A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law

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2. TIS

2.1 The Assyrian Empire and Its Successors

2.1.1 The expansion of the Assyrian Empire in the ninth century

profoundly altered the traditional political map of the ancient Near

East. For the first time in history, practically the whole of the Near

East was permanently brought under the control a single imperial

power. This situation was to prevail until the end of the millennium

despite the fall of Nineveh in 612 and the subsequent dissolution of

the Assyrian supremacy. The multinational Empire created by the

Assyrians was re-established with few modifications by the Achaemenid

Persians, after a brief interlude during which it had been split between

the Babylonians and the Medes, and was continued, again with few

modifications only, by the Seleucid Empire until the advent of the

Romans in the first century.

2.1.2 Administrative Structure

The Assyrian Empire was a union of states consisting of a core area

under direct Assyrian rule (the Assyrian heartland with its provinces)

and of semi-independent (vassal and allied) states bound to it by

written treaties. While the latter were allowed to retain their local

infrastructure and native culture as long as they kept the treaty terms,

the core area tended to expand and homogenize continually. Broken

treaties resulted in the incorporation of the rebel country into the

Assyrian provincial system, with the imposition of regular taxation,

military service and corvée, a single imperial language (Aramaic), and

in the long run, a uniform imperial culture. From the middle of the

eighth century, the provincial system comprised virtually all of

Mesopotamia and the Levant and large areas of Anatolia and Iran.

2.1.3 Political Structure

All power was concentrated in the hands of a hereditary monarch

(the Great King), whose claim to universal rule was backed up by

sophisticated royal ideology, religious doctrines, and powerful visual

and verbal propaganda presenting the monarch as the sole, omnipo-

tent, and omniscient representative of god upon earth.^19 The Great

(^19) See Seux, Epithètes.. .; Garelli, “Conception.. .,” and “Propagande royale...”;
Oded, War.. .; Parpola, “Cabinet...”
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