The reviewed book approaches one of the central subjects in Assyriology and Egyptology from an interesting perspective. Aware of the variety of aspects studied by previous researchers, the editors explain in the introduction that exploring kingship in this book is not about synthetic studies replete with comparisons of major manifestations of royal power in both cultures.
Instead, they allowed contributors to address any topic falling into three thematic areas: cosmos (pp. 33–182), exploring the ruler's relationship to the gods and his maintenance of cosmic order; politics (pp. 185–328), revolving around the economic and administrative role of the crown; and landscape (pp. 331–423), meant to illuminate the interplay of the cosmic and political roles of kingship as shown in the king's manipulation of the physical space of his realm.
E.F. Morris (pp. 33–64) and L.D. Morenz (pp. 121–49) consider the visual representations of kingship on ceremonial objects from Predynastic Egypt (the Narmer Palette, the Scorpion macehead, ceremonial semiophores). Through a close reading of the symbolic language of those artefacts, both scholars offer semiotic analyses of messages which subsequently formed the mainstay of Egyptian royal ideology: the king is not an ordinary human, he is chosen by the gods to achieve unity between Upper and Lower Egypt, to bring abundance, to protect Egypt from enemies and to extend her territory.
Contributions by D. Charpin (pp. 65–96) and E. Frahm (pp. 97–120) elucidate the relationship of the king and the sun-god in Mesopotamia. While Charpin focuses on solar aspects of the Old Babylonian ruler as the ultimate judge and source of stability, Frahm shows how Neo-Assyrian royal rituals imitated the journey of the sun during the day, and that of the planet Saturn at night, transposing the simultaneous stability and volatility of kingship into the astral realm.
JoAnn Scurlock (pp. 151–82) attempts to trace the relationship of Mesopotamian (deified) kings to the divine shepherd and legendary ruler Dumuzi. Her study is written with wit but her argumentation is difficult to follow. Particularly her conviction that Dumuzi as a “dying god” was not associated with agricultural fertility has to be taken with caution. A shepherd not only herds and breeds his flocks but he must also find food for them, which is why Dumuzi is associated with sprouting plants. Conversely, if flocks are sated their dung makes the soil more fertile. In a shepherd the symbolism of plant and animal fecundity is intertwined. Both in pasture and in sheep-fold he daily observes constant growth and decay – a basic order of things which every Mesopotamian king had to safeguard.
The section on the political aspects of kingship opens with a study by J.C. Moreno García (pp. 185–217) on the relationship of 3rd millennium Egyptian kings and local elites, and the interaction of the palace and provincial (religious) institutions in building an efficient administration. His discussion of co-opting of notables into the court or the creation of royal cult centres in the provinces shows how pharaohs attempted to enforce their power on the local level during the Old Kingdom.
There follows a paper on the Mesopotamian palatial economy by W. Sallaberger (pp. 219–55). Using representative examples of archival texts, the author shows that the administration of precious goods (e.g. silver, textiles, delicacies) was the exclusive prerogative of the king in various periods and places. His findings call for a re-evaluation of the traditional palace vs. temple perspective, which considers the two institutions as economic players struggling for political power. Sallaberger has demonstrated that while temples dominated the management of agriculture (p. 247), “the palace goods could only be managed actively by the political ruler” (p. 231), which imbued the king with political and symbolic power that the temples could not possess.
M. Bárta (pp. 257–83) investigates the transition of Egyptian kingship during the Old Kingdom from the “family-run autocratic rule” (p. 274) during Dynasty IV, to the more socially stratified and hierarchically differentiated administration of the subsequent two dynasties. He uses the evidence of royal funerary complexes, the changes in their size and equipment, the development of non-royal tombs relative to the changes of status and wealth of their owners, and textual evidence of administrative measures taken by the kings of Dynasties V and VI to reverse the concomitant erosion of royal power.
B. Pongratz-Leisten considers the interdependency of the Neo-Assyrian intellectual elite and the ruler in the formulation and promulgation of the image of the king. Her clear and informative study of the role of scholars at Neo-Assyrian court is supported with an analysis of a prime scholarly product on behalf of the king – the report of Sargon II on his eighth campaign against Urartu (pp. 285–309).
D.B. Dickson offers a reinterpretation of elite burials at the “royal cemetery” at Early Dynastic Ur (pp. 311–28). He proposes the conflict theory as a conceptual framework of his study, for “conflict theory begins with the presumption that profound inequalitites in power exist” (p. 313) that foster competition over resources, instigating the emergence of states. The author explains the “royal cemetery” as a product of intense social conflict, a struggle for unity vis-à-vis grave inequity between the elite and the commoners. He supports his argument with similar evidence from Early Dynastic burials at Abydos, concluding that “early state rulers both in Mesopotamia and Egypt felt compelled to demonstrate their power through the murder of their subjects” (p. 322). He makes a convincing case against the application of integration theory to the “royal cemetery”, according to which “the people sacrificed at Ur along with the dynasts went willingly to their deaths out of loyalty, devotion, and faith in the dead monarchs … in order for the state to remain effective as a mechanism of adaptation to the social and physical environment” (p. 324).
The last three papers are devoted to manifestations of kingship in landscape, or drawing landscapes into images of kingship. M. Roaf offers an overview of the building activities of Mesopotamian kings (pp. 331–59). A.B. Lloyd scrutinizes five inscriptions about expeditions to a quarry in Egyptian Eastern Desert (pp. 361–82). While he attempts to highlight the possible use of those texts as royal propaganda, his paper appears to illuminate Egyptian religious perception of non-urban areas in the first place. The relevance of his contribution for the understanding of Egyptian royal ideology could be articulated in more detail.
Finally, the contribution by M.-A. Ataç (pp. 383–423) explores visual representations of distant (and “fabulous”) lands in Assyrian palace reliefs and obelisks with an excursus on the treatment of the same in Egyptian official art. Ataç argues that depictions of foreign plants and animals “not only referred to the expanse of the empire, but also constituted an indication that rule was now extended to the edges of the oikoumene and even beyond” (p. 416). The paper thus uncovers an interesting ideological tool of Assyrian rulers supporting their pretensions to universal rule.
Although not comparative stricto sensu, avoiding explicit discussion of some key issues (e.g. royal deification), and making a somewhat disparate impression, this book comprises a wealth of material and fresh interpretations, while it shows new methodological avenues of research on ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian kingship.
