ASSYRIA receives an interestingly mixed portrayal in the Old Testament. On the one hand, the Assyrians could be used as the rod of God’s anger against Judah (Isaiah), and they destroyed the kingdom of Israel (Kings). On the other hand, they perform a model repentance (Jonah), and yet the fall of Nineveh is celebrated because of its “endless cruelty” (Nahum). Who were the Assyrians, and what were they really like?
Eckhart Frahm writes lucidly as the master of his subject. He presents Assyria on its own terms from its literature, epigraphy, and archaeology, where much is known and new discoveries continue to be made. He is an enthusiast for his subject: world history begins not in Greece, Rome, or Israel, but in Assyria; and governmental structures and ideological concepts that originated in Assyria were emulated by subsequent imperial powers, and have an afterlife that continues, in certain respects, until today.
Frahm tells how Assyria’s story begins in a small town on the Tigris, with a long rise to imperial power and glory in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. One important aspect of its history is its relationship with its neighbour Babylonia, for which he uses the analogy of Scotland and England, or England and America, “two countries divided by a common language”; they alternately fought, despised, and emulated one another
Remarkably, Assyria completely collapsed at the end of the seventh century. Thereafter, its history is one of its influence and (mis)interpretation by others, and Frahm gives space to the history of Assyrian Christians from the fourth century CE onwards, to images of Assyria in Western culture, and also to the second destruction of its artefacts by Islamic State.
Although the storyline is dominated by kings and wars, Frahm constantly draws suggestive analogies between past and present. Ashurbanipal, for example, wanted “to be a true ‘Renaissance man’ or, to be less anachronistic, a new Gilgamesh”. He also includes numerous vignettes from everyday life, such as a teenager complaining about his clothing, or the practice of burying the dead under the living-room floor.
Women receive space, and Assyrian queens were more significant than “the minor royals who are the bread and butter of modern tabloid journalism”. None the less, although Frahm shows that Esarhaddon’s boastful inscription “Before me, cities, behind me, ruins” is far from the whole story, Assyria’s repeated military viciousness leaves a lasting impression.
Little fresh light is shed on the Old Testament, in which conventional judgements of modern historiography rule the roost, although Frahm offers a striking (and implausible) speculation about the origins of Jonah.
Despite Frahm’s readability, this is not quite a book for the beach. But those curious about the wider world of ancient Israel will find it rewarding.
Dr Walter Moberly is Emeritus Professor of Theology and Biblical Interpretation at Durham University.
Assyria: The rise and fall of the world’s first empire
Eckhart Frahm
Bloomsbury £14.99
(978-1-5266-2383-6)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49