The Origins of Tribute

Abstract

The Egyptian kings are not the only ones to view the acquisition of goods from abroad as implying the superiority of the receiver. The boast of Tukulti- Ninurta to be ‘one who receives the burdensome contributions of the four quarters in the city Ashur’¹ is in the same vein. Are all the contributions recorded in the middle-Assyrian royal inscriptions regarded as real tribute? Or, to be more precise: do the suppliers also regard them as such? This is difficult to ascertain from the stereotyped language and unifying ideology of the inscriptions. In reality it seems that sometimes they do and sometimes they do not. For instance, in a text of ‘Tiglat-pileser V we find three passages (in close sequence and using the same terminology) each of which must be evaluated differently.