descends from father to son. Its one chance of conserving some of its
pristine strength is to develop a bureaucracy which, if inspired by the
ideas and methods of earlier members of the dynasty, may continue to
realize them in a crystallized system of administration. This chance the
Middle Assyrian Kingdom never was at any pains to take. There is
evidence for delegation of military power by its Great Kings to a
headquarter staff, and for organization of military control in the
provinces, but none for such delegation of the civil power as might have
fostered a bureaucracy. Therefore that concentration of power in single
hands, which at first had been an element of strength, came to breed
increasing weakness as one member of the dynasty succeeded another.

Again, the irresistible Assyrian armies, which had been led abroad
summer by summer, were manned for some generations by sturdy peasants
drawn from the fields of the Middle Tigris basin, chiefly those on the
left bank. The annual razzia, however, is a Bedawi institution, proper
to a semi-nomadic society which cultivates little and that lightly, and
can leave such agricultural, and also such pastoral, work as must needs
be done in summer to its old men, its young folk and its women, without
serious loss. But a settled labouring population which has deep lands to
till, a summer crop to raise and an irrigation system to maintain is in
very different case. The Assyrian kings, by calling on their
agricultural peasantry, spring after spring, to resume the life of
militant nomads, not only exhausted the sources of their own wealth and
stability, but bred deep discontent. As the next two centuries pass more
and more will be heard of depletion and misery in the Assyrian lands.
Already before 800 we have the spectacle of the agricultural district of
Arbela rebelling against Shalmaneser's sons, and after being appeased
with difficulty, rising again against Adadnirari III in a revolt which
is still active when the century closes.