Near East Destruction Datings, Archaeological and Historical Studies: The Cases of Samaria (722 B.C.) and Tarsus (696 B.C.).

• Author: YOUNG, JR., T. CUYLER
• Position: Review

Near East Destruction Datings, Archaeological and Historical Studies: The Cases of Samaria (722 B.C.) and Tarsus (696 B.C.). By STIG FORSHERO. Second revised edition. Boreas, Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations, vol. 19. Uppsala: UPPSALA UNIVERSITY, 1995. Pp. 106. SK 132 (paper). [Distributed by Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm.]

This book will be of interest to historians of the first-millennium B.C. Near East and Aegean. It is a detailed review of both the archaeological and textual evidence for the "destruction" of Samaria by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and of Tarsus in 696 B.C. These are important issues, for such so-called fixed destruction dates provide benchmarks from which widespread archaeological materials are organized chronologically.

After a brief introduction on destruction levels and their import in chapter one, chapter two deals with the supposed destruction of Samaria. A detailed stratigraphic discussion of several areas of the mound and of the date of deposit of the Samaria ivories leads to the conclusion that we cannot find a coherent, single destruction in the archaeological record. An examination of the written evidence for an Assyrian destruction of Samaria then leads to two conclusions. First, "owing to the scantiness of the evidence, any reconstruction of the sequence of events that made up the Assyrian conquest of Samaria is liable to involve uncertainties inviting debate" (p. 43). And second, "the written evidence provides ... no grounds for believing that Shalmaneser or Sargon inflicted destruction on Samaria, except, of course, in a political and social sense" (p. 49). Thus 722 B.C. cannot be used as a chronological benchmark in archaeological analyses because a destruction event at Samaria at that date cannot be establish ed from either the archaeological or the textual evidence.

Chapter three, on Tarsus, arrives at the same conclusion for slightly different reasons. The archaeological evidence for what may have been an extensive destruction of the site by fire is satisfactory. The nature and extent of that destruction, however, is uncertain because our evidence comes only from Level II fill laid down for the foundations of Period Ill. Thus, "the destruction evidence seems insufficient to serve alone as the basis for an historical identification of it" (p. 56).

An examination of the relevant Assyrian sources proves convincingly that there is no evidence for Tarsus'...