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August 12, 2026
‘I Would Like My Research to Help Make the World a Calmer and Better Place
Whatever task Saraa Ali, Junior Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis (LAMBDA) of the AI and Digital Science Institute (HSE Faculty of Computer Science), is working on, she thinks about how it can benefit people. She told the Young Scientists of HSE University project about her large family, diagnosing three-phase motors, and her dream of building a children’s home in her native country.
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Luminous Oils and Waters of Wisdom: Shedding New Light on Oil Divination

Ch. 14. P. 169–176.
Loktionov A., Schmidhuber C.

The crucial position divination held in Mesopotamian religion and society, as well as beyond the Babylonian and Assyrian heartlands, has long been acknowledged and has justly received scholarly attention since the early days of Assyriology. Much progress has been made in the contextual study of divinatory theory and practice, although mainly focusing on extispicy and celestial divination, leaving aside the smaller, but considerable corpora relating to other types of divination. Oil divination is one such example. This paper attempts to elucidate its potential to contribute to current discussions concerning divination with insights from both the field itself but also other relevant Assyriological themes.

Language: English
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Keywords: Ancient MesopotamiaДревняя Месопотамиярелигия и политика religion and politicsdivinationгадание

In book

Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Held at Ghent, Belgium, 15-19 July 2013
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021.
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