Weavers, Scribes, and Kings by Amanda H. Podany;

Author:Amanda H. Podany; [Podany;, Amanda H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190059040
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ilim-ilimma: A Charioteer and Lender at Alalakh

The fifteenth century bce was therefore a time of change, and a time when wars frequently disrupted the lives of ancient Near Eastern peoples, especially in the Levant. Each of the kingdoms developed new strategies to employ in their battles against their neighbors. For the kings of Mittani, one approach was to assign their citizens to well-defined social classes and to demand different kinds of state service from the members of each class. This was not an old tradition in the region of Alalakh. There is no sign of it before the kings of Mittani took over there. But soon after Alalakh had been captured and brought into the kingdom of Mittani, the government set about organizing its population into classes.17

This brings us back to Ilim-ilimma. The classes at Alalakh had been established before his lifetime, and we know that he was a member of a social class called the maryanni. This meant that, in times of war, he would have served as a chariot warrior.

Ilim-ilimma’s name appeared on a list of thirty-four maryanni men, who represented the city’s elite.18 The list was one of many census records preserved in the palace at Alalakh that recorded people’s names along with their social classes. Although this preoccupation with social class was a new phenomenon, it was one that seems to have spread right across Mittani. Administrations in earlier Near Eastern kingdoms had little interest in defining people by social class. Although in his laws Hammurabi had made some distinctions among free individuals between a higher class (the awilums) and a lower class of commoners, in other contexts these terms were rarely used in association with actual named people. It’s not even clear how, or on what occasions, the two classes were distinguished in Old Babylonian times. In Mittani, though, one’s social class was an important part of one’s identity.

The four classes listed on the census records in Alalakh, and in another Mittanian town called Nuzi far to the east, were as follows. The maryanni—men like Ilim-ilimma—comprised the elite in society. The other classes were known as the “released ones”; “doers of ilku service” or “peasants”; and “tenants” or “poor.”

According to historian Eva von Dassow, the maryanni were distinguished from the rest of the society by their right to fight in chariots and their exemption from corvée labor duties, such as work on state building projects.19 The term maryanni comes from a borrowed Indo-Aryan word, márya, which meant “(young) man.” (The -nni at the end was a Hurrian word ending.) But to the east in Nuzi, the census takers did not use this word. They called men of this class “chariot riders,” using an Akkadian term,20 which confirms that chariot fighting was a distinguishing feature of men in this class in both cities. Presumably the same was true across Mittani.

The “released” individuals were artisans along with specialists in such fields as horse training. They worked for the great institutions and for the maryanni. These people merited

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