The rise of the Assyrians began as villages looked for protection to the city of Ashur, named after their principle god. The land had productive plains, pastureland and mountains rich in copper ore, limestone, alabaster, and marble. It lay athwart caravan routes from the Hittites in Anatolia to Southern Mesopotamia, or eastwards across the Zagros mountains to India.
At first, war played little part in the life of the Assyrians, who were busy acquiring wealth. Merchants travelled freely, trading exiles from Ashur. They produced and sold copper, the raw material for tools and weapons. From the east they imported tin essential for turning copper into bronze.Under King Shamshi-Adad I (1813 – 1781 BC) the Assyrians enjoyed a brief flowering, but with their good fortune acquired enemies. Pressure from the Babylonians under Hammurabi and from the expanding Hittite Empire to the west was followed by four centuries of foreign domination.
By the time they have shaken this off, their attitudes towards outsiders had changed. The farmers and traders had become warriors. Looking north and east they saw a continual threat from the mountain peoples, and against them adopted a policy of attack and extermination of forced resettlement. During the 13th and 12th centuries, Assyria’s kings push their boundaries ever outwards, with campaigns of conquest every summer. Their use of brutality to intimidate enemies was to become the distinctive stamps of Assyrians warfare.
It is not difficult to imagine the terror that an Assyrian attack inspired. Its army was vast, well trained and disciplined. It had several expert commanders, and plentiful supplies of equipment for all types of combat. By 800 BC, the Assyrians could field an army of 20,000 light cavalry armed with bows and spears, and 1200 two horse chariots.
The heavy infantry, clad in coats of mail, wielded daggers and swords of iron, the new metal which made the Assyrian’s weapon stronger than those of their opponents. The cavalry, the early days, rode into actions on two horse chariots and dismounted to shoot from behind tail wicker shields. Gradually arches mastered the tactics of shooting accurately from horseback at full gallop.
The Rise of the Assyrians
