Draft paper for “In the crucible of Empire” (Yale University, 30-31 October 2014)
Revolting subjects: Assyrian responses to resistance
Karen Radner (University College London)
From the 14th century BC onwards, Assyria was conceived as a territorial state
and a hereditary monarchy. Despite the waxing and waning of its holdings,
especially around the turn of the millennium, Assyria dominated Mesopotamia
and, more often than not, the wider Middle East politically and militarily. A period
of c. three centuries, from the reign of Aššurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 BC) onwards
until the collapse of the state in the late 7th century BC, is today described as
Assyria’s imperial period.
This paper focuses on revolts during that time and on the Empire’s responses to
resistance. We will concentrate on rebellions within the provinces of the Empire,
not on the insurrection of client states (for a recent discussion of one such case,
see Melville 2010).
1. A literary revolution
As we shall see none of these instances of rebellion and insurrection qualify for
Jack A. Goldstone’s definition of a revolution as combining the “elements of
forcible overthrow of government, mass mobilization, the pursuit of a vision of
social justice, and the creation of new political institutions” (Goldstone 2014: 9).
But the concept of such a revolution would nevertheless have been familiar at
least to educated Assyrians and Babylonians, as a classic work of literature deals
very prominently with the theme. This composition is an epic poem in the
Akkadian language and today called The Flood Story after its most dramatic
episode or Atram-hasis (“Exceedingly wise”) after its main protagonist
(translation: Foster 2004, 227-280). At the end of the Old Babylonian period (c.
1800-1600 BC), this poem was popular among urban audiences in the cities of
Southern Mesopotamia, as manuscripts found in their private houses
demonstrate. A millennium later, the poem is attested in slightly updated versions
in manuscripts from the Assyrian royal library at Nineveh as well as the Ebabbar
temple library at Sippar. While not without parallel, its long history of transmission
makes Atram-hasis special among the literary works of the Old Babylonian period
and suggests that the poem never lost its appeal and relevance.
Atram-hasis encompasses the whole mythological history of mankind (van
Koppen 2011, 142). For our purposes, the beginning of the tale is most
interesting. It describes a world still without people where gods are split into a
small elite of great gods (conceived as a royal court) and the masses of lesser
gods who have to provide for both groups. Eventually, fed up with the drudgery
of hard agricultural work, the lesser gods rebel. They lay down work and take up
arms, marching against the great gods and putting them under siege. Disbelief
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Draft paper for “In the crucible of Empire” (Yale University, 30-31 October 2014)
gives way to fear, and the great gods begin negotiations that resolve the social
conflict with the creation of humankind, invented to release the lesser gods from
their hard work and provide for all gods. A new world order is thus established.
The episode in Atram-hasis thus features all of Goldstone’s categories, namely
the forcible overthrow of government, mass mobilization, the pursuit of a vision of
social justice, and the creation of new political institutions.
Some scholars have argued that the revolution described in Atram-hasis reflects
actual political events in the early 2nd millennium BC (cf. Shehata 2001, 6 for
literature) but while this is possible, there is no consensus. For our purposes, the
question how first millennium audiences reacted to this narrative of a successful
revolutionary movement is more essential but in the absence of any relevant
testimonies, we can only speculate. Let us instead turn to rebellions against
Assyrian imperial power.
2. The monarchy and other political institutions
Assyria’s self-designation was the “land of Aššur” (māt Aššur). Using the Greek
form Assyria obscures some of the nuances of its actual name. “Land of Aššur”
refers as much to the city of Aššur, the state’s original centre and the place of
origin of its ruling dynasty, as to the deity of the same name whose ancient
temple dominated that city. The god Aššur and the city of Aššur are inseparable,
as the deity is the personification of the rocky crag called Qal’at Sherqat in Arabic
that towers high above a bend of the river Tigris. The deity’s only temple stood on
this very crag. The Assyrian ruler was considered Aššur’s human agent, invested
by the deity’s grace with the power to rule, and at the same time also his head
priest, lending him religious as well as political authority. All Assyrian kings
without exception were members of one particular family originally from the city of
Aššur, regardless of whether they had been appointed crown prince and inherited
the crown or whether they had taken the throne as usurpers (Radner 2010).
Apart from the king, the political institutions of the Assyrian Empire are largely
obscure. They are, however, relatively well known for a well-documented period
of around a century in the early 2nd millennium when Aššur was a city-state.
Mario Liverani (2011, 263) has recently described its “mixed constitution” as
comprising “a monocratic power represented by the [ruler], an aristocratic power
represented by the līmum [i.e., a high administrative office held in annual rotation
by the head of one of the major families and determined by lot] and a democratic
power represented by the city assembly”. All these institutions were maintained
until the end of the Assyrian Empire in the late 7th century. While it is
unmistakable that they were modified in order to suit the needs of kingdom and
empire it is less than clear how. The available sources (state archives; royal
inscriptions) focus very much on the king and his “palace”, which Liverani (2011,
263) has described very appropriately as “an impressive apparatus of military
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Draft paper for “In the crucible of Empire” (Yale University, 30-31 October 2014)
and fiscal nature”: in the shape of the palaces created in the provincial centres
this institution was physically present throughout the entire “land of Aššur”. But
the fact that the other institutions were kept alive at all highlights that the Assyrian
monarchy did not care to promote itself as the sole pillar of the state.
A turning point in the relation between the king and the “aristocratic” and
“democratic” powers of Assyria was marked by the relocation of the seat of royal
power away from Aššur to Kalhu in 879 BC during the reign of Aššurnasirpal II. I
have argued (Radner 2011a) that the relocation of the seat of royal power must
be primarily seen as a strategy to, firstly, emancipate the king from god Aššur
and, secondly, weaken the influence of the aristocratic and democratic powers
whose influence must have been strongest and most visible in the city of Aššur.
Kalhu was greatly expanded in size and the residents of the new centre of state
were handpicked from among the urban elites of the Assyrian heartland and also
the outlying provinces, as the royal edict appointing the royal official Nergal-apilkumu’a (a eunuch) to oversee the move to Kalhu makes abundantly clear. We
can safely assume that only those were selected who had showed enthusiasm
for the king, thus creating in 879 BC not only a new political centre but one that
was exclusively populated by loyal supporters of the crown (Radner 2011a). This
aspect of the move prompted the later relocation of the imperial centre to DurŠarrukin in 706 BC and then to Nineveh in c. 700 BC, both situated in the
Assyrian heartland.
The royal strategy of weakening the aristocratic and democratic powers was
combined with a clear preference for delegating governing power to officials who
owed their appointment and status entirely to the king (Radner 2011b). A central
strategy for achieving the state’s cohesion saw, after a period of transition in the
9th century BC, the total abolishment of local dynasties in the newly integrated
provinces and their replacement with governors without hereditary claims from
the core region. Whenever a new king ascended to the throne, he assigned all
state offices anew, including posts as governors and ambassadors. He could
either reappoint his predecessors’ officials or make new choices. The officials all
received a copy of a signet ring engraved with the universally recognised imperial
emblem: the king slaying a rampant lion. This ring served as a symbol of their
office and as a tool to act in the king’s stead. It enabled them to issue commands
in the king’s stead while stressing that they were his men. Bound by loyalty oaths,
the officials’ allegiance to the king was further protected by the fact that from the
9th century onwards, many of them were eunuchs, whose family links had been
severed and replaced by the patronage of the royal family. Eunuchs were the
preferred choice for the highest administrative and military appointments, at the
expense of the members of the old urban elites. Their sterility also effectively
prevented the emergence of new local dynasties and moreover avoided
competition with the royal clan. No state office but that of the king was hereditary.
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3. Resistance is futile – but rebellions happen
Kalhu’s most impressive building was certainly King Aššurnasirpal’s new palace
(Oates & Oates 2001). With a length of 200 meters and a width of 130 meters,
this gigantic building dominated its surroundings and, in an inversion of the
topography of Aššur, dwarfed the neighbouring temples.
The images decorating the throne room (Winter 1983) were consciously
designed to promote a crucial twofold ideological message. Firstly, the throne
room was to emphasise that despite the move away from the temple of the god
Aššur in the city of Aššur, the relationship between the god and the king, his
chosen representative, was as close and strong as ever – despite the fact that
when king and court moved to Kalhu, the deity stayed behind. The ingredients for
the daily feast of the god in his temple in Aššur continued to be provided by the
subjects of the empire but all other taxes and tribute were now delivered to the
king and his imperial capital. Secondly, the throne room decoration showed the
king in tight control of all his lands. They juxtapose orderly, calm scenes of
audiences and tribute delivery that show the encounter of the king with his dutiful
subjects (from the provinces and the client states alike) and chaotic, violent
scenes of conquest and siege that illustrate how the king reacted to resistance.
The message is clear. Cooperation is mutually beneficial while resistance is futile.
Several of Aššurnasirpal’s successors built their own palaces, and while they felt
it no longer necessary to prominently stress unity with the god Aššur, their palace
decorations continue to emphasise the king’s power over the lands by contrasting
peaceful interaction between the king and his subjects with the furious response
to revolt.
Instances of revolt are frequently documented not only in the palace reliefs
(which serve to commemorate actual events) but also in the textual sources. The
most common terms to describe such events are the synonyms sīhu (CAD S
[1984], 240 f.) and bārtu (CAD B [1965], 113-115), “rebellion, insurrection, revolt”
(cf. Juhás 2011). Thus, the so-called Eponym Chronicles – compositions that
combine lists of the year eponyms (the līmu-officials mentioned above) with brief
historical information (available for the period from 840-700 BC; edition: Millard
1994) – feature the comment sīhu or sīhu ina (place name), i.e. “rebellion in
(place name)”, for the years 826, 825, 824, 823, 822, 821, 820, 763, 762, 761,
760, 759 and 746 BC.
4. Succession wars and how to prevent them
This last rebellion of 746 BC brought the usurper Tiglath-pileser III to the throne
while the insurgences between 826-820 BC mark the difficult period of transition
from the exceptionally long-ruling Shalmaneser III to his eventual successor
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Shamshi-Adad V. We encounter in leading roles Dayyan-Aššur, Shalmaneser’s
long-standing Commander-in-chief (turtānu, one of the highest state officials), a
eunuch, and Aššur-da’’in-apla, a son of Shalmaneser and presumably his crown
prince (Fuchs 2008, 65-68).
Writes his brother, the King Shamshi-Adad V, on a public monument that he had
erected in the capital Kalhu after he was able to establish himself as unrivalled
ruler over Assyria:
“When Aššur-da’’in-apla, at the time of Shalmaneser (III), his father, acted
treacherously by inciting rebellion (sīhu) and uprising (bartu), criminal acts,
caused the land to rebel and prepared for battle, he won over to his side
the people of Assyria, high-born and low-born, and made them take
binding oaths (tamītu). He caused the cities to revolt and made ready to
wage battle and war. The cities …, altogether 27 centres with their
fortresses, which had rebelled against Shalameser (III), king of the four
world quarters, my father, sided with Aššur-da’’in-apla. By the command of
the great gods, my lords, I subdued (the rebels).” (Grayson 1996, 183).
According to this, support for the prince’s rebellion against his father was very
wide spread, as the 27 cities listed here include prominent central Assyrian
places such as Aššur, Nineveh and Kurbail and many provincial centres from
Amedi (Diyarbakir in Turkey) to Zaban (on the Diyala in southeastern Iraq). Kalhu,
stronghold of the monarchy and the empire, is conspicuously missing.
Generally speaking, the Assyrian monarchy was most vulnerable at the moment
when the king died or when he was considered too frail or otherwise unfit for rule
(abdication was not an option), before supreme power had formally been passed
on to his successor on the occasion of the New Year celebrations (in March/April)
at the Aššur temple in Aššur. Parricide and fratricide did not disqualify from
kingship, and therefore succession wars are not infrequently attested.
The obvious solution was to prevent such succession conflicts from happening
altogether by cementing the succession before the ruler’s death. At least by the
7th century, succession oaths imposed on the imperial subjects were designed to
guarantee that the appointed crown prince would eventually succeed as king
without opposition. While earlier examples are known only from very fragmentary
manuscripts (Frahm 2009, 129-135), the succession treaty imposed by
Esarhaddon (r. 680-669 BC) in 672 survives in at least nine copies found in
Kalhu, a copy from Kullania (Tell Tayinat on the Orontes) and a fragment from
Aššur. These manuscripts show that the same treaty was used to bind state
officials appointed by the king in the Assyrian provinces and client rulers in the
adjoining regions and internal peripheries.
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Inside the provincial system: “The treaty of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria,
son of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, with the governor of Kullania, with the
deputy, the majordomo, the scribes, the chariot drivers, the third men, the
village managers, the information officers, the prefects, the cohort
commanders, the charioteers, the cavalrymen, the exempt, the outriders,
the specialists, the shi[eld bearers], the craftsmen, all the men [in his
hands], great and small, as many as there are from sunrise to sunset, all
those over whom Esarhaddon exercises kingship and lordship – with them
and with the men who will be born in days to come after the treaty.”
(Parpola & Watanabe 1988, no. 6 – ND 4331)
Outside the provincial system: “The treaty of Esarhaddon, king of the
world, king of Assyria, son of Sennacherib, king of the world, king of
Assyria, with Tunî, city lord of Elippi, his sons, his grandsons and the
people of Elippi, all the men in his hands, small and great, as many as
there are from sunrise to sunset, all those over whom Esarhaddon
exercises kingship and lordship – with you, your sons and your grandsons
who will be born in days to come after the treaty.” (Lauinger 2012)
But while Esarhaddon’s succession happened as planned, the treaty patently did
not prevent insurgencies, as we shall see when discussion the events of 670.
5. Independence movements
Dynastic contest could provide the opportunity for local independence
movements to gain traction. A good example is the aftermath of the 722 putsch
that disposed of King Shalmaneser V (r. 726-722 BC) and brought his brother
Sargon II (r. 721-705 BC) to the throne (Fuchs 2009). Even after Sargon’s
accession to power, conflicts continued for some time in the Assyrian heartland,
in the western provinces and in Babylonia. In the heartland, the civil war resulted
most prominently in the deportation of 3,600 inhabitants of the city of Aššur. In
Syro-Palestine, one Ilu-bi’di (also Iau-bi’di) managed to temporarily free several
of the western provinces, including Samaria and Damascus, from Assyrian
control and to unite them as the resurrected kingdom of Hamath under his
leadership. Sargon eventually crushed these ambitions in 720 BC, destroyed the
city of Hamath and killed the rebel leaders. Ilu-bi’di was taken to Central Assyria
where he was publicly flayed. This most violent form of execution in the Assyrian
repertoire of terror was reserved for the most prominent enemies of the state and
used as a deterrent to discourage would-be insurgents.
Babylonia, too, used the opportunity to secede. The region had been less rigidly
integrated into the Empire and Sargon, like his predecessors, styled himself “King
of Babylon” in addition to his Assyrian royal titles. But now, the region supported
Marduk-apla-iddina, the leader of the Bit-Yakin tribe and formerly an Assyrian ally,
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in his claim to the Babylonian throne. He was crowned a mere three month after
Sargon had come to power. An early attempt to regain control in 720 was
unsuccessful when the Battle of Der was lost (or at least not decisive) but Sargon
managed to expel Marduk-apla-iddina a decade later in 710 BC and reclaimed
the Babylonian crown for himself. His treatment of the Babylonians was markedly
different compared to the brutal handling of the Syrian insurgents. His pointed
leniency was a key strategy in his attempts to win approval as King of Babylon
while Marduk-apla-iddina, who remained alive and footloose, remained a viable
alternative to his candidacy.
While in the heartland the conflicts following the 720 putsch can be characterised
as on-going dynastic contest, designed to bring another member of the royal clan
to the throne, the movements in Syro-Palestine and Babylonia aspired to
independence from Assyrian rule. These revolts were surely informed both by
ideological and economic considerations. The widely different Assyrian reaction
to the two rebellions, once defeated, reflects the balance of power but perhaps
also the economic value of the regions although the available sources do not
directly elucidate this last point.
6. Revolting against a false king
In contrast to the dynastic contests and independence movements just discussed,
the revolts noted in the Eponym Chronicle for the years 763-759 BC occurred
more than a decade after King Aššur-dan III (r. 772-755 BC) had ascended to the
throne. They are described as regional insurgencies in the cities Aššur, Arrapha
(near Kerkuk) and Guzana (near Nusaybin on the Turkish-Syrian border),
respectively, and follow an epidemic and a sun eclipse, both noted in the
Chronicle. A sun eclipse was always interpreted as a bad omen for the king, and
a full eclipse, such as the one in 763, would have been visible to all, not just to
the royal astronomers who habitually watched out for such signs. If the opinion
that the eclipse signalled divine withdrawal of support for Aššur-dan enjoyed any
popularity (and this is likely), this event may well have set off the initial
insurrection in Aššur, the city of the king’s divine overlord. Aššur-dan’s reign is
poorly documented, so little more can be said about the circumstances.
Much better known is the case of a revolt against Esarhaddon in 670 BC.
However, the events have to be constructed from various letters and are not
always clear. It would seem that the movement took its departure from the
western city of Harran (near Urfa in Turkey) where a prophecy communicated
through a local woman provided the ideological foundation for the insurrection.
The woman had fallen into ecstasy and uttered a sensational divine message:
“This is the word of the god Nusku: Kingship belongs to Sasî. I shall destroy the
name and the seed of Sennacherib!” (Luukko & Van Buylaere 2003, no. 59). This
prophecy proclaimed Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon and his heirs as impostors,
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unworthy to rule over Assyria. Beyond the fact that he kept a household at
Harran at the time, we do not know much about Sasî, Assyria’s one true king.
Given the longstanding tradition that reserved the Assyrian throne exclusively for
members of the royal clan, Sasî may have been a distant relative of Esarhaddon,
perhaps descended from Sennacherib’s father Sargon II (r. 721-705 BC). What
started as a local insurgence quickly grew into a transregional movement, as
within a very short period of time supporters joined the movement in various parts
of the Empire. Some, like Esarhaddon’s Chief Eunuch Aššur-naṣir (Radner 2003,
172) or Abdâ, the city overseer of Aššur (Frahm 2010, 114 f), held very influential
positions. Allies of such calibre would have enabled the rebels to tap into the
state communication network, which can explain the rapid spread of the
movement. Sasî imposed loyalty oaths, as if he already were king (Luukko & Van
Buylaere 2003, no. 243), just like previous rebels against the crown had done,
namely the already discussed prince Aššur-da’’in-apla and prince Urdu-Mullissi in
his plot against Sennacherib in 681 BC. In marked difference to the traitors of
681, who had plotted regicide as a small group and in utmost secrecy directly
under the king’s eyes, the new rebels seem to have been less concerned about
the concealment of their plans. Their belief that Sasî was chosen and protected
by the gods as the true king of Assyria will of course have made all the difference.
Esarhaddon did not react immediately but gathered detailed information about
the rebels and their supporters. Then, as a Babylonian chronicle text puts it in the
sole entry for the year 670: “In Assyria, the king killed many of his great ones with
the sword.” (Grayson 1975, 86; 127). According to Esarhaddon’s chief physician,
the insurrection “made all other people hateful in the eyes of the king, smearing
them like a tanner with the oil of fish” (Parpola 1993, no. 316). The movement to
replace Esarhaddon with Sasî was stopped but at great cost for the state. After
the executions in the wake of Sennacherib’s murder in 681, this was the second
mass culling among the Assyrian state officials that Esarhaddon had ordered
within a decade. But the well-oiled machinery of Assyria’s administration was the
backbone of the empire and this caused permanent harm to the state, perhaps
more than murdering a king would have. Just how much the state was damaged
is shown by the fact that in the first months of the year 669, no official was
chosen to provide the year’s name (as shown by the date formula in Kwasman &
Parpola 1991, no. 286, dated to the first month of the year “after Kanunayu”) – a
situation which is extremely rarely attested in the long course of Assyrian history
and always marks a time of inner turbulences (Millard 1994, 67 f).
The motivation of the 670 insurgents was ideological. As far as we can see,
economic reasons play no role at all. The king’s authority was fundamentally
challenged because his legitimacy and divine right to rule were contested. His
response was extreme violence against the rebels, seemingly without any regard
for the implications for the state’s stability. Absolution and rehabilitation of the
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rebels were not possible, however valuable the individual may have been to the
state.
7. Conclusions
There is no attempt in the official records of the Assyrian Empire to disguise the
fact that rebellions happened. However, a widely accepted ideology of divinely
granted and supported rule provided a strong foundation for the monarchy.
During the imperial phase, traditional aristocratic and democratic powers were
curtailed, although not abolished. Most revolts were therefore dynastic contests
for the kingship, settled among members of the royal clan and their factions. The
death of a king, his old age or perceived lack of divine support could all prompt
such uprisings that were generally ideologically motivated. The only possible
response to an usurpation attempt was the eradication of the rival and his
supporters.
Independence movements in integrated regions were relatively rare. But
opportunity breeds rebels. When the Assyrian heartland, in the grip of a dynastic
power struggle, was temporarily paralysed a region might attempt to slip out of
direct Assyrian control. Such secession movements were likely informed both by
ideological and economic factors and triggered patriotic feelings, broadly
perceived as anti-Assyrian by Assyrian commentators. The Empire’s responses
could vary enormously, from great leniency to extreme brutality, and reflect a
pragmatic approach to the assertion of power.
While the manuscripts of Atram-hasis in the royal library of Nineveh and in the
Ebabbar temple at Sippar suggest that at least some educated Assyrians and
Babylonians were familiar with the concept of revolution as a vehicle for social
change, none of the conflicts discussed can easily be described in this way.
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