markers (“the four corners”) that set it off from other, lesser territories. The
Assyrian king was “King of the Universe [everything]” (sar kissati), but also
“king of the four regions/quarters of the world” (sar kibra ̄t arba’i erbetti). He
was “Shepherd of the four quarters” (re ̄u ̄kibra ̄t erbetta) and “king of all lands”
(sar matati).^38 Assyria, we are reminded repeatedly, was ever expanding.^39
Honorifics invariably emphasize this. On one stele, Tiglath-pileser appears as
“king of Assyria, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters, shepherd
of mankind... who enlarges the boundary of Assyria.”^40
The famous king Ashurbanipal was known as the ruler who “extends the
borders of Assyria” and “enlarges the borders and territory.”^41 Ashurbanipal,
whose reign marks the culmination of the Assyrian Empire, was “the mighty
king who has extended his conquests from the banks of the Tigris to Mount
Lebanon and the great sea of the land of Amurru.”^42 An inscription in Tiglath-
pileser’s palace calls him “Great king, the mighty king, king of the universe,
king of Assyria, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four
quarters.”
Recurrent themes in the inscriptions are the all-encompassing scope of
the Assyrian kingdom and the territorially transformative effects of its rulers.
Tilgath-pileser was memorialized as a “brave warrior” who “swept the
[countries] like the flood.” “I am Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, who from
east to west personally conquered all the lands,” declares an inscription found
in Iran—the eastern territory of the empire.^43
The tandem use of “universe” and “four corners/regions/quarters” was
replicated in the Assyrian deployment of two distinct terms that referred to
their power. One (kissu ̄tu) denoted world hegemony, and the other (be ̄lu ̄tu)
world suzerainty.^44 This distinction was important because the Assyrians
wielded power and control in varying degrees over vast territories that might
fall under a number of categories: provinces, vassal states, buffer states, and
enemies. In the words of archaeologist Bradley Parker, direct “annexation was
not the only method of establishing Assyrian dominion.”^45 The general term
universe, the realm under the dominion of the “King of the Universe,” was
accompanied by the phrase “four regions of the world”—the vast, but finite and
specific space that, while not within the physical limits of the Assyrian domain,
was abstractly under Assyrian dominion.
The deportation of the Israelites was thus understood within a complicated
framework that was already explicitly geographic. Indeed, the deported Israe-
lites, in actual terms, were sent to places that would later become integral, core
lands of the imperial domain. In subsequent memory, however, while they
would retain their geographic groundedness—indeed, the promise that the ten
tribes are actually here, in a real place on earth, was what gave such staying
lu
(lu)
#1