Ideologies

A historical reconstruction of the ecology, demography, technology, and modes of production of the Ancient Near East follows the slow pace of development of macro-phenomena and the medium pace of social ones. It does not, however, follow the fast pace of the events that characterised its history. The available documentation (environmental, archaeological, and textual) does not allow a thorough understanding of the history of the Near East. This is because its evidence does not document every aspect of ancient life. Nonetheless, the knowledge of influential individuals, dynasties, or battles remains useful for the establishment of a chronological framework. Through the latter, it becomes possible to link equally historically important long-term phenomena shaping the Near East, especially since they can be linked to each other according to their development in time.

The reconstruction of events in the history of the Near East is generally sourced from royal inscriptions, as well as the deriving chronicles and annals recording important events, and ancient pseudo-historical literature. However, this event-based analysis often becomes overbearing, limiting the reconstruction of the history of the Near East and obscuring, if not obliterating, a thorough understanding of cultural processes. Reduced to a sequence of events, the history of the Near East loses its charm and interesting characteristics. Due to considerable gaps in the available evidence, the history of the Near East thus becomes repetitive, overall banal, too limited in its breadth, and schematic.

It is crucial to bear in mind that the use of royal inscriptions to reconstruct the sequence of events marking the political history of the Near East is based on a fundamental misunderstanding: that of considering royal inscriptions, annals, chronicles, and even literary sources as ‘historical sources’. This kind of writing is neither objectively nor subjectively ‘historical’. Our interest is in reconstructing past events, but ancient sources were not written for the same purpose. From our point of view, then, these sources do not provide us with a straightforward reconstruction. They also fail to provide all the kinds of information needed for our historical reconstruction, unless we give up on our cultural background and historiographical interests to take on the completely different viewpoint of ancient societies.

In fact, there was no proper historiography in the Near East in the way we understand it today. Royal inscriptions and annals were political texts aimed at celebrating specific individuals. Thus, they were part of a propagandistic plan, rather than an accurate account of events. This, however, does not mean that in the Near East there was no sense of history and no interest in the past, seen as the causal relation between events and their meaning. After all, every culture has its own sense of history, and so each text, despite being written for particular purposes, relies and transmits crucial elements of a society’s worldview. Interestingly enough, the influence of political propaganda and a specific worldview on ancient texts is often overlooked. As a result, sources are given a historical meaning that they do not always have. For instance, today no one would write sentences such as ‘in my reign grain was growing two meters high’ or ‘cows gave birth to twins’ (sentences which also appear on celebratory inscriptions) for a reconstruction of economic history. These are obvious propagandistic statements, useful for an analysis of a society’s ideology of kingship, rather than its agricultural and farming techniques. However, similar statements on military victories, political consensus or the administration ofjustice are taken as genuine and used as the basis for a historical event-based framework.

It is clear, then, that these celebratory inscriptions do not contain historical facts, but are using them for propaganda (i. e. aimed at gaining political consensus). An immediate reaction to this would be to start the historical reconstruction of the Near East anew, avoiding the primary sources due to their tendentious and biased nature, to which one could easily apply the popular disclaimer ‘any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental’.

This approach, however, would impoverish our own approach towards a historical reconstruction of the Near East. Despite the fact that these sources cannot be considered providers of historiographical information, they nonetheless provide useful information about the ideologies (not only political) of their authors and their cultural context. In fact, when dealing with these sources, our task is not to understand whether or not they recounted the truth or were based on real events. On the contrary, we have to use this material, and in particular its cultural bias, in order to reconstruct the aims and reasons for its existence, the range of ideas employed and the worldview they derive from and transmit. Therefore, ancient sources primarily document ideologies, and not facts.

From this point of view, then, this kind of documentation is not an obstacle, but an enrichment of our historical investigation. In fact, in the understanding of historical events, if one refuses to take into consideration a recorded event because the account may be unreliable, it is still possible to recognise the underlying reasons and political concerns surrounding its mention. Moreover, such an approach benefits our understanding of the overall context, making the written evidence an essential source for the understanding of social structures and the set of values which a certain community responded to and identified with. Political history should therefore not be relegated to the understanding of its events, but can and has to aim for a systematic reconstruction. This eventually leads to its integration with cultural history, enriching the latter’s technological aspect with the knowledge of ancient ideologies.

Royal inscriptions and other texts related to the palace were written with a propagandistic tone for clear political reasons: from legitimacy to celebration, comparison with other rulers and states, and communication. Legitimacy is a constant issue in the exercise of kingship, but is more evident in the initial phases of a king’s reign. After all, legitimacy is a problem that affects most rulers, especially usurpers, or, more generally, those transitional stages that cannot rely on a secure dynastic line. Therefore, legitimacy becomes a central topic in the apologetic tone employed by usurpers on their inscriptions. Their statements are frequently more or less extravagant justifications, which by contrast can reveal the traditional ideology of kingship and the common means of accession to power. If the normal procedure consisted in inheriting the office through the male line (and this is frequently the case), the usurper would have attempted to claim his descent from a former, disinherited branch of the royal family. In case the usurper lacked any such proof of legitimacy, he would have stated his divine appointment, being the one chosen among the people for merits that were not evident to humans. The actual legitimacy of a king would arise anyway from his rule. After all, a king that could successfully rule his state proved to his subjects that his rise to power was legitimate. Otherwise, why would the gods have granted him success and prosperity?

Legitimacy is therefore closely linked to the celebration of power, simply because he who is able to rule is the legitimate ruler. However, this aspect is only visible during the reign itself Consequently, a ruler that already managed to claim his legitimacy (through inheritance or usurpation), had to continuously demonstrate that his reign was prosperous and successful. Any aspect of kingship could therefore become a useful means for the assertion of power. Military campaigns had to be successful, through the ruler’s prowess and divine support. Similarly, commercial activities had to emphasise the quantity and rarity of the imported products without mentioning exports.

In this way, the cities at the centre of one’s kingdom could be portrayed as the centre of the known world, receiving raw materials and products, and employing all available resources for the king’s needs. Consequently, such centralisation of resources constituted proof of the ruler’s ‘universal’ control, real or potential. Even natural phenomena (such as rain and floods, crucial for a successful harvest), despite being outside the king’s sphere of influence, were associated with his positive influence. This is because of the common idea that the divine governed natural phenomena. The gods were beneficial towards their communities only if the king, as representative of the human sphere, and the community as a whole were able to please them.

The celebration of a king’s deeds was also expressed through the presentation of contrasting situations (both in terms of time and space) to his rule. In other words, all positive qualities were located in the centre of the realm, while all negative aspects were relegated to the periphery. This mirrored the opposition between order and chaos, civilised and barbarian, life and death, and between active players and passive receivers ofpolitical, military, and economic achievements. At the heart of the idea of the superiority ofthe centre, there was its clear link to the divine sphere. A successful king was one who could ensure positive relations with the gods at the expense of the surrounding populations. The latter were considered to be godless, absurdly contrary to being subjugated, and thus condemned to provide materials and workforce to the centre. Whenever the chaotic periphery rose against the centre, the king formed a protective barrier to ensure the safety of his subjects.

The same contrast between the positive centre and the negative periphery can be seen on a chronological level, with a tripartite division of time. First, there was the origin of the world, considered as a positive period when the world was created by the gods and ruled by the first mythical kings and heroes. Then, there was a negative period governed by inefficient (thus, illegitimate) successors, which brought chaos (which should have been relegated to the periphery) to the state. The situation was only solved in the third phase, when the celebrated king, just and successful, driven by his legitimacy of rule and his personal strength, managed to re-establish the right relations between the human and the divine spheres. Only then could order and prosperity return, and the king stood as a living insurance of the end of the negative phase and the return of stability.

The ruler’s celebration was always directed towards his subjects, who could not have known what actually happened outside the centre and were not able to make suitable comparisons, since all the information was monopolised by the ones in power. On the contrary, when diplomatic and commercial needs required cooperation with other centres of power, the tone had to change completely. It became much more focused on reciprocity and equality of status. In this case, the language used was one of kinship and brotherhood, aimed at the acknowledgement of mutual interests and spheres of influence.

In these inter-state interactions, then, the preservation of one’s power was linked to the acknowledgement of the surrounding powers. The same commercial, military, and political endeavours internally celebrated as proof of hegemonic power and the subordination of the periphery, were then externally presented in terms of equality. There is nothing more indicative of the internal and external political ideology of a state than the possibility to compare opposing versions of the same episode in sources directed to the subjects (royal inscriptions) and to other rulers (letters and treaties). Both versions are intrinsically biased, though in different ways: both employ facts as a way to construct the respective system of diplomatic networks, and use strong metaphors and connotations, depicting a different political situation from the real one.

Political propaganda can therefore provide a historical framework that is coherent, maybe too coherent, despite its strongly biased tone. However, this historical framework cannot possibly be an integral part of our own reconstruction. A political kind of discourse is intrinsically biased, mentioning certain events and forgetting others, while emphasising or minimising important elements. In this way, it influences, positively or negatively, historical information for its own purposes. Moreover, it always provides only the point of view belonging to the one in power, and never that of enemies or subjects. In other words, it is the view of the winner and never of the defeated.

Those in power effectively monopolised the means to record ideologies and historical events, thus shaping a community’s memories. The point of view of the defeated, their political strategies, and marginal ideologies run the risk of being completely invisible in the sources, except for very few cases. As a result, the only way to recover this information is a reversed reading of the official propaganda, paying attention to the concerns lurking behind the bold statements and the receivers of its criticism. Assurances also inform us of opposing opinions, political dissent, and potential oppositions to the ruling power. Therefore, through the confutation and demonisation of threats, ruling entities have involuntarily made sure that we know about their enemies.

However, how did political propaganda reach its audience? And who exactly was its audience? It has been often noted that in a world in which literacy (which required the knowledge of an ideographic and syllabic writing, in use before the development of alphabetic systems) was limited to a small, specialised group, the expression of political ideas in writing made the overall message inaccessible to a large portion of the population, and thus somehow pointless. The real problem, however, is that today we only have access to written sources, despite the fact that there were other means of large-scale communication that have not survived as well. In fact, written political propaganda was only accessible to a small group of scribes, administrators, and courtiers constituting the ruling class, in a sort of self-indoctrination process. On this level of society, a political statement can be more complex and sophisticated, since only among the ruling class would such a message be fully understood.

For a wider audience (such as a city’s inhabitants), there were other forms of communication, from oral transmission to iconography and festivals. These were designed to be less complex, and easier to spread and understand. In the case of a more marginal portion of society, such as villages outside the centre, this political message would only be delivered indirectly. In fact, it was sufficient for them to know of the presence of a legitimate ruler at the centre of their world, loved by the gods and caring towards his people, victorious in military campaigns, as well as able to obtain from nature and men fertility, prosperity, wealth and peace. Each layer of society, then, was reached through the appropriate channels of communication, and the corresponding message was designed accordingly. Royal inscriptions were accessible to few privileged individuals, but they constituted only the tip of an iceberg made of a wider political propaganda (which was also ideological with strong religious connotations). The latter held the community together on both a social and a political level, providing security and cohesion.

It is our task to understand the place of ideologies in the wider historical framework of the Near East, since, unlike the study of historical events, they allow us to recognise the cultural character of ancient communities and their values and worries. It is first necessary, however, to categorise specific ideologies by period, area, and social context. At the same time, it is crucial to find and bear in mind the underlying reasons, or the function, of the ideologies considered. Then, a community’s ideology needs to be convincingly linked to its social structure and material culture. This is not purely because the ideological level is more important than other levels, but because these various levels are interrelated and influence each other in a way which, if discovered, can become the key for the understanding of ancient cultures.