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September 14, 2006
Was Abdi-Heba a New Man in Jerusalem?
I'm about three or four days away from my next mega post on Scribal Schools. The research is done (I hope) and there are just a couple of issues to wrap-up. One of those has to do with Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem. How did he come to power and was he a native of the Jerusalem? Not sure what this has to do with scribal schools? Either wait for my next post on the subject or, if you just can't wait a few more days, check out Moran's paper on the scribe who wrote the Amarna letters from Jerusalem. Even a glance at the title of this paper might tell you enough. Moran's paper can be found two places. I list both below with the title.
Here's the problem with Abdi-Heba. He says he owes his authority to the pharaoh (See EA 286:9ff, EA 287:25ff and EA 288:13ff ). He repeats in various ways, "Neither my father nor my mother put me in this place, but the strong arm of the king gave it to me. (EA 287:25)." I am using Moran's translations from "The Amarna Letters." Abdi-Heba also reminds the pharaoh that he is a "soldier of the king" and not a governor (EA 288:9-10). In another letter (EA 287:69) he again reminds the pharaoh that he is a soldier.
But, one of his statements concerning the source of his authority reads, "Seeing that, as far as I am concerned, neither my father nor my mother put me in this place, but the strong arm of the king brought me into my father's house (emphasis added, EA 286:9ff)." And in EA 288:15, he again refers to his father's house. In addition, Šuwardata seems to view Abdi-Heba as a governor in EA 280 but Šuwardata seeing him as a soldier also cannot be ruled out.
After rehearsing the above material, Moran (2003), 273, says,
What would make sense of this apparent contradiction of a governor who is also not a governor but a soldier, and at the same time explain the unparallel insistence on the pharaoh's personal intervention in Abdi-Heba's coming to power, would be the assumption that unlike most of his peers he did not come to the throne in an established line of succession, but rather, after belonging to the military, had been brought into Jerusalem by "the strong arm of the king." On this reading of the passages in question, Abdi-Heba would in some sense be a novus homo on the Jerusalem scene, though perhaps not entirely so, if the reference to his father's house is to be given its full weight. He may have belonged to the old royal house, or a branch of it, which, for reasons we can only guess at, lost Jerusalem but not the pharaoh's favor.
I can't help thinking that Moran stretches the evidence in claiming Abdi-Heba was in any real sense a novus homo. I rather read all this as if he were a usurper who leveraged his own favor with the pharaoh against his father or whoever was in line to succeed his father. After all, a younger brother currying the favor of a great king and then staging a coup in his own house is not exactly unheard of. In any case, I find it hard to apply the term novus homo to Abdi-Heba even though I am willing to grant that he spent some time away from Jerusalem in the military. It appears to me that Moran himself equivocates on this point.
References:
Moran, William L., "The Syrian Scribe of the Jerusalem Amarna Letters," in Unity and Diversity, Hans Goedicke and J. J. M. Roberts eds., Baltimore: John Hopkins Univerisity, 1975, 146-168
Moran, William L., "The Syrian Scribe of the Jerusalem Amarna Letters," in Moran, William L., Amarna Studies; Collected Writings, John Huehnergard and Shlomo Izre'el eds., Harvard Semitic Studies 54, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2003, 249-274
Posted by Duane Smith at September 14, 2006 7:28 PM | Read more on Scribal Schools |
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