Article in special issue

The economic role of temples in the interrelated world of the Middle and Late Bronze Levant in the prism of cuneiform evidence

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Abstract

This article examines the socioeconomic role of temple institutions in the southern Levant from the Chalcolithic to the Late Bronze Age, with a primary focus on the limited but significant evidence from western cuneiform sources. While ritual sites and monumental temple architecture are well attested archaeologically, their economic functions and integration within local hierarchies remain poorly understood and widely debated. The study traces the transition from open shrines in Early Bronze Age I to more complex temple compounds, and the later coexistence of temples and palatial institutions in EB II–III urban centres such as Megiddo, ʿAi, Arad, and Zeraqun. For the Middle Bronze Age, fewer than ten relevant cuneiform documents exist, predominantly from Hazor, with none securely linked to institutional temple administration. The key exception, Hebron 1, contains indirect evidence of sacrificial livestock and palace-linked tax collection, including the rare feminine form mušadināti, signalling hybrid scribal adoption of Old Babylonian terminology without implying direct temple economic agency. In the Late Bronze Age, the Amarna correspondence offers only three explicit references to temples, all in Rib-Hadda’s Byblos letters, which foreground political rather than economic significance. The analysis demonstrates that cuneiform sources overwhelmingly reflect palace-centred administrative traditions, requiring alternative archaeological and textual proxies to reconstruct Levantine temple economies.

Keywords: temple economy, southern Levant, Amarna letters, cuneiform West, institutional hierachy

How to Cite:

Mynárová, J., (2025) “The economic role of temples in the interrelated world of the Middle and Late Bronze Levant in the prism of cuneiform evidence”, Akkadica 146(2), 213-225. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/akkadica.100522