The Changing Faces of Kingship in Syria-Palestine 1500-500 BCE

Investigation of the role of objects in the history of kingship in the Levant during the first millennium BCE, two periods have been chosen. The first is the region's pre-Assyrian conquest phase, when the Levantine kingdoms experienced a period of autonomy before the Assyrian intervention, and when a process of elaboration of collective memory can be detected (Feldman 2014). The second is the Persian period, when the disappearance of kingship from the majority of the Levant enables us to analyze the surviving Phoenician kingdom of Sidon as a case study of change in the language of court style and, therefore, in the conception of kingship. Every king probably impressed his own character on his kingdom, although in the context of a well-established tradition to which he could refer. The inclusion of the names of two kings in the title of this paper, instead of a generic reference to the two periods in which they lived, is an attempt, at least at the theoretical level, to indicate a specific context, insofar as it can be known from texts and inscriptions