The Ancient Near East and Egypt

Ancient Near Eastern sources cover some 3,000 years of history from the invention of writing until the final disappearance of the cuneiform writing system and the culture and traditions that were inextricably linked to it, in the first centuries AD. The textual documentation can usefully be divided into three categories: monumental, canonical, and archival. The first category comprises royal inscriptions and similar texts: documents intended for public display, or at least for wider dissemination, that carried an ideological and/or religious message. These texts are mostly uninformative regarding the practical minutiae of government, but they are essential for understanding the Mesopotamian concept of kingship. Their principal purpose was to establish the legitimacy of the ruler as a successful leader of his realm on the basis of his performance with respect to two core values: protecting the peace and prosperity of the country, and maintaining “good relations” with the divine sphere by providing the necessary framework for the upkeep of the official cult, in particular the regular offerings intended to feed (literally) the gods residing in the temples. Other sources of legitimacy, in particular success in war with outside enemies and descent from a royal line, are of comparatively minor importance. Divine approval could be assumed to have been withdrawn, and legitimacy of rule lost, when a king failed to keep his principal duties. The power of a Mesopotamian monarch was always contingent upon his success as provider for the gods and guarantor for internal stability and prosperity. Only in the case of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries does the duty aggressively to enlarge the realm (then conceived as the domain of the chief god, Assur) form part of the fundamental tasks of a Mesopotamian king. Canonical texts, namely works of literature and religious compositions, as well as scholarly material such as magical, medical, or divinatory texts, were transmitted in a (more or less) stable form in the realm of professional scribes, priests, diviners, exorcists, and the like, as well as in the context of scribal training.