Those beards and the powerful style of their art make the Assyrians one of the most distinctive-looking ancient Middle Eastern cultures, right up there with the Egyptians who walked Like This and wore the flapped nemes headgear that everyone associates with Tutankhamun.
They had amazing names - Sennacherib, Shalmanesar, Asshurbanipal, Tiglath-Pilesar - but frankly these were not nice people. The wall-carvings of Royal lion-hunts go out of their way to show the suffering of the hunted animals, and Assyrian government policy was based on ferocity. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica says “Although, by his own testimony, (Ashurnasirpal II) was a brilliant general and administrator, he is perhaps best known for the brutal frankness with which he described the atrocities committed on his captives…" After stamping out a rebellion, he had a carved and written record prepared, like so:
”...I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar. I cut the limbs off the officers who had rebelled. Many captives I burned with fire and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire. The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates…”
L. Sprague de Camp comments (in “The Ancient Engineers”, Ballantine 1974) observes that “Other ancient kings played rough too, but without quite such fiendish gusto. Most Egyptian and Babylonian kins liked to boast of their justice, piety and public works rather than of their cruelties and atrocities.”
Read more here if you like: amusingly, the writer’s by-line is “Roose Bolton”, though I think even even the lord of the Dreadfort would have muttered “hey, steady on a bit,” when Ashurnasirpal really got going…
Nassy might have been a bit of a party animal, though always with an ulterior motive: at the celebration after his new palace was finished:
“…his Banquet Stele records that 69,574 people attended. The menu from this celebration included, but was not limited to, 1,000 oxen, 1,000 domestic cattle and sheep, 14,000 imported and fattened sheep, 1,000 lambs, 500 game birds, 500 gazelles, 10,000 fish, 10,000 eggs, 10,000 loaves of bread, 10,000 measures of beer and 10,000 containers of wine. When the celebration was done, he sent his guests home “in peace and joy” after allowing the dignitaries to view the reliefs in his new palace…”
When you consider that the reliefs would have included more lovingly carved illustrations of incidents like the first quotation, the dignitaries were being given a message to go with their dinner.
Behave, Or Be Like These.
the-scarecrowlover
