILMUN" NEI TESTI DI EBLA

A comparative approach to the occurrences of gín DILMUN in the economic documents from Ebla may spread new light in the interpretation of the Ebla metrological standards. The registers concerning bracelets (gú-li-lum) show a widespread standardization according to factor 10, the complete series being 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 shekels (higher values rarely occur). The bracelets allotted to the main temples do not conform to this rule, their weight being 6 2/3 (=2 NI) DILMUN shekels each. The interpretation of gín DILMUN in terms of the so-called “Anatolian” standard of 11.75 g would solve this anomaly. Archaeological finds suggest in fact the use of multiple weight systems at Tell Mardikh, where “Eblaic”, “Syrian”, and “Anatolian” standards are all attested in the third millennium, while the presence of the Dilmun standard is debated. This new interpretation would therefore put in agreement archaeological and textual evidence

Thoughts on Ancient Textual Sources in their Current Digital Embodiments

The paper provides an overview on the current status of Digital Humanities projects concerned with the edition of cuneiform texts, as well as on academic education aimed at the implementation of ad-hoc digital tools for philological and historical research. It argues that basic skills in both programming languages (scripting in Python or Perl) and data visualization are becoming crucial to contemporary scholars, in order to deal with an ever increasing amount of on-line, open-access, complex information. In tum, this new way of approaching ancient textual sources must be paired with a proper conceptual framework for the digital representation of ancient texts, their encoding, and deep structure(s ). As a case study to test the potential of a scripting-oriented approach to philological research, a survey of the similarity between three large lexical repertoires is provided (Old Akkadian, Old Babylonian, and Old Assyrian): as the outcome shows a slightly more pronounced proximity of Old Akkadian to Old Babylonian, the formulation of the problem in digital terms exemplifies how the above-mentioned methodologies may contribute in achieving results in such complex domains

Archaic Text Graphemics

The ATG database is meant to provide scholars with a tool for the study of the textual records of the late Uruk period (roughly 3300 - 3000 BCE). This digital tool focuses on textual variations, which may help in the difficult task of understanding archaic sources. Due to their great antiquity, such texts are in fact still poorly understood. Such corpus is however historically very relevant, as it shed light on the developments of early urban economy and intellectual history. The database provide well structured, quantitative data relative to sign frequencies, selected palaeographical variations, as well as variations in sign combinations that are crucial to achieve a better understanding of the texts

A Hurrian Administrative Tablet from Third Millennium Urkesh

The article provides the edition of a unique administrative text from third millennium BCE Syria, written in Hurrian. The study focuses on the historical relevance of the document, also in terms of cultural identity and scribal education