A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  Day‐to‐day legal practice from this period, as visible almost exclusively from the archives of the commercial entrepôt (kārum) of Kaniš in Anatolia between the 19th and 18th centuries (see below, Old Assyrian Legal Practices), may thus be considered indigenous to a certain extent, and linked to a shared Northern Mesopotamian legal heritage (later still visible at Nuzi; Zaccagnini 2003: 569–73). Moreover, various of its features (in litigation, social divisions of labor and responsibility, pledge law, etc.) prove to have been carried over to subsequent phases of Assyrian history, despite simplifications in procedure and a set of shifts in terminology. The OA normative lynchpins may be identified in a series of painstaking step‐by‐step procedures – involving the presence of specific functional figures – which were carried to their conclusion (a judicial verdict or a contractual stipulation) through formal protocols entailing fixed factual or symbolic acts and their formulaic presentations. Each of these steps, aside from their oral enactment, could also be recorded on tablets, the binding character of which was assured by sworn oaths and the sealings of witnesses and parties.

  Other features of OA legal procedure, however, rather reflect the particular tenets of a mercantile society in a foreign context, not only in its self‐regulating aims but also, and especially, in its partially bi‐cultural (Assyrian/Anatolian) composition. Just to give a few examples in family law: marriage between Assyrians and Anatolians is relatively well documented at Kaniš. Assyrian men were often polygamous, with a “main” wife in Ashur and a concubine, or even a second wife, whether Assyrian or Anatolian, in the entrepôt; but opposite situations are also attested. Purely Anatolian contracts, however, seem to be more rigid by forbidding “another wife” outright. Assyrian society viewed divorce as a purely private affair, while Anatolian divorces were under the supervision of local rulers or their delegates (Veenhof 2003: 452–4). Other differences regard indebtedness: whereas Assyrian contracts established deadlines to repay loans in connection with incoming caravan traffic, Anatolians calculated such limits also in relation to agricultural cycles or seasonal festivals. Further, while – in line with general Mesopotamian custom – commercial debts by Assyrians could not be eliminated through acts of social justice, whether it was at all practiced or not in this period (cf. above), the case was different for Anatolians – usually burdened by higher interest‐rates – since local rulers seem to have periodically enforced collective measures of “washing away the debts” of their subjects (ibid.: 466). Finally, an Assyrian sold into slavery to cover a debt could be redeemed by a family member upon payment of the original sale price or multiples thereof; but in Anatolian contracts, also members of a collective social group could act as redeemers, and vindication of redeemed persons by the original parties was sanctioned by heavy fines or even the death penalty (ibid.: 448, 465).

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  These limited but manifold structural differences to be observed in OA legal practice open up wider questions of their own. The historical model of OA trade in Anatolia has been frequently viewed as involving the dominance of a structured core (Ashur) over an asymmetric and less structured periphery (the many individual Anatolian kingdoms). However, it is nowadays clear that the international commercial horizon at this time was vastly ramified (Larsen 1987: 54–6) and that the merchant traffic promoted by the Assyrians was only one among many similar endeavors taking place in the Tigris–Euphrates river basins (Charpin and Durand 1997). Moreover, it is increasingly evident that local Anatolian polities played a concurrent role in shaping the mechanisms of the Assyrian trading system from a political and economic standpoint: specifically, the entire mechanism of OA trade was regulated through sworn international treaties, called “oath” (mamītum), between the Assyrian authorities and the local Anatolian rulers, which were presumably preceded by various provisional drafts, carried to and fro by envoys (Eidem 2003: 749–50). The few examples of such treaties hitherto discovered show that Assyrians enjoyed rights of residence in their entrepôts (lying within/alongside the Anatolian cities) and legal extraterritoriality, i.e. as political and juridical extensions of the city‐state of Ashur. Forms of commercial protectionism against possible competitors on the Anatolian market (e.g. Babylonian traders) were underwritten by the local rulers, who – on the other hand – were entitled to a levy on goods traversing their territory with Assyrian caravans, whether coming or going.

  A further well‐known model, based on “acculturation,” implying the partial assimilation of “recipient groups” to “donor societies” – such as has for example been applied to ancient Greek colonies both eastward and westward – seems even less satisfactory in this context. As a case in point, the Anatolians (designated by the foreign traders as nuʼāʼum, “natives”) appear to have been highly selective in their acceptance of Assyrian material products and ideological positions – even in the domain of law, where they retained local mores, such as the river ordeal, and asserted specific forms of organized social protection. On the other hand, the merchants from Ashur might have fallen prey to local influence, if we may judge by the many items of Anatolian material culture discovered in their tombs and dwellings within the kārum, alongside Mesopotamian‐ and Syrian‐style artifacts (Özgüç 2003).

  In sum, hierarchically‐based templates (basically of a “top‐down” character) do not at present seem fully adequate to explain the great socio‐cultural complexity of the textual and archaeological evidence from Kaniš and other Anatolian outposts. Of late, it has been suggested to frame OA commerce within a “trade‐diaspora” model, well known from Medieval times onward (cf. e.g. the present‐day enclaves of Indian merchants in Africa, of Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia, etc.). This model (“bottom‐up” in its focus) refers to interregional exchange networks composed of spatially dispersed groups of traders, who show features of distinctiveness and inner cohesion vis‐à‐vis their host communities, and maintain numerous ties with their homeland, although they may progressively develop separate and unique forms of identity (Stein 2008). Undoubtedly more fluid and realistic than the models described above, the “trade‐diaspora” template still remains to be tested in detail against the Kaniš evidence, specifically as regards legal theory and practice.

  The Middle Assyrian period

  In the texts of the Middle Assyrian (MA) period, after a documentary gap of some 300 years, Assyria emerges as a full‐fledged territorial state, progressively asserting itself in a maze of international relations which encompassed all of Western Asia during the Late Bronze Age. Possibly as a reaction to an extended Mittanian overlordship in the 16th and 15th centuries, an innovative political‐religious ideology was developed, through which the god Assur bestowed upon the newly‐enthroned king not only full divine legitimation of his rule, but also the specific command to enlarge the territory with his “just scepter” in outlying zones, i.e. to enlarge the “land of Ashur” by military means (Postgate 1992). Beginning with the 14th century, newly conquered lands in the strategically‐located northern Syrian and Upper Tigris regions were thus annexed to the Assyrian heartland. The capital was now flanked by other major cities, such as Nineveh, seat of the cult of the goddess Ištar and residence of princes (Tenu 2004), and Dur‐Katlimmu, where the “grand vizier” had his command center (Cancik‐Kirschbaum 1996). In the framework of marked political multi‐centrism characterizing international law of the 15th–13th centuries, Assyria began to deal with the great powers of the time (Egypt and Ḫatti) on an equal diplomatic footing.

  The king, now ensconced in a dynastic system of succession, came to represent the ultimate seat of all power in peace and war (Jakob 2003: 19–22). A rigidly hierarchical administrative chain of command was at his orders: the rule of each newly constituted province (pāhutu) was entrusted to a governor, who directed district commanders, charged with protecting rural areas from marauders and forwarding tax‐revenues and other produce toward the capital city, for the benefit of the Palace or as cultic offerings (ginā’u) for the temple o
f Assur; “royal delegate(s)” (qēpū/ūtu (ša) šarri) were used to liaise between the capital and the provinces. Other territories were, instead, merely submitted to vassalage, entailing an annual tribute, especially metals and horses, with no religious ties with the cult of the god Assur. The western plains and hilly regions to the northwest of the capital (where the last remnants of Mittanian rule had survived under the name of Ḫanigalbat before their demise), up to the Euphrates (beyond which Hittite political power reached until the early 12th century) were entrusted to a “grand vizier” (sukkallu rabi’u), who could have been a member of the royal line (Cancik‐Kirschbaum 1999) and was a viceroy of sorts, with possible additional prerogatives as a military prefect – as the further title of “king of Ḫanigalbat” might indicate (Fales 2012a).

  The role of the former great merchant families of Ashur now expanded, as they became an elite class bound to the vaster politics of the new state: year‐eponyms (limmu) were chosen from its midst and landed holdings, granted by the Crown as rewards for fealty, covered increasingly wide portions of the rural landscape with fortified farmsteads (dunnu: cf. Akkermans 2007). The Assyrian elite also had the possibility of receiving “gratuities” (šulmānu) in the form of animals, barley, metals, and slaves, in exchange for their legal intervention in difficult cases: these transactions were regulated by contracts (Finkelstein 1952). Similarly to the OA period, MA law shows a division into two basic social classes – free persons (a᾽īlu) and slaves (ardu) – while a further split regarded purely and simply “natives” (um/nzarḫu) and foreigners, with the latter at times enjoying positions of some importance within the administrative structure of the reign. Groups of deported POWs (ṣābu), especially from the West (Hurrians) or the South (Kassites) are also attested, in texts describing their employment in the countryside or in building activities in cities (Freydank 2005) – thus foreshadowing the regular practice of mass deportation which will mark the social policies of the NA empire.

  The legal‐ideological ownership of most, if not all, land by the Crown appears related to a system of tenantship in exchange for feudal service (ilku), whereby each granted estate was expected to supply the Crown with a contingent of troops, or with corresponding civilian service (Postgate 1982). A feudal tenant could alienate the land or pass it on to his heirs; while failure to provide the ilku could entail its re‐assignment to another tenant. A class of persons called “villagers” (ālaiū) could have represented small landowners owing ilku‐service to the Crown, or former landowners dispossessed by the newer form of landownership, and thus forced to work on the estates of the elite, with binding obligations which passed on to their heirs, unless redeeming procedures were carried out (Lafont 2003: 532–3).

  The form of the private debt‐note was a common vehicle for administrative acts involving individuals and the central government. The distribution of commodities effected by the state in exchange for specific deliveries was thus presented as a “debt,” which the delivery thereupon extinguished, at times with the “smashing of the tablet,” no witnesses being required. This system regulated the inner legal and economic mechanisms of the government sector, where a work‐assignment system (iškāru) foresaw the doling out of raw materials of many different types (wool, leather, sinews, wood, spices, grain, stone, bricks, textiles) through a contractual obligation with the craftsman – whether employed full‐time or part‐time –, in exchange for the finished products. The provision of raw materials for the iškāru was assured by the outlying provinces in a continuous centripetal movement (Postgate 2010).

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  On the basis of these major institutional and economic aspects, MA legal practice deviates to a certain degree from that of the previous period, although a framework of diversified inner economic and social canons should be taken into account to avoid simplistic summarizations. As will be seen below, the official provisions and regulations surviving from this age appear harsh to the point of calculated frightfulness in the punishment of misdemeanors and crimes involving gender or social groups, frequently recurring to corporal/capital penalties and to extra‐rational means of reaching the truth, such as the oath and the river ordeal – and thus causing scandalized views on the part of some modern interpreters (“a juridical museum of horrors”: Cardascia 1969; cf. also Saporetti 2008). On the other hand, day‐to‐day legal procedures – based on a textual corpus which has been rapidly expanding through archaeological finds in the last decades – indicate that some crucial rights and legal conditions differed radically from those of the official norms, and that recourse to pecuniary measures was widespread. Some provincial archives also show a certain dependence of jurisprudence on local socio‐political conditions, as e.g. at Tell al‐Rimah, ancient Qaṭṭara (Postgate 2002).

  An overall juridical template for this period might therefore call for a distinction between stricter normative codifications (perhaps in some cases even of long‐standing tradition) prescribed within, and for, the specific moral and intellectual “climate” of the capital city Ashur – as a uniquely eminent seat of government and worship at the same time – and a set of more functionally‐oriented tenets regulating the mechanisms of economy and society throughout the kingdom, with its many provinces, diverse geographical landscapes, and mutually intermingling peoples (see already Postgate 1982: 308). Only additional evidence will allow to decide in the future whether, and to what extent, this twofold distinction is worth upholding, per se and comparatively – e.g. in the light of some singular analogues linking official MA laws/edicts and normative prescriptions in the Old Testament (Paul 2005: 159–76). In any case – especially as regards the entire sphere of kingship and its attributes, Palace society and its privileges, and various facets of landed property – the legal tenets of the MA multi‐regional state may be considered the crucial stepping‐stone between the city‐based jurisprudence of the OA period and the “universal” application of law which would come to mark the following imperial age.

  The Neo‐Assyrian period

  After some 200 years of political crisis due to the Aramean takeover of the western sector of the reign, and a long preparatory phase of step‐by‐step reconquest and expansion (late tenth to mid‐eighth centuries), the Neo‐Assyrian (NA) state developed into the first world empire in the course of one century (approx. 745–612), stretching from southern Anatolia to the Persian Gulf, and from western Iran to the border of Egypt – and even briefly to the Nile Valley (Fales 2001; Radner 2003). At its apex, the empire combined a double system of territorial and political domination: a core of adjacent provinces subjected in full to Assyrian jurisdiction was flanked by vassal and allied polities bound by written treaties to fealty and commercial support in exchange for partial autonomy. Provincial seats of power, modeled after the capital cities of inner Assyria, were interconnected through a vast road network, on which a traffic of civilian administrators, of envoys bearing written and oral messages, of armed forces on the march to and from increasingly remote battlefields, of vanquished communities deported hither and thither, and of abundant goods in the form of booty, tribute, and taxes, meant to enrich the Palaces and supply the Assur temple, incessantly flowed on foot, horseback, or on mule‐drawn carts.

  Only the Babylonian region managed to escape this status, and to retain by and large its native administrative structure, as the result of a centuries‐long policy of military revolts and unremitting political/cultural resistance (Brinkman 1979; Frame 1992); Assyrian rulers were forced to consider Babylonian kingship as a separate institution within Mesopotamian tradition, to be eventually assumed by themselves with extreme tact (including new throne‐names). Not by chance, therefore, Babylonia held on to its distinctive tenets in the realm of jurisprudence concerning language, document typology, dating techniques, and specific ideological‐religious references – thus constituting a fully autonomous legal tradition, different from that of its would‐be dominators.

  Elsewhere, however, the “Assyrian way of life” over the
subjected people was asserted through the imposition of many homogenous administrative features: from the year datings by eponym and the monthly calendar to weights and measures to the Neo‐Assyrian language used for official purposes. On the other hand, other parlances and written expressions were tolerated and at times even officially accepted, as in the case of Aramaic, which was used far and wide; and no imposition of Assyrian cult practices on local ones may be demonstrated, despite the constantly reaffirmed supremacy of the god Assur (see below, Neo‐Assyrian Legal Practices). As for material culture, specific typologies of pottery (Anastasio 2010) and a fixed range of formats and formularies for legal documents on clay tablets were diffused throughout the empire, showing variances with the ones in prior use (Postgate 1997). Despite the continuing use from MA times onwards of rewritable surfaces (wax‐covered wooden or ivory tablets, usually hinged together as “dyptichs” or “polyptichs”) and a newer, and presumably vast, diffusion of pliable media (parchment scrolls, papyrus sheets) in various compartments of NA imperial administration – possibly under the influence of the many “minority” cultures that Assyria hosted in its midst – it appears that the clay tablet retained its traditional function as main vehicle for juridical purposes.