A new tactic began to be employed by the Assyrians. For every conquered enemy, king Shalmaneser would stand before his fallen foes, proclaiming that their gods had abandoned them, and that Ashur (the deified god of their capital city) must be assumed as their new god. On a whole, worship of the Assyrian god, Ashur, widely spread on its own beyond Assyria's borders.
However, a lone city, Arina, strongly-fortified upon a steep mountain, resisted implicitly. Its governor, sickened by this new god's influence upon his smallfolk, made great efforts to gather crowds far and wide to view of vile demonstrations that demanded the desecration and denouncement of the Assyrian religion, as well as the head of its pantheon's deity.
When news of these anti-religious, anti-Assyrian demonstrations was brought to Shalmaneser's ear, the king advanced and laid the mountain fortress to siege, storming its walls and burning the entire city to the ground. Once destroyed, his military force witnessed its king walking amongst their thousands on horseback, sprinkling ashes of the dead city, a final show, or demonstration of his own, that Ashur remained supreme.
The reinvigorated armies of Assyria were now evermore blood-thirsty with a unending hunger for war. Next, they invaded the Musri (northern Iraq), a small and peaceful kingdom, that had remained untouched on Assyria's borders, now untouched no longer.
And it is here that a pivotal event in history takes its place, for in his next maneuver, king Shalmaneser invaded Hanigalbat, neutral lands friendly with the Hittites. Bearing the symbols of Ashur's winged discs with horns upon their dress, the Assyrian soldiers were relentless in their march, but here was an enemy that did not intend to bend the knee, and would mount a resistance unlike any Shalmaneser had yet faced.
Hanigalbat, once the lands of the Mitanni, now a multiethnic state of people, collectively known as the Hurrians, had its own king, Shattuara, who rallied the Hittites and Akhlamu under one banner, and to their aid. This was the moment Babylonia and Hatti had feared. Peace treaties and alliances were built upon the prophecy and foresight of this day.
The day that Assyria crossed over.
[Ashur - God of the Assyrians]
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