The Ancient Near East

History, Society and Economy

Mario Liverani, Soraia Tabatabai

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134750917
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The Ancient Near East reveals three millennia of history (c. 3500–500 bc) in a single work. Liverani draws upon over 25 years' worth of experience and this personal odyssey has enabled him to retrace the history of the peoples of the Ancient Near East. The history of the Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians and more is meticulously detailed by one of the leading scholars of Assyriology.

Utilizing research derived from the most recent archaeological finds, the text has been fully revised for this English edition and explores Liverani's current thinking on the history of the Ancient Near East. The rich and varied illustrations for each historical period, augmented by new images for this edition, provide insights into the material and textual sources for the Ancient Near East. Many highlight the ingenuity and technological prowess of the peoples in the Ancient East. Never before available in English, The Ancient Near East represents one of the greatest books ever written on the subject and is a must read for students who will not have had the chance to explore the depth of Liverani's scholarship.

PART I

Introduction

1

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST AS A HISTORICAL PROBLEM

1 The myth of the Ancient Near East

Over the past century and a half, excavations have provided the archaeological and textual evidence necessary for the study of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Prior to these excavations, many of these populations had been completely forgotten, not only in terms of their history and cultural traits, but also in terms of their names, languages and written sources. Their rediscovery constitutes one of the greatest achievements and developments in ancient history. This rediscovery, however, has only just begun and continues to provide new information, requiring the revision or the first writing of these long and often complex chapters of history. Admittedly, Western culture always retained a sort of mythicised memory of the Near East, based on preconceptions rather than on actual historical evidence. To a certain extent, these views continue to influence historical research today. Consequently, a brief but critical reference to this phenomenon can be a useful premise for the delineation of current historiographical trends.

One of the main sources that preserved a historical memory of the Near East through time (that is without interruption) is the Old Testament. However, this complex collection of writings, which vary both in terms of dating and type, was compiled according to the ideological intentions of its editors. Moreover, the Bible is closely linked to the development of two religions, namely, Judaism and Christianity. Both these religions initially developed in the Near East, and then managed to spread beyond their spatial and chronological boundaries.

On the one hand, this link has allowed the survival of a distant memory of the Near East, despite the general disappearance of its literature. The latter had to be rediscovered, alas only partially, through archaeological investigations. On the other hand, being a holy book (and thus a divine revelation), the Old Testament has given this memory a sense of authority and an appearance of ‘truth’. This overall impression has been accepted by Western culture without substantial revisions. Consequently, the conviction of the uniqueness of the Israelites as the ‘chosen’ people has negatively influenced the presentation of the surrounding cultures cited in the Old Testament – from the Assyrians to the Chaldeans, Canaanites, and the Philistines. These surrounding cultures were therefore seen as instrumental participants (in the hands of divine will) of the salvation story of the human race in its initial phase.

Originally, the archaeological rediscovery of the Ancient Near East was itself part of an attempt at recovering data and images of the so-called ‘historical context’ of the Old Testament. Only at a later stage, and undoubtedly as a reaction against a historical and textual analysis of the Old Testament, archaeological activities intensified in order to demonstrate its substantial accuracy. Using a famous expression of obvious ideological brutality, these activities were aimed at documenting that ‘the Bible was right’. Indeed, it has been noted that the majority of the earliest archaeological investigations pursued in the region were motivated, financed, and advertised for their (true or supposed) relevance in the exegesis of the Old Testament.

The majority of researchers involved (philologists, historians and archaeologists, to name a few) were initially spurred by common motivations. This was because they were mainly Jewish, Protestant pastors and, to a lesser degree, Catholic priests. Setting aside their intellectual integrity, these scholars were not entirely impartial in their research. Their main interest lay in the results of their investigations being able to confirm or deny the premises of their own worldview. From the nineteenth century onwards, however, a more secular approach has slowly managed to prevail, despite its occasional involvement in historically misleading controversies and debates – from the ‘Babel und Bibel’ of the nineteenth century, to the recent debates on Ebla.

The classical authors were another source guaranteeing the survival of information and images of the Near East in Western culture. These authors were representatives of a world (Ancient Greek, then Hellenistic and Roman world) that was contemporary, yet in a way in opposition to late Near Eastern cultures. From Herodotus onwards, the East began to be depicted as the polar opposite of ‘our’ West. As a result, several myths were centred on the despotism of the Near East (in opposition to Western democracy), its technological and cultural immobility (in opposition to the growing progress of the Western world), and the occult and magical nature of its wisdom (in opposition to the secular and rational sciences of the Ancient Greeks and their successors).

The shift from this anthropology by contraposition to a more historical anthropology of diversity – according to which each culture is different, including our own, the latter not being superior to the others – developed, and is still developing, along a difficult path. The latter fits within the general process of historicity and cultural relativism, characteristic of modern culture. Therefore, if this mythology of ‘the different’ as polar opposite seems to have disappeared today, it is not due to the rejection of the myth per se. It is rather due to its displacement elsewhere, perhaps in the extra-terrestrial and the futuristic, which have substituted the ‘Oriental’ and ‘Ancient’. In fact, the latter are now known well enough to preclude any utopic assumption, or their interpretation as opposites of Western culture.

With the significant increase of information on the Near East, however, new myths have replaced the old ones. I am mainly referring to the modern version of the origin myth that sees the Ancient Near East as the ‘cradle’ or the ‘dawn’ of civilisation. This view sees the Near East as the initial place that developed those technological and operational instruments, and forms of organisations typical of a ‘high culture’ which, through constant modifications and improvements, has survived to this day. It is not by chance that the Ancient Near East has become one of those privileged periods of history that constitutes the backbone of a Eurocentric world history, followed by Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, and Modern Western Europe. On the one hand, this backbone tends to give a sense of unity and progress in history. On the other hand, it inevitably causes the marginalisation of other historical phases that are left out and considered irrelevant.

This view is partly true, yet dangerous in its implications. It is undeniable that the range of phenomena which allowed the development of complex societies (the origin of the state, the city, writing, and so on) first appeared in the Near East, and that the reconstruction of the history of their transmission to our time is complex, yet possible. However, it is dangerous and misleading to imagine a monogenesis of civilisation, which instead had several starting points and different paths. Equally, one cannot underestimate the influence of the continuous and substantial changes that institutions, technologies, and ideologies underwent in their history. Historical phenomena do not have a single ‘origin’, but are always modelled upon the structure of the society in which they are found. This supposed origin, then, is only one of the rings in a chain (among the many rings in the many chains of history) that has to be reconstructed in its total length, which is neither short nor univocal. This is even more the case today, with the broadening of our knowledge of the world and the drastic changes in the systems of transmission of ideas and concepts. This forces us to put our own ethnocentric point of view aside and to take advantage of the experiences and paths previously ignored by other ethnocentric worldviews.

The Near Eastern contribution to human history is certainly not the earliest one. It is preceded by other equally fundamental prehistoric phases. Therefore, the Near East is only one of many phases, and equal to any other period of history, including those that are not part of that privileged backbone of history established by modern Western historiography. Nevertheless, the history of the Near East attracts particular attention due to its crucial place in history, as a threshold or starting point of fundamental constitutive processes characteristic of complex societies. Moreover, these myths and misconceptions characterising the traditional image of the Near East need to be reconsidered and clarified with a critical eye, rather than ignored or all too easily removed from our memory.

2 Historiographical approaches to the Ancient Near East

Modern historiography has long abandoned those mythical motivations emphasising the uniqueness of the Near East (for theological reasons, as an anthropological categorisation, or as an issue of ‘original’ primacy). It now aims, at least in its most conscious trends, for a normalisation of this phase of history, to be analysed and evaluated in the same way as other phases and other cultures. This process of normalisation implies the abandonment of simplistic models (often too easy to apply, and thus tempting), in order to gain a variety of perspectives, allowing a more holistic reconstruction of the history of the Near East. Consequently, landscapes and material remains are analysed in conjunction with social, economic, and political aspects, as well as ideologies and symbolic systems, in an attempt to reconstruct the whole network of interconnections and motivations linking these elements to each other.

Unlike other ancient periods of history (Ancient Greece and Rome in particular), for the Near East this task is influenced, both positively and negatively, by two factors: one of absence, and one of presence. On the one hand, we lack an ancient historiography able to provide a sort of guideline for our reconstruction. This substantial, yet not total, lack is, however, a useful aspect. It forces the reconstruction of a guideline from a responsible evaluation of the sources, rather than encouraging a lazy reliance on pre-existing guidelines that are often unrealistic, biased, and reductive. In fact, when such a biased picture exists (such as in the case of Greco-Roman history), it turns a large part of modern historical research into a mere exegesis of ancient historiography. On the contrary, the history of the Near East has to be reconstructed ex novo from primary sources, unmediated by later historians. It is here that the availability of primary sources becomes an influential factor. In this regard, administrative texts (as well as commercial, legal, and, in general, archival material) have survived in large amounts. This is due to the trivial, yet essential, fact that the writing material used (i.e. clay tablets) has endured fire and burial much better than other materials in use later or elsewhere (for example papyrus, parchment, and paper). The disadvantage of this fortunate availability of sources is the fact that every year new excavations, both legal and illegal, uncover new material. This forces – even with the inconvenience of a considerable and growing delay in publications – a constant revision of entire chapters of history with new details and more secure data.

Therefore, the absence of ancient historiographical guidelines, the constant publication of new sources, and the progress of philological knowledge and excavation methods make the history of the Near East a young and wide-ranging field of research, relatively free of traditional historiographical problems. The disadvantage of this situation is not really the constant out-datedness of current historical research (which is, on the contrary, a proof of its fast progress). It is the need for a vast array of specialised fields to access the primary sources, and the constant effort in the publication of the first editions of these sources. In fact, the majority of researchers specialised in the study of the Near East are focused on finding and publishing new material: they are therefore predominantly archaeologists and philologists. Fully-fledged historians – separate from the other two categories – are almost non-existent, and Italy is in this case a positive exception. The history produced is therefore anchored in strong philological foundations, and more faithful to the sources (possibly in the hope that they would speak for themselves), rather than guided by problems and issues of interpretation. The general histories of the Near East published today are a clear demonstration of this, since they convert more specialised studies in the field into a general synthesis.

However, this historiographical delay is contrasted by this field’s enormous potential, which has now begun to be applied. The lack of historiographical traditions and the constant influx of new material allows for the development of new approaches and methodologies, at times close to the most naïve and reckless of improvisations. However, this field’s eclecticism and receptiveness for schemes developed elsewhere (for other phases in history, as well as completely different anthropological situations) are in great danger of causing misunderstandings and superficial approaches in the study of the Near East. Nonetheless, these schemes have to be considered constructive – at least for the phase of history that we can rightly consider as ‘pre-paradigmatic’ – for the potential reactions and innovative approaches they unleash in the field. It can be said that there has not been a single analytical method or theme in historiography, recent or not so recent, which has not been applied to the Near East: from neo-geographic spatial analysis to the structural analysis of the narratives; from acculturation to frontier studies; from modes of production to systems of exchange; from the structure of myths to political discourse; from settlement patterns to historical semantics; from systems theory to mental maps, and so on. This experimental phase will sooner or later have to be consolidated into coherent lines of research, and become a mature and less adventurous ‘paradigmatic’ historiography. However, the first essential objective towards an enrichment of the overall picture of this phase has been achieved, having overcome the restrictions that a too-strong tradition is still enforcing on other phases of ancient history.

Therefore, the history of the Near East also constitutes a sort of ‘fringe discipline’, creating the right environment for the circulation of different experiences and interpretations. In this regard, the complex set of materials available and the complementarity of the archaeological and textual evidence have prompted a more holistic reconstruction of the past (from material culture to ideology). This should long have been part of the work of the historian, but is so hard to find in many historical works. Therefore, the historian of the Ancient Near East is forced to take on the role of field archaeologist as well as philologist, to a degree unknown to other fields of research, whose areas of expertise appear better defined and seem to be working in a sort of consolidated production chain.

The reconstruction of late prehistoric phases in particular – characterised by the difficult task of reconstructing complex social structures on the basis of non-textual evidence – has acted as an incentive for the coordinated and in-depth application of all the clues and evidence available: from data regarding ecology to pedology, paleo-botany, archaeo-zoology, ethno-archaeological comparisons, and experimental archaeology, along with all the refinements in prehistoric excavations (stratigraphic investigations as well as surveys), and all the problematic complexity of social, political, and economic anthropology. On the one hand, the results remain outside the margins of history, since the lack of textual evidence hinders an access to the historical events. On the other hand, these results open up a sort of ‘New History’, characterised by a desire to establish ‘laws’ (in a way similar to other, typically American, new sciences such as New Archaeology, New Geography, and New Economic History), aimed more at ‘predicting’ the past rather than reconstructing it. These trends manifest a tendency to detect laws instead of identifying exceptions. Moreover, the introduction of electronic programs has opened up a range of possibilities (and risks) through ‘simulations’ applied to the uncertainties of the past, rather than the uncertainties of the future. This has formed a generation of ‘demiurge’ historians who prefer to creatively construct the past, rather than reconstructing it.

In many respects, then, the history of the Near East is increasingly becoming a workshop for the study of highly interesting phenomena characterising the history of human societies. The concept of ‘workshop’ has to be understood as a place that allows the breaking down of complex phenomena in their constitutive factors, analysed on their own, in order to detect norms and recreate patterns of behaviour. Moreover, due to its place at the ‘dawn’ of history, the Near East can be considered a privileged workshop, since it deals with phenomena at the time when they were starting to become more complex. Yet this phase remains distant enough from our times to prevent an emotional or cultural attachment. The latter could in fact hinder a full understanding of the real development of the various factors. Therefore, apart from the immediate results gathered from an understanding of the historical facts examined, the study of the Near East constitutes an opportunity to gain a wider perspective on the results gathered, allowing a reconstruction of influential historical and anthropological patterns.

3 Unity and variety, centre and periphery

The chronological and spatial delimitations of the Near East (in other words, this book’s delimitations) const...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of texts
• Dedication
• Preface
• Part I Introduction
• Part II The Early Bronze Age
• Part III The Middle Bronze Age
• Part IV The Late Bronze Age
• Part V The Early Iron Age
• Part VI Empires and Unification
• Annotated bibliography
• Index