Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Ancient World

Genocides, one can surmise, may be as old as civilization itself. The many ancient cases of disappeared peoples and cultures may not always point to genocide, but the possibility that many of these peoples were the victims of genocide seems very likely. The reason for this is that awareness of genocide was widespread in antiquity and the frequent reports of its occurrence indicate that genocide was commonplace.

In Homer's Iliad, the Greek forces invading Troy have no qualms about planning the total destruction of its people. In Book IV, Agamemnon rouses Menelaus:

My dear Menelaus, why are you so chary of taking men's lives? Did the Trojans treat you as handsomely as that when they stayed in your house? No; we are not going to leave a single one of them alive, down to the babies in their mothers' wombs—not even they must live. The whole people must be wiped out of existence, and none be let to think of them and shed a tear.

Putting to one side the question of whether or not the inhabitants of Troy actually suffered this fate, what one finds in Agamemnon's words is the casual acceptance of genocidal warfare as legitimate and commonplace. In a world where the ruling elites exploited the lower classes to finance the building of great palaces and temples or to wage war against enemies (of the elites), the fate of an enemy city's inhabitants meant very little. Histories were written about kings, priests, and ruling elites, and heroic battles between the armies of kingdoms and/or empires. There were no histories written about ordinary men and women. As a result, we may never have enough information for a decisive analysis of many suspected cases of genocide.

From time to time, one does come across an account of a historical event in which the fate of common people is mentioned, giving us a rare glimpse, not only of the event itself, but also of patterns of thought that were prevalent at the time of the event. An example is the bloody battle of Kalinga (in India). Asoka (299–237 BCE) was the third emperor of the Mauryan dynasty of India and the best-known ruler of ancient India. In 260 BCE Asoka attacked Kalinga; the campaign was successful but resulted in a tremendous loss of life. Asoka's brutality in warfare and the slaughter of his enemies are legendary. But his brutality is cited in texts, not because the event of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people was so egregiously horrific, but because Asoka came to regret his actions and converted to Buddhism. In these texts the fate of Asoka's victims is noteworthy only because his guilt at having committed genocidal crimes led to his religious conversion, not because of a sense of bereavement for the people he victimized.

Although we often lack information for many of the instances of suspected genocide, the accounts of mass killings for which we have relatively more information must still be called into question, as that information may be exaggerated. Sennacherib, king of Assyria (705–681 BCE) waged wars against Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Philistia, as well as several cities in Judea. In 689 BCE Sennacherib captured and destroyed Babylon, slaughtered all its inhabitants, and diverted rivers of water into the city.

Do we absorb this information as factual, in the absence of any other corroborating evidence? Obviously, there were surviving Babylonians after 689 BCE, as both historical and archaeological evidence suggests that the Babylonians subsequently took revenge on Assyria. This question aside, the interpretation of such data (coming out of antiquity) is inherently problematic, as much of the data was obtained from inscriptions that were not intended for mortal eyes and were sometimes far from truthful. Records of a king's "heroics" were inscribed on the peaks of mountains or the foundations of buildings—all for the gods to see. Moreover, a king would record only his accomplishments, and never his failures, and what he chose to record might bear little relation to actual events.

One such example (of the erratic and undependable character of ancient historiography) is the story of the victory of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II over the Hittites (a nation of Asia Minor). The story of the Egyptian victory was for centuries relied on as historically correct, until an archaeological discovery in the late nineteenth century proved that not only did the Hittites win this battle, they also signed a peace treaty with the Egyptians. An interesting feature of the Hittite society is the way they are alleged to have treated their enemies. Unlike the Assyrians, who had a reputation for widespread brutality, the Hittites apparently did not commit genocide. Once an enemy was defeated, the inhabitants of the conquered nation would be taken into custody and distributed as slaves among the Hittite elites.

That the Hittites were at variance with the (presumed) general atmosphere of genocidal warfare in antiquity is subject to argument. In the ancient Mediterranean world, it was the reputation of Medes and Babylonians to have possessed no aversion to using exceptionally lethal techniques in warfare. There are several accounts of Medes and Babylonians (independently and jointly) slaughtering the inhabitants of enemy cities, but perhaps the most famous account would be that of the assault on Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, in 612 BCE, wherein Medes and Babylonians united to destroy the city. After a two-month siege, the city was pillaged, severed heads were put on display at its main entrance, and the city itself was reduced to rubble.

A detailed source for accounts of warfare in antiquity would be the Old Testament. It is a record of many events that might be viewed as genocidal. In Joshua the Israelites are portrayed as annihilating towns in fulfillment of their divine providence; Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel both prophesize the annihilation of the Amalekites. Egyptians and Assyrians alike professed to carry out the complete destruction of their foes. Yet there is little archaeological evidence to support Old Testament accounts of the widespread destruction of cities that took place during the Exodus period (1200–1100 BCE). It is helpful to examine these accounts, not because of any historical authenticity that they might possess, but because of the casual way in which acts of genocidal aggression are reported: a further argument that ancient peoples were not unacquainted with the concept of genocide.

Although the term genocide is a modern one that conjures up images of carnage in the aftermaths of twentieth-century conflicts, the slaughter of enemies has ancient roots—an examination of which is a necessary part of the quest to understand the historical development of genocide and the meaning of the term itself. All the instances of genocide or presumed genocide cited above have entailed the targeting of non-combatant men, women, and children for extermination. Regardless of whether the accounts of genocide are truthful, the manner in which they have been reported strongly suggests that genocide was widely practiced, and that awareness of its existence spanned many ancient cultures. A study of suspected genocides of antiquity is pivotal to an understanding of the development of genocide, what it is, and how it arises.

SEE ALSO Archaeology; Athens and Melos; Carthage; India, Ancient and Medieval; Sparta

Karin Solveig Bjornson