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History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia: Three Essays PDF

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Piotr Steinkeller History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records General Editor: Gonzalo Rubio Editors: Nicole Brisch, Petra Goedegebuure, Markus Hilgert, Amélie Kuhrt, Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski, Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts, Kim Ryholt Volume 15 Piotr Steinkeller History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia Three Essays ISBN 978-1-5015-1330-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0477-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0475-4 ISSN 2161-4415 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com ToJenai,whomadeitpossible Contents Preface 1 Essay 1 Writing, Kingship and Political Discourse in Early Babylonia: Reflections on the Nature and Function of Third Millennium Historical Sources 7  Preface 7  Early Historical Sources of Southern Babylonia 8  Historical Sources of Egypt, Mesoamerica, and Ancient China 15 . Introductory Remarks 15 . Egypt 16 . Mesoamerica 18 . China 21 . Summary 24  Archaic Cuneiform Script and the History of Late Uruk Times 24  Early Southern Babylonian Kingship 28 . Distinctive Characteristics of Southern Babylonian Kingship 28 . The Cult of the Former Rulers and Priestly Officials 30 . Gudea of Lagaš and His Ideology 32 . Kingship of Early Northern Babylonia 35 . Kingship of the Sargonic Period 36 . Kingship of the Ur III Period 37  The Poverty of Historical Tradition in Early Babylonia 39  The Importance of Scribal Lore in Babylonia and Its Relevance for the Question of Early Historical Tradition 46 . Introductory Remarks 46 . The Archaic Lu A and Ad-gi₄ Lists 47 . Why Lexical Sources? 50 . The Antediluvian King List 58 . The Antediluvian Kings 61 . The Figure of abgal, apkallu 65 . The “Story about the Seven Sages” 70 . Summary and Conclusions 74 VIII Contents Appendix 1: The Priest-King of Uruk Times 82  Introductory Remarks 82  Priest-King Iconography 82 . The Warka Vase 83 . Five Uruk Seals Depicting the Priest-King and Inana 88 . Summation 89 . Further Remarks and Final Conclusion 90  The en Official in Uruk III tablets 94  The Question of nam₂-šita₂ 96  Later Data Bearing on the Archaic Kingship of Uruk 100  The Priest-King of Late Uruk Times and the Early History of the En 103 Essay 2 The Divine Rulers of Akkade and Ur: Toward a Definition of the Deification of Kings in Babylonia 107  Preface 107  The Question of the Alleged Divinity of Pre-Sargonic Rulers 110  Historical Context of the Divination of Kings in Babylonia 117  Specifics of the Divination of Sargonic and Ur III Kings 129  The Titulary of the Divine Kings and Their Familial Connections with the Divine Realm 135  Was Naram-Suen’s Deification Inspired bya Foreign Example? 154  Final Thoughts 156 Appendix 2: The Roundlet of Naram-Suen 158 Essay 3 Mythical Realities of the Early Babylonian History (or the Modern Historian and the Native Uses of History Past) 167 List of Abbreviations 198 Bibliography 199 Index 220 List and Sources of Illustrations 229 Preface Thisvolumepresentsthreeessays,whichareexpandedversionsofunpublished papers I gave, invarious forms and on different occasions, over the last fifteen years.¹ Since these papers are thematically related, and since they represent whatis,inmanyrespects,asummationofdecadesworthofthinkingandwriting abouttheshapeanddynamicsofthehistoryofthirdmillenniumBabyloniaand the waysinwhich that history is reflected in ancient written sources and art, it occurredtomethatitmightbeusefultopublishthemtogether.Thatishowthis book came about. Among the leitmotifs that weave their way through these three essays, the following two are especially prominent. The first of them is the proposition that, as I have repeatedly strived to demonstrate in my work,the course of the thirdmillenniumhistoryofBabyloniawastoalargeextentshapedbythediffer- encesthatoriginallydistinguishedthesocietyandcultureofsouthernBabylonia from those existing in Babylonia’s northern half. Such differences can be dis- cerned in the political, social, and economic organization of both regions and, evenmoreclearly,intheareasoflanguageandreligion.Inmyview,theprocess underlyingthe earlyhistoryof Babyloniaisbestdescribed asa creative conver- sion,throughwhichtwo,originallyquitedistinctivesocietiesandcultures,grad- ually assimilatedto one another, in the end becominga completely new entity. Asfaraswecantell,thisprocessofconversionwasgenerallypeacefulandfric- tion free. It certainly was not enforced in any way or fashion. In the same way that there came into being, by the end of the third millennium, a single Su- mero-Akkadian language and a single Sumero-Akkadian religion, the political and social institutions of Babylonia too were of a hybrid nature. That process of mutual assimilation had begun extremely early, probably already in Late  TheoriginalversionofEssay1waspresented,underthetitle“Writing,KingshipandPolitical DiscourseinEarlyBabylonia,”attheconference“WritingCivilization:LiteracyandSocialTrans- formationinEarlyMesopotamia,”TheRaymondandBeverlySacklerArtandArchaeologyLec- tureSeries,UniversityofConnecticut,SchoolofFineArts,Storrs,April16,2004.Theforerunner ofEssay2wasmykeynoteaddress(sametitle)atthesummerprogram“Ideology,Powerand ReligiousChangeinAntiquity,3000BC–AD600,”GraduiertenschulefürGeisteswissenschaften Göttingen,Georg-AugustGöttingenUniversität,July20‒24,2015.Essay3goesbackto“Mythical RealitiesoftheEarlyBabylonianHistory:ThoughtsabouttheModernStudyofAncientMesopo- tamianHistory,”readatthe4thInternationalMelammuCongress,“SchoolsofOrientalStudies andtheDevelopmentofModernHistoriography,”Ravenna,October13‒17,2001. DOI10.1515/9781501504778-001 2 Preface Uruktimes.²Inalllikelihood,itscoursewasfarfrombeingsimpleandstraight- forward. However, due to the near-complete absence of written data from the earlyphasesoftheEarlyDynasticperiod,onemayonlyguessaboutthespecifics of this development. The other central theme of the essays presented here is mycontention that the kingship of early southern Babylonia had a very peculiar form, and that it differed significantly from that existing at the time in northern Babylonia.The characteristics of the southern kingship and its evolution over the course of the third millennium (and going back into the Late Uruk period, see especially Appendix 1),especiallyas itconcerns its interactionwith the kingship and cul- tural institutions of northern Babylonia, are studied in detail, especially in Es- says 1 and 2. In Essay 2 I also argue that the concept of divine king, which was introduced by Naram-Suen, was an instrument of that ruler’s unificatory policies,whosepurpose wastotranscendthelimitations imposedbythetenets ofthesouthernideologyofkingship.Itisfurthersuggestedthatthedivinationof Šulgi and his successors was motivated by similar political aims. Myunderstandingofthenatureofthesouthernkingshipleadsmedevelopa numberofsecondarypoints.Oneofthemisthepropositionthatthepeculiarity of the southern ideology of kingship finds a direct reflection in the historical writings and art. I base this idea mainly on the fact that the other literary civi- lizations of the ancient world with which such a comparison may be made (Egypt, Mesoamerica, and China) do indeed demonstrate the existence of such anexus.Ithenproceedto define (primarily inEssay1)the natureofthe histor- ical sources surviving from the third-millennium South and contrast them with those that may be attributed to the northern historical tradition. In conclusion, Iarguethat,asaconsequenceofthespecialcharacterofthesouthernideology ofrulership–inparticular,theabsenceinitofadevelopeddynastictradition– the societyof earlysouthern Babylonia showedaremarkablelackof interest in things historical. Hence the pronounced absence there of historical narratives, dynastic histories, and chronographic sources (such as king-lists and a devel- oped system of dating methods). As I argue, this situation contrasts sharply with what one encounters later under the Sargonic kings and their successors, thekingsofUr,whendifferentattitudestowardhistoryand,consequently,differ- ent forms of history writing and different royal imagery had come into being.  TheearliestcertainevidenceofSumero-SemiticcontactinBabyloniaisprovidedbytheoccur- rencesoftheSemiticloanwordmaš-gan₂(Akk.maškanu),“settlement,”inthesourcesofLate Urukdate(Steinkeller1995b:695;Monaco2016:10andnotes62and68).

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