The Land Between the Rivers

Mesopotamia was the land between and around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It was located in what is now Iraq. There are some river valleys like the Nile where annual flooding is predictable. This was not the case for Mesopotamian rivers. The currents were more violent. That meant people living there had to work harder to produce food. Also, resources like wood were scarce. This meant that societies in Mesopotamia had to trade or fight with each other to get the resources they needed.

In 3000 BCE, Mesopotamia was a land of city-states.¹ Most people lived in walled cities under the rule of a king. Dozens of city-states along the Tigris and Euphrates fought with each other in a struggle for power and limited resources. Around 2334 BCE, the city of Akkad grew strong enough to start conquering the others.

Five-thousand-year-old text messages!

Before 3000 BCE, the cities of Mesopotamia were mostly Sumerian. Sumerian was the major language of Mesopotamia until this time, and it was also the world’s first written language. The Sumerians developed a system of writing called cuneiform.

Around 3000 BCE, a new people migrated into northern Mesopotamia. They spoke a Semitic language.² We call them Akkadians after the city they built, Akkad. The Akkadians ruled history’s first empire. An empire is a political system in which a strong core state controls weaker states around that core. Empires have flexible borders and a core culture that controls other cultures. A bunch of different ancient empires rose in Mesopotamia because it was pretty easy to get to. The Nile river valley, by contrast, was surrounded by desert and hard to reach. This is why Mesopotamia was home to the first empires: it was a bunch of separate city-states on fertile land that was easy to march an army across.

The Akkadians

In 2334 BCE, Sargon of Akkad launched a series of conquests from his city on the Euphrates River. The empire he built extended from the Persian Gulf, up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as far as Anatolia (modern Turkey). To support his wars, Sargon created the world’s first permanent army. This army was made up of around 5,400 soldiers. It allowed Sargon to build the world’s first empire. He quickly extended Akkad’s control over several weaker city-states in the region.

The Akkadian Empire did not last long after Sargon’s death. Once the empire fell apart, Mesopotamia returned to being a collection of warring city-states. However, the region would not be without an empire for long.

The Assyrians

The Assyrian Empire followed the Akkadian Empire. It was much longer-lived, and its influence was also much larger. The Assyrian Empire lasted from 2025 to 609 BCE, though it was interrupted a few times. Historians divide the Assyrian empire into three parts: “Old Kingdom,” “Middle Empire,” and “Neo-Assyrian Empire.”3 For about 1,400 years, the Assyrian Empire controlled Mesopotamia.

The Assyrian Empire began with the city of Asur. Originally, the city was ruled by Akkad. After the Akkadian empire fell, Asur gained control over several nearby cities, like Nineveh. Eventually, Nineveh became the Assyrian capital. By the seventh century BCE, the Assyrians ruled an empire stretching from Egypt to Iran.

Empire and power, violence and management

The Assyrians were really good at war. They’re remembered in particular for their ruthlessness. They demolished cities that resisted and killed people in horrific ways. One example of this is that when they conquered a new place, the Assyrians stole statues and religious symbols from temples and brought them home. This practice of “godnapping” was meant to lower the morale of conquered peoples. They also moved conquered people around their empire. The relocation of conquered peoples made cities less unified, less likely to rebel, and easier to rule.

Unlike the Akkadians, the Assyrians closely managed the areas they conquered. They appointed Assyrian governors and officials to run conquered cities and keep political control.

Production, women, and enslavement

Both Akkadian and Assyrian society were male-dominated. However, women did sometimes play important public roles. Generally, women worked at home, making food or weaving textiles. But women sometimes worked in typically male jobs. Women also held political power. At least one woman ruled the Assyrian Empire, and female officials known as sakintus acted as palace administrators.

By the end of the Assyrian period, women had lost many of their rights. They became more limited in the jobs that were open to them and in the public roles they could play. Laws were passed that required women to wear veils in public. Women who were on their own, enslaved women, and women who worked as prostitutes could not wear a veil in public. Adultery was punishable by death, and many other restrictions were placed on women’s bodies and sexuality.

Women weren’t the only people with limited freedom. The use of forced labor was central to life in Mesopotamia. Both the Akkadians and Assyrians enslaved their prisoners of war. Enslaved women produced textiles or acted as housekeepers for the rich. Enslaved men worked in agriculture, mines, and construction.

Trade networks

The Akkadians and Assyrians came to Mesopotamia as foreign invaders. Both empires started because their rulers wanted to control more trade routes. Both Akkad and Asur were inland cities, far from the ports of the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. They began their conquests with the goal of seizing important trading centers and getting access to the sea. The conquests of both empires united the divided city-states of Mesopotamia. This allowed them to trade peacefully with each other and with distant regions.

The Mesopotamian empires often traded with distant societies for luxury goods. They traded with the Indus River Valley cities by sea. Overland routes connected them as far west as Egypt and as far east as Afghanistan. As luxury goods moved along these networks, so did ideas and new technology. Assyrian advances in chariot warfare and ironworking spread through trade and conquest. Mesopotamian gods and cuneiform writing spread along with them.

Conclusion: The land between the empires

Sooner or later, all empires fall. They might last for 100 years or 1,000. But they all end.

The Akkadian Empire only lasted for somewhere between 100 and 200 years. Why did it fall so quickly? Archaeologists now believe they have identified the reason: dust. Several centuries of dry and dusty conditions crippled the mighty Akkadian empire. As dust and drought choked Mesopotamian agriculture, whole cities disappeared. By contrast, the Assyrian Empire, like many empires since, fell because it grew too large. The high cost of running and defending the empire made it crumble from within.

Though these two empires fell, they provided inspiration for later empires. The Assyrians replaced the Akkadians with an even larger and mightier empire. The Assyrians were in turn replaced by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, which were replaced by … well, you get the idea.

1 A city-state is a city and the surrounding land under its control. City-states can be ruled by a government or a single ruler.
2 Semitic languages are now spoken widely in North Africa and the Middle East. Languages in this family include Arabic, Hebrew, and Assyrian.
3 Neo is just a fancy way to say “new.”