The topics include what if they are foreign: inner-legal exegesis in the ancestral narratives, Israel's matriarchs: political pawns or powerbrokers, Abraham traditions and cult politics during the Persian period, Jacob and the
Aramaean identity of ancient Israel between the Judges and the Prophets, the reception of the Abraham narrative in the Book of Jubilees, and the "other" Ishmael in Islamic scripture and tradition.
(38) In Amherst Papyrus 63 Bethel, an
Aramaean version of El, is portrayed as creator and father god with power over the destinies of his people; he provides fertility, food, and protection.
Nabonidus was another usurper, supported by his son Belshazzar, and was additionally of
Aramaean heritage.
Similarly, highlights from the Late Pre-Islamic Period include silver coins, a bronze bull head, and a bronze plaque inscribed in
Aramaean. More recent Islamic Age discoveries feature a huge range of pottery and ceramic objects made locally and brought into the UAE from Iran, China and Thailand.
(14.) Corbett emphasizes that Abram's leaving of Haran in tow with his herd animals was marked out in subsequent ritual confession of Israel's myth of origins (Dt 26:5) as an instance of rebellion against oppressive agro-state politics--"
Aramaean" going "cimarron" out on the land to be re-schooled by the Wild as feral nomad alongside his feral herds (Corbett, 1991, 4; Corbett, 2005, 221-2).
He expresses his comradeship to people "in the four corners of the world" in his poem "Identity Card." He sympathizes with the Armenian and the Turk, with the Algerian and the Amazigh, and he considers himself an Egyptian with African forebears, an
Aramaean with Byzantine uncles, a Hijazi child coddled by Muslim Umar and Christian Sophronius when the former conquered Jerusalem, and his "scorn for Zionists" does not prevent him from saying he was "a Jew expelled from Andalusia," for "by anything less than this, one is not an Arab." At all times, he fights injustice and hails principles of peace and justice.
Recent collections of poetry are Without Mythologies: New and Selected Poems and Translations (Dos Madres Press, 2008) and A Wandering
Aramaean: Passover Poems and Translations (Dos Madres Press, 2012).
This handbook offers a comprehensive review of current research regarding central Syria's ancient
Aramaean culture.
On the one hand, Syrian political and religious institutions are interested in the safeguard of the main relics of the political power and of the waqf; since the first UNESCO inquiry in Syria (Collart, Abdul-Hak and Dillon 1954), Damascus' architectural heritage has been represented as the objectification of Syrian history, conceived as a teleology that started from
Aramaean founders of the city, crossed Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Seljuq, Ayyub, Mameluk, and Ottoman civilizations and reached its climax in the modern Syrian Arab Republic.
The ancient treasure -- monumental deities from
Aramaean civilization and relief slabs depicting hunting scenes -- will soon be back on public display.
Abraham remained the lifelong "wandering
Aramaean" that Moses later calls him--a perpetual resident alien on the land his flocks graze.
