The book under review is an excellent introduction to the Assyrian art of warfare and stands as s... more The book under review is an excellent introduction to the Assyrian art of warfare and stands as state-of-the-art in the eld. It is also remarkable that this is not a translation but was actually composed in excellent French by a non-native speaker, a rare achievement. As with any review there are the inevitable quibbles. I have my own ideas on the meaning of kallapu (pp. 108–9), for which see my paper soon to be published in the proceedings of the Münster Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Also, the assignments Fales posits for chariot crew members (pp. 127–28) are little short of bizarre. Does it not stand to reason that the mar damqi or the bēl narkabti " chariot owner " would be the chariot ghter? And should not the rst and second " third man in the chariot " be the two supplemental persons? More importantly, there were neither auxiliaries (p. 115) nor mercenaries (p. 68) in the Assyrian army. The auxiliary system is peculiar to Rome in the ancient world and radiates out of concepts of citizenship foreign to Assyria. Romans were stingy about handing out grants of citizenship in conquered areas for the simple reason that Roman citizens paid no direct taxes or, to put it dierently, Romans lived o the sweat of their empire's brow. However, they cleverly used the army as a way of assimilating warlike foreigners who would not put up with such treatment—as, for example, Germans. First you served as an auxiliary and, once you had served your thirty years, you got a diploma of citizenship. Your children could then become legionaries. In the Assyrian system, it was non-citizens who were getting a free ride from the government's perspective , so they handed out citizenship to whomever they could force to take it. That meant, however, that you had to pay taxes (after a few years' grace to get settled in) and serve in the army. If you were already in your own army and things worked out right, you went straight into Assyria's army, as was the case with the Samaritan chariotry. None of these people were mercenaries, who are, by denition, not citizens of the state which they serve. Assyria had a standing army recruited from among its citizens, which it supplemented with levies and with troops contributed by tributaries and semi-incorporated areas. There was also a sort of tribal police (Aramean Gurai and Ituai) who went on campaign with the army, but these were not mercenaries either; the government supervised them, disciplined them, and provided them with land on which to live. Mercenaries are unsuited to the Assyrian system and would certainly have left traces in the administrative records if any such had existed. We should, for example, have condotta. What I would like to do in the remainder of this review, since this book is state-of-the-art, is to use this opportunity to assess where we are in our study of Assyria and how far we have yet to go in disabusing ourselves of the Orientalist trope of the evil empire, an issue raised prominently by Fales himself in his introduction (pp. 9–25). Unfortunately, the answer to date must be " very far. " Fales makes a good start by adding the administrative and epistolary documents back into the equation , but not, in my opinion, nearly aggressively enough, and his general account of Assyrian history (pp. 153–61) remains something that can only be described as hostile. One would never, for example, know that Esarhaddon rebuilt Babylon, ignoring angry protests from Nippur. A careful, and long overdue , rereading of the annals reveals all sorts of hidden treasures: rebuilding, returning gods, extending citizenship, bringing new lands under cultivation for the benet of subjects, generous extension of tax privileges, and the like. A careful reassessment of Biblical—particularly prophetic—references to Babylonia and Assyria yields ndings in exactly the same direction. Tributary relationships, generally regarded as the " good side " of Assyria, are what are anathematized by the prophets. Incorporation, by contrast, is described, literally as heavenly: the " work of God's hands, " and Sennacherib is criticized not for attacking Judah and Jerusalem, but for not carrying out his plan of incorporating them into the empire. Medea and Elam had ample reason for similar complaint—Assyrians always did their worst in areas they seemed unable to win or were not intending to hold. The topos of Assyria as atypically violent is largely a myth, and one which often attributes to them deeds actually committed against them by others. The rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire was accomplished by a literally apocalyptic level of destruction, the traces of which in the archaeological record have, with distressing regularity, been laid at the door of Assyria.
The book under review is an excellent introduction to the Assyrian art of warfare and stands as s... more The book under review is an excellent introduction to the Assyrian art of warfare and stands as state-of-the-art in the eld. It is also remarkable that this is not a translation but was actually composed in excellent French by a non-native speaker, a rare achievement. As with any review there are the inevitable quibbles. I have my own ideas on the meaning of kallapu (pp. 108–9), for which see my paper soon to be published in the proceedings of the Münster Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Also, the assignments Fales posits for chariot crew members (pp. 127–28) are little short of bizarre. Does it not stand to reason that the mar damqi or the bēl narkabti " chariot owner " would be the chariot ghter? And should not the rst and second " third man in the chariot " be the two supplemental persons? More importantly, there were neither auxiliaries (p. 115) nor mercenaries (p. 68) in the Assyrian army. The auxiliary system is peculiar to Rome in the ancient world and radiates out of concepts of citizenship foreign to Assyria. Romans were stingy about handing out grants of citizenship in conquered areas for the simple reason that Roman citizens paid no direct taxes or, to put it dierently, Romans lived o the sweat of their empire's brow. However, they cleverly used the army as a way of assimilating warlike foreigners who would not put up with such treatment—as, for example, Germans. First you served as an auxiliary and, once you had served your thirty years, you got a diploma of citizenship. Your children could then become legionaries. In the Assyrian system, it was non-citizens who were getting a free ride from the government's perspective , so they handed out citizenship to whomever they could force to take it. That meant, however, that you had to pay taxes (after a few years' grace to get settled in) and serve in the army. If you were already in your own army and things worked out right, you went straight into Assyria's army, as was the case with the Samaritan chariotry. None of these people were mercenaries, who are, by denition, not citizens of the state which they serve. Assyria had a standing army recruited from among its citizens, which it supplemented with levies and with troops contributed by tributaries and semi-incorporated areas. There was also a sort of tribal police (Aramean Gurai and Ituai) who went on campaign with the army, but these were not mercenaries either; the government supervised them, disciplined them, and provided them with land on which to live. Mercenaries are unsuited to the Assyrian system and would certainly have left traces in the administrative records if any such had existed. We should, for example, have condotta. What I would like to do in the remainder of this review, since this book is state-of-the-art, is to use this opportunity to assess where we are in our study of Assyria and how far we have yet to go in disabusing ourselves of the Orientalist trope of the evil empire, an issue raised prominently by Fales himself in his introduction (pp. 9–25). Unfortunately, the answer to date must be " very far. " Fales makes a good start by adding the administrative and epistolary documents back into the equation , but not, in my opinion, nearly aggressively enough, and his general account of Assyrian history (pp. 153–61) remains something that can only be described as hostile. One would never, for example, know that Esarhaddon rebuilt Babylon, ignoring angry protests from Nippur. A careful, and long overdue , rereading of the annals reveals all sorts of hidden treasures: rebuilding, returning gods, extending citizenship, bringing new lands under cultivation for the benet of subjects, generous extension of tax privileges, and the like. A careful reassessment of Biblical—particularly prophetic—references to Babylonia and Assyria yields ndings in exactly the same direction. Tributary relationships, generally regarded as the " good side " of Assyria, are what are anathematized by the prophets. Incorporation, by contrast, is described, literally as heavenly: the " work of God's hands, " and Sennacherib is criticized not for attacking Judah and Jerusalem, but for not carrying out his plan of incorporating them into the empire. Medea and Elam had ample reason for similar complaint—Assyrians always did their worst in areas they seemed unable to win or were not intending to hold. The topos of Assyria as atypically violent is largely a myth, and one which often attributes to them deeds actually committed against them by others. The rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire was accomplished by a literally apocalyptic level of destruction, the traces of which in the archaeological record have, with distressing regularity, been laid at the door of Assyria.
Uploads
Papers by Jo A Scurlock