This article is devoted to the study of the ideological attitude of the courts and élites of the peripheral, independent kingdoms when faced with the political problems of the dominance of the Assyrian empire and of its unrestrained imperialistic expansionism. The article is aimed at contrasting and modifying a theory largely prevailing among the historians of the Ancient Near East and especially of the Biblical world. According to it, the élites of the peripheral countries subject to the ideological, political and military pressure by the Assyrian empire would have adopted, almost without exceptions, a rigidly uniform and constant hostility and would have brought about an obstinate resistance against acculturation, political enslavement and territorial incorporation. This theory is now disproved when considering a recently discovered text, a short Luwian royal inscription by Warikas, king of Hiyawa / Adaniya (a Ist millennium state extending in Classical Cilicia, south-eastern Anatolia). In this inscription, the Cilician king boasts with utmost proud that the Assyrian king (most probably Tiglath-pileser III, 742-725 BCE) has become his own "father and mother" and that his own dynasty and the Assyrian dynasty have been fused into "a single house". In other words, a peripheral king subject to a heavy pressure like that exerted by Tiglath-pileser III (who smashed and annexed many Syrian kingdoms) is proud to officially celebrate his alliance with Assyria and his familial link with the Assyrian dynasty - exactly the contrary of the commonly shared opinion. A parallel is traced between Warikas' text and the inscriptions by Bar-rakib, king of Sam'al (a northern Syrian kingdom west of Hiyawa/Cilicia), who also boasts to have been, like his father, an ally of the Assyrian king.
A happy son of the king of Assyria: Warikas and the Çineköy bilingual (Cilicia)
LANFRANCHI, GIOVANNI-BATTISTA
2009
Abstract
This article is devoted to the study of the ideological attitude of the courts and élites of the peripheral, independent kingdoms when faced with the political problems of the dominance of the Assyrian empire and of its unrestrained imperialistic expansionism. The article is aimed at contrasting and modifying a theory largely prevailing among the historians of the Ancient Near East and especially of the Biblical world. According to it, the élites of the peripheral countries subject to the ideological, political and military pressure by the Assyrian empire would have adopted, almost without exceptions, a rigidly uniform and constant hostility and would have brought about an obstinate resistance against acculturation, political enslavement and territorial incorporation. This theory is now disproved when considering a recently discovered text, a short Luwian royal inscription by Warikas, king of Hiyawa / Adaniya (a Ist millennium state extending in Classical Cilicia, south-eastern Anatolia). In this inscription, the Cilician king boasts with utmost proud that the Assyrian king (most probably Tiglath-pileser III, 742-725 BCE) has become his own "father and mother" and that his own dynasty and the Assyrian dynasty have been fused into "a single house". In other words, a peripheral king subject to a heavy pressure like that exerted by Tiglath-pileser III (who smashed and annexed many Syrian kingdoms) is proud to officially celebrate his alliance with Assyria and his familial link with the Assyrian dynasty - exactly the contrary of the commonly shared opinion. A parallel is traced between Warikas' text and the inscriptions by Bar-rakib, king of Sam'al (a northern Syrian kingdom west of Hiyawa/Cilicia), who also boasts to have been, like his father, an ally of the Assyrian king.
Pubblicazioni consigliate
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
