Umman-manda and its Significance in the First Millennium BC

Umman-manda (literally “Troops of Manda”) is an Akkadian compound expression used to denote military entities and/or foreign peoples in a diverse number of texts pertaining to separate periods of ancient Near Eastern history. The dissertation initially discusses the various difficulties in ascertaining the etymology of the second component of the term Umman-manda. A very plausible etymology is proposed based on new research on the semantic range of the Sumerian word mandum. The thesis then focuses mainly on the references made to the Umman-manda in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian sources, where it is used to denote the Cimmerians and Medes respectively. The starting point is that these references are making literary allusions to the Standard Babylonian version of the Cuthaean Legend. New information gained from these literary allusions provides insight into the significance of the term Umman-manda in the first millennium B.C.: it recalls the various attributes of the Umman-manda depicted in the Cuthaean Legend and applies these attributes to contemporary political events. The Cuthaean Legend envisions a powerful enemy that emerges unexpectedly from the distant mountains and establishes hegemony after a sudden burst of military power. This enemy will eventually be destroyed without the intervention of the Mesopotamian king. The thesis studies how the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian sources allude to the Cuthaean Legend and in this way they identify the Cimmerians and the Medes as the Umman-manda

Four 7th-Century BCE Neo-Assyrian Slave Sale Records from Marqasi (Kahramanmaraş) in the Erimtan Museum (Ankara) and Elsewhere

The city of Kahramanmaraş, in southeastern Turkey (ancient Marqasi), was the capital of the Luwian kingdom of Gurgum, annexed by Šarru-ukīn (Sargon) II to the Assyrian empire in 711 BCE. Four tablets stemming from diggings at the city fortress and its environs are presented here: two of them were previously published in Gökçek 2005, the other two were previously unpublished. Three of them are kept at the newly established Erimtan Museum of Archaeology and Art (Ankara). The tablets record slave sales, and are dated to the reign of Aššur-bāni-apli (Ashurbanipal) (r. 668–c. 630 BCE) and, perhaps, the reign of Aššur-aḫḫe-iddina (Esarhaddon) (r. 681–669 BCE). The texts contain a number of previously unattested personal names, some of them of clear Luwian extraction. In addition, they attest to the existence of a sanctuary to the god Nergal (perhaps identified with the Luwian god Runtiya) in Marqasi