THE ANCIENT ARABS Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent 9th-5th Centuries B. C. ISRAEL EPH 'AL 1984 THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM PREFACE The Hebrew text on which this book is based was written in 1971. In the meantime, several scholarly papers have been published, some of them rather detailed, touching upon topics treated in this book. I did not, however, consider it advisable to curtail my discussion and the original comprehensive framewerk has been preserved. Where these new studies are relevant, they are mentioned, and my own comments appear in the notes. The English manuscript was completed in 1977 and has been brought up to date to that year (though there are sporadic instances of more recent updating). The sources for the material dealt with in this book are variegated in kind and origin. The inconsistency in spelling of proper names is thus inherent: some names derive from traditional sources, while others are from sources in which spelling systems widely differ. I have incorporated all these "as is", making no effort to impose a unified spelling "at all costs". Biblical names are generally given according to the Revised Standard Version. When, however, the Akkadian or West Semitic spelling is relevant, and the traditional spelling might be misleading, adjustments have been made - often using letters and symbols not found in the traditional English, for example, 'Ephah, Qedar and Tema'. Professor H. Tadmor, who followed the book through all the stages of research and writing, has kindly read the manuscript and made significant comments on both content and structure. My colleagues, Professor M. Cogan and Dr. N. Na'aman, have also contributed remarks which have led to various improvements. Mrs. Evelyn Strouse edited the English style, and it is only thanks to her unstinting efforts and well-tempered argumentation that the book has reached its present readable form. The Research Authority and the H. Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, both of the Tel Aviv University, have assisted in enabling the several retypings of the manuscript. To all the above, my gratitude cannot adequately be expressed. I.E. CONTENTS Preface Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 A. The purpose and history of the research .................................... l B. Definition and designation of the nomads ................................. 5 C. The chronological framework.. ................................................. II D. Geographie Iimits ..................................................................... 12 PART ONE: THE AKKADIAN AND BIBLICAL SOURCES ......... 20 Chapter I. Akkadian sources. ............................................................ 21 l. Royal inscriptions: A. The Monolith Inscription from Kurkh of Shalmaneser III ...... 21 B. Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pi1eser III ............................................. 21 C. Inscriptions of Sargon II .......................................................... 36 D. lnscriptions of Sennacherib ...................................................... 40 E. Inscriptions of Esarhaddon ...................................................... 43 F. Inscriptions ofAssurbanipal... .................................................. 46 2. Other Akkadian sources: G. Babylonian Chronicles .............................................................. 52 H. Assurbanipal's treaty with the Qedarites; letters and administrative documents ......................................................... 54 Chapter II. The bib1ical sources ........................................................ 60 A. C1assification ............................................................................ 60 B. Historical sources ..................................................................... 63 C. Literary sources ........................................................................ 72 PART TWO: HISTORICAL SURVEY .............................................. 74 Chapter III. From mid-9th century B.C. to Assyrian imperial expansion to Palestine ....................................................................... 75 Chapter IV. From Tiglath-Pileser III to Sargon li (738-705 B.C.) ... 81 A. Ethnographic-historical survey ................................................. 82 B. The integration of nomads into the Assyrian administrative system du ring the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon ............ 93 C. Sargon's economic policy and its effect upon the nomads ..... 101 Chapter V. From Sennacherib to Assurbanipal.. ............................ 112 A. The reign of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) ............................... 112 1. Politico-military survey ...................................................... 112 2. Tribute and taxes ............................................................... 123 B. The reign of Esarhaddon (681-669 B.C.) ............................... 125 1. The chronological framework ............................................ 125 2. The northeastern Arabian desert... ..................................... 126 3. The campaign against the land of Bäzu ............................. 130 4. The Arabs as indispensable to military campaigns in Sinai ............................................................................... 137 C. The reign of Assurbanipal (668-627 B.C.) .............................. 142 1. Source-Groups relating_to Arabs in the inscriptions of Assurbanipal .................................................................. 142 2. Survey of events covered by Source-Group A. ................... 147 3. Survey of events covered by Source-Group B .................... 155 4. Nomad Ieaders according to groupings during Assurbanipal's reign ........................................................... 165 Chapter VI. The Chaldaean period (605-539 B.C.) ........................ 170 A. The reign of Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.) ........................ 171 1. Nebuchadnezzar's war against the Arabs in his sixth regnal year (599/8 B.C.) ..................................................... 171 2. The political and mi1itary background (594-582 B.C.) of Arab penetration into Transjordan ................................ 176 B. The reign of Nabonidus (556-539 B.C.) ................................. 179 I. Babylonian historical sources ............................................. 180 2. North Arabian inscriptions ................................................ 182 3. Nabonidus' route to Tema' ................................................ 185 4. Arabs in Babylonia; North Arabian and Babylonian connections in the 6th century B.C. ................................... 188 Chapter VII. The Achaemenid period (539-ca.450 B.C.) ................ 192 A. Oemography ........................................................................... 193 I. Northern Sinai and the approach to Egypt.. ...................... 193 2. The southern coast of Palestine. ......................................... 195 3. ldumaea and southcrn Transjordan ................................... 197 B. Achaemenid rule in North Arabia and Transjordan .............. 201 C. Arab status in southern Palestine within the Achaemenid administrative and economic system .................. 206 0. Geshem the Arab: Problems of identification ........................ 210 Appendix A. The nomad groups ..................................................... 215 Appendix B. The Sons of Qeturah and the Sons of Ishmael (in the biblical genealogical lists) ..................................................... 231 Map ................................................................................................. 241 Abbreviations .................................................................................. 243 General index .................................................................................. 249 Index of sources .............................................................................. 259 INTRODUCTION A. THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH This book proposes to investigate and describe the relations between the nomads of northern Sinai, northern Arabia and the Syro-Arabian desert, and the population of Palestine and its environs, as weil as between those nomads and the great Near Eastern empires which ruled the western part of the Fertile Crescent in the 9th-5th centuries B.C. The study focuses mainly on the political and ethnographic aspects of these relations, and deals, to a Iesser extent, with social and economic matters. The investigation of the nomads within the described geographic confines was only made possible by the decipherment and public<>.tion of the Assyrian and Babylonian documents which relate to them and remain our chief source of information about the nomads during the discussed period. The pioneers in research of any dimension on this topic were Fr. Delitzsch (Paradies, 1881), F. Hommel (Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, Berlin 1885) and E. Glaser (Skizze, 1890). Their work was limited in the main to locating and identifying the nomads mentioned in the Bible andin Akkadian sources. For purposes of comparison they also made use of names in Greek and Latin sources, and to a lesser extent those in Arabic (e.g. al-Hamdäni and al-Bakri). Much of their work is faulty by present-day Standards and therefore unusable, primarily because of errors in reading cuneiform texts and the mechanical identification of various groups by phonological similarities, without sufficient regard for geographic logic. A generation later saw the second stage in the development of research, marked by the works of A. Musil and Hommel (Ethnologie und 1 lntroduction Geographie des alten Orients, 1926), which also account for geographic and social factors relating to the nomads. The documentary basis was likewise expanded by the publication of new sources and critical editions of texts previously available only in prelirninary publications (e.g. the inscriptions of Assurbanipal). Of particular value was the contribution of Musil, who in the years 1896-1902, 1908-1915 traversed the deserts from the Negeb and northern Arabia through Wadi Sir"än and the Syrian desert to the Euphrates. To his diaries on these travels Musil added numerous appendices, some of them elaborations of specific topics, including discussions of various groups of nomads and the history of the principal oases (Northern /fegaz.l926; Arabia Deserta, 1927; Middle Euphrates, 1927; Palmyrena, 1928; and Northern Negd, 1928 are especially important to our subject). In these discussions Musil made extensive use of biblical, classical and Roman-Byzantine sources. He even included material culled systematically from the itineraries and other works of Arab writers and geographers, most of which have never been translated into any European language. The vast amount of material cited in these books is extremely important for a knowledge of the ge::ography of the region and various aspects of the life of its inhabitants. At the same time, Musil's work, because of his ignorance of Akkadian and his consequent dependence on secondary sources, is marked by a nurober of flaws in the chapters dealing with the Assyrian and Babylonian periods. A useful tool for the systematic study of the history of the nomads was made available when T. Weiss-Rosmarin, in her doctoral dissertation (" Aribi und Arabien in den babylonisch-assyrischen Quellen", JSOR 16[1932], l-37), prepared an index of the majority of references to the various groups of Arabs in Babylonian and Assyrian sources. It is not, however, an original contribution to scholarship, since it confines itself to an alphabetical listing of already known material, and does not re-examine the texts or make an exhaustive analysis of them. A new phase in the study of the nomads, and one embodying a substantial change in approach, began with the work of W.F. Albright. In two articles which dealt with the Dedan and Massa' tribes ("Dedan", Alt Festschrift. 1953, l-12; "The Biblical Tribe Massa' and Some Congeners", Levi della Vida Festschrift, 1956, Vol. I, 1-4) as well as in numerous notes included in his other studies, Albright applied his 2 lntroduction general critical method to the study of the nomads and their history. He views the matter at hand within the general framework of ancient Near Eastern and biblical research, utilizing the resources of epigraphy, linguistics and archaeology. Thus, Albright sought to take advantage of the conclusions of archaeological research in southern Arabia, and of the implications of the Lihyanite and Thamudic inscriptions discovered in northern Arabia, in order to establish chronological starting points for historical research. He also called attention to new areas of research likely to deepen our understanding of the problems connected with the investigation of nomads. So, for example, the works of G.W. Va n Beek on the cultivation, processing and marketing of spices in southern Arabia, 1 which were prepared at Albright's instigation, make an important contribution - despite their reliance on classical sources - to the recognition of one of the basic factors affecting the relations between the nomads and the Near Eastern empires during the period under discussion. All the previously published research on nomads of the 8th to 5th centuries B.C. has dealt exclusively with particular problems. Our study is the first published attempt to encompass all the complex data on the nomads at that period in order to formulate a clear and complete picture of their organization, their geographical spheres and their relations with the countries of the Fertile Crescent. The method adopted seeks to follow the path pointed to by Albright in the conclusion of his article on Massa': "The material already available makes it certain that we must analyze our complex material with the greatest attention to basic philological and historical principles".2 In accordance with these principles, this work is based fundamentally on a critical analysis of the sources, made by carefully examining their texts, the circumstances of their formation, their classification and their usefulness for the purposes of historical research. The book begins with a study of all the Akkadian and biblical sources. Various Akkadian documents - among them letters, passages from inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Assurbanipal, as weil as Babylonian chronicles Van Beek, in R. Bowen and F.P. Albright. Archaeological Dücoveries in SoU/h Arabia, Saltimore 1958. 139-142; idem. JAOS 78 (1958). 141-152; idcm. BA 23 ( 1960), 70-95. 2 Albright. Levi della Vida Festschrift. 14. 3 lntroducrion - have been reconsidered and conclusions drawn which differ from the conventional ones. The same method has been applied to the dassical and North Arabic sources. Special attention was also paid to basic geographical data, unchanged for thousands of years, which may have had politico-military and economic implications. A nurober of constantly recurring phenomena are discernible in the history of the relations of the nomads with the sedentary population and the political authorities controlling the western part of the Fertile Crescent in the first half of the first millennium B.C. These pivotal phenomena can be more clearly understood if the basis for them is outlined: l. At the end of the second millennium B.C. - following both the establishment of centralized authorities in southern Arabia, which made it possible to cultivate, process and distribute spices on a !arge scale, and the domestication of the camel, which could then carry Arabian produce over great distances - there was a striking change in the nature of the contact between the nomads and the sedentary populations of the western part of the Fertile Crescent. Previous contact had been confined to attempted nomad encroachment with their flocks upon the settled parts of the country and the efforts made to repulse them, and the conflict over grazing areas of the cultivated land. It now developed that the nomads became important for the maintenance of Arabian trade because of their location along the long trade routes. Profit from this key branch of the economy and interest in its uninterrupted operation generated new, commercially based, relations. Especially affected by this change were their relations with the political bodies (the local-national ones and later also the empires) which ruled the region. These economic considerations had demographic and administrative implications as weil. 2. The gradual deterioration of the border kingdoms and their disintegrating borders created opportunities for the nomad infiltration. 3. The inadequate manpower in the empires controlling the western part of the Fertile Crescent during the 8th to 5th centuries B.C. led to the integration of nomad tribes into the imperial military and administrative establishment in the region. The Arabs grew increasingly indispensable, particularly when the Asiatic empires embarked upon the conquest of Egypt. The absolute dependence of their !arge armies on camels for the supply of water in the Sinai desert added a new element 4 Introduction to the relations between the nomads and the ruling powers. This book proposes, then, to describe and examine political, demographic and economic processes. We must emphasize, however, that, because of the few sources available, it is not possible to undertake systematic clatification of the history of the nomads and their tribes, but only their relations with the political authorities and sedentary populations in the western as weil as other parts of the Fertile Crescent m the 8th to 5th centuries B.C. B. DEFINITION AND DESIGNATIONS OF THE NOMADS As used herein, the term "nomads" refers to all the populations in the deserts of northern Sinai and northern Arabia and in the Syro-Arabian desert. Most of them raised carnels3 and sheep,4 lived in tents and unfortified temporary carnps5 and moved from place to place with their flocks, sporadically raiding the permanent settlements in the regions adjacent to the desert.6 For the purposes of this book, the term "nomads" is applied to oasis dwellers as weil. The oases - some of which, like Tema' and Durnah (Dümat al-Jandal, al-Jawf),7 served as economic, administrative and ritual centers - were the permanent homes of thousands of people engaged in cultivating the land and in crafts. Although from the socio-cultural point of view it is hard to describe this population as nomadic (a distinction made particularly in classical Arabic sources), we have adopted in this book the terminology 3 See Jer. 49:29. 32; Tig1ath-Pi1eser lii inscriptions: K 3751 rev. 5: IIl R 10, 2:20. 25; ND 400:27; Esarhaddon inscriptions: Nin. A iv 17, 21; Frt. F. rev. 2; Assurbanipal's Rm. viii 114, ix 5, 36-37, 42, 46, 52, 65; ABL 547, 631; Herodotus lll 9. Cf. also the Tiglath-Pileser lil and Assurbanipal reliefs. 4 Isa. 13:20; 60:7; Jer. 49:29; Ezek. 27:21; I Chron. 5:21; Rm. viii 114, ix 5. 42; ND 2644. Cf. also the Tiglath-Pileser reliefs. 5 lsa. 42: II; Jer. 49:29, 31; Ps. 120:5; Cant. I :5; and also the Assurbanipa1 reliefs. About the epithet äSibüt kuslltäri see below, 3. 6 Cf. Job 1: 15; ABL 88, 547; the Assurbanipa1 inscriptions: B viii 39-40; K 2802 iv 8- 10; Rm. vii 102-106, viii 15-16, 71-72. 7 The people of Tema' ("'"Te-ma-a-a) are included among the nomads who brought their gifts to Tig1ath-Pileser as a sign of submission (Ill R 10. 2:27; K 3751 rev. 3); Durnah is described as the Arabs' fortress (Esarhaddon, Nin. A iv 1: "'" A-du-mu-tu äl dan-nu-tu ku• '" A-ri-bi); lt is likewise mentioned in connection with H azael and Te'elbunu in Sennacherib's time (VA 3310 rev. 25 ff.): 5