A Companion to Assyria E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 1704

Beschreibung

A Companion to Assyria is a collection of original essays on ancient Assyria written by key international scholars. These new scholarly contributions have substantially reshaped contemporary understanding of society and life in this ancient civilization. * The only detailed up-to-date introduction providing a scholarly overview of ancient Assyria in English within the last fifty years * Original essays written and edited by a team of respected Assyriology scholars from around the world * An in-depth exploration of Assyrian society and life, including the latest thought on cities, art, religion, literature, economy, and technology, and political and military history

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Aims and Scope of this Book

Assyrian Civilization and its Study: Some Fundamentals

Trends in Research on Ancient Assyria and their Ideological Background

The Assyrian Cultural Heritage Crisis

References

PART I: Geography and History

CHAPTER 1: Physical and Cultural Landscapes of Assyria

Introduction

Physical Environment of Assyria

Cultural Landscapes: Past Research and Methods

Emergent Landscapes of the Early Bronze Age

Imperial Landscapes of the Neo‐Assyrian Period

Conclusions and Future Prospects

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 2: “Assyria” in the Third Millennium BCE

Introduction

Regionalization (3200–2700 BCE)

The Second Urban Revolution (2700–2400 BCE)

The Ebla World‐System (2400–2300 BCE)

Merchants and Empires (2300–2000 BCE)

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 3: The Old Assyrian Period (20th–18th Century BCE)

Sources, Rulers, and Chronology

Old Assyrian History

The Political Institutions of Ashur

The End of the Old Assyrian Period

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 4: Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Old Assyrian Period

Introduction

Ashur and Kaniš

Slaves

The Assyrian Family

Economy and Daily Life

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 5: The Transition Period (17th to 15th Century BCE)

Two King Lists and the Period after Šamši‐Adad I

Signs of Prosperity

Mittanian Dominion

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 6: The Middle Assyrian Period (14th to 11th Century BCE)

Assyria Joins the Scene

The First Half of the 13th Century BCE

Territorial Expansion and Consolidation: A First Attempt

The Decline of Power in the Period after Tukulti‐Ninurta I

Territorial Expansion and Consolidation: A Second Attempt

Concluding Remarks

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 7: Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Middle Assyrian Period

The Middle Assyrian State

The King

The Royal Palace

The Administrative Structure of the Middle Assyrian Kingdom

The Military

Recruitment and Labor Administration

Taxation

Middle Assyrian Society: Social Strata

The Middle Assyrian Family

Ethnic Groups

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 8: The Neo‐Assyrian Period (ca. 1000–609 BCE)

Introduction

Chronology and Sources

The Crisis Years (ca. 1050–935)

The Reconquista Period (934–824)

Internal Conflicts and Fragmentation of Power: The Age of the “Magnates” (823–745)

Genesis of an Empire: Assyria from Tiglath‐pileser III to Sargon II (744–705)

Imperial Heydays: From Sennacherib to Assurbanipal (704–631)

Assyria’s Downfall (631–609)

The “Afterlife” and Legacy of the Assyrian Empire

Abbreviation

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 9: Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Neo‐Assyrian Period

The Crucible of Mass Deportation

The Heartland of Assyria

The Provinces

The Nineveh Region

Farmers and Pastoralists

Four Vignettes of Neo‐Assyrian Life

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 10: Post‐Imperial Assyria

Introduction

The Early Post‐imperial Period

Restructuring and Revitalization: The Seleucid and Arsacid Periods

References

Further Reading

PART II: The Fringes of Empire

CHAPTER 11: Assyria and the North

The Eastern Taurus Mountains

Eastern Anatolia and Urartu

The Western Taurus and Central Anatolia

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 12: Assyria and the East

The Assyrian Expansion in the East

Western Iran beyond Assyria’s Provinces

Elam and Anšan

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 13: Assyria and the West

Introduction

The Levant until the Time of Tiglath‐pileser III: Exploration and Exploitation

The Levant at the Time of Tiglath‐pileser III: The Great Annexation

The Levant after Tiglath‐pileser III: The Taming of the Insurgents

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 14: Assyria and the Far West

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 15: Assyria and the South

Introduction

The Third and Second Millennium BCE

The First Millennium BCE

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 16: Assyria and the Far South

Introduction

From the Beginnings to the Reign of Tiglath‐pileser III

Sargon II and Sennacherib

From Esarhaddon to the Downfall of the Assyrian Empire

Conclusion

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

PART III: Elements of Assyrian Civilization

CHAPTER 17: Languages and Writing Systems in Assyria

Languages

Writing Systems

Main Features of Assyrian Grammar

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 18: Assyrian Religion

The City of Ashur and its Temples in the Third Millennium BCE

The God Assur

The Theology of Assur and His Elevation to Universal Dominion

Assur, His Earthly Representative, and the Community of Gods

Politics as Religion and Religion as Politics

Swan Song

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 19: Assyrian Literature

Old Assyrian Period

Middle Assyrian Period

Neo‐Assyrian Period

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 20: Assyrian Scholarship and Scribal Culture in Ashur

Assyrian Interest in Babylonian Scholarship

Middle Assyrian Scholarship

The Alleged Royal Library of Tiglath‐pileser I

Middle Assyrian Scholarly Families

The Scholars of Ashur between the Ninth and the Seventh Century bce

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 21: Assyrian Scholarship and Scribal Culture in Kalu and Nineveh

Introduction

Libraries of Neo‐Assyrian Scholars and Temples

The Growing Role of Divination and Scholarship for the Neo‐Assyrian Kings

How the Neo‐Assyrian Kings Obtained Access to Babylonian Scholarship

Assembling Tablets for Assurbanipal’s Library in Nineveh

The Archaeology of the Royal Library in Nineveh

The Tablets of the Library Collection in Nineveh Written by Babylonian Scholars

The Tablets of the Library Collection in Nineveh Written by Assyrian Scholars

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 22: Assyrian Legal Traditions

The Many Strands of Assyrian Legal Traditions

Old Assyrian Legal Practices

Middle Assyrian Legal Practices

Neo‐Assyrian Legal Practices

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 23: Assyrian Cities and Architecture

Introduction

Ashur in the Third Millennium BCE

The Old‐Assyrian Period

The Transition Period (17th to 15th centuries BCE)

The Middle Assyrian Period

The Neo‐Assyrian Period

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 24: Assyrian Art

Introduction

Ashur in the Third Millennium BCE

The Old Assyrian Period

The Middle Assyrian Period

The Neo‐Assyrian Period: Sculpture and Painting

The Neo‐Assyrian Period: Portable Arts

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 25: Assyrian Technology

Introduction

City Planning and Monumental Buildings

Hydraulic Engineering

Bridges

Transportation of Materials and Heavy Loads

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 26: Assyrian Warfare

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 27: Thoughts on the Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Kingship

Translatio imperii

World Empires: Size vs. “Mission”

Enlarging Assyria

Prerequisites of the Imperial Project

Imperial Practice and Theory

Destruction and Reconstruction

The Advantages of Direct Rule

References

Further Reading

PART IV: The Afterlife and Rediscovery of Assyria

CHAPTER 28: Assyria in Late Babylonian Sources

Assyria in the Royal Inscriptions of the Babylonian Empire

Assyria in Everyday Documents

Assyria in the View of the Persians

Hellenistic Babylonia Remembers Assyria

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 29: Assyria in the Hebrew Bible

Introduction

Terminology

History

Stories

Political Ideology and Law

More Immediate Assyrian Influences on Religion and Culture in Israel and Judah?

Conclusions

Abbreviations

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 30: Assyria in Classical Sources

Assyria’s Changing Image in Greek and Roman Texts

Assyrian Rulers in Classical Sources

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 31: The Archaeological Exploration of Assyria

Botta, Layard, and the Rediscovery of Assyria in the Nineteenth Century

Twentieth Century Excavations of Assyrian Sites

References

Further Reading

CHAPTER 32: Assyrian Christians

Introduction

Assyria and Assyrian in Pre‐Modern Syriac Sources

Assyrian Christians in Nineteenth‐Century Literature from the West

Assyrian Identity and the Church of the East

Assyrian Identity and the Greater Syriac Heritage

Conclusion

Appendix: The Churches of the Syriac Heritage

Acknowledgments

Abbreviation

References

Further Reading

List of Assyrian Kings

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 03

Table 3.1 The Old Assyrian part of the Assyrian King List

Chapter 05

Table 5.1 Names of rulers in AKL, KAV 14, and the Puzur‐Sîn inscription

Chapter 17

Table 17.1 Independent personal pronouns

Table 17.2 Independent possessive pronouns

Table 17.3 Pronominal suffixes

Table 17.4 Noun declension

Table 17.5 Adjectival declension

Table 17.6 Verbal prefixes and suffixes (long final vowels are used in OA/MA; in NA, however, these are shortened)

Table 17.7 Verbal classes

Table 17.8 Finite forms in the basic or G‐stem

Table 17.9 Commands and requests

Table 17.10 Stative

Chapter 21

Table 21.1 Text genres found in the Neo‐Assyrian Libraries in Kalu, uzirina, and Nineveh (here only the ones written in Babylonian ductus)

Table 21.2 Divinatory texts from Nineveh written in Babylonian ductus

Table 21.3 Religious texts from Nineveh written in Babylonian ductus

List of Illustrations

Chapter 01

Figure 1.1 Topography, hydrology, and major sites of Assyria (northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey).

Figure 1.2 EBA sites and linear trackways in the region of Tell Brak and Tell Beydar (based on Ur 2010b Map 3).

Figure 1.3 The evolution from nucleated to dispersed settlement in the Hamoukar and North Jazira Project areas (based on data from Wilkinson and Tucker 1995, Ur 2010b). A. Urban settlement and trackways in the later EBA, ca. 2600–2000

BCE

; B. Rural settlement in the Iron Age (early 1st millennium

BCE

).

Figure 1.4 Sites, canals, and other features in the Assyrian imperial core.

Figure 1.5 Austen Henry Layard exploring Sennacherib’s monumental relief at Khinis, as depicted by Frederick Cooper.

Chapter 02

Figure 2.1 Map of Northern Mesopotamia, 3000–2000

BCE

, with archaeological sites mentioned in the text.

Figure 2.2 Leilan Lower Town South, 1989, Worker’s Neighborhood (ca. 2300–2200

BCE

).

Chapter 03

Figure 3.1 Schematic illustration of the movement of goods in the Old Assyrian overland trade

Figure 3.2 Assur and the political world of Northern Mesopotamia during the Šamši‐Adad period

Figure 3.3a Seal of Sargon, son of Ikunum, ensí of Assur. Photo of Kt c/k 1389 (T. Özgüç 2003: 19 no. 5). Photo kindly supplied by the excavator, T. Özgüç.

Figure 3.3b Seal of Assur, of the

nisḫatu

‐tax, of the City Hall

Chapter 04

Figure 4.1 Anatolia during the Old Assyrian period.

Figure 4.2 The Old Assyrian letter Kt 88/k 625. Ankara, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi.

Figure 4.3 An Old Assyrian letter comprising a main tablet and a small second one preserved together in their sealed envelope. Kt 93/k 211, Ankara, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi.

Figure 4.4 Private houses in the lower town level II, reconstruction.

Chapter 06

Figure 6.1 The political landscape of the Middle Assyrian period.

Chapter 07

Figure 7.1 Conscription and labor organization in Middle Assyrian times.

Chapter 08

Figure 8.1 Metal brazier with turrets and wheels. The king, while keeping warm, would gaze at what looked like a conquered city on fire. Kalḫu, Fort Shalmaneser, Neo‐Assyrian period.

Figure 8.2 Map illustrating the various stages of the expansion of the Neo‐Assyrian state.

Figure 8.3 Letter to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon reporting a conspiracy in the city of Ashur (YBC 11382).

Chapter 09

Figure 9.1 A family of deportees leaving a captured Babylonian city on an ox‐cart: a man (boy?) and two women, one carrying a bag with her possessions. Detail from the wall decoration of Tiglath‐pileser III’s Central Palace in Kalḫu, later reused in Esarhaddon's Southwest Palace. British Museum, ANE 118882.

Figure 9.2 The Neo‐Assyrian provinces, with the position of Ashur, Nineveh, Arba’il, Kalḫu, and Dur‐Šarrukin marked by asterisks. The dashed lines indicate the provincial boundaries, but note that these are often hypothetical. For details see Radner 2006.

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1 Sites of the Late Assyrian to Arsacid periods mentioned in the text. Map by S. R. Hauser based on a topographical map by M. Grosch, SFB 586.

Figure 10.2 The sacred precincts of Ashur and Hatra in the first centuries

AD

.

Chapter 17

Figure 17.1 Three Assyrian letters (obverse). Left: The Old Assyrian letter BM 115199; Middle: Cast of the Middle Assyrian letter TCH 92.G.152; Right: The Neo‐Assyrian letter ND 2703;

Figure 17.2 Assyrian and Aramaic scribes as depicted on a Neo‐Assyrian relief.

Figure 17.3 Assyrian‐Aramaic triangular corn‐loan docket (after Fales 1986, fig. 3).

Chapter 18

Figure 18.1 View from the roof of the temple of Assur westwards towards the ziggurat and the northern part of the city of Ashur; reconstruction.

Figure 18.2 King Sennacherib, depicted twice, worshipping the god Assur and his wife Mullissu. Assur is standing on a

mušuššu‐

dragon, a feature adopted from the cult of Marduk of Babylon. Khinnis, “Großes Relief.”

Chapter 21

Figure 21.1 A colophon with the name of Assurbanipal added in ink on a cuneiform tablet from Nineveh. K. 11055 + D.T. 273.

Figure 21.2 Libraries and archives located on Kuyunjik (drawn by J.C. Fincke, after Reade 2000: 407–18, 421–7, and Smith 1875: 94–102, 138–43).

Chapter 23

Figure 23.1 Ashur, city plan; adapted by the author from Andrae 1938: Beilage.

Figure 23.2 Nineveh, plan of the mound of Kuyunjik.

Figure 23.3 Kalḫu (modern Nimrud), plan of the citadel.

Figure 23.4 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), city plan; adapted by the author from Loud 1938: pl. 69.

Figure 23.5 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), plan of the palace of Sargon II.

Figure 23.6 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), plan of the citadel.

Figure 23.7 Nineveh, city plan, time of Sennacherib.

Chapter 24

Figure 24.1 Ashur, statue of a ruler, digital reconstruction, probably Akkadian Period, diorite, total H. ca. 1.70 m; body in Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, VA Ass 2147, head in Baghdad, Iraq Museum, copyright Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum; Foto: Fotoarchiv; Bildmontage: Olaf M. Teßmer.

Figure 24.2 Ashur, cylinder seal and modern impression showing a presentation scene and male worshipper facing a bull altar, from Grave 20, Old Assyrian Period, lapis lazuli, H: 2.1 cm; Berlin, VA 5364.

Figure 24.3 Ashur, cylinder seal and modern impression showing a nursing ewe facing a tree, from Tomb 45, Middle Assyrian Period, lapis lazuli, H: 2.1 cm; Berlin, VA Ass 1129.

Figure 24.4 Ashur, cult pedestal from the Ištar Temple, inscribed by Tukulti‐Ninurta I, alabaster, H: 57.7 cm, Berlin, VA 8146.

Figure 24.5 Nineveh, White Obelisk, probably of Aššurnaṣirpal I or II, limestone, H: 285 cm, London, British Museum 118807.

Figure 24.6 Kalḫu (modern Nimrud), wall reliefs showing apotropaic deities and palm trees, Northwest Palace of Aššurnaṣirpal II, Room S, Slabs 20–22, calcareous gypsum, W: 646 cm.

Figure 24.7 Kalḫu (modern Nimrud), Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, black limestone, H: 198 cm, London, British Museum 118885.

Figure 24.8 Kalḫu (modern Nimrud), stele of Šamši‐Adad V, limestone, H: 195 cm, London, British Museum 118892.

Figure 24.9 Nineveh, wall relief showing the king and queen banqueting in a garden, North Palace of Assurbanipal, found fallen into Room S from an upper story, calcareous gypsum, W: 140 cm, London, British Museum 124920.

Figure 24.10 Kalḫu (modern Nimrud), Northwest Palace, Tomb II, view of entrance in 1989.

Chapter 25

Figure 25.1 City wall, probably Nineveh’s southwestern corner. Nineveh, Southwest Palace, Room XXII, Plate 8.

Figure 25.2 Irrigated park with aqueduct. Nineveh, North Palace, Room H (BM 124939).

Figure 25.3 Transport of bull‐colossus. Nineveh, Southwest Palace, Court VI, Plates 63–4 (BM 124820).

Chapter 26

Figure 26.1 Panel of bas‐relief sculpture from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh showing the Assyrian camp at the siege of Lachish, with two priests making offerings to two military standards.

Figure 26.2 Panel of bas‐relief sculpture from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib showing the siege of Lachish and deportees leaving.

Figure 26.3 Panel of bas‐relief sculpture from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib showing Sennacherib on his throne at the siege of Lachish, Nubian soldiers submitting, and war‐chariot with eight‐spoked wheel.

Chapter 31

Figure 31.1 Transportation of a monumental bull colossus from the ruins of Kalḫu (in the background) to the bank of the Tigris during the excavations undertaken by Layard.

Figure 31.2 Arrival of an Assyrian bull colossus at the British Museum in London. Illustration in

Illustrated London News

28 February 1852: 184.

Chapter 32

Figure 32.1 Bronze statue of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, designed by Fred Parhad, an artist of Assyrian descent born in Iraq. The statue, dedicated “by the Assyrian people” to the city of San Francisco, stands near the city’s “Main Library.”

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BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD

This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises approximately twenty‐five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

ANCIENT HISTORY

Published

A Companion to the Roman ArmyEdited by Paul Erdkamp

A Companion to the Roman RepublicEdited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein‐Marx

A Companion to the Roman EmpireEdited by David S. Potter

A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl

A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell

A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau

A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees

A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin

A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James

A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd

A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington

A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos

A Companion to AugustineEdited by Mark Vessey

A Companion to Marcus AureliusEdited by Marcel van Ackeren

A Companion to Ancient Greek GovernmentEdited by Hans Beck

A Companion to the Neronian AgeEdited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter

A Companion to SpartaEdited by Anton Powell

A Companion to AssyriaEdited by Eckart Frahm

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

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A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola

A Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner

A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden

A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf

A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall

A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington

A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley

A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory

A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot

A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox

A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker

A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss

A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam

A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis

A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldsEdited by Beryl Rawson

A Companion to Greek MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone

A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson

A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Emma Pagán

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A COMPANION TO ASSYRIA

Edited by

Eckart Frahm

This edition first published 2017© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Name: Frahm, Eckart, editor.Title: A companion to Assyria/edited by Eckart Frahm, Yale University, New Haven, US.Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2017. | Series: Blackwell companions to the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016046160 (print) | LCCN 2016050443 (ebook) | ISBN 9781444335934 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118325247 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118325230 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Assyria–History. | Assyria–Civilization. | Assyria–Antiquities. | Civilization, Assyro‐Babylonian.Classification: LCC DS71 .C59 2017 (print) | LCC DS71 (ebook) | DDC 935/.03–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046160

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Notes on Contributors

Ariel M. Bagg is private lecturer at the Assyriological Institute of the Ruprecht‐Karls‐Universität Heidelberg (Germany) and member of the Centre François Viète d’épistémologie et d’histoire des sciences et des techniques (Brest/Nantes, France). He is an Assyriologist and Civil Engineer specializing in ancient Near Eastern history of technology and historical geography of the first millennium. His publications include Assyrische Wasserbauten (2000), Die Orts‐ und Gewässernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit. Teil 1: Die Levante (2007), and Die Assyrer und das Westland (2011).

Paul‐Alain Beaulieu received his PhD in Assyriology from Yale University in 1985 and held various research and teaching positions at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Notre Dame before joining the faculty of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations in the University of Toronto in 2006. He has published extensively on the history and culture of Mesopotamia in the first millennium BCE, notably The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon (556–539 BC) (1989) and The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo‐Babylonian Period (2003).

Aaron Michael Butts (PhD University of Chicago) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America. His research focuses on the history, languages, and literature of Christianity in the Near East, including Arabic, Ethiopic, and especially Syriac Christianity. He is author of Language Change in the Wake of Empire: Syriac in its Greco‐Roman Context (2016) and a co‐editor of the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (2011).

Greta Van Buylaere (PhD Udine 2009) studied Assyriology in Leuven, Heidelberg, Helsinki, and Udine. At present, she is a researcher in the project “Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti‐Witchcraft Rituals” directed by Daniel Schwemer at the University of Würzburg. She is interested in Assyrian and Babylonian literacy, and the political and intellectual history of first millennium BCE Mesopotamia in general.

Stephanie Dalley is an Assyriologist who taught Akkadian for thirty years at Oxford University, and has published Assyrian cuneiform tablets from Nimrud, Nineveh, Tell al‐Rimah, Til Barsip, as well as Babylonian texts from Sippar and of the First Sealand Dynasty; also translations of the main myths and epics, Myths from Mesopotamia (1989), an analysis of the Assyrian background to the Hebrew Book of Esther, Esther’s Revenge at Susa (2007), and The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced (2013).

Frederick Mario Fales, born in Baltimore in 1946, has been Full Professor of ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Udine (Italy) since 1994. His main scholarly interests concern Mesopotamia in the Neo‐Assyrian period (10th–7th centuries BCE) and range from historical studies to editions of Assyrian and Aramaic texts. He has undertaken, and sometimes directed, archaeological activities in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iraqi Kurdistan. He founded an international journal on Neo‐Assyrian studies, the State Archives of Assyria Bulletin, and the monographic series History of the Ancient Near East (SARGON: Padua). His publications include twelve monographs, seven edited volumes, and some 170 articles. For bibliography up to 2011 see https://uniud.academia.edu/MarioFales.

Jeanette C. Fincke (PhD Würzburg: 1999; habilitation Heidelberg: 2006) has been conducting research on the British Museum’s collection of Nineveh texts for its Ashurbanipal Library Project in the past years, concentrating on divinatory texts and tablets written in the Babylonian ductus. Her work resulted in producing new databases (see www.fincke‐cuneiform.com/nineveh/index.htm) and several articles. Currently, she is chercheur for the ERC project Floriental at the Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, where she focuses on the pharmaceutical series URU.AN.NA from the first millennium BCE.

Eckart Frahm (PhD Göttingen 1996, habilitation Heidelberg 2007) is Professor of Assyriology at Yale University. His main research interests are Assyrian and Babylonian history and Mesopotamian scholarly texts of the first millennium BCE. Frahm is the author of numerous articles and five books: Einleitung in die Sanherib‐Inschriften (1997), Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts, vol. 3 (2009), Neo‐Babylonian Letters and Contracts from the Eanna Archive (2011, co‐authored with Michael Jursa), Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation (2011), and Geschichte des alten Mesopotamien (2013). In addition, he serves as director of the Cuneiform Commentaries Project (http://ccp.yale.edu).

Andreas Fuchs is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Tübingen and a specialist in Neo‐Assyrian history. He is the author of Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad (1993), Die Annalen des Jahres 711 v. Chr. nach Prismenfragmenten aus Ninive und Assur (1998), and, together with Simo Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III (2001).

Stefan R. Hauser is Professor for “Archaeology of ancient Mediterranean cultures and their relations to the ancient Near East and Egypt” at the University of Konstanz (Germany). He is editor of Die Sichtbarkeit von Nomaden und saisonaler Besiedlung in der Archäologie (2006) and Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950 (2005; with A.C. Gunter), and author of Status, Tod und Ritual. Stadt‐ und Sozialstruktur Assurs in neuassyrischer Zeit (2012). He currently directs projects on burial practices and the art of the portrait in Palmyra and on religion and identity in Hellenistic Mesopotamia. A Handbook of the Arsacid Empire is in preparation.

Nils P. Heeßel is Professor of Assyriology at the Julius‐Maximilians University Würzburg. He is a specialist for the Akkadian scholarly tradition, in particular for scientific and divinatory texts. His publications include Babylonisch‐assyrische Diagnostik (2000), Pazuzu (2002), and Divinatorische Texte I and II (2007, 2012).

Stefan Jakob studied Assyriology, Near Eastern Archaeology, and Musicology at the University of Saarbrücken and received his PhD degree in 2000 for research on Middle Assyrian administration and social structure. Between 1992 and 2003 he served as a staff member of several excavation projects (Tell Chuera and Tell Shekh Hassan in Syria and Qantir/Pi‐Ramesse in Egypt). Since 2004 he has been a research assistant in Assyriology at the Institute for Cultures and Languages of the Middle East, University of Heidelberg. His main interests are Middle Assyrian history and chronology. In recent years he also worked on Assyrian prayers and ritual texts.

Mogens Trolle Larsen, Emeritus Professor of Assyriology at the University of Copenhagen, is a specialist in the history and culture of the Old Assyrian period. His most recent book is Ancient Kanesh: A Merchant Colony in Bronze Age Anatolia (2015).

Mario Liverani is Emeritus Professor of History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” He is former director of the Institute of Near Eastern Studies, of the Department of Sciences of Antiquity, and of the Inter‐University Center on the Ancient Sahara, in the same “Sapienza” University. He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Copenhagen and Madrid, is a honorary member of the American Oriental Society, and member of the Lincei National Academy (Rome), of the Academy of Sciences (Turin), and of the European Academy. He was a member of archaeological missions in Syria (Ebla, Terqa, Mozan), Turkey (Kurban, Arslantepe), Yemen (Baraqish), and Libya (Akakus). He is author of nineteen monographs and ca. 260 articles, and the editor of eight books.

Alasdair Livingstone is Reader in Assyriology at the University of Birmingham and a specialist in cuneiform scholarly and literary texts, especially from Assyria. His publications include Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (1986) and Hemerologies of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (2013).

Mikko Luukko studied Assyriology, Semitics, and Linguistics at the University of Helsinki and the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2004, he gained his PhD from Helsinki, with a study of “Grammatical Variation in Neo‐Assyrian.” Luukko is currently working on a research project entitled “Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti‐witchcraft Rituals,” directed by Daniel Schwemer at the University of Würzburg. He has published monographs and articles on Neo‐Assyrian letters and Assyrian grammar, including The Correspondence of Tiglath‐pileser III (2013).

Stefan M. Maul is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Heidelberg. His research focuses on Assyrian and Babylonian religion and intellectual life; over the past years, his main project has been the edition of the literary and scholarly texts from Ashur. Maul’s books include “Herzberuhigungsklagen”: Die sumerisch‐akkadischen Eršaḫunga‐Gebete (1988), Zukunftsbewältigung: Eine Untersuchung altorientalischen Denkens anhand der babylonisch‐assyrischen Löserituale (Namburbi) (1994), Die Wahrsagekunst im Alten Orient (2013), and Das Gilgamesch‐Epos neu übersetzt und kommentiert von Stefan M. Maul (2014, 6th edn.). In 1997, Maul received the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for his research.

Cécile Michel is a historian and Assyriologist, Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in the laboratory Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité at Nanterre (France). She is currently heading the International Association for Assyriology (2014–18). Working on the decipherment and study of cuneiform texts from the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE (private archives of merchants, state administrative archives), she has published books and articles on Mesopotamian trade, Upper Mesopotamian and Anatolian societies, gender studies, daily life and material culture (fauna, food, metals, minerals, and textiles), calendars and chronology, history of science, education, writing, and computing.

Karen Radner is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich and Honorary Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London. She has published extensively on the Assyrian Empire’s political, administrative, social, legal, and cultural history. Her books include editions of cuneiform archives from Assur (Iraq), Dur‐Katlimmu (Syria), and Dunnu‐ša‐Uzibi (Turkey), an analysis of Mesopotamian inscriptions as “written names” (Die Macht des Namens: altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung, 2005), and Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction (2015), as well as several edited volumes. She currently directs the Peshdar Plain Project in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq and, together with Jamie Novotny, the Munich Open‐access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative.

Lauren Ristvet is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Near Eastern archaeology, the political transformations of complex societies, and ritual and performance theory. She recently published Ritual, Performance and Politics in the Ancient Near East (2014).

Robert Rollinger is Professor of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Leopold‐Franzens University at Innsbruck. His main research areas are the history of the ancient Near East and the Achaemenid Empire, contacts between the Aegean World and the ancient Near East, and ancient historiography. Recent publications include: Imperien in der Weltgeschichte. Epochenübergreifende und globalhistorische Vergleiche (co‐edited; 2014), Mesopotamia in the Ancient World. Impact, Continuities, Parallels (co‐edited; 2015), Alexander und die großen Ströme. Die Flussüberquerungen im Lichte altorientalischer Pioniertechniken (2013).

John M. Russell is Professor of the History of Art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He specializes in the art and architecture of the ancient Near East, in particular the Neo‐Assyrian period. His books include Sennacherib's “Palace without Rival” at Nineveh (1991), From Nineveh to New York (1997), The Final Sack of Nineveh (1998), and The Writing On the Wall (1999).

Jason Ur is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, and director of its Center for Geographic Analysis. He specializes in early urbanism, landscape archaeology, and remote sensing, particularly the use of declassified US intelligence imagery. He has directed field surveys in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. He is the author of Urbanism and Cultural Landscapes in Northeastern Syria: The Tell Hamoukar Survey, 1999–2001 (2010). Since 2012, he has directed the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey, an archaeological survey in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. He is also preparing a history of Mesopotamian cities.

Klaas R. Veenhof is Emeritus Professor of Assyriology at Leiden University and a specialist in the history and culture of Mesopotamia during the first half of the second millennium BCE, the so‐called Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian periods. His publications include the books Aspects of Old Assyrian Trade and its Terminology (1972), Altassyrische Texte und Tontafeln aus Kültepe (1992), Letters in the Louvre: Altbabylonische Briefe 14 (2005), and part I of Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period (Annäherungen 5, 2008). At the invitation of the director of the Turkish excavations at Kültepe (ancient Kaniš, in Central Anatolia) he has been working on the edition of some of the Old Assyrian archives found there, publishing, inter alia, The Archive of Kuliya, son of Ali‐Abum (Kültepe Tabletleri V, 2010) and The Old Assyrian List of Year Eponyms from Karum Kanish and its Chronological Implications (2012).

Shigeo Yamada is Professor of History at the University of Tsukuba, where he teaches history and languages of the ancient Near East. He is the author of The Construction of the Assyrian Empire: A Historical Study of the Inscriptions of Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC) relating to His Campaign to the West (2000), and the co‐author (with Hayim Tadmor) of The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath‐pileser III and Shalmaneser V, Kings of Assyria (744–722 BC) (2012). He is currently working on the texts unearthed by the Japanese excavations at Tell Taban, Syria.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Shana Zaia, an advanced PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale, for helping me edit many of the contributions in this book, and for translating Chapter 18 from the German. She spent a substantial amount of her time on these tasks and suggested many important improvements. Nicholas Kraus, another graduate student in the department, standardized the writings of personal and place names and formatted the bibliographies. Christine Ranft, a freelance copy‐editor for Wiley‐Blackwell, reviewed the whole manuscript before it went to press, for which I am much indebted. Yale graduate students Jonathan Belz and Benjamin Scruton and undergraduate students Jacob Neis and Sergio Tang helped with the index. I am grateful to Haze Humbert, Wiley’s acquisitions editor for Classics and History, for accompanying the process of editing this book, and to Denisha Sahadevan and Sakthivel Kandaswamy for helping carry the manuscript across the finishing line. Kathryn Slanski provided critical feedback on some of my own contributions to this book and kept up my spirits throughout the long process of its gestation. Finally, I would like to thank the authors for their willingness to contribute their time and knowledge to this project, and for their patience vis‐à‐vis various delays it has faced over the past years.

EF

Introduction

Eckart Frahm

Aims and Scope of this Book

Assyria was one of the great civilizations of the ancient world. It had a long and variegated history, with beginnings in the third millennium and various phases of growth and decline. During the eighth and seventh century BCE, Assyria became what many consider the first empire in world history, its borders stretching from the Persian Gulf to central Anatolia and from the Zagros mountains in Iran to the Egyptian Nile. The main beneficiaries of this unprecedented accumulation of power and wealth were the Assyrian military and administrative elites and, most notably, the Assyrian kings, who used a mixture of political cunning, military force, and administrative malleability to forward the Assyrian cause. Between 616 and 609 BCE, after a dramatic showdown with the Babylonians and Medes, the Assyrian state collapsed, and only vestiges of Assyrian culture survived. But the imperial structures built by the Assyrian kings provided a blueprint for the later empires of ancient Western Asia, beginning with the Babylonians and Persians. And Israelites and Greeks, while oblivious of earlier Mesopotamian rulers, immortalized in their historical writings their encounters with the great Assyrian kings (and a few queens) of the first millennium BCE. Thus, Assyria lived on, both in the political and administrative institutions of later states and, thanks to the Bible and classical authors, in the cultural memory of the Western (and Middle Eastern) world.

For a long time, this afterlife remained a rather shadowy one. Over a period of more than two millennia, the imperial cities of ancient Assyria lay buried under heaps of rubble, and no one was familiar any more with the languages the Assyrians had spoken and the literatures they had studied. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century, when British and French adventurers, diplomats, and scholars embarked on excavations in Nineveh, Kalḫu (Calah), and Dur‐Šarrukin, that Assyria’s ancient civilization began to reemerge. In palaces, temples, and private houses, impressive examples of Assyrian artwork and tens of thousands of Assyrian texts came to light, the latter ranging from literary and scholarly works to royal inscriptions, state correspondence, and economic documents. Many of the finds uncovered by the European explorers were transferred to the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris.

Once the Sumero‐Akkadian cuneiform writing system was deciphered, an achievement of the late 1840s and early 1850s, scholars were able to embark on the long and arduous task of reconstructing Assyrian history and culture based on original sources. Their work has now proceeded for more than 150 years, with new discoveries requiring repeated revisions of earlier views and giving rise to new directions in research. The twentieth‐century excavations in Assyria’s long‐time capital Ashur, for example, and in Kültepe (Kaniš), a city in central Anatolia with a settlement of Assyrian traders, have given us a much better view of the earlier periods of Assyrian history, up to then largely shrouded in darkness.

Future discoveries and new scholarly agendas will undoubtedly advance our understanding of Assyrian history and culture even further. But the materials at our disposal are now so rich and so well studied that the time seems ripe for a volume to summarize our current knowledge and provide an overview of Assyrian history and culture throughout the ages. Except for a few excellent but very short overviews (e.g., Cancik‐Kirschbaum 2008; Radner 2015), there is, somewhat surprisingly, no such volume yet.1 The present book, with its thirty‐two chapters on Assyrian geography, history, and culture, aims to fill the gap. While obviously not comprehensive, the book seeks to provide enough information to help readers gain a more in‐depth idea of the rich world of ancient Assyria. As for those who wish to go beyond what the volume has to offer, they will find ample material in the “guides to further reading” and the substantial bibliographies that accompany individual chapters.

Assyrian Civilization and its Study: Some Fundamentals

Geography

Assyria can be subdivided into three geographical zones (see Chapter 1). Its heartland, situated east of the Tigris in what is now the northeastern portion of the Republic of Iraq, was demarcated by the cities of Ashur in the south, Nineveh in the north, and Arbela in the east. These three important cities formed what has been dubbed the “Assyrian triangle” (Radner 2011), with a fourth one, Kalḫu, situated in the center. Assyria’s closer periphery reached to the Cizre plain in the north, the foothills of the Iranian Zagros mountains in the east, the border with Babylonia, in central Iraq, in the south, and the Khabur valley in the west, in modern Syria. From the 13th century BCE onwards, and especially during Assyria’s imperial phase in the first millennium BCE, Assyria also comprised a further periphery, which stretched in some periods as far as Babylonia in the south, Elam in the east, and the eastern Mediterranean and even Egypt in the west (see Figure 0.1).

Figure 0.1 Map of the ancient Near East in the first millennium BCE.

Source: M. Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC, 3rd ed., Malden, 2016, 8, Map 1.1. Reproduced with permission of Wiley Blackwell.

Sources

Our reconstruction of Assyrian history and culture is based on a plethora of sources. Of particular significance are tens of thousands of cuneiform texts from various Assyrian and non‐Assyrian sites, written by Assyrian scribes on clay tablets in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Sumerian language. Important to keep in mind is that their distribution, both in time and space, is highly uneven.

For the third millennium (see Chapter 2), the textual evidence is meager, and most of our knowledge about developments in the Middle Tigris region and Upper Mesopotamia in general comes from uninscribed archaeological sources. Much richer for the study of Assyrian history and culture is the textual record from the first centuries of the second millennium, the so‐called Old Assyrian period (see Chapters 3 and 4). Some 23,000 tablets inscribed in Assyrian are known from this time. Practically all of them originate from a site outside Assyria proper, Kültepe (Kaniš) in central Anatolia. The tablets deal almost exclusively with the activities of the Assyrian merchant colony located there and their interactions with their families in Ashur. We therefore know a lot about the socio‐economic conditions of the Old Assyrian period, the long‐distance trade in which the Assyrian merchants were engaged, and the individual biographies of some of them, but comparatively little about Assyria’s political history, even though there are a few short inscriptions of the Old Assyrian rulers of Ashur.

One source type first attested in the Old Assyrian period is the “eponym list,” which records in sequential order the officials after whom individual years were named. The Assyrians used this dating system throughout their history. Lengthy eponym lists, which together with king lists serve as the chronological backbone of our reconstruction of Assyrian history, are available for substantial portions of the Old Assyrian and Neo‐Assyrian periods, but not for Middle Assyrian times.2

The Middle Assyrian period (see Chapters 6 and 7), which followed the Old Assyrian era after a “Dark Age” that lasted from the 17th to the 15th century BCE (see Chapter 5), has left us fewer but more diverse texts, discovered in Ashur and a few other cities in central Assyria and eastern Syria. They include detailed royal inscriptions, political letters, administrative documents, epics, and scholarly texts from Assyria’s main urban centers, all of them important for our understanding of the history, culture, and socio‐economic conditions of the Middle Assyrian state.

By far the richest textual evidence is available for the so‐called Neo‐Assyrian period, which lasted from the tenth to the seventh century BCE (see Chapters 8 and 9). Particularly well documented are the roughly one hundred years from 745 to 631 BCE during which Assyria ruled over most of Western Asia. Thousands of often long and detailed royal inscriptions, and thousands of political letters, the “state correspondence” of the empire, found in Kalḫu and Nineveh, cast light on the political history of the period, while the roughly 20,000 scholarly and literary tablets and fragments from Assurbanipal’s famous library at Nineveh, created in the mid‐seventh century BCE, provide a detailed panorama of the intellectual pursuits in which members of the Late Assyrian elite were engaged. Numerous scholarly and literary texts were also discovered in Neo‐Assyrian Ashur, Kalḫu, and Sultantepe (Chapters 20 and 21). Thousands of legal texts, especially debt notes and sale documents, inform us about the social and economic history of the Neo‐Assyrian period and provide us with glimpses into the lives of non‐elite Assyrians, such as small traders, farmers, and slaves.

Texts written by other people in the ancient Near East also cast light on Assyrian history and culture. Examples include Sumerian economic documents from southern Mesopotamia from the 21st century BCE, diplomatic letters from 18th‐century Mari in eastern Syria, royal inscriptions and letters from the Hittite capital Ḫattuša from the second half of the second millennium, inscriptions in Luwian hieroglyphs from early Iron Age Syria and Anatolia, and Babylonian Chronicles from the late first millennium BCE. The reports on Assyrian history found in the Bible and the writings of Greek and Roman authors provide some interesting information as well. Though often historically inaccurate, they illuminate how the Assyrian state was perceived by less powerful neighbors and later tradition.

Attempts to reconstruct the history and culture of ancient Assyria cannot be based on written documents only. In fact, the material remains of Assyrian city walls, palaces, temples, and domestic quarters tell us a lot about the way ancient Assyrian city‐dwellers, whether rich or poor, lived their lives (see Chapter 23); and images on large artifacts such as bas‐reliefs or stelae or on small ones such as cylinder or stamp seals provide us with pictorial evidence of Assyrian deities and demons, the ways the Assyrians practiced warfare, and the urban and non‐urban landscapes they inhabited (see Chapter 24).

Because the political situation in Iraq has significantly limited archaeological work in the Assyrian core area during the past decades, newly developed scientific methods such as paleobotanical and archaeometrical analysis have been applied only sparingly at the main Assyrian sites in the Tigris region. However, thanks to surveys in eastern Syria that were conducted before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, and successful attempts in recent years to use satellite imagery, we now have a much improved understanding of settlement patterns, agricultural structures, and the distribution of roads and canals in the Assyrian heartland and its periphery (see Chapters 1 and 2).

Continuity and change in Assyrian history and culture

The aforementioned subdivision of Assyrian history into three periods, Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo‐Assyrian (followed by a long “post‐imperial” era, see Chapter 10), was devised by modern scholars and is primarily based on changes affecting the Assyrian language (see Chapter 17). Historically, it is somewhat problematic – the transitions between the periods were gradual and not marked by clearly identifiable historical events. Nonetheless, there are a number of characteristic political and cultural features that distinguish the three eras. They go hand in hand with some remarkable continuities that imbue the span of Assyrian history with a considerable degree of coherence.

With regard to Assyria’s territorial extent, we can trace, despite occasional setbacks, a steady development towards ever greater size. For most of the Old Assyrian period, Ashur was the center of a small city state. Even though the merchants of Ashur travelled wide and far, cities such as Nineveh were not under Ashur’s control yet. In the 18th century, the Amorite king Šamši‐Adad I brought Ashur for a short time into his large Upper Mesopotamian kingdom, but without making it his main residence. The situation changed in Middle Assyrian times, when Ashur grew into the political and religious capital of an influential territorial state reaching from the Khabur region in the west to the foothills of the Zagros in the east. Only now do we find references to the “land of Ashur” (māt Aššur) in the textual record and can speak of an “Assyria” in the strict sense of the word. Finally, in the Neo‐Assyrian period, Assyria expanded even further, morphing into an empire that dominated much of Western Asia.

Throughout all this territorial change, there was, however, also some continuity, especially with regard to the role played by the city of Ashur. It served as Assyria’s political capital until 879 BCE, when Aššurnaṣirpal II moved the royal court to Kalḫu. But Ashur remained a highly important cultural and religious center much longer. Up to the last decades of the Assyrian state, Assyrian kings would spend the winter months in Ashur to participate in various religious festivities. They also continued to be buried there, in vaults located under the floors of Ashur’s “Old Palace.”

Ashur’s status was closely linked to the god who shared his name with the city and had his temple there. Throughout the history of Ashur and Assyria, the god Assur served as the state’s foremost deity (see Chapter 18).3 As a consequence of the political transformations Assyria experienced over the course of this long period, Assur’s “character” changed as well – from numen loci into powerful divine king, with a family of his own. Yet he never ceased to define the religious identity of the Assyrian people and particularly their rulers. Even after the downfall of the Assyrian empire, Assur continued to be worshipped in his city, and some of the festivals held in honor of Assur and his wife Šerua were still celebrated in the second century AD (see Chapter 10).

While Assur served as Assyria’s divine protector, the Assyrian king embodied the earthly dimensions of the Assyrian state. But contrary to what one might expect, the autocratic type of rule that characterized Assyria’s political system during the imperial period came into being relatively late. During the Old Assyrian period, the Assyrian city state had a far more complex political structure, one that some have characterized, in reference to Aristotle, Polybius, and other classical political theorists, as a “mixed constitution” (Liverani 2011). There was a “democratic” component, provided by the city assembly, an aristocratic one, provided by the eponyms (līmum), who were probably chosen from among the landholding and mercantile elites, and a monarchical one, represented by a hereditary ruler. This ruler did not yet bear the traditional Mesopotamian title “king” (šarrum), which was instead associated with the god Assur. Rather, he was known as the “prince” (rubā’um), the “representative of the god Assur” (iššiak Aššur), and the “overseer” (waklum), a title referring to his legal functions.

It was not until the 14th century BCE, under Aššur‐uballiṭ I, that Assyrian rulers began to call themselves šarru(m