Lecture 9 -- Iron Age Near
Eastern Civilizations
Societal collapse at the
close of the Bronze Age was non uniform across space and time. Although
societies at the center of world systems bore the brunt of the upheaval, they were
also the first to rebound in the following era, most likely because they were
situated in food-producing regions that straddled important arteries of
trade. A few Bronze Age societies such
as Assyria and Babylonia were able to reemerge relatively intact by 900 BC.
Egypt likewise persisted although by 945 BC Libyan Bedouins invaded the Nile
valley and assumed local control. In other respects the complexion of the Near
East changed dramatically. New peoples, notably the Aramaeans and the
Chaldeans, migrated into Mesopotamia to establish an array of chiefdoms in the
surrounding mountains and deserts. Their West Semitic cultural attributes,
particularly their adaptation of the Canaanite writing system (Aramaic), would
resonate as far away as Persia and the Indus. In the former region of Canaan
non-Aramaean polities emerged, including Phoenicia, Israel, Judah, Ammon, Moab,
Edom. Conditions in the Near East remained disturbed for a considerable time as
newcomers reorganized political boundaries and control of local assets.
Eventually, resurgent extraterritorial states (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians) renewed the process of consolidation and
compelled smaller states to accept subservient roles in their hegemonies.
Technological innovations in the post-Bronze Age centuries included the
adaptation of iron as the cutting edge technology for weapons and tools, the
development of more accessible writing systems, and the introduction of horse-
and camel-back transportation. The appearance of iron tools helped to designate
the early Classical era as the Iron Age. The collapse of Bronze Age trade
routes appears to have restricted access to distant sources of copper and tin
and compelled metallurgists to experiment with locally available iron ore. When
casted iron holds its edge indefinitely and is vastly superior to bronze for
tool manufacture. Iron is also more plentiful than copper or tin in all ancient
regions of habitation. However, iron smelting required a much higher firing
temperature and was more difficult to produce. To attain the necessary heat,
for example, the Chinese appear to have used coke (a form of processed coal) to
produce “carbonized” steel by 600 BC. In the Mediterranean iron use developed
more crudely; people most likely relied on charcoal to attain the necessary
levels of heat. Primitive forms of charcoal production typically require seven
units of wood to generate one unit of charcoal. Widespread production of
charcoal placed far greater demand on regional forestry resources, accordingly,
and may have played a significant role in landscape transformations at this
time.
A second major development of
the Early Iron Age was the appearance of the Phoenician alphabet. Drawing on
previous experimentation with phonetic and syllabic scripts in Late Bronze Age
Egypt, Canaan, and Ugarit, the Phoenicians created a simple writing system that
was more accessible to everyday people. Although the extent of literacy in the
Iron Age remains debatable, the new technology put stored knowledge and communications
into the hands of a much wider swath of the population. This removed the
advantage of (and need for) limited scribal elites that so dominated
intellectual life during the previous era. A third set of innovations entailed
the harnessing of horses and camels for transportation. Innovations in the
design of bridle and saddle equipment enabled pastoralists from the northern
steppes (first recorded with the Cimmerians, the Scythians, and the Iranians)
to adapt to large formations of horse-back warriors as a new form of assault
force. This significantly expanded the range and effectiveness of cavalry
warfare. The speed and mobility of mounted warriors revolutionized Iron Age
battle tactics, with the result that emerging empires concentrated on
recruiting these contingents in the same manner that Bronze Age polities had
focused on chariot warriors. The domestication of the camel in the Arabian
Peninsula, meanwhile, revolutionized long distance trade and travel throughout
the Near East by enabling voyagers to traverse vast expanses of desert. This
brought populations and exotic resources from remote areas such as Sabaea (Yemen) at the southern end of the peninsula and
Meroe in Sub-Saharan Africa into regular contact with urban societies to the
north. Camels, horses, and improved ship construction all contributed to the
reassembling of interregional trading systems.
Initially, those states that
sustained the greatest continuity with the Bronze Age, particularly the
Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, did so by adhering to past
technologies and social systems. These enabled them to weather the storm and to
preserve crucial aspects of Bronze Age learning and technology. The
infiltration of rural populations (Aramaeans, Chaldeans, and Cimmerians, etc.) generated
highly unstable political conditions that prohibited interconnectivity.
Gradually, the societies that bridged the Bronze and Iron Ages reasserted their
military, economic, and cultural advantages. The leading societies of the Early
Iron Age were the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonians, the
Iranians, and the United Kingdom of Israel. In this chapter we will discuss the
impact of the first four mentioned civilizations. The cultural experience of
the last mentioned society was so significant that we will reserve our
discussion of it for later.
Phoenicia
(1100-600 BC, high point ca. 1000-800 BC)
Phoenicia consisted of several West Semitic coastal cities, particularly,
Tyre, Sidon, Arados, and
Beirut, that managed to survive the passage of the Sea Peoples at the end of
the Bronze Age or alternatively were rebuilt following the period of disorder.
Open to Mediterranean influences Phoenician civilization emerged from a mixture
of original Canaanite populations and newly settled Aramaeans and Sea Peoples.
The Phoenicians are credited with the following: the reconstruction of the
Mediterranean trade routes, the first effective alphabet, the influence of the
Baal cult, and innovations in creature comforts.
Phoenician Trade
Together with the Aegean
Greeks, the Phoenicians reconstructed the trade routes of the Mediterranean. By
1000 BC Phoenicians occupied several settlements on the island of Cyprus and
extended their maritime reach westward. According to extant sources princes
from Tyre founded Carthage in northern Africa
(Tunisia) in 814 BC, a tradition increasingly supported by excavation work at
Carthage itself. The Phoenicians continued to improve ship-building
technologies to accommodate greater loading capacities. They also designed
sleek, galley-oared warships to protect their convoys of merchant vessels.
Sailing Mediterranean waters became more reliable. The greatest contribution of
the Phoenicians was the reconstruction of maritime trade routes that connected
raw natural resources (principally metals and grain) in the western
Mediterranean (Sicily, Spain, North Africa, and beyond) to the finished goods
increasingly generated by artisans in Phoenician cities. Lacking charts and
compasses the Phoenicians devised relatively simple means of navigation. As they sailed they kept log books exclusive
to themselves. They relied on winds and currents for trans-Mediterranean
navigation, but for the most part they explored coastal routes relying on
hard-won knowledge of the locations of sheltered roadsteads and moorages, not
to mention, potable water and friendly inhabitants. Their position along the
north-south trending coast of Syria-Palestine gave their harbors enormous
advantage. Peoples seeking grain from Egypt (a crucial destination in
Mediterranean seaborne navigation) could sail southward across the
Mediterranean relatively easily by relying on the prevailing northwesterly
winds to drive their sails. The return trip to the Aegean, Italy, or Sicily
required navigation directly into the wind, however, and the limited
maneuverability of ancient sailing technology prohibited tacking to any
significant degree. Accordingly, sailors learned to rely on the slow but steady
counterclockwise current of the Mediterranean waters to push their vessels
slowly northward along the Phoenician coast. Sailing vessels could also utilize
the force of diurnal sea breezes that rose at sun up and sun down due to
temperature variations between the sea and neighboring mountains. The
combination of these two natural phenomena enabled shippers to make their way
along the coast, advancing as little as 3-5 km per sailing day, something
commonly referred to as the “maritime crawl” of the eastern Mediterranean.
Numerous harbors and roadsteads became established along this coast, even in
the bleakest of desert environments, to accommodate and take advantage of this
lumbering trade (particularly since it was hazardous to sail at night). Several
Phoenician harbors, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Acre
(Akko), were situated on off-shore islands furnished with ready-made harbors
for passing sailing ships. Their populations developed agricultural terrain on
the opposite mainland to create hinterlands. Much like Aegean Greek
communities, this form of settlement patter is referred to as liminal or coastal in character.
Positioned as they were at the ends of the overland trade routes bearing exotic
goods from the Middle East, the Phoenician states rapidly became wealthy,
crucial nodes to interregional trade. Politically they were organized as
independent, autonomous city states, each of them ruled by powerful dynasties
of merchant-warrior kings. As they developed skilled labor, large navies, and
stored wealth the Phoenicians quickly emerged as the leading maritime powers in
the Mediterranean. Their persistent seaborne exploration led their traders past
the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic waters to the Canary Islands and
to Britain (to acquire tin). According to Herodotus Phoenician explorers
departing from the Suez circumnavigated the continent of Africa. Phoenician
voyagers established colonies in Spain (investing in lucrative gold and silver
mines), western Sicily, and North Africa. Although these colonies were for the
most part limited to trading centers that drew on local native populations for
laboring needs, they laid the foundations for the Carthaginian Empire in the
West.
The Phoenicians also devised
the first effective alphabet (22 letters) widely adapted by neighboring Greek
and Aramaean populations. As noted earlier, epigraphical evidence indicates
that this system was invented by the Canaanites (who themselves borrowed
extensively from Egyptian hieroglyphics) prior to the end of the Bronze Age. By
the end of that period several competing writing systems were in existence and
their symbols and concepts were finding their way into cuneiform scripts
(Ugaritic, for example) as well as into Phoenician. With the Phoenician
alphabet each symbol functioned as a combined mnemonic device and a designated
phonetic sound. Referred to as an acrophonic system the name for each letter thus represented
something recognizable. The symbols could be assembled in any necessary order
to sound out spoken communication, and their names and limited number made them
relatively easy to learn and remember. It now became possible for commoners to
learn to read and write. Via Aramaic the Phoenician writing system spread as
far east as Iran and the Indus; via Greek it spread to Italy (Latin) and the
western Mediterranean. The simplicity of the system made it accessible to
anyone with some minimal degree of education. In the Iron Age schools became
available to most property-holding citizens, not only in Phoenicia but
throughout the cultures that adapted to this writing system, particularly the Greeks
and the Romans. Educational facilities, both public and private, became visible
features of any urban landscape. This is not to say that everyone took
advantage of the new literacy nor that that it was furnished at no cost
(typically schools were private and charged tuition). However, it does mean
that a significantly higher percentage of Mediterranean and Near Eastern
populations were functionally literate during the Iron Age.
From a religious and literary
perspective the Phoenicians cultivated the Baal cult, which became widely
revered and in Canaan in particular a competing influence to the Yahweh cult of
the Israelites. Baal (lord or master) became syncretized with Hadad, the Mesopotamian storm god, and was eventually
associated with Zeus by Aegean populations. Baal was killed by the god of
underworld but restored to life by Anat, the goddess
of love and war. His son, Melkart, avenged his death
and made himself king of the earth’s surface. His name literally meant king. Through syncretism Melkart became associated with the Greek god Herakles,
especially at Tyre where natives and visitors came to
offer tithed wealth and elaborate sacrifices at his altar. The Phoenicians were
a prosperous, sophisticated, and highly materialistic people. Their hierarchies
engaged in lavish, sometimes distasteful sacrifices, as well as temple
prostitution. Evidence of infant sacrifice likewise survives. Elaborate
orgiastic rituals earned the Phoenicians considerable bad press in the Hebrew
Old Testament. From the standpoint of popular culture, however, the impact of
this cult was felt far and wide. Mythological tradition maintained that the
earliest surviving monument in the city of Rome (the Ara Maxima) was erected by
Hercules (Melkart).
In addition, the Phoenicians
were important innovators of material comfort and style for the entire
Mediterranean. This contribution all too often gets lost in the historical
record. Finely turned red slipped Phoenician ceramic wares became widely
imitated by the Roman era; in fact, red slipped finewares
emerged as the Mediterranean standard by the first century BC. Phoenicians
learned how to extract red dye from local shell fish (purpura) and designed colorful textiles and garments that were
prized throughout the Mediterranean world. Phoenician artisans fashioned
weaponry, armor, jewelry, incense, perfumes, spices, and other exotic goods
crafted from raw materials imported from Africa, Arabia, central Asia, and
beyond. The Phoenicians were celebrated for the quality of their craftsmanship
and luxury goods, producing the ancient equivalents of Armani suits and
Lamborghini sports cars for wealthy consumers. Their engineers built high-rise
buildings, massive fortification walls, sleek oared warships, ocean-going cargo
vessels, and an array of large scale weaponry (towers, catapults, and the like)
capable of withstanding determined sieges. These and other skills demonstrate
the presence of highly skilled and educated laboring populations. These
communities persisted as city-state polities, nonetheless. Their failure to
evolve into larger confederacies combined with their stored wealth made them
lucrative targets to emerging world empires. Ultimately the Phoenician city
states were defeated one by one by the Assyrians and then by the Persians. Every
major Phoenician city was sacked at one point or another before the Roman era.
The evidence suggests, however, that they worked more often as allies and
partners of the great Near Eastern empires rather than as subjects. Their
mastery of maritime trade and naval warfare and their ability to recruit the
necessary skilled labor made them indispensable to the ruling hierarchies of
Near Eastern empires. Even the Persian emperors concluded that accommodation
with the Phoenician royal dynasties was the optimal way to proceed.
The Assyrian Empire (1000-612 BC, high point ca.
850-612)
The Assyrians rebounded
relatively quickly from the chaos of the Bronze Age (by 935 BC) to assert
renewed and unprecedented dominance in the Near East. In many respects their
pattern of behavior reflected continuity with the strategies of the great
empires of the previous era. Their conquest of Mesopotamia was achieved by 824
BC, only to be disrupted for a century by internal dissension and anarchy. Tiglathpileser III (745-727 BC) restored internal stability
and expanded Assyrian hegemony by conquering Phoenicia, Israel, Babylon, and
the Medes (western Iran). Sargon II (721-705) destroyed Israel; Sennacherab (704-681) sacked Babylon (689); Esarhaddon
(680-669) invaded Egypt, and Assurbanipal (668-631) so thoroughly crushed Elam
that that people’s long-standing threat to Mesopotamia came to a close. Many
Assyrian policies recall the previous era. For example, they built multiple
urban capitals, the most permanent being Assur, Nineveh, and Kalhu (Nimrud). These massive cities furnished visible
markers of Assyrian prosperity. Their maintenance required transfers of
resources from throughout the empire, particularly human populations, who were
forcibly extracted from neighboring regions and relocated to Assyria to serve
the imperial bureaucracy. British excavations recovered lively, remarkably
detailed wall reliefs from palace remains at Nineveh and elsewhere. These
furnish graphic detail of Assyrian military conquests. Also recovered at Nineveh
was Assurbanipal's great library containing some 20000 literary and scholarly
texts, royal correspondence, and administrative documents.
Our best preserved text of Gilgamesh epic, for example, surfaced at this
library. To amass texts of all the extant classics of Near Eastern literature,
King Assurbanipal dispatched military agents throughout Mesopotamia to rummage
through temples and private houses of priests and scholars to confiscate
tablets. A significant quantity of Mesopotamian textual data thus survived the
chaotic end to the Bronze Age.
The Assyrian hierarchy also
devised its own genre of records known as the Assyrian Royal Annals. These
recorded chronologically detailed, well organized accounts of military events,
including regions where the kings campaigned, places that they conquered, and
the kinds of booty they hauled back. Each year was identified by a significant
military campaign and typically included the epithets of the king and whatever
building projects he undertook. Recorded on a variety of media, the abundance
of detail they furnish about Assyrian military campaigns give the impression
that the regime was inordinately warlike. The same implication arises from the
wall reliefs, noted above, as well as from the Hebrew Old Testament. Reasons
for Assyrian military aggression have been much debated. Some scholars argue
that the Assyrians were no more bellicose than their competitors; they merely
preserved a better record of their accomplishments. Others argue that the
reasons for Assyrian military expansion evolved with changing conditions on the
ground. Early on the Assyrians conquered neighboring territories in order to
control threatening groups such as the Aramaeans and to acquire much needed
farm land. After the political collapse of the late 9th century BC,
the hierarchy reasserted itself with a renewed sense of purpose. In their
annals the Assyrian kings stated that all military operations were sanctioned
by their god Assur for legitimate and religiously justified reasons. With each
military advance the god’s authority radiated outward across the empire (his
sole temple stood in the city of Assur). The intent of the hierarchy,
therefore, was to convert Assyria into a political core by consolidating
control over neighboring peoples, by harnessing and organizing their local
resource capacities, and by employing its military forces to impose regional
order (and along with this, respect for Assur). Ideologically, they attempted
to integrate the surrounding peoples into a support system for the cult and its
hierarchy. Every province existed to supply basic foodstuffs to support the
god’s needs. In Palestine, for example, Assyrian authorities appear to have
organized the production of olive oil on a massive scale to guarantee supplies
to Assyria. The supremacy of the Assur cult thus served as an ideological
expression of the Assyrians’ desire to sustain its central bureaucracy and
military apparatus by harnessing the potential resources of a wider region.
The Assyrian hierarchy
maintained a clear distinction between native and territorial assets, referred
to as those of the land of Assur and those under the yoke of Assur. The first
population element represented Assyria proper. It was administered according to
twenty five provinces with overlapping jurisdiction to limit the powers of
individual governors vis-a-vis that of the king. The kings likewise appointed
eunuchs to high positions to eliminate the likely consequences of hereditary
authority. The four major cities of Assur, Kalhu
(Nimrud), Nineveh and Arbil (Arbela) enjoyed special privileges such as
exemptions from taxation and the military draft. The Assyrian king enjoyed
supreme status. Although not deified, he embodied god-like attributes to make
decisions in the best interest of Assyria and to fulfill the will of Assur and
other gods. The king was essentially the state – an absolute ruler whose
decisions could not be questioned and whose advisors and ministers worked as
his servants. In practice his power was restricted by tradition, by the power
of the Assyrian nobility, and by the need to obtain the approval of the gods
for all decisions. He was also expected to honor private property rights,
preexisting grants of tax exemption, and standing legal precedents. Failure to
respect these traditions implied a failure to comply with his duties and
obligations to the gods, particularly Assur, and could potentially induce a
rebellion.
States that existed “under
the Assyrian yoke” were nominally independent but their rulers functioned as
Assyrian vassals, bound by treaties and subject to tribute. Their treaties
included such requirements as obedience to the Assyrian king, support for his
choice as crown prince, annual payment of tribute, fulfillment of military
obligations, and the surrender of high ranking hostages. To govern the vast
extent of their empire the Assyrians developed a network of royal roads and a
messenger system long before the more famous road network of the Persians.
Contrary to popular perception, there is little to show that the Assyrians
engaged in religious intolerance or that they imposed their cults on conquered
populations. Treaties were sworn in the names of the vassal’s gods as well as
those of Assyria, and foreign temples were just as likely to be sacked for
their stored wealth as for their religious significance. However, vassal states
that failed to live up to their treaty obligations were punished with the
utmost severity. Depending on the requirements or the example that needed to be
set, the Assyrian kings employed their vast military superiority to destroy
cities, to enslave populations, or to engage in mass deportations. The Assyrian
kings viewed the application of swift and harsh punishment for rebellion not
merely as a political tool, but as a religious duty. Since rebellion entailed
the violation of sworn treaties, retaliation was required to uphold the honor
of the god Assur and to enforce his justice. Assyrian reliefs depict numerous
instances of torture, mutilation, and other acts of calculated terror intended
to suppress native sympathy. One of the most noteworthy Assyrian policies was
the reliance on mass deportation of rebellious populations from the periphery
to the core. Either during conquests or in response to rebellions the Assyrians
captured and deported whole segments of native populations, typically skilled
elements such as the nobility, merchants, and artisans. Over the course of
three centuries an estimated 4.5 million people (including the Israelites, the
Babylonians, and the Elamites) were forcibly relocated by the Assyrians. In
many instances entire communities were uprooted and moved from one corner of
empire to another. Although originally employed as manpower to resettle
depopulated parts of the Assyrian heartland, by the height of the empire
prisoners were exploited as war booty to furnish labor for state building
projects or slave labor for temples, noble families, and Assyrian cities. In essence, the Assyrians developed a core
population of urban communities by expropriating human resources from the
periphery.
Numerous explanations have
been raised to account for the sudden collapse of the Assyrian world system in
612 BC. Despite the risk of certain punishment neighboring peoples stubbornly resisted
Assyrian authority. The resilience of these states suggests that the Assyrian
hierarchy could not fully control the situation. Since rebellion was possible,
it was easily contemplated. In the final decades simultaneous rebellions by
tributary states may have successfully restricted the flow of resources to the
core. Cut off from the empire’s supply base the Assyrian hierarchy could no
longer sustain its massive cities or the cost of its military establishment.
Given the sizable population of deportees in their midst, the loyalty of the
Assyrian core population was equally suspect. The combination of external
pressure and internal conflict led to a sudden collapse of the entire regime.
By the late 600s BC, rebellions were initiated by the Babylonians and the Medes
who combine forces to crush the Assyrians, destroying Nineveh in 612. The
ritual destruction of images of Assyrian kings throughout the palaces,
including the damaging of eyes and ears in Assyrian reliefs, demonstrate that
the looters made an effort to deface the symbols of Assyrian authority before
setting fire to the edifices themselves.
Neo-Babylonia or Chaldea (626-539 BC)
Neo-Babylonia marked a brief
revival of the Babylonian Empire following the demise of Assyria. The Old
Testament writers referred to the polity as Chaldea because of the pronounced
Chaldean influence within its hierarchy. Like the Aramaeans the Chaldeans
migrated into the Euphrates valley ca. 1100 BC, provoking some 500 years of
instability and lawlessness beyond the walled defenses of Mesopotamian cities.
The Chaldeans struggled equally against the Elamites and the Assyrians until
they successfully managed to impose a ruling dynasty in Babylon in 626 BC.
After the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldeans re-conquered
Mesopotamia for a time. Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) invaded Egypt
unsuccessfully then rebounded by sacking Jerusalem in 586 BC. He destroyed the
Hebrew temple, enslaved the Israelite hierarchy, and brought the latter to
Babylonia where its members were distributed among Babylonian cities to reside
for seventy years (the Babylonian Captivity). Archaeologists working at the site of
Babylon actually found cuneiform tablets recording ration measures assigned to Jehoiachin (the exiled king of Judah) and his family. For a
time it appeared as though the Neo-Babylonian Empire would supplant that of the
Assyrians. King Neriglissar (559-556 BC) conducted
wars as far removed as Anatolian Rough Cilicia. However, the last king, Nabonidus
(556-539 BC) proved to be somewhat of an iconoclast who antagonized the
Babylonian hierarchy (particularly the priests of Marduk)
by his singular devotion to the cult of the moon goddess, Sin. When a series of
calamities beset the kingdom (including a plague, famine, and economic upheaval),
he retired to an oasis in the desert, leaving his son, Balshazzar,
to rule as his regent. At this point the Babylonian hierarchy undermined the
dynasty by supporting the invasion of Cyrus the Great of Persia. After
confronting and defeating the army of Balshazzar,
Cyrus entered Babylon to a hero’s welcome in 539 BC. He allowed surviving Jews
to return to Judah to rebuild their society, a process that would require
repeated Persian assistance, as we shall see.
In contrast with the
beneficence of Cyrus, the Old Testament view of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was
decidedly negative and tends to understate the significance of this
civilization to the emerging world system. Even more than Assyria Babylonia
represented a crucial bridge between the past and the future. Like Assyria the
Babylonian hierarchy relied on mass deportations to expand its population base,
assembling thousands of urban artisans and rural farm laborers. The Chaldean
administration was able to revive the agricultural foundation of southern
Mesopotamia through a methodical process of internal colonization and canal
building. This put the Babylonian economy on a solid footing for the rest of
the ancient era. Babylonian cities remained self-governing communities directed
by local temple hierarchies. Despite the tragedies entailed in mass
deportations, these foreign elements, particularly the deported elites who
resided typically at imperial courts, furnished Babylonia with important
contacts to peripheral communities and to regions beyond the limits of the
empire. Babylon’s location along the central trade route of the ancient world
system and its diverse population helped to restore its place as the hub of
international trade and communications. From the Persian King Cyrus to the
Macedonian King Alexander the Great to the Roman Emperors Trajan and Septimius Severus, numerous world leaders and abundant
quantities of imported prestige goods passed through Babylon, restoring this
city’s status as an icon of urban amenities and architectural splendor
(legendary for its hanging gardens). The Chaldean kings saw themselves very
much as agents of a sustained tradition of Babylonian greatness and did their
best to promote an awareness of the one-thousand-year-old heritage of their
city. These policies induced a cultural renaissance combining the best of
archaic Akkadian-Sumerian traditions with the leading Iron Age innovations.
Bronze Age texts were assiduously copied (some 15,000 tablets have been
recovered and published from Babylon) and artworks rediscovered and preserved.
King Nabonidus himself actually recovered a statue of
Sargon of Akkad from the ruins of a Mesopotamian temple, restored it to a new
location, and venerated it with regular offerings. In the temple of Shamash at
Sippar modern excavators discovered objects dating as far as back as the Jemdet Nasr era (3100-2900 BC). The manner in which these
had been found placed on display demonstrates that elites throughout the
kingdom engaged in antiquarian pursuits, including archaeological excavations,
to preserve and restore their cultural heritage. Lively and vibrant at the
moment that the Chaldean dynasty was expelled by Cyrus, the city of Babylon
secured its place among the ancient world’s greatest international cities.
The Persian Empire (ca. 640-331 BC)
The Persian Empire emerged
from the sustained infiltration of the Iranian plateau by Indo-Iranian elements
at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1800 BC). In his Behistun
inscription King Darius I referred to his people as Aryans, a Sanskrit word that originally meant “nobles” but could
also mean those who revered Vedic deities and ascribed to the Vedic way of
life. Misuse of the term in recent times has rendered it distasteful to
scholarly usage, so we must rely on the more ambiguous terms such as Iranian,
Indo-Iranian, and even Indo-Aryan while recognizing that none of these terms
adequately express the complexity of this vast civilization. In fact, the most
remarkable aspect of the success of the Iranian peoples was the breadth of
their political and cultural reach. The Persians represented the leadership
cadre of an extensive hegemony of nomadic populations extending from the
Iranian plateau across Afghanistan to the borders of China. By conquering the
Near East the Iranians succeeded for the first time at unifying nearly all the
civilizations previously discussed in this book into a single, remarkably
inclusive world system. Although the Persian Empire prevailed less than 300
years (ca. 612-331 BC), its capacity was extraordinary. As a land empire it
extended more than 5000 km east / west from the Aegean to the Tamir Mts. (a north trending spur of the Himalayas). It
incorporated an estimated population of 30 to 50 million inhabitants residing
on three continents (Africa, Europe, and Asia).This ability to assemble and to
organize disparate societies across vast distances made the Iranian hegemony
pivotal to the development and maintenance of an interregional world system and
assured its place in world affairs. Even as the Persian hierarchy assimilated
the advanced culture of the Near East and infused it with their own attributes
to create a uniquely hybrid form of expression, it never lost sight of its
pastoral roots. The capacity of the Achaemenid and
later dynasties to adapt to and to accommodate so many points of view explains
greatly their success at statecraft and the longevity of Iranian civilization.
As the southwestern most
tribe (their capital was Pasargadae, later moved to Persepolis) the Persians
represented one of a dozen known tribes of Iranian peoples, along with the
Medes (the northern tribe, their capital was Ecbatana), the Parthians (Herat),
the Areians, the Arachosians,
the Caramanians, the Gedrosians,
the Bactrians, and the Sogdians. These tribes consisted of similarly organized segmentary elements (within the Persians were the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, all of which in turn consisted of smaller kinship
groups). These populations existed primarily as pastoralists and rural
farmers with a nobility comprised of expert horsemen. Prior to the Achaemenid dynasty no major cities existed in Iranian
regions. Instead, the remains of a dispersed pattern of fortified palace
complexes with surrounding villages are visible from Ecbatana (the Medean capital) across Afghanistan to central Asia
(including notable examples such as Bactra or Balkh in Bactria and Marakanda or Samarkand in Sogdiana). Throughout Persian
history these tribal entities furnished large cavalry contingents (40,000
allegedly at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC) that lent the Iranian military
remarkable speed and versatility. Recruitment of their horsemen by neighboring
Iron Age empires in Mesopotamian probably drew the Iranians into the expanding
orbit of Near Eastern affairs. The tribes in the west eventually became subject
to the Assyrians. The Medean king, Cyaxares (633-585 BC), consolidated authority within Iran
itself and joined the Babylonians to defeat Assyria in 612 BC. According to
various sources the authority of his son, Astyages,
was successfully challenged by Cyrus II (the Great) of Persia (559-529 BC), who
deposed him and shifted the seat of political authority from Media to Persia.
Cyrus was the epitome of a charismatic warrior king; he conquered Lydia
(Croesus) ca. 547 BC (along with numerous East Greek city states) and Babylon
in 539. His son Cambyses (525-522 BC) conquered Egypt, but his prolonged stay
in that country induced his brother, Bardiya, to
mount a rebellion during his absence. Resentment was apparently mounting among
Iranian noble houses concerning the growing authority of the Achaemenid dynasty, and Bardiya
attempted to placate this by abolishing taxes and suspending military levies.
Events grew extremely murky after this. Rebellions soon erupted throughout
Persia, Media, Elam, and Babylon. Cambyses attempted to return to Iran but both
he and Bardiya were killed early on. The throne was
then claimed by a number pretenders including a magi (a priest of Zoroaster) named Gautama. As the situation
continued to veer out of control, a number of leading noble houses joined
together to support the candidacy of Darius, a member of a collateral branch of
the Achaemenid dynasty.
Although it took several
years, Darius I (521-486 BC) was able to suppress scattered rebellions and to
restore order to the empire. The effect of his difficult rise to power is
visible both in his recorded Res Gestae at Behistun (discussed above) and in the blueprint to
his reorganization of the empire. Darius I inscribed the account of his rise to
power on a cliff face visible along the road that connected Babylon with
Ecbatana. The tone of his justifications sounds overly defensive. Darius agreed
to restrict all future dynastic marriages to the women folk of six leading
Iranian families. This remained the practice until the end of the dynasty and
serves as an indication of the significant power enjoyed by the Iranian
nobility. The Behistun inscription also informs us
that the Persian king was expected to be a descendant of the dynasty’s founder,
Achaemenes (which Darius I was, albeit distantly), that his rule had to be
blessed by the Zoroastrian supreme deity, Ahura
Mazda, and that together the god and the king were expected to guarantee order
and furnish justice and truth to the Iranian people. As the first Iranian
document of its kind, the inscribed text is remarkably illuminating.
The document also informs us
that after crushing various elements of resistance, Darius regularized the
imperial administration by replacing the original patchwork of subject polities
with a uniform system of 20 to 30 provinces or satrapies to be ruled by satraps (governors). Within the Iranian netork satrapies had existed for some time and the satraps
themselves were responsible for tribute payments and military contingents.
Darius’ innovation was to implement the system across the empire and to do so
immediately. Relying in all likelihood on the
Assyrian model Darius imposed a system of overlapping jurisdiction between
civil and military satraps to hold
governors in check. Typically each satrap was a Persian nobleman and his
provincial administration resembled that of a local monarch, complete with a
treasury, archive, and chancellery. However, Darius made certain that the
satrap’s most important assistants, the secretary and the treasurer, were directly
responsible to himself. He also established a system of roving inspectors,
known as the eyes and ears of the king,
who would descend on a provincial headquarters without warning to audit the
satrap’s accounts and to interrogate his staff, not to mention, a far flung
network of paid informants, or spies, who reported suspicious activity directly
to the king. To improve communications Darius constructed the Royal Road, a well-maintained roadway
some 2500 km long that connected the provincial headquarters at Sardis in Lydia
(Anatolia) to his winter capital in Susa. (By its peak this was expanded into a
vast road network connecting distant points throughout the empire.) "Pony
Express" riders could reportedly convey messages along the length of this
highway in seven days’ time. A field army could reportedly march it in ninety.
This organization furnished the Persian Empire with sufficient coherency while
allowing local satraps the necessary discretion to address the concerns of
local populations with considerable flexibility. Garrison commanders were
available in the event of a military emergency. At the outbreak of a major
uprising the reaction time of the central administration was typically slow.
However, elements of the Persian hierarchy were installed throughout the empire
to enforce order and to furnish an aura of permanence and stability. Recent DNA
studies in Anatolian necropoleis and published
remains of Persian era castles (referred to as “tower farms”) and governors’
palaces along the south coast of Anatolia (such as Meydancik
Kale) demonstrate the extent to which the Persian hierarchy carpeted their
subject territories with imperial officials, agents, and soldiers. In this manner local inhabitants and
representatives of the central authority interacted and grew familiar with one
other. The Persian empire was at same time highly
centralized yet respectful of the multiplicity of the people it governed. It
was the first empire to acknowledge that its inhabitants represented diverse
cultures, spoke an array of languages, and were organized in different ways.
Respect for local traditions, tolerance of local viewpoints, and openness to
new ideas tended to achieve good relations with native inhabitants. The
longevity of Persian authority in various regions ultimately achieved a
unifying effect.
Much like the Assyrians the
Persian Empire boasted multiple capitals, the three main ones being Persepolis
in Persia, Susa in Elam (the eastern terminus of the Royal Road), and Ecbatana
(in Media). The ancestral burial place of the Achaemenid
dynasty remained located at Parsagadae, the former
residence of Cyrus the Great. The palace at Persepolis, constructed by Darius I
and Xerxes I, exhibited two great covered audience halls, or apadanai,
surrounded by extensive botanical and zoological parks where imported examples
of the flora and fauna found throughout the length of the empire were
transplanted. Its central location along the trade routes enabled the Iranian
hierarchy to transplant plant species from across the empire. Darius I, for
example, transplanted rice from India to Mesopotamia and pistachio nuts from
Anatolia to Syria. These pleasure gardens set world standards for royal
capitals and were in many ways the source of ancient notions of “paradise,” the
word itself being derived from the Persian word, Paradeisos. There were also vast
hunting preserves where the kings would regularly hone their skills at warfare.
The good will of Persian
authorities toward their subject populations was conditioned, of course, on
political subservience, timely tribute payments, and a willingness to furnish
military levies when summoned. The Persians could and did resort to
Assyrian-style instances of wilfull violence when
challenged. Inherent weaknesses to the imperial system became exposed during
the wars with the Greeks. Vast and cumbersome, the empire was often slow to
react to emergencies. Xerxes I (486-465 BC) required three years to mobilize
his invasion of Greece in 481 BC. The Persians were capable of putting large
armies in the field, perhaps as many as 200,000 men at a time, but their armies
lacked force cohesion. Ultimately Xerxes' forces were defeated by the Greeks,
and Persian authorities yielded control of the Aegean theater to Athens.
Nonetheless, the Persians exerted a powerful influence on eastern Mediterranean
affairs until reign of Alexander the Great. Alexander defeated the last Persian
king (Darius III) in 331 BC, and absorbed the entire extent of the Persian
Empire into his new realm. It was ultimately carved into lesser territories by
his successors and rendered vulnerable to incursions from India (Asoka),
Central Asia (the Sacae) and the Mediterranean
(Antiochus III of Syria). Led by the Parthians, Iranian tribal hierarchies
reasserted dominance in the Near East in the first century BC and remained a
threat to Roman hegemony for three centuries. Parthian hegemony was succeeded
by that of the Sassanid Persians (224-651 AD). Around 255 AD, the Sassanid
Emperor Shapur I defeated and captured in battle the
Roman Emperor Valerian as recorded by his relief at Naqsh-e
Rustam in Iran. Iranian hierarchies continued to play
a determining role in Near Eastern politics until the time of the Mongol
invasions (ca. 1000 AD).
The Life and Teachings
of Zoroaster
The Persians fostered
Zoroastrian religion. As a spiritual movement Zoroastrianism represented a major departure, and
one destined to have great influence on world religions. Zoroaster (Zarathustra in Iranian) was a prophet who probably lived at the end of the
Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BC). He propounded the belief in a cosmic dualism. His
Sacred books survive as the Zend-Avesta. Unfortunately little is known with certainty
about the origins of this faith and its founder, and so the following
reconstruction is necessarily conjectural.
The
first major question concerns the date and place of Zoroaster himself. An important clue lies in the language of the
earliest texts, the Gathas (‘Sayings’
or ‘Verses’), which are a series of hymns apparently composed by Zoroaster.
They are written in the most archaic form of Avestan,
the ancient Iranian language closely related to the early Sanskrit of the
Vedas, the earliest scriptures of India.
Most scholars would date this language to the late 2nd
millennium BC, thus providing one widely accepted time frame for the life of
the prophet. But later traditions claim
that Zoroaster lived “258 years before Alexander,” putting him in the 6th
century BC, and this is strengthened by the identification of a character
mentioned in the Gathas with Vishtaspa, the father of
Darius I (ca. 550-486 BC). The archaic
nature of Avestan probably resulted from a
conservative oral tradition (in any event the Gathas were probably not written
down until the early centuries AD). Like
the date of Zoroaster his place of origin is disputed: somewhere in the steppe
lands of northern Persia is likely, perhaps in the eastern regions of
Sogdiana/Bactria. Certainly the society
at the time was pastoralist, with an emphasis on cattle. In the Zend Avesta political structure is absent, family and clan are
central and organized according to local chieftains.
The
life of Zoroaster was highly mythologized in later legend. According to
tradition, he was born laughing, at the central point in the history of the
world; his house glowed for three days after the birth, he survived numerous
attempts on his life. From the Gathas
and later tradition it is possible to reconstruct a plausible but skeletal
biography. His clan name was Spitama, and the names
of various family members are given; his own name seems to mean ‘camel man.’
Apparently the family was not wealthy, but he was married and had children. He
refers to himself as a zaotar,
a sacrificial priest; at some point he experienced a religious conversion and
dedicated himself to spreading the word. At first his efforts were a failure:
in ten years’ time he managed to convert only his cousin, and resistance to his
teachings forced him to flee. Finally he won over King Vishtaspa,
who helped him spread his ‘good religion.’ He is said to have been assassinated
while performing a fire sacrifice.
The
original doctrines of Zoroastrianism are hard to disentangle from the long
tradition that followed; the collected scriptures known as the Avesta are of varying
quality. As a reformer, Zoroaster railed against abuse of the drug haoma (cognate
with the soma of Vedic India, but the actual plant is unknown), and also
against the excesses of blood sacrifice. One of the most remarkable Gathas presents the lament of the ‘Cow
Soul’ in this context. He replaced the pantheon of Indo-Iranian gods with a
series of abstract qualities such as ‘Truth,’ ‘Good Mind,’ and ‘Dominion,’ and
thus moved away from the anthropomorphic conception of divinity. This
perspective reveals itself in Persian notions of education, particularly among
the nobility. The sons of Persian nobles,
including royal princes, were trained by magi not so much to read and write
(they could employ scribes for this) as to recognize the virtues of telling the
truth and opposing falsehood. The Persians believed that these virtues formed
the underpinnings to military training, court etiquette, royal law, loyalty to
the crown, and court religion.
The
most important theological innovations of Zoroastrianism were seemingly
contradictory, since they included aspects that were both monotheistic and
dualistic. As Supreme Being he
recognized Ahura Mazda (‘Wise Lord’), all-knowing and
all-good. Other forces such as Truth and Good Mindedness were either created by
him or emanated from this deity. But
these positive forces were opposed by their opposites, and in particular the
malign powers of Ahriman (Angra Mainyu,
or ‘Evil Mind’). Ahriman was always and everywhere
hostile to the forces of good. The entire universe was, accordingly, locked in
a dualistic conflict between good and evil, more often expressed as Truth and
the Lie, and the choice between them was the highest human responsibility. Those who fell fighting on the side of good would
attain afterlife when Ahriman was defeated and the Day of Judgment arrived. For this reason
Zoroastrianism posited an absolute freedom of the will; it was the least
deterministic of all ancient religious systems.
Dualism
was common to many other religions and philosophies, although if the early date
for Zoroaster is accepted, it emerged first in Persia. Zoroastrian dualism
differed from that of Platonic dualism, for example, in that the latter philosphy saw a divide between matter and spirit, body and
soul. In Plato’s world, the soul was
weighed down by the body, which thereby acquired a negative valorization; the
job of the soul was to free itself from this ‘tomb’ of the body. A similar view
was offered by Hinduism and Buddhism, which likewise valued escape from the
material world. By contrast, the Zoroastrian dualism of good and evil did not
align itself neatly with spirit and matter, only with truth and falsehood.
Matter was not inherently evil, the body was not inherently sinful. Since the
cosmic elements of earth, air, water, and especially fire needed to remain
pure, Zoroastrianism propounded a seemingly advanced expression of ecological
balance. The acquisition of wealth (by honest means, of course) was welcomed;
asceticism was rejected and sexuality was embraced (Zoroastrian priests had to
be married).
As
mentioned earlier, Zoroastrianism espoused an elaborate eschatology of heaven
and hell, including a final judgment that would end the world. The physical
bodies of devout believers would then be resurrected. Zoroastrian insistence on
a form of monotheism that was inherently dualistic, and one that incorporated a
complex system of abstract powers and angels and demons, naturally invites
comparison with religions such as Christianity. Due to the confused nature of
the chronology and the sources, however, it is impossible to identify the
influence of the one world view on the other. Through Zoroastrianism Persia
emerged, nonetheless, as a potential central point of transfer for some of
mankind’s most fundamental beliefs. Prior to Christianity, an offshoot of
Zoroastrianism known as the Mithras cult
(named after the divine hero Mithras who died in defense of the good cause, and
was destined to rise from death at the end time) likewise became an important
mystery cult in Greco-Roman society.
The Iranian Hegemony
and the Ancient World System
Since the success of the
Persian hierarchy depended highly on its skill at multiculturalism, the source
of this ability probably lay with the Iranian people’s roots in central Asia.
This was arguably the most diverse region of the ancient world. Extending from
the northern shores of the Black and Caspain Seas to
the mountain ranges (Altai, Tien Shan, and Pamir Mts.) that sealed off China
from the West, this seemingly empty region of steppe lands and deserts formed a
crucial nexus for communications across ancient Eurasia. Steppe pastoralists
appear to have been responsible for technological advances such as horse
chariot (ca. 2500 BC) and the mastery of horse-riding per se (ca. 8000 BC). In
these and other respects their horse-driven mobility enabled them to function
as conduits of cultural innovation, trade, and technologies between the distant
world systems of the Mediterranean, India, and China. The fact remains that
Central Asian cultures preserved little written record of themselves prior the
Hellenistic era (323-27 BC). This makes it exceedingly difficult to identify
specific archaeological assemblages with historically recorded peoples.
Settled agricultural
communities, known as the Oxus Civilization, took root in central Asia by the
Early Bronze Age along the east / west trending axis of the Oxus and Murgab
Rivers (modern day Turkmenistan and Afghanistan north of the Hindu Kush Mts.).
This culture left behind an archaeological footprint of scattered fortified
settlements (usually with interior palace citadels that were presumably
occupied by chieftains). Assemblages include bronze tools, gold and silver
artifacts, stone statues, monumental architecture, and practically everything
available in more urban civilizations apart from writing. Later, during the
Iron Age, these isolated settlements became known across the region as Kalas (the
Iranian loanword word for fortress), ruled by princes known as Khans (a Mongolian loanword for
military leader). They furnished important nodes to transregional trade as well
as resting places where migrating pastoralists could obtain finished goods.
Given the vast distances that separated these communities, it is presumed that
their hierarchies were independent, though evidence of feudal systems of great
kings and vassal kings is sometimes discernible. By 1900 BC migrating elements
of this population began to penetrate into Iran, southern Afghanistan, and the
Indus Valley. Around 1700 BC, the urban character of Oxus Civilization
collapsed, and the inhabitants reverted back to pastoralism. Explanations for
this transition range from Indo-Iranian invasions, to climate change, to likely
ecological damage provoked by the rise in population in so fragile an
environment.
During the Iron Age the
region of central Asia was inhabited by three loosely identifiable populations:
Indo-Europeans (or Indo-Iranians, including the Iranians, the Tocharians, the Sacae, the Dahae, the Massagatae, the Sarmatians, the Scythians, and the Cimmerians), Turkic
elements (whose original homeland appears to have been in the northern steppes
hemmed in by the intersection of the Altai and Tien Shan mountains), and
Mongolians (such as the Huns, or the Hsiung Nu, who
filtered in from the northern steppes of East Asia). Naturally, this delineation is overly simplistic. Due to their highly
mobile lifestyles, these groups repeatedly penetrated each other’s cultural
zones and merged to form hybrid populations. According to Chinese
sources, for example, the Yuezhi were expelled from northwestern China by the Hsiung Nu or Huns ca. 170 BC, and were compelled to migrate
westward across the Tarim basin and the Pamir Mts.
into the plains of the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) River.
Here they encountered and expelled Iranian pastoralists such as the Sacae. One horde of the latter drove westward ultimately to
defeat the Parthian King Phraates II ca. 127 BC in
Media, another migrated southward into Bactria (expelling and extinguishing the
last local remnants of Macedonian hierarchy). Eventually they invaded
Afghanistan, and by the mid first century BC the northern basin of the Indus
valley. Recombination enabled these chains of segmentary
peoples to forge the Kushan hegemony that controlled the wider Central Asian region and its essential trade routes
well into the Roman era.
The Kushan patchwork of nomadic groups furnished interconnected
chains of communication and intercultural exchanges that linked Iran and the
Indus with the Tarim basin, the gateway to ancient
China. Through these remote deserts and
mountainous highlands passed caravans bearing valuable prestige goods,
ambassadors, monks, and philosophers. Since
Iranian and Indo-Iranian peoples inhabited the entire length of this journey --
from Ecbatana in Media to Purushapura (Peshawar) in
the northern Indus and Alexandria Eschate in Sogdiana
– we may legitimately refer to this network as an Iranian hegemony. Iranian
populations organized by the Persians into a loosely knit satrapal
hierarchy furnished the necessary bridge to connect societies in distant
continents. Iranian noble houses facilitated safety and supplies to travelers
journeying from one end of the global world system to the other. Alexander
placed such importance on securing the loyalty of these houses that he married
a Bactrian princess named Roxana (the daughter of the Persian ally, Oxyartes) in 327 BC. The extent to which cultures,
technological innovations, and philosophical breakthroughs radiated along these
routes cannot be stressed sufficiently: Zoroaster, the prophet whose world view
so profoundly influenced Judaism and Christianity, allegedly originated from
Bactra (Balkh), one of the easternmost nodes of the network. The cultural reach
of the Persian Empire and the role it played in assembling the communications
network of Eurasia were, therefore, crucial to the emergence of an ancient
global world system. Although the volume of the long distance trade that
traversed the highways of Central Asia in this era remains to be determined,
its conduct was due largely to the elasticity and diversity of the social
formations that the Persians cultivated at its center.
