Aššur, divine embodiment of Assyria’, Nimrud: Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Production, The Nimrud Project at Oracc.org, 2019
”From the early centuries of the second millennium BC, rulers of the city of Assur called themselves iššiakki Aššur, ”vice-regent of the god Aššur”. This royal title remained in continuous use right through to the end of the empire in 7th century BC. Its message was simple: the god had chosen the king to rule on his behalf.”
”Inscription of Shalmaneser III: When Asšur, the great lord, chose me in his steadfast heart (and) with his holy eyes and named me for the shepherdship of Assyria, he put in my grasp a strong weapon which fells the insubordinate, he crowned me with a lofty crown, (and) he sternly commanded me to exercise dominion over and to subdue all the lands insubmissive to Aššur”.
”Aššur, as the divine embodiment of a city and it empire, is fundamentally different from any other Mesopotamian god. He appears in no known narrative myths, even as a minor character, as he was rarely conceptualised”.
Temples in Mesopotamia as Law and Business Centers – Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, Professor Morris Jastrow Jr.
”Even in the purely business activity of the country, the bond between culture and religion is exemplified by the large share taken by the temples in the commercial life. The temples had large holdings in land and cattle. They loaned money and engaged in mercantile pursuits of various kinds; so that a considerable portion of the business documents in both the older and the later periods deal with temple affairs, and form part of the official archives of the temples”.
”The temples were the natural depositories of the legal archives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably enormous proportions. Records were made of all decisions; the facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses. Business and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale were in like manner drawn up in the presence of official scribes, who were also priests”.
”A large quantity of the business documents found in the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples in the large centres as among the most important business institutions of the country. In financial or monetary transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that of national banks; they carried on their business with all the added weight of official authority”.
Interest payment procedures applied by Assyrian merchants during the first quarter of the second millennium B.C. in Anatolia. Turk Tarih Kurumu
”These Assyrian merchants established a credit system that they applied to the transactions among themselves and to those with the local population. When they sold the local population products like tin and cloth, which they had imported from Assyria, they also offered credit facilities and charged interest rates that were a function of the term. In the same way, they added interest rates depending on the term, to all credit transactions among themselves and if the debit was not extinguished at its due date the interest was summed to the main sum and interest was charged on this new amount of debt.”
”We also see that some Assyrians, who must have been bankers or usurers, provided short-term credit facilities at low interest rates. Promissory notes found at the second level of the Kanis karum during the Kültepe excavations encompass the period beginning from the fifth year of the reign of the Assyrian king Sarrukan, including the reign of king Puzur-Assur and ending in the thirtieth year of the reign of king Naram-Suen (1920-1840 B.C.) A table has been compiled that shows the amounts of credit provided by Assyrian merchants active in Anatolia during the reigns of these kings, the interest rates charged by them, debit-credit amounts and terms, on a monthly and yearly basis. We see that the levels of interest rates change according to the months, the years and the individuals who provided the credit facilities.”
Economic and social aspects of the old Assyrian loan contracts. Department of oriental studies – Sapienza universita di Roma
”As trade developed, the Assyrians settled in approximately 40 trading posts (called kârum) on the Anatolian plateau. Their commercial activities were facilitated by international agreements between Assyrian and Anatolian authorities. These sworn treaties recognized the mutual and complementary interests of both parties. The Anatolian rulers granted the Assyrians protection for their caravans within their territories, as well as extraterritorial rights within the trading posts.”
”Even though many taxes were levied on caravans in both directions, it is estimated that the Assyrian merchants made a net profit of around 50% on their exports. Some merchants from Assur thus accumulated great wealth through repeated investments. The 22,500 clay tablets discovered in the lower city of Kanis deal primarily with trade. They consist of letters, legal documents, and various types of memoranda. The overwhelming majority of this documentation belongs to Assyrians whose home city was Assur.”
”Although property was individually owned, an Assyrian’s social standing and reputation were determined by the wealth of the family enterprise and the father’s social position, as he often served as a formal guarantor for investors. The involvement of many Assyrians in loan contracts and other business transactions paints a picture of Assur as a city primarily inhabited by merchants and entrepreneurs. The profits from trade appear to have benefited the entire population of Assur – the king and his family, high officials, priests, the temples, and the city-state itself. In fact, the city hall of Assur levied many taxes on caravans entering or leaving the city. The wide range of professions connected to trade included bankers, agents, and transporters.”
Accordance with the Words of the Stele: Evidence for Old Assyrian Legislation. Illinoise Institute of Technology – Chicago-Kent College of Law
”This important distinction is also made in a letter, where the writer, after discussing a settlement of accounts, concludes with the question: ”Don’t you know the rule (”words”) of the City: Items of Anatolia shall only be collected in Anatolia, those of the City only in the City (of Assur)?”
”The rich evidence on naruqqum-investments shows that, not infrequently, successful traders living in Anatolia gave silver to a trader there on the condition that he would inscribe their name among his shareholders on the ”naruqqum-tablet” in Assur. Hence, the verdict goes beyond the ”rule of the City” in looking not only at the place of origin of the transaction, but at its nature: capital investments by nature have to be settled in Assur, where the contracts recording the foundation of, and investment in, a naruqqum were kept”.
”The authorities apparently had ruled that all such individual, uncoordinated actions were forbidden and that a general settlement of accounts had to take place in Assur itself, where all debts and assets could be balanced. We know this rule from several judicial records and letters, which use almost the same words as our verdict: ”Nobody, either in Assur or in Anatolia, shall touch any thing, all his silver shall be brought together in Assur.”
”Trade appears to have been the backbone of Assur’s economy and prosperity. It occupied a substantial part of its population, and many of Assur’s habitants had invested in it, as well as the temples and the ruler. Assur, in fact, served as a strategic market city and entrepot in a commercial network which linked Iran, Babylonia, Assyria, Anatolia, and Syria”.
”The City also passed verdicts aimed at protecting the interests of the Assyrian trading establishment (which must have been well-represented among the ”elders,” the heads of the powerful families, which made up the Assembly), when they were at odds with entrepreneurs based in Anatolia”.
Becoming Empire: Neo-Assyrian palaces and the creation of courtly culture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019
”As the first in a long sequence of empires to rule the Middle East, Assyria can be described as the founder of the imperial model of kingship. Its experiments in becoming an empire and the resulting courtly culture informed the empires that came in its wake”.
”Combining spatial and textual evidence, we suggest that space was crucial to the formation of one of the earliest courtly cultures in the world, and that the spatial organization of the royal palaces was determined by how the household of the Assyrian king was structured and organized”.
”Access to the king’s presence was controlled by a series of checks and controls, manned by different kinds of palace staff, from simple security personnel to different high-ranking officials. These court officials stood at the most important thresholds between the outside world, the palace and its monumental core, both metaphorically – by controlling the flow of people and goods in and out of the palace – and physically, as they were present within the main gates of the palace”.
”The rab ekalli (palace manager) can be reconstructed as the supervisor of the external entrance and therefore as the likely superior of these doorkeepers. His responsibilities included overseeing the access to and egress from the palace of people and goods, as well as their circulation within the palace confines. More specifically, the rab ekalli was concerned with the handling of tax payments in kind”.