Chapter 2: Small Kingdoms and Mighty Empires in the Near East

Iron and the Emergence of New States

Iron Technology

Along with migration and drought, another significant development in the centuries around 1200 b.c.e. was the spread of iron tools and iron technology.
Artisans developed a long and difficult process for smelting iron, using charcoal and bellows (which raised the temperature of the fire significantly) to extract the iron from the ore.
In Anatolia, the earliest smelted weapon has been dated to about 2500 b.c.e., but there may have been some smelting earlier.
Thus, in the schema of dividing history into periods according to the main material out of which tools are made, the Iron Age began in about 1100 b.c.e.
Iron weapons became important items of trade around the Mediterranean and throughout the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, and the technology for making them traveled as well.
Ironworkers continued to experiment and improve their products.
Goods made of cast or wrought iron were usually traded locally, but fine sword and knife blades of steel traveled long distances, and the knowledge of how to make them followed.
The transition from bronze to iron happened over many centuries, but iron (and even more so, steel) would be an important factor in history from this point on.

The Decline of Egypt and the Emergence of Kush

Groups of seafaring peoples whom the Egyptians called “Sea Peoples” raided, migrated, and marauded in the eastern Mediterranean.
In Egypt, the pharaoh Ramesses III (r. 1186–1155 b.c.e.) defeated the Sea Peoples in both a land and sea battle, but these were costly, as were other military engagements.
Egypt entered into a long period of political fragmentation and conquest by outsiders that scholars of Egypt refer to as the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070– 712 b.c.e.).
The decline of Egypt allowed new powers to emerge.
With the contraction of the Egyptian empire in the Third Intermediate Period, an independent kingdom, Kush, rose in power in Nubia, with its capital at Napata in what is now Sudan.
The Kush ites conquered southern Egypt, and in 727 b.c.e. the Kushite king Piye (r. ca. 747–716 b.c.e. ) swept through the Nile Valley to the delta in the north.
In the seventh century b.c.e. invading Assyrians pushed the Kushites out of Egypt, and the Kushite rulers moved their capital farther up the Nile to Meroë.
Meroë became a center for the production of iron, which was becoming the material of choice for weapons.
Iron products from Meroë were the best in the world, smelted using wood from the vast forests in the area.
They were traded to much of Africa and across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to India.

The Rise of Phoenicia

While Kush expanded in the southern Nile Valley, another group rose to prominence along the Mediterranean coast of modern Lebanon, the northern part of the area called Canaan in ancient sources.
Their most valued products were purple and blue textiles, from which originated their Greek name, Phoenicians, meaning “Purple People.”
The trading success of the Phoenicians brought them prosperity.
They began to manufacture goods for export, such as tools, weapons, and cookware.
They worked bronze and iron, which they shipped processed or as ores, and made and traded glass products.
They imported rare goods and materials, including hunting dogs, gold, and ivory, from Persia in the east and their neighbors to the south.
They also expanded their trade to Egypt, where they mingled with other local traders.
The Phoenicians planted trading posts and small farming communities along the coast, founding colonies in Spain and Sicily along with Carthage.
The Phoenicians’ overwhelming cultural achievement was the spread of a completely phonetic system of writing — that is, an alphabet.
Egyptian scribes and officials continued to use hieroglyphics, but the Phoenicians adopted the simpler system for their own language and spread it around the Mediterranean.

The Hebrews

For a period of several centuries, a people known as the Hebrews controlled first one and then two small states on the western end of the Fertile Crescent, Israel and Judah.
Hebrews created a new form of religious belief, a monotheism based on the worship of an all-powerful god they called Yahweh.
Beginning in the late 600s b.c.e.,they began to write down their religious ideas, traditions, laws, advice literature, prayers, hymns, history, and prophecies in a series of books.
These were gathered together centuries later to form the Hebrew Bible, which Christians later adopted and termed the “Old Testament.”
These writings later became the core of the Hebrews’ religion, Judaism.
Jews today revere these texts, as do many Christians, and Muslims respect them, all of which gives them particular importance.

The Hebrew State

Most of the information about the Hebrews comes from the Bible, which, like all ancient documents, must be used with care as a historical source.
The Hebrews were nomadic pastoralists who may have migrated into the Nile Delta from the east, seeking good land for their herds of sheep and goats.
According to the Hebrew Bible, they were enslaved by the Egyptians, but were led out of Egypt by a charismatic leader named Moses.
According to scripture, the Hebrews settled in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River known as Canaan.
The Bible divides up the Hebrews at this point into twelve tribes, each named according to an ancestor.
In Canaan, the nomadic Hebrews encountered a variety of other peoples, whom they both learned from and fought.
The Bible reports that the greatest danger to the Hebrews came from a group known as the Philistines.
The Bible includes detailed discussion of the growth of the Hebrew kingdom.
It relates that Saul’s work was carried on by David of Bethlehem (r. ca. 1005-965 b.c.e), who pushed back the Philistines and waged war against his other neighbors.
He captured the city of Jerusalem, which he enlarged, fortified, and made the religious and political center of his realm.
David’s son Solomon (r. ca. 965–925 b.c.e.) launched a building program that the biblical narrative describes as including cities, palaces, fortresses, and roads.
Evidence of this united kingdom may have come to light in August 1993 when an Israeli archaeologist found an inscribed stone slab that refers to a “king of Israel,” and also to the “House of David.”
At Solomon’s death his kingdom broke into political halves.
The northern part became Israel, with its capital at Samaria, and the southern half became Judah, with Jerusalem remaining its center.
War soon broke out between them, as recorded in the Bible, and the Assyrians wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 b.c.e.

The Jewish Religion

During and especially after the Babylonian Captivity, the most important legal and ethical Hebrew texts were edited and brought together in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
Fundamental to an understanding of the Jewish religion is the concept of the Covenant, an agreement that people believe to exist between themselves and Yahweh.
The Covenant was understood to be made with the whole people, not simply a king or an elite, and was renewed again several times in the accounts of the Hebrew people in the Bible.
Individuals such as Abraham and Moses who acted as intermediaries between Yahweh and the Hebrew people were known as “prophets”.
Worship was embodied in a series of rules of behavior, the Ten Commandments, which Yahweh gave to Moses.
From the Ten Commandments a complex sys- tem of rules of conduct was created and later written down as Hebrew law, which was also influenced by the Hammurabi Code.
Like the followers of other religions in the ancient Near East, Jews engaged in rituals through which they showed their devotion.
Like Mesopotamian deities, Yahweh punished people, but the Hebrews also believed he was a loving and forgiving god who would protect and reward all those who obeyed his commandments.
The religion of the Hebrews was thus addressed to not only an elite but also the individual.
Religious leaders were important in Judaism, but personally following the instructions of Yahweh was the central task for observant Jews in the ancient world.

Hebrew Family and Society

The Hebrews were originally nomadic, but they adopted settled agriculture in Canaan, and some lived in cities.
Communal use of land gave way to family or private ownership, and devotion to the traditions of Judaism came to replace tribal identity.
Marriage and the family were fundamentally important in Jewish life.
Polygamy was allowed, but the typical marriage was probably monogamous.
According to biblical rules, sexual relations were a source of impurity that needed to be cleansed with specific rituals.
Sons were especially desired because they maintained the family bloodline, while keeping ancestral property in the family.
Women worked in the fields alongside their husbands in rural areas, and in shops in the cities.
Newly married couples were expected to begin a family at once.
The development of urban life among the Jews created new economic opportunities, especially in crafts and trades.
The Torah sets out rules about many aspects of life, including skin diseases, seminal emissions, childbirth, sexual actions, and animal sacrifices.
Meat and dairy products were not to be eaten at the same meal or cooked in the same utensils.
Beliefs and practices that made Jews distinctive endured, but the Hebrew states did not.

Assyria, the Military Monarchy

Assyria’s Long Road to Power

The Assyrians had inhabited northern Mesopotamia since the third millennium b.c.e.
During the time of Sargon of Akkad, they were part of the Akkadian empire, then independent, then part of the Babylonian empire under Hammurabi, then independent again.
The eleventh century b.c.e. — the time of the Bronze Age Collapse — was a period of instability and retrenchment in the Near East.
Eighth-century kings continued the expansion of Assyria, which established its capital at Nineveh on the Tigris River.
The kingdom of Israel and many other states fell; others, like the kingdom of Judah, became subservient to the warriors from the Tigris.
In 717 b.c.e. Sargon II (r. 721–705 b.c.e.) led his army in a sweeping attack along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean south of Phoenicia, where he defeated the armies of the Egyptian pharaoh.
By means of almost constant warfare, the Assyrians created an empire that stretched from east and north of the Tigris River to central Egypt.
Revolt against the Assyrians inevitably promised the rebels bloody battles and cruel sieges followed by surrender, accompanied by systematic torture and slaughter, or by deportations.
Assyria’s success was actually due primarily to the size of its army and the army’s sophisticated and effective military organization.
Assyrian military genius was remarkable for the development of a wide variety of siege machinery and techniques, including excavation to undermine city walls and battering rams to knock down walls and gates.
Although they had conquered many cities in Judah, the Assyrian armies gave up their attempts to conquer the entire kingdom and went home.
Sennacherib’s campaign is also recorded several times in the Hebrew Bible, but there the point is very different.
Instead of focusing on Assyrian might, the author stresses King Hezekiah’s reliance on Yahweh.

Assyrian Rule and Culture

Although the Assyrians gave up on conquering Judah, they won most of their battles, and they also knew how to use their victories to consolidate their power.
The lands closest to Assyria became provinces governed by Assyrian officials.
Kingdoms beyond the provinces were not annexed but became dependent states that followed Assyria’s lead and also paid Assyria a hefty tribute.
Babylon finally won its independence from Assyria in 626 b.c.e. and joined forces with the Medes, an Indo-European-speaking folk from Persia (modern Iran).
Together the Babylonians and the Medes destroyed the Assyrian Empire in 612 b.c.e., paving the way for the rise of the Persians.
Modern archaeology has brought the Assyrians out of obscurity.
For the kings’ palaces, Assyrian artists carved reliefs that showed scenes of war as a series of episodes that progressed from the time the army marched out until the enemy was conquered.
Equally valuable were the numerous Assyrian cuneiform documents, which ranged from royal accounts of mighty military campaigns to simple letters by common people.
The biggest find of these was the library of King Ashurbanipal (r. 668–627 b.c.e.), the last major Assyrian king, in the city of Nineveh.
Included in the tens of thousands of texts in his library were creation accounts from ancient Babylon, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and many other mythological and religious texts, as well as word lists, chronicles, and royal documents.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire

The decline of Assyria allowed another group of people, the Chaldeans, to create a new dynasty of kings and a somewhat smaller empire centered at Babylon.
Their most famous king, Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 b.c.e.), thrust Babylonian power into Syria and Judah, destroying Jerusalem and forcibly deporting the residents to Babylonia.
The Chaldeans focused on solidifying their power and legitimizing their authority.
They instituted a religious revival that included restoring old temples and sanctuaries, as well as creating new ones in the same tradition.
The Neo Babylonians preserved many basic aspects of older Babylonian law, literature, and government, yet they failed to bring peace and prosperity to Mesopotamia.
The Neo Babylonian kingdom was weakened and ultimately conquered in 539 b.c.e. by their former allies the Medes, who had themselves found new allies, the Persians.

The Empire of the Persian Kings

Consolidation of the Persian Empire

Among the nomadic groups were IndoEuropean speaking peoples who migrated into this area about 1000 b.c.e. with their flocks and herds.
In 550 b.c.e. Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 b.c.e.), king of the Persians and one of the most remarkable statesmen of antiquity, conquered the Medes.
In a series of major campaigns, Cyrus achieved his goals.
He conquered the various kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, including Babylon in 539 b.c.e.
Cyrus then swept into western Anatolia. Here his forces met those of the young kingdom of Lydia, a small state where gold may have first been minted into coins.
According to later Greek sources, Cyrus spared the life of Croesus, who then served him as an adviser.
Cyrus’s generals subdued the Greek cities along the coast of Anatolia, thus gaining him important ports on the Mediterranean.
After his victories, Cyrus made sure that the Persians were portrayed as liberators, and in some cases he was more benevolent than most conquerors were.
Cyrus’s successors continued Persian conquests, creating the largest empire the world had yet seen.
In 525 b.c.e. Cyrus’s son Cambyses (r. 530–522 b.c.e.) subdued the Egyptians and the Nubians.
By 510 the Persians also ruled the western coast of Anatolia and many of the islands of the Aegean.
Learning from the Assyrians, they created an efficient administrative system to govern the empire based in their newly built capital city of Persepolis near modern Shiraz, Iran.
Under Darius, they divided the empire into districts and appointed either Persian or local nobles as administrators called satraps to head each one.
The satrap controlled local government, collected taxes, heard legal cases, and maintained order.
This system lessened opposition to Persian rule by making local elites part of the system of government, although sometimes satraps used their authority to build up independent power.
Communication and trade were eased by a sophisticated system of roads linking the empire from the coast of Asia Minor to the valley of the Indus River.

Persian Religion

Iranian religion was originally tied to nature.
Ahuramazda, the chief god, was the creator of all living creatures.
Mithra, the sun-god whose cult would later spread throughout the Roman Empire, saw to justice and redemption.
A priestly class, the Magi, developed among the Medes to officiate at sacrifices, chant prayers to the gods, and tend the sacred flame.
Around 600 b.c.e. the ideas of Zoroaster, a thinker and preacher whose dates are uncertain, began to gain prominence.
Zoroaster is regarded as the author of key religious texts, later gathered together in a collection of sacred texts called the Avesta.
Zoroaster preached a last judgment that led to a heaven or a hell.
Later forms of Zoroastrianism followed each of these lines of understanding.
Most Zoroastrians believed that the good Ahuramazda and the evil Angra Mainyu were locked together in a cosmic battle for the human race, a religious conceptualization that scholars call dualism, which was rejected in Judaism and Christianity.
Some, however, had a more monotheistic interpretation and saw Ahuramazda as the only uncreated god.
Zoroaster’s writings were spread by teachers, and King Darius began to use Zoroastrian language and images.

Persian Art and Culture

They produced amazing works in gold and silver, often with inlaid jewels and semiprecious stones such as deep blue lapis lazuli.
They noted and carved the physical features of their subjects, the way they wore their hair, their clothing, their tools and weapons.
Persian art serves as an excellent source for learning about the weapons, tools, clothing, and even hairstyles of many peoples of the area.
These carvings adorned temples and other large buildings in cities throughout the empire, and the Persians also built new cities from the ground up.
The most spectacular of these was Persepolis, designed as a residence for the kings and an administrative and cultural center.
Underneath the city was a system of closed water pipes, drainage canals, and conduits that allowed water from nearby mountains to flow into the city without flooding it.
The Persians allowed the peoples they conquered to maintain their own customs and beliefs, as long as they paid the proper amount of taxes and did not rebel.