6. Assyrian world domination: pathfinder empire

‘Assyrian world domination: pathfinder empire’ considers the key aspects of governance and ideology that contributed to the Assyrian Empire’s control over its holdings for three centuries. Warfare is prominently reviewed in sources such as the Assyrian palace art, royal inscriptions, and the Bible. The ideology of absolute kingship, the innovative long-distance relay postal service, and the empire-wide resettlement programme provided powerful tools for the empire’s cohesion, and provided the basis and templates for successor states including the Persian and Roman Empires. The royal library that the Assyrian kings assembled and maintained since the 14th century bc has contributed much to our knowledge of Assyria’s cultural history.

4. Assyrians abroad

‘Assyrians abroad’ captures snapshots of Assyrian lives far away from the city of Aššur and Assyrian heartland through a range of primary sources from different periods. Accounts of Assyrian traders at the trading colony of Kaneš, c.1900 bc, are seen through letters excavated in the Assyrian quarter. Diplomatic relations between Assyrian ruler Aššur-uballit I and Pharaoh Akhenaten in c.1340 bc are described through the ‘Amarna Letters’ found among the state correspondence of the pharaohs of the later 18th Dynasty of Egypt. Details of the 1082 bc famine; Aššur-reṣuwa, the Assyrian ambassador for client state Kumme in c.710 bc; and the sibling rivalry between Aššurbanipal, king of Assyria, and Šamaš-šumu-ukin, king of Babylon, are also described.

2. Assyrian places

‘Assyrian places’ considers the exploration of key sites that provide insight into Assyria’s rediscovery since the mid-19th century. Firstly, it looks at the city where everything started—Aššur, at the southern edge of the core region—where the empire of the first millennium first came together. Aššur and Kalhu (which replaced Aššur as capital city) are two of Iraq’s most significant archaeological sites. A glimpse at the trading colony at Kaneš in Central Turkey serves to investigate Assyrian history of the early second millennium bc further afield, while Dur-Katlimmu, an important provincial centre in Syria, serves to emphasize the impact of Assyria’s expansion from the 13th century bc onwards.

5. Foreigners in Assyria

‘Foreigners in Assyria’ looks at Assyrian interactions with the wider world by focusing on foreigners in the city of Aššur and how they got there. The first two cases explore Assyrian political and cultural links to the Mesopotamian south in the second millennium bc. The third case shows Assyrian diplomacy in action when an Anatolian ruler—Seni, king of Daienu—was invited, like it or not, to visit Aššur. The last two cases focus on inhabitants of the city of Aššur who had been relocated there by force from Iran and serve to emphasize how the Assyrian heartland was an increasingly multicultural, cosmopolitan environment during its imperial phase.

3. Assyrians at home

‘Assyrians at home’ describes the great variety of living conditions and human experiences in the Assyrian Empire in the 7th century, the period when the source material is most numerous and diverse. First, it considers the life of King Esarhaddon and the continuing violence that attended his assumption of the title, before describing the frustrations of Šumaya and his cousin Urdu-Gula—scholars and trained exorcists—who did not share the privileged positions of Royal Scribe or Master Scholar that were bestowed on their relatives. The lives of Šulmu-šarri, a wealthy landowner from Dur-Katlimmu, and Duri-Aššur, a wine merchant of Aššur, and their families are also considered as illustrations of life in 7th-century Assyria.

1. Introducing Assyria

Ancient Assyria was one of many states flourishing in the Middle East in the millennia before the beginning of the common era, but the long-lived kingdom was one of the most influential. ‘Introducing Assyria’ looks back at an eventful history that begins in the city of Aššur, founded early in the third millennium bc. It shows that the state emerged in the 9th century bc as the first world empire. Decisions made in the imperial capital cities in present-day northern Iraq influenced lives from the Nile to the Caspian Sea while its political, administrative, and infrastructural heritage profoundly shaped the subsequent history of the wider Mediterranean region and the Middle East.