‘Behold, since you, my brother, did not allow your daughter to marry and wrote to me saying: “From of old, a daughter of the king of Egypt has not been given to anyone”, (I say): “Why do you speak like this? You are a king; you can do according to your heart’s desire. If you give, who shall say anything?” When they had told me this, I wrote to my brother as follows: “(In your land) there are grown up daughters and beautiful women. Send me any beautiful woman, as if she were your daughter. Who shall say: She is not a king’s daughter?! But you have not sent anyone at all. Did you not seek brotherhood and friendship? Just like you wrote to me to (arrange) a marriage, so that we be nearer related to one another, so I wrote to you for this same reason, for brotherhood and friendship, so that we be nearer to one another through marriage. My brother, why did you not send me a woman? Perhaps, since you have not sent me a woman, should I deny you a woman, thus behaving like you? No! There are daughters of mine, and I shall not deny them to you. [.
. .] Regarding the gold for which I have written to you, send me gold, as much as there is, in large quantities, before your envoy comes to me, now, immediately, this summer, in the month of Tammuz or the month of Ab, so that I may finish the work I have begun. If you, during this summer, in the month of Tammuz or the month of Ab, will send me the gold for which I have written to you, I shall give you my daughter: but you, please, send me the gold accordingly. If, however, you will not send the gold in the month of Tammuz or the month of Ab, I will not be able to finish the work I have begun. I beg of you: why should you send me (the gold) once I have completed the work I have begun? Why would I want gold? Even if you sent me 3000 talents (= 90 tons!) of gold, I would not accept it, I would send them back and I would not give you my daughter in marriage.’
Initial negotiations were filled with enthusiasm and willingness in engaging into an inter-dynastic marriage, only to be followed by complaints about problems and delays in the process. Admittedly, a certain degree of quarrel was fundamental to the maintenance of diplomatic relations, but inter-dynastic marriages presented three specific difficulties. First, there was the issue of the value of the dowry, marriage gifts and counter-gifts, which made marriage negotiations very similar to economic transactions. The second issue concerned rank: there was a fundamental difference between providing a princess who would eventually become queen and one who would become just another woman in a large royal harem. The third issue was the fate of the princesses that had already been given in marriage to foreign courts, who tended to be lost without a trace. Moreover, there was a concrete realisation that the prestige and political interest expected from the marriage never appeared afterwards.
All these negotiations shared several common features, such as the role of the protagonists of the negotiations. The king requiring a bride was generally insistent and aggressive, while the father of the bride was complacent but meticulous. The bride became a passive participant, almost like a beautiful object. Each court had its own matrimonial strategy. The Egyptian one was to acquire Near Eastern princesses, to express the centrality and superiority of Egypt. The Babylonian strategy was to give princesses to the Egyptian kings in exchange for gold. The Hittite strategy was to seal a network of kinship ties for strictly political reasons, in order to mark a preliminary intervention, a guarantee of loyalty, or at the beginning of an alliance.
Inter-dynastic marriages were an influential channel for acculturation, maybe even more influential than their participants imagined. The impact of a second-ranking wife, who lived in a harem as living proof of the power of her new husband, was completely different from that of a queen who would mother the king’s successor. Therefore, the link between the queen and the successor to the throne was a very delicate issue, due to its potential political implications. From a more general perspective, foreign wives had a strong influence on the education of their sons, the cultural climate of the court, the introduction of new deities and the kings’ decisions.
Apart from princesses and emissaries, specialists were often requested by foreign kings and they were sent to foreign courts with a combination of pride and worry. This is because they promoted the spread of specialised knowledge from court to court. Specialists were required from regions known for a specific expertise. Naturally, this gave an enormous sense of pride to the kings providing these individuals. However, foreign kings could keep the specialists for an extended period of time, at times without ever letting them return home. This could be a cause for concern for the kings who sent the specialists. Physicians and exorcists were requested from Egypt, while musicians, sculptors and specialised craftsmen circulated throughout the Near East. The formerly redistributive system attested in the Mari archives originated from the local shortage and frequent movement of specialists within the same kingdom. In the Late Bronze Age, it was replaced by a reciprocal system, which responded to the kings’ interest in acquiring foreign specialists. These could be experts in new and prestigious techniques, often inaccessible otherwise.
An extreme example of a request for a specialist was the request for a healing deity. The latter was delivered in the form of a cultic statue, which had to be returned. Even Egypt, which sent human physicians, requested the statue of Ishtar of Nineveh. Another indication of this practice is the case of the statue of Marduk, which had been ‘deported’ by the Hittites, Assyrians and Elamites. To justify this, the sources would say (as a result of a pious pretence of his priesthood) that the god wanted to travel to those foreign lands and extend the radius of his beneficial influence, following the example of other healing deities.
Finally, there was the third sub-system, gift-exchange, one of the paramount types of commercial exchange of the Late Bronze Age. The exchange of gifts between kings opened the way for new commercial networks and in a way the gifts themselves were effectively commercial in nature. The commercial networks available at the time are relatively obvious (Figure 16.4). Egypt mainly provided gold, as well as ebony, carved ivory and other typically African goods. Babylonia (or rather, through the mediation of Babylonia) provided lapis lazuli, while Hatti had silver. Mitanni and Syria provided chariots, horses, weaponry and glass. Finally, the Syrian coast had wool and purple dye.
This ‘code’ of behaviour had its intrinsic value. The careful calculation of the value of gifts and counter-gifts were hidden behind declarations of selflessness, generosity and joy in giving rather than receiving, and of a desire to please one another. Gifts had to be personal, made on special occasions and could only be requested to face particular needs. Naturally, these were all just pretexts, repeated over the years and inherited by the kings’ successors in case of prolonged negotiations. The formality of the interaction therefore had to be maintained at all costs and it was unacceptable to greedily request gifts without a concrete reason or, rather, a pretext. If, in the case of equal exchanges, gifts concealed (or emphasised) trade, in the case of unequal exchanges gifts concealed (or emphasised) tributes. The terminology and nature of the sources clearly show an attempt to conceal tributes in the form of gifts. The only difference was that these so-called gifts were established beforehand and that the counter-gift was not material. The latter fell into that category of life and protection provided by the great king to his subjects.
The distinction, however, between equal and unequal relations and thus between tributes and trade, could have been quite ambiguous and one-sided. For instance, Egypt and its Near Eastern contacts maintained an ambiguous type of relation with one another. In the realm of international relations, the Egyptian king accepted not only the formalities surrounding gifts, but also the implications of reciprocity and of the need for the counter-gifts to be of equal value. Nonetheless, when addressing his own subjects about the arrival of exotic goods from foreign lands, the Egyptian king openly described them as tributes, concealing the fact that he had to provide counter-gifts and act in a reciprocal manner. The king therefore advertised these gifts as a result and proof of the superiority of Egypt on an international level. There was a radical difference between the way in which political relations were pursued and the way in which they were presented to the population. When comparing a letter or a treaty with a celebratory inscription, it is
Figure 16.4 Metal trade in the Late Bronze Age: copper and tin ingots, amphorae, and other materials found in the shipwreck of Ulu Burun (fourteenth century bc), near Kas, (Turkey).
Almost impossible to believe that they are presenting the same episodes. This is because their presentation and interpretation of the events and the relations between the two parties appear to have been completely different.
However, not all interactions took place between royal courts or were presented in contrasting ways. Trade between merchants was stipulated through contracts completely lacking ceremonial formalities. In this case, there was a pressing need to establish equivalences between various systems of weight and value. This allowed merchants to trade in regions that counted the same goods in different ways or simply used a different measuring system. The presence of foreign merchants was at times relatively conspicuous and permanent, giving the impression that these individuals lived in proper colonies. For instance, the concentration of Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery in the harbour of Ugarit has led to the belief that there was a nucleus ofAegean merchants in the city (Figure 16.5). Similarly, sources attest to the conspicuous presence of merchants from Ugarit in Cyprus. Political developments had a strong impact on these types of concentrations. Consequently, the Mycenaean merchants in Ugarit came from an elusive and distant political
Figure 16.5 The spread of Mycenaean pottery in the Levant, fourteenth-thirteenth century bc.
Power and could only count on their abilities and goods. On the contrary, Hittite merchants, sometimes emissaries of great kings to whom the small king had to swear allegiance and obedience, could trade in a much stronger position. They could thus establish a financial influence that could have jeopardised the interests of the king of Ugarit.
Politics and trade were therefore closely connected, both in ceremonial and official contexts and in trade itself. The possibility for merchants to travel along a certain commercial route was hindered by the presence of political borders, since no one could cross them without the consent of the local ruler. Therefore, despite the great kings’ interest in expanding their network of contacts at the expense of other kings, interactions were effectively blocked or at least mediated by neighbouring states. The system of regional jurisdiction thus led to intense commercial interactions. However, it extended over relatively short distances, due to the difficulties encountered in crossing neighbouring states.
The strict regional jurisdiction also had some positive effects. The great king was responsible for the safety of merchants and messengers crossing his territories on behalf of his colleague. Specifically, each small king was accountable to his great king for everything that happened in his kingdom. In turn, each village was accountable for whatever happened in its surroundings to its king. Killings of merchants or robberies of caravans were very frequent. The palace supervision over settled areas still left caravans crossing large portions of land (especially semi-arid and mountainous areas) at the mercy of nomadic attacks. Even the crossing of cultivated areas was not without considerable risks, due to the considerable distance between palaces and villages.
The wealth of goods carried by mercantile caravans was such as to encourage assaults, especially by the poorer farmers and shepherds, but the palace was unable to prevent or solve the problem. The only way to keep commercial networks up and running was to take on the responsibility to take care of the problem, each ruler acting in his local sphere of influence. This procedure followed the horizontal and vertical ranks that characterised the period and through it victims were compensated for their misadventures and their losses by the palaces, which would punish the village where the accident took place, without ever trying to find the culprits. Therefore, compared to the Old Assyrian trade, Late Bronze Age trade not only had a different socio-political value, but was also far more dangerous. The subconscious decision of palaces to separate themselves from the population thus led to several problems. In fact, the palaces’ exploitation of villages was compensated by the ‘taxation’ imposed by farmers and shepherds on caravans.
World History
