Papers by Robert Rollinger
Bulletin du CIETA = Bulletin du Centre international d'étude des textiles anciens (formerly: Bull... more Bulletin du CIETA = Bulletin du Centre international d'étude des textiles anciens (formerly: Bulletin de Liaison du CIETA) BCSMS Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Berytus Berytus: Archaeological Studies published by the Museum of Archaeology of the American University of Beirut. Beirut, Libanon BIBR Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome BII Bulletin of the Iranian Institute BM Baghdader Mitteilungen BMC The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs BMFA Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts BMMA Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BSOS Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies BT Bāstānšenāsī-o Tārīḫ C&C Continuity and Change CleO Classica et Orientalia Dabir The Digital Archive of Brief notes & Iran Review (DABIR) EIT Estudios Iraniaos y Turanios EJFE L'Esprit des Journaux, François et Étrangers EuSt Eurasian Studies FAR Frontiers of Architectural Research FARMS The FARMS Review GB Gozāreš-hāye Bāstānšenāsī (Archaeological Reports) HARIBL Histoire de l'Académie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres HdO Handbuch der Orientalistik HiMA Revue intenationale d'Histoire Militaire Ancienne
Contextualizing the Achaemenid-Persian Empire 291 2. Preliminary Remarks, or Some General Observa... more Contextualizing the Achaemenid-Persian Empire 291 2. Preliminary Remarks, or Some General Observations on Empire in the 1 st Millennium BCE The somehow canonized modern view on the history of Ancient Near Eastern empires of the first millennium BCE as a succession of different and welldefined empires has its advantages and merits. According to this approach, the four different empires (Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid-Persian Empires; Empire of Alexander the Great) are dealt with as specific states, which created their own bureaucracies and ideologies. They were ruled from different core areas and were reigned by distinctive social elites who were the decisive pillars of the state by giving it structure and meaning. 6 Indeed, the Neo-Assyrian Empire had a well-defined core area formed by the River Tigris and its two major tributaries, the Upper and the Lower Zab, where all major centers of the empire are located, i.e. from north to south, Dūr Šarrukīn, Ninua (Nineveh), Arba'ilu, and Aššur (Libbi-āli). The empire was conceptualized as "land Aššur" (māt Aššur) including the provinces and ruled by a king who acted in accordance with and in charge of the god Aššur. 7 The Neo-Babylonian Empire's core region was Babylonia, i.e. the alluvial plains to the south of modern Baghdād including the lower Diyala river. There was only one royal seat, i.e. Babylon, and the core area was defined as the "land of Sumer and Akkad." The king who, in contrast to his Assyrian counterpart, did not also act as a priest, ruled in charge of Marduk and Nabû. 8 Another shift was caused by the Persian kings. For the first time, the imperial core was in fact outside Mesopotamia although there was a royal palace in Babylon and the city still leveled high in prestige. The king's and the leading elites' identities, however, were no longer tied to Babylonia but were bound to western and southwestern Iran. Anšan/Pārsa (modern Fārs), Elam, and Media (central western Iran) were defined as the new core areas where the kings used to reside in newly constructed palace complexes at Ekbatana (Hamadān), Susa, Pasargadae, and Pārsa (Persepolis). 9 At least beginning with the reigns of Darius I and Xerxes, the god Ahura Mazda started to play a major role and the identity of the leading imperial elites became to be distinctive Iranian forming a transregional and cosmopolitan "ethno-classe dominante" 10 all over the empire. 11 In these
In the first days of summer the Lacedaemonians (i.e., the Spartans) and their allies, with two-th... more In the first days of summer the Lacedaemonians (i.e., the Spartans) and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of Lacedaemon (i.e., Sparta), and sat down and laid waste to the country. Not many days after their arrival in Attica the plague (nosos) first began to show itself among the Athenians. It was said that it had broken out in many places previously in the neighborhood of Lemnos and elsewhere; but a pestilence (loimos) of such extent and mortality was nowhere remembered. Neither were the physicians at first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often; nor did any human art succeed any better. Supplications in the temples, divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to them altogether. 3
Revue internationale d'histoire et d'archéologie (iv e-viii e s.
Michael Gehler, Robert Rollinger, and Philipp Strobl, Decline, Erosion, Implosion and Fall, or Just Tranformation? Diverging Ends of Empires through Time and Space, in: Michael Gehler, Robert Rollinger, and Philipp Strobl (eds.), The End of Empires, Wiesbaden: Springer 2022, 1-45. The articles of this comprehensive volume offer a multidisciplinary and-in fact-global approach t... more The articles of this comprehensive volume offer a multidisciplinary and-in fact-global approach to the history of empires, analyzing their ends over a long spectrum of humankind's history. As the main guiding question, every author of this volume asked for the reasons for the decline, the erosion, and the implosion of individual empires. All texts locate and highlight different factors that triggered or at least supported the ending or the implosion of empires. This overall question makes the very diverse texts comparable and allows to detect similarities, differences as well as inconsistencies of historical processes. Since the contributions of this book examine a very long period of history and historical events that took place in different regions of the world as well as in different time periods, the empires analyzed here were obviously highly divergent in nature. This also implies that their declining processes were largely different. Some empires rose to power very quickly, based on rapid military successes, such as the Timurid, the Napoleonic, or the National Socialist Empire. As history shows, they were often unable to maintain their territorial
This is also true for Jacobs and Rollinger (2021a, b). The most recent paper dealing with imperia... more This is also true for Jacobs and Rollinger (2021a, b). The most recent paper dealing with imperial aspects of Achaemenid rule is Waters (2021, 130-132), who dedicates only a few words to the empire's downfall and is rather concerned with the assessment of Alexander the Great's role in this process; Specific aspects have been highlighted by Briant (2018, 2021); Hyland (2018b); Rop (2018). 11 Gershevitch (1985). 12 For details see Wiesehöfer (1996, 2007a); Briant (2009b); Cf. also Tuplin (2014a). 13 Exceptions are Plutarch's biography of Artaxerxes II. See Binder (2008) and the 15th and 16th book of Diodorus. See Stronk (2018); although indigenous sources started to increase in the last years, these sources mainly reveal local administrative perspectives. See below fn. 43. 14 See, for instance, P.A. Stadter's assessment of Arrian's Anabasis, which is our main source for Alexander's reign, idem 1980, 63: "The Anabasis is not the study of a war, or of a movement of peoples, but of a man." See now for Arrian Rollinger and Degen (in press). For Curtius cf. Wulfram (2016).
Until the late 8th century BC ancient Near Eastern sources conceptualised the Mediterranean prima... more Until the late 8th century BC ancient Near Eastern sources conceptualised the Mediterranean primarily as the 'upper sea' that marked an unlimited border zone of the world towards the west. This mental map changed considerably since the 9th century BC, if not earlier, when Levantine mariners started to explore the entire Mediterranean. With the subjugation of the Levantine cities by the Neo-Assyrian empire, the Assyrians made this new geographical worldview their own. Thereby, for the very first time in history, the Mediterranean was perceived as an inland sea and as a unity of its own.
Babylonia and Babylon are at the crossroads of multiple traditions that focus on and imagine the ... more Babylonia and Babylon are at the crossroads of multiple traditions that focus on and imagine the history of the Ancient Near East in the first millennium BCE. In a more general and substantial way, these traditions considerably influenced western thoughts, past and present, on the Near East, its culture, and cities, as well as "oriental" imperial power and politics. Before modern archeologists started to excavate the residences of the Ancient Near Eastern empires in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and before philologists began to decipher and read cuneiform tablets, it was classical sources and biblical texts that shaped the imagination of Ancient Near Eastern empires, their rulers, their cities, and their culture. In this context, Babylon loomed large, attracting an increasingly multilayered set of imagined conceptions and accruing thoughts that developed a life of their own. Herodotus' Histories, Ctesias' Persica, the Alexander historians, the church fathers, universal histories, and Christian chronicles were powerful and influential cornerstones of this tradition that was retold and reshaped again and again in antiquity and transmitted through the Middle Ages to later centuries (Rollinger 2008). The stories told and the images called up by this tradition shared some common strands that became markers of how Ancient Near Eastern history had to be perceived. Babylon and the Near East were "old"; it was the region where the first empires flourished and where for the first time mighty kings established their rule. This framework was filled with a combination of often conflicting notions. On the one hand, there was admiration for overwhelming imperial power and the manifold testimonies of human achievement as they Babylon
The cinematic representation of the Achaemenid world, among other genres, is a prime example of h... more The cinematic representation of the Achaemenid world, among other genres, is a prime example of how modern reception is determined by avenues of perception and thought already evident in classical antiquity, newly adapted to modern circumstances (Rollinger 2014). Thus, Darius III and the late Persian Empire function primarily as a stage for the military exploits of Alexander the Great (Briant 2003), a view mirrored closely by ancient sources. Thus also, the Persian Wars are portrayed as a background for a supposedly perennial conflict between East and West. In American and European cinematic productions, it is primarily the battles of Thermopylae ("The 300 Spartans," USA 1962, dir. Rudolph Maté; "300," USA 2006, dir. Zack Snyder) and Marathon ("La battaglia di Maratona," Italy 1956, dir. Jacques Tourneur and Mario Bava) that serve as focal points for a larger conflict. Interestingly, the colossal sea battles of this war have not, as of yet, received any attention, though this has changed with the sequel to Zack Snyder's "300," released in the spring of 2014 ("300: Rise of an Empire," dir. Noam Murro). Originally envisioned as based on the figure of the Persian king (the original name for the project was simply "Xerxes"), it was reimagined as a follow-up to the prior movie. But even though as a title "300: Rise of an Empire" may not indicate it, the main focus of the movie was no longer the Spartan Leonidas and the Battle of
Greek perceptions of the Persians had initially been closely intertwined with that of the Medes. ... more Greek perceptions of the Persians had initially been closely intertwined with that of the Medes. Their power had extended eastwards of the territory of the Lydians. The expansion of the Persian Empire under Cyrus II, who overran
Sources and Perspectives Our available sources about the first three Achaemenid kings are far fro... more Sources and Perspectives Our available sources about the first three Achaemenid kings are far from being consistent. The challenge of writing a history of the early Achaemenid Empire is based on the problem that mainly external sources need to be consulted to make basic statements. In fact, Greek authors provide us with the most comprehensive accounts, which are prone to contrast the Persian Empire with their own cultural milieu (cf. the collection of all relevant sources by Kuhrt 2007). These Greek sources, although labeled by modern historians as early examples of "historiography," do not present accurate reports but highly biased "views" with a very specific focus on the Persian Empire and its kings. Furthermore, the so-called Persian Wars had a deep impact on the way Greeks (and later "Europeans") conceptualized their past and their identities. Therefore, the modern historian has to distinguish carefully between "facts" and "interpretations." Although modern historians tend to present their works as studied results of "quellenkritik" being capable to clearly discern between these different levels, this optimism is frequently not justified. In addition, we have a wide variety of indigenous sources, whose treatment is also not without problems, since they develop specific perspectives. The Achaemenid royal inscriptions provide information about royal self-perception and the Persian conception of kingship (see Chapter 6 The Inscriptions of the Achaemenids). For Darius I, we have a considerable number of these texts,
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Papers by Robert Rollinger
Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: <https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/dzo/artikel/201/001/1906_201.pdf?t=1498133995>
[Articles in German and English]
Innerhalb eines Jahres wurden in Innsbruck sieben Vorträge zu Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupts Leben sowie seinen Forschungen gehalten; ein achter Vortrag widmete sich dem Leben und Wirken seiner Ehefrau, der Autorin Therese Lehmann-Haupt. Mit der Publikation dieser Vorträge, dreier weiterer Arbeiten sowie eines vollständigen Schriftenverzeichnisses liegt nun erstmals eine umfangreiche Aufarbeitung des Lebens und Werks dieses bedeutenden Wissenschaftlers vor, der sich neben der Gründung der Klio vor allem durch seine Armenienreise hervortat, durch die zahlreiche neue urartäische Inschriften und Monumente bekannt wurden. Neben Lehmann-Haupts wissenschaftlichem Werdegang über die Stationen Berlin, Liverpool, Istanbul und Innsbruck widmen sich die Beiträge dieses Bandes seinen wissenschaftlichen Leistungen auf dem Gebiet der urartäischen Archäologie und Philologie, der Metrologie sowie der Beziehung zu seinem wohl wichtigsten Schüler, dem Althistoriker Fritz Schachermeyr. Zwei Beiträge schildern den Einsatz des Ehepaares Lehmann-Haupt für die Armenier und befassen sich mit der Frage, wie das Leben Lehmann-Haupts durch seine jüdische Herkunft beeinflusst wurde.
umfangreichen Arbeiten ietet dieser Band 44 Artikel – in Englisch, Deutsch und Italienisch –, die sich mit Themen aus Ost und West und von der 3. Jahrtausend zum 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. befassen.
Inhalt:
A Festschrift for an Outstanding Scholar and a Real Friend
Bibliography of Giovanni-Battista Lanfranchi
Tzvi Abusch: Notes on the History of Composition of Two Incantations
Sanna Aro: The Relief on the Slab NKL 2 at Karatepe-Azatiwataya: Neo-Assyrian Impact in Cilicia?
Ariel M. Bagg: Hezekiah’s Jerusalem: Nineveh in Judah?
Nicoletta Bellotto: I contratti palāhum ad Emar
Reinhold Bichler: Semiramis and her Rivals. An Essay
Maria Giovanna Biga: The Marriage of an Eblaite Princess with the King of Dulu
Olivier Casabonne: Karmylessos : une Lycie chimérique ?
Eleonora Cussini: Predial Servitudes and Easements in Aramaic Documents of Sale
Rocío Da Riva: Assyrians and Assyrian Influence in Babylonia (626–539 BCE)
Stefano de Martino: The Hurrian “Song of Release”: an Up-to-Date Overview
Elena di Filippo Balestrazz: Il mostro “anguipede” e il “dio in battello” nelle stele felsinee. Una proposta di lettura
Betina Faist: The Ordeal in the Neo-Assyrian Legal Procedure
Frederick Mario Fales: The Two Dynasties of Assyria
Sebastian Fink: Sardanapal – Ein Hedonist aus Mesopotamien?
Massimo Forlanini: The Survival of Dynastic Traditions of Bronze Age Anatolia During the Transition to the Iron Age: the Case of Ḫalpa-šulubi and the Historical Connections Between Išuwa and Milidia
Salvatore Gaspa: Golden Appliqués in Assyrian Textiles: an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Neo-Assyrian Evidence and Some Remarks on the Use of Dress Decorations in the Periphery of the Empire in Later Times
Alessandro Greco: The Art of Propaganda in Aegean Iconography: When Art Must Be Sung
Bruno Jacobs: Historische Aussagen in den Achämenideninschriften im Licht sich wandelnder Legitimationsstrategien
Martin Lang: Assyrien im 7. Jahrhundert und die Literarische Produktion in der Levante und der Ägäis
Mario Liverani: The King and His Audience
Paolo Matthiae: Image, Ideology, and Politics: a Historical Consideration of the Message of Neo-Assyrian Reliefs
Raija Mattila: The Chief of Trade and the Chief Tailor – New Eponyms During the Reign of Assurbanipal
Mischa Meier: Feuer über Konstantinopel: vom Umgang mit einem Nicht-Ereignis
Clelia Mora: Symbols of Power in the Kingdom of Karkamiš (13th–12th Centuries BC)
Daniele Morandi Bonacossi: River Navigation and Transport in Northern Assyria. The Stone Quay-walls of the Rivers Gomel and Al-khazir in the Navkur Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan
Antonio Panaino: Daniel the “Magus” and the Magi of Bethlehem
Simo Parpola: Mount Niṣir and the Foundations of the Assyrian Church
Francesco Pomponio: Alcune considerazioni sul cosiddetto periodo di Isin-Larsa
Simonetta Ponchia: The Neo-Assyrian Adê Protocol and the Administration of the Empire
Beate Pongratz-Leisten: Bad Kings in the Literary History of Mesopotamia and the Interface between Law, Divination, and Religion
Claudia Posani: La diffusione del culto di Kubaba in epoca neo‒assira
Daniel Potts: Guriania, γουράνιoι and the Gūrān
Karen Radner: Zagros Spice Mills: the Simurrean and the Hašimur Grindstones
Julian Reade – Irving Finkel: Between Carchemish and Pasargadae: Recent Iranian Discoveries at Rabat
Robert Rollinger: Aornos and the Mountains of the East: the Assyrian Kings and Alexander the Great
Kai Ruffing: Der Reichtum Babyloniens
Paolo Scarpi: La divina auctoritas di Ermete Trismegisto: per una nuova religione di tolleranza
Gebhard J. Selz: Plant Metaphors: on the Plant of Rejuvenation
Christopher J. Tuplin: From Arshama to Alexander. Reflections on Persian Responses to Attack
Erik van Dongen: The Extent and Interactions of the Phrygian Kingdom
Lorenzo Verderame: A Glimpse into the Activities of Experts (Ummânu) at the Assyrian Royal Court
Josef Wiesehöfer: Alfred von Gutschmid und Eberhard Schrader: eine Kontroverse
Anne-Maria Wittke: Überlegungen zur Lage von Pteria
Stefan Zawadzki: Depicting Hostile Rulers in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions
Die klassischen Quellen indes blenden diesen Sachverhalt vollständig aus. Obwohl die großen Brücken, die Dareios I. und Xerxes I. über Bosporus und Hellespont schlagen ließen, nur vor dem Hintergrund dieser pioniertechnischen Meisterleistungen verständlich werden, betrachten unsere Quellen die Errungenschaften der altorientalischen Herrscher in erster Linie unter dem Blickwinkel orientalischer Despotie und großköniglicher Hybris und ignorieren vollkommen, dass selbst Alexander letztlich von dem Erfindungsreichtum eines Raumes profitierte, den man heute gemeinhin als Orient bezeichnet.