From Small States to Universalism in the Pre-Islamic Near East

REVOLUTIONIZING REVOLUTIONIZING Mark Altaweel and Andrea Squitieri and Andrea Mark Altaweel From Small States to Universalism in the Pre-Islamic Near East This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modern- day Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire. The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/ seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries, led to new socio-political structures and institutions emerging in the Near East. The primary processes that enabled this emergence were large-scale and long-distance movements, or population migrations. These patterns of social developments are analysed under different aspects: settlement patterns, urban structure, material culture, trade, governance, language spread and religion, all pointing at population movement as the main catalyst for social change. This book’s argument Mark Altaweel is framed within a larger theoretical framework termed as ‘universalism’, a theory that explains WORLD A many of the social transformations that happened to societies in the Near East, starting from Andrea Squitieri the Neo-Assyrian period and continuing for centuries. Among other inﬂ uences, the effects of these transformations are today manifested in modern languages, concepts of government, universal religions and monetized and globalized economies. Mark Altaweel is a Reader in Near Eastern Archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology having held previous appointments and joint appointments at the University of Chicago, University of Alaska, and Argonne National Laboratory. Andrea Squitieri studied Archaeology of the Ancient Near East at the University of Turin and at UCL (PhD 2015). He has been a post-doc researcher since 2015 working in the Peshdar Plain Project, based at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, focusing on the study of the eastern border of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Front cover image: Photograph by Mike Peel, CC-BY-SA-4.0 Back cover image: REVOLUTIONIZING WORLD A Photograph by A.Davey, CC BY 2.0 Free open access versions available from Cover design: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press www.ironicitalics.com Revolutionizing a World Revolutionizing a World From Small States to Universalism in the Pre- Islamic Near East Mark Altaweel and Andrea Squitieri First published in 2018 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press Text © Authors, 2018 Images © Authors and copyright holders named in the captions, 2018 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Altaweel M. & Squitieri A. 2018. Revolutionizing a World: From Small States to Universalism in the Pre-Islamic Near East. London: UCL Press. DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781911576631 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/ ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 65– 5 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 64– 8 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 63– 1 (PDF) ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 66– 2 (epub) ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 67– 9 (mobi) ISBN: 978– 1– 911576– 68– 6 (html) DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/111. 9781911576631 Preface Many scholars and even some of the wider public recognize how the ancient Near East and Egypt contributed to modern societies. Whether it was through the sciences, literature, writing, arts, governing systems or even religion, the imprint is clear. However, some periods in the ancient Near East and Egypt look more alien to us than others. In particular, many features of the third and second millennia BCE, including ethnic groups, religions, governments, languages, and even the media for eco- nomic exchange, appear very strange to us. In the first millennium BCE, circumstances began to change and we begin to see facets, such as languages, population groups, government and social institutions, and ideas, that we find more familiar. A simple argument is that over time things change, and therefore cultures closer to today should be more familiar to us. But could there be a process that demonstrates why societies shifted to create some of the cultural traits we are more familiar with? As these changes were occurring, another clear pattern emerged, in that large states had become common. Are these two phenomena related? We think that there is a link, and we propose a process that we term universalism to explain such changes. We are also aware that such terms are often criticized, and perhaps too many terms are used to describe different cultural developments. Nevertheless, the utility of this term is that it helps to explain a process of commonalities that forms in the first millennium BCE. The evidence of such wider common attributes is clear. Hellenism is one such development: in effect, it is a merger of different cultural trends that included Greek and Near Eastern styles and cultural traits. Like Hellenism, universalism is an older term, but we provide a different way of understanding it: we look at the core attributes and qualities that made common traits emerge. Thus, universalism serves to decode a process that explains elements we see as combined, that is, the formation of new social and cultural phenomena, the creation and continuity of large states, and the fundamental process that enabled such change, which we see as population movement. v There are often clear and stark divides, in teaching about the ancient Near East, between the period before Alexander’s conquest of the Near East and that which followed it. Magically, it often seems, Alexander’s invasion caused some seismic change in the ancient Near East that brought about a process whereby the region became so often dominated by foreign entities that the old religions and customs began to wither away. Before the events of 334 BCE and Alexander’s great invasion – that is, in the late Neo- Assyrian and later periods – what is telling is that empires had already become very large. If we look at what should have happened after the fall of the Neo- Assyrian Empire, between 612 and 605 BCE, the Near East should have reverted to a pattern of small states or even city-states, as it so often did in the Bronze Age. While some areas did indeed fragment, in general the Neo-Babylonians and the Medes created their own large political entities on the removal of the Neo- Assyrians. Not only did the region not fragment politically, but also states became even larger and, even after their scale reached a peak in the Achaemenid period or even in that of Alexander’s empire, for millennia empires continued to be large, often spanning large parts of Eurasia. There has been little discussion of the topic of the continuity of large- scale empires in a single region. The process that enables large states and empires to become the political norm is not well understood in the context of preceding periods, which often showed a reversion to small, fragmented states after the collapse of major dynasties. Our inquisitiveness about large states becoming the norm, along with our noticing major institutional and cultural changes such as those indicated above, helped us start the project of writing this book. At first, it did not lead to many ideas. One key factor, though, stood out as our investigation unfolded, which was settlement patterns: data provided information on the size and distribution of archaeological sites across a region. The size and distribution of settlements across periods from the Neo- Assyrian and into later periods showed structurally similar patterns. Yes, survey data often vary and results are not always certain, given the quality of the data captured. But these weaknesses do not hide some clear facts. Some regions, such as Southern Mesopotamia, developed extremely large cities, far larger than in previous periods. Other regions, such as Northern Mesopotamia, showed a contrast: sites were much smaller, and the larger urban patterns of the Bronze Age seemed to largely disappear. Rather than comparing settlements with some abso- lute size (e.g., 100, 200, 300 hectares), we compared the sites with each other, which made the patterns clearer. This pattern of urban change did not occur simultaneously throughout the Near East. Initially, we found vi PREFACE that major settlement pattern shifts occurred in Mesopotamia at the end of the Iron Age. However, as other regions were assessed, patterns com- parable to those found in Mesopotamia began to emerge, even if they occurred in later periods. What caused this change became an important question in our minds, and this is where the story of this book began. As settlement patterns shifted so too did other social patterns evident in historical and archaeological records. This then became our main area of exploration, and population movement emerged as the common theme in the data we had examined.

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