For three quarters of a century (ca. 705—630 bc), during the reigns of only three kings and with the capital firmly established in Nineveh, Assyria ruled an empire that, after Sargon’s annexations, could not expand further (Figure 28.4). The number of states that could be conquered and turned into provinces was by then fairly limited. Therefore, the seventh century bc only saw few additions to the empire. In other words, the system had reached a saturation point. There still were three great kingdoms (Egypt, Urartu, Elam) outside the empire’s borders. However, they were too difficult to conquer. There also were several new and unruly populations, such as the Arabs in the south and the Medes in the north. However, they eluded the standard forms of control and exploitation. Within the empire itself, the Babylonian problem continued to be unresolved. The issue at stake was not the conquest of the old southern capital, but rather the submission of the elusive Chaldean tribes, hiding in their refuges in the marshes and steppes.
The reign of Sennacherib (Sin-ahe-eriba; 704—681 bc) is well attested in his annals and other inscriptions, as well as on his palace reliefs, characterised by their distinctive landscapes. The king’s military expeditions in the north and the west were few. This, however, was because of the political situation at the time, and not because of a lack of evidence on our part. Despite reaffirming the tributary agreements with the small independent kingdoms of the coast (the Phoenician cities) and the south (Judah and the Philistine cities), the only great expedition in Syria and the Levant did not achieve its main objective. Of the two most important enemies, the king of Sidon escaped his capture by fleeing to Cyprus, and Hezekiah ofJudah survived the siege ofJerusalem. However, he lost part of his territories to the neighbouring pro-Assyrian states. The campaign was emphatically celebrated on the enormous depiction of the siege of Lachish, which was placed in a highly visible position. Nonetheless, the actual results of the campaign were relatively modest.
Sennacherib never went to Anatolia in person, possibly because of the curse surrounding his father Sargon’s death there. His generals led a few campaigns in Cilicia and Cappadocia, while Urartu remained untouched. Assyrian control was lost in several areas: Tabal became independent, Musasir returned to Urartu, and Ellipi and other areas of the Zagros fell under Elamite control. Sennacherib probably thought that these were natural adjustments, and that the recovery of certain borders would have been more costly than convenient.
The only significant and continuous military involvement of the Assyrians was focused on Babylonia, with several, not always successful, expeditions. The first phase still saw Marduk-apla-iddina as ‘king of Babylon’ and supported by Elam. Sennacherib would polemically remark that Marduk-apla-iddina had impiously ‘bought’ Elam with the treasury from the Esagila. An Assyrian victory at Kish and the first escape of the Chaldean king allowed the enthronement in Babylon of a certain Bel-ibni, an Assyrian trustee. Marduk-apla-iddina swiftly eroded Bel-ibni’s power, provoking yet another Assyrian intervention. The latter resulted in the appointment ofAshur-nadin-shumi, son of the Assyrian king, in Babylonia, and the flight of the Chaldean king to Elam. A third intervention led to an Elamite counterattack and the capture of Sennacherib’s son.
After the disappearance of Marduk-apla-iddina, a new Chaldean leader, Nergal-ushezib rose to power in Babylonia with the support of the Elamites. Sennacherib defeated both the Chaldeans and the Elamites at Nippur. He was about to continue towards Elam to avenge his son, but he was stopped by the oncoming winter. The subsequent death of the Elamite king proved to be enough for Sennacherib, who simply declared that the gods had completed his punishment. The third Chaldean enemy was Mushezib-Marduk, who managed to form a coalition able to threaten Sennacherib (again ‘buying’ allies with Marduk’s treasures). The battle of Halule (691 bc), which was described by the Assyrian king as a great victory, in fact led to a stalemate. Nonetheless, two years later Sennacherib returned and reached a ‘final solution’, relieving his resentments accumulated through the many military failures and the death of his son. Babylon was destroyed, its remains flooded, and the most glorious city of the time was condemned to be eternally forgotten.
The destruction of Babylon was contrasted by the king’s building program in Nineveh. The latter had long been the largest city in Assyria, but was now further enlarged and embellished as the true capital of the empire. Nineveh was therefore seen as the centre of the world, accumulating tributes from the empire’s periphery. In his celebratory expressions, Sennacherib insists on his enlargement and improvement of the city. The city was inhabited by around 100,000 inhabitants, and had serious problems of supply. The king tried to increase the productivity of the surrounding countryside by transforming the already extensive grain production into an even more intensive cultivation. Consequently, he commissioned several hydraulic interventions, channelling additional canals (gathered through various tunnels and a bona fide aqueduct) in the Khosr River, which passed through Nineveh. Within the capital, Sennacherib’s activities also included a new enlarged city wall, a royal palace (found during the old nineteenth century excavations), and restorations and enlargements of various city temples.
The succession to the throne had long become enough of a problem to involve a large part of the kingdoms and the entire ruling class, both in the centre and the provinces. Sennacherib designated his youngest son Esarhaddon (Ashur-ah-iddina) as successor. This selection was certainly influenced by the latter’s mother, the Aramean Naqi’a (Zakutu in Babylonian). In fact, Sennacherib clearly preferred him to his other children, sons of previous wives. This decision, inscribed in the stars and accompanied by every sort of favourable omen, was put into action through the participation of everyone involved (from the members of the royal family to court functionaries) in an oath of loyalty to the king and his designated successor. This colossal formality, however, did not appease the ambitions of the other brothers of Esarhaddon. One of them even killed the old Sennacherib to seize the throne. This led to a civil war between the chosen heir and the alleged parricide, which resulted in the victory of Esarhaddon (680—669 bc).
The issues of succession, however, became intertwined with the problems in Babylonia. The destruction of Babylon had serious consequences, even religious ones. This was due to the prestige of Babylon’s temples and deities in Assyria itself. Esarhaddon was particularly influenced by religious and magical considerations (and had a growing obsession for every sort of verification through omens). Consequently, he was extremely worried by his father’s ‘impious’ behaviour. Compared to his father’s interventions, Esarhaddon completely changed his policies. He generously allowed exemptions to Ashur, thus reviving Sargon’s policy (which Sennacherib had seemingly interrupted). He also began the restoration of Babylon, returning to the Babylonians their property, and to the Babylonian temples their cultic statues, previously deported by Sennacherib to Assyria.
Other Babylonian centres were also restored and granted exemptions and privileges. More repressive interventions were led against the Aramean and Chaldean tribes. In particular, the king focused on Bit
Dakkuri and Gambulu, which had threatening leaders in power. Elam was relatively under control and had to reduce its pressures in the west compared to the previous period. Esarhaddon remained king of Babylonia throughout his reign, and managed to keep the situation under control better than his predecessor. However, it is difficult to understand whether this was an effect of Esarhaddon’s benevolent behaviour towards Babylonia, or a consequence of the harsh final intervention of his father.
Having established control over Babylonia, Esarhaddon led an expedition in eastern Arabia (Bazu). This area was described as an impenetrable desert, a kingdom of death, and the true edge of the world. The Assyrian expedition in Arabia is a significant mark of the time. It implies that, alongside the more well-known commercial route along the west of the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen-Hejaz), there was a route along the Persian Gulf, in an area that had been barely visited for centuries.
There are no annalistic accounts for Esarhaddon, but his military activity was much more substantial than his father’s. In the north, Assyrian interventions were provoked by several difficult and not always solvable situations. In Anatolia, Mugallu, king of Melid and Tabal, had become independent. Assyrian control in the area was further threatened by the rebellions of the populations in the Taurus and the incursions of Cimmerians and Scythians. Having reached Urartu, the latter spread in the Anatolian Central plateau and moved against the kingdom of Phrygia. In Urartu, Esarhaddon had issues with the kingdom of Shu-bria, a buffer state between Urartu and Assyria. This episode is attested in a ‘letter to the God’, written by Esarhaddon to inform the god of the just punishment inflicted on the treacherous vassal. The letter shows the theological interpretation of facts in terms of a violation of a sacred oath and the subsequent divine punishment. This interpretation is also attested in an episode recounting the welcoming, rather than the extradition of refugees. This story would seem relatively banal, but it is probable that the refugees were the king’s brothers (or their supporters) defeated in the war of succession.
Further east, the Mannaeans continued to worry Esarhaddon. They had significantly evolved from the time of Sargon. The Mannaeans thus ceased to be a buffer state between Assyria and Urartu, subject to the harassment and tributes of both, and punished by one state when the other was approaching. They now became an important political presence, fully aware of its own resources. They expanded at the expense of Assyria (Zamua), and were now able to control the commercial networks coming from Iran. The Medes experienced a similar development. While in the reign of Sargon they were considered as a generic group, now they were known tribe by tribe, together with the name of their leaders and the region they controlled. The power of the Medes was both economic (horses, metals, and other products from Iran) and military. Relations between Assyrians and Medes were sealed through sworn treaties, and required the latter’s service to guard the Assyrian palaces. Contrary to prior belief, it is certain that the Median territories were not annexed to the empire.
Finally, in the Syro-Levantine front, Esarhaddon added a further state to his provinces through the annexation of Sidon. He also regained some sort of control over Cyprus, although this control was as temporary as the one in the reign of Sargon. The king continued to fight the independent Palestinian states in the south, and then decided to intervene in Egypt. At the time, the latter was supporting (if not instigating) all the Levantine rebellions, and welcoming the defeated refugees. However, Egypt was relatively vulnerable and reduced to a ‘broken reed’ (as they used to say in the Levant at the time). It thus was better in promising support to the Phoenician and Levantine kingdoms rather than providing it. Egypt was ruled by a Nubian dynasty (headed by king Taharqa). However, the Egyptian and Libyan princes of the Delta were eager to break free from Nubian control. Esarhaddon’s expedition was therefore an easy success. He marched as far as Memphis, while Taharqa retreated in Thebes (Upper Egypt). Following the campaign, the princes of the Delta became Assyrian vassals and Esarhaddon returned to Assyria. If the conquest had been relatively easy, control over Egypt proved to be difficult to maintain. As soon as the Assyrians left Egypt, Taharqa swiftly re-conquered Lower Egypt, regaining his previous position. A few years later, Esarhaddon organised a new expedition to Egypt, but died on the way, leaving the Egyptian problems in the hands of his successor.
Esarhaddon’s succession had been prepared following a similar procedure as the one implemented by Sennacherib. The decision was still influenced by the queen mother Naqi’a/Zakutu. Esarhaddon had chosen Ashurbanipal (Ashur-ban-apli), leaving his eldest son Shamash-shum-ukin as king in Babylonia. This was an equally prestigious role from a religious and cultural point of view, but definitely secondary on a political level. All members of the royal family and the court, as well as all the Assyrians, had to swear an oath (ade) of loyalty to the king’s decision. Apart from Ashurbanipal’s account, this oath is attested in a number of letters from his functionaries, and has fully survived (in a long and articulated text) in the oath taken by the leaders of the Medes. This oath, commonly misunderstood as a vassal treaty, was instead an oath of loyalty that the Medes swore as the crown prince’s bodyguards, thus ensuring the loyal execution of royal orders. After a reign spent worrying for any ‘sign’ on his fate and that of his empire, and appointing ‘substitute kings’ to divert negative omens, Esarhaddon, probably already ill, died on his way to Egypt. Ashurbanipal therefore became king while still young, ruling for forty years (668—629 bc).
Unlike his predecessors, Ashurbanipal did not lead his military expeditions in person, but simply devised the necessary orders from his palace. However, he prided himself on other personal achievements, namely, on being an expert scribe, able to understand even ancient and difficult Sumerian and Akkadian texts. He also proclaimed his ability to work with multiplications and divisions, and to quote and interpret the canonical series of liver and astronomical omens. His palace in Nineveh was the last building of this kind in Assyria to reach high levels of complexity and quality. There, the king ordered the collection of all renowned literary and religious texts, especially from Babylonia, in order to build a ‘library’. Despite the fact that this initiative had some modest antecedents (Tiglath-pileser I), Ashurbanipal’s collection exceeded them for the systematic conception, the quantity of texts accumulated, and the amount and quality of the philological work needed. Moreover, we owe Ashurbanipal’s library, found during the nineteenth century excavations at Nineveh, a large part of our knowledge of Babylonian literature.
Despite not being led by the king in person, Ashurbanipal’s military campaigns were numerous. They were depicted and narrated on inscriptions and reliefs, as if they were led by the king himself. These celebratory expressions were highly innovative, breaking from the traditional schemes through wider landscapes and detailed depictions, and ceasing the traditional year-by-year accounts or scene-by-scene depictions. Ashur-banipal’s most urgent problem, however, left unresolved at the time of his father’s death, was Egypt. The expedition begun by Esarhaddon was resumed and led to completion by Ashurbanipal’s generals. Taharqa was pushed out of Egypt. The Delta princes that had supported Taharqa were removed with the exception of Necho, who was left as ruler in Sais (almost as an Assyrian viceroy in the Delta), and his son Psamtik, ruler of Athribis. As usual, the Assyrian retreat from Egypt allowed the intervention of the Kushite king Tantamani, successor of Taharqa. This time, however, the Assyrians reacted immediately and marched into Upper Egypt. Having regained control over Memphis, the Assyrian army reached and conquered Thebes.
Despite having effectively ended the Kushite rule in Egypt, Assyrian control could not be consolidated. The Assyrian sources skip the following developments: Psamtik gained control over Egypt, expelling the Assyrians, and establishing a new dynasty that controlled the entire Nile Valley from the Delta to Thebes (663 bc). This time, Ashurbanipal did not intervene. This indicates that the Assyrians were unable to lead systematic interventions this far. After all, the Phoenician and Levantine states, which had initially sparked the conflict between the Assyrians and the Egyptians, continued to remain independent even when they were sieged, such as in the case of Tyre or Arwad.
If Egypt was a distant problem and overall a superfluous conquest, Babylonian control and the rise of Elam in Lower Mesopotamia continued to be a main reason for concern. The rise to power of Shamash-shum-ukin in Babylon did not solve the problem, but made it worse. The ‘unfaithful brother’, as Ashurbanipal describes him in his inscriptions, acted independently and attempted to free himself and his land from Assyrian control. He formed a coalition against Ashurbanipal with all the other powers outside the empire, from Elam to Egypt, the Arabs, and the Iranian tribes. Apart from the propagandistic exaggeration, the main support of Shamash-shum-ukin undoubtedly came from Elam. The latter was in the middle of internal power and succession wars. The former pro-Assyrian policy established under Esarhaddon was therefore abandoned, in the hope of isolating Assyria and drastically reducing its hegemonic role.
The sequence of events is complex. At the beginning, Shamash-shum-ukin was still peaceful, while Elam was supporting various ‘rebels’ in southern Mesopotamia. Ashurbanipal’s generals defeated a coalition between the Elamite Urtaku, Nippur, and Gambulu (665—663 bc). Ten years later, the most threatening Elamite attempt (under Teumman) was countered by a more serious Assyrian intervention that led the Assyrian army to Elam. As a result, Ashurbanipal forced the traditionally composite political structure of Elam to accept Assyrian control. This caused difficult relations among the internal factions. The ‘mosaic’ of factions extended as far as Lower Mesopotamia, where Shamash-shum-ukin ruled in the north (in the area around Babylon), while the Chaldean Nabu-bel-shumate ruled in the Sealand. At this point, the king of Babylon put the above-mentioned anti-Assyrian coalition together. The coalition was impressive, but inconsistent, due to the conflicting ambitions of the kings of Babylon and Elam. Therefore, the intervention of the Assyrian general Bel-ibni was decisive. Babylon was conquered, Shamash-shum-ukin died in his burning palace, and a certain Kandalanu was enthroned as an Assyrian governor in his place. Soon after, at the peak of a long campaign in which the Assyrian army devastated Elam (Figure 28.6), Susa was conquered and ruthlessly destroyed.
The destruction of Elam constituted a crucial moment in Mesopotamian history. The Chaldeans now lacked an external support. Consequently, for the remaining fifteen years of Ashurbanipal’s reign, they were unable to intervene. The repercussions of Elam’s disappearance, however, went far beyond the Lower Mesopotamian scene and the Assyrian presence in Elam. The fall of Elam created a power vacuum that not even Assyria was able to fill. Emblematically, soon after the sack of Susa, Ashurbanipal received a tribute from a king Cyrus of Parsumash (namely, Persis or modern Fars), an ancestor of the great Cyrus II. Already at this stage, the Persian nation occupied the land of Anshan, the ancient eastern centre of Elam.
The sack of Susa could have marked the peak of the Assyrian empire, but at the same time it signalled the beginning of the empire’s decline. Of the three other powers of the time, one, Egypt, was increasingly unable to intervene in Syria and the Levant, but was also too distant for another Assyrian intervention. The second power, Elam, had fallen, facilitating the rise of even more dangerous enemies. The third power, Urartu, was going through considerable difficulties. The latter, however, were more due to the pressures from the north than the Assyrians. Having defeated his rivals, now turned into ‘regular’ (non-expansionistic) powers, Assyria was more than ever exposed to the pressures from the new populations of the south and the north. Indeed, the latter were now free from the opposition of the former rivals of Assyria. The people of the south, namely, the Arabs, could not threaten Assyria. The Assyrian army easily overcame the Arabic troops on camels, which were inferior both in terms of weaponry and military tactics. The large booty brought back to Assyria led to the fall of prices in slaves and camels (following the typical celebrative topos). However, the centres, wealth, and human resources of the Arabs were still too far from Assyria. Therefore, their crucial commercial role in the Arabian Peninsula remained unshakeable.
The Iranian tribes in the north were a far more dangerous threat for Assyria, while Anatolia was still under the influence of the Cimmerians. After the fall of the kingdom of Phrygia, the new kingdom of Lydia contacted Assyria to seal an alliance against the common enemy. Gyges sent an embassy to Ashurbanipal. Allegedly, this move was inspired by a dream. However, the embassy’s messengers spoke an unknown language and came from too far to be included in the ‘mental map’ of the Assyrians. The embassy was therefore ignored. Soon after, the Assyrians faced the Lydian and Ionian mercenaries of Psamtik’s army, which made them retreat from Egypt.
Urartu was still standing, but was forced to ask for help to the Assyrians in order to face the Scythians and Cimmerians. Assyrian support, however, never materialised. This was not because Urartu was distant, but because it was considered a traditional enemy of Assyria. This reaction indicates that the Assyrians were clearly unable to cast their sense of rivalry aside — a decision that would soon prove to be a mistake. Further east, the Mannaeans and the Medes were also on the rise. Ashurbanipal sent his generals and achieved some
Figure 28.6 Relief of Ashurbanipal, with the siege of an Elamite city. From Kouyunjik, now in the British Museum, Reg. No. 1856,0909.17-18. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Successes. However, these campaigns only managed to contain their expansion. They did not avert the transformation of the Mannaeans and Medes into organised states with considerable military and economic power.
At the eve of Ashurbanipal’s death, the empire seemed larger and stronger than ever before. Everything seemed under control or, at least, almost everything. Who could have predicted, then, that new problems on the rise, combined with old unresolved issues, would have brought the empire to a sudden and definitive collapse?
World History
