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Throughout northern Mesopotamia - ancient Assyria - remains of the Mitannian Empire are found directly above those of the Akkadians. The latter empire, however, is said to have disappeared almost seven centuries before the rise of Mitanni, and it is generally assumed that there was some sort of "dark age" in the region in the intervening years. However, archaeological investigation has shown continuity of occupation as well as culture between the Akkadian and Mitannian epochs, and it is clear that no period of abandonment intervened. Even worse, Mitannian documents refer repeatedly to an Old Assyrian Kingdom which was conquered by the first Mitanni Great Kings Parsatatar and Shaushtatar. These documents also speak of the two greatest rulers of this Old Assyrian Empire, who are named as Sargon (Sharru-kin) and Naram Sin, and it is regarded as a strange coincidence that their royal titles are identical to the two greatest kings of the Akkadians, Sargon I and Naram Sin. How can this conundrum be resolved? The solution was proferred in 1990 by the late Gunnar Heinsohn, who argued that the Akkadians were one and the same as the Old Assyrians, a solution which explains at a stroke the occurrence of Akkadian rather than Old Assyrian strata underneath the Mitanni and the strange reappearance of Sargon I and Naram Sin in Mitannian Age documents. The present paper looks at evidence in support of this solution, and examines some of the profound consequences this will have for our understanding of the whole of ancient history.
This article aims to re-evaluate the history of the Middle Assyrian Empire by looking at new archaeological data and by critically re-examining the textual evidence. Special attention will be given to concepts like ‘Empire’, the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’, and related models of social organisation. It argues that while the territory controlled by the Assyrian kings remained more constant than normally argued, its internal organisation was more flexible.
Fortune and Misfortune in the Ancient Near East Proceedings of the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Warsaw, 21–25 July 2014
Regional Differences in Middle Assyrian, in Proceedings of the 60th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Warsaw (2017) 297-306At some point in the 14th century b.c.e., the town of Assur shed the yoke of the Mitanni who had dominated Northern Mesopotamia in the preceding decennia, both politically and militarily. The royal dynasty ruling Assur exploited the military crisis of their former overlords to incorporate their former vassals into the kingdomn of Assur, and enlarge the city-state considerably. This sudden expansion transmitted Assyrian scribal traditions over a large geographical area in a short period and we find archives in a large number of sites in the conquered territory. At the same time, Assyrian cuneiform replaced local customs, as the people of the newly conquered territory had their own scribal traditions. This is attested, for instance, for Tell Ar-Rimāḥ, where two ‘Nuzi’-era texts were found besides the Old Babylonian and Middle Assyrian tablets (TR 125 and 126). Likewise, for Tell Ṭābān we have an adoption contract in the Ḫana-style, which predates the Middle Assyrian tablets from the site. The local calendar used in Tell Ṭābān is perhaps the best-documented case of local traditions having been preserved into the Middle Assyrian period. Recently, an unusual letter in the Nuzi style, dated to the period following the conquest of Arrapḫa, showing that local traditions continued in this region, as well.
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UPS AND DOWNS AT KANESH proposes a revised sequence of Old Assyrian eponyms and establishes a relative and an absolute chronology by way of linking textual evidence, dendrochronology and archaeological stratigraphy. This chronological framework is used to trace broader historical and social developments of political and territorial centralisation in Anatolia, as well as to offer new insights in the social and commercial history of the Old Assyrian trade. A number of economic and social transformations in Assyrian society over the course of two centuries are identified by way of a statistical and prosopographical analysis. It is shown how the economic system that drove the well-known overland trade of the early Colony Period collapsed in a dramatic fashion after only thirty years (c. 1895-1865 BC), and that a series of changes in administrative organisation were created in immediate response. A primary vehicle in financing the trade – the joint-stock enterprise – was abandoned, and exchange came to be organised by way of venture trade. A distinct community of hybrid Assyrian-Anatolian households grew more prominent as mixed families came to be engaged mainly in local Anatolian trade and agriculture. In turn, a small and wealthy Assyrian elite functioned as permanently settled foreign trading agents, and a distinctive group of itinerant merchants continued to engage in the caravan trade and connect the Anatolian colonies to the mother city of Assur.
In this paper we investigate the consequences for the Assyrian Chronology of dating the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt from around 1800 BC to 1530 BC. Dating the New Kingdom in Egypt a minimum of 243 years later than generally accepted implies the existence of contemporaneous kings in Assyria. In the Assyrian King List Enlil-kudur-usur appears as the last king of the lineage of Ashur-uballit I, then is mentioned Ninurta-apil-Ekur son of Ili-pada descendant of Eriba-Adad. We assume that Ili-pada is the grandson of Eriba-Adad I and Ninurta-apil-Ekur started a second royal branch. The consequence is that Ashur-dan II is the son of Tiglath-pileser I. The rearrangement of the Assyrian Kings results in a reduction of about 250 years. A reduction of 250 years brings an end to the Dark Ages in the Ancient Near East.
Current Issues in the Study of the Ancient Near East, PAAH 8
The Assyrians: A New Look at an Ancient Power2007 •
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Understanding Hegemonic Practices of the Early Assyrian Empire. Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann. (PIHANS 125). Edited by B. Düring
The Rise and Consolidation of Assyrian Control on the Northwestern Territories2015 •
Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period
East of Assyria? Hasanlu and the problem of Assyrianization, in Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period, edited by Virginia Herrmann and Craig Tyson. Boulder: University Press of Colorado (2019), 210-239.2019 •
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und …
Amurru Between Hatti, Assyria, and Ahhiyawa. Discussing a Recent Hypothesis2010 •
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The Assyrians: Kingdom of the God Aššur from Tigris to Taurus.
Encounters, Interactions, and a Shared Cultural Sphere: The Assyrian Empire and the Syro-Hittite States of the Iron Age2018 •
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient …
The Assyrian Heartland, in: D. Potts (ed.), A companion to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Vol. II (2012), 851-8662012 •