violence against noncombatants in Ancient Near East wars

ANE TODAY - 201409 - Horrors of War in the Ancient Near East - American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)

By Jordi Vidal
. . .
. This archive described in detail the devastating effects on the city’s inhabitants of the siege led by Nabopolassar of Babylonia: the price of cereals rose, the lower classes were drastically impoverished, and traders appeared, offering to buy the children of ruined families.
... 

Following in the footsteps of Van de Mieroop, Nadali and I have edited a volume devoted to violence against noncombatants from the end of the third millennium BC (the Third Dynasty of Ur) to the middle of the first millennium BC (the Achaemenid period). The end result was The other face of the battle. The impact of war on civilians in the Ancient Near East, a set of seven contributions from Agnès Garcia, Jürgen Lorenz, John MacGinnis, Leticia Rovira, Ingo Schrakamp, and Jeffrey Zorn.

Brass band from the Balawat gate of Shalmaneser III showing prisoners being tortured and dismembered, ca. 858-824 BC.
Prisoners being flayed during the siege of Lachish, from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, 701 BC.

The studies cover a wide range related to the impact of war on noncombatants: (1) the influence of military campaigns during the Ur III period on the economic structures of that state; (2) the mass deportations recorded in the Mari texts, describing the situation of the deportees, who, completely unwillingly, underwent a process of cultural interbreeding during resettlement; (3) the Hittite military strategy against enemy populations, which included systematic destruction of economic resources, mass deportations, the depopulation of territories and complete destruction of enemy settlements; (4) the economic motives that explained the attack against the populations of Ugarit, Sumur, Giluni, and Magdalu in the Late Bronze Age; (5) the condition of the first millennium BC civilian populations in Israel and southern Levant during wartime, with examples of massacres of people, forced labour, slavery, and deportations; (6) the systematic Assyrian policy of capturing and deporting people, and the efforts of the Assyrian governors and officials to deal with high numbers of prisoners/deportees; and (7) the situation of noncombatants in Babylonia during the military campaigns carried out by the Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Achaemenids.

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