162 Geoff Emberling
Other Assyrian imperial techniques are attested in a series of royal inscriptions from
about 1350–1200BC. The inscriptions of King Adad-nerari I (r. 1305–1274BC) list
numerous armies, lands, cities, and kings that he defeated—“defeat” in this context
meaning anything from a military engagement to outright slaughter. Although the
defeated enemies belong to a variety of different cultural and linguistic traditions,
certainly including Kassite Babylonian, Hurrian, Hittite, Aramaean, and others, the
cultural and ethnic differences are not of concern to Assyrian ideology. Rather, they
are simply political rivals to be defeated and territories to be annexed by a king who
is now titled “LUGAL KISH” or King of the Universe. Adad-nerari I also claimed to
be an “extender of borders and boundaries” with the support of the gods of Assyria
(Grayson 1987: 131). He conquered territory across the part of the kingdom of Mitanni
that included the fertile land between the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates,
known then as Hanigalbat and more recently as the Jazira—and extended his rule to
Carchemish on the bank of the Euphrates River, nearly 500 km to the west.
Shulmanu-ashared I (also known as Shalmaneser I, r. 1273–1244BC) and Adad-
nerari’s son, continued the building projects and regular military campaigns that would
become the important annual activities of Assyrian kings. He also introduced two new
tools of empire: a system of provinces within the empire (Machinist 1982; Radner
2006), and forced resettlement (often called “deportation”) of conquered people. The
provinces (pahete) were mechanisms for expanding the land of Ashur—after submission
of the local elite or outright conquest, a governor would be appointed, and the province
would be responsible for sending goods annually to Ashur (Postgate 1992). Governors
were normally appointed from among the elite families of the city of Ashur.
Deportation would come to be widely used in the later Assyrian Empire, and it is first
clearly attested in the reign of Shulmanu-ashared I. In one campaign, the Assyrian army
“blinded and carried off” 14,400 soldiers of Hanigalbat, a number derived from the
Assyrian use of a sexagesimal system (60× 60 × 4 =14,400) and meaning “a lot”
(Grayson 1987: 184). While we do not know where these people were taken, Middle
Assyrian administrative texts note the presence of Subareans (people of Hanigalbat with
Hurrian names), Kassites, and Elamites working in various capacities for Assyrian admin-
istrators both in the heartland and in provincial centers (Freydank 1980; Machinist 1982;
C. Kühne 1996; H. Kühne 2000; Wiggerman 2000; Jakob 2005). There is no clear state-
ment of Assyrian ideology or policy about the ethnic identity of these deportees. They
were not made to become Assyrian, but it seems likely that they were gradually assimilated
over the course of several generations.
During the reign of Shulmanu-ashared’s successor Tukulti-Ninurta I (r. 1243–1207
BC), the Middle Assyrian provincial system continued to expand, and 28,800 depor-
tees from the land of Hatti were led into the land of Ashur (Grayson 1987: 272).
Tukulti-Ninurta’s reign was marked by the clearest sign of a long-standing Assyrian
struggle with Kassite Babylonia. The Assyrians had adopted aspects of Babylonian dialect
and titulary in their royal inscriptions, and there had been attempts to invoke tradi-
tionally southern Mesopotamian deities including Enlil, the main god of the Sumerian
city of Nippur and important in the older Sumerian pantheon (Machinist 1976). After
more than a century of struggle over boundaries and adoption of Babylonian culture,