by Eckart Frahm
In spite of a relatively weak Assyrian presence in the Levant, it is remarkable how few uprisings occurred there between the late eighth century and the 640s. The situation in the Assyrian provinces was stable; they served, among other things, as bases for military operations against the Arabs, which took place partially on the land of the Transjordanian vassals, and – in the case of Moab – even with their support.
The Assyrian kings were met with a complicated geopolitical situation in the Levant. A look at the political map reveals that they dealt with the region in different ways. During the course of some 200 years, the Assyrian army campaigned in the Levant sixty‐seven times. Although not every state lost its independence, twenty‐one provinces were created there, based on the principle of “territorial continuity,” which meant that only provinces whose territories bordered on already existing ones were established. Three of them (Ḫilakku/Bit‐Purutaš, Til‐garimmu, and Ashdod) were lost shortly after they were created. Tabalu, some Phoenician cities (Arwad, Byblos, Samsimurruna, and Tyre), Philistia (Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Ḫazzat), Judah, and the Transjordanian states (Ammon, Moab, and Edom), as well as some princedoms in Cyprus (Yadnana), remained Assyrian vassals.
References
Bagg, A.M. 2007. Die Orts‐ und Gewässernamen der neuassyrischen Zeit, Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
Bagg, A.M. 2011. Die Assyrer und das Westland, Leuven: Peeters.
Cogan, M. 2008. The Raging Torrent, Jerusalem: Carta.
Cogan, M. and Tadmor, H. 1988. 2 Kings, Anchor Bible 11, Garden City: Doubleday.
Eph‘al, I. 1984. The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Border of the Fertile Crescent 9th–5th Centuries B. C., Jerusalem: Magness Press.
Hawkins, J.D. 1995. “The Political Geography of North Syria and South‐East Anatolia in the Neo‐Assyrian Period,” in: M. Liverani (ed.), Neo‐Assyrian Geography, Padova: Sargon, 87–101.
Niehr, H. (ed.) 2014. The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria, Leiden: Brill.
Sader, H. 1987. Les états araméens de Syrie depuis leur fondation jusqu’à leur transformation en provinces assyriennes, Beirut/Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
Yamada, S. 2000. The Construction of the Assyrian Empire, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 3, Leiden: Brill.
Further Reading
Bagg 2011: chapters 4 and 5 provides a comprehensive study of the Assyrian conquest of (and rule in) the Levant based on the written sources (with secondary literature). For the historical geography of the Levant, see Bagg 2007 and Bagg 2011: chapters 1 to 3. A history of the Aramaean states in the Levant can be found in Sader 1987 and Niehr 2014. Hawkins 1995 presents an assessment of the political geography of the northern Levant. For Shalmaneser’s military campaigns, see Yamada 2000. For the relationship between Israel, Judah, and Assyria, see the commentary to the Book of Kings by Cogan and Tadmor 1988. Cogan 2008 offers a useful collection of cuneiform sources relating to ancient Israel. For Arabs in the Assyrian sources, see Eph‘al 1984, and Chapter 16 of this volume.
CHAPTER 14
Assyria and the Far West: The Aegean World
Robert Rollinger
In cuneiform sources of the eighth century BCE, there occurs for the first time an ethnic designation referring to people originating, from an Assyrian perspective, in the far west, i.e., in the Aegean. These people are labeled as “Yamnāya” (pronounced Yawnāya) in Assyrian and as “Yamanāya” (pronounced Yawanāya) in Babylonian. Very rarely, a corresponding toponym, Yaman (pronounced Yawan), is attested, referring vaguely to the region whence these people were coming (Rollinger 1997, 2001, 2003; for the Neo‐Assyrian testimonies: Rollinger 2008a, 2011a).
During the last two decades, it has become increasingly clear that ethnicity is a highly dynamic and volatile social phenomenon (Hall 1997, 2002; McInerney 2001; Morgan 1991, 2001; Ulf 2009). Though it is evident that “Yam(a)nāya” is related etymologically to “Ionians,” the term can only be equated with the “Greeks” with caution. The origins of the term can be traced back as far as the Late Bronze Age, where we find related expressions in Egyptian and Ugaritic as well as in the Linear B texts of the Aegean (Rollinger 2007: 260–3; Dietrich 2000, 2007; Haider 2008). After a break of several hundred years, the “Ionians” appear for the first time in Greek texts. If Iliad 13.685 is a later interpolation, then the sixth century BCE (pseudo)Homeric hymn about Apollo must be regarded as the first attestation of the I̓άoνες (Homeric Hymns 3,147) (Rollinger 2007: 303–8). The problems in identifying the Yam(a)nāya with the Ionians derive from the fact that a continuity of the term should not be confused with a continuity of the “content” to which it refers. French “allemand” does not designate only Alemanns, and Finish Saksa not only Saxonians. English “Germans” means Germans of the barbarian migration as well as “modern” Germans, i.e. “Deutsche,” whereas the term Dutch, etymologically related to the latter, has become the English designation for the closest neighboring “Germans,” the inhabitants of the Netherlands. Denominations for “Greece” and “Greek” in modern Middle Eastern languages are all etymologically derived from the term “Ionian,” but Assyrian “Yamanāya,” Homeric “Iaones,” Turkish “Yunanlı,” Arabic “Yūnānī,” and Farsi “Yūnānī” certainly do not mean exactly the same thing (Rollinger 2011a).
Interpreting the Yamnāya of the eighth and seventh centuries BCE as a specific Greek “tribe” with a uniform identity, language, and culture is also not without problems. The terminology for various groups of Greeks as we know it evolved from complex processes of ethnogenesis, which took place during the Persian Wars of the fifth century BCE (Ulf 1996b). Moreover, one should be aware that the Yam(a)nāya of the cuneiform sources betray an outsider’s perspective that was likely not identical with the inside perspective, shared by those who were labeled with this term. This Near Eastern perspective concerning the Yam(a)nāya was, moreover, not a stable one but was susceptible to changes and modifications according to time and place (for the post‐Neo‐Assyrian periods usage of the term, see Kuhrt 2002; Rollinger 2006a, 2006b, 2007).
All of these difficulties should be considered when we evaluate Assyrian references to the Yamnāya. The earliest come from the reign of the Assyrian king Tiglath‐pileser III (744–727 BCE), the latest from the time close to the end of the Neo‐Assyrian empire in the middle of the seventh century BCE (see the discussions in Lanfranchi 1999; Rollinger 2008a, 2008b; and cf. Rollinger 2001; Bagg 2007: 123f., 129). The sources can be divided into two groups. The majority of the attestations appear in Neo‐Assyrian royal inscriptions, which are composed in a literary dialect called Standard Babylonian and which are imbued with royal ideology. The most extensive attestations occur in the reign of Sargon II (721–705 BCE), but there are also examples from the inscriptions of Sennacherib (704–689 BCE) and Esarhaddon (688–669 BCE). Aside from royal inscriptions, the Yam(a)nāya are also mentioned in archival sources, which provide a different perspective. Two of these are letters pertaining to the royal administration (Nimrud Letter 69 = ND 2370 = Saggs 2001: 164–6 = SAA 19, 25, plus ND 2737 = Saggs 2001: 166–7 = SAA 19, 26). Both are related to a certain Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur, who held an important position on the Levantine coast during the reign of Tiglath‐pileser III (744–727 BCE) (cf. Van Buylaere 2002; Yamada 2008). The three remaining documents are from files of the Assyrian administration and belong to the reigns of Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) or Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE): SAA 7, 48, SAA 11, 1, and SAA 11, 34 (Rollinger 2008a).
The two letters are, so far, the earliest Assyrian attestations of the Yamnāya. Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur seems to have been governor of the Assyrian province of Ṣimirra, south of the estuary of the Orontes River. He was in control of the Syro‐Phoenician coast, which had become part of the province after the subjugation of Tyre, Israel, and Damascus in 732 BCE (for the problems connected with the term “Phoenician” cf. van Dongen 2010). Beginning with the eighth century BCE, the Assyrians started to control the trading activities of the Levantine city‐
states by establishing trade centers (kāru, bīt‐kāri), where tax inspectors exacted taxes from the local population (Yamada 2008: 309). One of these “trade centers,” localized on the seashore, is mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath‐pileser III, which summarize the king’s conquests in Syria in 738 BCE (Stele II B 13’: Tadmor 1994: 104f., plate XXXV; Rollinger 2011a: 270). The trade center is qualified as a “royal storehouse” (bīt ṣabûtāte šarrūte), supplying the Assyrian state with the revenue from trade and taxation related to the goods imported by local sea‐faring traders, who may have been Syro‐Phoenicians, Philistines, and Greeks (Yamada 2005: 68). In one of his letters (ND 2715), Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur reports to the king that such “trading centers” (bīt kārāni) have been established in the territory of Tyre (Saggs 2001: 155–8, plate 31 = SAA 19, 22; Yamada 2005: 59; Yamada 2008: 301f.). They are also attested in Sidon and Gaza (Summary Inscription 9, rev. 16: Tadmor 1994: 188f. with n. 16; Yamada 2005: 69).
It cannot be doubted that these facilities greatly affected Assyrian connections to the west. In the last years, it has become clear that Levantine traders had already reached the westernmost end of the Mediterranean Sea at the beginning of the ninth century BCE, as radiocarbon dating samples from Huelva in Southern Spain have demonstrated (Nijboer and van der Pflicht 2006; González de Canales et al. 2006). When from the middle of the ninth century BCE onwards the city‐states on the Phoenician coast began to fall under Assyrian supremacy, the Assyrians must have become increasingly interested in controlling these far‐reaching contacts and their economic profits. In a treaty between Esarhaddon and Baal, the king of Tyre (SAA 2, 5), we gain some insight as to what extent the Assyrians confined the independence of dependent vassal rulers (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: 24–7). The treaty specifies which harbors Baal’s ships were entitled to use and where his merchants were allowed to trade (SAA 2, 5, III 18’–30’). Thus, the Assyrian empire, at least indirectly, developed a Mediterranean perspective and had undoubtedly some influence in this geographic area (see also Radner 2004). Yet, it is astonishing to note that, with one possible exception, Assyrian texts do not mention “Greek” traders and trading activities, even though these must have existed, as demonstrated by the large amount of Aegean pottery excavated at sites on the Levantine coast, for example al‐Mīnā’. This pottery, which originated mainly from Euboea, with a smaller proportion from the Cyclades and Rhodes, substantially increases in the eighth century BCE (Haider 1996; Rollinger 2001), and it is exactly in this period that the first Assyrian attestations of the Yamnāya occur. The earliest attestation belongs to Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur’s dossier (ND 2737) and may be dated between 748 and 734 BCE (edition: Saggs 2001: 166–7, plate 33 = SAA 19, 26; cf. Yamada 2008: 305f., 309; for ND 2370 see Yamada 2008: 310). The letter is only partially preserved. Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur reports about two cities: the first city is uruia‐ú‐na and the second may be read as uruS[A]G‐ṣu‐ri, i.e. Rēši‐ṣūri (obv. line 14’–15’) (cf. Na’aman 2004: 70). The city Iauna, i.e. Yawna, can be interpreted as “Yawnāya‐city” (Rollinger 2011a: 271f.). If this is true, this letter provides the first attestation of a “Greek” settlement on Assyrian territory, and though we do not know where exactly it should be localized, it is highly probable that it was a coastal town. Since the events reported in the letter take place in the south of the Gˇabal al‐Aqra‘, an identification with al‐Mīnā’ seems to be ruled out. Ra’s al‐Bassīṭ is a possible option, even though this equation provides some problems too (Na’aman 2004: 70).
A few additional cuneiform documents testify to the presence of “Greeks” within the Assyrian empire. One administrative text from Nineveh about silver payments in connection with the Queen Mother mentions, in a fragmentary context, one (or more?) Yamanāya (SAA 4, 48, line 6 =Fales and Postgate 1992: 56). We do not know this person’s function; it has been speculated that he might have been a deportee, but this remains pure speculation (Rollinger 2001). More information is gained from an undated Assyrian letter, originating from the reign of Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) (SAA 16, 136). The text refers to fifteen people, qualified as fugitives, who were sent from the governor of the city of Der (east of Babylonia and the Tigris River) to two Assyrian officials. One of these people is called Addikritušu (Iad‐di‐ik‐ri‐tú‐šú; rev. 2), which is clearly a Greek name, Antikritos. He probably originated from Cyprus (Rollinger and Korenjak 2001) and was most likely a mercenary soldier.
In his annals, Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) offers a list of ten Cypriot vassal kings, reproduced without modification by his son and successor Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE). Some of these kings have Phoenician names (Qisu of Salamis; Damusu of Qart‐hadasht) but some are clearly Greek (Akestor of Idalion; Philagoras of Chytroi; Eteanthros of Paphos; Aretos of Soloi; Damasos of Kourion; Admetos of Tamassos; Onasagoras of Ledra; Bouthytes of Marion). Besides the aforementioned Antikritos, these are the earliest attestations of Greek personal names in cuneiform sources (Lipiński 1991).
Through the lenses of Assyrian “official” texts, the Yamnāya are viewed as robbers and marauders. This already becomes evident in another letter of Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur, written to the Assyrian king around 732/30 BCE (Nimrud Letter 69 = ND 2370) (Saggs 2001: 164–6, plate 32 = SAA 19, 25; Fales 1992: 52–4; Parker 2000; Yamada 2008: 310):
To the king my lord, your servant Qurdi‐Aššur‐lamur: The Yamnāya have appeared. They have battled at the city of Samsim[uruna], at the city of Ḫariṣu, and at the city of […]. A cavalryman came to the city of Da...[... (to report this to me). I gathered up the free men and went away. They (the Yamnāya) did not carry anything away. As soon as they saw my soldiers they [fled] on their boats. In the midst of the sea they [disappeared] …
Obviously, the Yamnāya deliberately avoided a military confrontation with the Assyrian army. Their strength was their high mobility, which was based on their nautical abilities. They originated from “the midst of the sea,” whither they also return. This metaphor has a long history in Assyrian texts and in the Assyrians’ perceptions of the far west (Lang and Rollinger 2010). It does not primarily refer to specific islands but rather to a faraway region at the western fringes of the Assyrian empire. In the reign of Sargon II (721–705 BCE), these fringes formed a triangle between the Syro‐Phoenician coast, Cyprus, and Cilicia (Que), and it was in this specific zone of encounter that the Assyrian king faced the threat posed by the Yamnāya (Fuchs 1993: 109, 319f.; cf. Rollinger 2001: 239f.; Rollinger 2003: 339):
[To subdue the Yamnāya, who] reside [in] the midst of the sea, who since faraway [days] were killing the inhabitants of Tyre and [the land of] Que, disconnecting the ways (of trade), I embarked [on ships of the land of] Ḫatti (= Syria west of the Euphrates) (and moved) towards them out on the sea. (There) I crushed all (of them) with my weapon.
(“Annals,” lines 117–19)
In other texts, Sargon boasts that he caught the Yamnāya in the midst of the sea “like fish,” which once again refers to the abovementioned zone of encounter between the Assyrians and these westerners (Rollinger 2008a).
For quite some time, the Yamnāyas’ homelands remained beyond the perspective of the Assyrian sources. This changed in the time of Esarhaddon, when the Assyrians’ view of the west expanded considerably. The most important testimony for this development is a passage in one of Esarhaddon’s royal inscriptions (RINAP 4: 60, line 9–11 = AsBbE 9–11): “I wrote to all of the kings who are in the midst of the sea, from Yadnana (Cyprus) (and) Yawan to Tarsisi, (and) they bowed down at my feet.”
A thorough analysis of the passage clearly reveals the advanced geographical knowledge of the reign of Esarhaddon (cf. Rollinger 2008b, 2011a; Lang and Rollinger 2010). On the one hand, the passage refers to the already well‐established fact that the Yamnāya originate from the midst of the sea, i.e. the faraway west. On the other hand, the traditional zone of encounter with them is no longer the westernmost region, according to Assyrian perspective. The nisbe Yawnāya h
as been replaced by the toponyom Yawan, i.e. their place of origin, and in this context the Assyrian king refers for the first time to political entities, i.e. kings, who are expected to respect Assyrian supremacy. Yet, the Assyrians’ perspective does not stop at Yawan, i.e. the Aegean, but goes far beyond, as far as the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is absolutely clear that Tarsisi does not refer to the city of Tarsus both because of the ideological message of the text and also for linguistic reasons. Tarsus appears in Assyrian texts as Tarzu, whereas Tarsisi has to be realized phonetically as Taršiši. It is connected with the Biblical Tarshish and the Tartessos of the classical sources, thus pointing to a region somewhere in southern Spain.1 Of course, Esarhaddon’s claim to have subdued “all the kings” of the Mediterranean is not a historical fact but an ideologically motivated assertion. It must be viewed within the framework of Assyrian royal ideology, in which every Assyrian king is eager to demonstrate that he has surpassed the achievements of his predecessors. Yet, seen in the light of the Assyrian control of the Levantine cities through taxing their trade activities in the west, the king’s claim is not only a castle in the air. We may suppose that the Assyrian administration was well informed about the trading activities of these cities, including basic data concerning where these cities had established emporia in the far west. This is supported by the king’s assertion that he had been writing to all these foreign kings,2 even though this claim has an ideological ring to it too. But it is clear that shortly afterwards, Ashurbanipal did communicate with Gyges of Lydia, another king of the far west (Fuchs 2010).
As discussed above, the Assyrians conceptualized their contacts with the Yamnāya mainly as confrontations with marauders and bandits who were heroically pushed back by the Assyrian kings. But this perspective is due to the Assyrian royal ideology and it is clear that, in reality, contacts must have been much more diverse. The importance of commercial connections has already been underlined, but there is more, and again it is in the royal inscriptions that we find essential information.
