The Fabric of Cities - Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome 2014

The Fabric of Cities

Culture and History of the Ancient Near East Founding Editor

M.H.E. Weippert Editor-in-Chief

Thomas Schneider

VOLUME 68

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/chan

The Fabric of Cities Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome Edited by

Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert

Leiden • boston 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Fabric of cities : aspects of urbanism, urban topography and society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome / edited by Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert.   pages cm. — (Culture and history of the ancient Near East ; volume 68)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-26233-1 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26234-8 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Cities and towns—Middle East—History. 2. Urbanization—Middle East—History. 3. Cities and towns—Rome—History. 4. Urbanization—Rome—History. 5. Civilization, Classical. I. May, Natalie N. (Natalie Naomi) II. Steinert, Ulrike.  HT147.M53F33 2013  307.760956—dc23 2013031399

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1566-2055 ISBN 978-90-04-26233-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26234-8 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements .........................................................................................

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Introduction: Urban Topography as a Reflection of Society? ............ Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert

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The Cost of Cosmogony: Ethical Reflections on Resource Extraction, Monumental Architecture and Urbanism in the Sumerian Literary Tradition ....................................................... J. Cale Johnson Gates and Their Functions in Mesopotamia and Ancient Israel ...... Natalie N. May

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City Streets: Reflections on Urban Society in the Cuneiform Sources of the Second and First Millennium bce ............................ 123 Ulrike Steinert The Babylonian Cities: Investigating Urban Morphology Using Texts and Archaeology .............................................................................. 171 Heather D. Baker From bābānu to bētānu, Looking for Spaces in Late Assyrian Palaces ............................................................................................................ 189 David Kertai „Ich bin die Grenze der Agora.“ Zum kognitiven Stadtbild der Athener in klassischer Zeit ...................................................................... 203 Jan Stenger Religiöse Topographie Roms: Der Aventin Innerhalb der Stadt und ausserhalb des Pomeriums ...................... 229 Darja Šterbenc Erker

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Index .................................................................................................................... Keywords ....................................................................................................... Personal and Divine Names .................................................................... Geographical and Place Names .............................................................. Textual Sources ........................................................................................... Words and Terms in Ancient Languages ............................................

247 247 251 253 255 258

Acknowledgements This book contains contributions of an interdisciplinary colloquium of the TOPOI project, which was held at the Freie Universität Berlin in June 2009. The topic of this conference revolved around the question of the co-relation between the political systems of ancient states, the social organisation and the topographical structure of their cities and the ways of influence of political changes on it. In this colloquium we were looking for a dialogue between philology, history and archaeology. We would like to thank TOPOI for the opportunity to hold the colloquium, and the volume contributors for their cooperation. We are also grateful to Heather D. Baker and Markham J. Geller for advice and critique on earlier versions of the Introduction. Moreover, we wish to express our gratitude to the editors of Culture and History of the Ancient Near East for giving us the opportunity to publish the colloquium proceedings in the series, and to Katelyn Chin and Karen Cullen from Brill for their devoted work and cooperation during the preparation of the manuscript for print.

Berlin, August 2013

Introduction: Urban Topography as a Reflection of Society? Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert This book presents a collection of articles which address interconnections between aspects of the topographical structure of ancient cities and the social-political organisation of ancient cities and states, as well as cultural perceptions of urban spaces. The introductory chapter sets a theoretical framework for the volume by presenting an overview of past scholarship on urban topography as an expression of social structures, focusing on key disciplines involved in this research in the last decades. Although the approach to the topographical organisation of a city as a mirror of its social organisation has been very popular in disciplines such as archaeo­ logy (e.g. Herzog 1997, 13; Heinz 1997) and social geography (see e.g. the work of L. Wirth (1938) and Soja (2000), its application can still lead to new insights in many fields of research, as this volume intends to show. At the same time, it has to be emphasised that the relation between (urban) space and society works in two directions, as a kind of dialectic process: urban space reflects or expresses social relations and can influence people’s behaviour, but on the other hand, urban space is formed and changed by social agents, and the social meanings and conceptions of the environment are generated through people’s social interactions and practices in it (see e.g. Carmona et al. 2010, 133). The contributions in this volume present and compare semantic, pictorial, and archaeological information spanning over various geographical areas and chronological periods of the ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity, the latter exemplified by articles on Athens and Rome ( Jan Stenger and Darja Šterbenc Erker). The research in this book is based on a broad interdisciplinary approach encompassing a variety of sources and societies. The volume embraces archaeological, iconographic and written materials, starting with third millennium Sumer, Akkadian sources of the entire Mesopotamian tradition, evidence from the Syro-Hittite city-states, ancient Israel, Greece and Rome. Many of its contributions explore fields which have not been extensively investigated, and which open up new horizons in the study of urban space. Previously explored topics, such as city gates of the ancient Near East and the Pomerium, are addressed from

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a new perspective. Each paper in this book approaches urbanism from a different angle and treats different aspects of early cities. Special attention is given to characteristic urban features of social and organisational importance: city gates, streets and open public spaces, citadels, and city quarters. Studies in this volume treat the various functions of urban public spaces (Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert). Another topic discussed is the relationship between public versus private spaces in palaces (David Kertai). Heather D. Baker investigates the impact of private ownership on the evolution of urban neighbourhoods in first millennium Babylonia. The research presented here refers to manifold topics such as the connections between urbanism and violence ( J. Cale Johnson); functions of marginal spaces in ancient Near Eastern cities (May and Steinert) and in ancient Rome (Šterbenc Erker), and the reflection of urban topography in the language terminology applied to it. It analyses the reference system used to structure the communicative spaces of the cities in the written sources (Stenger) and the language of spatial orientation related to domains of urban society such as administration, social structure, and religious ceremonies. Literature dedicated to the study of the ancient city is now vast. Since Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Max Weber and Gordon Childe much effort has been undertaken to investigate this subject, and many interdisciplinary publications have come to light. Nonetheless, the main target of most of this research has been the emergence of cities, and much of it is based on the analysis of the archaeological record supplemented by anthropological approaches rather than written sources. The purpose of the present volume is to contribute to the study of urbanism through a cross-cultural investigation of the social aspects of the city structure of the ancient Near East and Classical world, based primarily on the written evidence. Archaeological excavations reveal settlement plans and thus supply the same kinds of evidence, though varying geographically and chronologically. By contrast, the kinds of preserved written sources often differ across cultures and thus do not present a uniform spectrum of evidence and information for research, a factor that partially accounts for the variety of topics pursued in the contributions to this volume. The present study aims at exploring questions such as: – Are there discernible correlations between urban topography and the social organisation of ancient cities? – In which ways does the topography of the urban environment reflect different ways of socio-political organisation and historical processes?



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– Can the influence of private individuals and marginal ethnic groups be identified in the city layout? How do they influence its development? – How do ancient sources reflect on urbanism? – How are mental images and socio-cultural views of urban spaces expressed cross-culturally in the written sources or through architecture? – What are the limitations of the available textual or archaeological sources for answering these questions? Although the introductory chapter forms primarily a resumé of previous research, in which archaeology and anthropological approaches are overrepresented, this overview is important for setting out a comprehensive background for the reader and at the same time offering a contrast to the contributions in this volume, by outlining the achievements but also the limits of research which predominantly deals with archaeological information alone. The Introduction also provides cross-cultural comparisons on the matters treated by the contributors. 1. Defining a City Dealing with the ancient city one must never forget the differences resulting from diachronic development and geographical variability. Early research into Mesopotamian cities was engaged mostly with urbanisation and thus turned to investigating Sumerian city-states (e.g. Oppenheim 1969; Adams 1966; Algaze 2008). In the last decades, Elizabeth Stone (1991, 1995, 2005, 2008) pointed out the main features of the Sumerian, as well as the later northern and southern Mesopotamian cities, which can be related to the mythological concept of city life as a component of civilisation bestowed by the gods. Starting with Fustel de Coulanges (1980, 126ff.), exploration of early urbanisation raised the question of the emergence of cities. Indeed, classical sources (Šterbenc Erker, this volume, and e.g. Troy, Thebes, Athens)1 often supply city foundation legends. Typically, Near Eastern sources lack such legends. Instead, our sources2 provide information about the construction

1 DNP s.v. Troja, Theben, Athen. 2 Assyrian royal inscriptions and the Bible.

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and foundation of cities, especially Assyrian royal residences (Kar-TukultiNinurta, Kalhu, Dur-Sharruken, Nineveh, but also Samaria).3 In antiquity, a correct foundation procedure was an important guarantee of the city’s prosperity. Darja Šterbenc Erker shows how in Rome the negative status of the Aventine hill in the foundation legends is connected with the marginal position of this area as a home to foreign cults in the religious topography of the city. In Mesopotamia all the cities known to have been deliberately founded are either Assyrian capitals, or the outposts of the Assyrian expansion. Nothing is known of the last ones except the very fact of their foundation. As for the new Assyrian capitals, the main guarantee of a new capitals’ prosperity was a proper inauguration ritual (e.g. Fuchs 1994, 73; Bull inscription lines 97–100). Weber (1958), following Aristotle (Aristot. pol. 2, 2, 3, and esp. 3, 1, 12)4 denied that ancient Near Eastern cities were cities. For Aristotle the city meant primarily the political and social structure of the Greek polis, which ancient Near Eastern cities naturally lacked. Modern research (infra) departed from Weber’s perception of the “Oriental” cities. Nevertheless, the great diversity in attitudes to the cities of the Classical world and those of the Near East in modern scholarship did not disappear, since unlike the Greek polis “Oriental” cities were not communities of citizens.5 But do the city plans of Classical and Near Eastern cities indeed mirror the differences in their political organisation? The layouts of ancient Near Eastern cities as a reflection of social organisation were scrutinized by Marlies Heinz (1997), but her important study is exclusively based on the archaeological record. The present volume is an attempt to investigate the topography of ancient cities as a mirror of society drawing primarily on the written sources. Early research into ancient cities put very much effort into defining what the city is (e.g. Childe 1950; cf. Herzog 1997). But as has been pointed out by Childe himself, “The city is a phenomenon which is notoriously

3 For the Assyrian capitals these are contemporary royal inscriptions (for Kar-TukultiNinurta see Grayson 1987, 278, A.0.78.25, lines 25–30; for Kalhu/Calah—Grayson 1991, 288, A.0.101.30—the so-called Banquet Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II; for Nineveh—Luckenbill 1924, 94ff., The Palace without a Rival etc.; for Dur-Sharruken—Fuchs 1994, 37–44 Zyl., lines 33–77 etc.). 4 See Liverani (1997: 86, 91–93) for an overview of the research stream that followed these views. 5 For the discussion of collective governance in Mesopotamia see Liverani 1997, 91–93 and van de Mieroop 1997: 120–139; cf. most recently Fleming 2004, 170ff. concerning the evidence of the Mari texts.



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difficult to define” (Childe 1950, 12), and differing solutions and criteria have been suggested in different fields.6 Comparative approaches include Childe (1950) and Lewis Mumford (1961). Childe set up a list of features including considerable size, high population density, the production of agricultural surpluses, the existence of monumental or public buildings, full-time craft specialisation, systems of counting and record-keeping, writing systems, officials, priests, and foreign trade.7 Cross-cultural research of the last decades has led scholars to question the universality of many of Childe’s criteria for identifying a city.8 Although factors such as site size and population density have often been used as defining criteria for cities in archaeology, history and the social sciences (e.g. L. Wirth 1938, 8; Sjoberg 1960, 83; Kostoff 1991, 37; Owen / Preston 2009, 3), other approaches note the high range of variation in the size of urban settlements and emphasise instead the concept of centrality: in these approaches the term “urban” is reserved for central settlements which perform special (political, economic, social) functions in relation to a hinterland (e.g. Trigger 1972; Nóvak 1999; Hansen 2008) or as “population centres offering specialized services to a wider society” (Renfrew 2008, 31).9 Similarly, Paul Knox (1995, 8f.) defines the social role of cities as centres of authority, as places which generate discourses and collective beliefs that offer settings for the gathering of high-level information and for establishing and monitoring implicit contracts. Thus, crucial criteria for defining a city include internal diversity, public institutions and socio-economic differentiation (Marcus / Sabloff 2008, 12ff.).10 6 For instance in sociological approaches, cities are seen as places providing meaning to their inhabitants, expressed in the concept of “placeness”, i.e. as places with which people connect a sense of belonging (to a community), home, shared identity (see e.g. Orum / Chen 2003). 7 Similar features were discussed by Mumford (1961) and include the division between rich and poor, the institution of property, and a social make-up constituted by a heterogeneous collective entity. 8 See e.g. Bard 2008; Hansen 2008; Hirth 2008: there are societies with cities, but without writing systems (and vice versa); there are cities without monumental architecture; city and state are not necessarily linked to each other (there are examples of cities existing without a state and vice versa). Some cities are open structures without fortifications. For the latter criterion see also L. Wirth 1938. 9 Scholars who concentrate on functions and roles of cities reflected e.g. in public buildings include Eric Wolf (1966, 11), who defined cities as settlements in which a combination of functions are exercised. The diversity of activities and functions performed in cities is often linked with the existence of centralised authority and social hierarchy, but hierarchy by itself cannot be taken as a criterion for urbanism (Owen / Preston 2009, 3). 10 Taking into account the variability of ancient cities, several classifications of city types bound to their functions have been developed, see e.g. E. Wirth 1975, 51ff. Richard

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Spiro Kostoff (1985) lists general elements of the urban environment as organisational features of many cities in different cultures and regions, such as streets, public squares, fortifications, a monumental core with special buildings (e.g. temples, churches, baths, palace, courthouse, market, shops, restaurants, libraries, canals etc.) reflecting diversified political, social, religious, and administrative institutions.11 A city should also display an internal differentiation of the settlement connected to the social division of labour (Nóvak 1999, 48f.). Urban settlements can be distinguished from other types of concentrated populations by transformations in leadership, in spatial and economic organisation (M. L. Smith 2003).12 Thus, cities have been described as a “container of power” (Giddens 1984, 262), where elite groups acquire status, economic and political power (Herzog 1997, 6f.). Yet, the relationship between urban form and political authority is not straightforward. It has been shown that cities do not require a state level of political authority to exist (M. L. Smith 2003, 12ff. with further literature), and leadership roles may not be apparent on the level of the city form itself (cf. temples preceding palaces as central organisations in Mesopotamian cities; Stone 1995). Similarly, features facilitating city life such as markets, roads, and sanitation, can come into being without central planning (M. L. Smith 2003, 16ff.). Different elite and non-elite groups forming networks and alliances on the basis of shared religion, occupation or ethnicity can have an impact on the layout of cities through the actions of such groups (by sponsoring or participating in the construction of monuments etc.; M. L. Smith 2003, 16ff.). Some scholars emphasise the emblematic and religious meaning of cities and their structure, symbolising the cosmic order, e.g. through the form or the orientation of buildings, walls, streets according to the cardinal directions (e.g. Wheatley 1971 on ancient Chinese cities). Yet, as comparative studies show, both urban and non-urban settlements can be Fox (1977) distinguished regal-ritual, administrative and commercial city types. Because most cities combine several functions at the same time, such pure types can exist only in theory (Nóvak 1999, 54f.). For the essential aspect of exchange and trade (especially long-distance) as a motor of city formation see e.g. Renfrew 1975; Soja 2000, 42ff.; 50ff.; Algaze 2008, 155ff. 11  Colin Renfrew (1979, 16) suggested that archaeology has to look for “affinities of form”, i.e. common features of cities, which might indicate similar general processes. 12 Arguing that a definition of urbanism has to be quite abstract to be universally applicable, Aidan Southhall (1973) defined cities as places with a high density of social interaction and differentiation of social roles, exhibiting internal complexity and heterogeneity, e.g. differences of wealth (see also Kostoff 1991).



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read as cosmograms, as well as sociograms (cf. Carl et al. 2000; Choay 1986; Lagopoulos 1986a; 1986b). Another approach is to look for indigenous conceptualisations of what a city is. It has been noted that in many languages the word for “town, city” also designates the hinterland around the urban centre or the territory controlled by a ruler (Marcus / Sabloff 2008, 22ff.).13 Similarly, the fact that the Akkadian language does not clearly reflect the difference between urban and non-urban settlements14 could reflect the idea of unity between cities and their hinterland, or that the concept of city was not defined by size. Any settlement name would always be written with the determinative u r u , originally Sumerian, meaning “city.” Nevertheless, some distinctive aspects of ancient cities are important for the present research. Thus, it should be stressed that a typical attribute of nearly every ancient city was its city walls (e.g. Arav 2008, 5).15 This feature, prominently defining the city margins, was 13 Although a Mesopotamian city comprised the walled centre as well as the surrounding areas and agricultural land, the Akkadian word ālu does only refer to the walled urban area, and the Akkadian language designates the surrounding areas with specific terms or compound expressions, e.g. aḫât āli “outside the city” (which equates to Sum. uruba r “city outskirts, agricultural land around a city”), namû “pasture land, outlying area around a city,” ḫalṣu “district” (often forming a unit within cities) and the more specific ugāru “meadow, arable land” (also an administrative unit, often associated with cities, cf. CAD U/W, 23ff.), tamirtu “(irrigated) agricultural land; surrounding (of a city).” This might reflect the opposition between the civilised city and the wilderness, steppe (ṣēru) in the Mesopotamian worldview. Similarly, the term namû can stand in contrast to cultivated land and city and may refer to a deserted place or the steppe. 14 So for instance, Sennacherib reports of the destruction of Hezekiah’s “46 strong, walled cities” (46 ālāni (URUMEŠ)-šú dan-nu-ti bīt dūrāni (É.BÀDMEŠ); Luckenbill 1924, 32; Oriental Institute Prism col. iii lines 19–20) though there is no evidence for the existence in Judah of so many fortified urban settlements. The word ālu can also designate smaller settlements (manors, estates or forts), cf. CAD A/1, 379ff. Attributes are used with ālu, e.g. to indicate size and special types of cities (small, fortified etc.). The word edurû “hamlet, rural settlement” is a Sumerian loanword from é - d u r u5 , literally meaning “manor, farm on wet ground” (connected to a permanent water supply or swamp). The connection with dūru (=BÀD) “city wall, fortification,” the root which in one form or another is attested in all of the Semitic languages (AHw, 178a) is unclear. An Akkadian word for village, kapru, has widespread West-Semitic cognates (e.g. Hebrew ‫ ְ;ּכ ָפר‬Aram. kfr; Arab. kafr), and it is paralleled with adurû/é - d u r u5 in lexical lists (Diri V, 307 f, CAD K, 189b). However, kapru notoriously appears with the meaning “village” in Old Babylonian and Mari only, which drove some scholars to the conclusion that it is an Amorite loan word (convincingly dismissed by Dietz Edzard [1964, 145]). In later periods it is found only as a component of geographical names, which according to CAD K, 190b “might well represent geographical designations.” In Nuzi, a geographical name Kapru is attested written with determinative ur u (CAD K, 190a). See also van de Mieroop 1997, 10 concerning the Akkadian terminology for the city and various types of settlements. 15 Also expressed archaeologically. The linkage between urbanism and the existence of fortifications has been criticised (see e.g. Childe 1950; Düring 2011), because there are cities without city walls and fortified settlements which are not urban in character. One example

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crucial for urban organisation and planning. In Mesopotamian cuneiform texts, starting with early Sumerian sources, city walls are perceived as an essential urban characteristic.16 The walls determined the importance of the city gates (May, this volume) and the layout of the main city streets, as connecting between the gates (Steinert, this volume). Considering all the aforementioned approaches, we purposely avoid giving a definition of the city here since it is not an objective of this volume, nor is this matter discussed in individual contributions. In our opinion, there cannot be a general definition of the city suiting all periods of human history and no all-embracing definition of a city can be suggested even for antiquity as a whole. Moreover, taking into account the emic perspectives of different cultures, several definitions of urbanism are likely to evolve (Butzer 2008). 2. Urban Form and Social Structures Within the archaeology of the Near East and Greece, the study of the relationship between urban spaces and social organisation and relations developed into a considerable trend in recent years and decades.17 Moreover, this topic has long been investigated in other fields, including social geography.18 of an unfortified city is Egyptian Tell al-Amarna. However, what is important is that the ancients themselves perceived city walls as the main urban trait. 16 For instance, in a Mari letter the expression ālim ribītim “metropolis” is supplemented by the phrase ša dūram lawû, “surrounded by a wall” (Rouault 1977, 61, 22). In this connection, Jean-Marie Durand (1991) draws attention to the possible connection of the word ribītu “main street” with rabû “big” (literally “ville à grande place”), relating it to a conceptualisation of the capital city as political and cosmological centre of state and universe. See also the central importance of the city wall of Uruk as framing location for the whole Gilgamesh Epic, where the building of the wall is the main lasting accomplishment of Gilgamesh for which he is remembered (cf. van de Mieroop 1997, 73ff. for the topic of the royal construction of city walls in Mesopotamia). Note also the well known Biblical metaphor, which uses gates as synonym, pars pro toto, to describe the city. The construction of city walls was an important part of the Greek foundation legends (e.g. DNP s.v. Troja, Athen, Theben). 17 See e.g. for Greece Owen / Preston 2009 and Westgate et al. 2007, especially for interrelations between urban layout, social organisation and political ideologies; for Israel, Herzog 1997; for Mesopotamia see e.g. Heinz 1997; Nóvak 1999; Stone 1991; 1999; 2005; 2008; van de Mieroop 1997. 18 Starting with the Chicago School, e.g. L. Wirth 1938; cf. Soja 2000 (with an overview of urban theory in the twentieth century), urban sociology (e.g. Castells 1979; Gott­ diener 1985; Källtorp et al. 1997; Korff 1990; Lefèbvre 1991; Löw 2008; Tonkiss 2005), social anthropology (e.g. Gmelch & Zenner 2002; Gutkind 1974; Low / Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003),



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Studies of urban form show that the plans of cities in different cultures and periods can exhibit similarities as well as differences, which have been interpreted in different ways.19 It has been observed that the relationship between forms of social organisation and spatial patterns is complex and that it is often not directly mirrored in the archaeological data, because not all social processes are reflected in material culture (Heinz 1997, 113; Keith 2003, 59ff.). The spectrum of explanations brought forward points to the multiplicity of interrelated factors (e.g. environmental, ecological, cultural, socio-political, economic, historical) influencing and having impact on urban form (cf. Morris 1994). One explanation for similarities in urban structures is the common need to accommodate similar functions in a limited area with a limited crosscultural variation in the uses of buildings. Urban structures, which are likely to reflect urban functions, include the following examples assembled by Renfrew (2008, 46):20 fortifications (military), temples and cult buildings (religious), royal palaces (political), areas of craft production, places of public assemblies. It has been established that there are no mono-causal explanations for similarities of forms in urban built space.21 Since the 1980s symbolic and interpretative approaches have come to view human behaviour as

semiotics (e.g. Barthes 1986; Eco 1986; Gottdiener & Logopoulos 1986), and in the history of urban planning and architecture (e.g. Morris 1994; Mumford 1961). 19 See, for comparisons between urban form and functions, Bintliff (1977) on medieval monasteries and the Minoan palace of Mallia in Crete. Comparisons of similarities in urban form are especially applicable to cities within one culture, tradition, period or category, e.g. Roman army camp towns (Renfrew 2008, 37; Stone 1991). Similarities between cities within one region or period can be due to standardisation as a result of central control or urban planning (Renfrew 2008, 37ff.). 20 For intercultural comparisons see also Adams (1966) on second millennium bce Mesopotamian and Aztec cities in Mexico; Carl et al. (2000) for structural similarities between New Kingdom el-Amarna and late medieval London. Gideon Sjoberg (1960) has contrasted preindustrial and modern cities, while stating that preindustrial cities resemble each other because of similar ecological and social factors (e.g. a well-defined class structure and a division of labour), common structural features and similar values. A number of characteristics of Sjoberg’s “constructed” ideal type of a typical preindustrial city have been shown to be variable, especially the linkage between literacy and urbanism (cf. Herzog 1997, 5). For structural differences between preindustrial and industrial cities see also Soja 2000. 21 E.g. as responses to ecological and social conditions or economic ways of life. See Pfälzner 2001, 9ff. for a review of deterministic and functionalistic approaches, cf. e.g. Binford 1972, 20ff.; Kent 1987, 517ff.; see for different urban form determinants also Morris 1994, 10ff. The Central Place Theory (Christaller 1933) has had an influence in explaining the spatial organisation of urban centres in terms of settlement hierarchies (see e.g. Trigger 1972).

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shaped by the contents of specific cultural traditions, norms, and world views and by universal structures of the human mind.22 There has been a growing interest in studying the culturally specific ideas of the inhabitants of ancient cities about their centres, including similar patterns of belief and symbolic meanings that influenced the layout of cities (e.g. cosmic imagery reflected in centrality, verticality and quadripartition). According to the work of Françoise Choay (1986), preindustrial societies in general can be contrasted with industrial societies in that the structure of their built-up systems is linked to the totality of culture: the Bororo village, Classical Athens, and medieval towns express in different ways the social organisation, political order and other aspects of each culture. According to socio-semiotic studies influenced by Marxist materialism like Lagopoulos (1986a), the semiotic models of settlement space of different societies vary with their mode of production and overall structure, articulating to varying degrees cosmological, religious, social, and political aspects, often in a combined way. While cosmological connotations connected to dominant religious codes seem to be of importance in various societies, with the exception of the industrial societies, there is no general systematic evolution of semiotic models. The geometric form of settlement in preindustrial societies is limited (“orthogonal” or “centric”) and there is generally a dominant central element. Mirko Nóvak (1999, 374ff.) states that most urban settlements in the ancient Near East (and also in Greece) had an irregular shape reflecting organic growth; rectangular and round cities in the Near East can be associated with specific geographical regions and periods: the former is dominant in Assyria and Babylonia, and found in Roman, Sassanian and early Islamic foundations, while the latter is dominant in Syria, Iran and in Islamic cities. Bruce Trigger (2008, 60, 62ff.) connects cross-cultural similarities in the layout of city plans with uniformities in the human perception of space, as well as with human cognitive processes and symbolic aspects of culture. Karl Butzer (2008, 82ff.) argues that city forms also reflect the cultural values of societies, and that Hellenistic cities in the Near East with a gridiron plan were designed to communicate a new ideology (of the political order) of Greek civilisation in non-Hellenic areas and to acculturate indigenous peoples.23

22 See e.g. Hodder 1982a; 1982b; Kent 1987. 23 See below for an alternative interpretation.



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In the light of comparative studies, the traditional contrast between ancient Near Eastern and Greek urbanism and their differing sociopolitical structures have to be put into a modified perspective which is crucial for the topic of the present volume. 2.1 City Planning in Antiquity One presumed contrast between eastern and western cities of antiquity concerns the idea that city planning began with Hippodamus of Miletus. The development of the great majority of Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern cities through the millennia of their existence has often been described as unstructured and unplanned in contrast to the regular planning found in cities of the Classical world.24 Yet, city planning was not unknown, neither in Near Eastern antiquity nor in other ancient city cultures (Morris 1994; Marcus / Sabloff 2008; M. E. Smith 2002).25 Thus, urban settlements with an orthogonal grid-plan were built in Mesopotamia,26 Egypt and the Indus region, while Athens during the Classical period and ancient Rome had no grid plan (Butzer 2008; Morris 1994). In the ancient Near East capitals founded by royal initiative reveal regular planning (figs. 1–2; Dur-Sharruken, Samaria), even possibly with an orthogonal street arrangement.27 Not only Assyrian capital cities, but also depictions of Neo-Assyrian army camps on palace reliefs demonstrate a geometric arrangement of streets (figs. 3–4; and Micale & Nadali 2004, 172 fig. 10).28 Building a city on a preconceived plan seems to have been a royal initiative. Greek poleis originally were not built in accordance with a plan either, but had an irregular shape due to environmental conditions 24 See Baker, in press and in this volume for the examples of this type of development. 25 See especially Bard 2008; Kemp 1972 and Morris 1994, 26ff. In Egyptian, urban settlements were referred to as either nwt or dmi, with the former usually designating unplanned, grown settlements, the latter referring to cities that were laid out along a formal plan, e.g. Kahun or Tell el-Amarna (Uphill 2008). According to Barry Kemp and Anthony Morris, Egyptian cities, like Amarna, display only partial planning of the main layout and route structure combined with organically grown neighbourhoods, while some settlements like Kahun or Deir el-Medina have a highly formal grid plan of streets and uniform houses arranged in blocks. 26 E.g. early Sumerian trading colonies like Habuba Kabira or Old Babylonian provincial centres like Haradum, Shaduppum, see Heinz 1997; Nóvak 1999, 376ff.; Stone 2005. 27 Probably Sennacherib’s embellishing of Nineveh (e.g. Palace Without a Rival, Luckenbill 1924, 95, line 69). This similarly applies also to Egyptian foundations and special purpose towns. 28 The depiction of an Assyrian military camp on a relief of Ashurnasirpal II’s palace represents a circular plan with a cross-shaped division into four sectors similar to the Roman arrangement of the decomanus and cardo main streets.

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and growth patterns. Hippodamus’ vision of a regular city plan might well be a Hellenistic adoption of a Near Eastern technology together with many others.29 Due to the fact that most cities in Mesopotamia had an irregular form and an organically grown street layout and share many similarities with Islamic cities in the Near East (e.g. the segregation between the public and private sphere, the dominance of the courtyard house and the uniform outward appearance of house facades), several authors have attributed these uniformities to similarities in social organisation.30 2.2 Public and Private The main contrast between the ancient Near East and Greece has been the notion that Mesopotamian cities lack public open spaces for assemblies like the agora and special purpose buildings for communal or leisure activities like the stadium, theatre, gymnasium. These “revolutionary” features have been explained sociologically, as a result of the development of democracy and citizenship in Classical Greece, and intellectually, with a change in the perception of space.31 It is correct that ancient Near Eastern cities, whether planned or developed spontaneously, typically lack the open public areas which were so characteristic of Greek and Roman cities. The public areas of Mesopotamian cities were mainly associated with temples and palaces, notably the temple

29 The orthogonal plan was already in use in planned Greek colonies in the seventh century bce, long before Hippodamus, which is related to centralisation (Bengs 1997, 29; Greco 2009). According to Morris (1994), Egyptian Kahun is the oldest urban settlement with a true gridiron layout, while a rectilinear street system defining superblocks, the subdivision of which was left to the occupiers, is found in many ancient cities. Nóvak (1999) describes the rectangular city shape as a Mesopotamian invention connected to the cosmological concept of the four quarters of the world. Moreover, Hellenistic cities in the Near East were rarely rectangular or had a regular grid pattern of streets (one notable example is Seleukia), and this feature, which is typical for cities of the Roman period, fell again into decline in the Late Antiquity (Nóvak 1999; cf. Boksmati 2009 for the limits of Hellenisation affecting the city of Beirut during the Hellenistic period). 30 These structural patterns of Islamic cities have been connected with a dominant bottom-up social organisation based on kinship reflecting a primary concern for households and neighbourhood associations; see e.g. Bengs 1997, 16ff.; Butzer 2008, 85f. Mark Lehner (2000) and David Schloen (2001, 108ff.) explain similarities in the settlement patterns in the ancient and recent, preindustrial Near East and Egypt on the basis of the persistence of the patrimonial household system. 31  Cf. Zucker 1959, 19; cited in Morris 1994, 42. Similarly, Christer Bengs (1997, 25) contrasts the Classical Greek city with early Islamic cities as reflections of two differing systems: a society with an emphasis on the community and unified control vs. a closed “tribal society” characterised by hierarchies and levels of control.



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or palace courtyards.32 Accessibility to these courtyards seems to have been limited to selected public only (e.g. fig. 5). Most public affairs were managed indoors and not in open areas, although palace, temple and city gates could serve as places of litigation or even assembly, which was, however, typical for the periphery, such as Nuzi (May, this volume). In the absence of special places for staging public events, in the Mesopotamian heartland certain city streets and gate spaces served as the main locale for such activities (e.g. assemblies, religious festivals; contributions of Steinert and May, this volume). In the Assyrian Empire, administration and court duties were performed by officials at their residences, starting from the lower levels33 up to the royal palaces. The residence was also a place of work, and not only for the officials. The situation was similar in first millennium Babylonia as well (Baker 2011, 539–40; Stone 1987, 126f.; Brusasco 1999/2000), and it seems to be a feature common to pre-industrial societies in general. As a consequence the distinction between the private and public quarters in the palaces was blurred, as demonstrated by Kertai (this volume). Nonetheless, there are exceptions to this clear-cut contrast between the East and West regarding the existence of large public spaces in the city. Syro-Hittite cities34 reveal a spatial approach very different from Mesopotamia or the southern Levant. There existed not only multiple plazas and open spaces of profoundly public character, which were located inside the fortified acropolis and were delimited by architectural features, but these public spaces and also the city walls were decorated with reliefs pointing to their ceremonial importance. Syro-Hittite plazas were also sites for the installation of gigantic statues of deified ancestors of the ruling family or city founders (Pucci 2006; Gilibert 2011; 2012).35 Due to lack of written evidence, there is no way to completely investigate all of the functions of the open spaces in first millennium Syrian society, but their very existence seems to contrast with the spatial organisation of the rest of the ancient Near East.36 Yet, this perception might to some degree also be due to our still limited knowledge of Mesopotamian cities. 32 Large public open spaces can also be found along main processional roads of big urban centres, for instance the so-called “Tempelplatz” in Assur, see Steinert 2011, 331ff. for a discussion with further literature. For the gate squares see May, this volume. 33 E.g. the “Red House” at Dur-Katlimmu had official and private wings. It was in use under Babylonian rule (ca. 612–602 bce), but its occupants were Assyrians (Kühne 2000, 763, 768). 34 Often described as city-states, though little is known about their actual political and territorial structure. 35 This is similar to the installation of stelae at the city gate plazas (May, this volume). 36 Note moreover the evidence for a large plaza at the Hurrian urban centre Urkesh (Tall Mozan) in the North Mesopotamian Khabour region, which was situated next to the

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natalie n. may and ulrike steinert 2.3 City and Trade

Another often noted difference of ancient Near Eastern cities in contrast with Classical Greek urbanism is the absence of a market place, which in Greek and Roman cities was connected with the multi-purpose agora and the forum. The economy of the earliest Sumerian cities was primarily redistributive, and the trade, by and large, arranged and controlled by the state, was primarily marketless.37 The initially marketless character (Hammond 1972, 41) of early Mesopotamian trade might to some extent explain the absence of a market place deliberately imbedded into a city plan in the ancient Near Eastern cities also in later periods. On the other hand, areas for the exchange of goods are not restricted to open plazas within the city. As textual and archaeological evidence shows, this function was performed by the main streets (Stone 2005; Steinert, this volume) and gate spaces (May, this volume)—a feature which is still present in Middle Eastern cities (E. Wirth 1997, 32).38 It is also possible that markets were occasionally held outside the city gates and have not been archaeologically attested. However, another characteristic of Mesopotamian trade was that its main arteries were rivers rather than roads. Thus the harbour—kārum—often served as market and industrial area (Stone 1991, 242; 2005, 151–52). It should be stressed that though the original meaning of kārum in Akkadian was harbour (CAD K, 231a–237a), it often designated trading stations and even merchant communities (CAD K, 234a–237a) as well as

central oval temple complex (Buccellati 2005, 7f. with fig. 1; Pfälzner 2008, 396ff. with fig. 1–2, 16). The terraced temple complex with its staircase and ramp was oriented toward this plaza, which shows that this architectural arrangement with its long continuity from the first half of the 3rd until the second half of the 2nd millennium bce was an important and consciously planned element of the urban layout of Urkesh (Pfälzner 2008, 407ff., 428). The plaza seems to have connected the temple and a royal palace and could have been used for various public activities and gatherings of the population, e.g. during religious festivals. 37 This does not mean of course that markets and trade were non-existent (see below, and Renger 1984, Wilcke 2007). However, “there was no market as an economic factor determining the economy of Ancient Mesopotamia as a whole.” (Renger 1984, 113; see also Wilcke 2007, 113). Palace and temple still performed redistributive functions in the first millennium in Assyria (Kinnier Wilson 1972), and even in conditions of the increasing monetisation of the economy in Babylonia ( Jursa 2010, 9, 29–31, 50 with note 207, 66, 68, 162–163, 250 with note 1486, 442, 654–656, 661, 669–672, 771 and passim; Kleber 2010, 549ff.). See Jursa 2011, 13–22 for the most recent overview of the economic theories as applied to Mesopotamia. 38 During the survey at Mashkan-shapir, an area without dense buildings was detected in the vicinity of the main street, which could have been a market place (Stone 2005, 152).



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an office in the kārum (ibid. and CAD K, 237b–238a). Later it also becomes a component of city names such as Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, Kar-Shalmaneser, Kar-Sharruken, etc. This change in meaning reflects the switch in trade modes from southern Mesopotamia, where the harbour was indeed the most important trade node, to the emporium in the inland trade away from the rivers, as was the case with the Old Assyrian trading stations in Anatolia. Nonetheless, kārum never came to denote an open market place, but always designated a built-up area. It has been demonstrated (Stone 1995, 236; Cooper 2006, 122–23, 139) that the early urbanisation process in southern Mesopotamia was closely tied with the exchange of raw materials. Besides trade, the primary form of this exchange was war. This kind of exchange was naturally a state prerogative, a part of the redistributive economy, which had no need for an open market place, but only a storage place—a temple or a palace. The practice of extracting the raw building materials through spoil is well known e.g. through the literary topos of military expeditions to the Cedar Forest of the Mount Amanus.39 The article of Johnson (this volume) demonstrates how raw materials necessary for city building were extorted through military campaigns. 2.4 City Layout and Political Organisation Is the topography of a city-state different from that of an imperial capital? Can democracy be distinguished from despotic rule through the urban topography? How did changes of political structure influence the topographical structure of a city? In view of the interdisciplinary outlook of the present volume, it is important to highlight comparative analyses which have correlated urban form with political structures and forms of state societies. According to Trigger (2003, 92ff.), variation in the layout of urban centres correlates with two different types of political organisation: city-state systems and territorial states.40 In city-states the majority of the 39 Note that in the Bible the same precious cedar wood necessary for temple and palace building was acquired by Solomon through an exchange agreement, not through wars (1 Kgs 5:6–11). 40 See also Hansen 2000; 2002; 2006 for the Greek polis-system and comparative studies of city-state cultures; cf. Yoffee 2005, 45f. for Mesopotamia. In regions without centralised power (e.g. Sumer, Classical Greece), similarities between autonomous centres (e.g. the ziqqurats of Sumerian cities) have been interpreted as a result of peer-polity interaction found in early state societies, connected to processes of competition, warfare, exchange of goods, responsible for producing a degree of cultural homogeneity (Cherry 1986; Renfrew 1975; 1986; Sabloff 1986; Snodgrass 1986).

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population and also a considerable number of full-time farmers lived in urban centres.41 The centres of territorial states were mostly occupied by members of the upper classes (officials, craftsmen, employed retainers), and farmers tended to live in villages in the hinterland, thus these urban centres contained a much smaller percentage of the total population. These differences in political organisation have an impact on the form and layout of urban centres reflected in cross-cultural uniformities: the major cities in city-states tend to be larger (offering a broader range of special services) than those in territorial states. Moreover, while city-states are compact, the layout of cities in territorial states tends to be dispersed. In the latter centres, members of the nobility, rulers and high-ranking officials tend to live apart from the rest of the population in separated settlements; temples and palaces are often surrounded by their own enclosure wall (e.g. Egypt and the acropolis in Assyrian royal “residence”-cities). A similar approach was suggested by Stone (2008) who argues that there is a correlation between polity type and urban structures. She analysed differences regarding the physical organisation of cities between societies based on hierarchy (and “systematic exclusionary domination”) and societies based on heterarchy, but also taking into account environmental and ecological factors.42 Urban centres in states based on exclusionary control are characterised by a relatively small size, occupation by elites, their servants and dependent populations living in the suburbs or countryside. In contrast, capital cities in states with power-sharing mechanisms (reflected e.g. in physically and structurally separated political and religious institutions) are large and contain clearly defined neighbourhoods, which are inhabited by a mixture of different social groups without segregation between rich and poor (Stone 2008, 143ff.). 3. Bottom-up Analyses of the City Structure Until recently a tendency to concentrate the investigation of urban spaces on monumental architecture and the relationship between architecture 41  E.g. in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, see Adams 1981; Trigger 2003, 125; see already Weber 1958, 70f. calling the city-farmers “Ackerbürger.” 42 According to Stone (2008), specific ecological conditions are favourable for specific political and institutional structures. States with exclusionary domination are found in regions with permanent and bounded agricultural land (e.g. Egypt), while states with corporate power strategies are in regions with impermanent and unbounded land (e.g. Mesopotamia). In southern Mesopotamia, the constraining environment favours an agricultural system, which is more fit for institutional management (Stone 2005).



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and royal power has prevailed in the textual and archaeological studies of Mesopotamian cities (see e.g. Novák 1999; Maran et al. 2006; Bretschneider et al. 2007). This approach has been criticised (Baker 2011, 534; see already Liverani 1997 with a critique regarding the predominant model of the Near Eastern city used in the field). Research has to take into account the fact that urban spaces are also shaped by the inhabitants in a variety of ways. Although the configurations of public space are to a large extent guided by elites, urban transformations are always to some degree caused by the active participation of the inhabitants, especially on the level of private and semi-private space (M. L. Smith 2003, 19ff.). Due to their non-monumental appearance, archaeological investigation of private residences in the ancient Near East lagged behind research into temples and royal buildings. And the exploration of private households based on written sources has begun only in recent years. Thus Heather Baker in a number of recent studies has attempted a new approach to reconstructing bottom-up processes in Mesopotamian cities, concentrating on the non-monumental architecture of neighbourhoods during the first millennium bce (Baker 2010; 2011; Baker forthcoming; and also her contribution in this volume). These studies address questions about the role of non-monumental architecture and urban form in reproducing and transmitting social values and structures, and attempt to “read” the Mesopotamian cities on the level of the experience of their inhabitants, integrating textual and archaeological sources. Baker especially notes the problem that the cuneiform sources as products of an elite scribal milieu are not very suited to shed light on the views of the population at large, and that everyday documents hardly ever touch on individual experiences. Nevertheless, conflicting statements in textual sources demonstrate that the experience of the environment must have differed from individual to individual. On the other hand, archaeological evidence also points toward shared cultural values, e.g. the preference for a uniform outward appearance of house facades.43 Kathryn Keith (2003) and Michael E. Smith (2010) discuss bottom-up and top-down social processes which influence the patterning and makeup of residential neighbourhoods in ancient and preindustrial cities.

43 The similarities of form and blank public facades of house blocks in the Greek cities of the Classical period have been interpreted as expressions of an egalitarian ethos and the concept of isonomia (Dolynskij 2009, 122f.; cf. Bengs 1997, 117 for the same phenomenon in early Islamic cities based on the rejection of any outward expression of wealth in the Islamic tradition).

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Unplanned layouts of residential districts point to bottom-up processes, while their extensive planning hints at institutional control (M. E. Smith 2010, 151, contrasting early Islamic and ancient Chinese cities).44 Keith (2003, 62ff.) argues along similar lines that while the main streets in Old Babylonian cities were maintained over long periods of time, smaller streets in residential areas often changed over time, pointing in the first instance at institutional involvement in the maintenance and control of main streets, while in the second instance local negotiation of inhabitants was a decisive factor. 3.1 Neighbourhoods The division of cities into districts or neighbourhoods can be seen as one of the few universals of urban life in preindustrial and modern cities (Smith 2010).45 Sjoberg (1960, especially 95–103) established a series of differences between preindustrial and industrial cities and described the residential patterns of preindustrial centres by reference to a concentric spatial model: the city centre contains an elite district, while the middle classes and commoners reside in the surrounding areas and outcasts in a zone at the periphery.46 According to cross-cultural studies, residents of neighbourhoods in preindustrial cities often share one or more social attributes (race, ethnicity, class, religion, occupation), but neighbourhoods are not necessarily socially homogeneous.47 Thus, several contributions on ancient and preindustrial cities draw the conclusion that in contrast to models of the Chicago School on modern cities, which emphasise the factor of social segregation, neighbourhoods in ancient cities were socially mixed; rich and poor lived side by side.48 In Mesopotamian cities,

44 For self-reliant neighbourhood communities in early Islamic cities see Bengs 1997, 17. 45 According to Michael E. Smith two kinds of residential zones have to be distinguished: the level of the neighbourhood or quarter (a small area characterised by face-toface interaction between inhabitants) and the level of the district or ward (a larger zone with administrative or social significance in the city consisting of multiple neighbourhoods; see also Stone 1987, 3). 46 Residential zones in ancient cities corresponding to social neighbourhoods were often bounded by physical features (walls, streets, rivers or canals), as can be found in ancient Chinese and early Islamic cities; cf. Marcus 2009. 47 This trait is present in the Middle Eastern cities up to recent times. 48 See e.g. Heinz 1997, 103ff.; Keith 2003; for Egypt, Bard 2008, 177. In her study of Mesopotamian Bronze Age urban settlements, Heinz differentiates a category with homogeneous and heterogeneous residential architecture reflecting a relatively homogeneous social make-up of the residents vs. a more heterogeneous, socially differentiated social make-up. She correlates size, complexity, number of rooms and building plan of residential



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differences in social status and economic standing between individuals and families are expressed in the sizes of their houses and their position in relation to the public space of the street network (Baker 2011, 539ff.). According to Keith (2003, 77f.), neighbourhoods in Old Babylonian cities tended to consist of a large house surrounded by several smaller buildings pointing at a heterogeneous social make-up. Some evidence for the division of large houses through inheritance points to the co-residence of brothers and to some degree of family patterning in residential areas.49 Though social segregation was not characteristic of the ancient Near Eastern cities,50 temporal developments concerning socially mixed neighbourhoods in cities of the second and first millennium bce have also been noted, with tendency towards stronger social segregation (Stone 2007, 162, 164; Baker 2011, 543–4). Yet, evidence can also be adduced indicating that both in second and first millennium bce cities, one can find socially mixed neighbourhoods as well as districts which accommodated members of one social or professional group (e.g. temple personnel; cf. Stone 2008 comparing Old Babylonian Mashkan-Shapir and fortress towns in Urartu; Baker 2011, 544). 3.2 Houses A growing number of archaeological, textual and ethnoarchaeological studies analyse the relationship between house form, activity areas, circulation patterns, functions connected to the rooms of houses as reflecting family structures, and social relations among the inhabitants, between

buildings with socio-economic rank. While her study does not confirm spatial segregation of social or occupational groups in Mesopotamian cities, Keith (2003) discusses evidence for Old Babylonian cities where people with various occupations resided in one neighbourhood (various crafts- and businessmen worked and had shops in their private homes), e.g. at Larsa and Mashkan-Shapir. There is also some archaeological and textual evidence for some degree of occupational patterning at other settlements, e.g. at Nippur and Ur. At Nippur, area TB was “the residential quarter for landless employees of the state” (Stone 1987, 76), while area TA was occupied by small property owners (ibid., 71). In Ur, priestly families associated with the Nanna and Ningal temples lived in area EM, while businessmen who financed trade expeditions occupied area AH (van de Mieroop 1983, 123, 163). 49 See Stone 1981; 1987. Laura Battini-Villard (1997, 341ff.) differentiates densely built and uncongested residential quarters in Mesopotamian cities of the Old Babylonian period. She argues that the uncongested quarter in the north of Larsa contained a very large house belonging to people of the highest level of society (high functionaries or members of the royal family), while the dense quarters of Ur and Nippur were occupied by families of wellto-do middle classes, e.g. merchants or members of the clergy. 50 Beyond the citadels, which were not, by and large, residential areas.

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household members and the outside world.51 Noteworthy are also investigations of house structures to make inferences about gender relations and power relations within households.52 The research of Paolo Brusasco and Baker pointed out the need to combine where possible textual and archaeological sources to substantiate conclusions on building and social structure.53 This strategy is also used by Kertai (this volume) in his contribution about Assyrian palatial architecture and its public and private spheres. The differing conclusions regarding the correlation between house forms, household size and structure and gender relations show that inferring social phenomena should be derived from all the available kinds of sources, and not merely from archaeological evidence. Thus, there are, for instance, different views regarding the relationship between house and household sizes,54 because many different factors and processes like social mobility, economic rise and decline, major events in the family cycle, and historical changes have to be taken into account (Baker 2010; Pfälzner 2001, 18ff.). Different house

51  See e.g. for Mesopotamia Baker 2010; Baker, in press; Battini-Villard 1999; Eichmann 1991; Heinz 1997; Herzog 1997; Krafeld-Dougherty 1994; Miglus 1999; Pfälzner 2001; see also the contributions in Veenhof 1996, especially Stone 1996; for an interdisciplinary study on the cultural significance of domestic architecture see Kent 1990; important anthropological contributions on domestic architecture are e.g. Rapoport 1969; 1990. 52 See, for circulation patterns in domestic architecture of Old Babylonian Ur reflecting family structures and gender relations, Brusasco 1999/2000; 2004; for studies of house structure and gender relations in ancient Greece see e.g. Nevett 2007 and Dolynskij 2009; for workmen’s houses in Deir el-Medina (Egypt) see Koltsida 2007; cf. the ethnographic study of Bourdieu 2003 on symbolic, cosmological and gender issues. 53 Brusasco 1999/2000; 2004; Baker 2010, 2011, forthcoming. 54 Stone (1981; 1987; 1996) regarded extended patrilineal households as the norm for southern Mesopotamia in the third and second millennium bce, and correlated “linear” and “square” houses in Old Babylonian Nippur with nuclear versus extended families. In contrast, Battini-Villard (1999), Brusasco (1999/2000) and Schloen (2001) detected a dominance of nuclear family households (for second millennium Mesopotamia and the Levant). Pfälzner (2001) shows that there is no general connection between the number of rooms in a house and family size, but notes that large elite houses in third millennium bce northern Mesopotamia seem to have been inhabited by large households. The interpretation of house size in socio-economic terms is often found in the literature (e.g. Battini-Villard 1999). A relation between house sizes and different status groups can also be shown for the residential districts in Ugarit, with a tendency to spatial concentration of elite residences around the palace separate from the neighbourhoods of middle and lower class residences distributed all over the city (Calvet / Castel 2004, 220f.; Yon 2006). Cf. interpretations of house compounds (insulae) as residences of extended family groups in Minoan Crete settlements, where spatial size and location of residential buildings are seen as indications of social status (e.g. large Megaron buildings as dwellings of elite members) and social distance (cf. Cultraro 2007; Cunningham 2007).



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sizes are regarded as reflecting differences in wealth and social status, while modifications of domestic buildings (including their extension and division) have been related to processes of family extension and fission, division of inheritance, economic decline as well as to social mobility and population growth.55 Brusasco’s investigation of the residential houses at Ur, integrating archaeological, social and psychological theories and methods with textual and ethnographic evidence, was able to show an interrelationship between house types (houses with and without one or multiple courtyards), household structure (nuclear versus extended family types) and the socio-economic profile of the household (relative wealth, business activities). Moreover, the room structure of houses (the number and position of main living rooms, the existence of entrance suites, “chapels”, and archives) and the social relations between household members (relations of equality or inequality between the branches of co-residing extended families) can be correlated. The archaeological analysis of house forms and structures of ancient Near Eastern domestic architecture (e.g. the typical form of the courtyard house) in terms of gender relations can be pursued by integrating textual sources and comparing the evidence with ancient Greek and Islamic courtyard houses. The classical Greek house with a separate men’s reception room and its control of access and movement between rooms reflects a distinction between outside and inside, public and private, reception and private rooms as well as a heightened seclusion of women (Nevett 2007; Dolynskij 2009). These structural patterns have been connected to social status and the concept of citizenship of the polis, because smaller houses of poorer households placed less emphasis on privacy.56

55 Baker 2008, 185ff.; Brusasco 1999/2000; Pfälzner 2001, 384ff.; Schloen 2001; Stone 1981; 1987, 41–53; Yon 2006, 68. There are indications for both sharing of communal space (e.g. central courtyard, house entrance, cooking area) between house parties (possibly extended families) and the separation of house parts between two (unrelated) parties (Stone 1981; 1987; Baker 2010). In terms of social mobility, it is interesting to note that elite residences tend to stay unchanged over longer periods of time (Baker 2010, 189). 56 Nevett 2007, 8. Such differences can also be observed between houses in cities (like Athens) and smaller settlements (ibid., 8f.; cf. Dolynskij 2009). Alexander Anian (2007) correlates the development of Greek houses during the Early Iron Age towards more privacy, separation of functions and gender distinction with the shift of Greek society from a stratified society towards the polis. With this turning inward of the oikos arose also a new need for public spaces designed for communal activities. Cf. also Dolynskij (2009, 122f.) who sees the Classical house structures as expression of the membership within the citizen class of the polis.

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On the other hand, the development of domestic architecture in the Near East and in the Aegean world can be compared in relation to socio-historical changes. Greek houses of earlier periods,57 which consisted only of one room and an open area or of a front and a back space, and Greek houses of the Roman period with multiple entrances, reflect a less sharp distinction between family and outsiders, and between male and female spheres (Nevett 2007, 9f.). Similar differences in structural patterns related to social factors and diachronic changes are likely to be found in the domestic architecture of ancient Mesopotamia.58 Thus, Battini-Villard (1999) noted for Mesopotamian domestic architecture in the Old Babylonian period a tendency toward functional specialisation with growing house size (and number of rooms) in contrast to the multifunctionality of rooms in smaller houses. Yet, there seems to be no consensus on this point, because other analyses found only few functionally specialised uses of rooms.59 Moreover, the interpretation of the spatial organisation of Mesopotamian houses from the Old Babylonian period along a rigid gender division (Battini-Villard 1999; Battini 2009), with the ground floor for the activities of men and older sons and an assumed upper floor reserved for women and small children, can be questioned.60 Brusasco (1999/2000; 2004)

57 See Dolynskij (2009, 116ff.) for the development of Greek houses from the Archaic to the Classical period: from houses with weak boundaries and unstructured interiors displaying social solidarity towards houses with segregated interiors and controlled boundaries reflecting the privatisation of the independent household. For differences in the placement of the main room of houses and segregation of private and public space in Minoan Crete cf. Cultraro 2007; Cunningham 2007. 58 See also Koltsida (2007) for the prevailing multi-functionality of rooms and nonexistence of areas restricted to men/women in workmen’s houses of ancient Egyptian Deir el-Medina and el-Amarna. Ethnographic parallels from Egypt and other regions in the Near East also show that the distinct specification of male and female areas and separation of women tends to occur only in larger houses of wealthy, urban households (Koltsida 2007, 125ff.; Brusasco 1999/2000, 105ff.). 59 See e.g. Castel 1992, 79ff. for Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian houses; KrafeldDougherty 1994. According to Pfälzner (2001, 25), it is not possible to develop definite functional schemes for Mesopotamian houses because most rooms were multi-functional and use-flexible, and many activities do not leave any traces in the archaeological record. Yet, despite their multi-functionality, a primary specialisation for rooms in urban residential areas has been detected e.g. for Ur, Late Bronze Age Ugarit and Neo-Assyrian houses (Brusasco 1999/2000, 92f.; Castel 1992, 79ff.; Calvet / Castel 2004; Yon 2006; Callot 2009), consisting of rooms for the receptions of guests, food preparation, craft production, storage, lavatories or toilets, in Ur “chapels,” and archives. 60 Pfälzner’s analysis of houses in third millennium bce northern Mesopotamia (2001, 384ff.), which mostly consist only of one main, multi-functional room, also does not indicate a gender separation for this period. For the possibility of an upper floor in Old



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demonstrates that the Old Babylonian houses do not indicate any seclusion of women and have hardly any gender-specific areas, which points to differences between Mesopotamian and other Euro-Asiatic patrilineal societies like Classical Greece and the Islamic Near East regarding the social position and roles of women, despite the prevalence of the courtyard house in all these cultures. On the other hand, similarities between ancient Mesopotamian and recent Near Eastern, especially Islamic domestic architecture (e.g. house plans) have often been highlighted and explained on the basis of social structures (e.g. household forms, patterns of marriage, residence, inheritance; Bengs 1997, 16ff.; Morris 1994, 11, 22ff.; Schloen 2001, 108ff.; Stone 2005, 145) and used to interpret archaeological and textual data (KrafeldDougherty 1994; Pfälzner 2001). Beside the emphasis on introversion of houses in both cultural traditions, reflecting a similar need for privacy, the spatial expression in Old Babylonian and Islamic houses of the dominance of the pater familias has also been noted, reflecting social (often generational) inequality between family branches (Brusasco 1999/2000; 2004). On the other hand, in contrast to Islamic houses, Mesopotamian houses (e.g. from Ur, and Kertai, this volume) do not indicate any seclusion or segregation of women. 4. Contributions Due to the diverging background of the authors of this volume, the contributions presented in this book unite a variety of thematic and theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of urbanism in antiquity. The articles represent the heterogeneous character of the evidence at our disposal and treat a number of different aspects of urbanism. One aspect prevalent in contributions to this volume addresses the concepts of people in ancient urban societies regarding life in their cities as reflected in textual sources. The contributions are in line with previous studies (e.g. Arav 2008), which have a deconstructivist outlook in revealing concepts and images in texts and confronting them with archaeological data. Thus, some authors (Arav 2008) point out culturally differing attitudes in the Bible and the Greek world towards cities and city life (Roddy 2008; Williams 2008; Grams 2008), which are of interest in the light of conflicting attitudes found in Babylonian houses with a probable use of rooms as sleeping area see Brusasco 1999/2000, 86f.; cf. the contributions in Battini 2009 on houses in Larsa, Emar, Ugarit.

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Mesopotamian texts. The cities are surely perceived as and listed among those features of civilisation that are divinely revealed, blessed and founded,61 but thus they are also perceived as eternal.62 However, urbanism was not always described as a positive, divinely blessed and inspired process. The sources demonstrate active anti-urbanism notions, referring to the city as an overcrowded trap—an attitude inherent not in Sumerian sources alone ( Johnson, this volume). The physical density of early cities gave raise to moral density, which was mirrored by the language—Akkadian stock phrases and expressions. Mesopotamian ( Johnson, this volume), and especially Biblical (Roddy 2008) concepts of the city could be very negative.63 The population density of the city was well recognised by ancient Mesopotamians as an important element of an urban structure and was perceived as a negative feature typical of cities. While both the Hebrew Bible and the gospel traditions view cities (except Jerusalem) as negative and dangerous places full of crime and injustice, the attitudes of the Greek philosophers toward the polis are predominantly positive, although some philosophers refused to live in a city. Similarly, Mesopotamian textual sources show contradictory attitudes: on the one hand, sedentary city life and all aspects of civilisation, including cities, were invented and bestowed upon humanity by the gods and are thus valued highly, but on the other hand some texts also reveal social anxieties and negative views towards social outsiders and “have-nots”, which are discernible in the discourses on city streets in cuneiform texts (see Steinert, this volume).This dichotomy in attitude is reflected in modern theories of urbanism as well.64 J. Cale Johnson (this volume) shows that building materials necessary for the developing cities were predominantly extracted from outside the country as tribute or through the warfare. Nonetheless, this pattern is as

61 See Enki and the World Order, ETCSL 1.1.3, lines 212–218 for Ur, and the foundation of Babylon by Marduk together with the creation of the world (Enuma Elish, tablet VI lines 55ff., Talon 2005, 64ff.). See also Melvin 2010, 4. 62 In Sumerian mythology, all features of civilisation (intimately connected with city life) emerge through the creation of patron deities or are bestowed upon the humans by the gods or semi-divine beings. In Akkadian mythological texts, working gods can be encountered, e.g. in the Atrahasis myth. According to the Gilgamesh Epic, the foundation of Uruk’s city wall was laid by the “seven sages” in the time before the Flood. Cf. Melvin (2010) contrasting Mesopotamian versus Biblical view on the origins of civilisation. 63 In the writings of Ibn Khaldun, a similar negative moral judgment of city life can be found (Baali 1988, 95ff.). 64 Gottdiener & Lagopoulos 1986; Herzog 1997, 6, 9; Gmelch & Zenner 2002; Tonkiss 2005.



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characteristic for imperialistic democracies as it is for monarchies. For instance, the Athenian arche extracted resources for building the Parthenon and the Acropolis (Kallet 2005, especially 42) in a manner similar to that of ruler Enmerkar in the Sumerian composition Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. However, as opposite to Classical antiquity (Grame 2007), ancient Near Eastern civilisation seems to lack articulated urban theory, because neither political (like Aristotle, Aristot. pol. 7, 11), nor architectural (cf. Hippodamus) treatises on the city organisation are known from the textual sources.65 Yet, studies of ancient Near Eastern urban form and monumental architecture such as Heinz (2006) and Nóvak (1999) demonstrate that city space and architecture were designed to express the ideas of those who sponsored them and to communicate an ideological message as well as political concepts of rulership and authority. Moreover, analyses like those of Pongratz-Leisten (1994) and Pucci (2006) demonstrate that central elements of urban space such as the city gates, walls or royal gardens convey symbolic meanings, helping to define a community and embody collective values and an idea of community. The articles by Natalie N. May and Ulrike Steinert in the present volume analyse various civic functions of city gates and streets in Mesopotamia and the southern Levant. The assignment of these functions to the areas beyond the palace and temple organisations may hint at a decentralised structural organisation of city life and accentuate the importance of neighbourhoods. In this connection a thesis by Rami Arav (2008, 8) has to be mentioned. He proposes a contrast between ancient Near Eastern and Greek cities, explaining differences in the attitudes of these cultures toward city life. In contrast to Mesopotamia and the southern Levant, the heart of the Greek city was the agora and that of the Roman city was the forum, which were also located in the physical centre of the settlement, and the city gates had no function in community life. Thus, the differing attitudes of Greeks and Near Easterners and the feelings of insecurity of the latter could be related to the differences in the spatial and structural organisation of social activities. 65 Cf. only in royal building inscriptions does one find limited considerations about the construction of cities (esp. royal residence-cities), e.g. their location, or about the motives for changes in the urban structure (e.g. broadening of streets). See nn. 13 and 25. The lament literature, e.g. the Curse of Agade or the Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur, expresses to some extent the ancient Mesopotamian cognition of the cities’ architectural and political organisation, however, no theoretical works dedicated to these matters existed.

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Nonetheless, as noted above, the lack of market plazas, but not of the market-streets and market places at the gates,66 in Mesopotamian cities during the late periods could be a continuation of a traditional city layout, which was consolidated in the periods when trade and the economy were to a very high extent controlled by the state. Similarly, in Rome the imperial fori continued to be built when the republic had long ceased to exist, which indicates that the tradition of the city’s public spaces was still alive despite the change in political organisation.67 The important role of the cultural meanings attached to urban spaces is investigated in Jan Stenger’s and Darja Šterbenc Erker’s studies. Šterbenc Erker’s contribution, in examining the meaning of the Aventine within Rome’s religious topography, opens up another horizon for intercultural comparisons. Her analysis of the political and religious ordering and demarcating of Rome’s urban space reviews differing textual evaluations of the Aventine as negative and marginal space relating to “foreign” elements in Roman religion and society. Her contribution is not only important regarding the question of religious segregation (beside ethnic and social forms of segregation) in ancient cities, which seems limited apart from the demarcation of sacral spaces and palaces. It also draws attention to the intrinsic relationship between the meaning of urban places within Rome’s religious topography, and the history of the Roman state and the growth of the empire. Stenger’s observations about the image of Classical Greek Athens in contemporary written sources underlines the findings of Lynch (1960) and of cognitive research demonstrating that inhabitants develop a mental model of the city through social practice and their uses of urban places, and that there is a cultural and social basis for the conception of the urban environment. In accordance with semiotic and anthropological studies describing the mental mapping of the environment as an ideological representation of social processes (see Gottdiener / Lagopoulos 1986, 11f.), Stenger notes especially that elements of urban topography have different degrees of significance, and that the Athenians correlated all elements and kinds of spatial information in a dynamic process. In this process, space is constituted by the relationships between elements, and structured through the attribution of functions, related social practice and symbolic meanings.

66 See the contributions of Steinert and May. 67 Cf. Morris 1994; Mumford 1961 for a similar “petrification” of the Hellenistic city.



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Despite the fact that the development of geometry in ancient Greece was inspired by necessities of parcelling, the imagining of a city plan remained a sphere of mental and verbal description (Stenger, this volume). In Mesopotamia, however, attempts at schematic representations of a city like the famous Kassite map of Nippur (Finkelstein 1962, 80, fig. 1, pl. X) and even a universe plan are known from at least the second millennium bce. However, we know about the existence of maps of the world of Aristagoras (Hdt. 5, 49), Anaximander, Hecateus of Miletus and Eratosthenes’,68 though the Babylonian mappa mundi precedes all of them in time (ninth century bce; Horowitz 1998, 20ff.).69 Notably, Mesopotamian maps are accompanied by meticulous verbal descriptions, and are considerably more detailed than the verbal descriptions of the (not extant) Greek maps. The mappa mundi puts Babylonia in the centre of the universe, while for Herodotus (Hdt. 4, 42) and Anaximander it is Greece.70 Though Mesopotamian maps are schematic and not scaled plans, they display salient details and features, such as rivers, canals, gates. Representations of architectural constructions are known in Mesopotamia from the earliest periods and emerged together with the invention of writing. Architectural installations represented already in pictographic script and later in the monumental and minor reliefs reveal Mesopotamian cognitive concepts of space.71 Schemes of the cities originate in the representations of separate buildings such as the twenty-first century bce plan of a temple (Gudea, Statue B) combined with its elevation.72 This combination continued in representations of army camps on NeoAssyrian palatial reliefs. The cities on these reliefs are, however, always represented as elevations lacking exact measurements but displaying characteristic details, such as the number of city walls, prominent architectural constructions, aqueducts, the form of crenellations, or apotropaic

68 See DNP s.v. Anaximander, Hecateus of Miletus and Eratosthenes. 69 For other Mesopotamian sketches of the world see Horowitz 1998, 42. 70 For a more detailed comparison of Mesopotamian and Greek maps of the world see Horowitz 1998, 40–42; for cartographic sources from Mesopotamia see the overview of Millard 1987; for Egypt Shore 1987, for a comparative perspective on maps from the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome see the studies in Talbert 2012. 71  For studies and overviews of ancient artistic representations of Mesopotamian settlements, urban features and house architecture see Bretschneider 1991; Heinrich 1957; Miglus 1999, 231 ff.; Muller 2009; Porada 1967. For an analysis of Mesopotamian architecture in terms of spatial concepts see Winter 1991. 72 For plans of houses on cuneiform tablets see the overview in Miglus 1999, 217ff.; Abrahami 2009a–b with literature; for a depiction of a courtyard house see e.g. McCown / Haines / Hansen 1967, pl. 52.

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colossi at the gate (fig. 6 and Barnett et al. 1976, pls. 23 [Room H] and 25 [Room I]). Descriptions of the cities’ layouts and topographical features are preserved in numerous cuneiform texts which reflect the mental maps of the urban residents.73 5. Conclusions It has often been suggested that the spatial organisation of the ancient Near Eastern cities reflects the political organisation of the society, as non-democratic and not publicly oriented, in opposition to the Greek and Roman self-governed urban communities.74 Nonetheless, the research reveals that ancient city plans display traditional features inherent to a particular culture and do not necessarily reflect diachronic changes in political structure. Moreover, Baker points out that, according to the excavator’s soundings, the main streets in the Merkes area of Babylon during the first millennium bce preserve the course of their Old Babylonian forebears (Baker, this volume). Not only the spatial arrangement of the age-old Mesopotamian cities reveals traditionalism characteristic of this civilisation, but in Classical Antiquity political transformations did not cause radical alterations in traditional architectural forms of organisation of urban public spaces. Thus, such a typical feature of Greek civilisation as a theatre, when introduced in Babylonia by the Seleucids, served as a place of assembly as well (Baker 2009, 96 and van der Spek 2001). Nonetheless, Babylonian cities were not organised as Greek poleis under Hellenistic rulers, and the introduction of this architectural innovation into the traditional Mesopotamian milieu reflected cultural rather than political change. Both in the ancient Near East and in the Classical world the functions of these public spaces could evolve. It seems promising to continue to investigate in a comparative fashion the ways in which public spaces evolved in different societies. Thus, it has to be further explored to which extent the limited existence of public spaces for communal assemblies in the Near East reflects a society based on personalised patrimonialism (cf. Lehner 2000; Schloen 2001). Similarly, studies are needed to assess whether the development of public spaces and communal institutions in Greece 73 Many of them have been assembled and brilliantly analysed by Andrew George (1992) in order to reconstruct the topography of Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities. For the mental maps of the universe in Mesopotamia see Horowitz 1998. 74 See Liverani 1997 for an overview of the related literature.



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reflects a transformation from a society based on kinship towards one based on territoriality (Bengs 1997, 21f.), or towards a growing complexity of social and political organisation, based on class and a rationalised state (Anian 2007, 167f.; Knappett 2009).75 From the very start, the layout of ancient Near Eastern cities was architecturally not suited for public functions. Unlike the Greek and Roman cities, they initially lacked preconceived spaces for markets, processions, performances, assembly, and so forth, because these functions were nonexistent or minimal at the dawn of urbanisation. Later on spaces in the public domain, such as streets and gates, were adapted to accommodate these functions without changing their architectural form. The traditional form of the city did not always change to suit political, economic or social change. Thus, city plans can preserve a degree of conservatism and traditionalism despite political changes, and do not mirror a contrast between different political systems in a simple manner. Imperialistic tendencies can influence the development of the cities in the same way regardless of the fact that they occur in democratic and autocratic states. Similarities between ancient and recent Near Eastern urban form and structures do not necessarily imply corresponding social patterns. Similarity or diversity in the forms of buildings or city layouts does not inevitably point to similar or diverse functions, and city form did not adjust to the political and social structure. Summing up, the following chapters demonstrate not only the need for more archaeological data to fill the gaps in the current state of knowledge of cities and their internal structure in relation to socio-political organisation. They also point out that textual, archaeological and iconographic sources have to be integrated to be able to study cities within their wider social and cultural context, and to evaluate cross-cultural analogies. Abbreviations CAD The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Oriental Institute, 1956–2010. DNP Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, editors. Der Neue Pauly. 18 volumes. Stuttgart, 1996–2003. ETCSL Electronic corpus of Sumerian literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk).

75 Note that the term agora and the existence of large open spaces for public assemblies is attested in Cretan settlements and in colonies of Greek settlers already in the seventh and sixth centuries bce (Sjögren 2007, 154f.; Anian 2007, 167f.).

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City in the Greek World: Studies of Urbanism from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period, Oxford, 108–117. Gutkind, Peter C. W. (1974), Urban Anthropology: Perspectives on Third World Urbanisation and Urbanism, Assen. Hammond, Mason (1972), The City in the Ancient World. Cambridge, Mass. Hansen, Mogens H. (ed.) (2000), A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre, Copenhagen. —— (2002), A Comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures, Copenhagen. —— (2006), Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State, Oxford. —— (2008), “Analyzing Cities”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 67–76. Heinrich, Ernst (1957), Bauwerke in der altsumerischen Bildkunst, Wiesbaden. Heinz, Marlies (1997), Der Stadtplan als Spiegel der Gesellschaft. Siedlungsstrukturen in Meso­potamien als Indikator für Formen wirtschaftlicher und sozialer Organisation, Berlin. Herzog, Ze’ev (1997), Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and Its Social Implications, Tel Aviv. Hirth, Kenneth G. (2008), “Incidental Urbanism: The Structure of the Prehispanic City in Central Mexico”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 273–294. Hodder, Ian (1982a), “Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view”, in: Ian Hodder (ed.), Symbolic and structural archaeology, Cambridge, 1–16. —— (1982b), Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies in Material Culture, Cambridge. Horowitz, Wayne B. (1998), Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Mesopotamian Civilizations 8. Winona Lake. Jursa, Michael (2010), Aspects of the economic history of Babylonia in the first millennium BC. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 377, Münster. Kallet, Lisa (2005), “Wealth, Power, and Prestige”, in: Jenifer Neils (ed.), The Parthenon from Antiquity to Present, Cambridge, 35–66. Källtorp, Ove / Elander, Ingemar / Ericsson, Ove / Franzen, Mats (eds.) (1997), Cities in Transformation—Transformation in Cities: Social and Symbolic Change of Urban Space, Aldershot, England. Keith, Kathryn (2003), “The Spatial Patterns of Everyday Life in Old Babylonian Neighborhoods”, in: Monica L. Smith (ed.), The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, Washington / London 56–80. Kemp, Barry J. (1972), “Temple and Town in Ancient Egypt”, in: Peter J. Ucko / Ruth Tringham / Geoffrey W. Dimbleby (eds.), Man, settlement and urbanism. Proceedings of a Meeting of the Research Seminar in Archaeology and Related Subjects held at the Institute of Archaeology, London, 657–680. Kent, Susan (1987), “Parts as Wholes: A Critique of Theory in Archaeology”, in: Susan Kent (ed.), Method and Theory for Activity Area Research. An Ethnoarchaeological Approach, New York, 513–546. —— (ed.) (1990), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An interdisciplinary CrossCultural Study, New York. Kinnier Wilson, James V. (1972), The Nimrud Wine Lists. A Study of Men and Administration at the Assyrian Capital in the Eighth Century, B.C. Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud 1, London. Kleber, Kristin (2010), “The Eanna archive in the years 14–23 Nbk and 2–11 Nbn”, in: Michael Jursa, Aspects of the economic history of Babylonia in the first millennium BC. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 377, Münster 540–594. Knappett, Carl (2009), “Scaling up: From Household to State in Bronze Age Crete”, in: Sarah Owen / Laura Preston (eds.), Inside the City in the Greek World: Studies of Urbanism from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period, Oxford, 14–26. Knox, Paul L. (1995), “World Cities in a World-System”, in: Paul L. Knox / Peter J. Taylor (eds.), World Cities in a World-System, Cambridge, 3–20.

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Koltsida, Aikaterini (2007), “Domestic space and gender roles in ancient Egyptian village households: a view from Amarna’s workmen’s village and Deir el-Medina”, in: Ruth Westgate/ Nick Fisher / James Whitley (eds.), Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond, London, 121–127. Kostoff, Spiro (1985), A History of Architecture, Oxford. —— (1991), The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings through History, Boston. Krafeld-Daugherty, Maria (1994), Wohnen im Alten Orient. Eine Untersuchung zur Verwendung von Räumen in altorientalischen Wohnhäusern, Münster. Kühne, Hartmut (2000), “The ‘Red House’ of the Assyrian Provincial Center of DurKatlimmu”, in Paolo Matthiae / Alessandra Enea / Luca Peyronel / Frances Pinnock (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Rome, 761–769. Lagopoulos, Alexandros (1986a), “Semiotic urban models and modes of production: a socio-semiotic approach”, in: Mark Gottdiener / Alexandros Lagopoulos (eds.), The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, 176–201. —— (1986b), “Semiological urbanism: An analysis of the traditional western Sudanese settlement”, in: Mark Gottdiener / Alexandros Lagopoulos (eds.), The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, 259–287. Layard, Henry Austin (1853), The Monuments of Nineveh from Drawings Made on the Spot. London. Lefebvre, Henri (1991) [1974], The Production of Space, Oxford. Lehner, Mark (2000), “The Fractal House of Pharaoh: Ancient Egypt as a Complex Adaptive System, a Trial Formulation”, in: Timothy A. Kohler / George J. Gumeran (eds.), Dynamics in Human and Primate Societies, New York, 275–354. Liverani, Mario (1997), “The ancient Near Eastern city and modern ideologies”, in: Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch. Saarbrücken, 85–107. Low, Setha M. / Lawrence-Zúñiga, Denise (eds.) (2003), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, Malden, MA / Oxford / Carlton. Löw, Martina (2008), Soziologie der Städte, Frankfurt am Main. Luckenbill Daniel D. (1924), The Annals of Sennacherib, Oriental Institute Publications 2. Chicago. Lynch, Kevin (1960), The Image of the City, Cambridge, Mass. / London. Maran, Joseph / Juwig, Carsten / Schwengel, Hermann / Thaler, Ulrich (eds.) (2006), Constructing Power: Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice / Konstruktion der Macht: Architektur, Ideologie und soziales Handeln, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft 19, Hamburg. Marcus, Joyce / Sabloff, Jeremy A. (2008), “Introduction”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 3–20. McCown, Donald E. / Haines, Richard C. / Hansen, Donald P. (1967), Nippur: Excavations of the Joint Expedition to Nippur of the University Museum of Philadelphia and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. Melvin, David P. (2010), “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in the Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1–11”, in: The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 10, Article 17. http://www.jhsonline.org (accessed 27/05/2012). Micale, Maria G. / Nadali, Davide (2004), “The Shape of Sennacherib’s Camps: Strategic Functions and Ideological Space”, in: Iraq 66. Nineveh. Papers of the 49th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Part One, 163–175. Miglus, Peter (1999), Städtische Wohnarchitektur in Babylonien und Assyrien, Baghdader Forschungen 22, Mainz am Rhein. Millard, Alan R. (1987), “Cartography in the Ancient Near East”, in: J. Brian Harley / David Woodward (eds.), Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. The History of Cartography Volume 1, Chicago, London, 106–116.



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Morris, Anthony E. J. (1994), History of Urban Form. Before the Industrial Revolutions. Third Edition. Harlow / New York. Muller, Béatrice (2009), “ ‘La maison dans l’iconographie’ and ‘La maison dans les basreliefs’ ”, in: Laura Battini (ed.), Maisons urbaines au Proche-Orient ancient. Construire, vivre et mourir dans la maison. Dossiers d’Archéologie 332, 48–53. Mumford, Lewis (1961), The City in History. Its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. New York. Nevett, Lisa (2007), “Greek houses as a source of evidence for social relations”, in: Ruth Westgate / Nick Fisher / James Whitley (eds.), Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond, London, 5–10. Novák, Mirko (1999), Herrschaftsformen und Stadtbaukunst. Programmatik im mesopotamischen Residenzstadtbau von Agade bis Suraman ra’ā, Saarbrücken. Oppenheim, A. Leo (1969), “Mesopotamia-Land of Many Cities”, in: Ira M. Lapidus (ed.), Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism. Berkeley, 3–18. Orum, Anthony M. / Chen, Xiangming (2003), The World of Cities: Places in Comparative and Historical Perspective, Malden, MA. Owen, Sarah / Preston, Laura (2009), “Introduction: Inside the City in the Greek World”, in: Sarah Owen / Laura Preston (eds.), Inside the City in the Greek World: Studies of Urbanism from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period, Oxford, 1–13. Pfälzner, Peter (2001), Haus und Haushalt. Wohnformen des dritten Jahrtausends vor Christus in Nordmesopotamien, Mainz am Rhein. —— (2008), “Das Tempeloval von Urkeš. Betrachtungen zur Typologie und Entwicklungsgeschichte der mesopotamischen Ziqqurat im 3. Jt. v. Chr.”, in: Zeitschrift für OrientArchäologie 1, 396–433. Place, Victor (1867), Ninive et l’Assyrie, Volume 3: Planches. Paris. Pongratz-Leisten, Beate (1994), Ina šulmi īrub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Baghdader Forschungen 16, Mainz. Porada, Edith (1967), “Battlements in the Military Architecture and in the Symbolism of the Ancient Near East”, in: Douglas Fraser / Howard Hibbard / Milton J. Lewine (eds.), Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, New York, 1–10. Postgate, J. Nicholas (1990), “Archaeology and the Texts—Bridging the Gap”, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde 80, 228–240. Pucci, Marina (2006), “Enclosing Open Spaces: The Organisation of External Areas in SyroHittite Architecture”, in: Joseph Maran / Carsten Juwig / Hermann Schwengel / Ulrich Thaler (eds.), Constructing Power: Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice / Konstruktion der Macht: Architektur, Ideologie und soziales Handeln, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft 19, Hamburg, 169–184. Rapoport, Amos (1969), House Form and Culture, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. —— (1990), “Systems of Activities and Systems of Settings”; in: Susan Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and Use of Space, Cambridge, 9–20. Renfrew, Colin (1975), “Trade as Action at a Distance: Questions of Integration and Communication”, in: Jeremy A. Sabloff / Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (eds.), Ancient Civilization and Trade, Albuquerque, 3–60. —— (1979), “Transformations”, in: Colin Renfrew / Kenneth L. Cooke (eds.), Transformations: Mathematical Approaches to Culture Change, New York, 3–44. —— (1986), “Introduction”, in: Colin Renfrew / John F. Cherry (eds.), Peer-Polity Interaction and Socio-political Change, Cambridge, 1–18. —— (2008), “The City through Time and Space. Transformations of Centrality”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 29–51. Renger, Johannes (1984), “Patterns of Non-institutional Trade and Non-commercial Exchange in Ancient Mesopotamia at the Beginning of the Second Millennium B.C.”,

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in: Alfonso Archi (ed.), Circulation of Goods in Non-Palatial Context in the Ancient Near East, Roma, 31–124. Roddy, Nicolae (2008), “Landscapes of Shadows: The Image of City in the Hebrew Bible”, in: Rami Arav (ed.), Cities through the looking-glass: essays on the history and archaeology of Biblical urbanism, Winona Lake, Indiana, 11–21. Rouault, Olivier, (1977), Mukannišum. L’administration et l’économie palatiales à Mari, Archives Royales de Mari XVIII, Paris. Sabloff, Jeremy A. (1986), “Interaction among Classic Maya Polities: A Preliminary Examination”, in: Colin Renfrew / John F. Cherry (eds.), Peer-Polity Interaction and Socio-political Change, Cambridge, 109–116. Schloen, J. David (2001), The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East, Winona Lake, Indiana. Shaw, Ian (1992), “Ideal Homes in Ancient Egypt: the Archaeology of Social Aspiration”, in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2(2), 147–166. Shore, Arthur Frank (1987), “Egyptian Cartography”, in: J. Brian Harley / David Woodward (eds.), Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. The History of Cartography Volume 1, Chicago, London, 117–129. Sjoberg, Gideon (1960), The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. Glencoe, Illinois. Sjögren, Lena (2007), “Interpreting Cretan Private and Communal Spaces (800–500 BC)”, in: Ruth Westgate/ Nick Fisher / James Whitley (eds.), Building Communities: House, Settlement and Society in the Aegean and Beyond, London, 149–155. Smith, Michael E. (2002), “The Earliest Cities”, in: Robert Gmelch / Walter P. Zenner (eds.), Urban Life. Readings in the Anthropology of the City. 4th edition. Prospect Heights, Illinois, 3–19. —— (2010), “The archaeological study of neighborhoods and districts in ancient cities”, in: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29/2, 137–154. Smith, Monica L. (ed.) (2003), The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, Washington / London. Snodgrass, Anthony (1986), “Interaction by Design: The Greek City State”, in: Colin Renfrew / John F. Cherry (eds.), Peer-Polity Interaction and Socio-political Change, Cambridge, 47–58. Soja, Edward W. (2000), Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions, Oxford. Southall, Aidan W. (1973), “The Density of Role-Relationships as a Universal Index of Urbanization”, in: Aidan W. Southall (ed.), Urban Anthropology: Studies of Urbanization, New York, 71–106. Steinert, Ulrike (2011), “Akkadian Terms for Streets and the Topography of Mesopotamian Cities”, in: Altorientalische Forschungen 38, 309–347. Stone, Elizabeth C. (1981), “Texts, Architecture, and Ethnographic Analogy: Patterns of Residence in Old Babylonian Nippur”, in: Iraq 43, 19–34. —— (1987), Nippur Neighborhoods. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 44, Chicago. —— (1991), “The Spacial Organization of Mesopotamian Cities”, in: Aula Orientalis 9, 235–242. —— (1995), “The Development of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Jack M. Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, New York, 235–248. —— (1996), “Houses, Households and Neighborhoods in the Old Babylonian Period: The Role of Extended Families”, in: Klaas R. Veenhof (ed.), Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia. Papers read at the 40th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, July 5–8, 1993. Leiden, 229–236. —— (1999), “The Constraints on State and Urban Form in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Michael Hudson, / Baruch Levine (eds.), Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East, Cambridge, 203–227. —— (2005), “Mesopotamian Cities and Countryside”, in: Daniel C. Snell (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 141–154. —— (2008), “A Tale of Two Cities. Lowland Mesopotamia and Highland Anatolia”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 141–164.



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Stone, Elizabeth C. / Zimansky, Paul E. (2004), The Anatomy of a Mesopotamian City: Survey and Soundings at Mashkan-shapir, Winona Lake, Indiana. Talbert, Richard J.A. (2012), Ancient Perspectives. Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, Chicago. Talon, Philippe (2005), The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth Enuma Elish, State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts 4, Helsinki. Tonkiss, Fran (2005), Space, the city and social theory: social relations and urban forms, Cambridge. Trigger, Bruce R. (1972), “Determinants of urban growth in pre-industrial societies”, in: Peter J. Ucko / Ruth Tringham / Geoffrey W. Dimbleby (eds.), Man, settlement and urbanism. Proceedings of a Meeting of the Research Seminar in Archaeology and Related Subjects held at the Institute of Archaeology, London, 575–599. —— (2003), Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study, Cambridge. van de Mieroop, Marc (1992), Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur, Berlin. —— (1997), The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Oxford. —— (2003), “Reading Babylon”, in American Journal of Archaeology 107, 257–275. van der Spek, Robartus J. (2001), “The Theatre of Babylon in Cuneiform”, in: Wilfred H. van Soldt (ed.), Veenhof Anniversary Volume. Studies Presented to Klass R. Veenhof on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Istanbul, 445–456. Uphill, Eric (2008), Egyptian Towns and Cities, Oxford. Weber, Max (1958), The City. Translated and Edited by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth, New York / London. Wheatley, Paul (1971), The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City, Chicago. Wilcke, Claus (2007), “Markt und Arbeit im Alten Orient am Ende des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr.”, in: Wolfgang Reinhard / Justin Stagl (eds.), Menschen und Märkte. Studien zur historischen Wirtschaftsanthropologie. Historische Anthropologie 9, Wien, 71–132. Williams, Paul A. (2008), “Gospel Cities: Real, Imagined, and Avoided”, in: Rami Arav (ed.), Cities through the looking-glass: essays on the history and archaeology of Biblical urbanism, Winona Lake, Indiana, 23–37. Winter, Irene J. (1991), “Reading concepts of space from ancient Mesopotamian monuments”, in: Kapila Vatsyayan (ed.), Concepts of space: ancient and modern, New Delhi, 57–73. Wirth, Eugen (1975), “Die orientalische Stadt: Ein Überblick aufgrund jüngerer Forschungen zur materiellen Kultur”, in: Saeculum 26, 45–94. —— (1991), “Zur Konzeption der orientalisch-islamischen Stadt. Privatheit im islamischen Orient versus Öffentlichkeit in Antike und Okzident”, in: Die Welt des Islams 31, 50–92. —— (1997), “Kontinuität und Wandel der Orientalischen Stadt”; in: Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch, Saarbrücken, 1–44. Wirth, Louis (1938), “Urbanism as a Way of Life”, in: American Journal of Sociology 44 (1), 1–24. Wolf, Eric R. (1966), Peasants, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Wright, James C. (2006), “The Social Production of Space and the Architectural Reproduction of Society in the Bronze Age Aegean during the 2nd Millennium B.C.E.”, in: Joseph Maran / Carsten Juwig / Hermann Schwengel / Ulrich Thaler (eds.), Constructing Power: Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice / Konstruktion der Macht: Architektur, Ideologie und soziales Handeln, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft 19, Hamburg, 49–74. Yoffee, Norman (2005), Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations, Cambridge. Yon, Marguerite (2006), The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra, Winona Lake, Indiana. Zucker, Paul (1959), Town and Square. From the Agora to the Village Green, New York.

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Fig. 1. Plan of Dur-Sharruken (inaugurated in 706 bce). After Place (1867, pl. 2).

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Fig. 2. Plan of Samaria (9th? century bce). After Crowfoot (1942, pl. II).

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Fig. 3. Neo-Assyrian Camp. Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 bce) at Kalhu. After Layard (1853, pl. 30).

Fig. 4. Neo-Assyrian Camp. Palace of Sargon II (721?–705 bce) at Dur-Sharrruken, room 14. After Botta and Flandin (1849, pl. 146).



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Fig. 5. Throne Room Courtyard. Palace of Sargon II (721?–705 bce) at Dur-Sharrruken. After Place (1867: pl. 7).

Fig. 6. Elevation of a besieged city. Palace of Sargon II (721?–705 bce) at DurSharruken, room 2. After Botta and Flandin (1849, pl. 55).

The Cost of Cosmogony: Ethical Reflections on Resource Extraction, Monumental Architecture and Urbanism in the Sumerian Literary Tradition J. Cale Johnson1 Imperialistic expansions (and the cosmogonic beliefs that go along with them) are generally built on the dead bodies of both their woebegone enemies and a certain part of their own populace. The last few years have witnessed a flurry of publications on the means that Mesopotamian societies adopted in order to represent these acts of state violence and calibrate them with state-oriented cosmogonies of one kind or another.2 In contrast to these discussions of the representation of warfare and death in the ancient Near East, I would like to root my own discussion of warfare (and in particular its role in the acquisition of raw materials) in the theoretical matrix provided by Bruce Lincoln’s work on cosmogony, urbanism, the ethics of kingship, and royal embodiment. Lincoln’s work continually stresses that the cosmogony and the ethics of the state are deeply intertwined:3 the ritual, political and military activities of the 1  I would like to thank Robert K. Englund, Jerrold Cooper and Jean-Jacques Glassner as well as the editors of this volume for feedback and corrections to an earlier draft. I would also like to thank the TOPOI project (research group D-III-2) for supporting this work. All remaining errors and infelicities are entirely my own. Please send feedback to jcale@ zedat.fu-berlin.de. 2 Bahrani 2008; Noegel 2007; Richardson 2007 and the papers in Porter 2005. 3 Lincoln 1986; 1999; 2007. Zainab Bahrani (2008, 10–13) does take a first step toward integrating the cosmogonic dimension of state-sponsored violence into larger discussions of just war theory, but largely in terms of visual culture. For recent comparative work on the legal aspects, see James Turner Johnson 2005, and for the history of international law in the ancient Near East, see the series of papers by Amnon Altman in Journal of the History of International Law between 2004 and 2010 (Altman 2004; 2005; 2008; 2009a; 2009b; 2010; these papers are collected in Altman 2012, non vidi); the topic is not dealt with substantially in Cohen and Westbrook 2000, but it is implicit in the extensive literature on international treaties. The language of “cosmogony” (cosmos creation and recreation) is used here in line with Lincoln’s work; cosmogonies necessarily both refer back to cosmological models and result in instantiated cosmologies, but in speaking of “cosmology” we generally presuppose a static model of the universe that does not require on-going maintenance and revivification. In order to avoid these presuppositions, I describe any activities of the ruler or the urban center that bring into being or maintain the cosmos as cosmogonic.

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king establish a zone in which both correct ritual practice (calibrating the micro- and the macrosocial as well as disjoint ontic realms) and just behavior (including both legal remedies against unjust behavior within this zone such as the Codex Hammurabi as well as models of just war against external enemies) are brought into being in opposition to the chaotic world outside the realm.4 But in addition (and here lies the specific importance of Lincoln’s framework as a whole), his work formulates three zones of signification in which this type of cosmos building and calibration takes place: “the individual human body or microcosm . . ., the macrocosm, or the universe writ large . . ., and the entity intermediate to individual and cosmos—the mesocosm, if you will—human society.”5 In this paper I focus on how the acquisition of raw materials for monumental architecture mediates between the macrocosm and the urban center as mesocosm; links between the microcosm of the ruler’s body and the universe as macrocosm were certainly present as well, but would direct us away from this volume’s theme. The best known example of this type of multimodal ritual/architectural/ mythical complex in Mesopotamia is the New Year Festival celebrated in the core cities of the Neo-Assyrian state. This ritual complex included all manner of cosmogonic significations from warfare and procession to ritual and the recitation of cosmogonic mythology (Enuma Elish) and, crucially, it brought into being a zone of cosmogonically rooted, ethical ordo that legitimated the military and other extractive activities of the Neo-Assyrian state.6 Similar complexes of ritual, architectural and military practice arose in each of the imperial centers in Mesopotamia as they sought to align the different zones of signification that were available to them: (i) the concrete, visible space of ritual and architecture, (ii) the cartographic 4 For the “ideological” side of the equation, see Pongratz-Leisten 2001; 2002; Wiggermann 1996; Liverani 2001a, 91–96 (“Conquest as a Cosmic Organization”). For the more practical aspects (no less ideological of course), see the discussion of “the central zone as model” in Michalowski 1987, particularly 64–67. The papers collected in Richardson 2010, though presumably germane to these issues, are not yet available to me. 5 Lincoln 1986, 4. For a recent treatment of the primary materials, see Badalanova 2008. The three spaces defined by Lincoln also fit very nicely into recent discussions of architecture, embodiment and various forms of power, see Meusburger 2008 and the case studies in Maran et al. 2009. 6 For recent papers that summarize major components of this ritual complex, see Pongratz-Leisten 1994; 1997; Weissert 1997; Maul 2000; Dick 2006; Zgoll 2006. For corresponding practices at the periphery and their motivating ideology, see Tadmor 1999; Shafer 2007. See Cancik-Kirschbaum and Johnson 2013 for a new model of how regular offerings to the temple of Assur in the Middle Assyrian period were used to map cultic festivals into the geographical horizon of the Middle Assyrian state.



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spaces defined by cities, regions and borders, and (iii) the cosmic spaces thought to mirror fields of activity within (i) and (ii). The particular aspect of these mappings that is of interest to me here is the seemingly trivial fact that, ideally, the raw materials for the architectural component of a given ritual complex (either a temple or a palace) were to be extracted from the periphery of the state through either direct military activities or the indirect use of force in diplomacy, including interstate trade. The iconic character of state-sponsored monumental architecture as a microcosm for the territorial state (viz. a mesocosm in Lincoln’s terminology) has been eloquently stated by Irene Winter in her seminal descriptions of the throne room of Assurnasirpal II: What we would then be presented with in both text and image is an articulation of the boundaries of the empire—implying not only the limits of the king’s territory, but what the boundaries enclose as well. The walls of the throneroom then both echo the limits of the empire and at the same time make the throneroom itself the symbolic “center,” creating a physical microcosm of the state.7

The iconism identified by Winter famously includes both the mirroring of word and image within the throne room (left-to-right word order matching left-to-right sequence within individual reliefs, epithets of the king in the standard inscription written on each wall slab matching the scenes depicted on certain reliefs within the room as a whole, with the physical presence of the king himself corresponding to the first person pronoun) and the iconic relation that holds between the space defined by the walls of the throne room as an architectural unit and the borders of the state. Winter does not focus in particular on the indexicality of the raw materials that were used in the construction of the throne room, namely the fact that these raw materials (including captive labor) were extracted at least in part through the actions depicted in word and image throughout the throne room. The indexical aspect of the “physical microcosm” of the throne room, however, is effected not only through the physical presence of the king, but also through the contiguous presence of the crafted raw materials (drawn from indexically registered points of origin throughout the length and breadth of the known world) that form the

7 Winter presents her understanding of the throne room, oriented to quite different audiences, in two well-known papers, Winter 1981 and Winter 1983, 24.

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throne room itself.8 In other words, the locales from which particular raw materials (and labor) were acquired are represented indexically (viz. signs that code their meaning through spatio-temporal contiguity) by their presence in the various elements of the throne room. Given the extensive role of indexicality in a monumental space such as the throne room of Assurnasirpal II, both in terms of the physical presence of the king and the physical origin of the materials that were used to build the throne room, it follows that one of the central pre-occupations of the Assyrian annals is the acquisition of booty during the campaign and the transportation of these materials back to the Assyrian heartland.9 Here, however, I focus on the extraction of raw materials for monumental building not in the well-known Assyrian texts—but rather in the Sumerian literature from the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium bce. Mario Liverani has pointed out the pervasive character of this theme throughout Mesopotamian history: The motif of the king who builds a palace or a temple in his capital city, using materials coming from the most varied and most remote countries (a motif running through the entirety of ancient Near Eastern history, from Gudea to Darius), tells us a story of universal rule, of a superior capacity to enforce the entire world to contribute to the unprecedented enterprise— thus demonstrating the king’s power and the gods’ support.10

8 The material indexicality of the reliefs (and the gestures associated with tributaries) has been emphasized by Cifarelli 1998. Bahrani (2008, 52–58 and 77–80) writes at some length of the indexical aspects of images of the king, but only alludes to the origin of building materials in passing (“[w]ritten accounts describe the importance of all the materials used, their place of origin, . . .”), 52. It should be kept in mind that Bahrani and other art historians generally link indexicality to agency in the particular sense of those terms used by Gell 1998, see Bahrani 2008, 79–80. For a reconsideration of Gell’s use of these terms, with particular reference to the “agency” of temples and the like, see Winter 2007. For a modern parallel to this use of material indexicality (as exemplified by holocaust memorials), see Marcuse 2010. 9 Marc van de Mieroop has noted that “in Assyria, royal building inscriptions, especially starting with those of Adad-nerari I (ca. 1300), provide the [relevant military] campaigns as a means of dating the construction: after the king had gone on campaigns in a sequence of years, he built a palace or temple. What may have been the primary purpose of the annalistic texts, [viz.] the commemoration of a construction, becomes almost an appendix to a long account of annual campaigns (van de Mieroop 1999, 26–7 citing Grayson 1980, 151–2). For a catalogue and discussion of the building materials described in the annals, see Lackenbacher 1982, especially 81–128. For a particularly insightful review of the connections between iconography and the role of military campaigns in the maintenance of the Neo-Assyrian cosmological state, see Bonatz 2005. 10 Liverani 2001b, 303.



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The essential feature of this trope is that the abilities of and divine favor toward a ruler are demonstrated in the acquisition of the necessary raw materials (through a well run military or effective diplomatic activities or both) as well as through specialized forms of knowledge (including everything from how to fashion metalwork to the correct rituals and incantations to be performed in opposition to a threatening lunar eclipse).11 This general theme is a constant throughout Mesopotamian history, but there is a brief moment in the later phases of Sumerian literary production in which the literati actually stop and recognize the human cost of extracting raw materials from foreign cities, namely in a passage from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (lines 115–120, below). The fact that Enmerkar is portrayed as genuinely concerned for the well-being of the populace of a foreign city, namely Aratta, represents something of an anomaly in the history of Mesopotamian thought. Though the avoidance of civilian casualties would normally constitute a question of jus in bellum “justifiable action in the course of warfare,” Enmerkar’s hesitation would also seem to call into question the traditional Mesopotamian theory of jus ad bellum, “justifications for going to war,” namely that the ruler is authorized by the chief deities to bring order to the known world through military force, where tribute to superordinate rulers as well as the embodiment of tribute and booty in the form of monumental architecture is seen as an essential component of this kind of cosmogonic activity.12 I argue that the authors of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, presumably working in the Ur III (ca. 2100–2000 bce) or the Isin-Larsa period (ca. 2000–1800 bce), are reflecting on the rule of the Sargonic Dynasty as represented in The Curse of Agade. This moment of ethical reflection (in the course of a literature that does not generally shed many tears for defeated enemies) is part of a specific literary tradition that extends from the Nippur clergy who wrote The Curse of Agade and perceived themselves as victims, real or imagined, of Sargonic imperialistic intervention and ritual impropriety under Naram-Sin to the authors of Enmerkar and the Lord 11  The role of skill, craft or wisdom in maintaining political rule and revivifying the cosmogonic order have been described in a wide range of approaches, including PongratzLeisten’s notion of Herrschaftswissen (Pongratz-Leisten 1999, cf. Lenzi 2008 and Glassner’s critique of Alan Lenzi in Glassner forthcoming), Mary Helms’ work on the role of geographical distance (Helms 1988; 1993) as well as Algaze’s application of World Systems Theory to the ancient Near East (Algaze 1989; 1993; 2005) as well as Englund’s critique in “An Examination of the ‘Textual’ Witnesses to Late Uruk World Systems” (Englund 2006). 12 Bahrani 2008, 11.

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of Aratta.13 Once this minority report was embedded within the Sumerian literary tradition, it continues to color the general opinion of figures such as Enmerkar in later traditions, even if the initial vehicle, namely Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, is not transmitted beyond the Old Babylonian period.14 This minority report then culminates in the rather odd characterization of Enmerkar that we find in The Cuthean Legend. As Piotr Michalowski puts it, “Writing in first person, Naram-Sin tells us that: ‘He [Enmerkar] did not inscribe a monument, and did not establish his name, and so I did not praise him.’ ”15 As emphasized by Michalowski, it is exceedingly strange that Enmerkar, credited with the invention of writing in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, is described as failing to leave behind a description of his heroic deeds for future kings. In my view, this characterization of Enmerkar stems from the anti-militaristic character of Enmerkar as a riddler and inventor and this anti-militaristic character is epitomized by his concern for civilian deaths in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, lines 115–120.16 Whatever the internal, literary history that leads from The Curse of Agade to Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and The Cuthean Legend might be, it highlights the dangerous position of the king: he is normally obligated to campaign in order to maintain the integrity of the state, expand the borders of the ordered cosmos, and acquire precious materials for monumental architecture, but at the same time, if the king fails in these efforts, the failure would be his alone (often rationalized as the result of an individual ruler’s sin or hubris).17 The Curse of Agade offers 13 That the Nippur clergy were victimized in this way is made fairly clear in The Curse of Agade, lines 129–130: {itima e2 u4 nu-zu-ba uĝ3-e igi i-ni-in-ĝar / urudašen ku3 diĝir-ree-ne-ke4 uriki igi i-ni-in-bar} “The people looked into the cella, a room which knows no daylight, Akkad looked at the holy vessels of the gods” (translation after Cooper 1983). 14 See the recent edition of the text in Mittermayer 2009. 15 Michalowski 1999, quote on 82; on the relevance of “establishing one’s name”, see below n. 17. 16 As Catherine Mittermayer’s review of the secondary literature makes clear, the reading of Enmerkar as a crafty anti-hero, more invested in solving riddles than slaying enemies, was already recognized in Maurice Lambert’s 1953 review of Samuel Kramer’s editio princeps (Mittermayer 2009, 1). Such a characterization also fits very nicely into the general themes of the Enmerkar epic as a whole such as the replacement of warfare with diplomacy and trade, see Vanstiphout 1995; 2003, 49–55; in speaking of the entire “Matter of Aratta”, Herman Vanstiphout notes that “[m]ilitary glory is spurned and even somewhat ridiculed in at least two of the poems [viz. Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdana and The Return of Lugalbanda]” (Vanstiphout 2003, 15 and n. 78), but all the more so in the technical and commercial (rather than military) competition that we find in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. 17 For the general model, see Altman 2004, particularly 167–168, although the theme is found throughout the Mesopotamian text-artifactual record from the sin of Lugalzagesi



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a cautionary tale of militaristic hubris (epitomized by the destruction and plunder of the Ekur temple), Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta reacts to the excessive militarism of Naram-Sin by positing an anti-hero in the form of the inventor of writing, crafty Enmerkar, and The Cuthean Legend then offers a rebuttal to Enmerkar’s insufficiently heroic character. 1. The Extraction of Raw Materials Motif Averbeck has recently described in considerable detail the building inscription traditions in the third and early second millennium bce, focusing in particular on the similarities between foundation inscriptions like The Cylinders of Gudea and the abbreviated version on the back of Gudea Statue B.18 The lines that describe the extraction of raw materials in The Cylinders of Gudea do not form a single block in the Gudea materials (as they will in later texts), but are instead interspersed with descriptions of how these materials were extracted, processed and delivered to Gudea. The first set of three materials ({ĝišeren-bi}, {ad gal-gal-bi} and {na gal-galbi}, lines 408, 420 and 427 below) are brought from the Cedar Mountain {kur ĝišeren-na} (line 405 = xv 19), while the second set (in lines 438–442 below) derives from “the copper mountains in the direction of Kimash” {ḫur-saĝ uruda-ke4 ki-maš-ta} (line 436 = xvi 15).

(Ukg. 16; Hirsch 1967; Powell 1996) to that of Sargon II (Tadmor et al. 1989; Talon 2005). The rituals meant to undo similar kinds of miasma are treated in Maul 2004. For an overview of the links between sin and sanction in Mesopotamia and the Hebrew Bible, see van der Toorn 1985, passim, although in light of recent publications such as Schwemer 2007 and Abusch / Schwemer 2011, new synthetic and comparative treatments are necessary. Two further volumes that seem to deal with this theme (Lämmerhirt 2010 and Schaudig 2013) were not available to me until recently (long after this paper was writtten) and I have not tried to integrate them into my argument in this paper. The standard proverbial exhortation to establish one’s name, which is typically conjoined with a call for humility before the gods, is dealt with in Greenspahn 1994 and Samet 2010, although both Frederick Greenspahn and Nili Samet omit certain indirect third millennium precursors from their discussions such as the visual representation of the deity Ningirsu on the Stele of Vultures and the figure in Gudea’s dream (Cyl A iv 14–15 = 101–102), both of which are formulated in positive terms vis-à-vis the deity rather than the negative and interrogative terms used vis-à-vis the human ruler. 18 Averbeck 2010. The volume in which Averbeck 2010 appears offers a more-or-less chronological survey of temple building in the ancient Near East and in combination with Lachenbacker 1982, we have fairly good descriptions of the social practice as a whole. For a broader perspective on temple building, craft and wisdom, see Van Leeuwen 2007.

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Gudea Cyl. A, xv 22, 34, xvi 6, 17–21 (= lines 408, 420, 427, 438–442): (408) ĝišeren-bi tun3 gal-e im-mi-ku5 / . . . (420) ad gal-gal-bi diri-diri-ga-bi / . . . (427) na gal-gal-bi lagab-ba mi-ni-de6 (408) As for its (the Cedar Mountain’s) cedars, he (Gudea) had them cut down with a big ax. . . . (420) As for its big beams, (they were) floating (downriver) . . . (427) As for its big stones, he brought them back in blocks. (438) uruda-bi gi-diri-ba mu-ni-ba-al / (439) lu2 e2 lugal-na du3-dam / (440) ensi2-ra ku3-sig17 kur-bi-ta / (441) saḫar-ba mu-na-tum5 / (442) gu3-de2-a ku3 ne-a kur-bi-ta mu-na-ta-e11-de3 (438) As for its copper, he had it dug out (and put) in baskets. (439) It was to the man who was to build the house of his king, (440a) (It was) to the Ensi (441) that they were bringing (440b) gold dust from the mountains. (442) (It was) to Gudea that they were bringing precious metals down from the mountains in this way.19

The discursive structure exemplified in this passage is an enumeration of distinct entities, each of which is newly topicalized in sequence.20 Thus {ĝišeren-bi} in line 408 (xv 22) introduces a new topic, “as for its cedars,” where “its” refers (indirectly) back to the Cedar Mountain, and then describes how these materials reached Gudea. Then a new topic is introduced in line 420 (xv 34) and the process repeats, enumerating each of the major types of raw building material in turn. For our purposes here, the crucial point is that these raw materials are extracted directly from the natural world rather than from the monumental architecture of some other urban center.21 In other words, Gudea correctly acquires the 19 Since the sources of the raw materials listed here are both inanimate ({kur ĝišeren-na} and {ḫur-saĝ uruda-ke4 ki-maš-ta} respectively), it comes as no surprise that these materials bear an inanimate possessive pronoun {*-bi} as part of the topicalization structure used to single out each type of raw material in sequence. We can be sure that this is the possessive pronoun rather than the demonstrative due to the fact that an earlier passage uses the same discursive structure as in our passage, but has {urudada-ni} “his/her copper”, presumably in reference to {dnin-zag-ga} in the preceding line (lines 397–398 = xv 11–12). Clearly all of these materials (both materials bearing the {*-bi} suffix as well as those bearing the {*-(a)ni} suffix) are coming from a great distance, so the distinction between {*-bi} and {*-(a)ni} cannot be in terms of proximity to speaker, as an interpretation of them as demonstratives would require. 20 For the correlation between enumeration as a literary technique and pragmatic phenomena such as topicalization, see Johnson 2010, particularly 132, n. 76. It might be argued that certain phrases like {ku₃ za-gin₃-bi} in the so-called Urukagina Lament = The Sin of Lugalzagesi (Ukg 16, see Cooper 1983, 248; Hirsch 1967; Powell 1996) are the earliest exemplars of the discursive structure that I am describing, but the {*-bi} suffix in these phrases is actually part of the archaic conjunction {*X Y-bi-da} in Sumerian and not the topicalization structure that we are looking at here; see Civil 2008. 21  We now have some limited administrative evidence for direct extraction of raw materials from the “natural” world, namely the mining of copper, as in line 438, see Lafont 1996 and the discussion of Bernard Lafont’s evidence in Englund 2006, 8–9.



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raw materials for the “new” temple of Ningirsu from a wide variety of distant places (presumably through some combination of direct extraction, military coercion and diplomacy), but does not admit to cannibalizing materials from a previous incarnation of Ningirsu’s temple or any other pre-existing temple. 2. Recycling the Ekur as a Sign of the Unheilsherrscher In opposition to the quintessential ruler Gudea and the idealized depiction of resource extraction and temple building that we find in The Gudea Cylinders, the great anti-hero of the Sumerian literary materials from the Old Babylonian period (at least according to one strand of tradition) is undoubtedly the legendary figure of Naram-Sin in The Curse of Agade.22 Whereas Gudea brought the raw materials for the temple that he would build from the edges of the known Mesopotamian universe, the clergy who want to condemn Naram-Sin in The Curse of Agade describe the raw materials that Naram-Sin uses to rebuild the Ekur temple in Nippur as essentially “recycled” from the previous incarnation of the temple rather than extracted from the periphery. Or rather, to be somewhat more precise, the disgruntled literati in question describe Naram-Sin extracting raw materials from the erstwhile Ekur temple and sending these materials off via boat for some unstated purpose, but we should probably see this as literary hyperbole meant to describe Naram-Sin recycling materials from the previous incarnation of the Ekur temple for the new version that he seeks to build.23 Moreover, it should be reiterated here that we have 22 See the edition in Cooper 1983 as well as the numerous divergent interpretations summarized in Cooper 1993; Liverani 1993; Michalowski 1999; Cooper 2001. 23 In making such a statement I am adopting an interpretation of the text in line with Edzard (1989), namely (i) the temple for which omens are requested in lines 94–97 is the Ekur temple in Nippur, (ii) the “word of the Ekur” in line 57 signifies the loss of divine favor for Naram-Sin, and (iii) the loss of divine favor is in response to a lack of explicit piety and temple building on the part of Naram-Sin in the preceding lines, cf. Cooper 1993, 17, n. 30. Cooper’s criticism of some earlier interpretations of The Curse of Agade are certainly well founded, particularly as presented in Cooper 2001, but ultimately I think Westenholz’s inference that “The Curse of Agade reflect[s] a misunderstanding of the initial demolition that had to be done before the reconstruction could begin” (Westenholz 1987, 28 apud Cooper 2001, 141) is nearly correct. Cooper goes on to criticize Aage Westenholz’s view, “. . . as if the experience of several millennia of mud brick construction had not made the reconstruction process obvious” (Cooper 2001, 141). But if we simply replace Westenholz’s “misunderstanding” with a term like “misrepresentation,” which neutralizes questions of authorial self-awareness, then we can argue that the author of The Curse of Agade is intentionally portraying Naram-Sin’s preliminary demolition as an unauthorized destruction of the Ekur temple. Such an interpretation annuls the extremely complicated discussions of historicity that have arisen around The Curse of Agade and refocuses the

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contemporary administrative documentation—from the site of the Ekur temple itself—indicating that Naram-Sin did actually begin the rebuilding process, even if it had to be completed by Sharkalisharri.24 The Curse of Agade, lines 136–141 (Cooper 1983, 56–57): (136) ku3-sig17-bi mi-si-IŠ-ra bi2-in-ak (137) ku3-babbar3-bi kušlu-ub2-kušlu-ub2 šir-ra bi2-in-ak25 (138) uruda-bi še maḫ DU-a-gen7 kar-ra bi2-in-si-si (139) ku3-bi ku3-dim2-e im-dim2-e (140) za-bi za-dim2-e im-dim2-e (141) uruda-bi simug im-tu11-be2 (136) As for its gold, he had it put in a strongbox, (137) As for its silver, he had it put in leather sacks, (138) As for its copper, he filled up the port with it as if he had delivered huge ears of barley, (139) As for its metal, the metalworkers were working it, (140) As for its stones, the lapidaries were working it. (141) As for its copper, the blacksmiths were hammering it.

Just as in the passage from The Gudea Cylinders dealt with above, this passage from The Curse of Agade makes use of the same topicalization structure, in which each raw material is topicalized and then followed by a

authorial intent on the theological question that motivates the entire text: Can a temporal ruler reconstruct the Ekur (an act that is cosmogonic to the core) without having received appropriate omens from Enlil? 24 Thus Westenholz 1987, 24–29. Steinkeller 1993 disagrees with Westenholz’s use of The Curse of Agade in his discussion of the archival records, but if work on the Ekur was interrupted for a period of time at the end of Naram-Sin’s reign and had to be completed by Sharkalisharri, such an interruption could have been easily misrepresented by disgruntled Nippur literati as Naram-Sin’s failure to receive appropriate omens, as depicted in The Curse of Agade lines 92–97. The interrupted reconstruction of the Ekur may well have left an open pit that may have reminded passers-by of a plundered temple or a mining operation, but we must still carefully distinguish between historical realities (rooted in contemporary documentation) and ideologically motivated “memories” that refer back to these realities; see primarily Glassner 1986, which is organized along these lines, as well as Cooper’s review (1992) and the subsequent discussions cited in the preceding footnotes. 25 The same construction in {kušlu-ub2.kušlu-ub2 šir ak} “to put in leather sacks” (translation Mittermayer 2009, 121) is also found in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (ELA), lines 124 and 196 in Mittermayer’s new edition. In ELA, however, a double object construction is used {((second object ku3-sig17)) u3-tu-da-ba ((first object kušlu-ub2.kušlu-ub2-šir)) a-ba-ni-inak} rather than the underlying “locative” construction attested in line 137 of The Curse of Agade. That the {a-} of {a-ba-ni-in-ak} is the prospective rather than a locative attached to {šir} is made clear by the variant in line 196: witness Vu (UET 6/1, 47 + UET 6/3, 497) vs. 17 has {u3-ba-ni-in-ak} rather than the {a-ba-ni-in-ak} in the other witnesses (Mittermayer 2009, 177), although it must be admitted that witness Vu may have miscopied the {u3-} from the following line (197) into this line (196) as evidenced by the fact that witness Vu omits the prospective from the verb in line 197 {ba-ni-in-us2}. Note as well the absence of a topicalization structure and the inversion of first and second objects in ELA.



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predicate that comments on its acquisition or manipulation. In these lines from The Curse of Agade we see Gudea’s idealized practice of extracting resources from “natural” sources parodied and inverted through a reanalysis of the possessive pronouns that form the topicalization structure at the beginning of each line. As we have seen above, the possessive pronouns that formed the topicalization structures in the passage from The Gudea Cylinders referred to the particular geographical sites from which the raw materials were extracted, so that the {*-bi} in {uruda-bi} in line 438 (xvi 17) of The Gudea Cylinders refers to “the copper mountains in the direction of Kimash” {ḫur-saĝ uruda-ke4 ki-maš-ta} (line 436 = xvi 15). Here in The Curse of Agade, however, Naram-Sin extracts the raw materials from the old Ekur temple and the possessive pronouns that form the topicalization pattern refer to the Ekur temple itself.26 One could possibly go so far as to say that these pronouns refer to the once and future temple, namely to both the old temple that Naram-Sin is tearing down as well as the new temple that he plans on building, but from the point of view of the author of The Curse of Agade, the possessive pronouns that form the topicalization structures in lines 130–141 refer to the only legitimate instantiation of the Ekur temple, namely the Ekur temple that Naram-Sin is demolishing in preparation for its reconstruction. If we understand the source of the raw materials that Naram-Sin will use to rebuild the Ekur temple to be the old Ekur temple, then a number of otherwise incongruous features of The Curse of Agade seem to fall into place, particularly in opposition to the idealized scenario in The Gudea Cylinders. The distant land {kur} that one might have expected as the source of these materials is replaced by the nearly homophonous Ekur temple {e2-kur}, and plays on the widespread use of {kur} “mountain” as a metaphor for the temple.27 26 Part of the interpretive difficulty here lies in lines 134–135, which immediately precede the passage we are looking at here. Cooper renders these lines as follows: {ĝišeren ĝiššu-ur2-min3 ĝišza-ba-lum ĝištaskarin / ĝiš gi-gun4-na-be2-eš KUM ba-an-sur-sur}, “The cedar, cypress, juniper, and boxwood, / Woods for its giguna, he . . .” (Cooper 1983, 57). Mark Geller has suggested (personal communication) the possibility that line 135 could be read as {ĝiš gi-gun4-na-bi zi3-kum ba-an-sur-sur}. If {ba-an-} represents a reduced form of the *bani- prefix before a zero pronoun, the construction as a whole can be seen as a straightforward example of the double object construction: {((first object ĝiš gi-gun4-na-bi)) ((second object zi2-kum)) ba-an-sur-sur}, “(The cedar, cypress, juniper and boxwood) / as for the giguna (made from these) trees, it was scattered like isqūqu flour,” where the isqūqu/ zì.kum flour is actually meant to represent the broken bits of wood and sawdust from the trees that originally formed the giguna. For the ordinary state of the trees that form the giguna, see Enki and the World Order, lines 204 and 207. 27 See George 1992, passim.

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Fig. 1. Reverse of SF 76 (copied by Wiggermann 1996, 228, fig. 2). Wiggermann describes it as follows: “In the centre of the inhabited world, represented by four times the sign {ašagx} (GANA2), “field,” lies {kur} “mountain,” undoubtedly referring to the city of Nippur and the Ekur, “Mountain House,” whence Enlil, surnamed the “Great Mountain” ({dkur-gal}), rules his human subjects. The community of mankind, effectively ordered, is outlined on the other side of the tablet by means of the list of professional names.”28

It is only on the basis of this underlying pun that the older instantiation of the Ekur temple can act as the referent of the possessive pronouns.29 This is not a matter of historical reality per se (Naram-Sin only demolishes the old temple in preparation for its reconstruction and all kings presumably indulged in some recycling of raw materials), but rather of a literary hyperbole that is used to reinterpret Naram-Sin’s behavior as inappropriate, unsanctioned by the gods, and ultimately as actions typical of an Unheilsherrscher. It should be reiterated that the characterization of Naram-Sin as an Unheilsherrscher is not simply a matter of him being unlucky or lacking in 28 Quote from Wiggermann 1996, 208–209. Given the fact that rivers are represented by snakes in Sumerian mythology, there may be a connection between the rivers that form the edge of the known universe in this cosmological map and the knotted snakes that decorate at least one other example of Archaic Lu2 A, namely SF 75. For the history of Archaic Lu2 A, see Englund 1998, especially 86–92 and 103–106. There are also some precursors to this iconographic tradition among the seals from Archaic Ur republished in Matthews 1993 such as figures 12–16, nos. 6, 8, 10, 11, but particularly on the right side of no. 12 as well as nos. 25, 29, 31 and 33 (almost all dating to Seal Inscription Strata (SIS) 4, ca. 2800 bce, see Matthews 1993 for a detailed discussion). 29 For the trope here as an example of “the sameness of the signifier mask[ing] a difference of the signified,” see Pucci 1982, 48, apud Winter 1995, 257.



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divine favor. The Unheilsherrscher is cursed not because of the existence of a negative omen per se, which presumably could have been ameliorated in some way, but rather because he fails to react to negative omens in a ritually and legally appropriate way.30 This failure on the part of NaramSin is particularly clear in how he reacts to the ominous dream that he sees in lines 55 through 85. In the dream Naram-Sin imagines the withdrawal of divine favor and its consequences for the city of Akkade, that “its future was altogether unfavorable, that its temples would be shaken and its stores scattered,” in Jerrold Cooper’s translation of lines 84–85.31 The text notes very clearly that “this is what Naram-Sin saw in a dream,”32 but Naram-Sin’s reaction to the ominous dream is characteristic of an Unheilsherrscher: “he understood it (= the dream), but would not articulate it, nor would he talk with anyone about it.”33 Naram-Sin’s reaction contrasts quite unfavorably with the idealized reaction of a proper Heilsherrscher like Gudea, who states in reaction to his own dream, “I do not understand the meaning of what came to me in my nocturnal vision,

30 Mesopotamian omens are often misunderstood as signs of an inevitable future, but this is almost never the case; there are remedies and the contrast between Heilsherrscher and Unheilsherrscher is largely a function of whether or not a given ruler seeks out these remedies from the ritual specialists or not. This aspect is unspecified and perhaps even absent from Hans Güterbock’s original discussion (Güterbock 1934, especially 15–16 and 75–76, and Güterbock 1938). The role of the king’s own behavior, in general terms, is emphasized by Jacob J. Finkelstein: in speaking of Gurney’s translation of Unheilsherrscher as “ill-fated,” Finkelstein writes that “this translation does not convey the element of the king’s own instrumentality in bringing about the misfortune (by real or alleged misdeeds) which is definitely implied in the German term” (Finkelstein 1963, 467, n. 23). The role of the ritual procedures in ameliorating such situations is made abundantly clear, however, in Maul’s well-known collection of Namburbi materials (Maul 1994). Although Güterbock’s argument was based primarily the so-called Weidner Chronicle, which is now known to be a didactic letter rather than an actual chronicle (al-Rawi 1990; Cancik-Kirschbaum 2009, 14–15), the general theme of the Unheilsherrscher is a regular feature of various late genres associated with the narû literature. Michael Haul’s re-edition of the narû materials (Haul 2009), however, does not seem to touch on the issue. 31  See Johnson 2011, 153, n. 4, “It is Naram-Sin’s vision of an Agade lacking divine favor that pushes him to rebuild the Ekur and—lacking positive omens to proceed—Naram-Sin’s act of hubris in rebuilding the temple without divine approval. The irony, of course, is that the image of the absence of divine favor in the dream propels Naram-Sin down a pathway that leads, precisely, to the absence of divine favor.” 32 {dna-ra-am-dsuen-e maš2-ĝe6-ka igi ba-ni-in-du8-a} (line 86). 33 {ša3-ga-ni-še3 mu-un-zu eme-na nu-um-ĝa2-ĝa2 lu2-da nu-mu-un-da-ab-be2} (line 87). For the grammatical structure at work in line 86, see Johnson 2010, 102, n. 57. For the special role of dreams in elucidating a ruler’s secret or unknown sins as well as the use of penitential prayers (šigû) in counteracting ominous dreams, see van der Toorn 1985, 97, 120 and 125, but in particular 91 and n. 482.

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so I will bring my dream to my mother (for interpretation).”34 In other words, when a ruler experiences an omen of some kind, he is expected to make it known to his advisors and to endure whatever ritual prescriptions they propose rather than keeping it to himself.35 Given the impropriety of Naram-Sin’s reaction to his ominous dream (and the role of his inappropriate reaction in his own downfall), it is entirely appropriate that he becomes the central figure in the short historiola that first appears in the Old Babylonian proverb collections, but eventually becomes the opening lines of The Assyrian Dream Book in the first millennium bce: “O Sisig/ Zaqiqu! I (= Shamash) sent you to Akkad.”36 While framed in The Curse of Agade itself as a case of cultic infelicity (Naram-Sin’s demolition of the Ekur without the benefit of the proper omens or divinely inspired dreams, interpreted as an act of hubris vis-à-vis the gods), the underlying problem with Naram-Sin that the authors of this passage wish to critique is presumably his failure to appease the clergy in charge of the Ekur temple. It has often been suggested that the hostility of the clergy was ethnically or culturally motivated, and that the primary reason for their negative portrayal of Naram-Sin was, simply put, that he was not a Sumerian.37 I suspect, however, that the real cause of the

34 {niĝ2 maš-ĝe6-ke2 ma-ab-de6-a-ĝa2 / ša3-bi nu-zu / ama-ĝu10 ma-mu-ĝu10 ga-na-tum2} (Cyl. A i 27–29). 35 As noted by Cooper (1985, 33–39), the trope of an unspoken negative omen, seen in a dream and leading to the downfall of ruler and dynasty, also shows up in The Sumerian Sargon Legend, line 4. The difference is that Sargon, again prototypically, plays the wouldbe Heilsherrscher to Ur-Zababa’s role as Unheilsherrscher and it is Ur-Zababa who fails to report the negative omen, while Sargon does so even at the threat of his own life (though the negative omen is directed at Ur-Zababa). See Cooper and Heimpel 1983 and the discussion in Cooper 1985. In some sense, ominous dreams and how rulers react to them act as an internal clockwork (providing a legendary narrative for the transition from one dynasty to the next) in the otherwise somewhat dry lists of dynastic succession in The Sumerian King List. How precisely The Sumerian King List operates as a text (and consequently how it might interact with other genres so as to operationalize dynastic change) is still rather unclear; for some of the more influential interpretations of The Sumerian King List as a self-consciously schematic document that should not be read in a literally chronological sequence, see Michalowski 1983; Wilcke 1989 and Hallo 1998. 36 {si-si-ig a-ga-deki-še3 i3-gi4-in} = [dzi]-˹qi˺-qu . . . [ana a]-ga-de3ki aš2-˹pur˺-[ka]. On historiola generally in ancient Near Eastern materials, see Sanders 2001. The particular background of the anti-historiola that we have here (Naram-Sin serves not as model, but rather as an example of how a ruler should not behave when faced with a negative omen) is dealt with in Butler 1998, 321–324; Gadotti 2005, 141, as well as Johnson 2011; the Old Babylonian version appears in Alster 1997, vol. 1, 194 and 242 (viz. Proverb Collections 11 and 18). 37 Cooper 1983, 9–10, arguing against such as characterization. See also Cooper 2001.



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dissatisfaction of the Ekur clergy was that, under the rule of the Akkadian kings, the Ekur was no longer the center of the political universe, at least in practical terms. One of the perquisites of being the temple of the chief deity Enlil was that the clergy of the Ekur and their environs enjoyed a fairly constant stream of war booty and other forms of tribute, adornment and architectural elaboration. Even if the stream of tribute to the Ekur was not interrupted in any way, the anti-Naram-Sin faction in Nippur could easily imagine that the best of the war booty and other (diplomatic) acquisitions were being diverted to the city of Akkade. Thus the official or formal status of the Ekur temple (undoubtedly still at the top of any list) may have been contradicted by the movement of practical and material wealth away from Nippur and toward Akkade (at least in the imagination of whoever actually wrote The Curse of Agade). This is particularly clear if we look at the description of the city of Akkade in the first section of The Curse of Agade (lines 1–54). Cooper renders lines 12–22 as follows: (12) So that the warehouses would be provisioned, (13) that dwellings would be founded in that city, (14) that its people would eat splendid food, (15) that its people would drink splendid beverages, (16) that those bathed (for holidays) would rejoice in the courtyards, (17) that the people would throng the places of celebration, (18) that acquaintances would dine together, (19) that foreigners would cruise about like unusual birds in the sky, (20) that (even) Marhaši would be reentered on the (tribute) rolls, (21) that monkeys, mighty elephants, water buffalo, exotic animals, (22) would jostle each other in the public squares. . . .38

This image of happy, heterogeneous cosmopolitanism might reasonably lead one to conclude that Akkade simply enjoyed divine favor under the Akkadian kings up to a certain point in the reign of Naram-Sin, at which point the winds of divine favor shifted and Enlil turned against Akkade

38 (12) e2 niĝ2-gur11-ra niĝ2 sa2 di-de3 (13) iriki-bi dur2 ki ĝar sum-mu-de3 (14) uĝ3-bi u2 nir-ĝal2 gu7-u-de3 (15) uĝ3-bi a nir-gal2 na8-na8-de3 (16) saĝ a tu5-a kisal ḫul2-le-de3 (17) ki ezem-ma uĝ3 sig7-ge-de3 (18) lu2 zu-u3-ne teš2-bi gu7-u3-de3 (19) lu2 bar-ra mušen nu-zu-gen7 an-na niĝin-de3 (20) mar-ḫa-šiki le-um-ma gur-ru-de3 (21) uguugu4-bi am-si maḫ ab2-za-za u2-ma-am ki bad-ra2 (22) ša3 sila daĝal-la-ke4 teš2-bi tag-tag-ge-de3 (after Cooper 1983, 50, with a few minor changes).

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and its ruler Naram-Sin.39 There is, however, no expression of temple building or even a show of piety in these first fifty-odd lines; it is a description of a big city, largely non-religious “hustle and flow” that any presentday urbanite can easily recognize. The decisive counterpoint to the description of urban effervescence that we see in the initial 54 lines of The Curse of Agade comes in line 57, in Cooper’s lovely, almost biblical translation, “But the word from Ekur was as silence” {inim e2-kur-ra me-gen7 ba-an-ĝar}. It seems fairly clear that the primary objection that the Nippur clergy had to Naram-Sin’s behavior was his ostensible lack of piety, even if material facts would contradict such a point of view. Thus from a geopolitical perspective that takes Naram-Sin’s capital in Akkade as the center with the Ekur temple located in Nippur in its periphery—an inversion of the map in figure 1—the {kur} represented by the previous incarnation of the Ekur temple could indeed serve, within the poetics of The Curse of Agade at least, as a resource-rich peripheral “distant land” that provides raw materials for the construction of the new incarnation of the Ekur temple. In using literary hyperbole to represent the impiety of Naram-Sin, the authors of The Curse of Agade were leveraging the new geopolitical relationship between Nippur and Akkade: the Ekur temple had been reduced to a peripheral temple-mountain, viz. {kur}, and the Nippur clergy reframe the traditional trope of extracting raw materials from peripheral lands {kur} as a way of depicting the unjust extraction of raw materials from the proper center of the universe, namely the Ekur temple in Nippur. Stated somewhat differently, the new geopolitical situation in which the priesthood of the Ekur temple found itself (with the Ekur imagined as a peripheral, “foreign” temple from the point of view of Naram-Sin) created the necessary socio-historical context in which a disgruntled priesthood (or later literati) might sympathize with the inhabitants of a mythical land like Aratta, and then portray crafty Enmerkar (the inventor of writing no less) as a ruler who appeals to diplomacy, technology and commerce rather 39 Cooper 1983, 30: “the initial displeasure of Inanna and Enlil in the Curse of Agade might also have been arbitrary;” and 240: “Enlil’s initial hostility here may be simply capricious, or, for humans, incomprehensible divine will.” In my view, however, Naram-Sin is clearly at fault, as Maurice Lambert put it some years ago: “Les clercs mésopotamiens ont expliqué que la fin de l’empire provient clairement d’une faute, évitable de Naramsin qui a soulevé contra lui la colère des dieux” = “The Mesopotamian scribes explained that the end of the empire as resulting from a mistake, which Naram-Sin could have avoided, that provoked the anger of the gods against him” (Lambert 1974, 19, n. 85, apud Cooper 1983, 8 and passim).



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than military force. Needless to say, this must have represented a complete reversal of the standard view of war booty among the priests of the Ekur temple. 3. The Ethics of Resource Extraction It may be difficult for some of us to imagine a priesthood or clergy that might look forward to and even celebrate a delivery of war booty (including enslaved human beings) from a victorious ruler for dedication to the deity. We cannot help but think of modern-day mosques, churches and synagogues, where the collection of material support is somewhat more discrete and subtle. Nonetheless, the historical record makes it quite clear that (i) temples were one of the major beneficiaries of military campaigns and that (ii) one of the most widely used techniques for the extraction of raw materials was, as Englund has described it, the “simple plunder” of other people’s temples and palaces. The violent removal of desired goods from Anatolia, Persia and other Gulf regions such as Bahrain and particularly Oman (ancient Magan), or their removal under threat of annihilation, was a preferred means of Babylonian elites to satisfy their needs for goods not native to Mesopotamia. Campaigns designed to plunder booty from their neighbors, early on in the Old Akkadian period, and more systematically thereafter, became institutionalized means of state-sponsored extortion that, at least in several instances, was so widespread as to stave off the impending collapse of terror regimes with little or no basis of economic support. This threat of violence stood squarely behind the more benign extortion of taxation of domestic populations and close neighbors, and the demand of tribute from those more distant from Babylonian seats of power.40

The behavior described here by Englund as “simple plunder” was undoubtedly the norm throughout Mesopotamian history. Urban centers represented incomparable concentrations of accessible raw materials that could be quickly refashioned into analogous pieces of monumental architecture and adornment at home. This is presumably the background for the hyperbole that we find in The Curse of Agade. At first glance, therefore, it is rather surprising that we find the following statement inserted into Enmerkar’s first message to the Lord of Aratta at the beginning of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.

40 Englund 2006, 9.

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Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, lines 115–120, repeated in lines 187–192 (Vanstiphout 2003, 62–63; Mittermayer 2009, 120–121 and 235–237): (115) iri-bi irsaĝsaĝ.mušen-gen7 ĝiš-bi-ta na-an-na-ra-ab-dal-en (116) mušen-gen7 gud3 us2-sa-bi-a nam bi2-ib-dal-en (117) ganba ĝal2-la-gen7 na-an-si-ig-en (118) iri gul-gul-lu-gen7 saḫar nam bi2-ib-ḫa-za-en (119) arattaki a2-dam den-ki-ke4 nam ba-an-ku5 (120) ˹ki bi2˺-in-gul-la-gen7 ki nam ga bi2-ib-gul-en (115) As for the inhabitants of (Aratta), I don’t want to make them fly from their tree like pigeons. (116) It is not in their nests, which are attached to (the tree), that I will make them fly around like birds (in a cage). (117) I don’t want to heap them (= the inhabitants) up like what is in the marketplace. (118) It is not the rubble that I will have divided up as spoil, as if I were a destroyer of cities. (119) As for Aratta, a settlement cursed by Enki, (120) It is not such a place, like a place in ruins, that I want to see destroyed.

This passage appeals to the same literary motif that we saw in The Gudea Cylinders and The Curse of Agade (viz. the acquisition of raw materials) and it also preserves some of the linguistic features such as the topicalization structure that we saw earlier. This time, however, an explicit topicalization only occurs in line 115 {(arattaki-a) iri-bi}, “as for the city (of Aratta).” While the same phrase serves as the topic for all six lines in this passage, presumably undergoing ellipsis in each line after line 115, its referent and the referent of its elided possessor shift half way through the passage. In lines 115, 116 and 117, {iri} is an instance of metonymy in which the city {iri} stands for the populace of Aratta. In the remaining three lines (118–120), {iri} returns to its basic meaning, namely the walls and buildings that make up the urban structure itself, while the possessor presumably shifts to the populace of Aratta through the ambiguity of {-bi} between inanimate singular and (animate) plural. The shift in possessor in line 118 may then be confirmed by the first few words in the last three lines; {iri gul-gul-gen7}, {arattaki a2-dam . . .}, and {ki bi2-in-gul-la-gen7}, all of which designate the constructed urban landscape rather than the populace. In certain ways, however, this passage from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is a mirror image of the earlier instantiations of the resource extraction motif in that it describes what Enmerkar does seek from Aratta (the usual list of precious materials) by describing what Enmerkar does not seek, namely the dispossession, enslavement or death of the populace, the destruction of their homes or the capture of their territory. It is an attempt to separate the economic logic of resource extraction from the human toll



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that is usually exacted in such transactions. That is to say, it represents the emergence of tribute, diplomacy and trade in place of warfare and dispossession, the primary theme of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta as a whole. This interpretation only becomes clear, however, once the various manifestations of {nam} in this passage are taken into consideration. 4. Negative Contrastive Focus in Sumerian Here and elsewhere in the Sumerian literature composed in the Ur III and Isin-Larsa periods, I interpret the orthographic sequence {nam} followed by {bi2-} not as a representation of the *na- modal prefix followed by the *bi- conjugation prefix, but rather as the negative particle *nu- followed by the copula *-am, with the resulting segment (/nu-am/) functioning as an independent phrase preceding a verb that begins with the *bi- prefix. This yields, in my view, a negative form of contrastive focus, meaning something like “it is not x that. . . .” This construction, which I have termed the *XP nam bi- construction, is dealt with at considerable length elsewhere, but I reiterate a few points in favor of my interpretation here:41 (i) {nam} is used to represent /nu-am/ in certain Ur III administrative documents. (ii) {nam-mi} and {na-mi} regularly alternate in the Sumerian literature of the Old Babylonian period, but alternations between {nam bi2-}, on the one hand, and either {na-mi} or {nam-mi}, on the other hand, are very rare. (iii) If {nam} in {nam bi2-} is interpreted as a verbal prefix, it would represent the only case of a prefix that includes an incongruous Anlaut/ Auslaut, namely /m/ followed by /b/.42

Clearly the strongest of these arguments is the use of {nam} to write a negation of some kind in certain Ur III administrative documents such as the following:

41 Johnson 2008. 42 There is also some limited lexical evidence for an equation between {nam} and the negation lā in Akkadian; see CAD L, 1a and AHw, 520f, although these simply point us to a couple references in the NBGTs, namely NBGT I, 417 (MSL 4, 145), and NBGT IXb, 5 (MSL 4, 177). Of course the absence of any context for the lexical entries makes it difficult to know if these entries are relevant. Given the fact that Akkadian lā negates nominal phrases and subordinate clauses, it may be significant that in NBGT IXb, 5, {nam} is only equated with lā and not with ul.

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j. cale johnson ITT 5, 6863 (Ur III crop yield account) ii 1. 6(bur3) 5(iku) 1/2(iku) GAN2 113 1/2 iku of agricultural land 2. 3(iku) 1/2(iku) 1/4(iku) GAN2 su3 3 3/4 iku of fallow land 3. še-bi 6(geš2) 1(u) 8(aš) 4(barig) gur As for its barley, (it is) 378 4/5 gur 4. iri-ki-bi engar (Field of ) Irikibi, the cultivator . . . iii (one line blank) 1. a-ša3 kur-bi3-lu The field: Kurbilu 2. 6(bur3) 1(eše3) 3(iku) 1/2(iku) 1/4(iku) 117 3/4 iku of agricultural land, GAN2 nam there is no fallow land 3. še-bi nam As for its barley, there is none 4. ur-gu-la engar (Field of ) Urgula, the cultivator

Note in particular the parallelism between column ii, line 3 {še-bi 6(geš2) 1(u) 8(aš) 4(barig) gur}, which lists a substantial amount of barley, and column iii line 3, which also has the phrase {še-bi} “as for its barley,” but followed by {nam} literally, “it is not,” presumably meaning something like “there is none” in context. {nam} as an abbreviation of {niĝ2-nam} “something, anything” is unlikely since the standard orthography for this word in the Ur III period is {niĝ2-na-me}. Administrative texts like this as well as the other arguments listed above clearly allow for the possibility that at least some of the occurrences of {nam} in the passage from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta use this orthography to represent the negative particle *nu- followed by the copula *-am. As a number of investigators have recognized over the years, one of the primary uses of the copula in Sumerian is to code a kind of emphasis known as (contrastive) focus, which if present here, would lead to the following interpretations of lines 116, 118 and 120.43 43 One of the earliest discussion of focus, viz. “emphasis,” associated with the copula seems to be Heimpel 1970, 492–495, apud Karahashi 2006. Recent discussions of the copula as a marker of (contrastive) focus are to be found in Huber 2001, especially 149, exx. 399 and 400; Johnson 2008; Zólyomi 2009; Jagersma 2010, 712–714; Zólyomi 2012. One basic rule vis-à-vis the interpretation of instances of the copula that form focus constructions seems to be that when the copula follows a nominal phrase that is a cardinality expression (see Williamson 1987, 175 as well as Johnson 2006 for description), the construction is best translated in English as an existential sentence. This is evident from a clause like {ša3 ma-mu-da-ka lu2 diš-am3 . . .} “there was a man in the dream . . .,” (Gudea, Cyl. A iv 14 = line 101). Another use of the copula to code a categorical rather than referential meaning is the use of a doubled copular construction to form a wh-question that asks for semantic type rather than, say, an individual’s name. This is particularly clear in Ereshkigal’s question to Galatura and Kurgara, the two strange creatures who descend into the netherworld in Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld so as to rescue Inanna from her sister. Ereshkigal asks {[a-ba-am3] za-e me-en-ze2-en}, literally “who is it that you are?” but presumably



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Negative contrastive focus in ELA, lines 116, 118 and 120: 116. ((topic Ø = [[iri-bi]])) . . . mušen-gen7 ((focus gud3 us2-sa-bi-a nam)) bi2-ibdal-en As for its populace, it is not in their nests that are attached to it (with Aratta as metaphorical tree—JCJ) that I will make them fly around like birds (in a cage). 118. ((topic Ø = [[iri-bi]])) iri gul-gul-lu-gen7 ((focus saḫar nam)) bi2-ib-ḫaza-en As for their city, it is not the rubble that I will have divided up as spoil like a destroyer of cities. 120. ((topic Ø = [[iri-bi]])) ˹ki bi2˺-in-gul-la-gen7 ((focus ki nam)) ga-bi2-ibgul-en As for their city, it is not such a place, like a place in ruins that I want to see destroyed.

The lines that intervene between these contrastive focus constructions, however, demonstrate that the only things that Enmerkar is after are the same precious materials that were explicitly mentioned in the passage from The Curse of Agade. Both passages make use of the same topicalization pattern in which a series of related topics are each qualified by something like a cleft sentence: in The Curse of Agade, the motif is framed in positive terms (lines 136–141, above), while in this passage from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the same motif is framed in negative terms: “As for their city, it is not the rubble that. . . .”44 The author of these lines from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta refers to the desired materials through negation: “it is not the rubble that I want,” which in combination with contrastive focus, implicitly yields, “it is the gold, silver and so forth that I want!” The cuneiform sign NAM is used to code what is clearly the central motif in the passage. I would even go one step further, however, and suggest that the dominant figure or trope in the meaning “what are you two?” i.e., what type of person ({a-ba}) are you? (see Jagersma 2010, 683, ex. 33). The same type of construction is also seen in Enki and Ninḫursaĝa 170–171: {a-ba me-en za-e me-en / ĝa2-e nu-ĝiškiri6 . . .} “What are you? I am a gardener. . . .” When identification rather than categorization is the goal of the question, only a single copula is used as in Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld 80–81a: {a-ba me-en za-e / me dga-ša-an-na . . .} “Who are you? I am Inanna. . . .” The double copular construction coding semantic type also occurs rather frequently in the proverb collections in declarative statements rather than in questions, for example, Alster 1997, vol. 1, 53, (= Proverb Collection 2.40), ETCSL 6.1.2, segment A, line 72: {dub-sar šu ka-ta sa2-a e-ne-am3 dub-sar-ra-am3} “A scribe whose hand can follow dictation is indeed a scribe!” (translation ETCSL). 44 On cleft sentences in Sumerian and the role that the copula plays in their formation, see generally Zólyomi 2012.

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passage is articulated through the use of NAM in a number of different orthographic modalities. As already noted, three occurrences of the sign NAM in these six lines (116, 118 and 120) are to be interpreted as negative contrastive focus constructions (“it is not . . .”). NAM also occurs in a compound verb construction in line 119, viz. {nam-ku5} meaning “to curse”, and the phonologically similar verbal prefix *{na-an-} occurs in the two remaining lines (115 and 117). Thus every verb in the passage is preceded by NAM or begins with a verbal prefix that sounds like NAM, viz. *{naan-}. The centrality of NAM in the passage is made particularly clear by witness Fn (CBS 10435 + Ni 4529), which uses the NAM sign as the “verbal prefix” for every verb in the passage.45 Witness Fn iii 5–10 (= lines 115–120; transliteration Mittermayer 2009, 165–166; NAM has been capitalized and disconnected from the verb in each line; NAM signs that only occur in this witness are also underlined):46 Fn iii 5 (= 115) Fn iii 6 (= 116) Fn iii 7 (= 117) Fn iii 8 (= 118) Fn iii 9 (=119) Fn iii 10 (= 120)

[. . .]mušen-gen7 ĝiš-bi-ta ˹NAM dal˺-dal-le-˹en˺ [. . . gu]d3 us2-sa-bi-a NAM bi2-ib-˹x-e˺ [. . .]-˹la˺-gen7 NAM ˹si˺-si-ge [x g]ul-gul-la-gen7 saḫar NAM ˹ḫa˺-za-˹e˺ [ar]ataki ˹a2˺-dam den-ki-ke4 NAM ba-an-ku5 [x b]i2-in-gul-la-gen7 ki NAM ga-˹bi3-ib-gul˺-e

The use of NAM in the passage organizes both the ordinary denotational meaning of the passage as well as a series of iconic representations that operate at the orthographic level. Since the NAM sign is also a logographic representation of a bird of some kind (or, more likely, a flock of small birds) and serves elsewhere to write the names of at least two species of flying creatures (Veldhuis identifies the {simmušen} bird as “swallow” and {bir5(mušen)} as “locust”), these alternative values of the NAM sign must have crossed the mind of an attentive reader of the passage.47 Neither of 45 Mittermayer notes that witness Fn is anomalous in some ways. In my view, the scribe who wrote witness Fn has taken a contemporary oral commentary on the role of NAM in the passage a little bit too literally and, consequently, replaced the “verbal prefixes” in lines 115 and 117 ({na-an-na-ra-ab-} and {na-an-} respectively) with a single NAM sign in each case. When Vu repeats the passage in lines 187–192, however, only lines 188 and 192 include NAM. Needless to say, I am using “verbal prefix” here in a very loose and non-technical sense. 46 See the translation above. 47 See Veldhuis 2004, 279–280 and 224–225 respectively. Veldhuis notes that {buru5} “small bird, sparrow” has often been confused with NAM in Assyriological works, but in the original texts it can be distinguished from NAM (Veldhuis 2004, 225–227, cf. Lambert 1954). There is also a clear association of {simmušen} with violent imagery that makes sense



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these two interpretive possibilities for NAM are positive: {simmušen} “swallow” appears in a series of examples in which they are symbolic of rebellious subjects whose bodies will be piled up in heaps, while {bir5} would present the inhabitants of Aratta as locusts, left homeless to wander the earth in search of food and shelter.48 I would like to suggest, however, that the primary orthographic pun that would have struck contemporary readers has to do with the swallow {simmušen} rather than the locust. The association between the swallow {simmušen} and urban architecture as well as their propensity to fly away in mass when threatened seem to derive from the natural behavior of swallows.49 If the swallow mentioned in the cuneiform record is analogous to the North American Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), then the following description of their behavior may shed some light on their representation in Sumerian literature: The Cliff Swallow is one of the most social landbirds of North America. These birds typically nest in large colonies, and a single site may contain up to 3,500 active nests. Cliff Swallows originally were birds of the western mountains, where they still nest commonly underneath horizontal rock ledges on the sides of steep canyons in the foothills and lower elevations of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky and Cascade mountains.50

Likewise, this picture of a Cliff Swallow colony provides a clear referent and literary background for the paronomastic use of NAM = {sim} in our passage. Both the ordinary denotational meaning of the passage (“I don’t want to make them fly from their tree like pigeons / it is not in their nests, which are attached to [the tree], that I will make them fly around like birds”) as well as the possibility of an iconic referent for the NAM sign itself (NAM = FLOCK OF SMALL FLYING CREATURES) may point to

in this passage, see Black 1996 apud Veldhuis 2004, 279, where Veldhuis points out that the occurrences of {buru5mušen} in Black’s examples 4, 5 and 6 should all be corrected to {simmušen}). 48 The association between the piled up {si-ig} dead bodies of swallows and the similarly treated bodies of rebellious subjects appears elsewhere as well: in a šir3 nam-gula of Ninisina (Römer 1998, 673, A, rev. line 9): {ḫul-du-zu! simmušen-gen7 ḫa-ra-ur4-ru zar-re-eš ḫa-ra-ab-sal-e} “As for your persecutor, having been gathered (ḫamāmu) like swallows, may they be spread out like sheaves,” we have the usual components: (i) the evil-doer {ḫul-du} compared to swallows {simmušen-gen7}, (ii) {ur4-ru} and (iii) the piling of sheaves motif {zar-re-eš . . . sal}. Among the examples collected in Black 1996, swallows are explicitly compared to “malefactors” {ḫul-du} and “the . . . people of rebellious lands” {ki bala-a uĝ3 tar-tar-ra-[bi]} (Black 1996, 28–29). 49 Black 1996, 36–38. 50 Brown and Brown 1995.

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a colony of swallows as a metaphor for the inhabitants of the rebellious city of Aratta.51 The use of NAM read as {sim} as the leitmotif in these lines is particularly appropriate to the ordinary denotational construal of lines 115–120, allowing these lines to draw on a rich stream of Mesopotamian imagery in which human beings are represented with bird-like features, particularly in connection to death and the netherworld.52 The linkage between the swallow {sim(NAM)mušen} and the other uses of NAM in the passage may also have been suggested by a Sumerian proverb that equates material possessions with swallows in flight, {niĝ2-gur11 simmušen dal-dal ki-tuš nu-pa3-de3-dam}, “possessions are swallows flying around, unable to find a place to settle” (Proverb Collection 1.18, translation after Black).53 This proverb resonates with a larger complex of late texts that Bendt Alster has summarized under the heading of “The Vanity Theme,” where pride of place is given to a composition that begins with the phrase {nig2nam nu-kal zi ku7-ku7-dam} “nothing is of value, but life is truly sweet,” a line that agrees with the sentiments of our passage from Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta quite well.54 Crucially, however, it represents a devaluing of materials possessions vis-à-vis human life. 5. Conclusion I have sought in these few pages to outline a minority literary tradition that—largely in reaction to the militaristic figure of Naram-Sin—imagined

51  The only other trace of this constellation of imagery in later materials, which I was able to identify with the assistance of Ulrike Steinert, is the use of similar topoi in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser I such as the following: a-na gi-sal-lat KUR-i ša-qu-ti / ki-ma MUŠEN ip-par2-šu “they flew like birds to ledges on high mountains,” (AKA 42 iii 68–69 = RIMA 0.87.1 iii 68–69; Grayson 1991, 20) and pa-gar muq-tab-li-šu-nu a-na gu-ru-na-a-te / i-na gi-sal-lat KUR-i lu-qe2-ri-in / šal-ma-at qu-ra-di-šu-nu ID2 na-a-me / a-na ID2.IDIGNA lu u2-še-ṣi “I built up mounds with the corpses of their men-at-arms on mountain ledges. I allowed the river Name to carry the bodies of their warriors out to the Tigris” (AKA 40 ii 22 = RIMA 0.87.1 ii 22; Grayson 1991, 15). The key term is gisallû “eaves,” a Sumerian loanword {gi-sal-la}, that only appears in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser I. 52 See generally Johnson 2013. 53 Black 1996, 35; Alster 1997, 10; N 5230 seems to have NAM rather BURU5 (Alster 1997, vol. 2, pl. 6), while 3 N-T 907-268 + 3 N-T 916-334 (witness O) has a clear BURU5 (Gordon 1959, pl. 10). Alster reconstructs {buru5mušen} in all witnesses, so the connection may be only in terms of small birds generally rather than the swallow in particular. The same image also makes an appearance in line 84 in the first of the Pushkin Museum Elegies (see Kramer 1960; this line is not duplicated by the materials published in Sjöberg 1983). 54 Alster 2005, 265–341.



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Enmerkar as a riddler and inventor rather than a standard hero. The antimilitarism of Enmerkar has been described as “ethical” by one of our most insightful critics, but I would suggest that Enmerkar’s behavior is really only ethical from our own anachronistic point of view.55 Within the traditional mores of Mesopotamian kingship, Enmerkar’s behavior was indeed questionable and rightfully chastised in The Cuthean Legend. That being said, I suspect that the image of a ruler trapped in his own monumental architecture may point the way to the real inheritors of this early antiheroic tradition: later wisdom literature. Claus Ambos has noted the shared imagery of the imprisoned king in both Ludlul II 96 (“My house has become my prison”) and the bīt salāʾ mê ritual and the same image provides the dominant trope in one of the more literary moments in the Amarna Letters of Rib-Adda (EA 74, line 46, and elsewhere), in which he sees himself as “like a bird in a bird-trap (gloss: cage), so am I in Byblos” (see in comparison line 116 of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta above).56 Thus over the long history of Mesopotamian literature and its inheritors we see that the social values invested in architectural (and consequently cosmogonic) edifices could indeed change over time: the altered circumstances of the Ekur priesthood “make room” in the Sumerian literary imagination for the crafty anti-hero Enmerkar. In later periods, however, a critique of Enmerkar’s anti-militarism would emerge in The Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin and the ambivalence of the built-up urban landscape (as a symbol of imperial power or as a virtual prison for a cultically or psychologically troubled ruler) would become the dominant image. Moving to the broader, comparative framework of the volume as a whole, the moments in the literary history of Sumerian that I have discussed in this paper, particularly when the extraction of raw materials becomes a central pre-occupation of the literati, clearly represent a key piece of evidence for how Mesopotamians conceptualized and reflected on urbanism itself, which is one of the most important objects of investigation for this volume.57 The construction of the edifices of 55 Vanstiphout 1994, 153, and 1995, 7, among other places. 56 For the Ludlul passage, see W. G. Lambert 1960, 44–45. The discussion of bīt salāʾ mê is in Ambos 2008, but see in particular Ambos 2008, 4, n. 7, for Sumerian precursors. On the historical setting of the exorcistic medicine associated with the Second Dynasty of Isin (and its Sumerian precursors), which is at the core of Babylonian wisdom literature, see Beaulieu 2007. Once the “bird in the cage” motif is shorn from its foundation in wisdom literature—a foundation still present in the letters of Rib-Adda (see Liverani 2004)—it goes on as a frozen topos for besieged cities in first millennium sources (see Tadmor 1994, 78; Mayer 2003, 187–189). 57 See May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume.

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urban life, both architectural and cosmogonic, was one of the central concerns of Mesopotamian city dwellers and it is abundantly clear that they saw their built environment as much more than brick and mortar (see the discussion of “emblematic and religious meaning of cities” in the Introduction).58 Within the series of reflections on Mesopotamian urbanism assembled here, the changing role of the “swallow in flight” {simmušen dal-dal} is particularly interesting: framed in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta as an image of urbanites either trapped within the confines of the city (an image that reappears in Rib-Adda’s correspondence in the Amarna Letters) or fleeing the city in the face of potential violence, the image of the “swallow in flight” reappears later on in the Sumerian proverb collections as a description of material possessions {niĝ2-gur11} rather than human beings. In some sense, therefore, the later literati had learned the lesson of Enmerkar’s speech in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta: rather than clinging to material possessions, wisdom literature such as Nothing is of Value and other similar texts taught them to devalue material wealth in favor of the more subtle pleasures of Sumerian belles lettres, and in doing so they insulated themselves, at least to some degree, from the hurly-burly of urban existence. Abbreviations AfO Archiv für Orientforschung AKA The Annals of the Kings of Assyria (see Budge 1902) AoF Altorientalische Forschungen AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AOS American Oriental Series BBVO Berlin Beiträge Vorderen Orient CBS Museum siglum of the University Museum in Philadelphia (Catalogue of the Babylonian Section) ELA Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (see Mittermayer 2009) ETCSL The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Ni Museum siglum of the Archaeological Museum, Istanbul (Nippur) OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis OIS Oriental Institute Studies

58 See May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume.



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OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta OLP Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica OrAn Oriens Antiquus OrNS Orientalia, Nova Series RA Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale RAI Proceedings of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale RlA Reallexikon der Assyriologie RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods SAAB State Archives of Assyria Bulletin SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies, Helsinki SAOC Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie

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Shafer, Ann (2007), “Assyrian Royal Monuments on the Periphery: Ritual and the Making of Imperial Space”, in: Marian Feldman / Jack Cheng (eds.), Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students, Leiden, 133–159. Sjöberg, Åke W. (1983), “The First Pushkin Museum Elegy and New Texts”, in: JAOS 103(1), 315–320. Steinkeller, Piotr (1993), “Review of Aage Westenholz ‘Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia, Part 2: The ‘Akkadian’ Texts, the Enlilemaba Texts, and the Onion Archive’ ”, in JNES 52(2), 141–145. Tadmor, Hayim (1994), The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III King of Assyria: Critical Edition of the Annals of Tiglath-Pileser III, Jerusalem. —— (1999), “World Dominion: The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire”, in: Lucio Milano / Stefano de Martino / Frederick Mario Fales / Giovanni B. Lanfranchi (eds.), Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Padova, vol. 1, 57–62. —— (2004), “An Assyrian Victory Chant and Related Matters”, in: Grant Frame / Linda S. Wilding (eds.), From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea. Studies on the History of Assyria and Babylonia in Honor of A. K. Grayson, Leiden, 269–276. Tadmor, Hayim / Landsberger, Benno / Parpola, Simo (1989), “The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will”, in: SAAB 3(1), 3–51. Talon, Phillipe (2005), “Cases of Deviation in Neo-Assyrian Annals and Foundation Documents”, in: Barbara Nevling Porter (ed.), Ritual and Politics in Ancient Mesopotamia, New Haven, 99–114. van de Mieroop, Marc (1999), Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History, London. van der Toorn, Karel (1985), Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia: A Comparative Study, Assen / Maastricht. van Leeuwen, Raymond C. (2007), “Cosmos, Temple, House: Building and Wisdom in Mesopotamia and Israel”, in: Richard J. Clifford (ed.), Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel, Atlanta. Vanstiphout, Herman L. J. (1994), “Another Attempt at the ‘Spell of Nudimmud’ ”, in: RA 88, 135–153. —— (1995), “The Matter of Aratta: An Overview”, in: OLP 26, 5–20. —— (2002), “Sanctus Lugalbanda”, in: Tzvi Abusch (ed.), Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, Winona Lake, 259–289. —— (2003), Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta, Writings from the Ancient World 20, Atlanta. Veldhuis, Niek (2004), Religion, Literature, and Scholarship: The Sumerian Composition Nanše and the Birds, Leiden. Weissert, Elnathan (1997), “Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal (82-5-22, 2)”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Helsinki, 339–358. Westenholz, Aage. (1987), Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia: Part Two, Copenhagen. Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1996), “Scenes from the Shadow Side”, in: Marianna. E. Vogelzang / Herman L. J. Vanstiphout (eds.), Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian, Groningen, 207–230. Wilcke, Claus (1989), “Genealogical and Geographical Thought in the Sumerian King List,” in Herman Behrens / Darlene Loding / Martha Roth (eds.), DUMU-E₂-DUB-BA-A: Studies in Honor of Ake W. Sjöberg. Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 11, Philadelphia, 557–571. Williamson, Janis (1987), “An Indefiniteness Restriction on Relative Clauses in Lakhota”, in: Eric J. Reuland / Alice ter Meulen (eds.), The Representation of Indefiniteness, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 168–233. Winter, Irene J. (1981), “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs”, in: Studies in Visual Communication 7: 2–38.



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—— (1983), “The Program of the Throneroom of Assurnasirpal II”, in: Prudence O. Harper / Holly Pittman (eds.), Essays on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, New York, 15–31. —— (1995), “Homer’s Phoenicians: History, Ethnography, or Literary Trope?”, in: Jane B. Carter / Sarah P. Morris (eds.), The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, Austin, 247–271. —— (2007), “Agency Marked, Agency Ascribed: The Affective Object in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Robin Osborne / Jeremy Tanner (eds.), Art’s Agency and Art History, Oxford, 42–69. Zgoll, Annette (2006), “Königslauf und Götterrat: Struktur und Deutung des babylonischen Neujahrfestes”, in: Erhard Blum / Rüdiger Lux (eds.), Festtraditionen in Israel und in Alten Orient, Gütersloher, 11–80. Zólyomi, Gábor (2005), “Left-dislocated possessors in Sumerian”, in: Katalin É. Kiss (ed.), Universal Grammar in the Reconstruction of Ancient Languages, Studies in Generative Grammar 83, Berlin, 161–188. —— (2012), “A typology of Sumerian copular clauses”, in Catherine Mittermayer / Sabine Ecklin (eds.), Altorientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger, mu-ni u4 ul-li2-a-aš ga2-ga2-de3. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 256, 399–425.

Gates and their Functions in Mesopotamia and Ancient Israel Natalie N. May Since Max Weber who denied that the Oriental cities were “real” cities (Weber 1958), efforts of many scholars have been aimed at establishing a connection between the city form and its socio-political structure.1 It has often been claimed that the city plan mirrors a city’s political organisation.2 The lack of preconceived public spaces in the Near Eastern cities as opposite to the city-states of the Classical Antiquity was one of the focuses of these discussions (Liverani 1997, 91–93; May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume). One of the main public spaces of the Near Eastern city was and still is the city gate. Does this fact reflect the socio-political system of these cities? The present article is dedicated to the special socio-religious significance of the gate space in the life of the cities in the ancient Near East. The purpose is a comparative cross-cultural analysis of the gate space functions in Mesopotamia and the Levant based on textual, visual and archaeological evidence. The question of the cosmic significance,3 metaphysics and semiotics of the gate space as a liminal area will be consciously set aside as sufficiently treated both by Assyriologists,4 and anthropologists.5 Functions of the gates in the Bible have been well studied and discussed before. Gate functions in Mesopotamia were taken for granted as paralleled by the Biblical examples.6 An attempt will be made here to analyse all available written sources, both Biblical and cuneiform, together with relevant archaeological and pictorial material in order to examine similarities and differences in the city gate functions in diachronic and geographical perspectives.

1  E.g. Oppenheim 1969; Adams 1966; Heinz 199; Algaze 2008; Stone 1991, 1995, 2005, 2008; see May / Steinert, Introduction (this volume) for the comprehensive bibliography. 2 Herzog 1997, 13 with further bibliography and Heinz 1997. 3 For the most recent discussion of the gate to the Netherworld in Mesopotamia and the Bible see Paul 2010. 4 Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 13–36 Radner 2010, 271 with n. 12 for further literature. 5 See May / Steinert, this volume. 6 For instance George 1992, 458 quoted below.

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First terminological questions including ancient terms for gates and gate spaces are addressed. Further, the following, often interconnected gate space functions will be treated and compared for various periods and geographical locations: 1. Gates as a sacral space. Temples, chapels, cult ceremonies and sacrifices at the gate. 2. Gates as a place for the installation of the royal monuments. 3. Processional gates: a place for public performances: military and ritual. 4. Gates as a place for the public appearance of the king. 5. Gates as a place for public assemblies. 6. Gates as a place for judicial activities: judgement, litigation, legal agreements, publication of court decisions and legal documents. 7. Gates as a place for public executions (not only of legal character). 8. Gates as a market place. 9. Gates as a place of control. Obviously the occasional state of preservation of our sources does not always permit a full-scale diachronic and cross-cultural comparison for each of these functions. Nevertheless, all the available information must be considered in order to answer the question, if the public functions of the gates reflect differences in political and social organisation. 1. Gate Space: Definition By the “space of the gates” I mean the space before, inside and behind the gates. The meaning of the first and the last is probably self-evident, but the meaning of “the space inside the gates” needs an explanation. Ancient Near Eastern gates had inner chambers (fig. 1),7 sometimes also designated as a gatehouse, which were used for various purposes. These inner chambers could be rather spacious and were used for multiple purposes. They constituted the inner gate space.

7 See also, for instance, six-chamber city gates at Gezer (Stern et al. 1993, 503) and Herzog 1986 for the largest assemblage of the ancient Near Eastern city gate plans.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 79 2. Akkadian and Hebrew Terms for the Gate and Gate Space There are two terms for gates in Akkadian: • abullu=k á - g a l —city gate, entrance gate of a building or a building complex. This word designates a big monumental portal. • bābu=ká—opening, doorway, door, gate, entrance. In fact both words contaminate and can refer to the city, temple or palace gates. There is also an expression bāb abullim in Old Assyrian8 and Old Babylonian.9 Bāb ekalli(m) “palace gate,”10 and bāb ili(m) “gate of the god (= temple)”11 had special significance, which should be compared with the role of the city gates. In the Bible the gate space is described as: ‫“ ַׁש ַער‬gate;”12 . . . ‫רחֹוב ַׁש ַער‬,ְ ‫“ ִרחֹוב ַׁש ַער ַה ִעיר‬gate square, square at the city gate.”13 Square (‫רחֹוב‬,ְ lit. “wide place”) at the gate (‫)ׁש ַער‬ ַ is found in the postexilic texts.14 In the pre-exilic period the gate space is probably described as ‫חּוצֹת‬/‫חצֹות‬/‫חּוצֹות‬, ֻ lit. “outside space” in Ashkelon (2 Sam 1:20) and Damascus (1 Kgs 20:34).15

8 CAD A I, 84a; Bilgiç / Bayram 1995, 82; no. 43, line 15. 9 CAD B, 22a. 10 CAD B, 16b–18a. 11  CAD B, 18b–20a. It is not impossible that the name of the quarter in Babylon (k á - d i n g i r - r a = Bābili), known from the Kassite period, which also served as a name for the entire city, was a use of a common gate name to support a folk-etymology (George 1992, 253–256) of this name for the city of Babylon. This seems even more plausible in the light of the absence of textual evidence for the existence of a gate with the name bāb ilī in Babylon. 12 Passim. 13 All from late sources—Nehemiah 8:3, 16, and 2 Chronicles 32:6. ‫( ְרחֹוב‬derived from the root ‫ רחב‬with the meaning “wide”) in the Hebrew Bible seems to have a semantic field close to that of ribītu (see Steinert, 2011, 317 and this volume; Koehler / Baumgarten 1996, 1212–1213 with parallel to rebītu and rebīt Ninua [ibid., 1212, 1213]; note especially meanings of squares at palace gates [at Susa; Esth 4:6], ‫ה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬-‫ר‬ ַ ‫ ֲא ֶׁשר ִל ְפנֵ י ַׁש ַע‬,‫רחֹוב ָה ִעיר‬,ְ “city square before the king’s [= palace] gate”). 14 ‫רחֹוב ַׁש ַער ֶא ְפ ָריִ ם‬,ְ “wide space at the Ephraim Gate” (Neh 8:16), ‫ָה ְרחֹוב ֲא ֶׁשר ִל ְפנֵ י‬ ‫ה ַּמיִ ם‬-‫ר‬ ַ ‫ׁש ַע‬, ַ “wide space that is in front of the Water Gate” (Neh 8:3); ‫רחֹוב ַׁש ַער ָה ִעיר‬,ְ “wide space at the city gate” (2 Chron 32:6). Compare s i l a - d a g a l - l a , “wide square/street of the gate” attested in the texts of the Old Babylonian period (Steinert, this volume and n. 14). For ribīt abul . . . / s i l a - d a g a l - k á - g a l see CAD R, 320b. 15 However this word survived also in later periods with the meaning “open fields” (Ps 144:13; Job 5:10; Prov 8:26). Both in pre-exilic and post-exilic texts it might also mean “street,” “street corner,” “market street” (Koehler / Baumgarten 1996, 299).

80

natalie n. may 3. Gate Space Functions 3.1 Gates as a Sacral Space. Temples, Chapels, Cult Ceremonies and Sacrifices at the Gate

City gates as well as gates of shrines, cellas and chapels in Mesopotamia had elaborated ceremonial names which survived as lists,16 but also in numerous documents of various kinds. Gates played a preeminent role in the cult, especially, of course, in the religious centres. The gates of Nippur, one of the most ancient cult cities of Mesopotamia, the seat of Enlil, were named after the main gods of the pantheon and their spouses Enlil and Ninlil; Ea; Šamaš and Aya; Marduk, Ištar.17 There is even a name “holy” or “pure gate” in Nippur (k á - g a l - á - s i k i l - l a=abullum elletum).18 Gates bearing the name of a god are known also on periphery, for instance at Nuzi.19 In sixth century bce Babylon all the gates20 were named after various gods: Marduk, Ištar, Enlil, Adad, Šamaš, Uraš, Zababa.21 In the city of Assur the existence of the gates of Aššur, Šamaš, Šerua and Illat is evidenced at least from the Middle Assyrian period.22 Each of these gates was the starting point of a ceremonial way of the same name, through which the procession of the god passed on ritual occasions.23 The city or palace gate spaces could also serve as sacred spaces,24 but of course the most important sacral space was the space of the temple gates—k á - d i n g i r = bāb ili, “gate of the god,”25 the place where the worshipper would meet the divine statue, i.e. the god.26 16 For instance in the lexical lists Proto-Kagal, Kagal, and ritual texts (Civil 1971, 63ff.; 227ff.), incorporating the lists—the so-called Götteradressbuch (George 1992, 176–177; 182–183), and the gate lists of E-sagil (George 1992, 83–98; 389–409). 17 Civil 1971, 228, Canonical Kagal col. i, lines 5–11, Old Babylonian. 18 Civil 1971, 228, Canonical Kagal col. i, line 12. Old Babylonian. 19 Negri Scafa 1998, 144–145. 20 With only one exception, which is the King’s Gate. George 1992, 66–67, TINTIR= Babylon (no. 1), tablet v, lines 54, 68–69, 72 and below. 21  George 1992, 1–31; esp. 24 fig. 4; 28 fig. 5. 22 Idem, 456–457. 23 Idem, 15. 24 Due to their liminal position, gates, as well as doors and other passages were also important spots in medical and magic rituals. For instance in the course of a “reanimation” ritual certain actions were performed at the “gate of eternity,” abulli ša darāti (KÁ.GAL šá da-ra-a-ti; KAR 33, line 9; Ebeling 1931a, 74–75). Dust and other substances from these spots were widely used in magic. But this aspect of the gate spaces is beyond the present study. See CAD A, 82–88; CAD B, 14–27 passim, and Negri Scafa 1998, 139, with n. 2 on Nuzi and Hittite evidence. 25 CAD B, 19b. “Gate of the god” usually designates a temple gate, or the gate named after a specific deity, but very often activities of legal character were performed there (see below). 26 Cf. k á - s i l i m - m a , “gate of well-being” (George 1992, 402).

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 81 From the earliest periods sacrifices were offered in Mesopotamia at the temple gates (fig. 2).27 An Old Babylonian tablet dated to the thirtysecond year of Hammurabi preserved a ritual of offerings to the temple gates at Ur, performed on the occasion of the eššēšu-days of the month, i.e. the new moon, seventh, tenth, fifteenth and twenty-fifth days.28 Hundreds of years later, in the Neo-Babylonian period with the deve­ lopment of the market economy, sacrifices could be replaced by money offerings—erbu ša bābi or erbu ša quppi ša bābi, which were put in a special box—quppu, installed at the temple gates.29 This practice has direct parallels in the description of tax collection at Jerusalem Temple in 2 Chronicles 24:8–9: ‫יהּודה‬ ָ ‫קֹול ִּב‬-‫ וַ ּיִ ְּתנּו‬.‫חּוצה‬ ָ ,‫יְ הוָ ה‬-‫ וַ ּיַ ֲעׂשּו ֲארֹון ֶא ָחד; וַ ּיִ ְּתנֻ הּו ְּב ַׁש ַער ֵּבית‬,‫אמר ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬ ֶ ֹ ‫וַ ּי‬ .‫ל—ּב ִּמ ְד ָּבר‬ ַ ‫יִ ְׂש ָר ֵא‬-‫ֹלהים ַעל‬ ִ ‫ה ֱא‬-‫ד‬ ָ ‫ ְל ָה ִביא ַליהוָ ה ַמ ְׂש ַאת מ ֶֹׁשה ֶע ֶב‬,ִ‫ירּוׁש ַלם‬ ָ ‫ּוב‬ ִ So the king commanded, and they made a chest, and set it at the gate of the house of YHWH, outside. And they made a proclamation through Judah and Jerusalem, to bring in for YHWH the tax that Moses the servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilderness.

Given the late, post-exilic date of the Biblical source there can be no doubt that it was influenced by Late Babylonian practices. Nevertheless, altars were installed and sheep sacrifices were performed at the temple gates also in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, and at the Mesopotamian periphery, for example at Nuzi.30 In Assyria animal offerings were sent by the palace for gates of the small and the big shrine—bāb(KÁ) suk-ki dan-nu and qàl-li (1 ox, 10 sheep, 1 duck for each).31 Neo-Babylonian texts present us lists of animals to be slaughtered (nukkusu) at the gates.32 An eclipse ritual from Seleucid Uruk prescribes the lamentation and chief priests (kalû and šangû) to install a brazier (garraku) in front of the gates of temples (bāb bīt ilī (KÁ.É.DINGIR.RAMEŠ)).33

27 George 1992, 395. 28 Hallo / Levine 1967. These rites also included offerings in the temple courtyard much alike 1 Kings 8:64. 29 Kleber 2010, 544–545. 30 niqû(SISKURMEŠ) ša bá-ab ilāni(DINGIRMEŠ) with further details (Pfeiffer / Lacheman 1942, 14 = HSS 13 94, line 1ff.). It is of course hard to define with certainty if the temple gate or city gate is meant here. 31  Fales / Postgate, 1992, 179=SAA 7 181, lines 1–2. 32 Tremayne 1925, YOS 7 8, line 20; 143, line 4; TCL 13 145, lines 10, 12= Contenau 1929, pl. 71. The evidence of animal sacrifice is probably also known from Kassite Nippur, though it is not clear if an offering or other deliveries to the gates are listed there (see n. 84). 33 Linssen 2004, 306, line 14; 307, line 38.

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In the “Temple of Solomon” cultic utensils were installed at the temple’s courtyard, presumably in front of the temple portal (1 Kgs 7:16–39). The vision of Ezekiel describes sacrifices and offerings made outside the temple, at its gate surrounded by a courtyard. The topography of the ritual as it appears in Ezekiel (46:2–12) and its attachment to the calendar holidays resembles very much the offerings at the temple gate and courtyard in Ur published by William Hallo and Baruch Levine, though they chose for comparison Ezekiel 44:1–3.34 Nevertheless it proves again a great impact of Babylonian rites on the Book of Ezekiel (46:2–12): ‫ וְ ָעׂשּו ַהּכ ֲֹהנִ ים‬,‫מזּוזַ ת ַה ַּׁש ַער‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ וְ ָע ַמד ַע‬,‫אּולם ַה ַּׁש ַער ִמחּוץ‬ ָ ‫ּובא ַהּנָ ִׂשיא ֶּד ֶרְך‬ ָ ,‫יִ ָּסגֵ ר‬-‫מ ְפ ַּתן ַה ַּׁש ַער וְ יָ ָצא; וְ ַה ַּׁש ַער לֹא‬-‫ל‬ ִ ‫ וְ ִה ְׁש ַּת ֲחוָ ה ַע‬,‫ׁש ָל ָמיו‬-‫ת‬ ְ ‫עֹולתֹו וְ ֶא‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ֶא‬ ,‫ים—ל ְפנֵ י‬ ִ ‫ּוב ֳח ָד ִׁש‬ ֶ ,‫ ַּב ַּׁש ָּבתֹות‬,‫ ֶּפ ַתח ַה ַּׁש ַער ַההּוא‬,‫ה ָא ֶרץ‬-‫ם‬ ָ ‫ וְ ִה ְׁש ַּת ֲחוּו ַע‬.‫ה ָע ֶרב‬-‫ד‬ ָ ‫ַע‬ —‫ימם‬ ִ ‫ ִׁש ָּׁשה ְכ ָב ִׂשים ְּת ִמ‬,‫ ְּביֹום ַה ַּׁש ָּבת‬:‫יַ ְק ִרב ַהּנָ ִׂשיא ַליהוָ ה‬-‫ ֲא ֶׁשר‬,‫ וְ ָהע ָֹלה‬.‫יְ הוָ ה‬ .‫יפה‬ ָ ‫ ִהין ָל ֵא‬,‫ וְ ַל ְּכ ָב ִׂשים ִמנְ ָחה ַמ ַּתת יָ דֹו; וְ ֶׁש ֶמן‬,‫יפה ָל ַאיִ ל‬ ָ ‫ּומנְ ָחה ֵא‬ ִ .‫וְ ַאיִ ל ָּת ִמים‬ ‫יפה ַל ָּפר‬ ָ ‫ וְ ֵא‬.‫ימם יִ ְהיּו‬ ִ ‫ ְּת ִמ‬,‫ימם; וְ ֵׁש ֶׁשת ְּכ ָב ִׂשים וָ ַאיִ ל‬ ִ ‫ּב ָקר ְּת ִמ‬-‫ן‬ ָ ‫ ַּפר ֶּב‬,‫ּוביֹום ַהח ֶֹדׁש‬ ְ ,‫ּובבֹוא‬ ְ .‫יפה‬ ָ ‫ ִהין ָל ֵא‬,‫ ַּכ ֲא ֶׁשר ַּת ִּׂשיג יָ דֹו; וְ ֶׁש ֶמן‬,‫ וְ ַל ְּכ ָב ִׂשים‬,‫ יַ ֲע ֶׂשה ִמנְ ָחה‬,‫יפה ָל ַאיִ ל‬ ָ ‫וְ ֵא‬ ,‫ה ָא ֶרץ ִל ְפנֵ י יְ הוָ ה‬-‫ם‬ ָ ‫ּובבֹוא ַע‬ ְ .‫ּוב ַד ְרּכֹו יֵ ֵצא‬ ְ ,‫אּולם ַה ַּׁש ַער יָ בֹוא‬ ָ ‫יא—ּד ֶרְך‬ ֶ ‫ַהּנָ ִׂש‬ ‫ׁש ַער‬-‫ְך‬ ַ ‫ וְ ַה ָּבא ֶּד ֶר‬,‫ׁש ַער נֶ גֶ ב‬-‫ְך‬ ַ ‫ׁש ַער ָצפֹון ְל ִה ְׁש ַּת ֲחו‍ֹת יֵ ֵצא ֶּד ֶר‬-‫ְך‬ ַ ‫ ַה ָּבא ֶּד ֶר‬,‫ּמֹוע ִדים‬ ֲ ‫ַּב‬ ‫ יצאו‬,‫בֹו—ּכי נִ ְכחֹו‬ ִ ‫ּבא‬-‫ר‬ ָ ‫ ֶּד ֶרְך ַה ַּׁש ַער ֲא ֶׁש‬,‫ לֹא יָ ׁשּוב‬:‫ׁש ַער ָצפֹונָ ה‬-‫ְך‬ ַ ‫נֶ גֶ ב יֵ ֵצא ֶּד ֶר‬ ‫ ִּת ְהיֶ ה‬,‫ּמֹוע ִדים‬ ֲ ‫ּוב‬ ַ ‫ּוב ַחּגִ ים‬ ַ .‫אתם יֵ ֵצאּו‬ ָ ‫ּוב ֵצ‬ ְ ,‫בֹואם יָ בֹוא‬ ָ ‫תֹוכם ְּב‬ ָ ‫יא—ּב‬ ְ ‫ וְ ַהּנָ ִׂש‬.)‫(יֵ ֵצא‬ ‫יַ ֲע ֶׂשה‬-‫ וְ ִכי‬.‫יפה‬ ָ ‫ ִהין ָל ֵא‬,‫ ַמ ַּתת יָ דֹו; וְ ֶׁש ֶמן‬,‫ וְ ַל ְּכ ָב ִׂשים‬,‫יפה ָל ַאיִ ל‬ ָ ‫יפה ַל ָּפר וְ ֵא‬ ָ ‫ַה ִּמנְ ָחה ֵא‬ ,‫ה ַּׁש ַער ַהּפֹנֶ ה ָק ִדים‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ּופ ַתח לֹו ֶא‬ ָ ,‫ נְ ָד ָבה ַליהוָ ה‬,‫ׁש ָל ִמים‬-‫אֹו‬ ְ ‫עֹולה‬ ָ ‫ַהּנָ ִׂשיא נְ ָד ָבה‬ ,‫ה ַּׁש ַער‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ׁש ָל ָמיו ַּכ ֲא ֶׁשר יַ ֲע ֶׂשה ְּביֹום ַה ַּׁש ָּבת; וְ יָ ָצא וְ ָסגַ ר ֶא‬-‫ת‬ ְ ‫ע ָֹלתֹו וְ ֶא‬-‫וְ ָע ָׂשה ֶאת‬ .‫ַא ֲח ֵרי ֵצאתֹו‬ And the prince shall enter by the way of the porch of the gate from outside, and shall stand by the post of the gate, and the priests shall prepare his burnt-offering and his peace-offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate; then he shall go forth; but the gate shall not be shut until the evening. Likewise the people of the land shall worship at the door of that gate before YHWH on the Sabbaths and on the new moons. And the burntoffering that the prince shall offer unto YHWH shall be on the Sabbath day six lambs without blemish and a ram without blemish; and the meal-offering shall be an ephah for the ram, and the meal-offering for the lambs as he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah. And in the day of the new moon it shall be a young bullock without blemish; and six lambs, and a ram; they shall be without blemish; and he shall prepare a meal-offering, an ephah for the bullock, and an ephah for the ram, and for the lambs according as his means suffice, and a hin of oil to an ephah. And when the prince

34 See n. 28. Hallo and Levine (1967, 49) refer to Ezek 44:1–3 because the locked temple gates are mentioned there as well as in the text that they published. However, locking and unlocking the gate is also a matter of Ezek 46:2 and 12. For locking gates and controlled access to the Assyrian palaces see also Radner 2010.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 83 shall enter, he shall go in by the way of the porch of the gate, and he shall go forth by the way thereof. But when the people of the land shall come before the YHWH in the appointed seasons, he that entered by the way of the north gate to worship shall go forth by the way of the south gate; and he that entered by the way of the south gate shall go forth by the way of the north gate; he shall not return by the way of the gate whereby he came in, but shall go forth straight before him. And the prince, when they go in, shall go in in the midst of them; and when they go forth, they shall go forth together. And in the feasts and in the appointed seasons the meal-offering shall be an ephah for a bullock, and an ephah for a ram, and for the lambs as he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah. And when the prince shall prepare a freewill-offering, a burnt-offering or peace-offerings as a freewilloffering unto the LORD, one shall open for him the gate that looked toward the east, and he shall prepare his burnt-offering and his peace-offerings, as he doth on the Sabbath day; then he shall go forth; and after his going forth one shall shut the gate.35

Not only temple gates, but also palace gates and, especially, city gates were important cult places. A stele of an Elamite karību-priest of Inšušinak describes the installation of a standard (?; g i š - g a l ) and sacrifices at the gate of Inšušinak, presumably in front of his throne. The installation was accompanied by singing.36 In this connection it is interesting that a gate name “gate, which hears prayers” ([ k á - s í ] s k u r - š e - g a bābu(KÁ) ˹še-mu-ú ˺ k[a-ra-bi . . .) is known from a Late Babylonian text from the Rēš temple at Uruk.37 In the Old Babylonian period, in the time of Sîn-iddinam of Larsa, sheep sacrifices were offered to the gate of a palace and the gate of “the house of his sonship.”38 Sheep, the income from an audience gift (nāmirtu), are offered to the six gates of the city of Assur, one to each: that of Aššur, of Šamaš, Turret and Tissaru gate, gate of Šerua, and Tabīra gate according to the twelfth century document from the archive of Ninurtatukultī-Aššur.39

35 The translation follows the JPS Bible. 36 MDP IV, pl. 2: col. I, line 13–col. iii, line 2; Scheil 1902, 4–5. Note in this connection that karību-genii were often installed at gates as apotropaic figures (CAD K, 216b). 37 George 1992, 210–211, pl. 48, no. 31, rev. line 4. 38 1 u d u - n i t á g a b a - r i k á - é - g a l 1 u d u - n i t á g a b a - r i k á - n a m - d u m u - n i “one sheep offering in front of the gate of the palace, one sheep in front of the gate of his sonship.” These two gates appear in the list after the temples, which are also receiving sheep offerings (Goetze 1950, 92 and 103, YBC 7288, lines 6–7). 39 KAJ 254, lines 3–8; Ebeling 1927=1968, 133; George 1992, 457.

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The tākultu-ritual text40 terminates with the prescription of offerings to be performed at the gate chapel—bīt ilāni(É.DINGIRMEŠ) [š]á abulli(KÁ. GAL) (ibid., line 5). The Neo-Assyrian singer’s ritual commends an offering to be performed before the throne, presumably of Šamaš, standing in the gate inner space (birīt bābi, lit. “in-between the gates”).41 Sacrifices and libations at the gate were performed there in the course of purification rites, such as bīt rimki,42 and on the occasions of the celebration of the New Year (merged with akītu) and triumphs43 (fig. 3, 4).44 For this purpose divine symbols—urigallu or šurinnu were installed at the gate. This was done, for instance, during the nocturnal festival in the Rēš temple at Hellenistic Uruk,45 probably also in the course of bīt rimki,46 and by Assurbanipal at the entrance to the temple of Ištar of Arbela (fig. 5).47 Assurbanipal’s sacrifice at the temple gates of Ištar of Arbela was a part of a triumph—Assyria’s most important media event, during which the gates played the role of the most significant public spots (see below). The existence of gate chapels and daises is also attested. Such daises (parakku) are known at the Ištar Gate48 and at the gate of the temple of Ningišzida in Babylon.49 A dais against the gate (Cella C) was excavated by the German expedition in Babylon, and was suggested by Andrew George 40 Col. x 5–53, Frankena 1961, 201, 203. The tākultu-ritual is known since the Middle Assyrian period, and was obviously connected to the akītu (Frankena 1961, 202). However text B, which is quoted here dates to Sennacherib, as follows from the mentioning of the name of this king in col. v, line 12. 41  nāru (LÚNAR . . . DUG˺˹kal]-l[u šam]nē([I]À)[x] mē(AMEŠ) tumalli(SI.A)-ma ina rēš (SAG) kussē([GI]ŠGU.ZA) ina bi-rit bābi(KÁ) tašakkan(GAR-an), “the singer . . . you fill the bowl with oil and water, and install at the top of the throne (which is) in-between the gates” (Zimmern 1901, 174–175, BBR 60 obv. col. i, lines 6, 9). This passage at the beginning of the tablet is badly broken. Birit bābi here indicates the inner chambers of the gate. 42 Zimmern 1901, 126–127, BBR 26 col. iii 20. 43 See below the full quotations of Assurbanipal’s inscriptions (Borger 1996, 107; B col. vi, lines 66–68/ C col. vii lines 63–65; Epigraph no. 14, Fuchs apud Borger 1996, 301–302; col. i line 47–col. ii line 3). The inscriptions of Assurbanipal use the expression muḫ/ maḫhuriš umaḫḫir, “I presented as an offering” for a rather exceptional “offering”—the head of his enemy, the Elamite king Teumman, upon which he also pours a libation. 44 These pictures illustrate the Assyrian king’s triumphal entrance to a city, see May 2012, 267–274. 45 Linssen 2004, 246, 249, TU 41, rev. lines 26–27. 46 Zimmern 1901, 126 with n. 7. 47 For the sacrifices made to the divine symbols at the gate see the evidence collected in May 2008. The divine symbols represented on fig. 5 are reported to be installed in the course of the renovation of Ištar temple at Arbela, GIŠšu-ri-in-nu bāb(KÁ) bīt(É) dIš-tar ḫurāṣu(GUŠKIN) ú-za-‘-in-ma az-kup, “I set up and decorated with gold the divine symbols at the gate of the temple of Ištar” (K. 891; I Rawlinson, pl. 8, no. 2). 48 George 1992, 102–103; no. 11, line 5’. 49 Idem, 100–101; no. 9, line 3’.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 85 to be identified with parak dAssare,50 known from the textual evidence to have stood against the gate.51 The “house of gods” at the gates is mentioned in the text of the tākulturitual (see above).52 The Old Assyrian king Erišum reports the rebuilding of a watmānum—a chapel of the god Aššur at the city gates: ˹i-ri˺-šu-um ˹i˺-ší-a-ak a-šùr [mušlā]-lam qá-ša-˹am wa˺-at-ma-nam [ana b]e-˹li˺-a e-[pu-u]š ku-sí-a-a[m][x] x-˹tám˺ e-pu-uš pá-ni-ša ḫu-ša-ra-a[m] ˹ú-ḫi-iz˺ Erišum, the ruler of Assyria, a chapel, a votive gift for the mušlālum-gate (Step Gate?) I made to my lord. I built a [. . .] throne (and) inlayed its front with a precious ḫušāru-stone.53

We have no archaeological evidence, but it is not improbable that the construction above the gates was used as a chapel, or that the chapel was a structure anywhere within the gate space. The understanding of this matter depends on the understanding of the term mušlālum in this passage, which CAD interprets as a gatehouse and von Soden as an Assyrian gate name.54 Van Driel assembled and discussed all the evidence, but did not come to a conclusion about the nature of the mušlālum construction.55 If the mušlālum is indeed a gate-house it most probably served as a gate chapel, not unlike the mediaeval gate-churches above the gate passage. A typical Assyrian cult of the Sun god with horse offerings was celebrated by the kings of Judah at the gates of the Jerusalem temple, most probably in a special chapel where also the chariots of the Sun god were stored (2 Kgs 23:11).56

50 Idem, 400–401. 51  George 1992, 94–95; no. 6, rev. line 31. 52 In Qatna a bīt abullim (é - k á - g a l ) is known. This expression was translated literally as “gate-house” by the publisher of the text, who, however, admits the obscurity of the meaning of the term (Eidem 2007, 298–300). 53 Grayson 1987, 20, lines 4–8 paralleled by idem, 26, lines 15–19. The text is obscure. I prefer to take mušlālum and watmānum as accusativus duplex, and not as a sequence of homogenous parts of the sentence (contracted sentence), as Grayson does, because qa-a-šu is obviously an adverbial participle. See George 2003, 618–19, line 8. 54 CAD M II, 277; AHw, 684b. 55 Van Driel 1969, 29–31. 56 Šamaš gates existed in many cities, most often serving as a place of litigation (see below). Stables (?, bēt abūsāte) at the (temple) gates of Anu and Adad are known in Assyria itself (Grayson 1987, 153; A.0.76.17, line 4; Adad-nārārī I). For the stables (?) of Ninurta and Aššur see ND. 1120, rev. lines 19 and 22(van Driel 1961, 200–201) and VAT 10646, line 7 (May 2008, 218 and the commentary on p. 230) respectively.

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Ceremonial gates and altars/high “places” (‫)ּבמֹות‬57 ָ at the city gates existed in Ancient Israel. They are known both from archaeological excavations, particularly at the gates of Hazor, Megiddo, Dan and Jaffo,58 and from the Biblical texts (2 Kgs 23:8): ,‫ׁש ָּמה ַהּכ ֲֹהנִ ים‬-‫רּו‬ ָ ‫ה ָּבמֹות ֲא ֶׁשר ִק ְּט‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ וַ יְ ַט ֵּמא ֶא‬,‫הּודה‬ ָ ְ‫ ֵמ ָע ֵרי י‬,‫הּכ ֲֹהנִ ים‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ּכ‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫וַ ּיָ ֵבא ֶא‬ ,‫ה ִעיר‬-‫ר‬ ָ ‫הֹוׁש ַע ַׂש‬ ֻ ְ‫ּפ ַתח ַׁש ַער י‬-‫ר‬ ֶ ‫ ֲא ֶׁש‬,‫ּבמֹות ַה ְּׁש ָע ִרים‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ּב ֵאר ָׁש ַבע; וְ נָ ַתץ ֶא‬-‫ד‬ ְ ‫ִמּגֶ ַבע ַע‬ .‫ ְּב ַׁש ַער ָה ִעיר‬,‫ׂשמֹאול ִאיׁש‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ע‬-‫ר‬ ַ ‫ֲא ֶׁש‬ He brought all the priests from the cities of Judah, and defied the high places where priests had offered sacrifices, from Geba to Beer-Sheva. And he tore down the high places of the gates, by the gate of Joshua, governor of the city, on a person’s left at the city gate.59

Doubtless, the sacral and ritual function of the gate spaces was preconditioned by their liminality, which was also the reason for the role the gates played in magic.60 However, primary interest for us in the light of the aim of the present research is that any kind of ritual or other performance presented at the gate space had a public character due to its accessibility for the lay audience, in contrast to the temples which were accessible for the clergy only. 3.2 The Installation of Royal Monuments at the Gates The combination of sacredness on one hand and of publicity on the other was also the reason why royal monuments—steles and statues—were placed and revered at the gates. Assyrian inscriptions attest royal images61 at the city gate already in the Middle Assyrian period. Aššur-nādin-apli (1207–1204 or 1196–1194 bce) not only installed an “image of his kingship” at the entrance to his city, but built a special house, presumably a shrine,62 for this image:63

57 See Haran 1981, 33–34 on ‫ּב ָמה‬,ָ customarily rendered into English as a “high place,” to mean simply “altar.” 58 See Herzog 1986, 164–65 for a summary of the archaeological evidence for the cult at gates, most of which derives from the second millennium bce. Remains of the “baldachin” structure at the gate of Dan were suggested to be a dais of a deity (Biran 2001), but might be the “seat of a king,” and not necessarily a cultic structure. Note a fragment of an altar found at the gate of Jaffo. 59 Translation by Cogan / Tadmor 1988, 279. See also Emerton 1994 on this passage. 60 See n. 24. 61  ṣalam šarrūtiya might designate a statue in the round, as well as a stele. 62 Grayson 1987, 300. 63 Idem, 301, lines 24–30.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 87 ṣa-lam šarrū(LUGAL)-ti-ia e-pe-ša i-na si-i-pi āli(URU)-ia (erasure) ba-it ilāni(DINGIRMEŠ) ina ma-ḫar dA-šur4 ù dŠa-maš a-na ša-zu-zi lu ak-ru-ub i-na u4-mi-šu-ma bīt(É) ṣa-lam šarrū(LUGAL)-ti-ia i-na ki-pi-ir Idiglat(ÍDIDIGNA) i-na si-ip-pi āli(URU)-ia ālu(URU) ba-it ilāni(DINGIRMEŠ) lu e-pu-uš na-re-ia ù te-me-ni-ia i-na qer-bi-ša áš-ku-un I vowed to make the image of my kingship (and) install (it) at the entrance to my city, chosen by the gods, before Aššur and Šamaš. At that time I made the house of the image of my kingship on the bank of the Tigris, at the entrance to my city, chosen by the gods. My steles and (foundation) inscriptions I put inside it.

The practice of the installation of royal steles at the entrances continues in the Neo-Assyrian period. In a letter to Esarhaddon (680–669 bce) we find:64 šarru(MAN) liq-bi TA* bé-et i-da-nu-ni a-na rāb(LÙGAL) ṭuppšarru(A.BA) šarru(MAN) ṭè-e-mu liš-kun na-ru-u šu-mu šá šarri(MAN) ina libbi(ŠÀ) lišṭur ù šá ina si-ip-pa-ni šá bīti(É) i-šá-kan-u-ni is-se-niš-ma u4-mu ṭābu(DÙG. GA) le-mur Let the king order the chief scribe to write the name of the king on the stele, and at the same time to look up a favourable day for them to place (it) at the entrance to the house.65

Shalmaneser III places a statue of himself at the Coppersmith (Tabīra) gate of the city of Assur: ṣa-lam šarrū(MAN)-ti-a ēpuš(DÙ)-uš ina abul(KÀ. GAL) Tabīra(TIBIR) ul-ziz, “I made an image of my kingship (and) put it at the Tabīra Gate.”66 The inscription is incised upon the royal statue. A stele of Assurnasirpal II with an altar in front of it was erected at the gate of the Ninurta temple at Kalḫu (fig. 6). A stele of Tiglath-Pileser III is depicted standing at the city gate of Tirtakka on a relief from room II (722–725 bce) of Sargon II’s palace at Khorsabad (Dūr-Šarrukēn; fig. 7). Three steles of Esarhaddon were installed at the gates of conquered cities: one at gate D of Zincirli (Sam’al) and two at the north-eastern city gate and at the main gate of the acropolis of Tell-Ahmar (Til Barsip)—a stele at each gate (fig. 8a, b).67 Andrew George suggested the existence of a Gate of the Statue in Babylon.68 However, it is not clear if it is a royal, divine or other monument. 64 SAA 16, no. 125, lines r. 4–10 = Luukko / van Buyalere 2002, 106–107. 65 Presumably a temple or a palace. 66 Grayson 1996, 119, col. iii, line 10. 67 Ussishkin 1989, 488–489; Porter 2000. 68 George 1992, 456.

88

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David Ussishkin69 gathered most of the cases of the installation of this kind of monuments at city gates in Anatolia and the Levant in the second and first millennia bce, including steles erected by the Assyrians. He starts with the seated royal statue at the innermost entrance to the inner gatehouse of the central—South-West—Gate of Tell Mardikh (Ebla) dated to ca. 2000–1800 bce.70 Remains of the statues dated to the period of the Hittite Empire were unearthed nearby the Sphinx Gate of Alaça Höyük— also the central gate of the city, and the Sphinx Gate at Boğazköy (Hattuša), which served as an entrance to the temple area for cultic processions.71 A colossal royal statue, which Ussishkin tends to attribute to Pisisris (738– 717 bce) stood in the second chamber of the inner gatehouse of the South Gate at Carchemish.72 A colossal royal statue was installed at the inner gatehouse of “the Lion’s Gate” of Arslantepe (Melid) in the second half of the eight century bce.73 Ussishkin also suggests that a royal statue was erected at the eastern (central?) gate of Tell Tayanat early in the eight century bce. Ussishkin claimed that royal monuments were set “in a prominent position inside or adjacent to a central gatehouse” and were “meant to symbolize authority, domination or conquest of the city in question.”74 He connects the phenomenon with “the importance and function of the gate in the public life of the city in the ancient Near East.”75 However, the evidence from Mesopotamia quoted above and below denotes the sacral aspect of the act of installation of royal monuments at the gate.76 Archaeological records prove that steles were erected at the gate spaces of Ancient Israel.77 At Tel Dan uninscribed orthostats (maṣṣebōt; 9th–8th centuries bce) were found in situ at the gate plaza,78 as well as the scattered fragments of the famous stele of David (end of 9th century bce). A fragment of a monumental inscribed Israelite stele was unearthed in the debris near the great gate of Samaria. It is dated to the eight century bce on the grounds of the palaeography of its Hebrew inscription.79 69 Ussishkin 1989. 70 Ussishkin 1989, 485. 71  Ussishkin 1989, 486. 72 Idem, 487. 73 Idem. 74 Idem, 485. 75 Idem, 490. 76 On royal effigy as a sacral object see May 2008, Chapter I.3. 77 Ussishkin 1989, 490. 78 Biran / Naveh 1993, 81–87; idem 1995, 1–13. 79 Ussishkin 1989, 490; Crowfoot et al. 1942, 15; Birnbaum apud Crowfoot et al. 1957, 33–34, pl. II.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 89 3.3 Processional Gates—A Place for Public Performances: Military and Ritual Publicity and sacredness were again the reason for the gate spaces to be the place of ritualised performances. In the Assyrian Empire of the seventh century bce the gates of Nineveh, and of the cult centre of Ištar—Arbela served as the place of spectacular public performances— triumphal military processions, which are designated in Akkadian by the expression erāb āli, literary “entrance to the city,” since the triumphal procession was passing through the city gate in the sight of the citizens.80 It has been shown that in the Late Assyrian period military triumphs were celebrated together with the New Year feast—akītu.81 It was the main media event, an occasion on which the king was seen by the people. However, triumphal entrances were performed not only into the cities of Assyrian mainland, but also to the subjugated cities in the “hostile land.”82 The Hebrew Bible describes the women coming out of the cities to meet Saul and David returning from the victorious war with the Philistines, and forming a triumphal procession accompanied by recitation, singing and dance (2 Sam 18:6, 7): ‫ע ֵרי יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ וַ ֵּת ֶצאנָ ה ַהּנָ ִׁשים ִמ ָּכ‬,‫ה ְּפ ִל ְׁש ִּתי‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ ְּבׁשּוב ָּדוִ ד ֵמ ַהּכֹות ֶא‬,‫בֹואם‬ ָ ‫וַ יְ ִהי ְּב‬ .‫ּוב ָׁש ִל ִׁשים‬ ְ ,‫ְך—ּב ֻת ִּפים ְּב ִׂש ְמ ָחה‬ ְ ‫ ִל ְק ַראת ָׁשאּול ַה ֶּמ ֶל‬,‫(ל ִׁשיר) וְ ַה ְּמחֹלֹות‬ ָ ‫לשור‬ .‫ וְ ָדוִ ד ְּב ִר ְבב ָֹתיו‬,‫ ִה ָּכה ָׁשאּול ַּב ֲא ָל ָפו‬: ָ‫ֹאמ ְרן‬ ַ ‫ וַ ּת‬,‫וַ ַּת ֲענֶ ינָ ה ַהּנָ ִׁשים ַה ְמ ַׂש ֲחקֹות‬ Dancing women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet Saul, the king, with tambourines and celebration and lutes,  Saul has slain his thousands,  And David his ten thousands, sang the women.83

Besides military processions, the gates were also a place where ritual processions were passing. It was during the akītu when the gates had their main ceremonial function in Mesopotamia, and the festival procession was to pass through the gates. A Middle Babylonian gate name abul akīti “the New Year festival gate” was known in Nippur.84 Temple gates 80 May 2012, especially 461, 464, 474. 81  Pongratz-Leisten 1997, 245–52; Tadmor 2004; May 2012. 82 May 2012, 471, 480. 83 Translation following McCarter 1980, 310. P. Kyle McCarter amends the Biblical text into “to meet David.” 84 Six Kassite texts mention the akītu-gate, Sassmannshausen 2001, 243 (MUN 48, lines 28, 32); 244 (MUN 50, line 15); 248 (MUN 57, line 1); 420 (MUN 400, line 3), and

90

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naturally served the function of the place of display of a divine statue when it exited or entered the temple. The gates of the “entrance of Gula,” bāb(KÁ) e-reb dGu-la are mentioned to indicate the location of a house.85 Nebuchadnezzar embellished the northern gate of the chapel of Nabû for his exit and entrance.86 This is the gate described in the gate list of É-sagil as bāb nēreb dNabû u dBēlet-Bābili, “the Entrance Gate of Nabû and BēletBābili(=Ištar).”87 The most famous “New Year festival gate” is the Babylonian gate of Ištar, now in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin ( Jakob Rost 1992, 120–21, no. 61 and 123–125, nos. 62–63). The Middle Assyrian coronation ritual prescribes to carry the king out of the city gate during the coronation ceremony.88 These are probably the gates known from the Götteradressbuch as “the King’s Entrance Gate,” abul nēreb šarri, another name of the mušlālu-gate in the city of Assur, which was also a gate of litigation (see below).89 Another Middle Assyrian ritual commends going out, sitting and making sacrifice at the gate: [x] abulli(KÁ.GAL) Aš+šur illak(DU)-ku pan(IGI) abulli(KÁ.GAL) uššab(TUŠ)-bu niqû (UDU!SISKUR)[. . .].90

PBS 2/2 77, lines 2 and 11; PBS 106, line 27. PBS 106, line 27 speaks of the distribution of flour to the singers of the “akītu-gate”, a-na narû(NARMEŠ) abul(KÁ.GAL) á-ki-te/ti. PBS 2/2 77, lines 10–12 assign flour rations to the singers of akītu- and other gates. PBS 2/2 77, line 2 assigns a commodity of flour to the akītu-gate, not specifying a particular recipient. A ration given to the singers of the (akītu)-gate is interesting on its own, pointing out that a team of singers was among this gate’s personnel, which is obviously connected with rituals performed there. 85 Fales / Postgate 1995, 96 (= SAA 11 153). Another variant of this gate name is bāb(KÁ) né-reb dGu-la (George 1992, 94–95; no. 6, rev. line 29). Andrew George (1992, 399) suggests to identify this gate with k á - g ù n - a , probably the principal gate of Gula’s temple E-galmaḫ, located close to E-sagil in Babylon. As George notices, “the ceremonial name of the gate is shared with the gate of E-zida at Borsippa, through which Nabû’s procession passed to and from the Babylonian New Year festival.” The gate of Gula existed also in Nippur (Kramer 1956, 273–274). 86 bāb(KÁ) iltāni(IM.SI.SÁ) kaspi(KÙ.BABBAR) uh-hi-i-ma a-na [a-ṣi-]-e ù e-ri-ba ša . . . Nabû(dAG), “I inlayed the north gate with silver for the exit and entrance of . . . Nabû” (Langdon 1912, 158; A col. vi 46–48). 87 [bā]b ([K]Á) šà bāb(KÁ) Nabû (dAG) u Bēlet(dMÙŠ)-Bābili(TIN.TIRKI) ina lì[b]-bi i-ru-ub- né-reb Nabû (dAG) u Bēlet(dMÙŠ)-Bābili(TIN.TIRKI) šùm-sú, “The gate through which Nabû and Bēlet-Bābili enter is called the Entrance Gate of Nabû and Bēlet-Bābili” (George 1992, 94–95; no. 6, rev. line 23; 361–362; 397–398). 88 Müller 1937, 14–15, lines 43–44. 89 abul(KÁ.GAL) né-reb šarri (MAN) muš-la-l[u] (George 1992, 176–77, line 121). 90 “[to] the gate of Aššur they go (and) sit down in front of the gate, sacrifice [. . .]” (Speleers 1925, 36, no. 308, line 8).

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 91 3.4 Gates as a Place for the Public Appearance of the King Not only royal monuments, but the king himself makes his public appearances at the gate. As we saw he does it on the occasion of triumphs and ritual processions.91 The culminating point of the triumph is the king’s appearance at the gate performing a libation, which is the usual termination of a sacrifice.92 Assurbanipal’s libation over Teumman’s head at the gate of Arbela (fig. 5, and below) is the most explicit example of the king’s public appearance at the gate in Assyria. The gate list of E-sagil mentions the dais at the gate of the chapel of Gula, called parak šarri, “the dais of the king,” which probably served as the seat of the king on public occasions.93 The city gate of Babylon94 called “the King’s Gate,” abul šarri, is the only gate in this city, which does not bear the name of a god. It might be used for the royal ceremonies. The gate name “princes’ gate,” k á - g a l d u m u - m e š l u g a l is attested in Kassite Nippur.95 The gate is the place of the public appearance of the king also in the Bible. In 1 Kings one finds the enthroned kings of Israel and Judah, Ahaz and Jehosaphat’ sitting at the gate and hearing the prophet’s predicting them a victory (1 Kgs 22:10): ,‫ ְּבג ֶֹרן‬,‫ּכ ְסאֹו ְמ ֻל ָּב ִׁשים ְּבגָ ִדים‬-‫ל‬ ִ ‫הּודה י ְֹׁש ִבים ִאיׁש ַע‬ ָ ְ‫י‬-‫יהֹוׁש ָפט ֶמ ֶלְך‬ ָ ִ‫ּומ ֶלְך יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל ו‬ ֶ .‫יהם‬ ֶ ֵ‫ ִל ְפנ‬,‫ים—מ ְתנַ ְּב ִאים‬ ִ ‫יא‬ ִ ‫הּנְ ִב‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ ַׁש ַער ׁש ְֹמרֹון; וְ ָכ‬,‫ֶּפ ַתח‬ Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting on their thrones, dressed in robes, at the threshing floor96 at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them.97

David masters his troops at the city gates of Mahanaim before the battle as well (2 Sam 18:1–5, especially 4):

91  See also Schmitt, 2000. His pictorial examples of royal ceremonies at the gate (Abb. 8, 9)—the depictions on the White Obelisk, are in my view representations of triumphal processions and celebrations (May 2012, 267–274). 92 May 2008 and May 2012, 464–468, 471–474, 476. 93 George 1992, 94–95; no. 6, rev. line 32. 94 George 1992, 66–67, TINTIR=Babylon (no. 1), tablet V, lines 54, 68–69, 72. 95 PBS 2/2 77, line r. 3. 96 Eidem (2007, 299–300) discusses the possibility of the existence of a threshing floor at the gates of Qatna (depending on the translation of maškanum), and points to the existence of threshing floors or grain storages at Tuttul, as follows from the Old Babylonian text. 97 Translation Cogan 2001, 487. Cogan comments, “The cramped city streets and quarters could not accommodate large gatherings, and the only open space was to be found just inside the city gate or, better yet, outside it; such tracts served as the market and the place of assembly” (idem, 490).

92

natalie n. may ‫ וַ יְ ַׁש ַּלח ָּדוִ ד‬.‫ ָׂש ֵרי ֲא ָל ִפים וְ ָׂש ֵרי ֵמאֹות‬,‫יהם‬ ֶ ‫ה ָעם ֲא ֶׁשר ִאּתֹו; וַ ּיָ ֶׂשם ֲע ֵל‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ ֶא‬,‫וַ ּיִ ְפקֹד ָּדוִ ד‬ ,‫ וְ ַה ְּׁש ִל ִׁשת‬,‫יֹואב‬ ָ ‫צרּויָ ה ֲא ִחי‬-‫ן‬ ְ ‫יׁשי ֶּב‬ ַ ‫יֹואב וְ ַה ְּׁש ִל ִׁשית ְּביַ ד ֲא ִב‬-‫ד‬ ָ ַ‫ ַה ְּׁש ִל ִׁשית ְּבי‬,‫ה ָעם‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ֶא‬ .‫ ְל ֵמאֹות וְ ַל ֲא ָל ִפים‬,‫ה ָעם יָ ְצאּו‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ וְ ָכ‬,‫יַ ד ַה ַּׁש ַער‬-‫ ֶאל‬,‫ וַ ּיַ ֲעמֹד ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬. . . ;‫ְּביַ ד ִא ַּתי ַהּגִ ִּתי‬ David mastered the army (lit. the people) that was with him, setting commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds over them. David divided the army into three parts, one third under the command of Joab, one third under the command of Abishai son of Zeruiah, Joab’s brother, and one third under the command of Irtai the Gittite; . . . The king stood at the gate as the entire army (lit. the people) marched out by hundreds and thousands.

The king is sitting at the gate to meet the people and the army coming to him as does David after Abshalom’s revolt (2 Sam 19:9): ‫ וַ ּיָ בֹא‬,‫יֹוׁשב ַּב ַּׁש ַער‬ ֵ ‫ ִהּנֵ ה ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬,‫ה ָעם ִהּגִ ידּו ֵלאמֹר‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ּול ָכ‬ ְ ;‫ וַ ּיֵ ֶׁשב ַּב ָּׁש ַער‬,‫וַ ּיָ ָקם ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬ ,‫ָכל ָה ָעם ִל ְפנֵ י ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬ David got up and took his seat at the gate, and when the army (lit. the people) was told that the king was sitting at the gate, the entire army (lit. the people) came before the king.

Finally, the late post-exilic account of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib reports of Hezekiah assembling his generals at the city gate plaza and addressing them with a speech of encouragement (2 Chron 32:6): ,‫ל ָב ָבם‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ וַ יְ ַד ֵּבר ַע‬,‫רחֹוב ַׁש ַער ָה ִעיר‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ ֶא‬,‫ה ָעם; וַ ּיִ ְק ְּב ֵצם ֵא ָליו‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ ַע‬,‫וַ ּיִ ֵּתן ָׂש ֵרי ִמ ְל ָחמֹות‬ .‫ֵלאמֹר‬ He placed military officers in charge of the people, summoned them to himself on the plaza at the city gate, and spoke directly to them as follows. . . .98

The king at the gate in the Bible meeting and mastering the troops resembles of course the Neo-Assyrian triumphs, though these cultic-military performances were of much larger scale. However, in the vision of Ezekiel the prince (‫ )ּנָ ִׂשיא‬is prescribed to eat a sacrificial meal at the temple gate, in the passage compared by Hallo and Levine99 with the practice of offering to the temple gates at Ur (Ezek 44:3): ‫אּולם‬ ָ ‫ם—ל ְפנֵ י יְ הוָ ה; ִמ ֶּד ֶרְך‬ ִ ‫) ֶל ֶח‬-‫(ל ֱא ָכל‬ ֶ -‫ּבֹו לאכול‬-‫ נָ ִׂשיא הּוא יֵ ֶׁשב‬,‫הּנָ ִׂשיא‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ֶא‬ 100.‫ּומ ַּד ְרּכֹו יֵ ֵצא‬ ִ ,‫ַה ַּׁש ַער יָ בֹוא‬ 98 Translation by Myers 1965, 185. 99 Hallo / Levine 1967, 49. 100 It is noteworthy that this sacrificial meal seems not to be eaten publically, because the preceding passages (Ezek 44:1–2) prescribe to lock the doors and let no one enter the temple precinct.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 93 As for the prince, being a prince, he shall sit therein to eat bread before YHWH; he shall enter by the way of the porch of the gate, and shall go out by the way of the same.

It was suggested that in the Bible the king judges at the gate ( Jer 38:7)101 though the quotation does not directly point to it: ,‫יִ ְר ְמיָ הּו‬-‫נָ ְתנּו ֶאת‬-‫ ִּכי‬,‫ וְ הּוא ְּב ֵבית ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬,‫ּכּוׁשי ִאיׁש ָס ִריס‬ ִ ‫מ ֶלְך ַה‬-‫ד‬ ֶ ‫וַ ּיִ ְׁש ַמע ֶע ֶב‬ -‫ ִמ ֵּבית ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך; וַ יְ ַד ֵּבר ֶאל‬,‫מ ֶלְך‬-‫ד‬ ֶ ‫ וַ ּיֵ ֵצא ֶע ֶב‬.‫ ְּב ַׁש ַער ִּבנְ יָ ִמן‬,‫יֹוׁשב‬ ֵ ‫הּבֹור; וְ ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ֶא‬ .‫ ֵלאמֹר‬,‫ַה ֶּמ ֶלְך‬ But Ebed-Melech, the Cushite, a eunuch man, heard—since he was in the king’s house—that they had put Jeremiah into the pit. Now the king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate, so Ebed-Melech went out from the king’s house and spoke to the king.102

It should, nevertheless, be noted that to the best of my knowledge, we do not find the king judging at the gate in the Akkadian texts. 3.5 The Gate Space as a Place for Public Assemblies The Biblical text presents multiple evidence for the gate space being place of an assembly and the seat of elders, ‫נֹודע ַּב ְּׁש ָע ִרים ַּב ְע ָלּה ְּב ִׁש ְבּתֹו‬ ָ ‫א ֶרץ‬-‫י‬ ָ ֵ‫זִ ְקנ‬-‫עם‬,ִ “her husband is known in the gates when he sits with the elders of the land” (Prov 31:23).103 Gates were the place of public meetings as follows from the evidence discussed above and from further Biblical examples. Sichem and Hammor talk to their people at the gate of their city convincing them to make circumcision (Gen. 34:20, 21): .‫ ֵלאמֹר‬,‫אנְ ֵׁשי ִע ָירם‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ׁש ַער ִע ָירם; וַ יְ ַד ְּברּו ֶא‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ ֶא‬,‫ּוׁש ֶכם ְּבנֹו‬ ְ ‫וַ ּיָ בֹא ֲחמֹור‬ Hamor and Shechem came to the gate of their city, and spoke to their townsmen, saying. . . .104

In the post-exilic period the people of Jerusalem assembled to hear the Torah reading at the city gate (Neh 8:2–3):

101  Lundbom 1999, 71. 102 Translation idem, 4–5. 103 Translation by Fox, 1964, 1115. The commentator states again that “civic, personal and juridical business was conducted in the gates by city elders” (idem, 896). For the elders at the gates as a court jury see also Deut 21:18–22; Ruth 4:1–11. 104 The translation is mine. Speiser (1981, 263) rendered “the gate of their city” as the “town council” noting “Literally ‘the gate of their town,’ ” the place where all public business was transacted” (idem, 265).

94

natalie n. may —‫ ֵמ ִבין ִל ְׁשמ ַֹע‬,‫ וְ כֹל‬,‫א ָּׁשה‬-‫ד‬ ִ ‫ ֵמ ִאיׁש וְ ַע‬,‫ּתֹורה ִל ְפנֵ י ַה ָּק ָהל‬ ָ ‫ה‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫וַ ּיָ ִביא ֶעזְ ָרא ַהּכ ֵֹהן ֶא‬ ‫האֹור‬-‫ן‬ ָ ‫ ִמ‬,‫ה ַּמיִ ם‬-‫ר‬ ַ ‫בֹו ִל ְפנֵ י ָה ְרחֹוב ֲא ֶׁשר ִל ְפנֵ י ַׁש ַע‬-‫ וַ ּיִ ְק ָרא‬.‫יעי‬ ִ ‫ ַלח ֶֹדׁש ַה ְּׁש ִב‬,‫ְּביֹום ֶא ָחד‬ ‫ס ֶפר‬-‫ל‬ ֵ ‫ ֶא‬,‫ה ָעם‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ וְ ַה ְּמ ִבינִ ים; וְ ָאזְ נֵ י ָכ‬,‫מ ֲח ִצית ַהּיֹום—נֶ גֶ ד ָה ֲאנָ ִׁשים וְ ַהּנָ ִׁשים‬-‫ד‬ ַ ‫ַע‬ .‫ּתֹורה‬ ָ ‫ַה‬ On the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law (Torah) before the assembly of every man and woman, all who could hear and understand. And he read it at the plaza in front of the Water Gate from dawn until midday before the men and women who could understand, and all the people listened attentively (lit. the ears of the all people were directed towards) to the Book of the Law (Torah).105

Finally, the city gate and streets are the places where the Wisdom seeks for publicity (Prov 1:20–21): ‫ ְּב ִפ ְת ֵחי ְׁש ָע ִרים‬:‫ ִּת ְק ָרא‬,‫ ְּברֹאׁש ה ִֹמּיֹות‬.‫קֹולּה‬ ָ ‫ ִּת ֵּתן‬,‫ ַּבחּוץ ָּתר ֹּנָ ה; ָּב ְרחֹבֹות‬,‫ָח ְכמֹות‬ .‫ֹאמר‬ ֵ ‫יה ת‬ ָ ‫יר—א ָמ ֶר‬ ֲ ‫ָּב ִע‬ The Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, in the plazas gives for her voice, at the crossroads she calls out, at the openings of the city gate she has her say.106

I am not aware of any direct evidence from Mesopotamia itself for an assembly (puḫrum) at the gate.107 However, the divine or human assembly’s main concern is litigation,108 which often takes place at the gate (see below). Andrew George109 interprets Enūma eliš V, lines 125–128, where it is said that the divine assembly should take place in Babylon, as a word play on the folk-etymology of the name of Babylon as Bāb-ilī “gate of the gods.” He suggests that the assembly takes place at the “gate of the gods” that is in Babylon. One of the gates in Assur bore the ceremonial name lū dārât puḫur nišē, “Eternal be the assembly of the people!”110 Most interesting is probably the parallelism between Akkadian šību/ū, which means both “elder” (when in plural) and “witness,”111 and the “elders” serving as witnesses in the Bible as in Ruth 4:1–11.

105 Translation of the author. 106 Translation after Fox (2000, 95) with my amendments. 107 The only textual example of an assembly at the gate is rather unclear, a-na ri-ik-si šá bāb(KÁ) ekalli(É.GAL) ana pu-ḫur šá um-ma-ni, “to the board/treaty(?) of the palace gate, to the assembly of specialists” (VAT 8258=KAR 71, line; Ebeling 1931b, 30). 108 CAD P, 485–491. 109 1992, 256–257. 110  Menzel 1981, II T 155: 131, KAV 42 iii 37 and Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 26, 29. See also Steinert, this volume, n. 134. 111  CAD Š II, 390ff. For šību as a witness at the gate see below and nn. 128, 129. Most of this evidence derives from Nuzi.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 95 3.6 Gates as a Place for Judicial Activities: Judgement, Litigation, Legal Agreements, Publication of Court Decisions and Legal Documents etc. In the texts, both Akkadian and Biblical, the most often mentioned function of the gate space is its being a place of legal actions.112 This function of the gate space cannot be found in the archaeological record or visual representation with probably one only exception.113 Litigation took place at the city gate, as well as at palace and temple gates. In both Akkadian and Biblical contexts we find the gate space being used as a legal court on occasion of lawsuits. Books of Amos (5:10) and Isaiah (29:21) use the term ‫יח ַּב ַּׁש ַער‬ ַ ‫ּמֹוכ‬, ִ which designates the person demanding a litigation at the gate in order to prove his case. Gates in Mesopotamia were the place of the seat of the judges,114 in the Bible— the seat of the jury of elders,115 a court where decisions were made.116 In Mesopotamia judgement at the gate is a common place found in literary texts—proverbs and sayings. A text from Assur, written in the Neo-Assyrian dialect, and belonging to the collection defined by Wilfred Lambert as Popular Sayings renders: a-na URUKu-ú-ti ki-i il-li-ku ina ti-ib še-e-ri ina bāb(KÁ) ha-za-an-ni ig-ru-šú When he went to the city of Cutha, they took him to law at break of dawn in the magistrate’s gate.

And: ṣap-par-ru-ú i-na bāb(KÁ) de-˹e˺-ni ú-šu-uz im-na ù šu-me-la kàt-˹ra˺-a ú-paqa-ad i-di ḫi-bil-ta-šú Šamaš(dUTU) qu-ra-du The sycophant stands in court at the city gate, right and left he hands out bribes. The warrior Šamaš knows his misdeeds.117 112 The evidence is endless. There is no place and sense to discuss all the evidence here, only some texts are quoted. For the rest see CAD A, 82–88 and B 14–27, passim. 113 Traces of a throne were excavated at the gate plaza of Tel Dan. It was suggested, among other possibilities, that the throne was installed there for the king performing a royal court of justice (see discussion in Schmitt 2000, 477). The suggestion is based again on Biblical sources ( Jer. 38:7–8), and cannot be used as direct evidence in spite of its high probability, since the interpretation of this passage as the royal court at the gate is itself a suggestion. It is obvious, however, that the throne at the Tel Dan gate plaza stood there for a high official, most probably the king, though in Mesopotamia daises for gods were also erected at the gates (see above). 114 CAD A, 86a. 115 Deut 21:18–22; Ruth 4:1–11; Prov 31:23. 116 CAD B, 19b–20a, 21b–22a. 117 Lambert, 1960, 218–219, lines r. 1–2, and 8–10 respectively. I follow Lambert’s translation, but in fact it should be rendered, “the sycophant stands at the ‘gate of judgement.’ ”

96

natalie n. may

This rather late and literary text reflects a common notion of a gate being a place of legal procedures. Often the gate of litigation is the gate of the god.118 Gate names such as “gate of judgements,” bāb dīnī at the Eanna temple in Uruk119 or the “gate of the judges,” bāb dayyānī in Old Babylonian Sippar,120 which was probably the “gate of Šamaš, the judge”121 (Šamaš was the Sun god and the god of justice), also designate the gate space function. The term dayyānū ša bābi, “judges of the gate” is also often attested.122 Gates of Šamaš are known in Babylon,123 Assur124 and Sippar,125 but it seems that only in Sippar it was the gate of litigation. The range of judicial procedures which took place at the gate is much wider than just the act or a court of justice itself. There are attestations of: • Gates are places of the publication of legal decisions • Court of justice at the gate • Witnesses sworn or oaths taken at the gate • Gates as a place of legal transactions and contracts signed at the gate The starting point of a legal procedure at the gate was publishing of legal documents. This action is known as šūdūtu in the peripheral texts from Nuzi and Arrapha. The document was read at the gate and then written down. The final clause of multiple legal documents from Nuzi states, ṭuppu arki šūdūti ina bāb abulli ša URUNuzi šaṭir, “(this) tablet is written after the proclamation at the city gate of Nuzi.”126 Sometimes this clause states that the tablet was written ina pāni . . . hazannu, “in front of the mayor.”127 Another rather peripheral corpus of evidence, namely the Old Assyrian documents from Kültepe (kārum Kaneš) seems to be particularly clear This also transmits the play of words here: he himself is being judged by Šamaš. The text is dated to 716 bce. 118 CAD B, 19b. 119 Kleber 2008, 6 with n. 183. 120 CAD B, 21b. 121  k à - d u t u - d i - k u 5 (CT 4 46a: 4). 122 CAD B, 17b, 19b. 123 George 1992, 66–67, TINTIR=Babylon (no. 1), tablet v, lines 56, 68–69, 74, and passim. 124 George, 1992, 176–77, line 123, and p. 456ff. 125 See above with n. 120, and below. 126 See Negri Scafa 1998, 140 and Lacheman 1962 for the meaning and appearance of the šūdūtu-clause on the Nuzi texts. Further examples with the variants of writing appear in CAD Š III, 195. 127 For instance JEN 433: 36; 440: 16.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 97 concerning an oath sworn at the gate. The longest known Old Assyrian text from Kaneš,128 being a record of a lawsuit regarding a robbery, describes that the “witnessed tablets, whether concerning you or concerning IdīIštar, which they certified in the Gate of the God,” ṭup-pu-ú ša ší-bi4-a lu a-šu-mì-kà lu a-šu-mì I-dí-Ištar(AŠDAR) ša i-na ba-áb ilim(DINGIR) ú-ḫari-mu-ú-ni were taken by burglars. The expressions ša šībē ša bāb ilim129 and ṭuppum (ša šībē) ša bāb ilim, “a tablet (witnessed) in the Gate of the God” is well attested in the documents from kārum Kaneš.130 However, contracts were also reached at the Gate of the God,131 a-na bāb(KÁ) ilim(DINGIR) nu-šé-ri-sú-[ma] bāb(KÁ): ta-am-gi5-ir-tum i-bi4ší-ma, “We led him down to the Gate of the God, and in the Gate this agreement was reached.” The custom of litigation at the gate was common in this period also in the Assyrian mainland. An Old Assyrian inscription of Erišum132 enlists “Seven Judges” of the mušlālum-gate. The mušlālum-gate of the city of Assur in the Old Assyrian period is said to be a place of judgement also in the letters,133 which, using George’s expression, “brings to mind the ancient tradition of ‘justice at the gate.’ ”134 Witnesses were sworn and oaths were taken at the gates in Assyria itself as they were in Anatolian colonies of the Assyrians. The Erišum text mentions the mušlālum-gate as a place where oaths were taken, testimonies were given and legal decisions were made:135 qá-bi wa-ta-ar-tim i-na mu-uš-l[á-l]e [(x)] x ša ḫa-re-be-em pu-šu ù qí-na-sú i-ṣa-ba-at ki-ma kà-ar-pì-tim ḫa--e-tim qá-qá-sú i-ḫa-pì ki-ma qanêm(GI) qì-li- i-qí-a-al ú ma-ú-š[u] i-pè-šu-ma i-lu-ku qá-bi4-i wa-ta-a[r-t]im i-na mu-uš-lá-le bēt(É-be-et)ḫa-re-be-em bēs(É-be)-sú e-we ša a-na ší-bu-u[t s]á-ra-tim e-le-ú [7 da]-˹a˺-a-˹nù ˺ ša dí-na-am i-na [mu-uš-lá-l]e i-dí-nu ˹dí� ˺i[n sá-r]a-[t]im [lidīnūšum dAššur] ˹ú˺ dAdad(IŠKUR) ú be-l[u-um ilī zarāšu li]-il5-qú-ta áš-ra-a[m] [u x x x (x)-a]m e i-dí-na-šu

128 Larsen 1988, 115, No. 84a, lines 55–57. 129 lu ṭup-pa-am il5-qé lu ší-bé-e a-na ba-ab ilim(DINGIR-im) ú-šé-ri-id, “let him take a tablet, let him send down the witnesses to the gate of the god” (Albayrak 2006, 96, No. 45. Kt. o/k 30, lines 28–30), and CAD A II, 218 TCL 130: 30’. 130 ṭup-pá-am/um (ša ší-be) ša ba-áb i-lim/DINGIR Veenhof 2010, 143; no. 42, lines 1–3; 159; no. 51, lines 17–18; 178; no. 62, line 1=nos. 63, line 15 and 64, lines 18f. 131  Veenhof 2010, 103, no.13, lines 43–45. 132 Grayson et al. 1987, 20–21, lines 26–30. 133 CAD M II, 277a. 134 George 1992, 458. 135 Grayson et al. 1987, 21, lines 39–52.

98

natalie n. may The one who lies (lit. “talks too much”) in the mušlālum-gate, [the demon] of ruins will seize his mouth and his hindquarters; he will smash his head like a shattered pot; he will fall like a broken reed and water will flow from his mouth. The one who lies (lit. “talks too much”) in the mušlālum-gate, his house will become a house of ruin. He who rises to give false testimony, may the [Seven] Judges who decide legal cases in [the mušlālum-gat]e give a false decision [against him]; may Aššur [and] Adad, and Bēl [my gods, p]luck [his seed]; a place [. . .] may they not give to him.

The legal function of the gate space is interconnected with its sacral function: the witnesses swore by the deity/deities of the gate, in this case presumably by Aššur, Adad and Bēl, who would punish them for the false testimony. The Erišum inscription describes the witness given under oath obviously in the course of the litigation process. The court of justice at the gate is also found in the Bible (Deut 17:2–9): ‫ ֲא ֶׁשר‬,‫א ָּׁשה‬-‫אֹו‬ ִ ‫ ִאיׁש‬:‫ֹלהיָך נ ֵֹתן ָלְך‬ ֶ ‫יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬-‫ ֲא ֶׁשר‬,‫יִ ָּמ ֵצא ְב ִק ְר ְּבָך ְּב ַא ַחד ְׁש ָע ֶריָך‬-‫ִּכי‬ ,‫ֹלהים ֲא ֵח ִרים‬ ִ ‫ וַ ּיַ ֲעבֹד ֱא‬,‫ וַ ּיֵ ֶלְך‬.‫יָך—ל ֲעבֹר ְּב ִריתֹו‬ ַ ‫ֹלה‬ ֶ ‫א‬-‫ה‬ ֱ ָ‫ה ַרע ְּב ֵעינֵ י יְ הו‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫יַ ֲע ֶׂשה ֶא‬ ,‫לָך‬-‫ד‬ ְ ַ‫ וְ ֻהּג‬.‫יתי‬ ִ ִ‫צּו‬-‫א‬ ִ ֹ ‫ם—א ֶׁשר ל‬ ֲ ִ‫צ ָבא ַה ָּׁש ַמי‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ אֹו ְל ָכ‬,‫ ָל ֶהם; וְ ַל ֶּׁש ֶמׁש אֹו ַלּיָ ֵר ַח‬,‫וַ ּיִ ְׁש ַּתחּו‬ .‫ּתֹוע ָבה ַהּזֹאת ְּביִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל‬ ֵ ‫ נֶ ֶע ְׂש ָתה ַה‬,‫יטב—וְ ִהּנֵ ה ֱא ֶמת נָ כֹון ַה ָּד ָבר‬ ֵ ‫וְ ָׁש ָמ ְע ָּת; וְ ָד ַר ְׁש ָּת ֵה‬ ,‫ה ָּד ָבר ָה ָרע ַהּזֶ ה‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ה ִא ָּׁשה ַה ִהוא ֲא ֶׁשר ָעׂשּו ֶא‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ה ִאיׁש ַההּוא אֹו ֶא‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫את ֶא‬ ָ ‫הֹוצ‬ ֵ ְ‫ו‬ ‫ּפי ְׁשנַ יִ ם‬-‫ל‬ ִ ‫ ַע‬.‫ וָ ֵמתּו‬,‫ּוס ַק ְל ָּתם ָּב ֲא ָבנִ ים‬ ְ ;‫ה ִא ָּׁשה‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ אֹו ֶא‬,‫ה ִאיׁש‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫יָך—א‬ ֶ ‫ׁש ָע ֶר‬-‫ל‬ ְ ‫ֶא‬ ‫ּבֹו‬-‫ יַ ד ָה ֵע ִדים ִּת ְהיֶ ה‬.‫ּפי ֵעד ֶא ָחד‬-‫ל‬ ִ ‫ ַע‬,‫יּומת‬ ַ ‫ לֹא‬:‫ים—יּומת ַה ֵּמת‬ ַ ‫ֹלׁשה ֵע ִד‬ ָ ‫ אֹו ְׁש‬,‫ֵע ִדים‬ ‫ ִּכי יִ ָּפ ֵלא ִמ ְּמָך‬.‫ ִמ ִּק ְר ֶּבָך‬,‫ּוב ַע ְר ָּת ָה ָרע‬ ִ ;‫ ָּב ַא ֲחר ֹנָ ה‬,‫ה ָעם‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ וְ יַ ד ָּכ‬,‫ ַל ֲה ִמיתֹו‬,‫ָב ִראׁש ֹנָ ה‬ :‫ ִּב ְׁש ָע ֶריָך‬,‫ע—ּד ְב ֵרי ִריבֹת‬ ִ ַ‫ּובין נֶ גַ ע ָלנֶ ג‬ ֵ ‫ּדין ְל ִדין‬-‫ין‬ ִ ‫ּדם ְל ָדם ֵּב‬-‫ין‬ ָ ‫ ֵּב‬,‫ָד ָבר ַל ִּמ ְׁש ָּפט‬ .‫ֹלהיָך ּבֹו‬ ֶ ‫ ֲא ֶׁשר יִ ְב ַחר יְ הוָ ה ֱא‬,‫ה ָּמקֹום‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫—א‬ ֶ ‫ית‬ ָ ‫וְ ַק ְמ ָּת וְ ָע ִל‬ If there be found in the midst of you, within any of your gates which YHWH your God gave to you, man or woman, that did that which is evil in the sight of the YHWH your God, in transgressing His covenant, and had gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, or the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have commanded not; and it be told you, and you hear it, then shall you inquire diligently, and, behold, if it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; then shall you bring forth that man or that woman, who have done this evil thing, unto thy gates, even the man or the woman; and you shall stone them with stones, that they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is to die be put to death; at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hand of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall put away the evil from the midst of you. If there arise a matter too hard for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, even matters of controversy within thy gates; then shall you arise, and get you up unto the place which YHWH your God shall choose. And you shall come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 99 shall be in those days; and you shall inquire; and they shall declare unto you the sentence of judgment.136

In the book of Zechariah (8:16) the gate is defined as a place of judgement, .‫יכם‬ ֶ ‫ ִׁש ְפטּו ְּב ַׁש ֲע ֵר‬,‫ּומ ְׁש ַּפט ָׁשלֹום‬ ִ ‫הּו—א ֶמת‬ ֱ ‫ר ֵע‬-‫ת‬ ֵ ‫ּד ְּברּו ֱא ֶמת ִאיׁש ֶא‬,ַ “Speak truth to one another, and judge with complete justice in your gates.”137 However, the gates were also the place where the witness for a business or marriage contract could be found. In the book of Ruth (4:9–11), Boaz buys the field of Naomi and pronounces Ruth to be his wife at the city gate taking city elders and people at the gates as witnesses: ,‫ימ ֶלְך‬ ֶ ‫א ֶׁשר ֶל ֱא ִל‬-‫ל‬ ֲ ‫ּכ‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫יתי ֶא‬ ִ ִ‫ ִּכי ָקנ‬,‫ ֵע ִדים ַא ֶּתם ַהּיֹום‬,‫ה ָעם‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫אמר ּב ַֹעז ַלּזְ ֵקנִ ים וְ ָכ‬ ֶ ֹ ‫וַ ּי‬ ‫יתי‬ ִ ִ‫רּות ַהּמ ֲֹא ִבּיָ ה ֵא ֶׁשת ַמ ְחלֹון ָקנ‬-‫ וְ גַ ם ֶאת‬.‫ נָ ֳע ִמי‬,‫לֹון—מּיַ ד‬ ִ ‫ּומ ְח‬ ַ ‫א ֶׁשר ְל ִכ ְליֹון‬-‫ל‬ ֲ ‫וְ ֵאת ָּכ‬ ‫ּומ ַּׁש ַער‬ ִ ,‫ה ֵּמת ֵמ ִעם ֶא ָחיו‬-‫ם‬ ַ ‫יִ ָּכ ֵרת ֵׁש‬-‫ וְ לֹא‬,‫נַ ֲח ָלתֹו‬-‫ה ֵּמת ַעל‬-‫ם‬ ַ ‫ ְל ָה ִקים ֵׁש‬,‫ִלי ְל ִא ָּׁשה‬ ;‫ים—ע ִדים‬ ֵ ִ‫ וְ ַהּזְ ֵקנ‬,‫ּב ַּׁש ַער‬-‫ר‬ ַ ‫ה ָעם ֲא ֶׁש‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫אמרּו ָּכ‬ ְ ֹ ‫ וַ ּי‬.‫ ַהּיֹום‬,‫ ֵע ִדים ַא ֶּתם‬:‫ְמקֹומֹו‬ Then Boaz said to the elders and to all the people, “You are witness today that I buy all that belonged to Elimelek and all that belonged to Kilyon and Mahlon from the hand of Naomi. And Ruth the Moabitess, wife of Mahlon, I ‘buy’ as my wife, to establish the name of the dead on his inheritance, so that the name of the dead not be cut off from among his brethren, or from the gate of his town. You are witness today!” Then the people who were at the gate and the elders said, “(We are) witnesses!”138

The following verses (Ruth 4:11–12) are a blessing and might be in fact the confirmation of the wedding contract by the assembly. But the whole passage (Ruth 4:1–12) describes a civic litigation process all of which takes place at the city gate in the eyes of ten elders whom Boaz called to witness that the other party withdraws its claims (4:1–6). Abraham buys his burial place, the cave of Mahpelah, from Ephron the Hittite at the gates of the Hittite city (Gen 23: esp. 10–11) having all the people entering it as witnesses: ‫ ְלכֹל‬,‫חת‬-‫י‬ ֵ ֵ‫א ְב ָר ָהם ְּב ָאזְ נֵ י ְבנ‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫חת; וַ ּיַ ַען ֶע ְפרֹון ַה ִח ִּתי ֶא‬-‫י‬ ֵ ֵ‫ ְּבתֹוְך ְּבנ‬,‫וְ ֶע ְפרֹון י ֵֹׁשב‬ ‫ּבֹו ְלָך‬-‫ וְ ַה ְּמ ָע ָרה ֲא ֶׁשר‬,‫י—ה ָּׂש ֶדה נָ ַת ִּתי ָלְך‬ ַ ִ‫אד ֹנִ י ְׁש ָמ ֵענ‬-‫א‬ ֲ ֹ ‫ ל‬.‫עירֹו ֵלאמֹר‬-‫ר‬ ִ ‫ָּב ֵאי ַׁש ַע‬ .‫ ְקבֹר ֵמ ֶתָך‬,‫יה ָּלְך‬ ָ ‫ע ִּמי נְ ַת ִּת‬-‫י‬ ַ ֵ‫יה; ְל ֵעינֵ י ְבנ‬ ָ ‫נְ ַת ִּת‬ Ephron was sitting among the sons of Heth. Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in front of the sons of Heth, all coming to the gate of his city, so: 136 Translation following the JPS Bible. 137 Amended translation of Carol and Eric Meyers (1993, 409). See their note on the function of the gates in the Biblical texts (ibid., 427). 138 Translation by Campbell (1975, 140) with my amendments. For marriage contracts at the gate in Mesopotamia see CAD B, 23.

100

natalie n. may “No my lord, hear to me: I gave you the field and the cave in it, I gave it in the eyes of my people—bury your dead!”139

It is noteworthy, that both Edward Campbell and Ephraim Speiser140 do not translate “gate” literally, but render it as a city assembly or council, thus applying the derivative and not the direct meaning. As both the Biblical and Mesopotamian evidence display, gates were the place for various legal transactions. Contracts were made and “the tablets were sealed” at the gates; payments, in accordance with the legal obligations were executed there, and the contract witnesses witnessed at the gate as well. In Mesopotamia the richest evidence for the gate as a place of business legal actions, derives from Old Assyrian and from Nuzi documents.141 The location of these actions reflects their public character.142 A Seleucid text preserved a unique description of an interrogation by torture on the rack, simmiltu ša mašâltu “the ladder of interrogation,” of the suspects in sacrilegious larceny at the temple. The procedure was carried out in front of the high official (šatammu) of E-sagila, and “of the judges of the house of gods behind the gate,” presumably of the temple.143 3.7 Gates as a Place for Public Executions (Not Only of Legal Character) Legal procedure at the gate did not end with the judge’s sentence. It was indeed carried out there from the beginning until the very end. The gate space was used not only for tortures, but also for executions. I have found no Akkadian documents that evidence the execution at the gate as a matter of a court decision. However, already in a literary Babylonian prayer to Marduk, a composition which Lambert tends to date to the Kassite period,144 a “gate of punishment,” bāb šerti is mentioned connecting the gates to the place of both judgement and punishment: ur-ru-šú áš-riš di-i-[ni] ina ba-ab šèr-ti-ka ka-sa-a i-da-˹a˺-[šú], “. . . bringing him to the place of judgement, his arms are bound in your gate of punishment.”145

139 The translation is mine. See Speiser 1981, 168 for the alternative. 140 See notes 108–109. 141  CAD A I, 84a; B 19b; M II, 277a, Š III, 195. For the analyses of Nuzi material see Negri Scafa 1998. 142 For the legal transactions at the gate in the Bible see the passages quoted above from the books of Genesis (23, esp. 10) and Ruth (4:1–12). 143 dayyānū(LÚDI.KUD5MEŠ) ša bīt(É) ilī(DINGIRMEŠ) ina ku-tal bā[bi](K[Á]), Joannès 2000, 195, lines 10–11. 144 Lambert 1959–60, 48. 145 Idem, 5, lines 42–143.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 101 Idiomatic usage of the expression in this literary text indicates that the gates in general were known as a site of executions. Another Middle Babylonian example for punishment at the gates derives from the curse formula of a kudurru-inscription of Marduk-apla-iddina,146 abulli(KÁ.GAL) āli(URU)-šu ka-meš liṭ-ṭa-rid-ma i-na ka-mat āli(URU)-šu li-šar-bi-ṣu-šu-ma, “may he be expelled (from) the gate of his city as a captive (!),147 and may they make him stay outside the city.”148 Most of the cases of execution at the city gates derive from Assyria, where they are executions of war prisoners. Assyrian kings used to pile severed heads and corpses at the gates of cities (fig. 9 a, b), not necessarily Assyrian ones. In the inscriptions of Assurnasirpal II, piles of heads and impalement in front or near by the city gate is a common place, a-si-tu šá qaqqadāte(SAG.DUMEŠ) ina pu-ut abulli(KÁ.GAL-šú) lu ar-ṣip, “a pile of heads I erected in front of his gates”;149 700(7 ME) ṣābê (ERINMEŠ) ina pu-ut abulli(KÁ.GAL) šu-nu a-na GIŠzi-qi-pi ú-za-qip, “700 soldiers I impaled on stakes in front of their city gate.”150 It is also well paralleled by 2 Kings 10:8, a noted by Cogan and Tadmor,151 ‫ ֵה ִביאּו‬,‫לֹו ֵלאמֹר‬-‫וַ ּיָ בֹא ַה ַּמ ְל ָאְך וַ ּיַ ּגֶ ד‬ ‫הּב ֶֹקר‬-‫ד‬ ַ ‫ר—ע‬ ַ ‫ ִׂשימּו א ָֹתם ְׁשנֵ י ִצ ֻּב ִרים ֶּפ ַתח ַה ַּׁש ַע‬,‫אמר‬ ֶ ֹ ‫ה ֶּמ ֶלְך; וַ ּי‬-‫י‬ ַ ֵ‫אׁשי ְבנ‬ ֵ ‫ר‬,ָ “The messenger came and reported to him, ‘they have brought the heads of the princes.’ He said, ‘Put them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until morning.’ ” Tiglath-Pileser III singles out for the exemplary execution the person responsible for the resistance—the local king,152 mdNabû(MUATI)ú-šab-ši šarra(LUGAL)-šú-nu mé-eḫ-ret abul(KÁ.GAL) āli(URU)-šú a-na GIŠza-qi-pi ú-še-li-˹ma˺ mās(KUR)-su, “I impaled Nabû-ušabši,

146 Scheil, 1905, 38=MDP VI, col. vi, lines 16–17. 147 Contra CAD K, 122a. Note phraseology similar to Esarhaddon’s inscriptions below. 148 This passage can of course be interpreted as an exile from the city. In the previous line (Scheil, 1905, 38=MDP VI, col. vi, line 15) the violator of the kudurru is cursed with leprosy. So he should be driven out of the city as a leper, which constitutes a parallel to the law of Lev. 13:11, 46 and Num. 12:14–16 in general, and to 2 Kings 7:3 which describes four lepers sitting at the city gate during the siege of Samaria by Ben-Hadad. 149 Grayson 1991, 220, iii 108; also idem, 199, i 89; 210, ii 108–109; 260, 75–76 with combinations and variations. Shalmaneser III also used this expression (Grayson 1996, 20, ii 53). The inscriptions of these kings very often describe piles of heads and impaled captives in front or around conquered cities applying a variant of the same stock phrase. The highly literary character of this expression is also betrayed by a sign play when asītu ša qaqqadāte (SAG.DUMEŠ) ina pūt(SAG) abulli/āli is written with the use of Sumerograms. 150 Grayson 1991, col. ii 109; variant idem, 260, 75–76. 151  Cogan / Tadmor 1988, 113. 152 This reflects a transition from politics of plunder and devastation to gradual annexation in Assyrian imperialism.

102

natalie n. may

their king, before the gate of his city and exposed him to the gaze of his countrymen.”153 Sennacherib’s inscriptions carry on the change. Not only is the local king chosen for exemplary execution, but he is also brought to Assyria for this purpose: mŠu-zu-bu šar(LUGAL) Bābili(KÁ.DINGIR.RAKI) i-na taḫāz(MÈ) ṣēri(EDIN) bal-ṭu-su ik-šu-du qātā(ŠUII)-šu-un e-ri-in-nu bi-ri-tu id-du-šu-ma a-di maḫ-ri-ia ub-lu-niš-šu i-na abul(KÁ.GAL) qabal(MURUB4) āli(URU) ša Ninua(NINAKI) ar-ku-su da-bu-ú-eš Their hands captured Šūzubu, king of Babylon alive in an open battle. They put him into a neck-stock (and) fetters, and brought him before me. I fastened him at the inner gate of Nineveh as a bear.154

Esarhaddon’s scribes obviously knew Sennacherib’s inscriptions.155 He is also reported to have put a captive king near the inner city gate of Nineveh together with a bear, a dog and a swine to be mocked by the mob:156 URUAr-za-a šá pa-a-ṭi na-ḫal māt(KUR) Mu-ṣur-ri áš-lu-lam-ma mA-suḫi-li šarra(LUGAL)-šu bi-re-tú ad-di-ma ana māt Aš+šurKI ú-ra-a ina ṭe-ḫi abul(KÁ.GAL) qabal (MURUB4) āli(URU) šá URUNi-nu-a it-ti a-si kalbi(UR. GI7) u šaḫî(ŠAḪ) ú-še-šib-šu-nu-ti ka-mì-iš I plundered Arzâ, which is on the ridge of the brook of Egypt. Asuḫili, its king I put in fetters, (and) brought to Assyria. Near the inner gate of Nineveh with a bear, a dog and a pig I put them as captives.

Another opponent of Esarhaddon, the Arabian King Uabu, and his soldiers were put in collars near the city gate. The mentioning in this connection of Esarhaddon’s love for justice and punishing crime is remarkable, especially in the context of punishment at the city gate since it is extremely rare that the Assyrian kings represent themselves as a “king of justice.”157 It obviously points to the punishment of the rebellious king as to that of

153 Tadmor 1994, 122–123, Summary Inscription I, lines 9–10. 154 Luckenbill 1924, 87–88, Nebi-Yunis Inscription (H4), lines 34–36, var. idem, 90, lines 13–15. R. Campbell Thompson (1940, 95) notices a variant of Nebi Yunis inscription with bābu instead of abullu, and it-ti a-si in place of da-bu-ú-eš. 155 In this connection note DAM.ŠAḪ, DÍM.ŠAḪ=da-bu-ú (CAD D, 17a, lexical section). 156 Borger 1956, 50; Prism A, Episode 7, col. iii, lines 39–42=Leichty, 2011, 17–18. 157 The royal function as a “king of justice” is rarely associated with the kings of Assyria and is known only for Sargon II and his successors, which probably is an evidence of Babylonian influence (Postgate 1974, 418; Tadmor 2006).

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 103 a criminal, which is a typical Assyrian attitude towards the disloyalty of vassals:158 a-na-ku mAš+šur-aḫu(PAP)-iddina(AŠ) šar(LUGAL) māt(KUR) Aš+šurKI šar (LUGAL) kib-rat erbet(LÍMMU)-ti kit-tu i-ram-mu-ma ṣa-lip-tú ik-kib-šú ṣābû (LÚERINMEŠ) tāḫazi(MÈ)-ia a-na na-ra-ru-tu mIa-ta-‘a áš-pur-ma LÚA-ru-bu ka-li-šú ik-bu-su-ma mÚ-a-bu adi ṣābû(LÚERINMEŠ)-šá is-si-šú bi-re-tu id-du-uma ú-bi-lu-nim-ma GIŠši-ga-ru áš-kun­-šú-nu-ti-ma ina le-et abulli(KÁ.GAL)-ia ar-ku-us-šú-nu-ti I, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters, who loves justice, for whom treachery is interdicted; I sent my battle troops to the aid of Yata’. They totally defeated the Arab. They put Uabu with his army into fetters and brought him (to Assyria). I put them in stocks159 and fastened them aside my (city) gate.160

In the time of Esarhaddon the inner gate of Nineveh, abul qabal āli ša Ninua, probably becomes the place of public executions of the enemies of Assyria. That’s where his son Assurbanipal exposes the severed head of Teumman161 and causes the sons of Nabû-šum-ēreš to grind the bones of their father.162 This scene was presumably represented upon the relief of room 33 of the Southwest palace at Nineveh.163 The head of Teumman was not only hung upon the gate at Nineveh, but also served as a libation receptacle at the gate of Arbela in the course of the triumphal pilgrimage of Assurbanipal (fig. 5): a-na-ku Aššur(AN+ŠÁR)-bāni(DÙ)-apli(A) šár(MAN) māt(KUR) Aš+šurKI qaqqad(SAG.DU) mTe-um-man [šar(MAN)] Elam(KURELAM.MAKI) ina

158 The curses of Esarhaddon’s vassal treaties are probably the best manifestation of the attitude to changing or disregarding the vassal oath and the very document of the treaty being a crime (Parpola / Watanabe 1988, 43ff., §31= SAA 2 no. 6, lines 360ff.). 159 Note the wordplay: šigāru serves also as synecdoche for a gate (CAD Š II, 409b). 160 Borger 1956, 54; Prism A, Episode 14, col. iv, lines 25–31=Leichty 2011, 19–20. 161 ni-kis qaqqad(SAG.DU) mTe-um-man ina irat(GABA) abul(KÁ.GAL) qereb(MURUB4) āli(URU) ša Ninua((NINAKI/URUNINA/ URUNINAKI) ú-maḫ-ḫi-ra maḫ-ḫu-riš áš-šú da-naan Aššur(AN+ŠÁR) u Ištar(d15) bēli(ENMEŠ-ia) nīšê(UNMEŠ) kul-lu-me, “The cut-off head of Teumman, in front of the gates of the inner city of Nineveh I presented as an offering in order to reveal to all the people the might of Aššur and Ištar, my lords” (Borger 1996, 107; Prisms B col. vi, lines 66–68 / C col. vii, lines 63–65). 162 eṣmētu(GÌR.PAD.DU/DAMEŠ) mdNabû(MUATI/AG)-šum(MU)-ēreš(KAM/URU4-eš) ša/ šá ul-tu qé-reb māt(KUR) Gam-bu-li il-qu-u/ú-ni a-na māt(KUR) Aš+šurKI eṣmētu(GÌR.PAD. DU/DAMEŠ) šá-a-ti/te mi-iḫ-ret abul(KÁ.GAL) qabal(MURUB4) āli(URU) Ninua(NINAKI)/ Ni-nu-˻a ú-šaḫ-ši-la mārē(DUMUMEŠ)-šú, “the bones of Nabû-šum-ēreš that I brought from the land of Gambulu to Assyria, I caused his sons to grind these bones near the inner gates of Nineveh” (Borger 1996, 108; B VI 97–B VII 2/C VII 115–119). 163 Barnett et al. 1998, pl. 289, slab 381b.

104

natalie n. may abul(KÁ.GAL) qabal(MURUB4) āli(URU) muḫ-ḫu-riš ú-[maḫ]-ḫir ša ul-tu ul-la i-na ba-ru-ti qa-bu-u um-ma [qaqqadē˼([SAG].[DU˼MEŠ nakrē(LÚKÚRMEŠ)-ka ta-na-[kis] karānē(GEŠTIN) eli(UGU)-˹šú ˺-nu ta-naq-qí ša x[. . .] e-nen-[na Šama]š ([dUT]U u Adad(dIŠKUR) ina tarṣi(LAL)-ia[. . .] qaqqadē(SAG.DUMEŠ) nakrē(LÚKÚRMEŠ)-ia ak-kikis karāna(GEŠTIN) aq-qa˺-[a eli(UGU)-šú-nu] I, Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, the (cut off ) head of Teumman, king of Elam, at city gate of the inner city I presented as an offering. That, which from the days of old was declared in an omen, saying: “Cut off the heads of your enemies, libate wine upon them,” now Šamaš and Adad in my time [. . .]. I cut off the heads of my enemies, libated wine upon them.164

These Neo-Assyrian executions at the gates were part of the celebration of triumphs. The Biblical examples of execution at the gate are comparatively numerous. Thus the idolaters (see above, Deut 17:5) should be stoned to death at the gate. The same is the fate of the rebellious son (Deut 21:18–22). ,‫ּובקֹול ִאּמֹו; וְ יִ ְּסרּו אֹתֹו‬ ְ ‫ ְּבקֹול ָא ִביו‬,‫ה—אינֶ ּנּו ׁש ֵֹמ ַע‬ ֵ ‫ּומֹור‬ ֶ ‫סֹורר‬ ֵ ‫ ֵּבן‬,‫יִ ְהיֶ ה ְל ִאיׁש‬-‫ִּכי‬ ‫ׁש ַער‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ וְ ֶא‬,‫זִ ְקנֵ י ִעירֹו‬-‫הֹוציאּו אֹתֹו ֶאל‬ ִ ְ‫ ָא ִביו וְ ִאּמֹו; ו‬,‫ וְ ָת ְפׂשּו בֹו‬.‫יהם‬ ֶ ‫וְ לֹא יִ ְׁש ַמע ֲא ֵל‬ .‫ וְ ס ֵֹבא‬,‫זֹולל‬ ֵ ;‫ ְּבק ֵֹלנּו‬,‫ה—אינֶ ּנּו ׁש ֵֹמ ַע‬ ֵ ‫סֹורר ּומ ֶֹר‬ ֵ ‫ ְּבנֵ נּו זֶ ה‬,‫זִ ְקנֵ י ִעירֹו‬-‫ וְ ָא ְמרּו ֶאל‬.‫ְמקֹמֹו‬ ‫ יִ ְׁש ְמעּו‬,‫יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל‬-‫ ִמ ִּק ְר ֶּבָך; וְ ָכל‬,‫ּוב ַע ְר ָּת ָה ָרע‬ ִ ,‫ וָ ֵמת‬,‫אנְ ֵׁשי ִעירֹו ָב ֲא ָבנִ ים‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫ְּורגָ ֻמהּו ָּכ‬ .‫וְ יִ ָראּו‬ If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, that will not hearken to the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and though they chasten him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city: “This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he does not hearken to our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.” And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he dies; so shall you put away the evil from the midst of you; and all Israel shall hear, and see.165

In both cases the execution is to follow the sentence. 3.8 Market Places at the Gates The gate space served as a market place, which is reflected in the multiply attested Akkadian expression and gate name bāb maḫīri, “the market gate.”166 This expression is known from the Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian

164 Epigraph no. 14 (Fuchs apud Borger 1996, 301–302; col. i, line 47–col. ii, line 3). This libation took place at the gate of the temple of Ištar at Arbela (see above n. 47). 165 The translation follows the JPS Bible. 166 CAD B, 22a; CAD M I, 98.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 105 periods in Assyria and Babylonia respectively. In the pre-Hammurabi Old City of Babylon, the Market Gate was the gate through which the road to the southern city of Dilbat passed.167 In the Late Babylonian period this gate name is attested in Babylon itself, Uruk, Kutha168 and Bīt-Amukkāni,169 and is always written with Sumerogram, k á - K I . LA M ( g a n b a). In Uruk, Kutha and Bīt-Amukkāni the Market Gate gave its name to the city quarters, and in Babylon of the Late Babylonian period it probably is also a place name.170 A Late Assyrian text of Assurbanipal and 2 Kings present an interesting parallel of the prices at the gate market being an indication of the economic situation in the country.171 Assurbanipal boasts of his military achievements and tribute brought to Assyria after the defeat of Arab tribes, which led to an extraordinary low price for such an exotic item as a camel:172 nišē(UNMEŠ) zikru/(NITA) zik-ru u sinniš(MUNUS)/sin-niš sīsê(ANŠEMEŠ) gammalē(ANŠE.A.AB.BAMEŠ) alpē(GU4MEŠ) u ṣe-e-ni ina la me-ni áš-lu-la a-na māt(KUR) Aššur(AN+ŠÁRKI) nap-ḫar māti(KUR)-ia šá/˹ša] Aššur(AN+ŠÁRKI) id-di-na ka-la-mu a-na si-ḫir-ti-šá um-dal-lu-u a-na paṭ /paṭ-ṭi gim-ri-šá gammalē (ANŠE.A.AB.BAMEŠ) ki-ma ṣe-e-ni ú-par-ri-is ú-za-‘i-iz a-na nišē(UNMEŠ) māt(KUR) Aššur(AN+ŠÁRKI) ina qa-bal-ti māti(KUR)-ia gammalē (ANŠE.A.AB.BAMEŠ) 1 šiqil(GÍN) 1/[2 šiqil(GÍN]) kas-˹pi i-šam-mu ina bāb(KÁ) ma-ḫi-ri. Numberless humans, male and female, horses, camels, cattle and small cattle I brought to Assyria as a booty, I gave it all of my country of Assyria, I filled its (Assyria’s—N.N.M) borders with its (the booty’s—N.N.M) entirety. I divided (and) distributed camels to the people of Assyria as if a small cattle; in the middle of my land they bought a camel for a shekel (or) half a shekel173 at the gate market.

Elisha predicts high prices for flour and crops at the gates of Samaria as the god’s punishment to Ahab—an indication of economic collapse and famine (2 Kgs 7:1):174

167 George 1992, 18. 168 See also George 1992, 373—written also k á ( / g a l ) - g a n b a . 169 Pohl 1933, 48*; no. 19, line 47. 170 Idem. 171  Cogan and Tadmor (1988, 79) in their commentary also noted the literary motif of a cheap price as an abundance resulting from military booty. 172 Borger 1996, 67, A ix, lines 42–49. 173 See Frahm, 2005 on the half-shekel “coins”. 174 The verse is repeated thrice: here and in 7:16 and 7:18.

106

natalie n. may ‫ס ֶֹלת ְּב ֶׁש ֶקל‬-‫ ָּכ ֵעת ָמ ָחר ְס ָאה‬,‫ ּכֹה ָא ַמר יְ הוָ ה‬:‫יְ הוָ ה‬-‫ ִׁש ְמעּו ְּד ַבר‬,‫יׁשע‬ ָ ‫אמר ֱא ִל‬ ֶ ֹ ‫וַ ּי‬ .‫ל—ּב ַׁש ַער ׁש ְֹמרֹון‬ ְ ‫אתיִ ם ְׂשע ִֹרים ְּב ֶׁש ֶק‬ ַ ‫וְ ָס‬ Then Elisha said: “Hear the words of YHWH, thus said YHWH, ‘This time tomorrow a seah of choice flour shall be (sold) for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.’ ”175

Both examples quoted above show that in Mesopotamia and beyond market gates were the place where the exemplar prices were established. Paola Negri Scafa176 notes also that in Nuzi standard measures (ammati ša abulli, “measure [lit. ‘cubit’] of the gate”) were also displayed at the gate. Further examples of the standard measures of the gate are known as early as from the Old Babylonian Sippar of the time of Samsuiluna, where it is a “standard measure of (the god of justice—N.N.M) Šamaš at the gate of the (temple precinct—N.N.M) gagûm,” qaštu(GIŠBAN) Šamaš (dUTU) i-na bāb(KÁ) ga-˹gi4˺-im.177 Given the well-known association of the correct measures with the notion of justice in Mesopotamia,178 the establishment of exemplar prices and measures at the gate markets connects the gates with justice and jurisdiction once again. 3.9 Gates as a Place of Control The public functions of the gates needed control. A variety of “officials of the gates” existed in different locations of the ancient Near East. They exercised duties connected to the public functions of the gate spaces. There were gate officials since the earliest times in Mesopotamia. Various terms were used to designate them in different periods and even in different locations within the same period. The exact meaning of these terms and functions of the gate officials deserves a separate investigation.179 Below a list of the terms for “gate officials” is given with reference to location and period, but without an attempt at establishing their functions:

175 Cogan / Tadmor 1988, 77 translate “at the market price of Samaria,” taking the expression “at the gate of ” in its semantic development as “the rate of exchange.” 176 1998, 140, with n. 5 for further references. 177 Sigrist 1988, 75; no. 58a, lines 9–10 and 76; no. 58b, lines 7–8. 178 And thus with Šamaš as the god of justice. 179 Some of them dealt with the taxes paid at the gate: VAS 54, line 4ff. Taxation at the gate, its recipients and reason is another vast field to be explored (see evidence collected at CAD B, 16–23 passim and CAD A I, 87).

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 107 – with abullu:180 Old Babylomian: ša abulli(LÚ.KÁ.GAL) mār abulli(DUMU.KÁ.GAL) š à - t a m k á - é - g a l and š à - t a m k á - g a l are known from the early Old Babylonian lexical list lú=ša.181

Apart from that is an Old Babylonian attestation for gate attendants (?)— muzzaz abulli (mu-za-az KÁ.GALMEŠ).182 Nuzi:183 abultannu(LÚ.KÁ.GAL-(nu)) a city gate official. Neo-Assyrian: rab abulli(LÚ. GAL.KÁ.GAL) Neo-Babylonian: bēl abulli(LÚ.EN.KÁ.GAL)

– with bābu:184 ša bāb ekalli((LÚ).KÁ.É.GAL)—Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian periods. LÚ.KÁ.NA = ša bā[bim] is known from an Old Babylonian lexical list.185 Nuzi: maṣṣar bābi ša ekalli­—an official of palace gate.186 Neo-Babylonian: rab bābi(LÚ.GAL.KÁ)

Kudurru, governor of Uruk in the reign of Assurbanipal writes in his letter to the king that Bēl-ibni, military commander of the Sealand appointed his nephew Mušēzib-Marduk ša muḫḫi bābi (ša UGU KÁ).187 The event is important enough to be reported to the king, but the functions of the appointee remain unclear. In the Bible (2 Kgs 23:8)188 the gates are called “gates of Joshua” ‫ַׁש ַער‬ ‫הֹוׁש ַע‬ ֻ ְ‫ י‬in the name of the city governor, ‫ה ִעיר‬-‫ר‬ ָ ‫ׂש‬. ַ The distribution of the 180 CAD A, 88–89. CAD translates each of these terms by the neutral “gatekeeper,” which says nothing about these officials’ real function. 181  Civil 1969, 98, lines 137 e, f. 182 BE 6/1 58: 14f. There are numerous attestations of gate garrisons (CAD B, 17b–18a) and guards (maṣṣaru, CAD M I, 342), Eidem 2007, and Wright 1990. Some documents are ration lists of the gate garrisons (for instance Eidem 2007), but there is also evidence for payments for carried out work made at the gate (CAD B, 17 a, quoting TCL 7 8: 4 and 43: 3; PSD 180a, quoting Uruinimgina 7 vii 3–4(=5 vi 23–24). 183 For the exhaustive analysis of the evidence on abultannu see Negri Scafa 1998, passim and especially 140, for a summary. Though she manages to trace dynasties of these officials at Nuzi (eadem, 152) the texts do not provide information about their particular functions. 184 CAD B, 26–27. 185 Civil 1969, 171; line 469. 186 Negri Scafa 1998, 152–153. Negri Scafa notices also emantuḫlu—the head of a military unit of ten men of the gate guard (eadem, 140). 187 ABL 277, rev. lines 2–7, and Waterman 1930, 188–189. 188 Quoted above.

108

natalie n. may

gate offices (‫)הּׁש ֲֹע ִרים‬ ַ at the Temple by David is described in 1 Chronicles 26:12ff. Their exact function is again unclear. The royal officer in 2 Kings 7:17 appointed by the king of Israel in charge of the gates (‫ה ַּׁש ַער‬-‫ל‬ ַ ‫)ע‬ ַ of Samaria and trampled to death at that same gate by the hungry mob, was probably responsible for the regulation of access in and out of the starving city, and for the market prices at the gate during famine. His appointment was obviously of an extraordinary character. 4. Conclusions In Mesopotamia and in the Bible the gate was a public place. There (inter alia) legal procedures took place,189 but it was a place of publicity, be it royal, as well as of any other kind. It is clear particularly from the gate names that in the large Mesopotamian metropoliae such as Sippar, Uruk, Babylon, Assyrian capitals, and even at Megiddo and Hazor in Ancient Israel various functions were assigned to different gates. There were market gates, judges’ gates, ceremonial gates etc. In smaller urban compounds all the public activities were concentrated at the same gate. John Wright190 made an attempt of diachronic analyses of the gate functions in the Bible, claiming that in the Iron Age II the city gate was a paraphrase for the city itself.191 According to his scheme, in the NeoBabylonian Judean city the gates’ functions were transmitted to the temple gates,192 and in the Achaemenid period, to the squares. The power accordingly moves from the city to the temple gates, and then to the squares. This scheme is supposed to reflect the development from a “two tiered” society to a “three tiered” via the stage of the “four tiered” temple oriented Neo-Babylonian Jerusalem. The weakest in this chain of Wright is the definition of the ‫ ְרחֹוב‬as a square though it seems to mean just “broad space.” It may designate a street as well as a plaza, seemingly similar to Akkadian ribītu.193 It can be also located at the city gate, and is also attested in the post-exilic period.194 The other problem is of course the dating of the Biblical material and the absence of actual legal documents to support or deny the literary evidence. 189 See the examples assembled in PSD A 180a, most of which refer to Uruinimgina. 190 Wright 2003. 191  Ibid. 2003, 22–26. 192 Ibid., 33ff., based on Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 193 See Steinert 2011, 317 and this volume. 194 See above and notes 10 and 11.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 109 The comparison of the Mesopotamian and Biblical material discussed in the present study shows that though the role of the gate evolved with time, it does not necessarily reflect an axial development, but a specific stage of a particular social structure. First of all, it is clear that the gate of the city, temple or palace can share the same functions.195 It seems that in the Mesopotamian periphery such as in the Old Assyrian Assur and its colonies, and in Nuzi, the city gates were places of communal activities, primarily legal as they were in Ancient Israel. With the growth of royal power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire the public functions focused on the “royal persona” and his appearance in the gates, but in the Land of Israel this phenomenon existed from David through Jesus.196 In the Neo- and Late Babylonian periods city and temple gates had again sacral and communal functions. The main importance for us here is the absence of a space deliberately designated for public activities. Gate squares either before or behind the gates together with the gate construction itself served in Mesopotamia and Ancient Israel as a place of the main urban public activities, “civic space” in Wright’s definition. So did the streets (Steinert, this volume). Most public events such as processions and the king’s public appearance to the people also took place at the city gate space, but it was rather a consequence of a spontaneous development rather than a preconceived urban planning. Unlike the agora or forum of the Classical world, topographically, gate spaces were not the heart of the city. Often the gate squares were located even outside the city, which led Wright to deny the existence of a geographical entity “city” in Ancient Israel.197 Was this reflecting an authoritarian structure of the society in opposition to democracy, when the main place of the city was not the ruler’s residence, but the city square? It seems that in the ancient Near East the absence of specially designed public spaces was a matter of tradition, and environmental and climatic conditions (May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume) rather than a direct reflection of the political order.

195 For instance the Temple (gate or court) can become a market as is well know from the famous passage of the New Testament (Matt. 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45). The King’s gate may designate a palace gate as well as a city gate name, so it cannot be identified with certainty for instance in the book of Esther (passim), as well as in most cases in various Mesopotamian texts. 196 The topos of the “triumphal” entrance of the messiah to Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible (Zech 9:9), and the New Testament (Matt. 21:1–10; Mark 11:1–15; Luke 19:29–38). 197 Wright 2003, 50.

110

natalie n. may Abbreviations

I Rawlinson Rawlinson, Henry Creswicke (1861), Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. Vol. I. A Selection from the Historical Inscriptions of Chaldaea, Assyria, & Babylonia, London. ABL Harper, Robert F. (1892), Assyrian and Babylonian Letters belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum, Chicago AfO Archiv für Orientvorschung AfOB Archiv für Orientvorschung, Beiheft AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament AoF Altorientalische Forschungen BaF Baghdader Forschungen BBR Beiträge zur Kenntnisder babylonischen Religion, Zimmern 1901. BE Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform Texts BiOr Bibliotheca Orientalis CAD Chicago Assyrian Dictionary CM Cuneiform Monographs CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets HSS Harvard Semitic Series HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual IEJ Israel Exploration Journal JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JEN Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi JPS Jewish Publication Society JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament K. tablets in the Kouyunjik collection of the British Museum KAJ Keilschrifttexte aus Assur juristischen Inhalts KAR Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts MVAG Mitteilungen der vorderasiatisch-aegyptischen Gesellschaft MDP Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse MB Middle Babylonian MAOG Mitteilungen der altorientalischen Gesellschaft MSL Materials for Sumerian Lexicon MUN Mittelbabylonische Urkunden aus Nippur N.A.B.U Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires ND field numbers of tablets excavated at Nimrud OIP Oriental Institute Publications PBS 2/2 Publications of the Babylonian Section, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania PSD The Sumerian Dictionary of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania PIHANS Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandaise de Stamboul RAI Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale RIMA Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Assyrian Periods RINA Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period SAA State Archives of Assyria SCCNH Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians TCL Textes cunéiformes du Louvre TU Thureau-Dangin, François (1922), Tablettes d’Uruk: à l’usage des prêtres du Temple d’Anu au temps des Séleucides Paris.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 111 UF Ugarit Forschungen Uruinimgina Steible, Horst / Behrens, Hermann (1982), Die altsumerischen Bau- und Weihinschriften. Teil I. Inschriften aus “Lagas”, Freiburger altorientalische Studien, 5, No. 1, 278ff. VAS Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler YOS Yale Oriental Series: Babylonian Texts YBC tablets in the Babylonian Collection, Yale University Library WVDOG Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft

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—— (1931a), Tod und Leben nach den Vorstellungen der Babylonier. 1. Texte, Berlin. —— (1931b), Aus dem Tagewerk eines assyrischen Zauberpriesters, MAOG 5/3, Helsingfors: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. Eidem, Jesper (2007), “Notes on the Topography of the Late Bronze Age Qatna: New Evidence from the ‘Lower City Palace’ Tablets”, in: Daniele Morandi Bonacossi (ed.), Urban and Natural Landscapes of an Ancient Syrian Capital: Settlement and Environment at Tell Mishrifeh/Qatna and in Central-Western Syria. Studi Archeologici su Qatna 1. Udine, 297–304. Emerton, John A. (1994), “ ‘The High Places of the Gates’ in 2 Kings XXII 8”, in: Vetus Testamentum 44, 455–467. Fales, F. Mario / Postgate, J. Nicolas (1992), Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration, SAA 7, Helsinki. —— (1995), Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration, SAA 11, Helsinki. Fox, Michael V. (2000), Proverbs: a New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible; v. 18A–18B, New York. Frahm, Eckhart (2005), “Wer den Halbschekel nicht ehrt: Nochmals zu Sanheribs angeblichen Münzen”, in: N.A.B.U 2005, no. 45. Frankena, Rintje (1961), “New Materials for the Tākultu Ritual: Additions and Corrections”, in: BiOr 18, 199–207. George, Andrew (1992), Babylonian Topographical Texts, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 40, Leuven. —— (2003), The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. London. Goetze, Albrecht (1950), “Sin-Iddinam of Larsa. New Tablets from His Reign”, in: JCS 4, 83–118. Grayson, Kirk A. (1987), Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC), RIMA 1, Toronto. —— (1991), Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114–859 BC), RIMA 2, Toronto. —— (1996), Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858–745 BC), RIMA 3, Toronto. Hallo, William W. / Levine, Baruch A. (1967), “Offerings to the Temple Gates at Ur”, in: HUCA 44, 17–58. Haran, Menahem (1981), “Temples and Cultic Open Areas as Reflected in the Bible”, in: Avraham Biran (ed.), Temples and High Places in Biblical Times: Proceedings of the Colloquium in Honor of the Centennial of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, Jerusalem, 14–16 March 1977, Jerusalem, 31–37. Heinz, Marlies (1997), Der Stadtplan als Spiegel der Gesellschaft. Siedlungsstrukturen in Meso­potamien als Indikator für Formen wirtschaftlicher und sozialer Organisation, Berlin. Herzog, Ze’ev (1986), Das Stadttor in Israel und in den Nachbarländern, Mainz am Rhein. —— (1997), Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and Its Social Implications, Tel Aviv. Jakob-Rost, Liane (1992), Das Vorderasiatische Museum, Mainz am Rhein. Joannès, Francis (2000), “Une chronique judiciaire d‘époque hellénistique et le châtiment des sacrilèges à Babylone”, in Joachim Oelsner (ed.), Assyriologica et Semitica, Münster, 193–211. Jursa, Michael (2010), Aspects of Economic History of Babylonia in the First Millennium BC: Economic Geography, Economic Mentalities, Agriculture, the Use of Money and the Problem of Economic Growth, Münster. Kleber, Kristin (2008), Tempel und Palast: Die Beziehungen zwischen dem König und dem Eanna-Tempel im spätbabylonischen Uruk, AOAT 358, Münster.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 113 —— (2010), “The Eanna Archive in the years 14­–23 Nbk and 2­–11 Nbn.”, in: Michael Jursa et al., An Economic History of Babylonia in the First Millennium B.C. Economic Geography, Economic Mentalities, Agriculture, the Use of Money and the Problem of Economic Growth (AOAT 377), Münster, 540–563. Koehler, Ludwig / Baumgartner, Walter (1996), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament III, Leiden. Kramer, Samuel N. (1956), From the Tablets of Sumer, Colorado. Lacheman (1962), Ernest R., “The Word Šudutu in the Nuzi Tablets”, in: Igor M. Diakonoff et al. (eds.), Труды Двадцать пятого международного конгресса востоковедов, Москва 9–16 августа 1960, Moscow, 233–238. Lambert, Wilfred G. (1959–1960), “Three Literary Prayers of the Babylonians”, in: AfO 19, 47–66. —— (1960), Babylonian Wisdom Literature, Oxford. Langdon, Stephen (1912), Die Neubabylonischen Königsinschriften. Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 4, Leipzig. Larsen, Mogens T. (1988), “Old Assyrian Texts”, in: Ira Spar (ed.), Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Volume I. Tablets, Cones, and Bricks of the Third and Second Millennia B.C., New York, 98–143. Layard, Henry Austin (1853), The Monuments of Nineveh from Drawings Made on the Spot. London. —— (1853a), Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert: being the result of a second Expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum, London. Leichty, Erle with Grant Frame (2011), The royal inscriptions of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria (680–669 BC). RINAP 4, Winona Lake, IN. Linssen, Marc J. H. (2004), The Cults of Uruk and Babylon. The Temple Ritual Texts as Evidence for Hellenistic Cult Practice, CM 25, Leiden. Liverani, Mario (1997), “The ancient Near Eastern city and modern ideologies”, in: Gernot Wilhelm (ed.), Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch. Saarbrucken, 85–107. Luckenbill, Daniel D. (1924), The Annals of Sennacherib, OIP 2, Chicago. Lundbom, Jack R. (1999), Jeremiah: a New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 21A–C, New York. Luschan, Felix von (1893), Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 1. Einleitung und Inschriften, Berlin. —— (1898), Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 2. Ausgrabungsbericht und Architektur, Berlin. Luukko, Mikko / Van Buylaere, Greta with contributions by Simo Parpola (2002), The Political Correspondence of Esarhaddon, SAA 16. Helsinki. May, Natalie N. (2008), Sacral Functions of the King as Represented in Neo-Assyrian Art (Ninth—Seventh centuries BCE). Ph.D. dissertation, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. —— (2012), “Royal Triumph as an Aspect of the Neo-Assyrian Decorative Program”, in: Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, International Congress of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology, Winona Lake, IN, 461–488. McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr. (1980), Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes and Commentary. Anchor Bible, 8, New York. Menzel, Brigitte (1981), Neuassyrische Tempel, Studia Pohl Series Maior 10/I–II, Rome. Meyers, Carol L. / Meyers, Eric M. (1993), Zechariah 9–14: a New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible, 25C, New York. Müller, Karl Fr. (1937), Das assyrische Ritual: Teil I. Texte zum assyrischen Königsritual, MVAG 41/3, Helsingfors. Myers, Jacob M. (1965), II Chronicles. Translation and notes, Anchor Bible, 13, New York. Negri Scafa, Paola (1998), “Ana pani abulli šaṭir. Gates in the Texts of the City of Nuzi”, in: Davis I. Owen / Gernot Wilhelm (eds.), SCCNH 9, Bethesda, 139–162.

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Oppenheim, A. Leo (1969), “Mesopotamia-Land of Many Cities”, in: Ira M. Lapidus (ed.), Middle Eastern Cities: A Symposium on Ancient, Islamic, and Contemporary Middle Eastern Urbanism, Berkeley, 3–18. Parpola, Simo / Watanabe, Kazuko (1988), Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, SAA 2. Helsinki. Paul, Shalom M. (2010), “Gates of the Netherworld”, in: Wayne Horowitz / Uri Gabbay / Filip Vukosavovic (eds.), A Woman of Valor: Jerusalem Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Joan Goodnick Westenholz, BPOA 8, Madrid, 163–169. Pfeiffer, Robert H. / Lacheman, Ernest R. (1942), Excavations at Nuzi. Volume 4, Miscellaneous Texts From Nuzi, HSS 13, Cambridge. Place, Victor (1867), Ninive et l’Assyrie, Volume 3: Planches, Paris. Pohl, Alfred (1933), Neubabylonische Rechtsurkunden aus den Berliner Staatlichen Museen: I. Teil. Analecta Orientalia 8, Rome. Pongratz-Leisten, Beate (1994), Ina šulmi īrub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im I.Jahrtausend v. Chr., BaF 16, Mainz am Rhein. —— (1997), “The Interplay of Military Strategy and Cultic Practice in Assyrian Politics”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, 245–252. Porter, Barbara N. (2000), “Assyrian Propaganda for the West, Esarhaddon’s Stelae for Til Barsip and Sam’al”, in: Guy Bunnens (ed.), Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supp. 7, Louvain, Paris, Sterling, 143–176. Postgate, J. Nicolas (1974),” Royal Exercise of Justice under the Assyrian Empire”, in: Paul Garelli (ed.), Le Palais et la Royauté (Archéologie et Civilisation), RAI 19th, Paris, 418–426. Radner, Karen (2010), “Gatekeepers and Lock Masters. The Control of Access in Assyrian Palaces”, in: Heather D. Baker / Eleanor Robson / Gábor Zólyomi (eds.), Your Praise is Sweet: A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from Students, Colleagues and Friends. London, 269–280. Sassmannshausen, Leonhard (2001), Beitrage zur Verwaltung und Gesellschaft Babyloniens in der Kassitenzeit, BaF 21, Mainz am Rhein. Scheil, Vincent (1902), Délégation en Perse. Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique de Perse: Textes Élamites-Sémitiques. Deuxième série, MDP IV, Paris. —— (1905), Délégation en Perse. Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique de Perse: Textes Élamites-Sémitiques. Deuxième série, MDP VI, Paris. Schmitt, Rüdiger (2000), “Der König sitzt im Tor. Überlegungen zum Stadttor als Ort herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Alten Testament”, in: UF 32, In memoriam Cyrus H. Gordon, 475–486. Sigrist, Marcel (1988), “Old Babylonian Texts. Commercial and Legal Texts (Nos. 48–68)”, in: Ira Spar (ed.), Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Volume I. Tablets, Cones, and Bricks of the Third and Second Millennia B.C., New York, 64–86. Sollberger Edmond (1974), “The White Obelisk”. Iraq 36: 231–238, Pls. XLI–XLVIII. Speiser, Ephraim A. (1981), Genesis. Introduction, Translation, and Notes. The Anchor Bible 1, New York. Speleers, Louis (1925), Recueil des inscriptions de l’Asie Antérieure des Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire à Bruxelles: Textes sumériens, babyloniens et assyriens, Bruxelles. Steinert, Ulrike (2011), “Akkadian Terms for Streets and the Topography of Mesopotamian Cities”, in: Altorientalische Forschungen 38, 309–347. Stern, Ephraim (ed.) (1993–2008), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, New York. Stone, Elizabeth C. (1991), “The Spacial Organization of Mesopotamian Cities”, in: Aula Orientalis 9, 235–242. —— (1995), “The Development of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Jack M. Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, New York, 235–248.

gates and their functions in mesopotamia and ancient israel 115 —— (2005), “Mesopotamian Cities and Countryside”, in: Daniel C. Snell (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 141–154. —— (2008), “A Tale of Two Cities. Lowland Mesopotamia and Highland Anatolia”, in: Joyce Marcus / Jeremy A. Sabloff (eds.), The ancient city: new perspectives on urbanism in the old and new world, Santa Fe, 141–164. Tadmor, Hayim (1994), The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III King of Assyria. Critical Edition, With Introductions Translations and Commentary, Jerusalem. —— (2004), “An Assyrian Victory Chant and Related Matters”, in: Grant Frame with Linda S. Wilding (eds.), From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea: Studies on the History of Assyria in Honor of A.K. Grayson, PIHANS 101, Leiden, 269–276. —— (2006), “Sennacherib, King of Justice. Tradition and Change in the Assyrian Royal Titles”, in: Mordechai Cogan (ed.), Haym Tadmor, Assyria, Babylonia and Judah. Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East, Jerusalem, 51–55 (in Hebrew). Tremayne, Arch (1925), Records from Erech, Time of Cyrus and Cambyses (538–521 B.C.), YOS 7, New Haven. Ussishkin, David (1989), “The Erection of Royal Monuments in City-Gates”, in: Kutlu Emre / Barthel Hrouda / Machteld Mellink / Nimet Özgüç (eds.), Anatolia and the Ancient Near East, Studies in Honor of Tahsin Özgüç. Ankara, Ankara, 485–496. van Driel, Govert (1969), The Cult of Aššur. Studia Semitica Neerlandica 13, Assen. Veenhof, Klaas R. (2010), The Archive of Kuliya, son of Ali-abum (Kt. 92/k 188–263), Kültepe Tabletleri V, Ankara. Waterman, Leroy (1930), Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire. Translation and Transliteration. Ann Arbor. Weber, Max (1958), The City. Translated and Edited by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth, New York / London. Wright, John W., (1990), “Guarding the gates: I Chronicles 26.1–19 and the Roles of Gatekeepers in Chronicles”, in: JSOT 48, 69–81. —— (2003), “A tale of three Cities: Urban Gates, Squares and Power in Iron Age II, NeoBabylonian and Achaemenid Judah”, in: Philip R. Davies / John M. Halligan (eds.), Second Temple Studies III: Studies in Politics, Class, and Material Culture, 19–50. Zimmern, Heinrich (1901), Beitrage zur Kenntnis der babylonischen Religion, Assyriologische Bibliothek 12, Leipzig.

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Fig. 1. Scheme of the gate space of a six-chamber gates. Drawing by Nica May.

Fig. 2. Libation and prayer at the temple portal. Dedication plaque from Ur. Larsa period. Photograph by Natalie N. May.

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Fig. 3. Sacrifice and libation at the city gate. White Obelisk, third register, sides A–C. Drawing by Nica May (drawn after Sollberger 1974, pls. XLII–XLIV).

Fig. 4. Triumphal entrance of Sennacherib to the Babylonian city of Dilbat. Sacrifice at the gate. Layard 1853, pl. 73.

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Fig. 5. Assurbanipal’s libation over Teumman’s head in front of the divine symbols with a bow mounted upon it at the gates of Arbela in the course of the akītufestival. North palace, room I, slab 9 (Place 1867, pl. 41).

Fig. 6. Stele of Assurnasirpal II with an altar in front of it at the gate of the Ninurta Temple, Kalḫu (Layard 1953a, 351).

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Fig. 7. Siege of the city Tikrakka. Palace of Sargon II at Dūr-Šarrukēn, room 2. Royal stele at the city gates (Botta and Flandin 1849, pl. 64).

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Fig. 8a

Fig. 8b Fig. 8a, b. Stele of Esarhaddon at the gate of Sam’al. (a) The gate (Luschan 1898, pl. 23). (b) Esarhaddon’s effigy upon the stele (Luschan 1893, pl. 50).

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Fig. 9a

Fig. 9b Fig. 9a, b. (a) The impaling and mutilation of the male inhabitants of the city Kulisi in front of its gates. (b) Piles of severed heads in front of a captured Šubrian city. Bronze bands of the Balawat Gate (648 bce) of Shalmaneser III (King 1915, pls. 56, band X, 3 lower register and pl. 44, band VIII, 2 lower register respectively).

City Streets: Reflections on Urban Society in the Cuneiform Sources of the Second and First Millennium BCE1 Ulrike Steinert City streets are not only traffic routes, but also places for public life and social interaction. Streets as inherently public spaces not only structure communities, in many eras they have been the primary locale for communal events: rituals, collective celebrations, executions or public upheavals. According to the present, limited state of scientific knowledge, most Mesopotamian cities (with the exception of Syro-Hittite cities and urban centres in northern Mesopotamia) do not seem to have had large open areas or special-purpose buildings serving as places for public activities, but the cities’ main roads and gates served as the most important places for these activities (see May / Steinert, Introduction and Natalie N. May’s contribution, both in this volume). This absence explains the multifunctional nature of city streets and gates, as this article and May’s article in this volume show. As pointed out in this book, mental models of and discourses on urban spaces in written sources reflect the social meanings that are generated by people’s interactions and practices in the urban space and through the mapping of social and cultural values onto urban space (May / Steinert, Introduction and Stenger, this volume). Thus, discourses on streets in textual sources can reveal aspects of the life and the social fabric of ancient urban societies. The present contribution aims at providing an overview of how streets and their public functions are represented in cuneiform texts from the second and first millennium bce, and which cultural and social meanings are attached to streets in different sources. How is Mesopotamian urban society reflected in written materials that concern themselves with streets?2 Since many similar socio-cultural meanings seem to 1  I would like to thank the TOPOI project that made this study possible by granting me a scholarship during 2008–2010. Moreover, I am very grateful to Cale Johnson and Mark Geller who read earlier versions of this paper, improved my English and provided helpful criticism. Any remaining errors are of course my own. 2 We have to keep in mind that the texts belonging to the “stream of tradition” (such as myths, rituals, omens, prayers, wisdom texts, royal inscriptions etc.) reflect mainly the

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be attached to city streets cross-culturally, it is also asked if any culturespecific features can be found in the Mesopotamian sources. Various cuneiform texts from the second and first millennium bce Mesopotamia mention city streets in connection with various activities of daily life which took place there, with the multiple functions performed by urban centres (political/administrative, judicial, religious/cultic, economic/commercial, cultural etc.), and with a complex, differentiated urban society with its heterogeneous groups of inhabitants, professions, specialists of different economic means and social standing.3 City streets are characterised as public space in contrast to the privacy of the house, often in terms of the opposition between “outside” versus “inside.”4 In descriptions of urban building projects in royal inscriptions, the public space of

perspectives of an urban elite, of scribes who predominantly worked for the big institutions (palace/temple) and also were scholars, priests, omen and ritual specialists, as well as authors. Yet, many of the phenomena described can be rooted in common experiences and beliefs shared with other members and groups of their urban communities. 3 As Marc van de Mieroop (1997, 101ff.) noted, the social structure of Mesopotamian cities is still poorly known. Beside the nuclear family as the basic social unit, van de Mieroop (1997, 110ff.) mentions the existence of other social groups and networks based on profession (professional organisations), residence (the city-ward or neighbourhood which had its own governmental structure) and ethnic identity. Assyrian and Babylonian cities had diverse populations, many of which had ties to the palace or temples that employed numerous people and were the primary social organising forces of the cities. According to Leo Oppenheim (1977, 74ff.), Mesopotamian society was primarily based on economic status-stratification. Upper strata of urban society included office-holders in the big institutions (e.g. bureaucrats, priests, scribes) and owners of agricultural land in the countryside, which they did not cultivate themselves (but rented to tenant farmers). There were also city-dwellers who cultivated fields and orchards in the suburbs and engaged in trading/businesses (Oppenheim 1977, 86; van de Mieroop 1997, 142ff., 176ff.). The various crafts probably had a different social standing (e.g. goldsmith versus tanner). On the other hand, Oppenheim argued that ideally, all free citizens enjoyed equal status as members of the city’s or city ward’s assembly, which managed communal affairs, relations with the palace and matters between citizens (judicial conflicts, marriages, testaments, sales of property etc.); Oppenheim 1977, 95, 111f.; cf. van de Mieroop 1997, 120ff. For connections between the spatial organisation of Mesopotamian cities and social structure see also Stone 1991 and the literature discussed by May /Steinert, Introduction, this volume. 4 The typical Mesopotamian courtyard house was designed for privacy, turning inward and restricting contact with the outside (Guinan 1996, 61). The house omens of Šumma ālu highlight this contrast between the public sphere of the street and the private sphere of the house with omens which attach a positive value to the subordination of the private to the public: Encroachment of the house upon the boundaries of the street in the ­process of construction foreshadows bad luck and disharmony for the inhabitants or owners (Guinan 1996, 63f.; Freedman 1998, 90 Tablet 5: 23ff.). Other omens about the exterior appearance of houses reflect expectations of appropriate social presentation in the community: a modest, inconspicuous and uninviting façade results in happiness, well-being and protection of the household inside (Guinan 1996, 64f.; Freedman 1998, 110 Tablet 6: 1ff.).



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city streets is seen as superordinate to private space, e.g. when a city street is broadened to serve as royal processional road and any infringements of private houses on the borders of the street are strictly prohibited.5 An aspect that is dominantly reflected in the texts dealt with here is a system of symbolic meanings attached to places such as city, house or the streets, which are correlated to basic social distinctions and which underpin the social order and its structure. On the one hand, streets are places used for public activities and events, where the whole community gets together, e.g. during religious festivals. But they are also conceptualised as a kind of negative space, as the place of marginal, destitute and threatening elements of society. This symbolic system employs a contrast between social insiders and outsiders, or put differently: with these conceptions members of the urban upper class seem to set themselves apart from those at the other end of the social scale.6 This combination of attributions and projections regarding city streets in textual sources, of cultural meanings, values, anxieties, social tensions, leads to the impression that (especially upper-class) Babylonians had an ambivalent attitude toward life in the streets of their cities.7 Yet,

5 See the inscriptions of Sennacherib concerning his building projects in Nineveh (Luckenbill 1924, 152f., 98, 101, 113), which included the broadening of small lanes and streets (i.e. displacement of houses) to let more light in. Following Kostof (1993, 190ff.), in the history of urbanism, there have always been conflicts and tensions between public and private interests regarding control of the public space of streets. In Spiro Kostoff ’s view, in ancient Mesopotamian, Greek and Islamic cities, the private element (privately owned streets in living quarters and a house architecture emphasizing the closed character of neighbourhoods) prevailed over the public element, but in the “official” ideology, private space is subordinated to public space. 6 To which degree this contrast in the texts actually reflects social reality remains quite vague. There is generally no marked division into areas inhabited by rich and poor in Mesopotamian cities (see the overview of the literature in May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume), although polluting activities tended to be performed on the outskirts, and city-wards were sometimes separated from each other by walls and gates (Trigger 2003, 122, 127). Upper class residences and palaces often tend to occupy areas favoured by the climatic conditions (e.g. winds, fresh air). How numerous marginalised groups or unintegrated individuals (such as the homeless) were in Mesopotamian cities is hard to estimate and certainly depended on many historical factors (wars, political changes, economic crises etc.). But it seems that the social system included strategies and practices which effected social integration and stabilisation, e.g. preventing pauperisation through the remission of debts by royal edicts in times of economic crises (Selz 2007 for Babylonia in the second millennium bce). The lower strata including wage-labourers, tenants, retainers and slaves were to a large part dependent on or integrated into upper class households and the big institutions (e.g. Galil 2007 for the Neo-Assyrian period). 7 Similarly, ambivalent notions regarding today’s cities, as places of civilization versus barbarism, can also be found in present-day sociological discourse on urbanism (Schroer

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c­ eremonial streets, characteristic of urban centres, were a source of pride for rulers who financed these building projects, and certainly also in the collective consciousness of the citizens. Thus, the Babylonian king Nabo­ nidus prays to the gods that his residence in the centre of Babylon shall be long-lasting, and that he wants to enjoy walking to and fro on the streets of his city.8 1. Streets and Activities of Daily Life 1.1 City Streets, Traffic and Spatial Orientation Mesopotamian city streets were dominated by pedestrians, although domestic animals were regularly encountered there as well.9 Since little is known from the texts about the use of animal-drawn carts in Mesopotamian cities, we are dependent on archaeological information. At least the broader main streets allowed for the use of animal drawn carts, chariots and riding animals, but smaller city streets were too narrow for any

2006, 229ff.). See for further cross-cultural similarities in the cultural attitudes regarding city life, May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume. 8 Langdon 1912, 260 ii 47, see Schaudig 2001, 388: ina qereb Bābili(TIN.TIRki) likūn šubtī ina sulēšu atalluku lušbu. 9 For domestic animals frequenting city streets see § 250 of Hammurapi’s Laws (Roth 1995, 128) where the case of an ox is discussed that gores a man to death in the street. An animal typically associated with the streets is the dog; “to be like a dog in the street” is a popular metaphor for poverty used in literary texts. The presence of various wild and domestic animals in the city plays a fundamental part in the omen series Šumma ālu (see Freedman 1998; 2006; Moren 1978). For example, tablet 42 begins with the entry “if oxen are dancing in the street” (ina ribīti(SILA.DAGAL.LA), Freedman 1998, 20). Tablets 30–40 and 43–49 deal especially with the behavior and encounters with animals in or near the city and in a man’s house. According to the incipits of Tablets 71–72 and of what is known of Tablet 66 (its incipit is “if hawks walk in the road” (ina ḫarrāni (KASKAL), Freedman 1998, 21f. and Appendix B; Moren 1978, 211), these tablets discuss birds seen inside the city. Passages mentioning animals in the city streets can be found e.g. in Tablet 42 “if a fox runs around in the street” (ribītu; Nötscher 1930, 36 K. 2259 Rev. 7). Tablet 49 (K. 3725; CT 38, 45; Nötscher 1930, 39f.; cf. Moren 1978, 193f.; Freedman 1998, 21: 49) dealing with pigs begins with a section about numerous pigs in city streets (ribītu, sūqu) dancing, running around, assembling, screaming etc. We find parallel entries at the beginning of Tablet 46 about dogs howling, barking together, walking around, assembling or going wild in the streets (sūqu, Nötscher 1930, 56f. K. 236, K. 8063+, CT 38, 49 Vs.; Moren 1978, 190). In Tablet 1 of the Diagnostic Handbook (Labat 1951, 2ff.) dogs, pigs, oxen, sheep, horses are mentioned as animals that the healer might see on his way to the patient’s house. See also the Curse of Agade, lines 21f. imagining that even exotic animals like monkeys, elephants, water buffalo jostled each other in the public squares (š a 3 s i l a - d a g a l - l a - k e 4 ) of this city (Cooper 1983; ETCSL c. 2.1.5).



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vehicles.10 There is some evidence for the use of chariots during processions on the major ceremonial streets of big cities, which were sometimes furnished with tracks for this purpose.11 Parades of the Assyrian king in his chariot accompanied by courtiers, priests, musicians and soldiers are depicted on Neo-Assyrian reliefs.12 Streets and crossroads formed the basis of orientation for a Babylonian visiting another city, which is illustrated in a humoristic text (dated in the colophon to the end of the ninth century bce).13 In it, a citizen of Nippur invites a priest from Isin, and describes a series of streets and a square (ribītu) that the visitor will pass or cross to his left, as he walks along after entering the Exalted Gate (ABUL MAḪ), a city gate situated in the western part of the city wall on the Map of Nippur (ca. 1300 bce; cf. fig. 2): “When you come to Nippur, my [city], you enter by the Exalted Gate. You will locate a stre[et (E.SIR2), a bro]ad street (SILA.DAGAL.LA), a square (ribītu), the Tillazida Street (E.SIR2), (and) the Nusku-Ninimma Street (SILA) to your left.” Reaching the city quarter “Purification priests of the road, trust in Ea!”, the visitor is advised to ask a woman identified by name, profession and affiliation, living in the area (qaqqaru) of the Tillazida Street, how to get to the house of the host (lines 13–16), reminding us that street signs and house numbers are a quite recent invention. Moreover, not every street seems to have had a name, two streets are just called “street” and “broad street.”14 10 In Tablet 1 of the Diagnostic Handbook (Labat 1951, 5: 41f.; cf. CAD S, 163a sub b) the possible situation that a healer sees a chariot or cart (narkabtu, saparru, ṣumbu) on his way to the patient, is mentioned. 11  In Assur, the main street leading from the Aššur-Temple in the northeast of the city to the Tabīra Gate was used as processional street for the New Year’s Festival (akītu, see Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 60ff., 79ff.). It is probably identical with the king’s road called ḫūl šarri ša lismu (cf. Radner 1997, 278). This street was paved with stones and pebbles. The access roads from the temples to this street were also paved with bricks. The Assyrian king Sennacherib constructed a railway with parallel tracks for (divine) chariots (narkabtu, rukubu, Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 193ff.) having a width of 1,1 to 1,5 m and actually found in the courtyards and gates of the Aššur-Temple and the akītu-house (see Miglus 2006–2008, 104; Andrae 1977, 223f. fig. 202–203, 220). 12 See e.g. Barnett et al. 1998, 133ff. and pl. 473–496 (Sennacherib). 13 Cavigneaux 1979, 114f. No. 1: 10–12; Foster 1995, 363: ana Nippur(NIBRUki) [āli(URU)]-ia tallakamma abulla(KA2.GAL) ṣīra(MAḪ) terruba / sūqa(E.SI[R2) sūqa rapašta(SILA. DAGA]L.LA) ribītum / sūq(E.[SIR2) Tillazida(TIL]LA4.ZI.DA) sūq(SILA) Nusku(dNUSKA) u Ninimma(dNIN.IMMA3) ana šumēli(A2.GUB3.BI)-ka tašakkan(GAR-an). 14 Because SILA.DAGAL.LA and ribītu follow directly after each other it can be concluded that this was meant to signify different topographic entities, that SILA.DAGAL.LA stands for sūqu rapšu “broad street,” while ribītu is employed in another one of its meaning components (“crossroad” or “square”), cf. the different interpretations of ribītu in AHw and CAD; for an extensive discussion of ribītu see Steinert 2011.

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There were hardly any public recreational areas within the Mesopotamian cities. Thus, streets serving as playground for kids are mentioned a few times in literary sources.15 A cultic lament from the first millennium bce speaks of “the children whose playground is in the street(s) and road(s).”16 In a Sumerian tigi-song of Inanna called by the modern title The Wiles of Women, which consists of a dialogue between a girl (Inanna) and her seducer (Dumuzi), Dumuzi advises the girl to give her mother the following excuse for coming home late at night: “My (girl)friend was strolling with me in the street, to the playing of tambourine and recorder she danced with me, we sang and time went by.”17 These references imply that the activities of adolescent girls were not restricted to the house, but that they were visible in public, and spent time outside the family home with friends of their own age. Although the image of a care-free time in life for adolescent girls before marriage might be a purely literary image without much reality, references in incantations against the female ardat lilî-demon, the ghost of an adolescent girl who died before having married and experienced sexuality and childbirth, imply that participating in the activities of one’s age group also belonged to a happy and fulfilled life. The ardat lilî-demon is pitifully described as “a girl who never went along the street and road with the (other) girls,” “who never rejoiced with (other) young girls,”18 “who was never seen at her city’s festival”,19 never having the chance to take part in the social life of her community.

15 During the excavations at Assur, a game board with 20 squares scratched into one stone slab of the street pavement was found in a little alley (“Kanalgasse”) within a Late Assyrian city quarter, Miglus 1996, 280 and Fig. 29b. 16 SBH No. 70 Rev. 14f., see Cohen 1988, 330 f+239: d i 4 - d i 4 - l a 2 k i - e š e m e n s i l a [ e - s i r 2 ] - r a  . . .: ṣeḫḫerūtu ašar mēlul[ti] ina sūqi u sulî [. . .]. Cf. the curse in Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty (Parpola/Watanabe 1988, 46: 437–439) in which the goddess of birth Bēlet-ilī shall cut off birth from the land and deprive the nurses (tārītu) of the cries of little children “in street(s) and square(s)” (ina sūqi(SILA) ribīt). 17 m a - l a - m u s i l a - d a g a l - l a e - n e m u - d i - n i - i b - m a - m a , with the Akkadian gloss, ina ribītim immellil, see Wilcke 1970, 84f., commentary on line 15; for the text see Sefati 1998, 186ff.; translation cited using Jacobsen 1987, 10–12 and Leick 1994, 69f.; cf. Haas 1999, 141f. 18 Lackenbacher 1971, 136: 6’’–9’’: k i - s i k i l k i k i - s i k i l - e - n e s i l a e 2 - s i r - r a n u m u - u n - d i b - b a : ardatu ša itti ardāti sūqa u sulâ lā iba’û; see also the Old Babylonian ardat lilî incantation published by Farber (1989b) where her behaviour is contrasted with the girls who play cheerfully in the street (Farber 1989b, 15ff. lines 7–12). 19 Geller 1988, 15: 38–39: [ k i - s i k i l k ] i k i - s i k i l - e - n e n u - u n - ḫ u l 2 - l a : MIN (= ardatu) ša itti ardāti lā iḫdû / [ k i - s i k i l e z e ] n [ i - z ] i - i n u r u - a - n a - š e 3 i g i n u - m u u n - n i - i n - d u 8 : MIN ša ina isinni ša āli(URU)-šu lā innamru; see also Hecker 2008, 126.



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1.3 Peddlers, Businesses, Shops The Akkadian term sūqu “street” can denote a marketplace where one can buy and sell goods. Besides the streets, the city gates and the kāru “quay, embankment,” which was outside the city proper, were important places for commercial activities in Mesopotamian cities. Moreover, terms as bābtu “city quarter” and maḫīru “marketplace” designate locations for trading.20 Sumerian texts from the second half of the third millennium bce speak of goods “being in the street” (s i l a - a g a l 2 ),21 and in tablets from the first half of the second millennium bce we find references to the sūq šimātim, “commercial street.”22 In a humoristic text from the first millennium bce called The Poor Man of Nippur, the protagonist tries to buy a sheep in exchange for his clothes ina ribīt ālišu “in the main street of his city,” identifying ribītu as a place for the exchange of goods. Given our present knowledge it cannot be decided if in this reference ribīt āli designates a specific street or a city square used as marketplace. Notably, the current opinion on this issue is highlighted by Heather Baker in a recent article: There is no evidence at this time for public squares forming a part of the street network, nor indeed for any kind of formal civic space comparable to the Greek agora or the Roman forum, at least until the Hellenistic era when the Greek theatre at Babylon served also as a place of assembly.23

The multiple public, political, economic, administrative activities which took place at the Greek agora and the Roman forum seem to have been distributed to a number of places within the Mesopotamian city ­(Steinert 2011).24 The urban community was administered from the city gate(s), where the assembly of citizens (or of a city quarter) convened and the mayor exercised his office.25 While the harbour (kāru), situated inside or outside the city walls, was the administratively and legally independent

20 For places of commercial activities see Röllig 1976; Renger 1984; Zaccagnini 1987– 1990, 421–426; Fales 1984; Oelsner 1984; Silver 1985, 119ff.; Adamthwaite 2001, 241ff. with further literature. Zaccagnini (1987–1990, 422) interprets KI.LAM(g a n b a ) = maḫīru as an “open space, located in a specific part within the city area” connected to trade activities. 21  For different interpretations of this phrase with implications to the existence of a market(place) see Foster 1977, 40. 22 Morris 1985, 119. For streets as marketplace see also Streck 2012, 207; Jursa 2010, 641ff. (for first millennium bce Babylonia). 23 Baker 2009, 96; cf. van der Spek 2001. 24 Cf. Stenger, this volume, on the central importance of the Agora in the mental maps of the Athenians regarding their city. 25 Oppenheim 1977, 115f. Cf. Natalie N. May’s article in this volume. Interestingly, Oppenheim (1977, 128) connected ribītu to a place next to the gate inside the city where the assembly met, without providing textual evidence.

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centre of overland and intercity trade where foreign traders lived and taverns, inns, stores were located, within the settlements, the city gates and major streets served as the main places for commercial activities.26 In Old Babylonian texts from Sippar documenting the transfer of real estate and movable property, houses are often situated next to a major or “broad street” (ribītu).27 In one text, a large house also comprises a tavern and shops, which exit onto the “main street of Sippar.”28 In another example, the house also contains two shops, which exit to the “main street” and border on another shop and a tavern.29 These documents show that ribītu is connected to living quarters and economic activities at the same time.30 There is also written evidence from Hellenistic Uruk for the existence of rows of shops located along a number of major public streets.31 Street peddlers are rarely mentioned in the texts, although already in sources from third millennium bce Sumer there is evidence for food peddlers selling import products such as wine and salt, as well as domestic beer, roasted grain, pots and alkali (for soap).32 Street peddlers are called zilul(l)û33 in Akkadian, while the other term saḫḫiru, fem. saḫḫirtu “retailer” (lit. “roaming about”) can be used in a pejorative way (“tramp, vagabond, prowler”) implying activities or professions that do not have a high social standing, and are economically precarious.34

26 Cf. the roofed bazaars or suqs in Islamic cities of the Orient. In these cities, shops and crafts are similarly concentrated along major streets, either near the city centre or the city gates (Wirth 1975, 55ff.; Kostoff 1993, 99, 229). In contrast to ancient Mesopotamia, bazaars integrate both local and foreign trade. 27 See e.g. Ranke 1906, No. 13; Ungnad 1909–1923, III 251; Scheil 1902, No. 10, Ungnad 1909–1923, III 457. Rivkah Harris, in her discussion of the topographic terms in Old Babylonian texts from Sippar (1975, 17ff.), differentiates between “broad streets” (SILA.DAGAL) and the “(city) square” (ribītum). 28 Scheil 1902, No. 10: lines 19f. bīt(E2) sēbîm u bīt(E2) maḫīrātim ša ina ribītim ša Sippar(ZIMBIRki) uṣṣâ. Cf. Harris 1975, 21 reads “Square of Sippar-ṣēri.” 29 Ranke 1906, No. 13: 1–11; cf. Harris 1975, 21. 30 See also Silver 1985, 121. 31  Baker 2009, 96. 32 Silver 1985, 118, citing Oppenheim 1970; see also Haas 1992, 31ff. 33 Negative social evaluations are implied by references like the following from the Babylonian Theodicy (Lambert 1960, 84: 249; CAD S, 401f. sub 1a–1’) where the reversal of the normal social order is criticized: ina sūqi zilulliš iṣâd aplum “the heir runs around in the street like a peddler;” see also CAD Z, 118. The logogram for zilulû connects this profession with a stand (g i š g a l = manzāzu). See also the fragment of a SB omen text K. 4134: 21; Köcher/Oppenheim 1957–1958, 75: šumma(DIŠ) awīlu(NA) ana ṣibûti(A2. AŠ2)-šu sūqa(SILA) ittiq(DIB)-ma illak(DU-ak)-ma “if a man goes down the street in pursuit of his business. . . .” The following protases concern animals that appear in front of a man walking in the street; l. 22 forecasts that he will not be successful in his undertaking. 34 CAD S, 55f. In lexical lists saḫḫiru is used as a synonym for zilulû. The saḫḫirtu-woman is associated with the k a r - k i d “prostitute,” see Haas 1992, 48 n. 38; Cooper 2006–2008,



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While mobile street peddlers going from house to house leave no trace in the archaeological record, some evidence exists for shops and workshops,35 for instance in the residential quarter at Ur dating to the Isin-Larsa Period (ca. 1900 bce), which was excavated by Leonard Woolley and Max Mallowan.36 Among the buildings in some of the streets and alleys Woolley and Mallowan found what they interpreted as shops or open booths (“show rooms”) of merchants.37 The front walls of these shops, which were preserved only to a low height, could have had open fronts with windows, doors or counters which were closed at night by wooden shutters (in contrast to the walls of the residences which did not have windows turning to the street).38 Street names in written sources can also be indicative of economic activities in certain streets and quarters of Mesopotamian cities in the second and first millennia bce. Streets are not only often named after a deity who had a temple or shrine there, or after topographical features like city gates, but they are also named after professional groups or ­private persons.39 During the Achaemenid period a “street of the ḫubūru-vat

15 § 5 for lexical references. Compare the beginning of Tablet 1 of the Diagnostic Handbook (Labat 1951, 2ff.), listing various things and categories of persons the healer sees on the street on his way to a patient. In this passage we find references to animals, disabled people (deaf, blind), ecstatics (maḫḫû), cf. Haas 1992, 31. 35 For crafts and businesses in Mesopotamian cities see the overview by van de Mieroop 1997, 176–196; for an analysis of settlement structures as indicators for economic and social organisation Heinz 1997. 36 Woolley 1931, 359ff.; Woolley / Mallowan 1976, 32ff., pl. 124 for the house plan of the quarter; see also Schmidt 1964, 143, fig. 10. 37 E.g. No. I–III in “Bazaar Alley,” a crooked blind alley that was accessible from “Paternoster-Row” and “Baker’s Square” and could probably be locked. Similar buildings were found in “New Street,” in No. 2, 12 “Store Street” and in Nr. 14 “Paternoster Row” which was interpreted as a public cook-shop (Woolley 1931, 360; Woolley / Mallowan 1976, 32f., 155). These buildings always have a narrow front on the street, a small front room, and one or more storage rooms or magazines in the rear. 38 See e.g. No. II “Straight Street,” which consisted of only one room with its front on “Paternoster Row” (Woolley / Mallowan 1976, 159). Some of the shops were connected to a private house. No. V “Store Street” had cellars or magazines, probably for the storage of grain, interpreted as the house of a grain-merchant, ibid., 33, 141). Nr. 1B “Baker’s Square” was the workshop of a smith (pl. 50a), in Rooms 4 and 1 installations for furnaces were found (ibid., 158). Woolley and Mallowan interpreted buildings XI a–c with three separate entranceways from “Paternoster Row,” as an inn for traveling merchants (Woolley 1931, 366f.; Woolley / Mallowan 1976, 150f.). 39 There is evidence for craftsmen’s quarters in several cities like Nineveh in the first millennium bce with its neighbourhoods of goldsmiths, bleachers and potters, indicating that certain crafts were primarily performed in a particular neighbourhood (van de Mieroop 1997, 183). Evidence from Nippur from the Achaemenid period indicates that certain professions (potters, butchers, merchants, weavers etc.) and foreigners lived in separate quarters or streets (Oppenheim 1977, 78). From the name “Gate of the Metalworkers”

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makers” existed in Babylon; in Nuzi texts street names are connected to fowlers and weavers.40 In Old Babylonian Sippar, the existence of a “Broad Street (SILA.DAGAL) of the People from Isin” implies that foreigners or traders from other cities also resided in special streets.41 1.4 Streets and Religious Worship: Street Shrines It is known from textual sources that deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon were not only venerated indoors, in temples and shrines generally designated as bīt ili “house of the god,” but that they also had outdoor street shrines. Some information about different categories of cult places in Babylon can be found in Tablet V of the series Tintir = Babylon, which comprises long lists describing and naming important topographical features of the city such as the names of city walls, gates, streets, as well as temples and shrines.42 This text uses different terms for indoor and outdoor shrines. For instance in Tablet IV 43, major cult-centres of Babylon are named. Most of them are called bītu “house,” but some are designated as parakku “thronedais” implying a modest installation. Yet, in the summary in Tablet V 82, all the sanctuaries are called maḫāzu “cult-centre.” Smaller sanctuaries are designated as “seat” (šubtu) or “station” (manzāzu).43 In the summary of Tablet V 82–88, after the 43 maḫāzus “cult-centres” of the great gods, the text counts 55 parakkus “throne-daises” of Marduk in the city. These seem to be outdoor shrines scattered throughout the city and were probably much more accessible to the general public than big sanctuaries. One of these parakku-daises of Marduk by the name of “The Gods Pay Heed to Marduk” was an important landmark, for it marked the western boundary of the city quarter TE.Eki in the southeastern part of the city (Finkel /

for a city gate in the city of Assur, one can conclude that the members of this profession worked or lived in the area around that gate. See also the evidence from Tell Munbāqa in Syria for the concentration of different activities in particular areas of the settlement (Werner 1998, 89ff., 107f.). Trade activities are especially localised around central points and traffic routes. 40 Fincke 1993, 418; Dar. 410: 1; 464: 6. 41  Ranke 1906, 105: 10; Harris 1975, 19. 42 George 1992. The manuscripts of the series date to the first millennium bce, but the text was probably composed several centuries earlier. Tablet II, for instance, lists the numerous shrines of various deities in the temple complex Esagila of the patron god of Babylon and Babylonia, Marduk, by their ceremonial name. 43 George 1992, 9f. Both words can also mean cult pedestals, on which statues or symbols of the deities resided.



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Seymour 2008, 40, fig. 21.).44 Another parakku of Marduk by the name “Twin of his Brothers” was situated along the processional route of Marduk between Esagila and the temple of the New Year’s Festival.45 Some of these daises were located in streets, others at temple or city gates and in temple courtyards.46 The summary continues with “two (city) walls, three canals, eight gates, 24 streets of Babylon” after which it gives a sum of “300 parakkus (daises) of the Igigi and 600 parakkus of the Anunnaki”, 180 “open-air shrines” (u b - l i l 2 - l a 2 = ibratu, “niche in the open air”)47 of Ištar, 180 “stations” of the gods Lugalirra und Meslamtaea, 12 stations of the Divine Heptad, six stations of Kūbu, four of the Divine Rainbow (dManzât), two stations of the Evil God (ilu lemnu), and two stations of the “Watcher of the City” (rābiṣ āli). In his edition of Tintir = Babylon, Andrew George presumes that many of these shrines were located in niches at street corners or in temple gates, and were places of worship accessible

44 See George 1992, 70 Tablet V 97 and 24 Fig. 4 for a suggestion of the location of this dais (No. 11); see also George 2008a, 60f. and 40 Fig. 21. The ritual of the Love Lyrics from the first millennium bce which included a procession of Marduk, Zarpanītu and Ištar of Babylon to various localities within the city of Babylon, mentions a “dais of the Anunnakigods in the district of the street of Eturkalamma,” which was the temple of Ištar of Babylon situated in the quarter Eridu in vicinity of Esagila (Lambert 1975, 104: 11; George 1992, 20 Fig. 3, 24f., 307f.). There was also a seat of the Asakku-demon opposite/facing this temple (KAR 142 ii 1; see George 1993, 151). 45 George 1992, 12, 64 Tablet V 14 and 333f. commentary. This dais is known as a station of the procession beside the “dais at the river bend (of the Euphrates),” located outside the city proper on the way to the akītu-house. 46 See George 1992, 335 commentary to Tintir V 28 for several daises at the gate of the Ningišzida Temple in the quarter Eridu in the city centre (see also BM 34878 Rev. // BM 77236: 2’f.; George, ibid., 100). The dais “The Ištar Gate is the Threshold of the Land” in V 48 has to be located at or near the Ištar Gate (see also BM 41138: 5’ talking of a dais(?) “in front of the Ištar Gate, on the outside” (ibid., 102). Compare also the dais “Nabû is the Judge of his People” in V 43 and the identical street name in V 67 which is known as Nabû’s processional road from the Uraš Gate in the southern part of the city to Esagila (ibid., 336). Further references can be found in BM 34878 Rev. // BM 77236 and BM 41138 (ibid., 100ff.). The latter fragment mentions a dais which is located “in the Street of the Market Gate” (l. 3’). For the location of the Market Gate (bāb maḫīri), a city gate in use during the Old Babylonian period see ibid., 372f. commentary to Tintir V 92. 47 Such niches had an elevated structure, a socle or platform (nemēdu), which could have looked similar to the “throne-dais” (parakku) on which images of the deity were placed. In Šurpu VIII 48, the ibratu and its socle (nemēdu) are listed beside such typical topographical entities of the urban centre and its environment as field, orchard, house, street and alley (Reiner 1958, 42). In Tablet III 83 ibratu and its socle appear in a litany beside the “Lady of the city wall and battlement parapets” and beside various demons connected for instance to the corners (Reiner 1958, 21; Borger 2000, 85f.). In a commentary to Šurpu, the open-air shrine and socle of Tablet III 83 are explained as “the throne-daises (BARA2meš) of Babylon” (Reiner 1958, 50: 56).

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for the general public.48 Amazingly, hardly any of these numerous outdoor shrines has turned up in the archaeological excavations, partly because installations as simple as open-air shrines or altars are less likely to be preserved than monumental architectural structures.49 The large number (180) of open-air shrines dedicated to Ištar in Tintir demonstrates the popularity of this goddess among ordinary people. References in the god lists show that Ištar was associated with topographical features like the city wall and the streets.50 Other divine entities in the 48 George 1992, 368f. According to CAD M/1, 235, the “stations” of Lugalirra and Meslamtaea could have been located along the processional street of Marduk, while George (1992, 370) topographically connects the “Street of the Divine Twins” (mentioned in Tintir Tablet V 79, ibid., 68 within the section of street names) and the “Street of the Divine Heptad” (ibid., 68 V 78) with their respective “stations.” A bilingual cult hymn lets the deity talk about the “open air shrine where one comes to take counsel with me” (SBH p. 92a No. 50a: 5f.): k i s a l - g u r - r a e 2 - ˹ a d ˺ - m a r - r a - m u : ibratu šitūltija; see CAD Š/3, 143b lex.). Note that ibratu corresponds with k i s a l “courtyard” in the Sumerian version, and that it adds e 2 (“house [of taking counsel with me]”) in contrast to the Akkadian version. BM 33206+ iii 1, a Late Babylonian text describing a cult ritual of the Esagila at Babylon in the month Kislīmu, mentions an ibratu open-air shrine as station of the divine procession, between the temple gate (“Gate of the god Mandānu”) and the akītu-house (Çağirgan / Lambert 1991–1993; Pongratz-Leisten (1994, 48) translates ibratu here as “cult niche at the outer wall,” i.e. the outer temple wall. 49 Although Andrew George (2008a, 61) mentions that some had been excavated in Babylon, to my knowledge only a few free-standing features are known from streets or crossroads in the Merkes quarter which might have been cultic structures (cf. George 1990a, 356; Baker 2009, 96f.). There the excavators unearthed square brick structures that could have been altars, one at a crossroads of the so-called “Ostweg” and “Altarstrasse” (Reuther 1926, 67, 71f. Abb. 60 and Taf. 18, 21). A pedestal of unknown function was also found in “Zikkuratstrasse” (Reuther 1926, 70f.; see also Baker 2009, 97) and around the Ištar Gate and processional street of the New Year’s Festival (Reuther 1926, 70; Koldewey 1918, 10 and Abb. 9–10; cf. Koldewey 1990, 46f.). At Ur, cult pedestals/podiums comparable to the parakkus in the texts were only excavated indoors, in chapels of private houses (Woolley / Mallowan 1976, pl. 43–46). A similar installation was found in Tell ed-Dēr (“Batiment central,” Meyer 1978, Taf. 9, 4 and 78ff. citing more such cultic installations from third and second millennia bce Mesopotamia). The podium, often placed in a niche, is the typical architectural installation occupied by cult images in Mesopotamian temples (Seidl 1980– 1983, 315f.). 50 In Tablet IV of the god list An = Anum (“Ištar tablet”), one fragmentary name of the goddess Ištar is explained as bēlet sūqi “Mistress of the Street” (Litke 1998, 149: 14), while later in line 38 the name dnin-BAD3-ra is explained as bēlet eprāte “Lady of the Rampart,” followed by d n i n - b a d 3 = bēlet dūri “Lady of the City Wall” (Litke 1998, 151 and pl. 23 YBC 2401 vi 77f.; Cavigneaux/Krebernik, 1998–2001a). The reading of one epithet of the goddess as “Lady of the Open-Air Shrine” (CT 24, 33 v 35 // KAV 145 Rev.(!) 3: dNINbe-let ib-ra[t-ti], cited in CAD I/J, 4f. disc.; George 1992, 369) in the god list An = Anum was corrected through Litke’s edition and the new manuscript YBC 2401 to dNIN.be-litur(!)-⌈ru⌉ (duplicates have dbe-lit-tu-ur-ri and dBe-la-at-ur-ri) “lady of the niche(?)” (for t/ṭurru as “corner angle”, mentioned e.g. in a commentary beside tubqu “corner”, see George 2008b; cf. CAD Ṭ, 165b lex.). This line 169 belongs to a section (lines 162–170) enumerating the names of eight deified cult niches of Ištar (u b - l i l 2 - l a 2 d I n a n n a - k e 4 , Litke 1998,



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summary who occupy throne-daises have a demonic (like Kūbu, the Evil God and the City Watcher) or astral character (like the “Rainbow (Star)” or the Divine Heptad (Pleiades)) and are not very well known deities of the official pantheon, but seem once again to have a closer connection to popular religious practice.51 Other texts mention “throne-daises” in city and temple gates as well as on streets. It is interesting to find, as in Tintir, references concerning the daises of malevolent demons among them, such as the parakkus of the Evil God. Daises of malevolent demons are also mentioned in KAR 142, a text listing cultic locations for deities appearing in groups of seven. In obv. ii 1–10 this texts lists “seven throne-daises, stations(?) of the Seven Asakkudemons, sons of Anu, conquered by Ninurta”,52 five of which are situated in gates of different temples at Babylon. In the ritual series against the child-snatching demoness Lamaštu,53 she is called daughter of Anu (like the Seven Asakku-demons) and aḫāt ilāni ša sūqāti, “sister of the gods of the streets.”54 This epithet alludes to passages in the Lamaštu incantations, which mention that she was excluded from the heavenly community of the gods and sent to earth by her father because she perversely proposed to the gods to eat the flesh of humans.55 That she belongs to the gods of the street can be related to Lamaštu’s exclusion from heaven and subsequent denial of regular veneration and offerings in the temple cults, which were regularly provided to deities by humans. Instead, Lamaštu is associated with evil demons that roam streets and wilderness.56 160, pl. 23 YBC 2401 vii 1–8; compare CT 24, 33 v 32–36 // KAV 145 Rev.! 1–4; Cavigneaux/ Krebernik 1998–2001b; Cavigneaux/Krebernik 1998–2001c; Wiggermann 1993–1997). Following Frans Wiggermann, the eight u b - l i l 2 - l a 2 -deities could refer to parts of the temple of Inanna/Ištar, i.e. the four deified corners (ub) in lines 164–167. Note though that one designation, u b - s a ḫ a r - r a “earthen niche,” also appears as one of the 55 parakkus of Marduk in Babylon according to Tintir V 25 (George 1992, 64). 51  An altar dedicated by Shalmaneser III to the Sebittu, the Divine Heptad, was found at Nineveh (in secondary archaeological context), in the area between the mounds Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus (Reade 1998–2001, 410 § 13.4 and 390 fig. 1 map). The Sebittu also had a temple on Kouyunjik. 52 Cited in George 1992, 285 commentary to Tintir II 5’. 53 4R 56 i 2 and dupl., cf. Köcher 1949, 150. 54 Forerunners of Lamaštu incantations in Sumerian call her sister of “the divine son of the street of Ur,” a title also applied to groups of demons in other texts (cf. Tonietti 1979, 315: 3 with commentary to line 18’ on page 316). Wiggermann (2000, 226) relates this title to the seven utukku-spirits. 55 Cf. Farber 1980–1983, 445; Wiggermann 2000, 224ff. 56 Could it nonetheless be that Lamaštu was venerated (or placated) at street shrines like other demons? At least, in Old Babylonian Sippar (a part of town called Sippar-rabûm), there is a “Lamaštu Street” (Harris 1975, 18), which reminds us of the practice of naming streets after the deity that had a temple or a shrine there. Other streets named after gods

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Other gods, mostly of subordinate rank, are associated with the street. Among them is Išum, the messenger and vizier of the god Erra. Because of his function he is called “messenger/ herald of the street” (sukkal/nāgir sūqi)57 or “guardian of the quiet street” (n i m g i r s i l a - a s i g 3 - g a - k e 4 : nāgir sūqi šaqummi).58 Deities associated with streets59 and outdoor shrines are mentioned several times in Sumerian and bilingual cultic lamentations from the second and first millennium bce, e.g. the goddess Ninmuga, a deity associated with birth and handicrafts and known from god lists as the wife of Išum (Hendursaga).60 The goddess Lamma-ša6-ga, the chief vizier and messenger of Baba in Lagaš, is called “Lamma-ša6-ga of the wide streets (and) of the steppe” in cult liturgies.61 Beside outdoor shrines and divine images, other images could be found in the public space of Mesopotamian cities, namely images of the ruler.62

in documents from this city are the Ištar Street, Bunene Street, and Street of the Divine Heptad. Lamaštu’s association with impure animals of city streets, dogs and pigs, could be related to her status as goddess of the street. She is iconographically depicted suckling a piglet and a puppy, and incantations tell us that she disguises as wet-nurse in order to suckle human babies, thereby infecting and poisoning them. On amulets and in incantations against Lamaštu, animals are intended as replacements for human victims (Wiggermann 2010). For a possible connection to breast-feeding of dogs and pigs by women see Wiggermann 2010 with further literature. 57 This epithet can be found in prayers, for instance in a prayer to Lugal(g)irra from Tablet 2 of the ritual series bīt mēseri (Meier, 1941–1944, 144: 74), where Išum is called upon to help, but also in apotropaic prayers on amulets for the protection of the house against epidemics (for instance on the Assur tablet of the Erra Epic (KAR 169 Rev. ii 51) which was used as such an amulet, see Reiner 1960, 151ff.). 58 See the ritual series Utukkū lemnūtu Tablet 5: 163 (CT 16, 15 v 21f., Geller 2007, 125). In Tablet 13–15: 193 (CT 16, 49: 302f., Geller 2007, 174), the god Haniš who is associated with Adad, is called “god of the quiet street” (d l u g a l d i n g i r s i l a - a s i - g a - k e 4 : dMIN il sūqi šaqumme). In the god list An = Anu ša amēli, the god Šullat, who often forms a pair with Haniš, is identified with Nergal and called by this name in association with the functional domain “of the street” (dPA = Nergal ša sūqi, Litke 1998, 234: 85). 59 Note also the deity d L u g a l - t i l l a 4 “ruler of the city-square,” mentioned in god lists (Lambert 1987–1990, 153); in An = Anum VI 28 Lugal-tilla is among the names/manifestations of Nergal (Litke 1998, 202). 60 The goddess Ninmuga is also called “(she) who occupies the outdoor shrines” (SBH 48 and dupl., Cohen 1988, 306 c+171; cf. Cavigneaux / Krebernik 1998–2001d, 472 § 4; Cohen 1988, 285 e+215; 237 c+297; 360 a+231). 61  Cohen 1988, 307 c+188 d l a m m a - š a 6 - g a s i l a - d a g a l - l a e d e n - n a : dŠU-[ma] damiqtu ša ribīt u[. . .]; cf. ibid. 286 e+231 with the variant s i l a - g i 6 - e d e n - n a , “street of the dark shade.” 62 Börker-Klähn (1982) contains only a few examples for royal stelae from city streets or similar open public spaces, e.g. ibid., 55f., 119 no. 11, 212f. no. 217–219, 217 no. 227. When Sennacherib constructed a royal processional road in Nineveh, he had stelae made and erected them there opposite each other to mark the width and to inhibit a narrowing of the street (Luckenbill 1924, 153: 19ff.). This text is actually preserved on two stelae which



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These images have several different functions: they express power, sociopolitical and divine order, and collective or group identity.63 Religious images also play a role in ordering space, for example, in marking borders and thresholds, and they are involved in the Mythologisierung of space through mapping cosmological concepts of order onto the material space of the city.64 Mesopotamian deities associated with the streets either lend protection to the people in their terrain, or they are mediators who intercede between humans and the most powerful gods of the pantheon. The connection of evil gods and demons with the street brings us to the next section of this article, to socio-cultural conceptions of streets as negative space: as a space containing elements of disorder, danger, pollution and liminality: it is the space of persons at the margins and bottom of social structure, of beings who stand in opposition to the divine order and social norms.65 2. Streets as Negative Space The literate, especially scholarly stratum of Mesopotamian society who left behind a huge corpus of ritual texts and omen collections, perceived the streets of their cities as somewhat ambivalent. Negative contexts in which streets feature in these and other cuneiform texts describe them as places where one is vulnerable to the attacks of evil, demons and witchcraft, as places of dirt, rubbish, and impure animals (dogs/pigs), as places of poverty and misery: of homeless people without families, of outsiders, beggars, and exposed children. 2.1 Streets and the Dangers of Evil, Demons and Witchcraft Although according to Mesopotamian conceptions a person could be attacked by evil forces like demons and witchcraft virtually anywhere,66 were found at Nineveh (at the foot of Kouyunjik, i.e. near the location of this street, and southeast of Nebi Yunus (Paterson 1915, pl. 3 and 4; Börker-Klähn 1982, 209 no. 203–204). For Assyrian royal monuments in public urban spaces see also Yamada 2000, 25ff., 273ff., 332; Sobolewski 1982, fig. 9; Oates / Oates 2001, 71; Strommenger 1970, 11, 15f.). 63 An interesting question is who installed and took care of the numerous public street shrines—it is possible that citizens (or groups of citizens) were actively involved in these processes, expressing their religious identity. 64 Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 13ff. 65 Cf. Viktor Turner (1969, 105ff., 122ff.) for the connections between liminality, danger and the power of the weak. 66 To illustrate the point I cite an incantation published by Schramm (2008, 62, 148ff. No. 10: 14–27) listing various places demons were thought to inhabit: “They hit the man

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it seems that one was especially vulnerable to such attacks outside the home.67 Demons, ghosts and witches are repeatedly described as roaming, lurking or standing around in the street waiting to attack the victim.68 Thus, these evil beings are implicitly compared or likened to social outsiders who are not integrated into society and have no place to stay.69 In the first incantation of Tablet III (1ff.) in the anti-witchcraft ritual Maqlû the witch is similarly addressed: Oh, witch who continually roams the streets, who continually enters the houses, who walks around in the alleys, who looks around in the main streets; she keeps turning to her front and to her back, she stands in the street and blocks access; in the main street she has cut off the traffic . . .70 at the doorpost, they hit the man walking in the street, . . ., they hit the man on his seat, they hit the man in his bed, . . ., the u d u g -demon of the steppe, the u d u g of the mountains, the u d u g of the sea, the u d u g of the wasteland, the u d u g of the river, the u d u g of the cistern, the u d u g of the garden, the u d u g of the street, the u d u g of the house, the m a š k i m -demon of the steppe, the evil m a š k i m ” (l u 2 g i š - š a 3 - k a 2 - n a - t a i n - s a g 3 ga-e-ne / lu2 gen sila-a-ta in-sag3-ga-e-ne / . . . / lu2 ki-tuš-bi-ta insag3-g[e]-e-ne / lu2 ki-nu2-bi-ta in-sag3-g[e]-e-ne / . . . / udug eden-na udug ḫur-sag-ga2 udug a-ab-ba / udug a-ri-a udug id2-da ⌈udug pu2-ta⌉ / udug giškiri6 udug sila-a udug e2-a / maškim eden-na maškim2 ḫulg a l 2 - e ). 67 Thus, in hemerologies and Neo-Assyrian letters, astrologers advise the king or crown prince not to go out to the streets on unpropitious days, see CAD S, 401b sub 1a-1’; Parpola 1993, no. 52, 74. 68 CAD S, 403 sub 1a-3’, e.g. in Utukkū lemnūtu (Tablet 7: 27f.; CT 16, 25 i 42ff., see Geller 2007, 136): u d u g ḫ u l a - l a 2 ḫ u l l u 2 - g e 6 - s a 9 - a - š e 3 e - s i r 2 g i b - b a g i d i m ḫ u l g a l 5 - l a 2 ḫ u l l u 2 - g e 6 - s a 9 - a - š e 3 e - s i r 2 g i b - b a : utukku lemnu alû lemnu ša ana mušamšî ina sūqa parkū eṭemmu lemnu gallû lemnu ša ana mušamšî ina sulâ parkū, “the evil utukku, the evil alû who block the street for the one walking about at night; the evil ghost, the evil sheriff-demons who block the street for the one walking about at night;” the demons keep walking stealthily through the quiet streets at night to fall upon humans or harass them (Tablet 4: 70, 6: 88, Geller 2007, 112, 205; 131, 216; Tablet 3: 3, ibid., 100, 197, Tablet 7: 1, ibid., 135, 219); they walk the street and break into people’s houses like robbers (Tablet 6: 64, Geller 2007, 130, 216). See also Schramm 2008, 26 § 1: 9ff., 17ff.: “The a l a d , u d u g and m a š k i m , the big ones, chase after men in the wide street(s), . . ., the mighty Ugur who fells people in the street . . .,” (d a l a d u d u g m a š k i m g a l - g a l - l a n a m - l u 2 u 1 8 - l u s i l a - d a g a l - l a a l - b u 2 - b u 2 - d e 3 - n e : šēdu utukku rābiṣu rabbûti ša ana nišī ina ribāti ittanašrabbiṭū . . . d U - g u r n a m - u r u 1 6 - n a e - s i r 2 u g 3 d e 5 - d e 5 - g a  . . .: dErra rabâ ša ina sūqi nišī ušamqatu . . .). 69 Thus in Utukkū lemnūtu Tablet 9: 26–31 the ghosts who entered the house of the patient (trying to find a nice place to stay) are urged to “go out to the street” (Geller 2007, 146, 228). 70 Meier 1937, 22 (citing K.2728+; Tallqvist 1895, 17); Abusch/Schwemer 2008, 147; cf. Schwemer 2007, 82 n. 55–56: kaššāptu(munusUŠ11.ZU) muttalliktu ša sūqāti(SILAmeš) / mūterribtu ša bītāti(E2meš) / dajjulītu ša bīrêti / ḫajjuṭītu ša ribâti / ana pani(IGI)-ša u arki(EGIR)-ša issanaḫḫur / izzaz(GUB-az) ina sūqi(SILA)-ma usaḫḫar šēpē(GIR3.2) / ina ribīti iptaras alaktu. Similar statements appear in other incantation series against demons, e.g. Utukkū lemnūtu Tablet 5: 159, 178 (Geller 2007, 125f., 213) and Tablet 15: 25 (ibid., 166, 243): e - n e - n e - n e s i l a - d a g a l - l a b a - a n - s u 8 - g e - e š g i r i 3 k u r - r a - k e 4 b a - a n -



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The danger of the street in this incantation is intimately connected to the fear of the evil gaze of the witch who is capable of taking away the ­victim’s strength and attractiveness.71 It also relates to concepts of impurity and fear of the negative consequences of coming into contact with pathogenic substances like spittle, associated with witchcraft.72 The streets were thought to be a potentially dangerous place of contagion, because it is known that materia magica and objects used in rituals contaminated by pathogenic substances were sometimes disposed of in the street.73 Thus, the victim of witchcraft in Maqlû VII 133–135 wishes that some passer-by in the street will take away the evil that affects him so he can be rid of it:74 “Street and alley shall undo my wrongdoings; someone (fem.) shall serve as my substitute, someone (fem.) shall receive (it) from me! I had to face a mishap, (now) they shall receive (it) from me!”75 Sometimes part of the ritual action is to take place in the street or at a crossroads, which brings to mind European folklore traditions of conjuring the devil at a crossroads at night.76 s i g 3 - g e - e š : šunu ina ribâtu izzizzūma tallaktu mātu usaḫḫarū, “they stand at the crossroads and divert (or: delay) the traffic of the country.” 71  In omens, it is thought to bring bad luck to see certain things or persons in the street (e.g. in omens belonging to Šumma ālu Tablet 85, see Köcher / Oppenheim 1957–58, 76 Text B Funck 3, e.g. Obv. line 26): šumma(DIŠ) ḫarimtu musukkatu ana pani(IGI)-šu lā(NU) kašād(KUR) ṣibûti(AŠ2) tulâ(UBUR)-ša ilappat(TAG)-ma pašir, “If (a man walks along the street and) there is an ‘impure prostitute’ in front of him: no obtaining of wishes—he may touch her breast and will be released.” See also ibid. 69, 75f., Text A (Sm. 332), mentioning various animals, plants, a leper, a corpse, a midwife, an ecstatic, a doctor, an exorcist, an omen expert, a “prostitute,” an “impure prostitute” as likely candidates to be encountered on streets. One could be bewitched by looking at something evil or stepping on something in the street (Maqlû VII 121f., Abusch/Schwemer 2008, 174f.). 72 See the continuing lines 8–15 where it is said that with her venomous spittle the witch has blocked the traffic and cut off the victim’s business profits. 73 E.g. in Tablet 3 of the series against the asakku sickness demons, pathogenic substances that have absorbed the evil are left in the street (CT 17, 1: 4ff.): “[Throw away] at the street intersection what he has been wiped off with” (š u u r 3 - u r 3 - r u - d a - n i e - s i r 2 k a - l i m m u 2 - b a - š e 3 u 3 - m e - [. . .]: takpirtašu ana sūq erbetti [. . .]). 74 Another anti-witchcraft ritual (Schwemer 2007b, 24 and dupl.) tells us how this transfer could be accomplished: a leather bag for “money” (silver), called the patient’s substitute, was filled with stones and metals during the ritual and later left in the street, hoping that a passer-by might pick it up. For a discussion of this text see Schwemer 2007a, 218–222. 75 Cf. Abusch / Schwemer 2008, 175; Meier 1937, 51: 139–141; 1966, 79: sūqu u sulû lipaṭṭirū arnīja / ēnītu līnanni māḫirtu limḫuranni / amḫur miḫru limḫurūinni. The formula in Maqlû VII 134–35 is also found in namburbi-rituals, where pathogenic substances and objects thought to contain mischief and harm are disposed of at other places, thrown into the river for instance, see Mayer 1976, 271; for these namburbi-rituals see Maul 1994, 284ff. LKA 123; ibid., 181 Sm. 1704+ 80-7-19; ibid., 484ff. lines 60–83). 76 In a ritual against the “hand of a ghost,” the patient has to wash himself several times with “red urine” at a crossroads to physically get rid of the evil (AMT 95, 2 = BAM

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In anti-witchcraft rituals sorcerers and witches are accused of having bewitched the patient by burying figurines representing the victim at a crossroads, at a place where they would be in constant contact with impurity and would be stepped on by people passing by.77 On the other hand, substances such as dust78 or potsherds79 from a street or crossroads were used as materia magica and medica in various rituals.

471 iii 14’, see Scurlock 2006, 649 no. 324: ina uḫulgalli ina sūq erbetti(E.SIR2.LIMMU2.BA) irtanammukma, “on an unpropitious day he will repeatedly wash himself at a crossroads”). Another example of a ritual at a crossroads is von Weiher 1998, 58ff. No. 248, cf. Hecker 2008, 107ff., a ritual for a barren woman to get pregnant. According to one section of the text (Rev. 25’–27’), the woman is to place bread and heaps of flour at a crossroads and says: “What they brought I have received. What I have brought, may they receive it from me” (Rev. 28’, našûma amtaḫar našākuma limḫurūinni). This formula, very similar to Maqlû VII 134–135, shows that her barrenness was seen as having an external source, caused by something (an object) that an unspecified agent “brought” upon her; now this action is reversed by transmitting her barrenness in an analogous way to the ritual objects which in turn are thought to come into contact with the agent who caused the trouble in the first place. 77 See Schwemer 2007a, 100; this place of depositing figurines is mentioned for instance in a Maqlû type incantation, within a long list of methods for manipulating representations of the victim by destroying (burning) and burying them at different places (PBS 10/2, 18 Obv. 37’ // K. 3360+ Obv. 6’; Lambert 1957–1958, 292: 38; for further duplicates see Schwemer 2007a, 62 n. 127): MIN(=ṣalmānija īpušūma) ina sūq erbetti(SILA.LIMMU2.BA) utammerū, “they made figurines of me and buried (them) at a crossroads.” This incantation (Lambert 1957–1958, 292: 30, 38) also states that figurines of the victim were buried underneath (an image of) Kūbu, the demon of premature birth. Could this designate a street shrine of Kūbu? 78 Dust from a crossroads is used in rituals against the “hand of a ghost” (Scurlock 2006, 427 No. 165: 1 where it is mixed with water and put on the hurting neck of the patient), but also in rituals to protect or calm a crying baby (Farber 1989a, 74 §§ 18/18A Text Aa iv 4’ dust from a scull, a crossroads and a threshold; ibid. 68 § 16: 234). Dust from streets or crossroads is used furthermore in rituals for women in pregnancy and difficult childbirth (BAM 248 iii 46 among other types of dust; BAM 363 Rev. 10 together with minerals recommended for pregnant women), but also in a ritual for raising the profits of an inn (KAR 144: 3f. // Craig ABRT 1, 66 (K. 3646): 5), where dust from several places is collected (Farber 1987, 277ff.). A late commentary from Nippur (Civil 1974, 332) explains why such materials as dust from the crossroads are effective in childbirth rituals: SAḪAR “dust” is associated with ṣaḫar (ṣeḫru) “little one,” SILA.LAM4.MA “crossroads” is analyzed as SI “to come straight out,” LA “not” or “little one” and AM.MA “seed” (offspring). Dust from a crossroads was applied in medications (AMT 76, 5: 5 (recipe against stroke in the cheek); Thureau-Dangin 1922, 34 iii 9, parallel BAM 388 i 10; see further Köcher 1966, 20). A ritual to prevent a depressing dream from becoming reality (79-7-8, 77 Rev. 22’, line 24’, see Oppenheim 1956, 304, 343; Butler 1998, 184ff., 332f.) advises to tell the dream to clay pellets and then scatter them at a crossroads. For dust in namburbi-rituals see Maul 1994, 90, 98, 107, 350. For further references see CAD S, 405f. sub 1c, CAD E, 185f. sub 1b–2’; CAD Ḫ, 132 sub 3c. 79 Potsherds found at a crossroads are employed in rituals for magical protection, e.g. BAM 320: 16’ // LKA 144 Rev. 33; BAM 237 i 9 (a ritual against vaginal bleeding during pregnancy) and Farber 1989a, 112 § 39A: 5 // von Weiher 1988, 84: 58 (to protect a pregnant woman against sorcery causing miscarriage), where the potsherds found standing



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2.2 Streets and Impurity In connection with Mesopotamian city streets as a place of dirt and impurity, we shortly have to broach the question of the public hygienic situation in Mesopotamian cities relating to garbage and sewage disposal, which is hardly ever touched on by the textual sources. In the early periods of urbanism in Mesopotamia, as in the Uruk culture in the fourth millennium bce and even earlier, highly sophisticated sanitary engineering techniques for urban drainage systems were in use, comprising networks of wastewater and rainwater drainage in form of drainpipes which connected houses with a canalisation in the street system (installed underneath the gravel or brick pavement of streets), from where wastewater was lead outside the settlements to a river.80 Yet, in later periods, the tradition of drainage systems on such a large scale seems to have declined. Moreover, houses of ordinary people had no lavatories and the existence of public toilets in streets is not generally attested in Mesopotamian cities.81 For the situation in Assur in the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, Conrad Preusser noted that in absence of a public maintenance of up ­(protruding from the ground) are a symbol for obstruction and blocking (Scurlock 1991, 136ff.). In rituals for pregnant women, a potsherd would have to be fastened to the woman’s navel, bound on other parts of her body or rubbed on her vulva (Stol 2000, 132; Scurlock 1991, 138). In omens, in the series Šumma ālu for example, potsherds standing up in the street have a negative interpretation (Freedman 1998, 69 (Tablet 2): 71ff.). An omen fragment probably belonging to Tablet 85 of the same series (Freedman 1998, 341 for the incipit) treats various things and persons encountered by a man going along the street (Köcher / Oppenheim 1957–58, 67 Text B Funck 3), among them potsherds lying or standing up in different directions: Potsherds standing up or situated crosswise as if blocking the street mean that the person will not attain a wish (symbolised as an obstacle); potsherds situated parallel to the direction of the road mean that he will attain what he wishes (lines. 28ff.; Köcher / Oppenheim 1957–58, 71, see also Freedman 1998, 69 n. 71, 73–77). To release this person from the negative sign he encountered, it is recommended that he should step on the sherd with his left foot. In Maqlû Tablet III 136f., a potsherd is interpreted as an evil sign of sorcery, when an incantation starts with the words: “Potsherd from the street(s), why do you keep on being hostile to me? Why do your messages continually come to me?” (Meier 1937, 26: 140f.; 1966, 75, ḫaṣabtu(ŠIKA-tu2) sūqāti(SILAmeš-ti) ammēni tugdanarrênni / ammēni našpatuki ittanallakāni); in the accompanying ritual (Tablet IX 56f.) a potsherd from the street is used (Abusch / Schwemer 2008, 152, 182). 80 Tamburino (2010, 38ff.) cites evidence for instance from Habuba Kabira in Syria, where joined clay pipes and canals covered by limestone slabs were used, and from Tell Asmar in the Diyala region, where toilet facilities were found in a number of houses connected to the sewage canals by drains. Indoor lavatories in palaces and houses are attested as early as the third millennium bce. 81  Nemet-Nejat 1998, 110f.; Tamburino 2010, 38ff. In the Neo-Assyrian and Late Babylonian periods only about 4% of the houses had a toilet or lavatory (Nunn 2006, 15 and fig. 7 for house lavatories/toilets in a residential quarter of Ur in the Old Babylonian period). Compare for differing judgements on hygienic conditions and the quality of drinking

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streets and an overall drainage system only few houses had drainage pipes connected to a solid canalisation in the street or to sump pits, but that wastewater was commonly conducted underneath the thresholds of the houses onto the open street.82 Another problem connected to the impurity of the streets was that in the absence of municipal garbage collection, rubbish was regularly just disposed of in the dusty, mostly unpaved city streets.83 Thus, the thresholds at house entrances were continually raised to prevent rubbish to be carried into people’s houses. The practice of dumping garbage in the street is hinted at in the Gilgamesh Epic XII 154, where we read about the netherworld city that the ghosts who do not get any kispu-offerings from their heirs have to eat the leftovers of food that are thrown into the street. Such leftovers would be eaten by animals regularly seen in the streets of Mesopotamian cities such as dogs and pigs, which seem to have roamed unattended at times, served as garbage disposals, but also left their faeces there.84 Another cause of impurity and actual danger for public health is described in Assurbanipal’s inscriptions about the conflict with his brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn, namely corpses lying around in the streets of Babylonian cities in times of war: The corpses of the people which the plague (god Erra) had slain, who had lost their lives through deprivation and starvation—leftovers of the feed for the dogs and pigs, which blocked the streets and filled the crossroads—

water available in Mesopotamian cities Scurlock / Andersen 2005, 15f. and van de Mieroop 1997, 159ff. 82 Preusser 1954, 63. At Babylon, rainwater mostly flowed from the roofs through clay pipes onto the streets, from where it was sometimes lead away through a brick canal or into sump pits (Reuther 1926, 76, 146f.). Drainpipes were also installed in connection with street toilets found in the Merkes quarter at Babylon, near the Ištar temple. Some houses of this quarter had toilets and lavatories connected to sump pits or wastewater canals through drain pipes (Reuther 1926, 95, 111, 113f., 121). 83 In cities like Babylon and Assur, only few streets had a pavement, e.g. stretches around temples or at houses of wealthier citizens (Reuther 1926, 75; Preusser 1954, 46). Sometimes, pavement is found along the walls of houses to protect them from the rainwater. 84 For the street as a dirty place see e.g. a Babylonian wisdom text from the first millennium bce, edited by Wilfred Lambert (1960, 215 iii 14), where the pig is described as soiling the street with its excrements. In first millennium bce Mesopotamia, pigs were regarded as impure animals, but maybe because of their role as garbage disposals, both dogs and pigs were regarded with ambivalent attitudes. Dogs, although man’s best friends, also transmit diseases and of all domestic animals have the highest number of diseases in common with humans. One can imagine that rodents also thrived in the constant presence of garbage in the streets and could as well become a danger for public health by transmitting infectious diseases.



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I let their bones be brought out of the center of Babylon, Kutha and Sippar, disposed of them in the outskirts (Var. “on piles”). With the arts of ritual purification I purified their sanctuaries and their dirty streets.85

2.3 Streets as Places of Poverty and Misery The image of the street as place for the homeless and destitute shares a sad continuity with our own cultural conceptions and social reality. People begging for food or money in the street are nevertheless mentioned only sparsely; it is even hard to find a word which exclusively means “beggar”.86 This situation might be interrelated to the institution of giving unwanted and destitute persons without families (such as old women, orphans, widows, disabled people, beggars etc.) to temples as “votives” where they were used as “cheap” labour force in return for food and shelter(?). Thus, the temple would have been acting as a “collecting centre” or place of refuge for homeless people so as to get them off the street.87 In most references to homelessness such a way of life was feared and not desirable. Thus, it is interesting to find a sarcastic comment in the Babylonian Theodicy, where the sufferer rejects the “normal” way of life as a head of household, but wants to leave his home and instead to live as a social outsider: “I will go from house to house and ward off hunger; famished I will walk around and patrol the streets”.88 A few more references hint that begging as a way of providing one’s income could also be encountered in Mesopotamian cities. A royal edict from Nuzi forbids 85 Borger 1996, 45 A iv 79–87: šalmāt(ADDAmeš) nišē(UNmeš) ša dErra ušamqitu / u ša ina sunqi bubūti iškunū napištu / rīḫit ukulti kalbē(UR.GI7meš) šaḫê(ŠAḪmeš) / ša sūqāti(SILAmeš) purrukū malû ribāti / eṣmēti(GIR3.PAD.DUmeš)-šunu ultu qereb Bābili(KA2. DINGIR.RAki) / Kutî(GU2.DU8.Aki) Sippar(ZIMBIRki) ušēṣima / attadi ana kamâti (Var. ana nakkamāti) / ana šipir išippūti parakkī(BARA2meš)-šunu ubbib / ullila sulēšunu lu’ûti. 86 See already Oppenheim 1977, 362 n. 68. There are also no entries for “beggar, begging” in Thomas Kämmerer’s and Dirk Schwiderski’s Deutsch-Akkadisches Wörterbuch (1998). Instead of a special lemma for “beggar,” there are several words for “poor, destitute, helpless” used in such contexts (such as lapnu, muškēnu, enšu). E.g. the word pisnuqu, translated as “beggar” by Lambert (1960, 79: 142), is literary and rare, and connotes concepts like powerlessness, helplessness; cf. CAD P, 425; the Fable of the Fox B Obv. 19, Lambert 1960, 192. 87 See Renger 1992, 123f. and especially Gelb (1972, 8ff.) who draws attention to the Sumerian formulation s i l a - a d a b 5 - b a “seized in the street” for individuals such as vagrants and beggars, working for the temple households, mentioned in Ur-III documents. Widows and orphans (without any family relations, home and economic support) were very often integrated as (dependent) workers or slaves into temple households, where they typically worked in the textile industry. Parentless children could also have the luck to be adopted (see Volk 2006). 88 Lambert 1960, 78f.: 140f., bītbītiš lūterruba luni’ bubūti / birīš lutte’elume sulê luṣâ[d].

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slaves of the palace to let their daughters engage in “begging or prostitution” (ana ekûti u ḫarimūti) without the consent of the king.89 In an Old Babylonian letter of the official Šamaš-ḫāṣir to his wife Zinû, he quotes the rhetoric question of the addressee from her previous letter, connected to a request: “There is neither barley as fodder for the cattle fattening farm, nor as food for the household and your youngsters. All has been spent! Should I go out into the street (to beg for it)?”90 In a few texts the negative picture of women standing around or roaming in the street is presented.91 In the Sumerian hymn Innin šagurra, this behavior is caused by the goddess Inanna: “The woman whom she rejects . . . in an evil way . . . she lets her run around in the streets, le[ts her stand] on the br[oad street].”92 Roaming the street means to have no home or family,93 as is vividly described in the ardat lilî incantations.94 “Standing/roaming in the street” is also a typical activity of demons and sorcerers/witches as we have seen. Another implied contrast is that the place of a decent and respectable (married) woman is the house, while the “prostitute/single woman” (ḫarimtu) “goes out” and frequents the street95—if a woman “goes out” (without good cause) she risks 89 Pfeiffer / Speiser 1936, 51; Cooper 2006–2008, 16. For the related words ekûtu, ekû, ekūtu and Sumerian counterparts see lately Volk 2006, 58ff. They have various meanings connected to orphanage, homelessness, poverty, lack of family and protection. For the meaning “begging” in the Nuzi edict see Wilhelm 1990, 519f. with n. 78. 90 Veenhof 2005, No: 164: 5–8: ana ukullê(ŠA3.GAL) namrâtim(E2.UDU.GU.NIGA) / ukullê(ŠA3.GAL) bītim(E2) u ṣeḫrūtika / še’um ul ibašši gamer / ana sūqim lūṣi. See also EA 150: 33, a fragmentary letter of Abi-Milku, mayor of Tyre, to the Pharaoh (Moran 1992, 237f.), mentioning that the people are wailing in the street that Abi-Milku may give them wood. 91  See the dialogue “Two Women” line 111 cited in Volk 2000, 20 n. 94. 92 Sjøberg 1975, 184: 76,78: m u n u s z a 3 - t a g - g a - n i ḫ [ u l ] - b i b i 2 - i n - K [ A ?   .   .   . ] .   .   .   t i l l a 2 - a š u a l - d a g - d a g - g e [ s i l a - d a g a l ] - l a g i r i 3 - n i k i - a x [. . .]. 93 See the Sumerian Dialogue Between Two Scribes (SLTNi. 113 Rev. 2; 3 N-T 919, 461: 2, cited by Volk 2000, 20 n. 96) where one assaults the other as a person who “has no house, rests in the street.” 94 Lackenbacher 1971; Geller 1988 and below. 95 Leick 1994, 164; Haas 1999; Cooper 2006–2008, 14f. with references for streets and prostitution. In the sexual omens of Šumma ālu, sexual contacts with a prostitute are said to take place in the street (CT 39, pl. 45: 30): šumma(DIŠ) awīlu(NA) ina sūq erbetti(SILA. LIMMU2) ḫarimta(munusKAR.KID) sadir “if a man regularly engages with a prostitute at the crossroads.” Cf. Haas 1999 for streets and prostitution. In Mesopotamia, prostitution also seems to have been connected to taverns (Cooper op. cit., 20; Worthington 2009, 133f. § 4). For a critical viewpoint on prostitution in Mesopotamia and the status of the ḫarimtu as a prostitute see Assante 1998; 2007; 2009. The connection of the k a r - k i d /ḫarimtu with the street can also be seen in terms of an analogy of contrasts between spatial entities and social categories, i.e. between house and street, and persons integrated or not integrated into a patriarchical household. See in this connection ana ittišu Tablet VII ii



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suspicion of illicit sexual activities.96 The connection of the “prostitute” with the street often has a negative association with the “outsiders” and “outcasts” of society who have no home to return to, so for example, when Enkidu curses Šamḫat in the Gilgamesh Epic: [ē t]ēpušī bīt lalêki . . . [ē tu]šbī i[na maštaki(AMA)?] ša ardāti(KI.SIKILmeš) . . .  [išpallurtu] ša ḫarrāni(KASKAL) lū mūšabuki / [ḫurbātu lū m]aṣalluka ṣilli(GISSU) dūri(BAD3) lū manzāzuki . . . [šakru u ṣ]āmû limḫaṣ lētki [May you not] found a household to delight in, . . ., [May you not] sit in the women’s [chamber]! . . . May [the junction] of the highway be where you sit! [May the ruined houses be] where you sleep! May the shade of the city wall be where you stand! . . . May [drunk] and sober strike your cheek!97

In the ardat-lilî-incantations, the male lilû-demon is described as the ghost of a young man whose mother had to give birth to him in the street with weeping, as the son of a woman having no home to raise her child, while the female ardat lilî is called “the girl who never had (her own) room, who never called (her) mother’s name,” i.e. a motherless child who was not integrated into a household.98 Although children were generally socially welcome and to have many of them was an ideal in ­Mesopotamian

23–25 (Landsberger 1937, 96f.), where a man marries a woman with the status of a ḫarimtu (n a m - k a r - k i d ) and is said to have “brought her in from the main street” (t i l l a 2 - t a b a a n - d a - i l 2 - l a ), although this woman owned a tavern before her marriage which he gives back to her (cf. Roth 2006, 27f.; Cooper op. cit., 15 § 5; Assante 2007). 96 In the Sumerian Edubba (school) literature, hanging around in the street is criticized as bad behavior for both sexes and is associated with idle laziness and fussing and fighting in public, both of which were thought of as disgraceful misdemeanor, see Volk 2000, 20 with references. 97 George 2003, 638ff. Tablet VII 106ff., 115ff.; Lambert 1992, 130. In an Old Babylonian Sumerian love incantation the female object of desire is described as: “The beautiful maid (k i - s i k i l ), who stands in the street, the maid, the prostitute, daughter of Inanna” (Leick 1994, 196). The “woman of the street” is also mentioned in omens, e.g. in a hemerological text (CT 51, 161 Rev. 1, cited by Livingstone 1997, 218) recommending for the 25th day of the month Tebet that “he should make a woman of the street pregnant; Ištar will look at him with favor for the game” (sinništa(MUNUS) ša sūqi(SILA) lišâri Ištar(IŠ8.DAR) ana mē[lūlti] ana damiqti(MUNUS.SIG5) ippallas(IGI.BAR)-[su]). In lexical texts, the “prostitute” (k a r - k i d ) is also associated with roaming, making rounds (n i g i n ( 2 ) ; saḫāru) at other places like the city wall, see CAD S, 55f. In a political treaty of Aššur-nērārī V (Parpola/Watanabe 1988, 12 v 9–10) the contracting party, king Mati’-ilu of Arpad, is cursed that he shall become a prostitute (ḫarimtu) if he breaches the treaty, and his soldiers shall become women having to accept gifts in the street like a ḫarimtu. This reflects a view of such women as leading a precarious and marginalised existence, which would be still more degrading for a man. 98 Lackenbacher 1971, 124 i 7–8; Geller 1988, 15: 36: k i - s i k i l i t i m a n u - t u k u m u n u a m a p a 3 - d a : MIN(= ardatu) ša maštaki lā išû šum ummi lā izkuru; Hecker 2008, 126 (cf. the differing Sumerian version which may mean “maiden who was never called ‘mother’ ”).

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societies, it is known that parents (or mothers) sometimes abandoned their newborn babies at frequented places such as a street, well or the river, because of poverty or personal hardship.99 In legal texts the taking in of such foundlings from the street is mentioned quite often.100 In other cases, we read of persons leaving their families and homes, either voluntarily or by force—in cases of grave misbehaviour, sons, daughters, men and women were punished by casting them out of the family home, sometimes even “naked” (without clothes or any belongings to take with them).101 In the curse formulae of Middle and Neo-Babylonian

  99 See lately Volk 2006, 49ff.; Wunsch 2003–2004, 174ff. with earlier literature. Abandonment probably often awaited children of illegitimate unions. The places where children were abandoned, together with other formulae in legal documents, signify an “outside, ownerless and lawless area,” as Meir Malul (1990, 104f.) has noted. In Akkadian, foundlings sometimes have names such as “He of the street/moat” (Volk 2006, 51). 100 See CAD S, 402f. sub 1a–2’; Volk 2006, 51ff.; for foundlings in Neo- and Late Babylonian documents see Wunsch 2003–2004, 174ff. Standard termini technici for the status of a foundling were “a child who has no father or mother, who does not know his father or mother, who was found in a well, taken in from the street (ina sūqi šūrub),” a child who was taken from the mouth of a dog, raven or found in company of a dog or pig (see e.g. ana ittišu III iii 28–33, Landsberger 1937, 44). The fate of a foundling depended on the goodwill of the finder; often they ended as slaves, others were adopted and became scribes or even worked for the royal court (Wunsch 2003–2004, 182f.; Volk 2006, 51ff.). In the series ana ittišu Tablet VII (iii 11f.), the case of a qadištu-woman (a woman of special status who in some periods seems to play a role in childbirth beside the midwife or acted as a wet-nurse) is mentioned who takes into her home a “child from (found in) the street” (d u m u s i l a a m 3 : mār s[ūqi], Landsberger 1937, 100, cf. disc. Volk 2006, 53f.). It seems that women were most often the persons to abandon or take in foundlings (see also an apodosis in the commentary on astrological omens K. 4026 Rev. 13 (Virolleaud 1912, 67 No. XL): “The nurse in the street will abandon her child/son” (tārītu ina sūqi(SILA) māra(DUMU)-ša inaddi(ŠUB-di)). In other cases, adults are taken in from the street. In ana ittišu Tablet VII (iii 7ff.), the qadištu herself is taken in “from the street” (s i l a - t a : ina sūqim) by a man who loves and marries her. In legal documents from Nuzi, we find other arrangements of women entering a household from the street by being made the “sister” of a man after a public declaration of her consent “in the street.” Thus women who did not have a family or were manumitted slaves would have a home and protection, see Greengus 1975, 19ff. with note 50; cf. Lacheman / Owen 1981, 392f. No. 12 NBC 9112. 101  In ana ittišu Tablet III iv 11f. (Landsberger 1937, 48) is an entry about an adopted son who “has taken off, run away into the street” (ṣīta irtaši ana sūqi ittenrub), after which we find a formula for removing the adoptee from the status of a son (see CAD M/1, 319a lex.; Landsberger 1937, 148 Commentary to iv 11–16). In legal documents from Emar and Ugarit concerning domestic affairs such as testaments we read that if a family member (wife or son) is disloyal towards senior family members (husband, parents, elder brother) and does not accept their authority, the delinquent places his/her garment on a stool and leaves. In testaments from Emar (Beckman 1996, 14, RE 8: 40–43; ibid., 46 RE 28: 13–19; see also Arnaud 1986, 174f. No. 181) this fate is also stipulated for a wife going after another man or an adopted son denying respect towards his adoptive parents. The formula is also found in a verdict of the Hittite king regulating the divorce of Ammistamru, king of Ugarit, from his wife, a princess from Amurru (Nougayrol 1956, 127 RS.17.159: 25ff., 31–39). Here the crown



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land donation documents, called kudurrus, a homeless man who has to roam the streets of his city is compared to a dog, while an outcast criminal is described as one who is not even allowed to walk the streets, but instead belongs in the uninhabited steppe with the wild animals.102 These comparisons employ a hierarchy and pattern of relating spatial entities and relations to social differentiations: Having a home signified that one was part of human society, while domestic animals and the homeless are placed on another symbolic level (at the margin of society), because they share the same topographical place, as do fugitive criminals and wild animals (outside of human society). The (city) streets are viewed as ambivalent, being “outside” (the house), but “inside” (the cities); they are the connection and passage between inside (ālu “city”) and outside (ṣēru “wilderness”), and thus liminal.103 Their liminal character is expressed not only in rituals that included processions, but is also seen in the ambivalent evaluation of streets, as a place of impurity and danger, as a source of infection and harm. 3. Streets and Public Activities of Social Life, Politics, Religion and Law The city streets also occur in cuneiform texts as a place for activities involving the public. Most importantly we note recurring references to streets as: – a place of gossip, where one has to face the looks and judgement of other people – a place for processions, festivals, display of royal triumph – a place for the exhibition of criminals and delinquents

prince will have to leave his garment and go away if he wishes to follow his mother (back to Amurru) or tries to re-install her as queen after his father’s death. In all the texts the verb waṣû “to go out” is used for the banishment from the household without mentioning the street, except for a few documents from Ugarit (Nougayrol 1955, 60 RS.16.141: 15), where an unwilling fiancée gets her bridal gift back and “leaves for the street(s)” (tapaṭṭar ana sūqāti(SILAla.meš); similarly ibid., 55 RS.15.92: 14 where an adopted son ana sūqi(SILA) ipa[ṭṭar] if he hates his father). Arnaud (1981, 12) understands the legal gesture of placing one’s garment on a stool as a symbol for the renunciation of rights to the family property and support. 102 BBSt No. 7 ii 24 ina ribīt ālišu; Scheil 1900, pl. 23 vii 3 ribīt ālišu aj ikbus. 103 For similar notions of liminality associated with the Aventin in Rome see Šterbenc Erker, this volume.

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– a place of legal judgement – a place where the herald recites declarations We will turn now to these aspects of streets as locales for public activities. 3.1 Streets, Public Gaze and Gossip In contrast to the privacy of the home, the street is a public place per se, where one comes into contact with other people, where the public gaze is upon any member of the community, which, together with gossip, can work as a means of social control on the individual and his/her behaviour and social interaction.104 In some contexts, the gaze of others is felt as a potential threat, and one finds a recurring narrative in the Babylonian literary texts, as for example in wisdom literature and prayers, where the subject has to face adversity and contempt from people in the streets, which is seen as a shameful disgrace. Prayers to deities often reflect a subject’s apprehension about his reputation in the eyes of his community and a desire for divine protection, which will ensure that people will not talk bad about him or treat him with open disrespect:

104 In social anthropology, gossip is part of any socio-cultural milieu and has been seen in the functionalist approach as a culturally determined and sanctioned process with important functions in the maintenance of group unity and morality, enabling groups to control competing cliques and aspiring individuals (Rappaport 2002, 266f.). The importance of the public gaze can be related to societies with a group-orientation (cf. Douglas 1970). In that type of society, the main source of identity comes from belonging to a strongly bounded group. Public opinion can exert pressure on the individual who is primarily judged by his or her outward appearance and how he/she lives up to expected role models. In a group-orientated society, people’s standing and reputation in the community is decisive, and concepts of honour and shame are an important motor and sanction of behaviour, managed through the collective sanction of gossip (Mitchell 2002, 280f.). In Mesopotamian sources, the combined experience of an individual of unfavourable gossip, permanent social discord and conflict with people both in his home (family group) and in the street (community/neighbourhood) is seen as an extremely symptomatic sign of divine displeasure, caused by witchcraft (e.g. through negative gossip) which makes gods and fellow men hate the victim. Thus, an incantation to Šamaš expresses this point (Lambert 1957–1958, 293f.: 68–69): itti ili(DINGIR) u ištari(dXV) uzennûninni ulammenūinni / ina bīti(E2) ṣaltu ina sūqi(SILA) puḫpuḫḫû iškunūnimma “They made god and goddess detest me, defamed me; they have laid upon me strife at home, enmity in the street” (for a complete list of duplicates and fragments Schwemer 2007a, 318 index sub PBS 10/2, 18 //; Abusch 2002, 70ff., 151ff.). See also KAR 228 (Ebeling 1955, 146: 19–20): ina bīti(E2) ṣaltu ina sūqi(SILA) puḫpuḫḫû šaknā / muḫḫi(UGU) āmirija(IGI.LA2-ia5) marṣāku urra u mūša(GI6) nazāqu “In the house quarreling, in the street enmity is set (for me); to anyone encountering me I am a burden; day and night is sorrow.” Walter Farber (1977, 56: 10ff.) adds that the patient is hated or cursed by a lot of people.



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In the city, the people shall [listen? to me] without forgetting it, Establish speaking and cons[ent] for me (that what I say and do will be approved in the community), I want to walk the street (in such a way that) who sees me [shall be ashamed (of himself ) because of me]!105

The social dynamics of personal misfortune resulting in disgrace and maltreatment by one’s fellow-men is unfolded in a dramatic fashion in the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer. The onset of misfortune is foreshadowed in frightening omens and ominous events experienced by the sufferer who is driven from his house and made to wander outside (Tablet I 50). What people say about him in the streets portends evil for him and gives him a bad reputation.106 What follows is a tragic sequence of social decline from a favourite of the king and respected member of the community to an outsider despised by everyone, even the lowest riff-raff (Tablet I 55–100). This passage emphasizes the public disgrace, slander and humiliation experienced from fellow men: As I walked through the street, fingers were pointed at me, as I went into the palace eyes would squint at me, . . . my best friend would slander me, my slave openly cursed me in the assembly, my slave-girl defamed me in front of the crowd. . . .107

105 BMS 13: 7–9, Ebeling 1953, 84f. (Šuilla-prayers to Marduk): ina ālim nišē(UNmeš) ša la ma[šê lišmûni?] / šuknam(GAR-nam)-ma qabâ u magā[ri jāši] / lullik sūqa āmirī [libāšanni]. 106 Literally: “in the mouth of the street my reputation (egirrû, i.e. things that are said about me) is bad” (ina pī sūqi lemun egirrû(INIM.GAR-ú)-a); see Lambert 1960, 32 Tablet I 53; George / al-Rawi 1998, 193; Annus/Lenzi 2010, 16, 32. Also Babylonian kings like Nabonidus pray for positive pronouncements (egirrû) about themselves expressed by the people in the streets (Langdon 1912, 260 ii 36, Schaudig 2001, 387): ina sūqu u sulā’ lidammiqu egirrāja—“May (Bunene, the vizier of Šamaš) make favourable the gossip about me in street and alley!” For egirrû interpreted as “reputation (expressed in utterances of others)” see CAD E, 43 sub 1; CAD S 402, sub 1a-1’. In most references these ominous utterances are negative and associated with the evil curse, whereas the subject in prayers wishes that favorable words may be said about him when passing people by in the streets and a finger of favorable intent be pointed at him from behind, that people in the street may comply to what he says or notice that he is a divinely protected person (e.g. Geller 2007, 109 Utukkū lemnūtu Tablet III 189–190; Lambert 1959–1960, 59: 181ff.; Mayer 1976, 508: 120–121). 107 Tablet I 80–81, 88–90; Annus / Lenzi 2010, 17, 33: sūqa aba’ama turruṣā ubānāti / errub ekalliš(E2.GAL-liš)-ma iṣappurā īnāti . . . ru’ua ṭābi ukarraṣa napištī / šūpîš ina puḫri(UKKIN) īruranni ardī / amtī(GEME2) ina pān ummāni ṭapilti iqbi. See also van de Mieroop 1997, 127 for intrigues and gossip in the city assembly which could destroy a citizen’s good name. It reveals a greater apprehension of upper class members to preserve their reputation and status.

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That the overarching importance of public opinion nevertheless had its limits, is illustrated by an Old Babylonian letter where the addressee is told not to pay attention to the “talk (lit. mouth) of the street” (pī sūqim) and to dismiss it as unfounded rumours.108 That the streets belong to the public sphere is also reflected a few times in the cuneiform law codes. According to the Middle Assyrian Laws, special rules of conduct had to be observed by different categories of women when they walked in the street and appeared in public. Married free women and concubines accompanying their mistresses had to cover their head (probably only the hair) with a cloth, but female slaves and ḫarimtus are ordered to leave their head uncovered, otherwise they had to expect severe physical punishment. The law requires the public to drag female slaves and ḫarimtus covering their head in public to the palace entrance and to denounce them.109 Other sections of cuneiform law codes deal with the rape of unmarried women and adulterous sexual encounters of men with married women outside the house, imagining these events to take place in a tavern, in the main street (ribītu) at night or in a granary.110 3.2 Processions, Festivals, Display of Royal Triumph In Mesopotamian textual sources such as cultic calendars, rituals, royal inscriptions and literary compositions, we learn about recurring religious festivals, during which ceremonial processions of divine images and objects from their shrines within the city travel to cultic sites outside the city walls, as witnessed by the inhabitants who enjoyed work-free holidays on such occasions and would engage in celebration.111 Other festivals were marked by circumambulations within or outside the town.112 ­Procession routes included sections on land or water and stations at daises and 108 Frankena 1974, 9: 9. 109 Middle Assyrian Laws § 40, KAV 1 v 42–106; Roth 1995, 168f.; for a discussion of this passage questioning the meaning “prostitute” usually attached to ḫarimtu in the Assyriological literature see Assante 1998, 32ff. who interprets ḫarimtu as a single woman. Assante connects the wearing of a head cloth to the status of a free woman of the amēlu-class, but doubts that the Middle Assyrian laws were actually enforced and applied in practice. Karel van der Toorn 1995 sees the “veil” as a sign both for high social status and for married women in Babylonia and Assyria. 110  Middle Assyrian Laws §§ 12, 14, 55, Roth 1995, 157f. For a discussion of women in connection with rape and adultery in cuneiform and Biblical law see Lafont 1999. 111  See e.g. the passage in the Sumerian composition The Curse of Agade (lines 12–22) discussed by J. Cale Johnson in this volume. 112  For processions as part of religious festivals and cultic rituals in Mesopotamia see Berlejung 1998; Cohen 1993; Linssen 2004; Miglus 2006–2008; Pongratz-Leisten 1994; 2006–2008 with extensive literature; Walker / Dick 2001; Zgoll 2006.



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shrines. Before a deity would tread on a processional street, it had to be purified or refurbished. In many cases, processional streets were also the main arteries of the city.113 One of the best-known festival processions is that of Marduk during the New Year’s Festival (akītu) at Babylon, during which, as part of the performance of a religious drama, the deity leaves his temple to fight the impersonation of chaos (Tiāmat) outside in the steppe, thereby re-establishing cosmic order. The fifth of the eleven stations of this procession from the temple complex Esagila to the New Year’s Temple (“akītu-house”) outside the city is the processional street called by the ceremonial name Aj-ibūršabû “May the arrogant not prosper!”114 Although the general word sūqu is often used in the texts for processional streets, there is also a special Akkadian term in first millennium bce literary Babylonian texts, mašdaḫu (from the verb šadāḫu “to move in procession, to walk along”).115 Another word for “processional street” in Babylonian texts from the first millennium bce is mūtaqu “passage, thoroughfare”, which is mostly used as attribute to sūqu.116 Thus, in inscriptions of Nebukadnezzar II, the processional street Aj-ibūr-šabû is called sūqu rapšu mūtaq bēli rabî Marduk “broad street, processional road of the great lord Marduk.”117 Broad and narrow streets (sūqu rapšu/qatnu) were also called mūtaq nišē “thoroughfare of the people” which were used for daily traffic,118 or mūtaq ilī u šarri “thoroughfare of gods and king” used for parades and divine processions.119

113 Note the reference to a “lamentation in the quiet streets (s i l a s i - g a ) (for?) Ningišzida, circumambulation in the town” in Sumerian sources (Sallaberger 1993, I 282 II Tab. 102). 114 Pongratz-Leisten 1994; 2006–2008, 101f. In the ritual texts or commentaries describing the stations of the festival, this station is just called ina sūqi “in the street” (ThureauDangin 1921, 118 Rev. 10; KAR 142, Sm. 1720, K. 9876+, Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 40f., also Text No. 7 and 5), while in the royal inscriptions of Nebukadnezzar, Neriglissar and in the series Tintir V, Aj-ibūr-šābu is simultaneously called “street (sulû) of Babylon” (CAD S, 371a sub 1c; George 1992, 66: 64). The epithets “street of Babylon” and “broad/narrow street” could have been popular designations (George 1992, 358). 115 CAD M/1, 362f; e.g. Antagal F 163. 116 For instance in inscriptions of Sennacherib (Luckenbill 1924, 102: 90; 154: 10). 117 Langdon 1912, 160 vii 46, 50. In legal documents from the Late Babylonian period mūtaqu as attribute to sūqu is also combined with names of deities (e.g. Ungnad 1908, 105: 8 about a house in ḫarrānu(KASKAL.MIN) ša akītu mūtaqu Uraš(dURAŠ) “the street of the akītu-festival, thoroughfare of Uraš;” cf. the “Street of the Uraš Gate,” the processional street of Nabû in Babylon). 118 In documents from Uruk, Kiš and Ur, Nippur (Falkenstein 1941, 50ff.; often small streets (sūqu qatnu); CAD M/2, 297b sub b). 119 Attestations for this phrase come from Late Babylonian Uruk, Kiš, Borsippa, Babylon (CAD M/2, 298a sub c).

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In some texts, the special term ribītu is mentioned as place or stage of processions instead of the general terms for “street” (sūqu, sulû). In the context of processions, ribītu can be interpreted as a road with a linear character, as is implied by the use of verbs of movement. A bilingual hymn to Ninurta120 describes a procession of the god entering the city and approaching his temple Ešumeša in Nippur.121 The text mentions the performances of musicians and athletes, offerings and that the inhabi­tants of the city are singing songs for the deity. Then stations of the procession are named: k i - b i - t a i g i - z u g a r - r a - [ z u - d e 3 ] / ištu ašri šuātu panīka ina šakāni[ka] k a 2 - g a l - u z u g 2 b a r - š e g 3 - g a 2 - b i k u 4 - r a - [ z u - d e 3 ] / ina abul usukkī šarbiš ina erēbi[ka] sila-dagal-ka2-gal-uzug2 asilallal gal2-la dib-be2-da-zu-[de3] / ina ribīt abul usukkī ša rīšāti malât ina bâ’ik[a] ˹ e 2 ˺ - š u - m e - š a 4 e 2 - a n - k i - d a - l a 2 - a b a l - e - d a - z u - [ d e 3 ] / [ana Ešu]meša bītu ša ana šamê(AN-e) u erṣetim(KI-tim) tarṣu ina erē[bika] . . .  When [you] set your eyes on this place, When [you] enter the “Gate of the Impure” like a cold rain-storm, When you walk along the “Street of the Gate of the Impure”, which is full of rejoicing, When you enter Ešumeša, the house which stretches to heaven and the underworld. . . .

The description of the topography of Nippur in this text is in accordance with our scant archaeological knowledge of the topography of this city, but also with the Map of Nippur, which is on a cuneiform tablet from about 1300 bce. Although the temple of Ninurta has not been identified, it is highly probable that it corresponds to an excavated temple on “Tablet Hill,” the western mound WA (fig. 1).122 The “Gate of the Impure” (called abul usukkī in the Ninurta hymn) is also on the Map of Nippur (called there abul musukkātim “Gate of the Impure Women”), situated in the north-western stretch of the city wall

120 KAR 119 (VAT 10610); Lambert 1960, 118ff. and pl. 32 Rev. 12–19. This text probably dates to the Kassite period and was imported to Assur from Babylon. 121  For the festivals of Ninurta see also Streck 1998–2001, 519f. § 14; Gurney 1989, 26–32, No. 69+70, §§ 5’, 7’–10’; Sallaberger 1993, 121), especially the festival on occasion of his victorious return from the mountains to his city and temple described in the myth Ninurta’s Return to Nippur (Angimdimma; Cooper 1978; ETCSL 1.6.1), which was celebrated in Nippur in the second month of the year (Ninurta’s akītu) and is reflected in the Ninurta hymn. See also Annus 2002, 26ff., 61ff. 122 Gibson et al. 1998–2001, 558.



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Fig. 1. Nippur Topographic Map. Source: Gibson / Hansen / Zettler 1998–2001, 547 fig. 1.

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Fig. 2. Ancient Plan of Nippur Superimposed on Modern Topographic Map of the Site. Source: Gibson / Hansen / Zettler 1998–2001, 560 fig. 10 (Drawing by John C. Sanders).



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(fig. 2).123 Unfortunately, neither streets nor squares are depicted on the ancient city map, so it does not help to clarify the exact meaning of ribītu in the Ninurta hymn. Nevertheless, the placement of ribītu at an intermediate stage of procession and the verb bâ’u “to walk along” point to the linear conceptualisation of ribītu in this context. The stations of the procession according to the hymn are: 1) city gate—2) processional road between gate and temple—3) temple. A clear parallel for ribīt abul usukkī as a main processional street can be found in Babylon, where the main streets are often named in similar fashion after the city gate they led to, and connected city gates and big sanctuaries serve the same fundamental function as processional roads. Ribītu also figures as the place for a divine procession in the Middle Assyrian bilingual Ninisina’s Journey to Nippur.124 The procession of the goddess and her divine court starts at her temple in Isin and leads through the streets to the quay, where she embarks on her procession ship (lines 9–10, 23–26): sila-dagal-uru-na-ke4 mi-in-ni-dib-be2 uru-ni mu-un-da-sa2: ribīt āli(URU)-ša ana bâ’i āl(URU)-ša išannan . . . d Š u - m a ḫ s u k k a l - z i e 2 - g a l - m a ḫ - a i g i - š e 3 m u - u n - d u : dŠumaḫ sukkallu(SUKKAL) kīnu ša Egalmaḫ ina maḫriša illak e-sir2 sila-dagal mu-un-na-ab-sikil-e uru mu-un-na-ab-ku3g [ e ] : sūqu u ribītu ulluluši āla(URU) ullalši When she walks along the main street of her city, (the people of) her city do the same. . . . Šumaḫ, the reliable vizier of Egalmaḫ, walks in front of her. He purifies street and main street for her, he cleans the city for her. (Akk. “Street and main street purified for her, he cleanses the (whole) city for h[er].”)

Processions in city streets were not only performed by the gods, but they often required the participation of the ruler, and could be used for the display of a royal triumph, for example on the occasion of a victorious

123 For this city gate see Komoróczy, 1976, 341–345; Behrens 1978, 150–157; Stol 1998– 2001, 540; 2012, 275. There is another text explaining the cultic events in Nippur in the month Iyyar in connection with Ninurta’s victorious return from battle in the mountains (Gurney 1989, 69+70, 27f., 31f., §§ 7–12; Annus 2002, 63f.). According to this text, Ninurta returns on the 15th day, but on the 19th day the impure women had to leave the city in a procession, because Ninurta entered his temple Ešumeša “in anger” (i § 7); for a discussion see also George (1990b, 158) who sees in the ritual procession of these women the origin of the name of this city gate. 124 KAR 15+16; see al-Fouadi 1982, 35ff.; Cohen 1975, 609ff.

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return from a military campaign (erāb āli), which is especially attested in first millennium bce Assyria.125 Notably, the triumphal entry of the king is part of the Assyrian version of the akītu-festival.126 In Nineveh, as inscriptions of Sennacherib tell us, a 34 meter wide ceremonial “royal road” functioned as main processional road. It probably led from the ­Nergal Gate in the northwestern flank of the city wall to the citadel and royal palace on mound Kouyunjik.127 There is an example from the inscriptions of Esarhaddon for a triumphal parade of the Assyrian king celebrating the military victory over the kings of Sidon and Kundu/Sisû (in 676/5 bce), taking place in the ribītu of Nineveh.128 The king states that on this occasion, he had the cut-off heads of the enemy kings that he had killed hung around the necks of their magnates as part of their public humiliation, “to show the people the might of Aššur”.129 This parade was accompanied by performances of singers and lyre players (May 2012). Last but not least, Old Babylonian texts connected to the cult of the goddess Ištar describe rituals characterised by processions through the city and to the outskirts, which merit special mention here, because they describe the active participation of inhabitants (men, women, young men and girls), beside cultic personnel like ecstatics, transvestites and musicians, in ritual acts, especially in games of symbolic reversal (of gender attributes) and in collective celebrations.130

125 Nóvak 1999, 296f. For references see Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 151–190, esp. 159f.; CAD S, 312f. 126 For attestations from the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal see PongratzLeisten 1997, 249ff.; Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 79ff., 106ff., 147, 151ff.; Weissert 1997, 347f. For the akītu-festivities at Assur see also Menzel (1981) and Maul (2000). The gods’ procession to the akītu-house outside the city of Assur on the second of Nisan started at the Aššur Temple where Aššur, together with the king, mounted his chariot pulled by horses. The order of the gods in procession (in front of or behind Aššur’s chariot) was strictly defined, as it moved along the processional street from the Aššur Temple through the temple and palace area to the akītu-house outside the city (Menzel 1981, 55ff.; Maul 2000, 400; Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 108, cf. 27 map of Assur). Contrary to Andrae’s reconstruction (1977, 68f., 223f., figs. 40–42, 47), the known texts do not attest that the procession to the akītuhouse during the New Year’s festival at Assur took place by boat (cf. Menzel 1981, 243). 127 Luckenbill 1924, 153; Nóvak 1999, 162, 290; Lumsden 2004, Fig. 6. Another main street for daily traffic and processions could have connected the Shibaniba or the Hallahu Gate and the city (Lumsden 2004). 128 Borger 1956, 50 iii 38 ina ribīt Ninua. 129 Ibid., 50 iii 36: aššu danān Aššur bēlija nišē(UN.MEŠ) kullumimma. Note that in the inscriptions of Assurbanipal, a new formula is introduced in connection with the presentation of captives and trophies of war: ana tāmarti nišē (mātiya) “so that the people (of my country) may see” (Weissert 1997, 357, n. 2’). 130 Groneberg 1997.



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3.3 Streets, Legal Judgement and the Exhibition of Criminal Delinquents Beside its occurrence in the Middle Assyrian Laws as a public space where the appearance of women had to be regulated, the term ribītu is also connected to judicial activities in a number of other texts. In an Old Babylonian document from Ur (Figulla / Martin 1953, No. 265), a man is said to have taken an oath by the Moon God and the king “in the main street of Ur,” revealing that the trial concerning this man was held at a ribītu, presumably in the vicinity of an important building or public place (e.g. temple or city gate), “Bēlum-Sîn swore an oath by Nanna and Sumuel . . .; in the main street of Ur he swore the oath by Nanna and Sumuel.”131 In some judicial documents we read about the threat or actual performance of humiliating punishments in public. In a clause of an Old Babylonian judicial agreement from Sippar concerning an adoption, it is stated that should one of the parties bring a claim against the current agreement, “their noses will be pierced, and their arms will be stretched, and they will walk (like this) through the main street of Sippar.”132 In a Sumerian model court case from Nippur dating to the beginning of the second millennium bce, which was used in the scribal curriculum, a woman caught in the act of adultery is exposed to physical punishment and publicly humiliated: “They have shaved (her) pudendum, pierced her nose with an arrow. The king has handed her over for leading her around in the city.”133

131  Figulla / Martin 1953, No. 265: 1ff., 13ff.: Bēlum(mEN-um)-Sîn(dSUEN) nīš(MU) Nanna (dNANNA) u Sumu-El(DINGIR) itma(IN.PAD3) . . . ina ribīt Urim(URI2ki)-ma nīš(MU) Nanna(dNANNA) u Sumu-El(DINGIR) itma(IN.P[AD3]). The erroneous statement in Steinert 2011, 319 about taverns as places of judicial activities has to be corrected in the accordance with the references cited there: it was in the main streets (ribītu) that these activities took place in some periods of Mesopotamian history. 132 Ungnad 1909, No. 19: 9ff.: appāšunu ippallašāma / idāšunu ittarraṣāma / ribīt Sippar(ZIMBIRki) i[lla]kū; cf. CAD T, 215 sub 15b, CAD R, 320 sub d; Harris 1975, 133 with note 77. See also CT 45, 18: 14ff. where the plaintiff of an unlawful claim is lead around the city of Sippar with half of his hair shaved off, his nose pierced and arms stretched (in a stock?); cf. CAD T, 210 sub b; Harris 1975, 133 with note 78 for more references. 133 Van Dijk 1959, 12–14 and pl. 9 No. 8: 21–26; van Dijk 1963; Greengus 1969–1970; Roth 1988, 196: g a l 4 - l a - a - [ n i ] / u [ m b ] i n i [ n ] - k u 5 - r u - n e / k i r i 4 - n i g i š k a k - s i - s a 2 i n - b u r u 3 - u š / u r u k i n i g i n - e - d e 3 / l u g a l - e / [ b a ] - a n - s u m . In legal documents the shameful punishment of publicly exposing the delinquent’s naked body was primarily performed on married women who despised or wanted to leave their husbands for another man, e.g. in Old Babylonian documents from Hana (Clay 1923, 52: 14), and in Nuzi texts (Chiera 1929, 71: 35 where the woman is stripped). In the OB text from Hana, the woman is taken to the roof of the palace to be exposed to the crowd.

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While there are other more prominent public places for judgement, especially at the city, palace or temple gates,134 the streets are additionally mentioned in connection with the herald who recites proclamations of king or local authorities and informs people of public events (collective services, assemblies), of run-away-slaves and crimes like theft.135 In an Old Babylonian document in Sumerian,136 it is mentioned that the herald blows his horn in the streets to inform the people that a merchant had lost his seal. In the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, the city street is mentioned as place of public assembly of the inhabitants. In Tablet III 208f., Gilgamesh forbids the officers responsible for governing Uruk during his absence, not to assemble the young men (as troops for military expeditions) in the street.137 In the parallel sequence of the epic’s Old Babylonian version, in the Yale Tablet iv 172–177, Gilgamesh bolts the seven city gates of Uruk and convenes the city’s assembly (young men and elders) in the (main) street, to inform them that he has decided to go with Enkidu on an expedition to the Cedar Forest against Huwawa.138 While in the Akkadian Gilgamesh compositions, the two heroes go on this expedition alone, in the Sumerian precursor of this episode, in Bilgames and Huwawa, Gilgamesh mobilises the young men of Uruk who accompany him and Enkidu to the Cedar Forest as troops.139 This episode reflects the usual practice of assembling inhabitants for military and public services, such as repair work on the city walls or digging and cleaning irrigation canals.140

134 See Natalie N. May’s contribution in this volume; CAD A/1, 82ff.; CAD B, 14ff. For proclamations (šūdûti) at palace and city gates about legal decisions in Nuzi texts see Pfeiffer 1932, 18: 41; Gadd 1926, 142 No. 1: 22. Note also the ceremonial name of the Illat(u) Gate in the city of Assur mentioned in the so-called Götteradressbuch (Menzel 1981, II T 155: 131, KAV 42 iii 37 and dupl.: lū dārât puḫur nišē, “Eternal be the assembly of the people!”; cf. Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 26, 29. 135 For the street in connection with the activities of the herald see Sassmannshausen 1995, 96ff. 136 Ali 1964. 137 George 2003, 584. 138 George 2003, 200ff. 139 George 2003, 9f., 194f. Note that in the Yale Tablet, the young men of Uruk trying to follow Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are urged to stay at home. In Tablet II 260ff. Gilgamesh similarly addresses the young men of Uruk to give their blessing to his undertaking, while the elders present warn him, but later agree and give Gilgamesh in Enkidu’s care. 140 For more information on city assemblies see van de Mieroop 1997, 120ff.



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4. Conclusion The streets of Mesopotamian cities had various social, economic, political, religious functions. They were important locales for communication and public activities during which the social order and collective identity was cemented, for instance through their functions as a place of judgement and as a locale for processions of the gods and/or the ruler during religious festivals and triumphal parades. On the other hand, streets were also seen as a negative, marginal, liminal space where elements at the bottom of society were localised, some of which have no fixed place of belonging within a bounded group (family), or through their anti-social behaviour, tend to be seen as threatening to the social order (witch/ sorcerer; idle persons hanging around engaging in worthless gossip and quarreling). Others are marginalised because their occupation forces them to frequent the streets. The picture presented here based on available textual sources probably reflects social reality to some degree, but also contains perspectives of members of the upper class who set themselves apart from the ones at the bottom and at the margins of society. The impression that social boundary marking was a concern in Mesopotamian society might also be reflected in other characteristics of the spatial organisation of Mesopotamian streets and city quarters. The inwardness of the house architecture (closed walls, the absence of large windows etc.) could be interpreted as emphasising social borders and a desire of protecting those inside from the public gaze. Moreover, the occasional presence of gates at city quarters and private streets can be understood as an expression of social control through specific groups (by controlling access), marking a contrast between insiders and outsiders.141 Moreover, the recurring topic of gossip and the public gaze in the written sources can be seen as reflecting a group-orientation of Mesopotamian society,142 i.e. as a society in which belonging to a social group forms the main source of a person’s identity, as society in which the self-image of an individual is determined by his/her images in the eyes of others. Hopefully, the evidence in this contribution has demonstrated that in Mesopotamia as in other ancient societies, social structure is expressed in the spatial domain, which is charged with social meaning. In ­connection 141  For similar patterns of Islamic Oriental cities cf. Bengs 1997, 15ff. and May / Steinert, Introduction, this volume. 142 For “group” vs. “grid” see Mary Douglas 1970.

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with streets, the most dominant reflection of social structure in urban space, according to the written sources from Mesopotamia, was the contrast between the opposing categories “inside” versus “outside,” house versus street, centre versus periphery, property versus poverty, social belong‑ ing versus marginalisation. This contrastive ordering of social categories and urban space is tied to a focus on the liminal character of streets, as well as on spatial and social borders. Yet, this is just one aspect of the many interconnections between spatial organisation and social structure, since urban space is always formed by complex processes, overlapping factors, and is charged with multiple attributions of social meaning. Thus, we have encountered city streets not only in connection with social marginalisation, but also in connection with institutions and social practices effecting the (re)-integration of social outsiders and marginalised persons. Abbreviations AASOR The Annual of the American School of Oriental Research AHw Wolfram von Soden (1965–1981), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, Wiesbaden. AMT Reginald C. Thompson (1923), Assyrian Medical Texts from the originals in the British Museum, London. AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament BAM Franz Köcher (1963–1980), Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen, Vols. 1–6, Berlin. BBSt Leonard W. King (1912), Babylonian Boundary-Stones and Memorial-Tablets in the British Museum, London. BM tablets in the collection of the British Museum BMS Leonard W. King (1896), Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, London. CAD The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Chicago. Craig ABRT James A. Craig (1974), Assyrian and Babylonian Religious Texts Being Prayers, Oracles, Hymns (2 Vol.), Reprint, Leipzig. CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets etc. in the British Museum, London. Dar. Johann N. Strassmaier (1890), Inschriften von Darius, König von Babylon, Babylonische Texte Heft 10–12, Leipzig. EA Jörgen A. Knudtzon (1915), Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, Leipzig. Hh Benno Landsberger et al. (1957–1974), The lexical series HAR-ra = hubullu, Materialen zum Sumerischen Lexikon 5–11, Rome. K. tablets in the Kouyunjik collection of the British Museum KAR Erich Ebeling (1915–1923), Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts, 2 Vol., Leipzig. KAV Otto Schröder (1920), Keilschrifttexte aus Assur verschiedenen Inhalts, Leipzig. LKA Erich Ebeling / Franz Köcher (1953), Literarische Keilschrifttexte aus Assur, Berlin. N-T texts from Nippur (Chicago/Baghdad) n. note Obv. Obverse



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PBS Publications of the Babylonian Section, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Rev. Reverse RS. field numbers of tablets excavated at Ras Shamra SBH George A. Reisner (1896), Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen nach Thontafeln griechischer Zeit, Berlin. SLTNi Samuel N. Kramer (1944), Sumerian Literary Texts from Nippur in the Museum of the Ancient Orient at Istanbul, New Haven etc. Sm. tablets in the collection of the British Museum Taf. Tafel YBC tablets in the Babylonian Collection, Yale University Library 4R Henry C. Rawlinson (1875), The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. A Selection from the miscellaneous inscriptions of Assyria, London.

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Linssen, M.J.H., (2004), The Cults of Uruk and Babylon. The Temple Ritual Texts as Evidence for Hellenistic Cult Practice, Groningen. Litke, Richard L. (1998), A reconstruction of the Assyro-Babylonian god-lists AN: dA-nu-um and AN: Anu šá amēli, New Haven. Livingstone, Alasdair (1997), “How the Common Man Influences the Gods of Sumer”, in: Irving L. Finkel / Mark J. Geller (eds.), Sumerian Gods and Their Representations, Groningen, 215–220. Luckenbill, Daniel D. (1924), The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2), Chicago. Lumsden, Stephen (2004), “The Production of Space at Nineveh”, in: Iraq 66, 187–197. Malul, Meir (1990), “Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents. A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16.1–7”, in: Journal for the study of the Old Testament 46, 97–126. Maul, Stefan M. (1994), Zukunftsbewältigung. Eine Untersuchung altorientalischen Denkens anhand der babylonisch-assyrischen Löserituale (Namburbi), Baghdader Forschungen 18, Mainz am Rhein. —— (2000), “Die Frühjahrsfeierlichkeiten in Aššur”, in: Andrew R. George / Irving L. Finkel (eds.), Wisdom, Gods and Literature. Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert, Winona Lake, Indiana, 389–420. May, Natalie N. (2012), “Royal Triumph as an Aspect of the Neo-Assyrian Decorative Program”, in: Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, ­International Congress of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. Winona Lake, Indiana, 461–488. Mayer, Werner (1976), Untersuchungen zur Formensprachen der babylonischen Gebetsbesch­ wörungen”, Rom. —— (1993), “Das Ritual BMS 12 mit dem Gebet Marduk 5”, in: Orientalia NS 62, 313–337. Meier, Gerhard (1937), Die assyrische Beschwörungssammlung Maqlû, Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 2, Berlin. —— (1941–1944), “Die zweite Tafel der Serie bīt mēseri”, in: Archiv für Orientforschung 14, 139–152. Menzel, Brigitte (1981), Neuassyrische Tempel, Studia Pohl Series Maior 10/I–II, Rome. Meyer, Leon de (1978), Tell ed-Dēr II, Leuven. Miglus, Peter A. (1996), Das Wohngebiet von Assur. Stratiegraphie und Architektur, Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 93, Berlin. —— (2006–2008), “Prozession(sstrasse) B. Archäologisch”, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 11, 103–105. Mitchell, Jon P. (2002), “Honour and Shame”, in: Alan Barnard / Jonathan Spencer (eds.), Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, New York, London, 280–281. Moran, William L. (1992), The Amarna Letters, Baltimore, London. Moren, Sally M. (1978), The omen series Šumma ālu. A premliminary investigation, University of Pennsylvania Diss., Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nemet-Nejat, Karen Rhea (1998), Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Westport. Nötscher, Friedrich (1930), “Die Omen-Serie šumma ālu ina mêlê šakin (CT 38–40), Fortsetzung”, in: Orientalia 51–54, 1–243. Nougayrol, Jean (1955), Textes accadiens et hourrites des archives est, ouest et centrales, Le Palais Royal d’Ugarit III, Mission de Ras Shamra Tome 6, Paris. —— (1956), Textes accadiens des archives sud, Le Palais Royal d’Ugarit IV, Mission de Ras Shamra Tome 9, Paris. Nóvak, Mirko (1999), Herrschaftsformen und Stadtbaukunst. Programmatik im mesopotamischen Residenzstadtbau von Agade bis Suraman ra’ā, Saarbrücken. Nunn, Astrid (2006), Alltag im Alten Orient, Mainz am Rhein. Oates, Joan / Oates, David (2001), Nimrud. An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, London. Oelsner, Joachim (1984), “Die neu- und spätbabyonische Zeit”, in: Alfonso Archi (ed.), Circulation of Goods in Non-Palatial Context in the Ancient Near East, Rome, 221–240.

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Oppenheim A. Leo (1956), The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 46/3, Philadelphia. —— (1970), “Trade in the Ancient Near East”, in: Herman van der Wee (ed.), Fifth International Congress of Economic History, Leningrad 1970, The Hague, 125–149. —— (1977), Ancient Mesopotamia. Portrait of a Dead Civilization, Revised edition completed by Erica Reiner, Chicago. Parpola, Simo (1993), Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, State Archives of Assyria 10, Helsinki. Parpola, Simo / Watanabe, Kazuko (1988), Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, State Archives of Assyria 2, Helsinki. Paterson, Archibald (1915), Assyrian Sculptures. Palace of Sinacherib, The Hague. Pfeiffer, Robert H. (1932), The Archives of Shilwateshub Son of the King, Excavations at Nuzi Volume 2, Harvard Semitic Series 9, Cambridge, Mass. Pfeiffer, Robert H. / Speiser, Ephraim A. (1936), One Hundred New Selected Nuzi Texts, AASOR 16, New Haven. Pongratz-Leisten, Beate (1994), Ina šulmi īrub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Baghdader Forschungen 16, Mainz. —— (1997), “The Interplay of Military Strategy and Cultic Practice in Assyrian Politics”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September, 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, 245–252. —— (2006–2008), “Prozession(sstrasse). A.”, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 11, 98–103. Preusser, Conrad (1954), Die Wohnhäuser in Assur (WVDOG 64), Berlin. Radner, Karen (1997), Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle für Mensch und Umwelt, State Archives of Assyria Studies 6, Helsinki. Ranke, Hermann (1906), Babylonian Legal and Business Documents from the First Dynasty of Babylon Chiefly from Sippar, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform Texts, Vol. VI, Part 1, Philadelphia. Rappaport, Nigel (2002), “Gossip”, in: Alan Barnard / Jonathan Spencer (eds.), Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, New York, London, 266–267. Reade, Julian E. (1998–2001), “Ninive (Nineveh)”, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9, 388–433. Reiner, Erica (1958), Šurpu. A collection of Sumerian and Akkadian incantations, Graz. —— (1960), “Plague Amulets and House Blessings”, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 19, 148–155. Renger, Johnannes (1984), “Pattern of Non-Institutional Trade and Non-Commercial Exchange in Ancient Mesopotamia at the Beginning of the Second Millennium B.C.”, in: Alfonso Archi (ed.), 32–47. —— (1992), “Kranke, Krüppel, Debile—eine Randgruppe im Alten Orient?”, in: Volkert Haas (ed.), Außenseiter und Randgruppen. Beiträge zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Alten Orients, Xenia 32, Konstanz, 113–126. Reuther, Otto (1926), Die Innenstadt von Babylon (Merkes), 2 Vol., Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 47, Leipzig. Röllig, Wolfgang (1976), “Der altmesopotamische Markt”, in: Welt des Orients 8, 286–295. Roth, Martha (1988), “ ‘She will die by the Iron Dagger’. Adultery and Neo-Babylonian Marriage”, in: Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 31, 186–206. —— (1995), Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, Atlanta. Sallaberger, Walther (1993), Der kultische Kalender der Ur-III-Zeit, Berlin. —— (2006), “Marriage, Divorce, and the Prostitute in Ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Christopher A. Faraone / Laura K. McClure (eds.), Prostitutes and Courtesans of the Ancient World, Madison, 21–39.



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Thureau-Dangin, François (1921), Rituels Accadiens, Paris. —— (1922), Tablettes d’Uruk à l’usage des prêtres du temple d’Anu au temps des Séleucides, Textes Cunéiformes 6, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités Orientales, Paris. Tonietti, Maria V. (1979), “Un incantesimo sumerico contro la Lamaštu”, in: Orientalia NS 48, 301–323. Trigger, Bruce G. (2003), Understanding Early Civilizations. A Comparative Study, Cambridge. Turner, Viktor W. (1969), The Ritual Process. Stucture and Anti-Structure, New York. Ungnad, Arthur (1908), Neubabylonische Kontrakte, Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin 5, Berlin. —— (1909), Altbabylonische Privaturkunden, Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin 8, Berlin. —— (1909–1923), Hammurabis Gesetz, Vols. 1–6, Leipzig. van de Mieroop, Marc (1997), The ancient Mesopotamian city, Oxford. van der Spek, Robartus J. (2001), “The Theatre of Babylon in Cuneiform”, in: Wilfred H. van Soldt (ed.), Veenhof Anniversary Volume. Studies Presented to Klass R. Veenhof on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Istanbul, 445–456. van der Toorn, Karel (1995), “The Significance of the Veil in the Ancient Near East”, in: David P. Wright / David N. Freedman / Avi Hurvitz (eds.), Pomegranates and Golden Bells. Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, Winona Lake, 327–339. van Dijk, Jan (1959), “Textes Divers Du Musée De Bagdad III”, in: Sumer 15, 5–14. —— (1963), “Neusumerische Gerichtsurkunden in Bagdad”, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 55, 7077. Veenhof, Klaas R. (2005), Letters in the Louvre, Altbabylonische Briefe in Umschrift und Übersetzung 14, Leiden / Boston. Virolleaud, Charles (1912), Astrologie Chaldéenne, Second Supplément, 1re Partie (Fascicule 11), Paris. Volk, Konrad (2000), “Edubba’a und Edubba’a-Literatur: Rätsel und Lösungen”, in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 90, 1–30. —— (2006), “Von Findel-, Waisen-, verkauften und deportieren Kindern. Notizen aus Babylonien und Assyrien”, in: Andreas Kunz-Lübcke / Rüdiger Lux (eds.), “Schaffe mir Kinder . . .”. Beiträge zur Kindheit im alten Israel und in seinen Nachbarkulturen, Leipzig, 47–87. Von Weiher, Egbert (1988), Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk III, Berlin. —— (1998), Spätbabylonische Texte aus dem Planquadrat U18. Spätbabylonische Texte Uruk V, Berlin. Walker, Christopher / Dick, Michael (2001), The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian Mīs Pî Ritual, Helsinki. Weissert, Elnathan (1997), “Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September, 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, 339–358. Werner, Peter (1998), mit Beiträgen von Ralf Busch, Horst Klengel und Walter Mayer, Tall Munbāqa Bronzezeit in Syrien, Neumünster. Wiggermann, Franiscus (1993–1997), “Mušzaginna”, in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie und der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 8, 500. —— (2000), “Lamaštu, Daughter of Anu. A Profile”, in: Marten Stol, (2000), 217–252. —— (2010), “Dogs, Pigs, Lamaštu, and the Brest-Feeding of Animals by Women”, in: Frauke Weiershäuser / Dahlia Shehata / Kamran V. Zand (eds.), Von Göttern und Menschen. Beiträge zu Literatur und Geschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Brigitte Groneberg. Cuneiform Monographs 41, Groningen, 407–414. Wilcke, Claus (1970), “Die akkadischen Glossen in TMH NF 3 Nr. 25 und eine neue Interpretation des Textes”, in: Archiv für Orientforschung 23, 84–87.



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The Babylonian Cities: Investigating Urban Morphology Using Texts and Archaeology1 Heather D. Baker Abstract This article examines new approaches to investigating the fabric of the Babylonian cities, based on both archaeological and written sources. It focuses on the physical composition of the non-monumental sectors of the city, emphasising the agency of the local inhabitants in shaping their immediate environment and examining the processes by which houses and neighbourhoods were transformed over time.

1. Introduction Discussions of Mesopotamian urbanism tend to centre around the emergence of cities in the later fourth millennium bce and their early development. Relatively little attention has been paid to the longer-term trajectory of urban development beyond this initial phase. It might be argued that ancient Mesopotamia presents remarkable potential for examining the changing form of cities within one specific geo-cultural environment over a period of roughly three millennia (taking the end of the cuneiform writing tradition as the conventional stopping point). However, this potential has yet to be realised. For the earlier second millennium bce, studies of Mesopotamian cities have tended to focus on general spatial organisation,2 or on housing/residential areas/neighbourhoods.3 By the time we arrive in the first millennium bce, we find that a great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the archaeology and history of certain cities, especially the capitals Babylon,4 Nineveh,5 and Nimrud6 and the religious 1  This paper is based on research conducted under the auspices of the START Project on “The Economic History of First Millennium BC Babylonia” led by Michael Jursa at the University of Vienna and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). 2 E.g. Stone 1991; 1995. 3 E.g. Stone 1981; 1987; Brusasco 1999–2000; Keith 2003. 4 E.g. Renger 1999; André-Salvini 2008; Finkel / Seymour 2008; Marzahn 2008. 5 Collon / George 2004–5. 6 Curtis et al. 2008.

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centre Assur,7 but urbanism as a phenomenon in its own right is addressed only selectively and there is a persistent focus on the role of the ruler in shaping the city.8 Such a skewed perspective not only directs attention to the monumental elements of the city at the expense of others, it also tends to turn the creation of urban form into a series of historicallydocumented planned acts associated with the building (or rebuilding) of individual structures or building complexes. This in turn can create an impression of urban development as something large-scale and episodic, obscuring parallel processes which operate on a smaller scale, at a local level and at a slower pace. The approach I shall discuss here is concerned especially with these smaller scale “bottom-up” processes, and with developing methods of describing and investigating urban morphology in such a way as to facilitate the identification and analysis of long-term trajectories of development in the less well studied parts of the city. In a recent article, Michael E. Smith9 has reviewed eight different bodies of empirical urban theory which he considers to be of particular applicability in the study of ancient cities. He terms them “middle-range theory” in the sense coined by the sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1950s (and not as used by the archaeologist Lewis Binford), and considers them to be particularly useful in bridging the gap between, on the one hand, purely descriptive accounts with little wide-ranging explanatory value, and on the other hand high-level social theory which is more comprehensive but has little empirical content. He stresses that archaeologists who frequently have trouble applying abstract, high-level theory in their work tend to be more comfortable with “middle-range theory”, and that the latter is ideally suited to the study of ancient cities and the built environment. The eight bodies of theory that Smith identifies are: environment-behaviour theory; architectural communication theory; space syntax; urban morphology; reception theory; generative planning theory; normative urban theory, and city size theory. These bodies of theory are by no means mutually exclusive, rather, there are significant overlaps and points of contact between some of them. I think that Smith is right to stress the potential contribution of these approaches to the study of ancient urbanism, and in this article I shall examine the application of some of them in the study of the Babylonian cities of the first millennium bce. In recent years I have

7 Marzahn / Salje 2003. 8 Baker 2011a. 9 Smith 2011.



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been investigating these cities using methods which draw heavily on two of the bodies of “middle-range theory” reviewed by Smith, namely, urban morphology and generative planning theory. The results of this work will shortly be published in full elsewhere10 so, in the hope of reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of this book, my concern here will be to explain on a more discursive level the approach adopted, which I believe to be particularly useful for the integration of textual and archaeological data.11 If we are to study the topographical organisation of the Babylonian city as a mirror of its social organisation, in line with the main objectives of this volume,12 then we have first to develop a way of describing urban form that does justice to its complexity, one that is not focused only on the monumental sectors but can accommodate also the finer details of the physical structure of residential neighbourhoods. That is what this chapter attempts to do. Mesopotamia presents us with a unique opportunity to combine textual and archaeological evidence in the study of urbanism, and yet to date little attention has been devoted to exploring how this might fruitfully be done. One reason for this is no doubt the disciplinary divide within Mesopotamian studies identified by John Brinkman,13 which means that archaeologists and philologists only rarely cross over into one another’s territory (although it might be fair to say that collaboration between the two has become more “respectable” in recent years). We lack the narrative accounts available to scholars of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, and yet the very rich body of everyday documents, especially the legal and administrative texts, contains a wealth of information that can be used in the detailed study of urban form. The Babylonian documents at our disposal are particularly suitable for such an approach, not only because they enable us to reconstruct the physical characteristics of a large number of individual properties and their immediate surroundings, but also because they provide vital background information on the social and economic conditions underlying the ownership, transfer and use of those same properties. An understanding of these is vital for determining the conditions governing household and neighbourhood transformation which might be

10 Baker forthcoming. 11  Some of these issues relating to the question of planning are also touched upon in another study by the present author, though from a different perspective (Baker in press). 12 As set out by May and Steinert in their Introduction. 13 Brinkman 1984, 170.

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considered to be among the “local rules” responsible for generating complexity at the wider scale. Since the relevant documents were written for immediate, utilitarian purposes, their contents are essentially descriptive and can be taken at face value in the sense that they were not intended as propaganda or to influence the attitudes and emotions of others. That is not to say that they can be used without reference to any canons of source criticism, simply that their use as a historical source requires different methods of evaluation and analysis when compared with, for example, royal inscriptions and literary texts. In the case of first millennium bce Babylonia we are fortunate that many of the relevant factors, such as the legal-historical background, inheritance practice, and dowry-giving, are well documented and studied. Moreover, archival studies have advanced to the extent that we have quite a good understanding of how our documentation has come to take the shape it has. 2. The Study of Urban Land Use Patterns As Michael Smith14 notes, “urban morphology” is an approach which has been primarily concerned with the detailed description and analysis of historical town plans. I suggest that this approach is eminently adaptable to describing and analysing land-use patterns within the Babylonian city and that it is especially suitable for characterising the structure of residential areas. Modern geographers conventionally break down urban morphology into key elements, as in the following scheme: • the town plan itself, based on the street pattern • the plot pattern (land parcels or lots) • the arrangement of buildings within the plot pattern • the land use pattern • the building fabric (in three dimensions)15 One key feature of the urban morphology approach is the recognition that spatial patterns can emerge not only as a result of central planning, but also as the cumulative effect of many single decisions taken by individual landowners. For example, writing about the phenomenon of fringe belts

14 Smith 2011, 176–177. 15 Kostof 2001, 25–6, citing Conzen 1968; cf. Carmona et al. 2006, 61–7.



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in UK towns, Jeremy Whitehand16 writes: “But most fringe belts are not contrived. They are products of large numbers of separate decisions about individual sites. Indeed the decision-takers frequently had no knowledge of one another and almost invariably no conception of the way in which their decisions and those of others would in combination have the effect that we refer to as a fringe belt.” This approach, which emphasises the agency of individuals in shaping the urban environment around them, can, I believe, be usefully employed in the study of Babylonian residential areas. For example, in studying the question of physical modifications to Neo-Babylonian houses in relation to their social context, it has been noted “Such changes are of interest not only because they inform us about the living conditions of the occupants, but also because when viewed at a level beyond that of the individual household they may shed light on the longer-term development of entire residential districts. At the neighbourhood scale, urban development may be reflected in myriad changes of the kind I have been discussing.”17 This kind of process is often labelled “organic,” with sometimes thinly-disguised negative connotations of chaotic, haphazard development. Such values have in the past been attached especially to traditional urban form in the Middle East, in contrast to the (supposedly) ordered, regular planning evident in the cities of the Classical world. However, when viewed as the cumulative effect of numerous decisions taken by individual agents acting within the parameters laid down by prevailing patterns of socio-cultural behaviour, then urban form begins to take on a less overtly “chaotic” character. In this respect the body of theory that Smith18 labels “generative planning theory” comes into its own, because it places the local inhabitants—as decision-makers—at the centre of the generative processes which shaped their immediate environment. The work of Besim Selim Hakim19 in studying the form of traditional Islamic neighbourhoods is especially interesting in this respect because he traces in detail the small-scale, local effects on the residential fabric of community-based decisions made within the framework of Islamic law. As well as the legal principles, which were upheld with regard to privacy, for example, he notes that there was also a degree of self-regulation arising out of the societal norms governing acceptable behaviour. This approach fits very well together with that of urban morphology, stressing the social 16 Whitehand 2001, 108. 17 Baker 2010a, 193. 18 Smith 2011, 179–180. 19 Hakim 1986.

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context of the local decision-making processes that led to physical modifications to the urban fabric. Another notable feature of urban morphology research is the focus on the detailed, micro-scale study of individual plots, including metrological analysis; indeed, this has been termed a sub-field, “urban micromorphology.”20 The Babylonian land-sale tablets provide a comparable potential for detailed study, although in this case we are dealing (usually) with single properties whose precise location cannot be determined. As a group the tablets shed light on the kinds of properties being transferred at the period in question, but since these textually-attested urban properties are “floating” in space (within certain parameters) rather than fixed and contiguous, we can only extrapolate general principles from the multitude of individual cases, without being able to recover actual areas of urban layout beyond the immediate surroundings of individual properties. These difficulties can be overcome to some extent by using the excavated areas of contemporary housing as a control. In view of these observations, it seems to me that the above scheme for describing urban morphology can be adapted for use in a Babylonian context, providing a framework for describing elements of the urban layout that can be applied to archaeological and textual data alike. There is a substantial body of cuneiform documents recording the sale and exchange of urban properties that provide information not only on the property that is at the centre of the transaction, but also on its immediate environment.21 Data drawn from these tablets can be used to complement the archaeological evidence, thereby helping to overcome issues of representativeness arising from the relative scarcity of excavated residential areas. For example, it has been noted that, while blind alleys are scarcely represented in the excavated areas of Neo-Babylonian housing, their frequent occurrence in the contemporary tablets shows that they were a more common feature of the urban landscape than might be thought, based on the archaeological evidence alone.22 The use of textual data to shed light on the urban fabric in the way proposed here is not in itself an innovation: such an approach has been adopted by other scholars. In particular, it is implicit in Lucia Mori’s

20 Whitehand 2001, 104–5, 106. 21  For further details see Baker 2009, 89–90 with reference to a specimen house sale tablet. 22 Baker 2009, 96.



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reconstruction of the urban landscape of Emar.23 However, the process has been subjected to little in the way of rigorous scrutiny, and my aim here is to examine the methodological dimensions of this approach in the light of the bodies of theory discussed above. For investigating the Babylonian residential areas I have used a modified version of the aforementioned urban morphology scheme, one which accommodates the kinds of information at our disposal, taking into account the ways in which properties are described in the tablets (Table 1). In particular, it relies on an appreciation of contemporary methods of property surveying and the conventions used by the Babylonian scribes in describing properties in the legal documents.24 It is based on units of ownership (“parcels”) since that is what the tablets are typically dealing with. The smallest land-use unit is the “plot.” A parcel can consist of a single plot (figs. 1a–b), or of several plots (figs. 2a–b). In the former case, this means that the parcel has no internal differentiation as to land-use modes, according to the way it is described in the tablet (Table 1, categories A1a–c). This holds true even though a small number of properties, despite being treated as a single unit, are nevertheless described as having more than one use (for example, “built house and unbuilt land,” see fig. 1b). The defining characteristic here is that the written property description does not divide the parcel into separate areas differentiated by function (e.g. plot 1 = house, plot 2 = unbuilt land), but rather we are dealing only with one plot. Single-plot parcels are by definition of regular (quadrilateral) shape—or at least, they are treated as such in the tablets. It is by no means clear why in some cases a house and unbuilt plot should be treated as one unit (1 parcel, 1 plot), while in other cases such properties are described in greater detail (1 parcel, > 1 plot—see Table 1, category A2b). When irregularly-shaped properties are described in the tablets, they are broken down into a series of quadrilaterals for the sake of the survey (see fig. 2a). These individual areas are also called plots here, because again they represent the smallest attested land-use units. These parcels consisting of more than one plot may have a single land-use mode (Table 1, categories A2a, A2c; fig. 2a); alternatively, one or more of the different plots may be assigned a distinct function (Table 1, category A2b; fig. 2b),

23 Mori 2003, Chapter 1. 24 On the conventions of surveying and describing urban properties see Baker 2011b.

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such as an unbuilt plot belonging to a house complex, or an alley serving the house and sold together with it. At the next level of analysis we are dealing with “blocks” (Table 1, B); these consist of one or more contiguous parcels bounded by public streets or, occasionally, some other boundary-marker such as a canal flowing within the city. In this context alleys should not be classified as boundaries because the textual evidence shows that they were not part of the public street network: they never completely bisected a block and therefore by definition they could not serve as block boundaries. Within a block, the boundary between parcels could be formed by any combination of external house walls, alleys and other perimeter markers (such as walls surrounding unbuilt plots). It is clear that the nature of the house perimeter was significant: party walls between adjacent dwellings are indicative of lower status when compared with those adjacent houses which had separate external walls, as in Babylon, Merkes.25 One of the questions of interest is whether our documentation can shed any light on the issue of block size and configuration (see below). Table 1: Scheme for classifying the morphology of residential areas (based on the contemporary written documentation) A. The parcel (unit of ownership) subdivision(s) 1. one plot

2. several plots

potential land-use categories a. house (possibly with unbuilt land or another kind of structure attached, but not spatially differentiated in the written description; cf. 2b) b. other structure c. unbuilt d. unknown (tablet broken) a. house (irregular shape) b. house complex with plots differentiated by function c. unbuilt (irregular shape) d. unknown (tablet broken)

B. The block (one or more parcels) 1. one parcel 2. several parcels

25 Baker 2011a.

one parcel delimited on all sides by boundary-markers (streets, canals, etc.) adjacent parcels delimited on their external perimeters by boundary-markers (streets, canals, etc.)



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The scheme presented above (Table 1) was devised specifically to accommodate the kinds of information typically present in the land sale and related tablets from first millennium bce Babylonia. However, it is equally well applicable to excavated residential areas, taking into account some key differences in the nature of the evidence. The most significant factor here lies in the relationship between individual properties as distinguished in excavation (normally a complete house), and actual units of ownership (“parcels”) which are what the texts deal with but which may or may not have corresponded to a single complete house. In archaeological terms we are generally dealing with complete houses as defined by tracing their external perimeter, whereas the documentary sources often concern scenarios whereby houses are in divided ownership and/or occupation.26 One might compare Roman housing, where the term insula is commonly used in the modern literature to denote a block in the sense employed above, although in the words of one scholar “The block defined by surrounding streets is not properly an insula unless it is a unit of ownership.”27 In Table 1 the potential land-use categories associated with the various parcel/plot configurations are indicated in the right-hand column. This scheme can be refined further in accordance with the types of data contained in the tablets. The kinds of urban properties for which we have written documentation can be classified into land-use categories as follows:28 Table 2:28 Land-use categories and their corresponding parcel/plot configurations Land-use category

Parcel/plot configuration

Residential A. Primarily residential, without unbuilt land B.  Primarily residential, with unbuilt land C.  “Reeds” (house plot described simply as GI.MEŠ = qanâte)

1a, 2a–b 1a, 2a–b (1a)

Non-residential D. Independent unbuilt plot E.  Independent unbuilt plot of specific function (e.g. mūṣû “alley”) F.  Structure other than house

1b

Unknown G. Land use not specified or not preserved

1d, 2d

1c, 2c 1c

26 Baker 2010a, 185. 27 Wallace–Hadrill 1994, 132. 28 In the case of C. “Reeds” the textual sources indicate that these are primarily residential properties, i.e. houses; however, it is not possible to determine whether or not they were accompanied by unbuilt plots.

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The approach to land-use classification presented in Tables 1–2, based on the written documentation, potentially incorporates a greater level of detail than would be possible with reference to the archaeological record alone. This is especially the case with respect to buildings other than houses (including reed structures, and shops) since these have yet to be identified on the ground within the excavated residential areas, although they are mentioned in the tablets. On the other hand, owing to the fact that the textually-documented properties can at best be located only imprecisely within the settlement, the city districts within which individual properties were situated constitute a convenient unit of study. Thus it may be possible to gain empirical data concerning the kinds of properties located within certain districts of the same city, although unless the sample of relevant tablets is sufficiently large it will be impossible to compare the character of one district with another. Some preliminary results pointing towards variability in the composition of city districts within Hellenistic Uruk have been discussed recently by the present author.29 3. The Study of Block Configuration and Access Patterns In residential areas, block size depends very much on the configuration of the street network, and typically this was one of the most stable features of an ancient urban environment, just as it is today. In the Merkes area of Babylon, for example, soundings enabled the excavators to determine that the Neo-Babylonian streets followed the same course as their Old Babylonian forebears,30 and this network only fell into disuse in the Parthian era. Within the residential block itself, parcel boundaries were fluid: house perimeters were continually changing through expansion and contraction, and even alleys could be remodelled or moved to suit the requirements of those who owned and used them. The public streets, however, were fixed over long periods and it seems clear that encroaching on them was subject to sanction. A number of scenarios for access to private houses are represented in the textual sources, depending on their location with regard to the neighbouring public streets and private alleys:

29 Baker 2009, 93–4. 30 Reuther 1926, 66.



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• house adjacent to a public street • access via the public street. If the house adjoins one or more streets and no alley, then it must have been accessed via one of the said public streets (sometimes this is made explicit in the texts). • access via an alley. If a house adjoins an alley as well as one or more public streets, then it may have been accessed via the alley; in fact, usually the tablet makes it clear whether or not the alley served the house in question. • house adjacent to an alley • access via the alley. If the only adjacent thoroughfare is an alley, then the house must have been accessed via that alley; again, this is usually made explicit in the document. This range of textually-documented scenarios for access to private houses is of some considerable interest because, as noted above, blind alleys are significantly under-represented in the excavated residential areas of the first millennium cities, so it is only through the textual sources that it has been possible to confirm that they were a significant feature of the residential areas (as they were, for example, in Old Babylonian Ur). In this respect the written sources are vital for reconstructing the configuration of residential blocks, and without them we would have a very different picture. The best corpus of textual data suitable for addressing these issues comes from Hellenistic Uruk; by contrast, only a very small area of contemporary housing has been excavated at the site.31 I have suggested previously that we may to some extent be dealing with a deliberate reorganization of the urban settlement at Uruk which began at least in the early Hellenistic period, if not (as I believe) already in the Late Achaemenid era, and that one element of this new scheme was the apportioning by the temple of parcels of land called bīt ritti (“tenured property”) which were to be developed by individuals for housing.32 Mostly what we witness are later stages in the ownership history of these properties, but there is some evidence to indicate that they were originally given out as unbuilt plots measuring 50 square cubits (ca. 625 m2). It is interesting, therefore, that one documented property of known size from Hellenistic Uruk which is described as being adjoined on three sides by streets indicates a block length of precisely 100 cubits, i.e. ca. 50 metres (VS 15 50: 6–11, dated 178 bce). Another tablet,

31  Kose 1998, 380, Fig. 232. 32 Baker 2005, 36.

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BiMes 24 25 (157 bce), also involves a property that occupies one end of a block, but in this case the dimensions are not given (see fig. 3). 4. Conclusions In this paper I have explored methods of investigating the morphology of Babylonian urban residential districts, drawing on approaches used in other disciplines that seem to be particularly suitable for handling the kinds of data at our disposal, both textual and archaeological. Although I have focussed especially on the use of the written sources in the study of urban micromorphology, it is important to stress that with the approach adopted it is not a matter of simply interpreting the archaeological evidence in the light of what the cuneiform tablets tell us. Rather, it is a recursive process. It would be impossible to reconstruct the plan of a typical Neo-Babylonian house based on the evidence of the sale documents alone, even in the most detailed instances, in the absence of any excavated example. On the other hand, the cuneiform documentation provides important information on the social use of space within the house, including the identification of different sectors by name and, in some cases, by function. Each dataset, archaeological and textual, provides context for interrogating and testing the other in a more informed and targeted manner. Such an integrated approach facilitates the identification of the local rules which lay behind small-scale changes in the built environment and which may have contributed to the emergence of patterns discernible at a wider scale, both spatially and temporally. Abbreviations BiMes 24 Weisberg 1991. BRM 2 Clay 1918. VS 15 Schroeder 1916. RIAA2 Speleers 1925.

Bibliography André-Salvini, Béatrice (ed.) (2008), Babylone. Catalogue de l’exposition “Babylone”, Paris, musée du Louvre, 14 Mars–2 Juin 2008, Paris. Baker, Heather D. (2005), “The property portfolio of a family of builders from Hellenistic Uruk”, in Heather D. Baker / Michael Jursa (eds.), Approaching the Babylonian Economy. Proceedings of the START-Project Symposium Held in Vienna, 1–3 July 2004. AOAT 330. Ugarit-Verlag, Münster, 7–43.



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—— (2009), “A waste of space? Unbuilt land in the Babylonian cities of the first millennium BC”, in: Iraq 71, 89–98. —— (2010a), “The social dimensions of Babylonian domestic architecture in the NeoBabylonian and Achaemenid periods”, in: John Curtis / St John Simpson (eds.), The World of Achaemenid Persia. History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East. London, 179–194. —— (2010b), “Babylonian Shops”, Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires, 2010 no. 88. —— (2011a), “From street altar to palace: reading the built environment of urban Babylonia”, in: Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture. Oxford, 533–552. —— (2011b), “Babylonian land survey in socio-political context,” in: Gebhard J. Selz / Klaus Wagensonner (eds.), The Empirical Dimension of Ancient Near Eastern Studies / Die empirische Dimension altorientalischer Forschungen. Wiener Offene Orientalistik Band 6. Vienna/Berlin, 293–323. —— (in press), “Beyond planning: how the Babylonian city was formed”, in: Cornelia Wunsch (ed.), City Administration in Neo-Babylonian Times. The Neo-Babylonian Workshop of the 53rd RAI. Winona Lake, Indiana. —— (forthcoming), The Urban Landscape in First Millennium BC Babylonia. Boiy, Tom (2003), “RIAA2 293–300. Hellenistic Legal Documents from Uruk in the ‘Royal Museums of Art and History’ (Brussels)”, in: Akkadica 124, 19–64. Brinkman, John A. (1984), “Settlement Surveys and Documentary Evidence: Regional Variation and Secular Trend in Mesopotamian Demography”, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43, 169–180. Brusasco, Paolo (1999–2000), “Family archives and the social use of space in Old Babylonian houses at Ur”, in: Mesopotamia 34–35: 3–173. Carmona, Matthew / Heath, Tim / Oc, Taner / Tiesdell, Steven (2006), Public Places— Urban Spaces. The Dimensions of Urban Design. Oxford. Clay, Albert T. (1918), Legal Documents from Erech Dated in the Seleucid Era. Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan, Part II. New Haven. Collon, Dominique / George, Andrew R. (eds.) (2004–5), Nineveh. Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7–11 July 2003, Part 1 (= Iraq 66 [2004]), Part 2 (= Iraq 67/1 [2005]), London. Curtis, John E. / McCall, Henrietta / Collon, Dominique / al-Gailani Werr, Lamia (eds.) (2008), New Light on Nimrud. Proceedings of the Nimrud Conference, 11th–13th March 2002, London. Finkel, Irving L. / Seymour, Michael J. (eds.) (2008), Babylon: Myth and Reality, London. Hakim, Besim Selim (1986), Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles. London [3rd edition with postscript, 2008]. Keith, Kathryn (2003), “The Spatial Patterns of Everyday Life in Old Babylonian Neighborhoods”, in: Monica L. Smith (ed.), The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. Washington/ London, 56–80. Kose, Arno (1998), Uruk: Architektur IV, von der Seleukiden- bis zur Sasanidenzeit. Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Endberichte 17. Mainz am Rhein. Kostof, Spiro (2001), The City Shaped. Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History. London. Marzahn, Joachim (ed.) (2008), Babylon: Wahrheit, Berlin. Marzahn, Joachim / Salje, Beate (eds.) (2003), Wiedererstehendes Assur. 100 Jahre deutsche Ausgrabungen in Assyrien, Mainz am Rhein. Mori, Lucia (2003), Reconstructing the Emar Landscape, Quaderni di Geografica Storica 6, Rome. Renger, Johannes (ed.) (1999), Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne. 2. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 24.–26. Marz 1998 in Berlin, Saarbrücken. Reuther, Oscar (1926), Die Innenstadt von Babylon (Merkes), 2 vols. Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 47. Leipzig.

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Schroeder, Otto (1916), Kontrakte der Seleukidenzeit aus Warka. Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, 16. Leipzig. Smith, Michael E. (2011), “Empirical urban theory for archaeologists”, in: Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18/3, 167–192. Speleers, Louis (1925), Recueil des inscriptions de l’Asie Antérieure des Musées Royaux du Cinquantenaire, Brussels. Stone, Elizabeth C. (1981), “Texts, Architecture and Ethnographic Analogy: Patterns of Residence in Old Babylonian Nippur”, in: Iraq 43, 19–33. —— (1987), Nippur Neighborhoods. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilisation 44, Chicago. —— (1991), “The spatial organisation of Mesopotamian cities”, in: Aula Orientalis 9, 235–242. —— (1995), “The development of cities in ancient Mesopotamia”, in: Jack Sasson (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, New York, 235–248. Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew (1994), Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Prince­ ton, NJ. Weisberg, David B. (1991), The Late Babylonian Texts of the Oriental Institute Collection. Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 24. Malibu. Whitehand, Jeremy W. R. (2001), “British urban morphology: the Conzenian tradition”, in: Urban Morphology 5/2, 103–109.

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illustrations The selected examples are all roughly contemporaneous and derive from a single city, hellenistic Uruk. They are not drawn to scale since in some cases measurements are not given in the documents, or are not preserved.

Fig. 1a. schematic representation of property described in tablet BiMes 24 24 and duplicate riaa2 299 (edition: Boiy 2003, 43–7). Uruk, adad Temple district, 212/211 bce. single plot with single land use mode (cf. Table 1, category a1a, and Table 2, category a “primarily residential, without unbuilt land”). The akkadian term amaštu denotes a party wall. For an archaeological counterpart cf. house 1 at Babylon, Merkes (reuther 1926, 80–92).

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Fig. 1b. schematic representation of property described in tablet BiMes 24 27 and duplicate BiMes 24 29. Uruk, adad Temple district, 172 bce. single plot with dual land use (house and unbuilt land) though without spatial differentiation (cf. Table 1, category a1a, and Table 2, category B “primarily residential, with unbuilt land”). note that according to the extant cuneiform documentation, such a property could equally well be described in the manner of a house complex with sectors spatially differentiated by function (cf. Table 1, category 2b); the factors governing the choice of one convention in preference to the other remain unclear. For an archaeological counterpart cf. house 2 at Babylon, Merkes, a relatively rare example of an excavated house with external unbuilt plot (reuther 1926, 92–7; Baker 2009, 92).

Fig. 2a. schematic representation of property described in tablet BiMes 24 19 and duplicate BrM 2 28. Uruk, ištar gate district, 223 bce. house complex of irregular shape, divided into five quadrilateral plots for the sake of the survey (cf. Table 1, category a2a, and Table 2, category a “primarily residential, without unbuilt land”). For further discussion of this property see Baker 2005, 20–22. For excavated houses with relatively irregular outline cf. houses 2 and 3 at Babylon, Merkes, (reuther 1926, 92–105).

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Fig. 2b. schematic representation of property described in tablet BiMes 24 46. Uruk, adad Temple district, 226 bce. house complex with shops, divided into four quadrilateral plots, each identified according to its function (cf. Table 1, category a2b, and Table 2, combination of B “primarily residential, with unbuilt land” and F “structure other than house”). For the interpretation of akkadian kuruppu as “shop” see Baker 2010b. There is as yet no archaeological counterpart since shops have not been identified in excavations at first millennium sites.

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Fig. 3. schematic representation of property described in tablet BiMes 24 25. Uruk, lugalirra Temple district, 157 bce. house occupying one end of a block, with public streets on three sides (cf. Table 1, category B2). The house to the east is owned by a member of the same family.

From bābānu to bētānu, Looking for Spaces in Late Assyrian Palaces David Kertai After more than 150 years of research we still know frustratingly little of what happened within the walls of the royal palaces of the Late Assyrian Empire (ca. 900–612 bce). Basic questions, such as the kind and number of people who lived within these palaces, the use of spaces, and the access arrangements are all still subject to a lively debate. Our understanding of these palaces has mostly been based on archaeological sources (see May / Steinert, Introduction). This article focuses on textual sources as reflecting the problems inherent in attempts to reconstruct the Late Assyrian palatial topography. It aims at tracing the social organisation of the palaces and related socio-cultural views. Several problems arise in studying palatial spaces of the Late Assyrian Empire. The textual material we have at our disposal is of only limited help in reconstructing the functions of spaces within these palaces. The reasons for this can be summarised under three headings. First, the Assyrian spatial terms are often ambiguous and most of them are rather uninformative in themselves. Assyrian terms are constructs consisting of the bēt followed by a noun that specifies its meaning. The bēt is not helpful in reconstructing the nature of spaces as it can refer to a room, a part of a building, a building, or even to villages, cities, the household or groups of people. Such a broad range of connotations is foreign to the English language. With a few exceptions it is impossible to talk about space in English without indicating the scale involved. One has to distinguish between a living room, residential wing and residential building. There is no single concept that covers all these options. Ambiguity is, however, not completely absent in English. One may think of “country” which can refer to a spatially undefined land, but also to a specific territory belonging to a nation state. The Late Assyrian dialect is by its very nature ambiguous about the scale involved. It is of interest on its own that the Assyrians did not feel a need to distinguish between different spatial scales. This aspect is nonetheless frustrating for modern scholars who try to understand the ancient sources. It is only from the textual context that one might hope to reconstruct the use and size of Assyrian spaces. The contexts are, however,

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often less informative than one wishes and different authors frequently reach different conclusions. This ambiguity is, from our perspective, an unintended aspect of the Late Assyrian dialect, but would normally not be the intention of ancient writers. Royal inscriptions, in particular, form an exception as Assyrian writers did often use ambiguity on purpose as a literary technique in these texts. The second problem in reconstructing the functions of spaces is the very limited amount of attestations we have at our disposal. This gives many reconstructions a provisional character. Most of the spaces that must have existed within each palace are never attested in the texts that are available to us. Spaces that are mentioned occur only a few times in the preserved texts. The amount of excavated palatial spaces greatly outnumbers textually attested spaces. The absence of attestations cannot, therefore, be used to argue that types of spaces did not exist within the palaces. A good example of this is the question of whether second stories existed in Late Assyrian palaces. Second stories are never mentioned in the preserved texts, which might be evidence against their existence. Such an argument ex silentio is, however, very dangerous considering the general silence of our textual material. A third problem is caused by the overlap between expressions, for instance in the case of storage spaces. It is often impossible to reconstruct the differences between them, and one can never be sure whether an expression might be descriptive or whether it, although understandable to all involved, represented an official term. An expression such as “the treasury of the metal scraps”1 might describe a space where such scraps are presently stored, and lose its value after the scraps had been removed. It might also represent an official name for the place where such scraps are permanently stored. It is difficult to know whether or when a name is descriptive and temporary rather than official. These problems can be demonstrated by the example of the bētu dannu. As with most spatial expressions, the name itself provides little information on its usage; literally translated it means a “strong bēt.” The following text (ABL 126) describing building activity in the city of Kār-Šarrukēn shows some of these problems.2 Radner translates it as follows: “Ich bin hier in Kār-Šarrukēn. (Mit) Ziegeln, so viele sie genommen haben, werde

1  SAA 5, no. 206, line 5. 2 SAA 15, no. 94, lines 10–12: (10) ⌈a⌉-na-ku an-na-ka ina URU.kar—mMAN—GIN (11) SIG4.ḪI.A.MEŠ am—mar šaḫ-⌈ṭa!-tu!⌉-u-ni (12) É dan-nu a-ra-ṣi-pi.



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ich das Hauptgebäude aufmauern.”3 This text describes a bētu dannu, which Radner interprets as a building within a palace. Making mudbrick walls, however, must be considered an activity that can refer to all types of buildings and does not itself point to a palatial context. Andreas Fuchs and Simo Parpola offer a different translation: “I am (now) here in Kār-Šarrukēn. I am building the grand hall with whatever bricks have been glazed.”4 They translate the bētu dannu as a room and use the verb “to glaze bricks,”5 which is more likely to apply to a palace although it could also describe the construction of a temple. These two translations offer different conclusions concerning the scale and nature of this bētu dannu and as it often happens with such attestations, the text itself does not specify its location or size. The second text concerns a series of measurements for doors, probably to be installed in the city of Dūr-Šarrukēn.6 Of the 36 doors mentioned one was assigned to a bētu dannu. Regarding the future locations of the other doors, we only know that one door was intended for a bētu qallu which can be translated as “small bēt.”7 The width of the door of the bētu dannu is comparable to that of the bētu qallu while all other doors are smaller. The sizes of doors and rooms are usually related. The large door of the bētu qallu thus suggests that the associated room was of considerable size. The smallness of the bētu qallu is thus likely to have been relative. Its name is not necessarily informative about the size or importance of the space. Two more attestations of a palatial bētu dannu can be mentioned both dating to the reign of Esarhaddon (680–669 bce). The first text describes the burying of apotropaic figurines in the palace: “. . . they should bury them in front of the main room and the bedrooms, in places to be additionally specified by the king.”8 The bedrooms were apparently not a part of this bētu dannu, but the text does not specify their spatial relationship, and no further information is provided. The last attestation is part of a royal inscription and describes the construction of a bētu dannu within Esarhaddon’s Review Palace (ekal māšarti, also called bēt kutalli) in Nineveh, 3 Radner 1997, 270, n. 1495. 4 SAA 15, no. 94, lines 10–12. 5 CAD Š 1, 85, s.v. šaḫātu A.4. 6 SAA 1, no. 203. 7 These two terms are part of the Neo-Assyrian antonym dannu: qallu (CAD Q, 64— qallu). 8 SAA 10, no. 263, lines r. 5–9. (5) ina IGI É dan-ni (6) ina IGI É—KI.NÀ.MEŠ (7) É LUGAL is-se-niš (8) ú-saḫ!-ka-mu-ni (9) lit-me-ru.

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“I constructed the main (house of the) palace, which was ninety-five cubits in length (and) thirty-one cubits in width, as none of my royal predecessors had done.”9 Being of ca. 51 by 17 m,10 this bētu dannu is too small to describe an entire building, but it is also too big to describe most single rooms within the palace.11 Its length could describe the main throne room, yet its width is too large. A possible solution would be to consider the bētu dannu here as referring to the entire throne-room suite, although this probably has to exclude the ramp located next to the throne room. The details provided in this building description might support its identification with the throne room, which is a location worthy of receiving special attention in a royal building inscription.12 This suggestion seems to be strengthened by a textual variant that replaces bētu dannu with bēt šarri,13 which refers to the bēt of the king. This uncommon expression is attested in two administrative texts, which describe the future locations of bull colossi and as such probably refers to specific locations.14 It could refer to the main entrance of the palace,15 but also to a single space such as the throne room. Its interpretation as throne room is suggested by its association with the bētu dannu in the text mentioned above. The plural “bēt of the kings” (bēt šarrāni) generally refers to the royal burial place in Aššur.16 It is clear that reconstructing the function, location and size of a palatial bētu dannu is rather difficult with such limited and inconclusive evidence. It must be noted, however, that bētu dannu belongs to the better attested designations of palatial spaces. We meet the same kind of problems when the people residing and working in the palace are discussed. Functionaries often have generic names which themselves provide little information about their duties: the   9 Heidel 1956, 30–31; col. v, line 18–32. (18) É dan-ni ša 95 ina 1 KÙŠ GAL-tim GÍD.DA (19) 31 ina 1 KÙŠ GAL-tim DAGAL (20) ša ina LUGAL.MEŠ a-lik maḫ-ri AD.MEŠ-ia (21) mám-ma la e-pu-šú a-na-ku e-pu-uš. 10 Following Powell 1990, 476. 11  The architecture mentioned in the cited text is part of Esarhaddon’s building activity in the Review Palace in Nineveh. 12 It is described as having mighty cedar beams and door leaves of cypress wood, the smell of which is sweet, and which are coated with silver and copper. To the right and left of this entrance there are šēdu and lamassu figures of stone, which by their nature turn an evil person back and protect (every) step, safeguard every movement (Heidel 1956, ibid.). 13 Borger 1956, 62; Ep. 22 A col. vi, line 5. 14 SAA 15, no. 283, line 9 and SAA 1, no. 150, line 16. 15 This is how both SAA 1 and 15 translate the bēt šarri. 16 SAA 14, no. 60, line r. 4; SAA 14, no. 62, line 8; Deller / Fales / Jakob-Rost 1995, 41–44; no. 75, line 28.



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duties of various officials seem to overlap and the amount of attestations is always disappointing. Most texts do not concern activities inside the palace, but merely belong to the archive of its functionaries. In general, neither do we know who lived or worked inside these palaces nor the number of palatial residents. One can assume that at least the royal family did live in a palace, but whether all members resided in the same palace is already less clear. The texts almost never mention high numbers of functionaries working within the palace. A group of ten having the same profession can already be called exceptional. The number of personal names of palace functionaries that we know is limited. The main question is whether this is a true representation of the number of palace functionaries or a reflection of the limited amount of texts we possess. In order to know the capacity of Late Assyrian palaces it is important to establish their size. This is largely dependent on the presence of a second storey. Even though our texts are silent concerning this matter, its existence can likely be excluded on the basis of the archaeological remains. To many scholars the absence of a second storey seems counterintuitive. The Assyrians certainly had sufficient technical know-how and it would have created significantly more space. The idea of a second storey is commonly associated with the palaces, but few people have an idea about how it would have functioned. It is impossible to exclude the existence of a second storey, simply because one cannot exclude the existence of something that has not been found. There is, however, no supporting evidence and the arguments against a second storey are substantial. The most important requirement for a second storey would be means to reach it, i.e. the existence of staircases. One staircase, or more precisely a ramp, can always be found within these palaces, being a standard feature of all throne-room suites. Other staircases have, with a few exceptions, not been discovered. One can of course argue that staircases are still to be found or that they have disappeared because they were made of wood. While there is no architectural evidence to support this hypothesis, wooden staircases could have existed. It is, however, unlikely that these would have formed the main system of circulation, since they lack the monumentality typical for Late Assyrian palaces. Any staircase would require the existence of spaces that could accommodate it. None have been identified. The main proponent of a second storey has been Jean-Claude Margueron.17 17 See especially Margueron 2005.

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He generally does not introduce additional staircases in his reconstructions, suggesting that the only connection to a second storey would have been located in the throne room. The throne room, however, is a rather unlikely place for such a general staircase. A further argument against a second storey is the effect it would have on the access of light and air into the lower rooms. Even without a second storey, most of the ground floor rooms must have been fairly dark. Excluding the possibility of the existence of a second storey means that the entire palatial community must have been accommodated on the ground floor. The Northwest and Review18 Palaces in ancient Kalḫu are the only two palaces that have (almost) completely been excavated. They have yielded a relatively limited amount of residential suites. Even if several people would have resided in a single room, no more than a hundred persons could have resided in one such palace. Such a situation, however, does not appear very plausible. Considering the architecture of these palaces, it seems unlikely that more than fifty persons would have resided in them and a considerably lower number appears more probable. Many scholars, nonetheless, assume that the palatial community must have been extensive. One administrative text, called the “Survey of Palace Officials” by Mario Fales and Nicolas Postgate,19 is often used to support higher numbers. It offers exceptionally high numbers associated with all kinds of palace functionaries, yet the interpretation of this list as a “Survey of Palace Officials” is problematic. This text cannot represent a list of persons. First, it is a clear outlier in comparison to other texts; a circumstance that raises suspicion. Second, the texts ends with the Chief Eunuch and the personal names [A]ḫu-duri and [De]nu-amur. The Chief Eunuch is preceded by the number 800 and the numbers associated with [A]ḫu-duri and [De]nu-amur, although fragmentarily preserved, probably run in the hundreds. This implies that the palace community contained 800 Chief Eunuchs and several hundred persons named [A]ḫu-duri and [De]nuamur. This interpretation cannot be accepted. A different explanation is needed. An alternative solution is to reconstruct these numbers as people belonging to or working for these individuals and functionaries, but this would alter the identification of the list as “Survey of Palace Officials.” If the list represents items, such as people, belonging to the respective

18 Ekal māšarti, which is also known as “Fort Shalmaneser,” “Arsenal” and “Military Palace.” 19 SAA 7, no. 21.



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functionaries there is no reason why the list could not represent a list of goods received or to be provided by these persons and functionaries. In general it is dangerous to use such an outlier as the basis for argumentations. Understanding the function of palatial spaces is as much about interpreting Assyrian sources as it is about modern concepts (see introduction). There are many ways of conceptualising the spatial organisation of Assyrian palaces, but the most common manner is to divide the palace into public and private realms. This duality has been seen as the most fundamental principal underlying the organisation of Late Assyrian palaces. However, there are several problems with this concept. First, the publicprivate duality is based on a presupposition, which is not substantiated by any Assyrian source, and secondly, one could argue that the emphasis is placed on the wrong aspects of space. The presupposition that Late Assyrian palaces had a strong separation between public and private realms seems to be partly based on an analogy with palaces from the Ottoman period with their high degree of seclusion, but also with earlier Old-Babylonian examples. The duality between public and private spheres as conceptualised in Late Assyrian palaces is often articulated by using the Akkadian expressions bābānu and bētānu, which can be translated as “outside” (a substantive derived from bābu “gate”) and “inside.”20 Postgate summarised this in his Reallexikon article on palaces as follows, “A distinction was drawn between the private (bētānȗ) and public (bābānȗ) sectors of the p[alace].”21 The Middle Assyrian reference to the so-called Haremserlasse is used to substantiate this argument.22 In this text a doctor of the bētānu occurs, but a bābānu is never mentioned in the document. This passage therefore does not appear to provide evidence for the existence of a duality between the bābānu and bētānu. In fact, the main problem with the bābānu—bētānu duality is its absence in Assyrian sources. While the bētānu does occur several times in Late Assyrian sources, its presumed counterpart, the bābānu, only occurs in Sennacherib’s (704–681 bce) building description of his new Review Palace23 in Nineveh. In this text the bābānu is not contrasted with a bētānu. One can even ask whether here bābānu represents an organisational principle. It rather seems to refer to a specific spatial location, 20 For the multiple meanings of bētānu see CAD B, 274–275. 21  Postgate 2005, 222. 22 The same argument was suggested by Oppenheim 1965, 330. 23 Described both as ekal māšarti or ekal/bēt kutalli.

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namely the bābānȗ kisallu, which probably designated one of the outer courtyards of Sennacherib’s Review Palace.24 It is unclear whether the bētānu indicates a specific part of the palace or more generally refers to the entire inner part. While the bētānu is never compared with a bābānu, it is once contrasted to qannu in the insurrection queries of Esarhaddon. Ivan Starr translated the sentence as “[. . . the keepers] of the inner gates (bētāni), or the keepers of the outer gates (qanni).”25 As this line refers to doorkeepers, it seems reasonable to interpret the sentence as indicating two different areas of responsibility; namely the gates of the bētānu and those of the qannu. The correlation between qannu and gates is also attested within the astronomical inquiries of Esarhaddon: “does the crown prince now go out of the outer gate (qanni)?”26 If qannu indeed forms a duality with bētānu, one can wonder what exactly it is contrasted to. Since qannu represents the outer gates of the palace, the bētānu should refer to the entire inside rather than to a specific area within the palace. Otherwise one needs to assume a third intermediate category in order to describe the gates between the bētānu and the outer gates. Starr seems to have come to the same conclusion by interpreting the bētānu as the “inner gates” rather than as a location called the bētānu. In general there is little to support the idea that the bētānu referred to a specific area within the palace or that it had anything to do with seclusion. Rather, it labelled the interior of the palace in general. Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded that it designated a more specific location in certain situations. One has to conclude that the duality between the bābānu and bētānu is a modern construct. It could, however, be argued that this is a semantic issue and that the basic duality was present even when these words were not used. Did the Assyrians themselves distinguish between public and private realms? There seems to be little to substantiate this. The idea of a distinct private sphere within the palace is often combined with the notion of the existence of a harem. There are several ways in which a harem can be defined. The most common one is based upon an Orientalist interpretation of the Ottoman court, which is still widely found in popular culture (e.g. Hollywood films). Such a harem is defined by the presence 24 AHw, 94; CAD B, 7. bābānȗ (outer; äußerer) is an adjectival form of bābānu (outside; am Tor, außen). 25 SAA 4, no. 142, line 7. 26 SAA 10, no. 52, line r. 1–2.



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of numerous women whose main role is to (sexually) please the king. The number of scholars who define the Assyrian harem in such terms seems rather limited. The idea of the palace as a place occupied by royal concubines and their children is more widespread and might even represent the common opinion.27 Other scholars use the concept of a harem in its Arabic connotation,28 which can have the more “neutral” meaning of the “(place of the) women”. The problem with such a definition is that it is at odds with the common connotation. If not explicitly stated, a majority of people will have the Orientalist connotation in mind when a harem is mentioned. Since most scholars do not qualify their use of harem, it is often unclear what they mean. The harem discussion is related to several other questions such as the presence of eunuchs, concubines and secondary wives. The fact that these debates are still on-going shows that the existing arguments have failed to offer an overall convincing interpretation. As far as can be judged from the occurrence of the words “harem”,29 “eunuch”30 and “concubine”31 in the scholarly literature,32 most scholars tend to argue in favour of their presence at the Late Assyrian palaces. Original texts use terms which are more neutral and mostly relate to spaces and functionaries and are rather uninformative on their own. Their common translations are therefore interpretations rather than literal translations. This does not necessarily mean that such translations are incorrect, but they should be dependent on their contexts. Unfortunately, most of these terms are only rarely attested, and often occur in contexts that provide no clues for their interpretation. Their translation by necessity has to be based on an interpretation of the combined, often fragmentary, sources we have at our disposal. As a result the argumentation turns into a vicious circle, where the existence of a presupposed harem is reaffirmed by the interpretation of sources resulting in

27 See e.g. Leichty 2007, 189; Melville 2004, 40; Radner 2008, 495; Reade 2009, 252. 28 See e.g. Oates and Oates 2001, 38. 29 Harem has been used as translation for bēt isāti (Parpola 2008, 6; Teppo 2007a, 265–6) and bētu šaniu (Ahmad and Postgate 2007, xviii). 30 Eunuch is generally used as translation for ša rēši. See e.g. Dalley 2001, 200–205; Dalley 2002, 121–122; Deller 1999; Hawkins 2002, 218–220; Reade 2009, 252; Watanabe 1999. 31  Concubine has been used as translation for sekretu, amtu and issu. The rab isāti and šakintu (see footnote 34) have been interpreted as their supervisors. See e.g. CAD E, 61–62; Macgregor 2003, 98; Melville 2004, 39–40; Radner 2003, 897; Teppo 2007b, 389, 405–406, 409. 32 E.g. in various State Archives of Assyria publications.

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their translation. If one looks at the sources without a harem in mind it is difficult to find textual evidence for its existence. Another way of investigating this problem would be to discuss some of the officials who might have been involved with a secluded part. The official most likely to have been active in such an area is the šakintu.33 This female functionary seems at first sight to have been the female version of the šaknu who was a provincial governor, but her duties are more related to the palace administration. The association between her office and seclusion does not seem to be substantiated by the texts, which do not differ much from those associated with other palace functionaries. Her tablets show the same economic activities that are attested for other functionaries.34 There seems to be no significant difference in the kind of witnesses found in her documents in comparison to the documents of other palatial functionaries. Female functionaries only rarely occur in administrative documents, but are sometimes mentioned in the texts of the šakintu. On its own their presence reveals little about the status of these women. Lastly, we can point to the limited number of slave women or other possible harem members attested. When they appear in texts they seem to differ little from their male counterparts.35 Whereas males are normally regarded to be palatial workers, women tend to be seen as harem members. There is no reason for such difference in interpretation. On their own, such arguments do not refute the notion that seclusion was important, but there is no reason to start with such a premise. In fact, little seems to warrant the use of words like harem or concubine.36 Finally, one can argue that the duality between public and private is the wrong aspect to analyse within the organisation of palaces. Privacy is not a necessary aspect of palatial societies. Palaces are not primarily organised to create privacy, but to arrange access. There is an important difference between privacy and access. First, access is much more fluid and complex. In general, there is no single space that separates those without access from the privileged ones. Many levels of access can exist and these are temporal and situational. Secondly, the internal parts of the palace provide some of the best opportunities for approaching the king and therefore accessing power. The concept of privacy has the ­connotation of being

33 See e.g. CTN 3, 9–11; Macgregor 2003, 96–98; Teppo 2007a. 34 See e.g. CTN 3, 78–102 (nos. 28–45); SAA 6, 72–87 (nos. 81–99). 35 See e.g. CTN 1, 1–13 and ND 2803 (Parker 1961, 55–61). 36 Macgregor 2003, 86–87.



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apolitical, but this is misguiding within a palatial context. Everything is political in ancient palaces. More recent and better documented palaces, such as Versailles and Topkapı provide good examples of the importance of access. It can, for instance, be seen in the changes Louis XV made at Versailles in order to relocate the living quarters of his children, wife and mistress. By manipulating the distances of the different apartments to the royal bedroom, the king organised access to himself, and thereby tried to control the status and power of his family members.37 The political effect of gaining access can also be seen in the Topkapı Palace. The wish of the Ottoman Sultans for seclusion led them to reside within the harem, thus unintentionally causing the eunuchs and women of the harem, whose access to the king increased, to gain more power.38 Such examples show that a duality between public and private is largely meaningless in palaces arranged to control the access. Conclusion There are several factors hampering the reconstruction of a palatial topography from the Late Assyrian textual sources. They are primarily related to the administrative nature of the texts, which provides few clues about the nature of the spaces and people involved. The limited amount of attestations of specific terms makes interpretations even more complicated. The archaeological remains cannot presently be correlated with the textual sources. In fact, the texts only provide topographical elements, i.e. different spatial designations, which can neither be correlated together nor do they form a coherent whole. They have, nonetheless, been used to support conclusions about the organisation of these palaces, most specifically by introducing a public–private divide. The textual sources not only fail to offer supporting arguments, but they actually seem to refute the existence of such a distinction. While in general textual sources have been underrepresented in studies on topography, in relation to the Late Assyrian royal palaces, it is archaeology which appears to supply more venues for further research.

37 Justus 1996. 38 Necipoğlu 1991.

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ABL Harper, Robert F. (1892–1914), Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, Chicago. AHw Soden, Wolfram von / Meissner, Bruno (1965), Akkadisches Handwörterbuch: unter Benutzung des lexikalischen Nachlasses von Bruno Meissner (1868–1947), Wiesbaden. CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. CTN 1 Kinnier Wilson, J. V. (1972), The Nimrud wine lists: a study of men and administration at the Assyrian capital in the eighth century B.C., Cuneiform texts from Nimrud 1, London. CTN 3 Dalley, Stephanie / Postgate, John N. (1984), The tablets from Fort Shalmaneser, Cuneiform texts from Nimrud 3, London. ND Field numbers of tablets excavated at Nimrud. obv. obverse r. reverse SAA 1 Parpola, Simo (1987), The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West, State Archives of Assyria 1, Helsinki. SAA 4 Starr, Ivan (1990), Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, State Archives of Assyria 4, Helsinki. SAA 5 Lanfranchi, Giovanni B. / Parpola, Simo (1990), The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, State Archives of Assyria 5, Helsinki. SAA 6 Kwasman, Theodore / Parpola, Simo (1991), Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon, State Archives of Assyria 6, Helsinki. SAA 7 Fales, Frederick Mario / Postgate, John N. (1992), Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration, State Archives of Assyria 7, Helsinki. SAA 10 Parpola, Simo (1993), Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, State Archives of Assyria 10, Helsinki. SAA 14 Mattila, Raija (2002), Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Nineveh, Part II: Assurbanipal through Sin-šarru-iškun, State Archives of Assyria 14, Helsinki. SAA 15 Fuchs, Andreas / Parpola, Simo (2001), The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces, State Archives of Assyria 15, Helsinki.

Bibliography Ahmad, Ali Y. / Postgate, John N. (2007), Archives from the domestic wing of the North-West palace at Kalhu, Nimrud, Edubba 10, London. Borger, Rykle (1956), Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien, Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 9, Graz. Dalley, Stephanie (2001), “Review of Mattila, R.—‘The King’s Magnates’ ”, in: Bibliotheca Orientalis 58, 197–206. —— (2002), “Evolution of Gender in Mesopotamian Mythology and Iconography with a Possible Explanation of ša rēšēn, ‘the man with two heads’ ”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, Part I, Helsinki, 117–122. Deller, Karlheinz (1999), “The Assyrian Eunuchs and Their Predecessors”, in: Kazuko Watanabe (ed.), Priests and officials in the ancient Near East: Papers of the Second ­Colloquium on The Ancient Near East—The City and its Life; held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (Mitaka, Tokyo), March 22–24, 1996, Heidelberg, 303–312.



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Deller, Karlheinz / Fales, F. Mario / Jakob-Rost, Liane (1995), “Neo-Assyrian Texts from Assur Private Archives, Part 2”, in: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 9/1–2. Hawkins, David (2002), “Eunuchs among the Hittites”, in: Simo Parpola / Robert M. Whiting (eds.), Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, Part I, Helsinki, 217–233. Heidel, Alexander (1956), “A New Hexagonal Prism of Esarhaddon”, in: Sumer 12, 9–37. Justus, Kevin L. (1996), “Gilded Palace, Gilded Playpen: Louis XV’s Use of Palatial Space To Control His Rebellious Children and Their Politics”, in: Journal of Family History 21/4, 470–495. Leichty, Erle V. (2007), “Esarhaddon’s Exile: Some Speculative History”, in: Martha T. Roth / Walter Farber / Matthew W. Stolper / Paula von Bechtolsheim (eds.), Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary 2. Assyriological Studies 27, Chicago, 189–193. Macgregor, Sherry Lou (2003), Women in the Neo-Assyrian World: Visual and Textual Evidence from Palace and Temple, University of California, Berkeley (Unpublished thesis). Margueron, Jean-Claude (2005), “Notes d’archéologie et d’architectureorientale: 12—Du bitanu, de l’étage et des salles hypostyles dans les palais néo-assyriens”, in: Syria 82, 93–138. Melville, Sarah C. (2004), “Neo-Assyrian Royal Women and Male Identity: Status as a Social Tool”, in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 124/1, 37–57. Necipoğlu, Gülru (1991), Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, New York, N.Y., Cambridge, Mass. Oates, Joan / Oates, David (2001), Nimrud, an Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, London. Oppenheim, A. Leo (1965), “On Royal Gardens in Mesopotamia”, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 24, 328–333. Parker, Barbara (1961), “Administrative Tablets from the North-West Palace, Nimrud”, in: Iraq 23/1, 15–67. Parpola, Simo (2008), “Cuneiform Texts from Ziyaret Tepe (Tušḫan), 2002–2003”, in: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 17, 1–113. Postgate, John Nicholas (2005), “Palast A.V.”, in: Dietz O. Edzard / Michael P. Streck (eds.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie Bd.10. Berlin, 212–226. Powell, Marvin A. (1990), “Masse und Gewichte”, in: Dietz O. Edzard (ed.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie Bd. 7. Berlin, 457–517. Radner, Karen (1997), Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle für Mensch und Umwelt, State Archives of Assyria Studies 6, Helsinki. —— (2003), “Neo-Assyrian Period”, in: Raymond Westbrook (ed.), A History of ancient Near Eastern Law 1, Leiden, 883–911. —— (2008), “The Delegation of Power: Neo-Assyrian Bureau Seals”, in: Pierre Briant / Wouter F. M. Henkelmann / Matthew W. Stolper (eds.), L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis. État des questions et perspectives de recherches. Actes du colloque organisé au Collège de France par la “Chaired ‘histoireet civilisation du monde achéménide et de l’empired’ Alexandre” et le “Réseau international d’études et de recherches Achéménides” (GDR 2538 CNRS), 3–4 novembre 2006, Persika 12, Paris, 481–514. Reade, Julian Edgeworth (2009), “Fez, Diadem, Turban, Chaplet: Power-Dressing at the Assyrian Court”, in: Mikko Luukko / Saana Svärd / RaijaMattila (eds.), Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola, Studia Orientalia 106, Helsinki, 239–264. Teppo, Saana (2007a), “The Role and the Duties of the Neo-Assyrian Šakintu in the Light of Archival Evidence”, in: State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 16, 257–272. —— (2007b), “Agency and the Neo-Assyrian Women of the Palace”, in: Studia Orientalia 101, 381–420. Watanabe, Kazuko (1999), “Seals of Neo-Assyrian Officials”, in: Kazuko Watanabe (ed.), Priests and officials in the ancient Near East: papers of the Second Colloquium on The Ancient Near East—The city and its life; held at the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan (Mitaka, Tokyo), March 22–24, 1996. Heidelberg, 313–366.

„Ich bin die Grenze der Agora.“ Zum kognitiven Stadtbild der Athener in klassischer Zeit Jan Stenger 1. Poliskultur, Topographie und Raumkognition Eine Geschichte der europäischen Stadt ist ohne das antike Griechenland nicht denkbar. Wer auch immer sich mit Urbanität in historischer Per­ spektive befaßt, wird unweigerlich auf die spezifisch griechische Form des Phänomens, die Polis, zurückgeworfen.1 Abgesehen von Randzonen der griechischen Kultur, in denen Stammesverbände und Flächenstaaten als Organisationseinheiten prägend waren, kann gerade die kleinteilige Polisstruktur mit ihren zahllosen größeren und kleineren Städten als cha­ rakteristisch für die Geschichte des antiken Griechenland gelten. Dement­ sprechend haben sich die althistorische und die archäologische Forschung immer wieder auf die Lebensform der Polis und ihre baulichen, gesell­ schaftlichen sowie politischen Strukturen konzentriert, gerade in den letzten Jahren.2 Auch den Zeitgenossen selbst war bewußt, daß die Stadt als Organisationsform menschlichen Lebens unverrückbar zur griechi­ schen Kultur gehörte. Angefangen mit der Darstellung städtischen Lebens in der homerischen Schildbeschreibung über die politischen Reflexionen eines Platon oder Aristoteles bis zu den laudes urbium der Kaiserzeit und Spätantike, hat die Stadt immer wieder der griechischen Literatur ihren Stempel aufgedrückt.3 Im siebten Buch seiner Politik, im Rahmen einer Beschreibung des ide­ alen Staates, versäumt Aristoteles nicht, auch auf die Anlage der Stadt, die Ausrichtung des Siedlungsplatzes, die Befestigungswerke und die Anord­ nung der Privathäuser einzugehen.4 Seiner Aufmerksamkeit entgeht

1  Siehe beispielsweise Kolb 1984. Zur Frage, was die Griechen unter einer Polis ver­ standen, Hansen 2007. 2 Die Sekundärliteratur zu dem Thema ist unüberschaubar. Hingewiesen sei auf die Publikationen des Copenhagen Polis Centre: Hansen / Nielsen 2004; Hansen 2007. 3 Zu Topographie, Städtebau, Architektur und Stadtleben Athens als Gegenstand der griechischen Literatur siehe Goette / Hammerstaedt 2004. 4 Aristot. pol. 7, 11f. Zum Einfluß von Aristoteles’ Konzeption der Stadt auf die moderne Forschung siehe May / Steinert, Introduction in diesem Band, S. 8f.

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ebensowenig, daß in einer idealtypischen Polis Heiligtümer, Marktanla­ gen, Gymnasien und Gebäude für Behörden und Verwaltung in bestimm­ ter Weise zueinander angeordnet sind und jeweils spezifische Funktionen erfüllen. Die Stadt erscheint bei Aristoteles als relationaler Raum, der durch die Anordnung von Plätzen, Straßen und Bauten strukturiert und dadurch erst als Stadtraum erkennbar wird. Wie in einem zweckmäßig eingerichteten Organismus, so haben auch in der Polis öffentliche wie pri­ vate Gebäude ihre wohldefinierten Plätze und Beziehungen untereinander, damit das Funktionieren dieses Kosmos so gut wie möglich gewährlei­ stet wird. Nicht zufällig rekurriert Aristoteles auf den Stadtplaner Hippo­ damos von Milet und dessen Versuch, der Polis ein geometrisches Muster zugrunde zu legen und ein kohärentes Konzept der Flächennutzung zu entwickeln, in dem Bereiche mit verschiedenen Funktionen voneinan­ der geschieden und zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt sind.5 Doch bereits vor Hippodamos hatte sich in den Kolonialstädten das Bemühen urbani­ stisch manifestiert, der Stadt eine bestimmte wiedererkennbare Gestalt zu verleihen.6 In diesem Zusammenhang sei ferner daran erinnert, daß seit den Refor­ men des Kleisthenes in Athen städtische Topographie und politische Struktur unauflöslich ineinander verwoben waren, insofern die politische Partizipation auf einem hierarchischen Grundgerüst beruhte, das teil­ weise aus geographischen Einheiten aufgebaut war, nämlich aus Demen und Trittyen.7 Die Polis war folglich für die Griechen stets ein strukturier­ ter Raum, nicht einfach eine amorphe Ansammlung von Menschen und Bauten.8 Die scheinbare Kontinuität urbaner Lebensformen in Europa könnte zu dem Gedanken verleiten, die materielle Ausprägung und die Wahr­ nehmung der Polis in Griechenland unterschieden sich nicht wesentlich von den Gegebenheiten der Moderne, zumal sich die verschiedenen euro­ päischen Kulturen zu wiederholten Malen auf die Antike zurückbezogen haben, um dort zeitlos gültige Muster zu finden. Auch in der Stadtpla­ nung dominierte ein ahistorischer Zugang, seit Kevin Lynch in seinem 5 Aristot. pol. 7, 11, 1330b21–27. Zur städtischen Raumordnung, die mit dem Namen des Hippodamos verknüpft wird, siehe Hoepfner / Schwandner 1994, 17–67. 6 Hoepfner / Schwandner 1994; Hölscher 1998, 20–23. 7 Vgl. Aristot. Ath. pol. 21. Zur politischen Geographie Attikas Hansen 1995, 103–108. 8 Das Bewußtsein für die (geometrische) Form einer Stadt und ihrer zentralen Agora sowie für die Lage der Straßen zeigt sich in komischer Brechung auch in der Szene aus Aristophanes’ Vögeln, in der Meton einen Plan für die neu zu gründende Stadt der Vögel vorstellt (Aristoph. Av. 992–1020). Dunbar 1995, 550–562 (mit geometrischem Schema).



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e­ influßreichen Werk The Image of the City einen historischen Typus der Stadt, nämlich den der italienischen Renaissance, als überzeitliches Ideal gesetzt hatte, um daraus Leitlinien für die urbanistischen Aufgaben der Gegenwart abzuleiten.9 Als besonders wirkungsmächtig erwies sich Lynchs Ansatz, die Raumkognition, also die mentale Repräsentation der städti­ schen Umwelt, ins Zentrum seiner Überlegungen zu stellen. Er lenkte die Aufmerksamkeit darauf, daß Menschen sich ein inneres Bild ihrer städti­ schen Umgebung machen, das wichtige Funktionen bei der Orientierung und dem räumlichen Richtungsverhalten übernimmt. Disziplinen wie die Psychologie und die Geographie haben seitdem auf empirischem Wege ver­ sucht, mentale Raummodelle, sogenannte kognitive Karten, zu eruieren.10 Um die mentale Repräsentation der Stadt, die er als Bild mit visuellen Qualitäten begreift, beschreiben zu können, unterscheidet Lynch fünf Kategorien von konstitutiven Elementen, nämlich Wege (paths), Ränder oder Grenzlinien (edges), Bezirke (districts), Knotenpunkte (nodes) und Merkzeichen (landmarks). Über sie ermittelt er eine objektive Notation der Stadt und somit ein Bild, das deren Ordnung widerspiegelt. Je ­klarer sich die genannten Elemente herauspräparieren und anschließend zu einem kartographischen Diagramm zusammenstellen lassen, desto lesba­ rer ist eine Stadt, desto schärfer läßt sich ihre Gestalt wahrnehmen. Lynchs kognitiver, geradezu anthropologischer Zugang kann nicht ohne weiteres auf eine antike Stadt wie das klassische Athen übertragen werden. Grundsätzlich wäre zu diskutieren, ob nicht bereits die gängige Metapher der kognitiven Karte in die Irre führt, da sie impliziert, daß der Mensch sich eine mentale Repräsentation seiner Umwelt schafft, die in ihren Grundzügen einem kartographischen Diagramm entspricht. Dies kann jedoch zumal für eine Zeit, in der graphische Landkarten nicht ver­ fügbar waren, nicht einfach vorausgesetzt werden. Möglicherweise oder eher: mit Gewißheit unterschied sich das mentale Raummodell eines Atheners fundamental von dem eines modernen Menschen, da er die Stadt ausschließlich von der Warte des Fußgängers aus perzipieren konnte. Zudem sind die erwähnten Kategorien an einem bestimmten histori­ schen Typus der Stadt ermittelt worden, ohne für jede Kultur und jede Epoche verallgemeinert werden zu können. Ob für einen Stadtbewohner die fünf Konstituenten relevant sind, hängt davon ab, welche urbanisti­ schen Gegebenheiten er in seiner Kultur vorfindet. In der modernen, mit

  9 Lynch 1960. 10 Grundlegend Downs / Stea 1973.

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­Verkehrszeichen, Schildern und Übersichtsplänen übersäten westlichen Stadt lassen sich Wege, Bezirke und Grenzen sowie Distanzen viel leichter im Stadtbild ablesen als im klassischen Athen, wo man weitgehend ohne solche semiotischen Hilfsmittel auskommen mußte. Methodisch ergibt sich darüber hinaus die Schwierigkeit, das Material zu erheben, wenn man die Raumwahrnehmung antiker Menschen rekonstruieren möchte. Statt Befragungen durchführen und Verhalten beobachten zu können, sind wir darauf angewiesen, das Stadtmodell aus schriftlich festgehalte­ nen sprachlichen Zeichen abzuleiten. Diese liefern indessen weder ein auf Vollständigkeit zielendes Bild, noch sind sie für diese Zwecke überliefert worden. Gleichwohl soll im folgenden der Frage nachgegangen werden, wie man in der klassischen Epoche die Großstadt Athen wahrnahm, wie das kognitive Stadtmodell der Athener strukturiert war. Anders als bei Lynch steht nicht so sehr im Mittelpunkt, wie man sich in Athen orientierte,11 als vielmehr die Verbindung von Raum, Wissen und Kommunikation, insofern untersucht wird, welche Informationen der Raumkognition in mitteilbares Wissen umgesetzt werden und welches Wissen in bestimm­ ten Kontexten relevant oder erforderlich ist. An die Stelle der Wahrneh­ mung der Stadt tritt also die Kommunikation der Raumreferenz, da die einschlägigen Texte stellenweise dazu dienen, einem Rezipientenkreis räumliche Relationen in der Stadt mitzuteilen. Dieser kommunikative Prozeß bringt die Schwierigkeit mit sich, daß ein mentales Raummodell in ein Zeichensystem, die Sprache, umgesetzt werden muß, das zahlrei­ chen Restriktionen unterliegt und nicht imstande ist, die Raumkognition in all ihren Aspekten wiederzugeben. Wenn hier aufgrund von Inschriften und literarischen Texten der klassischen Zeit die Kommunikation räumli­ chen Wissens analysiert wird, können Lynchs Kategorien nur einen ersten Zugriff bieten, der es erlaubt, das Material zu strukturieren; wie erörtert dürfen sie jedoch nicht als zeitlos gültiges Raster über die antike Raum­ wahrnehmung gelegt werden.12 Mit diesem Ansatz versucht der Beitrag, aus der Perspektive des klas­ sischen Griechenland eine Antwort auf die leitende Fragestellung des 11  Zur Orientierung des antiken Menschen im Raum und den dabei auftretenden Pro­ blemen siehe den kursorischen Überblick von Graßl 2002; ferner Ling 1990 (am Beispiel Pompeii). 12 Die folgenden Beobachtungen sind als vorläufiger Eindruck zu verstehen, der auf einer punktuellen Lektüre basiert. Eine umfassende Untersuchung, die den hier gegebe­ nen Rahmen sprengen würde, müßte systematisch ein umfangreiches Corpus aus Inschrif­ ten, Reden, Komödien und Abhandlungen der klassischen Zeit sichten.



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Bandes zu geben, wie mentale Repräsentationen und sozio-kulturelle Konzeptionen von Stadträumen im Medium der Sprache ausgedrückt werden. Ebenso wird dabei erörtert, inwieweit die soziale und politische Organisation der antiken Stadt im gebauten Raum, aber auch im kogniti­ ven Stadtmodell reflektiert wird. Nicht zuletzt soll deutlich werden, wel­ che Grenzen die schriftlichen Zeugnisse diesem Zugang setzen. 2. Die Elemente der mentalen Repräsentation Athens Damit überhaupt von der Struktur eines Siedlungsraumes gesprochen werden kann, müssen Begrenzungen existieren, die verschiedene Bereiche voneinander absetzen, also Linien, die entweder tatsächlich als solche in der Topographie kenntlich sind oder zumindest als gedachte in das Gelände projiziert werden können. Während auf dem Lande in erster Linie natürliche Gegebenheiten wie Küstenlinien, Flußläufe oder Wald­ ränder in Betracht kommen, ist es in einem bebauten Stadtraum oftmals schwierig, von Natur aus vorhandene Begrenzungen auszumachen, so daß man sich eher an Artefakten orientieren kann. Wer sich der Stadt Athen von außen näherte, konnte zuerst eine Begrenzung wahrnehmen, die den Stadtraum vom umliegenden Land unterschied. Die als klare Linie erkennbare Stadtmauer faßte als ein Saum die urbane Topographie zu einer Einheit zusammen.13 In den zeitgenössischen Texten dient der Bezug auf die Stadtmauer nicht allein der Markierung der Ausdehnung Athens, sondern auch als Referenzpunkt, um andere Entitäten wie etwa Wege zu lokalisieren. Ἐπορευόμην μὲν ἐξ Ἀκαδημείας εὐθὺ Λυκείου τὴν ἔξω τείχους ὑπ’ αὐτὸ τὸ τεῖχος· ἐπειδὴ δ’ ἐγενόμην κατὰ τὴν πυλίδα ᾗ ἡ Πάνοπος κρήνη, ἐνταῦθα συνέτυχον Ἱπποθάλει τε τῷ Ἱερωνύμου. Ich ging von der Akademie geradewegs nach dem Lykeion den Weg außer­ halb der Mauer dicht unter der Mauer entlang; als ich aber an dem kleinen Tor anlangte, wo die Quelle des Panops ist, traf ich den Hippothales, den Sohn des Hieronymos.14

Mehrfach verwendet Platon in seinen Dialogen die Stadtmauer als Bezugspunkt, wobei er durch die Formulierung deutlich macht, daß diese

13 Vgl. Hölscher 1998, 67–73; ferner May / Steinert, Introduction zu diesem Band, S. 8. 14 Plat. Lys. 203a. Sokrates begibt sich also hier von der Akademie im Nordwesten der Stadt zum Hain des Apollon Lykeios im Südosten.

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Linie die Grenze zwischen einem Innenbereich und einem Außenbereich markiert;15 die Perspektive ist mithin die desjenigen, der sich in der Stadt befindet. Nicht allein in einem literarischen Kontext ist es möglich, auf diese Begrenzung zu rekurrieren, sondern ebenso, wenn administrative Belange im Vordergrund stehen, kann die Stadtmauer als präziser Anhalts­ punkt dienen. In seiner Beschreibung der athenischen Verfassung erläu­ tert Aristoteles, daß Aufseher darüber wachten, daß kein Unratsammler seine Last in einem Bereich von zehn Stadien vor der Mauer ablade.16 Die­ sem Passus ist ferner zu entnehmen, daß auch Straßen als Begrenzungen fungieren konnten. So sei es ebenfalls Aufgabe dieser Aufseher, die Errich­ tung von Gebäuden quer über eine Straße oder das Hineinragen von Bal­ konen in den Straßenbereich zu verhindern. In diesem Falle begrenzt also die Straße als öffentliche Sphäre den privaten Raum. Nicht immer, wenn Eindeutigkeit wünschenswert war, gab es ununter­ brochene Begrenzungslinien, die sogleich als solche ins Auge fielen. Damit verschiedene Funktionen des städtischen Lebens ihrem jeweiligen Bereich zugewiesen werden und überwacht werden konnten, war es insbesondere erforderlich, den Bereich der Agora, des Marktplatzes, zu definieren.17 Da die Unbestimmtheit seines Umfanges leicht zu juristischen Auseinander­ setzungen hätte führen können, markierte man diesen öffentlichen Raum durch Grenzsteine, sogenannte Horoi, die durch ihre Aufschrift keinen Zweifel daran ließen, wo der Bereich der Agora lag.18 Ein bei dem Rund­ bau der Tholos aufgestellter, nach Osten gewandter Grenzstein verkündet seinem Betrachter: hόρος εἰμὶ τες ἀγορᾶς „Ich bin die Grenze der Agora“.19 Etliche dieser Markierungen sind noch erhalten, wenn auch überwiegend nicht in situ.20 Wie in der politischen Struktur, so spielten Grenzsteine auch im sakra­ len Bereich eine Rolle. Für die Ausübung kultischer Handlungen war es erforderlich, Heiligtümer in der städtischen Topographie zu kennzeichnen und dadurch vom profanen Gebiet abzusetzen. Auch hier bediente man 15  Plat. Phaidr. 227a; Parm. 127b. 16  Aristot. Ath. pol. 50,2. 17  Zur städtebaulichen Anlage der Agora siehe die Abbildungen bei Travlos 1971 (mit den Plänen auf Seite 22f.); zu den schriftlichen Zeugnissen Wycherley 1957; Goette / Ham­ merstaedt 2004, 98–146. 18  Lalonde et al. 1991. 19  Agora 19, 27 (H25). Die Stele wurde um das Jahr 500 aufgestellt. 20 Darüber hinaus sind einige Markierungen der Trittyen aufgefunden worden, die jedoch nicht als eigentliche Grenzsteine dieser Einheiten betrachtet werden können. Man geht heute davon aus, daß sie bei Versammlungen den Aufstellungsplatz für die Angehö­ rigen der einzelnen Trittyen markierten. Lalonde et al. 1991, 14–16.



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sich solcher Grenzsteine, auf denen zumeist festgehalten wurde, welcher Gottheit der jeweilige Bezirk geweiht war. Auf einem im Südwesten der Agora gefundenen Markierungsstein, der um das Jahr 400 gesetzt worden ist, heißt es beispielsweise: hόρο/ς h­ιε/ρο͂ Ἀπ/όλλων/ος Ξαν/θο͂ „Grenze des Heiligtums des Apollon Xanthos“.21 Entscheidende Bedeutung konnten Horoi in sakralrechtlicher Hinsicht erlangen, wenn jemand, der sich eines Vergehens schuldig gemacht hatte, von verschiedenen sakralen Hand­ lungen und auch von den Heiligtümern und der Agora ausgeschlossen wurde.22 Die sakrale Weihe des Bezirks war überdies an Weihwasserbec­ ken, den perirrhantéria, kenntlich, die an den Grenzen der Agora aufge­ stellt waren.23 Dann hatten diese Markierungen im Gelände und der durch sie konstituierte Raumeindruck empfindliche praktische Konsequenzen für das Verhalten der Betroffenen im Stadtraum. Ebenso wie die Heiligtü­ mer ließen sich ferner Bezirke wie die einem Heros geweihte Akademie, aber auch Straßenverläufe durch Markierungssteine kenntlich machen.24 Dem Athener, der sich durch seine Stadt bewegte, wurde also immer wieder angezeigt, daß sie nicht allein von ihrem Umland abgegrenzt war, sondern auch intern in verschiedene Bereiche strukturiert wurde. Wie die Beispiele gezeigt haben, handelte es sich nicht einfach um eine topogra­ phische Binnengliederung nach physischen Gegebenheiten, sondern um eine funktionale Differenzierung, die ein klares Bewußtsein dafür voraus­ setzte, daß es auf einer Skala zwischen privaten und öffentlichen Räumen verschiedene Kategorien gab. Wie wir gesehen haben, konnten bauliche Markierungen relativ klar bestimmte städtische Bezirke definieren und erlaubten es so, diese je für sich als eine topographische Einheit zu betrachten.25 Auch wenn keine 21  Agora 19, 23f. (H10) (ca. 400 v. Chr.); weitere Horoi von Heiligtümern Lalonde et al. 1991, 22–27. 22 And. 1, 71 und 76; Demosth. or. 24,60. Thompson / Wycherley 1972, 117–119. 23 Aischin. Ctes. 176: Ὁ μὲν τοίνυν νομοθέτης τὸν ἀστράτευτον καὶ τὸν δειλὸν καὶ τὸν λιπόντα τὴν τάξιν ἔξω τῶν περιραντηρίων τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐξείργει, καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ στεφανοῦσθαι, οὐδ᾿ εἰσιέναι εἰς τὰ ἱερὰ τὰ δημοτελῆ „Der Gesetzgeber verbannt den, der keinen Wehrdienst leistet, den Feigling und den Fahnenflüchtigen außen vor die Weihwasserbecken der Agora und erlaubt nicht, daß sie bekränzt werden und zu den öffentlichen Opfern gehen.“ Vgl. ­Aristot. Ath. pol. 57,4; Demosth. or. 20,158, 22,77, 24,60. 24 Akademie: IG I3 1091 (ca. 500 v. Chr.); öffentliches Propylon: IG I3 1097 (vor Mitte 5. Jh. v. Chr.); Quelle: IG I3 1098 und 1099 (ca. 420 v. Chr.); Straßenverläufe: Agora 19, 29 (H32–35); IG I3 1093, 1094, 1094bis. Genaue Bezeichnungen der Straßen, etwa ihres Ziel­ punktes, sind hierbei nicht obligatorisch. 25 Dies gilt etwa auch für die topographisch herausgehobene und durch eine Mauer umfaßte Akropolis, die als städtischer Raum in den Texten unzählige Male erwähnt wird. Siehe nur Thuk. 2,15; And. 1,42; Aristot. Ath. pol.. 18,3.

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Nachrichten darüber vorliegen, wie die Athener etwa die Horoi wahrnah­ men, kann man davon ausgehen, daß diese augenfälligen Zeichen dazu beitrugen, das mentale Stadtmodell zu formen, indem sie eine Vorstel­ lung davon vermittelten, welchen Umfang und welche Form ein Bezirk hatte sowie in welcher Relation er zu anderen Bezirken der Stadt situiert war. Während die mentale Repräsentation eines Dorfes oder einer kleinen Polis eine recht geringe Binnendifferenzierung aufgewiesen haben dürfte, konnte ein Athener ziemlich präzise Bezirke mit ihren eigentümlichen Funktionen unterscheiden26 und anhand der Begrenzungen angeben, in welchem Bezirk sich ein Objekt befand. Der soeben angeführte Passus aus Platons Lysis demonstriert in seiner bemerkenswerten Präzision, wie mehrere städtische Bezirke in der Kognition zueinander in Beziehung gesetzt werden konnten. Die Präsenz von sichtbaren Grenzmarken darf freilich nicht zu der Annahme verleiten, jeder städtische Bezirk sei durch klare Begrenzungen definiert worden. Selbst wenn man einen Horos plaziert hatte, mußte nicht an jeder Stelle erkennbar sein, wo ein Bereich anfing oder endete. Denn diese Markierungen dienten weniger dazu, lückenlos einen ganzen Bezirk abzustecken, als vielmehr der allgemeinen Lokalisierung des Are­ als. Teilweise waren die Angaben relativ vage, wie etwa bei einer Inschrift aus dem Piräus: [ἀπὸ τε̑σ]/[δε τ]ε̑ς [h]/[ο]δ̣[ο͂] τ[ὸ π]/ρὸς τ[ο͂] / λιμέν̣[ο]/ς πᾶν [δ]/εμόσ[ιό]/ν̣ ἐ�σ̣ [τι] „Von dieser Straße an ist das gesamte Gebiet bis zum Hafen öffentlich“.27 Zudem war es, wenn nicht gerade administra­ tive oder sakrale Vorschriften berührt wurden, nicht unbedingt relevant, exakte Begrenzungen anzugeben. Wem es lediglich darauf ankam, seinem Hörer oder Leser eine ungefähre Vorstellung zu vermitteln, wo sich ein Objekt befand oder ein Ereignis zugetragen hatte, der konnte sich damit begnügen, auf einen städtischen Bezirk durch die Erwähnung des ein­ schlägigen Namens zu verweisen. In den attischen Gerichtsreden versu­ chen die Sprecher immer wieder, ihrem Publikum einen Raum vor Augen zu stellen, indem sie etwas beispielsweise auf der Agora oder im Stadt­ viertel Kerameikos lokalisieren.28 Damit seine Hörer wissen, wo sich ein 26 Insbesondere kommt dies zum Ausdruck in verschiedenen Funktionsbezeichnun­ gen, mit denen einzelne Areale auf der Agora differenziert wurden. Sie orientierten sich primär an den dort jeweils feilgebotenen Waren. In Xen. oik. 8,22 bemerkt Ischomachos, daß man allgemein wisse, in welchem Teilbereich der Agora man welche Güter finde, da es deutlich definierte Plätze gebe. Vgl. auch Plat. leg. 915d. Wycherley 1957, 185–206. 27 IG I3, 1110 (ca. Mitte 5. Jh. v. Chr.); vgl. auch 1109. 28 Agora: Antiph. 6,39; And. 1,45; Kerameikos: Isaios 5,26; 6,20. Ebenso rekurriert Platon immer wieder auf die Agora als öffentlichen Raum (Plat. Mx. 234a; Parm. 126a;



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­Reitunfall zugetragen hat, gibt Andokides in seiner Verteidigungsrede an, der Schauplatz sei das Kynosarges gewesen.29 Eine genauere Definition dieses Bezirks östlich vor den Toren der Stadt am Ilissos, der durch ein Heiligtum des Herakles und ein Gymnasion ausgezeichnet war, erübrigte sich, da sie erstens für den Sachverhalt nicht relevant war und zweitens die athenischen Richter wußten, wo sich dieser Bezirk befand. Wie exakt die mit solchen Angaben evozierten mentalen Raummodelle waren, läßt sich nicht ermitteln. Bei namentlich benannten Stadtvierteln30 oder Arealen vor der Stadtmauer haben wir es demnach mit Bezirken zu tun, deren Ränder unscharf waren, da sie weder eine spezifische bauliche Struktur noch sichtbare Markierungen besaßen, sondern eher eine mentale Größe bildeten, eine kognitive Kategorie, mit deren Hilfe der Wahrnehmende sein Raummodell strukturierte, um sich zurechtzufinden.31 Wenn man jemand anderem einen Ort innerhalb der Stadt bezeichnen wollte und eine exaktere Angabe erwünscht war als ein nur ungefähr defi­ nierter Bezirk, lag es nahe, auf bestimmte Punkte in der urbanen Topogra­ phie zu verweisen, die in der Regel aus materiellen Objekten bestanden. Weil es in den hier untersuchten Texten das Anliegen ist, einem Rezi­ pientenkreis eine Vorstellung davon zu vermitteln, wo eine Entität, die nicht vor Augen präsent ist, lokalisiert ist, rekurrieren die Autoren selbst­ verständlich auf Punkte, die den Adressaten vertraut sind. Nur dann ist der Rezipient imstande, das relevante Objekt in seinem mentalen Raum­ modell mit dort abgespeicherten Informationen zu verknüpfen und es in dieses Bild zu integrieren. Als architektonisch ausgezeichnete und somit Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehende Punkte der städtischen Topographie kamen insbesondere Heilig­ tümer in Frage.32 Sie erfüllten wichtige Funktionen für das religiöse Leben der gesamten Stadtgemeinde, bildeten immer wieder Orte, an denen man

Tht. 142a) oder auf den Kerameikos (Plat. Parm. 127c); ferner Aristoph. Ach. 17–22 (Pnyx und Agora). 29 And. 1,6: ὕστερον δ᾿ ἐγὼ μὲν ἐν Κυνοσάργει ἐπὶ πωλίον ὅ μοι ἦν ἀναβὰς ἔπεσον „Später, als ich im Kynosarges auf einem Fohlen, das mir gehörte, ritt, kam ich zu Fall.“ 30 Siehe Wachsmuth 1874/90, 1.347–357; Judeich 1931, 175–177. 31  Das im Nordwesten Athens gelegene Stadtviertel Kerameikos war allerdings durch Horoi markiert. Agora 19, 28 (H30 und 31). Zudem wurde es durch die hindurchlau­ fende Stadtmauer deutlich sichtbar in zwei Bereiche, einen inneren und einen äußeren, unterteilt. 32 Anschaulich illustriert dies auch Thukydides (2,15), wenn er wichtige und altehrwür­ dige Heiligtümer des Gebietes südlich der Akropolis aufzählt, um seine These zur Lage der früheren Stadt Athen zu untermauern (Heiligtümer des olympischen Zeus, des pythischen Apollon, der Ge und des Dionysos an den Teichen; ferner der Brunnen Enneakrunos).

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sich zu Kulthandlungen einfand und in größeren Gruppen versammelte, so daß sie durch die regelmäßige Praxis im kollektiven Bewußtsein ver­ ankert waren.33 Erst recht die großen Tempel und Bezirke wie der Par­ thenon, das Theseion und das Heiligtum des olympischen Zeus prägten durch ihre Lage, ihre Dimensionen und ihre aufwendige Gestaltung die Silhouette Athens und waren als Orientierungsmarken prädestiniert. In den literarischen Texten und in Reden wird daher häufig auf sie, aber ebenso auf kleinere Heiligtümer Bezug genommen, wenn ein Ereignis oder ein Objekt im Stadtraum situiert werden soll. In der bereits erwähn­ ten Rede paraphrasiert Andokides einen Ratsbeschluß, demzufolge sich bewaffnete Athener unter anderem bei dem nördlich der Akropolis gele­ genen Theseion und beim Anakeion einfinden sollten.34 Platon benutzt in seinen Dialogen mehrfach Heiligtümer als Referenzpunkte, um andere Gebäude oder Begebenheiten zu lokalisieren. Zu Beginn seines Phaidros beschreibt der titelgebende Dialogpartner das Privathaus eines gewissen Epikrates als nahe beim Tempel des olympischen Zeus gelegen.35 In glei­ cher Weise setzt Demosthenes die Unterrichtsstätte des Lehrers Elpias zum Theseion in Beziehung.36 Solche Stellen zeigen, daß die Autoren Objekte, deren Lage nicht allgemein bekannt ist, nur ungefähr in der urbanen Topographie situieren wollen, damit ihr Publikum eine vage räumliche Vorstellung gewinnt. Ginge es darum, die Privathäuser exakt zu lokalisieren, wären weitere Angaben erforderlich.37 Ähnlich wie Heiligtümer können auch profane Gebäude als Referenz­ punkte dienen, sofern ihnen eine größere Bedeutung für die ganze Bürger­ schaft innewohnt. In Inschriften wie literarischen Zeugnissen wird oft das an der Agora gelegene Rathaus, das Buleuterion, erwähnt, das ­aufgrund 33 Siehe Deubner 1932; Giovannini 1991. 34 And. 1,45. Bei dem Anakeion handelt es sich um einen Tempel für die Dioskuren auf der Nordseite der Akropolis (Paus. 1,18,1). Als weitere Versammlungsplätze erwähnt Andokides an dieser Stelle die Agora, den Hippodamischen Markt im Piräus, die Akropolis und die Tholos. 35 Plat. Phaidr. 227b; And. 1,16; siehe auch And. 1,111 (Eleusinion); Antiph. 6,39 (Parthenon); Plat. Charm. 153a (Heiligtum der Basile); Xen. equ. 1,1 (Eleusinion); Isaios 8,35 (Dionysosheiligtum in Limnai). 36 Demosth. or. 18,129: ἐδούλευε παρ’ Ἐλπίᾳ τῷ πρὸς τῷ Θησείῳ διδάσκοντι γράμματα „Er war Sklave bei Elpias, der beim Theseion Lesen und Schreiben unterrichtete.“ Siehe auch Thuk. 6,61,2; Aischin. Ctes. 13. In späterer Zeit bezeichnet der Geograph Strabon das Theseion ausdrücklich als für Athen signifikanten, geradezu emblematischen Punkt der Topographie (9,1,16). Wycherley 1957, 113–119. 37 Vgl. etwa auch Lys. 3,11, wo lediglich zwei Privathäuser zueinander in Relation gesetzt werden, ohne daß ihre Lage im Stadtraum spezifiziert wird; ferner Demosth. or. 59, 39.



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seiner öffentlichen Funktionen einen zentralen Ort des städtischen Lebens markierte.38 Ferner bilden unter anderem das am Südabhang der Akropo­ lis gelegene Odeion39 oder auch das Gefängnis40 solche Anhaltspunkte der Raumkognition. So lokalisiert der Redner Antiphon den Voragon der Großen Dionysien, bei dem sich die Tragödiendichter mit ihren Stüc­ ken präsentierten, in dem unter Perikles errichteten Odeion, und Platon setzt bei seinen Lesern die Lage des Gefängnisses oder die der Königs­ halle, der Stoa Basileios am Nordrand der Agora, als bekannt voraus: Τί νεώτερον, ὦ Σώκρατες, γέγονεν, ὅτι σὺ τὰς ἐν Λυκείῳ καταλιπὼν διατριβὰς ἐνθάδε νῦν διατρίβεις περὶ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως στοάν; „Was hat sich Neues ereignet, Sokrates, daß du deine Beschäftigungen im Lykeion aufgegeben hast und dich jetzt hier bei der Halle des Basileus aufhältst?“41 Anders als die oben erwähnten Heiligtümer trugen diese öffentlichen Gebäude nicht unbedingt Namen im eigentlichen Sinne, an denen sie identifiziert werden konnten. Im Falle des Rathauses und des Gefängnisses diente die Funktionsbezeichnung anstelle eines Eigennamens dem Zweck, das Gebäude zu kennzeichnen und von anderen abzuheben. Gemeinsam ist beiden Möglichkeiten der Identifikation, daß nicht allein der Punkt an sich bezeichnet und damit erkennbar gemacht wird, sondern auch Wissen über die Funktionen dieser Orte im städtischen Kontext vermittelt wird. Während große Heiligtümer, das Buleuterion, das Prytaneion und die Tholos durch ihre Dimensionen und Gestaltung sowie ihre städtebauli­ che Lage die Wahrnehmung des athenischen Stadtbildes prägten, waren kleinere Objekte wie Statuen und Brunnen optisch nicht gleichermaßen auffällig, konnten jedoch gleichwohl als Anhaltspunkte für die Orien­ tierung dienen, zumal sie bisweilen eine exaktere Lokalisierung ermög­ lichten. Platon situiert die Szenerie seines Lysis in der Eingangspartie des Dialogs bei einem Tor, dessen Lage er durch den Hinweis auf den Brunnen des Panops definiert.42 Sofern ihm hier daran gelegen ist, daß 38 Siehe beispielsweise Thuk. 8,92,6; 8,93,1; Antiph. 6,45; And. 1,95; Plat. Mx. 234a/b; Aristot. Ath. pol. 53,4; Aischin. Tim. 92; IG II2, 120.25f. (358/7 oder 354/3 v. Chr.); IG II2, 298.4f. (vor 336/5 v. Chr.); SEG 12.87.25f. (= Agora 16, 73) (337/6 v. Chr.). 39 Xen. hell. 2,24,2; Aischin. Ctes. 67. 40 Plat. Phaid. 59d: [. . .] συλλεγόμενοι ἕωθεν εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἡ δίκη ἐγένετο· πλησίον γὰρ ἦν τοῦ δεσμωτηρίου „[. . .] wir kamen morgens im Gericht zusammen, wo auch der Prozeß stattgefunden hatte; denn es befand sich nahe beim Gefängnis.“ 41  Plat. Euthyphr. 2a. Zur Halle des Basileus, welche die Funktion eines Gerichtsgebäu­ des hatte, siehe auch Aristoph. Eccl. 684f.; And. 1,82; Plat. Tht. 210d; Aristot. Ath. pol. 7,1f.; IG I2 115,4–8. Siehe Wycherley 1957, 21–25; Thompson / Wycherley 1972, 83–90. 42 Plat. Lys. 203a; Lokalisierungen durch die Angabe von Toren und Pforten auch Xen. hell. 2,4,8 (hier allerdings im Piräus); Demosth. or. 47,26; Isaios 6,20.

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seine Leser tatsächlich ein räumliches Bild vor Augen haben, setzt er also voraus, daß ihnen die städtebauliche Situation einigermaßen geläufig ist. Freilich ist für das Verständnis des Dialogs die exakte Lage nicht weiter von Belang. In einem juristischen bzw. politischen Kontext indessen ist es weitaus wichtiger, möglichst exakte topographische Angaben zu machen. Insbesondere bei der Publikation von Gesetzestexten und anderen offizi­ ellen Dokumenten kann nicht darauf verzichtet werden, genauer zu spe­ zifizieren, wo die jeweilige Bestimmung eingesehen werden kann. Damit jedermann imstande ist, das Gesetz zu konsultieren, muß der Ort über­ dies allgemein zugänglich und als Archiv für solche Beschlüsse etabliert sein. Für diese Publikationen ist der zentrale öffentliche Platz Athens, die Agora, angemessen. Häufig begegnen wir Hinweisen, daß Gesetzesstelen in diesem öffentlichen Raum aufgestellt werden, wobei durch einzelne Punkte spezifiziert wird, an welcher Stelle dieses großen Bereichs die Stelen zu finden sind. Neben der Stoa Basileios als Ort der Publikation43 wird vor allem das Buleuterion44 genannt, teilweise ergänzt durch eine Präzisierung.45 Dort wurden Anträge auf Gesetzesänderung öffentlich angeschlagen, damit jeder Bürger die Möglichkeit hatte, sich in der Ange­ legenheit kundig zu machen. Um den Standort deutlicher zu kennzeich­ nen, markiert ihn etwa Aristoteles, indem er auf die Statuen der zehn Phylenheroen verweist, die sich auf der Agora befanden.46 Auch offizielle

43 And. 1,83–85. Hierbei handelte es sich nicht um separate Stelen, sondern um Inschrif­ ten, die an der Wand der Stoa angebracht wurden. Hansen 1995, 170f. 44 And. 1,95. 45 Die Funktion eines Staatsarchivs erfüllte sonst das Metroon, das in den Texten wie­ derholt in dieser Eigenschaft genannt wird: Demosth. or. 19,129; 25,99; Lykurg. 1,66; Dein­ arch. 1,86; IG II2 140,35 (353/2 v. Chr.). Es befand sich in direkter Nähe zum Buleuterion. Goette / Hammerstaedt 2004, 113–117. 46 Aristot. Ath. pol. 53,4: οἱ δὲ ἔφηβοι ἐγγραφόμενοι πρότερον μὲν εἰς λελευκωμένα γραμματεῖα ἐνεγράφοντο, καὶ ἐπεγράφοντο αὐτοῖς ὅ τ᾿ ἄρχων ἐφ᾿ οὗ ἐνεγράφησαν, καὶ ὁ ἐπώνυμος ὁ τῷ προτέρῳ ἔ[τ]ει δεδιαιτηκώς, νῦν δ᾿ εἰς στήλην χαλκῆν ἀναγράφονται, καὶ ἵσταται ἡ στήλη πρὸ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου παρὰ τοὺς ἐπωνύμους „Früher wurden die Epheben bei ihrer Einschreibung auf geweißten Tafeln festgehalten, und zu ihnen wurde der Archon geschrieben, unter dem sie eingeschrieben worden waren, und der Namengeber, der im vergangenen Jahr als Schiedsrichter amtiert hatte; jetzt aber werden sie auf eine Bronze­ tafel eingetragen, und die Tafel wird vor dem Buleuterion neben den Namengebern (der Phylen) aufgestellt.“ Das Monument der eponymen Heroen befand sich gegenüber dem Metroon, wobei die Angaben der antiken Textzeugnisse nicht ganz einheitlich sind. Mit einer Länge von über 18 m bildete es einen auffälligen Orientierungspunkt. Vgl. Paus. 1,5,1. Wycherley 1957, 85–90; Thompson / Wycherley 1972, 38–41; Travlos 1971, 210–212 (mit Rekonstruktionszeichnung).



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Texte verwenden diesen Orientierungspunkt, wie ein bei Demosthenes zitierter Beschluß zeigt:47 πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ὁ βουλόμενος Ἀθηναίων ἐκτιθέτω πρόσθεν τῶν ἐπωνύμων γράψας τοὺς νόμους οὓς ἂν τιθῇ, ὅπως ἂν πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἐκτεθέντων νόμων ψηφίσηται ὁ δῆμος περὶ τοῦ χρόνου τοῖς νομοθέταις. ὁ δὲ τιθεὶς τὸν καινὸν νόμον ἀναγράψας εἰς λεύκωμα ἐκτιθέτω πρόσθεν τῶν ἐπωνύμων ὁσημέραι, ἕως ἂν ἐκκλησία γένηται. Vor der Volksversammlung soll jeder Athener, der will, vor den Namenge­ bern (der Phylen) schriftlich die Gesetze aufstellen, die er vorschlägt, damit in Relation zur Menge der vorgeschlagenen Gesetze das Volk über die für die Gesetzgeber angemessene Frist entscheidet. Wer das neue Gesetz vor­ schlägt, soll es auf eine weiße Tafel schreiben und täglich vor die Namenge­ ber stellen, bis die Volksversammlung tagt.

Hier markieren also mehrere Punkte auf einem öffentlichen Platz ein Areal, das dann als eigener Raum wahrnehmbar ist und dem eine eigene Funktion zugeschrieben wird. Die Bezirke, von denen oben die Rede war, lassen sich also ihrerseits weiter in kleinere Einheiten strukturieren. Sol­ che Präzisierungen liegen auch vor, wenn ein bestimmter Altar auf der Agora erwähnt wird48 oder sich die Autoren nicht mit der Nennung eines Gebäudes als einer Markierung begnügen, sondern den exakten Platz zu kennzeichnen versuchen.49 Bei einem umbauten Raum wie dem Buleu­ terion bietet es sich an, auf den Eingang des Gebäudes zu rekurrieren, um die Lage eines Objekts zu bezeichnen. In einer im Jahre 337/6 gesetzten Inschrift heißt es, daß Gesetzesstelen am Zugang zum Areopag, einem durch seine erhabene Lage topographisch ausgezeichneten Bezirk, aufge­ stellt werden sollen, und zwar dort, wo man ins Buleuterion eintrete.50 Wir haben bereits bemerkt, daß mit bestimmten städtischen Bezirken oder Gebäuden spezifische Funktionen verknüpft waren, die implizit auch in der Referenz auf die räumlichen Gegebenheiten vermittelt wurden. In der Zuschreibung von Funktionen kommt auch eine Hierarchie der städ­ tischen Topographie zum Ausdruck, da der wiederholte Rekurs auf einige öffentliche Bezirke oder Gebäude sie aus der Masse des urbanen Raumes 47 Demosth. or. 24,23; ebenso 20,94; 24,18; And. 1,83; Aischin. Ctes. 39. 48 Agora 16, 225.19f. (224/3–222/1 v. Chr.): στῆσαι ἐν ἀγορᾶι παρὰ τὸμ βωμὸν τῆς Ἀρτέμι̣[δ]ος τῆς Βουλαίας („[. . .] auf der Agora neben dem Altar der Artemis Bulaia aufzustellen“). 49 Antiph. 6,45 (Heiligtum des Zeus Bulaios und der Athena Bulaia im Buleuterion, an dessen Eingang; vgl. Paus. 1,3,5). 50 SEG 12, 87, 22–27 (= Agora 16, 73): ἀναγράψαι δὲ τόν/δε τὸν νόμον ἐν στήλαις λιθίναις δυοῖν τὸν γ/ραμματέα τῆς βουλῆς καὶ στῆσαι τὴμ μὲν ἐπὶ τ/ῆς εἰσόδου τῆς εἰς Ἄρειον Πάγον τῆς εἰς τὸ βο/υλευτήριον εἰσιόντι, τὴν δὲ ἐν τῆι ἐκκλησία/ι.

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heraushebt. Agora, Theseion oder Buleuterion werden immer wieder als Orientierungspunkte genutzt, weil sie im öffentlichen Leben der Athener eine wichtigere Rolle spielen als andere Plätze und Orte.51 Darüber hinaus läßt sich einigen Lokalisierungen entnehmen, daß Punkte im Stadtraum nicht allein deshalb markant waren, weil sie baulich ins Auge fielen, son­ dern auch aufgrund der ihnen innewohnenden symbolischen Bedeutung.52 Als im Jahre 314/3, also kurz nach dem hier untersuchten Zeitraum, die Athener den makedonischen Satrapen von Karien Asandros durch einen Volksbeschluß ehrten, erlaubten sie ihm unter anderem, als Zeichen sei­ ner Selbstdarstellung eine Reiterstatue von sich überall auf der Agora aufzustellen—mit einer signifikanten Einschränkung:53 δοῦναι δὲ αὐτῶι καὶ [σίτ]/[η]σιν ἐμ πρυτανείωι κα[ὶ πρ]/οεδρίαν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς ἀγ[ῶ]/σιν τοῖς τῆς πόλεως καὶ ἐ[κ]/γόνων τῶι πρεσβυτάτωι· ἐ[ξεῖ]/ναι δὲ αὐτῶι καὶ εἰκόνα στ/ῆσαι ἑαυτοῦ χαλκῆν ἐφ’ ἵππ/ου ἐν ἀγορᾶι ὅπου ἂμ βούλη/ται πλὴν παρ’ Ἁρμόδιον καὶ / Ἀριστογείτον[α] [. . .] ihm auch die Speisung im Prytaneion zu gewähren und die Prohedrie in allen städtischen Agonen, auch dem jeweils Ältesten seiner Nachfahren; es soll ihm auch gestattet sein, eine eherne Statue von sich auf einem Pferd aufzustellen, wo immer auf der Agora er will, außer bei Harmodios und Aristogeiton.

Die beiden Statuen der Tyrannenmörder Harmodios und Aristogeiton dienen, oberflächlich betrachtet, dazu, in diesem offiziellen Dokument einen urbanen Bezirk näher zu definieren, indem sie innerhalb der Agora einen Teilraum konstituieren, ebenso wie die eponymen Phylenheroen.54 Gleichzeitig markieren sie jedoch eine symbolische Struktur, die dem athenischen Stadtraum eingeschrieben ist. Denn im kollektiven Gedächtnis des demo­ kratischen Athen nahmen die beiden Männer, die unter Einsatz ihres Lebens das Ende der peisistratidischen Tyrannis eingeleitet hatten, einen zentralen Platz ein. Bei dem Raum, den die Standbilder auf der Agora abstecken, handelt es sich mithin um einen Erinnerungsort der gesamten Bürgerschaft, dessen symbolische Bedeutung man nicht dadurch schmä­

51 Dies erlaubt freilich nicht den Umkehrschluß, daß topographische Punkte, die in den Textzeugnissen nicht oder nur selten erwähnt werden, keine Bedeutung für die Raum­ wahrnehmung der Athener besessen hätten. 52 Zur symbolischen Dimension der Topographie und städtebaulichen Gestalt Athens Hölscher 1991. 53 IG II2 450 fr. b 3–12. 54 Harmodios als Orientierungspunkt auf der Agora etwa bei Aristoph. Eccl. 681–683; Lys. 631–634; Lykurg. 51.



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lern will, daß man dort die Aufstellung weiterer Statuen genehmigt.55 Das mentale Stadtbild ist ohne eine solche Bedeutung, die auch emotional besetzt ist, überhaupt nicht denkbar. Es läßt sich nicht auf rein topogra­ phische Informationen reduzieren.56 Die hier vorgestellten Punkte, die selbstverständlich nur eine Auswahl aus der Raumkognition der Athener repräsentieren, sind, wie angedeu­ tet wurde, mit bestimmten Praktiken des öffentlichen Lebens verknüpft. Jeder athenische Bürger, der am öffentlichen Leben partizipiert, sucht die Agora und die dort befindlichen Bauwerke auf oder begibt sich zu bestimmten Gelegenheiten zu den städtischen Heiligtümern. Um diese Orte auf einem möglichst effizienten Weg zu erreichen, greift er auf sein mentales Bild der Stadt zurück und setzt verschiedene Punkte zueinan­ der in Beziehung. Mit der modernen Stadtsoziologie kann man von einer Syntheseleistung sprechen, insofern der Mensch in seiner Kognition Bau­ ten, Objekte, Personen, aber eben auch Funktionen und Bedeutungen zu einem Ganzen, seinem mentalen Stadtmodell, zusammenfügt.57 Damit die Orte tatsächlich miteinander verknüpft sind und das Modell zur Ori­ entierung gebraucht werden kann, bedarf es zahlreicher Wege, die durch den Stadtraum gelegt sind. Während wir in den literarischen und den epigraphischen Dokumenten zahlreiche Hinweise auf Räume und Punkte finden, sind Angaben zu solchen Wegen weitaus seltener.58 Die Nennung bestimmter Straßen anhand einer gebräuchlichen Bezeichnung ist in einer Zeit, in der es keine offiziellen Straßennamen gibt, ohnehin nicht zu erwarten. Daß der Komödiendichter Aristophanes einmal eine Myrmex-Gasse erwähnt, deren Name offensichtlich ­geläufig

55 Die Bedeutung der Statuengruppe für die kollektive Identität der Athener erkannte der Perserkönig Xerxes und ließ sie deshalb als Beute abtransportieren. Um diesen Erin­ nerungsort wieder erfahrbar zu machen, ließ man eine neue Gruppe fertigen, und erst in hellenistischer Zeit kehrten die Originale aus Persien zurück (Paus. 1,8,5). Im übrigen wich man im Einzelfall auch von dem Grundsatz, die Tyrannenmörder allein auf der Agora stehen zu lassen, ab, so, als man den Diadochen Antigonos und seinen Sohn Demetrios im Jahre 307 auszeichnen wollte (Diod. 20,46,1f.). 56 Lynch 1960, 46 erkennt zwar an, daß die mentale Repräsentation (image) für den Wahrnehmenden eine praktische oder emotionale Bedeutung (meaning) hat, schließt diese jedoch aus seiner Untersuchung aus. 57 Löw 2001, 158–161. 58 Für die Terminologie und die Realien der athenischen Wege und Straßen immer noch nützlich Wachsmuth 1874/90, 2.279–303; Judeich 1931, 178–189. Vgl. die Bezeichnun­ gen im kaiserzeitlichen Lexikon des Pollux (1,220; 9,19). Zu den athenischen Straßen jetzt Greco 2008 und besonders Ficuciello 2008 (mit einem Katalog der Bezeugung von Straßen in literarischen Texten und Inschriften).

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ist,59 ist eine Seltenheit. Wenn überhaupt einmal ein Weg durch die Stadt oder vor der Stadt beschrieben wird, gibt man seinen Verlauf an, indem man ihn relativ zu anderen Orientierungspunkten und Begren­ zungslinien situiert. Die Sprecher in Platons Dialogen erklären mitunter ihren Gesprächspartnern, auf welchen Wegen sie zu bestimmten Punkten im Stadtgebiet gelangt sind, doch ist es nicht ihre Absicht, den Verlauf des Weges in allen Einzelheiten zu beschreiben. Während Phaidros im gleichnamigen Dialog lediglich erklärt, er gehe außerhalb der Stadtmauer spazieren,60 markiert Sokrates im Lysis, wie wir oben gesehen haben, ­seinen Weg immerhin durch die Angabe des Anfangs- und des Zielpunk­ tes sowie durch eine Station und eine Grenzlinie, zu der sein Weg parallel verläuft (Pl. Ly. 203a). Er sei, so gibt er Auskunft, von der Akademie direkt zum Lykeion marschiert, und zwar auf dem Weg außerhalb der Mauer, der direkt unter der Mauer liege; auf seinem Weg habe er auch das kleine Tor am Brunnen des Panops passiert. Bisweilen bemüht sich der Histo­ riker Xenophon, seinen Lesern eine räumliche Vorstellung von Trup­ penbewegungen zu vermitteln, indem er Märsche der Soldaten durch das Stadtgebiet anhand von Referenzpunkten definiert.61 Beispielsweise erwähnt er Straßen, die vom Lykeion zur Stadt oder aus der Stadt zum Piräus führen, und zeichnet einen Marsch durch das Athener Weichbild mit Hilfe von Zielpunkten nach, wobei als Ausgangspunkt lediglich allge­ mein die Stadt benannt wird: οἱ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ ἄστεως εἰς τὴν Ἱπποδάμειον ἀγορὰν ἐλθόντες πρῶτον μὲν συνετάξαντο, ὥστε ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν ὁδὸν ἣ φέρει πρός τε τὸ ἱερὸν τῆς Μουνιχίας Ἀρτέμιδος καὶ τὸ Βενδίδειον „Die anderen begaben sich aus der Stadt zum Hippodamischen Markt und stellten sich geordnet auf, so daß sie die Straße füllten, die zum Heiligtum der Artemis von Munichia und zum Bendis-Heiligtum führt“.62 Allein wo es der Kontext gebietet, erachtet Xenophon eine detaillierte Wegbeschreibung für nötig. Als er in seiner Schrift über den Reiterführer über einen Prozessionsweg spricht, versucht er selbstverständlich, diesen so nachzuzeichnen, daß seine Leser

59 Aristoph. Thesm. 100. An der Stelle ist der Name zwar eher bildlich zu verstehen, der Lexikograph Hesych bezeugt jedoch, daß es im Bezirk Skambonidai eine Straße dieses Namens gegeben habe (μ 1904). 60 Plat. Phaidr. 227a. In 229a bezeichnet Sokrates den Verlauf seines Weges mit dem Fluß Ilissos, der im Süden Athens in südwestlicher Richtung floß. 61  Xen. hell. 1,1,33; 2,4,8; 2,4,10; 2,4,27; 2,4,31. 62 Xen. hell. 2,4,11. Die hier von Xenophon erwähnte Straße läßt sich aufgrund des archäologischen Befundes lokalisieren; siehe Goette / Hammerstaedt 2004, 280f.



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die Prozession anhand von Wegmarken in ihr mentales Stadtbild zu inte­ grieren vermögen.63 Τὰς μὲν οὖν πομπὰς οἴομαι ἂν καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς κεχαρισμενωτάτας καὶ τοῖς θεαταῖς εἶναι εἰ, ὅσων ἱερὰ καὶ ἀγάλματα ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ ἐστι, ταῦτα ἀρξάμενοι ἀπὸ τῶν Ἑρμῶν κύκλῳ [περὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ] περιελαύνοιεν τιμῶντες τοὺς θεούς. καὶ ἐν τοῖς Διονυσίοις δὲ οἱ χοροὶ προσεπιχαρίζονται ἄλλοις τε θεοῖς καὶ τοῖς δώδεκα χορεύοντες. ἐπειδὰν δὲ πάλιν πρὸς τοῖς Ἑρμαῖς γένωνται περιεληλακότες, ἐντεῦθεν καλόν μοι δοκεῖ εἶναι κατὰ φυλὰς εἰς τάχος ἀνιέναι τοὺς ἵππους μέχρι τοῦ Ἐλευσινίου. οὐδὲ δόρατα μὴν παραλείψω ὡς ἥκιστα ἂν ἀλλήλοις ἐπαλλάττοιτο. δεῖ γὰρ μεταξὺ τοῖν ὤτοιν τοῦ ἵππου ἕκαστον σχεῖν, εἰ μέλλει φοβερά τε καὶ εὐκρινῆ ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἅμα πολλὰ φανεῖσθαι. ἐπειδὰν δὲ τῆς εἰς τάχος διελάσεως λήξωσι, τὴν ἄλλην καλὸν ἤδη σχέδην εἰς τὰ ἱερά, ᾗπερ καὶ πρόσθεν, διελαύνειν. Die Prozessionen dürften meiner Ansicht nach für die Götter und für die Zuschauer am gefälligsten sein, wenn sie zur Ehre der Götter, die Heiligtü­ mer und Kultbilder auf der Agora besitzen, um jene im Kreis [um die Agora und die Heiligtümer] herumziehen, wobei sie mit den Hermen beginnen. Auch bei den Dionysien sorgen die Chöre für zusätzliche Ergötzung, indem sie bei den übrigen Göttern und bei den zwölf Göttern tanzen. Sobald sie aber bei dem Umzug wieder an den Hermen angelangt sind, ist es darauf pas­ send, wie mir scheint, wenn die Pferde nach Phylen angeordnet im Galopp bis zum Eleusinion hinaufreiten. Und nicht werde ich außer acht lassen, daß die Lanzen der Reiter einander möglichst nicht überkreuzen dürfen. Es soll sie nämlich ein jeder zwischen den Ohren seines Pferdes halten, wenn die Kavallerie furchterregend und gut unterschieden sein und zugleich zahl­ reich erscheinen soll. Sobald sie aber den raschen Galopp beendet haben, ist es passend, wenn sie nunmehr im Trab zu den Heiligtümern reiten, wo sie auch zuvor gewesen sind (Xen. hipp. 3,2f.).

Nur wenig Niederschlag hat die wichtige Prozessionsstraße der Panathe­ näen vom Dipylon diagonal über die Agora zur Akropolis in den Texten der klassischen Zeit gefunden. Zwar ist dieser sog. Dromos auch inschrift­ lich bezeugt,64 der genaue Verlauf hingegen läßt sich aus den Angaben nicht erschließen.65 Mitunter definieren auch epigraphische Texte Wege durch Anfangsund Endpunkte, was freilich ebensowenig etwas über den Verlauf aussagt.66 63 Zur Bedeutung von Prozessionswegen für die Struktur des öffentlichen Raums Höl­ scher 1998, 74–83; Greco 2008. 64 IG I3 507 (ca. 565 v. Chr.), 508 (ca. 562–558 v. Chr.) und 509 (ca. 550 v. Chr.). 65 Thuk. 6,57. Auch die spätantike Beschreibung bei Himerios or. 47,12 vermittelt keine genaue Vorstellung. Vgl. den Lageplan bei Travlos 1971, 318. 66 Agora 19, 114 (P26, Z. 453f.) (Straße vom Heiligtum des Herakles Alexikakos zur Agora; 342/1–339/8 v. Chr.); IG I3 1095 (Straße nach Eleusis), 1096 (Straße nach Eleusis) (ca. 430 v. Chr.); SEG 12.100.11f. und 21f. (Straße zum Daidaleion) (367/6 v. Chr.).

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Es kommt allein auf die Lokalisierung eines Objekts an der jeweiligen Straße an, nicht auf die Beschreibung eines Weges für einen Ortsunkundi­ gen. Zuweilen wurde ein Athener auch durch einen Horos auf einen Pro­ zessionsweg aufmerksam gemacht, wie es etwa bei dem Zug der Pythais vom Pythion am Nordwesthang der Akropolis zum Apollonheiligtum in Delphi der Fall ist. Neben der sakralen Funktion der Straße bezeichnet der Markierungsstein lediglich allgemein den Zielort Delphi.67 Nur selten versucht man, das Raummodell durch die Angabe von Ent­ fernungen so zu präzisieren, daß die Rezipienten die Relationen genauer vor Augen haben. In literarischen Beschreibungen spielen meßbare Ent­ fernungen selbstverständlich nur eine untergeordnete Rolle, bei einer offiziell gesetzten Markierung einer öffentlichen Straße hingegen erfüllt eine entsprechende Angabe den praktischen Zweck, dem Reisenden die Einschätzung räumlicher Verhältnisse und Distanzen zu ermöglichen, wie es in der folgenden Inschrift zu lesen ist: [ἡ πόλις] ἔστσ[έμ με β]ροτ[οῖς] μνημεῖον ἀληθὲς / [. . .] σημαίνε[ν μ]τρ̣[ον] ὁδοιπορίας· / [. . . τ]ὸ μεταχσὺ θεῶμ πρὸς δώδεκα βωμόν / [ἓξ καὶ τ]εσσαράκοντ’ ἐγ λιμένος στάδιοι „Die Stadt hat mich aufgestellt den Sterblichen zum verläßlichen Zeichen, daß ich das Maß der Reise anzeige: Die Distanz zum Zwölfgötteraltar beträgt vom Hafen aus sechsunddreißig Stadien“.68 Für solche aus der Stadt aufs Land führenden Straßen bildete der Zwölfgötteraltar auf der Agora den Ausgangspunkt, von dem aus die Distanzen gemessen wurden.69 Inner­ halb der Stadt existierten vergleichbare Hinweise nur ausnahmsweise,70 das heißt, die Raumkognition der Athener orientierte sich weitgehend an den Erfahrungen der Fortbewegung zu Fuß. Aus den bisher besprochenen Texten geht hervor, daß Objekte im Stadtraum entweder so bekannt waren, daß sich eine genauere Lokali­ sierung erübrigte oder weniger bzw. nicht allgemein bekannte Objekte in Relation zu solchen Orientierungspunkten beschrieben wurden. Im zweiten Falle liegt demnach ein Verhältnis zwischen einer Figur und einem Hintergrund vor, insofern eine prototypisch kleinere (und etwa 67 Agora 19, 29 (H34) (4. Jh. v. Chr.): ὅρος ἱερᾶς / ὁδõ δι᾿ ᾖς πο/ρεύεται ἡ Π/υθαὶς ἐς Δε/ λφός. Zu diesem Prozessionsweg Ficuciello 2008, 26–33. 68 IG I3 1092bis (ca. 440–430 v. Chr.). 69 Hdt. 2,7,1f. Den Altar hatte der jüngere Peisistratos im Jahre 522/21 errichten lassen (Thuk. 6,54,6f.). Goette / Hammerstaedt 2004, 98f. 70 Eine in der zweiten Hälfte des vierten Jahrhunderts an der Akropolis aufgestellte Inschrift informierte darüber, daß die Länge des Umfahrungsweges fünf Stadien und acht­ zehn Fuß betrug (IG II2 2639).



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bei Inschriftenstelen bewegliche) Entität zu einer größeren in Beziehung gesetzt wird, und zwar durch einen Relator, der im Griechischen häufig in einer Präposition besteht.71 Dem Rezipienten wird also keine absolute Lokalisierung ermöglicht, sondern nur eine relative, die freilich verschie­ den exakt ausfallen kann. Wenn der genaue Ort nicht weiter von Belang ist, genügt es, eine Relation zwischen zwei Gebäuden anzugeben; bei offi­ ziellen Regelungen indessen kann auch durch die Erwähnung mehrerer Referenzpunkte eine möglichst exakte Lokalisierung angestrebt werden. καὶ τε̑ς τάφρο καὶ το͂ ὕδατος κρατε̑ν το͂ ἐγ Διὸς τὸν μισθοσά/μενον, ὁπόσον ἐντὸς ῥεῖ το͂ Διονυσίο καὶ το͂ν πυλο͂ν ἑ ἅλαδε ἐ[χ]σελα/ύνοσιν οἱ μύσται καὶ ὁπόσον ἐντὸς τε̑ς οἰκίας τε̑ς δεμοσίας καὶ τ/ο͂ν πυλõν αἳ ἐπὶ τὸ Ἰσθμονίκο βαλανεῖον ἐκφέροσι. [. . .] und daß der Pächter über den Graben und das Regenwasser verfügt, soweit es zwischen dem Dionysosheiligtum und dem Tor fließt, wo die Mysten zum Meer hin ausziehen, und soweit zwischen dem öffentlichen Gebäude und dem Tor, das zum Bad des Isthmonikos hinausführt.72

Diese relativen Ortsangaben, die keine Aussage über die absolute Lage des Objekts treffen, sind weitaus zahlreicher zu finden als Hinweise auf einen absoluten Referenzrahmen, nämlich auf die Himmelsrichtungen.73 Immerhin wird bisweilen in epigraphischen Zeugnissen auf diese abso­ luten Bezugspunkte rekurriert wie in dem folgenden frühhellenistischen Beispiel: ὥι γείτων βορρᾶθεν κ̣ /[ῆ]πος, νοτόθεν Ὀλυμπιοδώρου χωρίον, ἡλ/ ίου ἀνιόντος ὁδός, δυομένου Ὀλυμπιοδ/ώρου χωρίον „[. . .] dem von Norden her ein Garten benachbart ist, von Süden das Grundstück des Olym­ piodoros, vom Sonnenaufgang (Osten) her eine Straße, vom Sonnenun­ tergang (Westen) her das Grundstück des Olympiodoros“.74 Obgleich die Griechen in der Lage waren, bei der Lokalisierung sowohl einen relati­ ven als auch einen absoluten Bezugsrahmen zu verwenden, machten sie

71 Die Terminologie von Figur und Hintergrund wird in der linguistischen Forschung zur sprachlichen Darstellung räumlicher Relationen verwendet und ist der Gestaltpsy­ chologie entlehnt. Daneben finden sich in der Kognitiven und der Psycholinguistik auch andere Begriffe wie etwa trajector und landmark oder Locatum und Relatum. Talmy 2000, Bd. 1, 311–344. 72 IG I3 84,34–37 (418/7 v. Chr.). 73 Siehe Thuk. 2,15,3 (Gebiet südlich der Akropolis). 74 IG II2 1241,9–12 (300/299 v. Chr.). Siehe auch IG II2 1579 (Anfang 4. Jh. v. Chr.); SEG 12, 100, 9–12 (367/6 v. Chr.); Agora 19, 75 (P4, Z. 10) (370/69 v. Chr.); aus dem 3. Jahrhun­ dert Agora 19, 177f. (L4b, Z. 11–18). Um die räumlichen Relationen zu bezeichnen, wird in den Inschriften häufig der Ausdruck γείτων (benachbart) verwendet.

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in der Regel von dem relativen Gebrauch.75 Offenbar empfanden sie die ­ ngaben der Himmelsrichtungen jedoch als exakter, da sie unabhängig A vom Betrachterstandpunkt sind, weshalb sie im juristischen Kontext auf diese zurückgriffen. In dieser Praxis dürften sich die Athener der klassischen Zeit kaum von westlichen Stadtbewohnern der Moderne unterschieden haben, die für gewöhnlich ebensoselten Himmelsrichtungen für eine absolute Lokali­ sierung zu Hilfe nehmen und stattdessen Relationen zu bereits bekannten Orientierungspunkten verwenden, wenn sie einer anderen Person die Ori­ entierung in der Stadt bzw. das Auffinden eines Objekts erleichtern wollen. 3. Das mentale Stadtbild und seine Bedeutungsebenen Unsere Analyse von literarischen Texten und Inschriften der klassischen Zeit läßt erkennen, daß die Athener zum einen über ein differenziertes mentales Modell ihrer Stadt verfügten, zum anderen mit Hilfe verschie­ dener Kategorien in der Lage waren, ihre Raumkognition anderen mit­ zuteilen. Nach Ausweis der schriftlichen Zeugnisse konstituierte sich das mentale Raumbild durch Grenzlinien, die Bereiche definierten und voneinander unterschieden, durch eben diese städtischen Bezirke wie Stadtviertel oder Plätze, durch markante Orientierungspunkte von ganz verschiedenen baulichen Dimensionen sowie durch Wege, die bis zu einem gewissen Grade eine Orientierung innerhalb der urbanistischen Topographie widerspiegeln. Sofern der kursorische und keineswegs voll­ ständige Durchgang durch die Texte nicht trügt, spielten Punkte und Berei­ che in der Raumkognition der Athener eine wesentlich größere Rolle als die übrigen Kategorien. Während die Autoren häufig auf Orientierungs­ marken wie Heiligtümer, das Buleuterion und Statuen oder Areale wie die Agora und den Kerameikos rekurrieren, begegnet man Beschreibun­ gen von Wegverläufen relativ selten. Auch haben wir festgestellt, daß Markierungssteine offenbar nicht dazu aufgestellt wurden, Grenzlinien möglichst kontinuierlich im Gelände zu kennzeichnen, sondern vielmehr allgemein die Lage eines Bezirks signalisierten. Informationen, die für ein Zurechtfinden in der Stadt relevant wären, also genaue Richtungs- und Distanzangaben, scheinen die Ausnahme zu sein. Gleichwohl erlaubt die 75 Ausführliche Bemerkungen zur Unterscheidung zwischen intrinsischen, relativen und absoluten Bezugsrahmen in der Raumkognition und ihrer sprachlichen ­Repräsentation findet man bei Levinson 2003, 24–61.



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mentale Repräsentation Athens verschiedene Grade der Präzision, die je nach dem Kommunikationszusammenhang aktualisiert werden können. Falls in einer öffentlichen Angelegenheit die exakte Lokalisierung eines Objekts von Belang war, ließen sich, wie gerade die Inschriften illustrie­ ren, mehrere Referenzpunkte bezeichnen und Himmelsrichtungen als absoluter Bezugsrahmen angeben. Eingangs wurde betont, daß die Texte hier weniger als direkter Ausdruck der Raumwahrnehmung verstanden werden denn als Kommunikation der Raumkognition. Intention des Sprechers oder Autors ist es jeweils, einem Adressatenkreis eine räumliche Vorstellung zu vermitteln. In diesem Kommunikationsprozeß erfüllen die Konstituenten des mentalen Stadt­ bildes verschiedene Funktionen. Grenzlinien, Bezirke und Punkte, deren Kenntnis bei den Rezipienten vorausgesetzt werden kann, müssen nicht durch Bezug auf andere Entitäten lokalisiert werden. Es genügt, die Akro­ polis, die Agora oder den Areopag zu nennen, damit der Rezipient weiß, wo sich diese Elemente der städtischen Topographie befinden. Wenn hin­ gegen über kleinere Entitäten oder Ereignisse gesprochen wird, noch dazu über eventuell bewegliche oder mehrfach vorhandene Objekte, so werden diese in der Regel durch räumliche Relatoren, die sprachlich zumeist als Präpositionen realisiert sind, zu den allgemein bekannten Orientierungs­ punkten in Beziehung gesetzt. Um ein Privathaus oder eine bestimmte Herme zu lokalisieren, ist es erforderlich, eine Relation zu einem bekann­ ten Objekt zu bezeichnen, damit die Adressaten die betreffenden Entitä­ ten in ihre mentale Repräsentation der Stadt zu integrieren vermögen. Es besteht dann eine Relation zwischen einer Figur und einem Hintergrund, die impliziert, daß nach der Ansicht des Sprechers und der (vermuteten) seiner Rezipienten bestimmten Elementen der urbanen Topographie eine größere Signifikanz innewohnt als anderen. Für die Ausbildung des men­ talen Stadtmodells bedeutet dies auch, daß sich der Informationsumfang ständig verändert. Der Athener, der seine Stadt wahrnimmt, speichert die perzipierten Objekte in seiner Raumvorstellung, wobei er ihnen gemäß der Signifikanz auf einer Hierarchieskala einen Platz zuweist. Erhält er nun durch einen Text wie einen Volksbeschluß oder eine Gerichtsrede neue Informationen, gehen diese in sein Stadtmodell ein und werden zu den bereits gespeicherten Entitäten in Beziehung gesetzt. Die Autoren rei­ chern demnach potentiell die mentale Repräsentation ihrer Rezipienten mit neuen Informationen an, indem sie dort mutmaßlich bereits gespei­ cherte Informationen mit neuen Angaben verknüpfen. Es handelt sich bei der Raumkognition also um einen dynamischen Prozeß, nicht um einen statischen Wissensbestand.

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Aus diesen Beobachtungen läßt sich schließen, daß die Stadt in der mentalen Repräsentation eine relationale Anordnung von Objekten (und Menschen) bildet, also einen Raum, der durch Beziehungen zwischen einzelnen Elementen konstituiert wird. Die Athener nehmen ihre Stadt als eine differenzierte Struktur wahr und stellen in der Kognition eine Synthese her, indem sie Plätze, Objekte, Menschen und Verhaltensweisen miteinander verknüpfen und einander zuordnen. Durch diesen kogniti­ ven Akt werden mehrere Elemente zu Einheiten zusammengefaßt und als Teilbereiche innerhalb der gesamten Topographie wahrgenommen. In der Wahrnehmung wird also der Stadtraum strukturiert, und zwar keineswegs allein aufgrund der städtebaulichen und architektonischen Gegebenhei­ ten, sondern auch durch die Zuschreibung von Funktionen und die mit diesen einhergehenden Praktiken. So bildet die Stoa Basileios auch des­ wegen einen Teilbereich der Agora, weil in ihr offizielle Dokumente publi­ ziert werden. Diese Funktion, die bestimmte Verhaltensweisen nach sich zieht—wer ein Dokument einsehen will, muß diesen Ort aufsuchen—, unterscheidet sie von anderen städtischen Orten, macht also gewisserma­ ßen die Identität des Ortes aus. Die Relationen zwischen Objekten beru­ hen demnach sowohl auf städtebaulichen Zusammenhängen als auch auf funktionalen Entsprechungen, Analogien, Differenzen und Oppositionen. Aus den Informationen der Texte läßt sich in keinem Falle, nicht ein­ mal bei größter Präzision, ein auch nur halbwegs detailliertes, geschweige denn ein vollständiges mentales Stadtbild gewinnen. Stets präsentieren die Autoren lediglich kleine Ausschnitte, gleichsam Inseln der Aufmerk­ samkeit, aus der urbanen Topographie, die nur einzelne Punkte enthalten, ohne eine im engeren Sinne räumliche Vorstellung vermitteln zu können. Daß die Texte selektiv verfahren, viele Leerstellen enthalten und keine große Anschaulichkeit erreichen, hängt zum einen damit zusammen, daß wir wie erwähnt keinen unvermittelten Zugang zur Raumkognition der Athener finden, sondern auf deren sprachliche Repräsentation verwiesen sind. Wir sind folglich immer mit dem Problem konfrontiert, daß sich Kognition niemals eins zu eins in sprachliche Mittel transferieren läßt. Keine noch so detaillierte Beschreibung könnte einen Raumeindruck, der durch visuelle Wahrnehmung und körperliche Erfahrung zustande gekommen ist, erschöpfend wiedergeben. Von vornherein erlegt also das Sprachsystem dem Material Restriktionen auf. Zum anderen sind die hier analysierten Texte nicht zu dem Zweck niedergeschrieben worden, einem modernen Leser möglichst vollständige kognitive „Karten“ zu überliefern. Welche Informationen über die städtische Topographie ausgewählt wer­ den, wird in mehrfacher Hinsicht durch den jeweiligen Kontext bedingt.



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Der Verfasser beschreibt den städtischen Raum mit einer bestimmten kommunikativen Intention, weshalb er nur dafür relevante Angaben auf­ nimmt; er hat ein bestimmtes Publikum vor Augen, dessen Vorwissen er berücksichtigt; er schreibt gemäß den Konventionen einer literarischen Gattung, die ihm bestimmte Beschränkungen vorgeben. So bedeutet es einen erheblichen Unterschied, ob der Rat von Athen einen offiziellen, rechtsetzenden Text für die Bürger der Stadt inschriftlich festhalten läßt, oder ob ein platonischer Dialog ein gemeingriechisches Publikum ledig­ lich in die Lage versetzen will, die Szenerie eines sokratischen Gesprächs zu imaginieren, so daß topographische Angaben allein dem Kolorit und der Atmosphäre dienen. Gerade in der Kommunikation unter Athenern, die zur selben Zeit leben und ungefähr über dasselbe räumliche Wissen verfügen, erübrigen sich viele Informationen, die sich ein moderner Leser wünschen würde. Während in der psychologischen und humangeographischen Forschung die Funktion von kognitiven Karten, dem Menschen Orientierung zu ermöglichen, im Mittelpunkt steht, hat sich gezeigt, daß die sprachliche Vermittlung der Raumkognition weitere Aufgaben erfüllt und wesentlich mehr Informationen mitteilt, teilweise implizit, als für das bloße Zurecht­ finden in der Stadt erforderlich wäre. Wir dürfen nicht aus den Augen verlieren, daß die analysierten Texte primär anderen Zwecken dienen, als dem Leser Orientierungshilfen zu bieten, wenn er sich durch die Stadt bewegt. Wenn Informationen über den Aufstellungsort von Gesetzen, die Lage des Buleuterion und der Agora oder den Verlauf einer Prozession mitgeteilt werden, erfährt der Rezipient nicht nur etwas über die topo­ graphischen Gegebenheiten, sondern gleichzeitig von Konventionen, habitualisierten Praktiken und symbolischen Bedeutungen. Weit davon entfernt, allein das athenische Zentrum zu beschreiben, verweisen die Angaben zur Pnyx, zum Areopag, zum Buleuterion oder zur Tholos auf die politische Verfassung der Stadt und auf das Selbstverständnis ihrer Bürger. Diese Orte stellen die ideelle Signatur des demokratischen Athen dar, in sie sind bestimmte Werte und Ereignisse eingeschrieben, mit ihnen sind wiederkehrende Verhaltensweisen verknüpft. Ebenso stecken Hin­ weise auf die Akropolis, das Theseion oder den Tempel des olympischen Zeus die sakrale Topographie Athens ab, definieren die Bürgerschaft auch als Kultgemeinschaft. Nicht zuletzt lagern sich an zentrale Orte und Plätze wie etwa die Standbilder der Tyrannenmörder historische Erinnerungen an, die mental stets präsent sind und dem kognitiven Stadtmodell die Eigenschaften eines mnemotechnischen Speichers und damit eine zeit­ liche Tiefendimension verleihen. Denkmäler, aber auch Gebäude, Plätze,

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ja die ganze Form der Stadt tragen für die Bewohner symbolische Bedeu­ tungen, fungieren als Zeichen für Überzeugungen, Werte oder Normen. Eine Rekonstruktion des mentalen Stadtbildes darf diese semiotischen Aspekte nicht ignorieren, wenn sie nicht Gefahr laufen will, ihren Gegen­ stand seiner Komplexität zu berauben und entscheidende Konstituenten zu übersehen.76 Überdies geht es nicht zu weit, in der mentalen Repräsentation und ihrer sprachlichen Vermittlung eine Handlungsanleitung zu sehen. Statt allein Informationen über verschiedene Schichten der Topographie zu bewahren—Städtebau, Politik, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Religion—sagt das Modell seinem Benutzer auch, was er in bestimmten Situationen zu tun hat. Er erfährt, wohin er sich begeben muß, um offizielle Dokumente zu konsultieren, wo er sich als Mitglied der Volksversammlung oder des Rates einzufinden hat und an welchen Plätzen er zu bestimmten Termi­ nen kultischen Handlungen beiwohnen kann. Indem er sich gemäß die­ sen Vorgaben im urbanen Raum verhält, reproduziert er die Strukturen, die der städtischen Topographie und ebenso seinem mentalen Stadtmo­ dell inhärent sind. Diese Eigenschaften des mentalen Stadtbildes machen schließlich auf seine kollektive bzw. soziale Natur aufmerksam. Zwar gehen in die Raum­ kognition auch je individuelle Erfahrungen ein, aber zum großen Teil ist sie von Erfahrungen und Vorstellungen der Gruppe, der das Individuum angehört, geprägt. Der Rekurs auf Orientierungspunkte wie die Stoa Basi­ leios oder den Zwölfgötteraltar ist in jedem Kontext deswegen möglich, weil sie zu dem gemeinsamen mentalen Stadtbild aller Athener gehören. Es handelt sich um Plätze und Orte, die im Leben der gesamten Stadtge­ meinde eine wichtige Rolle spielen und den öffentlichen Raum konstitu­ ieren. So verschieden die individuellen Raumkognitionen auch ausfallen mögen, bilden diese Orte, an denen sich das soziale Leben abspielt, eine gemeinsame Schnittmenge, ohne die eine sprachliche Verständigung über den Stadtraum unmöglich wäre. Die Raumreferenzen spiegeln damit auch einen Teil der kollektiven Identität der athenischen Bürgerschaft wider, was nicht zuletzt darin zum Ausdruck kommt, daß in den Texten das poli­ tische und ideelle Zentrum Athens, nämlich der Bereich um die Agora, überproportional vertreten ist, indessen die Peripherie weitgehend aus­ gespart bleibt. Es wäre demnach unangemessen, das mentale Stadtbild

76 Einen Überblick über die sozio-semiotische Sicht auf die Stadt bieten Gottdiener / Lagopoulos 1986. Vgl. May / Steinert, Introduction.



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für eine objektive Wiedergabe eines Raumeindrucks zu halten. Vielmehr beruht es auf Selektion und Gewichtung, die durch Weltanschauung und Werte einer bestimmten sozialen Gruppe vorbestimmt werden; die Wahr­ nehmung verzerrt die topographischen Relationen. Daher erlauben es die analysierten Texte, in den wesentlichen Grund­ zügen das kollektive Stadtmodell der Athener in klassischer Zeit zu rekon­ struieren, auch wenn wir niemals imstande sind, die Raumkognition des Einzelnen vollständig zu ermitteln. Abkürzungen Agora The Athenian Agora: Results of the Excavations by the American School of Classical Studies of Athens, 1953ff. IG Inscriptiones Graecae, 1873ff. SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923ff.

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Hoepfner, Wolfram / Schwandner, Ernst-Ludwig (1994), Haus und Stadt im klassischen Griechenland, 2. Auflage, München. Judeich, Walther (1931), Topographie von Athen, 2. Auflage, München. Kolb, Frank (1984), Die Stadt im Altertum, München. Lalonde, Gerald V. / Langdon, Merle K. / Walbank, Michael B. (1991), Inscriptions: Horoi, Poletai Records, Leases of Public Lands (= The Athenian Agora 19), Princeton (NJ). Levinson, Stephen C. (2003), Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity, Cambridge. Ling, Roger (1990), “A Stranger in Town: Finding the Way in an Ancient City”, in: Greece & Rome 37, 204–214. Löw, Martina (2001), Raumsoziologie, Frankfurt am Main. Lynch, Kevin (1960), The Image of the City, Cambridge (MA). Talmy, Leonard (2000), Toward a Cognitive Semantics, 2 Bde., Cambridge (MA). Thompson, Homer A. / Wycherley, Richard E. (1972), The Agora of Athens: The History, Shape and Uses of an Ancient City Center (= The Athenian Agora 14), Princeton (NJ). Travlos, John (1971), Bildlexikon zur Topographie des antiken Athen, Tübingen. Wachsmuth, Curt (1874/90), Die Stadt Athen im Alterthum, 2 Bde., Leipzig. Wycherley, Richard E. (1957), Literary and Epigraphical Testimonia (= The Athenian Agora 3), Princeton (NJ).

Religiöse Topographie Roms: Der Aventin Innerhalb der Stadt und ausserhalb des Pomeriums Darja Šterbenc Erker Archäologische Funde belegen, dass der Hügel Aventin von der Servianischen (der ältesten) Stadtmauer Roms eingeschlossen war.1 Trotz dieses engen Bezugs zur Stadt lag der Aventin zur Zeit der Republik und weiter bis zum Jahr 45 n. Chr. außerhalb des Pomeriums.2 Aufgrund dieser Innenund zugleich Außenposition des Hügels in der stadtrömischen Topographie wurde dem Aventin in der religionsgeschichtlichen Forschung ein marginaler Charakter zugeschrieben. So ist John Scheid der Meinung, dass der Aventin ein marginaler und ambivalenter Hügel war, besonders gut geeignet für Initiations- und Übergangsrituale.3 Michel Gras erklärt die Andersartigkeit des Aventin mit seiner Lage, da er der südlichste Hügel Roms war. Fritz Graf spricht von der „coline d’alterité“, „dem Hügel der Andersartigkeit“ schlechthin.4 Vor diesem forschungsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund gilt es zu untersuchen, welche ethnischen und politischen Bedeutungen am räumlichen Konzept des Pomeriums haften, die solch unterschiedliche Meinungen hervorgerufen haben.5 Die Korrelation zwischen der Topographie Roms und der religiös-politischen Struktur der Stadt wird Aufschluß über die Hierarchisierung der Räume geben. In diesem Aufsatz werde ich literarische Texte analysieren, die Verweise auf den „fremden“ Charakter des Aventin geben. Meine Betrachtungsweise der Texte wird religionsgeschichtlich sein, im Mittelpunkt wird die Frage nach dem Begriff „Fremdheit“ in Bezug auf den stadtrömischen Raum stehen. Zuerst werde ich kurz die Bedeutung des Pomeriums, der wichtigsten religiös-politischen stadtrömischen Grenze, erläutern. Anschließend werde ich einige römische Legenden zur marginalen Rolle des Aventin 1  Coarelli 2000, 318 vermutet, dass der Aventin außerhalb des Pomeriums lag, weil er ein Geschäftsviertel war, in dem Ausländer verkehrten. Der vorliegende Text resümiert einige Ergebnisse aus meiner Monographie, Šterbenc Erker 2013. 2 Coarelli 2000, 318. 3 Scheid 1985, 45: „Notons, enfin, que ce lieu marginal et ambigu se prête bien aux cérémonies d’initiation et de transition“. 4 Gras 1987, 49, 60; Graf 2003, 143. 5 S. die Fragestellung von Natalie N. May und Ulrike Steinert in der Introduction.

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und die „Fremdheit“ einiger Kultstätten und Heiligtümer auf dem Hügel analysieren. Abschließend werde ich „fremde“ Elemente in antiquarischen Schilderungen des Stadtgründungsrituals untersuchen.6 Bei der Analyse werde ich die Grenzziehung hinterfragen, nach der die Kulte „fremder“ Götter, die aus sabinischen, etruskischen oder griechischen Städten nach Rom übernommen worden waren, außerhalb des Pomeriums angesiedelt wurden. Wie sind die antiken Texte, die darüber Auskunft geben, zu verstehen? Georg Wissowa, der Autor des Standardwerkes für die Religionsgeschichte Roms, Religion und Kultus der Römer, vertrat die Meinung, dass die aus griechischen Städten übernommenen Kulte außerhalb des Pomeriums angesiedelt wurden.7 Wissowas Idee wurde erst vor wenigen Jahren angefochten, wobei seine Auffassung von „fremden“ Kulten in der altertumswissenschaftlichen Forschung weiter lebt.8 Im Aufsatz wird gezeigt, dass der Ausdruck „fremd“ in den Diskursen über die Religion Roms nicht wörtlich zu nehmen ist. „Fremde“ Kulte waren typisch römische Formen der Religion.9 1. Das Pomerium Zunächst zur wichtigsten räumlichen Grenzlinie in Rom, dem Pomerium. Livius schreibt, dass die Innenstadt (urbs) nach der Vogelschau eingeweiht worden war.10 Hier denkt man an das Ritual der Einholung der auspicia durch Romulus, das in der antiquarischen Tradition über die Stadtgründung fest verankert war. Bei der Einholung der auspicia in der historischen Zeit wurde ein Raum durch einen Spruch der Auguren abgegrenzt und zum sakralen Bereich gemacht, in dem öffentliche Handlungen vollzogen werden konnten.11 Der inaugurierte Raum wurde durch das Ritual   6 Antiquarische Texte in Rom waren Untersuchungen der vergangenen, altertümlichen Institutionen. Varro z. B. hat in seinen Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum (Altertümer der menschlichen und göttlichen Dinge) die Ursprünge römischer Sakral-, Rechts- und Lokalaltertümer systematisch dargelegt.   7 Wissowa 1912, 62, 88–89; Cancik / Cancik-Lindemeier 1996, 271: „die ‚fremden‘ Kulte werden . . . an der Peripherie angesiedelt“; Jacqueline Champeaux spricht von einer „règle pomériale“ vgl. Champeaux 1998, 77.  8 Z. B. Gall 2006.  9 Deshalb wird der Begriff in diesem Aufsatz in Anführungszeichen gesetzt. 10 Liv. 5, 52, 2. 11  Wissowa 1912, 528; Varro ling. 6, 53; Serv. Aen., 3, 463: Loca sacra id est ab auguribus inaugurata effata dici. “Heilige Plätze werden diejenigen genannt, die von Auguren eingeweiht und abgegrenzt sind“.



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der Einholung von Auspizien von allen auf ihm ruhenden älteren sakralen Verpflichungen losgelöst. So war die Innenstadt (urbs) als Raum, geeignet für die Einholung der städtischen Auspizien (auspicia urbana), rituell definiert.12 Dieser Bereich innerhalb der Pomerium-Grenze war „heilig“, da sich dort, wie Livius schreibt, eine Fülle von Göttern befand: Urbem auspicato inauguratoque conditam habemus; nullus locus in ea non religionum deorumque est plenus.13 Wir haben eine Stadt, die nach einem Auspizium und nach den Regeln der Auguraldisziplin gegründet ist. Keine Stelle in ihr ist nicht voll von religiösen Verpflichtungen und von Göttern.14

In der urbs waren die wichtigsten Götter der civitas angesiedelt, Iuppiter Optimus Maximus, Iuno und Minerva. Im hierarchisch strukturierten Raum innerhalb des Pomeriums hatten sie ihren Tempel auf dem sakralpolitischen Zentrum Kapitol. Vitruv, der Autor des Werkes De architectura aus der augusteischen Zeit, erklärt die Ansiedlung dieser drei Götter am höchsten Punkt der Stadt damit, dass vornehmlich sie die civitas ­beschützten.15 Die für die öffentliche Religion wichtigsten Götter hatten ihre Tempel in der urbs, wo auch die politischen Institutionen lagen (curia, der römische Senat, comitium, die Volksversammlung).16 In der urbs übten Magistrate die zivile Gewalt (imperium domi) aus. Außerhalb der urbs, im ager, wo sich auch der Aventin befand, lag der Bereich der militärischen Gewalt (imperium militiae). Die durch Grenzsteine (cippi) markierte und von den Auguren bewachte Linie zwischen dem Pomerium 12 Gell. 13, 14, 1: Pomerium quid esset, augures populi Romani, qui libros de auspiciis scripserunt, istiusmodi sententia definierunt: „Pomerium est locus intra agrum effatum per totius urbis circuitum pone muros regionibus certeis determinatus, qui facit finem urbani auspicii“. „Was pomerium ist, haben die Auguren des römischen Volkes, die Bücher über die Auspizien verfasst haben, in folgendem Sinn definiert: ‚Pomerium ist der Raum innerhalb des abgegrenzten Umlands, welcher durch den Umkreis der gesamten Innenstadt hinter den Mauern durch gewisse Gesichtslinien bestimmt ist, der den Raum der städtischen Auspizien eingrenzt‘ “. Liou-Gille 1998, 351; Scheid 1998, 55–56; Rüpke 2001, 179–180. 13 Liv. 5, 52, 2. 14 Der moderne Begriff „heilig“ gibt nur teilweise den lateinischen Ausdruck religiones wieder, der religiöse Regeln und Bräuche bezeichnet. Zu den verschiedenen semantischen Feldern von religio vgl. Šterbenc Erker 2008. 15 Vitr. 1, 7: aedibus vero sacris, quorum deorum maxime in tutela civitas videtur esse, et Iovi et Iunoni et Minervae, in excelsissimo loco, unde moenium maxima pars conspiciatur, areae distribuantur „Den heiligen Tempeln derjenigen Götter, in deren Schutz die Bürgerschaft am meisten zu stehen scheint, des Jupiter, der Juno und der Minerva, werden Bauplätze auf der höchsten Stelle (sc. der Stadt) zugeteilt, von wo aus der größte Teil der Stadtmauern zu sehen ist“. 16 Belayche 2001, IV.

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und dem ager stellte somit eine symbolische Grenze zwischen der zivilen und der militärischen Gewalt dar.17 Wie bereits angedeutet, überschnitt sich der sakrale Raum mit dem politischen, darauf weist die Verankerung der „städtischen“ Auspizien in der urbs hin, denn nur hier konnten Magistrate die auspicia urbana, die göttliche Zustimmung zur Ausübung von Staatsangelegenheiten (z. B. vor den Volksversammlungen), einholen.18 Nicole Belayche stellt heraus, dass die zivile Amtsgewalt römischer Magistrate räumlich strikt definiert war, nur die Einholung der Auspizien auf dem Kapitol verlieh den Magistraten cum imperio eine völlige Legitimität.19 Wie erklären antike Autoren die Tatsache, dass der Aventin außerhalb des Pomeriums blieb? Römische Legenden verdeutlichen, dass der Aventin eine Sonderrolle bei der Gründung Roms hatte. Seneca nennt zwei Legenden, um zu erklären, warum der Aventin außerhalb des Pomeriums blieb: Hoc scire magis prodest quam Auentinum montem extra pomerium esse, ut ille adfirmabat, propter alteram ex duabus causis, aut quod plebs eo secessisset, aut quod Remo auspicante illo loco aues non addixissent . . .20 Das zu wissen nützt mehr als dass sich der Aventin außerhalb des Pomeriums befinde, wie jener stets versicherte, und zwar aus einem der folgenden zwei Gründe: entweder weil sich die Plebs dorthin zurückgezogen hatte, oder weil, als Remus an jenem Ort die Auspizien hielt, die Vögel nicht zugestimmt hatten . . .

Die Legende über die erste Auswanderung der Plebejer aus Rom auf den Aventin im Jahr 493 v. Chr., sowie Remus’ mythische Auspizien auf dem Hügel vor der Gründung Roms sind die zwei aitiologischen causae für den Auschluß des Aventin aus der urbs. Seneca rationalisiert allerdings diese Legenden und hält deshalb die Auspizien von Remus auf dem Aventin und die Erzählung über die secessio plebis für Lügen, was die Bedeutung seiner Erzählungen für die Konstruktion der römischen räumlichen Vorstellungen jedoch nicht vermindert.21 Da der Aventin durch negative augurale Zeichen markiert wurde, liegt der Schluß nahe, dass ­diesen

17  Reste der Grenzsteine aus der Kaiserzeit wurden gefunden, vgl. Beard / North / Price 1998, 95–96. 18  Gell. 13, 14, 1; Wissowa 1912, 529; Beard / North / Price 1998, 179. 19 Belayche 2001, III. 20 Sen. briev., 13, 8. 21  Zur secessio plebis auf den Aventin (oder alternativ auf den Mons Sacer), vgl. Cic. rep., 2, 33, 57; 2, 34, 59; Dion. Hal. ant., 6, 45, 3; Liv. 2, 32, 4; 2, 33, 3; Val. Max. 8, 9, 1; Bernstein 1998, 82.



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Legenden zufolge der Hügel nicht für die Einholung der städtischen Auspizien geeignet war. Ovid, Gellius und Plutarch schildern, wie Remus auf dem Gipfel des Aventin Auspizien einholte.22 Die Auspizien hätten bestimmt, welcher der beiden Zwillingsbrüder die Stadtmauer bauen sollte und somit der Gründer Roms würde. Remus bevorzugte den Aventin, er sei auf den Gipfel gestiegen und habe sechs Geier gesehen, Romulus dagegen habe später auf dem Palatin doppelt so viele Geier gesehen und habe damit das Recht bekommen, die Stadt Rom zu gründen.23 Gellius ist ebenso wie Seneca der Meinung, dass der Aventin durch das unglückliche Vorzeichen für Remus außerhalb der Stadt blieb: Propterea quaesitum est ac nunc etiam in quaestione est, quam ob causam ex septem urbis montibus, cum ceteri sex intra pomerium sint, Auentinus solum, quae pars non longinqua nec infrequens est, extra pomerium sit, neque id Seruius Tullius rex neque Sulla, qui proferundi pomerii titulum quaesiuit, neque postea diuus Iulius, cum pomerium proferret, intra effatos urbis fines incluserint. Huius rei Messala aliquot causas uideri scripsit, sed praeter eas omnis ipse unam probat, quod in eo monte Remus urbis condendae gratia auspicauerit auesque inritas habuerit superatusque in auspicio a Romulo sit: „Idcirco“ inquit „omnes, qui pomerium protulerunt, montem istum excluserunt quasi auibus obscenis ominosum.“ 24 Deshalb wurde diskutiert und es stellt sich auch jetzt noch die Frage, warum von den sieben Hügeln der Stadt, obwohl die übrigen sechs innerhalb des Pomeriums liegen, allein der Aventin, der weder weit entfernt noch wenig bevölkert ist, sich außerhalb des Pomeriums befinde, und warum weder der König Servius Tullius, noch Sulla, der doch nach einem Vorwand suchte, um das Pomerium zu erweitern, noch später dann der vergöttlichte Iulius, als er das Pomerium erweiterte, ihn in die (von den Auguren) bestimmten Stadtgrenzen nicht eingeschlossen haben. Messalla schreibt, dass eine ganze Anzahl von Gründen in Betracht kämen, doch abgesehen von diesen allen stimmt er selbst nur einem einzigen zu: der Grund sei, dass Remus auf diesem Hügel

22 Es gibt jedoch auch eine andere Variante: Ennius zufolge habe Romulus auf dem Aventin Auspizien eingeholt, vgl. Enn. ann., 75(80); Plut. Romulus, 9, 4. Liv. 1, 7, 2 erwähnt zwei Traditionen. Nach einer habe einer der Anhänger des Romulus Remus beim Streit darüber, wem die Auspizien die Zustimmung für die Stadtgründung erteilten, getötet. Nach der anderen habe Remus die bereits gezogene Stadtmauerlinie übersprungen, um sie zu schmähen, weshalb ihn Romulus ermordet habe, vgl. Ov. fast., 4, 812–814. 23 Plut. Romulus, 9, 4. Plutarch betont, dass Romulus seinen Bruder belogen hatte, weshalb Remus ihn an der Durchführung der Rituale der Stadtgründung gehindert habe, was der Grund für seine Ermordung durch Romulus oder Celer gewesen sei. Nach Ovid wurde Remus von Celer, einem der Begleiter des Romulus, getötet, da er die winzige Stadtmauer geschmäht und übersprungen habe, vgl. Ov. fast., 4, 840–844; Plut. Romulus, 10, 1. 24 Gell. 13, 14, 4.

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darja šterbenc erker seine Auspizien zur Stadtgründung abgehalten, unheilvolle Vögel gesehen habe und beim Auspizium von Romulus übertroffen worden sei. „Daher“, so meint er, „haben alle, die das Pomerium erweiterten, diesen Berg als gleichsam durch Unglücksvögel vorbedeutungsvollen Ort ausgeschlossen.“

Gellius verweist hier auf den Zusammenhang zwischen der Größe des Imperiums und der Größe des Pomeriums; die Feldherrn, die das Imperium ausgedehnt haben, hatten das Recht, ebenfalls das Pomerium zu vergrößern.25 Gellius fragt sich deshalb, warum Sulla und Julius Caesar hierbei nicht den Aventin eingeschlossen haben.26 Gellius zitiert Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus, der eine Schrift über die Auspizien geschrieben hat, dem zufolge der Aventin mit ungünstigen Zeichen beladen wurde. Deshalb wurde der Aventin in der antiquarischen Tradition als der Hügel des legendären „Außenseiters“ Remus bekannt. Dies war also die aitiologische Erklärung römischer Autoren dafür, dass der Aventin innerhalb der Stadtmauer und außerhalb des Pomerium lag. Diese aitiologische Spekulation hatte jedoch keinen Einfluß auf den römischen Alltag. Am Ende der Republik war der Hügel kein marginaler Raum oder Ort für Außenseiter. Im 5. Jh. v. Chr. wurden hier plebejische Familien angesiedelt, am Ende der Republik und insbesondere in der Kaiserzeit wurde der Hügel jedoch zum Wohngebiet der römischen Nobilität.27 Wie eben gezeigt, verknüpfen die aitiologischen Erzählungen über die Stadtgründung sowie der Verlauf der Servianischen Stadtmauer aus dem 6. Jh. v. Chr. den Aventin mit der urbs. Auf die enge Anbindung des Hügels an die Innenstadt weist auch die republikanische Regelung hin, dass die Magistratur der Volkstribunen durch die aedes Cereris, Liberi Liberaeque beschützt wurde, deren Unverletzlichkeit hauptsächlich innerhalb des Pomeriums und bis zum ersten Meilenstein gewährt wurde, also einschließlich des Aventin.28 Die politische Macht des princeps Augustus wurde allerdings in Bezug auf das Pomerium und das Volkstribunat neu konzipiert. Im Jahr 23 v. Chr., als Augustus die volle potestas und Rechte eines Volkstribuns erhielt, durfte er die Grenze des Pomeriums überschreiten, ohne dass die auguralen Vorschriften ihn zwangen, sein impe-

25 Gell. 13, 14, 3. 26 Scheid 1998, 57. 27 Gras 1987, 50; Coarelli 2000, 320. 28 Liv. 3, 55, 6–7, s. u.; Nippel 1988, 11. Zu Oktavians Übernahme des Amtes aufgrund der damit verbundenen potestas innerhalb des Pomeriums, vgl. Beard / North / Price 1998, 178–179; Rüpke 1990, 29–57; Ferrary 2001.



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rium militiae abzulegen. Diese historische Entwicklung hebt die innige Verwobenheit der urbs mit dem ager hervor. 2. Verbannung „Fremder“ Kulte aus dem Pomerium? Das Pomerium wurde durch die Erweiterung des römischen Territoriums ausgedehnt. Erst Kaiser Claudius schloss nach der Eroberung Britanniens den Aventin im Jahr 49 n. Chr. in das Pomerium ein.29 Diese späte Einbindung des Aventin in die Innenstadt (urbs) erklärte Georg Wissowa mit dem „fremden“ Charakter der Götter, die auf dem Hügel verehrt wurden.30 Wissowa postulierte eine Regel, nach der „fremde“ Rituale (sacra peregrina) außerhalb des Pomeriums angesiedelt wurden, die Innenstadt sei nur für die „römischen“ Rituale (sacra Romana) reserviert gewesen.31 Diese „Regel“ ist das Resultat von Wissowas Aufteilung der Entwicklung der römischen Religion in drei Etappen im ersten Teil seines Handbuches Religion und Kultus der Römer. Die erste Etappe umfasst die indigene römische Kultausübung und endet mit der Einweihung des Iuppiter-IunoMinerva-Heiligtums auf dem Kapitol.32 In der zweiten sei der Einfluss der italischen, etruskischen und griechischen Religion zu spüren (bis Ende des 2. Punischen Krieges). Die dritte Phase nennt Wissowa „Hellenisierung des Kultes“.33 Somit teilt Wissowa die Götter in zwei Kategorien ein, einheimische (di indigetes) und fremde-italische (di novensides). In die Kategorie der di novensides schließt Wissowa „fremde-griechische“, d. h. die „neugeschaffenen Gottheiten“ oder Götter der sacra pelegrina ein.34 Wissowas Trennung zwischen den „einheimischen“ und „fremden“ Göttern entwirft jedoch ein vereinfachtes Bild, weil die „fremden“ Götter auch innerhalb des Pomeriums verehrt wurden, wie z. B. die Castores auf dem Forum Romanum und Kybele auf dem Palatin.35 Wissowa vermischte zwei verschiedene Kategorien von Göttern. Antike Autoren betonen häufig, dass bestimmte Rituale aus „fremden“ Orten

29 Gell. 13, 14, 7; Tac. ann., 12, 24. 30 Wissowa 1912, 45–46; 471; Schilling 1979a, 95; Schilling 1979b, 139; Liou-Gille 1998, 24; Champeaux 1998, 68; Galsterer 2001, 87. 31  Wissowa 1912, 62, 88–89. 32 Wissowa 1912, 18–38. 33 Ibid. 38–60 und 60–72. 34 Prescendi 2003, 7–8. 35 Wissowa 1912, 268–271, 317–327.

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stammen, und Festus überlieferte dazu einen Eintrag des Lexicons De significatu verborum: Peregrina sacra appelantur, quae aut euocatis dis in oppugnandis urbibus Romam sunt conata, aut quae ob quasdam religiones per pacem sunt petita, ut ex Phrygia Matris Magnae, ex Graecia Cereris, Epidauro Aesculapi: quae coluntur eorum more, a quibus sunt accepta.36 Fremde Rituale werden jene genannt, die entweder nach „Herausrufung“ der Götter aus belagerten Städten den Weg nach Rom gefunden haben, oder die aufgrund irgendwelcher religiöser Verpflichtungen im Frieden nach Rom geholt worden sind, wie etwa aus Phrygien die Rituale der Magna Mater, aus Griechenland die der Ceres, aus Epidauros die des Asklepios: diese werden nach dem Ritus derjenigen begangen, von denen sie übernommen worden sind.

Die peregrina sacra waren somit Rituale, die in Rom nach der Art des Herkunftsortes zelebriert wurden, Kybele auf „phrygische“, Ceres auf „griechische“ und Asklepios auf „epidaurische“ Weise. Diese „fremden“ Arten der Kultausübung erweisen sich jedoch als typisch römische Rituale, bei denen lediglich einzelne Wörter oder nur die Bezeichnung an den Herkunftsort des Kultes erinnern.37 Die Kategorie der sacra peregrina wird in antiken Texten in der Regel dann erwähnt, wenn die Autoren auf die römische Übernahme der Götter aus verschiedenen Orten des Imperiums verweisen und dadurch die Unterstützung Roms durch ein quasi universelles Pantheon inszenieren. Problematisch ist Wissowas Trennung zwischen den di indigetes und di novensides, weil sie aus einer einzelnen Angabe des Livius zu einem archaischen Ritual der devotio hervorgeht. Livius legt dem römischen Feldherrn Publius Decius Mus einen devotio-Spruch in den Mund. Durch das Aussprechen dieses speziellen Gelübdes weiht sich der Feldherr in einem schwierigen Moment während des Krieges den Göttern der Unterwelt und stürzt sich in den Kampf. Wie in Gebeten üblich, nennt Decius die Götter, die dem römischen Volk den Sieg gewähren sollen. Neben Ianus, der als Gott des Anfangs zuerst genannt wird, wendet sich der Feldherr an Iuppiter, Mars und Quirinus, die archaische Kapitolinische Trias, dann an die Kriegsgöttin Bellona, an die Laren, an divi novensides (oder novensiles) und di indigetes, di Manes (die Unterweltgötter der Verstorbenen) und an alle Götter, die Macht über die römischen Feinde haben.38 Bei Livius ist 36 Fest. 268. 37 Scheid 1995; 2005, 87–110; Šterbenc Erker 2013, 185–189. 38 Liv. 8, 9, 6.



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keine Dichotomie zwischen den divi novensides und di indigetes herauszulesen, wie Wissowa sie gesehen hat, sondern nur eine Aufzählung, die alle betreffenden Gottheiten nennt. Francesca Prescendi hat gezeigt, dass Wissowas Unterscheidung zwischen den „einheimischen“ und „fremden“ Göttern ein Resultat der romantischen Bemühung war, eine „reine“, „einheimische“ „genuin römische“ Religiosität zu finden, in welcher der römische „Volksgeist“ zu erkennen ist.39 In dieser evolutionistischen Perspektive sind Wissowa zufolge nur die ältesten römischen Götter, die bis zum 2. Punischen Krieg in Rom verehrt wurden, „rein römisch“. Wissowa beruft sich dabei auf die Angabe von Cassius Dio (2. Jh. n. Chr.) zur Verbannung der ägyptischen Kulte aus der urbs durch Augustus: καὶ τὰ μὲν ἱερὰ τὰ Αἰγύπτια οὐκ ἐσεδέξατο εἴσω τοῦ πωμηρίου, τῶν δὲ δὴ ναῶν πρόνοιαν ἐποιήσατο.40 „Und zum einen nahm er die ägyptischen Kulte nicht in den Bereich innerhalb des Pomeriums auf, zum anderen aber trug er Sorge für die Wiederherstellung der Tempel“, sowie auf Sueton, dem zufolge Augustus zwischen römischen und „fremden“ Kulten einen Unterschied gemacht habe: Peregrinarum caerimoniarum sicut ueteres ac praeceptas reuerentissime coluit, ita ceteras contemptui habuit.41 „Von den fremden Ritualen beging er die alten und seit langer Zeit veranstalteten ebenso ehrerbietig, wie er die übrigen verachtete“. Graf stellt richtig heraus, dass hinter dieser Unterscheidung das ideologische Programm der Augusteer steht, die zwischen „römischen“ und „griechischen“ Tugenden unterscheiden.42 Der Grund für Augustus’ Verbannung der „fremden“ Götter aus der urbs war also die ideologisch-politische Situation. So sei die Göttin Isis aus dem Pomerium verbannt worden, weil sie als Schutzgöttin Ägyptens galt, somit als Gegnerin Oktavians und des römischen Volks.43 Mary Beard, John North und Simon Price nehmen deshalb an, dass Augustus die Regel, nach der innerhalb des Pomerium nur die traditionell römischen Götter verehrt wurden, „erfunden“ habe.44 39 Prescendi 2003, 12–14. 40 Cass. Dio 53, 2, 4. 41  Suet. Aug., 93. 42 Graf 2003, 133: „. . . Cette dichotomie renvoie au projet augeustéen, celui de ­Virgile et d’Horace, de distinguer aussi précisément que possible entre les vertus des deux peuples“. 43 Scheid 1998, 57. 44 Beard / North / Price 1998, 180, “Such a gesture of respect for the old sacred boundary is akin to Augustus himself banning Egyptian rites within the pomerium—so ‘restoring’ (or maybe ‘inventing’) a principle that the worship of foreign gods should not occur within the sacred boundary of Rome.”

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Tatsächlich ist nach der augusteischen Zeit der Diskurs, der den Unterschied zwischen den „fremden“ und „römischen“ Kulten hervorhob, weit weniger präsent. Die Zuschreibung der „Fremdheit“, die an bestimmten Kulten haftete, erweist sich somit als eine diskursive Strategie augusteischer Autoren, die Augustus’ politischen Gegner Antonius und alle mit ihm verbundenen Kulte diffamiert. Ein prominentes Beispiel ist Livius’ Darstellung des Bacchanalienskandals von 186 v. Chr., in der der Bacchuskult als „fremd“ diffamiert wird.45 Graf wendet weiter ein, dass die von Wissowa postulierte Trennung eine Konstruktion ist, die griechische und etruskische Einflüsse auf die römische Religion nicht adäquat wahrnimmt.46 Hier stellt sich jedoch die Frage, inwiefern es überhaupt möglich ist, aus unseren Quellen herauszulesen, was „griechisch“ und „etruskisch“ gewesen sei, wenn diese beiden Kulturen die Religion Roms schon seit der Gründung der Stadt geprägt haben.47 3. Tempel und Kultstätten auf dem Aventin Auf dem Aventin wurden einige Tempel erbaut, denen antike Autoren eine „fremde“ Herkunft zuschreiben, da die Götter aus etruskischen und griechischen Städten Italiens nach Rom übernommen worden sind. Ein prominentes Beispiel ist die aedes Cereris. Römische Autoren behaupten, dass sich ein „Mutterheiligtum“ dieses Tempels in Henna auf Sizilien befand.48 Die aedes Cereris stand in Rom am Fuß des Hügels Aventin, in der Nähe des westlichen Teils des Circus Maximus, oberhalb der Startplätze für die Rennwagen (carceres).49 Laut der Legende gelobte der Dictator A. Postumius Albus Regillensis während des Krieges gegen die Volsker ein Heiligtum, Opfer und Spiele für die Trias Ceres, Liber und Libera.50 Antike Autoren helfen uns nicht wirklich weiter, wenn sie erläutern, warum der Tempel außerhalb der Stadt erbaut wurde. Vitruv weist in 45 Liv. 39, 16, 8–10; Šterbenc Erker 2013, 202–238. 46 Graf 2003. 47 S. u. 48 Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 108. 49 Dion. Hal. ant., 6, 94, 3; Platner 1929, 109–110; Richardson 1992, 80–81 nimmt an, dass die Fundamente unter der Kirche der S. Maria in Cosmedin, wo Le Bonniec das Heiligtum lokalisiert (vgl. Le Bonniec 1958, 266–276), eher zur Ara Maxima gehörten, und hält den Westhang des Aventin oberhalb des Circus Maximus für den wahrscheinlicheren Ort des Heiligtums; De Cazanove 1990, 375, Anm. 4; Coarelli 2000, 318. 50 Dion. Hal. ant., 6, 17, 2–4; Tac. ann., 2, 49.



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seinem bereits erwähnten Werk zur Baukunst, in dem er Vorschriften für die Anlage von Städten und Heiligtümern beschreibt, darauf hin, dass ein Ceresheiligtum außerhalb der Stadt (extra urbem) gebaut werden solle.51 Vitruv begründet den außerstädtischen Ort für die Göttin Ceres dadurch, dass ihr Heiligtum durch Gottesfurcht (religio) besonders rein gehalten und durch heilige Bräuche geschützt werden müsse. Die Wahl des Standortes hat Vorbilder in griechischen Städten. Der älteste Cereskult bestand aus in der Forschung als typisch römisch eingestuften Verehrungsformen am Fest der Cerialia im April, denen der flamen Cerialis vorstand.52 Im Laufe des 3. Jh. v. Chr. kamen weibliche „griechische“ Riten (Graeca sacra Cereris) hinzu, die die römischen Matronen des Ritter- und Senatorenstandes vollzogen.53 Ovids Nacherzählung des griechischen Mythos über den Korearaub war die Aitiologie der Cerialia im April sowie des „jährlichen Ceresrituals“ der Matronen (sacrum anniversarium Cereris) im Juni. Der Cereskult ist ein Beispiel für eine kreative Rezeption „griechischer“ Riten, die zu einer neuen römischen Verehrungsform geworden sind.54 Laut Überlieferung stand auf dem kleinen Aventin das Heiligtum von Bona Dea, der Göttin der Frauen und der Heilkunde.55 Die Namen der Göttin und der Priesterin waren latinisierte griechische Namen, Damia und damiatrix.56 Das Ritual für die Göttin Bona Dea vollzogen römische Matronen in der Nacht zusammen mit den Vestalinnen. Dass diese Rituale in der Nacht stattfanden, ist ein Merkmal der Andersartigkeit des Bona Dea-Kultes, da in der traditionellen römischen Religion Rituale hauptsächlich am Tag stattfanden.57 Einige der Götter, die aus den etruskischen und sabinischen Städten nach Rom übernommen worden waren, hatten auf dem Aventin ihre Tempel. Das Kultbild und der Kult der Göttin Juno Regina wurde im Jahr

51  Vitr. 1, 7, 2: Item Cereri extra urbem loco, quo nomine semper homines nisi per sacrificium necesse habebant adire; cum religione, caste sanctisque morisbus is locus debet tueri. „Ebenso wird (sc. der Tempel—D.Š.E.) für Ceres auf einem Platz außerhalb der Stadt gebaut, den Menschen stets aus keinerlei anderem Grund betreten, außer, wenn es zum Opfern notwendig ist; jener Ort muss durch religiösen Brauch und heilige Sitten als rein beschützt werden“. In Griechenland wurden Demeterheiligtümer ebenfalls außerhalb der Stadt auf einem Hügel erbaut, vgl. Graf 2003, 141. 52 Le Bonniec 1958; Fasti Esquilini zum 19. April CIL I2 315; Ov., fast., 4, 393ff. 53 Paul.-Fest. 86; Šterbenc Erker 2006, 120. 54 Spaeth 1996; Šterbenc Erker 2013, 80–139. 55 Coarelli 2000, 318–321. 56 Paul.-Fest. 86; Val. Max. praef., 1, 1, 1; Paul.-Fest. 60. 57 Ausführlich zum Bona Dea-Kult: Brouwer 1989.

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396 v. Chr. mit dem Ritual der evocatio aus der etruskischen Stadt Veji nach Rom übernommen.58 Zur üblichen Taktik der römischen Feldherren gehörte es, die Götter aus den belagerten Städten für die eigene Seite zu gewinnen, indem sie ihnen einen Kult in Rom versprachen. Ebenfalls durch die evocatio erfolgte die Übernahme des Vortumnus nach dem Triumph Roms über die etruskische Stadt Volsinii.59 Der römische Feldherr Camillus weihte Iuno Regina einen Tempel auf dem Aventin, wo sie den Kult nach „griechischem“ Brauch (Graeco ritu) erhielt.60 Dieser Kult war während des zweiten Punischen Krieges sehr eng mit dem Staatswohl verbunden, da die Göttin in die Expiationsrituale anlässlich der Prodigien einbezogen wurde.61 Die Göttin Minerva wurde nach Rom übersiedelt nachdem ihre sabinische Heimatstadt Falerii besiegt worden war und erhielt eine Kapelle auf dem Caelius, später einen Tempel auf dem Aventin, wo sie als Schirmherrin der Handwerker verehrt wurde.62 Das Heiligtum von Diana auf dem Aventin erinnerte an ihre Bedeutung als Göttin des Latinischen Bundes.63 Weiter wurde im Lucus Stimulae in der Nähe des Ceresheiligtums der „fremde“ Gott Bacchus verehrt, dessen Rituale laut Livius ein Grieche in den etruskischen Städten verbreitete. Von dort seien sie nach Rom gebracht worden.64 Ein zu allgemeiner Schluß wäre, dass auf dem Aventin Kulte weiblicher und „fremder“ Götter ausgeübt wurden. Römische Autoren nennen diejenigen Kulte „fremd“ oder „griechisch“, die aus griechischen (Henna im Fall des Cerekultes) und etruskischen (Veji, Volsinii) Städten kommen. Die Bezeichnung „griechisch“ scheint ein Sammelbegriff für all die verschiedenen kultischen Einflüsse zu sein. Die „Fremdheit“ der Kulte auf

58 Iuno Regina: Liv. 5, 52, 11: at etiam, tamquam ueterum religionum memores, et peregrinos deos transtulimus Romam et instituimus nouos. Iuno regina transuecta a Ueiis nuper in Auentino quam insigni ob excellens matronarum studium celebrique dedicata est die. „Aber sogar, wenn wir auch gleichsam im Gedächtnis die alten Religionen erhalten haben, haben wir sowohl fremde Götter nach Rom verlegt als auch neue eingesetzt. Die Juno Regina wurde aus Veji überführt, und doch, mit welch einem wegen des herausragenden Eifers der Matronen hervorstechenden und feierlichen Tag ist ihr Tempel neulich auf dem Aventinus geweiht worden“; vgl. Liv. 27, 37, 7; Coarelli 2000, 318. Zur Evokation der Götter während der Kriege vgl. Van Doren 1954; Rüpke 1990, 162–164. 59 Prop. 4, 2, 3f. 60 Liv. 5, 22, 7; Wissowa 1912, 188; Rosenberger 1998, 188. 61  Liv. 27, 37, 7–11. 62 Ov. fast., 3, 835–838, 843–844. 63 Varro, ling., 5, 43; Scheid 1985, 45: „. . . c’est le lieu des alliances avec les amis du peuple Romain, comme le montre le sanctuaire de Diane, siège de la ligue latine“; Gras 1987. 64 Liv. 39, 8, 4; Wissowa 1912, 245; Latte 1960, 270–271.



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dem Aventin ist haupsächlich als Verweis auf Roms kulturelle Kontakte oder Siege über die etruskischen und griechischen Städte zu verstehen. Die Heiligtümer auf dem Aventin wurden nicht in erster Linie wegen ihres „fremden“ Charakters außerhalb des Pomeriums erbaut, sondern um eine gewisse symbolische Distanz gegenüber den Göttern und den politischen Tätigkeiten der römischen Bürger in der sakralen Innenstadt zu markieren.65 Die Tempel auf dem Aventin spiegelten die jeweilige Religionspolitik der res publica wider. Die Religionspolitik veränderte sich über die Jahrhunderte und damit auch die literarischen Schilderungen der Tempel und ihrer Bedeutungen. Aufgrund der spärlichen textlichen Beleglage ist es jedoch unmöglich, für alle Tempel auf dem Aventin eine historisch differenzierte Interpretation ihrer politisch-religiösen Bedeutung in verschiedenen Perioden der römischen Geschichte zu formulieren. Zuletzt ist es angebracht, den Begriff „fremd“ in den Legenden über die Stadtgründung zu untersuchen. 4. „Fremde“ Einflüsse bei der Gründung Roms Die antiquarischen Legenden über die Gründung Roms bezeugen, dass das römische Konzept des Pomeriums auf die Einflüsse anderer Städte verweist. Die Erzählungen über die Anfänge Roms stellen einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Konstruktion der römischen Identität dar, hier sind die „fremden“ Einflüsse nicht zu übersehen.66 Antike Autoren schildern, wie Romulus Rom unter Anweisung etruskischer religiöser Spezialisten, Haruspices, gegründet habe.67 Zuerst hob er eine Grube (mundus) aus, in die seine Begleiter die ersten Feldfrüchte (fruges) und Erdschollen aus ihren italischen Geburtsstädten hineinwarfen.68 Dann spannte Romulus eine weiße Kuh und einen weißen Stier vor einen Pflug mit bronzener Klinge und zog damit die Linie, die nach „etruskischem“ Ritual markierte, wo die Stadtmauer verlaufen soll.69 Mehrere Autoren verweisen auf die „etruskische“ Art der Gründung Roms und der latinischen Städte. Varro schildert

65 Graf 2003, 143. 66 Zur Konstruktion der römischen Identität in den Vergangenheitsdarstellungen vgl. Prescendi 2000. 67 Plut. Romulus, 11, 1. 68 Die Grube sei in der Nähe des Comitium auf dem Forum Romanum gewesen, vgl. Plut. Romulus, 11, 1. Ovid nennt keinen genauen Ort, vgl. fast., 4, 821–823. 69 Varro, ling., 5, 143; Plut. Romulus, 11, 1–4, Tacitus beschreibt den Verlauf der Pomerium-Grenze, wie sie Romulus markierte, vgl. ann., 12, 24.

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den Ritus der Stadtgründung als „etruskischen“ Brauch (Etrusco ritu); Paulus Festus erwähnt gewisse „etruskische“ rituelle Bücher (libri rituales), in denen die religiösen Regeln für die Stadtgründung beschrieben waren.70 Bernadette Liou-Gille betont mit Recht, dass nicht auszumachen ist, was bei der rituellen Markierung des Pomeriums „etruskisch“ war.71 Liou-Gille versteht die antiken Erwähnungen der „etruskischen“ Komponenten als einen Hinweis auf den Einfluss, den die etruskischen Städte auf die Religion in Rom ausübten. Servius erwähnt einen weiteren durch „fremde“ Herkunft markierten Brauch bei der Stadtgründung. Der Kommentator Vergils zitiert aus den Origines Catos, dass ein Stadtgründer den cinctus Gabinus trug, eine nach der latinischen Stadt Gabii benannte und in besonderer Weise gegürtete Toga, deren Rückenteil über den Kopf gezogen wurde.72 Dies war die typisch römische Art, eine Toga während des Opferns zu tragen.73 Die Angaben über die „etruskischen“ und „latinischen“ Merkmale des Rituals der Stadtgründung und der typisch „römischen“ Opferungsweise weisen darauf hin, dass die Autoren, die die Anfänge Roms beschrieben, die römische kulturelle Identität als Zusammensetzung verschiedener ­benachbarter Traditionen verstanden. Da anhand archäologischer Funde die griechischen Einflüsse auf Rom seit der Gründung im 8. Jh. v. Chr. belegt sind, wird in der jüngsten Forschung angenommen, dass die Stadt seit ihrer Gründung immer wieder fremde Einflüsse aufgenommen hat.74 Dies bestätigen die antiquarischen Angaben über die „etruskischen“ Charakteristiken in den Erzählungen über die Gründung der urbs, die ebenfalls auf die Integration fremder ­Einflüsse hinweisen. 5. Fazit Eins der Ziele des vorliegenden Sammelbandes ist die Untersuchung der Korrelation zwischen der topographischen Struktur der Städte und der 70 Varro, ling., 5, 143, s. o.; Paul.-Fest. 358. 71  Liou-Gille 1998, 348, 355. Die Autorin nennt das „einen römischen Komplex“, ohne näher zu bestimmen, was antike Autoren mit Begriffen wie „etruskisch“ und „fremd“ beschreiben. Jacqueline Champeaux dagegen bezeichnet nicht den „etruskischen“ Brauch als eine Konstruktion, sondern nimmt an, dass die bereits vorhandenen italischen Elemente in den „etruskischen“ Brauch integriert wurden, vgl. Champeaux 1998, 69. 72 Serv. Aen., 5, 755. 73 Wissowa 1912, 417; Scheid 1995, 19. 74 Cornell 1995, 242ff; Graf 2003, 133, 144; Chirassi Colombo 1981, 409.



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sozialen, politisch-religiösen Organisation der Stadt. In diesem Aufsatz habe ich gezeigt, dass vor diesem Hintergrund das Pomerium das zentrale Konzept der räumlich-politischen Struktur des antiken Roms war. Nur innerhalb des Pomeriums, in der urbs, konnten römische Magistrate, die Inhaber ziviler Amtsgewalt, Auspizien, die göttliche Zustimmung ihrer Handlungen, einholen. Der Hügel Aventin, der sich innerhalb der Stadtmauer und zugleich außerhalb des Pomeriums befand, stand den Legenden zufolge für die ungünstigen Auspizien von Remus, der die Stadt Rom nicht gründen konnte, da die Götter seinem Bruder den Vorrang sicherten. Ein weiteres Ziel des Aufsatzes ist die Untersuchung, inwiefern die ethnischen Konstruktionen des stadtrömischen Raumes in der Antike und in der modernen Religionsgeschichte Roms vorgenommen wurden.75 Es hat sich gezeigt, dass die seit Wissowa oft erwähnten Annahmen, der Aventin sei ein Hügel der fremden Götter gewesen, zurückzuweisen sind. Bereits der Begriff „fremd“ erweist sich hier als problematisch. Die Bezeichnung „griechisch“ scheint ein Sammelbegriff für die ­verschiedenen kulturellen und kultischen Einflüsse auf die Kulte Roms zu sein. Die „Fremdheit“ der Kulte auf dem Aventin ist hauptsächlich als Verweis auf Roms Kontakte oder Siege über die etruskischen und griechischen Städte zu verstehen. Die Tempel „fremder“ Gottheiten erinnerten an die republikanische Geschichte der führenden politischen Rolle Roms in Latium und Italien. Die Bezeichnung der „Fremdheit“ eines Kultes oder dass ein Kult nach „griechischer“ oder „etruskischer“ Art zelebriert wurde, verdeutlicht das Bewußtsein antiker Autoren, dass die römische Identität aus verschiedenen benachbarten Traditionen zusammengesetzt war. Diese Idee ist ebenfalls präsent in den Legenden über die Stadtgründung, die davon zeugen, dass das „Fremde“ als das typisch Römische zu verstehen ist. Abkürzungen Fest. /Paul.-Fest. Lindsay, Wallace M. (19131), Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome, Leipzig. CIL Mommsen, Theodor (Hg.) (1862–1963), Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, Berlin.

75 S. o. die Fragestellung von Natalie N. May und Ulrike Steinert in der Introduction.

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Index Keywords access 13, 21, 82 n. 34, 86, 108, 127 n. 11, 132–133, 138, 159, 180–181, 189, 194, 198–199 access pattern(s) 180 activity area(s) 19 Achaemenid 108, 131, 181 Akkadian 14, 24, 61 n. 42, 79, 89, 95, 107, 130, 146 n. 99 alley(s) 128 n. 15, 131, 133 n. 47, 138–139, 176, 178, 180–181 animal(s) 57, 81, 126, 130 n. 33, 131, 136–137, 139, 142, 147 archaeology 1, 3, 5, 6 n. 11, 8, 171, 199 architectural communication theory 172 architecture 3, 5 n. 8, 9 n. 18, 16–18, 20–23, 25, 27 n. 71, 44–45, 47–48, 50, 59, 65, 67, 125 n. 5, 159, 192 n. 11, 194 domestic, see also houses, household 20 n. 51, 21–23 monumental 5 n. 8, 16–17, 25, 44–45, 47–48, 50, 59, 67, 134 army camps 11, 27 auspicia 230 baldachin 86 n. 58 bazaar 130 n. 26 bedroom 191, 199 beggars 137, 143 Bible, Biblical 3 n. 2, 8 n. 16, 15 n. 39, 23–24, 49, 77, 79, 89, 91, 93–95, 98, 100 n. 142, 107–108, 109 n. 196 block(s) 11 n. 25, 17 n. 43, 49–50, 178–182 block configuration 180 boundary/ies 22 n. 57, 45, 124 n. 4, 132, 159, 178, 180, 237 n. 44 building fabric 174 built environment 68, 172, 182 businesses 93 n. 103, 99, 124 n. 3, 129, 131 n. 35 bottom-up processes 17–18, 172 canal(s) 6, 18, 27, 133, 141 n. 80, 142 n. 82, 158, 178 cardinality 62 n. 43 categorical question 62 n. 43

Central Place Theory 9 n. 21 central planning 6, 174 Chicago School 8 n. 18, 18 city/cities 1–19, 20 n. 54, 21, 23–29, 44–47, 54–55, 57–58, 60, 63, 66, 67 n. 56, 68, 77, 83, 85 n. 56, 86–93, 95, 97, 99, 101–105, 108–109, 123, 124 n. 3, 125–129, 130 n. 26, 132–133, 135–137, 141–143, 147, 149, 151–152, 155–159, 171–175, 178, 180–181, 185, 189–191 Chinese 6, 18 foundation of 4 Hellenistic 10, 12 n. 29, 26 n. 67 Islamic 10, 12, 17 n. 43, 18, 125 n. 5 maps of 129 n. 24, 155 mental maps of 26 Near Eastern vs. Greek 4, 11, 14, 25, 28–29, 77 preindustrial 9 n. 20, 17–18 public functions of 29, 78, 106, 109 Roman 12, 14, 25, 29 Sassanian 10 semiotic models of 10 Syro-Hittite 1, 13, 123 words for 7 city gate(s) 1–2, 8, 13–14, 25, 77, 78 n. 7, 79–80, 81 n. 30, 83, 85–96, 99, 101–102, 104, 108–109, 127, 129–133, 155, 157–158 city layout 3, 6, 10, 15–16, 26, 29 and socio-political change 9 city size theory 172 city wall/Stadtmauer, see also Athen 7–8, 24 n. 62, 27, 127, 129, 132–134, 145, 150, 152, 156, 158, 229, 231 n. 15, 233–234, 241, 243 city-state, see also territorial states 1, 3, 13 n. 34, 15–16, 77 contrastive focus 61–63 cosmic imagery 10 court 95–96, 98, 109 n. 95, 146 n. 100, 155, 196 courtyard house 12, 21, 23, 27 n. 72, 124 n. 4 crossroads 94, 127, 134 n. 49, 139–140, 142 cubit 106, 181, 192

248

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deity/deities, see also god(s), Götter 49 n. 17, 57, 59, 80 n. 25, 86 n. 58, 98, 131, 133 n. 47, 134 n. 48, 136, 151, 152 democracy 12, 15, 109 demons 98, 128, 133 n. 44, 135, 137–140, 144–145 dirt 137, 141 disjoint ontic realms 44 dog 102, 126 n. 9, 136–137, 142, 146–147 dream interpretation 56 economy 14, 15, 26, 81 Elamite 83 elites 6, 16–18, 20 n. 54, 21 n. 55, 59, 124 n. 2 environment-behaviour theory 172 ethics of kingship 43 ethics of resource extraction 59 Etrusco ritu 242 execution 78, 100–104, 123 exposed children/foundlings 137, 146 extraction of raw materials 46, 49, 50 n. 21, 58–59, 67 family structure 19 festivals see also New Year’s Festival 13, 14 n. 36, 44 n. 6, 84, 89, 125, 128, 147, 150–151, 152 n. 121, 156, 159 fortifications, see also city wall 5 n. 8, 6, 7 n. 14, n. 15, 9 garbage and sewage disposal 141–142 gate space 13–14, 77–80, 85–86, 88–89, 93, 95–96, 98, 100, 104, 106, 109, 116 gate(s), see also city, market and palace gate(s) 1–2, 8, 13, 25–29, 77–109, 123, 125 n. 6, 127, 129 n. 25, 130–133, 134 n. 48–49, 135, 151 n. 117, 152, 155–156, 158–159, 195–196 gatehouse 78, 85, 88 gender relations 20–21 generative planning theory 172–173, 175 girls 128, 145, 149, 156 god(s), see also deity/deities, Götter 3, 24, 46, 49 n. 17, 54, 56, 79, 80, 81, 85, 87, 91, 95 n. 113, 96, 98, 100, 105, 106, 128, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142, 144, 148 n. 104, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157, 159 gossip 147–148, 149 n. 106–107, 159 Götter see also god(s), deity/deities 219, 230–231, 235–240, 243 Graeco ritu 240 grid-plan/gridiron 10, 11, 12 n. 29

harem, “harem” 196–199 Heilsherrscher 55, 56 n. 35 Hellenistic 10, 12, 28, 84, 129–130, 180–181, 185 heralds 136, 148, 158 heterarchy 16 hierarchy 5 n. 9, 16, 147 hinterland, see also Central Place Theory 5, 7, 16 historiola 56 Hittite 80 n. 24, 88, 99, 146 n. 101 homeless 65, 125 n. 6, 137, 143, 147 house 11 n. 25, 12, 17, 19–23, 27 nn. 71–72, 124, 125, 130, 131 n. 38, 141–142, 159, 160, 175, 177–182 house form 19–21 house omens 124 n. 4 household 12 n. 29, 17, 20–21, 22 n. 57, 23, 124, 143–145, 146 nn. 100–101, 173, 175, 189 hubris 48–49, 55 n. 31, 56 imprisoned king 67 impurity 139–142, 147 judgement see also (legal) judgement jury 93 n. 103, 95 jus ad bellum 47 jus in bellum 47 just war theory 43 n. 3, 44 Karte, kognitive, see also mental map 205, 224–225 Kassite 27, 79 n. 11, 81 n. 32, 89 n. 84, 91, 100, 152 n. 120 land-sale tablets 176 land-use pattern(s)/mode(s) 174, 177–180 language 2, 24, 43 n. 3, 189 Late Babylonian 81, 83, 105, 109, 134 n. 48, 141 n. 81, 146 n. 100, 151 nn. 117, 119 Levites 98 (legal) judgement 78, 95–97, 99, 148, 157 legal document(s) 78, 96, 108, 146 nn. 99–101, 151 n. 117, 157 n. 133, 177 litigation 13, 78, 85 n. 56, 90, 94–99 map(s), see also Karte 27, 54 n. 28, 58 geographical 205 mental 28, 129 n. 24 map of Nippur 27, 127, 152, 154, 155 mappa mundi 27 marginal spaces 2, 26



index

marginalisation 160 market 6, 14, 26, 79 n. 15, 91 n. 97, 105, 109 n. 195 market gate 104–106, 108, 133 n. 46 market place 14–15, 26, 29, 60, 78, 104, 129 Middle Assyrian 44 n. 6, 80, 84 n. 40, 86, 90, 150, 155, 157, 195 Middle Babylonian 89, 101, 107, 110 middle-range theory 172–173 militarism 49 namburbi-rituals 139 n. 75, 140 n. 78 negative space 125, 137 neighbourhood 2, 11 n. 25, 12 n. 30, 16–19, 20 n. 54, 25, 131 n. 39, 171, 173, 175 Neo-Assyrian 11, 22 n. 59, 27, 44, 46 n. 9, 81, 84, 87, 92, 95, 104, 107, 109–110, 125 n. 6, 127, 138 n. 67, 141, 191 n. 7 Neo-Babylonian 81, 107–108, 146, 180, 182 Neo-Babylonian housing 22 n. 59, 175–176 New Year’s Festival, see also akītu 44, 127 n. 11, 133, 134 n. 49, 151, 156 n. 126 normative urban theory 172 North American Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) 65 occupation 6, 16, 18, 159, 179 official see also functionaries 5, 13, 16, 95 n. 113, 100, 106–107, 144, 193, 194, 198 oikos, see also household 21 n. 56 Old Assyrian 15, 79, 85, 96–97, 100, 104, 109 Old Babylonian 7 n. 14, 11 n. 26, 18–19, 20 nn. 52, 54, 22–23, 28, 48, 51, 56, 61, 79, 81, 83, 96, 104, 106–107, 128 n. 18, 130, 132, 133 n. 46, 135 n. 56, 141 n. 81, 144, 145 n. 97, 150, 156–158, 180–181, 195 omen 51 n. 23, 52 n. 24, 55–56, 104, 123 n. 2, 124 n. 4, 126 n. 9, 130 n. 33, 137, 139 n. 71, 140 n. 79, 144 n. 95, 145 n. 97, 146 n. 100, 149 open space 12, 13, 29 n. 75, 91 n. 97, 129 n. 20 open-air shrine 133–134 outsiders 22, 24, 125, 137–138, 143, 145, 149, 159–160 ownership 2, 173, 177, 179, 181 palace 6, 9, 11–13, 14 n. 37, 15–16, 20 n. 54, 25, 45–46, 81, 83, 87, 103, 123 n. 2, 124 n. 3, 141 n. 80, 144, 149–150, 156, 157 n. 33, 189–199

249

palace functionaries 192–195, 197–198 palace gates 79–80, 83, 94 n. 107, 95, 107, 109 n. 195, 158, 195–196 pantheon 80, 132, 135, 137, 236 parcel(s) 174, 177–180 parcel/plot configurations 179 Parthian 180 party wall, see also amaštu 178 patrimonialism 28 pavement 128 n. 15, 141, 142 n. 83 perimeter(s) 178–179 perimeter marker(s) 178 physical microcosm 45 pig 102, 126 n. 9, 136 n. 56, 137, 142, 146 n. 100 plot(s) 176–179 plot pattern 174 polis 4, 15 n. 40, 21, 24, 203–204, 210 political organisation 1–2, 4, 15–16, 25 n. 65, 26, 28–29, 77 population density 5, 24 poverty 126 n. 9, 137, 144 n. 89, 146, 160 privacy 21, 23, 124, 148, 175, 198 private alley(s) 180 private space(s) 2, 17, 22 n. 57, 125 processions 29, 40, 80, 88, 89, 91, 109, 127, 133 nn. 44–45, 134 n. 48, 147, 150–152, 155–156, 159 prostitutes 130 n. 34, 139 n. 71, 144–145, 150 n. 109 public space 2, 13, 17, 19, 21 n. 56, 22 n. 57, 26, 28, 77, 109, 123–124, 125 n. 5, 136, 157 public street(s) 130, 137 n. 63, 178, 180–181 public street network 178 public toilets 141 quadrilateral(s)/quadrilateral shape  177 Raumkognition 25 n. 65, 205–206, 213, 217, 220, 222–227 reception theory 172 recycling 51, 54 religious topography 4, 26 residential area(s) 18–19, 22 n. 59, 171, 174–181 resource extraction 51, 60 Review Palace 191, 192 n. 11, 195–196 Roman housing 179 royal embodiment 43 royal family 19 n. 49, 193

250

index

royal palaces 9, 13, 14 n. 36, 156, 199 number of residents 193 number of functionaries 193 existence of second storey 193–194 royal triumph 147, 155 sacrum anniversarium Cereris 239 second storey 193–194 Seleucid 28, 81, 100 sin 48, 49 n. 17 social mobility 20–21 space syntax 172 spatial organisation, see also city/cities 6, 9, 13, 22, 25, 28, 124 n. 3, 159–160, 171, 173, 195 square 6, 13 n. 32, 57, 79, 108–109, 126 n. 9, 127, 128 n. 16, 129, 130 n. 27, 136 n. 59, 155 staircase 14 n. 36, 193–194 state 1, 3, 5 n. 8, 6, 8 n. 16, 10, 13 n. 34, 14–16, 26, 29, 43–45, 46 n. 9, 48, 53 n. 26, 55, 77, 189 state-oriented cosmogonies 43 Stadtmodell, mentales, see also city/cities, mental maps of 206–207, 210, 217, 219, 222–227 stele 83, 86–88, 208 n. 19, 214, 215, 221 streets/Straße 2, 6, 8, 11–14, 18–19, 24–25, 26, 28–29, 79 nn. 14–15, 91 n. 97, 94, 108–109, 123–152, 155, 156 n. 126, 157–160, 174, 178–181, 204, 208-210, 217–221 streets as playground for kids 128 as traffic routes 123, 126–127 dust and potsherds from the street used as materia magica in rituals  140–141 functions of 14, 25, 123 in connection with activities of daily life 124, 126 in connection with public activities 125, 147–148, 159 kinds of: processional street/road, broad street 13 n. 32, 125, 127, 130, 132, 133 n. 46, 134 nn. 48–49, 136 n. 62, 151, 155–156 liminal character of 137, 147, 159–160 symbolic meanings of 125 street daises 133, 135

street names 131–132, 133 n. 46, 134 n. 48, 140 n. 77 street peddlers 130–131 street shrines 132, 135 n. 56, 137 n. 63 Sumerian literature 46, 61, 65 swallow 64–66, 68 Syro-Hittite 1, 13, 123 territorial states 15–16, 45 tenured property, see also bīt ritti 181 throneroom 45 topicalization 50 nn. 19–20, 52–53, 60, 63 Topographie, urbane, see also urban topography 204, 207–208, 211–212, 215, 216 n. 52, 222–226, 229 trade 5, 6 n. 10, 14–15, 19 n. 48, 26, 45, 48 n. 16, 61, 129 n. 20, 130, 132 n. 39 triumph 84, 89, 91–92, 104, 147, 155, 240 unbuilt land 177–179 Unheilsherrscher 54–55, 56 n. 35 urban features 2, 27 n. 71 urban functions 9 urbanisation 15, 29 definitions of 3 theoretical concepts of 3 urbanism 2–3, 5 n. 9, 6 n. 12, 7 n. 15, 8, 9 n. 20, 11, 14, 23–24, 43, 67–68, 125 nn. 5, 7, 141, 171–173 indigenous attitudes toward 4, 23–25 urban micromorphology 176, 182 urban morphology 172–177, 182 urban topography 1–2, 15, 26 village 7 n. 14, 10, 16, 189 violence 2, 43, 59, 68 warfare 15 n. 40, 24, 43–44, 47, 48 n. 16, 61 White Obelisk 91 n. 91 witchcraft/sorcery 137–140, 141 n. 79, 148 n. 104 women 89, 136 n. 56, 140 n. 78, 141 n. 79, 143–146, 150, 155, 157, 197–199 segregation of 21–23 workshops 131 zones of signification 44



index

251

Personal and Divine Names Abishai, son of Zeruiah 92 Abraham 99 Adad 80, 85 n. 56, 98, 104, 136 n. 58 Ahab 105 Ahaz 91 Aḫu-duri 194 Ambos, Claus 67 Anaximander 27 Arav, Rami 25 Aristagoras 27 Aristogeiton 216 Aristophanes 204 n. 8, 217 Aristotle/Aristoteles 4, 25, 203–204, 208, 214 Assurbanipal/Ashurbanipal 84, 91, 103–105, 107, 142, 156 n. 126 Assurnasirpal II/Ashurnasirpal 4 n. 3, 11 n. 28, 45–46, 87, 101 Aššur 80, 83, 85–87, 90 n. 90, 97–98, 103, 105, 127 n. 11, 156 Aššur-nādin-apli 86 Aššur-nērārī V 145 n. 97 Aya 80 Baker, Heather vii, 2, 17, 20, 28, 129 Battini-Villard, Laura 19 n. 49, 20 n. 54, 22 Bēl 98 Bēl-ibni 107 Binford, Lewis 172 Boaz 99 Brinkman, John A. 173 Brusasco, Paolo 20–23 Cato 242 Childe, Gordon 2, 4–5 Darius 46 David 88–89, 91–92, 108–109 Denu-amur 194 Ea 80, 127 Elisha 105–106 Englund, Robert K. 47 n. 11, 59 Enlil 52 n. 23, 54, 57, 58 n. 39, 80 Enmerkar 25, 47–49, 58–63, 66–68 Ennius 233 n. 22 Epikrates 212 Eratosthenes 27, 27 n. 68 Ereshkigal/Ereškigal 62 n. 43 Erišum 85, 97–98 Esarhaddon 87, 101 n. 147, 102–103, 128 n. 16, 156, 191, 192 n. 11, 196 Evil God 133, 135, 137

Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis 2–3 Galatura 62 n. 43 Gellius 233–234 George, Andrew 28 n. 73, 84, 87, 90 nn. 85, 94, 133, 134 n. 49 Gudea 27, 46, 49–53, 55, 60, 62 n. 43 Gula 90–91 Hakim, Besim Selim 175 Hammor 93 Hammurabi 44, 81, 105 Harmodios 216, 216 n. 54 Hecateus of Miletus 27 Heinz, Marlies 4, 9, 18 n. 48, 25 Herodotus 27 Hezekiah 7 n. 14, 92 Hieronymos 207 Hippodamus of Miletus/Hippodamos von Milet 11, 12, 12 n. 29, 25, 204, 204 n. 5 Hippothales 207 Ibn Khaldun 24 n. 63 Idī-Ištar 97 Illat 80, 158 n. 134 Inanna/Inana 58 n. 39, 62 n. 43, 128, 135 n. 150, 144, 145 n. 97 Inshushinak/Inšušinak 83 Irikibi 62 Irtai, the Gittite 92 Ishtar/Ištar, see also Inanna/Inana 80, 84, 89–90, 97, 103 n. 161, 104 n. 164, 133–134, 135 n. 50, 142 n. 82, 145 n. 97, 156 Išum 136 Jehosaphat 91 Jesus 109 Joab 92 Johnson, J. Cale 2, 15, 24 Keith, Kathryn 9, 17–19 Kertai, David 2, 13, 20, 23 Kūbu 133, 135, 140 n. 77 Kurbilu 62 Kurgara 62 n. 43 Lamaštu 135 Lamma-ša6–ga 136 Lincoln, Bruce 43–45 Liverani, Mario 17, 46 Lugal(g)irra 133, 134 n. 48, 136 n. 57 Lugal-tilla 136 n. 59

252

index

Lugalzagesi 48 n. 17 Lynch, Kevin 26, 204–206, 217 n. 56 Mallowan, Max 131 Manzât 133 Marduk 24 n. 61, 80, 100, 107, 132–133, 134 n. 48, 135 n. 50, 149 n. 105, 151 Marduk-apla-iddina 101 Margueron, Jean-Claude 193 May, Natalie N. 2, 8, 13, 13 nn. 32, 35, 14 25, 26 n. 66, 67 n. 57, 68 n. 58, 77, 77 nn. 1, 5, 79 nn. 13-14, 94 n. 110, 109, 123, 124 n. 3, 125 n. 6, 126 n. 7, 129 n. 25, 158 n. 134, 159 n. 141, 173 n. 12, 189, 203 n. 4, 207 n. 13, 226, 76, 229 n. 5, 243 n. 75 Merton, Robert K. 172 Meslamtaea 133, 134 n. 48 Michalowski, Piotr 48 Mori, Lucia 176 Mumford, Lewis 5 Mušēzib-Marduk 107 Nabû 90, 133 n. 46, 151 n. 117 Nabû-šum-ēreš 103 Naomi 99 Naram-Sin 47–49, 51–58, 66 Nebi Yunus 135 n. 51, 137 n. 62 Nebuchadnezzar 90 Nergal 136 nn. 58–59 Ningirsu 49 n. 17, 51 Ningišzida 84, 133 n. 46, 151 n. 113 Ninlil 80 Ninmuga 136 Ninurta 85 n. 56, 87, 118, 135, 152, 155 Ninurta-tukultī-Aššur 83 Novák, Mirko 10, 12 n. 29, 25 Ovid 233, 233 n. 23, 239, 241 n. 68 Pfälzner, Peter 20 n. 54, 22 nn. 59–60 Pisisris 88 Platon 203, 207, 210, 210 n. 28, 212, 213, 218 Plutarch 233, 233 nn. 22–23 Preusser, Conrad 141 Remus 232–234, 243 Rib-Adda 67–68 Romulus 230, 233–234, 241, 241 n. 69 Ruth 99 Samsuiluna 106 Sargon II 40–41, 49 n. 17, 102 n. 157, 119 Sargon of Akkade 56 n. 35 Saul 89

Sebittu (Divine Heptad) 135 n. 51 Seneca 232–233 Sennacherib 7 n. 14, 11 n. 27, 84 n. 40, 92, 102, 117, 125 n. 5, 127 n. 11, 136 n. 62, 156, 195 Seven Asakku-demons 135 Shalmaneser III 87, 101 n. 149, 121, 135 n. 51 Shamash/Šamaš 56, 80, 83–84, 85 n. 56, 87, 95–96, 104, 106, 148 n. 104, 149 n. 106 Sharkalisharri 52 Sichem 93 Sîn-iddinam 83 Sisig/Zaqiqu 56 Sjoberg, Gideon 9 n. 20, 18 Smith, Michael E. 172–175 Sokrates 207 n. 14, 213, 218, 218 n. 60 Steinert, Ulrike 2, 8, 13, 14, 24, 25, 26 n. 66, 66 n. 51, 67 n. 57, 68 n. 58, 77, 77 nn. 1, 5, 109, 123, 124 n. 3, 125 n. 6, 126 n. 7, 129 n. 25, 159 n. 141, 173 n. 12, 189, 203 n. 4, 207 n. 13, 226, 76, 229 n. 5, 243 n. 75 Stenger, Jan 1, 2, 26, 27, 123, 129 n. 24 Stone, Elisabeth 3, 16 n. 42, 20 n. 54 Sueton 237 Šamaš-ḫaṣir 144 Šamḫat 145 Šerua 80, 83 Šterbenc Erker, Darja 1, 2, 3, 4, 26, 147 n. 103 Šullat 136 n. 58 Teumman 84 n. 43, 91, 103–104, 103 n. 61, 118 Tiglath-Pileser III 66 n. 51, 87, 101 Trigger, Bruce 10, 15 Uabu 102–103 Uraš 80, 151 n. 117 Urgula 62 Ur-Zababa 56 n. 35 Vergil 242 Vitruv 231, 238–239 Weber, Max 2, 4, 77 Whitehand, Jeremy 175 Winter, Irene 45 Woolley, Leonard 131 Xenophon 218, 218 n. 62 Zababa 80 Zeus 211 n. 32, 212, 215 n. 48, 225 Zinû 144



index

253

Geographical and Place Names akītu-house 127 n. 11, 133 n. 45, 134 n. 48, 151, 156 n. 126 Akkade 55, 57–58 Alaça Höyük 88 al-Amarna/Amarna/Tell al-Amarna  8 n. 15, 9 n. 20, 11 n. 25, 22 n. 58, 67–68 Anatolia 15, 59, 88 Aratta 47, 58–60, 63, 65–66 Arbela 84, 89, 91, 103, 104 n. 164 Ashkelon 79 Assur 13 n. 32, 44 n. 6, 80, 83, 87, 90, 94–97, 109, 127 n. 11, 128 n. 15, 132 n. 39, 136 n. 57, 141, 142 n. 83, 145 n. 97, 152 n. 120, 156 n. 126, 158 n. 134, 172, 192 Assyria 10, 14 n. 37, 46 n. 9, 81, 84–85, 91, 101–105, 150 n. 109, 156 Athen/Athens 1, 3, 10, 11, 21 n. 56, 26, 203 n. 3, 204, 205–207, 211 nn. 31–32, 212, 212 n. 36, 214, 216, 218 n. 60, 223, 225–226 Agora 12, 14, 25, 29 n. 75, 109, 129, 204 n. 8, 208–210, 212–217, 219–220, 221 n. 74, 222–226 Akropolis 209 n. 25, 211 n. 32, 212–213, 219–220, 221 n. 73, 223, 225 Areopag 215, 223, 225 Buleuterion 212–216, 222, 225 Dipylon 219 Dromos 219 Eleusinion 212 n. 35, 219 Horoi 208–210, 211 n. 31 Ilissos 211, 218 Anm. 60 Kerameikos 210, 211 nn. 28, 31, 222 Kynosarges 211 Lykeion 207, 213, 218 Odeion 213 Pnyx 211 n. 28, 225 Stadtmauer 207–208, 211, 218 Stoa Basileios 213–214, 224, 226 Tempel des olympischen Zeus  211 n. 32, 212, 225 Theseion 212, 216, 225 Tholos 208, 212 n. 34, 213, 225 Aventine/Aventin 4, 26, 147 n. 103, 229, 231–235, 238–241, 243 Babylon 24 n. 61, 28, 28 n. 73, 79 n. 11, 80, 84, 87, 90 n. 85, 91, 94, 96, 102, 105, 108, 126, 129, 132–133, 134 nn. 48–49, 135, 142 nn. 82–83, 143, 151, 151 n. 117, 152 n. 120, 155, 171, 178, 180

Babylonia 2, 10, 13, 14 n. 37, 27–28, 105, 125 n. 6, 129 n. 22, 132 n. 42, 150 n. 109, 174, 179 Babylon, Merkes 28, 134 n. 49, 142 n. 82, 178, 180 Bahrain 59 Bīt-Amukkāni 105 Boğazköy (Hattuša) 88 Borsippa 90 n. 85, 151 n. 119 Broad street of the people from Isin 132 Bunene Street 136 n. 56 Byblos 67 Cedar Mountain 49–50 Crete 9 n. 19, 20 n. 54, 22 n. 57 Damascus 79 Dan, see also Tel Dan 86, 88, 95 n. 113 Deir el-Medina 11 n. 25, 20 n. 52, 22 n. 58 Dilbat 105 Dur-Katlimmu 13 n. 33 Dur-Sharruken, Dūr-Šarrukēn 4, 11, 87, 191 Eanna 96 Ebla 88 Egalmaḫ 155 Egypt 11, 12 n. 30, 16, 18 n. 48, 20 n. 52, 22 n. 58, 27 n. 70, 102 Ekur 49, 51–54, 55 n. 31, 56–59, 67 Emar 23 n. 60, 146 n. 101, 177 Eridu quarter 133 nn. 44, 46 E-sagil/Esagila 80 n. 16, 90, 90 n. 85, 91, 100, 132 n. 42, 133, 134 n. 48, 151 Exalted Gate 127 E-zida 90 n. 85 Forum Romanum 235, 241 n. 68 Gate of the Impure (Women) 152 Greece/Griechenland 1, 8, 10, 12, 15 n. 40, 20 n. 52, 23, 27–28, 203–204, 206, 236, 239 n. 51 Hazor 86, 108 Illatu Gate 158 n. 134 Isin 47, 61, 67 n. 56, 127, 131–132, 155 Israel 1, 8 n. 17, 81, 86, 88–89, 91, 98, 104, 108–109

254

index

Ištar Gate 80, 84, 90, 133 n. 46, 134 n. 49, 186 Ištar Street 136 n. 56 Jaffo 86 Jerusalem 24, 81, 85, 92–93, 108, 109 n. 196 Judah 7 n. 14, 81, 85–86, 91 Kahun 11 n. 25, 12 n. 29 Kalhu/Calah/Kalḫu 4, 87, 194 Kalḫu Northwest Palace 40 Kaneš 96–97 Kār-Šarrukēn 190–191 Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta 4, 15 Khorsabad, see also Dur-Sharruken, Dūr-Šarrukēn 87 Kimash 49, 53 Kouyunjik 135 n. 51, 137 n. 62, 156 Kültepe, see also Kaneš 96 Kutha 105, 143 Lamaštu Street 135 n. 56 Larsa 19 nn. 48–49, 23 n. 60, 47, 61, 83, 131 Levant 13, 20 n. 54, 25, 77, 88 Magan 59 Mahanaim 91 Mahpelah 99 Main Street of Sippar 130, 157 Main Street of Ur 157 Mari 4 n. 5, 7 n. 14, 8 n. 16 Marhaši 57 Market Gate 104–106, 108, 133 n. 46 Mashkan-Shapir 14 n. 38, 19 Megiddo 86, 108 Merkes quarter, see also Babylon, Merkes 28, 134 n. 49, 142 n. 82, 178, 180 Mesopotamia 4, 8 nn. 16–17, 11–13, 14 n. 37, 15, 16 nn. 41–42, 20 nn. 51, 54, 22, 25, 27, 28 n. 73, 44, 48 n. 17, 59, 77, 80–81, 88–89, 94–95, 100, 106, 108–109, 123–124, 130 n. 26, 134 n. 49, 141, 142 n. 84, 144 n. 95, 150 n. 112, 159–160, 171, 173 Nineveh 4, 11 n. 27, 89, 102, 103, 125 n. 5, 131 n. 39, 135 n. 51, 136 n. 62, 156, 171, 191, 192 n. 11, 195 Review Palace (bēt kutalli/ekal māšarti) 191, 192 n. 11, 194 n. 18, 195–196 Nippur 19n n. 48–49, 20 n. 54, 27, 47, 48 n. 13, 51, 52 n. 24, 54, 57–58, 80,

81 n. 32, 89, 90 n. 85, 91, 127, 131 n. 39, 140 n. 78, 151 n. 118, 152, 155 n. 123, 157 Nuzi 7 n. 14, 13, 80–81, 94 n. 111, 96, 100, 106–107, 109, 132, 143, 144 n. 89, 146 n. 100, 157 n. 133, 158 n. 134 Oman, see also Magan 59 Panops 207, 213, 218 Persia 59 Pomerium 1, 229–237, 241–243 Qatna 85 n. 52, 91 n. 96 ribītu of Nineveh 156 Rome/Rom 1–2, 4, 11, 26, 27 n. 70, 147 n. 103, 229–230, 232–233, 236–243 Samaria 4, 11, 88, 91, 101 n. 148, 105–106, 108 Sippar 96, 106, 108, 130, 132, 135 n. 56, 143, 157 Sippar-rabûm 135 n. 56 Square of Sippar-ṣēri 130 n. 28 Street of the Divine Heptad 134 n. 48, 136 n. 56 Street of the ḫubūru-vat makers 131 Thebes/Theben 3, 8 n. 16 Til Barsip 87 Tillazida Street 127 Tirtakka 87 Topkapı Palace 199 Troy/Troja 3, 8 n. 16 Tuttul 91 n. 96 TE.EKI quarter 132 Tell-Ahmar, see also Til Barsip 87 Tell ed-Dēr 134 n. 49 Tell Mardikh, see also Ebla 88 Tell Munbāqa 132 n. 39 Ugarit 20 n. 54, 22 n. 59, 23 n. 60, 146 n. 101 Ur 19 n. 48–49, 21, 22 n. 59, 23, 47, 54 n. 28, 61–62, 81–82, 92, 107, 131, 135 n. 54, 141 n. 81, 143 n. 87, 151 n. 118, 157 Ur, Old Babylonian 20 n. 52 Uraš Gate 80, 133 n. 46, 151 n. 117 Urkesh 13 n. 35, 14 n. 36 Uruk 8 n. 16, 24 n. 62, 81, 83, 96, 105, 107, 108, 141, 151 nn. 118–119, 158 Adad Temple district 185–187 Hellenistic 84, 130, 180–181 Lugalirra Temple district 188 Versailles 199



index

255

Sources 1 Chronicles: 1 Chronicles 26:12 108 1 Kings: 1 Kgs 5:6–11 15 n. 39 1 Kgs 7:16-39 82 1 Kings 8:64 81 n. 28 1 Kgs 20:34 79 1 Kgs 22:10 91 2 Chronicles: 2 Chronicles 24:8–9 81 2 Chron 32:6 79 n. 14, 92 2 Kings: 2 Kgs 7:1 105 2 Kings 7:3 101 n. 148 2 Kings 7:17 108 2 Kings 10:8 101 2 Kgs 23:8 86, 107 2 Kgs 23:11 85 2 Samuel: 2 Sam 1:20 79 2 Sam 18:1–5 91 2 Sam 18:6, 7 89 2 Sam 19:9 92 Agora: Agora 16, 73 see also SEG 12, 87, 22–27 215 n. 50 Agora 16, 73 see also SEG 12.87.25f. 213 n. 38 Agora 16, 225.19f. 215 n. 48 Agora 19, 23f. (H10) 209 n. 21 Agora 19, 27 (H25) 208 n. 19 Agora 19, 28 (H30 und 31) 211 n. 31 Agora 19, 29 (H32–35) 209 n. 24 Agora 19, 29 (H34) 220 n. 67 Agora 19, 75 (P4, Z. 10) 221 n. 74 Agora 19, 114 (P26, Z. 453f.) 219 n. 66 Agora 19, 177f. (L4b, Z. 11–18)  221 n. 74 Aischinus: Aischin. Ctes. 13 212 n. 36 Aischin. Ctes. 39 215 n. 47 Aischin. Ctes. 67 213 n. 39 Aischin. Ctes. 176 209 n. 23 Aischin. Tim. 92 213 n. 38 AMT 95, 2 = BAM 471 iii 14’ 139 n. 76 An = Anu ša amēli 136 n. 58 An = Anum 134 n. 50, 136 n. 59 ana ittišu III iii 28–33 146 n. 100 VII ii 23–25 144 n. 95 iii 11f. 146 n. 100 iv 11f. 146 n. 101 Andokides: And. 1,6 211 n. 29 And. 1,16 212 n. 35 And. 1,42 209 n. 25 And. 1,45 210 n. 28, 212 n. 34 And. 1,71 209 n. 22 And. 1,76 209 n. 22 And. 1,82 213 n. 41 And. 1,83 215 n. 47

And. 1,83–85 214 n. 43 And. 1,95 213 n. 38 , 214 n. 44 And. 1,111 212 n. 35 Antiphon: Antiph. 6, 39 212 n. 35 Antiph. 6, 45 213 n. 38, 215 n. 49 Aristophanes: Aristoph. Av. 992–1020 204 n. 8 Aristoph. Ach. 17–22 211, n. 28 Aristoph. Eccl. 681–683 216 n. 54 Aristoph. Eccl. 684f. 213 n. 41 Aristoph. Lys. 631–634 216 n. 54 Aristoph. Thesm. 100 218 n. 59 Aristotle/Aristoteles: Aristot. Ath. pol. 7,1f. 213 n 41 Aristot. Ath. pol. 18,3 209 n. 25 Aristot. Ath. pol. 21 204 n. 7 Aristot. Ath. pol. 50,2 208 n. 16 Aristot. Ath. pol. 53,4 213 n. 38, 214 n. 46 Aristot. Ath. pol. 57,4 209 n. 23 Aristot. pol. 7, 11f. 25, 203 n. 4, 204 n. 5 Aristot. pol. 2, 2, 2 4 Aristot. pol. 3, 1, 12 4 Assyrian Dream Book 56 Babylonian Theodicy 130 n. 33, 143 Bilgames and Huwawa 158 BiMes 24 19 186 BiMes 24 24 185 BiMes 24 25 182, 188 BiMes 24 27 186 BiMes 24 46 187 BRM 2 28 186 bīt mēseri 136 n. 57 bīt rimki 84 bīt salāʾ mê ritual 67 BM 33206+ iii 1 134 n. 48 BM 34878 rev. // BM 77236: 2f. 133 n. 46 BM 41138: 5’ 133 n. 46 BMS 13: 7–9 149 n. 105 Borger 1956: Ep.22 192 n. 13 Canonical Kagal 80 nn. 17–18 Cassius Dio: Cass. Dio 53, 2, 4 237 n. 40 Cicero: Cic. rep. 2, 33, 57 Cic. rep. 2, 34, 59 232 n. 21 Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 108 238 n. 48 Codex Hammurabi 44 CT 16, 25 i 42ff. 138 n. 68 CT 16, 15 v 21f. 136 n. 58 CT 16, 49: 302f. 136 n. 58 CT 17, 1: 4ff. 139 n. 73

256

index

CT 24, 33 v 32–36 // KAV 145 rev. 1–4 135 n. 50 CT 38, 45 126 n. 9 CT 38, 49 126 n. 9 CT 39, 45 30 144 n. 95 CT 45, 18: 14ff. 157 n. 32 Curse of Agade 25 n. 65, 47–48, 51–53, 56–60, 63, 126 n. 9, 150 n. 111 12–22 57, 150 n. 111 129–130 48 n. 13 136–141 52, 63 Cuthean Legend 48–49, 67 Cylinders of Gudea 49–50, 62 n. 53 Cyl. A iv 14–15 62 n. 43 Cyl. A xv 22, xv 34, xvi 6, xvi 17–21 50 Dinarchus/Deinarch: Deinarch. 1,86  214 n. 45 Deller / Fales / Jakob-Rost 1995, No.75 192 n. 16 Demosthenes: Demosth. or. 18, 129 212 n. 36 Demosth. or. 24, 23 215 n. 47 Deuteronomy: Deut 17:5 104 Deut 17:2–9 98 Deut 21:18–22 93 n. 103, 95 n. 115, 104 Diagnostic Handbook 126 n. 9, 127 n. 10, 131 n. 34 Diodorus Siculus: Diod. 20, 46, 1f. 217 n. 55 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: Dion. Hal. ant. 6, 17, 2–4 238 n. 50 6, 45, 3 232 n. 21 6, 94, 3 238 n. 49 Enki and Ninhursaga 170–171 63 n. 43 Enki and the World Order 212–218  24 n. 61; 204, 207, 53 n. 26 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 25  47–49, 52 n. 25, 59–63, 66–68 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 115–120, 47–48, 60, 64, 66 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 124 52 n. 25 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 196 52 n. 25 Ennius: Enn., ann. 75(80) 233 n. 22 Enuma Elish/Enūma eliš 44 V 125–128 94 VI 55ff. 24 n. 61 Esther: Esth 4:6 79 n. 13 Ezekiel: 108 n. 192 Ezek 44:1–2 92 n. 100 Ezek 44:1–3 82, 82 n. 34 Ezek 44:3 92

Ezek 46:2–12 82 Ezek 46:2, 12 82 n. 34 Fest. 268 236 n. 36 Gellius: Gell. 13, 14, 1 232 n. 12, 232 n. 18 Gell. 13, 14, 3 234 n. 25 Gell. 13, 14, 4  233 n. 24 Gell. 13, 14, 7 235 n. 29 Genesis: Gen. 34: 20, 21 93 Gen 23: esp. 10–11 99, 100 n. 142, Gilgamesh Epic 8 n. 16, 24 n. 62, 142, 145, 158 Gilgamesh Epic III 208f. 158 VII 106ff. 145 n. 97 XII 154 142 Götteradressbuch 80 n. 16, 90, 158 n. 134 Gudea Statue B 27, 49 Hammurapi’s Laws §250 126 n. 9 Haremserlasse 195 Herodotus/Herodot: Hdt. 4:42 Hdt. 5:49 27 Heidel 1956 192 nn. 9, 12 Himerios: Himerios or. 47,12 219 n. 65 IG I3 507 and 509 219 n. 64 IG I3 1092bis 220 n. 68 IG I3 1093–1094, 1094bis 1097–1099  209 n. 24 IG I3 1095–1096 219 n. 66 IG I3, 1109–1110 210 n. 27 IG I3, 84,34–37 221 n. 72 IG II2, 120.25f and IG II2, 298.4f. 213 n. 38 IG II2, 140,35 214 n. 45 IG II2, 450 fr. b 3–12 216 n. 53 IG II2, 1241,9–12 and IG II2 1579 221 n. 74 IG II2 2639 220 n. 70 Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld 62 n. 43 Innin šagurra 144 Isaeus/Isaios: Isaios 5,26 210 n. 28 Isaios 6,20 210 n. 28, 213 n. 42 Isaios 8,35 212 n. 35 ITT 5, 6863 62 IVR 56 i 2 135 n. 53 Jeremiah: Jer 38: 7 93, 95 n. 113 Job: Job 5: 10 79 n. 15 K. 236 126 n. 9 K. 2259 Rev. 7 126 n. 9 K. 3725 126 n. 9 K. 4026 rev. 13 146 n. 100 K. 8063+ 126 n. 9



index

Kagal 80 n. 16 KAR 142 obv. ii 1–10 133 n. 44, 135 KAR 169 rev. ii 51 136 n. 57 KAV 42 iii 37 94 n. 110, 158 n. 134 Livius: Liv. 1, 7, 2 233 n. 22 Liv. 2, 32, 4 232 n. 21 Liv. 2, 33, 3 232 n. 21 Liv. 3, 55, 6–7 234 n. 28; Liv. 5, 22, 7 240 n. 60 Liv. 5, 52, 2 230 n. 10 Liv. 5, 52, 11 240 n. 58 Liv. 8, 9, 6 236 n. 38 Liv. 27, 37, 7 240 n. 58 Liv. 27, 37, 7–11 240 n. 61 Liv. 39, 8, 4 240 n. 64 Liv. 39, 16, 8–10 238 n. 45 Ludlul (bēl nemēqi) 67 Luke 19:29–38 109 n. 196 Luke 19:45 109 n. 195 Lycurgus/Lykurg: Lykurg. 1,66 214, n. 45 Lykurg. 51 216 n. 54 Map of Nippur 27, 127, 152 Maqlû III 1ff. 138 III 136ff. 141 n. 79 VII 121f. 139 n. 71 VII 133–135 139, 140 n. 76 VII 134–135 139 n. 75 IX 56f. 141 n. 79 Mark 11:1–15 109 n. 196 Mark 11:15–17 109 n. 195 Matthew: Matt. 21:1–10 109 n. 196 Matt. 21:12–13 109 n. 195 Middle Assyrian Laws §§ 12, 14 150 n. 110 40 150 n. 9 55 156 n. 110 NBC 9112 146 n. 100 ND 2803 (Parker 1961, 55–61) 198 n. 35 Nebi Yunis inscription 102 n. 154 Nehemiah: Neh 8:3 79 n. 13–14 Neh 8:16 79 n. 14 Neh 8:2–3 93 Ninisina’s Journey to Nippur (KAR 15+16) 155 Ninurta’s Return to Nippur 152 n. 121 Ovidius/Ovid: Ov. fast. 3, 835–838  240 n. 62 Ov. fast. 3, 843–4 240 n. 62 Ov. fast. 4, 393ff. 239 n. 52 Ov. fast. 4, 812–814 233 n. 22 Ov. fast. 4, 821–823 241 n. 68 Ov. fast. 4, 840–844 233 n. 23

257

Pausanius: Paus. 1,3,5 215 n. 49 Paus. 1,5,1 214 n. 46 Paus. 1,8,5 217 n. 55 Paus. 1,18,1 212 n. 34 Paul.-Fest. 60 239 n. 56 86 239 nn. 53, 56 358 242 n. 70 PBS 10/2, 18 obv. 37’ // K. 3360+ obv. 6’ 140 n. 77, 148 n. 104 Plato/Platon: Plat. Charm. 153a 212 n. 35 Plat. Euthyphr. 2a 213 n. 41 Plat. Lys. 203a 207 n. 14, 213 n. 42 Plat. leg. 915d 210 n. 26 Plat. Mx. 234a 210 n. 28 Plat. Mx. 234a/b 213 n. 38 Plat. Parm. 126a 210 n. 28 Plat. Parm. 127b 208 n. 15 Plat. Parm. 127c 211 n. 28 Plat. Phaid. 59d 213 n. 40 Plat. Phaidr. 227a 208 n. 15, 218 n. 60 Plat. Phaidr. 227b 212 n. 35 Plat. Phaidr. 229a 218 n. 60. Plat. Tht. 142a 211 n. 28 Plat. Tht. 210d 213 n. 41 Plutarch: Plut. Rom., 9, 4 233 nn. 22–23 10, 1 233 n. 23 11, 1 241 nn. 67–68 11, 1–4 241 nn. 69 Poem of the Righteous Sufferer Tablet I 149 Pollux 1,220; 9, 19 217 n. 58 Poor Man of Nippur 129 Popular Sayings lines r. 1–2, and 8–10 95 Propertius/Properz Prop. 4, 2, 3f. 240 n. 59 Proto-Kagal 80 n. 16 Proverb Collection 1.18 66 Proverb Collection 11 56 n. 36 Proverb Collection 18 56 n. 36 Proverb Collection 2.40 63 n. 43 Proverbs: Prov 1:20–21 94 Prov 8:26 79 n. 15 Prov 31:23 93, 95 n. 115 Psalms: Ps 144:13 79 n. 15 Pushkin Museum Elegies 66 n. 53 RIAA2 299 185 RIMA 0.87.1 ii 22 66 n. 51 RIMA 0.87.1 iii 68–69 66 n. 51 Ruth: Ruth 4:1–11 93 n. 103, 94, 95 n. 115 Ruth 4:11–12 99, 100 n. 142 Ruth 4:1–6 99 Ruth (4:9–11) 99 SAA 1, 150 192 n. 14 SAA 1, 203 191 n. 6

258

index

SAA 4, 142 196 n. 25 SAA 5, 206 190 n. 1 SAA 7, 21 194 n. 19 SAA 10, 263 191 n. 8 SAA 10, 52 196 n. 26 SAA 14, 60 192 n. 16 SAA 14, 62 192 n. 16 SAA 15, 94 190 n. 2, 191 n. 4 SBH No. 70 Rev. 14f. 128 n. 16 SEG 12, 87, 22–27 215 n. 50 SEG 12.87.25f. (= Agora 16, 73) 213 n. 38 SEG 12, 100, 9–12 221 n. 74 SEG 12.100.11f. und 21f. 219 n. 66 Seneca: Sen. briev., 13, 8 232 n. 20 Servius: Serv. Aen., 3, 463 230 n. 11 Serv. Aen., 5, 755 242 n. 72 SF 76 54 šir3-nam-gula of Ninisina 65 n. 48 Sin of Lugalzagesi (Urukagina Lament, Ukg. 16) 48 n. 17, 50 n. 20 Sm. 332 139 n. 71 Stele of Vultures 49 n. 17 Suetonius/Sueton: Suet. Aug. 93  237 n. 41 Sumerian King List 56 n. 35 Sumerian Sargon Legend 56 n. 35 Šumma ālu 124 n. 4, 126 n. 9, 139 n. 71, 141 n. 79, 144 n. 95 Šurpu III 83, VIII 48 133 n. 47 Tacitus: Tac. ann., 2, 49 238 n. 50 Tac. ann., 12, 24 235 n. 29, 241 n. 69 tākultu-ritual 84–85 Tintir = Babylon 80 n. 20, 91 n. 94, 96 n. 123, 132–133, 151 n. 114 Thucydides/Thukydides: Thuk. 2,15  209 n. 25, 211 n. 32 Thuk. 2,15,3 221 n. 73 Thuk. 6,54,6f. 220 n. 69

Thuk. 6,57 219 n. 65 Thuk. 6,61,2 212 n. 36 Thuk. 8,92,6; 8,93,1 213 n. 38 Utukkū lemnūtu 136 n. 58, 138 nn. 68–70, 149 n. 106 Valerius Maximus: Val. Max. praef. 1, 1, 1 239 n. 56 Val. Max. 8, 9, 1 232 n. 21 Varro: Varro ling. 5, 43 240 n. 63 Varro ling. 5, 143 241 n. 69; 242 n. 70 Varro ling. 6, 53 230 n. 11 Vitruvius/Vitruv: Vitr. 1, 7 231 n. 15 Vitr. 1, 7, 2 239 n. 51 VS 15 50: 6–11 181 Weidner Chronicle 55 n. 30 Wiles of Women, The (t i g i -song of Inana) 128 Xenophon: Xen. equ. 1,1 212 n. 35 Xen. hell. 1,1,33 218 n. 61 Xen. hell. 2,24,2 213 n. 39 Xen. hell. 2,4,8 213 n. 42, 218 n. 61 Xen. hell. 2,4,10 218 n. 61 Xen. hell. 2,4,11 218 n. 62 Xen. hell. 2,4,27 218 n. 61 Xen. hell. 2,4,31 218 n. 61 Xen. hell. 2,24,2 213 n. 39 Xen. hipp. 3,2f. 219 Xen. oik. 8,22 210 n. 26 Yale Tablet iv 172–177 158 YBC 7288, lines 6–7 83 n. 38 YBC 2401 vi 77f. 134 n. 50 vii 1–8 135 n. 50 Zechariah (8:16) 99

Words and Terms in Ancient Languages abul akīti 89 abul šarri 91 abullu 79, 102 n. 154, 107 abullum elletum 80 abultannu 107 akītu see also “New Year’s Festival” 84, 89, 89–90 n. 84, 118, 127 n. 11, 151, 152 n. 121, 156 ālu 7 nn. 13–14, 147 amaštu 185 ardat lilî 128, 128 n. 18, 144–145 asakku 133 n. 44, 135, 139 n. 73

bāb abullim 79 bāb dayyānī 96 bāb dīnī 96 bāb ekallim 79 bāb ilim 97 bāb maḫīri 104, 133 n. 46 bāb šerti 100 bābānu 195–196 bābānȗ kisallu 196 bābtu 129 bābu 79, 102 n. 154, 107, 195 bēl abulli 107



index

bēt 189–192 bētu dannu 190-192 bēt šarri 192 bētānu 195–196 bētu qallu 191 bīt abullim 85 n. 52 bīt ili 81, 132 bīt ritti 181 bītu 132

mašdaḫu 151 mušlālum 85, 97–98 mūtaqu 151 muzzaz abulli 107

dayyānū ša bābi 96 di indigetes 235–237 di novensides 235–236 dūru 7 n. 14

qannu 196 quppu 81

é - k á - g a l  85 n. 52 edurû 7 n. 14 emantuḫlu 107 n. 186 erāb āli 89, 156 erbu ša bābi 81 erbu ša quppi ša bābi 81 eššēšu 81 forum, fori 14, 25–26, 109, 129 garraku 81 g i š - g a l  83 ḫarimtu 139 n. 71, 144, 145 nn. 95, 97, 150 ibratu 133, 134 n. 48 insula/insulae 20 n. 54, 179 k á  79 k á - d i n g i r  79 n. 11, 80 k á - g a l  79 k á - g a l - á - s i k i l - l a  80 kafr 7 n. 14 kalû 81 kapru 7 n. 14 karību 83 k a r - k i d  130 n. 34, 144–145 n. 95, 145 n. 97 kāru/kārum 14–15, 97, 129 kfr 7 n. 14 kudurru 101, 147 lilû 145 maḫāzu 132 maḫīru 129 mār abulli 107 maṣṣar bābi 107

259

nemēdu 133 n. 47 parakku 84, 132–133, 134 n. 49, 135 puḫrum 94

rab abulli 107 rab bābi 107 rābiṣ āli 133 rebīt Ninua 79 n. 13 ribīt āli 129, 147 n. 102 ribītu 8 n. 16, 79 n. 13, 108, 126 n. 9, 127, 127 n. 14, 129–130, 150, 152, 155–157 ribītu = rebītu 79 n. 13 saḫḫirtu 130 saḫḫiru 130 SILA 127, 129, 145 n. 97, 146 n. 100, 151 n. 113 s i l a - d a g a l - k á - g a l  79 n. 14 SILA.DAGAL.(LA) 79 n. 14, 126 n. 9, 127, 130 n. 27, 132 simmiltu ša mašâltu 100 sūq šimātim 129 sūqu 126 n. 9, 129, 151–152 sūqu qatnu 151, 151 n. 118 sūqu rapšu 127 n. 14, 151 ṣalam šarrūtiya 86 n. 61 ṣēru 7 n. 13, 147 ša abulli 106–107 ša bā[bim] 107 ša bāb ekalli 107 ša muḫḫi bābi 107 šakintu 197, 198 šangû 81 š à - t a m k á - é - g a l  107 š à - t a m k á - g a l  107 šību 94 šubtu 132 šūdūtu 96 šurinnu 84 u b - l i l 2 - l a 2  133–135 urbs 230–232, 234–235, 237, 242–243

‫‪index‬‬ ‫‪ּ 86‬במֹות‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫‪ 79‬חּוצֹות‪/‬חצֹות‪/‬חּוצ ֹת‬ ‫ֻ‬ ‫‪ּ 7‬כ ָפר‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫יח ַּב ַּׁש ַער‬ ‫‪ּ 95‬מֹוכ ַ‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫ל‪-‬ה ַּׁש ַער‬ ‫‪ 108‬ע ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫‪ 79‬רחב‬ ‫‪ 79,‬רחֹוב‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫‪92, 94, 108‬‬ ‫‪ׁ 79,‬ש ַער‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫‪81–82, 86, 91–95, 98–99, 101,‬‬ ‫‪104, 106–108‬‬ ‫‪ּׁ 86, 93–94, 106, 108‬ש ֲֹע ִרים‬

‫ ‪260‬‬ ‫‪urigallu 84‬‬ ‫‪u r u  7‬‬ ‫‪u r u - b a r  7 n. 13‬‬ ‫‪watmānum 85‬‬ ‫‪zilul(l)û 130‬‬