Assyrians and Greeks in Cilicia
in the late 8th and the beginning of the 7th centuryBC: A preliminary model for
the interpretation of the complex of Assyro-Greek relations
The relation which has been
traced so far between the Assyrian expansion in North Syria and Cilicia on the
one hand, and the increase of Greek pottery and the settling of Greeks on the
other, is admittedly very rough, and needs to be substantiated by specific
written sources. As has been well known for a long time, Greeks are mentioned
in some Assyrian texts of the late 8th century, where they are given the
gentilic name Yamnaiu/Yaunaiu, that is “Ionians.” They are mentioned in a very
fragmentary letter authored by an Assyrian official based in Phoenicia, who
reports an attack by Yaunaiu, “Ionians”; in the royal inscriptions of Sargon,
in connection with a military campaign of his in Cilicia in 715; and in a short
fragmentary passage of a royal inscription of Sennacherib. As regards Greek
sources, a battle between Ionians and Assyrians under Sennacherib, the son of
Sargon, is mentioned by Berossus. This group of documents, in spite of its
admittedly frustrating scantiness, can nevertheless shed some light on the
historical events, and may be used, albeit very prudently, in order to build a
sort of model for the development of the relations between the Greeks and the
Assyrian empire at the end of the 8th century. (Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, “The Ideological and
Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th
and 7th Centuries BC,” in The Heirs of Assyria: Proceedings of the
Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project.
Held in Tvärminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998, ed. Sanno Aro and R. M.
Whiting [Melammu Symposia 1; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project,
2000], 13-14)
For a thorough analysis of the
gentilic, and its use as a general indication of the Greek world in
Mesopotamian texts of the first millennium, see recently R. Rollinger, “Zur
Bezeichnung von ‘Griechen’ in Keilschrifttexten,” RA 91 (1997), pp. 167-72.
Rollinger rightly stresses that it is not possible to trace an opposition
between the form Yamnaiu prevailing in Neo-Assyrian texts and the form Yaman(n)aiu
prevailing in Neo-Babylonian texts (as suggested by J.A. Brinkman, “The
Akkadian Words for ‘Ionia’ and ‘Ionian’,” in R.F. Sutton (ed.), Daidalikon. Studies
in memory of Raymond V. Schoder, Wauconda, Ill., 1989, pp. 53-71), since a
Neo-Assyrian form Yamanaiu is attested (p. 168). Yamnaiu is a form parallel to Yaunaju,
and both may be easily related with the form connected with the original Greek
spelling '’Ιαονες (Rollinger, op. cit., p. 170). Rollinger, op. cit.,
p. 171, suggests that both forms may be interpreted as Babylonianisms, since in
Neo-Assyrian intervocalic -w should be rendered as -b-. The
spelling of the name is consistently different from that of the Assyrian name
of Cyprus, which was Yadnana; since the ethnonymic Yamnaiu appears in various
of Sargon’s texts contemporarily with the geographical name Yadnana (Yamnaiu
and Yadnana, respectively, in: Annals, 117 and 393; Annals XIV, 15 and 22; S4,
34 and 43; Stier, 25 and 28), it was evidently employed to designate a
geographical area different from Cyprus/Yadnana. Many scholars have suggested that
the usurper who took the throne of Ašdod and was repelled by Sargon in 711 was
an “Ionian” solely on the basis of the assonance of his name (Yamani) with the gentilic
Yamnaiu and with the name of the “Ionians” (following H. Winckler, Die
Keilschrifttexte Sargons, Bd. I, Leipzig 1889; also Rollinger, op. cit.,
p. 172). However, H. Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A
Chronological-Historical Study,” JCS 12 (1958), p. 80 n. 217, has correctly
suggested that Yamani is a proper name, probably of Semitic origin (he recalls the
Biblical names Yamin and Imna’), and not an ethnonym (which should have had the
normal ending -a-a, like, e.g., Tabalaiu, “Tabalian,” spelled ta-bal-a-a).
The conventions of cuneiform writing cannot be ignored. On the other hand, some
scholars, considering that in one single text the name of the usurper is
written Yadna (mia-ad-na: Fuchs 1994, p. 133, Annals, 246),
and basing on the assonance of such name with that of Cyprus (Yadnana), have
suggested that this Yamani/Yadna was a Greek/Ionian from Cyprus, and that his
true proper name was omitted, being replaced by a generic indication of his
nationality (e.g. S. Smith, CAH III, Cambridge 1954, p. 58; S.A. Cook, ibid.,
pp. 387f; recently, Haider 1996, p. 81). However, in this case too, the name
should have been preceded by the appropriate gentilic determinative, LÚ, and
not by the proper names indicator. As for the variant Iadna, which appears only
in the Annals, which were engraved on stone, perhaps it was introduced simply
through a mechanical slip in copying from the original: the cuneiform sign AD has
the same number of wedges as AM, and differs from it only in the inclination of
the concluding four right-hand wedges (the former’s being three horizontal
wedges followed by a vertical one, the latter’s being four 45 degrees inclined
wedges); when copying from the original and engraving the cuneiform sign on
stone, the four oblique wedges were transformed into three horizontal and one
vertical wedges. The Annals’ reading should thus be amended to ia-am!!-na,
and the alleged Cypriote provenance of Yamani should be consequently discarded.
P. Haider (Haider 1996, p. 82 n. 128) has further argued that the Assyrian
scribes, trying to render in cuneiform a previously unknown toponym such as
Yamn, “Ionia,” would have adopted the writing of a similar, familiar Semitic
proper name, replacing the geographical/social determinatives KUR/URU/LÚ with
the proper names’ determinative. Again, it must be stressed that the
distinction between specific determinatives cannot be underestimated; and, in
any case, that such an etymologizing rendering by Assyrian scribes remains only
a faint hypothesis. (Ibid., 13 n. 20)