denomination. The social (and, when necessary, military/political) leadership of each
ramification or clanic unit went back to a specific nasiku, ‘sheikh’, as indicated by
Assyrian and Babylonian texts from the reign of Sargon II onward. On the other
hand, it has been noted that nasikus are attested in the written records in connection
with a multiplicity of institutional or even purely geographical entities: i.e. not only
tribes, but also lands, cities, even rivers (Brinkman 1968 : 274 – 275 ). Leaving aside
the possibility for specific inaccuracies on the part of the scribes, this very feature
would seem to point to a high degree of ongoing segmentation within the tribal
units themselves. Somewhat similarly, it may be observed that Tiglath-pileser III’s
list of ‘unsubmissive Arameans’ comprised, alongside many indisputably tribal group-
ings, some entities elsewhere known only as toponyms (Rapiqu, Hiranu, Rabilu,
Radê, Karma’, etc.); this aspect might not point so much to an ‘Assyrian fabrication
or simplification’ (Brinkman 1968 : 271 ) as to the reality of a process of social and
territorial subdivision which was under way among the groups themselves.
In sum, the Arameans of the eighth–seventh centuries BCprovide – even through
the distorted lens of the Assyrian and Babylonian chroniclers – the overall picture of
a kinship-based society in which various procedures of segmentation and renewed
identification were in progress. Some tribal units had attained an ideal balance between
— Frederick Mario Fales —Figure 20. 1 Kudurru of Marduk-apla-iddina II (Berlin) Vorderasiatisches Museum, SMB/Jürgen
Liepe. The king, on the left, receives the greetings of a governor to whom he granted land.