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Sally Humphreys[1] (1978: p. 83) referred to “the disciplinary powers and clear consciousness of eukosmia and akosmia (order and disorder) associated with religious festivals.”StubThese paragraphs are a stub. Can you help us expand them, and in particular add the context for them: the introduction of the concept, the conclusion of the point being made, and a transition into the next paragraph after them (beginning “I have already discussed religion…”)?OpenSee All Queries
Gernet[2] made much of this in his study of Greek penal law. His 1917 Recherches sur le développement de la pensée juridique et morale en Grèce showed how the Greeks invented new words for their concepts of isonomia and their new universe: “dysnomia was created in antithesis to eunomia (which in Homer had been contrasted with hybris)” (quoted in Humphreys[3] p. 85). “Hybris, losing its old meanings to dysnomia and adikēma, was drawn into a new ambit of meditation on the ‘offender’ and his psychology.”StubThese paragraphs are a stub. Can you help us expand them, and in particular add the context for them: the introduction of the concept, the conclusion of the point being made, and a transition into the next paragraph after them (beginning “I have already discussed religion…”)?OpenSee All Queries
I have already discussed religion (Social Justice Sanctified, From Inanna and Nanshe to Nemesis) and cities (The Archaic Cosmology of Cities: Building the Kosmos on Earth) in relation to the creation of order. As Rodney Needham pointed out in his introduction to the 1970 reprint of Arthur M. Hocart’s Kings and Councillors[4] (1970: p. xxx–xxxi), the key was not that temples and cities were raised to a mystical plane. Rather, they were related to a mathematically “clean” and perfectly proportioned cosmos, module, or template. A temple was not only the abode of the god, but also a replica of the kosmos, “the world.” However, it was an idealized image of this world, one which was shaped and ordered in conformity with the macrocosm.
No a priori scheme will work, for there are too many possibilities of variation and idiosyncrasy. (See Needham/Hocart[5] 1970: p. xxxix.)Vague TextContext appears to be lacking here. Can you help us make this paragraph less vague?OpenSee All Queries
But some keys are in nature: the five symmetrical geometric (“Platonic”) solids. The Dorian mode is a symmetrical (palindromic) musical scale, and there are mathematical proportions among the tones.StubThese paragraphs are a stub. Can you help us expand them?OpenSee All Queries
Consider also the mathematics of right-angled (“Pythagorean”) triangles, known since the neolithic.StubThese paragraphs are a stub. Can you help us expand them?OpenSee All Queries
Important in the consideration of the creation of order is the earth’s rotation and wobble, and the four directions traced out by the rising and setting of the sun (east/west axis) and the north/south/snakelike wobble between the solstices.
Omitted TextWe omitted text here that seemed like an unfulfilled note: “Summarize the chapters so far. Then show how periodicities are designed to restore this modularized equality.” Can you help us fulfill it?OpenSee All Queries
All the above proportions needed to be tempered: The seasons needed to be made identical. (The earth moves in a somewhat ovoid orbit around the sun, so that the four seasons are not naturally quite equal.) Months had to be standardized, as did weights and measures. The musical scale had to be tempered. The feast had to be divided into equal portions. Likewise, communities had to be divided into equal tribal fractions, sharing the administrative center for an equal period of time each year. The city was standardized into districts. (However, each grid may have been differently sized, reflecting the different grades or functions of each section.) Corporations provided equality for their members.
Most studies of archaic order have limited their search for organizing principles to astronomy and the calendar, sometimes bolstered by number symbolism and music. Astronomical periodicities, musical proportions, and number mysticism have been found in myth and ritual, the iconography of public architecture, and urban planning. But they are rarely sought in everyday life, especially in so mundane an area as the economic plane. Yet the earlier we look in the history of civilization, the more we find cosmological order extending into all dimensions of social structuring. Even financial relations were proportioned to reflect the perceived rhythms and patterns of nature.
As an archaic social order, the Sumerian network of prices, interest rates, public fees, and ration levels integrated economic relations and nature’s rhythms into an interlocking whole to create a veritable cosmology of everyday life. Historians who refrain from developing an empathy with this social cosmology will miss the degree to which it shaped worldly economic practices. It was characteristic of archaic societies to seek order in terms of neat regularities. Sumer’s temple administrators and palace officials tried to make their society’s underlying structure conform as neatly as possible to the patterns they found in calendrical nature, which they viewed as a kosmos, a stylized, symmetrically ordered representation of life.
Fractional arithmetic based on these 30-day months determined the proportions of prices and interest rates, just as it shaped the proportions used by sculptors in designing their representations of the human body. Azarpay[6] (1990) contrasted the Near Eastern sexagesimal canon of human proportions, based on multiples of six, with the Pythagorean concept of decimalized human proportions based on 10ths found in Greek and Egyptian art.
But nature is not entirely symmetrical, of course. Confronted with the irregularities between the lunar and solar year, each society had to develop its own calendrical constructs, which initially were idiosyncratic rather than a priori natural and universal. Still, the calendar formed the basis for Mesopotamia’s weights and measures, designed to aid in such functions as disbursing rations to public dependents at regular intervals. The arithmetic system designed to coordinate these activities served as a natural takeoff point that was extended to shape economic relations in general. The result was a system of administered prices, interest rates, and other economic phenomena that dovetailed into a cosmological order composed of round numbers and calendrically convenient proportions.
Measures, Rules, and Prices has discussed the term “to rule” as being literal. We may now examine the root of the word “to govern.” It comes from the same root as the Latin “gubernare”: to steer or pilot a ship (from cf. “gubernaculum,” “helm,” “rudder”). This implies the idea of directing or managing, guiding or conducting, or leading. (Lewis and Short, cited by Needham in his introduction to Hocart,[7] Kings and Councillors, p. lxv. The English word “government” is of relatively recent origin.)
When it comes to the word to “steer,” again, the idea is linked to re-creation, or reordering. In fact, I might well have called this book The Re-Creation of Order.
We think of steering in terms of directionality. But note how cities were realigned by the ruler circumnavigating the four quarters or (in the Egyptian sed festival) shooting an arrow to each of them. Or the ruler received the rays of the sun as it rose in the east, much as the Roman augur faced a set direction and surveyed the scene before him.
All these meanings are linked to the idea of governance.
But what then was the proper role/task of rulers?
Measures, Rules, and Prices has discussed words for “straight,” as in “straight justice” in contrast to crooked judgments. Gudea, ruler of Lagash, for example, snapped the measuring line to make sure that the wall and bricks were straight.
But there is another plausible interpretation of the idea “to make straight,” that is, as in Sumerian “nig.sisa” (meaning “equity” or “justice”; also, the source of Babylonian “misharum”), in the sense of “leveling out.” It is to have an even surface.
Some Assyriologists (Piotr Steinkeller,[8] personal communication) believe that this was the sense in which “nig.sisa” and “misharum” were used. It was making everyone similar in the sense of placing them on the same plane financially, with none standing above or below the others for reasons of financial arrears. This idea reflects an egalitarian concept.
The tradition of social renewal provided the basis for the later Jewish and Christian eschatology, as Wensinck[9] (1923: pp. 181f.) has summarized: “The king, in antiquity, is above everything he who maintains law and order. … in the group of [Talmudic] Psalms [24 and 99, as well as 93, 94, and 47] the ascension to the throne and the administration of justice are spoken of in one breath. In cosmology this idea means: victory over chaos with its demoniac powers and establishment of cosmic order; in theology: accomplishment of the judgment of mankind. Each new period begins thus, with the establishment of order, with the settlement of destinies, with judgment. And every New Year is a day of judgment.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Wensinck’s text confirm the quotation and page number for us?OpenSee All Queries The common denominators were the rebirth of cosmic order and social justice, and the regeneration of nature and society which good rulers were supposed to oversee.
Why did rulers perform this renewal every 30 years? First, it is a generation, but there is more than mere convenience at work. Cosmologically, the number is a “solar” number. Earlier chapters have described this as being part of the solarized calendar which divided the Mesopotamian year into 12 standardized 30-day months. But there is yet another factor at work, and that is the fact that Saturn, the outermost planet known to the ancient world, was viewed as capping all the planetary rotation cycles as it were. It took 29 1/2 years to pass through the zodiac.
This number 29 1/2 is strikingly similar to the innermost movable body, the moon, which takes approximately 29 1/2 days to make a similar transit of the zodiac. Yet Saturn seems to have been associated with the sun as its planetary complement, not with the moon. In Babylonia it was viewed as a “second Shamash [sun-god],” or “Shamash of the nighttime sky,” the counterpart to the daytime sun (see on this point especially Jastrow[10] 1909, citing Hyginus, Astronomica II, 42.6–10, quoting Eratosthenes identifying Saturn with Phaethon, the son of the sun-god Helios, who drove his father’s fated solar chariot too near to and then too far from the earth, and Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica II, 30.3–4, stating that the Babylonians called Saturn the “sun-star”).
The reason, suggested Jastrow[11] (1909: pp. 169f.), was that “Strange as it may seem to us, the planet Saturn appears to have been regarded as ‘the sun of the night’ corresponding to Shamash as ‘the sun of the daytime’ and the cause of such light as the night furnishes. It was argued, that since there was a sun furnishing the light of day, so there must be some corresponding power which causes the illuminations of the heavens at night. Saturn was chosen—in preference even to the moon—because of the slowness of its movement, which made it visible continuously for a long period, while Jupiter, Mars and Venus disappeared frequently during the same period, and the moon for several days at the end of each month; Mercury owing to its position near the sun was visible only for very short periods. The moon, moreover, altered its phases while Saturn as its name Lu-Bat Sag-Ush, i.e., the ‘steady’ planet indicates, remained ‘constant—at least for a long period.” Thus Saturn was visible for several months each year without interruption, taking nearly two and a half years to move through each sign of the zodiac.[12] It seems to be this period rather than that of human generations that inspired the 30-year cycle between “freedom acts”—“a month of years,” calling for the ruler to celebrate a “jubilee” if he happened to live that long, as did Hammurapi (who “proclaimed justice” in his 30th year, as he had done on his accession in 1792 BC).Fact CheckCan someone please verify this fact and add a source if possible?OpenSee All Queries
Saturn was called the planet of justice (Jastrow[13] 1909: p. 173) (sometimes “Nabu,” which also was applied to Mercury). “Justice” in Babylonian was “kittum”). Jastrow cited[14] some cuneiform inscriptions (Charles Virolleaud, Ishtar: xxv.26 and xxx.20) to the effect that “kittum” was “made the equivalent of Saturn,” while “misharum” was “equated with” Shamash. In other contexts, according to Jastrow, Saturn was designated as Enmesharra (“Lord of the law of the universe,” or simply lord of misharum [justice]).Fact CheckPlease help us check this fact.OpenSee All Queries This throws an added cosmological dimension to Speiser’s discussion cited in Social Justice Sanctified, From Inanna and Nanshe to Nemesis.
The American Assyriologist Jack Finkelstein[15] (1965: p. 245f.) tried to find a regular pattern in Mesopotamia’s misharum decrees: “enactments of this type had to recur at fairly regular or predictable intervals. Were this not the case, and had the kings been free to announce the misharum without warning and at widely disparate intervals, there would have occurred a drying-up of the sources of credit and a virtual paralysis of economic activity every few years—after a reasonable lapse of time from the previous enactment.” The basic idea, he concluded, was a regularity that modern economists and investors love to find: “We might then detect a series of regular fluctuations in prices, interest rates (at least marginal ones), etc. and simple frequency fluctuations.” But instead of any such variations in Bronze Age interest rates, we find a historically unique stability for over a thousand years (as discussed in Measures, Rules, and Prices). “If our hypothesis proves valid, the years immediately preceding a misharum should show a low rate of frequency in transactions in general, higher interest rates, lower sales prices for real estate, etc. (the risk to the potential buyer and creditor being then much greater).”
But as great as Finkelstein’s contribution as an Assyriologist has been to the elucidation of misharum acts, his attempt at a modernistic economic interpretation is anachronistic. There is no archaic evidence at all for variations in interest rates (although free-market prices indeed varied).
This does not mean that there was no order or regularity to Mesopotamian misharum acts. What it does mean is that while it restored order, this was done when necessary, not in accordance with any periodicity beyond the first and 30th regnal years.
This would be the case with any modern economy that regularly went bankrupt, but Finkelstein seemed to be imposing a modernist view on the Bronze Age.
Under what conditions would regular cancellations not be disruptive? One obvious condition would be that in which the debts in question were owed to the palace. Rulers thus would cancel debts due to themselves from the debt-wracked peasantry at large, not commercial debts among merchants (who presumably were indeed in a better condition to pay). And as a matter of fact, these proclamations explicitly excluded silver-debts due among merchants.
In addition to being necessary periodically to free the economy from its debt overhead, such cancellations of agrarian debts would have been most appropriate in times of crop failure or military destruction of crops. These were not regular occurrences, but they occurred frequently enough so that they were often necessary. They were “periodic” in the sense of being occasional, not following a set periodicity.
In opposition to Finkelstein, Komoróczy emphasized their irregular and unforeseeable character. Although they were indeed regular in the sense of occurring at least in the first and 30th regnal year of Babylonian rulers, their accession was itself unforeseeable (depending as it did on their predecessors passing from the scene).
Komoróczy[16] (1982: p. 197) called these misharum acts a “corrective in the everyday run of economic life.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Komoróczy check this quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries Bottero[17] (1961) wrote that they countered the effects of “economic disorder.”Translation CheckCan a French speaker verify this is in Bottero’s text?OpenSee All Queries They were called by such terms as “Gerechtigkeit,” “redress.”Citation NeededCan you help us find the original source of these quotations?OpenSee All Queries “Misharum shakanum” is also rendered “creating straight order” in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary[18] (CAD M/II, pp. 116ff.).Verify CitationCan you help us verify this source attribution and quotation?OpenSee All Queries
Komoróczy called them “regelmassig-periodische”Translation CheckCan someone with access to the Komoróczy text (ideally checked by a German-speaker) verify this quotation?OpenSee All Queries—in other words, regular-periodical debt forgivenesses. Yet instead of having a fixed calendrical regularity, they were ad hoc proclamations as agrarian and military conditions warranted.
They often have been called “freedom acts,” for their effects. Yet based on their genealogy from Sumerian “amargi,”Sumerian TerminologyShould this be ama-gi or amagi instead of amargi throughout this book? See: Ama-gi.OpenSee All Queries “liberty” would be more appropriate—for they freed debt-slaves. (“Freedom” may be too modern a concept to be applied to Bronze Age Mesopotamians. “Liberty” connotes freedom of movement, above all from chattel slavery.[19]) Of course, by returning lands to their former owners, these misharum acts restored the means of economic freedom.
But they did not give everybody freedom. Above all they did not free individuals who had begun as slaves. Rather, they returned these individuals—along with the community’s lands and financial balance—to their preexisting state. This was the point made so strongly by the French Assyriologist Dominique Charpin.
In 1987 the French Assyriologist Dominique Charpin published an article[20] in which he established that the “freedom” aspects of Mesopotamia’s andurārum acts were secondary, not primary. The essential character of these acts was simply to make things the way they were before—“a return to the original situation.”Translation CheckCan a French-speaker check Charpin’s article for this phrase to check the quotation?OpenSee All Queries To the extent that current debt-slaves had previously been free and cultivators had held their own lands, these royal proclamations indeed restored freedom. But in the case of individuals who formerly had been slaves (but had been sold, or pledged for debt and forfeited to new creditors), they too were restored to their previous position. Hence, the term “andurārum” was not exactly liberation, except as a specific application of the more general return to the former status.
I have no doubt that this is true. And I am told that when Fritz R. Kraus heard Charpin’s ideas, he got quite depressed at having devoted so much of his life to the “liberation” aspects of andurārum. But we should beware of assuming that merely because an act’s overall purpose is more general, its broad intent was not indeed to achieve primarily this one specific achievement; and this achievement was indeed liberation.
Perhaps we should indeed call these acts “restoration” acts, or “renewal” acts, renewing in the sense of making things the way they were before, “in the beginning.”
An example of just how difficult the notion of andurārum has become to modern mentality is apparent, for instance, from the laws of Hammurapi. The penultimate paragraph of the laws (paragraph 280) stipulated that if a slave-dealer had bought a slave in a foreign land and returned to Babylonia, a man who formerly owned this slave may have identified him or her, and “if that male or female slave are natives of the land, their andurārum shall be effected without any money (payment).” Most English-speaking Assyriologists (e.g., Meek[21] 1958: p. 167) translate “andurārum” in this passage as “freedom.” But certainly the former slave is not really “freed” at all. He (or more likely, she) is, as Charpin[22] pointed out (1987: p. 36), returned to his or her former status, that is, as a servant to the Babylonian master. This is not exactly “freedom.”[23]
Wilfred Lambert imagined that “andurārum” meant “free trade,” literally tariff-free trade. This would follow if the Assyrians knew that “in the beginning” there were no tariffs. To establish “andurārum” for copper, silver, etc., would be to return them to their former (i.e., tariff-free) status.Citation NeededNo text by Wilfred Lambert (W.G. Lambert) has been cited anywhere in this book. Can you help us find a text that could be cited for this?OpenSee All Queries
With regard to the usual translation of Sumerian “amargi” as “return to the mother,” Charpin[24] found that this seems to use the term “mother” to denote “original status.” Charpin[25] (p. 39) concluded that “ama has acquired the sense derived from ‘origin.’ It thus should be translated simply as ‘point of origin.’”
Charpin[26] wrote (p. 38): “The Babylonians ignored in effect that men were born free and equal. For a slave born of a free mother, amargi signified a return to liberty. For a slave born of a slave mother, amargi meant a return to the master in whose house he was born.”Translation CheckCan a French-speaker verify the Charpin quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries
Charpin[27] pointed out that the cuneiform sign for “amargi” also “designates the cyclical trajectory of the sun, and the return of persons or goods to their initial status.”Translation CheckCan a French-speaker verify the Charpin quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries The proclamation of the Mesopotamian “king of justice” was thus inscribed in the cosmos. It was part of what Mircea Eliade called “the eternal return.”
Charpin[28] concluded that this idea of a cosmological return, as inevitable as the annual solar return to its zodiacal position at the New Year, was “the exact antithesis of any sentiment of ‘social justice’ or a reformist ideology.”Translation CheckCan a French-speaker verify the Charpin quotation and add a page number?OpenSee All Queries But does this really follow? To be sure, the ideas of amargi, andurārum, and their numerous Near Eastern analogs were “conservative” in periodically restoring a preexisting status quo as a norm, including a free land-tenured peasant-infantry. But this would certainly have implied a social ideology. It was simply a social ideology which was grounded—as was so much ritual and myth of the epoch—in a cosmological setting.
Apparently, Mesopotamians felt that a social philosophy could be justified best by grounding it in the calendrical kosmos and its periodicities.
Charpin[29] found the concept of andurārum et al. to be ultimately a cosmological one. And he was certainly right. But one must explain its popularity: Why was this concept adopted, and not others? I think that it used cosmology as a “peg” on which to hang a specific social policy—that of canceling debts and restoring liberty.
And when we come to “misharum,” here certainly we find the idea of social justice. It is a concept of social justice grounded in the kosmos itself, as the legal historian Ephraim Speiser established some decades ago.
A Mari text dated to the sixth year of Zimri-Lim (ARM VIII 33,Specify CitationCan you help us identify the text meant by ARM?OpenSee All QueriesTranslation CheckCan a French-speaker check the “33” here?OpenSee All Queries discussed by Jean-Marie Durand[30] in Archives Épistolaires de Mari [MARI 1] [1988: p. 107] and Charpin[31] 1987: p. 39) stipulated that “if an andurārumTranslation CheckCan a French speaker check this in both Archives Épistolaires de Mari and Charpin? Originally it was written “uddurarum” before we changed it to andurārum.OpenSee All Queries is instituted, this silver will not be subject to that measure.”Translation CheckCan a French-speaker verify this quotation from Durand and/or Charpin?OpenSee All Queries By writing this clause the creditor got his debtor to formally renounce any benefit of the debt remission. Obviously, its presence in a loan-contract envisioned the possibility of a royal andurārum proclamation.
CAD[32] D p. 109 translated the sign DRR (“darāru,” prefixed by “an”)Translation CheckCan someone familiar with translating Assyrian texts and the CAD confirm this?OpenSee All Queries as meaning “to become free (of a task), to move about freely, to run off.” But Charpin[33] (p. 40) said that this freedom of movement was only a secondary meaning; it was just one consequence of returning to the original status.
True, but after all this was the single major social consequence of returning to the status quo ante. It seems to have been the raison d’être for this cosmological return. We thus have a social policy rationalized by cosmology and presented as a policy inscribed in the kosmos itself, as Charpin correctly noted. But the underlying cosmology itself has a social purpose rather than being value-free.
Charpin[34] (p. 41) stated that in the Mari letters, ŠunuhrahalûSpelling of TermThis is how it was spelled in the French work (Charpin, p. 41), but we couldn’t verify in English spelling. Can you help?OpenSee All Queries wrote a letter to Zimri-Lim (in the latter’s 10th year), trying to get Yarim-Lim’s son Hammurapi of Aleppo to proclaim andurārum in the land of GasheraTranslation CheckCan someone please fact-check this? Perhaps a French speaker who reviews the Mari letters. From our research, Gashera was Hammurabi’s mother, not a place.OpenSee All Queries in the fashion done by Zimri-Lim.
Charpin[35] (p. 44) found that the diminution of misharum acts signified the shrinking power of the Babylonian dynasty.
He concluded that someday one may find an edict of Hammurapi serving as the prototype for the subsequent edicts of Ammisaduqa and Samsuiluna.
But as one moves forward in time, one finds that the tradition of debt cancellations was maintained in the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the early first millennium BC (Postgate 1973[36] and 19__).Missing DigitYears are missing in the second date; we only have the first text cited in the Bibliography here. Can you help us figure out what text was missing so we can add a year and citation footnote and bibliographical note?OpenSee All Queries How is it that this highly militaristic empire preserved this tradition? My idea is that this was done precisely because of Assyria’s militarism. It was a key element in the policy of maintaining the free land-tenured peasant-army that made Assyria’s conquests.
It is in Israel that one finds the tradition of debt cancellations being made regular. The Hebrew term used was “deror,” obviously a cognate to the Assyrian “andurārum.”
But there were some important changes. For one thing, the Jubilee (“yobel”) year was regular, although less frequent (every 50 years). Second, the political situation had changed radically by the seventh century BC from what it had been in Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Instead of being “royal” proclamations, they were fixed. Evidently, given the oligarchic tendencies that were a characteristic of the time throughout the ancient world, kings no longer were associated with the preservation of democratic tendencies. (And the democracies for their part were aristocracies, who had curtailed royal power if not abolished kingship altogether.)
In the beginning of the 20th century of our era, Mesopotamia’s debt cancellations were called either “seisachtheia” (after Solon’s great act of 594 BC in classical Athens) or “Jubilee Years” after Leviticus (which current biblical scholarship places in the seventh century BC).Fact CheckCan you help us confirm this dating?OpenSee All Queries But as more documentation has become available since 1917, it has become apparent that the Mesopotamian proclamations were different—and also that they fed directly into the Hebrew and even Mediterranean traditions.Citation NeededCitation(s) would be appreciated here.OpenSee All Queries (See Schorr[37] 1915 and Walther[38] 1917.)
It seems anachronistic to say that archaic rulers were enacting “reforms” when they canceled agrarian debts. Rather, their “economic freedom” acts, signaled in Babylonian times by raising the sacred light of justice,[39]Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThis is one of two places we worked in a footnote about the Statue of Liberty from the Key Concepts section of this chapter; but perhaps you can help us work it into the chapter body more.OpenSee All Queries were of a regular and normative rather than reformist character. This normally occurred in the ruler’s first and 30th (i.e., coronation and “jubilee”) years, and at interim New Year festivals as the need arose.
The irregular timing of these debt cancellations shows that rulers found the economic kosmos to be in need of renewal, particularly in wartime situations. This seems to have been the case from the time of the very first such cancellation on record, that of the Lagash ruler Enmetena in 2400 BC. Back taxes and other debts were canceled in large part to rally the soldier-peasantry by giving it something to fight for—its own land free of debt—in preparation for campaigning against other towns or bidding for defensive support against external attack. Foreign generals made their own promises to cancel the tax and debt obligations of cities they were besieging. This became the characteristic tactic of hapiru armies attacking Palestine in the 14th century BC (Liverani[40] 1979: pp. 18–20),Verify CitationCan someone with access to the Liverani text help us confirm the page range? Originally this was written as “1979: 1820” and we added “pp.” and the en dash.OpenSee All Queries and Aeneas Tacticus recommended it to his Greek compatriots in the fourth century BC.Expand SectionCan someone recommend a quotation from this text to insert after this sentence?OpenSee All Queries
Central to the archaic idea of preserving social order, and also deriving from Greek “arthron” (by dropping the initial “a”) are “rituals” (“rites”). These rituals periodically restored order once it got out of balance as obligations accumulated and various forms of economic inequality emerged as wedges threatening to polarize society.
Gaster[41] (1950: pp. 6f.) described archaic seasonal rituals and their festivals as having four major elements:
(a) Rites of Mortification. These typically took the form of communal lents, fasts, and similar austerities (viz. Christian Lent and Muslim Ramadan). Work stopped, and commercial transactions were suspended. In archaic societies this typically occurred at year-end, in a “time out of time,” a mythic cosmological period of suspended animation on earth, e.g., the five or six epagomenal days bridging the end of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian 360-day civil year and the 365/6-day solar year.
Gaster added (p. 34) that the initial fasting stage “is frequently… followed by a ‘vacant period’ marking the interval between the expiration of the old lease and the inauguration of the new. This period is regarded as ‘epagomenal’ or outside of the normal calendar. The customary order of society is reversed, the customary activities suspended.”
“(b) Rites of Purgation, whereby the community seeks to rid itself of all noxiousness and contagion, both physical and moral, and of all evil influences which might impair the prosperity of the coming year and thereby threaten the desired renewal of vitality.”[42] (I will show below that this includes debt.) Gaster[43] added (1950: pp. 17f.) that in this phase of the ritual “The topocosm gets a ‘clean start’ in the new year. … Thus, among the Romans, the last month of the year was dedicated especially to communal purification and was therefore termed February, from a verb (februare) meaning ‘to purify.’ Temples and sacred vessels were likewise thoroughly scoured at this season.”
This stage also contained the Ritual Combat between the forces of order and those of chaos—usually between solar and lunar representatives, the Ruler versus the Dragon, light versus darkness.
(c) Rites of Invigoration to renew the topocosm. These rites may have included sexual promiscuity in a carnival atmosphere. It also may have included “the formal recruitment of new members into the body of the community. For this reason Initiation is a frequent element of seasonal ceremonies” (Gaster[44] 1950: p. 26). For instance, “the Hebrews preceded their spring festival of Pesa[c]h (Passover) with rites of circumcision, whereby new members were formally admitted to the fold.” Such initiation ceremonies typically took the form of a formal “rebirth,” often with a baptism and new name. At least the ruler usually partook in a meal at this point.
(d) Rites of Jubilation, signaling the sense of relief when the new year has indeed begun.
It was in this last stage that the group feast occurred—and it was this group feast, above all in this highest social example (and most exemplary form) that shaped all subsidiary group meals, even down to private table manners. For it was the formal occasion that defined the informal, or supplied the formal model.
Gaster[45] (1950: pp. 29f.) noted that “The COMMUNAL MEAL is a standard element of seasonal celebrations. Indeed, the very fact that ‘feast’ and ‘festival’ have come to be virtual synonyms is eloquent testimony to its prevalence.” And significantly, “these meals are almost invariably believed to involve the presence of gods as well as mortals.” The Babylonian akitu festival “was popularly known as the ‘feast’ (kirêtu) of the gods, and once a year… a collation (tâkultu) was offered to them.”
Gaster[46] added (p. 27) that “The word festival, which originally denoted no more than the ritual meal eaten in common at topocosmic crises [that is, key seasonal turning points such as the solstices or equinoxes], came in time to acquire the meaning of an essentially joyous celebration and ultimately to serve as the most appropriate designation of the seasonal ceremonies as a whole.”
Finkelstein (followed by Kraus) believed that the Babylonian ruler’s raising of “the sacred torch”[39]Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThis is the second of two places we worked in a footnote about the Statue of Liberty from the Key Concepts section of this chapter; but perhaps you can help us work it into the chapter body more.OpenSee All Queries probably was a signaling device.[47] But perhaps the analysis of comparative myth and ritual may add a symbolic dimension, linking this ritual act to the general “purgation by fire” which has been a widespread element of seasonal New Year and coronation rituals from archaic through modern times.
What are we to make of the “sacred torch” which was a sign for canceling debt? Was it connected with casting out sin, with purification by fire?
Reviewing the literature, Gaster[48] (1950: pp. 19, 371, and 98) noted that rites of fire played a widespread role in the Purgation stage of more modern seasonal rituals. He cited such diverse cultures as the Incas, the Inuit of Point Barrow, “at Fez and among the Berber-speaking tribes of Morocco… [(who] light fires on the rooftops on the festival of ‘Ashura,” 10 days after the Muslim New Year, and the English kindling bonfires on Halloween and at the Midsummer festival to drive away “the lustful Dragons.” Bonfires also marked celebrations of May Day, Easter, and Midsummer throughout Europe. The Celtic name for the spring Mayday festival is Beltane, whose name derived from Old English “bael” (bright) and Gaelic “teine” (fire).[49]
Gaster concluded that “In most (though not in all) cases, the purgation is effected with the aid of fire.”[50] It is as if burning the old creates a tabula rasa for the future, e.g., as corpses are ritually burned in India.
Returning to where it all began, Babylonian texts describing the akitu festival refer to tossing firebrands into the air (Pallas, pp. 215, 218).Specify CitationCan you help us identify what text is meant by “Pallas”? We could not find it in the Bibliography of this or previous chapters.OpenSee All Queries
Gaster[51] added (1950: p. 371) that “On the face of it, the kindling of fire might seem to be no more than a piece of magical hocus-pocus. The fact is, however, that it reflects one of the most common features of seasonal festivals.” We find it in the Hittite myth of Telipinu, and at the Hierapolitan “Festival of Fires” witnessed by Lucian (The Syrian Goddess,[52] Chapter 49). The Thesmophoria and Eleusinian mysteries were highlighted by “the staging of a torchlight procession by the female worshippers. Such parades are… a common characteristic of seasonal festivals, where they serve as one of the methods by which blight and contagion are removed in preparation for the new lease of life.”[53] They typically follow fasts.
Macrobius (Saturnalia I.7.32[54]) reported that the Romans presented candles (cerei) to each other on the holiday of Saturnalia.
The festival proceedings almost invariably ended with a group feast, usually when the new ruler was installed. Usually “the action closes with an Assembly of the Gods, usually accompanied by a Banquet. … In the Hittite Puruli-text, the gods foregather in Nerik when the weather-god is installed as king; and in the Myth of Telipinu, they sit down ‘on long benches’ and regale themselves when that god returns to earth. In the Babylonian Poem of Creation, the acknowledgment of Marduk as king is accompanied by a gathering and banquet of the gods. In the Canaanite Poem of Baal, that god invites all of the ‘seventy sons of Asherat’ to a banquet when once his palace has been completed; while the [Ugarit] Poem of Dawn and Sunset ends with a scene in which the supreme god El throws open the resources of heaven and earth to his two infant sons and they eat and drink to satiety—clearly, an attenuation of the Banquet motif” (Gaster[55] 1950: p. 64).
Omitted TextCan you help us expand this stub, which we have omitted as it seems like an unfulfilled internal note?OpenSee All Queries
Frazer, in The Fasti of Ovid[56] (London: 1929), Vol. II, p. 278 (quoted in Gaster[57] 1950: p. 17), wrote: “Among peoples of the lower culture the ceremonies of public purification, which take the form of a general expulsion of devils, seem generally to fall at the end of the year in order that the people may make a clean start in the new year, having rid themselves, as they imagine, of all the baneful influences that have troubled them in the past.” (See also Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough,[58] p. vi [The Scapegoat], pp. 224ff.)
What does it mean for a community to rid itself of “evil”? I believe that for archaic communities, this included ridding itself of what we would call sin (Schuld), and what they called simply by its effect: a financial obligation—in short, a debt. (And it originally it was the debts to the public sector that were canceled, not mercantile debts among private-sector transactors!)
Hocart[59] (1927: pp. 70f.) outlined 26 phases of the archaic Coronation Ceremony. Although he acknowledged that “A complete set of all the parts is not known to occur anywhere,” he added that if it did, it would appear as follows:
In the above series of stages, B, C, G, L and N involve a group-feast. With regard to the “N” stage, Hocart[60] noted (p. 96) that “The authorities make no mention of a concluding feast,” and it seems to be civil in any event, but “We could scarcely conceive a ceremony of this magnitude without a banquet to follow.”
The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets has described the elements of the New Year festival as described by Gaster.[61] Part of the Rites of Purgation and Invigoration included the Ritual Combat, to drive out the forces of disorder and re-establish those of order.
What began as sacred ritual ended up as Greek drama. Religion was made civic as the focus of Greek drama became hubris—not only in tragedy, but also in comedy.
A major feature of seasonal festivals was the staging of ritual combats, which in time evolved into athletic contests. Sumerian and Babylonian rulers fought a combat between order and chaos and emerged victorious. By the late second millennium BC in Asia Minor, the Hittites divided their young men into two halves, calling one group the Men of Hatti and the other the Men of Masa (Puhvel[62] 1988: p. 27). “Men of Hatti have bronze weapons, whereas Men of Masa have weapons of reed. They wage battle. The men of Hatti are victorious; they take a captive and consign him to the deity.” This recalls “ritual battles between the forces of summer and winter (or light and darkness, fertility and sterility), in ancient and modern Europe.” The Hittite Puruli festival featured “a battle royale between a national weather-god and the dragon Illuyanka.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Puhvel’s text verify the points made, quotation, and page number cited here?OpenSee All Queries The Canaanite Baal, lord of the land, subdued the turbulent spirit of the waters, Yam, or the fall genius of aridity, Mot. The Egyptian Ra engaged the monster ’Apep, and Horus contended with Set. The Hebrew Jehovah battled the “crooked serpent” Leviathan, alias Tannin, “the Dragon,” alias Rahab “the Rager” (Isaiah 27, 30, and 51; Ezekiel 29, 32, etc., cited in Gaster[63] [1950: pp. 24, 50ff.]). Funeral games often marked Near Eastern burials, perhaps as a pre-staged pantomime to determine a favorable outcome of weighing the soul of the deceased in preparation for entering into the next world.
In these archaic contests the forces of light invariably defeated those of darkness, but in time these combats became genuinely athletic races. At Babylon “a foot-race (lismu) was a standard feature of the New Year (Akîtu) ceremonies; while in Greece at the Eleusinian Mysteries and in Rome at the annual festival of Robigalia (March 25 [near the spring equinox])Fact CheckWikipedia says this occurred on April 25. Which is correct? (We can add a footnote updating Gaster’s 1950 text if necessary since this occurs in a quotation.)OpenSee All Queries such races were likewise run” (Gaster[64] 1950, p. 24).[65]
Gaster[66] (1950: p. 52) commented that “when foot-races are run—a characteristic seasonal rite—they are taken to represent the eager dispatch of the savior-god against the Monster; and when an animal is ceremonially milked—a familiar type of dairy charm—this is interpreted as symbolizing the suckling of that god by a divine mother or wet-nurse. In all of these cases, what is involved is not really impersonation but correspondence; the sacral act and the associated myth are really parallel expressions.” Gaster added that “Indeed, even the antiphonal chorus, with its constant exchange of banter and raillery, is… a survival of the two opposing teams in the primitive Ritual Combat.”[67]
But by the end of antiquity the Greek games and related performances of agon dramas were secularized and privatized in the Roman ludi—the chariot races in the circuses (originally circular racing tracks) and gladiatorial combats staged to buy the support of the Roman populace. Hocart[68] (1927: p. 87) noted that Rome’s abolition of kingship did away with the ritual combat ceremony (there being no more monarch to contend with the forces of darkness after the aristocrats dethroned the kings in the sixth century BC). This “left the idea of victory in sole possession. It has degenerated into a mere pageant of victory.” (The pattern of military triumphs has been traced by Versnel[69] 1970.) But these were relatively late developments. Rome’s gladiatorial games became so overdone that little remained of any cosmological function save the general idea of competition. What began as a staged pantomime with a fixed outcome (the solar forces of light always conquering those of lunar darkness) ended up as an actual battle to the death for popular amusement and wagering.
The Greek word for combat was “agon.” Out of this kernel developed Greek drama, from the Dionysian, Eleusian, and other mystery plays to the civic dramatic competitions that reached their apex in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles and the comedies of Aristophanes and Euripides. Popular tyrants made such festivals civic rather than sacred, and their officials public rather than hereditary. This democratized the bureaucracy of the sacrifice. The content of agon dramas shifted toward civic-minded rather than sacred-elitist functions.
Also political were the four athletic contests which the Greeks staged on a rotating basis between Olympia, Delphi (the Pythian Games, held halfway through the Olympiad), Nemea, and the Corinthian Isthmus. Raschke[70] (1988: p. 7) pointed out that each of these Panhellenic festivals “took place in the vicinity of a sacred temenos.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Raschke’s book confirm this quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries The Delphi games commemorated the mythic combat between the sun-god Apollo and the lunar Python-dragon. This combat was re-enacted every four years. Before 586 BC, wrote Fontenrose[71] (1988: p. 124), “the only Pythian contests were musical. The hymn to Apollo was sung to the accompaniment of the kithara (lyre) played by the singer; and it was said that Hesiod was not allowed to compete because he had not learned to play the kithara.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to the Fontenrose text verify this quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries But after the First Sacred War in 586 BC the substance of the ritual combat was made into a literal contest, as was flute-playing.
Travelers to the Panhellenic Games were protected by a sacred tradition of safe conduct. “For the Pythian Games, as for the Olympic, a truce was proclaimed, forbidding hostilities for the period of the games” (Fontenrose[72] 1988: p. 128).Verify CitationCan someone with access to the Fontenrose text verify this quotation and page number?OpenSee All Queries For Rome, Macrobius[73] (Saturnalia I.10.1) reported that no war should be declared during the days of the Saturnalia, and that no punishment of guilty parties should take place. This is in keeping with the fact that such seasonal festivals were times of “suspended animation,” a ritual “time out of time.”
The Olympic truces were only local, not Panhellenic, for summer was the normal time for warfare among the Greeks. Yet they reflected a tradition of safe conduct and hospitality. Such care was necessary because diplomatic awkwardness could lead to hostilities in an age when the term for “foreigner” was “host”Citation NeededCitation needed. Perhaps check Benveniste?OpenSee All Queries—an ambiguous term meaning sometimes the protector, sometimes enemy.
Strangers were sacred guests, under the protection of Nemesis and Zeus.Citation NeededCitation needed. Zeus is on p. 147 of Lowry, but is there another source for Nemesis?OpenSee All Queries In archaic times most travelers were merchants. Those of Mesopotamia established their own temples in foreign trading posts to provide protection and also to act as embassies.Citation NeededCitation(s) needed.OpenSee All Queries But Greek travel and trade occurred on a smaller scale and in a more “privatized” manner, based on guest-friendship (Lowry[74] 1987: pp. 146ff.). The rules of politeness dictated that a host not inquire into his guest’s status or other personal details until the visitor was given a meal. And by receiving such hospitality, a traveler would have become in his turn the host for the friends he had made on his visits. Most well-to-do Greeks had such friends in various cities—protectors if they were exiled, and friends who would house and feed them on future travels.Citation NeededCitation(s) needed.OpenSee All Queries
Such practices may have stemmed from a time when most travelers were temple or royal merchants, and later messengers, tax collectors, or other palace emissaries. Solon traveled as a merchant in the sixth century BC, as there really was no other mode of tourism. Travelers visiting distant regions covered their expenses by trading as they went.Citation NeededCitation(s) needed.OpenSee All Queries
The Greeks felt that this treatment of travelers distinguished them from the barbarians. Much as Sumer’s Gilgamesh epic indicated the uncivilized Enkidu by his inability to know proper eating and table manners, so the Greeks compared their “sense of the obligation to extend hospitality” with those of “The uncivilized Cyclopes… to illustrate a lawless culture without social organization” (Lowry[75] 1987: pp. 146ff., summarizing the information conveyed by the Odyssey and other Greek epics).
The earliest known domestic legal proclamation (as distinct from boundary or peace settlements) is that of the Sumerian ruler Enmetena c. 2400 BC canceling the agrarian debts of Lagash’s inhabitants. The second such proclamation is the “reform text” of Urukagina of Lagash (c. 2380 BC–2360 BC)Fact CheckUrukagina’s Wikipedia page says he died in 2370 BC, before the original date written of c. 2350 BC here. We updated to “2380 BC–2360 BC” (but other sources say 2352–2342 BC, so we estimated). Can you verify our edit is accurate?OpenSee All Queries canceling debts and decreeing related temple-sponsored reforms. Gudea of Lagash (c. 2150 BC), Ur-Nammu of Ur (c. 2100 BC), and the rulers of Assyria, Babylon, and surrounding Mesopotamian and Asia Minor regions (c. 2000–1600 BC) all canceled their debts periodically, especially when populations were forced into arrears during wars, droughts, or floods. The biblical lands adopted this tradition in their Jubilee Year and similar debt cancellations extending into the fifth century BC under Nehemiah.
The commercial takeoff of Athens was triggered by Solon’s cancellation of the debts—his seisachtheia of 594 BC, which followed widespread sixth-century BC debt annulments in neighboring Greek towns. But these were among the last such proclamations. The Iron Age oligarchies abolished the tradition as private wealth broke free of social constraints. Wealthy individuals became free to enslave the bulk of society, to expropriate the peasantry, and to reduce it either to debt-slavery or war-slavery. Although the Spartan rulers Agis, Cleomenes, and Nabis canceled debts at the close of the third century BC, their action was a belated throwback. Nabis was defeated by Rome, as was the Pontus ruler Mithradates after he mobilized popular support by canceling debts in Asia Minor in the first century BC.
By the depth of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD the wealthy were able to throw the entire weight of taxation onto the middle classes. The most powerful families were able to evade paying taxes. Athens and other cities had levied “liturgies” (leiturgoi)Spelling of TermCan you verify the spelling?OpenSee All Queries to finance major public expenditures such as outfitting naval triremes and gymnasia and staging dramatic choral presentations. Local tyrants did not shy from forcing their richest subjects to make “loans.”
Rome became the first city to actually repay emergency war contributions. It reimbursed the donations made by its leading families to the Punic War effort, treating these as public debts rather than as contributions. Because there was no money in Rome’s treasury, payment was made in the form of hitherto public lands, beginning with the Campagna. The epoch of absentee landownership had arrived with a vengeance.
Rome’s destruction ended any prospect of economic revival. The result was the greatest Clean Slate yet. Not only were outstanding debts canceled and the slaves freed, but usury and personal slavery were banned outright, inaugurating the European Middle Ages out of which the modern world emerged.
StubThis section is a stub. Can you help us flesh it out/improve transitions and specificity?OpenSee All Queries
With regard to modern translations and commentaries on Enuma Elish, Francois Thureau-Dangin’s Rituels Accadiens[76] (1927) provided the text for a late Babylonian New Year ritual (seventh century BC). S.H. Hooke’s Myth and Ritual[77] (London: 1933) was a translation of this text. Enuma Elish was rendered into English by Heidel[78] (The Babylonian Genesis [Chicago: 1942 (1951)]).Omitted TextWe omitted text here (“now superseded by __”); if you can help us fill in the blank, we can add it back.OpenSee All Queries
Important commentaries include Henri Frankfort’s The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man[79] (Chicago: 1946), W.G. Lambert’s numerous articles (especially 1968 and 198_).Missing DigitCan you help us identify the year of publication for W.G. Lambert 198_?OpenSee All QueriesCitation NeededNo text by Wilfred Lambert (W.G. Lambert) has been cited anywhere in this book. Can you help us find either of the two texts that could be cited for this?OpenSee All Queries The late Babylonian version of the Creation myth by Berossus was translated by Stanley Mayer Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus[80] (1978).
The third-millennium BC roots of this festivalAdd ContextWhat festival is meant here?OpenSee All Queries are apparent in Gudea’s cylinders and cones describing his foundation of Lagash’s city-temple c. 2100 BC. A good modern translation is available in Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps that Once… Sumerian Poetry in Translation[81] (New Haven: 1897), pp. 386–444.
The Egyptian counterpart would be the sed festival, discussed by C.J. Bleeker,[82] Egyptian Festivals.
Arthur M. Hocart’s Kingship[83] (London: 1927) described the many common denominators between the Mesopotamian New Year festival and subsequent coronation rituals going down to modern times. Lord Raglan’s The Hero[84] (Mineola, New York: 1956 [1936]) and How Came Civilization[85] (London: 1939) described how the Mesopotamian New Year festival diffused throughout the ancient world to become a widespread basis for myths and epics, fairy tales, and folk tales.
This glossary of key concepts will help readers who are new to the subject of archaic human history.
Keywords: Archaic “freedom” terms: Sumerian amargi,Sumerian TerminologyShould this be ama-gi or amagi instead of amargi throughout this book? See: Ama-gi.OpenSee All Queries Babylonian misharum, Hurrian sudutu,Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThis word and these people are not mentioned throughout this chapter. Can you help us add it and expand on in the chapter body?OpenSee All Queries Akkadian andurārum, and Hebrew deror; also Egyptian ma’atKey Concept Missing in Chapter BodyEgyptian ma’at is not discussed in this chapter’s body. Can you help us add it?OpenSee All Queries and Greek seisachtheia.
Lunar symbol: Libra weighing out the cultivator’s grain obligations upon harvest.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyLibra is not discussed in this chapter's body. Can you help us add it?OpenSee All Queries
Solar symbol: The Babylonian ruler raising the sacred torch at the coronation festival to signal his proclamation of economic freedom throughout the land. This image is recalled by the Statue of Liberty.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThe Key Concepts section teases a mention of the Statue of Liberty that is not fulfilled in the chapter body except in footnotes we added. Can you help us work it in to the chapter body more thoroughly?OpenSee All Queries For the modern Caesarian-Roman New Year,Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyCaesar’s calendar is not mentioned in the chapter body (it’s only in the Key Concepts section); can you help us add it?OpenSee All Queries the winter solstice/Germanic Christmas.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyWinter solstice/Germanic Christmas are not mentioned in the chapter body (they are only in the Key Concepts section); can you help us add them to the chapter body? A hint from the author’s notes in Chapter 2 is provided in this query.OpenSee All Queries
Principle of regularity: A removal of financial or other obligations carried over from the past put all citizens once again on an equal self-sufficient footing. Crimes were forgiven and exile was commuted. This restored social order and placed citizens on a par with each other again, as “in the beginning.”
Periodic renewal ceremony: The New Year festival or coronation festival, when new rulers were crowned (especially at the inception of their first full year on the throne, in Mesopotamia, or celebrated on their 30th anniversary [“a month of years”]).
Integration with the calendrical kosmos: The New Year ritual at which the social kosmos was reordered and laws (re)proclaimed.
International interface: The Olympic Games held every four years (whose Olympiads became the key to classical Greek chronology). These sacred festivals were also commercial occasions.
Public character: Restoration of order was done by royal proclamation. This presupposed the institution of kingship.
Religious sanctification: It was the sacred duty of Bronze Age rulers to restore social justice and order. In Judaic law, Leviticus (Chapter 25 dealing with the Jubilee Year) placed periodic restorations of order and financial Clean Slates at the center of religion, while Deuteronomy’s septennial freeing of debt-slaves, nominally in memory of the fact that the Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt and thus should not exploit each other.
Ultimate dissolution: The classical aristocracies ended the Bronze Age tradition of proclaiming order or liberty. Debts were canceled and amnesties proclaimed only in military emergencies or revolutionary situations such as in Athens in 594 BC when Solon enacted his seisachtheia, or under kings Agis and Cleomenes in Sparta in the third century BC. At the end of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar declared a moratorium on debts owed by the well-to-do, but not by the indebted population at large.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyCaesar’s calendar/debt forgiveness is not mentioned in the chapter body (it’s only in the Key Concepts section); can you help us add it?OpenSee All Queries Roman rule made debts and debt-bondage irreversible and irrevocable. The New Year rituals lapsed into mere Saturnalia—one might say from re-creation to mere recreation.
Guitty Azarpay, “A Canon of Proportions in the Art of the Ancient Near East,” in Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East, Ann C. Gunter (ed.) (Madison, Wisconsin: 1990), pp. 93–103.
C.J. Bleeker, Egyptian Festivals (Leiden: 1967).
Jean Bottero, “Desordre economique et annulation des dettes en Mesopotamie a l’epoque paleobabylonienne,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 4 (1961), pp. 113–164.
Stanley Mayer Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus, in Sources from the Ancient Near East, Vol. 1 (Malibu: 1978), pp. 143–181.
Dominique Charpin, “Les Décrets Royaux à l’Époque Paléo-Babylonienne, à Propos d’un Ouvrage Récent,” Archiv für Orientforschung, Vol. 34 (1987), pp. 36–44.
Jerrold Cooper, SARI,Missing Bibliographic DetailsWhat journal does SARI stand for?OpenSee All Queries Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions.
G. Dossin, on prophecy in Mari, in La divination en Mesopotamie et dans les regions voisines, XI, Vo. R.A.I.,Missing Bibliographic DetailsWhat does “Vo. R.A.I.” stand for?OpenSee All Queries pp. 85–86.
Jean-Marie Durand, Archives Épistolaires de Mari (MARI 1) (Paris: 1988).
Maria de Jong Ellis, “Simdatu in the Old Babylonian Sources,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 24 (1972), pp. 74–82.
Jack J. Finkelstein, “Some New Misharum Material and Its Implications,” in Assyriological Studies, No. 16 (1965), pp. 233–246.Missing Bibliographic DetailsWhere in the Chapter 11 body should this be cited?OpenSee All Queries
Jack J. Finkelstein, “The Edict of Ammisaduqa: A New Text,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 63 (1969), pp. 45–64.
Joseph Fontenrose, “The Cult of Apollo and the Games at Delphi,” in Wendy J. Raschke (ed.), The Archaeology of the Olympics (Madison, Wisconsin: 1988), pp. 121–140.
Henri Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago: 1946).
Henri Frankfort, “State Festivals in Egypt and Mesopotamia,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute (1952).
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Part VI: “The Scapegoat” (3rd ed., 1913) (New York: 1894).
James George Frazer, The Fasti of Ovid (London: 1929).
C.J. Gadd, “Text of the ‘Babylonian Seisachtheia,’” in Symbolae Ad Iura Orientis Antiqui Pertinentes Paulo Koschakar Dedictae (Leiden: 1939), pp. 102–105.
Theodor Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East (New York: 1950).
I.J. Gelb, “Approaches to the Study of Ancient Society,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 87, No. 1 (1967), pp. 1–8.
Louis Gernet, Recherches sur le développement de la pensée juridique et morale en Grèce (Paris: 1917).
Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: 1942 [1951]).
Arthur M. Hocart, Kingship (London: 1927).
Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors (Chicago: 1970 [1936]).
S.H. Hooke, Myth and Ritual (London: 1933).
Sally Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London: 1978).
Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps that Once…: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven: 1987).
Morris Jastrow, “Sun and Saturn,” Revue d’Assyriologie, Vol. 7 (1909), pp. 163–178.
Géza Komoróczy, “Zur Frage der Periodizität der altbabylonischen mišarum-Erlässe,” in Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of I.M. Diakonoff by M.A. Dandamayev, I. Gershevitch, H. Klengel, G. Komoróczy, M.T. Larsen, and J.N. Postgate (eds.) (Warminster: 1982), pp. 196–205.
Fritz R. Kraus, Ein Edikt des Königs Ammi-Saduqa von Babylon (Studia et Documenta ad Iura Orientis Antiqui Pertinentia, Vol. 5, Leiden: 1958).
Fritz R. Kraus, Konigliche Verfugungen in altbabylonischer Zeit (Studia et Documenta ad Iura Orientis Antiqui Pertinentia, Vol. 11, Leiden: 1984).
Fritz R. Kraus, Sumerer und Akkader: Ein Problem der Altmesopotamischen Geschichte (Amsterdam: 1970).Omitted TextCan you help us understand what the omitted text note meant, and make any changes to the Bibliography or Chapter 11 if necessary?OpenSee All Queries
Maurice Lambert, “L’Expansion de Lagash au temps d’Entemena,” Rivista degli studi Orientali, Vol. 47 (1972), pp. 9–13.Missing Bibliographic Details“W.G. Lambert” had two citations in the Chapter 11 body, but there was no explicit allusion to Maurice Lambert. Can you help us identify at least two missing text citations in the Bibliography for W.G. Lambert?OpenSee All QueriesMissing Bibliographic DetailsOriginally all that was written here was “Maurice Lambert, Enmetena’s”; is our guess that’s currently in the Bibliography the right one for what was missing?OpenSee All Queries
N.P. Lemche, “Andurārum and Misharum: Comments on the Problem of Social Edicts and Their Application in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 38 (1979), pp. 11–22.Verify CitationCan you help us verify that this was in JNES Vol. 38 (1979)?OpenSee All Queries
Mario Liverani, Three Amarna Essays (Malibu, California: 1979).
S. Todd Lowry, The Archaeology of Economic Ideas (Durham: 1987).
Lucian and Herbert A. Strong (tr.), The Syrian Goddess: Being a Translation of Lucian’s ‘De Dea Syria,’ With a Life of Lucian, John Garstang (ed.) (London: 1913).
Macrobius, The Saturnalia, Percival Vaughan Davies (tr.) (New York: 1969).
Theophile J. Meek, “The Code of Hammurabi,” in Ancient Near East Texts, 163–164, 166–177 (Princeton: 1958), pp. 138–167.
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago editorial board, The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (also known as the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, or CAD), Volume 3, D, part 2 (Chicago: 1959).
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago editorial board, The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (also known as the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, or CAD), Volume 10, M, part 2 (Chicago: 1977).
J.N. Postgate, The Governor’s Palace Archive (Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud [CTN] 2, London: 1973), near p. 248.
Jean Puhvel, “Hittite Athletics as Prefigurations of Ancient Greek Games,” in Wendy J. Raschke (ed.), The Archaeology of the Olympics (Madison, Wisconsin: 1988), pp. 26–31.Verify CitationCan you verify the spelling of the author’s name as Jean Puhvel? It is possible Jaan Puhvel was meant (see Chapters 9 and 12), but it’s also possible they are two different people.OpenSee All Queries
Lord Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama (Mineola, New York: 1956 [1936]).
Lord Raglan, How Came Civilization (London: 1939).
Wendy J. Raschke (ed.), The Archaeology of the Olympics (Madison, Wisconsin: 1988).
M. Schorr, “Eine babylonische Seisachthie aus dem Anfang der Kassitenzeit” (Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse: 1915).
Ephraim Speiser, “Cuneiform Law and the History of Civilization,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 107, No. 6 (December 1963), pp. 536–541.Missing Bibliographic DetailsOriginally all that was written here was “Ephraim Speiser, ”; is our guess that’s currently in the Bibliography the right one for what was missing?OpenSee All Queries
Francois Thureau-Dangin, Rituels Accadiens (Paris: 1921).
H.S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden: 1970).
A. Walther, “Das altbabylonische Gerichtswesen” (Leipziger semitistische Studien, Band 6, Leipzig: 1917), pp. 83ff., 96ff.
Moise Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (London: 1972).
A.J. Wensinck, “The Semitic New Year and the Origin of Eschatology,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. I (1923), pp. 179–186.
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