ROYAL AND STATE SCRIBES IN ANCIENT

by

E. LIPINSKI Leuven

Scribes are the main figures behind biblical literature. In fact, we owe them the Bible, the whole Bible. In spite of this, very little is known about their activities and their social position. Texts provide us, however, with some names and a few data concerning royal and state scribes in the time of the monarchy. From the literary genres of the biblical literature and sporadic quotations of other writings we can tell not only that these scribes were bureaucrats, state officials, and accountants, but also that they were compilers of royal annals, writers of state letters, collectors of proverbs and other items, and authors who diffused the Davidic ideology and the royal propaganda. The annals behind part of the books of Kings were drawn up at the royal court. The seper dibd hayyiimfm lemaleke yisrii)el is referred to as many as seventeen times, from the reign of Jeroboam I to that of Peqah.' The annals of the last king of the state of Samaria, Hoshea son of Elah, are not quoted for the simple reason that they were never compiled. This fact confirms the reliability of the biblical references with regard to these royal annals. The seper dibre hayyiimfm lemaleke fhUdiih is referred to sixteen times, from the reign of Rehoboam to the one ofJehoiakim. 2 No mention is made either of annals of Ahaziah and Athaliah, both murdered, or of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, who were both deported to Babylon. Besides, no annals were known from 's and 's reigns. There was only a seper dibre felamah (1 Kings xi 41), which obviously did not present the events in an annalistic way from the beginning of Solomon's reign. This lack of annals or "diaries", dibd hayyiimfm, as they were called in Hebrew, is the reason why the real length of the reigns David and of Solomon was unknown to the redactors of the books of Kings and both monarchs were granted by them a reign of forty years each, a symbolic and conventional figure without any historical value. 3 We can assume

I 1 Kings xiv 19, xv 31, xvi 5, 14,20,27; 2 Kings i 18, x 34, xiii 8, xiv 15, 28, xv 11, 15,21,26, 3l. 2 1 Kings xiv 29, xv 7,23, xxii 46; 2 Kings viii 23, xii 20, xiii 12, xiv 18, xv 6,36, xvi 19, xx 20; xxi 17, 25, xxiii 28, xxiv 5. 3 A computation based on the regnal years of the kings of Tyre and on the syn- 158 E. LIPINSKI

therefore that the annalistic activity of royal scribes started in Jerusalem during Solomon's reign and the first complete annals of a king, compiled in the capital city ofJudah , were those of Rehoboam, Solomon's son and successor. The ancient Near East has a rich epistolary literature, especially an abundant royal correspondence. Although several ancient Hebrew letters are known now,4 none belongs to a royal correspondence. However, fragments of royal letters are embedded in narrative passages of the ,5 which allegedly contain the body of a letter either ver­ batim or summarized. The first letter mentioned in the Bible is the ill­ famed letter of David which sent Uriah to his death, and of which a sentence is quoted in 2 Sam. xi 15. Since the text is given in direct speech form: "Put Uriah facing the enemy where the fight is fiercest and then fall back, and leave him to meet his death", it may be a genuine verbatim quotation from the letter or from a copy kept in the archives. But it is of course uncertain whether this is really a passage from the very letter sent by David to Joab, for we can also surmise that the story teller fol­ lowed the custom writers had in antiquity of inserting words allegedly spoken or written by the heroes or villains of their stories, but in reality invented by the writer himself to make the narrative more vivid. 1 Kings xxi 9-10 uses in the same way Queen Jezebel's letter to the elders and nobles of Jezreel, and 2 Kings v 6 a letter from the king of Aram to the king ofIsrael. This quotation is introduced by weCattiih, "and now", cer­ tainly the regular formula that introduces the main part of the letter and comes after the introduction which usually contained the name of the sender, the name of the addressee, and a blessing or greeting formula to the receiver of the letter. 6 The term weCattiih also introduces the first of the quotations in 2 Kings x 2-3 and 6 from two letters allegedly sent by King Jehu to officials in Samaria. We cannot be sure that these quotations introduced by weCattiih are excerpts from real state letters and not fictitious passages. In any case, they reflect the genuine letter-style of the ancient Near East. Two other letters allegedly sent by foreign kings are quoted. Thus, 2 Kings xix 10- 13 = Isa. xxxvii 10-13 is supposed to be a message from Sennacherib to King Hezekiah of Judah, and 2 Chron. ii 10-15, a message from King

chronism between year 11/12 of Hiram I and year 4 of Solomon would allow Solomon a reign of less than 30 years. Cf. E. Lipinski, "BacJi-Maczer II and the Chronology of Tyre", RSO 45 (1970), pp. 59-65, in particular pp. 64-5. 4 They are conveniently collected in D. Pardee, Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Letters (Chico, 1982). 5 Ibid., pp. 169-82. 6 Ibid., pp. 145-52.