The History of Assyria

After the early Islamic conquests, Assyria was dissolved as an official administrative entity by an empire. Under Arab rule, Mesopotamia as a whole underwent a gradual process of further Arabisation and the beginning of Islamification , and the region saw a large influx of non indigenous Arabs, Kurds , Iranian , and Turkic peoples. However, the indigenous Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia retained their language, religion, culture and identity. Under the Arab Islamic empires, the Christian Assyrians were classed as dhimmis , who had certain restrictions imposed upon them.

Assyrians were thus excluded from specific duties and occupations reserved for Muslims, they did not enjoy the same political rights as Muslims, their word was not equal to that of a Muslim in legal and civil matters without a Muslim witness, they were subject to payment of a special tax jizyah and they were banned from spreading their religion further in Muslim-ruled lands.

However, personal matters such as marriage and divorce were governed by the cultural laws of the Assyrians. For those reasons, and even during the Sassanian period before Islamic rule, The Assyrian Church of the East formed a church structure that spread Nestorian Christianity to as far away as China, in order to proselytize away from Muslim-ruled regions In Iran and their homeland in Mesopotamia, with evidence of their massive church structure being the Nestorian Stele , an artifact found in China which documented over years of Christian history in China from to AD.

The first signs of trouble for the Assyrians started in the 13th century, when the Mongols first invaded the Near East after the fall of Baghdad in to Hulagu Khan. The Mongols in fact spent most of their time oppressing Muslims and Jews, outlawing the practice of circumcision and halal butchery , as they found them repulsive and violent. However, the Mongol rulers in the Near East eventually converted to Islam. In spring , the Mongol Malik governor of the region attempted to seize it from them with the help of the Kurds and Arabs, but was defeated. After his defeat he decided to siege the city.

The Assyrians held out for three months, but the citadel was at last taken by Ilkhanate troops and Arab, Turkic and Kurdish tribesmen on July 1, The defenders of the citadel fought to the last man, and many of the inhabitants of the lower town were subsequently massacred. Regardless of these hardships, the Assyrian people remained numerically dominant in the north of Mesopotamia as late as the 14th century AD, and the city of Assur functioned as their religious and cultural capital.

In the midth century the Muslim Turkish ruler Tamurlane conducted a religiously motivated massacre of the indigenous Christians , and entirely destroyed the vast Church of the East structure established throughout the Far East outside what had been the Sasanid Empire , with the exception of the St Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast in India , who numbered 4. Around years after the massacres by Timur, a religious schism known as the Schism of occurred among the Christians of northern Mesopotamia. A large number of followers of the Church of the East were dissatisfied with the leadership of the Church, at this point based in the Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh , and in particular with the system of hereditary succession of the patriarch.

These did not have the rank of metropolitan bishop , which was required for appointing a patriarch and which was granted only to members of the patriarch's family. In , he was killed by the Turkish authorities after being denounced by the traditionalist patriarch, but the metropolitans he had ordained elected a successor for him, initiating the Shimun line of patriarchs, all of whom took the name Shimun Simon. The patriarchs of this line requested and obtained confirmation from Rome only until In they clearly broke off communion with Rome, but continued as a line of patriarchs independent from that at Alqosh, with their seat, from then on, at Qodchanis in the Hakkari mountains.

There is no record of a response from Rome confirming him as Catholic patriarch. Biblical Aramaic was until recently called Chaldaic or Chaldee , [80] [81] and East Syrian Christians, whose liturgical language was and is a form of Aramaic , were called Chaldeans, [82] as an ethnic, not a religious term. Hormuzd Rassam — still applied the term "Chaldeans" no less to those not in communion with Rome than to the Catholic Chaldeans [83] and stated that "the present Chaldeans, with a few exceptions, speak the same dialect used in the Targum , and in some parts of Ezra and Daniel , which are called 'Chaldee'.

Thus was instituted the Josephite line, a third line of patriarchs. His successor Eliya XII, after sending his profession of faith to Rome and receiving confirmation as Catholic patriarch, adopted a traditionalist position in Although Yohannan Hormizd won the support of most of the followers of the Alqosh patriarchate, Rome considered his election to be irregular and, instead of accepting him as patriarch, merely confirmed him as metropolitan of Mosul and patriarchal administrator.

He was thus granted the powers and the insignia of a patriarch, but not the title. In , Eliya XI died and had no traditionalist successor. Augustine Hindi died in and, in , Rome appointed Yohannan Hormizd as patriarch of all the Catholics. The Shimun line, which had been the first to enter union with Rome, remained at the head of the traditionalist church that in adopted the name Assyrian Church of the East , [88] [89] [90] and that continued to be in the hands of the same family until the death in of Shimun XXI Eshai.

At the same time, the originally traditionalist Alqosh line continues, without hereditary succession, at the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church. After these splits, the Assyrians suffered a number of religiously and ethnically motivated massacres throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, [91] such as the Massacres of Badr Khan which resulted in the massacre of over 10, Assyrians in the s, [92] culminating in the large scale Hamidian massacres of unarmed men, women and children by Turks and Kurds in the s at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and its associated largely Kurdish and Arab militias, which greatly reduced their numbers, particularly in southeastern Turkey where over 25, Assyrians were murdered.

The Assyrians suffered a further catastrophic series of events during World War I in the form of the religiously and ethnically motivated Assyrian Genocide at the hands of the Ottomans and their Kurdish and Arab allies from to In reaction against Ottoman cruelty, the Assyrians took up arms, and an Assyrian war of independence was fought during World War I which took place in what is today south eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, north western Iran and north eastern Syria.

Who Are the Assyrians?

For a time, the Assyrians fought successfully against overwhelming numbers, scoring a number of victories against the Ottomans and Kurds, and also hostile Arab and Iranian groups. However, due to the collapse of the Russian Empire —due to the Russian Revolution —and the similar collapse of the Armenian Defense , the Assyrians were left without allies. As a result, the Assyrians were vastly outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, cut off, and without supplies.

The only option they had was to flee the region into northwest Iran and fight their way, with around 50, civilians in tow, to British train lines going to Mandatory Iraq. The sizable Assyrian presence in south eastern Anatolia which had endured for over four millennia was thus reduced to no more than 15, by the end of World War I, and by many of those who remained were forcibly expelled in a display of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish government, with many leaving and later founding villages in the Sapna and Nahla valleys in the Dohuk Governorate of Iraq.

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In the Assyrian settlements in Mindan and Baquba were attacked by Iraqi Arabs , but the Assyrian tribesmen displayed their military prowess by successfully defeating and driving off the Arab forces. The Assyrian Levies were founded by the British in , with ancient Assyrian military rankings, such as Rab-shakeh , Rab-talia and Turtanu, being revived for the first time in millennia for this force. The Assyrians were prized by the British rulers for their fighting qualities, loyalty, bravery and discipline, and were used to help the British put down insurrections among the Arabs, Kurds and Turcoman , guard the borders with Iran and Turkey, and protect British military installations.

During the s Assyrian levies saw action in effectively defeating Arab and Kurdish forces during anti-British rebellions in Iraq. After Iraq was granted independence by the British in , the Assyrians suffered the Simele Massacre , where thousands of unarmed villagers men, women and children were slaughtered by joint Arab-Kurdish forces of the Iraqi Army. The massacres of civilians followed a clash between armed Assyrian tribesmen and the Iraqi army, where the Iraqi forces suffered a defeat after trying to disarm the Assyrians, whom they feared would attempt to secede from Iraq.

Armed Assyrian Levies were prevented by the British from going to the aid of these civilians, and the British government then whitewashed the massacres at the League of Nations. Assyrians played a major role in the victory over Arab-Iraqi forces at the Battle of Habbaniya and elsewhere in , when the Iraqi government decided to join World War II on the side of Nazi Germany.

The British presence in Iraq lasted until , and Assyrian Levies remained attached to British forces until this time, after which they were disarmed and disbanded. A further persecution of Assyrians took place in the Soviet Union in the late s and early s when thousands of Assyrians settled in Georgia, Armenia and southern Russia were forcibly deported from their homes in the dead of night by Stalin without warning or reason to Central Asia , with most being relocated to Kazakhstan , where a small minority still remain. The period from the s through to was a period of respite for the Assyrians in northern Iraq and north east Syria.

The regime of Iraqi President Kassim in particular saw the Assyrians accepted into mainstream society. Many urban Assyrians became successful businessmen, a number of Assyrians moved south to cities such as Baghdad , Basra and Nasiriyah to enhance their economic prospects, others were well represented in politics, the military, the arts and entertainment, Assyrian towns, villages, farmsteads and Assyrian quarters in major cities flourished undisturbed, and Assyrians came to excel and be over-represented in sports such as boxing, football, athletics, wrestling and swimming.

However, in , the Ba'ath Party took power by force in Iraq, and came to power in Syria the same year. The Baathists, though secular, were Arab nationalists , and set about attempting to Arabize the many non-Arab peoples of Iraq and Syria, including the Assyrians. This policy included refusing to acknowledge the Assyrians as an ethnic group, banning the publication of written material in Eastern Aramaic, and banning its teaching in schools, together with an attempt to Arabize the ancient pre-Arab heritage of Mesopotamian civilisation. The policies of the Baathists have also long been mirrored in Turkey, whose nationalist governments have refused to acknowledge the Assyrians as an ethnic group since the s, and have attempted to Turkify the Assyrians by calling them "Semitic Turks" and forcing them to adopt Turkish names and language.

In Iran, Assyrians continued to enjoy cultural, religious and ethnic rights, but due to the Islamic Revolution of their community has been diminished. In the aftermath of the Iraq War of , Assyrians became the targets of Islamist terrorist attacks and intimidation from both Sunni and Shia groups, as well as criminal kidnapping organisations; forcing many in southern and central Iraq to relocate to safer Assyrian regions in the north of the country or north east Syria. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan has been slowly trying to cause demographic changes in the Nineveh plains , where the vast majority of Assyrians in Iraq reside.

After the failed Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum , the KRG and the Iraqi federal government reached an agreement whereby the Peshmerga would withdraw from the Nineveh plains and the Iraqi army would take over in addition to the reformation of the NPU , something the indigenous Assyrians have protested numerous times in many villages [] [] [] Iraqi flags along with Assyrian flags were flown by the residents during the occupation, especially after the announcement of the referendum.

Markourkas Church was destroyed and the cemetery was bulldozed. Assyrians in both Iraq and Syria [] [] [] have responded by forming armed Assyrian militias to defend their territories, [] and despite being heavily outnumbered and outgunned have had success in driving ISIL from Assyrian towns and villages, and defending others from attack.

The militia is made up of volunteers, who come from all over the Nineveh plain. Assyrians who have fled have ended up all over the world. S Census Bureau survey, reported that roughly , have relocated to the United States. Assyria continued to exist as a geopolitical entity until the Arab-Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century. Assyrian identity; personal, family and tribal names; and both the spoken and written evolution of Mesopotamian Aramaic which still contains many Akkadian loan words and an Akkadian grammatical structure have survived among the Assyrian people from ancient times to this day.

An Assyrian calendar has been revived. Emerging in Sumer c. Around BC, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller. The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian , Assyrian , and Hittite languages. Most of the archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use of both cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence.

Assyrian was a dialect of Akkadian, a member of the eastern branch of the Semitic family and the oldest historically attested of the Semitic languages, which began to appear in written form in the 29th century BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the Aramaic language became increasingly common, [] more so than Akkadian—this was thought to be largely due to the mass deportations undertaken by Assyrian kings, [] in which large Aramaic-speaking populations, conquered by the Assyrians, were relocated to Assyria and interbred with the Assyrians, and due to the fact that Tiglath-pileser II made it the lingua franca of Assyria and its empire in the 8th century BC.

The destruction of the Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Assur by the Babylonians, Medes and their allies, ensured that much of the bilingual elite but not all were wiped out. By the 7th century BC, much of the Assyrian population used distinct Akkadian-influenced Eastern Aramaic varieties and not Akkadian itself. The last Akkadian inscriptions in Mesopotamia date from the 1st century AD.

The Syriac language also emerged in Assyria during the 5th century BC, and during the Christian era, Syriac literature and Syriac script were to become hugely influential. However, the descendant Akkadian-influenced Eastern Aramaic dialects from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as Akkadian and Mesopotamian Aramaic personal, tribal, family and place names, still survive to this day among Assyrian people and are spoken fluently by up to 1,, Assyrians, with a further number having lesser and varying degrees of fluency.

History of Assyria | The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

After 90 years of effort, the University of Chicago in completed an Assyrian dictionary , the style of which is more like an encyclopedia than a dictionary. The Assyrians, like the rest of the Mesopotamian peoples, followed ancient Mesopotamian religion , with their national god Ashur having the most importance to them during the Assyrian Empire.

This religion gradually declined with the advent of Syriac Christianity between the first and tenth centuries. The original pagan religion of the Assyrians was widely adhered to until around the 4th century, and survived in pockets until at least the 10th century.

Assyrians had begun to adopt Christianity as well as for a time Manicheanism and gnosticism between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. The tradition of the Church of the East is that Thomas the Apostle and his disciples Addai Thaddeus of Edessa and Mari brought Christianity to Mesopotamia , thus attributing to the first century the founding of the episcopal see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon , which became that Church's primatial see in There is clear evidence of the presence of Christianity in Osroene in the second century.

At that time, Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire , but were at peace under the expanding Persian Empire. Shapur I — , the second shahinshah king of kings of the Sasanian dynasty, occupied Roman territory, advancing as far as Antioch in , and deported eastward much of the population to strengthen the economy of his own empire.

One of those deported in was Bishop Demetrius of Antioch , who then became the first bishop of Beth Lapat. After , when Constantine the Great legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, Christians in Persia came under suspicion of pro-Roman sympathies and were persecuted, especially under Shapur II — Under Yazdegerd I — the situation of the Christian minority improved considerably.

In , on the recommendation of several Western bishops the signatories included the bishops of Antioch , Aleppo , Edessa and Amid Yazdegerd called the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon , which organized the Persian Church after the model approved by the First Council of Nicea for the Church in the Roman Empire. The Church of the East was arranged as six ecclesiastical provinces , with the bishops in each grouped around a metropolitan , while the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital city , referred to in the acts of the council as the Grand Metropolitan, held authority throughout the Church and for that reason was called probably only from a later date the Catholicos.

Papa bar Aggai , who in about , almost years before this council, suffered a sudden stroke during a synod held to depose him, is looked on as the first Catholicos of the Church of the East, although this may only mean that he was the first bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In a synod held in Markabta in , the participating bishops recalled the circumstances concerning Papa, blaming the opposition to him on the influence of unnamed Western bishops, and declared or reaffirmed that the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was totally independent.

They excluded any right of appeal against him to any patriarch in the West. Any case that cannot be resolved in his presence shall be reserved to the tribunal of Christ [ He himself is to be the judge of all his subjects, and judgment on himself is reserved to Christ, who has chosen him, raised him up and placed him at the head of his Church.

This was six years before the Council of Ephesus , the enforcement within the Byzantine Empire of whose condemnation of Nestorianism is sometimes given as what led to the break between the Church of the East and the Western Churches. In , Catholicos Babowai wrote to some Western bishops asking them to get the Byzantine emperor to intercede with the Persian king Peroz I on behalf of persecuted Christians.

His letter was intercepted, reportedly by Barsauma , metropolitan of Nisibis , between whom and Babowai there was a heated dispute. It was shown to the king, who then had Babowai executed. Barsauma called the Synod of Beth Lapat , which, as well as condemning some of Babowai's policies, permitted marriage of clergy and of vowed monks and reputedly adopted Nestorian teaching. Under Babowai's successor, Acacius of Seleucia-Ctesiphon , a synod held in the capital in revoked the decrees of the Synod of Beth Lapat , whose acts have consequently not been preserved, and in its own name affirmed the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia against Monophysitism , forbade wandering monks or clergy, and allowed marriage of clergy and monks.

In , the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno closed the theological school of Edessa because of its promotion of the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Barsauma welcomed its teachers and revived the school of Nisibis. A century later, an attempt by the school's director to include influences other than that of Theodore alone [] His initiative was opposed by Babai the Great — , whose exposition of the theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia became the official teaching of the Church of the East.

At this time miaphysitism was advancing in the Persian Empire. Its followers were mainly from the "hundreds of thousands" of Western Syriac Christians whom Khosrow I — and Khosrow II and — deported to their own territory, as well as descendants of those previously deported, but there were also some defectors from the local Church of the East. Whatever the number, he set up a church structure parallel to and independent of that approved by the Byzantine emperors, so that the Syriac Orthodox Church has been called Jacobite in reference to him.

Weakened by their long struggle against the Byzantines , [] the Persians were unable to withstand the Arab conquest. Seleucia-Ctesiphon fell in For Christians in Persia, the change from Zoroastrian to Islamic rulers did not worsen their situation, but rather bettered it, especially for the "Nestorians" East Syrians. The patriarchate of Timothy I — was a high point of the Church's expansion.

After the general destruction wrought by Genghis Khan , the Church of the East fared no worse under the Mongols of the Ilkhanate than under the Arabs, but at the end of the 14th century Timur brought disaster on it, [] exterminating it in many regions, [] so that it survived only in the Kurdistan mountains and in India. An account of the divisions within the Church of the East from the midth to the early 19th century is given above.

The separate patriarchates at one stage grew to four, but were reduced in to two: After the Arab conquest had removed the previously existing frontier between the Byzantine and Persian Empires, the Syriac Orthodox Church no longer needed to maintain a clear distinction between the part under the direct rule of the Patriarch and the part in the care of the Maphrian. From the Maphrian was no longer elected by the Eastern bishops but simply appointed by the Patriarch.

The Maphrianate thus became, until abolished in , a mere title for the second in dignity within the Church. The Church itself, like that of the East, underwent divisions. William Taylor states that for years, from to , there were two rival series of Patriarchs, one in Mardin , the other in Tur Abdin. In the Syrian Orthodox Church won the allegiance of about a third of the Saint Thomas Christians in southwestern India, whose traditional liturgy had been that of the Church of the East.

Thomas Evangelical Church and about half of those remaining in the 20th century declared their Church the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church autocephalous , while those remaining in obedience to the Patriarch the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church have been granted autonomy within the Syrian Orthodox Church such as was once granted to the Maphran-headed part of the Church in Persia. At about the same time as the Syriac Orthodox Church was expanding into India, where now three quarters of its membership live, [] Capuchin and Jesuit missionaries won to union with Rome the majority of the Syriac Orthodox in Aleppo , including, in , their bishop, Andrew Akijan , who in was elected Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

On his death in , two strong factions emerged, each of which elected a Patriarch, one pro-, the other anti-Rome. The Ottoman civil authorities recognized the non-Catholic Patriarch and suppressed the Catholic faction, eventually forcing it underground. He was replaced as Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, but initiated a series of Catholic patriarchs that in was recognized by the Ottoman authorities as heading a distinct Catholic Syriac Church. In , the Catholic patriarchal seat was moved to Mardin. Many of its faithful were massacred during the First World War. The patriarchal seat is now Beirut , where it was moved in the In later years Vilatte consecrated "a number of men who are the episcopal ancestors of an enormous variety of descendants" in what is called the independent sacramental movement or independent Catholicism.

The Syriac Orthodox Church has today about 2 million followers, three quarters of whom belong to the autonomous Jacobite Syrian Christian Church in India. Coakley described as "bogus ethnology" the "Assyrians" description. The continuing trend towards identification as Arameans is evidenced also in the government of Israel 's recognition in September of the Arameans in Israel as a distinct nationality.

Assyrian architecture, like that of Babylonia, was influenced by Sumero-Akkadian styles and to some degree Mitanni , but early on developed its own distinctive style. Palaces sported colourful wall decorations, and seal-cutting an art learned from Mittani developed apace. Schools for scribes taught both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian, and Sumerian and Akkadian literary works were often copied with an Assyrian flavour. The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian was used in legal, official, religious, and practical texts such as medicine or instructions on manufacturing items.

During the 13th to 10th centuries, picture tales appeared as a new art form: Somewhat reminiscent of a comic book, these show events such as warfare or hunting, placed in order from the upper left to the lower right corner of the stele with captions written underneath them. These and the excellent cut seals show that Assyrian art was beginning to surpass that of Babylon. Architecture saw the introduction of a new style of ziggurat , with two towers and colorful enameled tiles.

Assyrian art preserved to the present day predominantly dates to the Neo-Assyrian period. Art depicting battle scenes, and occasionally the impaling of whole villages in gory detail, was intended to show the power of the emperor, and was generally made for propaganda purposes. These stone reliefs lined the walls in the royal palaces where foreigners were received by the king. Other stone reliefs depict the king with different deities and conducting religious ceremonies. A rare discovery of metal plates belonging to wooden doors was made at Balawat Imgur-Enlil. Assyrian sculpture reached a high level of refinement in the Neo-Assyrian period.

Modern-day scholars often divide Assyrian history into three periods: The timespan that each period covers is a source of debate among scholars. The "Old Assyrian" period generally refers to the time after Assyria first gained independence around 4, years ago. Ancient texts indicate that Assyria's size and power were limited in the period after it gained independence.

Its early rulers didn't refer to themselves as a "king" in their inscriptions. Instead they called themselves a "vicegerent" a word that can mean "governor" of the god Ashur. Why Assyria's early rulers used such modest titles is a mystery that scholars are still trying to understand. All pretense of modesty came to an end when a ruler named "Shamshi-Adad" sometimes spelled Samsi-Adad conquered, or otherwise took over, Assur, adding the city to an empire that controlled a vast swath of territory across modern-day Iraq and Syria.

Study of inscriptions and archaeological remains indicate that Shamshi-Adad lived sometime around 3, years ago and based himself not at Assur but at a site in Syria which is now called "Tell Leilan. Shamshi-Adad's empire did not last for long. After his death the Babylonian Empire, led by Hammurabi , and a kingdom known as "Mittani" or "Hanigalbat" took over Shamshi-Adad's lands. Ancient records indicate that by B. During the 14 th century B.

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Modern-day scholars often call this period of newfound Assyrian independence the "Middle Assyrian" period. At the start of this period Assur-Uballit I reign ca. His successors further enlarged Assyrian territory. Adad-nirari I reign ca. Adad-nirari I claimed that he "sowed salt over" the Mittani capital of Taidu and imposed labor obligations on the city's survivors.

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He constructed a palace over Taidu saying that he built it "from top to bottom" and deposited a stelae to mark his control of the city translation by Albert Kirk Grayson. Adad-nirari I also used the title "king of the universe" to describe himself, a title which future Assyrian kings would also use. Ancient records say that the successors of Adad-nirari I continued to expand Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser marked the achievement by bringing back cedar wood for building projects. The martial prowess and skill of the Assyrian kings continued to be emphasized in ancient inscriptions.

Tiglath-Pileser I boasted in one inscription that "altogether I conquered 42 lands and their rulers" from across the Middle East, adding that he was a "valiant man" with an "unrivalled bow" who was such a good hunter that "I killed on foot lions with my wildly vigorous assault" translation by Albert Kirk Grayson.

However, inscriptions from Tiglath-Pileser's time, and that of his successors, point to problems Assyria was experiencing. Cities and civilizations across the Middle East were collapsing as a group of people from the Aegean arrived in the region, displacing local populations and collapsing trade networks. Assyrian records indicate that Tiglath-Pileser and his successors frequently fought against the Arameans, a group of people who were displaced or otherwise caught up in the chaos. In the two centuries following Tiglath-Pileser's conquest, Assyria's territory gradually contracted, the kingdom retaining control of Assur and territory near it.

Assyria didn't expand again on a large scale until the 9 th century B. But siege implements are simple until the Assyrians. They pay special attention to the battering ram. Soldiers in early sieges swing a heavy timber ram against a town gate. They are vulnerable to missiles or heated oil from above. Under the Assyrians the ram becomes an engine.

Middle Assyrian Period

It is suspended from the roof of a timber structure, which in turn is mounted on wheels so that it can be pushed into position. Protected within this contraption, soldiers can swing the ram relentlessly against the gate. Archers, in protected turrets on top of the engine, exchange shots on almost equal terms with the defenders on the walls. The Assyrian war machine: Assyria is the first society to make militarism the central policy of state. A regular event each spring is the departure of the army for conquest.

At the head of the march are standard bearers and priests; behind them come the king and his bodyguard, followed by the chariots, the cavalry, the infantry and, bringing up the rear, the baggage train. This great cavalcade moves outwards through territories already under Assyrian control, growing as it moves, for each region is required to contribute troops. Eventually the great army reaches previously unconquered areas. Resistance may be brief, for the Assyrian custom is to make an example of any town which refuses to capitulate.

Siege engines are brought up, and the end is usually swift. Soon citizens of the unfortunate town are dangling on poles all round the city walls. The prophet Ezekiel provides a terrifying imaginary account of a Town besieged , in his vision of Jerusalem destroyed by the wrath of God. Other towns understand the message and open their gates. If they seem liable to cooperate, they may be incorporated into the Assyrian empire, providing troops for the army in their turn.