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Hello, and welcome to Western SIEV. In today's Bonus Author interview, I

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sit down with historian Eckert from and
we talk about his most recent book,

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Assyria. I don't think I need
to explain what the book is about this

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time, because it is pretty obvious. The Assyrians are one of my favorite

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ancient civilizations for a lot of reasons. We talk about a lot of this

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in the interview, but I think
that they provide the first real blueprint for

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how to run an empire one oh
one, and they get a lot of

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bad rap for being this horrifically vicious
people. But again at night, as

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I talk about in the interview,
I think that this is us maybe projecting

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a little bit back on people's of
the past. And do you want people

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to do that to us two thousand
and three thousand years from now? I'm

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not so sure now. As always, the link to purchase the book is

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in the show notes. This one, I think is fantastic. No technical

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issues either with the interview this time, so everything went according to plan.

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It's always nice when that happens.
The book itself is over four hundred pages

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long. It's very detailed and extremely
readable. I couldn't recommend it enough link

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in the show notes if you want
to purchase it. So, without further

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ado, here's the interview, right, I'm here with his story and Eckert

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from We're talking about a new book
on the Assyrians, as I just mentioned

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previously when we were meeting in the
introduction here, and it's an amazing book.

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I'll talk about that a little bit
more later on. And I'm so

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happy that people are still producing histories
about civilizations that are so old, because

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I find them endlessly fascinating. You
know, as I was reading the book,

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you know, in the beginning of
the book, you start out by

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outlining some of the similarities between Assyrians
and Romans, and they jump out to

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just about anybody I think who has
a working knowledge of ancient and classical histories.

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They're very apparent, and I would
guess that you know of ancient civilizations,

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casual history fans are probably the most
familiar with the Roman Empire when we're

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talking about classical world. So I
thought maybe you could start by just outlining

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some of those similarities from the introduction, because I think it's a great segue

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into the depth of the topic itself. Absolutely so Adam many things for having

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me and giving me a chance to
talk about Assyrian with you, and I

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think it's a good way to enter
this conversation, especially given that this is

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the Westensive podcast, to start off
with the classical Western civilization, the Romans.

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And yeah, I mean stress that. Indeed, what I'm arguing in

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my book is that Assyria it actually
has some rather interesting, well parallel features

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with ancient Rome. One is simply
that both are empires, and you could

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argue Rome became the archetypal empire of
all empires, the greatest empire of the

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ancient world. Undoubtedly Assyria I claim, and of course one can debate it,

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but I think there are reasons to
make that claim. Assyria, in

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my view, is the first weird
empire in the world. And of course

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there were other large states before which
you could define as aspirational empires, the

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Kingdom of Aga day in the late
third millennium BC in in Mesopotamia, for

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example, or a new kingdom Egypt. But I would say that with Assyria

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there's a new quality to that state, and we can get a detail a

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little more later that makes it really
an empire. And Assyria is not only

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an empire, it also shares with
Rome, let's say, a focus on

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a certain practical ethosum military spirit,
things like that well organized colleague of mine

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called the Assyrians, the Prussians of
the ancient Near East, which our cause

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is like every comparison, somewhat anachronistic. God gets something right. I think

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about the Assyrians, and you could
say something quite similar. People have said

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similar things about ancient Rome. There's
also an additional thing, namely that both

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Rome and Assyria, as sort of
emerging superpowers, relied for their for their

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culture, literature and and and religion
very much actually on um on on the

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culture of an earlier and somewhat more
sophisticated civilization. So in the case of

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the Romans, that's of course the
Greeks. The Romans read Homer and and

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eas easier than and and the great
Greek literature for a long time without really

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having any of their own, before
finally, of course, creating Latin literature

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with the indid and so on and
so forth. The Assyrians very similarly relied

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very much on Babylonian culture. Their
literature essentially was Babylonian literature, and to

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significant extent, their religion was based
on Babylonian religion, even though there is

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an important difference here in that the
Assyrian state guard Ashua was always of central

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importance for the Usurians. And it's
a final thing where I think one can

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compare Rome with Assyrian. That's the
fact that both of course were not created

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as empire as they were originally organized
along very different lines and in both cases,

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and we can get to that as
well and more detail where we got

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to Assyria. At some point one
could discus like the ways were organized as

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being based on the mixed constitution,
so with with with monocratic oligarchic but also

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almost democratic adamant. So these would
all be features I would say the Romans

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and Dassilians share. And I think
that one of the things that you talked

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about in the very beginning, and
that they're both sort of original empires,

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Romans much less. But the thing
that I find fascinating about ancient history especially

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is that these people, you know, the Assyrians, and I do think

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that the argument that this is really
this is really the first at least in

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the West. I'm much less well
versed on Eastern history, so I can't

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speak to that, but at least
in the West. You know, this

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really is kind of like the first
empire that fits the definition. There have

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been other maybe proto empires, aspirational, as you say. But what I

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love about ancient classical history is that, you know, the Assyrians, they

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had to figure this out for themselves. There weren't there weren't archetypes before them

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that they could look and say,
well, this is what happened and worked

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in the past, so we'll do
this, and we'll do that, and

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so on and so forth. And
I think you could say a similar thing

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about the Romans. Not that it's
there have been empires of course, as

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Persian Empire and so on and so
forth, but to have an empire of

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that size for that length of time, that requires a certain level of change

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throughout the time period and adaptability and
those are those are things that you know,

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other states have grappled with and have
not been successful. And I will

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talk a little bit more. I
want to talk about the collapse of the

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Bronze Aid and so on and so
forth said and and we'll get into that

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in a little while. But let's
say, you know, as the classic

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you know, Lewis Carroll would say, let's begin at the beginning and when

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we get to the end, let's
stop. Um, So if we get

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if we start in the beginning,
like, what can we say And this

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is another area of my fascination,
and which is the beginnings of civilizations,

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Like you know, when it was
just you know, a small group of

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individuals, you know, that expands
out slowly over time. And what was

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it like in the beginning for Assyria? What can we say about that?

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Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. What is contascinating in fact, when

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you look at the long term history
of Assyria is that Assyria originates. Assyrian

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civilization originates as something almost diametrically opposed
to the idea of empire. Assyria is

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the core area of Assyria is located
in northeastern Iraq. But actually the very

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beginning of Assyria is associated with one
single city only, and that's the city

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of Ashur, after which Assyria later
gets its name, a city located some

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sixty miles south of the modern Iraqi
city of Mosul on the Tigris River.

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And this is where Assyrian civilization essentially
begins, but really in the form of

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a city state and not in the
form even of a territorious state. We

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know as it often goes to the
situation with Rome. It's not that different,

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of course, not that much about
the very earliest beginnings. What we

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can say is that in the mid
third millennium BC, around two thousand and

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five hundred BC or so, in
the city of Usha, you have a

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number of temples, pretty pretty large
templates, substantial templates built over which later

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on the Assyrians would would build new
new temple buildings, and we can assume

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that the same deities were already worshiped
at that time. Those included the temple

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of Ishtar, goddess of Love and
War, and we can be pretty sure

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that if not at that very early
time, then not much later after a

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temple photo good Usha was erected.
We have statues, votive statues of both

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men and women. It's quite interesting
there were play into those temples as to

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perpetuate prayer before the divine statue,
so to speak. So we have some

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visual evidence for those very very early
Assyrians, but otherwise we know very little

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about them. They probably spoke a
Semitic language. It may have been an

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early form of Assyrian is a Symitic
language, just like Arabic, like Hebrew,

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and also like Babylonian in the south, but we know very little about

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the political organization of this time.
We know that the cities of Usha during

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the second half the third millennium BC
was often ruled from the south from Babylonia,

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for example by the kings of Agade, which I mentioned earlier, by

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kings of Ur, another large kingdom
in the south, which was more developed

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at the time towards the end of
the third millennium, and then it comes

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sort of into itself around two thousand
BC when it gains its independence and becomes

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a city state that engages in ways
quite remarkable and perhaps not a unique,

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but but still unusual in long distance
trade. So the Assyrian people, people

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of Usher should rather say, they
import tin from the east and textiles on

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Barbylonia. They create textiles themselves.
They transport those goods on donkey caravan some

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six hundred miles or so to the
north west to central Anatolia, and there

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they sell them and so an interlocking
trade circuit for silver and also some gold,

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which they then bring back. And
this is essentially how they make their

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money, and this is how they
accumulate wealth. So it's quite interesting.

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There's no tendency at all to engage
in war at this time. The elites

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in Usher are not interested in war. In the South you have almost perpetual

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warfare at this time in Assyria.
In Usher, you don't acquisition by means

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of trade is the way they get
rich. And then another really important difference

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the later times, of course,
and that is something I've already mentioned,

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is this political organization again also very
much in contrast to the South, where

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all these smaller states, small territory
states and city states as well were ruled

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by kings. The titled king,
which in Assyian and Babylonia was shahum,

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was not used. Instead, there
was an hereditary dynasty, but couldn't use

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that title, and in fact,
the members of the dynasty didn't really have

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much of a say. They didn't
even have a proper palace, they had

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no court and so on, so
they were allowed to build temples and things

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like that, but they were otherwise
not particularly powerful. Instead, power arrested

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very much with a popular assembly that
was in charge of legal affairs, met

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on a regular basis and a very
prominent spot near the Usher Temple, and

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the institution of the so called Lemmm. That's an Assyrian word for an officer

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out of taxation and a few others
of administrative and economic issues, after whom

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every year in the Syria was named. And it's interesting too to realize that

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in the Salle's years were named after
kings, and they're great deeds been so

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called year names, and all this
controlled paprikinda didn't exist by this time in

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Assyria itself. So it's a it's
a very different type of political organization we

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find um for aff for certainly roughly
two thousand to seventeen hundred BC. Yeah,

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and so starting out the gate,
it's it's one of those things that

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you have to remember that, Okay, when we're talking about original Assyria,

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when we're talking about the founding,
we are talking about ladies and gentlemen,

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very old history here. This is
m I was reading recently because I've been

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doing some work on Alexander the Great
in the time period leading up to him.

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You know, Xenophon, the good
Greek writer, is going to travel,

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you know, to what is then
going to be the Persian Empire to

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participate in what is basically a dynastic
dispute that doesn't matter, but he comes,

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he comes upon some of these old
cities, and he's reflecting in his

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writing on just how impressed he is
by those And it's important to remember,

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you know, he's writing in you
know, the fourth century, you know,

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so he's writing, you know,
roughly seventeen hundred years after the founding

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of some of these civilizations that he's
looking at. If you go back seventeen

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hundred years from where we are today, you know, we're in the late

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Roman period. You know, that's
how long ago it is. By sort

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of a comparison, we're talking about
really sort of foundational history here. And

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that is what I think is so
interesting because you have, you know,

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we're going to think about the Assyrians
later on, as you know, imperialists

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and kings and so because they have
some good ones, they have some power

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pful ones. But to think that
they were experimenting with different sorts of political

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organizations that they're founding is I think
important to recognize. But let's jump forward

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a little bit and talk about how
how Assyria is going to rise to the

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status of a regional power, because
before you become an empire, you have

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to be a regional power. And
nobody, nobody gets to go straight from

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city state to empire overnight. That's
not a thing that we do. So

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I think it's it's important to recognize
to talk for a second about how they

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get there and what was going on
in the region in say fifteenth fourteenth century

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BC. Yeah, first, let
me actually confirm what you just said that

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when you're dealing with ancient Egyptian and
as obtaining history, you're effectively dealing with

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the first half of history, even
a little bit more than that. And

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as a as a predecessor of mine
at the Alia has always said, and

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I think that's important to remember,
that is something we cannot really dismiss.

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It's really a significant portion of human
history defined by the emergence of writing.

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So that's that, Yes, what
actually happens then after seventeen hundred, what

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is going on in this area?
Unfortunately we must say here it's still very

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much a mystery because what's the problem
for modern historians is that between seventeen hundred

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and fourteen hundred PC we have very
very few sources, both in terms of

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text soucreineer from texts which were written
on clay and essentially are the most important

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source type for our reconstruction of Hissorian
history. But even in terms of our

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archaeology, it's just not that much
that we know about this time. So

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around seventeen hundred, what we can
see is that this old political system,

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with these interlocking governmental institutions, the
civic institutions, very much still in place,

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no kings and so on, and
that seems to essentially only change in

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the fourteenth century, when then for
the first time, we actually get an

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Assyrian ruler who assumes the title of
king. But what really happens between those

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centuries is betrothed in darkness. At
some point, a new dynasty in Assyria

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comes to power that goes back to
a man named Adasi. We know absolutely

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nothing about him, essentially, only
that he ruled for a short while,

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perhaps early seventeenth century BC or so. From him all the later members of

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the Cyan world House seem to originate, so that's also impressive. It's a

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dynasty that remains in place essentially for
one thousand years. It's not always father

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to son. Also side branches of
this family that comes too come to power

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occasionally, but it seems like so
far at least we have no evidence forever

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another family actually assuming rulership, and
members of this family would still not call

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themselves king until the mid fourteenth century, when there's a ruler theonym of Ashaal

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the First, and with him we
really see the invergence of a new geopolitical

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entity in Assyria. What is then
in fact for the first time actually a

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territorious state, not just the city
state, because what we can see under

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Asha Balat is that he now controls
also, for example, the city of

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Nineve, which is further to the
north of Ashwa, opposite of the modern

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city of Mosul on the eastern bank
of the Tiger Server, so this becomes

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now part of the power sphere of
this Asha First. He probably also woods

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over areas further to the east,
so Ashwa actually becomes Assyria only during this

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time as it is the first ruler
as I said, to assume the royal

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title. He also interacts with other
territorious states in the region and even beyond,

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including Egypt, and very soon sort
of tries to become one member of

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this as it has been called Club
of Great Powers that by this time dominates

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the political scene in the Middle East. This would be Babylonian the south,

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the Hittites in Anatolia, a state
named Mitani in Syria Um and well Assyria

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itself, maybe also Elam and Cyprus, but less importantly sou So the Assyrians

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now enter the stage, the historical
stage. And we have a letter written

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by Ashaabalid to the Egyptian Pharah in
the mid fourteenth century, in which he

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asks him to send him gold.
It makes it very clear that he now

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needs to be just taken just as
seriously as, for example, the king

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of Babylonia. The Babylonians initially don't
like that at all, and they've rite

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to the Egyptians in famous Almana correspondence
from Egypt which was conducted in canea form

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on clay tablets. So the Babylonian
rights to the Egyptian condepart and says that

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the Assilians are his subjects and you
shouldn't really have any commercial and other interactions

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with them. But the genius out
of the bottle, and the Assilians from

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now on our powerful terry tory estate
in the region, not an empire yet

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though still fairly small by this time. Yeah, and just you know,

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just a word about the history part
broadly speaking. Sometimes you know, when

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I when I teach ancient even classical
history, you know. Yeah, I

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can tell the students getting frustrated because
we don't know everything, you know,

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we have to um sometimes fill in
the gaps. We have documents sometimes that

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reference other documents that we do not
possess because they haven't made it through.

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But to me, that's the good
part. That's what makes it fun,

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you know, because we don't know
everything yet. That's the that's the exciting

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part. You know. We don't
have the various tweets from these kings,

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which would be interesting to have,
sure, or some other information. But

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I think that just the fact that
it's it's sort of it's veiled in a

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little bit of miss You can kind
of make through some of it. And

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the closer we get to it time
wise, the more you can see in

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the further back, the harder it
is to see, but you can still

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see some shapes. And I think
that's the interesting part. To me,

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at least, that's why I love
ancient and classical history, because we are

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still kind of piecing it together and
there's there's sort sort of a puzzle to

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an extent, but I want to
I want to kind of jump forward because

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you were talking about the Club of
Great Powers and you know, these these

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powers, they're gonna they're chugging along, they're doing great, and then the

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Bronze Age is going to abruptly collapse. Um. And that's going to upset

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the apple cart here um. And
you know, so just to ground our

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listeners, you know, this is
when this is when we're talking about New

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Kingdom Egypt. This is the coming
of those infamous see peoples these, This

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is the end of Mycenaean Greek ages. This is Metani, this is the

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Hittites, and many of those civilizations
are going to simply cease to exist when

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the dust settles. Assyria makes it
through and Assyria changes, like what happens

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during that time period? And I
don't know if you can answer the question,

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but why is it that you see
Assyria survive this collapse whereas other civilizations,

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notably like the Hittites, the Meisne
and Greeks, they're not so lucky.

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What's the difference? What's going on
here? Yeah? So, perhaps

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briefly, just to talk a little
bit more about the so called Middle assuming

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periods, so the centuries between the
fourteenth and eleventh centuries b CEO, so

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fairly early on, and especially then
the thirteenth centuries, the Assyrians actually expand

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their kingdom, especially further to the
west, so they consolidate their power also

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in areas formerly ruled by the so
called Mittani state, which was which governed

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by kings with in European names,
otherwise based on a sort of Harrean population.

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The Assyrians profit from inner strife within
the Mitani Voil family and essentially,

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along with the Hittites, eliminate the
Mittanie state and take over large portions of

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it, and in this way essentially
become settled also in what is now modern

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Syria, especially some more eastern parts
of modern Syria along the Kabua River,

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which is a northern tributary of the
Euphrates River, and in this way become

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a really powerful state that also puts
pressure on the Ahtites and so on.

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And then though essentially coexists with the
Hittites and the Babylonians in Western Asia,

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with the Egyptians in Egypt, and
a number of small states along in the

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Lebanon, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, some of which are vessels of the

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Hittites, other vessels of the Egyptians. So co exist for seven centuries essentially

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in what you could describe as a
pretty stable arrangement. So there was and

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so on, but the situation doesn't
really change dramatically. And and then,

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as you have pointed out absolutely correctly, there is really a major collapse occurring

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all of a sudden, and it
is often associated with the so called sea

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peoples as they were have been called
in modern times. So these were groups

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of people called the sclete or the
Palacete. Palacete is clearly the origin of

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the name of Palestine. They come
on boats from the Mediterranean and destroy cities,

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for examples such as Ugaret. So
there is in fact archeological evidence for

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the destruction. We have a letter
announcing King's writing to the Hittite ruler that

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the boats already on the horizon.
He has no way to defend himself.

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We see these sea peoples on reliefs
in Egypt, and what we then also

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see is in many at many sites, destruction horizons. When we look at

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the archaeology that go back to the
twelveth to the earlier twelfth century BCEs or

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the eleven seventy seven, that's the
year of a famous battle between the ce

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peoples and the Egyptians on the Nile
RIVERA has often been taken so as the

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combination of this development, and in
the wake of all this we also see

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the collapse of major states, such
as the Hittites. For example, the

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Hittite state is a large state existed
for forms half a million millennium in central

305
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Anatolia and northern Syria. Within just
a few decades essentially completely disappears from the

306
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scene. Recently, archaeologists have claimed
that the destruction altogether wasn't quite as bad

307
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as it sometimes portrait, and that
actually also several sides survived, apparently unharmed,

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and that may well be the case. I would still say, though

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that there is massive destruction. What
really caused it, of course, it's

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still not quite clear to Again one
of these big questions was it just migrations?

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Were these migrations perhaps caused by climate
change, as has been argued,

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I think for good reasons in a
way? In this case, were there

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also social issues involved, for example, the expropriation of the farmers in the

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countryside by these palatial elites, and
at some point, perhaps with slowly decreasing

315
00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:38.960
harvest, that could just no longer
sustain that, and they just left their

316
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plots of land alone. It may
all be a combination. Anyway, the

317
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consequences this pretty massive breakdown, especially
on the Eastern Editrani, also affects,

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as you said, to Masceneans and
so on. Why does it affect the

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Assyrians lass Well, first, I
would say it affects them to some extent

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as well, because one thing that
happens is that they are new sort of

321
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political players that emerge from this whole
disaster, and they're organized of more along

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tribal lines. They are often not
very hierarchical democratic elements in the political organization.

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So they include the Arabs, for
example, the Israelites, the fridge

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Ands, they all appear at around
this time, and they also include the

325
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Arnians and the Armians, Smitic speaking
people sort of emerging somewhere from southern Syria,

326
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it seems, especially though within the
twelfth century, and they're still also

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in the eleventh century. They migrate
towards the east, and they actually threaten

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Assyria and they do wreak havoc in
Assyria. So Syria is absolutely affected by

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this. We don't read about this
in as Cernan rol inscriptions, which of

330
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course only talk about the great successes
of the Assyrians, but we do read

331
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about it in chronic codes, which
are in a way more objective, and

332
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then we can see that well,
the Arni were attacking cities that the Assians

333
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were not able to cultivate their fields. That was famine Assorians to flee.

334
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So it was certainly a crisis in
Assyria as well, but what I would

335
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argue is it was probably less of
a crisis than elsewhere. One thing that

336
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we can observe is that the royal
dynasty, as I've already mentioned, actually

337
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stays in office. So these were
very resiliant kings. They might have known,

338
00:28:22.839 --> 00:28:25.640
I mean, they knew how to
fight. They had managed to somehow

339
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survive against the Mitani state. They
were good at this, and they just

340
00:28:30.839 --> 00:28:36.240
were able to keep their stronghold cities
such as usher At nine Way, but

341
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also a few cities further in the
west on the Kabu River and so on.

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And eventually, when the dust settled, when the Armians began to establish

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themselves in small polo states along the
fighters and elsewhere, it was the Assyrians

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where essentially, of all those pretty
much downbeaten states who were the strong list

345
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and who were now suddenly able at
the beginning in the tenth century and the

346
00:28:59.799 --> 00:29:04.079
later tenth century after the crisis century
was over, to expand into a region

347
00:29:04.119 --> 00:29:10.599
that was substantially weakened. They're also
profited again from from climate change. In

348
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:15.039
this case, it seems that in
the tenth century BC there was more rainfall

349
00:29:15.079 --> 00:29:21.960
than before, which allowed them to
cultivate more grain and established more wealth and

350
00:29:22.119 --> 00:29:27.240
all these things together and able to
Asserience then first to reconquer significant portions of

351
00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:30.240
the territory that had lost. This
is what I dubbed, I mean what

352
00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:36.440
actually in Italian historian before me has
dubbed the Reconquista period, in which Asserian

353
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:41.880
researched itself as a as a major
power. And this is then followed later

354
00:29:41.960 --> 00:29:45.720
in the eighth century by the Imperial
period, but by the Asserience is the

355
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:48.000
first state really to get out of
this crisis again. Yeah, And it

356
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:53.480
just strikes me that I've always sort
of felt this way, and reading your

357
00:29:53.519 --> 00:29:56.880
book brought it home to me again, especially this section that you know,

358
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one of the things that just sets
certain empires apart, and we're talking about

359
00:30:03.759 --> 00:30:10.640
I suppose all the pre modern period, but particularly this period, is some

360
00:30:10.839 --> 00:30:17.839
empires, some kingdoms are able to
take a punch and others aren't. And

361
00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:25.079
that's what one of the defining features
tends to be of an empire that has

362
00:30:25.359 --> 00:30:32.160
lasting ability, because again you're talking
about pre modern states that I mean,

363
00:30:32.160 --> 00:30:37.640
certainly they wouldn't have understood climate change
from a scientific perspective, and they don't

364
00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:42.960
have truly the capacity to maybe see
some of these things coming. The communication

365
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:52.039
networks are still relatively rudimentary. But
the difference between Rome and Assyria and some

366
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:56.799
of the other early modern states is
they can take a punch, they can

367
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get back up, and they can
recover. And that is critical in sort

368
00:31:03.519 --> 00:31:07.720
of understanding the distinction between who makes
it and who doesn't, because nobody gets

369
00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:12.720
through unscathed. As you mentioned,
Assyria is pressured during this time period.

370
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There are constant wars that they're having
to deal with. There's other issues that

371
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you have going on during this time
period, and you can say the same

372
00:31:22.039 --> 00:31:25.720
thing on the Romans when we're talking
about the Crisis of the third century or

373
00:31:25.720 --> 00:31:30.039
anything else. But they get back
up, and that capacity to get back

374
00:31:30.119 --> 00:31:33.480
up is very, very important.
The other thing I wanted to point out

375
00:31:33.480 --> 00:31:37.359
that you said that I think is
really worth mentioning is that you know the

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Hittite civilization effectively collapses. And I
know that, Yes, I've read some

377
00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:47.599
more modern scholarship that suggests, you
know, maybe it wasn't a total collapse,

378
00:31:47.599 --> 00:31:49.839
and so on and so forth.
But the reality is that they're not

379
00:31:51.400 --> 00:31:56.480
a major power in the region anymore. But they had existed for a thousand

380
00:31:56.599 --> 00:32:01.279
years roughly. You know, you
look at modern earned day nation states and

381
00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:06.640
do you just take the United States
for an example, and we're not quite

382
00:32:07.359 --> 00:32:10.240
three hundred years out, so you
know, and I would guess that if

383
00:32:10.240 --> 00:32:14.440
you would have asked anybody in the
Hittite Kingdom, you know, in the

384
00:32:14.519 --> 00:32:16.319
thirteenth century, you know, will
the Hittite Kingdom always be here? They

385
00:32:16.319 --> 00:32:19.319
would have said, of course,
it's always been here, It's always going

386
00:32:19.359 --> 00:32:22.599
to be here. So there's a
lesson in history there that maybe nothing is

387
00:32:22.920 --> 00:32:29.079
permanent in those in the way that
we might think that it is in modern

388
00:32:29.480 --> 00:32:31.839
eras. But the next thing I
wanted to ask you about is that,

389
00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:36.079
and this is I guess this kind
of goes along the vein of what I

390
00:32:36.079 --> 00:32:39.880
was talking about, where premodern civilizations
tend to go through crises, and the

391
00:32:39.960 --> 00:32:43.880
question is who can get through the
crisis and who can't get through the crisis.

392
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And one of these sort of archetype
crises that most premodern kingdoms, empires,

393
00:32:51.559 --> 00:32:54.720
etc. Go through at some point
is a succession crisis. It doesn't

394
00:32:54.720 --> 00:32:59.079
matter who you are, at some
point, you're going to go through a

395
00:32:59.119 --> 00:33:02.359
succession crisis and you're going to have
to deal with it. It's just not

396
00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:08.680
everybody gets an uninterrupted line of fantastic
rulers. It just doesn't seem to happen.

397
00:33:09.319 --> 00:33:14.200
So you talk about this sort of
age of magnates, and I was

398
00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:19.559
hoping you could define that, explain
what was going on and how the Assyrians

399
00:33:19.559 --> 00:33:23.079
are going to ultimately sort of deal
with this issue as we sort of inch

400
00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:30.559
towards the Assyrian empire. Right,
Yeah, it's true, of course what

401
00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:37.799
you say about also about individual it's
actually having an agency in history. I

402
00:33:37.839 --> 00:33:39.759
do think that is the case.
Of course, that doesn't mean one can

403
00:33:40.079 --> 00:33:45.319
discount the structural and systemic factors such
as climate change, geography, et cetera,

404
00:33:45.359 --> 00:33:47.759
et cetera. And I'm trying to
make that very clear in my book

405
00:33:47.759 --> 00:33:52.599
about Assyria. But I also do
think you're right the decisions made by individual

406
00:33:52.680 --> 00:34:04.759
rulers the way they organize their kingdoms
politically, and the administration implemented and so

407
00:34:04.799 --> 00:34:07.360
on. All these things of course
matter very much as well. And yes,

408
00:34:07.519 --> 00:34:14.199
in Assyria, one big problem was
that when I mean at a time

409
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:17.400
when the Assurian kings essentially really were
very much in charge, of course,

410
00:34:17.519 --> 00:34:22.360
that then when a king died and
the new king came to the throne,

411
00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:25.880
that this was a moment of instability, and on various occasions this led to

412
00:34:28.639 --> 00:34:31.280
we are crissis and we will talk
about some of the later ones as well.

413
00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:36.280
It's not that this ends ever entirely, I would say, but you're

414
00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:42.199
also right that sort of late in
this so called reconquista period, the asseryings

415
00:34:42.199 --> 00:34:47.519
now essentially have reconquered their former territories, and they have actually now made incurasions

416
00:34:47.559 --> 00:34:54.239
also in areas further beyond into Innatolia
to the Mediterranean. Haven't yet annexed those

417
00:34:54.280 --> 00:34:58.800
places, but they sent their armies. There's in the ninth century BC,

418
00:34:59.760 --> 00:35:06.400
so around Um in the eighteen eight
hundred and twenties, during the last years

419
00:35:06.440 --> 00:35:09.920
after the reign of King Shamanisa the
Third, there begins to be a problem

420
00:35:09.960 --> 00:35:14.159
about who's to succeed him. There's
a battle between two sons of this king,

421
00:35:14.840 --> 00:35:21.039
um Ashoda and Uply and another son
Shamshi added the fifth letter eventually becomes

422
00:35:21.159 --> 00:35:25.360
king under name Shamsha Added the Fifth. But Um, this is this is

423
00:35:25.400 --> 00:35:30.760
a problem. There there are isn't
clear a clear indications who's supposed to follow

424
00:35:31.679 --> 00:35:38.920
after Shamanisa's death, and there's really
seven year long civil war which destabilizes Um

425
00:35:39.880 --> 00:35:46.320
to some extent, of course the
Assyrian state UM and never during the reign

426
00:35:46.360 --> 00:35:52.960
of Shamshad the fifth, the situation
is never really fully remedied. When Shamshi

427
00:35:52.960 --> 00:35:58.880
Added the Fifth dies Um his son
and successor is apparently in minor their young

428
00:35:59.599 --> 00:36:04.360
child. Probably still this is a
very interesting period in a Sering history because

429
00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:07.119
for the first years of the reign
of this new king Ada Narari the third,

430
00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:13.719
so very late ninth century BC,
we now actually have a woman essentially

431
00:36:13.800 --> 00:36:19.880
being in charge, the wife of
Shamshi Adad the fifth, the mother of

432
00:36:19.880 --> 00:36:22.360
this Ada Narari, woman by the
name of Samo Ramad, who will later

433
00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:29.360
be celebrated in Greek legend as semi
Ranis. So she goes on campaign and

434
00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:37.199
all that. But I think these
years of dynastic unrest lead to a situation

435
00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:45.480
where the well important military officers and
administrators somehow realized that the royal dynasty is

436
00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:51.960
somewhat weak. At that time,
those administrators and military officers are often unichs.

437
00:36:52.079 --> 00:36:54.360
That is, they don't really have
an incentive to create a dynasty of

438
00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:59.280
their own because they have no offspring. But nonetheless, what we can see

439
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:05.159
during the eighth century the first of
the eighth century is that these of officers

440
00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:09.320
and administrators of seen nobles, if
you wish, now take a lot of

441
00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:16.119
power right inscriptions and royals die,
whereas the actual kings who remain in place

442
00:37:16.239 --> 00:37:22.079
the dynasty is never replaced, actually
have little to say about themselves, so

443
00:37:22.159 --> 00:37:27.639
the inscriptions that they produce become less
and less detailed. And then in the

444
00:37:27.719 --> 00:37:31.320
seven hundred and sixties and seven hundred
and fifties you actually can see that the

445
00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:37.159
real crisis emerges. So initially,
I would say the rise of those magnets

446
00:37:37.199 --> 00:37:39.880
are sometimes called isn't necessarily so much
of a problem in countries. Some have

447
00:37:40.039 --> 00:37:45.679
argued, perhaps widely so, that
they were motivated to develop the areas of

448
00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:50.920
vire that they were that they would, so they dug canals and did things

449
00:37:50.960 --> 00:37:53.400
like that. But then the seven
hundred and sixties and seven hundred and fifties,

450
00:37:53.400 --> 00:37:59.000
you have not only continuing sort of
crisis of the crown, but you

451
00:37:59.079 --> 00:38:04.719
also now have actually outbreak of several
bouts of plague only too familiar to us,

452
00:38:04.760 --> 00:38:08.400
of course, and that leads then
to insurgencies against the count in a

453
00:38:08.480 --> 00:38:13.199
number of Assylian cities, and so
an army stays at home, it no

454
00:38:13.239 --> 00:38:17.360
longer goes on campaign. So it's
a real crisis that emerges. And one

455
00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:23.800
of the great mysteries of Assylian history, then is how from these from the

456
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:29.920
ashes of these ani horribilis the phoenix
of empire rises, because that is what

457
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:35.079
then happens in seven forty five in
Uking comes to the Assyrian throne, that

458
00:38:35.199 --> 00:38:40.760
Tiglapilezer the third, and under him, Issyria actually becomes this great empire.

459
00:38:40.920 --> 00:38:46.320
At at the end of the Glapilza's
vein, it's Syria is twice as large

460
00:38:46.400 --> 00:38:51.679
as as before. So it's a
remarkable turnaround. It was not to be

461
00:38:51.760 --> 00:38:55.000
expected. One could also have expected, really a collapse of the state in

462
00:38:55.119 --> 00:38:59.599
seven hundred forty five or so.
It's exactly opposite. And here I think

463
00:38:59.599 --> 00:39:04.400
we see again that the agency of
individual rulers does really play a role,

464
00:39:04.719 --> 00:39:10.440
because I think what Tiglapilaza does is
he he acts very strategically. He realizes

465
00:39:10.519 --> 00:39:15.280
there's all this loss of life and
of wealth. He needs to replenish the

466
00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:17.679
workforce. So what he does he
annexes, he conquists other lands. He

467
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:22.239
still has enough soldiers for that,
so the crisis also not totally devastating.

468
00:39:22.840 --> 00:39:27.360
He conquers a lot of new lands, he annexes them, he taxes them,

469
00:39:27.400 --> 00:39:30.840
and he deports hundreds of thousands of
people from those lands and brings them

470
00:39:30.840 --> 00:39:35.920
to Assyria and to other areas where
he needs them to work on construction sites

471
00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:40.320
and in agriculture, and in this
way essentially forges the Assylian Empire into existence.

472
00:39:40.679 --> 00:39:45.000
Yeah, and that's you know,
it's it's an interesting topic because again

473
00:39:45.039 --> 00:39:47.840
we don't know everything, but we
also do have to remember that human capital

474
00:39:47.960 --> 00:39:52.159
is one of the most important resources
that we're talking about. In the pre

475
00:39:52.280 --> 00:40:00.000
modern eras, of course, when
economies were overwhelmingly agricultural and dependent on large

476
00:40:00.039 --> 00:40:07.000
workforces to be able to produce those
those surplus food items, and so deportation

477
00:40:07.119 --> 00:40:13.440
and the transportation of populations starts to
become more of a state policy, which

478
00:40:13.480 --> 00:40:16.719
is fascinating to me because you used
to see it in different places around the

479
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:22.480
world at different times, so it's
not necessarily something unique that anybody first thought

480
00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:27.039
of, but very disparate civilizations,
you know. I mean, we see

481
00:40:27.039 --> 00:40:29.960
it in the New World. You
know that the Inca are going to be

482
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.880
doing it in the fifteenth century,
and obviously they knew nothing of the Assyrians.

483
00:40:34.880 --> 00:40:37.840
So this is this is something that
you know, is utilized by other

484
00:40:37.960 --> 00:40:42.639
organizations. But I do want to
turn to the empire, you know,

485
00:40:42.719 --> 00:40:47.199
so now we're talking about mid eighth
century, we're entering into the Assyrian Empire,

486
00:40:47.360 --> 00:40:53.079
imperial excuse me, period. But
I really I'm interested in knowing,

487
00:40:53.199 --> 00:40:59.800
Okay, what does the empire look
like from a logistical standpoint, because again

488
00:41:00.079 --> 00:41:04.079
going back to Rome, my guess
is that's what most people are sort of

489
00:41:04.119 --> 00:41:07.760
familiar with and what most people would
expect. I think we get this bias

490
00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:09.039
that like, oh, well,
there's going to be an empire, which

491
00:41:09.079 --> 00:41:13.960
means there must be provinces, and
provinces must be ruled by you know,

492
00:41:14.039 --> 00:41:19.559
provincial elites or provincial governors. Do
we have that going on, or you

493
00:41:19.599 --> 00:41:24.280
know, is it more of a
compulsory tribute. I maybe Delian League situation

494
00:41:25.599 --> 00:41:31.159
where there's not as firm Assyrian local
control, but you know you have to

495
00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:35.440
provide x amount of tribute every year
and that's understood. And if you don't,

496
00:41:35.480 --> 00:41:37.639
well you know the army is going
to come and you don't want that.

497
00:41:38.079 --> 00:41:43.159
So I just was hoping maybe you
could flesh out for the listeners.

498
00:41:43.199 --> 00:41:47.639
You know what, Let's say we're
in the mid to now late eighth century,

499
00:41:47.679 --> 00:41:54.360
you know what is the Assyrian Empire
start to look like? Yeah?

500
00:41:54.400 --> 00:42:01.880
Absolutely. I think every empire uses
techniques off of power that can be direct

501
00:42:02.039 --> 00:42:07.039
or that can include direct rule or
indirect rule. So you have a large

502
00:42:07.039 --> 00:42:12.000
stat of land that is route directly
and in the periphery you will have vessel

503
00:42:12.119 --> 00:42:17.079
kings or client kings as we're called
in ancient Rome, who have to provide

504
00:42:17.119 --> 00:42:22.880
tribute rather than taxes and would help
you in war, but would still remain

505
00:42:22.920 --> 00:42:27.280
in place. In my view,
the Asserlian Empire is actually as far as

506
00:42:27.400 --> 00:42:30.239
its organization and its concerned, is
actually quite similar to the Roman Empire and

507
00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:37.639
not to the Delian League, which
is at least formally kind of more like

508
00:42:37.639 --> 00:42:44.519
like a union of different political entities, of course eventually essence calling the shots,

509
00:42:44.519 --> 00:42:51.159
but it's also short lived. Rome
is of course an empire that remains

510
00:42:51.159 --> 00:42:53.639
in place much longer. And I
do think many of the institutions you find

511
00:42:53.639 --> 00:42:58.639
in Rome you also find in Assyria, and that includes what you mentioned,

512
00:42:58.719 --> 00:43:02.199
namely provinces. So you have the
central authority, of course of the king.

513
00:43:02.320 --> 00:43:06.039
He's the lynchpin of the whole system. Isn't a god, but he's

514
00:43:06.079 --> 00:43:08.719
often compared to gods. He must
have seemed to many of his subjects like

515
00:43:08.760 --> 00:43:15.079
a god. He calls the shots. So this is not a system very

516
00:43:15.199 --> 00:43:20.159
much um based on one man,
one man whole. But of course such

517
00:43:20.159 --> 00:43:29.280
a system cannot work without the collaboration
of sophisticated administrative and and military elites.

518
00:43:30.320 --> 00:43:35.360
And yes, Assyria has provinces at
the height of its power, some seventy

519
00:43:35.480 --> 00:43:39.719
or so in all directions in southern
Anatolia, in western Ivan, in the

520
00:43:39.840 --> 00:43:49.719
levant Um, and those provinces are
governed by provincial governors who whose residences are

521
00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:53.039
little palaces in these provincial capitals that
are sort of mirror images of the royal

522
00:43:53.079 --> 00:43:59.800
palaces that the Assyan kings inhabit in
the Asseryan corps area, they communicate with

523
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:02.840
the kings, and this is important
I think, to keep in mind the

524
00:44:02.920 --> 00:44:08.639
communication structures established by the Assyrians based
on earlier once already in place, but

525
00:44:08.639 --> 00:44:14.360
but also some of them really innovations
under Assyrian rule are very efficient. So

526
00:44:14.480 --> 00:44:20.000
the Assurians create royal roads with road
stations and all these things with a relay

527
00:44:20.119 --> 00:44:25.280
system where a message can be transported
not just by one messengers, but on

528
00:44:25.480 --> 00:44:32.920
one road station to the next,
with fresh animals bringing them on, so

529
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:39.360
that essentially a message from from Cilicia
in near modern city of Ardana or so

530
00:44:39.559 --> 00:44:44.880
to the nint to Ninnovative so in
capital would take less than seven days,

531
00:44:44.920 --> 00:44:49.840
as has been estimated from one of
my colleagues, which would be faster than

532
00:44:49.880 --> 00:44:54.559
anything that was possible ever before the
arrival of the telegraph. So communication was

533
00:44:54.599 --> 00:44:59.480
important. The Assorian military, of
course, was an extremely important part of

534
00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:05.360
Asserian power. There were military contingents
in the capitals of Assyria, but they

535
00:45:05.360 --> 00:45:08.400
were also of course military contingents in
the provincial capitals, so that it was

536
00:45:08.440 --> 00:45:13.559
possible for the asseriance to react quickly
to any kind of unrest, especially in

537
00:45:13.599 --> 00:45:21.440
border areas. And another thing that
the Assyian empire is characterized by is ethnic,

538
00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:28.199
religious, and linguistic diversity. It
has that perhaps more in common with

539
00:45:28.400 --> 00:45:30.800
the Persian empiresment Roman Empire, because
the Assorians, like the Persians, were

540
00:45:30.840 --> 00:45:36.239
not interested in anything akin to romanizations. So what they did not do was

541
00:45:36.519 --> 00:45:42.840
imposed their culture. They expected defeated
enemies to swear by Asserian gods, but

542
00:45:42.920 --> 00:45:45.320
they didn't build temples of Ushua in
Jerusalem, I anywhere. I mean,

543
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:50.559
this would have been, in fact, probably being considered totally inappropriate by the

544
00:45:50.599 --> 00:45:55.880
Assyrians if anyone I tried to build
such a temple. So they also left

545
00:45:57.239 --> 00:46:01.480
those defeated populations a lot of color
actual autonomy, which I think is part

546
00:46:01.480 --> 00:46:07.119
of the strength of the Assaying Empire. So these are some of the elements

547
00:46:07.159 --> 00:46:13.360
that I would say constitute the empire
as it exists for more than one hundred

548
00:46:13.400 --> 00:46:19.480
and twenty years or so, from
the mid eighth century onwards. Yeah,

549
00:46:19.480 --> 00:46:22.280
and so one of the things that
I definitely want to ask about with the

550
00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:28.559
Assyrian Empire is it's kind of going
to be a two part question. So

551
00:46:28.599 --> 00:46:32.719
I want to ask about the military
structure because I think that's important for people

552
00:46:32.719 --> 00:46:38.440
to understand. But this the second
sort of hitch point on the question is

553
00:46:39.440 --> 00:46:45.559
the word Assyria and Assyrian for a
long time sort of becomes, I guess,

554
00:46:45.559 --> 00:46:51.159
i'll say, almost a byword for
cruelty. You know that they have

555
00:46:51.239 --> 00:46:57.719
this reputation in the ancient and classical
world of being just this is sort of

556
00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:04.960
an overwhelmingly not instructive, but a
cruel civilization when it comes to their treatment

557
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:12.119
of conquered people. I just wonder
to what extent that that's deserved reputation,

558
00:47:12.639 --> 00:47:19.000
or to what extent is that they
were just simply continuing practices that had already

559
00:47:19.039 --> 00:47:22.239
been existed and would continue to exist
in the near e. So sorry for

560
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:27.559
the two part question, but I
kind of go together. Yeah, let

561
00:47:27.599 --> 00:47:30.920
me start with a second. And
perhaps I think it's important, indeed to

562
00:47:30.360 --> 00:47:37.159
engage with it, because, yes, especially today, Assilians are often associated

563
00:47:37.199 --> 00:47:44.000
with unusual levels of violence and brutality, and I think it is important to

564
00:47:44.039 --> 00:47:46.079
make a couple of points. You're
not to downplay it, and I'll say

565
00:47:46.199 --> 00:47:51.079
a few words about the reality of
that violence, but I think it needs

566
00:47:51.079 --> 00:47:53.679
to be contextualized. First. It's
important not to essentialize the Assilience here.

567
00:47:54.400 --> 00:47:58.480
As I mentioned, when you look
at the history of the long delay of

568
00:47:58.519 --> 00:48:01.320
the history, and they start off
a civilization. They're actually extremely peaceful,

569
00:48:01.800 --> 00:48:06.360
much more peaceful than anyone else.
They do not engage in war during the

570
00:48:06.360 --> 00:48:10.360
so called Old Associan period in the
first centuries of the second millennium. Changes

571
00:48:10.400 --> 00:48:15.920
there now, of course, but
um initially they are not particularly violent.

572
00:48:15.960 --> 00:48:20.760
The other thing to say here is
that, of course the Assurians were absolutely

573
00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:27.559
not alone in using violence in order
to realize their political goals. Anyone essentially

574
00:48:28.719 --> 00:48:34.480
in the ancient world with the state
would use violence. The Egyptians are often

575
00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:39.800
now associated with beautiful scenes and frescoes
and tombs showing showing dancing girlds, but

576
00:48:40.079 --> 00:48:46.360
of course you also have the frescoes
showing how Egyptian soldiers heap up heaps of

577
00:48:47.559 --> 00:48:52.599
severed heads and penises before Pharaoh after
coming back from a campaign. So not

578
00:48:52.760 --> 00:48:58.639
that the Egyptians certainly weren't peaceful.
The Romans neither. Probably they're actually more

579
00:48:58.679 --> 00:49:01.280
brutal than the Assorians in many guards
and they knew that also full well,

580
00:49:01.320 --> 00:49:07.000
I mean, Seneca kind of ridicules
this whole talk about the mission of civilization.

581
00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:09.599
The Romans often claimed they were engaged
in by saying, well, in

582
00:49:09.679 --> 00:49:13.679
fact, what we do is we
kill everyone, and these people have no

583
00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:17.000
rights whatsoever when we go there and
conquer them. So I think it's important

584
00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:21.599
to say first that indeed, in
this respective assurance aren't really they are different.

585
00:49:21.639 --> 00:49:22.639
I think where they are a little
bit different, though, and that's

586
00:49:22.679 --> 00:49:28.719
true, is that they showcase this
violence very prominently in their texts, in

587
00:49:28.719 --> 00:49:32.440
the royal inscriptions in particular, but
also in images that we find on reliefs,

588
00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:36.559
lining the walls, officer in palaces, in any way in other places.

589
00:49:36.840 --> 00:49:39.000
So those are really often focused very
much on violence. And we read

590
00:49:39.039 --> 00:49:45.559
about how Egypt, how assuring kings
gauge out the soldiers, gauge out the

591
00:49:45.639 --> 00:49:50.239
eyes, the eyes of enemies,
how even occasionally young boys and girls are

592
00:49:50.239 --> 00:49:52.800
burned, and so on and so
forth. But I would also say probably

593
00:49:52.840 --> 00:50:00.840
actually these inscriptions and these images exaggerate
the amount of violence the Assuans actually implemented,

594
00:50:00.719 --> 00:50:04.760
because, as I mentioned, the
assurance new full well that and you

595
00:50:04.559 --> 00:50:08.360
you pointed it out too, that
a large workforce was really vital for them.

596
00:50:08.400 --> 00:50:12.639
They had no interest in genocide.
So it's totally wrong, for example,

597
00:50:12.639 --> 00:50:16.199
to compare the Assurians with Nazis.
This was not These were not attempts

598
00:50:16.239 --> 00:50:22.559
really to kill everyone off. Who
would be killed were so of the elites

599
00:50:22.239 --> 00:50:28.039
of the enemies who had engaged in
insurgencies, and occasionally a few other people

600
00:50:28.079 --> 00:50:30.119
probably as well. So there as
a warning. But on the whole,

601
00:50:30.199 --> 00:50:35.599
it is my impression almost as if
these many images and texts about violence were

602
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:42.719
so geared towards an inner audience somewhat
takeaway remorse for killing from the Assurance themselves,

603
00:50:42.719 --> 00:50:45.559
so they would actually go on campaigns. And that, of course is

604
00:50:45.599 --> 00:50:47.159
what they did. And this is
your second question, now, the question

605
00:50:47.159 --> 00:50:52.159
about the military. The Assurian Empire, of course it was was created by

606
00:50:52.440 --> 00:50:58.119
armies that would go I mean it's
not that as a will everyone just happily

607
00:50:59.639 --> 00:51:01.760
came and and so and that,
even though they did often happen, but

608
00:51:02.679 --> 00:51:07.800
usually more like as a consequence of
a state run protection record. I would

609
00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:10.840
say, So the army would show
up and there was an ultimatum either you

610
00:51:10.920 --> 00:51:15.719
submit or we fight you, and
then often enemies would submit. So,

611
00:51:15.800 --> 00:51:19.360
yes, there were armies. They
were well organized, certainly one of the

612
00:51:19.360 --> 00:51:22.199
great strengths of the Assyrians a station, as I said in various parts of

613
00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:28.920
the empire with special troops, often
comprised of specific ethnic groups. For example,

614
00:51:28.960 --> 00:51:32.360
the Sammarians from Israel, interesting enough, were integrated into the Asserian army

615
00:51:32.440 --> 00:51:37.000
as chariot troops or something they were
apparently very good at. There were sort

616
00:51:37.039 --> 00:51:43.920
of armine police troops the Etuians that
were used in order to fight rebellions.

617
00:51:43.960 --> 00:51:49.280
So you had special troops, you
had chariot troops, you had bowman the

618
00:51:49.400 --> 00:51:53.920
artillery of the ancient world infantry.
Of course, you had very sophisticated implements

619
00:51:53.920 --> 00:51:59.880
in order to engage in siege warfare, sorre siege towers and things like that,

620
00:52:00.159 --> 00:52:02.679
battering ramps. You can see this
very nicely on assuring reliefs. So

621
00:52:02.719 --> 00:52:07.159
we have a lot of information on
how this all worked. It was definitely

622
00:52:07.199 --> 00:52:12.559
not a pacific thing. It was
very much based all on military power that

623
00:52:12.760 --> 00:52:17.440
was justified by the Assyrians, and
it was based on violence. But I

624
00:52:17.440 --> 00:52:22.920
think except perhaps for a few kings, and he especially Usherbandiba comes to my

625
00:52:22.960 --> 00:52:24.920
mind, is otherwise so well known
for his library. But I mean that

626
00:52:25.159 --> 00:52:28.840
was a man. I think you
had a certain sadist tendency. And he

627
00:52:28.880 --> 00:52:32.599
describes in his texts the torture inflicted
on his enemies at home. Usually those

628
00:52:32.599 --> 00:52:37.159
were high ranking politicians who were tortured
before the public. At an interview,

629
00:52:37.199 --> 00:52:42.760
he describes that with sort of somewhat
unpleasant glee. And I think he did

630
00:52:42.840 --> 00:52:46.920
enjoy it. And so we are
we have someone who really was very keen

631
00:52:47.039 --> 00:52:53.880
on, really enjoyed violence. So
highly problematic degree. Otherwise, violence was

632
00:52:53.880 --> 00:52:58.960
was really a tool and not something
I would say that the Assurian kings would

633
00:52:59.159 --> 00:53:04.960
would necessary supa excited about. Almost. Yeah, I think there's a couple

634
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:07.000
of things there. I mean,
first of all, it is worth again

635
00:53:07.039 --> 00:53:15.440
remembering that because of the dependence on
agricultural labor, you would never just for

636
00:53:15.559 --> 00:53:19.480
no purpose go out and kill a
thousand people. Those are a thousand people

637
00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:22.039
that you need to work the land, you know. And it kind of

638
00:53:22.039 --> 00:53:28.639
gets back again to this the ancient
problem or fascination in my case, of

639
00:53:29.159 --> 00:53:30.960
we don't have all the sources,
like we only have what they wrote down.

640
00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:37.320
In the fact that the Assyrians chose
to write down more of the violence

641
00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:40.480
because it was clearly a propaganda tool
that they were going to use as a

642
00:53:40.519 --> 00:53:45.679
means of control, that doesn't mean
that other civilizations weren't engaging in just about

643
00:53:45.719 --> 00:53:49.159
the same thing. I mean,
and you take the Romans. I mean,

644
00:53:50.199 --> 00:53:52.920
you know, after Spartacus has failed
rebellion, they're going to crucify thousands

645
00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:58.760
of slaves, and that's absolutely a
propaganda message. You are meant to look

646
00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:01.800
at that and look at the what
it would take to die on the cross

647
00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:06.079
and think, wow, I am
not going to step out of line,

648
00:54:06.679 --> 00:54:10.039
because these guys are not messing around. And that gets me to my you

649
00:54:10.079 --> 00:54:13.320
know, the other point that I
always want to make is that, you

650
00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:19.079
know, we have to remember the
way that people long ago looked at the

651
00:54:19.119 --> 00:54:22.840
world is not the same way that
we look at the world today. You

652
00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:25.400
know. I just I think about, you know, the modern United States,

653
00:54:25.400 --> 00:54:29.760
which is where I live, you
know, and our need to sort

654
00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:35.159
of be the good guy on the
world stage all the time. And if

655
00:54:35.280 --> 00:54:38.119
if we're doing something, you know, how can we justify this as being

656
00:54:38.159 --> 00:54:43.000
in the interests of liberty and democracy
and so on and so forth. The

657
00:54:43.039 --> 00:54:45.840
ancient Romans wouldn't have seen it that
way, you know. They have said,

658
00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:50.079
well, yeah, we conquered you
because we're stronger than you are,

659
00:54:50.199 --> 00:54:53.280
and that's the natural order of things. That's just simply how it is like

660
00:54:54.239 --> 00:55:00.320
they wouldn't have necessarily felt the need
to justify every action that they took.

661
00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:04.400
And so it's important to remember that, you know, when we judge people

662
00:55:04.400 --> 00:55:07.079
in the past, judging them based
on our values and beliefs today is a

663
00:55:07.119 --> 00:55:13.239
slippery slope because, as we mentioned
previously, this was several thousand years ago,

664
00:55:13.519 --> 00:55:16.440
and what are people several thousand years
in the future going to think about

665
00:55:16.519 --> 00:55:23.239
us? It might not be you
know, all rainbows. So we're getting

666
00:55:23.239 --> 00:55:25.960
close to time. But I want
to ask, and I'm sorry for another

667
00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:28.960
two part question, but I'm gonna
it's going to do it again. I

668
00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:30.800
want to ask a little bit about
a Syrious collapse, and I think this

669
00:55:30.880 --> 00:55:35.559
is a I'm not going to say
a straightforward answer, but you know,

670
00:55:35.599 --> 00:55:40.199
the Persia features prominently. But the
other question that I want to ask,

671
00:55:40.239 --> 00:55:47.559
because it's really important to me right
now, is the state of Assyrian history

672
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:57.679
and archaeological remains today. It's on
my mind because of the earthquake recently in

673
00:55:57.840 --> 00:56:02.480
Syria and in Turkey that that did
destroy a couple of sites, damaged a

674
00:56:02.519 --> 00:56:07.480
couple of sites, and then you
have tremendous unrest in the region today and

675
00:56:07.719 --> 00:56:14.039
various groups who, some of which
intentionally will destroy some of these sites.

676
00:56:14.119 --> 00:56:17.239
So I want to I was hoping
you could talk about a serious collapse,

677
00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:22.800
and then I guess I don't want
I don't know if collapse is the right

678
00:56:22.840 --> 00:56:29.880
word, but the peril of the
loss of what remains, and how important

679
00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:31.800
it is for us to make sure
that we say what we still have.

680
00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:38.800
Absolutely no, And you're right,
you can, of course compare the destruction

681
00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:44.360
of issuing cities that led to the
fall in collapse of the empire in the

682
00:56:44.440 --> 00:56:49.119
late seventh century BC, to the
second destruction if you wish, that occurred

683
00:56:49.159 --> 00:56:53.639
in recent years, especially under Isis
in the areas around most of the and

684
00:56:53.719 --> 00:56:58.400
so on. So let me start
with the question of the collapse. And

685
00:56:58.400 --> 00:57:01.800
I'm fact it's not so straight.
It's actually a very difficult, complicated question

686
00:57:02.440 --> 00:57:06.519
here. I think when we talk
about the collapse of this in empire,

687
00:57:07.159 --> 00:57:08.960
here we see a big difference to
Rome. I mean, no one can

688
00:57:09.039 --> 00:57:14.400
really put a time frame to the
collapse of Roman Empire as it really collapse.

689
00:57:14.440 --> 00:57:16.360
I mean, there still is a
Roman Empire of the German nation and

690
00:57:16.840 --> 00:57:22.679
in the eighteenth century eighty, so
it never essentially collapses, and and it's

691
00:57:22.760 --> 00:57:25.559
very hard to pinpoint this. It's
different in the case of Assyria. It's

692
00:57:25.679 --> 00:57:31.920
just within some twelve years or so
um that is Syria between six hundred and

693
00:57:31.920 --> 00:57:37.239
twenty two essentially and m and six
hundred and nine, that is Syria is

694
00:57:37.280 --> 00:57:42.000
really wiped out. And this is
really a striking thing because it is so

695
00:57:42.039 --> 00:57:46.039
fast. You have this massive empire
that would not the world, that would

696
00:57:46.079 --> 00:57:51.280
of course be incorrect, but really
large parts of Western Asia. For a

697
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:55.079
time, even Egypt and so on, seems invincible, and then suddenly it

698
00:57:55.199 --> 00:58:01.559
is being defeated, not only defeated, but really eliminated from from the stage

699
00:58:01.559 --> 00:58:06.400
of world history in its entirety.
So what brings this about. It's a

700
00:58:06.440 --> 00:58:10.440
complicated question. It's again a question
where you can also sort of argue is

701
00:58:10.480 --> 00:58:15.800
it for structural and systemic reasons or
is it a personal issue. So recently

702
00:58:15.800 --> 00:58:21.639
two theories have been advanced claiming it's
the former. The one theory is that

703
00:58:21.719 --> 00:58:25.239
it was climate change again and the
second theory is migration. I'm not really

704
00:58:25.239 --> 00:58:30.239
convinced that these are in this case
are the major forces behind the collapse of

705
00:58:30.280 --> 00:58:35.559
this an empire. There is indeed, apparently again greater degree of abridity.

706
00:58:36.039 --> 00:58:38.320
But that starts already in the late
eighth century, and that's of course the

707
00:58:38.320 --> 00:58:40.440
time, and this theory is actually
at the height of its power, so

708
00:58:40.480 --> 00:58:45.760
it can't really see why that then
would suddenly lead one hundred years later to

709
00:58:45.800 --> 00:58:50.800
the collapse the other thing, migration. So there's a scholars argued that the

710
00:58:50.920 --> 00:58:58.360
scisions, these these nomadic horsemen reaked
havoc in the Levant in the second half

711
00:58:58.360 --> 00:59:00.440
of the seventh century, and that
the major impact on the fall of Is.

712
00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:04.239
So we have the problem with that
is it's only mentioned in aroder Is.

713
00:59:04.320 --> 00:59:07.000
Essentially we know very little about it
elsewhere. And so again I feel

714
00:59:07.039 --> 00:59:10.599
like this isn't perhaps really the thing. So to me, it's a combination

715
00:59:10.719 --> 00:59:15.239
of factors. It's sort of the
perfect storm. On one hand, it's

716
00:59:15.239 --> 00:59:20.559
again so the crisis of the crown, the crisis of legitimacy. I mentioned

717
00:59:20.599 --> 00:59:25.159
this last great king of the Suryashobanipal. He dies in six thirty one and

718
00:59:25.320 --> 00:59:29.840
is followed by a very young son. This young son is essentially more or

719
00:59:29.880 --> 00:59:32.840
less a placing of the chief eunuch. The chief eunuch then becomes king of

720
00:59:34.199 --> 00:59:37.920
in his own right, which is
unheard of never before had a unuch who

721
00:59:37.960 --> 00:59:42.320
cannot have offspring being a serwing king, so that must have damaged the authority

722
00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:45.519
of this assering crown. The unuch
is eventually removed from power, but the

723
00:59:45.639 --> 00:59:52.840
last a Serwing king, then man
by the namasha Ishkon can no longer really

724
00:59:52.360 --> 00:59:58.840
stand the way of the tide that
now suddenly comes over a sury and essentially

725
00:59:58.840 --> 01:00:04.599
two powers I engaged in the destruction
of the Assyrian state. On one hand,

726
01:00:04.639 --> 01:00:08.079
it's Babylonia, the Babylonians with whom
the Assyrians had this love hate relationship.

727
01:00:08.159 --> 01:00:12.880
They were so keen on Babylonian culture, but they also wanted to rule

728
01:00:12.920 --> 01:00:17.159
Babylonia that often destroyed Barbylon. The
Bolonians, essentially by that time hated the

729
01:00:17.199 --> 01:00:22.079
Assyrians, and at some point in
the city of Org and then in Babylon,

730
01:00:22.440 --> 01:00:28.400
a man by the name Nabopolaza Rose
eventually became king in Barbylon, who

731
01:00:28.480 --> 01:00:31.559
had actually who came from from a
family that had worked for the Assyrians in

732
01:00:31.599 --> 01:00:36.599
Babylonias essentially as administrators in the city
of Org, so he knew the Assylians

733
01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:39.480
very well. He knew how the
empire worked, and the under great power

734
01:00:39.559 --> 01:00:45.199
engaged in the fall of the Assylian
Empire. That was the Meads in the

735
01:00:45.280 --> 01:00:52.159
Zagros Mountains in western Iran who made
an alliance with the Babylonians around six hundred

736
01:00:52.159 --> 01:00:58.840
and fifteen BC. They too,
essentially had sort of studied Assyria very well.

737
01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:05.079
They had actually been four into a
united kind of confederacy of tribes by

738
01:01:05.159 --> 01:01:09.159
the Assyrians who wanted to text them
at interest in bringing them together in a

739
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:16.039
way. So somewhat ironically, the
Assyrians had created two enemies that then knew

740
01:01:16.079 --> 01:01:22.599
them very well and were able just
within a few years to yeah to wipe

741
01:01:22.639 --> 01:01:27.159
out these Assyrian cities and wipe them
out entirely. That is what happened.

742
01:01:27.920 --> 01:01:30.320
By six hundred and nine. The
last stronghold of the Assyrians in the city

743
01:01:30.320 --> 01:01:36.559
of Haaran. Further to the west
was Taitan. The Egyptians actually engaged in

744
01:01:36.599 --> 01:01:38.880
these wars as well. It was
really kind of an early World war on

745
01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:44.199
the side of the Assyrians, apparently
worried that then after the Assurians, the

746
01:01:44.239 --> 01:01:47.519
Babylonians would become an even greater threat
to themselves. They didn't prevail. The

747
01:01:47.559 --> 01:01:52.639
Assyria was gone and was then followed
first by the near Babylonian and then shortly

748
01:01:52.719 --> 01:01:57.280
seventy years after US so by the
Persian empires, who in many regards,

749
01:01:57.280 --> 01:01:59.159
and we don't have the time to
talk about it, yea, but I

750
01:01:59.199 --> 01:02:02.800
would like to to point this at
least out of course, followed the Assyrians,

751
01:02:02.800 --> 01:02:08.639
who used the imperial toolkit the Assyrians
had prepared for them and formed then

752
01:02:08.679 --> 01:02:13.119
on the idea of empire and the
practice of empire was in the world,

753
01:02:13.119 --> 01:02:15.760
and in the book, I do
argue that in a way it is something

754
01:02:15.800 --> 01:02:21.079
that goes back very much to the
Assyrian model. So Assyria as the blueprint

755
01:02:21.119 --> 01:02:23.400
of empire for all those later imperial
states, some of them much bigger.

756
01:02:23.519 --> 01:02:29.559
Persian Empire was much bigger than Assyria, but basically working very much in the

757
01:02:29.599 --> 01:02:32.880
same way, even emulating in the
case of the Persians Assyrian and not Babylonian

758
01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:37.480
art, which is quite remarkable,
and so on and so forth. So

759
01:02:37.519 --> 01:02:43.199
Assyrian was then remembered essentially only through
the Bible and the classical historians Diadors,

760
01:02:43.320 --> 01:02:47.400
Heroditus and so on, Mode Outdoors
and Arouditus until in the eighteenth In the

761
01:02:47.599 --> 01:02:53.679
nineteenth century AD, British and French
and eventually also other excavators, adventurers initially

762
01:02:53.719 --> 01:02:59.920
and not really proper archeologists, began
to excavate these Assyrian cities, which led

763
01:03:00.039 --> 01:03:04.360
to the situation that the Assyrians eventually
spoke again in their own languages Canai formed.

764
01:03:04.360 --> 01:03:08.880
The writing system they used was deciphered. Monumental inscriptions written by Syrian kings

765
01:03:08.920 --> 01:03:15.320
became legible again, as Asho Bandipad's
wonderful library of thirty thousand tablets and fragments

766
01:03:15.480 --> 01:03:20.079
on the British Museum, still studied, still not fully explored, but of

767
01:03:20.119 --> 01:03:24.119
course gave us an unbelievable insight into
intellectual and religious culture and ancient the Syria.

768
01:03:24.199 --> 01:03:28.199
So we didn't even touch upon this, but it would really be something

769
01:03:28.199 --> 01:03:32.800
to talk about also at great length. But I think you also see from

770
01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:35.880
what I'm saying here right now,
this was very much of this. We

771
01:03:37.559 --> 01:03:40.280
rediscovery of a Siria was very much
a Western project. It was very much

772
01:03:40.320 --> 01:03:46.360
the Brits, the French, later
the Germans, the Americans who who excavated

773
01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:51.159
in Assyria, and not so much
actually any locals, not so much Iraqis.

774
01:03:52.159 --> 01:03:59.199
When Ivraq became a nation state,
Assyria and Babylonia were often used by

775
01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:06.599
by ivak Hula's as models for an
identity that transcended religious and ethnic divisions.

776
01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:11.079
Saddam was saying, among others,
did this, and of course Saddam was

777
01:04:11.119 --> 01:04:16.199
a bootle dictator who killed scores of
people. And so what then happened after

778
01:04:16.239 --> 01:04:24.639
the fall of the Saddama regime in
two thousand and three was that suddenly,

779
01:04:24.679 --> 01:04:29.840
now the Iraqis found themselves confronted with
this ancient civilization, and the question was

780
01:04:29.880 --> 01:04:31.639
what to do with it. They
knew before that, I mean, the

781
01:04:31.639 --> 01:04:35.960
West had sor indorsed there's something belonging
to itself. Sadam had indorsed it.

782
01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:42.719
And there were many people in Iraq
still very proud of these ancient sites and

783
01:04:42.840 --> 01:04:49.280
the ancient history of the country.
But there were also radical Islam Islamicist groups

784
01:04:49.320 --> 01:04:53.679
that wanted to get rid of this
tradition because they saw it on one hand

785
01:04:53.719 --> 01:04:57.039
as something the West was infatuated with, and of course the West was to

786
01:04:57.079 --> 01:04:59.920
be punished. And on the other
hand, they realized this was something that

787
01:05:00.880 --> 01:05:05.679
served as yeah welling ground for those
who wanted to strengthen the Iraqi nation state.

788
01:05:05.800 --> 01:05:10.440
The same thing in Syria, of
course, and those groups, especially

789
01:05:10.440 --> 01:05:13.920
isis at some point, of course, didn't want these nations states. They

790
01:05:13.960 --> 01:05:18.119
wanted an Islamic caliphate that would would
the whole Islamic world, and wanted to

791
01:05:18.159 --> 01:05:21.800
get rid of states like Iraq,
Syria, etc. Etc. So this

792
01:05:21.920 --> 01:05:28.679
then explains why in twenty fifteen,
after ISIS had in two thy fourteen had

793
01:05:28.719 --> 01:05:34.519
taken control of the region around Mosul, why then suddenly members of the group

794
01:05:34.679 --> 01:05:40.920
engaged in an orgy of destruction of
these Assyrian wouins. Seems kind of paradox.

795
01:05:40.960 --> 01:05:45.000
They destroy essentially ruins, but that's
what they did. Whatever was left

796
01:05:45.079 --> 01:05:49.760
on the ground, you would still
have, for example, reliefs from the

797
01:05:49.800 --> 01:05:54.760
throne room of these Surian kings and
a croub standing up at an any way

798
01:05:56.079 --> 01:06:00.400
being visible. There there was the
museum and Mosol that showcased Syrian art.

799
01:06:00.400 --> 01:06:02.800
There was the Palace of Ashnat,
who were the second in the city of

800
01:06:02.880 --> 01:06:09.119
Kla not far away from Moso.
So all those sites, all these museums

801
01:06:09.559 --> 01:06:15.119
were deliberately targeted by ISIS and were
essentially destroyed, apart from also being looted.

802
01:06:15.159 --> 01:06:20.719
Because while the destruction of those sites
has been highlighted in Western media,

803
01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:25.519
there was also a lot of organized
looting and a lot of stuff was actually

804
01:06:25.599 --> 01:06:30.320
sold on the antiquities market. Now, in twenty seventeen, Moso was liberated

805
01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:36.079
by Ivaqi and US forces and since
then Isis is sort of dormant again.

806
01:06:36.239 --> 01:06:40.519
I mean, I hope it's more
than that, but I'm afraid maybe they'll

807
01:06:40.559 --> 01:06:43.320
come back at some point in some
form. But for the time being,

808
01:06:43.360 --> 01:06:45.960
and that's sort of the good news. For the time being, archaeological work

809
01:06:46.039 --> 01:06:51.599
in the region has actually began again. So there are now archaeological excavation not

810
01:06:51.679 --> 01:06:56.119
only in Kurdistan so farther away from
the great sides of his area, but

811
01:06:56.199 --> 01:07:02.480
also actually again at nineve especially at
Nineway, where both German, Italian and

812
01:07:02.639 --> 01:07:10.360
American archaeologists have engaged in archaeological excavations
again. And here you have this paradox

813
01:07:10.440 --> 01:07:15.960
of archaeological work. It always is
facilitated by destruction. So Isis destroyed not

814
01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:20.960
only these ancient Desyrian ruins, but
also a large mosque on top of amount

815
01:07:21.679 --> 01:07:29.440
where where Dessilian Palace lay hidden.
The amount dedicated to the prophet Jonah,

816
01:07:29.480 --> 01:07:33.199
who according to the Bible and the
Kuran, had died at Ninevay. And

817
01:07:33.280 --> 01:07:38.760
the destruction of this mosque enabled for
example, Germany varchi archaeologists in recent years

818
01:07:38.920 --> 01:07:44.400
for the first time actually excavate there, so we know actually know something about

819
01:07:44.480 --> 01:07:47.559
the palace underneath that mosque for the
first time because the mosque was destroyed.

820
01:07:47.599 --> 01:07:54.559
So you see how political archaeology is, how contingent on all sorts of strange

821
01:07:54.599 --> 01:07:58.760
things it is. But I mean
it gives me also some hope that things

822
01:07:58.880 --> 01:08:01.199
is going on there. Many any
you pointed out, many really exciting questions

823
01:08:01.280 --> 01:08:05.119
about Assiya still to be answered,
Certainly much more to be found. One

824
01:08:05.119 --> 01:08:10.000
of the great things about the engineer
used is that a little bit different from

825
01:08:10.039 --> 01:08:14.400
Greek and Greece and Rome, we
really can expect new finds that change our

826
01:08:14.400 --> 01:08:18.800
pictures so much. Again, because
caneve on tablets essentially indestructible and they survive

827
01:08:18.920 --> 01:08:23.800
in the ground, we will have
more of those, and then many of

828
01:08:23.800 --> 01:08:28.079
the questions I wasn't able to answer
today maybe answerable in the future. I

829
01:08:28.079 --> 01:08:31.319
think it's exciting. I think that
it's it's exciting to think about the answers

830
01:08:31.359 --> 01:08:36.520
that we might get about the ancient
world someday. But it's always worth pointing

831
01:08:36.560 --> 01:08:40.239
out. I try to point out
to listeners as often as I can that

832
01:08:40.640 --> 01:08:43.720
you know, as members of the
human race, you know, we're all

833
01:08:43.800 --> 01:08:48.920
responsible for making sure that our past
is preserved in some way, and made

834
01:08:48.920 --> 01:08:54.079
me to make sure that we oppose
those who, for whatever reason, would

835
01:08:54.399 --> 01:08:59.319
like to see it destroyed, because
with ancient sources, once they're gone,

836
01:09:00.520 --> 01:09:03.359
they don't come back, at least
potentially. But all right, so,

837
01:09:03.399 --> 01:09:06.800
as you mentioned, we touched this
is the tip of the iceberg, folks,

838
01:09:08.159 --> 01:09:14.319
we touched on a small fraction of
the fantastic book. You barely referenced

839
01:09:15.279 --> 01:09:18.039
the references to Assyria and the Bible. They're really interesting. They're in the

840
01:09:18.079 --> 01:09:25.880
book, and there's a lot of
other fascinating cultural historical aspects that we didn't

841
01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:30.479
get to. So I would highly
recommend picking it up. But I did

842
01:09:30.479 --> 01:09:32.640
want to thank you again, first
for coming on, but second just for

843
01:09:33.279 --> 01:09:39.039
taking the time to do the research
and to write the book, because without

844
01:09:39.279 --> 01:09:45.840
new historiography, we tend to lose
interest in some of these older aspects of

845
01:09:45.920 --> 01:09:53.520
history that I think are absolutely essential
to understanding our cultural past. So thank

846
01:09:53.560 --> 01:09:58.600
you for writing the book. I
think, yeah, I'm for giving a

847
01:09:58.680 --> 01:10:00.640
chance to talk about it and about
the Syrian General was that was great