Assyria the Beautiful
There is a Rand McNally Histomap taped to the front of my closet, a map of human history that spans nearly floor to ceiling. Every morning, I read a new headline circa 1000 to 500 BCE, the time period readable from my average American woman height: “Gambyses conquers Egypt,” “Rome plundered by the Gauls under Brennus,” simply, “LYDIANS” and so forth.
Assyria always catches my eye. Their civilization towers with Rome and Persia— big, bright, blue. Each civilization is given a lovely pastel that appears and reappears as the years run up to the present. There is no red on the histomap; how can you assign blood and forge fire to one empire and not the next? The ghosts of slighted soldiers would have jammed your printers in perpetuity. Smart move, McNally. Red was never an option, anyway - blood that runs through ancient streets dries brown to those whose history books begin with smallpox. Those newly destroyed ancient streets are just another morning’s news. Nations see the unpunished and often rewarded destruction, and they fear. We should fear as well; but we refuse to see what we should fear.
In my imagination, the murals in Assur-bani-pal’s audience chamber look like a threat. To a conquered, tax-paying nation, they would be a history. To those unconquered, with a tax of blood still uncollected, it is a silent promise. Business as usual in the ancient world fascinates me. Who else would paint war crimes across their corner offices and government buildings, dedicate entire monoliths and halls of wonder to them? Who could be so bold as the Assyrians, to do something like that?
I close my eyes and think of a Babylon nearly 3,000 years gone. Sennacherib and his armies are coming; it is a week before the Assyrians sack the city and carry away Babylon’s golden statues. It will shock Asia; this audacity to unmake another’s gods will lead to more questions than can ever be answered. The world over, they ask: how do you kill a god? And the Assyrians answer with their inevitable march forward.
The last sacrifices of Babylon’s temples are made, appeals sent to the deities that rule sky and earth and sun. Fertility is petitioned too, and the priestesses of Ishtar supplicate their goddess with life. Her priestesses offer only those women who would happily sacrifice body and blood. For even the priests of the chief god have no place to dabble in the affairs of women. Even Ishtar, a goddess of the ancient world, disdained the barbarism of forcing sacrifice upon those unwilling.
We sacrifice our heirs’ inheritance on the altar of passivity, and we look on as their coffers are drained. Assyrian kings, who made blood flow like the Tigris, still did not drown in the deep waters of their negligence. The Euphrates did not rise and wash them away to be drowned in the swirling eddies of history. Empires of the ancient world crumbled, or collapsed under their own weight. What will it be like, to be one of those who sink?
What happens when we go the way of the “LYDIANS”? Can you name a Lydian god? When the the long map of history reads, “AMERICANS” what will be remembered? Some will ponder over George Washington’s grave countenance, fading quietly on linen, and wonder if he’s the god from “In God We Trust”. Others will pray to eagles and stars and say they follow “the old way” while they drink whatever brew is in vogue and light fireworks with a solemn and doleful sense of duty.
Who are the people who name us “ancients”; the ones we failed? From islands and ragged coastlines on a ruined planet, our heirs worship us with curses, they honor us with spit and coughed up phlegm and their rage. Rage for a dead civilization’s theft is a cruel thing, and they take what revenge they can. The land and its bounty are the sacred gift from one generation, one civilization, to the next. We returned to clay with their inheritance, and the only offering we receive is the blood they shed over the scraps we left behind. They know our shame; they know our failure.
We sit in watery graves long sunk from melted polar ice. Here we remain, to cry to Bidu, keeper of the gates to the netherworld city: “Open up! We are hungry; we are thirsty. Our descendants curse us, they leave us no food, no drink!” We cry mercy, we cry forgiveness, we even cry blamelessness.
But the gates remain closed. In the ancient world, oathbreakers and liars are left for the carrion feeders. This world has no room for mercy, no room for forgiveness. And none are blameless.
About the author
Patrice Rivara is a 24-year old University of California, Davis graduate, currently teaching English in South Korea.