Empire and Ethnicity: A Social History of Deportation in Assyria and Kardunias during the First Millennium BCE

Abstract

Imperial conquest and deportation dramatically reshaped Middle Eastern societies during the first millennium BCE. While historians and archaeologists have studied these deportations from the perspective of kings and empires, the lived experience of deportees has largely been ignored. This dissertation develops a social history of deportation as implemented and experienced by social groups across the Middle East, with particular focus on Mesopotamia by reassessing our conceptions of empire, identity, and the experience of the subaltern. By grounding my research in the period’s geography and changing climate before approaching the relevant texts, I illustrate how deportation changes from the Middle Assyrian period until the beginning of the Persian period. I present deportation from multiple viewpoints: from that of the elite, of the lived experience of deportees, and of tribal elements often blamed for imperial difficulties. In Mesopotamia, the first millennium BCE witnessed the advent of at least three major empires. Immediately prior to this imperial “explosion,” the area had experienced a drier, colder shift in climate that contributed to the decline of previously flourishing imperial expressions (c.1250–900 BCE). Aligning the textual evidence with what paleo-climatology records, we see that empires and the use of deportation practices also declined and then redeveloped correspondingly. For this reason, this study focuses on 1200 to 500 BCE, incorporating the intermediate period between the height of the Middle Assyrian and Kassite Empires and ending before the recorded coup in the Persian Empire. Situating thousands of available administrative, epistolary, and royal texts in the period’s geography and climate, I illustrate how these texts reflect contemporary socio-economic motivations behind deportation and how they changed over the course of time in line with the changing climate and landscape. For the Middle Assyrian kings, raids and subsequent deportation provided mobile and edible capital for their homeland. As the climate improved, rationale for raids shifted to glory as kings sought fame for their military exploits instead of their ability to provide economically during the Neo-Assyrian period. During the Neo-Assyrian period, the Assyrian kings began deporting large numbers of people from recently conquered regions to meet a shortage of workers, to repopulate areas that had been abandoned during the previous deterioration in climate, and to populate the heartland of Assyria with small, rural communities of farmers who could supply the needs of the cities. Post-Kassite Southern Iraq, however, presents a different trajectory: never fully centralized, each region and ethnic group could hold local governing powers and provide for their own locality. Terms such as Akkad, Sumer, Karduniaš, Kaldû, Aram, and Sealand refer to various regions of Southern Iraq without subordinating any of them to another. While under Assyrian rule, the Aramaeans and Kaldeans of this region were the victims of the most recorded deportations. When at last free of Assyrian rule, it took time to unite the region under local rule. Even then, the king at Babylon appears to rule only certain regions, exercise authority over others, and be opposed by still others. Within this multicultural milieu, deportees made new lives for themselves as temple dependents and through land for service schemes according to the same practices in place for local subaltern groups or local mid-level elites.