Rana Mikati

Photo of a blue lapis lazuli cylinder seal that is broken, shown from two sides. On the left it looks almost complete, like a cylinder that has a chip at the bottom left. Part of a cuneiform inscription is visible on the left side. On the right of the image is the other side which is more broken, just a fragment. Part of the image of a person is visible.

You may have heard of Enheduanna, the princess, priestess, and poet who is also the earliest named author in history.

Well, a tiny broken artefact made of lapis lazuli preserves the name of Ilum-pālil, her hairdresser. It is a fragmentary cylinder seal, excavated from a tomb in the city of Ur.

A screenshot of a search input in the British Library's interim Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue.

An interim version of the Explore Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue is now available through the BL website: searcharchives.bl.uk

It contains all the catalogue data from the eve of the 2023 cyberattack, and features embedded links to all currently available digitised content within the records.

The Roman Empire’s Entire Road Network Just Got Mapped, and It's Mind-Blowing A new study identified over 68,000 more miles of ancient Roman roads than were previously known.

Researchers used archaeological & historical records,topographic maps & satellite imagery to create Itiner-e,a new high-resolution digital dataset & map of the Roman Empire’s roads around 150 AD. It charts 185,896 miles (299,171 km) of roads across almost 1,544,409 square miles (4,000,000 square km)

An entertaining and enlightening read.

Beirut folks, come if you can

Cover image of the book "Before World Literature" by Matthew L. Keegan.

My first monograph "Before World Literature" will be released by the University of Pennsylvania Press in March 2026. I hope it will be of interest to folks in comparative literature, Islamic studies, and classical Arabic literature.
www.pennpress.org/978151282887...

This is both lovely and important.

Please boost! The NOEL PRIZE, in memory of the great and good and much-missed Will Noel.

Celebrate your (or any) open access library project. No project too small, or too big. Full details here, deadline 8/1, extremely low-effort Google Form: pacscl.org/what-we-do/f...

Samsi, “Queen of the Arabs”, and Her Fight Against Assyria - The Ancient Near East Today The women referred to in Assyrian inscriptions as “Queen of the Arabs” have been a passing footnote in Neo-Assyrian history — until now. Here is the story of one of them.

Ancient Assyrian kings didn’t just go to war with other kings.

They battled queens of the Arabian peninsula, including the formidable Queen Samsi who may even be depicted on a lost stone relief mid-battle on the back of a camel. Fascinating piece by Ellie Bennet anetoday.org/samsi-queen-...

Meant to say at noon at Princeton

Today at noon at noon. Garrett Davidson and I are presenting on our ongoing al-Khanji book.

Join us this coming Monday at #IAIS to discuss Vernon Schubel’s new work with him - the registration link is here: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Indeed husbands are keepers of the speed limit

Drove there with a fellow Islamic archaeologist friend … we were stopped for speeding and told to bring our husbands next time.

Dug through my old files and all I could find is the Stephen Urice report (Qasr Kharana in the Transjordan) from 1987!

You’ve saved me 200$

Yep.

I believe he commissioned the Persian calligrapher Mohamad ‘Ali Sanglak for this and for the Bulaq Press

"اقليم الشام … ديار النبيين ومركز الصالحين ومعدن البدلاء ومطلب الفضلاء به القبلة الاولى وموضع الحشر والمسرى والارض المقدسة والرباطات الفاضلة والثغور الجليلة والجبال الشريفة."
المقدسي، احسن التقاسيم في معرفة الاقاليم.

I deleted one today…

Please share:
Call for Applications
Winter School: Reading and Analysing Ottoman Manuscript Sources
March 17-25, 2025, Rethymno (Greece), IMS/FORTH
www.ims.forth.gr/en/news-item...

A Window into Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Manuscripts Transactions On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a team of librarians from the American University in Cairo (AUC) arrived at the al-Khanji Bookstore in downtown Cairo to oversee the transfer of a rare archive document...

www.ias.edu/ideas/window...

A write-up by Garrett Davidson, Sabine Schmidtke and myself explaining how the project we are working on came about. Might be of interest to Islamic manuscripts people.

This is amazing. A Lithuanian researcher, Ernesta Kazakėnaitė, has identified the earliest surviving manuscript in a Sámi language: ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/je...

Fellow historians , #warfare folks - whether #lateantique or #medieval- are there out there articles/books that deal with the different values and characteristics attributed to various weapons (sword/javelin, etc)

He is considering it

Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca on Steam Seyahat: A Journey to Mecca is a unique free-to-play 2D RPG which is designed as an educational tool to help players and students to engage with the cultural history of the seventeenth-century Ottoman...

Here is the link for the free demo as well
store.steampowered.com/app/3306180/...

#gamingthepast #historygames #ottoman #digtialhumanities

Nice. Maybe I can use it for the Islamic Civ class I am teaching this Spring

Turkey and Pakistan and Indonesia had female heads of government since 90s, that is three decades—and counting—before the US.

“Magical” finds in manuscripts in the Garrett collection at the Firestone library.

www.aucegypt.edu/news/auc-lib...
Colleagues at AUC, IAS, NYU, Princeton, Umich, and cofc came together to make this happen. Proud of their work and of my husband Garrett Davidson who made it happen.