Articles

Uggetti, L. — Theban Choachytes, Pastophoroi, Door-Keepers: Some Terminological Remarks

Cannata delivers an extremely wide and deeply documented survey of the Ptolemaic funerary industry. With the scope of improving the fruition of such a valuable volume, some transliterations and translations of Demotic terms have been revised here. Notably, adopting Pestman’s and Chauveau’s suggestions, it has to be remarked that in the Theban area, a person whose principal occupation was “choachyte” bore the priestly title of “pastophoros of Amenope in the West of Thebes”, and not simply “pastophoros”, which in turn was different from the title of “door-keeper”. Similarly, the lesonis of a choachytes’ association was significantly different from the one of a temple: the hierarchical titles of the former were inspired by the latter, but they should not be strictly compared. Three documents presented in full by the author, that is P. Cairo 50127, P. Philadelphia XXX and P. Florence 3667, have been checked on photographs. In particular, new readings change the interpretation of the latter papyrus: instead of the breakdown of the funerary expenses for the mummification and burial of the choachyte Horos, it is here suggested that it was the account of a choachytes’ association or group, incorporating penalties to be paid by some members and also real estate properties. In the end, some publications, either recently issued or forthcoming, are suggested as complements to Cannata’s remarkable work.

Van De Mieroop, M. — A New History of the Ancient Near East, Part 2

The diachronically structured Oxford History of the Ancient Near East project covers the period from around 2100 to 1100 BC in its second and third volumes, both of which appeared in 2022. This review aims to show the differences in the overall characteristics of the periods before and after the so-called Dark Age in the middle of that millennium and in our ability to study them. It also points out how in projects of this nature contributors use individual voices and can give opposing answers to the same historical questions.

Portuese, L. — Perceiving the Divinity of the Assyrian King: Two Observations from the Sidelines on a Recent Book by Julian E. Reade

The Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh has recently been the biographical subject of a monograph by Julian Edgeworth Reade. This discussion uses Reade’s analyses to examine the new ways through which the last Assyrian kings presented themselves. The observations are built on the peculiar architectural traits of the palace’s throneroom and the upper rooms. It is concluded that the innovations introduced by Ashurbanipal contributed to turn the image of the king into a quasi-divine entity, with the consequence that Greek sources judged the Assyrian kings as unseen gods.

Sanders, S.L. — Ugaritic Writing as a Political Act: Sea-Change or Closed Circle?

We have typically understood the history and culture of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world in terms of peoples and literatures. As a result, we still tend to assign responsibility for each major event or interesting idea that humans have produced to an ethnic group: thus it may seem natural to say that the Sumerians invented writing, the Old Babylonian empire ruled much of the Near East, or that the Greeks created formal logic. Along with the habit of imagining such groups as the natural agents and protagonists of history, we sometimes still imagine each of them organically, as having a distinct human personality reflected in its artistic expressions: a set of poems, plays, etc. that reveal a distinct individual style and worldview. Yet as soon as we scratch the surface, we find that the assumptions that shape our telling of ancient history have at least as much to do with relatively recent European nationalism as they do with ancient realities.

This is a review article inspired by Philip J. Boyes’ Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems 3. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2021.

Book reviews and announcements

Faraonisch Egypte, Grieks-Romeins Egypte, Christelijk Egypte, Assyriologie, Hettitologie, Semitisch, Aramees, Oude Testament, Vroeg Jodendom, Archeologie

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