Assyria

[Patrick Waterson]

Good observation, Andreas: if the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (which incidentally 'guesstimates' kallabu to be 'light troops') mentioned which reigns feature these sample quotes our task would be easier.

If kallabu does mean archers, this could be both a troop type and a social class, on the basis that when the army was fleshed out with hupshu, who appear to have been soldiers of a relatively temporary nature, a permanent corps of trained archers would have been desirable as proficiency with this weapon, especially for effective shooting en masse, takes time and effort to acquire and, just as importantly, sustain (Egyptian archers shot 200 arrows per day to remain proficient, and Assyrians attempting to emulate Egyptian standards would have needed to make their archers full-time).  Hence such troops would become a de facto 'soldier class'.

[Duncan Head]

Dezso's treatment of kallāpani on pp.69-75 is interesting, and thorough. One text cited is:

Another entry, however, lists the kallāpu troops within a section of fighting units (hupšu, kallāpu, archers, and shield-bearers) which were intended to scale the walls of besieged towns ...

Footnoted:

sa-ab hup-ši kal-la-bu n[a-áš GIŠ.BAN as-ma-re-e a-na] BÁD.MEŠ-šu-nu ú-še-li-ma

I think this may be the same as Patrick's second dictionary quote, and that Dezso's archers are a restoration, in the square brackets in his version. Whether kallāpu means "archer" or not depends in part on how sound the restoration is. At the very least, the lacuna or uncertain reading means that you can't just write off the archers as "missing".

[Patrick Waterson]

It does appear to be the same as the second dictionary quote; the dictionary has kallabu na [s ...] duranisunu uselima for its version of the lacuna.

While owing to the lacuna one cannot, as Duncan points out, consider archers as definitely unmentioned, the last dictionary quote:

[L]U narkabte qurbute pithal qurbute saknute ma'assi sa rese [kit]kittu ummani LU kal-la-bu LU ariti dajalu LU.APIN re'u nukaribbu
(I enlarged the army) with charioteers of the guard, horsemen of the guard, men in charge of the stables, sa resi-officers, service engineers, craftsmen, kallabu, shield-bearers, scouts, farmers, shepherds, gardeners

has just the one lacuna which is easily explainable as the 'kit' of 'kitkittu' (also 'kiskattu'), meaning engineer or pioneer (those chaps with mail coats and big axes).  Ergo in this particular example we can say that archers appear to be missing - and there are no hupshu to muddy the waters.

However the said waters are still somewhat turbid on account of the standard word for bowman, qastu, which can also be represented by the Sumerian LU.ERIN.MES.GIS.PAN, appearing in various contexts but not, it appears, in the same contexts as kallapu.

Deszo's reconstruction of his quote adds GIS.PAN, a shorthand for 'archers' (ERIN.MES just means soldier types), plus asmare (azmari), lancers - but his translation does not include the latter!  I suspect he sourced this second-hand.

[Andreas Johansson]

On p36, Dezso paraphrases another occurence of kallāpu:

The unknown governor had to prepare his army, his chariot troops, the Gurreans, the Itu'eans, the exempt infantry (LÚ.zu-ku), and the kallāpu troops.

Here kallāpu appears to be parallel with the ethnica Gurreans and Itu'eans and with the exempt troops, whoever they are. It seems unlikely that it means simply "archers" here, because the Itu'eans were noted as auxiliary archers, and the Gurreans as spearmen - Dezso suggests that the words may have come to mean simply "auxiliary archers" and "auxiliary spearmen" respectively, losing their original ethnic restriction.

The citation is Lanfranchi, G.B. – Parpola, S., eds., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, (State Archives of Assyria, V), Helsinki, 1990.

[Patrick Waterson]

It is still possible that they may represent archers, on the basis that the 'exempt infantry' (presumably manpower mobilised only in an emergency) would not be bow-trained on account of the time and practice required for effective archery and would hence fight as spearmen without archers unless allocated a contingent of bowmen - which is where the kallāpu would come in on the same basis as the Gurrean and Itu'ean contingents.

I am still not wholly sure kallāpu represents archers, but it does seem to fit.

[Andreas Johansson]

Being archers and meaning "archers" isn't quite the same thing. It would be perfectly sensible to list some other sort of archers next to the Itu'ean auxiliary archers, but it would be strange to list, in effect, "archers and auxiliary archers". If the kallāpu are archers (which I see no strong reason to assume; but also no particular reason to reject), they're probably some particular kind of archers, maybe recruited in some particular way, or possessing some particular sociopolitical status, as the apparent parallellism with hupshu elsewhere suggests.

[Patrick Waterson]

Being archers and meaning "archers" isn't quite the same thing. It would be perfectly sensible to list some other sort of archers next to the Itu'ean auxiliary archers, but it would be strange to list, in effect, "archers and auxiliary archers".

The way I see this compilation is: auxiliary infantry (let us call them spearmen), auxiliary archers, domestic spearmen (an emergency levy of the usually exempt) and domestic archers (if that is what kallāpu really are).  The obvious question is: what happened to the domestic non-exempt spearmen?  It would be nice to have a context for this particular quote, which looks like a governor raising a force in a hurry while the royal army is elsewhere.  If this is the case, it answers the question about the domestic spearmen, and it would not be unusual for a governor to have a contingent of domestic/national archers as a standing force (this was Egyptian 18th Dynasty practice as per the Amarna letters).

If the kallāpu are archers (which I see no strong reason to assume; but also no particular reason to reject), they're probably some particular kind of archers, maybe recruited in some particular way, or possessing some particular sociopolitical status, as the apparent parallellism with hupshu elsewhere suggests.

My suggestion would be that the kallāpu are permanent regular archers, often maintained in garrison (where else would one put them when not campaigning?) who would be expected to flesh out an army of levies and/or accompany a fast raid/counterstrike by chariots and cavalry.  Their ethnicity is probably native Assyrian, which would distinguish them from auxiliary (non-Assyrian) archers.

I remain open to reasonable alternative explanations.

[Andreas Johansson]

Unfortunately, the letter in question is fragmentary, so there may be no more context available. But if anyone has access to Dezso's reference, it may be worth looking up.

[Patrick Waterson]

It does not appear in the University of Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (UCAD) examples, so presumably appeared after AD 1911.

This would seem to leave us with two likely possibilities for kallāpu:

1) A permanently embodied regular force, often in garrison, superior in status and immediacy of mobilisation to such categories as hupshu or exempt/emergency levies.  This seems to fit with our available references.

2) As above, but specifically archers, on the basis that they are mentioned in addition to shield-bearers in this quote:

L]U narkabte qurbute pithal qurbute saknute ma'assi sa rese [kit]kittu ummani LU kal-la-bu LU ariti dajalu LU.APIN re'u nukaribbu
(I enlarged the army) with charioteers of the guard, horsemen of the guard, men in charge of the stables, sa resi-officers, service engineers, craftsmen, kallabu, shield-bearers, scouts, farmers, shepherds, gardeners

I regard this as a potential tie-breaker in favour of the term specifically meaning 'archers'.  There is one question-mark over this, in that the UCAD has one reference to shields [ariate, from aritu, shield] being 'drawn' [issu] from officers of the kallāpu.  No context is given to clarify whether these shields were kallāpu issue, temporarily borrowed or even captures from an enemy, although the first seems the most likely option.

We may have gone as far as we can on this particular subject, but it would seem that troops on wheeled platforms are not viable contenders.

[aligern]

Some points:
The Assyrians may well have operated a system like  the Persian, with a large shield at the front and ranks of archers behind. That would make sense of a unit of archers being asked to give shields to another group.
Secondly, the occupants of the mule drawn carts are indeed archers.  Maybe they are distinguished by their mobility, being able to keep up with chariots or cavalry, able to deploy rapidly. Military technology is very mutable, hussars might be dashing light cavalry or heavy lancers, on occasion a name might tell us more about how troops are raised than their equipment. Looking back from 2,500 years hence, how will a historian classify the Sherwood Foresters?

Roy

[Andreas Johansson]

Some points:
The Assyrians may well have operated a system like  the Persian, with a large shield at the front and ranks of archers behind. That would make sense of a unit of archers being asked to give shields to another group.

As Dezso points out, Assyrian art often shows pairs of spearman and archer, the latter shooting from behind the former. But the cuneiform sources suggest there really was about one spearman to one archer, rather than the one to nine ratio assumed for Persian sparabara.

[Andreas Johansson]

On p72, Dezso summarizes another letter:

The first section of the letter lists 106 chariotry personnel, the second 343 cavalry
personnel, the third 69 domestics, the fourth 8 scholars, 23 donkey drivers, 1 information officer,
and 80 kallāpu. The fifth section contains 360 Gurreans and 440 Itu'eans.

As Dezso notes, what seems to be missing here is Assyrian (sc. non-auxiliary) infantry. These would be the "regular infantry" and/or the "heavy infantry" of Dezso's reconstruction (each of which included both archers and close combat troops).

One might think, tho, that if this force contained just 80 Assyrian infantrymen to 800 auxiliaries, the Assyrian infantry contribution was close enough to irrelevant that its absense is equally conceivable.

[Patrick Waterson]

Although if one adds the 80 to the 360, one gets 440 men (archers?) to accompany 440 Itu'eans, a nice 1:1 ratio ...

[Jim Webster]

Although if one adds the 80 to the 360, one gets 440 men (archers?) to accompany 440 Itu'eans, a nice 1:1 ratio ...

That is a very tempting figure to play with

[Andreas Johansson]

Although if one adds the 80 to the 360, one gets 440 men (archers?) to accompany 440 Itu'eans, a nice 1:1 ratio ...

The Itu'eans were noted as bowmen and the Gurreans as spearmen, so to get a 1:1 ratio the kallāpu should presumably be spearmen.