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West, M. L. Indo-European Poetry and Myth.  Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
Hardcover
Paperback

   What this book tries to do is trace elements of epic stories through the Indo-European prehistory, from Hittite and early Indian epics to late-medieval eastern Europe.  The book is organized into 12 rather large chapters (overall text is just over 500 pages), each is then broken into subsections.  The subsectional breakdown is not regular, sometimes it's by topic (i.e. Chap 11: Kings, The Queen, King and Horse, etc) and sometimes it is by region (Chap 7: Nymphs, Indian Nymphs, Iranian, etc.).  The overall conclusions about thematic elements, which are truly Indo-European, which belong to a subgroup and which came from outside sources, are conservative enough to not come across as "ooh, I found a thing somewhere else, must be a pattern" and well defended.  The author has command of a wide range of sources, translating all but the most obscure (primarily the Nartic tales and early Lithuaian works) himself.  The one weakness of this approach is it doesn't always provide a immediate reference if one is looking for the context of a quote.  A larger problem with the primary-source use is that it expects, at a minimum, a knowledge of Latin, French and the ability to read ancient Greek.  Familiarity with Russian, at least the alphabet, would have helped with a few sections as well.  
     Occasionally, throughout the text, West lets his "cleverness" run away from the direction of the text.  These pieces would probably be amusing in the context of a spoken lecture, but in the text they are an odd digression, eg. "The ancient (H)rego...was a rector, a director, a corrector..." (p. 413) or in a discussion on the slaying of dragons, "Now, of course, dragons are a protected species and it is illegal to harm them...." (p. 430).  These don't add much to the argument but interrupt the flow of the text.   These complaints are minor in the context of the excellent, if weighty, work and do not give me pause in praising it. It's not only interesting for the subject matter, but the primary sources are so wide ranging that, when one can read them, they provide previously unknown mythologies.  This book would be especially of interest to one writing in the style of earlier epics, as the topical organization provides a ready reference for form and content.  
     It suffers from Oxford University Press disease, the paperback edition is $85, but if you can find it in a library, I highly recommend it

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Apparently he's as trite a poet as he was verbose as a writer.  The illustration, signed J. H. W, isn't too impressive either.


Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Earl of, 1831-1891.
Lucile : manuscript, [not before 1860]
MS Am 889.433
 http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:...

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Amjad Jaimoukha, The cycles of the Circassian Nart Epic Amman Jordan: Sanjalay Press. 2004.

I was hoping for a book of the Nart Epics, and this did, technically, fit the bill,  The book itself is 68 pages, single-sided in a plastic binding and not of high technical quality (it seems one page of foot-notes is missing, some of the footnotes start numbering at 0, etc.).  It starts with an introduction to the Circassians and the Narts, which also seems to summarize some of the tales.  It is not really a scholarly text, the author states facts with no point of reference outside the mythic corpus (i.e. that the Narts killed their elderly at a specific age).  A bit more background information on the different ethnic groups within the overall community would have been welcome, as would a pronunciation guide. 

The bulk of the book consists of the translated myths, and that is of much higher quality. Where possible Amjad has included the original text in both Cyrillic and transliterated into the Latin alphabet alongside the translations and he provides some useful footnotes (e.g. where divergent spellings refer to the same character.  One omission of note, there are several times retellings of the same tale and no clear explanation as to why the divergent forms exist. 

Overall not a great book, but not a bad introduction to a rarely-seen Indo-European culture through their mythic corpus

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ps this is a great example of how the Harvard Libraries have EVERYTHING

I know it has been done before, but that doesn't make Mark Laita's ""Serpentine":http://":http://www.marklaita.com/serpentine.html, a book of 122 photos of snakes any less impressive

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From the British Library's Medieval Manuscript blog, the calendar page for July from their Isabella Breviary, produced in the late 1480s in Bruges (Feckin' Bruges).



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I may be incorrect, but I believe that's a Kindle that the smaller red-robed figure is pointing to....



From an review of several books on Mary in the NY Times Magazine

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Online Library of Liberty - Religion
A collection of various out-of-copyright religious texts, covering most major religions.  The download engine is quite nice, allowing one to choose format from HTML to ePub to PDF.

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Tyldesley, Joyce. Judgement of the Pharaoh. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2000.

This book presents the fragmentary information that remains on justice and the court system in ancient Egypt. She starts with an explanation of the concept of Maat, order, that pervaded the Pharonic system and probably caused many sorts of legal problems to not get recorded. Although the 1st C historian Diodorus Siculus reports that the Egyptian courts had 8 scrolls that listed the laws of the land, no trace of these has been found. We are therefore only able to glean what was reported by the government in many cases, and this is skewed to preserve Maat at all costs. There is then an explanation of the role of the Vizier and the various officers, those with both judicial and police responsibilities. The punishment system, both physical torture and monetary penalties are discussed, as well as the use of forced labor as payment.
The last third of the book focuses on more specific cases, several recorded incidents of Regicide, attempted or successful, the endemic problem of tomb robbery and smaller cases from the tomb-building town of Deir el-Medina. She can find no evidence for the often claimed murder of Tutankhamen, though surveys the evidence frequently given. Some discussion is given to rape and other sex-crimes, but as those were frequently handled as civil affairs, not criminal, they appear to have been dealt with outside the court system.

The book provides a fairly good overview of the fragmentary status of Egyptian judicial documentation, and a good introduction to the cultural elements that shaped it. Some of the text, though only 10 years old, feels rather dated. One complaint would be a lack of more context around some of the textual sources and better explanation. Several sources are given in translation, but are quite elliptical and hard to follow. Others are only given in fragments, a couple of more complete texts in an appendix would have been helpful.
All in all, a good introduction to a somewhat obscure topic.

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Schniedwind, William M. How the Bible Became a Book. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2004

This is not a full review, since it has been too long since I finished the book to give it proper thought, so this'll be a brief intro.  The underlying concept is not how the disparate books of the Bible became canonized into the modern Bible, but how oral tradition modified and adapted to the growing power of the written word.  Schniedwind traces the threads of Biblical narrative from emphasis entirely on tradition and the word to more power being assumed by text and the written word.  This is woven with archaeological evidence for growing literacy in the Israelite world, especially fueled by the rise of Aramaic with the Assyrian Empire. 

The impact of exile and the return to Judea is covered and the book closes with the Dead Sea Community, one known almost entirely from their textual output.  It was an good read, but alas enough time has passed that I cannot give a fuller account

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