In the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BCE), the Near East was governed by something remarkably rare in world history: a stable balance of power. Egypt, Hatti, Babylonia, Mitanni, and Assyria recognized one another as peers. They fought wars, but cautiously. They married into each other’s dynasties, exchanged lavish gifts, and corresponded in a diplomatic language that assumed rough equality. No single power could impose its will on the others without provoking a collective response. The result was stability and a lasting peace.
This system not only limited violence, but also actively prevented the emergence of a world empire. The costs of domination were prohibitive. Any state that grew too strong risked isolation, coalition warfare, and eventual exhaustion. Power was acceptable only as long as it remained proportional.
By the eighth century BCE, however, this world was gone. In its place stood an Assyria that increasingly dominated the Near East, facing a range of rivals — Urartu, Babylonia, Elam, Phrygia, and Egypt — yet never encountering a stable counterweight comparable to the Late Bronze Age balance. The paradox is striking. Where the Late Bronze Age produced equilibrium, the Iron Age produced hegemony. Why?
To answer that question, we must begin with the collapse of the old order and with the rise of Assyria before it became the centralized imperial machine we often imagine.
Continue reading “When balance failed (1): Assyria’s rise to hegemony”