Syria-Palestine in The Late Bronze Age: An Anthropology of Politics and Power (Copenhagen International Seminar) by Emanuel Pfoh

Author:Emanuel Pfoh [Pfoh, Emanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317392293
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-02-19T08:00:00+00:00

5.2. On Hittite ‘vassalage’

The image of a feudal order in several of the main societies of the ancient Near East, as we have seen, had a general acceptance to some degree among scholars towards the mid-twentieth century. In the particular case of the kingdom of atti, in effect, the existence of a feudal-like relation in the internal organisation seemed to be confirmed, especially by the presence of a powerful king, to whom officials had to swear loyalty and who would grant lands in return and who also would replicate this practice towards the exterior of the polity, when a conquered king had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Hittite king as a proper means of political subordination.

A classical formulation of Hittite (and Near Eastern) feudalism is provided by K. Ebeling in his entry ‘Feudalismus’ in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie from 1971:

Also in Hatti the social formation can be characterised as feudal. On the top, there is the king and the aristocracy (landowners and court dignitaries, Hit. panku). The latter stand before the king as in a relation between a feudatory and a feudal lord, although with rights. In the following steps of the state pyramid one finds the free[men] (merchants and priests), half-free [men] (warriors, craftsmen and peasants) and finally the slaves (the state administration [sic!]).12

Nonetheless, the idea of a Hittite feudalism must be revised and probably discarded as an interpretative possibility. I have advanced some of the reasons for setting aside the feudal model for the Levant some paragraphs above; but one should also consider serious objections from the arrangement of medieval feudal relations in Europe. Already half a century ago, the French medievalist R. Boutruche (1968) had observed that Hittite treaties had in principle a certain similitude with Euro-Franc feudal-vassal bonds. But such bonds did not imply the particularities of the western European feudal concession, first of all because the lord-vassal bond was a private affair in feudalism, while in atti the treaty with foreign subjects was a public political matter. Further, on legal grounds, there was legislation on the nature of the feudal order, between lords and vassals, and each party could have appealed to it in a dispute. This did not exist in the Hittite empire, as the legal terms of the socio-political transaction represented by the treaty were actually personal: those of the Hittite king. Further, as another notable medievalist, M. Bloch, asserted in his monumental work Feudal Society (Bloch 1989: 172):

Vassal homage was a genuine contract and a bilateral one. If the lord failed to fulfil his engagements he lost his rights. Transferred, as was inevitable, to the political sphere – since the principal subjects of the king were at the same time his vassals – this idea was to have a far-reaching influence, all the more so because on this ground it was reinforced by the very ancient notions which held the king responsible in a mystical way for the welfare of his subjects and deserving of punishment in the event of public calamity.

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