Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of the South Caucasus, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean throughout much of the 9th to 7th centuries BC, becoming the largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire has been described as the first world empire in history. It influenced other empires of the ancient world culturally, administratively, and militarily, including the Neo-Babylonians, the Achaemenids, and the Seleucids. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as parts of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.
The early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia and Levant, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire had been lost during the late 11th century BC. Under Ashurnasirpal II, Assyria once more became the dominant power of the Near East, ruling the north undisputed. Ashurnasirpal's campaigns reached as far as the Mediterranean, and he oversaw the transfer of the imperial capital from the traditional city of Assur to the more centrally located Kalhu The empire grew even more under Ashurnasirpal's successor Shalmaneser III, though it entered a period of stagnation after his death, referred to as the "age of the magnates". During this time, the chief wielders of political power were prominent generals and officials, and central control was unusually weak. This age came to an end with the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III, who re-asserted Assyrian royal power and more than doubled the size of the empire through wide-ranging conquests. His most notable conquests were Babylonia in the south and large parts of the Levant. Under the Sargonid dynasty, which ruled from 722 BC to the fall of the empire, Assyria reached its apex. Under Sennacherib, the capital was transferred to Nineveh, and under Esarhaddon the empire reached its largest extent through the conquest of Egypt. Despite being at the peak of its power, the empire experienced a swift and violent fall in the late 7th century BC, destroyed by a Babylonian uprising and an invasion by the Medes. The causes behind how Assyria could be destroyed so quickly continue to be debated among scholars.
The unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not only due to its ability to expand but also, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system. As the first of its scale, the empire saw various military, civic and administrative innovations. In the military, important innovations included a large-scale use of cavalry and new siege warfare techniques. Techniques first adopted by the Neo-Assyrian army would be used in later warfare for millennia. To solve the issue of communicating over vast distances, the empire developed a sophisticated state communication system, using relay stations and well-maintained roads. The communication speed of official messages in the empire was not surpassed in the Middle East until the 19th century. The empire also made use of a resettlement policy, wherein some portions of the populations from conquered lands were resettled in the Assyrian heartland and in underdeveloped provinces. This policy served to both disintegrate local identities and to introduce Assyrian-developed agricultural techniques to all parts of the empire. A consequence was the dilution of the cultural diversity of the Near East, forever changing the ethnolinguistic composition of the region and facilitating the rise of Aramaic as the regional lingua franca, a position the language retained until the 14th century.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire left a legacy of great cultural significance. The political structures established by the empire became the model for the later empires, and the ideology of universal rule promulgated by the Neo-Assyrian kings inspired—through the concept of —similar ideas of rights to world domination as late as the early modern period. The empire became an important part of later folklore and literary traditions in northern Mesopotamia through the subsequent post-imperial period and beyond. Judaism—and in turn Christianity and Islam—was profoundly affected by the period of Neo-Assyrian rule; numerous Biblical stories appear to draw on earlier Assyrian mythology and history, and the Assyrian impact on early Jewish theology was immense. Although the empire is prominently remembered today for the supposed excessive brutality of its army, the Assyrians were not excessively brutal when compared to other civilizations throughout history.
Background
and the ambition of establishing a universal, all-encompassing empire was a long-established aspect of royal ideology in the ancient Near East prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia, the Sumerian rulers of the various city-states in the region often fought with each other in order to establish small hegemonic empires and to gain a superior position relative to the other city-states. Eventually, these small conflicts evolved into a general ambition to achieve universal rule. Reaching a position of world domination was not seen as a wholly impossible task in this time since Mesopotamia was believed to correspond to the entire world. One of the earliest Mesopotamian "world conquerors" was Lugalzaggesi, king of Uruk, who conquered all of Lower Mesopotamia in the 24th century BC. The succeeding Akkadian Empire is generally regarded as the first known empire.Numerous imperialist states rose and fell in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East after the time of the Akkadian Empire. Most early empires and kingdoms were limited to some core territories, with most of their subjects only nominally recognizing the authority of the central government. Still, the general desire for universal rule dominated the royal ideologies of Mesopotamian kings for thousands of years, bolstered by the memory of the Akkadian Empire and exemplified in titles such as "king of the Universe" or "king of the Four Corners of the World". This desire was also manifested in the kings of Assyria, who ruled in what had been the northern part of the Akkadian Empire. Assyria experienced its first period of ascendancy with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, previously only having been a city-state centered around the city of Assur. From the time of Adad-nirari I onwards, Assyria became one of the great powers of the ancient Near East. Under Tukulti-Ninurta I the empire reached its greatest extent and became the dominant force in Mesopotamia, for a time even subjugating Babylonia in the south. After Tukulti-Ninurta's assassination, the Middle Assyrian Empire went into a long period of decline, becoming increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland. Though this period of decline was broken up by Tiglath-Pileser I, who once more expanded Assyrian power, his conquests overstretched Assyria and could not be maintained by his successors. The trend of decline was substantially reversed in the reign of the last Middle Assyrian king, Ashur-dan II who campaigned in the northeast and northwest.
History
Resurgence of Assyrian power
Initial
The early Neo-Assyrian kings initially set out to reverse the long decline of the Assyrian Empire, retake its former lands and re-establish the position it held at the height of its power. The two empires were not as distinct as their portrayal sometimes suggests, with the Neo-Assyrian kings being part of the same continuous royal family line as the Assyrian Empire. The outward re-expansion by these new kings was cast as war to liberate those Assyrians cut off from Assyrian territory and forced to live under foreign rulers. This held at least some truth, with material evidence from sites lost and then reconquered by the empire demonstrating an endurance of Assyrian culture in the interim. Early efforts at reconquest were mostly focused on the region up to the Khabur river in the west. One of the first conquests of Ashur-dan II had been Katmuḫu in this region, which he made a vassal kingdom rather than annexed outright; this suggests that the resources available to the early Neo-Assyrian kings were very limited and that the imperial project had to begin nearly from scratch. In this context, the successful expansion conducted under the early Neo-Assyrian kings was an extraordinary achievement. The initial phase of the Assyrian was slow, beginning under Ashur-dan II near the end of the Middle Assyrian period and covering the reigns of the first two Neo-Assyrian kings, Adad-nirari II and Tukulti-Ninurta II. Ashur-dan's efforts mostly worked to pave the way for the more sustained work under Adad-nirari and Tukulti-Ninurta.Among the conquests of Adad-nirari, the most strategically important campaigns were the wars directed to the southeast, beyond the Little Zab river. These lands had previously been under Babylonian rule. One of Adad-nirari's wars brought the Assyrian army as far south as Der, close to the border of the southwestern kingdom of Elam. Though Adad-nirari did not manage to incorporate territories so far away from the Assyrian heartland into the empire, he secured Arrapha, which in later times served as the launching point of numerous Assyrian campaigns toward lands in the east. Adad-nirari managed to secure a border agreement with the Babylonian king Nabu-shuma-ukin I, sealed through both kings marrying a daughter of the other. Adad-nirari continued Ashur-dan's efforts in the west; in his wars, he defeated numerous small western kingdoms. Several small states, such as Guzana, were made into vassals, and others, such as Nisibis, were placed under pro-Assyrian puppet-kings. After his successful wars in the region, Adad-nirari was able to go on a long march along the Khabur river and the Euphrates, collecting tribute from all the local rulers with no military opposition. He also conducted important building projects; Apku, located between Nineveh and Sinjar and destroyed, was rebuilt and became an important administrative center.
Though he reigned only briefly, Adad-nirari's son Tukulti-Ninurta continued the policies of his father. In 885 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta repeated his father's march along the Euphrates and Khabur, though he went in the opposite direction, beginning in the south at Dur-Kurigalzu and then collecting tribute while he travelled north. Some of the southern cities that sent tribute to Tukulti-Ninurta during this march were historically more closely aligned with Babylon. Tukulti-Ninurta fought against small states in the east, aimed to strengthen Assyrian control in this direction. Among the lands he defeated were Kirruri, Hubushkia and Gilzanu. In later times, Gilzanu often supplied Assyria with horses.