THE MELAMMU PROJECT http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/ “The Ideological and Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th and 7th Centuries BC” GIOVANNI B. LANFRANCHI Published in Melammu Symposia 1: Sanno Aro and R. M. Whiting (eds.), The Heirs of Assyria. Proceedings of the Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Tvärminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998 (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000), pp. 7-34. Publisher: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/ This article was downloaded from the website of the Melammu Project: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/ The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian culture throughout the ancient world. A central objective of the project is to create an electronic database collecting the relevant textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence, which is available on the website, alongside bibliographies of relevant themes. In addition, the project organizes symposia focusing on different aspects of cultural continuity and evolution in the ancient world. The Digital Library available at the website of the Melammu Project contains articles from the Melammu Symposia volumes, as well as related essays. All downloads at this website are freely available for personal, non-commercial use. Commercial use is strictly prohibited. For inquiries, please contact [email protected]. LANFRANCHI T HE IMPACT OF THE ASSYRIAN EXPANSION ON THE GREEK WORLD GIOVANNI B. L ANFRANCHI Padova The Ideological and Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th and 7th Centuries BC * his paper is devoted to the study of tact. However, the study of the relations the earliest known relations between between Assyria and Greece is extremely Tthe Neo-Assyrian empire and the important, if not crucial and essential, due Greek world, which took place, as attested to the fact that Assyria unified for the first by various sources, at the end of the 8th and time in history the whole Near East in a the very beginning of the 7th century BC . single, structured empire. Because of its This study is aimed at trying to delineate an strict internal organization and of the admittedly very preliminary sketch of the policies which were coherently established background to the relations between East by the governing elite for a long period, this and West which progressively tightened imperial structure reached a degree of abso- during the flourishing of Assyria and in the lute solidity which could transcend both centuries followin its final fall. It must be time and ethnic composition. As a matter of acknowledged, obviously, that the relations fact, the unification of the Near East lasted, between the Greek and the Near Eastern and the subject territory was progressively world during the first millennium BC are enlarged, even after the fall of the prime much older than those between Greeks and governing centre and the bloody defeat of Assyrians. The small southeastern Anato- the elite which had achieved the unification lian, Syrian, Phœnician, and Palestinian of the area and then governed it. states probably had older relations with The definitive consolidation of the Neo- Greece than Assyria did, and proved per- Assyrian empire took place during the latter haps more familiar to the Greek world half of the 8th century. This phenomenon formed of small polities. Thus, Assyria was certainly interfered with the change and de- not the first Near Eastern, “Oriental,” entity velopment of the Greek world and of Greek with which the Greeks entered into con- culture, which received a dramatic acceler- * This paper is a revised version of the lecture I gave at griechischer Identität: die Bedeutung der früharchai- the Tvärminne 1998 meeting. I have limited my analysis schen Zeit , Berlin 1996, pp. 59-115; Jasink 1990 = A.M. to the initial period of the relations between Assyria and Jasink, in P. Desideri - A.M. Jasink, Cilicia. Dall’età di Greece (until the reign of Sennacherib). Abbreviations: Kizzuwatna alla conquista macedone , Torino 1990; Luc- Bing 1969 = J. Bing, A History of Cilicia during the kenbill 1924 = D.D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennach- Assyrian Period , Ph.D. Diss. Indiana University 1969; erib (Oriental Institute Publications 2), Chicago 1924; Frahm 1997 = E. Frahm, Einleitung in die Sanherib-In- Matthäus 1993 = H. Matthäus, “Zur Rezeption orientali- schriften (Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 26), Horn scher Kunst-, Kultur- und Lebensformen in Griechen- 1997; Fuchs 1994 = A. Fuchs, Die Inschriften Sargons land,” in K. Raaflaub (Hrsg.), Anfänge politischen II. aus Khorsabad , Göttingen 1994; Haider 1996 = P.W. Denkens in der Antike. Die nahöstlichen Kulturen und die Haider, “Griechen im Vorderen Orient und in Ägypten Griechen (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kollo- bis ca. 590 v. Chr.,” in Ch. Ulf (Hrsg.), Wege zur Genese quien 24), München 1993, pp. 165-86. Sanna Aro and R.M. Whiting (eds.) MELAMMU S YMPOSIA I (Helsinki 2000) ISBN 951-45-9043-0 7 L ANFRANCHI T HE IMPACT OF THE ASSYRIAN EXPANSION ON THE GREEK WORLD ation just in this period, despite the appar- and essentially unproductive. As for Phry- ently great distance between the two areas. gia, it is true that it expanded in a wide area The transformations which resulted from of the Anatolian peninsula and competed Assyrian expansion in the Near East dra- with Assyria; however, its expansion was matically touched upon the Levantine limited in the southeast by independent coast, the area in which the Greeks had been states (and by the Neo-Assyrian empire and were in direct contact with the “Orien- itself): thus the Greeks certainly realized in tal” world in this period. Such changes im- a short time that it was nothing more than a mediately affected the Greek economy, be- strong regional power. cause Greek trade was to bear their conse- Relations between empires, and relations quences, whether positive or negative, as between empire and its periphery (which well as the commercial activity of the Le- progressively included Greece too) are the vantine states and cities. Thus, the appar- elements which influenced the Greek world ently distant Neo-Assyrian empire became in this period. As such, they must be thor- immediately an element internal to the po- oughly and carefully studied, in order to litical, social, economic and cultural trans- evaluate their contemporary impact and the formations in the Greek world. influence which they exerted in the follow- Even if the sources concerning this per- ing centuries once they were elaborated by, iod and this problematic area are extremely and absorbed into, Greek thought. This rare, it can be safely submitted that the paper will deal with the very beginnings of political thinking, the diplomatic activity, the relations between Assyria and Greece, and the cultural attitude of the Greeks had which took place in the period in which to be subject to a rather sudden reexamina- Assyria took control of the coastal regions tion, in order to fit, and to react to, the new of northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia situation in the East and the changes which under the kings Tiglath-pileser III (743-725 it was introducing in their homeland. On BC), Sargon (721-705) and Sennacherib another level, the spreading and consolida- (705-689). What will be studied here is thus tion of the Neo-Assyrian empire were cer- the first impact of the prevailing imperial tainly the first elements of the political and structure upon the Greek world. However, cultural attitude towards the problem of the the Assyrian empire continued to exert its “empire,” and of the “Eastern empire,” to influence upon the Greek world during the crystallize in the Greek historical con- following decades, until the fall of Nineveh sciousness. Other imperial structures, like in 612 BC . A detailed study of this period is Urar #u and Phrygia, certainly had some re- equally necessary, in order to evaluate the lations with the Greek world before Assyr- effects of the definitive consolidation of the ia. However, as regards Urar #u, any contact Near Eastern imperial unification, and of was mediated by interposed independent the further expansion of its influence in the states; the involving experience of direct direction of Anatolia and of the Greek contact was lacking, and certainly the ob- world. vious reactions in Greece were rather soft 8 LANFRANCHI T HE IMPACT OF THE ASSYRIAN EXPANSION ON THE GREEK WORLD Greek-Near Eastern Relations from the 10th to the 8th Century BC : The Archaeological Data A picture of the relations between the Greek Greek Pottery and Settling in the world and the Near East can be drawn on Near East the basis of recent comprehensive studies of the spread of Near Eastern artefacts in the The second part of the problem is repre- Greek world and of the diffusion of Greek sented by the penetration of Greek pottery pottery in the Levant 1 during the first four in the Near East, which, as far as it is at- centuries of the first millennium BC . tested by excavations, means essentially the coastal area. The first point to be stressed is that the proportion of Greek pottery among Near Eastern Artefacts in the Near Eastern pottery progressively in- Greek World creases to significant numbers only in the Syro-Phœnician coastal centres north of Near Eastern imports in the Greek world Byblos and in the maritime centres of south- (Asia Minor, the Ægean Sea, Crete, and eastern Anatolia (an area roughly corre- mainland Greece) appear in the 10th cen- sponding to classical Cilicia). South of tury BC , and progressively increase during Byblos, only a few scattered Greek findings the 9th, the 8th and the 7th centuries. The are attested throughout the whole period, area of provenance is very wide: it includes both in the coastal and in the inland cen- southeastern Anatolia, North Syria, Cyprus, tres.