their demographical dimensions, their specific territorial quarters, and their distinctive
ethnicity: such as the Utu’/Itu’, who would, after their subjugation by Tiglath-pileser
III, be integrated into the ranks of the Assyrian administration as a corps of ‘military
police’ characterized by their original ethnonym (cf. the Pope’s ‘Swiss guards’, present
in the Vatican for the last five centuries). Other units are captured by the contemporary
texts as being still in the process of internal accretion, as in the case of the Rupu’
who had incorporated the smaller group of Q/Gamu according to a letter from Nippur
(Cole 1996 b: 83 , 5 – 7 ). Finally, the vaster and geographically more dispersed tribal
complexes, such as the Puqudu and the Gambulu, while still retaining their distinctive
self-identification, had developed a number of inner clanic subdivisions with reference
to different ‘sheikhs’, who united their military and political efforts or took individual
courses of action, according to the circumstances. In this case, the possibility that
(periodical or random) comprehensive ‘conventions’ could have dictated the tribal
policies to be undertaken, is realistic, but has not hitherto surfaced as a specific
occurrence in the textual record.
As hinted above, the Chaldeans’ settlement patterns in Babylonian territory differed
greatly from that of the neighbouring (and partially interspersed) Arameans; and the
same may be said for their general socio-economic profile. Despite the preservation
of their tribal ethnonyms, we may observe the Chaldeans in the Assyrian record (texts
and palace reliefs) tending permanently to large tracts of land within their well-
watered enclaves, where they practised agriculture (including date-palm cultivation)
and breeding of horses and cattle. The structures for communal living within these
enclaves comprised not only rural villages and small townships, but also a fair
percentage of walled cities. Thus, Sennacherib, describing his first campaign into
— Arameans and Chaldeans —Figure 20. 2 Assyrian palace relief showing Chaldean captives in a date palm grove
(courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).