Die Macht des Namens: Altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung.

• Author: Foster, Benjamin R.

Die Macht des Namens: Altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung. By KAREN RADNER. SANTAG, vol. 8. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2006. Pp. ix + 341. [euro]98.

In this study, Radner argues that "Ancient Oriental Man," anxiously confronting both death and eternity, developed formal strategies for prolonging his identity beyond the existence of his corporal body, based on his name, spoken and especially purposefully written, in some cases associated with imagery. She thinks that names were not abstracts but were identified with what and whom they signified, though she does not argue this thesis in detail. She brings a vast array of Mesopotamian written evidence to her discussion, showing, however, a strong bias towards late material, to the extent that she edits first-millennium sources, sometimes with improved readings, photos, copies, and collations (for example, pp. 196-97), but relegates third-millennium passages to footnotes. In general, the earlier commemorative and literary sources are less well treated than the later ones. Her analysis of Urukagina's reforms is circular (p. 14 n. 58 = p. 276, end of third paragraph), in that she insists that Ancient Oriental Man respected ancient practice, so Urukagina must have been reasserting ancient practice (against most modern translations). In the Rimush bilingual (p. 120 n. 625), the Old Akkadian does not "deviate" from the Sumerian in the important passage cited; it reads usam'id, parallel to i-sid, perhaps "he gave an account of himself," an early reference to setting up an inscription in a sanctuary, as argued by the reviewer in "Old Akkadian u-sa-mi-id," Nouvelles Assyriologiques Breves et Utilitaires 2003/19. This passage is thus particularly germane to the thesis of the book.

When she discusses dating as a means of immortality, Radner is mistaken in thinking that the numerical dating systems used at Presargonic Girsu, Zabala, and Umma, and Sargonic Umma (as well as Presargonic Man?) referred to the reigning king. Lugalanda, for example, who used numerical dates, was never a king. Use of a full date at Sargonic Umma is interesting primarily because most Sargonic records were not dated at all, but dating seemed important to Ummaite administrators, and was merely a local practice like extensive sealing of vouchers in the Ur III period. At two nearby places, Girsu, the provincial center of Sargonic Sumer, and the estate of Mesag, a leading local administrator, royal year names were...