Tell me about the Assyrians. I've heard they were "cartoonishly evil", but all I know is that they've been around for a very long time.
Probably not too different than other conquering peoples at the time.
Well they had the first army that approaches what we'd see as modern today, complete with divisions, NCOs, and the like. They also pioneered the practice of deporting large amounts of the population in cities they had conquered to other regions and replacing those cities with yet more people they had previously conquered. As far as how evil they were, it seems they were no more and no less cruel than most Semitic states at the time. They were simply much more capable.
After Solomon dies, Israel goes into a civil war.
Israel is split between the kingdom of Israel (north) and kingdom of Judah (south).
Assyria conquers Israel.
Babylon conquers Assyria, Israel and Judah.
Persia conquers Babylon
Alexander conquers Persia
Rome
As for the culture of the Assyrians, they were degenerate pagans like the Babylonians, Egyptians and Canaanites.
IIRC some Assyrian king would string up prominent guys he had killed in his banquet hall and would regularly cut a slice off to eat.
>>432690
Yeah, I'll need a source on that. Never came across it in any sources I've read.
Assyrians were just extremely able at organization. This extended from their armies to their government. However, they made the mistake(?) of keeping conquered peoples in line by examples of extraordinary cruelty that spread terror to keep them from rebelling. As another poster said, they also deported conquered people en mass to every corner of the empire in order to diffuse them and their ideas of rebellion, thus also Assyrianizing the land.
On the field, they were nearly invincible(mostly). However, the policy of terrorizing conquered people came to bring about their demise. In the midst of a civil war during a period of decline, they were attacked by a coalition of those who were once conquered. This was lead by the Medes, who were the rising star at the time. They were joined by Assyria's ancient foe and cultural inspiration: Babylon. When the capital was about to be overrun by this coalition, even a force of Scythians descended into the fight.
For a few centuries after their fall, even as hated as they were by their former subjects, new empires tried to recapture the Assyrian army and strong centralized state. The Neo-Babylonians who followed them were pretty much just trying to continue the Assyrian hegemony. Persia was extremely successful in securing the former empire of Assyria because their policy of relative benevolence was really well received because of the centuries of Assyrian-Babylonian rule.
>>432435
>>432439
>>432761
The thing is, like the Mongols after them, the Assyians actively encouraged people to view them as the meanest fucks around.
This was a good way of keeping people afraid of them.
Conversely, the Persians marketed themselves as being an empire that wasn't nearly as savage and unjust as Assyria.
>>432421
there is a poetic recounting of an assyrian general using the skins of his enemies infants to make his personal chariot
>>432782
>Conversely, the Persians marketed themselves as being an empire that wasn't nearly as savage and unjust as Assyria.
Some historians have actually attributed the relatively docile inheritance that the Persians had to the Assyrians being absolutely barbaric in their treatment of people. They argue that the Assyrians broke the region to the yoke of Empire.
>there is a poetic recounting of an assyrian general using the skins of his enemies infants to make his personal chariot
Just to add to the list of Assyrian brutality, here's a picture of Ashurbanipal dining in his garden while the head of the Elamite king is hanging from a tree in front of him.
The woman he is with is controversial. Some say it's his wife. But other historians have said that it is actually the Elamite King's wife, forced to dine and probably get fucked by Ashurbanipal afterwards while the head of the Elamite king gazes on.
Ashurbanipal is kek'ing the Elamite king from beyond the grave.
Another tale is that one rebel king had his sons killed in front of him, and his eyes immediately stabbed so that the last thing he saw was the death of his family.
>>432788
>>432831
Ah fuck forgot pic.
>>432837
Was asshurbanipal like 7 feet tall or were all his servants dwarfs?
>>432853
Makes me wonder why Assyria hasn't been used for imagery more often in Metal to be honest. Egyptian and Roman themes are pretty common.
>>432831
Yeah, I've heard this proposition too and I certainly can't deny it. Most likely it's a mixture of both reasons. As for the poking eyes-out story, I'm pretty sure that come from the Babylonian attack on Jerusalem.
>>432864
Assyrian bas-reliefs(and most other royal artwork from that epoch) depict gods and rulers as much larger than other people. Even Assyrian soldiers as way larger than enemy ones. It's more of a moral/symbolic convention than a realistic one. I'm trying to find the picture where two Assyrian soldiers are trampling on two other soldiers that are about 50% smaller than them, but I can't seem to find it.
>>432865
Assyria is for sure the most metal empire.
>>432421
Cartoonishly evil is not that unfair a characterisation. I looked at their sculptures in the British Museum the other day. Piles of heads all over the place, flayed enemies, war rape etc.
Their society seemed rather belligerent and their kings celebrate how many enemies they blinded and skinned and things like that. I'd like to read a good book on them one day.
Ashurbanipal
did
nothing
wrong
>>432421
Google Stirling Newberry Vale to Babylon.
>>433579
> We remember the Assyrian Empire, even if not by name, because of its impact on both Hebrew and Hellenic culture - it provided the prototype of the evil empire, with its fast rise, brutal peak and implosive collapse. Reading the Assyrian chronicles, with their accounts of flaying alive rebels and enemies and plastering their skins to the walls of cities, and then burning alive the maidens and young men, and looking at the friezes of them impaling populations that they warred upon, one realizes that, despite there being an Assyrian lobby today, the Assyrians by and large deserve their reputation for fearful slaughter and savagery beyond the norms even of a dark age.
>Assyria is of interest today, however, not because of its legendary quality to many, and its claims to legitimacy - it amuses me that San Francisco, the city of peace, has a monument to a genocide-practicing empire - but because the patterns of behavior that the Assyrians engaged in, and the reasons for them, have parallels to our own.
>It was in a dark age that Assyria rose. Invasions of peoples displaced farther in Asia poured down on a trading system that stretched from what is now Afghanistan all the way to Italy. The engines of this trading system were an East-West movement for tin and copper, which together make bronze, the basic metal of that time period, and a series of north-south routes based on other materials and grain. There were rich centers, trading cities, and then there were areas that attempted to dominate trade with military force.
>>433586
Alongside bronze was an exotic material - iron. Called in many languages "sky metal," it was found in an iron/nickel form in meteorites and dominated the ceremonial dagger market because of the ability to sharpen it beyond what bronze could do. But it is softer than the best cold-worked bronzes with high tin content, and it does not hold an edge as well. To make iron that is better than bronze requires the discovery of carburization, which eventually leads to steel. However, with the collapse of the trading network, the production of what is called "sponge iron" took on a new imperative. And even early carburized irons offer advantages, not as much in raw weapons damage, but in tools, joining and binding.
The Assyrians were a people whose fortunes had ebbed and flowed, but they were uniquely situated along the East-West trade line, and realized that they could take iron tools and create a military that had better boots, its own back packs and, for military superiority, more horses and chariots. They also had another unique cultural advantage - a simple religious cult that created a strong sense of legitimacy within their core area. The stage was set for one of the first true war machines that the world has ever seen. At its peak, Assyria would have an army that could field 50,000 combat troops. In an age where a city might be defended by hundreds of people, this was enough to sack and overwhelm even the great powers.
>>433588
The geo-politics of the first waves of Assyrian empire-building in this period - the terminology is confusing, but I am going to use the convention that this is the "Neo-Assyrian Empire," with three dynasties - can be seen on their inscriptions. The standard assertion is that that the king is "The Great King, the Mighty King, the King of Assyria," and that he is descended from the priesthood of Ashur/Assur; that the goddess of love, war and confusion Ishtar smiles upon him; and that Shamash, the lord of vows and decider of heaven, has given him the scepter of power. This triumvirate of divine reasons for power would form the core of Assyria's religious basis for going to war.
It is important to note that all of them, in Assyrian hands, are also gods of place. They have centers of worship and are strongly tied to those centers of worship. The place god, as opposed to the concept god - is a tool for assimilating incoming invaders, but it is not generally as capable of assimilating peoples who are conquered. In ancient history, one sees how invaders often come into an area and are absorbed. This is because the local objective needs of production are contained in, and maintained by, the priests and priestesses of the local cults. When the waters rise, what grains to plant, how to take advantage of the "local magic" - that is, yeasts for bread, cheese and beer - are all things that are locked tightly in the writing systems. We find, early on, mathematical texts that mix astrology, theology - and word problems about how much mud to remove for an irrigation canal.
>>433595
The Assyrians used this warrior sky-god complex to master a military machine that would race back and forth within their core, defeating enemies on all sides, and thus keeping control of the trade route. It is a process similar to that of Fredrick the Great of Prussia thousands of years later, and is based on better mobility as much as man-to-man superiority in war. And remember sponge iron, unlike the steel that comes after it, offers only limited advantage in combat man-to-man.
The shape of this problem is also seen on the Assyrian steles. The claims of the Neo-Assyrian first and second dynasty center around controlling "The Four Corners of the World" and conquering as far as what is now Mt. Lebanon. To this they would eventually add Babylon. That Mt. Lebanon is religiously important is a fact known to scholars; that it is militarily important is a fact known to uncounted generations of generals and warrior leaders. Control this region in what is now Lebanon, and it is almost impossible to evict your control from the shores of the Mediterranean. The access to "The Great Sea," as the Assyrian texts called it, meant constant invasion and subjugation of the peoples along it, the Phoenecians and the Israelites.
>>433596
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stirling_Newberry
Click on bibliography and then Vale to babylon
>How shall I speak of the house of war, in which Esarhaddon and I filled such exalted stations? In my time there I learned how to ride a horse and drive a chariot, how to fight with the sword, the dagger, the bow, and the javelin. I learned the forms of military courtesy. I learned tactics. I learned discipline and the leadership of men. And, most important of all, I learned arrogance.
>I learned that I was a prince of Ashur, that all the peoples of the world were but dust under the feet of the unconquerable armies I was destined to lead. I learned that I had every right to be pleased with myself and contemptuous of all others because I would be a soldier and my father was the king. This was a most necessary lesson, and without these no wars have been won since the first turning of the sky.
>>433654
>We men of Ashur are farmers. We harvest our barley and our vines. Our lives are bound up with the soil and the life-giving water which are both gifts of the great Tigris River. But our land is flat and offers us no protection from the marauders of the eastern mountains, and it is poor in metal. Gold is from Egypt. Silver is from the Bulghar Maden, north of the Cilician Gates. A nation may manage without these but not without copper, which must come from Haldia, and even Cyprus. Our tin is mined in the north, beyond Lake Urumia, and our iron from the southern shore of the Black Sea. All of these places lie outside the plains where our first fathers set up their brick huts and worshiped the god from whom we took our name. Thus, because men envied us our rich harvest and because weapons are not made from mud and river reeds, we became warriors and spread the glory of Ashur to the four corners of the world.
>>433664
>And our rule brought the blessing of peace. This, I know, is no more than is claimed by every conqueror, but it is still the truth. The tiny western kingdoms that called us a den of lions and cried after their lost freedom had bled eath other to exhaustion for a thousand years before we came. Each would be a tyrant over the others and cursed us only because we were in the place they would have had for themselves. Thus the merchants and artisans and the common farmers, who cared nothing for the ambitionsof princes, such humble folk might complain because we taxed them, but they would not have rejoiced to see us overthrown. The trade routes were open and men might lie in peace. And these are not small things.
>Thus was I taught in the house of war
>But such matters mean little in youth. What I loved were the horses and the bronze-tipped arrows and the growing strength of my own body. I would be great in the Land of Ashur. I had for this the word of the king my father. Happy is that boy, yearning after manhood, whose hand has been filled with a sword.
>>433539
that statue is fake right?
"I built a pillar over against his city gate, and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round the about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls; and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled."
King Ashurnasirpal
The edge is real.
>>432690
History is written by its Victor. I bet this was just some propaganda against Assyrians by an enemy nation
>>433673
It cannot be fake if it doesn't claim to be an ancient assyrian statue. Which it doesn't, because it's in San Francisco and was erected in the past century by an assyrian-american.
>>432421
>OPs picture
>that unmistakable black text on yellow background
R O Y A L
O
Y
A
L
>>436273
Shut up, you'll bring THEM.
>>434453
Most of the reason Assyrians' shit shows is taken seriously is because Assyrian accounts of cruelty jive with foreign accounts of their cruelty.
It's not just dick waving or fear mongering on either part. Pic related it's a relief from Nineveh.
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>>432421
Ashurbanipal was a serious scholar with a library that collected much of the literature of the world known to the Assyrians, I think its primarily through this library that we have the Epic of Gilgamesh
>>436304
WE
>>439651
WUZ
>>439662
ASSYRIANS AND SHIT
Who /scaphism/ here?
From Plutarch: [The king] decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, they offer him food, and if he refuse to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth, but all over his face. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired.
Were the Assyrians actually Africans? Egypt had holdings in ancient Canaan, so they may have interbred with Mesopotamian pretty heavily.
>>439696
>the biggest, baddest empire of Mesopotamia uses fucking brutal methods of instilling fear into their enemies
>they eventually convert to the religion of charity and egalitarianism, becoming one of the last bastions of Christianity in the Middle East
That's pretty poetic
>but then jews have them killed :(
>>439770
The fuck are you talking about? The Assyrians disappeared hundreds of years before Christ
>>439784
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_people
One google search.
>>432446
>they were degenerate pagans
spot the christian /pol/tard
>>439794
Modern-day "Assyrian" is just a label for Semitic Christians from a particular area. There's literally zero connection to ancient Assyrians beyond the name.
>>439831
Spot the edgy teen who thinks that because the Assyrians did totally evil things thousands of years ago that it's not as damning as if someone did them now.
They were worse than Daesh is, perhaps thousands of times worse.
It was pure propaganda, from their own side.
https://pando.com/2014/09/03/the-war-nerd-the-long-twisted-history-of-beheadings-as-propaganda/
>>438788
IIRC a lot of what we have of the Epic of Gilgamesh is from a bunch of tablets found in scribe schools that students learned and practiced on by copying official tablets. Most of the main libraries were destroyed or pillaged during times of war and civil strife, leaving behind mostly fragments of the original work. Scribe schools weren't of as much priority or target as much, and they had far much more crude copies that it improved the likelyhood of some surviving compare to a few official ones from the years. But of-course, his increase focus and funding likely did help too.
There was a city, I forget what It was, I think they sieges it for 10 years
>>432446
>they were degenerate pagans
>tips fedora
>>439846
Got any sources to support that claim?
Not sure if this is frowned upon on /his/ because it is pop history or something but Dan Carlin did an interesting 3.5 hour podcast on this time period from the Assyrians to Cyrus the Great.
As a person with 0 knowledge of this part of history it was kinda neat
http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/
>>439846
>Assyrians were completely wiped out
Not according to King Cyrus, the king who destroyed Nineveh
>>439846
From the 1500s
>>439846
>>439846
>A-Assyrian nationalism is a r-recent 19th century construct!
>tfw I know what you are talking about, because I listened to dan carlings podcasts
>>432421
Assyrian here, I liked what hardcore history said about us.
https://huffduffer.com/Thisisdrew/100188
>>439846
Let me explain summaday history to you. My ancestors lived in Hakkari, Turkey for over a 1000 years and before that they used to live in Iraq, in fact some Assyrians never left. We're clearly Semitic from our language but our blood is fairly pure of foreign DNA. It's not a stretch at all to say that we are native to the land we live in, Northern Iraq, which is where the Assyrian empire was. In fact we speak an Aramaic dialect and the late Assyrians spoke Aramaic as well because of the superior alphabet compared to Akkadian.
>>441766
Can you make a map of a potential assyrian state?
>>441026
What's that line before alap? That straight line?
>>441770
reddit.com/r/Assyria dude, it's fairly active and they like to explain stuff.
I can't because over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Assyrians have left their villages and now we don't have enough people to make a state. Kurds are basically going to take it all, there are over 8 million of them and a couple hundreds thousand of us.
Here's a map of Assyrian villages
http://www.assyrianroots.com/map
Here's a map of where we are a majority, outdated as well.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Ethnoreligious_Iraq.svg/2000px-Ethnoreligious_Iraq.svg.png
Purple is us, not very many ya see. There are still Assyrians fighting for that land but they're doing it as part of KRG forces because there just isn't enough fighters to fight independently. Also no one gives a shit that we exist so we have to leave.
>>441780
Here's the image. It's easier to imagine this as Turks, Arabs and Kurds are a cancer and they're killing us with their nationalism bullshit.
>>432446
Ewww CHRISTIANS
>>432446
>hey guys, lets make a board about history and religion at the same time
>i mean, what could
>possibly
>go
>wrong
>>441784
This looks like a map of ISIS, doesnt it? Are you assyrians up to your old terror ways?
>>442637
No but ISIS has invaded and taken hostages in our villages. If there was a first place for best ethnic minority in Iraq we would be numba 1 habibi.
>>439696
What was that torture method called where they push a stone slab onto someone's face?
>>432421
niggas hunted lions
thats pretty badass desu
>>432446
You mean
>media and coalition conquers Assyria
>Persia conquers media
>>432831
I see somebody else has listened to King of Kings.
>>432761
What I'd like to know is how the scythians managed to join the fight. There's like hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain between Nineveh and the Pontic steppe
>>433673
Aren't all statues fake?
>>441766
Or maybe you're arameans, seeing how you speak the language.
>>432421
Every classicist that I've heard, refers to them as the prototypical Nazis.
>>444461
Assyrians switched to Aramaic towards the end of the empire. I think that western Assyrians might be partly or mostly Aramean.
>>445462
Is Aramaic somehow related to Proto-Armenian?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urartu
Also, let's discuss some of the less significant wars like this one:
http://www.mysteriesinhistory.com/ancient-wars/urartu-assyria-war.php
>>432865
Because it's obscure.
Trying to find books on Mesopotamia is also hard as hell.
>>446572
I don't think so, Cuneiform was used in both really semitic and indo-european languages but the actually words languages were very different and so are their modern child languages.
>>432446
>israel
>real
>>444461
We don't speak Aramaic. Even Arameans don't speak Aramaic. What we speak is Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Syriac being the classical dialect, mostly used in church liturgy, Eastern dialect. "Arameans" speak the Western dialect. For example, Eastern dialect will say Shlama (greetings) and Western will say Shlomo. Eastern will say Suraya and Western will say Suroyo (Syriac/Assyrian etc). The entire Aramean nationalist movement was born after the 60s/70s as a direct response to combat Assyrian nationalism. For the most part of our Christian history church has been put in front of ethnic identity, the Assyrian nationalism boosting after genocides in the 20th century. There is no such thing as Arameans or Chaldeans today, simply Syriac Orthodox Church adherents and Chaldean Catholic Church adherents (Roman Catholic Assyrians). The Assyrian situation is probably the best example of divide and conquer in our age.
>>447134
Hurrians didn't speak an indo-european language senpai.
