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The Display of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Kalḫu As Ameans of Internal Political Control

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The Display of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Kalḫu As Ameans of Internal Political Control 01 Barcina display_Antiguo Oriente 07/07/2017 11:43 a.m. Página 11 THE DISPLAY OF ESARHADDON’S SUCCESSION TREATY AT KALḪU AS A MEANS OF INTERNAL POLITICAL CONTROL CRISTINA BARCINA [email protected] University of Tartu Estonia Summary: The Display of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty at Kalḫu as a Means of Internal Political Control In 672 B.C. Esarhaddon made the citizens of Assyria swear a loyalty oath to his cho- sen heir, Ashurbanipal, in the Nabû Temple of Kalḫu. This is known through three let- ters belonging to the royal archives of Nineveh. This oath and its related stipulations were written in unusually big tablets and left on display in the Throne Room of the Temple. However, the identity of those pledging their loyalty to Ashurbanipal in the tablets that preserve the relevant lines (city-lords from the Eastern periphery of the empire) is at odds with the letters’ information. The identical oath-tablet recently exca- vated in a temple at Tell Ta’yinat (South-West Turkey), sworn by the provincial gover- nor and “apparat” of Kullania, forces a reassessment of the reasons behind the display of the tablets seemingly intended for the Eastern chieftains. The religious nature of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty by reason of the visual, textual and findspot aspects of the tablets, extensively analyzed by previous scholarship, should not obscure the fact that Esarhaddon may have taken advantage of those aspects, and earlier practices con- cerning the display of vassal-treaties, to hide his fears of treason from his intended tar- get audience: Assyrian officials of high-rank. Keywords: Esarhaddon – Dynastic Succession – Nabû Temple – display of treaties – Tablet of Destinies Resumen: La exposición del Tratado de Sucesión de Esarhaddon en Kalḫu como un medio de control político interno En el 672 a.C. Esarhaddon hizo jurar lealtad a los ciudadanos de Asiria hacia su here- dero escogido, Ashurbanipal, en el templo de Nabû en Kalḫu. Esto se conoce a través de tres cartas pertenecientes al archivo real de Niniveh. Este juramento y sus estipula- ciones relativas fueron escritas en tabletas inusualmente grandes y expuestas en la Sala Article received: December 6th 2016; approved: April 21th 2017. Antiguo Oriente, volumen 14, 2016, pp. 11–52 01 Barcina display_Antiguo Oriente 07/07/2017 11:43 a.m. Página 12 12 BARCINA ANTIGUO ORIENTE del Trono del Templo. Sin embargo, la identidad de aquellos que juraron lealtad a Ashurbanipal en las tabletas que preservan las líneas relevantes (señores de las ciudades de la periferia oriental del imperio) no concuerdan con la información de las cartas. Las tablas juramentales recientemente excavadas en el templo de Tell Ta’yinat (sudoeste de Turquía), juradas por el gobernador provincial y “apparat” de Kullania, fuerza a reevaluar las razones detrás de la exposición de las tabletas aparentemente destinadas a los jefes orientales. La naturaleza religiosa del Tratado Sucesorio de Esarhaddon a causa de los aspectos visuales, textuales y del lugar de hallazgo de las tabletas, ana- lizadas extensamente por anteriores académicos, no debe oscurecer el hecho de que Esarhaddon pudo haberse beneficiado de estos aspectos, y de las prácticas tempranas respecto a la exposición de tratados de vasallaje, para esconder sus miedos a la trai- ción de la audiencia a la que iba destinado el mensaje: oficiales asirios de alto rango. Palabras clave: Asarhadón – Sucesión dinástica – Templo de Nabû – exhibición de tratados – Tablilla de los Destinos INTRODUCTION The discovery in 2009 of a new version of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty (EST) in a small temple at Tell Ta’yinat,1 ancient Kunalia, the capital of a province in the Neo-Assyrian empire,2 has confirmed that all EST tablets share the same text,3 except for §1 concerning the oath- takers. Whereas the Ta’yinat manuscript was the treaty of Esarhaddon with the governor of Kullania, along with sixteen administrative and military categories,4 the identity of those who swore loyalty to Ashurbanipal in Ayyāru (II) 672 B.C. in seven of the tablets found at the Nabû Temple of Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu) are chieftains from diffe- 1 The first excavations at the site were conducted by the University of Chicago’s Syro-Hittite Expedition between 1935 and 1938. In 1999 the University of Toronto resumed field investi- gations within the framework of the Tayinat Archaeological Project. Building XVI was unearthed during the 2008 and 2009 seasons (cf. Harrison and Osborne 2012). J. Lauinger from Johns Hopkins University is responsible for the edition and publication of the epigraphic cuneiform material: Lauinger 2011; 2012; 2016. 2 KUR Kullania or Kulnia became the designation of Unqi/Pattina upon its integration into the Assyrian empire under Tiglath-pileser III. Cf. Parpola 1970: 213, and 206 for the different spellings of the capital. 3 Except for some linguistic and orthographic variations, errors and omissions; cf. Parpola and Watanabe 1988 (SAA 2): XXIX; Lauinger 2012: 90. 4 By contrast, composite SAA 2 6 reads: “with PN, city-ruler of GN, his sons, his grandsons, with all the [gentilic] (…).” Antiguo Oriente, volumen 14, 2016, pp. 11–52 01 Barcina display_Antiguo Oriente 07/07/2017 11:43 a.m. Página 13 ANTIGUO ORIENTE THE DISPLAY OF ESARHADDON’S SUCCESSION TREATY AT KALḪU 13 rent locations in the Zagros, the eastern periphery of Assyria.5 This pre- sented a conundrum already before Ta’yinat, one that past scholarship tried to explain from different perspectives that generally revolved around the idea of the mixed nature of EST as a vassal treaty and an ad hoc loyalty oath, and attempting to identify these city-lords with the available information.6 More recently, Steymans posited that Kalḫu was a convenient location for the Eastern oath-takers, since—given the amount of correspondence proving that the Nabû Temple acted as a center for the reception and redistribution of horses (SAA 13 82– 123)7—it was probably the place where these vassals were delivering their tribute from the Zagros and the Iranian Plateau.8 However, after Ta’yinat, the fact that only in this tablet there is perfect agreement between the location and the people entering the tre- aty becomes obvious. Thanks to the existence of SAA 10 5, 6, and 7, letters that chief scribe Issar-šumu-ereš addressed to the king discus- sing suitable dates in Nisannu (I) for scholars, temple personnel and citizens of main Assyrian cities to enter and conclude the treaty cere- monies in Kalḫu, we know unequivocally that Esarhaddon spared no effort in making his succession arrangements as “universal,” using Fales’ term,9 as possible. Yet, these citizens’ oaths were not preserved in oath-tablets for display a month later, following an introductory pat- tern that would have been similar to the Kunalia version. So why are several petty rulers from several locations in the Zagros, at a time when the empire is already more or less consolidated, used as oath-takers in these tablets conspicuously displayed in a temple of the old Assyrian capital? The information we have concerning these 5 SAA 2 6 is the composite version of this text, pieced together out of eight of the Nimrud exemplars, and taking the Assur small fragment known at the time of publication into account. Two additional fragments from Assur have recently been published by Frahm 2009: 135f, drawings in p. 255: VAT 12374 (ll 54–62) and VAT 9424 (ll 509–516). All Assur fragments come from unknown locations. 6 See Wiseman 1958: 9ff; Watanabe 1987: 3f; SAA 2: XXXf; Liverani 1995. 7 Perhaps to be connected to a possible role of Marduk as a horse trainer; cf. SAA 3 38, ll 14–15 (a cultic explanatory text). 8 Steymans 2006: 342ff. 9 Fales 2012: 138. Antiguo Oriente, volumen 14, 2016, pp. 11–52 01 Barcina display_Antiguo Oriente 07/07/2017 11:43 a.m. Página 14 14 BARCINA ANTIGUO ORIENTE city-lords from inscriptions and letters clearly shows that they were not “typical” vassals, that is, rulers of a newly defeated and subjugated polity.10 The fact that one of them was the city-lord of Zamua, capital of the province of Zamua (annexed to the empire by Shalmaneser III), instead of the governor11 and magnates of this province is also signifi- cant. Moreover, the deities invoked in the standard curse section of EST to represent the second party are at home in diverse Western loca- tions, not Ellipi, Media or Elam.12 Even considering Aramean penetra- tion in the East since at least the eighth century13 (the city-lord of Zamua himself seems to have been an Aramean),14 the lack of some eastern deities in the Kalḫu manuscripts is noticeable and should not be attributed to oversight. Indeed, the fact that Assyrians were more fami- liar with Western deities, and with the cultural world of Canaan, Syria and Anatolia, reveals their contempt of Eastern peoples, a contempt that encompassed mountain dwellers in general. On his work on the Assyrian perception of Zagros ruling elites as inferred from the language used in annalistic inscriptions, Lanfranchi concluded that Assyrians gradually realized the inferiority of the Eastern polities by comparison with the more substantial Western ones: 10 We learn from Esarhaddon’s inscriptions (RINAP 4 1, iv 32–45; 2 iv 1–20; 3 iv 3’–19’; 4 iii’ 12’–16’; 6 iii’ 25’–32’, 35 3–1) that the alliance forged with the chieftains of Partakka, Partukka, and Urukazabarna had been made at their request to defeat rival city-lords in exchange for horses and lapis lazuli, and the latter is the oath-taker in the most complete Kalḫu manuscript at our disposal. See Radner 2003a: 60 and SAA 16 146 and 147 concerning the lords of Sikris, Kār- Zitali, Ellipi and Nahšimarti (probably Elam).
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