Neo-Assyrian

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East throughout much of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, becoming the largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as portions of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.

The early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia and Syria, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire had been lost during a long period of decline. Under Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC), Assyria once more became the dominant power of the Near East, ruling the north undisputed. Ashurnasirpal's campaigns reached as far as the Mediterranean and he also oversaw the transfer of the imperial capital from the traditional city of Assur to the more centrally located Nimrud. The empire grew even more under Ashurnasirpal II's successor Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC), though it entered a period of stagnation after his death, referred to as the "age of the magnates". During this time, the chief wielders of political power were prominent generals and officials and central control was unusually weak. This age came to an end with the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), who re-asserted Assyrian royal power once again and more than doubled the size of the empire through wide-ranging conquests. His most notable conquests were Babylonia in the south and large parts of the Levant. Under the Sargonid dynasty, which ruled from 722 BC to the fall of the empire, Assyria reached its apex. Under the Sargonid king Sennacherib (705–681 BC), the capital was transferred to Nineveh and under Esarhaddon (681–669 BC) the empire reached its largest extent through the conquest of Egypt. Despite being at the peak of its power, the Neo-Assyrian Empire experienced a swift and violent fall in the late 7th century BC, destroyed by a Babylonian uprising and an invasion by the Medes. The causes behind how Assyria could be destroyed so quickly continue to be debated among scholars.

The unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not only due to the ability of Assyria to expand but also, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system. As the first empire of its scale, the Neo-Assyrian Empire saw various military, civic and administrative innovations. In the military, important innovations included a large-scale use of cavalry and new siege warfare techniques. Techniques first adopted by the Neo-Assyrian army would be used in later warfare for millennia. To solve the issue of communicating over vast distances, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed a sophisticated state communication system, using relay stations and well-maintained roads. The communication speed of official messages in the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not surpassed in the Middle East until the 19th century AD. The Neo-Assyrian Empire also made use of a resettlement policy, wherein some portions of the populations from conquered lands were resettled in the Assyrian heartland and in underdeveloped provinces. This policy served to both disintegrate local identities (making local regions less likely to revolt) and to introduce Assyrian-developed agricultural techniques to all parts of the empire. A consequence was the dilution of the cultural diversity of the Near East, forever changing the ethnolinguistic composition of the region and facilitating the rise of Aramaic as the regional lingua franca, a position the language retained until the 14th century AD.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire left a legacy of great cultural significance. The political structures established by the Neo-Assyrian Empire became the model for the later empires that succeeded it and the ideology of universal rule promulgated by the Neo-Assyrian kings inspired, through the concept of , similar ideas of rights to world domination in later empires as late as the early modern period. The Neo-Assyrian Empire became an important part of later folklore and literary traditions in northern Mesopotamia through the subsequent post-imperial period and beyond. Judaism, and thus in turn also Christianity and Islam, was profoundly affected by the period of Neo-Assyrian rule; numerous Biblical stories appear to draw on earlier Assyrian mythology and history and the Assyrian impact on early Jewish theology was immense. Although the Neo-Assyrian Empire is prominently remembered today for the supposed excessive brutality of the Neo-Assyrian army, the Assyrians were not excessively brutal when compared to other civilizations of their time, nor when compared to other civilizations throughout human history.

Background

Imperialism and the ambition of establishing a universal, all-encompassing empire was a long-established aspect of royal ideology in the ancient Near East prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia ( 2900–2350 BC), the Sumerian rulers of the various city-states (the most prominent being Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Umma and Kish) in the region often fought with each other in order to establish small hegemonic empires and to gain a superior position relative to the other city-states. Eventually, these small conflicts evolved into a general ambition to achieve universal rule. Reaching a position of world domination was not seen as a wholly impossible task in this early time since Mesopotamia was believed to correspond to the entire world. One of the earliest Mesopotamian "world conquerors" was Lugalzaggesi, king of Uruk, who conquered all of Lower Mesopotamia in the 24th century BC. The first great Mesopotamian empire is generally regarded to have been the Akkadian Empire, founded 2334 BC by Sargon of Akkad.

Numerous imperialist states rose and fell in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East after the time of the Akkadian Empire. Most early empires and kingdoms, the Akkadian Empire included, were limited to some core territories, with most of their subjects only nominally recognizing the authority of the central government. Still, the general desire for universal rule dominated the royal ideologies of Mesopotamian kings for thousands of years, bolstered by the memory of the Akkadian Empire and exemplified in titles such as "king of the Universe" or "king of the Four Corners of the World". This desire was also manifested in the kings of Assyria, who ruled in what had once been the northern part of the Akkadian Empire. Assyria experienced its first period of ascendancy with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, previously only having been a city-state centered around the city of Assur. From the time of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari I ( 1305–1274 BC) onwards, Assyria became one of the great powers of the ancient Near East and under Tukulti-Ninurta I ( 1243–1207 BC), the empire reached its greatest extent and became the dominant force in Mesopotamia, for a time even subjugating Babylonia in the south. After Tukulti-Ninurta's assassination, the Middle Assyrian Empire went into a long period of decline, becoming increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland itself. Though this period of decline was broken up by Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BC), who once more expanded Assyrian power, his conquests overstretched Assyria and could not be maintained by his successors. The trend of decline was only substantially reversed in the reign of the last Middle Assyrian king, Ashur-dan II (934–912 BC) who campaigned in the northeast and northwest.

History

Resurgence of Assyrian power

Initial

Through decades of military conquests, the early Neo-Assyrian kings worked to reverse the long age of Assyrian decline and retake the former lands of their empire. Though the Neo-Assyrian Empire has sometimes in the past been considered a completely new phenomenon only loosely connected to earlier Assyrian history, it is now considered more probable, due to evidence from royal inscriptions and the nature and extent of the campaigns undertaken, that the early Neo-Assyrian kings chiefly sought to re-establish the position of Assyria at the height of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Any notion of the two empires being distinct entities can also be dispelled through the line of kings being part of the same continuous family line. Another justification for expansion was casting the campaigns as wars of liberation, meant to liberate those Assyrians who no longer lived within Assyrian territory from their new foreign rulers; material evidence from numerous sites reconquered under the early Neo-Assyrian Empire demonstrate an endurance of Assyrian culture outside of the Assyrian borders during the decline of the Middle Assyrian Empire. The early Neo-Assyrian efforts at reconquest were mostly focused on the region up to the Khabur river in the west. One of the first conquests of Ashur-dan II had been Katmuḫu in this region, which he made a vassal kingdom rather than annexed outright; this suggests that the resources available to the early Neo-Assyrian kings were very limited and that the imperial project had to begin nearly from scratch. In this context, the successful expansion conducted under the early Neo-Assyrian kings was an extraordinary achievement. The initial phase of the Assyrian , beginning under Ashur-dan II near the end of the Middle Assyrian period and covering the reigns of the first two Neo-Assyrian kings, Adad-nirari II (911–891 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta II (890–884 BC), saw the slow beginning of this project. Ashur-dan's efforts mostly worked to pave the way for the more sustained work under Adad-nirari and Tukulti-Ninurta.

Among the conquests of Adad-nirari, the most strategically important campaigns were the wars directed to the southeast, beyond the Little Zab river. These lands had previously been under Babylonian rule. One of Adad-nirari's wars brought the Assyrian army as far south as the city of Der, close to the border of the southwestern kingdom of Elam. Though Adad-nirari did not manage to incorporate territories so far away from the Assyrian heartland into the empire, he secured the city of Arrapha (modern-day Kirkuk). Arrapha in later times served as the launching point of innumerable Assyrian campaigns toward lands in the east. A testament to Adad-nirari's power was that he managed to secure a border agreement with the Babylonian king Nabu-shuma-ukin I (900–887 BC), sealed through both kings marrying a daughter of the other. Adad-nirari also continued Ashur-dan's efforts in the west; in his wars, he defeated numerous small western kingdoms. Several small states, such as Guzana, were made into vassals and others, such as Nisibis, were placed under pro-Assyrian puppet-kings. After his successful wars in the region, Adad-nirari was able to go on a long march along the Khabur river and the Euphrates, collecting tribute from all the local rulers without being met with any military opposition. In addition to his wars, he also conducted important building projects; the city of Apku, located between Nineveh and Sinjar and destroyed around 1000 BC, was rebuilt and became an important administrative center.

Though he reigned only briefly, Adad-nirari's son Tukulti-Ninurta continued the policies of his father. In 885 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta repeated his father's march along the Euphrates and Khabur, though he went in the opposite direction, beginning in the south at Dur-Kurigalzu and then collecting tribute while he travelled north. Some of the southern cities that sent tribute to Tukulti-Ninurta during this march were historically more closely aligned with Babylon. In terms of military matters, Tukulti-Ninurta also fought against small states in the east, aimed to strengthen Assyrian control in this direction. Among the lands he defeated were Kirruri, Hubushkia and Gilzanu. In later times, Gilzanu often supplied Assyria with horses.

Dominion over the Near East

The second phase of the Assyrian was initiated in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta's son and successor Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC). Under his rule, Assyria rose to become the dominant political power in the Near East, though it would not yet achieve power comparable to that under its complete dominion in later centuries. In terms of personality, Ashurnasirpal was a complex figure; he was a relentless warrior and one of the most brutal kings in Assyrian history, but he also cared about the people, working to increase the prosperity and comfort of his subjects and being recorded as establishing extensive water reserves and food depots in times of crisis. As a result of the successful campaigns of his predecessors, Ashurnasirpal inherited an impressive amount of resources with which he could work to re-establish Assyrian dominance. Ashurnasirpal's first campaign, in 883 BC, was against the revolting cities of Suru and Tela along the northern portion of the Tigris river. At Tela he brutally repressed the citizens, among other punishments cutting off noses, ears, fingers and limbs, gouging out eyes and overseeing impalements and decapitations.

Ashurnasirpal's later campaigns included three wars against the kingdom of Zamua in the eastern Zagros Mountains, repeated campaigns against Nairi and Urartu in the north, and, most prominently, near continuous conflict with Aramean and Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the west. The Arameans and Neo-Hittites had by the time of Ashurnasirpal's rise to the throne evolved into well-organized kingdoms, possibly in response to pressure from Assyria. One of Ashurnasirpal's most persistent enemies was the Aramean king Ahuni, who ruled the city or region Bit Adini. Ahuni's forces broke through across the Khabur and Euphrates several times and it was only after years of war that he at last accepted Ashurnasirpal as his suzerain. Ahuni's defeat was highly important as it marked the first time since Ashur-bel-kala (1073–1056 BC), two centuries prior, that Assyrian forces had the opportunity to campaign further west than the Euphrates. Ashurnasirpal made use of this opportunity. In his ninth campaign, he marched to Lebanon and then to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Though few of them became formally incorporated into the empire at this point, many kingdoms on the way paid tribute to Ashurnasirpal to avoid being attacked, including Carchemish and Patina, as well as Phoenician cities such as Sidon, Byblos, Tyre and Arwad. The most impressive and important project conducted was the restoration of the ruined town of Nimrud, located on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the Assyrian heartland. In 879 BC, Ashurnasirpal made Nimrud the new capital of the empire and employed thousands of workers to construct new fortifications, palaces and temples in the city. The construction of the new capital left Assur, still the empire's religious center, as a purely ceremonial city. In addition to enormous city walls 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) long, palaces, temples, royal offices and various residential buildings, Ashurnasirpal also established botanical gardens, filled with foreign plants brought back from his wide-ranging campaigns, and a zoo, perhaps the first large zoo ever constructed. Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions offer no motive for changing the capital. Various explanations have been proposed by modern scholars, including that he might have gotten disenchanted with Assur since there was little room left in the ancient capital to leave a mark, the important position of Nimrud in regard to local trade networks, that Nimrud was more centrally located in the empire, or that Ashurnasirpal hoped for greater independence from the influential great families of Assur. To celebrate the completion of his work in Nimrud in 864 BC, Ashurnasirpal hosted a grand celebration, which some scholars have described as perhaps the greatest party in world history; the event hosted 69,574 guests, including 16,000 citizens of the new capital and 5,000 foreign dignitaries, and lasted for ten days. Among the food and beverage used, Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions record 10,000 pigeons, 10,000 jugs of beer, and 10,000 skins of wine, among countless other items.

Ashurnasirpal's aggressive military politics were continued under his son Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC), whose reign saw a considerable expansion of Assyrian territory. In Shalmaneser's reign, the lands along the Khabur and Euphrates rivers in the west were consolidated under Assyrian control. Ahuni of Bit Adini resisted for several years, but he eventually surrendered to Shalmaneser in the winter of 857/856 BC. When Shalmaneser visited the city in the summer of the next year, he renamed it Kar-Salmanu‐ašared ("fortress of Shalmaneser"), settled a substantial number of Assyrians there, and made it the administrative center of a new province, placed under the (commander in chief). Shalmaneser also placed other powerful officials, so-called "magnates", in charge of other vulnerable provinces and regions of the empire. The most powerful and threatening enemy of Assyria at this point was Urartu in the north; following in the footsteps of the Assyrians, the Urartian administration, culture, writing system and religion closely followed those of Assyria. The Urartian kings were also autocrats highly similar to the Assyrian kings. The Assyrians also took some inspiration from Urartu. For instance, Assyrian irrigation technology and cavalry units, introduced by Shalmaneser, may have been derived from encounters with Urartu. The imperialist expansionism undertaken by the kings of both Urartu and Assyria led to frequent military clashes between the two, despite being separated by the Taurus Mountains. In 856 BC, Shalmaneser conducted one of the most ambitious military campaigns in Assyrian history, marching through mountainous territory to the source of the Euphrates and then attacking Urartu from the west. The Urartian king Arame was forced to flee as Shalmaneser's forces sacked the Urartian capital of Arzashkun, devastated the Urartian heartland, and then marched into what today is western Iran before returning to Arbela in Assyria.

Although Shalmaneser's impressive campaign against Urartu compelled many of the small states in northern Syria to pay tribute to him, he was unable to fully utilize the situation. In 853 BC, a massive coalition of western states assembled at Tell Qarqur in Syria to work together against Assyrian expansion. The coalition, included numerous kings of various peoples, including the earliest historically verifiable Israelite and Arab rulers, and was led by Hadadezer, the king of Aram-Damascus. Shalmaneser engaged the coalition in the same year that it was formed. Though Assyrian records claim that he scored a great victory at the subsequent Battle of Qarqar it is more likely that the battle was indecisive since no substantial political or territorial gains were achieved. After Qarqar, Shalmaneser focused much on the south and in 851–850 BC aided the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I to defeat a revolt by his brother Marduk-bel-ushati. After defeating the rebel, Shalmaneser spent some time visiting cities in Babylon and further helping Marduk-zakir-shumi through fighting against the Chaldeans in the far south of Mesopotamia. As Babylonian culture was greatly appreciated in Assyria, Shalmaneser was proud of his alliance to the Babylonian king; a famous surviving piece of artwork shows the two rulers shaking hands. In the 840s and 830s BC, Shalmaneser again campaigned in Syria and succeeding in receiving tribute from numerous western states after the coalition against him collapsed with Hadadezer's death in 841 BC. Assyrian forces thrice tried to capture Damascus itself but were not successful. Shalmaneser's failed attempts to properly impose Assyrian rule in Syria was a result of his energetic campaigns overextending the empire too quickly. In the 830s BC, his armies reached into Cilicia in Anatolia and in 836 BC, Shalmaneser reached Ḫubušna (near modern-day Ereğli), one of the westernmost places ever reached by Assyrian forces. Though Shalmaneser's conquests were wide-ranging and inspired fear among the other kings of the Near East, he lacked the means to stabilize and consolidate his new lands and imperial control in many places remained shaky.

Age of the magnates

In the latter years of Shalmaneser's reign, Urartu rose again as a powerful adversary. Though the Assyrians campaigned against them in 830 BC, they failed to fully neutralize the threat the restored kingdom posed. Unlike the vast majority of Assyrian campaigns, the 830 BC campaign against Urartu was not led by the king, but by the long-serving and prominent Dayyan-Assur, indicating not only that Shalmaneser might have been very old and no longer properly capable of being a strong leader but also that Dayyan-Assur had grown unprecedently powerful for an Assyrian official, otherwise rarely mentioned by name in documents. In later years, Dayyan-Assur led further campaigns on behalf of the kings. Shalmaneser's final years became preoccupied by an internal crisis when one of his sons, Ashur-danin-pal, rebelled in an attempt to seize the throne, possibly because the younger son Shamshi-Adad had been designated as heir instead of himself. When Shalmaneser died in 824 BC, Ashur-danin-pal was still in revolt, supported by a significant portion of the country, most notably including the former capital of Assur. Shamshi-Adad acceded to the throne as Shamshi-Adad V, perhaps initially a minor and a puppet of Dayyan-Assur. Though Dayyan-Assur died during the early stages of the civil war, Shamshi-Adad was eventually victorious, apparently due to help from the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi or his successor Marduk-balassu-iqbi.

Shamshi-Adad V's accession marked the beginning of a new age of Neo-Assyrian history, sometimes dubbed the "age of the magnates". This time was marked by the number of royal inscriptions being much smaller than in preceding and succeeding times and Assyrian magnates, such as Dayyan-Assur and other prominent generals and officials, being the dominant political actors, with the kings wielding significantly less power and influence. Though the consequences of this shift in power remain debated, the age of the magnates has often been characterized as a period of decline. Assyria endured through this timespan largely unscathed but there was little to no territorial expansion and central power grew unusually weak. Some developments were good for the longevity of the empire, since many magnates took the opportunity to develop stronger military and economic structures and institutions in their own lands throughout the empire. Shamshi-Adad's earliest campaigns were against a series of Urartian fortresses and western Iran and quite limited in scope. One of the campaigns was led by the chief eunuch (), a position created under Shamshi-Adad, and not the king himself. Most of Shamshi-Adad's early reign was relatively unsuccessful; the king's third campaign, against the small states in the Zagros Mountains regino, might have been an Assyrian defeat and many of the small kingdoms in northern Syria ceased to pay tribute to Assyria. In 817 or 816 BC, there was a rebellion against the king at Tillê, within the Assyrian heartland.

From 815 BC onwards, Shamshi-Adad's luck changed. During the last few years of his reign he directed his efforts mainly against Marduk-balassu-iqbi in Babylonia. In 813 BC, he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi and brought him to Assyria as a captive. A year later he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi's successor Baba-aha-iddina and annexed several territories in northern Babylonia. Southern Mesopotamia was left in disarray after Shamshi-Adad's victories. Though Babylonia nominally came under Assyrian control, Shamshi-Adad took the ancient Babylonian title "king of Sumer and Akkad" but not the conventional "king of Babylon". Due to Assyria's perhaps somewhat weakened state he was unable to fully exploit the victory and the Babylonian throne remained unoccupied for several years.

Shamshi-Adad's son Adad-nirari III (811–783 BC) was probably very young at the time of his father's death in 811 BC and real political power during his early reign was probably wielded by the Nergal‐ila'i and by Adad-nirari's mother Shammuramat. Shammuramat was one of the most powerful women in Assyrian history and perhaps for a time served as co-regent; she is recorded to have partaken in a military campaign, the only ancient Assyriain woman known to have done so, against Kummuh in Syria and is credited in inscriptions alongside her son for expanding Assyrian territory, usually only a royal privilege. After Shammuramat's death, Adad-nirari continued to be dominated by other figures, such as the eunuch Nergal-eresh. Despite his limited sole authority, Adad-nirari's reign saw some military successes and Assyrian armies campaigned in western Iran at least thirteen times. The western territories, now more or less autonomous, were only attacked four times, though Adad-nirari managed to defeat Aram-Damascus. In 790 BC, Adad-nirari conducted the first Assyrian campaign against the Aramaic tribes now living in the Assyro-Babylonian border regions. In 787 BC, Adad-nirari appointed the new Shamshi-ilu. Shamshi-ilu would occupy this position for about 40 years and was for most of that time likely the most powerful political actor in Assyria.

After Adad-nirari's death in 783 BC, three of his sons ruled in succession: Shalmaneser IV (783–773 BC), Ashur-dan III (773–755 BC) and Ashur-nirari V (755–745 BC). Their reigns collectively form what appears to be the low point of Assyrian royal power since a remarkably small number of royal inscriptions are known from them. In Shalmaneser IV's reign, Shamshi-ilu eventually grew bold enough to stop crediting the king at all in his inscriptions and instead claimed to act completely on his own, more openly flaunting his power. Probably under Shamshi-ilu's leadership, the Assyrian army began to mainly focus on Urartu. In 774 BC, Shamshi-ilu scored an important victory against Argishti I of Urartu, though Urartu was not decisively beaten. There was however some significant succeses in the west since Shamshi-ilu captured Damascus in 773 BC and secured tribute from the city to the king. Another official who acted with usually royal privileges in Shalmaneser's time was the palace herald Bel-harran-beli-usur, who founded a city, Dur-Bel-harran-beli-usur (named after himself), and claimed in a stele that it was he, and not the king, who had established tax exemptions for the city. Though little information survives concerning Ashur-dan III's reign, it is clear that it was particularly difficult. Much of his reign was spent putting down revolts. These revolts were perhaps the result of the plague epidemics sweeping Assyria and the Bur-Sagale solar eclipse on 15 June 763 BC; both the epidemics and the eclipse could have been interpreted by the Assyrian populace as the gods withdrawing their divine support for Ashur-dan's rule. Though Assyria stabilized again under Ashur-dan's brother Ashur-nirari V, he appears to have been relatively idle. Ashur-nirari campaigned in only three of the ten years of his reign and is not recorded to have conducted any construction projects. The influential Shamshi-ilu passed away at some point in Ashur-nirari's reign. Though the Assyrian army under Ashur-nirari was successful against Arpad in northewestern Syria in 754 BC, they were also beaten at an important battle against Sarduri II of Urartu.

Revitalization and rise

In 745 BC, Ashur-nirari was succeeded by Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), probably another son of Adad-nirari III. The nature of Tiglath-Pileser's rise to throne is not clear and the surviving evidence is too scant to come to a certain conclusion. Several pieces of evidence, including that there was a revolt in Nimrud in 746/745 BC, that ancient Assyrian sources give conflicting information in regards to Tiglath-Pileser's lineage, and that Tiglath-Pileser in his inscriptions attributes his rise to the throne solely to divine selection rather than both divine selection and his royal ancestry (typically done by Assyrian kings), have typically been interpreted as indicating that he usurped the throne from Ashur-nirari. His accession, which is marked by a once more abundant number of sources, ushered in an entirely new era of Neo-Assyrian history. While the conquests of earlier kings were impressive, they contributed little to Assyria's full rise as a consolidated empire. Through campaigns aimed at conquest and not just extraction of seasonal tribute, as well as reforms meant to efficiently organize the army and centralize the realm, Tiglath-Pileser is by some regarded as the first true initiator of Assyria's "imperial" phase. Tiglath-Pileser is the earliest Assyrian king mentioned in the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible