Independent research archive Texts · Ideas · Civilizations
Selected readings
El in Human and Angelic Names
How does El survive in Israel, Ishmael, Daniel and angelic names? Seven formations, human and heavenly witnesses, selective Qurʾanic continuity, and the limits of inferring belief or identity from etymology.
Merneptah Stele, JE 31408, Egyptian Museum, Cairo; photographed in 2003. The inscription attests Israel around 1208 BCE. Evidence for the group’s name, not a Hebrew analysis of El or a stand-alone statement of its beliefs. Perspective-corrected version reused unchanged
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Judgment Scales: Egypt and the Worlds of Late Antiquity
Heart, destiny and deeds: Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Iranian and Quranic witnesses compared through roles, dates and the limits of transmission hypotheses.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Michael weighing a soul, 1506, woodcut. Metropolitan Museum, 27.54.22; public domain. Later Christian depiction, not an original Testament of Abraham illustration
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Allah before Islam
Following the name from inscriptions and personal names to Quranic discourse, distinguishing continuity of language from changing belief and stone testimony from scholarly interpretation.
BES19s 77.1, Firʿ Wadi al-Khudari, Mafraq, Jordan. Its reading invokes Allat and then Allah. This photograph shows stone and writing; animal and human drawings are not identified as depictions of these deities. Original preserved without cropping or alteration
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Slavery and Debt Service between Hammurapi and the Torah: Are These Texts Describing the Same Institution?
From Hammurapi §117 to Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus: categories, terms, women and fugitives, and the limits of evidence for practice or borrowing.
Cuneiform tablet from Babylon, ca. 554 BCE, catalogued by the Met as a proxy contract for the purchase of an enslaved person from the Egibi archive. It is Neo-Babylonian, centuries later than Hammurapi; its inscription, not read here, does not establish that any particular Torah or Hammurapi rule governed this transaction. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 79.7.11; Public Domain
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Leviathan and Lotan: the serpent across Ugaritic and Hebrew poetry
KTU 1.5 and Isaiah 27 pair a related name with the fleeing and twisting serpent epithets. What supports a shared tradition, and where does evidence for borrowing stop?
Fragments of Ugaritic KTU 1.5, Louvre AO 16641 and AO 16642, c. 1400–1200 BCE. The Baal Cycle text mentions ltn; the artifact does not depict the creature. Photograph by Rama, 2007, CC BY-SA 2.0 France via Wikimedia Commons; original unchanged
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New in the archive
Ninth-century North African Qur'an folio with Sura 54:13–27. It illustrates later manuscript transmission, not Dhul Qarnayn's passage or Marianna Klar. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.39.2.a
Scholar of Quranic narrative in its late-antique literary contexts.
Original diagram of two models discussed in Kara’s study: direct dependence between texts (01) or a shared narrative milieu feeding two versions (02). The arrows are hypothetical, not evidence of a documented transfer
Author of a 2026 study comparing Dhul Qarnayn with the Syriac Alexander tradition.
A Persian scene of Alexander building the wall, dated 1481. It is a later witness to the story, not the Syriac text studied by van Bladel or his portrait. Walters Art Museum, W.604.315A
Philologist and historian of the Near East and the transmission of learning across languages.
Gold stater issued in the name of Lysimachus, 286–281 BCE; the horned head is Alexander, not Lysimachus. The Met, 52.127.4
A successor of Alexander who ruled Thrace; his coins showed Alexander with Ammon’s horn.
Tangier and its port from the sea, 18 September 2008; a modern city view, not a confirmed location of Moses' story
City in northern Morocco by the Strait of Gibraltar, proposed in one interpretation of the Quran's meeting of the seas.
Gold solidus of 629–631 CE bearing official representations of Heraclius and his son Heraclius Constantine; a Byzantine coin, not a photographic likeness
Byzantine emperor who ruled 610–641 CE; his victory over Persia informs dating proposals for some Syriac Alexander texts.
British Egyptologist and ancient-language scholar (1857–1934) who published a historical English translation of Syriac Alexander texts.
Scholar of the history of religion and early Islamic exegesis.
IllustrationStudy
A story and its surviving manuscript may be centuries apart. Examples from Sargon, the flood, Enoch and the Qur'an explain how we date each stage.
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How do Illuyanka, Baal and Zeus–Typhon battles resemble one another? Hittite, Ugaritic and Greek accounts, dated witnesses, stolen body parts and possible paths of contact.
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IllustrationStudy
The Hittite Kumarbi song and Hesiod’s Kronos–Zeus narrative: succession, swallowing and birth, the dates of damaged witnesses, and possible routes of story circulation.
Original photographStudy
Councils of El, Baal and Zeus: how feasts, messengers and decisions move Ugaritic and Homeric stories, and what chronology and Phoenician–Greek contact help explain.
Original photographStudy
How does Abraham's sacrifice story differ between Genesis and the Qur'an? A historical comparison of Jewish, Christian and Islamic retellings of the son, his rescue and the animal substitute.
AI-generatedStudy
Leader, land, nations and barrier: Genesis, Ezekiel and Revelation through Alexander, the Quran and hadith, with Gyges, Marduk and witness dates examined.
From the artifact collection
A fragmentary Aramaic witness, probably from the later fifth century BCE, preserving Ahiqar’s tale and sayings with gaps and editorial restorations.
Illustration · CC0 · Modern editorial illustration: IL Archive / CC0
Image and object details →اقرأ Text مع موارده
A large rabbinic compilation in Hebrew and Aramaic, formed in Mesopotamia through stages; its final redaction remains debated.
افتح Text وموارد Line →Many paths to knowledge
Follow a period, discover a place, or explore a name and an idea.
Path images are generated illustrations.
Our method
Trace the evidence, levels of certainty, and different readings. Consult the revision history as knowledge changes.
How we work →Research history →
