WI Neo-Assyrian Empire Survives (a little longer)
- Thread starter John Fredrick Parker
- Start date
So Cilicia would be somewhat similar to a Neo-Neo-Hittite Empire
Yeah, sort of. They probably still spoke Luwian at the time, so it is not only a matter of geopolitics but there would be some historical continuity.
It would make for a good counterpart to OTL's Neo-Babylonians, and I have to admit, I doubt they'd last much longer barring some new development.
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Would Iranian peoples establishing an Empire be pretty similar to what the Persians did, from a religious/cultural/etc standpoint?
Difficult to say. We are more or less around the time the Mazdaic religion took its first form. The Medes may have had a culture quite different from what the Persians had, and a prolonged Assyrian contact and Iranian disunion may impact their culture in many important ways.
Cyrus was so successful OTL more out of everybody else being utterly exhausted, combined with his own great political skill, and a bit of luck. Down the line, the Assyrian Empire will become increasingly a house of cards, but there's no guarantee that a competent string of Iranian rulers will be there to exploit the collapse. At the same time, Bactria will consolidate, with Medes and Persian busy in being raided by the Assyrians. I'd bet that Iranian culture on the whole would be different, more closed and warlike. I sense it will have some similarities with Urartu.
The Achaemenids brought a decent lot of very much needed peace, integration and security to a depleted, violence-torn Western Asia. Cyrus policies were on the kind side. His successors were on average less gentle, but still usually kept an enourmous empire reasonably peaceful without much bloodshed, and tendeded to refrain from such things as genocide, mass deportation and the like.
The Assyrians were a nastier bunch. Bloodthirsty imperialists whose emperors made a point of terrorizing subjects and enemies alike with accurate reportages of how their military campaigns used to turn into extermination wars and mass-enslavement enterprise. They exaggerated to scare them, of course, but their still showed an unambiguous pride in mass murder.
Their wars of conquest had depopulated large parts of Syria and Mesopotamia and their tributes had almost starved what was left. Of course, if they had remained in charge for a century, the battlegrounds would have moved elsewhere, probably in western Iran, Egypt and Asia Minor, so that Syria and other areas may have recovered.
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Glad to know I hosted such an interesting topic
Thanks esp to Falecius and RobertP...Well, it depends on how long "long term" is. A century is a huge stretch IMHO. Fifty years are quite possible.