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The Assyrian army in Zamua

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. N. Postgate
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Extract

The article of Manitius published in 1910 has never really been superseded: that is because it was based on the Assyrian royal inscriptions, which were well understood at the time and to which there have been few major additions (and those principally from before the reign of Assur-naṣirapli II). With new texts from Nimrud and new editions from Helsinki of the Kouyunjik archives, the time is overdue for a reassessment of the textual evidence for the composition of the Neo-Assyrian army. In any case Manitius only covered some aspects of military organization and he himself wrote that he hoped to publish a work which “would present the development of the whole military world of the Assyrians, exploiting the entire available material in literature and sculpture”. No doubt the Great War foiled these plans, and indeed there is still no comprehensive study of the Assyrian army which pulls together the evidence from both the texts and the reliefs. Two recent books on the Assyrian army have no illustrations (Malbran-Labat 1982; Mayer 1995). Yet the palace reliefs are an inexhaustibly rich mine of information which is always susceptible of further interpretation. The most important initiative in exploiting this resource and achieving Manitius's goal has been Reade's article of 1972, but the textual sources have improved significantly since then. This present article is thus a partial and belated response to his plea of a quarter of a century ago that “the epigraphists who are at present rewriting and re-interpreting” the administrative documents “will bear the evidence of the sculptures in mind” (p. 108).

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 62 , 2000 , pp. 89 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2000

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