Lecture Summaries: 13 April, 2006

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by
Stephanie Dalley

Archaeological evidence for destruction does not always match textual evidence, particularly when wholesale annihilation is described in the latter. Fire, flood, enemy action, and complete abandonment are common motifs, even when flooding would be impossible because of the topography. Cities to which this interpretation applies are: Thebes in Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Susa, Nippur and Ur. Descriptions given by Nahum and Jeremiah for the destruction of Nineveh, as well as similar accounts in cuneiform texts, belong to the literary hyperbole of laments which, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, had the purpose of promoting revival. First found in the Sumerian city laments, this type of language is found in a 12th century BC building inscription of Nebuchadnezzar I, studied in 7th century Nineveh, and used in late Assyrian royal inscriptions. In Mesopotamia laments using such language accompany rituals of reconsecration when buildings had been repaired; symbolic acts representing flooding and the tearing down of buildings may have served to make the rituals effective. In Greek accounts, such as Diodorus Siculus' description of the fall of Nineveh to the Medes and of Persepolis to Alexander, the exaggeration may be linked to the philosophical theory that tyranny ends in corruption and causes the ruination of empires and peoples. The general difficulty of finding evidence, through pottery and buildings, for Achaemenid Persian occupation, has compounded problems in assessing archaeological evidence. Clear archaeological evidence from sculpture and Greek inscriptions that Nineveh was important and prosperous in the Seleucid and early Parthian periods contradicts the apparent evidence of texts, allowing many recent histories to give a misleading account of the fall of Nineveh and its supposed utter destruction.

A paper detailing some of these arguments will be published (in English) in

Baghdader Mitteilungen for 2006.

Stephanie Dalley is Senior Research Fellow in Assyriology, Oriental Institute and Somerville College, University of Oxford

Last modified 13 June, 2006