Rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Assyria began the expansion around 900 BC that made it the first empire to rule the whole Near East. It had been a middling Mesopotamian kingdom on the upper Tigris for centuries, with a brief period of dominance around 1300 BC and a long decline afterwards as Aramaean migrations cut its trade routes and reduced it to its homeland. Ashur-dan II and then Adad-nirari II began recovering the lost territory from the late tenth century, and Ashurnasirpal II from 883 BC turned recovery into conquest. The instruments were three. A standing professional army with iron weapons, siege engines, sappers and cavalry, funded by tribute rather than by seasonal levies. A road and courier system that let orders travel faster than armies. And deportation as a policy — entire populations moved hundreds of miles and resettled among strangers, which broke local identities and supplied labour where it was wanted. Something like 4.5 million people are estimated to have been moved over three centuries. Terror was the fourth, and it was advertised. Ashurnasirpal's own inscriptions describe flaying rebel leaders and hanging their skins on city walls, and the palace reliefs at Nimrud were made to be seen by envoys. Tiglath-Pileser III reorganised the provinces in the 740s, and Sargon II, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon took Israel, Babylon and Egypt. Ashurbanipal collected a library of some 30,000 tablets at Nineveh, which is how the Epic of Gilgamesh survived. Nineveh fell to Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC and Assyria disappeared entirely. Its administrative model — provinces, governors, roads, deportation, tribute — was inherited by Babylon, then Persia, and through Persia by everyone who came afterwards.
- Year: 900 BCE
- Category: Political
