Assyria

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The Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia around 1220 BC Chr.

Assyria ( ancient Greek Ἀσσυριά , Latin Assyria ) was an ancient landscape in northern Mesopotamia , especially on the central Tigris . It was the heart of the Assyrian Empire .

Landscape and climate

The Assyrian area is not particularly fertile. Today's rainfall is around 200 mm, the minimum for grain cultivation. The soils are thin, the bedrock consists of often less fertile sedimentary rocks (limestone and gypsum), especially in the west of the city. In the Tigris Plain there are fertile alluvial clays and silts , in the hill country clay soils (weathered limestone soils). The potential natural vegetation is mugwort - steppe with isolated scrub and gallery forest in the river valley.

The climate is believed to have changed in the first millennium BC. Was largely comparable to today's. Today's yields are between 400 and 500 kg of barley per hectare , on irrigated fields between 700 and 1000 kg / ha.

agriculture

In the Neo-Assyrian period , barley was mainly grown in the area. It is assumed that the land was cultivated by individual small families ( purū system), who, however, had to transfer part of the yield to the state or the magnates, to whom the fields now partially belonged (Postgate 1989). The long rectangular fields were between 1.8 and 14.4 hectares in size (Freydank 1980). The fields were worked with a simple hook plow (Arl) pulled by oxen. Broken glass shows that the fields were fertilized, according to texts, sheep and goats grazed on the harvested fields, which also led to fertilization. Altaweel (2008) assumes a one-year fallow land based on simulation results .

Irrigation canals were increasingly built under the Sargonids , especially around Nineveh and Kalach . Sennacherib reports on this in great detail. According to Zaccagnani, the average farming family needed about five hectares of irrigated land to make a living.

raw materials

In Assyria, in contrast to Babylonia , stones (limestone and gypsum) and timber ( ash , oak , elm and maple ) were found, but metals were lacking. Copper, silver and gold have been imported from Anatolia since ancient Assyria , and tin from Uzbekistan . In Central Assyria, copper and gold also came to Assyria via Babylonia.

history

For older history, see Assyrian Empire (18th to 7th centuries BC), New Babylonian Empire (626 to 539 BC) and Achaemenid Empire (6th to 4th centuries BC).

The great empire of Alexander the great lasted only a few years (see Alexander empire ). Under the Seleucids , the provinces of Apolloniatis , Gorduene , Mygdonia , Sittakene , Sophene and Zabdikene existed in the territory of ancient Assyria . Under the suzerainty of the Parthians , the vassal kingdom of Adiabene existed in the territory of ancient Assyria . Under the Parthians and subsequently from the 3rd century AD under the Sassanids , the former Babylonia was known as Asuristan .

In 116 AD, Trajan is said to have founded the province of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, but its existence is highly controversial in research. In Byzantine times , part of Assyria belonged to the province of Mesopotamia. The Syrian historian Bar Hebräus uses the term Athor for Assyria in chronography .

literature

  • Mark Altaweel: Investigating agricultural sustainability and strategies in northern Mesopotamia: results produced using a socio-ecological modeling approach . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . Vol. 35, 2008, pp. 821-835.
  • Mark Altaweel: The imperial landscape of Ashur: settlement and land use in the Assyrian heartland . Heidelberg Studies on the Ancient Orient 11, Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag 2008.
  • Helmut Freydank : On the situation of the deported Hurrians in Assyria . In: Altorientalische Forschungen 7, 1980, pp. 89–117.
  • Richard N. Frye: Mapping Assyria . In: A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (Eds.), Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena . Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project, Chicago, October 27-31, 2000 (Milano: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2002), Melammu Symposia 3, 75-78.
  • Simon Parpola, M. Porter (Eds.), The Helsinki atlas of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian period. Helsinki, Casco Bay Assyriological Institute and Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001.
  • J. Nicholas Postgate: The ownership and exploitation of land in Assyria in the 1st Millennium BC In: M. Lebeau, P. Talon (Ed.): Reflêts des Deux Fleuves: Volume des mélanges offertes à Andrè Finet . Leuven: Peters 1989, pp. 141-152.
  • Karin Radner: Province, Assyria . In: MP Streck et al. (Ed.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Aräologie . 11 / 1-2, Berlin: de Gruyter 2006, 42-68.
  • Michael Roaf : Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the ancient Near East . Oxford: Equinox 1990.

Web links

Commons : Assyria  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Assyria  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mark Altaweel: Investigating agricultural sustainability and strategies in northern Mesopotamia: results produced using a socio-ecological modeling approach . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . Vol. 35, 2008, pp. 821-835.
  2. Stuart C. Brown: Media and secondary state formation in the Neo-Assyrian Zagros: an anthropological approach to an Assyriological problem . In: Journal of Cuneiform Studies Vol. 38/1, 1986, pp. 107-119.
  3. ^ T. Jacobsen, S. Lloyd: Sennacherib's Aqueduct at Jenvan . Chicago 1935 ( Oriental Institute Publications . Vol. 24), p. 34 f.
  4. C. Zaccagnani: Economic aspects of land ownership and land use in Northern Mesopotamia to the Neo-Assyrian period . In M. Hudson, BA Levine (Ed.): Uranization and Land ownership in the Ancient Near East . Cambridge, Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology 1999, p. 337
  5. PRS Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian materials and Industries . Oxford 1994, p. 348.
  6. Betina Faist : The long-distance trade of the Assyrian Empire between the 14th and 11th centuries BC BC. Ugarit Verlag, Münster 2001, ( Ancient Orient and Old Testament , Vol. 265), p.53.
  7. ^ Richard N. Frye: Mapping Assyria . In: A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (eds.), Ideologies as intercultural phenomena . Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in Chicago, USA, October 27-31, 2000 (Milano: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2002), Melammu Symposia 3: 76.
  8. A. Maricq, La province d'Assyrie crée par Trajan . Syria 36, ​​1959, p. 257.