Historiography, Ideology and Politics in the Ancient Near East and Israel

Mario Liverani is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Rome, Italy. He is the author of many studies, including International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600–1100 BC (2001), Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (2004), Israel's History and the History of Israel (Routledge 2005) and The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy (Routledge 2014). Niels Peter Lemche is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the author of many studies, including Early Israel (1985), Ancient Israel (1988), The Canaanites and Their Land (1991), The Israelites in History and Tradition (1998), Prelude to Israel's Past (1998), and The Old Testament between Theology and History (2008). Emanuel Pfoh is Assistant Professor of History of Asia & Africa at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, and Researcher at Argentina’s National Research Council. He is the author of The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine (Routledge 2009) and Syria-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age (Routledge 2016).

Acknowledgements; Editorial note; List of abbreviations; Introduction (Niels Peter Lemche and Emanuel Pfoh); Part I: Ancient Near Eastern Historiography; 1. ‘But in the Seventh Year …’; 2. The Ugaritic epic in its historical and literary context; 3. Memorandum on the approach to historiographic texts; 4. The tribunal of history: Judicial origins of Ancient Near Eastern historiography; Part II: Ideology and Propaganda in the Ancient Near East; 5. Συδύκ and Μισώρ; 6. Holy war and just war in the Ancient Near East; 7. The Pharaoh’s body in the Amarna letters; 8. Ḫattušili dealing with Ramesside propaganda; 9. The ideology of the Assyrian empire; 10. Kingship ideology in Assyria and Israel; 11. The king in the palace; Part III: Syria-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age; 12. Contrasts and confluences of political conceptions in the Amarna period; 13. Political lexicon and political ideologies in the Amarna letters; 14. Refugees in Syria in the Late Bronze Age; 15. Becoming Ḫabiru; Part IV: The Old Testament and the History of Israel; 16. The ‘origins’ of Israel: An unachievable project of ethnogenetic research; 17. New developments in the study of the history of biblical Israel; 18. The Book of Kings and Ancient Near Eastern historiography; Index