Avraham Faust - The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and Its Consequences

This book was a long time in the making. My interest in the Assyrian empire grew out of my work on the Iron Age II, but my first explicit discussion of the Assyrian policies in the southwest grew from my joint research with Ehud Weiss on the economy of the 7th century (Faust and Weiss 2005, later developed into Faust and Weiss 2011). This research was, unintentionally, initiated in 2002 when we were both carrying out postdoctoral research (on completely different topics) at Harvard. We began our collaboration in an attempt to understand the botanical finds at 7th century Ashkelon, but we quickly realized that the city was embedded within a much larger economic system and could not be studied in isolation. Understanding the larger economy of the 7th century exposed a major discrepancy between the common scholarly perception of the Assyrian involvement in the Southern Levant and the actual evidence on the ground.

My later work on the period of Neo-Babylonian rule in the region, culminating in the book Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation (Faust 2012b) did not directly discuss the period of Assyrian rule, but it forced me to study this era which served as background to the changes created by the Babylonian conquests. The more I studied the 7th century data in the areas annexed by the Neo-Assyrian empire, the more it appeared that the difference between the policies of the two empires was not as great as they were often described. Comparing the 6th and the 7th centuries BCE (i.e. the periods of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian control) forced me to see that the reality in the 7th century, when the region was supposed to have prospered, was more complex, and while the clients flourished the Assyrian provinces were devastated. This resulted with a few more articles (such as Faust 2011a; Faust 2015a, and more).

By that time it was clear to me that the economic and demographic reality under Neo-Assyrian rule, at least the way I understood it, was very different from most common interpretations (not all). I summarised some of the data in a few large articles (such as Faust 2018c; 2018d), and (with Shawn Aster) organised an international workshop on this topic which resulted with an edited volume. I realised, however, that a much more detailed and systematic treatment was neededa treatment that would not only expand the discussion of the evidence from the Southern Levant, but would also put it within the context of the Neo-Assyrian empire at large and even within a broad study of ancient empires.

In the summer of 2016 I was granted a Summer Visiting Fellowship at St. Johns College at the University of Oxford with the explicit aim of beginning a book project on this topic. While staying in Oxford I carried out some of the basic research for this study, outlined its structure, and wrote the book proposal which I submitted to Oxford University Press.

While working on the book ever since, most of the research and writing was carried out during four subsequent academic breaks which I spent abroad. The first of these was in the Oriental Institute (OI) in the University of Chicago (in February 2018), and the other three were in Oxford.

I am grateful to St. Johns College for granting me the Fellowship that initiated the research, to Prof. David Schloen for inviting me to the University of Chicago, to the OI for providing me with library services and office space, to Oxford libraries (especially the Sackler and the Bodleian), and to Bar-Ilans libraries.

Thanks are also due to the many colleagues and friends who over the years discussed many of the issues addressed in this book with me, supplied advice and references, and helped in other ways, including David Schloen (University of Chicago), Daniel Master (Wheaton College), Shawn Zelig Aster, Joshua Schwartz, Zeev Safrai, Ehud Weiss, Eyal Baruch (Bar-Ilan University), Peter Machinist, Jason Ur, (the late) Larry Stager (Harvard University), Shlomo Bunimovitz, Zvi Lederman (Tel-Aviv University), Jan Joosten (Oxford University), Peter Dubovsk (Pontifical Bible Institute), Chaim Ben-David, Hayah Katz (Kinneret College), Baruch Brandl (Israel Antiquities Authority), Gunnar Lehmann (Ben-Gurion Univeristy), Sandra Jacobs (Kings College London), and Peter Zilberg (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). Special thanks are due to my former students Gilad Itach and Yair Sapir whose work on related topics are quoted in this book.

I would also like to thank the participants of the workshop The Assyrian Period in the Southern Levant, which took place in Yad Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem in November 11-12 2005, for their insightful papers and comments during the meeting.

The book contains a vast amount of information, and not all of it is published (or, in the least, was not published when it was supplied to me), and I am very thankful to many colleagues who supplied me with this information, including Hagit Torge (IAA), Gilad Itach (BIU and IAA), Amit Shadman (IAA), Ron Tueg (IAA), Zvi Lederman (TAU), Jimmy Hardin (MSU), Chaim Ben-David (Kinneret College), and Hayah Katz (Kinneret College).

Permission to use figures was granted by the Israel Exploration Society, The Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Geological Survey, Ronny Reich (Haifa University), and Zeev Herzog (Tel Aviv Univeristy).

Tamar Roth-Fenster and Asnat Laufer helped in the preparation of the bibliography and of some of the figures. Tidhar Karo produced two of the maps, and three others were produced by Janet Jackson and Charles Wilson. Support was also provided by the Ingeborg Rennert Center.