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Further Reading
Assyrian kingship: Cancik‐Kirschbaum 1995; Maul 1999; Lanfranchi and Rollinger 2010. Assyrian imperialism: Garelli 1974; Pecˇírková 1987, 1997; Tadmor 1999. Imperial ideology: Liverani 1979; Machinist 1993; Barjamovic 2012; Karlsson 2013; Liverani 2013. Political theology: Albrektson 1967; Oded 1991; Holloway 2002; Vera Chamaza 2002. Communication between god and king: Pongratz‐Leisten 1999, 2014.
Assyrian oikoumene: Villard 1999; Liverani 1999–2001. The “peer interaction” system: Liverani 2001a. Models for the imperial growth: Liverani 1988, 2011; Postgate 1992; Bedford 2009; Bagg 2011. Phases and directions of expansion: Lamprichs 1995; Yamada 2000; Parker 2001; Fuchs 2008; Siddall 2013; Radner 2014. Deportations: Oded 1979. Denigration of enemies: Haas 1980; Fales 1982; Zaccagnini 1982; Frahm 1997: 265–6. Assyrian warfare: Fales 2010; Fuchs 2011. Assyrian cruelty: Bersani and Dutoit 1985; Bleibtreu 1991; Zawadzki 1996; Bahrani 2008.
Royal images: Magen 1986; Ataç 2010. Stelae: Börker‐Klähn 1982. The importance of names and naming: Radner 2005. Toponyms: Pongratz‐Leisten 1997. Religious unification: Cogan 1974; 1993. Linguistic unification: Uehlinger 1990. Collapse of the empire: Machinist 1997; Liverani 2001b, 2008.
PART IV
The Afterlife and Rediscovery of Assyria
CHAPTER 28
Assyria in Late Babylonian Sources
Paul‐Alain Beaulieu
After the demise of the Assyrian state at the end of the seventh century BCE, Babylon, its long time rival and cultural sibling, emerged as hegemonic power in Mesopotamia and the Levant. After Babylon in turn lost its independence to the Persians in 539, Babylonian temples became the main repository of the cultural memory of Mesopotamia. Late Babylonian cuneiform documentation is remarkably rich and varied. The Babylonian empire of the seventh and sixth centuries has produced an important corpus of official inscriptions. Archival documents, concentrated mostly in the period from 626 to 485, can be counted in tens of thousands. Temple and private libraries dating to the Seleucid and Parthian period include hundreds of manuscripts of traditional texts, ranging from lexical and omen series to chronicles and works of literature. This rich and varied corpus preserves selective memories of Assyria as political and cultural competitor, as well as isolated elements of Assyrian culture which survived for centuries on Babylonian soil. These sometimes lived on in the form of a self‐consciously cultivated legacy, although more often they were completely assimilated to the point that they can be identified only with difficulty and were probably no longer identifiably Assyrian. The picture which emerges from that documentation is inevitably lop‐sided, viewing Assyria through the lens of a world centered on Babylon and its cultural, religious, and political achievements. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that Assyria had not been entirely forgotten, at least among the literate classes who controlled the temples and cuneiform learning.
Assyria in the Royal Inscriptions of the Babylonian Empire
Nabopolassar seized the Babylonian throne in 626 BCE. For the next six years he waged war against the Assyrians on Babylonian soil for control of its cities. Places like Uruk and Nippur changed hands a few times, but by 620 all evidence indicates that Nabopolassar had eliminated his rival Sîn‐šarru‐iškun from the south and was ready to carry the conflict to Assyria proper (Beaulieu 1997a). The Babylonians and their Median allies sacked Nineveh in 612, but it is only with the capture of Ḫarran in 609 that the long history of the Assyrian state and its monarchy came to a close. The Assyrian collapse was dramatic. In spite of evidence of partial occupation and some later resettlement, the vast imperial capitals and royal residences of the Sargonid kings became largely deserted. Assyrian cuneiform disappeared along with the state that supported it, while the progress of Aramaic as vernacular had already narrowed its usage, especially for the recording of private transactions. The sole post‐Assyrian evidence for the survival of the Assyrian language and the Assyrian cuneiform script in an everyday context comes in the form of four economic documents from Dur‐Katlimmu dated to the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II, 601–600 BCE (Postgate 1993; Brinkman 1993).
The years of struggle between Nabopolassar and the waning Assyrian state witnessed the emergence of a Babylonian discourse about Assyria which shaped the memory of that state in late Babylonian historiography. Nabopolassar alludes to the Assyrian demise in a few inscriptions. In his cylinder commemorating the restoration of the wall Imgur‐Enlil in Babylon (Al‐Rawi 1985), the new king describes the Assyrians as oppressors who had been allowed to rule Babylonia in an illegitimate manner because of divine wrath until he threw them out of the country and helped the Babylonians cast off their yoke. In the conclusion of this inscription, Nabopolassar contrasts Assyrian cruelty and trust in sheer might with his own passive faith in the power of Marduk and Nabû, drawing an ethical lesson from the failure of the Assyrian imperial system which recalls similar moral condemnations voiced by Biblical prophets (Beaulieu 2003b).
The greatest Assyrian crime in the Babylonian view was the treatment doled out by Sennacherib to their city after its
capture in 689. Although Nabopolassar does not mention these particular events in his inscriptions, there is little doubt that during his reign, the Babylonians began to view the unfolding disintegration and fall of Assyria as retribution for the crimes of Sennacherib against their city. This view seems implicit in a Babylonian Chronicle which covers interruptions in the New Year Festival from the time of Sennacherib’s sack of Babylon down to the year 626, when Nabopolassar assumed power in Babylonia following the demise of Kandalanu (Glassner 2004, Chronicle 20). The same explanation occurs, this time fully spelled out, in a stele set up at Babylon by Nabonidus not long after his accession to the throne. The first lines are lost and probably mentioned Sennacherib by name. The preserved parts describe his evil deeds against the sacred city, his desecration of the site and neglect of cult centers, as well as the forced exile to Ashur which he imposed on the god Marduk. The narrative continues with the routine theological explanation that it is Marduk, in his anger, who had allowed Sennacherib to succeed in his scheme, and ends with the return of the god to Esagil in Babylon after an exile of twenty‐one years. Nabonidus adds that, as punishment, Marduk incited the son of Sennacherib, now designated as “king of Subartu,” to murder him (Schaudig 2001: 516). Nabonidus also mentions the desecration committed against the Eulmaš temple of Sippar‐Anunitum, although this time he attributes to the god Sîn the guiding hand in the unfolding of the drama (Schaudig 2001: 457).
These dramatic events are also recalled in two fragmentary texts from Babylon dating to the Hellenistic period which record an alleged exchange of correspondence between Nabopolassar and Sîn‐šarru‐iškun detailing the main rationale invoked by the insurgent Babylonian king to wage war against Assyria (Gerardi 1986; Lambert 2005). They again portray Sennacherib as the desecrator of Babylon and Nabopolassar as the “avenger of Akkad,” selected by Marduk to bring an end to Assyrian rule and vindicate the holy city. These two literary letters indicate that the motif of retribution for Sennacherib’s sin as explanation for the fall of Assyria and the rise of Babylon as imperial power survived in Babylonian historiography until the Seleucid era.
