Ethnicity in Empire 167mentioned. The relocated people were a source of labor. Most were sent to the capital
cities of Assyria; letters in the royal archive of Sharrukin that concern construction of
his new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, mention groups of deportees that worked on the new
city (Parpola 1995: 54ff.). Population movements on this scale had considerable impact
on the shaping of ethnic identities across the empire. According to a royal inscription
of Sharrukin, the Assyrian administration “settled deportees from the conquered coun-
tries [in Dur-Sharrukin], made them speak one language, and commissioned natives of
Assyria, experts in all craft, as overseers and commanders over them to teach them correct
behavior and the right reverence towards god and king” (Parpola 1995: 54). By the time
of Sharrukin, Assyrians had begun to express some anxiety about the loss of their own
identity. In an often-cited letter, Sharrukin admonished an official for writing in Aramaic
on scrolls—the language of deportees from regions to the west—rather than in Assyrian
cuneiform on clay tablets (Parpola 1987: XVI). The reality, however, was often depicted
in what became a standard scene on Assyrian reliefs: two scribes counting enemy dead
or spoils of war, one writing in cuneiform Assyrian on a clay tablet, and another writing
Aramaic in ink on a scroll (cf. Beaulieu 2006).
Expansion and conquest meant an increase in tribute and a flow of goods brought
back to Assyria, frequently represented on Assyrian monumental reliefs, and recovered in
excavations of Assyrian palaces. Yet, the Assyrian attitudes to goods acquired in conquest
is hard to pin down. Among the most distinctive of these products are the ivory furniture
ornaments originally from palace workshops in areas to the west. Ivory was highly valued,
a symbol of such wealth that biblical prophets castigated those who lay on “beds of
ivory” (Amos 6:4). Provenance studies have made significant progress in identifying the
larger stylistic areas of ivory carving and separate workshop styles within them (Scigliuzzo
2005; Winter 2005; Herrmann and Laidlaw 2009). Yet, although furniture adorned with
ivory inlay is depicted on Assyrian palace reliefs—famously including a relief showing
Ashur-bani-apli and his queen in their garden—the vast majority of these carved ivories
were found not on display, but stacked in warehouses in a military palace at Kalh
̆
u.
A similar puzzle concerns the Assyrian king’s fondness for building abit h
̆ilani,or
“palace of the land of Hatti,” built for the kings’ pleasure (Tadmor 1994: 173). Assyr-
ian kings from Tukul-apil-esharra III to Ashur-bani-apli (including also Sharrukin and
Sin-ahhe-eriba) emphasized in their royal inscriptions that they had constructed a h
̆
ilani
in their own palaces. Earlier generations of scholars focused on identifying the structure
in the archaeologically recovered remains of Assyrian palaces, and the general if not uni-
versal consensus is that it refers to a pillared portico (e.g., Winter 1982; Mazzoni 2006).
Yet, why would Assyrian kings choose to highlight an architectural form distinctive of a
foreign conquered culture?
Ethnicity in Empire: The Perspective
of the Conquered
The complex negotiations of language, ethnicity, and politics are well expressed in
Neo-Hittite and Aramaean states to the west of the Assyrian heartland. These states had