Charles River Editors - Assur: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Assyrian Empire’s Capital City

By Charles River Editors

American soldiers patrolling around Aurs ruins

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A relief depicting Ashurnasipal with official

Aur

All who hear the news of your destruction clap their hands for joy. Did no one escape your endless cruelty? - Nahum 3:19

In northern Iraq, on the banks of the Tigris River, lie the ruins of the ancient city of Aur. This was the first capital and the most important religious center of the Assyrian Empire. Underneath the cover of sand and soil are almost six meters of dense stratigraphic layers that reveal the passage of millennia. Known today as Qalat Sherqat, and also as Kilah Shregat, the city dates back to the 3 rd millennium BCE. In that time period, the Assyrian army became the largest yet seen, and their warriors were both the greatest and cruelest in the land. They conquered an empire from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea; they despoiled the great city of Babylon, and they enslaved the tribes of Israel. Even the pharaoh of Egypt paid them tribute. No army had ever carried war so far.

Indeed, Aur was the heart of one of antiquitys most infamous war machines. When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science. When the Assyrians are mentioned, images of war and brutality are among the first that come to mind, despite the fact that their culture prospered for nearly 2,000 years.

Like a number of ancient individuals and empires in that region, the negative perception of ancient Assyrian culture was passed down through Biblical accounts, and regardless of the accuracy of the Bibles depiction of certain events, the Assyrians clearly played the role of adversary for the Israelites. Indeed, Assyria (Biblical Shinar) and the Assyrian people played an important role in many books of the Old Testament and are first mentioned in the book of Genesis: And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech, and Akkad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Ashur and built Nineveh and the city Rehoboth and Kallah. (Gen. 10:10-11).

Although the Biblical accounts of the Assyrians are among the most interesting and are often corroborated with other historical sources, the Assyrians were much more than just the enemies of the Israelites and brutal thugs. A historical survey of ancient Assyrian culture reveals that although they were the supreme warriors of their time, they were also excellent merchants, diplomats, and highly literate people who recorded their history and religious rituals and ideology in great detail. The Assyrians, like their other neighbors in Mesopotamia, were literate and developed their own dialect of the Akkadian language that they used to write tens of thousands of documents in the cuneiform script (Kuhrt 2010, 1:84). Furthermore, the Assyrians prospered for so long that their culture is often broken down by historians into the Old, Middle, and Neo Assyrian periods, even though the Assyrians themselves viewed their history as a long succession of rulers from an archaic period until the collapse of the neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BCE. In fact, the current divisions have been made by modern scholars based on linguistic changes, not on political dynasties (van de Mieroop 2007, 179).

Although war played such a central role in Assyrian society, they were also active and prosperous traders, and trade was an essential part of Aurs growth from its earliest stages. Strangely, even during military campaigns, merchants from the city engaged in commercial interactions with the enemy, for example with the Aramaeans during the campaigns of Adad Nirari II. As opposed to other cities in Mesopotamia, Aurs location meant that it was especially subjected to the influences of its many neighbors in southern Mesopotamia; Anatolia, Syria, the Zagros Mountains, and even from the barbarian tribes north of the Caucasus Mountains. Their presence can be seen today in the architecture and artifacts of the ruined city.

Aur: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Assyrian Empires Capital City looks at how the Assyrian city was built, its importance, and its collapse. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Aur like never before.

The name Assyria is actually a modern derivation of the name of the ancient city of Aur (Ashur in English), which is where Assyrian culture began (Kuhrt 2010, 1:82). The ancient city of Ashur was located approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of modern Mosul, located along the banks of the Tigris River in what is today the state of Iraq (Kuhrt 2010, 1:81). As such, Ashur was part of greater Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent region, which allowed the city to grow in terms of both culture and population. Assyria was provided with plenty of water from the Tigris River, and it was also on the fringes of the rainfall zone, which meant that it was not totally dependent on irrigation (Kuhrt 2010, 1:81).

Location allowed the population of Assyria to grow, but its culture flourished due to its proximity to southern Mesopotamia, particularly cities such as Babylon, Ur, and Larsa. The Assyrians encountered and adopted concepts already in use by their neighbors, including writing, which spurred the Assyrians advancement and has since made it much easier for people to study them.

Joey Hewitts map of Mesopotamia during the 2 nd millennium BCE

A letter sent circa 2400 BCE by the high-priest Luenna to the king of Lagash informing him of his son's death in combat.

The Assyrians development of writing allows current historians to read about the empires affairs, but it also allowed the Assyrians themselves the ability to document their own history. The Assyrians idea of history was essentially the same as that of their Babylonian neighbors to the south and involved ideas such as destiny that were manifested in the past and projected forward into the future (Speiser 1983, 38-39). As such, the Assyrians view of history was fundamentally different than the modern view. Modern notions of history are largely derived from the ancient Greeks, who believed that history should be written as a narrative and serve to teach those who read it. Modern views of history are largely divorced from ideas such as divine intervention, but to the Assyrians, it was the divine that made history, and as a result, they believed mortal failures were the result of not following divine law. In other words, history to the Assyrians was a theocratic history (Speiser 1983, 55-56).