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p. 36 Assyrian Military
The Rise of New
Empires
An independent Hebrew
state could exist only because there was a power vacuum in western Asia after the
destruction of the Hittite kingdom and the weakening of the Egyptian empire. But this
condition did not last; new empires soon arose that came to dominate vast stretches of the
ancient world.
The first of these
empires was formed in Assyria, located on the upper Tigris River, an area that brought it
into both cultural and political contact with Mesopotamia. The Assyrians were a
Semitic-speaking people who exploited the use of iron weapons to establish an empire by
700 B.C.E. that included Mesopotamia, parts of the Iranian plateau, sections of Asia
Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt down to Thebes. Ashurbanipal (669-626 B.C.E.) was one
of the strongest Assyrian rulers, but during his reign it was already becoming apparent
that the Assyrian Empire was greatly overextended. Internal strife intensified as powerful
Assyrian nobles gained control of vast territories and waged their own private military
campaigns. Moreover, subject peoples, such as the Babylonians, greatly resented Assyrian
rule and rebelled against it. Soon after Ashurbanipal's reign, the Assyrian Empire began
to disintegrate rapidly. The capital city of Nineveh fell to a coalition of Chaldeans and
Medes in 612 B.C.E., and in 605 B.C.E., the rest of the empire was finally divided
between the coalition powers.
At its height, the
Assyrian Empire was ruled by kings whose power was considered absolute. Under their
leadership, the Assyrian Empire came to be well organized. By eliminating governorships
held by nobles on a hereditary basis and instituting a new hierarchy of local
officials directly responsible to the king, the Assyrian kings gained greater control
over the resources of the empire. The Assyrians also developed an efficient system of
communication to administer their empire more effectively. A network of posting stages
was established throughout the empire that used relays of horses (mules or donkeys in
mountainous terrain) to carry messages. The system was so effective that a provincial
governor anywhere in the empire (except Egypt) could send a question and receive an answer
from the king in his palace within a week.
The ability of the
Assyrians to conquer and maintain an empire was due to a combination of factors. Over many
years of practice, the Assyrians developed effective military leaders and fighters. They
were able to enlist and deploy troops numbering in the hundreds of thousands, although
most campaigns were not on such a large scale. In 845 B.C.E., an Assyrian army of 120,000
men crossed the Euphrates on a campaign. Size alone was not decisive, however. The
Assyrian army was extremely well organized and disciplined. It included a standing army
of infantrymen as its core, accompanied by cavalry and horse-drawn war chariots that were
used as mobile platforms for shooting arrows. Moreover, the Assyrians had the advantage
of having the first large armies equipped with iron weapons. The Hittites had been the
first to develop iron metallurgy, but iron came to be used extensively only after new
methods for hardening it became common after 1000 B.C.E.
Another factor in the army's success was its ability to use different kinds of military tactics. The Assyrian army was capable of waging guerrilla warfare in the mountains and set battles on open ground as well as laying siege to cities. The Assyrians were especially renowned for their siege warfare. They would hammer a city's walls with heavy, wheeled siege towers and armored battering rams, while sappers dug tunnels to undermine the walls' foundations and cause them to collapse. The besieging Assyrian armies learned to cut off supplies so effectively that if a city did not fall to them, the inhabitants could be starved into submission.
A final factor in the
effectiveness of the Assyrian military machine was its ability to create a climate of
terror as an instrument of warfare. The Assyrians became famous for their terror
tactics, although some historians believe that their policies were no worse than those
of other conquerors. As a matter of regular policy, the Assyrians laid waste the land in
which they were fighting, smashing dams, looting and destroying towns, setting crops on
fire, and cutting down trees, particularly fruit trees. The Assyrians were especially
known for committing atrocities on their captives. King Ashurnasirpal recorded this
account of his treatment of prisoners:
3000 of their combat
troops I felled with weapons. . . .
Many of the captives taken from them I burned in a fire.
Many I took alive; from some of these I cut off their hands to the wrist, from others I
cut off their noses, ears and fingers;
I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers....
I burned their young men and women to death.
After conquering
another city, the same king wrote: "I fixed up a pile of corpses in front of the
city's gate. I flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on
the piles. ... I flayed many within my land and spread their skins out on the walls." (Obviously, not a king to play games with!) It
should be noted that this policy of extreme cruelty to prisoners was not used against all
enemies, but was primarily reserved for those who were already part of the empire and then
rebelled against Assyrian rule.
Unlike the Hebrews,
the Assyrians were not fearful of mixing with other peoples. In fact, Assyrian deportation
policies created a polyglot society in which ethnic differences were not very important.
What gave identity to the Assyrians themselves was their language, although even that was
akin to that of their southern neighbors in Babylonia who also spoke a Semitic language.
Religion was also a cohesive force. Assyria was literally "the land of Ashur," a
reference to its chief god. The king, as the human representative of the god Ashur,
provided a final unifying focus.
Agriculture formed
the principal basis of Assyrian life. Assyria was a land of farming villages with
relatively few significant cities, especially in comparison to Mesopotamia. Unlike
Mesopotamia, where farming required the minute organization of large numbers of people to
control irrigation, Assyrian farms received sufficient moisture from regular rainfall.
Trade was second to
agriculture in economic importance. For internal trade, metals, such as gold, silver,
copper, and bronze, were used as a medium of exchange. Various agricultural products
also served as a form of payment or exchange. Because of their geographical location,
the Assyrians served as middlemen and participated in an international trade in which
they imported timber, wine, and precious metals and stones while exporting textiles
produced in palaces, temples, and private workshops.
The culture of the
Assyrian Empire was essentially hybrid in nature. The Assyrians assimilated much of
Mesopotamian civilization and saw themselves as guardians of Sumerian and Babylonian
culture. Ashurbanipal, for example, established a large library at Nineveh that included
the available works of Mesopotamian history. Assyrian kings also tried to maintain old
traditions when they rebuilt damaged temples by constructing the new buildings on the
original foundations, not in new locations. Assyrian religion reflected this
assimilation of other cultures as well. Although the Assyrians had their own national god Ashur as their chief deity, virtually all of their remaining gods and goddesses were
Mesopotamian.
Among the best-known
objects of Assyrian art are the relief sculptures found in the royal palaces in three of
the Assyrian capital cities, Nimrud, Nineveh, and Khorsabad. These beliefs, which were
begun in the ninth century and reached their high point in the reign of Ashurbanipal in
the seventh century, depicted two different kinds of subject matter: ritual or ceremonial
scenes revolving around the person of the king and scenes of
The Chaldeans, a
Semitic-speaking people, had gained ascendancy in Babylonia by the seventh century and
came to form the chief resistance to Assyrian control of Mesopotamia. After the collapse
of the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldeans, under their king Nebuchadnezzar II (605—562 b.c.e.), restored Babylonia to its position as the
leading state in western Asia. Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt Babylon as the center of his
empire, giving it a reputation as one of the great cities of the ancient world. But the
splendor of Chaldean Babylonia proved to be short-lived when Babylon fell to the Persians
in 539 B.C.E.
The Persians were an
Indo-European—speaking people who lived in southwestern Iran and fell subject to the
ethnically related Medes. Primarily nomadic, the Persians were organized in tribes or
clans led by petty kings assisted by a group of warriors who formed a class of nobles.
At the beginning of the seventh century, the Achaemenid dynasty, based in Persis, in
southern Iran, managed to unify the Persians. One of the dynasty's members, Cyrus (559-530
B.C.E.), created a powerful Persian state that rearranged the political map of western
Asia. In 550 B.C.E., he extended Persian control over the Modes, making Media the first
Persian satrapy or province. Three years later, Cyrus defeated the prosperous Lydian
kingdom in western Asia Minor, and Lydia became another Persian satrapy. Cyrus's forces
then went on to conquer the Greek city-states that had been established on the Ionian
coast. Cyrus then turned eastward, subduing the eastern part of the Iranian plateau, Sogdia, and even western India. His eastern frontiers secured, Cyrus entered Mesopotamia
in 539 and captured Babylon. His treatment of Babylonia showed remarkable restraint
and wisdom. Babylonia was made into a Persian province under a Persian satrap, but many
government officials were kept in their positions. Cyrus took the title "King of All,
Great King, Mighty King, King of Babylon, King of the Land of Sumer and Akkad, King of the
Four Rims (of the Earth), the Son of Cambyses the Great King, King of Anshan" and
insisted that he stood in the ancient, unbroken line of Babylonian kings. By appealing to
the vanity of the Babylonians, he won their loyalty. Cyrus also issued an edict permitting
the Hebrews, who had been brought to Babylon in the sixth century B.C.E., to return to
Jerusalem with their sacred temple objects and to rebuild their Temple as well.
To his
contemporaries, Cyrus the Great was deserving of his epithet. The Greek historian
Herodotus recounted that the Persians viewed him as a "father," a ruler who was
"gentle, and procured them all manner of goods." Certainly, Cyrus must have been
an unusual ruler for his time, a man who demonstrated considerable wisdom and compassion
in the conquest and organization of his empire. Cyrus attempted—successfully—to
obtain the favor of the priesthoods in his conquered lands by restoring temples and
permitting a wide degree of religious toleration. He won approval by using not only
Persians, but also native peoples as government officials in their own states. Unlike the
Assyrian rulers of an earlier empire, he had a reputation for mercy. Medes, Babylonians,
Hebrews, all accepted him as their legitimate ruler. Indeed, the Hebrews regarded him as
the anointed one of God: "I am the Lord who says of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd and
will accomplish all that I please'; he will say of Jerusalem, 'Let it be rebuilt'; and of
the temple, 'Let its foundations be laid.' This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to
Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him." Cyrus had a
genuine respect for ancient civilizations—in building his palaces, he made use of
Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Lydian practices. Indeed, Cyrus had a sense that
he was creating a "world empire" that included peoples who had ancient and
venerable traditions and institutions.
Cyrus's successors
extended the territory of the Persian Empire. His son Cambyses (530-522 B.C.E.) undertook
a successful invasion of Egypt and made it into a satrapy with Memphis as its capital.
Darius (521-486 B.C.E.) added a new Persian province in western India that extended to
the Indus River and moved into Europe proper, conquering Thrace and making the Macedonian
king a vassal. A revolt of the Ionian Greek cities in 499 B.C.E. resulted in temporary
freedom for these communities in western Asia Minor. Aid from the Greek mainland, most
notably from Athens, encouraged the lonians to invade Lydia and burn Sardis, center of the
Lydian satrap. This event led to Darius's involvement with the mainland Greeks. After
reestablishing control of the Ionian Greek cities, Darius undertook an invasion of the
Greek mainland, which culminated in the famous Athenian victory in the Battle of
Marathon in 490 B.C.E.
By the reign of
Darius, the Persians had created the largest empire the world had yet seen. It not only
included all the old centers of power in Egypt and western Asia, but also extended into
Thrace and Asia Minor in the west and into India in the east. For administrative purposes,
the empire had been divided into approximately twenty provinces called satrapies. Each
province was ruled by a governor or satrap, literally a "protector of the
Kingdom." Although Darius had not introduced the system of satrapies, he did see that
it was organized more rationally. He created a sensible system for calculating the tribute
that each satrapy owed to the central government and gave satraps specific civil and
military duties. They collected tributes, were responsible for justice and security,
raised military levies for the royal army, and normally commanded the military forces
within their satrapies. In terms of real power, the satraps were miniature kings with
courts imitative of the Great King's.
From the time of
Darius on, satraps were men of Persian descent. The major satrapies were given to
princes of the royal family, and their position became essentially hereditary. The minor
satrapies were placed in the hands of Persian nobles. Their offices, too, tended to pass
from father to son. The hereditary nature of the governors' offices made it necessary to
provide some checks to their power. Consequently, royal officials at the satrapal courts
acted as spies for the Great King.
An efficient system
of communication was crucial to sustaining the Persian Empire. Well-maintained roads
facilitated the rapid transit of military and government personnel. One in particular,
the so-called Royal Road, stretched from Sardis, the center of Lydia in Asia Minor, to
Susa, the chief capital of the Persian Empire. Like the Assyrians, the Persians
established staging posts equipped with fresh horses for the kings messengers.
In this vast
administrative system, the Persian king occupied an exalted position. Although not
considered to be a god in the manner of an Egyptian pharaoh, he was nevertheless the elect
one or regent of the Persian god Ahuramazda (see Persian Religion later in this chapter).
All subjects were the kings servants, and he was the source of all justice, possessing the
power of life and death over everyone. Persian kings were largely secluded and not easily
accessible. They resided in a series of splendid palaces. Darius in particular was a
palace builder on a grand scale. His description of the construction of a palace in the
chief Persian capital of Susa demonstrated what a truly international empire Persia was:
This is the . . .
palace which at Susa I built. From afar its ornamentation was brought. . . . The cedar
timber was brought from a mountain named Lebanon; the Assyrians brought it to Babylon, and
from Babylon the Carians and lonians brought it to Susa. Teakwood was brought from Gandara
and from Carmania. The gold which was used here was brought from Sardis and from Bactria.
The stone—lapis lazuli and carnehan—was brought from Sogdiana. . . . The silver
and copper were brought from Egypt. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned was
brought from lonia. The ivory was brought from Ethiopia, from India, and from Arachosia.
The stone pillars were brought from . . . Elam. The artisans who dressed the stone were
lonians and Sardians. The goldsmiths who wrought the gold were Medes and Egyptians. . . .
Those who worked the baked brick (with figures) were Babylonians. The men who adorned the
wall were Medes and Egyptians. At Susa here a splendid work was ordered; very splendid
did it turn out.
But Darius was unhappy with Susa. He did not really consider it his homeland, and it was oppressively hot in the summer months. He built another residence at Persepolis, a new capital located to the east of the old one and at a higher elevation.
The policies of
Darius also tended to widen the gap between the king and his subjects. As the Great King
himself said of all his subjects: "what was said to them by me, night and day it
was done." Over a period of time, the Great Kings in their greed came to hoard
immense quanities of gold and silver in the various treasuries located in the capital
cities. Both their hoarding of wealth and their later overtaxation of their subjects are
considered crucial factors in the ultimate weakening of the Persian Empire.
In its heyday,
however, the empire stood supreme, and much of its power depended upon the military. By
the time of Darius, the Persian monarchs had created a standing army of professional
soldiers. This army was truly international in character, composed of contingents from the
various peoples who made up the empire. At its core was a cavalry force of 10,000 and an
elite infantry force of 10,000 Medes and Persians known as the Immortals because they
were never allowed to fall below 10,000 in number. When one was killed, he was immediately
replaced. The Persians made effective use of their cavalry, especially for operating
behind enemy lines and breaking up lines of communication.
Of all the Persians'
cultural contributions, the most original was their religion. The popular religion of
the Iranians before the advent of Zoroastrianism in the sixth century focused on the
worship of the powers of nature, such as the sun, moon, fire, and winds. Mithra was an
especially popular god of light and war who came to be viewed as a sun god. The people
worshiped and sacrificed to these powers of nature with the aid of priests, known as Magi.
Zoroaster was a
semi-legendary figure who, according to Persian tradition, was born in 660 B.C.E. After a
period of wandering and solitude, he experienced revelations that caused him to be revered
as a prophet of the "true religion." It is difficult to know what Zoroaster's
original teachings were since the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, the Zend Avesta, was not
written down until the third century C.E. Scholars believe, however, that the earliest
section of the Zend Avesta, known as the Yasna, consisting of seventeen hymns or gathas,
contains the actual writings of Zoroaster. This enables us to piece together his message.
That spiritual message was grounded in a monotheistic framework. Although Ahuramazda was not a new god to the Iranians, to Zoroaster he was the only god and the religion he preached was the only perfect one. Ahuramazda (the "Wise Lord") was the supreme deity who brought all things into being:
This i ask of You, 0
Ahuramazda; answer me well:
Who at the Creation was the first father of Justice?—
Who assigned their path to the sun and the stars?—
Who decreed the waxing and waning of the moon, if it was
not You?— . . .
Who has fixed the earth below, and the heaven above with its
clouds that it might not be moved?—
Who has appointed the waters and the green things upon the
earth?—
Who has harnessed to the wind and the clouds their
steeds?— . ..
Thus do I strive to recognize in You, 0 Wise One,
Together with the Holy Spirit, the Creator of all things.
According to
Zoroaster, Ahuramazda also possessed abstract qualities or states that all humans should
aspire to, such as Good Thought, Right, and Piety. Although Ahuramazda was supreme, he
was not unopposed. Right is opposed by the Lie, Truth by Falsehood, Life by Death. At
the beginning of the world, the good spirit of Ahuramazda was opposed by the evil spirit
(in later Zoroastrianism, the evil spirit is identified with Ahriman). Although it
appears that Zoroaster saw it as simply natural that where there is good, there will be
evil, later followers had a tendency to make these abstractions concrete and
overemphasize the reality of an evil spirit. Humans also played a role in this cosmic
struggle between good and evil. Ahuramazda, the creator, gave all humans free will and the
power to choose between right and wrong. The good person chooses the right way of
Ahuramazda. Zoroaster taught that there would be an end to the struggle between good and
evil. Ahuramazda would eventually triumph, and at the last judgment at the end of the
world, the final separation of good and evil would occur. Zoroaster also provided for
individual judgment as well. Each soul faced a final evaluation of its actions. If a
person had performed good deeds, he or she would achieve paradise, the "House of
Song" or the "Kingdom of Good Thought"; if evil deeds, then the soul would
be thrown into an abyss, the "House of Worst Thought," where it would experience
future ages of darkness, torment, and misery.
The spread of
Zoroastrianism was due to its acceptance by the Great Kings of Persia. The inscriptions
of Darius make clear that he believed Ahuramazda was the only god. Although Darius himself
may have been a
p. 30 - The Assyrian Military Machine
The Assyrians achieved a reputation for possessing a mighty military machine. They were able to use a variety of military tactics and were successful whether they were waging guerrilla warfare, fighting set battles, or laying siege to cities. In these three selections, Assyrian kings boast of their military conquests.
King Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.E.) Describes a Battle with the Elamites in 691
At the command of the god Ashur, the great Lord, I rushed upon the enemy like the approach
of a hurricane. ... I put them to rout and turned them back. I transfixed the troops of
the enemy with javelins and arows. ... I cut their throats like sheep. . . . My
prancing steeds, trained to harness, plunged into their welling blood as into a river; the
wheels of my battle chariot were bespattered with blood and filth. I filled the plain with
the corpses of their warriors like herbage. . . . As to the sheikhs of the Chaldeans,
panic from my onslaught overwhelmed them like a demon. They abandoned their tents and
fled for their lives, crushing the corpses of their troops as they went. ... In their
terror they passed scalding urine and voided their excrement into their chariots.
King Sennacherib Describes His Siege of Jerusalem (701 B.C.E.)
As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his
strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their
vicinity, and conquered
them by means of well-stamped earth-ramps, and battering-rams
brought thus near to the wall combined with the attack by foot soldiers, using mines,
breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out of them 200,150 people, young and
old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle
beyond counting, and considered them booty. Himself
[Hezekiah]
I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a
bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who
were leaving his city's gate.
King Ashurbanipal (669-626 B.C.E.) Describes His Treatment of Conquered Babylon
I tore out the
tongues of those whose slanderous mouths had uttered blasphemies against my god Ashur and
had plotted against me, his god-fearing prince; I defeated them completely. The others,
I
smashed alive with the very same statues of protective deities with which they had smashed
my own grandfather Sennacherib—now finally as a belated burial sacrifice for his
soul. I fed their corpses, cut into small pieces, to dogs, pigs, . . . vultures, the birds
of the sky and also to the fish of the ocean. After I had performed this and thus made
quiet again the hearts of the great gods, my lords, I removed the corpses of those whom
the pestilence had felled, whose leftovers after the dogs and pigs had fed on them were
obstructing the streets, filling the places of Babylon, and of chose who had lost their
lives through the terrible famine.
A contemporary statue, in San Francisco, based on historical sculptures, of Ashurbanipal: (click for details)