The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments From the Centre of the World (Aratta, 2) 9782503595368, 2503595367

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The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World

ARATTA II STUDIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORY, FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO THE INDUS VALLEY

General Editors Marc Lebeau, European Centre for Upper Mesopotamian Studies Holly Pittman, University of Pennsylvania Editorial Board Fereidoun Biglari, National Museum of Iran Rémy Boucharlat, Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon Elizabeth Carter, University of California, Los Angeles Robert Carter, University College London, UCL Qatar Franco D’Agostino, Università degli Studi ‘La Sapienza’ di Roma Jacob L. Dahl, University of Oxford Aurore Didier, CNRS, UMR 7041, Nanterre Nasir Eskandari, University of Jiroft Hassan Fazeli Nashli, University of Tehran Guillaume Gernez, Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne Barbara Helwing, University of Sydney Roger Matthews, University of Reading Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge Bruno Overlaet, Royal Museums of Art & History, Brussels Cameron Petrie, University of Cambridge Dan Potts, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University Piotr Steinkeller, Harvard University Massimo Vidale, Università degli Studi di Padova Rita Wright, New York University

ARATTA is a part of the ARWA Collection

Cover image: Extract from The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, oil on wood panel, 1563. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie 1026. Image released into public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’

Edited by

Marco Ramazzotti

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Keywords: Babylon, Mesopotamia, Ancient Near East, Cultural Memory, Cultural Heritage, Episteme, Urbanism.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-2-503-59536-8 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59537-5 DOI: 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.124333 D/2022/0095/154 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

Contents

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

The Epistemic Foundation of the Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon MARCO RAMAZZOTTI

1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

FRANCIS JOANNÈS

2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

ALESSANDRO CATASTINI

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Semantic Waves in the Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon RITA FRANCIA

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

RITA DOLCE

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians: Between Evocation and Negation, and its Reflections in the Urbanization of the Imperial Seats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

ROBERTO DAN and MARIE-CLAUDE TRÉMOUILLE

6. From Plains to Mountains: Literary and Cultural Models between Mesopotamia and Urarṭu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

vi

contents

ALESSIO AGOSTINI

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’: An Overview of South Arabian Data Relating to Mesopotamia (First Millennium bc). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

PIERFRANCESCO CALLIERI

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from the Results of New Field Research in Fars (Southern Iran). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

The Literary Form of Cultural Memory of Babylon GIANFILIPPO TERRIBILI

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World: Iranian and Zoroastrian Perception of the Old Babylon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

LEONARDO CAPEZZONE

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past: Narratives of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

GIOVANNI GRECO

11. Untranslatable Babel: A Quick Glance at the Contemporary Reception of the Biblical Myth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Index.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

List of Illustrations 1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon Figure 1.1. Excavation at Babylon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Figure 1.2. Babylon before Hammurabi.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Figure 1.3. The Babylonian World Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Figure 1.4. Koldewey reconstruction of Babylon.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Figure 1.5. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Figure 1.6. Satellite image of Babylon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians Figure 5.1. Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. Plan of the city.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Figure 5.2. Ashur. Plan of the northern sector of the city. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Figure 5.3. Dur-Sharrukin. Plan of the city.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Figure 5.4. Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin), plan of the city.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Figure 5.5. Nineveh. Plan of the city. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Figure 5.6. Babylon. Plan of the city. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

6. From Plains to Mountains Figure 6.1. The wall of the Urartian fortress of Körzüt Kalesi, Turkey.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Figure 6.2. One of the inscriptions by Sarduri (I), son of Lutibri, on the so-called Sardursburg, Van, Turkey. . . 87 Figure 6.3. A view of the mud-brick palace of Upper Anzaf. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Figure 6.4. The rock-cut gate of Meher Kapısı, Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Figure 6.5. Aerial view of the Urartian fortress of Solak 1, in Armenia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Figure 6.6. Urartian cuneiform tablets discovered in the fortress of Karmir-blur, Armenia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Figure 6.7. The plan of the Karmir-blur fortress, Armenia.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Figure 6.8. Detail of the fortification walls of Ayanis fortress, Turkey.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Figure 6.9. Detail of the Annals of Argišti I carved on the Rock of Van, Turkey.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Figure 6.10. The bilingual stele of Kelišin, still in situ on the homonymous mountain pass.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

viii

List of Illustrations

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’ Figure 7.1. Map of Arabia and neighbouring areas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Figure 7.2. Ṣirwāḥ courtyard and inscriptions. A: DAI- Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50; B: RES 3945; C: RES 3946. . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Figure 7.3. Cylinder seal with South Arabian letters.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107

Figure 7.4. The bronze plaque BL-Nashq.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Figure 7.5. Banāt ʿAd decor from intra-muros temple of Aranyadaʿ at as-Sawdāʾ.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Figure 7.6. Anthropomorphic winged ibex in bronze. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Figure 7.7. Assyrian winged genius in MṢM 4562. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Figure 7.8. Fragment of a bronze plaque with bearded man holding a situla.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

114

Figure 7.9. Bronze relief from Ma’rib (YM 13981).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from the Results of New Field Research in Fars (Southern Iran) Figure 8.1. Pasargadae. Comprehensive reconstruction sketch map of the layout in the light of the survey results obtained by the Iranian-French mission.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

125

Figure 8.2. Aramaic inscription from Tang-e Bolaghi TB76.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Figure 8.3. Persepolis West. Comprehensive reconstruction sketch map of the Achaemenid/postAchaemenid layout to the west of Takht-e Jamshid in the light of the magnetic survey results obtained by the Iranian-French and the Iranian-Italian mission (2008–2013). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Figure 8.4. Tol-e Ajori. A stretch of the wall of the inner room with decoration of glazed bricks found in situ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Figure 8.5. Bagh-e Firuzi East. Plan showing, from east to west: Firuzi 5, Sang-e Surakh, Tol-e Ajori. . . . . . . . . . 130

I

The Epistemic Foundation of the Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon

1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’ Marco Ramazzotti

Department of Sciences of Antiquity, Sapienza University of Rome

A bstract – For ancient world studies, Babylon can be considered the most impressive historical, archaeo­logical, and visual representation of ancient Near East urbanism. Many themes concerning this first urbanism and its cultural heritage, which have helped to form aspects of the Babylonian historical and cultural memory could be discussed. This volume is structured as open, multidisciplinary research (historical, archaeo­ logical, and philo­logical) on the ancient Babylonian culture, and collects chapters that define the epistemic foundation, contacts, cultural transmission, and resilience of ancient Babylonian milieu until the present time. The importance of the historical and cultural memory of Babylon is illustrated by the wealth of knowledge and skills it has transmitted from one generation to the next. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the colleagues who have believed in this project. In particular, I would like to thank a number of other scholars who have helped me with advice, references, or critical reading: Maria Giovanna Biga (Sapienza University of Rome); Marc Lebeau (Association for Archaeo­logical Research in Western & Central Asia); Holly Pittman (University of Pennsylvania); Werner Mayer (Pontificio Istituto Biblico); Claudio Saporetti (University of Pisa). Also, for their specific studies and insights on the transmission and reception of the ancient Near East and Babylonian world, I would like to thank: Giovanni Pettinato ‡ and Giovanni Garbini ‡ (Sapienza University of Rome), Mario Liverani and Paolo Matthiae (Sapienza University of Rome and Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei); Paolo Galluzzi (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei; American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia); Irene Winter (Harvard University, History of Art & Architecture, Emerita); Daniel T. Potts (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York); and our late friends and colleagues Luigi Enrico Rossi ‡ and Enzo Lippolis ‡ (Sapienza University of Rome).

‘If [the king] has no regard for his scholarly advisors, his land will rebel against him’

From the Advice to a Prince, Foster 2005, 867.

Introduction In addition to its extraordinary dimensions and ruins, Babylon1 can be considered as the centre of the universe 2 and the birthplace of mythopoeic thought (Fig.  1.1) in the archaeo­logy, history, and history of art of the ancient Near East.3 In the astonishing eighthundred-hectare urban plan of the first millennium bc, Babylon started to be an ideal-typical representation of a city-temple and a city-nation.4 Its position as the centre of the world at the end of the seventh century bc under Nabuchodonosor II (604–562 bc)5 formalized its archetypal and ideal-typical resilience both in the past and in the present historio­graphy.6

*

For any biblio­graphical updates on Babylon, eighty-five kilo­ metres south of the modern Iraqi capital Baghdad, see: [accessed 1 September 2021]. 1 

On the archaeo­logical, textual, and semiotic centrality of the city of Babylon in the history of the ancient Near East and in cosmic geo­graphy, see: Oates 1986; Pettinato 1988; Horowitz 1988; George 1997, 125–45; Van de Mieroop 2003, 257–75; Biga 2004; Liverani 2013 and Liverani 2016. 2 

On mythopoeic thought, see Frankfort et al. 1946; Frankfort et al. 1949, and the critical reviews in Taylor 2011, 1–16; Ramazzotti 2011, 1–20 and Ramazzotti 2013, 13–30. 3 

4  5  6 

Van de Mieroop 2004, 95.

Beaulieu 2003a, 5–12; Beaulieu 2018, 8–12. Reade 2008a, 13–32; Liverani 2016, 1–22.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 3–26 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127134

4

Marco Ramazzotti

Figure 1.1. Excavation at Babylon (from Koldewey 1914, 45, fig. 30).

Because of its polysemy, the imago of Babylon has been continuously adopted, neglected, and translated by different cultures from Late Antiquity until the present time.7 It was also ‘used and abused’ in the rhetoric and propaganda affecting the Babylonian kings of the mid-first millennium bc as well as in many policies of the post-colonial Middle East.8 For these reasons, trying to define the historical and cultural memory of Babylon now means updating another historio­graphical and political projection of its spatial-temporal assets (Fig.  1.2). 9 It also means combining different views of Babylonian culture ex antiquo and until the present time, tracing the limits of its archaeo­logical and textual information,10 mapping the possible margins of its aesthetic and cognitive impacts,11 decolonizing the modern and contemporary abuses of its political history,12 and 7  8  9 

Dalley 1996, 525–32.

See Winter 2000, 1787–1800 and Bahrani 1998, 159–74. Liverani 2016 and Scheil 2016.

See Civil 1980, 225–32 and the later ‘skepticisms’ in Hallo 1990, 187–99.

10 

11 

See Winter 2000, 1787–1800 and Ramazzotti 2007, 7–20.

See Bahrani 2006a, 48–59; Dhiaa & Mehiyar 2020, 831–45 and Ramazzotti 2020a, 75–82. 12 

encouraging respect for cultural differences within a common and universal world of values.13 It means opening the city of Babylon as a symbol of the so-called ‘conceptual autonomy’ of the Babylonian world,14 collecting fragments of its ancient and recent history, and focusing on other possible imagines15 of its cultural identities and the semantic transfer of peculiar Babylonian cognitive schemes in the collective memo-

In fact, the ‘fragments’ collected in the volume are only ‘drops’ in the ocean of interdisciplinary studies on Babylon and the Babylonian historical and cultural memory, but drops intended to help intercultural dialogue. 13 

On the ‘conceptual autonomy’ of the Babylonian world, see the Benno Landsberger manifesto in Islamica 2 (Landsberger 1926, 355–72) and the masterly translation with critical comments by Thorkild Jacobsen, Foster & Siebenthal 1976. For the German Kompositum ‘Eigenbegrifflichkeit’ the English translation ‘Conceptualizing Distinctiveness’ has recently been proposed. Cf. Marro 2019, 1 n. 4. 14 

In the Latin sense of concepts and mental representations that accompanied the reception of the East by the West. This reception was mediated by archaeo­logical cultures and historical sites of the ancient Near East several centuries before becoming the subject of modern European historio­graphy as representations of the ancient empires. Ramazzotti 2019, 277–88.

15 

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1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon

In this volume, the texts, objects, and contexts dealing with the Eigenbegrifflichkeit (conceptual autonomy or distinctiveness) of the Babylonian world are intended as ‘records’ coming from and dealing with the area between Sumer and Babylonia considered as the geopolitical epicentre of the most ancient civilizations of western Asia.19 However, they are also ‘fragments’ interpreted and inserted in a process of transformation through different cultures producing specific themes, topics, concepts, and values.

Figure 1.2. Babylon before Hammurabi (from George 1992, 20, fig. 3).

ry.16 Thus, on the one hand, the contributions collected here are different ‘fragments’ in a continuous dialogue with Babylonian centrality or marginality, on the other, the city of Babylon as imago mundi is observed as a polyhedric, composite ‘sema’.17 The present volume of collected papers has been divided into three distinct sections that identify the typical or homogenous elements in historical phenomena. Thus, readers can explore the conceptual framework of the volume as a cognitive map of Babylonian cultural identities, an open, multilayer network map depending on historical, archaeo­logical, and epi­graphical sources and on the emotional charge expressed in images and texts from antiquity that repeated themselves over time.18 16  Much archaeo­logical, historical, and aesthetic research takes place in this cross-cultural perspective, see Bahrani 2003; Dalley 2003, 171–89; Glassner 2003; Biga & Ramazzotti 2007, 22–43; Ramazzotti 2009, 54–65; Ramazzotti 2013; Pongratz-Leisten & Sonik 2015, 3–69; Ramazzotti 2019, 365–72.

For a semeiotic approach to the archaeo­logical records, see again the debate in Ramazzotti 2010, 17–49. 17 

For the analytical ‘hypersurfaces’ and/or ‘semiospheres’ generated by different multilayer and network approaches to the historical, archaeo­logical, and geo­graphical research, see now Ramazzotti 18 

They can be explored as archetypes, ideal-types, or mytho­ l ogemes, which are images of psychic energies crystallized since Late Antiquity that have survived as an inheritance deposited in the collective memory.20

The City of Babylon and ‘Unlimited Semiosis’ The present contribution attempts to introduce and understand these collected fragments, defining the ‘unlimited semiosis’ of the city of Babylon and a possible humanistic and scientific ‘defragmentation’ of the Babylonian cultures and milieu assembled in the volume.21 Babylon probably represents one of the most 2014, 15–52; Ramazzotti 2020b, 337–249. 19 

Leick 2007, 196; Rubio 2007, 1–54.

Halbwachs & Coser 1992. On the specific relationships between collective memory and history, see also Assmann-Czaplicka 1995, 125–33; Assmann 2001, 6822–29; Wertsch & Roediger 2008, 318–26; Roediger & Abel 2015, 359–61. 20 

‘The term coined by Eco to refer to the way in which, for Peirce (via the interpretant), for Barthes (via connotation), for Derrida (via freeplay), and for Lacan (via “the sliding signified”; see slippage of meaning), the signified is endlessly commutable — functioning in its turn as a signifier for a further signified. In contrast, while Saussure established the general principle that signs always relate to other signs (see relational model), within his structuralist model the relationship between signifier and signified is portrayed as stable and predictable’. Cf. Chandler & Munday 2020; see Peirce 21 

6

Marco Ramazzotti The still enormous archaeo­ logical ruins are divided by the Euphrates flowing from north to south. Despite propagandistic modern reconstructions of the city,23 it is well known that the first topo­g raphical plan of Babylon transposed on the landscape the most ancient religious, political, and economic codes of Sumerian and Akkadian urban life. 24 This is canonized in the scholarly literature25 as well as in the aesthetic values26 and represents a complex urban medium able to communicate through monumental architectures, texts, and visual languages (Fig. 1.3).27

Figure 1.3. The Babylonian World Map (from Ramazzotti 2013, 12, fig. 1).

Entering inside each structural aspect of the city of Babylon means selecting some characteristics of its topo­logy that remain unchanged by cultural deformation and recognizing the propagation of the ‘semantic waves’ created by monuments, objects, and texts. 28 Thus here, I  will briefly consider only three different characteristics later encapsulated in the forma urbis of the city, or that directly and indirectly inspired the urban topo­graphy of the first-millennium  bc ‘centre of the world’: its recognition as a

impressive, powerful, and cosmopolitan urban images coming to us from the ancient Near East through Greek philosophy and historio­graphy as well as through the Egyptian, Judean, Persian, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, Hellenistic, and Islamic intellectual cultures.22

The remains of Babylon consist today of different archaeo­ logical sites called Kasr, Merkes, Amran, Ishin-Aswad, Sahn, and Homera within the inner city, and Babil in the northern corner of the outer city. On the topo­graphical assets and present condition of the site see: Bahrani 2006b, 240–47; Bahrani 2008b, 165–72; Musa 2008, 143–50, Curtis 2011, 3–17; Lippolis, Biaggio & Monopoli 2013, 147–63.

1980; Eco 1990. On the term coined by Eco and on the semeiotic approach to archaeo­logical research see Ramazzotti 2010, 17–49.

25 

23 

Zadok 1981, 42–84; Rochnerg-Halton 1988, 51–62; Zadok 1992, Vlaardingerbroek 2004, 233–41; Van der Spek 2009, 101–16; Pedersén 2011, 45–67; Pedersén et al. 2010, 113–48; Erler 2011, 225–37; Potts 2011, 239–51; Wasmuth 2011, 115–24; Gabbay & Secunda ed. 2014; Pearce & Wunsch 2014; Hackl & Jursa 2014, 157–80; Haubold 2016, 89–102; Van De Mieroop 2016; Ramazzotti 2018, 567–78; Calasso 2020, 61–84.

22 

George 1992, 1–72; Lippolis, Biaggio & Monopoli 2011, 1–9; Ramazzotti 2012, 53–72; Vanderhooft 2016, 107–37; Beaulieu 2018, 24–59; Ramazzotti 2019, 365–72. 24 

Veldhuis 1998, 77–85; Radner 2011, 358–79; Frahm 2011, 508–32.

Winter 1994, 123–32; Bahrani 2003; Bahrani 2008a, 155–70; Bahrani 2014. 26 

27 

Van de Mieroop 2003, 257–75; Pedersén et al. 2010, 113–48.

For the analytical definition of ‘semantic waves’ and their significance for knowledge-building in the critical thinking and pedagogy of intercultural competences, see now Maton 2020, 59–85. 28 

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1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon

Figure 1.4. Koldewey reconstruction of Babylon (from Koldewey 1926, taf. 1).

holy city, its identification as a multicultural state, and its role as an ancestral siege of kingship (Fig. 1.4). The perception of Babylon as a holy city historically depended on Eridu, whose name later became interchangeable with Babylon.29 It was the first city-temple of Sumer and contained Enki’s temple, called the ‘House of the Aquifer’ (E-apsu),30 where the king, Hammurabi, was crowned. 31 Eridu (Abū Shahrein) had a special place in Babylonian literature and figurative language, since it was not only founded by the god Enki/Ea, who warned Ziusudra,32 the Sumerian Noah, about the flood, but according to the Sumerian King List, intended ‘as true reflections of the social matrix’,33 the gods first handed kingship down to Eridu.34 Gurney 1974, 39–72; Dalley 2008, 25–33 and Ramazzotti 2015, 3–29. 29 

30  31  32  33 

Ramazzotti 2015, 3–29; Ramazzotti 2021. Van Dijk 1966, 57–74.

Lambert, Millard & Civil 1999. Steinkeller 2017, 197.

Jacobsen 1939; Jacobsen 1981, 513–29. On the archaeo­logical, ideo­logical, and aesthetic relationships between Eridu and Babylon, see now Ramazzotti 2021. 34 

Indeed, Eridu was the central part of the Babylon urban plan35 and its religious character was transmitted into the city both through the cult and clergy of Ea36 and through the astonishing monuments such the Etemenanki37 and the Esagila of Marduk.38 The central focus on the Eridu quarter of Babylon was also planned topo­graphically in the Street of Procession. This was a multidirectional and multisensorial connection between the Ishtar Gate and the Esagila39 flanking the eastern 35  36 

Gurney 1974, 39–72.

See in particular Gordin 2016, 177–201.

According to a substantial revision of dating and strati­graphy in the area of the ziggurat, the foundation of the Etemenanki tower should date back to the Old Babylonian period. See Bergamini 1977, 111–72. For the Herodotus description of the famous temple tower, see MacGinnis 1986, 67–86 and Rollinger 1993; for the alleged destruction by Xerxes, see the debate opened by George 2010, 471–89 and Kuhrt 2014, 163–74. 37 

38  For the archaeo­logical excavations, see the preliminary reports Schmid 1981, 87–132; Schmid 1990, 303–42. For the history of the study and representation of the building in all its aspects, from biblical myth to medieval fantasy to archaeo­logical problem, see Schmid 1995; George 1995, 173–97; George 1999, 67–86 and the review article of Hansjörg Schmid 1995 in George 2005, 75–95. 39 

Koldewey 1918; cf. Pedersén 2018, 160–78.

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Marco Ramazzotti

facade of the Southern Palace of Nabuchodonosor  II (with the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World)40 and the E-mah, the temple of the mother goddess, Ninmakh. The intellectual, political, and religious characters of Babylon were preserved in the libraries of the inner city, collecting mytho­logemes on the fall of man, histories on the mortality of human beings, and myths of the raising of the kingship.41 They were also transferred through a specific ideo­graphy of archaic figurative elements linking the Lower Sea (Indian Ocean) with the Upper Sea (Mediterranean Sea).42 Thus, the Neo-Babylonian culture affirmed and enlarged its figurative and literary roots, becoming the epicentre of a multicultural state, well known in Late Antiquity. The economic practices related to the administration of Babylon as the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire43 depended on the most ancient southern Mesopotamian administrative systems. These were centred on the temple economy,44 on the agrarian state,45 on the hydraulic organization of the hinterlands,46 and on a considerable number of slaves having different degrees of freedom47 and different communities integrated into the land-forservice sector of the Babylonian economy.48 40  While Dalley argues that the Hanging Gardens were in Nineveh not Babylon (Dalley 1993, 45–58; Dalley 1994, 45–78; Foster 2004, 207–20; Dalley 2013, 1–13), this is not the commonly accepted opinion among Assyrio­logists and Ancient Near East archaeo­logists: e.g. Reade 2000, 195–217; Biga & Ramazzotti 2007, 22–43; Bagg 2014, 487–92.

For the ‘excavated and unexcavated’ libraries in Babylon, see Pedersén 2011, 47–67. For the Myth of Adapa, the Babylonian story of the Fall of Man and the mythopoetic explanation of human mortality, see Michalowski 1980, 77–82; Liverani 1992, 293–319; Dalley 1998, 182–88; Sasson 2008, 1–9. 41 

This was acutely sensed at the end of the 1940s (Frankfort 1949, 144–200) and continuously investigated until now as is well documented by the historical and aesthetic second-millennium  bc ‘open world’ emerged ‘Beyond Babylon’. See Aruz, Benzel & Evans (eds) 2008. 42 

43  44  45  46  47 

See now Jursa 2014, 121–48.

Dandamaev 1992, 252–75; Baker 2012, 914–30; Kleber 2013, 167–78. Winter 2007, 117–42.

Joannès 2002, 577–609 and Pedersén 2014, 107–29. Dandamaev 1997, 135–47 and Baker 2001, 18–26.

Dandamaev 2004, 157–71; Pedersén 2005, 267–72. Although deported to Babylon, the Judeans, like many other communities, were integrated into the land-for-service sector of the Babylonian economy. This was already functional in the reign of Nabuchodonosor II but best known from the Murašû Archive (Stolper 1974) from the late fifth century bc. Al-Yāhūdu was just one of the numerous 48 

The economic model of Babylon can thus be traced back to Uruk, the ‘first city’,49 where in the sacred quarter of Eanna, one of the most important archives for the political, social, and economic history of the first millennium bc was placed during the Neo-Babylonian period.50 In Uruk, there were spaces for scholarly activity51 as well as many areas of unbuilt land (such as intramural gardens, orchards, and watercourses) typical of firstmillennium bc Babylonian cities52 and the Eanna temple in Uruk participated in the building of the North Palace (Hauptburg) in Babylon between nineteenth and twentyninth regnal year of Nabuchodonosor II.53 The political kingship of Babylon has been discussed in many different contexts, mainly focused on Nabuchodonosor  I and his successors. This kingship has been interpreted as a royal attitude to the god Nabu evaluated more as a ‘king-maker’ than as a patron of learning. 54 However, the semantic relationships between Akkad, the undiscovered capital of the ‘first world empire’ and Babylon ‘centre of the world’, obviously filtered by the Assyrian kingship, are also closely connected to the fleeting phenomenon of deification of kings in Babylonia.55 Neo-Babylonian kings attempted to bind their authority to that of the remotest past through public events serving as a visual demonstration of their royal power and the unity of the empire.56 Thus, the political dimension of kingship was a conscious act of archaism57 represented by divine and cosmic emblems/symbols.58 The location of the city itself was intellectually conceived as the geo­graphic and symbolic ‘centre of the world’. This lasted until the conquest of Mesopotamia (539 bc) by Cyrus the Great, who profoundly changed the Babylonian kingship59 and until the conquest of ‘twin towns’ located in the Babylonian countryside and named after the geo­graphical origin of their inhabitants. On the Judeans in the Murašû Archive, see now Alstola 2019, 164–220. 49  50  51  52  53  54 

Nissen 1988, 65–106 and Liverani 2006.

Frahm & Jursa 2011 and Beaulieu 2003b, 2–4. Robson 2019b, 204–52. Baker 2009, 89–98.

Beaulieu 2005, 45–74.

Robson 2019a, 149–203.

Matthiae 1994, 127–65; Cooper 2008, 261–65; Steinkeller 2017, 107–57.

55 

56  57  58 

59 

Radner 2011, 371.

Segal 1956, 75; Bahrani 2008, 155–70; Beaulieu 2018, 24–59. Winter 2016, 23–36.

Waerzeggers 2015, 181–222. Recent epi­graphical research has

9

1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon Babylon (331 bc) by Alexander, who removed the ‘dust’ from the Esagila according to a particular expression used by the Greek historian Xenophon.60 Babylon probably became the most pervasive urban medium of the ancient Near East due to its religious, economic, and political dimensions rooted in the most ancient urban cultures of the Land of Sumer and Akkad during the second and first Millennium bc. It was able to transfer its mythopoeic and ideal-typical nature through its impressive monumental architectures and through the fabrication of historical-cultural, religious, and visual discourse closely related to a theoretical conception of time and to a unitary conception of the universe.61

The Semantic Waves of the Historical and Cultural Identities of Babylon through Time At the end of the third millennium  bc, the city of Babylon was well attested as a centre devoted to the cult of the god damar-utu in administrative documents of the Third Dynasty of Ur.62 From the beginning of the second millennium bc, it became the holy place of Enki’s son, Marduk (Asalluhi), the chief of the Babylonian pantheon, who was inseparable from the city of Babylon according to the Enūma eliš.63 It was the omphalic location where all the gods came together,64 and the capital of central southern Mesopotamia during the reign of Hammurabi (1792–1750 bc), the ‘perfect king’ who transformed Babylon from a kingdom of moderate size into an empire covering most of the ‘Land of Sumer and Akkad’.65 provided data allowing a more detailed reconstruction of the final episode of Neo-Babylonian history. See Sandowicz 2015, 197–210.

On the Anabasis’s description of the mercenary army’s march in 401–400 bc from the Aegean coast down to Babylonia, see Reade 2015, 173–202. On Alexander’s conquest of Babylon in 331  bc, see Kuhrt 1990, 121–30. Alexander’s plan to rebuild the Esagila appeared later in the Anabasis of Xenophon where he used the expression ‘removal of dust’ (τον χοΰν), based on the popular motif in Babylonian astronomical diaries. See Finn 2014, 385–403. 60 

61 

Von Dassow 2012, 113–43; Glassner 2019, xi–xv.

Textual evidence refers to Babylon in a date formula from the reign of the Old Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri, but the Sumerian name of Babylon was ká-dingirki, and the city is registered under a governor (ensi) as paying taxes to the Ur III central government. See Hallo 1960, 21–23 and Lambert 2011, 71–76. 62 

63  64  65 

Frahm 2010, 3–33 and Katz 2011, 123–34. Maul 1997, 109–24.

See here Chapter 2 by Francis Joannès. Beaulieu 2018, 60–96.

Archaeo­logy has revealed little about the city of Babylon during the Early Dynastic and Old Babylonian period66 and the picture that we have is mainly from the second-millennium bc texts from Tell Hariri (Mari).67 However, the city attains its important cultural position and mediating role with the decline of Eshnunna in the north, conquered by Hammurabi in the year 31 (1762 bc), and after the destruction of Larsa in the south (defeated by Hammurabi in 1761 bc).68 The time after the reign of Hammurabi has been discussed as a paradigm of the collapse of a complex Mesopotamian state,69 Babylonia was first occupied by the Hittites and then by a non-Babylonian ethnolinguistic group, the Kassites.70 However, after the thirteenth and twelfth centuries bc, with the ‘return’ of the statue of Marduk from captivity in Elam,71 the city of Babylon reached enormous proportions. During the seventh and sixth centuries bc, it became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire,72 an impressive political and economic organization, later considered as a paradigm of ‘oriental despotism’ in ancient Near Eastern historio­graphy and social history.73 The cultural milieu of second- and first-millennium bc Babylon was translated to the Old Testament and thus filtered through the monotheistic perspective overlapping the polytheist inner beliefs of the most ancient Near Eastern cultures. Nevertheless, part of the religious preconceptions in the Bible can still be anaThis was because the high phreatic aquifer did not allow investigation of the city of Hammurabi and because of its massive reconstruction in the sixth century  bc. See Bergamini 1977, 111–72. Unfortunately, the oldest evidence of third-millennium Babylon is the pottery of the Early Dynastic III period from the Amran and west of Homera’s surfaces. Gibson 1972, 149. 66 

67 

Durand 1997; Sasson 1998, 453–70; Charpin 1999, 111–30.

Biga 2011, 35–41; Charpin 2011, 77–89; Lambert 2011, 71–76; Brisch 2011, 706–24; Rutz & Michalowski 2016, 15–43. For the late Old Babylonian texts from Babylon, see Klengel 1982, 169–73. 68 

69  70 

Yoffee 1979, 5–35.

Evans 2008, 200–05.

After Nabuchodonosor I returned the Marduk statue from Elam captivity, the god Marduk rose in status as the unquestioned head of the Babylonian pantheon in the first millennium bc. Nielsen 2018, 3–29.

71 

In the sixth century bc Babylon expanded, with the outer eastern city growing to twice the previous size, approximately 800 ha or 8 km2. Based on the approximate estimations of population density, the number of people inside the city walls would have been between 80,000 and 300,000. Pedersén et al. 2010, 136. 72 

See here Chapter 2 by Francis Joannès and Liverani 1993, 7–33; Liverani 2021, 58–64. 73 

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Figure 1.5. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (photo by Culture Club/Getty Images).

lytically discussed as substrata, traditions and mytho­ logemes underlying the role played by the cultural and political memory of Babylon both in the western and in the eastern world.74 From the beginning of the second millennium bc, the semantic waves of the city of Babylon, of the Babylonians, and of the Babylonian world were certainly received by the ancient Near Eastern cultures in many different, original, and specific ways. The IndoEuropean Hittite kings took the Akkadian kings as models for their kingship,75 and despite the relative absence of Babylon in the Anatolian texts, the well-known sack of Babylon by the Hittite king Muršili  II in 1595  bc was probably not easily accepted by their intellectual entourage.76 74  75 

See Liverani 2003; Scheil 2016 and Liverani 2021, 23–30. Beckman 2001, 85–91.

See here Chapter 5 by Rita Francia. After the fall of Babylon, a new power emerged in Upper Mesopotamia: the kingdom of Mittani centred on Wasshukanni, the capital, which probably lay in the Habur triangle. 76 

Later, the Assyrian kings also took the Akkadian kings as models for their kingship,77 and Khorsabad, Sargon II’s (721–704 bc)78 new foundation city, was in fact conceived as ‘New Akkad and as New Babylon’. This metaphorical and imitative definition demonstrates how the Assyrians respected Babylonian urban society. The Assyrians first absorbed the Babylonian intellectual culture and finally succeeded in archiving as well as preserving the historical memory of their Chaldean invincible enemy.79

77  78 

Van de Mieroop 1999a, 327–39. Elayi 2017, 14.

Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1244–1208 bc), was the first Middle Assyrian king to ignore long-standing political relationships and attack the city of Babylon, taking its king and cult statue of Marduk into captivity, destroying its walls, and ruling Babylonia on his own. His treatment of Babylon and its patron deity was considered sacrilegious, because Marduk aroused the anger of the conservative elements in Assur. Led by the king’s son, they imprisoned TukultiNinurta in his palace and killed him. Joffe 1998, 549–80. 79 

11

1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon Although the role played by Babylon in the transmission of knowledge to the western peripheral area is closely related to the Middle Babylonian school material found at Hattusa, Emar, Ugarit, and Amarna,80 Babylonian culture was certainly also known in the northern highlands of Urarṭu, the upper limit of the imago mundi in the Babylonian World Map.81 However, it was strongly filtered and translated by the Assyrian Empire, after the adoption of Assyrian cuneiform writing, the imitation of literary formulas and propaganda devices, and the transformation of Assyrian cultural models in its architecture and art.82 On the southernmost side of the Babylonian world, in the regions surrounding the Lower Sea, contacts between the Sumer and Arabian Peninsula date back to the fifth, fourth, and through the third millennium bc.83 However, the relationships between southern Arabia and Babylonia were documented at least during the Iron Age  II period by two important Sabaean rulers of the eighth/seventh centuries bc, Yatha‘’amar and Karib’il and recorded in the documents of Sargon II and Sennacherib.84 The historical and cultural memory of Babylon was also transmitted via reproduction in completely different urban contexts through some of its extraordinary monuments. At Tol-e Ajori, a copy of the NeoBabylonian Ishtar Gate in larger dimensions is being excavated, which was built in the Early Achaemenid period with the same plan and the same decoration in glazed and reliefs bricks.85

80 

Van Soldt 2011, 197–211.

Unger 1931, 20; Horowitz 1988, 147–65; Smith 1996, 209–11; Ramazzotti 2009, 54–65; Del Nero 2018, 1–19.

81 

82 

See here Chapter 6 by Roberto Dan and Marie-Claude Trémouille.

Potts 1995, 559–71; Reade 2008b, 12–18 and now Laursen & Steinkeller 2017. 83 

See here Chapter 7 by Alessio Agostini. The Sabean kingship has been observed both on the level of some icono­graphies and in the shaping of a political ideo­logy in the second quarter of the first millennium bc. 84 

See here Chapter 8 by Pierfrancesco Callieri. This extraordinary recent discovery confirms the pervasive range of the Babylonian architectures, divine statues, and visual arts, which were strongly defended, protected, and transported to Babylon in times of danger at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Woods 2004, 23–103; Ramazzotti 2009, 64–85; Winter 2009, 461–69; Sandowicz 2015, 197–210. 85 

The Resilience and Transmission of the Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon Thus, it is not surprising to observe the propagation of the semantic waves from the city of Babylon, the epicentre of the cultural and historical memory of Babylon, through many Asian, African, and Mediterranean cultures. It would be difficult to fix precise margins or limits of such propagation, because it was not the simple diffusion of tangible cultural features, but rather the spread of values and models adopted, refused, quoted, or mixed by the other cultures (Fig. 1.5). It is not surprising that also in the Pahlavi sources (ninth–eleventh  centuries  ad), Zoroastrian intellectual culture performed a sort of political negotiation, conveying the image of Babylon as a ‘universal’ symbol both to dramatize the opposition between the past and the ‘current’ era and to stress the idea that the descent of a ‘true revelation’ marked the dawn of a new age.86 In medieval Arabic geo­graphical sources, the great Babylon was considered the city containing all the virtues of the old world and, on the contrary, the ominous place where Harut and Marut, the fallen angels, were punished for teaching magic and where baked bricks could be mined and reused for new buildings.87 Nevertheless, the fusion of the historical-mythical traditions in medieval Arabic culture (ninth–thirteenth centuries ad) generated the inclusion of Babylon and its memories in a history of catastrophes, which caused the dramatic loss of knowledge and libraries of the past. Thus, Babylon becomes part of a second general issue, of translation as a historical device capable of saving libraries and knowledge otherwise destined to loss and oblivion (Fig. 1.6).88 The founding myth of the origin of misunderstanding and of the ‘confusion of the languages’ is transfigured from Genesis 11. 1–9 in the Tower of Babel Vienna version (1563 ad) of Pieter Bruegel (1525/1530–1569 ad).89 It gives the historical 86  87 

See here Chapter 9 by Gianfilippo Terribili. Jannsen 1995 and Pedersén 2011, 47–67.

See here Chapter 10 by Leonardo Capezzone. In the same way, but according to another space-time dimension (probably), the cultural memory of Babylon was also adopted by Jorge Luis Borges to better define the modern concepts of the ‘library’ in his La biblioteca de Babel, Ficciones. The ‘Library of Babel’ is not only the story of an imaginative, hexagonal space but also a ‘virtual place’ following La doctrina de los ciclos and the Historia de la eternidad to mean the protection of the historical and cultural memories of Babylon. See Borges 1974, 389–571. 88 

89 

Mansbach 1982, 83–56; Albrecht 2000, 553–74; Glassner 2011,

12

Marco Ramazzotti

Figure 1.6. Satellite image of Babylon (source: Google Earth Pro).

1. The Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon and cultural memory of Babylon an extraordinary force, attacking the principles of patriarchal authority and provoking the emergence of a new aesthetics in contemporary world literature.90 The historical and cultural memory of Babylon has thus been absorbed by our present from its Zoroastrian exegesis, from medieval Arabic translations, and from ancient Near Eastern archaic mytho­logemes and biblical stories. Exegesis, translations, mytho­logemes, and stories deconstructed as ‘margins’ of contemporary world literatures, precede the archaeo­logical and philo­logical contexts first revealed by the astonishing discoveries of Robert Johann Koldewey (1855–1925), the undisputed pioneer of ancient Near Eastern archaeo­logy. That is why this volume has tried to follow the semantic waves of the historical memory of Babylon without defining any preordained limit. The Babylon différance is still alive in our present time; despite the progressive growth of totalitarian, fundamentalist, and absolutist world views, deconstructing the sema of Babylon is an unlimited semiosis involving the saving of knowledge, the fight against oppressors, and the hope in a future protecting differences and social equality. The collected papers here introduced are against the progressive erasure of our collective historical and cultural memory.91

295–303. On the Tower of Babel in art, see also Seymour 2008, 132–41.

See here Chapter 11 by Giovanni Greco. On the roles ‘not played’ by the so-called patriarchal authority in Old Babylonian Ur, remember the seminal and provocative contribution of Diakonoff 1986, 225–38. 90 

‘Before the deconstruction of Babel, the great Semitic family was establishing its empire which it wanted universal, and its tongue, which it also attempts to impose on the Universe. The moment of this project immediately precedes the deconstruction of the tower’, Derrida 1985, 167. 91 

13

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2005 ‘Eanna’s Contribution to the Building of the North Palace in Babylon’, in Heather D. Baker & Michael Jursa (eds), Approaching the Babylonian Economy: Proceedings of the START Project Symposium Held in Vienna, 1–3 July 2004 (Veröffentlichungen zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte Babyloniens im 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr. 2; Alter Orient und Altes Testament 330). Ugarit, Münster: 45–74. 2018 A History of Babylon: 2200 bc – ad 75. Wiley-Blackwell, London. Beckman, Gary 2001 ‘Sargon and Naram-Sin in Hatti: Reflections of Mesopotamian Antiquity among the Hittites’, in Dieter Kuhn & Helga Stahl (eds), Die Gegenwart des Altertums: Formen und Funktionen des Altertumsbezugs in den Hochkulturen der Alten Welt. Edition Forum, Heidelberg: 85–91. Bergamini, Giovanni 1977 ‘Levels of Babylon Reconsidered’, Mesopotamia 12: 111–52. Biga, Maria Giovanna 2004 Babilonia. Carocci, Rome. 2011 ‘Babylon and beyond Babylon in the First Half of the 2nd Millennium BC’, Mesopotamia 46: 35–40. Biga, Maria Giovanna & Ramazzotti, Marco 2007 ‘I giardini dell’Eden. Giardini e giochi d’acqua nel vicino oriente: miti, storia, tecno­logia’, in Giovanni Di Pasquale & Fabrizio Paolucci (eds), Il giardino antico da Babilonia a Roma: scienza, arte e natura. Sillabe, Livorno: 22–43. Borges, Jorge Luis 1974 Obras completes. Emec, Buenos Aires. Brisch, Nicole 2011 ‘Changing Images of Kingship in Sumerian Literature’, in Karen Radner & Eleanor Robson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 706–24. Calasso, Giovanna 2020 ‘The Past before their Own Past. Time, Otherness and the Remains of Pre-Islamic Civilizations as Seen by Medieval Muslim Authors’, in Leonardo Capezzone (ed.), Before Archaeo­logy: The Meaning of the Past in the Islamic Pre-modern Thought (Opere Collattnee dell’Atlante del Vicino Oriente anico 1). Artemide, Rome: 61–84. Chandle, Daniel & Munday, Rod 2020 A Dictionary of Media and Communication, 3rd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Charpin, Dominique 1999 ‘Hammurabi de Babylone et Mari: nouvelles sources, nouvelles perspectives’, in Johannes Renger (ed.), Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne (Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 2). SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken: 111–30. 2011 ‘Babylon in der altbabylonischen Zeit: Eine Hauptstadt von vielen … die als einzige übrig blieb’, in Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess & Joachim Marzahn (eds), Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident (Berlin Studies of the Ancient World/Topoi-Berliner Studien der Alten Welt 1). De Gruyter, Berlin: 77–89. Civil, Miguel 1980 ‘The Limits or Limitations of Textual in Formation’, in L’archéo­logie de l’Iraq du début de l’époque néolithique à 333 avant notre ère: perspectives et limites de l’interprétation anthropo­logique des documents (Actes du Colloque international 580). Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris: 225–32.

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Cooper, Jerrold 2008 ‘Divine Kingship in Mesopotamia, a Fleeting Phenomenon’, in Nicole Brisch (ed.), Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond. Oriental Institute, Chicago: 261–65. Curtis, John 2011 ‘The Present Condition of Babylon’, in Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess & Joachim Marzahn (eds), Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident (Berlin Studies of the Ancient World/Topoi-Berliner Studien der Alten Welt 1). De Gruyter, Berlin: 3–17. Dalley, Stefanie 1993 ‘Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Resolved’, Garden History 21.1: 1–13. 1994 ‘Nineveh, Babylon and the Hanging Gardens: Cuneiform and Classical Sources Reconciled’, Iraq 56: 45–58. 1996 ‘Herodotos and Babylon’, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 91: 525–32. 1998 ‘Adapa, Myths from Mesopotamia’, in Stefanie Dalley (ed.), Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 182–88. 2003 ‘Why Did Herodotus Not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?’, in Peter Derow & Robert Parker (eds), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest. Oxford Scholarship Online, Oxford: 171–89. 2008 ‘Babylon as a Name for Other Cities Including Nineveh’, in Robert D. Biggs, Jennie Myers & Martha T. Roth (eds), Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. July 18–22, 2005 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 62). Oriental Institute Publications, Chicago: 25–33. Dandamaev, Mohammed D. 1992 ‘Neo-Babylonian Society and Economy’, in John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, Edmond Sollberger & Nicholas G. L. Hammond (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History, iii: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries B.C. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 252–75. 1997 ‘The Composition of the Citizens in First Millennium Babylonia’, Altorientalische Forschungen 24: 135–47. 2004 ‘Towns and Ethnic Minorities in First-Millennium Babylonia’, in Robert Rollinger & Christoph Ulf (eds), Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World (Melammu Symposia 5). Steiner, Stuttgart: 137–51. Dassow, Eva von 2012 ‘Temporality and Periodization in Ancient Near Eastern History’, Social Science History 36.1: 113–43. Delnero, Paul 2018 ‘A Land with No Borders: A New Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”’, Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 4: 19–38. Derrida, Jacques 1985 Des Tours de Babel. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Dhiaa, Kareem Ali & Kathem, Mehiyar 2020 ‘Decolonising Babylon’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 27.9: 831–45 . Diakonoff, Igor M. 1986 ‘Women in Old Babylonia Not under Patriarchal Authority’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 29.3: 225–38.

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2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians Francis Joannès

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Abstract –

Among several older, more prestigious, or more imperialistic Mesopotamian cities, Babylon imposed itself as the sole political capital of the country during the reign of Hammurabi (1793–1750). At that time, the city had the ambition to become the only religious capital of southern Mesopotamia, as the exclusive residence of Marduk, king of the gods and head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. From the thirteenth century bc, Babylon dominates the whole of the country nowadays called ‘Babylonia’. From 624 to 539 bc the city even becomes the capital of the last great Babylonian political construction identified as the ‘Neo-Babylonian Empire’, which dominates the whole of the Near East and appears to be a perfect illustration of oriental despotism for its immediate or more distant neighbours.

Babylon as an Old Babylonian City-State The first emergence of Babylon was as an Amorite kingdom, established in what had been the centre of a provincial governorate of the Ur III empire (2112–2004).1 Who was the real founder of this Amorite dynasty? The question remains open: Sumu-abum (1894–1881) was assigned this function — on the basis of historical data provided by the Babylonians themselves — but Sumuabum is more likely to have been considered as a ‘great ancestor’ and seems to have exercised a sovereignty which was both broader and less defined than that of a simple king of Babylon. It therefore appears that actually Sumu-la-El (1880–1845) was at the origin of the power of the kingdom of Babylon, which his fourth descendant, Hammurabi (1792–1750), would wield at its peak. In about one and a half centuries, Babylon not only succeeded in establishing its supremacy over most of the city-states of the neighbouring area, such as Marad, 1 

For a recent and exhaustive development see Charpin 2012.

Borsippa, Dilbat, Kish, or Sippar, but also in freeing itself from the heavy control of the emperor of Elam in Iran.2 It also conquered the main political centres of Lower and then of Upper Mesopotamia: the kingdom of Larsa in 1764, the kingdom of Ešnunna in 1761, and finally the kingdom of Mari in 1759. Under the rule of Hammurabi, followed by his son Samsu-iluna (1749–1712), the Babylonian empire, which covered all of present-day Iraq and eastern Syria, was able to achieve a synthesis between the Sumerian and Akkadian traditions on the one hand and the Amorites on the other. It was thus actively engaged in the network of international relationships within the Amoritized Near East during the first half of the second millennium bc. By that time, after more than two centuries of political dispersion, the city-state of Babylon had become the master of a reunified empire for the whole of Mesopotamia. At the same time, the economic and demo­graphic situation in the southern part of the Mesopotamian country was deteriorating dramatically for reasons that are still difficult to identify but included lack of irrigation water and lack of canal maintenance, and political and social crisis. By contrast, Babylon was at the centre of a prosperous and populated agricultural area, and recovered not only the cultural and religious traditions of the south, but also its economic forces. These included the emigrant population from the large Sumerian metropolitan areas of southern Mesopotamia including Ur, Larsa, Uruk, or Nippur, which were thus abandoned by their inhabitants for several centuries. These people, who were not only the political elite, the scholars, and the educated members of the clergy, but also craftsmen and agricultural workers, came to Babylon and to 2 

Charpin and Durand 1996.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 27–36 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127135

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nearby cities such as Kiš, or to neighbouring rural areas and settled there.3 At the time of its emergence as a political centre, Babylon was therefore the capital city of one of the great states that shared the Middle East between the eighteenth and sixteenth centuries, for its people and for Mesopotamia as a whole. The king of Babylon was one of the ‘great kings’, and was called ‘my father’ by his vassals. He ruled a centralized state, whose resources converged on the capital’s royal palace, a powerful economic organization. By studying private archives and letters4 discovered on the archaeo­logical site of Abu Habbah, the ancient Sippar, north of Babylon, it was established that the palace of the king functioned as both a trading and an administrative structure. For example, it sold its surplus wool through private trading agents (tamkaru) for whom the palace administration had opened a kind of current account: once the wool was provided, these tamkaru agents were allowed a certain amount of time to pay the sale proceeds. Some of them also had the right to pay the official taxes in kind (cereals, dates, wool, or the like) that were collected and converted into money. As an influential economic structure, the royal palace in Babylon had an immediate impact on the personnel who depended directly on it. It acted as a kind of lever on the whole of the society, whose effects were multiplied by the commercial agents who worked at the border between the institutional and private economic spheres.5 The legal texts and the letters written in the Kingdom of Babylon refer to the god of the city, Marduk, originally a lesser god of land culture, for the taking of oaths validating contracts, or for protecting the recipient of a letter, referring to him as ‘the man whom Marduk makes live’ (awîlum ša Marduk uballaṭu-šu). Last but not least, Babylon was the source of law and of a unified practice of justice: the Code of Law left to us by King Hammurabi, who made the sovereign and his city the legitimate legal possessors of power over the entire country. We notice that at that time, the decisions affecting the future of the inhabited world were still taken by the supreme gods of the Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon, Anu, Enlil and Ea, but the god of Babylon, Marduk, was already responsible for their enactment, with the help of Hammurabi as is written in the Pro­logue of the Code:

3  4  5 

Charpin 2004, 342–46. Charpin 1982.

Cf. the developments in Clancier et al. 2005.

When the august god Anu, king of the Anunnaku deities, and the god Enlil, lord of heaven and earth, who determines the destinies of the land, allotted supreme power over all peoples to the god Marduk, the firstborn son of the god Ea, exalted him among the Igigu deities, named the city of Babylon with its august name and made it supreme within the regions of the world, and established for him within it eternal kingship whose foundations are as fixed as heaven and earth, at that time the gods Anu and Enlil for the enhancement of the well-being of the people named me by my name, Hammurabi, the pious prince who venerates the gods, to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to rise like the sun-god Shamash over all humankind, to illuminate the land.6

The political status acquired by the god Marduk, thanks to the conquests of Hammurabi, is also reflected in the presence of a very specific religious institution, that of the nadîtu-priestesses, who were women dedicated by their families to the worship of the god. The most prestigious of these nadîtus at that time, were the ones related to the god of the sun and justice, the god Šamaš in the city of Sippar, a little north of Babylon. The discovery of their archives has made it easier for us to understand what place they held in Babylonian society during the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, it appears that the god Marduk also had his nadîtus in Babylon, who were often women from the urban notability. Unlike the nadîtus of Sippar who were forced into celibacy, the nadîtus of Marduk could be married but, like their colleagues of Sippar, they were not allowed to bear children and could only adopt in order to have descendants. Nevertheless, to be a nadîtu of Marduk was a prestigious title, which testifies to the importance of the god of Babylon from that time on.7

Marduk, King of the Gods In 1595, the city of Babylon was assaulted, plundered, and burned by the Hittite king Mursili I, but the town did not disappear. According to modern historio­graphy, a new royal dynasty took the destiny of Babylon into its hands. They kings were of Kassite origin, a people from the central part of Zagros, the mountain range separating the Mesopotamian plain from Iran. However, several Kassite groups had already been present in the 6  7 

Roth 1995, 76–77. Barberon 2012.

29

2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians Mesopotamian alluvial plain for one or two centuries as mercenaries and immigrant workers and had sometimes founded small independent states. The Kassite kings did not make Babylon their only royal residence. Under their dynasty until 1155 bc, and then especially under the so-called ‘Second Dynasty of Isin’, from 1154 until 1027, the city definitively ensured its cultural and religious supremacy over Lower Mesopotamia through an ambitious effort to establish a cultural tradition. In this period, the canonical series of scholarly and divinatory texts were recorded in Babylon, and the standard versions of the Gilgamesh Epic and of the Creation Epic, also called Enûma eliš, were set in writing.8 The scholars of Babylon worked to establish Babylon first as the twin-city, then the heir of Nippur, the ancient religious capital of Sumer. In the eleventh century, the double city walls of Babylon, city of the god Marduk, and of Nippur, city of the god Enlil, received names that underlined a kind of crossed relationship between the two cities. The walls of Babylon were called Nîmitti-Enlil, ‘Protection of the god Enlil’ for the outer wall, and Imgur-Enlil ‘Enlil was favourable’ for the inner wall; those of Nippur were named Nîmitti-Marduk and Imgur-Marduk in parallel. Marduk thus took on some distinctive features of Nippur’s gods: first and foremost those of Enlil, the former great god in charge of the exercise of political power among humans, but also those of the oldest, and probably the original poliadic deity of Nippur, the god Ninurta. In the Sumerian-Akkadian tradition, Ninurta belongs to the group of heroic gods, saviours of the world, and benefactors of humanity: he fought and defeated a great number of monsters including dragon, buffalo, the Anzu bird, the seven-headed snake, and especially the king of the mountains, the monster Asakku.9

the storm, the god Ba’al (or Bel in Akkadian) against the sea.10 His triumph made possible the victory of the principles of order and civilization over the unrestrained and uncontrollable forces of wild nature. All this is presented in a literary work, the Epic of Creation (Enûma eliš), which tells how Marduk saved the world and the other gods by killing the goddess Tiamat, personification of the primeval sea. He was then elevated to rulership over the entire pantheon by the other gods and organized the universe, now ready to receive humanity. The Epic of Creation became the cornerstone of Marduk’s theo­logy, justifying his supreme power and making Babylon, his city, the centre of the world. From that moment on, the destinies of Babylon and Marduk are inseparably connected. The statue in which the god is incarnated inside his temple, the Esagil in Babylon, is repeatedly taken into captivity in a foreign country (in the sixteenth, thirteenth, twelfth centuries…), and its vicissitudes become events that threaten the country’s future. The Babylonian kings who manage to recover this statue and bring it back to Babylon take eternal glory from it in the eyes of the Babylonians. This is the case in particular of Nabuchodonosor  I (1125–1104) who took the statue of Marduk from the Elamites of south-western Iran. This led to the writing of some more or less authentic royal inscriptions, such as the one that was found copied on a tablet from the Assyrian Library of Nineveh that celebrates the Kassite king Agum Kakrime (around 1570), author of the statue’s first recovery:11 When Marduk, lord of Esagil and of Babylon, the master of the great gods, announced with his holy mouth that he was returning to Babylon, when Marduk turned his face back to Babylon, […]  I thought very carefully to bring Marduk back: I opened the way for him towards Babylon and I gave all my support to Marduk, who loves my reign. I queried the sovereign Šamaš by means of lecanomancy (oil divination). Then I sent a messenger to a faraway country in the land of the Haneans (= among the Hittites): the hands of Marduk and the goddess Zarpanitu were held there, so that we could bring back Marduk and Zarpanitu, who cherish my royalty, to the Esagil, to Babylon. It was indeed in the temple that Šamaš had confirmed to me during the oracular consultation, that I brought them back and that I made reside specialised craftsmen.

In the theo­logy of Marduk that was established at that time, especially through the mytho­logical account of the Enûma eliš, we see that Marduk also became a fighter of monsters. Afterwards, some of them would become his symbolic acolytes, such as the mušhuššu, the snake-headed dragon represented on the walls of the Ištar Gate in Babylon in the first millennium bc. However, Marduk also absorbs another mytho­logical tradition widespread throughout the Middle East of the second millennium, that of the fight of the god of 8  9 

Lambert 2013 Part I and II; George 2003. Van Dijk 1983 i, 9–19.

10  11 

Durand 1993.

Foster 2005, 273–76.

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This essential relationship between the statue of Marduk and the destiny of Babylon also gave rise to the writing of a literary work called the Erra Epic12 in the ninth century bc. The god of war and murderous violence, Erra, sought to make Marduk leave Babylon in order to remain its sole master. He persuaded Marduk to go down to his father’s house, the god Ea, to have his statue renovated. Once Marduk had left, Erra pushed the people of Babylon into revolt and set the city on fire. He then went to the royal military camp and persuaded the king to slay his subjects. Seeing the catastrophic consequences of his absence, Marduk lamented on the city and its rabid inhabitants, and refused to return. Finally, the vizier of Erra, the god Išum, managed to calm him down and the situation eased. Marduk then turned back to the city and took his place again in the Esagil as king of the gods. Considering that this literary text transcribes a real historical situation, it appears to be testimony above all to the strong relationship between the god and his city and makes its prosperity depend on divine well-being. A philosophy of history is beginning to emerge, which explains the major events in Babylon and throughout the country through the treatment that was reserved for Marduk.

remained inactive: the god Marduk, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, will favour his enemy and give his properties and treasure to the enemy. If (the king) has imposed punishment on citizens of Nippur, Sippar, or Babylon or thrown them in prison: at the very place where they were punished, the city will be overthrown until its foundations, and where they were thrown in prison, a foreign enemy will enter. If (the king) mobilizes Sippar, Nippur, or Babylon together, so that their workers should be imposed to carry the basket of bricks and be forced to perform the regular forced labour at the herald’s calling: Marduk, the wisest of the gods, the instructed prince, will turn the country towards his enemy; the workers of his country will carry the basket of bricks on behalf of his enemies.

On the other hand, when the sovereign participates in the ritual that takes place at each New Year’s ceremony in Babylon, he is reminded that he must humiliate himself before the god and be re-enthroned by receiving again the insignia of power after confessing his sins before Marduk’s statue. They will move a water (basin) for (the washing of) hands (in front of) the king and make him enter Esagila. The craftsmen will go out to the gate. When (the king) has arrived before Bel (= Marduk), the high priest will go out (of the cella) and lift up the sceptre, the loop, the mace of the king. He will also lift up the Crown of Kingship. He will make them enter before Bel and, in front of Bel, he will place them on a seat. He will go out of the cella and strike the cheek of the king. He will place the king behind him. He will make him enter before Bel. After this he will pull his ear, make him kneel on the ground.

The Privileges of Babylon As Babylon grew in importance, it monopolized the role of political capital, but also established itself as one of the main Babylonian holy cities (maḫazu) in southern Mesopotamia. As such, it enjoyed some prerogatives, in particular the right to obtain exemptions from the royal power — known as kidinnutu, or šubarrutu —, from taxes and forced labour. These privileges of the city were due to the Assyrian or Babylonian kings who exercised power there from the eighth century onwards, and included monitions in literary form, as shown by the text entitled by its modern publishers the Advice to a Prince,13 which presented itself as a divinatory text, but whose lesson was clearly political: If the king has not paid attention to the Law: his subjects will be in confusion, his country will become an uninhabited steppe. […] If he has seized money from the people of Babylon to bring it into his own Treasury, or if he has listened to the plea of a Babylonian but has nevertheless 12  13 

Foster 2005, 771–805. Foster 2005, 745–47.

(Tablet of the New Year’s ritual: the fifth of the month of Nisan)14

This recognition of the prerogatives of the inhabitants of Babylon was even at the origin of a partial attempt to unify worship throughout Babylonia during the NeoBabylonian period (626–539 bc). Nabuchodonosor II and his successors introduced some priests from Babylon to the country’s great temples dedicated to other divinities and they established chapels dedicated to Marduk and Nabu in the major sanctuaries.15 We can also observe that, because of a conscious and deliberate decision on the part of the Neo-Babylonian kings, the city of Nippur did not benefit from any restoration of its religious monuments by the Neo-Babylonian kings.

14  15 

Linssen 2004, 231–32. Kessler 2004.

31

2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians It all happens as if all the great gods had to recognize the primacy of Bêl-Marduk, even in the cities of which they were the poliadic divinities, since the pantheon was now structured according to a political hierarchy. During the Neo-Babylonian period too, the great gods of the pantheon were to come to the capital each year to participate in the New Year’s celebration, also known as the ceremony of the Akitu and on this occasion, the supremacy of Marduk over the other gods was solemnly confirmed. This conception of Babylon’s sacred status did not prevent the city from being the victim of sometimesviolent assaults. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704–681) besieged Babylon and then mercilessly destroyed it, in order to punish the Babylonians for having handed over his son, their viceroy, to the Elamites who had executed him. According to the Assyrian king, the whole city was razed to the ground and its debris was thrown into the Euphrates; the sight of Babylon’s mud carried by the river to the Persian Gulf terrified the local populations. At the same time, the statue of the god Marduk was once again taken to Assyria, where it remained a prisoner, honoured but captive for several years. However, sometime later, Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons, an event that was considered a punishment directly inflicted by Marduk on the Assyrian king. As early as the following reign of an Assyrian king, that of Esarhaddon (680–669 bc), Babylon regained its religious splendour: the king had the Esagil rebuilt and restored, but kept the city under the control of an Assyrian governor, his direct representative. Esarhaddon finally ordered the return of the cult statue of Marduk to the Babylonians and appointed his son Šamaš-šum-ukin the future king of Babylon, under the suzerainty of Aššurbanipal (668–627 bc), heir to the throne of Assyria. Therefore, it seems to have been considered that any attack against Marduk and Babylon was a kind of mortal sin, which caused divine anger.

Babylon’s Peak under Nabuchodonosor II (605–562 bc) The construction of the city’s double wall (Nîmitti-Enlil and Imgur-Enlil) dates back to a fairly early period, in the second half of the second millennium, during the reign of Adad-šum-uṣur (1216–1187 bc). Babylon’s intramuros territory reached its maximum extension as early as the twelfth century, even if this intramuros territory was far from being entirely built and included many gardens and palm groves. The main streets, especially the pro-

cessional street that led from the Ištar Gate in the north of the city to the Esagil, Marduk’s temple, traversed the whole city and made it truly a monumental city, by far the largest of Babylonia. After the destruction wrought by the Neo-Assyrian kings during the seventh century, the aim of the NeoBabylonian kings of the following century was to rebuild Babylon as a centre of political and religious power, which would be visible to all of the peoples and as a stronghold, which could not be destroyed or easily accessed. This did not prevent them from arranging wooded areas used as a park for the royal palace inside the city. Although it seems that the Hanging Gardens that made the city famous during Antiquity are actually to be found in Assyria,16 it remains quite possible that the arrangements of the Babylonian palace served as a model for the park that the Persian king Cyrus built a little later in Persia at Pasargadae at the end of the sixth century bc, which was the first ‘paradise’. As a result of the works of the Neo-Babylonian kings, Babylon was protected by a double enclosure: the eastern urban area on the left bank of the Euphrates was surrounded by a vast agricultural zone that was encircled by an outer wall over 11 km long, starting at today’s ‘Babil Hill’, in the north of Babylon, and then rejoining the Euphrates to the south of the city. It formed the first enclosure of the city. A second, internal, enclosure about 8 km long, was formed by the two walls called NîmittiEnlil and Imgur-Enlil, and enclosed the city’s urbanized quarters. This rampart was built with baked and sundried bricks joined with bitumen and included a complex set of ditches, glacis, and a double wall, reinforced by towers, which made it impenetrable. One could believe that Babylon was then never again invaded from the sixth century onwards and that its inhabitants opened their gates voluntarily to the Persian king Darius I in 521 or to Alexander the Great in 330. Nevertheless, in October 539, a small group of Persian soldiers entered Babylon probably in a night-time surprise attack on the Enlil Gate, northwest of the city, and seized the temple of Marduk and the king’s palace. Marduk’s overwhelming presence in Babylon, including the large area of his temple (Esagil) and of the ziggurat (Etemenanki), may have prompted the king, Nabuchodonosor II, to attempt to elude this While Dalley argues that the Hanging Gardens were in Nineveh not Babylon (Dalley 2013), this is not the commonly accepted opinion among Assyrio­logists. See for example the review of Dalley’s book by A. Bagg in Bagg 2014, 487–92. 16 

32 heavy divine sovereignty by building his palace complex partly outside the city’s wall. At the same time, he loudly and clearly proclaimed in his inscriptions that the king would not in any way impinge on the holy territory under the authority of Marduk.17 Recently studied archives also make it possible to reconstruct the process of restoration and enlargement of the royal palace that took place under the reigns of Nabopolassar and his son Nabuchodonosor  II. These two rulers used the services of royal slaves and dependents by way of the corvée, but also through the country’s great temples, which had to provide workers and construction products, each receiving a defined portion of the future palace building.18 Some parts of the sixth-century bc city of Babylon had a dense structure, with very close buildings, and winding streets or alleys, whose narrowness provided some shadow. In other districts, buildings were separated by vast plots of land that were used as gardens, orchards, and palm plantations. The further you moved towards the eastern wall of the city, the more aerated and discontinuous the urban structure became and it was sometimes interrupted by areas of cultivation. It remains almost impossible to tell the exact number of inhabitants that Babylon could contain at that time, given the great contrast, for example, between a complex such as the royal palace, with its large domestic and service personnel, which alone constituted a kind of small town within Babylon, and some private houses surrounded by gardens. The most visible monument of the city was the ziggurat called Etemenanki (‘the temple foundation of heaven and earth’), which can be considered as the direct model of the biblical Tower of Babel. A  tablet from the Hellenistic period but belonging to an older tradition, called the ‘Esagil tablet’, provides both a description of the main parts of the Tower of Babel, but also their measurements, and thus the possibility of establishing mathematical relationships that give this monument an additional value.19 One of the questions that still arises, for example, is whether the description of the ziggurat in this text as a pyramid 90 m high on a square base 90 m wide is real or whether it is a theoretical elaboration based on fictional data.

17  18  19 

Francis Joannès It has been noted that a building mainly made of stacked mud bricks would present serious risks of instability, and in particular could not reach such a height. It would be better to adopt a 2/3 ratio between the height and the side of the base square, assuming a real altitude of about 60 m. This would put the ‘Tower of Babel’ at a height close to that of the ziggurats in Dur-Kurigalzu (57 m currently preserved), or in Borsippa (47 m). The German excavations in Babylon that cleared the base of the Etemenanki, the only remnant of the Tower of Babel, nevertheless confirmed the validity of the 90 m length for the side of the square. The stele in the Schoyen collection published by A. George20 provides a fairly clear view of the structure of the pyramid formed by the ziggurat, while leaving the question of height open. It is certain, however, that this ziggurat dominated the city and was visible for miles around to anyone coming to Babylon by land or water. During the late part of the second millennium bc, Babylon became a cultural centre, gathering scholars in the service of the temple of Marduk, the Esagil. Their task was to normalize the scholarly tradition, especially the divinatory corpuses produced in Mesopotamia for centuries, as had been done by their colleagues from Borsippa, Kiš, Nippur, Sippar, and other great Mesopotamian cities. Through the use of writing and the constitution of a kind of ‘documentation centre’ attached to the sanctuary and no longer to private houses of scribes or a religious dignitary, these scholars also developed a true theo­logy of Marduk and ensured his pre-eminence over the other gods and the visible universe. This pre-eminence of Marduk obviously led to that of Babylon. This collective work, supported by the successive kings who held power in Babylon, led to the constitution of the first true Great Library in history,21 as early as the second half of the second millennium bc. This was then to serve as a model for the Assyrian kings who reproduced the principle in Aššur, then in Kalhu, and finally, and above all, in Nineveh. Babylon’s onto­ logical position in the written tradition of Babylonian scholars led to the elaboration of a cuneiform lexical list of an original kind,22 whose title was ‘Tin.tir: Bâbilu’, or: ‘The name Tin.tir in Sumerian is to be understood as Bâbilu in Akkadian’.

Joannès 2011.

20 

George 1992.

22 

Beaulieu 2005.

21 

George 2011.

Clancier 2009. George 1992.

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2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians This lexical list is both an urban description of the city with its main characteristics and a search for the meaning and value of its monuments. Tin.tir: Bâbilu is not the only list of significant elements of a city (we know some for Uruk or Nippur), but it was particularly developed and well preserved, as part of the learning programme of the scholars. In the eyes of the Babylonians, such a compendium made it possible to give meaning to all the material elements that made up the city and to substantiate the rituals that took place there by putting them in an almost mytho­logical context. The text thus lists the different districts of the city on the left and right banks of the Euphrates. Ka-dingirra, the Sumerian form of the Akkadian Bâb-ili, the ‘Gate of the Gods’, as a later folk attempt to give a Sumerian etymo­logy to the (perhaps non-Semitic) name of the city, thus referred to the district of the royal palace and its immediate surroundings in Babylon. Following the lexical list, to the north-east of Babylon lay an urban extension dating from the Old Babylonian period, and called the ‘new city’ (Alu eššu) from that time. The centre of the main part of Babylon was occupied by many religious buildings and included two districts; they were named in reference to two of the oldest Sumerian settlements in southern Babylonia: Eridu, the city of the god Ea and Kullab, part of the city of Uruk where the god Anu used to reside.

Marduk, ensures his worship according to the prevailing religious standards, and promotes his clergy. This is what happened under Cyrus the Great in 539, against Nabonidus, the latest Neo-Babylonian king and later, at the beginning of the third century bc in order to legitimize the Seleucid kingship against the first successors of Alexander the Great in Babylonia, who were described in Babylonian chronicles as Haneans, ‘people from the land of Hana’. In Mesopotamian literature of the second millennium, the people of the Hana country belonged to the world of nomads who were not Mesopotamians and they were therefore seen as foreigners and even as barbarians. Cyrus’s cuneiform Cylinder tells in detail how the god Marduk was revolted by the lamentable state to which King Nabonidus had brought Babylon and the country. He chooses abroad, on the Iranian plateau, a prince whose behaviour he considers truly royal, and grants him sovereignty over Babylon. The Persian conquest is thus justified and legitimized: Marduk, the supreme Enlil of the gods, turned to all the inhabited places whose houses were abandoned and to the inhabitants of the lands of Sumer and Akkad who had become walking skeletons, he took pity on them, he had compassion for them; so he examined and inspected all the countries; he sought a righteous prince according to his desire, he took the hand of Cyrus the king of Anšan, and he appointed him: he pronounced his name to exercise royalty over the whole world. He put under his feet the land of the Gutti, all the Umman-manda; and the people of the Black Heads, whom he had thus placed in his hands, he made them continually graze in Right and Equity; Marduk, the great Lord, who protected his people, looked with pleasure at his good deeds and his right heart; he decided to make him walk towards Babylon, his city, and made him take the road to Babylon; as a friend and a companion, he walked by his side. His immense troops, as countless as the drops of water of a river, walked with him, girded with their weapons. Without any fight or battle, he brought him inside Šuanna; he saved his city, the Gate of the Gods (Bab-ili) from fear and delivered into his hands Nabonidus, the king who had not respected him. The Babylonians all together, the whole land of Sumer and Akkad, princes and governors, he gathered them under him and they kissed his feet, they rejoiced in his royalty, and their faces shone.

To the south extended the commercial district, which served as a residential area for the notables. It was called Šu-an.na ‘Heaven’s hand’, and was flanked by another district called Te-e. The western, secondary part of Babylon, on the right bank, was distributed between the Tuba, Ku’ara, and Bâb-Lugalirra districts. Each topo­graphical element of Babylon: walls, gates, streets, or shrines, was thus provided with a name that had religious connotations, and was part of a symbolic whole that justified the status of Babylon as the unique religious, political, and socio-economic capital of the country, and even of the inhabited world.

Marduk and the Eternity of Babylon The god Marduk is granted the privilege of choosing and designating the king of Babylon. This conception of the devolution of power is not new and has its origins in a very old tradition, as illustrated, for example, by the Sumerian King List. It leads to the fact that usurpation can be legitimized and, above all, that a foreign king can be established in Babylon, as long as he respects

(Cyrus Cylinder, ll. 10–18)23

Translation by F. Joannès, according to the edition of Schaudig 2001, 550–56. 23 

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Francis Joannès

This teleo­logical vision of history, in which the supreme divinity decides events and changes the country’s rulers at his own discretion, has deep roots in the SumeroAkkadian tradition. However, the religious and moral justification given for these divine decisions, which distinguishes between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ kings, those who do ‘what is good in the eyes of the god’ and those who do not respect his prescriptions, obviously recalls the biblical vision of the history of the kings of Israel and Judah. It gave rise to a historical tradition among late Babylonian scholars of reconstructing the country’s history according to the good/bad sovereigns and their more or less respectful treatment of Babylon. Thus the ‘great kings’ of the Sumerian and Old-Akkadian past, who entered the tradition, such as Sargon  I or Šulgi, are mentioned in some ‘pseudo-chronicles’ which recall their good beginnings and then their sacrilege, without any consideration of the historical anachronisms:24 Ur-Zababa ordered Sargon, his cupbearer, to change the wine libations of Esagila. Sargon did not change but was careful to offer […] quickly to Esagila. Marduk, the king of the world, favoured him and gave him the rule of the four corners of the world. He took care of Esagila. Everyone who sat on a throne brought his tribute to Babylon. Yet he ignored the command Bêl had given him. He dug soil from its pit and in front of Akkad he built a city which he named Babylon. Enlil changed the order he had given and from east to west people opposed him. He could not sleep. (Chronicle of Esagila (= Weidner Chronicle))

Sargon, king of Agade, came to power during the reign of Ištar and he had neither rival nor equal. His splendour, over the lands he diffused. (…)  He dug up the dirt of the pit of Babylon and made a counterpart of Babylon next to Agade. Because the wrong he had done, the great lord Marduk became angry and wiped out his family by famine. From east to west, the subjects rebelled against him and Marduk afflicted him with insomnia. (…)  Šulgi, the son of Ur-Nammu, provided abundant food for Eridu, which is on the seashore. But he had criminal tendencies and the property of Esagila and Babylon he took away as booty. Bêl caused […] to consume his body and killed him. (Chronicle of Early Kings)

These chronicles are edited by Robert J. van der Spek on the site [accessed 30 September 2021]: ABC 19 (Weidner Chronicle), ABC 20 (Chronicle of Early Kings), and CM 52 (Nabû-šuma-iškun).

24 

Year after year, he made unbearable their burden of slaughter, robbery, murder, corvée, and forced labour. In only one day, he burned alive sixteen Cutheans at Zababa’s gate in the heart of Babylon. He delivered inhabitants of Babylon to Hatti and Elam as a token of respect. He made the inhabitants of Babylon with women, children, and servants go out and settled them into the countryside. He heaped up the houses of Babylon’s inhabitants […here a break…] into piles of rubble, and he turned them into royal property. The main street, the avenue of Šarur, his lord’s beloved, who passes through the streets of his city in the month of Ululu, its passage he blocked off and turned into royal property, making him pass into a cul-de-sac. In the sixth year, he turned his attention toward the Esagila, the palace of the Enlil of the gods (i.e. Marduk), with a view to restoring it, but the possessions of the Esagila, as much as was there, what earlier kings had brought there, he took out, gathered them into his own palace, and made them his own: silver, gold, choice and priceless stones, and everything that befits a deity, as much as was there. According to his good pleasure, he made offerings of them to the gods of the Sealand, of the Chaldeans, and of the Aramaeans. He would adorn the women of his palace with them, and would give them to Hatti and Elam as signs of respect. (Chrono­graphic document dealing with the demise of King Nabû-šuma-iškun (761–746 bc))

However, unlike old Sumerian cities such as Ur, Uruk, or Nippur, Babylon was a relative newcomer in the long Mesopotamian history and its inhabitants do not belong to ancestral lines dating back to the early days of human history. It could almost be said that in historical Mesopotamia of the second and first millennia bc ‘one was not born as a Babylonian citizen, but became one’ and this is particularly true for its royal dynasties, which rarely came from the city itself. It is therefore understandable that from the moment Babylon ceased to be the political seat of autonomous power in 539 bc, the cities of southern Babylonia became somewhat independent of the capital. The case of the city of Uruk is now well known. From the Achaemenid period onwards, the inhabitants of Warka brought back worship of the god Anu, the former poliadic god and tutelary figure of the SumeroAkkadian pantheon, through onomastics and restoration of the temple and cult of the god, which triumphed in the Seleucid era, from the third century bc onwards. At the same time, there was still scholarly determination to make Babylon a kind of eternal city. The literary tradition that is still alive in the city after 539 is also based on the major economic role Babylon plays in

35

2. Babylon as Seen by Babylonians southern Mesopotamia: it remains the commercial hub, where river and land caravans arrive from Arabia or the Levant. It is here that members of the urban notability or representatives of the great sanctuaries of Babylon come to buy luxury products, precious metals, or rare essences.

Conclusion: Which Babylon for the Babylonians? Babylon is the product of history. It was a small Amorite kingdom from the beginning of the second millennium bc which became a royal capital, heir to the imperial capitals of Sumer and Akkad, which were then definitively replaced. The power of Babylon is also the

product of its geo­graphy. Although the traditional area of the capital cities (Akkad, Ešnunna, then Seleucia, Ctésiphon, and Baghdad) is located a little further north, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Diyala Rivers, Babylon is very close to the place where the Tigris and Euphrates flow closest to each other, and where the irrigation network is the densest and the agricultural land the most productive. However, for the Babylonians, as we have seen, it was above all a religious Babylon, the mythical residence of Marduk, who became king of the gods and a unique demiurge in the twelfth century, and a Babylon that was a centre of knowledge and culture, to which we owe the transmission of a large part of the Sumero-Akkadian tradition.

Works Cited Barberon, Lucile 2012 Archibab, i: Les religieuses et le culte de Marduk dans le royaume de Babylone (Mémoires de NABU 14). Société pour l’étude du Proche-Orient ancien, Paris. Beaulieu, Paul-Alain 2005 ‘Eanna’s Contribution to the Construction of the North-Palace at Babylon’, in Heather D. Baker & Michael Jursa (eds), Approaching the Babylonian Economy. Ugarit, Münster: 45–74. Charpin, Dominique 1982 ‘Marchands du palais et marchands du temple à la fin de la I° dynastie de Babylone’, Journal asiatique 207: 25–65. 2004 ‘Histoire politique du Proche-Orient amorrite (2002–1595)’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz  O. Edzard & Marten Stol (eds), Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160.4). Academic Press, Fribourg: 23–480. 2012 Hammurabi of Babylon. Tauris, London. Charpin, Dominique & Durand, Jean-Marie 1991 ‘La suzeraineté de l’empereur (Sukkalmah) d’Elam sur la Mésopotamie et le nationalisme amorrite’, in Leon  De Meyer & Hermann Gasche (eds), Mesopotamie et Elam: actes de la XXVIème Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale, Gand, 10–14 juillet 1989 (Mesopotamian History and Environment, Occasional Publications 1). University of Ghent, Ghent: 59–66. Clancier, Philippe 2009 Les bibliothèques en Babylonie dans la deuxième moitié du Ier millénaire av. J.-C. Ugarit, Münster. Clancier, Philippe; Joannès, Francis; Rouillard, Pierre & Tenu, Aline 2005 Autour de Polanyi: vocabulaires, théories et modalités des échanges (Colloques de la Maison archéo­logie & ethno­ logie 1). René-Ginouvès, Paris.

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Dalley, Stephanie 2013 The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dijk, Johannes J. van 1983 Lugal ud me-lám-bi nir-gál: le récit épique et didactique des Travaux de Ninurta, du Deluge et de la Nouvelle Creation, 2 vols. Brill, Leiden. Durand, Jean-Marie 1993 ‘Le mytho­logème du combat entre le dieu de l’orage et la mer en Mésopotamie’, Mari: annales de recherches interdisciplinaires 7: 41–61. Foster, Benjamin R. (trans.) 2005 Before the Muses: An Antho­logy of Akkadian Literature. CDL Press, Bethesda. George, Andrew R. 2002 (ed. and trans.) Babylonian Topo­graphical Texts (Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 40). Peeters, Leuven. 2003 (ed.) The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 2 vols. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2011 (ed.) Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection. CDL Press, Bethesda. Joannès, Francis 2011 ‘L’écriture publique du pouvoir à Babylone sous Nabuchodonosor II’, in Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess & Joachim Marzahn (eds), Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident. De Gruyter, Berlin: 113–20. Kessler, Karlheinz 2004 ‘Urukäische Familien versus babylonische Familien: Die Namengebung in Uruk, die Degradierung der Kulte von Eanna und der Aufstieg des Gottes Anu’, Altorientalische Forschungen 31: 237–62. Lambert, Wilfrid G. 2013 Babylonian Creation Myths. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Roth, Martha T. 1995 Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Scholars Press, Atlanta. Schaudig, Hans Peter 2001 Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros des Großen. Ugarit, Münster.

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament Alessandro Catastini Sapienza University of Rome

A bstract –

If Babylon played a vital role in the history of the people of Israel, it had no less importance from the point of view of the literary traditions of the Old Testament. Babylon is at the heart of many mythical elaborations, such as the episode of the Tower of Babel or the patriarchal traditions, where, starting with Abraham, ties with Mesopotamia are constantly maintained. However, Babylon is also the subject of invective by the prophets as well as God’s instrument to punish his own people. In this contribution, we try to understand the cultural substratum of a series of traditions of Babylon, which may even appear contradictory.

Historical Framework The large-scale historical upheavals mentioned in the Old Testament in reference to Bābel may essentially be traced back to the Neo-Babylonian era and the Chaldean dynasty that achieved supremacy in Mesopotamia following the decline in Assyrian power.1 The Assyrians had conquered Babylon, but, from the eighth century bc onwards, it began to present many problems in terms of autonomy. Tiglatpileser  III (744–727) had to deal with the situation there precisely when the Chaldean component managed to set itself up effectively as an antagonist to Assyrian power. Tiglatpileser then had to face the states of Bit Ammukani, Bit Shilani, Bit Bakkuri, and Bit Yakini and, in the wake of his successes, he then declared himself king of Babylon; his successor, Shalmanassar V (727–722), took on the same rank as did Sargon II (721–705). Nevertheless, Sargon  II had to face the Chaldean tribes, which had united under the command of Marduk-apla-iddina and were allied with the Kingdom of Elam. The Chaldean question in Babylon continConcerning the following historical framework, please see Liverani 2014, 475–553. 1 

ued to hold weight throughout the subsequent reign of Sennacherib (704–681) who, following an extenuating series of clashes with the Chaldeans, razed the city to the ground (689). His son, Esarhaddon (681–689) kept the Babylonian element firmly under control and arranged that the relevant royal title would be borne only by his elder son, Shamash-shum-ukin (669–649), while the younger, Assurbanipal (668–626), was to succeed his father. The attempt misfired and Shamash-shum-ukin perished in his palace during the clash in Babylon and was succeeded by a certain Kandalanu (648–627). This upheaval ultimately led to Nabopolassar (625–605) being acknowledged as the effective king of Babylon. In 610, he gained the upper hand over the last Assyrian monarch, Asshur-uballit thanks to an alliance with the king of the Medes, Cyaxares. The Babylonian empire, at that stage, extended throughout Mesopotamia and the Chaldean dynasty was, by now, firmly established. The subsequent king, Nebuchadnezzar (604–562), brought about the event that, together with the tradition of the exodus from Egypt, constitutes one of the cornerstones on which the biblical authors centred aspects of a political, historical, and religious nature: the taking of Jerusalem in 586, with the consequent exile to Babylon of the monarch and the ruling class from the Kingdom of Judea. Events may be summarized as follows. In 605, the last year of Nabopolassar’s Babylonian reign, his son Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians at Karkemish, thus ensuring Babylonian supremacy throughout Syria-Palestine. The king of Judea, Yehoyaqim, initially submitted to Nebuchadnezzar, who, in the meantime, had succeeded his father on the throne; soon after, however, he rebelled in order to regain freedom for Judea. In 598 the Babylonian army attacked Jerusalem. During the

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 37–52 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127136

38 course of the siege, Yehoyaqim and his son, Yehoyakin, were among the adults initially deported to Babylonia. Zedekiah, Yehoyakin’s uncle, was nominated regent over Judea, but he also attempted to rebel. In a military campaign that lasted from 588–586, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and deported the surviving members of its ruling class.

Alessandro Catastini may be considered from this viewpoint, despite being a part of the first section of the prophet’s book: the return from exile is foretold, along with the death of the king of Babylon. Isaiah’s participation in an episode concerning a Babylonian embassy to Ezechia, king of Judea is described; this fact is recounted in ii Kings 20. 12–19 and in the parallel text Is. 39:

Zedekiah was captured after attempting to flee and was forced to witness the killing of his children; he was then blinded and taken off to Babylon, after which, there is no further mention of him (ii Kings 25. 5–7). Instead, his grandson, Yehoyakin was let out of prison and given a high-ranking position at the Babylonian court (ii Kings 25. 27–30 = Jer. 52. 9–11). Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, son of Safan, was established as ruler of Judea, but during the ‘seventh month’, Ishmael, son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of royal descent, came to Gedaliah and killed him (ii Kings 25. 22–25 = Jer. 52. 31–34).

1 At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of his illness and recovery. 2 Hezekiah received the envoys gladly and showed them what was in his storehouses — the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine olive oil — his entire armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. 3 Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, ‘What did those men say, and where did they come from?’ ‘From a distant land’, Hezekiah replied. ‘They came to me from Babylon’. 4 The prophet asked, ‘What did they see in your palace?’ ‘They saw everything in my palace’, Hezekiah said. ‘There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them’. 5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord Almighty: 6 The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. 7 And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon’. 8 ‘The word of the Lord you have spoken is good’, Hezekiah replied. For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my lifetime’.

The Biblical Point of View There is a twofold approach in the way the prophets outline Babylon’s political role. On the one hand, the Babylonian empire is the oppressor, forcing Judea into complete submission and deportation, while, on the other, it is hailed as an instrumentum Dei to punish Judea for its sins. This second position may be found within a sub-division into factions: one is philo-Babylonian, while the other is philo-Egyptian.2 Egyptian control of the area, including the kingdom of Judea, had declined in 609 following the Battle of Karkemish and the Prophet Jeremiah, at this point, becomes a great supporter of Babylonian supremacy,3 even opposing the priesthood of Jerusalem (Jer. 25. 1–14). The plea for submission to the empire is a Leitmotiv in the book, and the invective against Babylon in chapter 50 may be attributed to a late tradition that was foreign to Jeremiah. Ezekiel also considers Babylonian intervention to be a just punishment for the sons of Israel, a ‘race of rebels’ (Ez. 12. 1–13; 17. 11–16; 21. 23–32). Instead, it is Isaiah who takes a stance against Babylonian oppression in passages that are subsequent to the actual era in which the prophet was active. Instances such as Is. 13 and 14 2 

Liverani 2005, 188–89.

Alt 1959, 129–37; Lemke 1966, 45–50; Fensham 1982, 53–65; Aitken 1984, 25–63; Perdue & Kovacs 1984; Seitz 1985, 78–97; Sisson 1986, 429–44; Anderson 1998, 1–13; Garbini 1991, 7–22; Kunin, 2003, 699–706; Leuchter 2008; Thelle 2009, 187–232; Thelle 2015, 77–94; Crouch 2017. 3 

In this case, the prophecy of exile carries out an antimonarchical function towards a king who had nevertheless received a positive judgement from the authors of Kings (ii Kings 18. 3–8). To return to the perspective of being liberated from the yoke of exile in Babylon, a further prophecy, which was of course subsequent to the chrono­logical collocation of the prophet (between the eighth and seventh centuries bc), occurs in Micah 4. 10: Writhe in agony, Daughter of Zion, like a woman in labour, for now you must leave the city to camp in the open field. You will go to Babylon; there you will be rescued. There the Lord will redeem you out of the hand of your enemies.

In the Book of Daniel, the circumstances of the prophet at the Babylonian court are recounted in the style of the Diaspora Tale,4 where the Jew distinguishes himself before 4 

Meinhold 1975, 306–24; Meinhold 1976, 72–93.

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3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament the foreign kings as a model of virtue and similar cases occur for instance with Joseph, Esther, and Ahasuerus.

Mesopotamian Literature in the Old Testament Apart from the references to Babylon in the Old Testament, it is interesting to notice how the culture linked to it has been given some interpretative space by the biblical authors. The use of Assyrian-Babylonian literary frameworks in the Old Testament plays a preeminent role and may be inserted into an ideo­logical approach based on priesthood, while the tradition that attributed the patriarchs with a Mesopotamian background may be viewed as more markedly political. In the opinion of an extensive number of scholars, the creation myth, as it stands in the first chapter of Genesis can be traced back to a source which, following the categorizations postulated in the traditional theory of the sources, is defined as ‘priestly’.5 In actual fact, in accordance with the current state of research, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to disregard excessive authorial or redactional fragmentation of the biblical authors.6 From a personal point of view, I feel that it is more honest and productive to conceive of an investigation that takes into account the possibility of an ultimately unitary framework: that is to say, it is necessary to ask whether the apparent internal lack of consistency in a biblical book should not take second place to the conception of a work that is in any case organized in accordance with an author’s plan.7 Quite apart from the traditional meaning that has normally been attributed to the definition of ‘priestly’ in the field of Old Testament critical studies, its use when speaking of Genesis 1 is nevertheless fitting. The tone attributed to God and the characterization that arises from this, so far removed from anything even vaguely human (as instead will be the case in the chapters that immediately follow), contribute quite significantly to the accurate evocation of a priest-like ambience. This has been pointed out, just as the aspects in this chapter that may be traced to Mesopotamian literature have also been a matter of focus for some time.8 5  6 

See for example Soggin 1997, 15–21. Catastini 2001c.

See also the stance taken by Sacchi 1987, 65–86 and the humorous Clines 1998, 830–39. 7 

For an overview of the matter, Kraus 1969, 302–14 is still valid, and for the crucial role played by H. Gunkel, pp. 341–67. The funda-

8 

The presence of the deity Tiamat has been ascertained by means of the term tehôm in Gen. 1. 2, but it is also necessary to acknowledge, in this presence, the dignity of ‘reading recognition’,9 which goes well beyond an episodic, fortuitous utilization.10 The literary reference to Tiamat and the myth of Enuma eliš11 has, at times, been rejected as it is held to be impossible that the Hebrew term tehôm could constitute a loanword from a ‘de-personification’ of the name of the Akkadian deity. If the term can be traced to a common Semitic source, it seems unlikely that a link may be found between the Tiamat in Enuma eliš and the tehôm in Gen. 1. 2.12 In any case, the name ti’āmtum> tâmtum denotes the sea, or the ocean, so that, in terms of a common root, the same meaning should apply to tehôm.13 Backing this up, I would add that Gen. 1. 2 itself presents confirmation in the parallelism ‘darkness was over the face of the tehôm // while a wind (rûaḥ) from God swept (√rḥp) over the face of the waters’. The mention of God’s rûaḥ may be linked to the divine prerogative of agitating the waters by means of a spirit, for which the Hebrew term also includes the meaning of ‘wind’: when this sweeps (meraḥefet) over the oceans, it thus affirms its lordship over them. The hypothesis has been advanced that Yahweh’s rûaḥ may form a parallel with the mummu mentioned in Enuma eliš (cf. i. 4), which conveys ‘an abstract notion of creativity and dynamism’, as well as the fact that ‘the reference to rûaḥ in Gen 1. 2 may be a deliberate attempt on the part of the biblical author to transfer the concept of mummu from Ee I, 4 into his own creation account’.14 Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that mummu and rûaḥ are connected mental Gunkel 1895 should also be mentioned (as should Klatt 1969 and, for a more recent evaluation, the studies collected in Scurlock & Beal (eds) 2013). There is a further worthwhile overview in Prato 2013a and Prato 2013b, respectively on pages 41–61 and 95–109. Regarding the pan-Babylonian controversy, see Lehmann 1994. 9 

On this definition see Nencioni 1967.

An excellent work on the links between Mesopotamian culture and the Old Testament, especially in relation to the motif for the killing of the dragon, is that by Batto 1992, the first chapter of which also manages to successfully bring focus to the studies comparing Old Testament, Canaanite, and Mesopotamian literary schemes. For a comparison between the biblical and Babylonian creation myths, see pages 41–101.

10 

Among which the following should be mentioned: Gunkel 1895, 115; Heidel 1951, 82–140. Among the comments, see at least Skinner, 1910, ix–xi, 17, 40–50; Speiser, 1964, 9–13; Soggin 1997, 29. 11 

12  13  14 

See Tsumura 1989, 52–56. See Waschke 1995, 567. Frahm 2013, 113.

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respectively to the negative component in Enuma eliš — that is, Tiamat — and to the positive one in the biblical account — Yahweh. This being so, the correspondence between the agents of the action should rather bear in mind what is expressed in Enuma eliš i. 105–10: Anu formed and produced the four winds, He put them in his hand, ‘Let my son play!’ He fashioned dust, he made a storm bear it up, He caused a wave and it roiled Tiamat, Tiamat was roiled, churning day and night, The gods, finding no rest, bore the brunt of each wind.15

At this point, it has to be clarified that the comparative question may indeed be carried out on the basis of linguistic loanwords or phono­logical equivalences, but not only in this way, as it would, at the very least, amount to a priori negation of literary credit towards the author of the text; what we are dealing with here, specifically, are literary texts and religious traditions. Therefore, it becomes necessary to take into account the manner in which the literary modules have been reutilized within the various narrative structures. In the monotheistic re-elaboration of the biblical author, the wind is unique and belongs to God, who does as he pleases with it. This wind ‘swept’ over the waters: meraḥefet comes from a root that indicates convulsive movement;16 the intensive form (but leaving aside the Masoretic vocalization, a causative form could also be put forward) is sufficiently eloquent with regard to the effect produced on the surface of the waters, that is, a disturbance that is the equivalent of what the four winds created by Anu provoke in Tiamat. Having become even more chaotic following the confrontation with the divine wind, an order consistent with a series of separations is imposed on the waters in Gen. 1. 217 between light and darkness, the upper and lower waters, land and sea; night and day, followed by the cycle of the seasons, days, and years; the stars are necessary for mapping out the passing of time. Then comes the creation of living creatures, including man, who in turn is split into two genders. Plants and herbs are also separated ‘according to their species’. Lastly, man is given lordship over the whole of creation, and is urged by God to be fruitful and multiply.

In extremely succinct terms, it may be said that Enuma eliš recounts the defeat of the primordial chaos and the setting up of a cosmic order wherein time is regulated by the stars. While it does not make much sense to compare the two texts in such a way as to show a close correspondence between them, underlying similarities are nevertheless noticeable in the overall structure: the starting point is chaos and, following an instance of theomachy, cosmic order is established. In this perspective, it makes even less sense to argue over the derivation of the noun tehôm from the proper noun Tiamat; as has already been observed, it is a common lexical item which on the Akkadian side gave rise to a personification. The fact is, rather, that in Gen. 1. 2 the biblical author wanted to use the Hebrew equivalent tehôm by framing it in parallel with mayim, ‘waters’, and then stating that God caused a separation between the two (verses 7–8); since tehôm and mayim are equivalents in the parallelism in verse 2, the separation of the waters corresponds to a separation of the tehôm. In this way, the author succeeds in bringing about in the reader/listener a sense of recognition capable of evoking the theomachy in Enuma eliš with the consequent reordering of the universe along the lines laid down by Marduk following the dismemberment of Tiamat. In such an interpretative context, the use of tehôm should therefore be classified as an instance of ‘allusive art’.18 Subsequent chapters also touch on a theme that is well represented in Assyrian-Babylonian literature, that is, the human condition of mortality; in this sense, references to the myth of Adapa and Gilgamesh’s encounter with Utnapištim are obvious. In particular, the first of the two myths shows an affinity with the events surrounding Adam: the human acquisition of knowledge shows itself to be incompatible with the mortal state, otherwise man would be on a par with a god.19 As in the epic of Gilgamesh,20 on the other hand, the process of a return to youth is entrusted to the consumption of a particular plant. Adam and Eve have been refused immortality, but it could be achieved once again by eating the fruit of the tree of life, which is guarded in the Garden of Eden and is now off-limits for humankind in 18 

See Talon 2005, 37; for the English translation: Foster 2005, 350–401: 357 (with an extensive biblio­graphy).

15 

16  The remaining attestations in the biblical corpus are significant in this sense: Dt. 32. 11 and Jer. 23. 9. 17 

Westermann 2004, 8–9; Beauchamp 1969; Prato 2013b, 100–01.

See Pasquali 1968, 273–82.

See the exhaustive outline by Jiménez Zamudio 2005, 173–200 (with extensive biblio­graphy); see also Burrows 1928, 1–24: 24; Jacobsen 1939, 201–03; Pedersen 1955, 244; Foster 1974, 351; Shea 1977, 34; Prato 2013a, 54–55.

19 

20 

For the text: George 2003.

41

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament the wake of their disobedience to God’s will. In both cases the extension of life is due to the properties of a plant.21 In the account of the disobedience enacted towards God, with the consequent ejection from the Garden of Eden, the biblical author once again uses Mesopotamian literary themes as a means of expressing theo­logical concepts. Eden itself recalls the mythical Dilmun of Sumer in which Enki lies with his daughters and becomes guilty of a sin similar to Adam’s by eating the fruit of the trees created by the goddess Ninhursag.22 It is the goddess herself who, in order to put to rights the evil that the god has been condemned for, creates goddesses whose names correspond to the parts of Enki’s body. From the rib is created Nin.ti, the ‘goddess that enables life’, just as Eve is created from the same part of Adam’s body, that is to say, she who is destined to bring into being all future humanity (Gen. 3. 16, 20).

After Erra was calmed and took up his own abode, All the gods were gazing at his face, All the Igigi-gods and the Anunna-gods stood in awe, Erra made ready to speak, saying to all the gods: ‘Quiet, all of you learn what I have to say! ‘No doubt I intended evil in the bygone lapse, ‘I was angry and wanted to lay waste the people. ‘Like a hireling, I took the lead ram from the flock, ‘Like one who did not plant an orchard, I was quick to cut it down, ‘Like a scorcher of the earth, I slew indiscriminately good and evil. ‘One would not snatch a carcass from the jaws of a ravaging lion, ‘So too no one can reason where one is in a frenzy’.

Another significant parallel may be found in Gen. 11, which contains the episode relating to the tower of Babel. In this regard, it will be remembered that the following is recounted in Enuma eliš vi. 47–72: The Anunna-gods made ready to speak, | To Marduk their lord they said, | ‘Now, Lord, you who have liberated us, | 50. What courtesy may we do you? | We will make a shrine, whose name will be a byword, | Your chamber that shall be our stopping place, we shall find rest therein. | We shall lay out the shrine, let us set up its emplacement, | When we come (to visit you), we shall find rest therein’. | 55. When Marduk heard this, | His features glowed brightly, like the day, | ‘Then make Babylon the task that you requested, | Let its brickwork be formed, build high the shrine’. | The Anunna-gods set to with hoes, | 60. One (full) year they made its bricks. When the second year came, | They raised the head of the Esagila, the counterpart to Apsu, | They built the upper ziggurat of Apsu, | For Anu-Enlil-Ea they founded his […] and dwelling. | 65. Majestically he took his seat before them, | Its pinnacles were facing toward the base of Esharra. | After they had done the work of Esagila, | All the Anunna gods devised their own shrines. | The three hundred Igigigods of heaven and the six hundred of Apsu all convened. | 70. The Lord, on the Exalted Dais, which they built as his dwelling, | Seated the gods his fathers for a banquet, | This is Babylon, your place of dwelling.27

In the Babylonian myth Atra-Ḫasīs, men are created in order to carry out tasks that are useful for the gods so that they do not have to bother with them.23 Men rebelled against this, and their punishment consisted in the flood, from which a sole human24 survived, thanks to the intervention of the god Enki. Comparisons with the biblical account of the flood have increased and there is no point in going into them here as other studies give an overview.25 However, it is interesting to notice how the literary modules crop up again, despite occurring in different works. Indeed, as far as what is recounted in Gen. 6. 5–9. 18, it should be borne in mind how Yahweh himself, at the conclusion of the catastrophic event in Gen. 8. 21, concedes: ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.’ This promise, halfway between the disconsolate and the penitent, recalls the words that the god Nergal the destroyer (Erra) utters in Erra v. 1–12, after the destruction of the world has taken place:26 Gilgamesh, xi. 283–93. According to the edition, George 2003, i, 721–23. 21 

22 

Cagni 1994, 13–46.

Atra-Ḫasīs, i. 204–43. In the Lambert edition, Millard 1969; see also Pettinato 1971, 74–81.

23 

See Van Dijk (ed.) 1983; Lambert & Millard 1969, 88–105 (tab. III); George 2003, i, 703–15 (XI, 9–180). 24 

25  26 

See Prato 2013a, 55–57.

Translated from Cagni 1969, 122–23.

The biblical author shows that he is referring to this episode, but he overturns both the outcome and the characters: in the Mesopotamian poem all the characters are gods, while in Gen 11 Yahweh confronts men. The ‘second Babel’ in Enuma eliš functions as a pointer to the Babel in the biblical text, while the summit of Esagila, opposite Apsu’ is mirrored in the ‘tower that reaches to the heavens’ (Gen. 11. 4).28 All this troubles 27 

Foster 2005, 384–85.

See Speiser 1955–1956, 317–23; Westermann 2004, 81; Couffignal 1983, 63; Neveu 1984, 115; Bost 1985, 46–47, 53; Ross 1981, 123; Uehlinger 1990, 246–53; Batto 1992, 85–88. 28 

42 Yahweh, who thus gives rise to ‘Babel, where the Lord confused all the tongues of the earth’. Into another context near the Mesopotamian area (Ur of the Chaldeans), and therefore in Babylon, the biblical author introduces the patriarchal traditions subsequent to the flood in Gen. 11. 31: ‘Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans’. Abraham and his wife Sarah come from the Mesopotamian area, and the subsequent patriarchs Isaac and Jacob will have to find their wives in this same area for their legitimate offspring (Gen. 24. 2–4; 29.  28–30). The link with Babylonian culture continues to be evident in the narration, but it is necessary here to work out why, in the first thirty-five chapters of Genesis, the Mesopotamian component is present to such a pervasive extent. For some time, there has been a clash between scholars who wish to set the dates for the writing of the biblical texts more recently, and those who maintain more traditionalist positions; rather inappropriately the definitions applied to these two groups are the ‘minimalists’ and the ‘maximalists’.29 For the former — with whom this author is more in sympathy — the patriarchal traditions may be collocated in a postexile era and the focus on Abraham’s Mesopotamian origins has a precise function in such a historical context. Abraham came from the Mesopotamian area just like the exiles ‘returning’ from Babylon; the formation of the tradition concerning him aimed at legitimizing these returning exiles, who thus found themselves travelling back along the same route as their ancestor.30 Above all, in this way the political and religious traditions the exiled brought with them were legitimized. It is in this re-elaborative context of their original traditions that the use of Mesopotamian literary modules in Genesis needs to be collocated, with a cosmogonic myth referring to an instance of theomachy following which order was brought to a chaotic universe. At this point it becomes necessary to examine the issue of theomachy in such a way as to prepare the ground for a discussion of the redeployment of Mesopotamian traditions in the Old Testament as a whole. It therefore becomes necessary to refer to a model of literary structure that I identified some time ago,31 Among the former, the following names occur: G. Garbini, T. L. Thompson, K. Whitelam, N. P. Lemche, P. R. Davies; while among the latter, please see Halpern 1999. 29 

30  31 

Garbini 1988, 144–47; Liverani 2005, 256–64. Catastini 1988, 17–49.

Alessandro Catastini which manifests in an extremely paradigmatic form in the Hittite myth of Illuyankas.32 This myth is attested to in two versions, defined respectively ‘old’ and ‘new’.33 The latter presents the following scheme: 1. the Dragon defeated the Storm God and deprived him of his eyes and heart; 2. the Storm God attempted to avenge himself; 3. he possessed the poor man’s daughter and generated a son; when this son grew up, he married the Dragon’s daughter; 4. the Storm God instructed his son as to what to do; the son asked his wife and the Dragon for the heart and they gave it to him; he asked for the eyes and they gave him those as well; the Storm God got back his heart and his eyes; 5. when he started the duel with the Dragon, he had almost succeeded in vanquishing it; 6. the son of the Storm God shouted out: ‘Do not spare me!’; the Storm God killed the dragon and his son; 7. the Hittite new year, the Purulli, is celebrated. It must now be pointed out that the name Illuyankas means ‘dragon, serpent’; the two contenders’ connotations denote the theme of lordship over the waters; the symbolic representation of Hittite royalty can be recognized in the myth.34 The literary structure of this myth is recThe fact that Illuyankas is a Hittite myth should not give rise to excessive cultural circumspection in terms of the narrative structure underpinning it: this is borne out by its redeployment in the myth of Zeus and Typhon (Apollodorus, Bibl. i. 6. 3). In addition, in a series of articles, M. Liverani has demonstrated that certain stylistic features occurred throughout the ancient Near East: see for example Liverani 1973. 32 

On the Illuyankas myth, see Pecchioli Daddi & Polvani (eds) 1990, 39–55. 33 

‘Both versions begin ex abrupto with the defeat of the heavenly god of storm, who is the principal deity of the Hittite pantheon, by the dragon, who is designated only with the common name illuyanka, which in fact means “dragon, serpent”. The reasons for the clash are not clarified, but, given the characteristics of the protagonists, it is obvious that they are connected to the struggle for control over the waters, which are so necessary for agriculture: the storm god is indeed the lord of rain water and the dragon is the custodian of underground waters’ (Pecchioli Daddi & Polvani (eds) 1990, 40–41; the italics are mine). Furthermore, ‘This mythical event, which opens with Hupašiya’s choice and closes with the attribution of control over the waters to the Hittite sovereign, may […] be read as a symbolic representation of the institution of Hittite royalty’ (Pecchioli Daddi & Polvani (eds) 1990, 43). 34 

43

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament ognizable in the account in i Samuel 11, which concerns the invasion by the Ammonite king, Nachash, against the Israeli cities in Transjordan.35 Saul, the first king of Israel, manages to form a coalition of cities in order to confront their enemy: by comparing the organization of the Hittite myth and the biblical story, two orders of correspondences of remarkable interest are obtained: The agents of the drama: a. the Storm God || the Israeli cities b. Illuyankas, the dragon || the Ammonite king Nachash c.  the son of the Storm God || Saul The phases of the action: a. initial conflict b.  moments of difficulty for the hero, with bodily mutilation c.  reconstruction of physical integrity by means of a helper d.  defeat of the enemy e. celebration To sum up: chaos, represented by the dragon/serpent, threatens and momentarily undermines the Storm God, who is the divinely legitimized figurehead of order — that is, the monarchy. The god’s revenge by means of a helper (which, in this case hides the person of an earthly sovereign), is propaganda for the latter’s right to regality. That this framework may also be applied to Old Testament narrative is at this stage a given;36 the presence of this framework in i Sam. 11 is clear and is further confirmed by the enemy king’s name, Nachash (nāḥāš), which explicitly recalls the name of the monster that traditionally brings about chaos, that is, the ‘serpent’ or ‘dragon’. Ultimately, the episode centring on the Ammonite invasion by Nachash provides independent justification for, and is in accordance with an approach proper to the ancient Near East, the rise of the institution of monarchy in Israel.37 35 

Catastini 1988.

See Wakeman 1973; Grottanelli 1979, 39–63; Day 1985; Miller 2014, 225–45; Bekkum et al. (eds) 2017.

36 

In addition, it is this ‘Near Eastern’ approach that gives rise to the differentiating gap from a structural norm in the story that may recall those of the judges Gideon (Jdg. 6–8) and Jephthah (Jdg. 19–20); in 19. 29–30 the theme of dismemberment also recurs: consider the episode of Samuel who dismembers a couple of oxen in i Sam. 11. 7.

A more extended application of the literary mytho­ logical framework conveyed by the Illuyankas myth underlies the narration of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.38 Already in the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel an interpretation of it is provided based on the symbolism of the waters and the monsters that reside in them: Isaiah 51

9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake, as in days of old, The generations of long ago! Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, Who pierced the dragon? 10 Was it not you who dried up the sea, The waters of the great deep; Who made the depths of the sea a way For the redeemed to cross over?

Ezekiel 29

3 speak, and say, Thus says the Lord God: I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, The great dragon sprawling in the midst of its channels, Saying, ‘My Nile is my own; I made it for myself’. 4 I will put hooks in your jaws, And make the fish of your channels Stick to your scales. I will draw you up from your channels, With all the fish of your channels Sticking to your scales. 5 I will fling you into the wilderness, you And all the fish of your channels; You shall fall in the open field, And not be gathered and buried. To the animals of the earth And to the birds of the air I have given you as food.

It is evident that in Ex. 1–15 there is a deliberate reference to the myth of the serpent-shaped sea monster.39 Take, first of all, the termino­logy that enables an immediate appreciation of the monster. The rod that transforms into a serpent in Ex. 4.  3–5,  7.  9 is necessary to show that Moses speaks in Yahweh’s name: the term used in this context to define the reptile is nāḥāš. During the stand-off between Moses and Aaron, and the Pharaoh’s magicians in Ex. 7. 10–12, the participants’ rods transform into tannînîm, that is, the sea creatures whose creation is described in Gen. 1. 21.

37 

38 

Catastini 2001b.

See the discussion in Day 1985, 96–101; in addition: Kloos 1986, 155–57; Batto 1992, 102–27; Janzen 1997, 191. 39 

44 The victory of Moses and Aaron’s tannin over those of the pharaoh’s magicians introduces the theme of the theomachy between the storm god and the sea monster, but with a difference compared to the characters of the antagonists. While the pharaoh is easily associated with the monster, given his connection with the waters of the Nile (in Isaiah and Ezekiel, as has been seen, this symbolism is explicitly referenced), Moses and his brother Aaron had also taken on a physiognomy connected with the role of ‘dragons/serpents’, since Yahweh had provided them with a weapon with this monster’s features. In 7. 10–12, therefore, what unfolds is a battle between two sides — the pharaoh on the one hand, and Moses and Aaron on the other — that both may be perceived as ‘dragons/serpents’ as they are both connected with the tannînîm. Furthermore, the relationship of all the contenders with the waters is expressed repeatedly:40 the pharaoh orders that male Jews are to be thrown into the waters of the Nile (Ex. 1. 22); Moses is entrusted to the waters of the Nile (Ex. 2. 3); Moses settles in Midian and comes to do battle at the well, emerging as the victor (Ex. 2. 17); several of the plagues inflicted on Egypt are of an aquatic nature; once out of Egypt ‘So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea’ (Ex. 13. 18); with his rod, Moses divides the waters of the Red Sea in order to let the Jews pass through it; and again with his rod, Moses closes the waters so as to submerge the pharaoh and his army (Ex. 14. 26–30); the song of the sea is declaimed (Ex. 15); in Ex. 15. 22–27, Moses manages to obtain water in the desert. From these events, it can be seen that not only Moses, but the whole of Israel is framed in relation to the element of water, an element that consequently is shown to be positive and welcoming.

Alessandro Catastini parallel represents a clear instance of keeping to the framework of the myth of Illuyankas, with which there is a basic connection with the Canaanite area: the structures of the mytho­logical Ugaritic poems are, in this sense, significant. It now becomes necessary to establish the distinctive features of the Mesopotamian and Canaanite models in the instances of theomachy mentioned so far. If one considers what could be defined as the ‘Illuyankas framework’, it is immediately possible to identify the hero’s phase of difficulty, when he is initially defeated by his adversary, as well as being partially deprived of his powers, only to recover them thanks to the feminine component in the monster’s family circle. In the Enuma eliš model, the action does not include moments of difficulty — and still less of mutilation — for the hero, Marduk; additionally, the theomachy represents the premise underpinning the ordering of chaos by means of bolts and bars (Enuma eliš iv. 139; v. 10). This digression on the literary models of theomachy is necessary in order to appreciate an instance of redeployment concerning the historical memory of Babylon in the Old Testament. The case that will now be examined is that narrated in the book of Nehemiah; but it is necessary, first of all, to fill in the background, narrated in ii Kings 24. 18–25. 1–7, 18, 21,41 when Babylon bursts into Jewish history with an indelible event: 24. 18 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 19 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. 20 Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 25. 1 And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem, and laid siege to it; they built siegeworks against it all around. 2 So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. 3 On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine became so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. 4 Then a breach was made in the city wall; the king with all the soldiers fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans were all around the city. They went in the direction of the Arabah. 5 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; all his army was scat-

In considering the phases of the action, it can be seen that there are some particularly remarkable components in the organization of the myth of Illuyankas. First of all, the hero — that is, Moses — finds himself in danger on several occasions (Ex. 1. 22, 2. 3, 2. 15, 2. 17). First among them is being cast away into the Nile as a baby (Ex. 1. 22), when he is placed in a position of complete vulnerability, a condition that corresponds to that of the storm god when Illuyankas deprives him of his eyes and his heart; just as the eyes and the heart are recovered thanks to the intercession of Illuyankas’s daughter, so too is Moses’s safety restored when he is saved by the daughter of his antagonist, the pharaoh. This narrative 40 

Catastini 2001b, 85–87.

41 

Concerning this, see Abate 2008, 207–17.

45

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament tered, deserting him. 6 Then they captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, who passed sentence on him. 7 They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, then put out the eyes of Zedekiah; they bound him in fetters and took him to Babylon. […] 18 The captain of the guard took the chief priest Seraiah, the second priest Zephaniah, and the three guardians of the threshold […] 21 The king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah went into exile out of its land.

The king of Babylon, therefore, is portrayed as the monster in a context that reutilizes a theme that is specific to the ‘Illuyankas framework’, that is, a moment of difficulty accompanied by mutilation: the king of Judea is left without his descendants and deprived of his sight. Nevertheless, the ending of the account remains open: even if the legitimate king who has been deposed, Yehoyakin, is saved from his fate by Nebuchadnezzar himself,42 the books in Kings end with the victory of the monster. This conclusion to the narrative fits in admirably with the anti-monarchical stance in the block Samuel-Kings. The books in Chronicles, on the other hand, fit in deliberately with Jeremiah’s philo-­ Babylonian outlook; it is written in ii Chr. 36: 11 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. 12 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself before the prophet Jeremiah who spoke from the mouth of the Lord. 13 He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God; he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. […] 20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, ‘until the land had made up for its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years’.

ii Kings 25. 27–30: ‘27 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twentyseventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison; 28 he spoke kindly to him, and gave him a seat above the other seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. 29 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes. Every day of his life he dined regularly in the king’s presence. 30 For his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion every day, as long as he lived.’

In the verses 22–23 that follow, Jeremiah’s prediction is necessary so as to present the character of Cyrus, the Persian king, positively: 22 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfilment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: 23 ‘Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up’.

The account in Chronicles therefore concludes on a positive note,43 the salvation of Judah and their cult is entrusted to the Persian king, who is described as an envoy from Yahweh.44 Chronicles comes across as a work that is favourable to Davidic ideo­logy: it is therefore natural that the foundation be laid for the reconstitution of the cult and prestige of the line of David. This state of affairs has a literary development due to another capable biblical author, of a clearly anti-monarchical position, that is, the composer of the so-called Memoirs of Nehemiah (Neh. 1–7; 12. 27–43; 13. 4–31).45 The framework of the struggle against the dragon is taken up again in such a way as to sanction the opposite of what was asserted in i Sam 11, that is, the end of the monarchy.46 The protagonist of the action is Nehemiah himself who, by means of a series of literary and mytho­ logical themes, is described as having the prerogatives of a king, and what is more, with definite echoes of the narrative structure in i Sam 1. 1; but precisely when he is called on to give an account of this possibility, the answer in Neh. 6. 5–8 is quite clear and unambiguous:47 5 In the same way Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand. 6 In it was written, ‘It is reported among the nations — and Geshem also says it — that you and the Jews intend to rebel; that is why you are building the wall; and according to this report you wish to become their king. 7 You have also set up prophets to proclaim in Jerusalem concerning you, “There is a king in Judah!” And now it will be

42 

The apocryphal iii Ezra, 1. 50–2. 4, does not substantially differ in terms of content.

43 

44  45  46  47 

As indeed he is, in the eyes of Isaiah 45.

See the status questionis in Kellermann 1967, 76–88. See Catastini 2001a.

Catastini 2001a, 169–78.

46

Alessandro Catastini reported to the king according to these words. So come, therefore, and let us confer together’. 8 Then I sent to him, saying, ‘No such things as you say have been done; you are inventing them out of your own mind’.

The words in v. 8 leave no room for doubt regarding the author’s position in the book. What remains to be done now is to see how the model of the struggle fits in with the monster. In the book of Nehemiah the evocation of the image of chaos48 provides a frame for the situation of objective disorder that is described: the city walls are broken down, and its doors destroyed by fire; the community has been scattered and lacks any factor that might bring about aggregation; the dangers represented by Nehemiah’s enemies, who oppose his reconstruction work. Within this set of factors, waters are continually mentioned, and the function of literary allusion is obvious. First of all, let us consider this passage — Neh. 2. 11–15 — with its decidedly evocative tone: 11 So I came to Jerusalem and was there for three days. 12 Then I got up during the night, I  and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode. 13 I went out by night by the Valley Gate past the Dragon’s Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. 14 Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool; but there was no place for the animal I was riding to continue. 15 So I went up by way of the canal by night and inspected the wall. Then I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned.

The passage proceeds in accordance with the framework ‘Leave on the cart, for the desert’, taking this definition from a study carried out by M. Liverani.49 In this type of narration what is described is a king’s moment of difficulty; he is forced to flee his kingdom and take with him only what is essential for survival. In Nehemiah’s case, this takes the form of a ride on horseback (v. 12) which he uses not as an accessory to his authority, but merely as a means of transport, which may be deduced from the use of a complement (b-) rather than the more imperious preposition ‘above’ (‘al). At v. 13 that mention of the ‘fountain of the Dragon’ (‘ên ha-tannîn), which Nehemiah moves towards, directly introduces the evocation of the struggle with the aquatic monster;50 this theme is taken up again in the subsequent

verse, where the phases of Nehemiah’s experience are developed in verses that include ‘the king’s swimming pool’. It may be said that the author of Nehemiah intended to provide an allusion that would create a parallel between the character of Nehemiah and the deity fighting against the dragon, who suffers a moment of difficulty (specifically, the moment when the Storm God’s eyes and heart are taken from him by the dragon Illuyankas). Nehemiah’s journey backwards, or rather the return from danger, is written down in the verse that immediately follows, v. 15: ‘I went up by way of the canal’, where the author once again uses aquatic symbolism (ba-naḥal). In chapter 3 of Nehemiah, the restoration of the walls is described, as well as the doors of Jerusalem. In v. 3 the theme of the waters appears again by means of the creatures that live in water, fish: ‘The sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars.’ The chaos of the waters is associated with the chaos of the walls (and here there is an obvious echo of ii Kings 25. 4: ‘Then the city wall was breached’) described in the chapter, which it is attempted to repair. It is mentioned several times that the doors have been provided with locks and bolts (Neh. 3. 3, 6, 13, 14, 15): once the myth of the waters has been recalled again, the construction of the doors and fixtures represents the re-establishment of order. There is an eloquent instance of this in Enuma eliš, where the god Marduk places a latch to contain the waters after the imprisonment of the monster, Tiamat:51 IV, 135. Then the Lord was inspecting her carcass, That he might divide the monstrous lump and fashion artful things. He split her in two, like a fish for drying. Half of her he set up and made as a cover, heaven. He stretched out the hide and assigned watchmen. 140. And ordered them not to let her waters escape. and again when the stars have been fixed:52 V, 5. After he had patterned the days of the year, He fixed the position of Neberu53 to mark the (stars’) relationships. Lest any make an error or go astray, He established the position(s) of Enlil and Ea in relation to it. He opened up gates on both (sides of her) ribs, 10. He made strong bolts to left and right.54 51  52 

48  49  50 

Foster 2005, 376. Foster 2005, 377.

Catastini 2001b, 74–82.

53 

See Ryle 1917, 167.

The two cosmic doors through which the sun passes in the morning and the evening.

Liverani 1972.

54 

Jupiter, Marduk’s star.

3. Traces of Babylon in the Old Testament A rather refined ‘aquatic’ reference may be seen in Neh. 7. 4: ‘Now the city was large and great, but there were few people in it, and the houses were not rebuilt.’ ‘Large and great’ (raḥavat yādayim) conveys precisely the desolation of Jerusalem. The expression occurs in Gen. 34. 21, Jdg. 18. 10, Is. 22. 18, 33. 1, and i Chr. 4. 40, with a reference to the land, bodies of water, in Is. 33. 21. In Neh. 7. 4 the image refers to Jerusalem, but there is a clear reference to Psalm 104 and the marine context in verses 25–26: 25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide (reḥav yādayim), creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. 26 There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

The psalm lists the works of creation and the reference to the sea is established precisely through the juxtaposition ‘desolation  / creeping things innumerable […] both great and small’. It may be that, in Neh 7. 4 the expression ‘large and great’ is used as a sort of oxymoron, whose transmissive element consists of the underlying idea of the waters. Furthermore, the tradition of Psalm 104. 25–26 continues to pass on the theme of chaotic danger connected with the mention of the Leviathan in v. 26. On the other hand, the assonance of the first term in the expression raḥavat yādayim with the monster Raḥab, which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament, must also be remembered.55 As has already been said, in narrating Nehemiah’s mission, the author attributes characteristics of royalty to the protagonist, only then to reject royalty itself in 6. 5–8. The allusions that I have so far highlighted concern the mytho­logy of the waters and the monsters that live in them. These allusions carry out the function of evoking the theomachy that is a symbolic representation of royalty. It can therefore be assumed that the reader was perfectly capable of grasping the implications scattered throughout by an author, whose refined literary techniques are still striking. Nevertheless, it needs to be borne in mind that, while in chapter 2 it is possible to catch the allusion to the fight against the monster of chaos — and the subsequent episodes where Nehemiah’s enemies are defeated show this even more — this sort of theomachy is incorporated into the context of the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem by a series of further allusions to water, as well as by approaches that recall the cos55 

See Kwakkel 2017, 77–89.

47 mogonic organization in Enuma eliš. As far as can be perceived, the author of The Memoirs of Nehemiah masterfully employed two literary structures predicated on the theme of theomachy. The enemy to be defeated remained the serpent/dragon, veiled in an oft-used symbolism; however, the function of the myth is twofold here, as are the literary structures. By means of the ‘Illuyankas framework’, the author intended to resolve an issue that had been introduced in ii Kings 27. 7, where the monster Nebuchadnezzar actuates the themes of mutilation: Zedekiah witnesses his own children being killed and then has his own eyes put out. The question of monarchy is resolved in The Memoirs of Nehemiah by simply denying that there is any king in Judea (Neh. 6. 8); in any case, the theme centring on theomachy was broadened by drawing on the Enuma eliš framework; that is, introducing the image of cosmogony and applying it to the rebuilding of Jerusalem. In conclusion then, within a sweeping literary vision, the biblical authors succeeded in skilfully assimilating the implications of Mesopotamian mytho­logical themes and redeploying them in the context of events in Israel.

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Works Cited Abate, Emma 2008 La fine del regno di Sedecia. Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Madrid. Aitken, Kenneth T. 1984 ‘The Oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah 50–51: Structures and Perspectives’, Tyndale Bulletin 35: 25–63. Alt, Albrecht 1959 ‘Die Deutung der Weltgeschichte im Alten Testament’, Zeitschrift für Theo­logie und Kirche 56: 129–37. Anderson, Jeff 1998 ‘The Metonymical Curse as Propaganda in the Book of Jeremiah’, Bulletin for Biblical Research 8: 1–13. Batto, Bernard F. 1992 Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition. Westminster John Knox, Louisville. Beauchamp, Paul 1969 Création et séparation: études exégétique du chapitre premier de la Genèse. Aubier Montaigne, Paris. Bekkum, Koert van; Dekker, Jaap; Kamp, Henk van de & Peels, Eric (eds) 2017 Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World. Brill, Leiden. Bost, Hubert 1985 Babel: du texte au symbole. Labor et fides, Geneva. Burrows, Eric 1928 ‘Tilmun, Bahrain, Paradise’, Orientalia 30: 1–24. Cagni, Luigi 1969 L’epopea di Erra. Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente. Università degli Studi di Roma, Rome. 1994 ‘Miti di origine, miti di caduta e presenza del femminino nella loro tradizione interpretativa: considerazioni sui dati della tradizione numerica e babilonese-assira’, in Gian Luigi Prato (ed.), Miti di origine, miti di caduta e presenza del femminino nella loro tradizione interpretative: XXXII settimana biblica nazionale. EDB, Bo­logna: 13–46. Catastini, Alessandro 1988 ‘4Q Sama: II. Nahash il `serpente’, Henoch 10: 17–49. 2001a ‘Giuda in epoca persiana’, in Atti del Seminario invernale ‘Il popolo del ritorno: l’epoca persiana e la Bibbia’ (Lucca, 27–30 gennaio 2000). Associazione laica di cultura biblica, Florence: 149–78. 2001b ‘Il mostro delle acque: riutilizzazioni bibliche della funzione di un mito’, Mediterraneo Antico 4: 71–89. 2001c ‘L’attribuzione letteraria degli scritti biblici’, Materia Giudaica 6: 16–27. Clines, David J. A. 1998 ‘New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und traditionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch’, in David Clines (ed.), On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967–1998, ii. Academic Press, Sheffield: 830–39. Couffignal, Robert 1983 ‘La tour de Babel: approches nouvelles de Genese xi, 1–9’, Revue Thomiste 83: 59–70. Crouch, Carly L. 2017 An Introduction to the Study of Jeremiah. T&T Clark, London.

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Day, John 1985 God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dijk, Jan J. A. van (ed. and trans.) 1983 Lugal Ud Me-Lám-bi Nir-Gál: le récit épique et didactique des Travaux de Ninurta, du Déluge et da la Nouvelle Création; texte, traduction et introduction, 2 vols. Brill, Leiden. Fensham, F. Charles 1982 ‘Nebukadrezzar in the Book of Jeremiah’, Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 10: 53–65. Foster, Benjamin R. 1974 ‘Wisdom and the Gods in the Ancient Mesopotamia’, Orientalia 43: 344–54. 1995 (trans.) From Distant Days: Myths, Tales and Poetry from Ancient Mesopotamia. CDL Press, Bethesda. 2005 (trans.) Before the Muses: An Antho­logy of Akkadian Literature, i: Archaic, Classical, Mature, 3rd edn. CDL Press, Bethesda. Frahm, Eckart 2013 ‘Creation and the Divine Spirit in Babel and Bible: Reflections on mummu in Enuma elish I, 4 and rûaḥ in Genesis  I:2’, in David  S. Vanderhoof & Abraham Winitzer (eds), Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 97–116. Garbini, Givanni 1988 History and Ideo­logy in Ancient Israel. SCM, London. 1991 ‘Letteratura e politica: consenso e dissenso nell’antico Israele’, in Cedant arma: letteratura, parole d’ordine e organizzazione del consenso nel mondo antico; incontri del Dipartimento [di Scienze dell’Antichità dell’Università di Pavia] IV, Pavia, 21 marzo 1991. New Press, Como: 7–22. George, Andrew R. (ed.) 2003 The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 2 vols. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Grottanelli, Cristiano 1979 ‘The Enemy King Is a Monster: A Biblical Equation’, Studi storico-religiosi 3: 39–63. 1999 Kings and Prophets: Monarchic Power, Inspired Leadership, Sacred Text in Biblical Narrative. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gunkel, Hermann 1895 Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. Halpern, Baruch 1999 ‘Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel’, in Philips V. Long (ed.), Israel’s Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historio­graphy. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 415–26. Haran, Menahem 2003 ‘The Place of the Prophecies against the Nations in the Book of Jeremiah’, in Shalom M. Paul & Robert Kraft (eds), Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls. Brill, Leiden: 699–706. Heidel, Alexander 1951 The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation, 2nd edn. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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Jacobsen, Thorkild 1930 ‘The Investiture and Anointing of Adapa in Heaven’, American Journal of Semitic Languages 46: 201–03. 1970 Towards the Image of Tammuz. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 1976 The Treasures of Darkness. Yale University Press, New Haven. Janzen, J. Gerald 1997 Exodus. Westminster John Knox, Louisville. Jiménez Zamudio, Rafael 2005 ‘Adapa o la inmortalidad frustrada: reflexiones sobre el poema de Adapa’, ISIMU: Revista sobre Oriente Próximo y Egipto en la antigüedad 8: 173–200. Kellermann, Ulrich 1967 Nehemiah: Quellen, Überlieferung und Geschichte. Töpelmann, Berlin. Klatt, Werner 1969 Hermann Gunkel: Zu seiner Theo­logie der Religionsgeschichte und zur Entstehung der formgeschichtlichen Methode. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. Kloos, Carola 1986 Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea. Van Oorschot, Amsterdam. Kraus, Hans-Joachim 1969 Geschichte der historisch-kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart. Erziehungsverein, Neukirchen. Kunin, Seth D. 1999 ‘Israel and the Nations: A Structuralist Survey’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 82: 19–43. Kwakkel, Gert 2017 ‘The Monster as a Toy. Leviathan in Psalm 104:26’, in Koert van Bekkum, Jaap Dekker, Henk van de Kamp & Eric Peels (eds), Playing with Leviathan: Interpretation and Reception of Monsters from the Biblical World (Themes in Biblical Narrative 21). Brill, Leiden: 77–89. Lambert, Wilfred G. & Millard, Alan Ralph (eds and trans.) 1969 Atra-Ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Clarendon, Oxford. Lehmann, Reinhard G. 1994 Friedrich Delitzsch und der Babel-Bibel-Streit. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Freiburg. Lemke, Werner E. 1966 ‘Nebuchadrezzar my Servant’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 28: 45–50. Leuchter, Mark 2008 The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26–45. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Liverani, Mario 1972 ‘Partire sul carro, per il deserto’, Annali dell’Iistituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 32: 403–15. 1973 ‘Memorandum on the Approach to Historio­graphic Texts’, Orientalia 42: 178–94. 2005 Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Equinox, London. 2014 The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. Routledge, London.

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Meinhold, Arndt 1975 ‘Die Gattung der Josephsgeschichte und der Estherbuches: Diasporanovelle I’, Zeitschrift für die Alt­testa­ mentliche Wissenschaft 87: 306–24. 1976 ‘Die Gattung der Josephsgeschichte und der Estherbuches: Diasporanovelle II’, Zeitschrift für die Alt­testa­ mentliche Wissenschaft 88: 72–93. Miller, Robert 2014 ‘Tracking the Dragon across the Ancient Near East’, Archiv Orientální 82: 225–45. Nencioni, Giovanni 1967 ‘Agnizioni di lettura’, Strumenti critici 2: 191–98. 1983 Tra grammatica e rhetorica: da Dante a Pirandello. Einaudi, Turin. Neveu, Louis 1984 Avant Abraham (Genèse I–XI): recherches sur les procédés de composition bibliques. Université Catholique de l’Ouest. Faculté de Théo­logie, Angers. Pasquali, Giorgio 1968 Pagine stravaganti, ii. Sansoni, Florence. Pecchioli Daddi, Franca & Polvani, Anna Maria (eds) 1990 La mito­logia ittita. Paideia, Brescia. Pedersen, Johannes 1955 ‘Wisdom and Immortality’, in Martin Noth & David Winton Thomas (eds), Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East. Brill, Leiden: 238–46. Perdue, Leo G. & Kovacs, Brian W. (eds) 1984 A Prophet to the Nations: Essays in Jeremiah Studies. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Pettinato, Giovanni 1971 Das altorientalische Menschenbild und die sumerischen und akkadischen Schöpfungsmythen. Winter, Heidelberg. Prato, Gian Luigi 2013a ‘Le “tavole celesti” babilonesi e l’ordine normativo del cosmo’, in Gian Luigi Prato (ed.), Gli inizi e la storia: le origini della storia nei testi biblici. Carocci, Rome: 41–61. 2013b ‘Le cosmo­logie bibliche come ezio­logia della storia’, in Gian Luigi Prato (ed.), Gli inizi e la storia: le origini della storia nei testi biblici. Carocci, Rome: 95–109. Ross, Allen P. 1981 ‘The Dispersion of the Nations in Genesis 11:1–9’, Bibliotheca sacra 138: 119–38. Ryle, Herbert E. 1917 The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sacchi, Paolo 1987 ‘Il più antico storico di Israele: un’ipotesi di lavoro’, in Le origini di Israele (Convegno Fondazione Caetani Roma 10–11 2 86). Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rome: 65–86. Scurlock, Joann & Beal, Richard H. (eds) 2013 Creation and Chaos: A Reconsideration of Hermann Gunkel’s ‘Chaoskampf ’ Hypothesis. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake.

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Seitz, Christopher R. 1985 ‘The Crisis of Interpretation over the Meaning and Purpose of the Exile: A Redactional Study of Jeremiah XXIXLIII’, Vetus Testamentum 35: 78–97. Shea, William H. 1977 ‘Adam in Ancient Mesopotamian Traditions’, Andrews University Seminary Studies 15: 27–41. Sisson, Jonathan P. 1986 ‘Jeremiah and the Jerusalem Conception of Peace’, Journal of Biblical Literature 105: 429–44. Skinner, John 1910 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis. T&T Clark, Edinburgh. Soggin, Jan Alberto 1997 Das Buch Genesis: Kommentar. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt. Speiser, Ephraim A. 1955–1956   ‘Word Plays on the Creation Epic’s Version of the Founding of Babylon’, Orientalia 25: 317–23. 1964 Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Doubleday, Garden City. 1967 Oriental and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Talon, Philippe (ed. and trans.) 2005 Enūma Eliš: Introduction, Cuneiform Text, Transliteration, and Sign List with a Translation and Glossary in French. Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki. Thelle, Rannfrid I. 2009 ‘Babylon in the Book of Jeremiah (MT): Negotiating a Power Shift’, in Hans M. Barstad & Reinhard G. Kratz (eds), Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah. De Gruyter, Berlin: 187–232. 2015 ‘Babylon as Judah’s Doppelgänger: The Identity of Opposites in the Book of Jeremiah’, in Else K. Holt, Hyun Chul Paul Kim & Andrew Mein (eds), Concerning the Nations: Essays on the Oracles against the Nations in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Bloomsbury, London: 77–94. Tsumura, David T. 1989 The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2. Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield. Uehlinger, Christoph 1990 Weltreich und ‘eine Rede’: Eine neue Deutung der sogenannten Turmbauerzählung (Gen. 11,1–9). Universitätsverlag, Freiburg: 246–53. Wakeman, Mary K. 1973 God’s Battle with the Monster: A Study in Biblical Imagery. Brill, Leiden. Waschke, Ernst-Joachim 1995 ‘tehôm’, in G.  Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren & Heinz-Josef Fabry (eds), Theo­logisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, viii. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart: 564–71. Westermann, Clauss 2004 Genesis. T&T Clark, London.

II

Semantic Waves in the Historical and Cultural Memory of Babylon

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts Rita Francia

Sapienza University of Rome

A bstract –

The reference to Babylon in Hittite texts does not seem to have different relevance from that of other cities or lands of the contemporary ancient Near East and, to my knowledge, it is never joined to any adjectives or circumlocutions that suggest particular consideration reserved for it. However, given its impor­ tance in the Near East of the second millennium  bc, it does not seem possible that this is not adequately testified in the Hittite texts. We have studied the vision that the Hittites had of the Babylonian world and how it was expressed in the documentation, focusing on three topics: the names with which Babylon is mentioned, the recording of a significant event like the sack of Babylon of Muršili II in 1595 bc, and some literary aspects.

* Tavernier 2010 carried out a study analogous to this by subject but contrary by point of view, i.e. the image of the Hittites in Mesopotamian sources.

The Names: uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA, uruŠanḫara, uru Kar(an)duniaš The Hittites used three names to refer to Babylon, both the city and the land: uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA, uruŠanḫara, uru Kar(an)duniaš.1 In spite of this threefold denomination, the adverb derived to refer to the language of the place is uniquely (uru)pabilili ‘in Babylonian, in Akkadian’ or, with logogram, uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA-li,2 attested in OH/ NS, MH, and NH texts. This would suggest that the logogram corresponds in Hittite phonetic reading to *pabil(i), which, with the addition of the suffix -ili to

indicate the language relative to the toponym, turns out to be just pabilili.3 However, no geo­graphical name to be connected to *pabil(i) is attested in Hittite texts.4 The use of three different toponyms to refer to a city or a land is already quite unique: there is nothing analogous in relation to other cities or countries in the Hittite texts. The three toponyms, on the other hand, never recur as alternatives in the same text: the scribes choose to adopt one or the other. uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA and uru Šanḫara are juxtaposed in the same line, but not used as alternatives, except in MH/MS CTH 483, as we will see below. The reason why three names are reserved only for Babylon, and the criterion of choice are not entirely clear. As we will see later, if historical-political reasons can be invoked for one of them, uruKar(an)duniaš, it is not so evident why the scribes note uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA or uru Šanḫara. In the following, we will review the passages in which these three toponyms occur, examining the typo­logy of the texts, their contexts, and dating. KUR  uruŠanḫara and uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA are documented in texts similar by typo­logy and chrono­logy. uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA is clearly prevalent in the OH/NS texts narrating the military deeds of the most ancient kings, in relation to the enterprise of Muršili I against Babylon: CTH 10, KBo 3.45, 5’ and its duplicate KBo  27.7,  2’, 6’; CTH  11, KBo  3.57, Vs.  II  19’; CTH  12, KUB  31.64+, III  17’. KUR  uruŠanḫara occurs only in (OH?/NS) KUB 26.74 (CTH 10)5 among the documents belonging to this group: 3 

RGTC 6, 185–87, 344; RGTC 6/2, 68. For Šanḫara: Wilhelm 2009; for Kar(an)duniaš: Brinkman 1980, 423. 1 

CHD, P, 100–01: KUB 60.42, 6; KUB 39.88, IV 3; Beckman 2014, 2, 56 (645/z, I 2’), 57 (KBo 43.214, I? 2); RGTC 6, 186. 2 

Hoffner-Melchert 2008, 292.

The Hurrian urupa-a-bi-el-ḫa occurs in Hurrian text KBo 27.85+ KBo 33.1, Vs. 18’ in relation to a ‘Babylonian stone’, Haas 2003, 202; Richter 2012, 297, pabilḫe ‘babylonisch’. This form is annotated in RGTC 6, 86 under Karduniaš. 4 

5 

de Martino 2003, 203: res gestae or initial part of an Edict.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 55–69 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127137

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Rita Francia

Vs. I 8 [ ……]-an? ḫar-ni-ik-ta (9) [………] ḫar-ni-ik-ta ḫur-la-aš-ša (10) [xxxx EGIR-an-da-ma KU]R uruŠa-an-ḫa-ra (11) [pa-it na-an ḫar-ni-ik-ta nu aš]-šu-u uruḪa-at-tu-ši pé-e [ḫar-ta] ([     ] destroyed, (9) [     ] destroyed and the Ḫurrian (sing. c. nom.?) (10) [xxxx then he went] to Babylon (11) [and destroyed it and brou]ght [its go]ods to Ḫattuša.)

KÁ.DINGIR.RA occurs also in the initial list showing the heroic deeds of the first kings of the Ancient Kingdom, which opens the Edict of Telipinu, whose original is slightly later than the above-mentioned texts: uru

ma-a-an mMur-ši-li-iš uruḪa-at-tu-ši LU[GAL]-et-it … (27’) [na-a]š uruḪal-pa pa-it nu uruḪal-pa-an ḫar-ni-ik-ta nu uru Ḫal-pa-aš NAM.RAmeš a-aš-šu-še-et (28’) [uru]Ḫa-at-tu-ši ú-da-aš EGIR-pa-ma-aš uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA pa-it nu uruKÁ. DINGI[R.RA-an] ḫar-ni-ik-t[a] (29’) [ÉRINmeš] ḫur-lu-uš-ša ḫu-ul-li–i[t] uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA-aš NAM.R[A]meš a-aš-šu-ušše-et [uru]Ḫa-at-[tu-ši] (30') [(pé-e ḫar-t)]a. ((OH/NS CTH 19) KBo 3. 1+, Vs. I)

(When Muršili became king of Ḫattuša … and he marched against Ḫalap and destroyed Ḫalap, and he brought captives and possession of Ḫalap to Ḫattuša. Subsequently, he marched against Babylon and destroyed Babylon, defeated the Ḫurrian troops, and brought captives and possessions of Babylon to Ḫattuša.)

The logogram prevails also in the MH and NH; it occurs even in the MH prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna CTH 376.I.E (KUB 24.4+, Vs. II 4’), in which the sack of Babylon is remembered. It is interesting to note, that here the author of the enterprise is not King Muršili, as in the OH/NS texts narrating the same topic, but to the ‘Land of Ḫatti’ as a whole, aided by the Sun Goddess of Arinna: nu ka-ru-ú KUR  uruḪa-at-ti uruA-ri-in-n[a-aš] (3) [DUTU-it za-a]ḫ-ḫa-it a-ra-aḫ-zé-na KUR-e UR.MAḪ ma-a-an a-a[raš-ki-t] / (4) [nu pa-ra-a uruḪal-pa]-an ku-i-uš uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA ku-i-uš ḫar-ni-in-ki-iš-ki-i[t] (5) [nu KUR-e-aš ḫu]u-ma-an-da-a-aš a-aš-šu--mi-it KÙ.BABBAR GUŠKIN DINGIRMEŠ da-a[š]6 (6) [na-at PA-NI D]UTU uruA-ri-in-na zi-ik-ki-it. ((CTH 376.I.E) KUB 24.4+ Vs. II)

(Formerly, the Land of Ḫatti [with ] the Sun Goddess of Arinn[a] [used to] com[e] to the foreign lands with [a batt]le like a lion. [Further]more, Aleppo

and Babylon it used to destroy, the possessions of [ev]ery [country], the silver, the gold, and the gods, it used to place [them before] the Sun Goddess of Arinna.)

Other occurrences of uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA in MH texts are in the Hittite copy of the Adad Hymn (CTH 313, KBo 3.21, Rs. III 18), and in the Evocation CTH 483,7 in which it is followed, exceptionally, by KUR uruŠanḫara, the only occurrence in this epoch of this toponym: [ma-an-za I-N]A KUR  uruA-aš-šur KUR  uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA KUR  uruŠa-an-ḫa-ra KUR uruMi-iz-r[i] (58) [KUR  uruA-la-aš-š]i-ya KUR  uruA-al-ziya (CTH 483) KUB 15.34, I 57). KUR  uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA is attested in only four occurrences in the original texts dating back to the Imperial period: in the Evocation CTH 481, KUB 29.4, Vs. I 1 and Rs. III 43, in the Appu myth, CTH 360, Rs. IV 18, and in a fragment of a letter CTH 187, Rs. IV 3’. Also the occurrences of KUR uruŠanḫara are few: one in the treaty between Muwatalli and Alakšandu of Wiluša, CTH 76, A., Rs. III 11, and one in the Prayer of Muršili II, CTH 70 KUB 14. 4, Vs. II 5–8, in which the king reports the sending of goods from Ḫatti to notables of Babylon by the Babylonian tawananna, wife of Šuppiluliuma I: a-pa-a-at-ma (6) uruŠa-an-ḫa-ra-az ḫu-i-nu-ut (Vs. II 5) (She (re)moved part (of goods) to Babylon).8 The logogram uru KÁ.DINGIR.RA occurs more frequently in all documentation than those of uruŠanḫara (fifteen instances compared to four):  

See Czyzewska 2012, 151.

MH

NH

8

3

4

1

1

2

KÁ.DINGIR.RA

KUR Šanḫara  uru

Among these attestations, the difference in use between toponyms (eight vs. one) is particularly important in the documentation in OH/NS relating to the enterprise of Muršili  I. The occurrences of the logogram in late copies of old original scripts (OH/NS) do not exclude the possibility that it was attested also in the ancient original manuscripts. The high number of occurrences of uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA in different manuscripts leads us to believe, that it was present as such already in the original redaction. The attestation of uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA in the MH Prayer CTH 376.I.E is also relevant to this purpose: the narration is in relation to the feat of Muršili I, and therefore maintains the tradition. The scribe may have noted the name of the city he had read in the documentation 7 

6 

OH/NS

uru

8 

Forlanini 2000.

See Melchert 1977, 358–59.

57

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts relating to this event or had heard in its storytelling. The prevalent attestation uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA in this group of texts narrating the enterprise of Muršili I, leads us to suppose that this was the oldest Hittite denomination of the city. These texts refer to the most ancient period of Hittite history and report an event that was among the most significant for the land of Ḫatti as we will see later. The juxtaposition of uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA and uruŠanḫara in the MH Evocation CTH 483 must be read as an appositive construction, in which the second term is affixed to the first: ‘uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA namely uruŠanḫara’. The use of uru Šanḫara was established in a later period than uruKÁ. DINGIR.RA, even for chrono­logical questions related to the formation of the toponym itself, as we will see later. From the time of Šuppiluliuma I, Babylon is mainly called uruKar(an)dunia(š), a name of Kassite origin. This toponym is used often and is the only one attested in the documentation with Egypt. uruŠanḫara and KUR  uruKÁ. DINGIR.RA are relegated to very few occurrences in this age. uruKar(an)dunia(š) is considered to be the phonetic reading of uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA, however some factors leave doubts.9 First for all, the occurrence of uruŠanḫara in OH/ NS CTH 10 (KUB 26.74, Vs. I 10) attests that the toponym is used here as an alternative to the logogram, probably as a phonetic reading of it. Texts related to it by content and dating present KÁ.DINGIR.RA, as we have already seen. Another proof of the close relationship between these two toponyms is in the postpositional syntagma of CTH 483: KUR  uruŠanḫara may be the phonetic reading written next to its reference logogram. The chrono­logical factor also favours this interpretation. The appearance of uru Kar(an)dunia(š) in the documentation is much later than that of the other two names, which leads us to advance the hypothesis that the phonetic reading of uru KÁ.DINGIR.RA was just uruŠanḫara.10 uru

In conclusion, of the three toponyms used in the Hittite documentation in reference to Babylon, uruKÁ. DINGIR.RA and uruŠanḫara are present in OH/NS, in MH and NH texts, albeit in a limited number of attestations. For the third, uruKar(an)dunia(š), much more numerically documented, the terminus a quo of appearance is In this regard, Weeden 2011, 524, notes uruŠanḫara next to the logo­gram uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA but without further clarification.

9 

This problem, due to its complexity, will be dealt with more extensively in other places, limiting ourselves here to present the terms of the question.

10 

the epoch of Šuppiluliuma I. uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA is the first name of Babylon attested in Mesopotamia, but read in Akkadian language, BĀB-ILIM.11 This favours it as the oldest name of the city also in Hittite documentation. Probably it was brought to Anatolia by Assyrian merchants. The ‘Akkadicized’ reading of the original Mesopotamian name is to be seen in the Hittite adverb papilili ‘in Babylonian, in Akkadian’, in reference to the language of Babylon (BĀB-ILIM). Šanḫara has been linked to the biblical Shinar and appears in Pharaonic Egypt at the time of Tutmosis III.12 Its origin is probably to be found in the mention of ÉRIN samḫarū ‘Samharites troop’, attested in the documentation dating back to the fifteenth year of Amiṣaduqa.13 In Hittite tablets, ÉRINmeš š[(a-am-ḫa-)14 occurs in a (OH/ NS) CTH 14 KUB 40.5+, 7’ and its duplicate KBo 12.13, 7, dating back to Ḫattušili I or Muršili I, relating to the campaigns in Syria. This mention could arise in relation to ÉRIN samḫarū of the Amiṣaduqa age, but the absence of the determinative URU leads us to believe, that it is here an adjective, as in OB attestation, and that it does not refer to the toponym uruŠanḫara. According to Zadok (1984, 242), the Samharite troop could belong to a Kassite tribe, and he related samḫarū to Samharû, a term referring to a troop-commander attested along with another commander of Kassite name. uruŠanḫara is attested in the Hittite documents certainly starting from MH/MS, as we have seen, so at that time it had already been affirmed in Anatolia. With regard to the occurrence in OH/NS KUB 26.74 (CTH 10), we cannot be sure that it goes back to the OH original or rather, as we believe, that it was recorded in a later period, during the copying of the OH original tablet. The comparison of this text with the others in OH/NS narrating the feat of Muršili shows that these later have uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA in the same position. uru

Therefore, this would prove that the toponym noted in the original OH tablet was just that. The replacement by uruŠanḫara could be attributed to one of the scribes who copied the document over the centuries. Probably he reported the name of the city in phonetic reading or writing under dictation, or remembered it during the process of copying the text.

11  12  13  14 

Gelb 1994, 267.

Zadok 1984, 240–42; RGTC 3, 201; Wilhelm 2009. Wilhelm 2009.

Forlanini 2000, 14 and n. 24.

58

The Sack of Babylon of Muršili I One of the most important military enterprises of the Ancient Kingdom was the ‘sack of Babylon’ of Muršili I in 1595 bc. It was given such importance, that Telipinu mentions it in his Edict (CTH 19) among the feats that gave prestige to the first rulers of Ḫatti, and it was also remembered to exalt the grandeur of past times, as for example, in the MH Prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna (CTH 376.I.E), which we have already mentioned in an earlier para­graph, resumed then by Muršili II (CTH 376. II). Telipinu attributes the destruction of Aleppo and Babylon to Muršili, who despoiled the cities of their possessions and captives, and brought them to Ḫattuša, as a worthy conclusion of his campaigns. However, in MH Prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the expedition against Babylon is not assigned to a specific king, but to the ‘Land of Ḫatti’. It overwhelmed great cities, even Aleppo and Babylon, ‘like a lion’ under the guidance and protection of the Sun Goddess of Arinna. It is emphasized that the cities were despoiled of their goods and their deities, and therefore this fate must also have happened to Babylon. A similar phraseo­ logy is used in the later version of the prayer dating back to Muršili II (CTH 376.II, Rs. II 44’–48’). These texts tell the event in celebratory tones, exalting the greatness of the king or of the entire land of Ḫatti, as the authors of this enterprise. However, a very different reading of the Babylonian campaign is documented in some texts dating back, in their original to a king immediately preceding or following Muršili I, most probably his successor Ḫantili,15 such as for example: (1’) […]x […] x túḫ-ḫu-uš[-ta? …] (2’) w[a-][a]-tar-na-aḫ-ḫa-an ḫar-zi šu-uš-ká[n …] (3’) [LÚ]meš uruḪa-at-tiki ŠEŠmeš-NI x[…] / (4’) [n]e-pí-ši DINGIRmeš iš-tar-ni-in-ku-en [(ta) …] (5’) [UR]UKÁ.DINGIR.RA-aš ku-e-az-mi-it da-a[-ú-en …] (6’) [(G)]U4ḫi.a-NI UDUḫi.a-NI a-ap-pa-an ša-an[-ḫi?-ir?-(x-na)] (7’) [(ku)]-en-ta ta e-eš-ḫar-še-et šu-up-pa[-še-et-ta…] (8’) […]-a-i-ú-en ta pa-a-i-ú-en ta LÍ[L? …] (9’) [š]a-li-ku-wa-aš-ta-ti ta-at-ra-an-t[a- ŠA? (uruKÁ.DINGIR.RA)] (10’) [(u)t-n]e-e-az-ma tar-nu-mi-en TÚG.SIG u[ruKÁ.DINGIR.RA-aš…] (11’) [nu ma]-a-an ša-la-i-iš at-ta-aš ut-tar p[é-eš-ši-ya-at]/ (12’) [… me]-ma-a-i a-ni-ši-wa-at mMur-ši-i-[li-iš…] (13’) […]x ŠUM-an-še-et le-e ku-iš-[ki te-ez-zi …] (14’) […ḫa-an-t]e-ez-zi-i-aš-mi- le-e [……] (15’) […. n]a-an a-aš-ki-iš-ši k[án-kán-du …]/ (16’) […]x ku-iš […] (17’) broken.

Rita Francia (2’) ‘He commanded/instructed and…[ (3’) the people of Ḫatti, our brothers [     / (4’) [we] mad[e] the gods in heaven sick (5’) Of Babylon their (of the gods) possession [we] took away? (6’) [they?] too[k?] after our? cattle (and) our? sheep (7’) He killed. Its blood [and] its meat (8’) we [       ]   and went        and the fiel[d? (9’) we reached/arrived. A ragin[g?     (of Babylon)] (10’) from the land we released. Fine garment [from Babylon…] (11’) and when he grew up?, he di[sregarded] the words of his father./ (12’) [    sa]ys: ‘Today Murši[li …] (13’) [ ….] his name no o[ne spoke  ] (14’) [        the fir]st-rank of mine no [         ] (15’) [………] and [let them] ha[ng] him in his gate!./ (16’) [                           ] x who[’ ((OH/NS) (CTH 10) KBo 3.45 and its duplicate KBo 22.7)

This text was interpreted as propaganda of Ḫantili to legitimize his usurpation of the throne by justifying Muršili’s murder.16 The deed against Babylon is presented here as an action of hybris of the king, so much so that the gods themselves wanted his death. Ḫantili proposes himself as executor of divine justice: he punishes Muršili for his serious fault, killing him and sitting on the throne in his place.17 Ḫantili invokes the damnatio nominis of the king, guilty of the sack of Babylon (rr. 12’–13’ ŠUM-an-šet lē kuiš[ki] tezzi)18 and the expression ‘hang him on his door’ (r. 15’) is probably in reference to the penalty for the transgressors of this order: whoever had dared to defend Muršili’s deed, would have been sentenced to capital punishment and then hung on his own door.19 Among the texts recording the Babylonian plundering, KBo 3.45 is chrono­logically closest to the event. Although it was written for political propaganda, tending to exalt the image of the writer to the detriment of his predecessor, its phraseo­logy suggests that the expedition against Babylon was not unanimously considered heroic in Ḫatti and that probably part of the elite considered it a disappointment. The double consideration of the same event, positive in Telipinu and in Prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, but negative in the text Gilan 2014a, 203 with previous literature; Soysal 1989, 147; de Martino 1991, 60.

16 

17  18 

See footnotes 2 and 3.

Gilan 2014a, 203.

On this practice, also known from the Code of Ḫammurabi, de Martino 1991, 60–61. 19 

15 

Hoffner 1975, 56–57.

59

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts of Ḫantili, concerns only the Babylon campaign, while nothing is said about that against Aleppo, who also suffered the same fate and is always associated with the Mesopotamian city in literature of consensus. This criticism is relevant in the reconstruction of the view that the Hittites had of Babylon and the importance reserved to it, which was evidently superior to that of Aleppo and any other great cities destroyed by the former kings. The motivation of divine wrath is attributed solely to the destruction of Babylon, and not to other equally execrable actions, such as the deportation of divine simulacra of Marduk and Zarpanitu, and it is not mentioned either in this text or in others dating back to the Ancient Kingdom.20 The ‘god-napping’ from Babylon is remembered only in the Prayer to the Sun Goddess of Arinna (CTH 376) and it does not share equal importance with the destruction of the city, either in a positive or negative way, perhaps because the gods did not reach Ḫattuša.21 In Ḫantili’s propaganda, the negative events that followed the Babylonian campaign of Muršili not only fell on the guilty king, who deserved his death, but also on the whole land of Ḫatti according to the Hittite view of the relationship fault–punishment. The plundering of Babylon, rather than being one of the greatest deeds of the past, is here considered one of the most execrable by a king, so much so that it also caused a catastrophe for the entire country. No other destruction of an important city is associated with such a nefarious interpretation, even for propaganda purposes. KUB 31.64+, with its duplicate KBo 46.26522 (CTH 12, OH/NS), is another document that recalls the memory of the sack of Babylon in a negative way. It dates back to a king of the Ancient Kingdom, most likely Ḫantili I, according to the content of the text:23 (15’) UM-MA LUGAL.GAL [ (16’) ḪUL-lu x [         -]x-ka-t[e   KBo 46.265, Rs. (1)]-x?-x-me-et i-da-a-l[(u)] (17’) KÁ.DINGIR.RAk[i-aš-ša-ma-]aš ú-uk [    (2)                                 R]A-aš-ša-ma-aš ú-u[k (-)…?] (18’) [ki-i]š-ta-an-zi-ya-at-tu-[ma-at?] (3)                         ]i-ya-at-tu-ma-[at] (19’) [k]a-ri-ip-tén ANŠE.KUR.RAmeš   (4)                    ] ANŠE.KUR.RAmeš a-ta-a-a [n?-…]

(20’) zi-in na-at-tén ma-a-a[-an (5)                                             a]n-tu-uḫ-ša-ša (21’) e-ez-za-at-tén x24 [ (6)                                            ](-)x-an UR.GI7-an (7)                              uruḪa-a]t-tu-ša-ašˇ (8)                                            ]-x-ga?-[ ]-x–x

(KUB 31.64+, Rs. III)

Although these texts are fragmentary, some words that suggest a negative view of the narrated event can be identified: (KUB 31.64, Rs. III 17’) ḪUL-lu, in the duplicate (KBo 46.265, Rs. 1) idāl[(u)] ‘bad’ (KUB 31.64, III 18’) [ki]štanziyattu[mat?], corresponding to the duplicate Rs. 3 kištanz]iyattuma[t] ‘you have suffered famine’, followed in KUB 31.64, Rs. III 19’ by ANŠE.KUR.RAmeš, also attested in the duplicate (Rs. 4) and followed by the verb a-ta-a-a [n?-…], which can be traced back to the verb ed-/ ad- ‘to eat’,25 which returns in the verbal form ezzatten in KUB 31.64, Rs. III 21’; the duplicate shows also (Rs. 6) UR.GI7-an ‘dog’ in the accusative case, whose regent verb falls into the gap, but it could be the same ed-/ad-. This text can be linked to CTH 10, according its content, giving a negative view of the sack of Babylon, and for this reason, both could be dated to Ḫantili I, who used the event for his own propaganda purposes. This king justified his usurpation to the throne and the murder of his predecessor Muršili, accusing him of having been guilty of a grave fault due to the plundering of Babylon.26 The consequences of this action would then be poured over the land of Ḫatti, also causing a famine, as suggested by the use of expressions such as: ki(štanz) iyattuma[t (4’) ANŠE.KUR.RAmeš atā[nzi? (KBo  46.265, Rs.); (18’) [ki]štanziyattu[mat? (19’) [k]aripten ANŠE.KUR. RAme[š(KUB 31.64+, Rs. III) ‘you have suffered famine, they ate/took the horses’, from which it would seem that the inhabitants were driven to feed on horses or dogs (UR.GI7, KBo 46.265, Rs. 6’).27 The serious fault of which Muršili was stained and that dragged the land into ruin was such as to merit the damnatio nominis referred in (CTH 10) KUB 3.45 12’–13’ŠUM-an-šet lē kuiš[ki] tezzi.28 In conclusion, Muršili’s campaign against Babylon was one of the most important events for the affirmation of Hittite power in the ancient Near East, due to the considerable fame and importance of the Mesopotamian 24  25 

20  21  22  23 

Gilan 2014a, 197–98.

Schwemer 2008, 141; Gilan 2014a, 203. Soysal 1998, 31–32.

For the dating, see footnotes 14 and 15.

Soysal 1998, 23 t.[a-; de Martino 2003, 176 e-[kutten. Soysal 2005, 132.

The word idālu/ḪUL-lu ‘bad’ is recurrent in these texts (KBo 46.265, Rs.1’; KUB 31.64+, Rs. III 17’). 26 

27  28 

Soysal 1989, 156; 2005, 131–33. Gilan 2014a, 204.

60 city.29 It had unparalleled resonance in the land of Ḫatti and was considered positively or negatively according to the political and ideo­logical use that was made of it.

The Babylonian Cultural Influence: Ḫattušili I and Sargon of Akkad Babylonian cultural influence was remarkable in all fields of knowledge and was conveyed also by the same writing that the Hittites adopted from North Syrian, most likely from Alalaḫ.30 Akkadian and Sumerian texts were studied by young learners.31 In this perspective, we cannot forget the importance played by ‘mythical’ Akkadian kings Sargon and Naram-sin in the construction of the ideal figure of the king and royal ideo­logy itself, as well as in the elaboration of ‘Hittite’ epic and history, as the texts in CTH 310, 311, on these two kings, testify. The will to link one’s heroes of the past and one’s poor history to the more extensive and better known one of the great Mesopotamian heroes was also due to a political and cultural necessity: to provide a foundation for the unknown past, connecting it artificially to the wide Near Eastern world.32 The Hittite version was also exported to a foreign land, as the Tell el Amarna tablet in the Akkadian language shows. This suggests that the Hittites had assimilated and made this episode their own, and recognized it as an example of their own cultural heritage of a past that was actually reconstructed, but perceived as real.33 Beckman (2001) showed that the ancient Hittite kings took Sargon and Naram-sin as models for their kingship and saw them as their ideal predecessors, whose behaviour was to be emulated (Sargon) or avoided (Naram-sin). Legendary episodes with these kings as protagonists were studied and opportunely revisited, according to need, for example exalting the deeds of Sargon in Anatolia. He represented the ‘winning king’, the hero par excellence, and Ḫattušili was inspired by him for his self-celebratory purposes, as the explicit and implicit allusions to Sargon’s deeds in his Annals suggest. Sargon and his gesta were widely known, as the 29  30  31  32  33 

Rita Francia explicit and implicit allusions to the Akkadian king in the Annals of Ḫattušili I suggest. Texts dedicated to Sargon’s deeds in Anatolia circulated in kārum of Kaneš before the formation of the Hittite kingdom.34 The memory of Babylon and its greatness were represented by the same figure of this king, whose remembrance had been handed down among the Assyrians of the kārum, who transmitted it to the local inhabitants. The new rulers, the Indo-European Hittites, knowing the mythical deeds of Sargon and Naram-sin, made them their own, and associated their past with that of the famous heroes. It is significant that the choice fell on non-Anatolian figures, on those originating from a geo­graphically distant and at that time still unknown land, but whose greatness they perceived. In this way, the historical events of the newborn kingdom were linked, albeit artificially, to those of the ‘universal’ history, taking on an international dimension and giving fame to its performers.35

The admiration and self-identification of Ḫattušili I with Sargon is made explicit in his Annals by the connection between his undertaking of the crossing of Euphrates and the analogous enterprise of the Mesopotamian king: the only one who realized it before him.36 In his military expedition in the opposite direction to that of Sargon, from north to south, Ḫattušili recognizes himself as the author of a deed that no one had been able to accomplish since the remote times of the Akkadian leader. The Hittite king not only compares his ability as a leader to that of Sargon, but goes far beyond, boasting his superiority in war, as revealed in the expedition against Ḫaḫḫu: Sargon only routed opposing troops, but he, Ḫattušili, burned the city and humiliated its king: no one had crossed the Euphrates River, but I, the Great King, Tabarna, crossed it on foot, and my army crossed it [behind me] on foot. Sargon (also) crossed it. [He] fought the troops of Ḫaḫḫu, but [he] did nothing to Ḫaḫḫu: he did not burn it down nor did he make the smoke [go up] to Tarḫunt of Heaven. But I, the Great King, Tabarna, destroyed Ḫaššu(wa) and Ḫaḫḫu and [burned] them down with fire. I  [showed] smoke to the Sun-god of Heaven and the Storm-god. I, the Great King, Tabarna, destroyed Ḫaššu and Ḫaḫḫu, I  burned them down with fire, I hitched the king of Ḫaššu and the king of Ḫaḫḫu to a wagon. (KBo 10. 2, Rs. III 29–42)

See also de Martino 2016, 28.

Van den Hout 2012; Beckman 2001, 86. Beckman 1983.

Gilan 2008, 112; 2010, 53; Beckman 2001, 89. Gilan 2008, 112–13.

Van de Mieroop 2000; Alster 2007; Beckman 2001, 89; Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 289–90; de Martino 1993. 34 

35  36 

Beckman 2001, 89; Gilan 2008, 113–14.

Goodnick Westenholz 1987, 8; 2011, 291; Beckman 2001, 91.

61

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts This specification sounds also like a direct answer to Sargon’s claim to his troops in the last lines of the poem ‘Sargon, the Conquering Hero’: ‘Lo, the king who wants to equal me, where I have gone let him also go!’37 or to the words proclaimed by Nur-Dagan in the exaltation of Sargon in the version of the poem from Tell El Amarna (20’–21’): ‘What country among countries can compare with Akkade? [What] king can compare with you? Your adversary does not exist.’38 The lion simile is repeated several times in a few lines in the Annals of Ḫattušili I, starting from the II column, and it introduces implicitly the comparison with the great Sargon: nu kap-p[u-u]-wa-an-da- UD.KAMḫi.a-aš ídPu-run[a-an] (18) zi-iḫ-ḫ[u-un] nu KUR uruḪa-aš-šu-wa UR.MAḪ GIM-an (19) GÌRḫi.a-i[t a]r-ḫa ša-ak-ku-ri-ya-nu-un (20) nu-z[a-an ma-]aḫ-ḫa-an wa-al-ḫu-un (21) [nu-uš-ši SAḪARḫi.a-u]š še-er ar-nu-nu-un (22) [a-aš-šu-ma-ši ḫu-u]ma-an ša-ra-a da-aḫ-[ḫu-un] (23) [(nu uruKÙ.BABBAR-t)i ša-ra-a šu]-un-na-aḫ-ḫu-un. (KBo 10.2, Vs. II)

(within a few days I cross[ed] the Puran[a] and overpowered Ḫaššu like a lion wi[th] its paws. [W]hen I struck [it], I heaped [dust over it], and [a]ll [its goods I] took up and filled [up] Ḫattuša (with them).)

In relation to this passage, it is interesting to note that the lion simile is used here also for the crossing of the Puran in the Akkadian text, which however is omitted in the Hittite version: i-na u4-ma-ti-ma ir-t[i í]dPu-ra-an ki-i-ma UR.MAḪ LUGAL GAL i-te-ti-iq (KBo 10.1, Vs. I 34)

(just in those days the Great King crossed the Puran like a lion.)39 Ḫa-aḫ-ḫa-an-ma-za-kán UR.MAḪ ma-aḫ-ḫa-an (2) ar-ḫa tar-ku-wa-al-li-iš-ki-nu-un (3) nu uruZi-ip-pa-aš-šana-an ḫar-ni-in-ku-un uru

(KBo 10.2, Rs. III 1–3)

(like a lion I kept Ḫaḫḫu at bay and destroyed Zippašna).

Among the texts about Sargon’s deeds, two manuscripts currently known as ‘Sargon, the Lion’ show the lion simile, which was later also taken up by Naram-sin (Vs. 9’), ‘I, Sargon, am your raging lion […]’.40 37  38  39  40 

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 77, 121–23; Gilan 2010, 53. Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 127–28. Devecchi 2005, 46–47.

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 94–101; 99.

Goodnick Westenholz (1997, 94) notes in her commentary to this text: ‘he is presented as a terrifying conqueror endowed with an awesome aura, whose essence is epitomized as a lion’, this description corresponds to that which Ḫattušili gives of himself in his self-celebration.41 No other later Hittite king will return to this simile for himself and his own capacity as a conqueror.42 It is interesting to note that in these texts, among the places that are the background to the Akkadian hero, there is also the Cedar Forest (Vs. 13’),43 whose mention makes the hypothesis that this poem reached Anatolia in oral form even more plausible. Here it was then enriched with details known to local inhabitants and was also known in the Akkadian or perhaps already in the Hittite language by Ḫattušili himself, who took inspiration for his own self-celebration.44 The famous passage of Ḫattušili’s Annals (KBo 10. 2, Rs. III 29–42) is relevant to our discussion for at least two reasons: the comparison with another king and the implicit proof of the notoriety of the poems that flourished around Sargon in Anatolia. There are no other examples in the Hittite literature, where a king compares himself and his feat to those of a foreign king, either contemporary or previous. The comparison was possible insofar as Sargon and his deeds were well known to the public Ḫattušili spoke to, and more generally, to the inhabitants of the Anatolian area.45 Had this not been the case, he would not have achieved the desired effect of presenting the Hittite king as a hero of equal rank, or even superior, to that of the legendary Sargon of Akkad, the undisputed hero. The Sargon saga, and in particular, the episode known as šar tamḫāri, perhaps reached Anatolia through Assyrian merchants46 and must have been widely appreCollins 1998 ascribes the lion simile to the Ḫattic influence. Although this supposition is certainly probable, it nevertheless does not exclude the influence of Sargonic legends, whose echo in Ḫattušili’s texts is remarkable, as we noted; see also Devecchi 2005, 113–25, 119 with literature. 41 

Ḫattušili III only will use it in his Apo­logy (IV 31), but with other purposes: Hoffner 1980, 297; Collins 1998, 17–18. 42 

43 

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 94.

Güterbock 1997, 173. On the use of the two languages in the kārum of Kaneš and the close coexistence between the two populations, Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 290. 44 

45 

Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 297–98.

Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 290, 295–96, 298. The version of the saga found at the home of the merchant Aḫ-Šalim is considerable, Liverani 1993; Van de Mieroop 2000, 146–48; Torri 2009, 112; Alster & Oshima 2007; Goodnick Westenholz 2007, 21–27.

46 

62 ciated by inhabitants of the region, and adapted for the new audience by local bards. In cities such as Kaneš, whose ethnic-linguistic component was complex and where Assyrians and Hittites lived together, versions of the various stories were elaborated in the two languages to indulge listeners.47 They were passed on orally at first, as some internal evidence proves,48 and it is plausible that the stories we know represent only some of the many versions circulating in the region at that time. They are perhaps the ones that mostly met with public favour, but also that of the central Hittite power once it had been established there.49 The fortune of šar tamḫāri among the Hittites is proven firstly by the reworking of the tale in the Hittite language and from an Anatolian perspective. As  G. Torri remarked, the version of this poem from Ḫattuša is not the remake of the Assyrian one. It is rather ‘an original creation of the Hittite scribal school, using of course Mesopotamian and Hurrian models and oral stories about Sargon existing in the Syrian and Anatolian region’,50 although at present there are no unanimous opinions on Hurrian transmission in Anatolia.51 In the Akkadian version from Tell El Amarna, some merchants invoke the help of Sargon against the king of Purušḫanda.52 In the Hittite version, however, the merchants are missing, unless they are to be found in the gap in the initial part of the text. There is no historical certainty that Sargon really achieved this feat. From the inscriptions of Sargon, there is no mention of a campaign against this city.53 Other details that attracted

Rita Francia the interest of the local public had to be added to this theme, which is the core of the telling during slow stratification. The episode was formed spontaneously around the starting nucleus, in parallel to the affirmation of the story itself among the local public, as naturally happens for oral telling.54 At one time, popular oral telling had to meet the favour of the Hittite court in order to merit a written version and its conservation in the royal collections. One wonders why this story, in this version, was so successful and what aroused the interest of the Hittite king of the moment, to require a written copy for posterity. The principal studies on this subject have identified the main motivation in the close connection between its central theme, the capture and destruction of Purušḫanda by Sargon, and the Anitta text. Anitta’s campaign against Purušḫanda would have found its mythical transposition into that of the Akkadian hero.55 Recent studies, however, have shed light on some details of the narrative that lead us to review this interpretation. Dercksen proposed a new interpretation of the passage of the Anitta text, in which he receives the gifts from the ‘man of Purušḫanda’: ma-a-an x x [              (la-aḫ-ḫa pa-a-un)] (74) nu LÚ uruPuru-uš-ḫa-a[(n-da kat-ti-mi hé-en-ku-m)u-uš ú-da-aš] (75) šu-mu I gišŠÚ.A AN.BAR I gišGIDRU.GAM AN.BAR [(ḫé-engur ú-da-aš)] (76) ma-a-an a-ap-pa-ma uruNe-e-ša [ú-wan(u-un)] (77) nu LÚ uruPu-ru-uš-ḫa-an-da kat-tim-mi [(pé-e-ḫu-te-nu-un)] (78) ma-a-an tu-un-na-ki-iš-na-ma pa-iz-zi a-p[(a-a-ša)] (79) pé-e-ra-am-mi-it ku-un-na-az e-ša-ri ((CTH 1) KBo 3. 22, Rs.)

Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 290; on the complex ethnic-linguistic reality of Anatolia in this period, see also Goedegebuure 2008, 137–38; Archi 2015, 7. 47 

48 

Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 286.

Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 294; on the oral transmission of narratives in Anatolia and more generally in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern region, Bachvarova 2016, 4–5, 29, et passim. The scholar behind this process notes: ‘the value placed on exotic objects and knowledge from far away and long ago, the desire of local courts and polities to connect themselves to world history’, which she summarizes, together with others, in the expression ‘legitimization of authority’. This description is pertinent to the diffusion and fortune of šar tamḫāri in the Hittite environment. On the oral transmission of the Sargon poems, see also Alster & Oshima 2007, 6–7.

49 

50  51  52 

Torri 2009, 116; Westenholz 2011, 204. Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 288. Forlanini 2008, 61–62.

Forlanini 2017, 136; Goodnick Westenholz 2011, 293–94, hypothesizes that Purušḫanda was inserted at the expense of the Ḫurrian Šimurrum, mentioned in ‘Sargon, the Conquering Hero’, II  68, 53 

(When xx [          (I went on a campaign)] the man of Purušḫa[(nda of his ḫengur-gift to me) brought]; [(he brought as ḫengur-gift)] to me an iron throne and an iron crook. When [I retur(ned)] to Neša, [(I brought)] with me the man of Purušḫanda. When he goes to the inner chamber, he shall sit before me on the right.)

Based on other examples in contemporary texts, the scholar does not identify here the description of an act of submission of the king of Purušḫanda to Anitta following a war, but an exchange of gifts: and in ‘Sargon in Foreign Lands’, III 15’, see Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 59–77 and 78–93. On the formation and comparison of the šar tamḫāri editions, see Vanstiphout 1998.

See also Torri 2009, 112: the written version was born through a process of slow stratification; for example, the lists of enemy kings refer to an Old Akkadian tradition, Goodnick Westenholz 2017, 297. 54 

55 

Torri 2009; Gilan 2008; 2010; Westenholz 2011; Miller 2012.

63

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts diplomatic presents given by one king to another. This is in line with an ancient Near Eastern tradition that is well known from near-contemporary Old Babylonian evidence, in which the king making the gift was the more powerful of the two parties.56

had been three years and [five months] he had sat (on the throne)/stayed’ (Obv. 27’–28’).59 The motive for the peaceful return of the Akkadian king is also mentioned in the Hittite version: [LUGAL-g]i-na-aš-ta uruPu-ru-uš-ḫa-an-da a-aš-ši[-ya-atta-at] 9′ [na-a]š MU.3.KAM 5-ya ITU-mi uruPu-ru-uš-ḫaan-ti e-[ša-at] 10′ [LUGAL-]gi-na-aš EGIR-pa uruA-G[A-D] È i-ya-an-ne-eš (IV 8’–10’)

The more powerful king of Purušḫanda brought the gifts to Anitta, king of lower rank, at the stipulation of an alliance. This interpretation also provides an adequate explanation of the obsequious attitude of Anitta to the king of Purušḫanda: he occupies a prominent position, sitting before him on his right, in the throne room.57 In the Amarnian version there is a passage in which NurDaggal, the king of Purušḫanda, and Sargon confront each other and, in the end, the first recognizes the superiority of the second (Obv. 15’–23’) and he is said to be seated before Sargon: ‘They made Nur-Daggal sit before Sargon. Sargon opens his mouth’ (Obv. 15).58 The difference between this passage and that of Anitta’s text is precisely in the position of the king of Purušḫanda. While in the Amarnian version, he sits before Sargon, and there is no allusion of an alliance between the two kings, instead there is recognition of the subordination of the first to the second, in the Anitta text, Nurdaḫi sits before Anitta on the right, and this position is representative not only of the alliance stipulated between the two, but also of the recognition of the superiority of the king of Purušḫanda by Anitta. In this text, there is no mention of a campaign against Purušḫanda: l. 73 preserves only ‘I went on a campaign’ (laḫḫa pāun), we do not know whether the gap is to integrate a toponym (‘against the city of x’), an anthroponym (‘against NP’), or none of these. The city of Purušḫanda appears certainly only in the following line, in relation to the gifts that its king offers to Anitta. The destruction of the city, symbolized by the demolition of its walls, is an innovation of the Hittite version, in that Sargon leaves the city of Tell El Amarna peacefully, without destroying it: ‘Sargon has ruled; (when) he gave orders to depart from the city, (at that time) it Dercksen 2010, 72–73; Archi 2015, 5 believes that this passage proves that the texts ‘were drawn up by a scribe educated in an Akkadian scriptorium’, however the mention of dŠiuš-(š)miš ‘Their god’ (l. 47), dŠiu(na)š-šummiš (ll. 39, 41) suggests that it was written for Hittite speakers. 56 

According to Forlanini 2017, 129–31, the contrast between the two dynastic lines, the southern and the northern lines of the Hittite royal house, should be read also here. 57 

58 

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 124–25.

(Sargon enjo[yed] (being) in Purušḫanda, [and] resi[ded] in Purušḫanda for three years and five months. [Sar]gon set off for Akkad.)

Immediately afterwards, however, there is the discontent of the soldiers who are not satisfied by this epilogue and incite the king to carry out more decisive action, involving the demolition of the walls and the humiliation of the king of the city: [(uruPu)]-ru-uš-ḫa-an-da-aš BÀD-eš-šar KÁ.GAL ḫa-an-ti pí-ip-pa-an-du (24’) [e-eš-e]ša?ri-iš-me-et i-ya ne KÁ.GALaš a-še-eš-ḫu-ut mNu-úr-da-ḫi-ma-ta (25’) [e-eš-]ša-ri-ši-it pé-ra-an še-[er] ar-ta-ru ne-et-ta GAL-in ḫar-du

(IV 23’–25’)

(Let them break down the walls (and) the gate of Purušḫanda separately! Let you make their representation and put them (the depicted warriors and inhabitants) at the gate! But let Nurdaḫi, in what that is his representation, stand before you, and let him give you a cup!)

The formulation of Sargon’s will to peacefully withdraw from Purušḫanda is very similar in the two versions, but in the Amarnian one, it is followed only by the colophon: DUB.1.KAM ša LUGAL tam-ḫa-ri qa-ti (Obv. 29’) (Tablet I of the “King of Battle” — complete). This leads to considering the Hittite epilogue a later addition, deliberately designed to give a different ending to the story. The lines IV 23’–25’ are about a representation affixed to the city gate, designed to exalt the Akkadian king’s undertaking. Here the enemy ranks led by Nurdahi are depicted, standing before Sargon, subordinated to him, and recognizing his greatness.60 References both to a representation and to a/the city gate, as a place where Sargon exalts the outcome of his own feat and where he humiliates the rival king, are also present in other texts. The first is in ‘Sargon the Conquering Hero’, II 38–39 ‘That he might erect your 59  60 

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 130–31.

Miller 2012, 682 with a partly different interpretation.

64 statues in front of his own statues’, and in ‘Sargon in Foreign Lands’, III 6’ ‘A statue’,61 while the second city gate is in the Amarnian version (Obv. 10’– 18’; 19’–23’).62 Purušḫanda played a major role in the western area and was perhaps the most important Anatolian centre during the period of the kārum of Kaneš II, as recently affirmed by both Kryszat63 and Forlanini.64 The king of Purušḫanda, at the time of the events, was mentioned with the title of ‘great king’ in the documents from Kaneš.65 According to the reconstruction of Kryszat, the assumption of the title of ‘great king’ by Anitta was a novelty in the Anatolian context, since only the king of Purušḫanda had held this title until then.66 Since Anitta did not move into battle against Purušḫanda to destroy it, ‘the man of Purušḫanda’ had no reason to carry out an act of submission to him. Being more powerful, he offered his alliance according to diplomatic protocol. According to this interpretation, there is no reason to suppose that šar tamḫāri represents the mythical reading of the campaign of Anitta against Purušḫanda, because it was never conducted67 and it would contrast with the narration of the first and most ancient part (ll. 1–35) of the Anitta Text, in which the city appears as an ally of the king of Kuššar.68 The composition in oral form of the Sargon campaign against Purušḫanda dates back to about the eighteenth century, as the ‘Ur Letter’ attests.69 This is an OB tablet, Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 66–67, 88–89. The word translated ‘statue’ is the Akkadian ṣalmu, whose semantics, like the Hittite ešri-, goes from ‘figurines, effigies, statues’ to ‘relief ’ CAD, Ṣ, 76–85; for Hittite per ešri- ‘statue’ see Collins 2005, 20.

61 

62  63 

Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 102–03; 124–27. Kryszat 2008, 202–03.

Forlanini 2017, 131, 135, confirms its identification with Acemhöyük. Other recent proposals have been put forward on its location: west of Akşehir, according to Kryszat 2008, 205, Dercksen 2010, 71–72; or Bolvadin, according to Barjamovic 2011, 407, see also rec. Weeden 2012, 560, Radner 2012. 64 

65  66 

Kryszat 2008, 202–03, letter of Imdīlum. Kryszat 2008, 205–06.

67  This also explains why in Ḫattuša, there are no other ḪurroAkkadian tales set in this area. See also Torri 2009, 112. If there had really been a conflict between Anitta, little more than a king like many others of the time, and the great and powerful king of Purušḫanda, its echo should have been found in far more than a Hittite text.

Forlanini 2017, 130–31. We accept here the reconstruction proposed by Forlanini. For other reconstructions of this historical phase, see de Martino 2016, 20–22 and Beal 2003. 68 

69 

Wilcke 1982, 51; Goodnick Westenholz 1997, 148–51.

Rita Francia probably a scribal exercise, and begins (ll. 1–17) with a (fake) letter of Sargon about the campaign against the Anatolian city. Purušḫanda at l.  13 however is written in an anachronistic way, namely Pu-ru-uš-ḫa-an-da, according to a Hittite spelling, instead of the expected Purušḫattum.70 This text probably represents the written transposition of an oral version of the episode circulating in the bilingual Anatolian region of Kaneš. This new composition, elaborated in the Akkadian-Hittite context, had to be exported back to Mesopotamia, probably by a merchant of the kārum on one of his journeys from Kaneš to the mother country.71 Regarding the fortunate reception of the Nešite version of the poem, it is significant that whoever exported it to Mesopotamia, remembered and transmitted the name of the Anatolian city in Hittite spelling, namely in the language in which he listened to it in Neša/Kaneš, and not in Akkadian. As such, it was received by the student author of the Ur letter. The undertakings of Anitta are to be dated to the last quarter of the eighteenth century,72 but at this time the Nešite Sargon poem had already been established and affirmed at least orally. As Forlanini suggested (2017, 136), perhaps it was just the presence of Purušḫanda that aroused the interest of the Hittite court of Ḫattušili I, which had to request a probable written version but, for us, lost.73 Ḫattušili saw his own ideo­logy of dynastic power and his willingness to identify himself with the Akkadian king reflected in this version of the legend. Ḫattušili became king of Ḫattuša because he embodied the two fighting souls of the Hittite ruling family: he was in fact grandson of Ḫuzziya, the king of Zalpa on his paternal side (maybe Pawaḫtelmaḫ),74 and related to Labarna on his maternal side. His dynastic ideo­logy, however, aimed to enhance the line of paternal descent, that of the northern Ḫuzziya family of Zalpa.75 This king had been 70  Gilan 2008, 113; Torri 2009, 115–16; to note also the doubt expressed by Miller 2012, 683 on the reconstruction previously hypothesized in the light of this attestation.

There is some evidence of the influence that the culture of the Anatolian environment had on the Assyrian merchants of the kārum of Kaneš, see Devecchi 2005, 117 with literature. 71 

According to new texts, at the end of the eighteenth century, Lacambre & Nahm 2015, particularly, 21, 24. 72 

73  The version we have presents evidence of a late MH, Rieken 2001, but we cannot rule out the existence of an earlier version dated back to the ancient period, as some other linguistic evidence suggests. 74  75 

Otherwise Gilan 2014b, 88. Forlanini 2017, 128–30.

65

4. The View of Babylon in Hittite Texts humiliated by Anitta, an ally of the king of Purušḫanda according to the Anitta Text, and then the city of Zalpa was destroyed.76 Ḫattušili, who proposes himself as a new Sargon, had to see a transposition of his claim of the campaign of Anitta against Zalpa in the legend of Sargon but also to read in it his legitimization to the Hittite throne in the struggle for royal power.77 The destruction of Zalpa and the fate of Ḫuzziya would be figuratively claimed in the taking of Purušḫanda, the novelty of the Hittite text, and in the humiliation of its king at the hands of the Akkadian hero. Whoever wanted to transmit the legend to posterity in Hittite, desired that this version presented the annihilation of the Anatolian city. If this king were to be found in Ḫattušili I, as we believe, this text could be read as Ḫattušili I’s answer to the Anitta Text. While it celebrates the campaigns of the southern family of the Hittite dynasty to the detriment of the northern one, the šar tamḫāri tells of the claim of humiliation suffered by this dynastic line, precisely in the defeat of the king of Purušḫanda, the most powerful Anatolian king of the age and ally of Anitta, and the destruction of his city. In this sense, the motivation for the preservation of the text from Ḫattuša, could therefore just be sought in its epilogue.78 The Ḫattušili Annals do not recount any campaign against Purušḫanda; Telipinu mentions uruPár-šu-ḫaan-ta in the introductory lines of his Edict among the conquests of Labarna, the predecessor of Ḫattušili. The city appears conquered and destroyed in the reports of the expeditions of the ancient kings, CTH 13 (KBo 3.46), whose dating is uncertain, between Ḫattušili, Muršili,79 or, with motivations that seem better founded, to Ḫantili I.80 According to all the examined elements, it is evident that Babylon and its culture occupied a particular position in the Hittite imagination, different from any other known place. The perception of its greatness had been manifest since the dawn of the constitution of the kingdom as an independent power. Hence the sack of Babylon was one of the main objectives of the first 76  77  78 

Forlanini 2017, Dercksen 2010. Forlanini 2017, 136.

See also Forlanini 2017, 131; 135–36 and n. 70.

79  de Martino 2003, 130, prefers Muršili, although he recognizes that dating to Ḫattušili cannot be excluded. 80 

Forlanini 2017, 127, 133, 136.

kings and was brought to completion by Muršili I. The gesture had to represent the achievement of a goal felt necessary for the affirmation of one’s power. The identification of his past with that of the legendary Sargonic kings, and also by Ḫattušili I, testify that Babylon was seen both as a military and cultural model, representing the aim to be equalled in all fields in order for the Hittites to rise to the role of a great power.

Abbreviations CAD: 1956–. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago.

CHD: Güterbock, Hans Gustav; Hoffner, Harry A. & Hout, Theo P. J. van den (eds). 1980–. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. CTH: Laroche, Emmanuel. 1971. Catalogue des Textes Hittites. Klincksieck, Paris (supplements in Revue Hittite et Asianique 30 (1972): 94–133 and Revue Hittite et Asianique 32 (1973): 68–71). KBo: 1923–. Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköy. Mann, Berlin.

KUB: 1921–1990. Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköy. Akademie Verlag, Berlin. MH: Middle Hittite. MS: Middle Script. NH: New Hittite. NS: New Script.

OH: Old Hittite.

RGTC 3: Groneberg, Brigitte. 1980. Répertoire géo­ graphi­que des textes cuneiforms, iii: Die Ortsund Gewässernamen der altbabylonischen Zeit. Reichert, Wiesbaden.

RGTC 6: Del Monte, Giuseppe & Tischler, Johannes. 1978. Répertoire géo­graphique des textes cunéiformes, vi: Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der hethitischen Tetxe. Reichert, Wiesbaden.

RGTC 6/2: Del Monte, Giuseppe. 1992. Répertoire géo­ graphique des textes cunéiformes, vi/2: Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der hethitischen Texte: Supplement. Reichert, Wiesbaden.

66

Rita Francia

Works Cited Alster, Bendt & Oshima, Takayoshi 2007 ‘Sargonic Dinner at Kaneš: The Old Assyrian Legend of Sargon’, Iraq 69: 1–20. Archi, Alfonso 2015 ‘How Anitta Text Reached Hattusa’, in Andreas Müller-Karpe, Esabeth Rieken & Walter Sommerfeld (eds), Saeculum: Gedenkschrift für Heinrich Otten anlässlich seines 100. Geburtstags (Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 58). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 1–13. Bachvarova, Mary R. 2016 From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolia Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Barjamovic, Gojko 2011 A Historical Geo­graphy of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen. Beal, Richard H. 2003 ‘The Predecessors of Hattušili I’, in Gary Beckman, Richard Beal & Gregory McMahon (eds), Hittite Studies in Honor of Harry A. Hoffner Jr. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 13–35. Beckman, Gary 1983 ‘Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at Ḫattuša’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 35.1: 97–114. 2001 ‘Sargon and Naram-Sin in Hatti: Reflections of Mesopotamian Antiquity among the Hittites’, in Dieter Kuhn & Helga Stahl (eds), Die Gegenwart des Altertums. Forum, Heidelberg: 85–91. 2014 Babili-Rituals from Hattusa (CTH 718). Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Brinkman, Johan A. 1976–1980    ‘Karduniaš’, in Reallexikon der Assyrio­logie und vorderasiatische Archäo­logie, v: Ia-Kizzuwatna. De Gruyter, Berlin: 423. Collins, Billie J. 1998 ‘Hattusili I, the Lion King’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 50: 15–20. 2005 ‘A Statue for the Deity: Cult Images in Hittite Anatolia’, in Neal H. Walls (ed.), Cult Image and Divine Repre­ sentation in the Ancient Near East, American Schools of Oriental Research, Boston: 13–42. Czyzewska, Izabella S. 2012 ‘How to Pray to Hittite Gods: A Semantic and Contextual Analysis of Hittite Prayer Termino­logy with the New Editions of Selected Prayers of Muršili II’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, SOAS, University of London). Devecchi, Elena 2005 Gli Annali di Ḫattušili I nella versione Accadica (Studia Mediterranea 16, Series Hethaea 4). Italian University Press, Pavia. de Martino, Stefano 1991 ‘Alcune osservazioni su KBo III 27’, Altorientalische Forschungen 18: 54–66. 1993 ‘KUB XXVII 38: Ein Beispiel kultureller und linguistischer Überlagerung in einem Text aus dem Archiv von Boǧazköy’, Studi Micenei ed Egeo Anatolici 31: 121–35. 2003 Annali e ‘res gestae’ antico ittiti (Studia Mediterranea 12). Italian University Press, Pavia. 2016 Da Kussara a Karkemish: storia del regno ittita (Laboratorio di Vicino Oriente Antico 1). Lo Gisma, Turin.

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Dercksen, Jan Gerrit 2010 ‘Anitta and the Man of Purušhanda’, in Şevket Dönmez (ed.), DUB.SAR É.DUB.BA.A: Veysel Donbaz’a Sunulan Yazılar; Studies Presented in Honour of Veysel Donbaz. Zero Prodüksiyon, Istanbul: 71–75. Forlanini, Massimo 2000 ‘L’orizzonte geografico dei testi hittiti e le “Liste di evocazione”’, in Lucio Milano, Stefano de Martino, Frederick Mario Fales & Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi (eds), Landscapes: Territories and Horizons in the Ancient Near East; Papers Presented to the XLIV Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale, Venezia, 7–11 July 1997, ii: Geo­ graphy and Cultural Landscapes (History of the Ancient Near East, Mono­graphs 3.2). Sargon, Padua: 9–20. 2008 ‘The Historical Geo­graphy of Anatolia and the Transition from the kārum-Period to the Early Hittite Empire’, in Jan Gerrit Dercksen (ed.), Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (Publications de l’Institut historique et archéo­logique néerlandais à Stamboul 111). Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, Leiden: 57–86. 2017 ‘Le role de Purušḫanda dans l’historie Hittites’, in Alice Mouton (ed.), Hittito­logy Today: Studies on Hittite and Neo-Hittite Anatolia in Honor of Emmanuel Laroche’s 100th Birthday / L’Hittito­logie Aujourd’hui; études sur l’Anatolie hittite et néo-hittite à l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance d’Emmanuel Laroche; Istanbul 21–22 novembre 2014. 5èmes Rencontres d’Archéo­logie de l’IFÉA. Institut français d’études anatoliennes, Istanbul: 125–50. Gelb, Ignace J. 1994 ‘The Name of Babylon’, in Richard S. Hess & David Toshio Tsumura (eds), I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 266–69. Gilan, Amir 2008 ‘Hittite Ethnicity? Construction of Identity in Hittite Literature’, in Billie. J. Collins, Mary R. Bachvarova & Ian C. Rutherford (eds), Anatolian Interfaces: Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbours; Proceedings of an International Conference on Interaction, September 17–19, 2004 Emory University Atlanta. Oxbow, Oxford: 107–15. 2010 ‘Epic and History in Hittite Anatolia: In Search of a Local Hero’, in David Konstan & Kurt A. Raaflaub (eds), Epic and History. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden: 51–65. 2014a ‘The End of God-Napping and the Religious Foundations of the New Hittite Empire’, Zeitschrift für Assyrio­ logie 104.2: 195–205. 2014b ‘The Hittite Offering Lists of Deceased Kings and Related Texts (CTH  610–11) as Historical Sources’, KASKAL 11: 85–102. Goedegebuure, Petra 2008 ‘Central Anatolian Languages and Language Communities in the Colony Period. A  Luwian-HattianSymbiosis and the Independent Hittites’, in Jan Gerrit Dercksen (ed.), Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (Publications de l’Institut historique et archéo­logique néerlandais à Stamboul 111). Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, Leiden: 137–80. Goodnick Westenholz, Joan (ed. and trans.) 1997 Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. 2011 ‘The Transmission and Reception of Sargonic Sagas in the Hittite World’, in Manfred Hutter & Sylvia HutterBraunsar (eds), Hethitische Literatur: Überlieferungsprozesse, Textstrukturen, Ausdrucksformen und Nachwirken; Akten des Symposiums von 18. bis 20. Februar 2010 in Bonn. Ugarit, Münster: 285–303. Güterbock, Hans Gustav 1997 ‘Hittite Historio­graphy: A Survey’, in Harry A. Hoffner Jr. & Irving L. Diamond (eds), Perspectives on Hittite Civilization: Selected Writings of Hans G. Güterbock (Assyrio­logical Studies 26). The Oriental Institute, Chicago: 171–77 (repr. from Hayim Tadmor & Moshe Weinfeld (eds), History, Historio­graphy and Interpretation (Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures). Jerusalem, Magnes, 1983: 21–35).

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Haas, Volkert 2003 Materia magica et medica hethitica: Ein Beitrag zur Heilkunde im Alten Orient, i. De Gruyter, Berlin. Hoffner, Harry A., Jr. 1975 ‘Propaganda and Political Justification in Hittite Historio­graphy’, in Hans Goedicke & Jimmy J. M. Robert (eds), Unity and Diversity: Essays in the History, Literature and Religion of the Ancient Near East. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore: 49–62. 1980 ‘Histories and Historians of the Ancient Near East: The Hittites’, Orientalia, n.s. 49: 283–332. Hoffner, Harry A., Jr. & Melchert, H. Craig 2008 A Grammar of the Hittite Language, i (Languages of the Ancient Near East). Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Hout, Theo P. J. van den 2012 ‘The Ductus of Alalah VII Texts and the Origin of The Hittite Cuneiform’, in Elena Devecchi (ed.), Palaeo­ graphy and Scribal Practices in Syro-Palestine and Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age: Papers Read at the Symposium in Leiden, 17–18 December 2009 (Publications de l’Institut historique et archéo­logique néerlandais à Stamboul 119). Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, Leiden: 147–70. Kryszat, Guido 2008 ‘Herrscher, Kult und Kulttradition in Anatolien nach den Quellen aus den altassyrischen HandelskolonienTeil 3/2: Grundlagen für eine neue Rekonstruktion der Geschichte Anatoliens und der assyrischen Handelskolonien in spätaltassyrischer Zeit II’, Altorientalische Forschungen 35.2: 195–219. Lacambre, Denis & Nahm, Werner 2015 ‘Pithana, an Anatolian Ruler in the Time of Samsuiluna of Babylon: New Data from Tell Rimah (Iraq)’, Revue d’assyrio­logie et d’archéo­logie orientale 109: 17–28. Liverani, Mario 1993 ‘Model and Actualization: The Kings of Akkad in the Historical Tradition’, in Mario Liverani (ed.), Akkad: The First World Empire; Structure, Ideo­logy, Tradition (History of the Ancient Near East 5). Sargon, Padua: 41–67. Melchert, H. Craig 1977 ‘Ablative and Instrumental in Hittite’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Harvard). Mieroop, Marc van de 2000 ‘Sargon of Agade and his Successors in Anatolia’, Studi Micenei ed Egeo Anatolici 42: 133–59. Miller, Jared L. 2012 ‘The (City-)Gate and the Projection of Royal Power in Ḫatti’, in Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Organization, Repre­sentation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale at Würzburg, 20–25 July 2008. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 675–86. Radner, Karen 2012 Review of Barjamovic, Gojko. 2011: A Historical Geo­graphy of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen. American Journal of Archaeo­logy 116.4. Richter, Thomas 2012 Biblio­graphisches Glossar des Hurritischen. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Rieken, Elisabeth 2001 ‘Der hethitiche šar tamḫari-Text: archaisch oder archaisierend?’, in Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethito­logie, Würzburg, 4.–8. Oktober 1999 (Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 576–85.

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Schwemer, Daniel 2008 ‘Fremde Götter in Ḫatti. Die hethitische Religion im Spannungsfeld von Synkretismus und Abgrenzung’, in Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Ḫattuša – Boğazköy: Das Hethiterreich im Spannungsfeld des Alten Orients; 6. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 22.–24. März 2006, Würzburg. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 137–57. Soysal, Oǧuz 1989 ‘Mursili I. Eine Historische Studie’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Würzburg). 1998 ‘Beiträge zur althethitischen Geschichte (II). Zur Textwiederherstellung und Datierung von KUB XXXI 64+ (CTH 12)’, Altorientalische Forschungen 25.1: 5–33. 2005 ‘Beiträge zur althethitischen Geschichte (III): Kleine Fragmente historischen Inhalts’, Zeitschrift für Assyrio­ logie 95: 121–44. Tavernier, Jan 2010 ‘Les Hittites dans les sources mésopotamiennes’, in Isabelle Klock-Fontanille, Séverine Biettlot & Karine Meshoub (eds), Identité et altérité culturelles: le cas des Hittites dans le Proche-Orient ancient; actes de colloque, Université de Limoges 27–28 novembre 2008. Safran, Brussels: 171–92. Torri, Giulia 2009 ‘Sargon, Anitta, and the Hittite Kings against Purušḫanda’, Altorientalische Forschungen 36.1: 110–18. Vanstiphout, Herman J. L. 1998 ‘Comparative Notes on Šar tamhāri’, in Hayat Erkanal, Veysel Donbaz & Ayşegül Oǧuroǧlu (eds), XXXIVème Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale / XXXIV. Uluslararasi Assirioloji Kongresi. 6–10/VII/1987-Istanbul. Türk Tarih Kurumu Baslimevi, Ankara: 573–89. Weeden, Mark 2011 Hittite Logograms and Hittite Scholarship (Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 54). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. 2012 Review of Barjamovic, Gojko. 2011. A Historical Geo­graphy of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period. Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 75.3: 559–60. Wilhelm, Gernot 2009 ‘Šanḫara’, in Reallexikon der Assyrio­logie und vorderasiatische Archäo­logie, xii.1/2: Šamuḫa-Schild. De Gruyter, Berlin: 11–12. Wilcke, Claus 1982 ‘Zum Geschichtsbewußtsein im Alten Mesopotamien’, in Hermann Müller-Karpe (ed.), Archäo­logie und Geschichtsbewußtsein. Beck, Munich: 31–51. Zadok, Ran 1984 ‘The Origin of the Name Shinar’, Zeitschrift für Assyrio­logie 74: 240–44.

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians: Between Evocation and Negation, and its Reflections in the Urbanization of the Imperial Seats Rita Dolce

University of Roma Tre

A bstract –

A visible line, sometimes fine and sometimes more well-defined, connects the developments of Assyrian architectural and figurative culture between the late second and much of the first millennium bc to that of its eternal ‘rival’ in Mesopotamia, Babylonia and its capital. The fortunes of Babylonia in the historical memory of the Assyrians seem to have a double and contrasting image: that of a model to aspire to and even supersede, and that of its annihilation to ensure that it was permanently forgotten, though this in fact turned out to be fairly ephemeral. The urbanistic and architectural layout of the largest buildings of the Neo-Assyrian period, between the eighth and seventh centuries bc, reflects the former of the two perceived images of Babylonia and is expressed powerfully in the activities of the sovereign perhaps most inspired by this ‘model’, Sargon  II, in an ideo­l ogical and political synthesis that enriches its significance, expressed through that powerful means of visual communication that is the urban landscape of the royal seat in the broad sense. The construction of the double image, so to speak, of the capital of Babylonia pervades, with conflicting intentions, the construction and political projects of later Neo-Assyrian sovereigns, from the total destruction by Sennacherib on the one hand to the unavoidable evocations, in the palatial spaces of his palace at Nineveh, of the innovative developments enacted at Khorsabad by his direct predecessor on the other; up to the reparatory and perhaps cathartic mission, of strong symbolic significance, with Esarhaddon and to an even greater extent the last famous sovereign of the dynasty, of the ‘reconstruction’ of the Chaldean capital. A  similar dimension, though with far slighter traces, can be outlined for some features of formal language and for some choices in the production of figurative works and the message that these are intended to convey. The artistic culture and visual communication are affected by a new ‘climate’ that during the second millennium bc pervades the entire Near East. This is a system broadened with respect to the past, extending outside Mesopotamia and increasingly large and wellorganized, of cultural influences connected to the network of economic relations. These dynamics affecting the Near East from Elam to Egypt to Anatolia also see the participation, with alternating fortunes, of Ashur and Babylonia. The relationship and memory between the permanent past of the great Babylonia and Ashur takes the form of a permanent conflict between evocation and negation.

Events and Stages of ‘Parallel’ Paths of Babylonia and Assyria The principal focus of this article is the cultural, historical, and ideo­logical faces, and — last but not least — the visual communication punctuating the relationship between Assyria and Babylonia during that key period lasting over half a millennium between the final centuries of the second millennium to the fall of the NeoAssyrian empire in the first. First, however, we should go back in time to recall the salient circumstances, events, and stages of the ‘parallel’ paths of Babylonia and Assyria, the two ‘faces’ of Mesopotamia, their shared and venerated land. Already between the third and second millennia bc, with the first administrative and territorial empire to emerge in Mesopotamia under the Third Dynasty of Ur, the northern region and its towns, such as Ashur itself and Nineveh, effectively belonged to this immense state; the presence of the Amorites in both Mesopotamia and Syria later came to be a powerful and long-lasting variable in political and cultural history, eventually leading to the collapse of the system of power and forced unification established by the Neo-Sumerian sovereigns of Ur, the sudden breakaway of northern Mesopotamia, and its rule by local dynasties.1 Again, the collapse in around the mid-second millennium bc, as a consequence of various international pressures, of the kingdom of Mittani that then controlled Assyria, represented its opportunity for autonomy.2 1  Trolle Larsen 2008, 13; Galter 2007, 527–28. The winning ideo­logy of the Amorites also had an impact on the new development of the urban layouts of the Assyrian capitals, no longer tied to tradition but resulting from the autonomous wishes of the sovereign who built them and the needs of urban development: cf. Masetti 2019, 368. 2 

Liverani 2008, 161–62; Evans 2008, 206; Galter 2007, 528.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 71–84 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127138

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Figure 5.1. Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. Plan of the city (from Eickoff 1985, 258).

It also gave rise to the establishment in Babylonia of a reign of ‘newcomers’, the Kassites, already at this stage creating the conditions for a ferocious and long-lasting armed conflict between the two kingdoms. It was at this point, in the mid-fourteenth century bc, that Assyria became conspicuous for the international ambitions and determination of its leaders. They included AshurUballit I,3 who clearly aspired to equal the ­pharaoh with the title of ‘great king’, and who attained control over 3 

Evans 2008, 206; Galter 2007, 528.

Babylonia and its ruling dynasty. Adad-Nirari  I subsequently weakened Babylonia and conquered what remained of the kingdom of Mittani, consolidating the coveted role of (equal) partner on the political stage with Egypt and with the kingdom of Khatti, and setting his expansionist sights on Babylonia; the same aims were pursued by his successor, Shalmaneser I. This is the other focal point in the construction of the Assyrian project for supremacy, extended to its southern ‘rival/sister’ and the premise on which the great Tukulti-Ninurta I later acted in the mid-thirteenth

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians

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Figure 5.2. Ashur. Plan of the northern sector of the city (from Heinrich 1982, 284).

century bc. The latter was a highly innovative sovereign in both political and ideo­logical terms, a precursor to the strategies of the Imperial period. At this point we see the start of an intense and controversial process, lasting until the fall of Nineveh, marked by a sort of cross-eyed way to manage the actions against and contacts with Babylonia, giving rise to opposing impulses and to emulation, through visual manifestations of the affirmation of power.4 It was Tukulti-Ninurta I who Brinkman 1979, 223 already described it as difficult to draw an exhaustive picture of Babylonia under Assyrian domination given its peculiarity as home to an ancient civilization and to a culture considered a shared legacy and an example of an advanced political structure. This to the extent of claiming that Babylonia in the last two centuries of Assyrian supremacy was treated not as a province but as a kingdom run by the Assyrian king himself or by an individual chosen by him. Brinkman argues that Babylonia remained prosperous, despite the ferocious conflicts with Assyria even during the last phase of the Neo-Assyrian empire and considers this an indicator of a fundamental failure on the part of the Assyrians to manage direct rule over their rival: Brinkman 1984, 123–25; the same suggestion is made in Bahrani 2007, 155 especially, which poses the question of whether a certain policy of Ashurbanipal 4 

first chose to refound the seat of the kingdom elsewhere, devising and implementing the tangible distinction between the imperial capital and the religious capital, physically and symbolically a short distance one from the other (Fig. 5.1);5 however, the historic capital permanently acquired (or was relegated to?) the exclusive role of holy city at a later point (Fig. 5.2).6 in the visual communication formulated on the stela found in the Esagil of Marduk at Babylon was dictated by the need to legitimate himself through a specifically Babylonian and to an even greater extent Sumerian image, at the roots of the culture of early dynastic Mesopotamia. Worth noting is the hypothesis advanced by Reade 2011, 111, on the origin of the establishment of the first new Assyrian capital after Ashur; the model of transmission and the stimulus for emulation is thought to be the Kassite capital Dur-Kurigalzu, which presented features shared with the older Babylon, visited by the Middle Assyrian sovereign himself. It was this sovereign who for the first time adopted a regular geometrical form when planning his newly founded city called by his name, perhaps drawing on Babylonian urban models already present: Masetti 2019, 367, 369. 5 

It was the seat of royal power, for example, under TiglathPileser I. The city of Ashur as a frequent royal seat from at least

6 

74 Tukulti-Ninurta  I was the first to name the first Assyrian capital subsequent to Ashur after himself, a media operation of enormous impact and one that, perhaps not coincidentally, was emulated by the great Sargon II centuries later, at the height of Neo-Assyrian power. It was Tukulti-Ninurta I who demonstrated the firm determination to extend his territorial dominion both to the north and south of the Assyrian epicentre, and who used the rash attempt of the Kassites to counter him as a pretext to launch an all-out attack on southern Mesopotamia and on Babylonia itself. It was at this point that the same sovereign took four concomitant steps of enormous historical and political impact, which in my view had a permanent effect on relations between Babylonia and Assyria in later centuries. He materially conquered Babylon, the capital and custodian of the tradition of Mesopotamian civilization; he went so far as to sack the houses of the gods and particularly the supreme place of the Esagil7 and committed the sacrilegious act par excellence of removing the ‘living statue’ of the titular god Marduk and taking it to Ashur, which under his rule had become the sacred city of Assyrian religion and cult. The memory of his triumph is fixed in the epic literature in various versions, and even finds a place in the Library of Nineveh at the time of Ashurbanipal;8 finally, he celebrated himself officially in his royal titles as, among other designations, ‘King of Sumer and of Akkad’, picking up of his own accord the baton of the historical and cultural legacy of third-millennium bc Mesopotamia.9 before the ninth century bc is attested by the evidence of the written sources on the Old Palace, and even before the advent of Sennacherib for some sovereigns, according to Reade 2011, 110. The continuity in its role as capital from the late second millennium bc until the investiture of Nimrud is clarified by the remains of occupation concentrated in the area of the ‘Old Town’, which deserves further investigation in light of the results published a few years ago: cf. Hausleiter 2011. Ashur’s dual nature as the administrative capital and the most important seat of cult in the Assyrian empire was later split with Ashurnasirpal II and the new imperial capital; but the supreme god of the same name could not be moved from his house in this city, conferring upon Ashur the perennial status of a seat of cult, as remarked by Reade 2011, 109.

For a wide-ranging examination of the greatest temple of Marduk and its ziggurat see George 1999. 7 

8 

Later Assyrian sovereigns benefitted from the positive effects of Tukulti-Ninurta  I’s reign, adopting a policy of safeguarding the status quo; however, Assyria had now taken a new path and it was precisely the Babylonians’ emulation of the hostage-taking of the statues of the Assyrian gods from the town of Ekallatum that gave the last great leader of the Middle Assyrian period, Tiglath-Pileser I, the opportunity to launch an exemplary ‘demonstrative action’. Like his illustrious predecessor, he marched on Lower Mesopotamia, wresting it from Kassite control, conquering its capital, and assailing Babylon, setting fire to the royal palace itself:10 the repeated conquest of the city and the momentous insult formerly inflicted by Tukulti-Ninurta I on the Babylonian deities was now compounded by the destruction of the epicentre of secular power. Yet a distinctive feature of the policies and image of this sovereign, breaking with the past, was the rehabilitation, so to speak, of the imperial capital of Ashur. Here Tiglath-Pileser embarked upon an impressive project to restore the key structures in the urban layout, the walls and the royal palace, as in contemporary Nineveh. Whilst hardly anything is known about the ideo­logical intentions and effects that this operation may have produced after his reign, it is nonetheless certain that it reveals a (temporary) explicit setback in the rhetoric of ambition of some sovereigns to re-establish the urban seat of kingship after ascending to the throne, introduced some time earlier by the innovative TukultiNinurta I. An interlude of about two centuries in Assyria’s political and expansionist advance, clearly due to the widespread presence of the Arameans and perhaps also to the absence of high calibre individuals at the top levels of the power structure, curtailed the kingdom’s ambitions and borders until the early ninth century bc. At this time, a tellingly named sovereign, TukultiNinurta II, with a determination equal to that of his ancestral namesake, laid the foundations for a radical transformation of political policy. His aim was to exponentially extend the dominions of Assyria, a forerunner to the imperial dimension that later came to characterize the final and golden age of its history in the first half of the first millennium bc.

Evans 2008, 207.

Some considerations on the personality of this sovereign and the foundation of his capital have been formulated by Dolce 1997; for a profile of the relations of this sovereign with Babylonia in the context of the cultural and religious sphere, with an impact that goes beyond his kingdom, cf. Galter 2007, 536–38. 9 

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10 

Evans 2008, 208–09; Matthiae 1997, 19.

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians

The Contradictory and Dual Perception of Babylonia for the Assyrians During Assyria’s golden age and at the height of its power, both concentrated in under three centuries, the controversial relationship with Babylonia, apparent in the aforementioned events and media expressions already during the second millennium bc, reappears in similar forms but simultaneously develops into a rivalry with the cultural model and image of Babylonia, aimed at surpassing them. This is evident particularly in the imposing urbanism programmes in the successive imperial capitals. The military conflict between the Assyrians and Babylonians began again at the start of the millennium and for the first time took on an aspect of clear (presumed) parity in the relationship between the contenders at the time of Ashurnasirpal II and Nabu-apla-iddina, to the extent of producing pacts of alliance with their respective successors. These pacts were celebrated as notable achievements on the throne base of the Assyrian warrior-king Shalmaneser III, yet remained stable for only a few decades. The ephemeral nature of this agreement is revealed by the rapid resumption, already in the late ninth century bc, of the military campaigns waged by successive Assyrian sovereigns against Babylonia.

These unfolded in accordance with the same strategic and ideo­logical rationale constructed in the remote past, from pillage to the destitution and imprisonment of the Babylonian sovereigns and, again, the deportation of the statues of the national gods, the latter at the hands of Adad-Nirari III. It is with this Neo-Assyrian sovereign that the contradictory, enduring, and never fully resolved relationship with the historical memory of Babylonia first becomes more directly apparent. The supreme injury inflicted by his usurpation of the sacred realm, replicating the deed of his great ancestor, contrasts diametrically with his image as the protector of the age-old cults in the temples of the Babylonians, now reduced to subjects of his empire. The contradictory and dual perception of Babylonia in the historical memory of the Assyrians continues with Tiglath-Pileser III and during the eighth century bc in the rationalization of the widespread domination of southern Mesopotamia11 but also, as a counter­point, in

Trolle Larsen 1979, 85–87 supposes that the reforms undertaken under the rule of this sovereign were determined by social conflicts within Assyria, already ongoing for some time among the higher notables of power and exploding with his ascent to the throne. It has been noted that this sovereign was the first after Tukulti11 

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the extension of tax privileges to Babylonia and to leading cities of the ‘Land of Sumer’, from Eridu to Uruk and Ur, at the wishes of Sargon II, no accident for the sovereign bearing the name of the soon-to-be founder of the first universal ‘empire’.12 This perception is also manifested in a sort of emphasis on the kingship of Babylonia and in Babylonia in the cult places on its territory, culminating in an operation of guaranteed communicative impact with the assumption of the title of ‘king of Babylon’ by some Assyrian sovereigns up to the end of the empire.13 However this operation was of limited efficacy given the recurrent control over Babylonia itself of the Chaldeans and their alliances with those later responsible for the definitive collapse of Nineveh and the empire as a whole. A clear change of pace and a return to the strategy of wholesale destruction of Babylonia pursued by Tukulti-Ninurta I centuries earlier took place under Sennacherib, who, I think, looked to the political and ideo­logical model of his great ancestor. At the same time, however, whilst he displayed an exponential determination to destroy compared to the past, he also effected a complex political operation apparently aimed Ninurta I to officially establish himself on the throne of Babylonia after the invasion of southern Mesopotamia: Galter 2007, 531.

According to Trolle Larsen 1979, 101, the privileges granted to Babylonia on the one hand allowed the Southern Land to enjoy stability and to promote economic and commercial activities, and on the other allowed the Neo-Assyrian empire to offer to the provincial areas of its vast empire opportunities for economic profits with a view to garnering widespread support; Elayi 2017, 253. Sargon’s primary objective of founding a new capital to enhance his image and enact the project for a universal empire also entailed his strong opposition to the proliferation of new cities in the empire and media focus on himself; these operations have recently been judged relatively ineffective by M. Masetti, leading to a return, at Dur-Sharrukin, to the traditional model for the first new capital of the Neo-Assyrian period, Calah, a project imbued with his own selfcelebration: Masetti 2019, 375–76. 12 

By Tiglath-Pileser III himself up to Ashurbanipal. Conversely, the concept of Neo-Assyrian kingship resists the decline of the empire in the manifest conviction of the Neo-Babylonian, Median, and Persian sovereigns that they were successors to the Assyrian kings, continuing the form of Assyrian kingship, and custodians, among other things, of the vast literary legacy preserved in copies in Babylon itself and elsewhere already by the wise Ashurbanipal: cf. Parpola 2010, 39–41. A political-historical view of Assyria’s relationship with Babylonia as a special one has recently been proposed by Frahm. Over time, besides the long-lasting clash between the two Mesopotamian kingdoms, there were cultural ties between the two civilizations including languages, writing, deities, and their religion institutions, refashioning Assyrian sacred areas, such as Ashur Temple, after the Babylonian model: Frahm 2017, pp. 286–87, 290–95 especially. 13 

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Figure 5.3. Dur-Sharrukin. Plan of the city (from Gordon 1936, fig. 1).

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians at repairing the damage inflicted on Babylonia and its sacred realm.14

His successor Esarhaddon too exerted himself to the maximum and with a determination equal to that of Sennacherib but in acts of a different nature, aimed in my view at cancelling out part of his father’s efforts in a crescendo of activities to regenerate Babylonia and southern Mesopotamia. These comprised a massive and extensive building project, from holy places to defensive walls, up to the repair and return to their homes of the divine images of the Babylonian pantheon which had long remained segregated in both Assyria and Susa.15 On the level of official visual communication, this policy is presented as an obligation on the part of Esarhaddon to make reparations for the damage inflicted by his predecessor in the recent past and also as a way of exhibiting his personal and privileged attention to that region of Mesopotamia, home to the historical-cultural and religious legacy of millennia. Esarhaddon’s radical switch from the extreme humiliation to the celebration of Babylonia, taken up by the last famous sovereign Ashurbanipal who extended it to economic aspects such as tax and trade benefits for southern Mesopotamia, marks the peak in the alternating and contrasting primordial and enduring relationship between the two lands of Mesopotamia. This immediately preceded the definitive collapse of the Neo-Assyrian empire, Babylonia’s full recovery of its role under Nabopolassar,16 and its domination over the lands of Assyria, up to its central role in the world with Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucodonosor)  II, as had already been the case with his ancestor of the same name centuries earlier.

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The Policies and the Ideo­logical Clash between Assyria and Babylonia In these final centuries of the maximum expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the fierce and complex rivalry always characteristic of the policies and the ideo­logical clash between Assyria and Babylonia found further forms of competition with the immanent image and cultural memory of Babylonia, employed by the individual sovereigns of the eighth and seventh centuries bc in the visual self-celebration of their reign, conceived and given concrete expression in the architecture of the imperial capitals. The first (?)17 exhaustive proof of this can be found in the layout of Sargon II’s newly founded capital of Assyria, a foundation that followed the forerunner experience of the Middle Assyrian sovereign Tukulti-Ninurta I and Ashurnasirpal II’s choice to refound the capital yet elsewhere, in a place that sounds paradigmatic, between the first and last Assyrian capital (Figs 5.3, 5.4).18 The sovereign looks to and reproposes the urban model proper to Babylon, in a contemporary formula that represents the outcome of a long development over time in terms of the overall project and significant elements of the city plan. This is true to the extent that Sargon’s idea of the royal city could plausibly be considered a ‘new Babylon’19 with specific similarities between the positioning of city gates and palaces at Khorsabad and the topo­g raphy of Babylon. 20 Further food for thought is provided by the observation that already at Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta significant similarities can be seen with the topo­graphy of Babylon, probably about Cf. Matthiae 1996a, 136–37 on this, for an attractive hypothesis on Ashurnasirpal II.

17 

The absolute determination of this sovereign to destroy Babylonia is noted by Liverani 2017, 150 as one of only two cases attested in the decrees of the last phase of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. 14 

For the special relationship between Esarhaddon and the cosmic residence of the ‘king of the gods’, the Esagil, in its Babylonian recreation cf. George 1999, 67–68, especially. Enlightening in this regard is the expression of Esarhaddon, recalled by Liverani 2017, 149, on the meaning of the destruction of enemy or hostile cities and on the prospects for their reconstruction. As regards the motivations underlying the sovereign’s operations proposed above, the religious prominence of Babylonia suggested by Liverani 2017, 155 as the reason for its reconstruction seems in my opinion to be rather an argument from expedience, so to speak, well received by his subjects and in any case functional with a view to the more ambitious and personal intentions of Esarhaddon. 15 

It has rightly been noted that there is a parallel between the motivations adduced for the attack on Assyria and those for the destruction of Babylon at the time of Sennacherib, in a reversal of the roles of the respective protagonists: Liverani 2017, 269.

16 

18  Reade 2011, 112–13 explains the choice of Nimrud as capital of the empire with its strategic position between Ashur and Nineveh which had become an important seat of royalty already before it was chosen as the imperial capital by Sennacherib; but in my opinion also for the powerful media impact of such a choice, perhaps a premonition of the latter city’s future destiny. The construction of Dur-Sharrukin significantly revives the ideal model of Calah in the urban layout, albeit on different ideo­logical bases: cf. note 12.

For analytical evaluations and insightful observations see Matthiae 1996a, 135–37. 19 

20  Battini 2007, 282, 284, following the first revisions by George 1992 of the Tintir text. A new suggestion comes from Reade 2011, 112, 118 who considers the urban layout of Khorsabad the exact reproduction of that of Nimrud both in the plan and the topo­graphy of the citadel and the arsenal. Were this the case, Sargon II would have far-sightedly created in his capital a synthesis of a homage to the past of Neo-Assyrian national urbanism and the emulation of the Babylonian model.

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Figure 5.4. Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin), plan of the city (from Gordon & Altman 1938, pl. 69).

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians

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a century more recent, and in Nippur itself in the late second millennium bc.21 This might open up a new perspective in which the Middle Assyrian capital and that of Babylonia both looked to an other and more ancient urban and ideo­logical model.22 Sargon II also aimed to erect a multiform visual monument to perennially commemorate his own person, without equals in the immediate future of the empire if, as it seems, he associated the emulation of his illustrious Middle Assyrian ancestor (thirteenth century) in the foundation ex novo of the capital also bearing his name and that of the Babylonian model of the royal city probably dating to the twelfth century, slightly later than Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, with the deliberate aim of uniting in a single new city the two faces of power, religious and political,23 in other words the two faces of Mesopotamia, in line with the universalizing ideal of the founder of Akkad, Sargon I.24

21 

Battini 2007, 289.

Identified hypothetically in Nippur itself by Battini 2007, 289. Unfortunately, the variable of the city plan of Hammurapi’s Babylon remains unknown, despite the widespread opinion that already at this time the city was of great importance: George 1997, 133–34; Bergamini 1977, 151–52 and especially note 166 on the structural situation with regard to the foundations of the Ishtar Gate, already then considered a topic requiring more extensive investigation; Matthaie 1996a, 136 agrees with a reduced urban layout during the Old Babylonian period. Of the same opinion is Biga, according to Charpin, who on the basis of the written sources suggest a lesser role of Babylon in the first half of the second millennium bc and identify in Eshnunna the leading capital on the political stage of the eighteenth century bc: Biga 2011, 36–39 and references to the studies of Charpin; finally see Charpin 2012, 199–202 for an overview of the varying impact of the deeds of the Babylonian sovereign during his long reign. The foundation of the city is in itself another important issue, posed by J. Margueron, who identifies evidence and conditions to date it to the late third–early second millennia bc and to consider it already a large and important city, and sees traces of the original layout in the topo­graphy of the NeoBabylonian capital: Margueron 2001, 323, 336–38, especially. 22 

23 

Matthiae 1996a, 135, 136.

The universalizing imprint conferred by the Neo-Assyrian Sargon on Khorsabad as a hub for peoples from all four quarters of the earth is emphasized by the inscription recalled in Matthiae 1996a, 93. Detailed considerations on the intention of the Assyrians of the first millennium bc to build their own ideo­logy on that of the period of Akkad, already innovative in its own time, and to deliberately use the royal titles developed by the Akkadian sovereigns more than a millennium and a half earlier were formulated some time ago by Trolle Larsen 1979, 90–91; as was his remark on the structural differences between the two systems of power, rightly considering the ‘empire’ to be appropriate only to the Assyria of the first millennium bc. 24 

Figure 5.5. Nineveh. Plan of the city (from Heinrich 1984, fig. 108).

The primacy of the god Sin among the titular deities of the temples adjacent to the Royal Palace25 also suggests that the choice of this god, already one of the most important deities from the period of Akkad to Ur III, alludes to or even exhibits the reference to the astral deities protecting the dynasty of Sargon I. The backwards path linking the historical memory of southern to northern Mesopotamia from the late third millennium bc mentioned above would thus come full circle. That Sargon’s act, of enormous political and ideo­logical reach in imperial policy inflicted a serious injury on Babylonia and above all on its patron god Marduk seems certain, regardless of the hypotheses based on the textual sources and their interpretation.26 It also had a significant impact on the complex personality of his son and successor Sennacherib, who took two extreme decisions, once again destined to feed the double, contrasting image about and of Babylonia in the perception of the Assyrians. The first, famous for its exemplary ferocity, is the aforementioned destruc25  26 

Reade 2011, 118.

Matthiae 1998, 60–63.

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Figure 5.6. Babylon. Plan of the city (from George 1992, fig. 2).

tion of Babylon; the other is the change of seat of the royal capital, but this time — uniquely in the history of Assyria — ably motivated by the damage caused by his father to Babylon, punished (by the gods) with his own

death in battle. By choosing Nineveh as his capital and returning to the distant history of this city, favoured by many Assyrian sovereigns with its numerous temples, and to the age-old home of the goddess Ishtar, already

5. The Perception of Babylonia in the Historical Memory of the Assyrians the focal point of Ashurnasirpal  II’s reconstruction with the temple of the goddess (Fig. 5.5),27 Sennacherib enacts a complex media operation that effectively belies Sargon II’s actions both towards the sacred city of southern Mesopotamia (venerated and hated) and towards the new foundation of Khorsabad considered the ill-omened expression of Sargon’s project. At the same time, Sennacherib refounded Nineveh itself and placed at the centre of the image of the renewed capital, the citadel, his ‘Palace without Rivals’,28 openly challenging in its very epithet all the royal residences previously built by his predecessors and others. As concerns the building project, it is worth noting that the new spatial and architectural imprint conferred by the sovereign on the sacred places seems again to look to Babylon, as has been proposed for the reconstruction of the Akitu29 at Ashur itself, precisely in the other symbolic city of Assyria. Equally important is that, among his theo­logical reforms, the ancient and traditional primacy of the cult of Marduk as ‘king of the gods’30 was adopted for the god Ashur and other deities, evidencing an extremely significant ideo­logical shift.31 This is true to the extent that some scholars have perceptively reconsidered the tangible changes in the sacred complexes and their names in accordance with their new function in the performance of the rituals and with the ‘new’ cosmo­logical conception of the divine residences,32 on the Babylonian model (Fig. 5.6).33 See the picture painted by Reade 2011, 112, where of particular interest is the hypothesis formulated on the textual sources that the capital par excellence of the Assyrian empire had risen to the rank of capital city already before Sennacherib’s efforts. 27 

For analyses and considerations on the urbanism of Nineveh at the time of Sennacherib and of the innovative layout in the Palace of the architectural spaces and the figurative programmes, see Matthiae 1996a, 143–44; 1996b, 25–28; 1998, 87–125. On the intentions of the sovereign, implemented in the building programme evocative of the Babylonian megalopolis, see Masetti 2019, 376. 28 

29 

Matthiae 1996b, 26.

On the importance of this and other epithets of the god for the special nature of his temple and the city of Babylon itself, see the exegesis of the Tintir text by George 1997, 127–28 especially. 30 

The fact noted by George 1997, 128 on the presence in the text in question of many epithets already recurrent in the Sumerian hymns of various cities is in my opinion even more significant for the relationship between Babylonia and Assyria, since these are Eridu, Uruk, and Nippur, each memorable in the collective memory of all Mesopotamia.

81

The sovereign who has gone down in history as the destroyer of Babylon is in fact, of all the Assyrian leaders, the one who most fully expressed the tortuous and conflicted nature of the relationship with the other half of Mesopotamia on a variety of communicative registers. After Sennacherib, the guarantor Esarhaddon concentrated his building activities, especially those of a sacred nature, in the capital that had by now become the centre of the universe and at Ashur, whilst he seems to aspire to the full recovery of Nimrud as the principal seat of royalty.34 Here he had his South-West Palace built, perhaps with the intent to reconnect the thread twice broken by his predecessors (Sargon II and Sennacherib) with the first Neo-Assyrian capital. Esarhaddon exerted himself particularly in Baby­ lonia, devoting himself to an overall regeneration/ reconstruction of its sacred places, that later also characterized the city building policy of the long reign of Ashurbanipal before the catastrophe. The continuity between these two sovereigns in safeguarding the places and cultural legacy of southern Mesopotamia takes on a special significance in terms of media operations under the latter, to judge from the picture outlined in the textual documents.35 These ascribe to Ashurbanipal not just physical and intellectual virtues, but also an understanding of various fields of knowledge, as he cultivates and admires writings in Sumerian and Akkadian, displaying an awareness of the perennial importance of the heritage originating in the earliest Mesopotamia. Two deeds of enormous communicative impact in my view confirm Ashurbanipal’s propaganda efforts in this direction: the removal of the statues of the divine couple Marduk and Sarpanitu from the temple of Ashur, placed there as an obvious act of humiliation by Sennacherib, and their return to their legitimate home in the Esagil in Babylon; the upkeep of many illustrious sanctuaries of southern Mesopotamia, almost as if he wished to repair a sort of territorial connective tissue of holy places and their titular deities, including the Ebabbar at Sippar (Shamash), the Ezida at Borsippa (Nabu), the legendary Ekur at Nippur (Enlil), and the sacred area of the Eanna at Uruk (Inanna).

31 

32 

Cf. George 1999, 77–79.

Representative in this context is the observation by George 1999, 79 on the correspondence between the function and the ideo­logical 33 

principle underlying the Babylonian Ubshu-ukkina and the temple of Ashur at Ashur, as is apparent from the formulations chosen by Sennacherib in his celebratory inscriptions reported here. 34 

Cf. Reade 2011, 118.

Cf. Grayson 1991, 159–60 especially; for some considerations on the personality of this sovereign see also Matthiae 1998, 127–28. 35 

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Conclusions The controversial relationship established over more than two millennia between the two lands of Mesopotamia thus proceeds without interruption even before the imperial dimension attained by Assyria in its last three centuries of life. During this latter period of time of maximum splendour it unfolds through imposing means of visual communication such as city planning and the imperial architecture of the royal seats, of enormous media impact both with regards to the subjects of the empire and the Assyrian nation, and international interlocutors, always fed by the competitive relationship with Babylonia. It is thus possible, according to Reade, that the ideo­logy and the logic of Assyrian policy are partly reflected in the layout and architecture of the cities that were royal seats and in their development, to be abreast of the programmes of one or the other

sovereign.36 These are means of visual communication of the highest order, inside and outside the Assyrian range’s control and with a special impact during their development, particularly striking in precisely that period between the peak and the collapse of Assyria.37 As effectively proposed by J. Reade: Reade 2011, 109, 123 especially. The new perspective proposed by Masetti’s recent re-examination of the town planning of the Neo-Assyrian period clarifies how debatable is the persistent opinion that city planning projects were merely an expression of ideo­logical and identity-related values as means for reconstructing their history, rather than seeing them as autonomous entities, urban forms created at a specific point of their development, which do not merely reflect the objectives of the sovereigns: Masetti 2019. 36 

On the causes underlying the fall of Assyria, only superficially sudden and never tackled in their substance by the studies in its true terms, which should be identified largely in the internal, organizational, economic, and social weakening of the empire, which started already at the time of Assurbanipal’s predecessors, see Liverani 2001. 37 

Works Cited Bahrani, Zainab 2007 ‘The Babylonian Visual Image’, in Gwendolyn Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World. Routledge, London: 155–70. Battini, Laura 2007 ‘Quelques considérations sur la topo­graphie de Babylone’, Akh Purattim 2: 281–98. Bergamini, Giovanni 1977 ‘Levels of Babylonia Reconsidered’, Mesopotamia 12: 111–52. Biga, Maria G. 2011 ‘Babylon and beyond Babylon in the First Half of the 2nd Millennium bc’, in Proceedings of the International Conference ‘Near Eastern Capital Cities in the 2nd and 1st Millennium b.c. Archaeo­logical and Textual Evidence’ (Torino, May 14–15th, 2010), Mesopotamia 46: 35–40. Brinkman, John A. 1979 ‘Babylonia under the Assyrian Empire, 745–627 BC’, in Mogens  T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda. Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen: 223–50. 1984 Prelude to Empire: Babylonian Society and Politics, 747–626 B.C. University Museum, Philadelphia. Charpin, Dominique 2012 Hammurabi of Babylon. Tauris, London. Dolce, Rita 1997 ‘The City of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta: Cosmic Characteristics and Topo­graphical Aspects’, in Hartmut Waetzoldt & Harald Hauptmann (eds), Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten: Akten der XXXIXe Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale; Heidelberg 6 bis 10. July 1992. Heidelberger Orientverlag, Heidelberg: 251–58.

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Eickoff, Tilman 1985 Kar Tukulti Ninurta: Eine mittelassyrische Kult- und Residanzstadt. Mann, Berlin. Elayi, Josette 2017 Sargon II, King of Assyria. SBL Press, Atlanta. Evans, Jean M. 2008 ‘The Middle Assyrian Period’, in Joan Aruz, Jean M. Evans & Kim Benzel (eds), Beyond Babylon. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 206–13. Frahm, Eckart 2017 ‘Assyria and the South: Babylonia’, in Eckart Frahm (ed.), A Companion to Assyria. Wiley, Malden: 286–98. Galter, Hannes D. 2007 ‘Looking down the Tigris’, in Gwendolyn Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World. Routledge, London: 527–40. George, Andrew R. 1992 Babylonian Topo­graphical Texts (Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 40). Peeters, Leuven. 1997 ‘“Bonds of the Lands”: Babylon, the Cosmic Capital’, in Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Die orientalische Stadt: Kon­ tinuität, Wandel, Bruch; 1. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (9. – 10. Mai 1996 in Halle/ Saale). SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken: 125–45. 1999 ‘E-Sangil and E-Temen-Anki. The Archetypal Cult-Centre’, in Johannes Renger (ed.), Babylon: Focus Meso­ potamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne (Colloquien der Deutschen OrientGesellschaft 2). SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken: 67–86. Gordon, Loud 1936 Khorsabad, i: Excavations in the Palace and at the City Gate (Oriental Institute Publications 38). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gordon, Loud & Altman, Charles B. 1938 Khorsabad, ii: The Citadel and the Town (Oriental Institute Publications 40). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Grayson, Albert K. 1991 ‘Assyria 668–35  bc: The Reign of Ashurbanipal’, in John Boardman, Iorwerth  E.  S. Edwards, Edmond Sollberger & Nicholas G. L. Hammond (eds), Cambridge Ancient History, iii/2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 142–61. Hausleiter, Arnulf 2011 ‘Ashur in the 2nd and 1st Millenia bc. Archaeo­logical Challenges’, in Proceedings of the International Conference ‘Near Eastern Capital Cities in the 2nd and 1st Millennium b.c. Archaeo­logical and Textual Evidence’ (Torino, May 14–15th, 2010), Mesopotamia 46: 59–70. Heinrich, Ernst 1982 Die Tempel und Heiligtümer im Alten Mesopotamien: Typo­logie, Morpho­logie und Geschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin. 1984 Die Paläste im Alten Mesopotamien. De Gruyter, Berlin. Liverani, Mario 2008 ‘The Late Bronze Age: Materials and Mechanisms of Trade and Cultural Exchange’, in Joan Aruz, Jean M. Evans & Kim Benzel (eds), Beyond Babylon. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 161–68. 2017 Assiria: la preistoria dell’imperialismo. Laterza, Bari.

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Margueron, Jean-Claude 2001 ‘Aux origines du plan de Babylone’, in Catherine Breniquet & Christine Kepinski (eds), Études mésopotamiennes: recueil de textes offerts à Jean-Louis Huot. Éditions Recherches sur les civilisations, Paris: 323–46. Masetti-Rouault, Maria Grazia 2019 ‘Urban Planning and Neo-Assyrian History’, in Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi, Raija Mattila & Robert Rollinger (eds), Writing Neo-Assyrian History: Sources, Problems, and Approaches; Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the University of Helsinki on September 22–25, 2014 ( State Archives of Assyria Studies 29). The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki: 365–81. Matthiae, Paolo 1996a L’arte degli Assiri: cultura e forma del rilievo storico. Laterza, Bari. 1996b I grandi imperi. Electa, Milan. 1997 La storia dell’arte dell’Oriente antico: i primi imperi e i principati del Ferro. Electa, Milan. 1998 Ninive. Electa, Milan. Parpola, Simon 2010 ‘Neo-Assyrian Concepts of Kingship and their Heritage in Mediterranean Antiquity’, in Giovanni  B. Lanfranchi & Robert Rollinger (eds), Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity: Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop Held in Padova (November 28th–December 1st, 2007). Sargon, Padua: 35–44. Reade, Julian 2011 ‘The Evolution of Assyrian Imperial Architecture: Political Implications and Uncertainties’, in Proceedings of the International Conference ‘Near Eastern Capital Cities in the 2nd and 1st Millennium b.c. Archaeo­logical and Textual Evidence’ (Torino, May 14–15th, 2010), Mesopotamia 46: 109–25. Trolle Larsen, Mogens 1979 ‘The Tradition of Empire in Mesopotamia’, in Marie T. Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda. Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen: 75–103. 2008 ‘The Middle Bronze Age’, in Joan Aruz, Jean  M. Evans & Kim Benzel (eds), Beyond Babylon. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 13–17.

6. From Plains to Mountains Literary and Cultural Models between Mesopotamia and UrarṬu Abstract –

Urarṭu was one of the most important kingdoms of the ancient Near East during the first half of the first millennium bc. It was a rival to the Neo-Assyrian Empire between the second half of the ninth and the second half of the seventh centuries bc. Today the Assyrian cultural features that have been identified in the Urartian culture cannot be considered as merely resulting from the external influence of Mesopotamia on Urarṭu, but rather as an expression of the will of the Urartian kings to model their state on this nearby empire. This is shown by: the adoption of Assyrian cuneiform writing during the state’s formation phase, the systematic imitation of literary formulas and propaganda devices, similarities in the general organization of the state, and the adoption of Assyrian cultural models in architecture and art. Naturally, Assyrian culture was received in both direct and mediated forms and often did not simply provoke slavish imitation, but instead led to the creation of interesting hybrids through the merging of Mesopotamian cultural elements and long-standing Caucasian cultural traditions. We also wish to underline that this imitation of an external power was not an isolated case, since the absorption of external cultural elements was an Urartian modus operandi. This paper summarizes and analyses these external cultural influences that progressively contributed to the shaping of the Urartian state.

Introduction1 Without doubt, the war and diplomacy between the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Kingdom of Urarṭu were among the most important historical events in the ancient Near East during the first millennium bc. The competition between Assyria and Urarṭu was mostly expressed in mediated forms, in the competing expansion of their respective domains and through the R. Dan wrote ‘Introduction’, ‘The First Phase: The Artificial Shaping of Urartian Kingship’, ‘Second Phase: Urartu’s Apogee and the Construction of Urartian Cultural Identity’, ‘Third Phase: The “Age of Diplomacy” and Birth of the “Urartian Style”’; M.-C. Trémouille wrote ‘A Glance through the Written Sources’. 1 

Roberto Dan

IsMEO / Tuscia University

Marie-Claude Trémouille IsMEO

dynamics of a policy of extraterritorial blocks, less frequently in direct confrontation or invasion.2 All of Urarṭu’s history and historio­graphy is deeply connected with Assyria. From a historio­graphical perspective, Urartian studies have been, since the beginning, bound to an Assyro-centric vision. Clearly, this view was deeply influenced by the quantity and nature of Assyrian written documents, which are significantly more numerous and more important in content than Urartian contemporary written documentation.3 The most striking element is the use of the exonym Urarṭu, 4 instead of the endonym Bia, 5 by the academic community. Moreover, Urarṭu is usually considered as a mere ‘periphery of the Neo-Assyrian Empire’. In this regard, Mario Liverani said: ‘However, since every empire generates a periphery, the end of the Neo-Assyrian empire saw the survival of several ethnic groups and political formations’,6 and Urarṭu was among them. Urarṭu has usually been considered an emblematic case of a typical secondary state resulting from the military pressure that started during the late Middle Assyrian period against the tribes of Nairi and Uruatri.7 2  3 

Maniori 2010, 177. Radner 2011, 735.

The term Urarṭu has been identified in their inscriptions only twice, both in the Assyrian version of the same bilingual inscription of Movana (CTU A 10–3, Vo ll. 22′, 24′), in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 4 

Sometimes the term Biainili has been used, which is the absolutive plural (KURbia = i = ni = li). On the analysis of this toponym, see Salvini 1979, 113–15. 5 

6  7 

Liverani 2014, 518.

Piotrovskij 1959, 52; Zimansky 1985, 3; Cline & Graham 2011, 56.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 85–101 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127139

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Figure 6.1. The wall of the Urartian fortress of Körzüt Kalesi, Turkey (photo by R. Dan, 2010).

About this, P. Zimansky wrote: ‘The Urartian state itself seems ultimately, if unwittingly, to have been a creation of Assyrians’ (Zimansky 1985,  48), while M. Liverani said: ‘the formation of the Urartian state was stimulated by this Assyrian interest in Armenian resources’.8 As we shall see, Neo-Assyrian influences were crucial in the process of defining the state apparatus of the Kingdom of Urarṭu and in defining its cultural identity. It is, however, clearly reductive to consider Urarṭu as only the result of Assyrian military activities. Indeed, if we look carefully at those military activities, they were not frequent enough to justify the creation of a state. There were five Assyrian expeditions in the area where Urarṭu was born over a period of about four hundred years, between 1273 and the late tenth century bc, on average one every seventy–eighty years before the raids of Adad-Nirari II (911–891 bc).9 The situation changed with this king at the end of the tenth century: there were six incursions in the fifty years preceding Šalmaneser III (858–824 bc). In the second quarter of the ninth century, however, the Kingdom of Urarṭu already existed: in fact in 858 bc, Šalmaneser III fought against Aramu the Urartian (first half of ninth century bc) and his royal city of Arzaškun. In dealing with the issue of relationships and influences between Assyria and Urarṭu, we must take into account 8 

Liverani 2014, 525–26.

Chrono­logical references to Assyrian kings are taken from Frahm 2017, 613–16, and for Urartian kings from Salvini 2008, 23. 9 

the latter’s great adaptability to the climatic and geo­ graphic extremities of the regions that it progressively occupied. These elements were both the strength and weakness of this state: the insurmountable mountains, protected by hundreds of impregnable fortresses (Fig.  6.1), formed a formidable bastion against the Assyrian advances — which, in fact, beyond the propaganda about some victorious clashes, never succeeded in subjugating it. At the same time, the difficult living conditions, in particular during severe winters, were a major limit to development, especially in demo­graphic terms, a circumstance that led the Urartian kings — as we learn from their texts — to resort frequently to the expedient of deportation. This probably served to deal with the geo-climatic situation and to create unified cultural cohesion among the different tribes of Nairi and Uruatri, clearly a political strategy of ‘inclusive character’. Otherwise, how could we explain the existence of a pantheon of about eighty deities in the ninth century bc, except as a manifestation of the will to assimilate all the local cults of the Nairi and Uruatri peoples. It was presided over by the god Ḫaldi, whose cult was imported from another region. This god had been worshipped since the Middle Assyrian era, as some theophoric personal names demonstrate, and his cult also reached Mannean territory, as shown by the Aramaic stele of Qalaichi near Bukan, south of Lake Orumiyeh.10 10 

Salvini 2014, 300.

6. From Plains to Mountains

87 when the Euphrates was reached, and there was the start of relationships that were sometimes belligerent and sometimes commercial with Syro-Hittite states.

The political and military relations between Assyria and Urarṭu, which had natural repercussions on Urartian culture and art, can be summarized in three main phases: first phase: the formation of the kingdom during the ninth century bc with the functional replication of many traits of Assyrian power models and its administrative system. Second phase: the Urartian expansion that was the prelude to the great military clashes with Assyria, culminating in 714 bc, with the eighth campaign of Sargon  II (721–705  bc). This period saw opening to new influences and the progressive definition of Urartian culture. Third phase: the age Figure 6.2. One of the inscriptions by Sarduri (I), son of Lutibri, of diplomacy from 714 bc up to the end on the so-called Sardursburg, Van, Turkey (photo by R. Dan, 2008). of the dynasty of the lords of Van. In this period, over-represented in Urartian archaeo­logy, there was a definitive ‘Urartian This inclusive practice can be associated also with style’ in art and architecture. the Assyrian elements assimilated during the years of state formation. The replicas of Assyrian cultural elements cannot be reduced, in the Urartian case, to mere The First Phase: slavish imitation of a more powerful opponent, in which the weaker subject (at least apparently) tends indirectly The Artificial Shaping of Urartian Kingship and unconsciously to imitate the culture of the other. As mentioned, the first historical stages of the Kingdom The first Urartian monarchs, in the difficult attempt to of Urarṭu were dominated by the first Urartian rulers’ unify the tribes of Nairi and Uruatri, initially decided to need to create a state from a group of unified tribes replicate the models of Assyrian power without media(Nairi and Uruatri). This was done following a precise tion, as a carefully planned political strategy. Over time, strategy involving the political and religious structure Assyrian elements were in some cases maintained, in of the growing state. The absence of state reference others assimilated and reinterpreted in the light of the structures in the region — for we must remember that progression of territorial conquests and contact with Urarṭu was the first state of the Cis-Caucasian regions12 new cultures — or due to the progressive re-emergence, — led the Urartian sovereigns to literally ‘adopt’ a politeven in palace art, of elements of the cultural substrate ical model to ensure the stability and continuity of their of the regions of the Armenian Highlands. dynasty. The choice naturally fell on Mesopotamian traEmblematic in this sense is the interesting case of the dition, embodied at that time by their powerful Assyrian adoption of a reworked form of Neo-Hittite hieroglyphic writing,11 used exclusively as an indicator of volume, 12  We use the version Cis-Caucasia instead of Trans-Caucasia, that was introduced in Urarṭu shortly after the Urartian because from a European perspective the south Caucasus region advance during Minua’s reign (about 810–785/80 bc), On Urartian ‘hieroglyphic writing’, see Barnett 1974 and Salvini 2002. 11 

is located before the Caucasus mountain range and not beyond it. The use of Trans-Caucasia is the result of the uncritical recycling by Western scholars of a termino­logical definition used by the Russian school of archaeo­logy.

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Figure 6.3. A view of the mud-brick palace of Upper Anzaf (photo by R. Dan, 2008).

rival. The first signs can be detected from the time of Sarduri (I), son of Lutibri (mid-ninth century bc). The first elements that can be attributed to the will to shape the new state on the Assyrian model are among those that were to prove the most decisive in Urarṭu’s later decades: writing and architecture. The adoption of the Assyrian language and the Neo-Assyrian cuneiform ductus in the only inscriptions known for Sarduri (I), son of Lutibri13 (CTU A 1–1A-F; A 1–2) can be reasonably considered as unique in the history of the ancient Near East (Fig. 6.2). According to M. Salvini, these inscriptions were made by Assyrian scribes.14 In this regard, the introduction of cuneiform writing in Urarṭu might be traced to the possible capture by the Urartians of an Assyrian scribe in the ninth century bc.15 Already in the reign of Sarduri’s son Išpuini (about 830–820 bc), the Assyrian language was replaced by the native Urartian language. Some documents in Assyrian survive (CTU A 2–4; B 2–5; B 2–6; B 2–7A-E), and it is possible that these are the oldest documents of Išpuini’s 13  14  15 

Sarduri I defined himself as ‘king of kings’ (CTU A 1–1A-F, l. 4). Salvini 1980, 174.

Radner 2011, 742.

reign, just before the final change to Urartian. In these first years (Sarduri  I and Išpuini), the royal titulary took shape, which gives us an idea of Urartian kingship, clearly based on Assyrian models of the time of Aššurnasirpal II (883–859 bc) and Šalmaneser III.16 In these years, the first stone steles were carved, again modelled on Assyrian prototypes. From an architectural perspective, the Mesopotamian influence starts to be clear especially from the reign of Išpuini. The most distinctive elements, which remained characteristic — albeit with significant changes over time — were: 1. the widespread use of sun-dried bricks on a scale unknown for the region (Fig. 6.3); 2. the perpendicularity of groups of structures and of single architectural units; 3. the introduction of the insistent use of buttresses and towers with both aesthetic and mechanical purposes.17 Salvini 1980, 170; Salvini 2006, 466. On Urartian royal titles, see Çifçi 2015. 16 

We must take into account that the insistent use of buttresses is a feature that can be recognized also in Hittite Anatolia. See, for example, Temple I in Ḫattuša.

17 

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6. From Plains to Mountains The small fortress of Lower Anzaf, dated with certainty to the time of Išpuini by the cuneiform inscription discovered there (CTU A 2–6AC), gives the idea of architectural planning which is not yet completely defined. This small road station18 features the use of mud bricks and right-angled corners, but not yet the introduction of buttresses that later became characteristic of Urartian architecture. It is interesting that at the beginning of the Urartian kingdom, the main religious areas were mainly extraurban sanctuaries (Meher Kapısı and Yesilalıç), in line with a practice typical of Anatolian cultures (Fig. 6.4).19 Only later, during the reign of Minua, were Urartian sanctuaries transferred inside the fortresses, taking the shape of towertemples.20 The Urartian practice of basing buildings on rock-cut foundations had the twin function of giving great stability to the structures and enlarging the available building surface on narrow rocky spurs, by creating terraces. This use is again something that is traceable in Hittite tradition,21 and was important to give static stability in areas where earthquakes were frequent. From an artistic perspective, although in fact the data is very scarce for the ninth century bc, we seem to find a reproduction of typical Assyrian apotropaic figures and deities, which were then partially assimilated and reinterpreted by Urartian art during the eighth and seventh centuries bc. Traces of Assyrian influence may also be recognized in the glyptic, which appears influenced by contemporary Assyrian production from the ninth century bc.22

Second Phase: Urarṭu’s Apogee and the Construction of Urartian Cultural Identity

The eighth century was the era of rising Urartian power, which coincided, at least in the first half of the century, with a period of Assyrian weakness. This epoch also saw the clearer delineation of Urartian culture, as can be seen in its art and architecture. On the basis of current knowledge, the climax of Urartian victories against Assyrians is represented by a series of clashes won by 18 

Dan 2017, 86–87, 90.

Obvious examples are Ḫattuša, with its extra-urban rock-cut sanctuary of Yazılıkaya (on this see Seeher 2011), and the Phrygian rock-cut shrines (Berndt-Ersöz 2006). 19 

20  21  22 

Figure 6.4. The rock-cut gate of Meher Kapısı, Turkey (photo by R. Dan, 2008).

the Urartian king Minua (about 810–785/80 bc) against the Assyrians ruled by Adad-Nārārī  III (810–783  bc), which took place on the southern frontier, constituted by the Taurus mountain range. The reason for the clashes was possession of the buffer states of Šubria/ Šubarû and Kumme/Qumenu, which had presumably been under Urartian control for only a few years.23 However, the Urartian successes of this period are generally considered to have been a consequence of Assyria’s weakness.24 This period of ascent was abruptly interrupted by the enthronement of Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727 bc), who immediately tried to stop the growing influence and trade relations between Urarṭu and the Syro-Hittite states. In 743 bc, the conflict known as Kištan and Ḫalpi saw an Assyrian victory over a Urartian and Syro-Hittite coalition and the withdrawal of the Urartians from the Euphrates region. Another setback resulted from the conflict between Rusa (I), son of Sarduri (about 730–713 bc) and Sargon II of Assyria, triggered for control of the Mannean kingdom. The famous campaign of Sargon II against Urarṭu in 714 bc, known as the ‘eighth campaign’, put an end to Urartian ambitions — which, from that moment on, underwent drastic downsizing. During the eighth century, the Urartian written language separated definitely from Assyrian, keeping only the cuneiform writing system, with a ductus that evolved over time.25 The Urartian royal inscriptions were written in the Urartian language with the excep-

Dan 2017.

23 

Matthiae 1996, 139.

25 

Fales et al. 2009, 33.

24 

Salvini 1984, 28–30. Fuchs 2017, 251.

Salvini 2012, 277–323.

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Figure 6.5. Aerial view of the Urartian fortress of Solak 1, in Armenia (Archive of Kotayk Survey Project; photo by R. Dan, 2017).

tion of a last hybrid inscription from the time of Minua, written partly in Urartian and partly in Assyrian (CTU A 5–44), but which is not a bilingual inscription.26 At this time, the Urartian kings began to write long annalistic texts on the Assyrian model. We possess fragmentary annalistic inscriptions of Minua, son of Išpuini, and almost complete ones of Argišti (I), son of Minua (785/80–756 bc) and Sarduri (II), son of Argišti (756– c. 730 bc). The Assyrian influence on Urartian architecture became stronger in this century, although it was strongly reinterpreted in accordance with local tastes and other external influences, such as Hittite ones, and naturally conditioned by the geo-climatic characters of those territories. The fortifications are rectangular, and usually reinforced by the presence of towers and buttresses, which become a distinctive trademark of Urartian architecture (Fig. 6.5).

With regard to artistic production, in this century, the tradition of decorating the royal palaces with cycles of frescoes (mainly Erebuni and Altıntepe) began. It was clearly inspired by contemporary Assyrian paintings (from Khorsabad, Til Barsip, and Nimrud), with which they shared technique, chromatic patterns, and decorative motifs at least in some phases.27 Although these wall paintings have been rather arbitrarily reconstructed on the basis of the available fragments, they show in their details (dividing lines, crenellations, pomegranates, bulls, squares with sides facing inwards, apotropaic figures with sacred threes, etc.) inspiration clearly derived from ninth-century bc Neo-Assyrian icono­graphy.28 The general compositional organization, however, cannot be reconstructed.

27  26 

Salvini 1980, 175.

28 

Albenda 2005, 126.

Matthiae 1996, 124.

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6. From Plains to Mountains Starting from the eighth century bc, new elements in Urartian art and culture are clearly recognizable. This was the result of the cultural contacts between Syro-Hittite states and Urarṭu, which started with Minua at the beginning of eighth century bc, and which led to the spread of ivories (discovered in sites like Altıntepe, Karmir-blur, and Toprakkale), imported or locally produced, in any case clearly inspired by Syrian prototypes. 29 Traces of these relations with Syrian and Levantine areas, clearly mediated by contacts with the Neo-Hittite states, are visible both in glyptics and metalworking.30

Third Phase: The ‘Age of Diplomacy’ and Birth of the ‘Urartian Style’

Figure 6.6. Urartian cuneiform tablets discovered in the fortress of Karmir-blur, Armenia (after Piotrovskij 1970, fig. 20).

During the seventh century, the political situation changed. In this phase Urartians and Assyrians avoided open large-scale warfare (Fuchs 2017, 252). In this last period of Urartian history, its culture seems to have become more distant from the original Assyrian models, with the development of increasingly characteristic traits (although important traces of Assyrian influence were still visible). From a philo­logical perspective the seventh-century adoption of Assyrian terms, such as LÚ ŠÁ.RĒŠI and LÚTE-RI to define Urartian officials, must be noted.31 Some fresco fragments discovered in Erebuni (pertaining to a possible later phase of the Urartian occupation of the site) in which hunting scenes are represented, are considered to have been influenced by the famous hunting scenes represented on the Aššurbanipal (668–631? bc) orthostats.32 One of the most intriguing features of this period is the introduction of the use of cuneiform tablets in the royal court, a praxis clearly based on Mesopotamian examples. It is generally believed that the use of inscribed clay tablets and bullae was introduced by Rusa (II), son of Argišti (first half of the seventh century bc), in an attempt to reorganize the kingdom’s administrative Van Loon 1966, 133; Akurgal 1968, 75; Özgüç 1969, 85; Çilingiroğlu 1997, 148. On this Syro-Hittite influence on Urarṭu, see also Öğüt & Erdil-Kocaman 2015. 29 

30  31  32 

Azarpay 1968, 62; Ayvazyan 2006, 15. Salvini 1980, 176–77. Nunn 2012, 330.

system in the last stages of its life. These tablets were discovered in the sites of Ayanis (CTU CT Ay), Karmirblur (CTU CT Kb), Bastam (CTU CT Ba), and Toprakkale (CTU CT Tk) built by the same Rusa II and in Upper Anzaf (CTU CT An), Çavuştepe (CTU CT Çav), and Van Kalesi Höyüğü,33 sites built in late ninth–eighth centuries bc but clearly still in use in the seventh century bc (Fig. 6.6). Although we have a limited number of administrative tablets, their importance is noteworthy since their contents are completely different from those of royal inscriptions with propagandistic purposes engraved on stone and rock — and give us a glimpse, although highly fragmentary, of the Urartian state’s administrative organization. Salvini has suggested that before Rusa II a different writing support material was used for administrative needs, made of perishable substances such as wood or tanned leather, a circumstance that would explain why we have no previous documentation.34 With regard to architecture, although they still tried to emulate Assyrian models, at the same time they were developing new and distinctive architectural features. The fortress of Karmir-blur, built by Rusa II (first half of the seventh century bc) is emblematic in this sense. The fortress appears to be an attempt to replicate the residences of the Assyrian kings — in particular the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad, which was built on a high artificial mud-brick terrace. 33  34 

Konyar et al. 2016, 577; Işık 2014, 173–84.

Salvini 1995, 103–04; cf. Salvini 2006, 496.

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Roberto Dan and Marie-Claude Trémouille of sites built or modified by Rusa  II were shaped with reference to this module. This could be considered one of the most important Urartian innovations in the field of architecture.36 Urartian stone masonry reached its apogee during the seventh century, featuring aesthetic and practical solutions (e.g. anti-seismic) that resemble Hittite architecture, with complicated and perfect joints between the stones (Fig. 6.8).37

A Glance through the Written Sources A literary topos sees the mountains as zones of ‘non-culture’, and mountaindwellers as barbarians, illiterates, people without rules, almost nonhumans. However, it is just a topos; the presence of indigenous written records is enough to change the sceFigure 6.7. The plan of the Karmir-blur fortress, Armenia (adapted from Vanden Berghe & De Meyer 1982, pl. 13). nario. In fact, writing is the mountain peoples’ official passport to entry The fortress at Karmir-blur was built on a huge mudonto the Near Eastern stage, as active and recognized brick terrace, which was a new feature for the region, participants. The earliest known Urartian document is but, unlike that in Assyria, inside the terrace, hundreds written in… the Assyrian language! It is an inscription of partly underground storerooms for the stockpiling (CTU A 1A-F)38 in cuneiform writing, repeated six times, 35 of food for the winter were constructed. The palace, carved into blocks of stone that comprise what is known completely destroyed, was situated on the upper floor, as ‘Sardursburg’, a building of unknown function at the and was divided into four or five different areas, as we foot of the Rock of Ṭušpa (Van). The text contains the can understand from the positions of the stairwells and name of the sovereign, Sarduri (I)39 and indicates that the thicknesses of the storeroom walls. The larger ones, these stone blocks come from the city of Alniunu.40 The with a south-west/north-east alignment, clearly supinscription may be considered a foundation document. ported thicker walls that divided the different sectors of Another inscription, again in Assyrian, also probably the complex. In addition, the shape of the site, characterized by an insistent orthogonality, reveals the origi36  Dan & Herles 2017. nality of Urartian architectural design, with a series of 37  Dunham 2005, 273. closely (almost regularly) spaced angular projections on 38  Textual references are to the edition of Mirjo Salvini, Corpus the external walls, especially on the eastern side overdei Testi Urartei (Documenta Asiana  8/1–5), CNR-ICEVO, Rome, looking the River Hrazdan (Fig. 6.7). One of the most important features of Urartian architecture in the first half of the seventh century bc was the introduction of the use of a ‘module’ derived from the shape of their main religious building, the tower-temple (susi temple). A series of architectural features (like pillars and buttresses) attested in a number

2008–2018, from which the translations are taken, with a few modifications (Salvini 2008; Salvini 2012; Salvini 2018).

It should be noted that the anthroponym Sarduri, which became a dynastic name, is an Assyrian formation: mDsar5-dūri (sometimes written mDXV-BÀD) ‘Istar is my rampart’, while the name of the king’s father, Lutipri, seems Hurrian, containing ipri (= ewri ‘Lord’, Richter 2012, 92–94 with biblio­graphy). Other names containing ipri are Uedipri, in CTU A 10–7, 5 and Ispilipri, in CTU 12–1 V 2. 39 

For the position of Alniunu, see Salvini 2001, 302–04, and Dan 2020, 126.

40 

35 

Dan 2015, 48.

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6. From Plains to Mountains dates to the reign of Sarduri I (CTU A 1–2); it is religious in nature but unfortunately very fragmentary and its historical context is thus difficult to understand. As an explanation for the use of the Assyrian language, it was suggested that it might have been engraved by an Assyrian scribe present in the Urartian court (GKU, 36; EuS, 4), although we know in any case that that there were (largely military) contacts between Assyria and northern territories (referred to as Subartu, Nairi or Urarṭu), which might have involved the introduction of Assyrian writing as a means of control over local clans and the tributes they had to pay to Assyria. The children of defeated chieftains were repeatedly deported to the Assyrian court, where they would undoubtedly have absorbed the local culture.

Figure 6.8. Detail of the fortification walls of Ayanis fortress, Turkey (photo by R. Dan, 2008).

However, the CTU  A 1 inscription is called IM, literally ‘tablet’, which suggests that the Urartians’ knowledge of the writing was largely acquired through administrative letters or other documents written on clay. It is also interesting that this text is repeated six times, prefiguring the ‘decorative’ use that writing was later to have. It seems improbable that the population of Ṭušpa was able to read cuneiform or understand the Assyrian language. In the absence of a public able to receive this ‘political’ message, it is difficult to see this inscription as an intentionally propagandistic communication by the Urartian king. Figure 6.9. Detail of the Annals of Argišti I There is another text with a pascarved on the Rock of Van, Turkey (photo by R. Dan, 2008). sage in Assyrian, followed by a few lines in the Urartian language (CTU A 5–44). It recounts the building and dedication of a at Movana (CTU A 10–3), Mergeh Karvan (CTU A 10–4) temple-tower to the god Ḫaldi by Minua (in Assyrian), and Topzawä (CTU A 10–5), produced by Rusa I. Here with a request for blessings for Išpuini and Minua (in the use of Assyrian is explained by the function of the Urartian). Thus it is hybrid and unique. There are some steles, which mark the respective zones of domination; genuinely bilingual inscriptions on steles: that at Kelišin the sides of the stele bearing the Assyrian version thus (CTU A 3–11) by Išpuini and Minua, and the triplicates face towards the territories where this language was

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Roberto Dan and Marie-Claude Trémouille and several pictograms that served to indicate measures on containers. It may be imagined that the Urartian rulers learned of this writing system during their military campaigns towards Malatya and other Neo-Hittite kingdoms, where hieroglyphic writing was used. As I mentioned above, as well as the writing, the Urartians adopted certain formal features of inscriptions, following literary models and thus participating in a sort of scribal koinè:41 the royal title and the curses that surround the main text are examples. With regard to the title, we do not find in Urartian documents the long lists of genealogies and epithets seen in Assyrian inscriptions; the form is normally quite short and stereotyped. The longest title of all is that of Sarduri I mentioned above (CTU A 1) and written in Assyrian. It thus seems reasonable that it shares features in common with those of the sovereigns of Assur: Inscription of Sarduri, son of Lutibri, great king, powerful king, king of all, king of Nairi, king without equals, admirable shepherd, who fears not battle, king who conquers the disobedient; (I am) Sarduri, son of Lutibri, king of kings, who has received tribute from all kings. This is the word of Sarduri, son of Lutibri: I  brought these foundation stones from the city of Alniunu; I built this wall.

Figure 6.10. The bilingual stele of Kelišin, still in situ on the homonymous mountain pass (photo courtesy M. Salvini).

spoken, and vice versa for those with the Urartian version. Apart from these examples, writing is always in the Urartian language. As in Assyria, the inscriptions are celebratory or propagandistic in nature, either recording military campaigns, or the erection of buildings or of steles in honour of deities. Most feature stereotyped formulas, which I will discuss later. The sign inventory used by Urartian scribes, and reproduced by the stone carvers, was basically Neo-Assyrian (Fig. 6.9), with some variations, as may be seen in the palaeo­graphical collection published by Salvini (CTU  IV,  281–323). It remained more or less the same for the few centuries that the kingdom of Urarṭu existed. The only form of change was aesthetic in nature: consider the two-part formation of a horizontal wedge stroke crossing a vertical stroke. It is conditioned by practical considerations, since it avoids the creation of sharp edges — which might break — between the two intersecting strokes. On the few clay tablets that have survived (CTU CT) and in inscriptions on other materials, the inventory remains the same (although in the latter the breakage problem does not exist). With regard to Urartian ‘hieroglyphics’, these consist of a few signs

The Assyrian version of the Kelišin stele (A 3–11) also contains some of these titles (Fig. 6.10): Vo (1–3): [When into the] presence of the god Ḫaldi in the city of Muṣa[ṣir came] Išpuini, son of Sarduri, powerful king, king of all, king of Nairi, lord of the city of Ṭušpa, and Minua, son of Išpuini …

In documents in the Urartian language, the titles are more standardized. Some titles are occasionally moved, but the overall picture is similar. Below are given several examples: A 2–6 (1–6): Thanks to the power of Ḫaldi, Išpuini, son of Sarduri, has built this fortress to perfection. (I am) the powerful king, the great king, the king of countries, the king of Biainili. A 3–11 Ro (1–5): When into the presence of the god Aldi, to the city of Ardini, came Išpuini, son of Sarduri, powerful king, king of countries, king of the land of Biainili, lord of the city of Ṭušpa, and Minua, son of Išpuini, …

In fact Salvini and Wegner (EuS, 7) recognize a ‘mesopotamische Schultradition’ in Urartian inscriptions (Salvini & Wegner 2014, 7). 41 

95

6. From Plains to Mountains A 5–5 (18–21): (I am) Minua, son of Išpuini, powerful king, great king, king of Biainili, lord of the city of Ṭušpa. A 8–1 Ro (4–7): By virtue of the greatness of Ḫaldi (I am) Argišti, son of Minua, powerful king, great king, king of Biainili, king of kings, lord of the city of Ṭušpa. A 9–10 (7–11): … By the [greatne]ss of Ḫaldi, (I am) Sarduri, son of [Argišti], powerful king, great king, king of [countr]ies, king of Biainili, [king] of kings, lord of the city of Ṭušpa. A 11–8 Ro (17–24): By order of Ḫaldi (I am) Argišti, son of Rusa, powerful king, great king, king of Biainili, king of kings, lord of the city of Ṭušpa.

From Rusa I onwards the titles change at times. Often they are fewer, and above all new titles appear: A 10–1 (7–8): (I am) Rusa, son of Sarduri, powerful king, he who has enlarged Biainili. A 10–3 Ro (Urartian version) (5–6): I am Rusa, son of Sarduri, servant of Ḫaldi . . . r.s. ‘(…) (11’–14’) I am Rusa, servant of Ḫaldi, true shepherd of peoples.

The Assyrian version of the stele adds more titles: A 10–3 Vo (52’): [ . . ] I am Rusa, (53’) servant of the god Ḫaldi, true shepherd of peoples, (54’) (I am) he who approached the house of Ḫaldi, (I am) he who has no fear (55’) of battle. Ḫaldi gave me power and strength (56’) [and joy]. In my years I have enlarged the country of Urarṭu (57’) and humiliated [enemies]. The gods gave me days of joy, (58’) [many good] days of joy.

From Argišti II onwards certain qualities granted to the king by the god Ḫaldi are listed; unfortunately, their meaning is unknown, so the translations are uncertain: A 11–1 Ro (10–24): By virtue of the greatness of Ḫaldi, the Lord, Argišti, son of Rusa, servant of Ḫaldi, says: Thanks to the power of Ḫaldi, the Lord, who to me all the authentic(?) place uešelaše uešigi, who gave me ṭubarduni ubarduiali, who gave me powerful royal dignity, I ascended to the throne of royalty; he placed the sceptre of royalty in my hand, he gave me true authority (?) aluka uešiauali enemy lands, Ḫaldi, the Lord, gave me warrior spirit and military prowess, dominion(?) over all the territory(?). A 14–1 Ro (1–15): Thanks to the greatness of Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, I am Rusa, son of Erimena, servant of Ḫaldi. Thanks to the strength of Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, who all of this place, true (?) uešelaše uešigi, who … gave me(?), who gave me powerful kingship, ascended the royal throne (of kingship). He placed (established for me)

the sceptre (? the lituus) of royalty in my hand (?). He gave me the true uešelaše, by which (?) the enemy lands are terrified (??). Ḫaldi, the Lord, gave me ḫuṭutuḫi, bellicosity (i.e. courage in battle, prowess as a warrior) and dominion (?) over all the territory.

Note that the titles always begin with the patrilineal descent; in some cases there is nothing more. In the Assyrian language versions, the sovereign is called ‘king of Nairi’, while in those in Urartian we find king of Biainili, that is king of [the lands of] Bia. Nairi, or indeed Urarṭu (written TILLA/URI), is not a toponym used by the Urartian scribes when they write in their own language, but they follow Assyrian usage, according to which, only these two terms indicate the lands dominated by Urartian rulers, when writing in Assyrian. Other names refer to a well-established scribal tradition in the Mesopotamian area: the title of ‘strong/powerful king’ is of ancient Akkadian ancestry, while that of ‘king of kings’ emphasizes the sovereign’s hegemonic role, since it recognizes the existence of other, smaller, sovereigns but puts him above them. As for the curses, they were customary in Near Eastern polities, where every ungodly, unjust, or untruthful action was considered a fault and consequently called for divine punishment. The formula is fairly unchanging and therefore I will give just a few examples: A 3–11 Ro (37–41): Whoever removes this inscription (stele) from [this] place, ruins it, or makes others do [the]se things, saying: go, [destro]y, may Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God (and all), the gods of Ardini eliminate his descendants from the (face of the) earth. A 5–1 (21–24): Minua says: whoever destroys this inscription, whoever damages it, whoever makes others do these things, whoever says: ‘I have conquered the city of Luḫiuni’, may he be annihilated by Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, and all the gods, from under (the light of) the sun; (22–24: untranslatable formula). A 8–1 Ro (8–16): Argišti says: whoever destroys this inscription, whoever damages it, whoever tells others to do these things (and) says ‘go, destroy’, whoever else says ‘I have done (all this)’, may Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, (all) the gods, annihilate him (and his) descendants from under (the light o)f the sun. (14–16: untranslatable formula). A 11–3 Vo (25–29): Argišti [says]: whoever (removes my) name [and puts hi]s n[ame in its place will be destroyed by Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, he, his name, and all his seed from under the (light of the) sun].

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Roberto Dan and Marie-Claude Trémouille A 11–5 (10–13): Argišti says: whoever removes my name or damages this inscription, may Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, (all) the gods annihilate him from under (the light of the) sun. A 12–1 VIII (3–10): Rusa, son of Argišti, says: whoever destroys, damages, or hides (?) this ‘Ḫaldi Gate’ inscription, who moves it from (this) place, whoever says ‘I have done (this)’, either an inhabitant of Bia or an outsider, who removes my name and puts his in its place, may Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, (and all) the gods, annihilate him, his seed, and the seed of his seed from under (the light of the) sun … (rest of the curse formula untranslatable).

Note that in these curses the Sun God is distinguished from the celestial body, while in that of Rusa  II (A 12–10, 4), apparently, there is no such distinction: ‘Rusa says: whoever destroys this inscription, may the Sun God burn him.’ Besides these items that link the activities of Urartian scribes with their Mesopotamian, and particularly Assyrian, counterparts, Urartian documents contain varied evidence of shared cultural models. As will be known to those who have read the Annals of Ashurnasirpal II or those of Salmanassar III, the sovereign’s every act takes place ‘by order’, ‘with the protection’, ‘with the great strength’, ‘with the help’, ‘with the assurance’, etc. of the god Assur, whether for military campaigns or building work. In Urartian too, there are similar introductory formulas, but only four are known: 1. Ḫaldinini ušgini ‘for the ušgi of Ḫaldi’ 2. Ḫaldinini baušini ‘for the bauše of Ḫaldi’ 3. Ḫaldinini ušmašini ‘for the ušmaše of Ḫaldi’ 4. Ḫaldinini alsuišini ‘for the alsuiši of Ḫaldi’ ২ ušgi is a term that only appears once, in CTU  A 2–1,  1–2 and its meaning is unknown. Salvini, CTU I, 107, translates it as ‘thanks to the strength of ’ with a question mark. ২ ušmaše, like bauše and alsuiše is a word containing the element -še which makes abstract terms. ২ bauše is the Urartian equivalent of the Sumerian INIM, i.e. ‘word, order’. On the basis of CTU B 2–7 the equivalence of ušmaše to the Assyrian ṣilli ‘protection’ may be suggested, while alsuiše is formed from the adjective alsui ‘great’, and would thus mean ‘greatness’ (perhaps in the sense of ‘glory’?).

However, it is, above all, in the context of war that we find the most significant parallels between Assyrian and Urartian cultural customs. In the same way that Assur leads the Assyrian army and routs their enemies, in Urartian documents it is the god Ḫaldi, after the Urartian king has addressed prayers for support and help to him and the other gods: A 8–1 Vo (23–30): In virtue of the greatness of Ḫaldi, Argišti, son of Minua, says: ‘I invoked Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, the Storm God, the Sun God, (all) the gods of Biainili.42 For the greatness of the L[ord ali abadi] the gods listened to me. [The same year I marched] to district of(?) the land of Uburda. I captured x-lubura, the king of Uburda. The land[ … . l.s. lines 1–12 are untranslatable. (13–26): I placed an inscription here, men and women I deported from here. Argišti says: in the same year again(?) I  mobilized my troops; I  invoked the god Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, the Storm God, the Sun God, and all the gods of Biainili. Thanks to the greatness of Lord ali abadi the gods listened to me, I moved in war against/ towards the land of Urme, I conquered the country of Urme, [took over] the country, [continu]ed up to[… (…). A 8–2 Ro (1–8): I invoked the god Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, the Storm God, the Sun God, and all the gods of Biainili. Thanks to the greatness of (my) Lord ali abadi the gods listened to me. Argišti, son of Minua, says: Ḫaldi is victorious, Ḫaldi’s army is victorious. Thanks to the greatness of Ḫaldi, I went to war in the land of Mana. I conquered the land of Irkiuni, continuing up to the plain (?) in the land of Aššur. … (12–22) Argišti says: for (love of?) Ḫaldi I accomplished these tasks in one year. Ḫaldi went to war with his army, conquered the land of Mana, conquered the land of Buštu, and threw them at Argišti’s feet. Thanks to the greatness of Ḫaldi Argišti says: I  invoked the god Ḫaldi, (my) Lord, the Storm God, the Sun God, and all the gods of Biainili. Thanks to the greatness of Lord ali abadi the gods listened to me. Argišti, son of Minua, says: Ḫaldi is victorious, Ḫaldi’s army is victorious. A 9–3 IV (43'–49'): Sarduri, son of Argišti, says: [I pray] ed to Ḫaldi, the Storm God, the Sun God, and (all) the gods of Biainili. In virtue of the greatness of alauini in all lands. The gods listened to me, they opened the way for me, I left for the country of Qumaḫa.

42  It is interesting to note that the Urartian verb ‘to invoke’ uses the directive case, as if to illustrate a gesture of prayer, with the arm stretched out towards the deity. It brings to mind the Assyrian expression ‘I raised my hands to Assur my lord’.

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6. From Plains to Mountains A 5–2 (1): Thanks to the strength of Ḫaldi, Minua, son of Išpuini, says: when I laid the foundations of the gate (i.e. the temple) of Ḫaldi, when I built the gate (i.e. the temple) of Ḫaldi, I  prostra[ted] myself before Ḫaldi, I prayed to the god Ḫaldi. Ca[me (the time o)f the land of Erkua]; I  marched (2) towards the (land) of Erkua, conquer[ed the city of Lu]ḫiuni in the land of Erkua, I devastated the land of Etiuni. Minua, son of Išpuini, says: the city of Luḫiuni, royal city of the land of [Erk] ua, (3) that had never been under siege(?), Ḫaldi (gav)e it to Minua, son of Išpuini. A 3–4 (11’–26’): …. Uiteruḫi, Luša and Katarza. The enemy kings of Etiuni rose up(?); Ḫaldi left with his army towards Uiteruḫi, towards Luša, and towards Katarza, against the kings of Etiuni. Ḫaldi is victorious(?), Ḫaldi’s army is victorious(?). They left on (an expedition) Išpuini, son of Minua, and Minua, son of Išpuini; … A 3–5 Ro (4–13): Ḫaldi went to war with his spear. He conquered Uiteruḫi, he conquered Luša, he conquered Katarza. Ḫaldi is victorious(?), Ḫaldi’s spear is victorious(?). Thanks to the strength of Ḫaldi they left on an expedition against Luša Išpuini, son of Sarduri, (and) Minua, son of Išpuini. Išpuini is victorious(?), Minua is victorious(?). A 9–1 r.s. (1–30): Ḫaldi went to war with his spear, defeated Murinu, king of the land of Uelikuḫi, defeated Ṣinalibi, king of Lueḫu, king of the city of Tuliḫu, he defeated Aššurnirari, son of Adadnirari, king of the land of Aššur; defeated the land of Arme, conquered the city of Nihiria, a royal city; the town threw itself at the feet of Sarduri, son of Argišti. Ḫaldi is victorious(?), Ḫaldi’s spear is victorious(?). Sarduri, son of Argišti, left on an expedition. Sarduri says: ‘I went to war against Uelihuḫi, conquered the land; in a (single) day I destroyed fortresses and gave to the flames [villages], the [city] of X-riu, a royal city, …’.

In these texts, however, the equivalent of the ‘terrifying aura’ of Assur — which frightened enemies and overpowered them — is missing, while it is frequently present in Assyrian celebratory texts. Although there is no trace in the written documents, we have a visual representation on the shield of Anzaf (CTU IV B 3), where we see the god Ḫaldi, of greater stature than the gods who follow him, running ahead of the army, guiding it, with spear in hand. He is surrounded by small flames, which I think serve to represent rays of light, his ‘terrifying splendour’ that dazzles the enemy. I think that a further aspect should also be emphasized. Beginning with Minua, some sovereigns praised themselves for having ‘enlarged the boundaries of Bia’ (in the same way that Assyrian monarchs ‘increased the

territory of Assur’), and defeated enemy kings’ vassals and subjected them to payment of tribute, in addition to deporting entire populations, building fortresses and cities, and installing governors in various parts of the kingdom. Here are some examples: A 5–1 (12–14): I took the city of Luḫiuni and subjected the land of Etiuni to tribute. A 5–5 (16–17): He (i.-e. Minua) subjected the king of Miliṭia (Malatya) to tribute. A 9–1 Vo (18): to the right I submitted the land of Qala’ani to tribute. A 9–3 I (17–18): the king of Puini I enslaved and sub­ jected to pay tribute to Sarduri. A 9–3 IV (52'–56'): the city of Parala, a royal city, I surrounded in siege(?); he came into my presence and threw himself at my feet; I put him back in (his) place (?); he gave me in tribute: 800 minas of silver, 3000 robes, 2000 bronze shields, 1535 cups. A 9–3 VI (19–21): Sarduri says: Nidini, king of Uelikuḫi, came into my presence; he prostrated himself, I made him a vassal and imposed payment of tribute to Sarduri. A 10–3 (r.s. (23'–25'): during my years I enlarged the land of Biainili. A 10–4 r.s. (2’–4'): I  enlarged the land of Biainili, humiliating enemy countries. A 9–3 IV (17'–24'): I built fortresses here to strengthen Biainili and humiliate the enemy country. I  annexed the territory to my country. I  set fire to villages, devastated the land, deported males and females from there. I built fortresses here to strengthen Biainili and humiliate the enemy country. I annexed the territory to my country. Sarduri says: in the same year I marched again on Eriaḫi, conquered the region, set fire to the villages and destroyed them, devastated the land, took males and females to Biainili. I  built strongholds up there and annexed the region to my country. A 9–3 V (20'–26'): The city of Darbani, a (well) equipped stronghold, I took in battle. I left a detachment there, (and) annexed the region to my country. A 9–18 (1–11): for the god Ḫaldi, my Lord, this susi temple Sarduri, son of Argišti, has built and a perfect fortress. He gave it the name of Sarduriḫinili. Sarduri says: I  have installed here Zaiani as governor to administer (? mirtaršue) the region up to Miliṭia, up to the city(!) of Qu[maḫa], up to the city of Niḫiria, up to the country of Ar[me?], up to the country of Hašime[ ... ]. A 10–1 (1–8): for the strength of Ḫaldi, Rusa, son of Sarduri, says: I  defeated the king of Uelihuḫi and

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Roberto Dan and Marie-Claude Trémouille made him a vassal (enslaved him). The country I also occupied(?)/organized(?), I installed a governor there. A ‘Gate of Ḫaldi’ and a perfect fortress I built and gave (them) the name of ‘City of Ḫaldi’, (for the) strength of Biainili and humiliation of enemy countries. (I am) Rusa, the son of Sarduri, a powerful king, he who has enlarged/exalted Biainili. A 10–2 (13–18): In all, twenty-three kings in (just) one year (as) enemies I conquered; I  deported men and women to Biainili and an annual tribute. I came (and) built these fortresses in this region, installed here a governor, and these fortresses to perfection I [const] ructed, and [gave it the na]me of ‘City of the Storm God’, (for the) strength of Biainili and [humiliation] of the enemy countries. A 11–4 (6–12): I  stormed the city of Runitarni, conquered the territories, and subjected those to tribute, and this fortress I took in battle and rebuilt, and gave it the name of ‘Presidium of Argišti’ for the strength of Biainili and the humiliation of the enemy country.

If we consider this information (territorial expansion, victory over local kings made vassals and subjected to tribute, the building of fortresses and cities, and nomination of governors to control the conquered lands) it seems that the hegemonic tendencies of the Urartian sovereigns increased over time, with some imperialist ambitions — in the footsteps of the Assyrians — in the forms described by Liverani in his recent volume Assiria: la preistoria dell’imperialismo.43

43 

Liverani 2017.

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Works Cited Akurgal, Ekrem 1968 Urartäische und altiranische Kunstzentren (Turk tarih kurumu yayinlarindan, 6th ser., 9). Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, Ankara. Albenda, Pauline 2005 Ornamental Wall Painting in the Art of the Assyrian Empire. Brill, Leiden. Ayvazyan, Alina 2006 ‘Urartian Glyptic: New Perspectives’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of California, Berkeley). Azarpay, Guitty 1968 Urartian Arts and Artifacts: A Chrono­logical Study. University of California Press, Berkeley. Barnett, Ricard D. 1974 ‘The Hieroglyphic Writing of Urartu’, in Bittel Kurt, Philo Hendrik Jan Houwink Ten Cate & Erica Reiner (eds), Anatolian Studies Presented to Hans Gustav Güterbock on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Nederlands Historisch-Archaeo­logisch Instituut, Istanbul: 43–55. Berndt-Ersöz, Susanne 2006 Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines: Structure, Function, and Cult Practice. Brill, Leiden. Bittel, Kurt; Hendrik, Philo; Houwink, Jan; Cate, Ten & Reiner, Erica (eds) 1974 Anatolian Studies to Hans Gustav Güterbock on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Nederlands Historisch-Archaeo­ logisch Instituut, Istanbul. Çilingiroğlu, Altan 1997 Urartu Krallığı Tarihi ve Sanatı. Yaşar Eğitim ve Kültür Vakfı, Izmir. Çifçi, Ali 2015 ‘The Royal Titles of the Urartian Kings’, in Erica Hughes (ed.), Meaning and λόγος: Proceedings from the Early Professional Interdisciplinary Conference Held at the University of Liverpool, April 8–10 2013. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge: 130–41. Cline, Eric H. & Graham, Mark W. 2011 Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dan, Roberto 2015 From the Armenian Highland to Iran: A Study on the Relations between the Kingdom of Urartu and the Achaemenid Empire. Scienze e lettere, Rome. 2017 ‘The Gate and Temple of Ḫaldi in Ašotakert/Yeşılalıç and the Evolution of Urartian Cultic Complexes’, AJNES/Aramazd 11.1–2: 161–85. Dan, Roberto & Herles, Michael 2017 ‘From the Gate of Ḫaldi to the “Module”: A Study of the Urartian Architectural “Module” and the Oshakan Fortress’, Akkadica 138: 107–52. de Martino, Stefano 2006 Storia d’Europa e del Mediterraneo: il mondo antico, i: La Preistoria dell’uomo: L’Oriente Mediterraneo; ii: Le Civiltà dell’Oriente mediterraneo. Salerno editrice, Rome. de Martino, Stefano & Pecchioli Daddi, Franca 2002 Anatolia antica: studi in memoria di Fiorella Imparati. LoGisma, Florence.

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Dunham, Sally 2005 ‘Ancient Near Eastern Architecture’, in Daniel C. Snell (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Near East. Blackwell, Oxford: 266–80. Fales, Mario; De Martino, Stefano; Ponchia, Simonetta & Strobel, Karl 2009 ‘Austro-Italian Archaeo­logical Investigation in the Region of Yozgat (Turkey)’, Studia Asiana 5: 31–37. Frahm, Eckart 2017a A Companion to Assyria. Wiley, New Haven. 2017b ‘List of Assyrian Kings’, in Eckart Frahm (ed.), A Companion to Assyria. Wiley, New Haven: 613–16. Fuchs, Andreas 2017 ‘Assyria and the North: Anatolia’, in Eckart Frahm (ed.), A Companion to Assyria. Wiley, New Haven: 249–58. Hejebri-Nobari, Alireza 1997 ‘L’architecture militaire urarteenne’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris). Hughes, Erica 2015 Meaning and λόγος: Proceedings from the Early Professional Interdisciplinary Conference Held at the University of Liverpool, April 8–10 2013. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge. Işık, Kenan 2014 ‘Van Kalesi Höyüğü Kazılarında Keşfedilen Urartu Yazılı Belgeleri’, Colloquium Anatolicum 13: 173–84. Işıklı, Mehmet & Birol, Can 2015 International Symposium on East Anatolia-South Caucasus Cultures. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge. Konyar, Erkan; Avcı, Can; Yiğitpaşa, Davut & Tan, Armağan 2016 ‘Eski Van Şehri, Kalesi ve Höyüğü 2014 Yılı Kazı Çalışmaları’, Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 37: 573–90. Liverani, Mario 2014 The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. Routledge, London. 2017 Assiria: La preistoria dell’imperialismo. Laterza, Bari. Loon, Maurits N. van 1966 Urartian Art: Its Distinctive Traits in the Light of New Excavations (Uitgaven van het Nederlands HistorischArchaeo­logisch Instituut te İstanbul 20). Nederlands Historisch-Archaeo­logisch Instituut, Leiden. Maniori, Fulvia 2010 ‘Le campagne assire contro l’Urartu del 715 e 714 a.C.’, Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 52: 177–256. Matthiae, Paolo 1996 La storia dell’arte dell’Oriente antico, iv: I grandi imperi. Electa, Milan. Nunn, Astrid 2012 ‘Wandmalerei in Urartu’, in Stephan Kroll, Claudia Gruber, Ursula Hellwag, Michael Roaf & Paul Zimansky (eds), Biainili-Urartu: The Proceedings of the Symposium Held in Munich 12–14 October 2007, Acta Iranica 51: 321–37. Öğüt, Birgül & Erdil-Kocaman, Sanem 2015 ‘Melting Pot? Urartu Bronz Kemer ve Plakalar Üzerindeki Geç Hititi Ekisi‘’, in Mehmet Işıklı & Birol Can (eds), International Symposium on East Anatolia-South Caucasus Cultures. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Cambridge: 196–201.

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Özgüç, Tahsin 1969 Altıntepe, ii: Tombs, Storehouse and Ivories. Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara. Pecorella, Paolo E. & Salvini, Mirjo 1984 Tra lo Zagros e l’Urmia: ricerche storiche ed archeo­logiche nell’Azerbaigian Iraniano. Edizioni dell’Ateneo, Rome. Piotrovskij, Boris B. 1959 Vanskoe Tsartsvo (Urartu). Bostochnoe Literaturi, Moscow. 1970 Karmir-blur: Al’bom. Izdatel’stvo Avrora, Leningrad. Radner, Karen 2011 ‘Assyrians and Urartians’, in Sharon R. Steadman & J. Gregory McMahon (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 734–51. Richter, Thomas 2012 Biblio­graphisches Glossar des Hurritischen. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Salvini, Mirjo 1979 ‘Problemi di morfo­logia nominale in urarteo’, Annali del Seminario di studi del mondo classico, sezione linguistica 1: 97–115. 1980 ‘L’uso dell’assiro nel regno di Urartu’, Vicino Oriente 3: 169–77. 1984 ‘Storia della regione in epoca urartea’, in Paolo E. Pecorella & Mirjo Salvini (eds), Tra lo Zagros e l’Urmia: ricerche storiche ed archeo­logiche nell’Azerbaigian Iraniano. Edizioni dell’Ateneo, Rome: 9–51. 1995 Geschichte und Kultur der Urartäer. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt. 2001 ‘Notiziario. Ricerche a Van e dintorni (estate 2001)’, Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 43.2: 283–306. 2002 ‘Geroglifici di cantina’, in Stefano de Martino & Franca Pecchioli Daddi (eds), Anatolia antica: studi in memoria di Fiorella Imparati. LoGisma, Florence: 677–93. 2006 ‘Il Regno di Urartu (Biainili)’, in Stefano de Martino (ed.), Storia d’Europa e del Mediterraneo. Salerno editrice, Rome: 459–503. 2012 Corpus dei Testi Urartei, iv: Iscrizioni su bronzi e argilla: paleografia (Documenta Asiana 8.4). CNR-ICEVO, Rome. 2014 ‘Urartu. Ein Imperium’, in Michael Gehler & Robert Rollinger (eds), Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 299–327. Salvini, Mirjo & Ilse, Wegner 2014 Einführung in die Urartäische Sprache. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Seeher, Jürgen 2011 God Carved in Stone: The Hittite Rock Sanctuary of Yazılıkaya. Ege Yayınları, Istanbul. Snell, Daniel 2005 A Companion to the Ancient Near East. Blackwell, Malden. Vanden Berghe, Louis & De Meyer, Leon 1982 Urartu een vergeten cultuur uit het bergland Armenie. Centrum voor kunst en cultuur, Gent. Zimansky, Paul E. 1985 Eco­logy and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’: An Overview of South Arabian Data Relating to Mesopotamia (First Millennium bc) Alessio Agostini

Sapienza University of Rome

A bstract – Although often considered peripheral,

with a largely autonomous and conservative culture, South Arabia reveals certain elements of Mesopotamian inspiration, some of which are particularly evident in its figurative production. Some decorative motifs, such as sphinxes or winged genies, are seldom found represented within the South Arabian artistic language, which indicates that this combination was elaborated internally and continued to emerge occasionally all through the first millennium  bc. This study intends to reconstruct part of the underlying scenario with the help of the historical sources that document direct contacts with Mesopotamia through a twofold itinerary, external and internal. First, the already well-known Neo-Assyrian sources are reviewed as they record the first contacts between Mesopotamia and the rising Sabaean supremacy in the south-western corner of the Arabian Peninsula around the eighth and seventh centuries  bc. The first Sabaean rulers produced very refined annalistic inscriptions that denote an already mature and complex political ideo­logy, promoted by the use of written documents publicly displayed, a feature also shared with other regions of the ancient Near East then under the Assyrian yoke. Secondly, the internal South Arabian epi­g raphic documentation will help to disentangle the multiple contacts between South Arabian kingdoms with several Levantine and Mesopotamian regions, which appear mainly stimulated by commercial ties. The resulting picture suggests that while exposure to direct Mesopotamian cultural stimulus was possible but rather occasional during the first half of the first millennium, it possibly stabilized indirectly, thanks to the closer contacts that South Arabia maintained at this time with North Arabia and the Levant, both already experiencing Mesopotamian influence. During the Persian and Hellenistic periods, however, more direct contacts may have been further stimulated by the increased exchange of goods and relations inside the numerous outposts and through the multiple crossroads traversing the peninsula, reaching the gulf region and Lower Mesopotamia as well.

Introduction Relations between Mesopotamia and South Arabia have been debated over a long time and in relation to several issues. Although peripheral in its location (Fig. 7.1) and of a later development compared to the Mesopotamian cultural and technical level, in the course of the first millennium bc, South Arabia reached a degree of progress in architecture, artistic expression, and literacy, whose apparent rapid flourishing has frequently been explained by migration or at least as a result of a strong external impulse (Nebes 2001). Such an approach is now less taken for granted, because archaeo­logy has contributed in clarifying that some of the formative processes have occurred within South Arabia itself, following slight internal population shifts or in continuity with, and evolution from, the Bronze Age settlements (Edens & Wilkinson 1998); some studies concerning the ancient South Arabian languages tend to support this interpretation, re-evaluating the importance of internal development (Avanzini 2009). At the same time, however, the presence of several cultural motifs of clear external provenance cannot be disregarded, even if they totally transformed into an original and autonomous realization. The present study deals with some of these issues following two distinct yet intersecting paths: an overview of the first accounts mentioning Sabaʾ in the Neo-Assyrian texts, as the background for later contacts that involved the entire region, and an analysis of the few first-millennium bc texts from South Arabia,1 1  South Arabian inscriptions are cited according to the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions — DASI ( [accessed 1 October 2021]), where further details and biblio­graphy can be found. Here only the most common proper names are vocalized according to the usual conventions, which do not necessarily fit the hypothetical South Arabian custom; other rare names are left in their consonantal structure.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 103–122 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127140

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Alessio Agostini

Figure 7.1. Map of Arabia and neighbouring areas (from Hoyland 2001, 4).

which mention toponyms or ethnonyms related to Mesopotamia; finally, some of the South Arabian figurative motifs of possible Mesopotamian inspiration will also be briefly addressed. Needless to say, such documentation, as far as Mesopotamia is concerned is still too meagre both in quantity and in consistency to obtain a sufficiently organic picture for the first millennium  bc, but an assessment of the already known material in the light of some recent textual and figurative acquisitions may contribute in understanding the complex network connecting such distant populations, and this may also help I am very grateful to S. Antonini for her help in the icono­graphical research and to M. V. Tonietti with whom I have discussed some of the issues coming from the Assyrian texts.

to explain some of the recurrent dynamics in the transmission of cultural models across this large area.

The Neo-Assyrian Premises The most ancient external accounts about South Arabia are limited to Sabaʾ and are in a few Assyrian texts from the eighth–seventh centuries bc, documentation mostly known since the nineteenth century and consequently already widely explored (Ephʿal 1982; Galter 1993). The ethnonym Sabaʾ is first recorded in two texts during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III. The first is a document by Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur, the governor of Sūḫu and Mari in the middle Euphrates valley around the middle of the eighth century (see Appendix A, no. 1). This document relates the plundering of a large caravan from

105

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’

Figure 7.2. Ṣirwāḥ courtyard and inscriptions. A: DAI- Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50; B: RES 3945; C: RES 3946 (after Nebes 2016, pl. 23a).

Taymāʾ and Sabaʾ, both to be considered as ethnonyms as they are accompanied by the determinative LÚ; consequently, at this time, it appears that some trade connections were already established between the Fertile Crescent and the northern and southern poles of the Arabian Peninsula.2 The spoil included goods carried by two hundred camels and consisted of blue-purple wool (takiltum), and other kinds of wool, iron, pappardilustones, and ‘every kind of merchandise’. The account found in the Summary Inscriptions written on the stone slabs originally displayed on the palace walls at Nimrud, in which several military operations by TiglathPileser III are celebrated is from slightly later. In the section describing the activities carried out in Syria and Palestine, which involve various nomad tribes, Sabaʾ is mentioned together with the countries of Massaʾ, Taymāʾ, Khayappā, Badanu, Khatteʿa and Idibaʾilu; on this occasion only Sabaʾ and Idibaʾilu are accompanied by the determinative LÚ (see Appendix A, no. 2).3 The aggressive behaviour by Sūkhu is justified by the absence of previous diplomatic relations, but it is quite probably a rhetorical expedient (Liverani 1992). The reconstruction of the trade routes is a very popular topic and has, of course, a vast biblio­graphy; for the purpose of the present study, the synthesis by Potts (1988) is still particularly useful.

2 

The mentions of the Sabaeans together with some groups that were basically from the north of the peninsula have been often cited to support the hypothesis that Sabaʾ was previously settled in 3 

It is under Sargon II4 and Sennacherib5 that for the first time two Sabaean rulers, Itʾamra and Karibilu are mentioned. This suggests that the situation had noticeably improved around the end of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh centuries bc, as indicated by these apparently friendly diplomatic relations established at the highest level. It does not appear that they are the consequence of military action by either party, but they are rather based on a mutual commercial interest. These accounts found in the deeds of the two Assyrian rulers are still the most significant external synchronisms for the more ancient South Arabian phase, offering major hints for clearer chrono­logical positionthe north, a theory never verified by the archaeo­logical evidence. For a synthesis of the debate see, inter alia, Robin (1996, 1109–11). Annals, II: 11 (see Appendix A, no. 3); the event is also briefly summarized in the Prunkinschrift (see Appendix A, no. 4). 4 

During the reign of Sennacherib, two groups of documents referring to a Karibilu, king of the land of Sabaʾ are available. The most detailed account is from the tablet VA 8248 from Ashur (see Appendix A, no. 5), which is also briefly confirmed by a series of six fragmentary beads, probably coming from Nineveh, all presenting more or less the same formula, with small differences (cf. Appendix A, no. 6, where only the integrated piece BM 89910 is shown). The gifts were sent by Karibilu on the occasion of the foundation of the Akītu temple in Ashur, built a few years after the Assyrian conquest of Babylon. A fragmentary letter also mentions the Sabaeans (Sabaʾu) in the context of tribute payments to Sennacherib, although the context is highly fragmentary (BM 99170, see Appendix A, no. 7). 5 

106 ing, regardless of the few weaknesses that still persist within the internal documentation. Thanks to the several archaeo­logical investigations carried out in the last decades of the twentieth century, it is now undisputed that around the eighth century bc, the Sabaeans were already organized in South Arabia in a complex political structure and that a formalized writing techno­logy was at the same time integral to the society, with monumental texts beginning to be displayed by the social elites. The identification of Itʾamra and Karibilu with Sabaean rulers known from the vast internal documentation has been puzzling for a long time, mainly because the several homonyms within the Sabaean royal onomastics offered multiple possibilities to choose from. There is little doubt that both personages were kings reigning in South Arabia, despite the fact that only Karibilu is designated as such in the texts of Sennacherib. Now it is quite convincing that Itʾamra and Karibilu should be identified with the two Mukarribs Yithaʿʾmar Watar bin Yakrubmalik and Karibʾil Watar bin Dhamarʿlī, respectively, both of whom have left extensive accounts of their expansionist policy in detailed monumental epi­ graphic deeds erected inside the site of Ṣirwāḥ, thirtyfour kilometres west of Maʾrib (DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50 and RES 3945/3946, respectively, Fig. 7.2),6 and are therefore good candidates to have been personalities whose renown could have been spread also at an international level. These annalistic texts,7 among the first of the kind in South Arabia, as far as we know, offer an ideo­logically complex portrait of the Sabaean sovereign and a mature conception of the state, based on tribal and religious alliances that were successful in aggregating different polities.8 In DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50 and RES 3945 the The long and intact text DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50 by the Mukarrib Yithaʿʾmar Watar bin Yakrubmalik was discovered in 2005 during the excavations of the Deutsches Archäo­logisches Institut inside the courtyard of the Almaqah temple in Ṣirwāḥ, just in front of the already known texts by Karibʾil Watar bin Dhamarʿlī (RES 3945 and RES 3946, written on the two opposite faces of the same monolith). Yithaʿʾmar Watar, a previously ill-known Sabaean sovereign, became immediately a good substitute to Yithaʿʾamar Bayān bin Sumuhūʿalī, who faute de mieux was previously considered the Itʾamra mentioned by Sargon II, overlooking the fact that he was a close predecessor of Karibʾil and it was then difficult to accept a thirty-year span between the two, as the connection with the Assyrian sources necessarily imply; the new text is analysed in full length by Nebes (2016), see also Arbach (2014). 6 

The fragmentary RES 3943 should also be added to the group even if the name of the mukarrib subject of the text is not preserved. The palaeo­graphy suggests that it is chrono­logically close to RES 3945, although probably slightly later. 7 

8 

The aggregation of the several social and religious forces is best

Alessio Agostini mukarrib is represented as a pious observant of the religious rituals, but also as an avenger and a warrior-hero. The transfer of populations was intended to realize a more controlled and uniform ‘Sabaeanized’ society: the site of Nashq in the northern Jawf valley, for instance, is colonized with Sabaeans, some refractory local kings are replaced with more obedient figures, others are subdued or recompensed for their support. RES 3945 indulged sometimes in a more detailed chronicle, with a numerical indication of the deportees, and describing exemplary revenge, especially cruel to former allies turned enemies, as in the case of the city of Nashshān, which was destined to pillaging and to ritual destruction by fire,9 followed by the imposition of the cult of the Sabaean god Almaqah. Both Yithaʿʾmar Watar and Karibʾil Watar (the latter especially in RES 3946) present, however, also peaceful activities, mainly regarding the organization of the newly conquered territories, provision of new irrigation systems, and the building of strong defensive walls. Karibʾil Watar lists a considerable number of sites that have been provided with massive urban walls (an action indicated by the verb gnʾ ‘to encircle with walls’), in most cases still archaeo­logically visible. The actions carried out by these first mukarribs had a lasting effect on South Arabian society on the political level as well as for the technical improvement, resulting in a more complex urbanized society. A network of small-scale but well-defended urban centres became reciprocally interconnected within a pre-desertic environment, still largely occupied by scattered rural communities (Mouton & Schiettecatte 2014, 163–71). The progress of the Sabaean expansion activity can be outlined, starting with the inscription DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50, whose anteriority is supported by palaeo­graphic analysis and by the fact that the military campaigns recorded there involve a smaller area around the core of the Sabaean kingdom, which implies that the broader occupations celebrated in RES 3945 by Karibʾil Watar were later additions. The association of these two sovereigns with the two mentioned in the Assyrian texts is still a hypothesis, but it is the most reliable so far according to this historical represented by the formula: gwm ḏ-ʾlm w-s²ymm w-ḏ-ḥblm w-ḥmrm (DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50: 7; RES 3945:1).

ḤRM is the root used to express this action, which is in the causative form in the perfect tense in DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50/2,4 (hḥrm bn mṯbrm w-mwfṭm) and with the interesting consecutive imperfect construction in RES 3945/16 (yhḥrm bn mwfṭm). For a wider analysis of the ritual destruction or ḥērem in a comparative perspective, especially Levantine, see Monroe (2007) and Hatke (2015, 104–10). 9 

107

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’

Figure 7.3. Cylinder seal with South Arabian letters (from Christie’s Catalogue 2001, 73, n. 530; Bron 2001, 147).

sequence. What is still quite surprising is that neither of the two mukarribs recalled the alleged contacts with the Assyrian rulers in their long inscriptions, as here, they certainly had a very good occasion to celebrate from a propagandistic point of view. Both inscriptions could have been potentially realized before the contacts with the Assyrian sovereigns were formalized (Potts 2003), but this clashes with the impression that both texts belong to the style of res gestae, usually set up at the end of a reign.

sent an unsurpassed combination of figurative narrative and written record on the same stone slabs, even if they were transmitted by the exclusive cuneiform writing. It is clear that this great propagandistic synthesis could have produced a strong sensation in everyone allowed to see it.10 However, it should also be emphasized that it is just the figurative narrative that is lacking in the South Arabian autonomous artistic production — although with some significant archaic exceptions (see below).

These first annalistic Sabaean texts seem to appear suddenly, without a preceding local tradition known to date and one may deduce that they have been inspired by the Neo-Assyrian narrative propaganda (Frahm 1999, 86). The emissaries of Yithaʿʾmar Watar and Karibʾil have probably witnessed the Assyrian royal magnificence, but it is difficult to imagine that these occasional events could have been so determinant as to produce such emulation in South Arabia. However, this kind of written exaltation of the political power could be the result of a similar ideo­logical background, whereas the general situation could have further favoured parallel development. The Assyrian political hegemony certainly stimulated a Mesopotamian cultural imprint beyond its immediate periphery, but it is still doubtful whether such an influence was sufficiently direct or persistent to produce lasting effects in South Arabia as well. The question of a direct Assyrian stimulus to the new South Arabian epi­graphic habit thus still remains open.

By the early first millennium bc, the growing caravan trade connections not only stimulated the dissemination of products and merchandise, which may per se also transmit cultural imprints, but also promoted contacts of groups of diverse origin and economic background; such contacts may have resulted in integration and economic cooperation, not only in recurrent conflicts and lootings. By the middle of the eighth century bc, Lower Mesopotamia is a good example of a complex multiethnic region, as several tribal entities began gravitating and settling there: Aramaeans, Chaldeans, and Arabs, mingled with Assyrians and, naturally, Babylonians around the central plain, with different degrees of integration. The Governor’s Archive of Kudurru, šandabakku of Nippur, during the third quarter of the eighth century bc, provides a good epistolary account of the social situation, revealed by heterogeneous onomastic material, indicating Aramaeans and North Arabians, together with some names showing a possible South Semitic correlation, such as Ydʿʾl for instance.11 Some interest-

What is clear is that this first South Arabian documentation appears as a mature realization at the stylistic level, both technically and linguistically, and already expresses a conscious royal ideo­logy. The beautiful Assyrian reliefs preserved inside royal palaces, repre-

10  Reade 1979. In a wider perspective, see also Matthiae 1996; more recently, Liverani 2017. 11 

The personal name Ydʿʾl is found about ten times in the Neo-

108 ing textual features have also been pointed out, like the use of temporal conjunction ūmu, compared to its cognate ywm, which is employed similarly in South Arabian commemorative texts (Cole 1996a, 11). However, none of these elements is conclusive to attest significant South Arabian presence in Babylonia at this time. Evidence for Arab presence is stronger, even if the lack of a clear ethnic specification often precludes the possibility of distinguishing between different groups, especially Arabs and Aramaeans (Cole 1996b, 34–42; cf. also Zadok 2013). Traces of the South Semitic scripts all along the Fertile Crescent around the second third of the millennium may add further evidence, although these instances are certainly limited and often of unclear origin and doubtful dating (Bron 1995; Sass 1991, 38–75). These coarse forms of script are certainly of South Semitic type, but ethnic attribution is even more difficult to assess in these cases. However, it is significant that this script is seldom found on typical Mesopotamian objects, like cylinder seals: such products testify that multiple connections were favoured by the growing circulation of products and persons of diverse origin (Fig. 7.3). This explains why between the eighth and the sixth centuries bc, South Arabia may have been exposed to a Mesopotamian influence through multiple sources. The increased use of dromedaries as beasts of burden over longer itineraries certainly stimulated widespread flourishing of overland trading activities, which were already fully established at the beginning of the first millennium bc. This produced favourable premises that stimulated cultural transmissions over a larger scale, not necessarily direct but more probably through intermediate steps. In this context, the semi-nomadic groups involved in trading activities could also have acted as a transmission belt of heterogeneous cultural traits. Since the first clash in the Battle of Qarqar (853 bc) between Shalmaneser III and Gindibu ‘the Arab’, a chieftain of a North Arabian tribe, political contacts and military opposition between the Assyrian army and the seminomads of the Syro-Arabian desert intensified, especially under Tiglath-Pileser III — as already indicated Assyrian documentation and it is also borne by a vassal of Kudurru in four letters of the Nippur’s Archive (nos 3, 6, 23, and 59). The name is very common in archaic South Arabian documentation, as it is also used by some Sabaean sovereigns (usually vocalized Yadaʿʾil), but it is also found once in Old Aramaic (Cole 1996a, 43–44). Linguistic and extra-linguistic elements are not sufficient to designate this name as typical South Semitic, whereas a general Western Semitic classification would be more appropriate (cf. also Golinets 2018, 211, 469).

Alessio Agostini by the Summary Inscriptions (cf. above and Ephʿal 1982, 81–92). The Arabs were often considered by the Assyrians as intruders, sometimes allies of their enemies, but also possessors and breeders of huge camel herds. They experienced occasional conflicts with the Assyrians, which often also turned to compromise rather than to force, for reciprocal interests (Bagg 2018). Late Assyrian sources reveal the presence of Arabic onomastics, as well as reciprocal lexical loanwords, which testify to closer contacts (Zadok 1981; Krebernik 2008) — just as at the end of the sixth century bc, when the presence of Nabonidus at Taymāʾ was something more than a symbol of the Neo-Babylonian decadence. In the Persian period, the Arabs and the sedentary polities of the Near East experienced more regular relations (Fales 2020, 41) and, later on, the already settled Arabs in the Levantine commercial hubs could no longer be considered newcomers (Graf 2015) — rather, they were the result of a long process of integration and acculturation with the sedentary political forces of the previous centuries with whom they had already experienced regular contacts. The occasional accounts of Sabaʾ along with other North Arabian groups and in connection with Levantine ethnonyms, indicates that the Levant was a good source for the dissemination of Mesopotamian cultural traits. In the Early Iron Age period, the small-scale polities of Phoenicia, Moab, and the Old Aramaean states had already started to sustain their propaganda also thanks to inscriptions in publicly displayed consonantal scripts, and in some cases Mesopotamian models are clearly discernible (Hatke 2015).12 Approximately two centuries later, the same trend was also attested in Sabaʾ, when its political structure was fully organized with combined royal propaganda. In the meantime, South Arabia had already been concerned by the great techno­logical innovation represented by the consonantal writing system, which may have been transmitted (possibly through ostraca or perishable materials) from a Northern Levantine antecedent dating back to the Middle or Late Bronze Age. It is not totally excluded that a cuneiform alphabet might have served as a model 12  As far as the Phoenician domain is concerned, Guzzo Amadasi (1987) points out that the occasional use of the first person singular in some Phoenician dedicatory and funerary texts may be due to a Mesopotamian influence as the Assyrian royal texts and Annals are usually written in the first person, while the more archaic examples from Byblos, for instance, show the regular third person singular. In the South Arabian monumental inscriptions, the subject is invariably indicated by the third person.

109

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’ for the later South Semitic linear development, which again would point to the northern Levant (Robin 2008). Certainly, the fact that the Southern Semitic alphabetic order was also known at Ugarit and Palestine indicates the compresence there of different scribal schools with alternative conventions. This alphabet order certainly spread over a large area, apparently also comprising Egypt (Haring 2015), but remained marginal in the Levant and was, in the end, totally abandoned in favour of the usual Northern alphabetic order (the same used in Phoenician). The Southern Semitic alphabetic order was by contrast fully adopted during the Iron Age in the Arabian Peninsula and later spread down to Ethiopia. Whatever its ultimate origin may be, the South Arabian script systematization was not simply receptive from an external model but was completed with a strong internal adjustment in the figurative layout and in the inner structure, reflecting some linguistic peculiarities of the South Arabian languages, especially the larger phono­logical repertoire. This adoption followed by strong internal reworking became a good paradigm for a number of subsequent cultural acquisitions in this part of the peninsula. In addition, it is also possible to speculate whether the sharing of a different yet related linear script could have been a more favourable condition for the adaptation of a similar epi­graphic habit combining writing and epi­graphic support. Because the Levant was obviously exposed to the Mesopotamian cultural model as a direct consequence of the repeatedly experienced Assyrian political yoke, this could also have been a good prerequisite for it secondarily filtrating towards the Arabian Peninsula as well. As Byrne states, while caravans may have circumnavigated the Nafud during the Persian or Graeco-Roman periods, the Levant served as the primary artery of movement during the first centuries of contact between southwestern Arabia and the Neo-Assyrian Empire — partly contributing to Assyria’s profound interest in southern Levantine petty states otherwise lacking significant resources. (Byrne 2003, 12)

Moreover, it is just in the Levantine epi­graphic production of the Iron Age that we find the combination of different traits that we also notice in some of the archaic South Arabian monumental inscriptions.13

The frequent association of Sabaʾ with Taymāʾ in the commercial enterprises recorded by the Assyrians, to which several biblical accounts should also be added,14 reminds us that among the north-western Arabian oases network, Taymāʾ represented a pivotal centre of multicultural intersections throughout most of the first millennium bc and remains a key site to better understand the centre–periphery relations in the region (Edens & Bawden 1989; Hausleiter & Eichmann 2018). Well before King Nabonidus of Babylon moved for ten years to Taymāʾ during the mid-sixth century bc, there are clear examples that an original Mesopotamian figurative tradition was known to the region, which was presumably highly appreciated by local elites, as usually happens with those cultural trends coming from hegemonic polities.15 The local production during the Achaemenid time indicates that this exposure produced a figurative eclecticism embracing Mesopotamian and Egyptian elements, as finally represented by the stele and the cube of al-Ḥamrāʾ,16 for example (Sperveslage 2018). The spreading of the Aramaic language and script, finally rooted during the Persian time, remains among the most long-lasting cultural impacts ultimately favoured by the Mesopotamian pressure on the Western regions. This picture reinforces the impression that since the second quarter of the first millennium, the most developed centres in the north of the peninsula, on the fringes of the powerful states of Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine, may have contributed to the spreading of cultural models of different origin to South Arabia as well. If we want to resort again to the above-mentioned ‘writing paradigm’, we should also remember that a prominent cultural role for Taymāʾ is also suggested by the fact that the script used all over North Arabia, ultimately belonging to the South Semitic branch, was internationally known as the ‘Taimanite writing’, as indicated by the well-known Luwian text by Yariris of Carchemish.17 We can then conclude, at this point, that Meso­ potamian cultural influences on South Arabia may have occurred directly on some limited occasions before the fest 1999). It is interesting to note, however, that this trait is not present in the more ancient DAI-Ṣirwāḥ 2005–50. Cf. also Hatke 2015. 14 

It is sufficient to remember the stylistic device of the ‘consecutive imperfect’, a trait that is found in the North-Western Semitic milieu as well as in some Sabaean and Minaean inscriptions (Grunt13 

Job 6. 19; Isa. 21. 14; Jer. 25. 23; Gen. 25. 15; i Chron. 1. 30.

Cf. in particular the decorated fragment AO 29143, discussed in Potts 1991. 15 

16  17 

Al-Riyāḍ, National Museum, inv. no. 1021. Karkamiš A15b: ll. 19–22.

110 Persian period, but they stabilized also thanks to the contribution of indirect actors, following the interactions with the sedentary and semi-nomadic communities in Syria-Palestine and northern Arabia, which had already experienced closer contacts with the Mesopotamian world.

South Arabian Data Relating to Mesopotamia (Sixth–First Centuries bc) Despite the fact that regular commercial contacts with the northern regions partly reduced the geo­graphical isolation of South Arabia, it is still difficult to assess to what extent this mitigated its cultural isolation.18 The repetitive and stereotyped South Arabian epi­graphic production, combined with a conservative figurative tradition, may prevent fuller investigation of this point. It is thus also possible that exposure to external influence could have been stronger, but partly obstructed by internal cultural resistance. When an external input is discernible, it is also clear that it has also been promptly digested and adapted to the local taste, as is evident with some figurative subjects that frequently became repetitive decorative motifs once transposed in South Arabia (see below). This condition may also explain the so-called ‘formal inertia’ in the epi­graphic domain, a phenomenon that makes it difficult to escape the rigidity of textual models: when personal or historical facts are mentioned in an inscription, they are, in fact, simply juxtaposed to the underlying formulary pattern of the text (Ryckmans 1974). This condition explains in part why historical facts or external events are so rare in the South Arabian documentation. Among the few external references, those relating to Mesopotamia are particularly elusive: it is clear that the background is again that of trade activities, but usually this subject is not explicitly stated in the epi­ graphic documentation because commerce was considered a humble activity, not worthy of mention. The toponyms that are related to the Mesopotamian region in the documentation from the first millennium bc are ʾʾs2r (Assyria-Babylonia), which is usually a pair with ʿbr Nhrn (Transeuphratene), and Ks2d (Chaldea). The more ancient attestations of the name Ks2d are found in two recently published texts. The beautiful bronze plaque BL-Nashq (see Appendix B, no. 1; Fig. 7.4) The documentation attesting contacts with the Levant has been recently assessed by Stein (2017a). 18 

Alessio Agostini was offered by a Sabaean originating from Nashq as a dedication following an expedition across the Levant and the Mediterranean, passing through Dedān (Ddn), the cities of Judah (ʾhgr Yhd), Gaza (Ġzt), and finally reaching Kition (Kty) in Cyprus. This person also conducted a diplomatic mission to several Arabian countries: Dhakr, Liḥyān (whose main centre was Dedān), Abīʾaws, and possibly Ḥanak. Chaldea is not touched in this itinerary but is mentioned anecdotally because it is recounted that the journey took place during a conflict between Ionia (Ywn) and Chaldea (Ks2dm). The dating of the text is still debated. This event has been associated with military operations carried out by the NeoBabylonian dynasty in Cilicia, dated to the early sixth century (Bron & Lemaire 2009, 19–29) or to the midsixth century bc (De Maigret & Robin 2009, 93–96 (note by S. Anthonioz)); recently, the operation has been identified with the war between the Persians and Evagoras, proposing to change the date of the inscription to the early fourth century (Sørensen & Geus 2019, 199–200; accepted also by Multhoff 2019, 12–13). The other text mentioning Chaldea comes from Qatabān (Maraqten-Qatabanic 1: see Appendix B, no. 5) and should be dated to the first century bc (Maraqten 2014). In this case, the dedication is by two men following their safe return from an expedition to the ‘lands and the towns of the North’ (ʾrḍtw w-ʾhgr s2ʾmt), which are Nabataea (Nbṭm), Chaldea (Ks2d), Egypt (Mṣr), and Ionia (Ywnm). The indication of the Land of the North is interesting and could be simply a general geo­graphic reference to the north-lying foreign countries in relation to ancient Yemen — a phrase that also seems current in some texts from the first centuries ad.19 In the case of this Qatabanian text, the term Ks2d indicates one of the geo­graphical destinations reached during the commercial expedition. One of the two men also recalls a previous mission alone to the city of Petra (Rqmm), an expedition that is realized ‘by land and by sea’ (b-ybs1n w-bḥrn); incidentally, at this time interactions with Nabataea were predictable, as has been further conBroader observations concerning the ‘Land of the North’ based on a third-century ad text can be found in Schiettecatte & Arbach (2016). The text Riyām 2006–17 mentions the tribe of Tanūkh, which certainly settled in Lower Mesopotamia in the first Islamic period, and it is probable that it was already in the region of al-Ḥīra on the right bank of the Euphrates since the late third century ad, as is further supported by the text Sharafaddin 31 of the early fourth century, where it is stated that a Ḥimyarite mission reached Ctesiphon (Qṭwṣf) and Seleukia (Kwk), before reaching the land of Tanūkh (ʾrḍ Tnḫ). 19 

111

7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’ firmed by the discovery of a Sabaic-Nabataean bilingual in the Almaqah temple in Ṣirwāḥ dated to 7–6 bc,20 thus realized just a few years after the unfortunate expedition conducted by Aelius Gallus to South Arabia (25–24 bc), guided by the Nabataean Syllaios, as Strabo also recorded (Geo­graphy, xvi. 4. 24). The homo­graph name Ks2d occurs very rarely in South Arabian onomastics as well but, in these cases, it is used by South Arabian individuals, and this excludes an external ethnic affiliation.21 In the Neo-Babylonian period, the term in the South Arabian texts may refer, broadly speaking, to the Chaldean people, thus corresponding to AssyrianBabylonian Kaldu and to Masoretic Hebrew Kaśdīm (plural form).22 A much later attestation of the name Ks2d, as an ethnonym, is in a Ḥaḍramitic text incised on the rock of al-ʿUqla near the capital Shabwa (Ja 931: third century ad).23 In the course of the sixth century bc the political and economic background began to change in South Arabia, and this was reflected also in the organization of trading activities. In the Persian period, the kingdom of Maʿīn started to gain greater control over commerce, and this is testified by several accounts left by Minaean merchants in North Arabia, in their stable outpost of Dedān, or in Egypt, up to the island of Delos. Two Minaic texts found in their homeland (RES 3022 and RES 2930 — see Appendix B, nos 2 and 4), mention ʾʾs2r, ʿbr Nhrn together with Egypt (Mṣr) as commercial destinations. RES 3022 is a very important account by Minaeans that

Figure 7.4. The bronze plaque BL-Nashq (from De Maigret & Robin 2009, 83).

It is a dedication to the god ḏu-Shara by a man called Taymu, in the third year of Arethas IV, king of the Nabataeans (partially published in Nebes 2009). 20 

Kamna 11 is a funerary stele of two daughters of Ks²d the Ḥanakite, while CIH 150 Ks²d is the patronymic of a male individual. Finally, in the funerary stele al-Jawf 04.211 probably the feminine variant of this proper name is mentioned (Ks²dt). The occurrence of the name in nisbe Ks1dyn in the RES 4109, with a different sibilant, discourages an association with the Chaldeans despite some previous attempts in this direction. 21 

The sibilant that we find in the root of this name was probably articulated as a lateral, and this explains the transcription in Assyrian-Babylonian (where such a sibilant had already merged and the consonantal cluster -ld- is the result of the assimilation of -ls-, a closer phonetic representation of the lateral phoneme, with the following dental). 22 

The text registers embassies to the Hadramitic king consisting of Palmyrenes, Chaldeans, and Indian diplomatic emissaries, it reads: Ḫyry w-ʿḏḏm Tḏmryyhn Ḏmtrn w-Flqt Ks²dyyh(n) Dhrdh w-Mnd(h) (H)ndyyhn s²wʿw mrʾ-s¹m ʾlʿḏ Ylṭ mlk Ḥḍrmt (Ḫyry and ʿḏḏm, the two Palmyrenes, Ḏmtrn and Flqt, the two Chaldaeans, Dhrdh and Mndh, the two Indians, followed their lord Ilīʿaḏ Yaluṭ, King of Ḥaḍramawt). 23 

were staying in Egypt at the time of a Persian attack (mrd kwn byn Mḏy w-Mṣr); after a long debate,24 this event can now be dated to around mid-fifth century bc, also thanks to epi­graphic and archaeo­logical data (Agostini 2020, 172–74). For the present perspective, it is still in doubt whether these toponyms should be considered as simple geo­graphical names or correspond to the administrative satrapies of the Persian period, also bearing in mind that toponymic associations might change over time. Following the balanced reconstruction proposed by Gnoli, it is possible to associate the term ʾʾs2r with Mesopotamia in the broader sense in the Minaic docuThe debate over the so-called ‘Persian-Minaean synchronism’ is amply summarized in Gnoli 1996. 24 

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Alessio Agostini Figure 7.5. Banāt ʿAd decor from intra-muros temple of Aranyadaʿ at as-Sawdāʾ (from Sass 2007, fig. 6; after Audouin & Arbach 2004, figs 4–8).

ments of the Persian period, thus encompassing Assyria and Babylonia, while ʿbr Nhrn should be intended as Transeuphratene, similar to the Akkadian Eber-nāri and the Aramaic ʿAbarnahara (Gnoli 1996, 27–31). This possibility is probably confirmed by another Minaic inscription referring again to trading activities with Egypt and Assyria-Babylonia (RES 2771: Appendix B, no. 3), where in spite of the region ʿbr Nhrn, only Gaza (Ġzt) is mentioned, as the main emporium representing Syria-Palestine. The text Maʿīn 10 still refers to a commercial expedition, but it did not touch Mesopotamia, as it was limited to the western countries of Dedān (Ddn), Egypt, Tyre (Ṣr), and, probably, Sidon (Ṣ[ydn]). Egypt is, of course, again mentioned in the Minaic text incised on the sarcophagus found in the Fayyūm, realized for a Minaean trader (RES 3427). More broadly, the best accounts of the multiple Minaean commercial ties are the lists dealing with foreign females, which are written on the pillars of the extra muros temple of ʿAthtar ḏu-Qabḍ at Qarnaw, probably following their naturalization inside Minaean society (Bron 1998, 102–21): Egypt is the occasional origin of these women, while Gaza and some Levantine towns are frequently attested. Cities of Mesopotamia, on the other hand, are never mentioned as homeland of the naturalized wives of the Minaean merchants, while eastern Arabia is mentioned only once (Hgr/Hagar). If we had to rely only on these accounts, we should conclude that the Minaeans of the homeland possibly had more frequent commercial ties with the north-western regions of the Near East than elsewhere. However, sometime later, a Minaean declares links towards the eastern borders of the peninsula, up to Lower Mesopotamia: while leaving a dedicatory bronze tablet in the oasis of Qaryat al-Fāw in central Arabia (Riyāḍ 302F8: Appendix B, no. 6), he relates a trade expedition towards the Arabian Gulf, reaching also Seleucia on the Tigris; if the interpretation of Christian Robin is correct, the toponym Nhr (lit. ‘river’) could indicate the Euphrates district, thus Babylonia, or, in general, Lower Mesopotamia (Robin & Prioletta 2013, 173–75). Incidentally, this situation is anticipated by a couple of Sabaic texts from the Sabaean homeland that reveal a synchronism with a King Seleucus, probably Seleucus I Nicator (reigning 305–281 bc);25 both are fragmentary, but some of the onomastic features of the merchants that have commissioned these dedicatory inscriptions indicate that they probably originated from the gulf region (Robin & Prioletta 2013, 167–69). The picture is further completed by the fact that the South Arabian script was known in eastern Arabia at least in the second half of the first millennium bc: in its monumental variant (musnad) it is clearly recognizable in the Hasaitic inscriptions (cf. those from Thāj), a small group of very repetitive funerary texts; although their dating (probably third century bc) and the reason for the limited local adoption of this script (prestige?) remain debated, there is no doubt that it derived from South Arabia (Macdonald 2000, 35–36; Robin 2016, 227–28). More recent, moreover, is the discovery of some pieces that show CIH 921+Ry 547 (+DAI Maʾrib Oase 2007–1 [unpubl.]) dated to 303–302 bc and A-20–216 dated to 298–297 bc.

25 

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7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’ that even the South Arabian minuscule script (zabūr) was known in the region, as evidenced by some findings from Mleiha to be placed in the third century bc (Stein 2017b; Stein 2019). Since the Hellenistic period, the road towards the region of the gulf and from there to Babylonia, branched at the site of Qaryat al-Fāw, which became a main stopover bustling with Minaeans, but also Sabaeans and Qatabanians, heading to the port town of Gerrha.26

Figure 7.6. Anthropomorphic winged ibex in bronze (from Antonini de Maigret 2012, fig. 57; photo courtesy S. Antonini).

Some Observations about a Few Figurative Traits of Possible Mesopotamian Origin During the whole of the first millennium  bc, South Arabia was consequently exposed to several external influences from the northern regions of the Near East, Mesopotamia included, which may also have produced a cultural impact. A brief, unsystematic review of the few figurative instances in which clear external figurative elements can be detected may help to assess the problem, especially as far as a Mesopotamian connection is concerned. As anticipated, the genuine South Arabian figurative tradition seems to avoid any historical or mytho­logical narrative intent and therefore, the few exceptions to this trend could possibly rely on a different background, which may be also explained as the consequence of a foreign stimulus, although not always easy to trace. Some significant instances are concentrated during the archaic phase and again only towards the end of the first millennium, when some late Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman borrowings began to circulate. As far as the archaic period is concerned, the socalled ‘Banāt ʿAd decoration’ offers a variety of elements and themes, which have been further enlarged thanks to the recently found figurative scenes that have been exposed on the pillars of the intra-muros temple at as-Sawdāʾ in the Jawf (northern Yemen).27 Hunting and processional scenes are found among plentiful repetition of animal and vegetable elements that sometimes recall a ‘brocade’ style; the new material has added further significative icono­graphy, particularly in the scenes portraying some anthropomorphic figures, which the corresponding inscribed captions The site of Gerrha known from classical sources has recently been identified with Hagar (Robin & Prioletta 2013; Robin 2016). 26 

The temple dedicated to Aranyadaʿ has been partially unearthed by clandestine digging and later documented thanks to a brief visit on the site by the French Mission (Audouin & Arbach 2004). 27 

designate as local divinities (Fig. 7.5). They are carved bas-relief of opposing pairs standing or seated in table scenes in some squared tableaux. Some dancing female figures are also separately represented. It is important to note that such figurative tradition of the Banāt ʿAd has no continuation in the following periods: moreover, the excavation of the extra-muros temple at as-Sawdāʾ revealed that some of the stone blocks that were decorated with similar motifs were re-employed during subsequent interventions inside the temple without any regard to the decoration, which would imply that this tradition soon lost any appeal. The reasons why this happened are still unknown, but this raises the question of whether a sensitive ideo­logical change may have occurred at the end of the archaic South Arabian phase, around the seventh century bc, also affecting the figurative expression. However, this short-lived tradition is of the greatest interest for the variety of elements and impulses that have been combined together. The overall composition of the table scenes may be traced back to the Syro-Anatolian tradition of the ninth–eighth centuries bc according to Sass (2007), although a connection with some Mesopotamian glyptic could be further investigated. In the following mature South Arabian phase, however, a number of symbolic elements of possible ultimate Mesopotamian origin were retained or introduced,

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Figure 7.8 (left). Fragment of a bronze plaque with bearded man holding a situla. Private collection, Yemen (from Antonini de Maigret 2012, fig. 54; photo courtesy S. Antonini).

Figure 7.7. Assyrian winged genius in MṢM 4562 (© Military Museum of Ṣanʿāʾ; photo courtesy S. Antonini).

but they were more systematically adapted to the local fixed artistic expression, with pure decorative purpose. Some genies, sphinxes, demons, and other hybrid creatures are of particular interest, since they do not usually belong to the original South Arabian repertoire. The same may also concern some particular symbolic elements, like the Blitzbündel — a symbol usually found in the inscriptions by the mukarribs — or the sebitti, the five or seven circles that represent the Pleiades.28 An androcephalous winged ibex from al-Jūba, south of Maʾrib, is locally realized combining the ibex body, which is a frequent image in the South Arabian symbolic repertoire,29 with the head Cf.  fig.  7.3 above and the terracotta votive tablet from Yalā (Antonini de Maigret 2012, 36–37). The motif is usually found on some Kassite kudurru or on glyptics, but cf. also the lateral bands of the al-Ḥamrāʾ cube from Taymāʾ cited above. 28 

Incidentally, also the South Arabian ibex representation, so deeply linked with the local imagery, has possibly shown a connection with a ninth-century bc ivory vessel from Hama (Avanzini 2005; Potts 2003, 200).

29 

Figure 7.9. Bronze relief from Ma’rib (YM 13981, from Simpson 2002, 60, n. cat. 26).

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7. The ‘Mesopotamian Connection’ and the wings that are, by contrast, clearly inspired by the Assyrian winged bulls lamassu, especially in the representation of the beard and the locks (Antonini de Maigret 2012, 60; Fig. 7.6). The calcite slab MṢM 4562, although very fragmentary, shows a portion of a figure dressed in a fringed mantle and holding a bucket with his left hand. This is clearly in connection with a genuine Neo-Assyrian style and at least its model should be dated to the seventh century bc (Antonini de Maigret 2012, 53–55; Fig. 7.7). It is possible that, in this case as well, the production was local but inspired by the circulation of prototypes, which would leave the dating of most of these pieces disputable, or by the presence of foreign craftsmen, as is clearly documented for the Hellenistic period (Avanzini 2012). At the same time, possible later adaptation from a more ancient model could also be assumed. Some examples of blessing guardians, whose composition and attributes are very close to the Assyrian winged genius (Fig. 7.8),30 have also been found incorporated in the local epi­graphic production as figurative ornaments. The best examples are in the lateral framed decoration to the text Maʿīn 100 and BL-Nashq (see above and Fig. 7.4), where figures bearing a situla and a vegetal aspergillum are repeatedly represented; usually, these frames are occupied by seated ibexes, in frontal or lateral view, in line with the genuine South Arabian figurative tradition. Incidentally, both pieces exemplify how older figurative motifs borrowed from a Neo-Assyrian model may have survived in inscriptions of apparently later production according to their palaeo­graphy (cf. above for the uncertainties regarding BL-Nashq). The persistence of these foreign models is also suggested by the bronze relief YM 13981 from Maʾrib (Fig.  7.9), showing a series of warriors parading with bows and cut hands of their enemies as a trophy; on the same picture are two winged bulls opposing a tree of life: the winged bull appears in Mesopotamian architecture since the ninth century bc, a tradition that is also revived during the Achaemenid period, and this South Arabian piece shows closer similarity to the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid productions, which suggests a fifth-century The Assyrian winged figures may also display the bucket and cone motif, and are usually considered among the Akkadian apkallu ‘wise man’, with several icono­graphic variants. It is interesting to note that, according to RES 3945/16, the city of Nashshān, in the Jawf valley, had a category of priests or diviners named ʾfkl, which is clearly a lexical borrowing from the Sumero-Akkadian apkallu (Beeston 1994, 40). However, the term was also present in Hasaean and in North Arabia as ‘priest’ and again, this may explain the infiltration of this particular Mesopotamian lexical and figurative trait into this region of South Arabia. 30 

date according to Gerlach (2000). The unusual narrative intention of the panel, however, represents a unique exception in this period, also recalling some scenes from the Banāt ʿAd decor. This local composition is remarkable for the original utilization of some figurative and symbolic elements of Mesopotamian ascendance, which already experienced wide Near Eastern diffusion. However, the process that led to this figurative integration was not emulative in South Arabia: some motifs of possible external derivation were in fact effectively blended with an autochthonous tradition and combined with the local style, resulting in an original product whose previous constituents are otherwise still discernible. The transmission of such external symbolism resulted in a general reorganization of themes, where a complex narrative scheme seems to be avoided in general, in line with the native inclination.

Conclusions The scope of this parallel review of the written and figurative sources was to briefly assess some cultural motifs of possible Mesopotamian inspiration in the documentation pertaining to South Arabia in the first millennium bc. In the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, South Arabia may have been exposed to occasional contacts with Mesopotamia, as they are historically documented in the background scenario of the growing interregional contacts promoted by trade relations. Some of the cultural influences that could point to a Mesopotamian origin may have however filtrated indirectly to South Arabia, also through different trajectories, as the closer bonds with peoples spanning from the north of the peninsula to the Levant could possibly better explain this dissemination. Since the Persian period, the wider ramifications of trade routes and the intensification of trading contacts with the eastern regions of the peninsula may have stimulated even more direct contact with the gulf and then Lower Mesopotamia. More generally, the evolution of the South Arabian cultural dimension was more the result of an internal process, in which several external sources of inspiration can be also detected in different moments, from the Levant, to Mesopotamia, via the northern and eastern Arabian Peninsula. These occasional traces were finally combined in a genuinely autonomous language, with a conservative trait that can sometimes be erroneously considered impenetrable to external influences, whilst it leaves occasional room for some persisting motifs of foreign provenance.

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Appendix A: Cited Neo-Assyrian texts relating to South Arabia (Sabaʾ) Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur IM 95917: iv 26b’–30’; iv 35’–36’ 1

I, Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur, governor of the land of Sūkhu and of the land of Mari: with regard to the people of Tema and Šaba [LÚ

šá-ba-ʾa-a-a], whose own country is far away, (whose) messenger(s) had never come to me, and (who) had never travelled to

(meet) me, their caravan came near to the water of the well Martu and the well Ḫalatu, but passed by and then entered into the city Ḫindānu … … I captured one hundred of them alive. I captured their two hundred camels, together with their loads — bluepurple wool, … wool, iron, pappardilū-stones, every kind of merchandise. (Frame 1995, 300) Tiglath-Pileser III III R 10, 2: 27–33

2

The people of the cities Masʾa (and) Tema, the (tribe) Saba [LÚ sa-ba-ʾa-a-a], the people of the cities [Ḫayappa, Badanu], (and) Ḫatte, (and) the (tribes) Idibaʾilu […], who are on the border of the western lands, [whom none (of my predecessors) had known about, and whose country is remo]te, [heard about] the fame of my majesty and [my heroic deeds, and (thus) they beseeched] my lordship. As one, [they brought before me] gold, silver, [camels, she-camels, (and) all types of aromatics] as their payment [and they kissed] my feet. (Tadmor & Yamada 2011, 107) Sargon II Annals, II: 11, 6–8

3

From Pirʾu, king of Egypt, Samsi, queen of the land of the Arabs, Itʾamra the Sabaean [It-[ʾ]a-am-ra KUR sa-ba-ʾa-a-a], and the kings of the seashore and the desert gold, special plants of the mountains, precious stones, ivory, seed of maple, aromatic shrubs of all kinds, horses, camels as their tribute I received. (From Fuchs 1994, 110, 320) Sargon II

4

Prunkinschrift: 27: 3,3 From Pirʾu, king of Egypt, from Samsi, the queen of the land of the Arabs, (and) from Itʾamra of the land of Saba [It-ʾa-am-a-ra KUR sa-ba-ʾa-a-a] I received as a gift gold in the form of raw ore from the mountains, horses and camels. (From Fuchs 1994, 198, 344) Sennacherib VA 8248, 48–55a

5

While laying the foundation of the akītu-house, the audience gift of Karib-il, king of the land of Saba [Ka-ri-bi-DINGIR LUGAL KUR sa-ba-aʾ] – pappardilū-stone, choice stones, (and) fine aromatics — [wa]s presented to me and from that audience gift I laid stones (and) aromatics in its foundation. Like …, I … silver, gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli, ḫulālu-stone, muššaru-stone, pappardilūstone, papparmīnu-stone, dāmātu-paste, (and) all of the finest aromatics in the foundation of that akītu-house. I sprinkled that foundation with perfumed oil (and) fine oil as (abundantly as) river water. (Grayson & Novotny 2014, 246–49) Sennacherib

6

BM 89910 [Palace of Sennac]herib, king of Assyria: [(This is) the audience gift that] Karib-il, [king of the land Saba] [ka-ri-bi-DINGIR [MAN KUR sa-ba-aʾ]], presented to me. [Whoever] places (it) [in] the service of god [(or another) person (or) eras]es my inscribed name, [may] the deities Aššur, […], Sīn, (and) Šamaš make [his name (and) his seed] disappear. (Grayson & Novotny 2014, 146) Sennacherib

7

BM 99170, 3 When I sent to you, w[hy] did he bring […] but [you withhel]d from him the two cam[els] (and) all the […] that the Sabaʾu [LÚ sa-

ba-aʾ] [had brought] as [tribute]? (Dietrich 2003, 7 n. 4)

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Appendix B: Cited South Arabian texts relating to Mesopotamia BL-Nashq late sixth or early fourth century bc | out of context (probably al-Bayḍāʾ) — Sabaic Yadaʿʾil Bayan son of Yiṯaʿʾamar King of Sabaʾ ll. 13–21: … (w)-yw(m) rkl w-mṣr ʿd Dd(n)+ [w-Ġz]t w-ʾhgr Yhd w-ywm s¹lm w-wfy ḏ-ys¹r bn Ġzt ʿd Kty b-ḍr Ks²dm w-Ywn w-ywm hwṣt-hw

1

w-ltʾk-hw Ydʿʾl Byn bn Yṯʿʾmr mlk S¹bʾ ʿd ʾrḍ Ḏkrm (w)-Lḥyn w-ʾbʾs¹ w-Ḥnk ʾlhn ʾrbʿ ʿs²r-hw ʾrglm w-hwfy kl ḏt …

… and when he traded and led a caravan to Dedan and Ġazat and the towns of Judah; and when he was safe and sound, he who was sent from Ġazat to Kition, during the war between Chaldea and Ionia; and when Yadaʿʾil Bayan son of Yiṯaʿʾamar King of Sabaʾ appointed him and sent him as a messenger to the land of Ḏkrm and Liḥyān and ʾbʾs¹ and Ḥnk in those fourteen expeditions (?) and he accomplished all that … RES 3022 late fifth century bc | Barāqish — Minaic | ʾAbyadaʿ Yaṯaʿ King of Maʿīn

2

ll. 1, 2–3: … w-rtkl b-(ʿ)mh-s¹mn Mṣr w-ʾʾs²r w-ʿbr Nhrn … ywm mtʿ-s¹m w-ʾqny-s¹m ʿṯtr ḏ-Qbḍm w-Wdm w-Nkrḥm w-ʾmr-s¹m bn ʾḍbʾ ḍbʾs¹m w-ʾqny-s¹m w-bʿr-s¹m S¹bʾ w-Ḫwln b-ms¹bʾ byn Mʿn w-Rgmtm w-bn ḍr kwn byn ḏ-ymnt w-ḏ-s²ʾmt w-ywm mtʿ-s¹m w-ʾqny-s¹m ʿṯtr ḏ-Qbḍm w-Wdm w-Nkrḥm bn ws¹ṭ Mṣr b-mrd kwn byn Mḏy w-Mṣr …

… (those) who traded, together with them, in Egypt, Assyria, Transeuphratene … when ʿAṯtar ḏu-Qabḍ, Wadd and Nakraḥ and their authority saved them and their goods from the hostilities which Sabaʾ and Ḫawlān brought against them and their goods and their camels, on the route between Maʿīn and Ragmat, and from the war which occurred between the one of the South and the one of the North, and when ʿAṯtar ḏu-Qabḍ, Wadd and Nakraḥ saved them and their goods in the middle of Egypt, during the conflict which occurred between Persians and Egypt … RES 2771

3

fourth century bc | Maʿīn — Minaic | ʾIlyafaʿ Riyam and Hawfʿaṯat Kings of Maʿīn ll. 3–4: … ywm rt(kl )(Mṣr) (w)-Ġzt w-ʾʾs²r w-(s¹)lm b-ʾmr ʿṯtr ḏ-Qbḍ w-Wd …

… when he traded with Egypt, Ġazat and Assyria and he gained security by the command of ʿAṯtar ḏu-Qabḍ and of Wadd … RES 2930 4

c. third–second centuries bc | Barāqish — Minaic | Sovereign unknown [… Mṣ]r w-ʾʾs²r w-ʿ[br Nhrn ….…]r w-ʾkrb kt[rb … … ʿṯt]r ḏ-Yhrq w-b[…] […] in Egypt, in Assyria and in Trans[euphratene…] the obligations he incurred […] ʿAṯtar ḏu-Yahriq, with […] Maraqten-Qatabanic 1 first century bc | Hajar al-ʿĀdī — Qatabanic | Sovereign unknown ll. 7–14: … ywm ʿlw w-s¹wfy (Ḥwkm) w-ʾlhw bytn S²bʿn Ṯwbʾl w-ʿmḏkr bn ʾrḍtw w-ʾhgr s²ʾmt w-Nbṭm w-Ks²d w-Mṣr w-Ywnm w-ywm ʿlw

5

w-s¹wfy Ḥwkm w-ʾlhw bytn S²bʿn Ṯwbʾl bn hgrn Rqmm s¹bʾtm s¹bʾb-qdmw ḏtn s¹bʾtn b-ybs¹n w-bḥrn …

… when Ḥawkam and the gods of the temple Šabʿan raised and saved Ṯawbʾil e ʿAmmḏakir from the lands and the towns of the North: Nabataea, Chaldea, Egypt, and Ionia; and when Ḥawkam and the gods of the temple Šabʿan raised and saved Ṯawbʾil from the town of Rqmm (Petra), during the expedition he did before this expedition, by land and by sea … Riyāḍ 302F8 first century bc | Qaryat al-Fāw — Minaic | Sovereign unknown

6

ll.1–10: [… b]ny Wdʿt ḏ-Mrn ʾdm Wdm S²hrn s³lʾ w-s¹qny ʿṯtr ḏ-Qbḍ w-Wd S²hrn w-Nkrḥ s²ymn w-ʿṯtr ḏ-Yhrq w-ʿṯtr bʿl Ḥdṯ w-kl ʾlʾlt Mʿn s¹qnyt ḏhbn b-gntn b-Qryt Ṭlw b-hdyht w-ʾkrb ʾḫḏ ʾḥly-s¹m ns²ʾh k-Nhr ʿd S¹lky w-gbʾh ʿd Qryt w-Qrnw …

[… s]ons of Wadiʿat ḏu-Marrān, servants of Waddum Šahrān, dedicated and offered to ʿAṯtar ḏu-Qabḍ, Wadd Šahrān, Nakraḥ the Patron, ʿAthtar dhu-Yahriq and ʿAthtar master of Ḥadaṯ and all the deities of Maʿīn the bronze offering in the Oasis at Qaryat Ṭalaw, with the gifts and the taxes taken from their wares, which they carried away from (the Land) Nahar (?) to Seleucia and brought back to Qaryat and Qarnaw …

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Cole, Steven W. 1996a Nippur, iv: The Early Neo-Babylonian Governor’s Archive from Nippur. Oriental Institute, Chicago. 1996b Nippur in Late Assyrian Times c. 755–612 BC (State Archives of Assyria, Studies 4). Helsinki University Press, Helsinki. De Maigret, Alessandro & Robin, Christian Julien 2009 ‘Le royaume sudarabique de Maʿīn. Nouvelles données grace aux fouilles italiennes de Barāqish (l’antique Yathill)’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres 153: 57–96. Dietrich, Manfried 2003 The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib (State Archives of Assyria 17). Helsinki University Press, Helsinki. Edens, Christopher & Bawden, Garth 1989 ‘History of Taymāʾ and Hejazi Trade during the First Millennium  b.c.’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 32: 48–103. Edens, Christopher & Wilkinson, Tony J. 1998 ‘South-West Arabia during the Holocene: Recent Archaeo­logical Developments’, Journal of World Prehistory 12: 55–119. Ephʿal, Israel 1982 The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent 9th–5th Centuries b.c. Magnes, Jerusalem. Fales, Frederick Mario 2020 ‘Les premiers témoignages historiques sur les Arabes dans les empires assyrien et babylonien’, in L’Islam dans l’Antiquité Tardive: colloque international Académie du Royaume du Maroc 17 - 18 janvier 2019. Académie du Royaume du Maroc, Rabat: 25–42. Frahm, Eckart 1999 ‘Perlen von den Rändern der Welt’, in Karel van Lerberghe & Gabriella Voet (eds), Languages and Cultures in Contact: Proceedings of the 42nd Rencontre Assyrio­logique Internationale (Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 96). Peeters, Leuven: 79–99. Frame, Grant 1995 Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157–612 bc); Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia; Babylonian Periods. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Fuchs, Andreas 1994 Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad. Cuvillier, Göttingen. Galter, Hannes D. 1993 ‘… an der Grenze der Länder im Westen’. Sabaʾ in den assyrischen Konigsinschriften’, in Andre Gingrich, Sylvia Haas & Gabriele Paleczek (eds), Studies in Oriental Culture and History: Festschrift für Walter Dostal. Lang, Frankfurt: 29–40. Gerlach, Iris 2000 ‘Zur Übernahme altorientalischer Motive in die Kunst Südarabiens. Eine reliefierte Bronzeplatte aus dem Jemen’, Baghdader Mitteilungen 31: 259–95. Gnoli, Gherardo 1996 ‘Il sincronismo mineo-persiano’, in Christian Julien Robin & Iwona Gajda (eds), Arabia antiqua: Early Origins of South Arabian States. Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome: 23–34.

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Golinets, Viktor 2018 Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit, ii: Verbalmorpho­logie des Amurritischen und Glossar der Verbalwurzeln (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 271.2). Verlag, Münster. Graf, David F. 2015 ‘The Arabs in Palestine from the Neo-Assyrian to the Persian Periods’, ARAM 27: 283–99. Grayson, A. Kirk & Novotny, Jamie 2014 The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681  bc), ii: The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Gruntfest, Yaakov 1999 ‘The Consecutive Imperfect in Semitic Epi­graphy’, in Yitzhak Avishur & Robert Deutsch (eds), Michael: Historical, Epi­graphical and Biblical Studies in Honor of Prof. Michael Heltzer. Archaeo­logical Center, Tel Aviv: 171–80. Guzzo Amadasi, Maria Giulia 1987 ‘Influence directe de la Mésopotamie sur les inscriptions en phénicien’, in Hans-Jörg Nissen & Johannes Renger (eds), Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jt. v. Chr. Reimer, Berlin: 383–94. Haring, Ben 2015 ‘Halaḥam on an Ostracon of the Early New Kingdom?’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74: 189–96. Hatke, George 2015 ‘For ʾĪlmuquh and for Sabaʾ: The Res Gestae of Karibʾīl Watar bin Dhamarʿalī from Ṣirwāḥ in Context’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 105: 87–133. Hausleiter, Arnulf & Eichmann, Ricardo 2018 ‘The Archaeo­logical Exploration of the Oasis of Taymā’, in Arnulf Hausleiter, Ricardo Eichmann & Mohammad al-Najem (eds), Taymāʾ, i: Archaeo­logical Exploration, Palaeoenvironment, Cultural Contacts. Archaeopress, Oxford: 2–58. Hoyland, Robert G. 2001 Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. Routledge, London. Krebernik, Manfred 2008 ‘Von Gindibu bis Muḥammad: Stand, Probleme und Aufgaben altorientalistisch-arabistischer Philo­logie’, in Otto Jastrow, Shabo Talay & Herta Hafenrichter (eds), Studien zur Semitistik und Arabistik: Festschrift für Hartmut Bobzin zum 60. Geburtstag. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 247–79. Liverani, Mario 1992 ‘Early Caravan Trade between South Arabia and Mesopotamia’, in Marilia Poli (ed.), Yemen: Studi archeo­logici, storici e filo­logici sull’Arabia meridionale, i. Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome: 111–15. 2017 Assyria: The Imperial Mission. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Macdonald, Michael C. A. 2000 ‘Reflections on the Linguistic Map of pre-Islamic Arabia’, Arabian Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphy 11: 28–79. Maraqten, Mohammed 2014 ‘Ḥawla al-ʿalāqāt mā bayna bilād al-Shām wa-l-Yaman al-Qadīm’, in Zeidan Kafafi & Mohammed Maraqten (eds), A Pioneer of Arabia: Studies in the Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphic of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula in Honour of Moawiyah Ibrahim (Rome ‘La Sapienza’ Studies on the Archaeo­logy of Palestine and Transjordan 10). Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome: 97–114.

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Matthiae, Paolo 1996 L’arte degli Assiri. Laterza, Bari. Monroe, Lauren A. S. 2007 ‘Israelite, Moabite and Sabaean War-ḥērem Traditions and the Forging of National Identity: Reconsidering the Sabaean Text RES 3945 in Light of Biblical and Moabite Evidence’, Vetus Testamentum 57: 318–41. Mouton, Michel & Schiettecatte, Jérémie 2014 In the Desert Margins: The Settlement Process in Ancient South and East Arabia (Arabia antica 9). L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome. Multhoff, Anne 2019 ‘Merchant and Marauder – The Adventures of a Sabaean Clansman’, Arabian Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphy 30: 239–62. Nebes, Norbert 2001 ‘Zur Genese der altsüdarabischen Kultur. Eine Arbeitshypothese’, in Ricardo Eichmann & Hermann Parzinger (eds), Migration und Kulturtransfer: Der Wandel vorder- und zentralasiatischer Kulturen im Umbruch vom 2. zum 1. vorchristichen Jahrtausend. Habelt, Bonn: 427–35. 2009 ‘Die Nabatäer in Südarabien, Eine datierte nabatäisch-sabäische Inschrift (Bilingue) aus Ṣirwāḥ/Jemen’, Antike Welt 40: 52–53. 2016 Der Tatenbericht des Yiṯaʿʾamar Watar bin Yakrubmalik aus Ṣirwāḥ (Jemen): Zur Geschichte Südarabiens im frühen 1. Jahrtausend vor Christus (Epi­graphische Forschungen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel 7). Wasmuth, Tübingen. Potts, Daniel T. 1988 ‘Trans-Arabian Routes of the Pre-Islamic Period’, in Jean François Salles (ed.), L’Arabie: ses mers bordières, i: Itineraires et voisinages: séminaire de recherche 1985–1986 (Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient 16). Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, Lyon: 127–62. 1991 ‘Tayma and the Assyrian Empire’, Arabian Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphy 2: 10–23. 2003 ‘The Mukarrib and his Beads: Karibʾil Watar’s Assyrian Diplomacy in the Early 7th Century  b.c’, Isimu 6: 197–206. Reade, Julian 1979 ‘Ideo­logy and Propaganda in Assyrian Art’, in Mogens Trolle Larsen (ed.), Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (Mesopotamia 7). Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen: 329–44. Robin, Christian Julien 1996 ‘Sheba. II. Dans les inscriptions d’Arabie du Sud’, in Jacques Briend and Édouard Cothenet (eds), Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible, xii/70. Letouzey & Ané, Paris: 1047–1254. 2008 ‘La lecture et l’interprétation de l’abécédaire Raʾs Shamra 88.2215. La preuve pour l’Arabie?’, in Carole Roche (ed.), D’Ougarit à Jérusalem: recueil d’études épi­graphiques et archéo­logiques offert à Pierre Bordreuil (Orient & Méditerranée 2). De Boccard, Paris: 233–44. 2016 ‘Gerrha d’Arabie, cité séleucide’, in Frédérique Duyrat, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, Jean-Marie Dentzer & Olivier Picard (eds), Henri Seyrig (1895–1973): actes du colloque Henri Seyrig (1895–1973) tenu les 10 et 11 octobre 2013 à la Bibliothèque nationale de France et à l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Paris (Syria Supplément 3). Presses de l’Ifpo, Paris: 223–50. Robin, Christian J. & Prioletta, Alessia 2013 ‘Nouveaux arguments en faveur d’une identification de la cité de Gerrha avec le royaume de Hagar (Arabie orientale)’, Semitica et classica 6: 131–85.

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Ryckmans, Jacques 1974 ‘Formal inertia in the South-Arabian Inscriptions (Maʿīn and Sabaʾ)’, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 7: 131–39. Sass, Benjamin 1991 Studia alphabetica: On the Origin and Early History of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek Alphabets (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 102). Universitätsverlag, Freiburg. 2007 ‘From Maraš and Zincirli to es-Sawdāʾ: The Syro-Hittite Roots of the South Arabian Table Scene’, in Susanne Bickel, Silvia Schroer, René Schurte & Christhoph Uehlinger (eds), Bilder als Quellen = Images as Sources: Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Artefacts and the Bible Inspired by the Work of Othmar Keel (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, Sonderband). Academic Press, Fribourg: 293–319. Schiettecatte, Jérémie & Arbach, Mounir 2016 ‘The Political Map of Arabia and the Middle East in the Third Century ad Revealed by a Sabaean Inscription’, Arabian Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphy 27: 176–96. Simpson, St John (ed.) 2002 Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen. The British Museum Press, London. Sørensen, Søren L. & Geus, Klaus 2019 ‘A Sabaean Eyewitness to the War of Euagoras against the Persians’, Zeitschrift für Papyro­logie und Epi­graphik 209: 196–204. Sperveslage, Gunnar 2018. ‘Ägypten und Arabien’, in Arnulf Hausleiter, Ricardo Eichmann & Mohammad al-Najem (eds), Taymāʾ, i: Archaeo­logical Exploration, Palaeoenvironment, Cultural Contacts. Archaeopress, Oxford: 200–45. Stein, Peter 2017a ‘Sabäer in Juda, Juden in Saba. Sprach‐ und Kulturkontakt zwischen Südarabien und Palästina in der Antike’, in Ulrich Hübner & Herbert Niehr (eds), Sprachen in Palästina im 2. und 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr.: Kolloquium des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas, 02.–04. 11. 2012 Mainz (Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästina‐ Vereins 43). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 91–120. 2017b ‘South Arabian zabūr Script in the Gulf: Some Recent Discoveries from Mleiha (Sharjah, UAE)’, Arabian Archaeo­logy and Epi­graphy 28: 110–23. 2019 ‘Languages and Scripts in the Arabian Gulf in the Hellenistic Period: The Epi­graphic Evidence from Mleiha (Sharjah, U.A.E.)’, in George Hatke & Ronald Ruzicka (eds), Ancient South Arabia through History: Kingdoms, Tribes, and Traders. Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle: 118–42. Tadmor, Hayim & Yamada, Shigeo 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). Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Zadok, Ran 1981 ‘Arabians in Mesopotamia during the Late Assyrian, Chaldean, Achaemenian and Hellenistic Periods Chiefly according to Cuneiform Sources’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131: 42–84. 2013 ‘The Onomastics of the Chaldean, Aramean, and Arabian Tribes in Babylonia during the First Millennium’, in Angelika Berlejung & Michael P. Streck (eds), Arameans, Chaldeans, and Arabs in Babylonia and Palestine in the First Millennium b.c. (Leipziger Altorientalistische Studien). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 261–336.

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from the Results of New Field Research in Fars (Southern Iran) Pierfrancesco Callieri

University of Bo­logna

A bstract –

The new geophysical and archaeo­ logical investigations carried out in the Persepolis and Pasargadae areas of Fars (southern Iran) are throwing new light on what appears to be a ‘Persian conception of urbanism’. In the site of Pasargadae, until now known only for its Achaemenid monumental remains, the new information concerns the possible location of an inhabited settlement near the official buildings, but also the reconstruction of a new general layout of the whole site. In the area of Persepolis, identified until recently only with the Achaemenid citadel on the world-famous Terrace, the new geophysical and archaeo­logical works concentrate on the study of the topo­g raphic and environmental context of the Terrace and the location in the adjacent plain of the everyday city of Parsa mentioned by written sources. The geophysical surveys, supported by archaeo­ logical excavations in the sectors of Persepolis West and Firuzi, have revealed a very heterogeneous urban layout, alternating built spaces with wide green areas, suggesting a ‘Persian conception of urbanism’ very different from the Babylonian one. At the same time, the excavations in the area of Firuzi have brought to light evidence of monumental buildings in the plain prior to the construction of the Terrace by Darius  I, among which the Gate of Tol-e Ajori shows a strong Babylonian orientation.

Until a few decades ago, our knowledge of the cities of the Iranian plateau during the period in which Persian kings dominated the largest part of the known ancient world was almost non-existent. The only settlement of unmistakably urban character of this period1 located in present-day Iran is Dahane-ye Gholaman in Sistan, where the IsMEO Italian Archaeo­logical Mission’s discoveries of the 1960s2 were confirmed by further Iranian archaeo­logical3 and geophysical4 investigations. Urban settlement had also been investigated in Susa, in lowland Elam; in this huge archaeo­logical site, R. Ghirshman had thought he had brought to light a limited area of a sparse settlement in the tell known as ‘ville des artisans’ which he dated to that period, therefore called by him ‘village perso-achéménide’.5 However, subsequent studies by P. de Miroschedji demonstrated that in the cultural sequence of this site, most of the Achaemenid-period duration was absent, and that the site had been occupied only in the early Achaemenid years and then in the fourth century bc. At the same time, the monumental constructions of In order to avoid a lengthy discussion of a historical nature which would take us away from our main scope, bearing in mind the distinction between the Teispid and the Achaemenid lineages acknowledged on solid ground by W. Henkelman (2011, 579; cf. Zournatzi 2011, 2), and simplifying D. Stronach’s definition (1997) I will use the term ‘Achaemenid period’ for the period including Darius I and his first successors, preceded by an ‘Early Achaemenid period’ including the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses and followed by a ‘Late Achaemenid period’ starting with Artaxerxes II. 1 

2 

* I thank Dr S. Gondet (CNRS, Lyon) for an updated illustration of the Iranian-French activities in Pasargadae as well as for having discussed this paper with me.

3  4  5 

Scerrato 1966; Genito 2014. Sajjadi 2007.

Mohammadkhani 2012. Ghirshman 1954.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 123–138 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127141

124 Darius  I, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes  II belong to official architecture only, to the extent that the absence of an urban settlement at this town during the Achaemenid period had been noted.6 In Fars, the cradle of the Persian dynasty, the two royal centres of Pasargadae and Persepolis, despite often being defined as ‘towns’ were known only for the architectural remains of official and ceremonial character. In fact, the archaeo­logy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was looking at monumental evidence of royal art and architecture and was very little concerned with the modest remains from inhabited settlements. Even though the sources mentioning proper towns were known, we must reach the mid-1980s in order to have a dedicated debate on this topic. In 1986, W. M. Sumner published his seminal article ‘Achaemenid Occupation in the Persepolis Plain’,7 based on his surface surveys carried out before the substantial changes in the ancient landscape which followed the project of intensive agricultural exploitation of the Marvdasht plain linked to the construction of the Dorudzan dam in 1974.8 The evidence for inhabited settlement was indeed so scanty to have suggested to some scholars that the Persians during the Achaemenid time could have known only the same nomadic or semi-nomadic settlement pattern which had been postulated for prehistoric times.9 Scholars were posing the question whether an Achaemenid town had ever existed:10 the geo­graphic environment was considered the reason for this situation.11 A comprehensive discussion based on facts and not only on personal hypotheses has only been possible with the availability of the results of new geophysical and archaeo­logical investigations carried out in the Persepolis and Pasargadae areas, which, since 1999, started throwing new light on what appears to be a ‘Persian conception of urbanism’. A short introduction on the history of research on this subject is therefore necessary. Until 1999 the site of Pasargadae was known only for its monumental remains, mainly having an official function and attributed largely to Cyrus the Great.12 6  7  8  9 

Perrot 1981, pl. 36; 1985, 68, fig. 1; Boucharlat 1990; 1997; 2001; 2005. Sumner 1986.

Cf. Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 255. Hansman 1972, 110; Alizadeh 2003; Potts 2014.

10  11 

Briant 1996, 9; Briant & Boucharlat 2005. Shahbazi 2012, 123; Gondet 2018, 2.

After the first studies and excavations by E.  Herzfeld in the 1920s, followed up by the activities of A. Sami in the 1940s and

12 

Pierfrancesco Callieri The topo­graphical context of these monuments was also known only through surface studies. The application of geophysical methodo­logies to the study of the topo­graphy of the site, mainly due to the efforts of R. Boucharlat, not only modified its general plan but also located what has been interpreted as a possible inhabited settlement. These geophysical surveys were carried out with different methods by Iranian and French scholars from 1999 to 2005, and in 2015 started anew. The most relevant result of these activities in the study of Achaemenid architecture is that they modified our understanding of the topo­graphic context of the zone of the three official buildings (Gate R, Palace S, and Palace P) and the two smaller ‘pavilions’ inserted in a garden, corresponding to the Persian ‘paradise’. It was a whole ensemble planned according to an approach in which the buildings were fully integrated in a natural and artificial context where water plays an important role through a large basin in the south-east part of the garden and through a refined network of water canals built in stone slabs. A  discussion on the function of this complex shows that it had simultaneously an official and a symbolic function.13 It is noteworthy that the recent Iranian-French geophysical investigations have shown that the garden surrounding these official buildings reached up to the still extant Tomb of Cyrus II, so that the area of this ‘royal park’ extended over 100 ha.14 Similarly, geophysical prospections gave evidence that the tower-like building known as Zendan-e Solayman15 was originally not isolated but inserted in a wide architectural complex.16 As regards urbanism and the question of the existence of an inhabited settlement at Pasargadae, the geophysical investigations located an area characterized by anomalies showing a regular grid and dense pattern on the slopes surrounding a flat depression to the north of the Tol-e Takht as well as on 1950s, a British team guided by D. Stronach carried out excavations here from 1961 to 1963: see Stronach 1978, with biblio­graphy.

The sparse evidence for administrative function at Pasargadae, recognizable by some Persepolis tablets (Henkelman 2008 on the šīp fest and the partetaš nature of Pasargadae) and archaeo­logical evidence (Tang-e Bolaghi settlement network and hydraulic features around the plain that could show management from Pasargadae) should be located in other areas of the site. 13 

14 

Boucharlat 2016, 71.

On the interpretation of this and of the similar monument at Naqsh-e Rostam, called Ka‘be-ye Zardosht, see Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1983. 15 

Boucharlat 2003b. Since 2017, the monument has been the object of new excavations directed by A. Mousavi and M. T. ‘Ata’i. 16 

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from New Field Research in Fars

125

Figure 8.1. Pasargadae. Comprehensive reconstruction sketch map of the layout in the light of the survey results obtained by the Iranian-French mission (after Gondet & Mohammadkhani forthcoming, courtesy the authors).

the southern slope of the latter (Fig. 8.1): even though surface ceramics show the existence of possible postAchaemenid material, a beginning of the use of the area during the Achaemenid period cannot be excluded.17 In the valley of Tang-e Bolaghi, on the southern borders of the Morghab plain in which Pasargadae lies, an interesting appendix to the study of human settlement in that area has come from the results of the resCf. Boucharlat & Bénéch 2002, 29; Boucharlat 2002, 282; Gondet & Mohammadkhani forthcoming.

cue excavations carried out between 2005 and 2006 in the Sivand Dam Rescue Archaeo­logical Project, timely organized by M. H. Talebian. Among the other evidence brought to light, the identification of rural settlements of the Achaemenid and Post-Achaemenid periods has been noteworthy, two of which were partly excavated by an Iranian-Italian team.18 The appearance of fresh information on these very modest rural settlements in a scientific context in

17 

18 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2016.

126

Pierfrancesco Callieri brings us to the other and most important of the royal settlements of Fars, Pārsa in Old Persian, Persepolis in Greek, mainly known through the monumental Terrace founded by Darius I and known in the Modern Persian tradition as Takht-e Jamshid. The Persepolis Tablets, found in large numbers in a room of the northern side of the Terrace Fortifications where the archive had been stored, but also in lesser numbers in the Treasury, provide us with the missing information on daily life for the period from 509 to 458 bc, i.e. during the rules of Darius I, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes I. Found during the excavations of the Chicago Oriental Institute at Persepolis in 1933–1934 and in 1936–1938, they began to be published in 194822 and then in 1969,23 but the informative content was barely taken into consideration by historians until Sumner used them for his tentative reconstruction of the Achaemenid settlement hierarchy in the Persepolis plain.24 A radical acceleration of the process of publication, until then slow, took place when, due to the need to return the tablets to Iran after the expiry of the decade-long loan, the Oriental Institute in 2007 set up a collaborative working team for a new Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, directed by M. Stolper.25

Figure 8.2. Aramaic inscription from Tang-e Bolaghi TB76 (from Garbini 2016, 219, fig. 128, © Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeo­logical Mission in Fars).

which the Persians of the Achaemenid age were considered characterized by a nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life, has great importance. It testifies to the adoption, in that age, of a settlement pattern of a permanent character, linked to a centralized state system of agricultural exploitation and storage,19 as indicated by the find of the fragment of a globular pot with a measure of quantity incised in Aramaic (Fig. 8.2)20 and by the possible correspondence of some of the excavated structures with a type of building mentioned in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets.21

One of the important pieces of information for the study of inhabited settlements in Achaemenid Fars deriving from the study of the tablets is the indication that most of the individuals who worked in the administration, maintenance, and construction of the Terrace of Pārsa, lived in a settlement not far from the royal citadel on the Terrace, the distance between the two locations being feasible daily on foot. Scholars do not all agree on the identification of this settlement with place names mentioned in the tablets. Sumner thinks of Matezziš,26 which the texts show to be located at a very short distance from Pārsa, while other scholars consider that the whole area, perhaps including the part of it called Matezziš, fell under the name of Pārsa.27 At any rate, what counts more than its name is the confirmation of information contained in Greek sources,28 according to which, in Persepolis, there was a town distinct from the citadel: while Alexander allowed his soldiers to plunder the town on their arrival in Persepolis, the citadel

The mention of these documents, written mainly in Elamite but also in Aramaic and other languages,

22 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2016, 134; cf. Henkelman 2013, 529.

25 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2016, 50; cf. Sumner 1986, 26–27; Henkelman 2013, 539.

27 

19  20  21 

Garbini 2016.

23  24 

26 

28 

Cameron 1948. Hallock 1969.

Sumner 1986, 17–28.

Azzoni & Stolper; Henkelman 2008, 75–179. Sumner 1986, 23.

Henkelman 2008, 118; Gondet 2011, 613; Gondet 2018, n. 20. Diodorus of Sicily, XVII, 70–71.

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from New Field Research in Fars was spared until the great fire which was started four months later for still obscure reasons.29 Thanks to the still few tablets published at that time, Sumner elaborated an interpretation of the archaeo­ logical evidence procured during the surface field work which he had carried out twenty years earlier, which linked the importance of each of the mentioned place names to the frequency with which they recurred in the texts, thus providing a settlement hierarchy covering the whole of Persia.30 In this hierarchy, below the regional capital, Sumner proposes the existence of 13 towns having an extension between 6 and 8 ha (4 of which ascertained, 9 hypothetical), 28 villages between 1 and 2 ha (7 of which ascertained), and 86 hamlets with an extension of less than 1 ha (26 of which ascertained). For the known settlements, the extension has been proposed more on the basis of the extent of tepes’ surface than on that of ceramic presence: the latter, in any case, obliges us to consider all the uncertainties regarding the relationship between surface evidence and true extension of the sites.31 At the top of this hierarchy, Sumner places the provincial capital of Persepolis (Pārsa), which would be comprised of an area of c. 25 ha densely built at the site of Persepolis West, c. 1 km to the West of the Terrace, and a larger area of c. 600 ha, centred on the present village of Firuzi, with a number of isolated tepes bearing traces of a more elaborate architecture using cut blocks of stone of Achaemenid workmanship. Persepolis West, described by Sumner as a ‘complex group of low mounds’,32 represented, according to him, the settlement for the common people: ‘Although Persepolis West is much disturbed, it appears originally to have been a single mound or dense cluster of contiguous mounds, topo­graphically comparable to ordinary Near Eastern town sites, in contrast to the more dispersed, open topo­graphy of Firuzi’.33 Firuzi would have been, by contrast, the residential area of the elites living in luxurious buildings surrounded by gardens. Taken together with Firuzi, Persepolis West would have constituted ‘a provincial city or town’,34 which had been ‘temporarily galvanized by the construction of Persepolis’.35 See Calmeyer 1990, 9. On the Persepolis fire see Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1993, Mousavi 2012, 57–70. 29 

30  31  32  33  34  35 

Sumner 1986, 22, ill. 6.

See Haselgrove et al., eds, 1985. Sumner 1986, 9. Sumner 1986, 9. Sumner 1986, 9.

Sumner 1986, 28.

127

The information gathered by Sumner in the 1960s and 1970s was increased by the information added by Giuseppe and Ann Britt Tilia, leading the IsMEO studies and restoration activities at Persepolis.36 During these activities, uninterrupted from 1964 to 1979, the two scholars were informed of important discoveries during agricultural activities in the Marvdasht plain, and carried out urgent surveys recording the available information, also acquired through limited excavations. 37 However, it was only thanks to the inclusion of geophysical prospections that the information acquired could reach a quantity sufficient for the first research on the aspects and characteristics of the ‘urban layout’ of Pārsa, which was finally confirmed as not only limited to the official citadel on the Terrace of Takht-e Jamshid. The new geophysical work opened a new phase in the history of research on Persepolis, and archaeo­logical studies could concentrate on the study of the topo­ graphic and environmental context of the Terrace and on the location in the adjacent plain of the everyday city of Pārsa mentioned by the written sources. It has been thanks to the efforts of the ParsaPasargad Research Foundation38 that this new perspective has opened up, initially with the institutional aim of bringing new reliable evidence for enforcing the obligations in the buffer-zone around Takht-e Jamshid but soon becoming a source of new scientific information. Thus geophysical surveys were carried out with different methods, including magnetic, electric, and georadar prospection, by an Iranian and an Iranian-French team from 2003 to 2008, and resumed within an IranianItalian Project from 2009 to 2010 and then from 2012 to 2014. The scientific importance of these investigations was clear from the beginning, helping to provide a possible solution to the many questions remaining unanswered, from the position of the Persepolis lines of fortifications as described by Diodorus of Sicily (xvii. 71. 3; hypothesis concerning their location in Mousavi 1992) to the location of the everyday town of Pārsa, mentioned by the same writer (xvii. 70. 1) as well as by the Elamite Fortifications Tablets administrative documents.39 These activities were started thanks to the far-sightedness of Giuseppe Tucci and were guided by the experience of Guglielmo De Angelis d’Ossat, Domenico Faccenna, and Giuseppe Zander: see Zander 1968. Sumner 1986 takes into account the results published by Tilia in 1972 and 1978. 36 

37  38  39 

Tilia 1972, 1978.

Directed at the time by Mohammad Hassan Talebian. See lastly Henkelman 2012.

128 Of the two parts of the town hypothesized by Sumner, Persepolis West has its eastern limit about 500 m from the foot of Takht-e Jamshid and extends for about 1 km in a westward direction, corresponding to what Boucharlat et al. have more precisely called ‘Persepolis Northwest area’.40 It is likely that this was the site E. Herzfeld referred to when he wrote: À l’Ouest de la terrasse, vers la plaine, l’étendue de la ville peut être déterminée par la nature du sol, qui se distingue visiblement de celle de la plaine: la couleur de la terre des décombres diffère de celle de la terre végétale naturelle, et toutes les deux produisent des végétations différentes. En outre, le sol jadis occupé par des édifices est parfaitement parsemé de petits éclats de matériaux de construction et de poteries.41

The Iranian-Italian joint excavations carried out at Persepolis West in 2008 and 2009 and in some areas of Firuzi from 2011 to date, have produced evidence which largely confirms this. They make the point in their picture based on the geophysical surveys, although to some extent showing the constraints of this method in the areas where the soil movement linked to field levelling for agricultural purposes has also shifted materials. The abundant material from the upper layers in those areas includes materials of Islamic date as well and could have its origin in the levelling of settlements of various age, eventually completely destroyed.42 In the area between Takht-e Jamshid and Persepolis West, geophysics located a regular grid of long linear magnetic anomalies which was interpreted as a network of ditches or canals.43 This interpretation was confirmed by the excavations which exposed a stretch of a ditch dug in the soil, 0.75–0.80 m wide, running from southwest to north-east, exactly in correspondence with one of the long anomalies discovered by geomagnetic surveys. The radiocarbon dating of one bone sample from the lowest of the deposits filling the ditch has given a time range of c. 500–400 bc, which allows us to interpret the ditch as an ancient feature going back to the Achaemenid-period occupation of the plain.44 40  41 

Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 260. Herzfeld 1929–1930, 32.

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2017, 288; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 261.

42 

Gondet et al. 2009; Gondet 2011, 251–57; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 263; Boucharlat 2016, 73. 43 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2012, 236–37; Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2017, 287. 44 

Pierfrancesco Callieri This area would thus correspond to a garden. One relevant architectural structure exposed here, which we have proposed to interpret as the enclosure wall of the garden, is a stretch of an imposing wall running from north-west to south-east, and apparently corresponding to an anomaly visible in the grid outlined by geophysical surveys for a length of more than 200 m. The wall, c. 1.80 m thick, is built with a foundation of large stones and a superstructure of very compact pressed soil (chineh). The fact that this structure is built in chineh and that its line can be seen in the geomagnetic survey for a long stretch, suggests that it possibly represented an enclosure wall. This structure is built on top of an earlier wall in mud brick measuring 33 × 33 × 8.5 cm, laid with a 16 cm horizontal shift between the two courses, a masonry typical of the Achaemenid period. As for the dating of the wall in chineh, the close strati­graphic connection with the preceding phase and the long duration of its life suggest a dating to the Achaemenid period. The phases which follow represent successive episodes of accumulation and collapse layers: the radiocarbon age of samples collected from two successive phases of collapse indicate a calibrated age between the second half of the sixth century bc and the third century bc.45

Further to the west, in the area where Sumner had situated the mounds of Persepolis West, geophysics located an area of strong magnetism interpreted as an indicator of kilns and other craft activities and the levelled remains of a settlement with mud-brick structures and its artefacts.46 In fact, excavation in this zone found an area of dumps spanning from the Achaemenid through the Post-Achaemenid periods and a kiln of a peculiar type, likely to have been used for producing a special plastering material used on the buildings of Takht-e Jamshid.47 This is the only evidence of a builtup settlement brought to light by the two excavation seasons at Persepolis West. This craft area lies at about 1–1.5 km to the west of Takht-e Jamshid, and judging from the recorded evidence, the settlement of Persepolis West should be located from here westwards. From the craft area eastwards, there were other built areas mainly known through geophysical surveys, up to a belt of gardens around the Terrace which was probably compenAskari Chaverdi & Callieri 2012, 230–31; Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2017, 287. 45 

Gondet 2011, 233–38; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 260, 262. 46 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2012, 232–33, 240; Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2017, 287. 47 

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from New Field Research in Fars

129

Figure 8.3. Persepolis West. Comprehensive reconstruction sketch map of the Achaemenid/post-Achaemenid layout to the west of Takht-e Jamshid in the light of the magnetic survey results obtained by the Iranian-French and the Iranian-Italian mission (2008–2013) (from Gondet and Mohammadkhani 2017, fig. 20, courtesy the authors).

sating for the absence of vegetation on the Terrace, largely built on the rock bed of the Kuh-e Rahmat. This feature matches with the tentative reconstruction proposed by S. Gondet for the town of Persepolis, which alternated densely built-up areas with large green zones hosting the aristocratic or royal settlements within gardens.48 What is particularly interest-

ing is the fact that the terrain organization in the area from Takht-e Jamshid until the westernmost limits of Persepolis West is governed by the main axes of the former, thus showing that the planning of this part of the settlement was contemporary to Takht-e Jamshid (Fig. 8.3).49 Gondet 2011, 256–57; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 263, fig. 12. 49 

48 

Gondet 2011, 614–16; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 263.

130

Pierfrancesco Callieri

Figure 8.4. Tol-e Ajori. A stretch of the wall of the inner room with decoration of glazed bricks found in situ (photo © Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeo­logical Mission in Fars).

Figure 8.5. Bagh-e Firuzi East. Plan showing, from east to west: Firuzi 5, Sang-e Surakh, Tol-e Ajori (drawing by S. S. Tilia, © Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeo­logical Mission in Fars).

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from New Field Research in Fars The second area where Sumner placed the town of Matezziš/Pārsa is named Firuzi after the village extending at its middle. Here both Sumner and Tilia/the Tilias recorded a number of isolated buildings scattered over an area of c. 600 ha., which to the north touches the monumental complex of Dasht-e Gohar and the royal necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam. As better specified by S. Gondet, this area is in fact composed of two very different sectors, Firuzi South and Bagh-e Firuzi.50 In the former, the sites belonging to what Gondet calls Firuzi South, now totally disappeared, in the 1960s, presented a surface showing a dense texture of eroded mud-brick walls forming tepes. Firuzi South is therefore likely to have represented the second built-up part of the town along with Persepolis West.51 Bagh-e Firuzi however, which Gondet subdivides into two sectors, West and East, includes a number of isolated small tepes or surface sites characterized by the presence of cut-stone architectural elements of Achaemenid type, which suggest the existence in most of these sites of buildings belonging to the Persian aristocracy installed in large green areas.52 In the fields among the sites, geophysical surveys identified the existence of long linear anomalies attesting a network of ditches or canals, less dense than in Persepolis West. Interestingly, the orientation of these lines differs from those of the area nearer to the Terrace, suggesting planning carried out in a different phase.53 Also in this sector of the town, we see the taste of the Persians for the alternation of built-up areas and green open spaces. An important feature of the settlement in the plain is the absence of a fortification, at least as far as the recorded evidence shows. Fortifications were present around the royal citadel, visible on the slope of the Kuh-e Rahmat overlooking Takht-e Jamshid and searched for by scholars in the plain at its foot,54 but not around the town. No area serving as a graveyard for the common people has been found for this town during the Achaemenid period, since the only cemetery, located by E. F. Schmidt along the slope of the Kuh-e Rahmat c. 2 km to the north-west of Takht-e Jamshid, the ‘Persepolis Spring Cemetery’, is dated to the Late

50  51  52  53 

Gondet 2011, 266; Askari Chaverdi, Callieri & Gondet 2013, 4–6.

Gondet 2011, 268–77; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 267.

Gondet 2011, 277–325; Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 267. Gondet 2011, 324; Askari Chaverdi, Callieri & Gondet 2013, 33.

Mousavi 1992; 1999; 2012, 55; Boucharlat, De Schacht and Gondet 2012, 251. 54 

131

and Post-Achaemenid period.55 However, this late evidence, joined with the monumental royal necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam, with its successive appendix of the two graves cut in the Kuh-e Rahmat overlooking the Terrace during the fourth century bc, suggests that the funerary custom of placing graves outside the town was also used for the rest of the population, despite the many doubts raised about the evolution of the Persian funerary custom in the Achaemenid period.56 On the whole, the picture we can trace of Pārsa is that of a diffused settlement, alternating built-up spaces with large green areas, lying in the plain at the foot of the royal citadel (the Terrace, with its extension in the South Quarter) and separated from it by a belt of gardens which were protected by an enclosure. If we compare it with the plans of most Mesopotamian towns, with their defensive walls containing a dense built-up pattern including both royal structures and common houses, we see quite a different approach to the concept of town, but still presenting the basic requirements to be considered ‘urban’.57 Rather than doubting the existence of proper urban settlements in Achaemenid Persia, we can thus propose reading in this peculiar evidence a ‘Persian conception of urbanism’ very different from the Babylonian one, but not without affinities in other places and other periods.58 However, even though the Babylonian city seems to be conceptually far away from the land of Pārsa, the effect of Mesopotamian culture on the kingship59 as well as on the architecture and art of the Persians is becoming increasingly clear thanks to one of the monuments brought to light at Bagh-e Firuzi, the monumental gate. The Iranian-Italian Joint Archaeo­logical Mission is excavating this at Tol-e Ajori, 3.5 km to the west of Takht-e Jamshid. It is a copy in larger dimensions of the NeoBabylonian Ishtar Gate, built in the Early Achaemenid period with the same plan and the same decoration in glazed and relief bricks as the Ishtar Gate,60 and 55 

Farjamirad 2013, 52–55; Callieri 2007, 37; Gondet 2018, 20.

Farjamirad 2013, 213–14; S. Gondet, in fact, considers Naqsh-e Rostam royal necropolis as a part of the ‘zone d’occupation de Persépolis’: cf. Gondet 2011, 614. 56 

57 

Gondet 2018.

S. Gondet brings forward the examples of Mongolian or Central American towns: Gondet 2018, 22. See also Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 282. 58 

For the political thought see Gnoli 1974, 1989; for the visual evidence see Root 1979. 59 

60 

Askari Chaverdi, Callieri & Gondet 2013; Askari Chaverdi et al.

132 stands out as the main preserved monument belonging to a project of land use for settlement different from that illustrated above for the area of Pārsa centred on Takht-e Jamshid (Fig. 8.4). The Gate has been shown by recent excavations to be linked to a mud-brick wall at right angles with it, unfortunately completely removed during the levelling of the fields surrounding the tepe, to the extent that it is absent from the geophysical survey. It also has a clear topo­graphical connection with the adjacent monumental building of Firuzi 5, lying c. 360 m to the south-east of it. It appears as an imposing but unfortunately very damaged palatial structure known only through some stone foundations for pillar bases,61 as well as with the adjacent structure built in blocks of well-cut limestone, registered as Sang-e Surakh, likely to consist in a bridge crossing a canal.62 Also the anomalies located by geophysical surveys in the field surrounding these buildings, representing ditches or canals share the same orientation, which differs from that of the area centred on Takht-e Jamshid (Fig. 8.5).63 The nature and the extension of this complex elude us, because it could be a royal ‘paradise’ such as at Pasargadae64 or a quarter of a diffused town. So far, we also have not been able to understand the relationship of this discovered sector with the aristocratic settlement that Sumner sees represented in many of the buildings of Bagh-e Firuzi, the orientation of which has not yet been fully studied. Thus, for the moment, it is impossible to verify the topo­graphical pertinence of each of those buildings to the land planning centred on Takht-e Jamshid or the one to which Tol-e Ajori and Firuzi 5 belong. However, it seems clear that the two land plannings go back to two different phases, as also tentatively proposed in 2012 by R. Boucharlat et al.65 For Tol-e Ajori, we can only rely on a secure terminus post quem, Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylon of 539 bc. However, there are several aspects which indicate that Tol-e Ajori was built before Takht-e Jamshid. The most significant are: the architecture of the Gate, which in plan and construction details adheres to the 2014.

The Firuzi 5 complex had been surveyed by the Iranian-French geophysical team: Gondet 2011, 292–306.

61 

62  63  64  65 

Known also as Gowd-e Gavmish: see Gondet 2011, 301–03.

Pierfrancesco Callieri Babylonian tradition with no hint of the profound innovations of Darius’s architecture; the technique and icono­graphy of Tol-e Ajori glazed bricks, belonging to a more archaic craft tradition than that of the bricks of Susa or Takht-e Jamshid; and the palaeo­graphic aspects of the thirteen fragments of cuneiform characters in Babylonian and Elamite discovered to date, as well as the absence of Old Persian fragments. Thus the foundation of Tol-e Ajori Gate should fall in the time lapse between 539 bc and the foundation by Darius I of Takht-e Jamshid around 518 bc, largely corresponding to the reigns of Cyrus II and Cambyses II. The dating proposed for Tol-e Ajori is a key to understand the chrono­logical succession of the two different land plannings mentioned for Pārsa/Matezziš. The phase of Tol-e Ajori/Firuzi 5 would then be earlier than that of Takht-e Jamshid. Reconsidering the comprehensive interpretation proposed by Sumner for Pārsa/Matezziš, which apparently puts together the area of Persepolis West, topo­graphically linked to Takht-e Jamshid, and that of Firuzi, which includes Tol-e Ajori and Firuzi 5 belonging to an earlier phase, it should be highlighted that, despite lacking the information on which we can rely today, Sumner was able to sense the possibility that most of the aristocratic buildings of Bagh-e Firuzi belong to a land planning prior to the reign of Darius I. Sumner considered that, although ceramic assemblages dating to the Early Achaemenid period, i.e. ‘earlier than the initiation of construction at Persepolis, ca. 520 b.c.’, had not yet been found in the Persepolis plain,66 the settlement system discussed in his paper was ‘assumed to represent the cultural landscape in the Persepolis plain and surrounding districts from a date soon after the end of Cyrus’s reign until the social and economic changes following Alexander’s conquest’.67 According to him, Matezziš was already an important town during Cambyses’ reign, and the rebel Vahyazdata was brought here in 521 bc for execution: ‘At that time the town of Matezziš (Persepolis West) was inhabited and the elite dwellings at Firuzi and Dasht-e Gohar were already standing’.68 If today we must also include in the possible time lapse for the construction of Tol-e Ajori the part of Cyrus’s reign after his conquest of Babylon, Sumner’s great insight is confirmed by the fact that newly published Babylonian documents reveal the pres-

Gondet 2011, 303–04, 324.

66 

Boucharlat, De Schacht & Gondet 2012, 267.

68 

Askari Chaverdi & Callieri 2020.

67 

Sumner 1986, 7 and n. 10. Sumner 1986, 7 and n. 10. Sumner 1986, 28.

8. A ‘Persian Conception of Urbanism’ as Seen from New Field Research in Fars ence of Babylonian workers in the area of Matezziš during Cambyses’ reign.69 This chrono­logical articulation, however, does not affect our overview of Pārsa. The alternating of builtup spaces with green areas resulting in the end of the settlement project, which has been stressed by Gondet in the concept of ‘diffuse city’,70 can be considered the basic feature of a ‘Persian conception of urbanism’ decidedly different from the Babylonian one. The fact that many other Babylonian elements are present in the art and architecture of the Achaemenid Empire from its inception, as visible at Tol-e Ajori, strengthens the awareness and appreciation of the Persian otherness, which remained unchanged despite those contacts and which has therefore to be considered as a fundamental trait of the culture of the Persians.

69  70 

Henkelman & Kleber 2007.

See Root 2015, 13; Gondet 2018, 23.

133

134

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2012 ‘The Achaemenid Heartland: An Archaeo­logical-Historical Perspective’, in Daniel T. Potts (ed.), A Companion to the Archaeo­logy of the Ancient Near East, ii. Wiley, Chichester: 931–62. 2013 ‘Administrative Realities: The Persepolis Archives and the Archaeo­logy of the Achaemenid Heartland’, in Daniel T. Potts (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian Archaeo­logy. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 528–46. Henkelman, Wouter; Merijn, Franklin & Kristin, Kleber 2007 ‘Babylonian Workers in the Persian Heartland: Palace Building at Matannan during the Reign of Cambyses’, in Christopher Tuplin (ed.), Persian Responses: Political and Cultural Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire. The Classical Press of Wales, Swansea: 163–76. Herzfeld, Ernst 1929–1930    ‘Rapport sur l’état actuel des ruines de Persépolis et propositions pour leur conservation’, Archäo­ logische Mitteilungen aus Iran 1: 17–40 and 1–24 [in Persian]. Mohammadkhani, Kourosh 2012 ‘Une nouvelle construction monumentale achéménide à Dahaneh-e Gholaman, Sistan, Iran’, Arta 2012.001: 1–18. Mousavi, Ali 1992 ‘Pārsa, a Stronghold for Darius: A Preliminary Study of the Defence System of Persepolis’, East and West 42.2–4: 203–26. 1999 ‘La ville de Parsa: quelques remarques sur la topo­graphie et le système défensif de Persépolis’, Iranica antiqua 34: 145–55. 2012 Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder. De Gruyter, Berlin. Perrot, Jean 1981 ‘L’architecture militaire et palatiale des Achéménides à Suse’, in 150 Jahre Deutsches Archäo­logisches Institut, 1829–1979. Von Zabern, Mainz: 79–94. 1985 ‘Suse à la période achéménide’, Paléorient 11.2: 67–69. Potts, Daniel T. 2014 Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Root, Margaret Cool 1979 The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Icono­graphy of Empire (Acta Iranica 19). Brill, Leiden. 2015 ‘Achaemenid Imperial Architecture: Performative Porticoes of Persepolis’, in Sussan Babaie & Talinn Grigor (eds), Persian Architecture and Kingship: Displays of Power and Politics in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. Tauris, London: 1–63. Sajjadi, Seyyed Mansour Seyyed 2007 ‘Wall Painting from Dahaneh-ye Gholaman (Sistan)’, Ancient Civilization from Scythia to Siberia 13: 129–54. Sancisi-Weeerdenburg, Heleen 1983 ‘The Zendan and the Ka’bah’, in Heidemarie Koch & David Neil Mackenzie (eds), Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte der Achämenidenzeit und ihr Fortleben (Archäo­logische Mitteilungen aus Iran, Ergänzungsband 10). Reimer, Berlin: 145–51. 1993 ‘Alexander and Persepolis’, in Jesper Carlsen, Bodil Due, Ottoman Steen Due & Birte Poulsen (eds), Alexander the Great: Reality and Myth (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Suppl. 20). L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome: 177–88.

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Scerrato, Umberto 1966 ‘Excavations at Dahan-i Ghulaman (Seistan, Iran), First Preliminary Report (1962–1963)’, East and West 16: 9–30. Shahbazi, Alireza Shapur 2012 ‘The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330  bce)’, in Touraj Daryaee (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 120–41. Stronach, David 1997 ‘Anshan and Parsa: Early Achaemenid History, Art and Architecture on the Iranian Plateau’, in John Curtis (ed.), Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism, 539–331. British Museum Press, London: 35–53. Sumner, William M. 1986 ‘Achaemenid Settlement in the Persepolis Plain’, American Journal of Archaeo­logy 90.1: 3–31. Tilia, Ann Britt 1972 Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fārs (IsMEO Centro studi e scavi archeo­logici in Asia, Reports and Memoirs 16). Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome. 1978 Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and other Sites of Fārs II (IsMEO Centro studi e scavi archeo­logici in Asia, Reports and Memoirs 18). Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome. Zander, Giuseppe 1968 Travaux de restauration de monuments historiques en Iran: rapports et études préliminaires (IsMEO Centro studi e scavi archeo­logici in Asia, Reports and Memoirs 6). Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome. Zournatzi, Antigoni 2011 ‘Early Cross-Cultural Political Encounters along the Paths of the Silk Road: Cyrus the Great as a “King of the City of Anshan”’, in Dariush Akbarzadeh (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference ‘Iran and the Silk Road’, Tehran, 11–14 February 2011. Tehran: 1–19.

 III

The Literary Form of Cultural Memory of Babylon

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World: Iranian and Zoroastrian Perception of the Old Babylon Gianfilippo Terribili Sapienza University of Rome

Abstract –

From the earliest times, the intercourse between Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau was ceaseless, constituting a complex network of cross-cultural interactions. Meanwhile the dissemination of the prestige of Babylon and its ideal image as the foremost centre of enlightenment and wisdom soon exerted a captivating influence even eastward. Furthermore, all the three great Iranian dynasties of the pre-Islamic period, the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and Sasanian, exploited the leading role of the deeply urbanized region between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, making of it the most bustling centre for political, economic, and trading affairs of their kingdoms. These tight bonds triggered several phenomena of acculturation that reverberated transversely within each level of Iranian society; the encounter with the old Babylonian tradition as well as with different ethnoreligious communities living in that region must have fostered a broad range of confrontations and intellectual responses. Unfortunately, due to the paucity of direct sources, these dynamics are not always clear to the modern scholar. Through the examination of consistent accounts occurring in Middle Persian texts and in other sources related to the Arsacid-Sasanian period, the present paper aims to investigate how the Iranians, and more specifically the Zoroastrian doctors, reinterpreted the image of Babylon within their own tradition, shaping it according to the dualistic tenets characterizing both their religious system and world view.

Introduction Reshaping the memory of a legendary past in consequence of cross-cultural interactions is a process through which different populations have constructed their selfconception throughout history. Within this general framework, the long-lasting impact that Mesopotamian civilization exerted over the entire Near East reverberates in various forms in the later cultures. Memory of the wondrous Babylon was soon interpreted within native horizons, while the image of it as a pole of ancient wisdom proves particularly ubiquitous. Through the analysis of Zoroastrian Pahlavi sources (ninth–eleventh centuries ad), this paper aims to investigate how the idea of Babylon was re-invented within the framework of late antique–medieval Iran and Zoroastrian tradition. In order to reconstruct a more comprehensive context, comparison will be made between this data and the relevant early Islamic sources, which in many cases reflect the Iranian idea of ancient world history. In fact, during the prolonged settlement in Mesopotamia, Zoroastrian priests and Iranian literati performed a sort of cultural negotiation, conveying the image of Babylon and its legacy in the stream of their founding past and, above all, exploiting it according to their identity borders.

A Theo­logical Point of View The polarized structure characterizing Zoroastrian dualism provided a consistent scheme with which the Zoroastrian doctors fabricated historical memory and their world view. In this scheme, both physical and cultural constituents were attributed to negative/posi-

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 141–156 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127142

142 tive categories and tinged with marked ethical value. It is thus in this conceptual framework that the image of Babylon finds its setting within Pahlavi literature. Although few, the references to Babylon/Babylonia are included in relevant passages related to Zoroastrian historio­graphy and myth. The most significant account appears in the seventh book of Dēnkard, a ninth-/tenthcentury collection that draws upon earlier texts belonging to the lost ‘Sasanian’ Avesta. Dēnkard vii (hereafter Dk vii) contains the most authoritative tradition concerning the legendary life of the prophet Zarathustra, relating this figure to the sacred and ‘national’ history of Iran. In a decisive phase of the story, we find Zarathustra striving to disseminate the Good Revelation and demonstrate its truthfulness:1 Dk  vii.  4,  72–74 ēk čand čiš ī widimās ī dahāg pad ǰādūgīh andar bābēl kard estād mardōm pad ān wiyābānīh ō uzdēs-paristišnīh mad estād hēnd tā-š murnǰēnišn ī gēhān būd pad ān ī pērōzgar dēn gōwišn ī zarduxšt ān padīrag ān ǰādūgīh frāz guft hamāg wišōbīhast ud agārīhast (73) ēk ēd ī abāg abdīh ī az zarduxšt paydāgīhist pad pahikār ī abar dēn abāg kišwar nāmīg frazānagān kē-š andar pad frazānagīh gēhān āšnāg sraw bābēlāyagān andar awēšān ī škaft pahikārdar ān 12-star gōwišn kē-šān nām az 12-star dēn bōxtan u-š rāstīh (ud) dānišnīg paydāgēnīdan (74) ud wištāsp šah hamist awēšān frazānagān pad rāstīh ī dēn abegumānēnīdan frēstīd čand dādār ohrmazd wahman ašwahišt ud ātaxš ī abzōnīg pad āštīh ud ō wištāsp (By means of sorcery many marvellous things were made by Dahāg in Babylon, because of that deception the people adhered to idolatry until it caused the ravaging of the world. By means of the victorious discourses of the Revelation that Zarduxšt delivered against that sorcery, all (of the marvellous things) were destroyed and reduced to impotence. Now this: along with the prodigies revealed by Zarduxšt during the disputation on the religion against renowned sages of the country — those who in the understanding of the cosmic wisdom (were) illustrious, (namely) the Babylonians, (and) among them the hardest contenders, those of the discourses on the twelve stars, who are named after the twelve constellations — for defending the Revelation and asserting its truth and wisdom, and for dissipating the doubts of King Wištāsp (and of) all those sages regarding the Revelation, the creator Ohrmazd sent to Wištāsp some (messengers) Wahman, Ašwahišt and the bountiful Fire in peace.)2

Gianfilippo Terribili The text looks like a Chinese box and presents a multilayered composition with glosses extending the passage’s meaning.3 Parallel accounts in the Zoroastrian tradition report the motif of Zarathustra’s disputation against the courtly sages of Wištāsp, although specific mention of Babylon or Babylonian astro­logers only appears in Dk vii and in a more succinct text in the fifth book of the same work (Dk v. 2. 9), which looks like an epitome of that former passage.4 Taken as a whole Dk vii includes many quotations from lost Avestan texts and material directly composed in Middle Persian. In introducing this anecdotal tale, the Dk vii redactor/s, make/s no reference to the authority of dēn (i.e. to the Avestan tradition or its exegesis), although it is made in other sections of this book.5 This fact, along with the absence of, or differences in, this episode in other Zoroastrian sources, similarly drawing upon the Avestan nasks, reveals that in this case the information is independent of the sacred textual tradition and that the redactor/s extended the tale, inserting material from either oralvernacular or ‘non-canonical’ sources.6 In the Dk vii passage, the references to ‘Babylonian matters’ are included in three autonomous but correlated motifs, which form a narrative unit and allude to more extensive accounts. These motifs can be divided into: the activities of Dahāg in Babylon, Zarathustra’s deeds against the deceptive creations of Dahāg, and Zarathustra’s exploit against the Babylonian astro­ logers in the context of King Wištāsp’s conversion. The first sentence of this narration introduces a connection between the Mesopotamian city/land and a renowned figure of the Iranian epic, namely the dragon-like tyrant Dahāg (Av. Aži Dahāka). Dahāg belongs to the oldest mythical lore, but in the course of time he took on an ever more personified character, becoming an archetype of tyranny, demonolatry, and sorcery.7 During his evolution, the pseudo-historical figure of Dahāg also 306–07; Windfuhr 2017, 483.

3  The reference to the Babylonian sages seems to be a gloss that excessively lengthens the syntax of the period.

For the legend of Zarathustra in Middle Persian texts, see Molé 1963a, 271–386; Molé 1967. For the later Zoroastrian tradition see e.g. Zarātoštnāma (Rosenberg 1904, 41–44), Čangranghāča (Molé 1953, 314–19), and Ṣaddar Bondaheš (Dhabhar 1932, 508). 4 

5 

The episode occurs between two crucial events in Zarathustra’s life, the reception of Ohrmazd’s revelation and the conversion of king Wištāsp.

1 

2 

Molé 1967, 56–57; see also Cereti 1995, 322–23; Panaino 2007,

See Molé 1963a, 378; Nyberg 1975, 512.

The comparison with the Wištāsp Sāst’s content in Dēnkard viii (11. 1–5), summarizing the nask devoted to Zarathustra’s endeavours at Wištāsp’s court, seems to confirm this fact (Molé 1963a, 348–49). 6 

7 

See Skjærvø, Khaleghi-Motlagh & Russell 1987 with references.

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World assumed Semitic traits, eventually being considered akin to the race of Tāz, i.e. the ancestor of the Arabs.8 By dint of contrast, it defined an ‘otherness’ with which Iranians came into contact and which included a broad spectrum of social institutions, ethical norms, habits, behaviours, etc. As long recognized,9 the DahāgBabylon nexus was possibly based on interpretation of the Avestan toponym Baβri, originally referring to an eastern Iranian region where, according to Yašt v. 29, Dahāg performed a sacrifice in honour of Anahītā invoking the destruction of humankind, a boon that the goddess did not satisfy.10 The Dahāg-Babylon connection, however, does not seem to be a matter of Baβri-Bābēl homophony alone, but more likely includes a wider stream of associations. Generally speaking, the readaptation of mythical lore is in fact a highly complex praxis through which a symbolic cosmo­graphy is constantly transposed to new geo­graphic realities and cultural settings.11 In a non-specified epoch, Zoroastrian priests relocated the then obscure Avestan toponym associated with Dahāg to a more familiar scenario, i.e. Babylon, making of this prestigious city the enchanted residence of this sinister character. Whatever the origin of this correlation might be, in our case, it also implies a functional usage of the motif. The Zoroastrian redactor here exploited the old symbolic centrality of Babylon, and the fame of its prodigious structures, inverting and reducing it to a representative epicentre of deviated and archaic beliefs. In the Zoroastrian context, the highly negative connotation of Dahāg automatically affects whatever was created by him, denoting it as something affiliated with ‘daevic’ forces. The association between Dahāg, idolatry, and the arts of magic is a pivotal point to understand See e.g. Bundahišn xxxv. 7; Dēnkard iii. 227; 308 and viii. 13. 8. The tradition is well attested also in Arabo-Persian sources (Scarcia 1965).

8 

See Yarshater 1983, 426; Skjærvø, Khaleghi-Motlagh & Russell 1987. 9 

Interestingly in the same Yašt (v.  105) Zarathustra invokes Anāhitā asking her to grant him success in persuading Vištāspa (MP. Wištāsp) in matters of faith. Thus composing the prophetic legend, the exegetes could have been inspired by the invocations in Abān Yašt conflating material from this text in a single account. 10 

A parallel phenomenon of shifting Avestan name places westward can be detected in Bundahišn xxxi and in the first chapter of the Pahlavi Widēwdād, both based on the geo­graphic list included in the Avestan Widēwdād (Shapira 2001). In fact, in these Middle Persian texts some of the new identifications coincide with Mesopotamian regions, thus confirming the importance this area had in the development of the Iranian world view. 11 

143

the multifaceted implications of the Dahāg-Babylon nexus. Through this rhetorical device the Zoroastrian doctors also explained the origin and nature of the heterogeneous reality of coeval Mesopotamia, setting it within mythical categories that the Iranian recipients would have no difficulty in recognizing. Late antique Mesopotamia was characterized by the presence of a large number of religious groups and cross-cultural interactions. Rural communities still practised archaic cults,12 while popular forms of magic permeated that society transversally.13 Evidently, from a Zoroastrian point of view, the identification with Dahāg aptly justified the existence of cultural crossbreeding in the Babylonia of the time, denoting it with an evil connotation. Simply detecting a Zoroastrian self-referential elaboration of Dahāg’s activity in Babylon could, however, prove misleading. Zoroastrian circles participated in and interacted with a Mesopotamian environment where appropriation of foreign elements and their harmonization within historio­graphical visions was a practice commonly followed by different cultural agents to shape their own communal memory and identity. This context fostered the circulation of historio­ graphical and literary motifs which, from the Hellenistic period onward, shaped the consciousness of the past in many western Asia and Mediterranean communities. In this framework, the Jewish Diaspora seems to have played a pivotal role in amalgamating heterogeneous material and in influencing different traditions. In addition, the development of monotheistic views and the rise of Christianity had a crucial impact on the definition of cultural memories.14 The hybridization process involved the same pseudo-historical figure of Dahāg, frequently identified with King Nimrod,15 a synchronization which generated On the survival of old traditions in the religious context of Parthian Mesopotamia, see Dirven 2014. Later on, Islamic authors recorded in the area of Sawād (old Babylonia) a religious substratum practised by the local peasantry and vaguely identified under the label of ‘Sabianism’, see Hämeen-Anttila 2006. MesopotamianHellenistic astral beliefs characterized this socio-religious system (Hämeen-Anttila 2006, 52), and some of these features fit the framework of our references to Babylon. 12 

13 

See Shaked 2011 with references.

On the development of religious thought in Late Antiquity, see extensively Stroumsa 2015.

14 

15  See e.g. Ṭabarī (Brinner 1987, 4, 23, 49–50, 109) and Movses Khorenatsi (Thomson 1978, 127). For the synchronisms AbrahamNimrod-Zarathustra see Kiel 2015 with references. Appropriations and hybridizations flourished in popular as well as intellectual con-

144 overlapping motifs, like those related to the construction of marvellous buildings, the propagation of idolatry, or the persecution of Abraham.16 The core theme of a primeval giant, tyrant of Babylon, who built prodigious structures and deceived his people by propagating magic and idolatry, actually seems to have been shared by many traditions of Near Eastern agora, including the Zoroastrian tradition. On this narrative pattern, each religious group developed pious stories about the origin of the community and the spiritual message carried on by prophetic figures. As for Dahāg, his building activity in Babylonia is highlighted by another Pahlavi text and relevant passages reported by Islamic sources. In listing the marvellous mansions built by figures of the past, the Bundahišn (xxxii. 4 and 15) says:17 4) ēk ān ī dahāg kard pad bābēl kē kulang-dušdīd xwānēnd (The one built by Dahāg in Babylon, which they call the ‘vile crane’.) 15) mān ī dahāg pad bābēl kulang homānāg būd (The palace of Dahāg in Babylon was like a crane.)18

These lines recall Dk vii passage about the wondrous things the tyrant accomplished in Babylon, while, also in this case, older material was reinvented in an ‘up-todate’ guise. The palace denomination, MP. kulang-dušdīd, possibly derives from the Avestan passage Yt. xv.  19 (upa kuuiriṇtәm dužitәm), mentioning the place where Dahāg invokes the god Vāyu.19 The Middle Persian text

Gianfilippo Terribili differs from its Avestan archetype — namely the ‘inaccessible’ (dužita-) Kuuiriṇta — and adds a gloss at the end of the list (Bd. xxxii. 15) to explain the former occurrence. This peculiar residence reappears in two Islamic sources:20 the anonymous Mojmal al-tawāriḵ and Ḥamza al-Esfahāni’s Ketāb taʾriḵ. Ḥamza, who long resided in Baghdad and interacted with coeval Zoroastrian mowbeds,21 reports that Dahāg (Zohak) built a craneshaped fortress in Babylon named kolang dež and known by the local dwellers as dež-het, a form possibly derived from the old dužita-/dušdīd.22 Similarly, a passage by Ṭabarī corroborates this information, observing that some Magians stated that Dahāg (al-Ḍaḥḥāk) often resided in Babylon.23 Ṭabarī also reports that the Persians credited Dahāg with the foundation of cities in this region, like that of Nars on the road to Kūfah.24 Most remarkably, an excerpt from Ibn-Nawbaḫt (eighth–ninth centuries  ad), quoted in al-Nadīm’s Fihrist and sharing many points of contact with our account and other Dēnkard passages,25 says that Dahāg (aḍ-Daḥḥāk) built a city in Sawād and named it after Jupiter.26 It was the place where the tyrant gathered scientific works and scholars, building twelve mansions corresponding to the zodiacal signs.27 Taken together, the Bundahišn material and the consistent evidence in Islamic authors may well attest to the fact that, alongside historio­graphical hybridizations, the Iranian 20  21 

texts. Ibn-al Nadīm, for instance, mentions a Pahlavi book entitled ‘Nimrod the King of Babel’ (Dodge 1970, ii, 716), thus suggesting that motifs cultivated in the Judaeo-Babylonian environment also entered into the Iranian literary tradition (Widengren 1960, 42). On the ambivalence and circulation of the figure of King Nimrud in Sasanian Upper Mesopotamia and its role in the fabrication of local identities, see now Payne 2015, 148–50, 160–63. On the post-biblical tradition connecting Nimrod with the construction of the Tower of Babel, see e.g. Van der Toorn & Van der Horst 1990; Lowin 2012.

See Kiel 2015. In Dk iii (227; 229; 288) the relation between Dahāg and Abraham appears somewhat inverted. In pursuit of his polemical purposes, the Dk iii theo­logian presents the latter as disciple of the former, consequently portraying the tyrant as the demoniac initiator of Jewish tradition, see Molé 1963b; Shaked 1990; Secunda 2014, 75–80; Kiel 2015; 2019; Terribili 2021. 16 

Dahāg’s mansion is mentioned after those built in different lands by Jam, Ferīdūn, and Kay Us. 17 

Pakzad 2005, 359–61; Agostini & Thrope 2020, 168–69. The same chapter also mentions two more abodes built by Dahāg in Šambarān and India.

18 

Even in this case Dahāg asks for the destruction of humankind; see Wikander 1941, 4.

19 

22 

See Darmesteter 1883 [1971], 211–12. Modi 1931.

Darmesteter 1883 [1971], 211; Scarcia 1965, 139 n. 92.

Brinner 1987, 3. According to e.g. Dīnawarī Dahāg (Ḍaḥḥāk) founded Bābil by the name of Khowb/Khūb (Pourshariati 2010, 215).

23 

24 

Brinner 1987, 3, 6.

This excerpt received the attention of many modern scholars interested in the history of astro­logy and the transmission of knowledge in early Islamic society, see recently Van Bladel 2009; 2012 and Cottrell 2015, 392–401 with references to previous biblio­ graphy. 25 

The well-known equivalence between Jupiter and Aramaic Bēl suggests that the reference to that planet referred to Babylon itself; see Van Bladel 2012, 53. As aptly pointed out by Van Bladel, Nawbaḫt and Ādurfarrbay ī Farroxzādān — the first Dēnkard redactor — participated in the cultural milieu of late eighth-/early ninth-century Baghdad and may have been informed by the same historio­graphical sources used by Ibn-Nawbaḫt (Van Bladel 2012, 47–62). On Ādurfarrbay and his context, see recently De Jong 2016; Terribili 2017, 397, 402–11; Sahner 2019, 7. Evidence of similar narrative patterns dealing with the transmission of wisdom and circulating in that milieu have been noted by Shaked 1994, 107 and n. 39. 26 

27 

See translation by Van Bladel 2012, 45; Cottrell 2015, 397–98.

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World dwellers of Mesopotamia interpreted local topo­graphy in a similar sense, fabricating specific identification with actual architectural features and urban realities. The imposing remains of the ancient structures characterizing the landscape of Babylonia, as well as the stories gravitating around them, evidently caught the imagination of Iranian people, who rapidly assimilated them within their own cultural horizons. The evidence can thus be considered as part of a ‘cultural appropriation’ of the territory and its memory, a phenomenon that must have been fairly extensive. Such functional adaptability of Dahāg is consistent with the development of Iranian civilization as well as its local varieties.28 Indeed, this mythical prototype of tyranny offered ready-made material for reinvention of ambiguous circumstances as well as actual adversaries. A parallel functional use of Dahāg appears in some chapters of Dēnkard iii (227; 229; 288), where this figure is associated with Judaism.29 According to these texts, he founded Jerusalem (ōrušlem), conserving the Torah (ōraytā nibēg) there and disseminating its tenets. This association aimed to discredit both this faith and the very roots of monotheism, using the archetype of tyranny and witchcraft and making use of common narrative patterns. This kind of ‘geo­graphical’ transfer presupposes recognition of a functional equipollence between old and new places; the correlations thus follow the ‘qualitative’ nature of the space and its relation with a mythical horizon. In fact, Babylon and Jerusalem shared some symbolic analogies,30 which, apparently, facilitated the transposition made by the Zoroastrian doctors. The motif of Dahāg’s residence in Jerusalem did not, however, remain confined to Zoroastrian circles but was also taken up by Ferdowsī in his Šāhnāma.31 The tyrant (Żaḥḥāk)’s fabulous palace is described here as a tall tower reaching Saturn, as lofty as the stars and shining like the planet Jupiter in the sky. Having entered the palace, the hero Ferīdūn smashed a massive idol/talisman made by the evil king. Thus, Ferdowsī’s descrip28  29  30 

See Scarcia 1965, 135. See above, n. 16.

See Scarcia 1965, 139–40.

Šāhnāma, v. 207–08, ed. Khaleghi-Motlagh 1987, 74. Jerusalem is here named bait al-muqaddas (the ‘Holy City’) in accordance with its Arabic denomination; Ferdowsī specifies that in the ancient language (pahlavāni) it was called kang-i duzhukht. On the alleged connection of the latter with the Avestan and Pahlavi kuuiriṇta dužita/ kulang dušdīd, see Scarcia 1965, 139 n. 92. 31 

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tion of the tyrant’s residence in Jerusalem evokes different elements consistent with Dēnkard, the passage by Nawbaḫt, and the Nimrod-Dahāg tradition. It is, again, the backbone of a narrative storyline which was well suited to extoll the deeds of epic heroes as well as religious prophets.32 These considerations fit with the second sentence in our Dk vii account where the destruction of the idolatrous and deceptive symbols established by Dahāg in Babylon is attributed to Zarathustra. The theme preludes the prophetic salvific mission and the dissemination of religious enlightenment throughout the world. As insightfully pointed out by P. O. Skjærvø, the account in Dk vii portrays Zarathustra as an epic hero, evoking old patterns of the Ferīdūn-like ‘dragon-slayer’ motif.33 The heroic guise of Zarathustra finds its first occurrence in Young Avesta and resurfaces in the Manichaean tradition, too, where there are interesting parallels with the Dk vii scenario, including the theme of Zarathustra’s struggle against sorcerers and idolatry in Babylonia and in connection with the figure of Wištāsp.34 Possibly here, Mani and his followers drew on both Iranian and Judaeo-Christian traditions; on the other hand, this evidence shows that a legend of Zarathustra’s miracles in Babylonia was already circulating in the early Sasanian milieu. These narrations made use of the ‘universal’ symbol and stereotype of Babylon both to dramatize the opposition between past and ‘current’ era and to stress the idea that the descent of a ‘true Revelation’ marked the dawn of a new age.35 In this perspective, the Dk vii motif In the perspective of diachronic progression, Ferīdūn’s act anticipates the one performed by Zarathustra in Babylonia, narrated by Dk vii. On the other hand, the Iranian epos associates the pious King Lohrāsp, a contemporary of Zarathustra, with Jerusalem’s destruction (Agostini 2019). Thus if we piece together all these passages, a consistent historio­graphical view emerges. 32 

33 

Skjærvø 1996, 607–11.

Sundermann 1986 [2001], 854–56; Skjærvø 1995, 192–94; 1996, 617–21; Van Tongerloo 2008, 257–60. Excerpts of this episode have been found in Turkic and Sogdian fragments, revealing the dissemination of the Manichaean legend on Zarathustra’s miracles in Babylonia. According to the Manichaean perspective, Babylonia may overlap with the mythical land of Ērānwēz. At the same time, the cultivation of Zarathustra’s figure and deeds in this pivotal landscape was part of the so-called Manichaean successio apostolica. Within the framework of the Manichaean world history — deeply influenced by both biblical and apocryphal models — these accounts structured a prestigious antecedent to the advent of Mani himself, see Sundermann 1986 [2001], 857. 34 

Conceptions on time reckoning and the chiliadic cycles may have favoured the presentation in sequence of Dahāg and Zarathustra’s 35 

146 is in tune with the cosmopolitan literary scenario of the late antique Near East, engaging a ‘Nimrod-like’ narrative that proved to be a useful tool in structuring hagio­ graphic composition. Thus the old city and its memory were aptly integrated in Iranian sacred history, symbolizing an epicentre of primeval wisdom and magic arts. The theme of the religious leader who smashes the idols had been a transversal motif in western Asia’s religious scenario while, in the case of the Iranians, the contacts with the oriental Jewish Diaspora, as well as the Christian communities, must have fostered crosscultural intersections even in the sphere of prophetic imagery.36 The hybridization of motifs and authoritative figures entered into the discourse of religious identity and was widely exploited for doctrinal purposes. In this intricate framework, the Dk vii (4. 73) and Dk v (2. 9) textual extensions upon Zarathustra’s victory over the twelve Babylonian astro­logers connected to the zodiacal constellations work in a consistent way.37 activities despite the temporal gap, which divided the two figures. The Zoroastrian doctors may have been prompted to sew the line of time, harmonizing in a single account meaningful events joined by the link with the rise and decline of astral bodies (e.g. Jupiter, see Van Bladel 2012, 53–54; Panaino 2016), and the progression of cosmic eras. On the significance of Zarathustra’s figure in the Zoroastrian cosmic history see Cereti 1995.

Particularly frequent in both ancient and medieval sources are the synchronisms between Zarathustra and biblical figures related to a Mesopotamian scenario (e.g. Nimrod, Abraham, Balaam, Baruch, Ezekiel), see Bidez & Cumont 1938, i, 41–50; Gnoli 2000, 111–18; Kiel 2015; 2019; Cottrell-Ross 2019. The destruction of Dahāg’s magic devices by Zarathustra resembles the Talmudic — and later Quranic — episode of Abraham who broke the idols before being thrown into a furnace by King Nimrod at Kutha (Morony 1984, 394–95), or perhaps more closely that of the Prophet Daniel who, under the reign of Cyrus, smashed the idol of the divinised king Bēl in Babylon. This latter story is an extension of the Book of Daniel found in apocryphal traditions and Syriac Chronicles, and indeed in a Christian Sogdian fragment (Sims-Williams 1993). The idol-smashing theme characterizes various figures of the Iranian tradition, too. The tale of Kay Khusraw and the temple of idols is included at the beginning of Dk vii (1. 39) itself. The legend is not recorded in the Avestan account on Kay Khusraw but appears in other Pahlavi texts (Tafazzoli 1990). On the primordial link between Babylon and idolatry again, a Shiite tradition still reports that when ʿAlī and his companions arrived in Babylonia the Imām declared that it was a cursed land because it was the first region on earth to start the worship of idols (Amir-Moezzi 2007, 230–31). Regarding the extensive dissemination of Nimrod-like accounts and syncretistic identifications, a passage from Snorri’s Edda provides remarkable evidence; here, in fact, Zarathustra is connected both to the construction of the Tower of Babel and the figure of Bēl (Jackson 1898, 286). 36 

The passage encodes references to several key topics animating the late antique and early Islamic cultural debate. An in-depth 37 

Gianfilippo Terribili The motif still exploits the ‘shared’ heritage of Babylon and asserts the supremacy of the Zoroastrian faith also in the field of astro­logical-astronomical wisdom.38 In particular, the genre of courtly and public debates on wisdom (Arabic majlis) is ubiquitous in western Asia’s late antique and medieval literature.39 It shaped a sort of literary locus in which historical royal praxis and narrative fabrications intersected, giving space to the formulation of pious storylines centred on the meeting between a spiritual leader, a king, and sages of different affiliation. The astro­logers mentioned by Dēnkard find conceptual analogies with the sages summoned by Dahāg to Babylon and hosted in twelve residences in Nawbaḫt’s ‘Hermetic’ tale. 40 However the latter text does not explicitly mention Zarathustra and only speaks about the advent of an unnamed prophet who plays a negative role.41 According to the account, his acts throw humankind into confusion. Interestingly, the dodecadic symbolism associated with the deeds of Zarathustra occurs again in Manichaean sources possibly related to the stories of this prophet in Babylon.42 An Old Turkic fragment tells us that Zarathustra, while establishing the pure doctrine of the Magians, showed twelve kinds of unique and marvellous signs.43 examination of these aspects will be addressed in a dedicated study.

38  Panaino 2007, 305; see also the considerations by E. Raffaelli (2017, 185) in connecting this passage with Bundahišn vb. 22 where the Zoroastrian astro­logical wisdom is magnified. An extended version of the account of Zarathustra’s discussions with sages at Wištāsp’s court appears in the New Persian Zarātoštnāma (chaps 36–41; Rosenberg 1904, 40–45). In this text the provenience of the sages is not specified. The story of the dispute between the Iranian Prophet and Babylonian sages explicitly resurfaces in the work by Shahrastani (Gimaret-Monnot 1986, i, 650; see also De Menasce 1954, 55; Panaino 2007, 307). 39  For our geo­graphical and chrono­logical framework see e.g. Walker 2006, 164–205; Gardner, BeDuhn & Dilley 2015; Sahner 2019 with references.

40  On this text and its cross-cultural connections (e.g. Manichaean, Enoch literature, and Alexandrian hermeticism) see extensively Van Bladel 2012; Cottrell 2015; Cottrell-Ross 2019.

According to Van Bladel (2012, 54) the text possibly omits Zarathustra’s name; for a different view see Cottrell 2015, 398. In comparison with Dk vii (4. 72–73), Ibn-Nawbaḫt’s account seems to display a functional inversion: here Dahāg has a positive/neutral role while the prophet’s intervention causes negative aftermaths. 41 

42 

See n. 34 and 44.

U 63. (TM 170), ll. 2–5 (Van Tongerloo 2008, 239). The Pahlavi literature often uses words such as abdīh, warz, widimās ‘miracle, wonders’ in describing Zarathusta’s activity and its aftermath. According to the Dēnkard (viii. 14. 4) résumé of the Sasanian Avesta, 43 

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World Unfortunately, the fragmentary nature of this text makes it difficult to contextualize;44 however, the mention of Wištāsp in line 6 of the same text suggests that this Manichaean account dealt with the theme of the king’s conversion, thus providing a key element of comparison. Therefore, a version of the legend of Zarathustra’s miraculous preaching and agonistic confrontation with Babylonian wisdom must have circulated in late antique Iran, inspiring cross-cultural discourses on prophethood.45 In this sense, parallels are offered by the life of Daniel, who is a further protagonist of the religious scenario of the regions straddling between Mesopotamia and Iran. According to the biblical tradition, at the beginning of his career at Nabocodonosor’s court, Daniel proves his superiority in visionary and predictive prowess in respect to the ֥ ֵ ִ‫חַ ּכ‬/ courtly Babylonian sages (e.g. Daniel 2. 12: ‫ימי בָ ֶ ֽבל‬ οἱ σοφοί Βαβυλώνιοί). It is worth noting that the intersections between the Jewish and Iranian prophets find justification in the synchronism established by the Iranian historio­g raphy where King Nabocodonosor (MP. Bōxt-Narsēh) is presented as a lieutenant of King Lohrāsp.46 By portraying Zarathustra as an expert astro­ logist and asserting his dialectic victory over a culture broadly acknowledged as a cradle of astral and divinatory sciences,47 the Dēnkard engaged with the ‘memetic’

147

memory of Babylon and boosted the prestige of the Zoroastrian teachings within a Near Eastern context. In the same perspective, Dk  vii also addresses Zarathustra’s reputation, long acknowledged outside the Zoroastrian community as an astro­loger and ‘stardiviner’.48 The syncretistic image of the ‘Chaldean/ Babylonian’ Zoroaster represented a recurrent topos for the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic world. This memetic view of Zarathustra was assimilated, with different approaches and purposes, in many socio-cultural contexts. Thus it cannot be ruled out that this long-lasting feature impacted Zoroastrian circles too, prompting their intellectual reaction and re-elaboration of Zarathustra’s prophethood and competencies. It is worth noting that astro­logical-astronomical knowledge and symbolism are associated with soterio­ logy and soul ascension by many in late antique thought; this is true for the Zoroastrian dualism. The mechanics of astral bodies and the definition of the progression of time is of the utmost importance to defeat the principle of evil and accomplish both individual and cosmic salvation.49 In this respect, the Dk vii image of Zarathustra’s superiority over old astro­logy perhaps polemically challenges a broad conspectus of philosophical-religious traditions ranging from the hermetic wisdom, to NeoPythagorean, Neo-Platonic, Gnostic, Judaeo-Christian, In this regard, the Middle Persian passage matches with the Graeco-Roman interpretatio of Zarathustra/Zoroaster as an authority in astral and secret wisdom; see Jackson 1898; Bidez & Cumont 1938; De Jong 1997, 317–23; Gnoli 2000, 95–118; Beck 1991; 2002; Stausberg 2007; Vasunia 2007. The endurance of this image of Zarathustra is clearly witnessed by the late Byzantine compendium of Suda (α 4257), which describes the entry ‘Astronomy’ as: ‘the arrangements of the stars. Through Zoroaster, the Babylonians were the first to discover this; and with them Ostanes. They established that events happen by a heavenly movement around those who are being born’ (Vasunia 2007, 73). With the rise of Islam and the interest in the translation of (para-) scientific treatises, the popularity of memetic figures like Zarathustra-Zoroaster and their connection with ancient wisdom (e.g. the Chaldean/Babylonian) was surely reinvigorated, in both intellectual and esoteric circles (Stausberg 2007, 193; Cottrell 2015, 352 n. 66, 369–72, 378; for a status quaestionis Cottrell-Ross 2019, 99–102). It suggests that the western interpretatio of the Iranian prophet, if not direct translations of pseudepi­grapha attributed to him, took firm roots in Mesopotamia and Iran. Possibly, it was a phenomenon already existent in the Late Sasanian epoch. There is no doubt that the figure of ZarathustraZoroaster repeatedly crossed the boundaries between the east and west, back and forth. 48 

the Spand nask contained a large collection of them (West 1892, 32). In his Tanbīh Masʿūdī indirectly confirms that the Persians had many stories about Zarathustra’s miracles (Carra de Vaux 1897, 134). More explicitly, Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī (tenth century ad) records the question of the eighth Shīʿī imam, al-Riḍā, to a Zoroastrian high priest concerning the fundament of Zarathustra’s prophetic authority (Sahner 2019, 9–10, with references). The mowbed answers that it is based on the miracles and wonders performed by him.

Comparable Manichaean Old Turkic fragments (T II D 175 and U 4) deal with Zarathustra’s miraculous dispute against idol-priests and wizards in the city of Babylon, see Sundermann 1986 [2001], 855; Skjærvø 1996, 620; Van Tongerloo 2008, 260. 44 

In this perspective, new investigations on the Manichaean by Chester Beatty Kephalaia (2 Ke) show interesting correspondences about the trope of the agonistic disputations at court and claims of spiritual legitimacy in the case of both Mani himself and his Iranian precursor, see extensively Gardner, BeDuhn & Dilley 2015.

45 

46 

See above, n. 32.

For a survey on the image of Babylon in classical sources see, Rollinger 2008. In the period of Dēnkard’s redaction, many Islamic intellectuals interested in astro­logy-astronomy transmitted this long-lasting stereotype in their writings, see e.g. Cottrell 2015, 357, 368, 377; Cottrell-Ross 2019, 89; Panaino 2019, 93–94. 47 

See Panaino 2020 with references. It must be stressed that eschato­logy represents the bulk of both the entire Dk  vii and Wištāsp’s conversion’s pious message.

49 

148 Manichaean, and other systems, which were interested in ‘star-talk’ discourses and the heterogeneous material related to it.50 Dk vii claims, and indeed implicitly places Zarathustra’s path of salvation in competition with alternative teachings concerning the ascension of human souls through the heavenly stations of the firmament. Unfortunately, it is hard to date the above-mentioned variations in Zarathustra’s Dēnkard legend accurately.51 The passage itself shows different stages of redaction, which extended the sense of the text. Dk vii (4.  72–74) combines episodes and encodes historio­ graphic and astro­logical-astronomical references to fashion the cosmo­logical dimension of Zarathustra’s mission. We may reasonably suppose that these accretions were cultivated within a Mesopotamian milieu, in which heterogeneous groups continuously debated upon interpretations of the past, authoritative figures, and eschato­logical expectations. In this respect, also the Zoroastrian doctors re-invented events of Zarathustra’s life in a ‘Babylonian guise’, not arbitrarily but attuned and in response to competitive historio­g raphical hybridizations and cosmo­logical views.

A Secular Point of View If the Zoroastrian theo­logical texts mainly present a historio­graphical perspective strongly influenced by doctrinal purposes, other sources, both Pahlavi and Arabo-Persian, show that the Iranians of Late Antiquity had a more inclusive idea of Babylon and its legacy. This approach is detectable in one of the few secular

Gianfilippo Terribili works surviving in Pahlavi literature, the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, the ‘Cities of the Iranian Kingdom’: (ŠE §. 24) šahrestān ī bābēl bābēl pad xwadāyīh [ī] ǰam kard u-š tīr abāxtar ānōh be bast ud mārīg [ī] haft [ud] dwāzdah ī axtarān ud abāxtarān haštom bahrag pad jādūgīh ō mihr ud azērīg be nimūd. (The city of Babylon, was built by Bābēl/Bēl52 during the sovereignty of Jam. And there he (i.e. Bābēl/Bēl or Jam) bound the planet Mercury, and by means of magic he showed the language (lit. word) of the seven and the twelve — i.e. the constellations and planets —,53 the eighth section54 to the sun and what is below (i.e. the lower sections of the sky? Mankind?).)55

Here again we find that ideas on astro­logical knowledge characterize a composition that mentions Babylon in connection with primeval events in human history. More specifically, the link with the planet Mercury (i.e. the Mesopotamian Nabu) preserves an old and wellattested feature related to this city and its land.56 By assuming the equivalence of the otherwise unknown Bābēl with the name of Bēl, the Middle Persian passage would here appear to reproduce the Bēl-Nabu hendiadys, the astral-divine couple associated with the city For this figure we can postulate that either the Iranians forged an eponymous hero or that a copyist erroneously repeated the name of the city twice. However, Bābēl might stand for a more appropriate Bēl, i.e. the late pseudo-historical transposition of Marduk. In his Tanbīh, Masʿūdī states that the latter part of the Chaldean place name Bābīl refers to Bīl — i.e. Jupiter-Bēl — (Hämeen-Anttila 2006, 36 n. 87). It indicates that these kinds of pseudo-etymo­logical interpretations were on their way. 52 

53 

Clement of Alexandria’s combination (Stromata v. 14) of a Zoroaster pseudepi­graphical text, the comment on Plato’s Republic, and the idea that departed souls pass through the path of the zodiac is self-evident in this kind of intersection, see the considerations on this and related sources by Stausberg 2007, 187–89. 50 

Since the ‘Babylonian’ astro­logers only occur in the Dēnkard narration of the events, it may indicate a relatively late addition in respect to mainstream — already widespread — Vorlage of Zarathustra’s life. In this perspective, two conjectures appear plausible. On the one hand, we should consider the reign of Husraw I. In this period, scientific studies were implemented and different astro­ logical-astronomical conceptions were adapted to fit the Zoroastrian tenets. Thus, the Dk vii gloss can be seen as part of this acculturation process and its justification, projecting into a mythic past the alleged Iranian superiority. On the other hand, it may reflect the dialectical context in which the Dēnkard’s redactors, and especially Ādurfarrbay ī Farroxzādān, were involved, namely the intellectual scenario of the ʿAbbasids’ Baghdad, where the literary genre of majlis and competition in ‘star-talk’ interpretation flourished. 51 

See Panaino 2005, 74–77.

Possibly referring to the eighth sky, i.e. the immovable sky. On the developments of Iranian cosmo­graphy see now Panaino 2019 with references. 54 

It is assumed here that this obscure passage alludes to the establishment of astro­logy and astral divination, as well as to the connection between the supernal and the lower worlds, cf. with Markwart 1931, 14; Panaino 1998, 75–76; Daryaee 2002, 19–20, 26. The latter part of this passage appears somewhat corrupted. The text denotes the influence of Hellenistic-Mesopotamian astro­logy (MacKenzie 1964, 524 n. 65); similarly these astral conceptions share analogies with beliefs still professed by Sabian/Nabatean communities in late Sasanian and early Islamic Mesopotamia, see HämeenAnttila 2006, 109–12. There are no other occurrences in the existing Pahlavi texts of the strings binding planets — which in the Zoroastrian doctrine have a demonic aspect — to the lower regions of the earth (Panaino 1998, 71–78). Therefore, this information sounds like the adaptation of a foreign tradition. 55 

Morony 1984, 386, 392, 398; Daryaee 2002, 56; Hämeen-Anttila 2006, 123. Similar associations are evident in the role of Hermes within Nawbaḫt’s account (Van Bladel 2009, 37–38; 2012; Cottrell 2015). 56 

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World of Babylon and still worshipped in that region in Late Antiquity.57 The text may in fact allude to a genuine Mesopotamian myth, or late re-elaboration of it, representing an attempt to harmonize it with Iranian epic history. The old cosmogonic myth in which Marduk/ Bēl fixed the astral bodies to the firmament permeated post-Hellenistic Mesopotamia and echoed in Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, as well as esoteric traditions.58 In relation to this mytho­logeme, an Aramaic incantation bowl from Nippur evokes the magic charm that bound the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac,59 showing that the story was included in popular practices. Thus here the Šahrestānīhā, whose core was composed in the Late Sasanian era, is probably assimilating and interpreting both the symbolic meaning associated with this old city and a related substratum of beliefs still alive in coeval Babylonia.60 Evidently, the Iranian intellectuals had no difficulty in taking the ‘alien’ myth and recasting it within the horizon of their ‘culture hero’ par excellence, King Jam (Av. Yima). Definitely, the analysis of the ŠE para­graph raises the question about this text’s relationship with the Dk vii passage. In which way are the two texts connected? Do the two narrations receive mutual elucidation? Do they belong to a united historio­graphical storyline? The two texts share a common view in conceiving of Babylon as the cradle of a primordial knowledge linked to magic, idolatry, and astro­logy. This stereotype view often includes references to the ‘seven and twelve’ astral bodies associated with the Babylonian Chaldeans and Persian Magians in different sources.61 Apparently, Dk vii and ŠE historio­graphic excerpts are based on an embedded ‘international’ vulgata on the origin of human civilization, which displayed the image of primeval and 57  58  59 

Morony 1984, 386.

Montgomery 1913, 135–37.

Montgomery 1913, 133; Morony 1984, 392.

Accordingly, Muslim authors frequently associated the origin of Sabianism with primeval kings of the Iranian epos; see occurrences in Christensen 1917–1934. 60 

A prominent example is John bar Penkāyē’s polemic against Magianism (De Menasce 1939, 588–89). On chapters from the Manichaean Kephalaia-like genre labelled as ‘The Seven and the Twelve’ see Sundermann 1992 [2001], 315–16; Dilley 2015, 23. A further example is in the Syriac text The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, which magnifies the School of Nisibis (sixth–seventh centuries ad) and includes an account of the old sapiential schools that characterized human history. The text mentions the teachings of the Chaldean in Babylon about the ‘seven and twelve’ (Ramelli 2005, 146). The reference shows the extent of this trope in pseudohistorio­graphical and identity discourses. 61 

149

defective wisdom spreading out from Babylonia, along with its promoters and opponents. Be that as it may, the answers to these questions require more extended investigations. These fragments witness pivotal developments in Iranian historio­graphy, marking the assimilation of heterogeneous elements and involvement in cosmopolitan discourses on the past. Indeed it was a long process in which some crucial periods proved to be decisive. The development of universal or synchronic views of human history must be seen in conjunction with the dynamics involving religious thoughts and the cultural landscape of Late Antiquity. The primeval centrality of Babylonia vigorously resurfaces in Islamic authors, who also collected Sasanian sources and refashioned stories from different traditions.62 In the ʿAbbasid age, the endeavour to harmonize and synchronize world history engaged with long-lasting historio­graphical customs, encapsulating multiple and heterogeneous layers of historical awareness into a new system.63 In this framework, many of the first ‘universal’ kings of Iranian epic, and above all Jam himself,64 often appear to various degrees associated with Babylonia. Their achievements include a wide range of cultural aspects evoking many topics already introduced in this paper.65 Conceptually, the deeds and marvellous residences of these kings were, according to the myth, set in a space corresponding to the heart of Xwanirah (Av. Xᵛaniraθa-), the central clime of Avestan cosmo­graphy. Thus, geo­graphical variations in these narrative motifs are indicative of cultural reconfiguration of this mythical centre due to social and historical factors. To a large extent the impression is that there was a phenomenon spreading in the vernacular culture of the Iranian communities settled in Mesopotamia on a vast scale, which saw major parts of the ‘national’ myth transposed to that geo­graphical setting. Indeed, the scattered but copious evidence shows that for an 62 

See e.g. Yarshater 1983, 402.

See Bowen-Savant 2013. When Islam came to the fore, IranoSemitic historio­graphical hybridization was already cultivated by different groups of late antique society, see e.g. Widengren 1960, 42–50; Shaked 1987, 245, 251–54. 63 

64  See e.g. the well-known story of the establishment of New Year festival (NP. Nowrūz) by Jamšid and its first celebration in Babylonia; for a collection of passages see Christensen 1917–1934, ii, 83–108.

For instance, both Hōšang and Tahmūras are frequently mentioned as the founders of Babylon (Christensen 1917–1934, i, 148, 160, 162, 195, 201, 202, 212; ii, 169, 171), while according to some authors Kay Kāvūs built there a wondrous tower (Skjærvø 2013). 65 

150 influential part of the Arsacid-Sasanian population, Mesopotamia was integrated into its cultural horizon, and on some occasions conceived as a key constituent of its sense of identity. In Pahlavi literature, this perspective is suggested by an apocalyptic prophecy occurring in Bundahišn (xxxiii. 29), which includes Babylon within the geo­graphical core of the Iranian kingdom (i.e. the Ērānšahr): ‘grōh-ēw āyēnd suxr nīšān ud suxr drafš ud pārs ud rōstāgīhā ī ērānšahr tā ō bābēl gīrēnd ud awēšān tāzīgān nizār kunēnd’ (A group will come with red banners and red flags. They will seize Pārs and the districts of Iran as far as Babylon; they will weaken the Arabs).66 More explicitly, many Arabo-Persian authors reflect a certain interchangeability among the concepts of old Xwanirah, Ērānšahr, and Babylonia itself.67 Such an overlap between the Iranian symbolic world-centre and that region — roughly corresponding to the Sasanian Asōrestān — resoundingly echoes in mythic stories,68 but it also had a political sense, as indicated by the definition of Iraq (Ar. al-ʿIrāq/Sawād) as dil–i Īrānšahr, namely ‘the heart of Iran’, given by some Islamic authors and possibly depending on a genuine Sasanian expression.69 It is likely that, during the rule of this dynasty, Babylonia became part of a consistent Iranocentric ideo­logy, which included epic history and cosmo­logical world view. Remarkable evidence of it is once again provided by Ṭabarī, who introduces in two separate chapters of his universal history the deeds of the legendary Iranian kings reigning in Babylon [sic].70 Evidently the Muslim historian is here drawing on sources deriving from the royal court in Ctesiphon or from circles involved with the intellectual milieu of the Sasanian metropolis. The continuity of major political and royal centres in that region (viz. Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and later Baghdad) must have fostered the transfer of symbols and prerogatives from Babylon to the new cities and their rulers.

66 

Pakzad 2005, 369; Agostini & Thrope 2020, 174.

See e.g. Thaʿālibī (Zotenberg 1900, 26), Dīnawarī (Christensen 1917–1934, ii, 83).

67 

As in the case of Ēriz/Īraj, the beloved son of Ferīdūn and ancestor of the Iranian kings, and the assignation of the central dominion of the inhabited world, see e.g. Ṭabarī (Brinner 1987, 26), Balʿamī (Zotenberg 1867, 120). 68 

69 

See Morony 1982, 3 and n. 27; Gnoli 1989, 157.

See Brinner 1991, 112; Perlmann 1987, 1. The connection between epic Persian kings and Babylon is repeatedly attested by medieval Islamic authors.

70 

Gianfilippo Terribili

Conclusions The evidence presented here is part of a long-lasting process of acculturation through which Iranian peoples dealt with the idea of Babylon. From a diachronic point of view, the process followed the different phases of political affirmation of the Iranian dynasties. Meanwhile, from a synchronic point of view, it must have achieved its own socio­logical layering. Within Arsacid-Sasanian society the memory of Babylon could have shifted depending on social or religious affiliation. However, all these tendencies were based on a common ground, which accorded to this city a pivotal role in the historical and cultural development of humankind. The idea expressed by Pahlavi texts originated from this shared view, broadly disseminated among different cultures of the post-Hellenistic era. The Zoroastrian doctors appropriated the memetic image of Babylon and manipulated it with a twofold purpose, namely to extoll the authority of their own tradition and fabricate a prophetic legend attuned to the Mesopotamian cross-cultural debate. Some parallelisms with Jewish, Christian, Manichaean, and Hermetic traditions reveal that the contact with the prestigious Mesopotamian civilization produced mutual intersections and analogous reactions in different groups. In re-elaborating the idea of Babylon and conveying literary tropes, all these groups conceived narrative motifs that ideo­logically defended the integrity of their native traditions and conversely facilitated the assimilation of new conceptions. Confrontations and mediations between historio­graphical traditions were in fact commonly practised in late antique and medieval Mesopotamia. Early Islamic sources reflect a decisive phase in this process, providing us with a wider view of the ways in which Iranians associated the image of Babylon with their own ‘national’ history. In this — I might go so far as to say — ‘world-history’ framework, both Arsacid-Sasanian and Zoroastrian traditions offered a substantial contribution to the memory of Babylon throughout the lands and ages.

9. Reversing and Reinventing the Centre of the World

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10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past: Narratives of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Culture Leonardo Capezzone Sapienza University of Rome

A bstract –

Medieval Arabic literary sources, from historio­ g raphy to geo­ g raphy — and more generically adab literature — assign to Babylon and its remains a peculiar place. Interest for the ‘after-life of Bābil’ (as Caroline Janssen calls the whole phenomenon in her Bābil, the City of Witchcraft and Wine: The Name and Fame of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Geo­graphical Texts, University of Ghent, Ghent, 1995, 91), is often connected with a wider issue cherished by Medieval Islamic culture, which inherited it from Late Antiquity, that is to say the world history of lost books and of dispersed knowledge. Actually, memories of Babylon depend on one hand on the biblical tradition, and on the other hand on the Persian Sasanian tradition, the latter focused on the destruction of Babylon and the negative feature of Alexander. As a result, the fusion of the historic-mythical traditions in Medieval Arabic culture generated the inclusion of Babylon and its memories in a history of catastrophes which caused the dramatic loss of knowledge and libraries of the past. Thus Babylon becomes part of a second general issue, focused on translation as a historical device capable of saving libraries and knowledge otherwise destined to loss and oblivion. Translating the ancient knowledge had a specific relevance in the Abbasid age, being an aspect of the cultural policies of what can be called ‘an Empire ideo­logy’. In that sense, Babylon is given a role in the reflection on the roots of Islamic civilization, and the process sounds like a synthesis of myth and fantasy. Ibn al-Nadīm, with his catalogue of books, provides an unexplored, tenth-century instance of such a process, in which Babylon stands as a fruitful reference to the past: high culture and collective imagination combine with each other in order to fulfil a public request of reading in the Abbasid society of the time. Lost novels, whose only surviving trace is the title mentioned by Ibn al-Nadīm, are located in a Babylonian context, orienting the ancient memories towards the realm of fiction.

Babylon as a Place of Ideo­logical Combat In Culture and Imperialism, Edward W. Said defined the concept of narrative as the method used by colonized populations to affirm their identity and their history, in opposition to the hegemonic discourse of the dominant culture of which they are generally the object.1 This definition, which is pivotal to post-colonial theory, is perhaps useful for understanding from a perspective that is both postmodern but with reverberations upon the medieval Arab-Islamic past of some dynamics generated at the time when the imperial ideo­logy of the Abbasid Caliphate, at the end of the eighth century, had implemented a cultural policy of Arabization and Islamization of the history of the lands and people united under that dominion.2 This management of the past was elaborated in terms of an inheritance welcomed and revived by the hegemonic discourse, translated and therefore narrated in the dominant language. This set apart some major nodes through which transmission of the cultural heritage passed, represented by the passage of knowledge and texts contributing to the construction of a multiple vision of classicism and the people who had taken part in it. These nodes, of which pre-Islamic Iran and ancient Greece were undoubtedly among the most important, have become, to use the termino­logy of Said, places of ideo­logical combat, to which the shu‘ūbiyya, the movement aimed at establishing equality between Arabs and non-Arabs. has given many voices.3 Between the ninth and tenth centuries, Babylon seemed to be one of these nodes, constituting, albeit to a lesser degree, one of those battlefields. We can, however, note that the interest in including Babylon and its antiquity in the great discourse on Abbasid imperial 1  2  3 

Said 1994, xiii. Gutas 1998.

Gibb 1962; Mottahedeh 1976; Agius 1980; Pohl 2003.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 157–172 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127143

158 ideo­logy was initially directed at the Aramaic peoples inhabiting Mesopotamia and who were obviously aware of their own Babylonian descent.4 Otherwise, all the sources making up the representation of Babylon identify their ‘historical’ location through the languages of its inhabitants, always linked to the Semitic matrix, from time to time called Nabataean, Syriac (sūryānī), Chaldean.5 In chapter 1 of section 1 of the Fihrist, dealing with the universal history of languages and writings, Ibn al-Nadīm (d. post 987) wrote thus, recalling a passage (from book 1 of the Torah) by Theodore the Commentator (possibly Theodor Abū Qurra, d. 823): Nabatean was the language in which God spoke to Adam, a purer language than Syriac; the Babylonians also used to speak it. After the languages became merged, the language used by the Babylonians remained unaltered but the Nabatean spoken in the surrounding villages became a spurious, badly pronounced version of Syriac.6

The seminal work by Caroline Janssen, dealing with awareness of the Babylonian heritage in the medieval Arab-Islamic culture between the eighth and tenth centuries — or to use her own pleasant definition: ‘what different people [in medieval Islam] believed to be Babel’s past’7 — acknowledged a Babylon in which a mythical past of Semitic and biblical ancestry was in conflict with an equally mythical past of Persian origin. The scholars of medieval Islam approached this dual interpretation of the past by making a great and complex effort to create a chrono­logy for it. The successive eras were articulated by means of a genealogical and political vision that identified the founders as a set of key characters — Nimrod on the one hand and al-Ḍaḥḥak on the other. These two characters were the incarnation of an ideal of sovereignty, power, and justice (or iniquity) within which to divide up peoples and their descent, what we would today call ethnicity. This two-edged vision, Semitic and Iranian, on the one hand establishes dates and genealogies and, on the other, draws geo­ graphical borders within which ancient history produced documented events, separated by radically different visions and their resulting narratives. According to the Semitic vision,8 Babylon represents the height of

Leonardo Capezzone disaster and perdition, and the Jewish mediation, with its memory of the Babylonian exile, undoubtedly contributed to this malign attitude inherited by the Arabic medieval culture.9 The ill fame of the city and its history is reflected in popular culture and in the literature, both of which — according to another definition coined by Caroline Janssen —10 bear witness to this ‘afterlife of Bābil’: wine, sin, luxury, and decadence in the lifestyles associated with Babylon, are frequently referred to in medieval Arab poetry, alongside another motif, so to speak of a pre-archaeo­logical nature, which links the ruins of Babylon with a desolate past of which no memory remains.11 In themselves, the ruins of Babylon arouse a reflection leading to a lyrical searching for a meaning for the past, entirely based on the sense of desolation evoked by the traces of what remains after a catastrophe. The sinister shadow that, in popular culture, envelops Babylon, starting with the impiety of Nimrod, its founder who built the Tower of Babel (mention of which would also be made, according to the medieval exegesis, in Koran 16. 23–29),12 coexists with an attitude of erudite interest. The associations of Babylon and its ancient history hark back to the origins of certain techno­logical practices, in particular those relating to the control of water and to agriculture.13 It must be said that Babylon, whether a vestige or a ruin, although localized and seen, from the tenth century on, as the object of antiquarian research,14 remains excluded from being considered, either from the Semitic or Iranian point of view, as playing a relevant part in ancient knowledge. The monument is reduced to a relic in an epistemo­ logical space in which the object of a possible prearchaeo­logy is the inscription, the tombstone, the stone bearing a writing, which is capable of capturing interest only if it can be deciphered, translated, and finally interpreted. Babylon, therefore, belongs in an ambiguous way to that ideo­logical framework which accompanies the process of recovering and translating ancient texts, considered to be human heritage, and the con9 

Brody 1998.

10  4  5  6  7  8 

Gutas 1998, 43.

11 

Janssen 1995, 151; Gutas 1998, 43.

12 

Janssen 1995, 148. See also Janssen 2002.

13 

Tajaddud 1977, 22.

Janssen 1995, 148–51.

Janssen 1995, 91.

Janssen 1995, 193–94.

The medieval Koranic exegesis of the verses dealing with the Tower of Babel and its ruin would deserve a separate study.

14 

Janssen 1995, 212–13. Janssen 1995, 137–41.

159

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past sequent emphasis placed on foreign sciences and their transmission.15 As such, Babylon echoes in the multivoiced debate that animates, and divides, the Abbasid imperial ideo­logy because also from there a transmission of knowledge and texts has started that is inscribed in the historical legacy of the empire.

Catastrophes and Texts In addition to its ruins, Babylon has given shape to a type of catastrophe peculiar to each form of renaissance: the loss and dispersal of knowledge. This image of catastrophe is also that in which, in its anti-Byzantine guise, the Abbasid ideo­logy constructs the myth of the renaissance in Greek knowledge on Islamic soil. However the Persian narrative emerging in parallel, risks being obscured by the emphasis on the Hellenic origin of the foreign sciences, and it reclaims a primacy over the origins of Babylonian sciences, and also the purpose to save them from extinction. The catastrophe that hit Babylon in ancient times results in a colossal loss of books that the ancient Persian dynasties saved, reconstituted, and preserved. In short, this is the narrative unfolded by the Iranian point of view, created by Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī, the eighth-century astro­loger, at work at the court of the Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr (for whom, alongside other colleagues, he established the horoscope of the foundation of Baghdad) up to the caliphate of Hārūn al-Rashīd (for whom, in his Khizānat al-ḥikma, he translated pahlavī texts).16 This is a text, now lost, of which the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm has preserved a long passage, whose enigmatic title is Kitāb al-Nahmuṭān fī l-mawālīd (‘On Nativities’).17

15  16 

Webb 2012.

Pingree 1983.

Tajaddud 1977, 299–301. The work has been discussed by Gutas 1998, 38–40 (dealing with the passages related to the destruction of Persian texts); Van Bladel 2011 (with a complete translation of the text and a study of its Middle Persian sources); Langermann (in press) hints at this text, and shows how even modern orientalist scholarship has carried on obscuring the Persian narrative. According to Langermann, criticizing Gutas, historians of mathematics have neglected Babylonian influences on astronomy (n. 18, and beyond, nn. 23 and 24); al-Khwārizmī and other previous algebraists would seem to depend on traditions of mathematical thought not entirely bounded with Greek sources (as Gutas 1998 emphasizes), but possibly connected with Babylon; astronomy as received by the Arabs seems to be a Babylonian-Greek hybrid. 17 

Defined by Van Bladel as the first history of science written in Arabic, the narrative provided by Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī unwinds in three epoch-making periods: the pre-Alexandrian age, its origins in the reign of the legendary sovereigns Jām and al-Ḍaḥḥāk; the ruinous conquest of Alexander and the dispersion of the sciences; the advent of the Sassanids and their efforts to have the lost knowledge reconstructed. The first period was a happy era, the dawn of human civilization, in which the sciences, particularly astro­logy, and technical skills were clearly visible and known to the people ‘as the Babylonians described it in their books, and the Egyptians learned from them, and the Indians practised it in their country’.18 Right from the beginning therefore, the primacy of Babylon was established in writing down the knowledge and the techniques in the form of books, subsequently described as inscribed on stone or wood. However, an era of decadence and barbarism began, due to the errors and sins of human beings. Although they had fallen into a state of confusion under the reign of Jām, people received assistance from their successors and continued ‘bringing recollection, comprehension, and understanding of these matters, and [receiving] knowledge of the past’.19 During the second period, according to a tradition dating back to the Avesta, the foundation of a city in Sawād (in modern-day Iraq), is attributed to the devilish al-Ḍaḥḥāk, and its name was placed under the auspices of Jupiter.20 Thanks to al-Ḍaḥḥāk, all the knowledge was gathered and entrusted to scholars placed at the head of twelve palaces. According to another version quoted by Ibn al-Nadīm, there were seven palaces.21 Among those wise men was Hermes, who governed the palace under the control of Mercury. Then another period followed of confusion and decadence, signalled by the coming of a prophet, which saw the decline of the community 18  19 

Tajaddud 1977, 299; Van Bladel 2011, 44. Tajaddud 1977, 299; Van Bladel 2011, 44.

On the Avestan connection between al-Ḍaḥḥāk and Babylon, and the attempt to provide an etymo­logy linked to Jupiter in the name of the city by way of the Aramaic name of the god (Bēl), see Van Bladel 2011, 53. 20 

Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 300; Van Bladel 2011, 45. The seven cites placed under the guidance of the wise men could be a variant according to which Babylon was divided into seven cities, each one renowned for prodigies and enchantments (Janssen 1995, 200). In the text of Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī the emphasis is also placed on the techno­logical nature of the knowledge conserved in those cities (anwā‘ al-‘ilm wa-ḥiyal al-manāfi‘). 21 

160 of scholars and their ascendance over the people. The scholars chose exile, and Hermes went to Egypt, where he became king of that land, imparting his knowledge to its inhabitants and improving their living conditions. However, the greater part of the knowledge and the books stayed in Babylon, until the advance of the armies led by Alexander. He killed the Persian king Darius, took possession of that kingdom, razed to the ground the walls and towers of Babylon, built by demons and giants, and ‘destroyed the varieties of learning that had been inscribed in the different kinds of buildings, written on their stones and timber, tearing them down and burning them, scattering their arrangement’.22 Following that, Alexander had copied that which had been collected and conserved ‘in the offices and the libraries’ (al-dawāwīn wa l-khazā’in) in the city of Isṭakhr (Persepolis), and had them translated into Greek and Egyptian (ilā al-lisān al-rūmī wa l-qibṭī). Finally he ordered the burning of all that had been written in Persian (al-fārisiyya), collecting all those he considered useful among the books on astro­logy, medicine, and natural sciences and sending them to Egypt together with other sciences and treasures. What remained in India and China was collected and copied by Persian kings in the days of their prophet Zoroaster and the sage Jāmāsp, while in Iraq all knowledge was completely dispersed, at a time when, following the death of Alexander, that land was divided among factions and rivalries, bringing the Party Kings (mulūk al-ṭawā’if) into existence. Babylon remained a ravaged land until Ardashīr the Sassanid became king and extended his authority over the whole of Babylonian territory. At his request, missions were sent to India, China, and the Byzantine land (al-Rūm) to copy the books to be found in those places. His son Sābūr continued his father’s work, having the books copied in the Persian language according to the teaching of Hermes the Babylonian and according to the example of Dorotheus the Syrian, of Fydrws of Athens,23 and the Indian Farmāsp, ‘just as they had taken from all these books, the origin of which was from Babylon’.24 The intention of al-Nawbakhtī’s text is clear: to highlight the work of reconstructing ancient knowledge by the Sassanid kings. However, over and above ideo­logical appeal, it sheds light on the ‘historical’ trajectory of the journey of the books and knowledge, establishing the 22  23  24 

Tajaddud 1977, 300; Van Bladel 2011, 46.

On these names see Gutas 1998, 29 n. 31; Van Bladel 2011, 47 n. 23. Tajaddud 1977, 300–01; Van Bladel 2011, 47.

Leonardo Capezzone dependency of Egyptian, as well as Indian and Chinese knowledge, on Babylon. In addition, this trajectory intersects a nodal point in which the Persian narrative collides with the Semitic one: the founder of Babylon and, as a result, the chrono­logy of that foundation. The biblical tradition, based on Genesis 10.  8, according to which the giant Nimrod, with an act of arrogance, founded the city of Babylon, had been absorbed by the historical Arab-Islamic culture between the eighth and tenth centuries, and treated as a matter of scholarly reflection and investigation. However, that same historical culture had also acknowledged and discussed the Persian variant of the narrative, possibly translated into Arabic for the first time by Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī, claiming primacy by identifying its founder as the equally titanic figure of al-Ḍaḥḥāk.25 This debate, which was conducted in Arabic from the eighth century onward between the experts and connoisseurs on all things ancient, is a relevant part of a conflict between the methods used for historical knowledge, which opposes, in the classifications of knowledge and the epistemo­logical status of knowledge, Arabic knowledge to foreign knowledge. This conflict, which called upon the need to distinguish between and separate that which is real history and that which is fiction,26 is neatly summed up by Tarif Khalidi: At about the time that schools of law and Hadith began to sacralise the past, to establish the in illo tempore needed for all myths of foundation, free and iconoclastic spirits conjured up an alternative image of a past whose many revered models of piety were seen to have fallen far short of the ideal. The ‘epic’ past of Hadith pitted against the ‘romantic’ past of Adab: a contrast shorn of many subtleties but one that could be left to stand as representing what most distinguished one manner of historical thought from another.27

Such a tension between the two different concepts of construction of the past, between the eighth and tenth centuries, marked the cultural history of classical Islam: the method based on the reconstruction of an event by way of a chain of transmitters, relating to the religious, juridical, and historio­graphic culture, and the method based, in the absence of any directly relevant sources 25 

Janssen 1995, 149.

I hold with the methodo­logical distinction used by Günther 2000, 172 n. 5, using the two terms, history and fiction, as categories not only in contrast but in opposition to each other. For an original discussion of this topic, see Hoyland 2006. 26 

27 

Khalidi 1994, 130.

161

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past and documents, on a rational and intellectual attitude to acknowledge the lessons of the past, originating from the humanistic culture of adab. Muḥaddithūn and udabā’, traditionists and humanists, are the architects of two conflicting historical visions. Inspired by a distinction made in Bachtin’s Dialogic Imagination, Khalidi attributes to the former an epic attitude and to the latter a romantic attitude to the past.

ibn Noah, thus uniting the main peoples of the Islamic empire (together with Indians and the inhabitants of Sind) in a single common genealogy, revealed by God to Moses and to his people. Nimrod, a descendant of Ham ibn Noah, erupts into this general framework, in which the Nabataeans live in Babylon and are already monotheists. He imposes his reign on Babylon, forcing the inhabitants to practice idolatry.31

This conflict, as noted by Khalidi,28 is by nature not only methodo­logical and epistemo­logical but also ideo­ logical and it operates on different planes in a complex reflection on the past that begins, in the eighth century, together with the process of cross-culturalism triggered by the Arab conquests and the confrontation between the Islamic hegemony and the cultures and histories of the peoples subject to and taken over by the new ArabIslamic ecumene. In other words, the tension between the methodo­logies for reconstructing the past is part of a process of describing the cultural geo­graphy of the empire, possibly not vastly different from that deconstructed by Edward W. Said in Orientalism, in which foreign cultures (these days known as ‘other’ cultures) are identified and located in a temporal order linking them to the past, laying them out on a map delineated by temporal sequences.

However, previously al-Ṭabarī had made room for the Iranian component in relation to the founding of Babylon, in a passage in which he writes that some nonPersian scholars maintain that the figure the Persians believe to be Adam (Gayōmart, the first man in the Avestan writing on the creation), is in reality Gonar ibn Japhet ibn Noah (and therefore connected to the common genealogy we mentioned previously), whose sons took control of Babylon. Further on, al-Ṭabarī accepts a tradition according to which the Persian Ōshahanj, King of the Seven Climes, founded the two most ancient cities, Sūs and Babylon, and iron was melted for the first time in his reign.32

If the narrative reflected in the text of Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī undoubtedly belongs to the romantic mode, the genealogical issue underlying the foundation of Babylon was formulated in historio­graphic form, when the city and its origins were returned to a universal historical plane. With al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), the father of Islamic annalistic historio­graphy, the romantic attitude is absorbed by a new epic approach, more precisely choral, prepared to encompass and therefore to welcome all the versions, according to a tendency to provide a multiple vision — the same as that which innervates the process of reconstructing the Sunna of the Prophet.29 Therefore he put together what would be called in post-modern terms ‘a synchronic plane of the geopolitical map’.30 Based on the authority of a chain of transmitters or narrators, ending with al-Ḥārith ibn Muḥammad, moving through Hishām ibn al-Kalbī and starting with Ibn ‘Abbās, al-Ṭabarī assigns a common lineage to Arabs, Persians, and Nabataeans from Shem See also Kennedy 2005, xix–xx. In more general terms: Heck 2000; Goodman 2003.

28 

More precisely, I refer to the construction of a multiple orthodoxy as discussed by Donner 1998. 29 

30 

Dimock 2001, 175.

Thus, a double temporal sequence is set out, held together by a single, coherent genealogy, and al-Ṭabarī can also accept, without having to subscribe to it, the primacy of al-Ḍaḥḥāk as the first universal sovereign and, consequently, quoting the connoisseur of antiquity, and his habitual source, Hishām ibn al-Kalbī, according to whom this figure is the same as that of Nimrod.33 Nonetheless, the historian adds: ‘Scholars experts in the account of the forebears and in kingdom of the affairs of the peoples of ancient times have a different view’. Indeed, he writes, it is well known that Nimrod had Nabataean origins, while al-Ḍaḥḥāk was Persian. Yet, ‘scholars of scripture and men learned in the accounts of past generations assert that al-Ḍaḥḥāk peaced the Sawād and its surroundings to the right and the left under the rule of Nimrod, and made him and his descendants governors there’.34

Babylon Is a Location Sufficient attention has never been paid to the points of contact, even though they exist, between the areas of cultural production of the Abbasid era (ninth–tenth 31  32  33  34 

De Goeje 1879–1881, I ser., 218, 220; Brinner 1989, 17, 18.

De Goeje 1879–1881, I ser., 147, 171; Rosenthal 1987, 318, 341. De Goeje 1879–1881, I ser., 205; Brinner 1989, 4.

De Goeje 1879–1881, I ser., 324–25; Brinner 1989, 109–10.

162 centuries) usually seen and perceived as separate from the knowledge classifications of the time. I am referring, on the one hand, to the area concerned with antiquarian research associated with the genealogist’s competence, or the culture of the state chancellery and administration; while, on the other hand, the area dealing with developing a literary synthesis between the models of political culture typical of Late Antiquity, and which appear in the Arabic context in declared, or alleged, dependency on a Greek or Persian source. It is usual to claim unequivocally that this point of contact is the humanistic culture of the adab, but this claim, when it is not generic, is habitually supported by a reference to high levels of cultural production. The relationships between adab and historio­graphy are seen in light of a process of cultural construction of the past that calls into question multiple branches of the encyclopaedia of knowledge.35 Undoubtedly the heterogeneous literary corpus that I am about to describe, and that we can define as belonging to the genre of the novel, is the direct emanation, to a greater or lesser degree, of that construction. The interest in the past that emerges from the list of fiction books that the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm provided us with is, in a certain sense, in communication with the ‘archaeo­logical’ needs that, in the Abbasid era, are part of both the cultural recovery of the pre-Islamic Jāhiliyya,36 and of the idea of the Greek and Iranian past, a past considered by the medieval Arab-Islamic culture as classical and authoritative by definition. Leaving aside the rigid schemata for the classification of knowledge employed at a high cultural level, when moving on to consider the real circulation of books, we realize that the literature is truly enjoyed by a set of readers who partly follow fashion and the cultural trends set by the highest classes of society, above all the court circles, seen as the place in which intellectual production is legitimized, but who also partly determine literature’s development and possible decline, thus directing the circuit of booksellers and bookshops. The one that Ibn al-Nadīm, probably the most important bookseller in tenth-century Baghdad, shows us is a scenario from which, above all, titles of lost works emerge, while showing a fluidity in the demand and 35 

See for example Khalidi 1994, 96–99.

In the same way, the list of titles of romantic novels provided by Ibn al-Nadīm (Tajaddud 1977, 365), clearly emanates from the same process of constructing the pre-Islamic past as that examined by Drory 1996. 36 

Leonardo Capezzone supply of books and narrative themes that overcome the considerable divisions and conflicts between certain knowledge and knowledge of uncertain origin. In other words, readership seems to include and, at the same time, to go far beyond the tenacious division that creates opposition between and separates history and fiction, generated by the claims of both the followers of the learned tradition or those of the culture of the adab. In the pages of his catalogue, that describes the range of books in circulation in those days in the capital city of the empire, Ibn al-Nadīm shows us a particular modality of the impact of Babylon on the medieval Arab-Islamic cultural imagery. This modality is still generated by an articulate discourse on antiquity and the heritage of the past, but Ibn al-Nadīm’s list captured it through a specific aspect of the transit of texts and literary production that has been generally not yet much investigated: that relating to the literary genre of the novel. This aspect reflects a living image of a society in which the demand for literature and literary tastes brought to life the silent space of the culture of reading in the Islamic city.37 The titles enlisted by the biblio­grapher, through the suggestion of their themes and the motifs, offer numerous references to a past whose protagonists are often Sassanid Iran and the Byzantine world.38 Ibn al-Nadīm devotes the first and third section of chapter VIII of the Fihrist to the moderate amount of ‘exotic’, imaginative literature encountered in the publishing market of tenth-century Baghdad, thus tracing the borders of the cultural geo­graphy of the society in which he lived: India, Persia, Rūm. Actually, that chapter appears anomalous in relation to the overall plan of the work. Compared to the other chapters whose criterion is essentially bio­graphical, while within a general classification of knowledge, here a list of heterogeneous titles is grouped according to their affinity with some narrative genres. In the first section, dealing with ‘books of narrative and legends’ (kutub fī l-asmār wa l-khurāfāt), among other things, one can find the well-known passage in which Ibn al-Nadīm attributes to the Persians and, alternatively to Alexander the Great, the invention On reading in the Islamic Middle Ages see Hirschler 2012. Some reflections on the division between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature are in Pellat 1962; on the historio­graphic aspirations of the novels in Ibn al-Nadīm’s list, see Capezzone 2000, 403–10. On the sometimes problematic reliability of the Fihrist as a source and on the at times debatable rigour with which the biblio­grapher catalogues his titles, see the limits in the example given by Leder 1987.

37 

38 

Capezzone 2004.

163

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past of the literary genre of the asmār, or night-time stories, showing the origin of the One Thousand and One Nights.39 Let us skip for a moment to the end of the first section of chapter VIII. After providing a long list of novels of a romantic nature, from which it is possible to infer that they belong to the typically Hellenistic genre of lovers pursued by fate,40 Ibn al-Nadīm resumes the thread of the discourse at the beginning of the chapter, expressing some thoughts that shed light on the literary tastes of the era and on some historical situations in which this kind of literature is successful for being consumed by a particular class and type of reader. In the first para­graphs of the chapter in which the biblio­ grapher established the diffusion of the oldest version of the Thousand and One Nights, this genre is relegated to a lower level of literary enjoyment. At the end of the list of romantic novels he makes a similar assertion, and states that the genre of the novel (al-asmār wa l-khurāfāt) achieved a popular success at the time of the Abbasid caliphs, locating the period when they were most read as during the caliphate of al-Muqtadir (r. 908–932). For this type of text therefore, the profile is for an audience with links to the courtly environments, but from what is added by Ibn al-Nadīm, we learn that the success achieved by this literary genre encouraged booksellers (al-warrāqūn) to increase production of such books, putting ‘forged’ fake texts on the market (ṣannafū wa-kadhdhabū).41 From such an assertion we can deduce that, following on from the first generation of supposedly ‘authentic’ texts, although there is no way of tracing this authenticity whose origin may be Iranian or Hellenistic and whose legitimacy is provided by a scholarly translation, the literature market is invaded by texts emulating the form and content of the preceding models. The common denominator that would appear to guarantee the homogenous nature of the titles listed in the first section, as well as in the third, of chapter VIII should be the historical character of the narratives. Each of the thematic sets bring together titles of texts in which the events are set in a past, although not always historiTajaddud 1977, 363–67. On the social impact and the consensus reached by the literary genre of the asmār wa l-khurāfāt see Drory 1994. On the relationship between this genre of literary works and the emergence of a middle literature for a middle class, and its entanglements with ‘high’ literature cfr. Chraïbi 2016, 15–65.

39 

40  The spread of Hellenistic motifs in this Arabic literary genre is illustrated by Von Grunebaum 1942. See also Hägg 1986. 41 

Tajaddud 1977, 367.

cally defined. The historical era of Sassanid Iran whose chrono­logy is identified by such key names as Ardashīr or Cosroe Anūshirwān is mixed with the Jāhiliyya era of pre-Islamic paganism, where almost all the romantic novels listed are set. However, the allusions to Byzantine times which ‘create’ the texts’ antiquity, are even more vague. Needless to say, these titles contain no traces of any texts that we could define as historio­graphic, but, starting from a premise of literary genre, rather than the author, that dominates the catalogue giving it meaning, it is possible to see, by way of cross-references to different places in the Fihrist, the whole socio-cultural fabric in which historio­graphy and the novel seem to intermingle. Following this route, subject to the bio­graphicalthematic organization set out by Ibn al-Nadīm, a route that could be said to be implicit to the text, at times being manifest, at others allusive, in which Babylon also appears, there is a meeting of that dialectic between the author and the literary genre that characterized all the problems of attribution and authenticity inherent to classical Arab-Islamic literary discourse.42 In these pages of the Fihrist, such a dialectic reappears in the framework of the texts originating from foreign cultures. Once again, it is from this hidden route of authors and intellectual skills, that we saw emerging from the conflict between the different methods of making history as described by Tarif Khalidi, that appear, for example, historians who write novels (historical novels, of course). This chapter of the Fihrist therefore seems like a shadowy zone in which there is a convergence of literary modes and texts generated by multiple methods of cultural production: the historio­graphic culture relating to the akhbār genre or the political and philosophical culture of the siyāsa texts or of regal ethics (adab al-mulūk or akhlāq al-mulūk), catalogued by Ibn al-Nadīm in the places in which it is immediately possible to deduce the relationship between the sense of the past, on the one hand, and the text, author or translator, authenticity, and genre. From this shadowy zone emerges the construction of the images of the past according to a new cultural model for managing the past which includes both fiction and an imaginative component — something that is threatening for scholars but entertaining for less severe 42 

See the masterly study by Kilito 1985.

164 readers. Within this literary production in which fiction is given a historical setting, there seems in fact to come to light a living aspect of the controversy that opposed those disciplines with a rigorously scholarly tradition (the muḥaddithūn) to the knowledge of the historians (akhbāriyyūn), sometimes accused of inaccuracy and lack of criticism in recollecting and verifying their own sources. This lack of certainty in the historio­graphic status, at least up to the tenth century, weakened the borders between history, understood as narration of the past, and narrative fiction. 43 Ibn al-Nadīm acknowledges that the akhbāriyyūn demonstrate skill within the overall framework of knowledge where that which is perceived as a reconstruction of the past is concerned. He therefore accepts their claim for intellectual legitimacy, considering their work to be a solid and compact corpus that has impact, at least, on literary tastes and the market for literature. However, he does not guarantee that all the works belonging to the nebulous genre of the akhbār are identically placed. The most eloquent example is the recurrence of works linked to this genre in the biblio­graphies of authors grouped together in the chapter dedicated to the secretaries of the imperial treasuries (kuttāb). The fact that the biblio­grapher uses the expression kadhdhabū for the effective unmasking of the lack of authenticity of the historio­graphic content of such works of fiction, and to denounce the emulation of a high literary canon perpetrated by the authors can probably also be related to the polemic on the method of making (or creating) history and on the genre to which historical writing belongs.44 The brief history of the literary genre of the historical novel is interesting: ‘As we have already said’ continues Ibn al-Nadīm ‘those who start composing in the genre of the asmār wa l-khurāfāt […] were Sahl ibn Hārūn, ‘Alī ibn Dāwūd and Al-‘Attābī’. The first three names belong to the group of court secretaries, promotors of the profane culture of the adab, whose works are cata43  On the appearance of the specialist definition of akhbāriyyūn, that seem to appear for the first time with Ibn al-Nadīm, see Leder 1992, 313–15. On the various concepts of history/historio­graphy and the conflict between the historio­graphic methods, see Laroui 1999, 41–66; Khalidi 1994, 137–41. But in different methodo­logical terms see also Günther 1998.

Equally eloquent is the termino­logical differentiation adopted here and elsewhere by Ibn al-Nadīm to distinguish an original work (ta’līf) from a work of compilation (muṣannaf). More vague is the difference that in the Fihrist he seems to state between naql and tarjama, both of which can be translated as ‘translation, version’. 44 

Leonardo Capezzone logued in the chapter that the Fihrist dedicates to the kuttāb. Here Ibn al-Nadīm refers back to a literary and cultural circuit dating back at least to a century before. The three secretaries are fairly famous and, together with Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, they played an important part in spreading Persian culture both as the translators of texts which are acknowledged as holding the status of antiquity, and for producing imitations of the classical style. It is therefore in this cultural context that it is possible to understand a single collocation, by Ibn al-Nadīm, of the Persian narratives (asmār al-Furs) and those considered ‘authentic’ relating to their kings and their moral conduct (al-siyar wa l-asmār al-ṣaḥīḥa llatī li-mulūkihim), alongside the titles of the ‘Byzantine books of narratives, chronicles, legends and proverbs’ (kutub al-Rūm fī l-asmār wa l-tawārīkh wa l-khurāfāt wa l-amthāl), and lastly, the ‘titles of the books (on) the kings of Babylon’ (asmā’ kutub mulūk Bābil). Famous and less famous Persian novels, such as the well-known Khuday-nāmah, the Book of Rustam and Isfandiyār, the Book of Darius and the Golden Idol, the Book of Rūzbih the Orphan, two probable bio­graphies of Anūshirwān, or the controversial Book of Būdasf (or Yūdasf) and Bilawhar45 all exist together within a single literary space considered to be of a homogenous genre. These sit alongside the Byzantine and Indian titles, thematically in dialogue with texts that have a sovereign as protagonist of the city of Babylon, and others descended from narrations of the post-Alexandrian Iranian Party Kings (wa-ghayruhum min mulūk al-ṭawā’if wa-aḥādithuhum).46 The majority of the titles of these texts demonstrate a link with the theme of enlightened kingship and good government, a theme that also characterizes most of the novels of Persian origin, while others recall more explicitly fictional atmospheres. The fact Tajaddud 1977, 364. Following this, novels of Indian and Byzantine origin appear together with other Parthian novels and whose translation from pahlavī to Arabic is attributed to the circle of Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, Sahl ibn Hārūn, and Abān ibn Lāḥiq. It should be noted that these novels, together with some texts from the Persian corpus defined as authentic (al-siyar wa l-asmār al-ṣaḥīḥa) are quoted with explicit mention of such a mechanism as translation (referred to at the beginning of the chapter VIII (Tajaddud 1977, 364)), which legitimates the origin, the history, and control of the textual process. The complexity of the questions that can be raised on the basis of this patent of ‘authenticity’ that Ibn al-Nadīm uses as a guarantee for some texts of Iranian origin, linked to the genre of bio­graphies of Persian kings also dear to Arab historio­graphy, is amply demonstrated by Grignaschi 1969; Grignaschi 1973. 45 

46 

Tajaddud 1977, 364–65.

165

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past that the different groups appear without any distinction between them being made lead us to believe that the small collection of Babylonian-style titles belongs to the genre of fiction. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that, immediately afterwards, the section continues with a long list of the titles of stories dedicated to lovers of the Jāhiliyya and of Islamic times whose deeds and events inspired some books (ullifa fī akhbārihim kutub). The section ends with titles of books that are stated to be fiction: stories of relationships between human beings and jinn, and tales telling of the wonders of the sea (‘ajā’ib al-baḥr). Thus we skim through such titles as the ‘Book of the Just King of Babylon and Satan and How He Tricked Him and Led Him into Temptation’ (Kitāb malik Bābil al-ṣāliḥ wa-Iblīs kayfa aḥtāla lahu wa-aghwāhu); the ‘Book of the King Who Astrides a Reed’ (?) (Kitāb al-malik al-rākib al-qaṣaba); the ‘Book of the Old Man and the Young’ (Kitāb al-shaykh wa l-fatā); the ‘Book of Ardashīr King of Babylon and his Minister *Ar.wayh’ (Kitāb Ardashīr malik Bābil wa-*Ar.wayh wazīruhu); the ‘Book of the Wise Hermit’ (Kitāb al-ḥākim al-nāsik). In the titles in which Babylon is mentioned, the ancient city is always connected with the theme of kingship and its exercise, which is wise when guided by a minister, or wicked when it is exposed to the temptations of the devil. In this small collection of books with no author, the Persian and Semitic ancestries seem to coexist in peace, brought together in a single genre: alongside the Babylon governed by Ardashīr we also find the other Babylon in a novel: the ‘Book of Nimrod King of Babylon’ (Kitāb Nimrūd malik Bābil), a book whose title and setting recall a biblical reference.47 However, a little earlier, Ibn al-Nadīm had mentioned a ‘Book of Nimrod King of Babylon’, placing it within a set of ‘night-time’ narratives of Persian origin (asmār al-Furs), whose titles bear a clear mark of fiction.48 We are probably dealing with two very different texts. So far we have seen fictional texts without an author in a Babylonian setting, whose literary genre determines their location in the Fihrist. In a completely different context, to be precise in the third section of chapter III, dealing with courtiers and literary figures (al-nudamā’ wa l-julasā’ wa l-udabā’) and the titles of the books composed by them, the author mentions the only literary text, and the last in our series of ‘Babylonian’ novels,

with an explicit reference in the title to a Babylonian setting, that can claim a paternity. This is the ‘Book of the Two Tyrannical Kings of Babylon and Egypt and the Wise Byzantine King’ (Kitāb al-malik al-bābilī wa l-malik al-miṣrī al-bāghiyyayn wa l-malik al-ḥālim [var. al-ḥākim] al-rūmī).49 Its author, Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir ibn Ṭayfūr (d. 893) comes from a Persian family of courtiers and historio­graphers and he is also a historian working at the court of the father of al-Muqtadir, the caliph al-Mu‘taḍiḍ (r. 892–902).50 The theme that the title implies and, as we have seen, that is common to all the texts in which Babylon is evoked, still carries the heritage of a philosophical and political tradition of Late Antiquity, of kingship and its good and bad practices. Moreover, it is by now clear that this theme is the inspiration not only for, on the one hand, a great deal of literary fiction produced at that time but also, on the other hand, on the basis of the inventory provided by Ibn al-Nadīm, for learned men who were used to practise historio­graphy.51 Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir, one of the most representative names on the cultural scene of ninth-century Baghdad, authored a historio­graphical source of some importance: the Kitāb Baghdād, of which all that remains is the part relating to the caliphate of al-Ma’mūn. Ibn al-Nadīm acknowledges that this prolific author, in close contact with the world of booksellers and copyists, deserves unquestioned fame as a literary critic and antho­logist as well as an expert on antiquity, the latter aspect reflected in his skills in the field of akhbār. Some examples of his vast literary production help us to understand the sense of the presence of Babylon within the narrative world of fiction that emerges from the scenario described in the Fihrist.52 They appear to be halfway between historical reconstruction and a literary setting with a historical resonance. They immediately evoke that corpus of texts and the most favoured themes of both male and female readers53 described by Ibn al-Nadīm in the chapter on asmār wa l-khurāfāt, and they set out the context in which the literary memory of Babylon is celebrated. In all of these, the theme of kingship and good government, that lends 49  50 

However, precisely because it is counted among novels of the Parthian age, this text may also have a Parthian origin, as also suspected by Grignaschi 1973, 128, 155. 47 

48 

Tajaddud 1977, 364.

51 

Tajaddud 1977, 163.

On him see Toorawa 2005. Capezzone 2004.

The complete list of titles, and their variants, of Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir is in Toorawa 2005, 62–70, from which the translation is taken.

52 

53 

Capezzone 2004, 143–44.

166 itself to imaginative literature, stands out as if to create a high-level hook from its authors to the sphere of political philosophy, of which the principles of the Persian tradition are the immediate reference,54 an example being the ‘Book of [the story of] the Conciliatory King and the Supportive Vizier’ (Kitāb al-malik al-muṣliḥ wa al-wazīr al-mu‘īn). A tendency to favour the Persian past in the narrative work of Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir is clear in the novel entitled the ‘Book of the Upbringing of Hurmuz ibn Kisrā Anūshirwān’ (Kitāb tarbiyyat Hurmuz ibn Kisrā Anūshirwān).55 We can sense a reflection of this cross-contamination among the genres of writing and the thematic settings — historio­graphy and the ethics of good government, that permeate the literature of the imagination — that Ibn al-Nadīm, in chapter VIII, allows us to see in the texts of attributed Persian, Parthian, and Byzantine origin, in the title of another text by Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir: ‘Book of the Story of the Great King and the Management of the Kingdom and its Administration’ (Kitāb khabar almalik al-‘alī fī tadbīr al-mamlakah wa l-siyāsah). The anonymous figure of the king who is the protagonist encourages readers to identify, without hesitation, this work as a novel. Also in the ‘Book of the Two Tyrannical Kings of Babylon and Egypt and the Wise Byzantine King’, we find anonymous protagonists. As well as being a powerful indication of the fictional nature of the text, this information, as in the previous examples cited, tells us that we are faced with a vague past in which Babylon and the rest of Egypt, although a little less in the case of Byzantium,56 is the fruit of the collective imaginary, that seeks and finds in the historical references and setting fertile ground for narrative. The characters peopling these novels are icons or, as Shawkat Toorawa puts it: ‘the protagonists are archetypal’.57 The fact that these titles, despite their air of being novels, are quite rightly separated from the set of narratives that Ibn al-Nadīm places in the chapter on the asmār wa l-khurāfāt, seems to be a key to understanding what the author of the Fihrist, as we have already seen, wrote about a first generation of narratives of a histori54  55 

Leder 2015.

On shu‘ūbiyya of Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir see Toorawa 2005, 83–86.

Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir lived under the caliphate of al-Mu‘taḍid, the son of the Greek Ḍirār: can we see this novel as a kind of homage to the origins of the mother’s caliph? 56 

57 

Toorawa 2005, 82.

Leonardo Capezzone cal nature and at a level of ‘high’ culture (to which the novels of Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir, recognized as one of the inventors of this genre, belong), followed by a second generation with a lower profile, the result of a fashion set by the demands of the readers in the tenth century. In effect, the presence of a Byzantine king, described as having a wise disposition toward affairs of government, alongside the two icons of tyranny (the King of Babylon here claiming biblical descent, and the King of Egypt, re-echoing the despotism of the Koranic Pharaoh), cannot fail to recall a particular motif in the ‘high’ literature of wisdom, a point of contact between the Hellenistic and the Iranian philosophical and political tradition: the disputation between two or more wise men. Ibn al-Nadīm, therefore, provides us with a set of historical and social coordinates that helps us to understand the literary phenomenon of Babylon set within a collective view directed at the past, that seems to condition the demand for novels. It is worth remembering that a similar passion for the pagan past is also encountered in Byzantine novels, some of which appear in Arabic translation in the Fihrist:58 the imitation of classicism, in our case what is considered to be classicism, is a substantial part of this chapter on late Byzantine literature and, in many ways, capable of providing elements that assist an understanding of the social and cultural phenomenon that is the historical novel in Baghdad between the ninth and tenth centuries.59 Among the authors of this literary view directed at the pre-Islamic past, Ibn al-Nadīm names those who have linked their own intellectual expertise with other forms of reconstructing the past, undoubtedly closer to the strictly historio­graphical model of the akhbār. In this context of historians writing historical novels, Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir is not alone, even if he is the only one to include Babylon within the boundaries of fiction. It may seem surprising that an author usually remembered as one of the fathers of Muslim historio­ graphy, al-Balādhurī (d. 892), translated from Persian and at times also in verse, according to a fairly common literary form, the ‘Testament of di Ardashīr’ (Kitāb ‘ahd Ardashīr).60 We can add the name of Hishām ibn al-Kalbī, whom we have already encountered as a highly knowledgeable source of al-Ṭabarī, including on the subject 58  59  60 

Capezzone 2004.

Beaton 1989; Hunger 1968; Ševčenko 1992. Tajaddud 1977, 126.

167

10. Receiving Knowledge of the Past of the genealogical diatribes on the first sovereigns and founders of Babylon, Nimrod or al-Ḍaḥḥāk. Then there is al-Haytham ibn ‘Adī (d. 822), and both of these names are placed in the first section of chapter III of the Fihrist, dedicated to the historio­graphers (akhbāriyyūn). The latter writer seems not to have had any interest in Babylonian matters, but Ibn al-Nadīm recalls his talent as a connoisseur of poetry, historical narratives, the literature of virtue and vice, antiquities (al-mā’thir), and genealogy.61 We have seen the former name as the authority on which al-Ṭabarī bases his opinion bringing together Nimrod and al-Ḍaḥḥāk as the same person. In his case however, his interest in all things Babylonian is not that of a novelist, but rather with a ‘scientific’ bent, something that is clear when we see Hishām al-Kalbī described as a reliable source in the debate about Babylon as Semitic or Persian.62 This expertise was perhaps gathered in the lost Kitāb al-Ḍaḥḥāk, quoted by Ibn al-Nadīm, but the author of the Fihrist reminds us of the sort of double life of al-Kalbī describing his as an author of historical and of imaginative narratives (kutub fī l-akhbār wa l-asmār), and among the latter ones, some titles retain a definite flavour of the novel.63 To conclude our look at the book world restored to us by Ibn al-Nadīm: in the tenth century, while al-Ṭabarī consigned to the historical memory of the Muslim world an image of Babylon intended to reconcile the two sides in the argument, Semitic and Persian, disputing its heritage, the literary phenomenon favoured by the book trade prospering in the capital of the Abbasid empire carried Babylon along in a tidal wave of narratives. This highly fashionable literary tidal wave seemed to use the discursive potential hidden within the multiple nature of the iconic value of Babylon: the city of the perdition according to the poets, the city as the symbol of despotism and the political iniquity of biblical origin, the city in which the universal forms of knowledge originate and from which these spread to all populated lands. However, between the ninth and tenth centuries, this iconic value seems also to be losing its power. As implicitly reported by Ibn al-Nadīm, the decline in level undergone by the narrative on Babylon becomes manifest in a socio­logical process that standardizes its use. From being an inheritance from the past, and what Tajaddud 1977, 108, 112. On the uncertain character of the attributions to this author, see Leder 1988; Leder 1996. 61 

62  63 

Janssen 1995, 156–80.

Tajaddud 1977, 108–10.

that means in terms of ideo­logy, and the tension of the present reverberating on antiquity, the antiquity of Babylon becomes a scenario of the past: basically, just a pre-modern usage of the myth.

Words of a Philosopher Political science […] consists of knowing the things by which the citizens of cities (ahl al-mudun) attain happiness through political association (al-ijtimā‘ al-madanī) in the measure that innate disposition equips each of them for it. It will become evident to him that political association and the totality that results from the association of citizens (ijtimā‘ al-madaniyyīn) in cities correspond to the association of the bodies that constitute the totality of the world.64

Thus wrote, in the tenth century, the philosopher al-Fārābī (d. 950) in his introduction to The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, a text considered to be the philosophical foundation of his political thought. Human science and political science (al-‘ilm al-insānī wa l-‘ilm al-madanī), in al-Fārābī, are lexically constructed on the basis of an Arabic neo­logism (madanī), coined by him, that creates an unbreakable link, according to Platonic and Aristotelian teaching, between politics (usually siyāsa) and the city (polis, madīna). The vision of al-Fārābī, directed at the past, and aiming at establishing a sort of archaeo­logy of the philosophical knowledge in which the art of politics is the focus, retraces the origins of the nexus between politics and the city in Babylon when he writes: It is said that this science existed anciently among the Chaldeans, who are the people of Iraq, subsequently reaching the people of Egypt, from there transmitted to the Greeks, where it remained until it was transmitted to the Syriacs and then to the Arabs. Everything comprised by this science was expounded in the Greek language, later in Syriac, and finally in Arabic.65

What al-Fārābī intends to retrace by referring to the Chaldeans, are the origins of a complex way of thinking, based on the political system of a city. The reference to Babylon, while apparently vague and hazy, is able to yield to the romantic temptation to rediscover in that place, in that node of myths, the trace of an ancient way of thinking that still persists. Babylon resounds in a mythical sense to the extent that the primacy of that 64  65 

Mulḥim 1995, 46; Mahdi 2001, 24. Mulḥim 1995, 86; Mahdi 2001, 43.

168 most ancient city is recognized. Later on, however, after explaining the articulation of that ancient way of thinking in a powerful form of knowledge that guarantees the achievement of political happiness, the philosopher writes: The philosophy that answers to this description was handed down to us by the Greeks from Plato and Aristotle only. Both have given us an account of philosophy, but not without giving us also an account of the ways to it and of the ways to re-establish it when it becomes confused or extinct.66

From this point on, al-Fārābī’s discourse, in which the introduction gives way to treatment of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, is essentially concerned with the modern use of ancient knowledge. Indeed this is not a narrative proceeding according to a late antique, persistent image of ancient knowledge, written once and for all, dramatically lost and luckily rediscovered in the fragments of texts and the spaces to which it has been transported by the events of time. In al-Fārābī, the evocation of Babylon is merely the indication of a beginning, of an origin, whose journey al-Fārābī describes by following a linguistic itinerary: Greek, Syriac, then Arabic, to start again. According to the philosopher, only with Plato and Aristotle does a fixation with ancient philosophical and political thought really begin, by way of texts arriving up to the modernity of the tenth century. These texts, that obviously make use of the cultural mediation of translation, constitute certain proof of a form of ancient knowledge that can overcome the test of temporality and be read, in a chrono­logical perspective, in the light of the modernity of the Koranic revelation. For al-Fārābī, the truth is in the present and in the contemporaneous form that welcomes and translates an ancient way of thinking, interpreting it within its categories because this way of thinking is already inherent to them. From the tenth century on, Babylon is antique; Greek knowledge is classical.

Mulḥim 1995, 99; Mahdi 2001, 44–45. Strauss 1995, 81–100; Galston 1992; Brague 1996.

66 

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169

Works Cited Agius, Dionysius 1980 ‘The Shu‘ūbiyya Movement and its Literary Manifestation’, Islamic Quarterly 24: 76–88. Beaton, Roderick 1989 The Medieval Greek Romance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bladel, Kevin van 2011 ‘The Arabic History of Science of Abū Sahl Ibn Nawbaḫt (fl. ca. 770–809) and its Middle Persian Sources’, in David Reisman & Felicitas Opwis (eds), Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas. Brill, Leiden: 41–62. Brague, Rémi 1996 ‘Eorum praeclara ingenia. Conscience de la nouveauté et pretention à la continuité chez Farabi et Maïmonide’, Bulletin des études orientales 48: 87–102. Brinner, William M. (trans.) 1989 The History of al-Ṭabarī, ii: Prophets and Patriarchs. State University of New York Press, Albany. Brody, Robert 1998 The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture. Yale University Press, New Haven. Capezzone, Leonardo 2000 ‘Dalla preminenza dei generi all’onnipresenza dell’Io narrante. Note sul canone letterario (e sul romanzo) nella cultura araba’, Critica del testo 3.1: 391–417. 2004 ‘Note su alcuni romanzi di ambientazione bizantino-sasanide nel Fihrist di Ibn al-Nadīm’, in La Persia e Bisanzio: convegno internazionale (Roma, 14–18 ottobre 2002). Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rome: 137–60. Chraïbi, Aboubakr 2016 ‘Introduction’, in A. Chraïbi (ed.), Arabic Manuscripts of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’. Espaces&Signes, Paris: 15–65. De Goeje, Michael J. (ed.) 1879–1881    Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk. Brill, Leiden. Dimock, Wai Chee 2001 ‘Literature for the Planet’, Publications of the Modern Language Association 116: 173–88. Donner, Fred M. 1998 Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Darwin, Princeton. Drory, Rina 1994 ‘Three Attempts to Legitimize Fiction in Classical Arabic Literature’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 18: 146–64. 1996 ‘The Abbasid Construction of the Jāhiliyya: Cultural Authority in the Making’, Studia Islamica 83.1: 33–49. Galston, Miriam 1992 ‘The Theoretical and Practical Dimensions of Happiness as Portrayed in the Political Treatise of al-­Farabi’, in Charles E. Butterworth (ed.), The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 95–149. Gibb, Hamilton A. R. 1962 ‘The Social Significance of the Shu‘ubiyya’, in Stanford  J. Shaw & William  R. Polk (eds), Studies on the Civilization of Islam. Beacon, Boston: 62–73.

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Goodman, Lenn E. 2003 Islamic Humanism. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Grignaschi, Mario 1969 ‘La Nihāyatu-l-‘arab fī aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-‘Arab’, Bulletin des études orientales 22: 15–67. 1973 ‘La Nihāyatu-l-‘arab fī aḫbāri-l-Furs wa-l-‘Arab et les Siyaru mulūki-l-‘aǧam du ps. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’, Bulletin des études orientales 26: 83–184. Grunebaum, Gustav von 1942 ‘Greek Form Elements in the Arabian Nights’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 62: 277–92. Günther, Sebastian 1998 ‘Fictional Narration and Imagination within an Authoritative Framework. Towards a New Understanding of Ḥadīth’, in Stefan Leder (ed.), Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 433–71. 2000 ‘Modern Literary Theory Applied to Classical Arabic Texts. Ḥadīth Revisited’, in Beatrice Gruendler & Verena Klemm (eds), Understanding Near Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches. Reichert, Wiesbaden: 171–76. Gutas, Dimitri 1998 Greek Thought Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd– 4th/8th–10th Centuries). Routledge, London. Hägg, Thomas 1986 ‘The Oriental Reception of Greek Novels’, Symbolae Osloenses 61: 99–131. Heck, Paul L. 2000 The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Qudāma b. Ja‘far and his ‘Kitāb al-kharāj wa-sinā‘at al-kitāba’. Brill, Leiden. Hirschler, Konrad 2012 The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Hoyland, Robert 2006 ‘History, Fiction and Authorship in the First Centuries of Islam’, in Julia Bray (ed.), Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam. Routledge, London: 16–46. Hunger, Herbert 1968 ‘On the Imitation (ΜΙΜΗΣΙΣ) of Antiquity in Byzantine Literature’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23–24: 17–38. Janssen, Caroline 1995 Bābil, the City of Witchcraft and Wine: The Name and Fame of Babylon in Medieval Arabic Geo­graphical Texts. University of Ghent, Ghent. 2002 ‘At the Banquet of Cultures. Mesopotamia’s Heritage in Arabic Times’, in Antonio Panaino & Giovanni Pettinato (eds), Ideo­logies as Intercultural Phenomena: Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project (Chicago, USA, October 27–31, 2000). Università di Bo­logna & IsIao, Milan: 119–33. Kennedy, Philip F. 2005 ‘Preface’, in Philip F. Kennedy (ed.), On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: xi–xxii.

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Khalidi, Tarif 1994 Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kilito, Abdelfattah 1985 L’auteur et ses doubles: essai sur la culture arabe classique. Éditions du Seuil, Paris. Langermann, Tzvi Y. in press    ‘Babylonian and Indian Wisdoms in Islamicate Culture: A Critique and a Supplement to Dimitri Gutas’ Greek Thought, Arabic Culture’. Leder, Stefan 1992 ‘The Literary Use of the Ḫabar: A Basic Form of Historical Writing’, in Averil Cameron & Lawrence I. Conrad (eds), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, i: Problems in the Literary Sources Materials. Darwin, Princeton: 277–315. 1996 ‘Grenzen der Rekonstruktion alten Schrifttums nach Angaben im Fihrist’, in Ibn an-Nadīm und die mittelalterliche arabische Literatur: Beiträge zum 1. Johann Wilhelm Fück-Kolloquium (Halle 1987). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden: 21–31. 1998 Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. 2015 ‘Sultanic Rule in the Mirror of Medieval Political Literature’, in Neguin Yavari & Regula Forster (eds), Global Medieval: Mirrors for Princes Revisited. Harvard University Press, Harvard: 93–110. Mahdi, Muhsin (trans.) 2001 The Attainment of Happiness, in Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, rev. edn with a foreword by Charles E. Butter­ worth and Thomas L. Pangle. Cornell University Press, Ithaca: 13–50. Mottahedeh, Roy 1976 ‘The Shu‘ūbiyya Controversy and the Social History of the Early Islamic Iran’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 7: 161–82. Mulḥim, ‘Alī Bū (ed.) 1995 Kitāb taḥṣīl al-sa‘āda. Dār wa-Maktaba al-Hilāl, Beirut. Pellat, Charles 1962 ‘La prose arabe à Baġdād’, Arabica 9: 407–18. Pingree, David 1983 ‘Abū Sahl b.  Nawbaḵt’, in Encyclopædia Iranica,  i/4. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, New York: 369; an updated version is available online at [accessed 1 October 2021]. Pohl, Walter 2003 ‘The Construction of Communities and the Persistence of a Paradox: An Introduction’, in Richard Corradini, Max Diesenberger & Helmut Reimitz (eds), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts. Brill, Leiden: 1–16. Rosenthal, Franz (trans.) 1987 The History of al-Ṭabarī, i: From the Creation to the Flood. State University of New York Press, Albany. Said, Edward W. 1994 Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, New York. Ševčenko, Ihor 1992 ‘The Search for the Past in Byzantium around Year 800’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46: 279–93.

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Strauss, Leo 1995 Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predecessors. State University of New York Press, Albany. Tajaddud, Riḍā (ed.) 1977 Kitāb al-Fihrist. Marwī, Tehran. Toorawa, Shawqat 2005 Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Arabic Writerly Culture: A Ninth-Century Bookman in Baghdad. Routledge, London. Webb, Peter 2012 ‘“Foreign Books” in Arabic Literature: Discourses on Books, Knowledge and Ethnicity in the Writings of alJahiz’, in Antonella Ghersetti & Alex Metcalfe (eds), The Book in Fact and Fiction in Pre-modern Arabic Literature, special issue, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12: 16–55.

11. Untranslatable Babel: A Quick Glance at the Contemporary Reception of the Biblical Myth Giovanni Greco

Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica ‘Silvio D’Amico’

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

A bstract –

The history of Babel in the biblical frame represents a charter myth, which is the beginning of translation as an essential necessity but, at the same time, as a painful, inevitable punishment. The challenge to God Father means the end of Heaven on earth and the origin of misunderstanding, of the Mother languages, of the tentative, uncertain, human storytelling: philosophy, literature, and interpretation come from this attack on the principle of patriarchal authority and from the confusion that follows. The contemporary age is haunted by that early loss and reconsiders countless times that nostalgia of a lost unity in the old relationship with the Father and in the new connection with the Mothers. Freud, Kafka, Borges, and Derrida, among others, show how powerful this sense of unfinished shapes the modern sensibility and how productive was and is this unsuccessful assault, and finally how providential was and is this default to forge a new aesthetics where failure and lacuna are the best ways to create coherent and multiple forms of expression to represent the fragmentary, incomplete condition of the modern man.

In his last book, Babel ou l’inachèvement, Paul Zumthor devotes a whole chapter (‘Clay and Bitumen’) to verse 4 of the biblical account, within the story of the tower’s construction, where it is said ‘They said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly”. They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar’.1 The same clay that served God to give body to man, serves man to give body to the tower. The manipulation of nature, raw earth that is cooked according to the uses of a very ancient techno­logy, becomes the vehicle of the challenge to God, but also the point of no return of God’s revenge: by observing the product of clay in fieri the Divinity decides to descend from Above to disseminate that confusion that will no longer allow men to understand each other in the process of building. 1 

Gen. 11. 1–9. See Zumthor 1997, 147–62.

S. Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

It is a technique, as in the case of Zeus’s revenge that punishes Prometheus, the fire-thief, that is the privileged object of divine wrath, of the phtonos theon of the Greeks. The tower will be unfinished, the men will be scattered and locked up in their own idioms, their fate will be marked by the end of the original unity, the frustrated provocation of those who do not accept their limits, unsatisfied research, and incurable nostalgia.2 There is a time of concord, in which men are meant to join in what Freud would call the ordeal of the brothers who want to overthrow their father (the myth with which Totem and Taboo ends). They are able to explain to each other the techne (the artifice, the stratagem, the skill, the art, the technique) with which to assemble the bricks after the clay has been fired, in order to reach the sky. And then, when God finds out the baleful potentials of that techne, He intervenes before it is too late, that is before nothing is ‘impossible’ for them and men no longer know what to do with that clay. It is not mentioned in the story again, they lose the notion: the man made by God with clay cannot use clay to climb to heaven, he cannot manipulate it to become God in turn, he cannot mould, with safe technique and complicity, the translation of the human into the divine, of earthly into celestial without generating the disruptive response of God. This metaphysical translation is not possible for men. Another one will be possible, which does not go from man to God, but from man to man, menschlich allzumenschlich, as a consequence of the dispersion and confusion of the tongues, with which the techne of the man who aims to be God by manipulating the clay in a forbidden sense is suppressed from the very beginning. 2 

Zumthor 1997, 195–208.

The Historical and Cultural Memory of the Babylonian World: Collecting Fragments from the ‘Centre of the World’, ed. by Marco Ramazzotti, ARATTA 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 173–181 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.ARATTA-EB.5.127144

174 Men lose, God wins: the beginning of every human translation is loss. Men lose a technical skill, which is both manual and intellectual, handcrafted and shared, they lose language and acquire languages: clay cooking and the use of bitumen correspond to the age of Universal Understanding, which is the Edenic language, or the Ur-Sprache. Clay manipulation would seem to be a metaphor of linguistic technique acquired and performed by everybody in the same way, at a time when political, cultural, and linguistic division did not yet exist. Or perhaps this division, of which Genesis has already witnessed some episodes (between God and man: Adam and Eve, or between man and man: Cain and Abel), is kept undercut, omitted, silenced when they are getting ready for the joint venture, by identifying the common objective, and perhaps the common Enemy. As in many cosmogonies, the divinity perceives the threat that is being moved against him/herself: not immediately, but just in time to let the freedom of human judgement appear and the limitation of the same freedom from Above, in order to make it truly free, such freedom, must be punished. The use of clay, as with any kind of techno­logical use of nature, is never neutral. It always reveals a manipulative point of view that can be directed to good or evil, that is to say, in short, that it is always relative to the point of view of the Observer. In any case, it causes a historical modification of power relations, horizontally and/or vertically, by which the future is set. When I speak of the point of view, I also speak of the communicative ambiguity involved by the manipulation of nature: no transformation takes place out of its storytelling, no deliberate metamorphosis of nature is conceivable out of language, mitopoiesis, multiplication or diminution of sense and non-sense of life. It is no coincidence that God could strike by lightning the men who aspire to climb to the sky, could tie them to a rock for an eagle to tear their liver to pieces as Zeus did with Prometheus, and that, on other occasions, sends flood, plague, famine (like other divinities), and moves in this symbolic point of view to confuse languages, by constructing, while destroying, the etio­logy of human incommunicability, the last piece to make the fall in the non-sense of time and history perfect, after expulsion from the earthly paradise. ‘Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedankens’, i.e. language is the formative organ of thought, said W. von Humboldt in his masterwork On the Diversity of Human Language (1991). In the Universal Language, in which everyone understood and was encouraged to bake bricks for the

Giovanni Greco construction of the tower, one could conceive the climb to heaven: the language, according to the hypothesis of the ethno-linguistic relativism of Sapir and Whorf, Humboldt’s heirs, implies a Weltansicht, a world view, a glimpse of the world, an angulation of the unique and unrepeatable existence.3 Language is culture or Zwischenwelt among men and between men and things: Universal Language is absolutely arrogant in its totalizing, exclusive being, and speaking that language means the need to imagine ‘promethean’ actions such as those of the construction of the tower of Babel. In this sense, imagination means action because, in that world, to speak is to act. Thought is language and vice versa, and in that language of the origins, words and things are not competing and the signifiers are not yet independent of their meanings; indeed, the word is action and even creation as it is the word of God, just as a voice makes and unmakes without the need for translation, mediation, or negotiation.4 That language does not know the betrayal of translation, the infidelity of mediation, the weariness of negotiation yet. In that language, the speakers say what they do and do what they say and decide to build the tower and the city ‘to make themselves a name’ and not to disperse over the whole earth (which they obviously see as a curse). But what does it mean to ‘make themselves a name’? Of course, to become famous, to be renowned, to stand up in a proud way, but, at the same time, it means to become the word that needs to be said, to be identified in the voice that makes and unmakes, to be(come) God in the way the logos be(comes) God at the beginning of John’s Gospel. Becoming a name means dramatizing the communicative act in a form that transforms the world, the scene of the world in which the dramatis personae can be what they say and are dramatically what they do, because acting in drama is thinking in action. Many people have referred to Babel in their works.5 Among these, J. Derrida, in his Des Tours de Babel, a text deciphering another very famous and very ambiguous text, that is W. Benjamin’s Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers. Derrida observes, among other things, the fact that the twenty lines of the biblical text about Aufstieg and Niedergang of the Tower imply non-secondary translation difficulties, as well as fixing contradictory oral traditions. The story of Babel is therefore not only the 3  4 

Sapir 1949 and Whorf 1956. Eco 2003, 83–91.

For an overview Nergaard 2002 and Nergaard 1995. See also Osimo 2003.

5 

175

11. Untranslatable Babel source of linguistic (un)translatability, but a mise en abyme, a metatext which, while introducing the necessity and the impossibility of translation, is a translational rebus. The first difficulty is the word Babel that would mean at the same time ‘city of God’ and ‘confusion’. Derrida says: the relationship between the two meanings of the proper name of God, ‘city of God’ and the confusion is not clear. However, if we consider the passage, where it is said that the brick was made of stone and the bitumen was made of cement, we are immediately in front of the dramatization of a translation process in which one element is translated into another, is transposed into the other, according to an equivalence that involves transforming human intervention and that is not natural, spontaneous, immediate, but a product of intelligence. Translation is the conviction of punished humankind, who did not originally need to translate words but had things at its disposal in productive and constructive terms before metaphor and metonymy. That is, after the translation became betrayal, the translator would be a traitor, the object of the translation as a rhetorical figure would be ugly and faithful, or rather beautiful and unfaithful to the original (les belles infidèles):6 the clay was brick without being betrayed and brick corresponded to clay without infidelity, no one would recriminate if not God. Only divine recrimination will create confusion between signifier and meaning, between word and action, between matter and metaphor. Only the fear of God that this symbiosis possibly being the beginning of an overwhelming rise to heaven will open the way for the ambiguity, the adequacy or acceptance of the passage,7 the change of state, the elusiveness of meaning. The restitution of the sense as loss becomes law, once the tower is left unfinished. The translation makes The distinction between intralingual translation or reformulation, interlingual translation or proper translation, and intersemiotic translation or transmutation is due to Jakobson 1959. With Jakobson the concept of equivalence between system, context, source language and system, context, target language is definitively put in crisis: Jakobson speaks of dynamic equivalence and fidelity of SL with respect to TL that does not bring into question the autonomy of TL. 6 

The translation will be said, in the post-Babel world, foreignizing or domesticating, i.e. source-oriented (in the service of the text, context, author of the source language) or target-oriented (in the service of the text, context, of the target language): in the first case the translation will be considered adequate, in the second acceptable. 7 

debts, the translator is insoluble and insolvent from the point of view of compensation that contracts with the origin, but paradoxically also the origin contracts a debt with the debtor. The very life of the work depends on the missing return that is never complete but is never equal to zero — just as it was for the unfinished tower. God interferes with the transaction and interrupts a genealogy, a descent without alien insertions that risked dangerous welding or balance between heaven and earth. By launching the confusion among those who want to make a name for themselves for not being scattered ‘all over the earth’, He deconstructs a colonizer mechanism who assigns taxonomic and equal power to men, such as to make them inhumane. The father’s survival and unquestioned omnipotence passes through the dissemination of mother tongues, through the desperate approximation of horizontal communication, where the subject of survival will take place again: the Fortleben which invests the languages in their inexhaustible and mutual making and unmaking. For example, Polysystem Theory8 will start from this point: from the idea that translation, far from being a secondary operation, a copy of the archetype, a simulacrum,9 is the only possibility of growth of Even-Zohar 1990. The hypothesis of the polysystem arises in connection with the study of language and then extends to that of literature. The term ‘polysystem’ refers to the concept of a system as a dynamic whole: each semiotic system is conceived as a heterogeneous open structure that is necessarily configured as a polysystem i.e. as a multiple system, system of various systems that intersect with each other and an overlapping part, which use different options at the same time, but which function however as a structured whole whose members are interdependent. This elaboration proposes a vision of literature not as an isolated activity within society but as a system within the polysystem of culture. The various systems occupy different and hierarchical positions within the polysystem. A central system will naturally have greater importance than a peripheral system within the polysystem which, in the dynamics of diachrony, is subject to change and exchanges between the centre and the periphery. The production and translation of texts are also considered functional elements in the system. The literature observed in the light of these notions presents itself as a general semiotic mechanism rather than a purely literary phenomenon. 8 

Venuti 1991 claimed centrality for the figure of the translator for the first time, against the invisibility that had characterized their story and against an assimilationist idea of the translation that conceals the difficulties of the translinguistic passage. The socalled ancillarity of the figure of the translator is opposed by the most recent developments in Translation Studies (see Bassnett 1993 and Bassnett & Trivedi 1998): post-colonial studies, for example, underline the theme of multiple and hybrid identity played by translation, meant as an act of liberation from the power of 9 

176 languages and literatures, and the primary and unique stuff, with which we compare the dispersed humankind of mother tongues, which is the decisive factor that constitutes the Tradition in a dynamic and vital sense.10 Benjamin (1923) himself, if so, aims at that messianic language which is the sum or the difference of the mother tongues, an impossible and necessary tertium, die reine Sprache which is then the language of truth (Die Sprache der Wahrheit). Clay and bitumen in the hands of men make the tower, establish a powerful interlacing that projects mankind upward, and are the components of a love and convenience marriage between nature and culture pointing to heaven: the topic of language kinship rises with Babel, the question of comparison and affinity, which does not necessarily mean identity, originates in the time of the First Language in which there is unity of word and action, where everything is related and cooperates with self-and-world construction, or directly commits reality without contrasts unless with the Elsewhere.11 But God is unattainable, unity is only intuition, and the translation that God inaugurates as at the same time necessary and impossible, assumes that there is always an intangible point, a promise always unmatched, a kinship that you choose and that does not naturally exist: clay may once again become a brick in the age of mother tongues, but, from the day of dispersal, every statement will presuppose a question, each question being put into doubt and the same faculty of language will be questioned a fundamentis, whenever the word will be exchanged with pain or hope in time and space, in a nostalgic poetical way, if ‘poetry is what gets lost in translation’ (apparently ascribed to R. Frost). the original, also through a new culture of self-determination. The translation, understood as a cannibalistic act (De Campos 1963), as a blood transfusion, as an act of vampirization, nourishes the translator by subverting the hierarchical priorities between original and translation. The most recent trends consider the act of translating ‘decolonized’ from traditional stereotypes as potentially anti-metaphysical and anticapitalistic. On the new translator’s role see also Bassnett 2006.

The most interesting reinterpretation of the Bruni’s motto traduttore/traditore in the positive sense of translation = tradition is Folena 1991. 10 

The question of the origin of language and languages dates back to the times of Plato (Cratylus) and Aristotle (De interpretatione) up to Chomsky and his black box that would subtend all languages, different on the surface, but equal in depth. The unresolved question is that of the substantial affinity or irreducibility of languages in relation to each other or, in other terms, the absolute translatability or untranslatability of languages in relation to each other. 11 

Giovanni Greco If the origin is a missing origin, the harmony with father, with author, with authority among mother tongues is not possible: nothing is original, natural, but everything is promise, controversy, uncertainty of choice, contradiction, and the first contradiction will be the idea of originality. The myth of the origin of the diversity of languages ‘promises a realm to the reconciliation of languages’ (Derrida), but it is a myth in all respects, since the condition of both the storyteller and the listener is already completely implicated in the dispersal, which means misunderstanding, disguise, search for identity: and to be outside language is just a metaphor. This metaphor, which moves the frustration for the ineffable on the level of the fairy tale, says that communication is in every case a translation12 and that the revolt against God, father and author, is translated into an erection that does not end: the coitus remains forever interruptus, the match between earth and heaven does not end and therefore cannot generate fruit — the tower gets stuck between as a symbol of human powerlessness and incurable castration, that is infinite dispersion of the seed that wanted to fertilize the Most High Almighty. A new genealogy of disseminated is born.13 The identity after Babel, in the age of mother (tongues), is paternal thanks to oppression and phallogocentrism which, by paradox, characterizes it. It is implicitly evoked by a legendary age in which humankind spoke differently and lived what many will nostalgically define the age of gold. The clay phallus that wants to come to heaven, to God, remains an unfinished and inconclusive ruin, a disgusting witness of uncanny (unheimlich) orality, embarrassing nonsense (or nonsex), spat and regurgitated by Heaven’s Mouth in a thousand corners all over the earth. The dissemination of the historical-natural languages is the result of Steiner 1975, 23–77 defines the entire communicative and interpretative process as a translation process in a broad sense, consisting of four phases: trust, aggression, incorporation, and restitution. This configuration overcomes the littera/spiritus dichotomy of the whole translato­logical theory that goes from Cicero to Dryden and attributes to translation a general hermeneutical value. 12 

It seems useful to me to refer to Hesiod’s Theogony and to the cycle of castrations which inaugurate the ages of the world, such as that made by Cronus against his father Uranus, from whose sperm fallen into the sea Aphrodite was born (from his blood, the Furies). There is another myth to which I would like to allude, namely that put into the mouth of Aristophanes in the Platonic Symposium (189 c–193 e), which tells of the arrogance of men and androgens who are cut in two by Zeus when they try to ascend Olympus and from that day on, they are constantly looking for the other half of the whole that they were. 13 

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11. Untranslatable Babel the vomited seed of the children which, pointing at the mouth of their father, falls over the streets of the earth before reaching the goal. Human perversion involves the response, God’s inescapable repulsion, realizing that nothing is impossible, staring at the mighty, human erection, powerfully silhouetted below Him. Only in this perspective, Babel does not present itself as yet another variation on the subject of the punished hybris, but as the representation of God’s disgust: God’s disgusted lips14 in front of the phallus/foul of the ‘excited’ man and his piercing desire. Therefore, the vicissitude of mother tongues shows a story of lost seed, adultery and betrayal, taking the name of God in vain, etc. (the list of commandments should be known…). A translation story, remarkably, in which the worry about the search for meaning is endless, the arbitrariness of the motivation of the linguistic sign is continually put in doubt and continuously reconfirmed,15 the relationship between us and me, apparently resolved in the direction of us (God speaks in the first-person plural like the men in this affair: we go down… we confuse…), when they begin the construction of the tower, is splashed into the detection of the mother tongues. The manipulation of clay that becomes brick to get to the sky, from which we started, suggests, in the above-mentioned sense, an autoerotic meaning that connotes the language of the men of the tower in a selfreferential direction: the techne is put at the service of personal satisfaction, the challenge to the Divinity has got an autistic clue, already marked by failure long before the arrival of God. In the tongue of mothers or in the mother tongue it is still possible to say ‘clay’ and to make towers, but in the promiscuity, in the ambiguity, accepting misunderstandings.16 You can imagine the mythical origin of language, but never experience it; you can bypass or sublimate the finitude of language, The translation of the word that in Hebrew means ‘lip’, is metonymically rendered with ‘language’ in most modern translations. 14 

Iconism, phonosymbolism, onomatopoeia represent some of the counterweights to the radical arbitrariness of the linguistic sign as postulated by Saussure 1922. 15 

In the most recent developments of gender studies, the translation considered for centuries at the service of the original of an author/patriarch has easily been identified with the female gender, such as the concepts of fidelity and ugliness, infidelity and beauty refer to a phallogocentric lexical repertoire. The post-structuralist and feminist approach, which starts from the deconstruction of Derrida thought of as difference, transforms the gender of the translator into a literary and social project of putting into crisis a thousand-year-old hegemony. 16 

without the possibility of being out of language; you will be able to conceive silence as the full and not as the void of dialectical exchange, but you will have the horror of the meaningless void. Banished from Eden, humankind experiences a new, heart-breaking exile that, unlike the former, is, babelically, the exile within the Unsaid and the Undone: the wound, the tear, the lack, this second time, directly referred to expression and relationship. Loneliness and aphasia are the source of dissemination, the immediate danger, which is difficult to overcome; if the first exile (Adam and Eve’s exile) meant the shame of those who precipitate in time and death, far away from earthly paradise, the second exile implies the suffering of the word not found, the difficulty of the sentence not coming, the stuttering, ‘on the tip of the tongue’ tension towards the Other;17 if the first exile was the tragic consciousness of finitude and nakedness in front of the challenge in discovering nature, the second exile will be that of the Unfinished, that is the poetic fragility of misunderstanding when the use of nature becomes problematic, the relationship with reality unsolved, untold, unfinished. Unfinished, meaning at the same time not finished and never ending, infinite, endless: the way the concept of identity is to be dealt with in our contemporary age, hybrid, precarious, and performative.18 The reception of the biblical myth has fascinated modern poets, storytellers, writers, playwrights. I would therefore just briefly focus on Borges’s Babel Library and Lottery in Babylon, Kafka’s The Great Wall of China and The City Coat of Arms, and Szymborska’s The Tower of Babel, three meaningful rewritings of the biblical memory of the last century. Szymborska’s poem, chrono­logically the last example, translates the story of Babel into a love story, where the two lovers talk without speaking, hear without listening, write songs that voices never share (Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence). The tradition of the tower is that of incommunicability, so that human beings, although lovers, are unable to share what they really think, wish, believe: they seem to speak, they apparently communicate, they do not understand each other, even when they are persuaded to do it as it should be in the name of love. The curse coming from Babel, the original sin makes them isolated, unfit, and inadequate to tell each other what they actually are, feel, believe. Berman 1984 claims that translation is the only vehicle of Otherness. 17 

18 

See on performative identity Butler, 1991 and Butler 1993.

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The communication, even between lovers, is always distorted, schizophrenic, broken, as if the two were in two different times and in two different places, maybe one still alive and the other dead. They do not answer and they do not ask or maybe they do not ask because they do not answer and vice versa: they never answer or late or fortuitously; they ask without persuasion and they accidentally answer as if they profoundly knew or guessed there is no real way to comprehension and at the same time they could not afford not to say something in any case. Beckett (quoted at the beginning) and Pinter’s lesson echoes in this asymmetric, lopsided, oblique dialogue: ‘What time is it?’ ‘Oh yes, I’m so happy; all I need is a little bell round my neck to jingle over you while you’re asleep’. ‘Didn’t you hear the storm? The north wind shook the walls; the tower gate, like a lion’s maw, yawned on its creaking hinges’. ‘How could you forget? I had on that plain gray dress that fastens on the shoulder’. ‘At that moment, myriad explosions shook the sky’. ‘How could I come in? You weren’t alone, after all’. ‘I glimpsed colors older than sight itself’ ‘Too bad you can’t promise me’. ‘You’re right, it must have been a dream’. ‘Why all these lies; why do you call me by her name; do you still love her?’ ‘Of course, I want you to stay with me’. ‘I can’t complain. I should have guessed myself ’. ‘Do you still think about him?’ ‘But I’m not crying’. ‘That’s all there is?’ ‘No one but you’. ‘At least you’re honest’. ‘Don’t worry, I’m leaving town’. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going’. ‘You have such beautiful hands’. ‘That’s ancient history; the blade went through, but missed the bone’. ‘Never mind, darling, never mind’. ‘I don’t know what time it is, and I don’t care’.19

On a different level, it is possible to face the development of the Tower’s legend in Kafka’s The City Coat of Arms and The Great Wall of China (this last unfinished story is made of many long fragments, one of which contains a reference to the Babel Tower as exemplum e contrario of the Great Wall of China). Kafka’s novels (The Trial, The Castle, Amerika) and stories (with the exception of The Metamorphosis) remained unfinished and were published in this not completed form against the author’s will by his friend Max Brod: they are not only Szymborska 1995. See also Ceccherelli, Marinelli & Piacentini 2016, 9–10.

19 

not revised, but they do not reach the end, although the author devoted his entire life to their improvement. Perhaps they do not want to reach the end, they cannot reach the end, they do not need to, one can say: the plot puts a frustration on stage each time; the published, unfinished work appears systematically as a failure, a defeat, an abortion; the continuus coitus is fond of being interrupted. But this failed, unsuccessful shape becomes a genre worthy to be published, this recurrent and revised impotence shows a real coincidence with the condition of Kafka’s contemporary age. Modern sensibility feels the powerful need for finished works, but goes on staging the nostalgia of the finished work: the well-done work is wishful thinking. Kafka’s reality has completely changed from the times of Naturalism and implies an unredeemable sense of lack that needs to be seen and said in a missing form, or to be partially left unseen and unsaid in a deformed shape. We could say that the Babel Tower enacts a metaphor which is for Kafka an obsession, a nightmare, an endless revelation: the ruins, the remains, the wreckage of what could have been something and failed, deserve a page, a stage, a frame, where to be again and again observed and absorbed as not finished, not accomplished, not ended. The Tower and the Great Wall of China suffer from a structural problem, although in different ways: the Tower of Babel had failed to attain its goal not for the reasons commonly asserted, or at least that the most important cause was not among these wellknown ones. He [scil. a scholar] not only based his proofs on texts and reports, but also claimed to have carried out personal inspections of the location and thus to have found that the structure collapsed and had to collapse because of the weakness of its foundation.

This weakness of the foundations is similar to that of the Wall, but the scholar who wrote the book about the Great Wall in Kafka’s story underlines that the weakness which affects the foundations of the Tower affects the foundations of human understanding, hearts, and minds: There was a great deal of mental confusion at the time — his book is only one example — perhaps simply because so many people were trying as hard as they could to join together for a single purpose. Human nature, which is fundamentally careless and by nature like the whirling dust, endures no restraint. If it restricts itself, it will soon begin to shake the restraints

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‘Man of the Book’ has read it, and they travel through the library seeking him.

That is not exactly an explanation of the diversity between the unfinished Tower and the unfinished Wall, but a paradoxical way to assert that humankind is originally unfinished, unable to finish, always ready to find a new beginning without reaching the end: absolutely unfit to finish anything, bypassing the end, because in Eliot’s words ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’ (The Waste Land, in the section Burt Norton), which eventually is his/her death-end. In this sense, to look at the Unfinished or to publish what remained unfinished does not mean we have a final explanation of everything, but that no explanation is completely possible, and that the actual explanation of the unfinished work is postponed, delayed, not required as not to be required.

But Borges’s conclusion, although full of loss and bewilderment in front of the infinite or unfinished possibility of conceiving the world as an infinite library, introduces an ironical, final hope which ends the story in a disordered order or ordered disorder, the stigmata of human life: I have just written the word ‘infinite’. I  have not included that adjective out of mere rhetorical habit; I hereby state that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who believe it to have limits hypothesize that in some remote place or places the corridors and staircases and hexagons may, inconceivably, end — which is absurd. And yet those who picture the world as unlimited forget that the number of possible books is not. I will be bold enough to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited but periodic. If an eternal traveler should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder — which, repeated, becomes order: the Order. My solitude is cheered by that elegant hope.21

The sense is elusive, missing, failing like the end: the story cannot end as Kafka cannot bear very much reality. But what is reality? What is the meaning of this word in this babelical, fragmentary framework? Borges’s answer is a new mise en abyme of the myth. Unlike Kafka who focused his attention on time, Borges considers Babel’s Nachleben in relationship with space. The idea of Unfinished means immeasurable, infinite space (Borges’s beloved labyrinth): the universe consists in The Library of Babel of an enormous expanse of adjacent hexagonal rooms, each of which contains what is necessary for human survival — and four walls of bookshelves. The sequence of the books is random and without meaning, the inhabitants are convinced that the books contain every potential ordering of just twenty-five basic characters. Most of the books in this world is pure nonsense, but the library must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible version of every one of those books. Despite and maybe because of this abundance of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. This leads some librarians to superstitious and cultlike behaviours, such as the ‘Purifiers’, who arbitrarily destroy books they deem nonsense as they scour through the library seeking the ‘Crimson Hexagon’ and its illustrated, magical books. Others believe that since all books exist in the library, somewhere, one of the books must be a perfect index of the library’s contents; some even believe that a messianic figure known as the 20 

Kafka 2003. See also Kafka 1931.

Borges 1941; Borges 1998. It is also interesting to notice that in the other story Borges wrote about Babel and the role of chance in man’s life, The Lottery in Babylon, there is a brief, intertextual reference to Franz Kafka as Qaphqa, the legendary Latrine where spies of the Company that rules the city and the lottery leave information. 21 

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Works Cited Bassnett, Susan 1980 Translation Studies. Routledge, London. Bassnett, Susan & Trivedi, Harish (eds) 1998 Postcolonial Translation Theory. Routledge, London. Bassnett, Susan & Bush, Peter (eds) 2006 The Translator as a Writer. Continuum, New York. Benjamin, Walter (trans.) 1923 Charles Baudelaire: Tableaux Parisiens; Deutsche Übertragung mit einem Vorwort über die Aufgabe des Übersetzers. Weissbach, Heidelberg. Berman, Antoine 1984 L’épreuve de l’étranger: culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique. Gallimard, Paris. Borges, Jorge L. 1941 La biblioteca de Babel, in El jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan. Sur, Buens Aires: 85–95. 1998 The Library of Babel: Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. Penguin, New York. Butler, Judith 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, London. 1993 Bodies that Matter: On Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, London. Carrol, John B. (ed.) 1956 Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings by Benjamin Lee Whorf. Techno­logy Press of Massachusetts Institute of Techno­logy, Cambridge, MA. Ceccherelli, Andrea; Marinelli, Luigi & Piacentini, Marcello (eds) 2016 Szymborska: un alfabeto del mondo. Donzelli, Rome. De Campos, Haroldo 1963 ‘Da Traduçâo como criaçâo e como crítica’, Tempo Brasileiro 4–5: 164–81 (repr. in H. de Campos, ‘Translation as Creation and Criticism’, in Metalinguagem e outras metas: ensaios de teoria e de crítica literária, 4th edn. Perspectiva, Sao Paulo, 1992: 31–48). Derrida, Jacques 1985 ‘Des tours de Babel’, in Joseph F. Graham (ed.), Difference in Translation. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Eco, Umberto 2003 Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Bompiani, Milan. Even-Zohar, Itamar 1990 Polysystem Studies. Duke University Press, Durham, NC [= Poetics Today 11.1]. Folena, Gianfranco 1991 Volgarizzare e tradurre. Einaudi, Turin. Galimberti, Umberto 2005 Il corpo, 14th edn. Feltrinelli, Milan.

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Humboldt, Wilhelm von 1991 La diversità delle lingue, ed. Donatella Di Cesare. Laterza, Bari. Kafka, Franz 1931 Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Co­logne. 2015 Franz Kafka: Collected Works. Books on Demand, Norderstedt. Jakobson, Roman 1959 ‘On Linguistics Aspects of Translation’, in Reuben Arthur Brower (ed.), On Translation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 232–39. Nergaard, Siri (ed.) 1995 Teorie contemporanee della traduzione. Bompiani, Milan. 2002 La teoria della traduzione nella storia, 2nd edn. Bompiani, Milan. Ortega y Gasset, Josè 1955 [1937] ‘Miseria y esplendor de la traduccìon’, in Obras Completas, v: 1933–1941. Revista de Occidente, Madrid: 427–48. Osimo, Bruno 2003 Storia della traduzione. Hoepli, Milan. Sapir, Edward 1949 Culture, Language and Personality. University of California Press, Berkeley. De Saussure, Ferdinand 1922 Cours de linguistique générale. Payot, Paris. Steiner, George 1975 After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Szymborska, Wislawa 1995 View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Harcourt Brace, Orlando. Venuti, Lawrence 1995 The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Routledge, London. Zumthor, Paul 1997 Babele ou l’inachèvement. Éditions du Seuil, Paris.

Index ‘ajā’ib al-baḥr, the wonders of the sea: 165 ‘Alī ibn Dāwūd: 164 ‘Ali: 146 n. 36 ‘Athtar, Temple: 112 ‘Banāt ʿAd: 112, 114 Aaaron: 44 Abān ibn Lāḥiq: 164 n. 45 Abbasid Caliphate: 157 Abbasid empire: 167 Abbasid imperial ideology: 157 Abbasid: 148 n. 51, 149, 157, 159, 162–63, 167 Abel: 174 Abi’aws: 110 Abraham-Nimrod-Zarathustra: 143 n. 15 Abram, Abraham: 37, 41, 42, 144 Abu Habba, Sippar: 28 Abū Sahl al-Nawbakhtī: 158, 159, n. 21 159, 160 Abū Shahrein, Eridu: 7 Achaemenid: 11, 34, 109, 115, 123–26, 128, 131, 133 Empire: 133 lineages: 123 n. 1 adab al-mulūk: 163 Adab: 160–64 Adad Hymn: 56 Adad-Nirari I: 72 Adad-Nirari III, Adad-Nārārī III, Adadnirari: 75, 86, 89, 97 Adad-šum-uṣur: 30 Adad: 56 Adam and Eve, exile of: 176 Adam: 41, 158, 161, 174, 177 Adapa: 8 n. 41, 40 Ādurfarrbay ī Farroxzādān: 148 n. 51 Advice to a Prince: 3 Aegean coast: 70 n. 9 Aelius Gallus: 111 African: 11

age of gold, the: 176 Agum Kakrime: 29 Ahasuerus: 39 Ahikam: 38 Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir ibn Ṭayfūr: 165–66 akhbār: 163 akhbāriyyūn, historiographers: 164, 166 akhlāq al-mulūk: 163 Akitu, Akītu: 31, 81, 105 n. 5 Akkad, Agade: 9, 33–35, 79, 79 n. 24 Akkadian: 6, 10, 27– 29, 33–35, 40, 55, 57, 60–62, 62 n. 56, 63, 63 n. 61, 64, 64 n. 24, 79, 81, 95, 112, 115 n. 30 Akkadian-Hittite context: 64 Akkadicized: 57 Aksehir: 64 n. 65 Al-‘Attābī: 164 al-‘ilm al-insānī wa l-‘ilm al-madanī, human science and political science: 167 al-‘Uqla: 111 al-Balādhurī: 166 al-Ḍaḥḥāk: 158–61, 166 al-Fārābī: 166–68 al-Ḥamrāʾ cube: 109, 113 n. 31 al-Ḥārith ibn Muḥammad: 161 al-Haytham ibn ‘Adī: 166 al-Jawf: 111 n. 21 al-Jūba: 114 al-Khwārizmī: 159 n. 17 al-Ma’mūn: 165 al-mā’thir, antiquities: 166 al-Manṣūr, Abbasid caliph: 159 al-Mu‘taḍiḍ: 165 al-Muqtadir: 163–65 al-Nadim: 144 al-Riḍā: 147 n. 43 al-Rūm, Byzantine land: 160 al-Ṭabarī: 160–61 Al-Yāhūdu, twin town: 8 n. 48

Alakšandu of Wiluša: 56 Alakshandu: 56 Alalaḫ: 60 Aleppo: 56–59 Alexander the Great: 8, 9, 31, 33, 126, 132, 157, 159, 160, 162 Alexandria: 148 Alexandrian hermeticism: 146 n. 40 Alī ibn Dāwūd: 164 Almaqah: 106 Almaqh: 111 Alniunu: 92, 92 n. 40 Altintepe: 90, 91 Alu eššu, new city of Babylon: 33 Amarna: 11, 28, 60–63 Amiṣaduqa: 57 Ammonite: 43 Amorites: 27, 71 Amoritized Near East: 27 Amran, site of Babylon: 6 n. 23, 9 n. 66 Anabasis: 9 n. 60 Anahītā: 143 Anatolia: 10, 47, 57, 60–61, 66, 71 Anatolian: 10, 62, 64, 89 Anitta: 62–65 Anshan: 32 anti-metaphysical: 176 n. 9 anticapitalistic: 176 n. 9 Antonini, S.: 104 n. 1 Anu: 28, 32, 34, 40 Anunna-gods: 41 Anunnaku deities: 28 Anunnaku: 28 Anūshirwān: 164 Anzu: 29 Aphrodite: 176 n. 13 apkallu: 115 n. 30 Apollodorus: 42 n. 32 Appu myth: 56 Apsu: 41 Arab historiography: 164 n. 45 Arab-Islamic: 157, 160, 162

184 cultural imagery: 162 ecumene: 161 literary discourse: 163 Araba: 44 Arabia: 35, 103–06, 108, 110–12, 115 Arabian: 105, 109, 113–14, 117 Gulf: 112 Peninsula: 11, 103, 105, 115 Arabs: 107–08, 143, 161 Arabic: culture: 11, 161 geographical sources: 11 Arabo-Persian: n. 8 143, 148, 150 authors: 150 archaeologists in Ancient Near East: 8 n. 40 Aramaeans: 108 Aramaic Bēl: 144 n. 26 Aramaic: 86, 109, 112, 126, 149, 158 Arameans: 34, 74 Aramu: 86 Aranyadaʿ, temple: 112, 113 n. 27, 114 Ardashīr: 160, 163, 165 Arethas IV: 111 n. 20 Argišti I: 90 Arinna: 56, 58 Aristophanes: 176 n. 13 Aristotle: 167–68, 176 n. 11 Aristotelian: 167 Armenia: 86–87, 90–92 Armenian: 86, 87, 87 n. 12 Highlands: 87 Arsacid-Sasanian: 141, 150 Artaxerses I: 126 Artaxerses II: 123 n. 1, 123 Arzaškun: 86 as-Sawdāʾ: 112–14 Asakku: 29 Asalluhi: 9 Ashur-Uballit I: 36, 73 Ashurbanipal: 74, 77 Ashurnasirpal II, Assurnasirpal II: 75, 77, 88, 96 Asia: 146 Asian: 11 asmā’ kutub mulūk Bābil, titles of the books (on) the kings of Babylon: 165 asmār al-Furs, Persian narratives: 164 Asōrestān: 150 Assur, Ashur, Aššur: 9, 32, 71, 73–74, 75 n. 13, 77 n. 18, 81, 82 n. 33, 94, 96–97, 105, 105 n. 5 Assurbanipal, Aššurbanipal: 31, 37, 77, 81, 88, 91

Index Assyria: 71, 72, 77, 82, 92, 110, 112 Assyrian, Assyrians: 10–11, 30, 31–32, 37, 40, 60–62, 64, 64 n. 71, 71, 73, 73 n. 4, 74, 77, 79–82, 85, 86–97, 103–04, 106–09, 111, 115–16 Empire: 11, 71, 74, 74 n. 6, 81 n 27 kings: 87 n. 9 Library of Nineveh: 29 royal texts and Annals: 108 n. 12 winged genius: 115 Assyrian-Babylonian: 40, 111, n. 25 112 Assyriologists: 8 n. 40 Atra-Ḫasīs: 41 Aufstieg and Niedergang: 174 author / patriarch: 177 n. 16 of Nehemiah: 46 the Fihrist: 167 of the Ur letter: 64 of dēn: 142 of Kings: 38 Avesta: n. 43 127, 142, 159 Avestan: 142–43, 145 n. 31, 146 n. 36, 149, 161 awîlum ša Marduk uballaṭu-šu: 28 Ayanis: 92 Ba’al / Bel (in Akkadian): 28–29 Bâb-ili, Gate of the Gods: 33 Bâb-Lugalirra, district of Babylon: 33 Babel Library: 177 Babel ou l’inachèvement: 173 Babel, Bābel, Bābēl: 88 n. 11, 13 n. 91, 32, 37, 41, 148, 158, 173–79 Babel’s Nachleben: 179 babelically: 177 Babil: 6, 6 n. 23, 144 n. 23 Bâbilu: 32, 33 Babri-Babel: 143 Babylon: 3– 11, 13, 27–39, 42, 44, 55–60, 77, 80, 143–45, 147–50, 157–67, 177 Hanging Gardens of: 8, 31 n. 16 Sack of: 58 Babylonia: 5, 9, 11, 30, 34, 71–73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 143, 145, 149–50 Babylonian, Babylonians: 10, 74–75, 107, 142, 158–59 army: 37 countryside: 8 n. 48 economy: 8 -Greek: 159 n. 17 tawananna: 56 world: 3 World Map: 6

Bachtin, M. M.: 161 Badanu: 105 Bagh-e Firuzi: 131, 132 Baghdad: 3 n. 1, 35, 144, 144 n. 26, 150, 162, 165–66 bait al-muqaddas (the ‘Holy City’): 145 n. 21 Baladan: 38 Barthes, R.: 5 n. 21 Battle of Karkemish: 38 Baβri-Bābēl: 143 Beckett, S.: 177 Bêl-Marduk: 31 Bêl-Nabu: 148 Bēl, King: 146 n. 36 Bēl: 148 Bêl: 30, 144 n. 26, 146 n. 36, 148 Benjamin, W.: 174, 176 Beyond Babylon: 8 n. 42 Bia’: 85, 96– 98 Biainli: 85 n. 5, 86 n. 4, 95, 98 biblical accounts: 109 and apocryphal models: 145 n. 34 author, authors: 37, 39, 40–42, 45, 47 descent: 166 figures: 146 n. 36 memory: 177 myth: 37 n. 7, 177 origin: 167 Shinar: 57 stories: 13, 43 text: 174 tradition: 147, 160 vision: 34 Biga, M. G.: 3 n. * Bīl: 148 n. 52 Bit Ammukani: 37 Bit Bakkuri: 37 Bit Shilani: 37 Bit Tamartu: 22 Bit Yakini: 37 Black Heads: 32 Book of Būdasf (or Yūdasf) and Bilawhar: 164 Book of Daniel: 38 Book of Darius and the Golden Idol: 165 Book of Dēnkard: 142 Book of Rustam and Isfandiyār: 165 Book of Rūzbih the Orphan: 165 Book of the Two Tyrannical Kings of Babylon and Egypt and the Wise Byzantine King: 166 Borges, J.-L.: 11, 173, 177, 179

I ndex Borsippa: 27, 81 Brod, M.: 178 Bruegel, P.: 11 Bukan: 86, 87 Bundahišn: 150 Burro-Akkadian: 64 n. 67 Buttle of Qarqar: 108 Byblos: 108 n. 12 Byzantine: 147 n. 48, 159–60, 164, 166 Byzantium: 166 Cain: 174 Cambyses: 123 n. 1, 132 Canaanite: 44 Čangranghāča: 142 n. 4 Carchemish: 107, 109 Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, The: 149 n. 61 Çavuştepe: 92 Cedar Forest: 61 Central American towns: 131 n. 58 centre of the world: 7 Chaldea: 110 Chaldean, Chaldeans: 10, 37, 42, 44, 75, 107, 111, 111 nn. 21 and 23, 122, 149, 158, 167 Chicago Oriental Institute: 126 China: 170, 175, 177–78 chineh (soil): 128 Chinese: 142, 160 Chomsky, N.: 176 n. 11 Christian: 146, 146 n. 36, 149–50 Chronicle of Early Kings: 34 n. 24 Chronicle of Esagila (= Weidner Chronicle): 34 Chuteans: 34 Ciaxares: 37 Cicero: 176 n. 12 Cilicia: 110 Cis-Caucasian: 87 City Coat of Arms, The: 177–78 classicism: 157, 166 Clay and Bitumen: 173 Clement of Alexandria: 148 n. 50 Code of Ḫammurabi: 58 n. 19 Code of Law: 28 conceptual autonomy: 4 continuus coitus: 178 Corpus dei Testi Urartei: 92 n. 38 cosmic geography: 3 n. 2 cosmic order: 40 Cosroe Anūshirwān: 163 Cratylus: 176 n. 11 Crimson Hexagon: 179 Cronus: 176 n. 11

185 Ctésiphon, Ctesiphon: 35, 110 n. 19, 150 cube of al-Ḥamrāʾ: 107, 114 n. 28 cultural memory see memory Culture and Imperialism: 157 Cyprus: 110 Cyrus the Great: 8, 31, 33, 45, 123 n. 1, 124, 132, 146 n. 36 Daga (Zohak): 144 Dahāg (Av. Aži Dahāka): 142–43 Dahāg-Babylon: 143–44 Dahane-ye Gholaman: 123 damnatio nominis: 59 Daniel: 146 n. 36, 147 Darius I: 123 n. 1, 124, 126, 160, 164 Dash-e Gohar: 128, 131–32 Davidic ideology: 45 De Angelis d’Ossat, G.: 127 n. 36 De interpretatione: 176 n. 11 decolonized: 176 n. 9 Dedan: 110–11 Delos: 111 Denkard: 142 Derrida, J.: 5 n. 21, 173, 176 Des Tours de Babel: 174 Dhakr: 110 Dhrdh: 111 n. 23 dhu-Shara: 111 n. 20 Diakonoff, I.: 13 n. 90 Dialogic Imagination: 161 Diaspora Tale: 38 Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers: 174 Die Sprache der Wahrheit: 176 différance: 13 diffuse city: 133 Digital Archive for the Study of preIslamic Arabian Inscriptions: 103 n. 1 dil–i Īrānšahr: 150 Dilbat: 27–28 Dīnawarī: 150 n. 57 Diodorus of Sicily: 128 Ḏmtrn: 111 n. 23 Dorotheus the Syrian: 160 Dorudzan dam: 124 dramatis personae: 174 Dryden, J.: 176 n. 12 Dur-Kurigalzu: 32 Dur-Sharrukin: 75 n. 12, 76 dust, removal of (τον χοΰν): 9 n. 60 E-apsu, House of Aquifer: 7 E-mah: 8 Ea: 28, 30, 32

Eanna: 8, 81 Early Achaemenid Period: 11, 123 n. 1, 131–32 Early Dynastic III: 9 n. 66 Early Iron Age: 108 early Islamic Mesopotamia: 148 n. 55 Eastern Arabia: 112 Ebabbar: 81 Eco, U.: 5 n. 21 Edda: 146 n. 36 Eden: 41, 177 Edenic language: 173 Garden of: 40 Egypt: 37, 43, 71, 109, 110–12, 160, 166–67 Egyptian: 6, 36, 38, 109, 159–60 Eigenbegrifflichkeit: 4 n. 14, 5 Eight campaign: 89 Ekallatum: 74 Ekur: 81 Elam: 9, 34, 71, 123 Elamite, Elamites: 31, 126, 127, 132 Eliot, T. S.: 179 Elishama: 38 Emar: 28 Enki: 7, 9, 41 Enlil: 28, 29, 31, 33, 46 Enūma eliš: 9, 29, 39, 47 Epic of Creation: 29 Ērānšahr: 150 Erebuni: 90–91 Eridu: 7, 75, 81 n. 31 ÉRIN samḫarū, Samharites troop: 57 Ēriz / Īraj: 150 n. 68 Erra Epic: 30, 41 Erra: 41 Esagila, Esagil: 7, 9, 29, 31–32, 34, 41, 73–74, 77 n. 15 Esarhaddon: 31, 37, 71, 77, 77 n. 15, 81 Eshnunna, Ešnunna: 9, 27, 35, 79 Esther: 39 Etemenanki, Tower of Babel: 7, 24, 31, 32 Ethiopia: 109 Euphrates: 6, 31, 35, 60, 87, 104, 109, 141 Evagoras: 110 Eve: 41, 174, 177 Even-Zohar, I: 175 n. 8 Evil-merodach: 45 n. 42 Ezekia: 38 Ezekiel: 38, 43, 44, 52 Ezida: 81

186 Faccenna, D.: 127 n. 36 Fall of Man: 8 n. 41 Fars, Iran: 124, 126, 136 Fayyūm: 112 Ferdowsī: 145 Ferīd n-like ‘dragon-slayer’ motif: 145 Fertile Crescent: 105, 108 Fihrist: 158, 162 first city: 7 first world empire: 8 Firuzi: 127, 131, 132 Flqt: 111 n. 23 forma urbis: 6 Fortleben: 175 Foster, B.: 3 n. * Frankfort, H.: 3 n. 3 Freud, S.: 173 Frost, R.: 176 Furies: 176 n. 13 Fydrws of Athens: 160 Galluzzi, P.: 3 n. * Garbini, G. ‡ : 3 n. * Garden of Eden see Eden Garfunkel, A.: 177 Gayōmart: 161 Gaza: 110, 112 Gedaliah: 38 Genesis, Gen.: 11, 39, 40, 41–42, 47, 160 Gerla: 112 Gerorge, A.: 33 n. 33 Gerrha, Hagar: 114 n. 26 Gerrha: 11 Geshem: 45 Ghirshman, R.: 124 Gideon: 43 n. 37 Gilgamesh: 40 Gilgamesh Epic: 29 Gindibu the Arab: 108 Gnostic: 147, 149 God: 173–74 Gonar ibn Japhet ibn Noah: 161 Gondet, S.: 129 Graeco-Roman: 109, 113, 114 Great Wall of China: 178 Great Wall of China, The: 177 Greek, Greeks: 6, 126, 159, 160, 162, 167, 168, 173 Ḍirār: 166 n. 56 Guzzo Amadasi, M. G.: 108 n. 12 Habur: 10 n. 76 Ḥaḍramawt, king of: 111 n. 23 Hadramitic: 111 Ḫaḫḫu: 60, 61

Index Ḫalap: 56, 58, 59 Ḫaldi: 86, 89, 90, 93 Halpi: 89, 90 Ham ibn Noah: 161 Hama: 114 n. 29 Hamath: 45 Hammurabi, Hammurapi: 7, 9, 27–28, 35, 79 Ḥamza al-Esfahāni: 144 Hana: 32, 33 Hanak: 110 Haneans: 29, 33 Hanging Gardens see Babylon Ḫantili: 58–59, 64 Haran: 42 Hariri, Tell el-: 9 Hārūn al-Rashīd: 159 Harut Harut: 11 and Marut: 11 Hasaean: 115 n. 30 Hasaitic: 112 Hassenaah: 46 Hassu: 60 Hatti, Ḫatti: 34 Hattic: 61 n. 41 influence: 61 n. 41 Hattusa, Ḫattuša: 28, 11, 56, 58–59, 61–62, 64 n. 67, 65, 88 n. 17, 89 n. 19 Ḫattušili I: 57, 61, 65 Hattushili’s Annals: 61, 65 Heaven’s Mouth: 176 Hebrew: 39, 111, 177, 177 n. 14 Hellenistic: 6, 32, 103, 113, 115, 143, 149, 163, 166 Hermes the Babylonian: 160 Hermetic: 150 Herodotus: 7 n. 35 Hesiod: 176 n. 13 Hezekial: 38 Hishām ibn al-Kalbī: 161 Historia de la eternidad: 11 n. 88 historical memory see memory history / historiography: 164 n. 43 European: 4 n. 15 Hittite, Hittites: 9, 29, 42–43, 55, 59, 60–62, 64 n. 61, 65, 89, 92 kings: 10 Myth of Illuyankas: 42–43 Homera, site of Babylon: 6 n. 23 Hosang: 150 n. 65 Hrazdan, River: 92 Humboldt, W. von: 173 Hurmuz ibn Kisrā Anūshirwān’: 166

Ḫurrian Šimurrum: 62 n. 53 Hurrian, Ḫurrian: 55 n. 4, 61–62, 92 n. 39 Ḫurro-Akkadian tales: 75 n. 64 Husraw I: 148 n. 51 Ḫuzziya family of Zalpa: 64–65 hybris: 176 hypersurfaces: 5 n. 18 Ḫyry: 111 n. 23 Ibn ‘Abbās, al-Ṭabarī: 161 Ibn al-Muqaffa‘: 164 n. 45 Ibn al-Nadīm: 158, 162–63, 163 n. 37, 164–65 Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī: 147 n. 43 Ibn-al Nadīm: 143 n. 15 Ibn-Nawbaḫt: 144 iconism: 177 n. 15 Idiba’ilu: 105 Igigi-gods: 41 Ilīʿaḏ Yaluṭ: 111 n. 23 Illuyankas: 42, 42 n. 32, 43 imago: 4 Imago mundi: 5 Imgur-Enlil, walls of Babylon: 29 Imgur-Marduk, walls of Babylon: 29 India: 162 Indian, Indians: 111 n. 23, 159, 161, 164 Farmāsp: 160 Ocean: 8 Indo-European: 60 intersemiotic: 175 n. 6 Ionia: 110 Iran: 28, 123, 126, 136, 142, 145 Iranian: 33, 127, 141, 143–45, 146 n. 45 147, 149–50, 158–59, 161–63, 164 n. 45, 166 -French: 124, 127, 132 n. 61 -Italian: 131 kings: 150 n. 68 plateau: 33, 123 Irano-Semitic historiographical hybridization: 149 n. 63 Iraq (Ar. al-ʿIrāq/Sawād): 150 Isaac: 42 Isaiah: 43–44 Ishin-Aswad, site of Babylon: 6 n. 23 Ishmael: 38 Ishpuini: 88, 93 Ishtar, Ištar: 7, 11, 29, 31, 34, 79, 80, 131 Gate: 7, 11, 79, 131 Islam: 149 n. 63, 158 Islamic: 6, 128, 144, 147, 149, 150, 157, 165 annalistic historiography: 161

I ndex authors: 143 n. 12, 144, 150 cultural debate: 146 n. 37 empire: 161 hegemony: 161 Middle Ages: 162 n. 37 period: 110 n. 19 sources: 143 Islamic Republic of Iran: 85 n. 4 Islamization of history: 157 IsMEO: 131, 135 Išpuini: 88, 90 Israel: 34, 37, 43, 44 Israelites: 43 Isṭakhr (Persepolis): 160 Išum: 30 Itʾamra: 105 Jacob: 42 Jacobsen, T.: 4 n. 14 Jāhiliyya: 162–63 Jakobson, R.: 175 n. 6 Jām, Jam: 149, 159 Jam (Av. Yima), King: 148 Jāmāsp: 160 Jamshid, Jamšid: 128, 129, 132, 150 n. 64 Janssen. C.: 158 Jawf valley: 106 Jawf: 113–14, 115 n. 30 Jehoiakim: 44 Jephthah: 43 n. 37 Jericho: 44 Jerusalem: 37–38, 44–47, 145, 145 n. 32 Jewish, Jews: 44, 143, 146, 149, 158 Diaspora: 143, 146 Jinn: 165 John, Gospel of: 174 Joseph: 39 Judaeo-Babylonian: 144 n. 15 Judaeo-Christian: 147 Judah: 34, 44–45, 110 Judaism: 145 Judea: 37, 38 Judeans: 6, 8, 14, 21 Jupiter: 144, 144 n. 26, 159 nn. 20–21 Jupiter-Bēl: 148 n. 52 ká-dingirki: 9 n. 62 Ka-dingirra: 33 Ka’be-ye Zardosht: 124 n. 15 kadhdhabū: 164 Kafka, F.: 173, 177–78 Kaldu: 111 Kandalanu: 37

187 Kanesh, Kaneš: 60–61, 64 kang-i duzhukht: 145 n. 31 Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta: 72 Karduniash: 55 n. 4 Karib’il: 11, 106 Karibilu: 105, 105 n. 5 Karibʾil Watar bin Dhamarʿlī: 106 Karkemish: 37–38 Karmir-blur: 91–92 kārum of Kaneš: 60, 62 Kasr, site of Babylon: 6, 6 n. 23 Kassite, Kassites: 9, 28, 57, 72, 74, 114 n. 28 Kay Kavus: 150 n. 65 Kay Khusraw: 146 n. 36 Kelišin stele: 93–94 Kelišin: 94 Ketāb taʾriḵ: 144 Khatteʿa: 105 Khayappā: 105 Khorsabad: 9, 10, 71, 76–79, 79 n. 24, 81, 90–91 Khowb / Khūb: 144 n. 23 Khuday-nāmah: 164–65 King Nabû-šuma-iškun, chronographic document: 34 king-maker: 7 Kings, biblical book of: 38 Kish, Kiš: 27, 32 Kištan: 89–90 Kitāb ‘ahd Ardashīr, Testament of Ardashīr: 166 Kitāb al-Ḍaḥḥāk: 166 Kitāb al-malik al-bābilī wa l-malik almiṣrī al-bāghiyyayn wa l-malik alḥālim [var. al-ḥākim] al-rūmī, Book of the Two Tyrannical Kings of Babylon and Egypt and the Wise Byzantine King: 165 Kitāb al-malik al-muṣliḥ wa al-wazīr al-mu‘īn, Book of [the story of] the Conciliatory King and the Supportive Vizier: 166 Kitāb al-Nahmuṭān fī l-mawālīd: 159 Kitāb Baghdād: 165 Kitāb khabar al-malik al-‘alī fī tadbīr al-mamlakah wa l-siyāsah, Book of the Story of the Great King and the Management of the Kingdom and its Administration: 166 Kitāb malik Bābil al-ṣāliḥ wa-Iblīs kayfa aḥtāla lahu wa-aghwāhu, Book of the Just King of Babylon and Satan and How He Tricked Him and Led Him into Temptation: 165

Kitāb Nimrūd malik Bābil, Book of Nimrod King of Babylon: 165 Kitāb tarbiyyat Hurmuz ibn Kisrā Anūshirwān, Book of the Upbringing of Hurmuz ibn Kisrā Anūshirwān: 166 Kition: 110 Koldewey, R. J.: 13 Koran: 158 Koranic Pharaos: 166 Koranic revelation: 168 Körzüt Kalesi: 86 Kryszat: 64 Ku’ara, district of Babylon: 32, 33 Kudurru, Governor’s Archive: 107–08, 108 n. 11, 161 Kūfah: 144 Kuh-e Rahmat: 131 Kullab: 32 Kumme / Qumenu: 89 Kusshar: 64 Kutha: 146 n. 36 kuttāb: 164 Kutub al-Rūm fī l-asmār wa l-tawārīkh wa l-khurāfāt wa l-amthāl, By­zan­­tine books of narratives, chronicles, legends and proverbs: 164 kutub fī l-akhbār wa l-asmār, historical and of imaginative narratives: 166 kuuiriṇta dužita / kulang dušdīd: 145 n. 31 Kuurinta: 144 La doctrina de los ciclos: 11 n. 88 Labarna: 64–65 Lacan, J.: 5 n. 21 Lamassu: 115 Land of the Gutti: 32 Land of Hana: 32 Land of Hatti, Ḫatti: 34, 56–60 Land of Pārsa: 132 Land of Sumer: 75 Land of Sumer and Akkad: 9, 32 Landsberger, B.: 4 n. 14 language of Babylon (BĀB-ILIM): 57 Larsa: 9, 27 Late Achaemenid period: n. 1 123 Late Antiquity: 5, 157 Late Bronze Age: 108 late Sasanian: 148 n. 55 Lebeau, M.: 3 n. * legitimization of authority: 62 n. 49 les belles infidèles: 175 Levant: 35, 109, 110 n. 18, 115 Levantine: 91, 103, 108

188 Libnah: 44 Library of Babel: 11 n. 88 Library of Babel, The: 179 Lihyan: 110 Lippolis, E. ‡: 3 n. * littera / spiritus: 176 n. 12 Liverani, M.: 3 n. *, 42 n. 32, 46, 85, 98 logos: 174 Lohrāsp, King: 146, 145 n. 32 Lot: 42 Lottery in Babylon: 177, 179 n. 21 Lower Anzaf: 89, 97 Lower Mesopotamia: 115 Lower Sea, Indian Ocean: 8, 11 See also Indian Ocean Lutibri: 88, 94 Lutipiri: 92 n. 39 Luwian: 107, 109 Ma’in: 111 Ma’rib: 106 madīna, polis: 167 Magians: 144, 146 Magianism: 149 n. 61 majlis: 148 n. 51 Malatya: 94 Man of the Book: 179 Mani: 145, 146 n. 45 Manichaean Kephalaia-like genre: 147 n. 45, 149 n. 61 Manichaean successio apostolica: 145 n. 34 Manichaean: 145, 145 n. 34, 146–48, 149 n. 61, 150 Mannean: 86, 89 Marad: 27 Marduk / Bēl: 148 Statue: 9 n. 71 Marduk-apla-iddina: 37 Marduk-Baladan: 38 Marduk, Asalluhi: 9–10, 27–34, 38, 40–41, 46, 59, 73 n. 4, 74, 79, 81 Margins: 13 Mari: 9, 27, 104 Marut: 11 Marvadasht: 124, 127–28 Masoretic: 40, 111 Massaʾ: 105 Masʿūdī: 147 n. 43 Matezziš / Pārsa: 131 Matezziš: 126 Matthiae, P.: 3 n. * Mayer, W.: 3 n. * Maʾrib: 106, 114–15 Maʿīn: 114

Index Medes: 37 Median: 75 n. 13 Mediterranean: 8, 11, 62 n. 49, 143 Meher Kapısı: 89 memory: communal: 143 cultural: 4, 11, 13, 77 historical: 10, 11, 13, 44, 167 memetic: 147 political: 10 Memoirs of Nehemiah: 45, 47 menschlich allzumenschlich: 173 Mercury: 148 Merge Karavan: 93 Merkes, site of Babylon: 6 n. 23 Mesopotamia: 8, 9, 10 n. 76, 27, 29, 32–35, 37, 39, 41–42, 47, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 71, 74–75, 77, 79, 81–82, 85, 91, 96, 104–05, 107–13, 115, 131, 141, 143, 144 n. 15, 145, 148–50, 158 Metamorphosis, The: 178 Micah: 38 Middle Assyrian: 74, 77, 79, 85, 86 Middle Babylonian: 11 Middle East: 11, 28, 29 Middle Persian: 142, 142 n. 4, 144, 147 n. 48, 148 sources: 159 n. 17 Minean: 109 n. 13, 111–12 Minua: 89, 90, 93 mise en abyme: 174 mitopoiesis: 174 Mittani: 10, 10 n. 76, 71, 72 Mleiha: 112 Mndh: 111 n. 23 Moab: 108 Mojmal al-tawāriḵ: 144 Mongolian towns: 131 n. 58 Morghab plain: 125 Moses: 42, 44, 161 Movana: 86 n. 4, 93 Muḥaddithūn: 161, 164 Mukarribs Yithaʿʾmar Watar bin Yakrubmalik; 106 Mukarribs: 106–07 Murašû Archive: 8 n. 48 Muršili I: 28, 55–58 Muršili II: 58 Mus’udi: 147 n. 43 mušhuššu: 29 Muslim: 60 149, 150, 166–67 authors: 149 n. 60 historiography: 166 See also Islamic

Muwatally: 56 Myth of Adapa: 8 n. 41 mythologemes: 5 Mythopoeic thought: 3 n. 3 Nabatea, Nabataean, 110, 158 Nabateans: 111, 158, 161 Nabocodonosor (Bōxt-Narsēh): 146 Nabonidus: 33, 36, 108 Nabu 8, 31, 81, 148 Nabu-apla-iddina: 75 Nabû-šuma-iškun: 34 n. 24 Nabuchodonosor I: 9 n. 71 Nabucodonosor II, Nebuchadnezzar: 8 n. 48, 21, 31, 37, 44, 77, 147 Nabupolassar: 37, 77 Nachash, Amonite king: 43 Nachash: 43 nadîtu: 28 Nairi and Uruatri: 87 Nairi: 85, 87, 92, 93, 94 Naqsh-e Rostam: 124 n. 15, 131 Naram-Sin: 60 Nars: 144 Nashq: 110 Nashshān: 106 naturalism: 178 Nawbaḫt: 145–46, 148 Near East: 3, 6, 9, 27, 42, 43, 59, 71, 85, 103 Nehemiah: 46, 47 Neo-Assyrian: 31, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 85–86, 88, 103–04, 107, 115 Empire: 77 kings: 31 period: 115 Neo-Babylonian: 8–9, 27, 30–31, 33, 37, 79 n. 22, 110–11 Empire: 8 kings: 8 period: 115 Neo-Hittite: 87, 91, 94 Neo-Platonic: 147 Neo-Pythagorean: 147 Nergal: 41 Neša / Kaneš: 64 Nešite Sargon poem: 64 Nethaniah: 38 New Akkad and New Babylon: 9 New Babylon: 9, 77 New Year festival (NP. Nowrūz): 149 n. 64 Nile, River: 44 Nîmitti-Enlil, walls of Babylon: 29 Nîmitti-Marduk, walls of Babylon: 29

I ndex Nimrod: 143, 144 n. 15, 146 n. 36, 158, 160–61, 166 Nimrod, King of Babel: 143 n. 15 Nimrod-Dahag: 145 Nimrod-like narrative: 146 Nimrud, Kalhu: 32, 77, 81, 90, 105, 144, 158, 160–61 Nin.ti: 41 Nineveh: 8 n. 40, 31 n. 16, 32, 71, 73–75, 77 n. 18, 76, 79, 81, 105 n. 5 Ninhursag: 41 Ninmakh: 8 Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur: 104 Ninurta: 29, 36, 49, 83 Nippur: 27, 29–30, 33, 34, 79, 81, 81 n. 31, 107, 149 Nippur’s Archive: 108 n. 11 Noah: 7, 161 non-Semitic: 33 North Arabia: 115 n. 30 See also Arabia North Arabians: 107 See also Arabians North Palace (Hauptburg): 8 North-Western Semitic milieu: 109 n. 13 Nur-Dagan: 61, 63 Nurdaḫ: 64 Old Akkadian: 9 n. 70, Old Aramaic: 108 n. 11 Old Babylonian: 9 n. 70 Old Palace: 74 Old Persian: 126 Old Testament: 9, 37, 39, 42–43, 45 Old Turkic: 147 n. 44 Olympus: 176 n. 13 On the Diversity of Human Language: 173 Orientalism: 161 Oriental Despotism: 9, 27 Orumiyeh: 86 Lake: 87 Ōshahanj, King of the Seven Climes: 161 pabilili: 55 pahlavāni: 145 n. 31 Pahlavi Widēwdād: 143 n. 11 Pahlavi: 11, 141–42, 144, 145 n. 31, 146 n. 36, 148, 150, 159, 164 ‘Palace without Rivals’: 81 Palestine: 105, 109 Palmyrenes: 111 n. 23 Parsa-Pasargad Research Foundation: 128

189 Pārsa: 126, 128 partetaš nature of Pasargadae: 126 n. 13 Parthian: 6, 143 n. 12, 164 n. 45, 165 n. 47, 166 Age: 175 n. 47 Pasargade: 31, 123–25, 127, 132 Pawaḫtelmaḫ: 64 Perice, C.: 5 n. 21 Persepolis: 123–24, 126–29, 131–32 Fortification Tablets: 126 West: 131 Persia: 127, 162 Persian: 6, 31, 45, 103, 109–12, 123, 124, 126, 131, 133, 141–42, 144, 147, 150–51, 157, 159–61, 164–67 and Semitic ancestries: 163 kings: 149 n. 70, 164 n. 45 period: 115 Persian Gulf: 31 Persian-Minaean: 111 n. 24 synchronism: 111 n. 24 Petra (Rqmm): 110 Pettinato, G. ‡ : 3 n. * Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, The: 167 Phoenicia: 108 Phoenician, Phoenicians: 108 n. 12 phonosymbolism: 177 n. 15 Phrygian rock-cut shrines: 89 n. 19 Phtonos theon: 173 Pinter, H.: 177 Pittman, H.: 3 n. * Plato: 176 n. 11 Republic: 148 n. 50 Platonic: and Aristotelian philosophy: 168 and Aristotelian teaching: 167 Symposium: 176 n. 13 Pleiades: 114 polysystem theory: 174, 175 n. 8 Post-Achaemenid period: 128 post-Alexandrian Iranian Party Kings: 165 post-Babel world: 175 n. 7 post-biblical tradition: 144 n. 15 post-colonial Middle East: 4 post-colonial theory: 157 Potts, Daniel T.: 3 n. * Prayer of Muršili II: 56 Pre-Alexandrian Age: 159 pre-Islamic: Jāhiliyya: 162 paganism: 163 past: 167

promethean: 174 Prometheus: 173–74 Psalm: 47 Puran: 61 Purušḫanda: 62–65 Purušḫattu: 64 Qalaichi: 86–87 Qaphqa: 179 n. 21 Qaryat al-Fāw: 112–14 Qatabanian, Qatabanians: 112 texts: 110 Qatabans: 110, 113 Raḥab: 43 Red Sea: 44 Riblah: 45 Rock of Ṭušpa: 92 Roman: 6, 109, 113, 147 Rossi, L. E. ‡: 3 n. * Rūm: 162 Rusa I: 89 Russian: 87 n. 12 Sabaic-Nabatean: 111 Sabaʾ: 103–07 Sabeans: 105 nn. 3 and 5, 112 Sabian/Nabatean: 148 n. 55 Sabiansim: 143 n. 12 Sābūr: 160 Sack of Babylon see Babylon Ṣaddar Bondaheš: 142 n. 4 Safan: 38 Sahl ibn Hārūn: 164, 164 n. 45 Sahn, site of Babylon: 6 n. 23 Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, Cities of the Iranian Kingdom: 148 Šahrestānīhā: 149 Said, E. W.: 157, 161 Salamanassar III, Šalmaneser III: 86, 88, 96, 108 Salmanassar V, Šalmanassar V: 37 Salvini, M.: 92 n. 38 Samharites: 57 Samsu-iluna: 27 Samuel, book of: 43, 42 n. 37 Sanballat: 45 šandabakku of Nippur: 107 Sang-e Surakh: 132 ṣannafū wa-kadhdhabū: 163 Sapienza: 3, 37, 63, 103, 141, 157 Sapir, E.: 173 Saporetti, C.: 3 n. * šar tamḫāri: 61–62 šar tamḫāri: 62 n. 53

190 Šar-Kali-Šarri: 9 n. 70 Sarah: 42 Sarai: 42 Sarduri I: 88, 88 n. 13, 89, 92 Sarduri II: 90 Sargon I: 34, 60–65, 79 Sargon II: 11, 17, 77, 79, 87, 105 Šarur: 34 Sasanian: 127 n. 43, 141, 143 n. 15, 144–45, 149–50 Saturn: 145 Saussure. F. de: 177 n. 15 Sawad, Sawād (old Babylonia): 143 n. 12, 144, 161 School of Nisibis: 149 n. 61 Schoyen collection: 32 Sealand: 34 Seleucia, Seleukia: 35, 110 n. 19, 150 Seleucid: 6 Seleucos I Nicator: 112 sema: 5, 13 semantic waves: 6, 10–11, 13 semeiotic approach: 5 n. 17, 6 n. 21 semiospheres: 5 n. 18 Semitic: 13, 13 n. 91, 39, 107–09, 143, 149 n. 63, 158, 160, 165–67 and biblical ancestry: 158 Sennacherib: 31, 71, 77, 79, 81, 105 Seven Wonders of the World: 8 Shabwa: 111 Shamash-shum-ukin, Šamaš-šumukin: 31, 37 Shamash, Šamaš: 28, 29, 81 Shawkat Toorawa: 166 Shem ibn Noah: 161 Shīʿī imam: 147 n. 43 shu‘ūbiyya: 157 Shuppiluliuma I, Šuppiluliuma: 56 Simalucrum: 175 Simon, P.: 177 Simulacra: 59 Sind: 161 šīp fest: 126 n. 13 Sippar: 27, 28, 30, 81 Siro-Hittite: 87, 91 Ṣirwāḥ: 106, 111 Sistan: 123 Sivand Dam: 125 siyāsa texts: 163 siyāsa, politics: 167 Skjærvø, P. O.: 145 ‘sliding signified’: 5 n. 21 social matrix: 6 Sogdian: 146 n. 36 Solak: 90

Index Sound of Silence, The: 177 South Arabia, South Arabian: 103–15 monumental inscriptions: 108 n. 12 See also Arabia South Semitic: 109 scripts: 108 South-West Palace: 81 Southern Palace: 8 Strabo: 111 Street of Procession: 7 Stromata: 148 n. 50 Šu-an.na, Heaven’s hand: 33 Subartu: 92–93 Šubria / Šubarû: 89 Substrata: 9 Suda (α 4257): 148 n. 48 Sūkhu: 104, 105 n. 2 Šulgi: 34 Sumer: 5, 7, 11, 41 Sumer and Akkad, king of: 74 Sumerian 6, 7, 19, 27–28, 33–34, 60, 71, 73, 81 Sumerian King List: 7, 33 Sumero-Akkadian: 35, 115 n. 30 Sumu-Abum: 27 Sumu-la-el: 27 Sun Goddess of Arinna: 58–59 Šuppiluliuma: 56–57 Sūs: 161 Susa: 123 Sydon: 112 Syllaios: 111 Syria, Syrian: 23, 60, 62, 71, 91, 105, 160 Syria-Palestine: 109–10 Syria: 27, 71, 105 Syriac (sūryānī): 158 Syriac chronicles: 146 n. 36 Syriac: 146 n. 36, 149 n. 61, 158, 168 Syrian: 60, 91, 160 Syro-Anatolian tradition: 113 Syro-Arabian desert: 108 Syro-Hittite influence on Urarṭu: 91 n. 29 Szymborska. W.: 177 Ṭabarī: 144, 150 Tabarna: 60 Tahmuras: 150 n. 65 Taimanite writing: 107, 109 Takht-e Jamshid: 126–28, 131 Talebian, M. H.: 125 Tanbīh: 147 n. 43 Tang-e Bolaghi: 124 n. 13, 125

Tanukh: 110 n. 19 Tarif Khalidi: 160–61 Taurus: 89 Taymāʾ: 104–05, 108, 113 n. 31, 114, 197 Taymu: 111 n. 20 Tāz: 143 Te-e, district of Babylon: 33 techne: 173 Teispid lineages: 123 n. 1 Telipinu: 58, 64–65 Temple I in Ḫattuša: 88 n. 17 Temple of Ashur at Ashur: 82 n. 33 Tepe: 127, 131–32 Terrace of Parsa: 126 Testament of di Ardashīr: 166 Thaʿālibī: 150 n. 57 Theodor Abū Qurra, Theodore the Commentator: 158 Theogony: 176 n. 13 Theomachy, literary models of: 44 Third Dynasty of Ur: 71 Thousand and One Nights, The: 163 Tiamat: 28, 39, 40, 46 Tiglat-Pileser III, Tiglath-Pileser III, Tiglathpileser III: 37, 73, 73 n. 6, 89, 104–05 Tiglat-Piliser I: 74 Tigris: 35, 141 Til Barsip: 90 Tilia / the Tilias: 131 Tol-e Ajori: 11 Tol-e Takt: 124 Tomb of Cyrus II: 124 Toprakkale: 91 Topzawa: 93 Torah (ōraytā nibēg): 145, 158 Totem and Taboo: 173 Tower of Babel: 7, 11, 32, 37, 41, 143 n. 15, 146 n. 36, 158, 177–78 Tower of Babel, The: 177 traduttore / traditore: 176 n. 10 Trans-Caucasia: 87 n. 12 Transeuphratene: 110, 112 Transjordan: 43 translation studies: 175 n. 9 Trial, The Castle, Amerika, The: 178 Tuba, district of Babylon: 33 Tucci, G.: 127 n. 36 Tukulti-Ninurta I: 73 Turkey: 86 Turkic: 145 n. 34 Ṭušpa: 92, 93 Tutmosis III: 57 Typhon: 42 n. 32 Tyre: 112

I ndex udabā’: 161 Ugarit: 11, 28, 109 Ugaritic poems: 44 Ululu: 34 Umman-manda: 32 Universal Language: 173 Université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne: 28 unlimited semiosis: 5 upa kuuiriṇtәm dužitәm: 144 Upper Anzaf: 88, 91 Upper Mesopotamia: 76 n. 10, 27, 37, 144 n. 15 Upper Sea, Mediterranean Sea: 8 See also Mediterranean Ur III: 9 n. 70, 27 Ur of the Chaldeans: 27, 34, 42 Ur-Nammu: 34 Ur-Sprache: 173 Ur-Zababa: 34 Uranus: 176 n. 13 Urartian, Urartians: 85, 87–96, 98 hieroglyphic writing: 87 n. 11 kings: 87 n. 9 Urartu, Urarṭu: 85, 92–93 Uruatri: 85, 87 Uruk, Warka: 7, 8, 27, 33–35, 75, 81 n. 31 uru KÁ.DINGIR.RA: 55 uru Kar(an)dunia(š): 57 uru Kar(an)duniaš: 55 uru Šanḫara: 55 used and abused: 4 Utnapištim: 40 Vahyazdata: 132 Van Kalesi Höyüğü: 92 Van: 87, 92 Vāyu: 144 n. 19 Warka, Uruk see Uruk Wasshukanni: 10 n. 76 Waste Land, The: 179 Weidner Chronicle: 34 n. 24 Weltansicht: 174 west of Homera: 9 n. 66 Western Asia: 11, 143, 146 Whorf, B. L.: 173 Wilusha: 56 winning king: 60 Winter, I.: 3 n. * Wištāsp: 142–43, 145, 146 n. 38, 147 Worstward Ho: 173 Writhe: 38

191 Xenophon: 9 n. 60 Xerxes: 7 n. 37, 124 Xwanirah (Av. Xvaniraθa-): 149–50 Yahweh: 39 Yalā: 114 n. 28 Yariris: 107, 109 Yatha‘’amar: 11 Yazılıkaya: 89 n. 19 Ydʿʾl: 107 n. 11 Yehoyaqim: 38 Yemen: 110, 113 Yesilalıç: 89 Yithaʿʾmar Watar: 106 Zababa’s Gate: 34 Zagros: 28 Żaḥḥāk: 145 Zalpa: 64–65 Zander, G.: 127 n. 36 Zarathustra-Zoroaster: 148 n. 48 Zarathustra: 142, 146 n. 36, 147–48 Zarathustra’s prophetic authority: 147 n. 43 Zarātoštnāma: 142 n. 4 Zarpanitu: 29, 58–59 Zedekiah: 38, 44–45, 47 Zendan-e Solayman: 124 Zeus: 42 n. 32, 173–74, 176 n. 13 Ziggurat: 7, 31–32, 41 Zion: 38 Zippashna: 61 Ziusudra: 7 Zoroastrian: 11, 13, 141–48, 150 exegesis: 13 Zumthor, P.: 173 Zwischenwelt: 174 ʿAbbasid age: 148 ʿAlī: 146 n. 36 ʿAthtar dhu-Qabḍ at Qarnaw: 112 ʿḏḏm: 111 n. 23

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Titles in Series Steve Renette, Lagash I — The Ceramic Corpus from al-Hiba, 1968–1990: A Chrono-Typology of the Pottery Tradition in Southern Mesopotamia During the Third and Early Second Millennium BCE (2021)