Ancient Iraq

by Georges Roux

  The first act of the new monarch was to atone for Sennacherib's sin by rebuilding Babylon. The gods in their anger had decreed that the town should lie in ruins for seventy years, but the priests found an easy way of overcoming this difficulty: ‘The merciful Marduk turned the Book of Fate upside down and ordered the restoration of the city in the eleventh year’, for in the cuneiform script the figure 70 becomes 11 when reversed, just as our figure 9 becomes 6. All the people of Kar-Duniash could then be summoned to ‘carry the basket’, and in due course Babylon was not only rebuilt but ‘enlarged, raised aloft and made magnificent’.22 Although the great city was probably not as thoroughly destroyed as Sennacherib would have us believe, the work of restoration occupied the whole reign, and it was not until the accession year of Ashurbanipal (669 B.C) that Marduk and the other gods of Akkad could return from Assur, where they were held captive, to be reinstated in their temples. This act of justice won Esarhaddon the friendship of many of his Babylonian subjects: with the exception of an abortive attempt made in 680 B.C. by Merodach-Baladan's son to capture Ur, there was no serious trouble in southern Iraq during the rest of the reign, and indeed the Babylonians themselves repulsed the Elamite Humba-haldash when in 675 B.C. he invaded their country23 In that other troublesome area of the empire, Phoenicia, Esarhaddon proved that if he could forgive he could also punish. Abdi-Milkuti, King of Sidon, who revolted in 677 B.C., was caught and beheaded; Sidon was ‘torn up and cast into the midst of the sea’, its inhabitants deported to Assyria and its territory given to the rival city of Tyre.24 These drastic measures ensured – at least for a while – peace on the Mediterranean coast and left Esarhaddon free to deal with the serious problems that had arisen along the northern and eastern borders.

  At the beginning of his reign another nomadic people from southern Russia, the Scythians (Assyr. Ishkuzai), had crossed the Caucasus and joined the Cimmerians already established in Asia Minor, Armenia and Iran.25 The arrival of these warlike tribes, with which they were closely related, gave a new impetus to the predatory activities of the Cimmerians. In 679 B.C. they suddenly broke through the Taurus mountains, threatening the Assyrian garrisons in Tabal and causing some unrest among the vassal rulers of Cilicia. Esarhaddon swiftly counter-attacked, ‘tramped upon the neck’ of the Cilician rebels and ‘cut with the sword’ Teushpa and his hordes, forcing them to retreat beyond the Kizil-Irmak river. Cimmerians and Scythians then fell upon the kingdom of Phrygia, which they overthrew three years later with the help of the Urartians. Happy to see this human flood diverted from his own kingdom, Esarhaddon made peace with the Cimmerians, gave an Assyrian princess in marriage to the Scythian chief Bartatua (the ‘Protothyes’ of Herodotus) and repelled a weak attack from Rusas II of Urartu. On the eastern side of the Armenian massif, however, the repeated efforts made by the Assyrians to obtain tribute from the Mannai – now under strong Cimmerian and Scythian influence – met with failure, despite claims to the contrary in the royal inscriptions. To the south-east of Lake Urmiah the vast Iranian plateau was occupied by the Medes, in theory under Assyrian control but in fact independent, and this was the time (c. 680 B.C.) when Khshathrita (‘Phraortes’), son of Daiakku (‘Deioces’), was uniting their numerous tribes under his authority. Esarhaddon did all he could to prevent the development of a situation whose immediate effect was to cut down the supply of Median horses to the Assyrian Army and whose remote consequences were perhaps dimly foreseen. Several raids of cavalry were launched across the plateau as far as the desert to the east of Teheran, and three important princes of the Medes, who had begged Esarhaddon's help against their own vassals, were placed under Assyrian protection and imposed regular tribute. Farther south a series of successful operations in the central Zagros and an alliance sealed with the Gambulû – an Aramaean tribe settled on the left bank of the lower Tigris – aimed at forming a barrier of buffer states between Elam and Mesopotamia; but Esarhaddon struck an even greater victory when, after the death of Humba-haldash, he succeeded in putting on the Elamite throne a prince friendly to Assyria: Urtaki (675 B.C.).

  While obtaining by a remarkable combination of force and diplomacy a precarious peace in Babylonia, in Phoenicia and along the 2,000 kilometres of his northern and eastern frontiers, Esarhaddon was preparing for his great project: the conquest of Egypt.26 Already in 679 B.C. he had captured the city of Arzani ‘on the border of the Brook of Egypt’ (Wadi al ‘Arish, in the Negeb). Then he had endeavoured to win the friendship of the Arabs, by now settled in large numbers in the Syrian desert, since without their cooperation no large-scale military campaign in the south-western regions of the empire could be undertaken. For example, he had given back to its former ruler, Hazail, the stronghold of Adumatu (al Jauf) which Sennacherib had conquered, together with his gods, and when a certain Uabu (Wahab) revolted against Hazail's son the latter received full military support from the Assyrians.27 Finally, in the spring of 671 B.C., when he felt all the frontiers secure and the Arabs friendly or neutral, Esarhaddon led his army into Syria, the first step on the road to Egypt. An attempt was made to besiege Tyre, whose king had revolted, but the city resisted, and no time was wasted in trying to capture it. Marching southwards, the Assyrians reached Rapihu (Tell Rifah, south of Gaza) and crossed the Sinai desert, where they saw, among other dreadful things, ‘two-headed serpents whose attack spelled death’ and ‘green animals whose wings were batting’. After fifteen days of considerable hardship they entered the green land of Egypt.

  Despite the strong resistance offered by the pharaoh Taharqa and his army, the conquest of this vast country took surprisingly little time:

  ‘From the town of Ishhupri as far as Memphis (Mempi), his royal residence, a distance of fifteen days (march), I fought daily, without interruption, very bloody battles against Tahasqa (Tarqû), King of Egypt and Ethiopia, the one accursed by all the great gods. Five times I hit him with the point of (my) arrows (inflicting) wounds (from which he should) not recover, and then I laid siege to Memphis, his royal residence, and conquered it in half a day by means of mines, breaches and assault ladders. His queen, the women of his palace, Ushanahuru, his “heir apparent”, his other children, his possessions, horses, large and small cattle beyond counting I carried away as booty to Assyria. All Ethiopians I deported from Egypt – leaving not even one to do homage (to me). Everywhere in Egypt, I appointed new (local) kings, governors, officers, harbour overseers, officials and administrative personnel. I installed regular sacrificial dues for Ashur and the (other) great gods, my lords, for all times. I imposed upon them tribute due to me (as their) over-lord, (to be paid annually) without ceasing.’28

  But Egypt was not to be an easy prey. Two years later, Taharqa came back from the south, where he had fled, recovered Memphis and fomented a rebellion against the Assyrians in the Nile Delta. Esarhaddon was, once again, on his way to Egypt when he fell sick in Harran and died (669 B.C.).

  Three years before, in May 672, in the presence of the Army and nobles of Assyria, foreign ambassadors and representatives from subject countries, he had solemnly proclaimed his son Ashurbanipal the legitimate heir to the throne and appointed another of his sons, Shamash-shum-ukîn, viceroy in Babylonia. That same day the vassal princes had signed a long and detailed treaty of loyalty to the crown prince, copies of which have been found at Nimrud.29 Even Esarhaddon's mother, the Aramaean-born Naqia-Zakutu, had thrown the weight of her influence into the balance and obtained from the Babylonians and their future viceroy an oath of allegiance to the future ruler of Assyria.30 Esarhaddon, the brave and wise king who left nothing to chance, had ensured that no dynastic crisis would follow his death.

  Ashurbanipal

  The change of reign took place smoothly, and the two princes sat upon their respective thrones: Ashurbanipal in Nineveh one month after his father's death, Shamash-shum-ukîn in Babylon one year later. The empire, however, was not divided. In all probability, the purpose of the arrangements made by Esarhaddon was to satisfy his Babylonian subjects by
granting them sovereignty, though it had been made clear to all concerned that Ashurbanipal took precedence over his brother. The latter had full authority within his own kingdom; the former held sway over Assyria proper, the distant provinces and the vassal rulers, and was responsible for the conduct of war and the foreign policy of the empire as a whole. It was perhaps an awkward solution, but it worked perfectly well for sixteen years.

  With the crown of Assyria Ashurbanipal* (668 – 627 B.C.)31 inherited the task, interrupted by his father's death, of repressing the Egyptian revolt.32 The commander-in-chief (turtânu) was at once dispatched to that remote country with a small army corps which met Taharqa and his troops in the plain south of Memphis. The Assyrians won the battle and recovered the city, but Taharqa escaped them as he had escaped Esarhaddon's army. Ashurbanipal then ordered the formation of a larger armed force composed of Assyrians, Phoenicians, Syrians and Cypriots, but also of Egyptian soldiers recruited in the Nile delta. This army left Memphis and began marching towards Thebes (Assyr. Ni’), but it stopped on its way when the news broke that the princes of Lower Egypt were about to revolt:

  All the kings… talked about rebellion and came, among themselves, to the unholy decision: ‘Taharqa has been driven out of Egypt, how can we, ourselves, stay?’ And they sent their mounted messengers to Taharqa, King of Nubia, to establish a sworn agreement: ‘Let there be peace between us and let us come to mutual understanding; we will divide the country between us, no foreigner shall be ruler among us!33

  Betrayed by one of them, the conspirators were captured. Some were executed and others – notably Necho, King of Sais – were sent to Nineveh. The Assyrians knew that they could not proceed with their long march leaving behind them an ebullient Delta. Moreover, they were now some two thousand kilometres away from their homeland, in the heart of an unknown and hostile country with utterly foreign languages, customs and religion and which, in any case, they could not rule directly for a lack of administrators and troops in sufficient numbers. The only solution was to forgive and indeed cajole the kings of the Delta and win them over to their side, hoping that their hatred for Taharqa the Kushite (i.e. the Sudanese) would do the rest. Ashurbanipal, therefore, released the prisoners and put his stake on Necho, whose ancestors had reigned over the whole of Egypt. He sent him back to Sais, ‘clad in a brilliant garment’ and loaded with rich presents.

  Two years elapsed, during which Taharqa died in exile. In 664 B.C, his son Tanutamûn (whom the Assyrians called Tanda-mane) entered Thebes amidst rejoicing, then sailed down the Nile to Memphis, in the vicinity of which he hit a thin screen of enemy troops, mostly Egyptians, and easily beat them. Necho was killed in the skirmish; the other kings of the Delta took refuge in the marshes whence they could not be dislodged. It was then that the large Assyrian army, stationed somewhere south of Memphis, began to move and march on Thebes. Entering that great and beautiful city at long last, they ransacked and destroyed it ‘as if by a floodstorm’ and carried away ‘booty heavy and beyond counting’, including two tall electrum-coated obelisks, each weighing almost thirty-eight tons. The metropolis of Southern Egypt never recovered from the devastation.

  Although the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal are written in the first person, it is very unlikely that he visited Egypt. On the other hand, it seems certain that on two occasions he intervened personally in Phoenicia: in 667 B.C. to ‘put under his yoke’ Iakinlu, King of Arvad, who forced foreign vessels to unload their cargo in his own port instead of the Assyrian port, then in 662 B.C. against Ba'alu of Tyre who refused to continue paying tribute. Tyre which, like Arad, was built on an island but much closer to the Lebanese coast was reputed impregnable: it was besieged, reduced to famine and obliged to surrender. Similar tactics were probably used against Arvad, bringing the same results. Yet the rulers of these two cities were treated with astonishing leniency, no doubt because Ashurbanipal, whose army was fully engaged in the Egyptian venture, could neither afford to lose his Phoenician vassals nor spare troops for other fronts. He merely received the homage of the rebels as well as their presents and their daughters for his harem. For the same reason, he remained deaf to the calls of Gyges (Gugu), King of Lydia in western Anatolia – ‘a distant country whose name the kings, my fathers, had never heard’ – harassed by the Cimmerians. Gyges defended his kingdom alone and proved his success by sending two prisoners of war to Nineveh.34

  The victory over Tanuatamûn and the Phoenicians gave Ashurbanipal a few years of respite during which he was able to devote his attention to the northern and eastern frontiers. The chronology of the reign is extremely uncertain, but it is probably between 665 and 655 B.C. that must be placed the campaign against the Mannai and the Medes described in the royal records, perhaps the alliance with Madyes, chief of the Scythians, which was to prove so useful a few years later, and the war against Urtaki, King of Elam, ‘who gave no thought to the good done to him’ by Esarhaddon and ‘overran Akkad like a dense swarm of grasshoppers’35 and was repelled. It seems that the alliance of the Cimmerians with the king of Tabal, their victory over Lydia and the death of Gyges killed in the battle, as well as their foray towards Mesopotamia, checked by the Assyrians, took place between 650 and 640 B.C.

  Shortly before the middle of the seventh century the gods, who had always stood at Ashurbanipal's side, suddenly seemed to abandon him. About 655 B.C. Psamtik (Psammetichus I) – possibly a son of Necho – raised the flag of independence in the Nile Delta and, with the help of Ionian and Carian mercenaries, expelled the Assyrians from Egypt, pursuing them as far as Ashdod in Palestine. We owe this information to Herodotus,36 for there is naturally no mention of this disaster in the cuneiform records, except for a passage in the ‘Rassam cylinder’ where Ashurbanipal states that Gyges ‘sent his force to the aid of Tushamilki, King of Egypt, who had thrown off the yoke of his (Ashurbanipal's) sovereignty’. In other times an army would have been sent against Psammetichus, and Egypt would not have slipped so easily out of Assyrian hands. But it so happened that the bulk of the Assyrian army was engaged in a fierce struggle with the Elamites, and Ashurbanipal had to give up Egypt in order to save Mesopotamia. The King of Elam was then Tept-Humban (the Teumman of Assyrian inscriptions), a usurper who, six or seven years before, had seized the throne, obliging the sons of Urtaki to take refuge in Nineveh. War broke out when Teumman demanded their extradition, which Ashurbanipal refused. The Elamites attacked, aided by the unfaithful Gambulû. Driven back into their own country, they were defeated at Tulliz on the Kerkha river. Teumman was killed in the battle; his head was cut off and triumphantly taken to Nineveh, where – as shown in a famous bas-relief – it was hung on a tree in the garden of the royal palace.37 The Gambulû were punished, and Elam was divided between two members of the Urtaki family: Humbanigash and Tammaritu. There, as in Egypt, the Assyrians would not or could not put the vanquished country directly under their rule, and the half-measures they adopted left ultimately no choice but withdrawal or utter destruction.

  This episode of the Elamite war was hardly concluded when Babylonia revolted. For sixteen years Shamash-shum-ukin had behaved as a faithful brother, but gradually the virus of Babylonian nationalism overtook him and he came to think that, after all, Babylon was as much entitled to world domination as Nineveh. In 652 B.C. he closed the gates of Sippar, Babylon and Barsippa to the Assyrians and contrived a huge coalition comprising Phoenicia, the Philistines, Judah, the Arabs of the Syrian desert, the Chaldaeans of southern Iraq, the Elamites and even Lydia and Egypt. Had all these peoples attacked simultaneously, Assyria would have been overwhelmed. Fortunately, the plot was discovered in time. In a strongly worded proclamation Ashurbanipal warned the people of Babylon:

  ‘Regarding the empty words which this false brother told you, I have heard all that he has said. They are nothing but wind. Do not believe him… Do not, for a moment, listen to his lies. Do not contaminate your own good name, which is unsullied before me and before the whole world, nor make yourselves sinners against
the divinity.’38

  But the Babylonians refused to listen, and the King of Assyria marched against his brother. For three years, says a Babylonian chronicle, ‘the war went on and there were perpetual battles’.39 In the end Shamash-shum-ukin lost hope; the legend has it that he set fire to his own palace and perished in the flames (648 B.C.).40 Sumer and Akkad were pacified and Ashurbanipal put on the throne of Babylon a shadowy figure called Kandalanu, of obscure origin.41 Soon afterwards, he proceeded to punish the other rebels and became at once entangled in a war against the Arabs,42 who had not only lent their support to Shamash-shum-ukin but were continuously raiding the western vassal-states. It was a difficult war, waged against elusive enemies fighting bravely and vanishing in a dreadful desert ‘where parching thirst is at home, where there are not even birds in the sky’. Yet, here again, the Assyrian Army accomplished marvels: Uate' and his allies, the Nabataeans – who already dwelt around the Dead Sea – were defeated; Abiate' and his Qedar tribe were surrounded, cut off from water wells and forced ‘to cut open their camels and drink blood and filthy water against their thirst’. Another Uate', son of Hazail, was caught and, a ring in his jaw and a collar around his neck, was ‘made to guard the bar at the east gate at Nineveh’. The booty taken in this campaign was such, says Ashurbanipal, that: