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The great tradition: Thespread of diplomacy in theancient worldRaymond Cohen aa The Hebrew University of JerusalemPublished online: 19 Oct 2007.
To cite this article: Raymond Cohen (2001) The great tradition: The spreadof diplomacy in the ancient world, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12:1, 23-38, DOI:10.1080/09592290108406186
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The Great Tradition: The Spread ofDiplomacy in the Ancient World
RAYMOND COHEN
Diplomacy as we understand it to the present day — a sophisticated system for handlingaffairs of state and negotiating treaties, based on accredited envoys working within aframework of international law and protocol - emerged in the third millennium BCE in theancient Near East at the same time as the development of writing and urban culture.Transmitted by the great cuneiform civilizations of Babylon and Assyria to AchaemenidPersia and classical Greece and Rome, the heritage of diplomacy continued to flourish inByzantium, Rome, and Venice. The Renaissance provided the conditions for the spread ofa tradition that had existed in many essential aspects for millennia.
The theory presented here is simple and can be said to be implicit inthe comparative study of the historical development of diplomacyaltogether. Nevertheless, it deserves to be stated explicitly andrigorously examined because of its historical and theoreticalimplications. My thesis is that there is a continuous 'Great Tradition'of diplomacy in the ancient world stretching from the cuneiformcivilizations of Mesopotamia down to Classical Greece and Rome.This Great Tradition consisted of a body of ideas, norms, practicesand roles governing relations between political entities, usually, butnot always, sovereign authorities. The hallmarks, the characteristicidentifying features of diplomacy, were diplomatic protocolregulating the exchange of envoys, a law of great kings, and strictadherence to a set of procedures for negotiating binding internationaltreaties. Modified to suit changing technological, cultural andeconomic circumstances, the institution of diplomacy retained inmany respects its essential, underlying practices and forms downthrough the ages. Appearing sometime during or before the thirdmillennium BCE among the city-states of Western Asia, it wastransmitted from one civilization to the next, eventually being passeddown from Babylon to Achaemenid Persia (c. 550-330 BCE), classicalGreece and then Rome.
In contrast to received wisdom, Greece was not the birthplace ofdiplomacy, but the heir of a very ancient heritage already more than
Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol.12, No.1 (March 2001), pp.23-38PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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2,000 years old by the time of Alexander the Great. Of course, thereare differences of opinion on points of detail. Do residentambassadors first appear at the time of Hammurabi (c. 1800 BCE) orin Renaissance Italy? Are protests against the odd known cases ofoffences against ambassadors in the ancient Near East evidence of arule of inviolability or of its absence? Are we justified in equating the'laws of kings' with international law? Just how sophisticated wasancient diplomacy? Debate on these issues is justified and welcome.The point is not that there are no differences between ancient andmodern diplomacy; it is obvious that the system has evolved andchanged over the ages. "What is remarkable is that the basicassumptions constituting diplomacy - the idea that sovereigns couldcommunicate and negotiate by means of surrogates, enter intobinding written commitments regulating their relationships, and passobligations down from one generation to the next - are there fromthe beginning of recorded history in the city-states of the ancientNear East.
It is unlikely that the idea of diplomacy is a feature of all humancivilization, the self-evident solution to problems of coordinationbetween separate entities that must necessarily appear in all times andplaces. Diplomacy, like the wheel, had to be invented. RagnarNumelin is right that in primitive societies emissaries are sent fromone tribe to another to make blood pacts for war, and to concludepeace in its aftermath. Rituals and taboos surround these practices.1
But there is a quantum leap from the customs of illiteratecommunities to the procedures of literate civilization as it emerged inthe city-states of Sumer in the middle of the third millennium BCE. Inthe former case, illiteracy places insuperable limits on thetransmission of information and the development of knowledge. Norecords can be kept, and all messages and commitments remain oral.In the latter case there is, demonstrably, enormous potential forperfecting mechanisms to handle and store information, and generatecumulative knowledge. Before the particular instruments ofdiplomacy can evolve there have to be scribal schools, archives andlaw codes. It is no coincidence that diplomacy appears at the sametime and in the same place as government, law, taxation, educationand literature.
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THE SPREAD OF DIPLOMACY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 25
The Origins of Diplomacy
Comparing different diplomatic systems throughout history onecannot fail to be impressed by the striking resemblance between thetasks and procedures of diplomacy at different periods. From ancienttimes to the present, 'diplomacy' (or its functional equivalent) hasinvolved the dispatch of envoys from one polity to another to carryout a familiar repertoire of basic functions: conveying messages,greetings and gifts; acting on behalf of principals as attorneys andsurrogates in legal and ceremonial situations; negotiating agreementsfor cooperation in peace and war, especially the conduct of trade andmilitary alliance; collecting information, both legally andclandestinely. Sometimes envoys have engaged in subversion and runagents against a host government. Still, the common themes runningthrough all these activities are representation, exchange andreciprocity.
The relative constancy of the work of diplomacy throughouthistory provides the first clue to a possible shared progenitor,common functions hinting at a common primordial design. Theearliest prototype of 'diplomatic-like' behaviour - characterized bythe aforementioned, telltale features of representation, exchange andreciprocity - crystallized to handle, practically and ceremonially,transactions in archaic societies before the development of politicalinstitutions.
In his seminal work Essai Sur Le Don the great socialanthropologist Marcel Mauss demonstrates that primitive tribes arebound together by the moral and sacred obligation to give andreceive; they do not engage in instrumental trade.2 Before theemergence of the rational economic system of the market, in whichindividuals conduct utilitarian transactions to acquire goods andproduce on the basis of money or barter, transactions were seen asmoral acts carried out by leaders acting for and entering intocontracts involving entire groups, their members and possessions.Such transactions took place only within the moral framework ofwhat Mauss calls exchange relationships of 'total prestation'.Prestation means anything given by one group to another andincludes material things of economic value, such as goods, wealth andproperty; people, such as warriors, women and children; andcommunal benefits and services, like courtesies, hospitality, feasts andother rituals.3 Gifts are the epitome of prestation, since while they are
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in theory voluntary and disinterested, they are in fact 'given andrepaid under obligation'.4 Gifts given to men (and gods) buy peace.5
The sanction for infringing the exchange system of total prestation iswarfare. Gifts and feasts (most remarkably in the potlatch, thegratuitous consumption and destruction of wealth) also reflectcompetition over status, challengers trying to outdo each other intheir reckless extravagance.6
At some point, we may conjecture, face-to-face systems of totalprestation gave way to exchange systems at a distance betweenorganized, urban communities conducted by envoys standing in fortheir leaders. Reflecting the sophisticated practices of the polities thatsent them, these envoys came to conduct diplomacy as we nowunderstand it, the management of transactions based upon theprinciples of reciprocity and exchange within a formal framework oflaw, contract and protocol. Trade agreements, dynastic marriages andmilitary alliances superseded total prestation in its original form.Nevertheless, as the student of ancient and classical diplomacy willreadily observe, many of the unusual archaic features of theprimordial system were preserved: an obligation to reciprocity, ifonly in principle; gift giving as both a duty and also as an instrumentof appeasement; the exchange of women and warriors; the potlatch-like competition for status; ritual, hospitality and feasting.
The Hamazi letter sent from Ebla to Hamazi - a round-trip ofalmost 2,000 kilometres - reflects the proto-diplomacy of the mid-third millennium BCE. We have reached an advanced stage ofgovernance, bureaucracy and protocol, yet the moral imperative ofexchange and reciprocity found in systems of total prestation, nowcast in the idiom of athutwn, brotherhood, remains.
Thus says Ibubu, the director of the king's palace, to themessenger: "You are my brother and I am your brother. As abrother I will grant whatever you desire, as you will grantwhatever I desire. Give me good mercenaries [or, work-animals]. Please send them. You are my brother and I am yourbrother. Ten beams of boxwood, two sledges of boxwood I,Ibubu, have given the messenger (for you). Irkab-Damu, king ofEbla, is brother of Zizi, king of Hamazi, and Zizi, king ofHamazi, is brother of Irkab-Damu, king of Ebla." Thus Tira-Il,the scribe, has written. For the messenger of Zizi. [Reverse]Delivered.7
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Within the confines of this one, brief message the basic featuresof proto-diplomacy are thrown into stark relief: a workingrelationship between two independent kingdoms or city-states; theuse of an envoy to convey a letter over a long distance; protocol,including the concept of equal status and a conventional form ofaddress; an understood medium of communication, namely, the useof a common language; a domestic bureaucracy for conductingforeign affairs made up of officials performing specialized functions;an archive; a set of normative expectations about right and properbehaviour; a sense of transnational fellowship or brotherhood;exchange or reciprocal gift-giving. Here is the familiar institution ofdiplomacy in embryonic form.
The Continuity of Treaty Forms
The existence of common diplomatic activities - communication,negotiation, legal representation, the collection of information andso on - though suggestive, cannot provide definitive proof of acommon progenitor of diplomacy. After all, as we learn fromcultural anthropology, there are many generic human activitieswithout this necessarily indicating a common source. The roughresemblance in functional responses to the needs of communaleating, religious worship, adornment, leadership, bargaining,cultivation, disposal of the dead and so on, may point to ingrainedhuman traits rather than to a single instrumental prototype existingat some point in the remote past. In other words, quite bycoincidence, the needs of conducting transactions betweenorganized polities located far apart may conceivably have given riseat different times and in different places to similar instrumentalsolutions. This seems to me to be an unlikely explanation, however.In pre-Columbian America and pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa,messages and gifts were exchanged, trade engaged in, and alliancesmade, but the institution of diplomacy - documentation, treaties,law - as we understand it did not emerge. Whenever fully fledgeddiplomacy appears, from Greece to India, we can trace it back to itsancient Near Eastern ancestor.
An even more telling argument for a Great Tradition rests on theidentification of common institutional forms, roles and conventions.The two most characteristic diplomatic institutions are internationallaw and diplomatic protocol. Even if we make the far-fetched
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assumption that different societies separately invented thediplomatic envoy, credentials, the audience, the diplomatic protest,the treaty, ratification and so on, it is hardly conceivable that theycould have designed these instruments along such strikingly similarlines.
Fortunately, Moshe Weinfeld has placed at our disposal anauthoritative diachronic analysis of precisely the kind we require tocorroborate the theory of a Great Tradition. In a classic seriesof studies he traces the language and form of the covenant from earlysecond millennium Mesopotamia to late first millennium Greece andRome. This reconstruction strikingly exemplifiesthe continuitythroughout the entire ancient and classical periods of a central,defining feature of diplomacy: the international treaty.
Weinfeld's initial breakthrough was the discovery of a commontreaty terminology which, first established in the ancient Near East,penetrated the Greek milieu via the Achaeans, and was later taken upby the Romans.8 The importance of this discovery is that it indicatesthe existence of common semantic fields, a standard system ofmeaning, possessed by all the ancients. It was this shared ontologythat underpinned the Great Tradition - in the same way that adefined corpus of belief about what reality consists of, existentiallyand normatively, is the condition for the creation and perpetuation ofany system of ideas, whether a religion, ideology or scientificdiscipline.
The key terms for covenant or pact presented by Weinfeld take anunusual, and therefore unmistakable hendiadystic form, expressing asingle complex idea by means of two words joined by 'and' (anexample of this form given by the Oxford English Dictionary is 'niceand warm'). Thus the Akkadian term for treaty found in the Hittitedocuments is riksu u mamitu, bond and oath. This becomes inHebrew the exactly equivalent brit ve'alah, and in Greek horkos kaisyntheke. Another way in which covenantal relationships wereexpressed in the ancient Near East was by expressions such as ahhutusalamn (Akk.), brotherhood and peace, or alternatively love andfriendship. Recurring in Hebrew, Assyrian and Aramaic, identicalforms are found in the Greek-Roman sphere, for instance filia kaihorkos (Gk.), love and oath, or pax et amicitia (Lat.), peace andfriendship.
Technical terms for making, keeping and violating a treaty canalso be traced in direct line of descent from Latin and Greek back
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to Akkadian and other ancient Semitic languages. The verbs usedfor establishing a covenant in Greek - put, give, erect, enter - arefound in Akkadian, Hebrew and Aramaic. However, an exceptionto this tendency is the term horkia tamnein, to cut the oaths, whichis found only in Western Semitic languages such as Hebrew,Phoenician and Aramaic, not in Akkadian and Hittite. Observanceof a treaty follows the hendyiadistic form 'keep and remember':nasaru/hasasu (Akk.), shmor ve'zachor (Heb.), diaterein, syntereinand fylassein (Gk.). Finally, violation of a treaty uses the commonidiom of breaking or shattering: mantita parasn (Akk.), hefer brit(Heb.), foedus frangere/rumpere (Lat.). The regular verb forbreaking an agreement in Greek, however, is lyein, to loosen,though Weinfeld points out that Homer uses the term delesasthai,which can mean to break or ruin.
Besides a common covenantal vocabulary, Professor Weinfeldhas also demonstrated the existence of common treaty provisionsand customs of such specificity that, as he notes, they 'can, by nomeans, be the result of an independent creation'.9 A notableexample of a recurrent formula is the injunction found in alliancetreaties 'to be a friend to friends and an enemy to enemies'. Firstappearing in a treaty between Akkad and Elam from the thirdmillennium BCE, the clause is seen to be characteristic of the Hittitetreaties, later turning up in several places in the Bible. In Greek andRoman treaties it is found in treaties between states and also oathsof loyalty. Weinfeld quotes Thucydides I: 44: 'tons autous echthrouskai filous nomizein.' Another analogous term is the injunction 'toserve or to help with all one's might and power, with all one's heartand soul', which appears in almost identical form in Hittite,Assyrian, and Greek treaties. Similarly, the validity of a treaty canbe expressed by the formula, lasting 'as long as heaven and earthendure'.
Finally, Weinfeld considers the special case of vassal treaties andloyalty oaths. Here he notes the recurrence of identicalformulations and a characteristic three-part structure: anaffirmation of loyalty, a commitment to uncover rebels, and theinvocation of curses. 'The basic components of these documents',he shows by the detailed analysis of extensive material, 'recur inthis same formulation over very long periods of time: from the daysof the Hittite Empire of the fourteenth century BCE, through theAssyrian Empire, and on into the Roman Empire'.10 He goes on to
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show how formal aspects of the covenant ceremony are equallyinvariant: the mass gathering, the recital, the witnessing, theblessing and the curse, the sacrifice and the erection ofcommemorative monuments.
By now quite enough evidence has been mustered, thanks toWeinfeld's tour de force of comparative philological research, tothoroughly substantiate the hypothesis of the continuity of treatypractice. Weinfeld is surely justified in his argument that 'theidentity in covenant formulations and idiomatic expressionsin Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine, Anatolia, Greece and Romeseems to point towards a common origin'. He adds: 'In the lightof all this there is no escape from the conclusion that the MiddleEast was the cradle of covenant formalities in the ancientworld.'11
Variations in Diplomatic Practice
Differences of diplomatic protocol and practice between theMesopotamian, Amarna and Assyrian periods, and between theancient Near East and Greece and Rome, indicate that the GreatTradition was not an immutable or inviolate set of prescriptions.After all, the institution of diplomacy was never embodied in anorganization based on authority and succession like the Church, butconsisted of a corpus of knowledge, conventions and techniquesintended to serve certain practical purposes. One would expectsuch an epistemic institution to display two apparentlycontradictory tendencies: on the one hand, the conservation ofsometimes redundant customs simply because of the force ofprecedent and associations of dignity with practices hallowed bylong use; on the other hand, gradual change and more suddenmutation based on instrumental needs. This is exactly what weobserve in contemporary diplomacy, old-fashioned traditioncoexisting with far-reaching innovation.
It is interesting to trace and explain manifestations of the twinprocesses of conservation and change. The covenantal ceremoniesof 'touching the throat' and the sacrifice of an ass, possibly ofAmorite origins, lapsed by the Amarna Age, along with otherMesopotamian diplomatic customs. In the transition fromMesopotamia to Western Asia in its entirety some customs,grounded in local culture, could be readily replaced by functionally
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equivalent practices of more universal resonance. The theme ofaffectionate love expressed in a very personal way, characteristic ofHurrian and Hittite documents, was not adopted by the Assyrians.12
An apparent breach of custom might be intended to transmit anonverbal message. From the first half of the tenth century BCE theBible provides us with an account of the humiliating mistreatmentof King David's embassy of condolences to Hanun king of Amon,on the death of the latter's father. Half the envoys' beards wereshaved off and their clothes cut in two. They were not, however,put to death but sent home, perhaps as a graphic rejection byHanun of David's wish for diplomatic recognition. Significantly,David prevented the delegation from returning directly toJerusalem for all to see, keeping them back in Jericho. Davidconsidered the offense a casus belli." In this case it is clear thatdiplomats were mistreated to make a deliberate political point.Hanun's actions do not refute the existence of prior norms ofconduct but rather assume them.14
Any study of the Great Tradition has to account for quite far-reaching departures in Greek practice from the norms and customsmaintained by the foremost diplomatic power of the period, theAchaemenid Persian Empire. Domestically, the Greeks had theirown indigenous customs reflecting, as Herodotus writes, 'thekinship of all Greeks in blood and speech', common religiousbeliefs, and 'the likeness' of their 'way of life'.15 One innovationwas the resident consul, the proxenos, a local citizen, not a foreigndiplomat. The proxenos clearly filled a vital role, flexiblyconducting everyday business of all kinds among the Greek city-states without pomp and circumstance, when the protocol-boundapparatus of classic diplomacy would have been superfluous.Another Greek peculiarity was a preference for oral messages tothe written notes (originally in cuneiform on clay tablets)characteristic of the Great Tradition. This reflected the hallowedinstitution of the herald in Greek life. Herodotus, though, hasthe Persian king Cyrus the Great (559-530 BCE) pouring scorn onthe whole system of Greek public oratory.16 Thucydides, too,implicitly acknowledges the ineffectiveness of public over privatediplomacy.17
Another departure of Greek diplomacy from traditional practicewas a prohibition on the custom of extending elaborate gifts toenvoys — according to Adcock and Mosley, for fear of bribery. When
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two Athenian envoys on a mission to Persia in 394 BCE werepresented with gifts, the matter was raised on their return home. In367 BCE another Athenian envoy was condemned to death for thesame offence.18
As with the preference for public oratory over secret diplomacy itis clear that the Greeks were well aware of international custom, butpresumably thought that their own approach was better. Herodotusdescribes Croesus, king of Lydia (c. 560-540 BCE), sendingmessengers to Sparta bearing gifts to request an alliance." LaterHerodotus has the Persian King Darius (422-486 BCE) demandingthat the Scythians submit to Persian suzerainty by sending symbolictribute of earth and water. The Scythian king declines: 'Gifts I willsend you, not earth and water, but such as you should rightlyreceive.'20
In the matter of the inviolability of envoys, too, the Greeks seemto have been aware of international practice while not alwaysmaintaining it. In the Great Tradition of the ancient Near East, withrare exceptions, messengers were inviolate, though they did notpossess legal immunity.21 This was not an automatic or general rightof envoys in Ancient Greece. Heralds, it is true, were regarded asagents of the gods and were sacrosanct and inviolable.22 Moreover,when states were not at war, envoys travelled unmolested, relying on'the traditional codes of conduct observed for strangers'.23 However,Spartan and Athenian delegates were executed during thePeloponnesian War.24 Worse, during the time of Darius both Athensand Sparta murdered Persian envoys sent to demand tribute. Later,the Spartans, attributing a run of misfortune to their impious act, senttwo volunteers to Xerxes (486-465 BCE) to offer themselves forexecution and expiation of the sin. On arrival in Susa, the Persiancapital, the envoys refused to prostrate themselves before the king. 'Itwas not their custom [they said] to do obeisance to mortal men, norwas that the purpose of their coming.' Rather, they had come tomake atonement. Xerxes magnanimously declined their offer, sayingthat he would not imitate the Spartan contempt for the law ofmankind (nomina anthropon).25 The picture thus painted byHerodotus is of Greek provincialism in the period in question in theface of Persian worldliness, not of a totally alternative approach todiplomacy.
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The Transmission of Diplomatic Ideas
How and why was the Great Tradition handed down through theages? Explanation of the phenomenon necessarily starts withfunction or need. Diplomacy emerged to serve systems of exchange;kings needed things from each other: goods, services, warriors andwives. They wanted the society, honour and status that could onlybe provided by their own kind, so a community or fellowship ofkings, athutumlahhutu, crystallized. At the same time the world ofthe ancient Near East was dominated by a pervasive consciousnessof sacred forces, the gods and ceremonies of propitiation. It wasnatural, therefore, to surround the institution of diplomacy withappropriate ritual and ceremony. Customs and laws acted asinstruments for implementing exchange, coordinating expectationsand providing the normative underpinnings for agreementsreached.
If a new member wished to enter the fellowship from the outsidehe was obliged to accept the rules of the club. Club membershipgave him not only an entree into the society of kings, it alsoprovided him with a valuable range of services and benefits - trade,communication, alliance and so on. We observe the samephenomenon in the second half of the twentieth century CE. Post-colonial states cheerfully accepted the acquis of a system ofdiplomacy that they had had no role in formulating (and which hadactually discriminated against them in the past, continuing to do soin the shape of the special privileges reserved to the victor powersof the Second World War, as permanent members of the SecurityCouncil).
For much of the second millennium BCE Pharaonic Egypt hadremained aloof from the world of cuneiform diplomacy,maintaining its sense of civilizational and ethical supremacy intactbehind the deserts of the Sinai peninsula. When, in the eighteenthdynasty, it expanded its empire into Western Asia and found itselfthe close neighbour of the Hittites and Hurrians, it really had nochoice but to enter into diplomatic relations with other GreatKings. It could not continue to ignore great powers with which itmight find itself at war. Diplomatic relations entailed acceptance ofthe instruments and conventions of cuneiform diplomacy. Some ofthese customs could not have been easy for the divine pharaoh toaccept, especially the use of Akkadian as an interlanguage in written
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and oral correspondence, and acknowledgment of the equal status ofother, mortal Great Kings.
We learn just how an emerging great power applied formembership of the diplomatic system from the Amarna Letters of themid-fourteenth century BCE. The Assyrian king Ashur-uballit sendshis messenger to pharaoh, noting on the tablet: 'Up to now, mypredecessors have not written; today I write to you.' He informspharaoh that his messenger has been sent on a visit to see Egypt(nothing more specific, as business cannot yet be conducted). Themessenger is not to be detained, but allowed to return home. A kinglygift accompanies the approach, an implicit request to enter intodiplomatic relations. The conventional opening to a diplomaticmessage, the important accompaniment of full relations according toprotocol, is missing. In the next message sent by Ashur-uballit all thecorrect forms and titles are observed, and an exchange relationship isevident.26
The mystery of the transmission of the Great Tradition is not itsspread through the ancient Near East or even its preservation afterthe collapse of the Amarna system c. 1200 BCE. Cuneiformcivilization never lapsed, and reappeared in full force in Babylon andAssyria in the first millennium. The historical puzzle is to account forthe spread of the essential principles of ancient Near East diplomacyfrom the Eastern Mediterranean to Greece well before theAchaemenid period and the establishment of contact between Greeceand the Persian Empire. One clue is provided by the kind ofpainstaking philological analysis carried out by Weinfeld. As noted,the Greek term for establishing a covenant is horkia tamnein, cuttingthe oaths. This is fully identical with the Phoenician, Western Semiticterm, but not with Eastern Semitic Akkadian. Weinfeld suggests thatthis identity 'might point towards the Phoenician origin of theidiom',27 a conjecture reinforced by archaeological evidence found atRas Shamra in Northern Lebanon, site of the important ancient portof Ugarit.
It was during the international age of peace and stability, namedfor the Amarna archive, the years from about 1450 to 1200 BCE (alsoreferred to as the Late Bronze Age), that Ugarit achieved its greatestprosperity, serving as a flourishing centre and entrepot for trade andmanufacture. The relics of over 350 different products have beenfound in excavations. The merchants and goods passing through theport came from all the great civilizations of the time, Egyptians,
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Hittites, Canaanites, Babylonians, Assyrians - and MycenaeanGreeks. Cretan and Mariote merchants had traded with each other inUgarit long before in the Middle Bronze Age and remnants ofMycenaean ceramics and even of a Mycenaean colony have beenfound from the Late Bronze Age.28 Trade with Crete is mentioned ina tablet preserved in the palace archives from the thirteenth centuryBCE.29
Trade and shipping required a framework of internationalregulation, and traders and diplomats not only travelled togetherbut were sometimes one and the same. Concepts and ideas flowedalong the trade routes together with merchants, envoys and goods.Michael Heltzer shows that the Ugaritic measure of a kad (jar),namely 22 litres, was exported along with oil and wine to theMycenaean world. The loan-word chadoslkados, said by Herodotusto be the Phoenician wine-amphora, appears in Greek in theseventh century BCE.30 Another example of intellectual exchangemay be detected in the area of naval warfare. Ugarit, like other seapowers, needed peace and international law to protect its tradinginterests. But it also needed a navy to guard its ships from piracy.Clear parallels have been found between the Ugaritic system ofnaval mobilization and of manning the ships, reflected inadministrative texts, and those found in Homer's Iliad and some ofthe Mycenaean Linear B tablets. Elisha Linder wonders whetherthese similarities did not derive from Ugarit's contacts with theAegean.31
The decisive link in the chain connecting the EasternMediterranean and the Aegean is provided by Giiterbock'sidentification of the Land of Ahhiyawa, mentioned in the Hittitearchives of the Late Bronze Age, and the Achaean Greeks whoproduced the Mycenaean civilization of Linear B.32 In the Hittiteroyal correspondence the Achaean monarch, addressed as 'MyBrother', is honoured with all the epigraphic trimmings of GreatKingship. An Ahhiyawan/Achaean prince rides in a chariot with theHittite King.33 If Giiterbock's persuasive argument is accepted then itimmediately follows that the Achaean king was a fully fledgedmember of the Amarna diplomatic fellowship, completely conversantwith the diplomatic protocol that was the hallmark of the GreatTradition.
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Conclusion
Rituals of friendship, exemplified by the joint appearance of anAhhiyawan prince and the Hittite king, were part and parcel of thatceremonial, procedural and legal scaffolding of diplomacy supportingthe complex exchange system known as international relations. Onan Assyrian relief from Nimrud, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III isdepicted shaking hands with the king of Babylon. The same stylizedgesture of pledge is found in both the Bible and in Greek sources.34
The handshake has passed down to us as an integral part ofdiplomatic choreography alongside the state visit, joint motorcadeand photo opportunity.35
In the final analysis, what makes it likely that there was a GreatTradition linking Akkad to Rome is both the detail of diplomaticpractice and also the deep grammar that imbued diplomacy withmeaning. Before there can be an encompassing terminology andprocedure of treaty making there has to be the general idea of abinding and dependable international compact. It is not just thehandshake, the diplomatic note or the given legal norm that suggesta single paradigm, but the very concept of a system based on envoys,credible contact and agreements that the parties expect to behonoured. Diplomacy is neither self-evident nor serendipitous, but acomplex ecology of conduct produced by civilization over a longperiod. It could no more occur by chance than Russell's team ofmonkeys could type out the Works of Shakespeare. Social scientistscould not have invented so illogical an institution. Rational choicetheory takes the Prisoner's Dilemma model of reasonable betrayal asits metaphor of international relations, not the remarkable idea of aninstitution that assumes trust and reliable communication.
From Classical Greece and Rome we may surmise that the GreatTradition was transmitted via the Church of Rome and the ByzantineEmpire to Renaissance Italy and Western Europe. If this pedigree isaccepted, then the diplomacy of Westphalia looks like a relatively latestage in the development of a heritage spanning thousands of yearsthat had its unlikely birthplace between the Tigris and the Euphratesrather than in the shadow of Mount Parnassus.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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NOTES
1. The Beginnings of Diplomacy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950).2. Marcel Mauss, Essai Sur Le Don (Paris: Presses Universitaires De France, 1950); (in
English) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (Glencoe, IL:The Free Press, 1954).
3. Ibid., p.3.4. Ibid., p .1.5. Ibid., p.14.6. Ibid., pp.31-7.7. Pinhas Artzi, unpublished translation of Hamazi letter (1995); Giovanni Pettinato,
Ebla: A New Look at History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).8. The following account is based on Moshe Weinfeld, 'Covenant Terminology in the
Ancient Near East and its Influence on the West', Journal of the American OrientalSociety, 93 (1973), pp.190-99; and Moshe Weinfeld, 'The Common Heritage ofCovenantal Traditions in the Ancient World', in Luciano Canfora, Mario Liverani andCarlo Zaccagnini (eds.), I Trattati Nel Mondo Antico. Forma, Ideologia, Funzione(Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1990), pp.175-91.
9. Weinfeld, 'Covenant Terminology', p.198. The following section is based both on thelatter paper and also Moshe Weinfeld, 'The Loyalty Oath in the Ancient Near East',Ugarit-Forschungen, 8 (1976), pp.379-414.
10. Weinfeld, 'The Loyalty Oath', p.383.11. Weinfeld, 'Covenant Terminology', pp.197, 190.12. Moshe Weinfeld, 'Covenant Making in Anatolia and Mesopotamia', Journal of the
Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University, 22 (1993), pp.135-9.13. II Samuel 10:2-5.14. On diplomatic signalling see Raymond Cohen, Theatre of Power (London: Longman,
1987).15. Herodotus VIII: 144.16. Herodotus I: 152-3.17. Thucydides IV: 22.18. Sir Frank Adcock and D.J. Mosley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1975), pp.164-5.19. Herodotus I: 74.20. Ibid., IV: 126-7.21. However, the Mari archives give lively descriptions of envoys being confined to
quarters under guard, and even shackled, Archives Royales De Mari, XXVI (Paris:Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), nos. 361, 363, 372.
22. Adcock and Moseley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece, p.229.23. Ibid., p.154.24. Ibid., pp.153-4.25. Herodotus VII: 133, 134, 136.26. Pinhas Artzi, 'The Rise of the Middle-Assyrian Kingdom, according to El-Amarna
Letters 15 & 16', in Pinhas Artzi (ed.), Bar-Ilan Studies in History (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1978); Pinhas Artzi, 'EA 16', Altorientalische Forschungen, 24(1997), pp.320-36.
27. Weinfeld, 'Covenant Terminology', p.196.28. Michael C. Astour, 'Ugarit and the Great Powers', in Gordon D. Young (ed.), Ugarit in
Retrospect (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1981), pp.8, 28-9.29. Quoted in Mario Liverani, Storia Di Ugarit Nell'Eta' Degli Archivi Politici (Roma:
Universita Di Roma, 1962), p.54.30. Michael Heltzer, 'Olive Oil and Wine Production in Phoenicia and in the
Mediterranean Trade', in Marie-Claire Amouretti and Jean-Pierre Brun (eds.), Oil andWine Production in the Mediterranean Area (Paris: Diffusion De Boccard, 1993),pp.50-51.
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31. Gordon D. Young, 'Ugarit: A Canaanite Thalassocracy', in Young (ed.), Ugarit inRetrospect, p.41.
32. Hans G. Guterbock, 'The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1. The AhhiyawaProblem Reconsidered'. American Journal of Archaeology, 87 (1983), pp. 133-8.
33. Weinfeld, 'The Common Heritage', p.180.34. Ibid., p.181.35. Cohen, Theatre of Power, pp.91-6.
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