František Válek | University of Pardubice (original) (raw)
Papers by František Válek
Aula Orientalis, 2024
The presented article addresses the question of whether the epics of Kirta and Aqhat from LBA Uga... more The presented article addresses the question of whether the epics of Kirta and Aqhat from LBA Ugarit may be considered narratives articulating social myths, building upon the theory of Gérard Bouchard. As such, the epics are seen as potentially influential elements within the society of Ugarit, significantly contributing to the construction of the reality of that time. The designation invites us to consider the complex social and historical setting in which the narratives appeared and worked and ask how they could have been relevant, what aims their author could have followed, and what means he used to achieve them. The preservation of sources considerably limits our possibilities in tracking the links among the narratives, author, audience, local and international politics, environment, religion, or emic conception of history. The reconstructed context, therefore, remains largely porous. Still, Ugarit is one of the best sites to start such an endeavour which may broaden our understanding of political uses of narratives in the ancient Near East.
Axis Mundi, 2024
This paper investigates the practice of divination within the political administration of Ugarit ... more This paper investigates the practice of divination within the political administration of Ugarit at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The core interpretative approach is to draw comparisons with similar practices in the broader ancient Near East, within which the local sources may be contextualised. The study focuses on divinatory models in clay from the “House of the Hurrian Priest,” and in ivory from the Royal Palace, and on divinatory compendia, both of local and Mesopotamian origin. The study draws connections between private and state divination, and outlines cooperation between the palace and other institutions at Ugarit.
N.A.B.U., 2024
RS 25.435 (AuOrS 23, no. 36) was previously identified as a fragment of the Epic of Tukultī-Ninur... more RS 25.435 (AuOrS 23, no. 36) was previously identified as a fragment of the Epic of Tukultī-Ninurta. In light of newly discovered fragment from Aššur (VAT 10722 + VAT 12178), this view is untenable.
Call for Papers - Religion and Identity, 2023
The Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion invites submissions for its upc... more The Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion invites submissions for its upcoming conference, hosted by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary between the 20th and 22nd of October 2023.
The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of M... more The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of Mari from the beginning of the 18th century BC. The text of the epic is included in transliteration (based on the edition by Michaël Guichard from 2014) and in English translation. The epic has also been published online as the first entry of NERE (Near Eastern Royal Epics: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nere/index.html) project on ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus). In addition to the text itself, the thesis includes a broader historical-cultural commentary. There, selected elements of the ancient text are portraited as well-set within the lived cultural-political environment of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to the time of Zimrī-Lîm. Most of the space is devoted to the religious aspect of the work, especially the role of the deities. Last but not least, the composition is discussed within the context of other royal epics of the ancient Near East.
Studia Orientalia Electronica 9(2); Special Issue: Identity and Empire in the Ancient Near East, 2021
During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was mostly dominated by the larger powers of the ancient Near E... more During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was mostly dominated by the larger powers of the ancient Near East-Mitanni (the Hurrians), the Hittite Empire, and Egypt. The ancient city of Ugarit yielded numerous texts and artifacts that attest to the presence of foreigners and their influences on local religious traditions. Textually, the best-preserved influences are those of Hurrian origin, although these were probably promoted thanks to the Hittites, who incorporated many Hurrian deities and cults. Hurrian traditions thus influenced both Ugaritic cults and divine pantheons. Egyptian influences, in contrast, are observable mostly in art and material evidence. Art of Egyptian origin was considered prestigious and because of that was prominently seen in trade and international exchange gifts, but it also entered the religious sphere in the form of cultic statues and ex-voto gifts for deities. Egyptian art was also often imitated by local artists. The same can be said of art from the Mediterranean area. Some evidence suggests that foreigners actively related to local traditions as well. Ritual tablets from Ugarit (namely KTU 3 1.40 and its variants) illustrate that there were always frictions in a multicultural/national society. These tablets also indicate that such frictions could have been dealt with through ritual action, and thus emphasize the role religion played. The city of Ugarit is used in this paper to illuminate some processes that can be observed in the whole of ancient Syria. Nevertheless, every site has its own outcome of interactions with other cultures.
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](Religio: revue pro religionistiku
This thesis aims to map non-Semitic influences in the religion and culture of the Late Bronze Age... more This thesis aims to map non-Semitic influences in the religion and culture of the Late Bronze Age Syria. During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was divided into many local kingdoms which were most of the time subdued to the great empires of the ancient Near East (Mitanni and Ḫatti) and Egypt. Influences from these cultural areas are the most noticeable.Trade across the Mediterranean brought many cultural influences, too. Theseare mostly observable in art.
The thesis is centred around case studies from Ugarit, Amurru, Byblos, Karkemiš, Alalaḫ, Ḫalāb, Emar, Tunip and Qaṭna. Each case study shows peculiarities of individual sites and different modes of cultural transfer. The data are set into a broader anthropological perspective and some general conclusions are made about the process of culture transfer and about conceptions of foreignness in the cultures of the ancient Near East and Egypt.Abroadertheory of culture as a system of concepts is outlined and the material is interpreted in its light.
Thesis Chapters by František Válek
Life, Society and Politics in Relation to Religion at Ugarit in the Late Bronze Age, 2023
The presented dissertation attempts to cover some aspects of the extensive topic of religion at U... more The presented dissertation attempts to cover some aspects of the extensive topic of religion at Ugarit, an ancient site on the Syrian Mediterranean coast at the very end of the Late Bronze Age (late 14th to early 12th century BC). Religion is explored here in relation to everyday, social, and political life. It is based on the assumption that religion is not merely a matter of theological concepts and mythological narratives but is, first and foremost, a way of living in the world. Religion does not exist as a distinctly separate sphere of life but runs through the whole spectrum of human existence in different forms and with varying intensity. The present work discusses this broadly defined topic from several very different perspectives.
After the first introductory chapter comes the second part, in which religion is set in the broader context of the surrounding world. The surrounding landscape, mountains, rivers, seas, forests, skies, mineral resources, etc., have a considerable, though not straightforward, influence on lived religion. Social and historical contexts are also considered as essential factors.
In the third chapter, the thesis focuses on one of the central concepts of religious life in Ugarit: divinity. Here, the ways in which divinity manifests itself in the available sources are explored. The conceptualization of divinity is shown to be highly problematic and dependent on the contexts in which it occurs. Different types of sources – from rituals to myths to lexical lists to letters to administrative texts – always show a different side of the divine.
The fourth chapter deals with the issue of written sources. The scholarly preference for written material often fails to recognise that written sources are also material in nature and that their meaning is not exhausted by their content. The chapter deals with a statistical analysis of individual Ugaritic "archives" that reveal an interconnected network of centres of religious life manifested in written sources. The various languages and scripts attested in Ugarit are analysed in relation to religion. The materiality of the written sources is related to their power to manipulate reality, largely regardless of their content. The relationship of the written sources to the assumed illiterate majority of society is also briefly discussed.
In the following section, religion is examined from the perspective of the environment, particularly the city’s architecture. The temples on the city acropolis and the shrines spread out in the urban built environment are examined. Attention is also given to residential architecture and how religion may have been present in it. The city’s whole space is then considered as an environment in which various forms of religious life took place.
The extensive sixth chapter focuses on several narrower areas where religion was present in various forms. Firstly, the ways in which religion is manifested in onomastics are addressed, particularly by exploring the use of theophoric elements in anthroponyms and toponyms or the proper names of priests. Still, the wider symbolic significance of proper names is also considered. The next section focuses on the connection between cult activities and social life – in particular, which population groups participated in running the earthly life of the deities and in what ways. The question of public and private participation in religious activities is also addressed. The third section of chapter six is devoted to divination, especially as a practical way of living in the world. The fourth section discusses the administrative-economic dimension of religious activities more broadly. The care of deities was economically very demanding and required the broader participation of the whole society. Ritual texts are discussed here primarily as administrative documents, which in their structure are in many ways similar to ordinary economic activities. Part five examines the role of
religion in legal documents. For example, how and when deities were needed to guarantee made agreements. The penultimate section focuses on interpersonal communication as manifested in letters. Religion and symbolic communication are shown here as essential to letter-writing activities. In addition, various religious activities are occasionally addressed in the letters. The letters also show the religious dimension of political communication, illustrated by the example of the divine character of the Egyptian and Hittite rulers. The final section of chapter six deals with seals, which are not seen only as the iconographic representation of deities and religious activities but also as an important means of visual symbolic communication. A brief discussion of royal seals prefaces the last chapter.
The seventh chapter focuses on the relationship between politics and religion, showing them as interrelated spheres. It is divided into four narrower units. First, the participation of the monarch and the palace institution in cultural activities is discussed. These activities were largely directed from clergy institutions outside the palace itself. The second part deals with divinatory practices and their relationship to the royal palace. The third and most extensive part discusses the complex issue of political ideology and its relationship to Ugaritic narratives from the theoretical perspective of social myths. The discussion focuses mainly on the royal epics of Aqhat and Kirta. Their potential role in political propaganda is set in a broader social, religious, political, and historical context. The final section of the dissertation focuses on the issue of the divine character of deceased rulers.
The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of M... more The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of Mari from the beginning of the 18th century BC. The text of the epic is included in transliteration (based on the edition by Michaël Guichard from 2014) and in English translation. The epic has also been published online as the first entry of NERE (Near Eastern Royal Epics) project on ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus). In addition to the text itself, the thesis includes a broader historical-cultural commentary. There, selected elements of the ancient text are portraited as well-set within the lived cultural-political environment of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to the time of Zimrī-Lîm. Most of the space is devoted to the religious aspect of the work, especially the role of the deities. Last but not least, the composition is discussed within the context of other royal epics of the ancient Near East.
Conferences and Seminars by František Válek
CESAR Call for Papers 2022, 2022
The CEU Center for Religious Studies is proud to announce its 6th PhD conference is the kick-off ... more The CEU Center for Religious Studies is proud to announce its 6th PhD conference is the kick-off event for the annual regional event: CESAR (Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion)!
This new consortium's first official PhD conference, Transformations of Religions in Times of Crises: Spiritual Alienation and Rethinking of Ethics, will take place 1-3 September 2022 in Pardubice, Czech Republic and we invite all interested Religious Studies PhD scholars to apply and join us.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2022
Our team currently consists of the CEU Center for Religious Studies, Center for Religious Studies (Charles University), the Center for Religious Studies (Pardubice University), Department of Comparative Religion at Comenius University of Bratislava, Department for the Study of Religions (Masaryk University), Department for the Study of Religion (University of Szeged), and the Centre for the Study of Religion (Eötvös Loránd Tudomány University). If you and your institution are interested in joining the consortium, please contact us at religion@ceu.edu or at the conference event's g-mail account (1st.cesar.2022@gmail.com) to find out more.
Aula Orientalis, 2024
The presented article addresses the question of whether the epics of Kirta and Aqhat from LBA Uga... more The presented article addresses the question of whether the epics of Kirta and Aqhat from LBA Ugarit may be considered narratives articulating social myths, building upon the theory of Gérard Bouchard. As such, the epics are seen as potentially influential elements within the society of Ugarit, significantly contributing to the construction of the reality of that time. The designation invites us to consider the complex social and historical setting in which the narratives appeared and worked and ask how they could have been relevant, what aims their author could have followed, and what means he used to achieve them. The preservation of sources considerably limits our possibilities in tracking the links among the narratives, author, audience, local and international politics, environment, religion, or emic conception of history. The reconstructed context, therefore, remains largely porous. Still, Ugarit is one of the best sites to start such an endeavour which may broaden our understanding of political uses of narratives in the ancient Near East.
Axis Mundi, 2024
This paper investigates the practice of divination within the political administration of Ugarit ... more This paper investigates the practice of divination within the political administration of Ugarit at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The core interpretative approach is to draw comparisons with similar practices in the broader ancient Near East, within which the local sources may be contextualised. The study focuses on divinatory models in clay from the “House of the Hurrian Priest,” and in ivory from the Royal Palace, and on divinatory compendia, both of local and Mesopotamian origin. The study draws connections between private and state divination, and outlines cooperation between the palace and other institutions at Ugarit.
N.A.B.U., 2024
RS 25.435 (AuOrS 23, no. 36) was previously identified as a fragment of the Epic of Tukultī-Ninur... more RS 25.435 (AuOrS 23, no. 36) was previously identified as a fragment of the Epic of Tukultī-Ninurta. In light of newly discovered fragment from Aššur (VAT 10722 + VAT 12178), this view is untenable.
Call for Papers - Religion and Identity, 2023
The Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion invites submissions for its upc... more The Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion invites submissions for its upcoming conference, hosted by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary between the 20th and 22nd of October 2023.
The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of M... more The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of Mari from the beginning of the 18th century BC. The text of the epic is included in transliteration (based on the edition by Michaël Guichard from 2014) and in English translation. The epic has also been published online as the first entry of NERE (Near Eastern Royal Epics: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nere/index.html) project on ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus). In addition to the text itself, the thesis includes a broader historical-cultural commentary. There, selected elements of the ancient text are portraited as well-set within the lived cultural-political environment of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to the time of Zimrī-Lîm. Most of the space is devoted to the religious aspect of the work, especially the role of the deities. Last but not least, the composition is discussed within the context of other royal epics of the ancient Near East.
Studia Orientalia Electronica 9(2); Special Issue: Identity and Empire in the Ancient Near East, 2021
During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was mostly dominated by the larger powers of the ancient Near E... more During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was mostly dominated by the larger powers of the ancient Near East-Mitanni (the Hurrians), the Hittite Empire, and Egypt. The ancient city of Ugarit yielded numerous texts and artifacts that attest to the presence of foreigners and their influences on local religious traditions. Textually, the best-preserved influences are those of Hurrian origin, although these were probably promoted thanks to the Hittites, who incorporated many Hurrian deities and cults. Hurrian traditions thus influenced both Ugaritic cults and divine pantheons. Egyptian influences, in contrast, are observable mostly in art and material evidence. Art of Egyptian origin was considered prestigious and because of that was prominently seen in trade and international exchange gifts, but it also entered the religious sphere in the form of cultic statues and ex-voto gifts for deities. Egyptian art was also often imitated by local artists. The same can be said of art from the Mediterranean area. Some evidence suggests that foreigners actively related to local traditions as well. Ritual tablets from Ugarit (namely KTU 3 1.40 and its variants) illustrate that there were always frictions in a multicultural/national society. These tablets also indicate that such frictions could have been dealt with through ritual action, and thus emphasize the role religion played. The city of Ugarit is used in this paper to illuminate some processes that can be observed in the whole of ancient Syria. Nevertheless, every site has its own outcome of interactions with other cultures.
Religio: revue pro religionistiku
This thesis aims to map non-Semitic influences in the religion and culture of the Late Bronze Age... more This thesis aims to map non-Semitic influences in the religion and culture of the Late Bronze Age Syria. During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was divided into many local kingdoms which were most of the time subdued to the great empires of the ancient Near East (Mitanni and Ḫatti) and Egypt. Influences from these cultural areas are the most noticeable.Trade across the Mediterranean brought many cultural influences, too. Theseare mostly observable in art.
The thesis is centred around case studies from Ugarit, Amurru, Byblos, Karkemiš, Alalaḫ, Ḫalāb, Emar, Tunip and Qaṭna. Each case study shows peculiarities of individual sites and different modes of cultural transfer. The data are set into a broader anthropological perspective and some general conclusions are made about the process of culture transfer and about conceptions of foreignness in the cultures of the ancient Near East and Egypt.Abroadertheory of culture as a system of concepts is outlined and the material is interpreted in its light.
Life, Society and Politics in Relation to Religion at Ugarit in the Late Bronze Age, 2023
The presented dissertation attempts to cover some aspects of the extensive topic of religion at U... more The presented dissertation attempts to cover some aspects of the extensive topic of religion at Ugarit, an ancient site on the Syrian Mediterranean coast at the very end of the Late Bronze Age (late 14th to early 12th century BC). Religion is explored here in relation to everyday, social, and political life. It is based on the assumption that religion is not merely a matter of theological concepts and mythological narratives but is, first and foremost, a way of living in the world. Religion does not exist as a distinctly separate sphere of life but runs through the whole spectrum of human existence in different forms and with varying intensity. The present work discusses this broadly defined topic from several very different perspectives.
After the first introductory chapter comes the second part, in which religion is set in the broader context of the surrounding world. The surrounding landscape, mountains, rivers, seas, forests, skies, mineral resources, etc., have a considerable, though not straightforward, influence on lived religion. Social and historical contexts are also considered as essential factors.
In the third chapter, the thesis focuses on one of the central concepts of religious life in Ugarit: divinity. Here, the ways in which divinity manifests itself in the available sources are explored. The conceptualization of divinity is shown to be highly problematic and dependent on the contexts in which it occurs. Different types of sources – from rituals to myths to lexical lists to letters to administrative texts – always show a different side of the divine.
The fourth chapter deals with the issue of written sources. The scholarly preference for written material often fails to recognise that written sources are also material in nature and that their meaning is not exhausted by their content. The chapter deals with a statistical analysis of individual Ugaritic "archives" that reveal an interconnected network of centres of religious life manifested in written sources. The various languages and scripts attested in Ugarit are analysed in relation to religion. The materiality of the written sources is related to their power to manipulate reality, largely regardless of their content. The relationship of the written sources to the assumed illiterate majority of society is also briefly discussed.
In the following section, religion is examined from the perspective of the environment, particularly the city’s architecture. The temples on the city acropolis and the shrines spread out in the urban built environment are examined. Attention is also given to residential architecture and how religion may have been present in it. The city’s whole space is then considered as an environment in which various forms of religious life took place.
The extensive sixth chapter focuses on several narrower areas where religion was present in various forms. Firstly, the ways in which religion is manifested in onomastics are addressed, particularly by exploring the use of theophoric elements in anthroponyms and toponyms or the proper names of priests. Still, the wider symbolic significance of proper names is also considered. The next section focuses on the connection between cult activities and social life – in particular, which population groups participated in running the earthly life of the deities and in what ways. The question of public and private participation in religious activities is also addressed. The third section of chapter six is devoted to divination, especially as a practical way of living in the world. The fourth section discusses the administrative-economic dimension of religious activities more broadly. The care of deities was economically very demanding and required the broader participation of the whole society. Ritual texts are discussed here primarily as administrative documents, which in their structure are in many ways similar to ordinary economic activities. Part five examines the role of
religion in legal documents. For example, how and when deities were needed to guarantee made agreements. The penultimate section focuses on interpersonal communication as manifested in letters. Religion and symbolic communication are shown here as essential to letter-writing activities. In addition, various religious activities are occasionally addressed in the letters. The letters also show the religious dimension of political communication, illustrated by the example of the divine character of the Egyptian and Hittite rulers. The final section of chapter six deals with seals, which are not seen only as the iconographic representation of deities and religious activities but also as an important means of visual symbolic communication. A brief discussion of royal seals prefaces the last chapter.
The seventh chapter focuses on the relationship between politics and religion, showing them as interrelated spheres. It is divided into four narrower units. First, the participation of the monarch and the palace institution in cultural activities is discussed. These activities were largely directed from clergy institutions outside the palace itself. The second part deals with divinatory practices and their relationship to the royal palace. The third and most extensive part discusses the complex issue of political ideology and its relationship to Ugaritic narratives from the theoretical perspective of social myths. The discussion focuses mainly on the royal epics of Aqhat and Kirta. Their potential role in political propaganda is set in a broader social, religious, political, and historical context. The final section of the dissertation focuses on the issue of the divine character of deceased rulers.
The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of M... more The presented master’s thesis deals with the Epic of Zimrī-Lîm, a text from the ancient city of Mari from the beginning of the 18th century BC. The text of the epic is included in transliteration (based on the edition by Michaël Guichard from 2014) and in English translation. The epic has also been published online as the first entry of NERE (Near Eastern Royal Epics) project on ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus). In addition to the text itself, the thesis includes a broader historical-cultural commentary. There, selected elements of the ancient text are portraited as well-set within the lived cultural-political environment of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to the time of Zimrī-Lîm. Most of the space is devoted to the religious aspect of the work, especially the role of the deities. Last but not least, the composition is discussed within the context of other royal epics of the ancient Near East.
CESAR Call for Papers 2022, 2022
The CEU Center for Religious Studies is proud to announce its 6th PhD conference is the kick-off ... more The CEU Center for Religious Studies is proud to announce its 6th PhD conference is the kick-off event for the annual regional event: CESAR (Central European Symposium for the Academic Study of Religion)!
This new consortium's first official PhD conference, Transformations of Religions in Times of Crises: Spiritual Alienation and Rethinking of Ethics, will take place 1-3 September 2022 in Pardubice, Czech Republic and we invite all interested Religious Studies PhD scholars to apply and join us.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2022
Our team currently consists of the CEU Center for Religious Studies, Center for Religious Studies (Charles University), the Center for Religious Studies (Pardubice University), Department of Comparative Religion at Comenius University of Bratislava, Department for the Study of Religions (Masaryk University), Department for the Study of Religion (University of Szeged), and the Centre for the Study of Religion (Eötvös Loránd Tudomány University). If you and your institution are interested in joining the consortium, please contact us at religion@ceu.edu or at the conference event's g-mail account (1st.cesar.2022@gmail.com) to find out more.