A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  The NA deeds on clay tablets had relatively standard formats – of rectangular shape, written on the short or on the long side, or of rougher triangular shape, possibly doubling as a text and a sealing; the associated terms attempt at some precision (dannatu = “binding (sales) document,” egirtu = “(horizontally written) loan document”), but local traditions and Assyrian‐Aramaic linguistic symbiosis could have muddled the issue (Fales and Radner et al. 2005: 611–12). Only the “selling” or “owing” parties – and not the witnesses, as in the MA period – sealed the deeds, and the seals were rolled or impressed on the clay before, and not after, the writing of the text, thus leaving a clearer imprint (Postgate 1986). The role of the scribes was all‐important; personal scribes are attested for officials of every rank. A special function seems to have been reserved for the ṣābit ṭuppi, perhaps indicating the actual scribe “who drew up the tablet” as in the MA period (Postgate 2012). Every deed bore the date at which the described legal transaction took place and/or was registered in writing (by day, month, and year). Thus, NA legal documents are of particular interest for the reconstruction of the chronological backbone of this period, especially regarding the years between 648 and the fall of the empire (612 to 609), for which no canonical register of year‐eponyms (limmu) has come down to us (Millard 1994).

  An increasing number of excavated NA sites testifies to the practice of writing deeds on clay tablets both in Assyrian cuneiform and in Aramaic alphabetic script (with incised or painted characters); doubtless, deeds in Aramaic on other, “soft,” media – irretrievably lost to us – were particularly abundant in areas where clay was scarce or not traditionally employed for writing purposes. The Aramaic language and its legal jargon, presumably in widespread local use, were officially accepted and employed alongside Assyrian (Fales 2007; Lipiński 2010), whereas precious little is as yet known of legal traditions that other subjected peoples – from Egyptians to Anatolians to Medes – could have brought with them, piecemeal or as deported communities, and used within the empire’s confines. On the other hand, Assyrian law seems to have influenced communities abroad, leaving its traces over time and space: thus, the legal terminology and phraseology of deeds in Aramaic from Elephantine (Egypt) of Achaemenid date displays some NA features (Muffs 2003: 173–94); and NA covenants (see the case study below) could have had a determining influence on the composition of some passages of the Biblical book of Deuteronomy (Radner 2006).

  Organs of legislation

  No collection of NA laws has come down to us, or happens to be recalled/quoted in the clay tablets of this age: this overall silence also rules out the possible existence of such collections on perishable media, such as wooden/ivory writing boards or on papyrus/leather scrolls. There is no apparent reason for this state of affairs, also because we know from archeological finds that both palace and other official libraries kept exemplars of law codes from previous periods (Radner 2003: 883). As a consequence, however, the Assyrian king came to represent not only the supreme judge of the land, but also a figure of ultimate normative protection for his subordinates, whether of high or lowly status – the supreme figure in a “patrimonialist” society, by now fully undergoing multiple sectorial and personal splits in the jurisdictional and bureaucratic subdivisions of power, also due to its ever‐increasing size (cf. Westbrook 2005; Fales 2012a). Although official or legal documents do not show the ruler involved in judgments, as in the MA period, letters of this age indicate that he was the object of a formal procedure, called “invoking the King’s word” (abat šarri zakāru), thanks to which any subject could appeal to him if they felt unfairly treated, mistreated in the personal and professional sphere, or affronted in circumstances ranging from the contractual to the ethical‐religious domain (Fales 2001: 178–90). On his part, the king could use these appeals from the rank and file to curb any excess of power wielded by middle‐to‐high rank officials – whether civilian or military. Other letters, bearing the explicit heading “the King’s word,” bore orders in all spheres of societal life which were not to be disputed – although they could, in point of fact, be subjected to cautiously worded and formally styled argumentation on the part of the subordinates operating “in the field” (Ponchia 1989).

  While the traditional term dayyānu(m) “judge” was no longer used for human judges in the Neo‐Assyrian period, various high officials are attested in judicial roles, drawn from the ranks of state, provincial, city, and temple administration (Radner 2003: 890). Two of the “Grandees,” the sukkallu (Vizier) and the sartinnu (Chief Secretary) are frequently mentioned as judges, thus showing something of a specialized function, and one implying their occasional presence in cities all over the empire. Similarly to the OA and MA periods, no distinction between civil and criminal law was made. Close to one hundred judicial documents from the NA period are preserved (Jas 1996; Radner 1997–8), but they provide precious little evidence on the procedures; the rare presence of gods as “judges” (Fales 1977) might imply reference to supranatural methods of evidence.

  Case study: Treaties and covenants, external and internal

  As indicated above, NA international legal practices differed from those that had been in place in previous millennia, and constituted a prototype and basic template for all following imperial experiments in Western Asia. The various forms and the chronological mutations of Assyrian foreign policy between the age of progressive territorial reconquest and the final development of the imperial system of rule are reflected here and there in official inscriptions of the rulers and in letters, and recorded in a bare dozen of exemplars of actual covenants, which have come down to us in more or less fragmentary form, dated between 825 and 625 (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: nos. 1–12). Further information on the political and ideological background to these covenants may be derived from a variety of other sources, in Akkadian (chronicle texts, border or celebrative stelae) or in other languages (royal inscriptions in Phoenician or in Aramaic; commemorative texts in Luwian; treaty‐documents in Aramaic) and even in bilingual (Phoenician:: Luwian, Akkadian::Aramaic) versions (Lanfranchi 2005; Fales 2008; Singer 2012).

  A basic division of the treaty documents according to their different aims (Parpola 2003: 1054–6) points to four basic groups: (1) agreements of mutual assistance/friendship between Assyria and a foreign state; (2) pacts of alliance, requested by the non‐Assyrian partner in view of short‐/long‐term political/other benefits, and thus of unbalanced character, similarly to the next group; (3) treaties of political vassalage, involving annual tribute and personal visits to the king on the part of pro‐Assyrian puppet rulers of areas not, or not yet, subjected to direct Assyrian domination as provinces; (4) covenants of allegiance concerning Assyrian dynastic succession, equally imposed on vassal rulers and on Assyrian citizenry. The terminology and formulary of these different categories tended to overlap to some extent: they were all called adê, with a term of Aramaic origin which combined the notions of “pact of allegiance/alliance” sworn before the gods and “treaty of subordination” registered in writing (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: xv–xxv) – both of them being, as a rule, unbalanced in favor of the Assyrians. However, the same term seems to have been used elsewhere – e.g. in the contemporaneous Babylonian region (Ponchia 2002–05) – with a different acceptation, to sanction relations of non‐belligerence and alliance among neighboring polities of differing socio‐cultural origin; and at least one case, recorded in a letter, points to an adê between Assyria and Elam as equally‐ranking partners (Radner 2006: 359–60). Common to all the Assyrian adês, albeit in varying admixtures, were the following obligations for the contracting party: devotion to the Assyrian Crown; to report any threats to the state; to side without fail with Assyria’s foreign policy; to provide military cooperation; to extradite fugitives from Assyria; to accept royal delegates; to acknowledge Assur’s divine supremacy in legal and institutional matters; to foster commercial contacts (Parpola 2003: 1058). The stipulations were followed by a
clause for treaty violation, leading to lengthy and detailed curses, which defined and sanctioned the punitive measures to be meted out by individual gods (or by all the treaty gods).

  ***

  A major innovation in the Assyrian use of the adê occurred in the seventh century: the covenantal instrument was extended to obtain sworn oaths of loyalty in favor of the ruling dynasty. The controversial promotion of Esarhaddon as crown prince (683/682), and the ensuing bloody civil war for the succession to the murdered Sennacherib (681), seems to have stimulated the earliest exemplars of loyalty adês at present known (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: nos. 3, 4; Frahm 2009: nos. 67–9), and more such texts (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: nos. 7, 8) would mark the late reign of Esarhaddon (670) and the early reign of Assurbanipal (668); due to the fragmentary state of the texts, only the recipients of the latter document are known, comprising the royal family, the aristocracy and all the Assyrians, by professional and social categories.

  Even vaster was the body of recipients foreseen for the sole adê which has come down to us in complete form, the one promoted by Esarhaddon in early 672 for the succession of his son Assurbanipal to the Assyrian throne – whereas the heir apparent Šamaš‐šumu‐ukin was instead destined for the throne of Babylonia (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: no. 6). The text was retrieved in hundreds of deliberately smashed fragments near a throne‐base in the temple of Nabû in Kalḫu in 1951. Its reconstitution resulted in eight parallel manuscripts of a vast eight‐column tablet with 670 tightly written lines, which was headed by three different impressions of the seal of the god Assur, respectively of OA, MA, and NA date – with the latter bearing a text which describes it as the “Seal of Destinies” of ultimate sacral character (George 1986: 140–1). The sole major variant of the manuscripts lay in the names of the individuals taking the oath, corresponding to eight city‐lords of the land of the Medes – known or presumed to have been subjected to political subservience by Esarhaddon himself. This factor prompted the earliest definition of the text(s) as “vassal‐treaties of Esarhaddon” (Wiseman 1958). Subsequent debate hinged on these Median vassals as the exclusive focus of the extant manuscripts – whether as a purely accidental occurrence (Watanabe 1987) or to the contrary as a politically meaningful presence (Liverani 1995) – also in view of a more precise legal definition of the document (loyalty oath plus vassal treaty, or merely one of the two).

  Whereas the existence of a few further fragments of the same adê from Assur (Frahm 2009: 135–6, with previous literature) has not substantially altered these positions, the basic contextual issues surrounding the text seem now to be cleared thanks to the discovery in 2009 at Tell Tayinat, ancient Unqi, and capital of the Assyrian province of Kullania (or Kunalia/Kunulua), of a further complete exemplar, the recipient of which was the “governor (bēl pāhete) of the land of Kunalia” with his subordinates (Lauinger 2012: 91, 112). Working from this exemplar discovered some 800 kilometers west of Kalḫu, it can now be firmly established that the document served as a covenant of loyalty to the Assyrian Crown in view of the planned succession of Assurbanipal, which Esarhaddon imposed on the totality of the empire, in its twofold division of Assyrian‐ruled provinces and polities subjected to vassalage. In practice, the oath was sworn in Kalḫu by all palace personnel – as we know from letters – and by the heads of the individual political units far and wide (governors or kings/chiefs), also on behalf of their dependents/subjects: in a nutshell, as Assurbanipal himself would later phrase it, by “the people of Assyria, great and small, from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea” (Borger 1996: 15, text A I 18–19). Each signatory was thereupon expected and/or enticed to take his personal copy of the covenant back “home,” and place it in a prominent position there. This procedure – such as in fact is known to have occurred at Kullania, where the tablet was located in a building identified as a temple (Lauinger 2011; Harrison‐Osborne 2012) – was meant to elevate the text of the oath sworn before Assur to the status of an institutional emblem of Assyrian political unity and dynastic continuity. And not by chance, beginning with this period, the adê itself became a quasi‐divine symbol which could be the object of a sworn oath in deeds, and could thus retaliate in turn against the legal offender, as may for example be read in an Aramaic penalty clause: “Whoever will open his mouth – the life of the king and his loyalty oath (ḥyy mlk’ w‘dwh) will hold him responsible” (Fales et al. 1996: 99–100).

  Finally, the discovery of the Kullania exemplar of the covenant has opened up new possible scenarios also regarding the much‐discussed Median rulers. The fact that the only copies of the adê found at Kalḫu were written on behalf of this homogeneous group of vassals might be explained by the possibility that – in contrast to all others – they failed to attend the ceremony, perhaps by deliberate choice. Thus the texts prepared for them could have been locally archived, in anticipation of a future occasion – which however never took place. Whether it was the Medes themselves who, during the final conquest of Kalḫu in 612, painstakingly reduced to bits the tablets sanctioning their forebears’ status as vassals of the Assyrian empire (as suggested by M.E.L. Mallowan in Wiseman 1958: i–ii) is impossible to say.

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