The World

The Nubian Pharaohs and Great Kings of Ashur: House Alara versus House Tiglath-Pileser

THREE QUEENS: JEZEBEL, SEMIRAMIS AND ATHALIAH

In 853 BC, at Qarqar in northern Syria, the kings of Israel and ten other kingdoms prepared to fight the most powerful monarch of his day, Shalmaneser III of Assyria, who was advancing to destroy them.

Ashur was an old city founded around 2600, home of the god Ashur, worshipped in his ziggurat tower and temple, where Assyrian kings were crowned. For a long time, Assyria was just a minor city state in a region dominated by Akkad and Babylon, but around 1300 its kings, descended from the semi-mythical Adasi, started to conquer northern Iraq. After its expansion had been checked by Hatti and Babylon, Assyria – Assurayu in Assyrian (a dialect of Akkadian) – exploited the predations of the Sea Peoples to shatter both powers: Shalmaneser routed the king of Hatti, whose empire was fatally undermined by the attacks of Kassite nomads; Hattusa was abandoned. The Assyrian king captured the Babylonian king, on whom he ‘trod with my feet upon his lordly neck as a footstool’, and then struck at the kingdom of Elam (Iran), invading Arabia, seizing entrepôts in Dilmun (Bahrain) and Meluhha (India), calling himself King of the Upper and Lower Seas and King of Kings. After seizing power in 1114, Tiglath-Pileser I, tempted by the riches of Canaan, plundered the kingdoms of Damascus and Tyre, Sidon and Beirut, celebrating, he claimed, by harpooning a ‘seahorse’ – surely a whale – in the Mediterranean. When Assyria was crippled by the strife among his heirs, a small people in southern Canaan took the opportunity to expand their own kingdom.

Around 1000, the Israelites were united under elected kings, first Saul and then David, a warlord who made his name fighting the Philistine tribes of the coast. David, whose existence as the founder of a kingdom called the House of David is confirmed by a stele found at Tel Dan, chose a small Canaanite stronghold and shrine as his capital: Jerusalem. On Mount Moriah, David’s son Solomon built a temple to the one god idiosyncratically worshipped by the Israelites, who disdained Baal and the Canaanite pantheon of gods. There is no evidence for Solomon’s existence except the Bible,^* but there is plenty of evidence for the Jewish Temple that existed soon afterwards. The united Israelite kingdom quickly broke up: the House of David ruled the southern part, Judah – the origin of the word Jew – based around the richly endowed Jerusalem Temple that was raided by one of the Libyan pharaohs of Egypt, who mentioned it in his inscriptions. The northern half of Canaan was ruled by a larger, more formidable kingdom, Israel, built up by a general, Omri, who seized the throne, founded a new capital, Samaria, where the ivory artefacts of his splendid palace have been found, and made it a regional power, building his own temple, conquering Moab across the Jordan and marrying his son Ahab to a princess of Sidon: Jezebel.

Israel was close to the Canani^* and their rich coastal city states, like Tyre, Byblos and Acre (Lebanon/Israel), traders in purple dye, cedarwood, carved ivory and ebony (imported from Africa) and glass artefacts, united together at this time under a priest-king Ithobaal of Sidon, Jezebel’s father. Worshipping Baal, Astarte and other gods, the Canani – also known as the Phoenicians – voyaging in ships powered by rows of enslaved oarsmen, were already founding colonies in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain (Cadiz), trading and seeking new sources of iron, tin and silver, even passing into the Atlantic to found Mogador in Morocco. In the process, they spread their written language, an alphabet of 22 consonants, just at the time the Tyrians founded their New City, Qart Hadasht – Carthage (Tunisia). Assyrian kings furnished their palaces with Canaanite ivories; Omri’s palace in Samaria was filled with the Canani’s ivory carvings and treasures.

The marriage of Ahab to Jezebel linked Omri’s family to this sophisticated Eurasian network, very far from the puritanical priests of remote Jerusalem. Many of the achievements assigned by the Bible to Solomon may describe Omri, who built the port-fortress at Tel Kheleifah on the Red Sea between Elath and Aqaba, to trade spices and ivory, via the kingdom of Sheba (Yemen/Eritrea), with Africa, Arabia and India. But when Omri died in 873, Ahab and Jezebel faced an imminent threat: Assyria was back.

Shalmaneser III, portrayed on his steles gripping a royal mace and wearing the crown, robes and braided long beard of an Assyrian monarch, blessed by his god Ashur, reconquered Iraq, attacked into Persia – boasting that he received the tribute of the Paruwash (the first mention of the Persians) – then struck westwards, demanding the tribute of Israelites and Canani.

Ahab of Israel and Hadanezer of Aram-Damascus refused and massed their armies, joined by the 1,000 cameleers of King Gindibu of the Arabs, their first appearance in history, and the first recorded use of camels in battle.^*

Shalmaneser marched south. Jews and Arabs, Aramaeans and Phoenicians drew their swords.

TIGLATH-PILESER AND FAMILY: THE WORLD -CONQUERING ASSYRIANS

Shalmaneser, fielding 100,000 men that day, defeated the Israelite–Aramaean–Arab alliance, killing 14,000 of them, but a rebellion called him home. As soon as he was gone, the allies fell out among themselves: Ahab returned to his alliance with his compatriots in Jerusalem, marrying his daughter Athaliah to its heir. But he was killed by Hadanezer. Jezebel oversaw the succession of her family in Jerusalem and Samaria, but in 825, ‘Jehu of the House of Omri’ – as the Assyrians called him – assassinated both kings and then trapped Queen Mother Jezebel in her Samarian palace, where she faced down the rebels dressed in her royal jewels and regalia, only for three court eunuchs, suborned by the rebels, to toss her out of the window. Jehu trampled the queen with his horse, her body torn apart by dogs – and paid tribute to Shalmaneser.

The sole survivor of this family massacre was Queen Mother Athaliah of Judah who seized power in Jerusalem and ruled in her own right – that rare phenomenon, a queen regnant. But Athaliah was – like her mother Jezebel – a homicidal megalomaniac who slaughtered the royal family to retain power. Only one Davidic prince was hidden from her killers. Once his survival was known, the courtiers assassinated Athaliah. Israel was an Assyrian vassal but tiny Judah survived as Assyria itself faltered.^*

In 754 Urartu, a mountain kingdom famed for its military ferocity and bronze craftsmanship, situated in the mountains of north-western Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia, shattered the Assyrians. The downfall seemed final, but one man changed everything: his real name was Pulu, a prince who governed the Assyrian capital Kahlu (Nimrud). In 745, taking the name Tiglath-Pileser III, he created a new Assyria, diminishing the overmighty nobility, recruiting a professional army and specialized auxiliaries, all funded by his efficient tax collecting, directed though a cabinet of seven; his orders stamped with the imperial seal of the king killing a lion were conveyed along royal roads by special couriers. Tiglath-Pileser was voracious and tireless, in perpetual motion, scourging Elam, climbing with his men into the mountains to defeat Urartu^* and routing an Arab queen. When Damascus and Israel besieged Jerusalem, King Ahaz of Judah unwisely invited Tiglath-Pileser to help: ‘“I’m your servant … Come and save me,” and the King of Assyria came.’

Tiglath-Pileser made Judah a vassal and reduced Israel to a rump, whose king in 727 desperately sought a way to escape Assyrian rule: he appealed to Egypt, but its pharaohs no longer counted. The unthinkable was about to happen: Kush was about to take Egypt.

ALARA OF KUSH: FIRST AFRICAN EMPIRE

In 727 BC, Piye, king of Kush, galloped northwards into Egypt. Kush had existed for millennia alongside Egypt, its twin riverine civilization. Around 800, a local ruler called Alara, who later assumed the title of king, united a realm based in Napata, a city founded by Thutmose III, close to the holy cobra mountain of Jebel Barkal, which was governed by a literate court – with secretaries of the archives and chief treasurers. Kush fielded crack archers and formidable cavalry, all funded by trade between the Mediterranean, inland Africa and, via the Red Sea, India.

Alara oversaw a hybrid Egyptian–Kushite religion. Originally Kushites buried their dead beneath circular mounds at el-Kurru near their capital Kerma, accompanied by droves of relatives or servants, sacrificed by being buried alive. Then their kings started to build pyramids for their burials: 200 pyramids still stand in Sudan, almost double those of Egypt. Like a pharaoh, Alara called himself Son of Amun and married his sister. Alara’s brother Kashta succeeded him just as the instability in Egypt, particularly a conflict in Thebes between a king and his Amun priests, forced the latter to seek asylum in Napata, the new Kushite capital, where they encouraged Kashta to see himself as the legitimate guardian of Amun – and of Egypt.

In 760, Kashta raided Thebes where he forced the Egyptians to accept his daughter as God’s Wife of Amun and proclaimed himself King of the Two Lands. Kashta and his heirs claimed to be protectors of ancient gods, but the dynasty never presented themselves as Egyptian: in her statue at Karnak, Kashta’s daughter, Amenirdis, depicted as God’s Wife of Amun, is dressed like an Egyptian but her face in unmistakably Kushite.

Fifteen years later, Kashta’s son King Piye, invited by one of the Egyptian factions to intervene, advanced into Egypt, presenting himself as more Egyptian than the Egyptians, respectfully honouring Amun. Kings made obeisance to him in Thebes as pharaoh – as he boasted on Jebel Barkal. Married to a cousin, and to his own sister, Piye was content to leave his Egyptian vassals to rule on his behalf until challenged by the rulers of Memphis. In 729, he personally led the storming of Memphis. All the potentates of the delta submitted to him, promising to ‘open our treasuries and bring you the choice of our studs and the best of our horses’. He loved horseflesh more than jewels or women: ‘The king’s wives and daughters came to him and paid honour but His Majesty did not pay them attention. Instead he went off to the stables where he saw that the horses were hungry.’ In a city stinking of dead bodies, he could barely tolerate any cruelty to animals. ‘It’s more painful to me,’ he wrote on his pyramid in Napata, ‘that my horses should be hungry than every ill deed you have done.’ When he died, he was buried in his Napata pyramid with his favourite squadron of horses.

His brother Shabaka did not stay in Napata but marched north, enforcing direct rule and religious purity by burning one of his opponents alive, installing his son as high priest and female cousins as God’s Wives of Amun. House Alara now ruled all of modern Egypt and Sudan, at least 2,100 miles of the Nile – one of the largest African empires of world history. The royal archives at Nineveh show friendly contacts between Shabaka and Assyria, but the titans were bound to clash. Shabaka was unlikely to be threatened by the new Assyrian king, who was said to be a weakling. But first impressions can be deceptive.

His name was Sennacherib. When the news spread that Sennacherib was king, the entire Assyrian empire flickered into rebellion – and Hezekiah, king of Judah, asked for Shabaka’s help.

In 701, the pharaoh’s army of Kushites and Egyptians under Prince Taharqo, younger son of Piye, marched north across Sinai just as Sennacherib fought his way south-west towards Jerusalem. The two greatest families, one Asian, one African, were now to fight for the world.

AFRICA VERSUS ASIA: SHABAKA VERSUS SENNACHERIB

It was hard to be Sennacherib: his father was Sargon II, a triumphant warlord who had conquered Cyprus, Phoenicia and the rest of Israel, ethnically cleansing it and deporting 29,000 of its elite to Assyria, before turning to Urartu. In a spectacular exploit, Sargon had led his army into the mountains to destroy the kingdom before returning to the heartland to found his own new capital, Dur Sharrukin – Fort Sargon – where he declared himself King of the World. But predators can never rest. Now old, but drawn to one last campaign in Tabal (Türkiye) in 705, he was killed during an enemy raid on his camp, his sacred body lost.^*

Sennacherib must have loathed the old monster: he never praised or mentioned his father. But he possessed all the atrocious grandeur of his father and grandfather, lashing out at Babylon, independent-minded city state of the god Marduk, whose blessing the Assyrians could never quite ignore. Then Sennacherib hacked his way southwards, consuming Phoenicia and Judah, city by city.

As the King of the World approached Jerusalem, the House of David prayed for deliverance from God and for a relieving army from Egypt. The Kushite Prince Taharqo, aged twenty, raced towards Jerusalem.

Kushite prince and Assyrian king met at Eltekeh near Ashdod; the Kushites were defeated and pursued back to Egypt. Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem but then, paid off with Temple gold, he withdrew, returning laden with booty to pay for the embellishment of his capital, Nineveh, sacred to the goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Building massive walls, with eighteen gates, decorated with winged apotropaic bulls, and a new palace, Sennacherib was surprisingly green-fingered for a blood-soaked conqueror: he prided himself on the city’s gardens, irrigated by fifty-five miles of viaducts and canals to bring water from the mountains; his own in his palace contained rare plants, while he promised every Ninevite an allotment garden. Supernatural protection was essential at all times in a world threatened by evil spirits. Like the city gates, his palaces were magically protected by pairs of human-headed winged bulls – lamassus – weighing thirty tons – ‘a wonder to behold’, said Sennacherib. Sennacherib’s city, with its 120,000 inhabitants, was so big it is only partly covered by modern Mosul.

Blessed with at least seven children, he placed his eldest on the Babylonian throne, but a Babylonian faction arrested the boy and sold him to the king of Elam, who hated the Assyrians and executed him. Now it was personal: ‘I put on my coat of mail … my helmet,’ Sennacherib recorded. ‘I hurriedly mounted my great battle chariot’ and ‘stopped their advance, decimated them with arrow and spear. I slashed their throats, cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string.’ In 689, he destroyed Babylon. ‘Like the waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails slither along the earth,’ he wrote with macabre Assyrian glee. ‘My prancing steeds plunged into their blood. The wheels of my chariot … were spattered with blood … Their testicles I cut off; I ripped out their genitals like seeds of summer cucumbers.’

Sennacherib was supreme: yet it is one of the ironies of power that kings of the world struggle to cope with their own children.

DEPRESSION OF A WORLD KING: ESARHADDON AND TAHARQO

Sennacherib first favoured one of his surviving sons, Ardamullisi, then changed his mind and appointed the younger Esarhaddon: ‘This is the son who shall succeed me.’ But ‘Jealousy overcame my brothers,’ recorded Esarhaddon, ‘plotting evil.’

Ardamullisi decided to assassinate his father and brother. Oblivious, Sennacherib was praying at a Nineveh temple, kneeling, when his eldest son hacked him to death. But Esarhaddon exterminated his brothers and their entire families, though by the standards of House Tiglath-Pileser he was a milksop: the stress took its toll. He suffered fevers, loss of appetite, blisters and paranoia – what we would call depression. ‘Is one day not enough for the king to mope and eat nothing?’ wrote his doctors. ‘This is already the third day!’

In Nineveh, he trained his youngest son, the remarkable Ashurbanipal, who now moved into the heir’s residence, the House of Succession. ‘I cantered on thoroughbreds, rode stallions raring to go,’ recalled Ashurbanipal. ‘I held a bow … I threw quivering lances; I took the reins of a chariot and made the wheels spin.’ But he also studied. Even the most brutish dynasties become cultivated in the end. ‘I learned … the hidden and secret lore of all the scribal arts. I’m able to recognize celestial and terrestrial omens and can discuss them with an assembly of scholars.’ Ashurbanipal was also trained in vigilance and security by his grandmother, Naqia. Now he watched his father’s back, as Esarhaddon marched against Egypt. Pharaoh Taharqo, son of Piye, was preparing to restore Egyptian power over Judah.

Just as this Nubian ruled the cradle of civilization, migrations were starting that would change the continent. Most of Africa had long been the domain of Khoesan hunter-foragers, but in the west – today’s Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon – Bantu-speaking peoples farmed beans, sorghum and millet, herded cattle and sheep, forged weapons from iron ore and traded with the north. Now, for reasons we may never know, the Bantu started to migrate slowly southwards, settling the best land, killing, conquering and marrying into the Khoesan, whom they slowly drove into more marginal regions. Their warlords probably conquered kingdoms, but since they left no pyramids or inscriptions to equal Kush, we can track them only by the march of their Bantu language.

To their north, Taharqo trained his army Assyrian-style: on a sixty-mile all-night run, ‘the king himself was on horseback to see his army running when he exercised with them in the desert behind Memphis in the ninth hour of the night. They reached the Great Lake at sunrise.’ Then he led them into Judah and Phoenicia, agreeing treaties with Jerusalem and Tyre, both of them keen to escape the Assyrian yoke.

In 674, Esarhaddon invaded Egypt. Taharqo defeated him, but three years later Esarhaddon, after destroying Tyre, swooped across Sinai and besieged Memphis. Taharqo retreated to Kush, leaving his treasury and his women behind. Yet he returned. If he thought Esarhaddon’s death had saved him, he was wrong. In 667, the young scholar-king Ashurbanipal finally woke the Kush empire: ‘I made Egypt and Nubia feel my weapons bitterly.’^*

ASHURBANIPAL AND GRANDMOTHER: A POWER PARTNERSHIP

The security chief and top adviser of Ashurbanipal was his grandmother, Naqia. It was she who backed his succession and orchestrated the oaths of allegiance across the empire. This history has a cast of female potentates but few equal Naqia, who ordered, ‘Whether plotters are bearded or half-men [eunuchs] or royal princes, kill them and bring them to Zakutu [Naqia] and Ashurbanipal King of Assyria your lord.’

Ashurbanipal was a scholar who proudly wore a pen as well as a sword, but the Assyrian empire was surprisingly bureaucratic: scribes were constantly present with their hinged writing boards to record taxes, booty, royal orders. Some 32,000 cuneiform tablets survive. But Ashurbanipal was also the first collector of literature, creating a library of scholarly texts, oracular requests and reports and buying other collections from Babylon, the home of high culture, and he was contemptuous of his coarse forefathers who knew nothing of books. Yet, however fastidious he was, warfare was an essential part of being a world king. Lions were hunted^* – and so were people.

Ashurbanipal turned eastwards to strike Elam, whose king, Teumman, was shot with an arrow in the back and beheaded, the head brought back to Nineveh. Ashurbanipal poured libations from his trophy as prisoners paraded around the city wearing decapitated heads around their necks. In the royal pleasure park, the king and chief queen Libbali-sharrat, sitting on thrones facing each other, relaxed at parties and played board games, as servants fanned them and served pomegranates and grapes, eunuchs officiated, lyres and harpists played and tame lions were walked. This inscription presents a scene of serene splendour, yet there is a very Assyrian touch: the head of King Teumman hangs upside down in a tree next to the picnic like a gruesome fruit.

Ashurbanipal’s victories did not alleviate the tensions within his own family. He was a control freak who interfered in his brother’s subordinate kingdom: ‘My faithless brother Shamashshumukin, whom I treated well and established as king of Babylon, forgot this kindness – and planned evil,’ assembling a coalition of Babylonians, Elamites, Arabs and Aramaeans. After four years of war, his brother threw himself into the flames of his palace. Ashurbanipal ordered tongues to be slit or ripped out, prisoners were flayed, and in the temple ‘between the colossi where they had cut down Sennacherib, my grandfather, I cut them down as an offering to his soul. Their dismembered bodies I fed to dogs, swine, fish of the deep …’ Elam was sacked, yet the family war weakened Assyria, and the constant campaigns in Iran failed to declaw the dynamic peoples of the steppe who regarded Ashurbanipal’s empire as prey.

Just after these victories, Ashurbanipal got a nasty shock: an army of sheepskin-clad nomadic horsemen, Medes and Persians, led by a Mede khan Dia-oku, rode into Assyria right up to the walls of Nineveh. These Parsa (Persians) and Mada (Medes), the most successful of the Aryan peoples of the Iranian plateau, rode tough little Nisean horses, lived in portable ger, tents, and tended their herds of horses – 160,000 of them – enjoying themselves raiding, feasting, gambling, storytelling and horseracing.^*

To defeat these barbarians he hired other barbarians, the Scythians, Aryan horsemen who ranged across the steppes of central Asia. The Mede khan’s son was killed. The son of one Persian khan – who also called himself king of Anshan – Kurosh, sent his son to Ashurbanipal’s court as a hostage. The other Persian khan was Haxamanis (Achaemenes). As these shaggy horsemen galloped ignominiously back to their herds, who would have believed that these two khans were the progenitors of the world-conquering Persian greats, Cyrus and Darius?

Ashurbanipal was exhausted. ‘Let the king apply this lotion and perhaps the fever will abate,’ advised his doctor. ‘I’m sending ointment.’ But when, after forty-two years of war and refinement, Ashurbanipal died at the age of sixty, it looked as if Assyria would rule for ever.

Yet, just fifteen years later, Nineveh would fall and out of a story of cannibalism, burning cities and vines growing out of royal vaginas rose the family that would rule an empire on three continents.

* The Bible is a library of different sacred texts written by anonymous Jewish authors much later, during the Babylonian exile from the religiously pure monotheistic point of view of the kingdom of Judah. It was biased against the more cosmopolitan kingdom of Israel. Like all sacred texts, it is filled with obscurities, but it is also sometimes a historical source, sometimes mythological.

* These peoples called themselves ‘Canani’ but the Greeks called them ‘Phoenicians’, after their top brand, the purple dye phoenix, derived from the Murex mollusc.

* Camels, two-humped in Bactria and one-humped in Arabia, had been domesticated for milking in the fourth to third millennium BC, then used as pack animals and ridden mounts. They were already central to the life of the Arabs as currency, transport and food: when an Arab chieftain died, his favourite camel was buried with him or left hobbled by his grave to die. Arab chieftains had already fought the Assyrians, but their troops were also in demand as mercenaries. Camels transported Arab fighters, who then switched mounts and galloped on horseback into battle.

* Shalmaneser III died facing a rebellion by his sons, one of whom emerged as King Shamsi-Adad. His queen was Shammuramat, a Babylonian princess, whom the Greeks called Semiramis. When Shamsi-Adad died in 811 BC, their son Adad-Nirari III was a child, so Semiramis took power, describing herself as ‘King of the Universe, King of Assyria, Daughter-in-Law of Shalmaneser, King of the Four Regions of the World’ – and winning the respect of the martial Assyrians. Like a real king of Assyria, she led her armies into Iran and died in battle. But thanks to the queen, Assyria retained its power.

* The name of Mount Ararat is a rare geographical hint of Urartu’s existence, but there are many excavations of Urartian cities in Türkiye and Armenia. Elam was also a powerful realm; its people spoke a language unlike any other in the region; its capital Susa was a famous walled city while its chief temple was the ziggurat 174 feet high at Choga Zanbil which, writes Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, is ‘the best-preserved ziggurat in existence, a monument to Elamite ingenuity and might’.

* His grandfather was (probably) the conqueror Tiglath-Pileser, but some scholars argue that Sargon was a usurper. The mission of the Assyrian kings was to expand the territory of the god Ashur, legislate and rule justly, enrich the homeland and serve all their gods. Their palace reliefs and historical annals describe the battles and killing, but this is exaggerated for effect. Their deportations were intended to disrupt rebellions and populate core Assyria.

* The House of Alara, still using pharaonic titles and burying their kings in pyramids, ruled Kush for several centuries more, finally moving the capital deeper into Sudan to Meroe to be safer from Egyptian invasion.

* Lion killing was the motif of Assyrian monarchy. Iraqi lions were smaller than those in Africa, but the beasts were corralled by armies of beaters, and driven towards the king by eunuchs holding mastiffs, watched by huge crowds. It was religious, it was sport and it was training for warfare. After the hunt, the king celebrated: ‘I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of the land of Ashur, whom Ashur and Ninlil endowed with supreme strength, who killed lions with the terrible bow of Ishtar, lady of battle: I offered a libation of wine over them.’

* The Medes and Persians, guided by a class of priestly diviners, the magi (from whom we get the word magic), saw the world as an endless duel between light and darkness, truth and lies, ruled by the fire-giving god of light, wisdom and truth, Ahura-Mazda. They were inspired by an Aryan prophet, Zoroaster, who may have lived in Bactria during the second millennium – or much later in the time of Cyrus or Darius. Only fragments of his life were preserved: his birth as a baby that laughed rather than bawled; his vision at the age of thirty in which he saw a being of lightness who revealed the truth of Ahura-Mazda (Wise Lord), who represented asha – order and truth – while fighting the darkness of Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit), who represented druj – the chaos and the lie. Much of Zoroastrianism, expressed in the Persian sacred text the Avesta, is linked to Indian Hindu religion, referring as it does to Indian gods such as Mithra, thus showing a shared Indo-Iranian origin. Unlike Jesus Christ but like Muhammad, Zoroaster married and had children; like Jesus, he died violently aged seventy-seven by an assassin’s dagger.