The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia

944 Pages·2009·38.81 MB·English

by  Trevor Bryce

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
THE PEOPLES AND PLACES OF
ANCIENT WESTERN ASIA
This 500,000 word reference work provides the most comprehensive general treatment
yet available of the peoples and places of the regions commonly referred to as the
ancient Near and Middle East – covered in this book by the term ancient western Asia –
extending from the Aegean coast of Turkey in the west to the Indus river in the east. It
contains almost 1,500 entries on the kingdoms, countries, cities, and population groups
of Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria–Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Iran and parts of Central Asia,
from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the Persian empire.
Trevor Bryce, in collaboration with five international scholars, provides detailed
accounts of the Near/Middle Eastern peoples and places known to us from historical
records. Each of these entries includes specific references to translated passages from the
relevant ancient texts. Numerous entries on archaeological sites contain accounts of
their history of excavation, as well as more detailed descriptions of their chief features
and their significance within the commercial, cultural, and political contexts of the
regions to which they belonged.
Illustrated throughout with 140 images and 20 maps, The Routledge Handbook of the
Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia is a much-needed reference resource for students
as well as established scholars of history and archaeology, of both the ancient Near
Eastern as well as the Classical civilizations. Including substantial essays on a number of
major kingdoms, countries and cities, such as Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Troy, it will
also appeal to more general readers who wish to pursue in depth their interest in these
civilizations.
Trevor Bryce is an Honorary Research Consultant at the University of Queensland and
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has held positions as Reader
in Classics and Ancient History, University of Queensland, Professor of Classics and
Ancient History, University of New England (Australia), and Deputy Vice-Chancellor,
Lincoln University, New Zealand. He is the author of numerous works on the ancient
Near East. His most recent publications are The Kingdom of the Hittites (2005), and The
Trojans and their Neighbours (Routledge, 2006).

THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF THE
PEOPLES AND PLACES OF
ANCIENT WESTERN ASIA
The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the
Fall of the Persian Empire
Trevor Bryce
in consultation with
Heather D. Baker
Daniel T. Potts
Jonathan N. Tubb
Jennifer M. Webb
Paul Zimansky
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2009 Trevor Bryce
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-87550-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978–0–415–39485–7 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–87550–6 (ebk)
CONTENTS
The consultants vii
List of maps xi
List of figures xiii
Abbreviations xvii
Maps xxiv
Introduction xxxvii
Historical overview xli
Entries A–Z 1
Appendices
I General chronology 795
II The major royal dynasties 797
III Urartian chronology 801
IV Greek and Roman authors 803
Glossary 805
Bibliography 815
Index of peoples and places 847
Index of persons 871
Index of deities 886
v

THE CONSULTANTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the scholars who have contributed to
this book. Their contributions have consisted in scrutinizing all the entries relevant to
their fields of expertise, and in a large number of cases making amendments and
providing additional material. These amendments and additions have often been sub-
stantial. In some cases, they have totally rewritten my original entries, and have also
provided a number of new entries. In these cases, I have specifically indicated their
authorship. But I would stress that their contributions have gone far beyond the entries
directly attributed to them. The book as a whole has benefited enormously from the
time and expertise which they have devoted to it.
CYPRUS
Jennifer M. Webb received her first degree in Classics and Ancient History from the
University of Melbourne. She subsequently worked on a number of excavations in
Greece, Cyprus, and Jordan, and completed the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for the
University of Melbourne in 1988. Since 1991, she has co-directed three major excav-
ation projects in Cyprus, primarily on settlement and cemetery sites of the Early and
Middle Bronze Ages. Her research interests include the material culture of Bronze Age
Cyprus, with a particular focus on pottery and glyptic, and the archaeology of house-
holds and communities. Her monographs include Ritual Architecture, Iconography and
Practice in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and Litera-
ture Pocket-book 75, 1999); Marki Alonia: An Early and Middle Bronze Age Settlement in
Cyprus, with D. Frankel (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology CXXIII, 2006), and
The Bronze Age Cemeteries at Deneia in Cyprus, with D. Frankel (Studies in Mediterranean
Archaeology CXXXV, 2007). She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the
Humanities, and currently a Research Fellow in the Archaeology Program at La Trobe
University in Melbourne, Australia.
IRAN AND CENTRAL ASIA
Daniel T. Potts is the Edwin Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology
at the University of Sydney. His research interests cover broadly the archaeology and
early history of Iran, the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, the Indo-Iranian borderlands, and
Central Asia. His publications include Mesopotamian Civilization: The Material Founda-
tions (Cornell, 1997), The Archaeology of Elam (Cambridge, 1999), Excavations at Tepe
vii
THE CONSULTANTS
Yahya 1967–1975: The Third Millennium (Cambridge, MA, 2001), and edited volumes
including Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates, with H. Al Naboodah and P. Hellyer
(Trident, 2003); The Mamasani Archaeological Project Stage One: A Report on the First Two
Seasons of the ICAR–University of Sydney Expedition to the Mamasani District, Fars Province,
Iran, with K. Roustaei (Tehran, 2006); and Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in
Asia, with H. P. Ray (New Delhi, 2007). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of
the Humanities.
MESOPOTAMIA
Heather D. Baker, a graduate in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, has
participated in numerous excavations in Britain, Cyprus, Jordan, Turkey, and espe-
cially Iraq. At the University of Oxford she gained an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies and
a DPhil in Assyriology. Her research interests lie primarily in the social and economic
history and material culture of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BCE.
Since January 2003, she has been working as a researcher with the START Project on
‘The Economic History of Babylonia in the first millennium BC’ at the University of
Vienna. Her publications include a monograph, The Archive of the Nappahu Family
(Vienna, 2004), and (as editor) The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Part 2/I
(Helsinki, 2000), Part 2/II (Helsinki, 2001), Part 3/I (Helsinki, 2002), and Approaching
the Babylonian Economy, with M. Jursa (Münster, 2005). She is currently working on a
monograph, now nearing completion, on the urban landscape in first millennium BCE
Babylonia.
SYRIA AND PALESTINE
Jonathan N. Tubb is Curator of the Ancient Levant in the Department of the Middle
East at the British Museum, a post he has held since 1978. He trained in Levantine
archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology in London, and began his field career in
Syria and Iraq in the 1970s. For ten years he served as Assistant Director of the
Institute’s excavations in Syria – at Qadesh (Tell Nebi Mend) on the Orontes. In 1984,
he excavated the Early Bronze Age site of Tiwal esh-Sharqi in the Jordan valley on
behalf of the British Museum, and in 1985 began excavations at the nearby major site
of Tell es-Sa(cid:1)idiyeh, a project which is continuing to this day. An expert on Canaanite
civilization, he is the author of many articles and several books on Levantine archae-
ology, including Archaeology and the Bible (London, 1990) and Canaanites (London,
2006). He lectures internationally, and for several years was Program Chair of the
American Schools of Oriental Research. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries,
and is currently President of the Palestine Exploration Fund, a society founded in 1865
to promote the scientific exploration of the Levant.
URARTU
Paul Zimansky is currently a Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History at the State
University of New York, Stony Brook. Since taking his PhD in Near Eastern Lan-
guages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 1980, he has directed archaeo-
logical projects in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. Much of his research has focused on Urartu,
viii
THE CONSULTANTS
a field in which he began working as a graduate student with the German Archaeo-
logical Institute in excavating at Bastam, Iran, in the 1970s. His publications include
Ecology and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State (Chicago, 1985), Ancient Ararat: A
Handbook of Urartian Studies (Delmar, 1998), The Iron Age Settlement at (cid:2)Ain Dara, Syria,
with E. C. Stone (Oxford, 1999), The Anatomy of a Mesopotamian City: Survey and Sound-
ings at Mashkan-shapir, with E. C. Stone (Winona Lake, 2004), and Ancient Turkey, with
A. Sagona (Abingdon, 2009).
ix