The Exercise of Power and Royal Legitimacy in the Ancient Near East

This lecture is based on the assumption that sociological tools may be used for the analyis of the legitimacy of kingship in the ancient Near East. The exercise of power according to accepted standards is one of the conditions for a recognition of power as legitimate (others are acquisition of power according to the accepted rules and evidence of the subjects` consent). The presentation begins with the most convincing proof that the quality of rule affected the royal legitimacy: i.e. the fact that the loss of the throne was a consequence of bad rule. This is followed by an analysis of royal inscriptions in which kings represented themselves as good rulers. Other genres, such as royal correspondence, chronicles, omina, wisdom literature and legal documents are examined in order to check whether the standards of rule reflected in royal inscriptions were shared by the ruled. A combination of sources representing both the royal point of view and the perspective of the subjects is methodologically indispensable as the quality of rule professed by rulers had to meet the expectations of the ruled. Special attention will be paid to the Bible, which contains extremely rich material with regard to quality of rule in comparison with other ancient Near Eastern sources.