Personal Exile in the Ancient Near East

摘要

Personal exile was an ongoing phenomenon in the ancient Near East that had a specialdynamic, giving rise to its own political conventions, legal regulations, and literary reflec-tions. While sharing some features with the mass deportations used as a policy tool byimperial powers of the region, such as the exile of the inhabitants of Judah to Babylonia in586 B.C.E. (2 Kings 24 and 25), I personal exile could have very different practical effectsand certainly did have different psychological consequences. Unlike deportees, the individualexpatriate was uprooted not only from his geographical but also from his social environment.