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PART TWO THE DATA

4 THE RECORD AND THE EVIDENCE 4.1 The use of primary sources 4.2 From record to evidence 4.3 Source criticism 4.4 The question of consciousness 4.5 Degrees of evidentiary intent as a sorting criterion 4.5.1 Degree 0: the physical record 4.5.2 Degree 1: the static record 4.5.3 Degree 2: the dynamic record 4.5.4 Degree 3: the idealized record THE PHYSICAL RECORD: GEOGRAPHICAL PRECONDITIONS 5.1 Geology 5.2 Geomorphology and climate 5.3 Perceptual geography 5.4 Cultural impact on landscape: the built environment 5.5 Political regions 5.6 Corridors for ethnic movement 5.7 Natural resources THE CULTURAL RECORD: ARCHAEOLOGY AND TEXTS 6.1 Nature of the artifactual sources 6.2 The broken vs. the continuous tradition 6.3 Stratigraphic analysis 6.4 Typological analysis 6.5 Epigraphic sources and manuscript tradition 6.6 The canon: the selective frame 6.7 Chronology: the global frame 6.8 The mechanics of writing: types of materials 6.9 The conceptual dimension: types of texts 6.10Integrative nature of historiography 20 20 20 21 22 22 23 23 23 24 25 25 25 25 25 26 26 27 28 29 29 29 29 30 30 30 31 31 32 32 33

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THE RECORD AND THE EVIDENCE

4.1 The use of primary sources

Practically all the sources we have concerning ancient Mesopotamia are primary in the sense that they stem from Mesopotamian data found in the excavations of Mesopotamian sites. Most of them, too, date to the period to which they refer, since there are relatively few Mesopotamian syntheses of their own history (this is precisely what was meant above by broken tradition). In this respect, the situation is quite different from that that obtains, e.g., for ancient Israel, where the majority of the historical documentation derives, yes, from Israel itself, but is embedded in overarching historical syntheses that have undergone major redactional revisions, in for no other reason than to present a unitary picture of the events. The consequence is that we must develop a special sensitivity for the reading of such sources. We must interpret them with a view towards reconstructing the environment from which they stem and to which they give evidence. This entails identifying their social space (generally referred to by the German term Sitz im Leben, literally setting in life), i.e., the individual authors who brought them about, the audience they were addressed to, the specific purpose they were meant to serve, the possible underlying agenda of the authors, etc. We can do this through an internal analysis of the documents themselves and through a comparison with other data. A goal of the course is to give you a concrete sense for such a utilization of the sources, so that you should use as much as possible the texts from the anthology contained in this Primer, and others available in the library.

4.2 From record to evidence

The data that pertain to historical reconstruction form the documentary basis on which to build. They constitute the factual record from which everybody has to start. The record is factual in its specific embodiment: a cuneiform tablet or a stone statue retain their physical consistency regardless of how we look at them, read their code or interpret their meaning. But the physical embodiment as such is powerless to unlock the secrets of the world to which they give witness. There is a minimum of interpretation even in the manner in which the original is cleaned or lighted when we look at it; the way in which it is photographed and published; all the way up to its eventual translation and

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explanation, where interpretation plays of course a major role. So in a sense it is true to say that the factual record is not purely and simply factual, because it is always mediated through some scholarly filter, however minimal, through the very process of its becoming publicly accessible, or published. What is more, the record, in and of itself, says everything and says nothing. By way of a parallel, you may think of linguistic analysis. The sum total of all possible utterances in a language is a form of grammar, in that it describes fully the expressive range of that language. But is obviously the most unwieldy of grammars: a grammar in a proper sense of the term must discover the intrinsic mechanisms that account for all those manifestations in a more compact way. Just as a linguist cannot simply sit in front of an informant and ask him simply to speak, but must eventually ask leading questions, so a historian must look critically at the record and transform it into evidence. The record is analyzed for what it says of institutions, phenomena, events, and at that point it is shown to exhibit a specific relevance. It is the functional use of the record that gives it its value as evidence something that Vico, the great philosopher of history, expressed by saying that the historian must lend truth to the real (inverare il certo).

4.3 Source criticism

Apart from the physical data (of geography, but also of physical anthropology, palaeobotany, palaeozoology, etc), the data for historical reconstruction come from cultural materials. These may be divided into epigraphic and artifactual. For each there is a vast body of critical literature at various levels, e.g., linguistic and literary for written texts, stylistic or iconographic for artifacts. The results of these types of analysis are embodied in disciplines other than historiography, which may roughly be said to cluster around philology for the texts and around archaeology for the artifacts. But there is a type of source criticism which is proper to historiography: this is based on a method which probes into the value of the sources vis-a-vis specific problems of historical reconstruction. Instead of taking texts or artifacts at face value, questions are asked as to what was the initial intent of the document, what are the implicit references to issues not envisaged directly in the document, what are the biases which color the documentary value of the source, and so on. A good example of this is found in Liverani, Three Essays on the Amarna Age (see the bibliography). It is seldom possible when dealing with ancient history to verify a source by obtaining a second source (as is the rule in good journalism). But we can establish correlations that are not immediately apparent to us and especially to the authors of the record, and this a good standard to work by.

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If the hallmark of scientific experimentation is repetition of the experiment, it would appear at first that a historian is at a disadvantage in that we cannot hope, or wish, to resurrect the situations of the past to test a given hypothesis. But it would be a fundamental mistake in logic to assume that that were necessary. Any hypothesis we propose is not based on the events of the past, but on the record of their having happened. Hence, repetition of the experiment for us means only to be able to retrace the steps taken in arriving at a certain conclusion, the way in which certain segments of the record have been interpreted as evidence for certain assumptions. In this sense, then, we can perfectly well repeat the experiment by verifying the implications that have been read into the record against the record itself. For this reason, even in a survey like ours, we will make an effort to show on what documentary evidence our conclusions rest, where documentary evidence refers precisely to the way in which a segment of the record (a document) has been interpreted to give evidence for the conclusion suggested.

4.4 The question of consciousness

I have already referred briefly (3.9) to the question of the consciousness of the ancients. The primary sources are the frozen record of ancient consciousness, and it is from a careful reading that we can go beneath the surface. Our analysis of these sources consists precisely in unlocking the underlying consciousness and showing arguments why this can be, literally, argued. Alertness to such questions of consciousness, and a proper application of distributional analysis, leads to a properly semiotic type of translation whereby we go beyond the mere nominalistic, literal and mechanical rendering of a word with another word. De-cyphering a semiotic code is as difficult (but as possible) as de-cyphering a mechanical code (including the built into writing systems and natural languages). A good insight is afforded by the contemporary concept of localization which is used in the industry as an alternative for translation, precisely because it points to the fact that the rendering of, say, an advertising commercial must take into account the sensitivity of other cultures in ways that go well beyond the literal meaning of individual words.

4.5 Degrees of evidentiary intent as a sorting criterion

In the next two chapters we will consider what types of records we have at our disposal. Here we can briefly look at how different types can be identified depending on how their coming into existence is correlative to an

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intended impact on the part of the makers of the record. In other words, to what extent do the authors want the record to serve as evidence? How much does the author of the particular source has in mind the way in which the information provided will be scrutinized and expected to be correct? I refer to this as the evidentiary intent on the part of the author at the time the record is fashioned. Equally significant is the question as to the level of access to the data on the part of the original users. How wide was the audience? Who are the addressees? To what extent can they undertake an independent verification of the record? I distinguish four degrees of such evidentiary intent in ascending order from minimal or non-existent to maximal. Degree 0 stands by itself, and will be treated further in chapter 5. Degrees 1-3 constitute the written record, and will be treated further in chapter 6. The pertinent elements that establish each degree are given here in outline form. 4.5.1 Degree 0: the physical record
the concept of accountability does not apply, since data such as physical geography come into existence without consideration for what they might mean in terms of human use much of the archaeological record falls in this category, at least that part of the record that derives from the depositional process, i.e., the way in which artifacts have come to rest in the ground

4.5.2 Degree 1: the static record

description: channeled interaction (archival, functional, formulaic, pre-set, bureaucratic) major types: administrative texts (example: contract of Puzurum) verification: maximal, actual and systemic specificity: maximal and rigid topic: imposed by system point of view: none (template to be used is pre-set by the system) addressee: the system itself.

4.5.3 Degree 2: the dynamic record

description: spontaneous interaction major types: letters, legal disputes (example: letter about Kassites; letter to Amenhotep III - see syllabus)

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verification: intermediate, potential, and expected to the extent that the recipient cares to verify specificity: flexible, but generally considerable; dependent on the interaction between author and addressee topic and point of view: chosen by the author addressee: individuals or organizations

4.5.4 Degree 3: the idealized record

description: projection of idealized conditions major types: political literature and selected monuments example: year names; inscription of Samsu-iluna verification (of stated details): minimal, difficult and not necessarily expected specificity (amount and nature of details): highly flexible, and dependent primarily on the choice of the author topic and point of view: chosen by author addressee: no particular individual, but large audience or generalized public

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5 THE PHYSICAL RECORD: GEOGRAPHICAL PRECONDITIONS

5.1 Geology
The most important geological factor affecting human development in the Mesopotamian area is the alluvial deposition caused by the rivers which has resulted in two major consequences. (1) Prehistoric reclamation of a large part of the Gulf which reached farther north in antiquity than at present (Lees and Falcon 1952). (2) Historic alluviation of the plain from the piedmont area to the shores of the Gulf, resulting in the disappearance of many of the earliest settlements below the present plain level (Jacobsen and Adams 1958; Jacobsen 1980).

5.2 Geomorphology and climate

The fundamental geographical factors which affected historical development of ancient Mesopotamia are climate and relief. Rainfall and irrigation conditioned vegetation and agriculture, the rivers and the relief conditioned transportation and trade, the steppe became the reserve of incipient tribal populations, and the mountains were the reservoir of unstable, semi-nomadic populations often on the move toward the river basins. The sea and the desert became important only in the later periods. The desert was impenetrable without the camel, which was first domesticated around 1200 B.C., and is first attested as being in common use only from the 7th century B.C. The sea played an important role only in the case of the seapeoples (about 1200 B.C.) and then especially with the Phoenicians (from about 1000 B.C). It is important to note that none of the great powers were sea powers, and that control of the sea did not play any role in the definition of territorial power or in the development of imperialistic policies.

5.3 Perceptual geography

Our term Mesopotamia is of Greek origin, and is based on an Aramaic concept of the mid first millennium. The Mesopotamians did not have either the term or an analogous concept. The term as such refers to the area between the rivers (i.e., between the Tigris and the Euphrates). It was not a Mesopotamian concept because as it happens the area in the middle is the least desirable, and would have hardly qualified for the positive perception the peo-

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ple had of their land. So the term arises from a later cartographic perception by foreigners looking at a map, rather than from people living there. As it happens, the rivers were indeed important, in fact essential, especially for the southern part of the region. So the rivers do in fact dominate the perceptual view that the Mesopotamians had of their country in terms, however, not of what lay between them, but rather of what lay next to them on either side. This is the concept of river bank (kibrum, in Akkadian; see Buccellati 1990), i.e., the irrigable area where dry farming is made possible within well developed irrigation basins. The term came to be a part of the political titulary of the kings as soon as they achieved a political unification of, as they called it, the four river banks (kibr!tum arba!um). This then is the Mesopotamian perceptual equivalent of what we will continue of course to call Mesopotamia.

5.4 Cultural impact on landscape: the built environment

The physical geography of the Mesopotamian area has been most visibly altered by the following human activities. (1) Permanent settlements, from small villages to large urban centers. The architecture is largely of mudbrick and wood, and only to a small extent of stone. (2) Irrigation, which has created a long network of canals and consequent irrigation basins (ug!rum in Akkadian), some with a large carrying capacity so as to be considered branches of the major rivers. (3) Modification of the chemical consistency of the soil, with ever increasing salinization on the alluvial plain (where the drainage is limited) and consequent depletion of nutrients in the soil (Jacobsen and Adams 1958; Jacobsen 1980). (4) Intensive and extensive cultivation of domesticated crops. (5) Deforestation in the lower ranges of the Syrian steppe and the piedmont area (Rowton).

5.5 Political regions

Although political development of the ancient Near East is far from static, one can easily observe how the articulation of power through time respects rather rigid and constant demarcation lines which delimit well defined political regions. Besides geographically well delimited regions (corresponding to a single landscape, identified for instance as the basin of a tributary river), there are macro-regions, which maintain some degree of geographical uniformity, but subsume different landscapes or regions in the narrower sense of the term. The major regions are as follows:

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1) The drainage basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris, south of the Taurus range, is the overall geographical region. 2) The western macro-region, Syria, consisted of individual, even if large, centers of power both when it formed a unified culture with the East (as SyroMesopotamia) and afterwards. Even the largest states, like Ebla and Aleppo, do not appear to have effectively unified this entire sub-region. 3) The northern macro-region retained throughout history an identity of its own, first with major city-states possibly ethnically affiliated with the Hurrians, then achieving unification after 1500 B.C. with the state of Mitanni and reaching the climax of power with the Assyrians. 4) The southern macro-region, like the northern one, was unified after 1500 B. C. with the Kassites, and then reached the climax of power with the NeoBabylonian empire.

The regional growth implies a movement of an expansion type, whereby no transfer of people takes place, but simply the enlargement of the political boundaries of a certain political region. This type of expansion, which involves considerable administrative readjustments, lies at the basis of the establishment of a universal state, which was brought for the first time into existence at the end of the ancient history of the Near East, with the Assyrian empire.

5.6 Corridors for ethnic movement

The history of the ancient Near East is characterized by repeated migratory movements of various ethnic groups. In this connection note especially the following points:
1) There are two main centers of diffusion, namely the Syrian steppe (though, as we shall see, this was a point of arrival from the Middle Euphrates before it became a point of departure back to all other river basins), and the mountains to the North-East of Mesopotamia. The sea served as an invasion route only in two cases, of which one (the Persian Gulf for the Sumerians) is uncertain, and the other (the Mediterranean for the Sea people) is rather late. 2) Most of these ethnic movements have to be conceived of as slow and continuous processes, with only a few exceptions, such as in the case of the Guti and the sea peoples. Infiltration would seem, therefore, a better word than invasion, especially because in many cases the nature of the movement was peaceful. The interaction which could thus take place allowed a considerable continuity in the cultural history of the area, with relatively little breaks. 3) The movements represented by these movements are of a dislocation type, in the sense that they indicate the transfer of one people from one region to

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the other. The result was increased density of population at the terminal point of the migration, and a relative vacuum at the point of origin.

5.7 Natural resources

The alluvial plain is devoid of all mineral resources. The piedmont area offers bitumen (related geologically to the rich oil deposits found today in Iraq), which was used as a waterproof agent in constructions. The mountains to the North, from the Taurus to the Caucasus, are rich in copper, tin, iron, silver, obsidian. Of the other important minerals, not present in the area, mention should be made of gold (which came from Egypt), lapis-lazuli (from Afghanistan), amber (not properly a mineral, from the Baltic). The only kind of timber available in large quantities in the alluvial plain is the palm, which provides a poor construction material, but can be used for roofing. Otherwise, the most important source of timber is found in the Lebanon range. In terms of agricultural resources, Mesopotamia was self-sufficient, except for specialized items such as wine (imported from the Mediterranean coast) and spices (imported from the Indus valley and as far afield as Indonesia).

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6 THE CULTURAL RECORD: ARCHAEOLOGY AND TEXTS 6.1 Nature of the artifactual sources
Practically all cultural source material about ancient Mesopotamia comes from archaeological excavations, including the textual evidence just outlined. Hence knowledge of archaeological methods is essential for the historian, especially with regard to current excavations, since excavation strategy is molded by overall problems of cultural analysis. For the pre-literate periods, artifactual remains are the only type of source we have, and our reconstruction of events and institutions is based entirely on them. As texts begin to appear, artifactual evidence comes to be progressively ignored by contemporary historians, a negative factor which should be corrected. The artifactual evidence provides us, in fact, with a wealth of information which is less explicit on some levels (than written texts), but also less biased.

6.2 The broken vs. the continuous tradition

Above (1.5 and 3.5-7) I have already referred to the concept of broken tradition. It is in my view the best way to identify the proper scope of archaeology as such. Archaeology confronts data that have their own identity defined in the first place by the way in which they have come to be deposited in the ground. Our skill, as archaeologists, is to disentangle the data from the grip of their own collapse, to see how they relate in the ground. No other discipline tells us how to do this. The discovery of this emplacement, however humble it may seem, is the primary duty of the archaeologist. The next step is to identify the mechanisms through which these, embedded in their matrix of dirt, have come to be there. This is what we call deposition how things have come to be in the ground. Was there destruction? structural neglect? normal accumulation resulting from use? degradation? natural decay? etc. Deposition is then the moment, and the process, whereby the breakage, i.e., the initial interruption took place. Things froze as a result of a process. And this frozen state is the only thing left for us to inspect data that are in place in the complex stratigraphic matrix we excavate. Giving meaning to this broken tradition is the next stage that the archaeologist must embark on. Without the visualization that a living tradition

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offers, the archaeologist must discover the inner momentum that held all the pieces together. And this comes from a very special scholarly skill, that must be developed carefully on its own terms.

6.3 Stratigraphic analysis

The depositional history of ancient sites is extremely complex, resulting as it does from a very long organic growth: the accumulation of debris which we face when we begin to excavate is due to human activity, both intentional and unintentional, and to natural forces. The process of excavation aims at extricating each component part of this depositional organism, and recording the exact spatial interrelationship of all such components. This activity is called stratigraphic analysis and, inasmuch as it applies to cultural deposition, it is the hallmark of archaeology. In Mesopotamia this type of cultural deposition is most complex, because the nature of debris was such that it could not be reutilized: it was therefore left in place, and the new accumulation would occur on top of it. The modern procedures for excavation are considerably more refined than in the past, and the concern for the stratigraphic context is overriding whereas often in the past one would be satisfied with discovering important single artifacts.

6.4 Typological analysis

Once the artifacts are extricated from their depositional context, and their stratigraphic value has been properly recorded, they are analyzed according to their formal characteristics. This establishes a typology which goes from such macroscopic distinctions as statues vs. figurines, to a much more minute analysis which isolates component attributes to an unlimited degree of differentiation. The basic distinction is between architectural and movable items. Within buildings, we have either public edifices (temples, palaces) or private residences; we also learn much about the urban layout, from city walls to streets and squares. As for movable artifacts, the one type which is ubiquitous is pottery: being very numerous and distinct, pottery types are highly diagnostic, and thus they are used the most frequently for chronological and other correlations.

6.5 Epigraphic sources and manuscript tradition

For Mesopotamia, we have hardly any manuscript tradition coming down to us through a continuous line from antiquity. This means on the one hand that we have less problems with reinterpretations and text corrections which took place over the centuries with texts like the Bible, and that we have

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a large number of texts (such as administrative texts) which in a manuscript tradition (like the Biblical one) would not have been considered worthy of being copied through centuries. On the other hand, the documentation is highly fragmentary, without any set framework: this leaves more gaps in the outline of events and institutions, but also has the advantage of giving the historian greater freedom from biased self-analysis of the ancients. Note that the etymological meaning of epigraphy is writing on, in the specific sense that we have the original material on which the text was entered, i.e., autographs. Note further that since these documents were all deposited in the ground, where they have been found my modern archaeologists, they were not available for inspection to even the later Mesopotamians. As a result we are in the curious (enviable?) situation that sources we know ancient Mesopotamia better than even the later Mesopotamians did!

6.6 The canon: the selective frame

In spite of what has just been said, it is also true that there developed, in ancient Mesopotamia, a canon that recognized the most important texts as individual documents and, for repetitive texts such as those used in administration, the standard formulas and document templates used through the centuries. There developed, in other words, a degree of self-awareness for their own tradition, which yielded what we call classics. Such a canon can be understood as a frame that links portions of the record, a mechanism whereby the transmission of the record becomes part of the record itself. In addition, there develops as well a certain perceptual wholeness of the record as framed. In other words, the canon is not only a listing, but also a living library, as it were, that conditions new choices and innovations. The Biblical canon is a classic that goes much beyond the limits just indicated. In Mesopotamia a canon existed as well, though it was much less influential than the Bible became in ancient Israel and later.

6.7 Chronology: the global frame

If the canon constitutes a selective typological frame in the sense just described, chronology constitutes a more global frame which encompasses the entirety of the record. Mesopotamians were very aware of this frame, and established a variety of chronological lists. They were not all in use at the same

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time, so that in this respect as well we can say that our knowledge of Mesopotamia is fuller than that of the ancient Mesopotamians themselves! The criteria used by the ancients were linked to political history kings and events that occurred during their reign or eponyms, i.e. officials who gave their name to each individual year. Since these lists were kept (separately for each period) we can reconstruct long sequences as segments of the overall chronological table. This (combined also with the rich information gathered from archaeology) constitutes what we call relative chronology i.e., precisely, segments which are only self-contained . When we seek to link these fragments to us (to heal, in this sense as well, the rift of the broken tradition), we aim to establish an absolute chronology (where absolute means in fact that the sequence of segments is viewed as relative to us). There are three major possible reconstructions, which, for the period before 1500 B.C., fall into the categories of high, middle and low chronology. The middle chronology is the one more generally used (and is presented and discussed in both Roux and Oppenheim). Recently, more weight is being given to the low chronology (see especially (Gasche, Armstrong, Cole and Gurzadyan 1998).

6.8 The mechanics of writing: types of materials

Clay Tablets. Most are rectangular, divided into vertical columns drawn with string. Horizontal lines were etched in with a stylus after writing. Many are often written on both sides. The reverse side was concave; the obverse was flat. The concave side possibly took the shape of the hand, since the tablet was held in the palm when written. Some were a cylindrical barrel cylinder shape, with lines wider than the extremities. The prism form of tablet also exists, but is less frequently found. The texts are published by sign transcription and transliteration, then a translation. Other permanent materials: engravings on stelae, cylinder seals, and metal plaques. Less permanent materials: wax tablets, ink on papyrus or parchment.

6.9 The conceptual dimension: types of texts

(1) Administrative Receipts or records of transactions within given establishments Lists of wages or rations given to workmen Records of fields, distribution, and what was grown within them.

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(2) Religious Omina, i. e. lists of signs and portents of a magical nature (flight of birds, etc.) Rituals (3) Philological, especially lexical lists bilingual: words translated generally from Sumerian to Akkadian monolingual: dictionaries (encyclopediae), arranged by conceptual order (4) Letters either public or private political, written by the king and the administration some international in character, bearing directly on political history. (5) Juridical contracts of sale, marriage, loans, etc. court decisions concerning suits laws (6) Political literature votive inscriptions objects dedicated in temples great royal inscriptions, usually associated with the temples. Written by the king and dedicated to the deity, but relating also the deeds of the king. (7) Chronicles (later development) for erudition; for scribes to know what happened closest to our idea of history (8) Literature (smallest category of texts) myths and epics wisdom literature religious literature, other than under (2) above.

6.10 Integrative nature of historiography

The sources described here must first be understood properly in their intrinsic value (the task of philology and archaeology), then in their histo-

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riographic value (the task of source criticism). Only then can they properly be inserted in a higher level of integration, which is that of historical reconstruction of events and institutions. This integrative goal of historical reconstruction is to relate ideally, all evidence from the data to itself and to universal system of principles. Thus the field of Mesopotamian political history is an integrative study of the data from the natural habitat, the statements of the texts, the evidence of the artifactsas seen from the viewpoint of a generalized understanding of human political institutions. Further, this is viewed as a process, whereby a given political system undergoes changes through time, retaining an essential balance all the while some component parts are altered.