The tactical and logistic deployment of the Neo-Assyrian Empire: Til-Tuba – AH

For more than three centuries, the Neo-Assyrian Empire managed to carry out a great territorial expansion in the Near East. The tactical and strategic doctrines of this power were not the result of a generalized innovation, but of the improvements of those that were already known since the III millennium BC. C., especially with regard to the field of polyorcetics, a field in which the Assyrians excelled. The bas-reliefs of the great palaces of the Assyrian capitals show a great interest in representing this type of warin which the multiple siege techniques that the Assyrians carried out to placate the resistance of the enemy enclaves are illustrated.

The primacy of sieges in representations has obscured other facets of the Empire’s way of waging war. Although their manifestations are scarce, the pitched confrontations were frequent, essentially in those territories where large settlements did not stand out because they were mostly desert areas. To a greater or lesser degree, some of the basic patterns of behavior could be discerned from the tactical doctrine in Assyrian siege warfare.

On the other hand, the data obtained does not allow an explanation of the ordinary tactics that the Assyrian army would adopt in the open field, since this would depend more on the situational context of the battle and the forces deployed by the enemy. This last issue is the one that, in one way or another, has caused an unfair sense of referential emptiness about the art of war in pitched battleswhich should be shown independent of taking cities.

In the present work, we will try to clarify an example of warfare in the open field, following the iconographic and textual displays of the bas-reliefs, to try to demonstrate that the revolution or the military improvement of Assyria can also be perceived from other warlike perspectives, such as for example, the logistics apparatus or the intelligence services, and that the tactical behavior of pitched battles, although possibly not very revolutionary, was essential, at the same level as sieges, for resolving political conflicts and continuing with the territorial expansion.

Why have I considered it opportune to face this writing? Faced with this question, I have to explain that I consider it necessary to expand the research on this type of confrontation, since it is possible to specify the skills in the field of polyorcetics, regardless of whether this is more supported in terms of greater availability documentary, it could also be related to the scenario of war episodes in open spaces, always bearing in mind, but in the same way that occurs in siege warfare, that ancient sources are limited and that the general approach must be used of hypotheses that support such facts according to the time and historical space objects of the analysis.

To carry out the development of this work, I have deemed it necessary to divide the study into five parts: a first point that allows a brief description of the testimonies available for the examination of the warlike encounters of the Neo-Assyrian Empire; a second section that offers the main characteristics of the neo-Assyrian army in terms of its composition and its structural evolution; a third part that outlines the main features of the tactics undertaken by the Assyrians in the open field —using as an example one of the battles best attested by the sources: the battle of til tuba—; a fourth section that encompasses two of the most influential elements of the military success of the Empire: the intelligence services and the development of an essential logistics apparatus to forge the success of military expeditions, as well as initiative and strategic advantage at all times; and, finally, a whole series of conclusions that glimpse the tactical skills of an Empire that used all the resources, both operationally and logistically, available to prevail over the other powers.

In terms of the bibliographic record used, I must point out that it is impossible to address everything in this space, so it must be understood that the list is incomplete and that the references of the works cited in the corresponding section are of special interest to swell the list. rows of the testimonial apparatus of the topic to be treated. Without further delay, I am going to begin with a modest description of those that I weigh have provided me with incalculable help when carrying out this study, being, in general, monographic works and magazine articles.

Without a doubt, among the works of the first group I must highlight the writings of Florence Malbran-Labat: L’armée et l’organisation militaire de l’assyrie d ‘après les lettres des Sargonides trouvées à Nineveh, edited by Librairie Droz and published in 1982; and the two parts of the books of Giovanni Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola The Correspondence of Sargon II. Letters from the Northern and Northeastern provinces, edited by the University of Helsinki and published in 1982. Both works collect numerous epistolary testimonies from, among many others, the great collections of texts and letters from Assyrian and Babylon Letters (ABL) or of the Cuneiform Texts from Babylon and located in the British Museum (CT), which makes them very valuable references as primary source materials. These make room for extracting a loose view of interpretations about the structure of the Assyrian army, the logistics apparatus, the sizes of the armies, the geographical information of the near-eastern territories, diplomatic relations, or the situation in matters foreign policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its geostrategic objectives.

Finally, we must mention the articles of David Nadali as “Assyrians to war: positions, patterns and canons in the tactics of the Assyrian armies in the VII century BC”, in Di Ludovic, Alessandro and Nadali, Davide (eds.) Studi in Onore Paolo Matthiae, published in 2005, p. 167-205, or “Assyrian Open Field Battles. An Attempt at Reconstruction and Analysis”, in Vidal, Jordi (ed.) Studies on War in the Ancient Near East. Collected Essays on Military History, published in 2010, p. 117-152, regarding the optics of the monitoring of the bas-reliefs from the archaeological remains of the great palaces and the various political centers of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which have allowed me to know in detail the inquiries and hypotheses of the tactical development of the Assyrian armies. Likewise, the detailed monographs of Tamás Dezsó, such as The Assyrian Army, I. The Structure of the Neo-Assyrian Army. 1. Infantry, edited by Eötvös University and published in 2012, on the conception and evolution of the troops of the Assyrian army; or all the support material provided by institutions such as the British Museum, which boasts the largest collection of reliefs and bas-reliefs of the period.

Sources for the study of pitched battles

As in other periods of antiquity, the study of the ancient Near East is largely conditioned by archaeological, iconographic and textual data. In this sense and from the military point of view, the Neo-Assyrian Empire carried out a whole royal exaltation program through the representation of scenes of domination, subjugation and military victories that have allowed, with the obvious limitations, a reconstruction of the tactical and logistical apparatusbeing resources, these last ones, that were fundamental for the maintenance of the cohesion and the survival of the Empire.

The inscriptions of the Assyrian monarchs, the epistolary texts and the bas-reliefs of the palaces They provide a valuable reference on the clashes between the Assyrian army and their enemies. These official sources offer us, above all, chronological aspects such as the year in which the campaign was produced; names of kings; testimonies about the enemies of the Assyrians; the list of loot captured after the victory; the uniforms, the weapons, the military camps; as well as siege techniques, deportations and scenes prior to the start of a battle or its always victorious outcome.

On the other hand, there is a whole documentation of everyday style that, except in the examples of legal texts, do not present dating because they are administrative writings. These, despite everything, give us a remarkable range of information regarding the logistical needs of the Assyrian army, as well as everything that has to do with tactical positioning, settlement operations and pacification of the annexed territories, and the peace negotiations.

These resources, mainly those that come from the first group, however, what they testify is that these battles frequently take place in moments before or immediately after a siege. This note is of great interest, since it could mean that open field battles would always occur as a precedent to the conquest of enclaves or as a direct consequence of said action. In Nadali’s opinion, two ideas could be derived from this hypothesis: the first is that the battles would be conceived as secondary episodes of the main strategic objective (the capture of a certain enclave); and the second that these pitched clashes would occur more as responses to the challenges of the peoples under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire than at its initiative, and that, except in a few examples, they would have a more uncertain strategic result, so that, perhaps, , they would not be so interesting at a propaganda level.

Bas-reliefs generally show scenes in separate sequences. For this reason, pitched battles are often seen as significantly differentiated from representations of cities or fortifications that, as a whole, would show the perpetration of a military campaign. Expressions such as kaku (war) or youahazu (battle) that do not include descriptive elements of the art of polyorcetics perpetrated by the Assyrians. This could imply, following Nadali, that they would be terms associated with pitched battles, on the one hand, or with war, in a broad sense of the word, on the other, in relation to the development of a specific military campaign in which possibly only clashes took place in the open field.

In short, and despite the fact that, as has been mentioned, the resources available, even adding all the sources, are scarce, it is not impossible to reconstruct, at least partially, the functioning of the military apparatus of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Indeed, in the case of pitched battles, these would show more complete elements than in the case of sieges, since In these types of clashes the Assyrians deployed all…