DNHG Lecture: "Representation of "Arabs" in Levantine and Mesopotamian Art and Texts in Antiquity"
Channel: DNHG Public Lectures
Date: 2023-10-05

Speaker: Martin Makinson 
(Ras al-Khaima Department of Archaeology and Heritage)

Lecture Date: Monday, 5 June 2023

(our sincere apologies for the poor sound quality of the recording)

- This visual presentation attempts to expose what can be known of the early Arabs "out of Arabia" in the eyes of their main beholder, the Assyrian. To do so beyond the tropes, beyond the Mesopotamo-centric world views of order and chaos promoted by Assur, and beyond the stereotypical visions of "the other" as described in kings' annals and on Assyrian paintings and carved slabs.
- In this talk our speaker shares Archaeology and Iconography of the Arabs in Syro-Mesopotamia and the Levant in the Iron Age II-III/Early First Millennium BCE.

Abstract: 
- The Arabs were no latecomers in the Levant and Mesopotamia's intertwined histories. The first mention of them under the appears in the Kurkh Stela, in Shalmanezer III's 841 BCE account of the battle of Qarqar on the Orontes, when the Assyrian advance to the Mediterranean was halted (briefly) by all coalition of Central and South Syrian and Levantine kings, from Hamath to Judah.
- Sometimes in direct conflict with Assyria, at other times coopted by Mesopotamian powers, Arabs, often ruled by queens and priestesses, appear to have either been gradually integrated into the Assyrian provincial power structure, at others times ruthlessly exterminated when directly threatening imperial interests.
- Gradual Arab infiltration into the Levant appears to have taken place for two reasons: camel domestication and the inception of the trans-Arabian trade on the one hand, and a gradual vacuum in the settled regions North and West of the steppes and deserts on the other, at a time when Assyria crushed every Late Hittite and Aramaean state of Syria after 744 BCE.

Biography of Speaker:
- Martin Makinson is a French and Australian archaeologist currently working for the Department of Antiquities and Archaeology of the Emirate of Ras al-Khaima. He has studied at both University College London and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
- Martin holds two masters and is currently preparing a PhD on "Territories, Cultures, Empires: The Assyrian presence on the Syrian Upper Euphrates, from the Late Bronze Age to the fall of Harran 610 BCE". Martin Makinson has excavated extensively in Syria (in particular at Tell Shioukh Fawqani and Tell Ahmar), in Jordan, Lebanon (he is one of core staff members in charge of publication at Kfarabida, an Early Bronze Age site near Byblos, and has excavated at Sidon), in Iraq (Eridu), Turkey (Zincirli) and in Saudi Arabia and the Sudan.
- He has lived for long periods in the region, in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon and Libya.



For more information, kindly refer to DNHG Lecture web page: https://www.dnhg.org/lectures.html