Let us travel back to 16th century BC . . . Where the great lands of the civilized world were Egypt, Hatti (geographically: modern day Turkey; ruled by the Hattians, later the Hittites), Assyria, Babylonia (conquered and controlled by the Kassites by this time, remained known as Babylonia), and Elam (geographically: modern Iran). Of these five grand powers of the known ancient world, Egypt and Hatti rivaled near the top of the hierarchy, with Egypt in first as the power center of the Near East (what we now refer to as the Middle East). A very distant third, in terms of both military power and expansive trade, would have been Babylonia, but it was without doubt inferior in all aspects to the grander two empires above its station.
Assyria was in its infancy, and would later grow to a vast empire of its own right, but during this era was but a small state, well-protected but also isolated by the endless miles of unexplored rough terrain that surrounded its nation.
Egypt was coming off the heels of expelling the Hyksos (Asian invaders of unknown tribe or origin) and following this invaded the Semitic lands of Palestine and all the fertile grounds around them. Thutmose I pressed the might of his Egyptian military forces into Syrian lands and all the way to the Euphrates River.
Three hundred years prior, the Hittite ruler, King Murshil I, swept down from the hills of Taurus and took much of the lands of Syria, a culmination that bore witness to their taking over Aleppo. His freebooters sailed down the Euphrates to raid Babylonia, and historians debate whether or not such attacks were referenced in The Books of Chronicles in the Bible.
These attacks were the height of incursion on the part of the Hittites to Babylonian lands, for concern that too much force might expose their rear flanks to the forever-pending threat of an Egyptian invasion. Such were the political conditions and theater of war at this time.
Sharing in the western portion of their lands, the Assyrians were overshadowed in history by the strength of the Mitanni. So strong was this nation that their king, Shaushshatar, invaded Assyria's capital city, Ashur, and carried off its gate, fashioned from gold and silver and a structure of pride for the Assyrian people. Stolen, they thereafter erected it in the Mitanni capital, Washshukkani, as a trophy of Assyria's submission. This act of humiliation likely drew Assyria's ire for many forthcoming generations.
Throughout 16th century BC to 14th century BC, the Near East was engulfed by ongoing Syrian and Palestinian wars. However, the two nations of Assyria and Babylonia were prevented from taking part, largely due to two buffer zones. First, the brutish Mitanni lay directly north and west of the Assyrian people. Second, the desert east of Palestine separated Babylonia from its most direct route to the convergence of military campaigning.
Adding to this isolation, historians must also consider the geography. While the lands of Assyria and Babylonia lay to the east of the Euphrates, all of the action between Egyptian, Semitic, Hittite, and Mittanian forces fought for blood west of the great river.
It is most interesting to note that while the Egyptian and Hittite empires exhausted time, resources, and lives in a state of perpetual mass warfare, youthful Assyria remained untouched, and thus became the genesis of its growth into a great empire, facing little resistance in slow expansion into uncontested northern lands, with an eye on the lands of Babylon to the south.
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