Nothing New Here . . .

Unintended Irony

ISIS has attracted much loathing over recent days.  Its wanton destruction of historical artefacts has outraged many.  The heading in The Telegraph said it all:

Islamic State's thugs are trying to wipe an entire civilisation from the face of the earth

Just as the Nazis destroyed synagogues as well as those who worshipped in them, so Isil aspires to erase all traces of those it condemns as kuffar

Columnist Tom Holland went on to write:

Last week, a video was released showing the destruction of antiquities in Mosul’s museums. Since the antiquities themselves were probably smashed months ago, the dust in the display-rooms will long since have settled. Meanwhile, in the world beyond, the brutal and deliberate attack on treasures spanning millennia is already yesterday’s news.

The Islamic State, whose goons perpetrated the vandalism, appreciate more cynically than anyone that the world’s media feeds on a rapid turnover of atrocities. One succeeds another in a murderous churn. Why, then, should the destruction of statues matter more than the loss of human life? It is a question that troubles me: for I must acknowledge, if I am honest, that no images from the hell that is the Islamic State have upset me more than those which showed a winged bull more than two-and-a-half thousand years old being deliberately and methodically power-drilled.

His conclusion:

It was in the mid-19th century that archaeologists from France and Britain revealed to the world just how dazzling the civilisation of ancient Assyria had truly been. The reliefs and statuary from Nineveh which today adorn the British Museum are among the greatest works of art ever created. Not all the treasures exhumed from the buried cities of ancient Assyria were transported to the West, though. Many were preserved in Iraq. Great winged bulls fashioned in the reign of Sennacherib himself were reinstalled in one of the gateways of Nineveh. There, when the Islamic State took over Mosul, they served as a standing reproach to the new masters of the city: “statues and idols,” as the propaganda film released last week put it, “excavated by Satanists.”

It was one of Sennacherib’s bulls that was shown on the film being power-drilled. The aim of Isil was not merely to emulate the idol-smashing of the Prophet Muhammad, but to provoke and outrage world opinion – an aim in which they certainly succeeded.

More than that, though, their ambition is to complete the job they began when they expelled the monks from Saint Behnam’s Monastery: to compound the exile of the Assyrians from their ancient homeland by erasing all traces of their history and culture. Just as the Nazis destroyed synagogues as well as those who had worshipped in them, so does the Islamic State aspire to erase all traces from its caliphate of those it condemns as kuffar.

Control the past, and control the future. The shattered fragments of Sennacherib’s bulls bear fatal witness to just how thoroughly Isil have grasped this truth. Assyria and the Assyrian people risk being lost to a terminal darkness.

This alleged wilful provocation of "world opinion" is a simplistic analysis.  We suspect the truth is much more ironical.  What is more plain than a nose on the face is that ISIS is imitating an imperial technique perfected millennia ago--by none other than the ancient Assyrians themselves.  When conquering, the ancient Assyrians revealed a ruthless nihilism which sought to destroy conquered territory and peoples utterly as a necessary prelude to rebuilding things "the way they ought to be".  Obliterate in order to create.

The historian Simon Anglim writes:

The Assyrians created the world's first great army and the world's first great empire. This was held together by two factors: their superior abilities in siege warfare and their reliance on sheer, unadulterated terror. It was Assyrian policy always to demand that examples be made of those who resisted them; this included deportations of entire peoples and horrific physical punishments. One inscription from a temple in the city of Nimrod records the fate of the leaders of the city of Suru on the Euphrates River, who rebelled from, and were reconquered by, King Ashurbanipal:

I built a pillar at the city gate and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I walled up inside the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes." Such punishments were not uncommon. Furthermore, inscriptions recording these vicious acts of retribution were displayed throughout the empire to serve as a warning. Yet this officially sanctioned cruelty seems to have had the opposite effect: though the Assyrians and their army were respected and feared, they were most of all hated and the subjects of their empire were in an almost constant state of rebellion (185-186).

Sound familiar.  It's true that this ruthless cruelty was a psychological weapon to weaken resistance.  ISIS is no different.  But more than that it was a need to purge and purify by destruction.

Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE), the last great king of the Assyrian Empire, who was so successful in battle that he laid waste to the entire country of Elam in 647 BCE. The historian Susan Wise Bauer writes, “Elamite cities burned. The temples and palaces of Susa were robbed. For no better reason than vengeance, Ashurbanipal ordered the royal tombs opened and the bones of the kings bundled off into captivity” (414). When he sacked and destroyed the city of Susa, he left behind a tablet which recorded his triumph over the Elamites:

Susa, the great holy city, abode of their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed... I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt.

Obliterating an entire civilisation, root and branch.  Why?  So that there could be a clean slate upon which to build.

It is deeply ironic that the "cleansing" by ISIS has led it into beliefs and practices which ape the very historical pagans they are so set on expunging from the earth--the ancient Assyrians.  They have shown that they are no different.  The Assyrians and ISIS are alike.  Both are "kuffar".  In the doom of Assyria, the fate of ISIS is foreshadowed.  Totalitarian tyranny does not an enduring city make.  Relentless destruction and oppression cannot build a civilisation, let alone an enduring empire.

The ancient, broken tyrant Ozymandius intoned:  "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".  Thus passed the Assyrian Empire:

Ashurbanipal's sons, Ashur-etli-Ilani and Sin-Shar-Ishkun, did not inherit his military or political skills and, even before he died, were struggling with each other for control of the empire. After his death in 627 BCE, their civil war drained the resources of the empire and provided the regions under Assyrian control with the opportunity to break free. While the princes were struggling for control of the empire, that very empire was slipping away. The rule of the Assyrian Empire was seen as overly harsh by its subjects, in spite of whatever advancements and luxuries being an Assyrian citizen may have provided, and former vassal states rose in revolt.

With no strong king on the throne, and the empire vastly over-extended by this time, there was no way to prevent it from breaking apart. The entire region eventually rose in revolt and the great Assyrian cities such as Ashur, Kalhu, and Nineveh were sacked and burned by the Medes, Persians, Babylonians, and others. The Assyrian's historical records and Ashurbanipal's vast library of clay tablets which chronicled their advancements in medicine, literature, religion, and scientific and astronomical knowledge all lay buried beneath the ruined walls of their cities.

ISIS would do well to despair.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.