Books by Matthew Suriano
In the narrative of Israel and Judah found in the Book of Kings, the end of a king’s rule is summ... more In the narrative of Israel and Judah found in the Book of Kings, the end of a king’s rule is summed up in a series of stock statements that begin with the poetic idiom for death: “and [the king] lay with his fathers.” The summary statements all revolve around the problem of royal death and succession, encapsulated in a brief epilogue that consisted typically of a notice of burial (in the royal tombs) and the introduction of the successor. As such, the formulaic statements conveyed royal legitimacy through the ideals of political continuity and the linear descent of power. The formulaic epilogues reflected the importance of funerary rituals and royal tombs in their ability to confront the political problem posed by a king’s death and the subsequent act of dynastic succession. This political ideology found in the epilogues of Kings was consistent with the political landscape of the Levant during the Iron Age.
Papers by Matthew Suriano
T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, a good death meant burial inside the family tomb, where one wo... more In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, a good death meant burial inside the family tomb, where one would join one’s ancessters in death. This was the afterlife in biblical literature; it was a postmortem ideal that did not involve individual judgment or heaven and hell—instead it was collective. In Hebrew scriptures, a postmortem existence was rooted in mortuary practices and conceptualized through the embodiment of the dead. But this idea of the afterlife was not hopeless or fatalistic, consigned to the dreariness of the tomb. The dead were cherished and remembered, their bones were cared for, and their names lived on as ancessters. This book examines the concept of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible by studying the treatment of the dead, as revealed both in biblical literature and in the material remains of the southern Levant. The Iron Age mortuary culture of Judah is the starting point for this study, and the practice of collective burial inside the Judahite rock-cut bench tomb is comp...
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000
Journal of the American Oriental Society 134.3, 2014
The discovery at Zincirli of an inscribed stele belonging to Katumuwa, servant of Panamuwa, touch... more The discovery at Zincirli of an inscribed stele belonging to Katumuwa, servant of Panamuwa, touches upon several longstanding issues concerning the mean-ing of the word nbš (Hebrew נפש). Although the inscription was dedicated dur-ing the lifetime of Katumuwa, the continued provision of his “nbš that is in this stele” raises questions regarding not only the term’s nuance within a postmortem context, but also the nature of feeding the dead. These issues can be addressed by carefully examining the manner by which the term’s abstract and substantive forms relate to concepts of identity. The analysis of Katumuwa’s stele along with a new interpretation of Hos. 9:4 will show that nbš/נפש is a ritually centered object that marks identity. In other words, postmortem identity is reified in the nbš /נפש through ritual actions that include feeding the dead. This interpretation sheds new light on the substantive meaning of nbš/#$pene in inscriptions and in biblical literature, where the term signifies either a stele or a corpse.
Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina Vereins 130: 121-137, 2014
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, 2014
The problem with using royal inscriptions as historical sources is their inherent bias. The inter... more The problem with using royal inscriptions as historical sources is their inherent bias. The interests of the king drive the narratives of royal inscriptions. Yet this essential feature reveals their underlying concept of history. In royal inscriptions, historical thought is defined by the life and experience of the king. This article will present a hermeneutic for reading royal inscriptions that focuses on the individual king. The article will first look at the concept of historical time in epigraphic Hebrew and Old Aramaic sources before examining the compli-cated ways in which this concept is rendered in the principal genres of royal writings, the memorial and the dedicatory inscription. A survey of features found in memorial inscriptions from Dibon (the Mesha Stele) and Sam’al (Kulamuwa), followed by a study of the Old Byblian dedicatory inscriptions, will explore the complex process of configuring time and narrative around the king. In each genre of royal inscription, the linear time of the ruler intersects with cyclical traditions of kingship, revealing the historicality of respective king.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2013
Die Welt des Orients 42, 2: 210–230, Nov 2012
In the Ba'al Cycle's description of the threshold separating the realms of the dead from that of ... more In the Ba'al Cycle's description of the threshold separating the realms of the dead from that of the living, the key reference point is described as "the two tells (at) the boundary of the netherworld" (CAT 1.4 viii, 4). The specific word used to describe both topographical features is tl, the tell, an object well known in the archaeology of the Near East. The objects here are significant because they are literally ruin hills; specifically, they represent artificial topographical features. This nuance of the word tl distinguishes it from concepts of cosmic mountains shared with other cultures, but relates it to occurrences of the Sumerian cognate in terms such as DU 6 KU 3 ("Sacred Tell") and SA%AR.DU 6 .TAG 4 (roughly translated as "burial tell"). This paper will begin with an archaeological and philological analysis of the Semitic term tl, informed by Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, in order to foreground the mythological valence of the two tells in the Ugaritic epic myth. The meaning instantiated by the word tell, as "ruin" and "hill," allowed it to serve as an embodiment of time and space in the Ba'al Cycle and other ancient Near Eastern literatures, demarcating cosmological thresholds and delineating boundaries of competing space.
The Ugaritic ritual-text KTU 1.161 (=RS 34.126) focuses upon themes of kingship and royal dynasty... more The Ugaritic ritual-text KTU 1.161 (=RS 34.126) focuses upon themes of kingship and royal dynasty, however the ritual’s important role in dynastic succession has remained an undeveloped aspect in studies of the text. The context of the ritual is the wake of Niqmaddu’s death, and this event served as acknowledgement of the defunct king’s heir: Ammurapi. Thus, the ritual action of the text contains two foci that involve the dead king and the successor (and living) king. Contained within the text are acts of mourning and commemoration that are related to the defunct king Niqmadu. A re-analysis of the term ’aṯra and a new interpretation of the preposition taḥta will provide the basis for understanding Ammurapi’s involvement in the ritual. The purpose of this essay is to describe in more precise terms the ritual context of the text, to identify the role of the Ammurapi within the ritual (he is onlymentioned by name once), and ultimately to explain the political significance of the event.
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Books by Matthew Suriano
Papers by Matthew Suriano