Around 2350 B.C. SARGON, king of the AKKADIANS - a Semitic tribe dwelling to the north of the Sumerians, which had adapted the Sumerian
cuneiform script to their own language, conquered Sumer and established the first known empire in history, reaching to the Mediterranean. An
empire is defined as being established by force (war of conquest) and including many different ethnicities). Sargons empire lasted three generations.
In the 2nd millennium B.C. Mesopotamia was split in two states - BABYLONIA in the south and ASSYRIA in the north. Under HAMMURABI
(c. 1780 B.C.), the BABYLONIAN EMPIRE stretched from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf; Hammurabi is best-knoen for the LAW CODE
ascribed to him. The code reveals a stratified society, with nobles, free men and slaves.
Around 1600 B.C. a new nation appeared, the HITTITES, armed with horse-drawn chariots and iron weapons. They established an empire
centered on the HALYS valley in central Anatolia and c. 1550 took Babylon. The Hittites were crushed in c. 1200 B.C., to be replaced as
Mesopotamia's hegemon by the ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. The Assyrians, residing on the middle Tigris, capitals ASSUR and NINIVE, were warlike
and oppressive. Israel refused to submit voluntarily; the country was conquered, its population forcibly resettled all over the Assyrian Empire (and
never heard of again, as the small groups probably assimilated). Assyrians punished their enemies by impaling them. The Assyrian Empire at its
height in the 7th century B.C. even included Egypt; it is probably due to Assyrian pressure that the Phoenicians established colonies in the
western Mediterranean (Carthago).
In 612 a coalition of MEDES, NEOBABYLONIANS and LYDIANS defeated the Assyrians and took their mighty capital Ninive. The
NEOBABYLONIAN EMPIRE (612-539) now ruled the fertile crescent; NEBUCHADNEZZAR conquered JUDAH and (in continuation of Assyrian
tradition) forced many Jews to resettle in Babylonia (BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY).
The Persians - an Indogermanic people subject to the Medes, ZOROASTRIANS by religion - rebelled against the Medes, under CYRUS THE GREAT
they conquered their former masters (c. 550), their allies the Lydians (546), Babylon (539). Later, Egypt and the Indus Valley would follow; the
PERSIAN EMPIRE (c. 550-c. 330) was the largest the world had seen so far.
Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews in Babylonia to return to Palestine. The Persians permitted their subjects to dwell in their ancestral lands,
to worship their traditional gods and to pursue their traditional businesses; they demanded the payment of taxation, obedience to laws and royal
decrees and military service; a policy often described as RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. As their treatment of conquered peoples was more lenient than
that of their Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian predecessors, their empire was more stable.
The Persian Empire was vast, the capitals (SUSA, PERSEPOLIS) connected via a network of ROYAL ROADS with the outlying satrapies. Many
stations along these roads provided food, lodging and fresh horses so that messages could be transported by a system similar to that of the Pony
Express.
The Persoian army relied on cavalry; infantry contingents were supplied by the (non-Persian) provinces. India supplied WAR ELEPHANTS.
The SHAH-IN-SHAH (king of kings) ruled absolute; he regarded all his subjects, including the leading noblemen, his slaves and all their property
his to dispose of (ORIENTAL DESPOTISM). The Persians used cuneiform script for administrative purposes.
This page is part of World History at KMLA First posted on September 10th 2001, last revised on April 12th 2009
