This Sage handbook offers a panoramic view of the broad field of international relations by integrating three distinct but interrelated foci. It retraces international relations' historical devolopment as a professional field of study, expolores the philosophical foundations of international relations, and interrogates the sociological mechanisms through which scholarship is produced and the field is structured. The 41 chapters are structured into five parts: 01. Reflections on a disciplinary practice02. Imagining the international, acknowledging the global03. The search for (an) identity04. International (...) relations as a profession05. Looking ahead: the future of meta-analysis. (shrink)

This article examines the derivation of toy and game imagery in “The Elevation of Ištar.” I argue that the presence of these metaphors in a first-millennium text represents a late stage in the development of Ištar’s characterization as a childlike goddess. Tracing this development from Sumerian mythological and lexical texts into the Sumero-Akkadian and Akkadian traditions reveals Inanna/Ištar’s well-known attribute of violent rage in a different manner. This suggests that the characterization of the goddess as childlike existed over a (...) significant period of Mesopotamian history as shown by the inclusion of toy and game language in a variety of texts. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: The city is not simply a location in space, but also a vehicle in time that can itself accelerate the evolution of consciousness. Like molecules packed into the membrane of a cell, the minds that are packed into a city take on a new life that is energized by the city's intensification of space and time. The first cities of ancient Sumer were ceremonial centres organized around the sacred precinct of the temple. Sumerian mythology stated that these cities (...) were founded and lived in by the gods. One of the earliest texts we have in Sumerian mythology is the story of how the goddess Inannna transferred the arts of civilization from the god Enki's favoured city of Eridu to her own beloved Erech. The text is a fundamental expression of the ancient Arithmetic Mentality, as it displays the numinosity of the list and delights in repeating, in strophe after strophe, the enumeration of these me's that were loaded on and unloaded from Inanna's riverine barge. (shrink)

Through the frame of the Sumerian myth of Inanna, this essay explores Joseph Campbell’s body of work on the hero’s journey and living mythology. Particular focus is placed on examining both the place of woman as hero and the symbol of woman for the hero in Campbell’s work. This essay suggests that Campbell’s theories present both possibilities and problems from the perspective of feminist analysis for the representation of woman as hero.

Antik Mısır’da Meryem isminin yazılışı mr sözcüğüyledir, sevilen anlamına gelir. İsis de Meryem de, özü itibarıyla aynı Tanrıça olduğu gibi Tanrısal ananın aynı bedenleşmiş görünümüdür. Bu nedenle, Hıristiyanlar, İsis’in tapınaklarını yıkıp yerle bir etmişler ve tapınanlarını da öldürmüşler; fakat bütün bu olup bitenlere rağmen, İsis, Meryem’e beslenilen iman ve tapınmada yaşamaya devam etmiştir. Nitekim İsis’e okyanus yıldızı anlamına gelen “Pelagia” unvanı verilmişken, benzeri şekilde Meryem de denizyıldızı olarak tanınmıştır. İştar ya da İnanna’nın tanındığı unvanlar gibi, Meryem de İsis’e verilen “Göğün (...) Kraliçesi” unvanını paylaşmıştır. İsis, Tanrıça konumuyla her şeyin hükmedicisini yansıtırken; Meryem de, Kutsal Ruh ya da Tanrı ailesi olarak eşleştirilen gökteki yücelmeyi ve taçlanmayı temsil etmektedir. (shrink)

Mesopotamian works are usually anonymous; at best the names of some copyists are known. Some significant exceptions, such as Saggil-kênam-ubbib, the author of Théodicée babylonienne, Kabti-ilî-Marduk, author of the ‘myth of Erra’, and Shamash-muballit, the son of Warad-Sîn, who may have been the author of a hymn to the goddess Inanna, do not make up for this lacuna.