Ashurnasirpal II r. Shalmaneser III r. After a series of kings, Sargon II r. Sargon appears to have seized the throne in a violent coup and, after dealing with resistance inside Assyria, spent much of his rule in battle. He was succeeded on the throne by his son Sennacherib r. After Sennacherib was assassinated by two of his sons, another son, Esarhaddon r. He extended Assyrian activity into Egypt, capturing Memphis in B.
Ashurbanipal r. Assyria was at the height of its power, but persistent difficulties controlling Babylonia would soon develop into a major conflict. At the end of the seventh century, the Assyrian empire collapsed under the assault of Babylonians from southern Mesopotamia and Medes, newcomers who were to establish a kingdom in Iran.
Nimrud was destroyed twice, first in and again in B. Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. Curtis, John E. Reade, eds. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Ancient Near East c. London: Routledge, Visiting The Met? Cuneiform tablet case impressed with two cylinder seals, for cuneiform tablet As such, it would have an immense influence on later world history, pioneering the techniques for administering a huge empire which would be passed on to later imperial states.
The Assyrians, like previous Mesopotamians , published their own law code. However, it was noticeably harsher, with more brutal punishments for wrongdoing. This perhaps reflects the more militarized society for which it was intended. Like many autocratic monarchies, the system had a crucial weakness at its heart: whenever a king died and several Assyrian kings were assassinated , there was the potential for trouble as rival princes vied for the throne.
Several kings had to fight their way to the throne in civil wars which sometimes lasted several years. These conflicts were not necessarily simply between different members of the royal family. It seems clear that these would be backed by factions within the Assyrian nobility. Some of these may have had roots in particular areas, for example in and around the capital city. In these circumstances, once a king had defeated his rivals, he sometimes felt the need to move the capital to another city, or indeed build a completely new city as happened on at least two occasions , to reduce the influence of those nobles who had opposed him.
Indeed, throughout their history, and despite the merciless reprisals that they visited upon defeated rebels, the Assyrians constantly had to deal with vassals seeking to shake off their rule. Because of its great prestige and wealth, the region of Babylonia played a key role in the dynamics of the Assyrian political system.
The practice of appointing younger brothers of a king of Assyria to be king of Babylon had the opposite effect from that which had been intended. It was hoped that this key region would thus be brought under the tighter control of the Assyrian kings. Unfortunately, despite their close family relationship to the Assyrian king, the kings of Babylon had a tendency to rebel against them.
Revolts in such an important area of the empire was a grave matter for the Assyrian king. A generation later another rebellion by a king of Babylon would precipitate the fall of Assyria itself. Scythians and Cimmerians from the steppes north of the Black Sea raided unchecked through Assyrian territory in Anatolia and northern Assyria, Babylonia itself broke completely free from Assyrian rule, and very shortly the Assyria succumbed to invasions from all sides.
The Assyrian army was one of the first major military force in world history to benefit from iron armor and weapons. Whereas the earlier armies of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age had been built around a comparatively a small number of aristocratic warriors fighting from chariots, under the Assyrians the cheaper but tougher iron enabled the Assyrians to arm many more ordinary subjects.
Their army was therefore able to be composed of much larger bodies of infantry and cavalry than hitherto. The cavalry were now largely made up of soldiers riding on horses, and warriors riding in chariots became less important in the army.
The Assyrians learnt this new style of cavalry warfare from the Cimmerians and Scythians, the horse-riding nomads from steppes of central Asia. All horsemen at the time rode without stirrups or saddles, but this seems not to have hindered their ability to control their mounts. Stone depiction of an Assyrian Soldier on Horseback. Both cavalry and infantry formations now went into battle to fight, not as individuals, as the old Bronze Age warriors had done, but as unified, disciplined bodies of troops fighting en masse.
Before the mid-8th century, the army was essentially a citizen army, composed of ordinary Assyrian farmers performing their military service. The men called up for a particular year were stationed in camps, before being sent off on campaign. Those not called up at the start of a year might still find themselves called up later, to replace losses or if additional troops were needed.
This system continued into later times, but was now supplemented by a standing army of foreign troops, made up of contingents from conquered peoples. These soldiers served for many years at a time; they were able to attain a higher level of experience and training, and, free from the need to return to their farms for the harvest, they were able to serve on longer wars rather than the seasonal campaigns of old. This also allowed permanent garrisons to be stationed at key points within the Assyrian empire, answering to the provincial governors.
These helped to keep the subject peoples and neighboring vassal kingdoms in check. It was from these long- service professional troops that the royal guard, the elite troops of the Assyrian army, were formed. Assyrian inscriptions testify to the importance that commanders accorded logistics. Food and military supplies were gathered together in preparation for a campaign and transported occasionally using camels as beasts of burden with the army on the march.
Also traveling with the army was a siege train, staffed by a corps of engineers. Their job was to fill in moats, construct earthworks against walls, and dig tunnels. They were equipped with the first recorded siege engines in world history, including battering rams, assault ladders and even siege towers for scaling the mud brick city walls of the ancient Middle East.
Assyrian imperialism was of a particularly harsh variety. The tribute exacted from vassal kingdoms seems to have been very heavy. It did nothing to promote the economic welfare of the subject peoples, as can be seen in the impoverished remains of many towns and cities of the period; and it provoked repeated revolts, despite the cruel fate awaiting defeated rebels. By contrast, the remains of cities in the Assyrian homeland reveal a magnificence and luxury unparalleled in the ancient Middle East up to that time.
This clearly indicates that the Assyrian imperial system was an engine for hoovering up wealth from the provinces for the benefit of the ruling class. From the mid-8th century the Assyrians practiced a policy of mass deportation. Conquered towns and districts were emptied of their inhabitants, who were resettled in distant regions, to be replaced by people brought in by force from other countries.
The most famous example was the destruction of the kingdom of Israel in BCE, described in the Bible. The aim of this policy was to punish rebels, prevent rebellions by undermining local loyalties, to populate new towns, either in conquered countries or in the Assyrian heartland to develop agriculture in under-populated regions, and to provide the Assyrian state with the troops, laborers, craftsmen, and even civil servants it needed.
The deportees were not slaves; they had the rights and duties of other subjects of the Assyrian king; and there is evidence that they were to prove amongst the more loyal subjects of the Assyrians. It has been estimated that four and a half million people were forcibly relocated in this manner. The bulk of deportations involved Aramaic speakers, and as a result this policy greatly contributed to the Aramaization of large parts of the Middle East.
Aramaic was to remain the most widely used language in this region for centuries; for example, Jesus would have spoken Aramaic in everyday life. It was only with the coming of Islam that Arabic began to replace it as the language for millions of people.
Aramaic was an easy language to learn, and also had an alphabetic script, closely related to Phoenician and Hebrew. This made learning to read and write much easier than with the old cuneiform scripts of Sumeria and Akkad, which the Assyrians had previously used.
Paradoxically, therefore, the policy of deportation must have greatly helped the spread of literacy in the Middle East. As for the Assyrians, they too also began to speak Aramaic their original language having been Akkadian. The ruling class may have continued to speak Akkadian to some extent, and they certainly used its cuneiform script in a smaller, more refined style than previously in government and administration.
However, Aramaic made headway even in these exalted circles, and in BCE it was made an official language of administration alongside Akkadian. The Assyrians shared in the religion of the Mesopotamian civilization at large. This involved the worship of many gods, though with the god Ashur, the national god of Assyria, taking the chief place in the pantheon. Like all Mesopotamians, the Assyrians had a deep and all-embracing belief in signs and omens.
The gods, they felt, were always wishing to communicate their wishes to men, and did so through the movements of sun, moon or stars, the flight of birds, the state of chicken livers and so on. No major decision was taken without consulting priests on whether it was in the will of the gods. This included major issues of state, and the king had a staff of expert astrologers to aid him in his policy-making.
Information about Assyrian society is scant; the following represents a best stab at an outline based on current evidence.
All three categories had defined rights in Assyrian law; even slaves were not on a par with cattle in the way that, say, Roman slaves were. The wide-ranging Assyrian conquests did not give rise to a vast slave trade as Roman expansion would, in which human beings were traded on the free market. Conquered populations became free subjects of the Assyrian king, even if deported to another area within the empire.
At the other end of the social scale, the Assyrian royal family headed a landed aristocracy which had dominated Assyrian society from time immemorial. It was from this that the bulk of ministers, commanders, provincial governors and high officials were selected though not all, see above.
They had estates both within Assyria and scattered throughout the empire. They were also among the first to build chariots, which provided greater protection on the battlefield. These technological advancements allowed the Assyrians to go on the offensive and attack neighboring areas for the first time, which led to the expansion of their empire.
The Assyrian Empire maintained power for hundreds of years. But in the s B. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service.
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Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Mesopotamia is thought to be one of the places where early civilization developed. It is a historic region of West Asia within the Tigris-Euphrates river system.
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