Ancient History in 15 minutes: Mesopotamia

The rivers Euphrates and Tigris – modern day Iraq- have been the home of many different civilizations and it is difficult not to lose track when one reads upon the history of the area.  It is no wonder then that scholars have granted it the name of “Cradle of Civilization”. Like the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in India and the Yellow river in China, the Euphrates and Tigris attracted people because it offered food fairly easily, turning the arid regions of western Asia into a fertile garden. It is no wonder then why this region was hotly contested for thousands of years – unfortunately even up to this day.
 
 The first people that laid claim to this area in around 3500 BC were the Sumerians. It is not known where they came from, their origins are rather obscure and even their language is unrelated to any other known language. What is known from the Sumerians is that they build large towers on which their altars stood. Since they had no idea on how to construct stairs, they surrounded their temples by rising galleries. These artificial hills were the political, religious and economic center of their towns of which Uruk archeologically has been the most important to us. In order to manage their centers they used the very first form of literature that we know of. The Cuneiform script: wedge-shaped symbols written on a clay tablet with a reed. It received its name from the word “Cuneus” which means wedge in Latin.  From 2700 BC the civilization became internally threatened by the growth of power from the independent states, Ur, Kish, Awan and Lagush.    
As the saying goes  “When two dogs fight over a bone, a third one carries it away” it was the northern city of Akkad under Sargon that overran the squabbling Sumerians in 2350 BC, thereby creating one of the first Empires in world history. The lands to the north were always seen as the backward regions by the Sumerians to the south, since these lands were less fertile and also since they were ruled by the strange Semite people.  They were called that way because they spoke a different dialect and because it was believed that they were the descendants of Shem , one of the three sons of Noach. Anyhow, the Akkadians  gained military supremacy thanks to their use of throwing spears and arrows. The slow Sumerian phalanxes were no match against those swift desert tactics. Sargon and his sons had learned from the internal strife amongst the Sumerian city-states and were determined not to make the same mistake. They therefore centralized the government by choosing a court of Akkadian men to “share their tables” appointing them as governors of their provinces. Sargon’s daughters were appointed as high priestesses or married out to powerful courts on the borders of the Empire. Important is the fact that his empire was connected by roads. There is evidence that a massive drought in the Middle-East, followed by massive migration and depopulation  brought about the collapse of the Akkadian Empire only 150 years after its sudden rise.
The Gutian raiders arriving out of the Zagros mountains to the north were the first in line to profit from the declining Akkadian power. With their hit and run tactics they crippled the trade before forces could deal with the situation causing even more famine. Although they managed to control the area for a hundred years they were not sufficiently organized to remain on stage for long. The Sumerians, not intending to make the same mistakes their ancestors did 300 years before, took control once again in what is known as the “Sumerian Renaissance” which lasted from 2050-1900 BC. This time they centralized their government on the Akkadian model and having learned how to build stairs now, erected ziggurats all over the countryside. Sumerian literature took a flight and scholars believe that the famous Epic of Gilgamesh was written in this period.
The IIIrd dynasty of Ur gradually found itself encircled by powerful neighbors, creating situations similar to the Peloponnesian Wars which would take place a good 1600 years later. To the East were the Elamites, to the West the Amorites and to the North the tough and warlike Assyrians. Unable to cope with the pressure, the last Sumerian dynasty finally had to give way when the Elamites succeeded in sacking the city of Ur. A tug-of-war between the various nations took place for the next hundred years and in the end it were the Amorites that would succeed in pulling all the others into the pit of historical oblivion. One of it’s most distinguished  countrymen, Hammurabi,  succeeded in unifying the lands between and beyond the rivers. He made his home city, Babel, the capital of his realm thus formally introducing the Babylonians to our history around 1750 BC. What makes Hammurabi stand out from the other rulers of these lands is the fact that he created the very first set of laws ever recorded, known as the Codex Hammurabi. Although progressive for their time, I don’t believe that throwing a wife and her lover tied together in a river would be an acceptable punishment these days. I’m also sure that putting out the eye of a man who has put out the eye of another would cause an international upheaval if it became a law, although the saying “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” is a much used saying in our own language today. In any case, the creation of these laws made the Babylonian state one of the best administered Empires of the ancient world.
 It were the Hittites, originally from eastern Anatolia,  that would bring the rich and progressive  Babylonian Kingdom to crumbles thanks to their chariots. History is not sure why exactly they moved so far southwards in order to ransack Babylon in 1530 BC and leaving it again shortly after. There is evidence that the Hittites were in an alliance with the Kassite tribe from the Zargos mountains to the east and that Babylon was the required prize for the alliance. For the next four hundred years, the obscure Kassites would rule southern Mesopotamia from their capital Nippur. Their success depended largely on their successful diplomatic and commercials skills with foreign powers.
 Around the beginning of the 1^st millennium the notorious Assyrians made their appearance on stage. They  were originally from Assur, a city to the north on the western banks of the Tigris and duly called themselves so. Their influence in the area waned and was subsequently regained when the Hittite Empire, who had been a thorn in their side for the last 200 years, crumbled. They were not the neighbors you’d like to have living next door from you. It’s strikes me as odd that even up to this day the name Iskander  -our Alexander the Great – strikes fear into the heart of the local population of the Middle East but that names of Shalmanesser, Tiglath-Pileser  and  Ashurbanipal do not call up the least of shivers.  Thanks to their use of cavalry, these bullies succeeded in subjecting the entire area from Egypt to Anatolia and from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf leaving behind pyramids of chopped heads, roads of impaled bodies and fields of flayed  bodies. It is therefore no wonder that they were the uncontested master of the Middle East from around 1100 BC until 600 BC. Yet, war and destruction was not their only passtime. They also has a soft spot for the arts and architecture: building temples,  beautiful palaces and even libraries, such as the one in Nineveh,  in order to  overawe their subjects and enemies alike by their greatness. Of course a civilization can only conquer, manage and build so much and in due time new neighbors rose on the Assyrian borders. They were no match for the Assyrians when taken on one by one, but when they finally allied themselves to get rid of the bully together it was an all different ballgame. The Medes, the Cimmerians, the Scythians, the Lydians, the rebellious Elamites and Babylonians finally shook hands in the 7^th century BC to make an end to the Assyrian yoke. It was Nebuchadnezzar who together with his Medan allies succeeded in capturing the city of Nineveh in 612 BC and by razing it and its inhabitants to the ground, made an end to the Assyrian Empire.
[b style="font-weight: bolder; "] [/b]
Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon was a colorful figure,  credited for having established  the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the building of the famous Ishtar Gate and  the Hanging Gardens. He also prominently featured  in the Bible as the oppressor who destroyed Jerusalem leading to the Jewish diaspora and, for having boasted about his achievements to God, going insane, living as an animal in the wild for seven years. With the death of Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian Empire did not have much longer to live. A decade later it was struck by a famine and when the unhappy populace had to cope with a series of unpopular rulers, the Empire was literally up for grabs. Its gates were quickly opened  to Cyrus the Great of Persia after his victory at Opis in 539.
Cyrus had once been a vassal-king of the Medes who led a successful rebellion against his master’s policies. Like a house of cards, the Middle East crumbled to the feet of this brilliant statesman and commander who in a period of only 20 years had conquered a territory much larger than any other ruler before him. After the cruelty of the Assyrians, the sympathetic Persians were a sigh of relief. Being a follower of the humanist Zoroaster, he showed much respect for the religions and traditions of the populations he  conquered. Especially the Jews regard him as a liberator, for after the fall of Babylon Cyrus let them return to their Promised Land. In that which the other civilizations of Mesopotamia  failed, the Persians succeed: they  created a competent centralized government reaching  from the Egypt to the Black Sea and from the Mediterranean to the Indus. After Darius the Great in 486 BC  it seems as if the Persian Empire fell asleep. It didn’t move forward nor backwards. The “Kings of Kings” remained locked up  in their comfortable palaces in Susa, Babylon and Persepolis leaving all to their  incompetent advisors and corrupt satraps. It all would ‘eve lasted much longer if they hadn’t picked a fight with the tiny Greek city-states to the West.
What ensued in the next century and a half, was nothing more than a battle between David and Goliath. In a matter of only 10 years Alexander of Macedon would accomplish all that Cyrus had done before him two centuries ago. But instead of moving westwards, Alexander would turn eastwards, conquering all in his path thereby turning the Persian Empire in a vast Greek Empire.  
Jason St.Just
Ancient History