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Author: Mario Liverani Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801473586 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
The essays included in this volume analyze important historical texts from various regions of the Ancient Near East. The distinguished Italian historian Mario Liverani suggests that these historiographical texts were of a "true" historical nature and that their literary forms achieved their intended results. Liverani focuses on two central themes in these texts: myth and politics.There is a close connection, Liverani finds, between the writing of history and the validation of political order and political action. History defines the correct role and behavior of political leaders, especially when they do not possess the validation provided by tradition. Historical texts, he discovers, are more often the tools for supporting change than for supporting stability.Liverani demonstrates that history writing in the Ancient Near East made frequent use of mythical patterns, wisdom motifs, and literary themes in order to fulfill its audience's cultural expectations. The resulting nonhistorical literary forms can mislead interpretation, but an analysis of these forms allows the texts' sociopolitical and communicative frameworks to emerge.
Author: Mario Liverani Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801473586 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
The essays included in this volume analyze important historical texts from various regions of the Ancient Near East. The distinguished Italian historian Mario Liverani suggests that these historiographical texts were of a "true" historical nature and that their literary forms achieved their intended results. Liverani focuses on two central themes in these texts: myth and politics.There is a close connection, Liverani finds, between the writing of history and the validation of political order and political action. History defines the correct role and behavior of political leaders, especially when they do not possess the validation provided by tradition. Historical texts, he discovers, are more often the tools for supporting change than for supporting stability.Liverani demonstrates that history writing in the Ancient Near East made frequent use of mythical patterns, wisdom motifs, and literary themes in order to fulfill its audience's cultural expectations. The resulting nonhistorical literary forms can mislead interpretation, but an analysis of these forms allows the texts' sociopolitical and communicative frameworks to emerge.
Author: Mario Liverani Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000413098 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
In this volume, Niels Peter Lemche and Emanuel Pfoh present an anthology of seminal studies by Mario Liverani, a foremost scholar of the Ancient Near East. This collection contains 18 essays, 11 of which have originally been published in Italian and are now published in English for the first time. It represents an important contribution to Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies, exposing the innovative interpretations of Liverani on many historical and ideological aspects of ancient society. Topics range from the Amarna letters and the Ugaritic epic, to the ‘origins’ of Israel. Historiography, Ideology and Politics in the Ancient Near East and Israel will be an invaluable resource for Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical scholars, as well as graduate and post-graduate students.
Author: Agnès Garcia-Ventura Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 1646020871 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
The present volume collects eighteen essays exploring the history of ancient Near Eastern studies. Combining diverse approaches—synthetic and analytic, diachronic and transnational—this collection offers critical reflections on the who, why, and how of this cluster of fields. How have political contexts determined the conduct of research? How do academic agendas reflect larger social, economic, and cultural interests? How have schools of thought and intellectual traditions configured, and sometimes predetermined, the study of the ancient Near East? Contributions treating research during the Nazi and fascist periods examine the interpenetration of academic work with politics, while contributions dealing with specific national contexts disclose fresh perspectives on individual scholars as well as the conditions and institutions in which they worked. Particular attention is given to scholarship in countries such as Turkey, Portugal, Iran, China, and Spain, which have hitherto been marginal to historiographic accounts of ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Selim Ferru Adali, Silvia Alaura, Isabel Almeida, Petr Charvát, Parsa Daneshmand, Eva von Dassow, Hakan Erol, Sebastian Fink, Jakob Flygare, Pietro Giammellaro, Carlos Gonçalves, Katrien de Graef, Steven W. Holloway, Ahmed Fatima Kzzo, Changyu Liu, Patrick Maxime Michel, Emanuel Pfoh, Jitka Sýkorová, Luděk Vacín, and Jordi Vidal.
Author: Emanuel Pfoh Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317392310 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Syria-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age presents an explicitly anthropological perspective on politics and social relationships. An anthropological reading of the textual and epigraphic remains of the time allows us to see how power was constructed and political subordination was practised and expressed. Syria-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age identifies a particular political ontology, native to ancient Syro-Palestinian societies, which informs and constitutes their social worlds. This political ontology, based on patronage relationships, provides a way of understanding the political culture and the social dynamics of ancient Levantine peoples. It also illuminates the historical processes taking place in the region, processes based on patrimonial social structures and articulated through patron-client bonds.
Author: Karen Radner Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019068786X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 800
Book Description
This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a highly diverse, international team of leading scholars, whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. Commencing with the domestication of plants and animals, and the foundation of the first permanent settlements in the region, Volume I contains ten chapters that provide a masterful survey of the earliest dynasties and territorial states in the ancient Near East, concluding with the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia. Politics, ideology, religion, art, crafts, economy, military developments, and the built environment are all examined. Uniquely, emphasis is placed upon elucidating both the internal dynamics of these states and communities, as well as their external relationships with their neighbors in the wider region. The result is a thoughtful, critical, and robust survey of the populations that laid the foundation for all future developments in the ancient Near East.
Author: Marc Van De Mieroop Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 111871816X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 451
Book Description
Incorporating the latest scholarly research, the third edition of A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC presents a comprehensive overview of the multicultural civilizations of the ancient Near East. Integrates the most up-to-date research, and includes a richer selection of supplementary materials Addresses the wide variety of political, social, and cultural developments in the ancient Near East Updated features include new “Key Debate” boxes at the end of each chapter to engage students with various perspectives on a range of critical issues; a comprehensive timeline of events; and 46 new illustrations, including 12 color photos Features a new chapter addressing governance and continuity in the region during the Persian Empire Offers in-depth, accessible discussions of key texts and sources, including the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh
Author: Emanuel Pfoh Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134947755 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
Taking advantage of critical methodology for history-writing and the use of anthropological insights and ethnographic data from the modern Middle East, this study aims at providing new understandings on the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine and the socio-political dynamics at work in the Levant during antiquity. The book begins with a discussion of matters of historiography and history-writing, both in ancient and modern times, and an evaluation on the incidence of the modern theological discourse in relation to history and history-writing. Chapter 2 evaluates the methodology used by biblical scholars for gaining knowledge on ancient Israelite society. Pfoh argues that such attempts often apply socio-scientific models on biblical narratives without external evidence of the reconstructed past, producing a virtual past reality which cannot be confirmed concretely. Chapter 3 deals with the archaeological remains usually held as clear evidence of Israelite statehood in the tenth century BCE. The main criticism is directed towards archaeological interpretations of the data which are led by the biblical narratives of the books of Judges and Samuel, resulting in a harmonic blend of ancient literature and modern anthropological models on state-formation. Chapter 4 continues with the discussion on how anthropological models should be employed for history-writing. Socio-political concepts, such as chiefdom society or state formation should not be imposed on the contents of ancient literary sources (i.e., the Bible) but used instead to analyse our primary sources (the archaeological and epigraphic records), in order to create a socio-historical account. The final chapter attempts to provide an historical explanation regarding the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine without relying on the Bible but only on archaeology, epigraphy and anthropological insights. This Israel is not the biblical one. This is the Israel from history, the one that the modern historian aims at recovering from the study of ancient epigraphic and archaeological remains. The arguments presented challenge the idea that the biblical writers were recording historical events as we understand this practice nowadays and that we can use the biblical records for creating critical histories of Israel in ancient Palestine. It also questions the existence of undisputable traces of statehood in the archaeological record from the Iron Age, as the biblical images about a United Monarchy might lead us to believe. Thus, drawing on ethnographic insights, we may gain a better knowledge on how ancient Levantine societies functioned, providing us with a context for understanding the emergence of historical Israel as a major highland patronate, with a socio-political life of almost two centuries. It is during the later periods of ancient Palestines history, the Persian and the Graeco-Roman, that we find the proper context into which biblical Israel is created, beginning a literary life of more than two millennia.
Author: Mehmet-Ali Ataç Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108688403 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Discussions of apocalyptic thought and its sources in the ancient Near East, particularly Mesopotamia, have a long scholarly history, with a renewed interest and focus in the recent decades. Outside Assyriological scholarship as well, studies of the apocalyptic give significant credit to the ancient Near East, especially Babylonia and Iran, as potential sources for the manifestations of this phenomenon in the Hellenistic period. The emphasis on kingship and empire in apocalyptic modes of thinking warrants special attention paid to the regal art of ancient Mesopotamia and adjacent areas in its potential to express the relevant notions. In this book, Mehmet-Ali Ataç demonstrates the importance of visual evidence as a source for apocalyptic thought. Focusing on the so-called investiture painting from Mari, he relates it to parallel evidence from the visual traditions of the Assyrian Empire, ancient Egypt, and Hittite Anatolia.
Author: Matthew J. M. Coomber Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1532657986 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
Over the past few decades biblical economics has developed into an important subfield of biblical studies. Through examining the economic realities that lay behind Hebrew biblical texts and archaeological findings, biblical economics has led to greater understandings of the cultures and experiences of ancient Hebrew communities, the legal and religious texts they produced, and of how those texts may or may not relate to the experiences of communities who continue to receive them, today. Economics and Empire in the Ancient Near East has brought together ten scholars of biblical economics and one economic anthropologist to create a repository of what is understood about the economic realities of Southwest Asia in the late second and first millennia BCE. In addition to furthering the research and teaching interests of biblical scholars, this volume has also been created for the benefit of economic historians, anthropologists, and sociologists.
Author: C. L. Crouch Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 311022352X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 261
Book Description
The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings’ military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, begun by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics.
Author: Mario Liverani
Author: Mario Liverani
Author: Mario Liverani
Author: Agnès Garcia-Ventura
Author: Emanuel Pfoh
Author: Karen Radner
Author: Marc Van De Mieroop
Author: Emanuel Pfoh
Author: Mehmet-Ali Ataç
Author: Matthew J. M. Coomber
Author: C. L. Crouch