|
ANATOLIA IN THE OLD ASSYRIAN PERIOD HISTORY
The oldest contact of Anatolia with the Akkadian-speaking peoples appears to go back to the time of the Dynasty of Agade. A legendary account, the so-called epic King of the Battle, relates that a group of merchants from the Anatolian city of Purushkhanda sent a delegation to the king Sargon of Agade, urging him to undertake a campaign to their city and vividly describing the wealth of their country. Sargon is reported in the legend to have, after some hesitation, acceded to the merchants’ request leading his troops to Purushkhanda.
Another historiographical text, the Legend of Naram-Sin, implies that the city of Purushkhanda belonged to realm of Sargon’s grandson. Here it is related that a strange host, descending from the city of Shubat-Enlil in the country of Subartu, i.e. from northern Mesopotamia, invaded Naram-Sin’s kingdom, first attacking Purushkhanda and then, turning east and finally south, advanced toward the heartland of the Akkadian Empire. It is significant that Hittite versions of both of these tales have come to light at Bogazkoy and that Sargon’s exploits in Asia Minor are alluded to by the Hittite king of Khattushilish I (c. 1650 B.C.) in an historical inscription; for this tends to show that the later population of Anatolia considered the Old Akkadian period the beginning of their country’s recorded history. It is further worth noting that in the King of the Battle one of the principal actors bore the name of Nur-daggal, which stands for Nur-Dagan. Since, in the belief of the Akkadians, the lands dominated by the god Dagan lay west and north-west of the city of Tuttul (near the mouth of the river Balikh) the name Nur-Dagan perhaps implies that the merchants of Purushkhanda were not Akkadians but western Semites who were anxious to enter into commercial relations with Akkad.
The first ruler whose contacts with that part of Asia Minor which, in the Hellenistic period, was called Cappadocia, are well attested is Erishum I of Assyria (c. 1941-1902 B.C.). Two copies of an original inscription of this king recording his building activity in the complex of the Ashur temple in the city of Ashur were excavated in 1948 at Kultepe, a site near the modern village of Karahuyuk, not far from Kayseri in central Asia Minor. With this ruler began an era in the history of Asia Minor which is characterized by close political and economic ties with Assyria. The latter country, in the middle of the twentieth pre-Christian century, had initiated a policy of expansion which, to judge by two royal inscriptions of this period, served the purpose of establishing commercial relations with foreign countries. In an inscription dealing with his campaign to Babylonia, Erishum’s father, King Ilushuma (c 1962-1942) remarks ‘The freedom of movement of the Akkadians and of their children I established. Copper for them I washed. From the marshy regions and the city of Ur and the city of Nippur, the city of Awal and the city of Kismar, the city of Der of the god Sataran up to the City [i.e. Ashur] I established their freedom of movement.’ Accordingly, Ilushuma compelled the then overlord of Ur and Nippur, King Ishme-Dagan of Isin, and three vassal states of his, to grant the merchants of Akkad access to their cities and the right to market in these their own goods as well as merchandise which they purchased in Ashur. The phrase about ‘washing copper’ for them implies, on the other hand, that Ilushuma kept a state monopoly on the native copper found in countries dependent upon Assyria and processed through crushing and washing; but he obviously granted the Akkadian traders the privilege to purchase this copper from him and to sell it in their own country as well as in southern Babylonia. State monopolies of the copper trade existed in most ancient Near-Eastern countries. They were motivated by the fact that weapons of war were made of copper. By keeping the sale of the red metal in his own hands, a ruler could determine who was allowed to make to market, and to own weapons. However, Ilushuma’s son, Erishum, relinquished this last state monopoly also, at least in so far as Assyria proper was concerned. In one of his inscriptions unearthed in Ashur he writes ‘I established the freedom of movement of silver, gold, copper, lead, wheat, wool’, and two other commodities.
Three sites in Asia Minor attest the eminent success of this Old Assyrian trade policy. Near the afore-mentioned village of Kultepe, the ancient city of Kanesh, thousands of inscribed clay tablets have been found, attesting the activity of Assyrian merchants who dispatched goods from their homeland to Anatolia, sold them there, and sent back to Ashur gold and silver, at least part of which was to be used for the purchase of more merchandise for export. Smaller archives of the same nature were found at Alisar, the ancient city of Ankuwa, and at Bogazkoy, the site of the famous city of Khattum, or Khattusha, where, several centuries later, the Hittite kings established their residence.
In view of the commercial character of these archives, historical data are rather scanty. For the purpose of estimating the length of the period covered by the archives mention must be made of the date formulae which are found on numerous juridical documents, in particular promissory notes. In the manner practised by the Assyrians throughout their history, the years in these date-formulae were named after an eponym-official called limum (limmu) appointed annually at Ashur. Lists of these officials made it possible to ascertain their sequence, and the practice of making the king limum in one of the early years of his reign served to co-ordinate the eponym-list with the king-list. However, neither of these lists has yet been found in Asia Minor.
The number of eponyms named in date-formulae on tablets from Asia Minor thus far amounts to about eighty-four. Of these six occur on tablets from Bogazkoy, five on texts from Alisar, and the remaining seventy-three on Kultepe tablets. There is some evidence, both archaeological and calendric, which indicates that the eighty-four years represented by these officials were not consecutive years, but that an older period of some seventy years, designated by the excavators of Kultepe as ‘level II’ must be distinguished from a very short later period, called by the excavators ‘level Ib’. The occurrence in the texts of some royal names combined with a prosopographic analysis of some of the prominent merchant families makes it possible to delimit the two periods. The name of King Ikunum, who appears to have ruled for only a few years, occurs in a promissory note from Kultepe. His father, Erishum, was involved in one of the typical business operations which, however, dragged on beyond Erishum’s lifetime, throughout Ikunum’s reign, and into that of his son, Sharrum-ken. One of the documents recording this transaction is a letter, now preserved in the University Museum of Philadelphia, which bears an impression of the seal of King Sharrum-ken. It is addressed to a merchant named Pushu-ken who is known from numerous letters and documents as the head of one of the prominent business houses. Mention is made in the letter of an interview which Pushu-ken had with Sharrum-ken’s father, Ikunum; and whereas the latter addressed the merchant as ‘my son’, King Sharrum-ken respectfully called him ‘my father’. Accordingly, Pushu-ken, while younger than Ikunum, must have been considerably older than King Sharrum-ken. Pushu-ken’s father, Sinea, on the other hand, who thus could have been a contemporary of Erishum I, does not appear as an acting person in the texts. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the older period, represented by Kultepe level II, began during the last years of King Erishum I, which means around 1910 B.C.
Pushu-ken’s sons and daughters are known to have carried on the business after their father’s death. A grandson of his, another Pushu-ken, son of Buzazu, appears as a witness in an unpublished Kultepe text. The same three successive generations are traceable in the family of another outstanding member of the Assyrian business community, Enlil-bani. His father, Ashur-malik, was a contemporary of Pushu-ken, and, like the latter, the first acting member of the family appearing in the texts. One of Enlil-bani’s sons, Nab-Sin, is mentioned in numerous texts, either under his own name or as ‘Enlil-bani’s son’. The three generations, or seventy limum-years, of the level II period, must accordingly have covered the years from around 1910 to 1840 B.C.
The above-mentioned letter in the Philadelphia Museum is not the only document attesting the rule of Sharrum-ken during the period covered by the Kultepe texts. A tablet in Edinburgh records a judgment by the highest court of Assyria which, as was traditional in the ancient Near East, was presided over by the king. In fact, the text begins by stating that the king (waklum) sealed the case-tablet. The cylinder-seal which was rolled over the envelope bears this inscription ‘Sharrum-ken, priest-prince of Ashur, son of Ikunum, priest-prince of Ashur.’ A further text written under Sharrum-ken’s rule lists, among various items carried by a caravan, ‘five garments of Puzur-Ashur, son of the prince’, obviously referring to Sharrum-ken’s son and successor, Puzur-Ashur II, as crown-prince. However, there is as yet no evidence to show that the archives covered either the reign of Puzur-Ashur II or that of his son, Naram-Sin.
The period in which the bulk of the Kultepe texts originated thus being definitely established, it is possible to interpret another group of seal impressions to which historical significance was attributed when they first became known. A case-tablet in the Louvre Museum was sealed with a cylinder bearing the following legend ‘Ibbi-Sin, the mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters [of the world]; Ur-Lugalbanda, the scribe, the son of Ur-nigin-gar, is your servant’. This legend first led scholars to the belief that the tablet in question was written at the time of the last king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2029-2006 B.C.), a conclusion which appeared all the more legitimate since the script as well as the seal impressions of the Kultepe tablets bear a considerable resemblance to those of the Ur III period. Yet a closer examination of the envelope and the enclosed tablet reveals that the seal was rolled over the case not by the scribe Ur-Lugalbanda but by an Assyrian royal scribe who, by using this seal, wished to emphasize that he was the legitimate successor of the royal scribe from Ur. An analysis of the persons involved in the text further reveals that they are all Assyrians, and that the scribe’s royal lord was King Ikunum, the son of Erishum, and predecessor of Sharrum-ken. Two tablets recently excavated at Kultepe bear a seal with the legend ‘Ibbi-Sin, the mighty king, king of Ur’. In this case, the Assyrian owner of the seal had his own name, Amurru-bani, engraved on the cylinder besides the name of king of Ur. Even though the secondary use of the Ur III seals is thus proved beyond doubt, it remains an open question whether, slightly more than a century before the establishment of the Assyrians, the city of Kanesh and parts of the surrounding country had been under the domination of Ibbi-Sin of Ur. The very presence of the cylinder-seals from Ur at Kanesh may be taken to point in this direction even though no other supporting evidence has come to light as yet.
As regards the later period of Assyrian settlement in Central Anatolia, a text acquired in the years before systematic excavations were undertaken at Kultepe is dated by the eponym Awilia. This official is known by texts from Chagar-Bazar as well as from Mari to have held office at the time when Iasmakh-Adad ruled over Mari, which means in the last few years of the reign of King Shamshi-Adad I (1813-1781 B.C.). Since, according to the previous computation, the older period ended around 1840 B.C., or some 25 years before the accession of Shamshi-Adad I, it is obvious that the year named after Awilia belonged to the later, or ‘Ib’, period of Assyrian occupation. The conclusion that this later period coincided with Iasmakh-Adad’s rule over Mari is compatible with its comparative shortness as evidenced by the dearth of tablets as well as by the small number of eponym-years as compared with those of the older period; for Iasmakh-Adad’s rule lasted no more than nine years. It was preceded by some four or five years during the which Shamshi-Adad reconquered from Iakhdunlim of Khana the region of Mari and Terqa as well as the Khabur valley. Since, during these years, the newly conquered region was not incorporated yet into the Assyrian Empire, no limum dates were being used at Mari. Instead, the documents were dated by formulae in Babylonia style recording events of Shamshi-Adad’s reign. Even so, this conquest restored the communications between Assyria and Asia Minor which, of necessity, had been interrupted when the king of Khana expanded his realm by conquering seven neighbouring kingdoms, including Zalmaqum in northern Mesopotamia. With Iasmakh-Adad’s defeat and the installation on the throne of Mari of Zimrilim, hitherto king of Khana, these communications obviously were interrupted again; for Zimrilim ruled not only over the Euphrates valley down to the Babylonian border but also over the Khabur valley and northern Mesopotamia. Accordingly, the later period of Assyrian activity in Cappadocia is likely to have lasted for no more than fourteen years, i.e. as mentioned before, nine years of Iasmakh-Adad during which Assyrian limum dates were used at Mari and five years with names in Babylonia style preceding his accession. If the Mari texts contain altogether about eighteen different names of eponyms this is due to the fact that they cover three unconnected periods of Assyrian overlordship, viz., several years (including that of Ibni-Adad) before Shamshi-Adad’s accession, several years of Sumu-iamam, and the years of Iasmakh-Adad.
Whereas the end of the later period thus appears to be historically well established, the question remains to be answered what caused the apparent eclipse of the Assyrians between the end of the older and the beginning of the more recent epoch. In this respect attention must be called to the occurrence on tablets from Kultepe and Alisar of the names of several non-Assyrian princes who are known from Hittite sources. A promissory note excavated in 1925 bears this unique date formula ‘When Labarsha took over the princely functions’. Regardless of whether this take-over was a legitimate accession to an ancestral throne or a seizure following a conquest, the new ruler does not appear to have interfered with the activities of the Assyrian merchants; for the text stipulates that the debt recorded in the promissory note was payable as soon as the creditor, who bore the Semitic name Idi-Ishtar, should return from Khattum. The mention of Khattum raises the question whether it was the throne of this city-state to which Labarsha acceded and whether, accordingly, this Labarsha is identical with the King Labarnash who, according to Hittite tradition, heads the list of Hittite kings of the so-called Old Kingdom. Labarnash was accorded a special place in Hittite history because he allegedly enlarged his original kingdom by conquering the entire territory which separated it from the sea. If, however, it was Kanesh where Labarnash took over the throne, this date formula would represent the moment when a native replaced a Semite as prince of Kanesh. For the present discussion it is important to note that the Assyrian merchants, while finding this accession an event sufficiently important to replace with this unusual formula their usual dating by month and eponym, did not discontinue or interrupt their commercial activities.
A similar conclusion can be reached with respect to the city of Zalpa; here it can be shown that, about the time of the second of three generation of Assyrian merchants traceable in the level II period, a political change took place, Assyrian domination of the city being replaced by that of native ruler. Yet there too the Assyrians continued their business without interruption, no doubt because the native rulers found it to their own advantage to maintain the export-import trade at a high level.
The names of several local princes are mentioned in texts dealing with the affairs of the native population. The most note-worthy among these princes occur in the divorce record of a non-Assyrian couple which contains the following clause ‘In the hand of Pitkhana, the prince; Anitta [was] commander of the fortress’. The Hittite inscription of a King Anitta, son of Pitkhana, found at Bogazkoy, relates how this king, extending his father’s conquests, took over large parts of eastern Anatolia and, after having conquered and destroyed Khattusha, the subsequent capital of the Hittite kings, assumed the title ‘great king’. Proof of the identity of this King Anitta with the ‘commander of the fortress’ of the Kultepe tablet is furnished by one of the documents excavated at Alisar. Dealing with the release of six native prisoners, this text contains the clause ‘In the hand of Anitta, the great prince Peruwa was commander of the fortress’. Another text from Alisar, obviously somewhat earlier, refers merely to ‘Anitta, the prince’. Still another text from Alisar, this one from the Assyrian settlement, refers to the ruler of the town as ‘the princess’ and her ‘commander of the fortress’, it being a priori uncertain whether this princess preceded or followed Anitta. To round out the evidence concerning Anitta, it must be mentioned that a dagger bearing the inscription ‘place of Anitta, the prince’, was unearthed on the mound proper of Kultepe—that is to say, not in, or near, the Assyrian settlement which was located in the plain surrounding the mound.
Owing to the fact that three of the native witnesses of the divorce record mentioning Anitta’s father, Pitkhana, can be traced in documents involving Assyrians, it is possible to integrate these native rulers into the three-generation scheme previously established for the Assyrians. The first of these witnesses was Khaduwa, who appears also in two documents listing bundles of cloth which were presented as gifts to various natives, among them Khaduwa and the ‘chief of the weapons’. These textiles are said to have been brought up ‘to the palace’, whence it seems that, as in the afore-quoted divorce record, Khaduwa was an official of the local prince. Now the list of textiles also states that the karum at the place where this prince resided received some of the items for the account of Shu-Ishtar, son of Ilish-tikkal, and he is attested as a contemporary of the well-known Imdi-ilum, who belonged to the first generation of Assyrian merchants.
Two more of the witnesses in the first-named deed of divorce are found again in another deed of divorce in the company of a certain Ennanum, son of Alabum, and this man again is attested as a contemporary of Imdi-ilum.
From all this it results that Pitkhana was himself a contemporary of the first generation of Assyrian merchants, and probably a vassal of the Assyrian king, for in the second deed of divorce mentioned above it is said that two of the natives concerned in the action swore an oath ‘by the City’ (i.e. Ashur). Furthermore, according to the afore-cited list of textiles, Pitkhana’s principality was the seat of karum, and it will be shown that the Assyrian governing-body was called karum only in those city-states where the local ruler had submitted to Assyrian supremacy.
Consequently Anitta and the conquests which prompted him to assume the title ‘great prince’ fell within the second generation of Assyrian merchants at Kanesh. It is therefore unlikely that his expansionist policy was the cause, or a contributing cause, of the abrupt end to the older period of Assyrian occupation at Kultepe. As will be seen below, the end of the ‘level II’ period is more likely to have been brought about by circumstances which made the caravan traffic between Assyria and Asia Minor unprofitable.
|
Current Amount in My Cashbox:
2,628 strti.
|
