# What Caused the Assyrians to (And I Believe This Is the Historically Accurate Wording) Lose They Damn Minds?! : AskHistorians <cite>by u/udreaudsurarea</cite> ## Metadata - Author: [[u/udreaudsurarea]] - Full Title: What Caused the Assyrians to (And I Believe This Is the Historically Accurate Wording) Lose They Damn Minds?! : AskHistorians - Link: https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pxlpdw/what_caused_the_assyrians_to_and_i_believe_this ###### Outline - [[timeline of Mesopotamian empires]] - [[mass deportation policies were common in the Ancient Near East]] - [[Assur is associated with a rock outcropping]] - [[Assyrian religion changed in response to politics]] - [[Assyria was considered brutal because we have records from their victims]] - [[Assyrian temple slaves produced goods for sale]] - [[despoiling temples was rare in Assyria but did happen]] - [[the Hittites may have conquered Cyprus]] - [[Hittites fought to control the port of Ura]] - [[Hittite kings had their sons as vassals]] ## Highlights ### q1 timeline of Mesopotamian empires > The history of ancient Assyrian urban states is usually divided up into the Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods. The Old Assyrian states are notable for their trade colonies in Anatolia and the importance of their merchants. Assyria was subjugated by the kings of Akkad, and when they fell the kingdom spent another couple of centuries before engaging on campaigns of conquest beginning in the reign of Shamshi-Adad I (19th-18th centuries BCE), conquering the then-powerful state of Mari which was centred in Syria and extending its power into Anatolia. Soon after this, however, Assyria was subjugated by Hammurabi's dynasty of Babylon. The centuries after this are quite poorly known, but when the Mitanni entered Mesopotamia and Syria they seem to have made the Assyrian kings their tributaries from the 15th-14th centuries BCE until Assyria successfully rebelled and restored their own independence. > > Having broken the power of the Mitanni, the new Middle Assyrian empire was able to seize much of their former territory and more. King Tiglath-Pileser I (12th-11th centuries BCE) was able to reach the Mediterranean and subjugate many of the cities of Phoenicia. The Middle Assyrian Empire waned a little after this high watermark but is considered to have transitioned into a new phase, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with the accession of Adad-nirari II. Exacavations of cities like Nineveh and Nimrud in the 19th century, with their impressive bas-reliefs, monumental sculpture, and cuneiform libraries, triggered the founding of the field of Assyriology in Europe. These are also the Assyrians who appear in the Hebrew Bible, such as Sennacherib seizing the cities of Judah in Isaiah 36 and Tiglath-Pileser III in 2 Kings. Their role in destroying cities and deporting populations as the rod of God's wrath left them with a violent and terrifying legacy in the Abrahamic imagination. ### q1a mass deportation policies were common in the Ancient Near East > None of these things are really unique to the Assyrians, though. The Egyptians, Hittites, and Babylonians also engaged in mass deportation policies. Kings such as Šulgi of the Ur III dynasty in the 21st century BCE proclaimed their destruction of city after city, often using them as year names (since years are often named retroactively according to an important event of that year) and used these conquests for their own propaganda. Titles that the Assyrians used to universalise their own claim to empire such as *Šarru Kibrat 'Arbaim* (King of the Four Corners of the World) or *Šarru kiššat māti* (King of the Universe) are much older than Neo-Assyria, dating back to the kings of Agade in the 3rd millennium BCE. There was a religious element to their conquests and imperialistic ideology, but this had been true for every imperial state in Mesopotamia; Sargon claimed to conquer the Upper Euphrates by the will of the god Dagan, for example. In the religion of the time, any conquest *was* necessarily the result of the God's favour. The proof could be found in the victory. ### q1b Assur is associated with a rock outcropping > The god Aššur is actually attested from all the way back in the reign of Ušpia, a king who reigned in the 21st century BCE. The development of the god is still quite mysterious, though W. G. Lambert wrote a useful paper on the topic (*The God Aššur*, [jstor](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4200181)). From the earliest attestations, he is tied to one particular rocky outcrop at Qal’at Sherqat in Iraq which would develop into his namesake city and house his temple, the Ešarra, which continued to serve as his temple until the end of the Neo-Assyrian period. As Assyria developed into a major player in the Ancient Near East, the god's close association with royal power caused his profile to rise higher and higher. However, there's very little evidence of any attempts to integrate him into the families of the gods of Babylonia, which the Assyrians also venerated, until the reign of Sennacherib (704-681 BCE). To some degree the Assyrians attributed qualities of the major god Enlil from Southern Mesopotamia to Aššur, co-opting his status, but he is also written into stories about Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, and Anšar, a primordial figure from Babylonian cosmogeny. What is always central, though, is his sovereignty, initially over the city and kingdom but eventually over the entire universe as he becomes the pre-eminent deity and universal king. In Neo-Assyrian ideology, even the 'King of the Four Corners of the World' is merely the governor ruling the world on Aššur's behalf. - Interesting example of the evolution a different Near Eastern monotheistic all-powerful deity. - see also: [[lambertGodAssur1983]] ### q1c Assyrian religion changed in response to politics > It's difficult to attribute Neo-Assyrian militarism, such as it was, to a religious transformation. The Assyrians picked up military innovations and imperial social technologies from the the kings of Agade, the Mitanni, and the Babylonians, who were certainly not averse to war and destruction. As far back as Agade and Ur III there are kings who seem to campaign every year and speak with pride of the treasures and captives they brought back with them. Their religion legitimises conquest and the gods and temples have a mutually beneficial relationship with a successful conquering king, but the religion seems to be transforming in response to empire (whether Assyria was building or receiving it) rather than the other way around. ### q2 Assyria was considered brutal because we have records from their victims > they were around a lot longer than many other empires of the Ancient Near East, and regarding their reputation, the other thing is that we have the accounts of their victims, which is extremely rare in this time period. > Shu-Suen of Ur writes in the 21st century BCE: > > Shu-Suen, mighty king, king of Ur, king of the four quarters, by the might of Enlil, his lord, and at the command Ninlil, his beloved lady, was victorious in those battles and combats. He killed both the strong and the weak. He sowed the heads of the just and the iniquitous alike like seeds. He piled up the corpses of the people into a heap. Their lords he took as bound captives ...The men who had evaded battle and who, like birds, saved their lives by fleeing, did not escape his hand. He turned their established cities and villages into heaps. He destroyed their walls. He blinded the men of those cities, whom he had overtaken, and established them as servants in the orchards of the great gods. And the women of those cities, whom he had overtaken, he offered as a present to the weaving mills of the great gods. Their cattle, sheep, goats, and asses he led away. > (From Douglas R. Frayne's *Ur III Period*, RIME 3/2, p303-304) > It sounds like a level of devastation worthy of the Neo-Assyrians, but without the perspectives of his victims or a continuous transmission of history to the present any reputation he cultivated was lost until modern times. - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pxlpdw/what_caused_the_assyrians_to_and_i_believe_this?__readwiseLocation=0%2F0%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A81%2C0%2F4%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A223#:~:text=they%20were%20around%20a%20lot%2Cwas%20lost%20until%20modern%20times.) ### q3 Assyrian temple slaves produced goods for sale > many of the temples owned large estates and kept many slaves (*sag* in Sumerian) who created goods for the temple in workshops. In the same way a temple could own herds of cattle and land which they could rent out and gather revenue from. #articleseed/addendum for [[Ancient Priests]] - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pxlpdw/what_caused_the_assyrians_to_and_i_believe_this?__readwiseLocation=0%2F0%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A14%2C2%2F0%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A171#:~:text=many%20of%20the%20temples%20owned%2Cout%20and%20gather%20revenue%20from.) ### q4 despoiling temples was rare in Assyria but did happen > Sennacherib's religious policy is remarkable, though, because after putting down a revolt in Babylon he dug a canal through the city and despoiled the temples, which the Neo-Assyrian kings before and after had always been very careful to respect. His successor Esarhaddon restored the temples of Babylon along with the city and the Babylonian chronicles are a lot more favourable to him than his father. Kind of reminds me of how much Amun was such an outlier in Egyptian history for the whole monotheistic blip. ### q5 the Hittites may have conquered Cyprus > The Hittite raid on Babylon took place around 1600 BCE, so presumably you were thinking of the Elamites under Šutruk-Naḫḫunte I. Regardless, the raid on Babylon was a unique event; never before had the Hittites ventured so far from central Anatolia, nor did they ever do so again. Raids of this sort have only a few parallels in Hittite history, most notably the supposed "conquest" of Cyprus under Tudḫaliya IV. - see also: [[guterbockHittiteConquestCyprus1967.pdf]] ### q6 Hittites fought to control the port of Ura > The Hittites were certainly interested in conquest and imperial expansion, not least because control of Cilicia and the port of Ura provided valuable access to the Mediterranean. Šuppiluliuma I and Muršili II were particularly vigorous campaigners and supervised the (re)conquest of the kingdoms of western Anatolia (Mira, Ḫapalla, the Seḫa River Land, etc.), Kizzuwatna and southern Anatolia, and northern Syria. ### q7 Hittite kings had their sons as vassals > It was the Hittite conquests in Syria in the Late Bronze Age that led to the rise of the Syro-Anatolian (or "Neo-Hittite") kingdoms in the Iron Age. Around 1350 BCE, the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I installed two of his sons as vassal kings of Aleppo and Carchemish, and their sons, grandsons, and subsequent descendants followed them on the throne. The kings of Carchemish and Aleppo became independent rulers as the Hittites lost their grip on northern Syria toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, and the cadet branches outlasted the main royal line of Ḫattuša by at least a couple of centuries. By the 10th century BCE, the two rump states of Carchemish and Aleppo had fragmented into still smaller kingdoms – Malatya, Patin, Hama, Gurgum, Que, and so on – some of which incorporated Phoenician and Aramaean cultural elements in addition to Anatolian (Hittite/Luwian) iconography, writing, and material culture. Reminds me of how various other kingdoms fragmented (East and West Francia). #articleseed because this definitely isn't limited to the Middle Ages but that would be the paradigm most people are used to.