Position:

Shillito Fellow in Assyriology (part-time Faculty post); Senior Research Fellow of St Benet's Hall

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / St Benet's Hall

Email:

frances.reynolds@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

My broad research area is Babylonian and Assyrian intellectual history, literature and religion, with an emphasis on the late second and first millennia BC. I specialize in the evolution of cuneiform scholarship, particularly in response to cultural and political change in Babylonia. My interests also extend into the wider ancient Middle East.

My forthcoming monograph publishes an edition and study of a scholarly ritual calendar text composed in Babylon in the Hellenistic period. My book explores the use and adaptation of traditional material relating to political history, mythology, astrology, ritual and hermeneutics and situates this in the context of scholarly responses to conflict.

A related research area involves temple ritual texts from Babylonia in the first millennium BC, especially those relating to the cult of Ishtar of Babylon and her temple Eturkalama. I also work on concepts of the divine and the development of religious thought in changing political and cultural contexts.

Current Projects:

• A Babylonian Calendar Text: Scholars and Invaders in the First Millennium BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Contributions to Robson, E. (ed.) Scholarly Writings from Assyria and Babylonia [working title], Writings from the Ancient World Series (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature).
• Name entries in Baker, H.D. (ed.) The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 3/II: Š-Z (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project).
• A biography of Babylon
• Ishtar of Babylon's cult at Eturkalamma

Courses Taught:

• Akkadian: Elementary and set texts
• Sumerian: Elementary and set texts
• Mesopotamian cultural and historical topics
• Religions and Mythology of the Ancient Near East (Faculty of Theology)
• Mesopotamia: The Sumerians of Ancient Iraq (DACE, University of Glasgow)

Recent Publications:

• 2010a ‘A Divine Body: New Joins in the Sippar Collection’ in Baker, H.D., Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G. (eds) Your Praise is Sweet: A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from Students, Colleagues and Friends, London: BISI, 291-302.
• 2010b The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-šarru-iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia, Revised Online Edition, SAAo Volume 18, see 2003. http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saa/corpus
• 2010c ‘Food and drink in Babylonia’, Kindle Edition, T&F Books UK, see 2007a.
• 2009a ‘Food and drink in Babylonia’, Revised Paperback Edition, New York and London: Routledge, see 2007a.
• 2007-2008 Contributions to the AHRC-funded project ‘The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia: A Diachronic Analysis of Four Scholarly Libraries’ including ‘The Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship’ (P.I. Dr E. Robson, University of Cambridge). http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/gkab/  
• 2007a ‘Food and drink in Babylonia’ in Leick, G. (ed.), The Babylonian World, New York and London: Routledge, 171-84.
• 2007b ‘Luxury Goods in the Ancient Near East’ Antiquity 81, 4-6.
• 2004 Rev. Bryce, T., Life and Society in the Hittite World in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67/3, 385-86.

• 2003 The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-šarru-iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia, State Archives of Assyria Volume XVIII, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. ISBN 951-570-567-3 (paperback). ISBN 951-570-568-1 (hardbound).
• 2002a ‘Describing the Body of a God’ in Wunsch, C. (ed.), Mining the Archives: Festschrift for Christopher Walker on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday 4 October 2002, Babylonische Archive Band 1, Dresden: ISLET, 215-27.
• 2002b Baker, H.D. (ed.) The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 3/I: P-S, Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1049, 1053, 1057, 1095, 1097, 1170-75, 1177-78.
• 2001a Baker, H.D. (ed.) The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 2/II: L-N, Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 940-44, 957, 959-60.

Full Publications

Further Info:

• Associate Member, Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford
• Humanities Division Teaching Award (2009); Merit Award (2008; 2007).
• Director of Studies for Oriental Studies, St Benet’s Hall and Blackfriars
• Consultant (Akkadian, Hittite, Sumerian), Oxford English Dictionary
• Honorary Research Fellow in Assyriology, Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham
• Founder and tutor, Cuneiform Reading Group, a resource for informal learners
• Patron, Enheduanna Society
• Consultant, BBC series under development ‘History of the World’ and ‘When God was a Girl’