In his new guide “Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire” (Primary Books), Yale professor Eckart Frahm provides a complete historical past of the traditional civilization (circa 2025 BCE to 609 BCE) that will grow to be a mannequin for the world’s later empires.

Rising from the city-state of Ashur, situated in modern-day Iraq, Assyria undertook quite a few often-violent army campaigns to unfold its rule into Babylonia and different areas; however its kings additionally created a transportation community that made attainable the free stream of concepts and items and established the primary common library, says Frahm, a professor of Assyriology within the Division of Close to Japanese Languages and Civilizations in Yale’s School of Arts & Sciences.

For the guide, Frahm attracts on finds from current archaeological excavations, cuneiform tablets, and Biblical and classical texts to explain what is thought about life within the empire — for royal and non-royal Assyrians alike — and the circumstances that contributed to its hasty demise.

In an interview with Yale Information, Frahm discusses what impressed his personal curiosity on this historical empire, what is thought about its individuals, and why it issues at this time. The interview is edited and condensed.

How did you grow to be involved in Assyria as a scholarly subject?

Eckart Frahm I first grew to become involved in Mesopotamia after I was in highschool. I took some Hebrew, just because I needed to be taught a language that was completely different, and I started to comprehend that there was an entire world past the biblical narrative. The historical past of Mesopotamian civilization encompasses 3,500 years, of which Assyrian historical past is a crucial portion.

It’s attainable to color a really detailed, typically thrilling, and sometimes entertaining image of Assyrian historical past.

Eckart Frahm

Later, I had a lot of college lecturers who had been specialists within the linguistic examine of Assyrian and who had edited a wide range of Assyrian texts. I did my fair proportion of editorial work myself, however thought sooner or later I would transfer past philology to as an alternative carry collectively the various completely different sources about Assyrian historical past.

There are actually tens and tens of hundreds of Assyrian cuneiform texts, from royal inscriptions through which kings describe their army actions or constructing initiatives, to letters to royalty by officers or by spies that discuss in regards to the army and political challenges the empire skilled. It’s attainable to color a really detailed, typically thrilling, and sometimes entertaining image of Assyrian historical past.

What’s the legacy of the Assyrian Empire?

Frahm: Assyria’s most essential legacy might be the concept of empire as such. “Empires” have a foul identify at this time, and I’ve no real interest in downplaying their darkish sides. Essentially, “empire” means that there’s some middle that guidelines over a big and considerably various periphery, which is to a big extent unfree. Empire, nevertheless, additionally provides some benefits, together with, for instance, better ease of stream of concepts and of merchandise.

Certainly, the Assyrians began off primarily as retailers. Once they operated their city-state within the early second millennium BCE, lengthy earlier than the imperial interval, it was territorially a really small entity. However the geographic horizon of the Assyrian individuals of this time was already broad: they had been engaged in long-distance commerce, importing tin from Central Asia and textiles from Babylonia, and buying and selling each for silver in Anatolia.

In a while, through the so-called Neo-Assyrian interval [ca. 900 BCE to 600 BCE], the Assyrians created a really refined communication community. The so-called Royal Highway is commonly related to the Persian Empire, which began off in 539 BCE, nevertheless it existed already in Assyrian instances.

I feel you will need to stress that, in contrast to later empires, the Assyrians weren’t making an attempt to impose their very own tradition, their very own language, or their very own faith on any of their topics. Folks within the imperial periphery needed to pay taxes to the crown and provide labor, however they had been allowed and anticipated to only proceed worshiping their very own gods and talking their very own languages. On this regard you might say the Assyrians weren’t super-repressive.

What is thought in regards to the on a regular basis lives of non-royal Assyrians?

Frahm: An incredible deal is thought, notably about these dwelling in cities, but in addition in regards to the rural inhabitants, which engaged in agriculture, with barley as their primary crop. The general public within the countryside had been most likely semi-free. Those that grew crops might maintain a share. One other share went to the state, and generally a share went to landowners, lots of them members of the army.

There have been additionally shepherds on the steppe, herding flocks of sheep and goats. A cuneiform letter reveals that, for some seven years, a few of these shepherds did not ship a portion of their flocks to the Ashur Temple in Ashur. This attracts a criticism from an official of the temple, who tells the king, “Should you don’t do something about that, then your authority is in peril.” The episode exhibits us that regardless that the Assyrian kings had been very highly effective, they couldn’t absolutely be answerable for every little thing.

We additionally know quite a bit about how husbands and wives interacted, generally apparently not harmoniously. Cuneiform texts discuss husbands and wives having fantasies of killing their spouses and marrying another person and so forth. However there are additionally tales of nice affection, and of grief when a beloved youngster would die.

Households had been primarily, like at this time, monogamous, with a couple of youngsters dwelling with their mother and father in a home, generally grandparents as effectively. The lifeless could be buried actually below their ft in vaults below the homes. Households would go down there to make sacrifices for the lifeless on holidays and different particular events. Folks additionally had pets. Some texts embody cat omens, which predict what occurs when a cat sits on an individual’s breast or urinates on that particular person. The latter was thought of signal, indicating that the person in query would grow to be rich.

Cuneiform letter written by an area spy to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon about an insurgency within the metropolis of Ashur, ca. 671 BCE. Yale Babylonian Assortment/Yale Peabody Museum. (Picture: Klaus Wagensonner)

The autumn of the Assyrian empire occurred rapidly. What brought on it?

Frahm: That’s a million-dollar query, and the reply remains to be not completely clear. Two current theories have tried to pinpoint forces better than politics; on the one hand local weather change, and on the opposite migration. I’m not completely positive, although, that these elements had been completely decisive.

In my opinion, it was an ideal storm that introduced the empire down. One situation was that through the empire’s final a long time, the Assyrian crown skilled a disaster of legitimacy. It had been precipitated by Ashurbanipal, whose lengthy reign [669-631 BCE] marked a cultural excessive level for Assyria — he created the primary common library and can be well-known for the sculpted reliefs that lined the partitions of his palaces. However Ashurbanipal didn’t stay as much as the picture he tried to venture; he needed to be perceived as an ideal warrior, for example, however by no means went to conflict. As a substitute, he stayed house in his palace, the place, based on his personal texts and later custom, “he ate, drank, and made merry.”

This, I feel, already sowed some doubt amongst his topics in regards to the health of their imperial rulers. Then Ashurbanipal dies, and a whole lot of inner and exterior strife follows. There’s a rebel within the south by Babylonians, who really handle to chase the Assyrians out of Babylonia. On the similar time, territories within the Levant, within the west, regain their independence. And within the east, the Medes, united in response to the stress beforehand placed on them by the Assyrians, be part of the Babylonians within the struggle towards the empire.

In 615 BCE, the Medes and the Babylonians embark on a final assault on Assyria. It’s the primary time in lots of of years that Assyrian cities are below siege. For some time the Assyrians have some allies, together with, unexpectedly, the Egyptians. The battle escalates into what one might describe as a primary “world conflict,” with a cataclysmic sequence of battles ultimately resulting in Assyria’s collapse.

What went improper?

Frahm: The Assyrian cities show to be not very straightforward to defend. For instance, Nineveh — the best of all of the Assyrian cities and the capital on the time — was constructed with 18 gigantic gates. This was a strategic legal responsibility: the gates had been so giant that they supplied little safety towards enemy assaults. Archaeologists really discovered the our bodies of Assyrian troopers killed in these very gates when the Medes and the Babylonians in 612 BCE bought by. Two years earlier, in 614 BCE, the Medes had already conquered town of Ashur, Assyria’s spiritual and religious middle. And with the autumn of these cities, and town of Harran in 609 BCE, comes the autumn of the empire and the royal dynasty.

Why is Assyria essential at this time?

Frahm: One motive is that “empire” remains to be with us at this time. The empires of at this time not name themselves empires. However imperial ideologies, after all, are nonetheless very a lot in place. So I feel Assyria might be stated to mark the very starting of a sequence that runs from the primary millennium BCE to the fashionable age.

I feel Assyria might be stated to mark the very starting of a sequence that runs from the primary millennium BCE to the fashionable age.

Eckart Frahm

Within the Center East, the Assyrian Empire was adopted by others, from the Persian as much as the Ottoman Empire. Though empire is a shape-shifting phenomenon, all these geopolitical entities had been primarily primarily based on a blueprint that the Assyrians had been the primary to create.

Assyria additionally teaches us one thing about how improper it’s to “essentialize” the individuals of the Center East. I feel it is actually attention-grabbing to see how Assyria begins off not as a war-prone state however as a reasonably peaceable one, with a blended structure in place and even some democratic establishments. Later, it turns into far more belligerent and autocratic. If you have a look at that story, you possibly can see that the peoples of the Center East can change, and that individuals normally can change — that social and political change is feasible.

Lastly, as we’re popping out of a number of years of plague with the COVID disaster, it’s attention-grabbing to contemplate what sort of impression epidemics had in historical Assyria. Within the guide I argue that, surprisingly, the rise of the Assyrian empire, somewhat than its fall, is related to plague. It was within the wake of two bouts of contagious illness — and the financial and demographic contraction brought on by them — that the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III [744–727 BCE] launched into a sequence of conquests and annexations on the finish of which the Assyrian state was greater than twice as giant because it had been earlier than.

So the nice thriller then, is how can or not it’s that the phoenix of empire rises from the ashes of a number of grim years of plague? I might argue that historical past will not be one thing predetermined by deterministic guidelines. If challenges should not too large, then people can really adapt to them and discover methods to get out of a disaster. That is what Tiglath-pileser did when he compensated for the lack of life and wealth Assyria had suffered by implementing a brand new grand technique targeted on annexing overseas lands, extracting their property for the better good of the Assyrian middle, and deporting lots of of hundreds of individuals to replenish the work pressure the place it was most urgently wanted.

Now, this is not a narrative for us to emulate. Somewhat, I consider it as a warning that dangerous actors might effectively reap the benefits of the pure disasters that are likely to befall humanity and have befallen us, after all, lately with COVID. And we higher remember and be looking out for what others might do in such circumstances. Assyria teaches us that there are all types of the way to react to historic challenges.