PC: Steel using Mesopotamian empires?

As I understand it, wrought iron weapons are typically less hard and more ductile than bronze weapons, and thus don't hold an edge as well; their advantage in the ancient world was because iron ore was much more common in the earth than copper and tin, and this came to a head with the collapse of trade networks in the late Bronze Age. I'm actually kind of fuzzy about when steel became standard issue vs iron, so some kind of timeline on that would make this easier.

I'm also under the impression that the Neo-Babylonians of the 6th Century B.C. were the last native Mesopotamian empire, eventually being conquered by the Persians, then the Macedonians, then the Partians, the Romans, the Sassanids, then the Arabs. Is there a way to keep Akkadian speaking Mesopotamian peoples on top in the Near East into the middle ages?
 
I don't know much about Mesopotamia in particular, but the irrigation techniques used at the time caused problems if my memory serves me. Perhaps new agricultural discoveries could slow Mesopotamia's decline?
 
How hard would it be for the Iranian tribes to just never unify (maybe the Assyrians fund/aid the various tribes of the Iranian plateau a la the Persians and Greece), and the Assyrians not to collapse into such destructive civil wars? Or maybe the Neo-Babylonians conquer Egypt and use it as a breadbasket for the empire, so they have the numbers to resist any Iranic offensives?
 
As I understand it, wrought iron weapons are typically less hard and more ductile than bronze weapons, and thus don't hold an edge as well; their advantage in the ancient world was because iron ore was much more common in the earth than copper and tin, and this came to a head with the collapse of trade networks in the late Bronze Age. I'm actually kind of fuzzy about when steel became standard issue vs iron, so some kind of timeline on that would make this easier.

I'm also under the impression that the Neo-Babylonians of the 6th Century B.C. were the last native Mesopotamian empire, eventually being conquered by the Persians, then the Macedonians, then the Partians, the Romans, the Sassanids, then the Arabs. Is there a way to keep Akkadian speaking Mesopotamian peoples on top in the Near East into the middle ages?
I believe even in the Neo-Babylonian Empire that Aramaic had already become the dominant language of the area. I dont think Arcadian was able to survive by that time. Perhaps an earlier pod is needed.
 

Deleted member 97083

How hard would it be for the Iranian tribes to just never unify (maybe the Assyrians fund/aid the various tribes of the Iranian plateau a la the Persians and Greece), and the Assyrians not to collapse into such destructive civil wars? Or maybe the Neo-Babylonians conquer Egypt and use it as a breadbasket for the empire, so they have the numbers to resist any Iranic offensives?
It would be hard to prevent the unification of Iran. Due to the importance of the qanats in Persia, as soon as somebody unites the region, they control the water supply and can make local rebellion quite difficult. Persian empires tended to invest in building new qanats, cultivating new fields, so farmers greatly admired their king.

That said, if Elam remained intact, they could perhaps stand against the Iranian kingdoms for a longer period of time. But the technologically advanced Iranians pushing west would happen eventually.

Fun fact: Cyrus the Great might have been an Elamite, or at least part-Elamite.

I believe even in the Neo-Babylonian Empire that Aramaic had already become the dominant language of the area. I dont think Arcadian was able to survive by that time. Perhaps an earlier pod is needed.
Akkadian was "alive", but only in the sense that Latin was in 1500 AD.

Aramaic was dominant by the mid-Assyrian period--by the neo-Babylonian period, there were two main dialects of Aramaic: Assyrian and Babylonian.
 
So if the lynchpin of Iran was Persia, could the Assyrians or Babylonians just conquer that and play the other tribes/regions off each other?
 

Deleted member 97083

So if the lynchpin of Iran was Persia, could the Assyrians or Babylonians just conquer that and play the other tribes/regions off each other?
By Persia I meant the whole of Iran, not just the Persia province/satrapy. Although I will be more specific from now on.

The Neo-Assyrians could conquer Pars, even the rest of Iran, but they couldn't hold it for long. Their typical strategy of forced population movements doesn't work in a vast land of desert and mountains with minimal rivers. The Assyrians would prefer receiving tribute from the Iranian polities rather than a direct conquest, but by exacting tribute, they just incite the Medes to unite Iran against them. The Assyrians did receive short-lived payments of tribute from the Medes at times, just as they did from all their neighbors, but this never lasted long before another war started.

The Assyrian king was fighting dozens of rebellions every year, and the size of Persia compared to its wealth makes it not worth occupying. Fighting rebels beyond the Zagros mountains takes weeks longer than fighting them in Mesopotamia, and endangers imperial power in Assur, Nineveh, Harran, and Babylon, centers much more important to the Assyrian state.

The Assyrians could however, have conquered Elam (which Ashurbanipal in fact defeated and demanded tribute from, but promptly left).

As for the Babylonians, I don't think they could conquer Persia considering they failed to take Egypt.

Is there a way to keep Akkadian speaking Mesopotamian peoples on top in the Near East into the middle ages?
Notably, Aramaic was the majority language of Mesopotamia well into the Roman period and early Middle Ages. The Aramaic language was also native to the Fertile Crescent, even if not the area of Akkad itself.

It's difficult to keep Mesopotamian peoples on top of the game with no interruption, but they could potentially acquire independence from a non-Mesopotamian empire centuries later.
 
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Well, if the qanats are so vital to the region, wouldn't that limit the points an invader actually needs to control? If the Assyrians can indeed conquer the region (probably using an oversea route rather than across the mountains, I'd think, at least for Fars), then they'd control all the water, thus making rebellion difficult. I don't think Egypt itself was much of a threat to Assyria proper; were Canaan and Egypt a net gain for the Assyrian Empire, or would the resources they spent controlling them be better used combatting their greatest threat, in the East?
 

Deleted member 97083

Well, if the qanats are so vital to the region, wouldn't that limit the points an invader actually needs to control?

If the Assyrians can indeed conquer the region (probably using an oversea route rather than across the mountains, I'd think, at least for Fars), then they'd control all the water, thus making rebellion difficult.
That's a good idea, but there's a caveat. For one, most non-Persian empires ruling Iran failed to realize the importance of the qanats or fund them properly--you see this with the Seleucid Empire, Abbasid Caliphate, etc. who let the infrastructure of rural Persia go into somewhat of a decay.

Secondly, the Assyrians' greatest enemy was not their non-Akkadian/non-Aramaic subjects. Rather, it was the king's own vassals and even his second and third sons who became his worst enemies. The second son of Esarhaddon, Shamash-shum-ukin, caused a devastating revolt in Babylon that almost destroyed the Assyrian Empire 40 years early. Meanwhile, it was not an infrequent occurrence for an Assyrian city to go through multiple rebellious governors in one year, each one rebelling, getting killed, and being replaced with a purportedly more loyal governor, who rises up and is defeated, ad infinitum.

If the king of Assyria conquers the Persians, he will have to place a viceroy there. At some point this viceroy will rebel and now he controls the water supply and the mountain passes. Defeating this rebellion, which will be just as hard as conquering the area from scratch, will allow other constantly simmering rebellions in Mesopotamia and the Levant time to grow--possibly fatal for the empire.

The Assyrian empire was basically a giant experiment on how large of an empire can be maintained purely by constant, brutal military campaigning and juggling one revolt after another.

I don't think Egypt itself was much of a threat to Assyria proper; were Canaan and Egypt a net gain for the Assyrian Empire, or would the resources they spent controlling them be better used combatting their greatest threat, in the East?
Well Egypt was only briefly under Assyrian control and later became a puppet. Actually, Pharaoh Necho II was the Assyrian Empire's first true ally, attempting to save it during the Babylonian invasion. Egypt is definitely better as a puppet state or independent kingdom.

Canaan was rich and close to Mesopotamia, so controlling it was definitely a net gain for the Assyrians.
 
Could you make Viceroy of Fars/Iran a title for the Crown Prince, as the person in the empire least likely to rebel against the king (a la Prince of Wales or Prince of Asturias)? And then some kind of deal where Egypt gets free rein in Nubia and a slice of southern Canaan in exchange for an alliance to protect against a Babylonian rebellion?
 

Deleted member 97083

Could you make Viceroy of Fars/Iran a title for the Crown Prince, as the person in the empire least likely to rebel against the king (a la Prince of Wales or Prince of Asturias)? And then some kind of deal where Egypt gets free rein in Nubia and a slice of southern Canaan in exchange for an alliance to protect against a Babylonian rebellion?
Then the Crown Prince would probably be loyal... but he might be killed by his own brothers or by eastern raiders. The same happened to Ashur-nadin-shumi, Crown Prince of Assyria, who as the vice-King of Babylon was captured and killed by Elamites. Afterward, his brother, Esarhaddon took the throne, but barely survived a conspiracy against him by his remaining brothers, who also killed their father in anger against Esarhaddon being marked the successor to the throne. Esarhaddon then defeated his brothers and put their families to death.

With few exceptions, there was no such thing as peace or a long-term agreement in the Assyrian Empire. Dynastic succession was generally a nightmare.

Giving Egypt a slice of Canaan would have been unacceptable--that would have made them a threat to the rest of Canaan and Phoenicia. Pharaoh Necho II was probably only friendly to Assyria because Egypt had become so weak and had just been freed from being a puppet state.
 
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