‘The treaty (ade) which Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, has made with you in the presence of the great gods of heaven and earth, concerning Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, whom he named and appointed to the crown-princeship. When Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, dies, you will seat Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, upon the royal throne, he will exercise the kingship and lordship over you. You will protect him in country and in town. You will fight and will die for him. You will speak with him in the truth of your heart, you will give him sound advice loyally. You will set fair path at his feet. (You swear) that you will not be hostile to him nor will you seat one of his brothers, older or younger, on the throne of Assyria instead of him. That the word of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, you will neither change nor alter. That you will serve only Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, whom Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord (hereby commends), that he will exercise the kingship and dominion over you.
(You swear) that you will protect Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, whom Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, has designated to you (and of whom) he has spoken to you, and concerning whom he has firmly imposed the treaty upon you. That you will not sin against him; that you will not bring your hand against him with evil intent. That you will not revolt (or) do anything to him which is not good, and not proper. You will not oust him from the kingship of Assyria by helping one of his brothers, older or younger, to seize the throne of Assyria in his stead. You will not set over you any (other) king or any (other) lord, nor will you swear an oath to any (other) king or any (other) lord.
(You swear) that you will neither listen nor conceal any improper, unsuitable or unseemly word concerning the exercise of kingship, which are unseemly and evil against Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, either from the mouth of his brothers, his uncles, his cousins, his family, members of his father’s line; or from the mouth of officials or governors, or from the mouth of an officer or courtiers, or from the mouth of any skilled person or from the mouth of any of the masses, as many as there are, but you will come (and) report (these things) to Ashurbanipal, the crown prince.
(You swear) that, should Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, die while his sons are minors, you will help Ashurbanipal, the crown prince, to take the throne of Assyria, (and) will help to seat Shamash-shum-ukin, his “twin”-brother, the crown prince of Babylon, on the throne of Babylon. The kingship over the whole of Sumer, Akkad (and) Karduniash (Babylonia) you will hand over to him. Whatever gift Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, his father, gave him he will take with him. Do not hold back even one.’
Means for the formalisation of relations with political entities that were not easy or convenient to include in the Assyrian provincial network. This was either because these entities were elusive (such as the nomadic groups of the Arabian desert or the Iranian plateau), or because it was more convenient to keep them in a subordinate, yet autonomous, state (such as in the case of Tyre) than to conquer and destroy them.
Then, there were some anomalous cases. The first one was Babylonia, where the personal rule of the Assyrian king, or the appointment of local rulers loyal to the Assyrians, show that it was deemed impossible to turn Babylonia into an Assyrian province. Some marginal portions of the Babylonian kingdom were at times turned into provinces. Overall, the kingdom continued to be seen as a single entity that could not be broken down, no matter how ardently the Assyrian kings wanted to secure control over the area. The failed annexation of Babylonia was mainly due to its influential political and cultural (i. e. religious) traditions. It therefore left the problem unresolved, a fact that would eventually lead to the collapse of the empire. Other issues left unresolved were Egypt and Elam. In both cases, Assyrian control did not last. It appears that the Assyrians preferred to encourage the fragmentation of these powers into a series of local statelets, thus weakening these powers without having to conquer them. In Egypt, the Delta fiefdoms provided the basic framework for a political fragmentation under Assyrian control. However, the attempt eventually failed due to the rise of one of them. In Elam, political fragmentation was also based on the traditional divisions of the land into individual political entities. However, the Assyrian strategy of encouraging local autonomies at the expense of a unified organisation made Elam an easy target of new emerging forces in the Iranian plateau.
World History
