Exemplars Of Kingship

Stretching across the historical region of Mesopotamia, the Akkadian dynasty (ca. 2334-2154 BCE) created a territorial state of unprecedented scale in the ancient Near East by uniting the city-states of Sumer and Akkad and parts of Syria and Iran. To establish and, later, cement their authority over disparate peoples and places, the kings used art and visual culture to extraordinary effect. Exemplars of Kingship conveys the astonishing life of the art of the Akkadian kings by assessing ancient and modern responses to its dynamic forms and transformative ideologies of kingship. For nearly two thousand years after their reign, the Akkadian kings were remembered as exemplary rulers. Modern assessments of ancient memories of Akkadian kingship have concentrated on textual attestations of the kings' place in cultural memory. This book considers the contributions of images to memories of Akkadian kingship. Through close readings of the visuals that remain, Melissa Eppihimer discusses how Akkadian steles, statues, and cylinder seals became models for later rulers in Mesopotamia and beyond who wished to emulate or critique the Akkadian kings-and how these rulers and their contemporaries were reminded of the Akkadian past when they looked at images. Exemplars of Kingship is, therefore, a book about Akkadian art and its reception in antiquity, but it is also concerned with the modern reception of Akkadian art and kingship. It argues that modern responses have constrained our understanding of ancient responses. Through a wide range of examples drawn from almost two millennia, the book highlights the individual decisions that prompted continuity and change during the long history of Mesopotamia and its artistic traditions.

Stretching across the historical region of Mesopotamia, the Akkadian dynasty (ca. 2334-2154 BCE) created a territorial state of unprecedented scale in the ancient Near East by uniting the city-states of Sumer and Akkad and parts of Syria and Iran. To establish and, later, cement their authority over disparate peoples and places, the kings used art and visual culture to extraordinary effect. Exemplars of Kingship conveys the astonishing life of the art of the Akkadian kings by assessing ancient and modern responses to its dynamic forms and transformative ideologies of kingship. For nearly two thousand years after their reign, the Akkadian kings were remembered as exemplary rulers. Modern assessments of ancient memories of Akkadian kingship have concentrated on textual attestations of the kings' place in cultural memory. This book considers the contributions of images to memories of Akkadian kingship. Through close readings of the visuals that remain, Melissa Eppihimer discusses how Akkadian steles, statues, and cylinder seals became models for later rulers in Mesopotamia and beyond who wished to emulate or critique the Akkadian kings-and how these rulers and their contemporaries were reminded of the Akkadian past when they looked at images. Exemplars of Kingship is, therefore, a book about Akkadian art and its reception in antiquity, but it is also concerned with the modern reception of Akkadian art and kingship. It argues that modern responses have constrained our understanding of ancient responses. Through a wide range of examples drawn from almost two millennia, the book highlights the individual decisions that prompted continuity and change during the long history of Mesopotamia and its artistic traditions.

This study examines issues in politics and political theory in selected works of Pedro Calder&ón de la Barca (1600&–1681), the major dramatist of the middle and later decades of the seventeenth century in Spain. By analyzing secular dramas (comedias) and religious plays (autos sacramentales), Stephen Rupp demonstrates Calder&ón's awareness of the ideas and institutions of power in Hapsburg Spain and explores the terms of his intervention in the long debate over the principles of Christian statecraft. Through references to Rivadeneira, Saavedra Fajardo, and Quevedo, Rupp describes the anti-Machiavellian theory of kingship that informs Calder&ón's political theater. Rupp's argument proceeds from abstract principles of political theory to particular institutions and events at the Hapsburg court. Discussion of two comedias (La vida es sue&ño and La cisma de Inglaterra) and five autos (La vida es sue&ño, A Dios por raz&ón de Estado, El maestrazgo del Tois&ón, El nuevo palacio del Retiro, and El lirio y la azucena) demonstrates Calder&ón's assimilation of true reason of state to providence, his attitudes concerning the conciliar system and the regime of the royal favorite or valido, and his allegorical treatment of significant state occasions.

This book contributes to one of the more fruitful areas of Old Testament studies in recent years: the canonical study of the Psalter. It asks why the three psalms that focus on the torah (instruction) of Yahweh (Pss 1, 19, and 119) are associated with royal psalms and suggests that the answer lies in an editorial attempt to draw attention to Deuteronomy's kingship law (Deut 17: 14-20). This focus on the Pentateuch's paradigm for kingship is meant not only to shape the psalmic presentation of the eschatological king but also to direct the reader to a piety that every believer should emulate-the king as exemplar for the people of God. This volume will be of interest to scholars of the Psalter, Deuteronomy, and intertextual studies as well as profitable reading for anyone interested in biblical perspectives on living as the people of God. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).

This book examines how ancient authors explored ideas of kingship as a political role fundamental to the construction of civic unity, the use of kingship stories to explain the past and present unity of the polis and the distinctive function or status attributed to kings in such accounts. It explores the notion of kingship offered by historians such as Herodotus, as well as dramatists writing for the Athenian stage, paying particular attention to dramatic depictions of the unique capabilities of Theseus in uniting the city in the figure of the ‘democratic king’. It also discusses kingship in Greek philosophy: the Socratics’ identification of an ‘art of kingship’, and Xenophon and Isocrates’ model of ‘virtue monarchy’. In turn, these allow a rereading of explorations of kingship and excellence in Plato’s later political thought, seen as a critique of these models, and also in Aristotle’s account of total kingship or pambasileia, treated here as a counterfactual device developed to explore the epistemic benefits of democracy. This book offers a fascinating insight into the institution of monarchy in classical Greek thought and society, both for those working on Greek philosophy and politics, and also for students of the history of political thought.

This book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important monuments of French Gothic architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle, constructed in Paris by King Louis IX of France between 1239 and 1248 especially to hold and to celebrate Christ's Crown of Thorns. Meredith Cohen argues that the chapel's architecture, decoration, and use conveyed the notion of sacral kingship to its audience in Paris and in greater Europe, thereby implicitly elevating the French king to the level of suzerain, and establishing an early visual precedent for the political theories of royal sovereignty and French absolutism. By setting the chapel within its broader urban and royal contexts, this book offers new insight into royal representation and the rise of Paris as a political and cultural capital in the thirteenth century.

This first modern study of Henry the Young King, eldest son of Henry II but the least known Plantagenet monarch, explores the brief but eventful life of the only English ruler after the Norman Conquest to be created co-ruler in his father's lifetime. Crowned at fifteen to secure an undisputed succession, Henry played a central role in the politics of Henry II's great empire and was hailed as the embodiment of chivalry. Yet, consistently denied direct rule, the Young King was provoked first into heading a major rebellion against his father, then to waging a bitter war against his brother Richard for control of Aquitaine, dying before reaching the age of thirty having never assumed actual power. In this remarkable history, Matthew Strickland provides a richly colored portrait of an all-but-forgotten royal figure tutored by Thomas Becket, trained in arms by the great knight William Marshal, and incited to rebellion by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, while using his career to explore the nature of kingship, succession, dynastic politics, and rebellion in twelfth-century England and France.

The first comparative study of royal childhood and child kingship, revealing the fundamental role they played in medieval rulership.