A few weeks ago, Israel had a parliamentary election, and once more, the wrong side came out on top. Benjamin Netanyahu had already shown himself to be a poor and even dangerous leader, seriously damaging the prospects for peace with the Palestinians by settlement expansion in the West Bank in defiance of world opinion and causing great suffering in Gaza, not only by getting into an avoidable war and using disproportionate force, but also by keeping a harsh blockade up that has kept Gazans in great poverty. He added further a black mark to his name by going to give a politically motivated speech to the US Congress a few weeks before the election at the behest of Republican leaders in a major violation of diplomatic protocol, doing significant harm to US-Israeli relations. Finally he clinched his negative reputation by sucking up to far right Israeli voters in the last days before the election, repudiating his past (admittedly lukewarm and superficial) support for a two state solution and making a blatantly racist attack on Israeli Arabs, urging right wing Israelis to get out and vote because the Arabs were voting "in droves" (as some pointed out, one has to wonder what Netanyahu's reaction would be if some right wing politician in Europe urged their followers to the polls with a warning that "Jews are voting in droves"). Yet this turn to the far right allowed him and his Likud party to win votes away from other right wing parties, giving them the largest share of seats and therefore a victory over the moderate, pro-peace Zionist Union. Even though the right did not actually win more votes than in past elections, they will once again form the government, dimming prospects for any kind of negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians in the next few years. While I still feel that many around the world focus too much on Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and far too little on worse occupations such as China's in Tibet, it's hard not to feel that the US should stop defending Israel in global institutions and that Netanyahu and those who voted for him will deserve most of the rough ride Israel will get internationally over the next few years. The rest of the Israeli populace (many of whom do strongly support peace) don't, but hopefully they can dump Netanyahu before the damage becomes irretrievable.
Here in Asia, a major news item was the death of Lee Kwan Yew, the former long-time leader of Singapore, at the age of 91. He was eulogized by world leaders, including US President Barack Obama (who as a child lived for several years in Indonesia, not too far from Lee's then newly established nation), and Singapore had a big funeral for him. It is certainly true that he was a capable leader and was largely responsible for Singapore's economic success. However, as a piece in the New York Times observed, his record was decidedly mixed. He was essentially an authoritarian ruler and his Singapore was a faux democracy; in fact, despite some improvement in the years since Lee retired as prime minister, it is still far from a true democracy with genuine freedom of speech. Even the fact that his son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the current long-time prime minister is revealing: in this respect, Singapore is not much different from places like martial law Taiwan (where Chiang Kai-shek was succeeded by his son Chiang Ching-kuo) or even North Korea. True, between the two Lees Goh Chok Tong served as prime minister for some time, but even at the time it was commonly known that he was just holding the position until the younger Lee was fully ready to take over - and after all, a similar situation occurred in Taiwan, where while the younger Chiang directly followed his father as KMT party leader, Yan Chia-kan served for a few years as president, though as even more of a figurehead than Goh was in Singapore. More to the point, Lee repressed dissent and ensured his party remained in complete control. Sure, his methods, which his successors have mostly continued, were more mild than those of most other dictators, but they were still blatant. Foreign newspapers and magazines that included articles critical of Singapore had their circulation in the city-state severely cut. Critics of the government were sued in court. When a foreign academic wrote an article talking about an unnamed Southeast Asian state using a "compliant judiciary" to control dissent, the Singapore government sued him in their courts - and (surprise!) won. Residents of public housing estates (a large percentage of Singaporeans) were told that decisions about allocations of funds for repairs and improvements would hinge in part on how high a percentage of the vote the ruling PAP had received at each estate in the latest election. It is no wonder that Lee was admired as a model for rulers like Xi Jinping in China, not exactly something to be proud of, though no doubt Lee, with his paternalistic, autocratic mindset and his "Asian values" nonsense, thought otherwise.
On the other side of Asia, the civil war in Yemen has reached a new level, with Saudi Arabia using air power against those fighting the internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has been forced to flee the country. In addition to the Houthi rebels (who are Shiite, unlike most of the remaining populace, which is Sunni) who forced Hadi out of the capital Sanaa, forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh are helping the rebels against the government in what is clearly a marriage of convenience, as Saleh fought the Houthi for years when he was in power. Saleh himself is bad news, having previously ruled the country for decades, only surrendering power in 2012 under extremely strong pressure from the US, the Saudis, and massive domestic protests. Before he finally gave in, he had peaceful protestors gunned down, reneged several times on tentative agreements for a political transition, and allowed the country to deteriorate into chaos, with he himself eventually being forced to fly to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment after nearly being killed by a bomb attack on his presidential compound (indeed, it is probably that this injury and the several months he had to spend abroad for treatment helped force him to final give in to pressure to step down). It is clear that even now he dreams of regaining power, regardless of the cost to the people of Yemen. Aside from Saleh, the Houthis, and forces loyal to Hadi, there is also Yemen's powerful al-Qaeda branch as well as a secessionist movement in what was once the separate country of South Yemen. All in all, Yemen is now almost as much of a mess as Syria, and the conflict threatens to further inflame that part of the world.
Lastly, the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are still hitting snags, despite the supposed deadline for an agreement today. Of course any decent agreement will at least make it very difficult for Iran to get nuclear weapons, though the trick is how to do that while allowing them to claim that they did not give up their right to nuclear power, and how to lift (or, as the West has proposed, suspend) sanctions to provide relief to the Iranian people and to strengthen moderate Iranian president Rouhani against hardliners. Of course we know that people like Netanyahu and right-wingers in the US claim the prospective agreement will give away too much to Iran, but they haven't proposed any reasonable alternatives. An example of how laughable (in a scary way) the idea of Ted Cruz as president is seen in the bill that he recently introduced in the Senate to scuttle negotiations, which as his latest newsletter explains, re-imposes previously suspended sanctions, adds new ones, and: "Gives Iran a clear path towards their removal: dismantling their nuclear program in its entirety; removing all centrifuges, relinquishing enriched uranium, and ceasing all research and development of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program." In other words, rather than a compromise solution, he wants a complete surrender on the part of Iran. Whether he is stupid enough to think that they would ever capitulate so completely or it is just that he badly wants another war in the Middle East (as that would be the only way left to prevent an Iranian drive for the bomb if he, Netanyahu and their allies force the Iranians to choose between total surrender and abandoning negotiations entirely) is not clear. Of course, this doesn't mean the West should give Iran everything it wants, either. After all this is a regime which not only suppresses political dissent, it is even trying to force its women to have babies by restricting access to contraceptives, banning sterilization and making it harder for women without children to get jobs. But a negotiated solution means both sides have to compromise, and any agreement that makes it harder for Iran to get nuclear weapons is better than abandoning negotiations entirely, which would almost certainly mean Iran getting the bomb or its opponents starting a war to stop it.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
What Is the Capital of Assyria?
In recent weeks the group variously known as ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State or Daesh has perpetrated some of the worst crimes of its short but sordid career by destroying ancient artifacts in a museum in Mosul and ancient ruins in Nimrud and Hatra. However, rather than dwell too much on the depressing destruction wrought by ISIL, I’d prefer to talk a bit about some of the region’s history.
If you’ve seen the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and if you haven’t, you should), you may recognize the title of this essay as the question from the bridge keeper that tripped up Sir Robin (the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot) when he attempted to cross the Bridge of Death. But unlike Sir Robin (and, it is probably safe to say, most other people), I actually knew the answer to the question the first time I watched the movie – or at least I knew a couple of possible answers to the question. In the many centuries when Assyria was a powerful independent state, it had several capitals. The two that I had long been familiar with and so leapt to mind when I heard the bridge keeper’s question were Assur (also spelled Ashur) and Nineveh; a third, Nimrud, was recently in the news for tragic reasons due to the senseless destruction visited on it by ISIL, and there was at least one other significant one. To be sure, the name Assyria was used for various political entities long after the destruction of the ancient Assyrian Empire (the name is still used of an ethnic group in the region), and without looking it up I have no idea what their capitals were. But it is ancient Assyria and its capitals that have the most historical prominence.
Ashur was the center of the Assyrian kingdom that first appeared in the 3nd millennium BCE. Though kings occasionally moved the capital away temporarily in later centuries, Ashur was the capital of Assyria for most of its history, and remained the country’s most important religious center and burial site for most of Assyria’s kings even when the capital was moved away permanently at the peak of Assyrian power. The Assyrians were a Semitic people, like many other ancient peoples of West Asia, such as the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Hebrews and the Arabs. The Assyrian kingdom waxed and waned in power many times over its long existence, though each successive peak was higher than the last. Assyria first appeared in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE, though little is known of its early history. It first became a regional power in the period around 2000 BCE to 1800 BCE (the so-called Old Assyrian Empire), not long before Hammurabi reigned in Babylon, and in the same era Assyrian merchants had a trading settlement in central Anatolia from which they traded with local kingdoms such as that of the Hittites. Historians have learned a great deal about the ancient Middle East from the documents they left behind (some of which I saw last month in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums). After several centuries of decline, Assur was once again the center of a powerful Assyrian kingdom from the 14th to the 11th century BCE (the Middle Assyrian Empire).
Assyria's final and greatest period of strength began around 900 BCE with the rise of what later historians have sometimes called the Neo-Assyrian Empire. One of the important early kings of this era, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), was the one who moved the capital from Ashur to the city of Kalhu (called Calah in the Bible), which the Arabs in later centuries gave the name Nimrud. Several of my books have pictures of some of the monuments, sculptures and reliefs installed there by Ashurnasirpal II and his successors, much of which presumably have now been destroyed by ISIL, who are so idiotic that they try to compare their destruction of the ancient heritage of humanity with Muhammad's destruction of idols in Mecca, even though in the latter case, for better or for worse, he was trying to end active worship of pagan gods by destroying objects that were contemporary and so at the time had no particular historical value, while the things ISIL is destroying are not worshiped by anyone now but have immense historical value. Not to mention the fact that you'd think they'd have better things to do than engaging wanton destruction, seeing as they are in a war that they currently seem to be losing. But I digress....
Kalhu (or Nimrud) remained the Assyrian capital for over 150 years, and major Assyrian kings like Shalmaneser II and Tiglath-pileser III built palaces there (indeed, the later king Esarhaddon also built a palace there, even though by then the capital had been moved), though as noted earlier kings from Ashurnasirpal II on also continued to build and be buried at Assur. Sargon II (721 - 705 BCE) moved the capital to a new city he built called Dur-Sharrukin (meaning Sargon's Fortress). This site, now called Khorsabad, has reportedly also been damaged or destroyed by ISIL. Dur-Sharrukun was only the capital for the reign of Sargon II, as after his death his son Sennacherib moved it to what is probably the most well-known of Assyria's capitals, Nineveh.
Nineveh was already an old city when it became Assyria's capital, but under Sennacherib and his successors Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal it became the largest city in the world at that time and the center of the biggest empire so far in history. In the 7th century BCE Assyria reached the height of its power, ruling or dominating not only all of Mesopotamia but also Syria, Cilicia (the southeast corner of Anatolia), Palestine and even briefly the delta region of Egypt. The Assyrian Empire and its kings have a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty which is not entirely undeserved. Of course, most ancient empires were founded on harsh rule of their subjects, so the Assyrians were hardly unique in this regard. But their own reliefs often make a particular point of showing such things as the impaling or torture of defeated enemies, and they made frequent use of mass deportations of conquered peoples (most notoriously the so-called "ten tribes" of the kingdom of Israel, but they were just one of many groups that was treated this way), an effective but cruel method of control. On the other hand, they also created a highly efficient governmental structure. The efficient Assyrian mail system would later be adopted by the Persians, and later empires also made use of other elements of the Assyrian empire's administrative system. Ashurbanipal also created the greatest library that the world had yet seen, collecting many thousands of texts, including more than 10,000 cuneiform tablets, from all over the empire and covering over two millenia of Mesopotamian history back to the days of Sumer and Akkad (Ashurbanipal himself was supposedly able to read Sumerian and Akkadian, even though by that time Assyrians spoke their own dialect of Aramaic). Indeed, much of what we know of Mesopotamian history comes from the texts recovered in modern times from Ashurbanipal's library.
But the harshness of Assyrian rule eventually caused the empire's subject peoples and neighbors to rebel and attack it. A coalition of peoples led by the Babylonians under their new Chaldean ruler Nabopolassar and the Iranian Medes eventually defeated Ashurbanipal's successors, sacking Ashur in 614 BCE and destroying Ninevah and Kalhu in 612 BCE, bringing the Assyrian Empire to a final, crushing end. But despite the destruction wrought by the victors (who despite a brief period of glory under rulers such as Nabopolassar's son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, would be conquered by the Persians under Cyrus a few decades later), substantial ruins remained, even aside from artifacts hauled away by later rulers such as the lamassu (winged bull men) we saw in the museum in Istanbul. But now thanks to ISIL, much that had survived for thousands of years, in Nineveh as well as Kalhu and Dur-Sharrukun, has now been destroyed, as have later ruins such as the well-preserved Seleucid-Parthian city of Hatra. We can only hope that ISIL is defeated before they do any more damage to our common heritage.
If you’ve seen the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and if you haven’t, you should), you may recognize the title of this essay as the question from the bridge keeper that tripped up Sir Robin (the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot) when he attempted to cross the Bridge of Death. But unlike Sir Robin (and, it is probably safe to say, most other people), I actually knew the answer to the question the first time I watched the movie – or at least I knew a couple of possible answers to the question. In the many centuries when Assyria was a powerful independent state, it had several capitals. The two that I had long been familiar with and so leapt to mind when I heard the bridge keeper’s question were Assur (also spelled Ashur) and Nineveh; a third, Nimrud, was recently in the news for tragic reasons due to the senseless destruction visited on it by ISIL, and there was at least one other significant one. To be sure, the name Assyria was used for various political entities long after the destruction of the ancient Assyrian Empire (the name is still used of an ethnic group in the region), and without looking it up I have no idea what their capitals were. But it is ancient Assyria and its capitals that have the most historical prominence.
Ashur was the center of the Assyrian kingdom that first appeared in the 3nd millennium BCE. Though kings occasionally moved the capital away temporarily in later centuries, Ashur was the capital of Assyria for most of its history, and remained the country’s most important religious center and burial site for most of Assyria’s kings even when the capital was moved away permanently at the peak of Assyrian power. The Assyrians were a Semitic people, like many other ancient peoples of West Asia, such as the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Hebrews and the Arabs. The Assyrian kingdom waxed and waned in power many times over its long existence, though each successive peak was higher than the last. Assyria first appeared in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE, though little is known of its early history. It first became a regional power in the period around 2000 BCE to 1800 BCE (the so-called Old Assyrian Empire), not long before Hammurabi reigned in Babylon, and in the same era Assyrian merchants had a trading settlement in central Anatolia from which they traded with local kingdoms such as that of the Hittites. Historians have learned a great deal about the ancient Middle East from the documents they left behind (some of which I saw last month in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums). After several centuries of decline, Assur was once again the center of a powerful Assyrian kingdom from the 14th to the 11th century BCE (the Middle Assyrian Empire).
Assyria's final and greatest period of strength began around 900 BCE with the rise of what later historians have sometimes called the Neo-Assyrian Empire. One of the important early kings of this era, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), was the one who moved the capital from Ashur to the city of Kalhu (called Calah in the Bible), which the Arabs in later centuries gave the name Nimrud. Several of my books have pictures of some of the monuments, sculptures and reliefs installed there by Ashurnasirpal II and his successors, much of which presumably have now been destroyed by ISIL, who are so idiotic that they try to compare their destruction of the ancient heritage of humanity with Muhammad's destruction of idols in Mecca, even though in the latter case, for better or for worse, he was trying to end active worship of pagan gods by destroying objects that were contemporary and so at the time had no particular historical value, while the things ISIL is destroying are not worshiped by anyone now but have immense historical value. Not to mention the fact that you'd think they'd have better things to do than engaging wanton destruction, seeing as they are in a war that they currently seem to be losing. But I digress....
Kalhu (or Nimrud) remained the Assyrian capital for over 150 years, and major Assyrian kings like Shalmaneser II and Tiglath-pileser III built palaces there (indeed, the later king Esarhaddon also built a palace there, even though by then the capital had been moved), though as noted earlier kings from Ashurnasirpal II on also continued to build and be buried at Assur. Sargon II (721 - 705 BCE) moved the capital to a new city he built called Dur-Sharrukin (meaning Sargon's Fortress). This site, now called Khorsabad, has reportedly also been damaged or destroyed by ISIL. Dur-Sharrukun was only the capital for the reign of Sargon II, as after his death his son Sennacherib moved it to what is probably the most well-known of Assyria's capitals, Nineveh.
Nineveh was already an old city when it became Assyria's capital, but under Sennacherib and his successors Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal it became the largest city in the world at that time and the center of the biggest empire so far in history. In the 7th century BCE Assyria reached the height of its power, ruling or dominating not only all of Mesopotamia but also Syria, Cilicia (the southeast corner of Anatolia), Palestine and even briefly the delta region of Egypt. The Assyrian Empire and its kings have a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty which is not entirely undeserved. Of course, most ancient empires were founded on harsh rule of their subjects, so the Assyrians were hardly unique in this regard. But their own reliefs often make a particular point of showing such things as the impaling or torture of defeated enemies, and they made frequent use of mass deportations of conquered peoples (most notoriously the so-called "ten tribes" of the kingdom of Israel, but they were just one of many groups that was treated this way), an effective but cruel method of control. On the other hand, they also created a highly efficient governmental structure. The efficient Assyrian mail system would later be adopted by the Persians, and later empires also made use of other elements of the Assyrian empire's administrative system. Ashurbanipal also created the greatest library that the world had yet seen, collecting many thousands of texts, including more than 10,000 cuneiform tablets, from all over the empire and covering over two millenia of Mesopotamian history back to the days of Sumer and Akkad (Ashurbanipal himself was supposedly able to read Sumerian and Akkadian, even though by that time Assyrians spoke their own dialect of Aramaic). Indeed, much of what we know of Mesopotamian history comes from the texts recovered in modern times from Ashurbanipal's library.
But the harshness of Assyrian rule eventually caused the empire's subject peoples and neighbors to rebel and attack it. A coalition of peoples led by the Babylonians under their new Chaldean ruler Nabopolassar and the Iranian Medes eventually defeated Ashurbanipal's successors, sacking Ashur in 614 BCE and destroying Ninevah and Kalhu in 612 BCE, bringing the Assyrian Empire to a final, crushing end. But despite the destruction wrought by the victors (who despite a brief period of glory under rulers such as Nabopolassar's son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, would be conquered by the Persians under Cyrus a few decades later), substantial ruins remained, even aside from artifacts hauled away by later rulers such as the lamassu (winged bull men) we saw in the museum in Istanbul. But now thanks to ISIL, much that had survived for thousands of years, in Nineveh as well as Kalhu and Dur-Sharrukun, has now been destroyed, as have later ruins such as the well-preserved Seleucid-Parthian city of Hatra. We can only hope that ISIL is defeated before they do any more damage to our common heritage.
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