Administration and Army

Assyrian imperial administration left a much smaller number of records than some of the preceding states in the region. The surveys of the economic underpinnings of the Assyrian Empire undertaken by Postgate^[264] are still the authoritative account of the matter.

Through a strict but simple system centered on taxation, military service, and corvee, and based on a direct line of authority that connected individual estates to the mayor and provincial governors, and the governors to the king, an effort was made to reduce the number of administrative steps needed to move resources from their place of origin to their intended destination.

The provincial governors served as military commanders and facilitated dip­lomatic relations with neighboring foreign and client states. Examples of direct correspondence between heads of state are not as common as one would expect, presumably because the governors had been put in charge of managing everyday contact and only sent reports to the capital as issues arose.

Information would pass to and from the royal court by way of road stations, fast couriers, and a network of spies.^[266] The imperial provinces, whose number varies greatly through history from a dozen to more than 70,^[267] were subdivided into districts managed by a hierarchy of civil servants that included superintendents, mayors, town managers, village inspectors, and fortress commanders.

All state officers were in principle appointed directly by the king, but they were often actively promoted for royal approval by local authorities and served within their confines. On a local level, communities were often headed by city elders or tribal leaders, who would function as semi-autonomous bodies of government.^[268] Royally appointed delegates would transcend such local networks of power to act with supreme authority on specific matters. Cadres of civil servants, many of them eunuchs, ran the central and provincial administrations.^[269]

Legal institutions in a physical sense (e.g., court buildings) were not maintained by the state^[270] and the imperial administration would influence existing local sys­tems of adjudication mainly through the appointment of key officials. Any relation­ship between central and local legislation is unclear, but the acknowledgment of existing community jurisdiction and enforcement of property rights was probably the rule. Arbitration could be provided and regulated by the state, and ideally the ruler functioned as supreme judge and highest court of appeal.^[271] The administra­tive and legal system is primarily known through private judicial documents and financial records, royal decrees, and letters.

In the client states, local rulers would renounce their right to lead an independent foreign policy and agree to interact with their neighbors only through Assyrian me­diation. ^[273] In return for their loyalty, the empire would guarantee protection against foreign and domestic enemies and the assertion of local dynastic continuity.^[274] Subordinate elites were tied to the Assyrian king through redistribution of impe­rial revenue, public displays of friendship and alliance, the celebration of religious festivals, local grants of privilege, dynastic marriages, and the education of young nobles from the client states at the imperial court. Their vested interest in nurturing a close institutional and personal relationship with the empire^[275] was underlined in state treaties^[276] and reiterated at ceremonial gatherings at the royal capital.^[277] Children of client rulers were brought to live in the Assyrian palaces and would receive formal training as part of the cosmopolitan scene of the imperial court. Ideally, they would become loyal subjects of the empire, who would one day return to rule their country of origin. De facto, they were also hostages in case of rebel­lion. Political refugees from rival states were likewise stationed in the royal palaces, and Assyria kept a permanent store of disappointed claimants, defeated rebels, and dispossessed foreign rulers, who supposedly held their allegiance to the crown, and who were ready to be used in negotiations or placed on their native throne with Assyrian support.

Instead of turning them into a rallying ground for resistance, local civic institutions were usually left intact and were co-opted by the empire. The impact of the empire on existing social order was therefore limited^[278]—provincial towns and client states held virtual autonomy in local matters and many leaders were ap­pointed by the communal institutions with imperial approval. Ideally, they were elected by peers to act as an instrument of the community both internally and in relation to the central power. In reality, Assyrian policy actively sought to draw the loyalty of local leadership away from its constituency so as to penetrate and coordinate aspects of society to which the empire had only limited direct access. The process of submission could take place at any level in the social hierarchy, but the basic element of reciprocity remained the same: subjects were bound by oath to certain obligations and would receive a number of privileges in return. In re­ality, a pro-Assyrian movement seems to have existed in most places, ready to form partnerships built on mutually reinforcing strategies.

In addition to a policy based on voluntary cooperation, the empire actively pursued a coercive approach. In some situations it would take what it wanted by strength alone, giving little or nothing in return. Through systematic demonstrations of destruction and cruelty in controlled doses, the empire would successfully build up an anticipation of violence.^[279] Hostages and kidnapped foreigners and gods were used to force reluctant polities into submission or were taken for the purpose of a later exchange or trade of prisoners.^[280] But at the same time, it was made clear that violence could be avoided by accommodation so that power to hurt was transferred into bargaining power. Detailed pictorial representations of torture and death shown in the Assyrian palace decorations are products of this ideology.^[281] Scenes of rebellion and punishment were set in direct relation to each other and presented as inseparable and inevitable.^[282]

During the late empire period, client states were transformed into provinces only when they proved too unstable to control through indirect hegemony.

During the late empire, the term “king's unit” (kisir sarri) is thought to refer to the standing army.^[287] Infantry (raksute) formed the backbone of the army and continued to be conscripted through the ilku-system according to which usufruct of land was linked to state service (in person or through substitute) in military or public works for a certain time each year. Veterans could be settled in military settlements established on newly acquired territory. As more troops were required, even an extension of the corvee system beyond landholding arrangements could not keep up with the demands of the expanding army. In addition to the conscripts, various auxiliary troops came to form part of the Assyrian army.

Military specialists included sappers, engineers, battlefield couriers, guards, and various policing units. Protective armor encompassed various types of pointed helmets, sizes and shapes of shields, and later also scale-mail and breast-plates.^[288] Hand-to-hand combat was fought in open or closed formation with various types of swords, daggers, spears, and lances. Ranged weapons included arrows, spears, and heavy slings. Cavalry (sa pethalli) was mounted on horses bred mainly in the mountains and steppes north of the Assyrian heartland. Early on, they served as a single group, but were later split into lancers and mounted archers. Urartian experts in rearing and training horses would serve as equestrian advisors and even auxil­iary cavalry. During the ninth century cavalrymen worked in pairs as a bowman and a partner in charge of protecting the bowman with a shield. Later, cavalry are shown lined up in battle formation and with increasing amounts of armor. Chariots were employed in open battle as heavy weapons of destruction, often led by a no­bleman “knight” and his team of a rein-holder and a shield bearer.^[289]

The late imperial period saw a continuous development in military camps and siege equipment,^[290] which enabled the army to efficiently fight aggressive wars of conquest when required. Census lists were maintained in each province for efficient conscription, substitution, and exemption, and the army was grounded in a system of provisioning, standardization, a developed intelligence network, and skilled corps of engineers.^[291] Together, they formed the military juggernaut that ultimately allowed for the imperial successes of Assyria, and earned it a less than flattering place in the histories of its contemporaries, whose armies it all surpassed in both skill and size.^[292]