Armies of Early Empires: War as a Machine of Expansion
The starting point is Lawrence Keeley's observation about prehistoric societies: culture alone does not mitigate war. From there, our turn begins, a discussion of empires, which Keeley did not touch on.
Severed hands are laid out before the pharaoh and counted. A scribe records the number. This is what victory looks like in New Kingdom Egypt. Not fury or chaos, but accounting. This is precisely what we're heading towards: the warfare of early empires long ago ceased to be a blind force of nature and became a machine, calculated, accounted for, integrated into governance. The familiar picture of ancient warfare as pure "barbarism," which civilization gradually tamed, crumbles upon closer inspection.
A disclaimer regarding genre. The scenes of the captured city, the reading of the treaty, and the counting of spoils below are generalized formulas from the source material, not records of individual events. Where relevant, I'll specify this separately.
From the ruler's army to the imperial machine
Earlier in this series, we described war as a communal affair, and then as the craft of the retinue and military aristocracy. A warrior was a man for whom battle brought status and spoils; the old Latin term is convenient for this type. Homo bellicosus, "a warlike man." L. B. Vishnyatsky in his work "War before stories" shows that such a figure has accompanied human societies since ancient times, and that violence itself is not a breakdown for them, but the norm.
The early empires of the Middle East change not the fact of war itself, but its structure. Mesopotamia, New Kingdom Egypt, the Hittite Empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire—everywhere, the army ceases to be the ruler's personal force. It becomes an institution, merging with bureaucracy, economy, and ritual. It's worth clarifying right away: the line "community—militia—empire" here is not a ladder of progress. These stages are not arranged in a strict sequence, do not occur simultaneously, and do not inevitably follow one from the other; this is merely a convenient framework for discussion, not a law of development.
This is already evident in the early Mesopotamian kingdoms. In Akkad and the Old Babylonian Empire, the army defended the city-state and conquered its neighbors, and garrisons were established in the conquered cities. Forced displacements also began, though still sporadic and ad hoc. The practice that would later become systemic was still only just beginning to emerge here.
And here's what's important not to confuse. It seems as if a more complexly structured state should be more humane. Nothing of the sort. Keeley in War Before Civilization Using prehistoric material, he demonstrates that wars in preliterate societies were brutal and widespread, no milder than historical ones. Hence our own step, which Keely does not take: as the state becomes more complex, it does not extinguish violence, but rather gives it form, calculation, and plan.
Assyria: Deportation as a Settlement Operation
The Neo-Assyrian Empire takes the Mesopotamian model to its extreme. The army here is a permanent professional structure with a branched command structure and specialized corps: infantry, chariots, and later cavalry. It is fused with the provincial administration. Campaigns are planned in advance, as entire series of conquests, rather than individual expeditions.
The main instrument of this machine is deportation. Under Tiglath-Pileser III, who reigned from 745 to 727 BCE, mass migrations transformed from a random practice into a systemic state policy. Deportation can easily be dismissed as a "collateral horror of war." But it doesn't qualify as "collateral"; everything was arranged too carefully.
Karen Radner, in her work on the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its provincial system, describes the deportation as a carefully orchestrated operation: the deportees were valued for their labor force and skills, and the displacement was planned for administrative purposes. This is demographic engineering. People were fragmented to break local identity and the ability to resist. They were transferred to wherever the empire needed labor. They were populated along the borderlands, creating a layer of settlers tied to the center by a common interest.
The deportation had a double meaning. On the surface, there was coercion and fear. But beneath the surface, there was the sober arithmetic: labor, taxes, developed lands, fortified borders. Estimates of the scale are cautious: historians speak of hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, resettled over several centuries. There are no precise figures, but the image is clear: this was a human transfer on the scale of an entire civilization, planned by the bureaucracy.
Ashurnasirpal II: Terror as a Message
Deportation is accompanied by demonstrative terror. The annals of Ashurnasirpal II, a king of the 9th century BC, read like a catalog of executions: impalement, crucification, and the flaying of rebels. The first urge is to call it sadism, but such an explanation is too simple to be true.
Annals are an official genre. The Tsar is keen to demonstrate the scale of his conquests and his determination in suppressing rebellions, so violence is presented as a consciously demonstrated sign of power, not an isolated incident. Scholars of royal rhetoric read these texts as political communication for multiple audiences simultaneously.
A typical Assyrian inscription about the capture of a city functions as a structured message. The city is captured, the walls are torn down, some of the inhabitants are taken away, some are executed, and the site of resistance is left as a warning to neighbors. This sequence is not a single scene, but a formula repeated over and over in the annals. The message's meaning strikes two recipients at once. To the subjugated, it says: resistance will be extremely costly. To enemies and allies: Assyrian weapon Brings terror and inevitability. A single display of cruelty keeps many cities from rebelling, and it's cheaper than maintaining a garrison against each one. Fear is cheaper than an army, if administered correctly.
New Kingdom Egypt: Accounting for Victory
Egypt offers a different type of imperial army, but with the same underlying logic. In the 15th–12th centuries BCE, New Kingdom Egypt builds a state beyond the Nile Valley, in Western Asia and Nubia, relying on expeditionary armies, a network of fortresses and garrisons, and a system of vassalage.
A telling scene is the Battle of Kadesh, circa 1274 BCE, a clash between two empires, Egypt and the Hittite Empire. The way this campaign was documented reveals the bureaucratic side of the Egyptian military machine. Reliefs and inscriptions transform the campaign into a public scene of royal victory: not only a chariot clash but also the recording of success itself, where the image of the pharaoh is embedded in the military machine (we're talking about a corpus of victory images, not a single scene).
This explains the counting of severed hands and heads on reliefs: a census of trophies and the dead, a ritual display, and administrative accounting all rolled into one. Ian Shaw, in his works on the history of Ancient Egypt and the New Kingdom, demonstrates that depictions of victory combine the accounting of spoils with a ritual confirmation of royal success. The Egyptian army, it turns out, isn't simply fighting, but reporting to the pharaoh and the gods: how many were killed, how many were captured, how many hands were laid at the king's feet. Violence is translated into numbers and recorded.
Hittites: War Written in Law
The Hittite Empire offers a third perspective. Its control over Syria and northern Mesopotamia rested more on a network of vassal kingdoms and written treaties than on permanent occupation.
Trevor Bryce, in his study of the Hittite Empire and vassal treaties, describes this model as an empire of obligations. Treaties transformed military aid into a legally binding obligation of the vassal: the vassal provided troops and supplies, and failure to comply was punished. Thus, the imperial army grew not only through its own troops but also through contingents of allies obligated to act at the request of the center.
This practice is based on a very imaginable scenario. A treaty is read before the royal court. The vassal assumes responsibility for men, supplies, and allegiance. Refusal to go on campaign is no longer political disloyalty, but a breach of an oath, followed by punishment (the image is reconstructed from the corpus of Hittite treaties). The Assyrians and Hittites used different instruments. Assyria exerted direct pressure—executions, deportations. For the Hittites, force was backed by treaty, and punishment came for broken oaths. The Hittite model appears more lenient, but the requirements for military service are strict in both cases. Violence has not disappeared; it is simply reinforced by a different instrument.
Homo bellicosus becomes an imperial soldier
If you put all four cases together, the same scenario of conquest emerges, almost like a conveyor belt. The city is taken. Part of the population is executed and intimidated, part is deported, new people are resettled in the vacated space, garrisons and officials are installed. Military force and bureaucracy work together here, the hands of the official and the sword of the soldier in one motion.
Behind this conveyor belt stands a new figure. The warrior of the community and retinue knew war as a personal craft and a source of status. The imperial soldier is structured differently: he is included in the staff structure, subject to regulations (accounting, supplies, punishments), and integrated into ritual: oaths, the cult of the king, victory rites. The Egyptian warrior, whose exploits are recorded in inscriptions, simultaneously serves the pharaoh and the gods. The Assyrian soldier participates in deportations and executions out of duty, not personal passion.
This is precisely what proponents of the new military history propose: to see the army as an institution, and war as a social practice. In early empires, violence becomes institutionalized: deportations, executions, garrisons, and treaties with military obligations make cruelty a manageable resource of the state.
Let's return to those very hands before the pharaoh, but let's look not at the victims, but at the one keeping count. The Egyptian scribe, carefully recording their number, doesn't look like an executioner and most likely didn't consider himself one. He was keeping score. That's the whole story: the Assyrians counted flayed skin, the Egyptians counted severed hands, the Hittites counted the soldiers deployed under the treaty. The tools are different, the habits are the same. Civilization hasn't mitigated war. It has learned to count it, and the soldier is no longer subtracted from this count; he is included in it.
Authors and works used
- L. B. Vishnyatsky - "War Before History: The Evolution of Armed Violence in Prehistory"
- Lawrence H. Keeley - "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage"
- Karen Radner – works on the Neo-Assyrian Empire, deportations, and the provincial system (including overview chapters on the Assyrian state and its governance)
- Trevor Bryce — "The Kingdom of the Hittites"; works on Hittite vassal treaties
- Ian Shaw — The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (ed.); works on the military history of the New Kingdom
- studies of the annals of Ashurnasirpal II and the royal rhetoric of intimidation (the corpus of Assyrian royal inscriptions and its analysis)
- studies of Egyptian military reliefs of the New Kingdom and the practice of counting trophies
- generalizing works on modern military history (the army as an institution, war as a social practice)
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