They really wanted to let you know how important they were back then. Which actually makes things hard for historians sometimes because it’s not clear that when they say things like, “The king who marched from opposite Tigris (from the opposite bank of the Tigris River) up to the Lebanon and the Great Sea, ruled over the land (and) the land Šabate I brought under my authority.” if that’s actually true or just bragging.
There’s definitely a lot of bragging about sizes of armies. They’ll claim they’re things like 100,000 strong when there weren’t enough men to make up an army of that size and still have society function.
They really wanted to let you know how important they were back then. Which actually makes things hard for historians sometimes because it’s not clear that when they say things like, “The king who marched from opposite Tigris (from the opposite bank of the Tigris River) up to the Lebanon and the Great Sea, ruled over the land (and) the land Šabate I brought under my authority.” if that’s actually true or just bragging.
There’s definitely a lot of bragging about sizes of armies. They’ll claim they’re things like 100,000 strong when there weren’t enough men to make up an army of that size and still have society function.