Eva von Dassow teaches the history and languages of the ancient Near East at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of State and Society in the Late Bronze Age: Alalaḫ under the Mittani Empire (2008), co-author of Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. III (2000), and editor of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (1994; 1998). Her current research focuses on citizenship, governance, and liberty in ancient Near Eastern polities. This work includes a study of the Hurro-Hittite bilingual edition of the "Song of Liberation"; other recent work investigates written records as artifacts of cultural practice, and the nature of writing as an interface between reader and reality. She is at present writing a book on freedom and governance in the ancient Near East.