Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History最新文献

{"title":"Status in a Nutshell. A Praxeological/Phenomenological Approach to Seals as Power Accessories","authors":"Diamantis Panagiotopoulos","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2024-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2024-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the course of their long history in Aegean societies, seals acquired a polyvalent significance that arose from their active ‘participation’ in different social spheres and manifested itself in a superb level of technique and virtuosity. This paper examines the role of Minoan and Mycenaean seals as status symbols, highlighting not their creation but rather the practices of wearing, displaying, using, and perceiving them. The discussion spans two main chronological periods: the Second Palace Period (mid-17th to mid-15th century BCE) and the Third Palace Period (14th-13th century BCE), during which seals served different functions as status mediators. In the earlier period, a notable tension in the social significance of seals is evident when comparing evidence from Crete and the Greek Mainland. While Minoan seals were used as sphragistic tools, Mycenaean seals were not. In the later period, the use of seals in Mainland Greece was driven by their role as administrative tools within the palatial sphere. This dynamic analysis sheds light on the evolving roles and transformations of seals, influenced by varying social environments and demonstrating the multiple ways these artifacts embodied and mediated power. Additionally, it shows how their symbolic potential could express individual or collective identities.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"11 2","pages":"361-377"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/janeh-2024-0006/pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147912394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Status of Gaza in the Persian Period: Imperial Dynamics, Local Agency, and Long-Distance Trade","authors":"Ryan Boehm","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2023-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2023-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although Gaza was among the largest and most important cities of the southern Levant, it has played a relatively minor role in recent reassessments of the reoccupation of the Palestinian coast and its administration in the Persian period. The widely-held scholarly view that Gaza fell outside of direct Achaemenid control, in a coastal zone conceded to a confederation of Arabian tribes ruled by the king of Qedar, is a primary factor in according it a separate status from the other cities of Philistia. This article argues that the sources do not support the notion that Gaza and its environs belonged to an Arabian district. Rather, Gaza, like the other coastal cities of Philistia, seems to have been redeveloped in the late sixth century BCE by Phoenician agents, likely from Tyre. While Gaza held a distinct position as the main outlet of Arabian and Egyptian trade, it was culturally and economically oriented around the wider Phoenician maritime network and integrated into a dense network of Achaemenid military and administrative infrastructure in the region. In the early fourth century BCE, however, the loss of Egypt and the eclipse of the Qedarites fundamentally transformed the nature of Achaemenid authority in the region. Gaza may have been lost during much or all of this period, and the Achaemenid response is visible across this border region. Nevertheless, Gaza retained its central commercial position across these disturbances.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":" 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141371273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Going Local: An Agency-Based Approach to Collapse, Resistance, and Resilience in Hittite Anatolia","authors":"N. İlgi Gerçek","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2023-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2023-0005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Crisis and collapse have long been prominent themes in Hittite studies (much more so than the related topics of resistance and resilience) and most of the extant body of scholarship on these themes have concentrated on the disintegration of the Hittite Empire around 1200 BCE. Though the events, conditions and processes that culminated in the disintegration of the Hittite Empire elude historical reconstruction, recent studies have unanimously rejected monocausal explanations of collapse in favor of the view that it was brought about by a combination of factors – internal, external, acute or chronic. In Hittite scholarship, the study of collapse and its aftermath have typically operated within a markedly state-centered and progressivist framework, focusing primarily on figuring out “what went wrong.” Meanwhile, especially in text-based studies, the agency and resilience of local, small(er)-scale, peripheral, and non-state individuals and communities, as well as their role in the construction, maintenance, and collapse of the Hittite empire, remain largely overlooked. The aim of the present paper is to shift the focus and scale of analysis away from the state, and to draw out from the textual record, the long-term agency, resistance, and resilience of local, small-scale, and often non-state individuals, communities, or socio-political institutions, which have typically been left out of text-based modern narratives. This paper will reassess the prominent view of the Hittite king (and state) as the absolute political, military, judicial, and religious authority, and argue that certain local and non-state communities and socio-political institutions exercised diverse kinds of agency, were remarkably resilient in the long term, and survived the final collapse of the Hittite state. In order to situate the inquiry in its broader scholarly and intellectual context, it will begin with an overview of where things stand in the study of the Hittite collapse. The next step will be to identify individual or collective local actors in the textual record. It will lastly focus on the interactions of diverse local agents with the Hittite state.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"5 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141099652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resilience Theory, Human Agency, and Political Archaeology: A RT Revised Model for the Understanding of the Late Bronze – Iron Age Transition in the Post-Hittite World","authors":"L. d’Alfonso","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2023-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2023-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the last twenty years, due to the growing concern with the human-environment relationship in the contemporary world as well as in the study of the ancient world, Resilience Theory (RT) has been adopted and adapted from the study of ecosystems to the study of stress dynamics within socio-political systems. The adaptation is indebted to the seminal work of Holling and Gunderson (2002. “Resilience and Adaptive Cycles.” In Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, edited by L. H. Gunderson, and C. S. Holling, 25–62. Washington, DC: Island Press), reviewed recently for application in archaeology in a volume edited by Faulseit (2016b. “Collapse, Resilience, and Transformation in Complex Societies: Modeling Trends and Understanding Diversity.” In Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, edited by R. K. Faulseit, 3–26. Visiting Scholar Conference Volumes. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press). While social scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists interested in system theories have welcomed this new interpretative tool for the study of rapid change in socio-political systems, RT has been considered unsatisfactory and substantially rejected by several scholars in the humanities because of the lack of freedom and intention assigned to human actors. After a short presentation of these premises, the paper seeks to affirm a different model for a social cycle of formation-growth-maturity-release, in which resilience is only one among a number of possible outcomes of the release phase, depending on the collective/political choice/orientation of a society. Put simply, the new model suggests reorganization and transformation as two alternative outcomes alternative to resilience. The model is applied to the case study of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) – Early Iron Age (EIA) transition in Anatolia and north Syria, corresponding to the time of the fall and aftermath of the Hittite empire. It will be shown that the adoption of the model offers a productive interpretive key to understand different outcomes in the new fragmented reality.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133828057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"International Politics and Local Change at Emar in the Late Bronze Age","authors":"John Tracy Thames","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2022-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2022-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124657172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trade, Kingdom, and Empire: Edom and the South Arabian Trade","authors":"Andrew J. Danielson","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2022-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2022-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115087923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Die Unterdrückung von Uruk: Einwände gegen die Deutung als „mythical history“","authors":"J. Keetman","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2022-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2022-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133601605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Participation of Marginal and Liminal Groups in Secondary State Formation under the Third Dynasty of Ur","authors":"Steven J. Garfinkle","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2022-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2022-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Ur III period (2112–2004 BC) provides rich opportunities to evaluate the contributions of marginal and liminal groups to the political economy of the era, and to re-assess our understanding of what constituted such groups in an era of early state formation. These opportunities arise in part from the well preserved and detailed administrative corpora at major provincial centers like Umma and Ĝirsu, as well as from significant centers of royal activity like Puzriš-Dagan and Iri-sagrig. These archives document many of the activities of the two groups on which this article focuses: the large body of marginalized dependent laborers (Sumerian ĝuruš) who performed a great deal of the agricultural work in Mesopotamia, and the liminal figures who frequent our records, often associated with pastoralism, and who are identified as Amorites (Sumerian Mar-tu). The former group I identify as “insiders” who were socio-economically marginalized, and the latter group I identify as “outsiders” who occasionally had the opportunity to become privileged insiders. Our tendency in the study of early agrarian societies to regard pastoralists as “outsiders” allows for a critique of how we identify and describe liminal groups; and this has added significance for how we understand the state building projects of the Third Dynasty of Ur.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130510436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wooden Wax-Covered Writing Boards as Vorlage for kudurru Inscriptions in the Middle Babylonian Period","authors":"Lynn-Salammbô Zimmermann","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129024816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marginal Communities and Cooperative Strategies in the Kerma Pastoral State","authors":"C. Walsh","doi":"10.1515/janeh-2021-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/janeh-2021-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the relationship between marginal Nubian communities—who are culturally different and who occupy peripheral contexts—and the Kerma “pastoral state” in Upper Nubia during the Classic Kerma period (1750–1550 BCE). It is argued that the funerary assemblages of two such communities—Mirgissa and al-Widay I—document localized identities and active roles in cross-cultural interactions with other cultural groups. These interactions and identities may have been intentionally encouraged and utilized by the Kerma state in order to gain access to exchange systems and maintain power within a more decentralized “pastoral state.” Cooperative processes such as commensality and social reception presented mechanisms for forming friendly relationships with these communities and a variety of Nile valley and desert groups and polities. It is argued that these communities were not marginalized and exploited by the state and but instead used their marginality to achieve degrees of autonomy and form their own localized practices.","PeriodicalId":174647,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124568806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}