Nyt on kyse Assurista.
Ancient Jewish History: The Assyrians(1170 - 612 BCE)Ancient Jewish History: Table of Contents | The Temples | Two Kingdoms
The Assyrians were Semitic people living in the northern
reaches of Mesopotamia; they have a long history in the area, but for most
of that history they are subjugated to the more powerful kingdoms and
peoples to the south. Under the monarch, Shamshi-Adad, the Assyrians
attempted to build their own empire, but Hammurabi soon crushed the attempt
and the Assyrians disappear from the historical stage. Eventually the
Semitic peoples living in northern Mesopotamia were invaded by another
Asiatic people, the Hurrians, who migrated into the area and began to build
an empire of their own. But the Hurrian dream of empire was soon swallowed
up in the dramatic growth of the Hittite empire, and the young Hurrian
nation was swamped. After centuries of attempts at independence, the
Assyrians finally had an independent state of their own since the Hittites
did not annex Assyrian cities. For the next several hundred years, the
balance of power would shift from the north to the south
Beginning with the monarch, Tukulti-Ninurta (1235-1198
BC), Assyria began its first conquests, in this case the conquest of
Babylon.
The Assyrian dream of empire began with the monarch,
Tiglat-Pileser (1116-1090), who extended Assyrian dominance to Syria and
Armenia. But the greatest period of conquest occurred between 883 and 824,
under the monarchies of Ashurnazirpal II (883-859 BC) and Shalmeneser III
(858-824 BC), who conquered all of Syria and Palestine, all of Armenia,
and, the prize of prizes, Babylon and southern Mesopotamia.
The Assyrian
conquerors invented a new policy towards the conquered: in order to prevent
nationalist revolts by the conquered people, the Assyrians would force the
people they conquered to migrate in large numbers to other areas of the
empire. Besides guaranteeing the security of an empire built off of
conquered people of different cultures and languages, these mass
deportations of the populations in the Middle East, Mesopotamia, and
Armenia, turned the region into a melting pot of diverse cultures,
religions, and languages. Whereas there would be little cultural contact
between the conquered and the conquerors in early Mesopotamian history,
under the Assyrians the entire area became a vast experiment in cultural
mixing.
It was the Assyrian monarch, Sargon II (721-705 BC), who first
forcefully relocated Hebrews after the conquest of Israel, the northern
kingdom of the Hebrews. Although this was a comparatively mild deportation
and perfectly in line with Assyrian practice, it marks the historical
beginning of the Jewish diaspora. This chapter in the Jewish diaspora,
however, never has been really written, for the Hebrews deported from
Israel seem to have blended in with Assyrian society and,
by the time
Nebuchadnezzar II conquers Judah (587 BC), the southern kingdom of the
Hebrews, the Israelites deported by Sargon II have disappeared nameless and
faceless into the sands of northern Mesopotamia.
The monarchs of Assyria, who hated Babylon with a
passion since it constantly contemplated independence and sedition,
destroyed that city and set up their capital in Nineveh. Later, however,
feeling that the Babylonian god, Marduk, was angry at them, they rebuilt
the city and returned the idol of Marduk to a temple in Babylon.
The last
great monarch of Assyria was Ashurbanipal (668-626 BC), who not only
extended the empire, but also began a project of assembling a library of
tablets of all the literature of Mesopotamia. Thirty thousand tablets still
remain of Ashurbanipal's great library in the city of Nineveh; these
tablets are our single greatest source of knowledge of Mesopotamian
culture, myth, and literature.
After Ashurbanipal, the great Assyrian empire began to
crumble; the greatest pressure on the empire came from their old and bitter
enemies, the Babylonians.
Aided by another Semitic people, the Medes, the
Babylonians led by Nabopolassar eventually conquered the Assyrian capital
of Nineveh and burned it to the ground, ending forever Assyrian dominance
in the region.
The Assyrian State
Simply put, the Assyrian state was forged in the
crucible of war, invasion, and conquest. The upper, land-holding classes
consisted almost entirely of military commanders who grew wealthy from the
spoils taken in war. The army was the largest standing army ever seen in
the Middle East or Mediterranean. The exigencies of war excited
technological innovation which made the Assyrians almost unbeatable: iron
swords, lances, metal armor, and battering rams made them a fearsome foe in
battle.
Science and Mathematics
The odd paradox of Assyrian culture was the dramatic growth
in science and mathematics; this can be in part explained by the Assyrian
obsession with war and invasion. Among the great mathematical inventions
of the Assyrians were the division of the circle into 360 degrees and
were among the first to invent longitude and latitude in geographical
navigation. They also developed a sophisticated medical science which
greatly influenced medical science as far away as Greece.
Sources: Mesopotamia from Washington State University, ©Richard Hooker, reprinted by permission. |
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