The New York Times decided to follow up on my essay about Greater Boston* by commissioning an interactive map of baseball fandom based on Facebook Likes correlated with zip code. The authors write about it here. The interactive map is here. A second map based on the same data showing the second favorite team is…
Earlier this year, I worked on an excavation in northern Sudan. The most amazing thing we found were a couple of rock-cut rooms in a mortuary temple a hundred yards from the pyramids of the royal cemetery. In the rock-cut rooms, there were columns, and in one of them, capitals of unusual design. My contribution…
The journal Iraq, published by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq recently printed an academic article about Assyrian music that I wrote. The citation is: Cheng, Jack, “The Horizontal Forearm Harp: Assyria’s National Instrument,” Iraq 74, 2012, p. 75-87. Here’s the abstract: A horizontal harp, strung with 7 to 9 strings and usually decorated…
Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter By Her Students, eds. Jack Cheng & Marian Feldman, (Leiden: Brill), 2007 is now accessible online for reading or download. You can find it on Scribd here: Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter By Her…
The Journal of Near Eastern Studies has just published my article on Sumerian music (including singing and iconography). Here’s the citation and the first few hundred words: Jack Cheng, “A Review of Early Dynastic III Music: Man’s Animal Call,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies July 2009, Vol. 68, No. 3: 163-178. A review of the…
Jack Cheng, PhD 