Making Peace in the Ancient World: Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5-7 November 2018 (Melammu Workshops and Monographs, 5) 9783963271809, 3963271809

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Melammu Workshops and Monographs 5

Making Peace in the Ancient World

Making Peace in the Ancient World Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018 www.zaphon.de

Edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger

Zaphon

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17.05.2022 13:13:13

Making Peace in the Ancient World Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018

Edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger

Melammu Workshops and Monographs Volume 5

Edited by Sebastian Fink and Robert Rollinger

Scientific Board Alberto Bernabé (Madrid) Josine Blok (Utrecht) Rémy Boucharlat (Lyon) Eckart Frahm (New Haven) Mait Kõiv (Tartu) Ingo Kottsieper (Göttingen) Daniele Morandi Bonacossi (Udine) Sabine Müller (Marburg) Simonetta Ponchia (Verona) Kurt Raaflaub (Providence) Thomas Schneider (Vancouver) Rahim Shayegan (Los Angeles) Shigeo Yamada (Tsukuba)

Making Peace in the Ancient World Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018

Edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger

Zaphon Münster 2022

The Melammu Logo was drawn by Rita Berg from a Greco-Persian style seal found on the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea (Dominique Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (London: British Museum Publications 1987), no. 432). Illustration on the cover: Throne base of Shalmaneser III fround at Nimrud, Iraq Museum; © akg-images / De Agostini Picture Library.

Making Peace in the Ancient World. Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018 Edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger Melammu Workshops and Monographs 5

© 2022 Zaphon, Enkingweg 36, Münster (www.zaphon.de) All rights reserved. Printed in Germany. Printed on acid-free paper.

ISBN 978-3-96327-180-9 (book) ISBN 978-3-96327-181-6 (e-book) ISSN 2698-8224

Table of Contents Introduction Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger .........................7 Saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova Antonio Daniele ..................................................................................................13 I Key Note Lectures The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and the Perspective of a Rebirth Paolo Matthiae ...................................................................................................15 Making Peace in the Ancient Near East Marc Van De Mieroop ........................................................................................19 Making and Experiencing Peace in the Ancient World Kurt A. Raaflaub .................................................................................................31 II Ancient Near East and Egypt The Antagonism between Animosity and Peace-making in Ancient Egypt: Between Ideology and Practical Foreign Policy. An Extended Synopsis Manfred Bietak ...................................................................................................63 Raiders, Neighbours, and Night-time: “Hybrid Peace” in Babylonia Seth Richardson ................................................................................................107 Making Peace in the Hittite Kingdom Stefano de Martino............................................................................................129 Making Peace in the Ancient Near East of the First Millennium BCE: The Case of the Assyrian Empire Salvatore Gaspa................................................................................................143 Peace and Peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible Martti Nissinen .................................................................................................201 Commemorating the End of Conflict in the Ancient Near East: Material Perspectives Ann C. Gunter ...................................................................................................219 Peace in Pieces: Making Peace in Elam Matthew Waters ................................................................................................249

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Table of Contents

Peace and Views of Peace in Achaemenid Iran Josef Wiesehöfer ...............................................................................................265 III The Mediterranean Worlds and Beyond Making Peace in the Hellenistic World Christoph Schäfer .............................................................................................275 Problems of Making Peace in the Roman Republic: The Case of Appius Claudius Caecus and King Pyrrhus Wolfgang Spickermann .....................................................................................285 Frames of Making Peace and Treaties in the Roman Empire Sven Günther ....................................................................................................297 Making Peace with the Goths and the Burial of Athanaric in Constantinople (January 381): A Note on Jordanes, Getica 28, 142–145 Umberto Roberto ..............................................................................................313 Many Eyes of the World? Making Peace between Byzantium and Other Empires, 600–1200 CE Johannes Preiser-Kapeller ...............................................................................331 Index.................................................................................................................351

Introduction Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger

1. The General Meeting In the late evening of November 3, 1918, in Villa Giusti (later called “Villa Giusti of the Armistice”), located in the southern periphery of the town of Padova, the military representatives of the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and of the Italian Kingdom signed the armistice which put to an end the hostilities between them in the war field. This armistice was an anticipation, and definitely the cause of the armistice between the armies of the German Empire and of the Allied Powers (British Empire, France, United States of America, Italy, Japan), which was signed at Compiègne on November 11, 1918. The peace treaties, however, were signed only in 1919, in various suburbs of Paris, i.e., Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, and Sèvres, after the long and difficult negotiations of the Paris Peace Conference. With the Versailles treaties, what was later designated as the First World War came finally to an end: it was an extremely bloody conflict, which involved almost all European States and caused more than 9,700,000 dead and 21,000,000 wounded among the military, more than 950,000 dead for war causes and more than 5,000,000 for indirect causes among the civilians. All European States and many other States in the rest of the world decided to celebrate officially the centennial of the end of that terrible war. On the one hand, they organized large public ceremonies with the participation of the Heads of State and of the highest institutional authorities in various locations bearing memory of the war. On the other hand, they stimulated, favoured, and organized an exceptionally high number of activities in the most various social environments (public, military, academic, private). The common theme of such activities was obviously the commemoration not only of the military and civilian dead, but also of the terrible difficulties and hardships suffered by the civilians not only during but also, and for a long time, after the war. A basic theme, however, was the repudiation and refuse of war as an instrument for the solution of international and national disputes and conflicts, which in its turn solicited an intense debate about the problems of state aggressiveness, expansionism and imperialism. Scholars, experts, specialists, and politicians generally acknowledged that in the years following the First World War this kind of considerations was put aside and neglected, thus opening the way to that stormy social and national environment which favoured the breakout of the Second World War, much more tragic and disastrous, only twenty years after the Paris Peace Treaties. The University of Padova, and particularly the Department of Historical, Geographical and Antiquarian Studies (Dipartimento di Scienze storiche, geogra-

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Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger

fiche e dell’antichità, DiSSGeA), then directed by Prof. Dr. Giovanniluigi Fontana, since 2015 elaborated a large project for the celebration of the centennial of the Villa Giusti armistice. For this purpose, it developed a network of collaborations with other Departments, which finally turned into a Permanent Academic Committee. The National Committee for the celebrations of the end of the First World War approved, and later co-signed that project. In the framework of the project, the University of Padova Committee organized numerous meetings, conferences, and exhibitions dealing with the most various aspects of the First World War, not only in Padova but also in various towns and places of the Veneto Region, which were directly involved in the fighting. As a climax of its activities, the University of Padova Committee decided to organize a large international meeting, to be held in Padova in the days of the centennial of the Villa Giusti armistice, for discussing the problem of ending war in the perspective of peace. The Committee decided that the title of the meeting would be “Making Peace. Transitions after War from Antiquity to the Present”, aiming at discussing the complex problems arising from the transition from war to the establishment of peace. The Committee, actually, aimed at avoiding to concentrate upon the merely, albeit legitimate, celebrative aspects of that event, which in Italy was always considered as the most exemplar Italian “Victory.” The Organizing Committee of the meeting was formed by Prof. Giovanniluigi Fontana (President), Prof. Aldino Bondesan, Prof. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Dr. Marco Mondini (all DiSSGeA members), and by Prof. Paolo Pozzato (independent scholar). For the management of the meeting, the Organizing Committee requested and obtained the collaboration of the University of Verona and of the Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck. The aim was to stress the importance of the tight connection between Austria and Italy in the European context developed after the Second World War, and especially between the Land Tyrol and the Veneto Region, which were both crucial and tormented war theatres. These three Universities solicited and obtained the collaboration of the International Research Project Melammu. The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Helsinki), aiming at developing an interdisciplinary collaboration between the scholars of the various disciplines of Ancient History and the scholars specialized in Contemporary History. Other institutions collaborated in the organization of the meeting: the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Padova), the Comune of Padova, the Veneto Region, the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, and Tourism (Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo, MiBACT), the National Committee for the celebrations of the end of the First World War. For the modern period, the Committee specifically requested also the collaboration of the International Society for First World War Studies, which solicited a large numbers of scholars and historians to enter discussions together with the specialists of Ancient History.

Introduction

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The aim of the Organizing Committee was to foster the dialogue, the debate, and the collaboration between historians and specialists of the Modern Age – and especially the experts of the many aspects of the First World War – and the historians and scholars of the Ancient periods, from the pre-classical Ancient Near East to the Greek, Roman, and Late Classical periods to the dawn of the Middle Age, on the basic problem of how to establish peace after the conclusion of war. The Organizing Committee solicited all participants to choose and submit to discussion and debate clear general concepts, analytical research tools and methodological approaches, albeit respecting the deep differences characterizing the various historical disciplines, either for the quality and quantity of sources, or for the methodological approach to the historical documents, or for the implications of historical research as regards the contemporary society and world. The Organizing Committee decided to split the meeting in two sections: one for scholars and experts of the First World War and of the following period; the other for scholars and experts of the Ancient World. The Committee, however, requested some renowned scholars to give lectures of more general character in Plenary Sessions and open to the general public, albeit respecting their specific specialization. The Meeting Sessions took place in the Aula Magna of the University, in the Town Hall and at the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. The Organizing Committee entrusted the section dedicated to the Ancient World to the International Research Project Melammu. The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Helsinki); the Project organized the meeting in the form of one of its periodical Melammu Workshops, with the title Making Peace in Antiquity. The organization of the Workshop was entrusted to its President, Prof. Dr. Simonetta Ponchia (University of Verona), and to the Board of the Project, with the special cooperation of Prof. Dr. Robert Rollinger (Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck).The proceedings of that Workshop are now published in this volume. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi Simonetta Ponchia Robert Rollinger *** 2. The Melammu Workshop The Melammu workshop contributed to the international conference Making Peace. Transition after the war from antiquity up to the present by proposing and encouraging a reflection on peace as a concept, set of rules, instruments, perceptions and representations, determined by and applied to diverse circumstances and various places, and elaborated over time. In fact, the focus of the Melammu Project is the ancient world, and, more precisely, the continuity, transformation and

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Giovanni B. Lanfranchi / Simonetta Ponchia / Robert Rollinger

diffusion of the Ancient Near Eastern culture from antiquity to the Middle Ages; its basic aim is widening the limits and the perspectives of historical interpretation. Thus, the celebration of the peace agreement finally reached in 1918 after one of the most traumatic experiences of Europe and the entire world is certainly a special occasion for stimulating a comprehensive reflection on historical dynamics. The title of the Melammu Workshop “Making Peace in Antiquity” points to two intertwined aims. The first consists in the analysis of the events, conditions, decisions and rules that led to and/or contributed to building and maintaining peace in particular periods and circumstances of the ancient world. The second consists in considering the idea and instruments of peace and making peace as evolving over time in a process that has distant roots. For instance, it is possible to trace this path, which certainly was not linear, in the stipulation of treaties, a practice which is attested since the 25th century BC, and in the formulation of international law 4,500 years ago. Moreover, it is worth considering the expectations and the meanings attributed to peace in their historical development and change. The end of conflicts, local as well as global, always implied and required the capacity, personal and social, to overcome the trauma caused by losses of relatives, property, normal environment, life habits, common belongings and heritage, and to cope with the restructuring of various aspects of society, economy and institutions, with mixed feelings of profound distress and hope of rebirth. The process of making peace and of returning to a condition of peaceful life and organization involves various aspects of personal and social experience, and has consequences for the future generations. This process has also an important, but historically different, impact on the development of social and political ideologies, in particular if one includes the enjoyment of rights to freedom and welfare in the idea of peace, as the result of a long process that had crucial phases of elaboration especially in the worldwide tragedies of the “short twentieth century.” This is a concept of peace which is quite obvious in the eyes of our generation, who is well aware of the two world conflicts through family narratives and memories, and of their aftermath by personal experience; but it is clear that in a changing world it imposes difficult and costly decisions. In 1914, various factors, such as the growing rivalries between Europeans states and the imperialistic policies of some of them, but also the aspirations to affirm national identities, provided the causes and the final ignition for an unprecedented, worldwide war conflagration. The centennial of the Villa Giusti armistice and of the Paris Peace Treaties takes place in a period in which European cohesion is at a critical point, the Near East is devastated by conflicts, and the Mediterranean is transformed into a space of flight and barriers. Consequently, a new awareness of the meaning of peace and instruments for making peace is necessary. Such instruments are the diffusion of culture and deepening of knowledge,

Introduction

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the preservation and the interpretation of the memories originating from the experience of the past and from the cultural heritage. Obliteration of memory, actually, opens the way to dangerous ideological attitudes and to destruction; the appropriation and squandering of material cultural heritage goes together with massacres and with the annihilation of the non-material heritage linked to peoples’ lives. For this reason, in our days it is absolutely necessary to enhance the value of monuments and memory as a shared patrimony, testimony to a multifaceted human culture and historical vicissitudes from which a better comprehension of the present can be derived and universal values can be distilled. All these perspectives pose serious issues to historians in their daily task of scholarly investigation and in communicating their research within the academic circles, but also beyond them, as illustrated by the recent development of the branch of the so-called public history and interest in new methods for the diffusion and narration of history. Therefore, besides the basic and necessary aim of deepening the analysis of the topic of peace in various areas and phases of antiquity, our workshop was aimed at contributing to a better understanding of the meaning of peace through human history and its meaning today by means of a comparative approach. Thus, it represented a contribution to the commemoration of the 1918 peace accord, both at the level of the scientific investigation – by surveying the distant and diverse roots of the concept of peace – and the value of this celebration for keeping memory alive, to recognize the signs and faces of those past events that shape our lives. “May our allies serving in times of war raise their forces for peace” 1 Simonetta Ponchia Chair of the Melammu Project

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“Uruk Lament,” 21–40, from S. Richardson, “The Mesopotamian Citizen Conceptualized: Affect, Speech and Perecption,” in J.L. Brooke, J.C. Strauss, G. Anderson [eds.], State Formations: Global Histories and Cultures of Statehood, CUP, Cambridge UK 2018, p. 270.

Saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova Antonio Daniele – Presidente

Sono lieto di portare il saluto dell’Accademia Galileiana di Padova − a nome mio e dei soci − in questo convegno che celebra la pace, a cent’anni dalla fine della prima guerra mondiale. E plaudo al taglio trasversale dei lavori che storicamente vanno dall’antichità ai giorni nostri, perché è chiaro che, se dal punto di vista materiale i modi della guerra moderna si sono evoluti (ahimè!) in forme sempre più terrificanti, i modi della pace, in ragione della pressoché immutata psicologia degli uomini, sono rimasti più o meno uguali nel tempo, talché la storia potrebbe veramente (solo che lo volessimo) esserci sempre maestra di vita. Sono uno dei pochi, credo, che per motivi anagrafici ormai possa vantarsi di essere figlio di un reduce della Grande Guerra. Anche per questa ragione l’argomento mi tocca da vicino. E sono lieto che oggi il convegno si sia spostato dall’Università (Palazzo del Bo’) nella cornice della nostra sede accademica, vale a dire nella medievale reggia dei Carraresi, dinastia signorile che per quasi un secolo ha governato nel Trecento la guerra e la pace nella nostra città: e pur nel convulso travaglio degli eterni conflitti tra città italiane è riuscita a lasciare un segno indelebile di bellezza artistica e di civiltà letteraria. Sembra ci sia in tutte le epoche un ciclico alternarsi di stupidità e obnubilamento degli uomini e poi di nobile riscatto, di lotte fratricide e di clamorose riappacificazioni, come se il cupio dissolvi che prende a tratti l’umanità venisse a intermittenza sopraffatto da slanci di ravveduta pietà e di ragionevole consapevolezza. Solo qualche lucido antivedente (o allucinato profeta) può prefigurarsi a volte la tragicità degli eventi nella loro devastante crudezza. È il caso di un nostro ‘nemico’ di allora (dico così per antifrasi), l’austriaco Karl Kraus, il quale in un suo scritto pubblicato sulla Fakel nel novembre del 1914 (a guerra dunque cominciata) con l’ironico titolo In questa grande epoca, anticipava tutto l’orrore di un’inutile strage e, opponendosi al coro bellicista di tanti intellettuali tedeschi e austriaci (e in seguito anche italiani), esibiva ai suoi connazionali una durissima reprimenda contro la guerra. Egli si opponeva in particolare ad una propaganda giornalistica che fomentava una retorica patriottarda e nazionalistica, fondando il suo pacifismo semplicemente sullo stato di diritto. Ma qui, in quest’aula mirabilmente affrescata dal Guariento, e che di sicuro ha visto sostare il Petrarca, permettetemi di ricordare un aneddoto da lui riportato in una sua lettera Senile (XIII,18), inviata da Padova all’amico veronese Gasparo de’ Broaspini il 22 novembre 1372, scritta proprio nel mezzo della guerra tra

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Padovani e Veneziani, che aveva messo in grave pericolo i familiari del poeta e la sua casa di Arquà. Vi cito, per semplificazione, la traduzione dal latino: Essendo di nuovo insorto – tempo fa – uno di quei gravi scontri bellici che tra pisani e fiorentini, per i peccati d’ambedue le genti, sono divenuti così frequenti da ripetersi ormai quasi ogni anno, un povero scemo che si aggirava seminudo per Firenze, vedendo l’esercito che usciva dalle porte della città, incuriosito dalla novità che faccenda fosse mai quella: «Non sai forse – gli rispose un tale che passava di lì – che stiamo facendo guerra a quelli di Pisa?» E lo scemo: «Ma non si farà poi la pace?» «Ma come puoi pensare alla pace, o stupido, proprio ora che comincia la guerra?» «Ma io ti chiedo – insistette lo scemo – se non si dovrà fare un giorno pace». «Certo che sì – ribatté l’altro –, non c’è guerra che duri in eterno. E tuttavia, adesso, si fa la guerra». «Ma non sarebbe dunque meglio – concluse lo scemo – far subito la pace prima di cominciare la guerra o di spingerla avanti?» Che dire se non questo: che, paradossalmente, le parole di quello stolto mi sembrano dettate da una grande saggezza? E ancora aggiunge il Petrarca, a commento proprio del conflitto in atto tra Padova e Venezia: Volesse il cielo che questi nostri combattenti soppesassero con più attenzione questa risposta! Accadrebbe probabilmente che, prima di dover soffrire tanti reciproci danni e tante belliche calamità, la guerra, a cui dovrà inevitabilmente seguire la pace, o non comincerebbe o sarebbe già finita, e che la pace, che fatta tempestivamente sarebbe ottima, sarà sì una buona cosa, ma tutt’altro appunto che tempestiva. In questo convegno, dunque, che si ispira al “fare la pace”, sotto tutti i cieli e in tutte le epoche, non posso non far risuonare il lamento del nostro grande Petrarca che, chiudendo e inviando la sua grande canzone Italia mia, disperatamente implorava all’Italia e al mondo: Proverai tua ventura fra’ magnanimi pochi a chi ’l ben piace. Di’ lor: – Chi m’assicura? I’ vo’ gridando: Pace, pace, pace. – Auguro a tutti gli ospiti una buona permanenza padovana e una proficua sessione di lavori congressuali. Padova, 6 novembre 2018

The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq and the Perspective of a Rebirth Paolo Matthiae

The destruction and plunder of cultural heritage of Syria and Iraq, as well as in other Countries of the Near East, Mediterranean, and Africa at the hands of Isis/Daesh is one of the great tragedies of our time. The obsessive strategy of destruction of this fundamentalist and totalitarian entity targets works of art, monuments and historical sites to ruthlessly strike, at the same time, both the identity of peoples and universal values of Humankind. The drama of the men and women in conflict areas obviously comes first and foremost, but, as stated by former UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, “It is not a matter of choosing between saving people and saving objects, it is all the same fight.” As a premise, it is necessary to remind that the intentional destructions by Isis/ Daesh are only the third, but catastrophic, cause of the present damage to the cultural heritage. The first one is the loss of territorial control by law enforcement, which provoked a substantial and sometime huge increase of illicit digging in archaeological sites. The second one is the occupation of monuments or historical sites by military units of the rebels or the regular army: the consequence in both cases, besides occasional damages, was the fact that those monuments became probable targets of the opposing forces. Without presenting here an even summary list of monuments or historical sites, damaged or destroyed by Isis/Daesh, we have to recall only, for Syria, at least, at Palmyra, the complete destruction of the well preserved Baalshamin Temple, the shrine of Bel Temple, a masterpiece of early imperial Roman architecture of Hellenistic influence, some funerary towers of the Tombs Valley and the heavy damages to the Grande Colonnade and the theatre. For Iraq, the savage annihilation of all Neo-Assyrian sculptures and the Ninurta ziqqurat at Nimrud, and the city gates and wall of the Archaeological Park of Nineveh. As is well known, works, monuments and sites not only of the Ancient Oriental civilizations of polytheistic religion and the Late Roman and Byzantine periods of pagan and Christian faith were intentionally destroyed, but also monuments of an Islamic faith different from the belief of the pseudo-Caliphate of al-Baghdadi. So, many Shi‘i mosques and even Sunny sanctuaries were destroyed as they were considered stained by residual polytheism. A few examples of total intentional destruction: in Iraq, at Tikrit, the Syriac Orthodox Green Church of 7th Century, one of the most ancient Christian religious buildings in the Near East as a whole; near Samarra, the Iraq’s first muqarnasdomed Shi‘i shrine of Imam ed-Dur, tomb of 11th Century emir Sharaf ed-Dawla; at Mosul, the sanctuary of Tell Nebi Yunus, alleged mausoleum of prophet Jonah,

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Paolo Matthiae

revered holy place for Hebrews, Christians and Muslims; in Syria, at Aleppo, Khosrofiyyeh Mosque of early 16th century, masterpiece of the architect Sinan, the so-called Ottoman Michelangelo. Astonishingly enough, before the fall of Raqqa Caliphate an official spokesperson of theirs declared that, when they would conquest Damascus, the first monument to be destroyed would be Salah ed-Din’s Mausoleum, the venerated tomb of the famous 12th century Ayyubide Sultan admired in all Islamic world as liberator of Jerusalem from Crusaders’ occupation. The geographical area of Syria and Iraq, of great importance for the history of Humankind, was home to the very first attempts at agriculture and establishing villages. It was home to the world’s most ancient city-states, territorial states, national states and universal empires, and, of course, was the cradle for the three great ethical monotheisms – Hebraism, Christianity, and Islam. The UNESCO Conventions and Declarations for the protection of the World’s Cultural Heritage clearly proclaimed the Universality, the Equality and the Intangibility of the works of art, monuments, habitats, and cities that comprise the World’s Cultural Heritage. Their intentional destruction, due to religious, ideological and cultural hatred is a deep and irredeemable injure to Humankind, since it breaks the essential bond between Humankind, Nature and Culture. This bond took shape over centuries, in countless different ways and at every latitude, and it must be preserved as sacrosanct. The destructions by Isis/Daesh are the most patent and irresponsible violation of the spirit of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, proclaimed in the basic Paris General Conference of November 2001. The vision of the cultural diversity in that unanimously adopted Declaration was that the cultural wealth of the world is its diversity in dialogue. In it the cultural diversity was raised to the level of “the common heritage of humanity”; “as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature,” and “its defence is considered an ethical imperative indissociable from respect for dignity of the individual.” Now, after the destructions, there is the problem of the reconstructions. The planned reconstructions, according to my personal opinion, must be based and must keep in due consideration three basic principles: these three principles, which I will illustrate briefly, have to be respected as a whole, not choosing one or the other, because they are complementary, and only as a whole can guarantee all the partners involved in the accomplishment of the delicate work of the reconstruction. The first principle is the full respect of the sovereignty of the Countries where artefacts and monuments are located nowadays: these Countries, Syria and Iraq, are members of the United Nations and of UNESCO, and they have all the right to be protagonists of the not arbitrary preservation, safeguard, and valorisation of the artefacts and monuments of their Heritage. Were this principle not respected, there would be phenomena of Neo-Colonialism which cannot by no means and

The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Iraq

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for no reason be accepted. The second principle is the coordination and ratification of all projects by UNESCO, which can have at its disposal experts from all Countries, and therefore with different formation and culture. It is necessary that UNESCO experts express their authoritative opinion about the projects of reconstruction, in order to certify these reconstructions as scientifically founded, and fully corresponding to international standards. The third principle is the international collaboration among good-willing and supportive Countries, well aware of the universal value of Cultural Heritage and firmly willing to save and reconstruct the destroyed artefacts and monuments beyond any political position, because, as maintained by Irina Bokova and recently ratified by the The Hague International Court of Justice, the intentional destructions of the Cultural Heritage are war crimes against Humankind. These principles have already been fully accepted by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria and by the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq. Following these three principles, as a preliminary Italian contribution to reconstruction, the Association “Incontro di Civiltà,” whose president, Francesco Rutelli, former Mayor of Rome and former Minister of Culture and Vice-Prime Minister of Italy, organized in Rome, with my scientific coordination, the Exhibition “Rising from Destructions: Ebla, Nimrud, Palmyra.” In this exhibition held at the Coliseum at the presence of the President of Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella at the end of 2016, we presented the 3D reconstruction of three artefacts of special historical, artistic and archaeological meaning, which were destroyed during the crisis in Syria and Iraq: the Royal Archives of Ebla of the 24th century BC, one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the past century; one of the human-headed winged bulls decorating the gate to the throne-room of the Ashurnasirpal II’s Palace of Nimrud, the capital of the Assyrian Empire in the 9th century BC; the ceiling with architectural decoration and the images of the stars, of the cella of Bel Temple in Palmyra, of the 1st–2nd century BC. As concerns the initiatives taken by the Cultural Authorities of Iraq and Syria to start the reconstructions, a first step towards the rebirth of the heritage has been the re-opening of the Iraqi Museum of Baghdad, the most important in the Country, three years ago, and of the National Museum of Damascus, few days ago, both previously closed in order to safeguard their archaeological treasures, as important signals of the will to reconstruct and to support national reconciliation. In conclusion, I wish to stress that the reconstructions of the destroyed monuments in the past took place under the mark of Identity, whereas in the present the restitutions take place under the mark of Identity and Alterity at the same time. Identity, for the moral duty to give back to the peoples in the Countries where the destructions were made, the evidences of their stratified Past, because they must have back the integrity of the inviolable chain of Humankind, Nature, and Culture.

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Alterity, because, according to the spirit and reality of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, cultural diversity is an extraordinary richness of Humankind, and it is a moral duty for all of us to actively operate in order that this richness does not suffer any loss.

Making Peace in the Ancient Near East Marc Van De Mieroop1

How does one characterize peace? The concept/dream/aspiration of peace can be so wide-ranging, that its definition becomes extremely vague. One can take the term in a very broad sense, including such aspects as an individual’s “peace of mind,”2 but since the volume in which this paper appears was inspired by the centennial of the end of the first World War, I will restrict the question to peace in its relationship to war. Even in this more circumscribed sense, it is not easy to determine if the existent conditions are those of war or of peace. Many states today are ostensibly at peace while they are engaged in military actions somewhere in the world. And even the absence of warlike behavior by itself is not a sufficient criterion to define peace. Modern peace studies – an academic discipline that originated after World War II – call that situation “negative peace.” That discipline sees peace as “fundamentally a question of justice,”3 and broadens the requirements to incorporate “the presence of the conditions for a just and sustainable peace, including access to food and clean drinking water, education for women and children, security from physical harm, and other inviolable human rights.”4 Such a state of affairs can be called “positive peace.” If you set the bar this high and find the protection of human rights a prerequisite for peace, how many modern states can say they are at peace? And, in the case of the ancient Near East, did a concept of “positive peace” ever arise? Also in legal terms, peace is not just the absence of war. One hundred years ago in 1918, the warring parties of World War I signed armistice agreements, which were temporary suspensions of hostilities. These truces needed to be renewed three times before an official peace treaty was signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919, which included numerous clauses that had little to do with terminating military activity, such as Germany’s obligation to cede territory and to pay reparations to countries of the victorious side in order to compensate for the losses they suffered during the war. Thus, again in the case of the ancient Near East, when we study the treaties that have survived, we have to question whether their 1

Acknowledgements: I am extremely grateful to Professors Simonetta Ponchia, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, and Robert Rollinger for inviting me to attend the workshop on the occasion of the centennial of the end of World War I in Padova and their hospitality when I was there. Their initiative inspired me to consider an important aspect of Ancient Near Eastern history I had given insufficient thought before. 2 Foster, 2007, takes this broad approach in his discussion of “peace in Mesopotamia.” 3 Swanger, 2015: 5. 4 https://kroc.nd.edu/about-us/what-is-peace-studies/, from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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aim was to end hostilities or make lasting arrangements about the relations between states. Let us focus now on the ancient Near East, which I will address in broad strokes disregarding the many nuances a closer look on specific times and places would provide. All modern surveys of its history read like accounts of a sequence of wars from the Umma-Lagash border conflict in the 25th–24th centuries BC to Alexander of Macedon’s conquest of the Persian empire in 330 BC. This fact is an outcome of our tendency to focus more on the rise and fall of political entities than on what happened in between, and that in the ancient Near East both events almost always, if not always, came about through military action. War is one of the most important factors in our explanations of historical change. Moreover, many of the sources that we use as the basis of ancient Near Eastern political history focus on this activity as success in war was something to celebrate and a sign that the person who commissioned most such texts, the king, did his job well. Assyrian royal inscriptions are the most explicit example of this attitude and perhaps because they were the first Mesopotamian texts to be read by modern historians they may have biased our views on how to write ancient Near Eastern history. The predominance of military activity in the ancient sources is reflected in the amount of attention the topics of war and peace receive in modern scholarship. By far much more has been written on the first subject than on the second – the Table of Content of the publication of papers delivered in 2006 at the annual international conference of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern archaeology on Krieg und Frieden shows the imbalance: many more participants addressed war than peace.5 Of course, the idea that war was the dominant agent in history is not limited to the study of the ancient Near East. Many world histories are histories of warfare. War is never an aim in itself, however. Although some modern scholars have accused them of going to war with no reason beyond the desire to do so,6 the Assyrians themselves claimed they wanted to create peace. The Epic of TukultiNinurta from the 13th century sums it up as follows: ul iššakkan salīmu balu mitḫuṣi [ ] ul ibbašši ṭūbtu balu šitnunimma “Peace does not come without a battle There will be no friendly relations without fighting.”7 War leads to peace. We can even say that despite the common glorification of kings as great warriors, war itself was not considered something positive. One of the most haunting poems from ancient Mesopotamia, the Erra epic, describes in 5

Neumann et al. eds., 2014. Kraus, 1957–58; the tone of the article was influenced by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. 7 CAD Ṭ: 116a s.v. ṭūbtu (translation changed). 6

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detail how people suffer in war. It was probably written in the eighth century by an author who saw the devastations his homeland Babylonia had suffered in the chaotic times of the early first millennium – he unusually identifies himself as Kabti-ilani-Marduk. This short passage reminds us how war is not only a matter of combat, but also of disease, famine, and the loss of law and order: “He who did not die in battle, will die in the epidemic; He who did not die in the epidemic, the enemy will rob him; He whom the enemy has not robbed, the thief will thrash him; He whom the thief did not thrash, the king’s weapon will overcome him; He whom the king’s weapon did not overcome, the prince will kill him; He whom the prince did not kill, the storm god will wash him away.”8 The five tablet long poem initially can read as a praise of the god Erra, the supreme warrior of the gods here, but the end shows the opposite to be true: things are much better when Erra quiets down – the text is thus a condemnation of war. Ancient Mesopotamians hung amulets with excerpts of the poem at the entrances of their houses to ward off the evils described in it.9 But this poem too makes the point that war is needed to establish peace. The true hero is the god Ishum, who through the military defeat of Babylon’s enemies re-establishes order as imposed by a new Babylonian king.10 Once again, “peace does not come without a battle.” Modern peace studies point out that the workings of power are a central consideration: how does power effect the justice peace promises?11 In the ancient Mesopotamian case, the answer seems straightforward: kings demand they be granted power so that they can subdue chaos and thus guarantee peace. They set themselves up as the guardians, the shepherds of their people, and promise them to provide them with peace and stability. If we follow Thorkild Jacobsen’s famous analysis of the Babylonian Creation Myth (or Enūma eliš) as an aetiology of monarchy,12 we understand how a king can present himself as emulating the god Marduk and defeating the forces of chaos. Peace equals order and order is only possible because the king has the power to impose it. The rhetoric is straightforward – and again, far from limited to the ancient Near East. Whereas we tend to criticize such assertions when made in modern times – the examples are too numerous and obvious that I need not point them out – historians seem less sceptical about their truth when they appeared in the past, certainly the distant past. A concept regularly found in discussions of the Assyrian empire, especially those that study its presence in the Levant, is that of Pax Assyriaca. When the empire was at its height, the need for annual military expeditions disappeared 8

Translation after Foster, 2005: 905. Reiner, 1960. 10 George, 2013. 11 Swanger, 2015: 5. 12 Jacobsen, 1976: 167–191. 9

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and the rulers could rest on their laurels. The exact chronological boundaries of this era are left vague, but evidence for it is said to come, for example, from the fact that during his twenty-four-year-long reign Sennacherib went on campaign only eight times (besides two conducted by his generals), while his predecessors did so every year.13 The relatively peaceful conditions are often considered to have triggered economic development in the provinces, which thus benefited from the existence of the empire.14 In a careful discussion of the concept of Pax Assyriaca a decade ago, F. Mario Fales pointed out that we need to confront the crude description of Assyria as an “evil empire,” a necessary corrective indeed.15 And he does adduce evidence from epistolary and administrative sources that there was a period of prosperity as a result of the stability the empire brought. Every empire, today as in the past, proclaims itself to do the same, of course. The idea to combine the concept of peace with the name of a military leader may go back to Alexander of Macedon,16 but certainly received a great boost when the Roman Augustus Caesar erected his ara Pacis Augustae, which Ovid already celebrated in the emperor’s lifetime.17 By AD 30 Velleius Paterculus described Pax Augusta as follows: “The Pax Augusta, which has spread to the regions to the east and of the west and to the bounds of the north and of the south, preserves every corner of the world safe from the fear of brigandage.”18 Peace, generated through Augustus’s absolute power, meant that no one had to live in fear. Historians of the ancient and not-so-ancient world have readily applied the concept to any hegemonic political structure: in Near Eastern studies one finds references to Pax Hethitica,19 Pax Aegyptiaca,20 Pax Babyloniaca,21 Pax Achaemenidica or Persica,22 even Pax Akkadica23 and Pax Sumerica24 referring back to late-third millennium states. No military victor seems not to have brought peace and prosperity – do we just believe them at their word?

13

Hallo, 1960: 57; Hallo / Simpson, 1998: 137. For such statements about the southern Levant, see, for example, Berlejung, 2012: 162 and Thareani, 2016: 95. That there is not always agreement on the reality of peace and development is clear, for example, from Fantalkin, 2004. 15 Fales, 2008. See also Fales, 2010: 219–228. 16 Weinstock, 1960: 49. 17 Cornwell, 2017. 18 Shipley, 1929: 316–318. 19 E.g., in Cohen et al. eds., 2010. 20 E.g., Fantalkin, 2004. 21 E.g., Leick, 2005: 80. 22 E.g., in Potts ed., 2012: 947 and 969 23 Glassner, 1986: 56. 24 Vermaak, 1993: 7 fn. 1. 14

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Scepticism about the kind of peace this meant is obviously widespread, from the Pax Americana today25 to the Pax Assyriaca twenty-seven centuries ago, “which for the Babylonians of course was more like a peace of the graveyard,”26 and everything in between. First, while these peacekeeping states may indeed have no military engagements in some parts of their territories, they may be actively at war elsewhere. During the so-called era of Pax Assyriaca the Levant may have been relatively peaceful (although one can doubt that considering that at least three substantial campaigns occurred27), but at the same time the Assyrians eliminated their great rivals in the Near East, Urartu, Babylonia, Elam, and Egypt. Similarly, when the province of Yehud enjoyed a period of reconstruction under the Pax Achaemenidica in the fifth and fourth centuries, its Persian overlords were trying to annex Greece and put down multiple rebellions in Egypt. These were hardly peaceful times for the soldiers who did the fighting. Moreover, while our sources like the Assyrian royal inscriptions focus on battles between states, there were many non-state actors that needed to be kept in line and the security of the empire had to be maintained through harsh military means.28 We have to be careful not to become apologists of empire and join the post-2000 inclination among some academics and many politicians to praise the accomplishments of recent empires.29 Just because Assyria and other ancient empires ruled many centuries ago it does not mean that their (now) faceless subjects were less human than the people whose descendants live among us. Second, the moments of alleged peace between states were imposed by force and intolerant of any opposition; they represented the point of view of the dominant power. In the ancient Near East (as in more recent times) these situations were often codified in peace treaties, the corpus of which is quite substantial.30 Striking in them is that the power disparity between victors and losers was so great that the first often dictated harsh terms to the latter. This situation has been called the hegemonic ideal of peace31 and the treaties signed under such conditions “contracts of subordination.”32 In his analysis of Neo-Assyrian treaties, for example, Simo Parpola listed these stipulations as recurring features: 1. Unconditional devotion to the Assyrian king; 2. Obligation to report any developments

25

Barton, 2007. Frahm, 2017: 186. 27 Hallo / Simpson, 1998: 137–138. 28 See the contribution by Seth Richardson in this volume and his concept of “hybrid peace.” 29 See, for example, Ferguson, 2003, (and the review by Colley https://www.theguardian. com/books/2003/jan/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview5). 30 Recently collected in Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012. A large amount of scholarship treats them: see Eidem / Parpola / Wilhelm, 2011 for a survey. 31 Cohen / Westbrook, 2008: 231. 32 Beckman, 2006: 284. 26

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hostile to the empire and the monarchy; 3. Harmonizing one’s foreign policy with that of Assyria; 4. Military cooperation with Assyria; 5. Extradition of deserters and fugitives seeking asylum in a vassal country; 6. Accepting a royal deputy; and, 7. Accepting Aššur as the supreme god.33 The empire’s military might was there to make sure these rules were obeyed. Once again, such arrangements are not unique to the ancient Near Eastern world. It is quite common to blame the drive toward Word War II on the harsh conditions imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. There existed situations of greater parity between the contracting parties, however. Only one clear such example has survived from the ancient Near East,34 the famous peace treaty that Pharaoh Ramesses II of Egypt and King Hattusili III of the Hittites signed in 1259. This happened fifteen years after Ramesses II had fought the battle of Qadesh against Hattusili’s brother, Muwatalli, so like the Treaty of Versailles it was a long delayed peace agreement. We know from the text itself that each party formulated a version that was engraved on a silver tablet. The Egyptian record was sent to the Hittite capital, where it has survived in the Babylonian language on several damaged clay tablets. The Hittite version, sent to Egypt, was translated into Egyptian and carved unto the walls of the Amun Temple at Karnak and of the Ramesseum. The primary concerns of the treaty are clear, and the obligations are mutual. The royal houses wanted peace forever and promised to help each other whenever threatened. Should an outsider attack one party, the other party had to send military support, and they pledged mutual assistance in the case of local rebellions. If rebellious subjects fled to the other country, they were to be returned home. The only divergence between the two versions is that Hattusili included a special clause that demanded that Ramesses would support his designated successor; as a usurper himself he knew how easily young kings could fall. The peace treaties we have from the ancient Near East are not agreements between states but between rulers. They were personal arrangements and needed to be renewed whenever a new king came to the throne even when the political conditions had not changed. Thus Tudhaliya IV of Hatti and Shaushga-muwa of Amurru concluded a treaty essentially renewing the arrangements their fathers Hattusili III and Benteshina had made.35 It is clear that the men who signed the treaty wanted to preserve the status quo; they and their chosen successors were to remain in power. Fear of war and revolt was pre-eminent, as those would lead to the disruption of power. The peace desired was both with external and internal enemies. In the Hattusili-Ramesses treaty, the two parties promised not to fight each other as that would upset who governed at home. At the same time, they 33

Eidem / Parpola / Wilhelm, 2011: 43–44. Beckman, 2006: 288; Eidem / Parpola / Wilhelm, 2011: 48. A helpful parallel translation of the two versions of the treaty is provided in Miano, 2014: 172–179. 35 Translations in Beckman, 1996: 95–102. 34

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promised to support each other were domestic forces to contest their rule. The fear for rebellion at home was as great as for an attack from the outside. And the principle of stability in government meant that a son had to succeed his father – Hattusili III wanted Ramesses II to ensure his son’s succession to the throne. That principle seems to have been so sacrosanct that in another Hittite treaty, that between Tudhaliya IV of Hatti and Shaushga-muwa of Amurru, the king of Amurru was berated because his father Masturi had supported a usurper of the Hittite throne. That usurper was Tudhaliya’s father, however, and Tudhaliya would never have become king had the usurpation not happened.36 Peace in the ancient Near East was thus order and stability, goals that were attained by holding and exercising power, often through violent military means. Portrayals of peaceful situations contained a hint that they were arrived at because war had happened. Perhaps the most jarring intrusion of military might in an ostensibly serene setting is the garden scene of the palace of Assurbanipal carved in the later 7th century when the Assyrian empire was at its height.37 Behind the king and his wife, Libbāli-šarrat, enjoying a drink the severed head of King Teumman of Elam dangles from a tree branch. The scene is the culmination of the intricately depicted story of the battle of Til-tuba in which the king’s head functions as an icon that allows us to follow events from the battle to the resulting peace.38 Peace is the culmination, the end phase of the story, which makes clear that it required war to reach that point. So far I have discussed “negative peace” only, essentially the absence of war, although the favourable conditions that such a peace provides have already cropped up. Is there any evidence in the ancient Near Eastern material that people dreamt of higher standards, something akin to “the presence of the conditions for a just and sustainable peace, including access to food and clean drinking water, education for women and children, security from physical harm, and other inviolable human rights”?39 There is actually one ancient Near Eastern king whose fame does not rely on his military might: Hammurabi who ruled Babylon in the first half of the 18th century BC. Today we praise him for his laws, and a millennium after his death the ancient Mesopotamians too admired him for his wisdom, not his strength. The famous text on the Louvre stele does honour him as a “king of justice” who guarantees his people that there are principles of justice in the land. Positive peace is a matter of justice, as pointed out before. Hammurabi promises to protect the weaker in society, using the orphan and the widow as the 36

Beckman, 1996: 100 §8. Collins, 2008: 136–137. 38 Bahrani, 2008: chapter 1. This Assyrian image seems to have inspired the emblem created for the 2006 Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale on Krieg und Frieden in Münster, which shows a Janus-figure holding a lyre on one side and two decapitated heads on the other; see https://www.uni-muenster.de/Altoriental/RAI52/RAI52.html. 39 Cf. above. 37

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primary examples of such people. He does not speak of “education for women and children,” but does see it as his duty to take care of these specific groups. In the epilogue of the code he summarizes what he has done: “With the ability which the god Marduk gave me, I annihilated enemies everywhere, I put an end to wars, I enhanced the well-being of the land, I made the people of all settlements lie in safe pastures, I did not tolerate anyone intimidating them. The great gods having chosen me, I am indeed the shepherd who brings peace (rē’ûm mušallimum), whose sceptre is just. My benevolent shade is spread over my city, I held the people of the lands of Sumer and Akkad safely on my lap. They prospered under my protective spirit, I maintained them in peace (ina šulmim attabbalšināti), with my skilful wisdom I sheltered them.”40 The prologue explores the benefits Hammurabi provided his people further, laying out to us what he intended the conditions of peace to mean. He states that he enriched cities, restored their buildings, guaranteed their water supply, enlarged their agricultural fields, and made sure that their cults were well-provided for. He enumerates these benefits going from city to city, and these geographical markers actually allow us to date the composition of the text accurately. It must have happened after his 38th year of rule (1755) because, before then, he could not have claimed control over all these areas. From other sources we know that he accomplished this dominance through a decade-long campaign of almost continuous warfare, episodes of which are vividly documented in the correspondence of the king of Mari, one of his earlier allies who became the target of his conquests in 1761. Hammurabi hints at his military feats in the prologue and epilogue – he conquered the four quarters of the world, he annihilated enemies everywhere – but is not explicit about it. War was the means through which he could bring peace to his people, and that meant agricultural and urban development, support for religious cults, and, for course, justice.41 That idea is found elsewhere. In a Sumerian literary text preserved from early second millennium manuscripts but talking about a time some 400 years earlier, the so-called Curse of Agade, we see the same. The poem is about King Sargon, the greatest conqueror who ever existed in later Mesopotamian tradition,42 but it presents the chief god of the pantheon, Enlil as his ally and the power that enabled his accomplishments:

40

Roth, 1997: 133. Van De Mieroop, 2005. 42 Van De Mieroop, 2012. 41

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“After Enlil’s frown had slain Kish like the Bull of Heaven, had slaughtered the house of the land of Uruk in the dust like a mighty bull, and then, to Sargon, king of Agade, Enlil, from south to north, had given sovereignty and kingship – at that time.”43 At that time, indeed, there was peace in the kingdom of Agade which, the text explains, meant that warehouses were full, people would eat splendid food and drink splendid beverages, they would rejoice and celebrate, and foreign people would be subjected and bring exotic goods. “The highland Amorites, people ignorant of agriculture, came before her (Inanna) there with spirited bulls and spirited bucks, Meluḫḫans, people of the black mountains, brought exotic wares down to her, Elam and Subir carried goods to her like pack asses.”44 The peaceful conditions created include abundant food and drink, celebration, and the willingness of foreign people to supply Agade with their goods. These elements are also visible in the most famous mid-third millennium visual source on peace in the ancient Near East, the Standard of Ur. On its so-called “peace side” appear from top to bottom celebration – fine drink –, the delivery of animals from the region (cattle, sheep, goats, and fish) – fine food –, and the supply of nonagricultural goods. In Donald Hansen’s reading the latter is done “by people of different aspect whose homeland is perhaps a region other than Ur.”45 The Ur standard is the most eloquent statement from ancient Mesopotamia that war and peace are two sides of the same coin. The three registers of the peace side are each paralleled by a register on the war side. Reading the monument from top to bottom, we find these twin images: On top, the king celebrates in peace having a drink with his courtiers and being entertained by musicians; this is paralleled on the war side by the king successfully capturing enemies with his soldiers. In the middle, the people of Ur bringing the animals of the land on the peace side are paralleled by the soldiers herding captured enemies. And on the bottom, the foreign people bringing non-agricultural goods using draft animals may be paralleled by foreign troops being chased by chariots drawn by draft animals.46 The benefits of peace were thus considered to be very straightforward: food, drink, and access to luxury materials from abroad. We can read the long and detailed Assyrian annalistic war accounts as giving the same message. Those are mostly embedded into building accounts, providing a temporal marker of when 43

Cooper, 1983: 50–51. Cooper, 1983: 52–53. 45 Hansen, 2003: 33. Images of the standard are available in many places, for example, in the same publication pp. 97–100. 46 Asher-Greve, 2014: 32 sees the peace side as representing the outcome of a specific war with booty being presented in the bottom register. I prefer to see the two sides to represent war and peace in more general terms. 44

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construction took place,47 and rationalizing the sequence we conclude that the spoils of war were used to fund building activities. The end result of a war was the construction of a palace, the renovation of a temple, the transformation of a city, or the construction of irrigation canals that bring abundant water to fields. Those are the types of benefits Hammurabi listed in the prologue to his code, and they too give us an idea of what aspects of positive peace were considered to be crucial. My discussion here has been entirely devoted to the rulers of ancient Near Eastern states, and reflects their point of view: they believed and argued that they brought peace (both negative and positive) to their people. The reality for their subjects was of course probably much different and populations promised tranquillity, respect, and economic welfare may not have seen much of it in real life. Throughout history leaders of states often fooled their people – and themselves – and argued that they alone can make their land flourish and be at peace. Then as now, it was often a dream, but a goal worth fighting for. Bibliography Asher-Greve, J.M., 2014: “Insinuations of Peace in Literature, the Standard of Ur, and the Stele of Vultures.” In H. Neumann et al. (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale - International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.– 21. Juli 2006. AOAT 401. Münster. Pp. 27–40. Bahrani, Z., 2008: Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia. New York. Barton, C.A., 2007: “The Price of Peace at Rome.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 245–255. Beckman, G., 1996: Hittite Diplomatic Texts. Atlanta. — 2006: “Hittite Treaties and the Development of the Cuneiform Treaty Tradition.” In M. Witte et al. (eds.): Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke: Redaktions und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur “Deuteronomismus” – Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 365. Berlin. Pp. 279–301. Berlejung, A., 2012: “Shared Fates: Gaza and Ekron as Examples for the Assyrian Religious Policy in the West.” In N. May (ed.): Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond. Oriental Institute Seminars 8. Chicago. Pp. 151–174. Cohen, R. / Westbrook, R., 2008: “Conclusion.” In R. Cohen / R. Westbrook (eds.): Isaiah’s vision of peace in biblical and modern international relations: swords into plowshares. New York. Pp. 229–239.

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Renger, 1980–83: 73.

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Cohen, Y., et al. (eds.), 2010: Pax Hethitica: studies on the Hittites and their neighbours in honour of Itamar Singer. Wiesbaden. Collins, P., 2008: Assyrian Palace Sculptures. London. Cooper, J.S., 1983: The Curse of Agade. Baltimore / London. Cornwell, H., 2017: Pax and the Politics of Peace: Republic to Principate. Oxford. Eidem, J. / Parpola, S. / Wilhelm, G., 2011: “Staatsvertrag.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Vol. 13 1./2, 38–49. Fales, F.M., 2008: “On Pax Assyriaca in the Eighth–Seventh Centuries BCE and Its Implications.” In R. Cohen / R. Westbrook (eds.): Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations. Swords into Plowshares. New York. Pp. 17–35. — 2010: Guerre et paix en Assyrie: Religion et impérialisme. Paris. Fantalkin, A., 2004: “The Final Destruction of Beth Shemesh and the Pax Assyriaca in the Judahite Shephelah: An Alternative View.” Tel Aviv 31, 245–261. Ferguson, N., 2003: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London. Foster, B.R., 2005: Before the Muses. An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd edition. Bethesda, MD. — 2007: “Water under Straw: Peace in Mesopotamia.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 66–80. Frahm, E., 2017: “The Neo-Assyrian Period.” In E. Frahm (ed.): A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken. Pp. 161–208. George, A., 2013: “The Poem of Erra and Ishum: A Babylonian poet’s view of war.” In H. Kennedy (ed.): Warfare and Poetry in the Middle East. London. Pp. 39–71. Glassner, J.-J., 1986: La chute d’Akkadé: l’événement et sa mémoire. Berlin. Hallo, W.W., 1960: “From Qarqar to Carchemish: Assyria and Israel in the Light of New Discoveries.” The Biblical Archaeologist 23/2, 33–61. Hallo, W.W. / Simpson, W.K., 1998: The Ancient Near East: A History. 2nd edition. Fort Worth. Hansen, D.P., 2003: “Art of the Early City-States.” In J. Aruz (ed.): Art of the First Cities. The Third Millennium. B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York. Pp. 21–37 and 97–100. Jacobsen, T., 1976: Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven. Kitchen, K.A. / Lawrence, P.J.N., 2012: Treaty, Law and Covenant in the ancient Near East. 3 volumes. Wiesbaden. Kraus, F.R., 1957–8: “Assyrisch imperialisme.” Jaarbericht van het AegyptischVooraziatisch gezelschap “Ex Oriente Lux” 15, 232–239. Miano, D., 2014: Pen, Stylus, and Chisel. An Ancient Egypt Sourcebook. San Diego.

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Neumann, H., et al. (eds.), 2014: Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale – International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Potts, D.T. (ed.), 2012: A Companion to the Archaeology of the ancient Near East. Chichester. Reiner, E., 1960: “Plague Amulets and House Blessings.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 19, 148–155. Renger, J., 1980–83: “Königsinschriften. B. Akkadisch.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Vol. 6, 65–77. Roth, M.T., 1997: Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. 2nd edition. Atlanta. Shipley, F.W. (translator), 1929: Velleius Paterculus. Compendium of Roman History. Cambridge. Swanger, J., 2015: “Revisualizing (In)Justice: Peace Studies in early 21st century.” In R. Amster / L. Finley / E. Pries (eds.): Peace Studies between Tradition and Innovation. Newcastle upon Tyne. Pp. 4–16. Thareani, Y., 2016: “The Empire and the “Upper Sea”: Assyrian Control Strategies along the Southern Levantine Coast.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 375, 77–102. Van De Mieroop, M., 2005: King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography. Oxford. — 2012: “The Mesopotamians and their past.” In J. Wiesehöfer / T. Krüger (eds.): Periodisierung und Epochenbewusstsein im Alten Testament und in seinem Umfeld. Stuttgart. Pp. 37–56. Vermaak, F., 1993: “Šulgi as sportsman in the Sumerian self-laudatory royal hymns.” Nikephoros 6, 7–21. Weinstock, S., 1960: “Pax and the ‘Ara Pacis’.” The Journal of Roman Studies 50, 44–58.

Making and Experiencing Peace in the Ancient World Kurt A. Raaflaub

1. Introduction1 I begin by establishing a few categories that might guide our analysis of peace in the ancient world, and by briefly sketching the potential and limitations of research on this topic.2 “Peace as a condition” presupposes the absence of war but says nothing about the cause or experience of such peace, while “peace as a process” looks at how one prevents war or gets from war to peace, and “peace as an experience” focuses on how peace, especially after the end of a war, affects those involved. These aspects, central to the present volume, will be discussed in parts three and four of my chapter. Peace could be realized in various forms that are familiar from more recent history but well attested in antiquity as well: (1) Peace by negotiation, such as the “Peace of Nicias” concluded between Athens and Sparta in 421 BCE.3 (2) Peace by reconciliation, such as the peace achieved between the kings of Egypt and Hatti in 1258 BCE, sixteen years after the indecisive battle of Kadesh in 1274 – perhaps the only ancient peace agreement for which enough contemporaneous documentation survives to reconstruct in some detail the diplomatic process leading up to it.4 (3) Peace imposed by the victor on a defeated enemy – by far the most common type of peace in antiquity. Examples include the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 or the peace treaties of Rome with Carthage at the end of the Second 1

I thank Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia, and the Board of the Melammu Project for the invitation to participate in the workshop in Padua, the organizers for their generous hospitality, and their collaborators (especially Silvia Gabrieli) for their assistance in many large and small ways. Because of my own field of expertise and because the preHellenistic Greeks are otherwise underrepresented in this volume, I write this essay with a strong focus on the ancient Greeks but insert references to other societies wherever possible. 2 For previous scholarship on peace in the ancient world, see, e.g., Fuchs, 1926; Nestle, 1938; Gilissen, 1961–62; Zampaglione, 1973; Sordi, 1985; Binder / Effe, 1989; Koppe, 2001; Raaflaub, 2007b; 2016b; Meyer, 2008b; de Souza / France, 2008; Wilker, 2012; Cornwell, 2017; Moloney / Williams, 2017; Lichtenberger / Nieswandt / Salzmann, 2018; see also Ager, forthcoming. Among individual articles, I mention Graeber, 1992; van Wees, 2001; de Souza, 2008; Raaflaub, 2011; 2015. 3 Thucydides, History 5.15–20. 4 For discussion, see Klengel, 2002; Bell, 2007; and S. de Martino’s chapter in this volume.

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Punic War in 201 and with Philip V of Macedon after the Second Macedonian War in 196 BCE.5 (4) Peace imposed by dictate on an enemy who had not been fully defeated, but was unable or unwilling to continue the war. This kind of peace was concluded between Rome and Carthage at the end of the First Punic War in 241 BCE. Like the treaty of Versailles in 1919, it left much resentment on the side of the “losers,” who had to accept harsh conditions (especially after Rome a few years later exploited Carthaginian weakness to extort further territorial and material concessions), and prompted developments that led directly to the Second Punic War.6 (5) Peace as an instrument, that is, peace concluded for a purpose beyond the mere ending of war, such as that between the Roman consul Sulla and king Mithridates VI of Pontus in 84 BCE that allowed Sulla to return to Italy and fight his opponents in Rome’s first civil war.7 (6) In an “undeclared peace,” after the victory of one side, military operations largely cease but the other side refuses to acknowledge defeat and to ask for a formal peace agreement. This situation applied to the Aegean after several Greek victories over Persian armies or garrisons between 490 and the early 460s that freed the north and west coasts from Persian occupation and barred the Persians for half a century from entering the area.8 A formal agreement may have followed later.9 (7) In a “sham or false peace” conditions agreed upon are not being met, the treaty keeps being violated, and in various ways wars continue, although the peace is not officially abandoned. An example is the interval of “peace,” explicitly described as a sham by Thucydides, between the conclusion of the “Peace of Nicias” in 421 and the renewal of the war between Athens and Sparta in 414.10 (8) Dissatisfaction with traditional peace arrangements that have failed to resolve essential social and political issues has recently provoked thought about alternatives, such as “hybrid peace governance” that aims at avoiding “the pitfalls of top-down liberal peacebuilding and provides new opportunities for a more sustainable, locally engrained version of peace.”11 In other words, lasting peace is possible only if it is based not just on institutions established by those governing but also takes the needs of the governed into account. Whether and to what extent 5

End of the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE): see fn. 105, below. For documents concerning the Roman peace treaties, see Lewis / Reinhold, 1951: nos. 67, 68, pp. 171–174. 6 See Scullard, 1989: 565–569 and the documents assembled in Lewis / Reinhold, 1951: no. 58, pp. 153–155. 7 See Keaveney, 1982: 100–105. 8 On developments in the Aegean in this period, see Balcer, 1995: 299–325. 9 The “Peace of Callias,” the authenticity of which is much debated: Bengtson, 1975: no. 152, pp. 64–69; Samons, 1998. 10 Thucydides 5.26. On this kind of “false peace,” see Giovannini, 2007: 185–190. 11 Belloni, 2012: 21. I thank Seth Richardson for this reference.

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such approaches are applicable to phenomena in the ancient world remains to be seen.12 A typology such as that presented above, however, takes us only part of the way, despite obvious parallels between antiquity and modern times. Our views about these matters are naturally influenced by modern (especially nineteenthcentury) concepts. Those of ancient societies differed, generally and in the most important aspects. They all had their own views, expectations, concepts, and terminology. For example, the Romans based peace agreements on the concept of deditio, unconditional and total surrender to the power of the Roman people. As the historian Polybius explains it, “Those who commit themselves to the charge of the Romans surrender in the first place the land belonging to them and the cities in it, together with all the men and women of the land and the cities; and likewise all rivers, harbours, sacred places, and tombs, so that, in a word, the Romans become masters of everything and those who surrender remain masters of absolutely nothing.”13 To what extent the Romans took advantage of the opportunities offered them by such treaties was left entirely to their discretion. Because this was unique and, on a comparative scale, extreme, those who surrendered to Rome often did not know what they were agreeing to, which could have predictable and serious consequences.14 What we need, therefore, is a typology of peace that is based entirely on ancient phenomena and, once established, can gain additional profile through comparison with other periods. Next, peace not only presupposes the absence of war, it gains substance only in contrast to war, just as freedom gains substance only if set against un-freedom (subjection or enslavement). The relationship between war and peace is complex. Some of its facets were understood quite well, for example, by ancient Near Eastern kings and thinkers. Thus in the epilogue of his stele that celebrates him as a king of justice, Hammurabi of Babylon (18th century BCE) ends a report on his successful campaigns with the claim to have made peace and brought his people stability and prosperity. War thus could be seen as an instrument or necessary step for establishing a peaceful world with all the benefits connected with it. The Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta (a 13th-century Assyrian king) demands a resolution of his conflict with the king of Babylon by trial of battle, stating explicitly that no peace (or reconciliation) is possible without fighting, no friendly relation without conflict

12

For discussion, see S. Richardson’s chapter in this volume. Polybius 36.4 (trans. Shuckburgh); cf. 20.9.10; Livy 1.38.2; Walbank, 1979: 79–81; Rüpke, 1990: 209–210. 14 An example is the misunderstanding of the Aetolians (Polybius 20.9.10: they “had no comprehension of what this really involved”). 13

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(or battle).15 This text refers to concrete events, but the statement is equally valid for the thinking about, and conceptualization of, peace in general. Hence to understand a society’s thoughts and actions about peace one needs to know how this society has been experiencing war and thinking about it. I will briefly survey the ancient world’s experience of war in part two of my chapter. Moreover, war is action, the opportunity for major decisions, deeds, and achievements, for glory, power, and riches to be gained; it justifies a leader’s claim to command and power. By contrast, peace usually is inaction, passiveness, offering no opportunity for distinction and gain. Generals were celebrated for having gained victories, not for having achieved peace, just as, on a completely different level, magic was used to implore the gods’ support for victory and survival rather than for securing peace.16 Only rarely was a leader (like the Athenian Nicias in 421 BCE) recognized for his role in establishing peace.17 In today’s world that lends prominence to peace makers and peace prizes, this is different. Ancient rulers (from Mesopotamian kings to Roman emperors) took advantage of the propaganda value of peace policies, although in their thinking peace was often no less than war an instrument for power and control.18 In antiquity and far beyond, war was more attractive than peace – at least to leaders who had to prove themselves, but often also to their peoples. As a result, although war was lamented and peace praised and desired, serious, even theoretical, reflection on peace and on possibilities to tame war emerged only under extraordinary conditions (in China and Greece, followed by Rome). In other societies, such as the Aztecs, war was so deeply embedded in the social fabric and ideology that peace was no viable option.19 Yet others, like the Israelites, squeezed by enemies on all sides, needed to rely on a powerful warrior god to survive and could think of peace only as an ideal that was retrojected into a “myth-historical” past or projected into a utopian future.20 The contrast between war as action and peace as inaction is reflected in the extant evidence, whether literary, epigraphical, or archaeological. Most of it focuses on action or the results of action and was produced at the instigation of “men of action.” Thus, we know much more about war than about peace – so that, unfortunately, even publications about “ancient war and peace” are often devoted 15

Hammurabi: Foster, 2005: 131; Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta: ibid.: 306 (translations differ among editors of these texts). See M. Van De Mieroop’s and S. Gaspa’s chapters in this volume. Cicero’s oration On the consular provinces, delivered in 56 BCE to support an extension of Caesar’s command in Gaul, also emphasizes the necessity of subjecting wild and unruly nations to create a safe, peaceful, and prosperous world for all. 16 See, for the Hittites’ military use of magic, Beal, 1995. 17 Thucydides 5.16.1. 18 De Souza, 2008. 19 See below at fn. 66. 20 See M. Nissinen’s chapter in this volume, and Krüger, 2007; Niditch, 2007.

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almost entirely to war. Monuments, images, and coins celebrating victories are frequent, those on peace much less so.21 The genre of history emerged as a narrative focusing on wars and politics which itself mostly dealt with avoiding or making and managing war.22 Still, apart from numerous extant peace treaties and frequent sentiments expressed in poetry, it is mostly through historical works that we know about negotiations for, conditions of, and the contemporaries’ reactions to peace and its consequences. Finally, ancient sources do not tell us what everybody knew anyway, on war as on peace. For example, it is difficult to find a detailed description of the real course of, let alone the soldiers’ experience in, an ancient battle (some of the most illuminating scenes are actually found in the Iliad).23 What Isocrates, rhetorician and Plato’s teacher, writes on the battle of Salamis in 480 BCE is revealing: “Now the clamours that arose during the action, and the shoutings and the cheers – things which are common to all those who fight on ships – I see no reason why I should take time to describe.”24 If they go into details, authors usually simply add up a series of platitudes, treating a battle like a set piece. An eye-witness description like that of the tragedian Aeschylus, who fought in that same battle, is rare.25 Nor do ancient histories focus on social, economic, or military realia. Nobody wrote a work like John Keegan’s The Face of Battle.26 There were military manuals but no peace manuals.27 Hence it is often through snippets of information, side-remarks, or stories told for another purpose that we learn about the peace issues that concern us here. Even so, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate, if we throw our net widely, a surprising amount of evidence on peace can be found.

21 On the ancient Near East, see A. Gunter’s chapter in this volume. On representations of peace in the Greek and Roman worlds, see Stafford, 2000; Meyer, 2008a; Raaflaub, 2011; 2015 (with bibliography); Smith, 2011; Lichtenberger / Nieswandt / Salzmann, 2018. More generally, Krems, 2018. Already the Iliad imagines such a representation on the famous shield of Achilles (18.490–508), where a community in peace is characterized by weddings, festivals, and a well-functioning system of settling conflicts. 22 It is significant that the Iliad as an epic focusing on a great war deeply influenced the emerging genre of historiography; see, e.g., Boedeker, 2002; Pelling, 2006. 23 See Raaflaub, 2013. 24 Isocrates 4.97. On the problems posed by ancient battle descriptions, see Bichler, 2009; on Mesopotamian battle descriptions, Fink, 2016. 25 Aeschylus, Persae, 353–432, 447–463; the comparison with the orator Lysias’ description of the same battle (2.37–39) demonstrates the difference; see also, e.g., Xenophon, Agesilaus, 10–14, where history is “enriched” by platitudes (12, 14). See further Strauss, 2007: 233–234 with more evidence. 26 Keegan, 1976. For recent studies of ancient battle experiences, see, e.g., Lloyd, 1996; Daly, 2002; Lendon, 2005; Strauss, 2007; Wheeler, 2007; see also Whitby, 2007. 27 Military manuals: e.g., Aeneas Tacticus, How to Survive under Siege (Whitehead, 1990); Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science (Milner, 1996).

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2. The role of war in ancient societies As Arthur Ferrill writes, from “the beginning of recorded times, at the earliest appearance of civilization, war was an established pattern of behavior.”28 Thus from very early on to ancient peoples war was an ever-present threat and reality. In early Mesopotamian art, the “Standard of Ur” (c. 2600 BCE) has a war side (perhaps depicting a border conflict and its aftermath) and a peace side (with a banquet scene), while on the slightly later “Stele of the Vultures” (c. 2450) the king leads his army into battle; the stele’s text describes the conflict’s cause and the city-god’s promise of victory to the king.29 Victory over enemies and the treatment of war captives, soon followed by battle and siege scenes are among the most frequent themes.30 In Homer the leader is best in fighting and speaking, and the beautiful death is death suffered in fighting for the community.31 War was always brutal.32 The victor’s right to deal with the defeated as he wished to was unquestioned.33 The destruction of settlements, annexation of territories, expulsion of populations, execution of arms-bearing men, and enslavement of women and children were always possible. The rape of women was common even if already the Iliad tries to ennoble the fact by emphasizing the love between war captives and their captors.34 Before the early fifth century BCE, however, Greek wars were limited in scope and duration.35 Their nature changed dra28 Ferrill, 1997: 11. For the question of the origins of war, see the summary in Raaflaub, 2019. 29 Illustrations of both pieces are in Strommenger, 1962: pl. 66–69, 72 and colour pl. X– XI; Moortgat, 1969: pl. 118–121, 260. See Kuhrt, 1995, I: 34–37; for the “Stele” also Winter, 1985. See M. Van De Mieroop’s chapter in this volume. 30 The plates in Moortgat, 1969 contain numerous illustrations of these themes. 31 Leader: e.g., Homer, Iliad 9.440–443; beautiful death: Tyrtaeus, fragments 10, 12 (trans. in West, 1994: 24–27); also Herodotus 1.30; Loraux, 2018. 32 On the impact of Greek wars on those fighting it and on their communities, see van Wees, 2004: 115–126; Raaflaub, 2014; 2016a; on brutality in depictions of Mesopotamian wars, see Dolce, 2014, and the chs. by S. Di Paolo, L. Battini, R. Dolce, and A. Bagg in Battini, 2016; on the brutal results of ancient Near Eastern battles, Trimm, 2017: 311–436. On war in the ancient world around the globe, Raaflaub / Rosenstein, 1999; Raaflaub, 2007b; Meissner / Raaflaub / Yates, in preparation; on war in Greece and Rome, van Wees, 2004; Sabine / van Wees / Whitby, 2007; Campbell / Tritle, 2013; in the Hellenistic period, Chaniotis, 2005; in ancient Egypt, Spalinger, 2005; in the ancient Near East, Trimm, 2017; in ancient Israel, Niditch, 1993; in early China, Yates, 1999; 2007; in preparation; Di Cosmo, 2009; Sawyer, 2011; Chittick / Tse, in preparation; in the early Americas, Hassig, 1988; 1992. Clark / Turner, 2018 offer a broad survey of how ancient Mediterranean societies dealt with military defeat. 33 This principle is explicitly formulated in Xenophon, Cyropedia 7.5.73. 34 Agamemnon and Chryseis: 1.112–15. The same idealization, though based on a frequent and commonly known experience, is visible in the Roman myth about the abduction of the Sabine women: Livy 1.9–10.1, 13. 35 See below at fn. 63.

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matically only in the aftermath of the Persian Wars and in connection with Athens’ naval and imperial policies and its competition with Sparta for primacy in Greece. Large naval forces made it possible now to transport troops over long distances. Wars became long, almost permanent, ubiquitous, and devastatingly brutal.36 They were driven by ambitious leaders and citizens who were willing to embrace aggressive policies. The historian Thucydides describes the Athenians’ notoriously warlike collective character with two words – polypragmosynē (hyperactive interventionism) and pleonexia (constant greed for more) – that encapsulate their tendency to be tirelessly aggressive imperialists.37 Despite the horrendous losses they suffered, overall they found war profitable. Their warlike disposition carried them to the peak of power and, eventually, over the edge. True, Athens was exceptional, but it was far from unique. Its imperial ambitions were emulated by Sparta and Thebes in almost uninterrupted wars in the fourth century that ended only with the Greek defeat by Philip II of Macedon at Chaeronea in 338. After Alexander the Great’s death, wars for primacy continued, now among kingdoms and federal states. Soon Rome joined the fray, eventually elevating the competition to one among empires that was to last for centuries. Arthur Eckstein describes the Hellenistic world (323–31 BCE) as a world of anarchy in which might was right and peace agreements were honoured only as long as the advantages they offered were greater than those expected from war.38 Essentially, this is true of the entire Graeco-Roman world before it was absorbed into the Roman empire. In its formative period in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Rome was forced by long-lasting outside pressure to adapt its structures and attitudes to the necessities of war.39 The aristocracy developed a value system that focused on successful service to the community, especially in war. The people learned to accept a strong and cohesive aristocracy as indispensable for communal survival and success. Increasingly, wars proved profitable too. This system developed its own dynamics: ever new wars were needed to keep it going. This explains why the Romans went to war virtually every year, why in the fourth century they transitioned seamlessly from defensive policies to the aggressive pursuit of expansion, and why the consolidation of their hegemonic rule in Italy was immediately followed by Mediterranean wars and expansion. War provoked new wars: a change to policies of peace was unthinkable. Occasional decisions by the Senate to desist from fighting a war or annexing a conquered territory were motivated by specific po-

36

On war and its transformation in the fifth century, see, e.g., Meier, 1990; Hanson, 2001; Pritchard, 2018. 37 Thucydides 1.70. 38 Eckstein, 2006. 39 See esp. Raaflaub, 1996, and Cornell, 1995: chs. 12, 14.

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litical concerns and had nothing to do with a change in the principles of Roman war policies.40 When Mediterranean predominance was secured, in Rome itself power and wealth gained in the empire overwhelmed traditional customs and restraints. War turned inward. In increasingly brutal civil wars that eventually encompassed the entire empire, leading senators used their legions to compete with each other for primacy, until the future Augustus, the last man standing, pacified the empire, disguising a military monarchy with his claim to have restored the republic.41 In China, the “Spring and Autumn” Period (722 – c. 450 BCE) was dominated by wars of city-states or larger coalitions for territory and resources; attempts to impose order were based on a system of covenants. In the “Warring States” Period (450–221), “warfare among the regional city-state systems was perpetual and increasingly fierce, and many technological and tactical inventions were adopted on the battlefields. The whole of society, including for the first time peasants, was organized to meet the needs of war, and major innovations in social organization resulted. War itself was theorized and integrated into an all-inclusive cosmological system.”42 Peace came only with the king of Qin’s ultimate victory and the country’s unification in the First Empire.43 As we shall see, the development in warfare from small-scale, occasional, and low-impact to large-scale, almost permanent, and brutal had, at least in Greece and China, important consequences for thoughts and actions about peace.44 3. Consequences for peace efforts: intensified peace discourse and obstacles to making peace Everything our extant sources say about peace must be examined against this background of war. That in a world often dominated by war efforts to establish or preserve peace faced tremendous obstacles is obvious enough. Still, war was never accepted silently. The Greek evidence is particularly eloquent here. Already in the Iliad, a truce concluded to enable a duel between principal perpetrator (Paris) and principal victim (Menelaus) that would decide the conflict and end (or avoid) the “miserable war” is welcomed enthusiastically by both armies. Its result, 40

See Badian, 1968; Harris, 1979. On the crisis of the republic and the age of civil wars, see the relevant chapters in The Cambridge Ancient History, vols. IX–X, and von Ungern-Sternberg, 2004. 42 Yates, 1999: 9. See also Yates, 2007, and relevant chapters in Loewe / Shaughnessy, 1999. 43 See fn. 90, below. 44 For the question of why this was not the case in other societies that were also frequently involved in war, see the chapters of S. Bickel and J. Bronkhorst in Raaflaub, 2016b. 41

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they hope, will establish friendship and reliable agreements between their nations – an early example of a “peace by reconciliation.”45 The war god, Ares, is highly unpopular even among the gods.46 Typically, though, the leader’s ambition and focus on personal honor contrasts sharply with the sentiments of the masses.47 The singer heroicizes warlike deeds but also describes in detail the horror of handto-hand battle among heavily armed soldiers and the misery that war causes for the noncombatant population – as illustrated, for example, by Andromache’s experiences during and after the war.48 The same impressions are conveyed by contemporaneous art and dramatized later by Greek tragedy.49 The horrors of war are illustrated also in ancient Near Eastern art (for example, in large pictorial reliefs decorating the walls of Neo-Assyrian palaces), and many ancient Near Eastern texts (such as the Epic of Erra) focus on the population’s suffering in war.50 Efforts to limit the impact of war or to resolve conflicts without resorting to war, and to achieve and secure peace were pursued through a range of procedures most of which were widely common throughout the ancient world. (1) Calls for moderation could be effective in periods of limited warfare among polities that shared basic values and norms, and even more so if they were supported by an agency that enjoyed high moral and/or religious authority, such as in Greece the Delphic oracle.51 (2) Diplomacy depended on the safety of the agents involved, which was achieved by specific institutions and measures. Thus heralds and ambassadors who had to travel through no man’s land and hostile territory were often marked by specific equipment and clothing. In Greece they were placed under the protection of the highest god, Zeus.52 45 Iliad 3.110–11, cf. 3.298–301, 320–23, 454; 7.390. End (or avoid): the epic, focusing on a major episode in the war’s tenth year, integrates events (such as this duel or the “viewing from the wall,” 3.146–242) that logically belong at the war’s beginning. 46 Iliad 5.761, 831, 890–91. 47 Iliad 3.276–91. 48 Iliad 6.447–65. 49 See, e.g., the “Mykonos pithos” depicting attacks on women and children and their killing, such as that of Hector’s son Astyanax (van Wees, 2004: 125; Lichtenberger / Nieswandt / Salzmann, 2018: 40, 43) or the sarcophagus with the sacrifice of Polyxena (Rose, 2014: 72–103). Tragedy: esp. Euripides, Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromache. 50 Art: see Bonatz, 2005; Collins, 2014 and, for illustrations, Yadin, 1963: 380ff.; Moortgat, 1967: pl. 261–267, 284. Epic of Erra: Foster, 2005: 880–911; see also the lamentations over the destructions of cities: Pritchard, 1969: 455–463, 611–619. 51 Among the general principles it advocated the Delphic Oracle emphasized moderation (“not too much”: mēd’ agan) and imposed, through a decree of the alliance protecting and supporting it, limits on the use of violence in war (Kiechle, 1958). On moderation in the Greeks’ exploitation of victories, see Karavites, 1982: esp. 124–127; on laws of war in antiquity, Bederman, 2001: 242–266; on Greek “rules of war,” Ober, 1996. 52 On diplomacy in ancient Greece, see Adcock / Mosley, 1975 (152–153 on the heralds’

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(3) Interstate arbitration was firmly established in Greece and worked well in many cases but tended to fail among super powers when there was no higher authority whose judgement they could trust.53 Thus during the Peloponnesian War Sparta attributed its initial setbacks to its refusal to respect the arbitration clause in an earlier treaty with Athens and later gained additional confidence by Athens’ refusal to do so.54 (4) To claim a just cause was important because the support of the gods depended on it.55 Thus Mesopotamian and Hittite kings always claimed to fight on behalf of and under the protection of their highest god, emphasizing at least that they were reacting to acts of hostility perpetrated by the enemy.56 Rome developed a specific institution (the priestly college of the fetiales) and highly formalized procedures for the primary purpose of establishing the justice of its wars.57 (5) Sacrifices, oaths, and curses, often again invoking one’s just cause, intended to secure the gods’ support for treaties and their punishment of violators. They were a firmly established component of ancient Near Eastern and Greek treaties.58 Already the Iliad describes these procedures in detail when narrating the agreement preceding the duel mentioned before.59 (6) Other procedures were intended to create good will among former enemies. We think of peace kisses, peace meals, and intermarriage between the victors and defeated that appear in Alexander’s history and became common in later periods.60 Leaving a defeated king in his position, now as a client king, had the same

protection by Zeus); Piccirilli, 2002; Giovannini, 2007: 92–97; on the protection of diplomats and embassies in antiquity, see Bederman, 2001: 88–120. A story told by Herodotus (7.133–37) illustrates the heralds’ divinely protected status. 53 On arbitration, see Tod, 1913; Piccirilli, 1973–97; Ager, 1996; Carty, 2017. 54 Thucydides 7.18 with 1.140. 55 A good example for the invocation of divine support for a just cause is Euripides, Heraclidae 243–246, 284–287; see Raaflaub, 2007a. The concept of decision by duel (Giovannini, 2007: 175–177), attested in early periods, is based on divine support. On concepts of just war in the ancient world, see Bederman, 2001: ch. 6; in Greece and Rome, Clavadetscher-Thürlemann, 1985; Rüpke, 1990: 117–122; Dewald, 2013. 56 For the Hittites, see the chapter of S. de Martino in this volume; for the ancient Near East in general, Trimm, 2017: 567–588. Jacobs, 2014, discusses an example from Achaemenid Persia, while Galter, 2014, focuses on the divinely ordained Neo-Assyrian claim to rule the world. 57 On the fetiales, see Livy 1.32; Wiedemann, 1986; Rüpke, 1990: 97–117. 58 See, e.g., Foster, 2007; Beal, 2007; broadly on treaty practices in ancient Greece, Giovannini, 2007: 224–248; Rhodes, 2008; in antiquity, Bederman, 2001: ch. 5. Karavites, 1992 emphasizes close analogies between early Greek and ancient Near Eastern treaty practices. 59 Iliad 3.245–323; for the duel, see above at fn. 45. 60 See, e.g., Arrian, Anabasis 7.11; Plutarch, Alexander 50. I thank James Romm for these references.

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purpose.61 (7) Oaths, curses against violators, the exchange of hostages, or marriage alliances had the purpose of securing the duration of peace.62 Generally, the return to peace was relatively easy in low-level wars among polities that shared common beliefs, values, and norms. An example are the neighbourhood conflicts and rivalries among early Greek communities (poleis). In such cases, war could even be constrained by ritual elements, such as sworn agreements on the avoidance of certain weapons (long-distance missiles), the choice of the battle field (that guaranteed a fair fight and offered both sides an equal chance), the unspoken rule that the defeated should not be pursued in flight – in other words, that the fight was about victory and honour, not the annihilation of the opponents – or the limitation of a peace accord to, say, thirty years so that the next generation would in due time get a chance to prove itself.63 It fits the same pattern that victory was demonstrated by the victor’s control of the battle field and erection of a “trophy” – a tropaion consisting of armour and weapons of the defeated mounted on or piled around a tree trunk or post and dedicated to the gods – and acknowledged by the defeated through the request of a truce and permission to remove and bury their dead.64 It became more difficult to achieve peace the higher the intensity of wars and the more was at stake. The greatest obstacle was the ambition of, or ideological pressure exerted on, communities (in Greece and early China), ruling aristocracies (in republican Rome), and especially rulers (around the globe) to fight wars for domination or territory. That in non-monarchic polities it was not unusual for the people to support their leaders’ expansionist policies is demonstrated by the cases of classical Athens and mid-republican Rome.65 Here, peace followed only upon the decisive victory of one side or, temporarily, the exhaustion of both sides, when neither saw a possibility to prevail. Thus in Warring States China peace, essentially existing in the intervals between wars, became more permanent only by the capitulation of the defeated and their integration into a shrinking number of grow-

61

Hassig, 2007: 315–316. These institutions can be observed around the globe. For hostages, Caesar’s Gallic War provides ample evidence (see Raaflaub, 2017, index under “hostages”); for marriage alliances early China (Yates, 2007: 38–40), the Aztecs (Hassig, 2007: 317–318), and the Hittites (Beal, 2007: 88–89), among others, offer many examples; so does the history of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire (see Romm, 2010, index s.v. marriage, wedding). See also the Egypto-Hittite treaty mentioned at fn. 4, above (e.g., Bell, 2007: 110–111). 63 Rituals in warfare or the adherence to certain common norms is not the same as “ritualized warfare” (for which see Connor, 1988): Ober, 1996; van Wees, 2004: 115–117. 64 Xenophon, Agesilaus 2.15–16. The refusal of this request was highly exceptional; a famous case is described by Thucydides 4.97–101. 65 For Athens, see above at fn. 37; for Rome, e.g., Gabba, 1984. 62

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ing states. As Ross Hassig writes,66 the Aztecs “lacked a peace god and rites for peace. Conquest was a primary political goal, and war … was suitably exalted. Death in war was the most honoured status one could attain … [Virtually everyone benefited from warfare. It fuelled the economy, permitted social mobility, and fed the gods.] The question for the Aztecs was not how to coexist peacefully with other polities, but how to bring all other polities into a hierarchical relationship with themselves on top. There could be peace only with the subordinated, the dead, or with those too distant or yet too powerful to be conquered.” In addition, to many rulers war was essential in guaranteeing a steady flow of revenues by providing booty, tribute, and dependent manpower – revenues that were essential to maintaining control both domestically and over an empire. From this perspective, peace could be detrimentally expensive. Thus the Hittites systematically spoiled conquered countries of precious goods, movable wealth such as cattle and sheep, and deportees. The stability that prevailed in Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and Syria in the thirteenth century BCE prevented them from continuing their profitable attacks, and it is well possible that the resulting lack of revenues weakened them and contributed decisively to the demise of their empire.67 Moreover, the pattern that was ultimately responsible for the outbreak of the First World War is also visible in antiquity. The rapid rise of a new power challenged the primacy of an established and long-dominating old one; in this constellation provocations by third parties or even mere accidents could trigger reactions that ended up involving both powers in a war they had not sought and might not really want. This pattern, Graham Allison suggests, was first described by Thucydides in his analysis of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (he therefore calls it the “Thucydides Trap”):68 the war was triggered by a series of marginal conflicts involving colonies of Corinth, an ally of Sparta, that were controlled by or seeking an alliance with Athens (Corcyra and Potidaea), but, the historian insists, the “truest or deepest cause” of the war was situated on a deeper level: “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”69 Whether or not ancient (or modern) powers wanted such wars or tried to avoid them, the escalation caused by the “Thucydides Trap” was facilitated by a “trigger-happy” attitude towards war that still considered war a normal part of politics.

66

Hassig, 2007: 313. See S. de Martino’s chapter in this volume. 68 G. Allison, The Washington Post, November 9, 2018: www.washingtonpost.com/news/ theworldpost/wp/2018/11/09/china (accessed Dec. 28, 2021). 69 Thucydides 1.23.6 (trans. R. Warner). 67

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Conversely, wars that became endemic and exceedingly oppressive without providing compensatory benefits could provoke reactions that pushed for peace. In fact, it was only in the climate of classical Greece’s incessant wars for domination, of the devastating civil wars of the late Roman republic, and of China’s never ending wars for primacy before the First Empire that the demand for peace intensified. It was supported by leading poets and thinkers and prompted serious discussions about possibilities to stifle war and create conditions for lasting peace. Now peace theories were developed both in China and in Greece. In China, most thinkers agreed that constant warfare among competing states could be overcome only by a strong centralized monarchy. What was debated was whether this ideal monarch should achieve the country’s unity by peaceful or warlike means. Meanwhile, state administrators developed practical solutions and laws aimed at securing internal peace and maximizing the population’s potential for the benefit of the state. This is a rich topic that I can only mention here.70 Uniquely in democratic Athens, this intensified peace discourse found expression not only in treatises but in public, in tragedies and comedies performed in front of thousands of citizens and in lectures presented by “knowledge experts” (philosophers called “sophists” as well as doctors, ethnographers, and historians) who contributed to and profited from a mutually stimulating pool of ideas and theories.71 The ideas presented there are reflected in all genres of literature. Scattered but unmistakable evidence, found not least in contemporaneous historical works, suggests that crucial issues were intensely debated. An example is the question of whether and how a power, like Athens, that was programmed for war and conquest could be converted to a policy of peace and collaboration.72 We also know of theories and practical solutions that must have resulted from such debates. Those focusing on internal peace by overcoming constitutional conflict, civil strife, and the threat of civil war (stasis) in the last phase of the Peloponnesian war and its aftermath had some promise because the citizen body controlled the polis’ internal sphere.73 We think of the theory of a “mixed constitution” that, according to Thucydides, was realized in Athens after the oligarchic coup of 411. It combined oligarchic and democratic elements and thus was expected to be acceptable to both sides.74 After the defeat of 404 and another oligar70

See esp. Yates, 2016. Treatises, dealing mostly with internal peace vs. stasis: Raaflaub, 2016b: 136–137. Tragedies: fn. 49, above; comedies: Aristophanes, Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata; Ruffel, 2017. Lysistrata challenges the democratic civic ideology with its embrace of war and death for the community, as it is formulated in Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” in Thucydides (2.34–46); see Raaflaub, 2016b: 59–65 and relevant sections in Pritchard, 2018. Lectures and pool of ideas: Thomas, 2000. 72 See Raaflaub, 2016b: 130–132. 73 See Raaflaub, 2016b: 136–139. 74 Thucydides 8.97.2; see von Fritz, 1954. 71

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chic interlude, the community overcame the threat of civil war by a “reconciliation decree” that geographically separated democrats and oligarchs without curtailing their citizenship or property rights in the larger community. Both sides swore “not to remember evil deeds.”75 This made it difficult to prosecute political opponents for crimes committed under the oligarchy and facilitated lasting peace. We are reminded of the “truth commission” that was established in South Africa to overcome the fallout of apartheid policies. Conversely, attempts at taming rampant inter-polis war remained unsuccessful. Prominent intellectuals, foremost among them the eminent rhetorician and philosopher Gorgias, publicly condemned inner-Greek wars but ultimately could think only of a desperate solution: to unify the Greeks for a great war against the Persians, thus diverting their warlike energies outwards.76 This is what the Macedonian kings, Philip II and Alexander the Great, achieved after defeating the Greeks in 338 BCE by founding the “Corinthian League,” but at the price of Greek loss of independence.77 A neutral institution supported by all or most poleis and charged with protecting peace was unthinkable. The experience of horrendous wars that would in modern times spark the creation of the International Red Cross, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, prompted in Greece too in the fourth century large-scale peace congresses and “common peace” (koinē eirēnē) agreements, but these all faltered soon because they were imposed by an outside power (Persia), because Sparta, charged with supervising them, blatantly pursued its own interests, and because they violated the principle of member autonomy.78 Let’s pause here for a moment.79 Some of the ideas promoting peace in China and Greece (and also India80), emerging roughly in the same period (fifth and fourth centuries BCE), not only rejected the use of violence to attain peace but were based on an understanding “that war was caused, not by ‘evil’ outside forces attacking a harmonious world order, but by a structural internal problem: that kings, officials, and humanity at large pursued selfish desires, and often did so violently.”81 75

Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.24–43; Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 39; see Loening, 1987, and, for a brief summary, Raaflaub, 2016b: 132–133. 76 Gorgias: see Diels / Kranz, 1964: no. 82 fr. B5b; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.9; see also Isocrates, Panegyric (Or. 4) 3, 115–16, 172–77; To Philip 7–9, 15–16; on Plato and Aristotle, Ostwald, 1996. 77 On the Corinthian League, see Ryder, 1965: ch. 7 and app. 10; Jehne, 1994: pt. 3; Rhodes, 2003. 78 On the history of the koinē eirēnē agreements, see Ryder, 1965; Jehne, 1994. 79 In this and the following paragraph, I draw on the excellent observations of van Wees, 2016: 161–173. 80 On India, see Salomon, 2007; Bronkhorst, 2016. 81 Van Wees, 2016: 162.

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Overcoming war thus required overcoming self-interest, which in turn required not only enlightenment and self-control but also a change of priorities and values. Here the Greeks went farther than others. Isocrates and Xenophon urged the Athenians to use negotiation to make peace with all, abandon imperialist ambitions, wage only defensive war, and seek international leadership on the basis of reputation and consent rather than by force. Their main supporting argument was economic benefit. In fact, they postulated, self-interest was served much better by peace than by war. War brought nothing but untold misery, destroyed the city’s reputation, and caused havoc to finances and the economy. “But if we make peace,” Isocrates wrote, “and present ourselves as our common covenants command us to do, then we shall dwell in our city in great security, delivered from wars and perils and the turmoil in which we are now involved amongst ourselves, and we shall advance day by day in prosperity, relieved of paying war-taxes, of fitting out triremes, and of discharging the other burdens which are imposed by war, without fear cultivating our lands and sailing the seas and engaging in those other occupations which now, because of the war, have entirely come to an end. We shall see our city enjoying twice the revenues which she now receives, and thronged with merchants and foreigners and resident aliens, by whom she is now deserted.”82 Xenophon proposed non-violent means to raise public revenues: improving the infrastructure, streamlining legal procedures, offering incentives for traders and ship owners.83 He concludes that only in peace can all the polis’ revenues come in. “If anyone supposes that financially war is more profitable than peace, I really do not know how the truth of this can be tested better than by considering once more what has been the experience of our polis in the past. He will find that in old days a very great amount of money was paid into the treasury in time of peace, and that the whole of it was spent in time of war; he will conclude on consideration that in our own time the effect of the late [the Peloponnesian] war on our revenues was that many of them ceased, while those that came in were exhausted by the multitude of expenses; whereas the cessation of war by sea has been followed by a rise in the revenues, and has allowed the citizens to devote them to any purpose they choose.”84

82

Isocrates, On Peace (Or. 8) 19–21; trans. G. Norlin. Xenophon, Ways and Means (Poroi) chs. 2–3. 84 Ibid. 5.1, 11–12; trans. E.C. Marchant; see van Wees, 2016: 170–173. 83

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Hans van Wees concludes that some of these ideas anticipate nineteenth-century liberal peace theories.85 4. The return of peace and its impact on the affected populations The process of actually making peace with all the procedures, rituals, and formalities observed in achieving it would deserve its own chapter. Several studies look at parts of this process in various ancient societies,86 but what we are missing so far is a comprehensive collection and analysis of the extant evidence.87 Rather than offering a few sketchy comments, I prefer to focus here on some aspects of how people experienced the return of peace. A distinction must be made between peace within and outside of empires. To begin with imperial peace, in Rome Augustus’ victory over Marc Antony and Cleopatra in 31 ended the civil wars. Over the previous two decades, peace had received much publicity by scholarly treatises and the poetry of the “Augustan poets” Vergil, Horace, and Tibullus. Not least urged on by such calls for peace, Augustus celebrated, in his famous peace altar (Ara Pacis Augustae), by the closure of the Gates of the Janus Temple, and by other means the restoration of peace within the empire, while at the same time, in the new Forum of Augustus, paying homage to Mars the Avenger, highlighting the long line of generals and statesmen who had built Rome’s empire, and presenting himself as Rome’s greatest conqueror. The same jarring double-claim is visible in the Forum Romanum, where the splendidly renovated Temple of Concord looked down on an imperial façade formed by the new Temple of the Deified Julius, whose assassination Augustus had avenged, flanked by triumphal arches, and half a century later in the emperor Vespasian’s Peace Forum that monumentalized both the return of peace, externally and after civil wars, and the victory in the Jewish War of 66–73 CE.88 Still, despite wars continuing beyond the borders, for the empire’s population the “Augustan or Roman Peace” (Pax Augusta or Pax Romana) ushered in a long period 85

Van Wees, 2016: 165, 171. See above at fns. 51ff. For Greece and Rome, see, e.g., relevant chs. in Raaflaub, 2007b; Rhodes, 2008; Moloney / Williams, 2017; Cornwell, 2017; for Mesopotamia, Foster, 2007; Neumann / Dittmann / Paulus et al., 2014; for the Hittites, Beal, 2007; Beckman, 2014; for ancient Iran, Wiesehöfer, 2007; for ancient China, Yates, 2007. Beal, 2014, claims that the Hittites considered “peace an ideal state of affairs” (109) so that avoidance of war by giving priority to diplomacy was often their primary goal. In contrast, Trimm, 2017: 56–65 emphasizes that the avoidance of war usually had pragmatic reasons; see also, for Roman analogies, text at fn. 40, above. It is a pity that Trimm, 2017, did not include in his broad survey of warfare in the ancient Near East a chapter on the termination of war. 87 The exhibition “Wege zum Frieden” (Münster, late April to early September 2018) selectively achieved some of this for the medieval and modern worlds: Arnhold, 2018. 88 On all this, see Raaflaub, 2011; 2015 with bibliography. See now also Cornwell, 2017. For recent discussions of Augustus’ Peace Altar, see Ionescu, 2016; Faust, 2018; for that of Vespasian’s Peace Forum with a reconstruction drawing, see Meneghini, 2018. 86

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of unprecedented prosperity and development that, although distributed unevenly, eventually made universal citizenship and cultural unity possible.89 In China, the ultimate victory in 221 of the king of Qin (who famously would take his army along to the other world) and the foundation of the first empire marked the return of peace within its boundaries.90 The philosopher and statesman Jia Yi, a critic of the Qin, expressed the general mood at the time: Now that there was an emperor, “[t]he masses hoped that they would obtain peace and security and there was nobody who did not whole-heartedly look up in reverence. This was the moment to preserve authority and stabilize achievements, the foundations of lasting peace.”91 Although intellectuals and elites were unhappy with the first emperor’s rule, as they were again under some of the Han emperors, for the people imperial peace under the Qin and Han empires brought lasting improvements. In sum, imperial peace gave the population stability and order which was hugely important but should not be confused with general happiness. Multiple sources from around the globe illustrate the ways in which such peace mattered most to people. In an Egyptian inscription that celebrates victories of the pharaoh Merneptah, by which he claims to have brought peace to all the defeated countries, we read: “Sit down and chatter happily, or walk out on your way: there is no fear in people’s hearts. Fortresses are left to themselves, wells are open for the messengers’ use. The battlements of the walls are becalmed, only sunlight wakes the watchmen. … People sing as they come and go; they do not lament or mourn. The towns are settled once again. He who tends his crop will eat it.”92 The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal’s coronation hymn emphasizes prosperity of all people and concord between upper and lower classes as essential features of peace: “May the resident of Assur obtain 30 kor (c. 170 bushels) of grain [or 30 quarts of oil or 30 minas of wool] for one shekel of silver. May the great

89

See, e.g., the praise of Rome in Aelius Aristides’ Or. 26, On Rome (trans. in Behr, 1981; for discussion, see Harris / Holmes, 2008: pt. 3). For discussions of the Pax Romana, see Wengst, 1987; Woolf, 1993; see also Cornwell, 2017: 187–200. 90 On the First Empire, see Lewis, 2007; on the First Emperor and his terracotta army, Portal, 2007. 91 Quoted by Yates, 2016: 100. 92 Lichtheim, 1976: 77, quoted here in the adaption of van Wees, 2016: 159.

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listen when the lesser speak, may the lesser listen when the great speak, may harmony and peace be established in Assur.”93 Contrasting the pleasures of country life and love with the cruel demands of war, the Roman poet Tibullus writes: “… Shining Pax first led Oxen under the curved yoke to the plow’s work. Pax nourished vines and established juice within the grape That a father’s jug might pour wine for his son. In time of Pax the hoe and share gleam; in the dark Rust seizes the tough soldier’s gloomy arms. And the peasant, himself scarcely sober, in his wagon Drives wife and children home from the sacred grove.”94 In sum, peace made life happy and easy – or at least manageable. Ancient rulers therefore very frequently claimed to rule their domain or the world with divine support in order to guarantee order, justice, prosperity, and peace for their people.95 That this just as much served their own needs and interests goes without saying. Outside of imperial contexts, however, experiences differed. Of course, victors thanked the gods with sacrifices, rituals, and the erection of shrines and temples. They celebrated their success with feasts, performances, competitions, and monuments. The erection of temples and public monuments in republican Rome often fulfilled vows offered before a war or battle.96 The Roman triumph developed into a lavish feast involving the victorious army and the population of Rome.97 Even the celebration of peace served that of victory. Kephisodotus’ famous statue of Eirēnē (Peace), holding the baby Ploutos (Wealth) and a cornucopia in her arm, marked the introduction in Athens of the cult of Peace; it was commissioned to celebrate an Athenian victory in 375 and perhaps also to advertise the polis’ mission as peacekeeper.98

93

Also mentioned by van Wees, ibid. Trans. Foster, 2005: 815–816. Tibullus 1.10.45–52. Trans. Dennis / Putnam, 2012: 77. See also Aristophanes’ peace plays (fn. 71, above). 95 Greeks and Romans gave credit to divine support for their victories, while the merits for peace were claimed by the rulers or leaders themselves. For differences in relations to the divine between especially the Greeks and other ancient civilizations, see Raaflaub, 2005. 96 See, e.g., Ziolkowski, 1992; Aberson, 1994. On victory celebrations in the ancient Near East, see Trimm, 2017: 413–424. 97 Beard, 2007. 98 Smith, 2011: ch. 10; Meyer, 2008a: 73–79, 84–85; Papini, 2018; on the statue’s new reconstruction presented in Münster in the spring of 2018, see Lichtenberger / Nieswandt, 2018: 9–10. 94

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Some of the defeated communities too erected monuments for their fallen soldiers.99 Yet for many there was no transition to peace: the men had been killed in war or executed afterwards, the women and children sold into slavery, the towns destroyed (like Corinth and Carthage after Roman victories in 146 BCE or many Near Eastern cities after their conquest by Assyrian armies) or taken over by the victor.100 The little island of Melos, immortalized by Thucydides’ “Melian Dialogue” offers an example: “[T]he Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took over for themselves, sending out later a colony of 500 men.” Aegina, long a rival of Athens and feared as a Spartan outpost, was occupied by Athens in 431, its people expelled and settled by Sparta in a border region. An Athenian raid soon killed most of them and scattered the rest. After the war, Sparta expelled the Athenian settlers and returned a few survivors to the island.101 Even if the defeated escaped extreme punishments, the victors’ terms usually were incisive. The Athenians punished allies who had revolted and been defeated by forcing them to hand over their fleet, destroy their walls, cede some of their territory, on which colonies of Athenian settlers were established, and accept various forms of supervision.102 In turn in 404, Sparta offered Athens peace upon condition of destroying its fortifications, handing over all warships but twelve, allowing their exiles (mostly oligarchs) to return, henceforth supporting all of Sparta’s wars, and accepting a garrison to assist the anti-democratic regime it installed.103 That Rome usually insisted on unconditional surrender was discussed above.104 In ancient Near Eastern, Chinese, and early Meso- and South American wars peace usually involved the losers’ loss of sovereignty and integration into the victors’ growing empires. Even after its end, war cast long shadows. The citizens of the warring states resumed their pre-war occupations and enjoyed the reopened market exchanges with other poleis – as Aristophanes’ Dikaiopolis does in Acharnians after concluding a private peace with Sparta.105 Yet of a wide range of profound problems 99

An example is the “Lion of Chaeronea,” erected by the Thebans to commemorate the members of their “Sacred Band” who fell in the battle of 338 BCE (Pausanias 9.40.10). See illustration in Cartledge, 1998: 190. 100 Destruction of cities was frequent in the Graeco-Roman world. For “Urbicide” in the ancient Near East, see Trimm, 2017: 367–379. 101 Melos: Thucydides 5.116. Aegina: Thucydides 2.27; 4.56–57; Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.9. 102 Meiggs, 1972: ch. 11; Schuller, 1974: pt. I. 103 Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.19–20; Bengtson, 1975: no. 211. 104 See above at fns. 13–14. 105 See also Aristophanes, Peace.

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we catch only glimpses in the extant evidence. Some soldiers returned with festering wounds and pain, torturing their surroundings with cries and evil smell; Philoctetes in Sophocles’ play titled after him may well be based on such experiences.106 As numerous “miracle inscriptions” attest, some sought the healing god Asclepius’ help in his sanctuary at Epidaurus.107 Others, maimed and invalid, needed support and sometimes received a small state pension for which they might be envied and harassed by others – as was one of the clients of the speech writer Lysias.108 Yet others were haunted by what we now know as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition well attested in contemporaneous literary testimonia but beyond help until recently.109 Then there were large numbers of war orphans and widows. In Athens the boys were raised at state expense, the girls received a dowry. Widows, who, among the shortage of men, could not find another husband,110 depended on their families’ support – as we learn from one of Xenophon’s “Socratic conversations”: the elite womenfolk of Athenians who had settled in one of the colonies were expelled after the war; they lived with a male relative on whom their maintenance imposed a heavy burden until Socrates convinced him to engage them in elitecompatible work as weavers.111 Women also commonly were the victims of warrelated violence and rape. The seventh-century BCE poet Hesiod comments: In peace “women bear children who resemble their fathers,” implying that in war times this often enough was different. Homer’s Iliad and Euripides’ Trojan War plays all touch upon this aspect or address it directly. We do not know how society dealt with these victims but their trauma is familiar from modern experiences.112 The Peloponnesian War had offered employment to large numbers of mercenaries.113 No longer needed after the war, some returned home, others waited for 106

Edwards, 2000; Tritle, 2010: 191–193. LiDonnici, 1995. 108 Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 49.4; Lysias, Or. 24; Edwards / Usher, 1986: 200–207, 263–269. 109 E.g., Herodotus 6.117; Gorgias, Encomium of Helen 17 (Diels / Kranz, 1964: no. 82 B11; trans. Gagarin / Woodruff, 1995: 194); see Shay, 1994; Tritle, 2000; Rawlings, 2007: 202–211; further bibliography in Raaflaub, 2014: 40 n. 37. 110 Aristophanes alludes to their sad fate in Lysistrata 620–628. On war orphans, see Raaflaub, 2014: 34. 111 Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7. 112 On women’s fates in Greek wars, see Schaps, 1982; Gaca, 2008, 2011, in preparation; in the Hebrew Bible, Trimm, 2017: 366–367; in Mesopotamia, Kuhrt, 2001; Ziegler, 2014. According to Trimm, 2017: 360–363 sexual violence is rarely mentioned in Assyrian texts and images, perhaps because imperial policies and deportations required avoidance of damage to the captives. 113 On the employment of mercenaries in Greek wars, see Parke, 1933; Bettalli, 1995: 123– 147. An extreme example of violence committed by mercenaries during the war is in Thucydides 7.29. 107

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new employment, and large crowds roamed through the country, taking what they needed and becoming a plague to local populations.114 In addition, expelled polis populations and refugees were seeking new homes. In 429, after a long siege the Athenians permitted the people of Potidaea to leave the town, each woman with two garments, each man with one and some money.115 We do not know their fate. After the Roman civil wars in the 80s and again in the late 40s BCE, thousands of small landholders were expelled from their farms to make place for the settlement of the victors’ veterans.116 The displacement of populations by war or design is particularly well-known from the ancient Near East.117 The Biblical stories of the Jews’ Babylonian exile and return to their homeland throws further light onto such experiences. Overall, then, for a good number of years after a major war’s end conditions remained unsettled and insecure. How long did the process of recovery and “normalization” take? The case of Athens offers some clues. In 404, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the city escaped destruction by a hair: for its own reasons, Sparta here refused to yield to the demands of some of its allies.118 The number of adult male citizens had shrunk to half the pre-war count; some 20,000 slaves had fled, and thousands of resident aliens (metics) had died in battle or left as well. In addition, numerous citizen families who had settled abroad were forced to return, placing an additional burden on the survivors. The meteoric population increase Athens had experienced in the decades before the war had now been more than reversed, and in a much shorter time span. How does a community cope with such challenges?119 Not much information survives to help us answer this question. But after less than a decade Athens was ready again to play a major role on the international stage, contributing decisively to a war effort against Sparta in the “Corinthian War” of 395–386 BCE.120 Things thus must have returned pretty quickly to normal, or a semblance of it. This probably was the most incisive impact of peace. Necessary adjustments were made in political structures and the financial administration. The farmers who had been bottled up in the urban area for many years now returned to their farms and repaired them. But details elude us except that we

114

E.g., Isocrates, Letter to Philip (1) 20; Letter to Archidamus (9) 9–10; see also Aeneas Tacticus, How to Survive under Siege 12.25 (trans. Whitehead, 1990). 115 Thucydides 2.70; Diodorus Siculus 12.46.6; see also Thuc. 1.103; Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.6; Isocrates, Panegyric (4) 168; generally on political refugees and exiles, see Seibert, 1979. 116 On farmers’ expulsions after Sulla’s and the triumvirs’ civil wars, see, e.g., Appian, Civil Wars 1.11.96; 5.2.12–13 with Vergil, Eclogue 1. 117 Oded, 1979. 118 Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.19; see discussion in Kagan, 1987: 395–417. 119 On all these issues, see Strauss, 1986; Akrigg, 2007 and 2019. 120 See Hamilton, 1979.

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notice a markedly different mood in post-war Athens than before the war.121 The Peloponnesian War and the defeat of 404 turned out to be a watershed in Athenian – and Greek – history: an age marked by huge achievements, optimism, and an almost unlimited sense of potential came to a crashing end. This is perhaps best comparable to the impact of the First World War on Europe.122 Bibliography Aberson, M., 1994: Temples votifs et butin de guerre dans la Rome républicaine. Rome. Adcock, F. / Mosley, D.J., 1975: Diplomacy in Ancient Greece. London. Ager, S., 1996: Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C. Berkeley. — (ed.), 2019: A Cultural History of Peace, I. London. Akrigg, B., 2007: “The Nature and Implications of Athens’ Changed Social Structure and Economy.” In R. Osborne (ed.): 2007: Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430–380 BCE. Cambridge. Pp. 27–43. — 2019: Population and Economy in Classical Athens. Cambridge. Arnhold, H. (ed.), 2018: Wege zum Frieden. Dresden. Badian, E., 1968: Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic. Oxford. Balcer, J.M., 1995: The Persian Conquest of the Greeks 545–450 BC. Constance. Battini, L. (ed.), 2016: Making Pictures of War: Realia et imaginaria in the Iconology of the Ancient Near East. Oxford. Beal, R., 1995: “Hittite Military Rituals.” In M. Meyer / P. Mirecki (eds.): Ancient Magic and Ritual Power. Leiden. Pp. 63–76. — 2007: “Making, Preserving, and Breaking the Peace with the Hittite State.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA/Oxford. Pp. 81–97. — 2014: “Hittite Reluctance to Go to War.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus et al. (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. Münster. Pp. 109–115. Beard, M., 2007: The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, MA. Beckman, G. 2014: “The Hittites Make Peace.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus et al. (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien. Münster. Pp. 117–122. Bederman, D.J., 2001: International Law in Antiquity. Cambridge. Behr, C.A. (trans.), 1981: Aelius Aristides. The Complete Works, II. Leiden. Bell, L., 2007: “Conflict and Reconciliation in the Ancient Middle East: The Clash of Egyptian and Hittite Chariots in Syria, and the World’s First Peace Treaty between ‘Superpowers’.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA / Oxford. Pp. 89–120. 121 122

See Strauss, 1986; Osborne, 2007. This aspect is emphasized by Kagan, 1987: 417.

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The Antagonism between Animosity and Peace-making in Ancient Egypt Between Ideology and Practical Foreign Policy: An Extended Synopsis1 Manfred Bietak2

Introduction In human history, it is the deeds of warlords that have been mostly glorified, while those of peacemakers only occasionally get proper credit. Defining, claiming and expanding one’s own territory by using power, intimidation and even extirpations of other groups of human beings is to some extent an inheritance from our animal ancestors and led to the loss of entire human populations. In early ancient Egyptian history, the appearance of foreigners along its borders was mostly met with aggressive defensive measures. These measures were supported by ideological propaganda by claiming Egypt as the abode of correct order under the rule of pharaoh whilst the hill countries and its inhabitants surrounding Egypt were declared as the unruly chaotic world with its dangerous representatives (Fig. 1). We shall see that, in the course of its history, Egypt applied different measures to secure its own peaceful development. The Egyptian concept of peace itself originally referred to the presence of peaceful conditions within Egypt. It is interesting in this context that ancient Egypt initially neither had a word for war nor for peace that would parallel in their semantic field our modern terminology (Gnirs, 2009: 67). It is only in the 18th Dynasty, when Egypt embarked on open warfare for superiority in the Near East, that two words emerge as approximate parallels, but always with different connotations to our modern understanding. The word used for peace, ḥtp, gained this meaning only transitively in the 18th Dynasty (Davies, 2018). As a verb, ḥtp meant “to rest,” “to be content,” or “to be satisfied.” Hence, ḥtp, “offering,” makes gods or deceased alike “content.” This is indeed the essential meaning of peace. However, a related word and concept is the causative verb sḥtp, “to make content” or “to pacify,” with an additional belligerent meaning, “to subdue” (foreign) regions. It thereby signals that, to make these regions peaceful for Egypt, peaceful conditions can in practice be enforced. A close parallel to our word “war” may be ḫrwyt, “animosities, war,” which is known from the 18th Dynasty onwards (Wb. III, 326). It originates perhaps from the MK word ḫrwy, “troublemaker,” “enemy” (Wb. III, 325). The Semitic loanword salam, ‫שלום‬, entered the Egyptian vocabulary only in the 19th 1

This is an extended synopsis of a larger publication project in progress. Austrian Academy of Sciences and University of Vienna. I would like to thank Orly Goldwasser, Lyvia Morgan and Anna Latifa Mourad for reading and editing this manuscript, Patrick Aprent for producing the illustrations; all mistakes remain mine. 2

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Dynasty (Hoch, 1994: 285–286). Again, the Egyptian meaning was probably not the definition of peace as we know it today. The term mostly occurs in association with requests by the Canaanites for the cessation of hostilities, and is often classified by hieroglyphs of submission (Hoch, 1994: 285–286; Gardiner, 1957: A4, A30).

Fig. 1: Border zones showing the extinction of the Early Bronze I culture on the Sinai and of the A-Group Culture in Lower Nubia. The positions of Wadi Maghara and Gebel esh-Sheikh Suliman indicate magic images of the Pharaoh clubbing and leading to captivity of foes (Google Earth image edited by P. Aprent). Besides the application of violence and oppression on its neighbours, Egyptians also learned to appreciate the skills and products of foreigners with whom they chose to make contact. This led to a slow but steady change in the Egyptian assessment of foreigners.

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Another dimension of peace is an ethical one connected to attaining the Egyptian concept of ma‘at: “harmony,” “order,” “correctness,” “justice,” or “balance” in the world. This term was first conceived to create a legal justification for the state and social system in which everybody should have known his place. Its etymology is clear in this respect; it is related to the verb ma‘a, “to direct,” “to lead.” The cosmological order of the universe was also represented by this term. The connection between a preferred “world order” to religious ideologies, in the form of the goddess Ma‘at, was most likely conceived by the power holders of the state and is known since the fifth Dynasty. The application of ma‘at to the sphere outside of Egypt, the chaotic part of the world, occurred only in the New Kingdom. This was an essential development in the way of thinking in ancient Egypt. It was a prerequisite for a true kind of peace, but it was a long process. Securing internal stability by gaining absolute control over Egypt Egypt was not a united land in its prehistory. It consisted of heterogeneous populations. Besides the indigenous people, some were descendants of immigrants from the Near East, some were from Nubia, and some were most probably settlers from the Libyan Desert to the west of Egypt. In the late Chalcolithic Period (c. 3500–3100 BCE), Egypt was divided into several kingdoms, which were gradually united into a single state. Beginning in Upper Egypt, this process lasted for centuries and, judging by pictorial representations, was surely not peaceful. Scenes such as the smiting of foes in painted Tomb 100 of Hierakonpolis and relief representations on slate palettes, especially the Battlefield and Narmer Palettes, glorify war atrocities. Some evidence indicates that, in order to apply a firm grip on the nascent unified state, the population was resettled during the First Dynasty (c. 3100–2900 BCE) from rural hamlets and villages into planned fortified settlements. From then onwards, town planning became a repeated pattern of Egyptian communal life. Of course, some settlements developed irregularly (without city planning) from the beginning while others grew organically from their planned beginnings over the course of time, especially during the so-called Intermediate Periods when Egypt was divided into different polities. It is possible that the Nile River’s flood cycle promoted the development of a highly organised state. When left uncontrolled, river branches created unstable dynamics such as erosion or alterations in their course, which may have caused devastations and compelled settlements to be abandoned or relocated. To create a stable and controllable river system, it was necessary to clear sediments along the nearly empty riverbeds during the period of drought in spring. The large number of workers needed to ensure such hydrographic stability was best rallied by a highly developed, centralised organisation. This most likely stimulated a growing complexity of the Egyptian administration. Cumulative measures were also necessary to cope with the annual Nile flood and the redistribution of land after the

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water receded. Indeed, the association between water management and the development of highly complex civilisations is also found in regions with comparable environments, as in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The need for river control led to sophisticated irrigation systems and highly developed administrations able to firmly control and manage large populations. In Egypt, this created internal stability, albeit not necessarily one favourable to all. It was a foundation for the creation of a state that offered its inhabitants, besides the hardships imposed, a regulated peaceful and foreseeable life without unexpected surprises over many centuries.

Fig. 2: Rock-reliefs in Wadi Maghara (Sinai) showing pharaohs Horus Sekhemkhet and Snofru killing Asiatics (after Petrie 1906: figs. 47, 50).

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Securing internal peace by clearing borderlands At the beginning of Egyptian history, when decisions in the administration were extreme, one of the measures to create peace, sḥtp (see above, Introduction), was to ward off the “chaos” caused by foreigners by emptying regions bordering the Egyptian state of people. The Nubian A-Group culture between the First and Second Cataracts ceased to exist during the First Dynasty and the same happened with the Early Bronze I culture in the Sinai Peninsula. Both borderlands remained empty for some time, and in both regions we find images of the pharaoh clubbing foreigners, as in the Sinai’s Wadi Maghara (Fig. 2) or the Second Cataract’s Gebel esh-Sheikh Suliman (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Rock engraving at Gebel el-Sheikh Suleiman in the Second Cataract area showing a pharaoh of the 1st Dynasty leading a Nubian symbolized by a bow into captivity. The image of pharaoh is abstract, showing Horus on the palace façade. The expedition was obviously river borne (courtesy © Somaglino & Tallet 2014: fig. 7). Such scenes could be considered to magically ward off potential foes from forever entering the borderland. We do not yet know if such measures were also taken in the Western Desert. However, the discovery of rock inscriptions recounting 4th Dynasty activities over 200 km south-west of the Dakhla Oasis, as well as Old Kingdom remains of water depots with hundreds of ceramic vessels at Abu Ballas deep in the Libyan Desert, suggest that the Egyptians were rigorously active in policing approaches to the Nile Valley. A late Old Kingdom Egyptian fortified town in the remotest of the oasis (Dakhla) signifies that this area was already occupied and controlled by Egypt. Egypt had also outside its southern border zone, just north of the 2nd Cataract at Buhen, an installation during the Old Kingdom. We do not know what happened to the people of these regions: perhaps they were deported to Egypt to serve the state as a working force for the monumental building and irrigation projects.

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Peace by securing trade requirements and the selection of strategic partners The demand of commodities such as cedar wood, pitch, bitumen, oils, metals, wine, as well as skills such as trading, seafaring, caravanning, military service and craftsmanship such as woodworking, metalworking, viniculture, brought Egypt into more peaceful contact with foreigners. The preferred partners were, however, mostly not immediate neighbours but in regions at some distance from Egypt. In its foreign policy, one can observe that Egypt conducted business with a few preferred strategic partners for trade as well as to facilitate Egyptian expeditions abroad, protecting mercantile campaigns and offering docking places for its ships. In the New Kingdom, Egypt entertained numerous such partners. To create bonds, luxurious gifts were sent to specific foreign courts, among them stone ointment jars.

Fig. 4: Libyans with women and children adoring Pharaoh Sahure of the 5th Dynasty (after L. Borchardt, 1913: Blatt 1).

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Foreign trade brings about contacts and creates peace. A good example is reported in the 6th Dynasty biography of Harkhuf, who was involved in a diplomatic and commercial expedition to the land of Yam, probably early Kerma, and back. A peaceful reception seems to have been given to Libyan immigrants under king Sahure‘ (c. 2500 BCE); of course this was granted under condition of submission (Fig. 4). In the Levant, the main partner in the Old Kingdom seems to have been Byblos. Its temples were endowed with highly coveted Egyptian commodities and artwork. Reliefs from the pyramid temple of king Sahure‘ (c. 2500 BCE) depict a ship expedition to the Levant, most likely to Byblos, bringing, besides the highly desired commodities of the region, Asiatics, possibly seamen and ship builders to Egypt (Fig. 5). Approximately 130 years later, on reliefs from the causeway to the pyramid of king Unas (c. 2370 BCE), is another seagoing ship manned with sailors from western Asia, recognizable by their long hair, headbands and kilts, that distinguish them from the probably Egyptian captain and first officer. As such, people also entered Egypt to offer their skills in labour. Their presence was not only tolerated but even desired when they were useful for Egypt. We do not know if they were purchased from or ordered by their princes, forcibly transported as prisoners of conflict, or willingly attracted by the possibility of better living conditions or occupational prospects. Foreigners who had moved to Egypt had the possibility to acculturate, become Egyptians, and establish a career. Some of them even rose to high positions within the Egyptian hierarchy and were not embarrassed, for instance, to add to their epithets “son of an Asiatic lady.” Others migrated for a short time to Egypt and went back with the expertise acquired in their host country. All such circumstances fostered peaceful relations. At Tell Ibrahim Awad, near the ancient easternmost Nile branch, is even evidence of ancient Near Eastern cults in the form of a series of broad-room temples (Fig. 6) dating from the late Predynastic Period to the Old Kingdom (c. 3200–2500 BCE). This iconic architecture was typical of temples in the Levant during the Early Bronze I–III. Foreign trade brings about contacts and creates peace. Trading partners were also welcome in Egypt, as is clearly expressed on the First Semnah Stela of Senusert III (Berlin 14753), which bars Nubians travelling northwards, except those travelling for trade who were allowed to proceed up to the fortress of Iqen (Mirgissa). It is unknown how Egypt came to tolerate the settlement of Canaanites in the eastern Delta. Subjected to Asiatic infiltration during the First Intermediate Period, it experienced a strong influx of foreigners from the northern Levant from the second part of the 12th Dynasty onwards. While, according to the papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446a–e, the households of upper class Egyptians during the late Middle Kingdom incorporated slaves of both sexes in specific professional duties, it seems that free settlements of western Asiatic people were concentrated in the

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Fig. 5a

Fig. 5b

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Fig. 5c Fig. 5: Egyptian ships, bringing sailors and other specialists from the northern Levant to Egypt (courtesy © SMB Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, photo by Sandra Steiß). eastern Nile Delta, especially at Tell el-Dab‘a. Here, a town of Levantine people developed around a core of an Egyptian settlement. They were obviously responsible to the crown for foreign trade and participated in mining expeditions. They seem to have enjoyed self-administration and some kind of freedom with the blessing of the Egyptian crown. This shows that the concept of foreigners as enemies had undergone a change. They became accepted partners in many fields, as can also be evidenced in the peaceful cooperation of Asiatic miners and administrators in the Sinai expeditions of the second half of the 12th Dynasty. During the reign of Amenemhat III (c. 1874–1828 BCE), the “Brother of the Prince of Retjenu,” a Canaanite dignitary in Egyptian services, accompanied several Egyptian mining expeditions to the Sinai (Fig. 7). His seat of residence may very well have been the Asiatic town at Tell el-Dab‘a. One gets the impression of a free trading zone at Tell el-Dab‘a under a kind of governor with the honorary title of a “Prince of Retjenu,” who, according to his name and titles, seems to have had family bonds with the Princes of Byblos, the latter adopting the Egyptian title of ḥ3ty-‘ (Fig. 8).

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Fig. 6: An Early Bronze III broad-room temple, changed to a bent-axis temple from the 4th to the 5th Dynasty at Tell Ibrahim Awad in the Eastern Nile Delta. Both temple types are Near Eastern (after Eigner 2000, fig. 2 reinterpreted by Bietak 2010b: fig. 2).

Fig. 7: Image of the “Brother of the Prince of Retjenu” on an engraving on the stela 112 at Serabit el-Khadem on the Sinai (after Goldwasser 2012/13: fig. 2).

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Fig. 8: Sealimpression of a “Prince of Retjenu” with the name of Ipy-shemu, dating to the Early Second Intermediate Period (c. 1700 BCE). Seal of the so-called Green Jasper Workshop after Dominique Collon impressed on Egyptian clay (after Kopetzky & Bietak 2016: fig. 3) and scimitar of Prince Ipy-shemu-abi from Byblos (after Montet 1924: pl. C/no. 653). Being an important partner of Egypt, the eastern Delta became the nucleus of two foreign dynasties of rulers. In the time of weakness of the late 13th Dynasty, a polity developed at Tell el-Dab‘a under the name of Avaris, that in the 14th Dynasty was to become a small kingdom. Already of largely foreign origin, this segmentation of Egypt signifies political instability and even violence, as further suggested by the conflagration of the 14th Dynasty palace in Tell el-Dab‘a. Nevertheless, it prepared the way for the establishment of the 15th Dynasty, ruled by the so-called Hyksos, the “rulers of the foreign lands,” with their capital at Avaris. During the first half of the 15th century BCE, or the early 18th Dynasty, another strategic partner seems to have been the Minoan Thalassocracy. After the conquest of the Hyksos kingdom, Egypt was a landlocked power that needed expertise in seafaring. It is very likely that they acquired this from the Minoans. In a series of tombs in the Thebes residential necropolis from the time of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III are paintings of Keftiu delegations in the typical Minoan dress, the men with short kilts, laced boots and long curly hair. They are depicted bringing so-called Vapheio cups, bull rhyta and other Minoan metal vessels as part of a gift exchange between royal courts (Fig. 9). From the same period are the wall paintings of the Thutmosid palaces at Tell el-Dab‘a (Fig. 10), their fragments revealing original Minoan motifs such as bull-leaping and bull-grappling which are otherwise known at the palace of Knossos. Of similar date is the British Museum papyrus BM 10056 listing dockyard activities at the naval port of Peru-nefer and mentioning Keftiu ships. Such evidence suggests that this period was the peak of Egyptian-Minoan relations, with the site of Peru-nefer possibly to be identified

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with the harbour of the former Hyksos residence Avaris, now rebuilt in the Thutmosid Period with an enormous palace precinct decorated in images specifically of Minoan origin. Thus far, Egyptologists have mainly located the royal harbour in the region of Memphis. However, the Nile River demands harbours for seagoing ships near the reach of the sea to ensure navigation, especially in the drought season of spring when travel along the Nile would have been difficult if not impossible.

Fig. 9: Minoans carrying presents of merchandise to Egypt. Wall painting in the tomb of the dignitary Senenmut in the Theban Necropolis (TT71) (facsimile after Davies 1936: pl. XIV). Stability and peace by border colonisation and occupation of borderland After the prolonged end of the Old Kingdom (c. 2200 BCE), there followed a period of regional segmentation in Egypt and a lack of rigorous border control. This situation in the First Intermediate Period is reflected in literary texts, which are not free of political bias and were written much later, such as “The Teachings for (king) Merikare‘,” “The Admonitions of Ipuwer,” or “The Prophecies of Neferti.” It seems, however, highly likely that the eastern border zone in particular was infiltrated by Asiatics, who settled there until king Nebhepetre‘ Mentuhotep II (c. 2000 BCE) united Egypt and conquered these settlements, leading its inhabitants into captivity (see also above). This may be reflected in the tomb of General Intef (Thebes Tomb 386: Fig. 11) and on reliefs from the temple of king Mentuhotep II (British Museum AES 731, 732, 735). Control of the border zones is mentioned in the “Story of Sinuhe” of the reign of Senusert I, which refers to the “Walls of the Ruler,” a fortress or a system of fortresses in the Wadi Tumilat, and the “Ways of Horus” along the northern access route to Egypt, probably to be

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identified with the later known fortress of Tjaru, situated at Tell Hebwa, northeast of Qantara.

Fig. 10: The Tuthmosid palace precinct at Tell el-Dab‘a, being most likely a part of the royal installations of Peru-nefer, the major naval port of the 18th Dynasty (© Manfred Bietak, Tell el-Dab‘a Archives).

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Fig. 11: Wall painting in the tomb of General Intef (TT 386) from the 11th Dynasty in Thebes. Egyptian troops, among them Nubian archers, storm a fortress of Asiatics with yellow skin colour, leading away captives with their wives and children (after Jaroš-Deckert 1984: Faltkarte 1: facsimile by W. Ruhm). We have no evidence that the southern borderland, Lower Nubia, was troublesome in the time of the First Intermediate Period. Without doubt, however, Nubians offered their services as soldiers and archers to Upper Egyptian nomarchs and seem to have even flocked together in settlements, as the so-called Gebelein stelae testify (Fig. 12). There may be several reasons why, after the unification of Egypt, the 12th Dynasty decided to occupy the borderland between the First and Second Cataract. One was the access to gold mines; another was to secure its southern frontier against a growing formidable power in the region south of the Second Cataract, the kingdom of Kush in Upper Nubia. This would explain the strong fortification of the Second Cataract area with a series of sophisticated fortresses. The local population of Lower Nubia, the so-called C-Group, was supervised by a series of additional fortresses in strategic positions, some of them near the gold mines. A few of these fortresses such as Aniba, Buhen and Mirgissa can even be

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Fig. 12a–b: Nubian archer from a group of stelae in Gebelein with his fair Egyptian wife and his hybrid children from the First Intermediate Period (after Fischer 1961: pl. XI), and a model of a Nubian archer company from the tomb of Mesehti in Assiut from the early Middle Kingdom (Cairo Egyptian Museum, photo by Udimu under CC BY-SA 3.0, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesehti).

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identified as fortified towns. The kingdom of Kush became most dangerous for Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. Under Thutmose I and his successors Thutmose II and Thutmose III, Egypt decided to destroy this African power, not only occupying Lower Nubia again but also imposing a firm grip on Upper Nubia as far as the Fourth Nile Cataract. Upper and Lower Nubia were finally transformed into a colony under strict Egyptian supervision. Another population, considered troublesome, emerged during the 12th and 13th Dynasties from the Nubian deserts and moved into Lower Nubia and Upper Egypt. They were the so-called Medjayu. In the 12th Dynasty, Egyptian military personnel and scouts were tasked to track down these peaceful migrants and send them back into the desert, as attested in the so-called Semnah Despatches. The authorities, however, were unable to stem the tide, as numerous sites of cemeteries of the “Pan Grave Culture” (the archaeological terminology for the Medjayu people at that time) at the edge of the desert of Nubia and Upper Egypt testify. To the west, according to the tale of Sinuhe, Senusert I made a raid into Libya. Remains of a fortress of this time have been found by Horst Jaritz in the Wadi Natrûn – the north-western access route to the Nile Valley. In contrast, Middle Kingdom Egypt did not attempt to conquer the territories on the other side of its borders in the Near East. Instead, several raids were conducted, with those of Amenemhat II bringing back numerous slaves. During the reign of Senusert III, another raid by an official with the name of Khu-Sebek is known to have penetrated the southern Levant (Birmingham Stela 3306, i.a. Peet 1914; Baines 1987). Soon afterwards, Egypt meddled in political affairs in the Levant and succeeded in developing strong relations with city-states like Byblos, Kumidi (most likely Kamid el-Lôz), and Ugarit. The ruling elite of these regions seem to have taken over Egyptian writing, using such titles such as ḥ3ty-‘, the “city governor” or “mayor.” This may further be a sign of an alliance with Egypt, to which they perhaps offered protection, harbours and favourable trading conditions (see above). One may indeed notice a strong trade exchange with the northern Levant during the Middle Kingdom; however, except for a few raids, Egypt did not conduct warlike activity in the southern Levant, probably because this region did not yield commodities important for Egypt at that time. In the New Kingdom, from king Horemheb onwards and more specifically in the time of Seti I, the eastern border of Egypt was fortified with a chain of fortresses along the “Horus Road” across the northern Sinai with a continuation along the Via Maris in the southern Levant. Other frontier fortresses were built in the Wadi Tumilat at Tell el-Retabe and probably another site further in the east. Ramses II also commissioned the construction of a chain of fortresses along the access route from the Libyan Desert to the western Delta ending beyond Marsa Matruh where a large fortress is located at Zawiet Umm el-Rakham on the Mediterranean coast. The strategy was to occupy a series of wells along approach

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routes to Egypt and thus to prevent masses of migrants from approaching the borders of Egypt. Introduction of long-distance letter diplomacy One of the most important influences of the Hyksos rule (c. 1640–1530 BCE) on the Egyptian state of the New Kingdom is the introduction of long-distance trade and diplomacy, with the use of Akkadian as diplomatic language, between Egypt and remote partners in Mesopotamia. A fragment of a cuneiform letter, written in a southern Mesopotamian Akkadian script was found in a well of the Hyksos Palace at Tell el-Dab‘a (Fig. 13). Old Babylonian seal impressions from the same site, which once sealed parcels, also point to trade with Mesopotamia. This was one of the long-lasting contributions of the Hyksos to Egypt, more than 200 years before the Amarna Age and its known archives. These foreign kings had no traditional claim as rulers of the entire universe, as held by the pharaohs, but they pushed their conqueror and heir, New Kingdom Egypt, into the arena of international politics for which trade, diplomacy and inter-dynastic marriages were already important means to entertain peaceful relationships.

Fig. 13: Fragment of a cuneiform letter of the Old Babylonian Period from the well of the Hyksos Palace at Tell el-Dab'a (drawing Frans van Koppen, after Bietak et al. 2009). This did not immediately occur after the conquest of the Hyksos by the early 18th Dynasty. It is more and more doubtful whether pharaoh Ahmose was particularly active in aggressive raids in the Levant. However, he seems to have initiated the peaceful custom of exchanging diplomatic gifts, as indicated by the alabaster vases with his name from Qatna and Cyprus. It is possible that Amenhotep I extended contacts with Syria and came into the interest sphere of the kingdom of Mitanni. Finally, Egypt started to be engaged in warfare over supremacy in the Levant with this new power, especially under Thutmose I. It seems that a peaceful path was taken by Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I, who is considered in his-

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tory books to have been a ruler who preferred to make a mark with her seaborne expedition to the legendary land of Punt (Fig. 14) and with her innovative building programme of temples. She is also known for such initiatives as the introduction of large religious events like the “Opet Festival” and the “Beautiful Festival of the Valley” in Thebes. However, even if officiating as a male pharaoh, it seems she did not change her peaceful priorities. Under the reign of her husband Thutmose II, before she herself became pharaoh, some military operations may have occurred at Kerma in Upper Nubia. Nothing is known of military activities under her reign in the Near East and this seems to have emboldened the kingdom of Mitanni to infiltrate the city-states of the Levant in order to draw them on their side in the event of potential future confrontations. This situation would cause successive pharaohs to change focus towards belligerent activities in the Levant.

Fig. 14: The seaborne expedition of Queen Hatshepsut to Punt (after Mariette 1877: pl.6) from a relief of her temple at Deir el-Bahari. Following this period of more hostile interactions, long-distance cuneiform letter diplomacy is yet again attested in Egypt with the unique find of the Amarna correspondence (Fig. 15). These letters reveal exchanges with Levantine princes as well as gift-giving and marriage negotiations with monarchs in the Near East. Of equal importance is the discovery of over 100 cuneiform tablets detailing correspondence between the courts of Ramses II and Hattušili III in Hattuša. We find in these most interesting letters not only political but also very personal information about the royal political players, especially Ramses II. The diplomatic protocols between the Egyptian pharaoh and Near Eastern kings and princes also in-

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dicate their political hierarchy. A monarch considered of equal standing with the pharaoh is addressed as brother. If the addressee is of lesser standing, he is a son, an expression already known from the letter of the Hyksos Apopi to the king of Kush. Queens were also involved in the correspondence with the Hittite court during the reign of Ramses II. The Hittite queen Puduhepa enjoyed nearly equal standing to her husband, as shown in her correspondence with the Egyptian king whom she also addresses as “my brother” as her husband would have done.

Fig. 15: Cuneiform tablets from the Amarna archives, being documents of long distance diplomacy with Akkadian as a diplomatic language (Amarna letter: Royal Letter from Ashur-uballit, the king of Assyria, to the king of Egypt, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Rogers Fund (24.2.11), under CC0 1.0, URL: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544695; and Amarna letter EA 10, Wikimedia Commons, photo by rowanwindwhistler, under CC BY-SA 2.0, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_letter_ EA_10#/media/File:TablillaBurnaburiashAAjenat%C3%B3n_(31261052197). jpg). Peace by warfare, organised oppression and deportation After the conquest of Avaris and the ousting of the Hyksos, the early 18th Dynasty had no problem with the southern Levant. In the north of Egypt, pharaoh Ahmose created a military stronghold at Avaris, but concentrated all his military efforts towards the south. His administration considered it highly dangerous for the borderland in Nubia to be in the hands of the kingdom of Kush. Lower Nubia was reconquered and the next objective was the elimination of the kingdom of Kush

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Fig. 16: Political Map of Egypt and the Near East (c.1640-1530 BCE) (after Hans Joachim Geisler, URL: https://geislershistorischekarten.wordpress. com/2015/08/30/histkarten/#comments, reworked by Manfred Bietak and Dominik Fill). with its capital in Kerma. It was Thutmose I who took this capital but the Kerma people were formidable warriors and retook Kerma. Under the reign of Hatshep-

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sut’s husband Thutmose II, activities at Kerma are noticeable by temple constructions that possibly followed warfare activities against the kingdom of Kush. It was under Thutmose III that this kingdom was finally defeated and eliminated. From Amenhotep I’s reign, and perhaps already during that of Ahmose, Nubia was under the administrative control of the “King’s son of Kush,” not a royal offspring, but an appointed viceroy directly responsible to the pharaoh. The territory from the First to the Fourth Cataract was divided into two administrative units: Wawat and Kush. These provinces were under direct Egyptian control and its centres culturally Egyptianised. From time to time, revolts broke out in remote areas, but altogether these provinces were considered pacified (Fig. 16). What were the means to create “peaceful” conditions? It seems highly likely that warriors of the kingdom of Kush were recruited into the Egyptian army after their defeat and sent to the northern end of Egypt. In the Thutmosid palace precinct of former Avaris, Kerma pottery and arrow tips of Kerma typology were found. It seems that the famous Nubian archers, high in demand in the Levant in the Amarna Period, were descendants of former Kerma soldiers. When Hatshepsut died (c. 1457 BCE), a military coalition of around 330 Levantine city-states was assembled under the leadership of the prince of Qadesh at Megiddo. It seems likely that the death of a ruler was often considered as an invitation for an uprising or perhaps even a military invasion of Egypt, as Wolfgang Helck has proposed. At the least, the lack of Egyptian presence in the Levant after the reign of Thutmose I invited attempts to disarm Egyptian sovereignty there. Only two months after the death of his co-ruler and stepmother Hatshepsut, Thutmose III marched with an army on the shortest land route to Megiddo to defeat the coalition and to take the oath of submission of the princes involved. He had to repeat his campaigns year after year in order to keep control over the region up to the Euphrates and at the coast up to Ugarit, and to create a pax aegyptiaca utilising the force of weapons. More subtle means to promote peace were also employed. The children of princes were taken as hostages to Egypt, raised there, and provided with Egyptian education. They were then sent back after the demise of their fathers as sovereigns loyal to Egypt, but as strangers to their own people. For securing access to important routes, centres, and commodities, the Egyptians also ensured control of harbours, the development of a fleet that provided quick transport of troops, and the provisioning of garrisons that were created at strategic locations. The administration of the occupied territories was organised effectively from centres both in Nubia and in Asia. While leaving the Near Eastern system of vassaldom intact, the three provinces Amurru, Upe, and Canaan were supervised from centres under a rabisu, a governor (Fig. 16). The Thutmosid grip on Levantine city-states was hardened by not allowing them to upkeep their fortification systems. This made them vulnerable towards the marauding bands of ‘Apiru and more dependent on the protection of Egyptian troops.

Fig. 17: Relief-representation of the Battle of Qadesh on the northern face of the pylon of the Temple in Luxor (after Wreszinski 1923–1938: pl.83–89).

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Amenhotep II tried to stop the defection of Levantine princes to the Mitanni patronage at the end of the reign of Thutmose III with whom he had a co-regency of three years. In his first campaign in the northern Levant, he assumed his iconic role as the smiting pharaoh and personally killed seven Syrian princes. Their corpses were hung on the prow of his ship and brought to Egypt; one of those rotting miserable corpses was sent to the southernmost town of Napata in Nubia to deter potential rebels. Another draconian measure of Amenhotep II to quell uprisings was to deport people from Nukhashe and from Canaan in large quantities (nearly 90,000 persons) to Egypt, depopulating vast areas that hardly recuperated during the Late Bronze Age. The main rival of Egypt in the power play of the Near East was, however, the kingdom of Mitanni, which acted behind the scenes against Egypt’s interests in Syria. It was Thutmose IV who concluded a peace deal with Mitanni and introduced peaceful years, which lasted until Mitanni became a dummy kingdom under the control of a new formidable power, the Hittites. The inactivity of Egypt in the Near East during the Amarna Period invited the Hittites to infiltrate and to take over the control in the northernmost province of Amurru. Horemheb and after him Seti I were partly successful in gaining back lost ground but this meant prolonged exchange of hostilities with the Hittites and using all means to raise an army again and again until Ramses II, early in his reign and inexperienced, led a large Egyptian army to the famous but indecisive battle at Qadesh in the Orontes valley (Fig. 17). It seems that the Egyptian army barely escaped a severe defeat. It took a long time for the two adversaries to come to terms with each other, though both parties seem to have avoided major field battles during the aftermath what paved the way to peace (see next chapter). After losing the provinces Amurru and later Upe, Egypt attempted to regain firm control of the remaining province Canaan. Ramesside hieratic ostraca from Lachish / Tell el-Duweir, Tel Haror / Tell Abu Hureyra and Tel Sera‘ / Tell elShari‘a indicate that such centres in Canaan received direct Egyptian control to supervise taxation and to administer local affairs before the coast of this province was taken by the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramses III (c. 1195–1164 BCE). A few decades later, control over the Jordan Valley was also abandoned. The land was divided between the Philistines, the remaining Canaanite city-states and populations such as the early Israelites and others. New Phoenician polities emerged in the northern Levant and extended their realm until western Galilee. Soon afterwards followed the independence of the province of Nubia. Egypt was deprived of all of its foreign possessions and all the concomitant income.

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Fig. 18: The hieroglyphic version of the Peace Treaty between Egypt and the Hittites in the Temple of Karnak (facsimile, after Lepsius 1849–1859: Blatt 146, with additions by Manfred Bietak, Patrick Aprent). Peace treaties Much has been made of the peace treaty in the 21st regnal year of Ramses II with the Hittite king Hattušili III (Fig. 18). It is repeatedly referred to as “the first known treaty of peace in the world” (as in the Guinness Book of Records but also in more scholarly literature). It is also presented as such in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, where the cuneiform version of the treaty is displayed (Fig. 19). The Turkish government had presented a copy of this text to the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, where it still remains. One wonders if this peace accord was such a unique event. The treaty has received much attention because it is preserved not only in cuneiform but also in hieroglyphic versions in the Temples of Karnak and the Ramesseum, attracting much interest not only from historians in Egyptology, Hittitology, and cuneiform studies, but also from experts in judicial and diplomatic history. One should, however, put the uniqueness into its proper historic context. Peace treaties were common in the ancient Near East. Such pacts were formerly concluded between the Hittites and Egypt, even with the definition of “brotherhood,” for which both partners sealed an accord on equal terms. A peace treaty seems to have been con-

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Fig. 19: Cuneiform version of the peace treaty between the Hittites and Egypt from Hattussas/Boghazköyi (after Smaller tablet of Treaty of Kadesh, Museum of the Ancient Orient, Istanbul, photo by Iocanus under CC BY 3.0, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_ peace_treaty #/ media/File:Treaty_of_Kadesh.jpg). cluded between Amenhotep III, Akhenaten or Semenkhkare‘ and Šuppiluliuma I according to the Amarna letter EA 41 and is referred to in the treaty of Ramses II and Hattušili III. It is also indirectly referenced in the Plague Prayers of Muršili II, where an epidemic outbreak was associated with the breach of a vow by Šuppiluliuma I for deposing his predecessor and/or for going to war with Egypt. According to the famous peace treaty of Year 21 of Ramses II, another peace accord was possibly concluded before, in the reign of Muwattalli, either with Horemheb or with Seti I, but these former treaties were broken by outbreaks of war between the two partners. A peace pact must also have been struck between the kingdom of Mitanni and Egypt under Thutmose IV and Šauštatar. While we do not know the texts of these earlier treaties, other treaties between Hatti and Near Eastern polities are further attested. The accord between Ramses II and Hattušili III bore all the signs of a Hittite legal style, especially as the Egyptian text must have been a copy of a Hittite treaty text written in cuneiform on a silver tablet sent from Hattuša. There, the name of

Fig. 20: Painting on the coffin of the Concubine of king Nebhepetre‘ Mentuhotep II from her tomb in the funerary complex of this king in Deir el-Bahari (Facsimile of the painting on the inner front side of the sarcophagus of Aashyt, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Rogers Fund (48.105.32), URL: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544535? searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ao=on&ft=Charles+K.+Wilkinson&offset=0&rpp=80&pos=39.

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the Hittite king is written in first place. The cuneiform tablet found in the corresponding document in Hattuša/Boğazköy seems to have been the copy of a text sent from Egypt, in which the Egyptian king appears in first place. The treaty defined peace and brotherhood. As the Egyptian word ḥtp was not suitable enough to express peace, the term “brotherhood” was added to express equality of the partners. This equality was only expressed by the Egyptians to the outside world; internally, they continued to disclose the inferiority of the Hittite king by writing “great chieftain,” raising him only slightly above any normal princeling in the Levant, having no word for “king” in their vocabulary except for their own pharaoh. On a colossal statue of Ramses II, now in Tanis, the Hittite princess and then the great king’s wife Ma‘at-hor-nofru-re‘ is represented in sculpture standing at the left foot of Ramses II. She is defined as daughter of the “great chieftain of Hatti,” who is disrespectfully represented in a logogram as a weary old man bending forwards (Fig. 24). Similarly, the Hittite king is classified in the text of peace treaty text in Karnak as staggering forwards, in some cases with a shaven head and a hair lock, the headdress of the Hurrians (Fig. 18).

Fig. 21: Relief fragment of king Mentuhotep II hugging his Nubian concubine Kemsit (Relief Kemsit, Museum of Egyptian Art, Munich, (Q19299), photo by Khruner under CC BY-SA 4.0, URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Relief_Kemsit_Munich.JPG).

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The treaty also included the next generations and secured the acknowledgement of the heir apparent defined by Hattušili III. For the Hittite king, the motivation for concluding a peace accord was the fact that he himself was a usurper. The legal throne heir, his nephew Urhi-Teshub, who followed his father Muwattalli II with the name Muršili III, was deposed by Hattušili III and fled to Egypt. Originally, Hattušili III was therefore not considered as a rightful king by Egypt and Assyria. A binding peace agreement with Egypt would secure the legitimacy, of Hattušili, who at the same time was anxious about the threat of a rising superpower in the East, the Assyrians. This is considered by Antony Spalinger and other scholars to be the main reason for the Hittites to negotiate a peace agreement with Egypt. Otherwise the belligerent encounters between the two superpowers had slowed down to practically zero in the second decade of the reign of Ramses II. The motivation for Egypt to conclude a peace treaty with the Hittites is less clear. It seems possible that the sheer presence of a superpower rival may have encouraged secession and rebellion of Levantine city-states against Egyptian control. A negotiated firm division between the two worlds would instead discourage any insurrection, with the peace treaty also stipulating that in case of rebellion as well as in case of an outside attack from a third power one contract partner would come to the help of the other. Another reason for Egypt to agree on a peace treaty was perhaps the ideological wish to install ma‘at in the world outside Egypt (Davies, 2018: 28). This would bring for the first time an ethical dimension to making peace. Nevertheless, the peace treaty was kept intact until the end of the Hittite Empire, when Egypt itself had to struggle to survive the impact of a crisis with migrations of displaced people that were felt all over the Mediterranean and Europe. Fortifying peace by political marriages What is the incentive for political marriages? It is the soliciting of bonds of the monarch with the family of the wife; it is the creation of one family between the married partners, and the creation of “brotherhood.” The more spouses a ruler was able to incorporate into his harem the more effective became the partnership network. It was common practice in the ancient world and in more recent history alike. The earliest political marriages with foreign wives may date back to the Old Kingdom, but for this we have no certain evidence. After the First Intermediate Period, it was Nebhepetre‘ Mentuhotep II, first king of a unified Middle Kingdom, who evidently had several Nubian spouses among his lesser wives (PM II2, 387– 390). Their names were written in single consonant signs, as was typical for foreign names at that time. Most probably they were princesses from the most influential tribes in the southern border regions of Egypt. The queens Kemsit and ‘Ashait are represented on their coffins with black or dark brown skin colour in contrast to their fair yellow-skinned female and reddish-brown skinned male serv-

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ants (Fig. 20). A representation of queen Kemsit in relief fragments in the Egyptian Museum in Munich (Q19299) and in the British Museum (AES 1450.460) also show her with prognathic facial features, further pointing to her identification as a Nubian (Fig. 21). Her name could mean km syt, “the black one.” Although the writing with only single consonant signs is unusual for an Egyptian personal name, it is explainable in terms of her being a foreigner. It seems logical that the king secured peace in Nubia and the Eastern Desert in this way. Indeed, after a long interruption during the First Intermediate Period, he sent an expedition under the high official Henenu to the legendary land of Punt (Hammamat inscription n. 114) after passing through the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea coast. For this, he may have needed the cooperation of the desert’s inhabitants, perhaps consolidated by the marriage with princesses of the tribes. According to the literary and political text The Prophecies of Neferti, the founder of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhat I (after 2000 BCE) was the son of a woman of Ta-seti, an expression for Nubia or the first Upper-Egyptian nome that borders Nubia. Whether she was a princess or an ordinary Nubian woman is not known, but mention of this exotic origin is more meaningful under the assumption of royal blood from this region.

Fig. 22: Jewellery of two Syrian queens of Thutmose III found in their tomb in the Valley of the Queens (courtesy © photo by Peter Clayton, after Aldred 1971: figs. 61–62). It is unknown if political marriages existed during the Second Intermediate Period between the Hyksos and the 17th Dynasty. In the New Kingdom, Thutmose III had three western Asiatic wives, whose tomb had been found and looted by tomb robbers in 1916. The Metropolitan Museum was able to buy most of the

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objects from the antiquities market (Fig. 22). Their splendid tomb contents were, however, completely Egyptian. Only their Semitic names reveal their origin. Independently, an inscription states that Thutmose III married a Syrian princess (Urk IV.669, 1). A life-size representation of a woman in a Minoan ceremonial flounced skirt from the paintings of the Thutmosid palace precinct at Tell el-Dab‘a also suggests that a Tuthmosid pharaoh, most probably Thutmose III, married a Minoan princess (Fig. 23).

Fig. 23: Life size Minoan fresco of a lady in a ceremonial flounced skirt from the Thutmosid Palace G at Tell el-Dab'a, representing either a goddess or a queen of a Thutmosid king, most probably Thutmose III (©Manfred Bietak, graphic by Marian Negrete-Martinez). The diplomatic correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna informs us about several political marriages of pharaohs with foreign princesses as an instrument of Near Eastern foreign policy. Thutmose IV, Amenhotep III and Akhenaton married Mitannian princesses who came with their entourages. This brought about a cordial friendship between the Mitannian and the Egyptian royal dynasty. When Amenhotep III was ailing in the last years of his life, his Mitannian father-in-law Tušratta sent him the precious statue of Ištar for its healing powers, the statue having previously been looted following a campaign against Nineveh. The pharaoh was supposed to send this statue back as soon as he no longer needed it. While the pharaohs took many foreign princesses into their harem, for which they had to send many precious prestigious goods, they did not give away their own daughters to foreign kings, even when this was explicitly demanded.3 In the 3

See the Amarna letters EA 2 and EA 4, dealing with pharaoh’s denial to marry his daughter to the king of Babylonia. See also references in the OT: according to 1 Kings 3: 1, Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, among numerous other wives. This is doubtful from a historical standpoint. The passage serves to explain the downfall of Solomon due to his many foreign wives, who distracted him from serving Yahweh. Also, Jeroboam, king of Israel, is said to have married an Egyptian princess. This is mentioned only in the Septuagint version of 1 Kings 14 and not in the Masoretic text. Jeroboam’s reported flight to

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late Amarna Period or shortly afterwards, however, we learn from the text The Deeds of Šuppiluliuma (CTH 40, Fragment 28), written by his son Muršili I, that the widow of a pharaoh sent a letter to king Šuppiluliuma I, great king of Hatti, who was on a field campaign against Amka, a land belonging to the Egyptian sphere. She asked him for a prince to put him as ruler on the throne of Egypt. She had no son and did not want to marry a “servant” (a high dignitary). As she is only referred by her title Daḫamunzu (Egyptian t3-ḥm.t-nsw, “the wife of the king”) and not by name, she is not securely identifiable. Her late husband’s name is rendered in cuneiform as Nibhururiya. She could therefore have been the wife of either Akhenaton, with the throne name Nfr-ḫprw-R‘, or of Semenkhkare‘, with the throne name ‘nḫ-ḫprw-R‘, or of Tutankhamun with the throne name Nb-ḫprwR‘. Marriage of an Egyptian queen or princess to a foreign king was against all tradition in Egypt and it is logical to think that this should and could not happen. After inquiries, the Hittite prince Zannanza was sent by his father to Egypt, but died on the way. He may have been murdered. This once again brought about the outbreak of hostilities between Egypt and Hatti. Egyptian prisoners of war transmitted the bubonic plague to Hatti, killing both Šuppiluliuma I and his successor. The Hittites took this as a revenge of the gods for the usurpation of the throne by Šuppiluliuma I or for breaking an agreement of peace with Egypt (see above). Over a hundred cuneiform tablets found in Hattuša/Boğazköy give us detailed information about the marriage negotiations of Ramses II with the Hittite royal couple and the squabble about their daughter’s dowry. The difference between this and previous marriages with foreign princesses is that the Hittite princess was also provided with an Egyptian name, Ma‘at-hor-nofru-re‘, the title of a “king’s great wife,” signalling that she was raised to the rank of a principal royal spouse (Fig. 24). This favour was surely connected to the special connection created by the peace treaty between Ramses and Hattušili III. The voyage of the princess to Egypt during winter, accompanied by favourable weather conditions, granted by the storm god, and the marriage itself are commemorated in the Marriage Stela at the temple of Ramses II in Abu Simbel (Fig. 25). After a while, even a second Hittite princess married Ramses II. The measure of the special peace treaty and this political marriage finally initiated a cordial long-distance relationship and an influx of foreign ideas to the Egyptian court, which seem to have also affected the education of princes and the more prominent position of Egyptian queens at the Egyptian court. The treaty and the marriage secured peace between Egypt and its partner, the Hittite kingdom, as long as the latter existed. In the next generation, king Merenptah even sent grain to the hunger-stricken Hittite empire.

Egypt and exile there may have inspired this biographical detail in the Greek version. Another doubtful “Pharaoh’s daughter” is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4: 18 as wife of one of the descendants of Judah.

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Fig. 24: Legs of a colossal statue of Ramses II of quarzite with the Hittite spouse Ma‘a-hor-nofru-re‘. The inscription column in front of her identifies her as the daughter of the great chief of Cheta who is classified as a weary old man with drooping shoulders, bent forwards (photos by Manfred Bietak).

Fig. 25: The marriage stela of Ramses II at Abu Simbel (facsimile, after Lepsius 1849–1859: Blatt 196, with additions by Manfred Bietak, Patrick Aprent).

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Conclusions: from superiority to equality of power – an agent for peace We can follow a slow and steady development in the attitude of Egypt towards the outside world. Egypt had to learn lessons from its history. Originally, the socalled “hill countries” were considered as representing chaos that one had to ward off from Egypt. This led to the policy in the Protodynastic Period of emptying borderlands, which was easy to achieve due to Egypt’s military superiority. At the same time Egyptians realised that partners abroad were needed for trade in products that could not be found in Egypt, such as coniferous woods, resin, bitumen, metals, wine, oils, and other commodities. For a land ruled by a divine king, the lord of the universe, to whom foreign countries had to beg for the “breath of life,” it was a long learning process to see the advantage of real peace on an equal basis. At the end of the Old Kingdom, Egypt experienced its first great trauma, the breakdown of divine kingship, as expressed in Egyptian literature: “Those who built in granite, who erected halls in excellent tombs of excellent construction – when the builders have become gods, their offeringstones are desolate, as if they were the dead who died on the riverbank for lack of a survivor. The flood takes its toll, the sun also. The fish at the water’s edge talk to them.” (Papyrus Berlin 3024, translation Lichtheim, 1975: 165). Then followed recovery with the firm kingship of the 12th Dynasty, yet the artworks reveal a new kind of pharaoh with a more human, less divine, facial expression. Afterwards, the country again disintegrated into several states. Egypt for the second time experienced a major trauma, now with the seizure of power by the first foreign rulers, the Hyksos, under whom the Egyptian 17th Dynasty in Thebes was merely a vassal. A third trauma was suffered with the invasion of the Kerma people of the kingdom of Kush. According to the inscriptions in the tomb of the governor Sobeknakht II in El-Kab, they swept through Upper Egypt (Davies, 2003a; 2003b). As a consequence, the concept of the divine ruler of the universe was completely shattered. It seems that this double humiliation caused a strong reaction, which left no space for peaceful considerations. A kind of Egyptian nationalism developed at least from the viewpoint of the rulers of the 17th/18th Dynasty. This resulted in the conquest of the Hyksos kingdom and afterwards the destruction of the most dangerous adversary of Egypt, the kingdom of Kush, a feat that took several decades to accomplish from the reigns of pharaohs Ahmose to Thutmose III. The victorious early 18th Dynasty inherited diplomatic and trade connections with the Near East from the Hyksos. It took some while until Egypt was also drawn into conflict with other powers in the Near East, first with the Mitanni kingdom, later with the Hittites. Under Thutmose I and Thutmose III, Egypt was victorious and able to build firmly controlled provinces in the Near East and in Nubia. Under Amenhotep II, for the first time in its history Egypt had to recognise

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that, realistically, the pharaoh is not the lord over the world and that adversaries did not have to beg for peace, as had been the standard position in the Egyptian royal protocol. Egypt faced adversaries who were equal in military power and could neither be vanquished nor their territory conquered. The conviction that peace and border security would be better than the threat of constant warfare came after some time to both parties. It seems that a peace deal was struck with Mitanni under Thutmose IV, introducing peaceful decades sealed with political marriages between the pharaohs and Mitannian princesses. Under Ramses II, the experience of an impasse happened for the second time. A decade after the difficult military encounter at the battle of Qadesh, again the awareness of being unable to get the upper hand came to the courts of Ramses II and the Hittite kingship. The wisdom of recognising the equilibrium of power can be considered as an agent to conclude a peace deal. It could be that this conclusion was now ideologically paired with the idea of ma‘at, of harmony and balance, a concept that was originally only applied to Egypt itself, while the world outside was conceived of as chaotic. This realisation of the great advantages embodied in peace between equal great powers can be considered as a major leap in the ideological and moral history of the Ancient World. Unfortunately this achievement was only to last for a short time. Further reading Abdul-Kader Mohammad, M., 1959: “The Administration of Syria Palestine During the New Kingdom.” Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 56, 105–137. Adams, W.Y., 1984: “The First Colonial Empire: Egypt in Nubia, 3200–1200 B.C.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26/1, 36–71. Albright, W.F., 1954: “Northwest-Semitic Names in a List of Egyptian Slaves from the Eighteenth Century B.C.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 74, 222–233. Aldred, C., 1971: Jewels of the Pharaohs. London. Allam, S., 2011: “Le traité égypto-hittite de paix et d’alliance entre les rois Ramsès II et Khattouchili III (d’après l’inscription hiéroglyphique au temple de Karnak).” Journal of Egyptian History 4(1), 1–39. Assmann, J., 1983: “Krieg und Frieden im Alten Ägypten, Ramses II. und die Schlacht bei Kadesch.” Mannheimer Forum 83/84, 175–231. — 1995: Ma‘at, Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten.2 München. Baines, J., 1987: “The Stela of Khusobek: Private and Royal Military Narrative and Values.” In J. Osing / G. Dreyer (eds.): Form und Mass. Beiträge zur Literatur, Sprache und Kunst des alten Ägypten. Festschrift für Gerhard Fecht zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. Februar 1987. Ägypten und Altes Testament 12. Wiesbaden, Pp. 43–61. Bayer, C. / Von Falck., M. / Petschel, S., 2004: Pharao siegt immer. Krieg und Frieden im Alten Ägypten. Bönen.

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Beckman, G., 1996: Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Atlanta. Bickel, S., 2016: “Concepts of Peace in Ancient Egypt.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): Peace in the Ancient World. Concepts and Theories. New York. Bietak, M., 1986: “La naissance de la notion de ville dans l´Egypte ancienne comprise comme un acte politique.” Cahier de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Egyptologie de Lille 8, 29–35. — 1988: “Zur Marine des Alten Reiches.” In J. Baines / H. James / A. Leahy (eds.): Pyramid Studies and other Essays presented to I.E.S. Edwards. London. Pp. 235–240. — 2003: “Two Ancient Near Eastern Temples with Bent Axis in the Eastern Nile Delta.” Egypt and the Levant 13, 13–38. — 2010a: “Le Hyksos Khayan, son palais et une lettre en cuneiforme.” CRAIBL 2010, 973–990. — 2010b: “The Early Bronze Age III Temple at Tell Ibrahim Awad and his Relevance for the Egyptian Old Kingdom.” In Z. Hawass / P. Der Manuelian / R.B. Hussein (eds.): Perspectives on Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honor of Edward Brovarski. Supplement du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 40. Cairo. Pp. 65–77. Bietak, M. / Forstner-Müller, I. / van Koppen, F. / Radner, K., 2009: “Der Hyksospalast bei Tell el-Dab’a, zweite und dritte Grabungskampagne (Frühling 2008 und Frühling 2009).” Egypt and the Levant 19, 91–119. Bietak, M. / Marinatos, N. / Palyvou, C., 2007: Taureador Scenes in Tell el-Dab‘a (Avaris) and Knossos, with a contribution of Ann Brysbaert. Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes XXVII. Vienna. Borchardt, L., 1913: Das Grabdenkmal des Königs S’aḥu-Re (Band 2,2): Die Wandbilder: Abbildungsblätter, Leipzig. URL: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg. de/diglit/borchardt1913bd2b/0006/image. Bottéro, J., 1954: Le problème des Habiru. Paris. Breyer, F., 2010: Ägypten und Anatolien. Politische, kulturelle und sprachliche Kontakte zwischen dem Niltal und Kleinasien im 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean XXV. Vienna. Bryan, B., 1991: The Reign of Thutmose IV, Baltimore. Bryce, T.R., 1990: “The Death of Niphururiya and its Aftermath.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 76, 97–105. — 2003: Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East. London. — 2006: “The ‘Eternal Treaty’ from the Hittite Perspective.” The British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 6, 1–11 (http://www.thebritishmuseum. ac.uk/bmsaes/issue6/bryce.html). Bussmann, R., 2014: “Krieg und Zwangsarbeit im pharaonischen Ägypten.” In K. von Gestwa (ed.): Zwangarbeit in Europa und Asien. Krieg in der Geschichte 77. Padderborn.

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Butzer, K.W., 1976: Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. A Study in Cultural Ecology. Chicago. Campbell, E.F., 1964: Chronology of the Amarna Letters. Baltimore. Černý, J., 1935: “Semites in Egyptian Mining Expeditions to Sinai.” Archiv Orientální 7, 384–389. Cline, E.H., 2000: The Battles of Armageddon. Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley, From the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. Ann Arbor. Cohen, R. / Westerbrook, R. (eds.), 2000: Amarna Diplomacy. The Beginnings of International Relations. Baltimore. Davies, N. de G., 1936: Ancient Egyptian Paintings I. Chicago. Davies, V., 2018: Peace in Ancient Egypt. Harvard Egyptological Studies 5. Leiden. Davies, W.V. 2003a: “Sobeknakht of Elkab and the Coming of Kush.” Egyptian Archaeology 23, 3–6. — 2003b: “Kush in Egypt. A New Historical Inscription.” Sudan & Nubia 7, 52– 54. Devecchi, E., 2015: “Missing Treaties of the Hittites.” Kaskal 12, 155–182. Devecchi, E. / Miller, J.L., 2011: “Hittite-Egyptian Synchronisms and their Consequences for Ancient Near Eastern Chronology”. In J. Mynářová (ed.): Egypt and the Near East – the Crossroads Proceedings of an International Conference on the Relations of Egypt and the Near East in the Bronze Age, Prague, September 1–3, 2010. Prague, 139–176. Drenkhahn, R., 1980: Die Elephantine-Stele des Sethnacht und ihr historischer Hintergrund. ÄA 36. Wiesbaden. Dunham, D., 1967: Second Cataract Forts, II: Uronarti, Shelfak, Mirgissa. Boston. Dunham, D. / Janssen, J.M.A., 1960: Second Cataract Forts I: Semna Kumma. Boston. Edel, E., 1949: “Kbo I 15 + 19, ein Brief Ramses’ II. mit einer Schilderung der Qadesschlacht.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie NF 15, 195–212. — 1951: “Zur historischen Geographie der Gegend Kadesh.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie NF 16, 253–258. — 1953a: “Die Stelen Amenophis’ II. aus Karnak und Memphis mit dem Bericht über die asiatischen Feldzüge des Königs.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina Vereins 69, 97–176. — 1953b: “Weitere Briefe aus der Heiratskorrespondenz Ramses’ II.” In W.F. Albright (ed.): Geschichte und Altes Testament. Festschrift für Albrecht Alt. Tübingen. Pp. 29–63. — 1978: “Ein neugefundene Brieffragment der Witwe des Tutanchamun aus Boghazköy.” Orientalistika 2, 33–35.

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— 1994: Die ägyptisch-hethitische Korrespondenz aus Boghazköy in babylonischer und hethitischer Sprache, Vol. I: Umschriften und Übersetzungen; Vol. II: Kommentar. Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 77. Opladen. — 1997: Der Vertrag zwischen Ramses II. von Ägypten und Hattusili III. von Hatti. Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft 95. Berlin. Eigner, D., 2000: “Tell Ibrahim Awad: Divine Residence from Dynasty 0 until Dynasty 11.” Egypt and the Levant 10. 17–35. Faulkner, R.O., 1946: “The Euphrates Campaign of Thutmosis III.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 33, 39–42. — 1947: “The Wars of Sethos I.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 34, 34–39. — 1958; “The Battle of Kadesh.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 16, 93–111. — 1980: “Egypt from the Inception of the Nineteenth Dynasty to the Death of Ramesses III.” In The Cambridge Ancient History II3, Ch. 23. Cambridge. Pp. 217–251. Fecht, G., 1984: “Ramses II. und die Schlacht bei Qadesh (Qidsha).” Göttinger Miszellen 80, 23–54. Feucht, E., 1990: “Kinder fremder Völker in Ägypten.” Studien Altägyptischer Kultur 17, 177–204 Feldman, M., 2006: Diplomacy by Design. Luxury Arts and an “International Style” in the Ancient Near East, 1400–1200 BCE. Chicago / London. Fischer, H.G., 1961: “The Nubian Mercenaries of Gebelein during the First Intermediate Period.” Kush 9, 44–80. Frandsen, P. J., 1979: “Egyptian Imperialism.” In M.T. Larsen (ed.): Power and Propaganda. A Symposium on Ancient Empires. Copenhagen. Pp. 167–192. Galán, J. M., 1994: “The Heritage of Thutmosis III’s Campaigns in the Amarna Age.” In B. Bryan / D. Lorton (eds.): Essays in Egyptology in Honor of Hans Goedicke. San Antonio. Pp. 91–102. — 1995: Victory and Border, Terminologically Related to Egyptian Imperialism in the 18th Dynasty. Hildesheimer Ägyptologische Beiträge 40. Hildesheim. Galán, J.M. / Bryan B.M. / Dorman, P.F. (eds.), 2014: Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut. Occasional Proceedings of the Theban Workshop, Papers from the Theban Workshop 2010. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 69. Chicago, Ill. Gardiner, A.H., 1957: Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs3, Oxford. — 1960: The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, London. Giveon, R., 1971: Les bédouins shosou des documents égyptiens. Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 18. Leiden.

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Raiders, Neighbours, and Night-time “Hybrid Peace” in Babylonia Seth Richardson *

Introduction Kurt Raaflaub asks us to begin our search by asking why specific discourses of “peace” operated within different ancient societies, the frameworks by which individual cultures made account of certain concepts, but not others.1 I will follow this and also attempt to do two other things: one, to work this advice out in a specific historical setting, situating concepts and discourses in a practical context; and two, to break apart “high” and “low” ideas of what peace was, to think about the intersection between official claims or ideological precepts on the one hand, and everyday encounters on the other. I do this not to make claims about exclusive or opposing spheres of reality constructed like golems from different kinds of texts, but to take on board the interplay of the different levels of experience they reflect. It may be easier to explain what I want to avoid. I want to avoid validating theological or state-ideological concepts about peace (like balance, as, e.g., kittu/ mīšaru, or maʾat) or dominance as the broadly accepted norms or perceived realities for all levels of ancient societies. At the same time, I want to avoid assuming that top-down definitions of peace as balance or dominance were simply false just because they endorsed official language. To make such divisions is hopeless: symbolic language about peace and its opposites are shared in all kinds of texts, high and low; only that they were mobilized to emphasize different social precepts. With this in mind, I want to explore the relatively abstract concept of “peace” with three particular questions in mind: What discourses of peace prevail in particular societies? How can this be situated in specific historical contexts? And what is the interplay between “high” and “low” experiences of peace?2

*

Abbreviations used in this essay include: CUSAS 8 = Van Lerberghe / Voet, 2009; CUSAS 29 = Abraham / Van Lerberghe, 2017; ETCSL = Black et al., 1998–2006; RIME 4 = Frayne, 1990; TLOB 1 = Richardson, 2010. All other abbreviations follow The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1956–2010). 1 Raaflaub, 2007. 2 This essay is an attempt to turn the lens of a theoretical literature onto a subject I have worked on for years; it therefore cites a disproportionately large amount of my own work (mea culpa), but is otherwise more heavily footnoted for contemporary political-science work.

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“Hybrid peace”: theory and application Expectations that peace/legitimacy find their opposites in war/illegitimacy are a significant obstacle to conceptualizing the ancient political landscape. This essay borrows from political science the concept of “hybrid peace,” where hybrid peace governance, even absent a situation of open war, may functionally accommodate both normative and non-normative actors, institutions, and practices to establish political equilibrium. Relevant to peace as such, this may notably include simultaneous and discrepant standards for violence, military organization, and even political membership. “Hybrid peace” insists that lasting and sustainable peaces – true peaces – are produced only by the interaction and accommodation of both top-down political and bottom-up local social practices. Both governance at the institutional/international level and the norms and structures of civil society, including local concepts of justice, cultural autonomy, and security of life and property, all of which may vary significantly from one another, must be aligned or at least have accepted forms of interaction to achieve workable peace. (These standards of governance correspond roughly to the two levels of “high” and “low” discourses or conceptualizations invoked above.) The theory also accepts that “peace” is a word that describes systems in which liberal and illiberal norms and practices coexist without producing increased levels of violence. Criticism of this position, unsurprisingly, has mostly to do with the fact that hybridity accepts something less than liberal models of state order, or even that it tolerates, excuses, or hides forms of inequality and violence that persist within states in failure. As a working definition, though, “hybridity” maintains that peace cannot only be imposed at the state level, but must take the discourse concerns of civil society and local cultures into account, and accept that some degree of illiberal norms must be accepted as part of a peace equation or process towards peace, as a step towards ultimately establishing a future legitimate state order. We mostly hear about “hybrid peace” when state governance has trouble taking root, e.g., in Kosovo or Iraq, where top-down efforts to promote peace and stability clash with local and domestic understandings of what that looks like, or where imposed peaces or state orders are inconsistent with local goals and definitions of legal, social, and economic fairness.3 The success of hybrid peace as a working mode of governance for countries emerging from states of war – e.g., in Uganda, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Timor – occurs when the integration of local norms of home rule / local autonomy, language, or patron-client networks have aided the peacebuilding process, even if and while non-state actors continue to exercise some control through extra-judicial violence and other illiberal means.4 In such cases, we may find state and even international deference to or recognition

3 4

Jarstad / Belloni, 2012. Jarstad / Belloni, 2012.

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of local and indigenous courts; entrenched systems of patronage and other corrupt practices; de facto ethnic or racial inequality; etc. If these do not sound like particularly impressive standards of successful governance, there are plenty of negative examples at hand to illustrate why hybrid peace is yet a necessary if not sufficient condition for peace. At one end of the spectrum, we may compare it favourably to the spectacular violence of state failure, as in Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Yemen, etc., where episodes of genocide and endemic warfare have arguably created more human suffering than the tolerated low-level violence acceptable under the hybrid power-sharing structures that preexisted those crises, violent and illiberal though they may have been. At the other end of the spectrum, the label of “peace” is no guarantee, either: unitary but repressive states exercising official violence and reprisals under the guise of security – including so-called “victor’s peaces,” e.g., Sri Lanka after 2010 or Francoist Spain of the 1930s and 40s; or authoritarian regimes such as contemporary North Korea – are probably also outcomes less desirable than the mixed landscape of hybrid peaces, notwithstanding official claims of maintaining “peace.” As a description, “hybrid peace” may accurately account for historical contexts in which neither states of war or peace cleanly and clearly prevailed over each other. For all its accuracy, however, this could potentially describe a wide variety of any historical states or cultures. But as an analytic concept, “hybrid peace” has the potential to explain why, how, and that the discursive authority of so-called “legitimate” kingship was not the exclusive basis of ancient political practice.5 Rather, governance (as distinguished from ideology) required some degree of recognition and engagement with parties and powers outside of the sphere of legitimacy. The balance of interaction between these arenas varies/d, but can explain large-scale changes in the political basis of state orders by identifying the inflection points at which specific paradigms of power are precipitated; the points at which state (and even interstate systemic) orders alter their commitments to normativity. To put this in other language, this is an approach which thinks about the kinds of non-normative/illegitimate actors, practices, and structures otherwise normative/legitimate states had to accommodate and work with to some degree; and about what happens to states when they stop acting like legitimate kingdoms and start acting like warlords. In this study, I argue that the major concept opposite to peace in Mesopotamia was not war, but insecurity, defined by the absence of predictable levels of safety for individuals and property, at home and in transit, and stable expectations of political behaviour. I will first lay out the historical setting of the case study, with reference to the hybridity model, and then return to consider what a definition of “peace” as “security” implies not only for the time under study, the Late Old

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Babylonian period, but for the political basis of early Mesopotamian concepts of sovereignty and subjectivity. I must briefly deal with two theoretical problems relative to the application of this modern concept to an ancient setting. The first problem is that the terms “liberal” and “illiberal” governance are obviously anachronistic to the setting of an ancient world long before modern nation-states. But in this treatment, where the focus is on dynamics within the state arena, my use of the terms has to do with practices relative to expected norms. We can map modern liberal expectations about rights, borders, and national identity onto the template of norms that kingship regimes were expected to deliver in antiquity: concepts of justice, security, and divine order. Simply put, just as every culture has an accepted political discourse, so also can deviations be identified relative to that discourse: this is a relatively simple matter of what is, from a state’s point of view, acceptable and unacceptable (but what must sometimes be tolerable). The second problem is less easy to dispose of: that, like a lot of contemporary peace-studies theories, “hybrid peace” is not an analytical tool, least of all for historical analysis, but a policy position. Note, for instance, that the words barely exist outside of the phrase “hybrid peace governance.” The theory is not really a theory at all, but a method, a means to an end: roughly speaking, to accept abnormal standards for a time until they can be integrated or eliminated in favour of normal ones. “Hybrid peace,” therefore, is not a term which has been much used to describe any state of equilibrium either in the present or the past. The gap between policy and analysis, between ongoing conflict-resolution and historical study, is thus a meta-theoretical problem: I am therefore not really doing the same thing with the idea as those who use it in political science. I can only recognize the problem rather than solve it: I have raided the camp of the peace-studies people, and stolen away one of their lenses for a while, to turn it retrospectively onto the ancient past. What I can hope is that it simply allows a way to ask these questions about the period I study – maybe it looked like peace from the palace window, but to everyone else, did it feel like peace? Can we say something about official message and the everyday subjective experience of the age? The Late Old Babylonian period In 1742 BC, the eighth year of Samsuiluna, as is well known, several south-Babylonian cities revolted. It took Samsuiluna at least five years to suppress a wave of rebellions led by eight or more enemy kings and the non-royal leaders of other army groups, in brutal campaigns that involved mass casualties, prisoner-of-war camps, and destroyed cities.6 But after this carnage and a brief period of re-occupation, a kind of deathly silence descended over lower Mesopotamia, at least from the perspective of the north-Babylonian sources we possess. In the 24 years after 6

For the most complete royal inscription of Samsuiluna describing the campaign, see now Lambert / Weeden 2020.

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the revolts were suppressed, Samsuiluna recorded only four more wars, none of them waged within the lower alluvium, all fought in northern territory.7 And in the next 116 years after Samsuiluna, Babylon’s year-names recorded only six more conflicts,8 with only two in the last 80 years of the dynasty. Of the last seven wars from Si 36 down to the end of the dynasty, a period of more than a century, only one was against a polity which Babylon recognized as a proper royal kingdoms (i.e., the war against Ešnunna [Ae C]), while the others were waged against Kassite, Amorite, and Elamite “troops” whose leaders were not identified, against entirely unnamed enemies (i.e., the unnamed Sealand as the probable enemy in year Ae d), or against enemies whose polities were not named and who were not dignified with the title of king, i.e., Araḫab and Damqi-ilīšu. None of the conflicts was a major tête-à-tête or war of conquest. We have only border skirmishes and long-distance raids, until the Hittite raid of c. 1620–1595.9 Nothing in the few royal inscriptions, hymns, or chronicles, either from this time or later, from inside the kingdom or out, suggests that Babylon engaged in any sustained interstate conflicts.10 Thus, we have nine celebrated wars in 140 years, about one every 15 years, with periods as long as 40 years in between, mostly waged against minor threats: a small state with no real competition on the scene. So: was this “peace”? Or just pathetic? From the perspective or standard of the Akkadian or Ur III periods, or even compared to the earlier OB, with hundreds of campaigns, we would have to count this as a relatively peaceful time. But the Babylonian kingdom had shrunk to a fraction of its former size, and one could just as reasonably say that the low incidence of warfare simply indicated and corresponded to its reduced circumstances. But does it matter whether we call it “peace” or not? What do we hope to prove by making a label for whatever state of affairs this was? What about that will help us examine other ancient cases of “peace” versus “non-peace”? Is “peace” substantially the cessation of conflict between states only, as a political, legal and military matter, as recognized and defined by state ideology? Or should it be defined by other criteria such as the presence of other kinds of violence? Let us try the hybrid view, comparing state claims to other kinds of evidence.

7

Si 20 (Ešnunna, the earliest and closest of the conflicts), Si 23 (Šeḫna et al.), Si 28 (Iadiḫabum [of Hana/Terqa] and Muti-ḫuršan), Si 36 (Amorites). 8 Ae d (against a Kassite army or troop, ugnim/eren2 Kaššûm), Ae o (damming river; it seems probable that this was an effort against the Sealand Dynasty, but it is significant that the enemy is not identified), Ae C (Aḫušina, king of Ešnunna), Ad 17 (Araḫab, “man of the land,” lu2 ma-da), and Ad 37 (destroying a wall built by the troops [eren2] of Damqiilīšu). See now also van Koppen, 2013, on a likely (defensive) war of Abi-ešuḫ against Elamite troops (=Ae “f ” mu eren2 elam-maki). 9 As I have argued elsewhere, the Hittite raid may have occurred at any point during the time Aṣ 18/19 until the end of Samsuditana’s reign. 10 For a profile of later traditions about the Fall of Babylon, see Richardson, 2016a.

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Princes of peace? A “top-down” view Whatever the complicating facts on the ground (and there were plenty: see below), the kings of the Late OB made an effort to present their regime as a kingdom at peace. To some extent, this was not different from what their predecessors had done. Hammurabi used the pacific trope of public happiness in saying he had established “joy for the people of Sippar”;11 Samsuiluna promised he would lead his people “in peace” (ina šulmim) and make them happy;12 and both spoke regularly of settling their people in “peaceful dwellings” (šubat neḫtim).13 But other “peaceful” rhetoric of theirs is in some senses misleading. For instance, the Hammurabi and Samsuiluna epithets sometimes translated as “the king who puts the four quarters at peace” do not in fact carry the semantic sense of “peace,” but rather authority: gu3-teš2-a literally means that the king made the people “speak with one voice” – in obedience.14 Similarly, the epithet šarrum muštešmi does not describe a king who “makes peace,” but who (again, literally) “makes (the people / the four regions) listen.”15 These and similar semantics16 were about enforced unity and obedience, not the “peace” that silim implies. Similarly, the themes of joy (ḫul2) celebrated by later kings was mostly used by Hammurabi and Samsuiluna to describe the personal qualities of the king17 or his relations with the gods18 rather than anything to do with the people, except in the few instances noted above. 11

RIME 4 3.6.2: 68–69: ana niši zimbirki rīštam lu aškun. RIME 4 3.7.5: 21–23; year name Si 2a. 13 RIME 4: šubat neḫtim for Hammurabi, 3.6.2: 19, 3.6.7: 36, 3.6.1: 33; for Samsuiluna (3.7.2: 43, 3.7.8: 9ʹʹ); for Ammiditana, 3.9.2: 17ʹ. 14 RIME 4 3.6.4 and .9, 3.7.7, all give (gu3-teš2-a), notably in the last instance (ll. 111– 112), proclaiming “one voice” in the wake of the southern revolts. 15 RIME 4 3.6.7 and 3.7.7 use šarrum muštešmi (from šemû, “who causes [the lands] to hear”), while LH v 10 adds kibrāt arbaʾim. CAD Š/2 s.v. šemû v. 8 gives it better as “to be of one mind / to live in agreement”; Roth, 1995: 80 gets to the underlying point with: “who makes the four regions obedient.” 16 E.g., the year-names Ha 31/33, in which lands are to “dwell under his authority” (du11ga-ni … tuš), in the latter case what Horsnell, 1999: 146–147 gives as “in friendship”; but of ku-li (= ibru), as CAD I/J s.v. ibru better explains (p. 7), “the word denotes an institutionalized relationship between free persons of the same status or profession which entailed acceptance of the same code of behaviour and an obligation of mutual assistance.” It does not denote affective feelings of friendship relevant to “peace.” 17 Hammurabi D includes the epithet “benign shepherd” (ETCSL 2.8.2.4: 35, sipa silimma); Samsuiluna is said to have “benevolent sight” in his Hymn A (ETCSL 2.8.3.1: 11, igi-gu10-gin7 silim-ma). 18 E.g., RIME 4 3.6.1: 9 and 27–28; 3.6.2: 8 and 34; 3.6.7: 8; 3.6.10: 10 is more obscure. The kings are said to satisfy the gods or that it was satisfying to praise themselves (with ṭubbu, see exs. in CAD Ṭ s.v. ṭâbu v. 2a-1' and ṭābu adj. s-3'; similarly Hammurabi B, C, and D, Samsuiluna A, B, F [ETCSL 2.8.2.2: 8, 2.8.2.3: 6, 2.8.2.4: 25, 2.8.3.1: 17, 2.8.3.2: 32 and 34, 2.8.3.6: B7, 2.8.3.8: 13), or to improve the physical well-being of the land (ibid., 12

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Though the Late OB kings continued some of these gestures,19 they spoke with a somewhat different emphasis, in new and unique terms. They said they made the land “content”20 and their cities “abodes of joy.”21 The gods were said to bless the king “in peace” (Sumerian silim, Akkadian šulmāniš) rather than just in happiness,22 and the king responded in kind,23 with Ammiṣaduqa twice dedicating statues of himself lifting his hand in “prayers of peace” (years 12 and 15). In so doing, he was using the word “peace” in a year-name for the first and only time in 700 years of year-names stretching back to Sargon of Akkad. The late OB yearnames present us with a number of peace-themed images with little or no previous use in the dynastic repertoire: the epithet of the king as “shepherd” appears six times in the Late OB,24 with Ammiditana uniquely using the image of the safety of a “sheepfold” (tur3) to describe the wall he built for the Sippar gagûm (Ad 18); the image of the king at prayer appears eight times;25 the building and dedication of “protective spirits” (dingir-lamma) appears six times.26 It is the first time we find in the year-names words like “joyful” (ḫul2: Ad 20), “friendly” (silim), and that the kings made the land have “a good time” (silim and du10: Ae ba/bb). These were not terms carried over from previous Babylonian royal messaging. The royal hymns of Abi-ešuḫ, the only hymns we have from the Late OB,27 are also a rich fund of peace symbols, calling his reign one of “peace in a place of contentment,” and a time of “pleasure.” “Wherever you walk, may you be established in peace,” the hymns sing; “When you lie down to sleep, may your dreams be propitious.” Even the food that Abi-ešuḫ eats and the water he drinks are called “peaceful.” These might seem generic claims, but they are the only times the words “peace,” “pleasure,” “contentment,” “pleasant,” “sleep,” or “dreams” appear in any of the hymns of the Kings of Babylon.28 ṭâbu v. 2b), but the semantics of /ṭʾb/ are not for the benefit of their ruled people as “happiness.” 19 E.g., Ammiditana also uses the phrase lugal muštešmi, RIME 4 3.8.1: 11ʹ–12ʹ. 20 RIME 4 3.9.2 (libbi mātim uṭīb). 21 RIME 4 3.8.1: 13ʹ–14ʹ (ki-tuš-su3-ga-ke4), 3.9.1: ii 1ʹ–3ʹ (he2-bi2-ni-dur2-ru); see also the year-name Ad 20, celebrating the king’s “palace of joy” (mu ki-dur2 / ki-tuš ša3 du10-ga-ni / ša3 du10-ga-ta / ša3 du10-ga-ke4 gu2 id2-a-ra-ah-tum-ma-ta e2-gal hul2-hul2-la bi2-in-du3a). Cf. the year-name Si 27, which mentions the Akitu festival “of rejoicing” (ul-šar2). 22 RIME 4 3.10.1: 26ʹ, mistranslated as “beneficently” rather than “in peace.” 23 The year-names Aṣ 12 and 15 celebrate the king’s prayers as “gestures of peace,” šu silim-ma. 24 Ae q, ba/bb, ca/cb, and bb1, and Aṣ 2, 3, and 10; no previous use. 25 Ae x, Ad 7, Ad 23a/b and 29a/b, and Aṣ 5, 12a/b, 15a/b/c; no previous use except one year-name of Samsuiluna (6a/b). 26 Ae pa; Ad 23 and 29; Aṣ 7; Sd 9 and H; no previous use except one year-name of Samsuiluna (6a). 27 I.e., ETCSL 2.8.5.1, 2.8.5.a, and 2.8.5.b. 28 Substantially, these topoi hearken back to Ur III hymns, but some can be found in the

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The image of the sleeping household was deeply embedded in Mesopotamian ideas of peace at the discourse level; safety at home, at night, more than any other concept, lay at the core of the Mesopotamian idea of what peace felt like. The verb nuaḫu, “to sleep,” and its derivates exemplify this link, combining meanings of not only the physical sleep of night-time, but spiritual contentment, stillness, and countries at peace. The baby at sleep, the farmer in his bed at night, the stillness of the countryside, and military security are all invoked by nuaḫu.29 In this connection it seems significant not only that Abi-ešuḫ mentions sleep, dreams, and contentment in his hymns; and not only that he is the only Babylonian king with a year-name dedicating a bed to a god; but even that one of his hymns uniquely gives us the image of the king “sitting on his chair and lying in his bed,” in his “years of life and months of peace in a place of contentment.”30 I do not want to oversell or overstate the importance of these symbolic manoeuvers; after all, rhetorical gestures and poses are not policies. And there also seems a very practical explanation for a greater emphasis on peace, given that Hammurabi and Samsuiluna fought dozens of wars, while the Late OB kings could claim few official ones in their res gestae (see above; but see also below); one might simply say there appeared to be more peace because there also appeared to be less (victory in) war. Regardless, it is a simple fact that, when juxtaposing the lack of peaceful symbols in earlier times to the dearth of martial imagery in the later kings’ messages, we must say they deliberately invested in peace as an ideological theme. It was not a particularly well-developed topos; the Late OB thematization of peace had only limited conceptual prominence and literary productivity. But the effort was important enough to make, and the effort presupposed that concepts of “peace” in the messaging carried a clear meaning. As a corollary, that same Late OB royal propaganda did not celebrate war, coinciding with a century or more when the celebration of major interstate warfare came to a nearly complete halt. Below the horizon of official recognition How seriously should we take this coincidence? I turn to less pleasant facts about the period. If the Babylonian kingdom was a stranger to celebrated warfare as such, it was no stranger to violent conflict. It faced a sustained problem with what we would in the present-day call, if not “war,” then “insecurity” or “instability,” as it is understood in political-scientific terms: where violent conflict is politically asymmetric between state and non-state actors; where the forms of violence violate accepted norms; and where the number of non-state actors rises substantially hymns of Būr-Sîn, Iddin-Dagan, and Rīm-Sîn. 29 Notwithstanding, night (mūšu) was also a liminal time of potential sleeplessness and danger, especially from demons and ghosts. Therefore, Guinan’s (2009) attention to disrupted and problematic sleep is also relevant to the discussion following. 30 Year Ae “eb.” Cf. Ad 12a/b, in which the king receives an omen in a dream.

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in proportion to the larger population and surrounding polities.31 These conditions are all satisfied in the Late OB. In addition, it is my argument that the asymmetry of these conflicts affected not only the balance of military power on the ground, but systematically eroded the norms the Babylonian state claimed to defend. The security problems were manifested along several different axes, which I will present in profile, as economically as possible, in eight points. 1. Militarism: demographic modality and a panopticon of fortresses I pointed out fifteen years ago that whereas the Late OB state had only four cities, it kept at least thirteen staffed and active fortresses. I argued from this fact that the modality of fortress communities had implications for the character of the state as a whole, and that militarism constructed new norms in terms of the legal domain of kingship. According to this notion, over the long century from Samsuiluna to Samsuditana, Babylonian kingship ceded some of its symbolic position as a kingship over individual cities per se and one based on the traditional ideological production of royal authority (but cf. point 5, below), and instead asserted itself as a domain authority, as a lordship or warlordship, over “the land” (the mātim), for which the important communities were not cities, but fortress towns. Today in 2019, the evidence is basically doubled for this claim, bringing the total to at least 28 active fortresses in the Late OB, and maybe as many as 43 in all – while of course in the meantime no more cities have been discovered, or are ever likely to be. Thus, if this was a time of peace, it was an “armed peace,” when military communities, however individually small (some were garrisoned by as few as a hundred men, though others likely numbered in the thousands32), played an outsized role in settlement demography. What seems critical in this situation is not necessarily that fortress towns outnumbered other kinds of settlements within the state, in either military strength or population size, but that they may have come to act as central places for villages in their hinterlands. Fortress towns like Dūr-Abiešuḫ clearly served socio-economic functions beyond the mere garrisoning of soldiers: they had markets (in which one could buy and sell slaves, take and make loans, make herding agreements, etc.), civic officials (including di.ku5, šu.i, and rabi sikkatum officers), and craftsmen (brewers, millers, basket-weavers, and bearers). At Ḫaradum, we find also a rabiānum and a council of elders (šibūt ālim).33 Fortresses could have small temples (at DūrAbiešuḫ, at least one dedicated to the god Mīšarum [CUSAS 8 60])34 and engaged 31

Cf. Ake, 1975. See Richardson, 2019a. 33 Joannès, 2006: nos. 1, 15, 20, 23, and 29; nos. 23 and 24 also mention the šibūt ālim of Yabliya. 34 As the editors of CUSAS 8 explain (p. 3), Dūr-Abiešuḫ in the Late OB became a “new religious centre” after Nippur became inaccessible (although cf. CUSAS 8 23–24, in which offerings were brought to Nippur itself); that is, offerings brought for the gods of Nippur 32

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in primary agricultural production, noting for instance the texts listing ox-teams (CUSAS 29 206) and hundreds of parts of plows (CUSAS 29 118–124). Just as importantly, Dūr-Abiešuḫ was in touch with places other than the main Babylonian cities, including with several towns that are not otherwise documented thus far in other texts of the Babylonian kingdom,35 whereas the Babylonian cities are mentioned rarely or not at all.36 Even Babylon is mentioned only 15 times in the 295 Dūr-Abiešuḫ texts (5%): eight times as the source of grain received; three times, goods are sent there; only four times are people sent to or from Babylon.37 One could easily overdo this argument: fortress towns should not be equated with Babylonian cities at the socio-political level. But neither were they only garrisons with granaries: they had their own civic structures, with a unique geographic horizon of both the very distant (from Elam to Aleppo) and the very local. As Tiffany Earley-Spadoni has argued, the intervisibility of fortresses, both between themselves and with other kinds of communities, added to their surveillance quality, affecting the perception of the state landscape as a panopticon.38 If we posit a perimeter for the kingdom of Babylon of about 350 km,39 and relatively even spacing for 28 fortresses along that circumference, we would find a fortress set every 12.5 km, easily visible across the flat alluvium to each other and to the towns they protected – or penned in. This is no more than a thumbnail sketch, but the point is made rather easily: fortresses were independent of cities, and occupied a rather ambiguous if not ambivalent position in relation to “protecting” them.

in Dūr-Abiešuḫ celebrated the cults of those gods in temporary exile from Nippur and the Ekur temple. Note, e.g., that many of the recipients of distributions in CUSAS 8 60, clearly set in Dūr-Abiešuḫ, are the same as those listed in CUSAS 8 59, in which the deities of Nippur are celebrated. A shrine has also been identified archaeologically at Ḫaradum. 35 All from CUSAS 8 or 29: uruAwīl-ilī (8 9), Baganna (29 39 and 40), Kakalla (8 2 and 6), Laḫaja-kitu (29 21), Nukar (29 40 and 71), Šatlaḫî (8 82), and Zulpaḫ (29 19). Admittedly, given the prevalence of foreign troops in the corpus, some of these toponyms could refer to places quite far away, rather than local villages. 36 In the Dūr-Abiešuḫ texts of CUSAS 8 and 29, Dilbat and Sippar are mentioned not at all; Kiš is mentioned twice (39: as origin of a troop of soldiers; 75: four sheep sent to Kiš, among others). 37 Grain from Babylon: CUSAS 8 39 and 29 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 22, and 24. It may be implied, however, that grain disbursed in other texts also came from Babylon, though this is not clear. Two texts (CUSAS 29 44 and 74) document sheep sent to Babylon, and one a šubultum-payment (CUSAS 29 188). Regarding people, the traffic between Babylon and DūrAbiešuḫ mentioned in CUSAS 29 texts is underwhelming: one ration recipient (25); five recipients (26); thirteen soldiers arrive (38); and a troop of Kassites is sent to Babylon and back (101). 38 Earley-Spadoni, 2015. 39 Assuming a roughly oval shape aligned to the major rivers, with a longer WNW axis from Sippar to Nippur of about 121 km and a shorter ESE axis from Dilbat to the Tigris of about 97 km.

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2. The effect of the military domain on state structure The fortresses were not in or attached to the main cities, but set out in the countryside. Thus, as well as being typologically distinct, fortresses were physically separate from the urban centres, with equal adjacency to and interaction with both rural communities of the state and stateless territory. Part of the import of this fact has to do with a particular understanding of the administrative structure of the kingdom. As I have argued elsewhere, “the land” (mātum) was not a word which meant “the whole country (of the Kingdom of Babylon),” i.e., including all its cities, towns, and open space, but a term which designated a specific administrative unit distinguished from other markets and cities of the kingdom.40 “The land” had its own officials (šāpir mātim,41 šakkanak mātim, su-si-ig mātim),42 institutions (notably the kārum, Edict Ammiṣaduqa §2), and troop units (e.g., the eren2 mātim of AbB XIII 25), whose remits stood in parallel position to others over cities and other specified districts. One could be a “citizen” of “the land” (dumu mātim) or a person from there (PN ša mātim),43 one could be a slave whose place of origin was there (Edict Ammiṣaduqa §21, next to Uruk, Isin, Kisurra, etc.). One might bear a personal name celebrating “the land” as a political unit of origin, paralleling others, e.g. Māti-libluṭ (BM 79951 [Aṣ 14]), as against, e.g., Uruk-libluṭ.44 It is clear that this particular reading is very context-dependent, since other uses of the word indicate both relative and “national” meanings.45 But it is also clear that when mātim appeared as the governed noun in construct, in clear parallel to similar terms and titles, it referred not to “the whole country” but to a specific politico-administrative domain within the kingdom. Significantly, “the land” was the domain where the fortresses were, and fortresses were where the great majority of military power lay:46 a rural and military domain where the king’s authority was more direct than it was over cities, wherein royal power had to work through and with civic and temple institutions. At least 40

Richardson, 2002, 2005, 2012. E.g., AbB I 119, II 8 and 68; XIV 124. 42 CAD M/1 s.v. mātu s. 1e, as well as several gala-offices; contra Hallo (COS II 2.134) p. 363 n. 24, “the land” in such titles does not mean “i.e., Babylonia.” 43 CUSAS 29 40: 7 (translated “people from the countryside”). 44 Other references are more ambiguous as to the distinctness of “the land” as an autonomous administrative entity, but neither are they openly out of alignment with that understanding, e.g. the prevailing interest rate (maš2) of “the land”: Kraus, JCS 3 33 n. 8. 45 E.g., respectively: as “the hinterland” of a specified city; and in a personal name like Šamaš-nūr-mātim, meaning that the light of Šamaš as the sun shines over the whole land, and not just the countryside. 46 There is relatively little evidence for substantial contingents of troops in the Babylonian cities. Indeed, when a “soldier” was called to enforce the law in Babylonian cities, at most one or two men might be expected to arrive (Richardson, 2017: 39) – clearly deploying a constabulary level of force at most. 41

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as a practical matter, royal rule over cities had to be negotiated, whereas the kings’ authority over fortresses, which were explicitly and titularly their property (as Dūr-RN etc.), was unmediated. What is a less provable proposition is the idea that the rural-military domain of the king became politically and legally distinct from the urban core, in turn (perhaps) giving rise to competing concepts of what the king was king of, exactly.47 The precise nature of these structural tensions are nowhere made explicit, but the increasingly military identity of the kingship, even in a time of peace, undoubtedly played a role in the state’s eventual collapse. 3. The alienation of military power Having taken the functional and structural differences of fortresses into account, a further tension between the protectors and the protected may be noted, in that the fortresses were garrisoned by troops who were mostly not Babylonian. Fortresses were not only more numerous and modal than cities, but they were almost entirely composed of ethnically or geographically alien soldiers. At least 23 foreign mercenary contingents appear in the record of this time, often of multi-ethnic composition, with others called ḫāpiru or ḫabbātu, against precious few actual Babylonian soldiers.48 At most, what one sees among the contingents at Dūr-Abiešuḫ are primarily foreign troops captained by individual officers, often with Babylonian names. The existence of foreign mercenaries by itself is entirely unremarkable. Virtually every ancient Near Eastern state in every period employed foreign mercenaries; the phenomenon is a rule, not an exception. But what is noteworthy in the Late OB is the near-exclusivity of such groups, and their segregation into different kinds of communities, and at a geographical remove from the cities. One would be remiss in connecting these facts to later historical traditions about the fall of the First Dynasty of Babylon which invoked not only concepts of foreign enemies, but of their multiplicities, characterizing them in one text as the “Edašuštu,” the “sixty-armed horde.”49 The entrustment of Babylon’s military power to fortresses staffed almost entirely by foreign groups – with no historical ties to the cities by kinship, language, land, or particular stake in who was in political control – set an ambiguous stage, on which the difference between being protected and being stuck in a “protection” racket was arguably hard to distinguish. Although evidence for the sense of threat I describe here is atmospheric,50 it is enough to suggest that military power in the kingdom was distributed unevenly between urban Babylonians and non-Babylonian soldiers. From a political science point of view, the militarism produced by long-term reliance on foreign mercenaries is ultimately corrosive of state authority: 47

See Richardson, 2017: 26–27. See Richardson, 2019a. 49 Richardson, 2015: 2016. 50 Richardson, 2019b. 48

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“Mercenaries might display high work ethics and military staunchness, but can hardly be expected to exhibit any virtues of citizenship or loyalty to a constitution. Hirelings will change sides in a conflict whenever better deals are available … For a government, hiring mercenaries means outsourcing parts of its monopoly over (armed) violence. In low-intensity conflicts and temporarily, this might be hardly noticeable. Referring to numerous historical examples, military historian Martin van Creveld argues, however, that over time selling away the monopoly of power inevitably threatens sovereignty and the existence of the state as such.”51 It is on these grounds that I find it significant that none of the “Trouble” letters (see fn. 59, below) describing attacks by “enemies” make any effort to identify who the “enemies” were, in any terms. The identity of these attackers is an issue modern scholarship seems to be very invested in, but not the ancient letter-writers. I find it likely, given the omission of a named enemy identity; and given the general absence of references to foreign states otherwise; that the armed group most likely to answer to the vaguer description of “enemies” were the polyglot, multiethnic fortress contingents themselves. If this were the case, it was precisely the “security” apparatus that created the insecurity. 4. The degradation of state autonomy in the absence of an international system If the Late OB was a time of “peace,” no treaties made it so; at the least, this was not an arranged peace between states. For the 140-year period down to the fall of the state, we have almost no evidence for contact of any kind between the Babylonian kings and any foreign courts. Some exceptions may be noted. There are three passing mentions of envoys from Aleppo,52 Elam,53 and the Sealand54 in this period, but nothing to suggest sustained diplomatic relations.55 While it is true

51

Poutvaara / Wagener, 2007: 11. AbB VI 24, datable to the time of Samsuiluna, describes the difficulties that envoys from Aleppo had in reaching Babylon with their audience gifts on account of difficulties interposed by a Kassite bukāšum. 53 VS 22 34 (Sd 11) identifies an “Elamite messenger” (PN lúkin.gi4.a Elamki) as the borrower of silver in an otherwise unremarkable one-month silver loan. 54 Unnamed “envoys of the Sealand” are the recipients of a modest amount of barley in CUSAS 29 3: 9–10 (dumu.meš šiprī ša a.ab.ba [Ae 14?]). 55 VS 7 67 (Aṣ 1), describing a deed of gift by a sukkal of Elam, and various mercantile texts pointing to Ḫaradum’s commercial relations between Emar and Assur (Joannès, 2006: nos. 65 and 70), e.g., suggest that some contact existed with the world outside of Babylonia, but these are not diplomatic activities. See also MHET I 12 for an apparent Elamite administrative text found in the Ur-Utu archive; and a mention of Hittite men (eren2 Ḫattî) by Babylonian merchants in VS 22 85: 11’ (see further Klengel, 1983: 54– 55). 52

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that we lack the palace archives of Babylon which might better reflect these kinds of texts, the ambient data of what letters we do have suggests that Babylon was largely isolated from other states, whether they were also in collapse or simply out of contact. The contrast is especially notable given the intense diplomatic interactions between kingdoms in the previous century. Of course, warfare was also more common in that earlier time, but along with the diminution of mass violence, it is safe to say that the Late OB kingdom was not situated in any interstate system. Thus the monopolar position of Babylon in this time was not one of hegemony, of predominance over other states, but of isolation – the asymmetric relation of a single state within a largely stateless landscape. The absence of peer competitors is not, in fact, particularly healthy for state autonomy, since it is the competitive arena that “forces states to engage in a particular kind of self-help,” in turn generative of unit identity. The legitimizing principles of state identity tend to atrophy where the competition of anarchy does not require its constant reinforcement (note especially, in this regard, the near-absence of royal inscriptions at the end of the dynasty). The category “state” makes less sense absent a system of other states, requiring it to manage issues of economic and military competition.56 All this calls into question, as a political-scientific matter, the validity of Babylon’s state identity and integrity, especially as it relates to paradigms of “peace” and “war.” Where Babylonian kings of the 17th century BC relied on foreign mercenaries to engage almost exclusively against more or less homologous non-royal enemies, what meaningfully differentiated them from other warlords? In the absence of a state system, we see the reversal of the imitative political behaviour we see in most international- and state-centred periods, where non-state actors imitate state behaviour; in the Late OB, we witness the gradual warlordification of Babylonian kingship, less interested in legitimacy than in manpower. 5. No war, but insecurity The Late OB kings may not have had many military victories to celebrate, but this hardly means that the period was free from violent conflicts. From economic and administrative texts, at least five disturbances in state security can be identified that were never reported as wars in the ideological apparatus – serious episodes not quite to be called “war,” but certainly not a real “peace.” To begin with, I have identified a disruption of unknown character interrupting administrative practice from Ammiditana’s 11th to 23rd year. The nature of the disruption is unclear, and is primarily visible from certain kinds of textual markers, such as a recession of overall text production, the disruption of many archives, the near-absence of real-estate documents, and the virtual termination of all realestate sales for the rest of the period.57 In addition, a spate of real-estate invento56 57

Kaufman, 1997. TLOB 1 p. 15.

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ries drafted in the decades both before and after the “brownout” decade may also be related to the crisis, especially given that two are explicitly accounts of fields formerly belonging to soldiers, now deceased.58 The decade also begins with enemy attacks on Nippur (CUSAS 29 205 [Ad 11], and coincides with a series of fortress-provisioning texts (TLOB 1 16–20); and the middle of the decade sees Ammiditana’s celebration, in this 17th year, of the seizure of the mysterious “Araḫab, man of the lands.” It is unclear how many of the above phenomena are related, but it strikes me as more likely than not that most of them connect to a state emergency with a military dimension. Three decades later, a military emergency in the countryside isolated cities in Ammiṣaduqa’s 15th year, as described in nine letters.59 The emergency involved raids by unnamed enemies – attacks which took place, incidentally, in one of the years in which the king dedicated a statue of himself with his hand lifted “in (prayers of) peace.”60 The precise origin and nature of these attacks are subject to debate (cf., Richardson, 2005 and 2019, and van Koppen, 2017), but the emergency lasted for at least seven months, characterized by safety only within the cities and limited movement in the countryside (see no. 6, below, for further discussion). We then know of destructions at the Ḫaradum fortress and city of Sippar-Amnānum which are datable to Ammiṣaduqa 18 or 19 from textual evidence.61 These may, for their temporal coincidence, be tentatively considered as two parts of a single event; I have speculated elsewhere that these events may have coincided with or precipitated a succession crisis, and/or been related to the Hittite raid on Babylon.62 Finally, we know of two more attacks in the reign of Samsuditana, one by “enemies” near Sippar-Jaḫrurum, the other by “enemies from Ešnunna.”63 It may also be that these five episodes were not the only ones: four other Late OB

58

See e.g. MHET II 4 485 (Ad 6), 492 (Ad 27), 493 (Ad 29); perhaps 5 675; and 6 894 (Ad 34 [see De Graef, 2002, for discussion]). Cf.: CT 45 52 (Ad 3?), MHET I 4 and 8, dated substantially later to Ammiṣaduqa’s reign; and MHET II 5 656 and 660, which probably date to earlier than Ammiditana, but this is not clear. 59 AbB I 2, VI 59 and 64, VII 47–50, X 150, and CTMMA I 69; see also fn. 64, below, regarding AbB VI 59 and 186, VII 88, XI 61, and possibly also VI 26–27, 59, 61, and 96– 97, as possibly related to this same episode. 60 Richardson, 2005. 61 Joannès, 2006: 25; Gasche et al., 1998: 15 n. 59 and 25 Fig. 3; Richardson, 2002: I 58– 59 and nn. 184–186. 62 See Richardson, 2002: I 56–57 and n. 209, and 2005: 286. 63 AbB XIV 8 (eren2 lu2.kur2) and XII 182 (lu2.kur2 aš2.nun.naki, said to have burned [something]). While the latter phrase is hardly clear about just who attacks, the phrasing does denote something distinctly different from the army of a recognized king: compare against Abi-ešuḫ’s more typical victory celebrated in his year C year-name, over “the army of the land of Ešnunna” (eren2 kalam aš2.nun.naki) under RN “the king of Ešnunna.” The term lu2.kur2, in fact, is not used in any Babylonian year names at all.

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letters refer to attacks of unnamed “enemies,”64 which may refer to some of the same above-mentioned disturbances, but possibly others.65 The year-names and inscriptions of the kings record none of these events (with the exception of the Araḫab detail), but clearly a reliance those sources alone would ignore the clues that the last century of the dynasty was without doubt wellsupplied with raids and skirmishes, if impoverished for proper wars. It may be mentioned, then, that the cessation of text-production in the cities of the Babylonian kingdom seem to have come in different years: Kiš and Dilbat in Sd 14; Sippar in Sd 19; and Babylon in Sd 26. At least to judge by these patterns, the cities were not terminated by the same single event. And it is exactly this image which is later described as a single-event destruction in a lengthy Neo-Assyrian tamītu-oracle. This ex eventu(?) oracle imagines the last years of Samsuditana as exactly this sort of tableau of incessant low-level attacks, the paper-cuts by which the state bled out (see further Richardson, 2019b). It may be problematic to try to empirically establish clear differences between “war” and “insecurity”; most attention to this kind of distinction in political science literature appears to be directed towards defining the difference between “war” and “civil war.” But at least one attempt to define political stability quite rightly returns us to emic criteria, emphasizing deviations from norms of stability within the culture under study.66 We should ask: what might the evidence for a Babylonian distinction between these two forms look like? To my mind, the probable limited scope of the conflicts described above are of less interest than certain absences: these were low-intensity local conflicts reflected only in letters and administrative documents, not celebrated in year-names or royal inscriptions. The fact of conflict paired with the absence of ideological promotion speaks not only to the probability that Babylon did not prevail in these skirmishes, but also that they percolated somewhere below the public level of attention which wars receive. Lost wars are lied about; whereas acknowledging the existence of brush wars, whether lost or won, would prima facie only advertise that the kings could not even keep safe the sheep in the meadows or the harvesters in the fields.

64

At least four of these nine letters are probably Late Old Babylonian. AbB XI 61 is identified as Late OB by Pientka, 1995: 405 n. 23. AbB VI 186, mentioning an attack on a fortress, is probably sent by the same Ibbi-Sîn/Enlil (commonly confused writings/readings in the Late OB) who writes to Ammiṣaduqa about enemies in AbB VI 59 (see also other letters to this king and to Samsuditana, AbB VI 26–27, 60–61, and 96–97). AbB VII 88 can be dated to the time of Ammiṣaduqa by the name Šamaš-bāni s. Ilšu-muballiṭ, and mentions the enemy camped “in the countryside.” 65 Five other OB letters mentioning “enemies” are of more uncertain date: AbB IX 160; XI 127; XIV 53, 81, and 114. 66 Ake, 1975.

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6. The subjective experience of insecurity However, our definition can speak also the different experiences that “war” and “insecurity” brought to the many participants who were not kings. Late OB letters emphasize that the problems with “enemies” were not only ones to be solved on the battlefield by soldiers, but troubles to be endured by civilians. Indeed, not only do we have little evidence that Babylon’s many mercenaries and fortresses ever engaged in actual combat with “enemies,”67 but there is corollary evidence to suggest that they were, at least occasionally, those very “enemies.” This is suggested by the letters of the Aṣ 15 emergency (see fn. 59, above), outlining the tactical responses to the presence of “enemies”: rather than hitching up chariots and marching out to battle, officials were directed to take defensive and protective measures against impacts on three aspects of civilian life. The first was to limit dangers to safe travel for merchants and civilians between cities, and especially in the countryside, where the enemies were – not by attacking them, but by keeping herds, flocks, boats, and people inside the cities or close to their walls for safety; in the villages, the local population was ingathered to small watchtowers. The second impact was temporal, about night-time: the letters repeatedly instruct that “the city gate should not be opened so long as the sun has not risen”; five letters specify that night was when things were especially unsafe.68 The violation of the peaceableness of night was, as noted above, a particular violation of ideals or norms. The third impact was on persons: the letters acknowledge that the targets of attack were mostly non-combatants and properties left vulnerable outside the walls: field-hands, flocks, boats, and grain stores.69 Rather than caring about who the “enemies” were, the letters cared about where they were, who they attacked, and when they did it. And it is the same atmosphere of pervasive and unpredictable danger that we find in the description of Babylon’s demise in a later tamītu-omen, concerning attacks by an unnamed “enemy,” invoking the same three themes: all civilians vulnerable to attack, especially if they went out of the city, and especially after the sun went down: attacks “by night in the open,” against “every human whatsoever,” protected for no more than “one league from the city,” etc.70 When the times, places, and targets of military violence are unpredictable, we leave off speaking of a meaningful dichotomy of “war” and “peace.” Even war 67

Cf. AbB VI 186, in which “enemies” came up to the city wall, and skirmishing ensued. In one letter (CTMMA I 69), complaining to the king that his local official is opening the gate “before sunrise” and closing it “too late,” against the king’s order, the letter-writer reports “I close the gate and enter by torchlight.” 69 Note also AbB XIV 8, on the vulnerability of the mērēš ālim, the “cultivation belt (around) the city.” 70 Lambert, 2007: 27, l. 47: “against this city, its population, every human whatsoever”; l. 58ʹʹ “by the robber’s dagger”; l. 60: “by night in the open”; etc. See further Richardson, 2019b. 68

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has a certain predictability; it is the unpredictability of violence which distinguishes “instability” from “war.” One important definition of insecurity identifies its unique criterion as generalized fear, “a form of futurity with the capacity to inform the present without presenting itself.”71 If we do not see in these “enemy” episodes the violation of accepted norms (given that raiding was hardly unknown in Babylonia), we do see the psychological dimension of uncertainty which instability makes pre-eminent. It is this sense of impending or contingent violence that I wish to invoke as the subjective experience of instability, its unpredictable quality, where the alter of “peace” becomes not “war” but “insecurity.” 7. Instability in a low-violence society The military dangers described above would have been all the more shocking because Babylonians (perhaps contrary to the reader’s expectations) were broadly unused to violence in civil or juridical contexts. That is, were we to imagine that the ambient, threatening violence described in the foregoing sections would have been accepted by Babylonians as merely an increased degree of normal social violence, as part and parcel of living in the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” life of man close to a Hobbesian state of nature, we would be wrong. Violence of all kinds – spectacular or everyday; private, community, state, or judicial; structural or exceptional – was simply not a normal condition of Babylonian society, where ostracism and exclusion were far more normal mechanisms of social policing.72 Violence was not among the normal sanctions levied or witnessed by neighbours. This is not to say much more than that the kind of sustained, lowlevel, ambient, and incipient violence of instability, visited as much on civilians as on combatants, was all the more consequential and shocking for a lack of corresponding violence in daily life. 8. Kulturkampf and the absence of epistemic peace One final dimension is worth mentioning, though it is rather different from the themes mentioned above. Another conflict hung like a high storm cloud far above the instability on the ground, which was that Late OB Babylon was also engaged in a theological and ecclesiastical conflict about who owned the cults and kingships of the south Babylonian cities abandoned during this period. This is, unfortunately, a very complicated issue which cannot be treated in detail here, but only summarized.73 In the wake of the collapse of the south Babylonian cities following the reconquista of Samsuiluna in the 1730s and 1720s, and in the absence of clearly-defined political authority there, Babylon made a programmatic attempt to reinstitute the cults of Isin, Uruk, and Larsa in the north, claiming the custodianship of the god-given thrones of those cities in absentia. Whole series of gods 71

B. Massumi apud Richardson, 2016b. See the study of Garfinkle / Richardson, forthcoming. 73 For a full treatment, see Richardson, 2018, with literature. 72

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and kingships now lived in exile, subject to the appropriations of other agents. Against whose competing claims Babylon’s custodial measures were staked is unclear (though the up-and-coming Sealand Dynasty seems a likely antagonist), but merely the fact of the cults and kingships in exile betrays the wider sense of displacement of the age, of a culture and theology in contest. Whether and how this competition or alienation on the divine plane impacted the social consciousness of those concerned with night-raids and unsafe countrysides is not in evidence. But the comforts and certainties of identity and spiritual or epistemic peace characteristic of more stable times were for many absent in this age, with a tension or disruption at the level of cultural identity. At the least, the psychosocial securities provided by cultural and religious institutions were not available to buffer against the more on-the-ground hardships described above. Conclusion The Late OB kings told their people it was a time of peace. But although there was little outright warfare, there was a pervasive insecurity that makes it hard for us to call it “peace” – a big difference between what was going on on the ground, and what the kings were choosing to document and celebrate. Such a gap between reality and propaganda is of course to be expected. But the efficacy of propaganda depends on its appeal to grounds of credibility or believability, even (or maybe all the more so) when it has the primary purpose of putting across broad untruths. At this level, the definitional criteria for “peace” (or at least the absence of “war”) seem to have been true enough to permit that claim to be persuasive, more than objectively true. This is by itself a dimension important enough to acknowledge: the political life of claims is itself a historical subject as much as the phenomena about which claims are made. In this instance, the discursive power of “peace” was operable despite what must have been broad public awareness of its problematic contrast with daily life – at least up to a point. But it is just this “point” about which a hybrid peace analysis tells us more, to explain both the success and ultimate failure of “peace” language in the context of insecurity. The big message has to be that peace and war cannot be for states alone to define. To ignore opinions and experiences at other levels violates a realist account and ignores the role of non-state actors, especially where the form of violence is unpredictable. A simulation of peace in the absence of safety requires the different name of “security theatre,” whereby at least part of what states must do is produce and communicate both securities and threats in order for their claims for the provision of safety to become and remain credible. The simulation of the security/insecurity dyad was ultimately a political device. States, especially early ones, created their “stateness” through acts of sublimation: By presenting themselves as sole defenders of an order they never fully could control, states skipped what we might think of as the “contract phase” between governing and governed, and assumed the right to speak authoritatively as defenders against all enemies,

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even ones it could not name. Such a simulation, however, will become unpersuasive when the state’s surrounding security and peace takes the form of an everpresent military apparatus, giving “peace” the aspect of the uncanny, of being notquite war and not-quite peace, where, as Lacan wrote, “we do not know how to distinguish bad from good.” What the hybrid view offers is to make this simulation problem visible; to ask what it means when the kings tell us it is peace, but the people tell us it feels like war. Only the juxtaposition of the viewpoints provides the real historical atmosphere. In the Late OB case, we see the unwinding process, a decomposition or desublimation, about which I have argued that the perception of the state as a categorically unique actor and arbiter was gradually degraded or eroded over time by constant interactions with significant “Others” who were non-state actors, rather than the peer-state enemies with whom a good, healthy war could be fought. It is this liminal and contingent reality, the threat that state integrity was vulnerable to symbolic erosion, that I think animates the histories of early states. Their existential identity may have been bounded at an upper end by the kind of institutional war-and-peace dyad to which we largely attend when we talk about “war” and “peace,” defined in terms of conquest, victory, treaties, and defeat. But the lower end of the state power spectrum was grounded in an insufficiency problem, where kings were (revealed to be) essentially warlords among other warlords. The distinction between the two may largely depend on the individual reader’s disposition to think of states as, fundamentally, either wolves in sheep’s clothing, or viceversa, with variances accounted for as deviations from norms. The hybridity thesis asks us to accept something different: that various mixtures of liberal norms and illiberal deviations themselves are the normal state of things. A hybrid-peace account would point to the fact that for 150 years of the Late OB, a wide variety of civic norms managed to persist within a broader landscape of instability. Indeed, this probably describes most times and places in Mesopotamian history. There being better and worse (or stronger and weaker) “hybrid peaces,” however, I take it – even more than the 1595 BC fall of the First Dynasty of Babylon itself – that the long, low-pressure, nearly stateless landscape that existed for decades if not centuries afterward indicates not just a temporary triumph of certain non-states over states, but of a profound cultural shift away from hybridity as a sustainable political balance. The eventual collapse of kingship norms (of justice, security, and divine order) in the face of warlordism resulted from, and in turn precipitated, a period during which the legitimation concerns of the former were largely abandoned. This is the kind of emphasis that is less visible unless we look both high and low. There are clues for plural and hybrid accounts if we will look for them, out in the countryside, near to the sheepfolds, after the sun goes down.

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Bibliography Abraham, K. / Van Lerberghe, K., 2017: A Late Old Babylonian Temple Archive from Dūr-Abiešuḫ: The Sequel. Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 29. Bethesda, MD. Ake, C., 1975: “A Definition of Political Stability.” Comparative Politics 7/2, 271–283. Belloni, R., 2012: “Hybrid Peace Governance: Its Emergence and Significance.” Global Governance 18/1, 21–38. Black, J.A., et al., 1998–2006: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/). Oxford. Earley-Spadoni, T., 2016: Envisioning Landscapes of Warfare: A Multi-Regional Analysis of Early Iron Fortress-states and Biainili-Urartu. Ph.D. dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, MD. Frayne, D., 1990: Old Babylonian Period (2004–1595 BC). Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods 4. Toronto. Garfinkle, S.J. / Richardson, S., Forthcoming: “Community Violence in the Middle Bronze Age.” In V. Juloux et al. (eds.): A Study of Violence in the Ancient Near East and its Neighbors. Leiden. Guinan, A., 2009: “Schlaf.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Vol. 12,3/4, 195–202. Jarstad, A.K. / Belloni, R., 2012: “Introducing Hybrid Peace Governance: Impact and Prospects of Liberal Peacebuilding.” Global Governance 18/1, 1–6. Joannès, F., 2006: Haradum II: Les textes de la période paléo-babylonienne (Samsu-iluna – Ammi-ṣaduqa). Paris. Horsnell, M.A., 1999: The Year-Names of the First Dynasty of Babylon, 2 vols. Hamilton, ON. Kaufman, S.J., 1997: “The Fragmentation and Consolidation of International Systems.” International Organization 51/2, 173–208. Klengel, K. 1983: “Spät-altbabylonische Briefe aus Babylon (VS 22 83–92).” AoF 10/1, 49–63. Lambert, W.G., 2007: Babylonian Oracle Questions. Mesopotamian Civilizations 13. Winona Lake, IN. Lambert, W.G. / Weeden, M., 2020: “A statue inscription of Samsuiluna from the papers of W.G. Lambert.” RA 114/1, 15–62. Poutvaara, P. / Wagener, A., 2007: “Conscription: Economic Costs and Political Allure.” The Economics of Peace and Security Journal 2/1, 6–15. Raaflaub, K.A., 2007: “Searching for Peace in the Ancient World.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Oxford. Pp. 1–33. Richardson, S., 2002: The Collapse of a Complex State: A Reappraisal of the End of the First Dynasty of Babylon, 1683–1597 B.C. Ph.D dissertation, Columbia University. New York.

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— 2005: “Trouble in the Countryside, ana tarṣi Samsuditana: Militarism, Kassites, and the Fall of Babylon I.” In W. van Soldt (ed.): Ethnicity in Mesopotamia. Compte rendu Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 48. Leiden. Pp. 273–289. — 2010: Texts from the Late Old Babylonian Period 1. Journal of Cuneiform Studies Supplemental Series 2. Boston. — 2012: “Early Mesopotamia: The Presumptive State.” Past & Present 215/1, 3– 49. — 2015: “Samsuditana and the sixty-armed horde.” Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2015/2, no. 37. — 2016a: “The Many Falls of Babylon and the Shape of Forgetting.” In D. Nadali (ed.): Envisioning the Past through Memories. Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity. London. Pp. 101–142. — 2016b: “Insurgency and Terror in Early Mesopotamia.” In L. Brice / T. Howe (eds.): The Brill Companion to Insurgency and Terrorism in the Ancient World. Leiden. Pp. 31–61. — 2017: “Before Things Worked: A ‘Low-Power’ Model of Early Mesopotamia.” In C. Ando / S. Richardson (eds.): Ancient States and Infrastructural Power: Europe, Asia, and America. Philadelphia. Pp. 17–62. — 2018: “Sumer and Stereotype: Re-forging ‘Sumerian’ kingship in the Late Old Babylonian Period.” In R. Rollinger (ed.): Conceptualizing Past, Present and Future. Melammu Symposia 9. Münster. Pp. 145–186. — 2019a: “Aliens and Alienation, Strangers and Estrangement: Difference-Making as Historically-Particular Concept.” In J. Mynářová / M. Kilani / S. Alivernini (eds.): A Stranger in the House: Crossroads III. Prague. — 2019b: “The Oracle BOQ 1, ‘Trouble,’ and the Dūr-Abiešuḫ Texts: The End of Babylon I.” JNES 78/2, 215–237. — 2020: “Down with ‘Legitimacy’: On ‘Validity’ and Narrative in Royal Tales.” In E. Wagner-Durand / J. Linke (eds.): Tales of Royalty: Notions of Kingship in Visual and Textual Narration in the Ancient Near East. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 23. Boston. Roth, M., 1995: Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Writings from the Ancient World 6. Atlanta, GA. van Koppen, F., 2013: “Abiešuh, Elam and Ashurbanipal: New Evidence from Old Babylonian Sippar.” In K. De Graef / J. Tavernier (eds.): Susa and Elam: Archaeological, Philological, Historical and Geographical Perspectives. Leiden. Pp. 377–397. Van Lerberghe, K. / Voet, G., 2009: A Late Old Babylonian Temple Archive from Dūr-Abiešuḫ. Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 8. Bethesda, MD.

Making Peace in the Hittite Kingdom Stefano de Martino

1. The Hittite word for “peace” The Hittite word for “peace” is takšul, which is a derivative noun ending in -ul from the verb takš-1. As in the case of its antonym kurur, which means “enmity,” and “enemy” as well, the term takšul originally signified “agreement” and “peace,” but it also had the meaning of “friend” and “friendly” (Neu, 1979). The Hittite verb takš- (Oettinger, 2002: 217–219) means “to unify,” or “to mingle,” or else “to make an agreement” and occurs in different contexts. For example, this verb means “to mix” in a festival text, where it is said that the officiant mixes water with wine (KBo 15 37 iv 45–47; Kompalla, 2011: 16–17). Concerning the meaning “to mingle” or “to merge” we may quote a passage in the ritual KUB 33 5 iii 8’–9’ (Torri, 2003: 113), which mentions the strict union between beer and malt. Instead, this verb occurs in a passage in the decree issued by Telipinu, whereby the king sent into exile the brothers of King Ḫuzziya I. Nevertheless, he assigns property to each of them (ii 13); the verb takš- has a technical connotation here and means “to agree upon the assignment” (Hoffmann, 1984: 28–29).2 The first treaty where both the aforementioned terms, namely takšul and takš-, occur is the agreement concluded between the Hittite king Zidanta I and Pilliya, King of Kizzuwatna. The word takšul is documented here in the expression takšul iya-, “to conclude a peace agreement” (obv. 1–2), whereas the verb takš- occurs in the following line. Hence, the whole sentence can be translated as follows: “His Majesty the Great King Zidanta, king of Ḫa[tti, and Pilliya], king of Kizzuwatna, concluded a peace agreement (takšul), (and) agreed (takšer) as follows ….” (Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 300–301; Devecchi, 2015a: 68–69). Lastly, the Hittite texts also document the term takšulae-, which is a denominative verb derived from the noun takšul, and we hereby quote a passage from the Res Gestae of Šuppiluliuma I, in which the said verb means “to ask for peace”: nu=šši KUR URUArz[iy]a KUR URUKargamiš=ya ḫumanteš takšulāir URUMurmurigaš=ši URU-aš takšulait, “the land of Arziya and the land of Karkemiš, all of them, asked him for peace, (and) the city of Murmurik asked him for peace” (KBo 5 6 ii 6–8; del Monte, 2008: 86–87, 105). As is well known, the Hittite chancellery wrote several texts in Akkadian, such as treaties, decrees and letters, and this was necessary when the king interacted 1

See Tischler, 1991: 47–49; Kloekhorst, 2008: 815–816. The verb takš- also occurs in another passage in the Telipinu decree (II 35, Hoffmann, 1984: 30–31) with the different meaning of “draw a weapon.” 2

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with rulers or dignitaries, who did not know Hittite. It is here that we find the Akkadian word šulmu, “peace,”3 instead of the Hittite term takšul. As far as the etymology of the Hittite verb takš- is concerned, N. Oettinger (2002: 218–219), S. Kimball (1999: 258) and A. Kloekhorst (2008: 814) assumed that it may be connected to the Latin verb texere.4 It is worth observing here that even the Hittite word išḫiul, which also refers to an agreement, derives from the verb išḫai-, “to bind, to wrap.” Thus, the Hittites considered the conclusion of a treaty and/or peace agreement as the result of a process similar to the action of weaving and interlacing different strands of fabric. 2. Enemies and friends: a diachronic perspective Hittite documents from the Old Kingdom support the assumption that the political vision of the first Hittite kings was concentrated more on the inner stability and the cohesion among members of the enlarged royal family than on the international scene (Imparati, 1987: 188). In support of this assumption, we quote the decree5 issued by king Telipinu (Hoffmann, 1984), which gives an account of the events that happened at the time of his predecessors. The historical narrative in this text puts an emphasis on the cause-effect relationship between the unity of the royal family and the military success of the Hittite army. Hence, the inner political scene appears as the prevailing aspect of the Hittite policy at that time, though Ḫattušili I and Muršili I led their respective army into Syria, and the latter king even reached Babylon. However, the idyllic presentation of the relations among the members of the royal family is contradicted by other contemporary documents (Liverani, 1977; 2004: 31), such as the so-called “Testament” of Ḫattušili I (Klinger, 2005: 142– 146). Notwithstanding the narrative offered by Telipinu, it is indeed unquestionable that the efforts of the first Hittite kings were centred mainly upon the consolidation of their power over the most powerful Anatolian families, some of whom descended from the royal houses of already conquered polities (Forlanini, 2004). It is not by chance that the word takšul, “peace,” occurs only once in the Old Hittite historical narratives, as documented in the tablet KUB 23 28 + i 18’ (de Martino, 2003: 104–105). The latter text preserves a composition which was attributed either to Ḫattušili I, or to Muršili I and relates the military campaigns led by the former ruler. The aforementioned passage refers to the conclusion of a peace agreement (takšul iēt, “they made a peace agreement”), but, due to the fragmentary state of this tablet, we are unable to know who the rulers involved in signing that agreement were. The Hittite approach to the international relations changed drastically starting in the 14th century BCE, when the Hittite kings took permanent control over west3

See CHD Š III (1992): 247–256. See Tischler, 1991: 42–43, for other etymologies. 5 See Gilan, 2015: 137–177, concerning the typology and function of this document. 4

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ern Anatolia and Syria. The international treaties which the Hittite kings concluded with subordinate rulers as well as with independent kings offer a clear picture of the Hittite political vision of the surrounding world, which was actually divided among friendly (takšul) and enemy (kurur) countries (Liverani, 1990a: 180). The treaty concluded between the Hittite king Tutḫaliya III6 and Šaušgamuwa of Amurru is a paradigmatic example; in fact, the latter ruler was subordinated to Ḫatti and, hence, was obliged to share the international policy of Ḫatti (§ 11; Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 595–608; Devecchi, 2015a: 225–232); thus, the enemies of the Hittite king were also enemies (kurur) to Amurru, whereas the Hittite friends and allies (takšul) were also at peace with Šaušgamuwa. Among the rulers whom the Hittite sovereign considered as his equals were the kings of Egypt and Babylon, respectively, who in turn had peaceful relations with Ḫatti and thus with Amurru too. Of course, in the event that the two aforementioned rulers became adverse to Ḫatti, they would also have been enemies of Amurru. Instead, the Assyrian king was considered an enemy at that time, although we do not know if this was a consequence of the Hittite defeat at the battle of Niḫriya (Singer, 1985; Bányai, 2011; Yamada, 2011), insofar as we are unable to determine the exact date of this event.7 Hence, the Hittite king imposed an embargo against Assyria, and the king of Amurru was forbidden from doing any trade with Assyria. Since this measure involved the Mycenaean ships, it was usually assumed that the embargo referred to the merchandise that the Mycenaean cargo ships would bring along the Levantine coast; in spite of this, the embargo might also have prevented the Assyrian ruler from hiring Aegean mercenaries, as G. Beckman, Tr. Bryce and E. Cline (2011: 68) assumed, and in this case there would have been a trading purpose as well as a military one. Though Assyria was considered a Hittite enemy, other Syrian polities, such as Emar and Karkemiš, in spite of their subordination to the Hittites, did not interrupt commercial relations with Assyria (Cancik-Kirschbaum, 2008; Giorgieri, 2011) and the Great King of Ḫatti, apparently, did not forbid them from trading with Assyrian centres. Furthermore, enemies could become friends if it was politically convenient. Thus, Hittite peace treaties do not mention episodes of hostility with countries whose alliance was considered to be of a great importance, either for political

6

I refer to the last Hittite king by the name of Tutḫaliya as the third sovereign, who bears this name; he was the son and heir of Ḫattušili II, who is also known in secondary literature as Ḫattušili III. 7 The Hittite king who fought against the Assyrians may have been Tutḫaliya III; instead, A. Bemporad (2002) argued that the Hittite army was led by prince Šuppiluliuma before he ascended the throne.

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reasons, or due to personal and family ties; hence, events, which might have breached a peaceful agreement and a fruitful alliance, were overlooked. Thus, as an example, we may quote the two treaties concluded with Amurru, respectively, by Ḫattušili II and Tutḫaliya III. The historical introduction8 in the treaty signed by Ḫattušili II with Bentešina had to tackle a thorny problem, due to the fact that Bentešina had not opposed any resistance to the Egyptian army, presumably already when Sety I moved against the Syrian regions under the Hittite control (Singer, 1991: 165). Although there was no way that Bentešina could have risen against the overwhelming military force of the Egyptians, Muwatalli II considered him a traitor and removed him from the throne. Notwithstanding, Ḫattušili II did not explicitly mention Bentešina’s betrayal, nor the role he played at the time the Egyptians invaded his country; in fact, the treaty only states that Bentešina was politically “dead” and, hence, Muwatalli II sent him into exile to Ḫakpiš in northern Anatolia, a region that was controlled by Ḫattušili at that time. And it was Ḫattušili II who, after the coup d’état, had the power to reinstall Bentešina in Amurru, and hence his “fault” was cancelled for ever (Devecchi, 2015a: 221–222; Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 566–567). The events involving Bentešina are shown in an even milder tone in the treaty that was concluded by Tutḫaliya III with Bentešina’s son and follower, King Šaušgamuwa (Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 596–599; Devecchi, 2015a: 227); in fact, the historical introduction of this treaty states that only the “people of Amurru” were responsible for the disloyalty to Ḫatti and, thus, may demonstrate that the royal house of Amurru was indeed champion in its loyalty to the Hittites. The treaty concluded by Muwatalli II with Alakšandu of Wiluša documents a less sophisticated attempt at disregarding the conflict, which had opposed Ḫatti and north-western Anatolian polities (Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 548–549; Devecchi, 2015a: 152–153). The Hittite king affirms that Wiluša actually defected from the Hittites, but this event was considered so irrelevant, that Muwatalli II did not even remember when it had happened; furthermore, the people of Wiluša were at peace with the Hittites from afar, and this was the only significant fact to be recorded. 3. War and peace R. Beal presented a paper at the 52th Rencontre Assyriologique International, which was held in Münster in 2006, entitled “Hittite Reluctance to Go to War.”9 On that occasion, R. Beal argued that the Hittite kings very often tried to avoid war and, instead, solved disputes by means of diplomacy. As a matter of fact, several Hittite historiographical narratives, the historical introductions of the international treaties and also texts of other content often 8

Concerning the function of the historical introduction, which is present in many Hititte treaties, see Altman, 2004, and Devecchi, 2015a: 35–39, with previous literature. 9 Beal, 2014.

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point out that the Hittite king was very patient. For example, Tutḫaliya I ignored the provocation of Madduwatta, who was a local chief in western Anatolia; and Ḫattušili II was very patient with Piyamaradu, the fortune-hunter, who was supported by the king of Aḫḫiyawa and raided the coastal sites in western Anatolia.10 Furthermore, all the Hittite kings, when moving against another country, always tried to demonstrate that they were on the right side and had respected all the agreements that they had concluded; instead, the enemy country was presented as the sole responsible for the casus belli. Hence, the Hittites only reacted to an enemy who showed hostile behaviour. This clearly appears, for instance, in the historical introduction in the treaty made between the Hittite king Tutḫaliya I and Šunaššura of Kizzuwatna (Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 315–320; Devecchi, 2015a: 73–91). Indeed, this text relates a series of events which attribute to the Mittanian king the fault of having violated a former treaty11 concluded between Ḫatti and Mittani. Thus, for this reason, Hittites could rightly annex Kizzuwatna, even if it had once been subordinated to Mittani (Altman, 2004: 403–436; Beal, 2014: 111; de Martino, 2016: 98–100). The Annals of Muršili II offer another interesting example; in fact, even though Muršili II was moving with an army aimed at deliberately conquering Western Anatolia, he put the blame solely to the Arzawean ruler for this military confrontation. Indeed Uḫḫa-ziti of Arzawa is accused of having refused to hand back to Muršili II the refugees, who had already left the territories under Hittite authority (see the Ten Years Annals, del Monte, 1993: 62–63; Beckman / Bryce / Cline, 2011: 14–15). The Extensive Annals of Muršili II also mention another casus belli, which involves Uḫḫa-ziti in the international relations between Anatolian and Aegean polities; in fact, the ruler of Arzawa is accused of having supported the king of Aḫḫiyawa in a military expedition involving the city of Milawanda (del Monte, 1993: 77; Beckman / Bryce / Cline, 2011: 28–29). Since the gods judged the legal reasons for the conflict between the two contestants (Liverani, 1990a: 153), the Hittite king needed to demonstrate that he was right, and the gods actually decided in his favour. Thus, the aggressive conquest of Muršili II was presented as the Hittite meditated reaction to a disloyal ruler, who had not respected the agreement sworn in front of the gods.12 Furthermore, the assumed indulgence of the Hittite kings towards the subordinate rulers who either rebelled or did not fulfil their duties was also part of a “communication strategy.” Hence, the Annals of the New Kingdom, which contain very detailed descriptions of the Hittite military enterprises, avoid mentioning the death or punishment inflicted on defeated enemies, though we can reasonably 10

See Beal, 2014, for further examples. That treaty is not preserved. 12 The accuse of having transgressed an agreement concluded between Ḫatti and Arzawa is not supported by Hittite evidence; in fact, no treaty concluded by Šuppiluliuma I with Arzawa is documented (Devecchi, 2015b: 162–163). 11

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assume that the kings of Ḫatti were just as cruel as all the other ancient monarchs (de Martino, 2004). Furthermore, these narratives often put an emphasis on the protection given to harmless peoples, even if they belonged to the enemy faction. The case of Manapa-Tarḫunta is an example of “Hittite clemency”; he was the ruler of the Šeḫa River Land and one of Muršili II’s allies, but then took sides with the aforementioned Hittite enemy Uḫḫa-ziti of Arzawa. When the latter king was defeated, Manapa-Tarḫunta asked the king of Ḫatti for mercy. The Extensive Annals of Muršili II relate that the Hittite king had decided to lead his army against the Šeḫa River Land, but Manapa-Tarḫunta dispatched his old mother to the Great King. Hence, Muršili II forgave the rebellious ruler and said: “Because a woman came to meet me and cast herself down at my feet, I had compassion for the woman and did not go again into the Šeḫa River Land. I accepted Manapa-Tarḫunta and the Šeḫa River Land in the condition of subordination” (del Monte, 1992: 82–83; Beckman / Bryce / Cline, 2011: 40–41). Did the Hittite king really want to avoid another military conflict in Western Anatolia? Was Muršili II actually moved by the old woman, who implored him for mercy? Or else, the Hittite ruler considered that Manapa-Tarḫunta could rule a region which he knew well by having already governed that territory, and trusted him despite his previous hostile behave? The Hittite system of governance, which was the result of a difficult balance between intimidation and indulgence, was definitely known among the rulers of the other Near Eastern countries. In support of this assumption we quote the letter RS 34.165 (Dietrich, 2003; see also Liverani, 1990a: 169–171), which was sent by the Assyrian king and was presumably addressed to the king of Ugarit, although the tablet is fragmentary and the name of the addressee is only partially preserved.13 The sender informed the receiver that the Hittites had been completely defeated by the Assyrian army at Niḫriya. Furthermore, when describing the phases of this struggle, the Assyrian monarch wrote that the Hittite king, before fighting against the Assyrian army, had dispatched three different messages; the first two were letters that contained a declaration of war, but the third instead was a request for peace (ṭuppa ša šulmi). The Assyrian king presumably intended to expose and ridicule the Hittite king for his arrogance and cowardice, in as much as the latter sovereign boasted his readiness for war, but then tried to avoid it (Liverani, 1990a: 170). Hence, one might assume that the Assyrians perceived the Hittite political strategy of using the iron fist and the velvet glove as an ambiguous and incoherent behave and, hence, derided the king of Ḫatti in the aforementioned letter. Instead, this strategy seems to have worked well, at least, with the subordinate countries; in fact, when they rebelled against Ḫatti, a process of negotiation, as well as the threat of the 13

L. d’Alfonso (2006: 304 n. 3) assumed that the receiver was the Pharaoh.

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Hittite military intervention sometimes succeeded in solving the revolts, without the necessity for any military action. 4. The cost of peace Despite the Hittite propaganda aimed at presenting the kings of Ḫatti as merciful rulers, almost all the Hittite sovereigns, from the time of Ḫattušili I and Muršili I, regularly led their army in war. Military conquests allowed the Hittites to dominate over rich and productive regions; in addition, the subordinate countries gave tributes to the Hittite kings, as well as precious gifts (Liverani, 1990a: 269–272; Giorgieri / Mora, 2012), and also put their army at the disposal of their overlord (Beal, 1992: 117–129). Warfare was a very productive business (Korn / Lorenz, 2014); in fact, the conquered countries and cities were systematically spoiled, as documented in the Hittite historiographical narratives, which mention not only the looted precious goods, but also the huge amount of deportees, cattle and sheep, which were taken and transferred to Ḫatti. This “living and movable wealth” played a significant role in the Hittite economy, and the deportation of civil prisoners was the main source of man-power. Since the scarcity of labour forces was a persistent problem for the Hittite kings, mostly after the terrible epidemic that killed many people at the time of Šuppiluliuma I,14 the deportees became a precious resource and were settled in different Anatolian regions, where they worked on farms, as peasants and shepherds (Imparati, 1987; Bryce, 2002: 100, 104–107). The Res Gestae of Šuppiluliuma I relate that this king deported 3,300 people from Karkemiš and destined them to his own personal estate; even more people were taken by his generals (del Monte, 2008: 116–117). Besides, his successor Muršili II boasted about having transferred 15,500 deportees from Arzawa (del Monte, 1993: 66). Even if we make allowance for exaggerations in the accounts of these two kings, it is indeed possible that many deportees were actually captured by the Hittites. When, at the time of Muršili II, Arzawa became part of Ḫatti, only small regions remained in Anatolia which could be attacked and spoiled, such as the area of Lukka and the more north-eastern territories. One may argue that the conquest of Syria and Western Anatolia as well as the peace established in these regions deprived the Hittite kings from the possibility of attacking foreign countries and, hence, looting wealthy territories. The tributes given by the subordinate rulers were significant for the acquisition of precious metals and goods, but the deportees and the livestock looted by Šuppiluliuma I and Muršili II better assured the food-production necessary for the life of the country.

14

See the Muršili II’s plague prayers (Singer, 2002).

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5. Making peace Peaceful relations with either a subordinate ruler or a Great King were ratified by means of an international treaty. The negotiations brought to the table were longer and more complicated, when the sovereign of Ḫatti interacted with a monarch of equal rank. Unfortunately, no treaty concluded by the Hittites with either Babylon or Assyria has been found, although agreements were presumably signed with the rulers of both these countries (Devecchi, 2015b); instead, copies of the treaty signed by Ramesses II with Ḫattušili II were discovered at Ḫattuša as well as in Egypt.15 As is well known, the treaty with Egypt was composed in Akkadian and written in two copies, since it was a parity agreement between two Great Kings. One of the two copies of the treaty was written by the Hittite chancellery and sent to Egypt, whereas the other copy of the Egyptian party was dispatched to Ḫatti. The two texts were inscribed on two silver tablets, as was the case for other international treaties too, and we can mention here the bronze tablet that documents the treaty signed by Tutḫaliya III of Ḫatti and Kuruntiya of Tarḫuntašša (Otten, 1988). The original silver tablets are not preserved; instead, the Egyptian translation of this treaty is documented from two stelae located, respectively, in the Temple of Amun at Karnak and in the forecourt of the Ramesseum. Furthermore, two fragmentary cuneiform tablets found at Ḫattuša document the Akkadian version of the treaty; neither of these two texts show significant differences the one from the other16 and may have been copied in Ḫattuša from the “Silver Tablet”17 which Ramesses II had sent to Ḫattušili II (Spalinger, 1981). This treaty was concluded in the twenty-first year of the reign of Ramesses II, and therefore the two courts, respectively of Ḫatti and Egypt, took sixteen years after the Qadeš battle to reach an agreement. A passage in the so-called Poem of the Qadeš Battle (Pernigotti, 2010: 80) states that, immediately after the military struggle with the Egyptians, Muwatalli II sent a letter to the Pharaoh asking for peace. Ramesses II gave a positive answer to the Hittite request and agreed to a peace settlement. Furthermore, the Egyptian translation of the treaty concluded between Ḫattušili II and Ramesses II states that Šuppiluliuma I, before, and Muwatalli II, a few years later, signed a treaty with Egypt (§ 5A, Edel, 1997: 26–29), though this statement does not occur in the Akkadian version of this agreement. As a matter of fact, the only agreement between Ḫatti and Egypt which has come to us and preceded the “Silver Tablets” is the so-called Kuruštama treaty. 15

See Edel, 1997; Beckman, 1999: 96–100; Kitchen / Lawrence, 2012: 583–594; Pernigotti, 2010: 96–105; Devecchi, 2015a: 265–270. 16 See Klinger, 2003: 244–246. 17 The provenance study conducted by Y. Goren and his team on the clay of the two aforementioned tablet seems to support the assumption that they were indeed produced at Ḫattuša, see Goren / Mommsen / Klinger, 2011: 686.

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This treaty can be attributed to the Hittite ruler Tutḫaliya I (Singer, 2004), but was still considered valid by Šuppiluliuma I, as documented in the Res Gestae of this king as well as in Muršili II’s Second Plague Prayer (Devecchi, 2015a: 264–265). Instead, Hittite sources do not document any treaty signed by Muwatalli II and the Pharaoh.18 Hence, we might assume that the aforementioned passage in the Poem is pure fiction, as argued by P.J. Brand (2007). The delay in the conclusion of the treaty after the Qadeš battle may be explained if we take into consideration the Hittite internal conflicts and the eventual coup d’état when Ḫattušili II opposed Muršili III. Egyptian sources, such as the Treaty stelae and the First Marriage stela, state that the Hittites took the first step, and this is indeed possible; in fact, Ḫattušili II, who was a usurper, needed for recognition from the other Great Kings, and hence peace with Egypt would actually legitimate his position. If the Hittite sovereign had a particular interest in ratifying peace with Egypt, both Ramesses II and Ḫattušili II also had good reasons for signing an agreement; in fact, these two kings were fully aware that the border between their countries could not be changed, and that another military confrontation between Egypt and Ḫatti would have been disastrous for either of them. Furthermore, Ramesses II had the opportunity to be the patron of an important international deed, which he would conclude with honour and prestige (Roth, 2005; Brand, 2007). Although we assume that the two courts had exchanged messages before the text of the treaty could fully be agreed upon and the silver tablets inscribed, no letter which we can surely date to that period has been found at Ḫattuša (Cordani, 2017: 63–65). Instead, several letters were sent by the Egyptian court to the Hittite royal family after the treaty was concluded, but with the aim of celebrating the peace and brotherhood which Ramesses II and Ḫattušili II had already established between the two countries (Edel, 1994: 30–49; Cordani, 2017: 66–73). Despite the fact that the two courts professed eternal friendship, moments of tension can be detected in the relations between them after the conclusion of the peace treaty. The causes of this political friction were twofold: the protection which the Pharaoh continued to give to the exiled Hittite ruler Muršili III (de Martino, 2018), and the Egyptian refusal to recognize the Hittite king as an equal to the Pharaoh. Thus, the Hittite king complained of being treated like a servant by the Pharaoh, who in turn tried to reassure Ḫattušili II of his sincere friendship in the letter KUB 3 22 (+) KBo 28 3 (Edel, 1994: 50–51; Cordani, 2017: 77–79). Furthermore, the Hittite messengers who went to Egypt presumably came to learn that the Pharaoh pretended to have completely humiliated and annihilated the Hittites at Qadeš (Liverani, 1990b).

18

It is possible that the aforementioned Egyptian statement refers to a treaty ratified between Muršili II and Egypt, but which is not preserved in any Hittite archive (Devecchi / Miller, 2011: 142–143).

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Nonetheless, these disputes did not threaten the peace between Egypt and Ḫatti, but instead the friendly relations were strengthened by means of the marriage of Ḫattušili II’s daughter to Ramesses II, even if the conclusion of this interdynastic wedding took many years to set up, and there were even more complicated negotiations compared to those of the peace treaty (Fisher, 2013; Cordani, 2017: 97–134). The treaty between Egypt and Ḫatti still continues to arouse interest even among others than mere scholars of Ancient Near Eastern history. In 1970 a replica of the cuneiform tablet which preserves the Akkadian version of the treaty was made by the Turkish sculptor Şadi Çalık and put on display in the building of the United Nations in New York. Though this is not the oldest international treaty, it is considered one of the most famous agreements in antiquity, and it actually assured peace and prosperity to a great part of the Near Eastern world in the second half of the 13th century BCE (Singer, 1999: 646–647). Bibliography Altman, A., 2004: The Historical Prologue of the Hittite Vassal Treaties. Ramat Gan. Bányai, M., 2011: “Die Niḫriya-Schlacht – Vorher und Danach.” Anatolica 37, 207–237. Beal, R.H., 1992: The Organisation of the Hittite Military. Texte der Hethiter 20. Heidelberg. — 2014: “Hittite Reluctance to Go To War.” In H. Naumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderaisen. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Pp. 109–115. Beckman, G., 1999: Hittite Diplomatic Texts (2nd edition). Atlanta. Beckman, G. / Bryce, T.R. / Cline, E.H., 2011: The Ahhiyawa Texts. Atlanta. Bemporad, A., 2002: “Per una riattribuzione di KBo 4.14 a Šuppiluliuma II.” In S. de Martino / F. Pecchioli Daddi (eds.): Anatolia Antica. Eothen 11. Pp. 71– 86. Brand, P. J., 2007: “Ideological Imperatives: Irrational Factors in Egyptian-Hittite Relations under Ramesses II.” In P. Kousoulis / K. Magliveras (eds.): Moving Across Borders. Foreign Relations, Religion and Cultural Interactions in the Ancient Mediterranean. Leuven / Paris / Dudley. Pp. 15–33. Bryce, Tr., 2002: Life and Society in the Hittite World. Oxford. Cancik-Kirschbaum, E., 2008: “Assur und Hatti – zwischen Allianz und Konflikt.” In G. Wilhelm (ed.): Ḫattuša-Boğazköy. Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 6. Pp. 205–222. d’Alfonso, L., 2006: “Die hethitische Vertragstradition in Syrien (14.–12. Jh. v. Chr.).” In M. Witte / K. Schmidt / D. Prechel / J.C. Gertz (eds.): Die deuteronomische Geschichtswerke. Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche Per-

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spektiven zur «Deuteronomismus» – Diskussion in Tora und vorderen Propheten. Berlin / New York. Pp. 303–329. Devecchi, E., 2015a: Trattati internazionali ittiti. Testi del Vicino Oriente Antico 4.4. Brescia. — 2015b: “Missing Treaties of the Hittites.” Kaskal 12, 155–182. Devecchi, E. / Miller, J., 2011: “Hittite-Egyptian Synchronism and their Consequences for Ancient Near Eastern Chronology.” In J. Mynárová (ed.): Egypt and the Near East – the Crossroads. Prague. Pp. 139–176. Dietrich, M., 2003: “Salmanassar I. von Assyrien, Ibirānu (VI.) von Ugarit und Tudḫaliya IV. von Ḫatti.” Ugarit-Forschungen 35, 104–139. Edel, E., 1994: Die ägyptisch-hethitische Korrespondenz. Band I. Opladen. — 1997: Der Vertrag zwischen Ramses II. Von Ägypten und Ḫattušili III. von Ḫatti. Berlin. Fisher, M., 2013: “A Diplomatic Marriage in the Ramesside period: Maathorneferure, Daughter of the Great Ruler of Hatti.” In B.J. Collins / P. Michalowski (eds.): Beyond Hatti. A Tribute to Gary Beckman. Atlanta. Pp. 75–119. Forlanini, M., 2004: “Considerazioni sulla prima fase della storia ittita.” Orientalia 73, 363–389. Gilan, A., 2015: Formen und Inhalte althethitischer historischer Literatur. Texte der Hethiter 29. Heidelberg. Giorgieri, M., 2011: “Das Verhaltnis Assyriens zum Hethiterreich.” In J. Renger (ed.): Assur – Gott, Stadt und Land. Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 5. Wiesbaden. Pp. 169–190. Giorgieri, M. / Mora, C., 2012: “Luxusgüter als Symbole der Macht: Zur Verwaltung der Luxusgüter im Hethiter-Reich.” In G. Wilhelm (ed.): Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 647–664. Goren, Y. / Mommsen, H. / Klinger, J., 2011: “Non-destructive provenance study of cuneiform tablets using portable X-ray fluorescence.” Journal of Archaeological Science 38, 684–696. Güterbock, H.G., 1989: “Survival of Hittite Dynasty.” In W.A. Ward / M. Sharp Joukowsky (eds.): The Crisis Years: the 12th Century B.C. Duboque. Pp. 53– 55. Hoffmann, I., 1984: Der Erlass Telipinus. Texte der Hethiter 11. Heidelberg. Imparati, F., 1987: “La politique exterieure des Hittites: Tendances et Problemes.” Hethitica 8, 187–207. Kimball, S., 1999: Hittite Historical Phonology. Innsbruck. Kitchen, K.A. / Lawrence, P.J.N., 2012: Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East. Wiesbaden. Klengel, H., 2002: Hattuschili und Ramses. Mainz.

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Klinger, J., 2003: “Zur Paläographie akkadischsprachiger Texte aus Ḫattuša.” In G. Beckman / R. Beal / G. McMahon (eds.): Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 237–248. — 2005: “Das Testament Ḫattušilis I.” In B. Janowski / G. Wilhelm (eds.): Staatsverträge, Herrscherinschriften und andere Dokumente zur politischer Geschichte. Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments NF 2. Gütersloh. Pp. 142–146. Kloekhorst, A., 2008: Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon. Leiden/Boston. Kompalla, K., 2011: “Die 13. Tafel des (h)isuwa-Festes.” In R. Fischer / D. Groddek / H. Marqardt (eds.): Hethitologie in Dresden. Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie 35. Dresden. Pp. 5–78. Korn, E. / Lorenz, J., 2014: “Staatsverträge der Bronzezeit: Lizenzen zur Bereicherung?” Die Welt des Orients 44, 57–75. Liverani, M., 1977: “Storiografia politica hittita – II. Telipinu, ovvero: della solidarietà.” Oriens Antiquus 16, 105–131. — 1990a: Prestige and Interest. International Relations in the Near East ca. 1600–1100 B.C. Padova. — 1990b: “Hattushili alle prese con la propaganda ramesside.” Orientalia 59, 207–217. — 2004: Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography. Ithaca. de Martino, S., 2003: Annali e Res Gestae antico ittiti. Studia Mediterranea 12. Pavia. — 2004: “König, Gott und Feind in den althethitischen historiographischen Texten.” Kaskal 1, 31–44. — 2016: “Išuwa and Ḫatti during the Early Hittite Empire (Tutḫaliya I – Šuppiluliuma I).” In Š. Vehlhartická (ed.): Audias fabulas veteres. Anatolian Studies in Honor of Jana Součková-Siegelová. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 79. Leiden / Boston. Pp. 98–110. — 2018: “Ramses II, il re ittita Muršili III / Urḫi-Tešob e I luoghi del suo esilio.” In A. Vacca / S. Pizzimenti / M. G. Micale (eds.): A Oriente del Delta. Scritti sul Vicino Oriente antico in onore di Gabriella Scandone Matthiae. Contributi e materiali di archeologia orientale 18. Roma. Pp. 223–231. Miller, J.L., 2013: Royal Hittite Instructions and Related Administrative Texts. Atlanta. del Monte, G., 1993: L’annalistica ittita. Testi del Vicino Oriente Antico. Brescia. — 2008: L’opera storiografica di Mursili II re di Hattusa. Le gesta di Suppiluliuma. Vol. 1. Pisa. Neu, E., 1979: “Hethitisch kurur und taksul in syntaktischer Sicht.” In O. Carruba (ed.): Studia Mediterranea Piero Meriggi dicata. Pavia. Pp. 407–427. Neumann, H., 2010: “Zur rechtsgeschichtlichen und sozialpolitischen Bedeutung der hethitischen Staatsverträge aus dem 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr.” In M. Lang /

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H. Barta / R. Rollinger (eds.): Staatsverträge, Völkerrecht und Diplomatie im Alten Orient und in der griechischrömischen Antike. Philippika 40. Wiesbaden. Pp. 141–155. Oettinger, N., 2002: Die Stammbildung des hethitischen Verbums. Nachdruck mit einer kurzen Revision der hethitischen Verbalklassen. Nürnberg. Otten, H., 1988: Die Bronzetafel aus Boğazköy. Ein Staatsvertrag Tutḫaliyas IV. Studien zu den Bogazköy-Texten 1. Wiesbaden. Pernigotti, S., 2010: L’Egitto di Ramesse II tra guerra e pace. Testi del Vicino Oriente Antico 1.7. Brescia. Roth, S., 2005: “‘In schönen Frieden befriedet und in schöner Brüderschaft verbrüdert’. Zu Motivation und Mechanismen der ägyptisch-hethitischen Diplomatischen Kontakte in der Zeit Ramses’II.” In D. Prechel (ed.): Motivation und Mechanismen des Kultrukontaktes in der Späten Bronzezeit. Eothen 13. Firenze. Pp. 178–226. Singer, I., 1985: “The Battle of Niḫriya and the End of the Hittite Empire.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 75, 100–123. — 1991: “A Concise History of Amurru.” In Shl. Ize’el (ed.): Amurru Akkadian: A Linguistic Study. Atlanta. Pp. 135–194. — 1999: “A Political History of Ugarit.” In W.G.E. Watson / N. Wyatt (eds.): Handbook of Ugaritic Studies. Leiden / Boston / Köln. Pp. 603–733. — 2000: “New Evidence on the End of the Hittite Empire.” In E.D. Oren (ed.): The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment. Philadelphia. Pp. 21–33. — 2004: “The Kuruštama Treaty Revisited.” In D. Groddek / S. Rössle (eds.): Šarnikzel. Hethitologische Studien zum Gedenk an Emil Orgetorix Forrer. Dresden. Pp. 591–607. Singer, I. / Gestoso Singer, G., 2014: “Alašian products in Hittite sources.” In Z. Csabai (ed.): Studies in Economic and Social History of the Ancient Near East in Memory of Péter Vargas. Budapest. Pp. 317–336. Spalinger, A., 1981: “Considerations on the Hittite Treaty between Egypt and Hatti.” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 9. Pp. 299–358. Tischler, J., 1991: Hethitisches Etymologisches Glossar. Teil III, Lieferung 8. Innsbruck. Torri, G., 2003: La similitudine nella magia analogica ittita. Studia Asiana 2. Roma. Yamada, M., 2011: “The Second Military Conflict between ‘Assyria’ and ‘Ḫatti’ in the Reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I.” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale 105, 199–220.

Making Peace in the Ancient Near East of the First Millennium BCE The Case of the Assyrian Empire Salvatore Gaspa

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (Tacitus, De vita Iulii Agricolae, XXX, 7)1 In memoria del soldato Michele Posadinu (Nulvi 1899 – Altopiano di Asiago 1917), ignoto tra gli ignoti del 151° Reggimento Fanteria, Brigata Sassari. Ai suoi sogni di ragazzo libero, lontani dai disegni del mondo. 1. Introduction Anthropologists who investigate the nature of political organizations in human communities have observed that warfare has been present for hundreds of thousands of years in communities of hunter-gatherers because of competition for resources and reproductive success.2 However, war as a large-scale, organized lethal conflict involving large numbers of people is peculiar to states and their specific dynamics of development, expansion, acquisition and control of resources.3 From the perspective of the necessity and inevitability of war, peace appears as a situation and condition that are deeply intertwined with the practice of warfare. More precisely, the emergence of peace in the context of political relationships between two states appears as the end-result of the complex social dynamics that leads a community into open conflict with its neighbour(s). Big agricultural states * This paper was written during a research period spent at the Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients – Abteilung Assyriologie, Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg, in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship Programme for Experienced Researchers in 2018–2019. The Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung is acknowledged for the support. 1 Tacitus, De vita Iulii Agricolae, XXX, 7, transl. De Saint-Denis, 1967: 24. 2 For an analysis of warfare in hunter-gatherers’ groups see Gat, 2006: 11–145, esp. 137– 142. 3 On war as a form of organized conflict involving lethal violence see Reyna, 1994: 30. Miller (2014: 168) observes that wars were first historically documented with the emergence of sedentary societies in the Neolithic period. For a discussion on military conflicts in the Neolithic Near East, see Müller-Neuhof, 2014: 539–552.

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make large investments in terms of taxes, military organization, war planning and colonization. In these polities ideological and religious motivations to war – particularly in ambitious projects of territorial expansion – are strongly developed.4 For these states making peace represents not only a necessity to preserve the integrity of communities heavily damaged by a previous conflict or avoid open conflict under the threat of military invasion by a more powerful neighbouring country. For large state organizations making peace could also represent an opportunity to gain control of enemy territory without recourse to war, thus avoiding huge costs in terms of human and material resources. In addition, from the point of view of the polity touched by the territorial expansion of a large state, the acceptance of imposed or vassalage peace could represent – and indeed in many cases did represent – an opportunity to grow in terms of prestige, power and accumulation of wealth by the foreign ruling elite. In the first millennium BCE the Assyrian state possessed an efficient bureaucratic system connecting central and peripheral administrations, a well-developed military technology, and large professional standing armies. Assyria had an unrivalled capacity for the large-scale mobilization of professional expertise and the redistribution of material resources for continuous and long-distance military operations. It also had a systematic capacity in terms of the direct government of conquered territories and a large-scale resettlement programme. All of this constituted an indisputable advantage for the Assyrian state in the international milieu of the first millennium BCE, granting Assyria unprecedented ascendancy over the entire Near East and enabling it to establish dominion from the Mediterranean coast and Egypt to the Iranian western area, and from southern Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. Between the 8th and 7th century BCE this dominion helped accelerate the process of cultural, socioeconomic and infrastructural unification of the region, and created a model of imperial power that was adopted and further developed by later empires. Although the Assyrian excellence in warfare explains the efficiency and successful accomplishments of the machinery of the Assyrian Empire, the history of the first world empire shows that as well as war activity, peace also played a significant role in creating stability for state organization and in the unified Near Eastern area subjugated by the Assyrian power. What is clear from the cuneiform documentation is that making peace was an integral part of the strategy of dominion of imperial Assyria and that peace took the form of the brutal imposition of vassal treaties onto foreign polities and of the acceptance by the minor contracting party of conditions of submission. The imposition of submission treaties is an example of how peace was created between states of unequal 4

War is more attested than peace in political discourse of the ancient states. Glory, wealth and economic success were celebrated in official texts of past civilizations as results of war, not of peace. As observed by Raaflaub, 2007: 11, “policies based on action and intervention paid dividends; policies of peace meant inactivity, lack of success, stagnation: nothing to fight and die for!”

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and asymmetrical power in order to govern and control enemy territory and its human and material resources without recourse to open conflict. This is well documented in the political history of the first millennium BCE. The first millennium BCE is also acknowledged by scholars as the Age of Empires, an era deeply characterized by processes of political, cultural and socioeconomic unification of the Near East by large state constructions (Assyria, Babylonia, Achaemenid Persia, Alexander the Great’s Empire and the polities of his successors, and the Arsacid Parthian Empire).5 The capacity of such empires for the direct rule of conquered territories was significantly more effective and systematic when compared to small-scale state organizations of the previous ages. In this paper, I shall investigate the topic of making peace and the nature of peace in the context of the imperial policy of Assyria, the first of the imperial constructions of the first millennium BCE that created an elaborate ideological message of dominion to support its expansionist programme and consolidate internal and external consensus to it. To sustain the imperialistic project, an ideological construct centered on universal dominion and loyalty to the god Aššur and his human representative, and on superior military strength, was convincingly promoted by generations of kings through various media in Assyria and outside. Political reasons for the success of such an ideological construct may be sought in the lack of fixed borders of the “Land of (the god) Aššur” (māt dAššur), and in the idea that the bordering countries – as well as the vassal kingdoms – not only represented a constant threat to Assyria, but were also a potential external audience susceptible to persuasion, intimidation and being compelled to loyalty.6 Cuneiform documents from Assyria dating from the 9th to the 7th century BCE provide full evidence of the importance of peace to the achievement of the imperialistic project’s goals in the international scenario of the time. References to peace and peace-making with foreign polities can be found in treaties and royal inscriptions from the Neo-Assyrian period. Another important documentary source that sheds light on peace and peace-making consists of royal correspondence and divinatory texts. Unfortunately, no similar documentation in terms of treaties or other documents concerning international law seem to be available from Babylonia during the period of its political independence (626–539 BCE) or from the Achaemenid rule,7 and the few references to treaties in various NeoBabylonian and Achaemenid sources appear to suggest that such records were not

5

Joannès, 2004: 3–4. Liverani, 1997: 886. 7 Parpola, 2003: 1047. As regards the Neo-Babylonian period, current multi-author anthologies on legal texts in the ancient Near East do not include discussion on treaties or other sources of international law from Babylonia. For legal documents from Neo-Babylonian archives, see Oelsner / Wells / Wunsch, 2003: 911–974; Joannès, 2008: 583–599; Jursa, 2008: 601–628. 6

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written in cuneiform.8 One reason why written evidence about treaties is limited to the Neo-Assyrian period could be because of the different political situation that characterized the expansion of the Chaldean kingdom and of the different ideological setting of the Neo-Babylonian šarrūtu.9 Another reason could be that cuneiform became less common over the course of the millennium, while alphabetic Aramaic, written on perishable materials, spread significantly as a means of recording state administration. Looking at all these considerations it seems fully justified for the present study on peace-making in first-millennium Near East to focus on Assyria, analyzing the concept and practice of peace that informed royal ideology and the practice of government in the Assyrian Empire. 2. Assyria in the international scenario of the first millennium BCE The historical development of power strategies followed by the Assyrian kings from the 9th to the 7th century BCE made use of both brutal military aggression and diplomacy to enlarge their dominion in the Near Eastern arena. Power relations within the international political scenario illustrated in the preserved NeoAssyrian treaties resulted not only from Assyria’s energetic expansionist policy but also from the active role of various foreign states which contributed actively to the creation of an international order in the first millennium Near East by associating themselves to the Assyrian Empire for prestige and for political and economic reasons. It is generally assumed that treaties were a fundamental diplomatic tool for the achievement of imperialistic goals as an alternative to military aggression.10 These documents are testimony to the idea that peace was connected to and resulted from war (or the threat of war). The idea is also clearly expressed in poetic words by the author of the Middle Assyrian poem dealing with TukultīNinurta I’s war against the Kassite king Kaštiliaš IV: ul iššakkan salīmu balu mitḫuṣi ul ibbašši ṭūbtu balu šitnunimma, “No peace will be concluded without fighting, there will be no friendly relations without conflict” (Tukultī-Ninurta Epic iii 15’–16’).11 To some extent this statement can be considered as an Assyrian forerunner to the better-known Latin motto Si vis pacem, para bellum.12 Before investigating exactly how peace-making was performed in the imperial policy of first-millennium BCE Assyria, it is useful to consider the words used by the scribes of the Empire’s administration for this political purpose. The term for peace in Neo-Assyrian texts is salīmu, “peace,” which is generally used in the Standard Babylonian dialect of the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions but rarely in 8

Parpola, 2003: 1054 and fn. 25 for references. Liverani, 1997: 886. 10 Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xxiii. 11 Foster, 2005: 306. 12 The idea that peace was contingent on war may be found in various Roman authors, such as Cicero, Sallust and Livy. See Cornwell, 2017: 2. For a discussion on war and peace and the relationship between the two concepts in the ancient world, see Raaflaub, 2007: 1–33. 9

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other sources.13 Another word is šalintu, “peace, safety,” which is regularly documented in the epistolography,14 while sulummû, “peace, pacification, good times,” is used more in royal inscriptions than in epistolary texts.15 Also the verb used in Neo-Assyrian texts to indicate the act of making peace is based on the Semitic root *s/šlm (salāmu).16 This is widely attested in different texts. Another term attested is the adjective nēḫu, “peaceful, quiet,”17 which is related to the word nēḫtu, “peace, quiet, security, tranquility,”18 and derives from the verb nâḫu (Assyrian nuāḫu), “to become peaceful, pacified.”19 The form nēḫu also occurs in royal inscriptions.20 As regards the term sulummû, it is already used in the second millennium BCE: in his royal inscriptions, the Middle Assyrian king Tukultī-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BCE) speaks about five rebellious cities of the Land of Katmuḫu that during a false peace dragged off people and plundered the lands of the 13 For the use of the term salīmu in royal inscriptions see RINAP 3/1, 1: 5; 213: 5; 1024: 5’; RINAP 5/1, 2 iv 15’; 6 ii 11’; 7 ii 27’; 8 ii 22’; 11 i 123; 23: 19 (http://oracc. museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). For the occurrence of the word in late Neo-Assyrian hymns, see SAA 3, 3 r.9 and 11: 14. The use of this term in the epistolary corpus is rare. See ABL 859 r.22. For the use of salīmu in queries, see SAA 4, 43: 9; 44: 10; 267 r.10 (var. silīmu!). For this word, see CAD S, 100b. 14 SAA 1, 54: 7; 111: 10; 132: 10; 188 r.3; SAA 5, 160: 5’; SAA 13, 48 e.12’; 139: 10; SAA 15, 94: 9; SAA 19, 4 r.11; 116 r.1; 117: 9’; SAA 21, 38 r.14. See CAD Š/I, 245a s.v. šalimtu 1a. 15 Fuchs 1994, Prunk. 35; RINAP 4, 1 v 31; RINAP 5/1 2 iv 17’; 3 iv 36, vii 75, viii 51; 4 vii 78, viii 53; 6 v 55; 7 v 1, vii 38, x 46’; 12 vi 3’; 13 viii 27; 23: 17 (http://oracc. museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). The only attestations in the letter corpus are SAA 19, 4 r.12 and SAA 21, 65 r.17’. In SAA 5, 157: 6 (broken) the word is possibly in conjunction with ṭūbu, “good relations.” For the occurrence of the form šulummû in the Assyrian royal correspondence in Neo-Babylonian dialect, see letters SAA 17, 95 r.3; 139: 11. For the occurrence of the word in queries, see SAA 4, 20: 7; 74: 4. See also CAD S, 372a. 16 See letters SAA 1, 38, r.47; SAA 5, 2: 13; 78: 16; 99: 5’; SAA 15, 28: 5; 90: 10, r.20; 269: 5’; 90: 9 (sullumu); 113: 17 (sullumu); SAA 16, 17 r.11’; 137: 12; SAA 19, 133: 17’; 184: 4. For the use of the term in the Neo-Babylonian correspondence of the Assyrian kings see SAA 17, 8 r.11’; 24: 23; 155 r.11; 177 r.3; SAA 18, 7: 6; 199: 14. For treaties, see SAA 2, 13 ii 3’. In the context of cultic interaction with gods, salāmu refers to the act of reconciling or appeasing. See SAA 13, 139: 2 about the king’s reconciliation with Mullissu and SAA 21, 33: 13 dealing with reconciliation of the Babylonian gods. See also CAD S, 89b. Another way to express the act of making peace is sulummû šakānu, attested in the royal letter SAA 21, 65 r.17’. 17 CAD N/II, 151b. 18 CAD N/II, 150b. 19 CAD N/I, 146b s.v. nâḫu 2b. 20 RIMA 2, A.0.98.1: 63; A.0.99.1: 19; A.0.100.5: 24; A.0.101.19: 95; RINAP 1, 46: 27; Fuchs, 1994: Ann. 423; Prunk. Vb: 21’; RINAP 4, 48: 43; 1004 i’ 3’; RINAP 5/1, 2 ii 23’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). See CAD N/II, 151b. The verb nuāḫu is used in the curse section of Esarhaddon’s succession treaty dealing with the wives, sons and daughters of those who do not keep and respect the oath.

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king.21 The use of this word in the Assyrian political discourse also characterizes the early Neo-Assyrian period during which Assurnaṣirpal II (883–859 BCE) launched the ambitious project of expanding the “Land of Aššur.” Among the curses that conclude his Nimrud stele, Assurnaṣirpal calls on the Assyrian gods to punish anyone who does respect his inscribed monument by establishing lack of peace without terms, strife, fights, and quarrels in his land.22 Deceitful peace and lack of peace do not belong to the cultural horizons of the Assyrian king’s policy, which is always presented as being aimed at reaching universal stability, peace and order in accordance with the gods’ will. 2.1. Peace-making in official state documents (chronicles, treaties and royal inscriptions) To consolidate the borders set by the first phase of the territorial expansion that took place at the start of the first millennium BCE, the Assyrian rulers of the 9th century BCE must have regularly imposed oaths of loyalty upon foreign leaders, although these are not mentioned in contemporary royal annals. References to the violation of oaths by enemies and the regular imposition of oaths in the name of great gods of Assyria in royal inscriptions of the 9th century BCE23 indicate the political strategy of reducing the foreign polities of Upper Mesopotamia to forms of vassalage and integrating them into the growing imperial structure. The beginnings of Assyria’s territorial expansion were also marked by the consolidation of the frontier with Babylonia, the major state formation of the Mesopotamian region. The chronicle known as the Synchronistic History, preserved in few manuscripts from Nineveh (Kuyunjik), illustrates the Assyro-Babylonian military and political interrelations covering a time span of around seven centuries; interrelations generally end with stipulation of bilateral pacts between the two kingdoms. Among these interrelations, the Synchronistic History mentions the reciprocal exchange of daughters in marriage and the establishment of perfect friendship and peace at the time of King Adad-nērārī II (911–891 BCE) and the Babylonian king Nabû-šūma-iškun.24 It also informs us that Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE), king of Assyria, and Nabû-apla-iddina, king of Karduniaš (a former designation for Babylonia) had established perfect friendship and peace between their kingdoms and that the Assyrian king helped Marduk-zākir-šumi (854– 819 BCE), the king’s son, in his fight against Marduk-bēl-usāte, his rebellious brother.25 The situation of good and peaceful interstate relations is also indicated in this section by the expression ṭūbtu u sulummû, “friendship and peace.” This formula was to become an integral part of the standard phraseology for peace21

RIMA 1, A.0.78.1 iii 24 ina su-lu-me-e ù sa-ra-ar-ti. RIMA 2, A.0.101.17 v 101–102 ˹la-a˺ / sa-˹li˺-ma ˹šá˺ la ma-ga-ri. 23 RIMA 2, A.0.99.2: 49–53; A.0.100.5: 25. 24 Glassner, 2005: 180–181, lines 17–18. 25 Glassner, 2005: 182–183, lines 22–34. 22

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making in the Neo-Assyrian diplomatic language. In bilateral relations, making peace implied mutual assistance and nonaggression in the light of the recognized parity of the contracting parties.26 A bas-relief from the limestone throne basement of Shalmaneser III from Kalḫu (Nimrud, c. 850 BCE) bears witness to the good relations that existed at the time between the two kingdoms: the Assyrian and the Babylonian kings are depicted in their royal attire in standing and frontal positions in the act of clasping each other’s right hands beneath a ceremonial canopy while holding the royal staff with the left hand.27 The bilateral nature of the relationship is manifested by the equal size of the royal figures and their symmetrical position in the scene.28 It is important to underline that the scene represents a public display of friendship between the two states and bears testimony to a public meeting in which the kings officially concluded a peace treaty. The fact that the scene was carved in the front and more visible part of the throne dais is a clear indication that peace was one of the objectives of Shalmaneser’s political agenda, and that peaceful relations with Babylonia were an integral part of Assyria’s expansionist project in the Near East. These good diplomatic relations were further consolidated by a treaty stipulated by Šamšī-Adad V (823–811 BCE), the heir and successor of Shalmaneser to the Assyrian throne, and the above-mentioned Marduk-zākir-šumi: this is the first attestation of a legally-binding agreement at international level stipulated by Assyria. Only a small fragment of the original black stone tablet of the treaty has been preserved, and it only contains a few stipulations, the violation clause and the curse section.29 The document, which is possibly referred to in some very

26

Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xviii; Parpola, 2003: 1054–1055. Mallowan, 1966: II, 447 fig. 371d (Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM 65574). 28 The motif of symmetrical royal figures in the context of peace-making is already attested in a stele from Ugarit (RS 7.116, National Museum of Aleppo, inv. 4418, 14th–13th century BCE) depicting a treaty ceremony. See Mallowan, 1966: II, 445; Yon, 1991: 303–305 and 335; Postgate, 2013: 401–402 and fig. 8.6. See also Gunter’s observations in this volume. The stele probably commemorates a treaty ceremony. The two figures, in all likelihood kings, are touching hands, while their elbows are put on what seem to be copies of the treaty, presumably written on hinged wooden writing boards. See Yon, 1991: 304 and Postgate, 2013: 401. However, some elements of the scene are new, namely the small table with copies of the treaty and the two lotuses on the top of the representation. Perhaps, the lotuses could indicate that the treaty ceremony was performed in a closed space, in all probability a tent characterised by decorated edges, like the above-mentioned Neo-Assyrian treaty ceremony, celebrated under a canopy. The same motif with kings clasping or simply touching hands appears to be attested in a Neo-Elamite(?) stele from Qala-i Tol, for which see Börker-Klähn, 1982: no. 272 and p. 233, and Waters in this volume. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Professors Ann C. Gunter and Matthew W. Waters for kindly providing me references to these stelae. 29 SAA 2, 1. 27

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fragmentary lines of the aforementioned chronicle,30 was aimed at compelling the Babylonian king to provide military assistance to Shalmaneser’s successor against the usurper Aššur-dā’’in-aplu, another son of the Assyrian king who brought a great rebellion to Assyria in the last years of Shalmaneser’s reign. The Synchronistic History and Šamšī-Adad V’s treaty bear witness to the Assyrian policy of regulating peace and border settlements in order to guarantee dynastic stability and continuity in both countries.31 Bilateral and balanced interactions were not the only political context for peace-making in Assyria’s international relations. Other types of treaties stand in testimony to the flexible strategy adopted by the Assyrian Empire to consolidate an international order under its dominion. The achievement of this order necessitated the complete submission of foreign rulers to the Empire. Requests for military aid by small polities to defend their ruling dynasties and territories represented opportunities for Assyria to intervene in the Transeuphratic region and establish its authority there. In the first phase of territorial expansion this political situation is illustrated by relations with the states of Kummuḫ and Sam’al, which sought the protective shadow of the Empire for defence against attacks by neighbouring countries (Arpad, then the leading power in northern Syria, and its allies; Gurgum) during the reign of Adad-nērārī III (810–783 BCE).32 The partnership between Assyria and these much smaller states was probably formalized through treaties of vassalage. This can be presumed from the written agreement stipulated by Aššur-nērārī V (754–745 BCE) with Mati‘-’Il, king of the powerful Aramaic state of Arpad (region north to Aleppo).33 This document is a subordination treaty imposed upon Mati‘-’Il. It compelled his loyalty to Assyria and was sworn in the names of the great gods of Assyria as well as those of the West Semitic and Hittite deities venerated in the Transeuphratic region. The treaty, poorly preserved, does not mention the obligation of paying tribute, but the king of Arpad had to not harbor enemies of Assyria. He also had to provide troops to the Assyrians in case of war.34 The text of the treaty is also interesting, because it explicitly mentions the term that was currently used by the Assyrian scribes to indicate treaties of subjugation and loyalty oaths. This is the word adê that once entered in the political terminology of the Assyrian chancery became a synonym for sworn and right oaths – formalized through a written document – that stood in opposition to oaths 30

Glassner, 2005: 182–183, lines C 1’–5’. See Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xxvii. Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xviii. 32 According to the Pazarcık stele, it was the king of Kummuḫ who asked the Assyrian king to intervene in his country against Arpad and its allies (see RIMA 3, A.0.104.3: 7– 10). See also the Zenjirli stele, in which the king of Sam’al states to have recruited the Assyrian king in the war against the kingdom of Danuna. See the discussion in Fales, 2008a: 517–519. 33 SAA 2, 2. 34 SAA 2, 2 iii 19’–28’, r. iv 1–3. See Younger, 2016: 537 for discussion. 31

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called kitru that had been concluded between states with an anti-Assyrian purpose and as such disloyal, sinful and fanciful. The tradition of binding agreements that implied specific assignments or duties by the minor contracting partner was at the basis of the institution of the adê-system.35 The essential nature of the adê consisted of obligatory behaviour (in the part of the contracting party of lesser standing, i.e., the foreign ruler), whose legally binding power was strengthened through the sealing of the treaty tablet with the seals of the god Aššur and the oath-swearing by the contracting partner. The divine seals made the treaty tablet a “Tablet of Destinies,” while the oath-swearing established the subordination of the contracting partner in terms of destiny.36 The centrality of the adê to the institutional and political life of the Assyrian Empire was basically linked to the crucial importance of any oath sworn in front of a god to the Neo-Assyrian religious concept of divine justice, as can be seen from the daily juridical and economic documents of the same period.37 In the field of interstate relations, the implications of swearing an Assyrian adê were the unconditional subordination of the contracting foreign ruler to the Assyrian emperor, the religious connotation of the violation of the oath in terms of sin against the gods and as such susceptible of divine punishment of the sinner and the negative consequences for the contracting part in terms of destruction and degradation of the country. Such aspects are expressed using magical and religious symbolism that is peculiar to the West Semitic culture.38 No evidence of any such treaties is available for the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 BCE), the king whose policy represented the starting point for the institutionalization of the imperial system of government for submitted enemy countries. The royal inscriptions (of annalistic and summary format) of this king offer further proof that the practice of the adê was consolidated and represented a powerful diplomatic means of neutralizing the political instability at the borders of the Empire by subjugating and integrating foreign polities into the imperial structure. References to adê-treaties sworn by the great gods and violated by Zakiru of Bīt-Ša’alli (Lower Mesopotamia),39 Tutammû of Unqi (western Syria)40 and Mitinti of Ashkelon (Philistia)41 or to the māmītu, “oath,” sworn by the Sun-god that was transgressed by the Arab Queen Samsi42 may well be taken as referring to oaths contracted with the Assyrian king some years before, although documentary evidence of

35

See Lauinger, 2013: 100 for remarks about the institutions of the Middle Assyrian riksu/rikiltu and Mari isiktum. 36 Lauinger, 2013: 114–115. 37 Lanfranchi, 2008: esp. 96–103. 38 Liverani, 1990: 124–127; Fales, 2008a: 522–523. 39 RINAP 1, 47: 19. 40 RINAP 1, 12: 3’. 41 RINAP 1, 21: 12’; 22: 8’. 42 RINAP 1, 20: 18’.

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these treaties has not been preserved.43 The references to generic violation without explicit mention of adê-treaties are a further indication of the existence of such loyalty pacts.44 Since the mid-8th century BCE, the establishment of the provincial system by the appointment of governors and the deployment of administrative staff and military garrisons progressively changed the political landscape of the submitted countries. Outside the “Land of Aššur,” a growing number of vassal states became subsumed to the Assyrian power through loyalty oaths. At the same time, the Assyrian state forbade any other form of alliance between these polities and other neighbouring countries.45 Historical texts that comprised various types of royal inscriptions make use not only of the technical term adê but also of terms whose meanings illustrate a new sense of sacredness and divine sanction attributed to these forms by the royal ideology during the age of Sargon II (722–705 BCE), when the practice of peace-making that was aimed at subordinating unconditionally the turbulent periphery of the growing Empire was fully institutionalized in the management of international relations. These terms are zikru, “the utterance of the names of gods invoked in the oath,” and māmītu, “oath (with curse and divine-punition purpose),” and refer to loyalty oaths transgressed by foreign polities with which a previous state of vassalage had been imposed by the Empire.46 Alliances of anti-Assyrian intent between foreign polities that refused to submit to the Empire are often mentioned in royal inscriptions, and although they are described through the ideological filter of Assyrian historiography and propaganda that define them with the disqualifying term kitru47 represent the peacemaking activities of Assyria’s enemies in their fierce struggle for independence. We do not know whether or how anti-Assyrian peaceful relations were formalized by written documents, but it is reasonable to assume that they were considered mutually binding for the contracting parties and that divine sanction was also invoked in the event of transgression. However, the Assyrian political discourse tends to disqualify the peace activities of the enemies as useless attempts to mobilize forces and to receive military aid against Assyria, trusting on human allies and their plans instead of relying on divine protection, support and legitimization. This is the backbone of the political message conveyed by royal texts that were aimed at perpetuating the inevitability of the Assyrian king’s victory and the necessity to submit to him and the ilāni rabûti, the “great gods” of the Empire. In 43

See Liverani, 1990: 125. See, e.g., RINAP 1, 35 i 22’ regarding Mati‘-’Il, king of Arpad. 45 No alliance with enemies of Assyria was permitted to vassal kingdoms. See Assurbanipal’s treaty with the Babylonians, SAA 2, 9: 20’: “The enemy of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, […] shall not be our ally.” The vassal kings were obliged to collaborate with Assyria’s allies. See the letter SAA 21, 28 r.1. 46 Liverani, 1990: 127–128. 47 Liverani, 1990: 130–131. 44

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reality, the Assyrian elite probably feared the enemy alliances as a threat to their expansionist project. We can thus interpret the negative connotation of enemies and their binding agreements that we encounter in royal annals as indirect proof of the deadly threat represented by the anti-Assyrian coalitions that Assyria had to face during the entire period of its expansion and consolidation (from the 9th to the 7th century BCE).48 The kidnapping of statues of the gods from unsubmissive foreign states and their relocation in Assyrian temples was one of the means used in Assyrian warfare and political discourse to convey the idea that Assyria’s enemies had been abandoned by their own gods and that without the support of local deities any attempt to rebel against the Assyrian king was inevitably destined to failure. Only in the reign of Sennacherib (705–681 BCE), the son and successor of Sargon, is the traditional terminology of the loyalty oaths and the theme of violation absent: this has been interpreted as proof of a “laic policy” inaugurated by Sennacherib, who preferred to define submission relations in concrete terms, without mentioning swearing in the names of the gods in his historical texts, if we exclude the unique reference to treaties and oaths (adê u māmītu) that Padî, king of Amqarruna (Ekron), concluded with Assyria in the past.49 From another interpretative perspective it is also plausible that the change in phraseology and ideology of adê-making, that implied the centrality of the swearing in the names of the great gods of Assyria, was an integral part of the Aššur-centered nationalistic reform of this king.50 With this king an important change came to affect the institution of the Assyrian adê. Originally applied to regulate the asymmetrical relations of the expanding Assyrian state with submitted polities in the international arena, the adê now also became a fundamental institutional means of regulating relations between the royal family and the Assyrians themselves. It was thanks to the imposition on collective bodies of an adê sworn by the great gods of the country that loyalty to the king and the designated heir was established and maintained. The introduction of this new form of submission treaty to regulate the Empire’s internal political stability was the political means that the late Assyrian ruling class had adopted to deal with any problems originating in the internal political weakness and irregular dynastic succession to the Assyrian throne. In short, this change in the treaty system seems to be related to two major factors: on one side the growing number of newcomers of different provenance that entered the administrative and military machinery of the Empire as a result of the expansion of the state territory and on the other the irregular dynastic succession and the problems of loyalty of the king’s relatives and high-ranking state officials that resulted from the expansion of the royal family and the court. The adê-treaties from the reigns 48

Lanfranchi, 2011: 226–227. RINAP 3/1, 4: 42; 16 iii 42; 17 iii 7; 22 ii 74–75; 23 ii 70; RINAP 3/2, 140 r.6; 165 iii 24–25. Note that in RINAP 3/2, 46: 23 only the word adê is mentioned. For the so-called “laic view” of this king see Liverani, 1990: 131–132. 50 Fales, 2008a: 533. 49

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of Sennacherib (705–681 BCE), Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) and Assurbanipal (668–631? BCE) bear witness to this political situation affecting the heartland of the Empire and the problems inherent in maintaining the cohesion of the ruling elite and imperial society.51 The loyalty oath imposed to the various members of the administrative and military organization of the state, as well as to foreign vassal rulers, required to observe the king’s decisions as regards the designation of his heir and implied the duty to protect the royal successor. Documentary evidence of this new category of adê is given by the royal succession treaties of Sennacherib (possibly in favour of the heir Esarhaddon)52 and of Esarhaddon (in favour of the heir Assurbanipal).53 Other adês of this period include the accession treaty of Esarhaddon,54 a pact of loyalty to Assurbanipal that was imposed on the aristocracy and the nation after Esarhaddon’s death in 669 BCE (Zakūtu’s treaty),55 and an alliance treaty dating from the period of the rebellion of Šamaššumu-ukīn and the resulting civil war.56 From the period pertaining to the successors of Assurbanipal, two fragmentary treaties date from the reign of Sîn-šarruiškun (623?–612 BCE): one is an alliance treaty with some Babylonians who were possibly supporters of the king in his war against Nabopolassar,57 and another is an extract from the curse section of a possible loyalty pact imposed upon the Assyrian nation after Sîn-šarru-iškun’s accession to the throne.58 Other treaties concerning loyalty to the king or regulating the vassalage of foreign polities exist only in fragmentary condition.59 Also this category of treaties is informed by the concept of peace. Internal peace was essential to avoid destroying the ruling elite’s cohesion and the prospect of civil war in the heartland of the Empire. In fact, some sections of Esarhaddon’s succession treaty are explicitly concerned with treason, rebellion, palace revolt, seditious meetings, and fomenting of strife.60 During the 7th century BCE, the external relations between Assyria and foreign polities continued to be regulated through the adê-system. Examples of treaties concluded with foreign polities during the Empire’s maximum territorial expansion phase are Esarhaddon’s treaty with Ba’alu, king of Ṣurru (Tyre),61 and Assurbanipal’s treaty with the Arab tribe of Qedar.62 These treaties were aimed at establishing and maintaining good and peaceful relations with external subjects. 51

Fales, 2008a: 534–535. SAA 2, 3. 53 SAA 2, 6. 54 SAA 2, 4. 55 SAA 2, 8. 56 SAA 2, 9. 57 SAA 2, 11. 58 SAA 2, 12. 59 SAA 2, 7; 13. 60 See SAA 2, 6 Sections §§10–19, 27–31. 61 SAA 2, 5. 62 SAA 2, 10. 52

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The treaty with Ba’alu was probably concluded after the destruction of Sidon in 676 BCE, and shows a very favourable policy toward the Phoenician city-state.63 The treaty allowed it free access to all trading ports on the Mediterranean coast and established limits to Assyrian control, probably as a continuation of the commercial policy inaugurated by Tiglath-pileser III.64 In particular, the clauses of Esarhaddon’s treaty with Ba’alu regulate in detail the spheres of responsibility of the two treaty partners regarding the legal ownership of the cargoes and crews of Tyrian ships shipwrecked on specific areas of the coast that were under Assyrian control, as well as Tyrian merchants’ rights of access to and use of commercial ports and routes within the territory recently conquered by the Assyrian Empire.65 The Empire’s favourable policy towards the Phoenician city lasted until 671 BCE, when Ba’alu’s alliance with the king of Egypt brought about military invasion by the Assyrians and the loss of Tyre’s political independence.66 Of course, once a pact with Assyria had been agreed, any alliance or peace by the contracting party with other foreign polities was forbidden by the Assyrians. The injunction to not make peace (salāmu) with enemies of Assyria is explicitly expressed in the wording of a treaty, perhaps dating from the reign of Esarhaddon. Unfortunately, details on the contracting parties and the context are not preserved in this text.67 An analogous injunction not to strive for loyalty (ana ṭābti qarābu) with third parties is also contained in the treaty imposed by King Assurbanipal to the Qedarites.68 Qedar was a nomadic polity of northern Arabia which concluded a treaty with Assurbanipal, probably before 652 BCE, when Šamaš-šumu-ukīn rebelled against Assyria and ended the seventeen-year period of internal peace inaugurated by Zakūtu’s treaty.69 The treaty with the Arab tribe was probably aimed at preventing hostilities along the northern Arabian frontier and the formation of alliances with the Empire’s enemies but it also gave the Assyrians access to the caravan trade routes controlled by the powerful nomadic groups in the region. However, a few years later the Qedarites would have joined the forces supporting Šamaš-šumuukīn during the civil war (652–648 BCE). Thus, during the 7th century, the concept of salīmu was applied more and more often to the internal situation of Assyria, which was becoming affected by growing political instability and dynastic 63

Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xixx. See SAA 2, 5 r. iii 6’–30’. The letter SAA 19, 22: 5–13 provides a good illustration of the relationship between the Assyrian Empire and Tyre at the beginning of the Assyrian domination of Phoenicia. For a discussion on this letter and the economic freedom guaranteed to Tyre see Gaspa, 2016: 100–101. 65 SAA 2, 5 iii 15’–30’. 66 RINAP 4, 60: 7’–8’. 67 SAA 2, 13 ii 3’–4’ [is-si]-šú ˹la˺ ta-˹sa-lim˺ / [pi-i i]s-si-šú ˹la˺ ta-šá-kan, “You will not make peace [with] him nor make [common cause w]ith him.” 68 SAA 2, 10: 13’ šum-ma at-tu-nu TA* Iia-ú-ta-a’ / a-na MUN ta-qar-rib-a-ni, “You shall not strive for loyalty with Yauta’.” 69 Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xxxiii. 64

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problems. The successful political imposition of loyalty oaths to foreign rulers in order to pacify – and thus consolidate – the borders of the Empire encouraged the Assyrian elite to apply this system internally. 2.2. Peace-making in everyday documents (letters and divinatory texts) The picture we get from treaties and historical texts – all of which were informed by a moral polarization between Assyria and its enemies and by the theme of immorality and sacrilege attributed to the enemy’s violation of any oath of loyalty70 – can be augmented by information from the royal correspondence. Among the thousands of letters routinely exchanged between the king and high state officials who operated in various cities and theatres of war there are epistles that shed light on pacification policies undertaken in foreign countries that were subjugated after military conflict with Assyria. Other letters illustrate international relations between Assyria and other polities and the diplomatic efforts to reach peace. Letters from the royal correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II deal with the status of pacification that followed defeat, as can be seen in the case of Urarṭu,71 Media,72 Māzamua,73 and other regions on the northern or northeastern frontier of the Empire.74 In all these attestations, forms of the Assyrian verb nuāḫu, “to become peaceful, pacified,” are used in the reports to the king. In letters concerning interstate relations and peace-making activities, the mention of treaties is made by paraphrasing these documents or even citing their contents verbatim. In the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, there is a letter reporting that Mukīnzēri, the leader of the Chaldean tribe of Bīt-Amukkāni, moved horses from the Borsippa gate against Babylon, and that this act had prevented people from cultivating their fields. The Assyrian king’s order was to make safe (šullim) the territory between the two cities, namely Borsippa and Babylon.75 This letter is also interesting because it mentions the treaty tablet (ṭuppi adê) which was at the disposal of the “son of Yakīn” and which had to be taken to the palace. The text explicitly mentions a copy of the tablet (gabrû) which was to be taken to the king.76 This is an indication that copies of treaties were exchanged between the contracting parties. The sender of the letter asks the Assyrian king to confirm the treaty in question (adê lukīn) and send a copy (gabrû [lišpur]) to the king of 70

Fales, 2008a: 528–529. SAA 1, 31: 22–e.27: “The previous report which I sent about the Urarṭians was that they had suffered a terrible defeat. Now his country is quiet again.” 72 SAA 15, 85: 5: “The Medes around us are peaceful”; 100: 5–7: “The Medes around are peaceful, and we are doing our work.” (cf. also 98: 5–6). 73 SAA 5, 210 r.7–8: “They are peaceful and do their work.” 74 SAA 19, 78 r.4’–8’: “He is in his country and does his work. His whole country is quiet; they are doing their work. His men are doing work in the fort.” 75 SAA 19, 133: 12’–17’. 76 SAA 19, 133 r.3–8. 71

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Yakīn.77 According to the sender’s words, however, there was no proof that the palace had indeed returned the treaty tablet to the Yakīnite king.78 Among the letters exchanged between King Assurbanipal and various addressees in Babylonia during the civil war there is a missive that cites the content of a treaty concluded with Uruk verbatim.79 The handling of treaty tablets is also mentioned in a letter from the reign of Sargon II. Ṭāb-ṣil-Ešarra, the governor of Assur, writes a letter to Sargon in which he mentions the treaty tablet of Gurdî, perhaps to be identified with the ruler of Kulummu or Til-Garimme:80 “As to the treaty tablet (ṭuppi adê) of Gurdî about which the king, my lord, wrote to me, the adjutant of the palace superintendent came and picked it up on the 1st of Abu. [As soon as] the emissaries [had ar]rived, they brought the tre[aty tablet to the Inner Cit]y; [the body]guard and the messenger of the palace superintendent went with them and introduced it into the courtyard of the temple.”81 The letter clearly refers to a vassal treaty imposed on the Anatolian king. From the governor’s words we learn that this copy of the vassal treaty stipulated with Gurdî was brought to the Aššur Temple in Assur with the arrival of the emissaries (representing the Anatolian state’s authority), and that the messenger of the palace superintendent had been asked to return the tablet to the former location after the execution of a ceremony.82 It is possible that the event in question was an oathtaking ceremony at the Aššur Temple, presumably to be performed in front of the statues of the country’s great gods.83 Letters from the astrologer Issār-šumu-ereš give us further details on oath-taking in Assyria. In one of his missives to the king he mentions categories of people that have to “enter the treaty,” i.e., to swear the 77

SAA 19, 133 r.11–12. SAA 19, 133 r.17–21. 79 SAA 21, 28: 22–r.2: “We will not change nor violate the treaty [of Assur]banipal; we will not [s]ide with his enemy; as long as [we] l[ive], we will keep the treaty [we have concluded with him; …] his ally shall be our ally, and we will walk [wi]th him […].” 80 See PNA vol. 1/II, 431b s.v. no. 2. 81 SAA 1, 76: 6–r.7. 82 SAA 1, 76 r.8–13. 83 SAA 13, 32: 9–11: “Let the gods come for the treaty (oath-taking ceremony).” In this letter, Mutakkil-Aššur cites verbatim what the king wrote to him. Mutakkil-Aššur’s reply to the monarch is broken in the tablet. The extant lines only concern the situation of the god Nabû, who was staying in the bedroom until the 12th day of the month (ibid., 12–14). On the presence of gods during treaty ceremonies see the discussion in Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xxxvii. Swearing oaths in the name of the national god of the Assyrians was also imposed in cultic places of the conquered polities. See, e.g., Tukultī-Ninurta II’s royal inscription RIMA 2, A.0.100.5: 24–25, regarding the imposition of an oath by the name of Aššur before a statue (of the local god?) to Ammi-Ba’al, the ruler of Bīt-Zamāni. 78

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oath. The oath in question was part of a loyalty pact ceremony to be sworn for Esarhaddon’s succession in favour of Assurbanipal.84 The astrologer’s letter also explains that the people of Nineveh and Kalḫu had to swear under the statues of Bēl and Nabû on the 8th day of the month.85 This ceremony, in which all the various professional and social bodies that formed the Empire’s administrative machinery and elite had to participate, probably took place in the Temple of Nabû in Kalḫu.86 Issār-šumu-ereš reminds the addressee that according to hemerologies there were specific days and moments to swear.87 In another letter he clarifies that the 20th, the 22nd and the 25th of the month were good days for concluding the treaty (ana šakāni ša adê).”88 The fact that treaties were concluded “before the sanctuary, [in front of] the gods,” is also confirmed by Mār-Issār’s words addressed to the king.89 Another scholar of the royal court, the chief physician UradNanāya, mentions criminals who had previously concluded the king’s treaty (adê ša šarri) before Aššur and the great gods.90 The ceremonies of oath-taking in the temples probably involved rituals using oil and water.91 In a section regarding action against traitors, Esarhaddon’s succession treaty enumerates all the ritual actions involved in oath-taking that could validate such swearing in front of divine statues, namely setting a table, drinking from a cup, kindling a fire, using water or oil, or holding breasts.92 From the available evidence, it seems that the oathtaking consisted of various phases: first of all, the text of the treaty was publicly read, then the stipulation took place in front of divine images or the stars with the recitation of the wording of the treaty by the contracting party in the names of the gods; finally, it was followed by the execution of a series of magic rituals.93 Returning to the aforementioned Ṭāb-ṣil-Ešarra’s letter, the conclusion of the missive appears to state that other officials of the city of Assur and the temple entrusted the ša pān ekalli to do something about the treaty tablet,94 but it is not clear exactly what. Another letter, possibly dated to 709(?) BCE and sent by King Sargon to Aššur-šarru-uṣur, the governor of Que (western Cilicia), explicitly mentions the peace agreement reached with Midas, the king of the Land of Muški (Phrygia). The letter contains the king’s replies to every question addressed to 84

SAA 2, 6. See Fales, 2008a: 536. SAA 10, 6: 20–r.23. These gods are mentioned in a fragmentary Babylonian letter that also refers to a treaty (adê). See SAA 18, 52: 1’–4’. 86 Fales, 2008a: 536. 87 SAA 10, 6 r.11–19. See also SAA 10, 7. 88 SAA 10, 5: 8–r.2. 89 SAA 10, 354: 21–22. 90 SAA 10, 316: 22–e.24. 91 See RINAP 4, 1 i 50–51: “The people of Assyria, who swore by oil and water (ina mê u šamni) to the treaty, an oath bound by the great gods (adê māmīt ilāni rabûti).” 92 SAA 2, 6: 153–161. 93 Fales, 2008a: 536 fn. 109. 94 SAA 1, 76 r.13–16e. 85

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him by the governor of Que. The unexpected peace with the Anatolian kingdom strengthened the position of Assyria in the region, which had become an arena of international diplomatic tension.95 It is clear that concluding an agreement with no recourse to armed conflict was an integral part of the imperialistic strategy of the Empire, which sought to find allies in the region and gain control of local trade routes. Typical commodities that circulated within the Neo-Hittite economy were cattle, sheep, horses, stone, metals, textiles and sweet wine.96 The king’s joy in learning from the governor that a secret diplomatic mission aimed at establishing an alliance between the king of Que and his arch-enemy the king of Urarṭu had been intercepted by Midas is expressed with these words: “As what you wrote to me: ‘A messenger [of] Midas the Phrygian has come to me, bringing me fourteen men from Que whom Urik had sent to Urarṭu as an embassy’ – This is extremely good! My gods Aššur, Šamaš, Bēl and Nabû have now taken action, and without a battle [or any]thing (lā ina libbi qarābi [lā ina libbi m]emmēni), the Phrygian (king) has given us his word and become our ally!”97 Concerning the exchange of messages with the Anatolian kingdom that were aimed at maintaining good relations, the king invites Aššur-šarru-uṣur to write to the Phrygian ruler in friendly terms (dibbī ṭābūti šupraššu) and constantly listen for any news of him.98 A third important passage of the letter concerns the governor’s worries about the demand of districts by Kilar, a local ruler in the vicinity of Que or Tabal, who wanted to profit from the rivalry between Phrygia and Assyria in the region. The king’s answer sought to assure his addressee that a peace agreement was in place with the kingdom of Muški: “Earlier, you were afraid of the Phrygian, but now the Phrygian has made peace with us (issini issilim), so what are you afraid of? Now eat your bread and drink your water under the protection of the king, my lord, and be happy. Do not worry about the Phrygian!”99 A fragmentary letter refers to the mission of the official Aššur-ālik-pāni and his adjutant Nergal-šarrāni to Bīt-Abdadāni, a city in Mannea. From this and analogous missives it becomes clear that Aššur-ālik-pāni was in charge of implementing imperial policy in the northeastern frontier of Assyria.100 The scope of the 95

On the tensions between Que and Bīt-Burutaš, see Giusfredi, 2010: 62. Giusfredi, 2010: 173, 177–178. On horses, oxen and sheep from Tabal, see the letter sent by Inūrta-bēlu-uṣur to the king, SAA 19, 33: 4–15. Wool from Kummuḫ is mentioned in SAA 1, 33: 19, one of the letters sent by Crown Prince Sennacherib to Sargon. 97 SAA 1, 1: 7–9. See also comments in Fales, 2008b: 24. 98 SAA 1, 1: 14–15. 99 SAA 1, 1: 36–r.42. The peace with Phrygia is also mentioned in ibid., r.47. 100 See also the letter SAA 5, 152, concerning a meeting with the king in Arbela. 96

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mission reflects Assyria’s policy of establishing good relations and peace with the Mannean city-state.101 The rest of the tablet is broken, but it seems that the diplomatic mission experienced some troubles during the accomplishment of their task.102 Another letter from the same corpus of texts reports the capture of Assyrian forts by the Urarṭians. The legitimacy of the military action is contested because it took place during a period of peace between the two countries: “Why do you capture our forts, while we are at peace (anīnu salmāni)?”103 A letter sent to the king by a certain Aššur-bēlu-dā’’in, perhaps the governor of Ḫalzi-atbār (a district that was probably located south-west of the Ǧebel Sinǧār),104 informs the monarch that two peoples, the Ušḫueans and the Qudaeans, had submitted to the king’s command.105 As the representative of the king’s authority in the region, the Assyrian official states that he had made peace with them (usallimšunu).106 This meant that after a few displays of reluctance, these nations had eventually begun to keep to and respect the Assyrian peace treaty. The sender concludes his message confirming to the addressee that “the whole mountain (area) has observed the king’s treaty (šadû gabbu adê šarri ittaṣar).”107 The last lines of the epistle, however, concern the rebellious people of the Mumaeans, possibly located in the present-day area of Judi Dağ. Negotiation with them appears to be a feasible option as far as Aššur-bēlu-dā’’in is concerned and the sender asks the king about that in order to know how to proceed: “Shall I go and negotiate with them (issišunu ladbub) about the king’s command? If not, let the king, my lord, tell me what his orders are.”108 Gaining control of local populations in mountainous or remote areas was a hard task for the Assyrians. Weak military and political control in such areas favoured episodes of non-collaboration and insurgency by local inhabitants that had to be addressed by the Assyrian officials who were in charge of governing these territories. The imposition of a peace treaty is also mentioned in a fragmentary letter dealing with people living in the vicinity of Lubda, a city south of Arrapḫa,109 but no specific details about the contents of the submission treaty are available in this text. Interesting insights into the conclusion of peace treaties may be gained from a letter by Mannu-kī-Ninūa, the governor of Kār-Šarrukīn during the reign of Sar-

101

SAA 5, 157: 5–7. SAA 5, 157: 8–9. 103 SAA 5, 2: 12–15. 104 Radner, 2006–2008: 54b. 105 SAA 5, 78: 4–9. 106 SAA 5, 78: 16. 107 SAA 5, 78 r.4–5. 108 SAA 5, 78 r.13–17e. 109 SAA 15, 28: 5’ a-si-˹lim˺. 102

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gon. The governor reports on affairs in Ellipi, a country in the western Iranian area. This letter informs the king that a treaty was drawn up with the people of Kulumān, a city in the western Iranian region, and that by virtue of this agreement they had been pacified by the governor (usallimušanuni).110 The people of the Zabgagaeans – another polity in the same area – also made peace (isalmū) with the Kulumaneans.111 This is an interesting reference to peace-making activities conducted between local polities which were all allied with the Empire. In the same missive, the representatives of the Zabgagaeans or another polity of the region show their intention of concluding a treaty with Assyria at the upper border of the city of Satarnu(?), confirming that they were at peace with their neighbours: “They also said: ‘As for you, come with your […] and conclude the treaty with us (adê isseni šuknu) at the upper border of Satarnu(?). We have made peace (nislim)’. ”112 The letter also sheds light on the application of the adê-system to small-scale polities – such as the inhabitants of a village – as a form of tutelage that implied protection and justice from the local Assyrian governor.113 This aspect of governance also emerges from another missive sent by Mannu-kī-Ninūa, according to which the governor of Kār-Šarrukīn sent his deputy to stipulate this form of adê with the inhabitants of a particular village.114 Also from the correspondence of the reign of Esarhaddon we learn that violations could take place in time of peace. The officials Nabû-rā’im-nišēšu and Salāmānu, both active at the eastern fringes of the Empire, report to the king that the messenger of Pa’ê, the legate of the Land of Arāši, a state of the Zagros region, once arrived in Nippur started complaining about raids that were occurring during a time of peace: “The kings have made peace with one another (issaḫē’iš issalmū), so why have you taken plunder (or captives)?”115 Analogous observations can be made about letters dated to the reign of Esarhaddon’s successor. The governor of Dēr, called Šulmu-bēli-lušme, receives a letter from Crown Prince Šamaš-šumu-ukīn – Assurbanipal’s brother and the future king of Babylonia – dealing with relations between Assyria and Elam. The crown prince reminds the addressee how the kings of the two countries stipulated a treaty: 110

SAA 15, 90: 9. SAA 15, 90: 9–10. 112 SAA 15, 90 r.18–20. The same formula occurs in the fragmentary letter SAA 15, 269: 5’ [ni-s]i-lim. 113 On this aspect see the discussion in Ponchia, 2002–2005: 157 in the framework of an in-depth investigation of the use of the adê to enforce requests related to legal matters. 114 SAA 15, 98 r.3’–6’. 115 SAA 15, 137: 12. 111

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“Having listened to one another, the king of Elam and the king of As[syria] have made peace with one another (itti aḫāmeš isselmū) at Marduk’s command and become treaty partners (bēl adê ša aḫāmiš).”116 In the light of this peace treaty – to be identified with the one concluded between Esarhaddon and Urtaku – the crown prince commands Šulmu-bēli-lušme to send him some fugitives quickly, otherwise the good relations between Assyria and the Elamites could be soured or, to use the mār šarri’s words, “a shadow (ekeltu) will be cast between the king of Elam and the king of Assyria.”117 This letter refers to the bilateral nonaggression treaty, qualified as an adê, that was concluded between Assyria and Elam, its arch-rival. Esarhaddon’s royal inscription offers a different and more ideologically-oriented description of how Elam and Assyria reached a bilateral peace agreement: according to the words of the author of the inscription, the Elamite king and a king of a polity that was allied with Elam in the region – anachronistically called “Gutians” in the text – were afraid of the might of the god Aššur, and in order to preserve the borders of their countries they dispatched messengers of friendship and peace to the Assyrian king and swore an oath by the names of the Empire’s great gods: “The Elamites (and) ‘Gutians,’ obstinate rulers, who used to answer the kings, my ancestors, with hostility, heard of what the might of the god Aššur, my lord, had done among all of (my) enemies, and fear and terror poured over them. So that there would be no trespassing on the borders of their countries they sent their messengers (with messages) of friendship and peace (ṭūbi u sulummê) to Nineveh, before me, and they swore an oath by the great gods.”118 From the aforementioned letter by the crown prince to the Chaldean official, it is clear that the Assyrian-Elamite political agreement took the form of an adê based on a bilateral relationship between the two states, possibly implying reciprocal nonaggression and the inviolability of borders.119 So, what is presented by Esarhaddon in his royal inscription as a treaty of ṭūbu u sulummû, was in technical terms an adê.120 The treaty in question – of which no documentary evidence has been preserved – was concluded by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, and Urtaku, king of Elam, in about 674 BCE.121 In order to keep to the terms of the adê, an exchange of royal children between the courts of the two countries took place.122 116

SAA 18, 7: 3–7. SAA 18, 7 r.7’–13’. 118 RINAP 4, 1 v 26–33. 119 Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xvii. 120 Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xvii. 121 Reynolds, 2003: xxi. 122 See the letter SAA 16, 1, sent from Esarhaddon to Urtaku. In this royal message, the Elamite king’s sons and daughters who were living at the Assyrian court are mentioned. 117

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This bilateral treaty enabled the two powerful states to maintain peaceful relations until 664 BCE, when the pact was unilaterally broken by the Elamites. Further evidence about the delivery of copies of treaties and the request of joining the Assyrian king’s adê can be gained from the following letter, sent by Assurbanipal to Nabû-ušabši, the governor of Uruk: “Now then I am sending to you my eunuch Nabû-erība, my ‘third man’ Nergal-šarru-uṣur and Akkullānu of the clergy of (the Temple of) Aššur with my treaty tablet (ṭuppi adêja). Join the treaty (adê ašba).”123 In this letter, possibly dated to 650 BCE, Assurbanipal urges the governor of Uruk to join the treaty. To this aim, three high-ranking Assyrian officials are sent by the king to Uruk with a new treaty tablet.124 The presence of an ērib bēti of the Aššur Temple was probably due to the sacral nature of the oath swearing ceremony and to the fact that the tablet bore the impressions of Aššur’s seals. The Neo-Assyrian royal correspondence also documents the exchange of treaty tablets between the kingdom of Dilmun and Assyria. In a letter dating to 647 BCE, Assurbanipal replies to Ḫundāru, the king of Dilmun, that he has seen the treaty tablet (ṭuppi adê) that the Dilmunite king sent to him.125 The Assyrian king confirms in his message that he was ready to conclude a treaty with him on the condition that the Dilmunite king would be unconditionally submitted to him.126 In general, it is from everyday communications in the forms of letters that we get an idea of the exchange of diplomatic messages, emissaries’ missions and the time-consuming and often difficult negotiation practices that were promoted by the Assyrian state chancery and foreign polities. This picture gives us a vivid representation of the attempts at peace-making that stands in stark contrast to the bellicose rhetoric and the religiously-connoted language of the royal inscriptions of the time, which stress the sacredness of the oath binding the vassals to the Assyrian king and the violation of the treaty as an offence against the great gods. Neo-Assyrian letters are replete with references to emissaries (ṣīrāni) from various countries bringing tribute and audience gifts to the Assyrian king. Such texts shed light on the activity of the diplomats. Royal permissions were necessary to allow representatives of foreign polities to cross the Assyrian territory. In a letter written by Ululāyu, the sender informs the king that the ambassadors from Kummuḫ, Karkemiš, Marqāsa, Sam’al, Ashdod and Moab have passed through TilBarsip and Gūzāna without permission, and that they have reached the city of Kubanaše.127 Any document accompanying the foreign emissaries had to be careSee the discussion in Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xvii. 123 SAA 21, 28 r.12–19. 124 Parpola, 2018: xxiii. 125 SAA 21, 75 r.4–5. 126 SAA 21, 75 r.16–29. 127 SAA 19, 8: 9–r.6.

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fully checked by the Assyrian officials and sent to the king.128 Foreign emissaries usually travelled with a retinue of assistants and servants bringing tribute.129 According to a letter concerning the emissaries from Que coming to Kalḫu, the diplomatic group comprised an interpreter and travelled with a carriage with three men and three mules. The group crossed the river and spent the night in KārShalmaneser.130 The activities of these emissaries were carefully monitored by the king’s officials and reported to the head of state, as shown in a letter from Marduk-rēmanni reporting the departure of an ambassador from Que and his onward travel to Zabban.131 Another message seems to indicate that on their return journey they were escorted by Assyrian military officials.132 The tribute brought by these foreign officials was also carefully checked by the Assyrian bureaucrats and reported to the king.133 An official reports in his letter that silver brought by two emissaries from Ekron was weighed, and amounted to seven talents and 34 minas.134 In another letter from the correspondence of Sargon, Crown Prince Sennacherib reports to his father that the tribute and mules brought by a group of Kummuḫean emissaries were entrusted in the Bēt Kummuḫāia, the “embassy” of Kummuḫ.135 From the prince’s words, the emissaries were also stationed in their “embassy,” where they could spent the night and eat.136 It is reasonable to assume that similar buildings were put at the disposal of visiting delegations from other countries in the capital and in other cities by the Assyrian state. Visiting delegates were welcomed with honours prescribed by the Assyrian royal protocol. Once the delegates had been admitted into the Assyrian king’s presence they were dressed in purple garments and their arms were adorned with silver bracelets. A messenger (mār šipri) of the Mannean king was welcomed in this manner according to a

128

SAA 19, 8 r.7–12. SAA 7, 58 e. i 9’ (servants and associates from Bīt-Ammon); ibid., e. ii 13’ (servant of the emissary of Tabal); ibid., e. iii 3’, 10’ (other servants); ibid., r. ii 2’–3’ (people who brought tribute); ibid., ii 24’ (associates of an emissary); ibid., ii 25’–29’ (chief of the pack-animals of the Arabs and his associates); ibid., ii 31–36’ (a sheikh and his Arab associate); ibid., iii 16–19 (emissaries and city rulers who brought tribute). For attestations of emissaries bringing tribute in letters see, e.g., SAA 19, 24 r.5’–6’. 130 SAA 19, 54: 3–r.8. 131 SAA 19, 159 r.14–17. 132 SAA 1, 110 r.14–17. 133 On the tribute brought by emissaries see, e.g., SAA 1, 33: 8–19 (tribute, mules and red wool from Kummuḫ); SAA 5, 52 r.12–14 (eight men, one mule and three donkeys with Šubrian emissaries); SAA 19, 24 r.5’–6’ (tribute from the West); 157: 20 (oxen and sheep from a Mannean emissary); 159 r.5–9 (tribute and horses from Egypt, Gaza, Judah, Moab and Ammon); 178: 5–7 (silver from Ekron); 193: 5–9 (horses and mules). 134 SAA 19, 178: 3–9. 135 SAA 1, 33: 11–12. 136 SAA 1, 33: 13–14. 129

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letter from the correspondence of Sargon.137 In another letter, messengers are said to have been dressed in purple garments and to have received silver bracelets.138 Also the son of Asrukāni, a nobleman from an eastern country, was said in a missive from Kār-Šarrukīn to have been clothed and adorned by the king with silver wrist-bracelets on the occasion of a diplomatic visit to Assyria.139 The custom is clearly connected to loyalty to the king, according to another letter of the reign of Sargon, possibly written by a certain Ḫunnî.140 In the Sargonid age, this custom was also applied in the case of foreign noblemen who submitted to the Assyrian king. Abī-Ba’al and Adūnī-Ba’al, the brothers of Azi-Ba’al, the newly appointed king of Arwad, were honoured by Assurbanipal through being clothed in (purple) garments with polychromatic trim and donation of gold wrist-bracelets. These noblemen were then taken into royal service.141 This ceremonial act marked the acquisition of a new professional status, as evident also from a letter of the correspondence of Assurbanipal concerning the appointment of an individual to commandantship (šikin ṭēmūti).142 In a missive sent by King Assurbanipal to the Gambulians, one of the Aramaean tribal polities that controlled the area between Babylonia and Elam, the monarch ensures the addressee that he would have dressed (in purple) a certain Rimutu and appointed him over the Gambulian tribe.143 Dur137

SAA 1, 29 r.21. SAA 15, 90: 25–26. 139 SAA 15, 91 r.1–2. 140 SAA 1, 134: 11–15: “Each and everyone who lays down his life under [your feet] and keeps your treaty, will be pardoned in your presence by your gods, and you will dress him (in purple clothes) and bl[ess him] as today; but whoever does not keep your [treaty] will fall into Aššur’s noose and trap and […] the ja[mb]s of your gates.” According to Nabûšumu-līšir’s letter, the men serving the king’s relatives were also dressed in purple and wore silver bracelets. See SAA 17, 122: 17–e.19. 141 RINAP 5/1, 3 ii 84–86; 4 ii 58’–60’; 7 iii 15’’–16’’; 8 iii 42’–45’; 9 ii 7–9; 11 ii 90–94 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). For the dressing of Necho I and his enthronement by the Assyrian king see RINAP 5/1, 7 ii 56’–60’; 11 ii 10–13; 74: 59’–62’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). The citizens of Babylon were also honoured by Assurbanipal in that way on the occasion of a sumptuous banquet offered by the king. See RINAP 5/1, 11 iii 92–93 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). This is reminiscent of the banquet and the honours made by Shalmaneser III to the people of Babylon and Borsippa. See RIMA 3, A.0.102.5 vi 4–5; 16: 62’. The only exception to this royal custom is that of Sennacherib, who states in his inscriptions to have clothed workmen who dug out a canal with linen and wool multicolour garments and adorned with gold rings and pectorals. See RINAP 3/2 154 r.5’–6’; 223: 33–34. The custom of dressing and adorning people also occurs in later Assyrian documents. From Aššur-etel-ilāni’s edicts for tax exemptions it is clear that this honour was reserved for high-ranking state officials and troops. See SAA 12, 35: 26–r.1 and the duplicate 36: 17–18 for this honour granted to the king’s chief eunuch and the battle troops of his own estate. 142 SAA 21, 40 r.7–9. 143 SAA 21, 51 r.9–13e: “I will dress him up, honour him, encourage him and appoint him 138

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ing diplomatic visits, precious items were usually given to foreign delegations, as can be seen from an inventory document issued by the central administration in Nineveh, which lists the recipients of silver and gold rings as various foreign emissaries and their assistants.144 From a glimpse of these everyday epistolary documents, we can conclude that these delegates played a significant role in mediating between the interests of the Assyrian imperial court and foreign polities. Of course, the activity of these state envoys was accompanied by the flow of diplomatic communication between Assyria and the foreign states, for which the role of messengers was also of crucial importance and relied on the postal communication system that became entrenched during Sargon’s reign.145 Diplomatic communication was vital in establishing and maintaining interstate relations between the Empire and the many subordinate rulers, as well as for monitoring the external political situation beyond the Assyrian Empire’s borders. Offerings of and requests for peace from foreign polities can also be seen in some Sargonid royal inscriptions as the response to an international political situation in which Assyrian power became overwhelming. In the numerous copies of his Nineveh A inscription on hexagonal clay prisms, Esarhaddon describes the request of peace by Elamite and “Gutian” rulers as a fearful reaction to the terror for what the might of the god Aššur had unleashed upon other enemies of the Empire. Thus, the Elamites and “Gutians” sent messengers offering friendship and peace (ṭūbi u sulummê) to the Assyrian king in Nineveh and swore an oath in the name of the great gods.146 His heir and successor Assurbanipal states in his royal inscriptions to have received Tugdammî’s envoys, who brought him messages of goodwill and peace (ṭūbi u sulummê) and wealthy tribute.147 He spoke in the following terms about Natnu, the king of the land of the Nabayateans, who had never established diplomatic relations with Assurbanipal’s ancestors: “The one who had never sent his messenger to t[he king]s, my ancestors, (and) had never inquired about the well-being of their royal majesties, now sent his messenger to me [with] greetings (and) kissed my feet. He was constantly beseeching my lordly majesty to conclude a treaty (and) peace agreement (ana šakān adê sulummê), (and) to do obeisance to me.”148

over you.” 144 SAA 7, 58. 145 See May, 2005: 94–95 for the hypothesis that the postal communication system was one of the administrative innovations introduced by Sargon II. 146 RINAP 4, 1 v 31–33. 147 RINAP 5/1, 23: 152–153 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). 148 RINAP 5/1, 3 viii 46–52; 4 viii 49–54; 6 x 12’’–14’’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ rinap/rinap5/).

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We have observed above that alliances between the enemies of Assyria are referred to using the negative designation kitru. However, it is worth noting that in Assurbanipal’s royal inscriptions peace-making activities conducted by those enemies who wanted to establish an anti-Assyrian alliance could also be described using the same phraseology as the Assyrian alliances. This can be seen in the case of the attempt of Necho I, Šarru-lū-dāri and Pa-qruru to make peace with Taḫarqa, the pharaoh of the 25th Dynasty and king of Kush, after the transgression of the adê previously stipulated with Assyria: “To establish treaties and [pe]ace (ana šakān adê u [sa]līme), they dispatched their [mounted messenger(s)] to Taḫarqa, the kin[g of] Kush, saying: ‘Let peace be established [between u]s (sulummû [ina biri]ni liššakinma) so that we can c[ome to a mu]tual [agreement] (nindaggara aḫāmeš)’.”149 Necho ascended to the throne of Sais in 672 BCE, but the Assyrian invasion in 671 BCE changed the political situation in the Delta, forcing Necho to become a vassal of King Esarhaddon. Although Esarhaddon’s successor restored Necho to power, political relations between the principate of Sais and Taḫarqa during the weak Assyrian dominion of Egypt in the reign of Assurbanipal laid the foundations for an anti-Assyrian alliance. Šarru-lū-dāri, ruler of Ṣi’nu, and Pa-qruru, ruler of Pišaptu (Per-Sopd), were among the Egyptian vassals appointed by Esarhaddon who were reinstalled in their posts by Assurbanipal. Esarhaddon’s son and successor states to have reappointed kings, governors and officials in their former positions.150 After reorganizing Egypt and Kush and strengthening its guard, Assurbanipal also declares that he concluded new agreements with the Egyptian rulers.151 We can infer that the collaboration between Necho and Šarrulū-dāri was already at work in the reign of Esarhaddon from a query to the Sungod concerning the chief eunuch’s expedition to Egypt, in which the two Egyptian city-rulers are mentioned.152 Interestingly, in the case of Natnu, the royal scribes use the formula ana šakān adê sulummê, while for the peace-making activity conducted by Necho and his allies they use the formula ana šakān adê u salīme. However, these Egyptian rulers’ attempts to construct an alliance with the Kushite king were destined to fail. Their peace mission resulted from words of treachery

149

RINAP 5/1, 2 iv 15’–18’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). On the formula ana šakān adê u salīme, see also ibid., iv 29’; 6 ii 11’; 7 ii 27’’; 8 ii 22’. For the formula sulummû ina biri šakānu, see ibid., 6 ii 13’’; 7 ii 29’’; 8 ii 24’; 74: 43’. 150 RINAP 5/1, 11 i 90–113 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). 151 RINAP 5/1, 11 i 115–116 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). In this passage, the word riksāti, “agreements,” is presumably used to indicate the adês stipulated with the rulers who were reappointed by the Assyrian king. 152 SAA 4, 88: 6, 9.

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(dababti surrāte) and was in the end a profitless decision (milik lā kušīri).153 Assurbanipal states to have had mercy on Necho, and to have imposed upon him a submission treaty “more stringent than the previous one (adê muḫḫi ša maḫri uttirma).”154 It seems that the new peace agreement with Assyria was kept and respected by Necho, who in 664 BCE died near Memphis in defence of his kingdom from a new Kushite invasion leaded by Tanut-Amani, Taḫarqa’s nephew and successor.155 It is clear that the favourable policy of Assyria towards Necho was aimed at supporting the local anti-Kushite party in Sais and preventing political unification of Egypt by the Kushite dynasty.156 From the economic point of view, the control of Egypt that derived from neutralization of the Kushite forces must have had positive results in terms of development of trade connections between Saites and Assyrians and protection of reciprocal commercial interests in the Levantine area.157 In some cases, it was the foreign king who came in person to the Assyrian king to swear the oath of vassalage. This was the case of Abī-Yate’, son of Te’ri, who came to the capital and kissed the Assyrian king’s feet: 153

RINAP 5/1, 2 iv 9’–10’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). RINAP 5/1, 7 ii 55’’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). 155 PNA vol. 2/II, 963a s.v. Nikkû, and vol. 3/II, 1310b s.v. Tanut-Amani. See also Grimal, 1992: 449 and Picchi, 1997: 52. 156 On the Assyrian policy towards Necho as a strategy to gain Egyptian support against Taḫarqa and prevent Egyptian rulers of the Delta from establishing new alliances with the Kushites see Picchi, 1997: 52–53, 66–67. The anti-Kushite policy of Necho was inherited by his son Psamtik I (664–610 BCE) who was put in charge of Athribis by the Assyrians. During his reign, Psamtik was able to neutralize the Kushite control of Thebes and to restore the unity of Egypt under the Saite authority. See Perdu, 2010: 141–142. 157 The project of political unification of Egypt by the Kushite kings also included consolidation of Egyptian influence in the Levant. This was also aimed at protecting their trade interests in the area. See Perdu, 2010: 141. Typical goods exported from Egypt to the Near East were cereals, papyrus and linen. See Grimal, 1992: 453. Linen, presumably of Egyptian origin, frequently occurs among the commodities imported in Assyria from western countries as tribute or booty since the 9th century BCE. Valuable Egyptian textiles were among the goods acquired by the Assyrians during the conquest of Egypt. In a fragmentary inscription dealing with the plunder of Taḫarqa’s palace in Memphis, Esarhaddon states to have taken from his royal residence innumerable choice linen robes and festive garments. See RINAP 4, 1019 r.34. In a text possibly related to Esarhaddon’s Egyptian campaign we read also of 1,586 bolts of woven linen. See RINAP 4, 9 ii’ 14’. According to Assurbanipal’s description of the campaign against Tanut-Amani, the booty acquired in the Assyrian sack of Thebes included linen garments, presumably of high quality. See RINAP 5/1, 3 ii 28; 4 ii 4’; 6 ii 45’. In all likelihood, the export of Egyptian linen continued during the Assyrian dominion and the peace with the Saites. Since Egypt was also renowned for its alum and natron deposits, it is possible that in addition to linen manufactured products also alum and natron were exported from Egypt to Assyria for the needs of the Empire’s textile production. 154

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“Abī-Yate’, son of Te’ri, came to Nineveh and kissed my feet. I concluded a treaty with him (adê … ittišu aškun) to do obeisance to me. I installed him as king in place of Yauta’.”158 Visiting delegates were entrusted by their king to stipulate the treaty as representatives of their state. This can be seen, for example, in the aforesaid Ṭāb-ṣilEšarra’s letter regarding the vassal treaty stipulated with Gurdî, an Anatolian king, during the time of Sargon’s reign, as well as from a divination text concerning the overture of the city lord of Karkaššî in the form of a peace treaty with Esarhaddon’s emissary (see below).159 A letter from the reign of Esarhaddon explicitly mentions some emissaries from Māzamua who came to Assyria to conclude a treaty (adê) with the king.160 We can assume that the hard work of negotiating with the authorities of the foreign polity, which was entrusted to delegates of both the Empire and the foreign state, required a deep knowledge on the Assyrians’ part of the political and economic situation of the foreign region and of the local ruling elite’s interests. In all likelihood, this was a prerequisite for concluding a binding agreement with mutual benefits for both contracting parties, as was the case with the above-mentioned treaty stipulated with the city-state of Tyre, in which the Phoenician king was acknowledged as having a certain contracting capacity in the field of navigation and international trade.161 We can conclude that the granting of a certain degree of economic freedom was part of the “liberal” policy of the Empire from a letter sent by Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur, the governor of Ṣimirra (Classical Simyra) to King Tiglath-pileser III, in which the Assyrian official describes the freedom granted by the Assyrians to the Tyrians: “All the ports of trade have been released to him (the Phoenician king); his servants go in and out of the trading posts and sell and buy as they wish. Mount Lebanon is at his disposal, and they go up and down as they wish and bring down the wood.”162 In all likelihood, these concessions resulted from previous negotiations that had been conducted between representatives of the Assyrian state and the Tyrian authorities after a scrupulous analysis of the local economic system and its major strengths by the Assyrian officials and trade agents. It was thanks to the diplomacy of the royal delegates that the adê-agreement system became a flexible institutional instrument by means of which a vast network of subordinate client states at the periphery of the Empire was established. Such a practice could be applied flexibly to the regulation of a variety of matters, from alliance and extradition of 158

RINAP 5/1, 3 viii 24–28; 4 viii 29–32; 6 x 6’–9’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ rinap/rinap5/). 159 SAA 4, 56: 5–10. See also ibid., r.8–14. 160 SAA 16, 150: 2’–8’. 161 Liverani, 1990: 133–134. 162 SAA 19, 22: 5–9.

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fugitives to military intelligence and commerce, implying specific duties for the vassal states under the guarantee of imperial protection.163 In the Assyrian political discourse, stipulating treaties with Assyria was an integral part of what distinguished the civilized from the uncivilized. Consequently, only barbarians who lived in the uncivilized and chaotic periphery of the Empire did not know or respect the institution of adê, as can be seen in the case of the Cimmerians, a northeastern nomadic people described in the following terms by the astrologer Bēl-ušēzib: “They are barbarians who recognize no oath sworn by a god and no treaty.”164 The act of stipulating a treaty usually followed a period of exchange of envoys and diplomatic messages. The above-mentioned letter regarding the AssyrianElamite bilateral treaty indicates that the stipulation of the adê was preceded by intensive negotiations165 in which a crucial role was played by delegates from both states. The difficulties inherent in negotiation and peace-making can be inferred not only from references in letters, but also from texts of divination. From the late Neo-Assyrian corpus of queries to Šamaš, the god of justice, a number of texts concern treaties and peace-making. Extispicy was required to verify oracle queries positively or negatively. One particular query to the Sun-god concerned a messenger whom Mugallu the Melidean sent to Esarhaddon to conclude a treaty (ana ṣabat adê).166 Another deals with King Esarhaddon’s doubts about whether or not to give a princess of the Assyrian royal family in marriage to Bartatua (or Partatua), the king of the Scythians. The Scythians – whose country was called Aškuza or Iškuza in Neo-Assyrian – are first attested in the reign of Esarhaddon, and at the time in question were moving westwards from the Iranian plateau.167 The king asks the Sun-god if it was favourable or not to the gods to grant the foreign king’s request, delivered to him by Bartatua’s envoys. This choice could have important consequences in terms of peaceful interstate relations with Scythia and maintaining the security of the Empire’s borders.168 What could confirm the trustworthiness of the Scythian leader was that he had to guard and keep the treaty

163

Lauinger, 2013: 103. SAA 10, 111: 15–16 NUMUN–LÚ.ḫal-ga-ti-i šu-nu / ˹ma˺-me-ti ša DINGIR ù a-de-e ul idu-ú. 165 SAA 18, 7: 3–7. See Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xvii. An exchange of messages with the aim of reaching an agreement with Assyria is also documented in a letter sent by Assurbanipal to the governor of Uruk. According to the Assyrian king’s words, the governor of Uruk sent a message to his countrymen, and made them conclude a treaty with the Assyrian king. See SAA 21, 28: 19–21. 166 SAA 4, 122: 3. 167 Lanfranchi, 2009–2011: 581b. 168 Fales, 2008b: 24–25. 164

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with the Assyrian king (adê … inaṣṣaru ušallamu).169 This is also explicitly stated in the query text: “If Esarhaddon, king of [Assyria], gives him a royal daughter in marriage, will Bartatua, king of the Scythians, speak with [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria], in good faith, true and honest words of peace (dibbī kînūtu šalmūtu ša šulummê ina kīttišu idabbubu)?” Will he keep the treaty of [Esarhaddon, king of Assyria]? Will he do [whatever i]s pleasing to Esarhaddon, king of Assyria?”170 The fact that interaction with Scythia by means of a diplomatic option consisting of state marriage and the stipulation of a treaty was considered as a valid and feasible solution by the Assyrian king provides further evidence that the Empire’s international policy explored all possible options, including diplomacy, to neutralize potential external threats before using military conflict.171 To judge from the positive omens listed in the above-mentioned query text, the marriage probably went ahead.172 Although no Assyrian-Scythian treaty is documented, good political relations with Scythians continued into the late period, since the Scythians played a role as allies of the Assyrians in the final years of the Empire.173 Bearing a message inspired by good faith and characterized by true and honest words of peace pleased the Assyrian king. Diplomatic messages brought by foreign delegates were expected to come in the spirit of ṭūbu u sulummû, “friendship and peace.” These virtues should also inform negotiations that were aimed at concluding peace agreements between Assyria and foreign states, especially when peace represented the only feasible option in interactions with powerful and dangerous states.174 But according to Assyrian diplomacy, goodwill should also inform the attitudes and negotiations of the Assyrian king’s representatives when they were entrusted to interact with polities that had not yet been added to the Assyrian Empire’s territory. Speaking and sending words marked by goodwill or kindness (dibbī ṭiābu; dibbī ṭābūti dabābu/šapāru) was an integral part of the diplomatic “toolbox” and the terminology of Assyrian envoys, as can be seen in various letters received by the Assyrian king by his officials and in royal orders.175 169

SAA 4, 20 r.4–8. SAA 4, 20: 4–10. See also ibid., r.4–10. 171 Lauinger, 2013: 101. 172 SAA 4, 20 r.14–20. See also Lanfranchi, 2009–2011: 581b. 173 The military alliance with Assyria against the Medes in 612 BCE, suggested by the episode we read in Herodotus’ Histories (I, 103), seems to imply that an adê stipulated between the Empire and the Scythians (possibly during the reign of Esarhaddon) was still valid at the time of the Median attack against Nineveh. On this aspect see Fales, 2001: 113–114. 174 Cf. Fales, 2010: 226. 175 SAA 1, 1: 14 (šapāru), r.63; 2: 4’–5’; SAA 5, 106 r.23’–24’; 210: 12–13; SAA 15, 90 r.21–22; 91: 2’, 15’; 95: 9’–12’; 104: 15’; 159: 7’–8’; 210: 6’; SAA 17, 111: 17, r.1–2, 8– 170

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The use of dibbī ṭābūti in political relations is documented particularly in the epistolography of the 8th century BCE (the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II).176 Friendly communication played a significant role in negotiations, especially when the stipulation of treaties brought advantages to both Assyria and the contracting partner.177 Diplomatic attitudes and activities characterized by dibbī ṭābūti thus appear to have played a crucial role in both the initial phase of negotiations with an outer polity and in the consolidation of existing and ongoing political relations.178 From a letter sent by Assurbanipal to a group of representatives of Babylonian citizens during the civil war against Šamaš-šumu-ukīn, we learn that in Assyrian diplomacy the alternative to friendly speaking was represented by speaking harsh words (dibbī šepṣūti).179 The latter option meant that armed conflict was the only solution. In the present case, Assurbanipal addressed to the besieged Babylonians before the end of siege of the city. Through this diplomatic correspondence he tried to settle the revolt peacefully and save Babylon from the final assault of the Assyrian troops. From another letter, sent to the elders of Elam, it is clear that only after the extradition of Nabû-bēl-šumāti, the ally of Šamaššumu-ukīn, and his accomplices he would have sent back the exiled Elamite gods and made peace with the Elamites.180 From the terminological point of view, it is worth observing that messages of peace brought by messengers and envoys are generally referred to by the terminological couple ṭūbu u sulummû, although in Assurbanipal’s royal inscriptions we also find šulmu,181 the common Akkadian word for “peace” and “goodwill.”182

9; SAA 19, 87 r.5. Note also the frustration of some Assyrian envoys in Babylonia expressed in a letter sent to the king after the refusal of the Babylonians to speak and negotiate: SAA 19, 98: 18–21: “We spoke many words with them, but some ten powerful men refused to come out and speak with us.” See also the discussion in Fales, 2008b: 34 fn. 31. 176 For a review of all the attestations of the dibbī ṭābūti clause in the Neo-Assyrian letters see Fales, 2009. 177 Cf. Fales, 2010: 220–221. 178 Fales, 2009: 38. 179 SAA 21, 4 r.9–12 ki-i šá dib-bi DÙG.GA.MEŠ dib-bi / DÙG.GA.MEŠ du-ub-ba ki-i šá dibbi / šip-ṣu-te dib-bi šip-ṣu-ú-te / it-ti-šú-nu du-ub-b[a], “If words (are in order), then speak (to them) kind words; if harsh words (are in order), then spea[k] to them harsh words.” 180 SAA 21, 65 r.16’–17’ bi-is ana-ku DINGIR.MEŠ-ku-nu lu-še-bil-ak-ku-nu / u su-lum-muu la-áš-kun, “I will promptly send you your gods and make peace.” 181 See RINAP 5/1, 6 iv 84’’ and 7 iv 51’’ in which Assurbanipal claims to have sent his messengers (bringing a message) of peace/goodwill to Uallî, a Mannean ruler whose father, Aḫšēri, had been murdered by his own people during an insurrection. 182 CAD Š/III, 247b, 253b s.v. šulmu 1 and 3. It is the word šulmu which is used in the Chronicle of Nabonidus to indicate the Persian peace in Babylonia. See Glassner, 2005: 238–239, lines 18’–20’: “In the month of Araḫsamnu, the third day, Cyrus entered Babylon. (Drinking) straws(?) were filled up before him. Peace (šulum) reigned in the city; Cyrus decreed peace (šulum iqbi) for all Babylon.”

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The relevance of dibbī ṭābūti in the language and ethos of the Assyrian diplomats also explains the immoral profile attributed to enemies in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions: also Assyria’s enemies speak (dabābu) and write messages (šapāru), but their dibbī are generally characterised by violence, treachery, hostility, falsehood and insolence (not ṭūbu u sulummû), and manifest plotting plans (not the intention to peace-making).183 The sinful and dishonest attributes that feature in the enemies’ profile and behaviour in the narratives of royal inscriptions result not only from the much-discussed binary anthropological scheme that juxtaposes the positive figure of the Assyrian king against the negative figure of his antagonist but can also be interpreted in the light of the values that informed the policy of friendly communication of the Assyrian imperial diplomacy in interstate relations. Interestingly, the theme of insolent diplomatic speech features in one of the bas-reliefs from Assurbanipal’s royal palace in Nineveh which illustrate the victorious military campaign against Elam in 653 BCE. A pair of Elamite ambassadors wearing distinctive national headgear and tunics are depicted in the act of being introduced to two Urarṭian diplomats wearing the tasseled caps and fringed robes that were typical of their homeland (Fig. 1).184 The Elamite envoys had been sent by Teumman (Tepti-Ḫumban-Inšušinak), the Elamite king (664–653 BCE), to Assyria with an insulting message (šipir mēreḫti) before the outbreak of war against Assurbanipal.185 Now, they are depicted as being obliged by Assyrian soldiers to show the insolent diplomatic letter to their Urarṭian colleagues. The political message of the scene is clear: the Assyrians wanted to discourage the king of Urarṭu from making the same mistakes as the Elamites and invite him to opt for a more diplomatic behaviour,186 an option more in line with the ṭūbu u sulummû based standards of Assyrian diplomacy.

183

On the treacherous words of Assyria’s enemies in the language of the royal inscriptions see Fales, 1982: 429. The enemy’s words are generally described using terms such as dāṣtu, ṣaliptu, surrāti, zērāti and mēreḫtu. The act of plotting is expressed with the verb kapādu. 184 Reade, 1983: 84 fig. 99. 185 RINAP 5/1, 3 vi 48–56 (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/): “(As for) Umbadarâ (and) Nabû-damiq, the envoys of Teumman, [the k]ing of the land Elam, by whose hands Teumman sent insolent message(s) (šipir mēreḫti), whom I had detained before me by making (them) wait for the issuing of my decision, they saw the decapitated head of Teumman, their lord, in Nineveh and madness took hold of them. Umbadarâ pulled out his (own) beard (and) Nabû-damiq stabbed himself in the stomach with his iron belt-dagger.” 186 Reade, 1983: 82.

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Fig. 1: Elamite diplomats in a bas-relief from Southwest Palace, Nineveh, c. 660–650 BCE (British Museum, WA.124802, from Paterson 1915, pls. 65–66). From all these references in letters we can achieve a better understanding of the ethos of the Assyrian diplomats. A royal directive, cited verbatim in a letter concerning Median city lords, shows that, according to the Assyrian protocol, the king’s envoys in diplomatic missions should maintain friendly conduct with both allies and enemies. This was crucial in conducting and concluding successful negotiations: “Spea[k] kindly wit[h them]! Your friend and [enem]y should not be treated differently!”187 This proves that the dibbī ṭābūti clause was also applied to those enemy polities that had chosen to make peace with Assyria.188 In their epistolary communication with the king, the Assyrian delegates regularly report their conduct and activity. An above-mentioned letter sent to the king reporting the royal order to speak with goodwill with the Kulumaneans in order to go on in the negotiations confirms to the addressee that the Assyrian envoy is doing this constantly (kaiamānu).189 The worries of the Assyrian king that led him to consult diviners also concerned the ways through which enemies could reach their goals. A query dating to the reign of Esarhaddon deals with the possibility that the city of Kišassu (a Median city) could be taken by hostile forces (i.e., Kaštarītu, the city lord of Karkaššî, Cimmerians, Medes, Manneans or any other enemy) by means of armed 187

SAA 15, 91: 15’–17’. Fales, 2009: 33. 189 SAA 15, 95: 9’–12’. See also 96 r.2’–5’. 188

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conflict, by stipulation of a treaty (ina adê) through invocations to the gods or by friendliness (ina pê ṭābi) or peaceful negotiations (salīm ṭubbāti).190 The content of this text is interesting, as it enumerates the full range of possibilities that were at the disposal of Assyria’s enemies to achieve the political goal of controlling the above-mentioned city. The military option191 is listed here as being just one of the alternatives to be explored. The other solutions include the stipulation of a treaty by swearing in the name of the gods,192 friendly relations and peaceful negotiations. If the second alternative consists of an unconditioned acceptance of the Assyrian vassalage treaty (adê), the last two options clearly delimit the field of interstate relations to diplomacy. In this non-military option, speaking and negotiating become the means of achieving political goals. However, what makes these two alternatives realistic is that they had to be done in the context of mutual acceptance and full legitimation of the parties involved, and of diplomatic communication characterized by friendship (ṭābu, ṭubbātu) and aimed at establishing peace (salīmu). One query asks whether the Median city lord Mamitiaršu will come to an agreement (pīšu išakkanu) with Kaštarītu to establish an anti-Assyrian alliance.193 Another query concerns possible overtures by Kaštarītu with another city lord to wage war against the Assyrian army.194 We can see from other texts that a diplomatic approach was also planned by Esarhaddon to neutralize the threat represented by Kaštarītu. From one of the queries addressed to Šamaš we learn that the Median ruler made an attempt to come to terms with Assyria; the god of justice is asked whether this overture is sincere: “[Kaštarītu, the city lord of Kark]aššî, [who] has sent […]… [to Nabûšūma-iškun the …, saying:] ‘Tell [the scribe who] is with you to send [a message to the king of Assyria, stating that the king’s envoy should come and] conclude [a (peace) treaty w]ith me; [… and] go [on you]r [way’] – have [truthful, sincere words of reconciliation r]eally been sent to […]?”195 Esarhaddon’s doubts about the intention of the city lord of Karkaššî to make genuine peace with Assyria emerge from another query concerning whether or not to send a messenger to him, and the risk that the king’s mār šipri will be seized, 190

SAA 4, 43: 9. The query text explicitly enumerates various forms of military intervention, including the use of war vehicles, i.e., SAA 4, 43: 6–8: “Will they, be it by means of pressure, or by force, or by waging war, or [by means of a tun]nel or breach, or (scaling) ladders, or by means of ramps or [battering]-rams, or famine.” 192 The deities are not mentioned as an indistinct group, but specified by gender. See SAA 4, 43: 9 lu-ú i-na a-de-e MU–MU DINGIR u i[š-ta-ri], “or by a treaty invoking the names of a god and a god[dess].” Note that this formula is omitted in SAA 4, 44: 10, a query concerning the conquest of Karibtu, an Assyrian stronghold in Media. 193 SAA 4, 41 r.2’–3’. 194 SAA 4, 42: 2–5. 195 SAA 4, 56: 2–10. See also ibid., r.8–14. 191

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questioned and killed by the Median ruler.196 The worries of the Assyrian king that emerge from these query texts show that the Assyrian Realpolitik took all the options to achieve a given political goal into careful consideration. The significant investment in promoting and maintaining diplomatic communication between the two ruling elites – Assyria and the foreign polity – was crucial in order to confirm the degree of reliability or dishonesty of the foreign ruler and to strengthen or change the political strategy. Peace is also extensively mentioned in astrological reports; these documents are another proof of the time-consuming decision-making procedures involved in the everyday running of the Empire as far as keeping the peace was concerned. Reports sent to the king every month or for shorter periods speak of messages of peace (salīmu šapāru) from previously hostile lands;197 reconciliation and peace (tašmû u salīmu) in the heartland198 or in all lands;199 universal peace (salīm kiššati);200 peace in specific regions (e.g., the Westland);201 peace-making of enemy kings202 or peace to be obtained (rašû) by enemy kings.203 The worries affecting the king’s rule and the resulting care in decision-making were fully justified. Secluded in his palace, the Assyrian king had to carefully collect and select information about internal political issues as well as the international situation from both human and divine channels of communication, regularly consulting with courtiers, officials and scholars. From the careful inspection of everyday information in letters and divinatory reports he had to take the appropriate measures to rule the Empire in peace and in war, running internal affairs as well as interstate relations.204 This was a very difficult task, since variables such as the reliability of information, loyalty of courtiers and state officials, not to speak of divine support, could change the situation and heavily influence the king’s final decision and behaviour.205 In summary, the picture that emerges from letters and divinatory texts counterbalance the bellicose rhetoric and political discourse of royal inscriptions as well as the marked religious mindset inspiring the ideology of the vassalage treaties. This different picture demonstrates that the search for solutions to political problems that occurred regularly in Assyria’s international relations required of 196

SAA 4, 57: 2–7. SAA 8, 43 r.5. 198 SAA 8, 39: 2; 113: 9; 158: 7; 175 r.2; 197 r.2’; 304: 5–6; 330 r.3–4; 343: 8; 371: 9; 394 r.3; 411 r.5; 464: 2; 525 r.4; 540: 2–3; 547 r.2. For the variant rēmu u salīmu, “mercy and peace,” see reports 357: 4 and 538: 4. 199 SAA 8, 212 r.5’. See the variant tašmû u salīmu kališ šakānu in 349 r.1. 200 SAA 8, 40: 4’; 90: 4; 154: 4; 166: 3; 168: 9; 181: 4; 383: 5. See also 172: 3 (salīmu kiššati). 201 SAA 8, 5: 10–r.1; 546 r.3. 202 SAA 8, 4 s.2; 115: 12; 170: 2; 184: 6; 254 r.7; 257 r.5; 258: 5. 203 SAA 8, 184: 4. 204 Liverani, 2009: 81–82. 205 Liverani, 2009: 82–90. 197

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the Assyrian decision-makers a scrupulous evaluation of the situation and hard diplomatic work in order to succeed. With constant changes in the international situation, complicated by the growth of the internal problems of disloyalty within sectors of the state machinery, diplomatic activities must have been intensified to face the many problems arising from interaction of the Empire with different external polities. With the last reigns (of Esarhaddon and especially Assurbanipal), the systematic use of the adê-system to reach peace and stability with bordering external polities of different extension, political organization, military capacity and interests (i.e., large and well-structured state organizations like Egypt and Elam, but also political entities marked by an high degree of mobility like the Arab tribes) would have soon revealed the incapacity of the imperial structure to regulate and maintain loyal relations with external realities within a homogeneous and universally accepted institutional frame.206 3. The nature of the “Assyrian peace” according to the Assyrian imperial ideology 3.1. Peace as a royal virtue and a ruling policy In line with a Mesopotamian political tradition, also in Assyria the political discourse was characterized by the theme of war. Special emphasis was put on the warlike imagery of the ruler and the enemies’ defeat and subjugation, while peace featured in texts in terms of epilogue of war and as the direct consequence of the king’s victory.207 However, war was not the only fundamental concept that informed the royal ideological construct of expanding Assyria’s borders under the command of the national god Aššur – the divine hypostasis of the universal power of the imperial state. Although less represented than military conflict in the political discourse conveyed through the usual channels of the royal propaganda (i.e., royal annals, monumental buildings, monumental art and minor arts, cult ceremonies and court literature), peace was another important element that structured the message of dominion of the Assyrian kings. This message of peace was conveyed towards the inner audience (the Assyrian ruling elite) as well as the external audience (the elites of the client states outside the Empire’s borders). Referring to the model of the pax romana, Fales speaks of a pax Assyriaca to explain the Assyria’s need for security and order for its inner territory and stability for the imperial borders and neighbouring states.208 Although Assyrian scribes never ex206

On the problems Assyria had in maintaining subordination and loyalty within the new international political scenario of the late Neo-Assyrian period, see the discussion in Liverani, 1990: 146–147 and Fales, 2008a: 535, 543–544, 548. 207 On this war-related Mesopotamian political tradition see Asher-Greve, 2014: 28. 208 Fales, 2008b; Fales, 2010: 219. The pax romana created a significant level of unity in the Mediterranean area from the cultural, social, economic, infrastructural and urbanistic point of view, integrating different regions into a standardized and stable system. Moreover, the impact of Roman peace was remarkable also from a long-term historical perspec-

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plained in the texts what the “Assyrian peace” or “Empire’s peace” was, we can find many insights into this issue from official political texts (royal inscriptions, treaties) and everyday documents (letters and divinatory texts). Information from these different sources help us form an idea about what the Empire’s peace was in the eyes of the Assyrian ruling elite and the role it played in the political discourse and the practice of interstate relations maintained by the Empire. The Middle Assyrian text for the Coronation Ritual, which was still in use in the Neo-Assyrian enthronement ceremony, defines the fundamental duties of the Assyrian king. The mandate of the king was to expand the borders of the “Land of Aššur.”209 The text also invokes the supreme national god of the Assyrians to give the king “command and attention, obedience, truth and peace (qabâ šemâ magāra kitta u salīma).”210 Obedience and peace (ina tašmê u salīme) are peculiar to the Assyrian king’s righteous rule over the “Land of Aššur” and are used for example by the authors of Sennacherib’s royal inscriptions to describe the beginning of his kingship, when he took command of the population of Assyria before the outbreak of a revolt leaded by Marduk-apla-iddina II.211 Analogous concepts are expressed in the hymn for the coronation of Assurbanipal; in this text the qualities that make the vice-regent of the god Aššur the perfect and righteous king of the country include eloquence, understanding, truth and justice (qabû šemû ketti mēšaru).212 Surprisingly, salīmu is no longer associated with kittu in the sequence of Assurbanipal’s royal virtues and its place is taken by mēšaru, “justice.” However, peace is mentioned in another passage of the coronation hymn. With this righteous king on the throne and his protection guaranteed by the great gods, concord and peace (mitgurtu salīmu) would have been established throughout the Empire, as stated in this hymn.213 Accordingly, the capacity of establishing salīmu is considered as one of the virtues that make the candidate for the Assyrian throne the perfect king. In one of his letters sent to the Elamites, Assurbanipal defines tive. See Cline / Graham, 2011: 232–235. 209 SAA 20, 7 ii 34–35 i-na e-šar-te / GIŠ.PA-ka KUR-ka ra-pi[š], “Expan[d] your country with your righteous sceptre.” See also Oded, 1992: 163–164. 210 SAA 20, 7 ii 35–36. 211 RINAP 3/1, 1: 5–7: “At the beginning of my kingship, after [I] sat on the [(lordly)] throne and took command of the population of Assyria amid obedience and peace, Marduk-apla-iddina (II), king of Kardun[iaš (Babylonia), an ev]il [foe], a rebel (with) a treacherous mind, an evildoer whose villainous acts are true, sought [frie]ndship with ŠuturNaḫundu (Šutruk-Naḫḫunte II), an E[lamite], by presenting him with gold, silver, (and) precious stones; then, he continuously requested reinforcements.” 212 SAA 3, 11: 8. That these concepts were largely used in the Assyrian political communication of the time is also evident from personal names of individuals attested in NeoAssyrian texts. For example, among the names aimed at honouring the king we find the anthroponym Šarru-kettu-irām, “The king loves truth,” given to an eunuch from Nineveh (PNA vol. 3/II, 1247b). 213 SAA 3, 11: 14.

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himself as a salmānu, “a peacemaker.”214 The concept of salīmu as a divine gift and a royal virtue was therefore an integral part of the ideological construct of Assyrian imperialism. It is worth noting that an analogous idea appears to inform the pax salomonica in the Book of Kings, according to which ideal peace results from Salomon’s God-given wisdom.215 Viewing peace as an integral part of the Assyrian political discourse on power and hegemony and not simply as a mere product of war enables us to investigate more in depth the strict relationship between peace and imperialism.216 It is important to underline that Assyrian state theology – vehiculated through ritual texts, royal inscriptions, monumental art and the performance of royal rituals in the context of state cult ceremonies – played a significant role in the manifestation of the imperial power and its universal mission, and in consolidating the internal cohesion of the Assyrian ruling class. Ritual texts from the late Neo-Assyrian period show that peace was what seems to be a personified and divinized concept in the state religion of Assyria.217 This conceptualization of peace in religious terms is testimony to the politicization of the concept during the phase of maximum territorial expansion of Assyria. An analogous theological conceptualization of abstract notions is also at the basis of personified and deified entities such as Kittu, “Truth,” and Mēšaru, “Justice,” who are mentioned as divine judges among various gods in tākultu manuals, in a text that describes the cultic topography of the holy city of Assur (Libbi-āli) and in a record of cultic reforms and prescriptions.218 Peace occurs in these texts as one of the deified entities that shape the cosmic and cultic landscape of Assur and that are

214

SAA 21, 66: 3’ DI-ma-a-nu ana-ku. See also ibid., 6’ referring to Nabû-bēl-šumāti. 1Kings 5: 9. On the pax salomonica see Nissinen’s paper in this volume. 216 For a study on the relationship between peace and imperialism in the Roman context see Cornwell, 2017. 217 This would contradict Raaflaub’s statement (2007: 13) that no god of peace is attested in Mesopotamia. Personification and deification of peace is especially attested in the Classical world. On the personification of peace (Εἰρήνη) in ancient Greece see Raaflaub, 2007: 13–14 with references. For an analysis on peace in the visual language of power in Rome see Cornwell, 2017: 34–41 and especially 159–186. In Rome the cultic elevation of peace (Pax) came late, after the civil wars, and was prompted by specific political circumstances and ideological motives. See Raaflaub, 2007: 14–15. As observed by Cornwell (2017: 35, 159–160), pax probably did not receive a cult in Rome until the building and consecration of the Ara Pacis Augustae, the monumental altar dedicated to the pax augusta. 218 For Kittu see SAA 20, 38 i 21, 23, 61, ii 54, iii 2, r. iv 43; 40 i 20, ii 29, vi 43; 42 i 25; 47 r.6; 49: 28, 65, 71; 52 r. iv 45. The deity Mēšaru is mentioned in SAA 20, 38 i 24, 62, r. iv 43; 40 i 20, vi 44; 42 i 25; 47 r.6; 49: 24, 34; 52 r. iv 45. The political-theological vision of tākultu is already formed in the Middle Assyrian period. See Jakob, 2018: 107, text no. 53 for a Middle Assyrian forerunner of tākultu-text, which mentions Kittu and Mēšaru (line r.3). According to this text, these deified entities dwell in the city of Assur (line r.5). 215

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invoked to protect the Assyrian king, his power and the Empire. Šalimtu, “Peace,” is mentioned as one of the deities that form the sacred landscape of Assur according to the tākultus for Sennacherib, Assurbanipal and Aššur-etel-ilāni.219 This goddess, whose cult place was the Anu-Adad temple in Assur,220 is not a novelty of the first millennium BCE, since it was already venerated in the state religion of the Middle Assyrian period, as can be seen from the text used for the Middle Assyrian Coronation Ritual.221 The process of personification and divinization of peace is part of the cultural strategy adopted by Neo-Assyrian scholars and theologians to anchor the royal power and the imperialistic project on religious grounds. In the Sargonid period, this cultural strategy was made through the reuse and reinterpretation of older religious and mythical traditions in order to show that the Assyrian king was the sole guarantor of civic and cosmic order at universal level and that the expansionist project was fully supported by the gods. To this aim, state cult ceremonies such as the tākultu rituals became powerful media to shape and transmit the new imagery of power, define the nature of the royal authority and delineate the cosmic function of the political project of expanding Assyria’s borders. In the spatial dimension delineated by the names of gods, deified entities and geographical elements listed in these texts all the components of the imperial territory appear as bound into a relationship of mutual obligation between the head of the pantheon, the king and the Land of Assyria.222 Through the divinized representation of the Empire’s peace, the concept of šalimtu was integrated into the realm of divine powers that protected the king and the rule of Empire. In addition, the worship of the goddess of peace in the holy city of Assur, the religious centre of the Empire, was instrumental to spread the idea among the people of Assyria that peace was an attribute of imperialism and that it could only be achieved by submitting to the authority of the Assyrian king. 219

SAA 20, 38 ii 34; 40 ii 12; 42 i 41; 44: 7’. In the list of gods of SAA 20, 38 and 40, Šalimtu occurs after Anu and the great gods and before the deities called Šunipur, Narūdu, Kūbu, Ningirsu and Ebeḫ, the holy mountain of Aššur. In SAA 20, 42 this deity is mentioned between Narūdu and Šunipur, while in the duplicate SAA 20, 44 it occurs between Šunipur and Enlil. 220 This is explicitly stated in the tākultu for Assurbanipal, SAA 20, 40 ii 24–25. From the tākultu for Sennacherib it seems that these gods were only worshiped in the sanctuary of Anu. See SAA 20, 38 ii 38 (line broken). 221 According to SAA 20, 7 r. iii 23, Šalimtu is one of the divinities who receive a stone as offering. The goddess is mentioned in a group that includes Anu, the great gods, Šunipur, Kūbu and Ningirsu (ibid., r. iii 22–24). From this text, it appears that the cult of this goddess in the city of Assur was strictly linked to the Middle Assyrian royal ideology and the expansionist policies promoted by Middle Assyrian kings. 222 The spatial dimension is used in these cultic texts to create the image of the Empire’s power as a unified cosmic and relational space in which all the components of the divine world and the imperial territory are mutually bound. On this aspect see B. Pongratz-Leisten’s observations in Parpola, 2017: xxxi–xlvii.

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If we now move from the realm of royal virtues and deified beings to that of royal behaviour, we can see the different contexts in which the terminology of peace is used and from these attestations we gain a clearer picture of the role peace played in the imperial policy. Salīmu and sulummû characterize the positive attitudes of those rulers who submitted to the Assyrian king and the great gods of the land: salīmu is the result of friendly interstate relations and characterizes both the negotiation phase and the binding agreements concluded with Assyria. In the Assyrian ideological discourse that informs the king’s communication with the gods, the state of salīmu is not referred to as the result of a vassalage treaty unilaterally imposed by the Assyrian king to foreign rulers. It is the enemy that is described as seeking peace with the Assyrian king through prayers and supplications.223 Sulummû, generally accompanied by friendly attitudes and positive relations (ṭūbu, ṭūbtu), plays a role in connection with diplomatic messages brought to Assyria and with bilateral treaties concluded with polities characterized by an equal or similar military capacity or whose submission manu militari proved more difficult to achieve.224 It is worth noting that this concept and its associated terminology were also used in the Chronicle of Nabonidus to refer to the Persian peace in Babylonia.225 The term sulummû was also applied by the Assyrian scribes to the context of non-belligerency between the enemies of Assyria as a precondition to anti-Assyrian alliances, as seen above in the peace-making activity conducted by Necho and his allies against the Empire. The term sulummû is also used in the case of peace made by the Assyrian king in person, as seen in the above-mentioned correspondence with the elders of Elam (sulummû šakānu).226 The Assyrian peace was reached by war and by the imposition of loyalty oaths. In the case of the military option, once the phase of brutal conquest and destruction came to an end, the post-war situation of the conquered country was characterized by reconstruction. However, peace was never linked to or considered a result of forgiveness. And when forgiveness entered the Assyrians’ ideological message of dominion with the late kings, it was not always stated in explicit terms; in this period the Empire was at the peak of its territorial expansion and it seems that the administrative and military machinery could no longer afford the costs of

223

This is explicitly stated in the hymn to the Ištars of Nineveh and Arbela: SAA 3, 3 r.7– 10 IGI.SÁ-e [šad-lu-ti] la na-par-ka-a šat-ti-šam / ú-˹ra!˺-nim-ma KÁ.GAL daš-šur u dNIN.LÍL i-na-ṣa-ru UD-me-šam / i-na ut!-nin!-na ù tas-pi-te ú-ba-’u-u sa-li!-me / ina ṣu-ul-le-e u suup-pe-e ú-na-áš-šá-qu GÌR-u-a, “Unceasingly, yearly they (the enemy lands) bring me [sumptuous] presents and protect daily the gate of Aššur and Mullissu. They seek peace with me in prayer and supplication; with observance and prayers they kiss my feet.” 224 Cf. Fales, 2010: 224. 225 Glassner, 2005: 220–221, line 29: “The town [was taken. The king of Akkad (Babylonia) and] C[ya]xares met outside the city and concluded a mutual accord and a total peace (ṭābtu u sulummû).” 226 SAA 21, 65 r.17’.

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further expansion. In the framework of the maximum expansion of the Empire, the practice of sparing the lives of surrendered enemies was not based on humanity and compassion, but on economic reasons connected to the imperial project. People were displaced through deportation to far-off regions according to colonization programs and agricultural exploitation. This phase is peculiar to the period of establishing the provincial system until the reign of Sennacherib.227 In the late phase of the Empire, as we can see from the royal inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, compassion and forgiveness became an integral part of the terminology of dominion, but no connection is made between forgiveness and responsibility. The concepts of compassion and forgiveness became instrumental to the strategy of protecting the submitted dynasties in order to create trustworthy buffer states at the periphery of the Empire when no further expansion could be afforded or consolidated.228 In the case of peace resulting from negotiations, foreign polities began to enjoy the internal peace of the Empire after stipulated a solemn binding agreement with Assyria. This is the most tangible evidence of the passage from a state of war (or the threat of war) and political instability under the threat of the Assyrian invasion to one of peace and stability under the “yoke” of the Assyrian rule. Apart from the unavoidable limitations for the political independence of the submitted country, for the foreign ruling elite accepting the “Assyrian peace” could represent an opportunity for growth in terms of prestige, power, and wealth thanks to the establishment of direct political and economic relations with the Assyrian ruling class and court. In addition, the Empire offered military protection and support to the local ruling dynasty.229 It is reasonable to assume that the local pro-Assyrian party used these arguments to support the necessity of peace negotiation with Assyria and persuade even the most reluctant anti-Assyrian members of the local elite to set aside plans for direct military resistance to Assyria. For the Assyrians, the resulting peace (for the population of the heartland and the submitted foreign nations) was a positive result of the imperial policy. To the submitted peoples, becoming “like the Assyrians” or being “counted as people of the (Assyrian king’s) country” simply meant being subjected to the same rules and conditions that rested on the inhabitants of the central region of the state: namely, providing taxes, manpower for forced labour in the state-controlled economy (i.e., in agriculture, building projects in the capitals, manufacture of utilitarian and luxury products, etc.) and men for the royal army. In addition, submitted people from conquered countries could not escape the destiny of being deported to central or distant areas of the Empire to increase the state’s economic productivity and the wealth of the ruling elite. The situation of pacified countries is described in royal inscriptions and letters with terms based on the verb nâḫu/nuāḫu. 227

Liverani, 2017: 142–145. Liverani, 2017: 145–147. 229 Lanfranchi, 2011: 228–229. 228

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To the above-mentioned attestations of nuāḫu in letters, we can add the occurrences of the term nēḫtu in the royal inscription corpus. It is through this term that the notion of peace as tranquillity, absence of suffering and of armed conflict is expressed. Also this term is testimony to the Assyrian notion and vocabulary of peace and shows another perspective on the idea of peace in the Age of Empires. As shown by an inscription of Tiglath-pileser III on a clay tablet, the policy of post-war reconstruction promoted by the Assyrian king included settling conquered people in peaceful (nēḫtu) dwellings.230 The Assyrian king’s victory allowed submitted people, Babylonians and Assyrians to live in peace and security (nēḫtu), as shown in the inscriptions of Sargon, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal.231 This motif is also attested in Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, as can be seen from the Nēmetti-Enlil cylinder inscription from Babylon, in which King Nabopolassar states to have reinforced the defences of Esagila and Babylon and to have allowed citizens of Babylon to live there in safety.232 Instead of nēḫu, in a Neriglissar’s inscription from Babylon we find the term šulmu. The Babylonian king is described as the one who established justice in the land and led the widespread people in safety.233 Before the eighth century BCE, the motif of safety had already occurred in the Middle Assyrian and the early Neo-Assyrian periods, namely in the reign of Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076 BCE) and during the first phase of territorial expansion of the Assyrian state. Securing a pacified abode for the king’s subjects was one of the main objectives of Tiglath-pileser I’s post-war policy,234 while Adad-nērārī II (911–891 BCE) was said to have settled the enemy troops that had fled from his weapons in peaceful dwellings.235 Aššur-dān II (934–912 BCE), Adad-nērārī II’s father, and Assurnaṣirpal II use the same motif when they speak of those Assyrians who had lived through times of insecurity during the enemy attacks.236 Tukultī-Ninurta II (890–884 BCE), the predecessor of Assurnaṣirpal II, treated 230

RINAP 1, 46: 27. Fuchs 1994, Ann. 423; Prunk. Vb: 21’; RINAP 4, 48: 43; 1004 i’ 3’; RINAP 5/1, 2 ii 23’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). The same word is used in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions for the motif of restoration of divine statues to their dwellings. 232 Da Riva, 2013: 75–76, text Napl C 23 ii 10. 233 Da Riva, 2013: 117, 119, text Negl C 21/1 ii 1–4. 234 RIMA 2, A.0.87.1 vii 33–35: “I brought contentment to my people (and) provided them with a secure abode.” See also RIMA 2, A.0.87.2: 8’. 235 RIMA 2, A.0.99.1: 17–19: “The remainder of their troops [which] had fled from my weapons (but then) returned [I settled] in peaceful dwellings.” 236 RIMA 2, A.0.98.1: 60–63: “I brought back the exhausted [people] of Assyria [who] had abandoned [their cities (and) houses in the face of] want, hunger, (and) famine (and) [had gone up] to other lands. [I settled] them in cities (and) houses [which were suitable] (and) they dwelt in peace.” RIMA 2, A.0.101.19: 94–95 “I resettled in their abandoned cities (and) houses Assyrians who had held fortresses of Assyria in the land(s) Nairi (and) whom the Aramaeans had subdued. I placed them in a peaceful abode.” 231

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the submitted people of Bīt-Zamāni in the same way, resettling them in abandoned cities.237 Establishing peace, security and order was a precondition to bringing prosperity and abundance to the whole imperial territory. The fact that all the submitted lands dwelled in peace (šubtu nēḫtu), as claimed by Assurbanipal in one of his inscriptions from Nineveh,238 is from the viewpoint of Assyrian royal propaganda the direct consequence of the unequalled power achieved by the king through military force and divine support. The motif of peaceful (nēḫtu) dwelling seen in royal inscriptions indicates the accomplishment of the Assyrian king’s mission of pacification. This motif, referred to the heartland239 or to all lands,240 also occurs in reports sent by the astrologers to the king. This peace ensures the proper functioning of society. In addition, it also affects a global dimension in which the political order established by the earthly vicarius of Aššur coincides with a supreme divine order.241 From such a perspective, peace, order, justice, security and prosperity were tangible goods that could only be achieved through the construction of the imperial project, and was therefore a political and religious mission to which everyone – from the ruler to all the ruled – had to adhere actively.242 Leading the submitted countries into a pacified state was also relevant from the religious point of view. Like going to war, also going out of war and coming back to the Assyrian territory had to be ritually controlled. This was performed by means of rites aimed at de-activating the king’s destructive power and leading him to re-integration into Assyrian society. With these rites the control over the new borders of the Empire’s territory was affirmed. The ordering of the conquered territories manifests the end of war and the re-entering of the king into the civilizing function of kingship, while the Empire’s newly acquired territories are integrated into a cosmic dimension.243 Once the periphery of the Empire had been pacified, the Empire’s internal region as well as its borders with adjacent client states could enjoy a state of wellbeing, order and security. This state is expressed by the term šulmu,244 another keyword of the Assyrian political vocabulary. The innumerable attestations of this word in the letter corpus are used by the Assyrian officials to report to the king the good condition enjoyed by the provinces and the client states under the As237

RIMA 2, A.0.100.5: 23–24: “I was merciful towards Ammi-Ba’al, a man of Bīt-Zamāni. I established (them) in abandoned cities (and) settled them in peaceful dwellings.” 238 RINAP 5/1, 2 ii 23’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). 239 SAA 8, 84: 2; 108: 10; 239 r.3; 273 r.2; 389: 7; 456: 6–7; 505: 8; 550 r.1. See also 323: 2: “quiet [dwelling] and complete well-being will come down on the land”; 329 r.3’: “quiet dwelling, peace and good for the land.” 240 SAA 8, 254 r.6–7. 241 Oded, 1992: 103. 242 Oded, 1992: 103. 243 For the ritual control over the act of going out of war and the integration of conquered territories into Assyria see Capomacchia / Rivaroli, 2014: 179–181. 244 CAD Š/III, 249b–250a s.v. šulmu 1 d.

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syrian rule.245 The state of peace, safety and order enjoyed by the Assyrians as well as the population of the client states could be threatened by various factors. Perturbations of the state of šulmu could come from either internal or external threats.246 This is why every subject of the Assyrian king, both in the inner territory of the Empire and in the vassal states, was obliged to actively disclose any real or potential danger that threatened the king and the Empire’s šulmu. This also explains the importance of the royal envoys’ mandate of speaking friendly words with outer states to maintain good interstate relationship and reinforce stability at the Empire’s frontiers. 3.2. The nature of the imperial peace and its function for Assyria’s hegemonic strategies From a close scrutiny of the Neo-Assyrian evidence we can see that the Assyrian imperial peace imposed on submitted countries was a concept in which legal, religious and political dimensions were intertwined. Apart from being the material result of the overwhelming and unequalled military power of Assyria, peace was also a crucial element of the royal ideology and religious world view. From the Assyrian religious perspective, the imperial peace imposed upon submitted countries was also the result of the agreement that bound the foreign rulers to the divine patron of the Empire. The theological root of peace is made evident from the vassals’ swearing in the name of Aššur and the great gods of Assyria. The swearing also involved the major patron gods of the submitted country, who were invoked in the curse sections of the texts. The sworn agreement was legally binding, since it was stipulated with the Assyrian king, who acted as the representative of the supreme authority of the Empire, the god Aššur, the theological fundament of the cosmic, legal and political order that ruled Assyria and its subjects.247 From the evidence of Esarhaddon’s succession treaty it is clear that copies of the adê bore the impressions of the supreme Assyrian god’s seals.248 These sealings were aimed at stressing the divine nature of the supreme contracting party and reminded the submitted ruler that any violation of the pact was a sacrilege and a sin against the gods. In fact, in the Assyrian view, breaking up a treaty sworn in the name of the gods was above all else a religious matter that required divine punishment and was therefore considered the principal cause for war.249 In this connection, it is 245

On the technical term šulmu see also Fales, 2008b: 18–19, and Fales, 2010: 220. Cf. Fales, 2010: 220. 247 The supreme royal authority in Assyria was that of Aššur, the head of the pantheon. According to the Middle Assyrian Coronation Ritual the god was considered the very king of the land. After slapping the king’s cheek, the priest of the Aššur Temple solemnly proclaimed the kingship of the god (Aššur šar Aššur šar, “Aššur is king! Aššur is king!”). See SAA 20, 7 i 27’–29’. 248 Watanabe, 2015: 207–208; Radner, 2019: 314–315. 249 Oded, 1992: 90–93. The sacrilegious nature of treaty violation is explicitly expressed 246

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interesting to note that the oath sworn in the name of Aššur is referred to as the supreme supernatural force who defeated the transgressors of treaties. This can be seen in Assurbanipal’s royal inscriptions concerning the Egyptian rulers who attempted to establish an anti-Assyrian alliance with the Kushite king; the passage also shows that the enemies’ violation concerned the mamītu in the name of Aššur as well as the kindness (ṭābtu) of the Assyrian king,250 two elements that are intertwined in the Assyrian ideological view. The latter element – ṭābtu – refers to the concessions and privileges the king had granted the Egyptian rulers when they were restored to their positions, and reminds us of the policy of friendly speaking (dibbī ṭābūti) that informed Assyrian diplomacy in the interstate relations of the time. As we know, the practice of imposing the adê as a form of pacification also worked internally, as seen during phases of political weakening in the central state authority, when succession to the throne was guaranteed by dynastic oaths imposed upon all the components of the vast state apparatus. This became customary in the later periods of Assyrian history, revealing the elite’s attempts to share the responsibility of keeping the royal dynasty on the throne and protecting the state’s integrity among all the components of the imperial society, two conditions that determined the internal peace of the Empire. This co-responsibility of maintaining the state’s cohesion and integrity and the relevant sense of being part of a greater project was publicly manifested through the swearing of loyalty oaths in favour of the candidate to the throne.251 The duty to denounce any threat or danger that could affect the royal dynasty and the integrity of the Empire made every subject of the Assyrian king who swore publicly during the oath-taking ceremonies an active part in the mission to create an ordered, stable and peaceful society. Every subject of the Assyrian king – whether they were an inhabitant of the Empire’s capital or a vassal ruler in a far-flung territory – had to guard the king’s treaty,252 in the following letter, sent by Assurbanipal to the Babylonian citizens, SAA 21, 3 r.10– 11 ḫaṭ-ṭu-u / ina ŠÀ a-de-e ina IGI DINGIR, “violating the treaty is a matter (to be settled) before God.” See also Assurbanipal’s message to Nabû-ušabši, the governor of Uruk, in which the Assyrian king reminds the addressee of the destiny of those who violate the treaty, SAA 21, 28 r.7–10 šá a-de-ia iḫ-ṭu-ú IGI.2-ka / [t]i!-da-a ak-ka-a-a-i DINGIR ina ŠU.2 / [šá a]-de-e ú-še-nu-u ḫa-an-ṭiš ú-tir-ru-ma / [ú]-ba-’u-ú, “those who have sinned against my treaty – your eyes will notice how God will once again swiftly call to account those who tampered with the treaty.” 250 RINAP 5/1, 2 iv 35’–38’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/): “The oath (sworn) by the god Aššur, the king of the gods, defeated them and my kindness, which I had done for them as a favor, called to account those who had sinned against [the great treaties].” 251 Ponchia, 2014: 522–523. 252 The verb used is naṣāru. See, e.g., the following injunction in Esarhaddon’s succession treaty SAA 2, 6: 291–293: a-de-e an-nu-te / uṣ-ra ma-a ina ŠÀ-bi a-de-e-ku-nu la ta-ḫaṭi-a / ZI.MEŠ-ku-nu la tu-ḫal-la-qa, “Guard this treaty. Do not sin against your treaty and

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and in guarding that treaty the subject had to acknowledge imperial authority and actively participate in the maintenance of the state of šulmu in his own domain. Copies of treaties that were set up in capitals of provinces and vassal kingdoms in order to be honoured by each oath taker as his own god253 represented the physical manifestation of the ideal of šulmu. Indeed, establishing peaceful relations is illustrative of the pragmatism of the Assyrian imperialistic policy and counterbalances the militaristic tenor of official texts and visual art. Assyria’s imperialistic policy reveals that establishing peaceful relations at international levels could be more remunerative than direct military control. Military aggression and direct control of the local polity required a large investment in human and material resources, not to speak of building a new administrative organization. If we consider these aspects, it becomes clear that the practice of imposing subordination agreements was a peaceful and nonaggressive means of achieving stability. If peace is defined as a sociopolitical situation of non-belligerency between state organizations,254 we can safely conclude that peace – through the adê-system – was indeed a fundamental goal of the Assyrian imperialistic project, a view that may sound contradictory in the light of the large investment in displays of terror and cruelty that characterize political communication through official political texts and monumental art. Due to the Assyrian kings’ large investment on the militaristic depiction of their imperial rule, the Kriegskunst has always been perceived as the predominant peculiarity of the Assyrian model of dominion in historiography. However, the final aim of the imperial policy was not total destruction and the voyeuristic representation of violence, but rather the acquisition of resources to increase the levels of well-being, wealth, prestige and power of the Assyrian elite living at the Empire’s core and at provincial centres. This could only be reached through the forced or diplomatic pacification of the periphery of the Empire and consolidation of the internal stability through the loyalty and cohesion of its ruling class – goals that were an integral part of the Assyrian ruling elite’s idea of peace. In addition, the large-scale mobilization of royal armies to neutralize local revolts must not have been the everyday rule. In fact, as can be seen in some letters, moderate displays of force by Assyrian governors were often used as deterrent in order to bring insubordinates of the cli-

annihilate yourselves.” The same treaty reminds the contracting party that ina (ŠÀ-bi) NA4.KIŠIB šá daš-šur MAN DINGIR.MEŠ-ni / ka-˹ni˺k!-u-ni ina IGI-ku-nu šá-kín-u-ni / ki-i DINGIR-ku-n[u] la ta-na-ṣar-a-ni, “You shall guard [this treaty tablet which] is sealed with the seal of Aššur, king of the gods, and set up in your presence, like your own god.” (ibid., 407–409). 253 Watanabe, 2015: 208; Fales, 2017: 418. On treaty tablets as objects of worship see Radner, 2019: 315. According to Radner (2019: 315–316), it was in the form of the treaty tablets that the god Aššur was made manifest across the imperial territory. 254 It is the concept of “negative peace” suggested in Asher-Greve, 2014: 29.

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ent state’s population back to a peaceful existence.255 The use and the quality of armed intervention to gain control of an insurgent area was planned by the Assyrian officials by taking into careful consideration the specific political situation in the area and the efficacy of the insurgents’ strategies. In addition, the fact that peace was not only a solution determined by circumstances and political pragmatism, but also a royal virtue shows that the practice of peace-making was inspired by an ideal of socio-political and cosmic order.256 Accordingly, tribute exaction from subjugated territories was a far more efficient way of exploiting local resources than the looting of material resources through military aggression and the destruction of the enemy country. In this way the local production systems and the organization of resource acquisition remained fully active and susceptible to new investments and implementation by the conquerors. Local professionals of the submitted polity were highly prized by the Assyrian elite. Such people were integrated into the retinue of craftsmen who would then be placed at the service of the king and provincial governors. This logic underpinned the policy of the Assyrian Empire to avoid military conquest of wealthy polities. As seen above, the Phoenician city of Tyre controlled a vast trade network in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Assyria was interested in the riches that had been acquired by and were circulating within the local trade system. The security of the transport infrastructure and the integration of subjugated countries into a new unified economic area was also an integral part of the Empire’s pacification project: Assyrian merchants acting as palace commercial agents as well as private entrepreneurs of wealthy mercantile families from the city of Assur needed security and protection for the regular management of their affairs and long-distance caravan trade in various regions of the Near East. Peace with foreign polities represented a developmental factor that rendered the competition for resources a more flexible system in which Assyria’s predatory policy was accompanied by peaceful and more pragmatic ways of acquiring control of local resources. From such a perspective, the universal Assyrian peace imposed upon foreign polities was reached through the flexible and variable system of adê-agreements, which as a general legal and religious framework required the unconditioned submission of any foreign ruler to Aššur and the great gods of the land. These were included in the pact as one of the contracting parties.257 The clauses of the treaties manifested a flexible strategy in applying the adê-system to polities which depended on different political and economic contexts. As a consequence, this plurality of political and socioeco255

See SAA 5, 78: 4–15 for the submission of some mountain peoples that had previously been reluctant to observe the duties imposed by an Assyrian treaty. For the employment of the military unit of Itu’eans to intimidate Sidonites who had previously driven out the newly-appointed Assyrian tax-collector see SAA 19, 22: 14–20. For discussion on these letters see Fales, 2008b: 23–24. 256 See Asher-Greve, 2014: 29–30 for this second category of peace (“positive peace”). 257 Liverani, 2017: 134.

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nomic conditions gave different results to the impact of the Assyrian expansionist project. This flexibility represented both the strengths and weaknesses of the imperial policy, especially after the Empire reached the height of its territorial expansion. Although fragmentarily preserved, Neo-Assyrian treaties provide evidence of this flexible institutional system, encompassing pacts of a bilateral or asymmetrical nature, of military alliance or with more marked interests in profiting from local trade. The adê aimed at regulating local trade is well represented by Esarhaddon’s treaty with Tyrians, and shows Assyria’s interests in profiting from the commercial infrastructures of the Phoenician city-state with no recourse to military occupation, an option that will only became realistic after the rebellion of Ba’alu a few years after the conclusion of the treaty with Esarhaddon. The preservation and control of the wealthy Babylonian “market” was also one of the objectives of the Assyrian imperial policy towards Babylonia, a region which during the Assyrian dominion was subject to instability, politically fragmented and divided between old Babylonian urban elites and Chaldean and Aramaean tribes. The favourable policy towards Babylonian elites became an integral part of the Empire’s strategy of strengthening the pro-Assyrian party in the major cities of southern Mesopotamia in order to consolidate Assyrian power in the region. This also enabled Assyrians to profit from the local trade centres and routes and gain control of Babylonian commerce with the Persian Gulf, the Iranian area and Arabia.258 Control of the local resources of subjugated countries is an indication of the competition for external resources at international level. In the Assyrian imperial age, the growth of internal demand by the socioeconomic elite of Assyria for luxury goods, slaves, land and raw materials (wool, metals, stone, wood, etc.) needed in order to run the state-controlled industries, as well as animals (mostly horses for the cavalry of the imperial army) and various end products (such as textiles, metal and ivory objects) determined the “specialization” of Assyria’s competition for resources at a large-scale. The trade networks and caravan routes controlled by client polities were also targets of competition for external resources, a fact clearly shown by the attitude of the Empire towards the wealthy economies of the Levant and Babylonia. 4. Imperial peace as universal peace: concluding observations In imperial structures like first-millennium Assyria the consolidation of the autocratic power of the ruler was progressively accompanied by the strengthening of the political and economic power of social groups linked to the Palace. Meanwhile, the growth of the royal court and the difficulty in maintaining the power balance between the king and the aristocracy opened the door to palace conjurations and civil war. In the final phase of Assyrian history these represented more

258

For Assyria’s interests in the rich trade network of Babylonia see Gaspa, 2016: 99–100.

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dangerous threats to the security and cohesion of the state than the presence of foreign polities at its borders. In Assyria, internal peace was established by the fact that only the Assyrian king, as entitled of autocratic power, had the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Internal peace was also consolidated by the adoption of the adê-system for regulating dynastic succession and cohesion of the state. The balance between the external or international peace and internal peace granted to the imperial society laid the foundations for the expansion of agricultural productivity, increased the economic prosperity of the imperial elite, encouraged demographic growth in the cities, the development of infrastructure and the enlargement of trade networks in the Near East under the “yoke of Aššur.” Of course, only the imperial elite and the upper social strata of urban population in the core region of the Empire really benefitted from the imperialistic project. Regarding the middle and lower social strata of the imperial population in the main cities and the people living in the countryside, one wonders whether these social groups benefitted from the security and protection granted by the king through the imposition of internal and external peace. What is clear is that these strata did not enjoy the huge wealth accumulated by the elites through military expansion, tax collection and international trade. In addition, the relevant costs of war deeply affected the countryside, resulting in a progressive decrease of the rural population.259 Protection and safety were certainly guaranteed by the Assyrian Empire to the foreign kings in return for their submission to the Assyrian king’s authority. But the situation for the client state changed if military intervention became necessary. The treatment reserved for the peripheries of the Assyrian Empire during military conquest and the following phase of annexation included deportation, destruction, depopulation and acculturation. This picture does not support the idea that the benefits of the imperial project were enjoyed equally by centre and periphery.260 Moreover, the negative impact of military conflict on the common population has no relevance in the political discourse of the conquerors. In no text the horrors of war are described, but it is clear that the consequences of expansionist policies adopted by Assyria and the other powerful states of the Age of the Empires must have stimulated a debate within the intellectual elite as regards war violence and the impact of armed conflict on order and stability of society. As far as Mesopotamian society of the first millennium BCE is concerned, this reflection must have inspired the critique of war that in literary terms is implicitly expressed through the eulogy of war-making in the Poem of Erra and Išum.261 Notwithstanding the Assyrian state’s efforts to maintain order and peace in the provinces, relocating deportees to new environments increased the levels of vigilance and repression necessary in order that the Assyrian governors could re-es259

Liverani, 2017: 267. Liverani, 2017: 215–216. 261 See Foster, 2005, esp. 895–907 (Tablets II–III). 260

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tablish order. Deportees were often exposed to attacks by local rebels, who were often indigenous inhabitants who did not accept being forced to live side-by-side with newcomers or deportees who had refused to collaborate with the Assyrians.262 These post-war social conflicts in the imperial territory bear witness to the progressive substitution of native and free farmers with people of servile status deported from conquered countries and reveal the deterioration of the socioeconomic condition of both the heartland and the provincial territories of the Empire.263 Moreover, the cost of war in terms of human resources heavily affected the royal army and Assyrian society.264 The attestations in epistolography about the conditions that affected the Assyrian army show that the regular replacement of dead and wounded soldiers was of paramount importance in order to maintain a high level of efficiency of the Empire’s military machinery in theatres of war and in areas in which the Assyrian control was weak.265 Apart from losses of war, the many injured soldiers who returned home from military campaigns represented the more vivid evidence of war damage and the cost of imperialism in the eyes of commoners, but no hint is made in letters about these aspects and how post-war conditions for Assyrian veterans was managed by the state. In comparison with first state organizations, and especially with pre-state communities, complex state organizations are seen in anthropological research on political systems as being characterized by lower levels of violence. In the case of the Age of Empires it is reasonable to assume that a larger power hierarchy ruling central and peripheral state branches and a large and pervasive bureaucratic apparatus created a more coercive political organization. These factors firmly secured state law and sanction and probably enabled society to be less exposed to permanent levels of violence and fighting – a situation that resulted in a certain degree

262

See, e.g., the letter SAA 19, 21, written by a newly-appointed Assyrian official based in the city of Turmuna, recently subjugated. The text deals with people, in all likelihood deportees, who were employed by the Assyrian state in local agricultural and building works. 263 Liverani, 2017: 266. 264 However, pictorial evidence of Assyrian imperial art shows that the costs of war in terms of destruction and brutal violence were only suffered by the enemy population. 265 SAA 1, 143 r.1–15: “As to the replacement for the dead concerning which the king told the magnates: ‘Provide the replacement!’ – nobody has given us anything. The deficit of our dead [and] invalid (mētūti [u] makiūte) soldiers who did not go to the campaign with us is [1],200; the magnates won’t give it to us, nor have they given their straw, [nor] have they worked with us.” On complains about the scarcity of troops, see also SAA 1, 241: 2’– r.1. Also references to injured military officers are rare. See the letter written by a certain Mušēzib-ilu, who informs the king that he has been wounded in a campaign: SAA 19, 119: 3–9: “The Gambuleans were in Arrapḫa on the 3rd day. I was wounded in the military campaign and I am very ill. It is not possible for me to co[me] to the king, my lord. At the moment I am laid up in the town Ša-Turmiš on the Za[b] river.”

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of public safety.266 This state of public safety is described in a royal inscription of Assurbanipal from Nineveh, although the elements of idealization predominate: “Within city and household, no one took anything from his neighbour by for[ce]. Throughout the entire land, not a single young man commit[ted] a crime. A traveller on his own walked in safe[ty] (ina šul[me]) on remo[te] road(s). There were no thieves (or) murderers, violent cri[mes] did not occur. The lands dwelt in peace[ful] abode(s) (šubtu nēḫ[tu]), the four quarters (of the world) were placid (taqnā) [li]ke the finest oil.”267 Indubitably, the creation of a vast economic area under the political and military control of Assyria – within the borders of the Empire’s territory and, thanks to the adê-system, in all regions controlled by the client states – offered unprecedented advantages for those who were involved in the state’s economic system as well as for private businesses. Safety (šulmu) enabled travellers to walk long distances. This security under the Empire’s peace certainly helped maintain trade expeditions by Assyrian merchants along all the long-distance caravan routes that crossed the imperial territory. This had a positive impact in terms of the circulation of commodities throughout the economic space controlled by Assyria.268 As a tangible result of universal peace ensured by the Assyrian state, not only lands dwelled in peaceful (nēḫtu) abodes. Also the entire world – represented here by the standard literary motif of the kibrāt erbetti, “the four quarters (of the world)” – benefitted from the šulmu granted by the Assyrian king, becoming placid (taqnu) like good quality oil. The reality was probably less idyllic than the one described by the author of Assurbanipal’s inscription. As we read in letters, Assyrian military units that stationed in various cities and villages of the imperial territory – including special ethnic units used as police – were often accused of abuses and crimes against local residents and their properties.269 The process of coercive relocation of conquered social groups within the vast state territory was also accompanied by concomitant processes of immigration to the Empire’s central cities, where prospects of work in the various productive sectors (such as temple and palace building projects, metallurgy, textile manufacture and horse breeding for the royal army) acted as a powerful magnet for cultural 266

However, the level of public safety is not easy to determine in past state societies. For a discussion of the level of violence in large state societies and the role of state and nonstate concentrations of power within this type of community see Gat, 2006: 404–409 with further literature. 267 RINAP 5/1, 2: 19’–23’ (http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/rinap/rinap5/). 268 Political stability and absence of war are preconditions for safe circulation of merchants and commodities. This can be seen, for instance, in Old Assyrian letters, that show how conflict and political turmoil in the Anatolian trade area interfered with Assyrian traveling and trading. See Veenhof, 2014: 844–847. 269 See, e.g., SAA 1, 154, dealing with soldiers acting as common criminals and drunkards, and SAA 19, 176 on complains about Itu’eans, accused of plundering sheep.

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assimilation to the imperial society and the adoption of its values, facilitating the integration and social ascent of newcomers into the socioeconomic elites of major cities and enhancing the level of social differentiation and professional expertise within the Assyrian society.270 This was another important result of the creation of a unified and pacified area in the Near East by the Assyrian Empire. This general situation of well-being throughout the country (directly derived from a state of internal pacification and security, and of peaceful relations at international level) was epitomized in the concept of the well-being (šulmu) of the “Land of Aššur,” of the forts, of the temples and the land. With this vivid imagery the salutatio of the king’s servants opened numerous letters routinely addressed to the attention of the head of state.271 The reality of the everyday running of the Empire that we can observe from letters and other ephemeral documents shows us that the state of peace and stability (in terms of territorial hegemony and security in the country) reached by Assyria from the eighth to the seventh century BCE – a political and socioeconomic situation for which the elusive but leading concept of pax Assyriaca has been proposed272 – was also the result of the diplomatic strategies adopted by the Assyrian elite in the running of their ambitious expansionist project. This contradicts the aforesaid Assyrian king’s heroic statement – as we read in the Tukultī-Ninurta Epic273 – that no salīmu would be stipulated without mitḫusu. The evidence unequivocally demonstrates that for the interests of the first-millennium Assyrian state, investing in diplomacy to gain the submission of foreign polities represented an autonomous channel of interstate political activity, which did not necessarily result from military victories. In addition, it also becomes clear that diplomacy in Assyria was not a second-class option in comparison to armed conquest for the management of international affairs, as the observations about friendly speaking in creating and maintaining interstate relations clearly show. From this study emerges that peace in Assyria was not only a product of war, but an autonomous field of political activity and thought. As such it played a significant role in the political discourse centred on the imperialistic project. The language of power and the state theology during the apex of the Empire’s expan-

270

In the multi-cultural society of the Empire we find Egyptians, Urarṭians, Elamites, Canaanites, Anatolians and Iranians, to cite the major ethnic groups documented in the text corpus of the Assyrian Empire. The Egyptians were one of the groups attested in the city of Assur. 271 SAA 19, 8: 3–8: “The b[e]st of he[a]lth to the [k]i[ng], my lord! Ass[yria] is well, the temples are well, all the king’s forts are well. The king, my lord, can be glad indeed” and passim in letters sent to the king. Royal letters also make use of this motif in the salutatio. See, e.g., Assurbanipal’s letter to the elders of Elam SAA 21, 65: 2: “I and the whole of Assyria are well.” 272 Fales, 2008b, esp. 18–25, and Fales, 2010: 219–228. 273 The “manual of the Assyrian holy war,” see Liverani, 1997: 594.

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sionism reveals that the concept of peace was an integral part of the royal ideology and as such it shaped various dimensions of the political and religious communication. However, the stability and order granted by the Empire’s peace, constructed through war as well as peaceful relations and treaties, were progressively eroded during the last century of the Assyrian Empire. The last reigns, weakened by irregular succession, court conspiracies and the dissolving of cohesion within the ruling class, would have revealed soon to the vicarii of Aššur that from a longterm perspective the imperial mission of creating and maintaining a unified, homogeneous and pacified world, both internally and at the frontiers of the “Land of Aššur,” was nothing more than a utopian ideal. Bibliography Asher-Greve, J.M., 2014: “Insinuations of Peace in Literature, The Standard of Ur, and the Stele of Vultures.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 27–40. Börker-Klähn, J., 1982: Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs. Baghdader Forschungen 4. Mainz am Rhein. Capomacchia, A.M.G. / Rivaroli, M., 2014: “Peace and War: A Ritual Question.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 171–187. Cline, E.H. / Graham, M.W., 2011: Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam. Cambridge / New York. Cornwell, H., 2017: Pax and the Politics of Peace. Republic to Principate. Oxford. Da Riva, R., 2013: The Inscriptions of Nabopolassar, Amēl-Marduk and Neriglissar. Studies in the Ancient Near Eastern Records 3. Boston / Berlin. Fales, F.M., 1982: “The Enemy in Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: the ‘Moral Judgement’ .” In H.-J. Nissen / J. Renger (eds.): Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen in alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. XXV. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Berlin, 3. bis 7. Juli 1978. Vol. II. Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 1. Berlin. Pp. 425–435. — 2001: L’impero assiro. Storia e amministrazione (IX–VII secolo a.C.). Roma / Bari. — 2008a: “Il periodo neo-assiro: trattati ed editti.” In M. Liverani / C. Mora (eds.): I diritti del mondo cuneiforme (Mesopotamia e regioni adiacenti, ca.

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2500–500 a.C.). Pubblicazioni del Centro di studi e ricerche sui diritti antichi 4. Pavia. Pp. 503–556. — 2008b: “On Pax Assyriaca in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries BCE and Its Implications.” In R. Cohen / R. Westbrook (eds.): Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords into Plowshares. New York. Pp. 17–35. — 2009: “‘To Speak Kindly to Him/Them’ As Item of Assyrian Political Discourse.” In M. Luukko / R. Mattila / S. Svärd (eds.): Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola. Studia Orientalia 106. Helsinki. Pp. 27–39. — 2010: Guerre et paix en Assyrie. Religion et impérialisme. Conférences de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études 2. Paris. — 2017: “Assyrian Legal Traditions.” In E. Frahm (ed.): A Companion to Assyria. Malden, MA. Pp. 398–422. Foster, B.R., 2005: Before the Muses. An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Bethesda, MD (3rd edition). Fuchs, A., 1994: Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad. Göttingen. Gaspa, S., 2016: “Trade and Distribution of Textiles in Ancient Assyria.” In K. Droß-Krüpe / M.-L. Nosch (eds.): Textiles, Trade and Theories. From the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean. Kārum-Emporion-Forum: Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des östlichen Mittelmeerraums und Altvorderasiens 2. Münster. Pp. 93–123. Gat, A., 2006: War in Human Civilization. Oxford. Giusfredi, F., 2010: Sources for a Socio-Economic History of the Neo-Hittite States. Texte der Hethiter: Philologische und historische Studien zur Altanatolistik 28. Heidelberg. Glassner, J.-J., 2005: Mesopotamian Chronicles. Society of Biblical Literature: Writings from the Ancient World 19. Leiden / Boston. (English transl. of the 1993 French edition). Grimal, N., 1992: Storia dell’antico Egitto. Roma / Bari. (2nd edition; Italian transl. of the 1988 French edition). Joannès, F., 2004: The Age of Empires. Mesopotamia in the First Millennium BC. Edinburgh. (English transl. of the 2000 French edition). — 2008: “Il periodo neo-assiro e neo-babilonese: proprietà e diritto familiare.” In M. Liverani / C. Mora (eds.): I diritti del mondo cuneiforme (Mesopotamia e regioni adiacenti, ca. 2500–500 a.C.). Pubblicazioni del Centro di studi e ricerche sui diritti antichi 4. Pavia. Pp. 583–599. Jakob, S., 2018: Ritualbeschreibungen und Gebete III. Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 154: Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 9. Wiesbaden. Jursa, M., 2008: “Economic Change and Legal Innovation. On Aspects of Commercial Interaction and Land Tenure in Babylonia in the First Millennium

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BC.” In M. Liverani / C. Mora (eds.): I diritti del mondo cuneiforme (Mesopotamia e regioni adiacenti, ca. 2500–500 a.C.). Pubblicazioni del Centro di studi e ricerche sui diritti antichi 4. Pavia. Pp. 601–628. Lanfranchi, G.B., 2008: “Divine Justice and Law in the Neo-Assyrian Period.” In H. Barta / R. Rollinger / M. Lang (eds.): Recht und Religion. Menschliche und göttliche Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen in den antiken Welten. Philippika. Marburger altertumskundliche Abhandlungen 24. Wiesbaden. Pp. 93–108. — 2009–2011: “Skythen (Scythians).” In M.P. Streck et al. (eds.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Vol. 12. Berlin / New York. Pp. 581b–583b. — 2011: “The Expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Its Peripheries: Military, Political and Ideological Resistance.” In Ch. Ulf / R. Rollinger (eds.): Lag Troia in Kilikien? Der aktuelle Streit um Homer Ilias. Darmstadt. Pp. 225–239. Lauinger, J., 2013: “The Neo-Assyrian adê: Treaty, Oath, or Something Else?” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 19, 99–115. Liverani, M., 1990: “Terminologia e ideologia del patto nelle iscrizioni reali assire.” In L. Canfora / M. Liverani / C. Zaccagnini (eds.): I trattati nel mondo antico: forma ideologia funzione. Saggi di storia antica 2. Roma. Pp. 113–147. — 1997: Antico Oriente: storia società economia. Roma / Bari (3rd edition). — 2009: “The King in the Palace.” Orientalia Nova Series 78, 81–91. — 2017: Assiria. La preistoria dell’imperialismo. Roma / Bari. Mallowan, M. E. L., 1966: Nimrud and Its Remains, I–II. London. May, N.N., 2015: “Administrative and Other Reforms of Sargon II and Tiglathpileser III.” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 21, 79–116. Miller, B., 2014: Antropologia culturale. Torino (Italian transl. of the 2013 English edition). Müller-Neuhof, B., 2014: “Kriege im Neolithikum Vorderasiens?” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 539–552. Oded, B., 1992: War, Peace and Empire: Justifications for War in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions. Wiesbaden. Oelsner, J. / Wells, B. / Wunsch, C., 2003: “Neo-Babylonian Period.” In R. Westbrook (ed.): A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, vol. II. Handbuch der Orientalistik I: Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten 72/2. Leiden/Boston. Pp. 911– 974. Parpola, S., 2003: “International Law in the First Millennium.” In R. Westbrook (ed.): A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, vol. II. Handbuch der Orientalistik I: Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten 72/2. Leiden / Boston. Pp. 1047–1066.

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— 2018: The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part I: Letters from Assyria, Babylonia, and Vassal States. State Archives of Assyria 21. Helsinki. Parpola, S. / Watanabe, K., 1988: Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki. Paterson, A., 1915: Assyrian Sculptures, Palace of Sinacherib. Den Haag. Perdu, O., 2010: “Saites and Persians.” In A. B. Lloyd (ed.): A Companion to Ancient Egypt, I. Malden, MA. Pp. 140–158. Picchi, D., 1997: Il conflitto tra Etiopi ed Assiri nell’Egitto della XXV dinastia. Archeologia e storia della Civiltà egiziana e del Vicino Oriente antico: Materiali e studi 2. Imola. Ponchia, S., 2002–2005: “Notes on the Legal Conventions and on the Practice of the adê in the Early Neo-Babylonian Letters from Nippur.” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 14, 133–167. — 2014: “The Neo-Assyrian adê Protocol and the Administration of the Empire.” In S. Gaspa / A. Greco / D. Morandi Bonacossi / S. Ponchia / R. Rollinger (eds.): From Source to History: Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Worlds and Beyond Dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday on June 23, 2014. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 412. Münster. Pp. 501–526. Postgate, J.N., 2013: Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria. Cambridge / New York. Raaflaub, K.A., 2007: “Introduction: Searching for Peace in the Ancient World.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA / Oxford / Carlton. Pp. 1–33. Radner, K., 2006–2008: “Provinz. C. Assyrien.” In M. P. Streck et al. (eds.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Vol. 11. Berlin / New York. Pp. 42b–68a. — 2019: „Neo-Assyrian Treaties as a Source for the Historian: Bonds of Friendship, the Vigilant Subject and the Vengeful King's Treaty.” In G.B. Lanfranchi / R. Mattila / R. Rollinger (eds.): Writing Neo-Assyrian History. Sources, Problems, and Approaches. State Archives of Assyria Studies 29. Helsinki. Pp. 309–328. Reade, J. 1983: Assyrian Sculpture. London. Reyna, S.P., 1994: “A Mode of Domination Approach to Organized Violence.” In S.P. Reyna / R.E. Downs (eds.): Studying War: Anthropological Perspectives. Langhorne, PA. Pp. 29–65. Tacite, Vie d’Agricola. Transl. E. De Saint-Denis. Paris 1967. Veenhof, K.R., 2014: “Old Assyrian Traders in War and Peace.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittmann / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology,

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Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 837–849. Watanabe, K., 2015: “Innovations in Esarhaddon’s Succession Oath Documents Considered from the Viewpoint of the Document’s Structure.” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 21, 173–215. Yon, M., 1991: “Les stèles de pierre.” In M. Yon (ed.): Arts et industries de la pierre. Ras Shamra – Ougarit 6. Paris. Pp. 273–344. Younger, K.L. Jr., 2016: A Political History of the Aramaeans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities. Society for Biblical Literature: Archaeology and Biblical Studies 13. Atlanta. Abbreviations PNA The Prosopography of the Assyrian Empire 1/II Radner, K., (ed.), 1999: The Prosopography of the Assyrian Empire, Volume 1, Part II: B–G. Helsinki. 2/II Baker, H.D., (ed.), 2001: The Prosopography of the Assyrian Empire, Volume 2, Part II: L–N. Helsinki. 3/II Baker, H.D., (ed.), 2011: The Prosopography of the Assyrian Empire, Volume 3, Part II: Š–Z. Helsinki. RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 2 Grayson, A.K., 1991: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, I (1114–859 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 2. Toronto. 3 Grayson, A.K., 1996: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, II (858–745 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 3. Toronto. RINAP The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 1 Tadmor, H. / Yamada, Sh., 2011: The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglathpileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 BC), Kings of Assyria. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 1. Winona Lake, IN. 3/1 Grayson, A.K. / Novotny, J., 2012: The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 1. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1. Winona Lake, IN. 3/2 Grayson, A.K. / Novotny, J., 2014: The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 2. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/2. Winona Lake, IN. 4 Leichty, E., 2011: The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4. Winona Lake, IN. 5/1 Novotny, J. / Jeffers, J. / Van Buylaere, G., 2018: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC)

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and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 1. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 5/1. Winona Lake, IN. (On-line version available at http://oracc.museum.upenn. edu/rinap/rinap5/, Last access: 15.1. 2019). State Archives of Assyria 1 Parpola, S., 1987: The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West. State Archives of Assyria 1. Helsinki. 2 Parpola, S. / Watanabe, K., 1988: Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki. 4 Starr, I., 1990: Queries to the Sungod. Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. State Archives of Assyria 4. Helsinki. 5 Lanfranchi, G.B. / Parpola, S., 1990: The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces. State Archives of Assyria 5. Helsinki. 8 Hunger, H., 1992: Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings. State Archives of Assyria 8. Helsinki. 13 Cole, S.W. / Machinist, P., 1998: Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. State Archives of Assyria 13. Helsinki. 15 Fuchs, A. / Parpola, S., 2001: The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces. State Archives of Assyria 15. Helsinki. 16 Luukko, M. / Van Buylaere, G., 2002: The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon (State Archives of Assyria 16), Helsinki 2002. 17 Dietrich, M., 2003: The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib. State Archives of Assyria 17. Helsinki. 18 Reynolds, F., 2003: The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon. State Archives of Assyria 18. Helsinki. 19 Luukko, M., 2012: The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud. State Archives of Assyria 19. Helsinki. 20 Parpola, S., 2017: Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts. State Archives of Assyria 20. Helsinki. 21 Parpola, S., 2018: The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part I: Letters from Assyria, Babylonia, and Vassal States. State Archives of Assyria 21. Helsinki.

Peace and Peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible Martti Nissinen

Many things can be referred to when the word “peace” is pronounced, depending on whether the frame of reference is individual, societal, political, or theological. The same is true for the Hebrew Bible, where the term šālôm has a manifold semantic field extending far beyond the usual implications of “peace” and its equivalents in the modern languages. In the Hebrew Bible, the word šālôm is used in the sense of “wholeness,” “wholesomeness,” or “integrity,” but it can also mean “retaliation” and, of course, “peace” in its different aspects.1 In this essay, I will focus on peace as a political-historical concept, excluding not only the individual facets of peace, but also the idea of “peace” as a God-given cosmopolitan condition expected to be established in a distant future.2 Even in the political sense, peace is a multidimensional concept, but it is typically somehow related to war.3 First, it may simply characterize a period of political stability, a state of affairs enabled by the absence of war. Secondly, it may refer to the post-war condition, often initiated by the event of ending the war by way of negotiations between two conflicting parties,4 sometimes called bĕrît (“treaty” or “covenant”) in the Hebrew Bible.5 Thirdly, peace can also be understood in a more active sense as a consciously pursued political strategy, a process aiming at a modus vivendi between two potentially hostile parties, whether domestic or international. All these three facets of peace are represented in the Hebrew Bible, either explicitly or implicitly. Peace as absence of war Periods of peace are mentioned many times without further comments in the biblical narratives in Joshua–Kings and Chronicles. Such a long period precedes Joshua’s farewell speech (Josh 23: 1), and in the book of Judges, a forty-year rest is mentioned three times: after Othniel’s subjugation of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Aram (Judg 3: 10–11); after the defeat of Sisera (Judg 5: 31); and in the aftermath of Gideon’s victory over the Midianites (Judg 8: 28). A three-year peace

1

For the semantics of šālôm, see Talmon, 1997. E.g., in Isa 2: 1–5 and Micah 4: 1–5; cf. Krüger, 2007; Nissinen, 2019a. 3 For the different dimensions of peace, see Raaflaub, 2007; for peace in the context of biblical ideologies of war, see Niditch, 2007. 4 For a more detailed classification of this aspect of peace, see the essay of Kurt Raaflaub in this volume. 5 For the political and theological dimensions, as well as the ancient Near Eastern roots of the concept and theology of bĕrît in the Hebrew Bible, see, e.g., Levin, 2004; Koch, 2008. 2

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between Aram and Israel during Ahab’s reign is reported in 1 Kgs 22: 1, and the Chronicles tell about long periods of peace under the kings Asa (2 Chr 15: 19) and Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 20: 30). An iconic description of peace in the sense of the absence of war can be found in the assessment of the reign of King Solomon in 1 Kings: “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea; they ate and drank and were happy” (1 Kgs 4: 20); “During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees” (1 Kgs 5: 5). The trope of sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree belongs even to the speech of Rabshakeh, the chief cupbearer of the Assyrian king, to the citizens of Jerusalem: “Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from your own vine and your own fig tree, and drink water from your own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey, that you may live and not die’ ” (2 Kgs 18: 31–32). The symbol of vine and fig tree is also adopted in prophetic texts representing the holy peace caused by God himself in the more or less distant future. Hag 2: 18–19 anticipates the turn towards peace to take place right after the foundation of the Second Temple of Jerusalem is laid: “Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider: Is there any seed left in the barn? Do the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still yield nothing? From this day on I will bless you.” The same trope is used in Zech 3: 8–10 in the context of rehabilitation of Joshua the High Priest: God promises to remove the guilt of the people who then invite each other to come under their own vines and fig trees. While the books of Haggai and Zechariah may in the earliest stages of their textual transmission still have invested some hope in such a restoration becoming a reality, in Mic 4: 1–5 (cf. Isa 2: 1–5) the peace is the result of the eschatological divine judgement based on trust and justice that makes the people beat their swords into ploughshares and sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees without being threatened by anyone – a state of affairs that was hardly experienced by the community of readers of these texts.6 In Ezek 28: 26 the Israelites who have been gathered back home from the people among whom they were scattered will live in safety, build houses and plant vineyards. Such an idyll can also be reversed by God if its source is interpreted in a wrong way: “I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, ‘These are my pay, which my lovers have given me’” (Hos 2: 14). As a symbol of peace, the vine and the fig tree can be understood in a more or less concrete fashion. It is worth noting that it is used of past and future circum6

According to Ben Zvi, 2000: 99, the text “plays on the aspect of difference by emphasizing the lack.” Cf. Krüger, 2007: 166–170: Nissinen, 2019a: 408–413.

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stances, but never of the present conditions. In the two cases in the books of Kings, it either characterizes the golden age of Pax Salomonica or is put in the mouth of a narrative character not to be trusted (i.e., Rabshakeh7) as a parody of rhetorical announcement of a presumed but rejected Pax Assyriaca.8 In these texts, however, the trope has a political meaning: the peace it describes seems to refer to the result of political strategy rather than divine intervention. This may be based on real-life experiences, in however idealized form – if not in Solomon’s time then in some later period. It is important to note, however, that the presentation of Pax Salomonica in the context 1 of Kings 5 belongs to the narrative framework of Solomon’s God-given wealth and wisdom, which makes the assessment of his activity ultimately more theological than political-historical.9 In prophetic texts, peace appears as a divine promise with little or no downto-earth political meaning. Such an idealized peace would fall out of the scope of this paper altogether, unless the divine agency was the backdrop against which most of the peace-talk in the Hebrew Bible should be read. Peace is presented as a God-given circumstance throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible, whether we read Leviticus or Deuteronomy, where the precondition of peace is people’s obedience to the divine ordinance (Lev 26: 6; Deut 12: 10); the historical narrative where peace appears as the result of divine intervention (2 Kgs 13: 5; 2 Chr 14: 5; 15: 15; 32: 22); or psalms and prophetic books presenting God as the guarantor of peace: “O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us” (Isa 26: 12; cf. Isa 14: 1; Ps 147: 14). The emphasis on divine agency in war and peace is, of course, not a specifically biblical idea; even the Assyrian sources make abundantly clear that wars were regarded as holy wars in the sense that they were due to divine initiative and waged for the sake of the gods rather than the kings themselves. Peace as a post-war condition Quite often in the Hebrew Bible, peace is mentioned as a condition following a war. In the book of Joshua, peace is the end result of the conquest of the promised land: “So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war” (Josh 11: 23; cf. 14: 15). This is emphatically presented as the work of God who keeps his promises to the ancestors: “the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their ancestors; 7

The Hebrew name Rabshakeh is identical to the Akkadian title rab-šāqê, “chief cupbearer”; see Baker, 2017: 114–115. 8 The speech of Rabshakeh is often found echoing contemporaneous Neo-Assyrian rhetoric (see Fales, 2008: 28–33; Hays and Machinist, 2016: 92–93), even though its present context in the Books of Kings is due to multi-layered later redaction. 9 For the figure of Solomon in the context of biblical historiographic narrative, see, e.g., Kalimi, 2013 and 2018; Särkiö, 2013.

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not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands” (Josh 21: 44). The subjugation of the Moabites by Ehud’s troops brought peace to Israel for no less than eighty years (Judg 3: 30). Even the Philistines were detained by the hand of God during the lifetime of Samuel, so that the Israelites could take back the territory occupied by them and peace prevailed even between Israel and the Amorites (1 Sam 7: 14). Some of these texts describe to some extent the wars of the Israelites against their enemies, but all of them ascribe the peace to God without saying a word about how the peace was concluded. The narrative strategy of the texts depicting events of the legendary past is to emphasize the decisive role of divine agency rather than political processes in safeguarding the people of Israel. Some narratives, however, do pay attention to the strategies of peace-making. Abram, after having defeated the coalition of Chedorlaomer, gave one-tenth of his booty to Melchizedek, king of Salem, and agreed with the king of Sodom not to take from him anything more than what had already been consumed by his men (Gen 14: 17–24). Joshua makes peace with the Gibeonites, guaranteeing their lives by a treaty (bĕrît), and the leaders of the Israelites swore an oath to them which they could not break even after it turns out that the Gibeonites had deceived them. They were not killed but were made hewers of wood and drawers of water by Joshua (Joshua 9). While the peace with the Gibeonites is presented as a fair movement of a just leader, another text, Judges 21, tells a more hair-raising story involving a massacre of Benjaminite men and hijacking young women from Jabesh-Gilead and Shiloh to save the tribe from extinction. The war of the Israelite tribes against the tribe of Benjamin is triggered by the intended male-to-male assault that eventually led to the rape of the pîlegeš (‘concubine’) of a Levite in the Benjaminite city of Gibeah (Judg 19).10 The outrage of other tribes caused by this event drives the Benjaminites to the brink of disaster because the other tribes kill all but six hundred Benjaminites (Judg 20: 47) and swear not to give their daughters in marriage to them (Judg 21: 1). To save the tribe from extinction, the other tribes go to Jabesh-Gilead and kill all the people there except for four hundred virgins who are brought to Shiloh. From there the Israelites send a word to the survived Benjaminites proclaiming peace to them and giving them the women captured at Jabesh-Gilead. Since these women are too few – four hundred women for six hundred men – the Benjaminites are allowed to hijack young women who come from Shiloh to celebrate their annual festival. This story is told in a seemingly neutral tone without specifically condemning the practices or incriminating the participants, but it concludes the book of Judges and is presented as having happened in the days when there was no king in Israel and all the people did what was right in their own eyes (Judg 21: 25). This is supposed to indicate that the country had 10

This story is probably dependent on the story of Sodom in Gen 19: 1–11; see Nissinen, 1998: 49–52.

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drifted towards an anarchy that calls for a corrective movement to take place later in the narrative and ending up in the establishment of monarchy.11 The peace-making strategies narrated in Genesis, Joshua, and Judges are set in a distant past, documenting their authors’ and redactors’ imagination rather than concrete historical circumstances. When the biblical narrative proceeds to events that have more chances of reflecting historical realities, descriptions of peace-making become few and far between. The establishment of monarchy does not end the wars when Saul and David eventually become kings in Jerusalem – quite to the contrary. However, even though every war takes an end somehow, the wars are seldom presented as being concluded by way of peace negotiations or treaties; what is reported is rather the amount of booty. In the context of David’s wars, the Moabites are said to have brought tribute to him (2 Sam 8: 2), and Toi, the king of Hamath, sends his son Joram with articles of silver, gold, and bronze to greet David who had just defeated Hadad-ezer, the king of Zobah (2 Sam 8: 9– 10). The purpose of this maneuver is obviously to side with the stronger party in a conflict, hence it is a strategic move but not actually a peace treaty. In the decisive battle of David’s troops against the Ammonite and Aramaean forces, the Ammonites gave up and even the Aramaeans saw that they were losing the war, hence they “made peace with Israel, and became subject to them” (2 Sam 10: 19; cf. 1 Chr 19: 19). How much of all this goes back to actual historical circumstances is very difficult to estimate.12 Solomon, whose reign is characterized as a period of peace, got peer support from at least one king, that is, Hiram of Tyre. Since Hiram “had always been a friend of David” (1 Kgs 5: 15), there was peace between him and Solomon, and they are said to have made a treaty with each other (bĕrît, 5: 26), even though nothing is told about the conditions of this treaty. Noteworthy about this text is, in any case, that it describes a political arrangement based on strategic partnership without one of the parties taking the upper hand over the other.13 This, again, is the case of the peace treaty between Ahab, king of Israel, and Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, whose troops the Israelites defeated at Aphek. Ben-Hadad, wearing a sackcloth, pleads for his life, and Ahab, calling him his brother, generously makes a 11

For the compositional function and composite nature of Judges 19–21, see Milstein, 2016: 175–185, who argues that the episode narrated in Judg 19, in fact, represents an act of revision through introduction to strengthen the bias against the Gibeahite king Saul, soon to be introduced in 1 Sam. 12 See Na’aman, 2006a, who analyzes the accounts of David’s wars narrates in 2 Sam arguing that the Deuteronomist scribes works on the basis of earlier sources; however,” [w]e must admit that nothing can be said with certainty about David’s wars with his neighbors” (p. 55). 13 Even here, Na’aman reckons with a pre-Deuteronomistic source used by the Deuteronomistic redactors, however, emphasizing that 1 Kgs 5: 15–26 is a literary letter that “mainly illustrates the outlines of negotiation and the conclusion of commercial agreements in the author’s time” (2006b: 87).

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treaty (bĕrît) with him on the condition that Ben-Hadad returns to Ahab the cities captured by his father and gives Ahab the right to establish bazaars in Damascus (1 Kgs 20: 23–34).14 Apart from the case of Solomon and Hiram, the few references to peace-making in the biblical narrative typically describe a set-up where the king of Israel or Judah is in an upper-hand or at least a favorable position. The cases where they have occupied the weaker position, even though probably more common from the historical point of view, are not reported as cases of peace-making, since peace terminology, as it seems, is not associated with treaties that could be interpreted as a political failure. Thus, the biblical narrative does not say anything about Ahab’s submission to Shalmaneser III, known to us from Assyrian sources, that is, the Kurkh Monolith that gives an account of Shalmaneser III’s battle at Qarqar by the river Orontes in the year 853 BCE.15 Moreover, we do not hear a word about the tribute of Jehu to the same king, reported in his inscriptions including the Assyrian Black Obelisk,16 and neither is the tribute of king Joash of Israel to Adad-nirari III known from one of his inscriptions17 mentioned in the Bible, even though Joash’s success in recovering some towns from the Aramaean king BenHadad is reported (2 Kgs 13: 25). It is only in the wake of the expansion of Assyria towards Southern Levant during Tiglath-Pileser III that the political realities begin to be more transparent in the Hebrew Bible. The treaties concluded by the kings of Israel and Judah are not necessarily presented as the result of peace negotiations, and the word bĕrît is not mentioned. However, the Assyrian treaty policy is well known, and the Hebrew Bible implies clearly enough that it was applied to the Levantine kingdoms.18 The word ‘peace’ is not pronounced in this context, but this is what the kings of Israel and Judah attempted to guarantee when they paid the tribute to the Assyrian king. Menahem, king of Israel is mentioned in Tiglath-Pileser’s inscriptions,19 and even 2 Kgs 15: 19–20 relates that he collected thousand talents of silver from wealthy Israelites to be delivered to Tiglath-Pileser, “so that he might help him confirm his hold on the royal power.” 14

The identity of Ben-Hadad is debated. Younger (2016: 580–591), among others, has equated him with Hadad-ezer, king of Damascus. Lipiński (2000: 397), on the other hand, argues that the problem of Ben-Hadad’s identification is due to the editorial history of the narratives in 1 Kings 20 and 22, and reflects the events narrated in the late ninth century. Some researchers read 1 Kings 20 as a fictional narrative composed in the Persian period, void of historical information for the time it tells about (e.g., Hasegawa, 2012: 112–113). 15 RIMA 3 A.0.102.2 (Grayson, 1996: 13–24). 16 RIMA 3 A.0.102.8 and 12 (Grayson, 1996: 44–48, 59–61) and RIMA 3 A.0.102.88 (ibid., 149). 17 RIMA 3 A.0.104.7 (Grayson, 1996: 211). 18 For the Assyrian treaty practice and imperial strategy, and their influence in the Levant, see, e.g., Parpola, 2003; Bagg, 2011: 295–301; Aster, 2018. 19 RINAP 1 14/15 and 35 (Tadmor / Yamada, 2011: 45–49, 81–87).

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King Ahaz of Judah, again, sends messengers to Tiglath-pileser, asking him for help in defense against Rezin, the king of Aram and Pekah, the king of Israel, who had attacked him. The prize for peace was not cheap: Ahaz “took the silver and gold found in the house of the Lord and in the treasures of the king’s house,” and sent them to the Assyrian king who would then march up against Damascus. According to 2 Kgs 16: 10, Ahaz even met Tiglath-pileser in person in Damascus – something that the Assyrian sources do not mention even though they list Ahaz among other tributary kings.20 Ahaz is the first king of Judah to appear in Assyrian sources. If Ahaz was successful in securing peace in his kingdom, so was his son Hezekiah who is often presented as ill-fated because he, having joined an anti-Assyrian coalition, had to capitulate to Sennacherib. In fact, however, Hezekiah may have eventually saved Jerusalem and Judah by reading the political situation correctly, giving up the rebellion and surrendering before the Assyrian king invaded the entire Kingdom of Judah. The historical reconstruction of the events in Jerusalem during Sennacherib’s campaign in 701 BCE is a notoriously difficult task,21 but the outcome of this event is clear: Hezekiah was not ousted from kingship, and Judah was reduced but not annexed to Assyria. It is probable that Hezekiah’s agreement to pay tribute gave the Assyrian king enough reason to end his military operations against Judah. In spite of the substantial tribute, reported in Sennacherib’s prism as well as in the Hebrew Bible,22 the kingdom of Judah continued to exist and even flourished in years to come. Peace as a political strategy This brings us to the third meaning of peace, that is, the actively pursued political strategy aiming at a modus vivendi between two potentially hostile parties. This is not something the biblical texts keep telling about, at least not in a positive tone. In the prophetic books, the ideal peace is God-given, hence political alliances and the attempts to peace negotiations are rather ridiculed: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound” (Hos 5: 13; cf. 7:

20

RINAP 1 47 (Tadmor / Yamada, 2011: 116–125). It is unclear whether Sennacherib actually laid a siege against Jerusalem, and on the basis of the Assyrian and biblical sources “one is not likely to get any closer to the precise historical truth of the incident without further information coming to light” (Hays and Machinist, 2016: 95; cf. Cogan, 2014). Sennacherib says to have confined Hezekiah in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage,” to have set up blockades against Hezekiah and made him “dread exiting his city gate” (RINAP 3 4: 52; Grayson / Novotny, 2012: 65). In concrete terms, a minor military operation may have been enough to block the city and control people’s movements; cf. Knauf, 2003; Ussishkin, 2014. 22 RINAP 3 4: 55–58 (Grayson / Novotny, 2012: 65–66); 2 Kgs 18: 14–16. 21

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11; 8: 9; 10: 4; 12: 2).23 Peaceful times are usually not presented as the outcome of the political skills of the kings, except for, perhaps, Solomon. Even in the case of Pax Salomonica, however, it is noteworthy that it is not presented as the result of warfare, and the role of God in maintaining peace is first and foremost to provide wisdom for Solomon (1 Kgs 5: 9), who then puts his God-given political skills into practice, concluding a strategic partnership with Hiram of Tyre (1 Kgs 5: 26) and establishing good relations with the queen of Sheba (1 Kgs 10: 1–13). However idealized the description of Pax Salomonica may be, it gives the reader an idea of the beneficial circumstances resulting from a political strategy based on wisdom. The reign of Solomon may or may not have been quite as peaceful as it is described; the only breach in the harmonious picture is the chapter on Hadad of Edom and Rezon who became king of Damascus; these two neighbors are said to have made trouble all the days of Solomon (1 Kgs 11: 14–25). In any case, the tenth century BCE was a period of local city states and chiefdoms without a superpower dictating the rules of Levantine politics.24 Long periods of peace may not do much credit to kings who are otherwise found unworthy. Jeroboam I, king of Israel, receives no thanks for his twenty-two peaceful years because of the grave sin he committed by erecting the notorious bull statues (1 Kgs 13: 33–34). The main thing that is mentioned of the largely uneventful reign of King Azariah of Judah that lasted for fifty-two years is that he did what was right in God’s eyes, but people still kept offering on the high places (2 Kgs 15: 3–4). Most notably, King Manasseh of Judah is only remembered as an apostate and blood-shedder,25 without mentioning that during the fifty-five years he reigned according to 2 Kgs 21: 1, Judah was not threatened by any foreign enemy. In fact, some scholars have started to appreciate the reign of Manasseh appears a relatively stable and prosperous era.26 As we know from the inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal,27 Manasseh was a loyal vassal of Assyria with whom the Assyrian king had made a treaty (adê), typical of those between Assyria and the vassal states throughout the Neo-Assyrian period. This, if anything, can be re23

The historical point of reference of the passages in the book of Hosea is not altogether clear. They may be understood as reactions to the circumstances in the last years of the Northern Kingdom (cf. Na’aman, 2015; Aster, 2018: 102–104), but since the book of Hosea has undergone a complicated process of transmission, even passages that seem to fit nicely that period of time may have a later origin (cf. Nissinen, 2019b: 613–627). 24 See, e.g., Van De Mieroop, 2007: 218–228. 25 See Stavrakopoulou, 2005. 26 Stavrakopoulou, 2004: 119 considers Manasseh “a successful monarch who rebuilt the decimated kingdom he inherited into a flourishing state”; cf. Knauf, 2005: 173: “Under his leadership, the Kingdom of Judah did not only survive its severe losses of 701, it more than compensated for them and prospered.” 27 Esarhaddon: RINAP 4 1 v 55 and 5 vi 7 (Leichty, 2011: 23, 46); Assurbanipal: RINAP 5 vi 27 (Novotny and Jeffers, 2018: 116).

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garded as a political strategy aiming at peace, not only from the point of view of the superpower but also from that of the small state too fragile to be weakened by ongoing wars. In spite of the murky picture of Assyrian political supremacy, drawn by the Hebrew Bible as well as the Assyrians themselves in their own propaganda,28 it can indeed be called Pax Assyriaca in the sense of a “state of law and order – or ‘security’ in present-day terminology – in territories subject to direct (but also indirect) Assyrian hegemony, such as to allow the imperial civilian and military occupants (or, respectively, the “agents” of the Assyrian king) and their local clients to pursue their day-to-day activities with no outside inference or danger.”29 This period is not hailed in terms similar to Pax Salomonica in the Hebrew Bible, and Hezekiah and Manasseh never get the praise of their political skill they would perhaps deserve, even though the kingdom of Judah lived in peace and relative prosperity in their time. The reason for such a disrespect for the strategic choices of these kings is ideological and has to do with political realities. Assyria was the superpower whose policy towards small states was to conclude a treaty, which even the kings of Judah chose to enter. Manasseh, as Ahaz and Hezekiah before him, paid their tribute to Assyria, and Assyria never invaded Judah but, instead, took it under its wings, at least in terms of military protection. This brought political stability but also the obligation to recognize the supremacy of Assyria. It may be that the Assyrian empire attempted to profit as much as it could with minimal investments in the vassal states with which it had made the adê,30 and it is debated how much the Assyrians actually invested in areas under their rule.31 In any case, the empire would hardly have profited much from political oppression and cultural persecution. The Assyrian supremacy lasted for more than a century, and most of the time, in fact, there prevailed a modus vivendi between Judah and Assyria. Compared to the desolation of the area of the Kingdom of Israel that was annexed to Assyria after the destruction of Samaria in 722 BCE, the kingdom of Judah did fairly well;32 Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 BCE, of course, destroyed parts of Judah, especially in the Shephelah, where there was a clear settlement decline. The tribute to Assyria was certainly a heavy burden, but it may also have speeded up economic development in the kingdom of Judah that became part of the Assyrian trade networks.33 Perhaps the Assyrian economic interests may have helped, or even forced, Judah to improve its economic infrastructure and develop its admin28

See especially Lewis, 2008. Fales, 2008: 18. 30 Cf., e.g., Bagg, 2011: 305–307; Faust, 2018: 41–49. 31 Cf. Younger, 2015, who reckons with the Assyrian interest in economic growth and development, and the contrasting view of Faust, 2018: 44–47. 32 See Maeir, 2017: 398–403; Faust, 2018: 33–36. 33 Cf. Maeir, 2017: 403, 407. 29

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istration to a full-blown state to be destroyed only by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. From the biblical narrators’ perspective, however, the Assyrian supremacy was unacceptable, especially because it brought about not only political but even cultural and religious changes, as may have happened under the rule of Manasseh. The rule of Babylonia in the mid-sixth century BCE Judah was too short-lived and disorganized to be characterized in terms of peace,34 but the change caused by the Persian rule was the beginning of the period of peace that lasted for two centuries. When the Persians took over the political supremacy in the Near East, the former kingdom of Judah became part of the Persian province of Yehud. The relationship with Persia was, thus, no longer based on a treaty between independent political agents but, rather, on the Persian administrative system within which Yehud had the status of a province.35 This political arrangement is never openly questioned in the Hebrew Bible. On the contrary, no foreign power receives a positive assessment like Persia does in the Hebrew Bible. No oracles against Persia are pronounced in the prophetic books, and no Yehudite group seems to have anticipated the downfall of the Persian empire. Nehemiah the chief cupbearer and Ezra the priest-scribe are presented as having been authorized by the Persians,36 and the jurisdiction of the province could hardly have been established without the consent of the Persian king. In view of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the return of the deportees as well as the reconstruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem was essentially initiated by the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes (Ezra 1; 5: 5–7, 13–17; 6: 1–15; 7; Neh 2: 1–7). Cyrus is hailed in messianic terms in the second part of the Book of Isaiah (Isa 42: 5–9; 48: 12–16).37 Any discontent among the people in Yehud with the Persian rule must be read between the lines (e.g., perhaps, Zech 11: 4–17); even the people’s accusations of economical oppression in Nehemiah 5 are directed against the nobles and officials of Yehud instead of the Persian administration. The Persian period between the years 539–331, justly labelled as Pax Persica, or Pax Achaemenidica,38 was the longest period of peace ever since the establishment of the kingdom of Judah. The number of settlements and administrativeoriented finds in the Persian period indicates a rural province with only a half the

34

For the archaeological evidence of the post-collapse societies of Judah in this period, see Valkama, 2010. 35 For the administration and tribute-based economy of the Persian empire, see Briant, 2002: 357–511; for the Achaemenid imperial policy and the status of Yehud, see Grabbe, 2004: 132–155; Lipschits, 2006. 36 For the biblical figures of Ezra and Nehemiah against the Persian background, see Kratz, 2011. 37 According to Albertz, 2001: 296–298, the hopes invested in Darius I are here projected to Cyrus. For the social memory of Cyrus in the (late) Persian period Yehud “as a kind of Davidide, as an Israelite king par excellence,” see Wilson, 2015. 38 Cf. Wiesehöfer, 2007a: 124–127.

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number of settlements as compared to the late Iron Age Judah.39 As much as can be interpreted from the meager and episodic sources from the Persian period, the life in Yehud was not extremely prosperous but relatively peaceful, without a surplus of external military threat. The conditions in this small, rather backward corner of the vast empire may not have been paradisiacal,40 but they were peaceful enough not to have left all too violent traces in the historical record.41 Recent Achaemenid scholarship has emphasized the resilient nature of the Persian rule and its tolerance towards the people and their religions in Achaemenid times. This is a counter-image not only to the despotic representation of the Persian kings in Greek sources but also to the notion of the Assyrian rule as having been excessively brutal and oppressive. The tolerant image of the Persian kings is, in fact, propagated by the kings themselves. Both the royal inscriptions and Achaemenid art present the kings as pursuing peace and harmony within their empire under the benevolent god Ahura Mazda, rather than intimidating their subjects and potential enemies with the kind of violent iconography we known from Assyrian reliefs.42 However, the Persian administrative and military culture was largely inherited from the Assyrians who, in practical terms, may not have been any more ruthless in their execution of power than their Persian successors, even though their own propaganda contributed heavily to their reputation in the ancient and even modern cultural memory.43 As both Marc Van De Mieroop and Salvatore Gaspa demonstrate in this volume, even the Assyrian sources do not glorify war for the war’s sake, but peace and harmony (šulmu) is the main feature of good governance. In terms of the “balance between intimidation and indulgence,”44 the Assyrians probably were more on the side of intimidation while the Persians relied more on indulgence; however, in the words of Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, “[n]either the Assyrians nor the Persians fully deserve their reputations: the former for terror, the latter for cultural tolerance. Rather, both responded to the conditions they encountered and both could be wielders of terror and destruction as well as the sophisticated creators of diplomatic relations.”45 39

See Lipschits / Tal, 2007. One of the “paradises,” that is, sumptuous gardens established by the Persian government, was probably located in Ramat Raḥel as a part of the administrative compound established under Assyrian hegemony in the late eighth–early seventh century BCE. The garden surrounding the palace was in full bloom in the Persian period: “The well-watered imperial Persian garden must have left a lasting impression on the viewers in this relatively arid environment. Its imported trees from far-off lands, aromatic plants and impressive fruit-trees, together with its aesthetic architectural features, symbolized the power and affluence of the Persian-period rulers” (Lipschits / Gadot / Langgut, 2012: 72). 41 For a synthesis of the sources and history of the Persian period Yehud, see Grabbe, 2004. 42 See especially Root, 1979; cf. Chan, 2017: 168–75. 43 Cf. Wiesehöfer, 2007b: 27. 44 See Stefano de Martino in this volume. 45 Fitzpatrick-McKinley, 2016: 164. 40

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Pax Persica did not mean that the Persian army stayed in its garrisons. On the contrary, the armies of Persian kings were constantly fighting on the borders of the empire, sometimes losing and sometimes conquering land for the empire. It is important to realize that, even if an empire is continuously waging war somewhere, this does not need to affect all parts of the empire. In the inner parts of the Persian empire, the conditions were stable and most of the people probably lived quite peacefully under their vines and fig trees. However, even if peace prevailed within an empire, it does not mean that everyone was equally safe and sound all the time; if this is the conditio sine qua non of peace, the whole concept becomes illusory. Life under any empire or any other political structure is never pure happiness and joy. Absence of war does not mean absence of violence, whether physical or structural. For most of the inhabitants of the vast empire, it would not have mattered much who was in charge of the supreme power which, in any case, was far away. What probably mattered more was the relationship between the local elites and the non-elite majority. The local elites seem to have profited from the relative stability of the Persian empire in Yehud,46 and this stability, in addition to a reasonable degree of self-censorship, is probably reflected in the unpolemical picture of Persia in the biblical texts. This, eventually, leads us to ask, whose peace it is we are talking about. Conclusion The statements about peace and peacemaking in the Hebrew Bible are first and foremost to be read within their textual contexts as narrative elements serving the purpose of the narrator, and this is even true for the lack of such statements. This makes the historical evaluation of the biblical peace-talk often difficult; especially the texts concerning pre-monarchic times cannot be taken at face value as descriptions of political realities of the time they describe. From the narrative perspective, peace is something to be hoped for, but it does not appear as the primary strategic goal of the royal narrative characters but is rather ascribed to divine providence. This is consistent with the ideology of “holy war,” that is, the idea that God is the primary agent in every just war, and even victory and peace are credited to divine agency. Hence, the absence of war and inimical aggression is not ultimately based on diplomacy but, rather, on trust in God and obeisance to his teaching. Since the ideal peace can hardly be considered reality at any given time, and swords have never been beaten into ploughshares, the ideal peace is presented as an eschatological utopia to take place only “in days to come” (bĕ-ʾaḥărît hay-yāmîm; Isa 2: 2–4). Against this theological/ideological background, it is understandable that even long peaceful periods under hegemonic empires are not hailed in terms of peace, but kings are evaluated according to their religious orthodoxy. Even fifty years of peace do not count if the king allows wrong kinds of worship.

46

See Silverman, 2019.

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Moreover, the biblical story of the Assyrian and Persian periods is narrated from the point of view of the victim. Peace is called peace in the narratives concerning the times when the kings of Israel and Judah were believed to have had an active political agency, but the word is avoided when they were not in charge of the political strategies and partnerships. The difference between Pax Assyriaca and Pax Persica is that between the different narrators’ points of view. Assyria belonged to the past and nobody was hurt if kings, whether Assyrian or Judean, were criticized. Persian government, on the other hand, was holding sway when a large part of the biblical narratives were written, and this may have had an effect on the treatment of the Persian authority in biblical texts written in the Persian period. Peace is all about power, and this makes even the biblical peace discourse dependent on political hierarchies and power structures. Bibliography Albertz, R., 2001: Die Exilszeit: 6. Jahrhundert v.Chr. Biblische Enzyklopädie 7. Stuttgart. Aster, S. Z., 2018: “Treaty and Prophecy: A Survey of Biblical Reactions to the Assyrian Political Thought.” In S.Z. Aster / A. Faust (eds.): The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination. University Park, PA. Pp. 89–118. Bagg, A., 2011: Die Assyrer und das Westland: Studien zur historischen Geographie und Herrschaftspraxis in der Levante im 1. Jt. v.u.Z. Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 216. Leuven. Baker, H.D., 2017: Neo-Assyrian Specialists: Crafts, Offices, and Other Professional Designations. The Prosopography of the Assyrian Empire vol 4/I. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Helsinki. Ben Zvi, E., 2000: Micah. Forms of the Old Testament Lliterature 21B. Grand Rapids. Briant, P., 2002: From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Trans. Peter D. Daniels. Winona Lake, IN. Chan, M.J., 2017: The Wealth of Nations: A Tradition-Historical Study. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2/93. Tübingen. Cogan, M., 2014: “Cross-examining the Assyrian Witnesses to Sennacherib’s Third Campaign: Assessing the Limits of Historical Reconstruction.” In I. Kalimi / S. Richardson (eds.): Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem: Story, History and Historiography. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 71. Leiden. Pp. 51–74. Fales, F.M., 2008: “On Pax Assyriaca in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries BCE and Its Implications.” In R. Cohen / R. Westbrook (eds.): Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords into Plowshares. New York. Pp. 17–35.

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Faust, A., 2018: “The Assyrian Century in the Southern Levant: An Overview of the Reality on the Ground.” In S.Z. Aster / A. Faust (eds.): The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination. University Park, PA. Pp. 20–55. Fitzpatrick-McKinley, A., 2016: “Continuity between Assyrian and Persian Policies toward the Cults of Their Subjects.” In D. Edelman / A. FitzpatrickMcKinley / P. Guillaume (eds.): Religion in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 17. Tübingen. Pp. 137–171. Grabbe, L.L., 2004: A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 1: Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah. The Library of Second Temple Studies 47. London. Grayson, A.K., 1996: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, II (858– 745 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 3. Toronto. Grayson, A.K. / Novotny, J., 2012: The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 1. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1. Winona Lake, IN. Hasegawa, S., 2012: Aram and Israel during the Jehuite Dynasty. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 434. Berlin. Hays, C.B. / Machinist, P., 2016: “Assyria and the Assyrians.” In B.T. Arnold / B.A. Strawn (eds.): The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East. Grand Rapids, MI. Pp. 31–105. Kalimi, I., 2013: “The Rise of Solomon in the Israelite Historiography.” In J. Verheyden (ed.): The Figure of Solomon in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Tradition: King, Sage, and Architect. Themes in Biblical Narrative 16. Leiden. Pp. 7–56. — 2018: Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel. Cambridge, UK. Knauf, E.A., 2003: “701: Sennacherib at the Berezina.” In L.L. Grabbe (ed.): “Like a Bird in a Cage”: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 363. Sheffield. Pp. 141–149. — 2005: “The Glorious Days of Manasseh.” In L.L. Grabbe (ed.): Good Kings and Bad Kings. The Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 393. London. Pp. 164–188. Koch, C., 2008: Vertrag, Treueid und Bund: Studien zur Rezeption des altorientalischen Vertragsrechts im Deuteronomium und zur Ausbildung der Bundestheologie im Alten Testament. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 383. Berlin. Kratz, R.G., 2011: “Judean Ambassadors and the Making of Jewish Identity: The Case of Hananiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah.” In O. Lipschits / G.N. Knoppers / M. Oeming (eds.): Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 421–444.

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Krüger, T., 2007: “‘They Shall Beat Their Swords into Plowshares’: A Vision of Peace through Justice and Its Background in the Hebrew Bible.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 161– 171. Leichty, E., 2011: The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680– 669 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4. Winona Lake, IN. Levin, C., 2013: “Die Entstehung der Bundestheologie im Alten Testament.” In C. Levin: Verheißung und Rechtfertigung: Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament II. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 431. Berlin. Pp. 242–259 (= Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse 2004. Göttingen. Pp. 89–104). Lewis, T.J., 2008: “‘You Have Heard What the Kings of Assyria Have Done’: Disarmament Passages vis-à-vis Assyrian Rhetoric of Intimidation.” In R. Cohen / R. Westbrook (eds.): Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords into Plowshares. New York. Pp. 75–100. Lipiński, E., 2000: The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion. Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 100. Leuven. Lipschits, O., 2006: “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement Processes in Palestine, and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century B.C.E.” In O. Lipschits / M. Oeming (eds.): Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 19–52. Lipschits, O. / Gadot, Y. / Langgut, D., 2012: “The Riddle of Ramat Raḥel: The Archaeology of a Royal Persian Period Edifice.” Transeuphratène 41, 57–79. Lipschits, O. / Tal, O., 2007: “The Settlement Archaeology of the Province of Judah: A Case Study.” In O. Lipschits / G.N. Knoppers / R. Albertz (eds.): Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 33–52. Maeir, A.M., 2017: “The Southern Kingdom of Judah Surrounded by Enemies.” In J. Ebeling / J.E. Wright / M. Elliott / P.V.M. Flesher (eds.): The Old Testament in Archeology and History. Waco, TX. Pp. 391–412. Milstein, S.J., 2016: Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature. New York. Na’aman, N., 2006a: “In Search of Reality behind the Account of David’s Wars.” In N. Na’aman: Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 38–61 (= Israel Exploration Journal 52 [2002]: 200–224). — 2006b: “Sources and Composition in the History of Solomon.” In N. Na’aman: Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 79–101 (= L.K. Handy (ed.): The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 11. Leiden. Pp. 57–80).

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— 2015: “The Book of Hosea as a Source for the Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel.” Biblische Zeitschrift 59, 232–256. Niditch, S., 2007: “War and Reconciliation in the Traditions of Ancient Israel: Historical, Literary, and Ideological Considerations.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 141–160. Nissinen, M., 1998: Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective. Minneapolis. — 2019a: “From Holy War to Holy Peace: Biblical Alternatives to Belligerent Rhetoric.” In M. Nissinen: Prophetic Divination: Essays in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 494. Berlin. Pp. 397–417 (= R. Cohen / R. Westbrooks (eds.), 2008: Isaiah’s Vision of Peace in Biblical and Modern International Relations: Swords into Plowshares. New York. Pp. 181–197). — 2019b. “The Book of Hosea and the Last Days of the Northern Kingdom: The Methodological Problem.” In M. Nissinen: Prophetic Divination: Essays in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 494. Berlin. Pp. 613–627 (= S. Hasegawa / C. Levin / K. Radner (eds.), 2019: The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 511. Berlin. Pp. 369–382). Novotny, J. / Jeffers, J. / Van Buylaere, G., 2018: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC) and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 1. The Royal Inscriptions of the NeoAssyrian Period 5/1. Winona Lake, IN. Parpola, S., 2003: “International Law in the First Millennium.” In R. Westbrook (ed.): A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, Vol. 2. Handbook of Oriental Studies 1/72/2. Leiden. Pp. 1047–1066. Raaflaub, K.A., 2007: “Introduction: Seraching for Peace in the Ancient World.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 1–33. Root, M.C., 1979: The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Acta Iranica 19. Leiden. Särkiö, P., 2013: “Solomon in History and Tradition.” In J. Verheyden (ed.): The Figure of Solomon in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Tradition: King, Sage, and Architect. Themes in Biblical Narrative 16. Leiden. Pp. 45–56. Silverman, J.M., 2019: Persian Royal–Judaean Elite Negotiations in the Early Teispid and Achaemenid Empire. The Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 690. London. Stavrakopoulou, F., 2004: King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 338. Berlin.

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— 2005. “The Blackballing of Manasseh.” In L.L. Grabbe (ed.): Good Kings and Bad Kings. The Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 393. London. Pp. 248–263. Tadmor, H. / Yamada, Sh., 2011: The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BC) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 BC), Kings of Assyria. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 1. Winona Lake, IN. Talmon, S., 1997: “The Signification of ‫ שׁלום‬and Its Sematic Field in the Hebrew Bible.” In C.A. Evans / S. Talmon (eds.): The Quest for Context and Meaning: Studies in Biblical Intertextuality in Honor of James A Sanders. Biblical Interpretation Series 28. Leiden. Pp. 75–115. Ussishkin, D., 2014: “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: The Archaeological Perspective with Emphasis on Lachish and Jerusalem.” In I. Kalimi / S. Richardson (eds.): Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem: Story, History and Historiography. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 71. Leiden. Pp. 75– 104. Valkama, K., 2010: “What Do Archaeological Remains Reveal of the Settlements in Judah during the Mid-Sixth Century BCE.” In E. Ben Zvi / C. Levin (eds.): The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 404. Berlin. Pp. 39–59. Van De Mieroop, M., 2007: A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC. Second Edition. Malden, MA. Wiesehöfer, J., 2007a: “From Achaemenid Imperial Order to Sasanian Diplomacy: War, Peace, and Reconciliation in Pre-Islamic Iran.” In K.A. Raaflaub (ed.): War and Peace in the Ancient World. Malden, MA. Pp. 121–140. — 2007b. “The Achaemenid Empire in the Fourth Century B.C.E.: A Period of Decline?” In O. Lipschits / G.N. Knoppers / R. Albertz (eds.): Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 13–30. Wilson, I.D., 2015: “Yahweh’s Anointed: Cyrus, Deuteronomy’s Law of the King, and Yehudite Identity.” In J.M. Silverman / C. Waerzeggers (eds.): Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire. Ancient Near East Monographs 13. Atlanta. Pp. 325–361. Younger, K.L., 2015: “The Assyrian Economic Impact on the Southern Levant in the Light of Recent Study,” Israel Exploration Journal 65, 179–204. — 2016: A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities. Archaeology and Biblical Studies 13. Atlanta.

Commemorating the End of Conflict in the Ancient Near East Material Perspectives Ann C. Gunter

The ancient Near Eastern material record is widely consulted as an almost unparalleled resource for investigating the subject of warfare. From the third millennium BCE onward, at least in Mesopotamia, representations preserved on stelae, cylinder seals, and large-scale reliefs depict humans engaged in armed combat with local or distant enemies, sometimes furnishing detailed evidence for military practices and technology. To this large corpus, we can add surviving examples of weapons and other battle gear recovered from archaeological contexts such as tombs and votive deposits. These monuments to military success, and defeat, include many of the most familiar and celebrated works of ancient Near Eastern art. Among these representations, “making peace” seems primarily to involve announcing or elaborating decisive battlefield triumph and its divine validation, a chief purpose clearly to identify the victors and commemorate the favorable outcome.1 If narrowly defined, a study of peacemaking in ancient Near Eastern art would thus seem fated to pursue a well-trodden path, revisiting a handful of images generally agreed to illustrate our conference theme.2 For a rich and nuanced account of peacemaking and its meaning in these cultural spheres, it might appear, we should search instead among the textual sources already investigated by many scholars, and freshly examined on the occasion of this gathering.3 1

I wish to thank Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia, and Robert Rollinger for inviting me to participate in this unforgettable meeting in Padua. It gave our highly collegial group of ancient specialists the opportunity also to benefit from the contributions of twentieth-century specialists. In addition, our visits to sites such as the Villa Giusti demonstrated the enduring significance of the locations where agreements to halt hostilities were formally concluded. I am also grateful to Theo van den Hout for reading a revised version and offering helpful suggestions. Suzanne Herbordt kindly gave permission to reproduce the Muwatalli sealing from the Nişantepe archive. 2 For example, the famous “handshake” between Shalmaneser III and the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi depicted on the carved throne base from Nimrud – an image also reproduced in our conference program. Kilmer, 1974: 182–183 with n. 24, suggested a possible connection of the gesture with figures of speech mentioned in second-millennium Akkadian treaties. 3 Recent publications exploring peacemaking in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, drawing primarily on textual sources, all with bibliography, include Raaflaub, 2007; Neumann / Dittman / Paulus / Neumann / Schuster-Brandis, eds., 2014; Raaflaub, 2016; Moloney / Williams, 2017; Davies, 2018.

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The stated aim of waging war was often to re-establish order in the world, with divine authorization and assistance. As others have observed, the material and cultural benefits resulting from the termination of conflict – however temporary – were indeed acknowledged in ancient texts and perhaps referenced in some of the surviving monuments. The well-known Early Dynastic “Standard of Ur,” recovered from a tomb in the Royal Cemetery at Ur in southern Mesopotamia, is surely the most frequently cited example. It is a roughly rectangular box of unknown function, originally wood decorated with lapis lazuli, carnelian, and shell comprising figural scenes arranged in horizontal registers on two long sides conventionally distinguished as “war” and “peace.”4 Julia Asher-Greve recently observed that the “peace” side, sometimes interpreted as representing a banquet with religious overtones, in fact more closely resembles a celebration following military success, with figures in the lower register carrying what appears to be war booty. Victory would signal peace, and therefore prosperity.5 Other monuments, too, bear images that we could plausibly connect with a notion of peace as a cultural value. Irene Winter has observed that the Mesopotamian rhetoric declaring the ruler as provider of abundance resulting from divine blessing was particularly common in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. Perhaps the visual counterpart, she suggests, was the scene of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) flanking the sacred tree that is repeated throughout the Northwest Palace, or was signalled aniconically in the ornamental bands framing the central field of the glazed brick panel from Fort Shalmaneser inscribed for Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE).6 Yet if we broaden our purview to consider aspects of the material role in the aftermath of war, or more specifically in processes of reconciliation, we find valuable evidence not only among representations but also in many of the written sources themselves. Treaties, for example, often stipulate a culturally significant place for their permanent display, along with instructions regarding their future consultation and its public performance.7 Texts also mention additional material components signalling the new order as part of the formal concluding of hostilities, such as the ritual disposition of weapons following combat.8 And, as others have convincingly argued, in the material realm we cannot neatly divorce making war from making peace. Aspects of war in art are equally crucial to our theme, as Tonio Hölscher has shown in his penetrating studies devoted to ancient Greece 4

Aruz, 2003: 97–100, for a description and illustrations. Asher-Greve, 2014: 32, with bibliography. See below for her comments on the Stele of the Vultures. 6 Winter, 2003; Pongratz-Leisten, 2015: 278–279. 7 For the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, see below. The rich Neo-Assyrian evidence is presented in Parpola / Watanabe, 1988; see also Fales, 2012, and Lauinger, 2013, for a new exemplar and discussion. 8 Capomacchia / Rivaroli, 2014: 171–181, with bibliography, on Neo-Assyrian royal rituals. 5

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and Rome.9 Representations of conflict, he observes, created after the events they purport to record, played a highly significant role in creating a public memory of war and its aftermath on multiple levels. First, for the victors they were a powerful means of constructing political dichotomies that helped formulate both the justification for war and the conditions for ending conflict. They assisted mightily in creating a collective self and a collective enemy. Second, along with rituals and ceremonies, monuments and the material realm more broadly were critical to transforming short-term military victories into durable political power. Representations of war and its aftermath thus not only shaped a shared memory of conflict, but also effectively set the terms for its resolution. Zainab Bahrani has compellingly explored the material dimension of armed conflict with special reference to ancient Mesopotamia, emphasizing the profound reconfiguration of architecture, monuments, and images as both a chief strategy and consequence of war. These actions, she observes, included the removal, destruction, or mutilation of divine images belonging to the defeated enemies.10 The theme of divine abandonment of the enemy in favour of the conqueror’s gods is attested in Mesopotamia from the third millennium onward, especially in firstmillennium written and representational sources: literally and symbolically, the gods left their homes. Since the altered or relocated images functioned to signify the new order following conquest, they could also play a significant role in processes of reconciliation. The Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) returned exiled images of Babylonian deities to a number of their home cities, including Der, Babylon, Uruk, and Larsa.11 His reign also saw the return of Babylonian gods from Elam, and Elamite gods to their original locations.12 Perhaps the most detailed account of abduction and return concerns the cult image of Marduk, patron deity of the city of Babylon, whose multiple travels outside his main temple, Esagila, are documented beginning in the Old Babylonian period and depicted in an eighth-century Neo-Assyrian relief.13 9

Hölscher, 2003: esp. 3–4, 12–16; Hölscher, 2006; my discussion is deeply indebted to both contributions. See also the other papers in Dillon / Welch, 2006. On battle trophies in the Greek and Roman spheres: Hölscher, 2006: 29–34; Trundle, 2013; and Kinnee, 2018, all with further references. 10 Bahrani, 2008: 139–140 (Old Babylonian stele of Dadusha), 160–175; Gunter, 2009: 168–169; multiple contributions to May, ed., 2012; Zaia, 2015; Melville, 2018: 32–34; all provide further references. Compare the Roman response to defeat: “Rome’s response to heavy casualties in warfare was not to remember the individuals who had lost their lives, but to lament a serious reversal in Rome’s fortunes and to seek to win back the gods’ support” (Cooley, 2012: 80). 11 Porter, 1993: 60–61, 137–148; Melville, 2018: 33. See also Cole / Machinist, 1998: xi– xiii, with further references. 12 Bahrani, 2008: 171, with references; see 163–164, 173–175, for the removal of royal images. 13 Recent discussions include Porter, 1993: 138–148; Bahrani, 2008: 166–173; and Mel-

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Fig. 1: Stele depicting Shalmaneser III. Found at Kurkh, near Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey; reign of Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE). Limestone; h. 2.21 m. British Museum ME 118884. © The Trustees of the British Museum. ville, 2018: 38–39, all with bibliography.

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The rock reliefs and stelae fashioned by Neo-Assyrian kings in conquered territory following battlefield victories form another category of monuments closely associated with the military campaigns during which they were carved and erected, as texts and representations attest. Yet they served multiple functions beyond the celebration of battlefield success, as several scholars have recently demonstrated. These commemorative monuments gathered ritual performances around them and with their presence constituted sites of cult practice: sacrificial rituals, feasting, and washing and raising the sacred “weapons of Aššur.”14 They typically show the king as worshiper, accompanied by the symbols of chief deities (Fig. 1). Stelae placed in temples reinforced and perpetuated a relationship of dominance, yet they also helped sustain Assyrian political power by providing an enduring image of Assyrian kingship in the presence of divine witnesses. Moreover, despite the rhetoric of royal inscriptions claiming conquest and new urban foundations in previously uninhabited or long-deserted territory, Assyrian kings overwhelmingly carved and inscribed images on rock faces at sites that were already powerful landscapes of profound local cultic significance.15 Thus, the mutable, dynamic character of the material record with respect to waging war allows us to reposition many of these images and monuments as valuable sources for investigating a comparable agency during the aftermath of conflict and in processes of reconciliation. A similar mutability, and prolonged duration, extends to the material world outside the domain of representations. After the battle, weapons became burial gifts, symbols of office or status, and temple votives; some returned to service in armed conflict.16 In addition, these material agents of destruction themselves changed considerably over the long span of antiquity. As organization, scale, technology, and tactics developed, so too did the difficulty and long-term nature of battlefield success, the potential scope and duration of devastation, and the likelihood of irreversible consequences: the virtual annihilation of the enemy, the permanent loss of territory or inhabitable land and means of livelihood.17 For this reason, what peacemaking involved or encompassed – that is, what followed the cessation of armed conflict – accordingly also changed markedly over time.18 New approaches to military history pioneered in 14

Important contributions include Kreppner, 2002; Shafer, 2007; Harmanşah, 2007; Schachner, 2007; Schachner, ed., 2009; Köroğlu, 2018. 15 Harmanşah, 2007; Schachner, ed., 2009. For the Hittite monuments, see Harmanşah, 2019, with bibliography. 16 Capomacchia / Rivaroli, 2014: 171–172, productively approach war and peace in the Neo-Assyrian context as successive conditions or states of being, requiring highly ritualized recognition and material signalling. 17 Hölscher, 2006: 29, on the ephemeral nature of military success and political power in Archaic Greece. For the elaborate technology of the Neo-Assyrian war machine, see the references given below. 18 For a more recent example: Saunders, 2004, emphasizes World War I as the first global industrialized war, creating an unprecedented scale of devastation and permanent battle-

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other cultural spheres have enlarged their orbit to address the manifold dimensions and consequences of warfare beyond battlefield tactics and technology, further dissolving sharp boundaries between studies of “war” and studies of “peace.” This intellectual shift, reflected also in ancient Near Eastern scholarship, has turned attention to defeat as well as victory, and to the impact on civilian populations on both sides.19 In this paper, I briefly outline the potential of our sources to elaborate the material role in creating a new order following armed conflict. Recent contributions in the ancient Near Eastern field have productively emphasized material agency, performativity, and object biography, providing new understanding of the impact of monuments at various moments in their histories – of fundamental importance to my discussion. I draw on well-known objects from different eras and cultural spheres in Near Eastern antiquity to illustrate a few possible directions and promising categories of evidence. Undoubtedly, many other aspects of the material role in commemoration and reconciliation merit exploration. Studies could address the creation of battlefield landscapes (including burial sites) and their post-conflict history, perhaps also within the wider category of war memorials.20 Another interesting dimension involves the visibility of weapons or armour outside the arena of formal combat: as an item of dress or insignia, a burial gift, or a votive. The mace, for example, was a weapon apparently invented in Neolithic times for handto-hand combat and widely used until the mid-third millennium BCE. It also became an attribute of rulers and deities, and a ceremonial and ritual object dedicated in temples, and it retained those functions long after its abandonment on the battlefield.21 Yet, as Michael Sebbane has noted, even as a votive object it could field sites. 19 Studies reflecting fresh approaches to the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, including perspectives influenced by the “New Military History,” include multiple contributions by Davide Nadali and Jordi Vidal. See Nadali / Vidal, eds., 2014; Neumann / Dittman / Paulus / Neumann / Schuster-Brandis, eds., 2014; Clark / Turner, eds., 2018; all with additional bibliography. The papers in Battini, ed., 2016 consider images of war from different periods of Mesopotamian history. For textual and representational evidence of military defeat drawn from another cultural sphere, see Normore, 2016. Recent studies addressing materiality with special reference to World War I include Saunders, ed., 2004; Saunders / Cornish, eds., 2009. 20 Richardson, 2007: 193–196, assembles and analyses references to the construction of burial mounds of enemy dead to mark the end of victorious military campaigns in texts dating from the Early Dynastic to Old Babylonian periods. A burial mound of dead soldiers is depicted on the Early Dynastic Stele of the Vultures: Bonatz / Heinz, 2019: 239. Pollard, 2007 reflects on the contested status of the post-conflict battlefield with reference to more recent history. For recent studies of war memorials in ancient Greece and Rome, see Low, 2012; Arrington, 2015; and Cooley, 2012. 21 Sebbane, 2016, with extensive bibliography, examines evidence from the fifth to third millennia BCE in Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, and Egypt. See also Rehm, 2003,

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preserve its potential for reuse as a weapon. In Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, he writes, “it seems that mace-heads were dedicated in temples by the population as a whole, and the collections may also have functioned as communal arsenals.”22 Such deposits must also have served along with other material remains, often housed in sacred spaces, to construct public memories of conflict and reconciliation.23 In keeping with our cross-cultural perspective, I also seek to open points of intersection with contributions treating other temporal, geographical, and cultural realms. Given the rich diachronic record furnished by the ancient Near East, investigating the material role in processes of peacemaking also has the capacity to offer broader insights into human behaviour. Studies of reconciliation among various primate species attest several widely shared practices, including the importance of publicly communicating the new, peaceful order to the entire community and the central role of mechanisms signalling dominance and submission. Among primates, however, only the human species is known to offer gifts or food as a common component of the peacemaking process.24 The iconic monument? The stele, the ruler, and the aftermath of battle The term stele (Akkadian narû), “erected stone,” designates stone monuments used to mark boundaries, or inscribed with legal texts or regulations, often set up in temple courtyards.25 An oblong or rectangular stone block carved on one or both sides with text or images or both, varying considerably in size, the stele was established already in the Uruk period as the formal material vehicle for communicating the ruler’s crucial role as hunter of wild beasts, thus conqueror of chaos and protector of human society.26 Recent scholarship has instructively explored this class of monuments as performative, perpetuating events or declarations through their durable material, accompanying texts guaranteeing inviolability through curse formulae, and placement often at a boundary or in a sacred setting. Two famous examples, the stele of Eannatum and the stele of Naram-Sin, examining evidence for weapons in diverse archaeological contexts and in written and representational sources. Braun-Holzinger / Rehm, 2005: 41–76, discuss the first-millennium history of the mace. Bahrani, 2008: 189–197, offers a fascinating discussion of divine and divinely enhanced weapons in Mesopotamia. On the visibility of warriors and weapons in the visual culture of ancient Greece, see Hölscher, 2003: 2–12; van Wees, 1998. 22 Sebbane, 2016: 466. 23 Jonker, 1995, contributes fundamentally to the subject of materiality and collective memory in ancient Mesopotamia. See also Di Paolo, 2016, on war, art, and public memory. 24 De Waal, 1989: 45, 163, 253–255. 25 Jonker, 1995: 81–83; Liverani, 2017: 91–98, and Suter, 2019: 385–386, with further references. 26 Pongratz-Leisten, 2019: 289–290 with fig. 12.1, for the well-known Uruk stele depicting the ruler hunting lions.

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both record a specific military victory; yet they exhibit crucial differences in subject, composition, purpose, locus of display, and therefore also audience. Thus, how they functioned to transform a short-term battlefield success into enduring political power differs in several key respects.

Fig. 2: Stele of Eannatum (“Stele of the Vultures”), detail of reverse. Telloh (ancient Girsu); Early Dynastic period (ca. 2450 BCE). Limestone; h. 1.70 m. Louvre Museum AO50; AO2346. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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The Early Dynastic Stele of the Vultures, or stele of Eannatum, is a large stone block carved on both sides with images arranged in horizontal registers, which together with its lengthy inscription describes a border conflict between the neighbouring Sumerian city-states of Lagash and Umma (Fig. 2).27 It is often considered the first surviving example that created both an iconic form and iconography of military victory and its divine sanction. The obverse presents the mythical version of the battle: Ningirsu, patron deity of Lagash, holds his captured enemies in a net. The reverse presents the earthly conflict in a series of episodes that emphasize the collective nature of warfare on behalf of a community, yet singles out the special role of Eannatum, shown at the head of his troops.28 Recent discussions have emphasized the stele’s significance in the category of boundary markers and legal documents, and thus not only as a monument commemorating the border dispute it records. “It is a monument of war,” writes Bahrani, “yet rather than simply commemorate a victory, it is also a contractual agreement to terminate a state of war.”29 Although the surviving fragments were almost exclusively found in Telloh (ancient Girsu), she has argued that the stele was originally set up not in a sanctuary, but on the boundary between the warring city-states and thus accessible as a public monument.30 The Victory Stele of the Akkadian king Naram-Sin is often celebrated for unprecedented iconographic developments in representing both the ruler and the divine role in military success (Fig. 3).31 Naram-Sin, wearing a horned helmet signifying divinity, stands at the top of a mountain, above a scene of well-ordered Akkadian soldiers and defeated Zagros mountain peoples; the accompanying text specifies the enemy and location of the battle. The single, culminating scene incorporates rich landscape details specific to the battle commemorated here, yet simultaneously alludes to the state’s vast geographical and cultural expanse. I wish to emphasize the novel depiction of a foreign enemy and its profound alterity, presenting a radical contrast between the well-armed Akkadian soldiers and the defeated Zagros peoples wearing animal skins. While the Eannatum stele declared the temporary end of hostilities between neighbouring city-states deeply interconnected both socially and culturally, the Naram-Sin stele presents a stark and perhaps unbridgeable divide between victor and subdued enemy. Its dramatic 27

Aruz, 2003: 189–191; see also the references in the following notes. For the text, see Frayne, 2008: 1.9.3.1. 28 Winter, 1985 provides a superb and comprehensive analysis, with special reference to historical narrative; see also Collins, 2019: 268–271, for additional thoughtful observations. 29 Bahrani, 2008: 151; see also Asher-Greve, 2014: 32–34. 30 Bahrani, 2008: 153; Winter, 1985: 23–25, proposes an original location in the sanctuary of Ningirsu. 31 Recent discussions, with further references, include Winter, 1996; Winter, 1999; Bahrani, 2008: 101–114.

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Fig. 3: Victory Stele of Naram-Sin. Susa; Akkadian period, reign of NaramSin (2254–2218 BCE). Limestone; h. 1.98 m. Musée du Louvre, AO Sb 4. Photo: Herve Lewandowski. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

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rendering of the Zagros enemies, clothed in animal skins, persisted as a stereotypical portrayal of these mountain peoples into Neo-Assyrian times.32 In his study of war in Greek and Roman art, Hölscher observed that the victory monument was not neutral, but rather a potent political symbol that could also become a weapon.33 The Akkadian victory stele’s enduring and contested power is also revealed by the subsequent history of several examples, as scholars have freshly reexamined.34 Two fragmentary victory stelae belonging to Sargon were found at Susa; whether both were deliberately mutilated is not certain, nor is the identity of any perpetrators. Other Akkadian stelae (and royal statues) were removed through abduction, apparently intact, and reappropriated through reinscription and relocation. The Naram-Sin stele was taken by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte from Sippar to Susa more than a thousand years after its creation. The same Elamite ruler also removed and reinscribed statues of Manishtushu from Agade and Eshnunna, also to “protect them.” The formal concluding of hostilities: material dimensions Stone monuments combining a written declaration of military victory with carved images of the human conflict they commemorated comprise one category of the material role in ending hostilities and transforming battlefield success into stable political power. For another perspective, I turn to a period of ancient Near Eastern history that has yielded substantial evidence for treaties and diplomatic correspondence between king and vassal, and also among kings of equal status, over a wide geographical and cultural expanse. The process of peacemaking itself and the maintaining of cordial relations could also depend on their material and symbolic expression, as well-studied examples from the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean world amply demonstrate. Not the least significant in this respect were the treaties themselves, material objects that could bear both text and images and were deposited or displayed in culturally significant and symbolic settings.35 The Hittite treaties indicate that most were inscribed on tablets made of bronze or iron, as mentioned in their texts and exemplified by the bronze example recovered in 1986 at the Hittite capital Hattusa (modern Boğazköy).36 By contrast, the famous treaty between Hattusili 32

Roaf, 2005: 309–311, with further references. Hölscher, 2006: 27–29. I mentioned above the Mesopotamian practice of removing or destroying divine images during warfare, and the enduring potency of these images in their new homes or altered states. 34 Westenholz, 2012, with further references, analyses evidence for the mutilation and destruction of Akkadian monuments and inscriptions. 35 For the important Neo-Assyrian evidence for treaties, see Parpola / Watanabe, 1988; Fales, 2012; and Lauinger, 2013; all with bibliography. 36 Beckman, 1999: 2–3; no. 18C §28, enumerates the copies and their sealings, and where they are to be deposited; see also no. 31A §4: “This tablet will answer whoever makes a 33

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III and Ramesses II (c. 1259 BCE) states that the original documents were “written on silver tablets and placed before their respective chief deities.”37 The preparation of the tablets was the subject of lengthy correspondence between the two kings.38 The Egyptian versions of the treaty text further reveal the importance of a seal on such a document, carefully describing the tablet and its royal seal impressions on front and back, both images and inscriptions, that correspond closely to surviving examples of Hittite royal seals preserved on cuneiform tablets and bullae (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: The Hittite king Muwatalli II embraced by the storm-god. Seal impression and drawing from Nişantepe archive, Boğazköy (Hattusa). From Die Siegel der Grosskönigen und Grossköniginnen auf Tonbullen aus dem Nişantepe-Archiv in Hattusa, Boğazköy-Ḫattuša 23 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2011), pl. 9 no. 39.1. Copyright archive of the Boğazköy Expedition, DAI, Berlin. “What is in the middle of the tablet of silver: on its front side: figures consisting of an image of Seth embracing an image of the Great Prince [of Hatti], surrounded by a border with the words: ‘the seal of Seth, the ruler of the sky; the seal of the treaty which Hattusili concluded, the Great Prince of Hatti, the powerful, the son of Mursili, the Great Prince of Hatti, the powerful …’ ”39 complaint.” 37 Smith, 2010: 51, whose valuable discussion of the divine witnesses I follow closely; for the treaty text, see Edel, 1997. See also Bryce, 2006; Bickel, 2016: 58–60; both with bibliography. 38 On the languages of the original texts, see Smith, 2010: 51 n. 60, with further references. 39 Adapted from Edel, 1997: 82–83 (hieroglyphic text); 102–104, on problems of the textual description of the seal (“on front and back”). How sealings would be attached to metal tablets is not fully understood. Feldman, 2006: 153–155, comments on seals and sealings in the treaties. See Postgate, 2013: 401: “Akkadian treaties on clay tablets from Ugarit

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Also central to the ceremony and its efficacy were the divine witnesses named in the text. In the treaty between Egypt and Hatti the divine witnesses of each party are listed first as corporate entities, followed by the names of specific deities in the pantheon. As Mark S. Smith has observed, “the making of the treaty is also the occasion for a meeting of the two sets of deities, as it were, an international divine council, so that they may witness to its terms.”40 An earlier treaty (c. 1340 BCE) between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Shattiwaza of Mittanni elaborates how the deities were understood to perform as divine witnesses: “they shall stand and listen and be witnesses to these words of the treaty.”41 The Hittite and Hurrian deities are then listed. These texts may suggest that images of deities travelled to function as witnesses for the ritual concluding of a treaty, and other second-millennium texts attest similar practices regarding separate forms of diplomatic activity.42 Statues of deities also travelled to witness marriage alliances between royal families, such as the occasion that prompted Ishtar of Nineveh’s travel to Egypt.43 When Iawi-Ila, king of Talhayum, became the vassal of Zimri-Lim, he was instructed to send the gods to his new overlord so that the Mari king could swear in the presence of the local deities his vow to be a protective sovereign.44 The Hittite treaties often stipulate where the tablets were to be deposited and displayed, along with their ongoing role in perpetuating the agreement. Thus, in the treaty between Suppiluliuma and Shattiwaza:

establish that while the format of a treaty tablet could vary depending on the scribal tradition in which it was composed, the presence of a seal was a regular requirement.” 40 Smith, 2010: 57. 41 Smith, 2010: 57; Beckman, 1999: 6A §15; see also no. 6B §8, §9; no. 12 §13; no. 13 §17–20. 42 Although the treaties were agreements between two persons (in this case, Great Kings), the rulers themselves – unlike the statues of deities – did not travel to witness the swearing of oaths. Beckman, 2014: 120: “Since it is extremely unlikely that any of the Great Kings of the Late Bronze Age ever met personally, the oaths must have been sworn by their respective envoys to one another’s courts.” 43 Moran, 1992: 62 n.2 (EA 23: 13–17), Tushratta of Mittanni sends Ishtar of Nineveh to Egypt in connection with marriage alliance; see also Moran, 1992: 252 (EA 164: 27–34), Aziru sends divine images with a messenger to witness an oath: “Here are my gods and my messenger.” This practice seems to have transcended disparate cultural spheres that held different notions about deity, representation, image, and tablet. For the Hittite material, reflecting notions of materiality regarding image and text unlike those attested in Mesopotamia, see Goedegebuure, 2012. See also Meier, 2007: 188 n. 15, with bibliography, citing an Old Babylonian instance in which a god’s weapon as divine symbol could be contracted in order to travel to resolve disputes or witness oaths. 44 Meier, 2007: 194–196, also cites examples in Neo-Assyrian texts of gods travelling to ratify treaties: see Cole / Machinist, 1998: no. 32. Note also the Mari letter ARM 26 199, (Heimpel, 2003: 253): “[They] keep writing [you] for peace, [and] they will dispatch their gods [to you].”

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“A duplicate of this tablet is deposited before the Sun-goddess of Arinna, since the Sun-goddess of Arinna governs kingship and queenship. And in the land of Mittanni a duplicate is deposited before the Storm-god, lord of the kurinnu of Kahat. It shall be read repeatedly forever and ever, before the king of the land of Mittanni and before the Hurrians.”45

Fig. 5: Stele depicting treaty ceremony. Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit); 14th–13th century BCE. Limestone; h. 21.8 cm. Aleppo Museum 4418 (RS7.116). National Museum, Aleppo, Syria. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. 45

Beckman, 1999: no. 6A §13; no. 18C §28. See also Beckman, 2014: 118, on the performative nature of the treaty ceremony, involving recitation of the text.

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Treaty rituals apparently took place in a temple or perhaps a palace, in the presence of the divine statues. A small stele found at Ras Shamra / Ugarit near the temple of Baal has long been interpreted as commemorating a treaty ceremony (Fig. 5). It depicts two male figures both in Syrian dress, perhaps indicating that they are rulers of neighbouring kingdoms and of equivalent status.46 They appear on either side of a stand on which documents are placed, perhaps a folded writingboard rather than tablets, as Nicholas Postgate has suggested.47 Letters from Mari and Amarna provide textual examples of oaths of alliance taking place in a temple.48 The Amarna correspondence, a corpus of some 400 clay tablets and fragments dating to the reigns of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten (c. 1360–1330 BCE), has long established that valuable materials were regularly exchanged upon demand among the courts of political powers in the Late Bronze Age, and that these exchanges constituted a critical component of peaceful coexistence.49 Building on this political and cultural context, Marian Feldman has argued that a small group of finished luxury items with a generally shared repertoire of imagery, composition, technique, or ornament might be understood as surviving examples of the greeting gifts (šulmānu) mentioned prominently in the correspondence. She began with a set of objects linked to one another by earlier generations of scholars and labelled an “international style,” whose findspots ranged widely over the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean, and Near East: elaborately decorated furniture, ceremonial weapons and vessels, and specialized containers for prized substances such as perfumed ointment, fashioned from rare and intrinsically valuable materials such as ivory and precious metal (Fig. 6). These objects initially gained scholarly attention because of their exquisite craftsmanship and elite contexts, among them the tomb of Tutankhamun, and because their styles could not be readily assigned to existing categories defined by regional or “national” boundaries. Feldman redefined this group to yield an “international artistic koiné” connected by many features of material, technique of manufacture, and decoration. The main themes of their imagery – animal combats and animals with vegetation – represent longstanding traditions connected with kingship in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. Creatures often depicted include animals existing in nature, especially lions and other felines, along with exotic, composite creatures such as sphinxes and griffins.50 46

Yon, 1991: 304. Postgate, 2013: 401–402. 48 Smith, 2010: 58, with further references. 49 Moran, 1992: xxiv–xxv; Feldman, 2006: esp. 105–127, with extensive literature; see also Liverani, 2008. Mynářová, 2014, provides an overview of the Amarna corpus, with special attention to the letters from client rulers in the Levant that comprise most of the correspondence. 50 Feldman, 2006: 25–87. For critical comments on the construction of the “koiné,” see, 47

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Fig. 6: Openwork plaque carved with female sphinx holding vessel with cartouche shapes. Megiddo, Treasury; late 13th or 12th cent. BCE. Ivory; h. 9.9 cm. Oriental Institute Museum A2213. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Feldman proposed that the “international koiné” formed a network of prestige items exchanged through diplomatic gift and counter-gift, their culturally neutral, “hybrid” imagery deliberately created for diplomatic purposes. Yet both texts and archaeological evidence suggest that rulers and ruling elites frequently sought to acquire not culturally neutral but in fact explicitly exotic materials, styles, and for example, Reynolds, 2007; and Fischer / Wicke, 2011, who also question the notion of an “International Style.” Aruz / Benzel / Evans, 2008, is a well-illustrated, detailed study of the Late Bronze Age long-distance exchange of luxury materials and objects.

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techniques of manufacture.51 There is no question, however, that the robust material exchange amply documented in the diplomatic correspondence played a crucial role across multiple cultural spheres, at the most exalted levels of political power.52 After the battle: bringing the material benefits of conquest to the imperial centre For well over a century, the extensive carved reliefs that decorated interior palace walls at royal centers in the Assyrian heartland have been scrutinized for their detailed visual narratives describing the mechanics of war-making: offensive and defensive weapons and armor, siege tactics, fortifications, military camps, and the like. While often mined for their presumed documentary value in reconstructing the history of warfare, like the Assyrian royal inscriptions they are simultaneously understood as ideological statements or “propaganda,” and thereby assumed to distort the record of actual events, or at least to omit crucial episodes such as battlefield losses and tactical defeats.53 Complex scenes elaborating military victories in the Assyrian palaces preserved and perpetuated those accomplishments and the new order they spectacularly achieved.54 In addition, the rich details and degree of specificity in depicting dress, weaponry, landscape, and architecture arguably helped “substantiate and authenticate the veracity of the historical narratives.”55 The so-called realism of the Neo-Assyrian campaign depictions returns us to the crucial consideration of audience. The visibility of the palace reliefs, especially scenes of violence, has emerged as a prominent topic of scholarly debate: what scenes were accessible to whom, and on what occasions? One targeted audience was arguably the defeated enemy – or more precisely its future envoys, whose annual tribute delivery to the imperial centre, perhaps in the palace itself, would thereby be reminded of the might of Aššur. This aim might have further encouraged a documentary treatment, furnishing recognizable features of land51

On the exotic appeal of non-local styles to the cosmopolitan elite in the “international” Late Bronze Age community, see Panagiotopoulos, 2012: 58, and other contributions cited in his bibliography. 52 Feldman, 2006: esp. 145–156. 53 For the Neo-Assyrian army, see the surveys by Fales, 2010: 95–151; Melville, 2016: 21–50; Dalley, 2017. More detailed studies include Dezső, 2012; De Backer, 2013; and De Backer, 2016. Recent decades have witnessed a wealth of impressive scholarship on Neo-Assyrian art and its images of military campaigns. Among recent contributions, see Nadali, 2016, on the reliefs as historical sources; Fales, 2009; papers in Battini, ed., 2016; and Russell, 2017, all with rich bibliography. 54 Recent thoughtful discussions on the visual narratives as perpetuating triumph in the imperial centre include Nadali, 2013; Collins, 2014. 55 Dillon, 2006: 259, acknowledging inspiration for her study of women in Roman historical reliefs from historians of Neo-Assyrian art, citing Marcus, 1995, and Winter, 1981.

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scape, fortifications, local dress and weaponry, and references to unique events.56 On the issue of audience may hinge whether we interpret images of the brutal treatment of enemies and prisoners as preemptive, for example, perhaps aimed at deterring future rebellion or violation of a treaty oath: to preserve the new order, in other words. Like the royal inscriptions, some scholars contend, images of torture and punishment carved on palace walls were largely inaccessible; it was the acts themselves, as public spectacles staged in real time, that were intended to intimidate.57

Fig. 7: Detail, Assyrian soldier receives bracelet and scribes record enemy heads. Nineveh, Southwest Palace, Room 28; Neo-Assyrian period (ca. 645–625 BCE). Gypsum alabaster; h. relief ca. 1.52 m. British Museum ME 124955. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Yet the visual record dominated from the ninth century onward by campaigns in foreign lands also underscored the terms of capitulation by the defeated enemy, which involved not least the conspicuous seizure and ceremonial delivery of ma56

Seymour, 2016: esp. 75–77, offers a thoughtful discussion of this scholarly perspective, with bibliography. On the audience for the Neo-Assyrian reliefs, see also Bahrani, 2008: 219–223; Fales, 2010: 63–65, on the divine audience for the royal inscriptions and palace reliefs; Collins, 2014. On the issue of audience for ancient Near Eastern images more broadly, see Bonatz / Heinz, 2019: 238. 57 Bagg, 2016: esp. 70–71; on the practice of impalement, see also Radner, 2015.

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terial wealth. After the battle, those who had distinguished themselves in combat were rewarded for their service. Karen Radner has drawn attention to the prizes awarded to Assyrian soldiers for collecting weapons and the heads of high-value enemies (Fig. 7). Royal gifts of tangible property as visible signs of esteem to military officers – personal ornaments, valuable textiles, and weapons – could also extend to slaves, land, and tax exemptions.58 The substantial material benefits yielded by the imperial project was communicated directly to court personnel and members of the royal family through gifts of select items of booty, which formed important income for the king’s magnates.59 The prominent themes of collecting booty and presenting tribute unquestionably emphasized Assyrian conquest and domination, but they must also have signalled to the imperial centre the material benefits of military action in distant locations. The campaign scenes in Nineveh’s Southwest Palace, observes Michael Seymour, with their exceptionally detailed visual accounts of foreign peoples and places sometimes further identified by inscribed labels, “set up a unique visual dynamic between the occupants of the palace and the world they governed” (Fig. 8).60 The primary intended viewership for the seventh-century reliefs consisted not of foreign visitors, he suggests, but subjects living in the imperial centre, perhaps above all high-ranking court officials and members of the royal family.61 Another dimension of that dynamic lay in the very construction of buildings in the imperial capital and their decoration, as Paul Collins has noted with respect to Sennacherib’s reliefs depicting prisoners carrying the materials to build and decorate the palace in which the sculptures themselves are now displayed: “The result is the representation of a creative act at the centre of the state using resources acquired through the defeat of chaos,” he writes.62

58

Radner, 2011: 43–49, also notes the rewards for individual bravery and heroic sacrifice on the battlefield. On the importance of burial in Mesopotamian culture, see Melville, 2016: 187–192, who considers the issue in the context of Sargon’s death while on campaign in Tabal. 59 Gunter, 2009: 171–174, with bibliography. Whether or to what extent carved ivories in Levantine styles acquired as booty or tribute were used by the Assyrian royal family is debated. Kertai, 2015, discusses the archaeological evidence from Nimrud, with further references. 60 Seymour, 2016: 65. 61 Seymour, 2016: 76–77. 62 Collins, 2014: 635.

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Fig. 8: Detail, Teumman and his son fall from their chariot and flee during battle of Til-Tuba. Nineveh, Southwest Palace (ca. 653 BCE). Gypsum; h. entire relief 2.04 m. British Museum ME 124801b. © The Trustees of the British Museum. The large-scale images decorating Assyrian palaces in the homeland would thus have effectively extended the participation of many who had not themselves been engaged in far-off campaigns.63 In this respect, they functioned in part to transform distant battlefield victories into enduring political power. This purpose might also help explain the importance of tribute scenes as a key component in Assyrian depictions of the aftermath of war. However widespread the imposition of tribute in the ancient hegemonic states of southwest Asia, in official artistic representations the theme of its formal delivery was exceptional; for this reason, Assyrian practice deserves our attention (see Fig. 9). Two types of tribute delivery are attested in Assyrian royal inscriptions and depicted in palace reliefs and other representations: “spot tribute,” offered at the moment of victory on the battlefield or following a siege; and the annual ceremonial presentation of tribute that took

63

Hölscher, 2006: 34–45, on Roman practices for transforming victories into political power and extending participation through rituals, monuments, and other material means.

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Fig. 9 Tribute bearers at the Assyrian court. Drawing of relief from Palace of Sargon, Khorsabad (Dur-Šarrukin), Salle X, bas-relief 7; reign of Sargon II (721–705 BCE). From P. É. Botta and E. Flandin, Monument de Ninive (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1849–50), 2: pl. 129. New York Public Library digital collections; public domain.

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place at the Assyrian court.64 These scenes eloquently constructed the end of conflict as a recurring moment or event in the history of a given campaign, repeated in multiple rooms of the palace or on multiple monuments of a single ruler, as among surviving monuments of Shalmaneser III. Indeed, campaigns could also be narrated as a history of tribute delivery, as on the throne base of Shalmaneser III from Fort Shalmaneser. Its carved reliefs depict not battles in distant lands, but rather the presentation of tribute from Syrian and Chaldaean campaigns, along with scenes of the king.65 The Assyrian material success resulting from conquest in distant lands thus helped signal the new order; it was perpetuated on the palace walls and performed annually on the occasion of formal tribute delivery to the imperial centre. Conclusions In many societies past and present, surviving monuments almost invariably privilege conquest and the military achievements of the victors, not the celebration of peace and reconciliation. Nonetheless, Mesopotamia (if not all societies in the ancient Near Eastern sphere) provides surprisingly rich evidence for investigating key aspects of our theme: how monuments and images helped transform the shortterm and sometimes ambiguous event of battlefield victory into long-term political power, and the consequences of creating such potent symbols; the role of material wealth and its ceremonial redistribution in maintaining that power; and the ways in which authoritative images and their rituals of appearance, transfer, and display contributed indispensably to the formal termination of hostilities and its mutual acknowledgment. From this perspective, the material role was fundamental. Bibliography Arrington, N., 2015: Ashes, images, and memories: the presence of the war dead in fifth-century Athens. Oxford. Aruz, J. (ed.), 2003: Art of the first cities: the third millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York / New Haven. Aruz, J. / Benzel, K. / Evans, J. M., 2008: Beyond Babylon: art, trade, and diplomacy in the second millennium B.C. New York / New Haven. Asher-Greve, J., 2014: “Insinuations of peace in literature, the Standard of Ur, and the Stele of Vultures.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittman / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale/International Congress of As64

See Bär, 1996, and Radner, 2007, with bibliography; Fales, 2010: 207–228, on the aims and benefits of Assyrian conquest. See also Gaspa in this volume. 65 Yamada, 2000: 52, with bibliography. Compare the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius, which narrate the campaigns against the Marcomanni as a series of ritual scenes, omitting depictions of battle or siege, as noted by Hölscher, 2006: 43.

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syriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 27–40. Bagg, A., 2016: “Where is the public? A new look at the brutality scenes in NeoAssyrian royal inscriptions and art.” In L. Battini (ed.): Making pictures of war: realia et imaginaria in the iconology of the ancient Near East. Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 1. Oxford. Pp. 57–82. Bahrani, Z., 2008: Rituals of war: the body and violence in Mesopotamia. New York. Bär, J., 1996: Der assyrische Tribut und seine Darstellung: eine Untersuchung zur imperialen Ideologie im neuassyrischen Reich. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 243. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Battini, L. (ed.), 2016: Making pictures of war: realia et imaginaria in the iconology of the ancient Near East. Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 1. Oxford. Beckman, G., 1999: Hittite diplomatic texts. 2nd edition. SBL Writings from the Ancient World. Atlanta, GA. Beckman, G., 2014: “The Hittites make peace.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittman / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale/International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 117–122. Bickel, S., 2016: “Concepts of peace in ancient Egypt.” In K. Raaflaub (ed.): Peace in the ancient world. Chichester. Pp. 43–66. Bonatz, D. / Heinz, M., 2019: “Representation.” In A. C. Gunter (ed.): A Companion to ancient Near Eastern art. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 233–259. Braun-Holzinger, E.A. / Rehm, E., 2005: Orientalischer Import in Griechenland im frühen 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 328. Münster. Bryce, T., 2006: “The ‘eternal treaty’ from the Hittite perspective.” British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 6, 1–11. Capomacchia, A.M.G. / Rivaroli, M., 2014: “Peace and war: a ritual question.” In H. Neumann / R. Dittman / S. Paulus / G. Neumann / A. Schuster-Brandis (eds.): Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale/International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Pp. 171–187 Clark, J.H. / Turner, B. (eds.), 2018: Brill’s Companion to military defeat in ancient Mediterranean society. Brill’s Companions to classical studies: warfare in the ancient Mediterranean world 2. Leiden. Cole, S.W. / Machinist, P., 1998: Letters from priests to Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. State Archives of Assyria 13. Helsinki.

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Collins, P., 2014: “Gods, heroes, rituals, and violence: warfare in Neo-Assyrian art.” In B.A. Brown / M.H. Feldman (eds.): Critical approaches to ancient Near Eastern art. Boston. Pp. 619–644. Collins, P., 2019: “Narrative.” In A.C. Gunter (ed.): A Companion to ancient Near Eastern art. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 261–282. Cooley, A., 2012: “Commorating the war dead of the Roman world.” In P. Low / G. Oliver / P. J. Rhodes (eds.): Cultures of commemoration: war memorials, ancient and modern. Proceedings of the British Academy 160. Oxford. Pp. 61–88. Dalley, S., 2017: “Assyrian warfare.” In E. Frahm (ed.): A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 522–533. Davies, V., 2018: Peace in ancient Egypt. Harvard Egyptological Studies 5. Leiden. De Backer, F., 2013: L’art du siège néo-assyrien. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 61. Leiden. — 2016: The Neo-Assyrian shield: evolution, heraldry, and associated tactics. Atlanta, GA. Dezső, T., 2012: The Assyrian army. Antiqua Orientalia 2, 6. 2 vols. Budapest. Dillon, S., 2006: “Women on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and the visual language of Roman victory.” In S. Dillon / K.E. Welch (eds.): Representations of war in ancient Rome. Cambridge. Pp. 244–271. Dillon, S. / Welch, K.E. (eds.), 2006: Representations of war in ancient Rome. Cambridge. Di Paolo, S., 2016: “War remembrance narrative: negotiation of memory and oblivion in Mesopotamian art.” In D. Nadali (ed.): Envisioning the past through memories: how memory shaped ancient Near Eastern societies. Cultural Memory and History in Antiquity 3. London. Pp. 143–162. Edel, E., 1997: Der Vertrag zwischen Ramses II. von Ägypten und Ḫattušili von Ḫatti. Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 95. Berlin. Fales, F.M., 2009: “Art, performativity, mimesis, narrative, ideology, and audience: reflections on Assyrian palace reliefs in the light of recent studies.” Kaskal 6, 237–295. — 2010: Guerre et paix en Assyrie: religion et impérialisme. Paris. — 2012: “After Ta‘yinat: the new status of Esarhaddon’s adê for Assyrian political history.” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale 106, 133–158. Feldman, M.H., 2006: Diplomacy by design: luxury arts and an “international style” in the ancient Near East, 1400–1200 BCE. Chicago. Fischer, E. / Wicke, D., 2011: “Review of Marian H. Feldman, Diplomacy by design: luxury arts and an “international style” in the ancient Near East, 1400– 1200 BCE.” Die Welt des Orients 41, 240–249.

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Frayne, D.R., 2008: Presargonic period (2700–2350 BC). Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Early Periods 1. Toronto. Goedegeburre, P., 2012: “Hittite iconoclasm: disconnecting the icon, disempowering the referent.” In N.N. May (ed.): Iconoclasm and text destruction in the ancient Near East and beyond. Oriental Institute Seminars 8. Chicago. Pp. 407–452. Gunter, A.C., 2009: Greek art and the Orient. Cambridge. Harmanşah, Ö., 2007: “‘Source of the Tigris’: event, place and performance in the Assyrian landscapes of the Early Iron Age.” Archaeological Dialogues 14, 179–204. — 2019: “Rock reliefs and landscape monuments.” In A. C. Gunter (ed.): A Companion to ancient Near Eastern art. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 483–505. Heimpel, W., 2003: Letters to the king of Mari: a new translation, with historical introduction, notes, and commentary. Mesopotamian Civilizations 12. Winona Lake, IN. Hölscher, T., 2003: “Images of war in Greece and Rome: between military practice, public memory, and cultural symbolism.” Journal of Roman Studies 93, 1–17. — 2006: “The transformation of victory into power: from event to structure.” In S. Dillon / K.E. Welch (eds.): Representations of war in ancient Rome. Cambridge. Pp. 27–48. Jonker, G., 1995: The topography of remembrance: the dead, tradition and collective memory in Mesopotamia. Studies in the history of religions 68. Leiden. Kertai, D., 2015: “After the court moved away: a reinterpretation of the ivory finds within the royal palaces of Kalḫu.” Altorientalische Forschungen 42, 112–121. Kilmer, A.D., 1974: “Symbolic gestures in Akkadian contracts from Alalakh and Ugarit.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 94, 177–183. Kinnee, L., 2018: The Greek and Roman trophy: from battlefield marker to icon of power. Routledge monographs in classical studies. New York. Köroğlu, K., 2018: “Anadolu’daki Yeni Assur dönemi stelleri ve kaya kabartmaları / Neo-Assyrian rock reliefs and stelae in Anatolia.” In K. Köroğlu / S.F. Adalı (eds.): The Assyrians: kingdom of the god Aššur from Tigris to Taurus. Istanbul. Pp. 162–207. Kreppner, F.J., 2002: “Public space in nature: the case of Neo-Assyrian rock reliefs.” Altorientalische Forschungen 29, 367–383. Lauinger, J., 2013: “The Neo-Assyrian adê: treaty, oath, or something else?” Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 19, 99–115. Liverani, M., 2008: “The Late Bronze Age: materials and mechanisms of trade and cultural exchange.” In J. Aruz / K. Benzel / J.M. Evans (eds.): Beyond Babylon: art, trade, and diplomacy in the second millennium B.C. New York / New Haven. Pp. 161–169.

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Low, P., 2012: “The monuments to the war dead in classical Athens: form, contexts, meanings.” In P. Low / G. Oliver / P.J. Rhodes (eds.): Cultures of commemoration: war memorials, ancient and modern. Proceedings of the British Academy 160. Oxford. Pp. 13–39. Low, P. / Oliver, G. / Rhodes, P.J. (eds.), 2012: Cultures of commemoration: war memorials, ancient and modern. Proceedings of the British Academy 160. Oxford. Marcus, M. I., 1995: “Geography as visual ideology: landscape, knowledge, and power in Neo-Assyrian art.” In M. Liverani (ed.): Neo-Assyrian geography. Quaderni di geografia storica 5. Rome. Pp. 193–202. May, N.N. (ed.), 2012: Iconoclasm and text destruction in the ancient Near East and beyond. Oriental Institute Seminars 8. Chicago. Meier, S.A., 2007: “Granting god a passport: transporting deities across international boundaries.” In P. Kousoulis / K. Magliveras (eds.): Moving across borders: foreign relations, religion and cultural interactions in the ancient Mediterranean. Orientalis Lovaniensia Analecta 159. Leuven / Paris / Dudley, MA. Pp. 185–208. Melville, S. C., 2016: The campaigns of Sargon II, king of Assyria, 721–705 B.C. Norman, OK. — 2018: “Ideology, politics, and the Assyrian understanding of defeat.” In J.H. Clark / B. Turner (eds.): Brill’s Companion to military defeat in ancient Mediterranean society. Brill’s Companions to classical studies: warfare in the ancient Mediterranean world 2. Leiden. Pp. 23–50. Moloney, E. P. / Williams, M. S. (eds.), 2017: Peace and reconciliation in the classical world. London. Moran, W.L., ed. and trans., 1992: The Amarna letters. Baltimore. Mynářová, J., 2014: “Egyptian state correspondence of the New Kingdom: the letters of the Levantine client kings in the Amarna correspondence and contemporary evidence.” In K. Radner (ed.): State correspondence in the ancient world: from New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire. Oxford. Pp. 1–31. Nadali, D., 2013: “Outcomes of battle: triumphal celebrations in Assyria.” In A. Spalinger / J. Armstrong (eds.): Rituals of triumph in the Mediterranean world. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 63. Leiden. Pp. 75–94. — 2016: “Images of war in the Assyrian period: what they show and what they hide.” In L. Battini (ed.): Making pictures of war: realia et imaginaria in the iconology of the ancient Near East. Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 1. Oxford. Pp. 83–88. Nadali, D. / Vidal, J. (eds.), 2014: The other face of the battle: the impact of war on civilians in the ancient Near East. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 412. Münster. Neumann, H. / Dittman, R. / Paulus, S. / Neumann, G. / Schuster-Brandis, A. (eds.), 2014: Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien: 52e Rencontre Assyri-

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ologique Internationale/International Congress of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology, Münster, 17.–21. Juli 2006. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 401. Münster. Normore, C., 2016: “Depicting defeat in the Grandes Chroniques de France.” In J. Bellis / L. Slater (eds.): Representing war and violence 1250–1600. Woodbridge, UK. Pp. 39–55. Panagiotopoulos, D., 2012: “Encountering the foreign: (de-)constructing alterity in the archaeologies of the Bronze Age Mediterranean.” In J. Maran / P.W. Stockhammer (eds.): Materiality and social practice: transformative capacities of intercultural encounters. Oxford. Pp. 51–60. Parpola, S. / Watanabe, K., 1988: Neo-Assyrian treaties and loyalty oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki. Pollard, T., 2007: “Burying the hatchet? The post-combat appropriation of battlefield spaces.” In L. Purbrick / J. Aulich / G. Dawson (eds.): Contested spaces: sites, representations and histories of conflict. New York. Pp. 121–145. Pongratz-Leisten, B., 2015: Religion and ideology in Assyria. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 6. Boston. — 2019: “Ideology.” In A.C. Gunter (ed.): A Companion to ancient Near Eastern art. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 283–308. Porter, B.N., 1993: Images, power and politics: figurative aspects of Esarhaddon’s Babylonian policy. Philadelphia. Postgate, J.N., 2013: Bronze Age bureaucracy: writing and the practice of government in Assyria. Cambridge. Raaflaub, K. (ed.) 2007: War and peace in the ancient world. Malden, MA. — (ed.), 2016: Peace in the ancient world. Chichester. Radner, K., 2007: “Abgaben an den König von Assyrien aus dem In- und Ausland.” In S. Klinkott / S. Kubisch / R. Müller-Wollermann (eds.): Geschenke und Steuern, Zölle und Tribute: Antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. Leiden. Pp. 213–230. — 2011: “Fame and prizes: competition and war in the Neo-Assyrian empire.” In N. Fisher / H. van Wees (eds.): Competition in the ancient world. Swansea. Pp. 37–57. — 2015: “High visibility punishment and deterrent: impalement in Assyrian warfare and legal practice.” Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte 21, 103–28. Rehm, E., 2003: Waffengräber im Alten Orient: zum Problem der Wertung in Gräbern des 3. und frühen 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. in Mesopotamien und Syrien. BAR International Series 1191. Oxford. Reynolds, F., 2007: “Luxury goods in the ancient Near East.” Antiquity 81, 465– 67. Richardson, S., 2007: “Death and dismemberment in Mesopotamia: discorporation between the body and body politic.” In N. Laneri (ed.): Performing death:

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social analyses of funerary traditions in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Oriental Institute Seminars 3. Chicago. Pp. 189–208. Roaf, M., 2005: “Ethnicity and Near Eastern archaeology: the limits of inference.” In W.H. van Soldt (ed.): Ethnicity in ancient Mesopotamia: papers read at the 48th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, 1–4 July 2002. Leiden. Pp. 306–315. Russell, J.M., 2017: “Assyrian art.” In E. Frahm (ed.): A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 453–510. Saunders, N.J., 2004: “Material culture and conflict: the Great War, 1914–2003.” In N.J. Saunders (ed.): Matters of conflict: material culture, memory and the First World War. London. Pp. 5–25. Saunders, N.J. (ed.), 2004: Matters of conflict: material culture, memory and the First World War. London. Saunders, N.J. / Cornish, P. (eds.), 2009: Contested objects: material memories of the Great War. London. Schachner, A., 2007: Bilder eines Weltreichs: Kunst- und Kulturhistorische Untersuchungen zu den Verzierungen eines Tores aus Balawat (Imgur-Enlil) aus der Zeit von Salmanassar III, König von Assyrien. Subartu 20. Turnhout. — (ed.), 2009: Assyriens Könige an einer der Quellen des Tigris: archäologische Forschungen im Höhlensysteme von Birkleyn und am sogenannten TigrisTunnel. Istanbuler Forschungen 51. Tübingen. Sebbane, M., 2016: “Ceremonial and ritual maces in the temples of the ancient Near East, and the nature of the hoard from Nahal Mishmar.” In I. Finkelstein / C. Robin / T. Römer (eds.): Alphabets, texts and artifacts in the ancient Near East: studies presented to Benjamin Sass. Paris. Pp. 421–473. Seymour, M., 2016: “The empire in the palace: campaign reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh and an Assyrian microcosm.” In J. Aruz / M. Seymour (eds.): Assyria to Iberia: art and culture in the Iron Age. New York. Pp. 65– 80. Shafer, A., 2007: “Assyrian royal monuments on the periphery: ritual and the making of imperial space.” In J. Chang / M.H. Feldman (eds.): Ancient Near Eastern art in context: studies in honor of Irene J. Winter by her students. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 26. Leiden. Pp. 133–159. Smith, M.S., 2010: God in translation: deities in cross-cultural discourse in the biblical world. Grand Rapids, MI. Suter, C., 2019: “Statuary and reliefs.” In A.C. Gunter (ed.): A Companion to ancient Near Eastern art. Hoboken, NJ. Pp. 385–410. Trundle, M., 2013: “Commemorating victory in classical Greece: why Greek tropaia?” In A. Spalinger / J. Armstrong (eds.): Rituals of triumph in the Mediterranean world. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 63. Leiden. Pp. 123–138. Waal, F.B.M. de, 1989: Peacemaking among primates. Cambridge, MA.

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Peace in Pieces Making Peace in Elam Matthew Waters*

Any study of Elam requires more qualifiers than the norm, even by the standards of ancient studies, so a brief recapitulation of caveats is a necessary starting point. Reading the historical survey chapters of the recent compendium The Elamite World (2018) reinforces once again, for all periods, the limitations of the extant evidence: uncertain chronology from sporadic (if any) king lists, and uneven synchronisms based on the same; a skewed view via the preponderance of modern work at Susa; and the dearth of Elamite documentation with a concomitant, necessary reliance on Mesopotamian evidence. To counter this, indefatigable philologists, art historians, and archaeologists continue to make advances via study of material already within museums and, as allowable, new finds on or in the ground. Daniel Potts noted in the preface to his second edition of The Archaeology of Elam (2016: xix) that he increased the bibliographic entries by roughly 800 entries in the seventeen years since the publication of the first edition. As per the theme of this conference, “making peace” in Elam is an elusive topic, challenging to appreciate in a number of ways. Not the least challenge is that we do not have an identifiable Elamite process (or ritual) specifically applied to making peace, for that matter even the relevant words’ meanings are obscure. This is, to put it mildly, an enormous problem for the topic at-hand; a clear contrast is provided when one peruses Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago (CAD) entries for riksu, sulummu, or adû and the related, extensive, literature for making peace in Mesopotamia. Only a brief sketch of relevant historical episodes is offered within this paper, which is in essence, especially for the early periods, a survey of interpretive difficulties. The main emphasis will be on the peace between Esarhaddon and Urtak, a sequence in the mid-first millennium for which there is clearer evidence. As will be seen, and as applies almost without exception through Elam’s history, any discussion of making peace is one based almost entirely on external, in this case Mesopotamian, source material. Pieces of peace through the second millennium The most logical place to start is the so-called Treaty of Naram-Sin. This Old Elamite text was published in 1911, edited in F. W. König’s Elamisches Königsin*

My thanks to the Melammu Board for inviting me to speak at this conference, the other attendees for stimulating discussions, the Universities of Padua and Verona for hosting and Silvia Gabrieli for logistics, and to all (and especially to Giovanni Lanfranchi) for the hospitality.

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schriften (EKI no. 2) in 1965 and was translated and discussed by W. Hinz in an article published in 1967.1 The label has stuck since, although few other than Hinz seem confident about what it says. The text’s initial association with a peace treaty stems from V. Scheil’s (qualified) translation of column iii, lines 10–13, as “L’ennemi naramsinien est mon ennemi, l’ami (?) naramsinien est mon ami (?)!”2 But the translations of the relevant Elamite terms are far from certain; commentators differ on interpretation, and it is hazardous to wrap a narrative around it. In Mesopotamian sources dating from the Akkadian, Ur III, and Isin-Larsa periods (corresponding to the Old Elamite and Shimashki periods), a number of diplomatic marriages to the daughters of Elamite rulers are explicitly mentioned in year names. But there is no additional information with which to write a historical account; that these year-name lists have even more references to conflict with Elamite rulers (sometimes within a few years of a marriage) reinforces how much context we lack.3 The Mari archive is a rich resource for Elam’s foreign relations with the west during the 18th century, especially during the reign of the Elamite sukkalmah, Siwe-palar-huhpak. He and other Elamites are mentioned numerous times in the correspondence, and Siwe-palar-huhpak is at times addressed as “father” in contrast to the use of “brother” among other (Mesopotamian) monarchs. The political vicissitudes of the time would have proved a particularly apt subject for Machiavelli.4 At least for a few years in the first half of the 18th century, Siwe-palarhuhpak controlled significant territory in Mesopotamia. He was able to compel Hammurabi, Zimri-Lim, and other rulers of the time to muster troops on his behalf, and Elamite influence, direct and indirect, is alluded to throughout the correspondence via several lines of communication.5 1

Scheil, 1911; Hinz, 1967; translation only in Koch 2005, 282–287. Stolper, 1984: 14 and 66 nn. 75–76 for earlier literature; Potts, 2016: 100–101. 2 Scheil, 1911: 5–6 translating bi-ti-ir as “ennemi” and duk-ti-ir as “ami(?)”; followed by Hinz / Koch, 1987: 225 and 355, respectively (Elamischses Wörterbuch, hereafter ElW). The translation of another key word, pilbiti, a hapax, as “treaty” is also provisional – ElW II: 1259, we(pi)-il-bi-ti, giving the definition “Vertrag(?)” – question mark sic. Cf. König, 1965: 29 n. 7. “Die Inschrift fällt völlig aus dem Rahmen aller sonst bekannten; ausserdem sind fast alle Verba nicht übersetzbar, Sprache und Schreibungen abweichend. An eine ganze Übersetzung ist nicht du denken bis auf Versuche …” Steinkeller, 2018: 189 (and see his n. 22) is particularly sceptical, characterizing Hinz’s restorations and translation as “grossly overconfident” and his reconstruction as “pure fantasy.” 3 See the chart in Potts, 2016: 128–129; note also Steinkeller, 2014. 4 Sasson, 2015: sections 1.6b–c discusses oath-taking and swearing of loyalty from letters within the archive. In ARM 26 449, as part of a running dispute about the city of Ḫit, Hammurabi, in a discussion with two of Zimri-Lim’s diplomats, warned explicitly not to mention these towns to the ruler of Elam; Sasson, 2015: 85–86. Note Heimpel, 2003: Appendix 6, for a reconstruction of the events of Zimri-Lim’s ninth to eleventh years. 5 Durand, 1994 and 2012; Lafont, 2001 and 2010; Charpin, 2012a: 44–53 and 2012b; Sas-

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Extrapolating from numerous references to treaties and related commitments that included “touching the throat,”6 Elam was clearly involved in some of these arrangements. But neither Hammurabi nor other correspondents in the archive offered details on said arrangements with Elam. For that matter, we do not have, or only have indirectly, an Elamite perspective on the particulars (i.e., alliances or other peace agreements), on how they were cast in an Elamite context. Thus, while these sources reveal quite a bit about making peace within Mesopotamia, with regard to Elam the evidence is more enlightening on alliances against them, for example: “… Swear by Shamash of heaven! Swear by Addu of heaven! These are the gods that Hammurabi, son of Sin-muballit, king of Babylon, invoked (when taking this oath), ‘From now on, as long as I live, I shall indeed be the enemy of Siwe-palar-huhpak. I shall not let my servants or my messengers mingle with his servants, and I shall not dispatch them to him. I shall not make peace with Siwe-palar-huhpak without the approval of ZimriLim, king of Mari’ …” (M.6435 + M.8987, circa 1765)7 Nevertheless, the implication looms large that treaties, or friendship, or similar compacts with Elam were sought and concluded throughout this period. A denunciation of Ishme-Dagan and Hammurabi refers to their seeking peace and goodwill from Elam, but the culmination of said effort is unclear.8 The questions remain in any such compact where Elam was a signatory – and a coequal one or superior one at that – were the same procedures used as those between Mesopotamian rulers (e.g., “touching the throat”)? Or would they have been supplemented by procedures unique to, or specific to, an Elamite context? To round off this brief survey through the second millennium, the so-called Berlin Letter (VAT 17020) must be mentioned, an extremely important but problematic text to which has been applied significantly varying interpretations. It is extant from a late Babylonian copy, closely-associated with the so-called KedorLaomer Texts.9 Taken at face value, these sources suggest consistent intermarriage between fourteenth century Elamite and Kassite royal houses – Elamite kings or princes (and maybe other elites as well) marrying Kassite princesses – that may have continued well into the twelfth. The author of the Berlin Letter was married to a daughter of the Kassite king, Meli-Šipak (c. 1186–1172). Without knowledge of the age of either bride or groom, the latter presumably reigned son, 2015: section 1.6.a.iv.1. 6 See Sasson, 2015: 92 and n. 175 for napištam lapātatum (metaphoric for “implicating life”). 7 Sasson, 2015: 98–100, note also A.4626. Charpin, 2012a: 35–72 for context. 8 ARM 26 371 via Sasson, 2015: 278–229 with references. 9 Van Dijk, 1986; Vallat, 2006; Paulus, 2013; Potts, 2016: 200–201 and Table 7.5. For the BM collection “Sp,” note comments of Waerzeggers, 2015: 103–104 n. 32 and references.

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within a roughly fifty year period from the late thirteenth to the mid-twelfth centuries – the identity and regnal years depending on who is counting which Elamite kings and how many are supplied to fill chronological gaps. Kidin Hutran (II), Šutruk-Nahhunte I, and his son Kudur-Nahhunte I have all been suggested as the author of the Berlin Letter. The latter two are reasonably anchored via synchronisms to the mid-twelfth century, Šutruk-Nahhunte having brought the Kassite dynasty to an end with his overthrow of Zababa-šum-iddin in 1158. Kidin-Hutran (II) was the Elamite king who, according to Chronicle P (iv 14–22), attacked Nippur during the reign of the Kassite king Enlil-nadin-šumi in 1224 and again a few years later during the reign of Adad-šum-iddin (r. 1222– 1217). If Kidin-Hutran II was the author, the chronology for a marriage to a daughter of Meli-Šipak is stretched but not impossible.10 There are several good lessons in historiography here, problems with almost any reconstruction connecting the author of the Berlin Letter to any of those three kings. One caveat is that the Berlin Letter is a late Babylonian copy that was part of a school exercise on the Kassite dynasty; likewise were the so-called KedorLaomer Texts, in tone and content not what one would classify as overflowing with good feelings towards the Elamites.11 One of the Kedor-Laomer Texts, Sp. II 987, mentions Kudur-Nahhunte explicitly (thus the sobriquet “Kedor-Laomer”), who apparently claimed the throne of Babylon based on his matrilineal descent – without providing any specifics, genealogy or synchronisms – but whom nonetheless is rejected by the Babylonians as illegitimate in quite colourful terms.12 “… Shall livestock and ravening wolf come to terms? Shall firm-rooted thorn and soaring raven love one another? Shall raven and venomous snake come to terms? [ ] Shall bone-gnawing dog come to terms with the mongoose? Shall dragon come to terms with blood-letting bandit?” In Sp. II 987, Kudur-Nahhunte also is identified as a descendant of the Kassite royal line. In conjunction with the Berlin Letter, one either needs to assume that there is severe conflation of the genealogies or that, despite the travails of ElamiteKassite relations during the twelfth century – especially severe during the reigns of the kings in question – royal Kassite blood still ran in the veins of Elamite rulers. 10

Grayson, 1975: 176–177 for the campaigns. In Paulus’ argument, the Berlin Letter author’s emphasis on descent from a daughter of Kurigalzu I fits better Kidin-Hutran II, 2013: 436–437. 11 Paulus, 2013: 430; Potts, 2016: 229 for a brief summary of the texts. See Brinkman, 1968: 81 for lines 6–16 of Foster’s Text A of the Kedor-Laomer, and note also Van Dijk, 1986: 166–167 and the remarks of Roaf, 2017: 195. 12 Brinkman, 1968: 80–81, and Foster, 2005: 370–371, translation slightly modified.

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Seeking a peaceful piece: the Elamite-Babylonian-Assyrian dynamic in the first millennium Elam is mostly a historical cipher to us c. 1100 to 750.13 When the documentary records resume, Babylonian-Elamite cooperation against Assyria marks the eighth and seventh centuries. The prominence in the sources of the Bit-Yakin and other Chaldean tribes is highlighted by their frequent assistance from, flight to, and connections with Elam. One might assume that dynastic inter-marriage was part of the equation, for purposes of alliance or to maintain friendship and goodwill, and the long-view record shows that that would be far from an anomaly. However, explicit references to such mechanisms for making, or maintaining, peace do not jump off the tablet. A major thorn in the side of the Assyrians, an ally and recipient of Elamite support, was Marduk-apla-iddina II (Merodachbaladan), notably the second of that name, king of Babylonia from 721 to 710, and, for a few months, again in 703. It may be a coincidence that the first of his name was a son of the Kassite king Meli-Šipak, who reigned 1171–1159, the same discussed above whose daughter married the author of the Berlin Letter. The close Elamite-Babylonian dynastic links enumerated in that letter remained at least a memory (the late Babylonian copy of the text is one testament to that), whether or not the phenomenon persisted during the intervening centuries. Perhaps the most well-known illustration of Elamite-Babylonian cooperation is the confrontation with Assyria that resulted in the Battle of Der in the year 720. This battle is alluded to in an inscription of Merodach-baladan, mentioned several times in Sargon’s annals, and relayed in the Babylonian Chronicle.14 The Elamite king, Humban-nikaš I (r. 743–717), was allied with Merodach-baladan’s Babylonian forces. Of six attested sons of Merodach-baladan, one has an Elamite name, Humban-nikaš (Akkadian Ummanigaš), the same name as Merodach-baladan’s Elamite ally.15 I suggest that Merodach-baladan took to wife a daughter or sister of Humban-nikaš I to seal an alliance, a “peace,” as it were. Humban-nikaš is the only son of Merodach-baladan with an obviously Elamite name, an anomaly, but one that is easily explained if Humban-nikaš was the fruit of Merodach-baladan’s marriage to a woman of the Elamite royal house.

13

For historical overviews of the Neo-Elamite period, see Waters, 2000 and 2013; Gorris, 2014; Potts, 2016: Chapter 8. Note the intriguing fragment of a stele from Qala-i Tol, south of the Izeh valley, that portrays two individuals grasping (or touching hands), each flanked by two smaller attendants. Börker-Klähn, 1982: 233 and no. 272 for a drawing; cf. remarks of Henkelman, 2008: 47 n. 121. 14 Frame, 1995: 137 (RIMB 2 B.6.21.1, lines 16–18); Lie, 1929: 6–7 and 42–43, and Fuchs, 1993: 196–197; Chronicle 1 i 33–37, Grayson, 1975: 71–72. 15 Brinkman, 1964, and Baker, 2001a (PNA 2/II) for Merodach-baladan; for his son Humban-nikaš see Frahm, 2001: 677 (PNA 2/II); Waters, 2002; and Baker / Waters, 2011: 1383 (PNA 3/II).

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There is an attested case of a Babylonian-Elamite dynastic marriage two generations later. One Šumâ, son of Šumu-iddin, son of Gaḫal, had as mother the sister of Tammaritu II, thus a member of an extended Elamite royal family. That Babylonian family, the Gaḫal, produced a king of Babylonia in the intervening generation (from Merodach-baladan): the Elamite-supported Nergal-ušezib in 694.16 To return to Merodach-baladan, and to review, he was closely-allied not only with the Elamite king Humban-nikaš I but also the latter’s successor, ŠutrukNahhunte II. Merodach-baladan spent significant time in Elam (often in flight from, or busy gathering forces against, Assyria), and most, if not all, of his sons and grandsons followed in their father’s footsteps with close links to Elam and as troublemakers for Assyria in the Sealand. One son, Nabû-šum-iškun, fought as an ally of Humban-menanu at the Battle of Halule in 691.17 Two other sons, Nabûzer-kitti-lišir and then Na’id-Marduk, were Assyrian appointees as governors of the Sealand – a complex and entertaining historical sequence of fraternizing with the enemy and betrayals that goes beyond the scope of this paper. Merodachbaladan’s grandsons, Aplāia,18 the son of Nabû-ušallim, and especially Nabû-bēlšumāti (father uncertain) also deserve, and have received, much fuller treatment than possible here. Assyrian correspondence of the time indicates extensive Elamite influence over several tribes and territories in southern Mesopotamia. One element would likely have involved marriage alliances, but these – beyond that of Šumu-iddin alluded to previously – are not explicitly noted in the extant sources. Elamite kings of this period considered the Sealand as part of their kingdom. Other letters reveal that an Elamite-Babylonian “axis of evil” consistently attempted to win over major Babylonian cities and governors throughout the period.19 When Humbanhaltaš II launched an attack on Sippar in 675, it was not an isolated incident, though perhaps an unusual or large-scale one, since it was noted in the chronicle: a serious Elamite threat to Assyrian interests. Shortly after this, Humban-haltaš II died of a medical emergency.20 Peace found and lost During the late 670s Esarhaddon entered into a coequal adê with Urtak, the king of Elam (r. 675–664). This sea change in Elamite-Assyrian relations is often as16

For the historical context, see Beaulieu, 2018: 204–205. Baker, 2001c: 888–889 (PNA 2/II). 18 For Aplāia the son of Nabû-ušallim, see Radner, 1998: 117 (PNA 1/I); for Nabû-bēlšumāti, see Baker, 2001b: 811–814 (PNA 2/II). 19 Waters, 1999a, with additional references; see also fn. 28, below. 20 Nabû-naṣir Chronicle iv 11–13 and Esarhaddon Chronicle, line 16; Grayson, 1975: 84 and 126, respectively. This too is part of a thematic pattern, traceable at least since KudurNahhunte, of a variety of maladies that afflicted the Elamite kings through (at least) Te’umman: strange and/or divinely afflicted medical disasters that led to their deaths. 17

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sociated with increasingly threatening incursions from Cimmerians and Scythians in the north, which may have given impetus to the two rivals to work together – or to stop working against each other.21 But an already roughly fifty-year run (since at least the Battle of Der in 720) of consistent Elamite-Assyrian conflict may have come to a head with Humban-haltaš II’s raid of Sippar, in conjunction with the ongoing Elamite agitation in the Sealand. It appears that both Esarhaddon and Urtak thought it was time for another option, a peaceful option. A passage from Esarhaddon’s annals refers explicitly to friendship and peace (ṭubi u sulumme), obviously cast from the Assyrian perspective. “The Elamites and Gutians, obstinate rulers, who used to answer the kings, my ancestors, with hostility, heard of what the might of the god Ashur, my lord, had done among all (of my enemies), and fear and terror poured over them. So that there would be no trespassing on the borders of their countries, they sent their messengers of friendship and peace to Nineveh before me, and they swore an oath by the great gods.” (RINAP 4 – Esar. 1 v 26– 33; Leichty, 2011: 22) This was certainly not the last adê between Assyria and Elam, but it is the most remarkable and most well attested, and thus will serve as the focus for the remainder of this paper.22 Compared to the situation during Humban-haltaš II’s reign, this episode represents a remarkable shift: a full and formal peace treaty between Assyria and Elam. Various other texts allude to the treaty or its implementation. Urtak’s sincerity with regard to the peace overtures was queried via an omen consultation. In early 673 (Addaru/X on the Assyrian-Babylonian calendar), Elam returned “Ishtar of Akkad and the gods of Akkad” to Akkad, the reconstruction of which was a focus of Esarhaddon’s so-called “Babylonian policy,”23 a policy that may would have been well served by a peace with Elam. The return of gods is generally interpreted as a gesture of goodwill and a stage in the thaw in relations. An undated letter from the crown prince refers explicitly to this adê-agreement: “Having listened to one another, the king of Elam and the king of Assyria have made peace with one another at Marduk’s command and become treaty partners. (Yet) you have detained there all the men of the country

21

Parpola / Watanabe, 1988: xixix–xxx; Starr, 1990: lxi–lxii. Those that came in the late 650s and 640s were ephemeral, manifesting an increasingly unstable political situation in Elam – exacerbated by the very Assyrian campaigns that were cast as a response to Elamite failures to uphold the agreements. 23 For the omen query seeking Urtak’s veracity, SAA IV 74. For the return of the gods, Grayson, 1975: 84 and 126. Note also SAA VII 60 (Fales / Postgate, 1992: 78–80); SAA X 359 obv. 4–10 (Parpola, 1993: 296). For the (much larger) phenomenon of returning gods, see, e.g., Zaia, 2015, with references to earlier literature. 22

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that came to the festival …” (SAA XVIII 7 = CT 54, 580, obv. 3–10; Reynolds, 2003: 7–8) The adverb aḫāmeš is used three times in the five-line passage, which emphasizes the mutual nature of the agreement, one predicated on equality and, as such, somewhat unusual in the corpus of adê-agreements.24 The last section of the quoted text is an admonition to one Šulmu-bēl-lašme, the šakin māti (LÚ.GAR.KUR) of Der, the city and region a continued flashpoint of Assyrian-Elamite tension. Having imprisoned a number of men who came to the festival to celebrate the treaty, the good governor seemed less than enthusiastic to accept the new reality. In the crown prince’s view, Šulmu-bēl-lašme’s actions were a threat to the good relations just formalized (cf. also rev. 7ʹ–17e). While we are missing a diplomatic marriage for this treaty, the letter tells us some important things about making this peace. First, the conclusion of the agreement was accompanied by a significant celebration between the two parties on previously (and frequently) disputed territory, and it was symbolic for that reason alone. Second, at least one high-ranking Assyrian, Šulmu-bēl-lašme, was not keen on the whole idea; in arresting several Elamites, he precipitated a diplomatic crisis, one that only (or, rather, “presumably,” there is no other direct reference to this episode) could be managed by the crown prince’s intervention.25 One implication is that the arrangement may have gotten a rough start, but it is difficult to extrapolate how widespread any initial resistance may have been to the peace. Other ramifications of Šulmu-bēl-lašme’s intransigence are not preserved – although since his name is given to the eponym year in 670, it appears that he had not fallen out of favour with Esarhaddon, or, if so, not for long. There is more. A letter to Urtak from Esarhaddon begins with the salutation “my brother,” and the standard accounting of “it is well with,” i.e., a formula that went back centuries for coeval kings and treaty partners. “A tablet from Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, to Urtak, king of Elam [my] br[other], I [am] well, your sons and daughters are well, my country and 24

Note Fales, 2012, and Lauinger, 2013, for discussion and references. For an example of a personal adê applicable to Elamite-Babylonian relations, in a letter to his father Esarhaddon, Šamaš-šum-ukin reported, in brief and general terms, of treasonous activity among one of his diviners. Aplāia, a diviner, had made a pact (adê) with certain Elamites (whose names not recorded) who had captured Esarhaddon’s brother, Aššur-nadin-šumi; see Luuko / Van Buylaere, 2002: 19. This Aplāia was not the grandson of Merodachbaladan. Aplāia was a common name, see Rader, 1998, for dozens of individuals with that name and cf. also the Appalaya from the Susa economic texts of the later seventh to early sixth centuries, who is called “king of the ones of Zari” in MDP 9, no. 71: 1–2; see Waters, 2000: 95, and Gorris, 2014: 184–187. 25 Note Reynolds, 2003: xxi–xxii for related context, especially on Ṣillaya and his activities in the Sealand against Assyrian interests; also, Waters, 2000: 43–45. For this Šulmu-bēllašme, see Villard, 2011: 1275 no. 11 (PNA 3/II).

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magnates are well. May Urtak, king of Elam, my brother, be well, may my sons and daughters be well, may your magnates and your country be well!” (SAA XVI 1 = ABL 918, obv. 1–8; Luuko / Van Buylaere, 2002: 4) In this iteration the standard greeting specifically included both Urtak’s children at Esarhaddon’s court as well as Esarhaddon’s children at Urtak’s court, each group perhaps complemented by retinues from their homes. This is the first attestation of such an exchange of children, de facto hostages. While subsequent events made the presence of Elamite royals and other notables at the Assyrian court unremarkable (or not unusual), the impetus that drove them there in the late 660s was more dire, reflective of a rupture in internal Elamite politics. With the usurpation of Te’umman in 664, an inveterate foe of Assyria for at least a decade previous, several sons of Urtak (including the crown prince Humban-nikaš II) and Humban-haltaš II along with scores of other Elamites, fled to Ashurbanipal.26 The exchange of royal children with Esarhaddon at the beginning of Urtak’s reign, to judge from the extant evidence, appears to have been more tranquil. There were cracks in the façade, however. A letter from Mar-Issar to the king that focused mainly on restoration work of various divine statues from Uruk also revealed some problems at Der, once again. A new temple, perhaps one dedicated on the occasion of, or in association with, the peace treaty (I emphasize that this is speculation) had trouble getting off the ground – in the English language phrasing’s colloquial sense and the literal one. The prelate (šatammu) and officials (bēlpiqittāte) of Der were masters of postponement, according to Mar-Issar anyway, from Simo Parpola’s translation (r. 11–18): “Then the temple of Der: from the moment its foundations were laid, until now, the prelate and the officials of Der have been pushing it onto each other, and nobody has set about it. This year they have started to build, (but) one day they do the work, the next day they leave it.” (SAA X 349 = ABL 476, r. 11–18; Parpola, 1993: 285) Somewhat more ominously, Mar-Issar has received a report that the crown prince of Elam “has become troublesome and sent mud-brick masons there …” MarIssar reminds the king, apparently concerned about the royal grasp of geography, that Der is “on the border of another country” and suggested that the king dispatch his own officials, in light of the sensitivity of the situation, to make sure the work was done properly (r. 19–29e). We do not know the results of this kerfuffle, or for that matter why the Elamite crown prince (presumably Humban-nikaš II) would have become involved on an Assyrian project. The implication of Mar-Issar’s letter is that the Elamites expected to be involved, or had an interest in being in-

26

Waters, 2000: 47 with references for the end of Urtak’s reign; note Waters, 1999a, for Te’umman’s career before he became king.

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volved, with construction of this temple (a joint project? a contested one?), thus my provisional association to the treaty. At the longest, this placid state of affairs stemming from the Urtak-Esarhaddon peace treaty lasted nine years. I use the word “placid” provisionally, because when the peace was broken in the reign of Ashurbanipal, the latter emphasized his complete surprise and dismay at Urtak’s perfidy in breaking the agreement (see below). Such phrasing, however, may be a literary device within the annals’ account, as the signs were there several months in advance. In the mid-660s, the šandabakku of Nippur wrote the king and alluded to a serious, potential threat of an Elamite invasion of Babylonia (SAA XVIII 202). The Elamite king’s brothers, names not given, were inciting the king of Elam (Urtak) to break the peace.27 The letter quotes Urtak as not willing to abrogate the adê-agreement, but that referred to the situation during “the previous year” (obv. 9–e. 22). That was then; making peace was clearly not only a difficult job but maintaining it was as well. The Elamite king had changed his mind about the peace, having relented to the pressure, and widespread preparations for a campaign had begun, thus indicating the situation in 665 or 664.28 Prominent among the brothers alluded to in SAA XVIII 202 was certainly Te’umman. Te’umman was explicitly named in another letter (SAA XVIII 86) as a main culprit in the Elamite involvement in the Sealand-affair during Humbanhaltaš II’s reign, at that time with his cohort Zinēni agitating for the Sealanders to accept Nabû-ušallim as their overlord.29 Based on the portrayal of Te’umman in Ashurbanipal’s annals, and the vituperation associated with him in every instance, he was likely unwavering in his anti-Assyrian activity before and during his reign as king of Elam. And he was not alone. Urtak’s peace agenda in the end did not withstand the unrelenting pressure. As noted previously, in his annals Ashurbanipal noted his surprise and the un27

Reynolds, 2003: 168–170, SAA XVIII 202 = ABL 328. Whether set at the same time, i.e., sometime shortly before Urtak’s breaking of the peace in 664, or (as seems more likely) roughly a decade later before the Te’umman campaign in 653, in ABL 268, Nabû-ušabši, the governor of Uruk, references a gift to Ishtar of Uruk: horses and horse trappings, including a bronze bridle-bit (Akkadian mune’û) that was inscribed with the name of Tammaritu the teppir, a high official. Which Tammaritu this was (there are at least three extant) remains an open question. Likewise an open question is who sponsored this activity, Urtak himself or Te’umman (the latter possible by any dating); the gift was promptly forwarded to Ashurbanipal by Nabû-ušabši to avoid any appearance of impropriety; see Waters, 1999a: 476, and Waters, 1999b. On Nabû-ušabši, see Baker, 2001d: 900–901 (PNA 2/II). 29 Reynolds, 2003: 69 (SAA XVIII 86 = ABL 576). On the Zinēni captured by Ashurbanipal after Te’umman’s defeat, probably the same individual, see Waters, 1999: 474 n. 8. The only other attested Zinēni was an Elamite military commander during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, active with forces in the vicinity of Der, Jas, 2011: 1446–1447 (PNA 3/II). 28

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expectedness of Urtak’s perfidy and attack, one that penetrated almost to Babylon.30 The annals allude to repeated (ištanappara) messages from Urtak via his nobles and officials for peace or rather, in Ashurbanipal’s view, for delay. One may wonder whether the distinction between peace and delay was settled on afterthe-fact (i.e., when the annals were redacted) or whether there was initially genuine confusion as to the situation. In light of the literary qualities of these inscriptions, that can be a difficult distinction. In the Assyrian view, Urtak was incited by the lies of several others, including Bēl-iqīša, sheikh of Gambulu; Nabû-šumereš, the governor of Nippur; and Urtak’s own šut rēši, Marduk-šum-ibni. Beyond a widespread conspiracy (or support base, choose your wording), the warning relayed in SAA XVIII 202 about Elamite preparations for a campaign, along with other disparate bits of other evidence, suggests that the attack was well-coordinated. Reconciling all that with Ashurbanipal’s expressed unawareness is not straightforward. Nor is it straightforward to reconcile Urtak’s thematic defeat: his forces were covering Akkad “like a swarm of locusts” (tibût aribī), but he fled in fear once he heard of the Assyrian advance. This leads to divine retribution, Urtak died that same year when “on a day not appointed by fate, death became hostile …” (ina ûmê la šimtišu mūtu ugarrû …).31 The surfeit of prominent Elamite refugees that fled to Nineveh in the aftermath of Urtak’s death, having fled there to escape the reckoning of his successor Te’umman (as noted, a staunch anti-Assyrianist), amplified the tensions. The aftermath signalled a major rift within the extended royal family: sixty members (though the number varies in the accounts) of the extended royal family, archers without number, and citizens of Elam fled to Nineveh. Among them were sons of the previous king Humban-haltaš II – Kudurru and Parû – and of Urtak – Humbannikaš (II), Humban-api’, and Tammaritu. The flight of the Elamite crown prince, Humban-nikaš II, warranted separate mention in the Šamaš-šum-ukin Chronicle, dated the 12th of Tashrit (VII), i.e., Sept./Oct. 664.32 One may note, somewhat wryly here, that the flight of the crown prince is generally not considered a feature of a smooth succession. So much for peace. With Te’umman there appears to have been none, but much of the subsequent decade is dark with regard to Assyrian-Elamite relations. Based on Te’umman’s track record, it was probably not good. For roughly ten years, scores of high-ranking Elamites and a large support retinue, including copious troops, remained in Assyria. If there was thought of achieving another, more lasting peace, Ashurbanipal may be forgiven for assuming that those he sheltered, and in some cases restored to their places in Elam itself (e.g., Humban-nikaš II 30

Borger, 1996: 94–97 iv 18–48, especially lines 27ff. On Humban-nikaš II in Uruk (chronology uncertain, ABL 998: 5ʹ–6ʹ), see Waters, 2000: 46 and for discussion of a wellcoordinated attack. 31 Borger, 1996: 96 (B iv 45–58). 32 Grayson, 1975: 128.

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and others), might remain well-disposed, loyal to him in gratitude for services rendered. That hope proved to be vain. In the next stage, peace would be imposed, though it was neither effective nor lasting, highlighting the exceptionality of the Esarhaddon-Urtak agreement, which appears to have held for the better part of a decade. That Ashurbanipal had to impose peace multiple times – in conjunction with renewed Elamite-Babylonian cooperation and multiple Assyrian campaigns to counter that cooperation – demonstrates that the cycle returned to normal, at least in comparison to the later eighth and early seventh centuries. Indeed, it was even worse, as the situation devolved into a spiral that resulted in the complete destabilization of Elam through the 640s. It is perhaps not a coincidence that it is within this period we find first mention of an independent kingdom of Parsumaš ruled by a certain Kuraš, Cyrus, likely taking advantage of a splintered Elam to augment his own kingdom.33 A century later, a different sort of peace was the end result, one in which Assyria, Elam, and Babylonia no longer existed as independent entities but had peace imposed upon the regions over which they held sway by another Cyrus, Cyrus the Great. Bibliography Baker, H., 2001a: “Marduk-apla-iddina.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2/II. Helsinki. Pp. 705–711. — 2001b: “Nabû-bēl-šumāti.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2/II. Helsinki. Pp. 810–814. — 2001c: “Nabû-šumu-iškun.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2/II. Helsinki. Pp. 888–890. — 2001d: “Nabû-ušabši.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2/II. Helsinki. Pp. 900–902. Baker, H. / Waters, M., 2011: “Ummanigaš.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3/II. Helsinki. Pp. 1382–1384. Beaulieu, P.-A., 2018: A History of Babylon,2200 BC – AD 75. Medford, MA. Borger, R., 1996: Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals. Wiesbaden. Börker-Klähn, J., 1982: Altvorderasiatische Bildstein und vergleichbare Felsreliefs. Mainz. Brinkman, J.A., 1964: “Merodach-baladan II.” In R. Biggs / J.A. Brinkman (eds.): Studies Presented to A. Leo Oppenheim. Chicago. Pp. 6–53. — 1968: A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158–722 BC. Rome. Charpin, D., 2012a: Hammurabi of Babylon. London. — 2012b: “«Ainsi parle l’empereur» à propos de la correspondence sukkalmah.” In K. De Graef / J. Tavernier (eds.): Susa and Elam: archaeological, philological, historical and geographical perspectives. Proceedings of the in-

33

Waters, 2011: 292–293 for discussion of the relevant passages and references.

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ternational congress held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009. Leiden. Pp. 341–354. Charpin, D. / Ziegler, N., 2003: Mari et la Proche-Orient à l’époque amorrite: Essai d’histoire politique. Paris. Charpin, D. / Durand, J., 1991: “La suzeraineté de l’empereur (sukkalmaḫ) d’Élam sur la Mésopotamie et le ‘nationalisme’ amorrite.” In. L. De Meyer / H. Gasche (eds.): Mésopotamie et Élam. Actes de la XXXVIème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Ghent. Pp. 59–66. Durand, J., 1994: “Le empereur d’Élam et ses vassaux.” In H. Gasche (ed.): Cinquante-deux réflexions sur le Proche-Orient ancien: offertes en hommage à Léon de Meyer. Leuven. Pp. 15–22. — 2012: “La suprématie Élamite sur les Amorites. Réexamen vingt ans après la XXXVIe RAI.” In K. De Graef / J. Tavernier (eds.): Susa and Elam: archaeological, philological, historical and geographical perspectives. Proceedings of the international congress held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009. Leiden. Pp. 329–340. Fales, F.M., 2012: “After Taʿyinat: The New Status of Esarhaddon’s adê for Assyrian Political History.” Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale 106, 133–158. Fales, F.M. / Postgate, J.N., 1992: Imperial Administrative Records. Part 1: Palace and temple Administration. State Archives of Assyria 7. Helsinki. Foster, B., 2005: Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Bethesda. Frahm, E., 2001: “Mangaš.” H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 2/II. Helsinki. Pp. 677. Frame, G., 1992: Babylonia 689–627 B.C.: A Political History. Leiden. — 1995: Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157–612 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Babylonian periods 2. Toronto. Fuchs, A., 1993: Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad. Göttingen. Gorris, E., 2014: “Power and Politics in the Neo-Elamite Kingdom.” PhD dissertation. Université catholique de Louvain. Louvain. Grayson, A.K., 1975: Assyrian-Babylonian Chronicles. Locust Valley, NY. Heimpel, W., 2003: Letters to the King of Mari. Winona Lake, IN. Henkelman, W., 2008: The Other Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation Based on the Persepolis Fortification Texts. Leiden. Hinz, W., 1967: “Elams Vertrag mit Narām-Sîn von Akkade.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 58, 66–96. Hinz, W. / Koch, H., 1987: Elamisches Wörterbuch. 2 vols. Berlin. Jas, R., 2011: “Zinēni.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3/II. Helsinki. Pp, 1446–1447.

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Koch, H., 2005. “Texte aus Iran.” In B. Janowski / G. Wilhelm (eds.): Staatsverträge, Herrscherinschriften und andere Dokumente zur politischen Geschichte, Band 2. Gütersloh. Pp. 282–306. König, F.W., 1965: Die elamischen Königsinschriften. Archiv für Orientforschung 16. Graz. Lafont, B., 2001: “Relations internationales, alliances et diplomatie au temps des royaumes amorrites. Essai de synthèse.” Amurru 2, 213–328. — 2010: “Šeplarpak.” Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie, Vol. 12 5/6, 391–392. Lauinger, J., 2013: “The Neo-Assyrian adê: Treaty, Oath, or Something Else.” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 19, 99–116. Leichty, E., 2011: The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680– 669 BC). The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4. Winona Lake, IN. Luuko, M. / Van Buylaere. G., 2002: The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon. State Archives of Assyria 16. Helsinki. Parpola, S., 1993: Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. State Archives of Assyria 10. Helsinki. Parpola, S. / Watanabe, K., 1988: Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki. Paulus, S., 2013: “Beziehungen zweier Großmächte – Elam und Babylonien in der 2. Hälfte des 2. Jt. v. Chr. Ein Beitrag zur internen Chronologie.” In K. De Graef / J. Tavernier (eds.): Susa and Elam: archaeological, philological, historical and geographical perspectives. Proceedings of the international congress held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009. Leiden. Pp. 429–449. Potts, D.T., 2016: The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. 2nd edition. Cambridge. Radner, K., 1998: “Aplāia.” In K. Radner (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 1/I. Helsinki. Pp. 115–119. Reynolds, F., 2003: The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon. State Archives of Assyria 18. Helsinki. Roaf, M., 2017: “Kassite and Elamite Kings.” In A. Bartelmus / K. Sternitzke (eds.): Karduniaš. Babylonia under the Kassites. Berlin. Pp. 166–195. Sasson, J., 2015: From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters. Winona Lake, IN. Scheil, V., 1911: Textes élamites-anzanites, quatrième série. Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, Vol. 11. Paris. Steinkeller, P., 2014: “Marhaši and Beyond: The Jiroft Civilization in a Historical Perspective.” In C. Lamberg-Karlovsky et al (eds.): “My life is like the summer rose”: Maurizio Tosi e l’archeologia come modo di vivere: papers in honour of Maurizio Tosi for his 70th birthday. Oxford. Pp. 691–707.

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— 2018: “The Birth of Elam in History.” In J. Álvarez-Mon / G. Basello / Y. Wicks (eds.): The Elamite World. London / New York. Pp. 177–202. Starr, I., 1990: Queries to the Sun God: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. State Archives of Assyria 4. Helsinki. Stolper, M.W., 1984: “Political History.” In E. Carter / M.W. Stolper: Elam: Surveys of Political History and Archaeology. Berkeley, CA. Stronach, D., 2005: “The Arjan Tomb: Innovation and Acculturation in the Last Days of Elam.” Iranica Antiqua 40, 179–196. Vallat, F., 2006: “La chronologie méso-élamite et la lettre de Berlin.” Akkadica 127, 123–135. Van Dijk, J., 1986: “Die dynastischen Heiraten zwischen Kassiten und Elamern: eine verhängnisvolle Politik.” Orientalia 55, 159–170. Villard, P., 2011: “Šulmu-bēl-lašme.” In H. Baker (ed.): Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire 3/II. Helsinki. Pp. 1274–1275. Waerzeggers, C., 2015: “Facts, Propaganda, or History? Shaping Political Memory in the Nabonidus Chronicle.” In J. Silverman / C. Waerzeggers (eds.): Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire. Atlanta. Pp. 95–124. Waters, M., 1999a: “Te'umman in the Neo-Assyrian Correspondence.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119, 473–477. — 1999b: “ABL 268 and Tammaritu.” Archív orientální 67, 72–74. — 2000: A Survey of Neo-Elamite History. State Archives of Assyria Studies 12. Helsinki. — 2002: “Another Huban-nikash.” Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires 2002 N°4 (décembre) no. 88. — 2011: “Parsumash, Anshan, and Cyrus.” In J. Alvarez-Mon / M. Garrison (eds.): Elam and Persia. Winona Lake, IN. Pp. 286–296. — 2013: “Elam, Assyria, and Babylonia in the Early First Millennium BC.” In D. T. Potts (ed.): Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran. Oxford. Pp. 478–492. Zaia, S., 2015: “State-Sponsored Sacrilege: ‘Godnapping’ and Omission in NeoAssyrian Inscriptions.” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 2, 19–54.

Peace and Views of Peace in Achaemenid Iran 1 Josef Wiesehöfer For Peter Funke on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, March 18th 2020

I “Proclaims Darius, the king: ‘By the favour of Auramazdā these (are) the countries, of which I took possession together with this Persian people (in arms, J.W.), which feared me (and) brought tribute to me: Elam, Media, Babylonia’ … Proclaims Darius, the king: ‘If thus you shall think: “May I not fear anybody else”, protect this Persian people! If the Persian people shall be protected, the blissful happiness existing very far off, the undisturbed one – that will come down also upon this (royal) house.’ ” (DPe 5–10, 18–24; transl. R. Schmitt, with small changes by the author) In his inscription e from Persepolis, the Achaemenid king Darius I, who ruled from 522 to 486 B.C., gives information about why peace and order prevail in his empire: together with the Persian kāra, the Persian “people in arms,” he has ensured that his rule has become unchallenged. His subjects fear him and pay him tribute. And if the kāra is doing well, if it is protected, then the ruling house is also doing well and even the reader of the inscription. In other inscriptions Darius clearly reduces the coercive character of his rule; the subjects then no longer fear the king himself or the Persian kāra, but the dāta, royal law, and they gladly and voluntarily work together with him, because he protects and perpetuates Auramazdā’s good order for the good of all of them. He helps justice to be done, eliminates social antagonisms and protects his subjects from the three great dangers: enemy attacks from outside (OP hainā), famine (OP dušiyāra), and the Lie (OP drauga), i.e. from human, natural and spiritual enemies. The world in which Darius’ subjects are allowed to live is therefore a peaceful world, as it was originally created by God before it became disordered for various reasons. And to restore this order, Auramazdā has appointed Darius ruler and endowed him with the physical and intellectual-spiritual qualities necessary for the exercise of all power. 1

I would like to thank very much my friends Simonetta Ponchia (Verona) and Gianni Lanfranchi (Padua) for their friendly invitation to Padua and the hospitality practiced there, and Kaja Harter-Uibopuu (Hamburg) for the critical reading of the article and valuable literature references.

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It is not surprising that this idea was taken up by Darius’ successors, not least his son Xerxes. In the relief art of the Persian residences with their scenes of the ruler carried by the subjects on hands or accompanied by members of the kāra, of the subjects who present the sovereign with typical gifts during their meetings, of the royal hero in the fight against monsters, these ideas of the well-ordered empire, of the cooperation between ruler and subjects, of the king’s constant effort for peace and order seem to be copied. It is therefore not surprising that scholars have introduced the concept of pax Achaemenidica in word and image into this ideological context of the ruler’s proclamations.2 It is a concept that is based on its Roman pendant, the pax Augusta, which was a successful ideologeme set by the emperor himself, which, however, unlike its Persian counterpart, also appears conceptually in contemporary contexts, such as in coin legends.3 It is also not surprising that the pax Achaemenidica has long been opposed by many scholars to the Assyrian way of “talking” about ruler, empire and dominion, as the Assyrian relief art and the Assyrian royal inscriptions often focus on the rather drastic aspects of maintaining peace and order. As recent research on the Persian and Assyrian realities of dealing with discord and disorder has shown,4 Assyrians and Persians are less distant from each other than long assumed: the Persians also used brutal measures to nip rebellions in the bud, to quell uprisings or to win back lost territories. And even in the field of royal self-proclamations, scholars such as Amélie Kuhrt pointed out quite early that we know little about the interior decoration of royal Persian palaces, for example, that in other genres of art, such as glyptic, there are thoroughly non-peaceful subjects to be found.5 Christopher Tuplin has recently supplemented this last idea with the observation that in the battle and combat scenes on Persian seals, but now also in those on a painted beam from Tatarlı and on the sarcophagi from Çan and Clazomenae, enemies are fought who live at the edges of the empire: “nomads” in Central Asia, Greeks, or Mysians and Thracians.6 Despite these justified hints there is no doubt: after Bisutun, where images and text focus on the chaos in the empire, the path of Darius I to power and his measures to end disorder, Darius and his successors decided to present their rule in a very special way: it should not deter or spread fear, but emphasize the advantages enjoyed by the subjects of the Great King. However, and this insight we also owe to Christopher Tuplin, even in the post-Bisutun inscriptions, discord and the use of force have not disappeared, but are subliminally there. When the role of the Persian kāra in securing Persian rule is emphasized at all times, when the 2

Cf. recently Brosius, 2012. Cf., e.g., Schmitzer, 2004; Cornwell, 2017. 4 See, e.g., van der Spek, 2014. 5 Kuhrt, 2001. 6 Tuplin, 2017. 3

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threats created by enemies, famine, and disloyalty are pointed out, when on the reliefs, next to the armed royal hero, extremely numerous guards can be found, when the king, for instance on the so-called “treasury relief” or on the tomb reliefs, is accompanied by arms bearers. In Tuplin’s words: “… if we are being confronted with an iconography of peace, we are also reminded of an old cliché: ‘if you wish peace, prepare for war’.” 7 The Greek sources of the 4th century, which in contrast to the testimonies from Iran flow so abundantly, know the Persian Empire not only as a colossus on clay feet but also as a powerful neighbour. It is said – because of the committed Greek mercenaries, but also because of the military ethos of the Iranian elites – to be still able to attack Hellas. However, as a rule, they do not offer an insight into the selfimage of the Great Kings and just this Iranian “éthno-classe dominante” (Pierre Briant): they are in most cases strongly bound to a specific genre and its rules or to a special context or their authors have an intention which conceals the genuine Iranian model or idea. The emic-imagined empire of peace with its hidden allusions to unrest and disorder coincides with the observations made on the true character of Achaemenid rule: it was an empire with a high degree of granted local autonomy, but under the strict supervision of the centre. It was a reign with an extremely flexible domestic and foreign policy – more on this later – which knew the drastic punishment of disloyal subjects and the mobilisation of all military resources to regain lost territories as well as politically far-sighted forgiveness towards former enemies, such as the victor at Salamis, Themistocles, or the king of Salamis on Cyprus, Euagoras. It knew the military-political expansionism of the initial phase of the empire as well as clever diplomacy and readiness to compromise in securing empire and reign later on. The restoration of peace and order after uprisings, which becomes visible in the Bisutun inscription, but also in other local sources, included not least the restitution or allocation of expropriated or looted estates to loyal followers of the victor. These estates, which were awarded by the ruler but could also be confiscated by him at any time, were, in addition to their strategic role in military crises, primarily “a means for distributing royal favour, fostering loyalty, ensuring tax income and, above all, increasing agricultural production.”8 II In the second part of my contribution, I would now like to turn to historical foreign relations, specifically, the Persian way of dealing with the Greeks who lived outside the empire. The answer to the question of how the Persians actually made peace, or at least a ceasefire, is extremely interesting and significant, but it causes great problems: we have almost exclusively Greek testimonies on this subject. In them, the authors’ political or literary intentions, their resumption of traditional 7 8

Tuplin, 2017: 36. Henkelman, 2018: 16.

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views of Persia or their introduction of new ones which are often due to contemporary political contexts, and their adaptation of Ancient Near Eastern or Iranian ideas to these intentions stand in the way of a reconstruction of real diplomatic contacts.9 For example, Plutarch’s reference to Artaxerxes II having concluded spondai … kai eirene (Artax. 24.5) is not only a very late information confirmed by no other source, it also serves the author to portray the king as a person acting out of low motives. And Diodorus’ assertion that Xerxes had concluded an agreement with the Carthaginians before his campaign in Greece (11.1.4, 20.1), has long been interpreted as a Sicilian attempt to complement the Eastern Greeks’ struggle against the Persian enemy with the Western Greeks’, more precisely: the Syracusan tyrants’, war against the Punics. And there is something else to consider. In Hellas, wars were only ended with a “peace treaty” (eirene) after the experiences of the Peloponnesian War; all previous agreements were “formally (only) war-suspending treaties (spondai), a preliminary stage to friendship and alliance treaties, but not peace treaties.”10 And even if we assume that it was possible for Greek poleis to conclude genuine peace treaties from then on, can we really assume that the Great King agreed to have his options for action curtailed by a genuine peace treaty with one of his Greek neighbours? We will come back to this question. The disclosure of Ancient Near Eastern or Iranian traditions in Greek sources and their specific adaptation and use by Herodotus and his successors has made enormous progress in recent years – examples include not least the works of my dear friends Robert Rollinger and Reinhold Bichler.11 However, much remains to be clarified in the field of diplomacy and Persian influence on the conditions in Hellas. To give you just an example: for many years scholars have been arguing about the deeper meaning behind the ritual of giving earth and water, about which Herodotus reports in connection with the negotiations between the emissaries of Athens and the Persian satrap in Sardes in the year 507/6 and in the run-up to the campaigns of Datis and Artaphernes as well as Xerxes in 490 and 481 B.C. respectively. There is not even agreement on the consequences of the stipulations of 507/6: while some emphasize that Athens thus became part of the Persian Empire, others assume that in return for the promised protection against Spartan ambitions, the polis had only promised not to pursue any policy that ran counter to the interests of the Great King. Both sides agree, however, that the short Athenian engagement in favour of the Ionian insurgents after 499 B.C. had in any case meant a breach of the contract.12

9

For interstate law in Classical Greece, cf. Buis, 2018. Baltrusch, 2008: 25. 11 See, most recently, Rollinger, 2018; Bichler / Rollinger, in press. 12 For the ritual of giving earth and water, see, most recently, Klinkott, 2016 (with previous literature). 10

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In his as yet unpublished dissertation, Daniel Beckman has identified as a basic feature of Persian policy towards Greece the preventing of pan-Hellenic action against the Great King. To this end, Darius and Xerxes had already tried to play off the Greek poleis against each other during the Persian Wars. It is undoubtedly true that, for example, Mardonius tried to extract Athens from the Hellenic League before the Battle of Plataea, that the Persian General Governor of the West (karanos), Tissaphernes, a few decades later, promoted the balance of power in Hellas. Much more decisive, however, is the fact that in many of the Greek states themselves there had been a fight at a very early stage about how to deal with the new world power in the East, whether a good relationship with the Great King could pay off politically and/or economically for the polis or the politicians who played a decisive role in it – and could thus be to the detriment of the rivalling poleis/ ethne or the competitors within the city itself. Depending on which party prevailed, poleis, such as Aegina in the time before Marathon or Thebes during the Xerxes-campaign, could be regarded “cities of the Great King,” others his opponents. The neutrality of Argos at the same time can be explained by the city’s hostility to Sparta, as there can be no doubt that the Messenians, who had been helotised by Sparta, will have prayed fervently to their gods for the victory of Xerxes at Salamis. A special case is Macedonia, where the Persian vassal Alexander I before 479 BC, and later also some of his successors from the House of the Argeads, hoped to strengthen royal power against the nobility by special relations to the Great King. Besides, Persia represented the only tangible model for the development of royal self-representation.13 In other words, the relations between the Hellenic poleis and Macedonia and the Persian Empire were multiform and not only determined by the Great Kings’ Western policy but also by the Eastern policy of the circles that were politically or economically relevant in the poleis. Besides, those relations were, on the Greek side, due to the frequent changes of political order and the numerous intra-urban conflicts that were more changeable than those on the Persian side. The fact that foreign relations in Hellas were often subordinated to questions of domestic policy is made clear by a quotation from the rhetorician Themistius in 370 AD which, following Plato (leg. 626), emphasizes that “the man for whom a truce with himself is impossible, would scarcely welcome peace with others” (Themistius 10, 131b = 156 Dind.).14 In Persia, after the expansion phase of the empire, the focus was on the recovery of lost territories, not least Egypt and Western Asia Minor, and on the protection of the empire’s territory, for example against the ambitions of the Delian League in Egypt, on Cyprus or on the Levant coast, of Agesilaus in Asia Minor or of Philipp II on the straits.

13

For Macedonian-Persian relations, cf., most recently, Müller, 2016, and the contributions in Müller / Howe / Bowden / Rollinger, 2017. 14 I owe this quote to Baltrusch, 2008: 98.

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The policy of Tissaphernes at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War served precisely these purposes, when for some time he skilfully played off the representatives of the Peloponnesian and Delian Leagues seeking support against each other. He only relied on a treaty of alliance with Sparta when Athens had supported the uprising of the satrap Amorges against the Great King in 413 B.C., and he did so firstly after very long negotiations and secondly only after Sparta had promised to “extradite” to him the formerly lost territories of Asia Minor in exchange for financial support. This ponderous policy paid off for the Great King, more than the one-sided support of Sparta by the king’s brother Cyrus the Younger a few years later that led to the hegemony of the Lacedaemonians over Hellas. And to make matters worse, the Spartans supported Cyrus in the throne dispute against his brother Artaxerxes and, after the rebel’s death, even attacked the Persians in their own territories.15 In the Greek sources, Persian money payments as a means of influencing Hellenic politics (the so-called “Daric Diplomacy”) play an important role. A Kassel dissertation of Louisa Thomas now shows, however, how topical many of the relevant passages are, and that we should therefore not overestimate the extent of Persian financial support to Greek poleis and politicians.16 Let us now turn to the most famous ceasefires and agreements between Persians and Greeks and the non-topical forms of Persian diplomacy. The two most famous treaties, in which the Great King or his functionaries and diplomats are said to have been involved, are the so-called Peace of Callias in 449 B.C. and the so-called King’s Peace of 387/6 B.C. The former, which is controversial in research as to whether it was historical at all, and, if so, a rather formless agreement or a real treaty, is normally interpreted as a sign of a change in Athenian policy under the influence of Pericles. The city no longer sought confrontation, as in the days of Cimon, but a conciliation for the establishment of the status quo and the preservation of the acquis of the Delian League : Artaxerxes I subsequently renounced all military action in the Aegean and on the west coast of Asia Minor, while the Athenians in return recognized Persian sovereignty over Egypt, Cyprus and the Levant. In 423 B.C. this agreement is normally said to have been confirmed once again in the so-called Treaty of Epilycus. If, however, it is assumed with Klaus Meister or Ernst Baltrusch that the Peace of Callias was unhistorical, the only reference to a Great King allowing himself to be formally curtailed in questions of peace and war, would have to be omitted.17 This does, of course, not

15

For the relations between Sparta and Persia, Lewis, 1977 is still extremely valuable. Cf. now also Rahe, 2015; Hyland, 2018; Buis, 2018: 98–101. 16 Thomas, 2021; on the forms of communication between Greeks and Persians, a Hamburg dissertation by S. Kühne has just been completed (supervisor: B. Meißner). 17 For the Peace of Callias, cf. Meister, 1982; Baltrusch, 2008: 143f.; but see also Badian, 1993.

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rule out war-suspending agreements on the spot between his satraps and their neighbours. The so-called King’s Peace, a general peace order (koine eirene) for Hellas negotiated by the Spartan Antalcidas with the Persian king Artaxerxes II, whose conditions were sworn in one year later in Sparta, saw the Great King in a special role. Not only did he proclaim the stipulations like a dictate to the Greek emissaries gathered in Sardes, he was also appointed patron and arbiter of the agreement himself and could now also have his de facto long-existing rule over all the cities of Asia Minor and Cyprus confirmed under “international” law.18 Besides truces and treaties with the Great King as patron, the Greek-Persian world also knew alliance treaties; the best-known of them are the three treaties or draft treaties between Sparta and the Peloponnesian League and Darius II from 412/11 B.C. already mentioned, handed down to us by Thucydides and put into effect by Tissaphernes; they make clear the relatively straightforward interests of the Great King and the negotiating skills of Tissaphernes on the one hand and the Spartan domestic political sensitivities on the other.19 III “Gentlemen! You have sent us to the Great King On a salary of two drachmas per day. That was over ten years ago, during the archonship of Euthymenes! … And wherever we dined, the hosts would always force us to drink Out of golden goblets and crystal cups! All that sweet, unmixed wine! … Then he (the Great King, J.W.) came back home And made us eat oxen, Roasted whole in the bread oven!” (Aristoph. Ach. 65ff.; Transl. G. Theodoridis) In a funny and ironic way Aristophanes, in his “Acharnians,” describes the journey and stay at the Persian court of two quite naïve Athenian diplomats. In reality, those emissaries, and this is not only true of Athens, were usually aristocrats accompanied by interpreters, and they were often enough connected to the functionaries of the Great King or even himself by a xenia/proxenia relationship. Our Greek sources, however, leave us unclear about the exact procedure of establish18

For the King’s Peace, cf., inter alia, Zahrnt, 2000; Tuplin, 2018 (with previous literature); the King’s Peace from a legal point of view is dealt with by Schmidt, 2002; for the Persian Empire in the 4th century, see Tuplin, 2014. 19 For the specificities of the agreements, cf. Hornblower, 2008: 924–932, for the names used by Thucydides for the parties to the agreement, see Buis, 2018: 98–101.

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ing contacts and agreements or they overstate it topically. The Greek emissaries, who had room for manoeuvre in negotiations on the spot, where they might also meet representatives of competing poleis, often enough benefited materially from these missions, e.g., by diplomatic Persian gifts. However, they also carried the risk of being prosecuted after their return for alleged bribery for lack of success or unfavourable agreements. Negotiations on the battlefield of Asia Minor on short-term non-aggression agreements or money payments, for example with Persian commanders or the satraps of Sardes or Dascylium, were usually more erratic than these official meetings in Sardes or Susa. This fact was due to personal continuity on the Persian and frequent changes of command on the Greek side. We know very little about the Persian emissaries. Were they “professional diplomats” or, like their Hellenic counterparts, ad hoc-determined powerful aristocrats or members of the royal family? Some of the diplomats whom Herodotus (7.32) referred to as kerykes, “heralds,” were obviously also travelling in Greece, as prove both their earth-and-water demands before and on the Xerxes-campaign and the episode of the killing of Persian emissaries in Sparta (7.134). But the heralds have undoubtedly not only “proclaimed” these demands but also conducted negotiations and reached agreements.20 As for the negotiations and their procedures it can be assumed – unfortunately the local sources are rather poor – that the Persian kings and their functionaries could fall back on diplomatic expert knowledge which not least profited from the experiences made over millennia in the Ancient Near East. Let us summarize. War, disorder and disloyalty have not disappeared from the divinely fostered rule of peace imagined by the Great Kings themselves in word and image; rather, they are present as a perpetual danger. This danger must be countered by armament for the case of emergency and by appeals to the subjects not to denounce the cohesive community with the Great King who is continuously worried about their well-being. In reality, this ideology corresponds to the Janusheadedness of Persian rule, which is characterized by a high degree of granted local autonomy and simultaneous strict supervision and by drastic action against enemies and insurgents. Persian diplomacy, only known to us in outlines from Greek sources, was able to draw on centuries of Ancient Near Eastern expertise about when and how to conclude armistices and treaties and how to bring about peaceful relations with neighbours for one’s own benefit.

20

Herodotus’ choice of words concerning the Persian emissaries (kerykes instead of presbeis or angeloi) may be due to the fact that kerykes enjoyed special protection in Greek poleis (cf. Bederman, 2009: 109–114) (reference K. Harter-Uibopuu). Their murder in Sparta would then appear all the more problematic.

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Rahe, P.A., 2015: The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge. New Haven / London. Rollinger, R., 2018: “Herodotus and the Transformation of Ancient Near Eastern Motifs: Darius I, Oebares, and the Neighing Horse.” In T. Harrison / E. Irwin (eds.): Interpreting Herodotus. Oxford. Pp. 125–148. Schmidt, K., 2002: Friede durch Vertrag. Der Friedensvertrag von Kadesch von 1270 v.Chr., der Friede des Antalkidas von 386 v.Chr. und der Friedensvertrag zwischen Byzanz und Persien von 562 n.Chr. Europäische Hochschulschriften II 3437. Frankfurt. Schmitzer, U., 2004: “Friede auf Erden? Latinistische Erwägungen zur pax Augusta in interdisziplinärer Perspektive.” Antrittsvorlesung 20. Januar 2004 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät II, Institut für Klassische Philologie, Berlin (https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/ 2366/148.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y). Thomas, L., 2021: Der ‚reiche Orient‘: Imagination und Faszination. Darstellungen des asiatischen Wohlstandes in griechischen Quellen des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Classica et Orientalia 28. Wiesbaden. Tuplin, C. J., 2014: “The Sick Man of Asia? Fourth Century Historians on the End of the Achaemenids.” In G. Parmeggiani (ed.): Between Thucydides and Polybius. The Golden Age of Greek Historiography. Cambridge, MA. Pp. 211–238. — 2017, “War and Peace in Achaemenid Imperial Ideology.” Electrum 24, Pp. 31–54. — 2018: “Xenophon, Isocrates and the Achaemenid Empire: History, Pedagogy and the Persian Solution to Greek Problems.” Trends in Classics 10(1). Pp. 13–55. van der Spek, R., 2014: “Cyrus the Great, Exiles, and Foreign Gods. A Comparison of Assyrian and Persian Policies on Subject Nations.” In M. Kozuh / W.F.M. Henkelman / C.E. Jones / C. Woods (eds.): Extraction and Control. Studies in Honor of Matthew W. Stolper. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 68. Chicago. Pp. 233–264. Zahrnt, M., 2000: “Xenophon, Isokrates und die KOINE EIRENE.” Rheinisches Museum 143, Pp. 295–326.

Making Peace in the Hellenistic World Christoph Schäfer

If Phillip II was widely known for personally participating in his battles, his son Alexander largely outshone him in this regard by fighting to the point of recklessness and thus setting an incontrovertible benchmark for his successors. The Diadochs, also personally led their troops and physically engaged in their battles; their participation in physical combat was not infrequent: Seleucus and Nicanor are known to have fought each other physically during the fight over Babylonia and the Upper Satrapies. The death of Nicanor by Seleucus’ own hand was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Seleucus’ courage and physical superiority to his soldiers.1 Craterus, Alexander’s most popular general, personally led the cavalry of his right wing against Eumenes of Cardia; Diodorus states that he fought valiantly until he was thrown by his horse and trampled to death in the ensuing crush.2 Eumenes himself, at that time operating as Perdiccas’ general in Asia Minor, also sought battlefield distinction by engaging in single combat, as Seleucus did. In the case of Eumenes, however, the need to show bravery and skill in combat was likely more pronounced: under Alexander he had risen from clerk (γραμματεύς) to the position of chief of the royal chancery (ἀρχιγραμματεύς), a position that kept him from acquiring martial renown.3 His opponent Neoptolemus, on the other hand, had been commander of one of Alexander’s elite infantry formations (ἀρχιυπασπιστής).4 Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Eumenes would prove to be more than a match for the veteran Neoptolemus. During their duel, the fighting was bitter and prolonged; when their spears had long since shattered, they slashed at each other with their swords until both were unhorsed and they were forced to continue their duel on foot until, finally, Neoptolemus was fatally injured.5 He was by no means alone. Over half of the successors of Alexander the great were to die in battle.6 1

App. Syr. 55,278, 57,293. For the re-conquest of Babylon and the fight against Demetrius and Nicanor cf. Mehl, 1986: 89–111. Grainger, 1990: 73–94. Shipley, 2000: 61. 2 Diod. 18,30,5. Plut. Eum. 7,5f. For the historiographical work of Hieronymus of Cardia, on which later accounts are likely mostly based, cf. Hornblower, 1981: 194–196. 3 Cf. Schäfer, 2002: 43–48. 4 Neoptolemus was a scion of the Epirote Molossian dynasty which enjoyed very close ties to the Macedonian Argeads. He was also known as a brave and experienced commander and had won renown by being the first to climb the walls of Gaza during the siege of that city (Arr. an. 2,27,6); cf. Heckel, 1992: 300–302. 5 Diod. 18,31; Plut. Eum. 7,5–7; Arr. succ. 1,27; Nep. Eum. 4,1f.; Iust. 13,8,8. Cf. Vezin, 1907: 48f.; Anson, 2004: 109; Hornblower, 1981: 194–196; Pritchett, 1985: 19f. 6 Schäfer, 2012: 324f.

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You may be wondering by now, why I am bringing this up in a paper on Making Peace. The few examples I have recounted show how deeply impressed the agonal principle (competition) was embedded in the psyche and conceptions of royalty among the Successors and how they consciously attempted to emulate their greatest predecessor. Alexander himself had no great interest in making peace; he preferred seeking a decisive engagement to force an issue. The generous terms offered by Darius after the battle of Issus were rejected brusquely. On the subject of making peace, then, the Successors likewise followed the example of their idol. This imitatio Alexandri was very closely tied to the necessity of Hellenistic rulers to “prove” or ascertain their legitimacy, their charismatic rule, by tracing their rule back to Alexander himself.7 The question I want to ask, then, is whether the Successors were even capable of “Making Peace” in a real sense. As we will see, this, too, was closely connected to external factors and depended on the necessity of legitimising their rule. German sociologist Max Weber introduced the differentiation of forms of rulership into one of three categories, i.e. “traditional,” “rational,” and “charismatic” rule. Charismatic rule, in contrast to rational rule, is based on personalities, as is “traditional” rule. Both differ, however, in that “charismatic” rule is uncommon, out of the ordinary, exceptional. The legitimacy of charismatic rulership does not derive from piety or legality, but instead rests on the rather vague notion of a specific “mission” of the ruler. In this, it is extraordinary, in the original sense of the word, as Max Weber has pointed out. There are no external limits placed on its legitimacy, no clear delineations, as there are with traditional or rational rule. Instead, the limits of charismatic rule are self-defined but not arbitrary.8 In contrast with traditional or rational rulers, charismatic rulers suffer from a clear imperative to prove themselves and their “mission” time and time again. They not only have to show that, e.g., their mission is divinely ordained, but also that divine support can be relied upon.9 As far as the time of the successors of Alexander is concerned, Weber’s reflections provide a convenient starting point for a typological analysis, particularly the category of charismatic rulership, which Weber further divides into religious or magical forms of charisma, and political, i.e. military charisma.10 Based on this view, H.-J. Gehrke has convincingly argued that the capability for victory is one of the most important aspects of the legitimation of power in Hellenistic monarchies.11 It is thus unsurprising that the Age of Successors witnessed a more or less continuous sequence of wars, with changing alliances and coalitions regularly facing off against the strongest of them. We would be wise to remember that, in 7

Schäfer, 2012: 307–311 and 325–327. Weber, 1980: 654 f. and 663. 9 Weber, 1980: 656. 10 Weber, 1980: 328 and 699. Cf. Breuer, 1991: 31 f. 11 Gehrke, 1982: 247–277. 8

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ancient Greece, war generally was more or less the normal state of affairs between polities, except when a specific peace treaty had been concluded. Such treaties interrupted the “normal” state of war, sometimes for 5 or 10 years, sometimes for 30, 50 or even longer. The fact that such peace treaties were always concluded with chronological limits shows that a renewal of conflict was expected.12 It would perhaps be more appropriate to talk of ceasefires, rather than peace treaties as we understand the term. Ernst Baltrusch has shown in his analysis of interstate treaties in ancient Greece that the different forms such treaties could take – e.g. symmachia or spondai – did not constitute clearly separated and distinct categories. Thus, compacts of capitulation were sometimes called spondai, as were peace treaties based on compromise. Likewise, the term symmachia should not be taken as indicating a clear model of hierarchy among the concluding parties.13 One slight exception to the rule was the koine Eirene (κοινὴ εἰρήνη): in this model, a general peace was prescribed between a number of independent states, guaranteed by the strongest power. This guarantee, most often made by an external or hegemonic power, is clear evidence that the “signatories” of the common peace were by no means equal partners.14 Such a common peace was famously in place when Alexander crossed the Hellespont and took up the war against the Persian Great King that his father had been preparing. This is documented by the founding oath of the Corinthian League: “Oath. I swear by Zeus, Earth, Sun, Poseidon, Athena, Ares, all the gods and goddesses: I shall abide by the peace (?); and I shall neither break the agreement with Philip (?) nor take up arms for harm against any of those who abide by the oaths (?), neither by land nor by sea; nor shall I take any city or guard-post nor harbour, for war, of any of those participating in the peace, by any craft or contrivance; nor shall I overthrow the kingdom of Philip or his descendants, nor the constitutions existing in each state when they swore the oaths concerning the peace; nor shall I myself do anything contrary to these agreements, nor shall I allow anyone else as far as possible. If any one does commit any breach of treaty concerning the agreements, I shall go in support as called on by those who are wronged (?), and I shall make war against the one who transgresses the common peace (?) as decided by the common council (synedrion) and called on by the hegemon; and I shall not abandon --- ”15

12

Meier, 1990: 588f. Baltrusch, 1994: 193. Cf. Ehrenberg, 21965: 128f. 14 Cf. Ehrenberg, 21965: 146. 15 IG II/III2 236 = Syll. 3I 260 = StV III 403 I. Transl. by Rhodes / Osborne, 2003: 372– 375. Cf. Diod. 16,89,1; Iust. 9,5,1. 13

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After Alexander’s death in 323, the clashes between the Hetairoi and the Pezhetairoi led to the compromise of Babylon which, in retrospect, seems destined to fail. The compromise centred around the acceptance of a dynastically legitimated double rule, if Alexander’s pregnant widow was in fact to give birth to a boy. The alleged mental deficiencies of Alexander’s closest living male relative, his half-brother Phillip III Arrhidaius, seem to have made such a double appointment necessary; they did not stop the army assembly from acclaiming him as Phillip III. After the birth of Alexander’s posthumous son, he, too, was acclaimed king as Alexander IV. The actual reins of government, however, were to reside in the hands of the chiliarch Perdiccas, who was to act as regent, and of Craterus and Antipater, none of whom was present in Babylon. Craterus was on his way to Europe when he was appointed guardian or “manager” of royal affairs (προστάτης τῆς βασιλείας). Antipater on the other hand was to remain in his post as chief general (στρατηγός) of the European parts of Alexander’s realm. After the end of the Lamian War, Antipater and Craterus ruled these parts jointly and, after Antipater’s death in 319, the latter was replaced by Polyperchon after Craterus himself had already fallen in combat against Eumenes. Meanwhile, Alexander’s erstwhile bodyguard Ptolemy had usurped monarchical power in Egypt. In Asia Minor, Greater Phrygia remained in the hands of Antigonus Monophtalmus, while Eumenes received Cappadocia.16 This partition of the satrapies was the result of a series of compromises and backroom deals between the rival generals. Their most important prerogative as satraps were their military commands and it was this fact that was to spell doom for the inner stability of the empire. The compromises necessary in Babylon and the personal ambitions of the generals would in time lead to violent conflicts and the first one of these was quick to erupt. Its result was the death or downfall of what we might call the protagonists on both sides of the Babylon compromise: Craterus, the leader of a coalition against the regent Perdiccas, fell in Asia Minor. Perdiccas himself could not rejoice over this victory; he was murdered by his own subordinates during his campaign against Ptolemy in Egypt. His loyal general Eumenes was subsequently condemned to death, together with other adherents. The coalition against Babylon had succeeded.17

16

For the distribution of the satrapies cf. Schober, 1981: 3ff. and 41ff.; Klinkott, 2000: 17ff. and 67ff. For the territories in detail Anson, 1988a: 471ff.; Orth, 1993: 41f., 58f. and 101. 17 Diod. 18,37,2; Arr. succ. 1,30. Cf. Errington, 1970: 49ff.; Briant, 1973a: 119ff.; Billows, 1990: 67.

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The re-organisation of Alexander’s empire at Triparadeisus In the Syrian town of Triparadeisus, of whose exact location we are still unsure, the victors of this first conflict among the Successors met to debate the future of the empire. Antipater was foremost among them, owing to his age and his uncontested authority. While he could rely on the authority of Macedonia proper, his age was also a problem: pushing 80, it was obvious that he would not be a longterm factor. The decisions made at Triparadeisus in 320 BC were to be influential in shaping the coming years: Antipater was to remain commanding general of Europe. In addition, he was appointed ἐπιμελητὴς τῶν βασιλέων (Diod. 18,32,2). What distinguished his position from that of Perdiccas was the fact that, in addition to his position as guardian of both kings, he could also dispose of a territory that remained loyal to him, i.e. the whole European part of the empire. There also occurred a redistribution of some satrapies in Triparadeisus; this had become necessary as satraps had fallen in battle (e.g. Leonnatus) or had been condemned as partisans of Perdiccas (e.g. Eumenes). Among those rewarded was Seleucus, who received the important satrapy of Babylon. However, it was Antigonus who emerged with a vastly strengthened position: the erstwhile satrap of Greater Phrygia was appointed Strategos of Asia, a new position that set him on par with Antipater and that comprised the command of the imperial army of the east, that is those troops formerly commanded by Perdiccas (Diod. 18,40,1). The siege of Nora and the oath of Eumenes Antigonus, tasked with stamping out the remaining members of opposition by Perdiccas’ partisans, was successful in driving Eumenes with 6–700 followers into the mountain fortress of Nora, located on the border of Cappadocia and Lycaonia.18 Letters were smuggled into Nora from Polyperchon, who had succeeded Antipater as epimeletes and protector of the kings after the old general’s death, and from Olympias, the mother of Alexander; both offered cooperation and support.19 However, Eumenes was to endure a siege of about a year, with no real prospect of escape, and ultimately attempted to negotiate his release. He modified the oath of allegiance that Antigonus insisted he give, to include the names of the kings and of Olympias. When he offered this version of the oath to the besieging army in the absence of Antigonus, the commanding officers agreed and lifted the 18

For Eumenes‘ retreat into Nora cf. Diod. 18,40ff.; Plut. Eum. 9ff.; Nep. Eum. 5,3ff.; Iust. 14,2,1; Strab. 12,2,6. Cf. Engel, 1978: 30ff.; Anson, 1977: 251ff.; Billows 1990: 73ff., esp. 77 and 83f. The exact location of the fortress is unknown but it was likely situated in the northern regions of the Taurus range. Cf. Orth, 1993: 56. On Antigonus’ position cf. Bengtson, 1937: 96ff.; Müller, 1973: 22f. For the transfer of command over Asia to Antigonus see Dreyer, 1999: 53f., esp. Anm. 121. 19 According to Diod. 18,48,4, Polyperchon’s exact title was ἐπιμελετὴς τῶν βασιλέων καὶ στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ. Cf. Diod. 18,57,3f. Briant, 1982 (1973b): 87f. (76f.) cast doubt on the authenticity of this exchange of letters. Cf. Billows, 1990: 83f.

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siege, giving Eumenes a chance to escape, referencing his on-going loyalty to the kings. After his escape, Polyperchon appointed him to the Strategy of Asia, in direct opposition to Antigonus.20 He also informed Eumenes by letter that the kings had decreed that 500 talents be given to him in compensation for the losses he suffered, as well as additional funds necessary for recruiting troops and continuing the fight against Antigonus. The letter stated that the loyal generals and treasurers of Cilicia, where a part of the royal treasury was, for the moment, located, had already been informed and that Eumenes had furthermore been given command over the Argyraspids, an elite unit first formed by Phillip II which had escorted the treasury to Kyinda in Cilicia.21 With troops under Antigonus’ command hot on his heels, Eumenes quickly crossed the Taurus mountain range and reached Cilicia, where he was welcomed by the commanders of the Argyraspids, Antigenes and Teutamus.22 With fresh troops available to Eumenes, the stage was now set for the second round of conflict between the Successors, which would see Antigonus and Cassander fighting Polyperchon, Olympias and Eumenes. After a series of bitter fights, Antigonus managed to defeat Eumenes in 316, whereupon he claimed overlordship over the whole of Asia and deposed (e.g. Peucestas) or even executed (e.g. Peithon) a number of satraps. Seleucus managed to escape to Egypt, which had become a centre of resistance to Antigonus’ claims. In the third War of the Successors, Antigonus, his son Demetrius, and Polyperchon were arrayed against Ptolemy, Cassander, and Lysimachus. The peace of 311 and its consequences In 311, after several rounds of inconclusive fighting, a certain calm set in in the relations of the Successors. The inconclusiveness of the on-going conflict had led to the so-called Diadochenfrieden (“Peace of the Successors”) between Cassander, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Antigonus.23 The terms of this peace are to be found in the account of Diodorus (19,105,1): “Cassander, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus came to terms with Antigonus and made a treaty. In this it was provided that Cassander be general of Europe until Alexander, the son of Roxanê, should come of age; that Lysimachus rule Thrace, and that Ptolemy rule Egypt and the cities adjacent thereto in Libya and Arabia; that Antigonus have first place in all Asia; and that the Greeks be autonomous. However, they did not abide by these agreements 20

According to Plut. Eum. 12,2f. Diod. 18,58,1; Plut. Eum. 13,1ff.; Diod. 18,58,2ff.; Plut. Eum. 13,1. Cf. Briant, 1982 (1973b): 87ff. (76ff.); Engel, 1978: 41ff. For Kyinda, Strab. 14,5,10; Seibert, 1983: 113. For the Argyraspids cf. Hammond, 1984: 51ff.; Anson, 1981: 117ff.; Anson, 1988b: 131ff.; Hammond, 1991: 414ff. 22 Diod. 18,59,2f. 23 StV III 428. 21

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but each of them, putting forward plausible excuses, kept seeking to increase his own power.”24 The signatories to this peace were the four great generals among the Successors, while Seleucus is not mentioned. Probably, Antigonus figured that he would be able to dispense with Seleucus relatively easily. Remarkably, the freedom of the Greek cities is much emphasised in the peace treaty, as confirmed by Hieronymus of Cardia. Cassander was to remain epimeletes of the young king and strategos of Europe; the other parties are guaranteed their territories such as they were. Antigonus is confirmed as overlord of Asia, which implicitly gave him free rein against Seleucus. From the point of view of Cassander, the treaty had one specific drawback: it only guaranteed him an exalted position until the maturity of Alexander IV. Cassander was well aware of that, as his subsequent actions showed: in 310, he had Rhoxane and Alexander IV murdered: “Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy, and Antigonus as well, were relieved of their anticipated danger from the king; for henceforth, there being no longer anyone to inherit the realm, each of those who had rule over nations or cities entertained hopes of royal power and held the territory that had been placed under his authority as if it were a kingdom won by spear (δορίκτητος χώρα).”25 The conflict between Antigonus and Seleucus, more or less ignored in the peace treaty, was resolved at a later date (we do not know when exactly) by a treaty between the two potentates: Seleucus was granted Babylonia, the Elymais and the Persis – territories from which he had previously driven the occupying forces of Antigonus. Following this compact, Seleucus was able to bring the remaining eastern parts of Alexander’s empire under his control. He was to spend the following years with securing his authority in these Upper Satrapies and to advance his frontiers to the Indus, where he famously struck a deal with the local ruler Chandragupta Maurya: in exchange for some frontier regions, the Indian king provided Seleucus with a large number of war elephants. We do not know, unfortunately, any details of the treaty between these two rulers. Andreas Mehl has postulated a nominal overlordship of Seleucus over Chandragupta. In any case, it was only after 304 BC that Seleucus returned from the east.26 Meanwhile, Antigonus had relaunched a campaign against Ptolemy. His son Demetrius managed to destroy the Ptolemaic fleet in a naval battle off Salamis on Cyprus in 306 BC, which in turn forced the landed Ptolemaic troops on Cyprus to capitulate. Not long after this, a coalition of forces under Ptolemy, Cassander, 24

Diod. 19,105,1. Cf. the letter of Antigonus to Scepsis announcing peace concluded with Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy: OGIS 5 = StV III 428 = Welles, Royal Correspondence 1) Cf. also Degen, 2019: 69f. 25 Diod. 19,105,3f. 26 Mehl, 1986: 176–181. Cf. Grainger, 2014: 65–67; Kosmin, 2014: 32–34.

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Lysimachus and Seleucus against Antigonus and his son Demetrius put a final nail in the coffin of the agreement of 311. With the death of Antigonus and the simultaneous rout of his son in the battle of Ipsus, the coalition’s immediate war goals are fulfilled, but their victory would prove to be a rotten fruit. Ptolemy, allegedly acting on false information, had neglected to lead his army into Asia Minor and to unify his command with that of his allies. After the victory, in which he had had no part, he claimed Coele-Syria, which had been promised to him ahead of the conflict. Seleucus resisted this incursion and chastised him for his absence at Ipsus. Coele-Syria, in fact, was to remain the main bone of contention between the Ptolemies and the Seleucides for the next century, with no less than six Syrian Wars to be fought over it.27 Thus, in reviewing the peace treaties and the practices of making peace among the Successors, one is left with the distinct impression that a true peace was never concluded. Instead of peace treaties, the different protagonists concluded alliances that were destined to break apart once the primary motive behind them had disappeared. This was indubitably tied to the very nature of Hellenistic kingship, closely connected to the person of the ruler and to the ideals of an agonistic principle. The eternal competition between the Successors made a lasting peace impossible. Bibliography Anson, E. M., 1977: “The Siege of Nora. A Source Conflict.” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 18, 251–256. — 1981: “Alexander’s Hypaspists and the Argyraspids.” Historia 30, 117–120. — 1988a: “Antigonus, the Satrap of Phrygia.” Historia 37, 471–477. — 1988b: “Hypaspists and Argyraspids after 323.” Ancient History Bulletin 2, 131–133. — 2004: Eumenes of Cardia. A Greek among Macedonians. Studies in Philo of Alexandria and Mediterranean Antiquity 3. Leiden / Boston / Tokyo. Baltrusch, E., 1994: Symmachie und Spondai. Untersuchungen zum griechischen Völkerrecht der archaischen und klassischen Zeit (8.–5. Jh. v.Chr.). Berlin / New York. Bengtson, H., 1937: Die Strategie in der hellenistischen Zeit. Ein Beitrag zum antiken Staatsrecht. 1. Bd. München. Billows, R. A., 1990: Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State. Hellenistic Culture and Society 4. Berkeley. Breuer, St., 1991: Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie. Theorie und Gesellschaft 18. Frankfurt / New York. Briant, P., 1973a: Antigone le Borgne. Les débuts de sa carrière et les problèmes de l’assemblée macédonienne. Paris.

27

Cf. Grainger, 2010; 2014: 81–87.

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— 1982 (1973b): “D’Alexandre le Grand aux diadoques: le cas d’Eumène de Kardia (II).” In Briant, P.: Rois, tributs et paysans. Études sur les formations tributaries du Moyen-Orient ancien. Paris. Pp. 55–93 (= Revue des Études Anciennes 75, 1973, 43–81). Degen, J., 2019: “Alexander III., Dareios I. und das speererworbene Land (Diod. 17, 17, 2).” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 6/1, 53–95. Dreyer, B., 1999: “Zum ersten Diadochenkrieg. Der Göteborger Arrian-Palimpsest (ms Graec 1).” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 125, 39–60. Ehrenberg, V., 19652: Der Staat der Griechen. Zürich / Stuttgart. Engel, R., 1978: Untersuchungen zum Machtaufstieg des Antigonos I. Monophthalmos. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der frühen Diadochenzeit. Lassleben. Errington, R.M., 1970: “From Babylon to Triparadeisos: 323–320 B.C.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 90, 49–77. Gehrke, H.-J., 1982: “Der siegreiche König. Überlegungen zur Hellenistischen Monarchie.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 64, 247–277. Grainger, J.D., 1990: Seleukos Nikator. Constructing a Hellenistic Kingdom. London / New York. — 2014: The Rise of the Seleukid Empire (323–223 BC). Seleukos I to Seleukos III. Barnsley. — 2010: The Syrian Wars. Boston / Leiden. Hammond, N.G.L., 1984: “Alexander’s Veterans after his Death.” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 25, 51–61. — 1991: “The Various Guards of Philip II and Alexander III.” Historia. Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 40/4, 396–418. Heckel, W., 1992: The Marshals of Alexander’s Empire. London. Hornblower, J., 1981: Hieronymus of Cardia. Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs. Oxford. Klinkott, H., 2000: Die Satrapienregister der Alexander- und Diadochenzeit. Historia Einzelschriften 145. Stuttgart. Kosmin, P.J., 2014: The Land of the Elephant Kings. Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA. Mehl, A., 1986: Seleukos Nikator und sein Reich, Band 1: Seleukos’ Leben und die Entwicklung seiner Machtposition. Studia hellenistica 28. Leuven. Meier, Ch., 1990: “Die Rolle des Krieges im Klassischen Athen.” Historische Zeitschrift 251, 555–605. Müller, O., 1973: Antigonos Monophthalmos und ‘Das Jahr der Könige’. Saarbrücker Beiträge zur Altertumskunde II. Bonn. Orth, W., 1993: Die Diadochenzeit im Spiegel der historischen Geographie. Kommentar zu TAVO-Karte B V 2 Diadochenreiche (um 303 v. Chr.). Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients. Beihefte, Reihe B, Geisteswissenschaften 80. Wiesbaden.

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Pritchett, W.K., 1985: The Greek State at War. Bd. 4. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Rhodes, P.J. / Osborne. R. (eds.), 2003: Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 BC. Oxford. Schäfer, Ch., 2002: Eumenes von Kardia und der Kampf um die Macht im Alexanderreich. Frankfurter Althistorische Beiträge 9. Frankfurt. — 2012: “Mut zum Risiko? – Überlegungen zur Herrschaftslegitimation in den Diadochenreichen.” In R. Rollinger / G. Schwinghammer / B. Truschnegg / K. Schnegg (eds.): Altertum und Gegenwart. 125 Jahre Alte Geschichte in Innsbruck. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 4. Innsbruck. Pp. 305–331. Schober, L., 1981: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Babyloniens und der oberen Satrapien von 323–303 v. Chr. Europäische Hochschulschriften: Reihe 3. Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 147. Frankfurt. Seibert, J., 1983: Das Zeitalter der Diadochen. Erträge der Forschung 185. München. Shipley, A. G., 2000: The Greek World after Alexander 323–30 BC. London / New York. Vezin, A., 1907: Eumenes von Kardia. Münster. Weber, M., 1980: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie. 5. Aufl. Tübingen.

Problems of Making Peace in the Roman Republic The Case of Appius Claudius Caecus and King Pyrrhus Wolfgang Spickermann

In his Aeneid (6, 851–853), the Roman poet Virgil, a contemporary of the first Emperor Augustus, lets Anchises, Aeneas’s father, say: Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera (credo equidem), uiuos ducent de marmore uultus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento – haec tibi erunt artes – pacique imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. “Others, I doubt not, shall beat out the breathing bronze with softer lines; shall from marble draw forth the features of life; shall plead their causes better; with the rod shall trace the paths of heaven and tell the rising of the stars: Remember thou, O Roman, to rule the nations with thy sway (these shall be thine arts), to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled and to tame in war the proud!” (Transl. E. H. Warmington, 1906). The influence of this Rome conception cannot be underestimated, as it assigns to the town on the Tiber River the divinely legitimised task of gaining domination about all known people, neither limited in time nor in its geographical dimensions and, at the same time, stylises Rome as a guarantor of peace and security.1 While the poet was looking back upon a long period of military expansion during the Republican time, he also saw with Emperor Augustus the beginning of the Imperial period, which seemed to bring peace and security to the inhabitants of almost the whole world after the most atrocious civil wars. It cannot be denied that the Roman Empire rose to become one of the most successful and lasting empires in world history. Hence, the poet Tibull’s Roma aeterna idea can still be felt in today’s Western world (Carmen 2,5,23 sq.: Romulus aeternae nondum formaverat urbis moenia, “not yet Romulus had formed the walls of the eternal city”). The English historian David J. Mattingly comments most aptly upon the almost nostalgic veneration of Rome in the occident when he says: “Rome certainly stands up to this sort of scrutiny as an extraordinary example of a preindustrial superstate.”2 The steady territorial expansion during the Roman Republic and, after the violent civil wars, the long period of peace within the empire, which encompassed 1

Mančić, 2015: 44. For the following considerations recently: Spickermann 2021, 11– 125. 2 Mattingly, 2011: 3 fn. 1.

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the major part of the world known at the time, created a huge economic and cultural area with Rome remaining its political centre until the foundation of Constantinople in 330 CE. The military monarchy and Roman citizenship constituted a common bond, which held this area together. Like most Romans, Caesar and Cicero, the best documented witnesses of the waning Republic, believed in the legitimacy of their conquests, as they had been warring for their own and their allies’ security. They were convinced that victory entitled them to rule the conquered and, of course, to profit from this right by pillaging and exacting tributes.3 This conviction in connection with a constant willingness to wage wars and to serve in the armed forces can be detected in all strata of the Roman Empire. The historian Livy summarizes Roman belief in certain victory as follows: “No human force could resist Roman might” (Livy 1,16), to which Greg Woolf notes: “Sometimes it feels as if empire was written into Roman DNA.”4 Since the 19th century all debates on Roman imperialism have focussed largely on the different interpretations of the term imperium, “empire,” its underlying claims to power and, more specifically, the various methods of exerting influence on other territories and communities, which could eventually lead to their subjugation and integration into an empire. The resulting network of control mechanisms enabled dominating communities to encroach upon the sovereignty of other political entities. In the 19th century, the ancient empires gained centre stage in the debates on imperialism, which were downright booming at the beginning of the 20th century, influenced as they were by Marxist ideas. The expansion of the Roman Empire, in particular its multi-ethnic character and its principle divide et impera became the paradigms of ancient “imperialism” per se. The proverbial Pax Romana referred to the domains of the Senatus Populusque Romanus (S.P.Q.R), in which the Romans pacified conquered territories through the principle of power sharing with local elites and monopolized foreign policy. Classical Athens can be regarded as the predecessor of later Mediterranean empires, being the first Mediterranean power to believe in its right to interfere in the affairs of other political entities. Rome, however, was the first local power that can effectively be considered a global empire. Yet the question must be raised as to whether the expansion of Rome was the result of a long-term strategy or if it emerged from the need to maintain the status quo and to safeguard one’s possessions. This question was pondered already by ancient authors who either stressed the “fortuitousness” of Rome’s rise to a global power (Cicero) or ascribed its expansion to a long-term strategy (Greek authors such as Polybius). This discussion resumed much later in Classical Studies. Theodor Mommsen (d. 1903), for example, emphasized the “accidental” expansion of the Roman Empire and recognized Rome’s right to defend its interests with all available means (theory

3 4

Brunt, 1978: 161. Woolf, 2012: 13.

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of defensive imperialism).5 According to this school of thought, the highly developed Greek culture had been distinctly disadvantaged over the superior Roman political system in this regard. Today, empires are not regarded solely in a negative way. From a historical point of view, it has to be conceded that they guaranteed continuity and stability. The case of the Roman Empire makes this sufficiently clear. It also has to be noted that, almost as a rule, ancient Mediterranean empires saw themselves as peacekeeping powers, which generally led them to take certain actions. Roman’s strive to establish Pax Romana should be analysed in this Mediterranean context. Armin and Peter Eich have established a direct connection between Roman imperialism, in particular the bellicose and violent period of expansion during the late Roman Republic, and the emergence of a community that grew with its challenges.6 However, they largely neglect the impact of the enormous military success on the social and economic structure of the Roman polity. Culturally as well, the impact of the conquered on the conquerors was huge, at least insofar as Greek culture is concerned. In the 2nd century CE, at latest, disciples of Greek education, the so-called pepaideumenoi, regarded Athens and not Rome as the cultural capital of the empire.7 Yet not even the greatest admirers of Greece would foster any doubts that Rome was the political Caput Mundi and, moreover, that the city of Rome became an idea that embraced the whole empire. Aelius Aristides expressed this sentiment most aptly in his Roman Oration, which he held in 143 CE: “What a city is for its frontiers and territories, this city is for the whole world. After all, it is selected as the general capital for the entire empire. You could say that all those who live in surrounding areas or – constitutionally – in a different country come together around one and the same fortress” (Oratio 26.61). Just like in Greece, the modification of fighting techniques from aristocratic cavalry charge and single combat to phalanx formation and combat in the battle line, which required enlisting ever-larger groups of men who had to provide their own equipment, led to the political emancipation of the heavily armed foot soldier. In Roman history, this process is associated with the so-called “Conflict of the Orders,” which started with the secession of the Plebeians, commoners not belonging to any patrician clan, to the Sacred Hill (mons sacer) traditionally in 494 BCE and was settled in 287 BCE with the Lex Hortensia. This law provided that all bills passed by the Plebeian Council (concilia plebis) were binding for the entire community. The political significance of the army and the high regard for military strength, which eventually led to the rise of a medium-sized soldier-peasant com5

Cf. Mommsen, 1856: 757–759. For modern critics see Garnsey, 1978, and Harris, 1979: esp. 163. 6 Eich / Eich, 2005. 7 Cf. Lucian, Nigrinus 15.

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munity to a hegemonic power first in Latium then in the whole of Italy and ultimately in the entire Mediterranean world, became apparent from the very outset. Jeremy Armstrong recently emphasized the shift from individual warfare of single groups (gentes) to collective warfare of the whole res publica.8 Life as a Roman peasant involved not only having a farmstead but also serving as a soldier and hence participating in the assembly (of arms-bearing men). In the formation of the Roman institutions, it is most fascinating to observe that, on the one hand, the assembly of arms-bearing men developed into an assembly of citizens whose members were organised according to their wealth into elective bodies. Their main task was to make decisions on war and peace and to elect the highest-ranking magistrates with military power. From a modern point of view, the res publica Romana was a political entity ruled by an aristocracy of patrician and plebeian senatorial elite families, which had an exclusive character and called themselves nobility. Their economic wealth was based on huge landholdings and their benchmark – and this is crucial – was a consulship combined with military success. As a result, the leading aristocrats competed unremittingly for the highest magisterial offices, particularly the consulship, since the holders of this office were invested with so-called imperium, the power to command the military. This competitive system pressurised each holder of imperium into waging as many wars as possible. Apart from hauling back home the spoils of war, parts of which had to be consecrated to the gods, the most worthy and most visible ambition of every military commander was to complete a successful campaign with the rite of triumph, which had to be granted by the senate. In Rome, the triumph was celebrated in the presence of all citizens. The exhibition of military force, the display of the spoils of war and the parade of the victorious commander in a chariot were a blatant manifestation of victory and not peace. Thus, a triumph constituted a much sought-after opportunity to permanently increase one’s own and one’s family’s reputation within the nobility.9 Two factors were crucial for the stability of this system. First, each successful magistrate and military commander had to resume his private life and return to the senate upon the expiry of his term of office. This means that none was able to rise above his peers through success and achievements for a longer period. Second, every political act was connected with a religious act. The gods had to be compensated, as their benevolence was considered as key factor for prosperity. Polybius regarded the Roman religion, in fact, as a major basis for Roman superiority because in regarding the public religion in a very serious way the common people were kept under control of the priest and magistrates.10 This chiefly military system of values, which was not only binding for the elites but also for large parts of the Roman citizenry and therefore a key to success, 8

Armstrong, 2016. Cf. Itgenshorst, 2005. 10 Cf. the famous description of the Roman conditions in Pol. 6, 56, 6–15. 9

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formed the basis of massive Roman expansion.11 A first significant step was Rome’s assuming a leading role in the Latin League. This confederation of 30 Latin towns emerged from the First Roman-Latin War, traditionally dated 493 BCE (foedus cassianum) but which, according to modern scholarship, might have been fought a whole century later. Another important milestone was the war against the Etruscan rival Veii about 20 km away from Rome (405–396 BCE). The war ended with the complete destruction of Veii and the incorporation of its territory. Consequently, Roman territory almost doubled from 822 km2 to 1500 km2 and the Roman general M. Furius Camillus was able to celebrate several triumphs. Ultimately, Veii’s defeat smoothed Rome’s way to superpower.12 The total destruction of an enemy, however, and the annexation of its territory remained a rare case. Subsequently, a system was developed which heavily contributed to Rome’s success due to its flexibility and originality: a system of alliances and the establishment of colonies for Roman citizens. Temporarily, however, Rome suffered considerable setbacks when the Celts invaded Roman territory from the north and threatened to conquer the city of Rome itself: vae victis! (389–386 BCE). However, when the Romans together with the Latins managed to drive them back, a period of renewed expansion began. Conquered adversaries were forced to conclude a treaty (foedus) with Rome, which granted them internal autonomy but obliged them to contribute troops to the Roman army without giving them a vote in the Roman people’s assembly (civitas sine suffragio). This fate struck the conquered Etruscan city of Caere and almost all cities that had been subjugated during the Second Roman-Latin War (340–338 BCE). These cities were called municipia, a term derived from munera capere as their citizens had the same obligations towards Rome as Roman citizens. The method of binding once independent communities to Rome turned out to be successful, particularly as Rome managed to isolate these communities in terms of their foreign and military policy. Treaties were highly customised and only applicable between Rome and the respective municipality. Two types of leagues (foedera) were used: the foedera aequa, a treaty on equal terms, and the foedera iniqua, which contained a majesty-clause in order to secure the higher interests of the Roman people. Three different kinds of communities emerged from this system: the civitates liberae ac foederatae, which were friends of and on equal terms with the Roman people, the civitates sine suffragio and, finally, the so-called dediticii, subjugated people who were denied any rights because of their resistance. Rome rose to become a leading central power in Italy after the Latin League had been dissolved and its territory, as well as large parts of Etruria, had been brought under control. Rome promptly turned towards the South against the Oscan tribes of the Apennine (Samnites), which were subjugated after some drawbacks in probably two wars (the first from

11 12

Rüpke, 1995. Cf. Bleicken, 2008: 190.

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343 to 341 BCE may be legendary) between 326 and 290 BCE.13 A change in military strategy eventually smoothed the path to success. In the mountainous area, the Romans were forced to give up the phalanx combat, which proved to be rather inflexible, and fought with smaller, independently operating units (maniples). The lance, the main weapon until this point, was replaced by the short sword (gladius) and the javelin (pilum). This combat technique, which was based on a strong and flexible infantry and did not rely so much on cavalry, turned out to be superior. The systematic establishment of colonies in Samnite and Lucan territory also contributed towards their complete subjugation. In the North, the Romans were able to achieve a great victory against the Sabines and Etruscans and their Celtic allies in the battle of lake Vadimo (283 BCE). Consequently, Rome rose to the status of superpower within Italy. However, Rome’s new position antagonised the powerful Greek towns in Southern Italy, above all the city of Tarentum, which summoned military assistance from the homeland. The “condottiero” Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was able to defeat the Romans in 280 and 279 BCE in two battles but suffered such heavy losses (Pyrrhic victories) that he had to return to Epirus in 272 BCE without resounding results. The Roman system of alliances had finally proved its worth, at least to a large extent as only the Samnites and the Lucani had defected. The Romans punished them by terminating the Samnite alliance and erecting new colonies. Around 240 BCE, Rome had over 28 colonies, and by around 180 BCE, Roman colonies had increased to more than 35, most of which had been established in the territory of the former Samnite alliance.14 Appius Claudius Caecus was the most important member of his family in the th rd 4 /3 century BCE; he received his cognomen due to his blindness in old age. During his censorship 312 BCE he initiated the construction of the aqua Appia and the via Appia. Near the end of his life during a war between Rome and the Epirote king Pyrrhus, the Senate was presented with peace proposals that, if accepted, could have resulted in the abandonment by Rome of southern Italy. The aged and blind Appius gave an eloquent speech urging rejection of the proposals. The Senate was convinced and further warfare between Rome and Pyrrhus compelled the Epirote king to depart from Italy.15 This speech and others were still preserved and read in the time of Cicero.16 This paper tries to reconstruct the ar13

Cf. Galsterer, 1976: 25–104. Cf. Bringmann, 2010: 83–92. 15 For Appius Claudius Caecus: Broughton, 1951: 160 passim; Linke, 2000: esp. 69 sq. 16 Cic., Brut. 61 (15): Hunc igitur Cethegum consecutus est aetate Cato, qui annis IX post eum fuit consul, eum nos ut perveterem habemus, qui L. Marcio M.’ Manilio consulibus mortuus est, annis LXXXVI ipsis ante me consulem. nec vero habeo quemquam antiquiorem, cuius quidem scripta proferenda putem, nisi quem Appi Caeci oratio haec ipsa de Pyrrho et nonnullae mortuorum laudationes forte delectant. Cic., Cato 16: Ad Appi Claudi senectutem accedebat etiam, ut caecus esset; tarnen is, cum sententia senatus inclinaret ad pacem cum Pyrrho foedusque faciendum, non dubitavi dicere illa, quae versi14

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gument of Appius Claudius Caecus, making no peace with Pyrrhus, to analyze Roman conquest policy in lower Italy and also the conditions of peace treaties with Rome’s opponents. The full text of an elogium for Appius Claudius Caecus (with his cursus honorum) originally from the forum Augusti in Rome is preserved in form of an inscription, which was found in Arretium/Arezzo and is now in the Florentine museum.17 It seems that of the elogia from the forum of Augustus copies were made, on a smaller scale for Italian municipia. The literary and historic interest of these elogia was so great that others are added from the same source.18 Among these the foremost place must be assigned to the seven from Arretium, namely those on M. Valerius Maximus, Appius Claudius Caecus, Q. Fabius Maximus, L. Aemilius Paullus, (Tib. Sempronius Gracchus), C. Marius, and Licinius Lucullus. In these copies, ancient forms are modernized, and verbal statements, as to the number of times in which a particular office was held, are changed into numerical abbreviations.19 The elogium of Appius Claudius Caecus has already been quoted from the Arretine copy and by fortunate circumstances fragments from the original inscription from the forum Augusti in Rome could be found.20 We can assume that this inscription was part of a statue program with the most important representatives of the Roman Republic; under them was verifiable Appius Claudius Caecus.21 bus persecutes est Ennius: “Quo vobis mentes, rectae quae stare solebantantehac, dementes sese flexere viai?” ceteraque gravissime: notum enim vobis carmen est; et tamen ipsius Appi exstat oratio. Atque haec ille egit ssptimo decimo anno post alterum consulatum, cum inter duos consulates anni decern interfuissent censorqueante superiorem consulatum fuisset; ex quo intellegitur Pyrrhi bello grandem sane fuisse: et tamen sic a patribus accepimus. Seneca, ep. 19, 114, 13: Multi ex alieno saeculo petunt verba, duodecim tabulas loquuntur; Gracchus illis et Crassus et Curio nimis culti et recentes sunt, ad Appium usque et Coruncanium redeunt. Tac., Dial. 18: vitio autem malignitatis humanae vetera semper in laude, praesentia in fastidio esse. Num dubitamus inventos, qui prae Catone Appium Claudium magis mirarentur? Satis constat, ne Ciceroni quidem obtrectatores defuisse, quibus inflatus et tumens nec satis pressus, sed supra modum exsultans et superfluens et parum antiquus videretur. Cf. Humm, 2005: 35–47; about the eloquence of Appius Claudius Caecus see Chapt. X. 17 CIL XI, 1827 = ILS 54 = Inscr. It. 13,3 Nr. 79 = AE 2011, 361 (elogia Arretina): Appius Claudius / C(ai) f(ilius) Caecus / censor co(n)s(ul) bis dict(ator) interrex III / pr(aetor) II aed(ilis) cur(ulis) II q(uaestor) tr(ibunus) mil(itum) III com/plura oppida de Samnitibus cepit / Sabinorum et Tuscorum exerci/tum fudit pacem fieri cum [P]yrrho / rege prohibuit in censura viam / Appiam stravit et aquam in / urbem adduxit aedem Bellonae fecit. Appius’ vow to Bellona: Liv. 10,19,17. 18 Sandys, 1919: 99. 19 Sandys, 1919: 99–102. 20 Humm, 2005: 35–47. 21 CIL VI 40943 = 31606 = CIL I p.192 = Inscr. It. 13,3 12 = AE 1999, 188: [Ap(pius) Claudius C(ai) f(ilius) Caecus], /[cens(or), co(n)s(ul) bis, dictator], / [interrex, pr(aetor) bis]. / [Complu]ra oppị[da de Samni]ṭịḅ[us cepit]. / [Sabinoru]m et

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The importance of the speech against the peace with Pyrrhus was so great, that it explicitly is mentioned in the text of the inscription: pacem fieri cum [P]yrrho / rege prohibuit. A similar version to the elogium can be found in Ps. Aurelius Victor’s De viribus illustribus (34.9), a text from the first half of the 4th century CE.22 But what were his main arguments? Plutarch’s paraphrase in the life of Pyrrhus 19 cites: “And a little after raising up himself: ‘I bore,’ said he, ‘until this time, the misfortune of my eyes with some impatience, but now while I hear of these dishonourable motions and resolves of yours, destructive to the glory of Rome, it is my affliction, that being already blind, I am not deaf too. Where is now that discourse of yours that became famous in all the world, that if he, the great Alexander, had come into Italy, and dared to attack us when we were young men, and our fathers, who were then in their prime, he had not now been celebrated as invincible, but either flying hence, or falling here, had left Rome more glorious? You demonstrate now that all that was but foolish arrogance and vanity, by fearing Molossians and Chaonians, ever the Macedonian’s prey, and by trembling at Pyrrhus who was himself but a humble servant to one of Alexander’s life-guard, and comes here, not so much to assist the Greeks that inhabit among us, as to escape from his enemies at home, a wanderer about Italy, and yet dares to promise you the conquest of it all by that army which has not been able to preserve for him a little part of Macedonia. Do not persuade yourselves that making him your friend is the way to send him back, it is the way rather to bring over other invaders from thence, contemning you as easy to be reduced, if Pyrrhus goes off without punishment for his outrages on you, but, on the contrary, with the reward of having enabled the Tarentines and Samnites to laugh at the Romans.’ When Appius had done, eagerness for the war seized on every man, and Cineas was dismissed with this answer, that when Pyrrhus had withdrawn his forces out of Italy, then, if he pleased, they would treat with him about friendship and alliance, but while he stayed there in arms, they were resolved to prosecute the war against him with all their force, though he should have defeated a thousand Laevinuses. It is said that Cineas, while he was managing this affair, made it his business carefully to inspect the manners of the Romans, and to understand their methods of government, and having conversed with their noblest citizens, he afterwards told Pyrrhus, among other things, that the senate seemed to him an

Tus[corum exercit]um [fudit]. / [P]ac[em fie]ṛi cụ[m Pyrrho rege prohibuit]. / Ịn ce[nsura viam Appiam stravit e]ṭ aq[uam] / 5 [in] ụ[rbem adduxit. Aedem Bellon]ae fe[cit]. ̣ 22 Cum de pace Pyrrhi ageretur et gratia potentum per legatum Cineam pretio quaereretur, senex et caecus lectica in senatum latus turpissimas condiciones magnifica oratione discussit. Cf. The commentary of Fugmann, 2016: 298; cf. Humm, 2005: 35–47.

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assembly of kings, and as for the people, he feared lest it might prove that they were fighting with a Lernaean hydra, for the consul had already raised twice as large an army as the former, and there were many times over the same number of Romans able to bear arms.” (Transl. Bernadotte Perrin)23 What was the story? 10 years after the third Samnite war (298–290 BCE), which is mentioned in our inscription, the Epirote king Pyrrhus entered Italy 280 BCE with an army consisting of 20,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 500 slingers, and 20 war elephants in a bid to subdue the Romans. The elephants had been loaned to him by Ptolemy II, who had also promised 9,000 soldiers and a further 50 elephants to defend Epirus while Pyrrhus and his army were away.24 Due to his superior cavalry, his elephants and his deadly phalanx infantry, he defeated the Romans, led by Consul Publius Valerius Laevinus, in the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BCE, in the Roman province of Lucania. There are conflicting sources about casualties. According to Plutarch Hieronymus of Cardia reports the Romans lost about 7,000 while Pyrrhus lost 3,000 soldiers, including many of his best. Dionysius gives a bloodier view of 15,000 Romans and 13,000 Epirotes dead.25 Several tribes, including the Lucanians, Bruttii, Messapians, and the 23 Plut. Pyrrhus 19: ὁ δὲ αὐτόθεν καταστάς, πρότερον μέν,’ ἔφη, τὴν περὶ τὰ ὄμματα τύχην ἀνιαρῶς ἔφερον, ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, νῦν δὲ ἄχθομαι πρὸς τῷ τυφλὸς εἶναι μὴ καὶ κωφὸς ὤν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀκούων αἰσχρὰ βουλεύματα καὶ δόγματα ὑμῶν ἀνατρέ ποντα τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ κλέος, ποῦ γὰρ ὑμῶν ὁ πρός ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους θρυλούμενος ἀεὶ λόγος, ὡς, εἰ παρῆν ἐκεῖνος εἰς Ἰταλίαν ὁ μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ συνηνέχθη νέοις ἡμῖν καὶ τοῖς πατράσιν ἡμῶν ἀκμάζουσιν, οὐκ ἂν ὑμνεῖτο νῦν ἀνίκητος, ἀλλ᾽ ἢ φυγὼν ἂν ἤ ποῦ πεσὼν ἐνταῦθα τὴν Ῥώμην ἐνδοξοτέραν ἀπέλιπε; [2] ταῦτα μέντοι κενὴν ἀλαζονείαν καὶ κόμπον ἀποδείκνυτε, Χάονας καὶ Μολοσσούς, τὴν ἀεὶ Μακεδόνων λείαν, δεδιότες, καὶ τρέμοντες Πύρρον, ὃς τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου δορυφόρων ἕνα γοῦν ἀεὶ περιέπων καὶ θεραπεύων διατετέλεκε, καὶ νῦν οὐ βοηθῶν τοῖς ἐνταῦθα μᾶλλον Ἕλλησιν ἢ φεύγων τοὺς ἐκεῖ πολεμίους πλανᾶται περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, ἐπαγγελλόμενος ἡμῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς δυνάμεως ἣ μέρος μικρὸν αὐτῷ Μακεδονίας οὐκ ἤρκεσε διαφυλάξαι, [3] μὴ τοῦτον οὖν ἀπαλλάξειν νομίζετε ποιησάμενοι φίλον, ἀλλὰ ἐκείνους ἐπάξεσθαι καταφρονήσαντας ὑμῶν ὡς πᾶσιν εὐκατεργάστων, εἰ Πύρρος ἄπεισι μὴ δοὺς δίκην ὧν [p. 406] ὕβρισεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσλαβὼν μισθὸν τό ἐπεγγελάσαι Ῥωμαίοις Ταραντίνους καὶ Σαυνίτας. τοιαῦτα τοῦ Ἀππίου διαλεχθέντος ὁρμὴ παρέστη πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς, καὶ τὸν Κινέαν ἀποπέμπουσιν ἀποκρινάμενοι Πύρρον ἐξελθόντα τῆς Ἰταλίας, οὕτως, εἰ δέοιτο, [4] περὶ φιλίας καὶ συμμαχίας διαλέγεσθαι, μέχρι δὲ οὗ πάρεστιν ἐν ὅπλοις, πολεμήσειν αὐτῷ Ῥωμαίους κατὰ κράτος κἂν μυρίους ἔτι Λαιβίνους τρέψηται μαχόμενος, λέγεται δὲ Κινέαν, ἐν ᾧ ταῦτα ἔπραττεν, ἅμα ποιησάμενον ἔργον καὶ σπουδάσαντα τῶν τε βίων γενέσθαι θεατὴν καὶ τῆς πολιτείας τὴν ἀρετὴν κατανοῆσαι, [5] καὶ διὰ λόγων ἐλθόντα τοῖς ἀρίστοις τά τε ἄλλα τῷ Πύρρῳ φράσαι, καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἡ σύγκλητος αὐτῷ βασιλέων πολλῶν συνέδριον φανείη, περὶ δὲ τοῦ πλήθους δεδιέναι, μὴ πρός τινα φανῶσι Λερναίαν ὕδραν μαχόμενοι: διπλασίους γάρ ἤδη τῷ ὑπάτῳ τῶν παρατεταγμένων πρότερον ἠθροῖσθαι, καὶ πολλάκις εἶναι τοσούτους ἔτι τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὅπλα φέρειν δυναμένους. 24 Iust. 17,2,4; cf. Spickermann, 2010: 352. 25 Plut., Pyrrhus, 17,4–5.

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Greek cities of Croton and Locri joined Pyrrhus now. He then offered the Romans a peace treaty. Pyrrhus spent the winter in Campania.26 After that Pyrrhus sent Cineas with gifts to Rome as an ambassador to offer peace and friendship. Pyrrhus demanded impunity for the Tarentines and a treaty of friendship and offered the release of all captives and his help to conquer Italy. The Romans rejected the gifts as bribery, but there was a discussion in the Roman senate about making peace with Pyrrhus. The impression of Heraclea’s defeat must have been important. In this situation, the aged Appius Claudius was brought to the senate and after reception by his sons and sons-in-law he held his famous speech.27 What are his arguments? Since Cicero mentions the speech, it is very likely that Plutarch still knew their contents and he reproduced only the main arguments very curtly in this passage: 1. Rome is invincible: even when Alexander the Great may have planned to conquer Italy he would have failed! 2. Pyrrhus is only a king of the Molossians and Chaonians, which are merely clients of the Macedonians, and he himself is alleged to have been a servant of a bodyguard of Alexander, surely Antigonos Monophthalmos; whose son Demetrios occupied Macedonia in 307 BCE and placed the 12 year old Pyrrhus on the throne of Epirus. 3. Pyrrhus’ campaign in Italy is not caused by the fact that he wants to help the Greeks there, but because he had to flee from his enemies in Macedonia. He himself is too weak to maintain only a part of Macedonia. (This is not correct, because Ptolemaios Keraunos as his ally was subdued to hand over to him a lot of mercenaries and elephants). 4. You cannot get rid of Pyrrhus making him a friend of Rome, because you lose your reputation and the aura of invincibility if you let him unpunished for his insults. It will be an invitation for the Tarantines and Samnites to pursue their revolts against the Romans. In fact, the acceptance of Pyrrhus’ offer of peace would have meant for the Romans the renunciation of the results of the last Samnite war and the exclusion of southern Italy from Roman rule.28 After Appius’ speech, the Senate’s opinion changed and the war was continued. 279 Pyrrhus invaded Apulia what matters in the Battle of Asculum, where Pyrrhus won an extreme costly victory. While the Roman force under the consul Publius Decius Mus was ultimately defeated, they managed to almost break the back of Pyrrhus’ Epirot army, which guaranteed the security of the city of Asculum itself. In the end, the Romans had lost 6,000 men and Pyrrhus 3,500 including many officers. Pyrrhus later famously commented on his victory at Asculum, stating: “If we are victorious in one more battle with 26

Kienast, 1963: 235–239; cf. Bringmann, 2010: 89 sq. Linke, 2000: 70. 28 So Bringmann, 2010: 90. 27

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the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined” (Plutarch, Pyrrhus 21,9–12). It is from reports of this semi-legendary event that the term Pyrrhic victory originates. After that, he left Italy to become king of Sicily and after several battles with the Carthaginians, he returned from Sicily, and was attacked by a superior Roman army under Manius Curius Dentatus. After the Battle of Beneventum in 275 BCE, which ended without a result, Pyrrhus terminated his campaign in Italy to return to Epirus. With the exception of the city of Tarentum, which remained under the dominion of the Epirotes, Southern Italy came under the control of the Romans.29 The example of Appius Claudius pacem fiere cum Pyrrho rege prohibuit was a proper lesson for Roman politicians until the imperial era. Notably the young men of senatorial rank already internalized this in their first rhetorical attempts. To make peace with the Romans every time had the consequence of the subversion of the enemy and the acceptance of the supremacy of Rome. In the end, to become an amicus populi Romani did not mean to negotiate at eye level, one can at best expect to be spared and keep responsible for your inner affairs. The reception of Appius’s speech is very remarkable: from 2 BCE onwards, every visitor of Augustus’ forum could see the statue of this hero of the Roman Republic who refused a humiliating peace. To cite Virgil again: “You, Roman, remember to rule people by command (these were arts to you), and impose the custom to peace, to spare the subjected and to vanquish the proud!” Bibliography Armstrong, J., 2016: War and society in early Rome. Cambridge. Bleicken, J., 20088: Die Verfassung der Römischen Republik. Grundlagen und Entwicklung. Paderborn. Bringmann, K., 20102: Geschichte der Römischen Republik. Von den Anfängen bis Augustus. München. Broughton, T.R., 1951: The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. Vol. I. New York. Brunt, P.A., 1978: “Laus imperii.” In P. Garnsey (ed.): Imperialism in the ancient world: the Cambridge University research seminar in ancient history. Cambridge. Pp. 159–191. Eich, A. / Eich, P., 2005: “War and State-Building in Roman Republican Times.” Scripta Classica Israelica 24, 1–33. Fugmann, J., 2016: “Kommentar.” In J. Fugman: Ps. Aurelius Victor. De viribus illustribus urbis Romae. Die berühmten Männer der Stadt Rom. Lateinisch und deutsch. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Joachim Fugmann. Texte zur Forschung 110. Darmstadt. Pp. 213–467.

29

Kienast, 1963: 146–155; Bringmann, 2010: 89–92.

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Galsterer, H., 1976: Herrschaft und Verwaltung im republikanischen Italien. Die Beziehungen Roms zu den italischen Gemeinden vom Latinerfrieden 338 v. Chr. bis zum Bundesgenossenkrieg 91 v. Chr. Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte 68. München. Garnsey, P. (ed.), 1978: Imperialism in the ancient world: the Cambridge University research seminar in ancient history. Cambridge. Harris, W.V., 1979: Imperialism in Republican Rome. New York / Oxford. Humm, M., 2005: Appius Claudius Caecus. La République accompli. Publications de l’École française de Rome. Rome. (https://books.openedition.org/efr/ 1581) Itgenshorst, T., 2005: Tota illa pompa. Der Triumph in der römischen Republik. Göttingen. Kienast, D., 1963: Art. Pyrrhus von Epiros. RE 24.1, 106–165. Linke, B., 2000: “Appius Claudius Caecus – ein Leben im Zeitalter des Umbruchs.” In K.-J. Hölkenskamp / E. Stein-Hölkenskamp (eds.): Von Romulus zu Augustus. Große Gestalten der römischen Republik. München. Pp. 69–78. Mančić, E., 2015: “Von der Aeneis bis zu den Nationalepen. Gründungs- und Begründungsnarative im imperialen und nationalen Kontext.” In M. Schmidt (ed.): Narrative im (post)imperialen Kontext. Literarische Identitätsbildung als Potential im regionalen Spannungsfeld zwischen Habsburg und Hoher Pforte in Zentral- und Südosteuropa. Tübingen. Pp. 37–48. Mattingly, D.J., 2011: Imperialism, power, and identity. Experiencing the Roman empire. Princeton, NJ. Mommsen, T., 18562: Römische Geschichte. Vol. 1. Berlin. Rüpke, J., 1995: “Wege zum Töten, Wege zum Ruhm: Krieg in der römischen Republik.” In H. von Stietencron / J. Rüpke: Töten im Krieg. Freiburg im Breisgau. Pp. 213–240. Sandys, J.E., 1919: Latin epigraphy: an introduction to the study of Latin inscriptions. Cambridge. Spickermann, W., 2010: “Blitz gegen Blitz. Überlegungen zur Niederlage des Ptolemaios Keraunos gegen die Kelten 279 v.Chr.” Gymnasium 117, 345–366. — 2021: “The Roman Empire.” In Y. Pines / M. Biran / J. Rüpke (eds.): The limits of universal rule. Eurasian empires compared. Cambridge / New York, NY. Pp. 111–140. Woolf, G., 2012: Rome. An Empire’s story. Oxford.

Frames of Making Peace and Treaties in the Roman Empire Sven Günther

Pax, the Latin term for “peace” seems to be the most desirable aim for all, a real global and eternal concept with only positive connotations. However, if one looks at the many victims of the Pax Augusta and the propagandistic aspects of the regime Augustus established under the pretense of pax, it becomes already clear that it depends on the perspective whether the Augustan Principate can be called “rule of peace” or “rule by peace.”1 Reflected in this observation is the problem that the actual expectation and/or experience by a specific audience might differ from the original intention of the author(ity), and that the frames set up by one party can influence the perception and judgment then and now more than those of others. What is called “framing” in modern socio-linguistic and -psychological research and derives from a model foremost developed by Erving Goffman historical research has traditionally been put under the feature “context.” In order to reveal the relative position of an ancient or modern viewer on historical events or situation, it is necessary to examine the context of a certain source, i.e., its author, time, location, intention, intended audience, etc., and to place it against other sources from (and about) the same time.2 The result of this analysis is history as a scientific subject, not focusing on “wie es eigentlich gewesen” (Leopold von Ranke) but on the question of how historical situations provoke different perceptions, with dominant ones becoming grand narratives. In this respect, the advantage of the modern frame concept is that it exactly concentrates on the dynamics and direct communication process between author and audience via the respective source, i.e., how the frames set up and filled by one side, namely the “work”, connect and/or challenge existing frames of experience/expectation of the other side, and may cause the one or the other “feedback” in terms of acceptance, modification or rejection of the original and/or newly appropriated frames. To make but one ancient example, in Pliny’s Panegyricus of AD 100, the suffect consul distinguishes the new rule of Trajan from the old one of the last

1

On the various perspectives of pax, especially in connection with concordia, and the inner-Roman sphere after the Civil Wars, see Koch, 1949: esp. 2430; for the Pax Augusta see also the “exempla ad pacem Augustam spectantia” in Keudel, 1991: 869, l.9–42 (I B iii). On the structure and structuring of peace treaties by ancient authors who tried to make (intentional) sense of historical events for their readers, see Baldus, 2002. 2 On frame-analysis, see Goffman, 1974; on the application to ancient studies, see Günther, 2017a; on the analysis of sources, see Droysen, 1882; on the consequences for – in this framework problematic – comparative studies: Günther, 2017b.

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Flavian emperor Domitian as follows (Plin. Paneg. 2.5): Intellegamus ergo bona nostra dignosque nos illis usu probemus, atque identidem cogitemus, quam sit indignum, si maius principibus praestemus obsequium, qui servitute civium quam qui libertate laetantur. “So we should understand our fortune and should prove us worthy for it by use, and again and again we should think how unworthy it is if we stay obedient more to emperors who are happy about the slavery of citizens than those who are about the freedom.” What is on the one hand a clear, and still quite common, judgment about the “bad” emperor Domitian with his tyrannical attitude from whom Trajan, the “good” emperor bringing fortune and freedom to the Roman people, has to be distinguished, can also be read as a strong and quite oppressive call by Pliny to join this negative framing of the former rule because it, in fact, reveals that many had followed Domitian; among them he himself.3 This is a necessary prelude to the conference and my paper’s topic because peace- and treaty-making is never one-sided. So, I will not follow traditional paths of research on the topic which have discussed the different forms of treaties, the different denominations and categories of diplomatic relations and crucial questions, such as the existence of “Völkerrecht” in the Roman Republic and Empire, the natural status of the relations between Rome and foreign political entities (whether “war” or “peace”).4 Instead, I want to take a look at the other side of the medal in three case-studies that ask how the other side perceived a treaty (casestudy 1), or was perceived as a (desired) treaty partner (case-studies 2 or 3). Given the limited view of our sources (being in Greek or Latin) it will not so much reveal this other side but the Roman “style” of treaty-making. It will, thus, allow us to understand partly why Rome was so successful in “framing” the peace-making discourse, of course under the precondition of being the more powerful partner in the majority of cases. Case-study 1 The first scenario brings us to the early reign of emperor Claudius (AD 41–54). In Suetonius’ biography, he is said to have publicly conducted treaties with for-

3

On the self-stylization of Pliny the Younger under the new Trajanic regime although he was at least for some time of his career close to Domitian, see Page, 2015: esp. 111–120. Ibid.: 62–68 on the Panegyricus as an affirmative claim-list that tried to establish a communicative basis between emperor and senators. See also Günther, 2019. 4 A comprehensive overview of these topics with a discussion of the relevant research literature is provided by Baltrusch, 2008, esp. the section “3. Außenpolitik, interpolitische Beziehungen und Völkerrecht”: 97–130. Still worth reading is Ziegler, 1989. Further literature is mentioned in the following with regard to the specific sources.

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eign kings according to ancient customs and formulas.5 More precisely, this relates to Herod Agrippa I of Judea and his brother Herod of Chalcis, whereby the former played a crucial role in Claudius’ ascension to the throne in AD 41, January 24–25.6 Interesting is now how both kings perceived and represented this in their local coinage (figs. 1–4). Agrippa I presents the conclusion of the treaty on the reverse of a bronze coin type issued in AD 42/43 and 43/44 with the typical Roman symbol of clasping hands with a long legend running in two concentric circles, divided by a huge wreath (Fig. 1):7 OPKIA BAΣ ME AΓPIΠΠA Π ΣEΒ KAIΣAPA K ΣYNKΛHTON K ΔHMO PΩM ΦIΛI K ΣYNMAXI AYTOY, “Sworn treaty of the great king Agrippa to Augustus Caesar and the Senate and the Roman people, his friends and allies.” It is political blasting power that the type develops with its obverse. There, the togate Claudius with veiled head stands to the left holding a patera in the right hand while the two kings Agrippa I and Herod of Chalcis crown him each with a wreath, with the legend: [BAΣ] AΓPIΠΠAΣ ΣEB KAIΣAP BAΣ HPΩΔHΣ, “King Agrippa. Augustus Caesar, king Herod.” As the two crowning figures are of equal height with the emperor Claudius and flank him, the message turns from a “normal” honoring by the “client king(s)” towards the “patron” into a self-confident message of influence on the core of Roman politics, i.e., the selection of the Roman emperor. In this way, the “friendship and alliance” on the reverse becomes the preserve of Agrippa I himself who can ensure this treaty as the at least equally strong partner, emphasized by the “framing” of the emperor, the Senate, and the Roman People by him from both sides of the legend (BAΣ ME AΓPIΠΠA … AYTOY).

5

Suet. Claud. 25.5: Cum regibus foedus in foro icit porca caesa ac vetere fetialium praefatione adhibita. Grotkamp, 2009: 151–152 judges this measure to show Claudius’ total dependency on advisers that is mentioned directly afterwards. I would interpret it not so much to end this section but as a bridge to the following section on Claudius’ wives, children, and freedmen (following Kierdorf, 1992: 125 (ad loc.)). However, Grotkamp’s interpretation of Suetonius’ context does not mean that Claudius was actually not aware of such traditions. See only his oratio de iure honorum Gallis dando (CIL XIII 1668) showing his deep knowledge of history. See also the important remark of Baltrusch, 2008: 117 that Claudius imitated Augustus who himself revived “old” religious forms of the fetiales. 6 Cf. Fl. Jos. AJ 19.5.1.274–277; cf. the different version and focus in BJ 2.11.5.215–216. See also Cass. Dio 60.8.2–3. On the relation between Rome and the Judean rulers, see Wilker, 2007. 7 RPC I 4982; cf. Sear, 1982: no. 5570. For a detailed interpretation of the coin, cf. Mann, 2016 (with comprehensive bibliography). See also Kropp, 2013 who translates the legend as follows (ibid.: 379): “Sworn treaty of the great king Agrippa to Caesar Augustus, the Senate and the Roman people, his friendship and alliance.” So, he reconstructs ΦIΛI[A] K[AI] ΣYNMAXI[A] while I suppose that one can read ΦIΛ[O]I K[AI] ΣYNMAX[O]I. From my viewpoint this is consciously left open.

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Fig. 1: Agrippa I; dated RY 8 = AD 43; AE 16.83g, 26mm; RPC I 4982; ex: Roma Numismatics Ltd, Auction XVI (26.09.2018), lot 435.

Fig. 2: Herod of Chalcis; dated RY 3 = AD 43/44; AE 14.34g, 26mm; RPC I 4777; ex: Classical Numismatic Group, Triton XV (03.01.2012), lot 1436.

Fig. 3: Herod of Chalcis; dated RY 3 = AD 43/44; AE 15.72g, 25mm; RPC 4778; ex: Ira & Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles, Auction 104 (12.06.2018), lot 3104.

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Fig. 4: Agrippa I; dated RY 8 = AD 43/44; AE 19.60g, 24mm; RPC I 4984; ex: Classical Numismatic Group, Electronic Auction 396 (26.04.2017), lot 520. Simultaneously, Herod of Chalcis minted a similar obverse narrative, however on the reverse the typical honourable style with a wreath and the emperor’s title in the dative (KΛAYΔI/Ω KAIΣA/PI ΣEBAΣ/TΩ ET Γ, “For Claudius Caesar Augustus, Year 3 (= AD 43/44)”) was adopted (Fig. 2).8 And while he continued such honourable types, even naming himself “Philoclaudius” on the obverse portrait (Fig. 3)9 Agrippa I related a second type with emperor Claudius on the obverse allegedly to the enactment of the treaty in Rome, with Claudius and Agrippa standing and facing each other, each holding a patera, within a distyle temple, with a third person, possibly a victimarius holding and restraining an offering, between them (Fig. 4).10 The self-confidence of especially Agrippa I is not only fascinating as he turns around the usual Roman perspective on how to deal with subordinated kings, but also shows how the Roman foedus – whatever its actual content was (amicitia / societas?) – was interpreted by Agrippa I in Greek terms, i.e., to be philia kai symmachia, hence an alliance on equal terms, at least in the view of Agrippa “framing” it with this very unique depiction.11 That the Romans and especially Claudius had allegedly a different view on the event and treaty than Agrippa I (and Herod) propagated towards their audience shows the communicative power that lay in the framing by the latter. What would certainly have been offensive towards a Roman audience was how both marketed the event in their respective (newly acquired) realm. And, to us it shows that not only the Romans made use

8

RPC I 4777. RPC I 4778; cf. 4779. 4780 does not use “Philoclaudius.” 10 RPC I 4984. For the interpretation, cf. ibid. with reference to Burnett, 1987. 11 In fact, Agrippa I turns around the usual Roman “framing” of such international relations as amicitia where the exact hierarchy of the partners involved was covered under and subject to permanent re-negotiation. On this, see Burton, 2003. 9

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of treaties and friendships but that this diplomatic tool also played an important role for the respective partner. Case-study 2 How were these partners then seen by the Romans? Of course, we have several examples of treaties between Rome and another party in Republican times where we are told the background. However, the different forms of coming to a treaty, and how to keep and control/judge it, are under review and discussion in research.12 An important text is the one of the 2nd-century AD jurist Gaius who deals with the concrete conclusion of a treaty in his third book of the Institutions. It is worth quoting the whole passage as it reveals the context of his remarks (Gai. Inst. 3.92–94; trans. Poste, 1904): Verbis obligatio fit ex interrogatione et responsione, uelut DARI SPONDES? SPONDEO, DABIS? DABO, PROMITTIS? PROMITTO, FIDE PROMITTIS? FIDE PROMITTO, FIDE IVBES? FIDE IVBEO, FACIES? FACIAM. (93) Sed haec quidem uerborum obligatio DARI SPONDES? SPONDEO propria ciuium Romanorum est; ceterae uero iuris gentium sunt, itaque inter omnes homines, siue ciues Romanos siue peregrinos, ualent. et quamuis ad Graecam uocem expressae fuerint, uelut hoc modo δώσεις; δώσω· ὁμολογεῖς; ὁμολογῶ· πίστει κελεύεις; πίστει κελεύω· ποιήσεις; ποιήσω, etiam hae tamen inter ciues Romanos ualent, si modo Graeci sermonis intellectum habeant; et e contrario quamuis Latine enuntientur, tamen etiam inter peregrinos ualent, si modo Latini sermonis intellectum habeant. at illa uerborum obligatio DARI SPONDES? SPONDEO adeo propria ciuium Romanorum est, ut ne quidem in Graecum sermonem per interpretationem proprie transferri possit, quamuis dicatur a Graeca uoce figurata esse. (94) Unde dicitur uno casu hoc uerbo peregrinum quoque obligari posse, uelut si imperator noster principem alicuius peregrini populi de pace ita interroget: PACEM FVTVRAM SPONDES? uel ipse eodem modo interrogetur. quod nimium subtiliter dictum est, quia si quid aduersus pactionem fiat, non ex stipulatu agitur, sed iure belli res uindicatur. “A verbal contract is formed by question and answer, thus: ‘Dost thou solemnly promise that a thing shall be conveyed to me?’ ‘I do solemnly promise.’ ‘Wilt thou convey?’ ‘I will convey.’ ‘Dost thou pledge thy credit?’ ‘I pledge my credit.’ ‘Dost thou bid me trust thee as guarantor?’ ‘I bid thee trust me as guarantor.’ ‘Wilt thou perform?’ ‘I will perform.’ (93) The formula, ‘Wilt thou solemnly promise?’ ‘I will solemnly promise,’ is only 12

Cf. ibid., 117–118 (with discussion of main research hypotheses); Kehne, 2001 with a useful differentiation of state treaties by Rome between form (foedus, sponsio) and content (amicitia, pax, societas).

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valid between Roman citizens; the others belong to gentile law, and bind all parties, whether Romans or aliens, and, if understood, bind Romans when expressed in Greek, and aliens when expressed in Latin. The formula, ‘Wilt thou solemnly promise (dare spondes)?’ is so peculiarly Roman that it cannot be expressed in Greek, though the word ‘spondes’ is said to have a Greek origin. (94) According to some, there is one case in which an alien may be bound by this word, namely, when a Roman emperor in concluding a treaty thus interrogates a foreign sovereign: ‘Art thou sponsor for peace?’ and the Roman emperor is interrogated in the same way in his turn. But this is a refinement on the law, for the violation of a treaty is not redressed by an action ex stipulatu but by the law of war.” Arguing for a difference between an inner-Roman sponsio and other corresponding words that are used in verbis obligationes within ius gentium, i.e., between Romans and non-Romans, Gaius disproves a counter-argument, i.e., that the Roman imperator uses the question: pacem futuram spondes? (“Do you promise future peace?”), to receive the binding answer from the (defeated) ruler/commander. For Gaius links this specific form of sponsio to the special sphere of “international law” that cannot be enforced by a civil actio ex stipulatu, but has to be dealt with in the sphere of ius belli.13 Much has been written now about this passage: the examples of such sponsiones connected with ius belli are listed,14 the (preliminary) character of these commander agreements,15 and the content of ius belli, its connection to the religious ius fetiale, and its use, particularly with regard to the bellum iustum, have been widely discussed.16 And, the transition between ius, fides, and fas forming more (Roman) assessment categories than a fixed and systematized legal framework, have been examined as well.17

13

Cf. the comprehensive commentary by Nelson and Manthe, 1999: 103–117, and the classification by Nörr, 1989: 115–116. 14 Cf. Liv. 9.41.20; Gell. 6.9.12 (from Val. Ant. hist. 22). Cf. Nörr, 1989: 115–116 with further references. 15 See Baltrusch, 2008: 122–123 on the discussion whether and how a commander’s sponsio binds the whole community, and can be solved. The Lex de Imperio Vespasiani l. 1 (CIL VI 930) allows the emperor “to conclude foedera with whomever he wishes …” ([--] | foedusue cum quibus uolet facere liceat, …). Usually (see ibid.; Kehne, 2001: 883), this is connected with this Gaius-passage to include also sponsiones. However, it becomes clear that in Gaius the emperor is acting as imperator what should be distinguished from concluding a treaty with more detailed regulations. 16 Cf. Nörr, 1989: 115–128; Grotkamp, 2009: 115–155. Particularly interesting is her understanding of ius belli to be outside of the normal civil legal framework, parallel to an argument in Quintilian (Quint. Inst. 5.10.111–118): ibid.: 134–137. 17 See Nörr, 1989: 115–135; Grotkamp, 2009: passim, esp. the conclusion: 205–213.

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Yet, two interesting points have not received much attention. First, Gaius does not mention the answer of the (foreign) ruler/commander, and second also includes the possibility that the imperator is asked to promise in the sponsio-form (uel ipse eodem modo interrogetur). Of course, the former may be for shortening the passage and thus weakening the counter-argument, the latter that he avoids to explicitly mention defeats of Romans. However, it may also reveal the problem that the other side may not be able or willing to speak Latin, i.e., to answer the question with the correct response: pacem futuram spondeo. Or, in the second case: why should the foreign ruler, and winner, ask in Latin? That this is not just a sophisticated scholarly problem is shown by a fragment of the jurist Ulpian’s commentary on the ius civile of the jurist Massurius Sabinus living in Tiberian times (AD 14–37). Preserved in Justinian’s Digest, the passage reads as follows (Dig. 45.1.1.6 (= Ulp. lib. 48 ad Sab.; trans. Watson, 1998): Eadem an alia lingua respondeatur, nihil interest. Proinde si quis Latine interrogaverit, respondeatur ei Graece, dummodo congruenter respondeatur, obligatio constituta est: idem per contrarium. Sed utrum hoc usque ad Graecum sermonem tantum protrahimus an vero et ad alium, poenum forte vel Assyrium vel cuius alterius linguae, dubitari potest. Et scriptura Sabini, sed et verum patitur, ut omnis sermo contineat verborum obligationem, ita tamen, ut uterque alterius linguam intellegat sive per se sive per verum interpretem. “It makes no difference whether the reply is made in the same language or in another. For instance, if a man asks in Latin but receives a reply in Greek, as long as the reply is consistent, the obligation is settled. Whether we extend this rule to the Greek language only or even to another, such as Punic or Assyrian or some other tongue, is a matter of doubt. The writings of Sabinus, however, allow it to be true that all tongues can produce a verbal obligation, provided that both parties understand each other’s language, either of their own accord or by means of a truthful interpreter.” Though the context of the passage relates this discussion – which is in Justinian’s times decided in favour of allowing other languages than Latin and Greek18 – to the stipulation according to ius gentium, i.e., not to a sponsio, we see that the jurists were aware of the problem, and here could even think of a reliable interpreter for coming to terms. And although we cannot directly apply this solution to our sponsio according to “international law” due to the lack of any further evidence, it remains at least a possibility that also Gaius was aware of such language issues, and thus did not attempt to tackle or even decide this in his refutation of a similarity between this “international” and his private-law sponsio between Roman citizens. And indeed, it was also not necessary to do so as not only ius belli 18

Cf. Inst. 3.15.1; cf. Nelson and Manthe, 1999: 112–113 with further references and discussion.

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decided about the enforcement of the agreement but also the internal consequences on the side of the enemy – e.g., how it was processed into foreign civil law and how the effects could be managed – was of no interest for the Romans as long as it did not affect Romans (or, secondary, inhabitants or territories of the Roman Empire). This brings me to the third case-study. Case-study 3 Such concern one can also notice in respect of regulations that are subsumed under the ius postliminii. As a basic principle, postliminium was designed to protect civil and property rights of Roman citizens who had been captured in war by an enemy and thereon became slaves. While in captivity, they were regarded as having died as free men with their rights suspended. Only upon return to Rome or Roman territory,19 these rights were resumed, with some exceptions, particularly in respect of factual matters such as specific possessory rights and marriage.20 While this suspension of rights created various legal problems that had to be solved by jurists,21 our interest lies in the treatment of (peace) treaties within the postliminium-framework. The first interesting case is the so-called postliminium in pace. While the postliminium applies regularly in war-times (Dig. 49.15.5.1 = Pompon. lib. 37 ad Q. Mucium) it is also granted in peace-time (cf. Dig. 49.15.5pr: postliminii ius competit aut in bello aut in pace) under the following conditions (Dig. 49.15.5.2 = Pompon. lib. 37 ad Q. Mucium; trans. Watson, 1998): In pace quoque postliminium datum est: nam si cum gente aliqua neque amicitiam neque hospitium neque foedus amicitiae causa factum habemus, hi hostes quidem non sunt, quod autem ex nostro ad eos pervenit, illorum fit, et liber homo noster ab eis captus servus fit et eorum: idemque est, si ab illis ad nos aliquid perveniat. Hoc quoque igitur casu postliminium datum est.

19

On the basic principle, see Inst. 1.12.5; also Cic. Top. 8.86–87 (esp. the debate on the etymology); on the fines imperii including amici, cf. Dig. 49.15.5.1 (= Pompon. lib. 37 ad Q. Mucium; trans. Watson, 1998: … Tunc autem reversus intellegitur, si aut ad amicos nostros perveniat aut intra praesidia nostra esse coepit, “He (i.e., the Roman citizen captured) is regarded as having returned from the time when he passes into the hands of our allies or begins to be within our own lines.” Cf. Zack, 2011: 73–74 with the ns. on the etymology and extension of postliminium to property. 20 On the origin (possibly, the return of expatriates) and basic principles, see Kaser, 1955: 250–251 (§68 II). 21 See, for instance, the problem of a soldier who died while still under the patria potestas of his father, and left a fideicommissum (trust) on his father via codicillum, to pay his military savings (peculium castrense) to a certain Titius in Dig. 35.2.18pr. See the discussion in Repnow, 2016. On the legal fiction involved, see Ando, 2011: 14–16.

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“Postliminium is also granted in peacetime; for if we have neither friendship nor hospitium with a particular people, nor a treaty made for the purpose of friendship, they are not precisely enemies but that which passes from us into their hands becomes their property, and a freeman of ours who is captured by them becomes their slave, and similarly if anything of theirs passes into our hands. In this case also postliminium is therefore granted.” In fact, the postliminium in pace is only necessary in case there is no legal connection of amicitia, hospitium, or any foedus amicitiae causa factum between the Roman people and another gens, or the status of being enemies (in war). Without such legal connection, may it be a positive or negative one, any property seized (even in friendly act) or Roman citizen captured by the foreign gens would irrecoverably become theirs. So postliminium was extended to this constellation – in fact, Pomponius updates it by transferring the original inner perspective in Q. Mucius’ writings to the reality of the Roman Empire.22 This move was quite probably 22

See Zack, 2011: 100–103. Pomponius introduces a differentiation that is not obvious, as far as we can see from the fragments compiled in the Justinian Digest, in the first-century AD jurist Proculus, the eponym of the competing school of the Proculiani. He concerns the postliminium from a different perspective (Dig. 49.15.7 = Procul. lib. 8 epist.; trans. Watson, 1998): pr. Non dubito, quin foederati et liberi nobis externi sint, nec inter nos atque eos postliminium esse: etenim quid inter nos atque eos postliminio opus est, cum et illi apud nos et libertatem suam et dominium rerum suarum aeque atque apud se retineant et eadem nobis apud eos contingant? 1. Liber autem populus est is, qui nullius alterius populi potestati est subiectus: sive is foederatus est item, sive aequo foedere in amicitiam venit sive foedere comprehensum est, ut is populus alterius populi maiestatem comiter conservaret. Hoc enim adicitur, ut intellegatur alterum populum superiorem esse, non ut intellegatur alterum non esse liberum: et quemadmodum clientes nostros intellegimus liberos esse, etiamsi neque auctoritate neque dignitate neque viri boni nobis praesunt, sic eos, qui maiestatem nostram comiter conservare debent, liberos esse intellegendum est. “I have no doubt that although free peoples and those bound to us by treaty are foreigners to us, there is no postliminium between us and them; for what need is there of postliminium between us and them, since they retain their freedom and rights over their own property in our country just as in their own, and the same applies to us in their country? 1. A free people is one which is not subject to the control of any other people; a civitas foederata, one which has either entered into friendship under an equal treaty or under a treaty [which] includes the provision that his people should with good will preserve the majestas of another people. It has to be added that that other people is to be understood to be superior, not that [the federated] people is not free; and insofar as we understand our clients [Watson: client states; Günther: “clientes” refers to any kind of Roman clients] to be free, even if they are not our equals in authority, dignity or power, so also those who are bound to preserve our majestas with good will are to be understood to be free.”

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done to provide more security for Roman traders and merchants in contact with far-away political entities as Michael Alexander Speidel has convincingly pointed out. This “regulatory gap” thus became a strong incentive to build diplomatic ties via amicitiae-foedera even with nations that were far away from the direct reach of the Roman Empire, though those treaties were not anymore primarily designed to ensure and display Roman authority that could not be enforced by military means in such far-away regions such as India or the Red Sea area.23 However, the juristic discussion as compiled in the Justinian Digest goes further. Claudius Tryphoninus, writing in the times of emperor Caracalla (reg. AD 197 (with his father Septimius Severus) / 211–217 (as single ruler)), also transfers an example of the first century-BC jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus to the third century AD (Dig. 49.15.12pr (= Tryphon. lib. 4 disput.; trans. Watson, 1998): In bello postliminium est, in pace autem his, qui bello capti erant, de quibus nihil in pactis erat comprehensum. Quod ideo placuisse Servius scribit, quia spem revertendi civibus in virtute bellica magis quam in pace Romani esse voluerunt. Verum in pace qui pervenerunt ad alteros, si bellum subito exarsisset, eorum servi efficiuntur, apud quos iam hostes suo facto deprehenduntur. Quibus ius postliminii est tam in bello quam in pace, nisi foedere cautum fuerat, ne esset his ius postliminii. “In wartime postliminium exists, as also in peacetime for persons captured in war for whom no provision was made in the negotiations. Servius [Sulpicius Rufus] writes that this was agreed because the Romans wished their citizens’ hope of returning to lie in their military courage rather than in peace. There are, however, those who have travelled in peacetime to foreign [peoples] and, on the sudden outbreak of war, are seized and become the slaves of those who have now become their enemies. The right of postliminium applies to them, in war as in peace, unless it had been provided in a treaty that the right of postliminium should not apply to them.” Servius Sulpicius Rufus obviously targeted the dishonourable return of Roman citizen who had become captives in war, through pacta ending the conflict and regulating the exchange or redemption of captives, so that no postliminium was

N.B.: the translation of Watson 1998 is problematic due to the separation of populus liber and populus foederatus which is not consistent with the Latin text. Proculus in fact perceives all people outside the direct imperium Romanum to be somehow legally connected with the Roman Empire, e.g., amici, civitates foederatae, etc. See the interpretation of Zack (ibid.) with further references. 23 See Speidel, 2016. On the discussion of the source, particularly the difference between amicitia (et societas), hospitium, and foedus (amicitiae causa factum) et sim., and the discourse about the character of Roman foreign relations, see Zack, 2011 and his following papers in the internet journal Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft from 2011– 2017, accessible under: https://gfa.gbv.de (20.04.2019).

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granted for them; only regarding those who were not covered by such agreements. Tryphoninus24 now transfers postliminium to the new frame, i.e., in case travellers, e.g., merchants, are in a foreign territory that suddenly becomes an enemy of the Roman people. They have the right of postliminium, during the war but also afterwards unless a foedus states otherwise. Such considerations were probably provoked by recent experience though we cannot directly relate it to any event or agreement of the Antonine or Severan period. However, one can clearly name several conflicts and political changes in the East at that time, especially in the small realms (several replacements of socalled client kings, change of sides, etc.) that could have brought a new juristic discussion of postliminium to the agenda.25 Conclusion The three case-studies show that Roman law is our most important source for studying peace-making during the Roman Empire. However, the legal framework and its terminology were never immune from political, economic or propagandistic issues involved in communicating those treaties. Nevertheless, law had a dominant role and developed such a strong structural force that not only Romans used the existing concepts, and tried to fill them with their specific intention, but that also other parties did so though in Greek terminology (case-study 1). In fact, for the Romans living in such a powerful empire with the emperor at its core it was absolutely normal to think and act exclusively in Roman terms and procedures, and to use and apply those frames also to the other side outside the Imperium Romanum, of course only so far it concerned them. What happened beyond the Roman scope was not important (case-studies 2–3). The worst thing was, indeed, to have no legal connection to a foreign country or nation or rule as this challenged the Roman view that everything could be regulated via (best) Roman civil law (ius civile) or (second best) law of nations (ius gentium). Thus, every effort was taken to build such legal connections towards the outside of the Imperium Romanum, and to integrate and frame it to the extent it was necessary from the Roman perspective. This pursuit of diplomatic relations could result in differ-

24

On Tryphoninus, see Stepan, 2018. Ibid.: 180–204 the discussion of Tryphoninus’ further application to the usucapio of a captivus via his subiectae personae. As this problem is also reflected in other contemporary juristic writings, it is likely that it was not only a scholarly discussion, but a real issue. 25 But cf. Hdn. 3.4.7 who narrates that several soldiers of the defeated Pescennius Niger in AD 194 changed to the Parthian side and joined their forces, with Septimius Severus’ only partly successful attempt to win them back. Smaller realms such as Osrhoene also changed sides. Both events may have caused problems as described in Tryphoninus. On the Parthian campaign of Lucius Verus, see the concise summary of Hund, 2017: 210–218 (with further literature). On the foreign military policy of the Severans, see Handy, 2009: 73– 99, discussing important events in the East.

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ent legal forms that were chosen according to the respective situation, but all were, of course, always emanating from a Roman framework or were at least transferred into Roman terms. As long as Rome was the more powerful partner they could interpret the modeled concept and keep the discursive priority in the communication and negotiation processes;26 but outside the reach of Roman authority it also offered the possibility for the partners to find their own interpretation and filling of the frame provided, and to communicate it to their intended (regional) audience (case-study 1). How much this permanent tension between the propagated imperium sine fine and the actual fines iuris Romani stimulated the expansion of Roman law and rule is open to further discussion. Bibliography Baldus, Chr., 2002: “‚Vestigia Pacis‘: Der römische Friedensvertrag als Struktur und Ereignis”. Historia 51/3, 298–348. Baltrusch, E., 2008: Außenpolitik, Bünde und Reichsbildung in der Antike. Enzyklopädie der griechisch-römischen Antike 7. Munich. Burnett, A., 1987: “The Coinage of King Agrippa I of Judaea”. In: H. Huvelin / M. Christol / G. Gautier (eds.): Mélanges de numismatique offerts à Pierre Bastien. Wetteren. Pp. 25–38. Burton, P.J., 2003. “Clientela or Amicitia? Modeling Roman International Behavior in the Middle Republic (264–146 B.C.)”. Klio 85/2, 333–369. Droysen, J.G., 1882: Grundriss der Historik. 3rd ed. Leipzig. Goffman, E., 1974: Frame-Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York. Grotkamp, N., 2009: Völkerrecht im Prinzipat. Möglichkeit und Verbreitung. Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts 21. Baden–Baden. Günther, S., 2017a: “(K)einer neuen Theorie wert? Neues zur Antiken Wirtschaftsgeschichte anhand Dig. 50,11,2 (Callist. 3 cognit.)”. Gymnasium 124/2, 131–144. –– 2017b: “Forum: Comparative Studies: Chances and Challenges – Ad diversas historias comparandas? A First, Short and Droysen-based Reply to Mutschler and Scheidel”. Journal of Ancient Civilizations 32/1, 123–126. –– 2019: “Teaching and Learning Latin and Roman History at IHAC: How to Connect Text, Context, History, and Tackle the Frames of Students with Pliny’s Panegyricus”. Latinitas Sinica 7, 115–125. Handy, M., 2009: Die Severer und das Heer. Studien zur Alten Geschichte 10. Berlin. Hund, R., 2017: Studien zur Außenpolitik der Kaiser Antoninus Pius und Marc Aurel im Schatten der Markomannenkriege. Pharos 40. Rahden (Westf.).

26

See Baldus, 2002: 346–347.

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Kaser, M., 1955: Das römische Privatrecht. Erster Abschnitt: Das altrömische, das vorklassische und klassische Recht. Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft. Rechtsgeschichte des Altertums III.3.1. Munich. Kehne, P., 2001: “Staatsvertrag V. Rom”. Der Neue Pauly 11, 883–884. Keudel, U., 1991: “pax”. TLL 10/1, 863,22–878,2. Kierdorf, W. (ed.), 1992: Sueton: Leben des Claudius und Nero. Textausgabe mit Einleitung, kritischem Apparat und Kommentar. UTB für Wissenschaft 1715. Paderborn et al. Koch, C., 1949: “Pax”. Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 18/2, 2430–2436. Kropp, A.J.M., 2013: “Crowning the Emperor. An Unorthodox Image of Claudius, Agrippa I and Herod of Chalkis”. Syria 90, 377–389. Mann, C., 2016: “A Controversial Coronation: Herod and Agrippa I ‘Crown’ the Emperor Claudius”. Blog: Coins at Warwick October 4, 2016, accessed under: https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/numismatics/entry/a_controversial_coronation (02.04.2019). Nelson, H.L.W. / Manthe, U., 1999: Gai Institutiones III 88–181: Die Kontraktsobligationen. Text und Kommentar. Freiburger Rechtsgeschichtliche Abhandlungen N.F. 35 / Studia Gaiana 8. Berlin. Nörr, D., 1989: Aspekte des römischen Völkerrechts. Die Bronzetafel von Alcántara. Munich. Page, S., 2015: Der ideale Aristokrat. Plinius der Jüngere und das Sozialprofil der Senatoren in der Kaiserzeit. Studien zur Alten Geschichte 24. Heidelberg. Poste, E. (trans.), 1904: Gai Institutiones or Institutes of Roman Law by Gaius. With a Translation and Commentary. 4th ed., Revised and Enlarged by E.A. Whittuck, with a Historical Introduction by A.H.J. Greenidge. Oxford. Repnow, R., 2016: “Exegese zu D. 35,2,18,pr. (Paul. 11 quaest.)”. Studentische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft Heidelberg, Wissenschaft Online 2/2016, 234–249. Sear, D.R., 1982: Greek Imperial Coins and their Values. The Local Coinages of the Roman Empire. London. Speidel, M.A., 2016: “Fernhandel und Freundschaft. Zu Roms amici an den Handelsrouten nach Südarabien und Indien”. Orbis Terrarum 14, 155–193. Stepan, S., 2018: Scaevola noster. Schulgut in den ‚libri disputationum‘ des Claudius Tryphoninus?. Ius Romanum 6. Tübingen. Watson, A. (trans.), 1998: The Digest of Justinian. English-language Translation. vol. 4. Philadelphia. Wilker, J., 2007: Für Rom und Jerusalem. Die herodianische Dynastie im 1. Jahrhundert n.Chr. Studien zur Alten Geschichte 5. Frankfurt a. M. Zack, A., 2011: “Forschungen über die rechtlichen Grundlagen der römischen Außenbeziehungen während der Republik bis zum Beginn des Prinzipats. I. Teil: Fragen an Sextus Pomponius: Quellen- und sachkritische Untersuchun-

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gen zu Pomponius 37. lib. ad Muc. D. 49,15,5”. Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 14, 47–119. Ziegler, K.-H., 1989: “Friedensverträge im römischen Altertum” Archiv des Völkerrechts 27/1, 45–62.

Making Peace with the Goths and the Burial of Athanaric in Constantinople (January 381) A Note on Jordanes, Getica 28, 142–145 Umberto Roberto

1. Jordanes, an Alan or a Goth by birth, wrote a history of the Goths (De Origine actibusque Getarum, or Getica) in the year 551, probably in Constantinople. In the general framework of the history of this population – written while the Roman eastern Army was accomplishing the destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy – Jordanes presents his interpretation of the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Goths. Despite the dramatic events in Italy, an important feature in the Getica is the idea that a profound unity exists between the destiny of the Romans and the Goths. According to Jordanes, between Theodosius I and Justinian, the Christian faith represents the unifying link bringing these two cultures closer together.1 According to Jordanes’s representation, Emperor Theodosius I the Great (379–395 AD) played a crucial role among the rulers who promoted peace and cooperation between Romans and Goths. For his commitment to peace, Jordanes claims that Theodosius was still praised as the “lover of peace and of the Gothic people” (amator pacis generisque Gothorum) by the Goths many years after his death. Actually, Jordanes’ Getica should be considered a summary of Cassiodorus’ lost work Historia Gothorum. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was involved in politics during the Ostrogothic rule in Italy. He was consul in 514, magister officiorum in 523 (head of the central civil administration of the reign) and praetorian prefect (533; 535–537). He collaborated actively with the new regime to promote intercultural dialogue and cooperation. Jordanes adheres to both the style and content of his model. Probably, the praise of Theodosius was already in Cassiodorus’ History. On the other hand, both Cassiodorus and Jordanes seem to be in connection with the authors of the Theodosian Age.2

1

Text and commentary of Jordanes, Getica: see Grillone, 2017. On the relationship between Cassiodorus and Jordanes see Luiselli, 1992: 684–690, 704– 710; Zecchini, 1993; Christensen, 2002. On Jordanes see also Girotti, 2009. On Cassiodorus’s activity as statesman see Giardina, 2006. See also Giardina / Cecconi / Tantillo / Oppedisano, 2014–2016 for the publication with critical edition, translation and commentary of the 12 books of Variae, official letters and documents that Cassiodorus composed during his political career under the Ostrogothic Kings. 2

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To introduce the theme of the relationship between Theodosius and Athanaric, a ruler of the Tervingian Goths, the historical framework for these events should be briefly described. At the end of the first century before Christ, Augustus based his political supremacy on the restoration of the peace in the whole Roman Empire. Along with ultio, revenge against the enemies of the Empire, pax is a key word of the Augustan regime. In the first two centuries AD, the Pax Romana can be described as a condition of order and relative peace within the provinces of the Empire; on the other hand, the Roman Empire during this period achieved its greatest territorial extent and was able to preserve its political and military supremacy over the foreign people within its borders. Among the documents on the relationship between imperial authorities and “barbarians,” one significant and highly evocative example is the elogium – a public inscription of an honorary type – of the Roman senator Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus from Tibur near Rome (CIL XIV 3608 = ILS 986). After a prestigious military and political career under Emperors Tiberius and Claudius, Plautius was sent by Nero to be governor (legatus) at the north-eastern edge of the Empire, in Moesia, today Bulgaria, where he served from 60 to 66/67. According to his elogium, during his rule: “he brought across more than 100,000 of the Transdanubians, along with their wives, children, chieftains and monarchs, to become tribute-paying subjects […] he brought across to the river-bank which he protected, in order to pay homage to the Roman standards, kings hitherto unknown or hostile to the Roman people.” As Plautius was informed that a huge number of people on the barbarian side of the Danube was urging the Romans to give them permission to cross the river and find shelter from their enemies in the imperial territory, he gave his approval to the request. After their formal subjugation to Rome, more than 100,000 barbarians were scattered around the Moesian country under Roman control. Following the usual practice of government in the frontier provinces, Plautius promptly organised a military expedition on the barbarian side of the Danube. As his elogium reports, the Roman governor was swiftly successful against the unknown and hostile barbarians, whose invasion had caused the migration of the 100,000 Transdanuviani into the Roman Empire. As a consequence of Plautius’s skilful solution of the turbulence at the border, and through the work of the settled Transdanuviani in the country, the province of Moesia sent to Rome a significant amount of wheat: “He was the first person to help from that province the grain-supply of the Roman people by means of a large quantity of wheat.”3 3

See CIL XIV 3608 = ILS 986: Ti(berio) Plautio M(arci) f(ilio) Ani(ensi) / Silvano Aeliano / pontif(ici) sodali Aug(ustali) / IIIvir(o) a(ere) a(rgento) a(uro) f(lando) f(eriundo) q(uaestori) Ti(beri) Caesaris / legat(o) leg(ionis) V in Germania / pr(aetori) urb(ano) legat(o) et comiti Claud(i) / Caesaris in Britannia consuli / proco(n)s(uli) Asiae legat(o) pro prae-

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Plautius’s successful reaction against the barbarian threat on the Danubian border in the first century AD can be usefully compared to a tragic failure in the same area many years later, in the last decades of the fourth century. In the years 260– 284, an age of military and political crisis, the imperial system of defence at the borders of the Empire collapsed under the pressure of different various barbarian threats. The courageous commitment of the Illyrian emperors – soldier-emperors like Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian – against the barbarians made possible the reestablishment of peace on the imperial frontier. However, as a result of this dramatic danger, the concept of peace assumed a different meaning for the Roman mentality in Late Antiquity. The sense of security and stability at the edge of the Empire was lost. During Late Antiquity, the frontiers of the Roman world needed a continuous monitoring by a huge army, which had to guarantee the protection of the provinces against dangerous barbarians. The perception of the relationship between Romans and foreign populations changed drastically. One source, the De rebus bellicis, a work written under the reign of Constantius II, offers an evocative description, among many others, of the perception of danger shared by the provincials both on the borders and inside the Empire (De rebus bellicis 6, 1–5): In primis sciendum est quod imperium Romanum circumlatrantium ubique nationum perstringat insania et omne latus limitum tecta naturalibus locis appetat dolosa barbaries. [2] Nam plerumque memoratae gentes aut siluis teguntur aut extolluntur montibus aut uindicantur pruinis; nonnullae uagae solitudinibus ac sole nimio proteguntur. [3] Sunt quae paludibus fluminibusque defensae nec inueniri facile queunt, et tamen quietem pacis lacerant inopinatis incursibus. [4] Ergo huiusmodi nationes, quae aut talibus subsidiis aut ciuitatum castellorumque moenibus defenduntur, diuersis et nouis armorum sunt machinis prosequendae. [5] Verum ne qua difficultas in excitandis armorum generibus oriatur, imaginem tormentorum nihil a uero distantem coloribus adumbratam orationi subieci, ut sit facilis imitandi confectio.4 t(ore) Moesiae / in qua plura quam centum mil(ia) / ex numero Transdanuvianor(um) / ad praestanda tributa cum coniugib(us) / ac liberis et principibus aut regibus suis / transduxit. Motum orientem Sarmatar(um) / compressit, quamvis parte(m) magna(m) exercitus / ad expeditionem in Armeniam misisset, / ignotos ante aut infensos p(opulo) R(omano) reges signa / Romana adoraturos in ripam, quam tuebatur / perduxit. Regibus Bastarnarum et / Rhoxolanorum filios, Dacorum fratrum / captos aut hostibus ereptos remisit; ab / aliquis eorum opsides accepit; per quem pacem / provinciae et confirmavit et protulit, / Scytharum quoque rege{m} a Cherronensi / quae est ultra Borustenen, opsidione summoto / primus ex ea provincia magno tritici modo / annonam p(opuli) R(omani) adlevavit […]. Translation here and above by Conole / Milns, 1983: 183–184. See also Zawadzki, 1975; Boatwright, 2015. 4 Translation by Ireland, 1979: 28: “First of all it must be recognized that frenzied native tribes, yelping everywhere around, hem the Roman Empire in, and that treacherous bar-

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Among the hostile foreign populations, the greatest threat was represented by the Persian Empire. Since its foundation, the new Persian Empire under the rule of the Sasanian dynasty claimed hegemony over the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. This claim was also based on the belief that the Sasanians were the true heirs of the Achaemenid Empire. Therefore, they strove to recover the territories which belonged to the old Persian Empire before Alexander. The contest for imperial hegemony heightened the tension between Romans and Persians, so that the conflicts and wars continually became a form of “ordeal” to determine to which of them the gods granted – as a divine gift (charisma) – the right to rule over mankind.5 On the other hand, as far as the barbarian peoples on the northern edges of the Empire (the areas of Rhine and Danube) are concerned, the relationship was not characterized by political, religious or cultural competition. Nevertheless, the situation at the border was dangerous. The Goths of the Danubian area were among the most treacherous enemies. In 271, Aurelian ordered the evacuation of the Roman territory in Dacia. Roman troops and most of the population withdrew from Dacia. The Danube became the new frontier of the Empire, and Aurelian was successful in reducing the length of the border to be defended. The Transdanubian territory was soon occupied by the Goths. After almost a century of settlement, the Goths were suddenly forced to abandon their land, as the Huns threatened their peace and freedom. Some Goths, such as a group led by Athanaric, fled; others tried to resist or to escape. As in the time of Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, the majority of the Goths reached the left bank of the Danube and asked the Roman authorities to cross the river and take refuge under Roman rule. Emperor Valens gave his permission. A huge number of barbarians with their families crossed the Danube in the autumn of 376. However, in contrast to the capacity of Plautius in the first century AD, the Roman authorities on the border were unable to handle the emergency. In his very pessimistic report of the events, Ammianus Marcellinus harshly disapproves of the incompetence and greed of the Roman civil and military officers, which he states led to a disaster. The Goths rose up, decided to fight and defeated the Romans. At Adrianople (August 9, 378) the imperial army

barians, protected by natural defences, menace every stretch of our frontiers. For these peoples to whom I refer are for the most part either hidden by forests or lifted beyond our reach by mountains or kept from us by the snows; some, nomadic, are protected by deserts and the blazing sun. There are those who, defended by marshes and rivers, cannot even be located easily, and yet they tear peace and quiet to shreds by their unforeseen attacks. Tribes of this kind, therefore, who are protected either by natural defences such as these or by the walls of towns and towers, must be attacked with a variety of novel armed devices.” See also Giardina, 1989: 71–74. 5 See Cassius Dio 80, 4, 1; Herodian 6, 2, 1–2. See also Gnoli, 1971; Wiesehöfer, 1986; Winter / Dignas, 2001; Mecella / Roberto, 2013.

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was destroyed. Emperor Valens perished in the carnage.6 After Adrianople, the Goths posed a serious threat to the eastern Roman Empire. The new Emperor, Theodosius, was forced to deal with an emergency situation. However, his response was not limited to military reaction to the danger. In the years 379–382, Theodosius achieved peace for the most part through diplomatic strategies. With courage and determination, Theodosius changed the traditional behaviour towards the Goths. Firstly, following an agreement disciplined by a treaty (foedus), the Goths and other barbarian populations received land inside the Roman Empire; in return, they provided men to cultivate or to defend it. Apparently, this decision was not contrary to the measures usually taken to make peace with the barbarians. Along with the above-mentioned case of Tiberius Plautius Aelianus, we possess many examples of this practice. The foreign populations were allowed to settle within the borders, in areas assigned to them, as long as they provided men fit to cultivate the land or to fight. In reality, the traditional patterns of Roman behaviour with the barbarians were changed, insofar as Theodosius allowed the Goths to settle themselves within the borders, along the Danube in Thrace, probably without military and political subjugation (deditio). The Emperor granted them autonomy and freedom; consequently, the Goths became a foreign enclave inside the Roman Empire.7 This political decision was accompanied by intensive diplomatic activity to strengthen the friendship between the Romans and Goths. Even before the peace treaty, Theodosius was personally committed to achieving this objective. He was well aware that the diplomacy of the northern barbarians was mainly based on direct relationships between leaders and chieftains, which is to say, between men. Therefore, he tried to establish personal contacts with barbarian leaders. 2. The case of Theodosius’s relationship with the Gothic leader Athanaric is emblematic of imperial diplomatic strategies. Athanaric was the head of the “royal clan of Scythians.” During his term of office as iudex of the Gothic Tervingian confederation (364–376), supreme army commander of his gens, Athanaric was a strong adversary of the Roman Empire. He fought bravely against Emperor Valens during the war in 367–369. The alleged casus belli was the Tervingian support given to Procopius, a relative of Emperor Julian and usurper against Valens in September 365. And in fact, after his usurpation in Constantinople, Procopius sent some envoys to Athanaric on the other side of Danube, with the request that they join his enterprise. Procopius claimed to be a legitimate heir to the Constantinian dynasty and therefore demanded military support. In accordance with the 6

See Wolfram, 1988: 117–131; Lenski, 2002: 320–367; Kulikowski, 2007: 123–143. On Theodosius’s accession see Errington, 1996a; on military conflict and diplomatic strategies to achieve peace with the Goths see Errington, 1996b; Wolfram, 1988: 131–135; Kulikowski, 2007: 144–153.

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treaty of 332 between Goths and the Roman Empire, Athanaric sent 3,000 warriors to the usurper. After his victory over Procopius (May 366), Valens decided to take revenge on the followers of his enemy, to punish the Goths and to attack them. Despite three years of hostilities, neither side could win a decisive victory. In 370 Romans and Goths came to an agreement to put an end to the war. Athanaric was forced to meet the Roman Emperor Valens. However, he refused to enter Roman territory, as he was bound by an oath to his father Aoric, never to set foot on Roman soil, as Ammianus Marcellinus reports: et quoniam asserebat Athanaricus sub timenda exsecratione iurandi se esse obstrictum mandatisque prohibitum patris, ne solum calcaret aliquando Romanum, et adigi non poterat, “But since Athanaricus declared that he was bound by an oath accompanied by a fearful imprecation, and thus prevented by his father’s orders from ever setting foot on Roman soil, and since he could not be induced to do so […]” (transl. by J.C. Rolfe).8 Consequently, Athanaric met the Roman Emperor on a boat in the middle of the Danube, at that time the border between the Goths and the Roman Empire.9 As the Huns, a new barbarian people, crossed the Dniester in 375, Athanaric vainly tried to stop their invasion of the Gothic territory. After an initial defeat, the Goths tried to escape death and slavery. While the main body of Tervingi went to the Danube under the leadership of Fritigern and Alavivus, Athanaric took refuge in Transylvania.10 After Adrianople, the new Emperor Theodosius persuaded Athanaric to move to the Roman Empire with his followers. Probably, the prohibition from entering the Roman Empire concerned an obligation linked to Athanaric’s position as iudex of the Tervingian confederation. After the disaster against the Huns, the confederation and the Tervingian judgeship were brought to an end. In early winter 380–381, Athanaric moved to Constantinople as leader of his followers. The Gothic chief arrived in Constantinople on January 11, 381. Despite his position as refugee who came to the Emperor in Constantinople to surrender and apply for asylum, Athanaric was received by Theodosius with great honour. According to Zosimus (see below), the Emperor came out in person from Constantinople to meet him.11 A contemporary member of the imperial court, The8

Ammianus Marcellinus 27, 5, 9. See Wolfram, 1988: 64–69; Heather, 1991: 116–117; Lenski, 2002: 116–137. On the treaty between Constantine and the Goths in 332 see Bleckmann, 1995; Kulikowski, 2007: 83–87. Procopius’s usurpation and the Goths: see Lenski, 2002: 68–115; Roberto, 2003; Roberto, 2020: 172–177. 10 See Ammianus Marcellinus 27, 5, 8–9 (peace on a boat in the middle of the Danube). On Athanaric as iudex of the Tervingian confederation see Wolfram, 1988: 70–73; Faber, 2010: 158–153. 11 For Athanaric’s stay in Constantinople see Consularia Constantinopolitana a. 381: His Conss. (Syagrius and Eucherius) ingressus est Aithanaricus rex Gothorum Constantinopolim die III id. Ian. Eodem mense diem functus idem Aithanaricus VIII Kal. Feb. See Wolfram, 1988: 73–74; Faber, 2010: 163. 9

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mistius – rhetorician and philosopher at Constantinople – refers to his coming in an oration delivered to celebrate Theodosius’s second dies imperii. Probably, Athanaric took part in the celebration (Orat. 15, 190d–191a): Τοιγαροῦν ὧν τοῖς ὅπλοις οὐκ ἐκρατήσαμεν, τούτους τῇ σῇ πίστει προσηγαγόμεθα αὐτοκλήτους, καὶ ὥσπερ ἡ μαγνῆτις λίθος ἡσυχῆ ἐφέλκεται τὰ σιδήρια, οὕτω καὶ αὐτὸς ἀκονιτὶ ἐφειλκύσω τὸν Γέτην δυνάστην, καὶ ἥκει σοι ἐθελοντὴς ὁ πάλαι σεμνὸς καὶ ὑψηλογνώμων ἱκέτης εἰς τὴν πόλιν τὴν βασιλίδα, οὗ τὸν πατέρα ὁ παμμεγέθης Κωνσταντῖνος εἰκόνι ἀπεμειλίσσετω τῇ νῦν ἔτι ἀνακειμένῃ πρὸς τῷ ὀπισθοδόμῳ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου. “And so those whom we have not conquered by arms, we attract voluntarily through faith in you and, as the magnetic stone gently draws iron to itself, so you drew on the Getic chieftain (Athanaric) without effort and he comes to the royal city as a willing suppliant to you, he who was once proud and haughty of spirit, whose father the great and mighty Constantine won over with the statue which even now stands at the rear of the Senate House.”12 During his stay in Constantinople, Athanaric suddenly died of an illness (fatali sorte, according to Ammianus13) on January 25. Following his source Eunapius, the historian Zosimus, at the end of the fifth century, describes these events in his Historia nea (4, 34, 4–5): ὃ δὲ ὡς Θεοδόσιον ἔδραμεν ἀρτίως ἀπαλλαγέντα νόσου τὸν βίον αὐτῷ καταστησάσης εἰς ἀμφίβολον· ὃ δὲ φιλοφρόνως μετὰ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ βαρβάρων ἐδέξατο, πόρρω που τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως προελθών, καὶ παραχρῆμα τελευτήσαντα ταφῇ βασιλικῇ περιέστειλε. (5) Τοσαύτῃ δὲ ἦν ἡ περὶ τὴν τάφην πολυτέλεια ὥστε τοὺς βαρβάρους ἅπαντας καταπλαγέντας τῇ ταύτης ὑπερβολῇ, τοὺς μὲν Σκύθας ἐπανελθεῖν οἴκαδε καὶ μηκέτι Ῥωμαίοις παρενοχλεῖν, τὴν εὐγνωμοσύνην τοῦ βασιλέως θαυμάσαντας, ὅσοι δὲ ἅμα τῷ τελευτήσαντι παρεγένοντο, τῇ τῆς ὄχθης φυλακῇ προσεγκαρτερήσαντας ἐπὶ πολὺ κωλῦσαι τὰς κατὰ Ῥωμαίων ἐφόδους· ἐν ταὐτῷ δὲ καὶ ἄλλα προσεγίνετο τῷ Θεοδοσίῳ τύχης πλεονεκτήματα. “He (Theodosius) received him (Athanaric, head of the Scythian royal family) kindly together with his barbarian retinue, even going out from Constantinople to meet him, and when he died straightaway after, buried him in a royal tomb. Such was the extravagance and lavishness of the tomb that all the barbarians were amazed, and the Scythians returned home without annoying the Romans any more, but rather marvelling at the Emperor’s

12

Translation by Heather / Moncur, 2001: 243. On Themistius’s cultural and political activity see Dagron, 1968; Vanderspoel, 1995. 13 Ammianus Marcellinus 27, 5, 10.

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kindness. The dead chief’s followers strengthened the guard on the bank of the river and for a long time prevented attacks on the Romans.”14 Ammianus Marcellinus 27, 5, 10 confirms the solemn splendour of Athanaric’s funeral, adding an important detail: the Gothic leader was buried in accordance with Roman funerary customs: Athanaricus proximorum factione genitalibus terris expulsus fatali sorte decessit et ambitiosis exsequiis ritu sepultus est nostro (“Athanaricus, driven from his native land by a faction of his kinsmen, died a natural death and was buried after our fashion with splendid rites”). Athanaric was a pagan who even persecuted Christians as iudex. Theodosius probably granted him a pagan funeral in accordance with the Roman rites.15 This detail of Ammianus becomes all the more important, if we consider the long chapter which Jordanes(-Cassiodorus) devotes to the episode. In his Getica, 28, 142–145, in the middle of the sixth century, Jordanes reports: Vbi vero post haec Theodosius convaluit imperator repperitque cum Gothis et Romanis Gratianum imperatorem foedus pepigisse quod ipse optaverat, admodum grato animo ferens et ipse in hac pace consensit, Aithanaricumque regem, qui tunc Fritigerno successerat, datis sibi muneribus sociavit moribusque suis benignissimis ad se eum in Constantinopolim accedere invitavit. 143 Qui omnino libenter adquiescens regiam urbem ingressus est miransque: “En, inquit, cerno, quod saepe incredulus audiebam,” famam videlicet tantae urbis; et huc illuc oculos volvens nunc situm urbis commeatumque navium, nunc moenia clara prospectans miratur, populosque diversarum gentium quasi fonte in uno e diversis partibus scaturiente unda, sic quoque militem ordinatum aspiciens: “Deus, inquit, sine dubio terrenus est imperator et quisquis adversus eum manum moverit, ipse sui sanguinis reus existit.” 144 In tali ergo admiratione maioreque a principe honore suffultus paucis mensibus interiectis ab hac luce migravit. Quem princeps affectionis gratia pene plus mortuum quam vivum honorans dignae tradidit sepulturae, ipse quoque in exequiis feretro eius praeiens. 145 Defuncto ergo Aithanarico cunctus eius exercitus in servitio Theodosii imperatoris perdurans Romano se imperio subdens cum milite

14

Text translated by Ridley, 1982: 194. On the funeral see also Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 5, 10; Orosius 7, 34, 6; Ambrosius, De Spiritu Sancto 1, 17. 15 See Wolfram, 1988: 74; Neri, 2013: 19 n. 54; see also Den Boeft / Drijvers / Den Hengst / Teitler, 2009: 125–126: “the style of the funeral was not Gothic, but ‘in accordance with our customs’. In death the Gothic leader was finally romanized.” Although the event is outside of the chronological framework of his history, Ammianus mentions the burial of Athanaric. His choice can be interpreted as an attempt to denigrate the memory of the Gothic leader. Despite his insolent behaviour in 369, Athanaric was later forced to surrender to the Empire; see Faber, 2009: 291, n. 17. On the problem of Gothic christianization, see recently Gheller, 2017: 75–139.

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velut unum corpus effecit militiaque illa dudum sub Constantino principe foederatorum renovata et ipsi dicti sunt foederati. E quibus imperator contra Eugenium tyrannum, qui occiso Gratiano Gallias occupasset plus quam XX milia armatorum fideles sibi et amicos intellegens secum duxit victoriaque de praedicto tyranno potitus ultionem exegit. “When the Emperor Theodosius afterwards recovered and learned that the Emperor Gratian had made a compact between the Goths and the Romans, as he had himself desired, he took it very graciously and gave his assent. He gave gifts to King Athanaric, who had succeeded Fritigern, made an alliance with him and in the most gracious manner invited him to visit him in Constantinople. (143) Athanaric very gladly consented and as he entered the royal city exclaimed in wonder ‘Lo, now I see what I have often heard of with unbelieving ears,’ meaning the great and famous city. Turning his eyes hither and thither, he marvelled as he beheld the situation of the city, the coming and going of the ships, the splendid walls, and the people of diverse nations gathered like a flood of waters streaming from different regions into one basin. So too, when he saw the army in array, he said ‘Truly the Emperor is a god on earth, and whoso raises a hand against him is guilty of his own blood.’ (144) In the midst of his admiration and the enjoyment of even greater honours at the hand of the Emperor, he departed this life after the space of a few months. The Emperor had such affection for him that he honoured Athanaric even more when he was dead than during his life-time, for he not only gave him a worthy burial, but himself walked before the bier at the funeral. (145) Now when Athanaric was dead, his whole army continued in the service of the Emperor Theodosius and submitted to the Roman rule, forming as it were one body with the imperial soldiery. The former service of the Allies under the Emperor Constantine was now renewed and they were again called Allies. And since the Emperor knew that they were faithful to him and his friends, he took from their number more than twenty thousand warriors to serve against the tyrant Eugenius who had slain Gratian and seized Gaul. After winning the victory over this usurper, he wreaked his vengeance upon him.”16 “The Emperor had such affection for him that he honoured Athanaric even more when he was dead than during his life-time, for he not only gave him a worthy burial, but himself walked before the bier at the funeral”: according to Jordanes, Theodosius, a Christian Emperor, attended the funerary ceremonies of the pagan Athanaric, celebrated, as Ammianus states, after the Roman (i.e., pagan) fashion. Matching the accounts of Ammianus and Jordanes, it is possible to better under16

Translation by Mierow, 1915. See also Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon s.a. 381, 2; Isidorus, Historia de regibus Gothorum, 11; Paulus Diaconus, Romana 11, 15. On Jordanes’s text see Heather, 1991: 336–340.

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stand Jordanes’s statement on Theodosius’s display of great respect for Athanaric. The Gothic chief received a public funeral. Our sources do not refer to a laudatio funebris for Athanaric, which was however probably held. They prefer to focus their attention on the funerary procession, the pompa funebris, because the procession was led by Emperor Theodosius.17 The splendid reception of Athanaric and the honours paid to him during the funeral should be understood in accordance with the political and diplomatic strategies of Theodosius to achieve the pacification of the Goths and to enable their integration into the Roman Empire. Evidently, Jordanes(-Cassiodorus) overestimated the importance of the event. As he moved to Constantinople, Athanaric was the ruler of a small part of Goths. However, from the barbarian perspective, the agreement between Theodosius and the followers of Athanaric can be considered as a means to restore the ancient treaty between Constantine and the Goths. Overcoming Valens’s hostility, Theodosius acted in harmony with Constantine.18 As far as the followers of Athanaric are concerned, they were fully impressed by the behaviour of Theodosius towards their chieftain. They remained faithful to the Emperor until his death (17 January 395).19 3. Theodosius’s political and cultural attitude towards the Goths and the other barbarians led to a controversial debate between the supporters of the inclusive and pacific imperial strategies and the opponents to this policy of compromise with the barbarians, who were not yet subjugated. Civil advisors, military officers and intellectuals loudly expressed their opposition to the imperial policy.20 Sometime after Athanaric’s reception, on October 3, 382, Saturninus, one of Theodosius’s generals (magister militum) was successful in concluding the peace with other Goths who were still fighting against the Empire. This peace agreement gave Themistius a new occasion to praise the diplomatic strategies of Theodosius and to celebrate his personal commitment to achieving peace instead of continuing war. According to Themistius (16, 199c), before obtaining peace, the Goths surrendered to the Roman State (deditio). Actually, the sources do not agree as far as this question is concerned; its presence, however, is entirely understandable in a celebratory speech. This was a necessary political and cultural precondition. The Roman mentality expected the Emperor to always triumph against his enemies, and in particular, against the northern barbarians, who were always portrayed as inferior beings. However, despite their formal subjugation, the Goths could pre17

In general, see Arce, 1988: 40–41, 46–53, 159–163; Arce, 2000. For the reception and the funeral of Athanaric as a means of Theodosian “propaganda”, see Kulikowski, 2007: 155; Faber, 2009. 19 See also Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 5, 10, 4. See Wolfram, 1988: 74–75. 20 See, e.g., Ammianus Marcellinus 31, 16, 8; Synesius, De regno 19; Zosimus 4, 30, 1–2 (following Eunapius). See Neri, 2013: 8; Roberto, 2008. 18

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serve their independent identity and their autonomy. In fact, they were allowed to continue to live under their own laws according to the remarks of Synesius, De regno 19.21 Although aware of this extraordinary situation, Themistius suggests in his oration that this was the best possible outcome to achieve peace with the barbarians. According to his arguments, Theodosius, following his imperial virtues – such as philanthropia, “humanity” – forgave the Goths, granting them moderate conditions. The positive impact of this policy was evident even for the Romans (Them. 16, 211a–b): λόγου γὰρ καὶ φιλανθρωπίας αἱ νῖκαι τοιαῦται, οὐκ ἀνελεῖν, ἀλλὰ βελτίους ποιῆσαι τοὺς λελυπηκότας. Ἔστω γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τὸ ἀνελεῖν ἦν ἐν ῥᾳστώνῃ καὶ δρᾶσαι πάντα ὑπῆρξεν ἂν ἡμῖν, ἀντιπαθεῖν δὲ μηδ᾽ὁτιοῦν, καίτοι γε ἐκ τῶν πολλάκις συμβεβηκότων οὐ ταῦτα ἦν ἀκόλουθα καὶ εἰκότα, ἀλλ᾽, ὅπερ εἷπον, ἔστω καὶ τοῦτο κεῖσθαι ἡμῖν ἐπ᾽ἐξουσίας. Πότερον οὖν βέλτιον νεκρῶν ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν Θρᾴκην ἢ γεωργῶν; Καὶ τάφων ἀποδεῖξαι μεστὴν ἢ ἀνθρώπων; καὶ βαδίζειν δι᾽ ἀγρίας ἢ δι᾽εἰργασμένης; καὶ ἀριθμεῖν τοὺς πεφονευμένους ἢ τοὺς ἀροῦντας; […] Ἀκούω παρὰ τῶν ἐκεῖθεν ἀφικνουμένων ὅτι μεταποιοῦσι τὸν σίδηρον ἐκ τῶν ξιφῶν καὶ τῶν θωράκων εἰς δικέλλας νῦν καὶ δρεπάνας, καὶ τὸν Ἄρην πόρρωθεν ἀσπαζόμενοι προσεύχονται Δήμητρι καὶ Διονύσῳ. “For such are the triumphs of reason and universal love, not to destroy but rather to make better those who have caused sufferings. For just suppose that this destruction was an easy matter and that we possessed the means to accomplish it without suffering any consequences, although from past experience this was neither a foregone nor likely conclusion, nevertheless just suppose, as I said, that this solution lay within our power. Was it then better to fill Thrace with corpses or with farmers? To make it full of tombs or living men? To progress through a wilderness or a cultivated land? To count up the number of the slaughtered or those who till the soil? […] I hear from those who have returned from there that they are now turning the metal of their swords and breastplates into hoes and pruning hooks, and that while paying distant respect to Ares, they offer prayers to Demeter and Dionysus” (Heather / Moncur 2001: 280). Themistius shows that the policy of peace and integration of the Goths was based on Theodosius’s belief that Romans and barbarians both deserved to be treated with philanthropia.22 21

See Neri, 2013: 14. On the Gothic deditio in 382 see also Orosius 7, 34, 7; Consularia Constantinopolitana, a. 382; Heather / Moncur, 2001: 260–262. 22 See also Themistius, Or. 16, 211c–d. See Daly, 1972; on the political virtue of philanthropia see Downey, 1955; Daly, 1975. In full harmony with this moral and cultural vision, Gregory of Nazianzus, archbishop of Constantinople in 382, praises the virtues of Modares, a Gothic general in imperial service (ep. 136, 1): Ἡμῖν σὺ καὶ συγγενὴς καὶ οἰκεῖος

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As these two texts show, in Theodosius’s policy toward the barbarians different concepts shared by both the Hellenistic-Roman culture and the Christian culture – e.g., philanthropia as an imperial virtue leading to the unity of mankind – join together to enable peace and integration between Romans and barbarians. Despite criticism already arising from his contemporaries, Theodosius was personally committed to this philo-barbarian policy. Firstly, a great number of Gothic warriors were recruited for the imperial guard, the Scholae palatinae. Theodosius entrusted them with his personal security. Secondly, in accordance with his attitude, the Emperor allowed family and kinship integration between Romans and the barbarians. Eunapius in frg. 60 Mü (= 59 Blockley) reports that Theodosius gave his permission to the young pagan Gothic chieftain Fravitta to marry an aristocratic Roman woman: Γυναῖκα οὖν ᾔτησε Ῥωμαίαν εὐθύς, ἵνα μηδὲν ὑβρίζῃ διὰ σώματος ἀνάγκην. καὶ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐπέτρεψε τὸν γάμον, καὶ ὁ πατὴρ τῆς κόρης (ἐτρέφετο γὰρ ὑπὸ πατρί) καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἐθαύμασε μακάριον ἑαυτὸν ὑπολαμβάνων, εἰ τοιοῦτον ἕξοι γαμβρόν.23 The wedding probably took place at the beginning of Fravitta’s career in the imperial service, in the early years of Theodosius’s reign and shortly after the treaty of 382. As in the case of Athanaric’s funeral, Theodosius personally interceded in order to make Fravitta’s request possible. As Fravitta was a Goth, without Roman citizenship, an imperial law banned the marriage; besides that, the Goth was a pagan. Once again, Theodosius develops his own policy programme of assimilation and peace with the Goths without taking religious beliefs into account and thus tempers the harshness of the previous imperial legislation against the relationships between Romans and barbarians. As far as we know, Fravitta could even have preserved his religious belief at the court of an orthodox prince. Both Eunapius and Zosimus praise him as a pagan friend of Rome.24

καὶ πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἂν εἴποι τοιοῦτόν τις. ἡ γὰρ εὐσέβεια συνῆψεν ἡμᾶς καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς εὐδόκιμον, ἣν ἐν σοὶ κατεμάθομεν δείξαντι σαφῶς ὅτι τὸ ἑλληνικὸν καὶ τὸ βάρβαρον σωμάτων, οὐ ψυχῶν ἐστι διαφορά, καὶ τόπων διάστασις, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τρόπων οὐδὲ προαιρέσεων. ἦ γένοιτο πολλοὺς τῶν ἡμετέρων τὸ γένος τὴν σὴν μιμήσασθαι καλοκἀγαθίαν, καὶ πάντα ἡμῖν οἶδ᾽ ὅτι ἕξει καλῶς, τά τε κοινὰ καὶ τὰ ἴδια. 23 Translation by Blockley, 1983: 87: “He straightway asked for a Roman wife, lest the needs of the body force him to violence. The Emperor permitted him the marriage, and the father of the girl (who was still living at home) was delighted at the match and thought himself lucky to have such a son-in-law”. On Fravitta see also Zosimus 4, 56–57. 24 On Fravitta’s marriage in the early years of Theodosius’s reign and his successful career until the early years of Arcadius’s reign (he became consul in 401) see Wolfram, 1988: 146–147; Albert, 1984; Elton, 1996; Sivan, 2002: 56–57. For the imperial prohibition of mixed marriages between Romans and barbarians (Codex Theodosianus 3, 14, 1) see Sivan, 1996; Mathisen, 2009. On Fravitta’s paganism see Eunapius fr. 60 Mü. = 59 Blockley;

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Kinship and marriage alliances as a means of integration became a political feature of the Theodosian dynasty (379–455). Barbarian high officers were integrated into the dynasty with imperial favour and patronage. In 384, Theodosius allowed Stilicho, a second-generation Vandal officer, to marry his step-daughter Serena. Before his death, showing appreciation for the virtues and the ability of Stilicho, Theodosius appointed him as guardian of his two young sons, the successors to the imperial throne, Honorius and Arcadius. In April 395 Arcadius, son of Theodosius and Emperor in the Eastern part of the Empire, married Aelia Eudossia, the daughter of a Frankish general, Bauto. Therefore, his son and successor in 408, Theodosius II, was half-Frankish and member of a Frankish aristocratic family line through his mother.25 Both the participation of Theodosius in Athanaric’s funeral and his sponsorship and approval of Fravitta’s wedding can be considered diplomatic and political gestures in accordance with the philo-barbarian imperial policy. In both cases, the decision of the Emperor is also very significant, as pagan Gothic leaders were involved in these ceremonies. For his personal commitment to promoting friendship and peace between Romans and barbarians, despite the religious beliefs, Theodosius gained a favourable reputation, destined to last in time in the historical memory and tradition of the Goths.26 In January 414, at Narbonne the (Visi-)Goth king Athaulf married the princess Galla Placidia, a daughter of emperor Theodosius and sister of the western Emperor Honorius, who had been taken hostage by the Goths some time before, perhaps as a consequence of the sack of Rome in August 410. Through this marriage Athaulf hoped on the one hand to restore diplomacy and a pacific dialogue with the western Roman government. On the other hand, despite profound tensions in the Gothic aristocracy, Athaulf tried through his wedding to impose a policy of reconciliation and alliance with the Romans on his people. In accordance with this policy, and following Placidia’s giving birth to a son in 415, Athaulf significantly decided to name the boy Theodosius, after Placidia’s father. After a generation, and dramatic events like the Sack of Rome, this choice confirms the good reputation of Emperor Theodosius, whose name was still associated with the possibility of peace among Goths and Romans.27 This 80 Mü. = 69.2 Blockley; Zosimus 5, 20, 1; 21, 5; Philostorgius 11, 8, 9. As noted by Elton, 1996: 99, the nature of Fravitta’s paganism is unknowable. 25 See Demandt, 1989; Mathisen, 2012. 26 On funerary practices as a means of political strategies in Roman culture, see Arce, 1988; Wesch-Klein, 1993; Arce, 2000. 27 On the marriage and its political significance see Olympiodorus, fr. 24 Mü. See the translated text by Blockley, 1983: 186–188. See also Orosius 7, 43, 5–7: “He was influenced to carry out everything required to set things in good order by the persuasive advice of his wife, Placidia, without a doubt a woman of keen intellect and clearly virtuous in religion.” See Cesa, 1992–1993. On the religious aspects – Galla Placidia was a Roman orthodox princess, Athaulf a pagan or Arian Gothic king – see Sivan, 2002: 56–57; Assorati, 2016. On Theodosius, son of Athaulf and Placidia, see Sivan, 2011: 47–59.

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reputation did not disappear among the Goths over the years and the centuries to follow. As Jordanes confirms (29, 146), in the history of Gothic people, first composed by Cassiodorus and then epitomized by Jordanes in 551, Theodosius was still considered amator pacis generisque Gothorum, “the lover of peace and the Gothic race”: Postquam vero Theodosius amator pacis generisque Gothorum rebus excessit humanis coeperuntque eius filii utramque rem publicam luxuriose viventes adnihilare auxiliariisque suis, id est Gothis, consueta dona subtrahere, mox Gothis fastidium eorum increvit, verentesque ne longa pace eorum resolveretur fortitudo, ordinato super se rege Halarico […].28 Bibliography Albert, G., 1984: Goten in Konstantinopel: Untersuchungen zur oströmischen Geschichte um das Jahr 400 n.Chr. Paderborn / München. Arce, J., 1988: Funus Imperatorum: los funerales de los emperadores romanos. Madrid. — 2000: “Imperial funerals in the later Roman empire: change and continuity”. In F. Theuws / J.L. Nelson (eds.): Rituals of power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Leiden / Boston / Köln. Pp. 115–129. Assorati G., 2016: “Il matrimonio fra Ataulfo e Galla Placidia tra prassi e diritto”. In V. Neri / B. Girotti: La famiglia tardoantica. Società, diritto, religione. Milano. Pp. 269–282. Bleckmann, B., 1995: “Constantin und die Donaubarbaren”. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 38, 38–66. Blockley, R.C., 1983: The fragmentary classicising historians of the later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus. Vol. 2. Liverpool. Boatwright, M.T., 2015: “Acceptance and approval: Romans’ non-Roman population transfers, 180 B.C.E. – ca. 70 C.E.”. Phoenix 69, 122–146. Boeft, J. den / Drijvers, J.W. / Hengst, D. den / Teitler, H.C., 2009: Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXVII. Leiden / Boston. Cesa, M., 1992/1993: “Il matrimonio di Placidia ed Ataulfo sullo sfondo dei rapporti fra Ravenna e i Visigoti”. Romanobarbarica 12, 23–53. Christensen, A.S., 2002: Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths. Copenhagen.

28

Translation by C. C. Mierow: “But after Theodosius, the lover of peace and of the Gothic race, had passed from human cares, his sons began to ruin both empires by their luxurious living and to deprive their Allies, that is to say the Goths, of the customary gifts. The contempt of the Goths for the Romans soon increased, and for fear their valour would be destroyed by long peace, they appointed Alaric king over them.”

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Conole, P. / Milns, R.D., 1983: “Neronian Frontier Policy in the Balkans. The Career of Ti. Plautius Silvanus”. Historia 32, 183–200. Dagron, G., 1968: “L’Empire romain d’Orient au IVe siècle et les traditions politiques de l’Hellénisme: le témoignage de Thémistios”. Travaux et Mémoires 3, 1–242. Daly, L.J., 1972: “The Mandarin and the Barbarian: the Response of Themistius to the Gothic Challenge”. Historia 21, 351–379. — 1975: “Themistius’ concept of Philanthropia”. Byzantion 45, 22–40. Demandt A., 1989: “The Osmosis of Late Roman and Germanic Aristocracies”. In E. Chrysos / A. Schwarcz (eds.): Das Reich und die Barbaren. Wien. Pp. 75–86. Downey, G., 1955: “Philantropia in Religion and Statecraft in the Fourth Century after Christ”. Historia 4, 199–208. Elton, H., 1996: “Fravitta and Barbarian Career Opportunities in Constantinople”. Medieval Prosopography 17, 95–106. Errington, R.M., 1996a: “The accession of Theodosius I”. Klio 78, 438–453. — 1996b: “Theodosius and the Goths”. Chiron 26, 1–27. Faber, E., 2009: “The Visigoths as the «other»: barbarians, heretics, martyrs”. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, serie 2, Historia Antigua 22, 287–296. — 2010: “Athanaric, Alarich, Athaulf. Zum Wandel westgotischer Herrschaftskonzeptionen”. Klio 92, 157–169. Fear, A.T., 2010: Orosius, Seven Books of History against the Pagans, translated with an introduction and notes by A.T. Fear. Liverpool. Gheller, V., 2017: “Identità” e “arianesimo gotico”: genesi di un topos storiografico. Bologna. Giardina A., 1989: Anonimo, Le cose della guerra. Milano. — 2006: Cassiodoro Politico. Roma. Giardina, A. / Cecconi, G.A. / Tantillo, I. / Oppedisano, F. (eds.), 2014–2016: Flavio Magno Aurelio Cassiodoro Senatore, Varie, vol. II–V. Roma. Girotti, B., 2009: Ricerche sui Romana di Jordanes. Bologna. Gnoli, G., 1971: “Politica religiosa e concezione della regalità sotto i Sassanidi”. In La Persia nel Medioevo. Roma. Pp. 224–251. Grillone, A., 2017: Iordanes, Getica, edizione critica, traduzione e commento a cura di A. G. Paris. Heather, P., 1991: Goths and Romans 332–489. Oxford. Heather, P. / Moncur, D., 2001: Politics, Philosophy and Empire in the Fourth Century. Selected Orations of Themistius. Liverpool. Ireland, R., 1979: De Rebus bellicis. Oxford. Kulikowski, M., 2007: Rome’s Gothic Wars: from the third century to Alaric. Cambridge. Lenski, N., 2002: Failure of Empire. Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D. Berkeley.

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Luiselli, B., 1992: Storia culturale dei rapporti tra mondo romano e mondo germanico. Roma. Mathisen, R.W., 2009: “Provinciales, Gentiles and Marriages between Romans and Barbarians in the Late Roman Empire”. The Journal of Roman Studies 99, 140–155. — 2012: “Les mariages entre Romains et Barbares comme stratégie familiale pendant l’Antiquité tardive”. In C. Badel / Chr. Settipani (ed.): Les stratégies familiales dans l’Antiquité tardive. Paris. Pp. 153–166. Mecella, L. / Roberto, U., 2013: “Isotimia tra Roma e la Persia. Una testimonianza dell’età di Severo Alessandro”. In M. Mari / J. Thornton (eds.): Parole in movimento. Linguaggio politico e lessico storiografico in età ellenistica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Roma, 21–23 febbraio 2011. Pisa / Roma. Pp. 99– 119. Mierow, C.C., 1915: The Gothic History of Jordanes. Princeton. Neri, V., 2013: “La politica gotica di Teodosio nella storiografia dell’età della dinastia teodosiana”. I. Baldini Lippolis / S. Cosentino (eds.): Potere e politica nell’età della famiglia teodosiana (395–455). Bari. Pp. 7–25. Ridley, R.T., 1982: Zosimus. New History, a translation with commentary by R.T.R. Canberra. Roberto, U., 2003: “Il magister Victor e l’opposizione ortodossa all’imperatore Valente nella storiografia ecclesiastica e nell’agiografia”. Mediterraneo Antico 6, 61–93. — 2008: “Esercito e città in età teodosiana: considerazioni sull’eccidio di Tessalonica”. Mediterraneo Antico 11, 269–287. — 2020: “L’usurpatore e i barbari in età tardoantica: alcune riflessioni tra diplomazia e politica”. Occidente/Oriente 1. Pp. 165–184. Sivan, H.S., 1996: “Why not marry a barbarian? Marital frontiers in Late Antiquity (The example of CTh 3, 14, 1)”. In R. W. Mathisen / H. Sivan (eds.): Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity. Aldershot. Pp. 136–145. — 2002: “From Athanaric to Ataulf: the shifting horizons of ‘Gothicness’ in Late Antiquity”. In J.-M. Carrié / R. Lizzi Testa (eds.): “Humana Sapit”. Études d’Antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini. Turnhout. Pp. 55–62. — 2011: Galla Placidia. The Last Roman Empress. Oxford. Vanderspoel, J., 1995: Themistius and the Imperial Court: Oratory, Civic Duty and Paideia from Constantius to Theodosius. Ann Arbor. Wesch-Klein, G., 1993: Funus publicum. Eine Studie zur öffentlichen Beisetzung und Gewährung von Ehrengräbern in Rom und den Westprovinzen. Stuttgart. Wiesehöfer, J., 1986: “Iranische Ansprüche an Rom auf ehemals achaimenidische Territorien”. Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 19, 177–186. Winter, E. / Dignas, B., 2001: Rom und das Perserreich. Zwei Weltmächte zwischen Konfrontation und Koexistenz. Berlin.

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Wolfram, H., 1988: History of the Goths, translated by Th. J. Dunlap. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London (first published in Germany 1979). Zawadzki, T., 1975: “La légation de Ti. Plautius Silvanus Aelianus en Mésie et la politique frumentaire de Néron”. La Parola del Passato 30, 59–73. Zecchini, G., 1993: “Cassiodoro e le fonti dei Getica di Giordane”. In G. Zecchini, Ricerche di storiografia latina tardoantica. Roma. Pp. 193–209.

Many Eyes of the World? Making Peace between Byzantium and Other Empires, 600–1200 CE Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

In his 2011 book “The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire,” the political scientist Edward Luttwak claimed that Byzantium “relied less on military strength and more on persuasion” and “even when the Byzantines fought (…) they were less inclined to destroy their enemies than to contain them, for they were aware that today’s enemies could be tomorrow’s allies.”1 As the present paper demonstrates, these assumptions cannot be generalised for all periods of Byzantine history; on the contrary, Byzantine emperors were prepared to aim for the destruction of their enemies and the total conquest of other polities if geopolitical conditions allowed them to do so. More often, however, Byzantium (or, more accurately, the Roman Empire as whose unbroken continuation the only by early modern scholarship so called ‘Byzantines’ considered themselves2) had to come to terms with powerful or even overpowering neighbours, frequently more than one at the same time. Diplomacy, peace making and peacekeeping were therefore essential instruments for the empire’s very survival.3 Accordingly, imperial pretensions and ideological framings were flexible and could be adapted to the needs and constraints of the empire’s geopolitical situation, as especially the groundbreaking studies of Yannis Stouraitis have demonstrated in recent years.4 When after the approval of Christianity by Emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306/324–337 CE) the Imperium Romanum over the course of the next decades increasingly became a Christian polity,5 ecclesiastical representatives had to come to terms with warfare in defence of the empire. Leading figures such as Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) or Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 300–373) argued that killing enemies in war should not be regarded as murder, but as necessary evil. Basil, however, recommended that those who had killed in war should abstain from the Holy Communion for three years (a practice obviously not followed since it would have kept professional Christian soldiers away from the sacrament in perpetuity).6

1

Luttwak, 2011. Therefore, we use “Roman” and “Byzantine” interchangeably in this paper. See also Stouraitis, 2014. 3 Shepard / Franklin, 1992; Shepard, 2006; Nechaeva, 2014; Drocourt, 2015. 4 See the bibliography for his many papers and volumes and now especially Stouraitis, 2018. See also Haldon, 1999; Decker, 2013. 5 See also Gallina, 2016. 6 Saint Basile, Lettres, ed. Courtonne, 1961: 188.13.1–5; Joannou, 1963: 68.4–14; Stouraitis, 2012a. 2

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While the turbulent 4th and 5th centuries CE actually saw Roman forces on the defending side mostly, Emperor Justinian’s (r. 527–565) attempt to ‘re-conquer’ the territories in the former Western half of the empire, where imperial rule had ended in 476 CE, could have been interpreted as wars of aggression. Justinian, however, claimed that he “hoped, with the help of God, to extend his rule to the remaining territories that had been under Roman rule and spread from one ocean to another, but had been lost through negligence.”7 And according to Procopius, when the Ostrogoths complained that the troops of Constantinople “would wage an unjust war because they fought against friends and allies who had conquered Italy from [the Germanic general] Odoacer on behalf of Emperor Zeno” (in 488 CE), the Romans answered “that the Emperor [Zeno] did not intend by this commission to King Theodoric [r. 474–526] to leave the rule over Italy to the Goths.”8 The Emperor could always reclaim former Roman provinces, so they argued, legitimately for direct control even by force, as also later examples demonstrate (see below). While the post-Roman successor kingdoms in the West thus could become objects of (re-)conquest, Constantinople acknowledged the existence of a neighbouring great power of equal footing in the East. Already in the 1st century CE, Tacitus referred to the Iranian Empire of the Parthians as second “maximum imperium” and Flavius Josephus wrote about the “two greatest dominions under the sun.”9 Later authors developed this into a model of special responsibility of the Roman and the Iranian empire for the maintenance of the order of the world. The 6th century author Petros Patrikios has a Persian ambassador on the occasion of the Roman-Persian peace negotiations in 299 CE say: “It is obvious for all mankind that the Roman and the Persian Empires are just like two lamps; and it is necessary that, like eyes, the one is brightened by the light of the other and that they do not angrily strive for each other’s destruction.”10

7

Corpus Iuris Civilis II, Nov. XXX.11.2. Procopius, Bella: 6.6.15–16; Stouraitis, 2009: 270–271; Stouraitis, 2012a. 9 Schmalzbauer, 2004 (with the citations). For the limits of Roman expansion towards the Parthian and later Sasanian realm, cf. James, 2011: 141–143 and 204–211; Isaac, 2000; Harris, 2016: 114–133, 143–147. 10 Peter the Patrician, frg. 13–14 (transl. Dignas / Winter, 2007: 122–123). On these concepts, cf. Canepa, 2010; Nechaeva, 2014. 8

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Map 1: The approximate borders of the Byzantine Empire in the central and eastern Mediterranean in 600 AD (image: J. Preiser-Kapeller, ÖAW, 2019)

Map 2: The approximate borders of the Byzantine Empire in the central and eastern Mediterranean in 800 AD (image: J. Preiser-Kapeller, ÖAW, 2019)

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Theophylaktos Simokattes (7th century) transmits the following passage, allegedly from a letter of the Sasanian Great King Xusrō II to Emperor Maurikios (to be dated to the year 589): “God saw to it that the whole world would be lit up from above and from the beginning by two eyes, namely by the most powerful Roman Empire and by the wisest rulers of the Persian state. For by these greatest powers the disobedient and bellicose nations are winnowed, and man’s way of life is well ordered and always guided”; and the Great King’s ambassadors added: “For one power alone is not able to shoulder the immense burden of taking care of the organisation of the universe and one man’s pulse is not able to steer everything created under the sun.” 11 Both authors put these ideas into the mouth of representatives of the Persian Empire, as if it were more acceptable to hear such potentially disturbing thoughts about a co-existence of the two empires from the other side. We find various agreements between the Roman Empire and Persia as well as formal peace treaties after longer periods of war in 299, 363, 532, 562, 591 and 629 CE. In these cases, delegates of both parties tried to define the respective spheres of influence, especially with regard to points of strategic relevance and the suzerainty over ‘lesser’ polities in between the two empires, but not in the form of a clearly demarcated borderline.12 Actually, the border between the two empires was often quite permeable, although the two powers tried to agree on the monitoring and limitation of the mobility of merchants, refugees or defectors.13 The ideal of coexistence also implicated (especially Persian) requests for mutual support in the establishment and maintenance of fortified frontiers towards the “the disobedient and bellicose nations” in the Caucasus region, which would have been in the interest of both polities (and the world order they had to sustain).14 In the long term, however, the ideal of cooperation between the two empires proved not very potent: after a period of détente in the 5th century, ByzantinePersian warfare intensified in the 6th century and culminated in two long wars (570–591 and 602–628) which left both empires significantly weakened. In their aftermath, the emerging Islamic Arab Caliphate between 632 and 651 CE was able to deprive the Byzantine Empire of its richest provinces in the Levant and Egypt and to conquer the Sasanian Empire in Iraq and Iran in its entirety. Along the new Byzantine-Arab frontier in the Taurus Mountains in Asia Minor, how11

Theophylact Simocatta iv.11.2–4 and iv.13.7 (transl. Dignas / Winter, 2007: 238–239). Güterbock, 1906; Dodgeon / Lieu, 1991: 133–134; Greatrex / Lieu, 2002: 1–9, 21–30, 96–97, 131–134, 174–175 and 226–228; Dignas / Winter, 2007: 118–151. 13 Procopius, De aed. III.3.3. 9–12; transl. Dignas / Winter, 2007: 208; Lee, 1993. 14 Dignas / Winter, 2007: 188–195; Greatrex / Lieu, 2002: 56–59. 12

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ever, in the 7th and 8th century there emerged a zone of weakly populated ‘noman’s-land’, which should impede the advance of larger armies, especially of the Arabs towards Byzantine territory.15 The Arabs did not succeed in permanent conquest beyond these zone, neither under the caliphate of the Umayyads (661–750), who even attempted to capture Constantinople, nor under the succeeding dynasty of the Abbasids (from 750 onwards), whose most prominent members campaigned in person against the Romans.16 On the contrast, during periods of internal unrest and civil war in the Islamic Empire, the Caliphs had to sue for peace and send tribute to Constantinople in order to avoid Byzantine intervention.17 For one of these times of peace around the years 678/680 CE, the Byzantine Chronicler Theophanes even sketches a scenario of a more general ‘Pax Romana’ in what had become a largely ‘post-Roman’ world: “When the inhabitants of the West had learnt of this [the Caliph´s plea for peace], namely the Chagan of the Avars [in the Carpathian Basin] as well as the kings, chieftains, and kastaldoi [representatives of the Lombards in Italy] who lived beyond them, and the princes of the western nations, they sent ambassadors and gifts to the emperor, requesting that peace and friendship should be confirmed with them. The emperor acceded to their demands and ratified a despotike eirene [in the sense of an “authoritative, lord-like peace”] with them also. Thus great security prevailed in both East and West.”18 Theophanes suggests that thereby Emperor Constantine IV “had subjugated everyone, those in the east and in the west, in the north and in the south.”19 This “despotic peace,” however, was short living, since in 680/681, the Byzantines were defeated by new arrivals from the Steppe, the Bulgarians, who established their control over territories between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains. As Theophanes reports: “The emperor was forced to make peace with them and agreed to pay tribute to them annually, which was a disgrace to the Romans because of their sins.”20 This agreement was followed by further Bulgarian-Byzantine peace treaties in 716 CE and 816/817 CE, by which a more precisely defined border zone and also procedures of control of mobility (of merchants, but also of defectors or refugees) 15

Asa Eger, 2015: 257–263; Stouraitis, 2012a: 256–258. El-Cheikh, 2004: 91–92. 17 Kaplony, 1996; Beihammer, 2000. 18 Theophanis chronographia: 356.2–7; transl. Mango / Scott, 1997: 496. 19 Theophanis chronographia: 359.19–21; transl. Mango / Scott, 1997: 499 20 Theophanis chronographia: 359.19–21; transl. Mango / Scott, 1997: 499; Stouraitis, 2009: 219–221. 16

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across it were established, similar to elements of peace-making with the Persian Empire (see above).21 Warfare, however, was frequent between the two polities, with Byzantium often in an inferior position. Other instruments of accommodation with the neighbour thus may have seemed more promising. One possible avenue is described by Emperor Leon VI (r. 886–912) in his Taktika, a handbook of military strategy: “Our father, autokrator of the Romans, Basil [I, r. 867–886 CE], now in the divine dwelling, persuaded these peoples [the Slavs on the southern Balkans] to abandon their ancient ways and, having made them subjected to rulers according to the Roman model, and having graced them with baptism, he liberated them from slavery to their own rulers and trained them to take part in warfare against those nations warring against the Romans.”22 Accordingly, the Christianization of the Bulgarians, which officially started with the baptism of their Khan Boris-Michael in 863/864, for Leon VI equally turned them from enemies into co-religionists: “Since the Bulgarians, however, embraced the peace of Christ and share the same faith in him as the Romans, after what they went through as a result of breaking their oath, we do not think of taking up arms against them. We now refer any military action against them to God. For the present, therefore, inasmuch as we are brothers because of our one faith and because they promise to yield to our advice, we are not eager to describe either their battle formation against ours or ours against theirs.”23 In another passage of his Taktika, Leon VI sketches an even more far-reaching ‘Christian Commonwealth’ of befriended peoples: “There are some nations, such as the Franks and the Lombards, who had formerly been bound by impiety, but have now embraced the true faith of the Christians. Some are friendly while others are subject to Our God-given Majesty. They have distinctive military practices, some of which are traditional among them, while others derive from actual usage. We are transmitting these to you (…) not because of a military campaign against them – for how could this be when they are at peace and are allies, coreligionists, and subjects?”24 As Yannis Stouraitis has pointed out, war among Christian nations thus would amount to “civil war” (emphylios polemos) within Christendom, in contrast to 21

Dölger / Müller / Preiser-Kapeller / Riehle, 2009: nr. 276 and nr. 397a; Ziemann, 2007; Sophoulis, 2012. 22 Leo VI, Taktika, ed. Dennis, 2014: 18.95, 470–471; Stouraitis, 2009: 238–239. 23 Leo VI, Taktika, ed. Dennis, 2014: 18.42, 452–454. 24 Leo VI, Taktika, ed. Dennis, 2014: 18.74, 462–464; Stouraitis, 2009: 240–241.

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war against “alien” or “barbarian” peoples (allophylos respectively barbarikos polemos).25 When Byzantium was pressed hard again by the now Christian Bulgarian Empire under Simeon I (r. 893–927), Patriarch Nikolaos I Mystikos of Constantinople addressed him with the following words: “Wars are bad even against outside enemies; but what shall one say of wars against fathers, brothers, friends, fellow-believers, who have chosen one God, one Lord and Master and Saviour?”26 In addition, in another letter the Patriarch wrote: “You are not at arms against the infidels, or the enemies of the cross of Christ, or nations who do not know God’s name, but against fathers, against brothers, in a word, against your kin, whom not flesh and blood, but the All-holy Spirit of God has made one with you.”27 Despite these appeals, however, warfare continued during the reign of Simeon, who even laid claim on the title of a basileus (emperor) of first the Bulgarians (in 913) and then even of the Romans (in 917) and hoped to establish himself as ruler of a joint empire in Constantinople. Only after his death in 927, a more permanent peace was restored, and a compromise was found by which the emperor in Constantinople recognised the imperial title (basileus) of the Bulgarian ruler for Bulgaria, while retaining the ‘universal’, Roman one (basileus ton Rhomaion) for himself. This is also reflected in the lists of forms of addresses to foreign rulers in the “Book of Ceremonies” of Emperor Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos (r. 913/945–959), where the basileus ton Bulgaron is equally honoured as “beloved spiritual son” of the emperor.28 Along similar lines, a temporary compromise had been found after the imperial coronation of Charlemagne in 800 CE, who was addressed as basileus (not “of the Romans,” nota bene) by Byzantine delegates in 812.29 The continuous claim to the Roman imperial title and ‘universal’ aspirations of hegemony within entire Christendom by Charlemagne´s successors and again since the coronation of Emperor Otto I (in 962), however, made constant waves in the relationship between Byzantium and the (in its own perspective ‘restored’) Western Empire. Constantinople was not prepared to accept a competing Roman Empire within the Christian Oecumene.30

25

Stouraitis, 2010. Nicholas I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letters, ed. Jenkins, 1973: nr 31.100–104; Stouraitis, 2009: 296–297. 27 Nicholas I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letters, ed. Jenkins, 1973: nr 24.51; Stouraitis, 2009: 296–297. 28 Constantine Porphyrogennetos, The Book of Ceremonies II, 47 and 48: 682 and 690; Browning, 1975; Dagron et al., 2000. 29 Dölger / Müller / Preiser-Kapeller / Riehle, 2009: nr. 385; Nerlich, 1999: 266. 30 Nerlich, 1999. 26

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Similar to arrangements with the Iranian Empire (see above), however, it was possible to respect the existence of another neighbouring imperial sphere outside of Christendom. Echoing the texts of the 6th to 7th century cited above, Patriarch Nikolaos I Mystikos of Constantinople wrote to the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908–932) in Baghdad: “I mean, that there are two lordships, that of the Saracens and that of the Romans, which stand above all lordship on earth, and shine out like the two mighty beacons in the firmament. They ought, for this very reason alone, to be in contact and brotherhood and not, because we differ in our lives and habits and religion, remain alien in all ways to each other.”31 To a certain extent, the rulers of the Islamic Empire were equally prepared to acknowledge the Roman Emperor as legitimate co-partner in the ordering of the world; we find the “Kaisar” (i.e., the Roman Emperor) as first in the row of world rulers (including the Emperor of China) depicted in a wall painting in the Umayyad palace of Quṣair ʿAmra in the desert of Jordan (dated to c. 740 CE). All of them, however, are paying standing homage to the first among them: the Arab Caliph.32 While this image comes from the apex of Arab power in the 8th century, the influence of the Caliph addressed by Patriarch Nikolaos I in the early 10th century was now largely confined to Baghdad and its environs, while large parts of the Islamic Empire had become de facto independent. Such a less terrifying imperial counterpart was also easier to embed in a scenario of peaceful co-existence as sketched in the Patriarch’s letter.33 A universal peace was described as ideal a few years earlier in the already frequently cited Taktika of Emperor Leon VI: “We must always embrace peace for our own subjects, as well as for the barbarians, because of Christ, the emperor and God of all. If the nations also share these sentiments and stay within their own boundaries and promise that they will not take unjust action against us, then you too refrain from taking up arms against them. Do not stain the ground with the blood of your own people or that of the barbarians. (…). We must always, if it is possible on our part, be at peace with all men, especially with those nations who desire to live in peace and who do nothing unjust to our subjects. We must always prefer peace above all else and we should be at peace with those nations and refrain from war.”34

31

Nicholas I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letters, ed. Jenkins, 1973: nr 1.16–21; Schmalzbauer, 2004; Stouraitis, 2009: 242. 32 Fowden, 2004. 33 Vaiou, 2015. 34 Leo VI, Taktika, ed. Dennis, 2014: 2.30, 34–35; Stouraitis, 2009: 273–274.

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Therefore, maybe Edward Luttwak, cited the beginning of this paper, was right? When the balance of power between Byzantium and its neighbours changed to its advantage during the course of the 10th century, however, also the tone of communication we find in the sources was modified. Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (r. 963–969), who had been a successful general already before his ascend to the throne and had re-conquered Crete from the Arabs in 961, campaigned victoriously in the frontiers regions to the Arab ruled territories in Cilicia, Cyprus and Northern Syria, where the important city of Antioch was taken in 969.35 These losses alarmed Muslim observers, and one Arab source has Emperor Nikephoros II sending the following letter to Caliph al-Mutīʿ in 966/967 CE: “I will move safely to Baghdad with my army until Bab at-Tak (…). Then I will burn what rises in Baghdad, and drag its city walls and carry on its imprisoned children, against the will of the one who does not want it. In addition, from there (I will) move on to Shiraz and Rayy [in Iran]. Know then: Khorasan [Eastern Iran and Central Asia] is my goal with my dashing armies. Moreover, from there I rush to Mecca (…). In addition, I will rule (Mecca) for a pacified epoch, and establish a throne for the most glorious of the world (Jesus Christ). (…) I will conquer the land of the East in its entirety and the West and spread the religion of the cross with the unfolding of the field signs.” 36 Although the authenticity of this text is dubious, Nikephoros II Phokas, who was celebrated in Constantinople as “the pale death of the Saracens,” also according to Byzantine sources had very high ideas about the purpose and religious dimension of his campaigns. A few years before Nikephoros´ reign, Emperor Konstantinos VII had commented on the Islamic concept of ‘holy war’ (ǧihād) as follows: “And this maniac and deceit [the Prophet Muhammed] taught his followers that the one who kills enemies or is killed by enemies, comes to paradise and other such nonsensical chatter.”37 Nikephoros II Phokas, on the contrast, used the idea of ǧihād as model and “urged the church to pass a law that honours those who died in the war, such as the saints, celebrating them with hymns.” He, however, did not succeed, since “the church leaders of the time, making efforts to persuade the emperor that his claim was not pious, finally argued with this canon, claiming that 35

McGeer, 1995. Grünebaum, 1937: 43–64; Dölger / Müller / Beihammer, 2003: nr. 707i; Stouraitis, 2009: 349–350. 37 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperii c. 14.30–34: 78–79; Stouraitis, 2009: 333–338. 36

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it was not possible to equate those who died in the wars with martyrs, since according to Basil they did not have clean hands and therefore had to stay away from communion for three years [for this postulation of Basil of Caesarea see also above]. So they refused the will of the Emperor.”38 Yet despite alleged phantasies of annihilation and this exception from the usual Byzantine refusal of any notion of ‘holy war’, also Nikephoros II Phokas followed more pragmatic traditions of politics when circumstances made it necessary: in 967, a Byzantine fleet was defeated by an Arab one near Sicily. In order to stabilise the front there, the emperor had to sue for a peace treaty with the (ShiiteIshmaelite) Fatimid Caliph al-Mu῾izz (whose claim on the Caliphate denied the rights of the Sunni Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad), who at that time ruled over North Africa. With his embassy, Nikephoros II sent a sword, which allegedly had been owned by the Prophet Mohammed, thus suggesting that he was prepared to acknowledge the supreme leadership of al-Mu῾izz over the Islamic umma – and providing an advantageous entry for his envoys at the Fatimid court.39 The Fatimids became even more important neighbours when in 969, their troops conquered Egypt and they re-located their residence to the Nile, where Cairo was founded. In their further advance towards the east, Fatimid troops also clashed with Byzantine ones in Syria, but despite several conflicts, a détente was established.40 Again, the Byzantines were prepared to accept the superiority of the Fatimid claim within the Islamic Oecumene in symbolic terms. In a peace treaty in 988 CE, it was stipulated that in the mosque in Constantinople the name of the Fatimid Caliph (al-‛Azīz, 975–996) should be mentioned during the Friday prayer instead of the name of the Abbasid Caliph (as had been the case until then). The existence of this mosque (whose beginnings can be traced back to the aftermath of the Arab siege of Constantinople in 717/718) within the capital of the Christian Empire was based on the principle of reciprocity. This became evident when the Fatimid Caliph al-Hākim (r. 996–1021) in 1009 decreed the destruction of several churches, among these the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and several measures against the Christian (and Jewish) communities. In return, the mosque in Constantinople was closed. Only in 1027, when a new treaty was concluded between the successor of al-Hākim, az-Zāhir, and Emperor Constantine VIII (1025–1028), the mosque was re-opened in return for the reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the permission for those Christian who 38

Matthaios Blastares, Collectio alphabetica, 7.122–131, in: Ralles / Potles, vol. VI: 492. Cf. Stouraitis, 2009: 352–355, and Stouraitis, 2012a: 241–250, who comes to the conclusion: “The notion of a ‘holy war’ against infidel enemies for the promotion of religion remained a rival idea with the Byzantine imperial state´s ruling ideology, the resonance of which was rather marginal and confined to small groups or individuals in certain periods.” 39 Dölger / Müller / Beihammer, 2003: nr 501a. Cf. Halm, 1991: 358–361; Beihammer, 2004: 185. 40 Halm, 1991: 361–372.

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compulsory had converted to Islam to return to their former faith. The Friday prayer in Constantinople continued in the name of the Fatimid Caliph until 1055/1056, when the Seljuks captured Baghdad and destroyed the geo-political equilibrium between Byzantium and the Fatimids to the disadvantage of both established powers and thus initiated a period of much higher fragmentation of the former imperial spheres both in the Byzantine and the Islamic world (see also below).41 However, until that time, a co-existence between the “House of Islam” and the “Christian Oecumene” was possible both in ideological and practical terms without doing (too much) damage to claims of universal rule in the respective spheres. On the Balkans towards Bulgaria, however, Nikephoros II Phokas resorted to ‘total’ war; when delegates of the basileus of the Bulgarians arrived in Constantinople in order to collect the usual annual payments as stipulated in the peace treaty 40 years before, according to the historian Leon Diakonos the Emperor received them with the words: “Tell your Prince, who eats leather and dresses in skins: The mightiest and greatest Emperor of the Romans will invade your country to fully pay tribute to you. So you will learn, because you are an ancestral slave since the time of your forefathers, to call the Emperors of the Romans loudly your lords and not to demand tribute from them, as from slaves.”42 What followed was a series of long and bloody wars between Byzantium and its Bulgarian neighbours from 967 to 1018 CE.43 Echoing Justinian´s legitimation for his war against Ostrogothic Italy (see above), one contemporary author claimed that “the Romans have not resigned themselves to the fact that their land is occupied by you [the Bulgarians], and have not forgotten it. On the contrary, they blame the Emperors of the time for leaving it to you to settle it.”44 And after the victory in the first of these wars in 971 CE, which brought Byzantine control back to the area between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube, Leon Diakonos wrote accordingly: “The Emperor [Ioannes I Tzimiskes, successor of Nikephoros II Phokas] returned Moesia [the ancient Roman province covering these areas] back to the Roman Empire.”45

41

Felix, 1981; Reinert, 1998: 125–150; Anderson, 2009: 86–113; El-Cheikh, 2004: 64; Preiser-Kapeller, 2012: 26–47; Dölger / Wirth, 1995: nr. 823b; Shepard, 2006: 37–38. 42 Leon Diakonos, ed. Hase: 62.4–13; Stouraitis, 2009: 253–254, 298. 43 Strässle, 2006. 44 Théodore Daphnopatès, Correspondance: 65.121–124; Stouraitis, 2009: 235–236, 248. 45 Leon Diakonos, ed. Hase: 157–158.

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A similar transition from potential to actual Roman sovereignty took place around the same time in Armenia. Already the first Roman Emperor Augustus (r. 30 BC– 14 CE) in his Res Gestae had claimed: “In the case of Greater Armenia, though I might have made it a province (…), I preferred, following the precedent of our fathers, to hand that kingdom over to Tigranes.”46 Also the Emperors of the late 9th and 10th century acknowledged the (renewed) Armenian monarchy of the rulers of the Bagratuni dynasty, who were even addressed as “spiritual sons” like the basileus of Bulgarians.47 But Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos also made clear: “since the prince of princes [of the Armenians] is the servant of the Emperor of the Romans, being appointed by him and receiving this rank from him, it is obvious that the cities and townships and territories of which he is lord also belong to the Emperor of the Romans.”48 The fragmentation of political power in Armenia finally allowed Byzantium to “make it a province” and to annex its capital Ani in 1045. This gain, however, was short living; in 1064, the Seljuks captured the city.49 Nevertheless, the emperors of the late 10th and early 11th century, especially Basil II, called the “the Bulgar slayer” (Bulgaroktonos, r. 976–1025 CE), came the nearest to achieve their perpetual “goal,” which in a law of Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his sons Leon VI and Alexander was defined as “the protection and safeguarding of the existing by goodness, the recovery of the lost through vigilant care and the re-acquisition of the missing through wisdom and justified victories and efforts.”50 Along similar lines, Arethas of Caesarea confirmed in a speech to Emperor Leon VI in 901 CE that the Roman armies do not “approach what is not ours but that which was once subjugated to the yoke of Rome and endured to be directed by the iron Roman shepherd’s staff.”51 The present status of the Empire, however, was always imperfect when compared with the former glory and territorial extent under Constantine the Great in the 4th

46

Res Gestae Divi Augusti: 27. Constantine Porphyrogennetos, The Book of Ceremonies II, 48: 687. 48 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperii: c. 44, 45–49: 200–201. 49 Preiser-Kapeller, 2010. 50 Eisagoge of Emperor Basil I, Leon VI and Alexander, in: Jus Graecoromanum II 240; Stouraitis, 2009: 277. 51 Arethae archiepiscopi Caesariensis scripta minora II: 62; Stouraitis, 2009: 278. 47

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century CE, whose rule the Chronicler Theophanes described as the time when “the Christian state enjoyed the perfect peace.”52 This “perfect peace” came even more out of reach when the geopolitical conditions for Byzantium worsened again since the mid–11th century, leading to the loss of Southern Italy to the Normans (who then attempted to continue expansion across the Adriatic on the Balkans) and of large parts of the former core regions of Asia Minor to the Seljuks and other Turkish groups in the aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 CE.53 Internal strife additionally weakened the empire, and only Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) was able to re-establish a more enduring regime and to stabilise Byzantium´s frontiers in the West and in the East. In this phase of weakness, we encounter echoes of earlier visions of peace among Christian nations and the avoidance of “civil war” between them, as Yannis Stouraitis has demonstrated for the historical work of Alexios’ I daughter Anna Komnene.54 When the arrival of the participants of the First Crusade in Constantinople in CE 1096 created another potentially dangerous situation, according to Anna Emperor Alexios I “insisted that not a single person should go out of the city to fight the Latins [the Crusaders] (…) because he wanted to avoid murder among the same people (ton emphylion phonon, i.e., among fellow Christians).”55 Yet even within the same historical work of Anna Komnene, the tone changes again when the Empire´s position of power had been re-established to a certain extent. In September 1108, the Norman crusader Bohemond of Tarent and Antioch, who had threatened Byzantium from the West and the East, had been defeated and was forced to sign the Treaty of Devol. According to Anna, he promised “that I will never at any time take and hold any country which either now or formerly has been brought under thy [Alexios I] sway, nor hold and take any town or island, and, in general, not to take any possession of all those which formerly comprised or are now held by the Empire of Constantinople, be they in the East or the West, except only such as are expressly given to me by your divinely appointed Majesties and which shall be stated by name in this present writing.”56

52

Theophanis chronographia: 20.12–16; transl. Mango / Scott, 1997: 33; Stouraitis, 2009: 266. 53 Beihammer, 2017. 54 Annae Comnenae Alexias: 279.95–280.8. 55 Annae Comnenae Alexias: 310.8–12. 56 Annae Comnenae Alexias: 413–414; Stouraitis, 2012b.

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The claim on former Roman territories thus was still alive, and Bohemond´s rule over some of these regions, although accepted by the Emperor for now, was only pro tempore and could be revoked as in the earlier cases of the Ostrogoths, the Bulgarians or the Armenians. The actual and potential (by far larger) limits of the “Roman rule” are described by Anna Komnene in the following way: “For there was a time when the limits of the Roman rule were the two pillars which bound east and west respectively, those on the west being called the ‘pillars of Heracles’ [the street of Gibraltar], those on the east the ‘pillars of Dionysus’ somewhere near the frontier of India. It is hardly possible to define the Empire’s former width. Egypt, Meroë [in modern-day Sudan], all the Troglodyte country, and the region adjacent to the torrid zone; and in the other direction far-famed Thule, and the races who dwell in the northern lands and over whose heads the North Pole stands. But in these later times [at the apex of crisis] the boundary of the Roman rule was the neighbouring Bosporus on the east and the city of Adrianople on the west. Now, however, the Emperor Alexios by striking with both hands, as it were, at the barbarians who beset him on either side and starting from Byzantium as his centre, enlarged the circle of his rule, for on the west he made the Adriatic sea his frontier, and on the east the Euphrates and Tigris. And he would have restored the Empire to its former prosperity, had not the successive wars and the recurrent dangers and difficulties hindered him in his purpose (for he was involved in great, as well as frequent, dangers).”57 At least the notion of integrity of a (considerable) territorial complex of the Medieval Roman Empire around the Eastern Mediterranean from the Danube to the Nile and from the Adriatic Sea to the Euphrates River we equally find in a treaty between Emperor Alexios I and the City of Pisa from the year 1111. The Pisans promised never to support an attack on the Byzantine Empire neither within its current nor its future extent; these ‛potential’ imperial territories still included the entire Balkans (starting from Croatia and Dalmatia), Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and even Egypt with Alexandria (and during the reign of Alexios I grandson Manuel I Komnenos [r. 1143–1180], Byzantium would actually undertook naval operations against the Nile delta).58 Thus, over almost a millennium, one can state with Yannis Stouraitis, that it was the “principle attitude of Byzantine imperial power” that “no peace agreement could prevent Byzantine imperial power from posing further claims on former Roman territories by means of warfare when the conditions were favoura57

Annae Comnenae Alexias: 193.7–24; Stouraitis, 2012b: 250–256; Fögen, 1993: 49–50; Koder, 2002: 20–21. 58 Dölger / Wirth, 1995, nr. 1255; Magdalino, 1993. For similar concepts in the Ottoman Empire with regard to the Danube frontier, cf. Panaite, 2000: 77–79 and 84–86.

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ble.”59 This principle, however, did not imply a firm foreign-policy doctrine or an overarching ‘grand strategy’, but was adapted to the current geopolitical environment or sometimes even stored deep in the ideological repository and dug out when the time was ripe. Only thereby, the ecumenical pretensions of a ‘universal’ Roman empire could be reconciled with strategic realities. This differential, however, became too steep after the year 1204, when the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders and Venetians dramatically interrupted the imperial continuum started by Constantine the Great in the 4th century. Of course, Byzantine rulers in exile even more insisted on their legitimate claim on the former capital though closing treaties with the Latin enemies; and when Michael VIII Palaiologos’ troops from Nicaea re-captured the city in 1261, ‘world order’ seemingly had been restored. Yet, the “Romania” remained politically fragmented, with Byzantium only one among several middle and small-scale polities in the Balkans and Asia Minor. In addition, while Constantinople was re-conquered, the scale of territorial losses elsewhere and the relative and increasing weakness of Byzantium could no longer be veiled beneath a cloak of potential and eventually renewed Roman rule.60 Ultimately, potential Pax Romana would be replaced by actual Pax Ottomanica across the Eastern Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th centuries.61 Acknowledgements The paper was written within the framework of the FWF-Wittgenstein-project “Moving Byzantium: Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency” (PI: Prof. Claudia Rapp; http://rapp.univie.ac.at/) at the Institute for Medieval Research / Division for Byzantine Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Bibliography Anderson, G.D., 2009: “Islamic Spaces and Diplomacy in Constantinople (Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E.).” Medieval Encounters. Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 15, 86–113. Beihammer, A.D., 2000: Nachrichten zum byzantinischen Urkundenwesen in arabischen Quellen (565–811). Poikila Byzantina 17. Bonn. — 2004: “Die Kraft der Zeichen: symbolische Kommunikation in der byzantinischen-arabischen Diplomatie des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 54, 159–189. — 2017: Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim-Turkish Anatolia, ca. 1040– 1130. London / New York. Browning, R., 1975: Byzantium and Bulgaria. A Comparative Study across the Early Medieval Frontier. Berkeley / Los Angeles. 59

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Index ‘Apiru 83 ‘Ashait 90 A/Iškuza 170 Abī-Ba’al 165 Abi-ešuḫ 111, 113, 114, 121 Abī-Yate’ 168, 169 Abram 204 Abu Ballas 67 Abu Simbel 93 Achaemenid 265, 267 Acharnians 271 Achilles 35 Adad 180 Adad-nērārī II 148, 183 Adad-nērārī III 150, 260 Adad-šum-iddin 252 Addu 251 Adrianople 316, 317, 318, 344 Adriatic 343, 344 Adūnī-Ba’al 165 Aegean 32, 270 Aegina 49, 269 Aelia Eudossia 325 Aelius Aristides 287 Aeneas 285 Aeschylus 35 Afghanistan 108 Africa 15, 340 Agade 26, 27 Agamemnon 36 Agesilaus 269 Ahab 202, 205, 206 Ahaz 207, 209 Aḫḫiyawa 133 Ahmose 79, 81, 95 Aḫšēri 172 Ahura Mazda 211 Aḫušina 111 Akhenaten 233

Akkad 26, 181, 255, 259 Akkullānu 163 al-‛Azīz 340 Alakšandu 132 Alavivus 318 al-Baghdadi 15 Aleppo 16, 116, 119, 149, 150 Alexander 342 Alexander I 269 Alexander IV 278, 280, 281 Alexander the Great 20, 22, 37, 40, 41, 44, 145, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 292, 294, 316 Alexandria 331, 344 Alexios I Komnenos 343, 344 al-Hākim 340 al-Mu῾izz 340 al-Muqtadir 338 al-Mutīʿ 339 Amenemhat I 91 Amenemhat II 78 Amenemhat III 71 Amenhotep I 79, 83 Amenhotep II 85, 95 Amenhotep III 233 America 36 Amme-ba’lī 157, 184 Ammianus Marcellinus 316, 318, 320, 321 Ammiditana 112, 113, 120, 121 Ammiṣaduqa 113, 117, 121, 122 Ammon 164, 205 Amorges 270 Amqarruna 153 Amun 136 Amun Temple 24 Amurru 24, 25, 27, 83, 85, 111, 131, 132, 204

352

Anatolia 42, 131, 132, 133, 135, 144, 193 Anchises 285 Andromache 39 Ani 342 Aniba 76 Anna Komnene 343, 344 Antalcidas 271 Antigenes 280 Antigonus Monophtalmus 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 294 Antioch 339, 343 Antipater 278, 279 Anu 180 Aoric 318 Apennine 289 Aphek 205 Aplāia 254, 256 Apopi 81 Appalaya 256 Appius Claudius Caecus 290, 291, 292, 294, 295 Ara Pacis Augustae 46 Arabia 155, 164, 189, 280 Arabs 339 Araḫab 111, 121, 122 Aram 201, 205, 207 Aramaeans 205, 215 Arāši 161 Arbela 159, 181 Arcadius 324, 325 Ares 39, 277, 323 Arethas of Caesarea 342 Argeads 269, 275 Argos 269 Argyraspids 280 Arinna 232 Aristophanes 43, 48, 49, 50, 271 Aristotle 44 Armenia 315, 342, 344 Arpad 150, 152 Arquà Petrarca 14

Index

Arrapḫa 160, 191 Arretium/Arezzo 291 Artaphernes 268 Artaxerxes I 210, 270 Artaxerxes II 268, 270, 271 Arwad 165 Arzawa 133, 134, 135 Arziya 129 Asa 202 Asclepius 50 Asculum 294 Ashdod 163 Ashkelon 151 Asia 238, 279, 280, 281, 314, 339 Asia Minor 269, 272, 275, 278, 282, 334, 343, 344, 345 Asiago 143 Asrukāni 165 Assur 47, 119, 157, 158, 179, 180, 193 Aššur 24, 145, 148, 151, 152, 153, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 165, 166, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 193, 194, 223, 235, 255 Aššur-ālik-pāni 159 Assurbanipal 47, 152, 154, 157, 158, 161, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 172, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 192, 193, 208, 257, 258, 259, 260 Aššur-bēlu-dā’’in 160 Aššur-dā’’in-aplu 150 Aššur-dān II 183 Aššur-etel-ilāni 165, 180 Aššur-nadin-šumi 256 Assurnaṣirpal II 17, 148, 183, 220 Aššur-nērārī V 150 Aššur-šarru-uṣur 158, 159 Assyria 22, 23, 24, 90, 131, 134, 136, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 156, 157, 158,

Index

159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 213, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 266 Astyanax 39 Athanaric 314, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 325 Athanasius of Alexandria 331 Athaulf 325 Athena 277 Athens 31, 32, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 268, 269, 270, 271, 286, 287 Athribis 168 Augustus 22, 38, 46, 285, 291, 295, 297, 299, 314, 342 Auramazdā 265 Aurelian 315, 316 Avaris 73, 74, 81, 83 Avars 335 Awīl-ilī 116 Azariah 208 Azi-Ba’al 165 Aziru 231 Aztecs 34, 41, 42 az-Zāhir 340 Ba’alu 154, 189 Baal 233 Baalshamin Temple 15 Bab at-Tak 339 Babylon 21, 25, 33, 111, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 130, 131, 136, 156, 165, 172, 183, 221, 251, 252, 259, 275, 278, 279 Babylonia 21, 23, 92, 114, 117, 119, 124, 145, 148, 157, 161, 165, 172, 178, 181, 189, 210,

353

253, 254, 258, 260, 265, 275, 281 Baganna 116 Baghdad 17, 149, 338, 339 Bagratuni 342 Balkan Mountains 335, 336, 341, 343, 344, 345 Bartatua 170, 171 Basil I 336, 342 Basil II 342 Basil of Caesarea 331, 340 Bastarnae 315 Bauto 325 Beer-sheba 202 Bēl 158, 159 Bel Temple 15, 17 Bēl-iqīša 259 Bēl-ušēzib 170 Beneventum 295 Ben-Hadad 205, 206 Benjamin 204 Benteshina 24 Bentešina 132 Bēt Kummuḫāia 164 Bisutun 266, 267 Bīt-Abdadāni 159 Bīt-Ammon 164 Bīt-Amukkāni 156 Bīt-Burutaš 159 Bīt-Ša’alli 151 Bit-Yakin 253 Bīt-Zamāni 157, 184 Boğazköy 229 Bohemond 343 Bokova, Irina 15, 17 Boris-Michael 336 Borsippa 156, 165 Borysthenes 315 Bosporus 344 Britannia 314 Bruttii 293 Buhen 76

354

Bulgaria 314, 335, 336, 337, 341, 342, 344 Bull of Heaven 27 Būr-Sîn 114 Byblos 69, 71, 78 Byzantium 331, 336, 337, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345 C. Marius 291 Caere 289 Caesarea 331 Cairo 340 Çalık, Şadi 138 Callias 32, 270 Campania 294 Çan 266 Canaan 64, 69, 83, 85, 193 Cappadocia 278, 279 Caracalla 307 Carpathian Basin 335 Carraresi 13 Carthage 31, 32, 49, 268 Carthaginians 295 Cassander 280, 281 Cassiodorus 313, 320, 322, 326 Caucasus 334 Celts 289, 290 Chaeronea 37, 49 Chandragupta Maurya 281 Chaonians 292, 294 Charlemagne 337 Chedorlaomer 204 Cherronensus 315 China 34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 338 Chryseis 36 Cicero 34, 146, 286, 290, 294 Cilicia 158, 280, 339 Cimmerians 170, 174, 255 Cimon 270 Cineas 292, 294 Claudius 298, 299, 301, 314 Claudius Tryphoninus 307, 308

Index

Clazomenae 266 Cleopatra 46 Coele-Syria 282 Coliseum 17 Constantine 318, 319, 321, 322 Constantine IV 335 Constantine the Great 331, 342, 345 Constantine VIII 340 Constantinople 286, 313, 317, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 332, 335, 337, 339, 341, 343, 345 Constantius II 315 Corcyra 42 Corinth 42, 44, 49, 51, 277 Craterus 275, 278 Crete 339 Croatia 344 Croton 294 Cushan-rishathaim 201 Cyaxares 181 Cyprus 79, 267, 269, 270, 271, 281, 339 Cyrus 172, 210, 270 Cyrus the Great 260 Dacia 315, 316 Dadusha 221 Dakhla 67 Dalmatia 344 Damascus 16, 17, 206, 207, 208 Damqi-ilīšu 111 Dan 202 Danube 314, 316, 317, 318, 335, 341, 344 Danuna 150 Darius 210, 265, 266, 269, 276 Darius II 271 Dascylium 272 Datis 268 David 205 de’ Broaspini, Gasparo 13 Delos 269, 270

Index

Delphi 39 Delta 167, 168 Demeter 323 Demetrios 294 Demetrius 275, 280, 281, 282 Der 221, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258 Dēr 161 Devol 343 Diadochs 275 Dikaiopolis 49 Dilbat 116, 122 Dilmun 163 Diocletian 315 Diodorus 268 Dionysius 293 Dionysus 323 Dniester 318 Domitian 298 Dūr-Abiešuḫ 115, 116, 118 Eannatum 225, 227 Earth 277 Ebeḫ 180 Ebla 17 Edašuštu 118 Edom 208 Egypt 23, 24, 31, 36, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96, 131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 144, 155, 164, 167, 168, 177, 193, 224, 231, 233, 269, 270, 278, 280, 334, 340, 344 Ehud 204 Eirene 48, 179 Ekron 153, 164 Ekur 116 Elam 23, 25, 27, 116, 119, 161, 162, 165, 172, 173, 177, 181, 193, 221, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 265

355

El-Kab 95 Ellipi 161 Elymais 281 Emar 119, 131 Enlil 26, 27, 180 Enlil-nadin-šumi 252 Ephraim 207 Epidaurus 50 Epilycus 270 Epirus 275, 290, 293, 294, 295 Erra 20, 21, 39 Esagila 183, 221 Esarhaddon 147, 154, 158, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 182, 183, 185, 186, 189, 208, 221, 249, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 260 Ešnunna 111, 121, 229 Etruria 289, 290 Euagoras 267 Eucherius 318 Eumenes 275, 278, 279, 280 Eumenes of Cardia 275 Eunapius 319, 322, 324 Euphrates 344 Euripides 50 Europe 278, 279, 280, 281 Euthymenes 271 Ezra 210 Fatimids 341 Firenze 14 Flavius Josephus 332 Fort Shalmaneser 220, 240 Forum Romanum 46 Franks 336 Fravitta 324, 325 Fritigern 318, 321 Gaḫal 254 Gaius 302, 303, 304 Galilee 85 Galla Placidia 325 Gambulu 165, 259

356

Gaul 34, 321 Gaza 164, 275 Gebel esh-Sheikh Suliman 67 Ǧebel Sinǧār 160 Gebelein 76 Germania 314 Germany 19, 24 Gibeah 204, 205 Gibeon 204 Gibraltar 344 Gideon 201 Girsu 227 Goffman, Erving 297 Gorgias 44 Goths 313, 314, 316, 317, 318, 321, 322, 325, 326 Grande Colonnade 15 Gratian 321 Greece 23, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 179, 220, 223, 224, 225, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 272, 277, 287 Green Church 15 Gregory of Nazianzus 323 Guariento 13 Gurdî 157, 169 Gurgum 150 Gutians 255 Gutium 162, 166 Gūzāna 163 Hadad 208 Hadad-ezer 205, 206 Haggai 202 Ḫakpiš 132 Halule 254 Ḫalzi-atbār 160 Hamath 205 Hammamat 91 Hammurabi 25, 26, 28, 33, 34, 112, 114, 120, 250, 251 Han 47 Hana 111

Index

Ḫaradum 115, 116, 119, 121 Harkhuf 69 Hatshepsut 73, 79, 83 Hatti 24, 25, 31, 41, 42, 87, 89, 93, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 230, 231 Ḫattuša 80, 87, 93, 136, 137, 229 Ḫattušili I 130, 135 Ḫattušili II 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138 Hattušili III 24, 25, 80, 86, 87, 90, 93, 131, 230 Hector 39 Hellas 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 Hellespont 277 Henu 91 Heraclea 293, 294 Herod Agrippa I 299, 301 Herod of Chalcis 299, 301 Herodotus 171, 268, 272 Hesiod 50 Hezekiah 202, 207, 209 Hierakonpolis 65 Hieronymus of Cardia 275, 281, 293 Hiram 205, 206, 208 Hittites 85, 86, 90, 93, 95 Homer 36, 50 Honorius 325 Horace 46 Horemheb 78, 85, 87 Horus 74, 78 Humban-api’ 259 Humban-haltaš II 254, 255, 257, 258, 259 Humban-menanu 254 Humban-nikaš I 253, 254 Humban-nikaš II 257, 259 Ḫundāru 163 Hungary 20 Ḫunnî 165 Huns 318

Index

Hurrians 89, 232 Ḫuzziya I 129 Hyksos 73, 79, 81, 91, 95 Iadi-ḫabum 111 Iawi-Ila 231 Ibbi-Sîn/Enlil 122 Iddin-Dagan 114 Ilšu-muballiṭ 122 Imam ed-Dur 15 Imperium Romanum 331 Inanna 27 India 44, 307, 344 Indus 66, 281 Intef 74 Inūrta-bēlu-uṣur 159 Ioannes I Tzimiskes 341 Ionia 268 Ipsus 282 Ipuwer 74 Iqen 69 Iran 193, 267, 268, 334, 339 Iraq 15, 16, 17, 108, 149, 334 Ishme-Dagan 251 Ishtar 231, 255, 258 Ishum 21 Isin 117, 124, 250 Isis/Daesh 16 Isocrates 35, 45 Israel 34, 36, 92, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 213 Issār-šumu-ereš 157 Issus 276 Ištar 181 Italy 17, 32, 37, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 295, 313, 332, 335, 341, 343 Itu’ 188, 192 Izeh 253 Jabesh-Gilead 204 Janus Temple 46 Jehoshaphat 202 Jehu 206

357

Jeroboam 92 Jeroboam I 208 Jerusalem 16, 202, 205, 207, 210, 340 Jia Yi 47 Joash 206 Jonah 15 Joram 205 Jordan 85, 338 Jordanes 313, 320, 321, 322, 326 Joshua 201, 202, 203, 204, 205 Judah 93, 164, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 213, 214, 215, 217 Judea 299 Judi Dağ 160 Julian 317 Julius Caesar 34, 46, 286 Justinian 304, 306, 307, 313, 332, 341 Kabti-ilani-Marduk 21 Kadesh 31 Kahat 232 Kakalla 116 Kalḫu 149, 158, 164 Kamid el-Lôz 78 Karduniaš 148, 178 Karibtu 175 Karkaššî 169, 174, 175 Karkemiš 129, 131, 135, 163 Karnak 24, 86, 89, 136 Kār-Šarrukīn 160, 161, 165 Kār-Shalmaneser 164 Kaššu 111, 251 Kaštarītu 174, 175 Kaštiliaš IV 146 Katmuḫu 147 Kedor-Laomer 251, 252 Keftiu 73 Kemsit 90 Kephisodotus 48 Kerma 69, 80, 82, 83, 95 Khorasan 339

358

Khosrofiyyeh Mosque 16 Khu-Sebek 78 Kidin-Hutran II 252 Kilar 159 Kiš 116, 122 Kišassu 174 Kish 27 Kisurra 117 Kittu 179 Kizzuwatna 129, 133 Knossos 73 Konstantinos VII Porphyrogennetos 337, 339, 342 Kosovo 108 Kraus, Karl 13 Kubanaše 163 Kūbu 180 Kudur-Nahhunte I 252, 254 Kudurru 259 Kulumān 161, 174 Kulummu 157 Kumidi 78 Kummuḫ 150, 159, 163, 164 Kuraš (Cyrus) 260 Kurigalzu I 252 Kurkh 206 Kuruntiya 136 Kuruštama 136 Kush 76, 81, 83, 95, 167, 168 Kuyunjik 148 Kyinda 280 L. Aemilius Paullus 291 Lacan, Jacques 126 Lacedaemonians 270 Lachish 85 Lagash 20, 227 Laḫaja-kitu 116 Larsa 124, 221, 250 Latium 288 Leon Diakonos 341 Leon VI 336, 338, 342 Lerna 293

Index

Levant 21, 22, 23, 168, 189, 206, 224, 233, 269, 334 Libbāli-šarrat 25 Libbi-āli 179 Libya 65, 67, 78, 280 Licinius Lucullus 291 Livy 146, 286 Locri 294 Lombards 335, 336 Lower Mesopotamia 151 Lubda 160 Lucania 290, 293 Lucius Verus 308 Lukka 135 Lycaonia 279 Lysias 35, 50 Lysimachus 280, 281, 282 M. Furius Camillus 289 M. Valerius Maximus 291 Ma‘at-hor-nofru-re‘ 89, 93 Macedon 20, 22, 32, 37 Macedonia 269, 279, 292, 294 Machiavelli 250 Madduwatta 133 Mamitiaršu 175 Manapa-Tarḫunta 134 Manasseh 208, 209, 210 Manishtushu 229 Manius Curius Dentatus 295 Mannea 159, 174 Mannu-kī-Ninūa 160, 161 Manuel I Komnenos 344 Manzikert 343 Marathon 269 Marc Antony 46 Marcus Aurelius 240 Mardonius 269 Marduk 21, 26, 162, 221, 255 Marduk-apla-iddina II 178, 253, 254 Marduk-bēl-usāte 148 Marduk-rēmanni 164

Index

Marduk-šum-ibni 259 Marduk-zākir-šumi 148, 149, 219 Mari 26, 231, 233, 250, 251 Mar-Issar 257 Mār-Issār 158 Marqāsa 163 Mars the Avenger 46 Marsa Matruh 78 Massurius Sabinus 304 Masturi 25 Mati‘-’Il 150, 152 Māti-libluṭ 117 Mattarella, Sergio 17 Maurikios 334 Māzamua 156, 169 Mecca 339 Media 156, 171, 174, 175, 265 Mediterranean 15, 219, 220, 224, 229, 233 Medjayu 78 Megiddo 83 Melchizedek 204 Meli-Šipak 251, 252, 253 Melos 49 Meluhha 27 Memphis 74, 168 Menahem 206 Menelaus 38 Mentuhotep II 74, 90 Merenptah 93 Merikare‘ 74 Merneptah 47 Merodach-baladan 256 Meroë 344 Mēšaru 179 Mesopotamia 19, 20, 27, 42, 46, 50, 66, 79, 109, 110, 179, 189, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225, 231, 233, 240, 249, 250, 251, 254 Messapians 293 Messenia 269 Michael VIII Palaiologos 345

359

Michelangelo 16 Midas 158, 159 Midian 201 Milawanda 133 Minoans 73 Mirgissa 69, 76 Mīšarum 115 Mitanni 79, 85, 87, 95, 96 Mithridates Ⅵ of Pontus 32 Mitinti 151 Mittani 133 Mittanni 231, 232 Moab 163, 164, 204, 205 Modares 323 Moesia 314, 315, 341 Molossi 275 Molossians 292, 294 Mommsen, Theodor 286 Moses 203 Mosul 15 Mount Lebanon 169 Mugallu 170 Muhammed 339, 340 Mukīn-zēri 156 Mullissu 147, 181 Murmurik 129 Muršili I 130, 135 Muršili II 87, 133, 134, 135, 137, 230 Muršili III 90, 137 Mušēzib-ilu 191 Muški 158, 159 Mutakkil-Aššur 157 Muti-ḫuršan 111 Muwatalli 24, 219 Muwatalli II 132, 136, 137 Muwattalli 87, 90 Mykonos 39 Mysia 266 Mystikos of Constantinople 337, 338 Na’id-Marduk 254

360

Nabayatu 166 Nabopolassar 154, 183 Nabû 157, 158, 159 Nabû-apla-iddina 148 Nabû-bēl-šumāti 172, 179, 254 Nabû-damiq 173 Nabû-erība 163 Nabû-rā’im-nišēšu 161 Nabû-šūma-iškun 148, 175 Nabû-šum-ereš 259 Nabû-šum-iškun 254 Nabû-šumu-līšir 165 Nabû-ušabši 163, 186, 258 Nabû-ušallim 254, 258 Nabû-zer-kitti-lišir 254 Nairi 183 Napata 85 Naram-Sin 225, 227, 229, 249 Narbonne 325 Narmer 65 Narūdu 180 Natnu 166, 167 Near East 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 210, 219, 224, 225, 233 Nebhepetre‘ 74, 90 Nebhepetre‘ Mentuhotep II 74 Necho I 165, 167, 168, 181 Neferti 74, 91 Nehemiah 210 Nēmetti-Enlil 183 Neoptolemus 275 Nergal-šarrāni 159 Nergal-šarru-uṣur 163 Nergal-ušezib 254 Neriglissar 183 Nero 314 New York 138 Nicaea 345 Nicanor 275 Nicias 31, 32, 34 Niger 308 Niḫriya 131, 134

Index

Nikephoros II Phokas 339, 340, 341 Nikkû 168 Nikolaos I 337, 338 Nile 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 78, 340, 344 Nimrud 15, 17, 148, 149, 219, 237 Nineveh 15, 148, 158, 162, 166, 169, 171, 173, 174, 178, 181, 184, 192, 231, 237, 255, 259 Ningirsu 180, 227 Ninurta 15 Nippur 115, 116, 121, 161, 252, 258, 259 Nişantepe 219 Nora 279 North Korea 109 North Pole 344 Nubia 65, 67, 69, 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 85, 91, 95 Nukar 116 Nukhashe 85 Nulvi 143 Odoacer 332 Olympias 279, 280 Opet 80 Orontes 206 Oscans 289 Osrhoene 308 Ostrogoths 313, 332, 344 Othniel 201 Otto I 337 Ovid 22 Pa’ê 161 Padî 153 Palestine 344 Palmyra 15, 17 Pan 78 Pa-qruru 167 Paris 16, 38 Parsumaš 260 Partatua 170

Index

Parthian Empire 145 Parû 259 Pazarcık 150 Peace 48 Peithon 280 Pekah 207 Peloponnesian League 270, 271 Peloponnesian War 268, 270 Perdiccas 275, 278, 279 Pericles 43, 270 Persia 20, 32, 40, 44, 145, 210, 212, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 316, 334 Persian Gulf 144, 189 Persis 281 Per-Sopd 167 Peru-nefer 73 Petrarca 13, 14 Petros Patrikios 332 Peucestas 280 Philip II 37, 44, 269, 275, 277, 280 Philip III Arrhidaius 278 Philip V 32 Philistia 151 Philistines 85 Philoclaudius 301 Philoctetes 50 Phoenicia 155 Phrygia 158, 159, 278, 279 Pilliya 129 Pisa 14, 344 Pišaptu 167 Piyamaradu 133 Plataea 269 Plato 35, 44, 269 Pliny the Younger 297, 298 Ploutos 48 Plutarch 268, 292, 293, 294 Polybius 33, 286, 288 Polyperchon 278, 279, 280 Polyxena 39 Pomponius 306

361

Pontus 32 Posadinu, Michele 143 Poseidon 277 Potidaea 42, 51 Probus 315 Procopius 317, 318, 332 Proculiani 306 Proculus 306, 307 Ps. Aurelius Victor 292 Psamtik I 168 Ptolemy 278, 280, 281, 282 Ptolemy II Keraunos 293, 294 Publius Decius Mus 294 Publius Valerius Laevinus 292, 293 Puduhepa 81 Punics 268 Punt 80, 91 Pyrrhus 290, 292, 293, 294, 295 Q. Fabius Maximus 291 Q. Mucius 306 Qadeš 24, 83, 85, 96, 136, 137 Qala-i Tol 149, 253 Qantara 75 Qarqar 206 Qatna 79 Qedar 154, 155 Qin 38, 47 Qudu 160 Que 158, 159, 164 Quintilian 303 Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur 169 Quṣair ʿAmra 338 Rabshakeh 202, 203 Ramat Raḥel 211 Ramesseum 24, 86, 136 Ramses II 24, 25, 78, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93, 96, 136, 137, 138, 230 Ramses III 85 Raqqa 16 Ras Shamra 233

362

Rayy 339 Red Sea 307 Retjenu 71 Rezin 207 Rezon 208 Rhine 316 Rhoxane 280, 281 Rhoxolani 315 Rīm-Sîn 114 Rimutu 165 Romania 345 Rome 17, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 179, 221, 224, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 301, 302, 305, 309, 314, 324, 325 Romulus 285 Rutelli, Francesco 17 Rwanda 109 Sabines 290 Sabinus 304 Sahure‘ 69 Sais 167 Salah ed-Din 16 Salāmānu 161 Salamis 35, 267, 269, 281 Salem 204 Šalimtu 180 Sallust 146 Salomon 179 Sam’al 150, 163 Samaria 209 Samarra 15 Šamaš 117, 159, 170, 175 Šamaš-bāni 122 Šamaš-nūr-mātim 117 Šamaš-šumu-ukīn 154, 155, 161, 172, 256, 259 Samnites 289, 290, 292, 294 Samsi 151 Šamšī-Adad V 149

Index

Samsuditana 111, 115, 121, 122 Samsuiluna 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 119, 124 Samuel 204 Saracens 338 Sardes 268, 271, 272 Sargon II 152, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166, 169, 172, 237, 253 Sargon of Akkad 26, 27, 113, 229 Sarmats 315 Šarru-kettu-irām 178 Šarru-lū-dāri 167 Satarnu 161 Šatlaḫî 116 Ša-Turmiš 191 Saturninus 322 Saul 205 Šaušgamuwa 131, 132 Šauštatar 87 Scepsis 281 Scythia 170, 171 Scythians 255, 315, 317, 319 Sealand 111, 119, 125, 254, 255, 256, 258 Šeḫa River Land 134 Seleucus 275, 279, 280, 281, 282 Seljuks 341, 342, 343 Semenkhkare‘ 87, 93 Semnah 69, 78 Sennacherib 22, 153, 159, 164, 165, 178, 180, 182, 207, 209, 237 Senusert I 74, 78 Senusert III 69, 78 Septimius Severus 307, 308 Serena 325 Servius Sulpicius Rufus 307 Seth 230 Seti I 78, 85, 87 Sety I 132

Index

Shalmaneser III 148, 149, 150, 165, 206, 219, 220, 240 Shamash 251 Sharaf ed-Dawla 15 Shattiwaza 231 Shaushga-muwa 24, 25 Sheba 208 Shephelah 209 Shiloh 204 Shimashki 250 Shiraz 339 Shutruk-Nahhunte 229 Ṣi’nu 167 Sicily 268, 295, 340 Sidon 155, 188 Ṣillaya 256 Simeon I 337 Ṣimirra 169 Simyra 169 Sinai 67, 71, 78 Sinan 16 Sin-muballit 251 Sîn-šarru-iškun 154 Sinuhe 74, 78 Sippar 112, 113, 116, 122, 229, 254, 255 Sippar-Amnānum 121 Sippar-Jaḫrurum 121 Sisera 201 Siwe-palar-huhpak 250, 251 Sobeknakht II 95 Socrates 50 Sodom 204 Solomon 92, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208 Somalia 109 Sophocles 50 Spain 109 Sparta 31, 32, 37, 40, 42, 44, 49, 51, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272 Speidel, Michael Alexander 307 Sri Lanka 109

363

Stilicho 325 Storm-god 232 Subir 27 Šubria 164 Sudan 109, 344 Suetonius 298, 299 Sulla 32, 51 Šulmu-bēli-lušme 161, 162 Šulmu-bēl-lašme 256 Šumâ 254 Sumer 26 Šumu-iddin 254 Sun 277 Šunaššura 133 Sun-god 151, 167, 170 Sun-goddess of Arinna 232 Šunipur 180 Šuppiluliuma I 87, 93, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 231 Ṣurru 154 Susa 229, 249, 256, 272 Šutruk-Naḫḫunte I 252 Šutruk-Naḫḫunte II 178, 254 Syagrius 318 Synesius 322, 323 Syracuse 268 Syria 15, 16, 17, 42, 130, 131, 132, 135, 150, 339, 344 Tabal 159, 164, 237 Ṭāb-ṣil-Ešarra 157, 158, 169 Tacitus 332 Taḫarqa 167, 168 Talhayum 231 Tammaritu 258, 259 Tammaritu II 254 Tanis 89 Tanut-Amani 168 Tarent 343 Tarentum 290, 292, 294, 295 Tarḫuntašša 136 Tatarlı 266 Taurus 279, 280

364

Taurus Mountains 334 Te’ri 168, 169 Te’umman 254, 257, 258, 259 Tel Haror 85 Tel Sera‘ 85 Telipinu 129, 130 Tell Abu Hureyra 85 Tell ed-Duweir 85 Tell el-Amarna 80, 92, 233 Tell el-Dab‘a 71, 73, 79, 92 Tell el-Retabe 78 Tell esh-Shari‘a 85 Tell Hebwa 75 Tell Ibrahim Awad 69 Tell Nebi Yunus 15 Telloh 227 Temple of Concord 46 Tepti-Ḫumban-Inšušinak 173 Terqa 111 Tervingians 314, 317, 318 Teumman 25, 173 Teutamus 280 The Hague 17 Thebes 73, 74, 80, 95, 168, 269 Themistius 269, 319, 322, 323 Themistocles 267 Theodoric 332 Theodosius 313, 314, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 Theodosius II 325 Theophanes 335, 343 Theophylaktos Simokattes 334 Thrace 266, 323 Thucydides 32, 37, 42, 43, 49, 271 Thule 344 Thutmose I 78, 79, 82, 83, 95 Thutmose II 78, 80, 83 Thutmose III 73, 78, 83, 85, 91, 95 Thutmose IV 85, 87, 92, 96 Tib. Sempronius Gracchus 291 Tiber 285

Index

Tiberius 314 Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus 314, 315, 316, 317 Tibullus 46, 48, 285 Tibur 314 Tiglath-pileser I 183 Tiglath-pileser III 151, 155, 156, 169, 172, 183, 206, 207, 258 Tigranes 342 Tigris 116, 344 Tikrit 15 Til-Barsip 163 Til-Garimme 157 Til-tuba 25 Timor 108 Tissaphernes 269, 270, 271 Titius 305 Tjaru 75 Toi 205 Tombs Valley 15 Trajan 297, 298 Transeuphratic region 150 Transylvania 318 Triparadeisus 279 Tudhaliya IV 24, 25 Tugdammî 166 Tukultī-Ninurta I 20, 33, 34, 146, 147 Tukultī-Ninurta II 157, 183 Turmuna 191 Tushratta 231 Tutammû 151 Tutankhamun 233 Tutḫaliya I 133, 137 Tutḫaliya III 131, 132, 136 Tyre 154, 155, 169, 188, 205, 208 Uallî 172 Uganda 108 Ugarit 78, 83, 134, 149, 230, 233 Uḫḫa-ziti 133, 134 Ulpian 304 Ululāyu 163

Index

Umbadarâ 173 Umma 20, 227 Ummanigaš 253 Unas 69 Unqi 151 Upe 83, 85 Upper Mesopotamia 148 Ur 27, 36, 220 Urad-Nanāya 158 Urarṭu 32, 156, 159, 173, 193 Urhi-Teshub 90 Urik 159 Urtak 162, 249, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260 Uruk 27, 117, 124, 157, 163, 170, 186, 221, 225, 257, 258, 259 Uruk-libluṭ 117 Ušhu 160 Vadimo 290 Valens 316, 317, 318, 322 van Creveld, Martin 119 Vapheio 73 Veii 289 Velleius Paterculus 22 Venezia 14 Vergil 46 Versailles 19, 24, 32 Vespasian 46 Via Maris 78 Villa Giusti 219 Virgil 285, 295 von Ranke, Leopold 297 Wadi Maghara 67 Wadi Natrûn 78

365

Wadi Tumilat 74, 78 Wawat 83 Weber, Max 276 Wiluša 132 Xenophon 45, 50 Xerxes 266, 268, 269, 272 Xusrō II 334 Yabliya 115 Yahweh 92 Yakīn 156 Yam 69 Yauta’ 155, 169 Yehud 23, 210, 211, 212 Yemen 109 Zab 191 Zababa-šum-iddin 252 Zabban 164 Zabgaga 161 Zagros 161, 227 Zakiru 151 Zakūtu 154, 155 Zari 256 Zawiet Umm el-Rakham 78 Zechariah 202 Zenjirli 150 Zeno 332 Zeus 39, 40, 277 Zidanta I 129 Zimri-Lim 231, 250, 251 Zinēni 258 Zobah 205 Zosimus 318, 319, 324, 325 Zulpaḫ 116