The name of their country was a pale fear to the ancients. The Assyrians were famous for their exceptional cruelty. They gouged out the eyes of their victims, cut off their noses and limbs.
The name of this country aroused pale fear in the ancients. The specter of the approaching army crushed the toughest resistance. The fear of dying in agony during unimaginably painful torture was enough for the cities and countries along the Assyrian path to surrender, relying on their grace. Often in vain ... Cruelty was a source of splendor for the Assyrian rulers, and the most important god for them was the god of war.
The Assyrians entered the arena of history, conquering one of the oldest civilizations in the world, to which mankind owes, inter alia, writing. I am talking about the Sumerians. At the end of the 3rd millennium BCE the Sumerian periphery became independent from the center. This is what the governor of the city of Ashur in northern Mesopotamia on the Tigris did. He professed obedience to the metropolis and began to rule his own city-state. This was the beginning of Assyria. In time, with the decay of Sumer and its conquest by the Amorites, Assyria grew in strength.
Masters of war
Assyria's peak power was in the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the 10th to the 7th centuries B.C.E. Then the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Babylon in the south, they took over all of Mesopotamia, as well as the Levant - the area of today's northwest Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Israel. Pharaohs' Egypt and Cyprus also did not resist their conquests.
The Assyrians turned out to be masters of the martial arts. They had metaphysical reasons for this. Their most important god was Ashur (Assur) - the god of war. It was he who led the Assyrian troops during the conquests and protected them from defeat. He was a symbol of military power and patronized the entire empire. A particular liking for war could also result from the kingdom's location. With no natural geographic barriers to separate them from their enemies, the Assyrians had to rely only on their own army. And indeed - they could rely on it.
The Assyrians turned out to be masters of the martial arts.
They were innovators in the art of war. They quickly began to use iron in their weapons, which replaced bronze. They used modernized, lightweight war chariots with a metal base and technologically advanced siege engines at the time. The Assyrian state introduced compulsory conscription to replace the mass mobilization. Instead of distracting the peasants from working in the fields, only some centers were selected to provide recruits. The backbone of the standing army was the Royal Guard, the best trained which foreigners could join.
The military might of Assyria
Cavalry was also the strength of the Assyrian army. The Assyrians did not use stirrups or saddles. The shot from the bow while driving in such conditions was very difficult. Therefore, cavalrymen rode in pairs. One led both horses and the other hit enemies with a bow. At the time of the highest power, the Assyrian army was able to field up to 700,000 soldiers and was the undisputed greatest military force of the world at that time. When in 722 BCE Sargon II entered Judah, the prophet Isaiah described the Assyrian army as follows:
He is neither weak nor tired, / nobody is napping or sleeping / nobody unfastens the belt from their hips / and there is no torn strap on the boots. / His shots are sharp / and every bow taut; / his horses' hooves are flint, / the wheels of his chariots are racing like a hurricane.
It was not only the combat prowess of the Assyrians that gave them an advantage over the enemy.
It was not only the combat prowess of the Assyrians that gave them an advantage over the enemy. They were able to skillfully use the psychological factor - to intimidate the enemy. Anyway, they had what. This people knew no mercy for the defeated. Tales of Assyrian cruelty carried far across the kingdoms of the Middle East. Ashurnaspial II, the creator of the Assyrian state, boasted about his ruthlessness. He punished rebels or enemies with death. Demonstration executions were combined with torture - incl. impaled and skinned alive. These bestial "deeds" praised songs of praise.
The skin torn off enemies was spread by the Assyrians on the walls of the cities. The population of the conquered territories was either slaughtered or displaced on a gigantic scale. Today it is estimated that at the time of their greatest power, the Assyrians could displace up to 4.5 million people. They demolished cities, raped and tortured - they gouged out eyes, cut off noses, tongues, limbs, burned alive.
No mercy
When the Assyrian army captured the rebellious city of Halizilua, "the lord of the four corners of the world" (as Ashurnaspial II called himself) boasted of his cruelty:"I killed 600 of their warriors with my sword, and I burned 3,000 prisoners, I did not leave a single one alive so that he can become a hostage. I piled their bodies, burned their male youths and girls, skinned their leader Hulai and hung them on the wall of the city of Damdamus. Another time he boasted:
I set up a pole in front of the city gate, skinned all the leaders of the rebellion, and laid the skins on the pole. Some I walled up in a pole others I pushed onto piles placed on the pole (...). I burned many prisoners. I took many soldiers alive. Some have had their hands or hands cut; others noses, ears and limbs. I have plucked out the eyes of many warriors. I have stacked up with the living and the other with heads. I hung them on trees around the city. I burned their youth, boys and girls. 6,500 warriors died by my sword, and the rest was swallowed up by the Euphrates because they were thirsty in the desert.
Aszurnaspial II
The cruelty, apart from the sadistic pleasure their rulers and commanders of the troops who gave the orders to murder and torture seemed to feel, had a "practical" dimension. The fear of the terrible punishment of the Assyrians often paralyzed the defenders who gave up their cities without a fight, or bought their lives and their inhabitants with massive gold tributes.
City of glamor and debauchery
The Assyrians were masters of war, but they cannot be denied other achievements - they skillfully developed trade, they were talented builders. Successive rulers of Assyria left behind magnificent, mighty palaces and other objects that inspired admiration. One of the largest metropolises of antiquity was the Assyrian capital - Nineveh (today's suburbs of Iraqi Mosul). The city stretched over 8 square kilometers. The 4.5 meter high stone walls were 12 kilometers long. The inner wall of dried brick was 25 meters high, and its thickness was as much as 15 meters. The city walls were additionally surrounded by a moat.
As many as 15 gates led to the interior. Nineveh had 120,000 people in its heyday. Thanks to the canals and aqueducts, the city was supplied with water from the Tigris. The Assyrian capital was famous for its stunning buildings - not only the royal palace, but also cobbled avenues and squares. It was here that one of the wonders of the world was to be located - the hanging gardens of Babylon. (According to another theory, the gardens - a gift from Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II to his wife - were in Babylon.)
One of the greatest metropolises of antiquity was the Assyrian capital of Nineveh
Nineveh was the intellectual and cultural center of antiquity. On the initiative of King Ashurbanipal, a huge library was established in which 30,000 texts were collected on clay tablets. The city was also famous for unbridled religious and sexual rituals in honor of the goddess of love and war popular throughout the Middle East - Ishtar .
In addition to the orgy with priests and girls dedicated to the temple service, the worshipers of Ishtar were required to go to her temple at least once to devote themselves to a foreigner. Ritual prostitution was a "sacred service" . It did not affect the moral assessment of the married woman's "conduct". The palace orgies with the participation of state dignitaries and their wives, who had to surrender themselves to the ruler, were also nothing special.
Bible prophecy
In 612 B.C.E. the mighty Nineveh, and with it all of Assyria, fell as a result of the invasion of allied peoples previously oppressed by a predatory power. I am talking about the armies of Babylon, the Medes and the Persians. The city never regained its former glory. Interestingly, the biblical prophets predicted the fall of Nineveh. In Nahum's book of the Assyrians' destruction of Thebes in Egypt (663 B.C.E.), the author mentions that soon the same fate will befall the Assyrian capital.
According to Bible prophecy, drunkenness was supposed to affect Nineveh's fall. The waters of the Tigris were to emerge from the trough and infiltrate the palaces, causing a panic. Additionally, the fire was supposed to consume the golden riches. The city was to be completely destroyed and its inhabitants murdered.
Assyrian ruler Sardanapalus was to ignore the threat.
The prophecy was fulfilled to the letter if we take the account of the Roman historian Diodorus Siculus as a point of reference. The ruler of Assyria, Sardanapal, who was a degenerate and effeminate ruler who practiced debauchery with both sexes, was to ignore the threat. To show his arrogance, he camped outside the city, convinced that he would deal with his opponents. While waiting for enemies in the camp, wine was supposed to flow in streams.
When the news of the enemy's complete decompression reached the anti-Assyrian coalition, they launched a sudden attack. The Assyrians were surprised. Sardanapal escaped behind the walls. He still tried to defend the city, convinced of the strength of the fortifications. It was unfortunate that as a result of heavy rains, the Tiger came out of the shores, flooded the area and washed the city walls, causing one of the walls to collapse.
A sweet revenge on the cruelty
It was the beginning of the end of cruel Assyria. The rebels broke into the city, killing them without mercy. The representatives of the peoples tortured and persecuted by the Assyrians have tasted sweet revenge. Sardanapal did not put himself in the hands of the enemy. He ordered a fire in the palace. He was burned down with a group of eunuchs and concubines on a specially prepared pyre locked in the chamber where the fire was strongest. Earlier, he had all valuables brought to it, incl. beautiful golden outfits. So we have again confirmation of biblical prophecy. Fire consumed the wealth of Nineveh.
The problem is that historians find no confirmation that someone like Sardanapal even existed. Apart from Diodorus Siculus and the Greek historian Ctesias, no other source mentions such a ruler. His name does not appear on the Assyrian king list. According to the present state of knowledge and the records of the Babylonian Chronicle, Sin-sharra-iszkun was the last ruler of the Assyrian empire and protector of Nineveh.
The Chronicle also does not mention drunkenness in the Assyrian army or the outbreak of the Tigris. According to the Assyrian capital, after three months of fierce fighting along the entire length of the walls, finally succumbed to the pressure of the invaders who slaughtered the inhabitants and plundered the city. This was the end of one of the greatest metropolises of antiquity. It is true that Nineveh continued to function for some time, but it was a secondary center. Eventually it was abandoned and its walls engulfed in earth. This was the case until the mid-nineteenth century, when the English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard began excavations that revealed the power of the former Assyrian metropolis.
Bibliography:
- Francis Joannes: History of Mesopotamia in the 1st Millennium BC , Poznań Publishing House, 2007.
- Jane McIntosh, Treasure Hunters , G + J RBA Publishing House, 2001
- Saggs H. W. F., The Greatness and Fall of Babylonia , State Publishing Institute 1973.