ASSYRIAN POLITICS

POLITICAL STRUCTURE AND MILITARISM

• The structure of Assyrian society, as a warrior nation,
was militaristic in nature. Their ruler was not just king,
but also chief commander of the military forces, and
the males were subject to obligatory military service.
Even officials performing civil tasks had military ranks,
and these official positions were often hereditary; a
son learning the profession by watching his
father. The army expanded by enlisting the male
populations of the conquered territories in its ranks,
so that by the time of the late Assyrian Empire, the
majority of the army was not even of Assyrian blood
– a fact that contributed to the eventual downfall of
the empire.
• The military campaigns they performed over the years
developed from simple, quick raids to carefully thought-out,
well-structured operations. Their strategy embodied not only
lengthy sieges and pitched battles, but psychological warfare
also. Because the former two were costly affairs, the Assyrians
attempted to apply the latter when and wherever possible. A
popular means of this was the use of rhetoric: they would
compare the relative size of their armies for instance, ridiculing
the native army and crying up their own. The Assyrians would
then promise peace and prosperity if the inhabitants of the
region would simply give up without a fight. If this particular
brand of diplomacy failed them, they would attack one or a
couple of smaller cities that were easy to take and commit
such atrocious acts of cruelty as to bully the inhabitants into
surrender.
•
 ASSYRIAN RULE OF CONQUERED
TERRITORY
• The city-state of Asshur, at the beginning of the second
millennium BC, built itself the army necessary to defend
itself from its neighbours. Defensive quickly turned to
offensive out of greed - and subsequently began to
include ideological and religious factors -, and by 1100
BC, the Assyrian forces had advanced from the
Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Persian Gulf in the
south. At its height, their territory spanned an immense
area, including Egypt, the Iranian Plateau, the Arabian
Peninsula and even the mountains of the Caucasus. This
did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process, like
the development of the army itself, and the
advancements in the administration of these conquered
territories.
• It was only in the ninth century BC that the Assyrians
started taking their administration of these areas more
seriously, renovating the system entirely.
 ASSYRIANS ATTACK A TOWN WITH
ARCHERS AND A WHEELED BATTERING
RAM