Maximum extent of the Assyrian Empire under Ashurbanipal, ca. 660 BC.
Assyrians spoke Akkadian, and shared culture with the rest of Mesopotamia except for one difference. The Assyrians prayed to Ashur, for which the capital got its name. The Assyrians were mostly peasants, and unlike southern Mesopotamia, Assyria received adequate rainfall so that they didn’t need irrigation systems like Sumer. The civilization first came to prominence under the ruler Shamshi Adad I, who seized most of northern Mesopotamia. But, the realm was short lived, falling under the powerful ruler Hammurabi.
Assyrian power eclipsed and was ruled by first the Babylonians, then the Mitanni. This changed when the Assyrian king Ashuruballit took control over the Mitanni by taking advantage of their civil war. Thus, the Middle Assyrian period began. Ashuruballit’s expansive successors, Shalmaneser I, Tikulti-Ninurta I, and Tiglath-Pileser I, set out in three directions to conquer Mesopotamia. The Assyrians were beyond cruel to the losers of the war. One king boasted “I caused great slaughter, I destroyed, I demolished, and I burned. I took warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes before their cities.” To lessen the chance of revolt, many Assyrian rulers deported citizens of the conquered lands. By one account, as many as four million people were forcibly deported.
Assyria faced a setback at the first millennium when Aramaean pressure cut off a vital trade route to the Mediterranean. Assyria’s glory was restored under the ruler Ashurnasirpal, and the nation remained dominant in Mesopotamia for three centuries. This new period was known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Warrior-kings sustained the success of Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser III conquered the Arameaeans, Sennacherib sacked Babylon, and Ashurbanipal extended Assyrian power as far as Thebes, this was the empire’s maximum extent. The empire collapsed after Ashurbanipal’s death when Babylon crushed Assyria.
War was a way of life for the Assyrian people. Two major factors contributed to Assyria’s military success. One being Assyria’s location in well-watered land and existing on major trade routes. The second being that Assyria had no natural defenses, meaning that the only way for Assyria to defend itself was by a powerful military. Assyria was vulnerable to raids because of their lack of natural defenses, so from an early time the rulers developed the tradition to go on regular military expeditions. Because it was so frequent, the summer month of Dumuzi was known as “the month which the lord of wisdom, Ninshuku, has prescribed in a tabled of former times for mustering the army.” In the Neo-Assyrian era, the country was now able to hire missionaries and order slaves to fight. Always, however, the commanders remained Assyrian.
The Assyrian forces had four main arms: the light infantry, the heavy infantry, chariots, and cavalry. The king was the commander in chief of the army. The part of Assyrian warfare that left the largest mark on history was the terror as an instrument of policy. Shalamaneser I once blinded 14,000 prisoners to make them submit. The Assyrian’s cruelty meant that no one was happy to see them. The fact that they made others fear them lead to the empire’s collapse.
In 1847 CE, observers on the Tigris river could have seen a large winged-bull on a raft being guarded by Arabs. The sculpture was on its way to the Louvre museum in Paris. The statue was part of the remains of Dur-Sharrukin. The statue was build by Sargon II, who’s mission was to make the city represent his grandeur. The work of French diplomat Paul Emile Botta, who discovered the remains, and his successors revealed the magnificence of Assyria.
In Assyrian cities, the most important building was the palace. Rulers strove to outdo one another in the finery of his palace. The architects of these palaces had access to materials that the Sumerians did not. There was timber, stone, limestone, and other materials. Limestone also helped the Assyrians in the arts. The Assyrians built many orthostats, or upright stone slabs of faces carved in relief. One of the most surprising things about Assyrian art was its lack of representation of the gods. The most popular figure of art was the king. Ashurnasirpal II represented exactly how important a king was in this inscription “I founded therein a palace of cedar, cypress, juniper, boxwood, mulberry, pistachio wood, tamarisk for my royal dwelling and for my lordly pleasure for all time. I fashioned beasts of the mountains and of the seas in white limestone and alabaster and set them up within its gates. I placed therein great quantities of silver, gold, lead, copper, and iron, the spoil of my hand from the lands I have brought under my sway.”
Semiramis
Semiramis (840-800 BC) was a legendary Assyrian queen. According to legend, Semiramis was the daughter of the fish-goddess Derketo of Ascalon in Syria and a mortal. Derketo abandoned her at birth and drowned herself. The child was fed by doves until she was found and brought up by Simmas, the royal shepherd. Afterwards she married Onnes or Menones, one of the generals of Ninus. Ninus was so struck by her bravery at the capture of Bactra that he married her, forcing Onnes to commit suicide. After Ninus’s death she reigned as Queen in her own right, and conquered much of Asia.
One of the most popular legends in Armenian tradition involves Semiramis and an Armenian king, Ara the Beautiful. According to the legend, Semiramis had heard about the fame of the handsome Armenian king Ara, and lusted after his image. She asked Ara to marry her, but he refused; upon hearing this, she gathered the armies of Assyria and marched against Armenia. The battle was supposed to have taken place in the Ararat valley, during which Ara was slain. In order to avoid continuous warfare with the Armenians, Semiramis prayed to the gods to revive Ara from the dead. Semiramis, reputed to be sorceress, took his body and tried in vain to enliven him. When Armenians advanced to avenge their leader, she disguised one of her lovers and spread the rumor that Gods brought Ara back to life. As a result, the war was ceased.
In The Divine Comedy, Dante sees Semiramis among the souls of the lustful in the Second Circle of Hell: “Master, who are those People, whom the black air so castigates?” “The first of those, of whom intelligence Thou fain wouldst have,” then said he unto me, “The empress was of many languages. To sensual vices she was so abandoned, That lustful she made licit in her law, To remove the blame to which she had been led. She is Semiramis. She succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse”.
While Semiramis is clearly a legendary figure, she is sometimes considered a dim reflection of the historical queen Shammuramat (ruled 811-808 BC), the Babylonian wife of Shamshi-Adad V. After her husband’s death, she appears to have served as regent for several years for her son, Adad-nirari III. This identification is disputed as being merely based on the similar sound of the two names.
