Of Ancient Codes

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Van De Mieroop
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
World History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Ancient Mesopotamia ◽  
The Law

This chapter focuses on the genre of law codes in ancient Mesopotamia. Hammurabi authored—or more likely commissioned—one of the earliest surviving law codes in world history. Hammurabi’s code is part of a small corpus of ancient Near East writings about law that was founded on the principles contained in lexical and omen lists. The law codes of the ancient Near East show how aspects of Babylonian epistemology could be imitated by others even if they did not employ the Babylonian writing system that lay at its core. The chapter first considers the historical context of the law codes before discussing the format of these laws. The composition of law codes flourished in Babylonia in the late third and early second millennia, when four kings commissioned them: Ur-Namma and Lipit-Eshtar in the Sumerian language, Dadusha and Hammurabi in Akkadian.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Near East ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Modern Period

The Introduction situates the myth of the descent to the underworld (catabasis) in a broad historical context beginning with Ancient Near East traditions, including the Sumerian poem preserved in cuneiform, “The Descent of Inanna,” and extending to medieval treatments such as “The Visions of the Knight Tondal”, and those of the early modern period. It includes a survey of other scholarly treatments of the underworld theme in recent literature. A brief overview of the volume explains how it fills a gap in the scholarship by focusing on the adaptation of the theme of a visit to Hades in postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial fiction.

Book I Diplomacy in General, 1 Diplomacy—a Short History from Pre-Classical Origins to the Fall of the Berlin Wall

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberts Ivor
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Short History ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
Post War ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
European Diplomacy

This chapter provides the historical context underpinning this study. It elaborates on the definition of the term ‘diplomacy’—the conduct of business between States by peaceful means—at the same time dispelling misconceptions regarding the term, as well as discussing its origins. Aside from that, the chapter largely focuses on a historical background of diplomacy as a whole, beginning from the earliest practices of sending emissaries to open negotiations. These origins may in fact go back at least as far as the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East in the second, and possibly even as early as the late fourth millennium BC, to the cuneiform civilizations of Mesopotamia. From there, the chapter maps out this history through the Renaissance period to the beginnings of classical European diplomacy, and later on to the two World Wars and the post-war world.

Artefacts of Cognition: the Use of Clay Tokens in a Neo-Assyrian Provincial Administration

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
John MacGinnis ◽  
M. Willis Monroe ◽  
Dirk Wicke ◽  
Timothy Matney
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
Administrative Culture ◽  
Time Period ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Provincial Capital ◽  
The 1960S

The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrative contexts. Now excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe — the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tušhan — have uncovered a corpus of tokens dating to the first millennium bc. This is a significant new contribution to the documented material. These tokens are found in association with a range of other artefacts of administrative culture — tablets, dockets, sealings and weights — in a manner which indicates that they had cognitive value concurrent with the cuneiform writing system and suggests that tokens were an important tool in Neo-Assyrian imperial administration.

Alphabetic Origins

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Pardee
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture

This chapter lays out the peculiarities of the Ugaritic language and hence of its peculiar contributions to our knowledge of the history of culture. It discusses the nature of the language and its place within the languages of the ancient Near East, the nature of the writing system, and the nature of the Ugaritic texts that have been preserved.

scholarly journals ‘Die pen is magtiger as die swaard’: Oor skrifgeletterdheid, skrifgeleerdes en Israel se Tweede Tempeltydperk

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerda De Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
General Part ◽  
The Law

‘The pen is mightier than the sword’: Literacy and scribes in Israel during the Second Temple period. This article is divided in two parts. Part one examines scribal education and scribes in the ancient Near East and Israel. Although no real evidence exists for scribal schools and education in Israel, it is argued that some form of institutionalised training must have taken place in order to produce literary texts of such a high quality as are found in the Hebrew Bible. Comparative material from Mesopotamia serves to trace the education of scribes in general. Part two focuses on the Second Temple period in ancient Israel. Ezra the scribe emerges as a typical scribe from that era. Post-exilic Israel was grappling with its identity, and sought guidance from ַ [as was written in the Torah]. However, it appears that there were different interpretations of the written Law during this period. Scribes of the Ezra circle advocated a radical policy of exclusivity on the basis of what was written in the Law; others who wrote the texts of Trito-Isaiah and Ruth pleaded for a more inclusive attitude towards foreigners. The conclusion is that the battle was fought not with the sword, but with the pen, therefore: ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’

“Four Kingdoms” in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-233
Author(s):  
Nadav Sharon
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
World History ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Book Of Daniel

Abstract The “Four Empires” scheme appears in literature from around the ancient Near East, as well as in the biblical book of Daniel. Daniel’s scheme was adopted in subsequent Jewish literature as a basic division of world history. In addition, the book of Daniel appears to have had a prominent place in the Qumran library. Scholars have identified, or suggested, the existence of the “Four Empires” scheme in two texts found among the Qumran scrolls, the “New Jerusalem” text (4Q554), and, especially, in the so-called “Four Kingdoms”(!) text (4Q552–553). This paper will examine these texts, will argue that the “four empires” scheme is not attested in the Qumran scrolls (apart from Daniel), and will suggest alternative understandings of those two texts.

Exemplars of Kingship

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Eppihimer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
Visual Models ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Ancient Mesopotamia ◽  
Cylinder Seals

The Akkadian kings (ca. 2334–2154 BCE) created the first territorial state in the ancient Near East and were remembered as model kings for more than two millennia thereafter. Exemplars of Kingship: Art, Tradition, and the Legacy of the Akkadians evaluates how later rulers engaged with Akkadian visual models and memories of Akkadian kingship in their own images. Through analyses of post-Akkadian victory monuments, votive statues, cylinder seals, and other works of art, the book explores the intersection of visual traditions and cultural memory in ancient Mesopotamia. Exemplars of Kingship also deconstructs the modern reception of Akkadian art to reveal its impact on our perception of ancient responses to Akkadian art and kingship.

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