Before Assyria

Gojko Barjamovic (Harvard University)

The transformation of Assur from city-state to universal empire was neither sudden nor predestined. Its historical roots in the dismantling of the oligarchic constitution and the transition to autocratic rule was obscured by later historiographers, whose much-redacted Assyrian King List demonstrably conflates disparate and incongruent traditions of political succession. This lecture combines textual and archaeological sources with recent advances in understanding the relative chronology to present a revised outline of the political and institutional history of Assur from the death of Šamši-Adad I to the reign of Aššur-uballiṭ I.