Old Assyrian Tablet and Envelope (Harvard Art Museums).
August 12, 2020

Fire Beacons and Message Relays: Staying in Touch in the Ancient Near East

August 2020 | Vol. 8.8

By Tiffany Earley-Spadoni

Communication strategies like text messaging or emails are marvels of the modern world, but people in the past found ingenious solutions to the problem of how to communicate efficiently without the use of electricity or computers. In the ancient world, particularly in the ancient Near East, people were also able to communicate messages at the speed of light.

Old Assyrian Tablet and Envelope (Harvard Art Museums).

Old Assyrian Tablet and Envelope (Harvard Art Museums).

If you were to travel to Federal Hill in Baltimore, Maryland, and climb atop its 15-meter summit, you would discover a dazzling view of the city featuring the touristic Inner Harbor surrounded by a phalanx of slick modern buildings. Yet, the panoramic point suggested a surprising purpose to the city’s inhabitants in the 18th and 19th centuries. A plaque placed on the hill by the Maryland Historical Society helpfully informs visitors that the location was an important signaling station for much of its early history and was used to broadcast messages to local merchants, namely that their ships had arrived safely in port. The site also provided strategic views during a climactic battle of the War of 1812.

A Historical Image of Baltimore from Federal Hill (Credit: the New York Public Library, Open Domain).

A Historical Image of Baltimore from Federal Hill (Credit: the New York Public Library, Open Domain).

Numerous other places in the United States such as Signal Mountain, Tennessee, or Beacon Hill in Boston retain the historical memory of smoke and fire communication systems employed by both indigenous and colonial populations. The beloved American poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, describes a plan to use lanterns to communicate essential details regarding the arrival of the British: one if by land, two if by sea. Other fire communication systems are known from ancient Greece, the Byzantine world and medieval China, just to name a few.

Shatin Watch Tower, Armenia. Courtesy of the author.

Shatin Watch Tower, Armenia. Courtesy of the author.

Traveling farther back into historical records to the 5th century BCE, Herodotus famously related splendors of the Persian world including its road system. He described a royal highway featuring rest stations for travelers located at regular intervals (Histories Book V). A system of fire beacon signaling stations was yet another wonder of the Persian highway, claims that are supported by archaeological evidence at Anatolian archaeological sites.

Additional details from the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, historical texts from one of Persia’s ancient capitals, supplement Herodotus’ tales by describing officials responsible for duties such as watching the road or managing “express mail” services. Yet, the success and overall structure of the Persian road and communications network owes much to older ancient Near Eastern models of long-distance communications and travel, a fact that is not always appreciated.

A remarkable text, sometimes called “The 8th Campaign,” describes a military expedition conducted by the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II in 714 BCE. According to the lengthy literary text framed as a letter, the Assyrian army set out from modern-day Iraq, crossed a high pass in the Zagros mountains, and entered territories in modern day Iran to assist their vassals, the Manneans. The Assyrians then headed north to the area near Lake Urmia where they confronted one of their most bitter enemies, the Urartian empire. The text, written from the Assyrian point-of-view, ridicules the Urartians, calling their skill and bravery into question by comparing them to women. Nonetheless, the narrative describes certain aspects of the Urartian world in admiring terms, such as abundant orchards dripping with fruit like raindrops. The text also relates an altogether cinematic sequence akin to the lighting of the beacons in the 2003 film Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. In advance of the arrival of the Assyrian troops, the Urartians illuminated the clustered mountain peaks like stars in the sky with their myriad beacon fires, presumably to warn their compatriots of eminent danger.

Tablet containing the narrative of the Eighth Campaign of Sargon II. © Musée du Louvre, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn

Tablet containing the narrative of the Eighth Campaign of Sargon II. © Musée du Louvre, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn.

Archaeological investigations have revealed traces of the elaborate systems of fire beacons described in the Assyrian text. Fire signaling platforms have been observed by archaeologists working in the region, and a computational analysis of fortress sites, identified in survey by German and Italian archaeological teams, suggest the fortresses were intentionally placed to create signaling networks. The analysis, performed by the author, employed Geographical Information Systems software to evaluate the intervisibility of the ancient sites, and used statistical methods to test the likelihood that the sites would have been placed in their locations by chance alone.

An Urartian waystation, Getap-1, located in Armenia. Courtesy of the author.

An Urartian waystation, Getap-1, located in Armenia. Courtesy of the author.

Signaling networks near Lake Sevan. Courtesy of the author.

Signaling networks near Lake Sevan. Courtesy of the author.

Video of a medieval signaling station in Armenia.

While fast, fire beacon systems could not communicate more complex messages like today’s emails, meaning that ancient empires needed to rely primarily upon other methods. The Assyrians, like the Persians, maintained a royal road system and used a relay system for official communications, a kind of Assyrian Pony Express. Messages exchanged among Assyrian officials could be delivered either by a relayed letter or personally, by envoy, the preferred method in preceding eras. The relay method was considerably faster, however, although it would have required more organization to achieve. There is no evidence of such systems in place in earlier periods meaning that it may be an innovation of the Neo-Assyrian empire.

The world’s oldest historical evidence for fire beacon communication comes from the ancient Near East, this time from archives of Mari, an archaeological site located on the Euphrates river in modern-day Syria. The letters that describe the system date to around 1800 BCE, and reveal that the world’s earliest known systems were not foolproof. Various letters were written to complain that help had not arrived when the beacons were lit or that two beacon fires would need to be lit going forward to prevent misunderstandings.

Unlike ancient Persia and Assyria, there does not seem to have been a relay system in place for sending official letters during the periods documented by the Mari archives. Instead, messages were carried by envoys and consisted of letters written in cuneiform on clay tablets. Archaeologists sometimes find these letters in their original clay envelopes.

Proverbs encourage us to “not shoot the messenger,” but the work of the messenger, the mār šipri, in the environs of Mari appears to have been dangerous indeed. Given their status and function, envoys frequently became pawns in the political theatre as described in ancient letters. Therefore, the messenger was sometimes given a military escort when traveling between fortified waystations along dangerous roads. Then, as now, communications had to be made secure from interception or worse.

Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni  is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Central Florida. She directs the Vayots Dzor Fortress Landscapes Project in Armenia.

Further reading:

Earley-Spadoni, T. 2015. Landscapes of Warfare: Intervisibility Analysis of Early Iron and Urartian Fire Beacon Stations (Armenia). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 3:22–30.

Favaro, S. 2007. Voyages et voyageurs à l’époque néo-assyrienne. Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, State Archives of Assyria 18. Helsinki.

Parpola, S. 1987. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I. Helsinki University Press, State Archives of Assyria, Volume I. Helsinki.

 

How to cite this article:

Earley-Spadoni, T. 2020. “Fire Beacons and Message Relays: Staying in Touch in the Ancient Near East”, The Ancient Near East Today 8.8. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/fire-beacons-relays/.

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