standing army, consisting of 5,400 men, with whom he ate
daily. Th e Sumerian battlewagon was a clumsy vehicle, with
four heavy wheels and pulled by onagers—wild asses from
central Asia. In battle Sargon and his commanders would
ride the wagons more for transportation around the battle-
fi eld than for use in combat, but from the battlewagons ar-
chers could fi re on the enemy while staying out of the way of
counterattacks.
Th e use of formations in battle and one great advance
in weaponry may have been behind Sargon’s ability to crush
his enemies and build the world’s fi rst great empire. Th e ad-
vance was the composite bow. It consisted of an inner layer
of bone, a middle layer of wood, and an outer layer of leather.
Sometimes more than one kind of wood was used, all to give
the bow more power. Th e result was that Sargon’s archers had
a range almost 200 feet greater than that of enemy archers.
By having his army fi re on the enemy long before the enemycould return fi re, he forced opponents into disastrous charges
against well-organized formations of warriors with spears at
the ready, or opponents fl ed because they could not come to
grips with his warriors.
Sargon’s successors continued to innovate. Perhaps their
most signifi cant contribution to military history was the de-
velopment of specialized units within the army. Rather than
having every warrior fi ght with every weapon, they developed
units of archers, spearmen, slingshot specialists who backed
up the spearmen, and charioteers.NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
(CA. 1000–CA. 626 B.C.E.)
Th e foremost practitioners of war of the ancient Near East
were the Assyrians. Th ey did not begin that way. Origi-
nally they settled in a mountainous region through which
several trade routes passed, making their living as traders
and farmers. Both trading and farming would remain vital
to the economy that funded the Assyrian military. During
the Old Assyrian Period (ca. 1813–ca.1365 b.c.e.) Assyria’s
wars tended to be reactions to aggression. Th eir mountains
did not aff ord them much protection, and their harvests at-
tracted the greed of nomads to the north and city-states to
the south.
Th e archer was the most important weapon in the As-
syrian army. Th e Assyrians developed a pairing of an archer
with a shield bearer. Th e shield was composed of reeds with
an outer covering of animal skin or metal. It rose higher than
the heads of the shield bearer and archer, curving up over the
bearer’s head. It was intended to allow the archer to focus on
his job of shooting the enemy while someone else worried
about keeping him alive. Both bearer and archer were usu-
ally armed with daggers for hand-to-hand fi ghting, but it was
the Assyrian commander’s intention to keep his archers away
from direct contact with the enemy.
During this period the Hittite Empire (ca. 1650–ca. 1200
b.c.e.) had developed to the west, in present-day Turkey.
Th e Hittites introduced the phalanx to warfare in the Near
East. Th e Hittite phalanx consisted of a block of soldiers who
marched toward the enemy in lockstep with spears evenly
spaced. Th e soldiers were heavy infantry, wearing weighty
uniforms draped with iron plates. Th e Hittites’ tactics in-
volved trapping enemies into direct encounters with the heavy
infantry, whose skills and armor surpassed those of others in
the Near East. Further, the Hittites used chariots as true of-
fensive weapons. Th eir units of chariots moved swift ly across
battlefi elds, pulled by horses and using spoked wheels.
In about 1200 b.c.e. the Hittite Empire collapsed. Raiders
whom modern historians call the Sea Peoples cut off some of
the Hittites’ trade routes to the south, and the Assyrians cut
off their trade routes to the east. Th eir capital was sacked. Th is
left openings for lesser kingdoms to expand, and it left much
of the territory to the west of Assyria open for conquest.
In 1595 b.c.e. Assyria had become a vassal of the Mit-
tani Kingdom, but that kingdom was absorbed by the Hit-Clay prism of King Sennacherib, ca. 689 b.c.e., upon which are
recorded eight successful military campaigns against various peoples
who refused to submit to Assyrian domination (Courtesy of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)1132 war and conquest: The Middle East0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1132 1132 10/10/07 2:31:11 PM