by Eckart Frahm
In one of his inscriptions, Sennacherib (704–681 BCE) focuses on the events of his sixth campaign (694 BCE). He reports how he ordered a fleet to be built from scratch and how the ships and their crews were shipped down the Tigris River as far as the city of Opis, where the whole fleet was transported across the land to the Euphrates River in order to reach the Persian Gulf, where the king campaigned against Elam. The crews of these ships are of interest (T 29 [Bull 4]; Luckenbill 1924: 73 = RINAP 3/2: 82–3; Salonen 1939: 181 (col I, lines 11–16); Frahm 1997: 117; cf. Rollinger 2001: 242f., 2003: 339f., 2008a, 2008b):
“Hittites,” plunder of my bows, I settled in Nineveh, and they built dexterously mighty ships according to the workmanship of their land. I gave orders to sailors – Tyrians, Sidonians, and Ya[m]nāya, captives of my hand, and (my troops) let them sail down with them the Tigris River to the city of Opis.
The text not only relates the establishment of a fleet in the dockyards of Nineveh but also offers information about the working gangs and the recruitment of the sailors. The workers are generally classified as “Hittites,” i.e. Syrians west of the river Euphrates. The mariners, in contrast, are mentioned with specific references to their places of origin. They are labeled as Tyrians, Sidonians, and Yamnāya. At first glance, it seems very clear how these men were hired, since Sennacherib qualifies them as prisoners of war. Yet one may doubt whether that was really the case. The workers, as well as a considerable part of the crews of these ships, should be regarded as true specialists, and one wonders whether the Assyrian king had really been able to deport them as captives. It seems more likely that a considerable part of these people had been recruited on the “free market.” Comparable measures have been undertaken throughout time; they are, for example, well attested for Alexander the Great (Rollinger 2008c). Yet, it seems that such a procedure did not fit into the requirements of Assyrian royal ideology, in which the king had to demonstrate his ability to supervise and control the resources of the world. Sidon and Tyre were indeed under Assyrian control, but where did Sennacherib’s Yamnāya come from? We can only speculate about their origin, though the aforementioned trade centers as well as Yawan‐city come to mind. In any case, Assyria was an important market for such specialists, and this is certainly not only true for mariners and ship‐builders.
The evidence so far adduced touches upon the question of the Yamnāyas’ activities as mercenary soldiers in the Assyrian army. Concerning the Neo‐Babylonian period, we have the famous example of Antimenidas, the brother of Alcaeus. But what about earlier times? Quite recently, it has been demonstrated convincingly that we indeed have to reckon with Aegean mercenaries in the Assyrian army (Luraghi 2006). The Aegean world as an area at the fringes of an empire fits, from a comparative perspective, very well into what we know about recruitment areas for mercenaries throughout world history. Going abroad was a response to structural poverty, not an elite phenomenon. Though there is no direct evidence for Aegean mercenaries in Assyrian texts, as we have already seen, there are some important archaeological findings pointing in this direction. A horse frontlet from the sanctuary of Samos with an Aramaic inscription referring to king Hazael of Damascus (second half of the ninth century BCE) and two blinkers from the sanctuary of Apollo at Eretria in Euboea with the same inscription can, with a high degree of probability, be interpreted as dedications made by mercenaries who may have come into possession of these items after the sack of Damascus in 732 BCE. Other blinkers and frontlets from Samos and Miletus, as well as Assyrian horse‐trappings, may point in the same direction (Luraghi 2006: 38–41). The most relevant piece in this respect is a Phoenician silver bowl from a chamber tomb near the Cypriot city of Amathus (Markoe 1985: 172–4, 248f. plates). The piece dates from around 700 BCE and shows, among other things, an army attacking the walls of a Near Eastern city from two sides. While the soldiers on the left are modeled according to Assyrian style, those on the right are four Greek hoplites in close formation. This is not only the earliest depiction of a hoplite phalanx, but also displays Aegean soldiers as part of an Assyrian army (Luraghi 2006, 26f.). All of this refers to a “proto‐history” of Greek mercenary soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean that may already have started in the ninth century BCE. In the middle of the seventh century BCE, this institution seems to have developed substantially due to King Psammetich’s concerted efforts to recruit Greek and Carian mercenaries. In Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, more than 2000 Carians are attested, and the Persians seem to have adopted similar recruitment strategies after the conquest of Egypt in 525 BCE, at the latest (Rollinger 2008c).
There is some disagreement concerning the extent to which Greek weaponry was influenced by Assyrian archetypes (Luraghi 2006: 28: positive; Raaflaub 2010: negative). In any case, it is clear that Aegean mercenaries, besides traders, pirates, and (probably) wandering priests (Huber 2005), played a major role in intercultural contacts between the east and the west. Though there is still heavy debate regarding how dependent socio‐political institutions like the Greek polis are on Near Eastern predecessors (Raaflaub 2004, 2011), important elements of treaty‐making and accompanying rituals have clearly been adapted from the Assyrian model (Rollinger 2004). This is not only true for petty kings in the Levant and in Anatolia (cf. RINAP 4: 2, I 43–6; 3, II 1’–3’; 35, rev. 5’; see also Lanfranchi 2005, 2011), but also for the inhabitants of the Aegean. The entire Orientalizing Revolution was triggered by these contacts, and the impact of ancient Near Eastern literary models on Homer and Hesiod was substantial (Rollinger 1996, 2012; West 1997; Burkert 2004; Patzek 2011). All of this would not have been possible without the manifold intercultural contacts and the stimulating and powerful influence the Assyrian empire had on its westernmost neighbors (Rollinger 2011b; on the routes of contact see most recently Wiesehöfer 2011).
Abbreviations
CAD
= Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Chicago Oriental Institute 1956–2010.
ND
= Sigla of the texts from Nimrud.
RINAP 3/2
= Grayson and Novotny 2014.
RINAP 4
= Leichty 2011.
SAA 2
= Parpola and Watanabe 1988.
SAA 7
= Fales and Postgate 1992.
SAA 11
= Fales and Postgate 1995.
SAA 16
= Luukko and Van Buylaere 2002.
SAA 19
= Luukko 2012.
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