Gojko Barjamovic wrote:
Administration and Army:
Assyrian imperial administration left a much smaller number of records than some of the preceding states in the region. The surveys of the economic underpinnings of the Assyrian Empire undertaken by [Nicholas] Postgate are still the authoritative account of the matter. Cuneiform writing appears to have served primarily to pass on messages instead of being used in bookkeeping and the administration of resources. To a large extent this may be the result of developments in the writing system, since texts were increasingly written in the Aramaic language and on perishable materials. But it is equally clear that Assyrian management was hierarchal and based on an oral command structure grounded in personal relations of trust that would not always have required writing. The state archives do contain judicial records, administrative texts, decrees, state treaties, and even scholarly works, but their main bulk is made up by an extensive correspondence that bears witness to a complex social hierarchy in which rank and status were linked directly to mandate. Many of the letters that ended up in the archives were produced lower down in the chain of command and appear to have been sent to the palace for final authorization.
Through a strict but simple system centered on taxation, military service, and corvée, and based on a direct line of authority that connected individual estates to the mayor and provincial governors, and the governors to the king, an effort was made to reduce the number of administrative steps needed to move resources from their place of origin to their intended destination.
The provincial governors served as military commanders and facilitated diplomatic relations with neighboring foreign and client states. Examples of direct correspondence between heads of state are not as common as one would expect, presumably because the governors had been put in charge of managing everyday contact and only sent reports to the capital as issues arose. This decentralized system took full advantage of a familiarity with local affairs and shortened response time, but the letters sent from provincial administrators also show that imperial policy was not left to local interpretation. A course of action was charted from the capital and implemented by the governors.
Information would pass to and from the royal court by way of road stations, fast couriers, and a network of spies. The imperial provinces, whose number varies greatly through history from a dozen to more than 70, were subdivided into districts managed by a hierarchy of civil servants that included superintendents, mayors, town managers, village inspectors, and fortress commanders.
All state officers were in principle appointed directly by the king, but they were often actively promoted for royal approval by local authorities and served within their confines. On a local level, communities were often headed by city elders or tribal leaders, who would function as semi-autonomous bodies of government. Royally appointed delegates would transcend such local networks of power to act with supreme authority on specific matters. Cadres of civil servants, many of them eunuchs, ran the central and provincial administrations.
Legal institutions in a physical sense (e.g., court buildings) were not maintained by the state, and the imperial administration would influence existing local systems of adjudication mainly through the appointment of key officials. Any relationship between central and local legislation is unclear, but the acknowledgment of existing community jurisdiction and enforcement of property rights was probably the rule. Arbitration could be provided and regulated by the state, and ideally the ruler functioned as supreme judge and highest court of appeal. The administrative and legal system is primarily known through private judicial documents and financial records, royal decrees, and letters. Only a single compilation of normative regulations known as the “Middle Assyrian Laws” (mostly eleventh-century BCE copies of fourteenth-century originals) survives from Assyria itself. This collection is characterized by references to physical brutality and principle of retaliation without a trace of the flexible system of arbitration and mediation evidenced in earlier Assyrian history. It is unclear whether these “laws” refer to actual practice or project a societal ideal. Taken at face value, they present an image of a ruthless and misogynous society with less capacity for clemency than its historical predecessors.
In the client states, local rulers would renounce their right to lead an independent foreign policy and agree to interact with their neighbors only through Assyrian mediation. In return for their loyalty, the empire would guarantee protection against foreign and domestic enemies and the assertion of local dynastic continuity. Subordinate elites were tied to the Assyrian king through redistribution of imperial revenue, public displays of friendship and alliance, the celebration of religious festivals, local grants of privilege, dynastic marriages, and the education of young nobles from the client states at the imperial court. Their vested interest in nurturing a close institutional and personal relationship with the empire was underlined in state treaties and reiterated at ceremonial gatherings at the royal capital. Children of client rulers were brought to live in the Assyrian palaces and would receive formal training as part of the cosmopolitan scene of the imperial court. Ideally, they would become loyal subjects of the empire, who would one day return to rule their country of origin. De facto, they were also hostages in case of rebellion. Political refugees from rival states were likewise stationed in the royal palaces, and Assyria kept a permanent store of disappointed claimants, defeated rebels, and dispossessed foreign rulers, who supposedly held their allegiance to the crown, and who were ready to be used in negotiations or placed on their native throne with Assyrian support.
Instead of turning them into a rallying ground for resistance, local civic institutions were usually left intact and were co-opted by the empire. The impact of the empire on existing social order was therefore limited—provincial towns and client states held virtual autonomy in local matters and many leaders were appointed by the communal institutions with imperial approval. Ideally, they were elected by peers to act as an instrument of the community both internally and in relation to the central power. In reality, Assyrian policy actively sought to draw the loyalty of local leadership away from its constituency so as to penetrate and coordinate aspects of society to which the empire had only limited direct access. The process of submission could take place at any level in the social hierarchy, but the basic element of reciprocity remained the same: subjects were bound by oath to certain obligations and would receive a number of privileges in return. In reality, a pro-Assyrian movement seems to have existed in most places, ready to form partnerships built on mutually reinforcing strategies.
In addition to a policy based on voluntary cooperation, the empire actively pursued a coercive approach. In some situations it would take what it wanted by strength alone, giving little or nothing in return. Through systematic demonstrations of destruction and cruelty in controlled doses, the empire would successfully build up an anticipation of violence. Hostages and kidnapped foreigners and gods were used to force reluctant polities into submission or were taken for the purpose of a later exchange or trade of prisoners. But at the same time, it was made clear that violence could be avoided by accommodation so that power to hurt was transferred into bargaining power. Detailed pictorial representations of torture and death shown in the Assyrian palace decorations are products of this ideology. Scenes of rebellion and punishment were set in direct relation to each other and presented as inseparable and inevitable.
During the late empire period, client states were transformed into provinces only when they proved too unstable to control through indirect hegemony. In many cases, revolts against central authority would first result in the disloyal ruler being replaced with a more devoted local subject. When a former client was turned into an imperial province, a governor would be appointed and the population given status as imperial citizens and subjected to regular taxation. In the rhetoric of the royal inscriptions, the God Assur delivered the territory to Assyria “for administration and direction” and the king would begin the task of “taking and reorganizing” the new land, to impose taxes and service “like Assyrians”, and “count its people as citizens of Assyria”. A clear institutional hierarchy was imposed and implemented in places where it did not already exist, and local systems of labor, production, and military service were reorganized. Imperial control was reinforced by a manipulation of religious institutions and practices, e.g., through exceptional grants and privileges accorded to sanctuaries. By this process, Assyria gradually changed from what had in essence been a territorial core with an irregularly distributed outer network of provinces and clients connected by transportation and communication corridors into a more territorially integrated state policed by a professional army.
During the late empire, the term “king’s unit” (kiṣir šarri) is thought to refer to the standing army. Infantry (raksūte) formed the backbone of the army and continued to be conscripted through the ilku-system according to which usufruct of land was linked to state service (in person or through substitute) in military or public works for a certain time each year. Veterans could be settled in military settlements established on newly acquired territory. As more troops were required, even an extension of the corvée system beyond landholding arrangements could not keep up with the demands of the expanding army. In addition to the conscripts, various auxiliary troops came to form part of the Assyrian army. These included specialized and foreign troops, such as charioteers, Elamite bowmen, and Gurrean spearmen. One group in particular, the Itu’ean archers, appear to have been feared for their brutality, and their mere mention in letters from the Assyrian king to unruly subjects often seems to have been sufficient to set things straight …
… The late imperial period saw a continuous development in military camps and siege equipment, which enabled the army to efficiently fight aggressive wars of conquest when required. Census lists were maintained in each province for efficient conscription, substitution, and exemption, and the army was grounded in a system of provisioning, standardization, a developed intelligence network, and skilled corps of engineers. Together, they formed the military juggernaut that ultimately allowed for the imperial successes of Assyria, and earned it a less than flattering place in the histories of its contemporaries, whose armies it all surpassed in both skill and size.
Religion, Art, and State Ideology:
The royal court in the capital city formed the pivot around which the empire was structured and organized. As a social institution, it was set within the spatial framework of the imperial palaces. Physically, it was a locale for the king and elite to interact, and the focal point of the state administration. As a setting, it was a main venue for the advertisement and manifestation of royal power and ideology, and a conspicuous backdrop for military reviews, political negotiations, and the reception of foreign dignitaries.
Assyria had a number of royal and provincial palaces, and the imperial capital moved several times. During the early empire, Tukulti-Ninurta I (ca. 1244–1208 BCE) made an effort to move his residence from its traditional seat in Assur to a newly constructed city on the opposite bank of the Tigris River. He failed, and was ultimately murdered, in part presumably due to the resistance to his project by the urban elites of Assur. The first successful relocation of the seat of royal power took place in the early ninth century BCE when Assurnasirpal moved the state capital to the city of Kalhu, almost 100 kilometers upriver. The urban layout and program of decoration chosen for this new royal palace reflects the confident self-perception of a reviving empire. It reinterprets the traditional functions of a royal seat and publicizes abstract concepts of rule and universal dominance through the symbolic appropriation of space. Its art was set to glorify the ruler and celebrate the universal empire. It emphasizes social hierarchies and defined actions, mobilizes societal core ambitions, forming a system of communication and representation and an instrument of state integration through the symbolic language of power. Monumental inscriptions were carved onto the palace walls in the cuneiform script; together with statuary and stone reliefs, they form an artistic unit, set to convey an official notion of kingship that justifies both political convergence and the physical separation between ruler and ruled.
It is hard to say to what extent such monumental backdrops contributed to the formation of a state-wide elite identity, but there were clearly competing ideas about hegemony in circulation. The surviving correspondence between kings and royal scholars shows that opposing views were present at court, and that political rivalry was an important royal mechanism of elite control. A retinue of scholarly advisors guided royal decision-making through the observation and analysis of omens and the performance of rituals. Extensive libraries holding a range of scholarly works were assembled in the state capitals and the imperial palaces. This was the intellectual environment within which Assyrian imperial ideology was formed and transformed; a process which one can follow at times in the correspondence of the individuals involved. To what degree the narrative passages of the royal annals and carved scenes of the palaces were the result of the personal preference of the individual rulers is debatable, but the scholars and artisans clearly worked for an audience whose essential values and ideas they would want to capture and perhaps reshape to provide with new and enhanced meaning.
Beyond the visual apparatus of the royal palaces, a characteristic imperial iconography was designed and disseminated through smaller media. A distinctive design kit co-opted well-known and easily recognizable symbols of power into particular contexts, including royal furniture, jewelry, and drinking sets. Such material elements of elite culture were appropriated by both local and foreign leaders, and used to legitimize and accentuate current relations of power through imitation. As the empire expanded and became increasingly culturally and politically diverse, graphic representations took on a growing importance as a vehicle for immediately decipherable and translatable claims to political authority. Significant parts of this “royal package” were ultimately passed down alongside the palace blueprint to succeeding states from India to Iberia.
Assyria bolstered its dominance in elite art through the development of a distinctive iconography that tied certain symbols directly to the executive power of particular institutions. A case in point are the so-called bureau seals, which were associated with a precise household and could be identified through iconography alone. These were not only an innovation that allowed officials to manage the delegation of institutional authority within the rapidly expanding empire of the ninth century BCE. The extension from traditional cylindrical inscribed seals to non-inscribed and impersonal stamp seals also meant that messages of imperial presence were constantly circulated and rendered immediately present and prolific among a geographically dispersed body of imperial subjects. The iconography of the bureau seals would broadcast short coded messages in a way similar to later coinage, and in fact, the characteristic seal of the Assyrian “royal bureau” that shows the king as a slayer of a lion was appropriated into later Achaemenid iconography and found its way onto the silver coins of fourth-century BCE Sidon.
Particular to Assyrian visual art was the extensive use of historical narrative to relay imperial claims to universal power. The astonishing scale on which the state represented itself through this medium is unrivaled in the ancient world, with more than three kilometers of decorated relief panels uncovered in the so-called North-West Palace of Assurnaṣirpal II at Kalhu alone. A new historiographical genre was developed alongside the visual representations to situate and explain political events through lengthy poetic discourse.
The impact of such vehicles of imperial ideology upon its audience is perhaps best revealed by the systematic way in which they were targeted by the forces who laid waste to the empire in the late seventh century BCE. Hundreds of images were laboriously altered through chiseling and hammering to relay a counter-message of liberation and imperial collapse. In one example, a lion—the Assyrian king’s enemy—was set free from the hold of the king by someone cutting its tail in the image. In another elaborate example, the king’s face was mutilated, his wrists severed, and his bowstring cut. This pointed destruction underlines the importance of imperial iconography and hints at the power of its imagery.
Assyrian imperial religion and ideology legitimized domination and provided a rationale for territorial growth, but a particular creed was not proselytized. Religion was inclusive in character and the power of deities was considered universal. A theologization of the cult of Assur was introduced during the early empire period, which promoted his image in particular as world ruler. Kingship had in essence been religious in character at least since the city-state period, but with the rise of the empire, the king’s role as interlocutor of Assur’s property became increasingly emphasized in state-sanctioned representations. The ruler was portrayed as the result of a separate act of creation, and sometimes stated to belong to a distinct physical category between gods and humankind. However, unlike Egypt or Hatti, deification of the king (living or dead) did not take place. The ruler was a physical agent and a link between humans and deities; he was presented alternately as a being of supernatural perfection, and the humble shepherd under God’s bidding. The historical role of the king as a primus inter pares thus remained conceptually intact, even if it had become increasingly hypocritical in practice.
Empire Entrenched:
As wealth was concentrated in a small circle of royal dependents with their fates linked directly to the ruler in exchange for wielding executive power, the state grew stronger in authority but more fragile in structure. Elites transcended the imperial melting pot and came to represent more than the sum of the provinces. On a cosmological level this was celebrated in grand triumphs, elaborate court ceremonies, and imperial gardens that set the precedent for the later Persian paradises. In parades of vanquished enemies and the relocation of plants and animals from the four corners of the world, a new and fictitious imperial landscape of universal power was fashioned and projected.
The cosmopolis of the great imperial capital at Nineveh itself came to embody the empire in its diversity and fragility. Ambivalence toward foreign influences is manifest in anxieties of adaptation and counteracted by tendencies of antiquarianism and exoticism. Foreign traditions were both fused and rejected in policy, art, and scholarship, leading to a radical restructuring of imperial identity. Gravitation toward the capital at the expense of the provinces became problematic as there was little focus on promoting an Assyrian identity outside the imperial elite.
The two major vehicles of integration and assimilation—large-scale deportation and the imperial army—ultimately proved counterproductive as national identities were retained (and sometimes even emphasized) in exile or through ethnically based military auxiliaries. Professional identities became gradually emphasized in the imperial core as the empire stretched between simultaneous cultural homogenization and ethnic fragmentation. The foundation of cities populated by people from across Western Asia was a new phenomenon, decisive for the flux in political and cultural identities that shaped the environment in which the foundational religious and moral traditions of new religions and philosophies were formed. But Assyrian views on Assyria also reveal a struggle between imperial and ethnic identities of the subjugated people, many of whom were “counted as Assyrians” and became part of the imperial conglomerate. Rulers made use of both stick and carrot to hold on to power, often at great expense for the royal treasury. Financial support for the cities of Babylonia during the reign of Sargon II according to his own estimate exceeded 4.5 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver. This staggering sum is indicative of a somewhat uneven policy toward the old cities of the south that combined ambivalence of conquest with cultural reverence and included the imposition of rule as well as exemption from normal levies of corvée, taxation, and military drafts. The ideology of Babylonia as the “cultural cradle” of Assur led to hesitant and oftentimes contradictory policies that proved dangerous to imperial integrity in the long run.
With the increased aligning of power around the king as individual, royal death became an auspicious time that left the state in a dangerous state of limbo. Loyalties were personal and had to be reaffirmed. All treaties, which were always individual and predicated upon oaths rather than being ratified between abstract state entities, had to be renegotiated. Principles and policies were re-established. All offices were reappointed. After the particularly long reign of Assurbanipal (668–ca. 627) this system suffered a shock and was never properly reset. As new loyalties were formed, several candidates for the throne emerged, and opposing alliances weakened the chain of command. As long as the empire would offer opportunity as a viable alternative to devastation, the system would endure. Once it ceased to do so, the structure collapsed.
The fall of the Assyrian Empire has been called a “historical scandal” due to its apparent inexplicability and suddenness. But the imperial template or “idea” of how an empire styles itself endured and came to form a model for the empires that followed. Assyria itself fell into ruin within a generation of its peak and disappeared almost without physical trace after 1,500 years as a vivid political and cultural force. According to later tradition, the catalyst for its downfall was a coalition of discontented Median and Babylonian tribal leaders. In fact, the empire had been torn by civil wars and court rivalry several times in history, and yet, it had always survived such periods of internal weakness and dynastic strife. It seems to be the unprecedented territorial expansion and political centralization of the last century of empire which brought about the societal changes on a deeper level that rendered the structure vulnerable. Assyria had become more dependent upon its ability to rule through existing local political and social structures and had grown more inclusive and tolerant of regional variation within its frontiers at the expense of cultural integrity and administrative homogeneity. The mass deportations had culminated during the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon, and Sennacherib, and appear to have decreased during the final two generations of the empire. Perhaps they had proved too costly or too difficult to manage, or perhaps there were fewer people left to move. The great urban centers of Nineveh, Kalhu, and Arbela had grown to a point where they could no longer survive on local agricultural production and were dependent upon outside labor and provisions. In spite of the effort to create the required physical infrastructure and the use of designated agricultural areas to intensify food production for the cities, the income that was generated in the extensive newly subjugated areas may have proven lower than the cost of the required military presence.
It also became increasingly difficult to isolate imperial clients from each other, and the upkeep of the civic privileges that were used to bargain for loyalty from local authorities became progressively more demanding on the imperial treasury. The system of royal patronage was strong at the center but not very far-reaching, so to penetrate underlying structures, the empire made use of a developed network of resident state agents who actively sought to capitalize on local political dissent. Such attempts often backfired, at least in part due to the complex network of states and local political alliances surrounding Assyria that had been strengthened under imperial pressure. Indirect hegemony through local clients presumably began as a cost-effective approach but proved insufficient in the longer run. Eventually client states were either de facto abandoned by the empire (Central Anatolia, Egypt) or were turned into provinces (Cilicia, Commagene, Sidon). In some cases, the heavy tribute levied from client rulers would be a cause of conflict between local elites and their subjects and could later lead to imperial intervention and trigger the transformation of a client state into an imperial province. But more often, emphasis appears to have been upon ensuring security in lieu of an irregular income from outlying areas. In essence, Assyrian imperialism became a self-perpetuating mechanism in search of security, resources, and a balance of power and funding that could not be achieved.
Power struggles between the city-states and tribal or kinship groups in Babylonia were a particular stumbling stone. The old urban centers were revered by the Assyrians for reasons of culture, and peace was preserved both through civic privileges and by actively manipulating Babylonian urban traditions of kingship in relation to the resident tribal groups. The urbanites traditionally defined themselves in political and cultural terms; their populations were multiethnic, proclaimed no common ancestry, and shared their language, religion, and culture with a number of other cities. They defined themselves on the basis of a civic identity and local belonging, and were characterized by a formal and highly institutionalized type of community. The tribal groups (Aramean, Chaldean, and Arab) identified by affiliation to a common ancestor and were not primarily bound by territory. Assyria’s failure to divide and rule these two groups in the long run became an important reason for its downfall. After the devastating civil war of 652–648 BCE, significant parts of the population in Babylonia had become permanently alienated from the empire. In addition, the retaliatory attack that destroyed Elam for its support of Babylonia in the war led to a fundamental shift in the political power balance and an opening up of the eastern flanks of the empire.
The inner threat to the head of state by palace intrigue and dynastic squabble also meant that Assyria gradually came to hollow out its own infrastructure of power in favor of autocracy. Provincial governors and high-ranking military officials held positions of great political and social authority until the mid-eighth century BCE, but with the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III, the king in effect became an absolute ruler. The magnates, most of whom were eunuchs, were dependent upon the king as person for their position, and held no claim to authority through hereditary right. The uppermost echelon of society grew separate from the traditional landed elite, and the latter appears to have had mounting difficulties in meeting the requirements of the former.
The late Assyrian Empire promoted the idea of a multinational state and came to invest its legitimacy directly in the public personality of the current ruler instead of the institutions of monarchy and aristocracy. When Assurbanipal died in ca. 627 BCE after almost four decades of rule, the transition of authority did not go smoothly and, in reality, the empire never recovered. As enemies struck the weakened Assyria, it shattered not only the empire. The heartland reverted to agricultural subsistence and its population collapsed. Presumably, tens of thousands starved or fled.
The traditional elites of the heartland had been eliminated as a hindrance to royal centralization and military efficiency. This explains why Assyria disappeared so totally after its defeat. There was no default structure to fall back on, and nothing from which to build. Without the king, there was no state …
… Although the Assyrian dynasty ceased to exist, and the state itself was demolished … [the] successes achieved by Assyria in bringing massive diversity under a single-state ideology and personal direction proved so robust that it became a foundational prototype for a succession of empires across Eurasia …
The Source:
Gojko Barjamovic, ‘The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire’, in The Oxford World History of Empire, Volume 2, The History of Empires, edited by Peter Fibiger Bang, C.A. Bayly, and Walter Scheidel, Oxford 2021 [pp. 91-103]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.