SECTION 9. MESOPOTAMIA
No annals of Assyria have survived for nearly a century before 1000 B.C., and very few for the century after that date. Nor do Babylonian records make good our deficiency. Though we cannot be certain, we are probably safe in saying that during these two centuries Assyrian and Babylonian princes had few or no achievements to record of the kind which they held, almost alone, worthy to be immortalized on stone or clay - that is to say, raids, conquests, sacking of cities, blackmailing of princes. Since Tiglath Pileser's time no "Kings of the World" (by which title was signified an overlord of Mesopotamia merely) had been seated on either of the twin rivers. What exactly had happened in the broad tract between the rivers and to the south of Taurus since the departure of the Mushki hordes (if, indeed, they did all depart), we do not know. The Mitanni, who may have been congeners of the latter, seem still to have been holding the north-west; probably all the north-east was Assyrian territory. No doubt the Kurds and Armenians of Urartu were raiding the plains impartially from autumn to spring, as they always did when Assyria was weak. We shall learn a good deal more about Mesopotamia proper when the results of the German excavations at Tell Halaf, near Ras el-Ain, are complete and published. The most primitive monuments found there are perhaps relics of that power of Khani (Harran), which was stretched even to include Nineveh before the Semitic patesis of Asshur grew to royal estate and moved northward to make imperial Assyria. But there are later strata of remains as well which should contain evidence of the course of events in mid-Mesopotamia during subsequent periods both of Assyrian domination and of local independence.
Assyria, as has been said, was without doubt weak at this date, that is, she was confined to the proper territory of her own agricultural Semites. This state of things, whenever existent throughout her history, seems to have implied priestly predominance, in which Babylonian influence went for much. The Semitic tendency to super-Monotheism, which has already been noticed, constantly showed itself among the eastern Semites (when comparatively free from military tyranny) in a reversion of their spiritual allegiance to one supreme god enthroned at Babylon, the original seat of east Semitic theocracy. And even when this city had little military strength the priests of Marduk appear often to have succeeded in keeping a controlling hand on the affairs of stronger Assyria. We shall see later how much prestige great Ninevite war-lords could gain even among their own countrymen by Marduk's formal acknowledgment of their sovereignty, and how much they lost by disregarding him and doing injury to his local habitation. At their very strongest the Assyrian kings were never credited with the natural right to rule Semitic Asia which belonged to kings of Babylon. If they desired the favour of Marduk they must needs claim it at the sword's point, and when that point was lowered, his favour was always withdrawn. From first to last they had perforce to remain military tyrants, who relied on no acknowledged legitimacy but on the spears of conscript peasants, and at the last of mercenaries. No dynasty lasted long in Assyria, where popular generals, even while serving on distant campaigns, were often elevated to the throne - in anticipation of the imperial history of Rome.
It appears then that our traveller would have found Babylonia, rather than Assyria, the leading East Semitic power in 1000 B.C.; but at the same time not a strong power, for she had no imperial dominion outside lower Mesopotamia. Since a dynasty, whose history is obscure - the so-called Pashe kings in whose time there was one strong man, Nabu-Kudur-usur (Nebuchadnezzar) I - came to an inglorious end just about 1000 B.C., one may infer that Babylonia was passing at this epoch through one of those recurrent political crises which usually occurred when Sumerian cities of the southern "Sea-Land" conspired with some foreign invader against the Semitic capital. The contumacious survivors of the elder element in the population, however, even when successful, seem not to have tried to set up new capitals or to reestablish the pre-Semitic state of things. Babylon had so far distanced all the older cities now that no other consummation of revolt was desired or believed possible than the substitution of one dynasty for another on the throne beloved of Marduk. Sumerian forces, however, had not been the only ones which had contributed to overthrow the last king of the Pashe dynasty. Nomads of the Suti tribes had long been raiding from the western deserts into Akkad; and the first king set up by the victorious peoples of the Sea-Land had to expel them and to repair their ravages before he could seat himself on a throne which was menaced by Elam on the east and Assyria on the north, and must fall so soon as either of these found a strong leader.