Analyzing Ideology Concerning the Royal Power in Neo-Assyria and Achaemenid Monarchies

One of the fundamental features of the ancient states associated with power was ideology, and Neo-Assyria and the Achaemenid empires were no exception to this rule. If we look at the written and visual documents and evidence of the royal contexts of Neo-Assyria and the Achaemenid, ideology has been at the heart of these two empires. How did they treat the subject people? How was their cooperation and participation with these empires? What was the connection between kings and their god or gods to justify their actions? How did the royal inscriptions and images describe the characteristics of a mighty and powerful king? What were the characteristics of hegemony and the view of domination over the whole world and nations in their views and in what methods was it done? These are the questions that this research seeks to answer to determine the ideological commonalities and differences between these two empires in their royal contexts and whether their ideological strategies and methods have been fundamentally different concerning the verbal and visual violence of the Assyrians? To achieve its goals, this research has examined the inscriptions and images (reliefs, steles, seals) of the royal contexts of these two periods. Concerning the strategies, methods, and concepts studied in this research, such as the mighty and powerful king, universal hegemony, connection between king and god (gods), participation of subject people in advancing the goals of the two empires, large construction projects and building of magnificent monuments, etc. There is not much difference in the royal ideology of the two Neo- Assyria and Achaemenid . Of course, the explicit and barely verbal and visual violence of the Assyrian should not be ignored in their royal reliefs and inscriptions, however, in the written and visual evidence of the Achaemenids, especially in the Persepolis, this violence is not explicitly seen, that is an important feature of the worldview and ideology of the Achaemenid monarchy