Culture of Assyria. Culture of Assyria Culture and customs of the Assyrians

Culture of Babylon and Assyria.

Babylon.

The word "Babylon" ("Babil") is translated as "Gate of God." Majestic Babylon was located on the banks of the Euphrates River. Babylon first achieved its power under King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC). He conquered Sumer, Akkad and Assyria. In the Kingdom of Babylon, the slaveholding system was strengthened and further developed. The Babylonians adopted the spiritual culture of Sumer and adopted the traditions of Sumerian art.

Babylonia did not create an original culture, but successfully developed what was inherited from Sumer: from construction technologies to forms of literature. The Babylonians taught the Sumerian language in schools, developed Sumerian astronomy, mathematics, medicine, architecture, crafts, and adopted cuneiform writing. They continued to worship the Sumerian gods under other names. They even gave the temple of their main god, Marduk (the supreme God, patron of the city), the Sumerian name Esagila - the house where they raise their heads.

The best surviving work of Babylonian art is the relief crowning the code of laws of King Hammurabi - the famous legislative collection, which is the most important source for the study of the economic and social system of Babylon. This relief is carved into the upper part of a diorite pillar, completely covered with cuneiform text, and depicts King Hammurabi receiving laws from the sun god and justice Shamash. The image of the king in direct communication with the main god, presenting symbols of power to the earthly ruler, had a very important content for ancient Eastern despotism. The scene of such a presentation clearly expressed the idea of the divine origin of royal power. Having appeared in a previous time, these scenes, much later, two thousand years later, in Sassanian art will still be the subjects of most rock reliefs. On the stele of Hammurabi, the god is represented seated on a throne; the king stands, accepting a rod and a magic circle - symbols of power. The figure of the king is smaller than the figure of god, the image is filled with canonical constraint and solemnity.

Along with the cult of the gods, the veneration of demons of good and evil was also widespread. The most terrible were the representatives of the “Evil Seven”; they were contrasted with the “7 wise men” - useful and kind demons. This cult formed the basis of the modern seven-day week. Every year in Babylon there was an 11-day New Year's holiday on the day of the vernal equinox (when the gods determined the fate of the city and citizens for a year) with countless prayers and processions. Myths were passed on from mouth to mouth about how Marduk created the world and his son Nabu appeared to people.

The priesthood in Babylonia was quite developed. In the temple of the Sun god Shamash there were even hermit priestesses, prototypes of Christian nuns. A culture with a powerful priesthood is characterized by a high level of scientific development. The cult of the heavenly bodies was extremely important in Babylonia. Attention to the stars and planets contributed to the rapid development of astronomy and mathematics. For the first time in human history, Babylonian astronomers calculated the laws of revolution of the Sun, Moon and the frequency of eclipses. The Babylonian names of the constellations Unicorn, Gemini, and Scorpio have survived to this day. In general, the Babylonians were significantly ahead of the Egyptians in astronomical observations. Mathematics, like the Sumerians, was based on sexagesimal calculation. This is where our 60 minutes in an hour and 360° in a circle come from. Babylonian mathematicians became the founders of algebra.

It should be noted that the interests of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were more focused on reality. The Babylonian priests did not promise blessings and joys in the kingdom of the dead, but in case of obedience they promised them during life. There are almost no depictions of funeral scenes in Babylonian art. In general, the religion, art and ideology of Ancient Babylon were more realistic than the culture of ancient Egypt during the same period.

The most important centers of cultural and economic life in Mesopotamia were temples. They were built to demonstrate the power of their deity. Their classic form was a high stepped tower - a ziggurat, surrounded by protruding terraces and creating the impression of several towers, decreasing in volume ledge by ledge. There could be from four to seven such ledges. The ziggurats were painted with color transitions: from darker at the bottom to lighter at the top; terraces are usually landscaped. The most famous ziggurat in history can be considered the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon - the famous Tower of Babel, the construction of which is referred to as the Pandemonium of Babel in the Bible. The main building material was brick, dried in the sun. The fragile building material dictated heavy rectangular architecture with massive walls. In addition, there were such architectural elements as domes, arches, and vaulted ceilings. Art historians express the point of view that these forms subsequently formed the basis of the building art of Ancient Rome, and then medieval Europe.

Assyria.

In the 12th century BC. Babylonia, the heir of the Sumerian-Akkadian culture, is subjugated by Assyria, which has long fought for supremacy in the region and, along with Egypt, has become a “superpower” of antiquity.

The morals of Assyria, in comparison with what was usual for Sumer and Babylonia, were distinguished by severity. The socio-economic system of Assyria was based on the brutal exploitation and enslavement of a huge mass of the population. All power was concentrated in the hands of the Assyrian kings; art was required to glorify military campaigns and glorify royal valor. Children, like slaves, were considered property here. There was a large property stratification in the state; there was a constant shortage of slaves, which encouraged conquest. Assyria occupied a favorable position at the crossroads of caravan routes, and as a result a strong merchant class developed. Disregard for man, the creations of his hands, and life as such characterizes its culture, unique in its cruelty and cynicism. Assyrian warriors plundered cities, stole gold, silver, and treasures. Cities turned into ruins. Babylon was not only plundered, but also flooded, and the monuments were moved to the new capital of Assyria, Nineveh, where a library of clay cuneiform tablets was found in our time. This library is considered one of the oldest in the world, the key to the entire Assyro-Babylonian culture. It contains royal decrees, historical notes, literary monuments, including the text of the outstanding work of Mesopotamia, the Sumerian epic “The Song of Gilgamesh”. Soon after the death of the formidable Ashurbanipal, Nineveh turned into a heap of ruins, and Babylon, “the gate of God,” again raised its head and led the fight against Assyria.

Constant wars determined a characteristic feature of Assyrian architecture - the flourishing of fortress architecture. Its example is the city of Dur-Sharrukin, the residence of King Sargon II. Built according to a single plan in 713-707. BC e., it was surrounded by a gigantic, powerful fortress wall, the height and thickness of which was 23 m. Above the city, on an adobe terrace, was a grandiose royal palace, which included 210 halls and 30 courtyards. The palace ensemble was distinguished by an asymmetrical layout, which is typical for the adobe architecture of Ancient Mesopotamia, and consisted of seven tiers.

At the palace portals stood figures of fantastic winged bulls with human heads carved from monolithic blocks of soft local stone. The Assyrians called them “shedu” and believed that these statues were supposed to protect the palace and the sacred person of the king from hostile forces.

Assyrian fine art is characterized by a special approach to the image of a person: the desire to create an ideal of beauty and courage. This ideal is embodied in the image of the victorious king. In all figures, relief and sculptural, physical power, strength, and health are emphasized, which are expressed in unusually developed muscles, in thick and long curly hair.

The Assyrians created a new, military genre. On the reliefs of the royal palaces, artists depicted military life with amazing skill. They created grandiose battle paintings in which the warlike Assyrian army put their opponents to flight.

On the alabaster slabs that decorated the walls of the royal palaces, relief images of scenes of hunting and military campaigns, court life and religious rituals were preserved. The reliefs usually represented a kind of chronicle of events that took place during the reign of one or another king.

In the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II, the Assyrian state reached its greatest prominence. The distinctive features of the art of this period are simplicity, clarity and solemnity. In depicting various scenes on reliefs, artists tried to avoid overloading the image. Almost all compositions of the time lack landscape; sometimes only a flat line of soil is given

Human figures, with rare exceptions, are depicted with the convention characteristic of the Ancient East: shoulders and eyes - straight, legs and head - in profile. The variety of scales when depicting persons of different social status is also preserved. The figure of the king is always completely motionless.

At the end of the 8th - beginning of the 7th century. BC. further development of the relief can be noted. The compositions become significantly more complicated, sometimes overloaded with details that are not directly related to the plot. The abundance of details and the large number of figures increase simultaneously with a decrease in their size. The relief is now divided into several tiers. There are also traits of stagnation, manifested in an increase in decorativeness, a kind of heraldic abstraction that leads away from the truth of life, in a certain sophistication of execution that becomes an end in itself.

Metal-plastics reached great perfection in Assyria. Its best example is relief compositions on bronze sheets that lined the gates found in the ruins of the ancient city of Imgur-enlil on Balavat Hill (the time of Shalmaneser III, 9th century BC). The particular interest of this work for the history of art lies in the depiction of the scene of the sculptor making the king’s victory stele. This is one of the rarest evidence of the life and work of artists in the art of Western Asia.

In Assyrian glyptics of the 1st millennium BC. scenes of religious content occupy a much larger place than in palace reliefs. But stylistically, the images on cylinder seals are close to monumental reliefs and differ from Sumerian-Akkadian glyptics in their great craftsmanship, fine modeling of figures and careful rendering of details.

The products of Assyrian artisans (carved bone, stone and metal vessels) were often very exquisite, but not independent in style: they show a strong Phoenician and Egyptian influence. After all, artisans from these countries were driven en masse to Assyria. Looted works of art were also brought here in large quantities. Therefore, products from local workshops are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguish from “imported” ones.

Rituals and rites of a magical nature were of utmost importance in the religion of the Assyrians. The gods were presented as strong, envious and menacing creatures in their anger, and the role of man in relation to them was reduced to the role of a slave feeding them with his victims. Every god was the patron god of a certain community or territory, there were “friends” and “foreign” gods, however, “foreign” gods were still recognized as deities. The patron god of the state was declared the most powerful god, the king of the gods, the world of the gods was represented in the image of the hierarchy of the royal court, and religion primarily sanctified the existing despotic monarchy. Official rituals, mythology and the entire teaching of the Assyrian religion were almost completely borrowed from Babylon, with the only difference being that the local god Ashur was placed above all the gods, including the Babylonian God Marduk. There were, however, myths and beliefs common among the masses that were not known to the Babylonians and that went back to Hurrian mythology. This is attested to by images on cylinder stone seals worn by free Assyrians. Assyrian myths and cults associated with agriculture have survived in the form of remnants to this day in the everyday life of the mountaineers living in the territory of the former Assyria.

Inventions: sun and water clocks, lunar calendar, first zoos.

CULTURE OF ANCIENT ASSYRIA

INTRODUCTION

The Assyrian people are rightfully considered one of the most ancient peoples in the world. The history of the Assyrians goes back several thousand years.

The treasury of world culture includes many creative achievements of the Assyrian people. Even the wars of conquest of the Assyrian kings did not always have negative consequences. United within the Assyrian state, nationalities and tribes, regardless of the will of the conquerors and even in spite of it, entered into close economic and cultural ties with each other, which contributed to progress in various spheres of life.

Despite the fact that the history of the Assyrians and Assyria has been taught in universities and schools around the world for more than 150 years and is considered well studied, it should still be said that the history of the development of the culture of this people still remains unclear and requires further development.

Up to the present day, excavations have been and are being carried out on the territory of the existence of the Assyrian state. Archaeologists discover new cities, palaces and temples. Cuneiform inscriptions on reliefs and cuneiform tablets are deciphered. New mysteries are opening up, new facts can be used to study the development of culture in ancient Assyria.

However, based on the facts already studied, it can be judged that the earthly heritage of the Assyro-Babylonian culture is great.

The knowledge that was used by the Assyrian people in ancient times continues to be practiced by people all over the world in our time.

This article uses a large number of sources - works of Russian and foreign Assyriologists, as well as materials and exhibitions located in museums in Russia, France and the USA.

CULTURAL MONUMENTS OF ASSYRIA

WRITING

Humanity owes its knowledge of the history of the peoples of Mesopotamia and its neighbors primarily to a clay tablet.

Among the Sumerians, like the Egyptians, writing was originally the prerogative of scribes. At first they used rough, pictographic writing, depicting the general appearance of objects, or rather their outlines. Then these drawings became more and more simplified and turned into groups of wedges.

The Assyrians significantly simplified cuneiform, bringing it into a certain system and finally moving to horizontal writing. The Assyrians and Babylonians wrote with sticks of peeled reeds on tanned leather, on wooden tablets and on papyrus, which they received with caravans coming from Egypt, not to mention inscriptions carved on stone, metal plates, vessels and weapons. However, clay remained the main material for writing.

They wrote with a stick like a stylus with a blunt end in the shape of a triangle. After the entire surface of the tile was written on, it was dried in the sun and then fired. Thanks to this, the signs were preserved and the tiles did not suffer from dampness. This method of writing was also adopted by neighboring peoples - the Elamites, Persians, Medes, Hittites, Urartians, and partly the Phoenicians.

There were even schools in Mesopotamia. During the excavations, it was possible to open one school in the city of Mari, and in it - teaching aids and tasks for students. One of the signs proclaimed: “Whoever excels in reading and writing will shine like the sun.” A student had to go through four courses to learn cuneiform.

Recent archaeological finds have even made it possible to discover a unique University on the territory of Assyria. About 10 km. To the east of Baghdad is the ancient fortress of Til-Karmal. Findings in this place led to the conclusion that here was a kind of first University in the history of mankind. It was possible to establish the name of the ancient Assyrian city - Shadupum, which in Aramaic means “court of accounts” or “treasury”. Shadupum was a storage place for important documents of Assyria, a center of concentration of people versed not only in the art of writing, but also in various fields of culture and science.

Of greatest interest are the tablets available here, reflecting the knowledge of the ancients in mathematics and geometry.

For example, one of them proves the theorem on the similarity of right triangles, which is attributed to the ancient Greek scientist Euclid. It turned out that it was used in Assyria 17 centuries before Euclid. Mathematical tables have also been found that can essentially be used to multiply, take square roots, raise various powers, perform division, and calculate percentages. (For more details, see "Abroad". 1973, No. 28, November.)

LIBRARY OF ASSHURBANAPALA

Assyria reached the pinnacle of its military and cultural development under King Ashurbanipal, who reigned from 668 to 629. BC

Ashurbanipal cared about the cultural development of his kingdom. His library in Nineveh, which he collected from all the large cities of Mesopotamia and placed in the archives of his palace, became especially famous.

The main place in the library was occupied by books of religious and scientific content, mainly on mathematics and astronomy. In both, the ancient Assyrians achieved great perfection.

Ashurbanipal's scribes immortalized his military campaigns and exploits by inscribing them on large clay prisms. Similar inscriptions have also been found about the military exploits of outstanding Assyrian kings - Esarhaddon and Sennacherib. These texts, in their content, are reduced to three parts: a) an introduction containing a short prayer addressed to the gods; b) a description of the actions of the king, his victorious campaigns, successfully won victories over his enemies; c) a story about the king’s construction activities. Sometimes the texts were devoted to descriptions of royal hunts, especially lions. They also talk about the king’s concerns related to the development of cattle breeding, trade, crafts, tree planting, and floriculture. All military campaigns are listed here in strictly chronological order, the events of a given reign are covered, and the time of compilation of the text is necessarily indicated.

The library of Nineveh contained many texts dedicated to the ancient kings of Assyria and the Babylonian rulers.

A huge number of various letters and dispatches have been preserved in the Nineveh Library. These written monuments indicate that the ancient rulers of Assyria and Babylon considered such correspondence to be everyday and quite common.

The reports of military leaders about the advances of troops, the conquest of cities and regions, and the fate of captured enemies were important; requests for the supply of weapons and food; reports of losses in one's own army and in the army of enemies.

A very important place in the library is occupied by grammars, dictionaries, and school books for exercises in reading by syllables.

The books listed above were part of the so-called classical department of the library. Another department can be called "archive". Various documents, public and private, were kept here. Along with political tracts, royal decrees, dispatches, lists of tributes and taxes, reports of royal governors and military leaders and daily reports from workers of royal observatories, this includes countless private documents: deeds of fortress, satisfied according to all the rules, with signatures and seals, for houses, lands , slaves - for all property; credit bills, contracts and agreements of all kinds. Literary monuments also include commercial inscriptions and contracts. They talk about the level of crafts and trade, routes of communication and legal relations in Assyria. Herodotus also noted that almost every inhabitant of Assyria and Babylon had a personal seal. Many such cylindrical seals with images and cuneiform texts can be seen in the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin.

ART

We are left with many original works from the fine art of the ancient Assyrians. After all, Assyria was the cradle of one of the greatest plastic arts of antiquity.

Assyrian fine art is characterized by a special approach to the image of a person: the desire to create an ideal of beauty and courage. This ideal is embodied in the image of the victorious king. In all the figures of the ancient Assyrians, relief and sculptural, physical power, strength, and health are emphasized, which are expressed in unusually developed muscles, in thick and long curly hair.

On the alabaster slabs that decorated the walls of the royal palaces, relief images of scenes of hunting and military campaigns, court life and religious rituals were preserved.

Sculpture played an important role in the appearance of Assyrian palaces. The man approached the palace, and at the entrance he was met by stone figures of winged spirits - the king's guardians: imperturbable, impenetrably majestic lions and winged bulls with human heads. With careful observation, it can be established that each winged bull has five legs. It was an original artistic technique, designed to create a kind of optical illusion. Everyone who approached the gate saw at first only two legs of a bull-man, motionless resting on the pedestal. As he entered the gate, he glanced at the giant figure from the side. At the same time, the left front leg went out of sight, but one could notice two hind legs and an extra front leg set back. Thus, it seemed as if the bull, which had just been standing calmly, was now suddenly walking.

The reliefs usually represented a kind of chronicle of events that took place during the reign of one or another king.

The art of the reign of the Assyrian king Sargon II is much more sculptural; the relief here is more convex. Sometimes there are images of people at different scales. The themes of military scenes are richer and more varied: along with the usual episodes of battle, siege and execution of prisoners, we encounter motifs of the sack of a captured city, allowing us to depict details of military life, as well as the construction of buildings. Documentary images are developing. Thus, a successive series of successive scenes on the relief dedicated to the campaign against the city of Musair in 714 BC almost literally coincides with their description in the report of Sargon II to the god Ashur about this campaign.

In general, the greatest successes of Assyrian artists were achieved precisely in terms of composition. Scenes of gazelle hunting, where small figures of animals (a wild ass and a royal horse, a gazelle protecting its cub, ferocious dogs) are freely placed in space, give a feeling of steppe space.

Assyrian reliefs of the 9th - 7th centuries. BC, found during excavations of the ancient capitals of Assyria, took pride of place in the largest museums in the world - England, France, Germany, Iraq, the USA, Russia and other countries.

LIFE AND CORNERS OF THE ANCIENT ASSYRIANS

Throughout the existence of the Assyrian state, there was a continuous stratification of property among its population.

The house of a noble Assyrian had several rooms; in the main rooms the walls were decorated with mats, colored fabrics, and carpets. The rooms contained furniture decorated with metal plates and inlays of ivory and precious stones. Many houses had windows right under the roof.

For the townspeople, the situation was much simpler: several chairs and stools of various shapes, with straight or crossed legs. They usually slept on mats, with the exception of the master and mistress of the house, who had wooden beds on four legs in the shape of lion paws, with a mattress and two blankets. In one of the corners of the yard there was a bread oven; on the pillars of the portico were hung wineskins with wine and jugs of water for drinking and washing. On the open-air fireplace there was a large cauldron of boiling water.

Various amulets were placed in the house, designed to protect households from the “evil eye” and “evil spirits.” To get rid of them, an image of the spirit in the form of a figurine was placed in a visible place. The text of the conspiracy was cut out on it. Other similar figurines were buried under the threshold to block “evil spirits” from entering the house. Most of them have the heads of various animals, completely unseen in the world.

The costume of wealthy Assyrians consisted of a dress with a slit on the side. Over the shirt, a noble Assyrian sometimes wore colored wool fabric embroidered and decorated with fringes or expensive purple. They wore a necklace around their necks, earrings in their ears, massive bracelets and wrists made of bronze, silver or gold on their hands. Dresses were worn long, reaching to the heels, and a wide belt covered them at the waist.

Craftsmen, farmers, and warriors dressed more modestly and simply. They wore a shorter tunic that reached to the knees and did not restrict movement.

The ceremonial clothing of the Assyrian king consisted of a dark blue outer dress with short sleeves embroidered with red rosettes; at the waist it was tied with a wide belt with three regularly folded pleats; the belt was trimmed along the lower edge with fringe, each tassel of which ended with four strings of glass beads. Something like a long epancha (sleeveless or very short sleeved outerwear) was worn over the tunic. It reached only to the waist and was so embroidered with patterns that the material itself was almost invisible. On his head, the king wore a tall tiara in the shape of a truncated cone, which fit tightly to the contours of his forehead and temples. In his hand the king held a long scepter, the height of a man. Behind him, slaves carried an umbrella and a large feather fan.

Jewelry made of precious metals matched the clothing. Men maintained the custom of wearing earrings in their ears. Bracelets of exquisite shape were usually worn two on each hand. The first was worn above the elbow. All decorations were made with great art. The lion heads are expressive, the designs are placed tastefully, and the combinations of patterns are very original.

ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN RELIGION

RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE ANCIENT ASSYRIANS

The religions of Assyria and Babylonia have much in common. The foundations of the religious system and almost all the deities of the Assyrians and Babylonians were the same.

At the head of the Assyrian pantheon was the ancient tribal god - Ashur, declared the king of the gods. He was usually depicted covered with bird feathers and was obviously associated with the ancient totem - the dove.

Religious ideology in its development reflected changes in the economic and political life of society. For example, the transition from hunting to agriculture led to the spread of the cult of fertility goddesses (especially Ishtar).

Significant shifts in ideas about the gods occurred as a result of the creation on the territory of Assyria of a centralized state with its developed bureaucratic system. The earthly hierarchy was transferred to the world of the gods. In each major center, the local god became the head of the pantheon (in Babylon - Marduk, in Ashur - Ashur).

The priests sought to bring various and sometimes contradictory beliefs into a single system, although this was not always successful, and local ideas and rituals remained in force. Although gods similar in their functions were identified with each other, this process was not always completed. A contradiction arose between complex theological constructs that were not understandable to everyone and numerous ancient beliefs and rituals.

This was, in general terms, the path of development of the Assyro-Babylonian religion. To study it in more detail, it is necessary to begin with an analysis of the Sumerian beliefs, which merged with the Akkadian ones and subsequently had a powerful impact on the religious systems of Babylonia and Assyria.

CONCLUSION

EARTHLY HERITAGE OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA.

And I remember Ishtar,

when the Babylonians had not yet stolen it from us...

Jack London

For almost two millennia, Christian peoples drew their understanding of Assyria and Babylonia, the Assyrians and Babylonians from the Bible.

Here is what the Assyriologist scientist N. Nikolsky wrote about this in the book “Ancient Babylon”: “Europeans formed a concept about Babylonia and the Babylonian kings, about Assyria and the Assyrian kings almost exclusively on the basis of biblical stories. The Assyrians seemed cruel, bloodthirsty conquerors, drinking human blood, almost cannibals... There was no thought that these scourges could be highly cultured peoples and even teachers of the Greeks and Romans.” The ancient Greeks and then the Romans experienced the most direct Assyrian-Babylonian influence in many areas: science, technology, history, myths, literature, military affairs, medicine, agriculture, mathematics, etc.

We are so accustomed, for example, to seven days of the week that it does not even occur to us to ask ourselves where this count of days of the week comes from; we also treat the twelve months of the year, or 60 minutes in an hour, or 60 seconds in a minute. Meanwhile, these integral divisions that have become part of our flesh and blood do not at all constitute the original heritage of our culture, but trace their origins to ancient Assyria and Babylon.

Another interesting fact is the discovery in the history of musical romance. Professors at the University of California spoke about this in 1975. They brought back to life an Assyrian romance written on clay that was about 3,400 years old. Before this, it was believed that ancient musicians could play one note at a time. It has now been proven that the ancient Assyrian musicians played two notes and used the Western seven-note scale, rather than the Eastern five-note scale. Before this, musicologists were sure that the seven-sound scale was created by the ancient Greeks in 400 BC.

Another invention of the Assyrians and Babylonians, which has survived to this day and is widely used by people in all countries of the world, is the sundial and water clock.

When we start studying geometry, we make sure to memorize the Pythagorean theorem. It was borrowed by Pythagoras during his visit to Babylonia. And Assyro-Babylonian mathematicians knew it thousands of years before. They laid the foundation for algebra and knew how to extract square and cube roots.

In Mesopotamia, the lunar calendar was invented, which still exists today. Scientists of Assyria and Babylonia established a connection between the Sun and the signs of the zodiac on the day of the spring equinox. They could predict solar and lunar eclipses, the approach of the Moon and the Earth.

Assyrian scientists collected, selected and systematized plants, compiled lists of local and imported animals, minerals, and conducted research on agriculture.

The inhabitants of Mesopotamia turned their country into the largest center of the most developed agriculture and were famous for viticulture and winemaking.

The first zoos were created in Assyria. The famous naturalist J. Darrell wrote about this: “The Assyrians had many zoos, including such famous ones as Queen Semiramis, her son Ninias and King Ashurbanipal, a specialist in lions and camels.”

And finally, the architecture of Assyria and Babylon forms a special style and genre and influenced European architecture as a whole, and through Byzantium - also on Rus'.

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INTRODUCTION

Highertion of Babylonia. Nebochadnezzar II. The history of the last Babylonian kingdom, called Neo-Babylonian, began with a rebellion in 625 BC, when the Chaldean leader Nabopolassar broke away from Assyria. He later entered into an alliance with Cyaxares, king of Media, and in 612 BC. their combined armies destroyed Nineveh. Nabopolassar's son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar II, ruled Babylon from 605 to 562 BC. Nebuchadnezzar is known as the builder of the Hanging Gardens and the king who led the Jews into Babylonian slavery (587-586 BC).

Persian invasion. The last Babylonian king was Nabonidus (556-539 BC), who ruled jointly with his son Belsharutsur (Belshazzar). Nabonidus was an elderly man, a scholar and a lover of antiquities, and apparently did not possess the qualities and energy necessary to rule the kingdom at a time of extreme danger, when the other states of Lydia and Media were collapsing under the onslaught of the Persian king Cyrus II the Great. In 539 BC, when Cyrus finally led his troops into Babylonia, he did not encounter any serious resistance. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that the Babylonians, especially the priests, were not averse to replacing Nabonidus with Cyrus.

After 539 BC Babylonia and Assyria could no longer regain their former independence, passing successively from the Persians to Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Parthians and other later conquerors of the Middle East. The city of Babylon itself remained an important administrative center for many centuries, but the ancient cities of Assyria fell into disrepair and were abandoned. When Xenophon passed at the end of the 5th century. BC. As part of a detachment of Greek mercenaries across the territory of the Persian state, the location of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, a once thriving, noisy city, a large trading center, could only be determined by a high hill.

As for mythology, it, like religious ideas, was quite gloomy in this world. This world was very afraid of death. The pagan world often fears death and strives to overcome it. But the world, which began with the Sumerians and subsequently fell to more and more new peoples, was extremely afraid of death. This religious system in Schubart’s classification represents the paradigm “good here, bad there.”

The oldest Sumerian epic, inherited by the Semites and well preserved, is the epic about the king and hero Gilgamesh. It tells about the incredible feats performed by Gilgamesh to save his friend Enkidu from accidental death and ending up in the Kingdom of the Dead. And Gilgamesh can be understood, knowing that this world imagined the afterlife like this: on the flat clay space of the courtyard, completely devoid of vegetation, the souls of the dead in complete darkness forever squat aimlessly, although without experiencing suffering.

In general, for most different religious systems that are far from each other, the afterlife is not a world of suffering, but a world of shadows living in darkness, with a complete absence of desire, will, initiative, i.e. not non-existence, but ghostly existence. The Hebrew Sheol is very similar to this (there is a clearly visible connection with the culture of Mesopotamia). But the Greek world of shadows (a people so far from the Bible and from Mesopotamia!) is also similar, only the ghosts of the Achaeans and then the Hellenes do not sit in the dark, but wander aimlessly in a world devoid of meaning, emotions, and faith.

A number of researchers believe that the world of Mesopotamia also contains the earliest attempts to magically influence the heavens in order to overcome death. It was for this, they believe, that the famous Tower of Babel was built, which was a magical, and not at all an engineering structure, with the help of which naive people hoped to reach heaven. Their point of view is indirectly confirmed by the Mesopotamian cultural and cult tradition of building ziggurats (step pyramids). It is usually explained by the fact that the Sumerians, who came to Mesopotamia from the mountains and who had previously built their sanctuaries on the mountains, found themselves in a swampy plain and began to build artificial mountains. However, what is much more interesting is what the ziggurat itself was.

Ancient ziggurats, incl. and the ziggurats of the Old Babylonian period, always of three stages, the upper stage of which was painted white, the middle red, and the lower black. This may be partly due to the absence of any noticeable dyes other than vegetable white, baked brick and asphalt among the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. However, the colors are symbolic, and they symbolize power over the heavenly world (upper level), the earthly world (middle) and the underworld, i.e. world of darkness (lower).

So, the religion of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia was largely based on the fear of death, and the cult was an attempt to magically influence the three-stage world, which seemed real to them. Moreover, they professed paganism, which was quite demonized and prone to communicating with the inhabitants of the underworld. It is no coincidence that the biblical tradition has a very bad attitude towards Mesopotamia, where the ancestors of the Jews came from (the righteous Abraham came from Ur). Let us also add that this world was no stranger to human sacrifices, incl. and took place in the sanctuaries on top of the ziggurats.

(This is why, by the way, the construction of a mausoleum on Red Square - actually a ziggurat in the center of Moscow - is a direct challenge to both the Christian faith and Christian culture. The black holes along its upper tier are especially gloomy. In all likelihood, these are not ventilation holes, but in the ziggurats of Ancient Mesopotamia these were chimneys. Moreover, the project executor, architect A.V. Shchusev, did not choose the prototype himself - the image of the ziggurat for our mausoleum was ordered (it is repeated in all competition projects.)

Babylon became more and more significant in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. already regardless of who prevailed in Mesopotamia and, above all, in Southern Mesopotamia. He was significant in himself. Any king, incl. and the invader king took him into account. Even such “steel” rulers as the Kassite kings took him into account. It gradually turned not only into one of the largest craft centers (there were many of them), but also into the largest trading, and then usurious or, in modern terms, banking center of the Ancient Near East.

At the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Another Semitic people appears - the Chaldeans. From the beginning of the 1st millennium they founded their cities, and among the old (essentially Amorite) cities there were more and more Chaldeans. They are nouveau riche, very young, energetic, and the further they go, the more they break through to power in Babylon, occupy key positions in society, crowding out the Amorite patriciate - the old nobility, accustomed to relying primarily on their exceptional wealth, as well as on the most powerful religious a cultural tradition, which, by the way, is gradually ceasing to be dark.

Then the Babylonians turn for help to their rather close relatives, the most warlike people in Mesopotamia - the Assyrians. And the Assyrians, represented by Sargon II (722-705 BC), occupy Babylon and begin to rule it. If we do not accept the hypothesis about the Ancient Kingdom of the Egyptians as an empire, then it is the Assyrians who should be recognized as the first in world history who began to correctly build an empire. The Assyrians treated the Babylonian tradition with the utmost respect. The Assyrian king either set one of his sons with a Babylonian throne name to rule in Babylon as a subject king; or, even if he himself became the king of Babylon, then, preserving the local tradition, he accepted the Babylonian Amorite throne name, and did not rule under the Assyrian name. Babylon was protected not only from direct political interference, but also received certain guarantees - it was protected by military force. Without a doubt, Assyrian rule was not ruinous for Babylon, although, of course, it was necessary to fork out for the maintenance of the army of the great northern neighbor.

But the Babylonians were accustomed to consider their city the navel of the earth. Moreover, those around us are also used to it. Unrest became more frequent in Babylon, and eventually a revolt occurred. The Assyrian military tradition could not tolerate this. In winter 689-688. BC. At the behest of the formidable Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-680 BC), Babylon, practically impregnable, was nevertheless destroyed. The engineers of Sennacherib carried out excellent siege hydraulic work (it was not without reason that this world had been a world of highly complex irrigation for more than a thousand years), and the Euphrates, diverted to a new channel, simply washed away the eternal city. It was not so difficult to wash away those cities - they were built of brick, not stone. In this world there has always been an acute shortage of stone, as well as industrial wood.

But Sennacherib did not take into account one thing: Babylon in the eyes of the entire surrounding world was an eternal city, and the terrible news of its death shocked everyone - from the Phoenician colonies that had already reached Spain to the Indus Valley, from the Black Sea region to the former savannah of the Sahara. Babylon may not have aroused good feelings towards itself, it could have caused irritation, aroused envy, and a desire to capture it, which happened more than once (they would also later strive to capture Rome, and even later Constantinople - the reputation of a great city attracts enemies). But no one could think of the idea that Babylon could not be captured, not reigned over, but simply wiped off the face of the earth!

Sennacherib, a talented ruler and brilliant military leader, spends the last 8 years of his life passively. He's confused. He feels that the world under his control looks at him as a blasphemer. That this world has become shaky. That they fear him, but hate him. That even his own people are confused. And as soon as Sennacherib died, his successor, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681-669 BC), restored Babylon, spending on this the funds of his colossal state, his unfinished but under construction empire. The Babylonians won here too!

Babylon did not repay such a good deed with good. In restored Babylon, the Chaldeans finally took a leading position. Ultimately, the whole story of the destruction of the city benefited them. She opened the way for them, since with the destruction of Babylon the Amorite tradition was also destroyed. Having restored its prosperity very quickly (remember that this world owned the best plantations of that time, had high culture, civilization, science, crafts and was also a world of traders and moneylenders), Babylon immediately created an anti-Assyrian coalition. I don’t really believe in the high qualities of the Babylonian army, whose valor was hardly comparable to the valor of the Assyrians. The coalition owes its success primarily not to him, but to the troops of the Indo-Europeans who recently arrived from the north - the energetic and brave Medes (the Median kingdom was the first large Iranian kingdom) and the nomadic Scythians. But it was the art of Babylonian diplomacy that made it possible to attract and Babylonian money to pay for their participation in the coalition. And in 612 BC. The capital of Assyria, Nineveh, fell. The Babylonians showed themselves to be petty-vengeful. They repeated the action of Sennacherib - Nineveh was washed away by the waters of the Tigris. But, unlike Babylon, it was never restored. And after another 7 years, not a trace remained of Assyria.

The main holiday of the Babylonians was the annual spring religious festival - the wedding of the god Marduk. The bride was brought to him along the river from the city of Borsippa - also an ancient and large Amorite center. Marduk (more precisely, his statue from the temple of Esagila) was taken to the water in a solemn procession, placed on a sacred barge and set off to meet his bride. In general, this is a grandiose celebration with a very complex ritual. The king had to play a particularly important role, and a priestly one, at this festival, for which he had to undergo initiation in the temple of Esagila. But the dedication was performed by the high priest of the temple - a person belonging to the ruling oligarchy. Therefore, it was very easy to eliminate the king simply by not putting him through this initiation. Then the king was deprived of the opportunity to celebrate the festival, and thereby automatically the opportunity to reign.

Babylon possessed not only a powerful craft (especially the ceramic tradition), but also excellent agriculture in the surrounding irrigated lands, based primarily on the date palm. The beautiful plantations of the Babylonians were three-tiered. Date palms are very sun-loving, so they formed the upper tier and were planted at a considerable distance from each other. The next tier was planted with fruit trees, less demanding in terms of sun, and under them garden or cereal crops were also grown.

This world was a world of high science. It has already been said about the significant achievements of Egyptian astronomy in creating the calendar, but Chaldean astronomy is also significant in its own way. By the way, from Mesopotamia we got a 7-day week. The zodiac (zodiacal constellations and associated luminaries, including the Sun and Moon) comes from Mesopotamia - the basis of the astrological system, which was part of the science of astronomy until the 18th century. AD Moreover, from there comes the semantics of the zodiac names of the days of the week, which have been preserved to this day in a number of Indo-European languages - primarily in Romance, as well as in Germanic.

Bearers of the most sophisticated scientific knowledge, incl. practical, knowledge in Babylon before the Assyrian invasion and later there were people who went down in history under the name “Chaldeans”. Note that the Chaldeans are the people who founded the Neo-Babylonian state. But the Middle Eastern world and the highly learned intellectual professionals of Babylon called Chaldeans, and not the priests, as is often erroneously stated in the literature. The priests of Babylon were aristocrats (more precisely, oligarchs), representatives of the most noble families. The priesthood was a symbol of their power and a public position. But the representatives of the nobility were not literate enough to master all the subtleties of the Babylonian cult. Therefore, they performed cultic acts in consultation with Chaldean intellectuals. And they came from all walks of life, because any person could achieve the position of an intellectual after receiving the appropriate education. This was not easy to do. In this world they studied Chaldean, Amorite, Assyrian, as well as the long-dead Sumerian and Akkadian languages. In this world, astronomy was studied to perfection. This world had excellent geometry. The same Chaldean intellectuals were consultants on the construction of canals, the construction and siege of fortresses, and many other engineering issues. This is another feature of Babylon.

This city ended badly, and not when it was easily included in the Iranian Achaemenid power. At one time, the Babylonians managed to bribe and subjugate the Medes. But they failed to do this with the Persians. The Persians - the founders of the first full-fledged empire - were accepted by everyone because they were tolerant and respected their subject peoples. However, Babylon was already doomed by that time. Fate seemed to settle scores with him for Ancient Assyria.

King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to please everyone - the bearer of a subtle Egyptian tradition, who surpassed all the local Chaldean and Amorite girls in beauty and intelligence. But the queen, naturally, wanted to do something nice for her husband. And she proposed building another canal, saying that her engineers would be able to calculate it perfectly, and the irrigated area for plantations would become even larger. A huge bypass canal was built. He took so much water from the Euphrates that the movement of water in the entire irrigation system became very, very slow, barely noticeable, and the evaporation surface increased. As a result, rapid salinization of the top layer of soil began.

Alexander the Great was the last to plan to establish a capital in Babylon, but did not have time. Babylon was already dying out then, its inhabitants were leaving. And by the end of the old era - the beginning of the new (by the date of the Nativity of Christ) it was completely deserted. Now no one lives there. It has been thoroughly excavated by archaeologists, and we can imagine it very well. It's just impossible to live there. In the Middle Ages, some particularly cruel rulers tried to bring life back to this soil in various ways, including. sending slaves to collect salt crystals. It was a terrible job. Slaves rebelled and were killed. But salt cannot be collected. In place of Babylon, the desert is one of the deserts created by man. And by the way, the Amorites - the ancient indigenous population of Babylon - understood perfectly well that it was impossible to build even more remote irrigation canals. But the king was a Chaldean, the king’s advisers were Jews, the engineers who calculated the canal were Egyptians. They were all strangers in this land and killed this land.

Assyrian Mesopotamian cultural ritual

1. ASSYRIA

Assyria is located in the north of Mesopotamia. Its very name comes from the word “Ashur”. In the ancient Assyrian period, this was the only name - Ashur - and this state was called. Its capital bore the same name. The city of Ashur preserved, despite the change of ethnicity between the ancient and Middle Assyrian periods, an aristocratic culture and even the aristocracy itself, which stayed in Ashur until the end of the existence of this state and this culture and was very proud of the fact that it was they - the Ashur aristocrats - were the creators of the Assyrian kingdom of all its periods.

The upper reaches of the Tigris are a different climatic zone than Middle or Lower Mesopotamia. This is a zone of gradual increase in relief - the Iranian Plateau begins in the upper reaches of the Tigris. It is cooler (the date palm grows there, although it ripens with difficulty) and wetter than the lower reaches of Mesopotamia (it rains there). There are no swamps there, but there are rocky areas close to the desert.

In this zone, a culture developed a long time ago, religiously close to the whole of Mesopotamia, which absorbed a lot from there, but also absorbed from Elam - a small ancient culture with a fairly high civilization in the southern part of the Iranian Plateau. Geographically, Elam occupied an intermediate position between Northern India and Mesopotamia, and, apparently, as already mentioned, the Elamites were relatives of the Dravidians - the oldest population of India about which we know something.

The ancient state of Ashur took shape at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The Ancient Assyrian period or the Ancient Assyrian Kingdom dates back to the end of the 3rd millennium BC. - end of the 15th century BC It was small, not prone to grandiose conquests, although most likely due to its small numbers, but not due to the lack of belligerence among the ancient Assyrians. Late XV - X centuries. BC. dates back to the Middle Assyrian Kingdom. This is followed by some decline. And the New Assyrian kingdom already dates back to the 9th - late 7th centuries. BC. This concludes the history of Assyria.

The period, which lends itself well to study based on the state of the sources, covers just under eight centuries. This is not enough for the normal passage of all phases of ethnogenesis. It is in no way possible to assume that certain phases of ethnogenesis were passed through by the Assyrians before the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period, because the ancient Assyrian period immediately preceding it ends with a deep decline, i.e. there was clearly a direct change of ethnic groups. Thus, the birth of the second Assyrians (inhabitants no longer of Ashur, but of Assyria), the beginning of their ethnogenesis occurs in the 15th century. BC. And they cease to exist in the phase of breakdown, or in the interphase period between breakdown and inertia, or at the very beginning of inertia at the end of the 7th century. BC, when Assyria was destroyed by the blow of a powerful coalition.

Having inherited the tradition of Ashur, Assyria, already in the Middle Assyrian period, was a surprisingly warlike state. The Assyrians were a people-army, like the Mongol Horde. In fact, all free-born Assyrians capable of bearing arms were involved in military affairs, although the method of warfare was predominantly aristocratic (the Achaeans, the ancestors of the Greeks, subsequently fought in the same way). Those. The aristocrats were the main striking force of the Assyrian army, and the people's militia was an auxiliary force. It must be said that aristocracy existed in many Semitic societies, but there was no developed aristocratic tradition in any of them, except Assyria.

The Middle Assyrian kingdom is organized in accordance with Polybius's scheme - the political system includes all three forms of power as constituent elements. Royal and aristocratic power is always more noticeable and much more powerful there. However, the democratic component - the people's assembly - also exists.

Among the patriarchal societies known to scientists, the Assyrian is one of the extremely patriarchal and very harsh in its way of life, traditions, and laws. This way of life, such laws are aimed at maintaining the ethnic group and its foundation - each family. The norm of family as the main value in Assyria is significant as nowhere else in Mesopotamia. Not all Assyrian laws have reached us, but quite a lot has been preserved from family legislation. According to these laws, property could practically only be owned by a man. A widow could inherit property only until the eldest of her sons came of age. Moreover, she could dispose of property uncontrollably only if there were no direct male relatives of her late husband. Divorce initiated by a man was considered highly reprehensible, but acceptable. As for women's initiative, the Assyrians were clearly aware of who is the true guardian of the integrity of the family, therefore the law directly commands: a woman who expressed her intention to leave her husband should be drowned in the river.

The patriarchal nature of family relations, already obvious from the above procedure for punishing murderers, becomes even clearer when looking at the legal provisions that regulate family law. There is also a “big family”, and the power of the householder is extremely broad. He can give his children and wife as collateral, subject his wife to corporal punishment and even injure her. “As he pleases,” he can do with his “sinned” unmarried daughter. Adultery is punishable by death for both of its participants: catching them in the act, the offended husband can kill them both. According to the court, the adulterer was imposed the same punishment to which the husband wished to subject his wife. A woman could become legally independent only if she was widowed and had no sons (even minors), no father-in-law, or other male relatives of her husband. Otherwise, she remains under their patriarchal authority. The SAZ establishes a very simple procedure for transforming a concubine-slave into a legal wife and legitimizing the children born to her, but in all other cases the attitude towards male and female slaves is extremely harsh. Slaves and harlots, under pain of severe punishment, were forbidden to wear a veil - a mandatory part of a free woman's costume. However, severe punishments are imposed on a slave by law, and not by the arbitrariness of the masters

In the Neo-Assyrian period, a fairly noticeable property stratification was observed, impoverished Assyrians appeared, although laws, apparently, protected the Assyrians from this (for example, the withdrawal of land ownership from the rural community was prohibited). However, warriors often went bankrupt after neglecting their farms during the war. (Later, the Roman landless plebs would also arise - farms there were neglected, mainly during the Punic Wars and were subsequently sold for debts.) The Assyrians, deprived of their means of subsistence, never became slaves, but they replenished a kind of clientele, and this enslaving dependence could be both lifelong and hereditary.

In addition, there was a custom called “revival”: during a period of major natural shocks (say, in a famine year), children whose parents were not able to feed could be “revived” (i.e. taken into maintenance) by a wealthy Assyrian. Thus, he acquired paternal rights to these children (the rights of the head of the family), and they were largely at his disposal. Among other things, he disposed of their marriage (for example, he gave the “vivacious” girl in marriage at his discretion).

Thus, dependence existed, but the Assyrians were never slaves. The slaves were prisoners of war and their descendants.

They were proud of freedom, freedom was emphasized. Under no circumstances could a freeborn woman leave the house with her head uncovered - only under a veil, although she did not cover her face. (The custom of covering the face was invented in Central Asia. It must be said that Sharia does not require this from a Muslim woman, she only needs to cover her hair.) For appearing with her head uncovered, an Assyrian woman was punished with 25 blows with a stick. But if a slave or a personally free prostitute of foreign origin walked under the veil, as a free woman, she would be punished with 50 strokes of a stick. Any man who discovered this was obliged to deliver the offender to the nearest official for execution of punishment. Otherwise, the same punishment was due to him.

Interestingly, there was a legal norm emphasizing that only the head of the family is the owner-manager of property. According to this norm, if a wife gives part of the property to a slave, and he loses it or disposes of it unworthily, the husband must punish her by cutting off her ear. He must do the same with the slave. But if, having forgiven his wife, he did not cut her ear, then he should not cut the slave’s ear either. Thus, the woman appears here as having abused her husband’s trust, and the slave is simply an instrument carrying out orders.

Note that this harsh world had a fairly high culture and considerable civilization. The new capital, the capital of the New Assyrian kingdom, the famous Nineveh, mentioned more than once in the Bible, was considered one of the most beautiful cities. The embankment of the Tigris in Nineveh was exceptionally good (it can be easily reconstructed because it is described in detail). They built in this world no worse than in Babylon - they built higher than one floor, they were excellent at the art of fortification, as well as the art of taking fortresses. They loved bright colors in architecture (the buildings, buried in greenery, were also richly painted).

The main achievements of the Assyrian civilization were in one way or another connected with war. The continuous improvement of military equipment contributed to the general increase in the technical level of their civilization (the same can be said about our modern world). This world knew plumbing, had excellent mastery of metal, incl. and artistic. By the way, the Assyrians were the first creators of steel. Of course, being a born and bred warrior, you will be more interested than anyone else in creating quality swords. But many wanted this, but did not create it! Moreover, the Assyrians created real damask steel, and the later tradition of making damask blades in the Middle East is simply a repeated return to the Assyrian tradition, to the same blade technologies. And since these warlike people also constantly trained, it was difficult to fight with them. The Assyrian infantrymen walked briskly in heavy weapons, which made them very vulnerable. When they acquired steel swords, they had no competitors at all (a sword made of simple iron, and often a bronze one, could be cut with a steel sword).

The Assyrians of the late Middle and New Assyrian periods very carefully adopted all the new innovations in military affairs. They were the first to adopt from the Indo-Europeans (most likely from the Hittites) the art of horse breeding and chariot combat. On the Assyrian chariots there were not two, as usual among the Egyptians, but three fighters, of whom the commander was an archer, the second was the driver, and what made this “tank” very perfect was the presence of a third fighter, whose main function was to cover himself and his comrades with a shield (themselves they could not do this because their hands were busy).

Of the non-Aryan peoples, the Assyrians were apparently the first to ride chariots and certainly the first - in the Neo-Assyrian period - to fight on horseback. They were good archers. But the Egyptians with whom they clashed were great archers. Therefore, the Assyrians needed to improve their fighting techniques. Having learned to stay on a horse, they could not immediately learn to shoot a bow from the saddle, for which they needed to have both hands free. (The nomads of later eras learned this.) But it seems that the Assyrians were the only ones who had an intermediate stage - their horse archers began to engage in battle in pairs. Each shooter was accompanied by an equestrian servant, to whom, when starting shooting, the shooter threw the reins, and he led his horse by the reins. By the end of the Neo-Assyrian period, the Assyrians still learned to control the horse with their knees and shot from the saddle, letting go of the reins.

This world is a world of considerable culture. Monuments of Assyrian literature are now known to us, because at the end of the last century a cuneiform library of Assyrian kings (the so-called “library of Sardanapalus”) was found. They have been translated, and they are worth it - this literature is polished in form and very organic. One of the books - a small book of comments and teachings - is especially noteworthy, since it went beyond the borders of lost Assyria and migrated from language to language, which is rare (not many works pass from one literature to another). This is the “Book of Ahikar” or “The Tale of Ahikar,” who, apparently, was a nobleman of King Sennacherib. It says, for example, the following (translation from Assyrian by D. Ch. Sadaev):

“It is better to carry stones with a wise man than to drink wine with a foolish man.”

Don’t be too sweet so that you don’t get swallowed. Don’t be too bitter, lest they spit you out.

Do not allow anyone to step on your feet, so that later they will not dare to step on your neck.

One sparrow in your hand is better than a thousand birds fluttering in the air.”

Through the Greek intermediate language, through Byzantine literature, the last proverb came to us; it was not invented by the Russians. This book was quite widely circulated in both the Greek and Latin traditions, and therefore reached medieval Europeans.

During the period of the New Assyrian Kingdom, the Assyrians were the first in world history (if the hypothesis about the earlier imperial experience of Egypt is not confirmed) to embark on the path of creating an empire. Of course, behind this were grandiose territorial conquests, invariably successful after the Hittites were knocked out of history (the Hittites left the historical arena in the 12th century BC). The most prominent Assyrian conquering commanders were Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BC), followed by Sargon II (722-705 BC) and the Sargonids - his successors, including Sennacherib.

However, we should give credit to the Assyrians - they not only knew how to seize lands, they knew how to govern. Moreover, their policies were different in relation to loyal and thereby reliable peoples and in relation to unreliable peoples. This is real imperial policy. The Assyrians pursued a policy of “non-sahu” in relation to unreliable peoples: they evicted them from their homes and mixed them with other peoples, thus completely destructuring them, i.e. turning into a crowd. For example, the ancient Israelites, the inhabitants of one of the two Hebrew kingdoms, which fell not under the New Babylonian rule, like Judea, but even earlier under the Assyrian, were subjected to “Neshacha.” As a result, the tribes of the Jewish people, transferred to Assyria, were practically lost, mixed in with other populations.

But the Assyrians behaved completely differently towards most peoples. They were the first to understand that it was necessary to create an imperial nobility (more broadly, an imperial elite). And they were the first to willingly introduce into the new Nineveh aristocracy not only the Assyrians, but also the main representatives of all the reliable ethnic groups that inhabited this huge power. The Neo-Assyrian kingdom owned all of Mesopotamia, the entire arc of the “Blessed Crescent”, had Egypt as a vassal, and the western border of the kingdom reached the middle of Asia Minor (i.e., the middle of the Asian territory of Turkey). They granted privileges to the most famous cities, freeing them from royal taxes, and much more often these were cities that belonged to other peoples annexed to the Assyrian power than the Assyrians themselves (by the way, Babylon was in this position as part of the Assyrian power). In Assyria itself, only two cities were removed from the system of royal taxation - Ashur and Nineveh. And when King Shalmaneser V tried to rid Ashur, the ancestral home of the Assyrians, of its privileges, the ancient capital and the ancient aristocracy so unequivocally put him in his place that no other attempts were made.

Why, however, did the Assyrian empire fail? I think the Assyrians were punished for their excessive cruelty. It is possible and necessary to build a great power from a position of strength, because not a single one, not even a great power, is based on a position of weakness. But a position of power cannot be incessantly cruel, and the level of cruelty varies. You can conduct a punitive expedition and suppress the uprising. But you cannot cover the gates of your capital with skin torn from conquered enemies, which Sargon II did in Nineveh. Then, sooner or later, a coalition will definitely form that will turn your cities into dust, which is what happened. Under the blows of the coalition of Babylon, the rising Kingdom of Media and the Scythian nomads at the end of the 7th century. BC Nineveh was destroyed, and then the Assyrian kingdom itself was destroyed - in 618 BC. it ceases to exist.

Moreover, Assyria, due to its exceptional cruelty, was subsequently surrounded by a conspiracy of silence. Historians kept silent about it even from those peoples who did not experience Assyrian rule (Herodotus barely mentions Assyria). And if it were not for the discovery of the library of the Assyrian kings, we would only know that such a state existed and was, according to rumors, very powerful.

2. STRUCTURE OF ASSYRIAN SOCIETY

In late Assyria, communal and large-family ownership of land disappeared. Private land ownership emerges, and the “big family” turns into an individual one. The wide spread of commodity-money relations is a characteristic feature of this period, which determined many of its other features.

At the head of Assyrian society was a king, whose power was theoretically limited only by the will of the gods. However, the real content of this “will” was determined by the balance of power between various groups of the nobility. It should be emphasized that the Assyrian king was neither the supreme owner of all the land, nor the supreme judge. One became a king not so much by right of birth, but by virtue of “divine election,” i.e. decisions of the oracle, and, therefore, at the request of the most influential group at that moment. The king was, as it were, at the top of a pyramid consisting of large and small officials, i.e. complex and extensive management apparatus. The communal nobility had already disappeared by this time, and therefore the nobility of Assyria was a serving one. The kings tried to prevent the emergence of overly powerful clans. To prevent this, eunuchs were appointed to the most important posts, as we have seen. In addition, although large officials received huge land holdings and many forced people, these holdings did not form a single mass, but were deliberately scattered almost throughout the country. The nobleman either rented out his lands or forced them to cultivate the forced people belonging to him. The income came to him in cash. In addition, major officials also received payments from the treasury - through taxes, tribute and military booty. Finally, some of them benefited from the revenues of the provinces "attached" to their positions.

As for small officials, their source of existence was either a tiny salary, more like a ration, or a very small official land plot. Inheritance of official positions occurred only with the approval of the king. Upon the accession of the new king to the throne, all officials took an “oath” or “oath”, in which a central place was given to the obligation to immediately report to the king any conspiracy, rebellion or abuse.

In the Assyrian state, a significant part of the lands belonged to the king by right of conquest. Rural communities turned into purely administrative and fiscal units. Lands from the royal fund were distributed to large and small officials for conditional ownership or ownership. The personal (palace) economy of the king and members of the royal family was not so large, since the main income came in the form of taxes. Temples were major landowners. However, land use was only small-scale throughout. Large landowners (kings, temples, nobles) had hundreds, thousands, sometimes many thousands of small farms subordinate to them. All lands owned or used by private individuals were subject to state taxes and levies in favor of churches. Both were natural: “seizure grain” (1/10 of the harvest); "straw" (feed with forage in the amount of 1/4 of the harvest); “taking of large and small livestock” (1 head of livestock from every 20), etc. The main levy in favor of churches was called “pyatina”. There were also duties associated with land ownership. The duties were general (military and construction) and special (carrying out some kind of service, for which an allotment was issued). In a number of cases, kings granted landowners so-called immunity, i.e. full or partial exemption from taxes and duties. Such exemption was a concession by the state of taxes and duties in favor of the landowner, which naturally increased his income. Persons who enjoyed varying degrees of immunity from royal taxes and duties were called “free” (zaku) or “liberated” (zakku), but, in essence, this concept could include both nobles and forced people.

The main part of the direct producers in the agriculture of the Assyrian state were people forcibly driven away from their homes. In new places they were planted on lands belonging to the king, temples or private individuals. There were also other categories of forced people. All of them were actually attached to the ground, i.e. As a rule, they were sold only together with the land and the whole family, as part of an entire farm. From a legal point of view, they were all considered slaves. But at the same time, these people could have property (including land and slaves), enter into transactions on their own behalf, get married, act in court, etc. On the other hand, the small free peasantry gradually merges with these people into a single class of forced farmers. This happened by “attributing” lands inhabited by free peasants to major officials in the form of “feeding,” at first as if for temporary use. Gradually, however, these lands (along with the people) found themselves assigned to the nobles forever. The free population during this period concentrated in cities - centers of crafts and trade. In Assyria, silver bars with a special mark certifying the weight and quality of the silver were put into circulation - the immediate predecessors of the coin. The most important cities enjoyed special privileges that exempted them from duties and taxes, i.e. their population was included in the category of “free”. Cities had self-government bodies in the form of a national assembly and a council of elders. But questions about the degree of autonomy and the scope of privileges of a particular city were often interpreted differently by the townspeople and the tsarist administration, which led to serious conflicts and even civil wars.

3. ASSYRIAN CULTURE

We know quite little about the daily life of the Assyrians, especially the rank and file. The houses of the Assyrians were one-story, with two courtyards (the second served as a “family cemetery”). The walls of the houses were made of mud bricks or adobe. In Assyria the climate is less hot than in Lower Mesopotamia. Therefore, the clothing of the Assyrians was more substantial than that of the Babylonians. It consisted of a long woolen shirt, over which, if necessary, another woolen cloth was wrapped. The fabrics were white or dyed bright colors using vegetable dyes. Rich clothes were made from thin linen or woolen fabrics, trimmed with fringe and embroidery. Purple-dyed wool was brought from Phenicia, but the fabric made from it was incredibly expensive. Shoes were sandals made of leather belts, and the warriors had boots.

Assyrian architecture was also not distinguished by its originality. As the Assyrian kings themselves noted, their palaces were built “in the Hittite manner,” borrowed from Syria, but these palaces were of grandiose size. However, the main decoration of these palaces - multi-figure compositions depicting mythological, genre and battle scenes, executed in very low relief on slabs of marbled limestone and partially painted with mineral paints - represents one of the brightest pages in the history of world art. In the style and technique of these reliefs one can trace such traditional features of Mesopotamian art as the “cartoon” rendering of successive moments of a particular scene: on the same relief the king is depicted approaching the altar and bowing before it. Local Assyrian traditions are manifested in a very free arrangement of figures on a plane, in the replacement of the image of a deity with his symbol. Finally, traces of Hurrian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Aegean styles can be found here. In general, from all these heterogeneous elements a surprisingly organic and original whole was formed. The main (almost the only) subject of the reliefs is the king and his activities. Therefore, on them one can see feasts and battles, hunting and solemn processions, religious ceremonies, sieges and storming of fortresses, military camps and troops, brutal reprisals against the vanquished and the bringing of tribute by conquered peoples. Although all these scenes are composed of repeating canonical details, it is almost impossible for the average viewer to notice: the whimsicality and boldness of the composition give them endless variety. The technique of execution also varies - from careful elaboration of details, an abundance of details (hairstyles, curls, beards, embroidery on clothes, decorations, horse harness, etc.) to graphic avarice, exquisite stylization, when almost only the outline is given (the famous image of a wounded lionesses). Strong, rapid movement (galloping horses, running animals) is combined with the ponderous, emphasized statuesque appearance of the king and his companions (majestic poses, emphasized muscles, exaggerated size of the figures). The color in these images, as in the rarer glazed brick compositions and paintings, has a purely decorative function. Therefore, you can see blue horses, yellow figures on a blue background, etc. on them. The few examples of round sculpture that have come down to us also depict kings. Among them, a figurine made of amber and gold depicting Ashur-nasir-apala II is especially interesting. Despite its miniature size, it creates a feeling of power and grandeur. The images of Assyrian reliefs are plot-based, narrative, and this is their difference from the art of neighboring peoples, where the decorative element predominates. But the technical techniques developed by Assyrian sculptors influenced Persian (apparently through Median mediation) and, perhaps, even Greek sculpture. And in our time, Assyrian reliefs, scattered, often broken, almost losing their colors, make a very strong impression. The huge quantity and excellent quality of the reliefs that have come down to us allow us to conclude that they were made in special workshops with a large number of first-class craftsmen. The same can be said about the magnificent jewelry made of gold, colored stones and enamel recently discovered in the royal burial. As for everyday “consumer goods” (seals, amulets and other small handicrafts), the class of their execution, as a rule, is immeasurably lower.

Another major contribution of the Assyrians to the history of world culture is the development of the literary and historical genre. Royal inscriptions telling about the events of a particular reign had a centuries-old tradition in Mesopotamia, but only the Assyrians turned them into real literature. Although these inscriptions are usually called “annals”, i.e. chronicles, in reality they are not. These are literary compositions in which historical events are “arranged” in a certain way to make the narrative look more colorful, and its main character - the king - more wise, valiant and powerful. Therefore, the “annals” often contain strong exaggerations (the number of enemies killed, the size of the loot, etc.) and at the same time they are silent about many things (mainly, of course, about failures). This also includes the so-called “letters to the god Ashur” - peculiar “reports” of the king to the god and residents of the city of Ashur about military campaigns, their causes, course and results. From a literary point of view, these texts are even more interesting than the annals. Thus, in the “Letter of Sargon II to the god Ashur” we find descriptions of landscapes for the first time in world literature. There are also quotes from “classical” literature, for example from the “Epic of Gilgamesh”. Although both the annals and the letters, like reliefs, are often composed of standard details (especially in the description of recurring events), their energetic and colorful style, bright, although sometimes crude, imagery make them fascinating reading. Assyrian historians tried in every possible way to show their learning: they copiously quoted ancient texts, tried to write in the “good” Akkadian language, i.e. in the literary Babylonian dialect. The features of the Assyrian annals, of course, greatly complicate their use as a historical source, but they increase their literary value (although their historical value is enormous).

As for other literary genres, works in the Akkadian language from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, in contrast to the 2nd millennium BC, are almost not created, but only rewritten and commented on - both in Assyria and in Babylonia. With the exception of the already mentioned “annals”, “letters” and chronicles, new literary works of this time known to us are few in number. But among them there are very interesting psalms, hymns to the gods and even lyrics. Of particular note is the story about the journey of a certain prince to the Kingdom of the Dead and what he saw there. This is the earliest work known to us in world literature of that unique genre, the pinnacle of which was Dante’s Inferno two millennia later. The decline of Akkadian poetry, however, is very noticeable. Apparently, this is due to the rapidly developing process of displacement of the Akkadian language from colloquial practice by Aramaic and with the emergence of new literature in Aramaic. We still know very little about this literature at its initial stage, since Aramaic was usually written on papyrus and other materials that were short-lived in Mesopotamian conditions (although a few texts written in cuneiform in Aramaic are known). Aramaic literature, apparently, served as a kind of “bridge” from the literatures of early antiquity to later ones. An example here is the so-called “Roman of Ahikar,” supposedly of Assyrian origin, which has come down to us in Aramaic (the oldest copy is from Egyptian Elephantine, 5th century BC). "The Romance of Ahikar" was very popular in antiquity and the Middle Ages: its Greek, Syrian, Ethiopian, Arabic, Armenian and Slavic versions are known. In Rus' it was known under the name "The Tale of Akira the Wise." This is an entertaining and at the same time edifying story about the wise adviser to King Sennacherib, Ahikar, and his ungrateful adopted son, who slandered and almost killed his benefactor. In the end, however, justice prevails. Ahikar's good advice and reproaches, addressed to his pupil, express the ethical views that prevailed in the Middle East in the 1st millennium BC. Recently it was established that Ahikar is a historical person. Another, recently published, very interesting text comes from Egypt - the so-called “Roman of Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin”, a unique artistic interpretation of well-known historical events. The text is written in Aramaic in Egyptian demotic script (such texts are extremely rare) and tells the story of a dispute between two brothers for supreme power and their sister's unsuccessful attempts to reconcile them. Apparently, this work also dates back to Assyrian times or very close to it. It is hoped that new finds will significantly expand our knowledge of Aramaic literature at the early stage of its existence.

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1. THE MOST ANCIENT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

The Assyrian people are rightfully considered one of the most ancient peoples in the world. The history of the Assyrians goes back several thousand years.

For more than two thousand years, humanity's greatest achievement - the civilization of Assyria - lay buried and almost forgotten in the land of what we now know as Iraq (formerly called Mesopotamia). About it there remain only some reports of doubtful authenticity in the literature of Greece, as well as some biblical statements, perhaps biased, about the Assyrians and more dubious legends about life in ancient times in a country called Shinar, according to the biblical account, the Tower of Babel was built; it was also home to the only family to survive the Great Flood, and somewhere in these parts, at the beginning of human history, was the mythical Garden of Eden. Ashur, Assyria is a mysterious, ancient country at the very heart of world civilization, which twenty-five centuries ago lost its independence and became legendary, like Atlantis, but retained its people, who scattered all over the world.

From school, each of us was captivated by the history of this unique country with its heroic people and rich culture. When we say “Assyria,” we immediately want to add the epithet “first” - the first statehood in the Ancient East, the first university, the first musical notation, the first cookbook, the first anesthesia, the world’s first rich library of Ashurbanipal. Not to mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, created by the Assyrian queen.

Modern Assyrians are actually the only people who have preserved in living communication one of the most ancient dialects of the Aramaic language, in which, as is known, Christ himself preached. Almost all Assyrians profess Christianity, which they adopted in the 1st-2nd centuries and since then have adhered to it quite zealously, since only it consolidates the people.

Despite their dispersed living and not having a compact settlement, the Assyrians preserved many traditions associated with the spiritual culture of the people. This concerns wedding and holiday rituals, a strong Christian identity, which over the centuries helped the Assyrians not to dissolve among neighboring Muslim peoples. Assyrians immigrated to Russia from the border regions of Iran, Turkey, as well as Iraq and Syria. Many Assyrians still live in these countries. Despite the fact that the history of the Assyrians and Assyria has been taught in universities and schools around the world for more than 150 years and is considered well studied, it should still be said that the history of the development of the culture of this people still remains unclear and requires further development. Up to the present day, excavations have been and are being carried out on the territory of the existence of the Assyrian state. Archaeologists discover new cities, palaces and temples. Cuneiform inscriptions on reliefs and cuneiform tablets are deciphered. New mysteries are opening up, new facts can be used to study the development of culture in ancient Assyria.

However, based on the facts already studied, it can be judged that the earthly heritage of the Assyro-Babylonian culture is great. The knowledge that was used by the Assyrian people in ancient times continues to be practiced by people all over the world in our time.

2. CULTURAL MONUMENTS OF ASSYRIA

2.1 Writing

Humanity owes its knowledge of the history of the peoples of Mesopotamia and its neighbors primarily to a clay tablet.

Of greatest interest are the tablets available here, reflecting the knowledge of the ancients in mathematics and geometry.

2.2 Literature and science

In the field of literature, Assyria, apparently, did not create anything of its own, except for the royal military annals. In their own way, however, these annals were remarkable for the vivid expressiveness of their rhythmic language and system of images when it came to depicting the military power of Assyria and describing the victories of the Assyrian king. But it is characteristic that even these typically Assyrian works were almost always written not in the native dialect of the Assyrians, but in the Akkadian (Babylonian) language, which was quite different from it by that time. As for all the other literary monuments, carefully collected in the library of the Nineveh Palace on the orders of the literate king Ashurbanipal, as well as in the libraries of the temples, almost all of them, without exception, represented monuments of Babylonian literature or imitations of them, such as hymns composed, apparently, by Ashurbanipal himself and prayers to the gods.

An educated scribe in Assyria had to know several languages: in addition to his native dialect and the Babylonian dialect in its two forms (live, used in business correspondence with Babylonia, and old literary) also the Sumerian language, since without some knowledge of this language complete mastery was impossible cuneiform writing. In addition, in official offices, in addition to the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language, another language was used - Aramaic, as the language most common among the multilingual population of different parts of the state. The clerical staff consisted of special Aramaic scribes who wrote on leather, papyrus or clay shards. Aramaic literature was also created, which, unfortunately, has hardly reached us due to the poor preservation of the material used for writing. However, the well-known Aramaic story about the wise Ahikar should be attributed to Assyrian times, the oldest version of which has come down to us in a copy of the 5th century. BC e. and the action of which takes place at the court of the Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. This story, which underwent changes over many centuries, survived until the late Middle Ages and was translated in Europe into many languages, including Russian.

Science in Assyria was generally still at the stage of primary accumulation of facts. The scientific works that have reached us are of a purely utilitarian nature - these are various lists, reference books, and recipes. Some of these reference books, however, assume certain preliminary generalizations. Most of the scientific works that have come down to us from Assyria are of Babylonian origin. We know dictionaries in collections of language and legal exercises, medical and chemical prescription reference books, summaries of botanical and mineralogical terms, astrological and astronomical records, etc. Scientific knowledge in such works is mixed with witchcraft ; the profession of a doctor, for example, was considered a priestly profession.

At a high level of development, as already indicated, were military equipment and those branches of technology that are related to military affairs - the construction of bridges, roads, aqueducts, fortresses, etc.

2.3 Fine arts and architecture

We are left with many original works from the fine art of the ancient Assyrians. After all, Assyria was the cradle of one of the greatest plastic arts of antiquity.

Assyrian fine art is characterized by a special approach to the image of a person: the desire to create an ideal of beauty and courage. This ideal is embodied in the image of the victorious king. In all the figures of the ancient Assyrians, relief and sculptural, physical power, strength, and health are emphasized, which are expressed in unusually developed muscles, in thick and long curly hair.

On the alabaster slabs that decorated the walls of the royal palaces, relief images of scenes of hunting and military campaigns, court life and religious rituals were preserved.

The reliefs usually represented a kind of chronicle of events that took place during the reign of one or another king.

In the field of architecture, Assyrian architects had major achievements. The most important buildings were built on high-brick platforms; all buildings were built from mud brick (burnt brick and stone were used, and not always, only for cladding). Since mud brick is a material that does not allow complex architectural forms, Assyrian architecture used a limited number of techniques: straight lines, alternating ledges and niches, open porticoes with pillars and two towers on the sides - the so-called “Hittite bit-hilani”. The walls of the buildings were blank; the rooms, as in Babylonia, opened onto the courtyard. An arched vault was known, but usually the ceilings were beamed, rolled; light passed through holes made in the ceiling or in the walls below the ceiling. At the temples of the most important deities, stepped towers (ziggurats) were built of a slightly different design than in Babylonia.

The central structure of a large Assyrian city was the royal palace, which occupied a significant part of its area. Such a palace was a fortification on a high platform. The walls with projections of rectangular towers, topped with stepped battlements, were usually built entirely of mud brick. The arched entrances were decorated with stone sculptures of winged bulls and lions with human linden trees - the guardian deities of the palace. The buildings, other than those described, for the most part had no external decorations. Mainly the interior spaces were decorated artistically, especially the narrow and long state halls of the palaces. Painted reliefs, paintings and colored tiles were used here.

However, the achievements of Assyrian art remain limited. It is characterized by an artisanal, albeit skilled, use of pre-designed stencils; sometimes - as in the case of hunting scenes - the artist skillfully combines them, achieving vitality in the image; the subject matter is limited to military, cult and hunting scenes, and the ideological content is reduced to praising the power of the Assyrian king and the Assyrian army and to shaming the enemies of Assyria. There is no interest in conveying a specific image of a person and his environment; the images retain a stencil type of face, a conditional turn of the body, etc.

3. LIFE AND CORNERS OF THE ANCIENT ASSYRIANS

3.1 Community and family

Within the territory of a particular urban community in Assyria there were a number of rural communities that were the owners of the entire land fund. This fund consisted, firstly, of cultivated land, divided into plots for the use of individual families. These areas, at least theoretically, were subject to periodic redistribution. Secondly, there were reserve lands, to the use of shares of which all members of the community also had the right. Land at that time was already being bought and sold. Although each land purchase and sale transaction still required the approval of the community as the owner of the land, and was carried out under the control of the king, however, in conditions of growing property inequality, this could not prevent the purchase of land plots and the creation of large farms.

Small farmers generally lived in large (undivided) families (“houses”), which, however, gradually disintegrated. Within such “houses,” the king apparently had the right to retain a “share,” the income from which went to him personally or was transferred by him to one of the officials as food for service. This income could also be transferred by the holder to third parties. The community as a whole was obliged to the state with duties and taxes in kind.

The Middle Assyrian period (XV-XI centuries BC) is characterized by the existence of a patriarchal family, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of slave relations. The power of a father over his children differed little from the power of a master over a slave; Even in the Old Assyrian period, children and slaves were equally counted among the property from which the creditor could take compensation for the debt. A wife was acquired by purchase, and her position differed little from that of a slave. The husband was given the right not only to beat her, but in some cases to cripple her; a wife was severely punished for escaping from her husband's house. Often a wife had to answer with her life for her husband’s crimes. Upon the death of the husband, the wife passed to his brother or father, or even to her own stepson. Only if there were no men over 10 years old in the husband’s family did the wife become a “widow” who had a certain legal capacity, which the slave was deprived of. A free woman, however, was recognized with the right to be externally different from a slave: a slave, like a prostitute, under the threat of the strictest penalties, was prohibited from wearing a veil - a sign that distinguished every free woman. It was believed that the owner, the husband, was primarily interested in preserving a woman’s honor. It is typical, for example, that violence against a married woman was punished much more severely than violence against a girl. In the latter case, the law was mainly concerned with ensuring that the father did not lose the opportunity to marry his daughter, even to a rapist, and receive income in the form of a marriage price.

3.2 Housing

Throughout the existence of the Assyrian state, there was a continuous stratification of property among its population.

3.3 Clothing

Craftsmen, farmers, and warriors dressed more modestly and simply. They wore a shorter tunic that reached to the knees and did not restrict movement.

3.4 Religion

The ideological content of both art and literature, and the entire Assyrian culture in general, was largely determined, as in other countries of the ancient East, by religion. Rituals and rites of a magical nature were of utmost importance in the religion of the Assyrians. The gods were presented as strong, envious and menacing creatures in their anger, and the role of man in relation to them was reduced to the role of a slave feeding them with his victims. Every god was the patron god of a certain community or territory, there were “friends” and “foreign” gods, however, “foreign” gods were still recognized as deities. The patron god of the state was declared the most powerful god, the king of the gods, the world of the gods was represented in the image of the hierarchy of the royal court, and religion primarily sanctified the existing despotic monarchy.

Official rituals, mythology and the entire teaching of the Assyrian religion were almost completely borrowed from Babylon, with the only difference being that the local god Ashur was placed above all the gods, including the Babylonian Bel-Marduk. There were, however, myths and beliefs common among the masses that were not known to the Babylonians and that went back to Hurrian mythology. This is attested to by images on cylinder stone seals worn by free Assyrians. Assyrian myths and cults associated with agriculture have survived in the form of remnants to this day in the everyday life of the mountaineers living in the territory of the former Assyria.

Religious ideas dating back to ancient times, and beliefs that arose again on the basis of social oppression of the masses, entangled every step of the Assyrians: countless superstitions, belief in dozens of types of demons and ghosts, from which they were protected by amulets, prayers, magical figurines of the heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu, thousands will accept for all occasions rituals observed with the greatest care, etc. The king, who was considered the magical bearer of the well-being of the country, also had to perform complex mandatory ritual ceremonies; this was widely used by the priesthood to put political pressure on the king and maintain their influence on state affairs.

LIST OF REFERENCES USED

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4. Kozlov S.V. Winners of time. Assyrians - a people from the history of the ancient world // Nezavisimaya Gazeta dated May 25, 2007

5. Kravchenko A.I. Culturology. - M.: Academic Project, 2006

6. Cultural studies for technical universities. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2007

7. Lavo R. S. Cultural archetypes of ethnic identity of the Assyrians // Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of cultural sciences 2007

8. Mishchenko E.V., Mikhailov S.S. Assyrians // Nezavisimaya Gazeta dated 02/02/2007

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11. Frantsev Yu.P. World History, Volume 1, 2006

Culture of Assyria. Culture of Assyria Culture and customs of the Assyrians

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2. STRUCTURE OF ASSYRIAN SOCIETY

3. ASSYRIAN CULTURE

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