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While Human-Animal Studies is a rapidly growing field in modern history, studies on this topic that focus on the Ancient World are few. The present volume aims at closing this gap. It investigates the relation between humans, animals, gods, and things with a special focus on the structure of these categories. An improved understanding of the ancient categories themselves is a precondition for any investigation into the relation between them. The focus of the volume lies on the Ancient Near East, but it also provides studies on Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Mesoamerica, the Far East, and Arabia.

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Introduction.- Human-Animal-Studies - Bridging the Lacuna between Academia and Society.- Taxonomy and Medicine: Analysing Transfers between Disciplines, a Step towards understanding Mesopotamiansciences.- Reflections on the Pivotal Role of Animals in Early Mesopotamia.- Creation of Animals in Sumerian Mythology.- Animal Friezes in " Orientalizing" Greek Art.- Animals and Demons: Faunal Appearance, Metaphors, and Similes in Lamastu Incantations.- Animals in the Sumerian Disputation Poems.- From Ape to Zebra: On Wild Animals and Taxonomy in Ancient Israel.- Categorization and Hierarchy: Animals and their Relations to Gods, Humans and Things in the Hittite World.- Holy Cow! On Cattle Metaphors in Sumerian Literary Texts.- Gilgames and Enkidu: The Two-thirds-god and the Two-thirds-animal?.- Man and Animals in the Administrative Texts of the End of the 3rd Millennium BC.- For the Gods or for Money? Sheep Husbandry at the Temples in First Millennium Babylonia.- Approaches to Animal Fables: Aesop, Anthropomorphism and Beyond.- On Men, Animals, and Supernatural Beings in Ancient Maya Iconography.- Aztec dogs: myths and ritual practice.- Zooarchaeological Study on the Ainu Bear-sending Ceremony.- The Animal Fable of the Ikhwan al-Safa in Context: The Ontological and Ethical Status of Animals in Early Islamic Thought.

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Dr. Raija Mattila is Docent of Assyriology, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Director of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, Beirut, Lebanon.
Dr. Sanae Ito is a historian and Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Dr. Sebastian Fink is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence "Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions".

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