Hittite Military and Warfare, in H. Genz/D. P. Mielke (Hg.), Insights to Hittite History and Archaeology, Colloquia Antiqua 2 (2011) 125–151 (with J. Lorenz)

2018

The Neo-Sumerian (Ur III) period is known for having produced tens of thousands of tablets though, paradoxically, much of the history and culture of this period remains in the dark. One of these areas is the history and organization of the Ur III military. This dissertation is an investigation of selected issues and the terminology related to the military history of this period. It attempts to rectify the absence of monographic studies on this topic and to clarify problematic issues that recur in the secondary literature. Chapter one introduces the historical background of the Ur III period, focusing on the available sources and their associated biases. Chapter two establishes the framework for a military history of this period by utilizing year-names and textual references to plunder, and teases out some of the problems involved in using this data. This chapter utilizes the vast administrative corpus to build portraits of the enemy toponyms mentioned in year-names and attempts to determine their organizational structure and political relationship to the kingdom of Ur. Chapter three discusses the primary terms for soldiers (eren2, aga3-us2, gar3-du) and the garrison system that was established in the periphery. It demonstrated that the taxes on garrison settlements (gun2 ma-da) exhibited an array of formats and utilized a multiplicity of terms; this aids our understanding of the political statuses of a number of foreign toponyms. Chapter four investigates the context of the messenger text genre and some of the military terminology found within. This resulted in the discovery that different provinces and their messenger text corpora dealt with different regions of the periphery. Additionally, it was discovered that foreign groups from the periphery traveled in greater numbers and with greater frequency than previously assumed. Lastly, selected military terms were investigated and some previous assumptions regarding their meaning were challenged. This dissertation increases and redefines our knowledge of the military and political contexts of the Third Dynasty of Ur and provides a beginning point for further research into this area.

Le rôle des insignes votifs et des insignes de pouvoir néo-assyriens. Un parallèle étonnant entre les deux catégories de masses d'armes ..

The image of the Achaemenid army that survives to this day has been shaped by testimonies of Greek authors writing on the Greco-Persian wars of the 5 th and 4 th c. BCE. From the 19 th c. onwards, the said testimonies and data found within capture the attention of scholars, constantly stir up major controversies and remain open to reinterpretation. New research methods in philology, history and archaeology challenge the scholarly consensus on the Achaemenid military history, open new research avenues and produce newer, exacter data. Although the voluminous research on the Persian army comprises scores of articles, treatises and monographs, the scholars continue to discuss its makeup, organisational structure and operation. One scholar who reinterprets the available evidence and questions commonly held beliefs is Sean Manning, whose monograph, Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects (an expanded version of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Innsbruck, 2018), is the subject of this review. Crucially, the monograph in question does not concern wars waged by the Achaemenids; instead, its focus lies on the land army of Persia under the Teispids and Achaemenids. The author excluded the navy due to his unfamiliarity with this topic. 1 What distinguishes Manning's perspective is his conscious shift of perspective: since the majority of scholars employ chiefly Greek sources on the Persian military, they inherit Greek cognitive biases. Manning proposes to paint a more comprehensive picture of the Persian army: first, to consider Greek, Persian and Babylonian sources side-by-side; second, to reexamine the image of the army in the sources through the lens of historical traditions that shaped it. The author underscores that the majority of scholars ignore the Persian's army embedment in the Eastern (non-Greek) military culture. To consider this army solely from the perspective of Greek sources and cultural codes will misinterpret peculiarities of the Persian culture (cf. pp. 61-63). The reviewed monograph, comprising seven chapters, is capped with a sizeable works cited section (pp. 359-415) and five indices. 2 The first chapter ('A History of Research,' pp. 21-64) surveys the history of research on the Achaemenid army, from the very first publications in the 19 th c. up to the dissertation's completion in 2018. The author traces the evolution of main research trends in the studied interval and characterises key approaches.

Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien.

History: Reviews of New Books, 2019

Yamada Masamichi, « The second military conflict between 'Assyria' and '?atti' in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I »,