Democracy's Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance.

DEMOCRACY'S ANCIENT ANCESTORS: MARI AND EARLY COLLECTIVE GOVERNANCE. By Daniel E. Fleming. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xxx + 359. Cloth, $75.00.

Fleming has written an intriguing book on ancient Near Eastern collective governance. His primary resources for this work are the texts that have been translated of nearly 3,000 cuneiform tablets discovered in the royal palace in Mari, the first of which archaeologists discovered in 1934. Over the years, publication of these tablets has been slow. He points out that much more research has taken place in Mari studies since the early 1980s than has yet reached the wider scholarly world. DEMOCRACY'S ANCIENT ANCESTORS is his contribution to disseminate some of this information (p. 3).

He states his purpose in the first sentence of the book: "This book undertakes a study of ancient political life through the lens of one body of evidence: the cuneiform text of Mari" (p. 1). He clearly indicates that this work is based upon a linguistic study of the Mari cuneiform texts. His emphasis is upon collective governance in the lands around Mari, mainly of the third and second millennium BCE. His argument is that collective governance was hot as foreign to the region as one might think.

He divides his book into rive chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to Mari history and to prominent terms in these cuneiform texts. He also comments on his methodology. This chapter is primarily aimed at the Mesopotamian and cuneiform non-specialist. He focuses upon tribal leadership in chapter two, namely tribal kinship and confederacies. He concentrates his study upon two tribal groups, the Sim'alites and Yaminites. These groups resided around Mari during rule of Zimri-Lim and were distinct in their social and political structures. His premise is that the populous identified themselves in tribal terms during this period. In chapter three, he looks at larger political entities called "matums," which means "lands." He points out that Mesopotamia in the Mari period was a society of matums functioning as kingdoms (p. 136).

Chapter four is a discussion of collective governance of towns as seen in the Mari texts. This discussion builds on the information of chapters two and three. He sees the governance of the town as "the collective expression of all who gathered and lived there" (p. 171). He argues that it has a solitary voice and is treated as such in the Mari texts (p. 174). Chapter rive contains the conclusions of his study.

Fleming tries to be thorough in his approach, as is evident in his 65 pages of endnotes, 16-page glossary of ancient terms, and extensive bibliography. I appreciate his efforts to incorporate so much information. Also, he includes a subject index and an index of Mari cuneiform texts. "(et, the technical language and the reader's lack of access to the Mari cuneiform texts, or even translations, make the work difficult to follow. Basically, the reader must take Fleming at his word about the nature of the material in Mari's ancient tablets. The only other small issue I have with the book is the use of the word Democracy in the title. Mesopotamian governments did not function as democracies in the classical sense (as in ancient Athens, Greece), as Fleming acknowledges (p. 177). He is not convincing that collective governance is the ancestor to democracy, as the title suggests.

Overall, the book certainly delves into an area of study that needs much research, and I commend Fleming for his work. Mesopotamian specialists will appreciate his efforts; however, non-specialists may find this work too difficult for their tastes.

Terry W. Eddinger

Carolina Evangelical Divinity School 

High Point, NC 27265