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home / papers / 2022 / Just a Series of Misunderstandings? Assyria and B?t-Zam?ni, ?adi-/I?tadi-libbušu, and Aramaic in the early Neo-Assyrian State

Just a Series of Misunderstandings? Assyria and B?t-Zam?ni, ?adi-/I?tadi-libbušu, and Aramaic in the early Neo-Assyrian State

Summary

The paper addresses a long-running dispute: when and how did the Aramean polity of Bīt-Zamāni, centred on Amēdu (modern Diyarbakır), become an Assyrian province? Edmonds reviews earlier positions, which split into an "866–849 BC" camp and a "late 9th century" camp. He then traces the polity's Middle Assyrian background and writes two parallel, overlapping accounts. One covers Assyria's political dealings with Bīt-Zamāni. The other covers how Assyria organised provinces in the Upper Tigris.

He adds a prosopographical study of the governor of Na'iri who was eponym in 849 BC. That official's name appears in two contemporary forms, Ḫadi-libbušu and Iḫtadi-libbušu. Edmonds explains both as alternative Akkadian renderings of a single Aramaic name, *ḥdhlbbh. This suggests a local ruler was kept in office as governor, a Postgatian "transitional case" like Bīt-Baḫiāni/Gūzāna. It may also be the earliest known use of Aramaic in Neo-Assyrian administration.

Key points

  • Assyria's early foothold at Damdammusa gave way in 879 BC to two provinces, Sinābu/Na'iri and Tušḫan; Bīt-Zamāni itself proved notably resilient against Assyrian pressure.
  • The dating debate depends on the 17-year gap between Aššur-nāṣir-apli II's failure to take Amēdu (866 BC) and the 849 BC eponym. Only a short note on Salmānu-ašarēd III's march (856 BC) falls in between.
  • The province's extent comes from Aššur Stelae nos. 39 and 47, belonging to Marduk-šimanni and Ninurta-kibsī-uṣur. On these, the city appears as "Andi", which must be read as a byname for Amēdu.
  • Ninurta-kibsī-uṣur, eponym in 838 BC while still governor of Raṣappa, later displaced the local dynasty in Na'iri. Amēdu then rebelled in the 826–820 BC succession war before it was finally absorbed.
  • A comparable translation of names into Akkadian for limmu dating may apply to Gūzāna's first two governors. The author proposes that Urarṭu's threat pushed Aššur-nāṣir-apli II into a compact with Bīt-Zamāni.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Two spelling variants of one person are treated as two valid ways of vocalising and translating a consonant-only source name, rather than as a scribal error. — For Mova (tokens): Name normalisation could map variant spellings to one underlying form and keep the ambiguity explicit instead of picking one at random.
  • I2. The history is rebuilt by aligning two independent evidence streams, administrative eponym lists and royal campaign narratives, and checking archaeology only where needed. — For Mova (learn): This matches the witness-agreement idea: accept silver facts only when separate sources line up, and flag cases where they conflict.
  • I3. Two overlapping storylines, political relations and administrative provincialisation, are written separately and then combined, which exposes nuances a single narrative hides. — For Mova (world): The text world could keep separate layers for different kinds of relation (control vs. formal status) on the same entities, so a contradiction in one layer does not overwrite the other.
  • I4. A place name that differs on monuments ("Andi") is resolved as an alias of a known city, after rejecting an emendation because the form recurs on several stelae. — For Mova (frames): Coreference of named entities could use recurrence across independent mentions as evidence for a genuine alias rather than a typo.
  • I5. The first time a governor is attested gives only a latest possible date, and vague campaign reports cannot prove vassal status; the author treats absence of evidence cautiously. — For Mova (answer): When answering temporal questions, the reader should distinguish "attested by" from "happened at" and say when the text only bounds an event.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.36253/asiana-1188

@inproceedings{edmonds2022just,
  title = {{Just a Series of Misunderstandings? Assyria and B?t-Zam?ni, ?adi-/I?tadi-libbušu, and Aramaic in the early Neo-Assyrian State}},
  author = {Edmonds, Alexander Johannes},
  booktitle = {Asia Anteriore Antica 3},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.36253/asiana-1188},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.36253/asiana-1188}
}

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