The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Volume I: From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad 0190687851, 9780190687854

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The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East

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The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Editors: Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a highly diverse, international team of leading scholars, whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed.

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The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume 1: From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad

z Edited by KAREN RADNER NADINE MOELLER D. T. POTTS

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Radner, Karen, editor, author. | Moeller, Nadine, editor, author. | Potts, Daniel T., editor, author. Title: The Oxford history of the ancient Near East / edited by Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and Daniel T. Potts. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: Volume 1. From the beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the dynasty of Akkad Identifiers: LCCN 2020002854 | ISBN 9780190687854 (v. 1: hardback) | ISBN 9780190687878 (v. 1: epub) | ISBN 9780197521014 (v. 1: online) Subjects: LCSH: Egypt—Civilization. | Egypt—Antiquities. | Egypt—History—Sources. | Middle East—Civilization. | Middle East—Antiquities. | Middle East—History—Sources. Classification: LCC DT60 .O97 2020 | DDC 939.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002854 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

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Contents

Preface 

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The Contributors 

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Abbreviations 

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Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East (Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts) 

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1. Prehistoric Western Asia (Peter M. M. G. Akkermans) 

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2. Prehistoric Egypt (E. Christiana Köhler) 

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3. The Uruk Phenomenon (Gebhard J. Selz) 

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4. Early Dynastic Egypt (Laurel Bestock) 

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5. Egypt’s Old Kingdom: A View from Within (Miroslav Bárta)  316 6. Egypt’s Old Kingdom in Contact with the World (Pierre Tallet) 

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7. Egypt’s Old Kingdom: Perspectives on Culture and Society (Richard Bussmann) 

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8. The Early Dynastic Near East (Vitali Bartash) 

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9. The Kingdom of Akkad: A View from Within (Ingo Schrakamp) 

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10. The Kingdom of Akkad in Contact with the World (Piotr Michalowski) 

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Index 

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Preface

This is the first volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East; four more volumes of similar length will follow over the course of the next few years. The five volumes will cover the long period from the first settled communities in Western Asia and Egypt to the conquests of Alexander of Macedon (d. 323 bc), but with a particular focus on the three millennia starting in the late fourth millennium bc, when the emergence of the first complex states profoundly changed human societies and cultural norms across the region. In deciding on the cutoff point for the first volume, we had to take into account the physical constraints of bookbinding as well as the expectations of the readers. On balance, matching the Old Kingdom of Egypt with the much shorter-​lived Akkad state and using the detailed discussion of these influential pathfinder polities as the endpoint of the first volume’s narrative is satisfactory for logistical as well as conceptual and intellectual reasons. The absolute and relative chronology of the third millennium bc is still not securely anchored, so we must leave it to future generations of scholars to establish whether we should have included Egypt’s First Intermediate period or the kingdom of the Third Dynasty of Ur in this volume after all or were justified in reserving those chapters for the second volume. The chart on pp. x–xi presents a concise overview of the chronological coverage of the present volume. Because the chronology is so uncertain, we have asked our authors to use a bare minimum of absolute dates. When such information is mentioned, it is for the reader’s general orientation only and should certainly not be understood as the passionate endorsement of a specific

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chronology (High, Middle, Low, Ultra Low). Volume 2, in which we are on safer although still highly contested ground, will start off with a chapter discussing the reconstruction of the absolute chronology of the first half of the second millennium BC. This will address the challenges in correlating vastly different sources such as radiocarbon-​dated organic materials, tree rings, and astronomical information contained in ancient texts. In transcribing Egyptian proper nouns, we follow the conventions of The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw (rev. ed., Oxford University Press, 2004). We do not use hyphenation to separate the components of Sumerian personal names (e.g., Amargirid instead of Amar-​ girid), but we follow normal practice in marking the individual words within Akkadian proper nouns (e.g., Naram-​Sin instead of Naramsin, Dur-​Akkad instead of Durakkad). This should allow the interested reader to distinguish between Sumerian and Akkadian names, which very often occur side by side in Mesopotamian contexts from at least the mid-​third millennium bc onward. We do not use any long vowels in proper nouns, including modern Arabic and Farsi place names. The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East is the brainchild of Stefan Vranka at OUP New  York, who first suggested this ambitious publication project to us in 2015. Although the three editors are based on two continents and in three different time zones, we worked very closely with each other. This was greatly facilitated by the fellowships awarded by the Center for Advanced Studies of LMU Munich (CASLMU) to Nadine Moeller and Dan Potts, which allowed us to work together in Munich in July 2016, 2017, and 2018 while drafting the book proposal, recruiting authors, and fine-​tuning our editorial processes. We have also had the chance to meet up in various constellations in Chicago, Penjwin (Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq), and Pouillon (Pays Chalosse, France) while finalizing this first volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. We are very grateful to the illustrious group of scholars, a mix of leading experts and bright new talents from all over the world, who graciously agreed to write the ten chapters that make up this first volume, covering the period from the beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the

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Preface

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dynasty of Akkad. Draft manuscripts were received between April 2018 and June 2019. At LMU Munich, we are greatly indebted to Denise Bolton, who language-​edited several chapters; to Dr. Andrea Squitieri, who created all maps on the basis of lists of place names provided by the chapter authors; to Thomas Seidler, who consolidated the chapter bibliographies; and to Philipp Seyr, who harmonized the Egyptian names and spellings across the volume. Their good services were funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation via the International Award for Research in Germany 2015 to Karen Radner. We are very grateful for their patience, speed, and attention to detail. The cover of this volume shows, together with its modern impression on a strip of clay, the silver cylinder seal bearing the name and titles of the Egyptian ruler Sahura (Dynasty 5), which is today housed in the collection of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland (accession number 57.1748). It is the first of five cylinder seals from different parts of the Near East that we have chosen for the covers of the individual volumes of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. To us, not only are these seals beautiful and meaningful objects, each in its own right, but as a group they serve to epitomize the region’s great cultural variations and commonalities.

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Table 0.1. Chronological chart. Egypt 6000 bc 5000 bc

4000 bc

3000 bc

Predynastic period (5000–​3000 bc) Lower Egypt Neolithic 5000–​4000 bc Maadi Cultural Complex 4000–​3200 bc

Upper Egypt Badarian period 4400–​4000 bc Naqada I 4000–​3500 bc Naqada II 3500–​3000 bc

Naqada III 3200–​3000 bc Early Dynastic period (3000–​2700 bc) Dynasty 1 Aha Djer Den Queen Merneith Anedjib Semerkhet Qa‘a Dynasty 2 Hetepsekhemwy Raneb Peribsen Khasekhemwy

Mesopotamia

Syria Halaf culture (6000–​5300 bc) Ubaid period (5300–​3800 bc)

Iraq Ubaid period (6000–​3800 bc)

–​–​–​–​ Uruk period –​–​–​–​ (3800–​3300 bc)

Early Jezirah period (3000–​2300 bc) Ebla Mari

Lagaš

Jamdat Nasr (3300–​3000 bc) Early Dynastic period (3000–​2300 bc) Uruk Ur

Kiš

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2700 bc

2500 bc

2400 bc

2300 bc

Old Kingdom (2700–​2100 bc) Dynasty 3 Nebka Djoser (Netjerikhet) Sekhemkhet Khaba Huni Dynasty 4 Sneferu Khufu Radjedef Khafra Menkaura Shepseskaf Dynasty 5 Userkaf Sahura Neferirkara Shepseskare Raneferef Nyuserra Menkauhor ​ Djedkare Isesi Unas Dynasty 6 Teti Pepy I Meryra Merenra

2200 bc Pepy II

Meskalamdug Ur-​Nanše Ayakurgal

Igrišhalab Irkabdamu Išardamu

Iblulil

Mesilim

Eanatum Enmetena Erekagina

–​–​ Enšakušanna –​–​ –​–​ Lugalzagesi –​–​

Akkad Sargon Rimuš Maništusu Naram-Sin Šar-kali-šarri

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The Contributors

Peter M. M. G. Akkermans (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is professor of Near Eastern archaeology at Leiden University. He is director of the Tell Sabi Abyad Project in Syria and the Jebel Qurma Archaeological Landscape Project in Jordan. Together with Glenn M. Schwartz, he published The Archaeology of Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Miroslav Bárta (PhD, Charles University) is professor of Egyptology and director of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague. He is directing archaeological projects on the Abusir pyramid field and in Usli (Sudan). In 2003 he pioneered detailed satellite research on the pyramid fields. His many publications include Satellite Atlas of the Pyramid Fields (Dryada, 2006), Journey to the West: The World of the Old Kingdom Tombs in Ancient Egypt (Charles University, 2011), and Analysing Collapse: The Rise and Fall of the Old Kingdom (AUC Press, 2019). Vitali Bartash (PhD, University of Frankfurt) is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. His books include two editions of early Sumerian archives (2013, 2017)  and the monograph Establishing Value: Weight Measures in Early Mesopotamia (De Gruyter, 2019). His research focuses on the socioeconomic history of the Early Bronze Age Middle East, in particular age groups (children), kinship, labor, and mobility. Laurel Bestock (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) is associate professor of archaeology and Egyptology at Brown University. She directed excavations focused on Early Dynastic royal monuments

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at Abydos (Egypt) and currently codirects an expedition at the Middle Kingdom fortress of Uronarti (Sudan). Her most recent book is Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt: Images and Ideology before the New Kingdom (Routledge, 2017). Richard Bussmann (PhD, Free University Berlin, 2007) is professor of Egyptology at the University of Cologne. His research interests focus on the social archaeology of Egypt, urbanism, and comparative approaches to early complex societies. He has written a book on community shrines in third millennium bc provincial Egypt (Brill, 2010) and a beginners’ textbook for Middle Egyptian, which adopts methods from modern language teaching (Hodder, 2017). He codirects a fieldwork project at Zawyet Sultan in Middle Egypt. E. Christiana Köhler is professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna and a leading specialist in Pre-​and Early Dynastic Egypt. After working at archaeological sites in the Middle East for over thirty years, including two decades at the Early Dynastic necropolis at Helwan, she is currently director of the University of Vienna Middle Egypt Project and leads excavations in the Early Dynastic royal cemetery at Abydos/​ Umm el-​Qaab in cooperation with the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. Piotr Michalowski (PhD, Yale University) is George G.  Cameron Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous studies on literary, linguistic, historical, and historiographical aspects of ancient Mesopotamian cultures. His latest book is The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom (Eisenbrauns, 2011). Nadine Moeller (PhD, University of Cambridge) is professor of Egyptian archaeology at Yale University. Her research focuses on ancient Egyptian urbanism, on which she has recently published a book, The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2016). She has participated in numerous fieldwork projects in Egypt; since 2001, she has been directing excavations at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt.

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D. T. Potts (PhD, Harvard University) is professor of ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. A corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute, he has worked in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Armenia, and the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. His numerous books include The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State (2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2015)  and Nomadism in Iran:  From Antiquity to the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2014). Karen Radner (PhD, University of Vienna) holds the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich. A member of the German Archaeological Institute and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, her numerous books include Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015), A Short History of Babylon (Bloomsbury, 2020) as well as editions of cuneiform archives from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Ingo Schrakamp (PhD, Philipps-​Universität Marburg 2010, Habilitation Freie Universtität Berlin 2018) is a Privatdozent in ancient Near Eastern studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His publications focus on cuneiform lexicography and the history of Mesopotamia in the late fourth and third millennia bc, especially on its chronology and geographical, military, and socioeconomic questions. Gebhard J. Selz is professor emeritus of ancient Near Eastern languages and archaeology at the University of Vienna. His main research interests belong to the cultural heritage of early Mesopotamia, especially the specifics of hermeneutical procedures. He has published numerous articles and books on the intellectual, religious, and economic history of this period, including the evolution of the cuneiform writing systems. The scope of his research is reflected by two recent edited collections: The Empirical Dimension of Ancient Near Eastern Studies (LIT Verlag, 2011, with Klaus Wagensonner) and It’s a Long Way to a Historiography of the Early Dynastic Period(s) (Ugarit-​Verlag, 2015, with Reinhard Dittmann).

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Pierre Tallet studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale in Cairo and now holds the chair of Egyptology at the Sorbonne (Paris). He has directed and codirected a range of field projects in Egypt and Sudan, including a South Sinai survey and the excavations of two Red Sea harbors. The author of several books on ancient Egypt, he is currently editing the papyri of Pharaoh Khufu found in Wadi el-​Jarf on the Gulf of Suez.

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Abbreviations

AA AAE AfO AJA ÄL AnSt AoF ASAE BA BACE BaM BASOR BIFAO BiOr BMSAES BSFE BSOAS CA CAJ CdE CDLB CDLJ CDLN CRAIBL CRIPEL

American Antiquity Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Archiv für Orientforschung American Journal of Archaeology Ägypten & Levante Anatolian Studies Altorientalische Forschungen Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology Baghdader Mitteilungen Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale Bibliotheca Orientalis British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan Bulletin de la Société Française d’Égyptologie Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Current Anthropology Cambridge Archaeological Journal Chronique d’Égypte Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin Cuneiform Digital Library Journal Cuneiform Digital Library Notes Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-​Lettres Cahiers de Recherches de l’Institut de Papyrologie et d’Égyptologie de Lille

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xviii DE EAO GM HUCA IrAnt JAA JAOS JAR JARCE JAS JAS-​R JCS JEA JFA JMA JNES JRAS JWP MDAIK MDOG NABU NEA OJA OLZ PNAS PRS PSAS QI QSR RA RdE RlA RSO SAAB SAAC

Abbreviations Discussions in Egyptology Egypte, Afrique et Orient Göttinger Miszellen Hebrew Union College Annual Iranica Antiqua Journal of Anthropological Archaeology Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Archaeological Research Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Journal of Archaeological Science Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Journal of Field Archaeology Journal of Mediterranean Archeology Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal of World Prehistory Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-​Gesellschaft Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires Near Eastern Archaeology Oxford Journal of Archaeology Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Proceedings of the Royal Society Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Quaternary International Quaternary Science Reviews Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale Revue d’Égyptologie Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie Rivista degli studi orientali State Archives of Assyria Bulletin Studies in Ancient Art and Civilization

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Abbreviations SAK VDI WA WdO WZKM ZA ZÄS ZOrA

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Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur Vestnik Drevnej Istorii World Archaeology Die Welt des Orients Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde Zeitschrift für Orient-​Archäologie

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Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts

The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East aims to become the standard source for anyone interested in the subject, much like the Cambridge Ancient History was for earlier generations of readers around the world. It is intended to serve as a reference work and the new backbone for teaching and researching the three millennia bc from the emergence of complex states to the eve of the conquests of Alexander of Macedon. Organized in five volumes and more than seventy chapters, it provides a comprehensive survey of the history of the ancient Near East, including Egypt, and contextualizes this core region in a wider geographical horizon that stretches from the headwaters of the Nile and the Aegean Sea to Central Asia and the Indus region. The field owes significant advances to recent archaeological discoveries and textual research, including on clay tablets, papyri, and rock inscriptions. The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East offers the reader a chronologically organized overview of the current state of scholarship, highlighting problems and priorities for current and future research. Each chapter presents primary evidence (material and if available, textual), emphasizing the impact of new finds on historical reconstruction Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, and D. T. Potts, Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East In: The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Edited by: Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, D. T. Potts, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190687854.003.0001.

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and interpretation. In a field that is deeply shaped by international collaboration, the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East seeks to avoid a monocultural perspective by bringing together authors rooted in a wide range of scholarly traditions and disciplinary backgrounds. They are not afraid to critique influential scholarly paradigms and, where appropriate, discuss twists and turns in the evolving history of scholarship. The individual chapters highlight political, social, and cultural changes and continuities and frame these in the environmental and technological contexts that unite and divide the various regions, cultures, societies, communities, and polities considered here. The latter serve as the basic principle of organization for the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, as from the late fourth millennium bc onward the region was characterized by the emergence, consolidation, and collapse of a multiplicity of competing complex states. The first volume also includes chapters that trace the long-​term prehistory of the region up to the cusp of the establishment of complex polities in Western Asia (­chapter 1) and Egypt (­chapter 2). Otherwise, however, the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East deliberately privileges the state as the focal point of the narrative. Chapters that place major states such as the kingdom of Akkad or Old Kingdom Egypt in the context of their interactions with the wider world provide a stepping stone toward creating more connected and transregional historical narratives.

I.1.  The scope of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East As used in the title of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, the term “ancient Near East” embraces an area comprised, in modern terms, of Western Asia and Northeast Africa. Although scholars, cartographers, and political organizations vary in their definitions of which countries fall under the rubric Western Asia, for our purposes it includes Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, while Northeast Africa comprises Egypt, Libya, and Sudan as well as regions in the Horn of Africa. For

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some periods, particularly in the first millennium bc, parts of the southern Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) are included as well, and for the Achaemenid period, the scope widens to also include parts of Central and South Asia. The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East is concerned explicitly with history and the written record, rather than the archaeology of nonliterate societies. As such, the inclusion or exclusion of any part of this region simply reflects the presence or absence of written sources. By and large these sources are indigenous; that is, they were written in the area discussed. In some cases (e.g., for Oman or parts of Iran), although written sources are lacking, an area may be referred to in texts produced elsewhere (e.g., ancient Oman is mentioned as Makkan in cuneiform sources from Iraq). As a result, one can sometimes sketch the history of an aliterate region, albeit imperfectly, by drawing on non-​local sources. Needless to say, this is far from ideal, but it accounts for the mention of some regions that lack written sources in a work that is explicitly historical. From the Bronze Age (from the late fourth to the late second millennium bc), only those areas that used one of the various cuneiform writing systems, the Egyptian scripts, and the “Luwian hieroglyphs” of Anatolia provide a historical record sensu stricto, although alphabetic evidence from epigraphic sources becomes available gradually; much more alphabetic material, representing a range of languages and including relatively separate traditions such as the Old South Arabian script of Yemen, appears in the subsequent Iron Age throughout the entire region.1 But a preference for degradable writing materials means that much of this documentation has only survived in the most arid environments and therefore has never rivaled the sheer mass of almost indestructible clay tablets available for modern research. Depending on precisely which countries are included, the area of Western Asia comfortably exceeds two million square miles, or just over five million square kilometers. It is bounded on the north by the Black Sea, the Caucasus mountains, and the Caspian Sea; on the south by

1. The contributions in Woods 2015 provide well-​illustrated introductions to most of these writing systems.

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the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea (or Gulf of Oman), and the Western Indian Ocean; on the east by the deserts (Dasht-​e Lut and Dasht-​e Kavir) and hills of the Indo-​Iranian borderlands; and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea. Northeast Africa is bounded by the Red Sea to the east; the Mediterranean to the north; the Sahara to the west, and sub-​Saharan Africa to the south. Including this region increases the area under discussion by another 50 percent. Not unexpectedly, this immense territory displays a staggering diversity of topographic features:  mountain ranges, deserts, steppes, oases, alluvial environments, valleys, and plains. These are characterized by enormous climatic variability and biodiversity as well as highly irregular distribution of mineral and other natural resources.2 Major and minor river systems, lakes, and seas punctuate the landscape, offering opportunities for subsistence, irrigation, and navigation. Some nation-​states in Western Asia and Northeast Africa have names of considerable antiquity (e.g., Iran, Lebanon), while others are recent creations (e.g., Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates). Be that as it may, none of these names occurs in the earliest written sources from the late fourth millennium bc. Importantly, many of the geographic concepts that are today taken for granted have no equivalent in the ancient languages of the region. Thus the term “Mesopotamia” is a Greek concept that sees the region “between the rivers” Euphrates and Tigris as a unit. This may accurately reflect the situation for much of the first millennium bc, when the region was under the control of a series of major powers (Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia) that increasingly merged it into one political space—​especially in the perception of outsiders. But prior to the eighth century bc, this concept of one, united region had little relevance to political reality. When we use the name Mesopotamia in the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, we do so to describe a broad cultural sphere with many locally distinctive characteristics and differences and frequently changing political constellations. The same applies to names such as Anatolia (from Greek “East”) and Levant (from Latin

2. On raw materials see Moorey 1994 for Western Asia and Nicholson and Shaw 2000 for Egypt.

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“Land of the Rising Sun,” encompassing Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and the coastal regions of Syria). Ancient sources are replete with place names every bit as diverse as our own today, ranging from overarching names given to large regions to those of individual polities, cities, villages, mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, and seas. When cities and states appear in the chapters that follow, ancient names, whenever available, are generally used in preference to modern ones. On the other hand, archaeological sites that have not been conclusively identified with an ancient toponym are necessarily referred to by their modern names; on our maps, these names are italicized. For the sake of clarity, we generally refer to mountain ranges and bodies of water by their modern names. The maps that accompany the chapters of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East visualize the geographic information contained in each chapter. The boundaries of large ancient agglomerations—​ states and empires—​almost invariably transect the boundaries of more than one modern nation-​state, and readers should be aware that names are often used anachronistically. Terms such as “ancient Iraq” or “ancient Turkey,” for example, are oxymorons, since neither Iraq nor Turkey is attested in the periods covered by the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Nor, for that matter, does the widely used name Zagros—​the impressive mountain chain on today’s border between Iraq and Iran—​occur before the second century bc, when it first appears in Polybius’s Histories (5.44.6). On the other hand, ancient names such as Assyria and Elam may appear in the following chapters in the same sentence as patently anachronistic ones such as “Khabur triangle” and “Diyala region,” which are neologisms used by archaeologists and historians as convenient monikers for which there is no ancient equivalent. Even specialists are guilty of juxtaposing ancient and modern names in the same sentence, and with good reason: if the ancient name of the region is unknown, scholars discussing that area will necessarily use the modern one, even while they refer to other places identified in ancient sources by their premodern names. In terms of geological time, the scope of the present work is narrow and, except for the first two chapters, which set the scene by sketching the prehistoric background of the historical societies discussed

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thereafter, covers roughly three thousand years, from the late fourth millennium bc to the time of Alexander of Macedon (d. 323 bc), whose conquests provide this work with a convenient end date, as they link up the diverse regions under discussion. However, other points in time were considered for the finishing line of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: the creation of the Persian Empire in the sixth century bc, the spread of Christianity in the early centuries ad, or the advent of Islam in the seventh century ad. Using Alexander’s conquests as the terminal point for this work seemed a good choice, as multiple recent publications have been devoted to the Hellenistic world and the subsequent periods, which naturally combine Western Asia and Northeast Africa in their historical narratives.3 On the other hand, for the earlier periods, those regions are still regularly treated as separate entities as a matter of course, in part due to the different writing systems that underpin much of their study. With the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East, we want to link up the regional histories of Western Asia and Northeast Africa as much as possible, and in this we follow a very different strategy than the Cambridge Ancient History, which reserved discussion of Western Asia and Egypt for entirely separate volumes.

I.2.  The lay of the land Depending on the geographical and chronological context, modern research usually refers to the inhabitants of the ancient Near East as Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Elamites, Amorites, Hurrians, Hittites, Kassites, Nubians, Lybians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Persians, etc., and these names—​as well as conventional periodization labels such as “Old Babylonian,” “Middle Kingdom Egypt,” and “Neo-​Elamite”—​are based on linguistic and/​or political criteria. However, such labeling should never imply ethnic uniformity, which would by no means do justice to the linguistic and cultural diversity that was and is typical of the Near East through all periods.

3. For example, Erskine 2003; Bugh 2006.

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While Egyptian sources tend to strongly emphasize the cultural unity of the Nile valley, modes of living in the Nile delta and Lower Egypt, literally “The Wide (Land),” differ in fundamental ways from those in the narrow floodplains of Upper Egypt, literally “The Thin (Land),” and the two regions feature separately in the traditional titles of the ruler.4 And although Nubians, Libyans, and “Asiatics” (i.e., anyone originating from the lands east of Egypt) are often depicted as non-​Egyptians or even anti-​Egyptians in Egyptian texts and images, they constitute an integral part of Egypt’s population throughout the periods covered by the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. From the written sources of Mesopotamia, it is clear that the rulers of the various states along the Euphrates and the Tigris saw their regions as part of a much larger world, and this is already evident in testimonies from the second half of the third millennium bc.5 This world is defined by its borders, the “Four Corners of the World” (first documented in the titles of Naram-​Sin, king of Akkad; cf. c­ hapter 10). The Egyptian worldview is more compact and focuses on the Nile, the longest river in the world, whose water nourishes the land of Egypt. The most commonly used Egyptian term for the country was Kemet, “The Black (Land),” a reference to the dark, fertile soil created by the Nile flood. In opposition to Kemet stands Deshret, “The Red (Land),” that is, the surrounding desert. The idea that in essence the world consisted of the regions along the Nile crucially shaped the Egyptian worldview. The Nile has two tributaries, whose sources lie at the equator:6 the White Nile originates in the highlands of Burundi and the Blue Nile in the Ethiopian highlands. They both flow north and merge at the city of Khartoum, the capital of modern Sudan, into a mighty stream that is the only river to cross the Sahara desert, thereby connecting Central Africa with the Mediterranean Sea. The annual Nile flood is caused by

4. Kahl  2007. 5. Michalowski 2010. 6. On the Nile as natural and cultural landscape see Prell 2009; Willems and Dahms 2017.

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the copious rains that fall during the summer monsoon season in the Ethiopian highlands and first reach Egypt by early July, with the waters continuing to rise until September. The waters of the Blue Nile and the Atbara River used to supply about 80–​90  percent of the floodwaters reaching Egypt, while the White Nile provided a more steady water contribution of 10–​20 percent throughout the year. The construction of the first Aswan Dam in 1902 and the more recent Aswan High Dam, which was built during the 1960s and led to the creation of the vast Lake Nasser, irrevocably ended this phenomenon, which had shaped Egypt’s agriculture for millennia. Previously, when the waters of the flood had subsided, the land along the Nile had emerged, covered with the dark, mineral-​ rich silt deposits that were an ideal fertilizer, and this had ushered in the beginning of the agricultural year in September, mainly focused on the cultivation of wheat, barley, and flax for linen production. The Nile valley is a “convex” river floodplain, in which the highest ground is situated along the banks of the river and lower lying basins are found close to the outer edges of the Nile valley near the desert fringe.7 Through the process of coarse sediments being deposited in larger quantities, elevated levees formed along the banks of the main river channel and along its branches, while the finer sediments were distributed further into the lower basins of floodplain.8 The height of the riverbed and its embankments could rise faster than parts of the floodplain, and this frequently caused the river to change its course, which resulted in the creation of islands in the Nile. The meandering course of the Nile also created higher-​lying levees throughout the floodplain. Because they provide good protection from the inundation, many of these levees have been used for settlements from antiquity until modern times. Those situated close to the main river channel were also used to contain the floodwaters and often were reinforced and raised in height in order to better control the water flow. The foundation of settlements on such higher levees led to the development of permanent settlements, which

7. Butzer  1976. 8. Said  1994.

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were inhabited for long periods of time and gradually grew taller, thus forming a tell or kôm, an artificial mound created by superimposed settlement layers. Thus, towns and villages within the floodplain did not grow much horizontally but had a tendency to evolve vertically. The same was true for settlements in Western Asia, where these artificial mounds are known as tell (in Arabic), tel (in Hebrew), or tol (in Farsi) or as höyük (in Turkish), gir or gird (in Kurdish), or tappeh (in Farsi). The bulk of the Nile water drained into the Mediterranean Sea in a wide delta, frequently directed and controlled by human intervention through the construction of additional canal arms. The intensively used delta comprised two-​thirds of Egypt’s agricultural area and always housed the majority of its population. The Nile was not only indispensable for agriculture, but also Egypt’s main traffic artery. Also south of Aswan, on the way to the interior of Africa, where the waterfalls and rapids that form the six Nile cataracts impede navigation, the many traffic routes followed the river. An alternative overland route ran parallel to the Nile through a sequence of oases through the Western Desert.9 In addition, large wadi systems, with regular freshwater supplies, provided access from the Nile through the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea coast, including in the south Wadi Hammamat, which starts in the region of Thebes, and in the north Wadi Araba, which departs in the region of the Fayum. These wadis served as starting points for Egyptian maritime expeditions to the Sinai peninsula and to locations on the Horn of Africa. Also in Western Asia, the traffic networks relied heavily on waterways whenever possible. The large rivers Euphrates and Tigris and their tributaries were essential for the movement of people and goods in Mesopotamia. While the Tigris is a rather wild river, and shipwrecks are not uncommon even today, navigating the Euphrates is comfortable and comparatively safe. Both rivers originate in the mountain regions of central Anatolia (modern Turkey), while the sources of the main tributaries of the Tigris (Upper and Lower Zab; Diyala/​Sirwan) are located in the Zagros Mountains in the border region between modern Iraq and 9. Förster and Riemer 2013.

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Iran. Through these waterways, the mountain regions and high plateaus of Anatolia and Iran are directly linked to Mesopotamia as well as the entire Fertile Crescent, the hilly flanks running along the Zagros, Taurus, Amanus, and Lebanon mountain ranges and their promontories, where the earliest farming communities had settled permanently in villages (cf. ­chapter 1) and where rain-​fed agriculture and pastoralism were practiced throughout the periods covered by the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East.10 Although the wild mountain rivers could be used for transport only downstream and even then only seasonally (after the spring floods and before the beginning of the autumn rains), most of the wood and building stone used in Mesopotamia reached their destinations in this way. It is important to realize that the agriculture of Egypt and Western Asia was subject to different seasonal rhythms that started in autumn and spring, respectively. The Euphrates and Tigris reached their highest water levels in the spring, when the snow melted in their tributaries’ mountainous headwater regions in Anatolia and Iran. As in Egypt, but at a completely different time of year, the flooding of the rivers challenged the inhabitants of the floodplain of southern Iraq to protect their settlements from the onslaught of water while ensuring that the mineral-​rich and therefore very fertile mud carried by these waters reached the fields. Here, too, the water was tamed with dams and made serviceable with the construction of canals. South of the modern city of Baghdad, today the capital of Iraq, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers were linked in antiquity by a multitude of canals,11 and these turned a region whose low precipitation would otherwise make it a desert into a phenomenally rich agricultural region. We must imagine a human-​made, highly artificial landscape in the style of the Venice lagoon or the coastal areas of the Netherlands when we think of southern Iraq in antiquity. Dates and the cereals barley and wheat were the most important cultivars, and in contrast to Egypt’s linen industry, 10. For the vastly different environments and landscapes of Western Asia in antiquity see Wilkinson 2003. 11. Gasche and Tanret 1998.

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textile production was based mainly on wool. Shipping was the most efficient form of transport, and the Mesopotamian boatmen were rowing, punting, and sailing on all sorts of barges, rafts, coracles, and boats.12 Some of these vessels were made of wood, but it had to be imported and was therefore expensive. Reeds, straw, and leather were used much more frequently, and waterproofing of the vessels was achieved with the help of bitumen, a highly viscous liquid or semisolid form of petroleum that occurs naturally at seeps in oil-​rich Iraq.13 Egypt, too, had a lack of good-​quality timber suitable for shipbuilding, and close links with trading ports in Lebanon, in particular with Byblos, were essential to obtain cedar wood, the most popular choice for constructing seafaring ships, river boats, and vessels for ritual purposes (such as solar barques).

I.3.  Tectonics and geomorphology The Zagros mountain chain between Iraq and western and southern Iran is one of the most tectonically active regions on Earth, and a long sequence of earthquakes has been documented there.14 Earthquakes often create local, short-​term catastrophic conditions, leveling entire settlements and killing thousands of inhabitants. As is evident at the multiperiod mounds of Tol-​e Nurabad and Tol-​e Spid in Fars, entire settlements were sometimes destroyed by earthquakes, as demonstrated by visible cracks in excavated sections running right through the settlement deposits, slumped walls, and evidence of large-​scale building collapse.15 And yet resettlement on top of or adjacent to villages, towns, and cities destroyed by earthquakes was and is common. This probably reflects the fact that the very same faults that lead to earthquakes also serve as conduits of the groundwater, which in areas of low rainfall enable irrigation

12. Potts 1997: 122–​137. 13. Potts 1997: 99–​100, 130–​132. 14. Ambraseys and Melville 2005. 15. Berberian et al. 2014: 12–​25.

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agriculture,16 and farming populations generally hesitate to abandon areas with reliable groundwater resources. In the ancient Near East, where mud-​brick architecture was very widespread, the phenomenon of destruction, that is, houses and other buildings collapsing, followed by rebuilding on top of the resultant rubble, is well-​documented, as is settlement discontinuity, as many long-​lived sites have intermittent gaps in their settlement sequences. But although earthquakes arguably have killed thousands and thousands of people and caused the destruction and abandonment of entire settlements over centuries, the historical effects of seismicity are debatable. More obvious impacts on human society, settlement location, and the “fate of nations” have been caused by avulsions (i.e., the abandonment of one river channel and the formation of another), particularly in southern Mesopotamia. Since the fourth millennium bc, the dynastic history of the southern Mesopotamian states has been intimately connected to the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers,17 and Holocene avulsions over time have isolated some towns and cities that were formerly situated along rivers. A city like Sippar gradually received less water as the Arahtum Channel, the node of which is located some 20 km (kilometers) to the northwest of the site, superseded the Purattum Channel.18 Conversely, this same shift was instrumental in the rise of the city of Babylon.19 Avulsions, of course, may reflect human intervention as well as natural processes or a combination of both. Canal, dam, and weir construction may all contribute to changing watercourses.20 Although tectonic activity and geomorphologically dynamic zones, such as riverine and coastal marine environments, are well-​attested in some areas, geologically speaking, the physical environment of the societies discussed here was generally stable. Similarly, even if, in very broad

16. Jackson 2006: 1914–​1915; Schmidt et al. 2011: 584. 17. Gasche and Tanret 1998. 18. Heyvaert and Baeteman 2008. 19. Jotheri et al. 2016: 15–​16. 20. See, for example, Woodbridge et al. 2016.

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terms, the climate of the Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages was generally reminiscent of conditions today, several important “corrections,” to borrow a term from economics, must be recognized. The question always to be borne in mind, of course, is whether such corrections had demonstrable historical as well as social and economic implications.

I.4.  Climate: some issues for consideration All of written human history falls within the geological time period known as the Holocene. Beginning ca. 9700 bc (i.e., 11,700 BP, where BP = “before present,” i.e., ad 195021), the Early Holocene extended to 6200 bc; the Middle Holocene ended around 2200 bc; and the Late Holocene encompasses all time thereafter.22 Thanks to some eighty published palaeoclimate records from Italy, the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Seas, the Strait of Sicily, Tunisia, the Ionian Sea, Romania, Albania, Greece, the Aegean, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, the Red Sea, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and the Arabian Sea,23 the fundamentals of the ancient climate of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East are now reasonably well-​ known. These may be succinctly characterized as hot and dry summers (May to October), amounting to what may