The crisis of cities and palaces, and the availability of innovative technologies in semi-arid regions significantly increased the political influence of nomadic groups. This was the case both for the ‘new’ nomads (camel farmers) and for the old transhumant groups: the former settled in previously uninhabited areas and were thus an entirely new entity; the latter managed to gain a more central role compared to their marginal role in the Late Bronze Age. Pastoral groups had now become an attractive alternative political organisation compared to the palaces, which had become too demanding and in many cases disappeared.
The movement of villages towards pastoral groups instead of the cities was a process whose effects are almost invisible in terms of settlements. Pastoral groups had always settled in fertile fields on a seasonal basis, thus developing a strong interaction with the local farming communities. However, once the villages’ subordination to the palaces, which had been purely tributary, had fallen apart, pastoral groups suddenly became a desirable alternative for villages. Therefore, the villages, which had initially experienced a phase of relative autonomy, then of subordination to the palaces and of administrative unity, were now transformed into clans or sub-groups of these pastoral tribes. They therefore entered the tribal system as a kin-based unit.
This process did not lead to a ‘sedentarisation’ of nomadic groups or a ‘rise to power’ of these tribes, but rather to a re-elaboration of socio-political relations according to new parameters. The Early Iron Age therefore saw a shift from the administrative system, at the heart of the Bronze Age palace states, to the kinship system. The latter was at the heart of a new type of state formation developing in this period, eventually leading to the birth of the ‘nation’ state. Admittedly, this reconstruction is largely based on Biblical evidence, which was compiled much later. However, the little evidence there is from this period seems to broadly confirm these developments. Members of a state identified themselves as such because they believed that they descended from one eponymous ancestor. Therefore, the ‘charter’ of this kinship state was genealogy. The latter was able to link the mythical patriarch to the current members of the tribe, following kinship and marital ties that had a precise meaning in this genealogical code. Primogeniture, adoptions, marriages and every other form of kinship then indicated various types and degrees of sociopolitical integration.
Consequently, in order to integrate individual villages as clans of a tribe, the villages’ names were linked to an intermediate eponym (often the son of the tribal eponym, or a descendant of the confederal eponym, or an ancestor of the family eponyms). This process led to the establishment of a network of descendancy and brotherhood with other groups. However, the remaining cities were normally too large and important to be integrated in this way. Their position was therefore established through stories that made the tribal eponyms and these cities come to an agreement or to conflictual relations, thus explaining the current situation. Overall, this phase saw the increased implementation of aetiologies. These were used as charters of all those elements constituting this type of political formation: from borders between neighbouring communities to alliances, rivalries, the privileged status of certain groups or places, the acknowledgement of the communal nature of certain cults, prohibitions, norms and the importance of some specific localities. All these aspects were rooted in stories explaining the origins of these practices and the topographic features of the places representing, or simply using, these practices.
This kin-based reorganisation of the political system ruling in sedentary settlements developed alongside the occupation (or re-occupation) of new territories, where these new political structures were founded ex novo. This process had already begun in the thirteenth century bc and was further developed in the following centuries. In Palestine, the main protagonists of this expansion and territorial re-organisation were a series of populations linguistically related and linked to the previous groups living in the area in the Late Bronze Age (the ‘Canaanites’). Each one of these populations now began to develop an individual ‘nationality’ of their own. Further north, similar processes led to the formation of Aramean states. The latter expanded to the east and revived the old agricultural landscape, significantly improved by the construction of terraces.
The new ‘nation’ states of the Canaanites (to the south) and Arameans (to the north) already expressed their kin-based structure in their names, which were usually ‘House of followed by the name of the eponymous ancestor. Similarly, the names of these states’ members were the ‘sons of the same eponymous ancestor. Otherwise, the state formation was named after the name of a mountain or a region. Be that as it may, these names were completely different from the ones of Late Bronze Age states. The latter were usually taken from the names of their capitals, a practice that now became secondary, since the seat of power was not located in a specific palace, but was held by a specific group or lineage.
This transition from city-state to kin-based state was characteristic of the Syro-Levantine area (Figure 22.7). Elsewhere, the two processes existed alongside each other, and were different in their origins and nature. This aspect requires a closer examination. A first difference concerns the area east of the Euphrates, home of the great regional states of Assyria and Babylonia. In this area, tribal groups of Aramean origins began to infiltrate. These groups had to a certain extent been in these areas before (especially in the Middle
Figure 22.7 Philistines and Israelites in Palestine, thirteenth-twelfth century bc.
Euphrates and the Khabur Valley) as the Sutians and Ahlamu. However, now they moved further south, occupying vast territories in Lower Mesopotamia.
The relationship between these emerging tribal groups and the powerful states of Assyria and Babylonia could not have followed the same practices developed in the west by the small Syro-Levantine states. In the east, the tribes remained relatively extraneous to the great state formations of the area. The sedentary states, unable to assimilate them within their own administrative structure, tried to push them outside their borders and continued to consider them a hostile and foreign presence. The ‘sedentarisation’ of the eastern Arameans was therefore a much more arduous and partial process compared to its western counterpart, preventing their transition from tribe to state.
A second difference concerns the area outside the Fertile Crescent, alongside the Zagros and the Armenian plateau. At the end of the second millennium bc, this area was not yet densely populated. However, its people began to organise themselves into more stable state formations. This development was in part a reaction to the imperial attacks of the Assyrians, Elamites and Babylonians. It was mainly a response to the overall tendencies of the time, with the development of ‘national’ entities centred on kinship, and named after a population or a region. These entities were able to establish internal cohesion through a combination of kinship, linguistic and religious ties. Despite the fact that the evidence for these mountainous regions is far less than that for the semi-arid plateaus, it appears that the two processes developed at the same time. In both cases, they resulted in the formation of tribal states, finally getting rid of the marginal role they had in the Bronze Age.
A third difference concerns the political organisation of populations who recently established themselves in the Near East. Their foreign nature compared to the local population made ‘national’ features, such as language, religion and common origin, determining factors in the establishment of their sociopolitical identity. A case in point is that of the Philistines. Despite having followed a Canaanite model settling into a network of city-states, they continued to be seen as a population that had recently settled in the area and spoke a foreign language. Something similar could have taken place in Anatolia with the arrival of the Phrygians. However, two points have to be borne in mind: the first one, is that the evidence on the political structure of the Phrygians does not immediately appear in the twelfth century bc, but emerged only later on; the second one, is that the area occupied by the Phrygians was vast (roughly central and north-western Anatolia), so that their relations with the surviving local population could not have been easy, thus developing varying degrees of assimilation.
Be that as it may, after the Bronze Age crisis, also in Anatolia we do not encounter city-states anymore, but ‘national’ political entities, defined by the names of their populations: Phrygians, Lydians, Carians, Lycians and many more. When attempting to distinguish old features from new ones, at least from an ethno-linguistic point of view, one normally resorts to an analysis of the linguistic evidence of the first millennium bc. The Phrygians, then, constituted a new linguistic stratum, while the Lydians, Lycians and Carians were more or less linked to the Luwian populations of the second millennium bc. However, old communities and new groups experienced a complex series of contacts and assimilations, now impossible to reconstruct for each case.
This tribal kind of kinship therefore changed the nature of states in the Early Iron Age compared to the ones attested in the Bronze Age. The latter had been territorial states in which every individual who lived within a specific territory controlled by a certain palace was automatically its subject. Within the territorial state, there were two main criteria for differentiation. First, there was a division between cities and the surrounding farming villages, and possibly some marginal pastoral groups. Second, there was the division between members of the palace and ‘free’ individuals. An individual therefore belonged to a state regardless of the language he spoke, the religion he believed in or his origins. Moreover, the border between two states was defined through military interventions and tributes, and not through the identity of the communities living on either side of it. A sense of ‘national’ identity was only attested in case of major state formations (such as ‘the Egyptians’ and ‘the Assyrians’), but this self-identification was not placed in opposition to other populations, considered to be equal. This identification was rather placed in opposition to the world outside of this system, creating a contraposition between a central population of ‘humans’ and a periphery of sub-humans.
On the contrary, the ‘nation’ State of the Iron Age adopted the descendancy from a common ancestor, namely, the kinship ties existing between its current members, as a parameter of appurtenance. It is obvious that descendancy and kinship could be artificially established. However, this aspect further supported the idea that kinship expressed political relations. This national identity therefore led to an emphasis not on the control of a certain territory (the population could have migrated), but on the shared language, religious beliefs (a tribal god who would become a national god), customs, dress codes, taboos and so on. Within the ‘nation’ state, distinctions in terms of settlements and lifestyle among citizens, farmers, shepherds, or between palace functionaries and free citizens, ceased to be important. This was also because administrative and tributary dependencies were temporarily reduced. The state centred on the palace and its tributary and administrative system, typical of the first and second urbanisation, was therefore substituted by a kin-based state. The latter clearly revived pre-urban (or, better, ‘periurban’) values. A typical example of this can be found in the army. The Bronze Age army was an army of specialists and corvee soldiers. The army of the Early Iron Age was a ‘military population’ charged with enthusiasm, guided by the decisions of kin-based groups united in council and not by impositions from the state administration. Moreover, this army chose its charismatic leaders, who would return to their previous occupation once the danger was overcome.
World History
