亚述帝国国王与农业生产

The Assyrian Kings and Agricultural Production

亚述帝国以征战四方而闻名,国王给人的印象往往是英勇的战士,实际上他们还非常关心农业生产。亚述国王懂得通过复耕抛荒地和开垦草原来扩大耕地面积,吩咐在犁耕前灌溉和除草,还知道置备耕地的犁、挽犁的牛和种子。亚述国王清楚降雨对农业生产的重要性,急切地盼望降雨,向暴风雨神求雨,还开挖沟渠灌溉庄稼,并指导相关官员应对涝灾和蝗灾。亚述国王憧憬丰收景象,恳求神灵保佑丰收,指导粮食的收割与贮存。亚述国王之所以重视农业生产,是因为亚述帝国本质上仍然是一个农业社会,农业事关国家的繁荣与稳定。

The Assyrian empire was famous for its conquest, and the Assyrian kings always presented themselves as the foremost warriors, in fact they also cared about their agriculture. The Assyrian kings knew to enlarge their fields by cultivating abandoned fields and meadowlands, they ordered to irrigate fields and cut hays before cultivation, and prepared for ploughs, oxen and grain seeds.The Assyrian kings knew the importance of raining to crops, they looked forward to raining eagerly, plead to stormy god, cut canals to irrigate crops, and guided to deal with drought and locusts. The Assyrian kings expected the harvest, asked gods and goddess to bless it, and directed to reap crops and store grain. An important reason that the Assyrian kings paid attention to agricultural production was that the Assyrian empire was a agricultural society and agriculture was closely related to prosperity and stability of empire.