Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

TESTING THE MIDDLE GROUND IN ASSYRO-ANATOLIAN MARRIAGES OF THE KĀRUM PERIOD

2017; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 79; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/irq.2017.10

2053-4744

Yağmur Heffron,

Linguistics and language evolution

Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age is marked by a well-documented Old Assyrian presence during the kārum period (20 th –17 th century b.c. ), a dynamic time of long-distance trade and cultural contact. One of the idiosyncrasies of the social history of this period is a special bigamous arrangement which allowed Assyrian men to enter second marriages on the condition that one wife remained at home in Aššur, and the other in Anatolia. In testing the extent to which a middle ground for cross-cultural compromise is recognisable in such Assyro-Anatolian marriage practices, this article considers whether the terminology used in reference to the first and second wives ( amtum and aššatum respectively) can be interpreted as the crucial element of misunderstanding in middle ground formation.