Agyptische und assyrische Alabastergefa[beta]e aus Assur.

• Author: Guralnick, Eleanor
• Position: Book review

Agyptische und assyrische Alabastergefa[beta]e aus Assur. By HANS-ULRICH ONASCH, Wissenschaftliche Veroffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, vol. 128. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOW1TZ VER-LAG, 2010. Pp. v + 209. [euro]68.

Nearly 1000 fragments of Egyptian and Assyrian alabaster vases are presented in this volume, most treated for the first time. A very large number are stored in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. A few of these vases are currently in twelve other museums, in Aleppo, Baghdad, Boston, Brussels, Cairo, Cambridge, Damascus, Istanbul, Leiden, New York, London, and Paris. Nearly all of these vases were found in the Alter Palast at Assur. A small number were found in cult buildings or graves. All were excavated between 1903 and 1914.

The publication is divided into three major sections. The introduction reviews the excavations and identifies the find spots of the vases. It includes discussion of the alabasters from which the vases were made and their sources, comments on distinctions in workmanship and quality, on the types of Egyptian and Assyrian decoration carved on the vases, and discusses the many Egyptian and Akkadian inscriptions. The second division is the catalogue, which divides the vases into twenty-five separate types. A trimmed photograph of each significant item is included within its catalogue entry, making it unnecessary for the reader to search for illustrations. The high quality and size of all the photo illustrations makes inscriptions and carved decorations clear and readable. Each entry includes catalogue, find, and inventory numbers, size measurements, material, museum location, find spot, references to photo numbers, bibliography, description, and brief discussion. The appendix, the third division, includes a list of abbreviations, bibliography, indices by find and inventory numbers, and drawn illustrations including profiles and multiple details of many catalogued items.

The discussions in the introduction consolidate the evidence that leads to the conclusion that the largest group of alabaster vases comes from Egypt. These vases are of a calcite alabaster found in Egypt. Most of these belong to the second half of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasties. There are also a few later vases dating to the Third Intermediate Period. The vases of Egyptian origin are mainly of types not found in Egypt earlier than the New Kingdom. No comparisons were found within the Old Empire typology of...