The Land of Assur and the Yoke of Assur: Studies on Assyria 1971-2005

by Nicholas Postgate

This book brings together a selection of twenty-eight previously disparate articles by Nicholas Postgate that represent some thirty years of engagement with the nature of Assyrian society and government. Most are broadly synthetic and deal with general issues; they are a tremendous body of work, and this will be an invaluable collection for everyone interested in Assyria.

Table of Contents

Land tenure in the Middle Assyrian A reconstruction
Some remarks on conditions in the Assyrian countryside
Royal exercise of justice under the Assyrian Empire
Princeps index in Assyria
Nomads and sedentaries in the Middle Assyrian sources
The economic structure of the Assyrian Empire
The place of the Šaknu in Assyrian government
A plea for the abolition of Šessimur
Ilku and land tenure in the Middle Assyrian A second attempt
The columns of Kapara
First fruits and Tempel-Schuldscheine
The Middle Assyrian provinces
Middle Assyrian The instruments of bureaucracy
Employer, employee and employment in the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Ownership and exploitation of land in Assyria in the 1st millennium BC
The Assyrian Porsche?
The Land of Assur and the Yoke of Assur
Rings, torcs and bracelets
Middle Assyrian to The nature of the shift
Some latter-day merchants of Assur
The Home Provinces
The Assyrian army in Zamua
Assyrian felt
Assyrian uniforms
System and style in three Near Eastern bureaucracies
Business and government at Middle Assyrian Rimah
Documents in government under the Middle Assyrian Kingdom
The invisible Assyrian military and civilian administration in the 8th and 7th centuries BC

368 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2007

About the author

John Nicholas Postgate

Nicholas Postgate is a British Assyriologist. He is Professor of Assyriology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
From 1982 to 1985, he was a university lecturer in the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East. He was promoted to Reader in Mesopotamian studies in 1985. He was promoted to Professor of Assyriology in 1994.
He undertook excavations at Abu Salabikh, a Sumerian city in Iraq, from 1975 to 1989. From 1994 to 1998, he was the director of excavations at Kilise Tepe, a Bronze and Iron Age site in Turkey.