Temple Dedication and Construction Texts of the Ancient Near East with Elapsed Years: Implications for Long Duration Chronologies

Abstract

Ancient texts dedicating or commemorating temples that can be associated with archaeological remains such as architecture and inscriptions, along with identifiable kings who built or commemorated those temples and the specification of the elapsed number of years from a past event, are known from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant over the span of several centuries. Although the texts originate from differing religious, cultural, and geographic contexts and were recorded on various mediums, the similarity in content, style, and objective indicates a shared tradition and allows the grouping of these texts into a distinctive category. These temple construction and dedication texts document a king or kings involved in the construction, reconstruction, or remembrance of a temple, a deity with whom the temple was connected, the location of the temple, and the specific number of years elapsed between construction or dedication and another significant cultural or religious event. Known examples come from Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Israel, spanning the 13th to the 2nd centuries BC, along with a text from ancient Rome that was likely influenced by this practice. Because the kings named are known from various historical documents and inscriptions, archaeological remains related to the temples have often been recovered; since the construction or dedication texts record elapsed years in reference to another event, these texts can be analyzed in regard to their viability as sources for the history and chronology of the ancient Near East in the context of religion and official records of the state. Investigation of these texts alongside king lists and temples reveals that temple construction and dedication texts of the ancient Near East that included mention of elapsed years provide valuable, detailed, and accurate information that can be used to identify the existence of ancient temples in time, corroborate periods of kingship or other important events, and contribute to understanding a method of historical chronology used by the ancients.