Israel and Assyria, Judah and Assyria

Assyria rapidly and brutally conquered the southern Levant during the 730s and 720s and brought the destruction of the major southern Levantine polities and the eradication of their local social landscape by large-scale atrocities and the deportation of communities. Imperial administrators and soldiers governed the depleted conquered territories and monitored the subjugated rulers of the remaining polities. At the same time, the multifaceted Assyrian-southern Levantine interaction included additional aspects, such as economic interaction prior to the Assyrian conquest, and cultural attraction of the Levantine elites to the empire during the century of Assyrian domination following the conquest. In the end, a century of Assyrian colonialism completely altered the southern Levant-politically, demographically, and culturally-and nothing looked the same when the empire rapidly collapsed in the late 7th century BCE. In this chapter, I review the impact the Assyrian conquest had on the inhabitants of Israel and Judah and the significance of the encounters between the locals and the Assyrian courts and its agents. It begins with a short historical synopsis followed by four topics: the structure of the Assyrian Empire in the southern Levant, the impact of the deportations on the local social landscape, the Assyrian economic involvement in subjugated polities, and the colonial encounters and the appropriation of Assyrian ideas by the locals.