From the Banks of the Euphrates.

• Position: Book review

From the Banks of the Euphrates: Studies in Honor of Alice Louise Slotsky. Edited by Micah Ross. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2008. Pp. xii + 318, illus. $44.50.

The list of Alice Slotsky's publications is rather short, featuring most prominently the revision of her 1992 Yale dissertation: The Bourse of Babylon: Market Quotations in the Astronomical Diaries of Babylonia (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1997). Nonetheless, her influence as a pedagogue has exceeded that of most of her Assyriological colleagues, since as a visiting professor at Brown University she has for years offered a wildly popular course in introductory Akkadian, routinely attracting dozens of undergraduate students.

Having as an instructor at Yale initiated Alice into the mysteries of cuneiform studies, I would like to take some credit for her success, but I realize that it is due entirely to her own warm personality, enthusiasm, and talent for clear exposition in the classroom. Those who have benefited directly from Alice's teaching have organized this Festschrift in her honor, attracting contributions not only from among her students, most of whom are still in the early stages of their scholarly careers, but also from a number of more senior colleagues.

Given the great interest of the honoree in ancient astronomy, the largest number of essays gathered here appropriately deal with the Babylonians' observations and conceptions of the heavens. See the contributions of Lis Brack-Bernsen, Hermann Hunger, and Christopher Walker; John P. Britton; Francesca Rochberg; Micah Ross: John M. Steele and Lis Brack-Bernsen; and Clemency Williams. Also belonging here is Leo Depuydt's overview of the problems inherent in establishing an absolute chronology for the first millennium B.C.E. in Egypt...