Deportation, Resettlement and Dependency in Assyria
The Neo-Assyrian Empire (about 900–609 BCE) used population transfers to control territory, resettle communities, support military campaigns and build new cities. Earlier Assyrian periods provide context: Old Assyrian merchants were active in northern Mesopotamia around 2000–1700 BCE, and Middle Assyrian kings ruled a territorial kingdom around 1400–1050 BCE.
Forced relocation changed where people could live, but it did not give everyone the same status. Some resettled cultivators received land and paid taxes; enslaved people were held as property, while other workers could be compelled to labor for the state. Soldiers under military orders were another category, with their own equipment and duties.
Moving opponents and defeated populations
After taking power, Sargon II’s victory inscription says that he moved 6,300 Assyrians who had opposed his accession to Hamath, in present-day Syria, in 720 BCE. The city had been ruined, and Sargon said the resettled group rebuilt it. Moving these opponents distanced them from the imperial center while supplying people to restore a provincial city.
Royal inscriptions also describe transferring people from conquered lands to Assyrian cities. The crown selected urban leaders and skilled workers, including craftspeople and specialists, and sent cultivators to settlements where officials wanted farms developed. These orders pulled families from established communities and placed their labor, knowledge and local obligations under a new provincial administration.
Equipping troops and shaping households
In the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BCE), an official named Aššur-matka-tera wrote about Aramean troops ordered to join a campaign. He said he would supply travel provisions, sackcloth, leather bags, sandals and oil. The list shows officials equipping a military group before it set out. These men were troops serving on campaign, a different form of state-organized movement from the relocation of political opponents and farming families.
In another letter from the same reign, the official reports the king’s order that the Aramean troops marry. He had found women, but their fathers refused consent without payment. The official asked the king to provide the money. This exchange shows how military assignments extended into household arrangements: the official sought royal financing for the payment local families required.
Landholding and labor obligations
Some cultivators resettled by the state received assigned plots. When they worked the land and paid taxes, they could legally own the land. The crown directed their resettlement and collected taxes, but these farmers held plots as legal owners; enslaved people were instead held as property and another person controlled their labor.
Construction could involve different forms of compulsion. During Sargon II’s reign (721–705 BCE), the king built Dur-Šarrukin, his new capital at modern Khorsabad in northern Iraq. His inscription describes gathering people from different regions and languages and placing them under Assyrian supervisors, who were to direct the workers and teach conduct expected toward the king and gods. Sargon also used labor from subject kingdoms and compelled Assyrians to work on the project.
The building project depended on materials brought from distant places. Timber from the upper Tigris and the Amanus mountain range in southeastern present-day Turkey traveled by river toward Khorsabad. Stone blocks moved by sledges, rafts or boats. The largest carved stones could be floated downstream only during spring floods, so the timing of transport shaped when these heavy pieces could reach the capital.