The festschrift “I Passed over Difficult Mountains” is dedicated to the Assyriologist Mario Liverani. Twenty contributions explore a wide range of historical, philological and archaeological topics related to the Ancient Near East. Among others E. von Dassow focusses on “Oriental Despotism, the Enlightenment’s Evil Twin”. F.M. Fales studies “Assurbanipal’s Letters to the Babylonian Citizens”. “Hittite Historical Geography” is dealt with by St. de Martino. P. Matthiae is looking for “Adapa at Khorsabad” while Y. Cohen distinguishes scribal hands in Amarna tablets and L. Mori examines “Public Land in Late Bronze Age Ekalte”.

Prefazione

Silvia Alaura / Marco Bonechi: “The Heroic Age of Assyriology”: An Unpublished Manuscript of Archibald H. Sayce at The Queen’s College, Oxford

Emanuele Marcello Ciampini: In Search of Meaning: Ramesses II in his Court of the Luxor Temple

Yoram Cohen: Three Amarna Notes: Scribal Training, Scribal Hands and Tablet Provenance

Lorenzo d’Alfonso: City-States, Canton States, Monarchy and Aristocracy: The Political Landscape of the Early Iron Age in Central Anatolia within the Context of the Eastern Mediterranean (11th–9th century BCE)

Stefano de Martino: The Materiality of the Cuneiform Tablets and the Puzzle of the Hittite Historical Geography

Francesco Di Filippo: The “Eastern Turkey in Asia”: A Digital Edition of the Map Series IDWO 1522

Savino di Lernia: Archaeology in the Sahara: Before and after the “Arab Spring”

Frederick Mario Fales: Factions, Fictions and Frictions: Assurbanipal’s Letters to the Babylonian Citizens

Massimiliano Marazzi / Natalia Bolatti Guzzo: Some Reflections on the Nişantaş Inscription and Related Issues

Paolo Matthiae: Adapa at Khorsabad: Interpreting the “Grand Royal Emblem”

Clelia Mora: Barley and Sheep in Kululu (Central Anatolia, late 8th century BC)

Lucia Mori: The “Fields of the Town”: On the Shape of Public Land in Late Bronze Age Ekalte

Davide Nadali: Different Degrees of Empathy: On the Mobility of Images in Ancient Mesopotamia

Frances Pinnock: Some Thought about the Tell Halaf Reliefs: A Neo-Syrian Cycle of Carvings between Tradition and Innovation

Simonetta Ponchia / Giovanni B. Lanfranchi: Peering through the Door: A Note on the Functions and Relations of the atû in Neo-Assyrian Society

Beate Pongratz-Leisten: Myth and Politics Continued: The Ideological Discourse of Lagash and Ebla on a Cultural Continuum

Lorenzo Verderame: “Canine Instincts and Monkeys’ Features”: Animal and Demonic Traits in the Construction of “Otherness” in Sumerian Literature

Juan-Pablo Vita / Andrés Diego Espinel: Glosses in three El-Amarna Letters (EA 107, 108 and 124)

Eva von Dassow: Oriental Despotism, the Enlightenment’s Evil Twin

Carlo Zaccagnini: Ištēnūtu, tāpalu and ṣimittu: Accounting and Material Culture in the Near East