données sur l’utilisation militaire du char sont absentes de la documentation visuelle
et ne sont pas non plus explicites pour ce qui est des textes.”
24 Littauer and Crouwel 1979, p. 30.
25 Littauer and Crouwel 1979, p. 33. Although experiments with a pivoting or swiveling
front axle may have been done from time to time during the Bronze Age, the
innovation was not perfected until the middle of the 1st millennium BC. See Piggott
1983, pp. 156–158 (“The problem of the pivoted front axle”).
26 Dawson 2001, pp. 84–85, having concluded that “[i]t is impossible to imagine this
contraption being used in battle.”
27 According to Abrahami 2008, p. 1, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative includes
8077 Old Akkadian tablets. These come especially from archives at Girsu, Umma,
Adab and Nippur.
28 At Abrahami 2008, pp. 13–14, discussion of “l’ordre de marche” is drawn almost
entirely from the disposition of soldiers on Naram-Sin’s victory stela.
29 Line 20 of Rimush C 6, at Gelb and Kienast 1990, p. 206. Here the Sumerogram
GURUŠ.GURUŠ(see also line 9 of Rimush C 3, at Gelb and Kienast 1990, p. 199)
indicates that the men Rimush claimed to have slain in battles were “young men” or
conscripts.
30 See the tabulation at Hamblin 2006, p. 79.
31 In Gelb and Kienast 1990 this is insc. Sargon C 2. Gelb and Kienast translate the
line as “5400 Mann essen täglich vor ihm Brot.” This has usually (although not always)
been interpreted to mean that he employed 5400 warriors.
32 Foster 2016, p. 95:
Given Sargon’s statement that he fed 5400 men per day (Appendix Ib 7), one
may suggest that the main thrust of Akkadian recruitment efforts was for the
military. Sargon and his successors sought dependent labor for their armies rather
than for fieldwork, thereby raising a military force that no other rulers of the
time could match or withstand.
See also Postgate 1992, p. 41.
33 For such a reconstruction of Akkadian battles see Hamblin 2006, pp. 76–78.
34 Burke 2008, p. 28.
35 Lafont published his findings in “L’armée des rois d’Ur: ce qu’en dissent les texts,”
which appears on pp. 23–48 in Abrahami and Battini 2008. A year later Lafont’s
article was translated into English and is now available online as “The Army of the
Kings of Ur: the Textual Evidence,” Cuneiform Digital Library Journal2009:5. For
the online version (henceforth, Lafont 2009) see http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2009/
cdlj2009_005.html (accessed January 19, 2007).
36 Lafont 2009, §1.6.
37 Lafont 2009, §2.6.
38 Lafont 2009, §4.1.
39 Burke 2008, p. 28: “It is particularly noteworthy that in none of the year-names that
commemorate military engagements is there a commemoration of a single pitched
battle.”
40 Heimpel 2003.
41 Glock 1968; Sasson 1969.
42 Sasson 1969, pp. 43–45.
43 Glock 1968, p. 171.
44 Dalley 1984, p. 146.
45 Burke 2008, p. 27. See also the more cautious appraisal at Hamblin 2006, p. 207, in
his single-page discussion of “Battle” in the Age of Hammurabi:
Generally speaking, when facing a stronger enemy, an army would withdraw
to a fortified city or camp rather than engage in open battle. When battles are
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