Desertion during the Old Babylonian period: An irregular or frequent practice? Practical analysis based on the texts from the Mari and the Šemšāra archives

Authors

  • Patricia Bou Pérez Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, Archéorient, Université Lumière Lyon 2
  • María Teresa Ventura Herrera Arqueóloga y divulgadora

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v7i14.428

Keywords:

Deserter, pāṭerum, Šemšāra, Mari, archives, Old Babylonian period

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the image and the presence of deserters in the armies of the Old Babylonian period (c. XX – XVI cal. B.C.E.), somewhat underrepresented in the Akkadian public texts, as public inscriptions or literary texts. As an example, we can evoke the Epic of Gilgameš, a text dating from an older period but that we can classify as a timeless document, because it is present in all the periods since its literary creation. If we consider that the aim of these societies was to show to foreigners that they were invulnerable and powerful, we can then consider this characteristic of these sources as normal and as a guideline. Therefore, to achieve the objectives of this paper, we will analyse different documents from the royal archives of Mari (Tell Hariri) and from the šemšāra archives (Tell šemšāra), which correspond to letters sent by the upper ranks of the armies, like Baḫdî-Lîm, and the kings, like Samsî-Addu or Kuwari. We will expose all these texts translated from Akkadian to Spanish, in order to provide a better approximation to them; also, we will offer its corresponding transcription. However, before proceeding to expose the subject from the selected documents, we have considered opportune to include a brief historic context of the Old Babylonian period and a concise summary of the two archives from which the tablets come; furthermore, we have decided to do an analysis of all the Akkadian words which were used to refer the desertion or the deserter. With all of this, we intend to achieve a better comprehension of both selected documents and the representation of the desertion and the deserter. The final purpose of all these analysis is to prove that desertion was a regular practice within the irregularity with which was represented in the Old Babylonian sources.             

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Author Biographies

  • Patricia Bou Pérez, Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, Archéorient, Université Lumière Lyon 2

    Patricia Bou Pérez, graduada en arqueología por la “Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona” y máster en “Mondes Anciens – Assyriologie” por la “Université Lumière Lyon II”. Actualmente es doctoranda en asiriología en la Université Lumière Lyon 2 y en la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Forma parte del laboratorio de investigación “Archéorient” en la “Maison de L’Orient et de la Méditerranée”, en la Université Lumière Lyon 2. Su tesis doctoral se centra en el estudio de la vida cotidiana de los soldados en época paleobabilónica a partir de los corpus de tablillas cuneiformes, objeto de estudio que queda enmarcado en la denominada “New Military History”.

  • María Teresa Ventura Herrera, Arqueóloga y divulgadora

    María Teresa Ventura Herrera, graduada en arqueología por la “Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona” y máster en “Arqueología y Patrimonio Virtual: Documentación, Preservación y Difusión del Patrimonio Cultural” por la “Sociedad Española de Arqueología Virtual”. Su trabajo de fin de máster se centró en la narrativa virtual como herramienta para el cambio de paradigma de la difusión de la historia militar en el Próximo Oriente antiguo mediante la revisión de la historiografía relativa a este campo de estudio.

References

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Published

2018-07-11

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 14 (2018): La lógica de la guerra “irregular” en la Antigüedad

Section

Dossier

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How to Cite

Desertion during the Old Babylonian period: An irregular or frequent practice? Practical analysis based on the texts from the Mari and the Šemšāra archives. (2018). Revista Universitaria De Historia Militar, 7(14). https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v7i14.428

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