Rebellions and Peripheries in the Cuneiform World.

• Author: Chavalas, Mark W.
• Position: Book review

Rebellions and Peripheries in the Cuneiform World. Edited by SETH RICHARDSON. American Oriental Series, vol. 91. New Haven: AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY. 2010. Pp. xxxii + 109. $35.

Starting as a panel chaired by Seth Richardson for the 216th annual meeting of the American Oriental Society (Seattle, WA, 18 March, 2006; also included then were talks by Norman Yoffee, Daniel Fleming, and Richard Beal), and subsequently dedicated to the memory of Raymond Westbrook, this volume deals with the nature of dissent and resistance in ancient Near Eastern rebellions. The original panel was especially concerned with rebellions in the cuneiform record that revealed the political life of peripheral vassal states and disenfranchised elites. Though the topic of rebellion has often been studied, few have given it the prominence it has in this work. The contributors argue for a Mesopotamian "politics of dissent" (p. xix), unlike the stereotypical view of the inadequacy of dissent against the traditional view of Oriental despotism. They argue that ancient state-forms were as complex as modern ones, and can thus be explained with analogous models.

The work begins with a preface by Eva von Dassow, who poses the question as to why rebellions do not occupy a more important place in Mesopotamian historiography. She finds that there is ample but varied evidence for rebellion in the cuneiform record. After all, rebellion was present at the outset of creation, according to Mesopotamian mythical traditions.

Seth Richardson ("The Fields of Rebellion and Periphery") begins the discussion with an introductory section concerning rebellion as "process" (i.e., giving attention to the "features and dynamics common to 'rebellions' not dependent on the context of modernity," p. xxi). Thus, Richardson is concerned with what the so-called rebels actually said and did. He argues that there are plenty of hints in the written record of "actors employing assembly, persuasive speech, public acts, epistolatory or intelligence networks to forge social movements" (or factions, p. xxv). He defines the peripheries as those polities apart from the core nations that exist to benefit those core nations (responding to threat or exercise of force). The cores use propaganda to create and sustain the inequalities.

He concludes that the idea of rebellion shows that the Mesopotamian king was not so much a despot as tradition would have us believe. The rebels on the periphery enacted change through...