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2022

Frédéric Alpi, Zidan Bradosty, Jessica Giraud, John MacGinnis et Raija Mattila (éd.), Arbela Antiqua. Actes du colloque international d’Erbil (7-10 avril 2014) tenu sous la présidence de Zidan Bradosty : Arbèles antique – Histoire d’Erbil pré-islamique

Daniele Morandi Bonacossi
Référence(s) :

Frédéric Alpi, Zidan Bradosty, Jessica Giraud, John MacGinnis et Raija Mattila (éd.), Arbela Antiqua. Actes du colloque international d’Erbil (7-10 avril 2014) tenu sous la présidence de Zidan Bradosty : Arbèles antique – Histoire d’Erbil pré-islamique (BAH 218), Beyrouth, Presses de l’Ifpo, 2020, 22 × 28, 300 p., ISBN : 978-2-35159-768-2.

Texte intégral

1It has been over a decade since the archaeology of the Kurdistan region of Iraq has entered a phase of great expansion and development, which has made it one of the areas of the Near East the most densely studied by surface surveys and archaeological excavation projects. The first, substantial fruits of this new season of field research have been collected in the proceedings of an important international conference organized in 2014 by the Institut français du Proche-Orient, the Finnish Institute in the Middle East and the Salahaddin University of Erbil in the Kurdistan capital. The publication of the conference papers on Arbela Antiqua - Pre-Islamic History of Erbil brings together 21 contributions dedicated to Erbil and its territory that cover a wide range of archaeological, epigraphic and historical topics. The editors of the proceedings, F. Alpi, Z. Bradosty, J. Giraud, J. MacGinnis and R. Mattila, deserve our gratitude for making this collection of new data and scientific studies available to the research community committed to investigating the crucial role of cultural trait d’union between Upper and Lower Mesopotamia played in antiquity by the Kurdistan region in general and the plain of Erbil in particular.

2The importance of the volume also lies in the variety of subjects covered by the essays it contains, ranging from the most remote prehistory to the Hellenistic, Parthian and Sasanian eras. In his contribution, A. al-Hassan Bakry recognizes in the Middle Palaeolithic site of Shanidar and the other contemporary sites of the Zagros belt the area of origin of the Mousterian Neanderthal occupation recorded in Central Asian sites. N. J. Ibrahim briefly reviews the major archaeological research projects conducted in the Erbil region, starting from the pioneering enterprises of Braidwood and Solecki in Jarmo and Shanidar, while Molist et al. furnish a useful and up-to-date synthesis of the evolution of the first agro-pastoral communities between the PPNB and the Halaf era in the extensive segment of the Fertile Crescent between the Euphrates valley and the northern Iraqi Zagros region. In the latter region, the new excavations begun at Tell Laskhir in the Erbil plain promise to provide important new data for the final phase of the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age.

3The essay by K. Nováček examines the extension and topographical layout of the large urban site of Erbil/Arbail/Arbela, which had unfortunately been neglected by archaeological research until, after the 1960s, all the visible parts of its extended Bronze and Iron Age lower city gradually disappeared under the new urban districts of the current capital of Kurdistan. Through a careful study of historical aerial and satellite images, Nováček reconstructs the two fortification systems of the huge lower city (approx. 330 ha), which can probably be attributed to Assyrian and Medieval times. In this way, the article highlights the extraordinary importance of the Assyrian centre, whose significance was previously known only through cuneiform sources and the very limited archaeological research carried out on the citadel.

4In their article, J. Ur and J. Giraud sketch a history of human occupation of the Erbil plain in the light of new data provided by the “Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey” conducted by Harvard University. In harmony with what has also been recorded by other surveys in the region, the first results of the project, based on the extensive use of remote sensing images, indicate an increase in settlement during the Late Chalcolithic—and reveal the significant presence of southern Uruk pottery in the period’s last phases (LC 4-5). After a decline in settlement in the first half of the third millennium, the middle of the millennium saw a phase of strong urbanization of the landscape. This massive urban growth was marked by the emergence of large centres such as Tell Baqrta (95 ha) and, in the subsequent Middle Bronze Age, Kurd Qaburstan, a fortified city with an area of approximately 100 ha of surface, perhaps to be identified with the ancient Qabra conquered by Shamshi-Adad I. The maximum expansion of regional occupation was reached in the Neo-Assyrian era, when the Erbil plain became a central province of the empire administered by the large urban centres of Arbail and Qasr Shemamok/Kilizu and irrigated by canal systems of regional scale.

5M. G. Masetti-Rouault and O. Rouault present the results of the first excavation campaigns at Qasr Shemamok/Kilizu. The site is a large 70 ha Assyrian administrative centre in the plain southwest of Erbil, where, under thick Hellenistic, Parthian and Sasanian levels, excavations have unearthed part of a Middle Assyrian palace built by Adad-Nirari I and a monumental terrace with an access ramp made with baked bricks featuring inscriptions of Sennacherib.

6This article is followed by contributions by A. B. Othman, dedicated to the publication of the Mittani pottery from the excavations of Tell Ibrahim Bayis, Tell Agrah and Kuwal Kandal conducted in the Makhmur plain by M. E. L. Mallowan and M. el-Amin in 1948, and by N. A. Amin on the surface survey conducted in the western and southern portions of Late Antique Adiabene around the sites of Hazza and Makhmur. Amin outlines an interesting picture of the regional occupation in the Parthian and Sasanian periods based on the rich textual documentation and new data provided by archaeological research. Particularly interesting from an archaeological perspective is the strong continuity in ceramic culture that characterises the transition from the Late Sasanian to the Early Islamic period; the numerous ongoing surveys in Kurdistan will have to bear this evidence in mind.

7The articles by A. K. Kamil, N. Al Mutawali and F. Salman, and M. Sigrist are dedicated to the history of Urbilum/Erbil during the Ur III period and its conquest by Shulgi and Amar-Suen, while M. Nissinen returns to one of his favourite topics, the characterisation of the figure of Ishtar of Arbela in prophecy, poetry and politics, especially during the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. As an appendix to the article, the author publishes a useful catalogue of Middle and Neo-Assyrian texts that mention Ishtar of Arbela and/or her temple, the Egashankalama. The essay by J. MacGinnis is again centred on the divine figure of Ishtar and the pre-classical history of the city of Erbil, from the first laconic references in the Ebla archives to the numerous Middle and Neo-Assyrian attestations that mention it as a military stronghold of great strategic importance at the foot of the Zagros and seat of the prophetic cult of the goddess.

8S. Ponchia discusses the vast prosopographic documentation referring to the inhabitants of Arbela in the Neo-Assyrian era. The result is a vibrant scenario of people explicitly mentioned as coming from Arbela, individuals associated with the temple of Ishtar (mainly prophetesses and prophets, but also scribes, priests, astrologers and temple officials), workers belonging to different categories (weavers, artisans, farmers) and people whose name included the toponym Arbail. The following article by R. Da Riva constitutes an appendix to Ponchia’s article and presents the more limited Neo-Babylonian prosopographic evidence relating to Assyrians or individuals of Assyrian origin connected to Arbela and its tutelar deity, Ishtar. These names demonstrate how the fall of the Assyrian Empire did not bring about the end of the Assyrian tradition in anthroponymy.

9An article by D. A. Marf discusses the presence in Neo-Assyrian sources of Aramaean, and perhaps Egyptian and Urartian onomastics and of Philistine deportees in the territory of Arbela, thus underlining the composite and multi-ethnic character of the population of the Erbil Plain. S. Ito presents a new discussion of the royal letter SAA 21 1, a fragmentary and highly literary text of the kingdom of Ashurbanipal, in which the ruler addresses the inhabitants of Babylon, revealing a determined policy of conciliation towards the city. K. Nawotka brings us to the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great with a paper on the Gaugamela campaign and Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, a biography of Alexander by an unknown author of the third century bc.

10The next two essays are dedicated to the history of Adiabene. J.-S. Caillou discusses the political dimension of the presence of the Adiabene royal family in Jerusalem, in the Roman province of Judea, after the conversion to Judaism of the king of Adiabene, Izates II, and his mother Helena in the mid-first century ad. To explain this presence, substantiated by the construction of three palaces and the dynastic tomb in Jerusalem mentioned by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews, the author suggests an attempt by Izates II, an ally of the Parthian king Artabanus, to get closer to Rome. In his article, G. Terribili illustrates how Sasanian Adiabene, located on the border between two empires and characterised by a multi-ethnic population made up of communities of different religions, was centrally administered in a strictly controlled manner, but enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, which allowed the different religious groups to assert their cultural identity in the broader context of Sasanian imperial politics.

11In closing, S. H. Ahmad analyses the descriptions of Erbil made by English travellers and orientalists and their proposals for identifying the battlefield of Gaugamela in the region of the River Khazir, a tributary of the Great Zab.

12This important volume on Arbela Antiqua, which also contains the French, English, Arabic and Kurdish abstracts of all contributions, and toponym and name indexes, constitutes a precious enrichment of the scientific bibliography available on the archaeology and history of Iraqi Kurdistan. As a consequence of the liberal policy of openness pursued by the Directorate General of Antiquities and its peripheral offices and the general framework of instability that characterises part of the current Near East, Kurdistan has become the area with the highest density of archaeological research in the entire region and a veritable open-air laboratory of experimentation for new scientific research methodologies and techniques. Arabia Antiqua reflects in an excellent way these recent developments in archaeological and historical research on Upper Mesopotamia.

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Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, « Frédéric Alpi, Zidan Bradosty, Jessica Giraud, John MacGinnis et Raija Mattila (éd.), Arbela Antiqua. Actes du colloque international d’Erbil (7-10 avril 2014) tenu sous la présidence de Zidan Bradosty : Arbèles antique – Histoire d’Erbil pré-islamique »Syria [En ligne], Recensions, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2022, consulté le 16 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/syria/14034 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/syria.14034

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Daniele Morandi Bonacossi

Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage, University of Udine
orcid: 0000-0003-0065-7427

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