Kings from Babylon to Baghdad PDF

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Kings from Babylon to Baghdad Mesopotamia the Greek word for ancient Iraq means the land between the rivers the Tigris and Euphrates the Mesopotamian plane part of the Fertile Crescent was a perfect environment with abundant water for civilization to flourish an advanced tribal culture developed in this region long before Egypt Greece and Rome tribes turned into settlements settlements into towns by 3,500 BC the world's very first cities Luke and whore rose in southern Mesopotamia a region also known as Sumer it's the place that saw the development for the first time on the planet Earth of virtually all of those social and political and technological things that we associate with civilized life the world's earliest writing systems developed in Mesopotamia the world's first Keynes the invention of the wheel the invention of the plow the development of the state as a way of organising political life by 2900 BC the patchwork of mesopotamias 30 or so city-states hardly comprised a cohesive Empire each had its own key its own patron god or goddess and a competing area of agricultural fields rival cities created alliances to bolster their own independence or to conquer their neighbors distances between these cities were actually quite small and because the irrigation land was so valuable these cities were constantly at war with one another for the smallest of advantages by 23:34 BC one king came to dominate Mesopotamia Sargon the great as far as we know there are no images of Sargon that survived we can guess what he would have looked like he would have looked at least in his portraits the way that Mesopotamian kings tended to look which

was powerful strong the ancient form of Sargon's named shah rukh een means the legitimate king a strong hint scholars say that he was a usurper in a moses like legend about his origins Sargon was the illegitimate son of a priestess so she put him in a basket after he was born and floated him in the river and the basket then was discovered by a gardener who raised him and then he went into the service of the king of Kish enterprising ambitious and ruthless Sargon overthrew Kings Ababa of Kish and declared himself the city's new ruler he also reigned at Agra day the capital city he built north of Sumer in the state of Akkad though its precise location is still unknown with his Akkadian army Sargon started to take control of southern Mesopotamia his first conquest was the city of Uruk where he captured and then humiliated rooks King blew Gaza Ghazi by dragging him away on a leash and then after he conquered Erick he conquered other seven Mesopotamian cities and then he seems to have thought for whatever reason I can keep going he wasn't content simply as the earlier Sumerian Kings had been to to fight local battles he wanted to take over what was then the net world remarkably he did just that over a 56 year reign Sargon Concord North Mesopotamia North Syria and eventually reached the Mediterranean to capture southeast Turkey Sargon built the world's first Empire it's the first King in the world to decide to take over lands that were occupied by people with different nationalities different languages different gods and he was somebody that Mesopotamian kings from that time onwards looked up to he was the king that really set the ground rules for what it was to be an emperor Sargon's Empire was not only unique in scale but also in organization he tried to unify this vast area and we organized

it in a way that it had never been done before every city in Mesopotamia had its own system of weights and measures Sargon standardized weights and measures throughout the whole area he had conquered and by doing that he made it possible to have trade over vast distances Sargon's novel ideas weren't limited to empire building but extended to the military as well he was the first king who claimed to have a standing army drafted from all cities in the empire it was a huge force of 5,400 men that proved expensive to maintain so Sargon instituted a new tradition to help feed his troops plunder they fed themselves the army from the lam there so that the campaigns were more or less set to go at the point when the harvest was completed throughout Mesopotamia that is one age of terror I don't want to live to being outside of acha and not a member of that inner elite and knowing that every year we're going to be faced with this kind of slaughter Sargon reigned until his death in 2279 BC his dynasty continued to rule for another eighty-two years yet as imposing as the Akkadian Empire was it also proved fragile in 2197 BC the kingdom fell to Raiders from the Zagros Mountains in Persia soon a new king will emerge using Sargon as his role model Hammurabi would single-handedly create a legendary City and all of a sudden he's turning up on the borders with his army ready to to fight in 2197 BC chaos followed the fall of the Akkadian Empire that originated with Sargon finally in 2112 the kings of or restored stability then a new threat appeared from the northwest a nomadic people called Amma writes terrified the Mesopotamians we saw the amorite has barbarians their

descriptions of them these are people who don't farm they don't live in houses they live in tents they don't bury their dead on the day that they died they don't cook their meat but rather than causing turmoil by 1900 BC the amorite had completely assimilated into Mesopotamian life they became soldiers farmers and businessmen and rose to the ranks of Governor and general they consolidated their hold on Mesopotamia by founding dynasties in the cities of Essen Larsa ash nuna and Babylon it turned out to be actually a good thing for Mesopotamia in the end that the amorite came because some of the greatest Mesopotamian Kings were memorized in 1792 BC the greatest ruler of babylons amirite dynasty Hammurabi came to the throne as its sixth king initially he didn't seem to be interested in military campaigns he ruled for 43 years and starting in his 30th year gets it into his head to emulate Sargon to build himself an empire he starts campaigning against the neighboring kingdoms and these are neighboring kingdoms that had previously been allies these are some of them he had long-standing relationships with and all of a sudden he's turning up on the borders with his army ready to to fight ready to take them over Hammurabi's military campaigns were distinguished by the growing popularity of hostage-taking for ransom they were merchants who specialized in this who would go and ransom Babylonian soldiers from the enemy they would pay the ransom and then they were required to be paid back so they're win-win situation for the for the merchants because they would make a profit of these ransoms that they were paying Hammurabi's conquests extended from the Persian Gulf to Syria

although his empire wasn't as big as Sargon's had been scholars rate Hammurabi as the greatest empire builder since Sargon bad however he set himself apart from the former King whereas Sargon seems to have relied upon his power and his almost terror tactics to keep people under control Hammurabi presents himself almost like a modern politician in that he wants to be loved he wants the people to like him he's going to set up laws that will protect them not laws that will terrify them and force them into submission Hammurabi's fame grew from his conquests but his greatness came from his concern with justice toward the end of his reign he erected several monuments in his cities the largest one to remain intact is a stone slab known today as the Hammurabi's steel a a collection of 282 legal verdicts they're written in a wedge-shaped script called cuneiform the earliest known writing developed in Sumer at the end of the 4th millennium if a slave says to the master you are not my master a master shall cut off the slaves here if a man brings an accusation of murder against another man without providing proof the accuser shall be put to death if a woman is not discrete but again about thus neglecting her house and discrediting her husband they shall throw this one in water Hammurabi's plan for administering justice was extensive his civil and criminal regulations covered many subjects including commercial family and property law prices and wages and slavery regulations and fees some of them seem very sensible to us and were abuse of that the court spends a lot of time on specifying the social position of a married woman when she's at fault for doing something when she's not what her property rights are lost it seemed

very very advanced to us nowadays and very much not unexpected on the other hand what we find in the Hammurabi code is the eye for an eye tooth for tooth passages the totally parallel the biblical notion of that Hammurabi's justice was not necessarily equitable rights varied based on an individual status as a land owning free citizen a civil servant or a slave if you as a citizen kill a slave you might get away with just paying a fine if you kill another citizen you most likely are going to be killed for that yourself so certainly in the old babylonian period and not all animals were equal the articulation of law by Hammurabi was not the first time people in Mesopotamia were given a code to live by but Hammurabi's effort was the most comprehensive and sophisticated following Hammurabi's reign southern Mesopotamia became known as Babilonia a unified Kingdom and Babylon became mesopotamias political cultural and religious center so it was really common ease doing that made Babylon what it was and what it would be under the Neo Babylonians Nebuchadnezzar when it was this great huge metropolis of the ancient world in 1750 BC illness compelled Hammurabi to surrender the throne to his son by 1000 BC Babylon had established a lasting national state in the south meanwhile the city of Ashur dominated a similar rival state as Syria in the north soon the region's rulers like its desert sands would undergo a remarkable shift Babylonia will compete for power against North Mesopotamia poem to the ancient world's fiercest fighting machine the Assyrians the Empire's were getting bigger and

bigger and more and more ruthless the Assyrians as Semitic people had inhabited North Mesopotamia for at least 4000 years by the 9th century BC their conquests extended far beyond Ashur the capital city and heartland of Assyria from 885 to 860 BC a Syrian King Asher Nazir Paul the second was intensely focused on military matters he wants to build up the power of Assyria he'd had previously several hundred years earlier had been a major power and after naziball seems to have been determined to reinstate it as a major power and the whole emphasis of the administration is on military matters uh sure Nasser Paul's campaign set a standard for the future warrior kings of Assyria who were ruthless determined Empire builders the reliefs that are carved into the walls of the palaces of the Assyrian Kings show siege engines ripping apart the walls of enemy cities you see warships with battering rams on them we see chariots we see cavalry we see infantry digging tunnels underneath the walls of the cities that they're besieging the Empire's were getting bigger and bigger and more and more ruthless the sadistic cruelty Ashur nazar pol inflicted on war captives and his own subjects protesting taxation was legendary he would make a point of being as brutal as possible he describes in gruesome detail fleeing people putting their skins on the wall of the city making pillars of decapitated heads really horrible grace himself according to scholars he probably didn't do it everywhere he would take one city and do it as an example and terrify everyone else into obey by the time of Ashkenazi Paul's death in 860 BC his kingdom extended north to the borders of modern eastern Turkey and to the Mediterranean Sea in the century following his reign a lust to control

Babylonian dominated the Assyrian monarchy history Kings wanted to be king of the four quarters of the universe or they wanted to be king of everything now they didn't know how big the world was everything was them and Babylonia and if Babylonia was outside of that then they weren't king of the four corners of the universe so it they needed I think perhaps to feel they controlled him but the Babylonians it seemed had their own ideas about how they wanted to live Babylonia refused to buy into Assyria as its overlord and so was constantly breaking away and Assyria tried a number of different things they would put their own Babylonian king on they would put the son of the Assyrian King on the Assyrian King themself would be the king still no matter what trouble was brewing between the two cultures the assyrians ironically always held the Babylonian civilization in high regard even though the Assyrians were all-powerful they still had a sense of cultural inferiority visa V Babylonia they saw Babylonia as the source of the best tablets real cuneiform culture much's in the 19th century Americans might have looked to England as you know the place where you would find real English literature and drama and such the Assyrians also felt a strong bond with the Babylonians they spoke the same language they worshiped the same gods they wore the same clothes this was a sister culture but it was a much older sister culture and it was one that they had tremendous respect for but that changed beginning in 704 BC with the reign of the Assyrian King Sennacherib his army marched south several times to put down revolts in Babylonia he initially set up a puppet King and that puppet King was removed and then he put his crown prince on the throne of Babylon

this was his loved son he was his eldest son it was the man who was going to become king of Assyria after him he was doing the Babylonians presumably he thought a great favor by blessing them with with his son in 688 BC sanaa current son Asher Nadeem Schumi was captured and killed by an invading army Sennacherib blamed the Babylonians for failing to protect and defend him his relationship with Babylonians got worse and worse and in the end he did was unthinkable in a way which was to go in and besieged Babylon and he was brutal to it I pressed upon the enemy with the onset of a raging storm doesn't need to be able meowstic with our own spirit all their bodies I've bored through like a sieve cut their throats like lambs he destroyed the city he burned down buildings he raised temples he took the statues of gods and had his soldiers destroy them no this is complete desecration it's it's sacrilege then he cursed the city he said no one can rebuild Babylon for 70 years Sennacherib x' actions angered the Assyrians who believed babylons destruction invited the God's wrath even the king's own family disliked him it was killed by his own son and there are two stories about how he died one was that he was stabbed and the other one was that the son took one of those enormous statues of a bull and toppled it on his farmer so he was crushed underneath this heavy heavy stone sculpture what a horrible way to go upon sanaka ribs death his youngest son Sr hadn't became king of Assyria in 680 BC immediately he wanted to rebuild Babylon and correct the huge mistake he believed his father had made yet he knew he would not outlive the 70 year curse recorded for posterity on a clay tablet

desperate as her hadn't consulted the priests and made a startling discovery he discovered it wasn't 70 years after all that they had been reading the tablet upside down and in fact it was 11 years because the in the in the way that numbers are written in cuneiform 70 if you turn it upside down is 11 and there it is all they had to weigh it was 11 years s-sir hadn't ordered the city rebuilt he used the spoils from his conquests to help finance the construction when Ezzor hadn't died in 669 BC he left his eldest son Ashurbanipal a kingdom that stretched from Egypt to Persia a Shabani Paul was one of mesopotamias most cultured rulers and claimed a unique skill he said I after about a vowel who could read and write and he wanted to have a collection of all the literary works in his kingdom and he wanted it to be in his palace at Nineveh as Urbana Paul began sending agents to search out Jenaya form tablets in the archives and schools of the Babylonian temples his scribes then meticulously copied and catalogued some 20,000 of them before they were housed in what was the world's first library among the entire collection though Ashurbanipal especially valued more than 300 Roman texts that he believed predicted the future if the constellation Aries is faint the King will encounter misery if the stars of orion's sparkle someone influential will get too much power and commit evil deeds most of the tablets had to do with the kinds of omen divination that was important for him if he was to rule properly in accord with the will of the gods and really survive as as King Ashurbanipal was not only a scholar but also a military leader under his command the Assyrian Empire controlled the entire Near East the greatest land area

ever in Assyrian rule so for them that was the universe that was everything but after Ashurbanipal death in 627 BC new power brokers would deliver crushing blows to the Assyrian Empire these guys are forming a pincers attack on the Assyrian heartland late in the seventh century BC Babylon was in chaos Ashurbanipal the Assyrian King who also reigned over Babylon had died in the ancient Near East as soon as one King died everybody tried to break away thinking that there would be a moment of weakness in the Empire and that's when you have a bit of chaos because everybody wants a piece of the throne in 627 BC a local leader of uncertain origin named NAB OPA lessor began vying for babylons throne you he seems to have been a governor of Babylonia and in the first millennium you have a number of different ethnic groups in Babylon and Babylonia and he is in charge of one of them he seems to have won these skirmishes and claimed the king of Babylon time professing to be a man of the people King Nabucco Lasser was determined to win South mesopotamias independence from the north in 626 BC he began waging war against Babylonia 'he's a syrian administration within ten years NABBA Palliser had solidified his control over Babylonia and then began to threaten the Assyrian heartland he starts ejecting the Assyrian Garrison's and then pushing north into Assyria proper why 6:15 he's operating with armies in Syria itself and he's joined there by people pushing it from a northern Iran principally Medes so either operating independently or in concert these guys are forming a pincers attack on the Assyrian Heartland in 614

BC the Medes sacked the city of Nimrud and a year later brought down Ashur the spiritual and cultural center of Assyria in 612 a coalition of Medes and Babylonians marched against Nineveh and after a three-month siege Nineveh fell the once mighty Assyrian Empire was finished Assyria essentially falls victim to its own drive towards maximization what's conquering it's not a country whose power is necessarily based on treaties and as soon as Sri a power wanes it basically stands alone and it falls apart NABBA Palliser's hard-won victory against his city's age his old rival was sweet they slaughtered the land of Assyria turn the hostile land into heaps ruins the Assyrian oops its distant days had rule over all the peoples and with his heavy yoke abra injury to the people of the land his feet from Akkad I turned back and his yoke I threw off in 605 BC never Palliser died and was succeeded as king of babylon by his eldest son Nebuchadnezzar the second he had served as command...