Arthur Cotterell - Where War Began: A Military History of the Middle East from the Birth of Civilization to Alexander the Great and the Romans

Arthur Cotterell was formerly principal of Kingston College in London. Having lived and traveled widely in Asia, he has spent much of his life writing about its history and culture. In 1981 he published The First Emperor of China, whose account of Qin Shi Huangdis remarkable reign was translated into seven languages. Among his recent books, WesternPower in Asia: Its Slow Rise and Swift Fall, 14151999, was described by the Japan Times as three dimensional historiography at its best, while Professor Anthony Milner of the Australian National University called Asia: A Concise History an extraordinary achievement. Milner added that in this first-ever coverage of the entire continent, modern Asia is given its true place in a very long, rich historyand amazingly that history is told in a way that will stimulate both students and general readers.

The last two books he published, The Near East: A Cultural History and The FirstGreat Powers: Babylon and Assyria, indicate a shift of interest westward. It was in fact the research undertaken for these two publications that persuaded Cotterell of the urgent need for a general survey of ancient conflict, since organized warfare first arose in the Middle East. As a result, Where War Began reveals how such violence became an integral part of human society. The surge in military proficiency led to fighting on a scale unrepeated before modern times. As Cotterell points out, it is a sobering thought that, short of cyber weaponry, the ancient soldier experienced almost everything his present-day counterpart does.

Arthur Cotterells previous study of ancient warfare, Chariot: The Rise and Fall of theWorlds First War Machine, was, according to the Wall Street Journal, not aimed at your average subscriber to the History Channel. It is insteadthank goodnessa wide-ranging cultural tour, via chariot, of the major civilizations of the ancient world, from Egypt, Greece and Rome to Persia, India and China. There is as much in Chariot on the Iliad and the Ramayana as on battlefield tactics. Still, there is also the nitty-gritty of war.

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For Hugh Higgins, who encouraged theauthor to write this book during lockdown

MAPS

BATTLE PLANS

THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST WAS THE PLACE WHERE ORGANIZED WARfare began. Before the Sumerians fielded the worlds first armies, human conflict was never conducted in a systematic fashion. Yet even the Sumerians were aghast at the casualties their battles caused, and indeed the earliest war memorial ever erected reflects this profound unease. The Stele of the Vultures, which was carved around 2460 BC after a conflict between the city-states of Lagash and Umma, is not boastful at all. If anything, it sends the message that, though a political necessity, the advent of organized warfare was a matter of regret. While King Eannatum of Lagash is justified in halting the encroachment of Umma on land belonging to his city-state, the real victor was the god Ningirsu, who is shown holding a net in which the bodies of the vanquished are thrown carelessly together. The implication is that the entitlement to inflict death belongs to the god, not the king.

The Stele of the Vultures functioned as a war memorial and a legal treaty defining the border between Umma and Lagash. An inscribed curse warned that anyone moving or tampering with the stele faced the anger of the gods. That Lagash had tried and failed to use diplomacy to settle the dispute with Umma only underlines the reluctance of Eannatum to rush into war. The Sumerians believed that at least one deity lived in each city-state and that unnecessary conflict could well trigger divine punishment. Hence Eannatums consultation with his diviners before taking action: they assured him that the sun gods rays will illuminate your right. Only when he was absolutely sure of divine approval would this Sumerian king commit his forces to battle.

Although the Akkadians did not share the Sumerian sense of guilt over organized conflict, their kings were equally concerned to have the support of the gods. The founder of the Akkadian dynasty, Sargon, was prepared to extend his power through extreme violence, but he was always worried about the legitimacy of his rule. His name in the Bible is indeed a corruption of sharru kenu, meaning legitimate king, a title he felt it necessary to adopt. Sargons amazing military career rested upon the first permanent army to appear anywhere in the world. Though small by later standards, it represented a turning point in interstate conflict so that Sargons apparently endless series of campaigns became a model for the aggressive Assyrians. Sargon and his successors made war an integral part of civilization. Nothing was ever quite the same again, not least because a surge in military proficiency led to warfare on a scale unrepeated before modern times.

The Assyrian war machine in particular was a dreaded vehicle of destruction, reaching an unprecedented strength of 200,000 men in the seventh century BC. A steady increase in the size of the Assyrian army suggests that, like Napoleon, the kings of Assyria always believed in the military advantage of superior numbers. Added to this tactical edge was a deliberate policy of terror against anyone who dared to oppose Assyrian arms. For the Assyrians held that war was both just and good since it conformed to divine plans for the maintenance of the cosmic order, plans that were decreed through the omens of the gods. So sure of their right to exercise unrestrained violence were the Assyrians that there was never any hesitation on their part in recording the more gruesome aspects of war. Bas-reliefs depict the breaking and tearing of bodies, the impaling and flaying of live prisoners, and enormous piles of severed heads. Nowhere is there a hint that mercy is an obligation on the part of the victor. Honorable surrender never occurred to the Assyrians as an option: if they failed to achieve a military objective during one campaign, it simply became that of another.

Assyrian tactics are still a matter of debate, but there were standard procedures for an advance and a withdrawal, designed to protect the army from surprise attack. In 714 BC at Mount Uaush, at the end of an exhausting trek through a narrow pass, King Sargon II was confident enough to dispense with these altogether and charge the enemy head-on. He broke the enemy center and caused a general collapse of the Urartian battle line. By this period war chariots had been replaced by mounted archers, not least because the Assyrians were expanding their empire into terrain unsuited to wheeled vehicles. The great chariot battles were already a thing of the past, although the climatic clash between the Egyptians and the Hittites at Kadesh in 1274 BC was not forgotten. Then 5,000 chariots had engaged in a battle that left the young pharaoh Ramesses II in possession of the battlefield but by no means a complete winner.