Assyria, Art & Empire" treasures of Assyria from the British Museum

A week from today, Sudday September 21, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass will open a world exhibit " Assyria, Art & Empire" treasures of Assyria from the British Museum....The exhibit lasts till January 4, 2009...

Related subjects..

Ephraim Stem. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. II: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods (732-332 B.C.E.). Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 2001. xli + 665 pp. $45.00.

The book opens with a section that surveys the Assyrian domination of the southern Levant. This is followed by a chapter on the Assyrian impact on the material culture of Palestine. Chapter 3 discusses the Assyrian provinces of Megiddo and Samaria.

Stern discusses the Neo-Assyrian provincial system in Palestine. First, he notes E. Forer's (sic: Forrer's) study, followed by a critique made by I. ... ("Transjordan Under Assyrian Rule," IEJ 4 [1984]: 168-86). Next, he states that a "new list of the Assyrian provinces in Syria-Palestine was published by F. M. Fales and J. N. Postgate" and that this list "adds, for the first time, a third province in western Palestine, the province of Dor." He comments: "Before the publication of this document, the problem of Dor as capital of a separate province was the topic of a long and intensive dispute. This matter was finally resolved by the results of the recent archaeological excavations in the ancient city, where important Assyrian finds have been recovered, lending support to the idea that Dor was a provincial capital in those days, now confirmed by the recent publication." Apparently Stern does not understand that Fales and Postgate published a new edition of the same cuneiform text that Forrer had originally worked with-a new edition based on collated readings that clarifies the Assyrian provincial system.

Thus this is not a "new list," just a much better reading of a long-known text. But Forrer's original reading of Duru (Dor) was correct; and therefore continues in the Fales and Postgate edition. While it is true that important Assyrian finds (especially architectural) in the excavations of Tell Dor lend support to the fact that Dor was a provincial capital, none of these proves it. The Assyrian provincial list does that.