Administrative Practices And Political Control In Anatolian And Syro Anatolian Polities In The 2nd And 1st Millennium Bce

This volume originates from a research project, which was funded within the PRIN program Writing Uses: Transmission of Knowledge, Administrative Practices and Political Control in Anatolian and Syro-Anatolian Polities in the 2nd and 1st Millennium BCE. The project involved ‘research units’ from different Italian universities (Torino, Pavia, Bologna, Firenze, Napoli - Suor Orsola Benincasa). The papers presented here, seek to fill some gaps in our knowledge of the Hittite Empire and its epigones, and offer an updated picture of some aspects of the Hittite and post-Hittite administration in Anatolia and Syria through the analysis and interpretation of epigraphic and archaeological evidence.

Volume 24 of the Israel Oriental Studies Annual includes eight articles. The Ancient Near Eastern section consists of five articles. Four deal with Hittite and Anatolian subjects (Burgin, Gilan, Cohen and Hawkins); one discusses the “Laws of Hazor” text fragment and its relationship to other cuneiform law collections (Darabi). The Semitic section includes three articles. The first is the second instalment of Etymogical Investigations on Jibbali/Śḥerέt Anthroponyms (Castagna and Al-'amri). The second article is a discussion of the relationship between Ethiopian Semitic languages and ancient Egyptian (Cerqueglini). Sealing the Semitic section and volume 24 is a study of spoken Ashkenazic Hebrew among Hassidic communities (Yampolskaya et al.).

The topic of the Anatolian panthea in the Bronze Age deals with Hattian, Hittite, Palaean, Luwian and Hurrian gods who have been worshiped in the Kingdom of Ḫatti. In such a context, along with trying to keep a balanced and methodologically-aware approach in our original research, we realized that a multi-authored work such as the present volume, with papers written by some of the major experts of Anatolian religious history, would represent an invaluable contribution to the advancement of a complex and vast field. This collection of essays is the result of the workshop Theonyms, Panthea and Syncretisms in Hittite Anatolia and Northern Syria, held at the University of Verona on 25th and 26th March 2022. Colleagues with different areas of expertise pertaining to the topic of Anatolian religions contributed to an extremely successful event.

"This book presents a new model for the cluster of ancient kingdoms that clustered around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron age, ca. 1200-600 BCE. Rather than presenting them as ancient versions of the modern nation-state, characterized by homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. This conclusion is reached via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence lead to the awareness that this time and place consists of a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book thus proposes a new term to encapsulate that diversity: the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex"--

Known from the Old Testament as one of the tribes occupying the Promised Land, the Hittities were in reality a powerful neighbouring kingdom: highly advanced in political organization, administration of justice and military genius; with a literature inscribed in cuneiform writing on clay tablets; and with a rugged and individual figurative art ... Newly revised and updated, this classic account reconstructs a complete and balanced picture of Hittite civilization, using both established and more recent sources.

This book reconsiders the concept of empire and examines the processes of imperial making and undoing in Hittite Anatolia (c. 1600-1180 BCE).

This paper aims at presenting the results of recent investigations on the Early Iron Age at Arslantepe/Malatya (SE Turkey), which yielded important new data on the rise and collapse of a local power that used figurative representation at the town’s gate to express its authority. The 12th century BCE was one of the most relevant periods of transformation in the Syro-Anatolian region, which saw the decline of the Hittite Empire and the emergence of independent polities that re-elaborated the imperial tradition in original ways. The breakdown of the empire was not a generalized event, rather a process developing in an uneven temporal and geographic range. The Arslantepe case shows that the collapse was delayed, as it was contained by the rising of a local elite, which adopted strategies of territorial control and manifestation of power through the use of monumental buildings and sculptured reliefs. The archaeological evidence from Arslantepe will be presented and correlated with the Late Bronze Age epigraphic sources from Emar and the land of Aštata. These texts describe rituals illustrating the importance of city-gates as performance spaces in festivals involving the entire community and document the increasing financial support of the local kings. The festivals might have been also an instrument to establish or legitimate a stronger role of a previous “limited kingship” within the community after the Hittite conquest. The association of visual representations and rituals performed at the city-gates offer some reflections about the development of the Syro-Anatolian societies, as well as the role of the ruling class during the late-2nd millennium BCE.