Céline Debourse
Biographic Data
| ID | 1601314 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Céline Debourse |
| GIVEN NAMES | Céline |
| FAMILY NAME | Debourse |
| SIGNATURE | DEBOURSE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-6064-0278 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Kingship and Queenship in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires of the First Millennium BCE: Presentation to the Public as Builder
Empires and kingship are long-standing topics of research in ancient Near Eastern studies; the study of queenship has gradually received more attention over recent decades. However, discussions of the social implications of kingship and queenship, comparisons of the gender roles, and their study across several empires remain rare. The paper at hand takes the unprecedented step of such a comparative analysis by tracing a specific detail of royal i…
Betwixt and Between: The Women of Esagil (484–90 BCE)
In contrast to the preceding centuries, women occupy a prominent place in the Late Babylonian Esagil archives, particularly in lists recording the expenditures of allocations. A close reading of theses attestations reveals that in comparison to earlier centuries, there was more female agency and mobility within the traditional Babylonian temple household. My thesis is that these new roles for women can be explained against their wider socio-econo…
A Marad Cylinder in the Finnish Heritage Agency: Studying Old Collections with Unclear Provenances
Located in the storage of the archaeological collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency lies a well-preserved clay cylinder inscribed with cuneiform script. The text on it describes the building activities of the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE), and in particular recounts his renovation of the temple of the god Lugal-Marada in Marad. As one of around fifty known recensions of this inscription, the Helsinki Cylinder reveals lim…
Conceptualizing a Priestly World: Past, Present, and Future in Hellenistic Babylon
In a world that grew increasingly more foreign, the Marduk priests of Hellenistic Babylon endeavored to maintain their ancient traditions and beliefs. Central to their worldview was the idea that the gods decided the fates of the land and that to ensure their benevolence, temple worship was not only necessary but the primary raison d'être of the priests themselves. However, foreign rule posed significant challenges to the traditional Babylonian t…
The Late Babylonian Series of ‘Ancient Sumerian’: Structure, Contents, and the Agency of Ritual Texts
In this article, we shed new light on the series with the emic title ‘Ancient Sumerian’, previously known from the Late Babylonian ritual texts for the New Year Festival. We first establish a new reading of the title, the key to which lies in a Late Babylonian pseudepigraphic letter. Following that, we present the contents of the series, including the edition of the hitherto unpublished tablet BM 32544+ that according to its colophon belongs to t…
Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts
In cuneiform culture the New Year Festival was an important ritual of kingship. The most fundamental source for the reconstruction of this festival is a small corpus of cuneiform ritual texts that describe the ritual actions and prayers to be performed during the first days of the year. Those texts were written by Babylonian priests during the Persian-Hellenistic period (484-140 BCE), when Babylonia had come under foreign rule. Why were these rit…
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The Late Babylonian Series of ‘Ancient Sumerian’: Structure, Contents, and the Agency of Ritual Texts
In this article, we shed new light on the series with the emic title ‘Ancient Sumerian’, previously known from the Late Babylonian ritual texts for the New Year Festival. We first establish a new reading of the title, the key to which lies in a Late Babylonian pseudepigraphic letter. Following that, we present the contents of the series, including the edition of the hitherto unpublished tablet BM 32544+ that according to its colophon belongs to t…
Writing and imagining ritual in the Babylonian New Year festival texts
In cuneiform culture the New Year Festival was an important ritual of kingship. The most fundamental source for the reconstruction of this festival is a small corpus of cuneiform ritual texts that describe the ritual actions and prayers to be performed during the first days of the year. Those texts were written by Babylonian priests during the Persian-Hellenistic period (484-140 BCE), when Babylonia had come under foreign rule. Why were these rit…
Kingship and Queenship in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires of the First Millennium BCE: Presentation to the Public as Builder
Empires and kingship are long-standing topics of research in ancient Near Eastern studies; the study of queenship has gradually received more attention over recent decades. However, discussions of the social implications of kingship and queenship, comparisons of the gender roles, and their study across several empires remain rare. The paper at hand takes the unprecedented step of such a comparative analysis by tracing a specific detail of royal i…
Betwixt and Between: The Women of Esagil (484–90 BCE)
In contrast to the preceding centuries, women occupy a prominent place in the Late Babylonian Esagil archives, particularly in lists recording the expenditures of allocations. A close reading of theses attestations reveals that in comparison to earlier centuries, there was more female agency and mobility within the traditional Babylonian temple household. My thesis is that these new roles for women can be explained against their wider socio-econo…
A Marad Cylinder in the Finnish Heritage Agency: Studying Old Collections with Unclear Provenances
Located in the storage of the archaeological collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency lies a well-preserved clay cylinder inscribed with cuneiform script. The text on it describes the building activities of the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE), and in particular recounts his renovation of the temple of the god Lugal-Marada in Marad. As one of around fifty known recensions of this inscription, the Helsinki Cylinder reveals lim…
Conceptualizing a Priestly World: Past, Present, and Future in Hellenistic Babylon
In a world that grew increasingly more foreign, the Marduk priests of Hellenistic Babylon endeavored to maintain their ancient traditions and beliefs. Central to their worldview was the idea that the gods decided the fates of the land and that to ensure their benevolence, temple worship was not only necessary but the primary raison d'être of the priests themselves. However, foreign rule posed significant challenges to the traditional Babylonian t…
Ancient Near East History (5 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology (3 works) · Ancient history (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Classics (2 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (2 works) · Monarchy (2 works)