A Year of Vengeance. Volume 1 A Year of Vengeance: Time, Narrative, and the Old Assyrian Trade

Despite siginificant advances in annual chronology, the Old Assyrian trade fundamentally lacked a regime of time at the level of the merchant’s commercial and personal activities. In this book, Stratford sets out to recapture time through narrative, drawing on the relationship between the two described by the philosopher Paul Ricouer. Investigating a possible case of revenge leads to weaving together more than a hundred mostly undated documents to form a narrative within the course of a single year of vengeance, including trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce. This process demonstrates relationships between document and material context, and time and narrative. Along the way, Old Assyrian commercial time and its tempos become more clear, leading to descriptions of the scale of the trade and the nature of Old Assyrian archives as they have survived. Ultimately, the Assyrians involved appear as the earliest historical individuals in world history. The treatment of Šalim-aḫum’s apparent revenge comprises a practicuum in historical interpretation in the ancient world of interest to practitioners and theoreticians of both the ancient world and world history. Preface 7 Contents 11 Abbreviations 15 Introduction 21 Chapter 1. Šalim-aḫum’s Revenge 21 Chapter 2. Structures of the Trade 41 Part 1: Narrative and Time 55 Chapter 3. Ilabrat-bāni’s Arrival 55 Chapter 4. A Scale of Time 76 Chapter 5. Šalim-aḫum and Ilabrat-bāni Make a Deal 94 Chapter 6. Puzur-Istar and Šalim-aḫum’s Gold 104 Chapter 7. Dān-Aššur’s Travels 119 Chapter 8. Seizing Ilabrat-bāni’s Goods 131 Part 2: Old Assyrian Time 147 Chapter 9. The Bulk Caravan Hiatus 147 Chapter 10. Tempo of Transport 166 Chapter 11. Tempo of Communication 181 Part 3: Narrative and Context 199 Chapter 12. Prodigal Son 199 Chapter 13. Pūšu-kēn’s Pressures 216 Chapter 14. A Joint Venture 235 Chapter 15. Disruptions in the Supply 246 Chapter 16. Vengeance of the Gods 269 Chapter 17. Pūšu-kēn’s Revenge? 292 Part 4: The Material Implications of Old Assyrian Commercial Time 307 Chapter 18. The Volume of Trade 307 Chapter 19. Archives and the Deformation of Time 334 Conclusion 353 Chapter 20. A Year of Vengeance 353 Appendix 1: Analytic Ledger of Šalim-aḫum’s Assets During the Year of Vengeance 364 Appendix 2: Temporal Ledger of Šalim-aḫum’s Assets During REL 82 373 Appendix 3: Initial Analysis of Pūšu-kēn’s reconstructed archive in relation to the Year of Vengeance and other periods 380 Bibliography 383 List of Figures 402 Keyword Index 403 Selective Index of Personal and Divine Names 407 Index of Geographical Places 413 Annotation Despite siginificant advances in annual chronology, the Old Assyrian trade fundamentally lacked a regime of time at the level of the merchant's commercial and personal activities. In this book, Stratford sets out to recapture time through narrative, drawing on the relationship between the two described by the philosopher Paul Ricouer. Investigating a possible case of revenge leads to weaving together more than a hundred mostly undated documents to form a narrative within the course of a single year of vengeance, including trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce. This process demonstrates relationships between document and material context, and time and narrative. Along the way, Old Assyrian commercial time and its tempos become more clear, leading to descriptions of the scale of the trade and the nature of Old Assyrian archives as they have survived. Ultimately, the Assyrians involved appear as the earliest historical individuals in world history. The treatment of Salim-aum's apparent revenge comprises a practicuum in historical interpretation in the ancient world of interest to practitioners and theoreticians of both the ancient world and world history Despite siginificant advances in annual chronology, the Old Assyrian trade fundamentally lacked a regime of time at the level of the merchant's commercial and personal activities. In this book, Stratford sets out to recapture time through narrative, drawing on the relationship between the two described by the philosopher Paul Ricouer. Investigating a possible case of revenge leads to weaving together more than a hundred mostly undated documents to form a narrative within the course of a single year of vengeance, including trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce. This process demonstrates relationships between document and material context, and time and narrative. Along the way, Old Assyrian commercial time and its tempos become more clear, leading to descriptions of the scale of the trade and the nature of Old Assyrian archives as they have survived. Ultimately, the Assyrians involved appear as the earliest historical individuals in world history. The treatment of Šalim-aet#7723;um's apparent revenge comprises a practicuum in historical interpretation in the ancient world of interest to practitioners and theoreticians of both the ancient world and world history Despite siginificant advances in annual chronology, the Old Assyrian trade fundamentally lacked a regime of time at the level of the merchant's commercial and personal activities. In this book, Stratford sets out to recapture time through narrative, drawing on the relationship between the two described by the philosopher Paul Ricouer. Investigating a possible case of revenge leads to weaving together more than a hundred mostly undated documents to form a narrative within the course of a single year of vengeance, including trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce. This process demonstrates relationships between document and material context, and time and narrative. Along the way, Old Assyrian commercial time and its tempos become more clear, leading to descriptions of the scale of the trade and the nature of Old Assyrian archives as they have survived. Ultimately, the Assyrians involved appear as the earliest historical individuals in world history. The treatment of Salim-ahum's apparent revenge comprises a practicuum in historical interpretation in the ancient world of interest to practitioners and theoreticians of both the ancient world and world history Despite significant advances in annual chronology, the Old Assyrian trade fundamentally lacked a regime of time at the level of the merchant's commercial and personal activities. In this book, Stratford sets out to recapture time through narrative, drawing on the relationship between the two described by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Investigating a possible case of revenge leads to weaving together more than a hundred mostly undated documents to form a narrative within the course of a single year of vengeance, including trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce. This process demonstrates relationships between document and material context, and time and narrative The early second-millennium Assyrian trading colony in Anatolia at Kltepe has yielded a wealth of textual information. This volume focuses on documents pertaining to a series of events that took place in one year. They reveal a tapestry of trade disruptions, illnesses, and commerce, as well as illuminate the relationships between texts and their material context, between narrative and time, and between economic forces and individual agency. V.1. Time, Narrative, And The Old Assyrian Trade. Edward Stratford. Revision And Expansion Of Author's Dissertation (ph.d.)--university Of Chicago, 2010. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.