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A Study of Temporality in West Semitic Royal Inscriptions

  • Daniel Pioske EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 3. April 2025

Abstract

This study examines how the experience of time is articulated in West Semitic royal inscriptions from the Iron Age Levant. To do so, I examine two temporal indices or scaffolds on which the broader architecture of temporal experience is constructed within this corpus. The first is what I term dynastic time, a perspective organized around a ruler’s life and lineage that governs how past, present, and future are conceived within these writings. The second is the time attributed to material remains, or how these inscriptions account for the age of ruins and the dilapidated structures that are often referred to within them. What is historically meaningful about these descriptions and their attendant references, I argue, is a specific reckoning with the flow of time, where we are offered insights into how these writings apprehend a sense of temporal duration. When compared to royal inscriptions commissioned by contemporaneous Assyrian and Babylonian rulers, what appears in the West Semitic corpus, I contend further, is a reduced temporal framework whose retrospective and prospective visions rarely exceed a generation and, at most, extend roughly a century into the past or future. This investigation then concludes by examining what historical factors may have shaped this distinct sense of time conveyed in the West Semitic tradition of royal inscriptions.


Corresponding author: Daniel Pioske, University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota, USA, E-mail:

Abbreviations

CT

King, Leonard. 1914. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Part 34. London: British Museum.

KAI

Donner, Herbert, and Wolfgang Röllig. 2002. Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. Bd. 1–3. 5th edition. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

KTU

Dietrich, Manfried, Oswald Loretz, and Joaquin Sanmartin. 2013. Keilalphabetische Texte aus Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, und anderen Orten. 3rd Edition. Munster: Ugarit Verlag.

RIMA 1

Grayson, A. Kirk. 1987. Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

RIMA 2

Grayson, A. Kirk. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, I (1114- 859 BC). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

RIMA 3

Grayson, A. Kirk. 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, II (858- 745 BC). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

RINAP 1

Tadmor, Hayim, and Shigeo Yamada. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath- pileser III (744-727 BC), and Shalmaneser V (726-722 BC), Kings of Assyria. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

RINAP 3/1

Grayson, A. Kirk, and Jamie Novotny. 2012. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC). Part 1. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

RINAP 5/1

Novotny, Jamie, and Joshua Jeffers. 2018. The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria. Part 1. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns.

RINBE 2

Weiershäuser, Frauke, and Jamie Novotny. 2020. The Royal Inscriptions of Amēl-Marduk (561–560 BC), Neriglissar (559–556 BC), and Nabonidus (555–539 BC), Kings of Babylon. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns.

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Received: 2023-12-18
Accepted: 2025-03-16
Published Online: 2025-04-03
Published in Print: 2025-11-25

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