INQUIRY ABOUT THE NINTH-CENTURY COMMON USE OF IRON IN ASSYRIA

Introduction
In the modern world iron is a very common material. Iron ore can be found in many places all over the world; iron and steel can be produced with whatever strength and ductility are needed. This, however, was not always the case. In the Near Eastern Bronze Age (3000 BC to 1200 BC1) the material was already known, but probably only as a by-product of copper, of which the ore contained iron.2 Therefore it was scarce, expensive and used only for luxury goods, not for utensils. This changed in the twelfth century, when the use of iron as a material for weapons and tools started to grow,3 at first in areas where iron ore was found, soon followed by regions of which the soil did not contain ores. In one of these regions, northern Mesopotamia, the kingdom of Assyria arose at the end of the second millennium. To acquire metals like gold, silver, bronze and iron, the Assyrians bought them from other peoples; their armies took them as booty after a conquest, and their kings demanded them as tribute from subject peoples.4 This caused the presence and use of iron in Assyria to grow at a steady pace in the first part of the first millennium.
Some scholars believe that already as early as the ninth century iron was an ordinary metal for the Assyrians. Moorey, who is supported by Haarer5 and Reiter6, states: "It was probably in the course of the ninth century in Assyria that iron became relatively common."7 Four arguments, from texts as well as from archaeological finds, are used by these authors to substantiate their hypothesis. This article will examine this hypothesis by evaluating all four arguments.

Textual arguments for ninth-century common use of iron
Two arguments for a ninth-century common use of iron come from the Assyrian royal inscriptions. Moorey argues that: "Under Šalmaneser III, for the first time, iron was listed among metals obtained 'without number' and thereafter, until available records cease in the earlier seventh century BC, very considerable quantities of iron are recorded." 8 The first argument concerns the Neo-Assyrian king Šalmaneser III (858-824), who indeed in one inscription used the term ana la mani, uncountable, to describe iron that was received from the Neo-Hittite state Patina. It was part of a tribute that contained an uncountable quantity not only of iron, but also of silver, gold, tin, bronze, and ivory.9 Further investigation of the royal inscriptions reveals that other kings also used the expression ana la mani to indicate the dimensions of enemies10 or booty.11 The expression seems to have been used for other reasons than to specify the actual quantities of materials or objects, for instance to impress the reader or to disguise the fact that the enemy or tribute was not counted precisely.
The second argument given by Moorey, concerning the very considerable quantities of iron immediately after Šalmaneser´s reign, points to an inscription of Adad-Narari III (810-783). According to this Neo-Assyrian king a tribute of five thousand talents (more than 150,000 kilograms) of iron among other things was paid by the city of Damascus. However, there is a second text about the same event, in which the weight of the iron is two thousand talents and a third text (unfortunately partly illegible) where a possible weight of sixty talents is mentioned.12 On top of that, to this same tribute belonged 2,300 or two thousand talents of silver, whereas not even fifty years earlier Šalmaneser had received only one hundred talents of silver.13 These differences and uncertainties make it impossible to take this huge quantity of five thousand talents of iron for granted.

Archaeological arguments for ninth-century common use of iron
Two archaeologically based arguments for a ninth-century common use of iron are proposed by Haarer. The first argument comes from research done by Pigott and concerns Hasanlu.14 This independent city, east of Assyria, was probably destroyed by the Urartians. In a destruction layer dated around 800, more than two thousand iron artefacts were found, most of which were weapons: arrowheads, spearheads, knives and swords that had been used in the preceding siege.15 It is, however, not clear which party had used these weapons: the defenders, the aggressors or both. They might even have belonged to an Assyrian army that had come to the aid of Hasanlu or had been stationed there, as Pigott suggested, but this is only based on a very weak link consisting of inscriptions, non-iron artefacts and pottery, proving contemporaneous Assyrian influence on Hasanlu.16 Because no direct connection was made between the Assyrians and the iron utensils in Hasanlu, the archaeological finds cannot prove that the iron found in Hasanlu had been brought there by the Assyrians, nor that the Assyrians had adopted the iron technology from Hasanlu.
The most powerful argument for the commonness of iron in the ninth century would be the finds of iron in Assyria itself, which is Haarer´s second argument. He mentions finds from the ninth, eighth and seventh century, based on a publication of Curtis et al.17 This publication, however, does not mention any finds of iron in Assyria from the ninth century, and only twice the authors refer to a find from the eighth century.  The first reference is an enormous quantity of 160.000 kilograms of iron, found in a room in the palace of Sargon II (721-705) in Dur-Šarrukin.18 Sargon had built this city as his new capital; it was finished in 706, a year before the king's death. Soon after its inauguration, the city was deserted again by the new king; what happened to Dur-Šarrukin after the desertion is unknown. The iron found in the storage room must have been at its earliest from the very end of the eighth century, but can very well have been from the seventh century.
The second eighth-century find of iron in Assyria mentioned by Curtis et al.19  is from Aššur, another capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire. Archaeologists found three ploughshares, sixteen sickle blades, three hoes and thirty-six knives, in a context in which again it was not possible to distinguish between the eighth and the seventh century.20  

Conclusion
The hypothesis that iron was a common material in Assyria from the ninth century onwards, which is endorsed by several scholars, is based on four arguments. Evaluation of these arguments has shown that there is ambiguity and indistinctness in all four. Therefore, until new arguments will be given, this hypothesis has not been proved to be correct.

Bibliography
Curtis, J.E./T.S. Wheeler/J.D. Muhly/R.Maddin 1979, 'Neo-Assyrian Ironworking  Technology', in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 123, no. 6,  369-390.
Grayson, A.K. 1987, Assyrian Rulers of the third and second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC),  Toronto, Buffalo, London.
Grayson, A.K. 1991, Assyrian Rulers of the Early first Millennium BC I (1114-859 BC),  Toronto/Buffalo/London.
Grayson, A.K. 1996, Assyrian Rulers of the Early first Millennium BC II (858-745 BC),  Toronto/Buffalo/London.
Haarer, P. 2001, 'Problematising the Transition from Bronze to Iron', in: Shortland, A.J. (ed.), The social context of technological change, Egypt and the Near East 1650-1550  BC (conference 12-14 september 2000), Oxford, chapter 14, 255-273.
Moorey, P.R.S. 1994, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries, Oxford.
Pigott, V.C. 1989, 'The Emergence of Iron Use at Hasanlu', in: Expedition (the Bulletin of the  University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania), 31.2/3, 67-79.
Pleiner, R. / J.K. Bjorkman 1974, 'The assyrian Iron Age. The History of Iron in the Assyrian  Civilization', in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 118, no. 3,  283-313.
Reiter, K. 1997, Die Metalle im Alten Orient, Münster.
Stech-Wheeler, T./J.D. Muhly/K.R. Maxwell-Hyslop/R. Maddin 1981, 'Iron at Taanach and  Early Iron Metallurgy in the Eastern Mediterranean', in: American Journal of  Archaeology, vol. 85, no. 3, 245-268.

















1 All dates mentioned in this article are BC.
2 Moorey 1994, 279-280.
3 Stech-Wheeler, Muhly, Maxwell/Hyslop, Maddin, 1981, 245-256.
4 For booty and tribute see the Assyrian royal inscriptions, for example Grayson 1991, 176 (text 5, line 100); 177 (text 5, line 107); 193-223 (text 1, column i, line 84, column ii, line 122 and column iii, lines 66 and 74) and Grayson 1996, 18 (text 2, column ii, lines 22, 25 and 28).
5 Haarer 2001, 266.
6 Reiter 1997, 348.
7 Moorey 1994, 290.
8 Moorey 1994, 290.
9 Grayson 1996, 81-82 (text 16, lines 268-286) and 69 (text 14, black obelisk, lines 146-156).
10 Grayson 1987, 184 (text 1, line 69); Grayson 1991, 88 (text 1, line 10).
11 Grayson 1991, 14 (text 1, column i, line 84), 134 (tekst 1, line 44) and 173 (text 5, line 40).
12 Pleiner, Bjorkman 1974, 292-293. For 5000 talents of iron see Grayson 1996, 213 (text 8, line 19); for 2000 talents of iron see Grayson 1996, 211 (text 7, line 6).
13 For the silver Adad-Narari III received see Grayson 1996, 213 (text 8, line 19) and 211 (text 7, line 6). For the silver of Šalmaneser III see Grayson 1996, 18 (text 2, column ii, lines 22-24).
14 Haarer 2001, 266, based on Pigott 1989, 74-78.
15 Pigott 1989, 67-73.
16 Pigott 1989, 76.
17 Haarer 2001, 266; Curtis, Wheeler, Muhly, Maddin 1979, 382-384.
18 Curtis, Wheeler, Muhly, Maddin 1979, 382.
19 Curtis, Wheeler, Muhly, Maddin 1979, 382-384.
20 Curtis, Wheeler, Muhly, Maddin 1979, 382.