Volume 10, Issue 1

In this article the thesis is defended that the mythical tales about Gilgameš and other heroes of the past, are not concerned with telling or evaluating history, but that figures and perhaps events known from the tradition are only used in these tales. The term “mythical history”, used by Piotr Steinkeller is not adequate, if understood as a sort of philosophy of the past. Steinkeller’s example, the oppression of Uruk by Gilgameš, is investigated in detail. Steinkeller has chosen scenes from different stories of the Sumerian Gilgameš-Cycle neglecting their original context as if they were part of one story. Older translations of two Sumerian words and their Akkadian equivalences and the neglect of context are instrumental for Steinkeller’s interpretation of the oppression of Uruk. He proposes that a shift from divine kingship to secular kingship be taken for granted. But if we look at the evidence, a more divine rule before ca. 2900 BC seems neither impossible nor sure. But we know for sure that a religious legitimation of kingship remained in place. Later Sumerian and Akkadian kings were still the beloved ones of Inanna/ Ištar, received the scepter from Enlil and so on. It is very likely that the oppression of Uruk shows how a king should not behave towards his people and Gilgameš is required to learn this lesson in order to become a great king. A king you may wish for the present time too.

This article considers the administrative changes that occurred in the city of Emar in the early 13th century BCE—including the beginning of the now well-known bifurcation in scribal practices between the Conventional Middle Euphrates Format (also known as the “Syrian” system) and the Free Format (also known as the “Syro-Hittite” system)—in the context of international political currents. In order to position my understanding of Emarite history with respect to the ongoing chronology debate, I offer new chronological considerations using internal data from the Emarite legal documents that affirm the substantial overlap of the two scribal systems at Emar (most recently argued for by Daniel Fleming and Sophie Démare-Lafont), while also adjusting the dating of some important synchronisms. Following the establishment of the chronological position, the article poses the question of why the material changes at Emar were executed by the Hittite empire exactly when they were, despite a previous policy of non-intervention. I argue that the increasing threat posed by expansionist activity of the Middle Assyrian state to Hittite hegemony over the Syrian territories—of which Emar was the farthest south-easterly border state—is a contributing factor to administrative changes in Emar.

The inscriptions on Middle Babylonian kudurru monuments contain references to a certain type of Vorlage , wooden wax-covered writing boards. The kudurru monuments were erected in temples as (legal) proof of a royal land grant. In this article I explore three ways in which wooden wax-covered writing boards may have functioned as a Vorlage for kudurru inscriptions. Wooden wax-covered writing boards may have served as a Vorlage for literary passages, as a draft for the kudurru inscription or as a writing material for land survey documents (possibly the Middle Babylonian ammatu documents). Firstly, parallels between the colophons of kudurru inscriptions and first millennium literary and scholarly texts imply a shared scholarly practice in a temple context, in which wooden wax-covered writing boards were used as a Vorlage . Secondly, the use of wooden wax-covered writing boards to draft monumental inscriptions is well attested in the 1st millennium BC. Thirdly, I propose that writing boards may have been used to record the land survey necessary for the royal land grant, since land surveys and ground plans were traditionally recorded on writing boards in Mesopotamia. Wooden wax-covered writing boards and wooden writing materials became more widespread in the Middle Babylonian period. The Middle Babylonian land survey document was called ammatu document. Further, in this article I demonstrate that the equation of the Middle Babylonian ammatu document with the Old Babylonian ṭuppi ummātim , a term for title deeds written on clay tablets, is problematic.

Any discussion about historiography in Mesopotamia leads sooner or later—and it is usually sooner—to the question of genre. This article explores aspects of this question by examining how, in the wake of political, intellectual and cultural developments which marked the late second and the beginning of the first millennium BCE, various streams of historiographic practice converged towards the writing of a Babylonian national history, or rather, national histories. In order to do so, three roughly contemporary sources, written in different milieus, are discussed as instances of this phenomenon: the Chronicle of Ancient Kings A, the Chronicle Concerning the Early Years of Nebuchadnezzar II, and the Imgur-Enlil Inscription of Nabopolassar. The contents, form, sources used, and intentions of writing of each of them are evaluated, and a number of shared themes and approaches are identified and proposed as elements of seventh/sixth century national history writing in Babylonia.

During the first millennium BCE, extensive trade networks linked the South Arabian and Mediterranean worlds. While these trade networks are well known for their transport of highly lucrative materials, these connections afforded myriad economic and diplomatic opportunities for the intermediaries located along its routes, and held significant bearing on the political economies of southern Levantine kingdoms. While the wealth and opportunity afforded by the Arabian trade to these kingdoms are frequently invoked—particularly in relation to Edom—such references, and related discussions of the Arabian trade, are often restricted in their chronological scope and reliant on limited data. Recent scholarship on Edom, however, has substantially contributed to a more detailed understanding of settlement trajectories and shifts in sociopolitical organization, which, combined with recent archaeological research on varied aspects of the Arabian trade, necessitate an expanded synthesis of the trajectory of this trade and its relation to Edom. This work thus presents first an outline of the diachronic trajectory of the Arabian trade in relation to the southern Levant using textual and material culture data, and second, analyzes it within the context of sociopolitical developments in the late Iron Age kingdom of Edom. Ultimately, this work argues for a close association between the flourishing of long-distance trade in the southern Levant and the presence of sedentary sociopolitical complexity in southern Transjordan, as evident in the kingdoms of Edom and later Nabataea.