The Hittite ‘Theogony’ or Song of Going Forth (CTH 344): Stratification of Mythical Traditions

The present paper deals with the controversially discussed relationships between the gods Alalu, Anu, Kumarbi, and Tarḫunnaš in the Hittite Song of Going Forth (CTH 344). On the basis of a new philological analysis, of comparisons with theogonies or succession myths in other ancient cultures and on the background of considerations on the cross-cultural stratification of various mythical traditions in the surviving Hittite text, various proposals on the genealogical relationship of the deities in question are weighed against each other and reasons are presented for the plausibility of the proposed new translation and general reconstruction that the divine kingship always passes from father to son within a single genealogical line.

Vernacular historiography and self-translation in early colonial Nigeria: Ajiṣafẹ's History of Abẹokuta

Emmanuel Olympus Moore (aka Ajiṣafẹ) (c.1875/79–1940) was a pioneer of Nigerian Yorùbá literature and popular music. Ajiṣafẹ was one of the most significant Nigerian popular cultural figures of his generation. Written during the amalgamation of Nigeria, his History of Abẹokuta (1916) (Iwe Itan Abẹokuta, 1924) is a seminal text for our understanding of Abẹokuta and the Ẹgba kingdom. This article examines the bilingual passages of the History in which Ajiṣafẹ invokes oral history to construct a religious ethnography of the early Ẹgba polity. Self-translation enabled vernacular authors to mediate constituencies. The English and Yorùbá texts of the History differ in their engagement with Yorùbá cosmology. Ajiṣafẹ's texts converge in his defence of the Odùduwà dynasty; Abẹokuta, in a constitutional Yorùbá united kingdom, would be the seat of ecclesiastical power. Civil authority in Nigeria could be stabilized through an Abrahamic renegotiation of divine kingship. To establish his treatise within a genealogy of world Christianity, Ajiṣafẹ utilized self-translation as a rhetorical device to reconcile the working of providence in precolonial and colonial African history. Ajiṣafẹ's History, ultimately, is an Abrahamic exposition of the role of God's providence in bringing about the complete unification of Nigeria in September 1914.

Monumental Landscapes, Changing Ideologies, and Political Histories in the Mopan Valley

In Chapter 14, Brown and Yaeger discuss the sociopolitical organization of several key sites in the Mopan Valley from the early Middle Preclassic through the end of the Late Classic period. Through an examination of monumental architecture, public art, and ritual practices, the authors describe the political development over this 1,600-year period beginning with Early Xunantunich, the first major political center beginning in the early Middle Preclassic, to the latest, Classic Xunantunich, which was abandoned in the 9th century. The centers of Actuncan and Buenavista del Cayo filled a vacuum in the valley in the intervening centuries, playing major roles on the political landscape during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods, respectively. The authors trace how political authority and ideology became more centralized and the institutions of divine kingship developed as each center succeeded one another. It is clear from the data presented in this chapter that monumental constructions are at the forefront of our understanding of the development of the political landscape in the Mopan Valley, a landscape where ritual and religion played key roles in the rise of complexity.