• The structure of Assyrian society, as a warrior nation, was militaristic in nature. Their ruler was not just king, but also chief commander of the military forces, and the males were subject to obligatory military service. Even officials performing civil tasks had military ranks, and these official positions were often hereditary; a son learning the profession by watching his father. The army expanded by enlisting the male populations of the conquered territories in its ranks, so that by the time of the late Assyrian Empire, the majority of the army was not even of Assyrian blood – a fact that contributed to the eventual downfall of the empire. • The military campaigns they performed over the years developed from simple, quick raids to carefully thought-out, well-structured operations. Their strategy embodied not only lengthy sieges and pitched battles, but psychological warfare also. Because the former two were costly affairs, the Assyrians attempted to apply the latter when and wherever possible. A popular means of this was the use of rhetoric: they would compare the relative size of their armies for instance, ridiculing the native army and crying up their own. The Assyrians would then promise peace and prosperity if the inhabitants of the region would simply give up without a fight. If this particular brand of diplomacy failed them, they would attack one or a couple of smaller cities that were easy to take and commit such atrocious acts of cruelty as to bully the inhabitants into surrender. • ASSYRIAN RULE OF CONQUERED TERRITORY • The city-state of Asshur, at the beginning of the second millennium BC, built itself the army necessary to defend itself from its neighbours. Defensive quickly turned to offensive out of greed - and subsequently began to include ideological and religious factors -, and by 1100 BC, the Assyrian forces had advanced from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Persian Gulf in the south. At its height, their territory spanned an immense area, including Egypt, the Iranian Plateau, the Arabian Peninsula and even the mountains of the Caucasus. This did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process, like the development of the army itself, and the advancements in the administration of these conquered territories. • It was only in the ninth century BC that the Assyrians started taking their administration of these areas more seriously, renovating the system entirely. ASSYRIANS ATTACK A TOWN WITH ARCHERS AND A WHEELED BATTERING RAM
Karen Radner, “The Assyrian king and his scholars: The Syro-Anatolian and the Egyptian Schools.” In M. Luukko/S. Svärd/R. Mattila (ed.), Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola. Studia Orientalia 106 (Helsinki 2009) 221-238.
[Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 10] Steven W. Holloway - Aššur is King! Aššur is King! _ Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East) (2001,