This volume comprises many of the papers presented at the 67th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in July 2021 in Turin. Due to pandemic restrictions the participants of the conference could not meet in person. The encompassing topic “Eating and Drinking in the Ancient Near East” is broad and declinable under different perspectives. Key lectures (1) have been delivered by Cécile Michel on “Gender Aspects in Food and Drink Preparation” and by Theo van den Hout on “Hittite Foodways: The King as the Provider of his People”. Subsequent lectures grouped around the following sections: (2) Food Production, (3.) Resource Management, (4.) Rituality, Banquet and Commensality, (5.) Medicine and Literature, (6.) Philological and Archaeological Researches, (7.) Varia. The lections feature both philological as well as archaeological topics, presenting new insights into well-known texts as well as hitherto unpublished material. Among others Paola Paoletti examines “Butter and Cheese Production in the Third Millennium BCE Babylonia”, Juliette Mas “Funerary Drinking Vessels in Early and Middle Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Burials”, while Ludovico Portuese pursues “The Assyrian Royal Banquet”, and Jan Tavernier “The Use of Eggs in Mesopotamian Medicine and beyond”, to list just a few of the 35 articles.

Preface

1. Opening Lectures

Cécile Michel: ‘There is no one to set my table’: Gender Aspects in Food and Drink Preparation

Theo van den Hout: Hittite Foodways: The King as the Provider of his People

2. Food Production

Lorenzo Castellano: Viticulture in 1st Millennium BCE Anatolia: New Archaeobotanical Evidence from Southern Cappadocia and a Regional Overview

Giacomo Casucci: Cooking Practices in a Central Anatolian Site between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC: Fires and Pots at Uşaklı Höyük

Francesca Giusto: Dairy Production in SW Iran from the Middle Elamite to the Neo-Elamite Period

Paola Paoletti: “Ferment to Be”: Butter and Cheese production in the third millennium BCE Babylonia

Eleonora Quirico: Food and Craft Production at Tulūl al-Baqarat, Mound 7: A Typological and Functional Analysis of Fire and Work Installations from Building A

3. Resource Management

Philippe Abrahami / Brigitte Lion: Boire et manger d’après la documentation palatiale de Nuzi (14ème s. av. J.-C.): Première partie: les denrées alimentaires

Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum / Aron Dornauer: Feeding māt Aššur: Barley supplies as a means of governance in the Western Middle Assyrian State

Amalia Catagnoti / Elisabetta Cianfanelli / Fiammetta Gori / Marco Bonechi: The Value of Food: Historical, Prosopographical and Quantitative Aspects of the Final Letters and Related Texts from Ebla Palace G (3rd Millennium BC)

John Dayton: On the Logistical Probabilities of Maništušu’s ‘Magan’ Campaign

Massimo Maiocchi: Accounting for Alimentary Items in Third Millennium Southern Mesopotamia: Some Notes on the Role of Waxed Boards in the Historical Development of Early Mesopotamian Bookkeeping

Yasuyuki Mitsuma: Health and Social Crises in 108/107 BC as Recorded in the Late Babylonian Astronomical Diaries

Alessandra Caselli / Andrea Polcaro / Juan Ramon Muniz: Economy and Food Production at the Beginning of Uurbanization: The Case Study of Jebel al-Mutawwaq

Luciana Urbano: Yataraya and the Wine: Her Role in the Palace Administration of Mari (1775–1762 BC)

4. Rituality, Banquet and Commensality

Adonice-A. Baaklini / Margaux Spruyt: The Vessels of the Assyrian Royal Banquet: An Archaeological and Iconographic Approach

Trudy Kawami: What Fine Ceramics Can Tell Us About Social Drinking in Iron Age Iran

Juliette Mas: Toasting with the Dead: Funerary Drinking Vessels in Early and Middle Bronze Age Upper Mesopotamian Burials

Davide Nadali: Representing Banquets in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Public Affair?

Natia Phiphia / Omari Dzadzamia: Food and Drinks in Ancient Diaeuhi and Colchis

Paola Poli: The Iconography of the “Banquet Scene” among the Figurative Documentation from the Second and Third Millennium Levels at Tell Ashara-Terqa (Syria)

Ludovico Portuese: The Assyrian Royal Banquet: A Sociological and Anthropological Approach

JoAnn Scurlock: Marzeah in Mesopotamia

Zozan Tarhan: From Intention to Accomplishment: Secular and Cultic Feasts Provided  by the Neo-Assyrian King

5. Medine and Literature

Christie Carr: Desire and Hunger; Women and Food: The earliest example of a universal conceptual metaphor in the Sumerian “Love Songs”?

Paola Dardano: “Eat and drink, but do not look at my, the king’s, eyes!”: On a Metaphorical Expression in Old Hittite

Kiril Mladenov: The Potion in the 1st Millennium Assyro-Babylonian Medicine

Jan Tavernier: The Use of Eggs in Mesopotamian Medicine and beyond

Klaus Wagensonner: Rites, Music, and Banquets: Some Observations on Rituals in Sumerian Divine Journeys

6. New Perspectives

Romolo Loreto: An Old Babylonian Cylinder Seal from the Museo Orientale Umberto Scerrato: Notes on a Digital Microscopic High Magnification Analysis

Seraina Nett / Gustav Ryberg Smidt / Carolin Johansson / Rune Rattenborg: The Cuneiform Corpus in its Geographical Setting: Preliminary Results of the Project Geomapping Landscapes of Writing

Luca Peyronel / Tatiana Pedrazzi / Stefano Anastasio / Elena Devecchi / Silvana Di Paolo / Stefania Ermidoro / Valentina Oselini / Irene Rossi: ArCOA Project: The Ancient Near Eastern Collections in Italy  from Study to Public Fruition

Babette Schnitzlein / Sophie Cohen: News from Ashurbanipal’s Library

7. Varia

John P. Nielsen: Marad between the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires