We can contrast officially propagated images of ideal rulership and exercise of authority with evidence of how rulers successfully regulated these tensions or exacerbated them. The sources predictably glorified the virtues and beneficent intentions of the rulers, and omitted mention of problems or protest. An Akkadian proverb succinctly asserted the centrality of kingship in Mesopotamian society: ‘‘People without a king are (like) sheep without a shepherd’’ (Foster 1996: 338). In his elaborate ‘‘code’’ of laws, Hammurabi of Babylon called himself the shepherd whom the gods established ‘‘to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the weak from oppressing the strong, to rise like the sun god Siamas over all humankind, to illuminate the land’’ (Roth 1997: 76-7). Instructions given to officials dispatched by the Hittite court expressed similar sentiments about dealing fairly with subjects. For instance, in the Instructions for Commanders of Border Garrisons, frontier governors were enjoined to judge fairly the cases brought before them:
Let no one take a bribe. He is not to make the stronger case the weaker, or the weaker the stronger one. Do what is just.. .Judge a case for anyone who has one and make things right. If a man’s slave, or a man’s female slave or a widow has a case, judge it for them and make things right. (Hallo and Younger 1997: 224-5)
Mesopotamian and Hittite legal documents, as well as the Hebrew Bible, show that royal officials might participate with town or city elders in adjudicating local grievances, and were especially relied upon in cases involving treason or homicide. Literary compositions of Middle and New Kingdom Egypt exhorted royal officials to be fair-minded and generous in their dealings with commoners. Even more eloquent, though suspiciously overblown, testimony to what one authority has termed the ‘‘justice, charity, understanding and kindliness which formed the guiding ethic of Egyptian public life’’ is found in the biography written on the wall of the tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty royal vizier Rekhmire in the 1400s bce:
I judged both [the insignificant] and the influential; I rescued the weak man from the strong man; I deflected the fury of the evil man and subdued the greedy man in his hour. . . I succored the widow who has no husband; I established the son and heir on the seat of his father. I gave [bread to the hungry], water to the thirsty, and meat, oil and clothes to him who had nothing. . . I was not at all deaf to the indigent. Indeed I never took a bribe from anyone. (James 1984: 57)
To promote a sense of solidarity between rulers and their subjects, and perhaps to buffer themselves against a potentially restive population, ruling authorities sometimes transcended the good intentions of such ‘‘official versions’’ and effected more specific measures to provide economic relief, or even psychological release, for their subjects. For instance, Old Babylonian kings periodically issued edicts that canceled taxes owed to the palace and provided relief to those who sold property or even members of their family to pay off their debts. We find a parallel to this in the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Jeremiah chapter 34, where King Zedekiah freed debt slaves and canceled debts. Such actions surely were welcomed by most of the populace, though resisted by wealthier citizens deprived of repayment. Hittites in economic distress could petition the king for relief from tax burdens or forced labor, and in one Hittite-Hurrian bilingual text the Hittite ruler was advised to issue a proclamation releasing citizens from debt slavery (Hoffner 1995: 562-3).
The alleviation of societal tensions was not limited to cancellation of debts, however. The Egyptian year was replete with religious festivals sponsored by the many temples. A feature of these festivals was the colorful procession of the god’s statue from the temple through the local community, where it delivered oracles intended to resolve questions and disputes, but also intended, from the point of view of temple and royal authorities, ‘‘to reinforce devotion to god and pharaoh’’ (O’Connor 1995: 322). These festivals also featured the distribution of food and beer to the surrounding communities, as well as a ribald carnival atmosphere complete with acrobats, dancers, and musicians. The resulting merrymaking and general inebriation at official expense strengthened the psychological bond between the ruler and the masses.
But those ruled did suffer at the hands of their rulers, whose foremost motivation was to perpetuate their own power and prestige and ensure their revenue flow. In sharp contrast to the benevolence and fair-mindedness implied in Hammurabi’s laws and his successors’ economic-relief edicts, Neo-Babylonian literary texts from the middle of the first millennium bce alluded to abuses and suggested that they were not always rectified by royal intervention. The composition ‘‘King of Justice’’ told of how the ‘‘strong would oppress the weak, while they had insufficient means to go to court for redress. The rich would take the belongings of the lowly. Neither governor nor prince would appear before the judge on behalf of the widow or orphan... a judge would accept a bribe or present and would not consider (the case),’’ or would throw away the tablet recording a legal decision, thereby leaving a plaintiff with no legal redress. Another text advised the ruler to regard ‘‘due process’’ and maintain the traditional privileges of the old cities of Babylonia, taking care not to impose fines or imprison their citizens, or force them to labor or abuse their fields or flocks - all of which surely implied that past rulers had indeed infringed upon old privileges (Foster 1996: 745, 748).
Some of the most eloquent testimony to the abuse of subjects by their rulers is to be found in the Hebrew Bible. Its compilations of laws and wisdom literature abound in evidence concerning the social values and organization of early Israel. Implicit in these sources were standards and expectations of just kingship - among them, the protection of the poor and weak - to which Israel’s kings were to be accountable. Though we must remember that the books of the prophets were compiled by learned men with their own political and social agendas, it is clear in the prophetic books that Israelite kings all too often were guilty of abusing their subjects. The prophet Amos, for instance, dwelt on the many sins of Israel’s ruling elite: ‘‘... you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain. . . for I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins - you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate’’ (Amos 5: 11-12). Similarly, Isaiah condemned the rulers of Israel ‘‘who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you make the orphans your prey!’’ and predicted their demise at the hands of mighty Assyria (10: 1-2).
The rise of Assyria was the harbinger of a sequence of imperial systems that introduced new elements into the dynamic of ruler versus ruled. The looting, destruction, killing, rape, mutilation, and enslavement that typically accompanied military conquest had been grim facts of ancient life from earliest recorded times. The imperial systems of the first millennium bce, however, employed still other means of ensuring political domination and crushingly systematic economic exploitation. Most famously under the Assyrians, wealth and resources were coercively extracted and transported to the imperial capitals; local economies in the empire - and with them the livelihoods and prosperity of much of the population - likely were devastated.
From the standpoint of local communities, especially destructive was the mass deportation and relocation of conquered people to regions far from their homelands. Although such practices were employed at least as early as the Bronze Age Hittite conquests, their effects are best known and depicted graphically in the wake of the Assyrian destruction of the Israelite kingdom of Samaria in 722 bce and the later Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 587 bce. The Display Inscription of the Assyrian king Sargon II records that 22,290 people were deported from Samaria, and in that process families were broken up, and the deportees were forced to subsist on meager rations (Younger 2003). Upon reaching their destinations, either Assyria itself or the region of Media in Iran, they were compelled to toil as agricultural or construction laborers, often living (or not) on too small rations which rendered them more susceptible to disease, or they were settled in regions where farming was only marginally possible. The resulting psychological trauma and deprivation of identity were vividly expressed in the Book of Lamentations with its heart-rending recollection of the devastation and abject humiliation felt by the people of Jerusalem upon their expulsion by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar:
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens. We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought. With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.. .We get our bread at the peril of our lives... Our skin is as black as an oven from the scorching heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion, virgins in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders. Young men are compelled to grind, and boys stagger under loads of wood. (Lamentations 5: 2-13)
Because of fear or resentment of political authority, or perhaps as refugees from social or economic calamity, people might simply opt out of being ruled and become stateless persons, moving out beyond the reach of authority. This is one possible interpretation for the term habiru, an imprecisely understood social designation that appeared as early as the late third millennium and throughout most of the second millennium bce. In the Mari letters habiru were brigands; several centuries later they were similarly (though not exclusively) referred to as outlaws who based themselves in the mountainous areas of Palestine and Syria, beyond the reach of local rulers and Egyptian imperial authorities (Morrison 1992: 1157; Lemche 1992: 6-7). Neither exclusively nomadic nor settled, nor identifiable with a specific ethnic group, the habiru represented yet another significant aspect of the complex relationship of ruler versus ruled in the Ancient Near East.
World History
