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How do personal memorials and mortuary ritual mediate between competing sociopolitical identities in times of political change? The mid-eighth century BCE stele of the royal official Katumuwa bears a banquet scene and Sam’alian (Aramaic) inscription describing a large inaugural sacrifice and feast to be followed by smaller annual celebra-tions. It was found in 2008 at Zincirli, Turkey, capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Sam’al, in a mortuary chapel adjacent to a neighborhood shrine in a residential area. A

[www.lockwoodpressonline.com]

[www.lockwoodpressonline.com]