Who were the Assyrians? History of the Assyrian Empire

They created the largest empire the world had ever seen, the first professional standing army in history, and were the first true masters of siege warfare, grinding the walls of their enemies into dust and displacing large populations at a whim. The fury of Assyria was the terror of their age. The city-state of Ashur, named for the warlike god of the same name, was founded nearly 2,000 years before the height of the Assyrian Empire. Originally a Sumerian settlement, the city then became dominated by the Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad, whom the later Assyrians viewed as their direct ancestors. During the following Neo-Sumerian Empire, the Assyrians sporadically fell under their influence, although, typically, they managed to maintain independence. In the beginning of the period known as the Assyrian Old Empire, a stable line of independent kings allowed for Assyrian merchants to develop lucrative trade routes. Particularly with Anatolia, where they built permanent colonies that operated for hundreds of years. In Ashur, as well as with other nearby city-states such as Nineveh, this newfound prosperity led to large-scale public building projects and relevance on the international stage. With the other major powers of the day, Mari, Yamhad, Babylon, and the other city-states of southern Mesopotamia, one by one the ruling dynasties of these states were replaced by Amorite warlords who had migrated from near the plains and hill country of southeastern Syria. Originally described by the Sumerians as a vile people, who ate raw meat and did not bury their dead, the Amorites would one day be regarded as the most culturally sophisticated people of Mesopotamia, especially at Babylon. Shem-Shihad is believed to have been one of these warlords. His ancestors were later described as the kings who lived in tents. His father and then he had ruled over the city of Ekalatum on the Assyrian plain. He fled to Babylon when the king of Eshnunna conquered much of the Assyrian plain. When that king died, seven years later, Shem-Shihad returned and reconquered Ekalatum and Ashur from Eshnunna. It was during the reign of Shem-Shihad that a coherent political unity was established between the Assyrian city-states, and a strong national identity rare for the time began to evolve between them. Shem-Shihad conquered vast territories, going from fugitive to great king of an empire. Not a humble man, he granted himself the title king of the universe. Shem-Shihad's kingdom of upper Mesopotamia would not last long after his death, being eclipsed by the empire of Hammurabi of Babylon in the pages of history. However, his political unification of Assyria, as well as their memory of being the heartland of a vast empire, would have a profound impact for many centuries to come. Babylon's power declined after Hammurabi's death. Although it remained the greatest power in Mesopotamia, as two new people groups, the Hurrians and the Kassites, migrated into the region. This largely peaceful time period went up in flames, as the Hittites, a people from central Anatolia, destroyed the kingdom of Yamhad and sacked Babylon, ending the Amorite dynasty of Hammurabi's descendants, in a campaign so rapid that no effective resistance was organized. This massive power vacuum that the Hittites left behind was filled by the Kassites, who rebuilt Babylon, and the Hurrians, who united their squabbling kingdoms together to form the empire of Mitanni, which came to dominate upper Mesopotamia and rule over Assyria for 200 years. The Mitanni were a warlike people, whom the Assyrians learned much from, in the art of warfare and the administration of a large empire. They succumbed to internal infighting, allowing Assyria to gain independence without a fight. Pro-Assyrian and Hittite puppet kingdoms formed. During the reign of Adad-Nurari, the Mitanni puppet kingdom was annexed, while achieving major military victories against foes in nearly every direction, solidifying Assyria as one of the great states. Calling himself a great king, equal to the pharaoh of Egypt, the ruler of Babylon, and the Hittite empire, the older great powers did not acknowledge the upstart, viewing him as a rebellious vassal state that had achieved some temporary success. During the reign of his son Shalmaneser, everyone would acknowledge Assyria's ascendancy. After defeating a coalition of Mitanni rebels, Hittites, and nomadic desert kings, he blinded 14,400 captured prisoners of war in one eye, resettling them far from their homelands and unfamiliar territory, making them less likely to rebel, which later became a standard Assyrian practice for dealing with rebellious populations, often utilizing this to move skilled labor where it was needed most. Shalmaneser's son, Tikhulti-Ninurta, expanded the empire to its greatest extent yet, capturing Babylon and taking the ancient title, king of Sumer and Akkad, the first native Mesopotamian to do so in many centuries. Seeking to ensure Babylon's secondary status, he demolished the walls of the city and relocated the statue of their chief god Marduk back to Assyria. Tikhulti-Ninurta was as gifted a military strategist as he was ruthless. After campaigning down the Arabian coast as far as modern-day Bahrain, he defeated the Elamites, who he believed planned to take Babylon. He then engaged in a brutal act of sacrilege after a failed Babylonian revolt, massacring much of the city's population while looting and defiling the city's temples. While Mesopotamia was in shock, Tikhulti-Ninurta spent his time writing an epic poem about himself as well as building a new capital city, also named after himself. His sons, with the backing of the Assyrian priesthood, besieged their father at his new capital city, where the unpopular king was murdered. Babylon regained its independence while Assyria focused on consolidating its borders as the old Bronze Age empires to the west contracted or fell. While being subjected to waves of invading marauders, known as the Sea People, Babylon was conquered by the Elamites, followed by weak local dynasties, becoming a third-rate power. Only Egypt and Assyria would survive the Bronze Age collapse. Great cities lay abandoned and international diplomacy and trade all but disappeared. Over the next 100 years, while most of the Near East was in a dark age, Assyria was the only major power able to capitalize on the collapsing world. Babylon regrouped under a native southern Mesopotamian dynasty, once again becoming a rival for Assyria. As Egypt devolved into squabbling city-states, several ruled by foreign warlords. Assyria further developed its warrior culture, making military service compulsory for all adult citizen males, and began introducing iron weapons into the rank and file during the late Middle Assyrian period. Assyria's fine-tuned war machine was not its only accomplishment during this time. The Assyrian king, Ashur-bel-Khala, built the world's first known public botanical gardens and zoo, where he collected and bred many rare animals including primates and crocodiles, many sent by the Egyptians, seeking a curry favor with Assyria. For the remainder of the Middle Period, Assyria was typically governed by competent but not exceptional kings, who were content to rule over the heavily militarized Assyrian heartland while raiding their immediate neighbors to keep them weak. Egypt reunified, and two new peoples migrated into Mesopotamia. The Chaldeans took Babylon in the south, while pastoral Aramean-speaking tribes dominated the north. As they became dominant there, Assyrian refugees poured into the heartland, as many had been enslaved and had their land seized by the newcomers. In response, the Assyrian king Ashur-Dan II embarked on the first campaigns of conquest in over a hundred years, taking and resettling land with Assyrians while deporting Arameans. Ashur-Dan spent the spoils of his conquests on infrastructure, building well-built roads allowing armies to move much quicker to the front and aqueducts to increase farmable land and population. After a brief civil war, Adad-Nurari II took a throne. Following his father's lead, Adad-Nurari II continued conquering and building aqueducts and roads. And perhaps more importantly, he began the practice of building massive fortified administrative centers and supply depots where large amounts of grain and weapons were stored near the frontier in every province. Adad-Nurari II's yearly campaigns set the standard that all self-respecting Assyrian kings followed, maintaining it as their sacred duty to wage yearly war. His grandson, Ashurnasirpal II, greatly expanded the empire and built a new magnificent capital city named Kalhu, also called Nimrud. A significant development during his reign would be the unification of the Neri people into the kingdom of Urartu, which would be a longtime rival of Assyria. During the long reign of his son, Shalmaneser III, Babylon was captured as well as much of the Urartu heartland around Lake Van. Following Shalmaneser's death, his son defeated his brother in a four-year-long civil war as the empire contracted. He was succeeded by his wife, the only female regent in Assyrian history. Sa'am Muramat reigned for five years until her son came of age. He conquered the Medes, a newly arrived people in the east. After his reign, nearly 40 years of internal stagnation and instability ensued, until the reign of Tiglath Pileser III. Perhaps the greatest king in Assyria's history, he not only constantly campaigned effectively, he instituted numerous reforms. Instead of a few large provinces administered by powerful nobles, Tiglath Pileser divided the empire up into over 80 small provinces typically governed by a eunuch, with no descendants solely loyal to him. He also realized that despite Assyria's large population, they lacked the manpower to match the monarch's imperial ambitions. To solve this, he created the first professional national standing army in history, allowing anyone within the empire's borders to join. Now, anyone could become Assyrian, as long as they were willing to adopt the culture, worship the god Ashur, and wage perpetual war. The ranks of the army swelled with the adventurous and ambitious in a new type of army that could wage war year round. For the first time in history, siege engines and cavalry became an integral part of the army. Tiglath Pileser III was followed by a century filled with exceptional kings, such as Sargon II, Sinaturib, Esharhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, who expanded the empire to its greatest extent, making it the largest empire in history at that time. Assyria's deserved reputation for brutality, extreme even by the standards of the time, made it many enemies, especially within its own borders. First, Egypt successfully rebelled. And then, an allied army of Babylonians and Medes struck the Assyrian heartland without warning. Nineveh, the greatest city in the world at that time, went up in flames. And over the next three years, an empire seemingly at the height of its power succumbed to the vengeance of its subjects. And even though the empire was thoroughly destroyed, the Assyrians have survived to the present day as a distinct people. 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