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Was Assyria merely a more brutal, more uncivilized and less interesting offshoot of the culture created by Sumerians and Babylonians in Southern Mesopotamia at the dawn of history? Do the Assyrian reliefs that fill our museums give a complete picture of the phenomenon that was Assyria? Was the contribution of this people to world culture merely an incredibly effective military organization? The answers to these questions are sought here in this detailed book from 1963, referring to personal documents of the time, in the letters Assyrians wrote to one another rather than in the annals of the rulers.
For over 40 years, Jack M. Sasson has been studying and commenting on the cuneiform archives from Mari on the Euphrates River, especially those from the age of Hammurabi of Babylon. Among Mari’s wealth of documents, some of the most interesting are letters from and to kings, their advisers and functionaries, their wives and daughters, their scribes and messengers, and a variety of military personnel. The letters are revealing and often poignant. Sasson selects more than 700 letters as well as several excerpts from administrative documents, translating them and providing them with illuminating comments. In distilling a lifetime of study and interpretation, Sasson hopes to welcome readers into a fuller appreciation of a remarkable period in Mesopotamian civilization. Sasson’s presentation is organized around major institutions in an ancient culture: (1) Kingship, treating accumulation of wealth, control of vassals, dynastic marriages, treaty-obligations, as well as illustrating the hazards and vexation of ruling a large territory; (2) Administration, from palaces that teem with bureaucrats, musicians, and cooks, to the management of provinces and vassal kingdoms; (3) Warfare, military establishment and martial practices; (4) Society, including organs of justice (and shortcuts to it), crime, punishment, and civil transactions; (5) Religion, including notices on diverse pantheons, rituals, priesthood, cultic paraphernalia, vows, ordeals, and channels to the gods (divination, dreams, and prophecy); and (6) Culture, including ethnic distinctions, class structure, and moments in the life cycle (birth, childhood, family life, health matters, death, and commemoration). Sasson’s presentation of the material brings to life a world entombed for four millennia, concretizes the realities of ancient life, and gives it a human perspective that is at once instructive and entertaining. The book is accompanied by extensive concordances and indexes (including to biblical passages) that will be useful to those who wish to study the letters more intensively.
Amanda Podany here takes readers on a vivid tour through a thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history, from 2300 to 1300 BCE, paying particular attention to the lively interactions that took place between the great kings of the day. Allowing them to speak in their own words, Podany reveals how these leaders and their ambassadors devised a remarkably sophisticated system of diplomacy and trade. What the kings forged, as they saw it, was a relationship of friends-brothers-across hundreds of miles. Over centuries they worked out ways for their ambassadors to travel safely to one another's capitals, they created formal rules of interaction and ways to work out disagreements, they agreed to treaties and abided by them, and their efforts had paid off with the exchange of luxury goods that each country wanted from the other. Tied to one another through peace treaties and powerful obligations, they were also often bound together as in-laws, as a result of marrying one another's daughters. These rulers had almost never met one another in person, but they felt a strong connection--a real brotherhood--which gradually made wars between them less common. Indeed, any one of the great powers of the time could have tried to take over the others through warfare, but diplomacy usually prevailed and provided a respite from bloodshed. Instead of fighting, the kings learned from one another, and cooperated in peace. A remarkable account of a pivotal moment in world history--the establishment of international diplomacy thousands of years before the United Nations--Brotherhood of Kings offers a vibrantly written history of the region often known as the "cradle of civilization."
The Ancient Near East embraces a vast geographical area, from the borders of Iran and Afghanistan in the east to the Levant and Anatolia, and from the Black Sea in the north to Egypt in the south. It was a region of enormous cultural, political and linguistic diversity. In this authoritative new study, Amélie Kuhrt examines its history from the earliest written documents to the conquest of Alexander the Great, c.3000-330 BC. This work dispels many of the misapprehensions which have surrounded the study of the region. It provides a lucid, up-to-date narrative which takes into account the latest archaeological and textual discoveries and deals with the complex problems of interpretation and methodology. The Ancient Near East is an essential text for all students of history of this region and a valuable introduction for students and scholars working in related subjects. Winner of the AHO's 1997 James Henry Breasted Award.