Who Were the Assyrians, and Why Were they So Violent?
Most high schools and beginner undergraduate classes teach only the basics about the Assyrians — that they were ancient people who advanced literature, law, and other elements of civilization for the rest of humanity.
These lessons usually precede a far more detailed and lengthy overview of the Greeks and Romans, who academics always seem to find infinitely more interesting. But schoolroom discussions almost always neglect the most interesting thing about the Assyrians, which is that they were brutal as hell.
Where Did the Assyrians Come From?
The best archaeological evidence currently available places the beginning of civilization from around six to ten thousand years ago. Though some have begun to question this date range, it’s safe to say that the first civilizations for which we have good archeological evidence began at least six thousand years ago in the regions between modern-day Turkey and Iraq.
The world's first recognizable empire was called Sumer. After a reign of around two millennia, a people called the Akkadians took over the regions controlled by Sumer and founded a civilization called Babylonia in its place. The city of Babylon quickly became a thriving metropolis, complete with canals, stonework gates, monolithic art, and an almost-sensible legal system (I’ll do more on Babylon later). This new height of advancement would influence many later cities and cultures.
Typical Sumerian art
It isn’t entirely clear which people went on to found which further cities, but it is apparent that those in and around Babylon dispersed to the northwest and northeast. These people intermingled with other peoples in the region, eventually giving way to a people called the Assyrians, or the people of Aššur, their chief god.
What Set Assyria Apart From Other Ancient Civilizations?
The ancient world had always been a tough place to live in. People died young, killed each other a lot, and invaded neighboring territories regularly. The first ancient Babylonian legal system, Hammurabi’s code, sanctioned harsh punishments like removing the eyes, ears, breasts, or limbs of guilty parties. Compared to the Assyrians, though, the Babylonians and pretty much every other ancient people seemed like pacifist hippies.
Each of the main Mesopotamian cultures had its strong suits. Sumer had its monuments and cuneiform script, Babylon had its laws and trade, and Assyria had its military power. Though Assyria was perfectly fluent in writing and trade, its real backbone was its willingness to use brutality to terrify its enemies.
Assyrian kings with elaborate names like Ashur-Nadin-ache I or Ninurta-tukulti-Ashur seemed to love burning enemy cities to the ground, deporting entire populations, torturing helpless prisoners of war, and enslaving women and children. After completing their grisly deeds, they bragged about them on stone reliefs and inscribed tablets so everyone would know not to mess with them in the future. Below is one such tablet:
A public flaying before entranced children, if you didn’t get that
Ancient people often had a certain artful directness in their inscriptions. Maybe this is because writing was difficult and took a long time. Or perhaps, I like to think, they instinctively knew how metal it sounded.
Here’s an example:
I built a pillar at the city gate and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up inside the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes.
Brutal, yes?
Here’s another with some context:
By the time of the reign of King Ashurbanipal in 668 BCE, a particularly troublesome enemy, the Elamites, had long been responsible for resisting the power of Nineveh and Aššur. After an extended military campaign, Ashurbanipal’s victorious army beheaded the Elamite king and razed the Elamite city of Susa to the ground. On a tablet, the king boasted of his accomplishment:
For a distance of a month and twenty-five days' journey I devastated the provinces of Elam. Salt and sihlu I scattered over them... The dust of Susa, Madaktu, Haltemash, and the rest of the cities I gathered together and took to Aššur... The noise of people, the tread of cattle, and sheep, the glad shouts of rejoicing, I banished from its fields. Wild asses, gazelles, and all kinds of beasts of the plain I caused to lie down among them, as if at home.
Almost poetically dark
Why Were they So Good at Fighting?
Historians have long debated whether the people of Aššur really deserved its reputation for military savagery and why exactly it developed it in the first place. It is clear that it wasn’t positioned particularly advantageously in the world. Its capital cities, Aššur, Kalhu, Dur-Sharrukin, and Nineveh, had much milder weather than Babylon’s, and the surrounding terrain was mostly flat and fit for invading armies to traverse. Perhaps its kings saw their surrounding country as both desirable and vulnerable. Perhaps this led them to experiment with new military technology.
Whatever happened to make them so paranoid, the Assyrians were true pioneers in military combat. They led the first armies to equip themselves with iron rather than bronze weapons. They crafted iron swords, and long, iron-tipped spears and lances. For defense, they provided fighting men with helmets, shields, and eventually scale armor. When besieging cities, they advanced with ladders, rams, and other creative devices.
A ram for besieging a fortress
It’s always been hard for historians to apprehend the “softer” characteristics of ancient armies, such as their training and tactics. Still, many scholars believe the Assyrians were among the first people to use a strongly disciplined frontline made of uniformly equipped soldiers. They also used both cavalry and chariot cavalry when they needed speed and maneuverability.
Because Nineveh, Kalhu, and Aššur were extremely wealthy cities, kings and governors could hire professional soldiers, whose only job was to fight. This was rare in the ancient world, as most cultures required average farmers and workers to serve in the military part-time.
For most of its existence, Assyria was unmatched in both military and scholarly accomplishments. Throughout its 2,000-year reign, however, it produced more than its share of rebels and disgruntled subjects. In time, some of these opponents started to pose a real threat.
What Happened to the Assyrians?
There are probably reasons for the nation’s decline we’ll never know about. But plenty of evidence suggests that the stage had already been set well before the final invasions began. While king Ashurbanipal’s campaign against Elam in 239 B.C.E. had been successful, it drained his armies of their strength, leading him to rely on weak leaders and disloyal mercenaries.
Both the Babylonians and the Medes, the people who would later join with Persia, had long tired of Assyria’s aggression. They met in secret to form an alliance, along with other former subjects. By the time these newly united enemies had constructed an army formidable enough to rid the people of Aššur from the earth forever, they had ceased even pretending to tolerate them. Before his campaign, king Nabopolassar of Babylon swore of Nineveh in writing:
Her roots I shall pluck out and the foundations of the land I shall obliterate.
This was indeed what would follow, and one of the most accomplished yet maligned empires in human history was promptly razed to the ground. Even the bible throws in its two cents on the final showdown:
And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her?
Sadly, the Assyrians and other Mesopotamian groups are criminally under-discussed, especially in literature. If you’re hungry to spend more time with one of history’s most hardcore nations, check out Kur, a Mesopotamian epic, on Amazon today.