So when today, one hears about the death of a young man, in battle or otherwise, the reaction is usually much more emotional if he leaves behind a wife and a child. In the ancient world, the reverse was supposed to have been the case. Dying without having first made a name, a namesake, in the sense of a progeny, was considered completely devastating. While the news that the man had left behind a male child, who would carry on the fallen or the dead person's name, brought some relief. Such generalizations are, of course, risky, yet they point to what many see as a late development in the history of mentality or the [FOREIGN]. In modern times, the self, one's name, is conceived individualistically, while in pre-modernity, identity, one's name, is constructed according to collective, most fundamentally familial parameters. Pragmatically, what was most important for families at, that they produced at least one son, and in addition to merely continuing the family name on the patrimonial land. The son played a critical role in caring for his parents in their old age, and giving them a proper burial and protecting their graves. His filial duties also include the performance of the memorial rite during which, among other things, the names of his parents were invoked and remembered. The importance of producing a male child to perpetuate the family name in his body, in his daily activities, in his ritual commemorative performance, would be difficult to overstate for the ancient Western Asian societies and Mediterranean peoples. As today, young men in antiquity were often levied for military service, just as they were beginning to establish a family of their own. These soldiers knew that there was a very high chance that they might die without having first produced progeny to carry on their names. Few other situations in the ancient world compared to war time with respect to mortality risk. Hence, its not surprising that we encounter a range of text that reflect the concern of young soldiers for the fate of their names after death. Some of these texts witnessed through the practice of kings commemorating their fallen soldiers. Once again, we're dealing with the royal societies, the monarchial societies, state oriented society, thus when King Ammi-Saduqa of Babylon in the 16th Century BCE makes offering to the dead. Those whom he encourages to imbibe the offerings are not only his real and fictive royal ancestors, but also every soldier who fell in the service of his lord. That is, those soldiers who fell in the service of the king. And he, in Babylonian, [FOREIGN]. The latter belonged to the category the dead who have no one to provide or care for them in their death. As a kind of prayer for the unknown soldier, the Babylonian ruler herewith commemorates his men who sacrificed their lives for him on the battlefield without leaving behind descendants who could attend to their needs in the after life. Now, Gerdien Jonker claims that the motivation behind such commemorative practices was self-protection, since the dead would have posed a threat to the living and the welfare of the king's reign. While her thesis is tenable I think that the text also witnesses to what ancient Mesopotamian rulers thought, and that their soldiers, especially those who lacked sons, would perform their service more fearlessly if they could be assured that were they to die in the line of duty, the king would personally care for them. Even allotting them a place of special recognition when performing the commemoration ceremonies for the royal family. A similar understanding, in forms of practice of kings in pre-modern Europe, and the state representatives of nations states today, of conferring high honors on their young fallen soldiers who died in the line of duty and interring their remains in state cemeteries. That the principle was also known of burying in state cemeteries or something like it, was also known in Ancient Egypt. Is rendered likely by a discovery of in 1923 of a tomb near the funerary monument of Mentuhotep the Second, he was the 21st century BCE ruler in Egypt, and the tomb was found at the Deir el-Bahri. The tomb contained a heavily mutilated remains of some 60 soldiers. And the common interpretations of the finds is that the king honored these soldiers who were probably killed during the Nubian campaign, a campaign into Nubia. By allotting them graves adjacent to his own. By giving them a really honored place within the royal commemorative ritual and, and space of the monuments and the, and the graves. Evidence from southern Mesopotamia, moving from Egypt to now Mesopotamia, in the old Babylonian period reveals that officials were commissioned to make registers listing the names of deceased soldiers. And they have this little sign [FOREIGN] before the name. We have many documents that refer to the fields of soldiers who died childless and they are described with this Babylonian expression [FOREIGN], which really means the hearth has gone out, the fire has gone out and that expression you can find similarly in Second Samuel 14:7. One may compare these registers to troop rosters from Arrapha that lists some soldiers as lost [FOREIGN]. They are lost in battle or they may have run off but they also are just missing in action. And so we see in Babylonian society, in Mesopotamian society, in Egyptian society, that the states in various ways are concerned with the fate of those who fall in battle, sometimes conferring grace upon them, but at least keeping records of them and it's a, something that they're very aware of.
