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Abstract
CPJ 1.23, a second-century BCE contract between two Jews for an interest-free loan secured with a house, briefly stirred interest for the possibility that it shows Jews observing their law in the Hellenistic diaspora. Most regard that as unlikely though, and the text has since languished in obscurity among scholars of Hellenistic Judaism. This article reexamines the text in its proper juridical context—in comparison with other loan contracts from Greco-Roman Egypt—to show that it uses the form for a hypothecated loan to arrange the sale of a house which gives the seller the opportunity to reclaim it within a year of sale according to Leviticus 25:29–30. The article also places this reading of CPJ 1.23 alongside other evidence for Jews using their ancestral norms in handling property matters in Hellenistic Egypt to outline a hypothesis regarding the purpose of this tendency in Ptolemaic-era Jewish legal reasoning.
Abstract
This article presents an imaginative exercise in which a fictional author from the year 4025 details results from excavations of archaeological sites dating to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Based on analyses of small domestic finds, as well as the discovery of a monumental complex utilizing similar imagery, the author concludes that people must have worshipped an anthropomorphic mouse god – the Historical Mouse – in the Mechano-Digital Age, keeping devotional votives in their homes and traveling at least once a year to a primary space of worship centered around the experience of various ritual mysteries. This article calls upon students to perform a self-evaluation about their own assumptions and approaches to the ancient world as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an ‘ancient’ religion.
Abstract
Der mesopotamische “leidende Gerechte” wurde bislang als eine weitestgehend homogene Figur bewertet: als ein gottesfürchtiger und rechtschaffener (aber nicht unfehlbarer!) Mensch, der trotz seiner redlichen Lebensführung unerklärliches Leiden in Form von Krankheiten, sozialem Abstieg und Verarmung ertragen muss. Anhand neuer Textquellen zum “leidenden Gerechten” aus der Brief- und Weisheitsliteratur wird in diesem Beitrag ein spezifischer Typ des “leidenden Gerechten” herausgearbeitet: der seit mindestens der altbabylonischen Zeit dokumentierte verarmte missachtete Gelehrte, oft in Form des abgesetzten königlichen Gelehrten, der neue Erkenntnisse zu den alten Fragen der mesopotamischen Theodizee zu vermitteln vermag: Wer ist (ursächlich) verantwortlich für unerklärliches menschliches Leiden? Nach dem verarmten missachteten Gelehrten ist das de facto die Menschheit selbst! Und wie kann unerklärliches Leiden gelöst, oder besser noch: verhindert werden, wenn nicht (allein) durch Gottesfurcht und Rechtschaffenheit? Theoretisch, indem ein Mensch “ein Haus mit guten Geistern” bewohnt, doch die praktische Umsetzung dieser Empfehlung bleibt schwierig.
Abstract
This paper focuses on the analysis of a religious text coming from the reused blocks in Amun temple B 700 at the capital of the Napatan Kingdom (713–290 BCE), in the Sudan. This is the first fragmented Osirian hymn attested in Kush, while its integral version was found in Thebes, in the inner walls of the chapel erected by the Divine Adoratrice Ankhnesneferibre at Karnak North. The article presents the content of this hymn and its commentary, investigating the possible origins of the cult of this solarised form of Osiris associated to a local deity such as Dedwen in Nubia.
Abstract
While recent scholarship has clarified the spelling of the little-known Old Assyrian nasbītum rite, formerly glossed as naspittum, its etymology and social context have remained obscure. This paper suggests the elusive rite has its etymology in the OA verb sabā’um, “to brew/draw beer,” and refers to the act of libation. While the textual evidence for nasbītum is currently limited, an analysis of the rite as it occurs in the OA corpus suggests that nasbītum was the OA term for the care and feeding of the spirits of the dead, analogous to the better-known Old Babylonian kispum.
Abstract
Although the Syrian kingdoms of the 13th century BCE may not have been integrated into the Hittite empire politically or economically, there is evidence that the Hittites employed strategies of cultural integration – part of bridging the geographical and social divide between the rulers and the ruled. The recently published documents from Ugarit reveal that both the Hittite Great king himself, as well as the King of Karkamiš, who administered the Syrian kingdoms, participated in Ugaritic ritual management and sent Hittite agents to offer sacrifices foreign to Ugarit. These features resonate with the emerging understanding of ritual practice at Emar as deeply influenced by Hittite ritual ideas and closely managed by Hittite officials, raising anew the question of Emar’s cult for “the gods of Ḫatti.” This investigation demonstrates aspects of foreign involvement in Ugaritic and Emarite ritual that contributed to the ongoing negotiation of power between those regions as political actors.