Search Results
of the legend of Mary the Egyptian. Motivating Contexts The legend of Mary the Egyptian achieved a perfected form in the Sophronian vita, a hagiography emphasizing the power of an icon of the Blessed Virgin; the life of Mary the Egyptian could thus be read and employed as a refutation of
snatching up an unsullied flake and making his pen express the irony of life. (Davies 1917:236) As satire tends to be topical, directed against specific and often transi- tory social or political evils, one would expect its cartoon expression to be a unique and somewhat spontaneous creation, as suggested
in order to demonstrate that violence against such images entailed more that a symbolic "politi- cal statement." To deface or destroy an image of the king, in the conceptual world of ancient l\ifesopotamia, represented a genuine attempt on the life of the living-or the afterlife of the dead
Neo-Babylonian rule to the west, it was inevitable that problems would arise with the independently motivated Phoenicians. In ca. 574, after a long siege, Nebuchadnezzar defeated Tyre and finally brought all of Phoenicia under his rule (Harden 1971:50). Thirty-five years later, Cyrus moved into
reign and beyond." Both empires were bound to reassert their impe- rial claims repeatedly, at vast cost of materiel and human life, for a lasting humiliation spelled international loss of prestige, and empires must maintain the fiction of invincibility at their peril. The British Foreign Office, the
.tlarran and elsewhere aimed at toppling the Sargonid king- ship. His admonitions to Esarhaddon frantically implore the king to save his own life by executing a certain Sasi and his named fellow- conspirators. Given the writer's apparently unmediated knowledge of prophecies, and a description of a
library staff likened my investigation to that of a hopeful patron who inquired whether official statistics exist on the number of rats living in Chicago. 6 Estimated for 1998; 1999 Facts About Chicago, Richard At. Daley, Mayor, A1unicipal Reference Library. DIPLOMACY IN THE EXERCISE OF EMPIRE 219
sees their blood, he is hetep . 5 Breath or a Breeze from Deities The breath ( tjau ) and breath of life that foreigners request of the Egyptian king also has connotations for living when Egyptians request it of deities. A New Kingdom prayer to Amun asks for breath from the deity. “Give breath
or practices such as circumcision, or to participate in the pagan cults (Honigman, 2014:378– 404). The idea of religious persecution is dismissed as a myth; the reality had to do with military repression of a revolt that was motivated by economic measures. Honigman claims that her account is
is not a high god, AN.ZA.ĜAR, appears already to the king’s son Lugalbanda (Epic of Lugalbanda I 322–355, H.L.J. Vanstiphout, Reflec- tions on the Dream of Lugalbanda, in J. Prosecký (ed.), Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East, Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre Assyriologique