The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent 9th-5th Centuries B.C.

270 Pages·1982·29.09 MB·English

by  Israel Eph'al

THE ANCIENT ARABS
Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent
9th-5th Centuries B. C.
ISRAEL EPH 'AL
1984
THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM
PREFACE
The Hebrew text on which this book is based was written in 1971. In
the meantime, several scholarly papers have been published, some of
them rather detailed, touching upon topics treated in this book. I did
not, however, consider it advisable to curtail my discussion and the
original comprehensive framewerk has been preserved. Where these new
studies are relevant, they are mentioned, and my own comments appear
in the notes. The English manuscript was completed in 1977 and has
been brought up to date to that year (though there are sporadic
instances of more recent updating).
The sources for the material dealt with in this book are variegated in
kind and origin. The inconsistency in spelling of proper names is thus
inherent: some names derive from traditional sources, while others are
from sources in which spelling systems widely differ. I have
incorporated all these "as is", making no effort to impose a unified
spelling "at all costs". Biblical names are generally given according to
the Revised Standard Version. When, however, the Akkadian or West
Semitic spelling is relevant, and the traditional spelling might be
misleading, adjustments have been made - often using letters and
symbols not found in the traditional English, for example, 'Ephah,
Qedar and Tema'.
Professor H. Tadmor, who followed the book through all the stages
of research and writing, has kindly read the manuscript and made
significant comments on both content and structure. My colleagues,
Professor M. Cogan and Dr. N. Na'aman, have also contributed
remarks which have led to various improvements. Mrs. Evelyn Strouse
edited the English style, and it is only thanks to her unstinting efforts
and well-tempered argumentation that the book has reached its present
readable form. The Research Authority and the H. Rosenberg School of
Jewish Studies, both of the Tel Aviv University, have assisted in
enabling the several retypings of the manuscript. To all the above, my
gratitude cannot adequately be expressed.
I.E.
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction .......................................................................................... 1
A. The purpose and history of the research .................................... l
B. Definition and designation of the nomads ................................. 5
C. The chronological framework.. ................................................. II
D. Geographie Iimits ..................................................................... 12
PART ONE: THE AKKADIAN AND BIBLICAL SOURCES ......... 20
Chapter I. Akkadian sources. ............................................................ 21
l. Royal inscriptions:
A. The Monolith Inscription from Kurkh of Shalmaneser III ...... 21
B. Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pi1eser III ............................................. 21
C. Inscriptions of Sargon II .......................................................... 36
D. lnscriptions of Sennacherib ...................................................... 40
E. Inscriptions of Esarhaddon ...................................................... 43
F. Inscriptions ofAssurbanipal... .................................................. 46
2. Other Akkadian sources:
G. Babylonian Chronicles .............................................................. 52
H. Assurbanipal's treaty with the Qedarites; letters and
administrative documents ......................................................... 54
Chapter II. The bib1ical sources ........................................................ 60
A. C1assification ............................................................................ 60
B. Historical sources ..................................................................... 63
C. Literary sources ........................................................................ 72
PART TWO: HISTORICAL SURVEY .............................................. 74
Chapter III. From mid-9th century B.C. to Assyrian imperial
expansion to Palestine ....................................................................... 75
Chapter IV. From Tiglath-Pileser III to Sargon li (738-705 B.C.) ... 81
A. Ethnographic-historical survey ................................................. 82
B. The integration of nomads into the Assyrian administrative
system du ring the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon ............ 93
C. Sargon's economic policy and its effect upon the nomads ..... 101
Chapter V. From Sennacherib to Assurbanipal.. ............................ 112
A. The reign of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) ............................... 112
1. Politico-military survey ...................................................... 112
2. Tribute and taxes ............................................................... 123
B. The reign of Esarhaddon (681-669 B.C.) ............................... 125
1. The chronological framework ............................................ 125
2. The northeastern Arabian desert... ..................................... 126
3. The campaign against the land of Bäzu ............................. 130
4. The Arabs as indispensable to military campaigns
in Sinai ............................................................................... 137
C. The reign of Assurbanipal (668-627 B.C.) .............................. 142
1. Source-Groups relating_to Arabs in the inscriptions
of Assurbanipal .................................................................. 142
2. Survey of events covered by Source-Group A. ................... 147
3. Survey of events covered by Source-Group B .................... 155
4. Nomad Ieaders according to groupings during
Assurbanipal's reign ........................................................... 165
Chapter VI. The Chaldaean period (605-539 B.C.) ........................ 170
A. The reign of Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.) ........................ 171
1. Nebuchadnezzar's war against the Arabs in his sixth
regnal year (599/8 B.C.) ..................................................... 171
2. The political and mi1itary background (594-582 B.C.)
of Arab penetration into Transjordan ................................ 176
B. The reign of Nabonidus (556-539 B.C.) ................................. 179
I. Babylonian historical sources ............................................. 180
2. North Arabian inscriptions ................................................ 182
3. Nabonidus' route to Tema' ................................................ 185
4. Arabs in Babylonia; North Arabian and Babylonian
connections in the 6th century B.C. ................................... 188
Chapter VII. The Achaemenid period (539-ca.450 B.C.) ................ 192
A. Oemography ........................................................................... 193
I. Northern Sinai and the approach to Egypt.. ...................... 193
2. The southern coast of Palestine. ......................................... 195
3. ldumaea and southcrn Transjordan ................................... 197
B. Achaemenid rule in North Arabia and Transjordan .............. 201
C. Arab status in southern Palestine within the
Achaemenid administrative and economic system .................. 206
0. Geshem the Arab: Problems of identification ........................ 210
Appendix A. The nomad groups ..................................................... 215
Appendix B. The Sons of Qeturah and the Sons of Ishmael
(in the biblical genealogical lists) ..................................................... 231
Map ................................................................................................. 241
Abbreviations .................................................................................. 243
General index .................................................................................. 249
Index of sources .............................................................................. 259
INTRODUCTION
A. THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH
This book proposes to investigate and describe the relations between
the nomads of northern Sinai, northern Arabia and the Syro-Arabian
desert, and the population of Palestine and its environs, as weil as
between those nomads and the great Near Eastern empires which ruled
the western part of the Fertile Crescent in the 9th-5th centuries B.C.
The study focuses mainly on the political and ethnographic aspects of
these relations, and deals, to a Iesser extent, with social and economic
matters.
The investigation of the nomads within the described geographic
confines was only made possible by the decipherment and public<>.tion of
the Assyrian and Babylonian documents which relate to them and
remain our chief source of information about the nomads during the
discussed period. The pioneers in research of any dimension on this
topic were Fr. Delitzsch (Paradies, 1881), F. Hommel (Geschichte
Babyloniens und Assyriens, Berlin 1885) and E. Glaser (Skizze, 1890).
Their work was limited in the main to locating and identifying the
nomads mentioned in the Bible andin Akkadian sources. For purposes
of comparison they also made use of names in Greek and Latin sources,
and to a lesser extent those in Arabic (e.g. al-Hamdäni and al-Bakri).
Much of their work is faulty by present-day Standards and therefore
unusable, primarily because of errors in reading cuneiform texts and the
mechanical identification of various groups by phonological similarities,
without sufficient regard for geographic logic.
A generation later saw the second stage in the development of
research, marked by the works of A. Musil and Hommel (Ethnologie und
1
lntroduction
Geographie des alten Orients, 1926), which also account for geographic
and social factors relating to the nomads. The documentary basis was
likewise expanded by the publication of new sources and critical
editions of texts previously available only in prelirninary publications
(e.g. the inscriptions of Assurbanipal). Of particular value was the
contribution of Musil, who in the years 1896-1902, 1908-1915 traversed
the deserts from the Negeb and northern Arabia through Wadi Sir"än
and the Syrian desert to the Euphrates. To his diaries on these travels
Musil added numerous appendices, some of them elaborations of
specific topics, including discussions of various groups of nomads and
the history of the principal oases (Northern /fegaz.l926; Arabia Deserta,
1927; Middle Euphrates, 1927; Palmyrena, 1928; and Northern Negd,
1928 are especially important to our subject). In these discussions Musil
made extensive use of biblical, classical and Roman-Byzantine sources.
He even included material culled systematically from the itineraries and
other works of Arab writers and geographers, most of which have never
been translated into any European language. The vast amount of
material cited in these books is extremely important for a knowledge of
the ge::ography of the region and various aspects of the life of its
inhabitants. At the same time, Musil's work, because of his ignorance of
Akkadian and his consequent dependence on secondary sources, is
marked by a nurober of flaws in the chapters dealing with the Assyrian
and Babylonian periods.
A useful tool for the systematic study of the history of the nomads
was made available when T. Weiss-Rosmarin, in her doctoral
dissertation (" Aribi und Arabien in den babylonisch-assyrischen
Quellen", JSOR 16[1932], l-37), prepared an index of the majority of
references to the various groups of Arabs in Babylonian and Assyrian
sources. It is not, however, an original contribution to scholarship, since
it confines itself to an alphabetical listing of already known material,
and does not re-examine the texts or make an exhaustive analysis of
them.
A new phase in the study of the nomads, and one embodying a
substantial change in approach, began with the work of W.F. Albright.
In two articles which dealt with the Dedan and Massa' tribes ("Dedan",
Alt Festschrift. 1953, l-12; "The Biblical Tribe Massa' and Some
Congeners", Levi della Vida Festschrift, 1956, Vol. I, 1-4) as well as in
numerous notes included in his other studies, Albright applied his
2
lntroduction
general critical method to the study of the nomads and their history. He
views the matter at hand within the general framework of ancient Near
Eastern and biblical research, utilizing the resources of epigraphy,
linguistics and archaeology. Thus, Albright sought to take advantage of
the conclusions of archaeological research in southern Arabia, and of
the implications of the Lihyanite and Thamudic inscriptions discovered
in northern Arabia, in order to establish chronological starting points
for historical research. He also called attention to new areas of research
likely to deepen our understanding of the problems connected with the
investigation of nomads. So, for example, the works of G.W. Va n Beek
on the cultivation, processing and marketing of spices in southern
Arabia, 1 which were prepared at Albright's instigation, make an
important contribution - despite their reliance on classical sources -
to the recognition of one of the basic factors affecting the relations
between the nomads and the Near Eastern empires during the period
under discussion.
All the previously published research on nomads of the 8th to 5th
centuries B.C. has dealt exclusively with particular problems. Our study
is the first published attempt to encompass all the complex data on the
nomads at that period in order to formulate a clear and complete
picture of their organization, their geographical spheres and their
relations with the countries of the Fertile Crescent. The method adopted
seeks to follow the path pointed to by Albright in the conclusion of his
article on Massa': "The material already available makes it certain that
we must analyze our complex material with the greatest attention to
basic philological and historical principles".2
In accordance with these principles, this work is based fundamentally
on a critical analysis of the sources, made by carefully examining their
texts, the circumstances of their formation, their classification and their
usefulness for the purposes of historical research. The book begins with
a study of all the Akkadian and biblical sources. Various Akkadian
documents - among them letters, passages from inscriptions of
Tiglath-Pileser III and Assurbanipal, as weil as Babylonian chronicles
Van Beek, in R. Bowen and F.P. Albright. Archaeological Dücoveries in SoU/h
Arabia, Saltimore 1958. 139-142; idem. JAOS 78 (1958). 141-152; idcm. BA 23
( 1960), 70-95.
2 Albright. Levi della Vida Festschrift. 14.
3
lntroducrion
- have been reconsidered and conclusions drawn which differ from the
conventional ones. The same method has been applied to the dassical
and North Arabic sources. Special attention was also paid to basic
geographical data, unchanged for thousands of years, which may have
had politico-military and economic implications.
A nurober of constantly recurring phenomena are discernible in the
history of the relations of the nomads with the sedentary population
and the political authorities controlling the western part of the Fertile
Crescent in the first half of the first millennium B.C. These pivotal
phenomena can be more clearly understood if the basis for them is
outlined:
l. At the end of the second millennium B.C. - following both the
establishment of centralized authorities in southern Arabia, which made
it possible to cultivate, process and distribute spices on a !arge scale,
and the domestication of the camel, which could then carry Arabian
produce over great distances - there was a striking change in the
nature of the contact between the nomads and the sedentary
populations of the western part of the Fertile Crescent. Previous contact
had been confined to attempted nomad encroachment with their flocks
upon the settled parts of the country and the efforts made to repulse
them, and the conflict over grazing areas of the cultivated land. It now
developed that the nomads became important for the maintenance of
Arabian trade because of their location along the long trade routes.
Profit from this key branch of the economy and interest in its
uninterrupted operation generated new, commercially based, relations.
Especially affected by this change were their relations with the political
bodies (the local-national ones and later also the empires) which ruled
the region. These economic considerations had demographic and
administrative implications as weil.
2. The gradual deterioration of the border kingdoms and their
disintegrating borders created opportunities for the nomad infiltration.
3. The inadequate manpower in the empires controlling the western
part of the Fertile Crescent during the 8th to 5th centuries B.C. led to
the integration of nomad tribes into the imperial military and
administrative establishment in the region. The Arabs grew increasingly
indispensable, particularly when the Asiatic empires embarked upon the
conquest of Egypt. The absolute dependence of their !arge armies on
camels for the supply of water in the Sinai desert added a new element
4
Introduction
to the relations between the nomads and the ruling powers.
This book proposes, then, to describe and examine political,
demographic and economic processes. We must emphasize, however,
that, because of the few sources available, it is not possible to undertake
systematic clatification of the history of the nomads and their tribes, but
only their relations with the political authorities and sedentary
populations in the western as weil as other parts of the Fertile Crescent
m the 8th to 5th centuries B.C.
B. DEFINITION AND DESIGNATIONS OF THE NOMADS
As used herein, the term "nomads" refers to all the populations in the
deserts of northern Sinai and northern Arabia and in the Syro-Arabian
desert. Most of them raised carnels3 and sheep,4 lived in tents and
unfortified temporary carnps5 and moved from place to place with their
flocks, sporadically raiding the permanent settlements in the regions
adjacent to the desert.6 For the purposes of this book, the term
"nomads" is applied to oasis dwellers as weil. The oases - some of
which, like Tema' and Durnah (Dümat al-Jandal, al-Jawf),7 served as
economic, administrative and ritual centers - were the permanent
homes of thousands of people engaged in cultivating the land and in
crafts. Although from the socio-cultural point of view it is hard to
describe this population as nomadic (a distinction made particularly in
classical Arabic sources), we have adopted in this book the terminology
3 See Jer. 49:29. 32; Tig1ath-Pi1eser lii inscriptions: K 3751 rev. 5: IIl R 10, 2:20. 25;
ND 400:27; Esarhaddon inscriptions: Nin. A iv 17, 21; Frt. F. rev. 2;
Assurbanipal's Rm. viii 114, ix 5, 36-37, 42, 46, 52, 65; ABL 547, 631; Herodotus
lll 9. Cf. also the Tiglath-Pileser lil and Assurbanipal reliefs.
4 Isa. 13:20; 60:7; Jer. 49:29; Ezek. 27:21; I Chron. 5:21; Rm. viii 114, ix 5. 42;
ND 2644. Cf. also the Tiglath-Pileser reliefs.
5 lsa. 42: II; Jer. 49:29, 31; Ps. 120:5; Cant. I :5; and also the Assurbanipa1 reliefs.
About the epithet äSibüt kuslltäri see below, 3.
6 Cf. Job 1: 15; ABL 88, 547; the Assurbanipa1 inscriptions: B viii 39-40; K 2802 iv 8-
10; Rm. vii 102-106, viii 15-16, 71-72.
7 The people of Tema' ("'"Te-ma-a-a) are included among the nomads who brought
their gifts to Tig1ath-Pileser as a sign of submission (Ill R 10. 2:27; K 3751 rev. 3);
Durnah is described as the Arabs' fortress (Esarhaddon, Nin. A iv 1: "'" A-du-mu-tu
äl dan-nu-tu ku• '" A-ri-bi); lt is likewise mentioned in connection with H azael and
Te'elbunu in Sennacherib's time (VA 3310 rev. 25 ff.):
5