The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Volume I: From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad

805 Pages·2020·102.44 MB·English

by  Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, D. T. Potts

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The Oxford History of the Ancient
Near East
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The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East
Editors: Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts
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, interna-
tional 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 par-
ticular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact
on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed.
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The Oxford
History of the
Ancient
Near East
Volume 1: From the Beginnings
to Old Kingdom Egypt and the
Dynasty of Akkad
z
Edited by
KAREN RADNER
NADINE MOELLER
D. T. POTTS
1
iv
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Radner, Karen, editor, author. | Moeller, Nadine, editor, author. |
Potts, Daniel T., editor, author.
Title: The Oxford history of the ancient Near East /
edited by Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and Daniel T. Potts.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Contents: Volume 1. From the beginnings to
Old Kingdom Egypt and the dynasty of Akkad
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002854 | ISBN 9780190687854 (v. 1: hardback) |
ISBN 9780190687878 (v. 1: epub) | ISBN 9780197521014 (v. 1: online)
Subjects: LCSH: Egypt—Civilization. | Egypt—Antiquities. |
Egypt—History—Sources. | Middle East—Civilization. |
Middle East—Antiquities. | Middle East—History—Sources.
Classification: LCC DT60 .O97 2020 | DDC 939.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002854
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
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Contents
Preface vii
The Contributors xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East
(Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts) 1
1. Prehistoric Western Asia (Peter M. M. G. Akkermans) 27
2. Prehistoric Egypt (E. Christiana Köhler) 95
3. The Uruk Phenomenon (Gebhard J. Selz) 163
4. Early Dynastic Egypt (Laurel Bestock) 245
5. Egypt’s Old Kingdom: A View from Within (Miroslav Bárta) 316
6. Egypt’s Old Kingdom in Contact with the World
(Pierre Tallet) 397
7. Egypt’s Old Kingdom: Perspectives on Culture and Society
(Richard Bussmann) 459
8. The Early Dynastic Near East (Vitali Bartash) 531
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vi Contents
9. The Kingdom of Akkad: A View from Within
(Ingo Schrakamp) 612
10. The Kingdom of Akkad in Contact with the World
(Piotr Michalowski) 686
Index 765
vii
Preface
This is the first volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near
East; four more volumes of similar length will follow over the course of
the next few years. The five volumes will cover the long period from the
first settled communities in Western Asia and Egypt to the conquests
of Alexander of Macedon (d. 323 bc), but with a particular focus on
the three millennia starting in the late fourth millennium bc, when the
emergence of the first complex states profoundly changed human societ-
ies and cultural norms across the region.
In deciding on the cutoff point for the first volume, we had to take
into account the physical constraints of bookbinding as well as the
expectations of the readers. On balance, matching the Old Kingdom of
Egypt with the much shorter- lived Akkad state and using the detailed
discussion of these influential pathfinder polities as the endpoint of the
first volume’s narrative is satisfactory for logistical as well as conceptual
and intellectual reasons. The absolute and relative chronology of the
third millennium bc is still not securely anchored, so we must leave it
to future generations of scholars to establish whether we should have
included Egypt’s First Intermediate period or the kingdom of the Third
Dynasty of Ur in this volume after all or were justified in reserving those
chapters for the second volume. The chart on pp. x–xi presents a concise
overview of the chronological coverage of the present volume.
Because the chronology is so uncertain, we have asked our authors
to use a bare minimum of absolute dates. When such information is
mentioned, it is for the reader’s general orientation only and should
certainly not be understood as the passionate endorsement of a specific
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chronology (High, Middle, Low, Ultra Low). Volume 2, in which we
are on safer although still highly contested ground, will start off with
a chapter discussing the reconstruction of the absolute chronology of
the first half of the second millennium BC. This will address the chal-
lenges in correlating vastly different sources such as radiocarbon- dated
organic materials, tree rings, and astronomical information contained in
ancient texts.
In transcribing Egyptian proper nouns, we follow the conventions of
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw (rev. ed., Oxford
University Press, 2004). We do not use hyphenation to separate the com-
ponents of Sumerian personal names (e.g., Amargirid instead of Amar-
girid), but we follow normal practice in marking the individual words
within Akkadian proper nouns (e.g., Naram- Sin instead of Naramsin,
Dur- Akkad instead of Durakkad). This should allow the interested
reader to distinguish between Sumerian and Akkadian names, which
very often occur side by side in Mesopotamian contexts from at least
the mid- third millennium bc onward. We do not use any long vowels in
proper nouns, including modern Arabic and Farsi place names.
The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East is the brainchild of
Stefan Vranka at OUP New York, who first suggested this ambitious
publication project to us in 2015. Although the three editors are based on
two continents and in three different time zones, we worked very closely
with each other. This was greatly facilitated by the fellowships awarded
by the Center for Advanced Studies of LMU Munich (CASLMU) to
Nadine Moeller and Dan Potts, which allowed us to work together in
Munich in July 2016, 2017, and 2018 while drafting the book proposal,
recruiting authors, and fine- tuning our editorial processes. We have also
had the chance to meet up in various constellations in Chicago, Penjwin
(Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq), and Pouillon (Pays Chalosse,
France) while finalizing this first volume of the Oxford History of the
Ancient Near East.
We are very grateful to the illustrious group of scholars, a mix of
leading experts and bright new talents from all over the world, who gra-
ciously agreed to write the ten chapters that make up this first volume,
covering the period from the beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the
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Preface ix
dynasty of Akkad. Draft manuscripts were received between April 2018
and June 2019.
At LMU Munich, we are greatly indebted to Denise Bolton, who
language- edited several chapters; to Dr. Andrea Squitieri, who created all
maps on the basis of lists of place names provided by the chapter authors;
to Thomas Seidler, who consolidated the chapter bibliographies; and
to Philipp Seyr, who harmonized the Egyptian names and spellings
across the volume. Their good services were funded by the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation via the International Award for Research in
Germany 2015 to Karen Radner. We are very grateful for their patience,
speed, and attention to detail.
The cover of this volume shows, together with its modern impres-
sion on a strip of clay, the silver cylinder seal bearing the name and titles
of the Egyptian ruler Sahura (Dynasty 5), which is today housed in the
collection of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland (accession
number 57.1748). It is the first of five cylinder seals from different parts
of the Near East that we have chosen for the covers of the individual vol-
umes of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. To us, not only are
these seals beautiful and meaningful objects, each in its own right, but as
a group they serve to epitomize the region’s great cultural variations and
commonalities.