RBL 09/2013 Jacqueline S.

du Toit Textual Memory: Ancient Archives, Libraries and the Hebrew Bible Social World of Biblical Antiquity 2/6 Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011. Pp. xii + 187. Hardcover. $95.00. ISBN 9781907534157.

Ingeborg Lwisch Utrecht University Utrecht, The Netherlands Jaqueline du Toits excellent book on textual memory aims at offering a historiographical approach to the study of the organization and use of ancient bodies of texts in the Near East (3). An important part of her book is devoted to surveying previous research on these bodies of texts (especially the works of Morris Jastrow, Mogens Weitemeyer, Ernst Posner, Klaas Veenhof, and Olof Pedersn) and to exposing pervasive terminological inconsistency and resultant confusion in defining the ancient textual entities and textual assemblies in twentieth-century scholarship (152). She integrates this research survey with approaches from library history, archival science, and subdisciplines of ancient Near Eastern studies (especially studies on cuneiform collections) into a process of interdisciplinary synthesis (3) that allows her to expose ideologies in the research history, formulate her own claims, and subtly but effectively shift paradigms. Paradigm shifts first concern her critique of a hierarchical differentiation between ancient Near Eastern libraries and archives, on the one hand, and Hellenistic libraries, especially the library of Alexandria, on the other. Du Toit opposes a chronologically dependent evolutionary model from less to more complex organization techniques. She emphasizes that dissimilarities in textual bodies are due to their respective sociohistorical contexts and functions, and she claims that mature libraries and archives existed throughout the

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ancient Near East. Second, paradigm shifts concern du Toits key argument that the great libraries of Ashurbanipal and Alexandria, with their politics of universal collection of information, should be considered as exceptions rather than typical collections of the time. Instead, she argues, typical ancient textual bodies had the form of small, agile, and accessible collections, flexible and easy to disseminate. In consequence, such small and flexible collections would need to be envisioned as a backdrop for the minimalistmaximalist controversy on the historicity of ancient Israel and the role ancient archives and libraries play in it. The book contains six chapters. Chapter 1, Introduction: The Archive of Paradise, lays the foundation for du Toits understanding of the development of writing and its consequences for the emergence of textual bodies. Du Toit argues that the facility of writing resulted in an increase of knowledge transfer, which provoked the creation of multiple bodies of texts. These bodies of texts aimed at mediating knowledge through selecting, classifying, and organizing information to the end of enabling conservation, retrieval, and dissemination of information and knowledge. Multiple textual bodies accommodated concern with a physical manifestation of memory and recollection, whereas their dissimilarities would result from different societal environments and the specific contextual requirements in which bodies of texts were created and continued to exist (sometimes changing according to these contexts). Chapter 2, Modern Scholarship and the Ancient Phenomenon, provides an extensive survey of published materials, which according to du Toit reveal a glaring deficiency in modern scholarship (152) and make clear that current portrayals of ancient textual deposits tell more about twentieth-century scholarship than about the collections as such. She is especially critical of the frequent distinction between archives and libraries according to content alone. First, the distinction between collections of documents (usually identified as archives) and collections of literary texts (usually identified as libraries) cannot be maintained as ample textual deposits such as genizas exceed this very distinction. Second, factors such as user perception, user intent, and usage are likewise crucial to consider. Finally, all textual deposits may have undergone changes in nature and function. Thus, she proposes to use the umbrella term textual deposits, which includes archives, libraries, genizas, foundation deposits, and others and highlights the continuum between these textual assemblies. Chapter 3, An Imperceptible Dialogue: Canon, Temple and Library, opposes Morris Jastrows denial of the existence of temple libraries and his premise that the nature of ancient Near Eastern libraries can be detected from the library of Ashurbanipal. Instead, du Toit argues that temple libraries in the form of numerically limited religious text collections did indeed exist and were prevalent in the ancient Near East but that the

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character and nature of these collections differed considerably from what has been traditionally associated with the ideal of the ancient library as typified by the libraries of Ashurbanipal or Alexandria. While these large collections were exceptions rather than the rule, ancient textual deposits were smaller, more modest, and far more prevalent collections. The formation and nature of such small but agile collections was often imbued with religious meaning and intent. The limited dimension facilitated the duplication and dissimilation and eventually abetted the eventual disassociation of the collection from a specific temple setting. Use and the Assignment of Meaning: Archives and Adjunct Textual Deposits (ch. 4) critiques the evolutionary model for the description of text bodies as from primitive to mature. Against the latter perspective, which takes its starting point in the notion of invention, du Toit argues that libraries and archives are an expression of convention rather than invention. Employing the perspective of archival science and building on Klaas Veenhof, she defines libraries and archives as locations of selection and conscious and deliberate policy of collection development. Consequently, a general analysis of the management of ancient text bodies beyond the typological distinctions becomes crucial. Du Toit argues that the existence of mature ancient archives and libraries has to be assumed for the entire period of the ancient Near East. Chapter 5, The Enterprise of Empire: Encyclopedic Knowledge, the Universal Library and Total Archives, brings into focus the collections of Ashurbanipal and of Alexandria. Du Toit argues that these universal collections are not libraries or archives in the strict sense, because they do not select and classify. Thus, they are not to be seen as progenitors of modern library practice, as is often claimed. They are exceptions rather than the rule. Here du Toit argues with Jacques Derridas insistence on the priority of processes of inclusion and exclusion and related notions of power and political control as characteristic quality of archives. On the basis of her thesis of small agile collections as typical textual bodies of the time, du Toit comes back to the minimalist-maximalist controversy on the historicity of ancient Israel. Du Toit argues that both positions argue on the premise of libraries that resemble the universal libraries of Ashurbanipal and Alexandria, thus on the premise of exceptions rather than the rule. Hence, the shape and existence of textual deposits at the basis of the biblical canon need to be reconsidered and posited with greater care. Chapter 6 summarizes that the great libraries of the time cannot be seen as ultimate representatives of ancient information management and the ideal of the ancient library. Du Toit argues that temple libraries may have indeed existed, but in the form of modest, flexible, and accessible textual deposits, which should be indeed seen as the standard

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textual deposit of the ancient Near East. Typical examples for such small units are the recently discovered Neo-Babylonian Sippar temple library and the archive of Room L.2769 in the Early Bronze Age Palace G at Ebla. Du Toit argues that such flexible textual units, rather than the expansive, idealized collections, were best equipped to serve humanitys mission to govern, organize, and explain the perimeters of ones universe. The accessibility of these units allowed for easy retrieval of information and enabled easier duplication of them. Du Toit argues that they would have existed in abundance and in coexistence with oral repositories. The small collections would have been initially associated with scribal centers at the palace or temple, but later became independent. In a more general way, scribal traditions would not be key and fundament of the ancient textual deposits, but the management of information in the human mind to facilitate both memory and forgetting. Reading the book, one needs some staying power to work through the ongoing research survey, which is especially dense in chapter 2 but also runs through the entire book. However, it is worthwhile to do so, because du Toit not only succeeds in exposing ideologies and hierarchies in twentieth-century scholarship on ancient textual bodies but also effectively uses them as a backdrop for proposing alternative concepts. Here her bringing in library studies and archival science pays off. Especially the archival turn, which in archival science indicates a shift from understanding archives as sites of knowledge retrieval to understanding archives as sites of contested knowledge production (Ann L. Stoler, Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance, Archival Science 2 [2002]: 87) is perceptible in her focus on small agile collections as the most important textual entities to negotiate power and produce knowledge. Here I find her work very convincing, as it allows a fresh view on what the background of the development of the biblical canon might have looked like. However, from the same perspective, I feel that her analysis of the great libraries misses something. Du Toit focuses on the absence of selection criteria for the in/exclusion of texts to these libraries but misses a thorough analysis of the taxonomy and order of these textual deposits to the end of researching their formalities and rules of power. To conclude, Textual Memory is an important contribution to the study of ancient bodies of texts in the Near East, including the Bible. Moreover, the book demonstrates the innovative force of integrating interdisciplinary perspectives into the analysis of these ancient textual deposits.

This review was published by RBL !2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.