Regime Change in the Ancient Near East and Egypt

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Islamic

The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet it is a subject that has largely been ignored by modern scholarship. These chapters, covering more than 4,000 years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran. Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from late third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for modern geopolitics.

Reconstructing the Temple

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Temple

This book examines temple renovation as a distinct topos within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Unlike newly founded temples, which were celebrated for their novelty, temple renovations were oriented toward the past. Kings took the opportunity to rehearse the history of the temple, selectively evoking certain past traditions and omitting others. In this way, temple renovations are a kind of historiography. The particularities of each case notwithstanding, this book demonstrates a pattern in the rhetoric of temple renovation texts; namely, kings used temple renovation to correct, or at least distance themselves from, some turmoil of recent history and to associate their reigns with an earlier and more illustrious past. The main evidence for this royal rhetoric comes from royal literature of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. This evidence in turn becomes the basis for reading the story of Jeroboam I’s placement of calves at Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12:25–33) as an eighth-century BCE account of temple renovation with a similar rhetoric. Concluding with further examples in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, this book shows that the rhetoric of temple renovation was not just a distinct topos, but also a long-standing one in the ancient Near East.

Of Fields and Forced Labor

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-152
Author(s):  
Carolyn J. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
Economic Control ◽  
History Of

Biblical narratives about ostensibly “local” barter (Abraham’s purchase of the cave at Machpelah), protection of battle spoils (Achan’s theft and subsequent execution), and commodification of labor and bodies (Ruth gleaning for hours and offering herself to Boaz) reveal much about ideologies of economic control operative in ancient Israel. The materialist analysis of Roland Boer provides a richly detailed study of Israelite agrarian and tributary practices, offering a salutary corrective to naïve views of Israelite economic relations. Highlighting labor as the most ruthlessly exploited resource in the ancient Near East, Boer examines the class-specific benefits and sustained violence of economic formations from kinship-household relations to militarized extraction. Boer’s erudite study will compel readers to look afresh at the subjugation of the poor and plundering of the powerless as constitutive features of diverse economic practices throughout the history of ancient Israel.

scholarly journals Breach of Treaties in the Ancient Near East

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-56
Author(s):  
Gábor Sulyok
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Relative Abundance ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Abundance And Diversity ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThe history of the breach of treaties can be traced back to the ancient Near East. The relative abundance and diversity of contemporary sources attest that the breaking of treaty obligations must have been a rather persistent problem, and that such occurrences were regarded as events of utmost importance throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The present study strives to demonstrate how peoples of old may have perceived and reacted to the breach of treaties on the basis of selected writings—the Legend of Etana, the Indictment of Madduwatta, the Indictment of Mita, the plague prayers of Mursili and the Old Testament—that provide, beyond the exposition of actual or alleged facts, a deeper insight into the psychological and procedural aspects of the subject.

Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Karen Radner ◽  
Nadine Moeller ◽  
D. T. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
North African ◽  
Inter Tropical Convergence Zone ◽  
The North ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues

With the emphasis of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East firmly placed on the political, social, and cultural histories of the states and communities shaping Egypt and Western Asia (including the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), this introduction to the five-volume series seeks to place the region in its environmental context. It discusses the lay of the land between the North African coast and the Hindu Kush, including the role of tectonics and geomorphology. It also considers some key issues regarding climatic conditions, focusing in particular on the significance of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the potential impact of megadroughts and pandemics.

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