Mechanisms of communication in an ancient empire: The correspondence between the king of Assyria and his magnates in the 8th century BC

古代帝国的通讯机制：公元前8世纪亚述国王与其权贵之间的通信

• 批准号: AH/F016581/1
• 负责人: Karen Radner
• 金额: $ 56.05万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF016581%2F1
• 关键词: Mechanisms; communication; ancient; empire; correspondence

How did ancient empires cohere? What roles did long-distance communication play in that coherence? How did long-distance communication work, structurally and socially? The aim of the project is to address these questions for the Assyrian Empire in the period between 721 and 705 BC, the reign of Sargon II when Assyria had been successfully transformed into the first large empire to exercise hegemony over the Old World core system. Assyria's success and stability owed much to innovations in administrative technology which afforded the control of a vast geographical horizon: Yet the mechanics of organization of the Assyrian Empire have found little attention beyond the study of the king's role. A shift of focus away from the monarch onto the second level of imperial control, i.e. the provincial governors to whom the king delegated governing power on a local level, will allow a new understanding of the set-up of the Assyrian empire to be reconstructed.We will analyse the mechanisms of communication between the king and his immediate subordinates in two distinct and complementary ways. On the one hand, using the methods developed in the field of linguistic pragmatics, the different forms of the Assyrian language employed by the king and his subordinates, respectively, will be compared and contrasted, including a study of letter writing etiquette and of notions of politeness and appropriateness. On the other hand, we will apply a structural analysis of the second level of control, aiming to establish its level and nature in different parts of the empire by differentiating between the provinces inside Assyria's natural boundaries, the new provinces established by Sargon's immediate predecessors and his own additions. We will discuss the practicalities of and motives for long-distance communication, with an awareness for time and timing, as well as the strict conventions governing and complicating communication with the king.Our research will be based on a thorough analysis of c. 1200 surviving letters of the correspondence of Sargon II, king of Assyria (r. 721-705 BC), with his governors and magnates. These letters are clay tablets inscribed with the cuneiform script. They were often carried over vast distances to reach their recipient; stored in the royal archives, they survived the destruction of the palaces in Nineveh and Nimrud at the end of the 7th century BC and are today kept in the British Museum.We will convert a legacy database containing transliterations of Sargon's correspondence into an XML database using open, standards-based encoding, with a twofold purpose: Firstly, to serve as the project's research database, and ultimately, supplemented by translations, commentaries and bibliographies, to make the material freely accessible to the general public as a website that will be also used as a research tool by researchers. The project team will comprise Dr Karen Radner, an expert on the Assyrian Empire, as the principal investigator and Dr Mikko Luukko, a specialist in the Neo-Assyrian language with a strong background in linguistics, as researcher. Both Radner and Luukko have been closely associated with the institution providing the legacy database, the Helsinki Corpus of Neo-Assyrian Texts project, since joining the project staff in 1997, as a post-doc researcher and a research assistant, respectively. The project partner, Professor Steve Tinney, is the driving force behind the standard-setting Cuneiform Digital Library consortium in the USA. A project student will investigate the historical geography of the Assyrian Empire during the reign of Sargon II.

古代帝国是如何凝聚在一起的？远距离通信在这种一致性中扮演了什么角色？远距离通信在结构和社会上是如何运作的？该项目的目的是为公元前721年至公元前705年期间的亚述帝国解决这些问题，当时是萨尔贡二世统治时期，亚述成功地转变为第一个在旧世界核心体系中行使霸权的大帝国。亚述的成功和稳定在很大程度上归功于管理技术的创新，这些技术提供了对广阔地理范围的控制。然而，除了对国王角色的研究之外，亚述帝国的组织机制很少受到关注。将焦点从君主转移到帝国控制的第二个层面，即国王在地方层面上授权的省长，将使人们对亚述帝国的建立有一个新的理解。我们将以两种截然不同的互补方式分析国王和他的直接下属之间的沟通机制。一方面，使用语言语用学领域发展起来的方法，将对国王和他的下属分别使用的不同形式的亚述语言进行比较和对比，包括对写信礼仪和礼貌和适当性概念的研究。另一方面，我们将对第二级控制进行结构分析，旨在通过区分亚述自然边界内的行省、萨尔贡的前任建立的新行省和他自己的新行省，来确定其在帝国不同地区的水平和性质。我们将讨论远程通信的实用性和动机，时间和时机的意识，以及严格的惯例管理和复杂的通信与国王。我们的研究将基于对大约1200封现存的亚述国王萨尔贡二世（公元前721-705年）与他的总督和权臣的通信信件的彻底分析。这些字母是用楔形文字刻在泥板上的。它们经常被运送到很远的地方才能到达收件人那里；它们被保存在皇家档案馆中，在公元前7世纪末尼尼微和尼姆鲁德的宫殿被毁后幸存下来，现在保存在大英博物馆。我们将使用开放的、基于标准的编码将包含Sargon信件音译的遗留数据库转换为XML数据库，有两个目的：首先，作为该项目的研究数据库，最终，通过翻译、评论和参考书目的补充，使这些材料作为一个网站免费向公众开放，也将被研究人员用作研究工具。项目团队将由研究亚述帝国的专家Karen Radner博士担任首席研究员，并由具有深厚语言学背景的新亚述语言专家Mikko Luukko博士担任研究员。Radner和Luukko自1997年加入赫尔辛基新亚述文本语料库项目以来，一直与提供遗产数据库的机构密切相关，分别担任博士后研究员和研究助理。项目合作伙伴Steve Tinney教授是美国楔形文字数字图书馆联盟标准制定的推动者。项目学生将调查萨尔贡二世统治时期亚述帝国的历史地理。

项目成果

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran

古代伊朗牛津手册

• 发表时间: 2013
• 作者: Karen Radner

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: (10,000-323 BCE)

古代安纳托利亚牛津手册：（公元前 10,000-323 年）

• 发表时间: 2011
• 作者: Karen Radner

Between the Cultures: The Central Tigris Region in Mesopotamia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium BC

文化之间：公元前三千年至一世纪的美索不达米亚中部底格里斯地区

• 发表时间: 2011
• 作者: Karen Radner

Biainili-Urartu

比亚尼利-乌拉尔图

• 发表时间: 2012
• 作者: Karen Radner

The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture

牛津楔形文字文化手册

• 发表时间: 2011
• 作者: Karen Radner