Gods, Kings, and Merchants in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia
Title | Gods, Kings, and Merchants in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia PDF eBook |
Author | Dominique Charpin |
Publisher | |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2015 |
Genre | Babylon (Extinct city) |
ISBN | 9789042932753 |
Gods, kings and merchants, a way of designating religion, politics and the economy: three spheres which in the modern world are quite distinct, even if they do interact constantly. The aim of this book is to show that their boundaries were far more fluid in the Mesopotamian civilisation: gods could act as money lenders, kings could invoke divine will to refuse extradiction, the dead could serve as a reference for how the living should behave, and wealthy merchants could live in residences modelled on those of kings... This civilisation preceded the Greek miracle which Jean-Pierre Vernant has quite correctly defined as a process of change which led to the emergence, as distinct areas, of the blueprints for the economy, politics, law, art, science, ethics, and philosophy. In a direct continuation of his earlier book published in 2010, Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, D. Charpin here examines in greater depth the situation which existed in Mesopotamia in the first half of the second millennium BC, using texts discovered in numerous archives throughout the entire Near East, especially those found at Mari eighty years ago.
Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia
Title | Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia PDF eBook |
Author | Dominique Charpin |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 197 |
Release | 2010-11-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0226101592 |
Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization—home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code was only part of a rich juridical culture from 2200–1600 BCE that saw the invention of writing and the development of its relationship to law, among other remarkable firsts. Though ancient history offers inexhaustible riches, Dominique Charpin focuses here on the legal systems of Old Babylonian Mesopotamia and offers considerable insight into how writing and the law evolved together to forge the principles of authority, precedent, and documentation that dominate us to this day. As legal codes throughout the region evolved through advances in cuneiform writing, kings and governments were able to stabilize their control over distant realms and impose a common language—which gave rise to complex social systems overseen by magistrates, judges, and scribes that eventually became the vast empires of history books. Sure to attract any reader with an interest in the ancient Near East, as well as rhetoric, legal history, and classical studies, this book is an innovative account of the intertwined histories of law and language.
The Babylonians
Title | The Babylonians PDF eBook |
Author | Gwendolyn Leick |
Publisher | Psychology Press |
Pages | 194 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780415253154 |
This survey introduces the people and the reality behind the popular myth of Babylon. It explores the social, historical, geographical and cultural context in which this extraordinary civilization flourished for so many centuries.
Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part Two
Title | Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part Two PDF eBook |
Author | A. R. George |
Publisher | Penn State Press |
Pages | 249 |
Release | 2019-08-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1646020146 |
In ancient Mesopotamia, men training to be scribes copied model letters in order to practice writing and familiarize themselves with epistolary forms and expressions. Similarly, model contracts were used to teach them how to draw up agreements for the transactions typical of everyday economic life. This volume makes available a trove of previously unknown tablets and fragments, now housed in the Shøyen Collection, that were produced in the training of scribes in Old Babylonian schools. Following on Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part One: Selected Letters, this volume publishes the contents of sixty-five tablets bearing Akkadian letters used to train scribes and twenty-six prisms and tablets carrying Sumerian legal texts copied in the same context. Each text is presented in transliterated form and in translation, with appropriate commentary and annotations and, at the end of the book, photographs of the cuneiform. The material is made easily navigable by a catalogue, bibliography, and indexes. This collection of previously unknown documents expands the extant corpus of educational texts, making an essential contribution to the study of the ancient world.
The Old-Babylonian Merchant
Title | The Old-Babylonian Merchant PDF eBook |
Author | W. F. Leemans |
Publisher | |
Pages | 192 |
Release | 1968 |
Genre | Babylonia |
ISBN |
An Ox of One's Own
Title | An Ox of One's Own PDF eBook |
Author | T. M. Sharlach |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 348 |
Release | 2017-09-11 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1501505262 |
Shulgi-simti is an important example of a woman involved in sponsoring religious activities though having a family life. An Ox of One’s Own will be of interest to Assyriologists, particularly those interested in Early Mesopotamia, and scholars working on women in religion. An Ox of One’s Own centers on the archive of a woman who died about 2050 B.C., one of King Shulgi’s many wives. Her birth name is unknown, but when she married, she became Shulgi-simti, “Suitable for Shulgi.” Attested for only about 15 years, she existed among a court filled with other wives, who probably outranked her. A religious foundation was run on her behalf whereby courtiers, male and female, donated livestock for sacrifices to an unusual mix of goddesses and gods. Previous scholarship has declared this a rare example of a queen conducting women’s religion, perhaps unusual because they say she came from abroad. The conclusions of this book are quite different. An Ox of One’s Own lays out the evidence that another woman was queen at this time in Nippur while Shulgi-simti lived in Ur and was a third-ranking concubine at best, with few economic resources. Shulgi-simti’s religious exercises concentrated on a quartet of north Babylonian goddesses.
Babylonia under the Sealand and Kassite Dynasties
Title | Babylonia under the Sealand and Kassite Dynasties PDF eBook |
Author | Susanne Paulus |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 345 |
Release | 2020-09-21 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1501510231 |
Babylonia in the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE is one of the most understudied periods of Mesopotamian history. In the last few years, discoveries of new texts and archaeological materials from the Sealand Dynasty have emerged, which expand the possibilities to fill this gap in our knowledge of Mesopotamian history. At the same time, scholars have started to revive Kassite studies using new materials, methods, and questions. While those works are groundbreaking contributions to the field, many questions about the history and chronology, archaeology, economy, language of Babylonia during this period are still unsolved. This volume brings together eleven contributions by leading scholars in the Sealand and Kassite period, approaching those questions from an archaeological, ethnological, historical, linguistic, and economical point of view. The book opens with an introduction into the history and research on Babylonia under the Sealand Dynasty and the Kassites.