The colophon, the ultimate or “crowing touch” paragraphs of a manuscript or a book, provides readers with a the historical context in which the scribe produced the manuscript (or the publisher, a book). At its most fundamental level, the colophon gives us the “metadata” of the manuscript: who was the scribe? When and where was the manuscript produced? For whom was it produced and who paid for it? But colophons are far more rich. They are literary works in their own right, having a style and rhetoric independent of the main literary text of the manuscript. Some are assertive, providing contextual data about the scribe/publisher and manuscript/book; others are expressive, demonstrating the scribe’s feelings and wishes. Some are directive, asking the reader for an action; others declarative, providing all sorts of statements about the scribe/publisher or even the reader. The latter sometimes provide historical facts otherwise lost to histories: wars, earthquakes, religious events, legal agreements, etc. This volume introduces the colophon as a genre, with examples from different traditions.

The structure of the Book of Numbers and its division into textual units has long been of interest to scholars, and various theories have been put forward based on criteria such as time, location or theme. The present volume offers a syntactic-hierarchical analysis of the Book of Numbers, giving priority to syntax and secondary priority to participants and their roles.

A Festschrift for Rifaat Ebied celebrating a lifetime of work in the field of Semitic Studies, in particular Syriac, Christian Arabic, and Mandaic.

A study of the archaeology, history, architecture, sculpture and divinities of the ancient city of Hatra.