Dispatches from the British Museum

The society was chalcolithic--that is, it had copper and stone tools, as well as gold and silver metalwork, but no bronze or iron. The figures left to us from Sumer are equally male and female, bejeweled, hands clasped in worship, embedded in scenes of religious activity, agriculture, and family life. It isn't eden, or a matriarchal paradise, but it's as close as humanity would come for thousands of years. Maybe ever.

Needless to say, all this splendor left the local hunter-gatherers slack-jawed (if they hadn't been already) and they either lined up to join the party or wandered off muttering to themselves, leaving the fertile valleys to these new, organized people.

The great tension of the next thousand years or so grows up between the agricultural people and the horse people--nomads with domesticated animals, but without agriculture or fixed abode. The horse people will come out of the desert or off the steppes repeatedly to sack the cities and farms. It's a tension that will persist right through Gary Cooper and John Wayne, who will reenact the battles of the American west, as cattle men on horseback facing off against sod-busters.

In general, the horse peoples will either be beaten back, or destroy the cities and wander off, leaving the survivors to rebuild, or conquer and settle, to be absorbed by the farmers. Because only fixed abode and agriculture can create this great wealth; if the nomads stay to enjoy it, they must become farmers, or the kings of farmers, which is much the same thing, and leave their nomadic ways behind.

Gradually, the city and farm people become more warlike, partly through the repeated experience of defending their homes and families, and partly through the cultural inheritance of successive waves of conquerors. Ur is later and more warlike than Sumer, with more steles glorifying great men in chariots. Babylon still more so.

This more-or-less culminates in the civilization of Babylon, which marries the wealth and culture of the original farmers and builders to the horse and chariot of the invaders. Did I mention bronze? The Babylonians had bronze. And chariots, but mainly to impress the yokels and for parades. And to chase the pesky lions from the surrounding fields. (Lions would be pests for the next few centuries, and would not be extinct in the area until 1920 or so.)

To the north of Babylon, however, is an enormous cross-roads with no natural defenses and just enough rainfall for agriculture; it is open to the north and north-east to the horse peoples of the steppes--Cimmerians, Syths, Huns, Magyars, and infinitely worse. More directly to the east, it is open to the Aryans, Medes, Persians, and the like, who themselves are subject to pressure from northern nomads, and inclined to head west looking for easier living. To the West lie the the Illyrians, Macedonians, various nomadic peoples from further north, and ultimately the Hittites and Greeks. To the south is Babylonia, complete with chariots. Southwest is Syria, the Phoenicians, and Egypt. The countryside is characterized by open plains created, it would seem, because a youthful God enjoyed playing with armored fighting vehicles. People who live here either conquer their neighbors or are overrun by invaders; there is no such thing as peace.

In response to this geographical imperative, or perhaps because of an innate crankiness that made them want to live there in the first place, the Assyrians created the world's first great chariot empire. And for the next 500 years cause nothing but trouble.

They have left massive works, inscriptions, and bas-relief sculpture, which can be summarized as follows:

• "I hit him on the head and took his women."
• "I attacked in my chariots, hit them on their heads, and took their women."
• "I destroyed his city, cut off many heads, and took his women and sheep prisoner."
• "I destroyed his city, which he had rebuilt, and cut off many heads, and took many sheep and women and other things, and had my scribes count it all, the complete accounts of which fill the next several panels."
• "I came in my chariots, and he opened his city to me, and I did not hit him in the head. But I could have. And he knew it. And he gave me many gifts, which my clerks wrote down in the scrolls, and the totals from which cover the next fucking mile-and-a-half of walls."

And on, and on, until you don't care if you never see another ringlet-bearded chariot rider or another gang of spearmen in pointy iron helmets. Did I mention iron? They had iron. And pointy helmets.

In case you think I'm exagerating, I direct your attention the plaques 1, 2, 3, and especially 4.

This type of "monumental" history provides our primary written record of events that take place during this period, which I call "the Penis Monologues," and which begins with the Assyrians and ends, one hopes, some day soon.

If it pains you to imagine these coarse goons running roughshod over all of civilization for the next half a millennium, it may comfort you, slightly, to think what it must be like to campaign in southern Iraq for your entire life wearing a thick iron helmet. Or perhaps to consider what would have happened to these advanced-war-technology, iron-helmeted, chariot-driving clowns if they had been fighting in, say, the jungles of Indochina...

But that is, almost certainly, another story.

Another story altogether.

To make a painfully long story painfully short, this shit continues until Astyages, Emperor of the Medes (remember Astyages?), teams up with the Illyrians and Thracians, and puts an end to the Assyrians once and for all. (The Assyrians are named for their chief city, Ashur--did I mention Ashur? It's Babylonian for "assholes." If you don't believe me, decipher the cuneiform for yourself.)

This is the great accomplishment of Astyages' time, and it's really quite an accomplishment. At least I think so. But Cyrus the Great says Astyages was a jerk and had it coming.

And I'm not getting into it with Cyrus.

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