by Harvey Kraft
As to the personality of their God the Assyrian clergy preferred to emulate the Akkadian Enlil, wrathful overlord God of Sky and Storms, a more fitting model for Assyria’s ruthless kings. Whereas Marduk had reflected the kinder face of the Water God, the Akkadian Ea (Sum. Enki), Assur would be revered and feared for his intolerance of wrong doers. In the Assurian cosmology, Assur now ruled the movements of Heaven,58 a role that Marduk had taken from the Sumer/Akkad God of Heaven (Anum). Incorporating both Babylonian and the Akkadian mythologies, Assyria’s clergy crafted a Supreme God with the attributes of the Creator, King of Heaven, the God of Sky and Storms, and the God of All Gods, leader of all pantheons past and present.
With the growing domination of Assyria’s empire and the further deterioration of Babylon’s role, the Neo-Assyrian Empire achieved the pinnacle of domination during a three-hundred-year period (915–612 BCE). Imposing its will on its neighbors it thrived by building a level of organized brutality unlike any perpetrated by its predecessors. The Neo-Assyrian Empire moved its headquarters from Assur to Nineveh, the largest city in its realm. It became the administration center for governing an area from the Black Sea to Africa and from the Mediterranean to Aryana. The Assyrians imposed a ruthless system of extortion, deportation, and genocide on conquered peoples, and designed its bureaucracy to execute these policies at a peek level of intimidation and efficiency.
The Assyrian Empire sought its reputation for brutality to make sure that all would fear it. When destroying a target location, their goal would be to leave it unrecognizable, thereby erasing the prospect for its indigenous population to return. To crush all hope of resistance, they cultivated fear through a scorched-earth policy; they flattened homes, sacked temples, burned farms, and even uprooted trees. Either they left no one alive or deported whole nations, leaving no one behind but the elderly and infirm to fend for themselves. Leveraging their reputation for annihilation they would give potential victims an alternative option of a crushing extortion. Only local kings comporting with their “pay and we’ll let you live“ offer would be able to avert obliteration. The acquiescence of a city or state would allow the Assyrians to take control without any military cost, while vassals handed over the contents of their treasuries and accepted oppressive taxation on an ongoing basis.
Shalmaneser II, King of Assyria, captured, annexed, and enslaved Medes (836 BCE), but brutally razed Elam because it had put up a strong resistance. Assyrian monarchs regarded outlying areas as inferior, uncivilized, and deluded by weak gods and superstitions, and they showed little tolerance for their local religions. But the majority of the Assyrian people had a healthy fear of the divine powers of many gods, and respect for seers skilled in divination.
During the reign of King Sennacherib (705–681 BCE) the Assyrians at Nineveh encountered Jonah, a Prophet of Israel,59 who spent three days crossing the “City of the Big Fish,“ so-named because its population had grown to 120,000. At the behest of his God, Elohim, Jonah reluctantly berated the citizens of the city warning that if they did not repent for their depraved behaviors, His God would wipe them out. When Nineveh’s residents showed themselves to be penitent, God told him that he would forgive them.
It was natural for ordinary people of that time to fear a prophecy of doom. There was a widely-accepted understanding of the wrath of God, who had many names: Elohim, Marduk, Assur, and others. People were willing to express repentance for their immoral behavior rather than risk divine retribution coming true. However, for Jonah, it was difficult to accept God’s forgiveness, especially as he foresaw the devastation the Assyrians would exact upon his people.
The Assyrian kings, on the other hand, considered themselves to be the hand of god. What Elohim would not do to the Assyrians, Assur would do to the Israelites. He would smite all those who resisted their rule. After decades of assaults on the area, the Assyrians invaded Israel (738 and 720 BCE) and deported some 27,000 to 40,000 Israelites. Many were forced to walk a trek of nearly 3,000 miles from the Galilee to Nineveh (today Mosul, Iraq) and then further east to Medes. Many Israelites were unable to complete the journey, either because they died or were sold as slaves along the way.
The Median tribes were equine experts who knew how to capture, tame, and breed horses, while the Israelites had shown themselves to be excellent horse trainers and skilled riders of chariot cavalry. The Assyrians, needing to resupply their warriors with some 3,000 new horse-drawn chariots per month, combined these enslaved nations to meet their requirements.
But their policy appeared to have backfired when King Dayukku (aka Deioces) unified Medes and founded its first intra-tribal dynasty (722 BCE). Contrary to Assyrian expectations, Medes had been strengthened by the arrival of the elite Israelite chariot squad. Bringing the Israelites and Median tribes together may have unified Medes for the first time in its history. Dayukku’s next step was to surreptitiously expand his reach in the south. The Elamites were glad to cooperate with the Medians after the devastation wrought on them by the Assyrians. Dayukku was able to marshal the architectural skills of Elam and the managerial skills of the Magi to build Ecbatana (Hamadan, Iran), Media’s strategically located new capital in Elam (710 BCE).
From there, he conducted surprise hit-and-run attacks on Assyrian bases, finally expelling them completely from ancestral Medes in 675 BCE. The king ruled for fifty-three years, but his successor found it difficult to hold on to Elam. The Scythians, their eastern neighbors, were able to take Elam’s northeastern territory (653 BCE), and the Assyrian King Assurbanipal (646 BCE) recaptured Susa by entering Elam’s ancient capital from the southwest.
During the reign of Dayukku, the Magi Order had elevated their practices and influence and became accepted and revered across Medes, Elam, and Eastern Aryana. The Magi Order set up their religious center at Rhagae (Tehran, Iran), creating a community devoted to research, study, and teaching, and from there they established Magi schools to educate future religious and thought leaders.
Under the next Median King, Cyaxares,60 the military union of Median, Israelite (aka Ishkuzai61), and Elamite tribes had matured into a superior force. Nearly one hundred years after the arrival of the Israelites, new generations born in Medes shaped the alliance into a formidable and well-managed cavalry capable not only of resistance but of venturing beyond its own backyard. Its armies pushed out the Scythians back into eastern Aryana (today Seistan-Baluchistan in southeast Iran and Pakistan), chased the Assyrians out of Susa (626 BCE), and then united with a new king in Babylon to raid Assyrian cities deep inside their empire (615 BCE).
The Medes King, Cyaxares, in alliance with the King of Babylon, Nabopolassar, destroyed the Assyrian capital of Nineveh three years later (612 BCE) and finally ended the heavy-handed Assyrian domination of the region once and for all.
The Assyrian kings had come to lament their original investment made generations earlier when they sent the Israelites into Medes. Assyria no longer existed. In its place, the allies divided the fallen empire into the Babylonian and Median Empires. The new Medes Empire reached across the northern latitude from the Black Sea in the west to Central Asia (today encompassing Iran, northern Iraq/Syria and Turkey). The resuscitated Neo-Babylonian Empire now encompassed the southern latitude from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean coast (today southern Iraq/Syria, Lebanon, Judea, and Arabia).
With the rise of the Median Empire the influence of the Magi Order would extend beyond its original borders. Its interfaith legacy would have a profound impact on the beliefs of future civilizations and the development of religions yet to come.
BABYLON RESURRECTED
Although Babylon had been the cultural prize of the Fertile Crescent, after the fall of the Kassites, its local kings had few victories in defending it from outside invaders. Babylon’s sense of entitlement repeatedly caused waves of destruction and renewal. After King Nebuchadnezzar I overthrew the Elamites and recovered the sacred statue of Marduk, he devoted himself to rebuilding projects aimed at restoring the majesty of
Babylon. But the Assyrian defeat of his son and successor62 ended this initiative for independence. Again the city fell back into a cycle of anarchy and failed attempts to rule it.
Between the reigns of King Nebuchadnezzar I (1124–1103 BCE), and Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE), some five hundred years had passed. During that period Babylon was invariably a nuisance to colonizers because of its strong cosmopolitan identity, historicity, key location, and cultural pride. Its public institutions and indigenous rulers were quick to express dissatisfaction with the authority of occupiers, demanding rectification or apology for any offense or insult against them and, if given the opportunity, they would rebel.
Assyrian leaders, most of them admirers of Babylonian culture and religiosity, permitted the city of Babylon to be ruled by indigenous kings as long as they accepted their role as tribute-paying vassals. But when the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III marched into Babylon (729 BCE), he was determined to impose his will. He had already crushed any attempt at independence throughout his empire; he sacked Damascus, ravaged Israel and Aramea, and destroyed other outposts before taking and annexing Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser III initiated the policy of mass deportation by moving whole populations from Israel and Aramea to forced labor in Assyria63 and its colonies. His successor Sargon II followed with a second invasion of Israel (720 BCE) and orchestrated the wholesale deportation and resettlement of Israel’s tribes, primarily to Medes.
Prior to the destruction of Israel, two of its twelve original tribes, the Tribe of Judah, and the Tribe of Simon, seceded and formed the land of Judea, centered primarily in Jerusalem and territory to its south (9th or 8th century BCE). Because of its cooperation with Assyria, Judea became a protected Assyrian vassal.
The clerical tribe of Levi, providers of religious services, divided their allegiance between Israel and Judea. Some of its members were attached to the Temple of Elohim built in Jerusalem by King Solomon (965–925 BCE). Other Levites sided with the remaining tribes of Israel gathered in the northern region and these religious leaders were included in the deportation of the ten tribes of Israel.
Soon after the exile of Israel, the Assyrian King Sennacherib (705–681 BCE) invaded and sacked Babylon, laying waste to the city, and then subjugated Elam for its involvement in that rebellion. Sennacherib’s successor to the Assyrian throne, Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE) crushed Babylon and destroyed Susa (646 BCE) after another attempted insurgency. But following his death Assyria’s ambitious generals vied for power and the “Empire of the Winged Sun” began its descent from prominence as a raging civil war drained its military resources.
The next opportunity for Babylon to rebel came under the leadership of King Naboplassar (reign 625–605 BCE) of Chaldea,64 king of the marshy kingdom located just south of Babylon. Taking advantage of Assyria’s internal conflagration, he ejected them from the city. Meanwhile King Cyaxares of Medes had likewise taken the opportunity to overthrow the Assyrians and liberate Elam. Gaining the popular support of most inhabitants and tribal centers in the region, the resistance movement against the Assyrians propelled Naboplassar and Cyaxares to cement an alliance (616 BCE) that also included their neighbors, among them the Saka (aka Scythians), to join in an all-out attack on Assyria. In southern Mesopotamia only the old guard of the wrathful Sky God, Nippur, continued to side with the Assyrians. The final downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire came in 607 BCE with the allied invasion of Nineveh.
The rebuilding effort of the newly liberated Babylon would fall to Naboplassar’s son, King Nebuchadnezzar II, heading the Neo-Babylonian Empire. He ascended the throne (604 BCE) fully prepared to return Babylon to its glory days, a role similarly undertaken by his namesake, Nebuchadnezzar I. Babylon, the largest city in the world at this time, encompassed a diverse population65 of 125,000 or more, composed of a cross-section of cultures, faiths, and languages with Aramaic now serving as the lingua franca66 for civil administration and clerical functions.
Through the royal marriage of Nebuchadnezzar II to Amytis, daughter or granddaughter of Cyaxares the Great, the Babylon-Medes alliance would continue and the empires would refrain from attacking one another. Nebuchadnezzar held her in great esteem and sought her counsel on matters regarding the restoration of Babylon. He may have built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his wife, because, legend has it, she longed for the mountain scenery in Medes. When Nebuchadnezzar II had described to her his plans to rebuild Babylon’s historic center, the Esagila Temple and its Etemenanki Ziggurat, Amytis could have advised him to bring in the Magi advisors from her homeland. The Magi Order not only possessed knowledge of religion, history, divination, and ceremonial duties, but most importantly, they had acquired experience with architecture, construction, and administration starting with Dayukku’s building of the capital of Medes at Ecbatana.
After rebuilding the Esagila complex, the interfaith Magi would manage it. Under their leadership the ziggurat observatory would be used to conduct a deeper study into the real nature of the cosmos by using all possible means, including astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and visionary intuition. While they were charged by Nebuchadnezzar to restore Marduk’s place in the center of Babylonian religiosity, they sought to discover an all-encompassing Universal Truth that could bring together all religions and the many names that they attributed to the divine.
The duties of the Magi Order included the administration and record keeping of land ownership. They managed the allocation of land grants, produced maps, and set official border stone markers (kundurru). To illustrate their worldly scope the Magi drew the first World Map (600 BCE) based on the classic ancient view of a world landmass surrounded by an ocean moat. The “Babylonian continent” appeared at the center of the world with eight small triangles (Nagu) pointing in the ordinal directions—indicating the Magi’s awareness of distant unexplored regions at the ends of the Earth, as well as their view that other worlds existed in every direction of the cosmos.
Among the Magi were prophets from a host of different religions all of whom foretold of the coming of a master sage. He would possess an enlightened vision able to see beyond the boundaries of the World Map, beyond the stars, beyond Creation, and fully reveal the unseen works of the Universe. This One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth would lead them to discover the source of Universal Truth.
THE EMPEROR’S DREAM
When Naboplassar established the Neo-Babylonian Empire, he sent his son, General Nebuchadnezzar, to bring under control his father’s newly acquired western territories of Aramea, Phoenicia, Judea, and Arabia. Nebuchadnezzar attempted to convince the Kingdom of Judea, at the time under the protection of Egypt, to switch its allegiance to Babylon. A few months before his father’s death and the start of Nebuchadnezzar’s forty-three-year reign as Emperor, the Judean king acquiesced to being a Babylonian vassal. The agreement resulted in the recruitment of some of Judea’s brightest and most attractive young nobles for training in Babylon in service of the royal court (605 BCE).
Unfortunately, soon after this, the Judean king made a fateful decision to switch back his support to Egypt. The young Nebuchadnezzar II, having just succeeded his father to the Babylonian throne, had to show his muscle or appear weak. The new emperor ordered an attack on Jerusalem to make sure they understood the punishment of disloyalty. He captured the Judean king, Jeconiah, and his household, nobles, clerics, and some three thousand Judeans and deported them all to Babylon. He then placed a new king Zedekiah, on the throne, charging him with the payment of tribute. In spite of warnings by the Judean prophets of his day, Zedekiah repeated the mistake of his predecessor and also chose to go back on his pledge to be a vassal of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar responded again with a siege of Jerusalem (599 BCE), blockading the entry of food and drink until the city fell thirty months later. Payback for Zedekiah’s miscalculation included the sacking and destruction of the Temple of Solomon (597 BCE) and deportation of 11,000 Judeans to Babylonia.
Since Babylonian military policy for punishment of con
quered nations included the removal of religious items from their temples, certain relics of the Judean Temple were probably carried to Babylon. In addition, Jerusalem’s Levite clergy, among them its prophets,67 scribes, and temple caretakers, would have been brought to the newly built Esagila, where idols and exalted objects of other conquered gods were stored in sacred rooms inside the ziggurat. The Judean clergy would have been assigned compulsory duties in service of the Marduk complex, although they would be expected to continue personal worship of their God and to care for their own temple treasures. They also would be invited to participate in the Magi initiative to collect, record, and debate views of Universal Truth.
The young Hebrew nobles brought to Babylon prior to the sacking of Jerusalem had already received training in the arts of divination from the Magi. Among these dream interpreters in the Magi’s den of Lion-Sun sages, was a Hebrew named Daniel, given the Babylonian name of Belteshazzar (meaning Prince of the Lord).
Nebuchadnezzar, suffering from intermittent swings between depression and euphoria, would display fits of extreme cruelty, especially where loyalty was concerned. This was followed by spurts of manic dedication to grandiose projects.
Daniel played a critical role when King Nebuchadnezzar began to experience a tortured and puzzling dream. The sleep-deprived Emperor was bedeviled by a giant metallic figure sculpted of human features. The haunting image repeatedly terrorized him. Demanding that the Magi rid him of this cursed nightmare, the king became enraged as various seers skilled in prophecy failed to unravel its meaning. When the king threatened to execute the entire Magi Order, Daniel prayed for a revelation and received God’s communication.68
