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In the Garden of the Gods: Models of Kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids

Amazon.com Price:  $124.74 (as of 03/05/2019 04:54 PST- Details)

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Description

Examining the evolution of kingship within the Ancient Near East from the time of the Sumerians to the upward push of the Seleucids in Babylon, this book argues that the Sumerian emphasis at the divine favour that the fertility goddess and the Sun god bestowed upon the king must be understood metaphorically from the start and that these metaphors survived in later historical periods, through popular literature including the Epic of Gilgameš and the Enuma Eliš. The creator’s research shows that from the earliest times Near Eastern kings and their scribes adapted these metaphors to promote royal legitimacy in keeping with legendary exempla that highlighted the role of the king as the establisher of order and civilization. As some other Gilgameš and, later, as a pious servant of Marduk, the king renewed divine favour for his subjects, enabling them to share the ‘Garden of the Gods’. Seleucus and Antiochus found these cultural ideas, as they had evolved within the first millennium BCE, extremely useful of their efforts to establish their dynasty at Babylon. Far from playing down cultural differences, the book considers the ideological agendas of ancient Near Eastern empires as having been shaped principally by class ― moderately than race-minded elites.


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