Part XIV

A problem in connection with this early history of Assyria that still awaits solution is to account for the presence of an extensive settlement in far distant Cappadocia, making use of the cuneiform script and Akkadian language (with certain modifications) for recording business transactions on clay tablets precisely like those to which we are accustomed in Babylonia and Assyria, even to the attachment of the seals of the parties concerned. ^[1]

Through these seals furnishing names of rulers of the Ur dynasty and of early patesis of Ashur, we are enabled to say definitely that these Cappadocian documents, found at various places of the extensive district, revert to a period as high as about 2400 B.C., and come down to about 1900, though a definite limit at the other end has not yet been determined. The proper names in these documents are unmistakably Assyrian, as is shown by the frequent introduction of the element Ashur generally written Ashir as in the oldest Assyrian inscriptions in names of individuals.

A further proof of the presence of Assyrians in this district at an early period is the designation Assyria given by early Greek geographers to the land on both sides of the river Halys, covering precisely the region in which Cappadocian tablets have been found. Even in later times, the inhabitants of Cappadocia are spoken of as Syrians (an abbreviation of Assyrians), and by way of contrast to the Syrians south of the Taurus range are specified as "White Syrians". ^[2]

How are we to account for this Assyrian colony in a district so remote from both Babylonia and Assyria at this early date ? A plausible hypothesis which may be provisionally accepted is to assume that Assyrian garrisons were placed here to maintain some measure of control over the land and that around these garrisons, owing allegiance to rulers of Sumer and Akkad, settlements of Assyrians and perhaps also of Babylonians grew and maintained commercial and other relationships with their native land. ^[3]

In view of this extension of Assyrian influence in Asia Minor at so unexpectedly early a period, even though these Semitic settlements represent merely the outgrowth of military outposts, the aggressive policy of Samsi-Adad centuries later appears in a more natural light. What he did, others may have attempted before him, and indeed it is possible that he endeavored to secure for Assyria a control of lands to the northwest that had been wrested from her while her rulers were still merely patesis, owing allegiance to rulers of the south.

At all events, the advance of the Hittites, marked by their success in overthrowing the dynasty of Babylon, must have put at least a temporary end to Assyrian control in Asia Minor, and we may perhaps bring the end of the settlements in Cappadocia in connection with this rise of the Hittites to a position of extraordinary power.

But for the presence at this time of the strong Gassite rulers in Babylonia, one might have witnessed another Hittite invasion of the Euphrates Valley in the sixteenth century. If we place Samsi-Adad shortly before the definite control of Babylonia through the Cassites, we obtain a date for the decline of the Hittite power in Babylonia, c. 1750 B.C., which answers the required conditions the weakened state of the south through constant uprisings of various centres, and attempts of rulers of the "sea land" to maintain or extend their power, and the advantage reaped by Assyria from this state of affairs to assert her independence and to push on to a renewed control of the regions lying to the north and northwest.

In default of historical documents of Assyrian rulers for the succeeding centuries we are left in doubt as to the further course of this extension of Assyrian power, but the existence, in the sixteenth century, of the strong, independent state of Mitanni in northwestern Mesopotamia, extending to the Taurus range, and the simultaneous establishment of a still more powerful Hittite kingdom with a centre near the Black Sea, furnish a date for the reaction which must have forced Assyria back within her proper bounds. The large admixture of Aryan elements at this time to the Hittite population, employed perhaps at first as mercenaries and then rising as successful soldiers to leading positions, is to be regarded as an important factor in bringing new vigor to the various Hittite groups throughout Asia Minor.

The supremacy of the Cassites in the south, reaching the height of their power in the seventeenth to the fifteenth centuries, would act as a further deterrent in restricting the activity of Assyrian rulers to keeping a watch on the formidable neighbor, whose natural ambition would be to re-establish the dependency of Assyria upon Babylonia which had prevailed for so many centuries.

A definite point of contact between the Cassites and the Assyrians is found in a statement of a chronicler, ^[4] that the Cassite ruler Karaindash, whose reign may be approximately fixed in the second half of the fifteenth century, made a treaty with Ashur-rim-nisheshu, the King of Assyria, agreeing by a solemn oath to respect the boundary as fixed between them.

That Assyria is strong enough to compel Babylonia to make an agreement regarding the boundary between the two lands is extremely significant, pointing as it does to the failure of attempts on the part of the Cassites to secure a control of the north. The northern kingdom was thus steadily growing in strength, and it is eminently likely that after 1500 B.C. the south had given up all hope of reducing the north to the former position of subserviency. Assyria, in fact, was beginning to assume the role of aggressor, though some time naturally elapsed before she was ready to assume a direct interference in the affairs of the south.

This was brought about through the marriage of an Assyrian princess, Muballitat-Sheru'a, the daughter of Ashuruballit (c. 1380-1350 B.C.), with Karakhardash, the Cassite ruler of Babylonia. The offspring of this marriage, Karaindash, was murdered in a rebellion that broke out and Ashur-uballit proceeds to Babylonia to wreak vengeance for the death of his grandson.

He succeeds in this to the extent of dispatching Nazibugash, an usurper and the ringleader of the uprising. In place of the latter, Kurigalzu II, another son of Burna-buriash, is placed on the throne and he rules for twenty- three years (c. 1355-1332 B.C.).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See the references grouped together by Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I, 2, p. 613, seq., and the note on page viii of the Introduction.

[2]:

See the references given by Noldeke in Hermes, vol. v, pp. 443-468.

[3]:

A parallel in much later days would be the growth of an extensive Jewish colony in Upper Egypt out of a military frontier garrison at Elephantine. See Ed. Meyer, Papyrusfund von Ele- phantine, (Leipzig, 1912).

[4]:

Keilinschrift liche Bibliothek (ed. Schrader), I, p. 194.