Ages and Mothers: On a Peculiar Aspect of Official Royal Records in the Kingdom of Judah

Kingdom of Judah This article deals with the format of the introductory records for the reigns of the kings of Judah in the book of Kings, which are probably derived from Judah’s royal chronicles. The records concerning the kings of Judah are unique among the chronistic sources from the ancient Near East in recording for almost every king his mother’s name and his age at accession. The article suggests that these data were included in the royal chronicles of Judah following the reform of king Asa ca. 900 BCE, when he removed his grandmother Maacah from the position of the reigning queen and introduced systematic recording of the princes’ ages and their mothers’ names as factors that would influence the selection of the heir to the throne. In introducing this reform, Asa utilized a wider tradition of court historiography in the Levant, in which the total life-spans of royal persons were put in writing at the time of their death to express whether they were granted longevity as a mark of the gods’ favor toward them.