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Ancient Near Eastern Studies: Books

The Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library is the premier research library for Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. It incorporates the libraries previously housed in the Griffith Institute and the Ashmolean Museum.
Subjects: Ancient Near East

Introduction

The majority of books held by the Bodleian Libraries, in both physical and electronic formats, can be searched for via SOLO. If you are new to Oxford libraries or to SOLO, we recommend visiting the 'Getting Started' and 'How to' guides at the links below.

Physical books

The following tabs list Oxford libraries with physical collections of interest to those studying Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Collections access and borrowing privileges are subject to conditions; please check individual library websites for further information.

For those wishing to learn more about searching for physical collections in Oxford, we recommend the following:

            Holds books relevant to Bible Archaeology. 

            Holds titles on the Middle East from the Arab conquest onwards.

            Holds some titles relevant to ancient oriental religions and languages.

            Holds some titles relevant to ancient oriental religions.

Holds the Jeremy Black Collection on Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and it welcomes qualified students and researchers to consult the collections during library staff hours. Additionally, the newly created Assyriology Hub provides a space entirely dedicated to the study of the Ancient Near East, allowing collaborative work and research. It is equipped with a small Assyriological library.

Electronic books (ebooks)

Ebooks are digital manifestations of written works. Broadly speaking they come in two forms: they are either 'born digital' or are digital reproductions of printed books. Many have enhanced functionality, while some have restrictive access and usage terms.

The Blog post Why can't the library provide everything electronically? explains why you will not always find an electronic copy of a publication on SOLO.

The links below are provided for those wishing to learn more about ebooks, while the following tabs list ebook collections and platforms relevant to to those studying Egyptology.

The following is a list of ebook collections applicable to those studying Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Oxford. We recommend visiting Databases A-Z for a full breakdown of eresource packages, including trials and new arrivals, available to Oxford University members.

A selection of dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopedias useful to those studying Ancient Near Eastern Studies:

A number of eresources, including ebook collections, are freely available online. Some of these are indexed in Databases A-Z and can be identified by the following icon: A blue globe symbol indicating that a eresource is online and freely available to all.

A selection of other free ebook collections, not listed on Databases A-Z, are also given below.

  • AWDL

    Ancient World Digital Library is an initiative of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and aims at providing access to a broad range of scholarly materials relevant to the study of the ancient world. Expanding the collection, AWDL is actively soliciting partnerships with publishers, scholarly societies, organizations and individuals who hold the rights to scholarly content..

  • AWOL

    Ancient World Online is in the first instance a database for open access material relating to the ancient world, inc Ancient Egypt, Nubia, the Sudan, Papyrology and Late Roman Egypt.

  • Internet Archive

    A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

  • CORE

    CORE’s mission is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public. In this way CORE facilitates free unrestricted access to research for all. A vast amount of material on Egyptology can be accessed through this portal.

  • EThOS

    Based at the British Library EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses.

  • Getty Research Portal

    The Getty Research Portal is an online platform providing global access to digitized art history texts, inc many older books on Ancient Egypt, the Sudan and the Ancient Near East. It provides access to digitized resources for the printed literature of art, including fundamental texts, rare books, exhibition catalogues, auction catalogues, and related literature.

  • Google Scholar

    Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

  • MetPublications

    This is a portal to the Metropolitan Museum's comprehensive publishing programme with over 1,500 titles, including books, online publications, and Bulletins and Journals from the last five decades.

  • Oriental Institute Chicago publications

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Many ANES publications by the OI are available as Open Access and can be downloaded from their website.

  • ProjectMUSE

    Project MUSE is a trusted provider of authoritative humanities and social science ebooks and ejournals from more than 200 of the world’s most distinguished university presses and scholarly societies.

  • Propylaeum DOK 

    Propylaeum DOK is the full-text server of the Specialized Information Service Classics and is made available by the University Library of Heidelberg. It includes Egyptological and Ancient Near Eastern Studies electronic publications.

  • Open Book Publishers

    Open Book Publishers is one of the biggest independent open access academic publishers of monographs in the UK.

  • Digital Book Index

    Provides links to more than 165,000 full-text digital books from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. More than 140,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free.

  • Open Book Publishers

    Open Book Publishers is one of the biggest independent open access academic publishers of monographs in the UK.

Recommend a book

If the Bodleian Libraries don't have the print or ebook you are looking for, you can make a recommendation by completing the form below (Oxford Single-Sign On required).

Inter-library requests

If the Bodleian Libraries don't have the book you are looking for, we may be able to source it through Oxford's inter-library request service.

Why are some books not available electronically?

There are a number of reasons why the Bodleian Libraries may be unable to provide electronic access to a resource. The ebooks guide explains some of these reasons: