Ashurnasirpal II and the New Assyria

Ashurnasirpal leads his army out almost every year: the mountains in the north, the Aramean kingdoms on the Euphrates, the Phoenician cities on the coast. His annals describe the punishment of the defiant in deliberate detail — terror was part of the policy. He moves the capital to Kalhu and builds a palace there with reliefs of the king hunting lions and receiving tribute; according to the inscription, nearly seventy thousand people were summoned to the opening. The machine is assembled that will grind the Near East for the next century and a half: tribute, garrisons, the deportation of whole peoples.