Michael Astour
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Michael Czernichow Astour (December 17, 1916
Kharkov Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.
– October 7, 2004
St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
) was professor of
Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
and Russian literature at
Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...
and from 1969 professor of history (classical civilization and the ancient Near East) at
Southern Illinois University Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois. Board of trustees The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of T ...
at Edwardsville.


Biography


Early life

Astour was born into a non-observant Jewish family, only son of a lawyer and essayist, Joseph Czernichow, and his wife, the historian Rachel Hoffmann. In 1921, the family relocated from Kharkov, then part of the Soviet Union, to
Kaunas Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...
in
Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
, which had recently achieved independence. The move was influenced by concerns for security: he had been a defense attorney at the revolutionary tribunals set up in Russia after the
October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
, representing people accused by the
Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...
of involvement in counter-revolutionary activities. In 1924 they settled in
Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
in Poland, where he received his secondary schooling at the Vilna Yiddish high school, growing up trilingual as a native speaker of Russian, Polish and the Yiddish of his
Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...
community. Abraham Sutzkever became a family friend. Astour later acquired fluency in French, German and English, together with a good knowledge of both Italian and Hebrew. Astour revered his father (who was also one of the founders of
YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...
) and absorbed his militantly anti-religious outlook. When the father was appointed to the chair of the Vilna
Kehilla Kehilla or kehillah () means "congregation" in Hebrew. The term may refer to: *Kehilla (modern), the elected local communal Jewish structure in Eastern Europe (Poland's Second Republic, the Baltic States, Ukrainian People's Republic) during the i ...
in 1937, he refused to attend synagogue, an example followed by his son.


Youth

Following in the steps of his father, Astour became an activist in the
Jewish Territorial Organization The Jewish Territorial Organisation, known as the ITO, was a Jewish political movement which first arose in 1903 in response to the British Uganda Scheme, but only institutionalized in 1905. Its main goal was to find an alternative territory to ...
(JTO), and, from 1935 onwards, militated in the Freeland League (''Frayland-lige far Yidisher Teritoryalistisher Kolonizatsye'') which envisaged the possibility of setting up a Jewish enclave in some sparsely populated area of the world beyond Europe and the Middle East, with the consent of the hosting society/nation. Among the countries under consideration were
Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...
, the
Guianas The Guianas, also spelled Guyanas or Guayanas, are a geographical region in north-eastern South America. Strictly, the term refers to the three Guianas: Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, formerly British Guiana, British, Surinam (Dutch colo ...
, and Australia. It has been said that to this day this work 'remains the most comprehensive piece of research on territorialist thought of the 1930s.' He retained a deep lifelong antipathy to
Zionism Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
, and, once the latter movement achieved its goal of statehood (1948), to Israel. At 15 he was elected member of the organizing committee of the local territorialist youth groups, dubbed "Hawks" (''Shparber'' in Yiddish). To distinguish himself from his well-known father, he adopted a pen name, Astour, which likewise bore an ornithological resonance, since, he recalled in a late interview, it was a gallicized form of a Latin word ''astur'', denoting a species of hawk. and which he adopted as his legal name on securing a job in the United States, in 1960.


Paris

From October 1934 to 1937 he undertook advanced studies in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he became acquainted with and studied under scholars such as
Charles Virolleaud Jean Charles Gabriel Virolleaud (2 July 1879 – 17 December 1968) was a French archaeologist, one of the excavators of Ugarit. Virolleaud was the author of ''La légende du Christ'' (1908) and was an advocate of the Christ myth theory. He also ...
, who introduced him to
Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...
, and
Charles Picard Charles Picard (7 June 1883 – 15 December 1965) was a prominent Classical archaeologist and historian of ancient Greek art. He is best known for his multi-volume, monumental survey, ''Manuel d'archéologie grecque: La sculpture.'' Volume I (7 ...
with whom he studied Greek archaeology. He also attended courses on Egyptology with
Raymond Weill Raymond Weill (28 January 1874 – 13 July 1950), whose full name was Raymond Charles Isaac Weill, was a French archaeologist specialized in Egyptology. Biography Born on 28 January 1874 in Elbeuf, 28 January 1874 in Elbeuf began his career in ...
,
Adolphe Lods ''Adolphe'' is a classic French novel by Benjamin Constant, first published in 1816. It tells the story of an alienated young man, Adolphe, who falls in love with an older woman, Ellénore, the Polish mistress of the Comte de P***. Their illicit ...
in Hebrew and biblical studies, and André Pigagnol in Roman history. Julius Beloch's influential thesis (1894) that the Phoenician influences on Greece were unfounded assumptions prevailed. The only dissent from this negation of Semitic influences on Greek civilization was the work of
Victor Bérard Victor Bérard (; Morez, 10 August 1864 – Paris, 13 November 1931) was a French diplomat and politician. Today, he is still renowned for his works about Hellenistic studies and geography of the Odyssey The locations mentioned in the narr ...
. Though entertaining some doubts, he accepted the consensus at the time. Astour graduated licencié es-lettres, equivalent to a BA, and prepared for a doctorate at the
École des Hautes Études École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...
of the University of Paris. In October 1937 he visited
Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
and stayed for several months. On his return to Paris in October 1938, he changed plans and enrolled to do agricultural sciences at the École Supérieure Nationale d'Agronomie de Grignon.


World War II

On the eve of World War II in 1939, against his parents' advice, he broke off his studies and returned to Vilna. Astour and his father were arrested, together with another 1,800 people, in a
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
roundup. The father's detention probably related to his record as a defense attorney two decades earlier. A German blitz took Vilnius on June 24, 1941, and Jews, among whom Astour's mother Rachel, were confined to two ghettos. In retreating the Soviets evacuated their prisoners in a forced march and, when Astour's father was unable to keep up on the march towards
Bobruisk Babruysk (, ) or Bobruysk (, ; , ) is a city in Mogilev Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Babruysk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. It is situated on the Berezina River. Babruysk o ...
, he was executed. His mother Rachel was consigned to the ghetto reserved for those marked down for immediate execution and she was murdered, along with another 40,000 Vilna Jews, by SS
Sonderkommando ''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the di ...
s and Lithuanian auxiliaries in
Ponary Forest The Ponary massacre (), or the Paneriai massacre (), was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by German '' SD'' and '' SS'' and the Lithuanian ''Ypatingasis būrys'' killing squads, during World War II and ...
8 miles southwest of the city. The reason given for Astour's arrest was his role as a member of the Hawks. Without the preliminaries of a trial, he was given a five year sentence to labour camps. Transported to the Ukhto-Izhemskiy camp complex in the
Komi Republic The Komi Republic (; ), sometimes simply referred to as Komi, is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the northeast of European Russia. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Syktyvka ...
just south of the
Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the northernmost of the five major circle of latitude, circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth at about 66° 34' N. Its southern counterpart is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circl ...
, he was assigned to work at a Vodnyi installation where radium was extracted from radioactive water wells. Guards and zeks helped him survive three close calls with death. He was esteemed by both for his ability to recite poems and tell stories in several languages. Astour was to spend much of the subsequent decade in Soviet political prisons and
gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
s. After relations were established with the
Polish government-in-exile The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile (), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent Occupation ...
, Astour was the immediate beneficiary of an amnesty, being released in September 1941. He made two unsuccessful attempts to cross to Iran, the second time in 1943 when the
battle of Stalingrad The Battle of Stalingrad ; see . rus, links=on, Сталинградская битва, r=Stalingradskaya bitva, p=stəlʲɪnˈɡratskəjə ˈbʲitvə. (17 July 19422 February 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, ...
was in its closing phase, the USSR declared on 16 January all Poles who had been resident in its territory from November 1939 Soviet citizens. Caught near the frontier he was rearrested for disloyalty and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for "treason".


Release and emigration to the United States

On his release in September 1950, he settled in
Karaganda Karaganda (, ; ), also known as Karagandy (, ; ; ) (also sometimes romanized as Qaraghandy), is a major city in central Kazakhstan and the capital of the Karaganda Region. It is the fifth most populous city in the country, with a population o ...
also where he met and married Beta Miriam Ostrowska. Access to inter-library loans enabled him to resume his scholarly studies and he managed to have himself repatriated to Warsaw in late 1956 where he gained employment in the
Jewish Historical Institute The Jewish Historical Institute ( or ''ŻIH''; ), also known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, is a public cultural and research institution in Warsaw, Poland, chiefly dealing with the history of Jews in Poland and Jewish cul ...
, ending 17 years of isolation. Desiring neither to remain in Poland nor emigrate to Israel, the couple availed themselves of a window of opportunity for displaced Jewish Poles to emigrate to France, arriving there in mid March 1958, and taking up a post as archivist at the
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...
, while undertaking studies on Akkadian and Assyrian. Still aspiring to return to scholarship he emigrated to the US in late 1959, becoming a US citizen five years later.


Academic career in the United States

Alerted also by a letter of recommendation from Virolleaud of Astour's research projects to explore Greek-West Asian links,
Cyrus Gordon Cyrus Herzl Gordon (June 29, 1908 – March 30, 2001) was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages. Biography Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon. ...
, chair of the Department of Mediterranean and Classical Studies at
Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...
, and like Virolleaud a leading expert on Ugaritic, appointed him to the Jacob D. Berg Chair in Yiddish culture, where he was to teach Yiddish and Russian, while pursuing doctoral studies under Gordon. He obtained a doctorate with his dissertation on Hellonosemitica in June 1962. After some years at Brandeis, Astour was informed he had no future teaching there, and he took up an offer to teach as an assistant professor of ancient history at Southern Illinois University in 1965. Astour believed that the refusal of strong pro-Zionist Brandeis authorities to offer him the prospect of tenure was related to his vigorous opposition to Israel. Astour played an important role in retrieving, and subsequently editing, the 9th volume of Israël Zinberg's monumental Yiddish ''History of Jewish Literature''. The final volume, which Zinberg had been working on when he was seized by the Soviet authorities and sent to a Siberian gulag, where he died in 1939, turned up in a Leningrad library in 1962. Astour also wrote and published in 1967 a 900-page book in two volumes on the history of the Freeland League and the territorialist concept. Astour was honored by a ''
Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
'' in 1997, and, on reaching the statutory retirement age of 70, was obliged to take the pension in 1987, though he remained active in scholarly work until his death. He left uncompleted a comprehensive manuscript on ancient Syrian
toponomy Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for a proper nam ...
, running to nearly 1,000 pages, which was intended to be his ''magnum opus'', entitled ''Topography and Toponymy of Northern Syria''. The discovery of the Eblaite archives, which promised to yield a further huge mass of new material on the area's ancient geography compelled Astour to defer publication indefinitely. His wife died on January 22, 2000, and received a Jewish burial. Astour died, following emergency abdominal surgery, on October 7, 2004, and was cremated.


Zionism, Israel and Jewishness

Astour bore a lifetime grudge against Zionism, arising from its influence in marginalizing the Freeland Movement. He wrote at one point of:-
the unbelievable acts of betrayal against the interests of the Jewish people committed by the rich Jewish relief organizations and by the powerful Zionist apparatus, whose official and unofficial representatives did their best, by intervening with the governments in question, to wreck the salvation efforts of the Freeland League.
In his view, Zionist exclusivism had exercised a negative impact which had profound implications for the Jewish people. He took strong exception to what he perceived to be Zionist ruthlessness in achieving their aims in Palestine on the eve of World War II when the lives of Jewish refugees were imperiled, as illustrated by a remark made by
David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...
just after
Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...
. He went as far as to liken Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi persecution of Jews, a position that echoed the view of
Yeshayahu Leibowitz Yeshayahu Leibowitz (; 29 January 1903 – 18 August 1994) was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a ...
. His outrage was particularly vehement in reacting to the
Israeli Invasion of Lebanon in 1982 The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the Second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization ...
, American support for which led him to repudiate the Democratic Party. He went to far as to argue that the antisemitic fiction of the "Elders of Zion" had been realized in the form of the Zionist lobby. He never reconciled himself to the post-Holocaust world, and of his personal identity as a Jew he wrote late in life:
It is difficult to identify oneself with the Israeli brand of Jewishness. My personal tragedy, however, is that neither can I feel differently with regard to American Jewishness. My kind of Jewish people has been exterminated, and there is no substitute for it.


''Hellenosemitica'' and its reception

Long before Hellenism imposed itself over the ancient civilizations of the East, Semitism had exercised no less an impact upon the young civilization of Greece. Hellenism became the epilogue of the Oriental civilizations, but Semitism was the prologue of Greek civilization.
Astour's book did not emerge out of thin air. His sponsor Cyrus Gordon had been publishing along similar lines at the time, and three years earlier had published on ''The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations.'' The German Jewish
Hittitologist Hittitology is the study of the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian people that established an empire around Hattusa in the 2nd millennium BCE. It combines aspects of the archaeology, history, philology, and art history of the Hittite civilisation. Ther ...
H. G. Güterbock, the British archaeologist and classicist
T. B. L. Webster Thomas Bertram Lonsdale Webster (3 July 1905 – 31 May 1974) was a British archaeologist and Classicist, known for his studies of Greek comedy. Background He was the son of Sir Thomas Lonsdale Webster. During World War I he attended Chart ...
,
Joseph Fontenrose Joseph Eddy Fontenrose (17 June 1903 in Sutter Creek – July 1986 in Ashland, Oregon) was an American classical scholar. He was centrally interested in Ancient Greek religion, Greek religion and Greek mythology; he was also an expert on John Ste ...
and Peter Walcot, to name a few, had been exploring similar ideas of eastern, especially Anatolian, influences on the formation of Greece. However, as is now widely acknowledged, a prejudice against the topic had set in from the 19th century. M. L. West mentions that a work written in 1658 by a
fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
of Corpus Christi College Zachary Bogan, ''Homericus, sive comparatio Homeri com scriptoribus sacris quoad norman loquendi'', drew numerous parallels between biblical texts and phrases in both Homer and
Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...
. Neglect of the work was such that West believed he was the only person to have consulted a copy at Oxford in the preceding 200 years. Analyzing the "ideological protectionism" that set in to fracture the "Greek-Orient" axis,
Walter Burkert Walter Burkert (; 2 February 1931 – 11 March 2015) was a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult. A professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he taught in the UK and the US. He has influenced generations of student ...
cites three factors: the detachment of classical studies from theology; the rise of romantic nationalism which preferred to think in terms of organic growth from individual ethnic origins rather than cross-cultural influences-Jewish emancipation went hand in hand with trends against "Orientalism" giving anti-Semitism an opportunity to get a leg in; and, thirdly, the discovery of
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
and emergence of
Indo-European linguistics Indo-European studies () is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical p ...
focused on a common archetype in which Semitic had no place. Thus
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf Enno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (22 December 1848 – 25 September 1931) was a German classical philologist. Wilamowitz, as he is known in scholarly circles, was a renowned authority on Ancient Greece and its literature ...
, perhaps the greatest classicist of his time, could write authoritatively in 1884 that,
The peoples and states of the Semites and the Egyptian which gave been decaying for centuries and which, in spite of the antiquity of their culture were unable to contribute anything to the Hellenes other than a few manual skills, costumes, and implements of bad taste, antiquated ornaments, repulsive fetishes for even more repulsive fake divinities.
The British archaeologist John Boardman, writing for ''
The Classical Review ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
'', found parts critical of classicists as both "crudely partisan" and outdated, stated that it was hard to decide whether or not the book furnished an important contribution to the field. The controversial historian
Martin Bernal Martin Gardiner Bernal (; 10 March 1937 – 9 June 2013) was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history. He was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is best known for his work '' Black Athena'', ...
described the early scholarly reviews of Astour's book as a "battering", so severe that Astour stopped working in this specific field.


Bibliography


Books

* * * * *


Edited books

*


Articles

* "The Primitive Notion of Yahweh"
n Yiddish N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
''YIVO-Bleter'' 13 (1938): 477-504. * "Biblical Tradition as a Source of Hebrew Prehistory" n Polish ''Bulletin of the Institute for Jewish History''. 22 (1957): 1-25. * "The Habiru Problem and the Conquest of Canaan"
n Yiddish N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
''Bleter far Geshikhte''. 11 (1958): 59-90. * "Benê-Iamina et Jericho." ''Semitica'' 9 (1959): 5-20 * "Les étrangers à Ugarit et la statut juridique des ҫabiru." ''Revue d'Assyriologie et d'Archéologie Orientale'' 53 (1959): 70-76. * "Metamorphose de Baal. Les rivalités commerciales du IX siècle." ''Evidences'' 75. (January–February 1959: 77 (May–June 1959): 54-58. * "Review Article of E. Orbach (Auerbach), Hamidbar ve'ereş habḥirah, I"
iddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
''Di Goldene Keyt'' 32 (1959): 236-45. * "History and Legend: The Conquest of Canaan in the Light of Archaeology." ''The Zukunft'' 65 (1960): 109-14. * "Review Article of A. Dupont-Sommer, Les écrits esséniens, découverts près de la Mer Morts."
iddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
''Di Goldene Keyt'' 35 (1960): 150-59. * "Place Names from the Kingdom of Alalaҫ in the North Syrian List of Thutmose III: A Study in Historical Topography." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 22 (1963): 220-41. * "Un texte d'Ugarit récemment découvert et ses rapports avec l'origine des cultes bachiques Grecs." ''Revue de l'Histoire des Religions'' 164 (1963): 1-15. * "Greek Names in the Semitic World and Semitic Names in the Greek World." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 23 (1964): 193-201. * "Religion of Ancient Jews." Zygmunt Poniatowski, ed., ''Zarys dziejów religii''. Warsaw: Iskry. 1964: 301-29. * "Second Millennium B.C. Cypriot and Cretan Onomastica Reconsidered." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 84 (1964): 240-54. * "The Amarna Age Forerunners of Biblical Anti-Royalism." For Max Weinrich on his Seventieth Birthday: Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society. Mouton. The Hague. 1964: 6-17. * "New Evidence on the Last Days of Ugarit." ''American Journal of Archaeology'' 69(1965): 253-58. * "Sabtah and Sabteca: Ethiopian Pharaoh Names in Genesis 10". ''Journal of Biblical Literature'' 84 (1965): 422-25. * "The Origin of the Terms 'Canaan,' 'Phoenician,' and 'Purple.'" ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 24 (1965): 346-50. * "Aegean Place-Names in an Egyptian Inscription." ''American Journal of Archaeology'' 70 (1966): 313-17. * "Political and Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis 14 and in its Babylonian Sources." ''Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations''. Ohilip W. Lown Institute. Brandeis University: Study and Texts III. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1966:65-112. * "Some New Divine Names from Ugarit." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 86 (1966): 277-84. * "Tamar the Hierodule: An Essay in the Method of Vestigial Motifs." ''Journal of Biblical Literature'' 85 (1966): 185-96. * "The Problem of Semitic in Ancient Crete." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 87 (1967): 290-95. * "Mesopotamian and Transtigridian Place Names in the Medinet Habu Lists of Ramses III." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' 88 (1968): 733-52. * "Semitic Elements in the Kumarbi Myth: an Onomastic Inquiry." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 27 (1968): 172-77. * "Two Ugaritic Serpent Charms." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 27 (1968): 13-36. * "La triade de déeses de fertilité à Ugarit et en Grèce." C.F.A. Schaeffer, ed. ''Ugaritica'' VI. Mission de Ras Shamra XVII. Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique 81. Institut Franҫais d' Archéologique de Beyrouth. Paris. 1969: 9-23. * "The Partition of the Confederacy of Mukiš-Nuhašše-Nii by Šuppiluliuma: A Study in Political Geography of the Amarna Age." ''Orientalia'' 38 (1969): 381-414. * "Ma'ҫadu, the Harbor of Ugarit." ''Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient'' 13 (1970): 113-27. * "Toponyms in the Hurrian Alphabetic Tablet RS 24.285." 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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Astour, Michael 1916 births 2004 deaths Brandeis University faculty Ukrainian Gulag detainees Southern Illinois University faculty 20th-century American Jews