Our theatre is the central zone of the Ancient Near East: North Syria, with its adjoining zones east of the Euphrates, south to-wards Damascus, and north into SE Anatolia. Our period is broadly 1200–700 bc, following on the collapse of the two great rival Hittite and Egyptian empires, in the first part of the 12th century bc. Between c. 1220 and c. 1170 bc, the political map of the western parts of the Ancient Near East changed
rad-ically. These two empires had dominated the Levant and SE Anatolia, but by 1180/70 bc the central Hittite power had col-lapsed, leaving only its devolved provincial powers in Tarhun-tassa (SE Anatolia), and in Carchemish (N Syria), while the Egyptian power under Ramesses iii first shrank to the coast-lands of Phoenicia and Canaan (plus Jezreel), then by c. 1140 bcthe Egyptians withdrew from Canaan completely. But before those changes, we return briefly to the late 13th century bc. The Egyptians, of course, spoke and wrote Egyptian (an Afro-Semitic language). But the Hittites spoke and (in cuneiform, wrote) in three related dialects of Anatolian Indo-European: Nesite (Hittite proper), Luwian, and the obscurer Palaic. Alongside this, the totally unrelated, agglutinative Hurrian language featured in re-ligious usage. Contacts with Egypt stimulated the Hittite em-perors or ‘Great Kings’ to carve rock-reliefs, and even an entire open-air temple at Yazilikaya, with the texts to the figures ex-ecuted in their own system of hieroglyphic script, in the Luwian dialect – hence the popular name ‘Hittite Hieroglyphs’ culturally, but in strict linguistic terms, ‘Hieroglyphic Luwian’. By 1940, a skeleton grammatical analysis and the Indo-European nature of Hieroglyphic Luwian had been established; but without con-trol of vocabulary, sound translations of texts of any length were practically impossible. The discovery in 1946 of the much later Hieroglyphic Luwian/Phoenician bilingual inscriptions at Kar-atepe enabled a full decipherment. This has by now reached a very advanced stage, making reliable translations possible, with only a residue of still-obscure vocabulary.
During the Late Bronze Age, rulers of top rank claimed and were accorded the title ‘Great King’, an equivalent of ‘emperor’
in Roman down to modern times. Kings ruled a recognised ter-ritory, while Great Kings ruled over their own territory and also over vassals. With the eclipse of the ruling Hittite monarchy in Central Anatolia c. 1180 bc, the title of ‘Great King’ was an-nexed by two of its former viceroyalties - by the rulers of Tarhun-tassa in south-east Anatolia (Taurus mountains area) and by the kings of Carchemish, former Hittite power-base in northern Syria.
These men kept their local realms intact, when almost all around them vanished into a melting-pot, in the extensive disturbances that marked the period c. 1200-1180/70 bc. While Tarhuntassa and Carchemish survived in the north, further south only the
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tenacious Phoenician seaports (such as Tyre, Byblos, etc.) and temporarily a reduced realm of Amurru survived effectively into the new Iron Age. Elsewhere, traditional Canaanites were ous-ted or hemmed in by Arameans (in the north), Philistines and other Sea-People groups (in the south-west, up the west coast to the north-west), and eastwards in the central Palestinian up-lands by the earliest tribal Israel of Merenptah’s stela (cf. Judg.), plus emergent polities over in Transjordan. Up north, the old city-states such as Ugarit, Qadesh, Nuhasse, Niy, and Alalakh were swept away. Instead, new polities arose in which Luwian and (eventually) Aramean people-groups dominated, often un-der entirely new names: Gurgum, Melid, Hamath, Patina (Unqi), Bit-Adini, etc. Over these, the kings of Carchemish re-imposed their former overlordship, to become Great Kings, while up in the Taurus, other newer local groups became vassals of the parallel Great Kings of Tarhuntassa. A new age had begun.
3 The Transitional Era of Western Mini-Empires, c. 1180-950
bcHere, we consider four such mini-empires in this 200+ year period, often wrongly termed a ‘Dark Age’.
(a)To the NW, we have No. 1, Tarhuntassa, later to be known as Tabal. Here, the kings of Tarhuntassa lorded it over their lesser neighbours (in Shinuhtu, Tyana, etc.) as vassals, and so could hold the title ‘Great Kings’, as in fact did their rulers Mursil, Hartapus, etc. (12thcent.), then after a 400-year gap in our dyn-astic data, so did Tuwatis and Wasu-sarruma (8th century). Dur-ing that very long gap in our documentation, in 837 and 836 bc,1 in his Years 22, 23, Shalmaneser iii referred to ‘24 kings of Tabal’, giving us just a brief glimpse of those Tabalian vassals.
No breakaway Arameans intervened, nor was there much external impact on Tabal from Mushki and/or Phrygia until late on, and it remained free of Assyrian interference until the mid-9th cen-tury, and of Assyrian conquest until the late 8th century bc. So, this ’mini-empire’ lasted the longest.
1D.D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria, vol. 1, Chicago 1926, 206,
§§579-580; A.K. Grayson, Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Peri-ods, vol. 3: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium bc, ii, (858-745 bc), Toronto 1996, 67.
(b) Second, we have the mini-empire of Carchemish, whence we have slightly more 12th/11th century data. Here, the surviv-ing Hittite dynasty quickly reasserted sovereignty over their old North-Syrian domains, up NW & N into SE Anatolia (border-ing on Tabal), and over the Euphrates east to Guzan, to the headwaters of the Habur. Around Carchemish, there arose thus a belt of subject-vassals, initially Luwian-ruled (‘Neo-Hittite’ in culture). So, justly, the Carchemishian rulers soon took the title
‘Great King’, as successors to their Central Hittite forebears. For 200 years, this polity continued. In about 1100, the inquisitive Tiglath-pileser i came west, and encountered ‘Great Hatti’ and its ruler Ini-Tesup (ii). This all lasted until c. 1000/920 bc, within which short space of time the whole thing broke up, suddenly shattering like a plate fallen to the floor. What happened? The answer was largely impact by the rising power of the Arameans, and the growing independence of local Neo-Hittite rulers. From c. 1000 bc, Melid, Gurgum and Hamath had their own dynasties that split off. Guzan became Aramean. Bit-Adini (older Mas-uwari) came under Aramean expansion, in the time of Assur-rabi iiof Assyria (as Shalmaneser iii tells us), almost certainly effected by the Hadadezer of the state Aram-Zobah whom we meet oppos-ing David and pressurisoppos-ing Hamath. Samal, Unqi and Kummuh then broke off by c. 920 at the latest. The mini-empire of Car-chemish was no more. The last-known Great King of CarCar-chemish was Ura-Tarhuns; his sons and successors - Huwa-sarruma and Suhis i – henceforth bore only the title of plain ‘King’. On the stela Carchemish A4b, we have the last Great King Ura-Tarhuns sending out his army to quell revolt; the text was engraved by two officials, one being Arnu-[xxx], son of the governor Suhis, this latter name being that of the main founder of the new line of plain Kings (not ‘Great Kings’) of Carchemish.
(c) Our third mini-empire is the Aramean one reported as ex-panding over the West-Euphrates fords c. 990 bc, in the time of Assur-rabi ii.2This is precisely the time of David’s foe Hadadezer of north-central Syrian Aram-Zobah, who had clearly gained rule over Damascus, had cowed Hamath, and thus gained his way to the Euphrates, enabling his kith and kin (one, Adin?) to set up
2Mentioned by Shalmaneser iii; see Luckenbill, op. cit., 1, 218, §603;
Grayson, op. cit., 18-19.
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rule in Bit-Adini, perhaps only briefly. The Israelite ruler David brought Hadadezer’s ephemeral power (20 years at most?) to a rapid end, and a liberated Hamath then allied itself with him (cf.
2 Sam. 8:3-19; 10:6-19. Note 8:3 and 10:16). Meantime, over in Bit-Adini, Adin was quickly supplanted by a Neo-Hittite dynasty (Hapatilas onwards), who used Hieroglyphic Luwian for their in-valuable series of inscriptions.
(d) And so, fourthly, we come to our last mini-empire in this unique series: that reported in the OT for David and Solomon.
David’s military expansion from c. 990 bc, lasting into Solomon’s reign (to c. 940 bc), perhaps some 50 years all told, presents us with a further ephemeral mini-empire, slightly longer-lasting than Hadadezer’s, but very much shorter-lived than the two north-ern examples. However, its political structure is basically the same as the others. Namely, a hard-core ‘homeland’, adjoined by conquered territories (which retained their individuality as vas-sals, under governors or subject-kings), and also by subject-allies.
This latter status was the status of Melid in the Carchemishian mini-empire; of Bit-Adini in the Aram-Zobah mini-empire; and of Hamath, Maachah, Geshur and in part Ammon, in David’s mini-empire. This contrasts sharply with the practice of the much later
‘maxi-empires’ – of Assyria, Neo-Babylonia, and Persia – wherein older units were increasingly broken up or re-combined into new regional units and districts, under governorates. Organisation-ally and morphologicOrganisation-ally, in no way can our four mini-empires (David’s included) be meaningfully compared with the massively vaster and differently-run conglomerates of Assyria, Babylon and Persia. Such fantasies must be abandoned once and for all, in the face of our contemporary, first-hand data. After 930 bc, the mini-empire phenomenon was gone forever; Aram-Damascus was en route to becoming a fifth mini-empire in the 9th century bc, but the brutal and persistent intervention of Assyria from the 850s bc onwards nipped that dream in the bud.3
3More fully on the mini-empires, see K.A. Kitchen, ‘The Controlling Role of External Evidence in Assessing the Historical Status of the Israelite United Monarchy’, in: V.P. Long et al. (eds), Windows into Old Testament History, Grand Rapids 2002, 111-30, with set of maps. The current archaeological dispute over which Iron Age Palestinian strata might belong to the 10th century bc is irrelevant to the existence of the Hebrew united monarchy, and bears only on what particular material culture it enjoyed then.