The Assyrians were a Semitic people living in the northern reaches of Mesopotamia; they had a long history in the area, but for most of that history they were subjugated to the more powerful kingdoms and peoples to the south. The new state grew around four cities fed by the waters or tributaries of the Tigris: Ashur, Arbela, Nimrud (or Calah) and Nineveh.
The god Ashur gave his name to the city Ashur, and then to the whole of Assyria. There, the earliest of the nation's kings had their residences, until exposure to the heat of the desert and the attacks of the neighboring Babylonians led Ashur's rulers to build a secondary capital in cooler Nineveh, named after Nina, the Ishtar of Assyria.
They took their common language and their arts from Sumeria, but later modified them until they were almost indistinguishable from the language and arts of Babylonia. However, unlike the Babylonians, from beginning to end the Assyrians were a race of warriors, more cruel and more brutal than any other race. Their history is one of kings and slaves, wars and conquests, bloody victories and sudden defeat.
Early Empires and Dependency
About BCE 1810 an Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad I (reigned 1813-1780 BC), succeeded in extending the territory of Assyria from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. Shamshi-Adad may have been the first ruler to establish a centrally organized empire in the ancient Middle East. He divided his kingdom into districts under specially appointed administrators and councils, instituted a system of couriers, and took a census of the population at regular intervals. This first Assyrian Empire did not last long, however; Shamshi-Adad’s son, Ishme-Dagan I, (reigned circa BCE 1780-1760),was defeated about BCE 1760 by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, and Assyria became part of the Babylonian Empire.
The Babylonian Empire was also short-lived. The Kassites, a non-Semitic people, invaded Babylonia in the 16th century BCE and seized political power. Another non-Semitic mountain people, the Hurrians, infiltrated practically all northern Mesopotamia and even reached Palestine to the west. Close behind the Hurrians, and to some extent intermingling with them, came an Indo-European people whose name is unknown. As a result of these migrations and wanderings, the 16th century BCE was one of turmoil in Mesopotamian history. About BCE 1500 Assyria became a dependency of Mitanni, a kingdom of imperial proportions that had extended its sway over all northern Mesopotamia. Assyria remained in subjection until early in the 14th century BCE, when the Mitanni Kingdom suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the rising empire of the Hittites to the north. Taking advantage of the ensuing confusion, the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I (reigned BCE 1364-1328) freed Assyria from the Mitanni yoke and even annexed some of its territory.
Altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I
Ashur-uballit I was succeeded by a series of vigorous rulers, notably Adad-nirari I (reigned BCE 1307-1274), Shalmaneser I (reigned BCE 1274-1244), and Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned BCE 1244-1207). They were successful in extending the Assyrian boundaries and in keeping at bay their powerful neighbors, the Urartians, the Hittites, the Babylonians, and the Lullubi.
Beginning with the monarch Tukulti-Ninurta, Assyria began its first conquests, in this case, the conquest of Babylon. The Assyrian dream of empire began with the monarch, Tiglat-Pileser I (1115-1076), who extended Assyrian dominance to Syria and Armenia. At the time of Tiglath-Pileser's death, Assyria enjoyed a period of tranquility, which, however, did not last very long; for we find his two sons and successors, seeking offensive and defensive alliances with the Kings of Babylonia
Beginning of the Neo Assyrian Empire
From about BCE 1070 to 950, a gap of more than one hundred years presents itself in the history of Assyria. But from 950 down to the fall of Nineveh and the overthrow of the Assyrian Empire (BCE 609) the history of Assyria is very completely represented in documents. Towards BCE 970, Tiglath-pileser II was king over Assyria. In BCE 935 he was succeeded by his son, Assuhr-Dan II, and about BCE 911 by the latter's son, Adad-nirari II, who, in BCE 889, was succeeded by his son, Tukulti-Ninurta II. The last two monarchs appear to have undertaken several successful expeditions against Babylonia and the regions north of Assyria. Tukulti-Ninurta's successor was his son Asshur-Nasir-Pal (BCE 884-859), with whose accession to the throne began a long career of victory that placed Assyria at the head of the great powers of that age. He was a great conqueror, soldier, organizer, hunter, and builder, but fierce and cruel.
Ashurnasirpal II
In his many military campaigns he invaded, subdued, and conquered all the regions north, south, east, and west of Assyria, from the mountains of Armenia down to Babylon, and from the mountains of Kurdistan and Lake Urmi to the Mediterranean. He crossed the Euphrates and the Orontes, penetrated into the Lebanon region, attacked Karkemish, the capital of the Hittites (Neo-Hittite) , invaded Syria, and compelled the cities of the Mediterranean coast (such as Tyre, Sidon, Bylos, and Arvad ) to pay tribute.
Asshur-Nasir-Pal was succeeded by his son, Shalmaneser III, who during his reign made an expedition to the West with the object of subduing Damascus. In this memorable campaign he came into direct touch with Israel and their king Achab who happened to be one of the allies of Benhadad, King of Damascus. In describing this expedition the Assyrian monarch goes on to say that he approached Karkar, a town to the southwest of Karkemish, and the royal residence of Irhulini.
After Shalmaneser III came his son Shamshi-Adad V (BCE 824), who, in order to quell the rebellion caused by his elder son, Asshur-Danin-Pal, undertook four campaigns. He also fought and defeated the Babylonian King, Marduk-balatsuiqbi, and his powerful army. Shamshi-Adad V was succeeded by his son, Adad-Nirari III (BCE 811). This king undertook several expeditions against Media, Armenia, the land of Nairi, and the region around Lake Urmi, and subjugated all the coastlands of the West, including Tyre, Sidon, Edom, Philistia, and the "land of Omri", i.e. Israel. Adad-Nirari III also claimed sovereignty over Babylonia. In one of his inscriptions, which are unfortunately scarce and laconic, he mentions the name of his wife, Sammuramat, which is the only Assyrian or Babylonian name discovered so far having any phonetic resemblance to that of the famous legendary queen, Semiramis. The personal identity of the two queens, however, is not known. Adad-Nirari III was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV (BCE 782-772), and the latter by Asshur-Dan III (BCE 773-754). Of these three kings we know little, as no adequate inscriptions of their reigns have come down to us.
World Empire
In the year BCE 745 Tiglath-Pileser III seized the throne of Assyria, at Nineveh. For the first time in history the idea of centralization was introduced into politics; the conquered provinces were organized under an elaborate bureaucracy at the head of which was the king, each district paying a fixed tribute and providing a military contingent.
Tiglath-pileser III in Triumph
From Nimrud, about BCE 730
The Assyrian forces became a standing army, which, by successive improvements and careful discipline, was molded into an irresistible fighting machine, and Assyrian policy was directed towards the definite object of reducing the whole civilized world into a single empire and thereby throwing its trade and wealth into Assyrian hands. With this objective, after terrorizing Armenia and the Medes and breaking the power of the Hittites, Tiglath-Pileser III secured the high-roads of commerce to the Mediterranean together with the Phoenician seaports and then made himself master of Babylonia. In BCE 729 the height of his ambition was attained, and he was invested With the sovereignty of Asia in the holy city of Babylon.
Two years later he died but his successor, who took the name of Shalmaneser IV, continued the policy he had begun. Shalmaneser died suddenly in Tebet BCE 722, while pressing the siege of Samaria, and the seizure of the throne by another general, Sargon, on the 12th of the month, gave the Babylonians an opportunity to revolt. The Babylonian prince Marduk-baladan, entered Babylon and was there crowned legitimate king. For twelve years he successfully resisted the Assyrians; but the failure of his allies in the west to act in concert with him, and the overthrow of the Elamites, eventually compelled him to flee to his ancestral domains in the marshes of southern Babylonia. Sargon, who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of the northern nations, had taken (BCE 717) the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish and had annexed the future kingdom of Ecbatana, was now accepted as king by the Babylonian priests, and his claim to be the successor of Sargon of Akkad acknowledged up to the time of his murder in BCE 705.
His son and successor, Sennacherib, did not possess the military or administrative abilities of his father; and the success of his reign was not commensurate with the vanity of the ruler. He was never crowned at Babylon, which was in a perpetual state of revolt until, in BCE 691, he shocked the religious and political conscience of Asia by razing the holy city of Babylon to the ground. His campaign against Hezekiach of Judah was as much a failure as his policy in Babylonia, and in his murder by his sons on BCE 681 both Babylonians and Jews saw the judgment of heaven.
Esarhaddon, who succeeded him, was of different calibre from his father. He was commanding the army in a campaign against Ararat at the time of the murder; forty-two days later the murderers fled from Nineveh and took refuge at the court of Ararat. But the Armenian army was utterly defeated near Malatia, and at the end of the day Esarhaddon was saluted by his soldiers as king. He there upon returned to Nineveh and on the formally ascended the throne.
One of his first acts was to restore Babylon, and to re-people the city with such of the priests and the former population as had survived massacre. Then he was solemnly declared king in the temple of Bel-Merodach, which had again risen from its ruins, and Babylon became the second capital of the empire. Esarhaddon's policy was successful and Babylonia remained contentedly quiet throughout his reign.
In February (BCE 674) the Assyrians entered upon their invasion of Egypt, and in March BCE 670 an expedition on an unusually large scale set out from Nineveh. The Egyptian frontier was crossed in June, and Egyptian forces were driven to Memphis after fifteen days of continuous fighting, during which the Egyptians were defeated with heavy losses. Next Memphis was entered by the victorious army and Tirhaka (Egyptian commander) fled to the south. Two years later (BCE 668) Egypt revolted, and while on the march to reduce it, Esarhaddon fell ill and died.
Assur-Bani-Pal succeeded him as king of Assyria and its empire, while his brother, Samassumyukin was made viceroy of Babylonia. The arrangement was evidently intended to flatter the Babylonians by giving them once more the semblance of independence. But it failed to work. Samassumyukin became more Babylonian than his subjects. The viceroy claimed to be the successor of the monarchs whose empire had once stretched to the Mediterranean. Even the Summerian language was revived as the official tongue, and a revolt broke out which shook the Assyrian empire to its foundations. After several years of struggle, during which Egypt recovered its independence, Babylon was starved into surrender, and the rebel viceroy and his supporters were put to death.
Ashurbanipal Killing a Lion
Egypt had already recovered its independence (BCE 660) with the help of mercenaries sent by the king of Lydia. Next followed the contest with Elam, in spite of the efforts of Assur-Bani-Pal to ward it off.
Assyria, however, was aided by civil war in Elam itself; the country was laid waste with fire and sword, and its capital, Susa, leveled to the ground. But the long struggle left Assyria maimed and exhausted. It had been drained of both wealth and fighting population; the devastated provinces of Elam and Babylonia could yield nothing with which to supply the needs of the imperial exchequer, and it was difficult to find sufficient troops even to garrison the conquered populations. Assyria, therefore, was ill prepared to face the hordes of Scythians who now began to harass her.
Decline of the Empire
The rapid downfall of the Assyrian empire was formerly attributed to military defeat, although it was never clear how the Medes and the Babylonians alone could have accomplished this. More recent work has established that a civil war occurred, weakening the empire so that it could no longer stand up against a foreign enemy. Ashur-Bani-Pal had twin sons. Ashur-Etil-Ilani was appointed successor to the throne, but his twin brother Sin-Shar-Ishkun did not recognize him. The fight between them and their supporters forced the old king to withdraw to Harran, in BCE 632 at the latest, perhaps ruling from there over the western part of the empire until his death in BCE 627. Ashur-Etil-Ilani governed in Assyria from about BCE 633, but a general, Sin-Shum-Lisher, soon rebelled against him and proclaimed himself counter-king. Some years later Sin-Shar-Ishkun finally succeeded in obtaining the kingship. In Babylonian documents, dates can be found for all three kings. In BCE 626 the Chaldean, Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur), revolted from Uruk and occupied Babylon. There were several changes in government. King Ashur-Etel-Ilani was forced to withdraw to the west, where he died (BCE 621?).
Assyrian Archer
About the year BCE 626 the Scythians laid waste to Syria and Palestine. In BCE 625 the Medes under Cyaxares began to conquer the Iranian provinces of Assyria. One chronicle relates wars between Sin-Shar-Ishkun and Nabopolassar in Babylonia in BCE 625-623. It was not long until the Assyrians were driven out of Babylonia. In BCE 616 the Medes struck against Nineveh, but, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, were driven back by the Scythians. In BCE 615, however, the Medes conquered Arrapkha (Kirkuk), and in BCE 614 they took the old capital of Ashur, looting and destroying the city. Now Cyaxares and Nabopolassar made an alliance for the purpose of dividing Assyria. In BCE 612 Kalakh and Nineveh succumbed to the superior strength of the allies. The revenge taken on the Assyrians was terrible. Sin-shar-ishkun, king of Assyria, found death in his burning palace. The commander of the Assyrian army in the west crowned himself king in the city of Harran, assuming the name of the founder of the empire, Ashur-Uballit II (BCE 612-609). Ashur-Uballit had to face both the Babylonians and the Medes. They conquered Harran in BCE 610, without, however, destroying the city completely. In BCE 609 the remaining Assyrian troops had to capitulate. With this event, Assyria disappeared from history. The great empires that succeeded it learned a great deal from the Assyrians, both in the arts and in the organization of their states.
Assyrian Warfare after Tiglath-Pileser III Reforms
Tiglath-Pileser III established the most efficient military, financial, and administrative system the world had yet seen. The army was its heart. He abolished the militia organization and built the state around a standing regular army. The principal business of the nation became war; its wealth and prosperity were sustained by booty and by supervision of trade and finance. A semimilitary bureaucracy carried out the functions of government at home and in the conquered regions, setting the first pattern of centralized imperial control over far-flung provincial territories.
Assyrian Regal Chariot With Two Horses
This was the first truly military society of history. No effort was spared which would contribute to the efficiency of the army, or which would assure continued Assyrian supremacy over all possible foes. The Assyrians were the first to recognize fully the advantage of iron over bronze. As early as BCE 1000 their militia armies had been completely equipped with weapons, chariots, and armor made of iron. Tiglath-pileser saw to it that this technical superiority was maintained by constant and systematic improvement of weapons, and by the careful training of the soldiers in the use of their arms.
The bulk of the army was comprised of large masses of spearmen, slow-moving and cumbersome, but relatively more maneuverable than similar infantry formations of other peoples of the time. Their irresistible advance was the culminating phase of a typical Assyrian battle plan.
In the Assyrian Army the archers were more highly organized than their counterparts elsewhere and evidently had stronger bows, from which they fired iron-tipped arrows with deadly accuracy. They created confusion in the enemy ranks in preparation for a closely coordinated chanot and cavalry charge.
The main striking force of the Assyrian Army was the corps of horse-drawn, two-wheeled chariots. Their mission was to smash their way through the ranks of enemy infantry. Like their contemporaries, the Assyrians used chariots in simple, brute force, but employed them in larger numbers, with more determination, and in closer coordination with archers, spearmen, and cavalry.
The cavalry was the smallest element of the army, but probably the best trained and equipped. The noble horsemen fought with a combination of discipline, skill, and ingenuity not possible in the other elements of the army. Only the cavalry could be employed in the occasional maneuvers attempted in battle.
The art of fortification had been well developed in the Middle East before BCE 1000. The great walls of the large cities were almost invulnerable to the means of attack available within the limited technology of the times.
The Assyrians greatly improved the techniques of siegecraft and attack of fortifications. Accompanying their armies were siege trains and various forms of specialized equipment, including materials for building large movable wooden towers (protected from the flaming arrows of defenders by dampened leather hides) and heavy battering rams.
Assyrian Besiegers
From the tops of the wooden towers, skilled archers would sweep the walls of the defenders, to prevent interference with the work of demolition, while nearby other archers, sheltered by the shields of spearmen, would fire arrows—some of them flaming in a high trajectory over the walls, to harass the defenders and to terrify the population. The methods used by the Assyrians did not originate with them, but were apparently borrowed from the Sumerians. But it was the skill and organization of employment which brought success to Assyrian siegecraft.
The high degree of organization of the Assyrian Army is clearly evidenced by its ability to fight successfully over all kinds of terrain. The organizational details have not been preserved in the fragmentary records available to us, but their field armies may occasionally have approached a strength of 50,000 men. Forces of such size would have required large supply trains for desert or mountain operations, and could have functioned only with smoothly operating logistical systems.
Terror was another factor contributing greatly to Assyrian success. Their exceptional cruelty and ferocity were possibly reflections of callousness developed over centuries of defense of their homeland against savage enemies. But theirs was also a calculated policy of terror -— possibly the earliest example of organized psychological warfare. It was not unusual for them to kill every man, woman, and child in captured cities. Sometimes they would carry away entire populations into captivity. The policies and procedures of Tiglath-Pileser III were employed with vigor and ferocity by his successors and proved invaluable in maintaining security.
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Mark Healy, Agnus McBride "the Ancient Assyrians" Trevor&Ernest Dupuy "
The Encyclopedia of Military History"
