….
Ashurnasirpal II was also a great builder. He too raised monuments throughout Assyria. These included a new capital named Calah. In Calah archaeologists found numerous artifatcs of Egyptian manufacture. There were, for example, many scarabs of the latter Eighteenth Dynasty, especially from the time of Amenhotap III. (See Austen Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853) p. 282)
So, just in the place where we would expect to find the monuments of Ashuruballit, who was a contemporary of the latter Eighteenth Dynasty, we find the monuments of Ashurnasirpal II, whose buildings are full of artifacts of the latter Eighteenth Dynasty. ….
The “Middle Assyrians” were a mysterious line of kings who ruled Assyria before the time of the Neo-Assyrians and supposedly after the time of the Mitannians. Yet we know of no Assyrian stratigraphy which can give a clear line from Mitannian to Middle Assyrian to Neo-Assyrian. On the contrary, as we saw, the Mitannians are followed immediately by the Neo-Assyrians of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III. This can only mean that the Middle Assyrians must have been contemporaries of the Mitannians, and were most likely Mitannian kings using Assyrian names. We know that ancient rulers often bore several titles in accordance with the various nations and ethnic groups over which they reigned. Since the Mitannian royal names are Indo-Iranian, and therefore meaningless and probably unpronounceable to the Semitic speakers of Assyria, it is almost certain that they would also have used Assyrian-sounding titles.
That the Middle Assyrians were in fact contemporary with the Mitannians is shown in numberless details of artwork, pottery, epigraphy, etc. (See for example P. Pfalzner, Mittanische und Mittelassyrische Keramik (Berlin, 1995).
….
No comments:
Post a Comment