November 21, 2024 • 53 mins
This is a special episode presenting the prize-winning research of three early career scholars: William McGrath, Alessia Pilloni, and Christopher Jones. What prizes did they win, and what was their research about? We hear about the latest news from Isin II period history, astrology in the Late Babylonian period, and a military coup in the Neo-Assyrian period.
1:24 William McGrath
2:10 dissertation
6:08 key conclusions
9:10 publication plans
10:48 what's next?
13:45 Alessia Pilloni
14:27 horoscopes
20:03 star signs
22:37 two technical terms identified
26:51 wider context
29:10 Christopher Jones
30:45 whodunnit
35:59 new evidence
41:54 purge
45:48 coup theory
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge, the
podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode, Italk to friends and colleagues
and get them to explain theirwork in a way we can all
understand.
This episode is anotherdedicated to the winners of the
(00:35):
prizes offered each year by theInternational Association for
Assyriology. We hear from threeearly career scholars whose
research has been recognised forits excellence. We start with
the history of the Isin IIdynasty, a pivotal moment in
Babylonian history, but a poorlydocumented one. Then we turn to
astrology and horoscopes in thelate Babylonian period, before
(00:58):
ending with an attempted coupthat could have taken the
Assyrian Empire in a differentdirection.
Congratulations to all threewinners, and I hope you enjoy
this special episode. So getyourself a cup of tea, make
yourself comfortable, and let'smeet today's guests.
(01:24):
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
William McGrath (01:28):
Oh, thanks so much, Dr Taylor.
Jon Taylor (01:29):
Could you tell us, please, who are you and what do
you do?
William McGrath (01:34):
Yes, my name is William McGrath, and I'm a
recent graduate from theUniversity of Toronto studying
assyriology, and I'm an earlycareer assyriologist.
Jon Taylor (01:44):
Okay, we're talking today because you won a prize
earlier this summer, didn't you?
So could you tell us what theprize was, please, and what did
you win it for?
William McGrath (01:53):
Yes, I won the prize for best dissertation from
the International AssyriologicalAssociation, which they very
generously selected mydissertation, which is entitled
"Resurgent Babylon (02:04):
A Cultural, Political and Intellectual
History of the Second Dynasty ofIsin".
Jon Taylor (02:10):
Could you tell us a little bit more detail about
your dissertation, then? Whatkinds of topics were you
touchingon?
William McGrath (02:15):
Sure. Well, to begin with, my dissertation is a
study of the Isin II period ofBabylonian history, a period of
132 years spanning from 1157 to1026 BC. I have framed my study
of the Isin II period as havingtwo major foci: political
(02:35):
history, typified by the work ofBrinkman; and literary
theological innovation, typifiedby the work of Lambert, which I
aim to bring together in asingle work, with the hope that
these two focuses may provemutually informative. So to
start with, perhaps I couldframe the intellectual
background of this project--whyit made a certain sense for a
(02:58):
Toronto student to come to thistopic, because, as it turns out,
both Brinkman and Lambert hadconnections with Toronto-based
astrology.
Well, first of all, in 1962Brinkman completed a PhD
dissertation on the post-Kassiteperiod for the University of
Chicago. Over the next sixyears, he then developed a
(03:19):
seminal version of this project,which was published in 1968
under the title A PoliticalHistory of Post-Kassite
Babylonia. This work, of course,was the first major treatment of
the Isin II period, and remainsindispensable today. It's
superbly reliable, cogentlyargued and with 2195 footnotes,
(03:40):
it's exhaustively documented.
Brinkman's updated work wasagain conducted at the
University of Chicago, which isinteresting because his access
to the vast referencecollections in the Oriental
Institute's files was likely acontributing factor to making
his work as thorough as it is.
His connections with Torontowere also significant at the
(04:01):
time and provided him earlyaccess to Grayson's editions of
the chronicle texts, as well asan early involvement with
Toronto's Royal Inscriptions ofMesopotamia project.
Secondly, although one wouldhardly go so far as to
characterise Lambert as aCanadian scholar, it is notable
that his first assyriologicalpublication caught the eye of
(04:22):
Toronto based Hebraist R. J.
Williams, and that subsequently,Lambert accepted a position at
the University of Toronto, whichhe maintained from 1955 until
1959. This period inauguratedLambert's full time academic
career, and it was during hisstay in Toronto that he produced
his paper, "Ancestors, Authorsand Canonicity", and would have
(04:43):
completed most of his work forhis Babylonian wisdom literature
project at this time. Of course,these, together with several of
his later papers, provedfoundational for the model of
Babylonian religion that Imaintain in my dissertation.
To return to your question,"what was my dissertation
about?", it was envisioned fromthe start as a re-examination of
(05:06):
the Isin II dynasty ofBabylonian kings, albeit one
that was sorely needed, since ithad been 50 years since the last
in-depth treatment. So I wasable to draw from new textual
sources that weren't availableto Brinkman for my look at the
political history of the Isin IIkings. And this is a corpus
roughly 1/3 larger than thatavailable in 1968 in fact,
(05:28):
although many of these texts arelaconic to a greater or lesser
extent. Although my work treatsthe reigns of all 11 kings of
the dynasty in question, it wasinevitable that Nebuchadnezzar
the First would be a major focusof my work, and this is because
of the 54 kings of thepost-kassite period, scholars
(05:49):
have suggested that the onlygreat king among them was
Nebuchadnezzar the First.
Further, of the over 100Babylonian kings to have reigned
in the various Babyloniandynasties, Nebuchadnezzar is
held to be among the top fourBabylonian kings in terms of the
importance which subsequenttradition ascribed to him.
Jon Taylor (06:08):
This is quite exciting, then, isn't it? You
have a large number of newsources, and you're presumably
able to say something about oneof the key figures in Babylonian
history. Prior to publication,are you able to share what some
of the conclusions are from yourwork?
William McGrath (06:23):
Certainly, yes.
Listeners may be familiar withNebuchadnezzar the First's
much-discussed victory over theElamites, and this episode will
naturally call to mind thatBabylonia, at this time, was not
at peace. Rather, it was a timeof tension and conflict with
neighbours. In fact, the Isin IIdynasty begins, and continues
for some time, in what has beencalled the Assyrian-Elamite
(06:47):
phase. That is, a timecharacterised by conflict with
both Assyria to the north andElam to the east.
One of the major findings I cameto is a significant reworking of
the timeline for these events,which occur in Nebuchadnezzar
the First's reign. Using newlyavailable texts which provide
(07:08):
new data about the timing of keyevents, I have produced a series
of interlocking and mutuallysupportive arguments which
result in the first definitetimeline for Nebuchadnezzar's
Elamite campaign. Havingestablished that I, was also
able to reassess a series ofprior events, such as the prior
military action of the Elamiteking in the region as being more
(07:32):
direct and consequential inmotivating Nebuchadnezzar's
ultimate response. I should add,however, that the work is not as
much a re-examination ofNebuchadnezzar the First's
reign, as a treatment of theentire dynasty. Owing to the
information from new sources andoutside of the events of
(07:52):
Nebuchadnezzar's campaign justmentioned, my reconstruction of
the dynasty differs from earlierworks in several respects, or in
numerous respects. This includesthe positioning of
Marduk-kabit-ahheshu's ascensionto the throne,
Itti-Marduk-balatu's militaryactivity, the demise of
Ninurta-nadin-shumi, althoughthis is necessarily speculative,
(08:14):
and Enlil-nadin-apli'susurpation by his uncle,
Marduk-nadin-ahhe.
While it has been thetraditional view that the Isin
II kings were initially theaggressors against the Assyrian
kings, my work establishes thatthis pattern was consistent from
kings two, three, four and five,rather than just kings three and
four. In addition, myreconstruction of
(08:36):
Tiglath-pileser the First'smilitary actions against
Babylonia contains updates andagainst previous accounts, I
have argued that there was noAssyro-Babylonian clash in the
reign of Adad-apla-iddina. Insummary, my look at the
political history of the dynastyhas put forward a new
formulation of the span ofBabylonian history for
(08:59):
consideration. I should add thatI am indebted to several
generations of archaeologists,curators, and philologists for
making the contributions that Idepended on.
Jon Taylor (09:10):
I'm very much looking forward to reading that.
One of the benefits of thedissertation prize is the
facility to help with thepublication. So are you able to
say what your plans are forthis?
William McGrath (09:22):
Well, yes, I'm currently working to refine my
dissertation and to selectivelyedit it down to a format which
would be more applicable to apublished book. I think because
I was following a work that wasparticularly exhaustive, that is
Brinkman's 1968 treatment ofthis period, I sort of
endeavoured to be as exhaustiveas I could be as well. But this
(09:44):
resulted in a very longdissertation with a lot of
footnotes. So I see now thatthere is a lot of editing that I
should do in order to make amore streamlined and readable
work that would appeal more topublishers.
In addition to that, after Ifinished my dissertation,
several esteemed andauthoritative scholars wrote to
me and have generously providedcritique and suggestions for
(10:06):
revisions. In addition, theyhave provided me with
information about numerous textspertaining to the reigns of
Nebuchadnezzar the First andAdad-apla-iddina that remain
unpublished and that I had notbeen aware of at the time of my
work. So of course, these arefor the most part,
administrative texts, whichwould probably just contain
royal titles or statements ofaffiliation. But still, this
(10:30):
counts as very appealing andimportant information for the
study of a dynasty that is, infact, poorly documented on as a
whole. So I'm beyond grateful tothese scholars for generously
sharing, and I would want towork this information over
thoroughly in the course ofrevising my dissertation for
publication.
Jon Taylor (10:48):
Yeah, good luck.
That sounds very interestingindeed. That must presumably
take up rather a lot of yourtime. But if you have any time
left over, and if you canenvisage the period after the
dissertation is published, isthere anything else you're
working on or that you'd like towork on next?
William McGrath (11:05):
Oh, yes. Well, thanks for asking. Yeah. At the
current moment, indeed, I ammost focused on this material
that would complement therevision of my dissertation, the
good number of unpublished textsrelating to the Isin II kings.
Before getting there, I amthinking that I will produce a
paper size study of this newmaterial that could later be
incorporated into the revisedbook edition.To that end, you
(11:28):
know, curators at Yale have beenvery generous and forthcoming in
providing photographs of anumber of tablets, and I am very
thankful for this. But I stillhave a good amount of legwork to
do in reaching out to othercollections elsewhere, and
inquiring as to whether I mightobtain permission to work with
further Isin II period texts.
Apart from this, I am developinga project that will examine a
(11:51):
selection of Kassiteadministrative texts. This came
about from considerations of theMiddle Babylonian text
publications, and the state ofthe publications that I observed
in the course of my dissertationwork. At which point, it became
apparent to me that this area ofthe field remains somewhat
underdeveloped. I've been intouch with Grant Frame and
(12:13):
Jonathan Tenney, and they havekindly shared some insights with
me. And as a result, I'mweighing my approach. There are,
of course, many ways that onecould come to a corpus as large
and as significant as theKassite administrative text from
Nippur. I also note that thereis a current upsurge in
innovative and interestingKassite period scholarship right
(12:34):
now. And the amazing work beingdone at your Corpus of Seal
Inscriptions of the Kassiteperiod is a great example of
that.
Jon Taylor (12:42):
Oh gosh, that's very kind. Good luck with your work.
Congratulations on your prize,and thank you very much for
talking about it today.
William McGrath (12:48):
Sure. Well, thanks so much for having me.
Like I said, I really enjoyedthe opportunity to discuss this.
And if I could, I would justquickly like to thank my
supervisors, Professor Beaulieuand Professor Baker, as well as
Professor Benjamin Foster forsuggesting that I apply for the
IAA award in the first place. Inaddition, I'd just like to
quickly thank the IAA reviewpanel for selecting my
(13:09):
dissertation, of course.
Finally, thank you very muchagain for having me on, Dr.
Taylor.
Jon Taylor (13:12):
It's been a pleasure. Thank you again.
At this point, I must make aconfession. I failed to record
the question where I ask my nextguest to introduce themself. My
apologies to her and to you forthat. So I'll do that on her
(13:35):
behalf now. We hear next fromAlessia Pilloni, who is a PhD
student at the Frei UniversitaetBerlin.
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
Alessia Pilloni (13:49):
Hello, thank you so much for inviting me.
Jon Taylor (13:51):
We've invited you on because you won a prize this
summer. Could you start pleaseby telling us what the prize was
that you won and what you won itfor?
Unknown (13:59):
Yes. So last summer, at the Rencontre, I won the
runner-up prize for the bestfirst article. The topic of my
paper was the astrologicalschemes behind these two
mysterious astrologicalterminology that are bit nisirtu
and KI in the Babylonianhoroscopes.
Jon Taylor (14:20):
And where did you publish that article?
Unknown (14:22):
I published it in the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern
History, 2024.
Jon Taylor (14:27):
Well, first off, congratulations. Before we dig
into your work in detail,perhaps you could set the scene
for us and explain a little bitabout what horoscopes are and
the current state of researchbefore your work, please?
Unknown (14:41):
The starting point of my research is an edition that
was already made in the '90s byFrancesca Rochberg. Actually,
there was already an editionmade by Abraham Sachs in the
'50s, but Francesca Rochbergadded some more context, a nice
introduction, and she clarifiedmany of the things that were not
clarified by Abraham Sachsbefore. So what is a horoscope?
(15:03):
And why do we call these textshoroscopes? Well, we know that
modern horoscopes are a verypopular practice lately, and
they actually derive from theBabylonian ones. We can say that
the Babylonian horoscopes werethe ancestors of our modern
horoscopes.
Alessia Pilloni (15:21):
So what are these horoscopes? We can define
them as horoscopes because theyrecord mainly two informations.
Jon Taylor (15:27):
There is a larger question, isn't there, with
One is the child's birth, thedate of birth of the child, and
the second one is the positionof the planets at the time of
that birth. So we can imaginesort of a map of the sky in a
precise time. We might thinkthat these positions were
observed, but in fact, if wethink about it, at any time, if
(15:49):
we go out and look at the sky,we will never be able to see all
the planets together. So eitherthe sun is out, so it's bright,
and we cannot see the otherplanets. And even if it's dark,
even if the child was born atnight, there is no way we can
see all the planets together. Soactually, the positions that we
(16:11):
see in the horoscopes were allcomputed. In fact, we are
already in the Late Babylonianperiod, so from the fourth
century BC onwards, where theBabylonian scholars were already
able to compute these positions.
They already had a lot ofomens and this kind of material.
But if you're calculating thingsalgorithms and tools on how to
compute the occurrences ofplanetary phenomena and also the
(16:31):
exact position at any time thatthey wanted to. So that's what
they did for the horoscopes.
and they're predictable, why dothey have meaning? And perhaps,
in the case of astrology, thatis what gives it the meaning?
Alessia Pilloni (16:53):
In the few cases where we have some
prognostication written down inthe tablet, they're actually all
positive. And they come afterplanetary position. So we have
this horoscope from Uruk sayingthat a planet is in its KI, so
in its place, and then somepositive predictions follow. In
(17:14):
this case, for example, I arguethat the positive predictions
are because the planet is in itstriplicity. So the zodiacal
position of this planet is partof the triplicity that belongs
to that planet. So this gives anoutcome. What I can say more
about this is that how theprognostication is structured
(17:38):
reminds us of the astraldivination. So, for example,
Enuma Anu Enlil.
Jon Taylor (17:45):
The horoscopes are quite late creations, aren't
they? But the names of ... canwe call these "signs" ... are
older?
Alessia Pilloni (17:51):
Yes. So the horoscopes are, in a way, an
outcome of what astronomers andastrologers in Babylonia were
already doing for many years.
They started with astraldivination, which is the old way
of looking at the sky. So everyevent in the sky corresponded to
something on Earth. But by thefourth century BC, they already
(18:13):
had observed enough to be ableto predict the occurrences of
heavenly phenomena. And theyalready invented algorithms and
other tools on how to predictthese phenomena, like in the
future, at any time. So I thinkthat at some point they just
(18:33):
combined the fact that you canassociate events in the sky and
on Earth with the fact that youcould predict them.
The problem with thesehoroscopes is that we don't have
many mathematical astronomicalsources for that, meaning that
the main interest ofmathematical astronomy is
actually not calculating theexact position of the planet in
(18:57):
every moment, but rather thefuture occurrences of the same
phenomenon. That could be, Idon't know, the appearance of a
planet in the eastern horizon.
But we have some of these textsthat calculate the exact
position of the planet at givenmoments, and these were probably
the sources for the horoscopes.
(19:17):
But as I said before, we don'treally know what is the outcome
of the horoscopes. It's just arecord of a date of birth of a
child that sometimes has a name,sometimes it doesn't. There are
not a lot of interpretation ofthe events described in the
tablets.
Jon Taylor (19:37):
That's a shame, isn't it, because I was going to
ask, what do you do with thesethings? If there are very few
prognostications, you don'tlearn what the fate of your
child is, I guess you can, youcan explain it orally?
Alessia Pilloni (19:48):
Exactly, that's my understanding. Probably they
just serve as a scheme for theastrologer to actually explain
the outcome, theprognostication, to the client.
If we can talk about clients,because we don't know that
either.
Jon Taylor (20:03):
Would people have star signs, as we would think of
it? So would someone say, "Oh,I'm a Capricorn", and that would
convey some kind of meaning.
Would they consider themselvesto be a type of person based on
when they were born?
Unknown (20:17):
Yeah, that's very interesting. Probably the solar
zodiacal sign, so where the sunwas in the moment where we were
born was not that important forthem. They say that a planet is
in a particular zodiacal sign.
What does that mean? Because nowwe associate a zodiacal sign
with being completelyastrological. But actually the
(20:37):
purpose of the zodiac wasastronomy. So astronomical
computation, mathematicalastronomy. The zodiac, in fact,
is ideal division of the path ofthe sun. The path of the sun
sounds maybe a little bitawkward or weird to a modern
audience, because we know thatthe sun doesn't revolve around
(21:00):
the earth, but is the other wayaround. But for the Babylonians,
that was not a given. Theythought that the sun was moving
around the Earth.
Alessia Pilloni (21:09):
We also know that a year for a Babylonian
lasted about 360 days, andthat's how they divided the path
of the sun, because the sun ismoving little by little every
day for 360 days, untilreturning to the same position.
And that is exactly the zodiac.
So the division of this path.
Since 360 is a little bit of abig number, then they divide it
(21:33):
into 12. That 12 are thezodiacal signs as well as the
months of the year. And eachzodiacal sign is divided into 30
degrees, as well as a month isdivided into 30 days. So with
this amazing tool, this amazingcoordinate system, they were
able to compute the planetaryposition, even if they couldn't
(21:55):
observe them.
And apart from these two data,so the date of birth of the
child and the position of theplanets, we also have some other
information, but we're notdiving into that. I can just say
some of the horoscopes fromBabylon record also the
occurrences of eclipses, ofequinoxes and solstices that
(22:19):
happen close to the date ofbirth. And, for example, some of
the horoscopes from Uruk recordthe position of the moon and the
direction of the position of themoon at the time of birth. So
whether it was going upward ordownward. All these data were
already clarified by Rochbergand also others.
But we still have two mysteriouselements in these horoscopes
(22:42):
that consists of two terms. Thebit nisirtu, which is the "house
of secrecy", literally, or the"house of protection", according
to some latest interpretations,that is only found in the
horoscopes coming from Babylon,from the city of Babylon. And
then we have another term thatis the KI. It's a Sumerian word,
(23:02):
and in Akkadian it would beashru, which means "place", and
nobody had an idea on what theymeant, because this terminology
appears in other texts. But inother texts, it has a clear
context and a clear meaning,whereas in the horoscopes, we
have no idea what it meant.
Jon Taylor (23:20):
What is the solution to these two terms?
Alessia Pilloni (23:23):
So bit nisirtu is this term that we only find
in the horoscopes from Babylon.
Not in all of them, but isexclusive of this corpus. So
scholars are already well awarethat bit nisirtu is actually
connected to very well-knownastrological concept that is
well developed also in Greekastrology, that is that of the
(23:43):
exaltation. In Greek it iscalled hypsoma. And is the
position where a planet as themost powerful influence. This
concept already existed, and itoriginated in Babylonia. The
only problem is, it is notapplicable to the horoscopes. So
we said that a planet has aprecise position where it has
(24:04):
its most powerful influence. So,for example, we have Jupiter in
the constellation of Cancer, andthat's where Jupiter has its
most powerful influence. Butthen in the horoscope, whenever
we find this terminology, likebit nisirtu of a certain planet,
it's never this exaltation. It'snever connected to the
(24:24):
exaltation. It's not the mostpowerful position of that
planet. So that's already a signthat for the horoscope, this
meaning, this application of theexaltation, is not valid. So we
need to find another one.
And the same goes for KI. KI hassuch a broad range of meanings.
(24:44):
It was suggested by Brown thatit might refer to the ascendant.
Maybe some of you that arefamiliar with modern astrology
know what an ascendant is. It'sactually the zodiacal sign
rising at the horizon at thetime when we are born. But
that's probably, unfortunately,not the case. So even in this
(25:07):
context, we need to find anothermeaning for this term. It's not
referred to the ascendant, norto any other well-known
concepts.
looking at other texts and othercompendia from Mesopotamia, even
from earlier astral sciencetexts, I suggested these two
terms are connected to thetriplicities. So this is quite
(25:31):
hard to imagine, but let's giveit a try. Let's imagine that we
have a circle, and this circleis divided into 12 equal parts.
I told you before that theZodiac is the division of the
path of the sun into 12 equalparts. Each of the parts
correspond to one zodiacal sign,or one month, because they are
(25:51):
the same, they are associated.
And Babylonians were reallyaware of this. So we can imagine
that the first month, nisannu,corresponds to the first
zodiacal sign, which is Ares,and the second month to the
second sign and so on. In thetriplicity scheme, months, or
zodiacal signs, are arranged infour groups of three, so that
(26:13):
their distance is always fourmonths or signs. That's quite
complicated, but if we want toput it in a easy way, we can say
that they form triangles in acircle. And each of these
triplicities is assigned to adifferent planet. And this is
probably what theseterminologies are referred to.
(26:34):
But there are differentapplications of this scheme. In
one case, the bit nisirtu of acertain planet is associated to
the month where the solstice orequinox that happens closest to
the date of birth is happening.
Jon Taylor (26:51):
Was this just an article you wrote as a single
piece of work, or does thisbelong to a larger piece of
research for you?
Alessia Pilloni (26:58):
Yes, yes, it belongs to my research interest,
but I have to say it was notexpected. I'm still doing my
PhD. I'm halfway through it, andI'm investigating the
differences between the astralscience texts from Uruk and
Babylon. Why these two cities?
Because this is where we haveall the text pertaining astral
(27:19):
science in the Late Babylonianperiod. So we also have
mathematical astronomy, otherforms of astrology, some
calendrical texts, observationand such.
One year ago, I was looking atthe horoscopes as a genre of
astrology in the Late Babylonianperiod. And I was looking only
(27:41):
at the differences between thetexts from Uruk and Babylon and
see if I can detect how astralknowledge was transmitted
between these two cities and howthey implemented each other. And
then I got into the terminology.
And as I said at the beginning,they differ between the two
cities. We have bit nisirtu onlyin Babylon and KI only in Uruk.
(28:01):
So I was mainly interested inwhy they were using two
different terminology. And thenI looked at some other sources,
and I found out that actually Icould find a possible solution.
Or, as far as we know, we don'tknow, if we find other
horoscopes, we might change ourview, but that's ... that's what
I was able to detect so far. Soyeah, it is part of my project
(28:25):
on astral knowledge transfer inLate Babylonia. And also part of
another bigger project with
this, which is Zodiac (28:33):
Ancient Astral Science in
Transformation, led by MatthieuOssendrijver, which is also my
supervisor. Where we, as thetitle, says, investigate
transformation in astralsciences in Babylonia, Egypt,
Greece, and Rome.
Jon Taylor (28:50):
Well, congratulations again. This is
fascinating stuff. I lookforward to the results of your
PhD. Good luck with that. Andthank you for explaining about
your work.
Alessia Pilloni (29:00):
Thanks a lot.
Jon Taylor (29:10):
Hello and welcome to Thin End of the Wedge. Thank you
for joining us.
Christopher Jones (29:14):
Thank you for having me.
Jon Taylor (29:16):
Could you tell us please, who are you and what do
you do?
Christopher Jones (29:20):
My name is Christopher Jones. I'm a
assistant professor in theDepartment of History at Union
University in Jackson,Tennessee. We're a small school.
I teach quite broadly, but myspecialty in research and my
academic training is inassyriology. And I specialise in
the study of the Neo-AssyrianEmpire in the seventh century
(29:43):
BC.
Jon Taylor (29:44):
We're talking today because you won a prize in the
summer, didn't you? Could youtell us, what did you win? And
what did you win it for?
Christopher Jones (29:52):
It was an award from the International
Association of Assyriology forthe best first article. So it's
a prize they award every year tosomeone who's published their
first like real peer-reviewedjournal article in the field.
And my article was called ...
it's called "Failed Coup. TheAssassination of Sennacherib and
(30:16):
Esarhaddon's Struggle for theThrone". It's taking a new look
at one of the most dramaticevents in Assyrian history, when
the Assyrian king Sennacheribwas murdered by some of his own
sons. And there's a brief civilwar that results, in which the
son that Sennacherib actuallydesignated as his heir,
(30:38):
Esarhaddon, defeats the othersand claims the throne.
Jon Taylor (30:45):
There are different interpretations of this event,
aren't there? So sometimes it'sblamed on one of Esarhaddon's
brothers. Sometimes Esarhaddonhimself is put in the frame.
Could you say something aboutthat, please? You know, who
dunnit?
Christopher Jones (30:57):
Yes. So for the longest time, the only
account that was extant of thisassassination was from the
Bible. And that was in the bookof Second Kings. It says that
the Sennacherib's sons,Adrammelek and Sharezer, killed
Sennacherib with a sword, andthey escaped to the land of
(31:18):
Ararat. And you know, when westarted to decipher cuneiform,
one of the first sources relatedto this assassination that was
translated was a royalinscription of Esarhaddon called
"Nineveh A". We actually havequite a few copies of Nineveh A
now. These were basically massproduced in 674 BC, in the
(31:39):
aftermath of Esarhaddon's failedinvasion of Egypt. He's
concerned that people mightbelieve his legitimacy is
somehow in question. That, youknow, losing this war means that
he's been cursed by the gods.
Something of that nature.
So he writes this document as adefense of his legitimacy on the
(32:03):
throne. But he refers to theassassination in some weird
ways. He doesn't refer to itdirectly. He just refers to his
brother's alienated Sennacheribfrom him, and then he marched on
Nineveh and drove them out whilethey were, you know, angering
(32:23):
the gods. People were alwaysstruck that it seemed a little
strange that he's notidentifying them as killing his
father, which would seem to be avery effective charge against
their legitimacy.
In 1926 Theo Bauer and BennoLandsberger published an article
(32:43):
where they suggested that maybeEsarhaddon had actually carried
out the assassination. Not himpersonally, but through an
accomplice or something, and heengineered this and then blamed
his brothers for it. Now thistheory was mostly put to bed in
(33:04):
1980 when Simo Parpola publisheda new edition of a tablet that
had not been well translatedbeforehand. And the tablet is a
... an investigation into theaftermath. And it describes a
son of Sennacherib namedUrad-Mullissu, which Parpola,
(33:28):
you know, convincingly linkswith the Adrammelek of Second
Kings 19 (33:31):
37. In this tablet, Urad-Mullissu is described as
plotting to kill the king, andsomebody finds out, and tries to
inform Sennacherib. ButUrad-Mullissu finds out that
this guy finds out, and there'sa dramatic scene where some of
Urad-Mullissu's accomplicesbring the would be snitch into a
(33:55):
room blindfolded. And they tellhim that he's standing before
Sennacherib and to tell themwhat he knows. And so he says,
you know, your son,Urad-Mullissu is plotting to
kill you. And then they take offthe blindfold, and instead of
Sennacherib standing before him,it's Urad-Mullissu. That kind of
(34:18):
settled the debate again for awhile.
But more recently, there's acouple of articles have
appeared, one by Matthijs deJong, couple by Andrew Knapp,
one by Stephanie Dalley and LuisSiddal that tried to revive this
theory. They made a couple ofnew arguments. In addition to
(34:41):
Nineveh A, they argued thatthere's a Ashurbanipal prism
where he says he executedBabylonian prisoners on a site
where his grandfather had beenassassinated. There's also
suggestions that Esarhaddonmoved on Nineveh too quickly;
(35:04):
that he wouldn't have been ableto gather an army and move that
quickly, unless he had advancedknowledge that the assassination
would take place. And so Ididn't set out to write this
article in this way, but, andyou know, many of these new
articles are relatively recent;they came out while I was still
working on it, so it kind ofreshaped the project. I'd wanted
(35:27):
to do, a project kind ofreassessing all the evidence
surrounding the assassination,and it ended up turning into
partly a scholarly refutation ofsome of these other positions.
Jon Taylor (35:40):
What is your reconstruction, then? What did
your article bring to thediscussion? And what's the
latest, best idea of what reallyhappened?
Christopher Jones (35:48):
So I would say my article made a couple of
interventions. The first is, Ithink I've identified where
Esarhaddon was located at thetime of the assassination. So
it's clear from Nineveh A thathe's sent out of Nineveh long
before the assassination. Hesays he was taken to a secret
(36:12):
place. That's all he says in theNineveh A inscription. And I
think this is really just astatement of thanks to the gods
that he wasn't in Nineveh. He'ssaying the gods intervened to
protect him, because theydecided that he was destined for
kingship.
(36:32):
The clue that really broke itopen is there are two letters
sent to Esarhaddon after hebecame king from two different
people. One's a provincialgovernment official, and one is
a scholar who interprets omensfor the royal court. Both of
them refer to Esarhaddon beinglocated in a place they call
(36:59):
"the tower"--isiti or ashiti,depending on which writer is
using it. It's not clear ... youknow, most people who've looked
at these letters before havejust thrown up their hands at
where the tower is, but the cityof Dur-Katlimmu on the Khabur
(37:20):
River in what's now Syria, whichwas a early administrative
centre for the Assyrian rule inthat region. It's referred to in
Aramaic documents a couple oftimes as Magdalu, which means
"the tower, the fortress" inAramaic. It's also referred to
(37:45):
an Akkadian as "Birtu", whichalso means "fortress" or
"tower". So all of thesealternative names have the same
semantic range. I argue thatesiti is another name for
Dur-Katlimmu in the same waythat it's called Magdalu in
(38:07):
Aramaic. And these namesprobably all refer to the
citadel towering over the riverand the surrounding countryside.
The location fits very nicelywith the route that Esarhaddon
describes taking in Nineveh A.
He says he went through the landof Hanigalbat, which is an
(38:28):
archaic term for the the Jazirahplain. So that means he would
have traveled north fromDur-Katlimmu up the Khabur
River, and then turned andheaded east towards Nineveh.
This is not a very difficultjourney, so I would say he could
(38:50):
have made it in a couple ofdays. If he's located in
Dur-Katlimmu arguments based onhim having a rapid reaction time
don't really hold water, Ithink. And Dur-Katlimmu itself,
we have some evidence that thecity has some sort of special
(39:13):
link with the crown princes ofAssyria. There are officials who
serve the crown prince who arelisted on legal documents from
there. There are legal documentswith a strange formula that says
that the crown prince will bethe arbitrator of any dispute in
this contract. That's a veryrare legal formula. And then
(39:37):
finally, there was a paper Iheard at ASOR last year by
Laurel Poolman, azoo-archeologist. She said that
at Dur-Katlimmu there's a lot ofremains of exotic, charismatic
megafauna, and suggested thatthere was some sort of elite
(39:59):
hunting going on there, whichwould certainly be consistent
with the city being linked tothe crown princes and them being
based out of it, you know, insome capacity. So I don't think
that Esarhaddon was sent out ofNineveh in order to protect him,
or something like that; thatpeople were so angry at him that
(40:23):
they sent him away. I think hewas sent to Dur-Katlimmu just to
gain some experience ingovernment in preparation for
his taking the throne.
So another intervention in myarticle has to do with the
perpetrators. Obviously, youknow, Urad-Mullissu Adrammelek
(40:45):
has been pretty wellestablished. But the two
accomplices listed in the letterwhere they describe taking the
guy blindfolded beforeUrad-Mullissu. One of these
guys, Nabu-shumu-ishkun, I thinkcan be pretty clearly identified
with a chariot driver ofSennacherib, who disappears from
(41:06):
our sources after Sennacherib'sreign. The other one, the only
the first part of his name isstill extant on the tablet, and
it says, "Sil". This has oftenbeen reconstructed "Sillaya".
Simo Parpola did this in 1980and people have just followed it
since. I don't think that iscorrect. Sillaya" is attested in
(41:33):
other texts as organizingagainst Esarhaddon within the
empire. But they're from muchlater, and I suggest that the
reconstruction of this nameshould actually be Sil-Ashur,
who's the governor of Ninevehduring the reign of Sennacherib.
(41:54):
But as I was looking into names,I got the idea that I should
record all the names of militarypersonnel in the legal documents
from Nineveh that appearedduring the time of Sennacherib.
And what I found was there are alot of legal documents of, you
(42:14):
know, charioteers, professionalsoldiers in the Assyrian army
that are stationed in thecapital from the reign of
Sennacherib. But then they alldisappear. There is nobody who
was a charioteer in Nineveh in681 BC, who appears in any legal
documents from the reign ofEsarhaddon. Now for charioteers
(42:38):
outside of Nineveh, that's nottrue. For people who are
stationed out in the provinces,we have plenty of examples where
they've got a legal documentdating from Sennacherib, another
one from Esarhaddon. The othergroup that disappears like this
are officials who controlaccess, like locks and things
within the palaces. There's a100% turnover there.
(43:02):
By comparison, you know, Iwanted to make sure that
Assyrian kings didn't just, youknow, bring in new charioteers
whenever they took office, orsomething like a mass
retirement. I looked atcharioteers from the texts
dating from the reign ofEsarhaddon, and found that many
of them do have documents fromthe reign of Ashurbanipal as
(43:23):
well. So the people who wereprofessional soldiers when
Esarhaddon died continued intheir jobs under the next king.
So based on that, I started toget suspicious that the chariot
units stationed in Nineveh hadjoined Urad-Mullissu during or
(43:44):
after the assassination. We'renot just looking at an
assassination now; we're lookingat a military coup. Then I found
there's a smoking gun letter. Itwas sent during the reign of
Ashurbanipal, but it talks abouta charioteer. The writer informs
Ashurbanipal that this man hadfled the country during the
(44:07):
reign of your father. So itseems to me that you know, the
charioteer units that joined therebellion either were killed or
executed or fled, or at the veryleast, were cashiered from
service in the aftermath, whichleft Esarhddon having to rebuild
the chariot corp.
(44:29):
And then my final interventionsare, one, this tablet that
Parpola published, there hadactually been a join made in the
early 2000s by Jeanette Fincke,but she never published it. And
when I was doing research for mydissertation at the British
Museum in 2018 I was able toexamine that and add some new
(44:52):
information from those joins;mostly the names of some of the
guys who tried to informSennacherib of a plot. They were
actually Babylonians. Probablythey were goldsmiths, probably
working in Urad-Mullissu'spalace household, when somehow
(45:14):
they learned about what wasbeing plotted. And the people
who wrote the letter wereinvestigating. I think they were
interviewing members ofUrad-Mullissu's household, and
they're pretty incredulous thatthe people that of his household
are not, well, it seems likethey're saying they didn't know
anything. And the investigatorsare skeptical that they didn't
(45:36):
know anything, because threepeople were murdered in order to
cover up the plot before it evenhappened. And, you know, how did
nobody notice? So that added alittle bit.
And then, kind of the finalpiece of the puzzle was bringing
So coups, Singh argued, are whathe calls a coordination game,
in some studies of modernmilitary coups. One guy,
Naunihal Singh, he did a studyof military coups in Ghana. He
(45:59):
went to Ghana and interviewedgenerals and people who had
tried to overthrow thegovernment and everything.
They're all you know, retirednow. He was surprised that the
way that generals made decisionsduring a coup was pretty much
entirely based on whether theythought the plotters were going
(46:20):
to win. It wasn't based on, "dowe agree with this guy
politically?" One general toldhim, "it would be very selfish
of me to throw away the lives ofmy men based on the political
ideology that I support". Whatthey're really doing is they're
watching, and they're trying tosee if the coup is going to
(46:40):
succeed. And if they think it'sgoing to succeed, they try to
get on its side, right, becausenobody wants to be on the losing
side. And if they think it'sgoing to fail, then they come
out and oppose it.
where the plotters are trying togive the perception that their
(47:03):
victory is inevitable. Theiropponents are trying to give the
perception that failure isinevitable. And most people are
kind of sitting on the fencewaiting as long as they can
before they decide which sidethey're going to support. And I
think we see that happening inthe days and weeks following the
assassination, we have a lot oftablets that record prophecies.
(47:28):
And these prophecies were issuedduring the brief civil war, in
the aftermath of theassassination on behalf of
Esarhaddon. They're mostlylinked with the Temple of Ishtar
of Arbela.
There's some evidence thatEsarhaddon's mother Naqia, was
out helping to organize thispropaganda campaign. And having
(47:48):
prophets say Esarhaddon isdestined to the kingship. I,
Ishtar of Arbela, is going tohelp pull you through. These
things help create a perceptionthat Esarhaddon is going to win,
because he has the gods on hisside. And of course, he
immediately, as soon as he cangather whatever military forces
(48:08):
were at his disposal, startsmarching towards Nineveh. And in
the Jazirah plain somewhere, hemeets a force loyal to
Urad-Mullissu. And there's onlya very slight battle, and most
of them switch sides and joinEsarhaddon. By the time he gets
to Nineveh, the support for hisbrothers has collapsed. There's
(48:31):
some evidence that they're also...Urad-Mullissu is one of the
plotters, but Esarhaddon says inNineveh A that they butted each
other like baby goats in themiddle of Nineveh for the right
to be king. So maybe they're notas unified in their action.
We see this process play outelsewhere too. The governor of
(48:53):
Ashur has some real decisions tomake, because he's got to bury
Sennacherib along with the otherkings of Assyria in Ashur. Can't
sit on the fence on that one,right? You're either gonna
pretend like he just droppeddead from a heart attack or
something, while his murdererpresides over the funeral or do
(49:16):
something else. There's anunfortunately very fragmentary
letter that describes himdeploying armed soldiers in the
streets and trying to attacksomebody's house and some
official in Nineveh and arresthim. And it's not entirely clear
which side he ended up on, butclearly he had to do something,
(49:38):
and did something. It's justunfortunately, the letter's too
fragmentary to be certain aboutwhat.
In the aftermath, I, you know, Ifind this assassination so
important, one, it's mentionedin the Bible. It's mentioned in
Babylonian sources, where, inboth cases, it's seen as kind of
divine vengeance on Sennacheribfor his invasion of Judah in 701
(50:04):
BC, or his destruction ofBabylon in 689. But it also sets
the tone for Esarhaddon's timeon the throne. He's full of
paranoia. He's obsessed withuncovering plots against him. He
has lots of his officialsexecuted. It's very dark, and I
(50:27):
think that the root is inthere's a lot of fear on
Esarhaddon's part that he'sgoing to end up like his father
did.
Jon Taylor (50:36):
Yeah, thank you.
That's super interesting. Andcongratulations on the prize.
Christopher Jones (50:41):
Thank you.
Jon Taylor (50:42):
I'd also like to thank our patrons, Enrique
Jimenez, Jon, Matuszak, Nancyhighcock, JC wood thrush, Elisa
osberger, Mark Weeden, Joncompanies, Thomas Bolin Jon,
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(51:07):
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(51:31):
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Jackson, Susanna Paulus, EricWhitaker, Jacob flgari, Jon
(51:57):
ghanoush, Bonnie Nilamkwasmanen, Ben Michael Gitlin,
as well as those who prefer toremain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
(52:18):
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
(52:41):
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
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(53:02):
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(53:31):
you’ll join us next time.
Hello and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge, the
podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode, Italk to friends and colleagues
and get them to explain theirwork in a way we can all
understand.
This episode is anotherdedicated to the winners of the
(00:35):
prizes offered each year by theInternational Association for
Assyriology. We hear from threeearly career scholars whose
research has been recognised forits excellence. We start with
the history of the Isin IIdynasty, a pivotal moment in
Babylonian history, but a poorlydocumented one. Then we turn to
astrology and horoscopes in thelate Babylonian period, before
(00:58):
ending with an attempted coupthat could have taken the
Assyrian Empire in a differentdirection.
Congratulations to all threewinners, and I hope you enjoy
this special episode. So getyourself a cup of tea, make
yourself comfortable, and let'smeet today's guests.
(01:24):
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
William McGrath (01:28):
Oh, thanks so much, Dr Taylor.
Jon Taylor (01:29):
Could you tell us, please, who are you and what do
you do?
William McGrath (01:34):
Yes, my name is William McGrath, and I'm a
recent graduate from theUniversity of Toronto studying
assyriology, and I'm an earlycareer assyriologist.
Jon Taylor (01:44):
Okay, we're talking today because you won a prize
earlier this summer, didn't you?
So could you tell us what theprize was, please, and what did
you win it for?
William McGrath (01:53):
Yes, I won the prize for best dissertation from
the International AssyriologicalAssociation, which they very
generously selected mydissertation, which is entitled
"Resurgent Babylon (02:04):
A Cultural, Political and Intellectual
History of the Second Dynasty ofIsin".
Jon Taylor (02:10):
Could you tell us a little bit more detail about
your dissertation, then? Whatkinds of topics were you
touchingon?
William McGrath (02:15):
Sure. Well, to begin with, my dissertation is a
study of the Isin II period ofBabylonian history, a period of
132 years spanning from 1157 to1026 BC. I have framed my study
of the Isin II period as havingtwo major foci: political
(02:35):
history, typified by the work ofBrinkman; and literary
theological innovation, typifiedby the work of Lambert, which I
aim to bring together in asingle work, with the hope that
these two focuses may provemutually informative. So to
start with, perhaps I couldframe the intellectual
background of this project--whyit made a certain sense for a
(02:58):
Toronto student to come to thistopic, because, as it turns out,
both Brinkman and Lambert hadconnections with Toronto-based
astrology.
Well, first of all, in 1962Brinkman completed a PhD
dissertation on the post-Kassiteperiod for the University of
Chicago. Over the next sixyears, he then developed a
(03:19):
seminal version of this project,which was published in 1968
under the title A PoliticalHistory of Post-Kassite
Babylonia. This work, of course,was the first major treatment of
the Isin II period, and remainsindispensable today. It's
superbly reliable, cogentlyargued and with 2195 footnotes,
(03:40):
it's exhaustively documented.
Brinkman's updated work wasagain conducted at the
University of Chicago, which isinteresting because his access
to the vast referencecollections in the Oriental
Institute's files was likely acontributing factor to making
his work as thorough as it is.
His connections with Torontowere also significant at the
(04:01):
time and provided him earlyaccess to Grayson's editions of
the chronicle texts, as well asan early involvement with
Toronto's Royal Inscriptions ofMesopotamia project.
Secondly, although one wouldhardly go so far as to
characterise Lambert as aCanadian scholar, it is notable
that his first assyriologicalpublication caught the eye of
(04:22):
Toronto based Hebraist R. J.
Williams, and that subsequently,Lambert accepted a position at
the University of Toronto, whichhe maintained from 1955 until
1959. This period inauguratedLambert's full time academic
career, and it was during hisstay in Toronto that he produced
his paper, "Ancestors, Authorsand Canonicity", and would have
(04:43):
completed most of his work forhis Babylonian wisdom literature
project at this time. Of course,these, together with several of
his later papers, provedfoundational for the model of
Babylonian religion that Imaintain in my dissertation.
To return to your question,"what was my dissertation
about?", it was envisioned fromthe start as a re-examination of
(05:06):
the Isin II dynasty ofBabylonian kings, albeit one
that was sorely needed, since ithad been 50 years since the last
in-depth treatment. So I wasable to draw from new textual
sources that weren't availableto Brinkman for my look at the
political history of the Isin IIkings. And this is a corpus
roughly 1/3 larger than thatavailable in 1968 in fact,
(05:28):
although many of these texts arelaconic to a greater or lesser
extent. Although my work treatsthe reigns of all 11 kings of
the dynasty in question, it wasinevitable that Nebuchadnezzar
the First would be a major focusof my work, and this is because
of the 54 kings of thepost-kassite period, scholars
(05:49):
have suggested that the onlygreat king among them was
Nebuchadnezzar the First.
Further, of the over 100Babylonian kings to have reigned
in the various Babyloniandynasties, Nebuchadnezzar is
held to be among the top fourBabylonian kings in terms of the
importance which subsequenttradition ascribed to him.
Jon Taylor (06:08):
This is quite exciting, then, isn't it? You
have a large number of newsources, and you're presumably
able to say something about oneof the key figures in Babylonian
history. Prior to publication,are you able to share what some
of the conclusions are from yourwork?
William McGrath (06:23):
Certainly, yes.
Listeners may be familiar withNebuchadnezzar the First's
much-discussed victory over theElamites, and this episode will
naturally call to mind thatBabylonia, at this time, was not
at peace. Rather, it was a timeof tension and conflict with
neighbours. In fact, the Isin IIdynasty begins, and continues
for some time, in what has beencalled the Assyrian-Elamite
(06:47):
phase. That is, a timecharacterised by conflict with
both Assyria to the north andElam to the east.
One of the major findings I cameto is a significant reworking of
the timeline for these events,which occur in Nebuchadnezzar
the First's reign. Using newlyavailable texts which provide
(07:08):
new data about the timing of keyevents, I have produced a series
of interlocking and mutuallysupportive arguments which
result in the first definitetimeline for Nebuchadnezzar's
Elamite campaign. Havingestablished that I, was also
able to reassess a series ofprior events, such as the prior
military action of the Elamiteking in the region as being more
(07:32):
direct and consequential inmotivating Nebuchadnezzar's
ultimate response. I should add,however, that the work is not as
much a re-examination ofNebuchadnezzar the First's
reign, as a treatment of theentire dynasty. Owing to the
information from new sources andoutside of the events of
(07:52):
Nebuchadnezzar's campaign justmentioned, my reconstruction of
the dynasty differs from earlierworks in several respects, or in
numerous respects. This includesthe positioning of
Marduk-kabit-ahheshu's ascensionto the throne,
Itti-Marduk-balatu's militaryactivity, the demise of
Ninurta-nadin-shumi, althoughthis is necessarily speculative,
(08:14):
and Enlil-nadin-apli'susurpation by his uncle,
Marduk-nadin-ahhe.
While it has been thetraditional view that the Isin
II kings were initially theaggressors against the Assyrian
kings, my work establishes thatthis pattern was consistent from
kings two, three, four and five,rather than just kings three and
four. In addition, myreconstruction of
(08:36):
Tiglath-pileser the First'smilitary actions against
Babylonia contains updates andagainst previous accounts, I
have argued that there was noAssyro-Babylonian clash in the
reign of Adad-apla-iddina. Insummary, my look at the
political history of the dynastyhas put forward a new
formulation of the span ofBabylonian history for
(08:59):
consideration. I should add thatI am indebted to several
generations of archaeologists,curators, and philologists for
making the contributions that Idepended on.
Jon Taylor (09:10):
I'm very much looking forward to reading that.
One of the benefits of thedissertation prize is the
facility to help with thepublication. So are you able to
say what your plans are forthis?
William McGrath (09:22):
Well, yes, I'm currently working to refine my
dissertation and to selectivelyedit it down to a format which
would be more applicable to apublished book. I think because
I was following a work that wasparticularly exhaustive, that is
Brinkman's 1968 treatment ofthis period, I sort of
endeavoured to be as exhaustiveas I could be as well. But this
(09:44):
resulted in a very longdissertation with a lot of
footnotes. So I see now thatthere is a lot of editing that I
should do in order to make amore streamlined and readable
work that would appeal more topublishers.
In addition to that, after Ifinished my dissertation,
several esteemed andauthoritative scholars wrote to
me and have generously providedcritique and suggestions for
(10:06):
revisions. In addition, theyhave provided me with
information about numerous textspertaining to the reigns of
Nebuchadnezzar the First andAdad-apla-iddina that remain
unpublished and that I had notbeen aware of at the time of my
work. So of course, these arefor the most part,
administrative texts, whichwould probably just contain
royal titles or statements ofaffiliation. But still, this
(10:30):
counts as very appealing andimportant information for the
study of a dynasty that is, infact, poorly documented on as a
whole. So I'm beyond grateful tothese scholars for generously
sharing, and I would want towork this information over
thoroughly in the course ofrevising my dissertation for
publication.
Jon Taylor (10:48):
Yeah, good luck.
That sounds very interestingindeed. That must presumably
take up rather a lot of yourtime. But if you have any time
left over, and if you canenvisage the period after the
dissertation is published, isthere anything else you're
working on or that you'd like towork on next?
William McGrath (11:05):
Oh, yes. Well, thanks for asking. Yeah. At the
current moment, indeed, I ammost focused on this material
that would complement therevision of my dissertation, the
good number of unpublished textsrelating to the Isin II kings.
Before getting there, I amthinking that I will produce a
paper size study of this newmaterial that could later be
incorporated into the revisedbook edition.To that end, you
(11:28):
know, curators at Yale have beenvery generous and forthcoming in
providing photographs of anumber of tablets, and I am very
thankful for this. But I stillhave a good amount of legwork to
do in reaching out to othercollections elsewhere, and
inquiring as to whether I mightobtain permission to work with
further Isin II period texts.
Apart from this, I am developinga project that will examine a
(11:51):
selection of Kassiteadministrative texts. This came
about from considerations of theMiddle Babylonian text
publications, and the state ofthe publications that I observed
in the course of my dissertationwork. At which point, it became
apparent to me that this area ofthe field remains somewhat
underdeveloped. I've been intouch with Grant Frame and
(12:13):
Jonathan Tenney, and they havekindly shared some insights with
me. And as a result, I'mweighing my approach. There are,
of course, many ways that onecould come to a corpus as large
and as significant as theKassite administrative text from
Nippur. I also note that thereis a current upsurge in
innovative and interestingKassite period scholarship right
(12:34):
now. And the amazing work beingdone at your Corpus of Seal
Inscriptions of the Kassiteperiod is a great example of
that.
Jon Taylor (12:42):
Oh gosh, that's very kind. Good luck with your work.
Congratulations on your prize,and thank you very much for
talking about it today.
William McGrath (12:48):
Sure. Well, thanks so much for having me.
Like I said, I really enjoyedthe opportunity to discuss this.
And if I could, I would justquickly like to thank my
supervisors, Professor Beaulieuand Professor Baker, as well as
Professor Benjamin Foster forsuggesting that I apply for the
IAA award in the first place. Inaddition, I'd just like to
quickly thank the IAA reviewpanel for selecting my
(13:09):
dissertation, of course.
Finally, thank you very muchagain for having me on, Dr.
Taylor.
Jon Taylor (13:12):
It's been a pleasure. Thank you again.
At this point, I must make aconfession. I failed to record
the question where I ask my nextguest to introduce themself. My
apologies to her and to you forthat. So I'll do that on her
(13:35):
behalf now. We hear next fromAlessia Pilloni, who is a PhD
student at the Frei UniversitaetBerlin.
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
Alessia Pilloni (13:49):
Hello, thank you so much for inviting me.
Jon Taylor (13:51):
We've invited you on because you won a prize this
summer. Could you start pleaseby telling us what the prize was
that you won and what you won itfor?
Unknown (13:59):
Yes. So last summer, at the Rencontre, I won the
runner-up prize for the bestfirst article. The topic of my
paper was the astrologicalschemes behind these two
mysterious astrologicalterminology that are bit nisirtu
and KI in the Babylonianhoroscopes.
Jon Taylor (14:20):
And where did you publish that article?
Unknown (14:22):
I published it in the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern
History, 2024.
Jon Taylor (14:27):
Well, first off, congratulations. Before we dig
into your work in detail,perhaps you could set the scene
for us and explain a little bitabout what horoscopes are and
the current state of researchbefore your work, please?
Unknown (14:41):
The starting point of my research is an edition that
was already made in the '90s byFrancesca Rochberg. Actually,
there was already an editionmade by Abraham Sachs in the
'50s, but Francesca Rochbergadded some more context, a nice
introduction, and she clarifiedmany of the things that were not
clarified by Abraham Sachsbefore. So what is a horoscope?
(15:03):
And why do we call these textshoroscopes? Well, we know that
modern horoscopes are a verypopular practice lately, and
they actually derive from theBabylonian ones. We can say that
the Babylonian horoscopes werethe ancestors of our modern
horoscopes.
Alessia Pilloni (15:21):
So what are these horoscopes? We can define
them as horoscopes because theyrecord mainly two informations.
Jon Taylor (15:27):
There is a larger question, isn't there, with
One is the child's birth, thedate of birth of the child, and
the second one is the positionof the planets at the time of
that birth. So we can imaginesort of a map of the sky in a
precise time. We might thinkthat these positions were
observed, but in fact, if wethink about it, at any time, if
(15:49):
we go out and look at the sky,we will never be able to see all
the planets together. So eitherthe sun is out, so it's bright,
and we cannot see the otherplanets. And even if it's dark,
even if the child was born atnight, there is no way we can
see all the planets together. Soactually, the positions that we
(16:11):
see in the horoscopes were allcomputed. In fact, we are
already in the Late Babylonianperiod, so from the fourth
century BC onwards, where theBabylonian scholars were already
able to compute these positions.
They already had a lot ofomens and this kind of material.
But if you're calculating thingsalgorithms and tools on how to
compute the occurrences ofplanetary phenomena and also the
(16:31):
exact position at any time thatthey wanted to. So that's what
they did for the horoscopes.
and they're predictable, why dothey have meaning? And perhaps,
in the case of astrology, thatis what gives it the meaning?
Alessia Pilloni (16:53):
In the few cases where we have some
prognostication written down inthe tablet, they're actually all
positive. And they come afterplanetary position. So we have
this horoscope from Uruk sayingthat a planet is in its KI, so
in its place, and then somepositive predictions follow. In
(17:14):
this case, for example, I arguethat the positive predictions
are because the planet is in itstriplicity. So the zodiacal
position of this planet is partof the triplicity that belongs
to that planet. So this gives anoutcome. What I can say more
about this is that how theprognostication is structured
(17:38):
reminds us of the astraldivination. So, for example,
Enuma Anu Enlil.
Jon Taylor (17:45):
The horoscopes are quite late creations, aren't
they? But the names of ... canwe call these "signs" ... are
older?
Alessia Pilloni (17:51):
Yes. So the horoscopes are, in a way, an
outcome of what astronomers andastrologers in Babylonia were
already doing for many years.
They started with astraldivination, which is the old way
of looking at the sky. So everyevent in the sky corresponded to
something on Earth. But by thefourth century BC, they already
(18:13):
had observed enough to be ableto predict the occurrences of
heavenly phenomena. And theyalready invented algorithms and
other tools on how to predictthese phenomena, like in the
future, at any time. So I thinkthat at some point they just
(18:33):
combined the fact that you canassociate events in the sky and
on Earth with the fact that youcould predict them.
The problem with thesehoroscopes is that we don't have
many mathematical astronomicalsources for that, meaning that
the main interest ofmathematical astronomy is
actually not calculating theexact position of the planet in
(18:57):
every moment, but rather thefuture occurrences of the same
phenomenon. That could be, Idon't know, the appearance of a
planet in the eastern horizon.
But we have some of these textsthat calculate the exact
position of the planet at givenmoments, and these were probably
the sources for the horoscopes.
(19:17):
But as I said before, we don'treally know what is the outcome
of the horoscopes. It's just arecord of a date of birth of a
child that sometimes has a name,sometimes it doesn't. There are
not a lot of interpretation ofthe events described in the
tablets.
Jon Taylor (19:37):
That's a shame, isn't it, because I was going to
ask, what do you do with thesethings? If there are very few
prognostications, you don'tlearn what the fate of your
child is, I guess you can, youcan explain it orally?
Alessia Pilloni (19:48):
Exactly, that's my understanding. Probably they
just serve as a scheme for theastrologer to actually explain
the outcome, theprognostication, to the client.
If we can talk about clients,because we don't know that
either.
Jon Taylor (20:03):
Would people have star signs, as we would think of
it? So would someone say, "Oh,I'm a Capricorn", and that would
convey some kind of meaning.
Would they consider themselvesto be a type of person based on
when they were born?
Unknown (20:17):
Yeah, that's very interesting. Probably the solar
zodiacal sign, so where the sunwas in the moment where we were
born was not that important forthem. They say that a planet is
in a particular zodiacal sign.
What does that mean? Because nowwe associate a zodiacal sign
with being completelyastrological. But actually the
(20:37):
purpose of the zodiac wasastronomy. So astronomical
computation, mathematicalastronomy. The zodiac, in fact,
is ideal division of the path ofthe sun. The path of the sun
sounds maybe a little bitawkward or weird to a modern
audience, because we know thatthe sun doesn't revolve around
(21:00):
the earth, but is the other wayaround. But for the Babylonians,
that was not a given. Theythought that the sun was moving
around the Earth.
Alessia Pilloni (21:09):
We also know that a year for a Babylonian
lasted about 360 days, andthat's how they divided the path
of the sun, because the sun ismoving little by little every
day for 360 days, untilreturning to the same position.
And that is exactly the zodiac.
So the division of this path.
Since 360 is a little bit of abig number, then they divide it
(21:33):
into 12. That 12 are thezodiacal signs as well as the
months of the year. And eachzodiacal sign is divided into 30
degrees, as well as a month isdivided into 30 days. So with
this amazing tool, this amazingcoordinate system, they were
able to compute the planetaryposition, even if they couldn't
(21:55):
observe them.
And apart from these two data,so the date of birth of the
child and the position of theplanets, we also have some other
information, but we're notdiving into that. I can just say
some of the horoscopes fromBabylon record also the
occurrences of eclipses, ofequinoxes and solstices that
(22:19):
happen close to the date ofbirth. And, for example, some of
the horoscopes from Uruk recordthe position of the moon and the
direction of the position of themoon at the time of birth. So
whether it was going upward ordownward. All these data were
already clarified by Rochbergand also others.
But we still have two mysteriouselements in these horoscopes
(22:42):
that consists of two terms. Thebit nisirtu, which is the "house
of secrecy", literally, or the"house of protection", according
to some latest interpretations,that is only found in the
horoscopes coming from Babylon,from the city of Babylon. And
then we have another term thatis the KI. It's a Sumerian word,
(23:02):
and in Akkadian it would beashru, which means "place", and
nobody had an idea on what theymeant, because this terminology
appears in other texts. But inother texts, it has a clear
context and a clear meaning,whereas in the horoscopes, we
have no idea what it meant.
Jon Taylor (23:20):
What is the solution to these two terms?
Alessia Pilloni (23:23):
So bit nisirtu is this term that we only find
in the horoscopes from Babylon.
Not in all of them, but isexclusive of this corpus. So
scholars are already well awarethat bit nisirtu is actually
connected to very well-knownastrological concept that is
well developed also in Greekastrology, that is that of the
(23:43):
exaltation. In Greek it iscalled hypsoma. And is the
position where a planet as themost powerful influence. This
concept already existed, and itoriginated in Babylonia. The
only problem is, it is notapplicable to the horoscopes. So
we said that a planet has aprecise position where it has
(24:04):
its most powerful influence. So,for example, we have Jupiter in
the constellation of Cancer, andthat's where Jupiter has its
most powerful influence. Butthen in the horoscope, whenever
we find this terminology, likebit nisirtu of a certain planet,
it's never this exaltation. It'snever connected to the
(24:24):
exaltation. It's not the mostpowerful position of that
planet. So that's already a signthat for the horoscope, this
meaning, this application of theexaltation, is not valid. So we
need to find another one.
And the same goes for KI. KI hassuch a broad range of meanings.
(24:44):
It was suggested by Brown thatit might refer to the ascendant.
Maybe some of you that arefamiliar with modern astrology
know what an ascendant is. It'sactually the zodiacal sign
rising at the horizon at thetime when we are born. But
that's probably, unfortunately,not the case. So even in this
(25:07):
context, we need to find anothermeaning for this term. It's not
referred to the ascendant, norto any other well-known
concepts.
looking at other texts and othercompendia from Mesopotamia, even
from earlier astral sciencetexts, I suggested these two
terms are connected to thetriplicities. So this is quite
(25:31):
hard to imagine, but let's giveit a try. Let's imagine that we
have a circle, and this circleis divided into 12 equal parts.
I told you before that theZodiac is the division of the
path of the sun into 12 equalparts. Each of the parts
correspond to one zodiacal sign,or one month, because they are
(25:51):
the same, they are associated.
And Babylonians were reallyaware of this. So we can imagine
that the first month, nisannu,corresponds to the first
zodiacal sign, which is Ares,and the second month to the
second sign and so on. In thetriplicity scheme, months, or
zodiacal signs, are arranged infour groups of three, so that
(26:13):
their distance is always fourmonths or signs. That's quite
complicated, but if we want toput it in a easy way, we can say
that they form triangles in acircle. And each of these
triplicities is assigned to adifferent planet. And this is
probably what theseterminologies are referred to.
(26:34):
But there are differentapplications of this scheme. In
one case, the bit nisirtu of acertain planet is associated to
the month where the solstice orequinox that happens closest to
the date of birth is happening.
Jon Taylor (26:51):
Was this just an article you wrote as a single
piece of work, or does thisbelong to a larger piece of
research for you?
Alessia Pilloni (26:58):
Yes, yes, it belongs to my research interest,
but I have to say it was notexpected. I'm still doing my
PhD. I'm halfway through it, andI'm investigating the
differences between the astralscience texts from Uruk and
Babylon. Why these two cities?
Because this is where we haveall the text pertaining astral
(27:19):
science in the Late Babylonianperiod. So we also have
mathematical astronomy, otherforms of astrology, some
calendrical texts, observationand such.
One year ago, I was looking atthe horoscopes as a genre of
astrology in the Late Babylonianperiod. And I was looking only
(27:41):
at the differences between thetexts from Uruk and Babylon and
see if I can detect how astralknowledge was transmitted
between these two cities and howthey implemented each other. And
then I got into the terminology.
And as I said at the beginning,they differ between the two
cities. We have bit nisirtu onlyin Babylon and KI only in Uruk.
(28:01):
So I was mainly interested inwhy they were using two
different terminology. And thenI looked at some other sources,
and I found out that actually Icould find a possible solution.
Or, as far as we know, we don'tknow, if we find other
horoscopes, we might change ourview, but that's ... that's what
I was able to detect so far. Soyeah, it is part of my project
(28:25):
on astral knowledge transfer inLate Babylonia. And also part of
another bigger project with
this, which is Zodiac (28:33):
Ancient Astral Science in
Transformation, led by MatthieuOssendrijver, which is also my
supervisor. Where we, as thetitle, says, investigate
transformation in astralsciences in Babylonia, Egypt,
Greece, and Rome.
Jon Taylor (28:50):
Well, congratulations again. This is
fascinating stuff. I lookforward to the results of your
PhD. Good luck with that. Andthank you for explaining about
your work.
Alessia Pilloni (29:00):
Thanks a lot.
Jon Taylor (29:10):
Hello and welcome to Thin End of the Wedge. Thank you
for joining us.
Christopher Jones (29:14):
Thank you for having me.
Jon Taylor (29:16):
Could you tell us please, who are you and what do
you do?
Christopher Jones (29:20):
My name is Christopher Jones. I'm a
assistant professor in theDepartment of History at Union
University in Jackson,Tennessee. We're a small school.
I teach quite broadly, but myspecialty in research and my
academic training is inassyriology. And I specialise in
the study of the Neo-AssyrianEmpire in the seventh century
(29:43):
BC.
Jon Taylor (29:44):
We're talking today because you won a prize in the
summer, didn't you? Could youtell us, what did you win? And
what did you win it for?
Christopher Jones (29:52):
It was an award from the International
Association of Assyriology forthe best first article. So it's
a prize they award every year tosomeone who's published their
first like real peer-reviewedjournal article in the field.
And my article was called ...
it's called "Failed Coup. TheAssassination of Sennacherib and
(30:16):
Esarhaddon's Struggle for theThrone". It's taking a new look
at one of the most dramaticevents in Assyrian history, when
the Assyrian king Sennacheribwas murdered by some of his own
sons. And there's a brief civilwar that results, in which the
son that Sennacherib actuallydesignated as his heir,
(30:38):
Esarhaddon, defeats the othersand claims the throne.
Jon Taylor (30:45):
There are different interpretations of this event,
aren't there? So sometimes it'sblamed on one of Esarhaddon's
brothers. Sometimes Esarhaddonhimself is put in the frame.
Could you say something aboutthat, please? You know, who
dunnit?
Christopher Jones (30:57):
Yes. So for the longest time, the only
account that was extant of thisassassination was from the
Bible. And that was in the bookof Second Kings. It says that
the Sennacherib's sons,Adrammelek and Sharezer, killed
Sennacherib with a sword, andthey escaped to the land of
(31:18):
Ararat. And you know, when westarted to decipher cuneiform,
one of the first sources relatedto this assassination that was
translated was a royalinscription of Esarhaddon called
"Nineveh A". We actually havequite a few copies of Nineveh A
now. These were basically massproduced in 674 BC, in the
(31:39):
aftermath of Esarhaddon's failedinvasion of Egypt. He's
concerned that people mightbelieve his legitimacy is
somehow in question. That, youknow, losing this war means that
he's been cursed by the gods.
Something of that nature.
So he writes this document as adefense of his legitimacy on the
(32:03):
throne. But he refers to theassassination in some weird
ways. He doesn't refer to itdirectly. He just refers to his
brother's alienated Sennacheribfrom him, and then he marched on
Nineveh and drove them out whilethey were, you know, angering
(32:23):
the gods. People were alwaysstruck that it seemed a little
strange that he's notidentifying them as killing his
father, which would seem to be avery effective charge against
their legitimacy.
In 1926 Theo Bauer and BennoLandsberger published an article
(32:43):
where they suggested that maybeEsarhaddon had actually carried
out the assassination. Not himpersonally, but through an
accomplice or something, and heengineered this and then blamed
his brothers for it. Now thistheory was mostly put to bed in
(33:04):
1980 when Simo Parpola publisheda new edition of a tablet that
had not been well translatedbeforehand. And the tablet is a
... an investigation into theaftermath. And it describes a
son of Sennacherib namedUrad-Mullissu, which Parpola,
(33:28):
you know, convincingly linkswith the Adrammelek of Second
Kings 19 (33:31):
37. In this tablet, Urad-Mullissu is described as
plotting to kill the king, andsomebody finds out, and tries to
inform Sennacherib. ButUrad-Mullissu finds out that
this guy finds out, and there'sa dramatic scene where some of
Urad-Mullissu's accomplicesbring the would be snitch into a
(33:55):
room blindfolded. And they tellhim that he's standing before
Sennacherib and to tell themwhat he knows. And so he says,
you know, your son,Urad-Mullissu is plotting to
kill you. And then they take offthe blindfold, and instead of
Sennacherib standing before him,it's Urad-Mullissu. That kind of
(34:18):
settled the debate again for awhile.
But more recently, there's acouple of articles have
appeared, one by Matthijs deJong, couple by Andrew Knapp,
one by Stephanie Dalley and LuisSiddal that tried to revive this
theory. They made a couple ofnew arguments. In addition to
(34:41):
Nineveh A, they argued thatthere's a Ashurbanipal prism
where he says he executedBabylonian prisoners on a site
where his grandfather had beenassassinated. There's also
suggestions that Esarhaddonmoved on Nineveh too quickly;
(35:04):
that he wouldn't have been ableto gather an army and move that
quickly, unless he had advancedknowledge that the assassination
would take place. And so Ididn't set out to write this
article in this way, but, andyou know, many of these new
articles are relatively recent;they came out while I was still
working on it, so it kind ofreshaped the project. I'd wanted
(35:27):
to do, a project kind ofreassessing all the evidence
surrounding the assassination,and it ended up turning into
partly a scholarly refutation ofsome of these other positions.
Jon Taylor (35:40):
What is your reconstruction, then? What did
your article bring to thediscussion? And what's the
latest, best idea of what reallyhappened?
Christopher Jones (35:48):
So I would say my article made a couple of
interventions. The first is, Ithink I've identified where
Esarhaddon was located at thetime of the assassination. So
it's clear from Nineveh A thathe's sent out of Nineveh long
before the assassination. Hesays he was taken to a secret
(36:12):
place. That's all he says in theNineveh A inscription. And I
think this is really just astatement of thanks to the gods
that he wasn't in Nineveh. He'ssaying the gods intervened to
protect him, because theydecided that he was destined for
kingship.
(36:32):
The clue that really broke itopen is there are two letters
sent to Esarhaddon after hebecame king from two different
people. One's a provincialgovernment official, and one is
a scholar who interprets omensfor the royal court. Both of
them refer to Esarhaddon beinglocated in a place they call
(36:59):
"the tower"--isiti or ashiti,depending on which writer is
using it. It's not clear ... youknow, most people who've looked
at these letters before havejust thrown up their hands at
where the tower is, but the cityof Dur-Katlimmu on the Khabur
(37:20):
River in what's now Syria, whichwas a early administrative
centre for the Assyrian rule inthat region. It's referred to in
Aramaic documents a couple oftimes as Magdalu, which means
"the tower, the fortress" inAramaic. It's also referred to
(37:45):
an Akkadian as "Birtu", whichalso means "fortress" or
"tower". So all of thesealternative names have the same
semantic range. I argue thatesiti is another name for
Dur-Katlimmu in the same waythat it's called Magdalu in
(38:07):
Aramaic. And these namesprobably all refer to the
citadel towering over the riverand the surrounding countryside.
The location fits very nicelywith the route that Esarhaddon
describes taking in Nineveh A.
He says he went through the landof Hanigalbat, which is an
(38:28):
archaic term for the the Jazirahplain. So that means he would
have traveled north fromDur-Katlimmu up the Khabur
River, and then turned andheaded east towards Nineveh.
This is not a very difficultjourney, so I would say he could
(38:50):
have made it in a couple ofdays. If he's located in
Dur-Katlimmu arguments based onhim having a rapid reaction time
don't really hold water, Ithink. And Dur-Katlimmu itself,
we have some evidence that thecity has some sort of special
(39:13):
link with the crown princes ofAssyria. There are officials who
serve the crown prince who arelisted on legal documents from
there. There are legal documentswith a strange formula that says
that the crown prince will bethe arbitrator of any dispute in
this contract. That's a veryrare legal formula. And then
(39:37):
finally, there was a paper Iheard at ASOR last year by
Laurel Poolman, azoo-archeologist. She said that
at Dur-Katlimmu there's a lot ofremains of exotic, charismatic
megafauna, and suggested thatthere was some sort of elite
(39:59):
hunting going on there, whichwould certainly be consistent
with the city being linked tothe crown princes and them being
based out of it, you know, insome capacity. So I don't think
that Esarhaddon was sent out ofNineveh in order to protect him,
or something like that; thatpeople were so angry at him that
(40:23):
they sent him away. I think hewas sent to Dur-Katlimmu just to
gain some experience ingovernment in preparation for
his taking the throne.
So another intervention in myarticle has to do with the
perpetrators. Obviously, youknow, Urad-Mullissu Adrammelek
(40:45):
has been pretty wellestablished. But the two
accomplices listed in the letterwhere they describe taking the
guy blindfolded beforeUrad-Mullissu. One of these
guys, Nabu-shumu-ishkun, I thinkcan be pretty clearly identified
with a chariot driver ofSennacherib, who disappears from
(41:06):
our sources after Sennacherib'sreign. The other one, the only
the first part of his name isstill extant on the tablet, and
it says, "Sil". This has oftenbeen reconstructed "Sillaya".
Simo Parpola did this in 1980and people have just followed it
since. I don't think that iscorrect. Sillaya" is attested in
(41:33):
other texts as organizingagainst Esarhaddon within the
empire. But they're from muchlater, and I suggest that the
reconstruction of this nameshould actually be Sil-Ashur,
who's the governor of Ninevehduring the reign of Sennacherib.
(41:54):
But as I was looking into names,I got the idea that I should
record all the names of militarypersonnel in the legal documents
from Nineveh that appearedduring the time of Sennacherib.
And what I found was there are alot of legal documents of, you
(42:14):
know, charioteers, professionalsoldiers in the Assyrian army
that are stationed in thecapital from the reign of
Sennacherib. But then they alldisappear. There is nobody who
was a charioteer in Nineveh in681 BC, who appears in any legal
documents from the reign ofEsarhaddon. Now for charioteers
(42:38):
outside of Nineveh, that's nottrue. For people who are
stationed out in the provinces,we have plenty of examples where
they've got a legal documentdating from Sennacherib, another
one from Esarhaddon. The othergroup that disappears like this
are officials who controlaccess, like locks and things
within the palaces. There's a100% turnover there.
(43:02):
By comparison, you know, Iwanted to make sure that
Assyrian kings didn't just, youknow, bring in new charioteers
whenever they took office, orsomething like a mass
retirement. I looked atcharioteers from the texts
dating from the reign ofEsarhaddon, and found that many
of them do have documents fromthe reign of Ashurbanipal as
(43:23):
well. So the people who wereprofessional soldiers when
Esarhaddon died continued intheir jobs under the next king.
So based on that, I started toget suspicious that the chariot
units stationed in Nineveh hadjoined Urad-Mullissu during or
(43:44):
after the assassination. We'renot just looking at an
assassination now; we're lookingat a military coup. Then I found
there's a smoking gun letter. Itwas sent during the reign of
Ashurbanipal, but it talks abouta charioteer. The writer informs
Ashurbanipal that this man hadfled the country during the
(44:07):
reign of your father. So itseems to me that you know, the
charioteer units that joined therebellion either were killed or
executed or fled, or at the veryleast, were cashiered from
service in the aftermath, whichleft Esarhddon having to rebuild
the chariot corp.
(44:29):
And then my final interventionsare, one, this tablet that
Parpola published, there hadactually been a join made in the
early 2000s by Jeanette Fincke,but she never published it. And
when I was doing research for mydissertation at the British
Museum in 2018 I was able toexamine that and add some new
(44:52):
information from those joins;mostly the names of some of the
guys who tried to informSennacherib of a plot. They were
actually Babylonians. Probablythey were goldsmiths, probably
working in Urad-Mullissu'spalace household, when somehow
(45:14):
they learned about what wasbeing plotted. And the people
who wrote the letter wereinvestigating. I think they were
interviewing members ofUrad-Mullissu's household, and
they're pretty incredulous thatthe people that of his household
are not, well, it seems likethey're saying they didn't know
anything. And the investigatorsare skeptical that they didn't
(45:36):
know anything, because threepeople were murdered in order to
cover up the plot before it evenhappened. And, you know, how did
nobody notice? So that added alittle bit.
And then, kind of the finalpiece of the puzzle was bringing
So coups, Singh argued, are whathe calls a coordination game,
in some studies of modernmilitary coups. One guy,
Naunihal Singh, he did a studyof military coups in Ghana. He
(45:59):
went to Ghana and interviewedgenerals and people who had
tried to overthrow thegovernment and everything.
They're all you know, retirednow. He was surprised that the
way that generals made decisionsduring a coup was pretty much
entirely based on whether theythought the plotters were going
(46:20):
to win. It wasn't based on, "dowe agree with this guy
politically?" One general toldhim, "it would be very selfish
of me to throw away the lives ofmy men based on the political
ideology that I support". Whatthey're really doing is they're
watching, and they're trying tosee if the coup is going to
(46:40):
succeed. And if they think it'sgoing to succeed, they try to
get on its side, right, becausenobody wants to be on the losing
side. And if they think it'sgoing to fail, then they come
out and oppose it.
where the plotters are trying togive the perception that their
(47:03):
victory is inevitable. Theiropponents are trying to give the
perception that failure isinevitable. And most people are
kind of sitting on the fencewaiting as long as they can
before they decide which sidethey're going to support. And I
think we see that happening inthe days and weeks following the
assassination, we have a lot oftablets that record prophecies.
(47:28):
And these prophecies were issuedduring the brief civil war, in
the aftermath of theassassination on behalf of
Esarhaddon. They're mostlylinked with the Temple of Ishtar
of Arbela.
There's some evidence thatEsarhaddon's mother Naqia, was
out helping to organize thispropaganda campaign. And having
(47:48):
prophets say Esarhaddon isdestined to the kingship. I,
Ishtar of Arbela, is going tohelp pull you through. These
things help create a perceptionthat Esarhaddon is going to win,
because he has the gods on hisside. And of course, he
immediately, as soon as he cangather whatever military forces
(48:08):
were at his disposal, startsmarching towards Nineveh. And in
the Jazirah plain somewhere, hemeets a force loyal to
Urad-Mullissu. And there's onlya very slight battle, and most
of them switch sides and joinEsarhaddon. By the time he gets
to Nineveh, the support for hisbrothers has collapsed. There's
(48:31):
some evidence that they're also...Urad-Mullissu is one of the
plotters, but Esarhaddon says inNineveh A that they butted each
other like baby goats in themiddle of Nineveh for the right
to be king. So maybe they're notas unified in their action.
We see this process play outelsewhere too. The governor of
(48:53):
Ashur has some real decisions tomake, because he's got to bury
Sennacherib along with the otherkings of Assyria in Ashur. Can't
sit on the fence on that one,right? You're either gonna
pretend like he just droppeddead from a heart attack or
something, while his murdererpresides over the funeral or do
(49:16):
something else. There's anunfortunately very fragmentary
letter that describes himdeploying armed soldiers in the
streets and trying to attacksomebody's house and some
official in Nineveh and arresthim. And it's not entirely clear
which side he ended up on, butclearly he had to do something,
(49:38):
and did something. It's justunfortunately, the letter's too
fragmentary to be certain aboutwhat.
In the aftermath, I, you know, Ifind this assassination so
important, one, it's mentionedin the Bible. It's mentioned in
Babylonian sources, where, inboth cases, it's seen as kind of
divine vengeance on Sennacheribfor his invasion of Judah in 701
(50:04):
BC, or his destruction ofBabylon in 689. But it also sets
the tone for Esarhaddon's timeon the throne. He's full of
paranoia. He's obsessed withuncovering plots against him. He
has lots of his officialsexecuted. It's very dark, and I
(50:27):
think that the root is inthere's a lot of fear on
Esarhaddon's part that he'sgoing to end up like his father
did.
Jon Taylor (50:36):
Yeah, thank you.
That's super interesting. Andcongratulations on the prize.
Christopher Jones (50:41):
Thank you.
Jon Taylor (50:42):
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I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
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(52:18):
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below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
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(53:31):
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