ASOR ANNUAL MEETING COVID-19 INFORMATION
(as of September 13, 2021)
All of us at ASOR look forward to gathering safely at the Annual Meeting in Chicago. We realize that everyone is eager to reconnect, network, and share research in person again, even if the experience may look different than our pre-COVID Annual Meetings. We also realize that many of you are still navigating travel restrictions imposed by various national and institutional entities. This webpage will be amended frequently with the most up-to-date Annual Meeting COVID-19 information.
ASOR staff and officers are following the evolving pandemic guidelines as they develop at the local (Chicago) and national (USA) levels. ASOR will follow all federal, local, and hotel guidelines and recommendations to ensure our members’ safety. We are working closely with our venue partners, affiliates, and vendors to create a safe meeting environment that is also engaging and meaningful.
City of Chicago Travel Recommendations
Please check the Chicago Department of Public Health’s website often for the latest information regarding Chicago’s COVID-19 Travel Advisory. Currently, every state in the U.S. falls within the Chicago COVID-19 Travel Advisory. The webpage states that all unvaccinated individuals who are returning to Chicago from travel should be tested 1–3 days before traveling to Chicago, and they should get tested 3–5 days after arrival. In addition, they should self-quarantine for 7 days. Everyone, regardless of vaccination status, should wear a mask on public transportation and in indoor public settings.
Vaccination Required for All Attendees
Obviously, it is not practical for ASOR members to follow the City of Chicago recommendation (it is written for returnees, but logically applies to visitors as well) to quarantine for seven days at the hotel before the start of the Annual Meeting. Furthermore, ASOR aims to act in solidarity with many of our sister learned societies that are meeting this winter (e.g., American Anthropological Association [AAA], American Historical Association [AHA], Middle East Studies Association [MESA], and the Modern Language Association [MLA]) by requiring all in-person Annual Meeting attendees to be fully vaccinated with a WHO-approved vaccine before arriving at the Hilton Chicago Hotel.
Annual Meeting in-person attendees will be required to share hard copy paper or digital proof of vaccination before receiving their name badges. We will also accept a sworn affidavit as proof of vaccination. If an in-person attendee has a need for an exemption to this policy, they may request one from ASOR’s President and Executive Director. Alternatively, prospective in-person attendees may also choose to forego the in-person meeting and participate in the virtual component of ASOR’s Annual Meeting.
ASOR Safety Pledge and Practices
- All ASOR staff and volunteers at the registration desk will be fully vaccinated.
- All ASOR staff and volunteers at the registration desk will take a rapid COVID test before travel to Chicago and after arrival at the hotel.
- ASOR encourages all attendees to follow these same testing protocols.
- All staff, volunteers, and in-person and attendees pledge to meet as safely as possible by:
- Being fully vaccinated,
- Wearing facemasks as recommended by the hotel and City of Chicago, and
- Following hotel, City of Chicago, and CDC COVID-19 guidelines.
Please visit this page often for updates as we get closer to the Annual Meeting. In the meantime, please contact Arlene Press, ASOR Director of Meetings and Events (meetings@asor.org), with any questions.
relationship to kinship and age-grade terminologies. The author argues that dumu is essentially a kinship term “son/daughter, one’s own child, offspring,” which lacks any age connotations. In contrast, di4-di4-la(2) designates children as an age grade. As in other languages, words for children as kinship and children as minors often exchange their semantic domains. Lu2 tur-ra, lit. “minor” is another age-grade term. In contrast, it has a pronounced social connotation and denotes those under patriarchal or professional authority, including children, youths, and young unmarried, or even recently married, individuals, as well as junior professionals.
Recent surveys on the eastern hillsides of Bamou Mountain near the current frontiers of Iran and Iraq have led to the discovery of an ancient broken stele in the area of the Sarab-e Sey (Seyed) Khan spring. The stele was made from a large slab of limestone that was broken and of which only two fragments have been recovered so far. The remaining pieces of the stele had a full-size image of a person in a long robe holding a crook in his right hand, undoubtedly a representation of the god Amurru; his left foot rests on the back of a sitting goat while grasping the goat’s horns with his left hand. Another, smaller figure stands to the right of the main figure, near his left shoulder, with in front of him carved a star which could be the symbol of Ishtar. The highly damaged nature of the stele and the absence of an inscription does not allow any precise dating, but it may be proposed that the stele of Sey Khan dates to the Old Babylonian period.
Amorite tribal and military leader who led groups of Amorite warriors between ca. 1890 and 1860 BCE. He managed to conquer large swaths of northern Babylonian and the Lower Diyala region. In the wake of these conquests, numerous small Amorite kingdoms were set up by his subordinates. The most important one was Sumu-la-El (1880–1845 BCE), who founded the First Dynasty of Babylon. After Sumu-abum’s death, Sumu-la-El subjugated several other petty kings in Babylon’s vicinity and built a string of fortresses around his territory. Through his actions he formed the core of the Babylonian kingdom.
kakrime Inscription. I revisit the most common arguments brought up against the inscription’s authenticity and then discuss it in the context of other Kassite inscriptions known from later copies. I additionally address the proposed financial motivations for possible forgers as well as potential anachronisms and the Sitz im Leben of the copies discovered in the library of Assurbanipal.
Europeans who excavated the great Assyrian cities in the mid-nineteenth century discovered colossal alabaster figures, hundreds of wall panels, and innumerable smaller items that they wished to send home. The journey was perilous and much was lost, most notably sculptures from Khorsabad and elsewhere that were on a French convoy attacked near the Tigris-Euphrates confluence in 1855. There has been much uncertainty over what perished on this and other occasions. This paper integrates the relevant sources, identifies antiquities lost during transport from Khorsabad, the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, the Southwest and North Palaces at Nineveh, and other sites, and compares the loss of original photographs, squeezes and paper archives after arrival in Europe.
Esagil. The main activities described deal with Nabû and Nanāya in their cellas: Ezida and Euršaba, respectively. These two tablets clearly belong together, and—together with other tablets now lost—may have originally constituted a series of rituals for the whole year that were connected, in a way or another, to the New Year Festival of Nisan. A striking aspect of BM 40790 and BM 40854+ is the presence of female deities and of female and sexually ambiguous cult attendants. The two texts show a new perspective on temple rituals, in which female agency appears stronger than previously assumed.