David is one of the most noteworthy figures in the Bible. He is remembered as the shepherd boy who slew Goliath, the gifted musician who soothed King Saul’s troubled mind, the adulterer whose affair with Bathsheba brought tragedy upon his household, and the pious king traditionally credited with composing many of the Psalms. In both Judaism and Christianity, he occupies an even greater place as the founder of the royal dynasty from which the Messiah was expected to descend.

Yet before he ruled from Jerusalem, David spent years doing something very different. He recruited a private army, forged alliances, protected settlements, raided his enemies and even sought refuge with a Philistine king. Whether these stories preserve historical events has long been debated. But the question of what “really happened” often obscures a more revealing one: what kind of political figure was the historical David? Viewed against the geopolitical realities of the tenth century BCE, he emerges not simply as a legendary king, but as a remarkably successful military entrepreneur who transformed a personal following into one of the ancient Near East’s most enduring dynasties.

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Governors, Local Rulers and the Classification of Neo-Assyrian Rule

On Thursday 9 July 2026, I presented a paper at the conference Order Out of Chaos: Classification and Categories in the Ancient Near East at University College London as part of my PhD research. The paper explores the often blurry boundary between provinces and vassal kingdoms in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and argues for a new interpretation of the role of governors in Assyrian imperial rule.

Continue reading “Between Province and Vassal State”

For many readers familiar with the Bible, Ahab (r. 874–853 BCE) is remembered primarily as the wicked king who opposed the prophet Elijah and allowed the worship of Ba’al in Israel. Yet this image reflects the concerns of later biblical authors rather than the geopolitical realities of the ninth century BCE.

Viewed through the lens of contemporary Near Eastern politics, Ahab appears as a remarkably capable ruler. During his reign, Israel became one of the strongest kingdoms in the Levant, capable of challenging Damascus, projecting power over its neighbours, and contributing one of the largest contingents to the coalition that confronted Assyria at the Battle of Qarqar.

Continue reading “Ahab, the king who made Israel a regional power”

Earlier I argued that during the late ninth and early eighth century BCE a relatively stable regional order existed in the Levant. Before that system emerged, however, one ruler briefly came closer than anyone else to establishing his dominance over all of Syria: Hazael of Damascus.

Hazael is one of the most remarkable figures of the ninth-century Levant. Unlike many contemporary kings, he was probably not born into a royal dynasty. According to the Books of Kings, he served at the court of the former king Ben-Hadad II before seizing the throne around 843 or 842 BCE. The biblical account describes how he assassinated his master after being informed by the prophet Elisha that he would one day become king. Whether or not every detail of this story is historical, few scholars doubt that Hazael was a usurper.

Continue reading “Hazael of Damascus, an Aramaean hegemon”

The Assyrian Empire has a public relations problem. Watch any documentary or read any popular history website and there is a good chance that within minutes someone will be impaled, flayed, or have their city burned to the ground. Preferably all three. The accompanying narrator will then solemnly inform us that the Assyrians ruled through terror, demanded impossible tributes from their neighbours, sought to conquer the entire known world and eventually suffered a well-deserved downfall.

This image is not entirely without foundation. The Assyrians were perfectly capable of extreme violence and, unlike many rulers throughout history, they were remarkably eager to advertise it. Yet I often find myself frustrated by how predictable these portrayals have become. Not because they are completely wrong, but because they are so incomplete. The Assyrian Empire frequently appears as a stock villain: an ancient equivalent of the Galactic Empire, forever plotting conquest while everyone else waits to be conquered. The real Assyrian Empire was far more interesting than that.

Continue reading “Assyria, more than history’s favourite villain”

In my previous post, I argued that the low frequency of Assyrian campaigns in the Levant between 841 and 743 BCE does not necessarily indicate stagnation or decline. Rather, it suggests that a relatively stable regional order had emerged in which local powers such as Damascus, Hamath, Luḫuti and Arpad largely managed their own affairs while Assyria focused its attention on developments in the north and east.

One of the clearest glimpses of this world comes from the reign of Zakkur, king of Hamath and Luḫuti. Who exactly Zakkur was remains unclear. In his own inscription, he claims that the god Baʿlshamayn raised him from humble origins and made him king. Scholars have often interpreted this statement as evidence that he was a usurper rather than a legitimate heir.

Zakkur probably originated from Hatarikka (Hazrach), the capital of Luḫuti, which remained his principal residence even after he acquired Hamath. How this happened is uncertain. He may have first become king of Luḫuti and later conquered Hamath, overthrowing its ruling dynasty in the process. Whatever the precise sequence of events, Zakkur succeeded in uniting two previously separate kingdoms and creating a larger and more powerful state than had existed before in central Syria.

Continue reading “Zakkur of Hamath: the limits of Levantine power”

The Levant has played a central role in world history since the earliest beginnings of civilization. This fertile corridor between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Desert, situated between Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia, formed a crossroads of long-distance trade. Caravan routes crossed its valleys and plains, while its ports connected the eastern Mediterranean to wider maritime networks. Much of the wealth of Levantine cities derived from their position as intermediaries in both overland and maritime commerce.

Politically, however, the Levant was highly fragmented. Phoenician city-states, Aramaean tribes and Neo-Hittite kingdoms constantly competed for control of trade routes. Alliances shifted frequently and no single power could easily dominate the region for long. For Assyria, the Levant therefore represented both opportunity and danger: a wealthy gateway to the Mediterranean, but also a frontier capable of producing powerful anti-Assyrian coalitions.

Under Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE), Assyrian armies campaigned repeatedly in the Levant, confronting anti-Assyrian coalitions led by rulers such as Ahuni of Bīt-Adini, Irhuleni of Hamath and Hazael of Damascus. A century later, the region again became the focus of Assyrian expansion under Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745–727 BCE), who annexed large parts of Syria and Palestine and transformed former client states into Assyrian provinces.

Yet between these two periods lies a striking gap. According to the Assyrian Limmu List — a chronological record in which each year was named after a high official and often accompanied by a brief note about a military campaign — there were hardly any Assyrian campaigns to the Levant between roughly 841 and 743 BCE. This was not because Assyria became inactive. On the contrary, Assyrian kings campaigned almost every year, but mostly toward the north and east: against Urartu in the Armenian Highlands and frontier polities the Zagros and Taurus Mountains. Why, then, was the western frontier comparatively quiet for almost a century?

Continue reading “All quiet on Assyria’s western front”

In my previous post, I explored an alternate timeline in which Assyria and Babylonia remained allies rather than descending into centuries of rivalry. I also speculated that, in the long run, Assyria might eventually come to be ruled by an Iranian dynasty, while Babylonia could fall under Arab rule. At first glance, such a scenario may sound implausible. Why would an empire hand power to outsiders? Why would foreign peoples become the military and political elite of states they once served? Yet history shows that this kind of thing happens surprisingly often.

Perhaps the best-known example is the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, where Turkic slave soldiers overthrew the ruling Ayyubids and founded a dynasty of their own. Similarly, in the late Roman Empire, Germanic generals evolved from imperial servants into kingmakers, and eventually rulers in their own right. In the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes first appeared as suppliers of horses, later as military auxiliaries, and eventually even as royal bodyguards. During Assyria’s final struggle for survival, the peoples of the Zagros played a crucial role: Mannaean contingents still fought alongside the Assyrians, while the Medes ultimately turned against their former masters. And centuries earlier, the Mitanni kingdom seems to have been dominated by an Indo-Aryan military aristocracy ruling over a predominantly Hurrian population.

These examples differ enormously in scale and context, yet they reveal a recurring historical pattern. Again and again, empires elevated foreign warrior groups into positions of military importance, only for those groups to gradually evolve into political elites, and sometimes even inherit the empire itself.

Continue reading “How empires create their own successors”

_{Map of an alternate Near East in 645 BCE, marking the 100th year anniversary of the Assyro-Babylonian alliance.
Assyria is shown in red, with allied and vassal states in light red.
Babylonia is shown in blue, with allied and vassal states in light blue.
Egypt is shown in yellow, with allied and vassal states in light yellow.
Author: Daan Nijssen ©}

In my previous post, I argued that the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not caused by a single weakness, but by a long chain of interconnected crises. After revisiting that argument, however, I increasingly came to suspect that many of those problems revolved around one central issue: Assyria’s attempts to dominate Babylonia.

Assyrian kings repeatedly intervened in Babylonian politics, either ruling Babylonia directly or installing unpopular puppet rulers. The result was a cycle of revolts, civil wars, and destructive campaigns that drained Assyrian resources for generations. Elam supported Babylonian rebels in order to create a buffer state against Assyria, dynastic struggles erupted within the Assyrian royal house, and entire reigns were consumed by conflicts in the south.

The most infamous example was Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon in 689 BCE, which severely damaged Assyria’s legitimacy. Later, the revolt of Šamaš-šum-ukin, Ashurbanipal’s older brother who ruled as king of Babylon, devastated the empire further, until Nabopolassar finally restored Babylonian independence and contributed to Assyria’s destruction.

But what if Assyria had never become trapped in this cycle? What if Tiglath-pileser III had maintained a stable alliance with Babylonia instead of trying to dominate it directly?

Continue reading “What if the Assyro-Babylonian alliance had persisted?”

The flames must have been visible for miles. In 612 BCE, after a long siege, a coalition of Babylonians and Medes stormed the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Temples burned. Palaces were looted. Statues were smashed or buried beneath rubble. The great imperial city that Assyrian kings had called “the city without equal” was transformed into ruins.

For more than two centuries, the Neo-Assyrian Empire had dominated the Near East. Its armies had marched from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea, from Anatolia to Egypt. Kings such as Ashurbanipal and Sargon II had presented themselves as rulers of the world itself, chosen by the gods to impose order upon all lands. And yet, within a few years, this seemingly invincible empire disappeared almost entirely.

Continue reading “When did the Assyrian Empire start to collapse?”