Talk:Old Assyrian period

Massive Clean-Up
Over these past six months or so I have been carefully adding, editing, removing, and organizing the various sections and subsections of this article. I will most likely continue doing so over the next few months as well. If you disagree with any of my edits, please discuss here.

— SomeGuyWhoRandomlyEdits (talk) 04:47, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate your content edits, but as I explained on your talk page, you really must pay attention to the Manual of Style. Please avoid over-linking, use standard English orthography, use the Wikipedia style for section headings (WP:HEAD), do not italicize the names of people and places, etc. Thank you. Ground Zero &#124; t 11:11, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

MOS:ROMANIZATION says "For foreign names, phrases, and words generally, adopt the spellings most commonly used in English-language references for the article, unless those spellings are idiosyncratic or obsolete." Ground Zero &#124; t 11:47, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

This article needs substantial professional editing. Hammurabi is dated after Shamsuiluna his successor. The article needs to pick a chronology and stick with it, and specify what chronology it is and give a reason. It is also otherwise confusing, asserting an Old Assyrian empire over Egypt and eastern "Lybia" which did not exist. I appreciate that last year a cleanup was under way, but the current state is painful to read. Perhaps an Assyriologist can be persuaded to re-edit it, because it is an important piece of history. 2602:306:3859:2530:659E:DE21:DC5C:A670 (talk) 22:49, 8 April 2017 (UTC) Bruce Williams, Chicago

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Requested move 20 December 2021

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as to the first proposal, no consensus as to the second. After much-extended time for discussion, there is a clear consensus to move Old Assyrian Empire to Old Assyrian period, but discussion of Middle Assyrian Empire has yielded no clear outcome. This is perhaps best revisited individually at a later time. BD2412 T 01:27, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

– I'm mainly concerned about the title "Old Assyrian Empire" as academic consensus is that Assyria prior to the time of the Ashur-uballit I in the 14th century BC (i.e. Middle Assyrian period) was little more than a city-state (see Radner 2015, p. 3 for instance); Shamshi-Adad I's brief empire is the only exception but arguably this was not an Assyrian empire per se. Google Ngrams also demonstrates that "Old Assyrian period" is vastly more common than "Old Assyrian Empire" (see here) which means that this should be the title per WP:COMMONNAME. If I search for "Old Assyrian period" on Google Scholar I get 1940 hits, but if I search for "Old Assyrian Empire" I get only 283.
 * Old Assyrian Empire → Old Assyrian period
 * Middle Assyrian Empire → Middle Assyrian period

Google Ngrams also shows "Middle Assyrian period" being vastly more common than "Middle Assyrian Empire" (see here), which is why I'm proposing to move that as well, again per WP:COMMONNAME. On Google Scholar, "Middle Assyrian Empire" gives me 446 hits and "Middle Assyrian period" gives me 2070 hits. The only phase of Assyrian history where "empire" is more common than "period" is the Neo-Assyrian Empire (see here), so that one should be kept where it is. Ichthyovenator (talk) 09:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * To clarify my own position in light of the discussion below, I prefer Old Assyrian period but I'm also fine with Old Assyria in case the consensus shifts to that (though it's a bit of a misnomer since Assyria was only a city-state at this time). I also prefer Middle Assyrian period on the basis of WP:COMMONNAME, though Middle Assyria, Middle Assyrian Empire and Middle Assyrian Kingdom are not without merit as titles. Ichthyovenator (talk) 12:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. This article is a complete mess and probably should be zeroed out and started over. The Old Assyrian thing, whatever it was, ran maybe 2000-1800 BC/BCE, not back to the dawn of time. And no it was not an empire and arguably not even a kingdom. It really only needs a few paragraphs. We went thru a period in the aNE when some IP editors were spinning a fictional narrative that the 3rd millennium Assyrians were a mighty empire akin to the Akkadian Empire. Not. So the whole "old assyrian empire" was spun up in that cause. Tragic. The middle assyrians actually had real kings at least thought certainly empire is pushing it.Ploversegg (talk) 15:13, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * For the record I hope to overhaul the articles on the Early and Old periods eventually — at this moment both are quite messy as you say and contain a lot of WP:OR while omitting a lot of actual info. Ichthyovenator (talk) 17:19, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Came back to say my yes vote also applies to the Middle period. And I will add that almost all of what we know about the Old period comes from the trading network, which is already well covered in Kültepe and Karum (trade post). Aside - it is interesting that the assyrians totally bought into the AE thing, even naming two of their kings Sargon and Naram Sin, meanwhile the Sumerians were like the AE never happened.Ploversegg (talk) 16:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good point about the overblown claims of "Empire", but in principle I am a bit concerned about entirely eliminating an ancient city-state (however smallish, centering around Assur) and replacing it by a time period (the proposal above "Old Assyrian Empire" > "Old Assyrian period"). Could the titles "Old Assyria" and "Middle Assyria", or "Ancient Assur" and "Middle Assur" do the trick, by retaining a geo-political nuance? This author has the following segmentation, but I don't know if this is mainstream or generally acceptable:
 * HISTORY OF ASSYRIA:
 * Old Assyria I ( OA I ) 2000–1814 BCE
 * Old Assyria II ( OA II ) 1814-1762 BCE
 * Middle Assyria ( MA ) 1353-1057 BCE
 * Late Assyria ( LA ) 934-612 [= Neo-Assyrian Empire]
 * We could therefore have three articles: Old Assyria, Middle Assyria, and Neo-Assyrian Empire.
 * पाटलिपुत्र Pat  (talk) 16:49, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * We'd still include that it was a city-state in the lead presumably but I see what you mean. I believe the designations with "period" are the most common but I'm not opposed to Old Assyria and Middle Assyria either. Ichthyovenator (talk) 17:19, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * OA and OA vs period, I'm fine with either way. OA II is new for me. Is this what they used to (and sometime still do) call the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia under Šamši-Adad? Minor semantics I guess.Ploversegg (talk) 17:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know what date scheme the author linked above uses but "Old Assyria II" seems to roughly line up with Shamshi-Adad and Ishme-Dagan; in any case I don't think we need distinct articles on OA I and OA II (if those are used outside this work) since the period as a whole already suffers from fewer sources than later times. Surveying some of the books I own Radner (2015) does not divide Assyrian history at all, Van De Mieroop (2016) uses "Old Assyrian period" and "Middle Assyrian period" and Frahm (2017) also uses "period" and divides into "Old", "Middle" and "Neo-". Frahm also refers to (on p. 6) the 8th and 7th centuries BC as "Assyria's imperial period", suggesting that it was not an empire before Neo-Assyrian times.
 * To reiterate I'm fine with either Old Assyria or Old Assyrian period (same goes for middle). Ichthyovenator (talk) 20:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Oddly, I am in the middle of reading this which seems to run OA down to 1700.Ploversegg (talk) 21:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * This particular source appears to date the later phase of the Old Assyrian trade at Tell Leilan to 1800–1700 BC, not the entire period, unless I'm mistaken. Ichthyovenator (talk) 21:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * True. That will teach me to finish reading an article before I post a link to it!Ploversegg (talk) 21:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to support the first and oppose the second on the basis of Bleda Düring's The Imperialisation of Assyria. He uses "Old Assyrian period" and "Middle Assyrian Empire", while explicitly rejecting the "Old Assyrian Empire". Srnec (talk) 01:49, 21 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Having briefly pondered this, I could live with MA Kingdom. We have a Hittite Kingdom and a Kingdom of Mitanni. Of course the Kassites, more or less equivalent to the MA don't even get that. OA is fine but if the consensus is MAK I can roll with that. Don't get me started about the "first babylonian empire".Ploversegg (talk) 23:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I would prefer "Old Assyria", precisely because it is less specific than "Old Assyrian period" or "Old Assyrian kingdom". Either of the latter implicitly focuses on one aspect (namely the timing or the politics), even though all of these remain subject to some debate (i.e. what constitutes the "period" or what kind of political system was in use?). Applodion (talk) 13:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * And Yes on changing the articles to OA period / MA period, although with the caveat (see my comment below) that we are probably slightly changing the potential scope of these articles. But that might not be a bad thing... Zoeperkoe (talk) 14:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support move of OAE to Old Assyrian period, which seems perfectly sound. I am unsure about moving MAE to Middle period but would still give it weak support per what appears to be somewhat common usage. Aza24 (talk) 09:16, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
 * just to be clear, by "Support OAE" do you mean that you support the proposed move of that title, or that you support the current title? BD2412  T 00:42, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah thanks, I've clarified above Aza24 (talk) 00:54, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Perfect, thanks. BD2412  T 01:21, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Support I would have probably "moved" the content of the article myself by simply cutting the content from the article for the Old Assyrian Empire to that of the Old Assyrian period, but was uncertain as how to go about it several years after my half-assed attempt to get the ball rolling for this topic by cutting out large chunks out of the article for Assyria (among several other Assyria-related articles) back in 2016.--SomeGuyWhoRandomlyEdits (talk) 11:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment on "empire" vs "period"
Comment: "empire" and "period" are different concepts, and can be used in different ways. The term "Middle Assyrian Empire" (probably) always refers to the state (apart from the question whether something should be called an empire at all, but the same would apply if this page was called Middle Assyrian state), whereas "Middle Assyrian period" refers to the time period in which this state existed. Thus, from an archaeological perspective, scholars will say "this pot dates to the Middle Assyrian period", and this dating could even be used outside of the area where the state actually existed. We have the same problem, for example, at Akkadian Empire and Third dynasty of Ur. In Wikidata there are separate items for <>  and  <>  because they are separate things conceptually, but I guess that this might not necessarily be the best solution for Wikipedia. Note though, that for example the German Wikipedia does have separate articles on Akkad empire and period. Zoeperkoe (talk) 14:34, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It is worth noting here that Old, Middle and Neo are stages of the same civilization/state; the Middle-Assyrian Kingdom/Empire is not a separate entity from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, but a prior stage of the same civilization that was less powerful. Because the "states" and periods in this sense are the same thing temporally (i.e. the Old Assyrian period refers to what went on at Assur between about 2025 BC and about 1363 BC, the Old Assyrian city-state is Assur during this time) I don't think it makes sense to have separate articles but there might be merit in just going with Old Assyria to avoid confusion (in any case it was not yet a territorial state during this time). Ichthyovenator (talk) 14:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that having separate articles might not be useful, and I can live with Old/Middle Assyria as well, but just wanted to point out that there is a (very) slight conceptual difference that casual readers will probably not notice. I am mostly interested in this discussion because I've been pondering for a long time what to do about Akkadian Empire/period and Ur III dynasty/empire/period, and these discussions share some similarites and whatever comes out of it may serve as an example to work on these other periods as well. Zoeperkoe (talk) 15:10, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I would say that, like pornography, empire is hard to define but you know it when you see it. That's because being an empire isn't a function of how big a state is, its how it acts. The Akkad ACTED like an empire, centralized control, setting up subsidiary admin centers etc. Ditto UR III, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. I would say there is a temporal aspect as well. Most entities in the aNE are one (or 2) strong rulers followed (or bookended) by a bunch of weak rules. Not really an empire, I would say nation-state. Anyway, agreed, its pretty messy for Wiki purposes. I'm pretty sure whatever you end up doing will be an improvement.Ploversegg (talk) 15:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * One thing I would like to point out is the issue of Shamshi-Adad I and his dynasty in relation to this discussion. I am no expert on the matter, but the sources I have read (for example stuff by assyrologist Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum) describe the realm of Shamshi-Adad I as less of an Assyrian kingdom, and more like a foreign state which conquered Assur and merely used the latter as a local administration center - despite him being counted among the Assyrian kings. In this sense, there was a break in the Old Assyrian political continuity, as there was - stritcly speaking - no Assyrian kingdom under Shamshi-Adad I (or his successors; Cancik-Kirschbaum states that Ishme-Dagan I also did not reside in Assur). So even if we state that there was one "Old Assyria" or "Old Assyrian period", the article should point out that this time covered several Assyrian states (namely the city-state under Puzur-Ashur I's dynasty, the non-Assyrian empire of Shamshi-Adad I, the divided kingdom of his sons; and then the restored city-state under the Adaside dynasty). Applodion (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Absolutely: this also speaks against using "Old Assyrian Empire" here because there was not a continuous single government. Scholars tend to use "Old Assyrian period" anyway as a singular thing so we should too. I don't think either "Old Assyrian period" or "Old Assyria" mean that we can not also point out that the city for a brief period was also part of an ostensibly foreign empire. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.