When today one hears about the death of a young manin battle or otherwisethe reaction is usually much more emotional if he leaves behind a wife and child. In the ancient world, the reverse is supposed to have been the case: dying without having first made a name in the form of progeny (a genealogical namesake) was considered completely devastating, while the news that the man left behind a (male) child would have brought some relief. Such a generalization is of course risky, yet it points to what many see as a late development in the histoire des mentalits: In modern times, the self (ones name) is conceived individualistically, while in pre-modernity, identity (ones name) is constructed according to collectivemost fundamentally, familialparameters. 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 wartime with respect to mortality risk. Hence it is not surprising that we encounter a range of texts that reflect the concern of young soldiers for the fate of their names after death. Some of these texts witness to the practice of kings commemorating their fallen soldiers. Thus, when King Ammi-aduqa of Babylon (sixteenth century bce) makes offerings 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 (ina dannat bliu[!] imqut) (l. 33). The latter belong to the category of the dead who have no one to provide and 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 afterlife. Gerdien Jonker claims that the motivation behind such commemoration practices was self-protection, since the dead would have posed a threat to the living and the welfare of the kings reign. While her thesis is tenable, the text may also witness to a realization by ancient Mesopotamian rulers 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 informs the practice of kings in pre-modern Europeand the state representatives todayof conferring high hon- !ors on their young fallen soldiers and interring their remains in state cemeteries. That the principle was also known in ancient Egypt is rendered likely by Herbert Winlocks discovery of a tomb in 1923 near the funerary monument of Mentuhotep II (twenty-first century bce) at Deir el-Bahari. The tomb contained the heavily mutilated remains of some sixty soldiers. The common interpretation of the finds, likely correct, is that the king honored these soldiers, who were probably killed during a Nubian campaign, by allotting them graves adjacent to his own.

Evidence from Southern Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period reveals that officials were commissioned to make registers listing the names of deceased soldiers (with the sign BAD / before the name). We have many documents that refer to the fields of soldiers who died childless, expressed in Babylonian as kinnum bel, literally the hearth has gone out (compare the expression in 2 Sam. 14.7). One may compare these registers to troop-rosters from Arrape that list some soldiers as alqu, lost, which may refer either to soldiers who were missing-in-action or who had dodged their duties.