Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
This essay is part of a series on cultural, scientific and esoteric matters.
The story of earlier imperial civilizations holds cautionary lessons about our own trajectory and hidebound arrogance. In antiquity (and this is disputed) only the Roman empire seems to have reached half a millennium. In modern times, despite their global footprint and technological prowess, no European empire has survived in full dominance beyond 250 years, and even the almighty US empire is showing signs of dysfunction and collapse in less than 150. Imperial trajectories are normally marked by lucky serendipity, accomplishments, narcissism, hubris, overreach, internal decay, and plenty of savage criminality—in the open or disguised, as is the favorite mode in our so-called democracies. Eventually, the rot within proves to be the decisive morbidity. In this post, we take a look at the Assyrian empire. We offer three views. What do you think?
CLICK ON IMAGES FOR BEST APPRECIATION
Appearing in The Guardian,
'Some of the most appalling images ever created' – I Am Ashurbanipal review By Jonathan Jones
‘They fought lions, to prove their superhuman virility’ … Ashurbanipal in combat. Photograph: The British Museum/PA
British Museum, London
Whether wrestling lions or skinning prisoners alive, the Assyrian king ran a murderously efficient empire. This is the art of war – and it’s terrifying
You have to hand it to the ancient Assyrians – they were honest. Their artistic propaganda relishes every detail of torture, massacre, battlefield executions and human displacement that made Assyria the dominant power of the Middle East from about 900 to 612BC. Assyrian art contains some of the most appalling images ever created. In one scene, tongues are being ripped from the mouths of prisoners. That will mute their screams when, in the next stage of their torture, they are flayed alive. In another relief a surrendering general is about to be beheaded and in a third prisoners have to grind their fathers’ bones before being executed in the streets of Nineveh.
‘Celebrating the blood-sport of the king’ … Ashurbanipal on a hunt. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
Yet behind the conquests these eye-blistering reliefs depict, lay an intricate system of bureaucracy and a passion for logistics. I Am Ashurbanipal is a portrait of the banality of empire. Just as Hannah Arendt argued that the Holocaust was perpetrated by characterless paper-pushers, not flamboyant sadists, so we find here that Assyrian atrocities – including the forced resettlement of thousands of Israelites – were not the product of random mayhem but diligent organisation.
The Assyrian empire was so disciplined that even though this exhibition focuses on one man, Ashurbanipal, who ruled the empire from 669BC until his death somewhere around 631BC, his personality is as remote as the sphinxes and lion spirits that loom in the atmospherically lit galleries. Ashurbanipal is less an individual in this show than a set of royal roles that he seems to have carried out immaculately. A letter that he wrote to his father when he was 13 – did the boy ever see his dad? – describes how he has been learning all the proper skills for a king.
One was hunting. In stone relief after stone relief, the blood-sport of the king is celebrated. Unusually, Ashurbanipal and his family didn’t hunt harmless deer or lumbering wild boars. They fought lions, to prove their superhuman virility and capacity to subdue the savage. Lions, portrayed with great observational accuracy, are shown being shot at close range with arrows or speared in the neck, their bodies carried aloft by servants. It’s a more equal battle than some the Assyrians conducted against human enemies and fought, it seems, with more respect. Lions rear up against their attackers and try to face down men on horseback. There’s a study of a dying lion gushing blood.
Ashurbanipal, shown with cuneiform inscription. Photograph: The Trustees of the British Museum
Ashurbanipal had what it took to fight lions but it was his administrative abilities that made him a successful crusher and smiter of peoples. He was served by eunuchs whose freedom from family ambition was thought to make them ideal civil servants. A portrait that may be of a bureaucratic eunuch shows him with a chubby face and no beard – for facial hair was phallic. That phallic symbolism explains the huge square beard worn by Ashurbanipal himself. Cuneiform, the world’s oldest form of writing, already almost 2,000 years old, was as crucial as siege machines to the sinews of power. Letters, negotiations and commands were transported down the king’s roads to organise a huge human system.
This excellent organisation, it seems from this detailed delve into history, was the true originality of the Assyrian Empire. It was precociously modern in its organisational rigour. Ashurbanipal was not a romantic conqueror like Alexander the Great or Daenerys Targaryen. He was the CEO of a ruthless global enterprise. Perhaps it is weirdly fitting that the exhibition is sponsored with much fanfare by BP. The controversial oil company is part of the relentless machinery of the modern world that exploits nature even faster than Ashurbanipal killed lions.
You can’t get away from the 21st century in this unsettling and even nightmarish exploration of the rise and fall of empires. The mini “caliphate” created by Islamic State was nothing like as vast or enduring as the Assyrian empire but in the three years that they ruled Mosul in Iraq, from June 2014 to July 2017, Isis militants set out to destroy the remains of Ashurbanipal’s pre-Islamic culture. The ruins of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, are on Mosul’s outskirts. They smashed antiquities in the Mosul Museum and set about demolishing Nineveh itself.
‘A glimpse of hope’ … stone tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
What’s it all for? Human history, including that of our own times, looks pretty brutal in this exhibition. One of the palace reliefs portrays people defeated by the Assyrians being forced by Ashurbanipal’s soldiers to migrate to land where their labour will profit the empire. Scenes like this are both fascinating and utterly crushing to the human spirit. The efficient brutality of the Assyrians looks like a sterile enterprise that existed only, at least as far as this exhibition goes, for the glory and luxury of the monarch. Once Ashurbanipal was dead, his empire fell apart. A wall-filling film of a city in flames looks as if it might be Mosul in 2017 or during the Iraq war. In fact it is meant to suggest the burning of Nineveh in 612BC and the apocalyptic end of Assyrian power.
Yet in this futile cycle of rising and falling empires one glimpse of hope gives the exhibition warmth. It is a wall of illuminated cuneiform tablets, their spiky scripts full of words that only specialists can read but whose human weight anyone can feel. These clay tablets come from the great library Ashurbanipal created in Nineveh. It was his enduring contribution to civilisation. The library was fired in the destruction of Nineveh at the end of the seventh century BC, but clay tablets don’t burn. They were hardened and preserved by the heat.
They include the text of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Collected by Ashurbanipal and excavated from his library, this is the best-preserved copy of the world’s earliest literary masterpiece. It’s still a basis for modern translations. Ashurbanipal may have been a murderous bureaucrat but he was also a benefactor of civilisation. In the relentless cycles of history, that urge to preserve and remember is what raises us out of the dust.
Jonathan Jones writes on art for the Guardian and was on the jury for the 2009 Turner prize
Assyrians: Cavalry and Conquests
Although Assyrian is like most Middle Eastern languages, part of the Semitic language family, the Assyrian people are ethnically distinct from other members of this Semitic group.
Much of Assyria's history is closely tied to its southern neighbor, Babylonia. The two Mesopotamian empires spoke similar languages and worshipped most of the same gods. They were often rivals on the battlefield for influence in the ancient Middle East.
The history of Assyria spans mainly from about 2000 B.C.E , when the cities of Nineveh and Calah were founded, to the destruction of Nineveh in 606 B.C.E.
Whereas Babylonia is best remembered for its contributions in literature, architecture, and the law, Assyria is chiefly remembered for its military prowess, advances in weaponry, and meticulously recorded conquests.
Geographically, Assyria occupied the middle and northern part of Mesopotamia. It was situated between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, and its major cities were Calah, Zab, Ashur, and the capital, Nineveh.
The Power and the Gory
"I am powerful, I am all-powerful .... I am without equal among all kings."
This was the boast of King Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.E.), who expanded the Assyrian empire to its greatest extent. At the height of his great power, in 671 B.C.E., he conquered Egypt in less than a month.
The Egyptian kingdom was considered one of the most impenetrable in the Middle East. The Egyptians had ruled over their own land virtually undisturbed for 2,500 years.
Once Egypt was captured, Esarhaddon and his successor, Assurbanipal (680-626 B.C.E.), ruled an empire that stretched over 1,000 miles from the Nile River to the Caucasus Mountains. In its time, the Assyrian Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen. The center of the empire was located in what is now northern Iraq, and its capital was called Nineveh.
Tiglath-pileser I
Few could stand in the way of the Assyrian expansion. After toppling the Babylonian Empire, the Assyrians conquered the Israelites, the Phoenicians, and even parts of the mighty Egyptian Empire.
Tiglath-pileser I was an early Assyrian king who began his reign in about 1100 B.C.E. He mounted several successful military campaigns against the Babylonians, Syrians, and many others.
He claims to have conquered 42 kings and peoples and wrote, "I carried away their possessions, burned their cities with fire, demanded from their hostages tribute and contributions, and laid on them the heavy yoke of my rule."
The Assyrian ruler also claimed great expertise as a hunter who on one expedition killed over 900 lions and captured several elephants alive.
This guardian (notice the 5th leg) protected an Assyrian citadel gate in Khorsabad.
In the city of Asshur he kept a hunting park in which to prey on animals. At Nineveh, he started a botanical garden in which he planted trees and fauna gathered during his military campaigns.
How did the Assyrians establish such a large empire over such formidable foes? Their armies were highly trained and professional. And their troops had a great deal of experience in battle. They were well organized into various units of charioteers, cavalry, bowmen, and lancers.
Assyrian armies also had a corps of engineers who employed movable towers and iron-headed battering rams for sieges on walled towns.
Soldiers used iron weapons, which were much stronger than the bronze weapons of some of their foes. The Assyrians also built roads for the quick and easy movement of troops, so that conquered rebelling kingdoms could easily be brought back under control.
Fear was another tool used by the Assyrians. Although all wars are cruel, the Assyrians were notorious for their widespread use of torture. The words of an early Assyrian king, Assurnarsipal, reveal just how cruel the Assyrians could be:
The Spoils of Victory
In ancient times, kings usually led their troops into battle and were highly skilled soldiers themselves. It was the custom of Assyrian kings to record their victories on the walls of their immense and extravagant palaces. The relief sculptures on the walls of King Assurbanipal's palace in Nineveh are some of the most elaborate. These sculptures, along with an important collection of cuneiform clay tablets — 25,000 of them — were discovered by Austen Henry Layard and his colleagues in the 1840s.
Empires meant power. This power led to extravagant wealth for the victors, who forced the conquered peoples into paying them tribute or taxes. The Assyrian kings had no end of such wealth.
Paying Tribute
The Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.E.) describes the tribute he exacted from the Hebrew king Hezekiah. Hezekiah withstood the Assyrians' siege in the capital city of Jerusalem in an event that is also recounted in the Bible. But the Hebrews still had to give enormous tribute and presents to the Assyrians.
Sennacherib explains in his own words on a tablet that was discovered by archaeologists: "He sent [a convoy] after me to Nineveh, my royal city with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, jewels, antimony ... couches of ivory, easy chairs inlaid with ivory, elephants' hides, elephants' tusks ... all kinds of valuable treasures, and his daughters, his harem, and male and female singers."
More than Warriors
With the wealth they obtained from war and tribute, the Assyrian kings built the well-fortified and beautiful cities of Nineveh, Calah, (present-day Nimrud).
In these cities, they placed their grand palaces, some of which spanned several acres. It these places, Assyrian kings showed their more cultured side.
The first glassmaking, the invention of backgammon, the ancestor of the lock and key, even therapeutic massage, are thought by many scholars to be Assyrian inventions.
But the Assyrian Empire's grandeur did not last. Just as it reached its peak, it began to crumble. Fighting between King Assurbanipal and his brother weakened the empire and opening it up to foreign invaders. The Assyrian Empire was eventually destroyed in 612 B.C.E. by the Medes from the Iranian Plateau and the Chaldeans of Babylonia.
It never rose again.
And finally, we present this view, by The Conversation. The surprising argument here is that climate change had a great deal to do with the Assyrian empire's rapid collapse and disappearance.
Climate change fueled the rise and demise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, superpower of the ancient world
November 13, 2019
Ancient Mesopotamia, the fabled land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, was the command and control center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This ancient superpower was the largest empire of its time, lasting from 912 BC to 609 BC in what is now modern Iraq and Syria. At its height, the Assyrian state stretched from the Mediterranean and Egypt in the west to the Persian Gulf and western Iran in the east.
Then, in an astonishing reversal of fortune, the Neo-Assyrian Empire plummeted from its zenith (circa 650 BC) to complete political collapse within the span of just a few decades. What happened?
Numerous theories attempt to explain the Assyrian collapse. Most researchers attribute it to imperial overexpansion, civil wars, political unrest and Assyrian military defeat by a coalition of Babylonian and Median forces in 612 BC. But exactly how these two small armies were able to annihilate what was then the most powerful military force in the world has mystified historians and archaeologists for more than a hundred years.
Our new research published in the journal Science Advances sheds light on these mysteries. We show that climate change was the proverbial double-edged sword that first contributed to the meteoric rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then to its precipitous collapse.
An artist’s vision of the interior of an Assyrian palace, based on drawings made in 1849 by Austen Henry Layard on the site of 19th century excavations.New York Public library digital collections, CC BY-ND
Booming right up to an unexpected bust
The Neo-Assyrian state was an economic powerhouse. Its formidable war machine boasted a large standing army with cavalry, chariots and iron weaponry. For over two centuries, the mighty Assyrians waged relentless military campaigns with ruthless efficiency. They conquered, plundered and subjugated major regional powers across the Near and Middle East, as each Assyrian king tried to outshine his predecessor.
Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, ruled this vast empire from the ancient city of Nineveh, the ruins of which lie across the Tigris River from modern Mosul, Iraq. Nineveh was a sprawling metropolis of unprecedented size and grandeur filled with temples and palace complexes, with exotic gardens that were watered by an extensive system of canals and aqueducts.
And then it all ended within just a few years. Why?
Our research group wanted to investigate climate conditions over the few centuries when the Neo-Assyrian Empire took hold and then eventually collapsed.
Building a picture of climate 2,600 years ago
For clues about rainfall patterns over northern Mesopotamia, we turned to Kuna Ba cave, located near Nineveh.
Our colleagues collected samples from the cave’s stalagmites. These are the cone-like structures that point upward from the cave floor. They grow slowly, from the ground up, as rainwater drips down from the cave ceiling, depositing dissolved minerals.
The layers of a stalagmite record the climate conditions of the time when they were created. (Ashish Sinha, CC BY-ND)
The rainwater naturally contains heavy and light isotopes of oxygen – that is, atoms of oxygen that have different numbers of neutrons. Subtle variations in the oxygen isotope ratios can be sensitive indicators of climatic conditions at the time the rainwater originally fell. As stalagmites grow, they lock into their structure the oxygen isotope ratios of the percolating rainwater that seeps into the cave.
We painstakingly pieced together the climatic history of northern Mesopotamia by carefully drilling into stalagmites, across their growth rings, which are similar to those of trees. In each sample, we measured the oxygen isotope ratios to build a timeline of how conditions changed. That told us the order of events but didn’t tell us the amount of time that elapsed between them.
Luckily, the stalagmites also trap uranium, an element that’s ever-present in trace amounts in the infiltrating water. Over time, uranium decays into thorium at a predictable pace. So the dating experts on our research team made scores of high-precision uranium-thorium measurements on stalagmite growth layers.
Together these two kinds of measurements let us anchor our climate record to precise calendar years.
Unusual wet period, then massive drought
Now a direct comparison of the stalagmite climate record with the historical and archaeological records from the region was possible. We wanted to place the key events of Neo-Assyrian history into the long-term context of our climate reconstruction.
We found that the most significant expansion phase of the Neo-Assyrian state occurred during a two-centuries-long interval of anomalously wet climate, as compared with the previous 4,000 years. Called a megapluvial period, this time of unusually high rainfall was immediately followed by megadroughts during the early-to-mid-seventh century BC. These ancient dry conditions were as severe as recent droughts in Iraq and Syria but lasted for decades. The period marking the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire occurred well within this time frame.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire rose during an unusual time of wet climate and collapsed soon after conditions swung to unusual dryness. Ashish Sinha, CC BY-ND
Mindful of the caveat that correlation doesn’t imply causation, we were interested in how this wild climate swing – an unusually rainy period that ended in drought – could have influenced an empire.
While the Neo-Assyrian state was huge in its final few decades, its economic core was always confined to a rather small region. This relatively small area in northern Mesopotamia served as a primary source of agricultural revenues and powered Assyrian military campaigns.
We argue that nearly two centuries of unusually wet conditions in this otherwise semi-arid region allowed for agriculture to flourish and energized the Assyrian economy. The climate acted as a catalyst for the creation of a dense network of urban and rural settlements in the unsettled zones that previously hadn’t been able to support farming.
Our data show the wet period abruptly ended and the pendulum swung the other way. In the grips of recurring megadroughts, the Assyrian core and its hinterlands would have been engulfed within a “zone of uncertainty” – a corridor of land where the rainfall is highly erratic and any rain-fed agriculture comes with a large risk of crop failure.
Repeated crop failures likely exacerbated the political unrest in Assyria, crippled its economy and empowered the adjacent rival states.
Uncertain climate, unsustainable growth
Our findings have current-day implications.
In modern times, the same region that once constituted the Assyrian core has been repeatedly struck by multiyear droughts. The catastrophic drought of 2007–2008 in northern Iraq and Syria, the most severe in the past 50 years, led to cereal crop failures across the region.
Droughts like this one offer a glimpse of what Assyrians endured during the mid-seventh century BC. And the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire offers a warning to today’s societies.
Climate change is here to stay. In the 21st century, people have what Neo-Assyrians did not: the benefit of hindsight and plenty of observational data. Unsustainable growth in politically volatile and water-stressed regions is a time-tested recipe for disaster.
[ You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.Sign up for good Sunday reading. ]
Every article you read here is written by university scholars and researchers with deep expertise in their subjects, sharing their knowledge in their own words. We don’t oversimplify complicated issues, but we do explain and clarify. We believe bringing the voices of experts into the public discourse is good for democracy.
Beth Daley
Editor and General Manager
Still fascinated by the Assyrian story?
Below read the story of modern-day Assyrians.
The world’s 4 million Assyrians are currently dispersed with members of the Diaspora comprising nearly one-third of the population. Most of the Assyrians in the Diaspora live in North America, Europe and Australia with nearly 460,000 residing in the United States of America. The remaining Assyrians reside primarily in Iraq and Syria, with smaller populations in Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, and Jordan.
The Assyrians are not to be confused with Syrians even though some Syrian citizens are Assyrian. Although the name of Syria is directly derived from Assyria and Syria was an integral part of Assyrian civilization, most of the people of Syria currently maintain a separate Arab identity. Moreover, the Assyrians are not Arabs but rather have maintained a continuous and distinct ethnic identity, language, culture, and religion that predates the Arabization of the Near East. In addition, unlike the Arabs who did not enter the region until the seventh century A.D., the Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. Until today, the Assyrians speak a distinct language (called Aramaic [Syriac]), the actual language spoken by Jesus Christ. As a Semitic language, the Aramaic language is related to Hebrew and Arabic but predates both. In addition, whereas most Arabs are Muslim, Assyrians are essentially Christian.
The Assyrians were among the first to accept Christianity in the first century A.D. through the Apostle St. Thomas. Despite the subsequent Islamic conquest of the region in the seventh century A.D., the Church of the East flourished and its adherents at one time numbered in the tens of millions. Assyrian missionary zeal was unmatched and led to the first Christian missions to China, Japan, and the Philippines. The Church of the East stele in Xian, China bears testament to a thriving Assyrian Christian Church as early as in the seventh century A.D. Early on, the Assyrian Church divided into two ancient branches, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. Over time, divisions within these Assyrian Churches led to the establishment of the Chaldean Church (Uniate Catholic), Syrian Catholic Church, and Maronite Church. Persistent persecution under Islamic occupation led to the migration of still greater numbers of Assyrian Christians into the Christian autonomous areas of Mount Lebanon as well. With the arrival of Western Protestant and Catholic missionaries into Mesopotamia, especially since the nineteenth century, several smaller congregations of Assyrian Protestants arose as well. A direct consequence of Assyrian adherence to the Christian faith and their missionary enterprise has been persecution, massacres, and ethnic cleansing by various waves of non-Christian neighbors which ultimately led to a decimation of the Assyrian Christian population. Most recently and tragically, Great Britain invited the Assyrians as an ally in World War I. The autonomous Assyrians were drawn into the conflict following successive massacres against the civilian population by forces of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Kurds, Arabs and Persians. Although many geopolitical and economic factors were involved in provoking the attacks against the Assyrians, a jihad or holy war was declared and served as the rallying cry and vehicle for marauding Turks, Kurds, and Persians. Although the Muslim holy war against the Armenians is perhaps better known, over three-fourths, or 750,000 Assyrian Christians were also killed between 1843-1945 during the Assyrian Holocaust.
The conflict and subsequent Assyrian Holocaust led to the decimation and dispersal of the Assyrians. Those Assyrians who survived the Holocaust were driven out of their ancestral homeland in Turkish Mesopotamia primarily toward the area of Mosul Vilayet in Iraq, Jazira in Syria, and the Urmi plains of Iran where large Assyrian populations already lived. The massacres of 1915 followed the Assyrians to these areas as well, prompting an exodus of many more Assyrians to other countries and continents. The Assyrian Holocaust of 1915 is the turning point in the modern history of the Assyrian Christians precisely because it is the single event that led to the dispersal of the surviving community into small, weak, and destitute communities.
Most Assyrians in the Diaspora today can trace their emigration from the Middle East to the Assyrian Holocaust of 1915. Many, who fled from their original homes into other Middle Eastern countries subsequently, just one generation later, once more emigrated to the West. Thus, many Assyrian families in the West today have experienced transfer to a new country for three successive generations beginning, for instance, from Turkey to Iraq and then to the United States.
During World War I, after the Assyrians ["Our Smallest Ally"] sided with the victorious Allies, Great Britain had promised the Assyrians autonomy, independence, and a homeland. The Assyrian question was addressed during postwar deliberations at the League of Nations. However, with the termination of the British Mandate in Iraq, the unresolved status of the Assyrians was relinquished to the newly formed Iraqi government with promises of certain minority guarantees specifically concerning freedom of religious, cultural, and linguistic expression. The Assyrians lost two-thirds of their population during the World Wars.
The Simele Genocide (Syriac: ܦܪܡܬܐ ܕܣܡܠܐ: Premta d-Simele) was the first of many massacres committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic genocide of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933. The term is used to describe not only the massacre of Simele, but also the killing spree that continued among 63 Assyrian villages in the Dohuk and Mosul districts that led to the deaths of an estimated 3,000 innocent Assyrians. Today, most of these villages continue to be illegally occupied by Arabs and Kurds.
Currently, the Assyrians are religiously and ethnically persecuted in the Middle East due to Islamic fundamentalism, Arabization and Kurdification policies, leading to land expropriations and forced emigration to the West.
Assyrian Holocaust
Historical timeline from 1915 to the 1958 Iraqi Revolution detailing the plight and suffering of the Assyrians
You have to hand it to the ancient Assyrians – they were honest. Their artistic propaganda relishes every detail of torture, massacre, battlefield executions and human displacement that made Assyria the dominant power of the Middle East from about 900 to 612BC. Assyrian art contains some of the most appalling images ever created. In one scene, tongues are being ripped from the mouths of prisoners. That will mute their screams when, in the next stage of their torture, they are flayed alive. In another relief a surrendering general is about to be beheaded and in a third prisoners have to grind their fathers’ bones before being executed in the streets of Nineveh.
These and many more episodes of calculated cruelty can be seen carved in gypsum in the British Museum’s blockbuster recreation of Assyria’s might. Assyrian art makes up in tough energy what it lacks in human tenderness. It is an art of war – all muscle, movement, impact. People and animals are portrayed as fierce cartoons of merciless force.
‘Celebrating the blood-sport of the king’ … Ashurbanipal on a hunt. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
Yet behind the conquests these eye-blistering reliefs depict, lay an intricate system of bureaucracy and a passion for logistics. I Am Ashurbanipal is a portrait of the banality of empire. Just as Hannah Arendt argued that the Holocaust was perpetrated by characterless paper-pushers, not flamboyant sadists, so we find here that Assyrian atrocities – including the forced resettlement of thousands of Israelites – were not the product of random mayhem but diligent organisation.
The Assyrian empire was so disciplined that even though this exhibition focuses on one man, Ashurbanipal, who ruled the empire from 669BC until his death somewhere around 631BC, his personality is as remote as the sphinxes and lion spirits that loom in the atmospherically lit galleries. Ashurbanipal is less an individual in this show than a set of royal roles that he seems to have carried out immaculately. A letter that he wrote to his father when he was 13 – did the boy ever see his dad? – describes how he has been learning all the proper skills for a king.
One was hunting. In stone relief after stone relief, the blood-sport of the king is celebrated. Unusually, Ashurbanipal and his family didn’t hunt harmless deer or lumbering wild boars. They fought lions, to prove their superhuman virility and capacity to subdue the savage. Lions, portrayed with great observational accuracy, are shown being shot at close range with arrows or speared in the neck, their bodies carried aloft by servants. It’s a more equal battle than some the Assyrians conducted against human enemies and fought, it seems, with more respect. Lions rear up against their attackers and try to face down men on horseback. There’s a study of a dying lion gushing blood.
Ashurbanipal, shown with cuneiform inscription. Photograph: The Trustees of the British Museum
Ashurbanipal had what it took to fight lions but it was his administrative abilities that made him a successful crusher and smiter of peoples. He was served by eunuchs whose freedom from family ambition was thought to make them ideal civil servants. A portrait that may be of a bureaucratic eunuch shows him with a chubby face and no beard – for facial hair was phallic. That phallic symbolism explains the huge square beard worn by Ashurbanipal himself. Cuneiform, the world’s oldest form of writing, already almost 2,000 years old, was as crucial as siege machines to the sinews of power. Letters, negotiations and commands were transported down the king’s roads to organise a huge human system.
This excellent organisation, it seems from this detailed delve into history, was the true originality of the Assyrian Empire. It was precociously modern in its organisational rigour. Ashurbanipal was not a romantic conqueror like Alexander the Great or Daenerys Targaryen. He was the CEO of a ruthless global enterprise. Perhaps it is weirdly fitting that the exhibition is sponsored with much fanfare by BP. The controversial oil company is part of the relentless machinery of the modern world that exploits nature even faster than Ashurbanipal killed lions.
You can’t get away from the 21st century in this unsettling and even nightmarish exploration of the rise and fall of empires. The mini “caliphate” created by Islamic State was nothing like as vast or enduring as the Assyrian empire but in the three years that they ruled Mosul in Iraq, from June 2014 to July 2017, Isis militants set out to destroy the remains of Ashurbanipal’s pre-Islamic culture. The ruins of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, are on Mosul’s outskirts. They smashed antiquities in the Mosul Museum and set about demolishing Nineveh itself.
‘A glimpse of hope’ … stone tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
What’s it all for? Human history, including that of our own times, looks pretty brutal in this exhibition. One of the palace reliefs portrays people defeated by the Assyrians being forced by Ashurbanipal’s soldiers to migrate to land where their labour will profit the empire. Scenes like this are both fascinating and utterly crushing to the human spirit. The efficient brutality of the Assyrians looks like a sterile enterprise that existed only, at least as far as this exhibition goes, for the glory and luxury of the monarch. Once Ashurbanipal was dead, his empire fell apart. A wall-filling film of a city in flames looks as if it might be Mosul in 2017 or during the Iraq war. In fact it is meant to suggest the burning of Nineveh in 612BC and the apocalyptic end of Assyrian power.
Yet in this futile cycle of rising and falling empires one glimpse of hope gives the exhibition warmth. It is a wall of illuminated cuneiform tablets, their spiky scripts full of words that only specialists can read but whose human weight anyone can feel. These clay tablets come from the great library Ashurbanipal created in Nineveh. It was his enduring contribution to civilisation. The library was fired in the destruction of Nineveh at the end of the seventh century BC, but clay tablets don’t burn. They were hardened and preserved by the heat.
They include the text of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Collected by Ashurbanipal and excavated from his library, this is the best-preserved copy of the world’s earliest literary masterpiece. It’s still a basis for modern translations. Ashurbanipal may have been a murderous bureaucrat but he was also a benefactor of civilisation. In the relentless cycles of history, that urge to preserve and remember is what raises us out of the dust.
I am Ashurbanipal is at the British Museum, London, from 8 November to 24 February.