The present book is the author's doctoral thesis in the subject of Near Eastern archaeology. The writer attempts to develop a portrait of Urartian kings on the basis of the known sources and simultaneously to examine the extent to which specific ideas were taken over from other ancient Near Eastern cultures. The author thus declares at the outset that she does not aim to reconstruct “historical realities”, but rather to look into the ideological intellectual world with respect to kingdom (p. 1).
The book opens with a chapter on “kingdom” (pp. 7–41), where the terminology used in the thesis is introduced and discussed. This is very much to the advantage of the reader, since the author points out on which basis she defines the terms “power” and “rule” (pp. 7–13), “patrimonialism” (pp.13–6) as well as “king” and “kingdom” (pp. 16–41). The mere term “patrimonialism” reveals the importance the author attaches to the theses of Max Weber. In addition to Weber's concept of rule, she uses the theses of the sociologist Stefan Breuer as a terminological basis (p. 11), first reconsidering the term “charisma” and subsequently the “king's charisma” – the main objective of her doctoral thesis – as regards its religious (pp. 39–40), political (pp. 40–41) and military (p. 41) aspects.
Chapter 2 (pp. 43–120) deals with the general concept of kingdom in the ancient Near East. It explains the Sumerian and Akkadian terms and forms of addresses for “king” and traces back the origin of ancient Near Eastern kingdom (pp. 48–58). The author's main focus here is on the relationship between art and politics (in the form of pictorial art and architecture), as well as the correlation between the functions of kings and gods. Starting with the Sumerian dynasties from the Uruk and Ǧamdat Naṣr epochs, this aspect is traced into the Achaemenid era (pp. 58–85). For almost any epoch and any ancient Near Eastern culture there are elementary works on kingdom, which are cited correspondingly in the present book. On account of her comprehensive diachronic comparisons, however, the author can only briefly outline and broach important aspects of the individual periods. With respect to the various tasks of the king, principally Assyrian, Hittite and Achaemenid sources are referred to (pp. 85–117). Chapter 2 closes with a fairly tight sub-chapter on the “mythical ideal kings”, as e.g. Gilgameš or also Lugalbanda (pp. 117–20).
Chapter 3 gives an introduction to Urartu (pp. 121–40): the reader is not directly confronted with the topic of Urartu before this stage. The geographical introduction is followed by a historical overview, with an elaboration on both the first references to Urartu in Assyrian sources from the thirteenth century bc onwards and the emergence of Urartian sources. The discussion about the problematic succession to the throne from the middle of the eighth century bc onwards is of special interest in this context (pp. 131–8). It reveals that without a synchronization with Assyrian data the Urartian chronology can hardly be reconstructed. The author juxtaposes the possible schemes of chronologization and in the question about the succession to the throne follows Michael Roaf's suggestion (“Could Rusa son of Erimena have been king of Urartu during Sargon's eighth campaign?”, in S. Kroll et al. (eds), Biainili-Urartu. Proceedings of the Symposium held in Munich 12–14. October 2007 (Acta Iranica 51. Leuven, 2012), 187–216) to consider the Urartian king Rusa, son of Erimena, as a contemporary of the Assyrian king Sargon II (p. 132).
Chapter 4 (pp. 141–312) constitutes the core of the author's research, the presentation of the “Urartian king” and the “Urartian kingdom” in all its facets. It introduces well-known writing systems (hieroglyphs and cuneiform) and subsequently examines the forms of addresses of kings in inscriptions (pp. 147–56). Above all the supreme god Ḫaldi, the Urartian state religion, and the relationship between the kings and the gods with all its rights and duties are highlighted here. Furthermore, extensive building projects in the form of fortresses and watering systems are dealt with. Finally, the chapter examines the administration of the Urartian state and raises the question whether it was a central or a segmentary state (pp. 274–8). The author concludes that it was a “feudal patrimonial state” (pp. 278–80), i.e. the political system suggested by Max Weber, which is based on structures subject to the directives of an autocrat.
In the reviewer's opinion, the first two chapters are highly interesting and of fundamental importance to the thesis, but in the end far too long. Above all in chapter 1 the reader gains the impression that this is a sociological work, the results of which are compared with a selected issue – the Urartian culture in this case. This also arises in the chosen order of the individual chapters. The discussion of Urartian culture does not begin until p. 121. More illustration would also have been helpful (there are only 36 figures).
The reviewer has not understood at all the author's system of citation. Despite an itemized bibliography at the end of the book (pp. 321–44), individual citations are listed again in the footnotes. This is simply unnecessary, inflates the length and leads the system of bibliography ad absurdum. Strangely enough, some citations did not find their way into the bibliography at all. Perhaps they have just been forgotten? Furthermore, a list of abbreviations is missing. Neither does the book contain any index, which should be standard with such monographs.
The author has delivered an extensive work in several ways. She proves soundness of handling the theoretical basics of social science in the first chapter, and extensive knowledge of ancient Near Eastern cultural history, especially of the Urartian cultural history, in subsequent chapters. Although there are some small aspects to criticize, the author has succeeded in writing an easily legible contribution to the research into Urartian culture. The second part of her publication will constitute an important contribution to subsequent research in this field.
