by Georges Roux
But it was not enough for the Assyrians to survive: they had to become wealthy in order to finance major architectural or agricultural projects, to provide their kings and their gods with the luxury to which they were entitled. During most of the second millennium B.C., Assyria had obtained the surplus she needed first from the fruitful operations of her merchants in Cappadocia, then from the ‘royal trade’ which flourished in the 15th and the 14th centuries, until the economic equilibrium of the entire Orient was toppled by the great invasions that took place around 1200 B.C. But since that time, the campaigns of Tukulti-Ninurta I and Tiglathpileser I had shown how much bold armed expeditions could pay and how useful it was to possess a vast hunting ground, ‘a geographical area through which one could raid without encountering effective opposition’,8 bringing back a heavy booty. As long as foreign countries could be plundered and/or persuaded to pay the ransom of their independence, there was no need to annex and govern them directly.
To these economic motives must be added, of course, the greed and ambition of the Assyrian kings, their typically oriental desire to cover themselves with glory, to pose as invincible demi-gods in front of their subjects.
Moreover, as vicars and representatives on earth of their national god regarded as standing well above all other gods, they felt it their duty to impose the cult of Ashur in what was for them the whole world.9 This in general could only be achieved by force, but it did not matter since the king's enemies were ipso facto the god's enemies and therefore wicked devils who deserved to be punished whatever they had done.10 Thus, brigandry and occasional massacres were justified by the politico-religious ideology of the Assyrians; each of their campaigns was a measure of self-defence, an act of gangsterism but also a crusade.
Almost every year, usually in the spring, the King of Assyria mustered his troops ‘at the command of Ashur’ and led them on the dusty tracks of the Mesopotamian plain or on the perilous paths of the Taurus and of the Zagros. In the early days his opponents in those regions were merely chiefs of tribes or local princelings. Some fought bravely, though rarely with success; others fled to the desert or hid on inaccessible mountain peaks; others ‘embraced the feet’ of the Assyrian war-lord, brought presents, promised to pay regular tribute and were spared. But woe to those who failed to keep their promise! In the course of another campaign a punitive expedition was directed against them and a storm swept over their country: the rebels were tortured, the population massacred or enslaved, the towns and villages set on fire, the crops burned, the trees uprooted. Terror-stricken, the neighbouring chieftains hastened to offer gifts and to swear allegiance. Then, its duty accomplished, loaded with spoil, trailing behind it human captives, flocks and herds, the army returned home and disbanded. As an example of what Assyria gained from these wars, here is a list of the tamartu (the ‘spectacular gift for display’) taken by Ashurnasirpal in one single, small district of Bit-Zamâni, the region of modern Diarbakr.
40 chariots ‘equipped with the trappings of men and horses’
460 horses ‘broken to the yoke’
2 talents of silver, 2 talents of gold
100 talents of lead, 100 talents of copper
300 talents of iron
1,000 vessels of copper
2,000 pans of copper
bowls and cauldrons of copper
1,000 brightly coloured garments of wool and linen tables of sha-wood and ‘couches made of ivory and overlaid with gold’ from the ruler's palace
2,000 heads of cattle
5,000 sheep,
not counting the ruler's sister, the ‘daughters of his nobles with their rich dowries’ and his 15,000 Ahlamû-Aramaean subjects ‘snatched away and brought to Assyria’. The local prince was put to death, and an annual tribute was imposed on his successor, consisting of 1,000 sheep, 2,000 gur of grain, 2 minas of gold and 13 minas of silver.11 In the same campaign Ashurnasirpal gathered presents and spoil from no less than five countries and nine major cities.
As years went by, the boundaries of the Assyrian hunting ground were pushed farther and farther afield. Behind the petty states of their immediate neighbourhood, the kings of Assur found larger and more powerful kingdoms: Urartu in Armenia, the Medes in Iran, Elam and Egypt. The raids of rapine became wars of conquest. Assyria had grown stronger, but her opponents were bigger and tougher. The increased distances rendered more difficult the collection of tribute and the suppression of revolts. In most places it became necessary to replace the native rulers and their courts by Assyrian governors and civil servants and to extend to these far-away regions the division into provinces which had prevailed in Assyria proper since very early days. In this way an empire took shape with its huge, complex and perfectly organized administrative machinery. But the original objectives were never forgotten, and the extortion of taxes remained the foundation of Assyrian government. It is certain that the Aramaean merchants and the Phoenician sailors and craftsmen benefited to a certain extent from the facility and security of communications throughout this vast territory and from the ever-increasing demands of the Assyrian palaces for luxury goods. It is probable that some of the more backward districts received a thin varnish of civilization.12 But outside Assyria proper – which now included the entire steppe between the Euphrates and the Tigris – there is no evidence that the conquerors made much effort to diffuse their highly advanced culture, to care for the economic development of the distant provinces and satellite states, to improve, even indirectly, the welfare of their populations. The silence on this subject of the royal correspondence found at Nineveh and at Nimrud, the almost complete absence of Assyrian texts in Syria, Palestine, Armenia and Iran, the generally poor character of the Assyrian level in excavated sites of these countries, the frequent references to spoil, massacres and destruction in the royal annals (however exaggerated they may be), everything points to impoverishment or, at best, stagnation. The men, horses, cattle and sheep brought into Assyria by the thousand, the enormous yearly income in silver, gold, copper, iron, grain and other commodities so accurately registered by the palace scribes, all this was generally not purchased but taken by force. Wealth was constantly being transferred from the periphery to the centre, from the dependencies and ‘protectorates’ to the Mesopotamian homeland.13 The Assyrians took much and gave very little, with the result that if the state was rich its distant subjects were destitute and in almost constant rebellion. The system upon which the empire was founded had in itself the germs of its own destruction.
Ashurnasirpal
With Tukulti-Ninurta's son we meet the first great Assyrian monarch of the new period. Ambition, energy, courage, vanity, cruelty, magnificence, Ashurnasirpal II* (883 – 859 B.C.) possessed to the extreme all the qualities and defects of his successors, the ruthless, indefatigable empire-builders. There is no smile, no piety, almost no humanity in the statue of him found at Nimrud and now in the British Museum, but the rigid attitude of a conceited despot, the aquiline nose of a bird of prey, the straight-looking eyes of a chief who demands absolute obedience, and in his hands the mace and the curved spear.14
No sooner was he upon the throne than, without the shadow of a pretext, he went forth to ransack the hilly countries to the north of Mesopotamia.15 This took him as far as the land of Kutmuhu in the Upper Tigris valley, where he received tribute from several local princes and presents from the Mushki, or Phrygians, who held outposts on the southern slopes of the Taurus mountains. While he was there he received news that a vassal Aramaean city on the lower Khabur had revolted, and he immediately proceeded to punish the rebels – a march of at least three hundred kilometres, in the middle of the summer:
‘To the city of Sûru of Bît Halupê I drew near, and the terror of the splendour of Ashur, my lord, overwhelmed them. The chief and the elders of the city, to save their lives came forth into my presence and embraced my feet, saying: “If it is thy pleasure, slay! If it is thy pleasure, let live! That which thy heart desireth, do!”… In the valour of my heart
and with the fury of my weapons I stormed the city. All the rebels they seized and delivered them up.’16
Further campaigns in the course of the reign were directed against other rebels in the Kashiari mountains, in the land of Zamua (the region around modern Suleimaniyah) and on the Middle Euphrates. Then, when the kingdom was pacified, the first stride was made towards reaching Syria and the Mediterranean, a goal which Shamshi-Adad I once had set and which no Assyrian monarch of value could overlook. Beyond the Khabur and the Balikh, within the great bend of the Euphrates, lay the important Aramaean kingdom of Bît-Adini, Ashurnasirpal invaded it and ‘with mines, battering rams and siege engines’ took Kaprabi (possibly Urfa), a city which ‘was exceedingly strong and hung like a cloud from heaven’. The ruler of Bit-Adini, Ahuni, brought tribute and left hostages in Assyrian hands: the way was clear for the great Syrian expedition of the following year (877 B.C.). The annals go into considerable detail over this campaign, and we can follow the king and his army step by step, by daily marches of about thirty kilometres from Karkemish to the plain of Antioch, across the Orontes and finally, ‘along the side of mount Lebanon and to the Great Sea of the land of Amurru’. There Ashurnasirpal repeated the gesture of his predecessors:
‘I cleaned my weapons in the deep sea and performed sheep-offerings to the gods. The tribute of the sea-coast – from the inhabitants of Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Mahallata, Maiza, Kaiza, Amurru, and (of) Arvad which is (an island) in the sea: gold, silver, tin, copper, copper containers, linen garments with multi-coloured trimmings, large and small monkeys, ebony, boxwood, ivory from walrus tusk – (thus ivory) a product of the sea – (this) their tribute I received and they embraced my feet.’17
The Assyrians returned home via the Amanus mountains, where trees were cut down and sent to Assur, and a royal stele set up. Taken by surprise, the Neo-Hittite and Aramaean princes of northern Syria had offered no resistance. Contrary to the claims made by the king, however, this triumphal campaign was not a conquest but another razzia, the first long-range Assyrian razzia since the days of Tiglathpileser I, two hundred years before. Even in Mesopotamia the territory gained by Ashurnasirpal was comparatively small, and the main result of the reign was to pave the way for the following kings. Fortresses such as Tushhan on the Upper Tigris, Kar-Ashurnasirpal and Nibarti-Ashur on the Middle Euphrates were founded and staffed with garrisons.18 The position of Assyria in northern Iraq was consolidated, its nearest neighbours in the mountainous half-circle counted as vassals. The entire Near East learnt that the Assyrians were once again on the move and trembled with fear.
They had every reason to tremble, for Ashurnasirpal was preceded by a well-deserved reputation for cruelty. Humanitarian concepts in warfare were unknown in those days, and a few spectacular examples duly recorded and displayed in writing and pictures in various places were no doubt necessary to inspire respect and enforce obedience. All conquerors in antiquity (and some in modern times) practised a policy of terror, and the Assyrians were no exception. But Ashurnasirpal surpassed them all. Not only were the rebellious or recalcitrant rulers put to death, flayed and their skin ‘spread over the walls of their city‘, but in a few, exceptional cases unarmed prisoners and innocent civilians, were tortured with sadistic refinements:
‘I built a pillar over against his city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skin. Some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar… And I cut the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled…
‘Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears and their fingers, of many I put out the eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads, and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire.
‘Twenty men I captured alive and I immured them in the wall of his palace…
‘The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates…’19
It must be noted, however, that these atrocities were usually reserved for those local princes and their nobles who had revolted and that in contrast with the Israelites, for instance, who exterminated the Amalekites for purely ethno-cultural reasons, the Assyrians never indulged in systematic genocides.20
It is only fair to add that the memory of Ashurnasirpal must be credited with other, more commendable achievements. Part of his thirst for blood was quenched by the hunting prowesses which his sculptors have immortalized. He had a taste for zoology and botany and brought back ‘from the lands in which he had travelled and the mountains he had passed’ all kinds of beasts, trees and seeds to be acclimatized in Assyria. Above all, he was possessed with that passion for building which is the mark of all great Mesopotamian monarchs. Without neglecting the traditional restoration of temples in Assur and Nineveh, he decided early in his reign to build himself a new ‘royal residence’ away from the old capital-city. Had the Aramaean invasion shown that Assur, on the right bank of the Tigris, was dangerously exposed to attacks coming from the west, or was the move prompted by pride alone? We do not know, but if safety was sought, the site selected by Ashurnasirpal, Kalhu (biblical Calah, modern Nimrud, thirty-five kilometres south of Mosul) was strategically excellent, protected as it was by the Tigris to the west and by the Upper Zab flowing at some distance to the south. Shalmaneser I in the thirteenth century B.C. had founded a town there, but it had long fallen into ruins. Thousands of men were put to work: the ruin-mound,
Plan of Nimrud. 1, The archaeologists' house; 2, temple of Nabû; 3, palace of the city's governor; 4, ‘burnt palace’; 5, street; 6, private houses; 7, building; 8, Ishtar's temple; 9, Ninurta's temple; 10, ziqqurat; 11, Ashurnasirpal's palace with A; domestic wing; B, throne room; C, archives room; D, well; 12, ‘central palace’; 13, ‘south-west palace’. From M. E. L. Mallowan, Iraq, XIX, 1957.
the ‘tell’, was levelled, and the building site extended; a massive wall reinforced with towers was erected, enclosing a rectangle about eight kilometres in perimeter, and a partly natural, partly artificial hill in a corner of this rectangle became the acropolis supporting the ziqqurat, several temples and the royal palace:
‘A palace of cedar, cypress, juniper, boxwood, mulberry, pistachio-wood and tamarisk, for my royal dwelling and for my lordly pleasure for all time I founded therein. Beasts of the mountains and of the seas of white limestone and alabaster I fashioned and set them up in its gates… Door-leaves of cedar, cypress, juniper and mulberry I hung in the gates thereof; and silver, gold, lead, copper and iron, the spoil of my hand from the lands which I had brought under my sway, in great quantities I took and placed therein.’21
At the same time a canal called Patti-hegalli (‘stream of abundance’) was dug from the Zab with the double purpose of sheltering the town further and of watering the surrounding plain. Prisoners from the subdued lands were settled in the new capital-city, whose tutelary god, significantly, was the war-god Ninurta.
Ashurnasirpal's palace at Nimrud was one of the first monuments ever excavated in Mesopotamia. Between 1845 and 1851 Layard worked on its central part and – much to the awe and wonder of his labourers – dug up a number of colossal winged bull-men, lions, genii and slabs covered with reliefs and inscriptions.22 Some of these treasures were sent to England and are now the pride of the British Museum; others, too heavy to be removed, were reinterred, to be unearthed again just over a century later by other British archaeologists.23 We now possess the complete plan of the palace, which covered an area of more than three hectares and was divided into three parts: the administrative quarters (a series of rooms around a large courtyard), the ceremonial block with its spacious reception-hall and throne-room and, finally, the domestic wing, including royal apartments, harem, stores and ablution-rooms. In the ceremonial block the main gates were flanked by huge lamussû, or protective genii, the mud-brick w
alls decorated with frescoes and with carved and inscribed orthostats, the floors paved with burnt bricks stamped with the name of the king. An interesting feature of the domestic wing was the presence of an ‘air conditioning’ system in the form of broad air-vents cut in the thickness of the walls to admit fresh air from above. The door leaves of precious wood have perished in the fire which destroyed Nimrud, like other Assyrian cities, in 612 B.C., but a number of objects have survived, in particular beautifully incised or carved panels of ivory, often covered with gold, which once decorated the royal furniture. There were also weapons and tools of bronze or iron, clay jars and a number of tablets. As it now stands, Ashurnasirpal's palace is the best preserved of Assyrian royal dwellings, and the visitor who wanders through this maze of rooms and courtyards, who walks along these narrow corridors lined with huge slabs to be suddenly confronted, in the dim light of a doorway, with some terrifying monster of stone, can well imagine the emotion which must have seized those who entered the building to approach ‘the wonderful shepherd who fears not the battle’.
Among the finds made in the palace was a very large stele bearing the figure of the king and a long inscription from which we learn of the festivities that accompanied the opening ceremony in 879 B.C.24 An enormous banquet – the menu of which is given in detail – was offered by Ashurnasirpal to the entire population of the town as well as to foreign ambassadors, in all no less than 69,574 guests for ten days. And the final sentence makes us for a moment forget the other, unsavoury aspects of this great monarch:
