by Eckart Frahm
In 626, Nabopolassar achieved a crucial breakthrough: in the eighth month of that year, a few weeks after Assyrian armies had suffered agonizing defeats against Babylonian forces at Babylon and Uruk, the people of Babylon made him their king. In the following years, Babylonia became the battleground for numerous brutal clashes between Assyrian and Babylonian troops, with cities repeatedly changing possession and the Babylonians slowly but steadily managing to force Sîn‐šarru‐iškun’s armies out from their territory.
It is doubtful, however, that Nabopolassar would ever have scored a final victory over the hated Assyrian enemy had he not received support from a somewhat unexpected ally: the mountain‐dwelling Medes in the east. For a long time divided through tribal fragmentation, which had enabled the Assyrians to control them (Radner 2003a), the Medes, after gaining their independence through a process of secondary state formation (S. Brown 1986), had finally been united by a certain Cyaxares (Umakištar). Cyaxares joined forces with Nabopolassar, and their combined armies carried the fight into the Assyrian heartland. In 615, Median troops conquered Arrapḫa, and one year later, they devastated the city of Ashur (Miglus 2000b), desecrating and plundering temples and palaces and demolishing the Assyrian royal tombs.
Without doubt, this assault on Assyria’s religious heart must have been devastating for Assyrian morale. A dramatic letter from Tušḫan in the Upper Tigris valley illustrates how the final breakdown of Assyrian power came about in the capitals of Assyria’s provinces (Parpola 2008). The decisive blow came in 612, when Babylonian and Median armies, after a two months long siege, conquered Nineveh, whose generously large city gates, built by Sennacherib, now proved a strategic liability (Stronach 1997; Reade, RlA 9: 427–8). The enemy forces looted the city thoroughly and indulged in an orgy of destruction. The Assyrian king, Sîn‐šarru‐iškun, was killed.
The conquest of Nineveh marked the effective end of the Assyrian empire, even though the events of 612 were followed by a short historical “coda.” In the city of Ḫarran, located on the Baliḫ river in Syria, an Assyrian prince who had survived the devastation in the Assyrian heartland refused to surrender, claiming instead kingship for himself. He assumed the throne name Aššur‐uballiṭ (II), after the famous earlier king who had established Assyria as a significant political power during the Middle Assyrian period (see Chapter 6), and, supported by Egyptian troops that had invaded Syria during the preceding years, offered some last resistance. If the anonymous “crown prince” mentioned in a few late documents from Dur‐Katlimmu on the Khabur is indeed to be identified with Aššur‐uballiṭ (thus Radner 2002: 17–18), he would have held some authority in the west for a little while. But in 610, Median and Babylonian troops drove Aššur‐uballiṭ away from Ḫarran, and, after a failed attempt in 609 to reconquer the city with Egyptian help, he disappeared from the scene. The Assyrian state had finally ceased to exist.
What were the primary causes for Assyria’s sudden end? As pointed out before, the question cannot be easily answered, but a few factors, both internal and external, seem to stand out. During the years 631 to 627, and possibly longer (Fuchs 2014: 35–6, 54–8), various contenders fought for the Assyrian throne. This domestic strife must have produced a serious crisis of legitimacy for the crown, especially among members of the Assyrian elite, who in all likelihood felt increasingly disconnected from their king. What made the situation worse was the fact that the internal fabric of the Assyrian state had been weakened for some time. Many presumably experienced and capable officials had been executed during the reign of Esarhaddon, and others had lost their positions to eunuchs during that of Assurbanipal.
Externally, Assyria’s rule had always suffered from certain structural vulnerabilities. As recently stressed by Bagg (2013: 305–8), Assyria was an “empire without mission” that sought to achieve maximum profits, in the form of tribute, taxes, and labor, through a policy based on minimal investments, both logistically and ideologically. Except for order and freedom from strife, the Assyrian state had little to offer to the various polities it had subjugated in the course of the centuries – and it had often alienated these polities by spreading fear and terror. The people ruled by Assyria had therefore few incentives to remain loyal when the empire came under attack.
An additional factor that might have contributed to Assyria’s predicament has recently been discussed by Schneider and Adalı (2014): a conceivably massive rise during the last century of the empire in the population of the Assyrian heartland may have led to a crisis when a period of – possibly severe – drought set in during the mid‐seventh century, apparently affecting Assyria far more than Babylonia. How significant these demographic and climate‐generated changes were remains, however, uncertain.
Despite all these challenges, Assyria might have survived had the unexpected coalition between the Babylonians and the Medes not created a perfect storm that finally brought her down.
The “Afterlife” and Legacy of the Assyrian Empire
Aššur‐uballiṭ’s disappearance from the scene in 609 marked not only the end of Assyrian kingship but also that of the Assyrian state, its institutional infrastructure, and, to a significant extent, Assyrian urban culture. Palaces, temples, and many private houses in key Assyrian cities such as Ashur, Kalḫu, and Nineveh were destroyed, and to the best of our current knowledge no one in the Assyrian heartland wrote on clay tablets ever again, neither in cuneiform nor in Aramaic. Outside the empire’s core area, as illustrated by a few documents from Dur‐Katlimmu on the Khabur, cuneiform writing in the Assyrian language and script continued for a few more years (Dalley 1990; Postgate 1993; Radner 2002: 16–19, 61–9), but no documents are known from after 600 BCE, the date of the latest legal document from Dur‐Katlimmu (Radner 2002: 68–9; for Assyrian texts from “post‐Assyrian” Babylonia, see Pedersén 2009).
To what extent Assyrian cities and their inhabitants survived the assault by the Median and Babylonian troops is a question that has raised considerable discussion in recent years. It is certainly true that the often promoted view that these cities were all reduced to rubble and entirely uninhabited after 612 cannot be upheld. Stephanie Dalley (1993; 2013: 179–202) in particular has repeatedly emphasized that there is evidence for continued urban life in Assyria. In certain parts of Nineveh, for instance, four levels of “post‐Assyrian” occupation before the Hellenistic period have been traced (Reade, RlA 9: 428). Ashur is mentioned in Cyrus’s famous cylinder inscription, as a place to which the Persian king returned a number of divine statues (Schaudig 2001: 550–6, line 30), and there is evidence that the cult of the god Assur continued in Ashur, in a sanctuary built in close proximity to the old one, the so‐called “Temple A.” As observed by Miglus (1992), this temple has yielded numerous royal inscriptions from various periods of Assyrian history, suggesting that it may have served for a while as a “lieu de mémoire” to the survivors of the catastrophe of 614. According to Aramaic inscriptions, the old Assyrian deities Assur and Šerua, as well as a few other gods, were still worshipped in Ashur in the second and even in the early third century AD (Beyer 1998: 11–25) – obviously evidence for a continuous religious tradition. Arbela (Erbil) remained an urban center of some importance as well. It features in Darius’s Bisitun inscription and later became the capital of the kingdom of Adiabene, where certain Assyrian traditions lived on (see Reade 2001; Walker 2006–07).
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that there are few archaeological traces of really substantial reconstruction work undertaken in Assyrian cities during the first centuries after the fall of Assyria. It was apparently only during the Parthian period that some of the sites of Assyria’s ancient urban centers, especially Ashur (Miglus 2000b; Hauser 2011), but also Arbela and Nineveh (Reade, RlA 9: 428–9), grew into more important cities again, probably due to their strategic location. During the roughly 500 years between the fall of Assyria and the arrival of the Parthians, these sites seem to have experienced widespread, albeit not total, abando
nment. It is telling that when the Greek general Xenophon marched through Assyria in 399 BCE, he proved unable to find out the ancient names of the Assyrian cities he passed – he called Ashur “Kainai”(?), Kalḫu “Larissa,” and Nineveh “Mespila” (Anabasis II.4.28, III.4.7, III.4.10; Hauser 2011: 125–6). Admittedly, Xenophon writes that Kainai, which he saw from the eastern bank of the Tigris but did not visit, was a “large and prosperous city,”23 and the names of a few Assyrian cities such as Nineveh and Arbela actually remained in use, despite Xenophon’s ignorance; but it seems, nonetheless, undeniable that these cities suffered massive destruction in 612 and a dramatic decline in population in the years after.
In Babylonia, despite the deep tensions that had characterized Assyro‐Babylonian relations in the seventh century, certain facets of Assyrian culture lived on after the fall of the Assyrian empire. Assyrian families residing in Babylonian cities were apparently allowed to hold on to their cultural identity, at least to some extent. Tellingly, several archival documents from Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Babylon are written in Assyrian script (Pedersén 2009), indicating that the bureaucrats serving at the Neo‐Babylonian court included native Assyrians. The last Neo‐Babylonian king, Nabonidus, may have had Assyrian roots on his mother’s side, and artworks from his reign display a number of Assyrian features (Schaudig 2001: 12–14, 39–40). Individuals with decidedly Assyrian names are attested in “post‐Assyrian” texts from Babylon, Sippar, Dilbat, Borsippa, Nippur, and Uruk (Zadok 1998). The evidence from Uruk is of particular interest. As demonstrated by Beaulieu (1997b), bearers of Assyrian names were closely associated with a local temple there that was dedicated to the cult of AN.ŠÁR–Aššur. Their community continued to exist throughout the Chaldaean period and lasted at least until the reign of the Persian king Cambyses (see Chapter 28). A tablet from Assurbanipal’s library, SBTU 2, no. 46, was found in a library in Uruk whose owner was active during the time of Alexander the Great, and there are hints that scholars in Uruk used text editions strongly influenced by Assyrian traditions (Beaulieu 2010). Babylonian chronicles kept alive the memory of important events that had occurred during the Neo‐Assyrian period, and scribes from Babylon and Borsippa continued to copy (pseudepigraphical or real) letters exchanged between Assyrian monarchs on the one hand and Babylonian kings and scholars on the other until the late second century BCE (Frame and George 2005; Frahm 2005a).
Perhaps of even greater significance is that a number of key components of Nabopolassar’s and Nebuchadnezzar’s new Neo‐Babylonian state were based on the example of the Assyrian empire. This applies, in particular, to the organization of the central palace bureaucracy under Nebuchadnezzar, which followed Assyrian and not Babylonian models (Jursa 2010). Certain features of Nebuchadnezzar’s massive construction work in Babylon, such as the rectangular plan of the inner city and the location of the king’s North Palace on a raised terrace across the city wall, were likewise inspired by Assyrian traditions.
There were, however, also differences in the urban setup, most importantly the central position within Babylon of the gigantic temple of Marduk (Beaulieu 2008). Unlike the great Neo‐Assyrian cities Kalḫu, Dur‐Šarrukin, and Nineveh, Babylon was not primarily the glamorous abode of a king, but a temple city, and as such it survived by more than 700 years the overthrow of the Chaldaean dynasty in 539 BCE. The contrast with Assyria’s royal cities, which largely collapsed once Assyrian kingship was gone, is striking.
The legacy left by the Assyrian empire in the regions west of the Euphrates was likewise significant, as epitomized by the fact that the name “Syria,” used from antiquity until today, derives from “Assyria” (Rollinger 2006). Centuries of Assyrian interference had thoroughly changed the political and ethnolinguistic makeup of the region, with long‐lasting consequences. And even though Assyrian imperialism did not include forced religious conversions, it did also reshape the religious views of the people in the West, most prominently in Israel and Judah. Several scholars have observed that certain portions of the Biblical book of Deuteronomy display close similarities both in form and content with the stipulations and loyalty oaths of Assyrian vassal treaties (Steymans 1995; Otto 1999; Radner 2006) – one of which is now known from a tablet found at Tell Tayinat on the Orontes (Lauinger 2012). It seems that the covenant theology articulated in Deuteronomy represents a reaction to these treaties – but with absolute loyalty towards god replacing loyalty to the Assyrian king, and monotheism superseding the monarchical rule of a foreign ruler.
Assyria played a prominent role, both as an example of a dangerous “otherness” and as an object of fascination, in the historical and narrative traditions of ancient Israel, Egypt, and the classical world. The Bible mentions “Aššur,” which usually denotes Assyria, some 150 times. It is particularly interested in Assyria’s western expansion between 745 and 700, and above all in Sennacherib’s attack on Jerusalem, but also in the fall of Assyria, which is the topic of the book of Nahum. Genesis 10: 8–11 describes the founding of Assyria by a legendary figure named Aššur. Of the historical kings of Assyria, the Bible mentions Tiglath‐pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and possibly Assurbanipal (references: Millard 1976; for a more detailed discussion, see Chapter 29).
Texts by Greek and Roman historians focus on the creation of the Assyrian empire, ascribed to the legendary king and conqueror Ninus; the remarkable deeds of his wife, Semiramis, whose name derives from that of Sammu‐ramat, the influential mother of king Adad‐nirari III (Pettinato 1985, and see above, “Internal Conflicts and Fragmentation of Power”); and the fall of the empire, which most authors incorrectly link, for the sake of dramatic effect, to the reign of the effeminate “Sardanapallus,” that is, Assurbanipal (see above, “Imperial Heydays”).24 The Orientalizing tropes of powerful females and decadent male autocrats are typical for the perception of Western Asia among Greeks and Romans. Of particular importance for the classical view of Assyria were the writings of Ctesias of Cnidus (born ca. 441 BCE) (Lenfant 2004). The idea that there was, throughout history, a succession of empires (translatio imperii) that began with Assyria is first attested in Herodotus (Lanfranchi 2003; Rollinger 2011; see also the more detailed discussion by R. Rollinger in Chapter 30 of this volume).
The Neo‐Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon feature prominently in the Aramaic Ahiqar story, about a legendary(?) royal advisor of that name (Niehr 2007). First attested on a papyrus from Elephantine dated to ca. 500 BCE, the story was later translated into a host of other languages. In a number of Demotic tales belonging to the so‐called Pedubastis Cycle, Esarhaddon plays an important role as well, as the opponent of the heroic Egyptian warrior Inarus. The tales were inspired by the Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 671. A papyrus from Egypt written in Demotic script but Aramaic language tells the story of the bloody war between Assurbanipal and Šamaš‐šumu‐ukin (Dalley 2001; Ryholt 2004), and a Demotic tale about the battle between the Egyptians and the Amazons features a certain Serpot, queen of the Amazons, who may be modeled on the Assyrian empress Sammu‐ramat–Semiramis (thus Zauzich 2010).
Some key figures of Assyrian history seem to have inspired the narrative traditions of neighboring civilizations in more indirect ways. The most prominent examples come from the Hebrew Bible. It is quite feasible, for instance, that the mocking dirge commemorating the downfall of an oppressive anonymous “king of Babel” in Isaiah 14 was originally aimed at Sargon II (Frahm 1999a: 86, with earlier references). Christian theologians such as Origen later reinterpreted the passage as referring to the devil. The Biblical tale of Jonah (a name that means “dove”) and the great fish may draw on the Semiramis legend, which, in turn, goes back to stories about the Assyrian queen Sammu‐ramat (Weinfeld 1991; Frahm 2016). According to Greek tradition, Semiramis, the daughter of the fish‐bodied goddess Derceto (Atargatis) of Ashkelon, was fed by doves when an infant and turned into a dove after her death. Finally, there is a certain likelihood that the Biblical story of Joseph (esp
ecially Genesis 37:1–11) was inspired by tales of Esarhaddon’s rise to power (see Frahm 2009: 39–41 and the more detailed discussion in Chapter 29 of the present volume).
There are other possible links between Biblical stories and events from Assyrian history (see, inter alia, Dalley 2007), but they cannot be discussed here. The same applies to the possible influence Assyrian traditions had on classical authors such as Homer (see, e.g., West 1997: 375–80), and the numerous adaptations of stories featuring Assyrian motifs from antiquity to modern times (for an attempt to trace the Semiramis tradition through the centuries, see Asher‐Greve 2006). The adoption of ancient Assyrian culture by “Neo‐Assyrian” Aramaic Christians since the 19th century will be examined in Chapter 32.
In conclusion, we can say that the Neo‐Assyrian empire, despite its dramatic sudden fall, left a legacy of great consequence. The political structures it had established became a model for the empires that succeeded it, and stories linked to Assyrian kings and queens continue to resonate until today.
