ABSTRACT
Despite recent trends in history to search for the “common” man and woman, much of our thoughts are still structured along lines determined by the fortunes of elites, especially rulers and dynasties. Our periodizations of antiquity, both on a long-term scale and in the detailed subdivisions of short periods and individual regions, are still often based on a perception of change in rule. Poorly written, or taught, histories tend to turn into annotated king lists with battles highlighted as major events. This is still very much true for the histories of ancient Mesopotamia, where an abundance of royal names is known and where dynastic shifts determine our view of historical change almost to the absolute. When Mesopotamia was almost entirely forgotten in the west from late antiquity to the midnineteenth century AD, the only memory that lingered in people’s minds came from the Hebrew Bible where Israel’s and Judah’s encounters with the Assyrian and Babylonian empires were summarily described. The focus was upon kings and battles: the Assyrians Shalmaneser, Sargon and Sennacherib, whose campaigns led to the destruction of the state of Israel and turned Judah into a puppet state; the Babylonian Nebuchadnezar, guilty of destroying Jerusalem and taking its people in captivity. Many Western writers and artists used these as characters well known to their audiences (e.g. Byron, Rembrandt). These kings, and some of their queens, colleagues, and officials, lingered as the ghosts of a forgotten civilization. Even today their biblical characters continue to dominate our perception of them. How can we see Assyrians as anything but warlike? We even continue to use the Hebraized versions of their names: Sargon instead of Sharruken, Nebuchadnezar instead of etc.
