During the mid-7th century
BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled over the largest territory that
the world had ever seen at the time. Leading this vast empire was a cunning
military commander named Ashurbanipal, who was popular among his people but
merciless when dealing with enemies. His obsession with collecting knowledge led him
to construct The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, which has been referred to as "the most precious
source of historical material in the world”. Ashurbanipal, whose name means “Ashur
has made another son”, was born in the Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 685 BC.
He descended from the Sargonid dynasty founded by his great-grandfather Sargon the Second,
after he usurped the Assyrian throne in 722 BC. Ashurbanipal’s grandfather, Sennacherib
and father, Esarhaddon were both very successful rulers who had helped form the
largest empire in history up to that point Upon conquering Egypt in 671 BC, Ashurbanipal’s father became the first ruler in
history to control both Mesopotamia and Egypt. King Esarhaddon suffered from a severe skin
disease and died only two years later as he was heading back to Egypt to put down a rebellion.
Despite being his father’s fourth son, Ashurbanipal was appointed heir to the majority
of the Assyrian Empire early and rightfully claimed the title, “King of the Universe”.
His first goal as ruler was to mobilize an army to crush the rebellion that his
father had planned to end in Egypt. Ashurbanipal defeated the rebels with ease
and campaigned as far south as Thebes. The city of Thebes was so thoroughly
sacked that its destruction is used in the Hebrew Bible as an example of the
devastation that can befall a city. By 665 BC, Egypt was once again under the
complete control of the Assyrian Empire. Ashurbanipal appointed an Egyptian
prince named Psamtik as pharaoh. The prince had been captured several years earlier and forcibly re-educated as
an Assyrian puppet ruler. Shortly after installing Psamtik as pharaoh
of Egypt, Ashurbanipal turned his attention to a new threat on the other side of his empire.
The kingdom of Elam, led by King Urtak, had taken advantage of Ashurbanipal’s prolonged absence in
western Assyria by invading Babylonia in 665 BC. The surprise attack was
easily repelled by the Assyrians and King Urtak died shortly thereafter.
Ashurbanipal’s brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, grew tired of his inferior position as King of
Babylon and began conspiring against his brother. Unbeknownst to Ashurbanipal, his brother
had been sending secret aid to Elam in an effort to destabilize his rule.
Ashurbanipal eventually launched a devastating attack on Elam in 653 BC, which culminated in the
Battle of Ulai near the Elamite capital of Susa. There, Ashurbanipal won a decisive
victory over the Elamite Kingdom. The king described his victory by saying: “With
the encouragement of Ashur and Ishtar I killed them. I cut off their heads before one another.
I damned up the Ulai River with the bodies of the warriors and people of Elam. For three
days I made that stream flow full of bodies instead of water. Like the onset of a terrible
hurricane I overwhelmed Elam in its entirety. I cut off the head of Teumman, their king, –
the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. With my hands, I
seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain. Their blood I let run down
the land; its water I dyed red like wool.” In this relief sculpture, Ashurbanipal and
his queen can be seen dining in Nineveh as the severed head of King Teumman
hangs from a tree on the left. Thus, by the end of the 650’s BC,
Ashurbanipal had succeeded in expanding the Assyrian Empire to the
greatest extent it would ever reach. These palace reliefs found in Nineveh,
called the “Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal”, show the king taking part in the
Assyrian royal tradition of hunting lions. Lions were viewed as menaces for centuries and
these hunts were symbolic of the king’s ability to protect the Assyrian people from its enemies.
The tensions between Ashurbanipal and his brother Shamash-shum-ukin eventually
led to a civil war in 652 BC. Shamash-shum-ukin was greatly outmatched and
outnumbered from the beginning of the war, but managed to sustain his cause for several years by
seeking alliances amongst his brother’s enemies. In reference to the situation with
his brother, Ashurbanipal said: “In these days Shamash-shum-ukin, the
faithless brother of mine, whom I had treated well and had set up as king of Babylon,
– every imaginable thing that kingship calls for, I made and gave him; soldiers, horses, chariots,
I equipped and put into his hands; cities, fields, plantations, together with the people who live
therein, I gave him in larger numbers than my father had ordered. But he forgot this kindness
I had shown him and planned evil. Outwardly, with his lips, he was speaking fair words while
inwardly his heart was designing murder.” Despite building a notable
coalition, Shamash-shum-ukin’s cause was futile as his brother’s armies laid
siege to most Babylonian cities, including Babylon itself which eventually fell in 648 BC.
It is believed that Shamash-shum-ukin and his family either set themselves on fire in
order to escape captivity or were burned alive by the attacking Assyrian soldiers.
Ashurbanipal described his victory over his brother and his allies by saying: “The
gods who march before me, slaying my foes, cast Shamash-shum-ukin, my hostile brother, who
became my enemy, into the burning flames of a conflagration and destroyed him. As for the people
who hatched these plans for my hostile brother, and did evil, but who were afraid of
death and valued their lives highly, they did not cast themselves into
the fire with Shamash-shum-ukin, their lord. Not one escaped; not one sinner
slipped through my hands. The chariots, coaches, palanquins, his concubines, the goods
of his palace, they brought it all before me. As for those men and their vulgar mouths,
who uttered vulgarity against Ashur, my god, and plotted evil against me – I slit their tongues
and brought them low. Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs, swine, wolves and eagles, to
the birds of heaven and the fish of the deep.” With his brother gone and the civil war over,
Ashurbanipal decided to punish the Elamite Kingdom for all their sins against the Assyrian people by
besieging the Elamite capital of Susa, massacring all of its inhabitants and leaving it in ruins.
Ashurbanipal described his victory as follows: “Susa, the great holy city, abode of
their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened
their treasures where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed... I destroyed the
ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught;
their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs of their ancient and recent
kings I devastated and exposed to the sun, I carried away their bones toward the
land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt.”
This relief sculpture shows the humiliated King of Elam, Humban-haltash, being forced
to serve food at the royal court in Nineveh. Ashurbanipal enjoyed torturing defeated
kings and is said to have once put a chain through the jaw of a king and forced him to
live the rest of his life in a dog kennel. Ashurbanipal decided against appointing any
puppet kings in Elam and made no attempt to incorporate the region into his empire,
instead leaving it empty and undefended. Choosing to ignore Elam proved to be a fatal
mistake because the Medians would go on to migrate into the abandoned region, rebuild the
destroyed cities and play an instrumental role in the eventual downfall of the Assyrian Empire.
The second conquest of Elam in the mid-640s BC was the final major military
campaign of Ashurbanipal’s life. He had been at war for nearly 25 years by
that point, quelling rebellions in Egypt, Anatolia and Babylonia, as well as
conquering the Kingdom of Elam. With his massive empire finally at peace,
Ashurbanipal was free to turn his attention to more scholarly pursuits.
He constructed the world’s first systematically organized library, called “The
Royal Library of Ashurbanipal”, or sometimes referred to as “The Library at Nineveh”.
Ashurbanipal was obsessed with ancient tablets and wanted to own a copy of
every text that was ever written. He commanded hundreds of scribes to
search for texts across the known world and make copies for his library.
The king described his motivation for constructing his library by saying: “I, Ashurbanipal, King
of the Universe, on whom the gods have bestowed intelligence, I have placed these tablets
for the future in the library at Nineveh for my life and for the well-being of my soul,
to sustain the foundations of my royal name.” Ashurbanipal himself was a voracious reader of
the texts within his library and many of the surviving tablets bear his royal mark, indicating
that he had read or consulted them personally. Ashurbanipal had been trained in the scribal
arts before becoming heir to the throne and this made him feel far superior to previous kings.
He boasted of his unique abilities and great intelligence, saying: “I studied the secret lore
of the entire scribal craft, I know the celestial and terrestrial portents. I can solve the most
complicated divisions and multiplications which do not have a solution. I have read intricate tablets
inscribed with obscure Sumerian or Akkadian that are difficult to unravel. I took my pleasure
in reading stones inscribed before the flood. The best of the scribal art, such works as none of
the kings who went before me had ever learned.” The prolific English writer H.G. Wells referred to
the Library of Ashurbanipal as "the most precious source of historical material in the world".
The royal library was buried during the Battle of Nineveh in 612 BC and lay
buried beneath Ashurbanipal’s destroyed palace until English archeologist
Austen Henry Layard discovered it in 1849. Layard took over 30,000 tablets from the library
to England, where they have been preserved at the British Museum in London ever since.
The most important text found within the library was “The Epic of Gilgamesh”,
which contained a version of the great flood story that predated the Bible.
Today, “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is considered a literary masterpiece and is widely regarded as the
world’s earliest surviving work of literature. In 631 BC, after 38 years on
the throne, Ashurbanipal died of unknown causes at the age of 44.
A civil war between Ashurbanipal’s two sons erupted over the throne, weakening the
empire from within and resulting in Assyria’s enemies becoming restive.
A revolt broke out in Babylon led by a rebel leader named Nabopolassar, who
conquered the city from the Assyrian Empire and crowned himself king of Babylon in 626 BC.
Nabopolassar’s conquest of Babylon gave birth to the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which went
on to survive for less than a century. King Nabopolassar formed an alliance with
the Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Cimmerians, and Scythians against the Assyrian Empire.
Their combined armies marched on the empire’s capital of Nineveh and in response, the final
Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal’s son Ashur-uballit the Second, fled to the city of Harran which
he established as the empire’s new capital. The king formed an alliance with his Egyptian
vassal, but their combined forces were no match and they suffered a devastating
defeat at the Siege of Harran in 609 BC. It’s unknown whether King Ashur-uballit the Second
died during the siege, but he simply vanished from historical records after the battle.
With no leader, the defeat marked the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as its lands were divided
between the Medians and the Neo-Babylonians. Thus, the empire that Ashurbanipal
had carried to its strongest position and through which he made profound contributions
to learning and world literature was conquered after only about 20 years after his death.
Through great brutality and intellect, Ashurbanipal controlled the largest
empire the world had ever seen and built the greatest surviving collection
of ancient knowledge ever discovered! Consider liking, commenting,
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