Mind-Munitions

24
Propaganda in the Ancient World
century BC an inscription on the royal palace of Assurnasirpal II at
Ninevah describes how the Assyrian king punished the rebellious
city Suru and devised a method of warning against further revolts:
I built a pillar over against the city gate, and I flayed all the chief men
who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skins; some I
walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes,
and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar; many within the
border of my own land I flayed, and I spread their skins upon the walls;
and I cut off the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had
rebelled. Ahiababa [the rebel leader] I took to Ninevah, I flayed him, I
spread his skin upon the wall of Ninevah.
Assyrian art reflects this brutality, and pottery took the images far
and wide. It was a policy of terror coupled with one of propaganda,
designed to keep conquered peoples down and to frighten potential
enemies with graphic propagandist imagery and brutal psychology.
The gradual shift from war fought in the name of a god to war
fought in the name of a king (with the god being reduced to a
symbolic presiding influence) may have been due in part to the
influence of the Egyptian kings, who developed their own forms of
propaganda, in particular spectacular public monuments such as
the pyramids and the sphinx. The Pharaohs were among the first to
recognize the power of public architecture on a grand scale to
demonstrate prestige and dynastic legitimacy. Yet, like the
Assyrians, their war propaganda was erratic and sporadic: there
was no coherent pattern or organization. Religion was used cynically
by rulers to promote loyalty and fear among the ruled.
Undoubtedly superstitious themselves, ancient kings backed up
their propaganda with terror, both in peace and in war. In other
words, if religion provided the origins of war propaganda, terror
can be seen to have provided the origins of psychological warfare.
But these are modern terms and do not describe adequately the
persuasive activities of these ancient rulers. They imply an
organization and a philosophy which did not really exist. It is only
with the flowering of Greek civilization that we can begin to see the
introduction of both these factors.