Neo-Assyrian Geography.

• Author: Pecirkova, Jana
• Position: Review

Edited by MARIO LIVERANI. Quaderni di Geografia Storica, vol. 5. Rome: HERDER, 1995. Pp. 282, 45 figs., 30 plates. LIt 50,000.

The volume under review presents papers read at the international conference on Neo-Assyrian Geography. The conference was held in November 1993 at the University of Rome. It was organized by M. Liverani, who details in his introduction the goals and achievements of the conference. The papers presented are not intended to produce "a handbook of Assyrian geography, but a lively exemplification of current research" (p. 10). This aim was successfully achieved; moreover, the contributions cover almost all the regions with which Assyria came in contact.

Three contributions are devoted to Assyria proper. J. N. Postgate gives a critical review of E. Forrer's Provinzeinteilung. He focuses on the analysis of the Assyrian home provinces and on the reevaluation of the usage of the terms halsu and pahutu. Forrer believed that Tiglath-pileser III introduced into Assyria from Babylonia the office of bel pahuti and the related use of the word pahutu for "a province." Postgate shows that both terms were, in fact, employed in Assyria before its Babylonian usage. He also rejects Forrer's notion of sub-provinces, accepting that some of the ninth-century provinces were broken up into small units and attributing this reorganization of the earlier system to Adad-nirari III. Postgate reviews and gives a detailed account of the location of provinces connected with major offices of state.

8. Kuhne discusses the economic potential of the Assyrian Middle Euphrates regions. He follows the development of this area from the thirteenth century to the close of the seventh. He concludes that this region was always firmly attached to Assyria, which from the eighth century proceeded with its colonization and urbanization.

18. Zadok surveys the ethno-linguistic character of Assyria and Upper Mesopotamia. He identifies thirteen ethno-linguistic groups as represented in the Neo-Assyrian documents. J. N. Reade deals with the controversial historical geography of troublesome regions in Iran during the Neo-Assyrian period. Reade offers a geographical scheme which is based on itineraries in Assyrian royal inscriptions. He gives special attention to the location of three crucial regions through which the Assyrians reached Iran (Hubuskia, Namri, Zamua). Reade supposes that the scale of the Assyrian operations in Iran was larger than usually assumed and suggests...