The main goal of the present research is the investigation of the general staff of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the uppermost class of imperial administration, which appears in cuneiform sources as LU2.GAL.MEŠ (Akkadian: rabûti, literally ’the great ones’) by collecting and analysing all the relevant sources (mainly documents created by the daily routine of the officials: letters, contracts, administrative lists), and by the elaboration of a monographic synthesis on the topic.

The administrative structures of the ancient Near East are squarely described as a despotic system by the historical literature, where the ruler’s will could prevail without any limitations. However, by the analysis of the documents created by the daily routine of the Assyrian administration we can draw a more sophisticated picture, where the general staff of the imperial administration could act as an equal actor against or in conjunction with the ruler’s will. The basic questions of the research are: Who were the members of the general staff? What was its role in the governance of the empire? What was the general staff’s relationship with the ruler or other centres of power of the empire?

The new administrative methods and techniques of control were developed in the heydays of the Assyrian Empire raised on a new level the possibilities of empire building, and these processes emerged in the tool bars of the later empires. However, no comprehensive monographic analysis of the structure and functioning of the Assyrian administration is available thus far, so the results of present research project could be an important reference point for not only the specialists of the history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, but for the researchers of ancient administrative systems as well. 

The Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BCE) is without parallels in the history of ancient Mesopotamia with regard to its duration and size, and as the first ‘territorial empire’ it became an example for the later empires of the Near East in many ways. The governance of this enormous state was enabled by the use of subtle administrative procedures derived from the Mesopotamian traditions and the work of officials who could apply and renew them. In this latter aspect, the Assyrian administration developed new methods of recruitment, education, and organization of the officials which not only outlived the Assyrian Empire, but were also echoed in the organizations of the later empires of the Near East. These methods are in the focus of the present research.

However, the administrative structures of the ancient Near East are used to be described as a despotic system, by the analysis of the documents created by the daily routine of the Assyrian administration we can reconstruct more sophisticated functioning, where the relations of power between the officials of the administrative elite and the rulers could have been changed in a dynamic manner.

The main goal of the present research is the investigation of the role of the oath in the working of the administration of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It contains on the one hand the translation and analysis of all the oath-texts, on the other hand the collection and analysis of those groups of sources (administrative letters, private contracts, ritual texts) which provide relevant information on the oath ceremony, the changing status of the members of the adê, and its effects on the everyday social status of the officials working of the administration, but the previous studies did not build in their arguments; and the elaboration of a monographic synthesis on the topic.

The scholarly literature related to the oaths in the Neo-Assyrian Empire dealt with the adê primarily in the context of inter-state contracts, although on the base of the still detected texts related to the adê, it became clear that beside the inter-state relationships the oath had a crucial role in the recruitments and working of the Assyrian administration. What circles of the members of the administration did take part in the adê ceremonies? How did it influence on the everyday work and the c? What was the ceremony of the oath taking? Can we find any connections with the results of scholarly literature on the Hittite, Aramaic, and Hebrew sources of oath?

The new administrative methods and techniques of control were developed in the heydays of the Assyrian Empire raised on a new level the possibilities of empire building, and these processes emerged in the tool bars of the later empires. The structure and functioning of the Assyrian administration were strongly determined by the adê system, however, the scholarly literature has investigated it in the context of inter-state relationships. As no comprehensive monographic analysis of the topic is available thus far, the results of present research project could be an important reference point for not only the specialists of the history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, but for the researchers of ancient administrative systems as well.

In the Neo-Assyrian era (911–612 B.C.E.), the Akkadian sources call adê a kind of oath-taking treaty which is contracted by the Assyrian king with rulers of foreign countries or with Assyrian subjects. The scholarly literature treated the concept of the adê mostly in the contexts of inter-state relations and neglected the information about oath taking which led us to consider the adê system as a key element in the inner structure and functioning of the Assyrian administration. The main goal of the research is, beyond the translation and analysis of the oath texts, to collect those written sources which contain relevant information on the circles of the members of the administration took part in the adê ceremonies, on the changing social status of these officials, and on the oath ceremony itself.

The Neo-Assyrian period is essentially a linguistic category that denotes the last phase of the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian – and historiography uses the term to refer to the state formation from which the written sources of this dialect originate. Starting from the Assyrian heartland at the confluence of the Tigris and Zab rivers, the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which was formed in the 10th century, expanded their state through successive annual campaigns in the four corners of the world until the end of the 7th century, when they fell. The success of this expansion is shown by the fact that a state of unprecedented size and durability (934-609 BC) was established in the history of the ancient East. From the second half of the 8th century BC onwards, Assyria can be confidently regarded as the superpower of the period, since no neighbouring state could have failed to recognise Assyrian supremacy and become vassal dependent on the empire for a longer or shorter period.

The Assyrian imperial expansion showed a steady development in military terms until 630 BC. In successive campaigns, the Assyrian army carried out successful operations further and further away from the imperial core - In the middle of the 7th century, at the zenith of the military expansion, the Assyrians captured the capital of Elam (Susa, 880 km from Nineveh), the Egyptian capital (Thebes, 2200 km from Nineveh) and waged war against the Cimmerians in the interior of Anatolia. However, the military expansion was not fully followed by the expansion of the administration, with military and territorial expansion developing together only in short periods.

By the middle of the 9th century BC, the provinces of the Neo-Assyrian Empire had reached the great bend of the Euphrates, and territorial expansion here - at the former borders of the Middle Assyrian Empire (14th-12th centuries BC) – came to a halt for more than a century. From the accession to the throne of Tukultī-apil-Ešarra III, another thirty-two-year period of expansion followed (745-713 BC), during which 36 new Assyrian provinces were established. Thereafter, hardly any new provinces were created, with only eight new administrative units until the fall of the empire, mostly in areas that were already deeply embedded in the Assyrian power structure.

In this period of massive provincialisation, Assyria took control of most of the Middle East, from the Armenian Highlands to the Persian Gulf, from the Zagros Mountains to the Levant, creating the largest world empire in history. Although the Assyrian royal inscriptions tell us that the empire's troops never retreated and were victorious in every conflict, the surviving royal correspondence and archaeological evidence paint a much more nuanced picture, suggesting the deliberate establishment of a sophisticated system of border control. The borders of this vast empire were, of course, extremely long, stretched over the most varied geographical and climatic conditions, and the local societies subjected to it were also very diverse in terms of both social complexity and cultural attitudes.

In my previous research on the history of the eastern mountainous provinces of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, I have come to the conclusion that the Assyrian state organisation, which has been portrayed in previous literature as schematic, was in fact highly flexible and highly adaptable to the geographic, social and economic conditions of the border region.

The main objective of the research is to collect and analyse written sources on the development and functioning of the border police system in three different border areas of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and to prepare an English-language manuscript presenting the results of the research.

While there are numerous studies in the literature on the archaeology, history or economic importance of certain border settlements, no attempt has yet been made to describe the border guard system of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In my work, I aim to apply the investigative aspects of frontier studies, which has been little used in the historiographical literature, and to see the frontier zones not only as a war zone to contain the enemy, but also as a primary area of communication between the empire and its neighbours.

In the 9th century BC. From the 9th century BC onwards, the northern frontier of the Assyrian Empire is recorded as having administrative units (the mātus, 'countries') larger in both area and strength than the other Assyrian provinces, each headed by an Assyrian court dignitary (turtānu, rab šāqê, masennu, nāgir ekalli), but neither the development of the mātu system nor the relationship between the mātus and the other Assyrian provinces has been studied in the literature. The three sections chosen lie along the northern border of the empire: 1, northern Syria and south-eastern Anatolia; 2, the upper reaches of the Tigris; 3, the section from Upper Zab to the Great Khorasan Road.