Ep 149 Shalmaneser Upends the Levant

I am getting deep into the Shalmaneser story, and it is already coming to be one of my more favorite tales from Mesopotamia. Ahumu’s resistance is usually nothing but a prelude to the battle of Qarqar, and I genuinely thought I could get through it pretty quickly on the way to the more famous battle, but the coalition dynamics and the implications for the Assyrian military machine captured my imagination and I got a bit carried away. Actually, the whole discussion on coalition dynamics got moved into next episode, but that one really will look at Qarqar. Still writing that, not actually sure if I will wrap up the Damascus story arc or not in just one episode, but as mentioned in the episode we have another exciting narrative for his Babylon and Urartu campaigns, as well as the decline into revolt that will characterize his immediate successors.