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Journal ArticleDOI

The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Scholarship

01 Jan 2008-Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions (Brill)-Vol. 8, Iss: 2, pp 137-169
TL;DR: The Uruk List of Kings and Sages as discussed by the authors is the most explicit scholarly genealogy written in the Hellenistic period and who is the last named person in the text.
Abstract: The Uruk List of Kings and Sages is best known for its genealogy connecting human scholars to antediluvian sages. Since its publication in 1962, however, questions pertaining to the text's specific purpose within the context of Hellenistic Uruk have been neglected. This study seeks to understand two such questions: why is the most explicit scholarly genealogy written in the Hellenistic period?; and who is the last named person in the text? Seeking answers to these questions sheds new light on the text's purpose: it is an attempt by scholars to gain support for themselves and their novel cultic agenda. La reputation de la liste des Uruk de les rois et les sages est due a sa genealogie, qui cree un lien entre les savants humains et les sages antediluviens. Par contre, depuis sa publication en 1962 on a neglige les questions qui ont affaire au but specifique du texte dans le contexte de l'Uruk hellenistique. Cette etude cherche a comprendre deux questions dans ce domaine: pourquoi la genealogie la plus explicitement savante est-elle ecrite pendant l'epoque hellenistique?; et qui est la derniere personne nommee dans le texte? Chercher des reponses a ces questions illumine d'une nouvelle facon le but du texte; c'est une tentative par des savants de gagner du soutien pour leur programme original de culte ainsi que pour eux-memes.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The concept of sign, a portent observed in the physical world which indicates future events, is found in all ancient cultures, but was first developed in ancient Mesopotamian texts as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The concept of sign, a portent observed in the physical world, which indicates future events, is found in all ancient cultures, but was first developed in ancient Mesopotamian texts. This branch of Babylonian scientific knowledge extensively influenced other parts of the world, and similar texts written in Aramaic, Sanscrit, Sogdian, and other languages. The seminar will investigate how much do we know about the Babylonian theory and hermeneutics of omens, and the scope of their possible influences on other cultures and regions.

77 citations

Dissertation
28 Jun 2017
TL;DR: Seal impressions on bullae offer new ways of approaching the local realities of Seleukid administrative and fiscal practice as discussed by the authors, and the interactions that are evidenced by several individuals impressing their seals on a single bulla enables a range of aspects of royal bureaucracy in Babylonia to be reconstructed.
Abstract: Seal impressions on bullae offer new ways of approaching the local realities of Seleukid administrative and fiscal practice. Previous studies of these objects have focused primarily on the iconography of the impressed seals. However, analysis of the find-spots of bullae, their forms, the sealing protocols employed, the quantities of extant seal impressions, and the interactions that are evidenced by several individuals impressing their seals on a single bulla, enables a range of aspects of royal bureaucracy in Babylonia to be reconstructed. This study is based on thousands of published and tens of unpublished bullae from several Seleukid sites, and also incorporates a few bullae from elsewhere that are impressed by seals with Seleukid motifs. It demonstrates the importance of groups of men ‘on the ground’ for the articulation and enforcement of royal power. Routine bureaucracy ensured that taxes were collected and local authority maintained throughout the long periods when the king and court were absent from a region, and even during instances of conflict over the throne. Nonetheless, some of the surviving evidence appears to reflect bureaucratic failings; there were also moments of reform and instances of idiosyncratic behaviour. The bullae suggest that administrative practice was relatively homogeneous across Babylonia, but differed from that known from the Greek cities of western Asia Minor. There are however similarities between Seleukid administration in Babylonia and Ptolemaic administration in Egypt, suggestive of cross-fertilisation between the two Hellenistic powers. This study is important because scant information survives about the daily realities of Seleukid control from anywhere in the empire, and very little on Seleukid rule in Babylonia. Fully exploiting these initially unpromising sources helps to fill an important gap in our knowledge, and enables broader comparisons of imperial structures between the Seleukid, Ptolemaic and Achaemenid empires.

70 citations


Additional excerpts

  • ...364 Rochberg 2004: 98–104; Lenzi 2009: esp....

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Book
23 May 2019
TL;DR: The authors argue that intellectual life in the Greek world and Babylonia can be linked not just through occasional contact and influence, but also by deeper parallels in intellectual culture that reflect their integration into the same overarching imperial system.
Abstract: This book argues for a new approach to the intellectual history of the Hellenistic world. Despite the intense cross-cultural interactions which characterised the period after Alexander, studies of 'Hellenistic' intellectual life have tended to focus on Greek scholars and institutions. Where cross-cultural connections have been drawn, it is through borrowing: the Greek adoption of Babylonian astrology; the Egyptian scholar Manetho deploying Greek historiographical models. In this book, however, Kathryn Stevens advances a 'Hellenistic intellectual history' which is cross-cultural in scope and goes beyond borrowing and influence. Drawing on a wide range of Greek and Akkadian sources, she argues that intellectual life in the Greek world and Babylonia can be linked not just through occasional contact and influence, but also by deeper parallels in intellectual culture that reflect their integration into the same overarching imperial system. Tracing such parallels yields intellectual history which is diverse, multipolar and, therefore, truly 'Hellenistic'.

62 citations

Book
07 Jan 2013
TL;DR: The role of giants in the narrative and historiographic worlds of symbol, geography, and religion in ancient Israel was explored in this article, where it was argued that all that is overgrown or physically monstrous represents a connection to the primeval chaos that stands as a barrier to creation and right rule.
Abstract: This dissertation explores the role of giants in the narrative and historiographic worlds of symbol, geography, and religion in ancient Israel. The Nephilim, Anaqim, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzumim/Zuzim, some Gibborim, and other individuals (e.g., Goliath) can all be classified as “giants”—not only with respect to their height and other physical properties, but also with respect to the negative moral qualities assigned to giants in antiquity. Previous interpreters have treated giants as merely a fantastical prop against which God’s agents emerge victorious. I argue that giants are a theologically and historiographically generative group, through which we gain insight into central aspects of ancient Israel’s symbolic world. All that is overgrown or physically monstrous represents a connection to the primeval chaos that stands as a barrier to creation and right rule. In this sense, giants represent chaos-fear, and their eradication is a form of chaos maintenance by both human and divine forces. Moreover, I demonstrate a series of affinities between the Bible’s presentation of its giants and aspects of Greek epic tradition (e.g., the Iliad, Catalogue, Works and Days, Cypria, and the Gigantomachy/Titanomachy), as well as other Near Eastern traditions. Both giants and heroes were thought to represent a discrete “race” of beings, both were thought to be larger than contemporary people, and both lived and flourished, in the historical imaginations of later authors, throughout the Bronze Age and largely ceased to exist at the end of this period. The size, strength, and physical excess of heroes and giants

53 citations