The New Assyrian Kingdom

The Assyrians were very powerful; their military organization was just astounding, and their strategies and organizations of their military was just amazing during that time in civilization. The Assyrians (mainly the king and his army) were able to put fear into their opponents’ minds, thus giving them ultimate power by enabling them to force others to “pay tribute” or face worse punishments, like deportations, etc. (Johannes 53). Even many of the peasants were required to give the king an annual military service, or the “ilku” (Johannes 54), and they formed the king’s army. Thus, it is pretty clear to me that the king made very good use of his role as a military leader to exert military power over others, which was one of the sources of power for Mann.

It is interesting that the kingdom did not automatically utilize these newly conquered lands, but instead, they did so in a predatory fashion and then later on, switched to a regular levying of a tribute (Johannes 54). Their military campaigns were very powerful, as they had a strong nuclear core of army men, and deserters were often punished very severely, which definitely strengthened their commitment and loyalty to the army and the kingdom (Johannes 55).

In any case, the main duty for the army was to conquer the lands and bring back booty for the king, which included a “prisoners, livestock, and every king of produce, the greater part being reserved for the gods and the king” (Johannes 57). The purpose of the army was to make sure that the kingdom was the strongest possible and to get the most out of the lands as well. Unfortunately, they did not utilize these lands very well, and they only wanted to conquer them (in the beginning) (Johannes 66). The army not only wanted to conquer, but they also wanted to pretty much weaken the people to their extinction, or pretty much kill everyone. Prisoners were often tortured and killed, with their heads and hands being cut off to be used as trophies, and the king of the losing side was humiliated and/or executed publicly. In addition, many of the original population actually were deported from their own land, and many actually didn’t survive (Johannes 59-60).

Like I said before, at first, they didn’t put the lands to good use, only plundering them like pirates to get the loot and bring it back to the kingdom. However, later on, they implemented agricultural locations for people to grow more crops there (Johannes 70-73). It is actually quite amazing that they could put a census together of the exact number of people living as well as what their occupations were, because it showed the family trees to some degree, and it also helped them to organize and figure out demographic discrepancies (Johannes 75-77).

What I got from reading this was that the Assyrian kingdom really loved to just plunder and get more loot, but they never really thought about what they were going to do with the actual land and people. The people deported had to be moved to places where the original people didn’t like to have them there, and so there were many issues with them and conquering. Yes, their military campaigns, their tributes, and their overall military power is great, and it definitely shows power over the “foes” in the area, but the kingdom just doesn’t have very good planning skills on what to do next with this kingdom. And definitely, they forced the people to obey the king by brute force, not by coercion or propaganda like Hammurabi once did.