̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cuneiform

A new chapter opens in the study of the Assyrian empire

hps25 — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:27:55 +0000

Later this week Dr John MacGinnis, a specialist in Assyrian civilisation at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, will fly to the city of Erbil in north east Iraq. En route he will stop off in Turkey where for more than a decade he has been involved in the excavation at the Neo-Assyrian site of Ziyaret Tepe, the ancient garrison town of Tushan.

̽��ֱ��capital city of today’s Kurdish Autonomous Region, Erbil is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and has retained its name (variously as Urbil, Arbil and Irbil) for more than 4,000 years. At its centre is a mound or tell that dates back more than 7,000 years. Such mounds, made by the continuous building and rebuilding of mud brick structures, are characteristic of the sites of Assyrian and other ancient near eastern cities.

In Erbil Dr MacGinnis will launch his latest book Erbil in the Cuneiform Sources, a work documenting the history of this extraordinary city from the first references dating to the third millennium BC up until the time of Alexander the Great. He will also take part in meetings with archaeologists working for the Kurdish Regional Government which is investing substantial effort in re-establishing the cultural and social identity of a region that was for many years closed to outsiders under the Saddam regime and subsequent political upheavals.

“There is a huge amount to be learnt about the Assyrian civilisation from investigation of the thousands of Assyrian sites in north east Iraq, which was the hub of the empire. These sites reflect every aspect of the civilisation – from royal palaces to centres for worship, from farming settlements to fortifications. Some are well known to local people, others have yet to be identified,” says Dr MacGinnis.

̽��ֱ��opening up of the Kurdish Autonomous Region – a region roughly half the size of Wales that stretches from the River Tigris to the Zagros Mountains – to archaeological enquiry was one of the key themes to emerge from a conference held at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� last December. It was the first international conference ever to focus on the provincial archaeology of the Assyrian empire.

̽��ֱ��emergence of the Kurdish Autonomous Region brings with it the possibility of the discovery of forgotten kingdoms and lost languages. “I hesitate to mention Indiana Jones – but the excitement that accompanies the chance to explore the archaeology of the area is tremendous,” says Dr MacGinnis.

“In some cases, it’s a question of looking at sites that we know exist and carrying out surveys and other fieldwork. In other cases it’s a question of looking for sites mentioned in cuneiform texts and seeing if we can locate them on the ground. Sometimes, as with Erbil, the ancient name may be preserved in the modern name. In still other cases, it’s a matter of discovering entirely new sites which have never been explored before.”

̽��ֱ��Assyrian empire rivals those of the Romans, Egyptians and Babylonians in terms of its extent, ambition and organisation. Archaeologists have been working on the history of this great civilisation ever since the scholar and traveller Claudius Rich, Resident of the East India Company in Baghdad, measured the towering mud brick walls of Nineveh in 1820, thus laying the foundations for the exploration of Assyria.

Cambridge has a distinguished history in the discipline with some of the most famous names in the field coming from the university. They include CHW Johns, who from 1895 held the ̽��ֱ��’s first post in Assyriology and went on to become Master of St Catharine’s College, and Professor David Oates, who worked on some of the greatest excavations of the 1950s and 1960s.

̽��ֱ��current Eric Yarrow Professor of Assyriology, Professor Nicholas Postgate has worked extensively on the decipherment of Assyrian cuneiform texts as well as directing some of the leading field projects of the past few decades. Dr Augusta MacMahon, the ̽��ֱ��’s Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Archaeology, is another key scholar in this tradition, while Dr Martin Worthington is revolutionising the study of Mesopotamian literature by applying principals of textual criticism of the sort which have been applied to classical manuscripts for generations but hardly applied to cuneiform texts at all.

As a centre for scholarship, Cambridge made an excellent base for the first ever international conference to focus on the provincial archaeology of the Assyrian empire. ̽��ֱ��meeting brought together researchers from Europe, the Middle East and North America to share their knowledge of a wide range of fields. “Feedback suggests that the conference came at exactly the right time in fostering renewed interest in this aspect of archaeology,” said Dr MacGinnis.

“We were especially honoured to have the participation of Dr Ali Jaboori from the ̽��ֱ�� of Mosul who is directing field work at Nineveh and who was able to tell us about the resumption of excavation at Kuyunjik, the great palace mound of this imperial metropolis.”

̽��ֱ��Assyrian empire expanded by swallowing up smaller kingdoms and installing provincial rulers. At its peak from the 9th to 7th centuries BC, the empire encompassed a huge swathe of territories. It was an empire characterised by a strict military hierarchy, with the tiers descending from the king at the top down to foot soldiers at the bottom. Its dominance was based on a mastery of metal weaponry, and its authority was feared. As the empire expanded, so did its needs for raw materials such as people, horses, wood and grain.

How these resources were controlled and allocated was recorded by the Assyrians in inscriptions written in cuneiform script incised into clay tablets. Extensive libraries of these tablets – which also record many other aspects of life – were found both at Nineveh and also at other sites scattered across the empire. Many are now in the British Museum. Deciphered by scholars they provide an extraordinarily detailed account of the organisation of the Assyrian empire.

Archaeological investigations have unsurprisingly focused on some of the great cities of the Assyrian empire, among them Nineveh and Nimrud, both of which were capitals at different times and which have yielded huge amounts of information. Provincial settlements are also interesting for their diversity and, in many respects, tell a different story, each one reflecting regional differences as Assyrian rulers embraced aspects of local culture – such as religious beliefs. A good example here is the discovery that in the northwestern part of the empire there was a tradition of ‘cremation burials’, a practice not found in the Assyrian heartland.

Dr MacGinnis is best known for his work as a field director at Ziyaret Tepe (site of the provincial Assyrian city of Tushan) on the northernmost border of Assyria (an area that is part of modern day Turkey). Some 12 years of survey and excavation at Tepe have revealed the layout of this provincial capital with its palace, administrative centre, streets and outer walls.

A development highlighted by the conference is the growing use of ‘overhead’ imagery (satellite and aerial photographs) in the detection and mapping of the region’s archaeological remains. Such imagery can both improve our understanding of a site and lead to the discovery of previously unknown sites – and not just settlement sites but other features such as road networks, river beds and irrigation systems. Such material can be irreplaceable as the imagery from earlier decades may preserve evidence which no longer exists on the ground.

A tablet found at the site in 2009, and deciphered by Dr MacGinnis, proves to be a list of women whose names appear to indicate the existence of a previously unknown language; this is likely to be either Shubrian, the indigenous language of the people who lived in the area of Tushan prior to the Assyrian arrival, or perhaps a language spoken by deportees taken from the Zagros mountains which now form the border between Iraq and Iran.

Dr MacGinnis says: “Our discovery of this latest tablet at Ziyaret Tepe was thrilling as it suggests that there is so much more to be learnt – there will be exciting discoveries for generations to come. ̽��ֱ��conference held at Cambridge last month represented a real step forward, bringing together scholars from across the region – everyone made new friends and contacts. It came at the perfect time, pooling the knowledge and understanding won over past decades in order to feed into and inform this resurgence of research in Iraq.”

On 15 February Dr MacGinnis will be giving a public talk on ‘Ziyaret Tepe, exploration of a lost capital of the Assyrian Empire’ at the Ancient India and Iran Trust, Brooklands House, 23 Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge, CB2 8BU. ̽��ֱ��lecture starts at 5.15pm and is open to all. On 19 February he will be giving a lecture to the Anglo-Turkish Society at the Unus Emre Institute, 10 Maple Street, London W1T 5HA, at 6.30pm. In early March Dr MacGinnis will be in America, speaking at the Cotsen Institute in Los Angeles on 1 March, the ̽��ֱ�� of California at Berkeley on 4 March, and addressing alumni at the gathering of Cambridge in America in New York on 9 March.

̽��ֱ��first ever conference to focus on the provincial archaeology of the Assyrian empire took place at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� last month. A key theme was the recent opening up of the Kurdish Autonomous Region – once at the hub of the empire – to archaeological enquiry.

There is a huge amount to be learnt about the Assyrian civilisation from investigation of the thousands of Assyrian sites in north east Iraq, which was the hub of the empire.

Dr John MacGinnis, Research Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Dr John MacGinnis

Panel of glazed bricks from the capital city of Assur, showing the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser (1114-1076 BC)

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Archaeologists discover lost language

bjb42 — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:00:08 +0000

Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq.

In keeping with a policy widely practised across the Assyrian Empire, these people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in what is now south-east Turkey, where they would have been set to work building the new frontier city and farming its hinterland.

̽��ֱ��evidence for the language they spoke comes from a single clay tablet, which was preserved after it was baked in a fire that destroyed the palace in Tušhan at some point around the end of the 8^th century BCE. Inscribed with cuneiform characters, the tablet is essentially a list of the names of women who were attached to the palace and the local Assyrian administration.

Writing in the new issue of the Journal Of Near Eastern Studies, Dr John MacGinnis, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, explains how the nature of these names has piqued the interest of researchers.

“Altogether around 60 names are preserved,” MacGinnis said. “One or two are actually Assyrian and a few more may belong to other known languages of the period, such as Luwian or Hurrian, but the great majority belong to a previously unidentified language.”

“If the theory that the speakers of this language came from western Iran is correct, then there is the potential here to complete the picture of the world’s first multi-ethnic empire. We know from existing texts that the Assyrians did conquer people from that region. Now we know that there is another language, perhaps from the same area, and maybe more evidence of its existence waiting to be discovered.”

Ziyaret Tepe is on the River Tigris in south east Turkey, and has been the subject of extensive archaeological excavations since 1997. Recent work has revealed evidence that it was probably once the site of the Assyrian frontier city of Tušhan. In particular, it is thought that the remains of a monumental building excavated on the site are those of the governor’s palace, built by the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (883 – 859 BCE).

̽��ֱ��tablet was found in what may have been the palace’s throne room by Dr Dirk Wicke of the ̽��ֱ�� of Mainz, working as part of a team led by Professor Timothy Matney of the ̽��ֱ�� Akron, Ohio. When a conflagration destroyed the palace, perhaps around the year 700 BCE, the tablet was baked and much of its contents on the obverse side preserved.

MacGinnis was handed the task of deciphering the tablet and has identified a total of 144 names, of which 59 can still be made out. His analysis systematically rules out not only common languages from within the Assyrian Empire, but also other languages of the time – including Egyptian, Elamite, Urartian or West Semitic. Even at its most generous, his assessment suggests that only 15 of the legible names belong to a language previously known to historians.

̽��ֱ��report also posits several theories about where this mysterious language may have come from. One notion is that it may be Shubrian – the indigenous language spoken in the Tušhan area before the Assyrians arrived. As far as historians know, Shubrian was never written down. In addition, it is believed to have been a dialect of Hurrian, which is known and does not appear to bear any resemblance to most of the names on the tablet.

Another theory is that it was the language spoken by the Mushki – a people who were migrating to Eastern Anatolia at around the time the tablet was made. This idea seems less plausible, however, as to appear on the list of the Assyrian administration, these people would either have infiltrated the Empire or been captured, and historians have evidence for neither.

More convincing is the theory that the language in question may have been spoken by a people from somewhere else in the Assyrian Empire who were forcibly moved by the administration.

This was standard practice for successive Assyrian Kings, particularly after the Empire began to expand during the 9^th century. “It was an approach which helped them to consolidate power by breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas,” MacGinnis said. “If people were deported to a new location, they were entirely dependent on the Assyrian administration for their well-being.”

Although historians already know that the Zagros Mountains were in a region invaded and annexed by the Assyrians, it remains, to date, the one area under Assyrian occupation for which no known language exists. That makes it tempting to link the text on the tablet to the same region. An Assyrian King, Esarhaddon, even referred to an unidentified language, Mekhranian, which supposedly hailed from the Zagros, but in practice the area was probably a patchwork of chiefdoms and more than one dialect may have been in use.

“If correct this suggests that Iran was home to previously unknown languages,” MacGinnis said. “ ̽��ֱ��immediate impression is that the names on this tablet were those of women who belonged to an isolated community. It may be, however, that there were others whom we still have to find out about.”

̽��ֱ��tablet is currently being stored in Diyarbakir, Turkey, where it is hoped that it will eventually go on public display. Dr MacGinnis’ report on its decipherment is published in the April issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey.

If the theory that the speakers of this language came from western Iran is correct, then there is the potential here to complete the picture of the world’s first multi-ethnic empire.

John MacGinnis

Detail from the tablet found at Ziyaret Tepe. Inscribed with Cuneiform characters, the tablet consists of a list of women's names, many of which appear to be from a previously unknown language.

In brief...

Archaeologists have been working at Ziyaret Tepe since 1997 and the site, in western Turkey, is widely thought to be the original site of the Assyrian frontier city of Tušhan. Zirayet Tepe, literally “pilgrimage mound”, consists of a central mound about 30 metres high, and a surrounding lower town of about 30 hectares.
̽��ֱ��tablet studied by John MacGinnis was found in what may have been the governor’s throne room in the remains of the palace on the site. It was written in Neo-Assyrian script (Cuneiform), and lists women attached to the palace. There are about 60 names and most belong to an unidentified language.
̽��ֱ��most plausible explanation is that this language is from Western Iran. We already know that the Assyrians deported people from the Zagros Mountains area of modern-day Iran, but we don't know anything about the language that they spoke. It has also been speculated that a language referred to by the Assyrian King, Esarhaddon, called Mehkranian, may be what we are seeing here.
Deportation was a common practice in the Assyrian Empire. It was an approach which helped the Assyrians to consolidate power, by breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas. ̽��ֱ��deportees were set to work building cities or labouring in the agricultural hinterland of these new settlements.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

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