Die Erzahlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte und Religion.

• Author: Eyre, Christopher
• Position: Book review

Die Erzahlung des Wenamun: Ein Literaturwerk im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Geschichte und Religion. By BERND U. SCHIPPER. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 209. Freiburg: ACADEMIC PRESS, 2005. Pp. xi + 383, plates. FS118.

This volume contains the revised version of a Hamburg dissertation that sets out to provide a basic text edition of the Story of Wenamun, with commentary appropriate for student and general use. It provides a hieroglyphic text accompanied by a basic interlinear transliteration and translation, characteristic of student working practice. This is followed by a coherent continuous translation. Photographs of the manuscript are provided, but for the critical edition of the text itself one must work in combination with Gardiner's primary publication. Textual, philological, and grammatical commentaries are limited to the minimum necessary for the text reading. A thorough survey of older editions and commentaries is provided, as well as an extensive up-to-date bibliography, but indices are limited only to texts, names, and foreign words.

The whole feel of the book is of a work intended to provide German-speaking students with convenient and thorough access to the text itself, the history of its interpretation, and the current state of research related to it. The basic presentation of the text is followed by a series of thematic essays: a historically based reading; a literary analysis that focuses on the structure of the work and its place in the literary corpus; and an exploration of the possibilities for a functional reading as a theo-political text. For the most part these essays provide a history of the secondary discussion. While much of this extensive survey focuses on older literature, the author provides a generally fair survey of priority in the discussion of the text, and an up-to-date survey of issues of focus in its interpretation.

At the core of the historical analysis is a re-presentation of the translation in sections, with commentary on specific issues arising. In more extensive discussions the author concentrates on changes in patterns of trade at the end of the Late Bronze Age, argued to be a change from royal trade to a sort of privatization under the impact of the so-called Sea Peoples. He stresses the vitality of the ports and coastal region of Palestine during this period, against the economic and population decline of the inland regions; the general complexity of demographic and political patterns in both...