Ancient tax tokens, trade licenses and metrological records?: Making sense of Indus inscribed objects through script-internal, contextual, linguistic, and ethnohistorical lenses.

This article argues that most of the inscribed objects (seals, miniature-tablets etc.) of ancient Indus valley civilization were essentially administrative-commercial tools (tax-tokens, trade-licences, metrological records, etc.) used for controlling the complex trading economy spread across the Indus settlements. It also argues that the inscriptions logographically encoded a commercial sublanguage to convey information about kinds of taxes/tithes, tax-receiving entities; tax-rates and modes; and activities (such as cultivation, manufacture, and trading of specific commodities) that these taxes covered and authorized. Building on the functional classification of Indus logograms performed in the author's previous structural analysis of Indus inscriptions and analysing various script-internal, archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence, this article seeks to interpret the semantic functionalities of different sign-classes. It proposes that: i) The numerical and metrological signs were used to represent certain tax-collection rates fixed for certain commodities, whereas the lexeme-signs following them ( ) represented those taxed commodities. ii) The Crop-signs ( ) represented different harvested grain-based taxes. iii) The phrase-final/terminal logograms ( ) encoded certain metrological modes (volumetric, weight-based, reed-measure-based etc.) of tax-collection, and thus metonymically encoded certain broad tax-categories. iv) The lexeme-signs appearing in the initial parts of the grammatically complex inscriptions ( ) represented the tax-collector entities and purpose of tax-payment. v) The signs mostly occurring in pre-phrase-final positions ( ) represented the mode of tax-payments through predefined equivalencies. vi) The bird-like logograms ( ) represented different precious stones including lapis lazuli, cornelian, agate etc.; while the fish-like logograms ( ) signified different apotropaic "fish-eye-beads", which were one of the most precious exported Indus commodities, coveted in ancient Near East. Analysing the related lexical roots of such commodities— e.g. ivory ("piru"); lapis lazuli whose colour was compared to the iridescent pigeon-neck ("kāsaka hya kapautaka"); and "eye-beads" (maṇi), in Mesopotamian lexicons, Amarna letters, ancient texts in Old-Persian language, BMAC languages, Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil etc. — this study claims that such words had originated in the Indus valley, and had spread to the languages of other civilizations through trade networks. Tracing out more such ancient metrological and revenue related terminologies (droṇa, bhāra, kṛṣṇala, raktikā, śara etc.) this study finally offers decipherment of a few Indus inscriptions.

2. Reconstructing ancient Egypt

‘Reconstructing ancient Egypt’ discusses the challenge of reconstructing ancient Egypt. New paradigms have been adopted by different generations of Egyptologists, gradually transforming the accepted picture of ancient Egyptian culture. Moreover, new methods, such as innovative excavation techniques or sophisticated processes of scientific analysis, have, at various times, altered people's perceptions of the surviving evidence from ancient Egypt. An important question to ask is: what can geology and archaeology reveal about the origins of the Narmer Palette? The discoveries of the Avaris frescos and the Amarna Letters, as well as the excavations of Flinders Petrie, are all important parts of this history.

Sea Raiders in the Amarna Letters?

The Amarna corpus contains several references to maritime conflict and related activities in the 14th century BCE, including blockades, the movement of troops, the capturing of ships at sea, and seaborne evacuation. While most of these are encountered in the context of conflicts between Levantine polities, there are clear references to what might on the one hand be called piracy, but on the other hand either acts of naval warfare or naval elements of a larger war effort, on both land and sea. This paper considers the martial maritime activities discussed in the Amarna letters, with particular emphasis on two uniquely controversial groups mentioned in this corpus in the context of maritime violence: the ‘ships of the men of the city of Arwad’ and the ‘miši-men.’ While the men of Arwad are identified with a polity on the Phoenician coast, they are referred to only by this collective term, even when mentioned in lists that otherwise contain only rulers. The miši, on the other hand, are not associated with any specific name or toponym. The purpose of this study is to identify just what can be determined about the roles and affiliations of these two groups in their Amarna context in this period.

The destruction of Hazor: Israelite history and the construction of history in Israel

The present study presents an alternative model of pre-monarchic Israel’s political organization in tandem with an investigation into the role of place in the preservation of memory that explains how and why the tradition of Hazor’s demise was included in the Bible. Corresponding to the type of decentralized political organization attested in the Amarna letters, the core narratives in Judges depict Israel as a confederation of independent entities whose concerns revolved around local affairs. As the identity of Israel evolved over time, the memories of the most significant of these affairs were retained, often with the aid of material remains in the familiar landscape. The apparent injunction against building over Hazor’s 13th century palace ruins during Israel’s subsequent occupation and the inclusion of Hazor’s destruction from competing perspectives in the Bible suggest that it was an important event in Israel’s history, even if the entirety of Israel was not involved.