Assurnasirpal II

Among the Neo-Assyrian kings, Assurnasirpal II has a reputation for being one, if not the, most sadistic and cruel. This impression undoubtably comes from the king's vivid campaign annals, which with its relentless refrains of massacres, impaling, flaying, and burning among rebellious cities, reinforces in clay what the army did in the field: the invincible insistence of the Assyrian war machine.

Assurnasirpal's royal annals are among the longest and best preserved from the Neo-Assyrian period, a condition which helps scholars to reconstruct political events, geography, architecture, and many other aspects of 1st millennium upper Mesopotamia. This same expansive coverage, however, should not make us blind to the possibility that there were other Neo-Assyrian kings just as active and cruel whose records have not survived.

At the political and military level, Assurnasirpal II continued the momentum generated by his predecessors with extensive campaigns east, north, and west of the Assyrian heartland. As soon as his accession year (apparently following directly on the heels of Tukulti-Ninurta II's last campaign - see Olmstead pg. ???) the king brought out his soldiers and chariots for a march through the area of Zamua, which stretched east from Nineveh as far as the Zagros foothills, and north up to Lake Urmia. He first conquered the cities of Libe, Surra, Abuqu, Arura, and Arabe, (Ass. annals l. 46). People fleeing from these towns congregated at the peak of a tall mountain, which the annals describe with the oft-quoted phrase: "like the point of an iron dagger, which no bird reaches" (King pg. 270). As was often the case for campaigns in these regions, the land was not suitable for chariots and large formations of men, a hinderance which may be masked behind the king's statement that only three days later were his soldiers able to climb the mountain peak and engage the enemy (Annals l. 50).

The next area of this first, brief campaign were the lands of Kirurri and Kirhu, which lay in the upper Tigris Valley north of Nineveh (Olmstead pg??). Several local rulers presented him with tribute, however when he reached the cities lying along the Arzn river, a north-south running tributary of the Tigris west of Lake Van, he proceeded to pillage until reaching the town of Nishtun. There he put the people to flight to a high mountain that "hung over the town like a cloud from heaven" (King pg. 275, l. 62). Boasting as a feat none of his fore-fathers had achieved, his soldiers managed to climb the mountain and again defeat the enemy (l. 63). He renamed Nishtun 'Al Assurnasirpal' (Assurnasirpal City) a testament to his dominion, capped off with a stele of himself set at the source of the river. Most graphically though, as an example to future would-be rebels he took the chief Bubu of Nishtun and flayed him in Arbela, spreading his skin along the city-wall (l. 68).