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About the Assyrians...everything I've read about these people

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Saturday, 22nd April 2006

  seems to indicate that they were a particularly brutal and singularly cruel type, even for the time. I recall reading, a few years ago, comments made by an archaeologist of some repute to the effect that those who concentrate on the study of a given ancient culture often come to like and admire the peoples they study, and he added the observation that he even knew of people who liked the Assyrians: ''an incredible feat'' he confided.
  
  I gather there isn't a great deal known of the Assyrians. There is mention of them in the old testament which seems to confirm the claim that they possessed an exceptionally venomous character and that their empire was abnormally malevolent. However, according to the old testament, all of those ancient peoples (outside of the Israelites) were detestable types, so I find I cannot place much confidence in those writings.
  
  Is anyone here an expert or knowledgeable re the Assyrians? Is there any solid information available as to their national character that would confirm this contention that they were really an especially brutal people?

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  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 22nd April 2006

  I am amazed to read that you think there is not a great deal known about the Assyrians, or indeed that they enjoy a reputation for being in any way more brutal than the regimes and cultures that shared their culture, their timeline and their geograpraphical location. That which I have always understood is that the Assyrians, especially at the time of their first 'empire' (I use apostrophes because their empirical territories were never very vast, even by contemporary standards), were renowned as fantastic innovators - both technologically and socially. I cannot claim to be anything but an interested reader of ancient history so I might well be mistaken, but your view is not one that I had hitherto heard as commonly expressed. Who was the archaeologist you referred to?

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  Posted by yankee014 (U3352255) on Saturday, 22nd April 2006

  As far as I know the Assyrians were no more brutal than any of their counterparts in Mesopotamia. They were feared for having a very strong and innovative military, famous for steel swords and battering rams. However, I do not recall hearing that the Assyrians used tactics any more brutal than those of other armies of the time. The Assyrians used their brilliant military genius to forge their own empire across Mesopotamia. Besides conquering countless lands, they built large monuments and were pioneers in the fields of mathematics and science.

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  Posted by yankee014 (U3352255) on Saturday, 22nd April 2006

  Sorry, I said steel swords when I meant to say iron swords.

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  Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  I think the Assyrians have never had a good press - possibly a case of History being written by the Victims, this time around!
  
  In similar vein, there seems to be some attempt at the moment to 'rehabilitate' the Acheaemiadied (sp?!) Persians as a jolly civilised and accomplished lot, whose empire was peaceful and prosperous, despite what the Greeks thought of them. That may be, but they were still stupid/mean enough to want to conquer independent Greece, which HAS to be a severe black mark against them.
  
  It's interesting the point about archeologists coming to like and admire the cultures they specialise in. Let's hope that isn't true of those who specialise in the Aztecs and the Mayans!
  
  Eliza

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  I am amazed to read that you think there is not a great deal known about the Assyrians, or indeed that they enjoy a reputation for being in any way more brutal than the regimes and cultures that shared their culture, their timeline and their geograpraphical location. That which I have always understood is that the Assyrians, especially at the time of their first 'empire' (I use apostrophes because their empirical territories were never very vast, even by contemporary standards), were renowned as fantastic innovators - both technologically and socially. I cannot claim to be anything but an interested reader of ancient history so I might well be mistaken, but your view is not one that I had hitherto heard as commonly expressed. Who was the archaeologist you referred to?Μύ
  I am, like you, nothing more than an interested reader of ancient history although probably I know less of it than you do. I wish I could remember precisely who it was that wrote that statement you ask about, but I read it in the 1950's or '60's and my memory slips badly from time to time. A couple of names come to mind...one is Thorkild Jacobsen and it might have been him....but it could equally easily have been an archaeologist named Moorey whose praenomen I cannot recall. I remember reading papers/books written by both of these gents for relaxation when I was in med school.
  
  I well remember the following observation made by one of them (bound to be somewhat paraphrased) that at the beginning of Assurbanipal's reign there was so much ''hatred of Assyrian cruelty and rapacity that a series of massive revolts occurred throughout the empire''. I recollect also reading an account apparently laid down on cuneiform tablets by an earlier Assyrian monarch who boasted, after having successfully besieged some city, that he built a pillar over the city gates and flayed alive all the city leaders and covered the pilllar with their skins. He impaled a select group of others, walled up some inside a structure of some sort, cut the limbs off of all the officers in the opposing army, hacked off the noses and ears of many of the soldiers, apparently indiscriminately, and burned alive all the remaining unmutilated young men and women he could find.
  
  While that may have been typical treatment meted out to conqered peoples of the period, I've never read of any other tribes doing that on such a grand scale...and that was only one of the Assyrian accounts. There are several others, equally savage, written by later Assyrian monarchs. Even Genghis Khan, when he conquered a city that resisted, doesn't seem to have been that brutal. He killed the entire population, true -- but I gather he didn't fool with them, he just had them beheaded or otherwise quickly disposed of.
  
  Regarding lack of knowledge of the Assyrians, that comment merely reflects my ignorance of the period. I do, however, remember reading that no one seems to know how they built their war chariots or how they used them, nor do they know why they seemed to have stricken such terror into ranks of opposing armies. Evidently little is known of how they made war and what they did when fighting that made them so successful. Whatever it was, it apparently worked because for several centuries no one they tangled with was able to stop them.
  
  

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  Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  I'm sure I remember reading that there was general rejoicing when the Medes (or possibly the Persians, or both!) finally sorted out the Assyrians.
  
  Eliza

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  I think the Assyrians have never had a good press - possibly a case of History being written by the Victims, this time around! Μύ
  My guess is that biblical accounts had a great deal to do with that. The writers of the old testament seem to have hated everyone but their own tribes.
  
  In similar vein, there seems to be some attempt at the moment to 'rehabilitate' the Acheaemiadied (sp?!) Persians as a jolly civilised and accomplished lot, whose empire was peaceful and prosperous, despite what the Greeks thought of them. That may be, but they were still stupid/mean enough to want to conquer independent Greece, which HAS to be a severe black mark against them.Μύ
  From what I've read of the Greeks of the period, they were a pretty warlike people themselves. Still, nobody likes to be conquered by Persians.
  
  It's interesting the point about archeologists coming to like and admire the cultures they specialise in. Let's hope that isn't true of those who specialise in the Aztecs and the Mayans!
  
  ·΅±τΎ±³ϊ²ΉΜύ
  As a matter of fact, Eliza, I took a course in the Pre-Inca civilisations of Peru when I was a undergraduate university student, and the professor, while well able to handle that course, was actually an expert in the archaeology of meso-America, and professed to admire the peoples to whom you refer. He had a particular affection for the Maya because, as he put it, they built a mighty civilisation in the heart of a steaming jungle, a fact that made them absolutely unique. All other ancient civilisations, he said, grew in rather arid areas either beside or between rivers or lakes -- none but the Maya were able to initiate a civilisation in a tropical rain forest then proceed to build an empire that had its centre in such an environment.
  
  I've met some people who actually like George Bush Jr., so I guess there are those can forgive anything.
  
  

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  Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  Well, say what you like about Dubya, but he aint as bad as the Mayans! (although I guess you can argue he goes in for human sacrifice too, but in a different way...war.)(but I think that's a bit glib and trite on my part - there's a sigficant cultural difference between overt human sacrifice, which is utterly sick, and a culture that tolerates war)(oh dear, I'm openign a can of worms, I can sense!)
  
  Is the theory that the Mayans died out because the water cycle changed and they ran out of water credible, by the way? Surely in a jungle there is just so much rainfall it wouldnt' really be impacted?
  
  Eliza

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  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 23rd April 2006

  ...at the beginning of Assurbanipal's reign there was so much ''hatred of Assyrian cruelty and rapacity that a series of massive revolts occurred throughout the empire''...
  
  
  ...an earlier Assyrian monarch who boasted, after having successfully besieged some city, that he built a pillar over the city gates and flayed alive all the city leaders and covered the pilllar with their skins. He impaled a select group of others, walled up some inside a structure of some sort, cut the limbs off of all the officers in the opposing army...
  
  Μύ
  
  The accession of Assurbanipal to the Assyrian throne was not easy. He faced revolt from several quarters and had to contend with a brother who laid equal claim to the kingship, and whose opposition fanned the revolts into full scale civil war (as we would term it today). Even given that the accounts of Assyrian cruelty have been seized on in antiquity by Hebrew scholars eager to portray them in a poor light, it does not take much imagination to understand just how 'dirty' a civil war can become, and especially in times when wholesale slaughter with great cruelty was an accepted part and parcel of warfare anyway. I would contend that a parallel statement could be made for almost all the incidents of such succession disputes that occurred in that region in those times (and there were several that descended into civil wars) with regard to both the cruelty exhibited and the hatreds engendered in their resolution.
  
  The second incident you refer to is lifted straight from the Hebrew texts and describes Ashur-natsir-pal's sacking of Suru (in modern day Iraq, east of the Euphrates). This was a city that had revolted against the new king and, under an Aramaean Akhiababa was well on its way to establishing itself as a new 'capital' for a federation of disgruntled statelets that complained they had not seen enough return from Ashur-natsir-pal's predescessors great expansion of Assyrian territory. Suru was therefore no ordinary little revolt, but one that could well have brought down the newly established empire if it had been allowed continue. An example would have had to have been made of it, so I have no doubt the great cruelties alluded to by the Hebrew scholars have a basis in fact. Interestingly, Ashur-natsir-pal's later reign was marked by great cultural initiatives, such as library building and state sponsored irrigation works, and was also noted for its unheard of peace (!), a commodity in as little supply then in the neighbourhood as it apparently is now.
  
  I am not contradicting you Erik, just pointing out that I tend never to accept the source material (especially the written record) at face value. The ancient texts and tablets tell a story - but not always the one that their authors intended.

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  Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Monday, 24th April 2006

  nordmann:
  
  Certainly no criticism inferred. The reason I initiated the post was to find out whether or not my readings re Assyrian character were unusual for the period.
  
  The portion that you say was lifted straight from the Hebrew texts came from writings of a gentleman named Samuel Kramer, an individual whom, I gather, is an archaeologist of some repute. He used it, I believe, to exemplify the savagery of the Assyrians and he certainly convinced me. Was that sort of behaviour typical of peoples of that area/time-period when a rebellion such as you describe occurred? If so, it was definitely a time period in which I would not have wanted to reside.
  
  I've read of the manner in which some of the far eastern conquerors treated inhabitants of rebellious cities, and while they killed wantonly, they don't appear to have been quite as sadistic. Timur built pyramids of skulls outside of conquered cities, but there is no evidence that he wasted time torturing the people he killed....he just wiped them out and left.

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  Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 24th April 2006

  Kramer placed great importance on linking that which he translated from Sumerian texts to other known works, namely the 'histories' compiled by the Jews in their sacred texts, many of which appear unchanged in the christian Old Testament. They lent his discoveries a validity and inferred an unquestionable authority on both him and his research. In such an endeavour however there is a tendency (indeed a temptation) to place literal faith in what one discovers can be read, and later archaeological theorists have watered Kramer's deductions down somewhat or introduced provisos that he never contemplated - as a slavish acceptance of the historical record according to the scriptures is now deemed unwise.
  
  But I'm not knocking Kramer, without whom so much of the Sumerian written record and literature would still be a mystery. From my point of view, Kramer's translations when viewed chronologically can also be used to indicate a shift in 'propaganda' emphasis throughout the centuries concerned as empirical powers waxed and waned - and it is against this backdrop that we can best judge the validity of the cruelty and genocide claims laid against the Assyrians (or for that matter the glib references to genocide on the part of Jews and their allies in the sources that went unitemised or elaborated upon). History is written by the winners, and unfortunately for the Assyrians they were two time losers. Worse, their second annihilation at the hands of the Medeans coincided with the emergence of a succession of subsequent would-be empires, all of whom borrowed heavily from Assyrian military and organisational prowess, and all of whom disassociated themselves from that tradition in case it lessened their claim to supremacy. It is no wonder Assyrians got the resultant press that they did!

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