26 Rise and Fall of the Assyrian Empire

Rise and Fall of the Assyrian Empire..

Populations had been growing in the Middle East. In the 700s BCE, Assyria's trade had expanded, and trade and the spoils of war had brought to Assyria more wealth than any other state. Its cities had become large metropolitan centers.

The Assyrians were as religious as their neighbors, believing like others that disasters were caused by displeasing the gods. Assyrian women were veiled – except for prostitutes, slave-women and unmarried priestesses, whom the law forbade to wear veils in public. Abortion was considered immoral and a crime against the state. A woman who willfully caused a miscarriage was impaled on a stake and left unburied. "Unnatural" sexual acts were forbidden and severely punished.

In 745 BCE , a military coup in Assyria brought to power a general who made himself king and called himself Tiglath-Pileser III. Meanwhile, Jeroboam II of Israel had died, and son and successor, Zechariah, ruled Israel for only six months before he was assassinated. Then Israel weakened itself with civil war, and this weakness made expanding southward more attractive for Tiglath-Pileser III. He decided to expand the realm of Assyria's god, Assur, and to win for himself more wealth. He created a new, permanent army, largely of well-trained and disciplined mercenaries – an army unmatched in West Asia and North Africa. Tiglath-Pileser's army had iron weapons, siege machines that could break down city walls, and they had archers on horseback who could move fast in hilly terrain.

Tiglath-Pileser defeated tribes that had been menacing the Assyrians and others. Waging total war, he extended Assyrian rule across Syria, expelling the Urartians and conquering Syria's Aramaean city-states, including King Ahab's old ally, Damascus. He destroyed cities, robbed and often deported whole populations, resettling them elsewhere in order to disunite them and put an end to their consciousness as a nation.

The Assyrians Overrun Israel

In 733, Tiglath-Pileser's army conquered Gilead and Galilee. Bending to the realities of power, Israel recognized Assyria's domination and paid Assyria tribute. Assyria replaced the king of Israel with someone of their choosing: Hoshea. Then Hoshea rebelled against paying tribute. Hoshea sent messengers to Egypt, hoping to win an alliance with Egypt. The worried kings of Tyre andSidon also sought an alliance with Egypt. But before Hoshea could create any meaningful alliance, Assyria attacked.

Some Israelites fled before the invaders. For three years the Assyrians besieged Israel's capital, Samaria. In 721, under a new king, Sargon II, Assyria conquered Samaria. Then Assyria conquered the whole of Israel. As they had done with other nations they had conquered they deported and dispersed large numbers of people. The Assyrians took 27,000 Israelis away as slaves, and Israel as a nation vanished.

Meanwhile, according to the archeologist Finkelstein, a "torrent of refugees" moving south into Judah expanded Judah's population. Judah was now to be overrun by the Assyrians and to become an Assyrian vassal. It was then, according to Finkelstein that "Judah emerges as a full blown bureaucratic state."^note4

The Assyrians Overrun Judah and Egypt

According to the Old Testament, another Hebrew prophet who addressed the issue of Assyrian aggression was Isaiah – a nobleman from Jerusalem. Isaiah joined the prophet Hosea in opposing alliances. He saw wisdom in pacifism rather than relying on arms. He believed that what mattered above all else was devotion to their god Yahweh (Jehovah). Like Hosea, Isaiah saw the Assyrians, as the agents of Yahweh.

But the king of the Assyrians, Sargon II's son, Sennacherib, pushed his army beyond Israel and into Judah. The Assyrians laid waste to Judah's countryside and gathered before the walls of Jerusalem. They threatened to destroy Jerusalem unless the city paid a ransom. The city paid, and Jerusalem was spared.

According to Isaiah, the Assyrians as agents of Yahweh had suddenly come to an end. Isaiah quoted Yahweh as saying "I will save Jerusalem for my own sake and for my servant David's sake" (Isaiah 37:35). According to the Second Book of Kings, 19:36, Yahweh intervened against the Assyrians, sending an angel during the night into their camp and slaying 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in their sleep.

The impact of such a loss would have reversed Assyrian gains, but no description of events in Assyrian writings compatible with such an event has been found. And rather than suffering a reversal, the Assyrians were able to continue their rule over Judah. Sennacherib's great Assyrian army continued its victorious march southward. The Assyrians occupied Egypt in 676, introducing iron to the region, and a few years later they sacked the city of Thebes. A weakened Egypt, meanwhile, had been invaded byNubia. A Nubian had become pharaoh. The Assyrians defeated the Nubian pharaoh, and the Nubians withdrew to their homeland.

By 640 BCE, Assyria had also extended its rule south along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the Persian Gulf, and they had extended their empire northeast into mountainous territory and south into Arabia. Assyria had created a great empire: all of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria and west of Kanesh in Asia Minor. They believed that they were enjoying the blessings of their great god, Assur. In the lands that the Assyrians conquered they established the same kind of peace that Hammurabi had created in Mesopotamia. The Assyrians built roads, which helped West Asia become more integrated economically and helped trade and industry flourish.

The Old and Middle Assyrian periods (2000 – 1200 BC)

The name Ashur was used by the Assyrians to designate not only their country, but also their most ancient city and their national god. The cities of Ashur (near modern al-Sharqat), Nineveh, and Irbil formed a triangle that defined the original territory of Assyria. Assyria’s early history was marked by frequent episodes of foreign rule. Assyria finally gained its independence around 2000 BC. About this time the Assyrians established a number of trading colonies in Cappadocia (central Anatolia), protected by treaties with local Hattic rulers. The most important of these was at Kultepe (Kanesh), north of present-day Kayseri, Turkey. Political developments Brought this enterprise to an end in 1750 BC. Assyria lost its independence to a dynasty of Amorite. Then Hammurabi of Babylon took over and established himself ruler of Assyria. The collapse of Hammurabi’s Old Babylonian dynasty gave Assyria only temporary relief. It soon fell under the control of the Mitanni, until that state was destroyed by the Hittites c.1350 BC.

The Early Neo-Assyrian Period (c.1200-600 BC)

After the collapse of Mittanni, Assyria regained its independence and was able to hold it thanks to the weakness of its neighbors. The most important event in Assyrian history during the 13 century BC, was the capture of Babylon by King Tukulti-Ninurta (r.1244-1208 BC). Although the conquest was short-lived the memory of it remained strong. In the following centuries the chief adversaries of the Assyrians were the Aramaeans, who settled in Syria and along the upper Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, where they founded a number of states. In the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II (r.883-859 BC) and Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC), the Assyrians finally managed to conquer Bit-Adini (Beth-Eden), the most powerful Aramaen state on the upper Euphrates. Shalmaneser then tried to invade the Syrian heartland, where he met with serious resistance from a coalition of kings that included Ahab of Israel. They successfully opposed him at the battle karkar in 853 BC. Internal disagreements marked the end of Shalmaneser’s reign, and many of his conquests were lost.

Assyrian power began with Tiglath-Peleser III (r. 745-727 BC) taking over the throne. He began on administrative reforms aimed at strengthening royal authority over the provinces. Districts were reduced in size and placed under governors directly responsible to the king. Outside Assyria, slave states were taken over and made into Assyrian provinces. In Syria, Tiglath-Pileser fought and defeated a number of anti-Assyrian alliances. In 732 BC he ruined Damascus, deporting its population and that of northern Israel to Assyria. In 729 he captured Babylon to guard against a Chaldean-led rebellion there and was proclaimed king of Babylon under the name Pulu (Biblical Pul). His administrative reforms and military victories laid the foundation of the Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Peleser’s son, Shalmaneser V, is remembered for his siege of Samaria, the capital of Israel (recorded in 2 Kings: 17-18). H died during the siege and was succeeded by Sargon II, who took credit for the destruction of Samaria and the exile of its people in 722 BC.

The end of the Assyrian Empire

The Assyrian Empire was faced with many challenges, Babylon successfully resisted Assyrian attempts to remove a Chaldean tribal chief who allied with Elam for over 10 years, a crusade against the northern state of Urartu, which resulted in their defeat and battling with rebellious coastal cities. The war against his Elamite ally continued for several years with indecisive results. Finally, after another revolt in Babylon, Sennacherib conquered the city and destroyed in 689 BC. He was assassinated by members of his own family in 681 BC.

Esarhaddon (r.608-669 BC), son of Sennacherib, rebuilt Babylon and tried to appease the Babylonian’s. During his reign, incursions by the Cimmerians and Scythians posed serious threats to Assyrian possessions in Anatolia and Media (northwest Iran), the latter of which was a major source of horses for the Assyrian army. Esarhaddon’s principle accomplishment was the conquest of Egypt, begun by him in 675 BC, but completed by his son Ashurbanipal (r.668-627 BC). Ashurbanipal, was the last great king of Assyria and had to deal with many revolts. He led an expedition against Elam and captured Susa, its capital city. After his death, however, the empire gradually disintegrated. In 626 BC, Nabopalassar, a Chaldean nobleman, proclaimed Babylonian independence and, allied with the Medes, set out to challenge Assyria. In the years 614-609, Ashur and Nieveh were captured by the Medes, and the Assyrian king fled to Harran on the northwest frontier. In 605 BC, Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar, defeated an Egyptian army that had come to the aid of the Assyrians, thus completing the destruction of the Assyrian state.

Assyrian Society and Culture

Before the development of modern archaeology, the Bible was the chief source of information about Assyria. The image of Assyria by the biblical accounts is one of irresistible military might. It was seen as an instrument of God’s wrath against a sinful people. Archaeological excavations, have unearthed the monuments and written records of the Assyrians kings, confirming this picture of military prowess and terrible brutality. They maimed, burned, speared and denounced harshly their captives. They wanted to instill terror and discourage rebellion. They also deported to cities and farmlands the enemy populations.

Assyria dominated Babylonia politically, however, culturally was dependent on the south. The first major collection of cuneiform tablets discovered by 19th-century excavators–the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh–consists of myths, epics, rituals, lexical texts, wisdom literature, and prophetic and magical texts, providing a representative sample of Babylonian scholastic literature.

Assyrian art is usually associated with the colossal winged bulls and lions that guarded the entrances of their palaces, but even finer are the bas-reliefs on the palace walls and the carved ivories used to decorate their furniture. The bas-reliefs portray the Assyrian kings hunting, kneeling before their gods, or conquering foreign cities.

Assyria's Demise and Judah's Independence lost again

Assyria's great empire lasted no longer than would the empires that began in the late nineteenth century – about seventy-five years. The world was too chaotic for anything like an empire that lasted a thousand years.

Assyria weakened itself economically by continuous wars to maintain its empire, including defending against invasions by an Indo-European tribal people, the Cimmerians, who came upon the Assyrians from the northeast. And the Assyrians spent themselves expanding into Egypt and in quelling the rebellions of Egyptian princes.

The Cimmerian menace increased, and more rebellions occurred within the empire. And Assyria was burdened by the expense of maintaining its army. Soldiers had to be paid. Massive numbers of horses had to be cared for and fed. Siege engines had to be moved against rebellious cities.
Egypt was able to break away from Assyrian rule. The Assyrians were then weakened by conflicts over succession, by coups and civil war. During these conflicts, cities in Canaan broke away from Assyrian control and Phoenicia began ignoring Assyrian directives. Other petty kingdoms joined the rebellion against Assyria, and in 623 the well-led Chaldean army drove north from around Sumer and expelled the Assyrians from Babylon.
With the independence of Egypt and Babylon, and a weakened Assyria, the new king of Judah, Josiah – the grandson of Manasseh – declared Judah independent. The hereditary Yahweh priesthood, which had suffered a loss of status during Assyrian domination, seized independence as an opportunity to advance its cause. With the support of Josiah and the zeal of the newly liberated, they moved against the religious influences that had gained ascent during Assyria's domination. They moved against what the Old Testament describes as abominations. The practices of rival worship were forbidden: witchcraft, sorcery, using omens, worshiping images of gods in wood or stone, orgiastic fertility festivals, human sacrifices and temple rituals involving prostitution and homosexuality. Homosexuality was labeled an abomination. The "priests of the high places" competing with Yahweh worship were slaughtered. (2 Kings 23)

The Medes and Chaldeans Expand

Between Mesopotamia and the Caspian Sea, tribes of an Indo-European people called Medes had become united under a single king. A later king of the Medes, Cyaxares, reorganized his army and attempted to expand westward against the Assyrians. He allied his army with the Chaldeans, who were now in control of Babylon and Sumer. The Medes and Chaldeans attacked, and together they defeated the Assyrians, overrunning Assyria's capital, Nineveh, in 612. Nineveh's walls were broken by the siege engines that Assyria had introduced centuries before. A community that had existed for more than two thousand years was obliterated. Those who escaped from Nineveh took refuge in Haran, and they fought on, but they were defeated in 609. Such a terrible revenge was taken on the Assyrians that two hundred years later the area was still sparsely populated.
The Medes conquered as far as the Halys River in Asia Minor. The Chaldeans conquered as far as Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains. Meanwhile, with the demise of Assyria, a revitalized Egypt felt free to move into Palestine. And when King Josiah heard that an Egyptian army was coming, he went south with an army to do battle against them, believing that Yahweh would protect him. Instead, he was promptly killed.