Assurnasirpal Has Too Much Energy - Oldest Stories Podcast

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Is Assurnasirpal II, king of Assyria, a relentless narcicisstic psychopath? Or is he a profoundly competant, ruthless tyrant? Can he be both, and does it really matter? Today we begin the first set of great conquest narratives of the Assyrian empire, unrivalled in their detail and shock value by any previous Mesopotamian king. We are deep into the Royal Inscriptions today, with a look at his listing of titles, and then a long tour as we see the Assyrian army really at work. There are a lot of place names today that aren't really that important, but we want to cover all of them because we really see how the empire grew from month to month in these many details.
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Опубликовано:

4 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 15

@evansiegel1732 4 месяца назад

Glad I came back to the You Tube version. Your graphics have massively improved.

@lonelycloud4773 4 месяца назад

Great episode!

@Amadeu.Macedo 2 месяца назад

As customary, I greatly appreciate your talented productions and share your apparent obsession with Assurbanipal II (this bad boy was indeed 100% psycho). As a separate observation, I have finally identified another psychotic historical dynasty, this one belonging to the Early Antique era (circa 1100 years after the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 611/09 BCE): The Merovingian dynasty was the ruling family of the Franks from around the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gallo-Romans under their rule. The most brutal among them was their founder, namely, King Clovis (whom the modern French occasionally call "Louis I"). Since this "bad-boy" monarch enjoyed axing people's heads off; publicly, under various witnessed circumstances, I conjecture that "our boy" Assurbanipal II would have applauded Clovis' multiple proclivities towards gore and carnage... P.S. I adored the countless number of titles that Assurbanipal claimed for himself. His psychotic nature is seconded only to his extreme narcissism (in fact, he probably personifies the classical profile of narcism).

@Wolffjord 3 месяца назад

I understand the policy of terror from Assyrian kings, it makes sense from their point of view. What I don't understand is why the ruler of Kinabu didn't do like Suhu. Suhu got a (relatively) good deal: his rule is confirmed, no war, Assyrian army protection... In exchanged of tributes. If we assume that the policy of terror was mostly pragmatic, we can assume that the terms would be favourable to promote submission without expensive war. But what the rulers of smaller towns like Kinabu would expect? They didn't have the strength to survive the war and the price for defeat was total slaughter. Did they really think they could win? Maybe at the end of the campaign season... But the Assyrians would get there eventually! The price for losing the war, especially after a rebellion, was genocide. I really wonder what calculation they had in mind; not even the rebellious ruler could escape. If we make a comparison with contemporary events, we can see a parallel between Israel and Hamas: Hamas kills thousands of Israeli and they know perfectly that the reprisal would be very hard, total destruction. At least the leaders of Hamas know that they can escape retribution (they live in comfort outside Gaza). But the leaders of those small towns at the borders with Assyria did not have any hope... Why try their luck against such overwhelming force?

@sahsenemelifgaboriault7064 5 месяцев назад

Genghis Khan’s teachers…

@viggoelenius4400 4 месяца назад

Would being a subject of Assyria during this period be better than being the subject of an independent city state? From a quality of life point of view.

@entirelyalive 4 месяца назад

In a rebellious region, obviously far worse. But for an integrated region, there was likely little difference at the bottom. Taxes and conscription levels varied from place to place and time to time, but the wider tax base of Assyria may have meant slightly lower burdens for some, and about even for most. Culture and religion had a lot of commonalities in most case, and the diversity present among different communities was often ignored. Most tellingly, in the early period most revolts are said to come from the nobility, the folks seeking power, not from the mass populace, suggesting that outside of the brutal suppression of revolt, the main grievance people had with Assyria was when locals wanted to be in power rather than the empire, a concern which would have had little to do with average farmers who would lack power in either case.

@viggoelenius4400 4 месяца назад

@@entirelyalive Fascinating, thank you for the in depth reply. I had no idea that the rebellions were started mostly by nobility, you should definitely bring that up in a future episode! Furthermore, on the subject of religious tolerance, can you imagine if Aššurnasirpal had been religiously INtolerant? I don’t want to think about it…

@luciansevastru7087 4 месяца назад

Psycho or pragmatic? WHY NOT BOTH? "Do what you love for a living, and you'll never work another day in your life" vibes out of our boy Ashur nasir apli

@larsandrune 4 месяца назад

Total Psycopath. I wonder if the Assyrian population themselves lived in fear?

@entirelyalive 4 месяца назад

I get the impression that his cruelty was very much directed outwards and ended as soon as a population submitted, but of course the nature of the sources means we can't be sure of that.

@mariusbehm9874 5 месяцев назад

Total war pharaoh gets finally mesopoamia and greece

@joshuaerickson2458 4 месяца назад

I saw that, but not sure if more hero characters will solve its problems, I switched to the bronze age mod for Rome 1

@mariusbehm9874 4 месяца назад

@@joshuaerickson2458 we get family tress assyria and babylon iam hyped

@entirelyalive 4 месяца назад

Yep, waiting for details, looking like it might be a longer timeline, so might be different start date. Super busy, but I will try and get some lore vids crammed in when I can, and once start date is confirmed. Glad to see folks are excited about it.