Abstract
The political geography of Southwest Asia was transformed by non-state actors during the second quarter of the second millennium BC. These were often mercenaries or militias engaged beyond the borders of established territorial states, who rarely recorded their actions themselves. Writing was of little use to such men, any more than it was to fight against them. Their interventions helped to sweep away existing structures of political authority and set up new regimes, notably the Mittani kingdom. Once these were formed, their architects gradually adopted writing as a technology for exercising power and authority, following the practices of earlier regimes.
We necessarily observe these developments through written documents, which complement archaeological data. The power of eloquence is underlined in the Hourrite poem entitled "Song of Liberation", in which the proposal of the king of Ebla is defeated by the arguments of a senator. Debates in such a forum are rarely recorded in practical documents - except in cases where we have exceptionally loquacious correspondence, as at Mari - and had this poem not been transcribed by Hittite scribes, we could hardly have assumed that Middle Bronze Ebla was governed by a senate. Yet it was the spoken word, not the written word, that moved minds, mobilized armies and left its mark on history.
Without sufficient epistolary, legal or literary documentation, we don't have access to speech as a driver of political change. Nevertheless, a perspective that takes this into account can help describe the largely unknown processes by which second-generation states like the Mittani were formed on the margins or vestiges of the states they replaced.
