to hear, see, and heed. The world created by Assyrian propaganda and imperial
communications was larger and wider than its actual political and military
scope. Assyrian propaganda shaped the geographical imagination of the
peoples within its (extended) boundaries, creating an impression of mastery
over much of the known world.
Assyrian propaganda created a rich treasure trove of sources, including
annals, summaries, and royal inscriptions. Some were produced around the
time of the events they described; others were composed years later. Assyrian
rulers erected steles marking the locations of battles, praising victories, and
expounding the consequences of their wars.^30 The wealth of these sources,
many of them discovered only in the nineteenth century, allows contemporary
scholars of Assyria to provide us with a reasonable sketch of what might be
called “Assyrian ideology.”^31 Assyrian rulers invested great effort in providing
justifications for their military expeditions and conquests. Assyrian wars were,
of course, divinely sanctified, but there were plenty of more mundane, earthly
justifications provided for them as well.^32 The twenty-first-century reader will
probably be familiar with the claim that imperial rulers have the right to wage
“preemptive wars.” As today, the Assyrians’ enemy in such cases was invariably
cast as the aggressor, or at least the potential aggressor.^33 Similarly, Assyrian
wars were often justified as the only means to “restore order” and “sustain
peace” in places under the sovereign control of other powers.^34
The eighth centurybceis a contender for the first “great century” in world
history thanks to the Assyrians.^35 The Assyrian world was the first realoikou-
mene,created by the first world power truly far-flung in reach and diverse in
culture. This world covered the entire Fertile Crescent from the Persian Gulf to
eastern North Africa. It touched on the Zagros Mountains in the east and the
eastern Mediterranean in the west, and in the north it reached the Taurus
range. Its southern edges included “Egypt to the west and Elam to the east,
even subduing the surrounding nomads—the Arabs of the desert and Medes
of the highland.” Indirectly, the Assyrian Empire reached even Arabia and
Nubia along its southern borders (see figure 2. 1 ).^36
The incorporation of the Phoenician trade network, which was greatly
affected by the rising imperial economy, brought an array of Mediterranean
territories within the Assyrian periphery as well.^37 The limits of the Assyrian
oikoumenewere not the concrete limits of the empire itself. Rather, they were
the outer limits of the world that the Assyrians knew and the world that knew
them. The limits of theoikoumene,in short, were the limits of Assyrian
propaganda. Indeed, Assyrian propaganda created this world, mapping it, as
it were. Assyrian kings had a clear vision of this territory, conceptualizing the
Assyrian realm both through the abstract term “universe” and by physical
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