History & Geography

Abstract

History & Geography Christopher T. Begg, Victor H. Matthews, Eric F. Mason, William J. Urbrock, Isaac M. Alderman, and Joseph E. Jensen 1137. [Twenty-Third Kushite Dynasty] Matthew J. Adams, "Manetho's Twenty-Third Dynasty and the Legitimation of Kushite Rule over Egypt," AntOr 9 (2011) 19-46. This paper considers the identification of the kings cited in the epitomes of Manetho's 23rd Dynasty and their function in the historiographical traditions of ancient Egypt. Against the long-standing scholarly rejection of Manetho's 23rd Dynasty as devoid of historical content, A. argues that the names of the 23rd Dynasty kings are part of an authentic historiographical tradition that originated with the Kushite king Taharka. A. further suggests specific reasons why, and a historical reconstruction of the process whereby, the 23rd Dynasty came to be integrated into other king-list traditions. Additionally, he identifies specific functions for the as-yet-unidentified names "Psammous" and "Zet" in Julius Africanus's version of the epitome of Manetho. The argument made by A. takes into account the political and cultural perspective of the Kushite kings who were responsible for a strand of the Egyptian king-list tradition and offers some interpretations of Kushite royal practices on this basis. [Adapted from published abstract] 1138. [Tello/Girsu] Daniel Arnaud, "Note sur les panthéons (officiel et populaire) de Tello à l'époque paléo-babylonienne," AO 33 (2015) 201-7. The onomastics of Old Babylonian Tello (ancient Girsu) offer an unexpected glimpse into the ideology of the site in the period in question: there were two pantheons, an administrative or official one and the other of a more popular character. The former reflected local nationalism, while the latter expressed nostalgia for the vanished Ur empire. [Adapted from published abstract] 1139. [First Temple Vessels] Debra Scoggins Ballentine, "Exile and Return of the First Temple Vessels: Competing Postexilic Perspectives and Claims of Continuity," NEA 82 (2019) 132-39. Biblical texts contain varying accounts of the temple vessels' "fate" during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. Biblical historiography features a claim of continuity of the vessels despite repeated disruption and reformulation of their physical location and material. Cultural memory of the postexilic reconstitution of the cultus evokes the motif of the temple vessels returning to Jerusalem as a way of claiming continuity with preexilic cultus. The vessels serve as a "continuity theme" operating synecdochically for the temple [End Page 380] cultus as a whole. Thus, their physical integrity served to legitimate particular ideologies and social groupings within the literary portrayals of postexilic Jerusalem. [Adapted from published abstract] 1140. [Esarhaddon Succession Treaty] Christina Barcina, "The Display of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Kalḫu as a Means of Internal Political Control," AntOr 14 (2016) 11-52. In 672 b.c., Esarhaddon made the citizens of Assyria swear a loyalty oath to his chosen successor, Ashurbanipal, in the Nabû Temple at Kalḫu, as we learn from three letters stemming from the royal archives of Nineveh. This oath and its related stipulations were inscribed on unusually large tablets and left on display in the Throne Room of the Temple. However, the identity of those pledging their loyalty to Ashurbanipal on the relevant lines of the tablets, i.e. city-lords from the eastern periphery of the empire, is at odds with the information on the matter given in the above-mentioned letters. The identical oath-tablet recently excavated at a temple at Tell Ta͑yinat in southwestern Turkey that was sworn by the provincial governor and the "apparat" of Kullania calls for a reassessment of the reasons behind the display of the tablets at Kalḫu that were seemingly intended for eastern chieftains. The religious nature of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty as attested by the visual, textual, and findspot character of the tablets, which has been extensively analyzed by previous scholarship, should not obscure the fact that Esarhaddon may have taken advantage of these features as well as earlier practices associated with the display of vassal treaties to conceal his fear of treason on the part of the intended target audience, i.e. high-ranking Assyrian officials. [Adapted from published abstract] 1141. ["Midian alongside...