ChatGPT4: Tablets of Power: The Dual Roles of Literacy in Ashurbanipal’s Assyria

I wanted a short, punchy, & informative article on the role played by writing & literacy in the Neo-Assyrian state ca. -700. But I could not find one. Can ChatGPT4 fill the bill? My verdict: No...

I wanted a short, punchy, & informative article on the role played by writing & literacy in the Neo-Assyrian state ca. -700. But I could not find one. Can ChatGPT4 fill the bill? My verdict: No. As so often is the case, barely workmanlike. But there is the perennial hope that with just a little more skill and expertise in prompt-writing its quality could be judged much higher. As it is, it has the form of an informative essay but not really sufficient insightful content. And if you can do form, how much harder can sufficient insightful content be? And yet the answer seems to be: a lot harder…

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The Neo-Assyrian Empire was renowned for its cruel military prowess, violent territorial expansion, and brutality in uprooting and rearranging its subject populations. But it also appears to have made major civilizational advances in the use of writing, using written words extensively and systematically as not merely tools of communication; but as instruments of power, control, and cultural continuity. 

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Ashurbanipal’s Library: A Center of Cultural and Political Power

Ashurbanipal’s predecessors were warriors and politicians. But Ashurbanipal himself appears to have been a scholar, or at least a scholastic, with a passion for collecting ancient texts. H.W.F. Saggs describes him as “never so happy as when curled up with a good clay tablet” (Saggs, 116). The vast library in Nineveh created during his rule is now our primary source for our understanding ancient Mesopotamian culture. It contained over a thousand ancient literary works (Saggs, 217).H

The library was not just a collection of texts but a reservoir of political and cultural power. It housed religious, medical, legal, and divinatory texts together covering and shedding insight on the entire broad spectrum of Assyrian life and knowledge.

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Literacy as a Tool of Coercion and Domination

Over 300 of the texts in the library were related to divination (Saggs, 217). These texts in Ashurbanipal’s library concerning divination and omens played a key role in legitimating the king’s rule. They were tools of ideological control. The king’s commands would be more power to the extent that his decisions and policies could be sold as being in line with divine will. Therefore ascertaining divine will, or finding a legalistic-ritual path that would take the king’s commands and link them to the desires of divinities, was a piece of the apparatus of rule. And those ritual-legalistic paths were contained in books.

But books were useful not just on heaven but on earth. Legal texts abound in Ashurbanipal’s library. They point to the use of writing in establishing a formal legal system to control and administer the empire effectively—a framework for governance and social control over a space more vast and more diverse than ever before, save possibly the New Kingdom of Egypt.

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Writing as a Means of Organization and Administration

Writing, however, was useful not just for the domination of man over man. It was very useful for the management for resources and the coördination of productive processes. The Assyrian bureaucracy was essential for managing the extensive empire. It relied heavily on written records for administration. Economic documents, state letters, and other administrative texts were found in huge quantities in the library. Indeed, they likely formed part of a separate state archive, revealing a sophisticated level of organization and record-keeping by the masters of Assyria.

The library’s collections were in very large part based on Babylonian models. Cultural appropriation and adaptation was a key thing for Assyria, with many texts not just presenting Babylonian perspectives and myths, but concerning medicine, and chemical technologies.

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The Role of Literacy in Enhancing Cognition, Memory, and Communication

Ashurbanipal’s library functioned as a center for preserving and disseminating knowledge. The careful cataloging and storage of tablets indicate a systematic approach to knowledge management, essential for maintaining the intellectual and cultural continuity of the empire. The collection of diverse texts provided a base for learning and scholarly activities. This not only fostered a culture of learning but also facilitated the development of new ideas and innovations, albeit within the constraints of traditional beliefs.

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Conclusion

The extensive collection of texts in Ashurbanipal’s library remains a testament to the Assyrians’ sophisticated use of writing as a tool for empire-building and cultural development. The Neo-Assyrian use of literacy and writing as revealed by Ashurbanipal’s library was multifaceted: control, administration, ideological influence, plus a medium for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. These multiple roles for writing in dominating and enlightening society underscore the complexity of Assyrian civilization. The Neo-Assyrian Empire’s approach to literacy and writing was dynamic: intertwining governance, culture, religion, and intellect, playing a pivotal role in shaping one of history’s most formidable empires.

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References:

• Saggs, H.W.F: 1984. The Might That Was Assyria. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. <https://archive.org/details/mightthatwasassy0000sagg>.

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Mentions of the word “library” in Saggs (1984):

Page 116: It was a defect of Ashurbanipal as a king that he had nothing in him of the great strategist, statesman, or soldier. He was as barren in political insight as he was rich in vindictiveness. It was his misfortune that he was called to be king when by inclination he was a scholastic. Yet we do owe him something. Earlier Assyrian kings had collected ancient texts and begun the creation of a library, but with Ashurbanipal this became a passion. He gives the impression of having been the sort of man who was never so happy as when curled up with a good clay tablet, although his motivation was probably more a matter of superstitious regard for ancient wisdom than love of literature for its own sake. Wherever he heard of ancient texts, he had them sent, or had copies of them made, for his library in Nineveh (see pages 279f.). And these texts, hidden in the earth until the mid-nineteenth century, and since their excavation hidden, at times almost as inaccessibly, in the British Museum, remain our major single source for knowledge of the ancient culture of Babylonia and Assyria…

Page 181: The mass of texts, produced in second-millennium Babylonia from third-millennium Sumerian roots, was taken over into first-millennium Assyria. Some of the texts were found at Ashur, the greatest mass of them at Nineveh, in a library which various Assyrian kings, mainly Ashurbanipal (668–627), had collected. Thus, almost anything we may say about Assyrian learning on the basis of such literary texts really relates to what Assyria had directly and consciously borrowed from Babylonia. However, there are some elements of Assyrian culture, known to us either from archaeological finds or from statements in inscriptions specifically of Assyrian and not Babylonian origin, which we may attribute to Assyria itself. And it has to be said – although we do not propose to allow the Assyrians credit for organized science and shall be chary in using the term ‘technology’ – that there were occasional instances in Assyria of recognition that knowledge could be extended, processes could be improved, and innovations – consciously… 

Page 186: The most extensive collection of known cuneiform texts concerned with chemical technology are a few dozen pieces about the making of coloured glass, most of them from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. It should be pointed out that these texts… 

Page 217: Most societies sought means to see into the future, and the people of ancient Mesopotamia were no exception. Many ination techniques were devised to foretell what was to come, and some of these, traceable to third-millennium Sumer and probably having their origins even earlier in prehistoric times, still flourished in first-millennium Assyria. The importance in Assyrian culture of means of foretelling the future is demonstrated by the contents of the library various Assyrian kings, mainly Ashurbanipal, built up at Nineveh. Excavated last century, it has been found to contain up to twelve hundred different ancient literary works, of which over three hundred are concerned with divination…

Page 229: One might have expected that the specialization of the asu in the use of medicaments would eventually give birth to the rudiments of the science of pharmacology; but the prevailing intellectual climate left little possibility for experiment and advance in that direction. Even disregarding the magical elements which sometimes came into the activities of the asu, it was not (at least in the late Assyrian period) the skill or knowledge of the physician personally which was thought to effect a cure; we have texts of prescriptions used by the asu, but their principal value was thought to derive from their ancient divine authority. This is clear from a colophon (1.e., summary of bibliographical details) appended by Ashurbanipal to some of the medical texts added to his library in the seventh century. One such colophon describes the texts as ‘healing-prescriptions (for everything) from top to toe, a collection outside the recognized group, containing expert learning, whatever pertains to the function of the great physician-gods, Ninurta and Gula’…

Page 229: Ashurbanipal adds: ‘I deposited them within my palace for reference and for my repeated reciting of them.’ This suggests that, from the point of view of Ashurbanipal, it was the ancient divinelyinspired wisdom on the texts themselves that was efficacious. This is in line with the ancient attitude. The medical texts (like a majority of all texts in Ashurbanipal’s library) had been committed to writing in the second millennium and constantly re-copied, independently of the state of current medical practices. The texts had the authority of ancient tradition, which could actively oppose any attempt at experiment or innovation…

Page 277: The best-known collection of laws from ancient Mesopotamia is that of the eighteenth-century Babylonian king Hammurabi, but there are other collections from Babylonia, and we also have examples from Assyria. Two groups of Middle Assyrian Laws were discovered at Ashur, one mainly concerned with land tenure and the other with women (see pages 132, 140ff.). Unlike the laws of Hammurabi, these were not drawn up in the form of decisions given by the king, but clearly were compilations by jurists (presumably acting under the instructions of the king) of traditional legal practice in particular areas. It is significant that no traces of these laws have been found in the great Kuyunjik library of texts from the seventh century (see pages 278ff.). This could be a matter of accident, but in view of the considerable amount of the library which 1s extant, if only in fragments, this is unlikely. The implication is that, whatever the purpose for which the Middle Assyrian laws were compiled, it was not to serve as a written corpus of national law, permanently…

Page 278: The categories so far mentioned either developed in Assyria or were composed in Assyria upon Babylonian models. But outside these, the majority of texts found in Assyria were direct borrowings from Babylonia. The most striking illustration of this is the very large collection of texts from a royal library in Nineveh, which were discovered when Kuyunjik was excavated last century (see pages 312ff.) and brought to the British Museum. Strictly speaking, there was more than one library, since in some colophons (see pages 280ff.) there is mention of the text being placed in the palace, and in others it is said to belong to the library of the temple of Nabu. However, because all were controlled by the same king, and all are now present together in the same collection in the British Museum, it is often convenient to treat them as a single library. Assyriologists have been well served in the matter of this collection. The main part of it was catalogued by a German scholar, Carl Bezold, in five volumes of Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum (1889–99), to which a Supplement by L. W. King was added in 1914. A large number of tiny fragments are still uncatalogued. The total entries in the Kuyunjik catalogue amount to over 25,000, but since many of these are broken pieces and not whole tablets, the number of tablets from which these fragments come reduces to about 5000. In many cases, several tablets duplicate the same text, so that the number of distinct texts represented may be estimated at between 1000 and 1200…

Page 278: Smaller libraries of cuneiform texts have been found at other Assyrian sites, notably Ashur and Calah, and also at the site Sultantepe (ancient Huzirina) near Harran in south-east Turkey. Many of the Ashur texts, which are in Berlin, have been published, and have proved to be of high importance for our knowledge of the cult in Assyria, though they bear upon many other aspects of Assyrian life as well; it is from Ashur that the Middle Assyrian laws come. The collection from Calah comprises the library of the temple of the god Nabu – whose temple usually possessed a library, as he was the scribal god – but with some small exceptions these have not yet been published. The Sultantepe texts, published in two volumes, contain much important literary material…

Page 279: Not all the tablets and fragments listed in the British Museum Kuyunjik catalogue come from a library in Nineveh, or indeed from Nineveh at all. The methods of nineteenth-century excavation did not include careful registration of the exact spot at which each cuneiform tablet was found, and in a site covering a hundred acres and containing several palaces, it is not necessary to assume that all tablets found came from the same part of the same building. In fact, we know from the contents of tablets that some of those catalogued in the Kuyunjik collection actually came from some site other than Kuyunjik; there, are for example, several dated by kings of Babylonia a century after the final destruction of Nineveh. But even within the vast majority which certainly came from Kuyunjik, there are some which manifestly were not from Ashurbanipal’s library. All the state letters, for example, are likely to have been in a state archive distinct from the library. And certainly the royal library cannot have been the home of those economic documents which dealt with such matters as private sales of slaves or houses, contracts for harvesting, and ’the like. This conclusion is supported by the discovery at Nineveh in the 1970s of similar economic documents in an area well away from the palaces…

Page 279: However, most of the tablets in the Kuyunjik collection did belong to the royal palace and temple libraries at Nineveh. We know something about the origin of these libraries, which were mainly due to Ashurbanipal, although the nucleus goes back to his predecessors, some of whom made collections of tablets. As early as about 1100, Tiglath-Pileser I established a library in a temple at Ashur, of which over one hundred tablets can be identified from finds there. But without question it was Ashurbanipal who was the greatest royal collector of all. His activities in this connection are established not only by the presence of his name on a large proportion of the tablets from Nineveh, but also by a letter dealing with this. The letter reads…

Page 280: In this letter, Ashurbanipal was clearly commandeering tablets from the temple of Borsippa, and tablets which are originals from Babylonia (as distinct from copies made of Babylonian tablets) have been found in his library. There are others which he had had brought from the older Assyrian capitals, Ashur and Calah. But the greatest number of tablets in his library (or, more accurately, libraries) were specially copied for him. We know such details from the colophons. A colophon, when the word is applied to a cuneiform tablet, is a statement at the end giving certain details about the particular tablet. Those used by Ashurbanipal fall within twenty-three patterns. Three examples follow…

Page 281: Written and collated according to its ancient form. I, Ashurbanipal, king of all, king of Assyria, on whom Nabu and Tashmetu [Nabu’s consort] have bestowed keen intelligence [literally ‘a broad ear’] and clear eyes to grasp the most precious parts of scribal knowledge, who amongst the kings who preceded me no one understood this matter, I wrote on the tablets the wisdom of Nabu, the pricking in of cuneiform signs as many as there are, and I checked and collated them. I placed them for futurity in the library of the temple of my lord Nabu, the Great Lord, which is within Nineveh, for my life, for the guarding of my soul, that I might not have illness, and for making firm the foundation of my royal throne. O Nabu, look with gladness, and ever bless my kingship. Whenever I call on you, take my hand. While I walk about in your House, guard my steps continually. When this work is put in your House, and placed in front of you, look on it and remember me with favour…

Page 282: The concern shown in the colophons to guarantee the authenticity of these library tablets must surely have been reflected in a careful filing system; this view is reinforced by the existence of catalogues of text titles. Unfortunately, because of the failure of the early archaeologists to record the find-places of tablets and associated details, we have no first-hand knowledge of how tablets were originally stored in the Nineveh libraries. However, excavations at Nimrud in the 1950s have filled some of the gaps. The state letters found there came from the floor of a chamber in the building known as the North-West Palace, and the containers in which they must originally have been kept are still to be seen. These were in the form of boxes about a foot and a half square, made of large burnt bricks. It seems likely that the tablets in Ashurbanipal’s libraries were stored in some similar way…

Page 282: The largest single category of texts from Ashurbanipal’s libraries was concerned with omens; it has been calculated that over a quarter of all the estimated total of 1000 to 1200 tablets were of this genre. The observing of omens figured very prominently in Babylonian and Assyrian culture; it was regarded as a means by which the king or a private individual might be forewarned of any unpleasant eventualities ahead, so that steps might be taken to avoid the evil consequences. First-millennium Assyria specially developed one particular form of this technique – the use of astrological texts already mentioned. Babylonia had earlier produced many other types, of which the majority are represented in Ashurbanipal’s library. Omens might be drawn from a vast number of circumstances: from the appearance or movements of ants, dogs, cattle, sheep or other animals, birds, snakes, scorpions; from dreams; from the appearance of fire or smoke; from the patterns of oil on water; from human sexual behaviour; from monstrous births. Such omens came to be arranged in long sequences, which in the course of time acquired a fixed official, or as we say ‘canonical’, form. Such texts were known technically as series, and the series would be designated by a name based on its first line, such as ‘If a town is set on a hill’…

Page 316: Layard left Constantinople for Mosul in late August 1849. His excavations in his second expedition were more far-ranging than in his first, extending into Babylonia as far south as Nippur, though with little success there because of unsettled conditions. In Assyria his work was mainly divided between Kuyunjik and Nimrud, with some time spent at Qal’ah Shergat and other sites. His method of excavation, where it was practicable, as at Nimrud and Kuyunjik, was to dig down until he had reached the floors of Assyrian chambers, and then work along the walls to find further examples of the slabs of bas reliefs which lined Assyrian palaces. But in the course of clearing floors there were other interesting finds, which at Nimrud included an important collection of bronze objects – bells, weapons, cauldrons, vases and a throne. He also discovered a full-size statue of Ashur-nasir-pal in almost perfect condition. At Kuyunjik, he recovered a huge collection of bas reliefs and some further colossal winged bulls. But his most important find at the latter site was the first large group of cuneiform tablets from Ashurbanipal’s library, which, once Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform writing had been deciphered, was to give the key to the literature, religion, medicine and way of life and thought of the people of ancient Mesopotamia…

Page 318: which is one of the glories of the British Museum, but also the bulk of that king’s library of cuneiform tablets, which, as a representative of the British Museum said afterwards, ‘form the foundations of the science of Assyriology’…