Ever give any thought to the earliest human civilizations? I know it sounds like a crazy question, but have you? I have, all the more so every time I see a news report from Iraq, a documentary on the Kurds, or a 60 Minute special on Turkey or Iran. Basically anything that enters the media dealing with the area stretching from the top of the Persian Gulf to the Turkish border reminds me that this is the longest inhabited—and fought over—piece of real estate on the planet. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder why.
Oh, come on, those of you who haven’t been there, you’ve seen the pictures. Endless miles of virtually featureless … well … wasteland. It’s hard to conceive of this arid land supporting one or two small communities, much less the very first cities in human history. And not just cities, mind you, but CITIES! Places that have come down to us through history, through culture, and though our religions as being epic metropolitan centers, protected by high walls, massive gates, and stout towers. And all of them—of basic human necessity—surrounded by miles and miles of farmland.
It’s easy to forget looking at pictures of the modern Iraqi or Iranian landscape, but this was once one of the most fertile places on earth. Rich enough in nutrients and fresh water to entice early humans to stop following herds, to quit searching for wild elder berries (for all you closet Monty Python fans), to settle down and begin … you know … farming. This is where it happened, right there in the vicinity of two of the world’s most important and influential rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Yet so much has happened over the past … let’s call it five millennia … that it’s hard to imagine that part of the Middle East—perennially in conflict—as anything other than the perpetual warzone its become today. And, to be honest, it’s always been that way, though in ancient times for very different reasons. While today nearly every nation on earth is reliant upon the petroleum that lies beneath the sand there, once upon a time it was food, and the ability to raise crops, that attracted armies. Lots and LOTS of armies.
So tonight, I thought I’d take a quick survey of the region. Just a brief review of the incredible richness this cradle of civilization has reared and, in some cases, released upon the earth. Buckle up!
It all started with the Sumerians, considered the world’s first real city builders. Established around 4300 B.C., the Sumerians built their first city, Uruk, just northwest of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is today Central Iraq. At its height, Sumerian civilization stretched from Ur just to the southeast all the way to Mari in Eastern Syria and Ashur in Northern Iraq. The Sumerians invented writing, leaving behind intricately inscribed cuneiform script, etched into monuments and clay tablets used to keep records by early city governments.
They also understood how to work bronze and were among the first to take equine breeds—much smaller than the horses we know today—and attach them to wheeled vehicles filled with soldiers. This arrangement was actually believed to be four asses pulling a crude, four-wheeled cart. Still, these proto-chariots, and the two-wheeled variety that would emerge out of Central Asia around 2000 B.C., would dictate, to a certain degree, the pace and style of warfare in the region until horses became large enough to ride, some five to six hundred years later. The walled cities of the Sumerian civilization were completely eclipsed by the rising power of Akkad by 2334.
The Akkadians—yes, of “The Scorpion King” fame—walked onto the stage of human history as individual city states grew more prosperous and powerful. While the Sumerians spoke a language of unknown origin, the Akkadians were the first of many Semitic language peoples to rise to power in the region. The city of Akkad itself is thought to have been situated somewhere along the Tigris River, though the precise location remains unknown. The formerly Sumerian cities of Uruk and Ur would fall under Akkadian control by 2334.
Akkadian kings ruled as god-kings, a theme that would last for some time in this region. More importantly, perhaps, the Akkadians found great value in trade, and as such they maintained commercial relationships as far away as Cyprus, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. Still, the vast majority of Akkad’s population worked the land, either as farmers or serving in the virtual army of administrators that kept an incredibly intricate and widespread irrigation system running smoothly. More importantly to someone like me, however, is the first known development of a body of professional soldiers, making Akkad’s the world’s first real standing army. Yet despite that significant military development, Akkad fell victim to the desire for independence of the very Mesopotamian cities the kings had worked so hard to build up, and the Empire dissolved into chaos.
Some eighty years later, the city-state of Ur rose to brief prominence in the wake of this chaotic period, but couldn’t hold the top position for long. Still, during its five minutes of fame, Ur built the world’s first ziggurats, the massive religious buildings that characterized many of the civilizations of the region which would follow. Regardless, until the rise of the Amorites in 2000, the region remained a writhing pit of struggling independent city states, constantly at war with one another.
The Amorites took the old Akkadian town of Babylon in 1990 and turned it into something special. They created the city that would be a fixture for millennia to come, establishing the requisite irrigation and farmland to support what may have been the ancient world’s greatest metropolis. The Amorites appear to have originally been a nomadic people who swept in to take advantage of a prolonged period of drought that may have undone Akkad’s carefully planned irrigation network. As Mesopotamian city states abandoned more and more land, the Amorites appeared to have squatted there, slowly growing into an empire of their own.
Eventually the Amorites would own the entirety of the double river basin, ruling a loose empire that stretched from the river confluence north to the headwaters of the Tigris. Yet what the Amorites left behind of greatest significance is a code of laws attributed to one Ammurapi. We refer to him today as Hammurabi—actually an Akkadian pronunciation—and his 282 laws chiseled onto a giant black stone stele may have been the first legal code designed and published for mass consumption. This massive stone was considered so important that when the neighboring Elamites prevailed over Babylon, they took the stone back with them to Elam. Yet the Amorites had a good run, remaining more-or-less in control of the region for over four hundred years … until a Hittite army based in Central Turkey sacked Babylon in 1595.
The Elamites ruled a sideshow, of sorts, and becomes one of the first empires we discover beyond the limits of the two great rivers. The Elamites emerged along the northeast coast of the Persian Gulf, having built significant cities at Susa and Anshan, places that would reverberate throughout the history of the region. The Elamites can be traced as a civilization back to 2700 B.C., but they really don’t become important to the region until they begin raiding and fighting with the empires to their west. By 1500, however, the Elamites had discarded the long-lasting Akkadian language in favor of their own and established firm control over the lowlands south of the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran.
The Elamites appear in history as chaotic spoilers. Just about the time that any Mesopotamian Empire or city state feels it really has its stuff together, almost without fail, the Elamites attack. And they were clearly a persistent people, causing significant problems for the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Babylonians, and, eventually, the mighty Assyrians. This would only come to an end when they finally pushed Babylon too far sometime in the 12th Century. King Nebuchadnezzar sacked Susa and put an end, more-or-less, to the Elamite scourge. The mysterious collapse of the Bronze Age during the 12th Century would all but bury what was left of that ancient people. They’d make a brief recovery in the 9th Century, but would never again threaten their neighbors, and are thought to have been absorbed by the growing power of the Medes to their East.
The Hittites were another power to develop beyond the twin river area but exerted significant influence upon the region and the civilizations that developed therein. Ruling an area stretching from the Aegean Sea east to the Upper Euphrates and south to Qadesh in Western Syria, the Hittites were a true force to be reckoned with, tangling with every major power in the region over the course of its five-hundred-year existence. To this day it is unclear how or from where this people originated, but they are considered one of the earliest users of an identifiable Indo-European language. In fact, it’s now suspected that Troy—you know, the big city with the sissy prince that Brad Pitt entered inside a huge wooden horse—that Troy, was actually a Hittite city.
The Hittites arrived at their success through mastery of the horse, and their chariot corps was considered virtually unstoppable. Their deepest penetration into Mesopotamia occurred in 1595, ending with the sack of Babylon mentioned above. Yet the magnitude of that campaign, executed over 3600 years ago, simply cannot be undersold. Historians still argue over why King Mursili would risk such a mammoth undertaking, there being no way the Hittites could hope to rule over cities so far away. Yet the fact of the matter remains that for half a millennium, Hittite armies were feared across the region. Still, even their great chariot force failed to hold back whatever cataclysm occurred in the 12th Century, and the Hittites disappear from the historical stage as mysteriously as they emerged.
Once the region sorted itself out after the Bronze Age collapse, the biggest and baddest Mesopotamian Empire of them all rose to the top and generally stayed there for a very long time. Assyria could trace its existence back to 2600 B.C., the date the city of Ashur was established. Yet the Assyrians we know today, those terrible, destroy everything in their path bad guys from the Bible, didn’t really come into their own until the old power players in the region had been done in by the collapse. At its earlier height, in the 18th Century, the Assyrian Empire encompassed an area almost identical to modern day Iraq.
The Assyria that emerged after the collapse, however, was a lean, mean, fighting machine. The empire maintained a 40,000 man professional army, and could rapidly call upon levies to increase that number when needed. And it was often needed, since the Assyrians were constantly at war with their neighbors until falling to the rising power of the Medes in 609. During that period Assyria conquered an empire that stretched from Central Turkey down to Egypt, over to Elam in Western Iran, and north to Urartu in the Southern Caucasus. Urartu, by the way, is the Assyrian version of the Aramean name for the principal mountain in the region, Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark reportedly came to rest. An incredible area to administer, the Assyrians, in the words of my favorite historical podcaster Dan Carlin, invented the means to rule and maintain large empires, pioneering techniques such as genocide and the forced deportation of entire ethnic groups.
The Assyrians developed a brand of warfare based on rapid marches, making use of both heavy chariots and light cavalry, as well as a firm specialization and organization of infantry troops with a roughly 50-50 archer to spearman mix in most units. They also perfected siege techniques, a necessity when you consider how many walled cities occupied Mesopotamia during the period.
Yet the Assyrians are most known for their brutality. The palace reliefs recovered by archaeologists indicate the most heinous of crimes carried out by the Assyrian state against conquered peoples. These depictions favor beheading, impaling, and skinning alive amongst other old-school Assyrian favorites. In short, the empire ruled with an iron fist. While this potentially explains its longevity it also helps the modern student of history understand the undeniable vehemence with which Assyria was torn apart by an alliance of peoples they’d long kept under thumb. The Medes, Persians, Babylonians, and even former allies, the Scythians, converged upon the capital at Ninevah and utterly destroyed Assyria.
Which brings us to the Medes and, soon thereafter, the Persians, but this really moves us into another epoch. The Persians would take the lessons painfully learned by Assyria and seek another way to rule, conquering, allying, cajoling, and buying their way into becoming the world’s first superpower. A story for another day, perhaps, as I’ve already rattled on for far too long tonight.
Yet I hope you read this or listen with a renewed sense of awe at the long-standing history of this barren, war-torn region. As well, I hope it generates a sense of humility for just how short a time our own nations have been in existence by comparison. 3600 years for some semblance of a central Chinese State, though bearing no resemblance to the China of today forged by conquering Manchu armies just prior to the American Revolution. Roughly 1800 years for Korea and Japan. 1500 years for France. 1100 years for a unified Britain. And a mere 246 years for the United States.
History has a way of humbling its students. And examining our world’s ancient cradle of civilization has a way of bringing so much of who we are as humans into focus. For more than six thousand years, people there have lived, died, learned, loved, warred, and made peace in a seemingly endless cycle of political upheavals and cultural shifts. Longer than anywhere else on earth.
Something to think about.
M. G. Haynes
* If you’re interested in learning more about any of these civilizations, I highly recommend “Forgotten People of the Ancient World” by Phillip Matyszak. Available in both paperback and ebook formats, it provides a wonderful introduction to many of the ancient world’s most fascinating disappeared civilizations.