Author: Jane A. Hill
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1934536644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
Experiencing Power, Generating Authority offers a cross-cultural comparison of the cosmic ideology and political structure of kingship in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Author: Karen Radner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190687576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 977
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Book Description
"The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East offers a comprehensive and fully illustrated survey of the history of Egypt and Western Asia (Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran) in five volumes, from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander of Great. The authors represent a highly international mix of leading academics whose expertise brings alive the people, places and times of the remote past. The emphasis lies firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities under investigation. The individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, giving special attention to the most recent archaeological finds and how they have impacted our interpretation. The first volume covers the long period from the mid-tenth millennium to the late third millennium BC and presents the history of the Near East in ten chapters "From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad". Key topics include the domestication of animals and plants, the first permanent settlements, the subjugation and appropriation of the natural environment, the emergence of complex states and belief systems, the invention of the earliest writing systems and the wide-ranging trade networks that linked diverse population groups across deserts, mountains and oceans"--
Author: Alexa Bartelmus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501504185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Karduniaš, as the kingdom of the Kassites in Babylonia was called in ancient times, was the neighbor and rival of great powers such as Egypt, the Hittites, and Assyria. But while our knowledge of the latter kingdoms has made huge progress in the last decades, the Kassites have until recently been largely ignored by modern scholarship. Recently a number of scholars have embarked on research into different aspects of Late Bronze Age Babylonia. The desire to share the results of these new investigations resulted in an international conference, which was held at Munich University in July 2011. The presentations given at this meeting have been revised for publication in the current volume. This book gives an overview of current research on the Kassites and is the first larger survey of their culture ever. An invaluable introduction by Kassite expert Professor John A. Brinkman is followed by seventeen specialist contributions investigating different aspects of the Kassites. These include detailed historical, social, cultural, archaeological, and art historical studies concerning the Kassites from their first arrival in Mesopotamia, during the period when a Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylonia (c. 1500-1550 BC), and in the subsequent aftermath. Concentrating on southern Mesopotamia the contributions also discuss Kassite relations and presence in neighboring regions. The book is completed by a substantial bibliography and a detailed index.
Author: Dominic Lieven
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
A dazzling account of the men (and occasional woman) who led the world’s empires, a book that probes the essence of leadership and power through the centuries and around the world. From the rise of Sargon of Akkad, who in the third millennium BCE ruled what is now Iraq and Syria, to the collapse of the great European empires in the twentieth century, the empire has been the dominant form of power in history. Dominic Lieven’s expansive book explores strengths and failings of the human beings who held those empires together (or let them crumble). He projects the power, terror, magnificence, and confidence of imperial monarchy, tracking what they had in common as well as what made some rise to glory and others fail spectacularly, and at what price each destiny was reached. Lieven’s characters—Constantine, Chinggis Khan, Trajan, Suleyman, Hadrian, Louis XIV, Maria Theresa, Peter the Great, Queen Victoria, and dozens more—come alive with color, energy, and detail: their upbringings, their loves, their crucial spouses, their dreadful children. They illustrate how politics and government are a gruelling business: a ruler needed stamina, mental and physical toughness, and self-confidence. He or she needed the sound judgement of problems and people which is partly innate but also the product of education and experience. A good brain was essential for setting priorities, weighing conflicting advice, and matching ends to needs. A diplomatically astute marriage was often even more essential. Emperors (and the rare empresses) could be sacred symbols, warrior kings, political leaders, chief executive officers of the government machine, heads of a family, and impresarios directing the many elements of "soft power" essential to any regime’s survival. What was it like to live and work in such an extraordinary role? What qualities did it take to perform this role successfully? Lieven traces the shifting balance among these elements across eras that encompass a staggering array of events from the rise of the world’s great religions to the scientific revolution, the expansion of European empires across oceans, the great twentieth century conflicts, and the triumph of nationalism over imperialism. The rule of the emperor may be over, but Lieven shows us how we live with its poltical and cultural legacies today.
Author: Sara Kipfer
Publisher: Kohlhammer Verlag
ISBN: 3170370413
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Power comprises one of the key topics of the book of Samuel. This theme encompasses tribal contentions, power differentials between religious authorities and kings, fathers and sons, men and women. The articles assembled here explore Israel's search for political identity and Samuel's critique of monarchy, the book's constructions of power and powerlessness, and the editors' and early audiences' postmonarchic reflections. Historical and social-scientific approaches to the book of Samuel find ancient Near Eastern parallels for the political organization of Israel and describe the social conditions under authoritarian regimes. Redactional approaches examine the diachronic development of Samuel's varying perceptions of monarchy, from that institution's inception through its entrenchment in Israelite and Judahite society, until it underwent a sudden, cataclysmic failure. And literary and theological approaches advocate for contemporary reconsideration and application of the book's more noble principles.
Author: Louise M. Pryke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317506707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Gilgamesh focuses on the eponymous hero of the world’s oldest epic and his legendary adventures. However, it also goes further and examines the significance of the story’s Ancient Near Eastern context, and what it tells us about notions of kingship, animality, and the natures of mortality and immortality. In this volume, Louise M. Pryke provides a unique perspective to consider many foundational aspects of Mesopotamian life, such as the significance of love and family, the conceptualisation of life and death, and the role of religious observance. The final chapter assesses the powerful influence of Gilgamesh on later works of ancient literature, from the Hebrew Bible, to the Odyssey, to The Tales of the Arabian Nights, and his reception through to the modern era. Gilgamesh is an invaluable tool for anyone seeking to understand this fascinating figure, and more broadly, the relevance of Near Eastern myth in the classical world and beyond.
Author: Tyler R. Yoder
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575064596
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
The metaphor is a hallmark of Classical Hebrew poetry. Some metaphors, such as “Yhwh is king” or “Yhwh is warrior,” play a foundational role. The same does not hold for metaphors from the fishing industry. Because they had access to only two major freshwater sources, archaeological research demonstrates that this industry did not play a major socioeconomic role in ancient Israel. Fishing has nevertheless made a substantial contribution to prophetic and wisdom literature. All metaphors manifest reality, but given the physical circumstances of a largely agrarian, nonmarine society, what does the sustained presentation of fishing metaphors in the Hebrew Bible communicate? Examining the use of fishing images in the Hebrew Bible is a formidable task that demands an open mind and a capacity to mine the gamut of contemporaneous evidence. In Fishers of Fish and Fishers of Men, Tyler Yoder presents the first literary study devoted to the fishing images used in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as in the Mesopotamian textual records. This calls for a penetrating look into cultural contact with Israel’s neighbors to the east (Mesopotamia) and southwest (Egypt). Though nearly all fishing metaphors in the Hebrew Bible carry overt royal or divine connotations that mirror uses well-attested in Mesopotamian literature, this comparative analysis remains a largely untapped area of research. In this study of the diverse literary qualities of fishing images, Yoder offers a holistic understanding of how one integral component of ancient Near Eastern society affected the whole, bringing together the assemblage of disparate materials related to this field of study to enable scholars to integrate these data into related research and move the conversation forward.
Author: Elke Brüggen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311138182X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
Given that strong asymmetrical dependencies have shaped human societies throughout history, this kind of social relation has also left its traces in many types of texts. Using written and oral narratives in attempts to reconstruct the history of asymmetrical dependency comes along with various methodological challenges, as the 15 articles in this interdisciplinary volume illustrate. They focus on a wide range of different (factual and fictional) text types, including inscriptions from Egyptian tombs, biblical stories, novels from antiquity, the Middle High German Rolandslied, Ottoman court records, captivity narratives, travelogues, the American gift book The Liberty Bell, and oral narratives by Caribbean Hindu women. Most of the texts discussed in this volume have so far received comparatively little attention in slavery and dependency studies. The volume thus also seeks to broaden the archive of texts that are deemed relevant in research on the histories of asymmetrical dependencies, bringing together perspectives from disciplines such as Egyptology, theology, literary studies, history, and anthropology
Author: Irene Sibbing-Plantholt
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004512411
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
This book presents the first in-depth analysis of Mesopotamian healing goddesses and their relationship to asûs, “healers”. Through this, Sibbing-Plantholt provides unprecedented insight into the diverse Mesopotamian medical marketplace and how professional healers operating within it legitimized themselves.
Author: M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004459537
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 625
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Book Description
In the House of Heqanakht: Text and Context in Ancient Egypt gathers Egyptological articles in honor of James P. Allen, Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University.
