2015 Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-871590-0. (original) (raw)

Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire

Basic Books, 2023

At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. In Assyria, Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of this empire and its enduring influence in global history. Assyria originated as a minor city-state in present-day Iraq. Much of its growth was fueled by greed and an insatiable hunger for war, epitomized in the words of one of its kings, “Before me, cities; behind me, ruins.” Yet violence was not all that defined Assyria. New research has shed light on other aspects of this ancient civilization: Assyria’s vast libraries and monumental sculptures, its elaborate trade and information networks, the crucial role played by Assyrian royal women, and the impact of plagues and climate change on the empire’s fortunes. Although crushed by rising powers in the late seventh century BCE, the Assyrian Empire launched a long tradition of multiethnic conqueror-states, and its legacy endured from the Babylonian and Persian Empires to Rome and beyond.

Why ancient Assyria still matters

Striking is that Old Assyria started as a peaceful non-militant proto-democratic trading based city-state in upper Mesopotamia – a „Singapore on the Tigris“ - from c2000 BCE, circa 1500 years before Classical Greece. But from about half a millennium later, in typical Mesopotamian fashion it morphed in two phases into a predacious theocratically driven empire: the Mid-Assyrian in 13th C BCE and post the end Bronze Age regional shock the much larger Neo-Assyrian, 10-7th C BCE, the largest such empire till then and the climactic epitome of millennia of Mesopotamian Old Politics. Its activities included near constant warfare [including intimidatory trademark brutality] trying to extend and defend its territory on behalf of god Ashur, and elaborate artistic recording of deemed victories and their kings’ roles, displayed in their grand capital cities. But the Assyrian imperial model was inherently flawed, vulnerable, ruling by violence and fear which alienated subjects, rendering most hostile and disloyal, inclined to support revolt. Thus blinkered, stubborn and resented - and overstretched mid 7th C BCE - it succumbed within c50 years to opportunistic, vengeful Babylonia and its Median eastern allies, both fortuitously well led. Its quasi-monotheism directly influenced the Hebrews [through significant population deportations], thence Christianity, and its violent divine-mandated deemed imperialism echoed in later Christian and Islamist history.

The history of the Middle-Assyrian Empire

This article aims to re-evaluate the history of the Middle Assyrian Empire by looking at new archaeological data and by critically re-examining the textual evidence. Special attention will be given to concepts like ‘Empire’, the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’, and related models of social organisation. It argues that while the territory controlled by the Assyrian kings remained more constant than normally argued, its internal organisation was more flexible.