The Assyrian kingdom and its history. History of ancient Assyria (state, country, kingdom) briefly Assyria is better

How did the first empire arise and fall? History of the Assyrian state

Assyria - this name alone terrified the inhabitants of the Ancient East. It was the Assyrian state, possessing a strong, combat-ready army, that was the first of the states to embark on a broad policy of conquest, and the library of clay tablets collected by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal became a valuable source for the study of science, culture, history, and ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, who belonged to the Semitic language group (this group also includes Arabic and Hebrew) and came from the arid regions of the Arabian Peninsula and the Syrian Desert, through which they roamed, settled in the middle part of the Tigris River valley (the territory of modern Iraq).

Ashur became their first major outpost and one of the capitals of the future Assyrian state. Thanks to the neighborhood and, as a result, acquaintance with the more developed Sumerian, Babylonian and Akkadian cultures, the presence of the Tigris and irrigated lands, the presence of metal and timber, which their southern neighbors did not have, thanks to the location at the intersection of important trade routes of the Ancient East, the foundations of statehood were formed among the former nomads , and the settlement of Ashur turned into a rich and powerful center of the Middle East region.

Most likely, it was control over the most important trade routes that pushed Ashur (that is what the Assyrian state was originally called) onto the path of territorial aggressive aspirations (in addition to the seizure of slaves and booty), thereby predetermining the further foreign policy line of the state.

The first Assyrian king to begin a major military expansion was Shamshiadat I. In 1800 BC. he conquered all of Northern Mesopotamia, subjugated part of Cappadocia (modern Turkey) and the large Middle Eastern city of Mari.

In military campaigns, his troops reached the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and Assyria itself began to compete with the powerful Babylon. Shamshiadat I himself called himself “king of the universe.” However, at the end of the 16th century BC. For about 100 years, Assyria fell under the rule of the state of Mitanni, located in northern Mesopotamia.

A new surge of conquests falls on the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser I (1274-1245 BC), who destroyed the state of Mitanni, capturing 9 cities with the capital, Tukultininurt I (1244-1208 BC), who significantly expanded the possessions of the Assyrian power , who successfully intervened in Babylonian affairs and carried out a successful raid on the powerful Hittite state, and Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077 BC), who made the first sea voyage in the history of Assyria across the Mediterranean Sea.

But, perhaps, Assyria reached its greatest power in the so-called Neo-Assyrian period of its history. The Assyrian king Tiglapalasar III (745-727 BC) conquered almost the entire powerful Urartian kingdom (Urartu was located on the territory of modern Armenia, up to present-day Syria), except for the capital, Phenicia, Palestine, Syria, and the fairly strong Damascus kingdom.

The same king, without bloodshed, ascended the throne of Babylonia under the name Pulu. Another Assyrian king Sargon II (721-705 BC), spending a lot of time on military campaigns, seizing new lands and suppressing uprisings, finally pacified Urartu, captured the state of Israel and forcefully subjugated Babylonia, accepting the title of governor there.

In 720 BC. Sargon II defeated the combined forces of the rebel Syria, Phenicia and Egypt that joined them, and in 713 BC. makes a punitive expedition to Media (Iran), captured even before him. The rulers of Egypt, Cyprus, and the Sabaean kingdom in South Arabia fawned on this king.

His son and successor Sennacherrib (701-681 BC) inherited a huge empire, in which uprisings periodically had to be suppressed in various places. So, in 702 BC. Sennaherrib, in two battles at Kutu and Kish, defeated the powerful Babylonian-Elamite army (the Elamite state, which supported the rebel Babylonia, was located on the territory of modern Iran), capturing 200,000 thousand prisoners and rich booty.

Babylon itself, whose inhabitants were partly exterminated and partly resettled to various regions of the Assyrian state, was flooded by Sennacherib with the released waters of the Euphrates River. Sennacherib also had to fight a coalition of Egypt, Judea and the Arab Bedouin tribes. During this war, Jerusalem was besieged, but the Assyrians failed to take it due, as scientists believe, to tropical fever that crippled their army.

The main foreign policy success of the new king Esarhaddon was the conquest of Egypt. In addition, he restored the destroyed Babylon. The last powerful Assyrian king, during whose reign Assyria flourished, was the already mentioned library collector Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC). Under him, the hitherto independent city-states of Phenicia Tire and Arvada became subordinate to Assyria, and a punitive campaign was carried out against Assyria's longtime enemy, the Elamite state (Elam then helped Ashurbanipal's brother in the struggle for power), during which in 639 BC. e. Its capital, Susa, was taken.

During the reign of the Three Kings (631-612 BC) - after Ashurbanipal - uprisings raged in Assyria. Endless wars exhausted Assyria. In Media, the energetic king Cyaxares came to power, expelling the Scythians from his territory and even, according to some statements, managed to attract them to his side, no longer considering himself to owe anything to Assyria.

In Babylonia, a longtime rival of Assyria, King Nabobalassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, who also did not consider himself a subject of Assyria, comes to power. These two rulers formed an alliance against their common enemy Assyria and began joint military operations. Under the prevailing conditions, one of the sons of Ashurbanipal - Sarak - was forced to enter into an alliance with Egypt, which by that time was already independent.

Military actions between the Assyrians and Babylonians in 616-615. BC. went with varying degrees of success. At this time, taking advantage of the absence of the Assyrian army, the Medes broke through to the indigenous regions of Assyria. In 614 BC. they took the ancient sacred capital of the Assyrians, Ashur, and in 612 BC. the combined Median-Babylonian troops approached Nineveh (the modern city of Mosul in Iraq).

Since the time of King Sennacherib, Nineveh has been the capital of the Assyrian power, a large and beautiful city of giant squares and palaces, the political center of the Ancient East. Despite the stubborn resistance of Nineveh, the city was also taken. The remnants of the Assyrian army, led by King Ashuruballit, retreated to the Euphrates.

In 605 BC. In the Battle of Karchemish near the Euphrates, the Babylonian prince Nebuchadnezzar (the future famous king of Babylon), with the support of the Medes, defeated the combined Assyrian-Egyptian troops. The Assyrian state ceased to exist. However, the Assyrian people did not disappear, maintaining their national identity.

What was the Assyrian state like?

Army. Attitude towards conquered peoples.

The Assyrian state (approximately XXIV BC - 605 BC) at the highest peak of its power owned, by the standards of that time, vast territories (modern Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Armenia, part of Iran, Egypt). To capture these territories, Assyria had a strong, combat-ready army that had no analogues in the ancient world of that time.

The Assyrian army was divided into cavalry, which in turn was divided into chariot and simple cavalry and into infantry - lightly armed and heavily armed. The Assyrians in a later period of their history, unlike many states of that time, were under the influence of Indo-European peoples, for example, the Scythians, famous for their cavalry (it is known that the Scythians were in the service of the Assyrians, and their union was secured by marriage between the daughter of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon and the Scythian king Bartatua) began to widely use simple cavalry, which made it possible to successfully pursue the retreating enemy. Thanks to the availability of metal in Assyria, the Assyrian heavily armed warrior was relatively well protected and armed.

In addition to these types of troops, for the first time in history, the Assyrian army used engineering auxiliary troops (recruited mainly from slaves), who were engaged in laying roads, constructing pontoon bridges and fortified camps. The Assyrian army was one of the first (and perhaps the very first) to use various siege weapons, such as a ram and a special device, somewhat reminiscent of an ox vein ballista, which fired stones weighing up to 10 kg at a distance of 500-600 m at a besieged city The kings and generals of Assyria were familiar with frontal and flank attacks and a combination of these attacks.

Also, the espionage and intelligence system was quite well established in countries where military operations were planned or were dangerous for Assyria. Finally, a warning system, like signal beacons, was quite widely used. The Assyrian army tried to act unexpectedly and quickly, without giving the enemy the opportunity to come to their senses, often making sudden night raids on the enemy camp. When necessary, the Assyrian army resorted to “starvation” tactics, destroying wells, blocking roads, etc. All this made the Assyrian army strong and invincible.

In order to weaken and keep the conquered peoples in greater subordination, the Assyrians practiced the resettlement of the conquered peoples to other areas of the Assyrian empire that were uncharacteristic for their economic activities. For example, settled agricultural peoples were resettled in deserts and steppes suitable only for nomads. So, after the Assyrian king Sargon captured the 2nd state of Israel, 27,000 thousand Israelis were resettled in Assyria and Media, and Babylonians, Syrians and Arabs settled in Israel itself, who later became known as the Samaritans and were included in the New Testament parable of the “Good Samaritan”.

It should also be noted that in their cruelty the Assyrians surpassed all other peoples and civilizations of that time, which were also not particularly humane. The most sophisticated tortures and executions of a defeated enemy were considered normal for the Assyrians. One of the reliefs shows the Assyrian king feasting in the garden with his wife and enjoying not only the sounds of harps and tympanums, but also the bloody sight: the severed head of one of his enemies hangs on a tree. Such cruelty served to intimidate enemies, and also partly had religious and ritual functions.

Political system. Population. Family.

Initially, the city-state of Ashur (the core of the future Assyrian Empire) was an oligarchic slave-owning republic governed by a council of elders, which changed every year and was recruited from the wealthiest residents of the city. The tsar's share in governing the country was small and was reduced to the role of commander-in-chief of the army. However, gradually the royal power strengthened. The transfer of the capital from Ashur for no apparent reason to the opposite bank of the Tigris by the Assyrian king Tukultininurt 1 (1244-1208 BC) apparently indicates the king’s desire to break with the Ashur council, which became only a city council.

The main basis of the Assyrian state were rural communities, which were the owners of the land fund. The fund was divided into plots that belonged to individual families. Gradually, as the aggressive campaigns are successful and wealth is accumulated, rich community members-slave owners emerge, and their poor fellow community members fall into debt slavery. So, for example, the debtor was obliged to provide a certain number of reapers to a rich neighbor-creditor at the time of harvest in exchange for paying interest on the loan amount. Another very common way to fall into debt slavery was to give the debtor into temporary slavery to the creditor as collateral.

Noble and wealthy Assyrians did not perform any duties in favor of the state. The differences between the rich and poor inhabitants of Assyria were shown by clothing, or rather, the quality of the material and the length of the “kandi” - a short-sleeved shirt, widespread in the ancient Near East. The more noble and rich a person was, the longer his candi was. In addition, all the ancient Assyrians grew thick, long beards, which were considered a sign of morality, and carefully looked after them. Only eunuchs did not wear beards.

The so-called “Middle Assyrian laws” have reached us, regulating various aspects of the daily life of ancient Assyria and being, along with the “laws of Hammurabi,” the most ancient legal monuments.

In ancient Assyria there was a patriarchal family. The power of a father over his children differed little from the power of a master over slaves. Children and slaves were equally counted among the property from which the creditor could take compensation for the debt. The position of a wife also differed little from that of a slave, since a wife was acquired by purchase. The husband had a legally justified right to resort to violence against his wife. After the death of her husband, the wife went to the latter's relatives.

It is also worth noting that the outward sign of a free woman was wearing a veil to cover her face. This tradition was subsequently adopted by Muslims.

Who are the Assyrians?

Modern Assyrians are Christians by religion (the majority belong to the “Holy Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East” and the “Chaldean Catholic Church”), speaking the so-called northeastern New Aramaic language, successors of the Old Aramaic language spoken by Jesus Christ, consider themselves direct descendants of ancient Assyrian state, which we know about from school history textbooks.

The ethnonym “Assyrians” itself, after a long period of oblivion, appears somewhere in the Middle Ages. It was applied to the Aramaic-speaking Christians of modern Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey by European missionaries, who declared them descendants of the ancient Assyrians. This term successfully took root among Christians in this region, surrounded by alien religious and ethnic elements, who saw in it one of the guarantees of their national identity. It was the presence of the Christian faith, as well as the Aramaic language, one of the centers of which was the Assyrian state, that became ethnically consolidating factors for the Assyrian people.

We know practically nothing about the inhabitants of ancient Assyria (the backbone of which occupied the territory of modern Iraq) after the fall of their state under the attack of Media and Babylonia. Most likely, the inhabitants themselves were not completely exterminated; only the ruling class was destroyed. In the texts and annals of the Persian Achaemenid state, one of the satrapies of which was the territory of the former Assyria, we encounter characteristic Aramaic names. Many of these names contain the name Ashur, sacred to the Assyrians (one of the capitals of ancient Assyria).

Many Aramaic-speaking Assyrians occupied quite high positions in the Persian Empire, such as, for example, a certain Pan-Ashur-lumur, who was the secretary of the crowned princess Cambyssia under Cyrus 2, and the Aramaic language itself under the Persian Achaemenids was the language of office work (imperial Aramaic). There is also an assumption that the appearance of the main deity of the Persian Zoroastrians, Ahura Mazda, was borrowed by the Persians from the ancient Assyrian god of war Ashur. Subsequently, the territory of Assyria was occupied by successive different states and peoples.

In the II century. AD the small state of Osroene in western Mesopotamia, inhabited by Armenian-speaking and Armenian populations, with its center in the city of Edessa (the modern Turkish city of Sanliurfa 80 km from the Euphrates and 45 km from the Turkish-Syrian border) thanks to the efforts of the apostles Peter, Thomas and Jude Thaddeus for the first time in history adopted Christianity as the state religion. Having adopted Christianity, the Arameans of Osroene began to call themselves “Syrians” (not to be confused with the Arab population of modern Syria), and their language became the literary language of all Aramaic-speaking Christians and was called “Syriac”, or Middle Aramaic. This language, now practically dead (now used only as a liturgical language in the Assyrian churches), became the basis for the emergence of the New Aramaic language. With the spread of Christianity, the ethnonym “Syrians” was also adopted by other Aramaic-speaking Christians, and then, as mentioned above, the letter A was added to this ethnonym.

The Assyrians were able to maintain the Christian faith and not dissolve into the Muslim and Zoroastrian population around them. In the Arab Caliphate, Assyrian Christians were doctors and scientists. They did a great job of spreading secular education and culture there. Thanks to their translations from Greek into Syriac and Arabic, ancient science and philosophy became accessible to the Arabs.

The First World War was a real tragedy for the Assyrian people. During this war, the leadership of the Ottoman Empire decided to punish the Assyrians for “betrayal,” or more precisely, for helping the Russian army. During the massacre, as well as from forced exile in the desert from 1914 to 1918, according to various estimates, from 200 to 700 thousand Assyrians died (presumably a third of all Assyrians). Moreover, about 100 thousand Eastern Christians were killed in neighboring neutral Persia, whose territory the Turks invaded twice. 9 thousand Assyrians were exterminated by the Iranians themselves in the cities of Khoy and Urmia.

By the way, when Russian troops entered Urmia, from the remnants of the refugees they created detachments, headed by the Assyrian general Elia Agha Petros. With his small army, he managed to hold back the attacks of the Kurds and Persians for some time. Another dark milestone for the Assyrian people was the killing of 3,000 Assyrians in Iraq in 1933.

August 7 is a reminder and day of remembrance of these two tragic events for the Assyrians.

Fleeing various persecutions, many Assyrians were forced to flee the Middle East and were scattered throughout the world. Today, the exact number of all Assyrians living in different countries cannot be established.

According to some data, their number ranges from 3 to 4.2 million people. Half of them live in their traditional habitat - in the countries of the Middle East (Iran, Syria, Turkey, but most of all in Iraq). The remaining half settled throughout the rest of the world. The United States has the second largest Assyrian population in the world after Iraq (the largest number of Assyrians live in Chicago, where there is even a street named after the ancient Assyrian king Sargon). Assyrians also live in Russia.

The Assyrians first appeared on the territory of the Russian Empire after the Russian-Persian War (1826-1828) and the signing of the Turkmanchay Peace Treaty. According to this treaty, Christians living in Persia had the right to move to the Russian Empire. A larger wave of emigration to Russia occurred during the already mentioned tragic events of the First World War. Then many Assyrians found salvation in the Russian Empire, and then in Soviet Russia and Transcaucasia, such as a group of Assyrian refugees walking along with Russian soldiers retreating from Iran. The influx of Assyrians into Soviet Russia continued further.

It was easier for the Assyrians who settled in Georgia and Armenia - there the climate and natural conditions were more or less familiar, and there was an opportunity to engage in familiar agriculture and cattle breeding. The same is true in the south of Russia. In Kuban, for example, Assyrian immigrants from the Iranian region of Urmia founded a village of the same name and began growing red bell peppers. Every year in May, Assyrians from Russian cities and neighboring countries come here: the Hubba (friendship) festival is held here, the program of which includes football matches, national music, and dances.

It was more difficult for the Assyrians who settled in the cities. Former mountaineer farmers, who were also mostly illiterate and did not know the Russian language (many Assyrians did not have Soviet passports until the 1960s), found it difficult to find something to do in urban life. Moscow Assyrians found a way out of this situation by starting to shine shoes, which did not require special skills, and practically monopolized this area in Moscow. Moscow Assyrians settled compactly, along tribal and single-village lines, in the central regions of Moscow. The most famous Assyrian place in Moscow was a house in 3rd Samotechny Lane, inhabited exclusively by Assyrians.

In 1940-1950, the amateur football team “Moscow Cleaner” was created, consisting only of Assyrians. However, the Assyrians played not only football, but also volleyball, as Yuri Vizbor reminded us of in the song “Volleyball on Sretenka” (“The son of an Assyrian is an Assyrian Leo Uranus”). The Moscow Assyrian diaspora continues to exist today. There is an Assyrian church in Moscow, and until recently there was an Assyrian restaurant.

Despite the great illiteracy of the Assyrians, the All-Russian Union of Assyrians “Hayatd-Athur” was created in 1924, national Assyrian schools also operated in the USSR, and the Assyrian newspaper “Star of the East” was published.

Hard times for Soviet Assyrians came in the second half of the 30s, when all Assyrian schools and clubs were abolished, and the small Assyrian clergy and intelligentsia were repressed. The next wave of repression hit the Soviet Assyrians after the war. Many were exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan on trumped-up charges of espionage and sabotage, despite the fact that many Assyrians fought alongside the Russians on the fields of the Great Patriotic War.

Today, the total number of Russian Assyrians ranges from 14,000 to 70,000 people. Most of them live in the Krasnodar Territory and Moscow. Quite a lot of Assyrians live in the former republics of the USSR. In Tbilisi, for example, there is a quarter called Kukia, where Assyrians live.

Today, Assyrians scattered throughout the world (although in the thirties a plan to resettle all Assyrians to Brazil was discussed at a meeting of the League of Nations) have retained their cultural and linguistic identity. They have their own customs, their own language, their own church, their own calendar (according to the Assyrian calendar it is now 6763). They also have their own national dishes - for example, the so-called prahat (which means “hand” in Aramaic and symbolizes the fall of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh), round flatbreads based on wheat and corn dough.

Assyrians are cheerful, cheerful people. They love to sing and dance. All over the world, Assyrians dance the national dance “Sheikhani”.

Short story. Huge Assyria grew from a small nome (administrative district) of Ashur in Northern. For a long time, the “country of Ashur” does not play a significant role in the destinies of Mesopotamia and lags behind its southern neighbors in development. Rise of Assyria falls on the XIII-XII centuries. BC and suddenly ends as a result of the invasion of the Arameans. For a century and a half, the population of the “country of Ashur” experiences the hardships of foreign rule, goes bankrupt, and suffers from hunger.

But in the 9th century. BC e. Assyria is regaining strength. The era of large-scale conquests begins. The Assyrian kings create a perfect military machine and transform their state into the most powerful power in the world. Vast areas of Western Asia submit to the Assyrians. Only at the beginning of the 7th century. BC e. their energy and strength are running out. The revolt of the conquered Babylonians, who entered into an alliance with the tribes of the Medes, leads to the death of the colossal Assyrian empire. The people of traders and soldiers, who carried its weight on their shoulders, heroically resisted for several years. In 609 BC. e. The city of Harran, the last stronghold of the “country of Ashur”, falls.

History of the ancient kingdom of Assyria

Time passed, and already from the 14th century. BC e. in Ashur documents, the ruler began to be called a king, like the rulers of Babylonia, Mitanni or the Hittite state, and the Egyptian pharaoh - his brother. From that time on, the Assyrian territory either expanded to the west and east, then again shrank to the size of historical ancient Assyria- a narrow strip of land along the banks of the Tigris in its upper reaches. In the middle of the 13th century. BC e. Assyrian armies even invaded the boundaries of the Hittite state - one of the strongest at that time, regularly made campaigns - not so much for the sake of increasing territory, but for the sake of robbery - to the north, into the lands of the Nairi tribes; to the south, passing more than once through the streets of Babylon; to the west - to the flourishing cities of Syria and.

The Assyrian civilization reached its next period of prosperity at the beginning of the 11th century. BC e. under Tiglath-pileser I (about 1114 - about 1076 BC). His armies made more than 30 campaigns to the west, capturing Northern Syria, Phenicia and some provinces of Asia Minor. Most of the trade routes connecting the west with the east once again fell into the hands of Assyrian merchants. In honor of his triumph after the conquest of Phenicia, Tiglath-pileser I made a demonstrative exit on Phoenician warships into the Mediterranean Sea, showing his still formidable rival who was really a great power.

Map of ancient Assyria

The new, third stage of the Assyrian offensive occurred already in the 9th-7th centuries. BC e. After a two-hundred-year break, which was a time of decline of the state and forced defense from hordes of nomads from the south, north and east, the Assyrian kingdom again declared itself as a powerful empire. She launched her first serious attack to the south - against Babylon, which was defeated. Then, as a result of several campaigns to the west, the entire region of Upper Mesopotamia came under the rule of ancient Assyria. The way was opened for further advance into Syria. Over the next few decades, ancient Assyria experienced virtually no defeats and steadily moved towards its goal: to take control of the main sources of raw materials, production centers and trade routes from the Persian Gulf to the Armenian Plateau and from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea and Asia Minor.

In the course of several successful campaigns, the Assyrian armies defeated their northern neighbors, after a grueling and ruthless struggle they brought the states of Syria and Palestine to the obedience, and, finally, under King Sargon II in 710 BC. e. Babylon was finally conquered. Sargon was crowned king of Babylonia. His successor, Sennacherib, fought for a long time against the disobedience of the Babylonians and their allies, but by this time Assyria had become the strongest power.

However, the triumph of the Assyrian civilization did not last long. Uprisings of conquered peoples shook different areas of the empire - from southern Mesopotamia to Syria.

Finally, in 626 BC. e. The leader of the Chaldean tribe from southern Mesopotamia, Nabopolassar, seized the royal throne in Babylonia. Even earlier, to the east of the kingdom of Assyria, the scattered tribes of the Medes united into the Median kingdom. Culture time Assyria passed. Already in 615 BC. e. The Medes appeared at the walls of the capital of the state - Nineveh. In the same year, Nabopolassar besieged the ancient center of the country - Ashur. In 614 BC. e. The Medes again invaded Assyria and also approached Ashur. Nabopolassar immediately moved his troops to join them. Ashur fell before the arrival of the Babylonians, and at its ruins the kings of Media and Babylon entered into an alliance, sealed by a dynastic marriage. In 612 BC. e. Allied forces laid siege to Nineveh and took it just three months later. The city was destroyed and plundered, the Medes returned to their lands with a share of the spoils, and the Babylonians continued their conquest of the Assyrian inheritance. In 610 BC. e. the remnants of the Assyrian army, reinforced by Egyptian reinforcements, were defeated and driven back beyond the Euphrates. Five years later, the last Assyrian troops were defeated. This is how it ended its existence the first “world” power in human history. At the same time, no significant ethnic changes occurred: only the “top” of Assyrian society died. The huge centuries-old inheritance of the kingdom of Assyria passed to Babylon.

In search of ancient cities

In 1846, the English scientist Henry Layard tried to find Nineveh - a city about which the Bible speaks in an extremely mysterious way: “a great city in which there are 120,000 people who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left...”. An attempt to solve the riddle of the Holy Scriptures leads an archaeologist to a hill called Kuyundzhik . This hill, under which Layard believed the ancient city must have been hidden, was located between the Tigris River and the dilapidated bed of an ancient artificial canal. Only this position of the city “between two waters” could explain the obscure biblical phrase.

Kuyundzhik - hill on the left bank of the river. The tiger under which the ruins of Nineveh were found.

The scientist’s intuition did not fail him. As soon as he started excavating, the stone faces of huge winged bulls that adorned the dilapidated city gates looked at him from under the ground. And when a year later the king's palace came into being Sennacherib , one of the rulers of ancient Assyria, there is no doubt left - Nineveh has finally been found.

Sennacherib - ruler of the Assyrian kingdom in 705 - 680. BC.

Lush palaces, wide streets, stone colossi that decorated the city - all this rose through the layers of earth and millennia, and the eyes of scientists were revealed to the majestic spectacle of the capital of the great kingdom that ruled Mesopotamia for many centuries. Assyria and the Babylonian kingdom were the main centers of political life in Mesopotamia for one and a half millennia BC. Assyria initially owned the Northern Mesopotamia, which the Babylonian rulers failed to subjugate. There was an almost continuous struggle between the two countries for power over the entire region. First one, then the other won, sometimes power over both countries was seized by nomadic tribes who founded their own kingdoms.

Library

Both Assyria and Babylon spoke and wrote the same language - Akkadian. The few cuneiform inscriptions that fell into the hands of European scientists could not recreate a more or less complete historical picture. Only in 1854, in the ruins of Nineveh, among the amazing palace walls of alabaster, under the rubble of ancient city walls, the English archaeologist Rassam discovered a treasure that all the winged bulls of the Assyrian capital could not compare with.

Ashurbanipal (Ashurbanipal) - Assyrian king in 669 - 633. BC.

The last great ruler of Assyria, before the country was destroyed by rebel tribes, was Ashurbanipal , aka Sardanapalus. Under him, Nineveh achieved true splendor; wealth from all over the country flocked to the city, where the king’s huge palace stood. Two and a half thousand years after the fall of Ashurbanipal's power, English archaeologists, while excavating his palace, came across in one of the rooms a myriad of clay tablets covered with cuneiform signs.

When all the tablets - and there were about thirty thousand of them - were dismantled, taken to London and read, it turned out that the library of Ashurbanipal, collected on his orders from all over the country, fell into the hands of scientists. It soon became clear that this was indeed a library, and not a random collection of tablets. Each text was marked, systematized and, obviously, had its own strictly defined place in the repository. There were signs everywhere with a menacing warning: “Whoever dares to take away these tables will be punished with his wrath.” Ashur And Belit , and let his name and his descendants be erased from human memory.”

Ashur - the supreme god in Assyrian mythology, the creator god, like the Sumerian Enlil and the Babylonian Bel.

Belit - obviously, the god of justice among the Assyrians, Babylonian Bel.

When the enemies broke into the royal palace, they destroyed and plundered the library, but a significant part of the texts, although in disarray, survived and have survived to this day. Considerable experience in deciphering Assyrian cuneiform had already been gained, and a huge amount of new material gave hope that the study of ancient Assyria would now proceed faster.

Indeed, linguists from many countries were quickly able to decipher most of the inscriptions from the library, which was of extraordinary historical value. Ashurbanipal collected clay “books” in his palace dedicated to all areas of knowledge that existed in his era. The best literary works, records of myths, lists of royal dynasties - all this represented a bottomless storehouse of information about the culture and civilization of Assyria.

Among the texts of this library, two well-fired clay tablets were discovered, inscribed by the hand of the king himself. The inscription on them read:

“I, Ashurbanipal, have attained wisdom Naboo , the art of scribes, mastered the knowledge of all the masters, how many there are, learned to shoot a bow, ride a horse and ride a chariot... I comprehended the hidden secrets of the art of writing, I studied heavenly and earthly buildings...

I observed omens, interpreted heavenly phenomena with the priests, I solved complex problems with multiplication and division that were not immediately clear...

I also studied everything that a master should know, and followed my own path, the path of a king.”

Naboo - Sumerian god of wisdom, patron of scribes and scientists. Borrowed from Assyro-Babylonian mythology.

“I burned three thousand prisoners,” he writes about one of his military campaigns. “I didn’t leave any of them alive so as not to hold hostages.”

The king speaks equally calmly about the suppression of one of the rebellions: “I tore out the tongues of those soldiers who dared to speak insolently against Ashur, my god, and who planned evil against me. I sacrificed the rest of the city’s inhabitants, and cut their bodies into pieces and threw them to dogs, pigs and wolves.”

However, Ashurbanipal was not alone in such treatment of captives. In many texts, both found in his library and those discovered elsewhere, the Assyrian rulers described in detail all the cruelties to which both captives from the conquered countries and their own subjects were subjected. Sometimes it even becomes a pity that modern scientists were able to decipher these records - it’s scary to even imagine the picture described by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I : “Rivers of the blood of my enemies poured into the valley, and heaps of their severed heads lay everywhere on the battlefield, like heaps of bread.”

Tiglath-pileser I - Assyrian king in 1116 - 1077. BC.

Following the opening of Ashurbanipal's library, interest in the Mesopotamian land flared up with renewed vigor. And, as if by magic (in this case, rather, a digger’s shovel), archaeologists began to see more and more evidence of the turbulent history of Mesopotamia. Each expedition recovered many inscriptions from the excavations - truly priceless material.

The rulers of Mesopotamia were very proud of the fact that during their reign new temples and palaces were erected in the country. Each more or less significant construction project was accompanied by a royal plaque, which stated in detail which of the kings and in honor of what event built this temple - to the glory of God or to commemorate a successful military campaign. In a country where good building material has long been a rarity, such deeds were apparently truly considered significant.

Actually, it was from the library of Ashurbanipal that the true study of Assyria and Babylon began. Later, while deciphering some of the tablets from this collection, linguists first came across the word “Sumer,” which little by little led them to the discovery of an even more ancient than the Assyro-Babylonian and completely forgotten civilization of Southern Mesopotamia. But, of course, the library of the Assyrian king first of all provided an opportunity to study the Assyrian kingdom itself.

Great conquerors. History of Assyria

Like Babylonia, Assyria arose from the ruins of the Sumerian-Akkadian kingdom, after the fall of the III dynasty of Ur. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. nomadic tribes of cattle breeders, under whose pressure the Sumerian-Akkadian kingdom collapsed, settled on the lands of the Northern Mesopotamia, mixed with the local residents, adopted their culture, language, writing and religion, and founded their own kingdom - Assyria.

The city became the center of Assyria from the very beginning Ashur , where for more than a thousand years the rulers of the state lived and died, where the temples of the main Assyrian gods were located.

Ashur - Assyrian city. The first mentions date back to ser. II millennium BC Capital of Assyria until the 9th century. BC.

When creating their power, the rulers of Assyria were primarily concerned about its security from a military point of view. Fortresses were erected in all important places for the life of the country - on major trade routes, in large cities. This was very important, since almost from the moment of its emergence, Assyria was constantly under threat of attack - either from nomadic tribes, or from neighboring powers seeking to seize the most important trade routes that ran through the Northern Mesopotamia. In addition, Babylon, the eternal enemy of the Assyrians, even after its conquest by the Kassite mountaineers, did not stop trying to take possession of all of Mesopotamia.

Ashuruballit - Assyrian ruler ca. 1400 BC

History of Assyria from the 15th century BC. until the end of the 7th century. BC, when this kingdom was destroyed - this is an almost continuous history of wars. The first flowering of Assyria began in the 15th century. BC. Tsar Ashuruballit and his successors conducted a series of victorious wars of conquest, as a result of which the territory of the Assyrian power reached the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The wealth looted in these wars made it possible to completely rebuild the ancient capital of the kingdom - the city of Ashur, to build new temples of Ishtar and Anu , Sumerian gods who occupied an important place in Assyrian mythology.

Anu - the supreme deity of the Sumerians, the father of all gods.

In the 13th century BC. King Shalmanser I not only expanded the borders of the country, but also founded several colonies - foreign settlements for Assyrian merchants. This allowed him to significantly strengthen the cultural, economic and military influence of Assyria on the countries north of Mesopotamia.

Shalmansar's successor, Tukulti-Ninurta, became famous for the fact that he subjugated not only neighboring Syria, taking from there more than thirty thousand captives, but also captured Babylon, destroyed the city and even took to Assyria the statue of the god Marduk - the supreme deity of the Babylonians, the greatest shrine of Babylonia. True, Babylon was soon freed from the rule of the nomadic Kassites. For some time, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I gained the upper hand over its northern neighbors, who were much exhausted by wars.

The last of the great rulers of Assyria in the initial period of its history - Tiglath-pileser I - returned Assyria to its glory, strengthened its borders and subjugated Babylon. He even conquered several rich Phoenician cities and ensured that the Egyptian pharaoh recognized the Assyrian kingdom and sent gifts and pledges of friendship. Having strengthened the position of his state in the region, Tiglath-pileser took up the internal development of the country. Under him, as the inscriptions on the walls of the temples say, cities, palaces and temples, and outbuildings were rebuilt and fortified. Tiglath-pileser started a menagerie in his capital, planted gardens, “brought peace and goodness to the country,” which he described in a memorial inscription in one of the palaces he founded. But, obviously, the country was already too exhausted by military operations. After the death of Tiglath-pileser, a period of decline began that lasted several centuries. Assyria was fragmented into parts by tribes of nomadic Arameans.

New Assyrian period - the era of the highest prosperity of Assyria from the 9th century. BC. to 605 BC

Only in the 9th century. BC. a new rise began, which historians call the period New Assyrian kingdom . The beginning of this period is associated with the name of the king Ashurnasirpala II .

Ashurnasirpal II - reigned in Assyria from 883 to 859 BC.

He again returned Assyria to its former power, having made a series of victorious campaigns to the west, to Syria. Thus, the most important trade routes for the entire region, connecting Mesopotamia with the Mediterranean Sea, were once again under Assyrian control. He, like his predecessors several centuries ago, took possession of a number of Phoenician ports - large trading centers. Syria and Phenicia were forced to pay rich tribute to Ashurnasirpal. Ashurnasirpal decorated the new capital of the country, the city of Kalhu, with temples, menageries and gardens. An irrigation canal was built in the areas adjacent to the capital for farmers. A memorial inscription found in the ruins of Ashurnasirpal’s palace reports that ambassadors from the northern states were also present at the ceremony for the completion of construction work on the improvement of the capital. This indicates that under Ashurnasirpal the country began to decisively rise from the ruins and conduct not only military, but also political activity in order to protect itself from strong opponents.

Urartu - a state in Transcaucasia, on the territory of modern Armenia (IX - VII centuries BC)

Shalmaneser III - Assyrian king in 859 - 824. BC.

Somewhat later, however, Assyria gathered its strength sufficiently to defeat the strong northerners from the state Urartu . Successor of Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III, continued the affairs of the former ruler and significantly expanded the borders of Assyria and the zone of its direct influence. In the middle of the 9th century. BC. Shalmaneser subjugated almost all of Syria right up to the borders Damascus , captured the capital of Phenicia - the city of Tire, and then moved south - towards Babylon.

Damascus - one of the oldest Syrian cities. Known since the 16th century. BC. Now the capital of Syria.

Shalmaneser's Babylonian campaign was a complete success. The Assyrian army carried out a devastating march through the lands of Southern Mesopotamia, and even reached the Persian Gulf. The Babylonian rulers recognized the power of Assyria, and one of the noble Babylonians received power over Babylon from the hands of Shalmaneser in exchange for recognition of citizenship.

Thus, Shalmansar subjugated almost all of Mesopotamia and could have conquered all of Western Asia (this dream dominated the minds of all the great kings of Assyria), but in the north there remained a rather powerful and well-fortified mountain state of Urartu. The Assyrians fought constantly and without much success with the rulers of Urartu, being able only to hold back the pressure of their mountaineer neighbors.

From the time of Shalmanser III to the present day, the temple in Ashur, the ancient capital and religious center of the country, as well as the city fortifications, have been preserved. The fort near Ashur is a striking example of the increased ability of the Assyrians to build military fortresses, so important for the state. Among the fort's buildings were “barracks” for soldiers, an arsenal, food warehouses and a treasury where military spoils were delivered. The royal residence was also located there, protected by powerful fortress walls.

After a short-term weakening, when the north of Mesopotamia came under the control of the Urartians, in the middle of the 8th century. BC, or rather in 745, ascended the Assyrian throne Tiglath-pileser III , founder of the Assyrian state, which ruled all of Mesopotamia for a century and a half.

Tiglath-pileser III ruled Assyria from 745 to 727 BC.

The first thing he did was completely defeat the Urartian state, putting an end to the threat from the north forever. Having defeated the Urartians on their territory - in the mountain gorges, Tiglath-pileser captured about 70,000 prisoners, took rich trophies, and even captured the headquarters of the king of Urartu, who fled from the Assyrian army. After the victory over Urartu, Assyrian power in the north extended to Armenia, as far north as ever before. Having entered the territory of Armenia, Tiglath-pileser built a fortress there and left the governor with a military garrison, and he himself returned to Mesopotamia.

Having neutralized the threat from the north, Tiglath-pileser went west, where his army conquered all of Syria, Phenicia and Lebanon - some of the richest regions of the Middle East. He even captured Damascus, Assyria's biggest rival in Mediterranean trade.

In the south, Tiglath-pileser finally defeated Babylon, annexing Babylonia to the Assyrian state. Having made rich sacrifices to the Babylonian gods, Tiglath-pileser proved himself to be an experienced politician - the priests, the most important political force in Babylonia, took his side.

Tiglath-pileser became the first Assyrian king to create a truly powerful power. He proved himself both as a wise politician and as a ruthless conqueror and ruler, and in most cases he preferred force to diplomacy. During the military campaigns of Tiglath-pileser, the Assyrians showed unprecedented cruelty towards those peoples whose lands they attacked. If there was even the slightest resistance to the Assyrian troops, all the people in the area were mercilessly killed. No one was taken prisoner or into slavery. Tiglath-pileser invented the most cruel and sophisticated tortures for his enemies - they were skinned alive, their arms and legs were cut off and left to die, adults and children were burned. Their settlements were destroyed, turning the surrounding area into desert. Covered with such cruel glory, the Assyrians then continued their campaign.

If the people whose land the Assyrian army entered did not offer resistance, all the inhabitants of the captured region were resettled to other lands, as far as possible from their homeland. Tiglath-pileser III was the first in the history of mankind to practice the resettlement of conquered peoples. Farmers from the interior regions of Assyria were driven to their deserted lands.

Thus, Tiglath-pileser solved - for the entire period of his reign and for some time to come - the problem of possible revolts of the conquered peoples. People needed to somehow settle in a new place so as not to die of hunger. This method also allowed the king not to keep new subjects under strong guard, and the army remained at his disposal for new conquests.

After Tiglath-pileser, his son Shalmanser V ascended the throne, ruling the country for only five years. Under Shalmansar, an important event took place in the internal political life of the country - all benefits of the ancient cities of Assyria and Babylonia, including Babylon itself, were abolished. The city nobility did not forgive the tsar for such an infringement of their rights. Shalmaneser fell victim to a conspiracy that brought his brother to the throne Sargon II .

Sargon II - ruler of the Assyrian kingdom in 722 - 705. BC.

Sargon continued the aggressive policy of his father and brother. Under him, Assyria finally subjugated all of Western Asia, becoming the most powerful state in the region. Even Egypt and Arabia paid tribute to the Assyrians. Sargon himself wrote, addressing the god Ashur, the patron saint of the country, “I covered their countries like locusts cover the fields.” Sargon also completely defeated Urartu, seizing countless treasures in the largest cities of this power. Then, relying on the support of the Babylonian priests, Sargon turned his troops against the Babylonian ruler Marduk-apal-iddin, who did not want to recognize Assyrian rule. The inhabitants of Babylonia themselves were relieved by the victory of the Assyrians - the long and futile confrontation of Babylon undermined trade and brought great losses to merchants and temples. In addition, the cruelty of the Assyrian army was all too well known in these parts, and the ordinary inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia preferred to yield to the force of their northern neighbors. Sargon entered the ancient capital of Mesopotamia - Babylon - under the solemn cries of the people, and took power over the entire Mesopotamia. After twelve years of conquest, Sargon built a new capital of the Assyrian state - the city of Dur-Sharruken, comparable in splendor, if not size, to Babylon itself.

Sargon's successor, Sennacherib, further expanded the boundaries of the state. But his actions, on the one hand strengthening the power of the state, on the other, were a prelude to the death of Assyria.

It became increasingly difficult for government officials and even troops to control the gigantic territories subject to the Assyrian kingdom. Egypt, having managed to free itself from Assyrian rule and fearing the increasing military power of the Assyrians, began to support internal rebellions and resistance from border states that were targeted by the Assyrian overlord. These rebellions, although unsuccessful, still undermined the internal stability of Assyria.

The Babylonians rebelled again. Sennacherib brutally suppressed this rebellion, destroying the city and executing almost all its inhabitants. Continuing to expand his wars of conquest, Sennacherib plundered significant wealth in all countries and built the new, last capital of the Assyrian power - Nineveh, a city cursed by the biblical prophets and famous throughout the East no less than Babylon. But in the end Sennacherib's commanders rebelled against him. The king was killed, and ascended to his throne Esarhaddon - son of Sennacherib and one of the last great rulers of Assyria.

Esarhaddon (Esarhaddon) - ruled Assyria from 680 to 669. BC.

Esarhaddon, unlike his father, willy-nilly had to seek a common language with internal political forces - the priests and the nobility. He showed due respect to the Babylonian priests, who were deservedly considered the bearers of the culture of all of Mesopotamia, the heirs of the Sumerian civilization.

Esarhaddon completely rebuilt Babylon, destroyed by his father, and returned the cities to their former liberties. The ruler of Babylon, who rebelled against Esarhaddon, was forced to flee to the neighboring Elam , but even there Esarhaddon did not leave him alone, having obtained from the Elamite rulers the execution of the “rebel”.

Elam (Elamite Kingdom) - a state in the southwest of the Iranian Plateau (3rd millennium BC - 6th century BC)

Having strengthened the state from the inside and, if possible, softening internal contradictions, Esarhaddon began to strengthen and expand external borders. In the north and west, he reached the central regions of Phenicia and took the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis, by storm. Even distant Cyprus, separated from Assyria by the Mediterranean Sea, sent rich tribute to Esarhaddon, paying off the threat of Assyrian conquest.

Cimmeria in the VIII - VII centuries. BC. called the regions of the northeastern Black Sea region.

From the east, a new enemy moved close to the Assyrian borders - nomads from the steppes Cimmeria , Scythians and Medes. With them, Esarhaddon entered into political agreements of friendship, securing - first of all from the Median rulers - promises to support his heir Ashurbanipal and not to participate in riots and uprisings directed against Assyria. These treaties indicate that the danger to the borders of the Assyrian kingdom, previously coming from the north, now moved to the east. The Medes, Scythians and Cimmerians apparently constituted such a significant force that the mighty Assyrian ruler preferred to settle matters with them peacefully.

In 668 BC. Esarhaddon handed over the throne of Assyria, more powerful than ever before, to his son Ashurbanipal. Another son of the king, Shamash-shumukin, became king of Babylonia. With this decision, Esarhaddon hoped to get rid of the eternal confrontation between Babylon and Assyria. But, as the very near future showed, his plan failed. Shamashshumukin, dissatisfied with his role as ruler of a minor city, rebelled against his brother.

Ashurbanipal marched on Babylon and besieged the city. After a three-year siege, a terrible famine began in Babylon. People even ate each other. In the end, the rebel brother set fire to the royal palace and committed suicide by throwing himself into the fire. Having won a victory over Babylon, Ashurbanipal dealt a crushing blow to the neighboring Elamite kingdom, which had long supported all the Babylonian rebellions against Assyria. Having stormed the capital of Elam - Susa - Ashurbanipal took a huge number of prisoners from there, plundered the temples and transported statues of the gods and goddesses of the defeated country to Nineveh.

Ashurbanipal achieved less success in the north. The states captured by the Assyrians - Egypt, Phenicia, Syria - constantly tried to regain their lost independence and did not want to recognize the absolute dominance of the Assyrians. Therefore, each new king of Assyria was forced to reaffirm his dominance in these areas by force. Under Ashurbanipal, the northern border of Assyria sank - the Egyptian pharaoh Taharqa declared his independence. Cases of open disobedience on the part of the Phoenician and Syrian rulers became more frequent, and internal revolts did not subside.

Under Ashurbanipal, Assyria, outwardly still powerful, was already beginning to gradually fall apart. Numerous officials who previously managed the economic life of the state were engaged almost exclusively in internal and external espionage, placed in the service of the country's military power. The ruler was informed about the slightest signs of the emergence of rebellions within the country and about all the events on its borders - the movements of troops of a neighboring state, the approach of nomads, trips of ambassadors from one ruler to another. But the country's economy was practically destroyed by endless wars, and even the rich spoils of these wars hardly helped keep such a vast power afloat. Neither Ashurbanipal's predecessors, nor he himself cared about connecting the various regions of the great kingdom with economic ties.

Soon after the death of Ashurbanipal, Assyria was attacked by the Medes, allied with Babylon. In 605 BC. The military leader Nabopolassar, a native of Southern Mesopotamia, at the head of the Babylonian army captured and burned Nineveh to the ground, declaring himself the liberator of the country from the Assyrian yoke. Nabopolassar founded a new kingdom with its capital in Babylon. It marked the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian period of Mesopotamian history, which lasted a little over a century. Babylon nevertheless won a final victory in the age-old dispute with its northern neighbor.

After the destruction of Nineveh, Assyria disappeared forever from the political map of Mesopotamia. Only the ruins of cities and the remains of magnificent palaces reminded of the once formidable power that made even distant countries tremble.

The king and his kingdom

The Assyrian rulers, like the Babylonians, took the despotic rule of the last Sumerian dynasty as the basis of their state system. However, the Assyrian rulers, unlike the Babylonian kings, subordinated absolutely all aspects of the country's life to their power.

The main difference between Assyria and Babylon was that the Assyrian king was not only a secular ruler who led the political and economic life of the country. The king in Assyria is also the high priest, the deputy of God, possessing doubly divine power - both that which belongs to him as a king, and that which comes through him from God. If in Babylon the king was allowed into the sanctuary of Marduk - the patron god of the city - only once a year, and then without royal regalia, then the Assyrian ruler himself always presided over the rites dedicated to Ashur, the supreme deity. Moreover, throughout the reign of the king, he was crowned anew every year, and the coronation ceremony was intended to confirm the relationship of the ruler with God.

The Assyrian king was the most carefully guarded person in the country. It was believed that through him the god Ashur expressed his favor to the people of Assyria, and the well-being of the entire country depended on the king’s well-being. In the king's retinue there were a huge number of priests and healers who warded off possible damage and harmful magical influence from the ruler. Any prediction, any sign was linked primarily to the king. Once, when it was predicted that the king would soon die, a “replacement king” was urgently installed in his place, they killed him and buried him with royal honors, thereby deceiving fate.

The duties of the king also included the management of the army. On any campaign he led his army, and even on rare occasions when he commanded soldiers turtan - the supreme military leader, all his victories were attributed to the king.

This almost divine position of the king in the system of government determined the following fundamental difference between the state structure of Assyria and neighboring Babylon. In Babylon, in continuation of the traditions laid down by the Sumerians, there were two main political forces in governing the country - the temple and the palace, the priests and the nobility, so the Babylonian kings had to maneuver between them. The Assyrian rulers were the sole rulers of their country. Therefore, Assyrian despotism was much harsher than Babylonian.

During periods when strong rulers sat on the throne of Ashur, this rigidity and even cruelty of rule helped them easily unite under their rule not only all of Mesopotamia, but even quite remote regions - at one time the Assyrians ruled even in Egypt. On the other hand, as soon as the Assyrian king weakened, or if the new ruler was weaker than his predecessor, the kingdom began to crumble. The conquered peoples, groaning under the heel of the Assyrians, immediately rebelled, and Assyria more than once, after a period of upsurge, found itself fragmented for a long time, losing a significant part of its lands.

The main opponent of Assyria in the struggle for a leading position in Mesopotamia was the Babylonian kingdom. Relations between the two states were a continuous series of wars and reconciliations. The Assyrians often managed to subjugate Babylon, but at every opportunity the Babylonian rulers, even those who came from Assyrian royal families, tried to regain their independence. It was never difficult for Babylon to find political allies against the Assyrian king. The peoples conquered and resettled by the Assyrians constantly retained the hope of returning to their native lands, and this created an eternal danger of riots throughout the country. And indeed, as soon as the royal power weakened, rebellions began throughout the country. The rebels were almost always supported by the rulers of Babylon, who hoped, with the help of the rebels, either to get out of Assyrian subordination themselves, or, conversely, to conquer Ashur.

The administration of such a state - based primarily on military force, largely disunited - could only be carried out with the help of an extensive network of officials. In every city, in every settlement, all important posts were occupied by people appointed by the tsar himself, who were fully accountable to him. The Assyrian ruler held the entire administration of the state in his hands and single-handedly made all important decisions.

To facilitate the administration of a huge state, all of Assyria was divided into regions - initially large ones, in which the rule was predominantly the clan nobility of the tribes that lived in these areas. However, subsequently the large regions were fragmented, and at the head of each small region the king put his own man - Bel-Pahati . The division into small regions was all the more important because the conquered peoples and tribes resettled to a new place negated the previous influence of the ancient nobility of the original regions of Assyria.

Some of the cities, the most important in terms of trade, became independent administrative units, not connected with the nearby region. The king also sent his people - “city governors” - to these cities. To communicate with the “governors” there were always special officials at the palace - bel-pikitty .

The highest positions at the Assyrian royal court were occupied by representatives of the country's largest noble families. These high-ranking officials often had great power and could influence the ruler in one way or another. From these people, the king appointed ambassadors to neighboring powers, military leaders, his representatives and advisers. Such officials were called, according to the royal lists, sukkallu. In total, the lists of officials preserved in the royal archives in the ruins of Assyrian palaces contain about 150 names of various official positions of all ranks.

Sukkallu - lit. “messenger”, royal representative or ambassador.

The tasks of officials included, first of all, the collection of taxes and tribute from the conquered lands. Nomadic tribes living on the territory of the Assyrian state were required to pay one head of cattle for every twenty heads of their herds. Rural communities paid taxes to the treasury with the products of their own labor. Tributes were collected from cities in silver and gold. Each city, depending on the size of the population, was required to pay a certain tax. The official who managed the city economy compiled annual lists of residents with a description of their families, the property they owned, and the name of the tax collector to whom they were supposed to pay taxes. Thanks to these lists, today one can get a fairly clear picture of the structure of Assyrian society.

Merchants and shipbuilders who brought goods to the ports of Assyria also had to pay royal officials a tax on all property intended for sale and, in addition, on each ship.

Only representatives of the highest nobility of the country and some cities were free from taxes - such as Babylon, Nippur, Ashur and several other ancient cultural, economic and political centers. The inhabitants of these “free cities” extremely valued their privileges and turned to each new king who ascended the Assyrian throne with a request to confirm their rights and liberties, including the right to a certain administrative independence. Despite the fact that, for example, the special position of Babylon was a constant source of revolts against royal power, the Assyrian rulers preferred to preserve their freedom for the cities. Attempts to eliminate city liberties, as happened during the reign of Shalmanser V, led to discontent and active resistance of the Babylonian priests - a very influential political force in the country, and it even came to the overthrow of the king himself.

In governing the country, the tsar relied primarily on the secular nobility. Aristocratic families received gifts of land and slaves from the king, as well as, in some cases, exemption from taxes. This exemption was enshrined in writing in the text of the deed of gift, which indicated in detail the lands transferred to the subject.

The relationship between the king and the priests in Assyria was somewhat different than in neighboring Babylonia. Being himself a high priest, the king could more easily control the temple nobility of his country, but he had to maintain good relations with the southern Mesopotamian priests, the recognized heirs and guardians of the Sumerian-Akkadian culture, which laid the foundation for the culture of Babylon and Assyria. It was the priests who, from time immemorial, possessed basic scientific knowledge, rich medical skills, and general cultural tradition. In addition, the priests could and did have a significant influence on the common people, so for the peace of domestic life, the Assyrian kings preferred not to quarrel with the temples and send rich gifts to them.

Lifestyle

The Assyrians lived in communities for a long time, and even with the formation of a despotic state with completely centralized royal power, the communal system still made itself felt - primarily in the family structure.

The Assyrian family was completely patriarchal. The head of the family had virtually unlimited power over all family members. A woman in Assyria had no rights. Unlike neighboring Babylonia, Assyrian women had to appear on the streets only with their faces covered, and only accompanied by one of the male family members. If a girl went out alone, she was defenseless both before a possible rapist and before the law. Any passerby could consider her a simple harlot. If the girl then went to court, then the man who insulted her had only to swear to the judge that he did not know that “this girl, who did not cover her face, was not a harlot.” He was released, but the girl’s family could be fined.

In general, the family was protected not only by the law, but also by blood feud, which was almost unknown in Mesopotamia before. Even in Assyrian laws it was written that the murderer had the right to pay a ransom for the victim (if the murdered person was a free man). If he refused to pay, he was to be killed at the victim’s grave. As a rule, a slave was given as “payment for blood,” but it also happened that a person, in order to pay off the relatives of his victim, gave his wife, son, or one of the relatives who were subordinate to him as the owner of the house.

For injury inflicted on a free person, the perpetrator was subjected to the same injury - his arm was broken or his eye was gouged out. The principle of “talion” - “an eye for an eye”, which was widespread at that time throughout Mesopotamia, was in effect here.

The attitude towards slaves was completely different in Assyria. A slave was actually equated to property, and for injury or murder caused to him, the perpetrator was obliged to pay the owner of the injured slave half or the entire cost of the “damaged thing” - depending on the severity of the injury.

Slaves and freemen constituted the two main classes of inhabitants of Assyria. Unlike Babylon, there were no “king’s people”, semi-enslaved “muskenums”, in Assyria. Instead, the royal household had many slaves captured during military campaigns. And if necessary, for example, for important construction work on a national scale, free citizens were also involved.

A free poor Assyrian could very easily become a slave - selling family members and even himself into bondage for debt was quite common in Assyria. Over time, the sale of slaves in Assyria became widespread. They were sold individually and as whole families. Often, when a plot of land was sold - for example, an orchard - the slaves who worked the orchard were also sold with it. Such slaves - “planted”, as Assyrian deeds of sale called them, could acquire their own household, property, and family. However, it remained in full ownership of the owner. Even if a slave was released, which happened quite rarely, he still did not have the rights that free citizens had in Assyrian society.

Slave artisans were often released by their owners “to earn money.” The slave worked in some workshop, paid the owner a specified amount of silver every month, and could keep the rest for himself. Skilled artisans could accumulate enough silver within a few years to buy themselves out - if, of course, the owner agreed to this.

Art of War

Many people tried to subjugate Assyria even in the era of its greatest power - nomadic tribes descending from the Iranian plateau, rulers of large states located outside Mesopotamia. The north of Mesopotamia was located quite advantageously geographically, and rich trade routes ran through Assyria, leading both to the south - to Babylon, and to the west - to Egypt. But it was not for nothing that the Assyrian kings gained well-deserved fame as experienced warriors.

Tiglath-pileser III created a completely new, hitherto unknown army, the tactics of which were radically different from everything that had come before.

Even Sargon the Ancient, the founder of the Akkadian kingdom, two hundred years before the arrival of the Assyrians in Mesopotamia, conquered the country, using highly mobile detachments of lightly armed infantrymen and archers, superior to the Sumerians primarily in their maneuverability. The Assyrians, especially under Tiglath-pileser, went even further. They relied not on infantry, but on horsemen, which almost no Mesopotamian ruler had used before. Thanks to this, the Assyrian army could cover a huge distance for those times in an unheard of short period of time and fall on the enemy with an avalanche of horses.

In addition, the Assyrian kings completely subordinated the entire system of government of the country to military needs. Having divided the entire country into regions, they organized permanent garrison colonies in the regions. The head of the garrison, if necessary, recruited additional soldiers from among free citizens. All of them were under his command. In addition, garrison commanders were allowed to recruit into the army the inhabitants of the conquered region in which his army was located.

The Assyrian army had a well-developed structure. The minimum combat unit was a detachment - kisru . These detachments, as necessary, were united into large or small formations. The Assyrian army included shield-bearing infantrymen, archers, spearmen and javelin throwers. The infantry was well equipped. Each warrior received a shell, helmet and shield. The most popular weapons were the spear, short sword and bow. Assyrian archers became famous for their skill far beyond the borders of Assyria and the lands it conquered.

In addition, cavalry was very widely used among the Assyrians. Large detachments of horsemen and war chariots played almost a decisive role in the tactics of the Assyrians, starting around the 9th century. BC. Thanks to the use of highly mobile cavalry and chariots, Assyrian troops were able to move long distances in a short time, quickly attack the enemy and pursue him. Thanks to their well-organized cavalry, the Assyrians for a long time were almost undefeated in battles in the plains.

The Assyrian army also included a detachment of selected warriors - the “royal detachment”, or “knot of the kingdom”. This army, the importance of which for the ruler is clear from its name, was directly subordinate to the king. He was sent to quickly and decisively suppress the riots. Finally, the king also kept a fairly impressive palace guard with him.

It was thanks to their excellent land army that the Assyrians conquered almost all of Western Asia. Having initially no access to the sea and being nomads by origin, the Assyrians were not seafarers and did not know how to build ships for sea voyages. For trips across the Mediterranean Sea, for example, to Cyprus, the Assyrians used ships from conquered countries. The best sailors in the Middle East at that time were the Phoenicians. The Assyrians not only captured Phoenician ships, but also used the skills of Phoenician shipbuilders. When Assyria equipped a naval expedition across the Persian Gulf, craftsmen were taken from the Phoenician cities to the capital of the kingdom, Nineveh, to build ships. These ships were then transported down the Tigris and Euphrates, and from there dragged overland to the “sea,” as the Mesopotamians called the Persian Gulf. Sailors from the conquered Phoenician regions were also taken as the crew of these ships.

Fortresses

The Assyrians truly brought warfare to the level of art. When organizing garrisons in various areas, rulers and military leaders approached the matter with the utmost seriousness. First of all, a fortress was built in a strategically important place, surrounded by a powerful wall. Inside the fortress there were barracks, weapons depots, outbuildings, and stables. The fortress was usually rectangular or oval - the most typical shapes for urban, temple, and military construction in Mesopotamia. Two walls, the distance between which reached 3-4 meters, were made of baked and mud bricks. Sand was most often poured between the walls, giving the walls solidity and elasticity. The latter quality was especially important, since during the Assyrian period, battering guns became widespread in Mesopotamia. The sand cushion was covered with a layer of clay and reeds, and the upper part of the wall was protected with loopholes. Strong towers rose at equal distances along the wall.

At the same time, the Assyrians knew how not only to build defensive structures, but also to destroy them. It was they who apparently invented the ram - a log bound with iron and suspended on chains from a special cart. The warriors, protected by shields and the cart itself, rolled the ram to the fortress wall of the besieged city, swung the ram and broke the walls. The Assyrians, in addition, used some kind of catapult. The siege of enemy fortresses was a common thing for Assyrian troops. For example, during the reign of Ashurbanipal, his troops, who went to Babylon to pacify the rebellion of the royal brother, stood under siege near the city walls for three years. This unprecedented siege eventually forced the rebels to surrender the city.

For construction and other similar work, the Assyrian army had special units, which we would call “engineering troops.” These detachments were engaged not only in the construction of fortresses and other defensive structures, temporary or permanent. Their duties also included building roads, paving them and covering them with asphalt. Not least thanks to these “military builders,” the Assyrian troops could quickly march to the enemy’s location and attack, “ahead of the news about themselves.”

Tactics and strategy

The Assyrian military leaders did not disdain anything for the sake of victory - attacks on the camp of a sleeping enemy in the dead of night were quite common. A merciless cavalry attack from a raid, when dozens of war chariots literally cut through enemy troops, an attack on the enemy from the flanks and along the front - the Assyrians beat the enemy both in numbers and with considerable skill. In addition, the Assyrian military leaders loved to starve the enemy out. When attacking any country, the Assyrians first of all sought to capture roads along which the enemy army could receive provisions; they captured rivers, wells, bridges, depriving the enemy of communications and water. During the battle, the Assyrians acted with extreme cruelty, trying to destroy the enemy army to the last man, even if this meant pursuing the retreating for a long time. The glory of merciless warriors, flying ahead of the Assyrian army, often helped them capture entire regions without the slightest resistance. In this case, the entire population of the conquered region was evicted to remote areas.

Finally, espionage was an important element of the Assyrian military state. Tens and hundreds of secret agents of the Assyrian king were constantly present in all major cities of Mesopotamia and neighboring countries. The royal palace almost immediately received information about all the concluded alliances between the rulers of neighbors, about the accumulation of troops at one or another border. This, coupled with the independence of garrisons in each of the regions of the kingdom, allowed the Assyrians to instantly react to an emerging threat and just as instantly attack a weakened or inattentive ruler of a neighboring state.

Hittites - a people who lived in ancient times on the territory of Asia Minor, who created the Hittite kingdom, which was quite strong militarily.

Military affairs became perhaps the main gift of the Assyrians to those peoples who owned Mesopotamia after the death of the Assyrian power. Hittites , the Syrians, as well as the Persians, who conquered Babylon and ruled almost all of Asia, borrowed from the Assyrians the skills of fortification, the tactics of equestrian combat and the use of chariots.

In peacetime. Economy of Assyria

Agriculture

Initially, from the time of their appearance in Northern Mesopotamia, the Assyrians were cattle breeders. Their tribes descended from the mountains into the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and settled there. In addition to traditional domestic animals - sheep, goats, donkeys and horses, the Assyrians domesticated the camel. In the XIV-XIII centuries BC. Bactrian camels appeared in Assyria, and later, during the greatest rise of the country, single-humped camels. They were apparently brought to the country after the wars with the Arabs. The camel turned out to be indispensable as a beast of burden. Many of Assyria's important trade routes ran through arid deserts and steppes, and merchants immediately took advantage of the strong and unpretentious animals. Camels also played a major role in military campaigns. It is very interesting to compare cuneiform tablets-agreements on the purchase and sale of camels in different eras. If in the 8th century. BC. a camel cost almost 900 grams of silver in Assyria, then in the time of Ashurbanipal, when Assyria was richer and more powerful than ever, the cost of this animal was no more than 5 grams of silver - so many of them were brought from military campaigns. Horses were used almost exclusively for military purposes - as riding animals and in teams of war chariots.

The climate, less hot than in Babylonia, made it possible to grow orchards in Assyria. Grapes grew in the mountainous regions. Many Assyrian rulers established real botanical gardens near the palace, in which trees and plants from various countries grew. Sennacherib, for example, ordered the creation of an artificial garden in Ashur, which occupied an area of ​​16,000 square meters. m. Special irrigation canals were connected to this garden. Similar gardens were often found in large estates of noble Assyrians.

In general, the agriculture of Assyria differed little from neighboring Babylonia. Both countries used the achievements of the former inhabitants of Mesopotamia - the Sumerians, whose ancient canals still regularly supplied water to arable lands. But centuries of wars and raids by nomadic tribes led to the fact that a significant part of the once extensive irrigation system of Sumer was destroyed, the soil became saline and became unsuitable for growing tender wheat. Therefore, the basis of food for the inhabitants of Mesopotamia - both northern and southern - was barley, a much more resilient crop.

Crafts

The Assyrians adopted craft skills, like many other things, from the Babylonians, just as they did from the Sumerians in their time. In addition to their own craftsmen, the Assyrian rulers, with their wars of conquest, ensured a constant influx of forced artisans from the conquered regions into the country. Therefore, crafts and applied arts in Assyria, especially during its period of greatest prosperity, were very developed.

Assyria was rich in stone - a building material that was extremely scarce in Sumer and Babylon. Assyrian fortresses, palaces with powerful fortress walls, the ruins of which have survived to this day, testify to the high level of development of the building art and architecture of the Assyrian state.

Monumental sculpture was widespread in Assyria to a much greater extent than in Babylon. Limestone was mined in quarries near Nineveh, from which statues of kings and the famous winged bulls were carved. I'm walking , guardians of the palace.

I'm going - this word refers to the Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform archives of mythological creatures in the form of winged bulls with a human body and lion paws. Shedu statues were usually installed at the entrance to the royal palace.

Metal processing, which was of enormous importance in the life of the military state that was Assyria, reached an extremely high level of development. Bronze and copper, the main metals of the Sumerian era, were found in Assyria by the 8th century. BC. became widespread both in military affairs and in agriculture and in everyday life. Iron tools - hoes, plows, shovels - became an everyday occurrence, and the price of iron dropped significantly. Due to the widespread use of iron, such types of applied art as metal chasing and casting began to develop. The blacksmith's craft has become much more complicated.

Of the applied crafts invented by the Assyrians, baked bricks covered with multi-colored glaze or patterns turned out to be extremely important for the whole of Mesopotamia - tiles that decorated the walls of palaces and temples. Subsequently, the art of making tiles became widespread in Babylon, after the fall of Assyria. Such tiles, for example, were used to decorate the walls and front gates in Babylon itself during the Neo-Babylonian kingdom. The Persians and Arab peoples who lived in these areas also adopted the art of making tiles from Assyrian craftsmen.

Trade and roads

The geographical position of Assyria was extremely advantageous - important trade routes ran through Northern Mesopotamia, which had long connected Sumer and Babylonia with the Mediterranean states. Therefore, trade has always been one of the most important sources of the country’s prosperity.

Merchants - both Assyrians and foreigners - brought a wide variety of goods to the country. Wood, the most scarce of the building materials used in the Middle East, came to Assyria from Phenicia and Lebanon. Lebanese cedars, whose fame thundered throughout the East as an unsurpassed wood for construction, were used in the construction of palaces and temples - both as load-bearing beams and columns, and for decorating the interior decoration of premises. The Syrians, in particular Damascus, supplied the Assyrian rulers with incense, incense and valuable oils. Phenicia, one of the richest Mediterranean powers, was a source of ivory and products made from it - carved inlay for furniture, figurines and other things. The Assyrians themselves had practically no skills in working with this material - elephants, which were found in southern Mesopotamia in ancient times, had already disappeared from Mesopotamia by this time.

Active trade activity was carried out not only outside Assyria, but also within the country. Documents on the sale and purchase of land, houses, livestock or slaves are found in abundance today in the ruins of the state archives of the Assyrian rulers.

Such a developed trade, in no way inferior to the business activity of the Sumerian-Akkadian tamkar merchants, required a well-developed network of roads. One of the main transport routes in Assyria were, of course, rivers. The Tigris, Euphrates, and other fairly deep rivers and artificial canals were widely used for transporting goods to kelekah And guffah , the two main types of ships known to the Assyrians.

Kelek - a raft made of thick bundles of reeds.

Guff - a boat with a wooden frame, covered with leather.

These vessels, quite simple in design, made it possible to carry out navigation mainly by rafting up the river, that is, not south of Babylon.

All of Assyria was entangled in a network of well-established caravan routes that led north to the Phoenician ports, to Armenia, to Syria, from where ships sailed by sea to Egypt and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Caravan routes connected Assyria with almost all the major trading centers of the East - Damascus, Tyre, Palmyra, and many other cities.

But not only merchants needed good roads. The constant wars waged by the Assyrian kings required not just established, but strong, paved roads along which large troops could be easily and quickly transferred. The Assyrians learned to build excellent roads, a skill that the Persians later adopted along with their recognition of the strategic importance of good roads. On the main roads there were patrols of guards who protected the road from destruction, and the merchant caravans following along it from attacks by robbers. In the desert regions of the country, small garrisons were posted along the roads and wells were dug. Garrisons could transmit messages to each other using fires - such a quick warning system was extremely important, especially in the militarized state that Assyria was throughout the centuries of its existence. In addition to the system of signal fires, a developed network of roads allowed the rulers of Assyria to organize a kind of “postal service”. Messengers carried royal messages to governors and decrees to all regions, and in every major city there was an official in charge of sending letters to the king.

The importance the Assyrian rulers attached to roads can be evidenced by at least one of the inscriptions made by Esarhaddon in the newly rebuilt Babylon. the Assyrian king specifically informs his descendants that he “opened the city roads in four directions so that the Babylonians could communicate with all countries.” Sometimes roads were built for a specific need - back in the 12th century BC. Tiglath-pileser I ordered the construction of a road “for troops and carts” during a war with one of the neighboring states. The Assyrians also knew how to build bridges - wooden and stone.

Assyro-Babylonian culture

Heirs of the “blackheads”

The Assyro-Babylonian period is one of the most significant in the history of Mesopotamia and the entire Middle East. During this period, a type of state was finally formed, which, with minor changes, existed in the Middle East for a very long time. Fine art has received significant development, stepping far forward in technique and skill. The cultural and historical role of Assyria and Babylon is extremely great both in the context of the development of the Middle East and for the entire world civilization.

Despite the external historical confrontation between the two states, it is quite acceptable to talk about a single Assyro-Babylonian culture. The main argument for this is the unity of the language. Both the Assyrians and Babylonians spoke and wrote in Akkadian, their literatures are based to varying degrees on the same sources, and their beliefs are largely similar. The main historical processes that took place in these two states reveal their commonality even more clearly than, say, the similarity of mythological plots.

But this culture did not arise out of nowhere. When studying Assyro-Babylonian art, literature, religion, any aspects of the private and public life of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia in the 2nd-1st millennium BC, one should always remember that the foundation for this culture was primarily the achievements of the “blackheads” - the Sumerian people.

Assyro-Babylonian culture is an excellent example of continuity and innovation in cultural development. The main features of the social system, economic structure, religious views - all this was adopted from the Sumerians by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia of a later period. Tribes of nomads, who repeatedly seized power over individual cities and entire regions of ancient Sumer, eventually adopted their culture, writing, and rich literary tradition from the vanquished.

But “adopt” does not mean “blindly copy.” The Semitic peoples who settled across the territory of Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC projected art, mythology and the entire culture of the Sumerians onto their worldview. The Sumerian pantheon combined very well with the beliefs of the ancient Semitic tribes, who were as defenseless against the onslaught of the elements as the Sumerians, and who also deified primarily the forces of nature.

The varied scientific knowledge of the Sumerians - astronomical, mathematical, medical, as well as applied (agrotechnical, architectural) - thanks to the continuous temple tradition, reached the priests of the Babylonian and Assyrian gods in an unchanged and enriched form.

But, perhaps, the main thing that the Assyro-Babylonian culture adopted from the Sumerians was writing. Actually, it was writing that ensured the continuity of the two cultures. First, at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, during the era of the Akkadian kingdom and the Sargonids, the Akkadian language received a written language based on Sumerian cuneiform. During this period, as well as at a later time, the main literary works, myths, much of the scientific knowledge and other achievements of Sumerian culture were written down in the Akkadian and Sumerian languages. All this then formed the basis of the Assyro-Babylonian culture.

But, in addition to continuity, progress is important for any culture. The Mesopotamian culture of the Assyro-Babylonian period made this progress. A significant step forward, compared to the Sumerians, was made in crafts, in construction, and in applied arts. The main trends in art have remained the same, but their artistic form makes it possible to unmistakably determine which culture - Sumerian or Assyro-Babylonian - a particular work belongs to. Assyro-Babylonian art is more monumental, in many ways more realistic from an artistic point of view, than Sumerian.

In ancient Mesopotamia there was no theory of the state, which was created only much later, in Greece. But the practice of the state, the system of effective management of a major power, was superbly developed both in the Assyrian power and in Babylonia. The Sumerian isolated city-states were replaced by a completely new type of government - with a rigid hierarchical structure, with an extensive bureaucratic apparatus, with absolute subordination to the king. A classic example of ancient Eastern despotism is the Assyrian kingdom. The Persian kingdom was subsequently built on the same principle, whose rulers, like the Assyrian kings, managed to conquer almost all of Asia.

Assyro-Babylonian culture played a very significant role in the political formation of Mesopotamia in later periods, and left a noticeable mark on the history of world art. The monumentalism of Assyro-Babylonian sculpture, in particular, largely determined the stylistic development of the culture of Ancient Persia, both in its heyday and later. And many elements of the artistic culture of Ancient Mesopotamia have reached the present day almost unchanged - first of all, of course, glyptic - carved stone cylinders, which in ancient times served as personal seals, and today are used by Middle Eastern women exclusively as decorations.

Gods - strangers and our own

In religious terms, the Assyro-Babylonian culture adopted from the Sumerians primarily the cult of Inanna-Ishtar, Venus. The veneration of this goddess is closely intertwined with primitive beliefs in the mother goddess, the bestower of life and fertility.

Actually, Sumerian mythology, in its later version, enriched with Akkadian deities, formed the basis of Assyro-Babylonian mythology, although with some important changes.

To begin with, there are no references to the actual Semitic gods in Mesopotamia; all the Akkadian gods were in one way or another borrowed from the Sumerians. Even during the Akkadian kingdom, when the major myths were written down in Sumerian and Akkadian, they were Sumerian myths, and the gods in these texts bore predominantly Sumerian names. So modern knowledge of Akkadian mythology is largely projected from Babylonian beliefs.

The main text that helps reconstruct the Assyro-Babylonian belief system is the epic poem “Enuma elish,” named after the first words meaning “When above.” This poem gives a picture of the creation of the world and man, similar to the Sumerian, but more complex in comparison with it. The Babylonians develop quite complex religious concepts, such as the existence of several generations of deities, the younger of whom fight with the elders and defeat them. The role of the “younger” generation in this battle is assigned to the Sumerian gods, from whom all the gods of the Babylonian pantheon subsequently descended, starting with Marduk, the supreme deity. Among the Assyrians, accordingly, Ashur takes the place of Marduk.

The tendency to highlight one supreme god, commanding all others, is directly related to the social development of Mesopotamia in the Assyro-Babylonian era. The unification of the country under the rule of a single ruler presupposed the unification of religious beliefs, the presence of a supreme god-ruler who would transfer his power over the people to the rightful king. Among the gods, as among people, the communal system is replaced by a despotic monarchy.

The theme common to Sumerian-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian myths is the global flood. In both cases, the plot is the same - the gods, angry with people, send a thunderstorm to the earth, under the waters of which all living things perish, with the exception of one righteous man with his family, who was saved thanks to the patronage of one of the main gods.

Interestingly, all Mesopotamian flood myths are associated with torrential rains sent by the gods. This, undoubtedly, lies the explanation for the reverence with which the gods of bad weather, thunderstorms and winds were treated in Mesopotamia in all periods. Since Sumerian times, the ability to command destructive thunderstorms and winds has been attributed, in addition to “special” deities, to all the supreme gods - in particular Enlil and his sons Ningirsu and Ninurta.

Assyro-Babylonian mythology differs from Sumerian primarily in that the Babylonians and Assyrians practically did not introduce heroes-demigods of human origin into the pantheon. The exception is, perhaps, Gilgamesh. And almost all the legends about people who became equal to gods in Assyro-Babylonian literature have a clearly defined Sumerian origin. But the Babylonian and Assyrian gods perform much more great feats than the Sumerian ones.

The emergence of a new form of government affected not only the general character of Assyro-Babylonian mythology. In the Assyro-Babylonian period, the concept of “personal” deities appears. Just as a king serves as a protector and patron for any of his subjects, each subject has his own guardian god, or even several, each of which opposes one or another group of demons and evil deities that attack people.

The general structure of the Mesopotamian pantheon has remained unchanged since Sumerian times - three supreme gods, to whom the council of supreme gods (seven or twelve deities commanding certain natural forces and phenomena) is subordinate. However, over time, the supreme god became the focus of the main forces and power in the world. Thus, the Babylonian Marduk eventually combined the features of such ancient deities as Enki and Enlil, and later almost all the “divine powers” ​​began to be attributed to him. THE SAME happened in Assyria, where Ashur finally turned into almost a single god. However, it should be noted that the Assyrian-Babylonian monolatry, which singled out one god-ruler, never developed into monotheism, which is inherent in a pronounced form in ancient Hebrew beliefs and Judaism in general.

Based on cuneiform texts of that period, modern scientists have been able to roughly recreate the picture of the universe as the Babylonians and Assyrians saw it. According to their ideas, the whole world floated in some kind of global ocean. The earth was like a raft, and the vault of heaven covered it like a dome. The sky was divided into three parts - “the upper sky, where the father of the gods Anu lives, the middle sky, which belongs to Marduk, and the lower sky, the only one that people see. Above these skies are four more. The Moon and the Sun are located there, and light descends to the earth from there. The heavenly dome is fenced off from the waves of the world's oceans by a high earthen rampart. The earth and sky are connected by strong ropes tied to pegs driven into the edges of the earth (in the minds of the Babylonian astronomer priests, these ropes are visible to people as the Milky Way).

The earth, like the sky, is divided into three parts. The upper level, which belongs to Enlil, is inhabited by people and animals. The middle tier is river waters and underground springs belonging to Eya, one of the three highest gods. Finally, the third, lower tier is the domain of Nergal, the underground kingdom where all the gods of the earth live.

The sky, according to Assyro-Babylonian ideas, was a prototype of everything that exists on earth. All cities and countries, all the largest temples have their own heavenly image. The plan of Nineveh, for example, has been written in the heavens since the beginning of time. The Khrpam of Marduk, located in the “middle sky,” was exactly twice the size of its earthly counterpart. In heaven, as on earth, there were countries known to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, and their relative location coincided with the real political map of the region.

Thus, Assyro-Babylonian mythology represents, in comparison with Sumerian-Akkadian, a step forward towards the formation of a single monotheistic religion. The patriarchal, communal character of the Sumerian pantheon does not find support in the era of the rigid state system of the Mesopotamian kingdoms. Disparate beliefs are united into a single unified system of views with rather complex internal connections.

Mesopotamia and biblical legends

The Assyro-Babylonian culture, as well as the Sumerian one that preceded it, hid a lot of surprises for European scientists from their very discovery in the 18th century. The main of these surprises turned out to be related to the Bible - a book that for many centuries was considered a genuine and indisputable historical book, the oldest sacred text known to mankind.

For some time, since the beginning of archaeological work in the Middle East, the data of the Bible was simply confirmed, which in itself was a sensation for European scientists infected with skepticism towards the Holy Scriptures. It turned out that there really were cities and tribes that are written about in the Bible - Babylon and Nineveh, the peoples of the Hittites and Chaldeans .

Chaldeans (Khaldu) - Semitic tribes that lived in the south of Mesopotamia, south of Babylon. Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, came from the Chaldeans.

The names of the biblical kings - Nebuchadnezzar, Nimrod - were not fiction at all; these names were drawn in time immemorial by the builders of Mesopotamian temples and palaces. The story of the flood has been confirmed - in the deep layers of the earth, during excavations of the Sumerian city of Ur, archaeologists stumbled upon a dense layer of mud two and a half meters thick, which could have ended up in these places only if it had been washed by huge sea waves or had overflowed its banks and flooded the entire river valley.

But after Assyro-Babylonian writings fell into the hands of researchers in the 19th century and were successfully deciphered, it became clear to scientists that many of the biblical legends were in fact just recycled myths of a people much more ancient than the Jews. As more and more tablets with cuneiform texts emerged from excavations, more and more borrowings were discovered by biblical authors from the Sumerian-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian culture. Here are some of these borrowings - the most famous of the biblical stories included in the Book of Genesis - the history of the ancient Jews.

Abraham, one of the forefathers of the Jewish people, came from “Ur of the Chaldeans,” from where he took out measures of weights, such as the shekel (shekel) and mina, which later spread throughout the East. In the same Uruk, Abraham’s ancestors prayed to the “golden calf” cursed by the Bible - a bull, the oldest of the symbols of fertility and strength common in the Middle East.

The biblical legend about the global flood and the salvation of righteous Noah with his family and animals was also borrowed by the Jews from the Sumerians. In southern Sumer, in ancient times, a legend was written about how the gods decided to punish people who stopped honoring the heavenly creators. Only the ruler of the city of Shuruppak, Ut-napishtim, having received a warning from the supreme god Anu, managed to escape the flood. The details of the Sumerian and biblical legends coincide almost completely.

The biblical legend about Moses, whom his mother put in a tarred basket and threw into the water to save his illegitimate son from death, mysteriously repeats the story of the first ruler of Mesopotamia - Sargon the Ancient, who described his own childhood in exactly this way.

In biblical books and in later works of Jewish theologians and Christian authors, the name of Astarte, the mythical mistress of vice, is often mentioned. It is not difficult to notice that Astarte is the Babylonian Ishtar, the Sumerian Inanna, the goddess of love, who, thanks to the Bible, acquired the status of a cursed deity for many centuries. It is difficult to say with certainty why one of the oldest beliefs of mankind acquired such a negative connotation in the Bible, but the fact remains that the ancient Jews did not recognize a single god other than Yahweh, and cursed all other gods and goddesses.

Modern religious scholars have discovered many similarities in the symbolism of Sumerian-Akkadian and Assyrian-Babylonian myths, on the one hand, and biblical tales, on the other. The snake as an object of religious hatred in both cultures, the bull - a lot of symbols passed from Mesopotamian mythology to biblical mythology. But this topic in itself is so vast that it deserves a separate study. Moreover, quite successful attempts have already been made to study and systematize the parallels between the biblical tradition and Mesopotamian myths.

When the ruins spoke

The history of Ancient Mesopotamia as we know it today - the history of disappeared civilizations that determined the development of this vast region for centuries to come, cultures that gave humanity a lot of invaluable knowledge - is unlikely to be complete without the history of the discovery of these civilizations. If it were not for the dedicated work of archaeologists, linguists, historians, we would not know about ancient history and a hundredth of what we know about it today. Therefore, it is only fair to briefly talk about those, thanks to whose efforts, the history of the Ancient East emerged from centuries of oblivion.

First of all, of course, archaeologists should be mentioned. More than one generation of them has been replaced on the ruins of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, and discoveries continue, and the moment is unlikely to come when the last page of the ancient history of mankind will be written.

European historians became interested in the East quite a long time ago - back in the seventeenth century, when the Italian merchant Pietro della Valle brought tablets with strange cuneiform signs carved on them to Rome. For a long time, no one knew how to approach reading these icons; it was not even clear whether they were written or just patterns on stone.

Gradually, more and more such inscriptions taken from Ancient Persia, a powerful state with which the ancient Greeks were at enmity, fell into the hands of researchers, and which was eventually subjugated by Alexander the Great, who conquered half of the countries known in his time. The ancient Persian inscriptions themselves contained a lot of possible discoveries, and it soon became obvious that texts in two languages ​​were carved on the same tablet - ancient Persian and some other, much more ancient and complex one.

The first truly serious step towards deciphering cuneiform was made by the English officer Henry Rawlinson. In 1837, he first took up the task of deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions from the monument to King Darius I. Having knowledge of Arabic, Rawlinson was able to read the inscription made in Old Persian and assumed - quite correctly - that the other two inscriptions, also made with cuneiform signs, although of different outlines, they talk about the same thing. Rawlinson laid the groundwork for deciphering inscriptions written in an older language, but was unable to decipher them.

Only later did linguists suggest that these inscriptions could have been made in one of the Semitic languages ​​- after all, it was known from the Bible, the main source of information about the ancient world at that time, that Semitic languages ​​had been spoken in Mesopotamia for a long time. With the help of many linguists who spoke modern Semitic languages, and especially experts in Hebrew, it was possible to decipher the first inscriptions in the ancient language.

Interest in the Ancient East flared up with renewed vigor. In their attempts to penetrate the thickness of time, European scientists left their university classrooms, armed themselves with shovels and went in search of the sand-covered ruins of ancient cities.

The first archaeologist to begin excavations in Mesopotamia was the Italian doctor and diplomat Paul Emile Botta. In 1842, he came to these parts, which were under Turkish rule, as a representative of the French government in one of the occupied provinces. But Bott's real mission was not diplomatic at all. The first deciphered inscriptions in ancient languages ​​confirmed the biblical stories about the countless rich and lush cities of antiquity. The French government, excited by this discovery, instructed Bott to find the biblical city of Nineveh, the capital of the ancient kings of Mesopotamia.

Neither Botta himself nor anyone else knew where the ruins of this city were - even the local Arab residents could not really advise anything. For more than a year, Botta carried out completely unsuccessful excavations of the hills that covered the entire Mesopotamian land in abundance - the graves in which human culture was buried. He was completely desperate when luck suddenly smiled at him. While excavating one of the remote hills, Botta found skillfully crafted alabaster tiles, then more and more. He came across clay tablets in abundance, covered with cuneiform characters. These tablets caused particular horror among the Arab workers who helped the diplomat-archaeologist - bricks covered with demons and burned in the flames of hell, as the Koran, the holy book of the Arabs, said. The next discovery plunged them into even greater horror, and Bott himself was finally convinced that the ancient capital of Assyria lay in ruins before him. These were stone bulls - with a bearded human head and powerful bird wings on their backs. Inspired by their success, Botta and his followers excavated a hill near the village of Khorsabad for several years. From under the piles of sand and thousand-year-old debris, the outlines of a huge palace began to appear, decorated in time immemorial with carved alabaster slabs and glazed bricks. But the work was interrupted, and only many years later, in the thirties of the 20th century, American archaeologists completed the excavations and found out that Botta had made a mistake. He found not Nineveh, but another, almost equally magnificent, although completely unknown to scientists, Assyrian city - Dur-Sharruken, the residence of King Sargon II.

The honor of discovering Nineveh, a city cursed by the biblical prophets, a city whose very name attracted researchers to itself like a magnet, belongs not to Botta, but to an Englishman Austin Henry Layard , who only a few years after Botta’s discovery arrived at the very hills that the Italian had dug up before him to no avail.

Austin Henry Layard (otherwise Layard, 1817 - 1894) - English archaeologist and diplomat.

Based on local obscure legends, Layard began excavations on that bank of the Tigris that had not been touched by workers from Bott's expedition. And he found - first the city Kalah and the palace of King Nimrod, about whom the Bible wrote, and soon Nineveh, with its palaces and stone bulls.

Kalah (Kalhu) - the capital of Assyria in the 9th-8th centuries. BC.

But only after his departure from Mesopotamia, on the ruins of the royal palaces of Nineveh, the main wealth of this city was found - the library of Ashurbanipal, the last ruler of Assyria before the powerful kingdom was swept off the face of the earth by the troops of the Babylonians - Assyria's eternal rivals. In 1854, thirty thousand clay tablets were discovered in the ruins of the royal palace, carefully packed and exported to England. Thanks to the discovery of this invaluable material, the study of Assyrian cuneiform began with renewed vigor.

It immediately became clear that the Assyrian script was much more complex than the later Persian cuneiform. The Persians used four dozen signs; the Assyrians had over four hundred similar signs. In addition, if among the Persians one icon denoted one sound, then the Assyrians could denote a syllable, a group of syllables, or even a whole word with an icon. And yet, scientists from all European countries did not give up trying to read the ancient texts.

Henry Rawlinson, a pioneer in the field of cuneiform deciphering, and his student George Smith were especially successful in this. It was Smith in 1872, while reading tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal, who came across a text that completely changed the views of scientists on the Bible and on the history of mankind itself. Smith was able to read the Assyrian legend about the global flood - the same one that, according to the Bible, destroyed all of humanity, leaving only the righteous Noah alive. But the Assyrian text was much older than the biblical one. This meant that even before biblical times, a highly developed culture existed in the East, whose myths and religion were borrowed by the Jews.

The text of the Nineveh flood myth was incomplete, and Smith set out on a new expedition to Mesopotamia to find the missing tablets with the text. In his searches, he came across a fairly large collection of cuneiform tablets, although much south of Nineveh, in the excavations of the Jumjuma hill. Smith was unable to fully excavate this hill, and a few years later a German expedition headed by historian and archaeologist Robert Koldewey went there. It was he who went to Mesopotamia in 1898, having a specific task in front of him - to find the biblical Babylon.

Attempts to excavate the Jumjuma Hill, where Smith found three thousand carefully packed in clay vessels and perfectly preserved tablets, were made before Koldewey, but it was he who had the honor of discovering these ruins, which - in full accordance with the expectations of scientists from all countries - turned out to be the remains of Babylon, “ Gate of God,” the most beautiful city of the Ancient East.

Koldewey spent 18 years in Babylon, providing researchers - historians, art historians, linguists - with material for work for many years to come. Under his leadership, another, no less important discovery was made - in 1903, the archaeological expedition of Walter Andre, Koldewey's assistant, discovered the ruins of a city that many centuries ago became the cradle of the great Assyrian kingdom. This was the city of Ashur, a sacred place for all of Ancient Assyria, where there were the graves of the kings, the temple of the god Ashur - the patron saint of the country, and the temple of Ishtar - Venus, the Morning Star, the goddess whom the Assyrians revered above all others. Like all the cities of Mesopotamia, Ashur was decorated with a multi-stage ziggurat - a temple tower. Both Babylon and Ashur presented the researcher with a lot of works of art - reliefs, figurines, which made it possible to recreate an interesting picture of the life and views of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.

The more cuneiform texts fell into the hands of scientists, the more the world learned about the ancient civilizations that lived in a deserted, almost lifeless, and once flourishing region. Nowadays, thanks to the efforts of several generations of archaeologists, historians and linguists, it has been largely possible to recreate the picture of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia - Sumerian-Akkadian and Assyrian-Babylonian. Many books have been written about these civilizations - from purely scientific ones, devoted to special issues of Assyro- and Sumerology, to popular science books, covering the life and everyday life of these ancient peoples, from which only the ruins of once beautiful palaces, products of skilled artisans, and clay have reached their descendants. tablets covered with a pattern of wedges, incomprehensible at first glance, but capable of telling a lot about those who once applied this “pattern” to wet clay, dried the tablet in the sun, and hid it in a clay “envelope”, which preserved the text much longer than its author could have imagined.

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Assyria is a country located in the middle reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers here are turbulent and have very deep beds. Their spill was much less pronounced in Assyria, so that a significant part of the country was not affected at all. Most of the river valley is arid. The harvest depended largely on rain, which fell more than in Babylonia. Artificial irrigation did not play a big role. In addition, Assyria was distinguished by mountainous terrain. The mountains bordering the country from the east, north and west were partially covered with forests. On the plains of Assyria there were lions, elephants, leopards, wild donkeys and horses, wild boars, and in the mountains - bears and deer. Hunting lions and leopards was a favorite pastime of the Assyrian kings. In the mountainous regions, different types of stone were mined, including marble, and metal ores (copper, lead, silver, iron). In addition to farming, hunting and cattle breeding played an important role in the economy. The favorable geographical location at the intersection of caravan routes contributed to the early development of trade.

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. the main population of northeastern Mesopotamia were subareas, associated with one of the most ancient peoples of Western Asia, the Hurrians, whose main area of ​​settlement was northwestern Mesopotamia. From here the Hurrians later spread throughout Syria, Palestine and Asia Minor. In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Intensified Semitization of Northern Mesopotamia occurs. An ethnic group is being formed Assyrians, speaking their own dialect of the Akkadian language. Nevertheless, Hurrian traditions persisted for a long time on the eastern edge of Assyria, across the Tigris.

Speaking about sources on Assyrian history, it is necessary to highlight among them monuments of material culture from excavations in major cities. A turning point in the study of Assyrian antiquities was the discovery by an English diplomat G. O. Layard V 1847 during excavations of the Kuyunjik hill, northeast of Mosul (modern Iraq), the Assyrian capital Nineveh. In it, Layard discovered the ruins of the palace of King Ashurbanipal, which died in a fire, with a huge library of books written on clay tablets. It was Layard’s findings that formed the basis of the British Museum’s richest collection of Assyrian antiquities. French diplomat Botta 1843 discovered in the area of ​​the village of Khorsabad the fortress and royal residence of Dur-Sharrukin, built by Sargon II. These discoveries marked the beginning of a new science - Assyriology.

The main group of written sources consists of cuneiform texts from the library of Ashurbanipal and other palace complexes. These are diplomatic documents, letters and reports of priests and military leaders, administrative and economic documentation, etc. Among the legal monuments, the so-called Middle Assyrian laws stand out (middle II thousand BC BC): 14 tablets and fragments found during excavations in Ashur. Actually, historical literature did not exist in Assyria, but “royal lists” and chronicles of individual kings were compiled, in which they praised their exploits.

Information about Assyria is also preserved by sources originating from other countries (for example, the Old Testament of the Bible). Ancient authors (Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo) also write about Assyria, but they know little about its history, and the information they provide is often semi-legendary.

Periodization of the history of Ancient Assyria

• 1. Old Assyrian period (XX-XVI centuries BC).
• 2. Middle Assyrian period (XV-XI centuries BC).
• 3. New Assyrian period (X-VII centuries BC).

As you know, the country in the north of which the Assyrian state arose is Mesopotamia, also called Mesopotamia. It received this name due to its location in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Being the cradle of such powerful states of the Ancient World as Babylonia, Sumer and Akkad, it played an important role in the formation and development of world civilization. As for his most warlike brainchild - Assyria, it is considered the first empire in the history of mankind.

Geographical and natural features of Mesopotamia

In terms of its geographical location, Ancient Mesopotamia had two significant advantages. Firstly, unlike the arid regions surrounding it, it was located in the zone of the so-called Fertile Crescent, where significant amounts of precipitation fell in winter, which was very favorable for agriculture. Secondly, the soil in this region was rich in deposits of iron ore and copper, highly valued since people learned to process them.

Today, the territory of Mesopotamia - the ancient country in the north of which the Assyrian state arose - is divided between Iraq and North-Eastern Syria. In addition, some of its regions belong to Iran and Turkey. Both in ancient times and in modern history, this Central Asian region is a zone of frequent armed conflicts, sometimes creating tension in all international politics.

Warlike daughter of Mesopotamia

According to researchers, the history of Assyria goes back almost 2 thousand years. Formed in the 24th century BC. e, the state existed until the beginning of the 7th century, after which, in 609 BC. e., fell under the onslaught of the armies of Babylon and Media. The Assyrian power is rightfully considered one of the most warlike and aggressive in the Ancient World.

Having begun her aggressive campaigns in the first half of the 9th century, she soon managed to conquer a vast territory. Not only all of Mesopotamia came under the rule of its kings, but also Palestine, Cyprus and Egypt, which, however, after a short time managed to regain independence.

In addition, the Assyrian power controlled certain areas of what is now Turkey and Syria for many centuries. That is why it is commonly considered an empire, that is, a state that relies in its foreign policy on military force and expands its own borders at the expense of the territories of the peoples it has captured.

Colonial policy of Assyria

Since the country in the north of which the Assyrian state arose was completely conquered by it at the beginning of the 9th century, the next 3 centuries are nothing more than a period of their common history, replete with many dramatic pages. It is known that the Assyrians imposed tribute on all conquered peoples, to collect which they periodically sent armed detachments.

In addition, all skilled artisans were driven to the territory of Assyria, thanks to which it was possible to raise the level of production to unprecedented heights at that time, and with cultural achievements to influence all surrounding peoples. This order was maintained for centuries by the most brutal punitive measures. All those dissatisfied were inevitably doomed to death or, at best, to immediate deportation.

Outstanding politician and warrior

The peak of the development of the Assyrian state is considered to be the period from 745 to 727 BC. e., when it was headed by the greatest ruler of antiquity - King Tiglath-Pileser III, who went down in history not only as an outstanding commander of his time, but also as a very far-sighted and cunning politician.

It is known, for example, that in 745 BC. e. he responded to the call of the Babylonian king Nabonassar, who asked for help in the fight against the Chaldean and Elamite tribes that occupied the country. Having introduced his troops into Babylonia and expelled the invaders from it, the wise king managed to win such ardent sympathy from the local residents that he became the de facto ruler of the country, pushing their hapless king into the background.

Under the rule of Sargon II

After the death of Tiglath-pileser, the throne was inherited by his son, who went down in history under the name of Sargon II. He continued to expand the borders of the state, but, unlike his father, he resorted not so much to skillful diplomacy as to brute military force. For example, when in 689 BC. e. An uprising broke out in Babylon, which was under his control, and he razed it to the ground, sparing neither women nor children.

A city returned from oblivion

During his reign, the capital of Assyria, and in fact of the entire Ancient Mesopotamia, became the city of Nineveh, mentioned in the Bible, but for a long time considered fictitious. Only excavations by French archaeologists carried out in the 40s of the 19th century made it possible to prove its historicity. This was a sensational discovery, since until then even the location of Assyria itself was not precisely known.

Thanks to the efforts of researchers, it was possible to discover many artifacts that testify to the extraordinary luxury with which Sargon II equipped Nineveh, which replaced the former capital of the state - the city of Ashur. It became known about the palace he built and the powerful defensive structures that surrounded the city. One of the technical achievements of that era was the aqueduct, raised to a height of 10 meters and supplying water to the royal gardens.

Among other finds of French archaeologists were clay tablets containing inscriptions in one of the languages ​​of the Semitic group. Having deciphered them, scientists learned about the campaign of the Assyrian king Sargon II to the southwestern part of Asia, where he conquered the state of Urartu, as well as the capture of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was also mentioned in the Bible, but was questioned by historians.

Structure of Assyrian society

From the first centuries after the formation of the state, the Assyrian kings concentrated in their hands the fullness of military, civil and religious power. They were simultaneously supreme rulers, military leaders, high priests and treasurers. The next level of the vertical power was occupied by provincial governors, who were appointed from among the military.

They were responsible not only for the loyalty of the peoples living in the conquered territories, but also for the timely and complete receipt of the established tribute from them. The bulk of the population were farmers and artisans, who were either slaves or workers dependent on their masters.

Death of an Empire

By the beginning of the 7th century BC. e. The history of Assyria reached the highest point of its development, followed by its unexpected collapse. As mentioned above, in 609 BC. e. The territory of the empire was invaded by the combined troops of two neighboring states - Babylonia, which was once under the control of Assyria, but managed to gain independence, and Media. The forces were too unequal, and, despite desperate resistance to the enemy, the empire, which for a long time held all of Mesopotamia and the adjacent lands under its control, ceased to exist.

Under the rule of the conquerors

However, Mesopotamia - the country in the north of which the Assyrian state arose - did not retain the status of a politically independent region for long after its fall. After 7 decades, it was completely captured by the Persians, after which it was no longer able to revive its former sovereignty. From the end of the 6th to the middle of the 4th century BC. e. this vast region was part of the Achaemenid power - the Persian empire, which subjugated all of Western Asia and a significant part of Northeast Africa. It received its name from the name of its first ruler - King Achaemen, who became the founder of a dynasty that was in power for almost 3 centuries.

In the middle of the 4th century BC. e. Alexander the Great expelled the Persians from the territory of Mesopotamia, incorporating it into his empire. After its collapse, the homeland of the once formidable Assyrians fell under the rule of the Hellenistic monarchy of the Seleucids, who built a new Greek state on the ruins of the former power. These were truly worthy heirs of the former glory of Tsar Alexander. They managed to extend their power not only to the territory of the once sovereign Mesopotamia, but also to subjugate all of Asia Minor, Phenicia, Syria, Iran, as well as a significant part of Central Asia and the Middle East.

However, these warriors were destined to leave the historical stage. In the 3rd century BC. BC Mesopotamia finds itself in the power of the Parthian kingdom, located on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and two centuries later it is captured by the Armenian emperor Tigran Osroen. During the period of Roman rule, Mesopotamia broke up into several small states with different rulers. This last stage of its history, dating back to the period of Late Antiquity, is remarkable only in that the largest and most famous city of Mesopotamia became Edessa, repeatedly mentioned in the Bible and associated with the names of many prominent figures of Christianity.