Great King Research Articles

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age

Offering fascinating insights into the people and politics of the ancient near Eastern kingdoms, Trevor Bryce uses the letters of the five Great Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Hatti, Mitanni and Assyria as the focus of a fresh look at this turbulent and volatile region in the late Bronze Age. Numerous extracts from the letters are constantly interwoven into the fabric of narrative and discussion, and this lively approach allows us to witness history through the eyes of the people who lived it, revealing the personalities and reactions of kings, queens, princes, princesses and royal officials more than 3500 years ago to the current events of the day.

Achämeniden am Schwarzen Meer

This article deals with a marble head wearing a Persian tiara in the Museum for Anatolian Civilations at Ankara, which was found in Heraclea Pontica. Although it was published twice in the mid-eighties of the last centuryby Akurgal the schoolars took hardly notice of it. The author of the peresent article argues that the heraclian head represents a man of Persian origin rather than an 'Anatolian Greek', as was proposed by Akurgal. As Thomas Schafer pointed out some years ago the rich traces of the oxidation on the beard show clearly that the short cut beard was indeed covered by a wig of bronze. In addition to this, there are also traces of rust surrounding the upper part of the tiara like a tie, which indicates on the existence of a diadem. Such a combination of headgear could be worn obviously by Persian nobles, kings, and satraps, but also by local dynasts. At the time when the sculpture was created at the end of the 6 t h century BC, there was no tyrant or dynast ruling in heracleia. The political system was democracy when the city was founded about 560 BC, then, it turned to oligarchy. From the middle of the sixth century the city came under the control of the Great King, but thanks to loyality of the oligarchs it kept its independency. In this historical context, it seems plausible that this headless statue was set up for a Persian ruler, possibly for the Cappadocian satrap Ariaramnes or the great King Darius I during his Black Sea campaing against the Scythians in 5I3/5I2 BC.

Cambodian Buddhism: history and practice

The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a book-length, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture. Beginning with a coherent history of the presence of religion in the country from its inception to the present day, the book goes on to furnish insights into the distinctive nature of Cambodia's important yet overlooked manifestation of Theravada Buddhist tradition and to show how it reestablished itself following almost total annihilation during the Pol Pot period. Historical sections cover the dominant role of tantric Mahayana concepts and rituals under the last great king of Angkor, Jayavarman VII (1181-c. 1220); the rise of Theravada traditions after the collapse of the Angkorian civilization; the impact of foreign influences on the development of the nineteenth-century monastic order; and politicized Buddhism and the Buddhist contribution to an emerging sense of Khmer nationhood. The Buddhism practiced in Cambodia has much in common with parallel traditions in Thailand and Sri Lanka, yet there are also significant differences. The book concentrates on these and illustrates how a distinctly Cambodian Theravada developed by accommodating itself to premodern Khmer modes of thought. Following the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970, Cambodia slid rapidly into disorder and violence. Later chapters chart the elimination of institutional Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge and its gradual reemergence after Pol Pot, the restoration of the monastic order's prerevolutionary institutional forms, and the emergence of contemporary Buddhist groupings.

Politik Pendidikan Islam Paku Buwana X

The kratons of Java were at times themselves leading agents of Islamisation. Sultan Agung's the great kings of Mataram dynastic has been reputation as reconciler of courtly culture and Islamic piety. Islamisation in Java has been stagnancy after the death of Sultan Agung, and continued centuries later by kings of Kasunanan, that is Sunan Paku Buwana (PBJ II, PB IV, PB VI, and PBX. This articles tries to analysis Islamic education politics in the reign of Sunan PBX. The background of Sunan's political thinking was to restored the power that has been disappeared by penetration of Dutch colonial The strategy to restored the power that is built Islamic School in 1905, named Madrasah Mambaul ‘Ulum. This madrasah consists of elementary school level (ibtidayah), secondary school level (tsanawiyah), and senior high school level (aliyah). For ibtidaiyah level expanded in seven regencies, i.e. Klaten, Boyolali, Kartosuro, Sukoharjo, Wonogiri, Sragen, and Surakarta. The expanded Ibtidaiyah level has been provoked revivalism and Islam solidarity, this phenomenon was exceptionally beneficial to the Sarekat Islam.

The Name of Offa's Queen: Beowulf 1931–2

For some time it has been scholarly consensus that the name of the wife of Offa, king of the continental Angles, is given in verse 1931b of Beowulf, though there is disagreement whether the name is Þryð or MōdÞryð, and whether the ending -o in the manuscript is organic or a case inflexion. Several difficulties attend this assumption. Manuscript mod is unlikely to be a separate word, since the syntax would then demand the meaning ‘arrogance’, though this meaning for the word is otherwise unattested in the poem. Yet the compound MōdÞryð(o) raises equally notable problems, since parallels like higeÞryðe wæg ‘acted arrogantly’ (Genesis A 2238b) suggest that the verse is a formula that does not contain a personal name. The strongest evidence for the standard view, the supposed parallel to the tale in the Vitae duorum Offarum (ca. 1200), describing the wickedness of (Quen)Drida, wife of Offa's English descendant Offa II, the great king of the Mercians, is vitiated by the realization that this woman's name actually was Cynethryth. Thus the similarity in the names cannot be said to evidence transferral of the tale alluded to in Beowulf to the wife of Offa's descendant; and once the coincidence of names is accordingly seen to be irrelevant to the question of the connections between the tales, the remaining resemblances are so feeble that the assumption of any notable relation between the Vitae and Beowulf must be abandoned. (The relevant portions of the Latin legend of Offa II, which seem not to have been translated previously into a modern language, are rendered into English in the appendix.) The best solution was offered, though without much conviction, by E. A. Kock: the woman's name is given not in 1931b but in 1932a: it is Fremu. This analysis offers several advantages. It allows mōdÞryðο wæg to be the formula it appears to be, meaning ‘acted arrogantly’. The verse then introduces the basis for contrast with Queen Hygd, and the antithesis between her and Offa's queen, while still abrupt, is thus not quite as irrational as it would otherwise appear. The mysterious ending -o can then also be explained as another instance of the scribe's habit of writing -o for final -a, an explanation that is not possible if (Mōd)Þryð is a name. And if Fremu is a name, it is no longer necessary to assume an i-stem adjective of uncertain meaning, an adjective that is not otherwise securely attested in Old English and which has no i-stem Germanic cognates. Etymology dictates that this presumed adjective ought to mean something like ‘excellent’ (as Frederick Klaeber supposes), yet this meaning seems inapposite applied to a young woman described at this place as acting so wickedly. Disposing of the adjective thus also relieves us of the obligation of assuming an improbably pejorative meaning for it.

Mental Disorder that Afflicted King David the Great

This research uses the tools of modern medical science to study ancient descriptions of the symptoms suffered by King David. Biblical texts were examined, with a close study of verses relating to the mental disorder that afflicted King David, the second and greatest King of Israel, who ruled more than 3525 years ago. We include no commentaries, but refer only to the words of the Bible exactly as written. Evaluation of the passages referring to King David indicated that he was afflicted by some mental disorder, and among the many possibilities major depression, dysthymia and minor depression are the most likely. Of these diagnoses, major depression seems the most acceptable. This report suggests that the roots of contemporary psychiatry can be traced back to Biblical times.

The mystery of the Persian mummy: original or fake?

We report on the 14C dating of a mummy found two years ago in the western part of Pakistan. According to the drawings and inscriptions on the coffin it was thought to be the daughter of Xerxes, the great king of ancient Persia (518–465 BC). AMS measurements were performed on pieces of textile, straw mat and charcoal resulting in a 14C content of about 113 pMC instead of an expected value of 75 pMC. Additional measurements of bone-, skin- and muscular tissue samples suggested the individual died in AD 1994–1996 and revealed the mummy to be a modern fake.

The mystery of the Persian mummy: original or fake?

We report on the 14 C dating of a mummy found two years ago in the western part of Pakistan. According to the drawings and inscriptions on the coffin it was thought to be the daughter of Xerxes, the great king of ancient Persia (518–465 BC). AMS measurements were performed on pieces of textile, straw mat and charcoal resulting in a 14 C content of about 113 pMC instead of an expected value of 75 pMC. Additional measurements of bone-, skin- and muscular tissue samples suggested the individual died in AD 1994–1996 and revealed the mummy to be a modern fake.

Burke, Paine, and the Newspapers: An "Archaeology" of Political Knowledge 1789-93

The MURTHER took place at four o'clock this morning, and was conducted in the most private manner. The Guillotine was erected in ya court of the Temple--a hole was dug in it, into which the King's head fell, and his body precipitated afterward .... (This must be understood as the prevailing report of the moment. It is impossible vouch for its absolute truth.) This scene of infernal assassination, which a base and cowardly faction have now degraded human nature by executing calls for a marked execration which it is not in the power of language convey .... Almighty vengeance must be the portion of who have thus step by step arrived at this damnable crisis. To that awful moment, when the great King of Kings shall sit in tremendous judgement of men and daemons, do we consign the diabolic spirits. It will come, and in thunders speak terrors their hearts, now hardened in human iniquity. THIS DESCRIPTION OF THE FRENCH REGICIDE FIRST APPEARED IN THE St. James' Chronicle on 24th January 1793, and was copied during the next few days in a number of other pro-ministerial newspapers. Its publication was a few days after the execution of Louis Capet, and clearly uses and elaborates upon a rumor suit the political purposes of that newspaper; the French King, murdered at night, in private, the perpetrators using all the cunning of a villain in a Gothic novel keep their crime secret. The Gothic tropes are built up so that, despite the partially-admitted dubiousness of the narrative being reported, a number of eschatological prophesies are made about the results. Today we would probably respond this passage by claiming that it is journalism, as it draws conclusions from facts not yet established, and accepts rumor as fact simply because it suits a particular political agenda. Against this, intend in the following pages argue that the imagination of political action, in this case imagining the King's death, cannot be read as simply bad journalism in the early 1790s; that in fact the equivocal nature of political factuality and truth steins from the whole system of the representation of political events at this time, and that this act of creative imagining is one of the ways in which political activity could legitimately be construed during the 1790s. I hope you do not think me weak enough, wrote Burke in a letter of January 1790, to form my of what is doing here [i.e., in France] upon the representations of newspapers, much less upon of a country in which the true spirit of the several transactions cannot be known. (1) The letter was probably intended for Thomas Paine, or at least reads very like a reply a letter that Burke had received from him a few days before, in which Paine assumes of his addressee an over-reliance on the London press for knowledge of the situation in France. Paine had stated, in the English papers is either untrue or misrepresented (75). So the writers of the most famed political appropriations of the events of the French Revolution, upon which so much debate turned, did not think much of the reporting be found in newspapers. Instead, they claimed more privileged access information, Paine through his friendship with Lafayette and his late presence in France, Burke by a more general appeal men of quality, or, those who have a considerable share in the formation of public measures (79). You really shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers-hardly a surprising sentiment find in the correspondence of two men of letters and active politicians such as Burke and Paine. It is perhaps statements such as these, and also the apparent disparities throughout the eighteenth century between government policy and opinion as expressed in the newspapers, that have led certain historians claim that the influence of the press on political affairs at this time was strictly limited; that the newspapers were much more concerned with the commercial interests of their readers; that people in reality did not believe what they read, or that they did not form effective critical based on what they read; and even if they did, the executive powers worked in a rarefied world that was not influenced by, or rather did not need be particularly bothered with, the formation of outside a relatively small circle attached the court and the cabinet. …

BUILDING THAI MODERNITY: The Maha Dhammakaya Cetiya

In the lead up to the completion and consecration of the Dhammakaya Cetiya near Bangkok in May 2000, English language publications from this Thai Buddhist sect's international division promoted it as a gesture for world peace: “In 2000 the world is going to calm down.” The claim speaks to the overriding concern of the twenty first century and links the futuristic, hi-tech building with a Buddhist tradition of stupa building dating back to the third century BC stupas of the King Asoka. Great Kings built great stupas for the benefit and protection of the state, here, the people of a modem democracy were building a stupa for the benefit and protection of the world at large. This paper reads the building as a strategic statement in the discourses of modern Thai identity in an age of Western dominated globalisation and intra-Asian cultural flows. It aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the enduring Asian problem of how to express its modernity while still retaining cultural integrity, when being modern is popularly assumed to be a matter of measuring up with the West.

The Dodecanese and the Ahhiyawa question

The recently reaffirmed identifications of Millawanda (= Miletos) and Apasa (= Ephesos) in the Hittite archives also confirm that interaction between Ahhiyawa and the Hittites was mainly in South-West Anatolia. Since Ahhiyawa was ‘across the sea’ from there, it is now shown to have been one of the ‘kingdoms’ of Mycenaean Greece. The Dodecanese Islands have been proposed, where a population increase may have been accompanied by immigration from the Argolid. But, even if combined with part of the Anatolian mainland opposite, the Dodecanese would not have been sufficiently important, since at least one king of Ahhiyawa was addressed as an equal by a Hittite Great King. Of the other suggested identifications, only Mycenae possessed the power and international status indicated. The Dodecanese seem marked as ‘the islands’, mentioned in the Hittite texts both as belonging to Ahhiyawa and as a haven for persons fleeing Hittite retribution.

The Jordanian-Israeli war, 1948-1951: a history of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Introduction: The Balance of Power The Gathering Storm On the Brink of War The Battle for Jerusalem The Battle of Bab al-Wad The Battles on other Fronts The First Truce The Second Truce Towards Arab Unity The Armistice Agreement, 1949 The First Arab Union The Last Days of a Great King The Succession

Spanish Colonization Literature, Powhatan Geographies, and English Perceptions of Tsenacommacah/Virginia

IN 1612 VIRGINIA COLONIST WILLIAM STRACHEY EXPLAINED THAT HIS Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania depicted in greatest detail that part of the Virginia Company's claims where the English had concentrated their colonizing activities. This area, as Strachey described it, was roughly contiguous with the severall territoryes and provinces which are in chief commaunded by their great king Powhatan, ... comprehended under the denomynation of Tsenacommacoh, of which we may the more by experyence speak being the place wherein our abode and habitation hath now well neere sixe yeares consisted. Ten years later Englishman John Martin wrote, That parte of Virginia wthin wch wee are seated and fitt to be settled on for many hundred yeares: Is wthin the Territories of [Powhatan's successor] Opichakano, ... whoe Comaundeth from the Southermost parte of the first [the James] River to the Southermost parte of the fourth River called Patomeck.... In longitude it extendeth to [the] Monakins Countrie ... west and west and by North.... The two writers used very similar boundaries to demarcate the English colony: the James River, the Atlantic Ocean, the fall line, and (in Martin's case) the Potomac River. (1) Neither the official extent of the Virginia Company's claims nor the actual reach of English settlement, however, explains Martin's and Strachey's descriptions of Virginia's boundaries. The colony's second charter in 1609 granted the Virginia Company land two hundred miles north and south of Point Comfort, and from sea to sea. Virginia's English population occupied only a small section of the James River when Strachey wrote, and more of the James and some of the Eastern Shore when Martin wrote. (2) A half century later the extent of Virginia's population, its dependence on tobacco cultivation and export via Chesapeake waterways, and the establishment of Maryland north of the Potomac would suggest these borders for the English colony, but the 1612 English population of about 500 and the 1622 population of just over 1,200 were not nearly enough to require the area encompassed by Strachey's and Martin's descriptions. (3) The explanation for such English perceptions of the Chesapeake's geography lies, rather, in their readings of Spanish colonization literature, which led some English promoters and colonists to see Virginia in terms of the political, economic, and cultural geographies of the native people they encountered there, the Powhatans. Virginia Company officials and English Virginians understood their colonization project within an American context, for which the Spanish provided the most relevant model--the appropriation and transformation of indigenous political and economic structures to serve the process of colonization. The English realized that colonization by appropriation was not uniquely American (and looked to ancient as well as more recent examples), but they studied the Spanish experience as the most applicable because they believed the specifics of American environments and populations to be comparable. Since Englishmen's readings of Spanish histories taught them that Indian political and economic geographies mattered to Euro-American colonies, early colonists and Virginia Company officials paid careful attention to Powhatan politics and economy. Indeed, their hopes of appropriating indigenous imperial structures encouraged them to overinterpret Tsenacommacah's potential to benefit them. Thus, in part because they hoped to follow Spanish successes, Powhatan Tsenacommacah--and English colonists' correct and incorrect perceptions of it--shaped the way Englishmen approached the Chesapeake during Virginia's first several decades. (4) Thus, through the early 1620s many English Virginians understood colonization to be the process of appropriating Powhatan's paramount chiefdom, Tsenacommacah, an already defined part of English Virginians' New World. (5) Specifically, Spanish models influenced the sequence of English settlement, encouraging the English to center their efforts first on conquering Tsenacommacah's core and to see Virginia's de facto borders as synonymous with their understanding of Tsenacommacah's extent. …

Les relations du clergé égyptien et des Lagides d'après la documentation privée

This paper, which deals with the relations between the Egyptian clergy and the Macedonians kings, is a prosopographic study based on the philological and historical analysis of the indigenous priests' private sources. The first part is about the first contacts between the clergy and the first Macedonian kings, in comparison with the previous bonds between the Great Kings and the temples' staff. The second part treats how the priests moved to the service of the Ptolemaic state. In the third part, the question of the intrusion of the royal officers in the temples is examined.

Framing Questions: Cynthia Ozick's 'Shots'

The philosophical (and stern) divide between the Hellenic and Hebraic, especially in relation to aesthetics and ethics, is what critics of Cynthia Ozick's fiction so often focus on. Yet I will argue that in her short story, 'Shots', Cynthia Ozick's passion for the Judaic collective memory and moral consciousness has created a character whose principal life's work, the production of visual images, rejects such a facile exiling of beauty and visual aesthetics to the realm of the pagan. For this protagonist, a photographer, sees herself as a creator who is not only not a mere maker of idols, a trafficker in vanity, but is rather a seeker, a critical eye, a woman attempt ing to understand the world both ethically and aesthetically through the interpretation of what she finds in her viewfinder. In the Second Commandment of the ten received by Moses, God wams Israel: do not make or worship graven images resembling anything in heaven or the natural world. This prohibition is a familiar one. It is the reason synagogues are devoid of stained glass scenes of Adam and Eve. It is why there are few frescoes of Abraham and his family. It explains the absence of triptychs documenting the exodus from Egypt, of'Jewish' sculptures honoring the great kings, David and Solomon. All these potentially dramatic images are rendered exclusively in words. The Second Commandment raises the question of what constitutes a Jewish visual aesthetics: does it exist; can it, given these restrictive prohibitions, and if so, what is its programme, its parameters; what actually constitutes transgression? Cynthia Ozick's work, as a whole, is not only concerned with aesthetics, but is specifically engaged in the struggle to define the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. How does an artist, some of her narratives ask, manage to create objects of beauty, inclusive of literature, in the shadow of the Second Commandment? How does one counter the numbing, or dehumanising, effect, she claims, idol worship inspires in adherents, 'crushing] the capacity for pity'? In her short story, 'Shots', Ozick has created a character who, by dint of being a photographer, has animated these questions and captured in © Oxford University Press 2002 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.23 on Tue, 19 Apr 2016 06:32:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 52 CYNTHIA OZICK'S 'SHOTS' her lens what can be construed as a Jewish interpretation on the creation of'graven images'. This portrait of the artist counters the putative dangers of

THE ORIGIN OF THE GOTHS

Witold Manczak has argued that Gothic is closer to Upper German than to Middle German, closer to High German than to Low German, closer to German than to Scandinavian, closer to Danish than to Swedish, and that the original homeland of the Goths must therefore be located in the southernmost part of the Germanic territories, not in Scandinavia (1982, 1984, 1987a, 1987b, 1992). I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes’ classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia. We must therefore reconsider the grounds for adopting the latter position and the reasons why it always has remained popular. The reconstruction of Gothic history and the historical value of Iordanes’ Getica have been analyzed in detail by Peter Heather (1991: 3-67). As he points out about this prime literary source (p. 5): “Two features have made it central to modern historical reconstructions. First, it covers the entire sweep of Gothic history. [...] Second, there is a Gothic origin to some of the Getica’s material, which makes it unique among surviving sources.” Iordanes’ work draws heavily on the lost Gothic histories of Ablabius and Cassiodorus, who “would seem to have been in the employ of Gothic dynasts and had to produce Gothic histories of a kind that their employers wished to hear” (Heather 1991: 67). As to the origin of the Goths and their neighbors, the Gothic migrations and the great kings of the past, oral history is the most likely source of the stories. This material must therefore be handled with particular care: “Oral history is not unalterable, but reflects current social configurations; as these change, so must collective memory” (Heather 1991: 62). It appears that Iordanes knew of several alternative accounts of early Gothic history, and Heather concludes (1991: 66): “There was thus more than one version of Gothic origins current in the sixth century. Jordanes, as we have seen, made his choice because he found written confirmation of it, but this is hardly authoritative: the Scandinavian origin of the Goths would seem to have been one sixth-century guess among several. It is also striking that Jordanes’ variants all contained islands: Scandinavia, Britain, ‘or some other island’. In one strand of Graeco-Roman ethnographic and geographic tradition, Britain, Thule, and Scandinavia are all mysterious northern islands rather than geographical localities. ‘Britain’ and ‘Scandinavia’ may well represent interpretative deductions on the part of whoever it was that recorded the myths. The myths themselves perhaps referred only to an unnamed, mysterious island, which the recorder had then to identify. The Scandinavian origin-tale would thus

A prominent Hephthalite:Katulphand the fall of the Hephthalite Empire

The Byzantine author Menander Protector reports the story of Kάτogvλφoς (Katulph), a member of Hephthalite nobility. This prominent Hephthalite took part in the events of the defeat of the Hephthalite Empire. He was one of the most important political persons of that epoch and area, someone who was the advisor not just of the Hephthalite ruler, but later the Türk Ištämi and what is more the Persian Great King Xusrō Anōšarwān I. This treatise deals with the so far unexamined Kάτogvλφoς-story and tries to define who Kάτogvλφoς actually was. Beside the thorough examination of the Byzantine source and the name Kάτogvλφoς I clarify some serious misunderstandings (such as the identification of Kάτogvλφoς with the last Hephthalite ruler), which are widespread in the secondary sources (for example in the works of Drouin, Haussig and Ghirshman).

From the Dark Jester

I stand on a King's precipice, a forgotten precipice remembered now in Dream, the pyramid of Palenque. It is a precipice for the great King. He topples still into the monstrous darkness of his grave from an inestimable height. How does one measure time and distance in the moment of dying? Does an inch bring a million, does a minute erase all clocks?

Antiochus III and the cities of western Asia Minor

Introduction: The Great King and the Cities 1. The Seleukid Past in Asia Minor 2. The Reconquest of Asia Minor: A Narrative (226 - 192 BC) 3. Empire as Structures 4. Empire as Interaction Conclusion, Epilogue, Envoi: 'Once there was a King, Antiochos the Great ...'

The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure (review)

Reviewed by: The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure Florian Coulmas The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure, edited by Young-Key Kim-Renaud. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997. 317 pp., appendixes. $68.00 cloth; $39.95 paper. As every student of Korean knows, the Korean alphabet is a writing system on which many superlatives have been heaped and of which Koreans are rightly proud. With its formal simplicity and systematic beauty, it cannot fail to impress the student of writing, too. The present reviewer [End Page 198] belongs to the latter category rather than to the former. It is, therefore, only from this point of view that this review can offer some comments on this collection of articles. Thus my first question: Can this book be read with benefit by those not well-versed in Korean? The answer is an unqualified yes. This is not to say that Koreanists will find it less interesting. After all, not everyone is an expert in the history, development, systematic makeup, and linguistics of the Korean writing system. The various papers in this volume offer a wealth of information about these matters and at the same time reflect the up-to-date state of the discussion of controversial issues. Four appendixes containing illustrative reference materials are particularly helpful to those with only limited knowledge of Korean. The second question to be asked about a collection of essays that has grown out of a symposium is whether it makes a book. In this regard, The Korean Alphabet deserves exceptionally high marks. There is remarkably little overlap between the papers, although they are thematically closely related. This testifies to the symposium organizer cum editor's considerable skills, both in securing the cooperation of distinguished authors and in crafting their contributions into a coherent whole. The result is a book that covers the most important aspects of the Korean writing system, ranging from the story of its invention to the systematic analysis of sound letter-correspondence, problems of orthography and standardization, and to principles of calligraphy and typography. While one or two of the authors, notably S. Robert Ramsey, who deals with phonological change, are more interested in the Korean language than in its remarkable script, their papers still contribute important insights about the alphabet by discussing some of the details of how exactly it relates to the language. The third and most important question I want to consider is what I have learned from reading the book. A great deal is the general answer, but there are far more things than I can mention here. I shall therefore limit my comments to a few points that particularly interest me. As a sociolinguist, I have always been intrigued by the notion that an enlightened monarch invented a demotic script for the benefit of his subjects but never quite knew what to make of the attribution of han'gŭl's creation to King Sejong. Ki-Moon Lee presents strong evidence that puts to rest any doubts about the king's decisive role. In his review of the (Mongolian) 'Phags-pa alphabet origin hypothesis, Gari Ledyard lends further support to the view that Sejong himself was the genius behind the script's design, although he also stresses the role of Sin Sukchu, a gifted young scholar who is said to have spoken Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, and Jurchen. Sin was a capable phonetician. At the time, this meant that he had a good [End Page 199] command of Chinese rime books and knew how to apply his skills to the phonological analysis of Korean, on which the alphabet is so clearly based. In other papers, the invention of the script is touched upon in passing. The common view that transpires from these accounts is that without the great king's scholarship and wisdom, the Korean alphabet would never have seen the light of day, Sin Sukchu's input notwithstanding and no matter whether or to what extent the 'Phags-pa alphabet served as a model. Another question of some theoretical interest is whether han'gŭl is aptly characterized as an alphabet, a syllabic script, or a featural script. Chin W. Kim points out that han...