Democracy's Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Government.

• Author: Seri, Andrea
• Position: Book review

Democracy's Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Government. By DANIEL E. FLEMING. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. xxvii + 395. $75.

Choosing a misleading title for a work of literature has its purpose, as Umberto Eco eloquently explains in Postille a il Nome della Rosa. Using the same device for an historical or anthropological book is mendacious, unless there are ends other than commercial purposes in mind. The second seems to be the case with Democracy's Ancient Ancestors, for the author feels the need to insist several times that Mari's government has in fact very little if anything to do with Greek democracy. This clarification already appears in the preface and is expanded in the conclusion where we learn that the word democracy is retained "if only to provide a clearer idea of what raw materials were available to any new political developments of succeeding periods" (p. 235). But are we to imagine a later ruler, let us say Cleisthenes, searching for inspiration from Near Eastern political "raw material" before conceiving his Athenian democracy? In any case Fleming affirms that Mari's collective tradition is not a direct antecedent of Greek democracy but rather a "cross-section of its ancestry in the larger region." The geographical proximity of Greece and Mesopotamia, and Mycenae and Mari, does not necessarily account for similar polities. Political ideas are not contagious, and they serve specific interests at a given time. Athens and Sparta are clear examples.

Infelicitous title aside, Fleming's book has the merit of being based on all the pertinent published cuneiform documents from the royal archives of Mari, and the originality of dealing with a poorly-explored topic, that is, the role that collective political decision-making played in ancient Near Eastern cities and states. The introduction considers instrumental issues such as the characteristics of the sources and related philological matters, and also surveys Mari's political history. Then follows a chapter entitled "The Tribal World of Zimri-Lim," which traces differences between the social organization of Sim'alites and Yaminites and discusses leadership in these groups. The third chapter is about urbanism and archaic states, as well as units of regional polities, for instance matum (land) and halsum (district). The analysis of collective decision-making proper is the subject of the fourth chapter. Collective authorities comprise a number of...