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Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

[Lat. Europus; now Jerabis, Jerablus]

Site in Turkey on the west bank of the River Euphrates, now on the Turkish-Syrian border. This ancient city is extensively attested in cuneiform records from the mid-3rd to mid-1st millennia bc and mentioned in New Kingdom Egyptian records, c. 1500–1200 bc, and in the Old Testament. It is the source of indigenous sculpture and associated hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions dating c. 1000–700 bc. Excavations commissioned by the British Museum (1878–81) recovered some inscribed sculptures. Regular excavations under C. L. Woolley (1911–14 and 1920) were broken off by war, and latterly the establishment of the Turkish–Syrian frontier immediately to the south of the site has precluded further excavation. Finds are in the British Museum in London and in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

Carchemish has produced evidence of occupation stretching back to the Chalcolithic period (c. 5300 bc) and has a long recorded history. First attested in the Ebla archives ...

(b Amsterdam, Feb 24, 1897; d London, July 16, 1954).

Dutch archaeologist and cultural historian. After studying at the University of Amsterdam and under Flinders Petrie at University College, London, he directed the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavations at Akhenaten’s city of Amarna, (Tell) el- and elsewhere (1925–9). He was Field Director of the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago from 1929 to 1937 and conducted excavations at the Assyrian site of Khorsabad and in the Diyala region; the latter made an important contribution to knowledge of the art of the Sumerians, particularly of their architecture and of the Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–2500 bc). He held professorships at Chicago, Amsterdam and London and was Director of the Warburg Institute from 1949 to 1954. In 1954 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and he was also Corresponding Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

Frankfort was a scholar of immense range, insight and artistic sensibility, with an abiding concern for the interrelations of the cultures of the ancient Aegean, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and he was instrumental in defining a structure for the integrated study of early Near Eastern civilizations. It was characteristic of his approach to see artefacts as works of art that could lead to a deeper understanding of ancient cultures, rather than merely as sources of historical data: his ...

Name given to the dominant element in the population of Palestine in the 1st millennium bc. The Israelites are first referred to c. 1210 bc on a stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah. It is generally believed that they were semi-nomadic people who gradually migrated into Palestine from the east late in the 13th century bc, eventually dominating the local Canaanites, but a few scholars argue that Israel resulted from an internal revolt by oppressed peasants. The archaeological record is difficult to reconcile with the biblical account of a military invasion entailing the destruction of Canaanite cities such as Jericho, but it does demonstrate a major cultural change in Palestine c. 1200–1000 bc. Numerous farming villages arose in the hill country, and in the early Iron Age the elaborate products of Late Bronze Age Canaan gave way to a simpler material culture, less influenced by Aegean, Egyptian and Syrian fashions, with a gradual change from bronze to iron tools. While hazards of discovery may be responsible, the absence of temple buildings in Iron Age Palestine contrasts notably with their presence in the Bronze Age, and there is no evidence that Late Bronze Age (i.e. Canaanite) cult sites continued in use. Open-air hilltop shrines (‘high places’) may have existed, for example on ...

The medieval term mappa mundi (also forma mundi, historia/istoire) covers a broad array of maps of the world of which roughly 1100 survive. These have resisted systematic classification, but the clearly dominant type is one that aims at comprehensively symbolistic representation. Its early, schematic form is a disc composed of three continents surrounded and separated from one another by water (“T-O Map”) and associated with the three sons of Noah: Asia (Shem) occupies all of the upper half, Europe (Japhet) to the left and Africa (Ham) to the right share the lower half. Quadripartite cartographic schemes included the antipodes as a fourth continent, but the tripartite model was adopted by the large majority of the more developed world maps in use from the 11th century on and—with important variations—well into the Renaissance. While details were added as available space permitted, the Mediterranean continued to serve as the vertical axis and, with diminishing clarity, the rivers Don and Nile as the horizontal one. The map also continues to be ‘oriented’ towards Asia, where paradise sits at the very top. A circular ocean forms the perimeter and not infrequently the city of Jerusalem constitutes its centre....

Term originally used to denote the territory of the nomadic tribes of the Numidae, occupying roughly the modern equivalent of Algeria north of the Sahara. By the late 3rd century bc they comprised two main tribal groupings, the Masaesyli in the west with their capital at Siga (near the coast 90 km west of Oran), and the Massyli further east, centred on Cirta (modern Constantine). The latter tribe rose to prominence under Masinissa (reg 203–148 bc), who defeated the Masaesylan king Syphax in 203 bc and then with the help of his cavalry assisted Rome in crushing the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama in 202 bc. As well as being a successful general, the remarkable Masinissa was also a noted linguist (reputedly the inventor of the Libyan written alphabet), an agronomist, a philosopher and the father of 44 children; he was also a great civilizer, encouraging settled agriculture rather than nomadism, adopting Punic (rather than Libyan) as the language of court, and much influenced too by Greek culture. His vast kingdom was divided at his death but forcibly reunited by his illegitimate grandson Jugurtha, whose sack of Cirta in ...

[Peleset]

Name given to the inhabitants of the south coast of Palestine in the late 2nd millennium bc and the early 1st. Philistine art and architecture offer a syncretistic blend of Aegean, Canaanite and Egyptian elements. The dominant element is Aegean, as demonstrated by cult practices, burial customs, funerary rites, architectural styles and decorative motifs on pottery. The Philistine people were among the invaders known from Egyptian records as the Sea Peoples. These were probably of Aegean origin and first appeared in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the 13th century bc. At that time the Egyptians and the Hittites controlled the Levant, but both were politically and militarily weak. The Sea Peoples exploited this opportunity by invading areas previously subject to Egyptian and Hittite control and launched land and sea assaults on Syria and Palestine. The Philistine people or Peleset are first mentioned as invaders during the reign of ...

Term applied to the civilization of the city of Carthage (see Carthage, §1) on the north coast of Africa and its colonies in the western Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coasts of North Africa and Spain during the 1st millennium bc. Carthage was founded by the Phoenician people, traditionally in 814/813 bc by the exiled princess Elissa (also known as Dido) from Tyre (now in the Lebanon); this date is widely accepted, although excavations have not revealed any material earlier than the 8th century bc. Carthage became the catalyst for Phoenician power in the western Mediterranean and developed rapidly. The city successfully countered Greek colonization in the west and established a first colony at Ibiza in 654/653 bc; this was soon followed by others in Sardinia and western Sicily. In the 6th century bc the political and economic expansion of Carthage led to a cultural boom in which its colonies participated, particularly ...

Type of statue and art form, first found in the early 3rd millennium bc in Egypt and the Ancient Near East, in the form of a mythical animal usually with a human head (see fig.). The sphinx (Gr.: ‘strangler’) could be male or female, and the female version was often shown with breasts. Lion sphinxes were the most numerous, but there were also many examples in the form of bulls or horses. Occasionally they were depicted with various other attributes such as wings, bulls’ horns or snakes’ tails. Throughout Egypt and the Near East the sphinx was seen as a guardian; its role diversified in the ancient Greek world, where it often took on a more sinister aspect.

In Egypt the earliest sphinxes appeared c. 2600–c. 2500 bc. They could be ram-headed (criosphinx), hawk-headed (hieracosphinx) or human-headed (androsphinx). Several examples have human hands instead of paws (...

Dedication of the remains of a defeated enemy, usually on or near the battlefield. This custom was practised by the Egyptians and the Sumerians as well as other peoples of the Mediterranean region and the Ancient Near East. Except in the case of some Egyptian and Mesopotamian monuments celebrating important victories, however, it was never accompanied by any special artistic production in these areas. In Greece and Rome, however, the artistic commemoration of a victorious battle became very popular.

The first trophy documented with certainty is Greek: the trophy of the Aiginetans in the Temple of Aphaia, celebrating their victory over Samos (520 bc). Trophies were mentioned with increasing frequency throughout the 5th century bc, but they became less popular in the 4th century bc and the Hellenistic age (323–31 bc). Among some of the Greeks, however, including the Spartans and the Macedonians, the custom of dedicating everything that remained on the battlefield to the gods remained for some time. For the rest of the Greeks the trophy was at once a symbol of victory, an ex-voto and a warning to the enemy. Two types of trophies are known. In the first and more common type the enemy’s arms were suspended from a post or cross, arranged as they had been worn by the soldier. This ‘anthropomorphic trophy’ was commonly connected with the figure of Victory. The second type, the ‘cumulus trophy’, was a stack of arms often placed on a pile of stones; the earliest form of trophy appears to have been a simple cone of stones. The array of enemy arms displayed in the two types symbolized the dedication of the defeated who had worn them to the gods who had given the victory. The first example of Victories connected with trophies was possibly the one on the balustrade of the ...

( Kyrle )

(b London, Oct 13, 1897; d Sharon, CT, April 18, 1986).

American archaeologist, curator and collector . Trained as an artist at the Slade School, University College, London, in 1920 he joined the graphic section of the Egyptian Expedition to Thebes, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. During the 1920s and 1930s Wilkinson painted facsimiles of Egyptian tomb paintings in the museum collection, and he joined museum excavations in the Kharga Oasis (Egypt) and Qasr-i Abu Nasr and Nishapur (Iran). Transferred to the curatorial staff of the museum in 1947, he became curator in 1956 of the new Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, which merged with the Department of Islamic Art in 1957. Through his energetic collaboration on major excavations at Hasanlu, Nimrud and Nippur, Wilkinson greatly expanded the Ancient Near Eastern collections at the Metropolitan Museum. After his retirement from the museum in 1963, he taught Islamic art at Columbia University and was Hagop Kevorkian Curator of Middle Eastern Art and Archaeology at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (...