KAI RUFFING, KERSTIN DROSS-KRÜPE, SEBASTIAN FINK, ROBERT ROLLINGER (EDS.) SOCIETIES AT WAR ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN PHILOSOPHISCH HISTORISCHE KLASSE MELAMMU SYMPOSIA HERAUSGEGEBEN VON EDITED BY ROBERT ROLLINGER und SIMONETTA PONCHIA EDITORIAL BOARD: ANN GUNTER (Evanston); JAAKKO HÄMEEN-ANTTILA (Edinburgh); JOHANNES HAUBOLD (Princeton); GIOVANNI BATTISTA LANFRANCHI (Padova); KRZYSZTOF NAWOTKA (Wrocław); MARTTI NISSINEN (Helsinki); BEATE PONGRATZ-LEISTEN (New York); KAI RUFFING (Kassel); JOSEF WIESEHÖFER (Kiel) BAND 10 KAI RUFFING, KERSTIN DROSS-KRÜPE, SEBASTIAN FINK, ROBERT ROLLINGER (EDS.) SOCIETIES AT WAR Proceedings of the tenth Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kassel September 26-28 2016 and Proceedings of the eight Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kiel November 11-15 2014 Angenommen durch die Publikationskommission der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Accepted by the publication committee of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences: Michael Alram, Bert G. Fragner, Andre Gingrich, Hermann Hunger, Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger, Renate Pillinger, Franz Rainer, Oliver Jens Schmitt, Danuta Shanzer, Peter Wiesinger, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz The Melammu Logo was drawn by Rita Berg from a Greco-Persian style seal found on the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea. Cf. Dominique Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East, British Museum Publications, London 1987, seal no. 432. The seal was vectorized by Angela Turri. Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen Begutachtungsverfahren unterzogen. This publication was subject to international and anonymous peer review. Peer review is an essential part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press evaluation process. Before any book can be accepted for publication, it is assessed by international specialists and ultimately must be approved by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Publication Committee. Die verwendete Papiersorte in dieser Publikation ist DIN EN ISO 9706 zertifiziert und erfüllt die Voraussetzung für eine dauerhafte Archivierung von schriftlichem Kulturgut. The paper used in this publication is DIN EN ISO 9706 certified and meets the requirements for permanent archiving of written cultural property. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. All rights reserved. Copyright © Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Wien/Vienna 2020 ISBN 978-3-7001-8572-7 Layout: Daniela Seiler, Vienna Printed: Ferdinand Berger & Söhne, Horn https://epub.oeaw.ac.at/8572-7 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at Made in Europe Content Acknowledgements ................................................................................. 9 10th Symposium “Societies at War”, Kassel 2016 Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, Sebastian Fink & Kai Ruffing Societies at War – Introduction ........................................................... 11 Hannes D. Galter & Kai Ruffing Introduction: “War and Numbers”...................................................... 15 Davide Nadali Numbers Matter. On the Nature and Function of Counting in Warfare in the Neo-Assyrian Period ............................. 21 Reinhold Bichler Numbers in Herodotus ................................................................... 39 Patrick Reinard “I do not think anyone in his senses would accept that!” Remarks on Numbers of Fallen Soldiers in Roman Historiography and commentarii ...................................................... 63 Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Sabine Müller Introduction: “War and Legitimacy” .................................................. 99 Salvatore Gaspa The Assyrian King as a Warrior: Legitimacy through War as a Religious and Political Issue from Middle Assyrian to Neo-Assyrian Times ...................... 113 Simonetta Ponchia Legitimation of War and Warriors in Literary Texts ................ 157 Daniel Ogden The Treatment of Warfare in the Legendary Traditions of Seleucus .................................................................. 177 Frances Pownall Liberation Propaganda as a Legitimizing Principle in Warfare: Dionysius I as an Antecedent to Philip and Alexander of Macedon.... 199 6 Content Rocío Da Riva Introduction: “War and Ritual” ........................................................ 219 Martin Lang War and Ritual in Mesopotamia and the Old Testament ................................................................. 229 Kai Trampedach The Use of Divination in Ancient Greek Warfare ...................... 251 Wolfgang Havener Tropaion. The Battlefield Trophy in Ancient Greece and Rome .......................................................... 267 Oliver Stoll Introduction: “War and Civilians” ................................................... 293 Josué J. Justel “Run for your lives!” War and Refugees in the Ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age .............................. 307 Anna Maria Kaiser Recruits and Deserters – How Wars affect the Civil Administration in the Late Roman Empire ..................................... 331 General Session Igor Kreimerman Why Were Cities Destroyed in Times of War? A View from the Southern Levant in the Third and Second Millennia BCE ............. 345 Geert De Breucker The Babylonian Temple Communities and Greek Culture in the Hellenistic Period ...................................................... 385 Christopher Baron Communication in Alexander’s Empire .......................................... 409 Hilmar Klinkott Mithridates VI and the Formation of an Empire ............................ 421 Content 7 8th Symposium “Iranian Worlds”, Kiel 2014 Marion-Isabell Hoffmann Sasanian rock reliefs and the British embassy, 1810–1812 ............. 457 Jake Nabel The Arsacids of Rome and Parthia’s “Iranian Revival” in the First Century CE ..................................... 475 Sean Manning War and Soldiers in the Achaemenid Empire: Some Historiographical and Methodological Considerations........................ 495 Sabine Müller The Winner Takes it All? Reflections on Persian Booty and Persian Cultural Property in Wartime ........................................... 517 Susanne Rudnig-Zelt “Who Created this Earth, Who Created Yonder Heaven, Who Created Man” – The Understanding of Creation in Old Persian Royal Inscriptions and the Old Testament ....................... 545 Ennio Biondi Traces of Egyptian Culture in Plato’s Laws .................................... 561 Aleksandra Szalc Indian Philosophers and Alexander the Great – Reality and Myth ................................................................................ 575 Stéphanie Anthonioz & Nicolas Tenaillon Greek Philosophy and the Wisdom of the East: The Case of ‘Lady Wisdom’................................................................ 593 Jeremy A. Simmons Paideia, God, and the Transformation of Egyptian Lore in Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride .............................. 609 Alberto Bernabé Greek Philosophy and the Wisdom of the East. Response ............................................................................................. 639 Contributors ........................................................................................ 643 Index ................................................................................................... 651 Numbers Matter. On the Nature and Function of Counting in Warfare in the Neo-Assyrian Period Davide Nadali Cinque … dieci … venti … trenta … trentasei … quarantatré … (Mozart / Da Ponte, Le nozze di Figaro, Act I, scene 1) Introduction Numbers and warfare are strictly bounded: in particular, war is a very special situation where numbers acquire a very important meaning and function. Even nowadays, when speaking of and analysing war, we are inevitably attracted by numbers and, we could say, numbers precisely dictate the reason and choice of war on the one hand, and the outcome and implication of fighting on the other. In particular, after the battle is over, a virtual fight of numbers begins comparing victories and losses, survivors and fallen. It can be said that numbers substantiate war and war is founded upon numbers: the present paper analyses the meaning and function of numbers in the Assyrian sources trying to go beyond the toosimplistic conclusion of the use of high numbers because of mere aims of propaganda. In the end, it cannot be totally denied that propaganda actually had a significant and coercive influence in the creation and registration of numerical data, but I think that the context (in addition to the content) of use can explain the multifaceted meanings of numbers in the Assyrian sources. In this respect, instead of simply considering the quantitative nature of numbers – that is in fact the most direct and immediate aspect – it is equally important to look at the qualitative implications of numbers in written and visual Assyrian media, paying attention to the places where those numbers were displayed and declared and the type of audience it was supposed they were addressed to. Numbers deeply characterize the nature of Assyrian sources: royal inscriptions and the daily letters sent 22 Davide Nadali by the officials to the king are dotted with numbers and these do not exclusively refer to war and the management of military campaigns. Nevertheless, it is evident that warfare and the outcome of wars are one of the main, if not the most important, topics of official written sources: this is the reason why numbers in Assyrian sources are often questioned as the different editions of the royal annals describe the same event differently, recording different amounts of enemies killed or captured.1 At the same time, Assyrian war numbers are very selective as they always refer to casualties and losses of the enemies, while they are silent (except in one very special case) on the death and defeats of the Assyrian army.2 However, discrepant numbers are also found in sources that do not deal with warfare, as for example the accounts of the building activities by the Assyrian kings.3 In this case, numbers are treated differently by scholars: no propaganda implications are inferred and the discrepancy of numbers is explained as the result of the ongoing works of the Assyrian king who precisely reports the progress of his activities year by year. If the numbers of war (calculating the totals of cities destroyed, enemies killed, prisoners, booty, weapons, and military men) change from one edition to another, propaganda is not the only reason to be taken into consideration. Coming back to war, numbers are used to describe the success of fighting and the outcomes of the war that has been fought – numbers are the most useful and explicit tool to point out the military success of an army, exalting the high percentage of enemies killed or captured, cities and places destroyed or conquered, the efficiency and quantity of soldiers and war machines employed in the battles. Conversely, the same numbers can be used to describe the situation suffered by civilians and the hard consequences of war on the civil population, material things, and environment: this means that it depends on how one considers the Assyrian texts relating 1 2 3 See for example the list of variations provided and analysed by De Odorico, 1995: 45–74. Vidal, 2013. The accounts of the building activities of Sennacherib at Nineveh are particularly interesting and illustrative: several texts describe the works for the renovation of Nineveh and the construction of Sennacherib’s palace. Numbers in this case refer to the ongoing activities, giving for example the increasing dimensions of the palace (that reaches the final size of 503 × 242 m in 694 BC) or the total of the city gates (14 in the annals edition of 607–695 BC; 15 in 694 BC and finally 18 in 691 BC). See the edition of Sennacherib’s texts dealing with building activities by Grayson / Novotny, 2012: 16–22. See also Reade, 2000. Numbers matter 23 to the quantities of prisoners and deported people; reading texts from an Assyrian perspective, those numbers are the exaltation of the Assyrian success; looking at those texts as administrative documents (despite the possible exaggeration), those numbers give the reality that conquered people might have suffered. This aspect is clear when the correspondence between the Assyrian officials in the provinces and the king in the capital are taken into account: the high numbers of prisoners of war are not at all a matter of pride but they imply difficulties in managing the logistics (space and enough food).4 Actually, even in recent wars, this is a quite natural and common situation: numbers matter and the often exaggerated and misleading use of numbers from both parties (winners and losers) consequently generates a warfare of numbers – the amounts become the real content of the battles and the declaration of numbers of people and things involved in and affected by war often becomes the cause of a virtual warfare that does not properly involve the use of weapons and men (proclamations, statements, and reports from both sides). In this respect, references to contemporary wars could be an interesting starting point to reconsider the nature of numbers in ancient warfare: indeed, it might even be considered a turning point in the analysis of ancient wars and the way numbers were registered in ancient documents. Numbers are the result of specific and precise operations, mathematical and administrative operations on one hand, and political and communication operations on the other: as a consequence, they are the result of registration of data that, in war, mostly concern the quantity of soldiers, enemies killed and captured, booty, animals, and devices employed.5 In the analysis of the data, different issues and persons have to be taken into consideration: 1) who is counting; 2) what is counted; 3) why things and people are counted; 4) the use of positive and negative numbers as a balanced or unbalanced comparison between win and loss; 5) where numbers were finally used, displayed, and announced. The analysis of numbers should not be limited to the simple numerical 4 5 Fales, 2006; Nadali, 2014: 106–107; Dezsö, 2016: 85–91. See the records collected by De Odorico, 1995. 24 Davide Nadali value they express, but rather it should also point to the implication that the registration of total amounts has: warfare is doubtless a favourite field of research since numbers, as we said, cover several aspects of the military life and army organization. For that reason, it is important that the examination of how numbers matter in warfare must necessarily pass through the consideration of the points mentioned above: it might happen that not all points can be clearly and satisfactorily answered as it principally depends on the nature of the sources at our disposal and the way ancient scribes registered the numbers. The Use of Numbers in the Assyrian Administration Warfare in Assyria was a very common and frequent activity that contributed to the growth of the empire, from the 9th to the 7th century BC: a growth not only from the point of view of the conquest of new territory, but also an economic development with high numbers of people involved in the war as members of the Assyrian army, high numbers of deportees that were employed in the civilian and military administration of the empire for construction, labour, and specialized personnel.6 Assyria was a well-organized administrative machine: written sources, letters in particular, show how the territory was carefully controlled with the dispatch of almost-daily letters to the Assyrian kings by the officials and governors in the provinces of the empire as well as by a sophisticated system of espionage.7 The act of registering numbers and events related to war was of course very important and it necessarily involved many levels of the administration: military dispatches and letters refer to the organization of the movement of the troops, the collection of soldiers, animals, and machines for the preparation of the military campaign and of the single battle, and the management of prisoners of war in temporary camps before they are moved to their final destinations.8 For what precisely concerns the registration of numbers, Assyrian scribes and officials register different kinds of amounts on several written documents: daily letters of the regular administration of the provinces of the empire shed light on the mechanism of management of huge quantities of people, animals and things (for example food supply or shelters that 6 7 8 De Odorico, 1995: 10; Nadali / Verderame, 2014. Fales, 2001: 92–96; 2010: 56–57; Dezsö, 2014. Postgate, 2000; Fales, 2006. Numbers matter 25 are of course necessary in winter time and in inhospitable situations and regions such as the mountains in Urartu).9 Because of the large quantity of letters (although we can still speak of incomplete and partial documentation),10 we have many numbers at our disposal: however, I will not precisely focus on the detailed analysis of single numbers – the insightful study by Marco De Odorico is still the reference book for the issues of how we have to consider and deal with the categories of exact, round, and explicit high numbers of the Assyrian sources.11 Being a consistent part of the written evidence of the Assyrians, numbers are a fundamental contribution to the knowledge of the ancient Assyrian society and the military organization in particular: the annals and the official court texts explicitly created by the royal chancellery follow a precise code and canon of expression and wording and give a partial view of the numbers of the army and outcomes of the military campaigns by the Assyrian king:12 that is, numbers are selected and they are reported quite quickly and roughly, giving exact (estimated), usually quite high, amounts that should however not sound too unrealistic and obviously inflated.13 At the same time, even for letters, we can speak of the partiality of the information they provide: since they refer to specific episodes that occurred in recent days or even hours, the data they register and refer to the king are probably too precise and limited to the most recent events.14 The numbers they give can of course change and it is only the entire corpus of a correspondence that can precisely give the content of the message and the total numbers of people and things involved. So, 9 10 11 12 13 14 SAA I 11, 219; SAA V 156; Fales, 2006: 59; Nadali, 2014; Nadali / Verderame, 2014: 557. The use of perishable materials (leather, papyrus, wax-covered tablets) to write documents in Aramaic certainly caused the loss of several letters of the correspondence, in particular, of the 7th century BC (Parpola, 1981: 122–123; Radner, 2014: 85). De Odorico, 1995: 4–8. On the code of the Assyrian official inscriptions (namely royal inscriptions) and its implications in deciphering and translating, see Cogan / Tadmor, 1997; Grayson, 1981; Levine, 1981; Liverani, 1973; Tadmor, 1981; 1997; finally see the overall evaluation of recent trends in assyriological and historical studies of the Assyrian royal inscriptions by Fales, 1999–2001. Scribes prefer to use numbers such as 100,225 or 200,150 instead of the exact round digits like 100,000 or 200,000 (De Odorico, 1995: 171–172). This also depends on the fragmentary condition of letters as well as on the fact that letters are usually undated (Parpola, 1981: 125); Dezsö, 2006a: 93. 26 Davide Nadali together with the points previously discussed, we should also take into consideration when numbers have been registered: the question of time is fundamental because the progression of events necessarily involves a change and an increase of numbers.15 During the military campaigns it is reasonable to think that, while the army is involved in the fight, daily dispatches continuously bring new information to the king, including updates on the numbers of cities destroyed and conquered, enemies killed and captured, total amount of booty collected, and losses the army might have suffered. While royal inscriptions give the final total amount (either exact or apparently exaggerated), letters go into the details of the progression of numbers and this is also true for the composition of the army with the quantity of soldiers for each unit: in particular, letters describe the quantity of soldiers that are physically and effectively present on the spot in front of the officials who are writing the document for the king. This is quite clear in the letter ND 2631 = NL 89:16 in fact, the writer, after giving the total of the king’s men (1,430), clarifies that the rest of the troops – it is impossible to know the quantity of this remainder – is delayed but on its way with the major-domo.17 The chronology of numbers gives the sequence of events and can explain the changes we encounter in the sources: this seems quite reasonable and normal when letters are taken into consideration. Because of the temporary nature of the information they deliver, it is obvious that numbers can be corrected and updated (either augmented or diminished) in later messages. In this respect, the simplistic conclusion that numbers have been expressly falsified should be denied or at least revaluated: as rightly pointed out by De Odorico, “as for the ‘corrections’ (that is alterations) at the level of digits, […] we saw that in most cases they are probably due to oversights or copying errors and not to the intention of inflating the numbers”.18 It seems that we tend to give simplistic and quick interpretations to the mechanisms of how ancient people dealt with numbers, in particular when numbers refer to military events that boost the glory of the winners. This situation often occurs with the Assyrians because their imperial attitude is judged to convey a forced view and representation of the reality by 15 16 17 18 De Odorico, 1995: 76, 173. SAA V 215; Saggs, 2001: 128–130. For comments and studies of the document, see also Fales, 1990 and Postgate, 2000. Fales, 1990: 33. De Odorico, 1995: 119. Numbers matter 27 the use of propaganda. Exaggerated and high numbers would then be the result of an alteration of the reality: this idea has also been applied when, on the contrary, sources minimize numbers, as it happens in the Letter to the God Ashur by the king of Sargon II where the loss of the Assyrian army is schematically and laconically reported as follows: “1 charioteer, 2 horsemen and 3 infantrymen were killed”.19 The idea of propaganda in Assyrian sources has largely influenced the way scholars approached Assyrian documents;20 more recently, that propagandistic vision has been attenuated or at least reconsidered in the light of new ways of studying the Assyrian written and visual evidence (taking for example into account the nature of the ancient audience and its role).21 Can numbers in warfare be a proof of Assyrian propaganda? Did the Assyrians rely upon numbers to build their power and control over territories and people? I think we cannot totally deny the possibility that Assyrian scribes and officials used numbers to describe a situation that indeed did not perfectly correspond to reality; rather, numbers were specifically used to create an invented reality, actually something similar to nowadays in the law of market economy, economic growth, and outcomes of wars and polls. At the same time, however, the claim to the use of propaganda has been extensively used to explain and justify every discrepancy in the numbers provided by the Assyrians in their sources. It must be pointed out that, in spite of the various written sources of the Assyrian period, we still lack part of the ancient documentation and, more importantly, we do not have enough (actually we do not have any at all in some instances) non-Assyrian sources that can balance the information and facts from the Assyrian point of view. Looking at the majority of written texts in ancient Mesopotamia, it can be observed that numbers are the most important if not the main topic and content of texts; the first examples of cuneiform texts are administrative documents and writing had a special use and function in registering and managing the administration of the ancient Mesopotamian cities;22 finally, 19 20 21 22 Translation by Fales, 2017. For another recent edition and translation of the letter, see Foster, 2005: 790–813. For comments on the composition of the text, see Fales, 1991. Garelli, 1979; Liverani, 1979; Reade, 1979. Tadmor, 1997; Liverani, 2010; Sano, 2016. As shown by the long lasting tradition (already attested in the archaic cuneiform documents) of filling out lexical lists of people, objects, professions, and words. For an overview of the history of lexical cuneiform lists in ancient Mesopotamia, see Veldhuis, 2014. 28 Davide Nadali it can even be asserted that writing was invented to serve that purpose. The function of writing, at least for an administrative use, was to record and register numbers of people (professions), animals, and things, in order to have the exact situation of people and goods at the disposal of the temple, palace, and city in general: if so, it seems there was no need to invent numbers as totals were calculated to mirror the reality rather than to envisage sums of employees of the state. Invention and exaggeration in the calculation of the administration of an institution would sound extremely illogical. It is however true that the real intention of even the administrative documents can escape us: exaggeration of numbers might in fact reflect the ideal an institution aspires to. However, when referring to the Assyrians, the idea of propaganda heavily affected the analysis of numbers, since it has been principally based on the existence of hyperbolic numbers (numbers of soldiers, numbers of captives, enemies killed, booty) and the nonexistence of any problem faced by the Assyrians in war: Assyrian bas-reliefs represent no Assyrian soldier dead or suffering at the hands of his enemy. Even when written sources refer to the loss of the Assyrian army, numbers of dead soldiers are so limited and scanty that they sound unreal if compared to the huge numbers of troops. So, the letter to the god Ashur by Sargon II on his eight military campaign simply reports that “1 charioteer, 2 horsemen and 3 infantrymen were killed”: 6 soldiers dead from an army totalling thousands. Indeed, the relationship between the number of men and number of dead soldiers is unbalanced: it appears that scribes, in a special literary work such as the letter to the god Ashur, used a coded phraseology where the reference to the dead men of the Assyrian army was simply instrumental and generic.23 Since the letter was probably read publicly, Mario Liverani asks whether “families, whose sons had not come back home from the expedition, […] perhaps imagined that their own missing person was one of the few mentioned by the king”:24 the nature of the document must be taken into consideration and the use of such wording 23 24 On the coded phraseology of the letter that shows the skilful use of rhetoric with variances in motif, see Fales, 1991. That the reference to dead soldiers in the ratio 3–2–1 might correspond to a stylistic “way of saying” rather than to a mystification of the numbers of casualties seems to be proved by the later incomplete draft for Esarhaddon’s letter to Ashur that records exactly the same amount of losses (Postgate, 2000: 105, n. 86; Fales, 2017: 215). Liverani, 2010: 230. See also Foster, 2005: 812, n. 2 and lastly Fales, 2017: 215. Numbers matter 29 with the mention of only six dead Assyrian army soldiers was therefore part of a common ceremonial idiom. Although distant in time, it might be interesting to compare the registration of the casualties of the Assyrian army with some documents of the third millennium BC from Ebla, in Syria, that deal with the registration of dead soldiers: the nature of the texts from Ebla is totally different from the Assyrian letter to Ashur. They are in fact purely administrative texts: in particular, three interesting texts related to the wars waged by Ebla report the loss of the Eblaite army;25 text TM.75.G.1698 from the great main archive L.2769 registers the loss of 20,309 men, a huge amount that must necessarily make us reflect on the composition and size of the army of Ebla in the third millennium BC.26 Due to the administrative function of the texts of Ebla, the number of dead soldiers must be considered true, as it would be illogical to register an invented so high number of losses of its own army for celebratory purposes. The content of the Assyrian and Eblaite texts is similar (at least concerning the reference to the losses of the army), but the context is completely different. Going through the points previously quoted: 1) Who is counting? Assyrians (or the Assyrian king), on the one hand, and the scribes of the Ebla administration, on the other. 2) What is counted? Both are registering the losses of their own army. 3) Why are they registering this kind of data? The Assyrian scribes probably used a coded poetic language; the importance was the reference to the losses rather than the reality of numbers (the real deaths the Assyrian army suffered); Eblaite administration carefully registered all data about the military campaign and the deaths of soldiers was part of the information that did not need to be hidden nor falsified. 4) Where was the information stored? The context of use of the documents marks the difference and therefore implies a different audience: Ebla texts have been found in the Royal Palace and were therefore official documents stored in the palace archives;27 the data were then used to draw up a final account at the end of the military 25 26 27 Archi, 2009: 29–32. Based in fact on the numbers of losses registered in these texts, Archi suggests that the army of Ebla might have been made of a total of at least 44,000 men (2009: 33). Matthiae, 1986; 2008: 63–77. 30 Davide Nadali campaign confronting the numbers of outcomes, incomes, victories, and losses; as the army of Ebla was made of Eblaite soldiers and men supplied by the allied cities,28 the account of losses was probably used to administrate the relationships with allies. Documents with the registration of the numbers of the losses were read and used by internal scribes and officials and information was also shared with the partners of Ebla; moreover, the information was also fundamental to reorganizing the army with a new levy and request of soldiers for future campaigns. On the contrary, the letter to the god Ashur was a very special literary work that was not used for administrative purposes: it was a direct dialogue and speech of the Assyrian king with the national god Ashur and information was therefore carefully chosen. The letter was also presented to the people of the city Ashur who could therefore witness the special relationship between the god Ashur and the Assyrian king; therefore, the outcomes of Sargon’s military campaign against Urartu were also shared with the citizens of Ashur and all of the city was called to feel part of a larger Assyrian community that also remembered those who died in the battle. The idea that the letter was read aloud is only conjectural, but the choice of writing a letter seems to point to the importance of a direct communication between the king and the national god and between the king and his people. Finally, the reference to the loss of 6 soldiers could be true, partially true, or even false: this means that the Assyrian army might have lost more than 6 men or it did not suffer any losses at all: the content was instrumental for the special use of the document and the context when the letter was recited, publicly or not. ↖ ↙ Who is counting? content vs context Why are data registered? 28 ↗ ↘ What is counted? Where are data stored? On the composition and levy of men in the army of Ebla, see Biga, 2008: 325–326; Archi, 2009: 20–27. Numbers matter 31 Conclusion Scholars have usually labelled the use of numbers in Assyrian sources as suspicious, explaining discrepancies and alterations by appealing to the deceptive Assyrian propaganda and emphasizing the real meaning of digits in the inscriptions. Recent studies proved that a careful analysis of numbers (putting together the information of the daily sources of the letter and the official royal inscriptions)29 shows that the high numbers claimed by the Assyrian kings are not so unreal or distant from the evaluation we can make;30 surely, it depends on how we evaluate those numbers, and on 29 30 See for example the studies by Fales, 1990; see also the study by Dezsö (2006b) who pointed out the importance of the pictorial evidence, going beyond the idea that Assyrian bas-reliefs are too schematic and repetitive to show aspects of real Assyrian daily life. In particular, Dezsö analyses the pictorial evidence from the reign of Sargon II: together with the written evidence (so, not in opposition), sculptures can eventually reveal interesting aspects of how the army appears (the physical representation of the quantities of soldiers, the types of weapons, amour, machines,) as well as the situation (open field battle or siege) where the army operates. In this respect, Dezsö rightly observes: “the military scenes on the sculptures, however, give a lot of information which is missing from the cuneiform sources” (2006b: 89). It is not a question of establishing a classification of importance, but rather of integrating data: in this respect, although indirectly, representations of the Assyrian army and wars also refer to numbers, with the depiction of ranks of soldiers, rows of prisoners, and the objects of booty pillaged. For Sargon’s army, see Dalley / Postgate, 1984: 28–47 and Dezsö, 2006a. The number of 120,000 men given by Shalmaneser III during his 14th campaign against the Syrian coalition has for example always been targeted as suspicious and unrealistic: that is 120,000 men is really a too-high and exaggerated number; however, the digit could in fact be interpreted as a round high number used by the Assyrian scribes to comprehend the totality of the soldiers the Assyrian army could have had. As said by De Odorico (1995: 111), “the number may have represented the theoretical or conventional size of the Assyrian army”. In this respect, the datum of 120,000 is not properly a wrong number: it refers to the highest possible size of the Assyrian army rather than to the real number of forces on the battlefield in Shalmaneser’s 14th campaign (Liverani, 2004: 215–216; Fales, 2010: 98). Taking into consideration another source of Shalmaneser III that gives the amount of cavalrymen (5,242) and chariots (2,001 = 6,003 men if we consider that each chariot carries up to three soldiers), Fales integrates the missing number of infantrymen (78,630): he concludes that the total men of Shalmaneser’s army would encompass about 90,000 soldiers that “ce n’est pas au fond pas si éloigné du chiffre de 120,000 évoqué plus haut” (Fales, 2010: 99). In conclusion, 120,000 men does not represent the total of the forces employed by Shalmaneser in the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC: it is a theoretical number that encompasses the standing army and the additional 32 Davide Nadali what we want to read in those accounts. At the same time, and conversely, we should first consider which message the Assyrian king wanted to convey and to whom this message was principally and specifically addressed. Although data on Assyrian numbers are quite numerous, we are still missing part of the documents (i.e. they have not yet been found) and we should also take into account the possibility that some texts might have been purposely destroyed. Once numbers were registered in the final accounts, temporary notes were discarded; so royal inscriptions and the different versions of the annals contained revised (increased or decreased) numbers that were the result of the recounting of notes and the integration of new information. In the end, internal and external numbers can be appropriately distinguished: on one hand, there were numbers that were used by the administration and the official of the state only; while on the other, there were numbers that could be (or even had to be) communicated outward. In this process of external communication, propaganda might have played a role, but it does not completely explain the way that the Assyrians dealt with the numbers in their documents related to warfare: surely, some numbers might have been adapted and suitably changed. How is it possible to state that numbers have been modified from one inscription to another? Indeed, the Assyrians themselves left the traces of their changes because they did not cancel the previous versions of royal inscriptions that reported the different numbers for the same event: if their propaganda was so efficient, how is it possible that they failed in this? Maybe what modern scholars labelled as propaganda was on the contrary the demonstration of the Assyrian king, in front the gods and his people, that he was able to rule even the numbers; on the other hand, this situation more plausibly describes a complex reality where numbers were sometimes given in round and high totals and were then recalculated on the basis of new incoming data. men supplied by Assyrian allies. The Assyrian standing army (kiṣir šarrūti) during the Sargonid time probably had 35,000 men: other units were then added arriving at a total of 100,000 men at most (forming up the ṣāb šarri, the king’s troops) (Henshaw, 1969: 3–5; De Odorico, 1995: 111; Postgate, 2000: 107; Fales, 2010: 140–141). At the same time, if we consider the special occasion (Shalmaneser’s 14th campaign, Liverani, 2004: 215) for such a high levy, maybe the number does not sound so illogical and unrealistic: actually, if Archi’s assumption is correct (2009: 33), Ebla had an army of about 40,000 men in the third millennium BC! Numbers matter 33 Numbers, however, were not only recorded in written sources: what happened when numbers needed to be represented? How were the written numbers of cuneiform sources translated into the visual numbers of pictures?31 It seems that pictures of soldiers and enemies on the Assyrian bas-reliefs in the rooms of the royal palaces work to multiply the presence and the quantity of people. Again, the analytical points (who, what, why, and where) are also valid for pictures: who is depicting numbers? What numbers are depicted? Why are numbers depicted? And finally, where were numbers displayed? It is true that no bas-relief shows an Assyrian soldier dying, so are we still deceived by propaganda? I think that the perspective we use to look at the Assyrian bas-reliefs nowadays is misleading: indeed, we mostly rely upon photos of pictures and enlarged photos of the reliefs that show even the smallest details.32 In this way, we dismiss the general view of the sculptures and the context in which they were placed and displayed. Can we really say that Assyrian pictures were ‘displayed’? Ancient Assyrian palaces were not museums. Sculptures surely celebrated the deeds of the Assyrian kings, but they were not works of art to be contemplated, at least not in our contemporary understanding. I think that looking from a distance at the long rows of soldiers, represented two by two so as to multiply the length of the formation, and the long processions of prisoners, sometimes on several registers, really gave the effect of abundance;33 conversely, in the close-up of the couple of counting scribes,34 the abundance or what we could label as the visual rhetoric of numbers can be precisely perceived in the obsessive registration of the booty (prisoners, objects, severed heads). So the multiplication of figures, one next to the other and one after the other, was not a simple way to fill the gap and to compulsively occupy the entire surface of the slabs (thus reducing some pictures to simple filling motifs); nor it was a mechanical copy and paste of a model to render the numbers visually. 31 32 33 34 If they were translated into pictures: Assyrian bas-reliefs are in a certain way a reinterpretation of the data that pass through a process of selection of what must/must not and can/cannot be represented (Nadali, 2016). On the visual effect of distortion and alteration of the perception as caused by photography, specifically detailed photos of partial portions of the bas-reliefs, see Winter, 2000: 51–54. Bagg, 2016: 66. 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