Fear Of The Other: Assyria's Employment of Routine Violence

Assyria was a violent civilisation, of that there is little debate. However, to fully explain the Assyrian employment of routine violence, it is important to lay down some parameters. The first of these would be to explore what exactly made Assyria's style of violence unique, as it can be argued that the vast majority of civilisations throughout history have in some form enacted violence. Many scholars would argue that it was the institutionalised nature of violence within a society where it was revered and encouraged that made Assyria’s employment so unique and this can be seen from the vast quantities of images and inscriptions glorifying their violence. More specifically however, this essay will explore how the ideology that implemented routine violence in Assyria vastly hinged upon the demonisation and hatred of The Other. The Other can be seen as an entity in of itself, because as Fales points out, from what we have gathered from Assyrian inscriptions, there was only one, singular enemy of Assyria that was embodied by all others besides Assyria herself. Other cultures and peoples deviated from Assyrian practise and thus according to their doctrine, were in need of punishment for their transgressions. This is succinctly summarised in an inscription of Tukulti-Ninurta I's prayer to Ashur, where he declares ‘the other lands in unison surround your city, Ashur, with a circle of evil.’ In the eyes of the Assyrians, The Other was proud and insolent. They were a liar and schemer and most importantly, were constantly plotting the ruin of Assyria.

Nevertheless, despite how reprehensible some of Assyria’s violence towards others may seem to our modern eyes, it is important, as Grayson suggests, to ‘shake off our presuppositions’ and view their actions through the lens of their own world, rather than ours. With this in mind therefore, we must analyse Assyria’s use of routine violence within the framework of their own society, always with the idea of The Other in mind, as it appears that any explanation can be linked back to this fear of The Other. The fear of their own destruction.

FEAR AS A TOOL:

It is without doubt that the Assyrians used routine violence to terrorise The Other and to fend off any who posed a threat to their society, or even to discourage said threat before it had a chance to materialise. For example, the Gypsum wall-panel depicting the Battle of Til-Tuba commissioned by Ashurbanipal depicts seas of corpses sprawled across the battlefield, prisoners having their tongues cut out before being flayed alive, as well as the head of the Elamite king being carried away in a chariot.

By carving these images, remembering these acts of brutality and torture, the Assyrians are arguably creating for themselves an image of terror. They are solidifying these acts into the historical record, so that they will never be forgotten and thus they are making a statement to The Other, telling it to fear them. There is an inscription accompanying the panels, addressed from the king himself stating among other things, that ‘five-hundred soldiers were impaled before their gate’ and ‘I massacred them. With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool.’ We can learn much from the fact that not only do the Assyrians not shy away from their atrocities, but actively advertise them for all to see, and thus this can support the argument that they are presenting this routine violence to other civilisations in an attempt to terrorise them into inaction and compliance.

We can also look towards an example of how The Other itself reacted to the routine violence of Assyria, to see how these tactics came across to their supposed enemy. The book of Isaiah is a great source demonstrating Judah’s response to the invasion of Israel in 720 BCE through a biblical lens. For example, in Isaiah 5: 25-30 it writes, ‘The Lord’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down’ demonstrating a key aspect of Assyrian violence. According to Judah here, the Assyrians are acting as Yahweh’s punishment to the sinful Israelites, almost acting as the hammer of justice against these ‘sinners.’ Moreover, in Isaiah 63:3 Yahweh declares that ‘it was for me the day of vengeance’ presenting the Assyrians as the personification of vengeance itself. Therefore, it can be argued that not only are the Assyrians presenting themselves in this light, but the desired message of their routine violence is translated to another culture's religious texts and doctrine. This highlights how successful their use of fear as a tool was and helps to explain the effect that routine violence had on The Other as according to Judah, the Assyrians act as wrath. They are death. They are feared.

However, the battlefield was not the only place the Assyrian’s used fear. The sources show that they were renowned for their attempts to disperse enemy populations. One method they used was the heinous acts of rape against women, in an attempt to depopulate a population and spread disease. Once again a relief created under the reign of Ashurbanipal between 645-635 BCE can be used here, as one depicts an Arab woman being raped and killed by Assyrian soldiers, while another has her womb cut open and baby foetus removed.

A poem recounted in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III supports this practice with the line ‘He slits the wombs of pregnant women.’ Despite how horrifying these practices may seem, the message seems clear, that the Assyrian’s were attempting to cut off and destroy a society's population in gruesome fashion. Another tactic that achieved this was the employment of displacement tactics, as shown in 2 Kings 17: 5–6, where the king of Assyria is described as having ‘carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed in Halah.’ This violent act of deporting defeated enemies left these people hopeless and without a homeland to protect and thus in a sense, no longer a threat to Assyria. Therefore, these tools of terror attempting to destroy and disband other populations explains a more insidious aspect of Assyria’s routine violence that left their enemy hopeless and most importantly, with little chance of revenge.

LOOK UPON MY WORKS:

It can be argued that the kings of Assyria used routine violence to establish and maintain their authority amongst their subjects. By using royal inscriptions, tablets and reliefs, kings were able to present their ‘great deeds’ and successful conquests to a large audience, as these acted as official accounts of the king’s reign and showed his effort to abide by the rules of the society's royal ideology. However, as Rensburg states that the king’s were not at all concerned with the whole truth of these victories and would deliberately avoid any details that would go against the king’s party line. The scribes of king Sennacherib for example, employed many devices in their records to omit the military defeats of their king. Nevertheless, the sheer scale of violent acts depicted in these propaganda pieces can explain the effectiveness of violent imagery in establishing a king’s authority. For example, in the banquet scene at the canonical end of the Til-Tuba relief, king Ashurbanipal can be seen atop a throne celebrating his victory, whilst the head of the fallen enemy king can be seen hanging from a nearby tree.

This shows the symbiotic relationship between kingly authority and routine violence and thus explains how the kings of Assyria were so eager to use their violence against The Other as a way of demonstrating their divinely anointed right to rule.

A WORLD FULL OF GODS:

If one is to truly explain why any culture of antiquity employed routine violence with such consistency, exploring their pantheon of gods provides some much needed context. Much of what a society values, encourages and embodies is resonated through their pantheons, as the worship and power bestowed upon the most prominent gods is a good indicator of what values take precedent in the society. By looking at Assyria's gods, it can be seen that their culture's violent values were perfectly encapsulated within the head of their pantheon and protector of their city, Ashur. Not only is Ashur the most powerful deity in Assyrian myth, he importantly is the god most associated with war, thus showing us the interwoven harmony between protection of Assyria and the conquests and violent actions the society inflicted. It could even be said that the very idea that Ashur is vital to the city’s protection reinforces and explains why the Assyrian’s believed that only through war and routine violence was this protection against The Other sustainable.

If we look at the primary evidence, this mentality can be seen through much of the political propaganda disseminated by Assyria’s kings. The prayer of Tukulti-Ninurta I to Ashur can be used once again to explore how and why the Assyrians called upon their deities in times of distress. The prayer’s ‘us versus them’ mentality explored in the introduction is evident throughout, however another aspect that needs explanation to understand the employment of routine violence, is how Ashur is used as the focal point throughout to justify and legitimise the demonisation of others to the Assyrian people. There is an emphasis on how Ashur himself provides the cultural standards of the society, as Tukulti-Ninurta states ‘You have taught your land not to transgress the oath, to observe norms.’ To the Assyrians therefore, their war-loving protector makes the standards and it can be argued that the king is attempting to remove himself from personal responsibility of Assyria’s routine violence by invoking this prayer.

This is also reinforced in the text when Tukulti-Ninurta invokes Ashur’s favour with the line, ‘may he support it’s (Assyria’s) fight!’ calling upon him to enable their violence. Through presenting Ashur as the creator of the ‘rules’ of their society and calling upon him for their strength and victory, the Assyrians may also be using this reasoning to psychologically detach themselves from the creation of these processes. Other sources that show a similar, albeit more graphic and visceral desire for the favour of the gods, come in the guise of curses. One such curse calls upon Ishtar, the goddess of fertility and love as well as war, which although appearing juxtaposed to most modern observers, was apt in the culture of Assyria, whose people rarely separated its deities from at least some aspect of war or violence. Here, Ishtar is asked to strip Assyria’s enemy of his manhood and ‘inflict on him confusion and turmoil.’ All these methods of communication with the gods undoubtedly helped in the effort to vindicate their actions and desensitise themselves from some of their more heinously violent deeds as routine violence always enacts a heavy toll on a society's people. Thus, it can be seen that it was simply easier to shift the responsibility of said actions and deeds away from themselves and onto the will of their pantheon. For Assyria’s truly was a world full of gods.

CONCLUSIONS:

To conclude, the Assyrian employment of routine violence can be explained as a reaction to their fear of The Other. To counter this fear, they used fear as a tool themselves and enacted horrific violence in an attempt to control their enemies and provide a common goal for their own people. As well as this, the kings of Assyria also used said routine violence as a means to establish and maintain their right to rule, as only a king favoured by the gods could have such an ability to inflict their will on The Other. Through all this however, the gods of Assyria were used as a means of justification as by presenting their gods as ones who could only be sated through the works of routine violence, the people of Assyria could be vindicated from the horrors of their actions. The common thread among all these however, was this lingering fear of The Other, which was the ever-present explanation behind the Assyrian employment of routine violence

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
SECONDARY SCHOLARSHIP:

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PRIMARY SOURCES:

Ashurbanipal II 001 Royal Inscription, Q004455 i50-i54, b. Neo-Assyrian, 883-859 BCE.

Gypsum wall-panel depicting the Battle of Til-Tuba (Battle of the River Ulai) in relief. British Museum 124801, b. Neo-Assyrian, 660-650 BCE.

Gypsum wall panel depicting soldiers assaulting women in relief. British Museum 124927, b. Neo-Assyrian, 645-635 BCE.

Heroic Poem celebrating the victories of Tiglath-Pileser I, VAT 13833, b. Middle Assyrian, 1114–1076 BCE.

The Holy Bible, Book of Isaiah, New International Version (2011). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

The Holy Bible, Book of Kings, New International Version (2011). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Tukulti-Ninurta I 06 Royal Inscription, Q005842 vi 1-27, b. Middle Assyrian, 1233-1197 BCE.

Tukulti-Ninurta I 01 Royal Inscription, Q005837 vi 2-22, b. Middle Assyrian, 1233-1197 BCE.

The Rassam Cylinder inscribed in cuneiform with the annals of Ashurbanipal. British Museum 91026, b. Neo-Assyrian, 643 BCE.