3) The Administration in Assyria
Communication
There was tremendous uncertainty in the Near East for a sender giving a letter or anything else to a messenger who would bring it to the recipient. Anxiety about it meant that only the messenger — and not a single person else — was expected to handle the delivery until giving it to the recipient. The messenger would single-handedly make the delivery, along with a riding animal — and for greater speed but at a greater cost, the messenger would bring two riding animals the animals could take turns rather than one needing to take extended breaks.
The key thing here was that in traversing complicated territories with conflicting political systems, the delivery and its messenger stayed together as the only way to have any sort of guarantee of delivery. Letters were immensely private things, and they were recorded on tablets that were then encased with clay that bore the messenger's seal and sometimes a very brief description of the contents. Messengers were trusted to not only make the delivery but to respect the privacy of the contents. With the transition to alphabetic Aramaic from cuneiform Assyrian, there was an explosion and deepening of literacy among previous illiterate or barely literate levels of society — the Aramization of the Near East — this trust must have become even more important.
On the Neo-Assyrian relay system.
In the 9th century BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed a completely innovative communications strategy. It became possible to send mail and goods from the capital all the way to the Mediterranean at Adana (the ancient Assyrian vassal of Quwe) within five days. This was a distance of 700 kilometers that included rivers, mountain ranges, and steppes. The new system worked by overcoming the challenge of trust, and the inefficient single-messenger-per-delivery system that was traditional. In the traditional system, even with two animals, eventually they would need to rest, sleep, eat, and drink — and even if the animals were able to survive, the messenger himself needed breaks as well. Deliveries that might take one hundred uninterrupted hours could increase to a week in practice. In the new system, there were postal stations every 35 to 40 kilometers across the entire empire. The messenger would bring the delivery to the next postal station, and rather than the package waiting for them to recover it was instead given to a messenger at that postal station who brought it to the next station on its journey. The package never had to come to a standstill and could be transported effectively uninterrupted. (Of note, no postal stations have been excavated yet which limits our understanding.)
We do not know exactly how the exchange worked, or if deliveries were made at night, but it brought a tremendous degree of efficiency. The speed of the Assyrian postal system was not exceeded for two thousand years with the introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century. However, this system was operated by the military and was only available for the royal court and those holding the royal seal — not more than about 150 people. The expense of this system — the mules, the soldier-messengers, not to mention the postal stations themselves maintained across the entire empire — suddenly seems even more expensive when considering it was only for top-level administrative use. It must have had tremendous benefit in supporting the coherence of the empire. The royal seal was put in place alongside the development of the postal system, suggesting it was part of a master strategy for stability, the delegation of responsibility, and the visibility of the king through the golden ring worn by his trusted appointees.
The extremely elite and militarized nature of the relay system suggests that the issue of trust was still present. Although modern people receive mail without needing to consider who exactly of tens and hundreds of people had access to it, this was an entirely new concept in the 9th century BC. However, there was tension between efficiency and increasing the number of people involved in mail handling. This tension was ameliorated in various ways. The relay system was only operated by sworn servants of the state — even the mules were part of the state assets — and the amount of trust the king placed in their service means the postal system itself can be viewed as an extended way that the Assyrian king was forced to delegate tasks as the empire expanded too far for single-handed central control. Also, it was highly efficient but the relay system was only efficient with a low level of throughput to ensure the relays were on standby. When the Neo-Assyrian populace adopted Aramaic, the state explicitly required only Assyrian cuneiform on all official documents. This may have been more than just continuity of the language of recordkeeping, or the deep scribal tradition around cuneiform — it may have been a means to curtail normal people from snooping.
On mules.
Mules were the backbone of communication. They are the generally sterile offspring of two different species: a horse and a donkey. They do not need as much food or water as a horse — but also have the strength of a donkey, without its stubbornness — and mules can be ridden, which of course is also possible with a horse but is not possible with a donkey. Mules were excellent for long-distance transport in an arid, challenging climate like much of the ancient Assyrian territory.
However, mules were expensive in ancient Assyria — in fact, they are still expensive to this day — and would have cost several times the price of a human. Producing a mule requires forcing a horse and a donkey to mate, which would almost never happen without human interference, and they are almost never able to produce offspring themselves. Skilled professionals are required to produce mules, from the mule's point of conception through its training. Mules were unaffordable to most people, but the Assyrian state used them extensively in transporting communications and goods.
Communication
There was tremendous uncertainty in the Near East for a sender giving a letter or anything else to a messenger who would bring it to the recipient. Anxiety about it meant that only the messenger — and not a single person else — was expected to handle the delivery until giving it to the recipient. The messenger would single-handedly make the delivery, along with a riding animal — and for greater speed but at a greater cost, the messenger would bring two riding animals the animals could take turns rather than one needing to take extended breaks.
The key thing here was that in traversing complicated territories with conflicting political systems, the delivery and its messenger stayed together as the only way to have any sort of guarantee of delivery. Letters were immensely private things, and they were recorded on tablets that were then encased with clay that bore the messenger's seal and sometimes a very brief description of the contents. Messengers were trusted to not only make the delivery but to respect the privacy of the contents. With the transition to alphabetic Aramaic from cuneiform Assyrian, there was an explosion and deepening of literacy among previous illiterate or barely literate levels of society — the Aramization of the Near East — this trust must have become even more important.
On the Neo-Assyrian relay system.
In the 9th century BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed a completely innovative communications strategy. It became possible to send mail and goods from the capital all the way to the Mediterranean at Adana (the ancient Assyrian vassal of Quwe) within five days. This was a distance of 700 kilometers that included rivers, mountain ranges, and steppes. The new system worked by overcoming the challenge of trust, and the inefficient single-messenger-per-delivery system that was traditional. In the traditional system, even with two animals, eventually they would need to rest, sleep, eat, and drink — and even if the animals were able to survive, the messenger himself needed breaks as well. Deliveries that might take one hundred uninterrupted hours could increase to a week in practice. In the new system, there were postal stations every 35 to 40 kilometers across the entire empire. The messenger would bring the delivery to the next postal station, and rather than the package waiting for them to recover it was instead given to a messenger at that postal station who brought it to the next station on its journey. The package never had to come to a standstill and could be transported effectively uninterrupted. (Of note, no postal stations have been excavated yet which limits our understanding.)
We do not know exactly how the exchange worked, or if deliveries were made at night, but it brought a tremendous degree of efficiency. The speed of the Assyrian postal system was not exceeded for two thousand years with the introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century. However, this system was operated by the military and was only available for the royal court and those holding the royal seal — not more than about 150 people. The expense of this system — the mules, the soldier-messengers, not to mention the postal stations themselves maintained across the entire empire — suddenly seems even more expensive when considering it was only for top-level administrative use. It must have had tremendous benefit in supporting the coherence of the empire. The royal seal was put in place alongside the development of the postal system, suggesting it was part of a master strategy for stability, the delegation of responsibility, and the visibility of the king through the golden ring worn by his trusted appointees.
The extremely elite and militarized nature of the relay system suggests that the issue of trust was still present. Although modern people receive mail without needing to consider who exactly of tens and hundreds of people had access to it, this was an entirely new concept in the 9th century BC. However, there was tension between efficiency and increasing the number of people involved in mail handling. This tension was ameliorated in various ways. The relay system was only operated by sworn servants of the state — even the mules were part of the state assets — and the amount of trust the king placed in their service means the postal system itself can be viewed as an extended way that the Assyrian king was forced to delegate tasks as the empire expanded too far for single-handed central control. Also, it was highly efficient but the relay system was only efficient with a low level of throughput to ensure the relays were on standby. When the Neo-Assyrian populace adopted Aramaic, the state explicitly required only Assyrian cuneiform on all official documents. This may have been more than just continuity of the language of recordkeeping, or the deep scribal tradition around cuneiform — it may have been a means to curtail normal people from snooping.
On mules.
Mules were the backbone of communication. They are the generally sterile offspring of two different species: a horse and a donkey. They do not need as much food or water as a horse — but also have the strength of a donkey, without its stubbornness — and mules can be ridden, which of course is also possible with a horse but is not possible with a donkey. Mules were excellent for long-distance transport in an arid, challenging climate like much of the ancient Assyrian territory.
However, mules were expensive in ancient Assyria — in fact, they are still expensive to this day — and would have cost several times the price of a human. Producing a mule requires forcing a horse and a donkey to mate, which would almost never happen without human interference, and they are almost never able to produce offspring themselves. Skilled professionals are required to produce mules, from the mule's point of conception through its training. Mules were unaffordable to most people, but the Assyrian state used them extensively in transporting communications and goods.