People Of Ancient Assyria
Jorgen Laessoe
Translated from the Danish by
F. S. Leigh-Browne
Published 1963 A.D.
Assyrian International News Agency
Books Online
www.aina.org
AM indebted to Professor M. E. L. Mallowan, Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial), for permission to reproduce photographs I took during the excavations at Nimrud.
The three maps in this book were prepared by M. E. Knop, Chief Topographical Officer of the Geodetic Institute, Copenhagen, on the basis of my sketches. My sincere thanks are due to him for this outstanding contribution.
Danish Oriental research owes a considerable debt to the Egyptologist, Professor C. E. Sander-Hansen, Ph.D. In thankful recognition of his interest and support over many years, I beg Professor Sander-Hansen to accept the dedication of this book to himself.
J. L.
AS Assyria merely a more brutal, more uncivilized and less interesting offshoot of the culture created by Sumerians and Babylonians in Southern Mesopotamia at the dawn of history? Do the countless Assyrian reliefs that fill our museums give a complete picture of the phenomenon that was Assyria? Was the contribution of this people to world culture merely an incredibly effective military organization? Is it a true picture of Assyria that the reliefs and annals give us, with their presentation of war chariots, archers, battering-rams surrounding besieged cities, the punishment of prisoners of war, and the triumphal march of the Assyrian army through the realms of the Near East? Have we no evidence of the human element behind this phenomenon? How far may we rely on the Biblical descriptions of the cruelty of the Assyrian armies and the depravity of Assyrian cities? How are we, who can look back on the incredible events of the European wars of religion, on the conduct of Europeans towards the Indians of America, and on man's recent treatment of his fellow-man, to judge these Assyrians? The rather
answer to many of these questions is to be sought they in the personal documents of the time than in the official inscriptions, in the letters Assyrians wrote to one another rather than in the annals of their rulers. Truth resides more often in the letters from one human being to another: distortion of facts often insinuates itself more easily into public proclamations intended for contemporary or subsequent acceptance. Therefore, in an attempt to rehabilitate the Assyrians and to provide a truer picture on which to base their reputation, their official inscriptions are, with few exceptions, excluded from this book. The basis of presentation here consists of historical sources that must in every respect be regarded as primary, namely the correspondence discovered in excavating the archives of Assyrian kings and governors.
It is impossible to offer such a presentation without mentioning the achievements of a number of Assyriologists. The Mari letters that form the basis of Chapter III (n) have been published and edited by a group of French and Belgian scholars among whom G. Dossin, of Liege, must have pride of place. His collaborators in the publication of these archives have been C.-F. Jean of Paris, J.-R. Kupper of Liege, J. Bottero of Paris, and A. Finet of Charleroi, whose work, published in the series Archives Royales de Mari I-VI (Paris, 1950-54) and XV (Paris, 1954), has been used as the basis of the present account. To this must be added a long sequence of articles in the periodicals Syria and Revue d'Assyriologie. J.-R. Kupper has undertaken a special investigation of the Bedouin in the Mari area in his book Les Nomades en Mesopotamie au temps des Rois de Mari (Paris, 1957). This is supplemented in respect of the Isin-Larsa period by Dietz Otto Edzard: Die 'Ziveite Zwischen.Zeit' Babyloniens (Wiesbaden, 1957). The inscriptions from Nimrud (the Assurnasirpal stele, pp. 58 ff., and Esarhaddon's treaty with the Mede Ramataia, pp. 65 ff.) were first dealt with by D. J. Wiseman (then of the British Museum) in the periodical Iraq (Vols. 14 [1952], pp. 24-44, and 20 [1958], pp. 1-99, with Plates 1-53, respectively).
The Sargon Chronicle translated on pp. 19 was published by L. W. King in Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings, II, pp. 113-119 (London, 1907); the Sargon inscription on p. 19 was first published by A. Poebel in Historical and Grammatical Texts (Philadelphia, 1914) as No. 34. The Sumerian king-list quoted in Chapter II was edited by T. Jacobsen in The Sumerian King List (Chicago, 1939), while the Assyrian king-list used in Chapter III was edited by I. J. Gelb in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 13, pp. 209-230 (Chicago, 1954). The text of the Old Akkadian letter mentioning the first appearance of the Gutians in Mesopotamia (p. 21) was published by S. Smith in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, in connexion with his article Notes on the Gutian Period in the volume for 1932, pp. 295-308. The Sumerian and Babylonian year-names used for dating in southern Mesopotamia have been collected and discussed by the German scholar A. Ungnad in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, xii Vol. II (Berlin-Leipzig, 1938), under the entry 'Datenlisten' (pp. 131-196): the Assyrian eponym-lists (catalogues of officials holding the post of limmu, used for dating in northern Mesopotamia) have been treated by Ungnad under the entry 'Eponymen' of the same work (pp. 412-457). For the neo-Assyrian period the last-named article is supplemented by Margarete Falkner's important contribution, Die Eponymen der spatassyrischen Zeit, in the periodical Archiv fur Orientforschung, Vol. 17, pp. 100-120 (Graz, 1954-55).
The latest history of the kingdom of Mittanni is by R. T. O'Callaghan: Aram Naharaim (Analecta Orientalia, 26, Rome, 1948); and that of the Hurrians in general by I. J. Gelb in his book Hurrians and Subarians (Chicago, 1944). The comprehensive material on Hurrian personal names from Yorghan Tepe has been dealt with by I. J. Gelb, P. M. Purves, and A. A. MacRae in Nuzi Personal Names (Chicago, 1943). The middle Assyrian manual on the breeding of horses, mentioned on p. 52, has been assembled by E. Ebeling in Bruchstucke einer mittelassyrischen Vorschriftensammlung fur die Akklimatisierung and Trainierung von Wlagenpferden (Berlin, 1951).
The grounds plans of the acropolis of Nimrud (Fig. 3) and Fort Shalmaneser (Fig. 4) have been reproduced respectively from Vols. 19 (Plate i) and 21 (Plate xxiii) of the periodical Iraq (London, 1957 and 1959). Reports by M. E. L. Mallowan and D. Oates on the work of excavation at Nimrud have appeared yearly in Iraq, beginning with Vol. 12 (1950). The standard inscription of Assurnasirpal was published by L. W. King in Annals of the Kings of Assyria, Vol. I, pp. 212-221 (London, 1902). The inscriptions of Shalmaneser III from the fort at Nimrud have been published by the present author in Iraq (Vol. 21, 1959, pp. 28-41, with Plate xii), and a statute of Shalmaneser III with inscription in Iraq (Vol. 21, pp. 147-157, with Plates xl-xlii). A number of the texts from Fort Shalmaneser of which incidental mention is made have not yet been published.
Of the letters from Tell Shemshara, a number have been published in my book The Shemshdra Tablets, a Preliminary Report (in the series of archaeological and art-historical monographs issued by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Vol. 4, No. 3, Copenhagen, 1959). The letter quoted on p. 84 appeared with a commentary in the periodical Acta Orientalia, Vol. 24, pp. 83-94 (Copenhagen, 1959). A definitive edition of all the texts from Tell Shemshara is in preparation.
The excavations at Tell Shemshara undertaken by the Danish Dokan Expedition in the summer of 1957 were made possible by a joint grant from the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Government Foundation for the Promotion of Science; after the actual expedition had been completed, the Carlsberg Foundation in addition supported research on the excavated material by a series of grants. The Rask-Orsted Foundation (the Danish Foundation for International Research) made it possible for a number of the members of the Dokan Expedition to participate in the excavations at Nimrud in the spring of 1957 before their own work in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Dokan Expedition received assistance in many practical ways from the Royal Danish Legation in Iraq and from Mr J. G. Campbell, of Messrs Binnie Deacon and Gourley of London, Resident Engineer in charge of the construction of the Dokan Dam. Thanks to these institutions and individuals are implied in every mention of the results of the Dokan Expedition.
Thanks are also due in another direction to H. E. Niji al-Asil, the former Director-General of the Iraq Department of Antiquities, and his successor Sayyid Taha Baqir, both of whom supported the expedition in its practical and scientific activities in every possible way. The members of the Director-General's staff contributed to making the co-operation between the Iraqi authorities and the Danish expedition so exemplary, both during the excavation and in the years after its conclusion in August 1957
I am grateful to the Carlsberg Foundation for the grants that made it possible for me to travel to Iraq in 1956 to join the British expedition at Nimrud and in 1959-6o enabled me in the course of a protracted stay in Baghdad to complete work on the Shemshira texts which are now housed in the Iraq National Museum. Furthermore, my thanks are due to Professor Max Mallowan and to the British School of Archaeology in Iraq which in 195 8 invited me to participate in the Nimrud expedition as epigraphist, as well as to David Oates for his hospitality at Nimrnd in the summer of 1960.
The translations of the texts quoted in this book vary occasionally from earlier renderings, though it is not practicable here to give detailed justifications for such variations. The system of chronology (i.e. the dates employed) is firmly established as far back as the Middle Assyrian period; as to the earlier periods, it may well be that future discoveries will necessitate a slight adjustment of the absolute chronology, though the relative chronology will remain unaffected. I have decided that the most practical course is to employ the chronology given in the latest textbook on the ancient history of the Near East, and have therefore co-ordinated the dating with that given in Hartmut Schmokel's Geschichte des Alten Vorderasien (Leiden, 1957).
Names are reproduced in forms transcribed from Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian texts where there is no generally accepted Biblical or other form. Thus I have used the name Tukulti-ninurta, but employed a rendering like Tiglath-Pileser because the latter name has come down to us in a Hebrew version of the Assyrian Tukulti-apil-esharra. Sharrum-kin is given as Sargon, Assur-nasir-apli as Assurnasirpal: Nabu-kudurri-usur becomes Nebuchadnezzar. As to the pronunciation of the names and words I have quoted, it should be observed that the circumflex accent (e.g. kin) indicates a long vowel. -sh- indicates a sound as in English shall. Special forms of s and t, such as occur in Semitic languages with emphatic articulation, are not distinguished in this work from the normal s and t. The Sumerian and Akkadian h (often transcribed kb) is pronounced approximately as ch in the German ach: thus jasmah is read as 'jasmach' and Arrapha as 'Arrapcha'. J in Akkadian words represents a sound like English y in you, but in Arabic and Turkish words (e.g. Jazira and Sanjaq) the sound corresponds to j in just.
In the translations of texts, dots within square brackets [. . . .] indicate a break in the original text, whereas omissions made by the author are indicated by dots without brackets. Words in round brackets () provide an amplification that is obvious from the text itself: additions in square brackets [ ] comprise a modern explanation or comment.
Expressions such as 'Semites', 'Hurrians', etc., are used as linguistic descriptions; 'a Semite' is to be understood as a person speaking a Semitic language: nothing is thereby implied as to racial characteristics or racial association. Our knowledge in this field is severely limited and differentiation on such a basis is impossible to establish fully. The existence of a Hurrian population such as is mentioned on p. 49 is not proved by the isolated occurrence of personal names of Hurrian type: a man with a Hurrian name could have a father whose name was Semitic (p. 49). The nature of the population in any given place is indicated rather by the fact that the allocation of names, as indicated by extensive textual material, follows to an overwhelming extent the norm of a particular language, and by the circumstance that the spoken language of the district in question can be shown to have been that language. Even where the written language was Akkadian, as was the case for a very long period over very large areas of the Near East, peculiarities of orthography, of the choice of words, or sentence structure often clearly indicate that another language was actually spoken.
The Plates
The photograph reproduced on Plate 10 (b) was kindly provided by Mr G. M. Binnie, whose firm, Messrs Binnie, Deacon and Gourlep, Civil Engineers, provided the plans for the Dokan Dam, which they built for the Government of Iraq. The remaining photographs in the book were taken by the author. Of these, Plates 7 (b) and 8 (the latter in colour), have previously appeared in The Illustrated London News (17 January 1959, p. 100, and Plate ii) ; Plates 13 (b) and 16 are included in my book The Shemshara Tablets: a Preliminary Report (1959; see p. 4) as Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.
The portrait of Sheikh Abd al-Halaf al-Ankud (Plate 1) is published with my greetings to the village of Shirgat and thanks for its firm friendship. Both at Nimrud and at Tell Shemshara Abd al-Halaf was the spokesman and foreman of the workmen: at Shemshara, where the locally recruited labour force consisted of Kurds from the villages of the district, the organization of co-operation between them and a small group of experienced Arab workers from Shirqat demanded a measure of tact and acuity possessed by but few. Like his fellow-countryman, the Baghdad fisherman Hassan (Plate 2), he is endowed with good humour, a sense of fun, authority, and sensitivity. Adb al-Halaf's feeling for the unspoken has struck me as incomprehensible ever since our first meeting. Our conversations had to be conducted in Arabic, in which, with uncanny telepathy, he was able to put the right words into a beginner's mouth or read the thoughts for which the Arabic words failed me. His patience, his care, his clarity would provide a model for every school teacher. He has most certainly taught me more than I have ever taught him. He is one of the few of his generation--he was 42 when the photograph was taken--to read and write Arabic, an accomplishment he acquired by study on his own. In Shirqat he took the initiative towards the erection of a school building; after making representations fox several years to such high authorities as the Ministry of Education in Baghdad, he succeeded in 1959 in obtaining two teachers for the village. His influence in Shirqat is considerable; as mukhtar, the popularly elected headman, he has a species of official authority, but his actual power is based on the fact that he is head of one of the village's oldest and most respected families. For archaeological expeditions to Iraq the name of Shirqat, and the expression shirgati used for its inhabitants, have particular significance. The village lies at the foot of the ruins of Assur. When a German expedition began in i~o3 to excavate this, the most southerly of the Assyrian capitals, the foundations were laid of a tradition that still persists.
The shirqatis were engaged every year for work on the excavations, which were continued until the outbreak of World War I, and in this way a group of Arab excavators was established whose number steadily grew. Boys who began by carrying the earth from the excavations in baskets were then by way of promotion entrusted with a spade or hoe, later with a brush and trowel. Some came to specialize in walls, others concentrated on problems arising from the uncovering of fragile small objects. The next generation, and the one after it, learnt from their elders. There are very few foreign expeditions to Iraq that do not make the shirgati the backbone of their labour force: almost all call upon a larger or smaller group of these experts, as required, and they are paid comparatively highly. Men from Shirgat are also employed on the excavations undertaken by the Iraqi Directorate of Antiquities: occasionally the best of them are engaged by the conservation department of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. The oldest shirgati working at Nimrud began his career as a basket boy, abu trab ('father of earth'), for the German expedition to Assur, and was for this reason called 'the old man from Assur'.
An experienced shirgati has acquired an assuredness in handling newly excavated Assyrian antiquities that a European archaeologist can only obtain from long experience. When a large number of cuneiform tablets were found at Tell Shemshara in a very short space of time, it was possible to entrust much of the work of lifting these documents with complete confidence to a man with years of experience, Ahmad al-Halaf al-Ankizd, a younger brother of Abd al-Halaf. Plate 14 (b) shows Ahmad engaged in the dramatic task of making sure that such a tablet would not fall into fragments of its own weight if an attempt were made to lift it. Cuneiform tablets are found in many varying conditions, partly depending on the quality of the clay of which the tablet is formed, partly on its salinity and on the salinity of the earth that has come to surround it. Salt crystals in the clay of a tablet have often split its surface and formed cracks that can be sufficiently deep to cause the separate fragments to fall apart when the tablet is moved. Along the cracks the surface bearing the written symbols is particularly liable to damage. It is therefore important for the tablet to be lifted complete, so that later the whole can be treated under laboratory conditions. During an excavation, this is achieved by the use of a cellulose adhesive of a consistency suitable for the requirement of any situation according to the condition of the clay tablet. A contrast to this difficult work of preserving a document possibly of historic importance, of which-as is obvious from Ahmad's attitude there is no duplicate, is represented by Plate 14 (a). Assurnasirpal's 'standard inscription' from Nimrud (p. 57), of which this is a detail, stands there monumental and clear, carved in stone and indelible. The inscription (also shown on the jacket of this book) is available in so many copies that hardly anyone knows exactly how many there are.
The typical Assyrian can be discerned on three photographs from Nimrud, showing a winged creature with an animal's body and human head: the facial characteristics must be presumed to portray the physiognomy of Assurnasirpal (Plates 3 (b), 4 and 5). Plate 6 shows a beardless court official, presumably a eunuch, represented on a relief from the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin, a ruin-mound known now by the name of Khorsabad, lying not far from Mosul toward the north-east.
Iraq, with its sparse rainfall, must supplement the water from precipitation and from the rivers by installations to make use of subsoil water. Plate 9 (b) shows a hoist set up for this purpose. The motive power is provided by a donkey or camel attached to the horizontal arm of the device; the animal, often blindfolded, walks round and rotates the cog-wheel on the vertical axle. By means of this wheel the power is transmitted to the horizontal (underground) axle, on which a further wheel fitted with scoops brings the water to the surface-or sometimes, if the water table lies deeper, by means of an endless chain with buckets. The scoops or buckets tip out the water into a flume, which takes it on its way to be distributed over the fields. Water-hoists of this kind were of course unknown to the Babylonians and Assyrians, for the transmission of power by cog-wheels seems to have been a Hellenistic invention. Representations on Assyrian reliefs and Babylonian cylinder-seals show, instead, acquaintance with a bucket suspended from a pole, distribution of water from which was facilitated by a counter-weight. Sennacherib introduced certain improvements in techniques of operation for Assyrian wells; but we have no precise indication of the equipment or function of such devices.
A number of dams, some completed, some still under construction, make their contribution to the utilization of river water in modern Iraq. One of the most important dams has been built near the village of Dokan in Iraqi Kurdistan (see map on p. 74), where the Little Zab river breaks through the mountains in the Torba Gorge. The photographs on Plate 1o show the rugged hills around Dokan, a kind of landscape not usually associated with Mesopotamian archaeology. Plate 10 (a) is a view from Dokan to the north-east in 1957, when the dam had not yet come into use: on Plate 10 (b) the same area is shown, with the lake that formed in 1959 and submerged the whole plain south of Rania. The village of Mirza Rustam then lay at the bottom of the lake: Bazmusian had become an island at its northern end, and the water reached the foot of Tell Shemshira. Soon Kuwari's old home town will be completely lost. On the Shehrizor Plain, where a dam across the Diyala River is nearing completion south of Sulaimaniya, at Darband-i-Khan, Iraqi archaeologists are working this summer (1960) to save the most important ancient monuments before this area too is submerged.
Plates 9 (a) and 11 (a) show Kurdish villages. Aqra, the chief village of the Surchi Kurds, in the Qara Dagh mountains 50 miles north-east of Mosul, lies hidden in a valley with steep escarpments on either side; it is only after passing a final jutting crag that it is possible to see the houses of the village towering u on the mountainside From the top most houses the suq, the bazaar street of the village, can be seen hundreds of feet below. In 74 B.C. an Assyrian king, Sargon H, described these mountain regions in the following words:
I marched between Nikippa and Upi, high mountains covered with trees of every kind, (mountains) whose interior is a wilderness, where passes are awe-inspiring, where shadows spread as in a cedar wood, and where the traveller does not see the sun's light. I crossed over the river Buja, that flows between them, no fewer than 26 times, and my troops were not daunted by its floods. The mountain Simirria, a mighty peak, rising like a spear point whose summit reaches above the mountain chains where dwells the mistress of the gods, (a mountain) whose peak supports the sky above and
whose roots below stretch to the midst of the underworld-that is like the dorsal of a fish, and allows no passage from side to side, and whose ascent is as difficult from the front as from
the back-into whose side ravines with mountain torrents are carved, terrible to behold-(a mountain) that is fit neither for the rolling of chariots nor for the galloping of horses, and whose paths are too difficult to lead assault troops along them....
With the obedience and inspiration vouchsafed to me by the god Ea and by the mistress of the gods, when they urged me to sweep over the enemy's land, I provided my leading troops with bronze axes wherewith they broke into the tracts of the high mountain, as if it were a quarry, and perfected the road.
Opposite Dokan is the village of Topzawa (Plate 11 [a]) where a Danish ethnographer, Henny Harald Hansen, B.Sc., had the opportunity during three months of the summer of 1957, with a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation, and in association with the Dokan Expedition, to study the life of Kurdish village women. In her book, Daughters of Allah (London, I96o) she has described her sojourn in Topzawa.
The remainder of the plates in this book are described in the text as they occur.
A SCRIPT was invented early in Mesopotamia. The oldest known inscriptions date back to the period immediately before 3000 B.C. Already at that period the writing material was clay-fine river clay-made into a small cushion-shaped tablet, usually of the size of a matchbox, but quite frequently smaller still. Tablets only two-fifths of an inch square are by no means uncommon; large ones exceptionally occur. The largest known tablets are that containing the treaty between the Assyrian king Esarhaddon and the Mede Ramataia (p. 65), 18 by 11.75 inches, and another of the same dimensions from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. The written symbols were impressed into the clay with the sharp edge of a flat rod or stylus of wood; the script can consequently be described as three-dimensional.
Originally the script was pictorial. Each symbol meant the object presented in the picture: each symbol was an ideogram or word-symbol. A writing system of this kind has limited possibilities, but in the first centuries of the history of its development the script in Mesopotamia served purposes that were also limited: it was only employed for bookkeeping-the establishment of regulation and control over the products of agriculture and craftsmanship. The oldest texts are lists of livestock and agricultural equipment; a system of numbers was soon developed, a stroke indicating units and a circular impression tens.
About 2700 B.C. a revolution occurred in the development of the script. Perhaps it was an individual scribe who, with a stroke of genius, saw that the word-signs could be freed of their connexion with the meaning of the pictures and used as sound-symbols (phonograms): only the sound, the syllable represented by the word-symbol, was to count. The invention of the script can certainly be attributed to the Sumerians: its development as a phonetic script was also undoubtedly a Sumerian idea. A need to write down non-Sumerian personal names could have contributed to the change in the principle of the script from that of word-symbols to that of syllable-symbols: the fact that a large proportion of Sumerian words had but one syllable may have facilitated the process.
With the freeing of the script from the narrower principles of picture-writing and word-signs came the possibility of setting down texts of every kind; and in the course of the third millennium inscriptions appear in ever-increasing numbers and in ever-increasing scope. Ideograms are still used to a limited extent, but in principle syllabic writing has replaced picture-writing. Alongside this change in the basic system of the script went a simplification of its outward form; the signs assume a stylized appearance,. and the curved lines of the original pictorial symbols are broken up into single components resembling small wedges, executed in such a way that the head of the wedge occurs at the point where the stylus is pressed deepest into the clay. This writing-system, known as cuneiform (i.e. 'wedge-writing'), was used in Mesopotamia and, beyond it, all over the Near East for as long as the Babylonian and Assyrian languages were vehicles of a distinct civilization.
Cuneiform was transferred to other writing materials, the signs evolved by the use of stylus and clay being preserved in the new media. So we find the cuneiform script hammered into metals, chiselled out in stone, carved on cliff faces, cut on small cylindrical seals of agate, onyx, and haematite, and painted on the walls of buildings. Clay, however, is the writing material in which the great majority of cuneiform texts have been preserved for posterity. Where parchment, papyrus, or paper would have disintegrated in the extreme climatic vagaries of Iraq, clay has remained imperishable. On the tablets usually reddish in colour -elegant little symbols, which in contrast to Egyptian hieroglyphs are made up of purely abstract shapes, have preserved to the present day messages of every imaginable kind; the inspired decipherment of the nineteenth century and the penetrating research of the twentieth have opened up Mesopotamian culture and made such a wealth of written sources available to us that this literature, together with archaeological discoveries, has made certain periods of the ancient history of the country the best documented in the early cultural history of the Near East and Europe.
Clay tablets with cuneiform script are occasionally found in the form of terracotta: the clay has been burned. In this way, the destruction of a building by fire in ancient times could lead to the preservation of the tablet, the heat of the flames having hardened the material. Inscriptions of particular importance were often baked in a kiln, when it was considered desirable to ensure the indestructibility of the text; thus the clay prisms of the Assyrian kings, containing the texts of their annals, are always found in terracotta and their state of preservation is perfect, apart from the possibility of their having been damaged by falling walls or destroyed by violence. Moreover, they were often buried under the comers of walls as foundation-inscriptions, and have thus been well protected.
Cuneiform tablets are more often found in an unfired condition. Some of the difficulties in excavating such tablets have been discussed above (p. 6). The condition of unbumt tablets depends on various circumstances. Some tablets are composed of particularly fine sifted clay with low saline content. If they are found at some depth below the surface, and have therefore not been exposed to the seeping of rainwater, they often appear as though written yesterday. One Shemshira tablet, illustrated in Plate 15, is an example of such a text. Other tablets are composed of clay of poorer quality and do not withstand even the least attempt to cleanse them of extraneous impurities gathered from the earth in which they have lain. Salts in the surrounding earth can have such a deleterious effect on tablets that they appear with a crust of hard crystals, and if an attempt is made to remove this crust part of the surface of the tablet will come away, and some of the text is irreparably damaged.
All unfired tablets are baked after their discovery irrespective of their condition. They are put in a kiln for a day or two and exposed to a temperature that is gradually brought up to about 700°C. This transforms the clay into terracotta. After this treatment the tablet can be soaked in distilled water for some days or weeks to dissolve all salts. Not till this has been done is the document fit to be handled and suitable for detailed study.
The scholarly treatment of a clay tablet demands in the first place experience in reading cuneiform from an original test. Handwriting and personal idiosyncrasies vary from scribe to scribe. It is a far cry from the regular fine calligraphy of the scribe who made a copy of the annals of an Assyrian king to the work of one who had the duty of writing a letter to dictation.
Another essential requirement for the scholar dealing with a cuneiform document is an understanding of the text. Most Assyriologists who concern themselves with the editing of original texts begin, I think, with the reading of the tablet and the transcription of its text in order to acquire a first impression of its meaning. When this has been done, and the text is understood, it is copied out. This involves setting it down in a form corresponding exactly to its original appearance. For this, a kind of Indian ink is used that is suitable for photographic reproduction. In this way, the text is presented for the judgement of scholars, sometimes accompanied by photographs showing the front and the back, the top, bottom, and left and right edges: for the lines are inclined to carry on in the direction of the writing (left to right) over the right edge, so as to become involved with the text on the other side of the tablet. Likewise, the three remaining edges are often brought into use when the text has occupied more room than originally envisaged. Figs. 1 and 2 show my copy of the tablet seen on Plate 15: the front (Fig. 1) appears in the photograph.
All the published texts of which I have made use in this book are available in editions that have been prepared in this manner. In the nature of things, the primary publication of a text must always consist of the copy made by the Assyriologist concerned. Accompanying photographs of the original text can be of use as a check, but can never be satisfactory by themselves. In the reading of the original the distribution of light and shade can be of decisive importance: it is essential to be able to turn the tablet in one's hand in order to obtain clear contrasts. Although normally a cuneiform tablet is best read in a light coming from a position to the left and slightly above the tablet, sometimes the individual elements of a symbol are so ill-defined that the vertical wedges need a light coming from the left in a horizontal direction, while the horizontal wedges similarly need light from a point above the tablet: only in a copy drawn on paper is it possible to include all these observations in one presentation. Since others who have no access to the original must be able to make use of the copy and base further discussion on it, the conscientious, trustworthy and careful copying of cuneiform texts is a responsible task.
The Sumerian word for a cuneiform tablet was dub; a scribe was called dub-sar, i.e. 'tablet writer'. Both these words were incorporated in Babylonian and Assyrian as loan-words, dub becoming tuppu and dub-sar becoming tupsharru. The Sumerian word was still current among the Aramaeans as tifsar. In the translations of letters given in this book, the word 'letter' always represents the Babylonian-Assyrian tuppu. When the receipt of a letter was acknowledged, the formula was not 'I have read your letter' but 'I have heard your tablet'. This fact, as well as the introductory words of the letter 'Say to so-and-so: thus says so-and-so', indicate the basic principle of carrying a message by word of mouth: the Babylonian epistolary style has preserved the memory of an earlier period when messages were less often written down than conveyed and declaimed by their bearers.
After the full development of the script, the written letter accompanied the messenger as a checking device, but the terminology was not altered; there are moreover a few cases in which letters to more than one person are set down on one and the same tablet.
Land and People-Euphrates and Tigris-Cultural Beginnings in Southern Mesopotamia-Strangers from the Eastern Mountains-The Gutians-The Hurrians-The Kassites-Medes and Persians -Migrations from the Western Desert-The Semitic Peoples-The Akkadians-Semitic Domination in Akkad-The Sumerian Legacy-The Third Dynasty of Ur-The Amorites-Isin, Larsa, and Babylon-Mari-The Aramaeans-Islam.
THE frontiers of the modern state of Iraq are arbitrary. To the west Iraq merges into the dusty desert of the Arabian peninsula; to the north caravans from Iraq pass into the fertile plain of northern Syria without the nomads being aware of any boundary-line. In the north and east the land gradually rise towards the mountains of Armenia and Persia; the traffic of the mountain-dwellers across the international frontiers between Turkey, Iraq, and Iran can only be regulated by the vigilance of frontier police patrols.
The rivers were the decisive
factor in the formation of state; in this part of the Middle East; the
Euphrates and Tigris produced conditions under which an ordered society
could develop it southern Iraq as early as the middle of the fourth
millennium. B.C.; the same rivers set their stamp on the special form
of culture that we can describe as characteristic of ancient Iraq, and
assured a continuity in the structure of society that was not really
broker until the irruptions of the Mongols in A.D. 1258. The Greek
recognized the fundamental significance of the rivers in this country
when they called it Mesopotamia, 'the land between the rivers'.
The ancient history of Mesopotamia is usually associated with the two distinct areas from which political leadership stemmed, namely Babylonia and Assyria. Babylonia comprises the region between the rivers south of Iraq's present capital Baghdad, a land of scanty rainfall in which agriculture is entirely dependent on artificial irrigation, though even this circumstance was of significance in the development of its culture. The establishment of this culture in Babylonia is a good example of Toynbee's formula of 'challenge and response'. Without continual work on the laying-out of canals, ditches, and dykes, without continual dredging of the water channels thus artificially established, the agriculture of Babylonia would lack the essential condition for its existence, and the fields would decay, becoming barren desert tracts. But if continuous supervision takes place, so that a central administration watches over a network of canals, large and small, to bring a sufficient supply of water to the fields, and to release the fruitfulness of the earth, then the 11,500 or so square miles of Babylonia can be transformed into one of the world's richest agricultural areas. When the prehistoric village societies grew in size and number, when villages became towns, and new societies were established all over Babylonia shortly after the middle of the fourth millennium B.C., the reason must have been that economic conditions in the land improved at this time. This development can best be explained on the assumption that the construction of canals and the establishment of a large-scale system of artificial irrigation began at this period. Later written sources make it possible for us to conclude that the villages were controlled by village councils consisting of the eldest members of the community, and that in certain circumstances they could, for a longer or shorter period, delegate their political power to a single man. Larger buildings, temples on a monumental scale, began to appear, often built on an artificial platform-the forerunners of the Zikkurat, the Babylonian temple tower. Writing made its appearance, a primitive pictorial script, which in the course of the third millennium assumed more conventional forms and became the cuneiform of Mesopotamia. The Babylonian concept of the world, according to which personified forces of nature, the gods, form an aristocracy in the universe for whom men work as slaves, took shape towards the end of the fourth millennium. Art and crafts were taken over by professionals; specialization must have taken place: the increased production from agriculture now made it possible for certain sections of the population to leave their work on the land and settle in towns as craftsmen-carpenters, smiths, and potters. Organized trade arose as a natural consequence of the growth of the towns. Today we know that the Sumerians in southern Babylonia at the dawn of history (about 3000 B.C.) were the people who primarily contributed to the shaping of Mesopotamian culture. They brought into being the material conditions for this early civilization and established the social forms under which it could survive in all its essentials with an astonishing continuity almost down to the beginning of the present era. S. N. Kramer in his book History Begins at Sumer (London, 1958) gives a comprehensive picture of Sumerian culture based on the Sumerian texts that have become available to us as a result of excavation in recent years and of the intensive work devoted by philologists to the Sumerian language.
Assyria is the area surrounding the Tigris on east and west, from the mountains of Armenia in the north to the Hamrin Hills in the south; a flood plain including the upper reaches of the Tigris and its eastern tributaries. To the west, Assyria is separated by a range of hills from Al-Jazira, a barren steppe, where nowadays the Arab Shammar nomads pitch their black tents. Between the rivers flowing through Assyria the country is undulating and hilly, verdant in spring after the winter rains, with a cover of millions of wild flowers: but in May the sun and the drought kill off the vegetation and, like Babylonia, Assyria becomes a brown land where the wind raises clouds of dust and makes the hot summer months a grim season. Nevertheless, the winter rain is usually sufficient to ensure a good harvest even without artificial irrigation. The date-palm, so characteristic of Babylonia, cannot thrive here, but on the eastern hill-slopes the vine and tobacco are cultivated and cool orchards of fruit-trees surround the Kurdish villages. In Assyria one is always aware of the presence of the mountains: from the tops of the natural hills that dot the landscape as well as from the mounds that mark the ruins of ancient Assyrian cities, the snow-clad peaks of the Zagros mountains can be seen sharply outlined on the eastern horizon, an inaccessible region whose inhabitants, though under the influence of the plain-dwellers of Assyria in ancient times, were never really subdued by the masters of Mesopotamia. On the mountain slopes east of Assyria a primitive form of agriculture was developed at a remote period of pre-history when the alluvial plain of Babylonia was uninhabited marshland.
Each of the two provinces of Mesopotamia has thus its own individual character. Babylonia is a flat brown desert, formed from the mud-deposit brought down by its rivers in their course from the northern mountains towards the Persian Gulf, a country without stone and with little rain, where only the traces of ancient canals bear witness to the intensive cultivation of former times, a plain in which each rise in the ground conceals the remains of buildings created by human hand. The ruin-mounds of Babylonia, to which the Arabic word tell is applied, show how densely the land was populated in ancient times. Assyria is by contrast a landscape of low hills, of much greater geological age than Babylonia, rich in oil wells, dependent on ample winter rainfall; a country with a stony subsoil, where the light grey alabastine limestone, often used to embellish Assyrian monumental buildings, crops out here and there through the surface of the soil.
The Euphrates and Tigris provided the conditions for the rise of this culture in Southern Babylonia: they necessitated the establishment of a regulated social order. The rivers of Mesopotamia depend on the fall of rain and melting of snow in the mountains to the north and east. The level of water in the Euphrates rises from March to May, and long stretches of the Babylonian countryside are consequently liable to flood; but the extent of the flood cannot be predicted from week to week, or even sometimes from day to day. The temperament of the Tigris is particularly dangerous. Its route from the mountains to the sea is shorter than that of the Euphrates; the latter river can expend its force as it skirts the Syrian desert. But along the Tigris in the spring months, the towns must maintain perpetual vigilance: sudden terrible cloudbursts in the Kurdish mountains can raise the level of the river by as much as 20 feet in a few hours. As late as 1954 Baghdad was threatened with disaster through a flood caused in this manner. Since then the dam at Samarra has been completed, and now the country to the south is protected against such danger by the dam, which diverts the water into a reservoir in the basin of the Wadi Tharthar. From June onwards the river levels fall: the raging current of the Tigris that has brought the chocolate-coloured water swirling round the piers of the Baghdad bridges now reduces its speed. When water is really needed for irrigation in the rainless summer, the rivers are back in their beds, and the fields must be watered mechanically by primitive hoists which are nowadays gradually being replaced by motor-pumps. On those who are destined to occupy and cultivate this land and wrest a crop from the flood-plain, nature has therefore ironically imposed a double task: to protect and secure their homes and fields against the fearful floods of spring by the provision of dykes and canals to control and direct the masses of water: and also to establish installations for the preservation and utilization of water for irrigating the fields in the dry season-canals, ditches, reservoirs, and pumps. The laying-out of new canals or the improvement of already existing ones were tasks in which the ancient Babylonian kings took a particular pride; concern for irrigation is a continually recurring theme in their inscriptions, and control of important watercourses became a matter of political significance. At Kut, south-east of Baghdad, one branch of the Tigris-today called Al-Gharraf--runs quite separately in a due southerly direction: it is, in fact, a canal originally of artificial construction, the first recorded in human history. A written account survives of its being dug. A governor of Lagash had it made in the middle of the third millennium B.C. to put an end to disputes between that city and the neighbouring city of Umma concerning water rights: the point at issue was the use of a network of canals that tapped the water of the Euphrates to the west of these urban communities. The distribution of the river water over the land of Babylonia has been carried out with varying success at different periods of Iraqi history, according to the stability of the government in power and the efficiency of the administration. The peak periods in this connexion were reached under the ancient rulers of Babylon and again under the Abbasid caliphs of the Middle Ages (A.D. 750-1258).
Just as a well consolidated government made Babylonia one of the richest countries in the ancient world, so did the fertile fields and gardens of Mesopotamia, and its great cities that rose between the Euphrates and Tigris, present to the peoples of the surrounding areas, where man was not endowed by nature with the same opportunities, a goal for their urge for conquest. The history of Mesopotamia is therefore an account of a land whose culture is influenced by persistent incursions from the mountains to the east and from the desert to the west. Among the invaders, a few were fortunate enough to hold on to their conquests, but so resilient was Mesopotamian culture, and so enduring its pattern, that most often the newcomers were assimilated to the native population and adapted themselves to the peculiar habits of the latter: after a few generations, differences were reconciled, and it is difficult for us to distinguish the descendants of the immigrants from the earlier population. It was only the Mongol whirlwind that brought a final change: the conquest and devastation of the land by Hulagu put an end to a social order whose essential features had been established at the very beginning of the historical period, five thousand years before.
The Sumerians, who laid the foundations of Mesopotamian culture, were undoubtedly themselves an alien people who infiltrated into the plains around the lower reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris towards the end of the fourth millennium B.C. The lack of written sources makes it impossible for us to draw any definite conclusions as to the tribes they found settled there on their arrival; though occasional place-names taken over by the Sumerians and a few technical expressions that found their way as loan-words into the Sumerian language may perhaps one day, after closer study, show us something of the linguistic affiliations of these prehistoric inhabitants. Concerning the original homeland of the Sumerians, also, we know only too little. Their language appears to be quite isolated; so far it has not been possible to demonstrate kinship between Sumerian and any - other known language of the ancient world. It must be regarded as certain that the Sumerian migration into Mesopotamia took place from the east, and their presence in southern Babylonia as well as their activity in establishing their culture there is proved by a rich written tradition-their own inscriptions and Sumerian literature, which until the end of the first millennium B.C. continued as the basis for all learning in Mesopotamia.
Later irruptions and attempts at conquest originating in the areas east of Mesopotamia did not produce effects as lasting as those of the Sumerian immigration. About 2200 B.C. the Gutians, a people from the Zagros mountain area, established themselves in Babylonia, and parts of the land were under foreign domination for the best part of a century. The few inscriptions left by the Gutian overlords are written either in Sumerian or in Akkadian--a Semitic language that was already being used side by side with Sumerian-and the language of the Gutians therefore remains unknown. Even some hundreds of years later, however, Gutian slaves are mentioned as being particularly attractive because of the light colour of their skin. Gutium-the expression used by the people of Mesopotamia for this race-were barbarians and despoilers of temples; a late chronicle describes them as men who 'knew not the fear of God and could not perform ritual instructions and ordinances'. For the Sumerians, Gutium seemed a 'mountain dragon'. In the history of Mesopotamia the Gutians, who were driven out or assimilated about 2100 B.C., have left their mark only on the literary heritage in which their brief domination is remembered with horror; they contributed nothing of permanent value to Mesopotamian culture, and the sources are too few and far between to make it possible to judge to what extent their evil reputation is due to Sumerian national propaganda.
While the Gutian dynasty was undoubtedly established in consequence of the invasion of armed hordes, a more peaceful immigration from the north-east took place after the end of the third millennium. This movement brought ever more numerous groups of Hurrians into the cities of Mesopotamia. As early as about 2200 B.C. a Hurrian enclave can be traced in Nippur, one of the most important Sumerian cities in southern Mesopotamia. It was, however, in the areas to the east of Assyria, in the eastern Tigris region, that they had their most important colonies, and from the bridgeheads established here by the Hurrians an expansion took place that eventually led to the formation about 15 00 B.C. of an empire, Mittanni, comprising all northern Mesopotamia from the Zagros to the Mediterranean. We have some knowledge of the Hurrian language from a large number of personal names, Hurrian loan-words in Akkadian, and Hurrian texts, some of which are bilingual, having translations in Sumerian or Akkadian; nevertheless, like Sumerian, the Hurrian language cannot be related to any larger linguistic group, and stands in isolation. We know that the language of Urartu, a kingdom in the mountains of Armenia, which caused considerable difficulties to Assyrian kings during the first millennium, was a later dialect of Hurrian; but attempts to trace a relationship between Hurrian and modern Caucasian languages must, in the absence of further evidence, be regarded as misconceived. Normally the Hurrians made use of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script and took over the Akkadian language, which they wrote with provincial peculiarities. The Hurrians had no small significance in the formation of the later specifically Assyrian culture.
In Babylonia the Gutian dynasty
was followed by a period often described as the Sumerian golden age, a
renaissance under five kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The country
had however for some time been exposed to pressure from nomadic tribes
of the western desert; all through the third millennium we find
evidence in the inscriptions of the presence of persons with Semitic
names in an environment otherwise Sumerian, and one well-organized body
of Semites had founded an empire with its capital in the city of Akkad
in northern Babylonia (about 2350-2150 B.C.). Defence-works in Sumerian
cities, such as the walls erected by the last kings of Ur, bear witness
to the danger that now threatened from the west. One of these
fortifications has the name AIuriq-Tidnum--'He that holds Tidnum at
arm's length'; Tidnum was a name for the desert tribes whose plundering
activities always brought fear to Mesopotamian cities, the Bedouin,
against whom right up to our own time the town dwellers have barricaded
themselves behind stout walls and locked gates. The last king of Ur,
Ibbi-Sin (1979-1955 B.C.), displayed true statesmanship and skilful
diplomacy in resisting the attacks of desert peoples along the
boundaries of Sumer; but even his alliance with Elam, the arch-enemy in
the east, and feverish defence works towards the west were unable to
prevent the fall of Ur, and with it fell the last Sumerian kingdom. The
two following centuries are marked by conflicts between the cities in
which the desert peoples had settled, and where their successors now
attempted to expand the territory of the city-states. The initiative
displayed by the cities Isin, Larsa, and Babylon was of greatest
significance. Under Hammurabi, one of the most celebrated kings of
Babylon (1718-1686 B.C.), Babylonia was for the first time united as
one kingdom. Amurrum, an alternative and more common name for Tidnum,
the tribes from the desert, who spoke a Semitic language, thus took
over the legacy of the Sumerians; but Amorite, the Semitic dialect
spoken by these tribes, is only known in Babylonia from their personal
names, since, once they were established in the cities of Mesopotamia,
they abandoned their own linguistic idiosyncrasies and took over the
Mesopotamian cuneiform script and also, presumably, the Akkadian
language, which was, of course, a Semitic dialect like their own,
though distinct from Amorite and one with a priority of several hundred
years in the context of Mesopotamia.
The military impulse that brought the
Amorites to power in Mesopotamia lost its dynamic character under the
successors of Hammurabi. The Amorite dynasty of Babylon that made that
city into a metropolis of the ancient Orient was brought to an end by a
single military event, a swoop made in 1531 B.C. by Murshili I, a king
of the Hittite realm in Asia Minor, resulting from an expedition into
Syria and northern Mesopotamia. Though not otherwise of lasting
importance, the conquest and partial destruction of Babylon by Murshili
I 
opened the way for a new group of strangers, the
Kassites, a people from the mountains east of Babylon. From 1530 to
1150 the Kassites ruled Babylon. Even before the fall of Babylon to the
Hittite attack, small groups of Kassites were established in
Mesopotamia; we find them, for example, engaged as harvest workers.
Armed Kassite forces first made their appearance under Samsuiluna of
Babylon (about 1680 B.C.). Just as the Hurrians further north had set
up outposts prior to a more massive and concentrated expansion towards
Assyria, so also did the Kassites find their road to Babylon prepared
by the presence of scattered groups of their people already entrenched
in the eastern confines of Mesopotamia. The first Kassite kings
accepted by later historical tradition as kings of Babylon belong in
fact to the period before the fall of the Amorite dynasty in 1531; they
may have been local chiefs of small communities in the outlying areas
between Mesopotamia proper and the mountains.
The four hundred years during which the Kassites ruled in Babylon are usually described as a period of cultural decadence. But recent research has led to a justifiable doubt as to the accuracy of such an assertion. The Kassite kings certainly took over the Babylonian culture and language and carried on the traditions on which Babylonian society was based; but by administrative reforms and the introduction of a feudal system they supplied Babylonia with a new social ideology. Under the Kassite dynasty literature, too, was formed into a canon; works handed down in writing, many of them going back to the Sumerian period or based on literature of that time, were edited in a permanent form that became the standard for later periods. The final redaction of the Gilgamesh poem, for instance, was the work of a Kassite scholar.
The period following the Kassite dynasty was one of insecurity for Babylon; in it the names of only a few rulers of particular initiative appear, to establish their personality. Assyria began to assume the role of a great power and interfered more and more frequently with Babylonian affairs. Conflicts with Elam, a state in the south-western part of what is now Iran, flared up at intervals without the army of either country being able effectively to subdue its opponent. After a period of dependence on the Assyrian kings lasting nearly two hundred years, the oppressed people of Babylonia again arose under the founder of the so-called neo-Babylonian dynasty, Nabopolassar (625-606 B.C.), a Chaldaean usurper. Assyria was incapable, even in alliance with Egypt, of withstanding the attacks of the Babylonian armies, which coincided with the march of Median troops against Assyrian cities. The Medes, an Iranian people, under Kyaxares once more brought the mountain-dwellers of the east into Mesopotamian history. In 614 Kyaxares took Assur, the most venerated of Assyrian cities; after the battle he met Nabopolassar, who had himself led his army against Assyria, outside the city walls. A pact was concluded between the Medes and the Babylonians by which each side assured the other of good intentions, and the armies duly went back home. Two years later, in 612, a combined Babylonian-Median army marched against Nineveh, and the city fell after a fierce attack, to experience merciless plunder and destruction.
The eruption from the mountain areas east of Mesopotamia which the peoples along the Tigris and Euphrates had already experienced in connexion with the episode of the Gutians and the entry of the Hurrians and Kassites was utilized by a crafty Babylonian king, now that the Medes were infiltrating into the land, to compass the obliteration of the political and military might of Assyria. Freed from Assyrian pressure, Babylon experienced under Nabopolassar and his son and successor, Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.), a renaissance that restored to the city its importance as one of the main trading centres of the ancient Near East and re-established Babylonia as a great power. Huge temples and palaces were built, and at the same time a programme of reconstruction was inaugurated so as to restore the edifices inherited from the past by the neo-Babylonian kings. The processional way and the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, planned and constructed with brilliant technical skill, have come down to us as witnesses of the splendour with which Nebuchadnezzar's architects embellished the capital. Trade flourished. From Africa, South Arabia, and India caravans and merchant ships brought goods into Mesopotamia; but with the countries to the north and north-west communications were maintained by water along the Euphrates and Tigris. Thousands of extant documents give us a comprehensive knowledge of the circumstances of the commercial world and all aspects of the social life of the period of the neo-Babylonian kings. Babylonian science and learning culminated in the works of the Mesopotamian astronomers and chroniclers. Ancient literature was studied in Babylonian temple schools, and in many cases older works are known only in transcriptions made at this time.
Babylonia, however, was once more struck by catastrophe from the east. Internal political and theological disagreements weakened the country under the last of the neo-Babylonian kings, Nabonidus (555-539 B.C.), at a time when the Persian king Cyrus, following up the example of the Medes, and after partly taking over Median territory, was laying the foundation of the Achaemenid empire. In 539 the Persians began their attack on Babylonia. At Sippar they defeated the Babylonian army, and on 1z October 539 the gates of Babylon were opened to the army of Cyrus without any siege or fighting. The city was spared, and the inhabitants treated with mercy; life continued as before, but the initiative had passed from Babylon to other places and other peoples. The study of Mesopotamian literature and the pursuit of Sumerian and Babylonian learning and religious tradition inherited from past ages was kept up in the temple schools; even about the beginning of our present era, scribes could be found who were able to use Mesopotamian cuneiform, though the lands by Euphrates and Tigris were absorbed in the greater unit created by Hellenism. About 300 B.C. a Babylonian priest named Berossos (the Greek version of the Babylonian B61-Usur) set down in Greek an account of the history and mythology of Mesopotamia as he knew it. A hundred years earlier Herodotus had visited the country and had written down what he was told about its past, as well as his own impressions of what he saw. These writings, together with Biblical tradition, were the only sources available to posterity until excavations well over a hundred years ago began to reveal the testimony of the ancient culture of Mesopotamia that lay hidden in the ruin mounds of Iraq.
This brief account of the part the foreigners from the east came to play in the history of Mesopotamia will have shown that hostile attacks and more peaceful immigrations were alike able to influence the cultural development of the country, without any break with inherited traditions being necessarily involved. Assyria as an independent political force ceased to exist; but the neo-Babylonian kings maintained the inheritance of Mesopotamia. Not till the appearance of the Persian world-empire and Hellenic internationalism, of new trade routes and trade centres in a larger world, did the centre of gravity of civilization shift westwards to the countries of the Mediterranean, where Greece and Rome were destined to pass on the legacy of the Orient and establish the basis on which Europe has built.
What was it then that secured continuity in Mesopotamia? What constant factor made it possible for the Babylonian form of culture to withstand the vicissitudes of time? How did the civilization established by the Sumerians between Euphrates and Tigris survive the immigrations and onslaughts of the mountain dwellers long after the Sumerians had ceased to exist as an independent people? How did it come to pass that so many of the important factors that together made up the pattern of Mesopotamian culture could be preserved for so many centuries?
To be able to answer these questions we must investigate the role played in Mesopotamian history by the peoples from the Continuity and Change in Mesopotamia two western deserts, the Arabian and its northern continuation, the Syrian. While the above account of the migrations from the east has given us a glimpse of tribes belonging to widely differing linguistic groups, when we come to deal with the movements from the west we must take into consideration a number of tribes that all had one thing in common: they all spoke Semitic languages. If we elect to call them Semitic peoples, it must be clearly understood that although they spoke Semitic languages, no judgement is thereby implied as to their racial characteristics, which were by no means necessarily uniform.
An Arabic proverb declares that the Yemen is the Arab's cradle and Al-Jazira his grave. Herein lies a recognition of the fact that, through the ages, there has taken place a slow but relentless movement of tribes from the southern part of the Arabian peninsula towards the more northerly regions along the course of the Euphrates as it skirts the Syrian desert, a never-ceasing immigration of nomads to the heart of Al-Jazira, the steppes between the Euphrates and Tigris to the west of ancient Assyria.
The study by Assyriologists of Mesopotamian cuneiform texts has served to confirm the correctness of this Arab aphorism. While earlier there was a generally accepted conviction that the third millennium was essentially the period of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia-with the dynasty of Akkad (p. 15) as a unique exception-and that it was not until the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur (1955 B.C.) that Semitic-speaking peoples were of any significance, we now know that in some important respects this picture must be revised. Semitic peoples were present in Mesopotamia from the very dawn of history, perhaps even in prehistoric times. This is evident from the fact that purely Semitic names appear in lists of those engaged in the economic life of the country, especially in agriculture, as far back as written sources are available. All through the third millennium, immigration was taking place from the desert into Mesopotamia: individuals sought to obtain employment with the resident Sumerian population in the cultivated areas along the rivers, while larger groups of nomads wholly or partially gave up their nomadic existence, becoming half-nomads with more or less permanent dwellings for part of the year and with an inclination to take up agriculture, or they moved into the towns and came to resemble the town dwellers with whom they gradually became identified. This is a constant process, which takes place even today. Although it is impossible to trace the causes in every individual case, from time to time incursions from the desert have taken place that are of quite a different description: the pillaging raids of armed Bedouin, made against the towns and the cultivated fields in the fertile areas of the flood plains. The word used by the Arabs to describe such raids, ghaza, is echoed in the word razzia, a loan-word from the Arabic, used in many European languages with the same nuances as the Arabic word, for the conception of surprise attacks, the ransacking of house and home by armed bands, and the meting out of summary justice at complete variance with the accepted conventions of society. In the relationship between the desert nomads and the town-dwellers and farmers of Mesopotamia, such attacks were probably often due to the vain search of the Bedouin for fresh pastures for their herds in bad years when insufficient rainfall left the steppes a barren plain.
In the northern part of Babylonia and along the upper reaches of the Euphrates the number of communities whose members spoke a Semitic language became quite considerable during the course of the third millennium; in southern Babylonia, where the concentration of Sumerians was greatest, groups of Semites had similarly become consolidated during this period. Their language belonged to the family of Semitic languages to which Hebrew, among others, belongs, its most prominent modern representative being Arabic. The Semitic dialects that acquired most significance in Mesopotamia can be described as east-Semitic, but are now usually referred to as Akkadian, a comprehensive term used by reason of the fact that the city of Akkad in northern Babylonia became the starting-point of the earliest development of political and military initiative under the leadership of Semites.
The exact location of Akkad is not known. The tell, or bill, that conceals its ruins must presumably be sought among the tells, so far unexplored by archaeologists, that are to be found in the area of Kish and Babylon, 6o miles south of Baghdad. Even though we have not yet discovered the capital of the Akkad kings, nevertheless by other means-through their own inscriptions as well as documents from other parts of their dominions, and also through later sources that have preserved records of the period of greatness established by their rule-we have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of this, the first Semitic empire.
Developments had made the time ripe for such an experiment. Side by side with the Sumerians, considerable groups of Semitic speaking peoples were now living in the land: a result of the immigrations and infiltration of centuries. Writing, an important factor in shaping and maintaining a culture, had since its invention-marking the dawn of history-by now developed to such an extent that by its means control could be maintained over a complex economic machine, and every communication could be set down: quite large areas could be brought under a centralized organization, and letters could be exchanged between the chancery in the capital and governors in outlying provinces. In this way the necessary conditions were provided for the formation of a really large state administration.
The initiative in the establishment of such a greater realm was taken by Sargon. According to Mesopotamian tradition, Sargon, who was brought up by a gardener, became in his youth cup-bearer to a king of Kish. We have no knowledge of the exact circumstances that led to his taking over power: he overcame Lugalzagezi, a king of the city of Uruk, and 'built Akkad', where he established his seat of government. The king-list, a document edited from earlier sources towards the end of the third millennium, reports that he reigned 56 years. According to the chronology followed in the present account, his accession is attributed to about 2350 B.C.
The name Sargon (Sharrum-kin in Akkadian) is a throne name. Its meaning is 'The King is steadfast'. In the very choice of this name a whole political programme is implied. The Sumerian rulers had represented themselves as earthly viceroys of the god which every Sumerian city recognized as its true master: the Sumerian state was a city state, an area embracing the city and its hinterland. Sargon, however, appeared on the scene with a new aggressive ideology: a demand for the recognition of the monarchy personified in an earthly ruling figure, and simultaneously the concept that the monarchy had territorial demands extending beyond the narrow limits of the city-state itself. In one of his own inscriptions that has survived in a later copy, Sargon expresses himself as follows:
Sargon, King of Akkad, overseer for the goddess Ishtar, king of Kish, anointed priest of the God Anum, king of the land, the exalted ensi1 of the god Enlil: he conquered Uruk and broke down its walls; in conflict with the inhabitants of Uruk he was victorious. Lugalzagezi, King of Uruk, he took prisoner in (this) battle (and) brought him in fetters to the gates of Enlil. Sargon, King of Akkad, was victorious in battle with the inhabitants of Ur; he conquered the city and broke down its walls. He conquered the city E-Ninmar, broke down its walls, (and) subdued all its territory from Lagash to the sea. He washed his weapons in the sea. In battle with the inhabitants of the city Umma he was victorious; he conquered their city and broke down its walls.
Enlil gave Sargon, King of the land, no opponent. Enlil gave him (the lands from) the upper sea (to) the lower sea. As far as from the lower sea, it is Akkadians that have in their hands the positions of viceroy. Mari and Elam stand (in obedience) before Sargon, king of the land. Sargon, king of the land, restored Kish (and) allowed them [i.e. the inhabitants of the city] once more to take possession of the city.
May the god Shamash destroy the virility and take away all the issue of the man who may damage this inscription.
The territory of the state of Akkad thus came under Sargon to embrace the lands from the lower sea-the Persian Gulf-to the upper sea, presumably the Mediterranean; another inscription mentions towns and districts along the upper reaches of the Euphrates as far as Northern Syria as being under his dominion. Akkadian governors secured the loyalty of the subject regions with the support of a standing army: '5400 soldiers daily receive their meals in the presence of Sargon'.
A later chronicle, undoubtedly tendentious-coloured as it is by the judgement of a later Babylonian age on certain encroachments Sargon is alleged to have been responsible for against the power of Marduk, the national god of Babylon-gives the following report of his reign:
Sargon, King of Akkad, came to power in the era of the goddess Ishtar2 and had neither rivals (for power) nor any opponents. He cast his formidable glory over all lands. He crossed over the Eastern Sea and alone conquered the land in the west to its full extent in the eleventh year (of his reign). There he set up a central government. [literally: he made its mouth all one]. In the west he raised his stelae. The booty there from [i.e. from the lands in east and west] he ferried over on rafts. His officials he caused to reside (round his residence within a range of) five double-miles, and over all lands did he maintain his absolute supremacy.
He marched against the land of Kazalla and turned Kazalla into mounds of ruins and piles (of brickbats). There he destroyed (even) every place where a bird could have settled.
Later, in his advanced old age, all lands rebelled against him and laid siege to him in Akkad. But Sargon made an armed sally and smote them, overran them, and defeated their vast army.
Later Subartu arose with its hosts, but bowed before the might of his arms; this nomad people he caused to settle [?]. Their possessions he brought to Akkad.
From the pits (under the figures of the gods) in Babylon he took the earth away, and upon this (earth) he built a (new) Babylon beside Akkad. At the sacrilege of which he was thus guilty, the great Lord Marduk was aghast and therefore destroyed his people with hunger. From east to west did (Marduk) thrust them from him and smote him with punishment so that he could find no rest (in his grave).
Kazalla is a land in the regions east of the Tigris, between Babylonia and the Iranian mountains. Subartu is a geographical expression for an area that roughly corresponds with the Assyria of later times, but must obviously also be taken as including part of the mountainous region between Assyria and the higher peaks of the Zagros range; the meaning of the sentence here translated 'this nomad people he caused to settle' is uncertain. The last paragraph of this chronicle must be attributed to the theologians of the Babylon of later times, since the city of Babylon hardly existed at all in the time of Sargon, and in any event the god Marduk did not acquire importance until much later. The paragraph seems to have reference to a violation of the sanctified earth used to fill deep pits under statues of Mesopotamian deities, on which in consequence those figures were supported; whether there is any reference to any actual occurrence, with details distorted by Babylonian orthodox interpretation, is as yet unknown. In any case, the condemnation of Sargon's conduct is of great interest. It confirms the impression conveyed by later Babylonian political and religious ideology: for the Babylonians, Sargon was a bird of ill omen, whom they never understood and never wholly recognized as the ideal ruler-figure: they saw in him a man who displayed hybris, and was therefore visited by the nemesis of the gods, namely the punishment of Marduk. It was their northern kinsmen, the Assyrians, who first found in Sargon a model that they could accept, a military and political leader-figure, whose ideas they took over and developed.
From time to time doubt has been expressed as to the historical accuracy of the information contained in the inscriptions, both contemporary and later, on the extent of Sargon's conquests. The doubt is, however, unwarranted. The sites of buildings, inscriptions, and reliefs cut in the rocks in regions far distant from Akkad, all of them evidence that can certainly be attributed to Sargon and his immediate successors, demonstrate by their very presence that the influence of Akkad corresponded to the assertions made in the texts. By the quayside at Akkad, ships were anchored that had come from the harbours along the east coast of Arabia: the eastern Tigris valley, Assyria (Subartu), parts of Syria and even Asia Minor recognized the suzerainty of Akkad, and Sargon assumed the title 'King of the four quarters of the world', a title that expresses the desire for recognition as ruler over all the above-mentioned lands. The unprecedented military successes of the Akkadians were to no small extent due to their novel methods of warfare. While the Sumerians fought in a closed phalanx, in which each man was armed with a short spear for thrusting or made use of a battleaxe or mace, the Akkadians fought in open order armed with a javelin for hurling and, in particular, with weapons that were later to provide the Assyrians with their victories, namely the bow and arrow: such arms must have been as revolutionary in Sargon's time as the atom bomb in our own.
The establishment of the territorial state did not, however, mean that the Akkadians abandoned the institutions that the Sumerians had created and maintained as essential features of their own culture. The worship of the Sumerian deities continued in temples all over the country: a daughter of Sargon, Enheduanna (a Sumerian name), occupied a high position as high priestess of the god Nanna in the moon-temple at Ur, and in some cases Sumerian deities were identified with the Akkadian: where aspects of the being worshipped as a deity by the Sumerians resembled characteristics of the gods the Akkadians venerated, such divinities could be combined and presented as one and the same. By such syncretism the Mesopotamian pantheon became modified. Among the difficulties besetting research into Mesopotamian religion is, therefore, the necessity of allowing for Sumerian as well as Semitic influences in the development of some of the deities concerned. Some aspects of a god's character may well stem from concepts evolved by a Sumerian farming population: other aspects of the selfsame individual deity may be founded on a tradition brought by the Akkadians from their desert past, and may be common to other Semitic peoples with whom they shared their original nomadic conditions.
A syncretism of another kind occurred when the Akkadians took over cuneiform. This script, probably invented and certainly developed by the Sumerians with ever-increasing precision and phonetic correspondence to the Sumerian language, was used by the Akkadians to set down Akkadian texts. A tendency to divorce writing from the principle of simple word-notation (i.e. with each sign actually meaning the object represented) had already begun before the Akkad dynasty was established. The beginning of the 'phoneticization' of script, i.e. its conversion into syllable writing, can be placed at about 3000 B.C. The individual symbol no longer bound up with the significance of the picture that was its original form-could now be used independently of its basic meaning and signify, in quite an abstract manner, the syllable or sound that was in Sumerian connected with the word concerned. The transformation from word-writing to picture-writing, from ideographic to syllabic script, was considerably accelerated in the course of the centuries preceding the Akkad dynasty by a need to set down foreign non-Sumerian names. The Sumerian scribe who had to put down in the accounts names of Semitic workmen was obliged to separate these names into syllables, and to use for each syllable a symbol that, in consequence, appeared in the text with no connexion with its original ideographic meaning; he employed the symbols of the Sumerian system of writing with no regard to the basic ideographic meaning of these symbols. The assimilation of cuneiform to a language very different from the one for which the writing system was originally created was a lengthy process; only gradually were principles evolved for the use of such a system to write the Akkadian language, but even in its most fully developed form, in the middle of the first millennium B.C., cuneiform contains inconsistencies and vital omissions that are a reminder of the fact that it was originally intended for a non-Semitic language. By the time of the establishment of the dynasty of Akkad, however, the writing-system had developed sufficiently for it to be possible to write down any kind of text, and I have already drawn attention to this as one of the circumstances that favoured the establishment of an administration over wider areas; in fact, it was one of the necessary conditions for the formation of a state on a larger scale (p. 18). The difficulties encountered by scribes and priests, the savants of the time, in the adaptation of Sumerian cuneiform to Akkadian, contributed to the creation of an early type of scientific literature. The lists of written symbols that had been used since the beginning of the historic period for instruction in the temple schools were now revised and provided with explanations according to various systems, as well as with translations into Akkadian; a whole series of lexicographical works was produced, the forerunners of a Babylonian-Assyrian philology.
The innovations brought by the rule of Sargon were thus accompanied by the preservation and further development of important elements in the pattern of culture taken over by the dynasty of Akkad from the Sumerian city-states. It was precisely the encounter between the Sumerian and Akkadian types of genius, the combination of Sumerian city-culture and Semitic audacity of thought, that made possible the emergence of an empire that was to carry Mesopotamian civilization far beyond the country's own frontiers and was to bring an acquaintance with the script, religion, and social structure of Mesopotamia to distant areas, where it left unmistakable traces.
Under the immediate successors of Sargon-his sons and descendants-the empire retained to all intents and purposes the extent achieved by the far-sighted founder of the dynasty. The king-list gives the following succession:
Rimush, son of Sharrum-kin,
reigned for nine years;
Man-ishtu-shu,
elder brother of Rimush,
son of Sharrum-kin,
reigned for fifteen years;
Naram-Sin,
son of Man-ishtu-shu
reigned for 37 years;
Shar-kali-sharri,
son of Naram-Sin,
reigned for 25 years.
Under Naram-Sin the empire achieved its greatest extent and influence. Naram-Sin led his armies into the Zagros mountains, where he gained victory in war with the people called the Lullubum; in memory of this campaign he caused a relief to be carved on a rock-face in the Qara Dagh mountains south of Sulaimaniya, showing him at the head of his army fighting the mountain-dwellers on steep mountain slopes. A similar relief that can probably also be attributed to Naram-Sin has recently been discovered on a rock-face at Darband-i-Ramkan, where the Little Zab breaks through the mountain range south-east of Rania and then flows south through the plains that the Kurds call Dasht-i-Bitwain. (See maps, pp. 25 and 74).
The reign of Shar-kali-sharri saw the first signs of difficulties in the border areas of the realm. A letter from a certain IshkunDagan, presumably sent to a provincial governor, says: 'You shall plough the fields and look after the cattle. Do not say [i.e. it will be no use your saying]: "Yes, but there are Gutians (on the move) and so I cannot plough my field". Set up patrols of watchmen every half-mile and then plough your field. If armed bands advance, [local] mobilization will be organized for you, and you must then have the cattle driven into the city. . . . If there are Gutians who have [already?] driven off the cattle, there is nothing to be said, but [nevertheless?] I will pay you [what is due to you?]. This do I swear by the life of Sharkali-sharri. . . .' This letter, not being obtained during an organized excavation, is of unknown provenance: it contains, however, the first mention of Gutium, 'the dragon from the mountains' (p. 14); Gutian raids presumably became more and more frequent from this time on and presented a threat to the power of the kings of Akkad that eventually overthrew the dynasty. After his mention of the reign of Shar-kali-sharri, the author of the king-list remarks:
Who was king, who was not king?
Was Igigi king?
Was Nanum king?
Was Imi king?
Was Elulu king?
Four were kings and reigned for (but) three years.
Conditions were chaotic and the empire of the Akkadians tottered. Part of Mesopotamia fell to the lot of the Gutians, but some of the old city-states, particularly in the southern part of the country, rose again, some under Sumerian and some under Semitic leadership.
In Lagash, Gudea was able to ignore the presence of the Gutians, and to inaugurate a Sumerian renaissance, in which art and literature flourished and craftsmanship and trade were pursued without let or hindrance. The Sumerian golden age, ushered in by Gudea (about 2100 B.C.), reached its peak with the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The founder of this dynasty, Ur-Nammu, united the Mesopotamian city-states again as one kingdom and extended Sumerian power to the east, north, and north-west: in fact, Ur-Nammu and his successor Shulgi (about 2046-1998 B.C.) very largely restored the empire that had existed under the first kings of Akkad. The period is remarkably well documented in innumerable cuneiform texts dealing with all aspects of the administration and economic life of the kingdom. With few exceptions, the state documents employ the Sumerian language, but it is quite clear that people with Semitic speech were established in the land in considerable numbers, and undoubtedly quite large groups of the population used Akkadian dialects as their spoken language. Akkadian expressions crop up extensively as loan-words in the Sumerian texts, and Akkadian personal names bear witness to the increasing influence of Semitic-speaking families in society. Even members of the Ur dynasty had Semitic names: namely, the last king but one of Ur, Shu-Sin (about 1989-1980 B.C.) and the last ruler of the dynasty, Ibbi-Sin (1979-1955). With the end of Ibbi-Sin's reign, the Sumerians irrevocably lost their power, but this was merely an apparent breach; in fact there had been, right from the period of the dynasty of Akkad, a steadily increasing development in favour of the Semitic immigrants, and the cultural life of Mesopotamia was moulded according to patterns conditioned by the Sumerian-Semitic symbiosis. This is one of the world's most instructive examples of the fruitfulness of contact between two cultural patterns and an argument against theories suggesting that culture thrives best where racial purity is preserved.
We may assume that Sumerian ceased to be a spoken language during the period following the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur. However, the study of this language in Mesopotamian schools continued as long as Babylonian culture existed: it was used by priests and scribes in ritual and in business documents, and instruction in Sumerian was given far beyond the boundaries of Mesopotamia: in Egypt, in Asia Minor, and between 1400 and 1200 B.C. also in the Hittite capital in Anatolia. The mentality transmitted to posterity by the Sumerian script and living tradition made a lasting impression on the peoples who carried on the culture of Western Asia. What then is the most outstanding debt of Mesopotamia to the Sumerians? If a simple answer is to be given to this question, certainly a desire to create order must be stressed as a characteristic feature of Sumerian mentality. The term order must be understood in its widest sense. Order in administration was essential in the topographical circumstances in which the Sumerians lived: the rivers had to be tamed, the irrigation of fields systematically organized. Meanwhile the orderly attitude of the Sumerians towards their environment was carried further: their tendency to systematization came to embrace the whole of existence, every phenomenon and all observations. Lists, or registers, were prepared of fields and cities, the various classes of society, and the city temples. There were lists of deities, great and small, carefully arranged according to their rank; lists of personal names, including not only such names as were in fact in use, but also names that were possible in theory without actually being employed; lists of objects arranged according to the material of which they were composed-wood, clay, the various metals, stone, etc.; lists of special juridical terms (formularies); lists of linguistic forms, and written symbols arranged according to various systems. Such ordered texts go back to the dawn of Mesopotamian history, and were accumulated in the course of centuries as a result of the continuous work carried out on them by teachers and pupils. Commentaries are also found. Though this may not have been scientific literature in today's sense of the term, yet we can discern here an attempt to resolve the sum total of experience and observation into categories, a comprehensive endeavour--consistently carried out--to create a system out of experience of the environment. The combination of the Sumerians' desire for order and the restless initiative introduced into Mesopotamian culture by the Semitic peoples from the desert may perhaps be regarded as at any rate a partial explanation of the unusual vitality that this civilization showed itself to possess.
The immigration from the desert, which earlier had made it possible for the dynasty of Akkad to assume power, reached a new peak after the fall of Ur in 1955 B.C. The desert tribes, Tidaum or Amurrum (cf, p. 15), established new states along the Euphrates and Tigris; in the areas east of the Tigris also kingdoms arose that were under Amorite regents. In the period lasting to about 1700 B.C., Isin and Larsa were the most influential cities, and this phase is known as the Isin-Larsa period.
Just as the kings of Akkad had taken over the script that they found in use in Sumerian Mesopotamia, so did the rulers of Isin and Larsa also make use of cuneiform. Their inscriptions, composed in Akkadian or quite often in Sumerian, embraced Mesopotamian culture in all its aspects. These Semitic peoples acknowledged their debt to the ancient Sumerian period. The written tradition was preserved in the temple schools; works of Sumerian literature were written down and title-catalogues of these works were prepared; collections of laws were edited on the basis of Sumerian redactions, and problems in mathematics and astronomy were studied. Not only were young men who were destined for priestly office, or for careers as scribes in the state chanceries, sent to be educated in the schools belonging to the great temples; sons of public officials, too, frequently spent time in such colleges to study cuneiform and the literature set forth in it. There is a letter of this period, or perhaps slightly later, which a student, Iddin-Sin, sent to his mother Zinu while he was staying at one of the boarding-schools of the time: it is an extremely human document written in Babylonian, dating from the eighteenth century B.C.
Say to Zinu: thus says Iddin-Sin.
May the gods Shamash, Marduk, and Ilabrat preserve you safe and sound for my sake.
The clothes of the other boys get better and better year by year. You let my clothes get plainer and plainer each year. By making my clothes plainer and fewer, you have enriched yourself. Although wool is used in our house like bread, you have made my clothes worse.
Addad-iddinam's son, whose father is bondman to my father, [has just received?] two new suits of clothes, but you are continually worried about merely one suit for me. While you actually brought me into the world, his mother adopted him: but the way in which his mother loves him, in such a way you do not by any means love me.
Knowledge of the history of the kingdoms of Isin and Larsa, and of the historical events that led to the growing power of Babylon and to the ultimate autocratic sway of Hammurabi, is based on cuneiform texts that have come to light in the course of excavations in Mesopotamia since the end of the nineteenth century. But it is due to the archaeological investigations of an even later time that we have obtained some insight into conditions in Assyria, the northern province of Mesopotamia, and those prevailing in the areas round the northern reaches of the Euphrates to the north of the Syrian desert. For this new vision we are indebted to the French excavations of the city of Mari (now Tell Hariri), situated on the Euphrates near Der ez-Zor on the Syrian side of the frontier with Iraq. Here were discovered in 193 5 the archives of the kings of Mari, altogether about 20,000 cuneiform documents, among them a very large number of letters of which over 600 have so far been published by French and Belgian Assyriologists.
An important post on the road from southern Mesopotamia to northern Syria, Mari has been of importance since the beginning of history. Even before the times of the Akkadian kings, Mari had been conquered at least once by a Sumerian prince, and the city was incorporated in the realm of Akkad just as later it became part of the empire of the last kings of Ur. Mari had thus for centuries before the Isin-Larsa period been subject to strong influences from the high culture of Mesopotamia, but the city's own kings bore Semitic names. Maxi had been an important, perhaps the most important, bridgehead established by the Semitic-speaking desert tribes and became a base for their further expansion. The prince of Isin, Ishbi-Errs, who took Ur in 1955 B.C., was a man from Mari who had subdued Isin with the help of his Amorite armies. The Mari letters have provided us with a comprehensive knowledge of a local dynasty, whose first important ruler was Jaggidlim; his sway continued to be exercised by his son Jahdunlim and his grandson Zimrilim (c. 1716-1695 B.C.).
The Semitic people, the Amorites, that had by now established themselves everywhere in Babylonia, were completely assimilated to the successors of the Sumerians and to the successors of the Semitic peoples that had settled by the Euphrates and Tigris long before the arrival of the Amorites. Under rulers such as Hammurabi (1728-1686 B.C.), the Babylonian empire embraced not only the whole of Mesopotamia but also the border regions to the east, Mari on the Euphrates, Assyria with the cities Assur and Nineveh to the north on the Tigris, as well as parts of the mountainous areas east of Assyria itself. The contemporary reports from which this knowledge is derived are not, however, reports conceived in the spirit of the kings of Akkad; it is only exceptionally that inscriptions of Babylonian kings are preserved that can be described as true historical sources. Following Sumerian tradition, the Babylonian kings, on the contrary, set great store by appearing as benefactors and protectors. In subject cities they restored local temples and posed as protectors of the local cult; they scrupulously saw to the maintenance of canal systems and liked to describe themselves as fathers of the country and shepherds of the people. The principal evidence for conditions at the time of the Babylonian kings consists of numerous inscriptions giving accounts of the rebuilding or building of temples and city walls, as well as letters exchanged between the kings and provincial governors on administrative questions; so far something over a thousand such letters of the period of the Babylonian dynasty have been published, but in museums of the Near East, Europe, and America there are several times as many letters of the period not yet available in published form. Another important source for Babylonian history is provided by the dating system, the 'year formulas' as they are called. In Babylonia events were dated not according to the king's regnal year but with reference to important happenings, so that each single year was given a name according to whatever event in that year was officially regarded as the most significant. Babylonian scribes worked out systematic lists of the 'year formulas' for the reign of each king. An extract from the 'year formulas' for Hammurabi's reign (1728-1686 B.C.) will show that regard was paid, now to military, now to social, and now to religious occurrences:
1. The year in which Hammurabi became king.
2. The year in which he brought justice to the land.3
3. The year in which he made a throne for the god Nanna in Babylon.
4. The year in which he built a wall around the sanctuary Gagia.
7. The year in which Uruk and Isin were conquered.
9. The year in which the canal 'Hammurabi is (the land's) wealth' was dug.
14. The year in which he prepared a throne for the goddess Inanna in Babylon.
22. The year in which the statue 'Hammurabi is the king of righteousness' [was prepared].
35. The year in which, at the behest of Anum and Enlil, he destroyed the walls round Mari and Malgia.
37. The year in which, with the help of the god Marduk, he overcame the armies from Turukkum, Kakmum, and the land of Subartu.
42. The year in which he built a wall on the banks of the Tigris as high as the mountains, called it 'The quay wall of the god Shamash', and also built a wall round the city Rapiqum on the banks of the Euphrates.
By such formulas, often severely abbreviated, business transactions such as contracts, conveyances, etc. were dated. The names of the years are occasionally our only evidence for the exploits of Babylonian kings and for the dating of such events.
The Babylonian kings of the dynasty of Hammurabi, and of the princely houses that followed-including the Kassites (p. 15)-thus regarded themselves as the heirs of the Sumerians. No break occurred in this tradition despite a new gradual immigration from the desert which, with the appearance of the Aramaeans, began to be noticeable in Mesopotamia towards the end of the second millennium and lasted throughout the first millennium B.C. These tribes, following the Akkadians and the Amorites on the road from Arabia to the urban communities along the rivers, established their own kingdoms on the Mediterranean coast and in northern Syria: but in Babylonia and Assyria they completely absorbed Mesopotamian culture and can hardly be distinguished by any separate culture-pattern from the older Semitic inhabitants. During the first millennium B.C. Aramaic, a West-Semitic dialect, replaced Babylonian and Assyrian as the spoken language in great areas of Mesopotamia: but until 6IZ B.C. Assyrian was still the written language in northern Mesopotamia; it is only through Aramaic names and the rare cases in which remarks in the Aramaic language and script are appended to the Assyrian cuneiform on the clay tablets that we have any evidence of an increasing variation in the composition of society. The suggestion has been made that there was a similar Aramaic infiltration into southern Mesopotamia, and there is some probability in the conjecture that the neo-Babylonian kings (cf. p. 16) were of Aramaic origin, but in their cultural development they looked back to the past of Babylon, and in their inscriptions showed a predilection for the written forms of the age of Hammurabi; even the symbols used in their monumental inscriptions were often of an archaizing character and resembled the texts of a period of a thousand years ago.
The relentless pressure of peoples from the Arabian and Syrian deserts brought Mesopotamia into the Semitic-speaking section of the world. When, in A.D. 63 3, Arab tribes, bringing with them the religious ideology of Muhammed, had brought the whole of Iraq under Islam, a new Semitic language was introduced into the country, and Arabic is still the official language of Iraq. But in some places in Iraq, Aramaic dialects are still spoken by small groups of the population-a belated survival of the last spoken language of Mesopotamia in ancient times. Of Babylonian and Assyrian, however, there only remain today a few words, e.g. technical expressions used in connexion with the cultivation and husbandry of the date-palm, but these expressions have, through the agency of Aramaic, survived for two millennia.
Assur Founded-Assur under Akkad and Ur-Trading Colonies in Asia Minor-The Amorites in Assyria-Shamshi-Adad IEkall$tum-Assur and Shubat-Enlil-Terga-Mari-JasmahAdad and Ishme-Dagan as Viceroys-Qatanum-The Nomads-The Eastern Provinces-Qabra-the Turukkaeans-ShusharraThe Defection of the Provinces-Zimrilim-Hammurabi of Babylon-The Dissolution of the Kingdom.
IN the northern province of
Mesopotamia, Semitic-speaking tribes had settled by the Tigris:
immigrants from the desert, nomads from Al-jazira, secured a permanent
home here and early in the third millennium founded the city of Assur,
about 6o miles south of Mosul. Until the end of the seventh century
B.C., Assur continued to be the religious centre of the land: it was
also for long periods the political capital. The city had the same name
as the national deity of these Semitic tribes, and the land surrounding
it was described as the land of Assur: hence the term Assyria which we
now employ, having inherited it from Greek historians and travellers.
In calling the population Assyrians, we are using an expression that
corresponds to their own terminology.
Assur experienced Sumerian influences at an early date, although Sumerians had not as yet been actually resident there. Assur was incorporated in the kingdom of Akkad at its greatest development: at the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur, too, Assur was in a position of dependence on the south. An inscription from Assur gives us the name of a governor--Zariqum, who acknowledged the position of vassal to Amar-Sin (about 1998-1989 B.C.) the third king of this dynasty. According to the Assyrians' own tradition, preserved in a king-list of which two copies are extant, they were governed in antiquity by a series of kings, seventeen in all, who lived in tents; the Assyrians thus recognized that their kings and they themselves had in times past been nomads, and the tribes that peopled Assyria about 1000 B.C. presumably formed part of the Amorite migration, other groups from which settled around Mari and in Babylonia. The dialects of Akkadian spoken in Assyria differed to some extent, however, from the Babylonian dialects; but the relationship between the southern and northern Akkadian dialects and their relationships to the language of the Akkad period (Old Akkadian) have not yet been satisfactorily established. If a clearer picture were available of the relationships between the Akkadian dialects, it would be possible to draw definite conclusions about the historical relationships-the migrations of the Semitic tribes and their mutual kinship but so far the evidence is fragmentary.
During the domination of the Third
Dynasty of Ur, and under its protection, a comprehensive trade-drive
developed with Assur as its starting-point. Assyrian merchants thus set
up trading-posts in several important towns and cities in Asia Minor.
The . Assyrian trading-community at Kanesh (now Kultepe), about 150
miles south of Ankara, conducted a particularly vigorous import and
export trade with commercial houses in Assur; 
Kanesh
exported to
Assur metal ore, obtained from the mines in Anatolia, while Assur sent
to Kanesh finished metal goods and textiles. This trading activity,
which lasted for several generations, is known from archives comprising
several thousand cuneiform tablets. Besides their interest for
commercial history, these texts are also important as being our best
evidence for the old Assyrian dialect: they date from a period for
which there are still few inscriptions from Assur itself. After the
fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur (1955 B.C.), the now independent kings
of Assyria took charge of the trade with Asia Minor and of the
protection of the caravan routes linking Assur with Kanesh over the
steppe of Al-Jazira and the passes of the Taurus mountains. The
Assyrian kings of the period emphasized their newly won freedom from
the political control of southern Mesopotamia by choosing royal names
that revived the tradition of the dynasty of Akkad. Thus, both a
'Sargon' (Sargon I. of Assyria) and a 'Naram-Sin' are included in the
list of Assyrian kings about the nineteenth century B.C. The Assyrian
trading colonies in Asia Minor seem to have had a last phase of
importance under Sargon I. However, the growing power of the Hittites
in Asia Minor involved the loss by Assyria of these colonies about 1770
B.C. Political conditions in the land in the decades immediately
following are obscure. The Assyrian king-list gives the following
information about this period
Shamshi-Adad, son of Ila-kabkabl, marched
at the time when Naram-Sin [was king of Assyria]
to Karduniash [i.e. Babylonia].
When Ibni-Adad occupied the office of
limmu,
Shamshi-Adad came north from Karduniash;
he took the city of Ekallatum and for three years had his residence in Ekallatum.
When Aramat-Ishtar occupied the office of limmu,4
Shamshi-Adad came north from Ekallatum,
deposed Erreshum [king of Assyria], son of Naram-Sin [of Assyria],
ascended the throne (himself), and ruled for 33 years.
With this Shamshi-Adad the Amorites make their entry into Assyria, and initiate the participation of that land in the interplay of great powers that their kinsmen in Isin, Larsa, Babylon, and Mari had set in motion in southern Mesopotamia.
Shamshi-Adad's reign is dated to 1748-1716 B.C.; thus, in the last twelve years of his reign, he was a contemporary of Hammurabi (1728-1686). As four later Assyrian kings also chose the same name, he is known as Shamshi-Adad I.
The discovery of the Mari archives (see p. 22) has made it possible to fill out the sketchy picture of Shamshi-Adad I given by the Assyrian king-lists. Now we can reconstruct in many important respects the picture of this ruler, his origin, his personality and his unusual career.
Where the Euphrates bounds the Syrian
desert to the north, a number of small states had arisen in the period
after about 2000 B.C. Their population was largely composed of
half-nomadic Amorites, or of Amorite desert-peoples who had completely
given up their nomadic existence and settled in and around cities and
towns along the river. We have already (p. 22) met Mari as one of the
most important of these cities, and one that during the third
millennium had been subjected to Mesopotamian rulers during the
expansion that stemmed from Babylon. Only some thirty miles further up
the Euphrates was situated a smaller city, Terqa, capital of a little
Amorite kingdom. Shamshi-Adad's father, Ila-Kabkabi, was king of this
city about 1760 B.C.; but between Terqa and the Amorite dynasty in Mari
relations 
were far from
friendly. Although at some time a non-aggression pact had obviously
been concluded between Ila-Kabkabi and Jaggidlim, who was then the
ruler of Mari (cf. p. 23), this pact was broken and war was waged
between Terqa and Mari with varying success. In a letter found at Mari,
a son of Shamshi-Adad outlines the conditions of the time as he sees
them. The letter belongs to the period following the assumption of
power at Assur by Shamshi-Adad; the section relevant in this connexion
reads as follows:
In my family there is none who has sinned against the god: they all keep to the oaths made upon [the invocation of] the god. In time of old did Ila-Kabkabi and Jaggidlim swear a binding oath to each other. Ila-Kabkabi has not sunned [i.e. failed in his sworn undertaking] towards Jaggidlim; on the contrary, it is Jaggidlim who has sinned against Ila-Kabkabi.
Later on, the letter refers to an occasion when Ila-Kabkabi succeeded in razing a wall round or near Mari. From the other side, however, we know that later on Mari attacked Terqa with more effect, so that Jaggidlim drove Ila-Kabkabi from the throne and incorporated the city in his own kingdom: Terqa became subject to Mari, and Ila-Kabkabi and his family were obliged to flee the country. Everything points to their exile having been spent in Babylonia; of Shamshi-Adad, who at the time must have been quite a young man, the Assyrian king-list, as we have seen (p. 25), reports that he, 'when Naram-Sin was King of Assyria, marched to Karduniash'. When later on, as king of Assyria, Shamshi-Adad had his own inscriptions drawn up, he used in them the Babylonian dialect instead of choosing the old Assyrian form of language, which we find employed in the texts of the earlier kings of Assur; this fact also suggests that his stay in Babylonia must have instilled in him a deep affection for Babylonian language and culture. It is not unreasonable to assume that, as the son of a foreign prince, he had attended one of the Babylonian schools where young men of high birth received instruction in Sumerian and Babylonian language and literature-a college like the one from which Iddin-Sin sent his letter of complaint to Zinu (p. 22). There is no means of judging how long Shamshi-Adad stayed in Babylonia, and no source has yet provided an explanation of how he was able to organize the army that made it possible for him to launch an offensive war against Ekallatum. The Assyrian king-list laconically reports that he took that city, about 3o miles south of Assur; later, when he had secured the Assyrian throne, it became one of the most important bases in the southern part of his kingdom. The capture of Ekallatum, however, was probably made possible for ShamshiAdad because he had behind him an army of Amorite mercenaries, who were only too pleased to participate in such an undertaking, in the hope of the rich booty obtainable when a conquered city was plundered. Shamshi-Adad could possibly have gained financial support from interested parties in Babylon, who saw that their advantage lay in a weakening of Assyrian influence in the northern provinces. This part of the story, however, is only conjecture. What is certain is that, during his stay of three years in Ekallatum, Shamshi-Adad must have prepared his attack on Assur, the northern capital, and that it was from there that he launched the actual assault. Having taken the capital of the Assyrian empire, he overthrew the dynasty in power and proclaimed himself king of Assur in 1748 B.C.
Shamshi-Adad immediately sought to justify his accession to power in Assyria on religious grounds. In the spirit of Babylon, he sought to establish his worth as king by claiming that Anum and Enlil-the old Sumerian gods, who according to Babylonian theology protected the country's kings-had called him to the throne of Assur. Adopting the territorial theology of the kings of Akkad, he assumed the title of 'king of the whole world', and in the victory-stelae carved by his sculptors he closely imitated the heroic style introduced into Mesopotamian relief sculpture by Sargon and Naram-Sin of Akkad: this style was never emulated by Babylonian kings. In Assur he had a temple-complex erected on a grand scale for the god Enlil. The constant assertion by Shamshi-Adad that Enlil had assigned him sway over Assyria finds its ultimate expression in the fact that he chose the name Shubat-Enlil, 'residence of Enlil, for the new capital that was founded in north Mesopotamia west of the Tigris. The site of this city has not yet been discovered; its ruins would have to be sought among the numerous ruin-mounds to be seen on the Jazira steppe, between the tributaries flowing into the Euphrates from the north. Shamshi-Adad gradually transferred most of his administration to Shubat-Enlil: perhaps the city was easier to defend against attacks from the south and east on account of its situation away from the Tigris and the old army-routes.
In an inscription from Assur, of which many copies-carved on alabaster plaques-axe known, Shamshi-Adad gives the following account of his titles, his building activities in Assur; and his conquests up to date:
Shamshi-Adad, king of the whole world, who-'built the temple of the god Assur, he who at the behest of Assur, who loves him, fortified the land between Euphrates and Tigris, he whose name the gods Anum and Enlil uttered out of regard for the great deeds (he wrought) over and above the kings that went before him.
The temple of Enlil, which Erreshum, son of Ilushuma, had built-that temple was decayed and I caused it to be removed. The temple of Enlil my lord, an awesome chapel, a mighty building, the seat of my lord Enlil, that stands securely built by the work of the builders, did I build in my city Assur. To the temple I gave a roof of cedar-logs. In the chambers I set up doors of cedar wood with inlays of silver and gold. [Under the foundations of] the walls of the temple [I laid down] silver and gold, lapis4azuli and carnelian [as foundation offerings], and I sprinkled the foundation with cedar oil, oil of the best kind, honey and butter. The temple of Enlil my lord I established firm and called its name E-am-kurkur-ra (that means) 'The house of the wild bull of the land'. . . .5
At that time I received in my city Assur tribute from the kings of Tukrish and from the king of the upper land. I set up a stele (on which was) my exalted name, in the land Lab'an on the coast of the great sea.
By taking tribute from the kings of Tukrish, an area east of the Tigris, and from the king of 'the upper land', which must be understood as a term for part of northern Syria, Shamshi-Adad expresses his wish to be recognized by princes in the lands from the Zagros range to the coast of the Mediterranean, 'the great sea'; Lab'an is most probably identical with Lebanon, from which Shamshi-Adad must have imported the cedar-wood that was used as building-timber for the temple of Enlil at Assur.
During his conquests in the lands west of Assyria, Shamshi-Adad did not forget Terqa, the city from which he sprang, and from which Jaggidlim and Jahdunlim, the kings of Mari, had expelled his family. From the very first, his plans must have included a scheme for the reconquest of Terqa by means of a retaliatory expedition against Mari. His official inscriptions, so far as they are at present known, give no information about the date when this campaign was carried out. That it did in fact take place, and that it was crowned with success, is clear from the evidence revealed by the French excavations of the Mari archives (p. 22). A large part of this correspondence on foreign politics and state administration stems from a period when both Mari and Terqa were under Assyrian domination. The reader of these letters is transported to a period when Shamshi-Adad ruled from Assur and Shubat-Enlil, while two of his sons, Jasmah-Adad and Ishme-Dagan, as his viceroys, maintained the kingdom's interests in Mari and Ekaliatum respectively-a period that, in the history of Mari, can be described as the Assyrian interregnum in that city.
Those of the Mari letters so far published fall into the following groups: nearly 150 letters from Shamshi-Adad to JasmahAdad; then about 100 letters from Jasmah-Adad and his brother Ishme-Dagan, partly a mutual exchange of correspondence between themselves; and finally a large number of letters to and from officials in the towns and districts around Mari, some from the reign of Jasmah-Adad, some from that of Zimrilim; as an example there are 84 letters from one Kibri-Dagan, Zimrilim's governor in Terqa, addressed to the chancery at Mari. Neither Ekallatum nor Shubat-Enlil has been excavated; it is obvious that archaelogical investigation of these cities-when they can be identified-should bring to light archives of the same type as those discovered at Mari, archives of perhaps even greater scope, from which the picture provided by the Mari letters can be rounded out in much more detail. The fact that, at Mari, letters were also found from Jasmah-Adad is presumably due to the practice of preparing two copies of each letter, one copy being kept for filing in the chancery from which the communication was sent.
The conquest of Mari by Shamshi-Adad cost Jahdunlim his life. A letter from Kibri-Dagan to Zimrilim mentions a late epilogue to this event:
Say to my lord: thus says Kibri-Dagan your servant:
With (the god) Dagan and Ikrub-Il it is well; with the city Terqa and (the whole) district it is likewise well.
Yet another matter. The same day that I am sending this my letter to my lord, the muhhum-priest of Dagan came to me and presented the matter to me as follows: 'The god has enjoined me: hasten to approach the King with the message that a funeral-feast must be held for the spirit of Jahdunlim.' This has the muhhrimpriest said to me, and herewith have I passed on the message to my lord. May my lord take such action as seems to him best!
(The word etimmum, here translated as 'spirit', could perhaps be rendered better by the Latin manes, which indicates the soul of the deceased. The Babylonian concept of the realm of the dead, arallu, assumed that the deceased lived in it as shadows, with dust for their fare and clay for their nutriment. It was 'a land from which none returned', 'a house in which those who entered were deprived of the light', where the deceased were 'clad like birds, with wings instead of garments'. It was a house in which 'dust lay on the door and bolt'. Such is the description of the underworld in a myth portraying the descent of the goddess Ishtar to the realm of the dead. In the legend of Gilgamesh, this hero is permitted the privilege of conversation with his departed friend Enkidu. Nergal, god of the underworld, opens a hole in the earth, and 'scarce had he opened it before the spirit (etimmum) of Enkidu came forth like a puff of wind from the realm of the dead. They embraced and kissed one another. They exchanged question and answer and sighed to one another', and Gilgamesh asks: 'Tell me, my friend, tell me, my friend, of the establishment of the underworld that you have seen'. Enkidu answers as follows: 'I will not tell you of it, I will not tell you of it. But if I tell you of the establishment of the underworld that I have seen, then sit down and weep.' 'He who died a sudden death, have you seen him?' 'I have seen him: at night he lies on his couch and drinks pure water'. 'He who fell in battle, have you seen him?' 'I have seen him: his father and mother support his head, and his wife shed tears over him.' 'He whose body was slung out on the steppe: have you seen him?' 'I have seen him: his soul finds no rest in the underworld.' 'He whose spirit has no one to provide for it: have you seen him?' 'I have seen him: the dregs from the jar, crumbs from the loaf, the refuse from the street, these he eats.'-Such is the concept that makes it vital for Zimrilim to institute a cult of the dead for the soul of his father Jahdunlim after the passage of several years, during which, being in exile, he was unable to make suitable offerings.)
Shamshi-Adad's vengeance on the dynasty that had driven his father from the throne extended to the sons of Jahdunlim, who were taken away and put to death; only one, Zimrilim, evaded this fate and escaped: later, when times appeared more favourable, it fell to the lot of Zimrilim to put an end to Assyrian domination at Mari. From a letter of Shamshi-Adad to Jasmah-Adad, we learn the fate of Jahdunlim's daughters:
Jahdunlim's young daughters, whom I delivered to you-these daughters have now grown up: [.... ] they have become grown women and [. . . .] you shall have them taken to Shubat-Enlil, where they shall live in the house that belongs to you. They will be trained in singing, and when you come here [.... ]. 6
Of the brothers, Ishme-Dagan was the more remarkable, and Shamshi-Adad must have chosen him as viceroy in Ekallitum in the consciousness that this frontier-city to the south was in better hands under Ishme-Dagan than under Jasmah-Adad, who was less like his father. In his letters to his son at Mari, he exhibits from time to time his impulsive temperament, when he finds occasion to criticize Jasmah-Adad's arrangements in terms that hardly endear him to the reader.
Say to Jasmah-Adad: thus says Shamshi-Adad, your father. The letter you sent me I have heard [i.e. had it read aloud to me]. Regarding the fact that evil has been spoken of Mubalshaga for the past three years-whether you are willing to defend his case, or on the contrary you do not blame him, let him nevertheless work. You are still young: there is as yet no beard on your chin, and even now when you have reached maturity, you have not set up a home. [.... ], your house in Ekallatum and your house in Shubat-Enlil are abandoned. [.... ] .... Now that Usur-awasu has gone to his doom [i.e. has died], who is there to look after your house? Is it perhaps not the case that if an administrator does not carry out his functions for merely two or three days, the administration collapses? Why in such circumstances have you not appointed a man to this post? As to the remark in your letter: 'Sin-iluni is too young; he is not