Much of our information must be gleaned from the Bible. Unlike the situation in Mesopotamia and Egypt, we have no royal inscriptions or surviving royal annals from ancient Israel or Judah. The kingdom of Israel, both in the features it shared with other Ancient Near Eastern cultures and in its unique features, was affected by the circumstances in which the monarchy was established. There are few sources concerning the character of monarchy in Canaan and the immediate vicinity, but there too it appears to have been considered elemental. In Mesopotamia, in the view that finds expression in the Sumerian kings list, the monarchy was introduced from heaven, although the Sumerian kings themselves were generally not divine. The monarchy was divine, as the natural order of things is divine. In Egypt the monarchy was regarded as an essential element in the order of creation. In many of the Ancient Near Eastern cultures the monarch was seen as part of the eternal order. The king's power over his subjects – which was usually supreme and absolute – was not regarded as arbitrarily arrogated but as an embodiment of the god's will and as a gracious gift of the god to humanity. All shared the view that there was a direct relationship between the king and the deity – whether the king was actually considered divine or son of a god, or the god's representative on earth who makes known the god's will, or as the god's chosen servant. Nevertheless, the general notions of the nature of monarchy and of the figure of the king in the various cultures of the Ancient Near East have much in common. The status of monarchy in Egypt is not the same as in Mesopotamia, and it differs again from its status in the Hittite and the Canaanite cultural spheres. The distinctions in the concept of monarchy are sometimes the differences between the ruler of a vast empire, and a city-state king who is in effect a vassal, and sometimes the differences among the cultures. The status of the monarchy and the concept of monarchy are not identical in the various cultures of the Ancient Near East. 31:8), and "the king of Kedar," mentioned in an Aramaic inscription of the Persian era. Occasionally the term "king" is used to designate a tribal chief, or the chief of a group of tribes, e.g., "The kings of Midian" (Num. This term is used to designate the rulers of great empires such as Egypt, Assyria, and Persia rulers of nation-kingdoms such as Moab, Edom, and Israel and the rulers of city-states, such as Tyre, Hazor, and Jericho. The term "king" in the biblical frame of reference and that of the Ancient Near East generally designates a governor and ruler, usually the sole authority over his subjects.
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