Some Ghost Facts from Achaemenid Babylonian Texts Author(s): Matthew W.

Stolper Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 108 (1988), pp. 196-198 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/632645 Accessed: 02/02/2010 03:23
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I96

NOTES
It is possible to suggest that the word zugodesmon changed its meaning over the centuriesor was used very of loosely, the zugodesmon a chariot or a fast mule team being more elaborate and including much more than that of a simple ox-drawn vehicle.
M. A. LITTAUER

where I4(+x) may be any numeralbetween 14 and i8. This statement puts Xerxes' death between 4th and 8th August 465. An apparent contradiction of this dating has been found in the Babylonian legal text UET 4 193, as interpretedby Figulla, UET 4, p. I5, and characterized from a certain Sabinus to Geminus dated ca. I00 AD, and expounded by Horn and Woods, Journalof Near reads:'Kindly give Vestinus for his yoke a new, strong Eastern Studies (I954) 9. The text is a legal agreement xiii which you will carefullygrease,from those recording the redistributionof parcels of land among zugodesmon, in the box of skins which you have with you ... for his four brothers.It was concluded in the thirteenthyear of own is cut.'12 The other passage,also in a letter, reads: Artaxerxes I, but it refers to an earlier arrangement 'Send to me at Aphroditopolis a zugodesmon the made in the twenty-first regnal year of Xerxes. On for oxen, strong and broad, as the one they have is cut.'13 Figulla'sreading, the earlier arrangementwas made in Leatheror hide would be a normal materialfor any kind Kislimu (Babylonian month IX), beginning I7th of harness bindings and it is not clear from the first December 465.2 If this reading were accurate, UET 4 passage what type of vehicle or draught animals were intended. But in the casewhere oxen are mentioned, the 1 Cited Parker Dubberstein, binding would certainly have been restricted to the and by Babylonian Chronology (Proviyoke and pole. dence 1956) 17, describedin Pinches et al., LateBabylonian astronomical
are hard to explain in detail, but they suggest that the zugodesmonwas wound around both the yoke, which was fitted with a knob (Tpis 8' Kdr-EpOEv 6rna,Cv rTT' 6pa,aA6v),and the pole
273-4

Were the ends of the yoke braces then brought inward to form the binding of the pole-and-yoke area, as the latter stage is describedin Homer? We simply do not know.10 But if they were, it would account for both the length of the zugodesmon its use here as a and pole-yoke binding. The wooden peg that pierced both the yoke and the underlying pole and was often used in antiquity in conjunction with yoke lashings, may also have been present on Priam's wagon, as suggested by the word hest5r-'pin' (line 272). Is it possible to reconcile this interpretation of Homer's zugodesmon with the term when it appears again almost a millennium laterin Arrianand Plutarch? In the former's Anabasisof Alexander,ii 3, we find the story of how Alexander solved the riddle of the 'Gordianknot'. The question was 'who could untie the binding of the yoke of the wagon/cart?' (TroU 3uyo0 T-rS s &r mrSTOV56EaOv). The vehicle is describedas having been ox-drawn and the binding as made of cornel bark; neitherthe beginning nor the end of the lashingcould be seen. Arriangives two versions of Alexander'ssolution. In the first, he simply cut the knot with his sword. In the second version 'he took out the pin (EarTcop) the pole, of a wooden peg which was driven right through the pole, holding the binding together, and so removed the yoke from the pole'. Both versions are repeated by Plutarch (Life of Alexanderxviii), who actually uses the word zugodesmon. It would seem as if the sense of zugodesmon was by now restrictedto mean simply pole-and-yoke binding. The vehicle, an ox-drawn hamaxa,was certainlynot for fast driving and pole bindings and yoke braces would have been quite superfluous. Cornel bark seems a peculiar material for binding and would be difficult to tie, but it seems possible that the ends had been slipped under the binding when the materialwas wetted, to be pliable when applied. When it dried, the end would be invisible. The same meaning may well obtain in the few other instancesin which the term zugodesmon appears(either in the singularor the plural,diminutive or in the variant zugodesmos).1 Two papyri from Egypt are of special interest. The relevant passage in one of these, a letter

Syossett,LongIsland Universityof Amsterdam

Some ghost facts from Achaemenid Babylonian texts The remarksbelow on UET 4 193 aim to correct the published accounts of that text in response to inquiries about its chronological implications. The long epigraphic comments are necessaryto explain what might otherwise seem to readers unfamiliar with cuneiform script to be a suspiciouslysharpdiscrepancyin interpretation. I take the occasion to append comments on two other 'ghost facts', a term meant as an analogy to 'ghost words'. The Evidence Cuneiform Texts of for the Date of Xerxes'Death The most exact known evidence for the date of Xerxes' death is the Babylonian astronomicaltext BM 32234, containing reports of lunar eclipses arrangedin eighteen year groups.1 The pertinent portion of the text, the beginning of column iv of the reverse, describesan eclipse on 5-6 June 465 BC,adding: IZII4( + X) Hi(?)-i(?)-air-4 DUMU4-S GAZ-Si him
Abu (=month V) (day) I4(+x) Xerxes' son killed

10 Lines

Ka'Trirlcav). Cf Reichel's reconstruction fig. 69, and also Wiesner (n. i) i6-r8. (acuTrp irrElTETaeSir

(n. I)

11 LSJ s.v. '3vyo68Caiov'etc. 12 P. Fayum 121, 5, ed. B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt, D. G. Hogarth (London go1900).
13

2 UET 4 =H. H. Figulla, Businessdocuments the New-Babylonian of Period, Ur Excavations, Texts, vol. iv (London 1949). Horn and Woods(9 n. 24) acknowledge translation UET 4 193supplied a of by of UET 4 (Journalof CuneiformStudies iv [1950] 188-I95) did not

The at Museum 1985 in unpublished. tabletwasdisplayed theBritish aspartof theexhibition Cometin History.' amindebted I to 'Halley's C. B. F. Walkerfor the text of the excerptgiven here.

and related texts (Providence 1955) xxxi, No. *I419 and still

Oppenheimwithout saying that OppenheimendorsedFigulla's of information. review reading thetext'schronological Oppenheim's

P. Fayum 115, 15.

commenton the chronological issue.

NOTES
193 and the earlier document to which it refers would imply that Xerxes was alive as much as four months after the date on which BM 32234 says that he was killed. The reading is, however, erroneous. UET 4 I93 belongs to a group of texts dated between the reigns of NebuchadnezzarII and Philip Arrhidaeus that constitute a family archive.3 The members of the family, including the brothersinvolved in UET 4 193, are identified as descendantsof an ancestor called 'the barber.' The ancestor's title, in Akkadian gallabu, is written throughout the texts of the archive with a Sumerogram, occasionally with a personal name
marker, mLU.SU.I.

197

context, the preservedtracesshown in the copy, and the normal usage of late Babylonian business documents: the three horizontal wedges shown in the copy after the break at the beginning of line 3 are not the end of the sign GAN (-) (that is, the Sumerogram for the month name Kislimu), but the end of the sign I (0) (that is, the last sign of the Sumerogram for the family namegallabu);the broken beginning of line 3 contained the beginning of the family name; the broken end of line 2, following 'sons of,' contained the brothers' patronym. Hence: mBa-la-tu "mSin-SES(2) [mdNin-a]-ZU-DIN-it
MES-MU U mBul-lut [DUMU.MESl [i mBA-

[Nina]zu-uballit, Balatu, Sin-ahhe-iddinand Bullut, sons of [IqTsa descendantof the Barber] in year the twenty-one of King Xerxes ... (made a sworn (2) [(break)]-ZU-DIN-it mBa-la-tu mdSin-SESagreement). MES-MU U mBul-lut rDUMU.MESl [(break)] Dr. Jeremy Black has collated the original tablet in mHi-i-ia-ar-su (3) [(break)]x ina MU.2I.KAM the Iraq Museum, finding it much deteriorated since LUGAL ... Figulla's copy was made. At the end of line 2, there [Nina]zu-uballit, Balatu, Sin-ahhe-iddinand Bullut, remainsonly a trace of the sign given by Figulla'scopy sons of [(break)] [(break)]x in year twenty-one of as DUMU ('son') and no trace at all of the following MES King Xerxes . .. (made a sworn agreement) (plural). At the beginning of line 3, nothing is clearly visible before ina MU.2I.KAM, and even the beginning of Figulla'smonth Kislimu can only result from interpret- the single horizontal wedge that indicates ina, 'in', is the incomplete sign that closes the break at the ing missing. The breaks at the end of line 2 and the beginning of line 3 as the end of the logogram for the beginning of line 3 correspond fairly well in length to month name. That is, Figulla read: the spaceusedin line 5 to write the patronym and family (3) [ina ITI.GA]Nina MU.2I.KAM mHii-i-ia-ar-4s name of the brothers. LUGAL In sum, there is not now on the original tablet, nor in Kislimu (=month IX), in year twenty-one of was there in Figulla's autograph, any support for the contention that UET 4 193 mentions Kislimu or any King Xerxes... It would be a lapse or an oddity to have the other month in Xerxes' twenty-first regnal year. The most reading of the tablet does not preposition (ina)between the month name and the year admitstraightforwardThis a month name. passagecannot be seriously number, as this restorationrequires.The normal way of consideredas evidence for Achaemenidchronology and such dates is intact in the following line: construing political history. ar-ki ina ITI.SU MU.I3.KAM mAr-tah-sa-as-u-su Of other cuneiform texts from the late years of LUGAL Xerxes' reign, A 23253, cited by Parker and Dubberstein (p. as an unpublished text documenting later, in Du'uzu (= month IV), year thirteenof King months 17) ten through twelve of Xerxes' twentieth regnal Artaxerxes (the brothers initiated the action that year, is not a Babylonian text, but an Achaemenid redistributedthe property). Elamite administrativeletter, published by Cameron, Furthermore, restoring the month name at the Persepolistreasurytablets (Chicago 1948) No. 75. A beginning of line 3 would leave only enough space for recently published Babylonian legal text dated in restoring the brothers'patronym at the end of line 2, in Xerxes' twenty-first regnal year is OECT Io I85 (at the space following the signs DUMU.MES, 'sons (of),' but Hursagkalama,day 27, month broken away).4 not enough space for restoring their family name (that is, their ancestor's professional title, 'barber'). The A Supposed to Reference RevoltsagainstOchos brothers would then be identified in full only on their second mention (line 5, with names, patronym, and Kuhrt (in Achaemenid historyi 149, with references) family name), while their first mention would be has already remarked that Unger's citation (Babylon abridged to names and patronym, again an implausible stylistic lapse. 4 OECT io=G. A differentrestorationof the broken ends of the lines, J. P. McEwan, Late Babylonian texts in the however, avoids these flaws and gives a more straight- Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts, vol. x forward reading of the text and a better fit with the (1984). For OECT Io 185 see S. Graziani, I TestiMesopotamici al datati
Universitario Orientaledi regnodi Serse, Suppl. 47 to Annali dell'Istituto Napoli 46 (1986) 102 f. no. 80. The text stipulates that a debt is to be repaidin the seventh month, implying that it was drafted earlierin the year. In OECT 10 326 (day 9, month i, year 2I), the ruler's name is not indicated, but for reasons of prosopography this text is probably also to be assigned to the last year of Xerxes' reign.

The only part of UET 4 193 that is germane to the Xerxes chronology is the first three and a half lines, referring to the earlier distribution of property. The beginnings and ends of these opening lines aredamaged. What was actually on the tablet, according to the published autograph, is:

sa-a]
(3)
[A mLU.SU].rI

ina

MU.2I.KAM

mHi-Si-ia-

ar-S

LUGAL ...

3 See G. Van Driel in Achaemenid and historyi: sources,structures synthesis, Proceedings of the Groningen 1983 Achaemenid History Workshop, ed. by H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Leiden 1987) I64-7.

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NOTES
part of his discussion of the Spartan strategy for the campaign (iv 8).1
... and the Lacedaimonians expectedthe Attic fleet from ... to Zacynthos come to the rescueand intended,if they had not to Pylos by that time, to block up the entrances the captured could not sail in and use it as an harbor,so that the Athenians extendsalongsidethe (The islandcalled Sphacteria anchorage. is harbor,and lies close to it: hencethe anchorage safeand the entrancesnarrow-the entranceby Pylos and the Athenian fortifications for givinga passage two shipsthroughthe channel, andthe entrance the mainland the othersidea passage on for by to then,theyintended blockup eightor nine.. .) Theseentrances to tightlywithships lyingparallel eachother,prowsto theenemy: and since they were frightenedthat the Athenians might use as across it, and to base,theyferried Sphacteria a military hoplites stationed othersalong the mainland. this plan,they thought, By the Athenians would find both the islandto be enemy-occupied andthe mainland, whichgavethemno chance landing(forthe of coastof Pylositself,outside entrance towards opensea, the and the is harborless, would give themno baseof operations help and to theirtroops): equally and wouldprobably able be theythemselves to capture the place by siege, without a sea-battleor any unnecessary danger-there wasno food in it, andit hadnot been for properly prepared a siege.This,then,wastheiragreed plan...

of Darius II Ochos,

[Berlin 1933] 318 n. 3) of the astronomical text VAT 4924, dated in the fifth year of Umasu (i.e., Ochos) must be corrected:the text has subsequentlybeen published, and its astronomicalcontents date it firmly to the reign observed that Unger's translation of the final line as 'angesichtsdes Aufstandes'and the reading on which it was based (anapan zi-hi) were erroneous. As Hermann Hunger tells me, the passage in question is a brief colophon that identifies the contents of the text as excerpted for study without reference to any revolt (Babylonian sihu) or other political circumstances. A Missing Textfrom the End of the Reign of Artaxerxes II The text accessioned by the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphiaas Kh2420 (now
ana amdri (IGI) nashi (ZI-hi) 419/I8
BC.

It should also be

Cambyses. A summary catalogue of the holdings of the Babylonian Section by Hilprechtand others attributesit (with a query) to the reign of Darius I. A collation of lines 4 f. establishesclearly that the text comes from the end of the reign of Artaxerxes II:
(4) ... ina
ITI.GUD

numbered CBS 1420) was published by Barton, AmericanJournal of Semitic Languages xvi (1899-1900) 67 no. 2. Barton (p. 65 n. 2) attributed it to the reign of

MU.45.[KAM] (5) mAr-tah-sat-su

LUGAL

(a debtor is to make a repayment at Babylon) in Ajaru (month II), year 45 of King Artaxerxes (II). cites a referencein a manuscriptof Hilprechtto Kh2541, an unpublishedtablet in Philadelphiadated in the fortyfifth regnal year of Artaxerxes II. The summary catalogue by Hilprecht and others, however, identifies
CBS 1541 (=Kh2 541) as a fragment of an Old Oelsner, Die Welt des Orients viii (1976) 315 n. I8

Although one would think this a clear and detailed geographic description,historianshave not yet found a location at Pylos for the harbor which satisfactorily matches it. Except for Grundy (whose lagoon harbor was discredited by Pritchett),2 all historians have identified Thucydides' harbor as the entire Navarino Bay (Figure I), despite the following and long recognized difficulties:(i) the south entranceto the bay is too wide and deep to be blocked by triremes, particularly by a Peloponnesianfleet which consisted of fewer than
60 of them (8.2, I3.I), and it is far too wide to be (8.6); (2) the entrances to the bay do not fit the 4:

described as allowing passage for only 8 or 9 of them width ratio enumerated in 8.6, and (3) the bay is too large to be considereda classicalharboror for its waters to be called sheltered.Furthermore,the Spartanstrategy for blocking the entrances to the harbor, which so sensiblyfits the limited capabilitiesof the Peloponnesian fleet, and which Thucydides mentions three times (8.5,

Babylonian tablet, and a note in the appropriatecabinet in the Babylonian Section indicates that this tablet has been 'missing since I909', shortly before the notorious 8.7, 13.4), cannot be implemented in the way he 'Hilprecht-Peters controversy', when the ownership describes if the bay with its southern entrance is the and whereabouts of some of the Philadelphia tablets harbor he means. This discrepancyrendersother parts of the text difficult to interpret or comprehend. The came into question. It is apparentthat the Hilprecht catalogue'sentry for naval battle of chapters13-14, which he says takesplace at CBS 154I refers to a different tablet from the one that in the harbor,and which will be reassessed the end of obscurein the absenceof a clear the Hilprecht manuscriptrefers to as Kh2 541, and it is this Note, is particularly thereforeprobablethat Hilprecht'smanuscriptrefersby and plausible idea of where and under what circuman erroneous number to the text already published but stances it occurred. Heretofore, scholars have either ignored these problems or explained them as products erroneously dated by Barton. of Thucydidean errors. MATTHEW W. STOLPER A preferablelocation for Thucydides'harborat Pylos OrientalInstitute has been overlooked. It is not without difficulties,but it Universityof Chicago

The Harbor at Pylos,

425 BC*

Thucydides' full descriptionof the harborat Pylos is

1 All Thucydidean references are from book iv unless otherwise noted, and all translations from Thucydides are from J. B. Wilson, and account Pylos 425 Bc, a historical topographical studyof Thucydides' of the campaign(Warminster, Wilts. 1979). 2 G. B. Grundy,JHS xvi (I896) I-5 . W. K. Pritchett, Studiesin ancientGreektopography (Berkeley 1965) 6-29. Pritchett's evaluation, i that in 425 the sandbarwas in existence and the lagoon could not have been a harbor, was also corroborated by William G. Loy and H. E. Wright, Jr., 'The Physical Setting', William A. McDonald and George R. Rapp, Jr. (edd.), The Minnesota Messenia expedition (Minneapolis 1972) 46.