Ebisu Publications

This is what was, and what might have been.

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Category: Assyria

  • Siege Warfare, Then and Now

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    Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book titled A Distant Mirror, about how we can see ourselves in 14th Century politics. I found the same is true when looking at the 9th Century BCE. For example, we’re still engaged in siege warfare.

    From ancient Assyria to modern Iraq, now to Venezuela, and probably next to Iran, the weaponry and some of the tactics have changed, but the basic principles remain the same. Surround your opponents and try to starve them out. Then, when they have exhausted their stores and are in a weakened condition, break through the fortifications, kill anyone who resists (and plenty of those who don’t), take prisoners, loot whatever valuables you can carry off. And if you are building an empire, be really vicious to the defeated. Make an example of them so no one else dares to resist you. I described such an event in the first novel of the Jezebel trilogy, The Throne in the Heart of the Sea.

    Below is the Assyrian king’s account of his destruction of the rebellious city of Halupu (warning—it makes for very unpleasant reading):

    In the valor of my heart and with the fury of my weapons I stormed the city. All the rebels they seized and delivered them up…I built a pillar…and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar; many within the border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls. As for the chiefs and royal officers who had rebelled, I cut off their members…

    But the besiegers don’t always win. If they did, nobody would have bothered to build fortified cities in the first place. Often the attackers are driven off or give up and go home for one reason or another. Sometimes both sides are able to negotiate an agreement. The agreement may require paying tribute to the besiegers and becoming a vassal state. I described a couple of unsuccessful sieges in the second novel of the Jezebel trilogy, The Stars in Their Courses, with two more in my upcoming novel, A Meteor Shower. (It will be published this year.) The passages are considerably less bloody, but too lengthy to quote here.

    Here’s how this works out in the 21st Century. The idea is to expend minimum force to get the maximum result. Let’s say a small nation wants to go its own way rather than allow its resources to be drained as tribute to a more powerful nation (the U.S. in this case, or rather our corporations). When possible, the C.I.A. may sponsor a coup. If that doesn’t work, the empire imposes “sanctions.” That is, instead of deploying our troops to encircle a city, we cut off trade. We deprive an entire nation of food, medical supplies, parts to repair broken equipment, etc. We encourage the inhabitants to blame their suffering on their own government and rebel against it, hoping that they’ll replace it with a puppet administration. Blasting propaganda over the airwaves is much more efficient than having heralds shout demands for surrender. Then, if all else fails, we catapult large rocks over the walls of the city—oops, send in the B-2 bombers—and when these have had the desired effect, follow up with ground troops.

    Propaganda is as important as any other weapon in the arsenal. It works best when aimed in both directions, at the people we’re trying to conquer and at our own citizens, to justify the war. We have to convince our people that the “enemy” is so terrible, so much of a threat, that it’s worth spending our treasure and sacrificing a few (thousand) of our own soldiers to defeat them.

    And this brings us back to Venezuela: a socialist government under Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Venezuela began to assert control over its own oil reserves—remember, it has the largest such reserves in the world. Subsequently there were several failed coup attempts, which may or may not have been sponsored by the U.S.; in any case, certain public figures in this country repeatedly called for Chavez’ assassination.

    In more recent years, we imposed sanctions, resulting in widespread hunger. The reason we gave was human rights violations. (Note that we have not imposed sanctions on the nation with the second largest oil reserves, that great champion of human rights—Saudi Arabia.) Now we have an unelected puppet-in-waiting to be named president once the current regime is overthrown.

    Week after week, for many months now, the mainstream media has been publishing articles about how terrible the Venezuelan government is. Occasional op-ed pieces try to justify U.S. military intervention. Various anti-war organizations have spoken in opposition, just as they did prior to our invasion of Iraq. Maybe they will succeed this time. I try to remain hopeful, despite what I know about the history of empire.

     

  • The Mighty Hunters–Now and Then

    Ashurnasirpal II hunting lionsAssyrian king portrayed as a lion hunter

    Many of you have read about the dentist who paid $54,000 for the privilege of luring the lion Cecil out of a wildlife sanctuary, shooting him, and taking his head and skin home as trophies. People were outraged, but it wasn’t a unique occurrence. Just in the last few months a gynecologist parted with an undisclosed sum to kill another lion, also illegally. A Texas millionaire spent $350,000 to shoot an endangered black rhinoceros, and has posted photos of himself smiling over the corpses of his other victims: gnus, ibexes, rams, and bears.

    Most trophy hunters are men, but not all. Another rich Texan took his daughter to Africa and introduced her to the sport. By age 14, she’d shot an African elephant, a lion, a Cape buffalo, a leopard, and a white rhino, the sought after “big 5” game animals. In the face of public criticism, all these hunters protest that they are helping conservation efforts and infusing African economies with much-needed cash.

    In nomadic societies, prestige accrued to individuals who provided plenty of meat to feed the tribe. Hunters took small souvenirs, such as bear claws for a necklace. Nowadays some country boys mount deer antlers over the barn door, but the main purpose of that hunt is still food.

    By contrast, trophy hunters are too wealthy to know hunger, or real danger, or even much discomfort. They hire locals to carry their gear, cook, pitch tents, and stand by with loaded guns in case something goes wrong. Canned hunts risk even less: A caged animal is released, and the buyer shoots it as it emerges from the cage.

    Canned hunts are nothing new, though, and go back at least to ancient Assyria. A king’s neck was too precious to risk, so his servants corralled a big cat and he took the first shot. Then he had his sculptors depict him slaughtering 40 lions from his chariot. Meanwhile, below is a subsistence hunt from The Stars in their Courses. (The same technique is used by modern Bedouin.)

    Elijah found a white willow growing around a tiny spring and a scattering of gazelle dung in the area. He collected some thin branches and the spines of a nearby acacia, and brought them back to the cave where the fugitives were hiding.

    “What’s that for?”

    “You’ll see. Give me two headbands and I’ll bring you more meat than you can eat.”

    Two men loosened their hair. Elijah cut the bands into cloth strips, bound the branches into a wheel the size of his hand, and stitched the acacia spines to the cloth so that they faced inward. Then he tied a rope to a stick that had been blackened in the fire and made a slipknot noose with the free end of the rope. That night he dug a small hole by the spring. He laid the wheel over the hole and the noose over the wheel. Then he covered the trap with sand and slept behind a boulder.

    At first light one of the gazelles stepped into the hole. It ran and ran, spines irritating its leg, noose tightening, the blackened stick making a tell-tale trail, until the stick caught between two rocks and Elijah was able to catch up with the gazelle and slit its throat. The dead beast was heavy across his shoulders but when he arrived back at the cave he couldn’t help strutting.

  • Assyrian Empire: Blood at the Banquet

    This week the big news in the U.S. has been about torture, as conducted by the C.I.A. after 9/11. I’ve spent some time with the comments section in my hometown newspaper: the majority of readers are outraged, while some defend the practice. Some even seem naïve enough to be shocked. However, most ruling elites, ours included, achieve and maintain their power by violence or the threat of violence.

    My novels about Jezebel take place when the Assyrian empire on the rise. A major predator without much in the way of natural resources (they didn’t know what to do with all that oil yet), it devoured the wealth and slave labor of other nations through conquest. Still, life was good for the elite and for what you might call the Assyrian middle class.

    In writing historical novels, I do my best to absorb historians’ and archaeologists’ descriptions and present the reader with snapshots that convey the color and flavor of an ancient civilization without descending into tedious academic detail. Below are a couple of the snapshots of ancient Assyria, from The Throne in the Heart of the Sea.

    Assyrian banquet1) The new Assyrian king has invited guests from other nations to celebrate the inauguration of his new capital. These guests include our heroine, Tamar. Wealthy and middle-class citizens are also in attendance.

    Hundreds of brightly striped awnings stretched from the riverbank up along the gently rolling terrain. Thousands of people milled about. Somewhere at the front of the mob the king was offering a sacrifice to Ashur. Tamar came late, so she waited at the edge of the crowd, hearing nothing of the ceremony, seeing nothing over the heads of those in front of them except smoke rising from the flames that would prepare their dinner.

    When the offering had been made, she threaded their way to the women’s section. Finely dressed ladies pushed ahead of them, trailing expensive scents, burbling effusive apologies without relinquishing a hair’s breadth of space, squatting knee to knee in every available bit of shade. Eventually they squeezed in across from a group of ladies in white linen, who seemed as cool as a school of fish in the Tigris.

    Servants carried jars of beer and copper trays up and down the aisles. The first course was roast chickpeas, pickled locusts, and pomegranate seeds, and a towel for the ladies to wipe their fingers.

    An enormous pastry arrived. They broke through the crust cover and found it stuffed with songbirds cooked in milk and sprinkled with mint. Then more beer arrived, along with the main course—a huge bowl of beef simmering in onions, surrounded by heart-shaped loaves. Within moments the ladies had torn the bread apart and were scooping up thick chunks of fragrant stew.

    “This is delicious!” Tamar exclaimed. “I’ve never had anything like it.”

    “Oh, I’m so glad,” said an Assyrian lady. “I do it this way at home. It’s one of my husband’s favorite recipes.”

    “How do you make it?”

    “Easiest thing in the world. Simmer chunks of fresh cow spleen with salted stomach, add milk, onions, and crushed dodder seed. While it’s cooking you pound more onions and some leek with fresh beef blood, add that during the last few minutes, sprinkle in a little mint and serve.”

    “Blood?” Tamar stared at the dripping hunk of bread in her hand. Dear Goddess, forgive me this sin against Your law and don’t let me throw up in front of everybody.

    2) Later, Tamar wanders through the city and accidentally encounters one aspect of the violence that supports the Assyrian empire and the comfortable life of its more fortunate citizens.

    Tamar was intending to stroll along the riverbank. After a while, however, she found herself in an unfamiliar quarter and realized she’d taken a wrong turn. She turned to retrace her steps and saw a large man coming on rapidly, hand on his sword belt. He yelled something. She began to run.

    In the distance she saw a flickering light and heard what sounded like drumming. A military band. She’d be safe with them. The man behind her increased his pace and she ran faster, until the stitch in her side became a stabbing. Then she rounded the last corner and arrived at a construction site. It was bathed in torchlight and surrounded by guards.

    She was standing at the edge of a plaza where naked men and women dragged stone blocks up ramps. Others squared the stones with chisels and shoved them into place. Work gangs slapped courses of bricks atop the foundation stones. Tamar forgot the stitch in her side, almost forgot the man behind her, as the syncopated ear-splitting hammering engraved this night in her heart forever: she drank in the stench of slaves who hadn’t bathed since their capture, drank the fetor of blood and the crack of whips, the black fumes of stone oil torches—

    Two men approached, hitched like donkeys to a heavy cart, its solid wooden wheels clattering on the cobblestones. She drew back to let them pass. The cargo of bodies was piled neatly, feet to front, heads lolling back at the rear. She gasped, and the donkey-slaves turned to look at her, displaying the brands on their cheeks, and something new in the world: the Assyrians, with their genius for organization, had tattooed numbers on their captives’ foreheads.