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

805 Pages·2020·102.44 MB·English
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Preview The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Volume I: From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad

i The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East ii 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. iii 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 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. 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 v 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 vi 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 viii viii Preface 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 ix 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.

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