Assyria 668-635 B.C.: the reign of Ashurbanipal

Abstract

The reign of Ashurbanipal begins in what appears to be the hey-day of Assyrian imperialism and ends in a dark period of confusion, followed shortly by the fall of Assyria itself. It is the task of the present chapter both to describe the great days of Ashurbanipal's reign and briefly to reflect upon the reasons for the catastrophe which brought to an end one of the great empires of the ancient world. The end of the reign of Ashurbanipal is part and parcel of the history of the foundation of the Neo-Babylonian empire which will be treated in the next chapter. Sources and chronology The reign of Ashurbanipal is the best attested of all periods in the history of Assyria in terms of quantity of material, but it is extremely difficult to use much of this documentation to write history because of its unusual nature and because of the lack of a chronology. Chief among the sources are Ashurbanipal's royal inscriptions; these are more numerous and lengthier than those preserved for any earlier monarch, and include a group of texts which are commonly called ‘annals’ but which are really a curious combination of the annalistic form and the ‘display’ form. They are rather like small historical novels and have behind them a complex textual history. Considerable care must be exercised in studying these to unravel the true course of events. Turning to the other sources, as with Ashurbanipal's immediate predecessors, there are a large number of state letters, astrological reports, and legal and administrative documents.