What is it about?
This article examines two near-duplicate letters by the same author, an official at the Eanna temple in Uruk in Southern Babylonia, addressed to different recipients. The letters date to 528 BCE. By comparing the two letters , we gain an insight into how the sender positioned himself in the temple hierarchy and with regard to his colleagues, and how he negotiated his relationship with other officials of different status in the institutional hierarchy.
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Why is it important?
This article strives to combine the fields of Historical Sociolinguistics and Assyriology, gaining new ground in the combination of two disciplines which have so far rarely been brought together. The paper also helps to understand the relationship between temple officials of different backgrounds and therefore different sources of power. The sender, a temple official, had a royal background, while the recipients, also temple officials, had a local background. Different interests, positions and links to power are therefore in play in this dynamic of personal and professional relationships.
Perspectives
The comparision of the two letters in question allows for insights into how a person performed their identity ca. 2 500 years ago. It shows how the official negotiated relationships, how the temple hierarchy played into this and how this hierarchy was understood at the time. Although this paper uses a microhistorical approach, it allows one to glean wider insights into the history of bureaucracy, the inner workings of a temple and the expressions and phrases used to communicate in this temple setting.
Martina Schmidl
University of Vienna
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics, August 2023, Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers,
DOI: 10.3726/b19157.
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