Annals of Ashurbanipal
The last great Assyrian annalist argues, through an account of his brother's betrayal and Elam's near-total destruction, that even a scholar-king who could read cuneiform himself was still expected to answer treachery with a campaign of deliberate, exhaustive annihilation.
- war against a rebellious brother crowned king of Babylon
- the deliberate, ritualized destruction of Susa
- desecration of royal tombs as calculated punishment
- combination of scholarly patronage and total warfare in one reign
Ashurbanipal's annals, most fully preserved on the Rassam Cylinder, cover a reign that combined the empire's greatest cultural investment, the library at Nineveh, with some of its most brutal warfare, most extensively a multi-year war against Elam provoked by his own brother Shamash-shum-ukin's revolt as the separately crowned king of Babylon. The text describes the eventual sack of the Elamite capital Susa in exhaustive, deliberately punitive detail, tombs of former kings opened and their bones removed to deny them peace, sacred groves salted, the ground sown so that no crop could grow there for years, presented not as excess but as proportionate, permanent punishment for Elamite betrayal.
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