CLAS / HIST 149 THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

Guidelines for Final Paper

Format: 3-4 pages, single-spaced. Font size: 10 or 12. Margins: 1” top and bottom, 1.25” L and R.

Email submission is fine, but if you print, please do it double-sided to save paper.

Primary sources: Your paper may be on any topic you choose. BUT, you must focus as much as possible on ancient texts or archeological evidence. I would rather see you make wild speculations or incorrect deductions about such material, than read a second-hand rehash of what someone else has said in an encyclopedia article or webpage! Your philological profile using the ETCSL was intended to give you practice at this kind of thinking: you went right to an original text, and developed your picture solely on the basis of its evidence. You should therefore pick a topic for which you will have ready access to the relevant sources. Some handy ancient sources you might consider working with, along with some topic ideas, are given below.

Secondary sources: although you can do this paper entirely on the basis of primary sources, you may well wish to consult secondary studies (articles and books) to help you understand the ancient material, and to see what other people have said about it. You will find loads of things in Bailey-Howe using the catalogue, and there are good reference works on the ground floor. Always analyze scholars’ arguments for the evidence that they are drawing on: checking footnotes and endnotes may be tedious, but this is what leads you to primary sources and further bibliography. For this project, it IS acceptable to ‘steal’ references, that is, to copy references from someone else’s footnote to back up your own statement. Of course, all references should be formatted consistently. Moreover, be sure to indicate whether or not you have actually SEEN/READ a source yourself (if not, put “not seen” in parentheses at end of reference). You can look at this as an exercise in compiling bibliography—identifying essential sources that one WOULD have to read if, say, writing an honors thesis.

Citations: Anything which you assert as factual, and any scholarly theory which you mention, must be backed up by specific references. All citations must be to PRINT sources only. Of course this does not mean you cannot do any online research: just be sure to identify the underlying PRINT authority, and preferably go to the hard copy in the library (if we have it). In the case of online collections of ancient materials (like the ETCSL), references according to its internal system (e.g. the ETCSL text number), and not the URL. IMPORTANT: Anyone who DOES cite a URL will be afflicted with a plague of tumors and mice.

TEXT COLLECTIONS:

You can see, from the above guidelines, how convenient it would be to select a coherent body of ancient text from which to work. Here are some examples, with a few hypothetical topics to help you get started. Most of the following texts are checked out of the library in my name. If you wish to look at any of them, let me know and I will put it on reserve.

The Oriental Institute of the U. of Chicago has many of their publications available online, both primary texts and secondary studies. You may wish to browse some of the possibilities there.

Early Dynastic Sumerian royal texts: Frayne, D. (2008). Presargonic period (2700-2350 BC). Toronto and Buffalo, University of Toronto Press. This is where you’d find the original texts bearing on the UmmaLagash border dispute, or the inscribed objects found in the royal graves of Ur, and various other texts which mention early kings which appear in the Sumerian King List.

Sumerian royal texts of the Ur III period: Frayne, D. (1997). Ur III period, 2112–2004 BC. Toronto and Buffalo, University of Toronto Press. You could study e.g. the building programs or campaigns of Ur-Nammu or Shulgi; or track all references to Amorite infiltration.

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: You could do another search-based project of expanded scope: e.g. what can we learn about the seven magic items which Inanna takes off on her trip to the underworld? Or you could take a genre-based approach: read all the royal hymns of Shulgi, and discuss the poetics of these texts (i.e. recurring themes and ideological concerns). Or compare the royal hymns to the Isin dynasty with those of Shulgi: what’s the same, what’s different? Or read the 5 Gilgamesh fragments and compare them with the Epic of Gilgamesh. Or use word searches to try to establish the layout of a typical temple or ziggurat, and then compare this with what has been learned from excavation.

Akkadian literature: a very large collection in translation is found in Foster, B. R. (2005). Before the muses: an anthology of Akkadian literature³. Bethesda, Maryland, CDL Press. Here you will find the rest of the erotic texts, incantations, wisdom literature and much more.

The Bible: the handiest of all ancient sources, with limitless possibilities. By consulting a Bible concordance (BH REF), you could look up all occurrences of one or more words. What does the Bible tell us, for instance, about the Amorites? What is their relationship with Israel, what is their geographical range? Or the Philistines: what do we learn about their culture, social organization, gods, etc.? Or about witches? Or ghosts? Or you could concentrate on interpreting a certain episode or set of episodes. For example, David’s time as a bandit in the wilderness: can we identify all the places he is said to have gone, and have they been confirmed by archeology? Or you could compare the various law codes of Deuteronomy and Leviticus with the codes of Hammurabi, Eshnunna, and that of Ur-Nammu. Or read through the rest of 1 and 2 Kings, and see what the Bible tells us about Assyrian or Babylonian campaigns against Israel and Judah, and then check these statements against the Assyrian / Babylonian royal inscriptions (see below).

The Amarna letters: these documents from the Egyptian capital in reign of Akhenaten, are available in English translation (it will be on reserve). You could read through them and talk about the poetics of diplomatic correspondence. Or reconstruct the economies / commodities of the various kingdoms involved by looking at what king sends what to whom. Or discuss Egyptian administration of Canaan through its governors and vassals (there are many letters from these officials to the Pharaoh), or try to reconstruct political squabbles between these vassals (several such cases). Moran, W. L. (1992). The Amarna letters. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions: These are translated in the handy edition of Luckenbill, D. D. (1926–1927). Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. You could use this source, for instance, to try to reconstruct the Middle Assyrian kingdom: see how much we really know about what these kings did (you could also concentrate on a single king). For the Neo-Assyrian period the inscriptions become quite voluminous: you might focus on a single king’s activities in a single region (Urartu, Israel, etc.).

Hittite Empire Diplomatic Texts: These are all the letters and treaties between the New Kingdom rulers and their contemporaries in Mitanni, Assyria, Egypt, etc. You could use this to study, for example, the Ahhiyawa problem (Mycenaean Greece), or the Hittite expansion into Northern Syria under Suppiluliuma, etc. Beckman, G. M. and J. Harry A. Hoffner (1999). Hittite diplomatic texts². Atlanta, Georgia, Scholars Press.

Ugaritic ritual texts: Pardee, D. (2002). Ritual and Cult at Ugarit. Atlanta, Society of Biblical Literature. Study the cultic apparatus at this major Canaanite site of the Late Bronze Age: what gods were worshipped? What was the king’s role in cult? What other officials were operative and what did they do? How do these rituals illuminate the Tale of Aqhat or the Baal Cycle?

The State Archives of Assyria: These are the administrative and diplomatic texts from the Neo-Assyrian period. Two online portals allow searching of some of the material. The first you will have already used for the Power and Knowledge in Assyria essay (http://knp.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/): you could simply investigate more of their study questions, and weave it all together into a larger essay. The other portal deals with the reign of Sargon II and the administration of his empire: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/

Neo-Hittite Sites and Reliefs (http://www.hittitemonuments.com/): this site is not sponsored by an academic institution, but is nevertheless excellent. With it you can study the topography of the Neo-Hittite states, the physical layout of the various sites and palaces, and examine images of all the sculpted reliefs that were found at them. This would let you do more of an art historical project.

RESEARCH TIPS:

How you proceed, of course, all depends on what you’re doing. You will start out by not knowing what primary sources exist. How do you find out? An encyclopedia article is a good place to start. These are tertiary: their job is to give you an overview of the scholarly state on a big subject, laying out the main sources, issues, and subjects of interest, and (ideally) giving all the most important and up-to-date secondary studies. No topic is too narrow! This will let you cover the material carefully, and not be superficial.

When you start you never know exactly where you are going, since research is a process of discovery. When you examine material, questions will inevitably arise. You want to find out the answer. Some answers may already have been correctly given by others, but that too is something you are searching for. Other questions have not been satisfactorily answered. For these you develop a hypothesis based on your present state of knowledge and the information so far collected. Further material is then tested against your hypothesis, which must evolve to you’re your changing state of knowledge. This is called the hermeneutic circle.

I find it really helpful, as I’m collecting, to sort material into different categories. I make subject headings in a word processing document People used to use index cards. Martin West still uses a three-ring binder, and he’s one of the most productive scholars in the field. A datum may bear on two or more points: I enter it under each heading, with a note about why it’s relevant in each place. Once you have collected and arranged all your information by heading, you can organize the headings into a logical sequence—i.e., an outline. What logic will govern how you arrange these topics? You can’t go wrong with Aristotle’s approach of progressing from the general to the specific. A chronological arrangement also works well, if it suits your topic.