Ashurbanipal’s Attack
Do you remember reading about Shamshi-Adad, the Assyrian king who wanted to rule the whole world? He led his armies out to conquer the cities all around him, and he built an empire—the Assyrian Empire.
But when they fought the Babylonians, the Assyrians lost. They became part of Babylon’s empire, and had to obey the king of Babylon. But all the time they were thinking, “One day we will be free, and we will try to conquer the world again!”Finally, that day came. The Assyrians rebelled against their masters, the Babylonians. They dug canals through the city of Babylon and flooded it with water, washing the city away. And then they started out to rebuild their empire. “We are like an evil rain that washes its enemies away!” they boasted. “We are like a net that tangles the feet of those who fight against us!”
The Assyrians raged up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, taking over every city in their path. They stampeded over to Canaan and scattered the Israelites like dust; the Israelites were never allowed to return back to their own land again. They marched up into Asia Minor and forced the people there to obey them. And one of the greatest Assyrian kings of all, Ashurbanipal, led his soldiers all the way down into Egypt—and took it over! Even the mighty pharaohs of Egypt had to obey Assyria.
Ashurbanipal became king of Assyria around 668 BC/BCE. He terrified his enemies. For fun, he went on lion-hunts, chasing the lions down on horseback and shooting arrows at them. And when he led his soldiers into battle, he fought like an angry lion himself. With Ashurbanipal leading them, the Assyrians were almost impossible to beat.
Why were they so hard to conquer? The Assyrian soldiers fought in pairs. One man would hold a shield made out of baskets, tied together with leather.
The other would shoot arrows from behind the shield. These basket shields were very light—but they kept arrows and spear-points out. The Assyrians would put their basket shields side by side and march towards their enemies like a moving wall with arrows spitting out from behind it.Soon, the only way to escape the invading Assyrians was to hide inside a city with strong brick or stone walls. But Ashurbanipal, the king who was as strong as a lion, knew how to get over city walls. First, he ordered his soldiers to build a ramp out of dirt. They hauled buckets of earth up to a city’s wall, holding their basket-shields over their heads to protect themselves. They dumped the earth into a heap against the wall and went back for more. Slowly, the heap grew larger and larger until it reached all the way up to the top of the wall.
Then Ashurbanipal commanded his men to build a siege tower—a wooden tower on wheels. The soldiers pushed the tower up the ramp, towards the city walls. On top of the tower, Assyrian archers fired arrows into the city. A battering ram jutted out of the tower’s front. The soldiers pushed it right into the wall, breaking up the brick and stone. Soon, a section of the wall tottered and fell. The Assyrian army poured through the gap, into the city. Another city had fallen to Ashurbanipal and his army.
Ashurbanipal was cruel and ruthless to the cities he conquered. He burned houses, smashed walls, and killed anyone who tried to disobey him. He scattered salt in their fields, poisoning the land so that no crops would grow. He took captured people off to be slaves and never let them go home again. Most cities were too frightened to resist Ashurbanipal for long. They agreed to become part of the Assyrian empire and to pay part of their money to the Assyrian king.
Ashurbanipal became very rich. He ruled the biggest empire that the world had ever seen. But all across Assyria, people hated him. The cities conquered by Ashurbanipal obeyed him because they were afraid, but all the time they hoped that Assyria would soon collapse. “When we finally hear the news of your destruction,” one conquered man wrote, “we will clap our hands with joy! And no one will cry over you.”
