Download ANCIENT NEAR EAST (CA. 1600‒1200 B.C.E.): University of

ANCIENT NEAR EAST (CA. 1600‒1200 B.C.E.):
INTERNATIONAL HISTORY MEETS IR THEORY
ALEX AISSAOUI (PH.D. CANDIDATE)
University of Helsinki
Paper prepared for
XXIIND WORLD CONGRESS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
RESHAPING POWER, SHIFTING BOUNDARIES
MADRID, SPAIN
JUNE 8–12, 2013
The aim of the paper is twofold: a) to analyze how far back in time can there be said to have existed an
international states-system and b) to demonstrate that at the beginning of the 21st century there's still a need to
make a better use of international history in the theory building of the IR research. While anarchy has become
common currency in IR theory to depict the structural ‘state of nature’ of interstate relations where there’s no
supreme authority above states to guarantee their security needs, the question of how far back in time can we
actually see an ‘anarchical system’ divides the research community. Classical and modern thinkers have dealt
this matter from a mainly Western point of view ever since Thucydides. Yet this paper argues that at least over
1000 years before Thucydides’ description of the rivalry among ancient Greeks and that of the Warring States
Period in China, we find in the Late Bronze Age Near East (1600-1200 B.C.E.) elements of anarchy that were
similar and in many ways more cosmopolitan than what the more homogenous, posterior and culturally restricted
Sino-Hellenic environment show us. Diplomacy, alliances, balance of power, concern for honor, trade, and even
a pre-modern conception of diplomatic immunity were all part of the systemic interaction of the Near Eastern
polities. Central argument of the paper is, then, that insufficient thought has so far been given to this important
phase in international history within political science.
Key words ♦ international states-system ♦ international history ♦ anarchical system ♦ Late Bronze Age ♦
diplomacy ♦ balance of power ♦ honor ♦ trade ♦ diplomatic immunity ♦ systemic interaction
1 INTRODUCTION: PUTTING THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST ON A MAP
A British historian G. Lowes Dickinson introduced the concept of anarchy1 to the modern
scholarship of International Relations through his works of The European Anarchy (1916) and
The International Anarchy 1904–1914 (1926). In them he argued that the anarchical structure
of the European pre-war states-system – with its offensive armaments policy and secret
diplomacy – was the main cause for the outbreak of the First World War (see Dickinson
1917/1926: 6, 13–4, 16, 27, 42, 59–60, 71, 96–8, 105, 128–29, 144/24–5, 36, 46–7). More
recently, in the Realist tradition, Kenneth Waltz (1979: 47–8) has elaborated vastly on the
question of anarchy although his somewhat ahistorical, Eurocentric and parsimonious approach has afterwards received a lot of criticism (see e.g. Buzan and Little 1996/2000/2010:
405–06, 411, 413/35/204, 213; Schroeder 1994: 110, 113–48).
The aim of this paper is to tackle the questions of how far in history is it feasible to go and
under what conditions in order to find an international environment conducive to bring about
those facets of world politics we find familiar in our contemporary world. The idea, however,
is not to try to find similarities in the inter-state relations per se and make the realist claim that
there are nomothetic-like laws at work behind the functioning of states-systems as if the
nature of word politics was a sort of ‘repetition’ (criticism against this line of argument, see
e.g. Buzan and Little 2000/2001: 19/24–8; Schroeder 1997: 71–3; see also Wight 1966: 26,
33). Rather, the purpose is to bring the ancient Mediterranean world – beyond the GrecoRoman period – more firmly in the research agenda of international relations, and thus to give
a new reading to the way we analyse the meaning and significance of the classical world in IR
theory. This necessitates a more systematic use of history which remains somewhat
1
Anarchy is of course one of those concepts that has a relatively long conceptual history in the European
political thought starting from the 16th century onwards, and including thinkers such as Jean Bodin, Thomas
Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see e.g. Aiko 2006: 96–120; Boucher 2006: 156–
177; Derathé 1995: 94, 382, 125–8, 147, 382; Keene 2006: 233–52; McMillan 2006: 52–73; Williams 2005:
253–76).
1
underdeveloped within the discipline of international relations (for literature dealing with the
problematic nature and lack of dialogue between history and political science, see Eckstein 2
2006: 7–10; Harber, Kennedy and Krasner 1997: 34–43; Hoffmann 1995: 237–38; Jervis
2001: 385, 392, 400–1; Lauren 1979: 9–10; Levy 1997/2001: 22–33/40–1, 45, 49–50, 59, 81–
2; Quirk 2008: 520–1). History’s role in IR theory will be dealt more closely in the second
section of the paper.
The story of the ancient Near Eastern world during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) (ca. 1600–
1200 BCE) is yet to be fully told within political science. In a larger sense, the ancient Near
Eastern civilization is to this day overshadowed by the Greco-Roman world (see e.g. Kuhrt
2006: 55–64) into which IR scholars have looked in an effort to locate the roots of inter-state
interaction (see e.g. Evans and Newnham 1998: 42–3; Jackson 2005: 5, 14; Jahn 2006: 1, 3,
18; Monoson and Loriaux 2006: 27–51; Levy and Thompson 2010: 38–43). In spite of this,
modern Western societies owe much to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin
and the Near East. They provided the foundation for agriculture, cities, states, writing, laws,
literature, mathematics, astrology, calendar, and even a rudimentary banking system (e.g.
Hallo 1996: 324–32; Maier 2006; Whitehouse 2006). This lack of dialogue between
disciplines is also related to the somewhat rigid barriers in the academia where different fields
of study don’t necessarily sufficiently meet (see e.g. Levy 2001: 30; Warleigh 2006: 31–2, 34,
41). Although there have been scholarly studies within the field of IR on the ancient Near
East, no thorough systematic analysis has so far been done concerning the topic. Yet the LBA
Near East matters for a student of world politics. In fact, the ancient Near East was often more
cosmopolitan and diverse than what the more homogenous, posterior and culturally restricted
Sino-Hellenic – Greek city-state polis system so vividly described by Thucydides and that of
the Warring States Period in China – show us (for a comparative perspective, see especially
Cohen 1999: 3–16; also Holsti 1992: 17–35; Walker 1953: 75, 82, 99; Xu 2011: 203–04). The
cosmopolitanism became evident at the beginning of the second millennium when Akkadian
in its Babylonian form was adopted as the international language of diplomacy of the Near
Eastern polities (see Bryce 2003: 13–14). It is against this kind of lacuna in research – where
there is still a tendency in international theory to consider the Greek city-state system as the
international arena where we see the makings of a ‘nascent’ international society – that this
paper aims to address (see Little 2005: 54; see also Giddens 1985: 4).
As indicated above, at the centre of this paper is the question of how far can there be said to
have existed an international states-system (on this question, see Buzan 1993: 332; Buzan and
Little 1994: 233; Luard 1992: 342). At this point, however, it should be mentioned that this is
a different question than the one addressing the very beginnings of international relations3,
which in any case is difficult to date in an exact fashion to a specific period in history – more
than likely the questions of war and peace were present in the prehistoric world (on this
problematic topic, see e.g. Gat 2006: 11–35; Keeley 1996; LeBlanc 2003: 100–27, 228–30;
2
Eckstein’s work is noteworthy in the sense that it is a rare example of a truly interdisciplinary work where the
author is addressing both political scientists and historians studying the ancient Rome.
3
Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook edited (2000) an insightful book on the ancient Near East called
Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations. Although a valuable comparative analysis of the
way the ancient polities interacted with one another in Western Asia during the 14 th century, it is something of an
exaggeration to say that the roots of international relations can be traced to this phase in international history (see
e.g. Liverani’s (2001: 2) take on this).
2
Numelin 1945: 8–9; Wright 1942: 33–5, 471–78, 527–59, 569–70). Whereas the precivilization prehistory is beyond the scope of this essay, there’s no denying that in IR theory
the states-system analysis has largely been addressed in post-Westphalian4 Eurocentric
context (see e.g. Bull 1984: 117–26; James 1993: 277; Jones 104–26; Luard 1990; Wight
1977). Partly, this state of affairs has to be understood in the way the international system
imposed by the Europeans became world-wide between the 16th and 19th centuries CE (see
e.g. Bozeman 1960: ch. 13; Flynn and Giráldez 2006: 236–45; Kennedy 1989: 20–38;
McNeill 1991: 565–7, 570–82, 598–9; Parry 1961: 47–59; Wallerstein 2011: 300–45; Watson
1992: 201–09). Notable exceptions to this, in recent years, especially include the writings of
Barry Buzan, Raymond Cohen, Richard Little, Adam Watson, David Wilkinson (2004), and
William C. Wohlforth, which will be dealt in the paper. Out of these, Raymond Cohen’s –
who is a political scientist – contribution (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001) marks out as perhaps the
most serious attempt to bring the Late Bronze Age world in Western Asia to the research
agenda of IR. Noteworthy earlier analyses on the topic also include Adda B. Bozeman’s
(1960: 17–36) book Politics and Culture in International History and Ragnar Numelin’s work
The Beginnings of Diplomacy: a sociological study of intertribal and international relations
(1950). The latter treatise, in particular, seems to be one of the earliest studies in social
sciences on the subject matter. By and large, it is fair to say, the general tendency in the IR
scholarship has been either to ignore or consider the ancient Near East from an anecdotal 5
point of view.
At the very start, a word of caution is in order: reconstructions of events are often difficult to
make and they draw largely on hypotheses. This is because the study of ancient documents do
not open up easily to interpretations as information is in many cases fragmentary and
rhetorical (on this problematic, see e.g. Liverani 2000: 17; Milano 2006: 1229). Even for
specialists, it is sometimes difficult not to take ancient texts at a face value. A classic example
of this is the way Herbert Butterfield (1970: 357–58), a British historian and a first generation
scholar of the English School, dismissed few decades ago the significance of the Amarna
letters on the grounds that “they no doubt deserve their fame; but one can brood over them at
dead of night without finding a trace of the diplomatic craft, though there were occasions
when diplomacy was sorely needed…they would resort to straight bleating or begging, would
withhold the return gift, or would detain the unfortunate messenger, perhaps for years.”
4
Andreas Osiander (2001: 259–60, 262, 264–6) has made a convincing case by showing that the Peace of
Westphalia – instead of being a decisive moment in international history – is, at least partially, a myth. It was not
essentially fought because of Habsburg empire’s quest for hegemony in Europe but because other monarchs,
mainly France and Sweden, sought aggrandizement against the Habsburg dynasty at a moment when the empire
was attempting to bring about a religious unity within its borders under the fervent Catholic king Ferdinand II
(Bonney 2002: 12, 16). In addition to this, Peter H. Wilson (2009: 8, 751–54), a historian, makes rightfully the
point that the development of the Westhphalian international order based on sovereignty was a long process,
beginning well before 1648 and continuing long after. Osiander’s article is an important effort to engage IR
researchers and historians to have a dialogue on the causes and significance of the Thirty Years’ War.
5
It is revealing for instance that Adam Watson (1992: 31–2) refers to the Amarna diplomacy with a sole footnote
and erroneously mentions Aramaic as the diplomatic language of the region during the second millennium
instead of Babylonian. Barry Buzan and Richard Little (2000: 167–82, 209–10) on the other hand, despite their
vast chronological coverage in International Systems in World History, only vaguely allude to the existence of
complex alliance system in the ancient Near East.
3
It is true that we cannot speak of a genuine conference diplomacy – although it is worth
reminding that the age of summit diplomacy does not really start before the 20th century CE –,
for the available evidence does not indicate that there ever were any summit-like meetings
between the Great Kings although in the Amarna letters one can find few invitations between
royals and quite possible preparations made for such a meeting take place (see Bryce 2003:
78–82; EA6 3: 18–19, 27–9). The reasons for this were most likely linked to the transportation
technology of the age which made long distance travelling somewhat dangerous and time
consuming (see Jönsson 2000: 203; Liverani 2000: 22–23). In addition, diplomatic immunity
was in many cases flagrantly violated – a recurring theme in the Amarna correspondence (see
e.g. Oller 1995: 1467). Nevertheless, states were in constant diplomatic contact with each
other, although, admittedly, there was not a permanent representation which is the hallmark of
modern diplomacy – and yet even this is not a clear-cut issue as will be later shown. If we
approach the diplomatic correspondence of the ancient world from a strictly limited modern
eye, emphasizing in this case the inviolability of diplomatic community, no doubt these
documents may seem crude, unsophisticated and even irrelevant. Yet, under closer scrutiny,
we can find clear landmarks of diplomatic craft in the making.
Another factor that perhaps explains why most students of world politics have avoided seriously studying the ancient Near Eastern world is related to the absence of a familiar conceptual framework of the discipline.7 An elementary IR term like ‘diplomacy’ does not
emerge in the ancient documents even in the Greco-Roman world, let alone in the ancient
Near East. The first recorded use of the English word diplomacy, which itself originates from
the French term diplômes8 or ‘written acts of sovereigns’, dates back to 1796 (see e.g.
Numelin 1950: 125–26). The same is true of the expression ‘great power’, which became a
colloquial term only after the Napoleonic Wars. The term was first used in its modern sense in
the negotiations leading to the Congress of Vienna and more precisely in the correspondence
of the British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh who described it in a letter in 1814
(Webster 1921: 88, 307; see also Rothstein’s (1968: 12–13) take on the formalization of the
categories of great and small powers). Also a classical concept in international relations
theory like ‘balance of power’ was unknown to the ancients: we don’t have sources that
would explicitly mention power balancing – although Polybius did describe the logics of
balancing behaviour in his writings – nor do we find ‘empire’ or ‘imperialism’, which are part
of common vocabulary in modern parlance (see Kemp 1978: 7; Levy and Thompson 2010:
39; Little 1989: 88; Pettinato 1991: 69; Polybius 1922: 226–27). However, in the words of
one Near Eastern scholar ‘…is it necessary to conceptualize diplomacy to make diplomacy?’
(Lafont 2001: 41; on the use of the term ‘balance of power’ in the ancient Near East, see
David 2000: 61–2). That is to say, what matters here essentially is the actual political
behaviour – whether imperialistic, diplomatic, or based on the motivations of power balancing
– of the players involved, not the theoretical abstractions around which to build a reality. One
6
In what follows, I will refer to Amarna letters by the standard abbreviation of EA which is a common practice
in the scholarly literature for studying this ancient primary source material for which I will use William Moran’s
translated edition (for a brief background analysis on the Amarna letters, see Moran 1992: xiv‒xxxviii).
7
Illustrative of this state of affairs is the fact that the very constitutive terminology for the discipline of world
politics – international relations – became possible when the word ‘international’ was coined by Jeremy
Bentham in 1781 to give a more accurate rendering of the Latin phrase ius gentium or ‘law of nations’ (see
Bentham 1781: 10, 236; also Evans and Newnham 1998: 259).
8
The origin of the French term derives from the Latin word ‘diploma’ meaning an official document.
4
way to overcome these difficulties is to look at the diplomatic correspondence and the treaties
signed between independent political communities, which give us a valuable clue as to the
way the states-system functioned, what were the questions of war and peace, trade relations,
power hierarchy to cite just few examples.
It is somewhat striking to notice the way scholars with different academic backgrounds approach these conceptual questions. Specialists9 in the academic fields studying the ancient Near
East use almost in a carefree fashion terms like a) ‘club of the great powers’, b) ‘political
system’, c) ‘balance of power’, d) ‘international system’, and e) ‘international equilibrium’.
The above terms are colloquial in the discipline of IR yet it is still a matter of dispute among
the students of world politics whether we can, for instance, talk about power balancing in the
ancient world (see e.g. Bull 2002: 101; Butterfield 1966: 133; Griffiths, O’Callaghan and
Roach 2007: 19; Sheehan 1996: 7). Another stumbling block for IR scholars seems to be what
to make of ‘state’ in the ancient context. Yet some scholars have started to recognize the need
to go beyond the analysis focusing on the birth of the modern state, for international history
clearly shows us the existence of organized political units that were unmistakeably autonomous and independent although, of course, not sovereign nation-states (for a literature addressing this question, see Dunne 2001: 227; Melko 1995: 34; Watson 1990: 100). During the
Amarna period, as well as way before that, we see territorial states, city-states, and, independent states, that fell in-between the first two, all interact closely in the international area of
Western Asia (see e.g. Goren, Bunimovits, Finkelstein & Na’aman 2003; Parpola 2003:
1052). Consequently, if there are too rigid conceptual definitional lines, then important parts
of what constitutes international history simply and quite unnecessarily disappear from the
radar screen of international relations and with it the beneficial dialogue between IR theory
and history (see the argument put forth by Buzan and Little 2000: 3, 18–34, 407–08).
This paper will not focus on the entire chronology of the LBA Near East. Attention will rather
be paid to the 14th and 13th centuries, which offer an interesting environment for the study of
inter-state relations in the region. Before entering this arena, however, the idea in the second
part is to elaborate the problematic relationship between political science and the study of
ancient past. The third section of the essay analyses what were the precedents for the
formation of this kind of international arena. In the fourth part, a close look will be given to
the so called Amarna period (ca. 1365–1330 BCE), which was marked by the rather complex
system of alliances and diplomatic activity between the regional political entities. The fifth
section will focus on the international treaties the Near Eastern polities signed with one
another. Finally, a short glimpse into the reasons that put a relatively quick end to the statessystem will be exposed. It should be noted that the word ‘end’ has a somewhat rhetorical
meaning to it: the interaction between different actors did not come to an end as such, of
course. Instead the power tended to concentrate in the hands of fewer great states. The main
thrust of the treatise, however, is to explain how the international system functioned before
this power change took place. Before moving on to the second section, a brief analysis of two
key concepts will follow.
9
See a) Tadmor 1979: 3 who coined the term in the Near Eastern context; b) e.g. Liverani 2004: 71, 100, 127–9,
130, 132; c) e.g. Van De Mieroop 2010: 234, Van Dijk 2000: 270; d) Cooper 2003: 241, Parpola 2003: 1051; e)
Charpin 2006: 819.
5
Expressions ‘international system of states’ and ‘international society of states’ have appeared
several times above. These concepts constitute a key element of this paper insofar as they
offer the theoretical framework through which we can analyse and assess the level of
sophistication of the interaction between polities in the LBA Near East. Historically,
international system started to develop as a term in the European political thought during the
17th and 18th centuries AD. An early elaboration on the system of states was made by Samuel
Pufendorf whose treatise De systematibus civitatum was published in 1668. Pufendorf,
however, approached the term from rather limited premises, addressing mainly particular
groups of states – such as the Holy Roman Empire, Dutch and Swiss Confederations – within
the European states-system instead of treating it as a whole (see Bull 2002: 12; Seidler 2007;
Wight 1977: 21–46). The modern connotation10 started to emerge a century later in the
writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Gentz and A. H. L. Heeren. Gentz and Heeren
in particular contributed to the use of ‘states-system’ as they described the way the system
collapsed – as a result of power balancing failure – during the Napoleonic Wars (see Bull
2002: 12; Gentz 1809: 258–62; Gulick 1967: 31–4, 36; Heeren 1829: 13; Luard 1992: 18–19).
The etymology of the expression ‘international society’ is similarly of a relatively recent
abstraction: it dates back to 1736 when a French diplomatic official Antoine Pecquet talked
about a type of ‘independent society’ (see Frey and Frey 1999: 213; Keens-Soper 1973: 505).
By independent society Pecquet referred, however, to the diplomatic corps rather than to the
collective entity of states as a whole. Yet for Pecquet the independent society that constituted
the diplomatic class was a reflection of the diplomatic society of Europe’s sovereigns. What
set the conditions for this feeling of solidarity was the relative rise of secularism and the
demise of confessional politics witnessed during the course of the 18th century (see e.g.
Anderson 1993; Frey and Frey 1999: 213; Kennedy 1989: 46, 94). This brief conceptual
history shows that several key concepts that form the basis of the study of world politics have
found their first theoretical expression in the European political philosophy. Yet we have to
make a distinction between the conceptual history and the international history for statessystems and international societies – their end points – between political communities have
existed before the very terms were coined, although admittedly in Europe.
The important question here is not really whether, in Western Asia during the Amarna period
or any other period before the first millennium, there were necessary elements to qualify any
of the actors in one or the other category. Probably the systemic and societal features were
overlapping as they do in the contemporary world. What matters is that we can indeed find at
least some ingredients that help us label the international arena as system-like. Essentially,
this means that there had to be diplomatic representation of sorts, trade relations, alliance
treaties, wars and periods of peace. A crucial factor creating the conditions for a functional
international system in the region was power balancing the same way as brotherhood between
Great Kings illustrated an attempt to form an inclusive community to move away from a
strictly systemic logic (in contrast to the more exclusive Chinese system, see Navari 2009:
44–5; Wight 1977: 32). Yet it is clearly more challenging to speak about international society
in the ancient world where there really was not common ideologies like capitalism, socialism,
or democracy that have made their mark on our modern world – this was more or less true in
10
The term ‘states-system’ made its first apparition in English in the translation of Heeren’s Handbuch der
Geschichte des Europäischen Staatensystems und seiner Kolonien (1809) that was published in 1829.
6
the classical antiquity as well (see Goldsworthy’s (2006: 360) argument on the reasons of
civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the first century BCE Rome).
In the IR literature international system and international society are most instances associated
with the writings of Hedley Bull. According to Bull’s (2002: 13; Bull and Watson 1984: 1)
definition an international society is “a group of states or independent political communities
which have established by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the
conduct of their relations, and recognize their common interest in maintaining these
arrangements”. In Bull’s view the difference between international society and international
system is that in the latter “states are in regular contact with one another, and where in
addition there is interaction between them sufficient to make the behavior of each a necessary
element in the calculations of the other” (Bull 2002: 9–10). Thus, in the systemic side of the
pendulum an inter-subjective agreement – with its shared norms, rules and institutions among
the actors – is missing, the focus being mainly on the interaction alone (Buzan 2001: 476–77;
Little 2000: 408–09). Yet interestingly, Bull (2002: 10, 39) recognizes that the interaction
may be either direct (rivalry or partnership between neighbors) or indirect (mutual dealings
through a third party). In the Near East during the Amarna period this interaction certainly
took both forms. By and large, however, Bull (2002: 39) did not seem to be able to make up
his mind as to in what exact way were the international system and society part of each other.
Consequently, IR scholars have rightly criticized Bull’s conceptual categorization as too rigid
– for when there is a system, there are inevitably elements or seeds of society such as
communication and diplomacy – but also as too Eurocentric and historically narrow, linking
as he did these two concepts to the birth of the modern state (see Dunne 2001: 225–27;
Hoffmann 1990: 24–6; James 1993: 272–76); Miller 1990: 70–9, 86). The contribution
Hedley Bull made to the conceptual analysis lies in the fact that he brought system and
society problematic more explicitly in the international relations research agenda than had
been the case before, although the theoretical roots of this analysis go back at least to the early
modern Europe (see Bull 2002: 12; Wight 1966: 17–34).
What has not been contested, however, is Hedley Bull’s distinction between international
system and international society, which are useful concepts for analysis and transhistorical in
nature, the same way as the balance of power theory. In the contemporary world certain institutions, mainly the European Union, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization, G-8 and G-24,
and the UN’s Security Council pass as modern examples of international societies and great
powers’ clubs on a regional and global level. These were obviously lacking in the Near East
during the second millennium. However, the urge to be addressed and accepted as ‘brother’
by fellow Great Kings was most probably the closest thing we can characterize as constituting
international society in that distant context in time. This matter will be dealt more closely in
the third, fourth and fifth section.
2 THE ENGLISH SCHOOL AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY
This is not the proper venue to tackle in a profound manner the problematic relationship
between international history and the study of International Relations. Nevertheless, a brief
analysis is in order when addressing an international arena dating back to millennia.
7
There has been a growing literature in recent years among IR scholars – and some historians –
who have pondered ways in which to create a more meaningful synergy between the two
disciplines, which in the words of one American scholar (Levy 1997: 33): “are too important
to leave to the other”. Too often the urge to appear ‘scientific’ has been in the way of
conveying the message in clear and pertinent fashion. This explains Joseph Nye’s – from the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard – recent statements and overall criticism
that the “…statistical techniques too often determine what kind of research political scientists
do, pushing them further into narrow specializations…at the expense of being relevant” (see
Nye 2008: 658 and Shapiro 2002: 601, 605). The key seems to be that historically-minded
political scientists should have the courage to use historical narrative in a methodical way in
their research projects without being labeled as mere chroniclers. Older generation of IR
scholars were very much conscious of this state of affairs. Among them, Hans Morgenthau
who did not approve the excessive ahistorical abstractions within the discipline (see
Morgenthau: 1995: 40) and Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard professor of political science, also
shared this view in his classic essay, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’.
Hoffmann is not only critical of the presentist agenda but also of the lack of interest in the
study of past imperial systems and of systems of interstate relations outside Europe in order to
better grasp what is unique and what is recurrent in our own contemporary world (Hoffmann,
1995: 237–8). Although IR theorists are increasingly aware of the benefits of world historical
approach, a general tendency within the discipline is to be somewhat dismissive of ancient
history and to consider the last 500 years as sufficient to analyse balancing behavior (EilstrupSangiovanni 2009: 370). The big question behind all this is, obviously, to what extent does
the analytical scrutiny of the past contribute to the theory building within IR research. There
have been several answers to this matter. Hedley Bull (1995: 182–3) – a prominent figure
from the first generation of English School scholars – captured the crucial meaning of the
problematic when he stated that “historical study is essential also because any international
political situation is located in time, and to understand it we must know its place in a temporal
sequence of events…”.
The use of historical material is not unproblematic, however. In order to really get to the heart
of the matter, scholars in the field of IR should approach more systematically historical
research made available by historians rather than lean on other writers of their own discipline.
There are several examples where IR scholars simply ignore the historical material available
for the subject matter under analysis: a case in point Buzan and Wohlworth’s article on the
balance of power theory (e.g. Buzan 2010: 7). While Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s (2009:
347–48, 369–71) critical claim – according to which the last 500 years of European history
are sufficient for the analysis of balance of power theory – is Eurocentric and methodologically limited, it does raise relevant questions on the usefulness of world historical approach.
Too often, it seems, IR scholars underuse historical sources and lean on scholarship advanced
within the field of world politics rather take advantage of historical research (on the
problematic way of analyzing historical topics, see e.g. Buzan 2010). The end result of this all
is that the IR community is mostly writing to each other – which applies in most cases to
historians as well – instead of trying to create a genuinely cross-disciplinary dialogue. We
should not, however, approach the question only from the point of view of “what’s in it for
us” but rather in what way the study of world politics can contribute to the study of history.
Paul Schroeder, American historian, has captured well the delicate balance between the two
disciplines by stating that “…IR theory can help historians avoid naïve empiricism; …help
8
them see repetitive patterns and substantive analogies where they might otherwise have seen
only unique particular circumstances”. The English School of International Relations has been
most serious about using historical material as a tool kit for the theory building. Yet even
within this IR tradition there has been uncertainty in the writings of the school about finding
the right balance between nomothetic and idiographic approach and about the precise nature
of historical knowledge (see Bull 2000a: 253; Suganami 2006: 86–7).
3 NEAR EASTERN POLITIES BEFORE THE LATE BRONZE AGE
The general chronology of the history of ancient Near East is not unproblematic. There is
some controversy as to which type of dating system – High, Middle or Low chronology – to
use. In the case of dating the Late Bronze Age, following periodization has been used in the
literature: 1600–1200 (high), 1550–1150 (middle), 1500–1100 (low). Nowadays, historians
usually resort to Middle Chronology although lower chronologies are increasingly gaining
ground among scholars (see Collins 2008: 10–13; Kuhrt 1997: 11–12, 317; Sasson 1995). In
this article, where possible, I will use the Low Chronology – although not exclusively –
because there’s a growing consensus that it is most in accordance with archaeological and
textual evidence. It should be clear, however, that the chronology of ancient history is inherently approximate, not absolute, in nature (on the problems of chronology, see e.g. Astour
1989: 1–5; Giles 1997: 5, 81). Finally, when I use expressions such as ‘third’, ‘second’ or
‘first millennium’, I’m obviously referring to time periods before the Common Era.
In the aftermath of the excitement of discovering the Amarna letter collection there was a
tendency among specialists to consider this ancient primary source material as exceptional.
Not so anymore. The findings of the Hittite archives in Boghazköy (1906–07) and the
archives of Ugarit in Syria (1951–7) have changed the picture significantly (see e.g. Beckman
2003: 754; Lafont 2001: 40–1). In addition, the French and Italian archeologists have revealed
in the 1930’s and 1960s and 1970s older ‘international periods’ known as Mari and Ebla age
respectively, the latter of which dates back the inter-state relations to the 24th century BCE
(see e.g. Cohen 1999: 3; Liverani 2001: 1–2; Michalowski 1993: 12; Pettati 1991: 9, 38–64).
These discoveries matter in the sense that they give us perspective and challenge the idea that
somehow there was a decisive moment or a landmark at a certain point in time to mark the
‘beginnings’ of inter-state relations; this is not, of course, unrelated to the Westphalian myth
question (see note 5). Even though there are certain limits to this logic for we must have some
criteria for making distinctions and demarcating lines such as prehistory vs. history,
nevertheless, international history is about an incessant dialogue between change and
continuity.
Historical narratives on the ancient Near East usually start around 3000 BCE, which coincide
with the birth of writing. This marks the beginning of the Bronze Age by which time we can
already see developed societies throughout the region from Egypt to Mesopotamia and
starting from the third millennium in the Levant, Iran and further east outside the Near East.
The appearance of writing is of particular interest not only for the historians but also for a
student of world politics since historical records11 form the foundation for a serious study of
11
Yet we should be careful not to dismiss the pre-historic phase of human past altogether. The well-known
realist axiom according to which ‘the state makes war and war makes the state’ puts too much emphasis on the
9
international systems (see Buzan and Little 1994: 237–39). The motives behind writing are
also interesting insofar as they relate to the formation of inter-state relations: a written letter
had clear advantages over an oral message for this made it possible to avoid problems with
memory or a temptation by the messenger to distort the contents of the missive in order to
please the receiver.12 These facts were not missed by the classical authors (on the benefits of
writing, see Thucydides 1950: 7.8). Nevertheless, we should not forget writing was a process
that only in the first millennium started to become significantly more widespread, and it is
still open to a debate to what extent it actually contributed to the state-formation – although it
was clearly an enabling factor with the coming of an administrative bureaucracy – in the
ancient Near East (see Charpin 2010: 247; Larsen 1995: 183). Even though several hundreds
of thousands13 of cuneiform tablets have been excavated from the region, only a relatively
small number actually give us an idea on the way the international relations were conducted,
most of these being administrative texts. However, this state of affairs can also be attributed
to other epochs in the classical world: it has been estimated that only around one per cent of
the Greco-Roman literature has survived to posterity, the commonest form of writing being
the letter of recommendation instead of the diplomatic correspondence (see Goldsworthy
2006/2009: 5/45).
It should be clear by now that the internationalization of the Near Eastern diplomacy goes
back to some thousand years before the Late Bronze Age. Tens of thousands of cuneiform
tablets predating the LBA have been recovered in northern Syria. These findings of Ebla (Tell
Mardikh, some 40 miles south of Aleppo) and Mari14 (Tell Hariri on the western bank of
Euphrates river) age in the 24th and 18th century BCE respectively indicate that there existed
well before a relatively sophisticated regional interaction between rival city-states which in
turn led to an intense diplomatic activity with all the implications that logically came with it:
international trade, alliances, war, and mini-empires (see Catagnoti 2003: 227–39; Charpin et
Ziegler 2003: 1−2, 169, 206, 214−15, 242−45; Cooper 2003: 242; Liverani 2000: 15; Munn-
entity of modern state as an agent and instigator of war. In recent research, there has been an increasing
awareness of the fact that organized violence did exist among hunter-gatherers dating back to pre-historic times
thus rejecting the Rousseauite view of seeing war as a recent invention and a by-product of modern societies
with its corrupting effects on man (see Gat 2006: 11‒12, 13, 16, 25, 30, 35, 663; James 1986b: 466; Keeley
1996: 6‒7, 179‒180; LeBlanc 2004: 12‒13, 22, 114‒115, 120‒123, 127, 228, 230; Numelin 1945: 8, 67–8; Tilly
1985: 181–83).
12
In the treaty (signed in the early 14 th century BCE) between Tudhaliya II of Hatti and Sunashshura of Kizzuwatna (located in the south-eastern Anatolia), Tudhaliya, the Hittite king, urges the Sunashshura to pay attention
to the words of the messenger as they should be in accordance with the words of the tablet (see Beckman 1999:
5, 24; on the historical context of the treaty, see Bryce 2005: 139, 427–8 n. 60).
13
All in all, historians of the ancient Mesopotamia continue to be overwhelmed in the face of primary sources,
the clay tablets millions of which have possibly survived; so far, around half a million tablets have been
excavated (see Charpin 2010: 247; Charpin et Ziegler 2003: 27; Michalowski 1993: 1–2; Podany 2010: 11).
14
The best-known figure of the Mari Age is undoubtedly King Hammurabi (1792–1752 BCE) of Babylon who
was famous for his law code although among modern scholars there’s a growing consensus that it was not so
much a code of law but rather a monument to prop up Hammurabi’s prestige as a ruler (Van De Mieroop 2004:
106–7; see also Kuhrt 1997: 107). It was during the Mari Age (18th century BCE) that we see for the first
unification of the whole of Mesopotamia under Babylon’s overlordship as a result of the king Hammurabi’s
expansive foreign policy. It is, then, no coincident that in the aftermath of the Mari Age the Babylonian form of
Akkadian becomes the lingua franca of international diplomacy in the region (see Bryce 2003: 13–14; Leahy
2006: 231; Kuhrt 1997: 4; Van de Mieroop 2007: 34, 201).
10
Rankin 1956: 68–110). And yet, there was still something parochial15 about this development,
confined as these city-states were to a limited area of Mesopotamia and Syria with their close
cultural, linguistic, and religious ties. In fact, it was during the LBA – the Amarna age in the
mid-14th century of which was the culmination point – that we can see the appearance of an
ancient international system covering the whole Near East (Cohen & Westbrook 2000: 11;
Liverani 2000/2001: 15/2; Ragionieri 2000: 46). This multipolar system where the great states
participated in a common system without one of them dominating all the others was rather
unusual in the history of the ancient world where power was usually tending more toward
imperial unity. Before examining more closely the Amarna period, it is appropriate to bring
some further light on the Ebla age since the oldest surviving diplomatic documents date back
to this period.
The oldest diplomatic letter that has survived to posterity was the one written by the king of
Ebla, Irkab-damu, to Zizi, king of Hamazi16 at the start of the 23rd century BCE. We should
not forget, however, that it is the first letter of its kind only to the modern world: without a
doubt, similar kinds of missives were exchanged even before this particular moment although
it has to be said that most likely it took several hundred years before there was a leap from a
purely instrumental use of the writing – primarily for the needs of economic administration –
into a more intellectual one (see Charpin 2010: 115; Michalowski 1993: 2; Nissen 2006: 797–
98). The actual content of the letter is as follows (translation17, with few stylistic changes,
after Pettinato 1991: 240–1):
“You are my brother and I’m your brother. …whatever desire comes from your mouth I will
grant, just as you will grant the desire that comes from my mouth.
Good mercenaries send me, I pray: since you are my brother and I am your brother; ten
wooden wagon ropes and two boxwood wagons I, Ibubu, have turned over to the messenger
for you.
Irkab-Damu, the king of Ebla is the brother of Zizi, the king of Hamazi, just as Zizi, the king
of Hamazi, is the brother of Irkab-Damu, the king of Ebla.”
When we look at the form of the letter, it gives us interesting hints for the diplomatic
‘protocol’ of the Ebla age. The expression ‘brother’ seems to follow a rhetorical formula
indicating a longer tradition of similar kind of diplomatic correspondence (see Podany 2010:
26–32). Addressing the second party as ‘brother’ is a familiar appellation in later periods in
15
A word of caution, however, is in order: diplomatic relations in the Near East already during the Amorite
period (ca. 2100–1595 BCE.) extended from western Syria to Mesopotamia and as far as Elam in the east. Yet
Egypt was conspicuously absent from the international scene in the Near East except for Byblos in the Levant
(see Charpin et Ziegler 2003: 26–7).
16
The actual location of Hamazi (see appendix 3) is not exactly known but it is believed to have situated in the
north-eastern Mesopotamia, somewhere between the border of present-day Iraq and Iran (on this question, see
Michalowski 1993: 13; Shea 1984: 143).
17
The letter was written in ‘Eblaite’, which is a Semitic language closely related but distinct from the Northwest
(Hebrew, Phoenician, Ugaritic) and East Semitic (Akkadian) languages. Eblaite is widely accepted as the earliest
documented Semitic language – together with Akkadian – in the region. Although there is not an absolute
certainty, it would appear that the language of Ebla was the lingua franca of large parts of the Near East during
the third millennium just as Akkadian and Aramaic were in the second and first millennium (for further linguistic
analysis, see Pettinato 1991: 172–73; see also Bryce 2009: 210; Catagnoti 2003: 227).
11
international history and it appears to reflect not only cordiality but also the psychological
desire to seek acceptance and prestige.18 This would be a major theme in the Near Eastern
diplomacy during the second millennium. Noteworthy feature of this letter is its repetitive
structure, which seems to suggest a heavy emphasis on reciprocity as if to look for assurances.
The fact that Irkab-Damu is asking for mercenaries from the king of Hamazi probably tells us
something about the military might of the latter and the relatively close ties between these two
kingdoms which were nevertheless situated quite far apart.
From the point of view of analyzing how the inter-state relations developed in the ancient
Near East, however, a more interesting example is the “Treaty between Ebla and Ashur” also
known as “Abarsal treaty”. It is considered to be the oldest international treaty. It was not,
however, a parity treaty although the evidence indicates their existence already in the third
millennium (more on this, see section 4) (see e.g. Cooper 2004: 245–48; Podany 2010: 31). It
was signed in the context of Ebla wanting to secure its commercial interests from Carchemish
to Harran in upper Mesopotamia (see appendixes 3 and 4) in the aftermath of a territorial
dispute with Mari (see Milano 2006: 1227–28). Again, it seems highly unlikely, that it was
the very first treaty between independent entities but so far it happens to be the earliest that
have yet been excavated dating back to the middle of the third millennium. The treaty starts
by enumerating the lands that belong to the kingdom of Ebla. Below an excerpt of the
opening (after Pettinato 1991: 230):
“ The city-state…and its trade centers belong to Ebla’s ruler (Ebrium); the city-state Kablul
and its trade centers belong to Ebla’s ruler; the city-state of Za-ar in Uziladu and its trade
centers belong to Ebla’s rules; the city-state of Guttanum land and its trade centers belong to
Ebla’s ruler. The subjects of Ebla’s ruler in all the aforesaid trade centers are under the
jurisdiction of Ebla’s ruler, whereas the subjects of Ashur’s ruler (Tudiya) are under jurisdiction of Ashur’s ruler.”
From this brief sketch we learn that already some 2500 years before the Common Era
frontiers demarcating the borders between independent entities – in this case Ebla and
Assyria– mattered. The rationale for the treaty was mainly to offer the Assyrian king Tudiya
the use of a trading post officially controlled by Ebla, guarantee security, freedom of
movement, and diplomatic immunity for the merchants, in exchange of which Assyria
permitted the creation of a new trading center in its territory (see Sollberger 1980: 129–55).
Out of the twenty-one articles of the treaty, number 4 stands out as it clearly states the
conditions under which the merchants can move freely, giving them a sort of ‘passport’
before age (translation after Pettinato 1991: 231–2): “…if there is no regulation, then Ja-dud
(Tudiya), king of Ashur, can allow his emissaries to travel freely…”. This sets an important
precedent for we see similar kinds of passports issued in the Amarna archive more than a
thousand years later. The above article underscores the argument already made that we should
avoid looking too ambitiously at a given age and then make the claim that somehow this
marks the beginning or birth of a states-system. The articles 10 and 11 are also interesting for
they obligate the pledging parties not to give aid to the enemies of the other party. The
Abarsal treaty specifically obliges Abarsal to denounce any conspiracy against the ruler of
18
On the way the Russian Tsar Nicholas I refused to give recognition to Napoleon III, see note 23.
12
Ebla. Here we see, thus, the beginnings of what has constituted the hallmark of international
alliance treaties in international history.
Together these two ancient documents – the diplomatic letter sent to Hamazi and the Abarsal
treaty – show that the ingredients were there for the existence of an international system
already in the third millennium. This seriously puts into question the earlier held belief that at
that epoch only the southern Mesopotamia represented by the Sumerian civilization qualified
as culturally advanced whereas Syria was supposedly uncultured nomadic zone (see the
argument of Cohen 1999: 3; Cooper 2003: 242–45; Pettinato 1991: 5–6, 173, 229–37; Podany
2010: 29–32).
4 THE AMARNA19 PERIOD (CA. 1365–1330 BCE)
Before examining the Amarna period, which has been the most widely researched phase in
the study of the ancient Near East, until later discoveries made in different parts of the region,
it is appropriate to look briefly in what way the political landscape changed during the 14th
and 13th centuries. First, the membership of the club of great powers took a different form
when Mittani (see map appendixes 3 and 4) was wiped out by the Hittite Empire under
Suppiluliuma in ca. 1350 BCE. Second, we witness the rise of Assyria during this brief time
phase covered by the diplomatic letters. Third, Babylonia, which was in any case
geographically in the sidelines of events, had to watch more or less helplessly how, of what
used to be its vassal in the north, that is Assyria, was accepted as member in the restricted
club of the Great Kings. Interestingly, this was recorded in the Amarna letters. Although the
Amarna period lasted only few decades, it is almost certain that this discovery is only a
‘snapshot’ of what must have been much longer tradition of diplomatic correspondence.
Significantly, the Amarna “Age” was mostly a time of peace and stability demonstrated by a
rising population in the towns of Palestine, and not a continuous warfare, nor even the start of
Egypt’s decline in the region (see Several 1972: 128, 132) It should be mentioned that the
second millennium Near East saw the rise of great territorial states in contrast to the third
millennium when indepen-dent political units were significantly smaller in size (for a brief
description of the political en-tities, see Bryce 2003; Giles 1997: 1–15). This development
created the proper conditions for a truly cosmopolitan inter-state environment to emerge.
Our factual knowledge of the way the regional system worked in the Near East during the
LBA is most solid when we turn to the Amarna period. It was during this brief time, lasting
only a few decades, that the interaction between independent entities reached its zenith. The
Amarna letter collection consists of 382 cuneiform tablets that describe the diplomatic correspondence under the Egyptian pharaohs Amenhotep III (ca. 1390−1353 B.C.E.) and Amenho-
19
The term ‘Amarna’ can be derived from the name of a tribe of nomads, called Beni Amran, who settled in the
18th century on the east banks of the Nile some 190 miles south of Cairo. This was the site of Akhenaten, the
capital of ancient Egypt for a brief time period in the fourteenth century BCE. The site Amarna became famous
when in 1887 a local woman uncovered a cache of over 300 cuneiform tablets that are now commonly known as
the Amarna Letters (see e.g. Giles 1997: 18–35; Moran 1992: xiii).
13
tep IV20 (ca. 1352−1336 B.C.E.). The correspondence was mainly conducted between Amenhotep IV and his vassals in Syria-Palestine (Letters from Palestine and Syria), but some
forty21 of the letters were from or to the kings that were considered to be ‘Great Kings’ (the
Royal letters). Besides Egypt, those were the rulers of Babylonia, Assyria, Mittani, and Ḫatti
(see appendix 4). In the letters, the kings mainly discussed diplomatic matters related to the
exchange of precious goods – especially the desire for Egyptian gold by the ‘Asiatics’ – and
of royal women. The language of most of the letters was Akkadian (Babylonian), the lingua
franca22 of international relations in the region (see Cohen 1999: 8). The behavior of the small
vassal states was both interesting and revealing of the way the system worked: as they were
forced to pledge allegiance to one of the neighboring great states (namely Hatti, Assyria,
Egypt), they often switched that allegiance to the stronger power in order to enhance their
own position.
For Egypt the Syria-Palestinian area always took precedence over Africa. Its presence in
Western Asia was mainly dictated by its security needs: the Syro-Palestinian area served as a
buffer zone against any potential threats from the north (Bell 2007: 100; see also appendixes 2
and 3). Egypt’s aggressive foreign policy in the area was explained by the memories of the
Hyksos who famously conquered Egypt during the 15th (1650–1550 B.C.E.) Dynasty, and this
left a lasting impact on Egyptian society (Bourriau 1996: 182–83; Bozeman 1960: 26;
Chrissanthos 2008: 4; Leahy 2006: 231; Shaw 2001: 59–70). Yet in Syria-Palestine the
Egyptian rule was typically much more indirect – with the exception of Byblos – compared to
Nubia where there were large Egyptian colonies (see Hoffmeier 2004: 129, 133, 141).
Although Hatti became a great state only as a result of the demise of Mitanni in the midfourteenth century B.C.E., it is from this Anatolian (Asia Minor) entity that we learn most of
the state of international relations in Western Asia during the Amarna Age because of the vast
collection of information contained in its archives (see Beckman 2003: 756; Liverani 2000:
15). It is the empire phase that interests us most here as it was then that the Hittites gradually
emerged from a period of weakness to become a first class regional power. Moreover, it was
during the reign of Suppiluliuma that regional balance of power changed when the Hittite
Empire put an end to the Mitannian power. In the Near Eastern power politics it was the
Hittites who most seriously challenged the Egyptian power.
20
Amenhotep IV is especially noted for attempting to compel the Egyptian population to adopt the monotheistic
worship of Aten and for his beautiful wife Nefertiti. Amenhotep built a new capital Akhetaten (Amarna) and
changed his name into Akhenaten (meaning ‘One Useful to Aton’).
21
The diplomatic correspondence between the Great Kings includes the following letters: a) Babylonia EA 1–12;
b) Assyria EA 15–16; c) Mittani EA 17, 19–21, 23–4, EA 26–30; d) Ḫatti 41–4 (see Liverani 1999: 343–422).
Of particular interest from the perspective of power balancing are the letters EA 15–16 which describe the
entrance of Assyria into the international Near Eastern scene. Equally interesting is the reaction of Babylonia
who reacted to this newcomer with an angry letter (EA 9) without being ultimately capable of stopping this
change in the power relations between the great states.
22
The usage of common diplomatic language Akkadian as the language of international relations and
cosmopolitan culture was an indication of the level of cooperation and an early manifestation of protoglobalization the same way as in later eras were the so-called imperial languages – mainly Latin, Chinese,
Arabic, Spanish, Russian, French, and, since the end of the First World War, English (see McNeill 2003: 263;
Moran 1992: xviii).
14
However, contrary to common held belief, the vassal’s letters found at Amarna don’t reflect
the imperial decline of Egypt as such – although without a doubt the land of the pharaohs was
a hybrid power whose security interests covered both Africa and Asia – but rather certain
problems that quite naturally came as a result of building an empire (see Hoffmeier 2004:
121–22). These problems included a) inter-city conflict: EA 244, 246, 252, 279–80, 286–87,
289–90 (local rivalry between vassal states under Egypt’s control); b) Habiru conflict: EA
195, 290 (instability caused by nomads); c) disruptions to trade and communication (Egypt’s
strong an effective governance deteriorates): EA 255, 287; and d) disregard of imperial
orders: EA 234, 245, 270–71, 286–87, 289 (bureaucratic incompetence and corruption) (see
Several 1972: 123–25). It was the inter-city conflict23 and disregard of imperial orders that
ultimately caused most concern for the great states because this at its worst meant resifting of
carefully constructed alliances and at a larger level changes in the local and regional balances
of power. Yet from the letter collection we know that Egypt was capable of flexing its muscle
if need be to make sure it controlled its vassals in Palestine. One such case was the overambitious king of Amurru (in modern Israel), Abdi-Ashirta (see EA 104 below), who shifted to the
Hittite side prompting a quick reaction from the Egyptians: Amenhotep IV of Egypt sent an
expedition, had Abdi-Ashirta captured and taken to Egypt (EA 108, 111) where he apparently
was executed (EA 101). This was not always the so, however, and on many occasions Egypt
did not even bother to reply to the complaints that came from it’s the under her control.
Nevertheless, it seems more than likely that Egypt was afraid that the general balance in
Syria-Palestine might tilt in favor of the Hittite Empire, which explains why she wanted keep
an eye on the local balances of power among the city-states. Clearly, we learn from this
example the logics of pre-modern international system in the making.
The Amarna letters tell a story of close interaction between polities eager to practice
diplomacy on a truly international scale, choosing not to fight but to facilitate relations based
on peace and shared interests. One indication of this are the ‘passports’ issued to the
messengers, the existence of which we learn in several letters of the archive collection (see
EA 30; EA 39: 10–20; EA: 40: 16–20, 24–28). Understandably, one should not mix passports
with modern diplomatic travel documents. While some of them were mainly based on a tacit
verbal agreement between Great Kings, the archives found at Mari tell us of the use of
genuine tablets with a royal seal stating the name of the envoy, his title as ambassador, his
starting point, and his destination (see Lafont 2001: 45–6). Although these arrangements did
not automatically give guarantees to the personal safety of the messengers – indeed these
guarantees were often violated –, they do indicate that there was a crude notion of ‘personal
inviolability’ taking shape in the ancient Near East well before the 14 th century BCE. In EA
30, the passport given to a messenger was described in the following fashion (translations
after Moran 1992: 100): “To the kings of Canaan, servants of my brother: thus the King
(Tushratta of Mittani). I herewith send Akiya, my messenger, to speed post-haste to the king
of Egypt, my brother. No one is to hold him up. Provide with safe entry into Egypt…Let him
23
The inter-city conflict in Palestine was an old problem for Egyt who had to face a broad coalition of city-states
in the battle of Megiddo oldest land battle known in detail, the battle of Megiddo in central Palestine (ca.
1457/1468 B.C.E.), dates back to the reign of Tuthmosis III. The reasons leading to the battle seem to have
stemmed from the local ruler of Kadesh, Durusha, who led a revolt of cities in Syro-Palestine (Tucker 2011: 3–
4). This compromised Egyptian interests in the Levant as possible Mitannian overlordship could have
jeopardized Egypt’s access to the cedar, copper and tin products which tell us of the relative prosperity of
Palestine (Bryan 2002: 237–38; Chrissanthos 2008: 5–6; see also Kuhrt 1997: 329).
15
go on immediately.” Another example (EA 39) comes from Alashiya: “My brother (king of
Egypt), let my messengers go promptly and safely so that I may hear my brother’s greeting.
These men are my merchants. My brother, let them go safely and promptly.” Finally in EA 40
the king of Alashiya says to the pharaoh: “Moreover, my brother, these men and this ship
belong to the king, my lord. So send me back the ship promptly and safely.”
The Great Kings addressed each other as ‘brothers’, which was recognition of equality,24
while vassal and small states were called servants (see Kemp 1978: 16‒17; Van de Mieroop
2004: 127; Van de Mieroop 2010: 111‒2, 120). While upon the vassals certain provisions and
obligations were imposed, in the parity treaties between great states neither party imposed
anything on the other, although, as will be shown in the section 4, this was not always so
simple. Each state’s status was thus demarcated, but as the relative power of the great powers
sometimes changed quickly, frictions at times arose. A well-known example of this is the rise
of Assyria under King Assur-uballit (1365–1330 B.C.E.) who sent two letters (EA 15, 16) –
the latter of which indicated a wish to be part of the great powers’ club – to the king of Egypt
as if he was an equal. This enraged Burna-Buriash, king of Babylon, and made him send an
angry letter (EA 9) to pharaoh Akhenaten as he considered Assyria to be one of his vassal
states (see Cohen & Westbrook 2000:7; Kuhrt 1995: 350‒2; Ragionieri 2000: 48; Van De
Mieroop 2004: 127–28). These three letters, which will be partially exposed below, are one of
the most important ones in the letter corpus – and rather rare in its genre – because they
explicitly tell us the story or great power management:
Letter from (EA 15: 7–15)
“…Until now, my predecessor did not write; (but) today I am writing. I am sending you a
beautiful chariot, 2 horses, and a date-stone (i.e. bead) of authentic lapis lazuli25, as your
greeting-gift. Do not delay the messenger whom I have sent to you for a visit. May he visit and
then come back to me. May he see how you are and how your country is, and then may he
come back to me.”
Letter from (EA 16: 26–33)
“When the king of Hanigalbat (Assyrian term of for Mitanni) wrote to your father in Egypt, he
sent 20 talents of gold. Now, I’m the equal of the king of Hanigalbat, yet you only sent me of
gold, and that is not enough to pay for the outward and return journey of my messengers. If
your purpose is graciously one of friendship, send me much gold.”
24
Equality as a manifestation of prestige and belonging among the great powers is one of the attributes that links
the ancient Near Eastern diplomacy to later periods in international history. Napoleon III’s (1807–73) France
provides a case in point. According to the Austrian Ambassador to Paris, Baron Hübner, Napoleon’s great worry
after his coup d’état in December 1851, was to be addressed as ‘brother’ by the other European monarchs, an
appellation which they commonly used when addressing each other; in the end, Austrian and Prussian monarchs
agreed to call him brother whereas the Russian Tsar Nicholas I refused to act in kind (Kissinger 1994: 106; on
the concept of prestige, see Morgenthau 1933: 61).
25
Lapis lazuli is a deep blue stone used for jewelry. It was a common product of commerce in the Ancient Near
East.
16
Letter from Burna-Buriash (EA 9: 26–33 )
“Now as far as my Assyrian vassals are concerned, I certainly did not send them to you. Why
did they come on their own authority to your country? If you love me, they will not conduct
any business. Send them away to me empty-handed..”
Egypt, however, did receive the Assyrian messengers and as a result de facto recognized
Assyria’s new position as great power. It is interesting to notice the low profile of Assuruballit clearly visible in the first letter as opposed to the second where he is already
addressing his Egyptian counterpart as ‘brother’ and calls himself ‘great king’ and demands to
receive gifts concomitant with his status (Kuhrt 1995: 350‒1; Moran 1992: 38‒9). Indeed, a
preoccupation with recognition and status is a central theme in the Amarna Letters. To give an
illustration of the power relationship between great powers and servants, it is time to look
more closely at two excerpts from the Amarna letters. The first is addressed to a ‘Great King’
and the second is from a vassal (translations after Moran 1992: 61, 177):
Letter from Tushratta of Mittani to Amenhotep III of Egypt (EA 23)
“Tell Nimmureya (Amenhotep III), king of Egypt, my brother, my son-in-law, whom I love and who loves
me; Tushratta, king of Mittani, who loves you, your father-in-law, says: All is well with me. May all be
well with you. May all be well with your house, with my daughter Tadu-Heba, and with your wife, whom
you love. May all be very, very well with your wives, your sons, your leading men, your chariots, your
horses, your troops, your country, and whatever else belongs to you…
May Shaushga (religious statue), the lady of heaven, protect my brother and me for 100, 000 years, and may
our lady give us great joy. Let us act as friends.
Is Shaushga not my goddess and my brother’s goddess?”
Letter from Rib-Hadda, king of Byblos, to the king of Egypt (EA 104)
“Tell the king, my lord, my Sun; Rib-Adda, your servant, says: I fall at the feet of my lord seven and seven
times. Let the king, my lord, know that Pu-bahla, the son of Abdi-Ashirta, has taken the city Ulassa by
force…Let the king thus send help to Sumur, until he gives thought to his land. Who are the sons of AbdiAshirta, the servant and the dog? Are they the king of the Kassites 26 or the king of Mittani, so that they can
take the king’s land for themselves…They have seized Ulassa. If you will do nothing under these
circumstances, they will certainly seize Sumur and kill the governor and the garrison…”
These letters should not be taken at face value, or as documents with direct juridical
implications. Tacit elements of the Amarna letters include rhetorical, almost solemn-like
arguments and emotional metaphors (with regard to reciprocity and equality for instance) that
were often more important than the actual substance of the letters themselves (Kemp 1978:
18–19, 54; Liverani 2001: 17). The first letter from the king of Mittani to Egypt is in line with
this, but it does show how these two great states were bound together through marital liaisons
(Mittanian princess Tadu-Heba married to an Egyptian pharaoh). Other issues treated in the
correspondence include the exchange of gifts, proposals of marriage, and lists of goods
exchanged at the time of marriage. What is lacking in the international correspondence is the
fact that only occasionally and in rather vague terms does it reveal the larger political scene of
26
Member of an ancient people known primarily for establishing the second Babylonian dynasty (1530−1155
BCE). They were of non-Semitic origin.
17
the Near East as when Burna-Buriash of Babylonia reveals the dangers of international trade
and implies growing Assyrian aggressiveness and ambitions. Nevertheless, the Amarna
archive constitutes a sort of showcase for understanding how the regional system functioned
during the Bronze Age and as such it has not lost its status as invaluable primary source for
Near Eastern studies.
5 INTERNATIONAL TREATIES
As shown earlier, the existence of international alliance treaties in the ancient Near East go
back as far as the mid-third millennium (see e.g. Lafont 2001; Lion 1994: 221–34). However,
only a small fraction of such treaties survive: until recently, about 60 international treaties, out
of which 15 count for real treaty texts, have been found covering an early Near Eastern
history (see Lafont 2001: 53; Walton 1989: 95–109). Even though new discoveries are bound
to increase these numbers, they do show that the treaty corpus emanating from the ancient
Near East is still somewhat thin. It would appear that one reason for this is the strong oral
culture attested in the second millennium and the role of oath, which sometimes excluded the
drafting of a written alliance text (Lafont 2001: 54–5). Although alliance treaties were not typically set up to uphold noble ideas about regional peace – rather their purpose was to further
the self-interests of the rulers and increase their power –, treaty arrangements did influence
the behavior of the kings in limiting warfare and creating the conditions for peace, sometimes
even for decades (portrait of this given by Podany 2010: 14–16).
There existed two kinds of treaties in the ancient Near East: vassal and parity treaties (see e.g.
Beckman 1999: 4; Cooper 2003: 244–45). The vassal treaties, which in actual fact had usually
no more than a protectorate status, were signed between great states and small city-states,
whereas the parity treaties were concluded with parties of equal standing. 27 From the Late
Bronze Age we know two documents of the latter nature: Treaty between a King of Hatti
(unknown) and Paddatissu of Kizzuwatna (15th century BCE) and Treaty between Hattusili III
of Hatti and Ramses II (1258 BCE). The first of these was concluded at a time when the
Hittites were starting to build their empire in Asia Minor; later on they would annex the
kingdom of Kizzuwatna (located on the Southern coast of Anatolia). Interestingly enough,
however, even in the vassal treaties, an effort could be made on the part of the great king to
add a favorable ‘face saving’ clause to treaty. In the case of the treaty between the king of
Hatti and Paddatissu it took the following form (translation from Akkadian after Luckenbill
1920: 180–87): “…As soon as he (Paddatissu) comes before His Majesty, the noblemen of
His Majesty will rise from their seats. No one will remain seated above him.” It seems evident
that, on occasion, the great kings were ready to go to great lengths to please their vassals in
order to guarantee alliance loyalty. In fact, when the position of a great state weakened, it was
not uncommon to see ‘defections’ on the part of the vassals who were quick to react to
systemic power changes in order to secure their interests (see e.g. Kuhrt 1997: 205–07;
Liverani 2004: 125–45; Van De Mieroop 2004/2010: 126/106). Another cause of friction –
vividly manifested during the Amarna period as we have seen – was the question of which
entity had the right to enter into alliance with a Great King.
27
However, equality is a relative thing: Egypt, for instance, wanted to be first among equals rather than equal
partner in its dealings with other great states in Western Asia.
18
What is of greater interest, from our perspective, is the above mentioned treaty between Egypt
and Hatti, two of the most dominant great states in the region, which were at the peak of their
power at the moment when it was signed. Undoubtedly, the treaty between Hattusili III and
Ramses II is the best known of all the ancient treaties coming from the ancient Near Eastern
world. The fact that it is considered to have relevance even in the 21st century AD, is
witnessed by an enlarged replica that appears above the entrance of the Security Council
Chamber of the United Nations in New York as a remainder of one of the earliest international peace treaties in history (see e.g. Bryce 2006: 1). The real one in Akkadian is being held at
the Istanbul archeology museums.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Late Bronze Age is the relationship between Egypt
and the Hittite Empire. At the time of the Amarna letters, the Hittites under Suppiluliuma I
had become major players in the region threatening Egyptian interests in Syro-Palestine. The
lingering interest of the great states of the Ancient Near East in Syria resulted from the desire
to dominate and exploit the economic resources and trade of this region which was at the
crossroads of proto-globalized commerce: copper, tin, chemicals, tools, ivory, ceramics,
jewelry, luxury goods, timber, textiles, faience, foodstuffs, glass ingots and lapis lazuli flew
into Syria all the way from Aegean in the west and from Iran and Afghanistan in the east.
Hegemony in the region, then, depended to a large extent on the capacity of a given power to
control this geopolitically critical area (See Frank 1993a; Healy 1993: 9, 89; Kuhrt 1997: 190,
250–1; Redford: 1992: 149; Wilkinson 2004: 665–66). Suppiluliuma fought two major
campaigns in Syria, the first being a failure and the second a success. It was as a result of this
second military operation that Mittani, Egypt’s ally during the Amarna Period, collapsed as a
great power at the expense of Hatti (capital of the Hittite empire). From a strategic point of
view the significance of Suppiluliuma’s conquest was to make Mittani a buffer-state against
the expanding power of Assyria in the east. Ominously enough, however, the Mittanian vassal
states such as Amurru (see appendix 4) pledged allegiance to the Hittite state which had by
now become a border state with Egypt in Syria-Palestine. Even though the relations between
Egypt and the Hittite state seem to have been friendly at first, these two superpowers of the
day were heading for a military confrontation as Egypt was beginning to lose its grip on some
of its northernmost territory (Van Dijk 2002: 282). The direct threat for Egypt’s security by
the Hittites as a result of a change in the balance of power was thus the underlining cause for
the great clash between the two states in question.
Sixteen years after the battle of Kadesh in 1258 BCE the two protagonists, Egypt and the
Hittite empire, concluded a peace treaty. The treaty was recorded in two versions, one in
Egyptian hieroglyphs, the other in Akkadian. The interesting point from the balance of power
aspect is what led to the rapprochement of these two rival super powers. As we can witness
when studying international history, it is the mutually conceived external threat that often
unites two former enemies. In the aftermath of the Amarna period this external threat – as
have been shown in the paper – was Assyria that was seriously threatening Hittite interests in
the region (see Melko 2001: 64; Van Dijk 2000: 290; Van De Mieroop 2004: 150). The
evidence seems to suggest that the initiative for making the peace treaty came from the
Hittites who probably had even more to lose from the rise of Assyria due to reasons of
geography. In the treaty the powers essentially divided Syria into Hittite sphere of interest in
the north and into Egyptian sphere of interest in the south.
19
The power hierarchy described above between Egypt and the other great states followed
similar patterns in the peace treaty. This becomes explicitly clear in the clause relative to the
protection of heirs and the question of succession as it goes in one direction only (after
Luckenbill in Beckman 1999: 98; see also Van De Mieroop 2004: 130):
“And if Hattusili III, Great King, King of Ḫatti becomes angry with his own subjects, after
they have offended against him, and he sends to Ramses, Great King, King of Egypt, on
account of this, then Ramses, Beloved of Amon, must send his infantry and his chariotry, and
they will destroy all with whom he is angry.”
“And the son of Hattusili, King of Hatti, shall be made King of Hatti in place of Hattusili, his
farther, after the many years of Hattusili, King of Hatti. And if the people of Hatti commit an
offense against him, the Ramses, Beloved of Amon, must send infantry and chariotry to his aid
and take revenge for him”
There is no reciprocal clause to guarantee the succession of Ramesses. First, it seems that as
an usurper28 Hattusili seem to have been more preoccupied with the loyalty of his nobility
than with the Egyptian troops. More important, however, was the issue of prestige: Ramses
had no problem with his own succession, and even if that had been the case, under no
circumstance would he have accepted the idea of being protected by a foreign king and a
foreign army (see Kuhrt 1997: 214; Liverani 2000/2001: 26/133). This would have been
incompatible with Egypt’s self-image as the leading power of the region. The significance of
the peace treaty itself between Egypt and the Hittite empire lies in the fact it is considered to
be the first non-aggression treaty between great powers that has survived 29 in recorded history
(Braudel 1998: 247–8; Ceram 2001: 189–90). It brought about an unprecedented peace and
prosperity in the region for over 80 years (e.g. Healy 1993: 88). The historical evidence
clearly shows that the main reason for concluding the treaty was to preserve the balance of
power in the region (see Bryce 2006; Kuhrt 1997: 194, 207, 263; Van Dijk 2002: 270). It was
thus in this context that the peace pact called the ‘Eternal Treaty’ between Ramses II and
Hattusili III was signed.
6 END OF A STATES-SYSTEM – THE DAWN OF EMPIRES
The regional system that had existed in Near East for hundreds of years during the Late
Bronze Age came to a rather sudden end at the turn of the 13th and at the beginning of the 12th
century. This does not mean that the international system in the region came to an end per se:
vassal states continued to make treaties with great kings, envoys were sent to foreign courts,
and trade relations were conducted as before, especially in Mesopotamia where the destabilizing effects of the upheaval were significantly less visible. What changed, rather, was that the
plurality of power centers that had characterized the regional interaction for many centuries
between more or less equal actors, paving ultimately the way for the rise of Assyria as a
hegemon in the first millennium. Power was now shifting towards imperial unity as, after the
28
Hattusili III had deposed Urhi-Teshsup, his nephew and the legitimate heir to the throne. Urhi-Teshub had
escaped as a political refugee to Egypt which made Hatti wary of Egypt’s motives.
29
Surely, similar kinds of treaties were signed between Egypt and Mittani which were allies long before the
Hittite Empire.
20
Assyrian imperial phase was briefly replaced by the neo-Babylonian empire, the Persians
created a unified Near Eastern imperium unlike nothing the region had seen before. While the
history of the first millennium Near East does not concern us here, a concise outline of this
change in power is in order.
This phase in the history of the ancient Near East is known as the second ‘Dark Age’ with the
same effects as the first one that go back to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. It was
marked by diminished written documentation and a decline in international contacts (see
Liverani 2001: 12). Scholars specializing in Near Eastern history have proposed several
reasons for this: outside invasions – attack the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’30 – and migrations,
social revolutions, ecological disasters such as the plague have all been suggested as the main
causes for the debacle (see Braudel 1998: 255–9; Kuhrt 1995: 275, 393; Panagiotakopulu
2004: 272; Van De Mieroop 2004: 186–9). No single cause31 can explain the chain of events
and without a doubt, there were major differences within the region: certain areas were less
affected than others. Archeological and written evidence shows that the destruction was the
strongest in the area of the eastern Mediterranean – the Aegean and Anatolia, coastal Syria
and the Levant. Although it is hard to know precisely what happened, why, and exactly when,
there’s a consensus among scholars that the Middle East in 1050 was very much different
from what it had been in 1250. The turmoil certainly had an effect on the great power
relations. The Hittite empire disappeared completely around 1200. The evidence from the
archives of Ugarit seem to indicate that the reasons for this were both internal (rebellions,
royal intrigues, famine, bad harvests) and external (attacks mainly by the Sea-Peoples and to a
lesser extent by Assyria, vassal defections) (see e.g. Braudel 1998: 258–59; Bryce 2005: 327–
46; MacQueen 2006: 1095–98). These years of crises meant that Egypt’s control of the
southern Levant ended (see Kuhrt 1995: 385; Van De Mieroop 2004: 182, 184). By the early
eleventh century Egypt, which was struggling with the same kinds of problem as the Hittite
empire (see Shaw 2002: 321–22), had withdrawn within her own frontiers after losing control
over Sinai and Nubia. Later on this would have serious security implications since Egypt was
now cut off from Asia making it vulnerable to attacks from the north. It is not entirely clear
whether this was due to military overextension or conscious decision now that the possible
Hittite threat had had been eliminated the Sea-Peoples (see Murnane 2006: 706–09). In the
short term, however, Egypt had to cope with fighting against the Sea-Peoples in the west
30
The origin of the Sea-Peoples (a term coined by the late 19th century AD historians) is unknown although it is
believed that they came from the north and the west. Archeological evidence seems to locate their origin to the
Black Sea, Anatolia (Asia Minor), Aegean, Sicily and Sardinia. The impact of the Sea-Peoples on the cultural
landscape of Near East is seen in a more positive light by modern scholars who have started to seriously question
their origin as merely island or coastal dwellers (see Braudel 1998: 261–3; Bryce 2005: 338; Dothan 2006:
1267–79; Kuhrt 1995: 386–93; Shaw 2002: 321–23; Wilkinson 2004: 683).
31
Modern scholars put emphasis on societal rather on external factors (i.e. wars, attacks by hostile groups). On
several occasions there are references to people identified as Habiru. The Habiru seem not to have been an
ethnic group but a social one although for over a century there has been a scholarly debate whether ‘Habiru’ or
‘Apiru’ allude to the ‘Hebrews’ (on this debate, see Na’aman 1986: 271–88; Waterhouse 2001: 31–42). They
were outcasts, probably runaway slaves and peasants who sought freedom in remote areas outside the control of
the great states (Shanks 1989: 26–34). Important factor causing instability of the region was thus socialeconomic malaise rather than the ravage of the Sea-Peoples (see Kurth 1995: 392–3; Van De Mieroop 2004:
187–8).
21
which apparently she managed to do albeit there is some controversy32 over whether
Egyptians had real success against the foreign invaders. All in all, the age of independent
territorial states interacting closely together with each other came to a close as a result of
these events (See Liverani 2001: 3). After this the age of empires – Assyrian, neo-Babylonian,
Persian, and ultimately Macedonian and Roman – would follow (see Watson 1992; for a more
close chronological description, see Wilkinson 2004).
7 CONCLUSIONS
A central research question posed in the paper was how far can there be said to have existed
an international states-system in international history. This elementary yet important question
has been surprisingly largely ignored in the mainstream IR theory. A key factor explaining
this lacuna in the research agenda has been attributed to the lack of systematic use of history
as a valuable tool for theory building. Eurocentric and presentist research agendas also play
their part in this as well as academic parochialism which sometimes acts as a powerful barrier
for interdisciplinary dialogue between history and political science.
An argument has been built in the paper according to which the political communities,
irrespective of their actual form, before and after the Amarna period, were fully cognizant of
the external environment in which they were interacting. Consequently, this set the stage for
the formation of alliances, counter alliances, trade, war, international treaties, rudimentary
diplomatic representation, and inter-dynastic marriages. And yet, in IR theory, there has been
a tendency to overlook the significance of this formative period in the development of statessystems. What made this this inter-state activity rather cosmopolitan was the existence of a
common diplomatic language – something we see in much later epochs in international
history. Akkadian as a medium for communicating together with power balancing strategies
constitute undeniably the strongest indicators in our possession to make the conclusion that
there really existed an international system of states with features bordering on the international society dimension. Admittedly, it was not based on any common religious or political
ideologies that have played their role in the present-day Near East. Instead it came about in
different phases during the course of the third and second millennium.
It is difficult to be indifferent about the importance of brotherhood (aḫḫūtu33 in Akkadian)
between the Great Kings in the international diplomacy of the age. Equally important was the
right to be called a ‘brother’ (aḫu34) and thus to be included in the great powers’ club. This
had to be earned and great states of the age were jealous about it, which the Babylonian and
Assyrian cases demonstrate. From Burna-Buriash’s viewpoint Assyria was still merely a
vassal of Babylonia. Assyria’s rise was a major factor in the balancing behaviour of the
regional actors. Ḫatti also had a lot to lose in seeing a powerful neighbour on its south-eastern
border. Security interests were, however, often secondary to the questions of status. Attitudes
32
Some scholars have boldly suggested that Ramses III (1184–1153 BCE) merely repeated battle accounts by
his predecessor and claimed earlier victories for himself (see Van De Mieroop 2004: 185). Nonetheless, it is
most likely that Egypt beat these invaders back and as a result they were not able to conquer Egypt nor seriously
threaten her interests in Syria-Palestine (Van Dijk 2002: 297–8).
33
See Cohen’s (1996: 11–28) take on the concept.
34
After Liverani 2000: 18.
22
of superiority and a tendency to treat newcomers as, parvenu, was psychologically a
noteworthy features of the system. When we thus put these issues of status and rank into a
larger context in international history, again we see similarities of pattern with later epochs in
the diplomatic history. Accordingly, the diplomacy of the ancient Near Eastern world ought to
be put on a more solid ground in the research agenda of international relations.
23
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