Assur is King! Assur is King!: Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Assur Is King! Assur Is King!: Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (HOLLOWAY Steven W 2002: Boston/Brill; Culture & History of the Ancient Near East, 10) is my latest library gold nugget. I am just digging into it now, but it is a highly intriguing book. It's about 600 pages long and has the following description on the back:

Steven Holloway’s work is the first monograph devoted to Neo-Assyrian religious imperialism. Neo-Assyrian religious imperialism was expressed by punitive measures such as "godnapping", the violent deportation of a vanquished foe’s divine images, but also, and this is a far less-studied facet of this topic, by the geographical focus and extent of the material support the Assyrians lavished on favored polities, in effect a Marshall Plan aimed at winning over the elite citizenry pivotal to maintaining economic and political equilibrium.

W00T!

I promise to blog about it as I read it. Which will happen when I'm not doing my Arabic homework, like, say, now. (I should be chanting poetry in 8th century CE Arabic so I can recite it properly from memory...)

And now, for something completely different...

I present for your delectation the best bitchy writing I've seen in a book in years. From the mind-bendingly terrifying Patron Saint of Plagues (Barth ANDERSON 2006) out of the mouth of the protagonist's friend, the Pan-Islamic Health league physician Dr Isabel Khushub, I present the following memorable quote:

"Your mother has a dick. I don't need underwear or your condescension."

Now go forth, vote, and read that book!