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The Near East 1200–330 BCE*

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The Near East 1200–330 BCE* Journal of the History of International Law 12 (2010) 101–153 JHIL brill.nl/jhil Tracing the Earliest Recorded Concepts of International Law. (5) The Near East 1200–330 BCE* Amnon Altman Department of History, Bar-Ilan University, Israel The 12th century BCE, dubbed “the crisis years” and seen in terms of political and cultural history, may be considered as the major watershed in the history of the Ancient Near East.1 The Hittite kingdom, attacked by the so-called “Sea Peoples”, entirely disappeared, taking with it its * The present article concludes this series. For the four previous phases see in this Journal: (1) Vol. 6 (2004) 153–172; (2) Vol. 7 (2005) 115–136; (3) Vol. 10 (2008) 1–33; and (4) Vol. 11 (2009) 125–186 and 333–357. All dates are BCE, unless specified otherwise. Abbreviations used here are: ABL = R.F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters belonging to the Kouyounjik Collection of the British Museum, 14 vols (London and Chicago: 1892–1914); ARAB = D.D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia Vols. I-II (Chicago: 1927); CTH2 = J. Boardman et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. III/1 (Cambridge: 1982), Vol. III/2 (Cambridge: 1991), Vol. IV (Cambridge: 1988); RIMA = The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods; RIMA 2 = A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, I (1114–859 BC) (Toronto-Buffalo-London: 1991); RIMA 3 = A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, II (858–745 BC) (Toronto-Buffalo-London: 1996); SAA = State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki); SAAS = State Archives of Assyria Studies (Helsinki). Please note the following signs: square brackets [ ] enclose restorations of lacunae; parentheses ( ) enclose clarification additions in the translation; angular brackets < > enclose text assumed to be omitted by scribal error; ellipsis of three or more dots within a quoted passage indicates omission by the present writer; three or more dots within parentheses (…) indicate a break in the text. 1) See the various articles in W.A. Ward and Martha S. Joukowsky (eds.), The Crisis Years. The 12th Century B.C. From Beyond the Danube to the Tigris(Dubuque, Iowa: 1992). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157180510X12659062066234 102 Altman / Journal of the History of International Law 12 (2010) 101–153 subordinated kingdoms such as Amurru, Ugarit, Alašiya (Cyprus) and others in northern Syria and Anatolia. The Egyptian Asian empire also collapsed, and the Canaanite cities along the Mediterranean coast suffered various degrees of destruction. At the same time, the Israelites invaded Canaan, and new kingdoms were established by the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites in Transjordan. The Philistines occupied Philistia, the ter- ritory that was later named after them. The Arameans expanded from the Syro-Arabian desert westward into southern Syria, and northward into Upper Mesopotamia where they established new petty kingdoms. In south- central Anatolia, Cilicia, and northern Syria, new so-called “Neo-Hittite” states that seem to have been of a mixed ethnic origin were established. After the mid-eleventh century, Assyria and Babylonia began to undergo territorial retrocession under the pressure of invading Aramean tribes, which sometime later established many settlements in Babylonia. Finally, about the same time as the Aramean influx, Chaldian groups whose exact ethnic origin is not clear penetrated into Babylonia. In the wake of these events, the sources for the transitional period of the 12th – 10th centuries became extremely scanty and the Near East entered a “Dark Age”.2 When in the latter part of the tenth century the curtain started to rise again above the political stage of the Near East, we encounter the begin- ning of a process which transformed this stage from one dominated by multi-powers to one dominated by only one single power.3 It started with the Assyrian king Aššur-Dan II (934–912), who in reaction to the pressure exerted by the Aramean tribes, set out on a series of campaigns in an effort to recover the territories held by the Assyrians in Upper Mesopotamia under the Middle Assyrian empire; an endeavor crowned with success by 745. At that time, the political scene of the Near East was still very much similar to that of the Late Bronze Age, dominated by some great powers 2) For the transitional period of the 12th-10th centuries in the Levant see the articles in S. Gitin et al. (eds.), Mediterranean People in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE (Jerusalem: 1998), and E.D. Oren (ed.), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (Philadelphia: 2000). 3) For the most detailed review of the political changes and developments during the period from the tenth through the sixth centuries, namely from the rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire up to the end of the Neo-Babylonian empire (539), see CAH2 Vol. III/1, Chs. 6–13, and Vol. III/2. A shorter, but still a detailed review is that of Amélie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 BC, Vol. II (London and New York: 1995)..
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