VI. To Ascend in the Ancient Near East

The logics and dynamics of politics and, within such a realm, of the ascension in revisionism certainly were as present and as real in the Near East of the Late Bronze Age as they are in the modern world. Ever since man is man, the struggle for power has remained unchanged. Ever since the transformation of tribes and communities into organizations of centralized political authority incarnated in the state, the inter- and intra-state relations and forces of power have been the same. Modernity and time have certainly turned politics into a more “complicated” battleground; however, the core of this endless war and the dynamics derived from it have not been altered but reasserted.

In the analysis of the Near East of the Late Bronze Age, a characteristic is to be underlined: obviously, the ascension in revisionism does not take place in a vacuum. In the first place, the rise of a great revisionist power, besides of resulting in the overthrown of a power relation of subjugation, develops into a change in the whole distribution of power within the system in which this takes place. Thus, it is to be expected that the other units react to such an ascension, by trying to stop or revert it. This is due to the fact that the distribution of power, because of its finite character, is altered and, as the rising power achieves a greater share of it, the other great powers see their power and their capacity to act in the system diminished. On the one hand, during Hatti’s ascension, other great powers, like Mitanni and Egypt which even become politically closer after Hittite ascension, seeking to reduce the possible damages to their interests and to control Hatti’s expansion. On the other, in the context of Assyria’s ascension, Babylon and Hatti tried to stop the arising power, while Egypt accommodated to the new situation.

In the second place, as to arise means to expand and to have previously subjected alien political units, in order to increase one’s power to overthrow the disturbing power relation, the process of ascension in revisionism carries the very seeds of revisionism. Oppression and disruption might ignite new processes of revisionist ascension. In a system, all the parties are interdependent and connected; the developments that take place within it have always consequences and trigger dynamics of response, in order to reach equilibrium within the system. However, the equilibrium reached is never the same, once it has been altered. The more disruptive the action, the more disruptive the response of the system and its parties to it. To ascend in revisionism is to totally disrupt the previous status quo; the system faces a crisis which will change the forces within it and their relations forever, but this will never alter its logics, its nature.