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205-535: During the Neo-Assyrian period in Syria (9th century BCE – 7th century BCE), Hisyah served as a post station known as "Hesa" on the road to Damascus. During the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III , it initially contained a full cohort of military craftsmen. Due to the small population in the area around Hesa, the cohort was later moved out and replaced by 30 Assyrian households subject to army recruitment. The village

410-401: A zoo , perhaps the first large zoo ever constructed. Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions offer no motive for changing the capital. Various explanations have been proposed by modern scholars, including that he might have gotten disenchanted with Assur since there was little room left in the ancient capital to leave a mark, the important position of Nimrud in regard to local trade networks, that Nimrud

615-442: A captive. A year later he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi's successor Baba-aha-iddina and annexed several territories in northern Babylonia. Southern Mesopotamia was left in disarray after Shamshi-Adad's victories. Though Babylonia nominally came under Assyrian control, Shamshi-Adad took the ancient Babylonian title " king of Sumer and Akkad " but not the conventional "king of Babylon". Due to Assyria's perhaps somewhat weakened state he

820-505: A completely new phenomenon only loosely connected to earlier Assyrian history, it is now considered more probable, due to evidence from royal inscriptions and the nature and extent of the campaigns undertaken, that the early Neo-Assyrian kings chiefly sought to re-establish the position of Assyria at the height of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Any notion of the two empires being distinct entities can also be dispelled through

1025-426: A complicated and extensive syllabary. A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of

1230-470: A development Tiglath-Pileser used as an excuse to invade Babylonia. In 729 BC, he succeeded in capturing Babylon and defeating Nabu-mukin-zeri and thus assumed the title "king of Babylon", alongside "king of Assyria". To increase the willingness of the Babyloninan populace to accept him as ruler, Tiglath-Pileser twice partook in the traditional Babylonian Akitu (New Year's) celebrations, held in honor of

1435-603: A few months later defeated and captured Nergal-ushezib in battle, the war dragged on as the Chaldean warlord Mushezib-Marduk took control of Babylon late in 693 and assembled a large coalition of Chaldeans, Arameans, Arabs and Elamites to resist Assyrian retribution. After a series of battles, Sennacherib finally recaptured Babylon in 689 BC. Mushezib-Marduk was captured and Babylon was destroyed nearly completely in an effort to eradicate Babylonian political identity. The last years of Sennacherib's reign were relatively peaceful in

1640-429: A general ambition to achieve universal rule. Reaching a position of world domination was not seen as a wholly impossible task in this time since Mesopotamia was believed to correspond to the entire world. One of the earliest Mesopotamian "world conquerors" was Lugalzaggesi , king of Uruk, who conquered all of Lower Mesopotamia in the 24th century BC. The first great Mesopotamian empire is generally regarded to have been

1845-422: A growing disconnect between the king and the traditional elite of the empire; eunuchs grew unprecedently powerful in his time, being granted large tracts of lands and numerous tax exemptions. After Ashurbanipal's death in 631 BC, the throne was inherited by his son Ashur-etil-ilani . Though some historians have forwarded the idea that Ashur-etil-ilani was a minor upon his accession, this is unlikely given that he

2050-635: A language of the Zagros possibly related to the Hurro-Urartuan language family , is attested in personal names, rivers and mountains and in various crafts. Akkadian came to be the dominant language during the Akkadian Empire and the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administrative, religious, literary and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until

2255-446: A new age of Neo-Assyrian history, sometimes dubbed the "age of the magnates". This time was marked by the number of royal inscriptions being much smaller than in preceding and succeeding times and Assyrian magnates, such as Dayyan-Assur and other prominent generals and officials, being the dominant political actors, with the kings wielding significantly less power and influence. Though the consequences of this shift in power remain debated,

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2460-488: A patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses . Esagil-kin-apli's Diagnostic Handbook was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease , its aetiology, its future development, and

2665-554: A precursor to the Socratic method . The Ionian philosopher Thales was influenced by Babylonian cosmological ideas. Ancient Mesopotamians had ceremonies each month. The theme of the rituals and festivals for each month was determined by at least six important factors: Some songs were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings , they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in

2870-761: A recent hypothesis, the Archimedes' screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times. Later, during the Parthian or Sasanian periods, the Baghdad Battery , which may have been the world's first battery, was created in Mesopotamia. The Ancient Mesopotamian religion

3075-402: A reign of only four years, Ashur-etil-ilani died in unclear circumstances in 627 and was succeeded by his brother Sinsharishkun . It has historically frequently been assumed, without any supporting evidence, that Sinsharishkun fought with Ashur-etil-ilani for the throne. Although the exact circumstances of Ashur-etil-ilani's death are unknown, there is no evidence to suggest Sinsharishkun gaining

3280-618: A result of the successful campaigns of his predecessors, Ashurnasirpal inherited an impressive amount of resources with which he could work to re-establish Assyrian dominance. Ashurnasirpal's first campaign, in 883 BC, was against the revolting cities of Suru and Tela along the northern portion of the Tigris river. At Tela he brutally repressed the citizens, among other punishments cutting off noses, ears, fingers and limbs, gouging out eyes and overseeing impalements and decapitations . Ashurnasirpal's later campaigns included three wars against

3485-567: A sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD. Libraries were extant in towns and temples during the Babylonian Empire. An old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and

3690-584: A siege lasting two months, the Medes and Babylonians captured Nineveh , Sinsharishkun dying in the city's defense. The capture of the city was followed by extensive looting and destruction and effectively meant the end of the Assyrian Empire. After the fall of Nineveh, an Assyrian general and prince, possibly Sinsharishkun's son, led the remnants of the Assyrian army and established himself at Harran in

3895-449: A state. The fall of Assyria was swift, dramatic and unexpected; still today modern scholars continue to grapple with what factors caused the empire's quick and violent downfall. One commonly cited possible explanation is the unrest and the civil wars that immediately preceded Nabopolassar's rise. Such civil conflict could have caused a crisis of legitimacy, and the members of the Assyrian elite may have felt increasingly disconnected from

4100-415: A table of Pythagorean triples and represents some of the most advanced mathematics prior to Greek mathematics. From Sumerian times, temple priesthoods had attempted to associate current events with certain positions of the planets and stars. This continued to Assyrian times, when Limmu lists were created as a year by year association of events with planetary positions, which, when they have survived to

4305-605: A usurper named Sasî would become king, and in Assur, the local governor instigated a plot after receiving a prophetic dream in which a child rose from a tomb and handed him a staff. Through a well-developed network of spies and informants, Esarhaddon uncovered all of these coup attempts and in 670 had a large number of high-ranking officials put to death. In 672 BC, Esarhaddon decreed that his younger son Ashurbanipal ( r.   669–631 BC) would succeed him in Assyria and that

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4510-495: A usurper, whose name is not known, from the empire's western territories rebelling in 622 BC, marching on Nineveh and seizing the capital. Though this usurper was defeated by Sinsharishkun after just 100 days, the absence of the Assyrian army allowed Nabopolassar's forces to capture all of Babylonia in 622–620 BC. Despite this loss, there was little reason for the Assyrians to suspect that Nabopolassar's consolidation of Babylonia

4715-519: A vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000-square-kilometre (5,800 sq mi) region of marshes, lagoons, mudflats, and reed banks in the south. In the extreme south, the Euphrates and

4920-595: Is an-ki , which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki . Their son was Enlil, the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief god of the pantheon . The numerous civilizations of the area influenced the Abrahamic religions , especially the Hebrew Bible . Its cultural values and literary influence are especially evident in the Book of Genesis . Giorgio Buccellati believes that

5125-414: Is a composite product, although it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure. Mesopotamian mathematics and science was based on a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system . This is the source of the 60-minute hour, the 24-hour day, and the 360- degree circle. The Sumerian calendar was lunisolar, with three seven-day weeks of a lunar month. This form of mathematics

5330-469: Is accurate to about six decimal digits, and is the closest possible three-place sexagesimal representation of √ 2 : The Babylonians were not interested in exact solutions, but rather approximations, and so they would commonly use linear interpolation to approximate intermediate values. One of the most famous tablets is the Plimpton 322 tablet , created around 1900–1600 BC, which gives

5535-450: Is attested to have had children during his brief reign. Ashur-etil-ilani, despite being his father's legitimate successor, appears to only have been installed against considerable opposition with the aid of the chief eunuch Sin-shumu-lishir . An Assyrian official by the name of Nabu-rihtu-usur appears to have attempted to usurp the throne but his conspiracy was swiftly crushed by Sin-shumu-lishir. Since excavated ruins at Nineveh from around

5740-597: Is compatible with ergodic axioms. Logic was employed to some extent in Babylonian astronomy and medicine. Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy . In particular, the Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the Sophists , the Heraclitean doctrine of dialectic , and the dialogs of Plato , as well as

5945-493: Is despite Babylon for the most part being treated more leniently than other conquered regions. Babylonia was for instance not annexed directly into Assyria but preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king or by the Assyrian king in a personal union . Despite the privileges the Assyrians saw themselves as extending to the Babylonians, Babylon refused to be passive in political matters, likely because

6150-589: Is impossible to determine the severity of such demographic and climate-related effects. A large reason for Assyrian collapse was the failure to resolve the "Babylonian problem" which had plagued Assyrian kings since Assyria first conquered southern Mesopotamia. Despite the many attempts of the kings of the Sargonid dynasty to resolve the constant rebellions in the south in a variety of different ways; Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon and Esarhaddon's restoration of it, rebellions and insurrections remained common. This

6355-472: Is often regarded to have been the last great king of Assyria. His reign saw the last time Assyrian troops marched in all directions of the Near East. In 667 and 664 BC, Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt in the wake of anti-Assyrian uprisings; both Pharaoh Taharqa and his nephew Tantamani were defeated and Ashurbanipal captured the southern Egyptian capital of Thebes , from which enormous amounts of plundered booty

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6560-504: Is possible that a large park constructed near the Southwest Palace served as the inspiration for the later legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon . Sennacherib's choice of making Nineveh capital probably resulted not only from him having long lived in the city as crown prince, but also because of its ideal location, being an important point in the established road and trade systems and also located close to an important ford across

6765-549: Is too scant to come to a certain conclusion. Several pieces of evidence, including that there was a revolt in Nimrud in 746/745 BC, that ancient Assyrian sources give conflicting information in regards to Tiglath-Pileser's lineage, and that Tiglath-Pileser in his inscriptions attributes his rise to the throne solely to divine selection rather than both divine selection and his royal ancestry (typically done by Assyrian kings), have typically been interpreted as indicating that he usurped

6970-421: Is uncertain. The Babylonian development of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy . The only Greek-Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a heliocentric model of planetary motion was Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC). Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch . He supported Aristarchus of Samos' heliocentric theory where

7175-528: The turtanu (commander in chief). Shalmaneser also placed other powerful officials, so-called "magnates", in charge of other vulnerable provinces and regions of the empire. The most powerful and threatening enemy of Assyria at this point was Urartu in the north; following in the footsteps of the Assyrians, the Urartian administration, culture, writing system and religion closely followed those of Assyria. The Urartian kings were also autocrats highly similar to

7380-483: The Akkadian Empire , founded c. 2334 BC by Sargon of Akkad . Numerous imperialist states rose and fell in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East after the time of the Akkadian Empire. Most early empires and kingdoms were limited to some core territories, with most of their subjects only nominally recognizing the authority of the central government. Still, the general desire for universal rule dominated

7585-674: The Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun . According to Plutarch , Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used, except that he correctly theorized on tides as a result of the Moon's attraction. Babylonian astronomy served as the basis for much of Greek , classical Indian , Sassanian, Byzantine , Syrian , medieval Islamic , Central Asian , and Western European astronomy. The oldest Babylonian texts on medicine date back to

7790-613: The Jazira , is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad . Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation. It is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests , with names like Syria , Jazira , and Iraq being used to describe

7995-486: The Medes , Arab tribes, and Ionian pirates in the eastern Mediterranean. A significant victory was the 714 BC campaign against Urartu, in which the Urartian king Rusa I was defeated and much of the Urartian heartland was plundered. In 709 BC, Sargon won against seven kings in the land of Ia', in the district of Iadnana or Atnana. The land of Ia' is assumed to be the Assyrian name for Cyprus, and some scholars suggest that

8200-650: The Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC . The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū , or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa , during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069–1046 BC). Along with contemporary Egyptian medicine , the Babylonians introduced the concepts of diagnosis , prognosis , physical examination , enemas , and prescriptions . The Diagnostic Handbook introduced

8405-616: The ancient Near East prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia ( c.  2900  – c.  2350 BC ), the Sumerian rulers of the various city-states in the region often fought with each other in order to establish small hegemonic empires and to gain a superior position relative to the other city-states. Eventually, these small conflicts evolved into

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8610-409: The early modern period . The Neo-Assyrian Empire became an important part of later folklore and literary traditions in northern Mesopotamia through the subsequent post-imperial period and beyond. Judaism , and thus in turn also Christianity and Islam , was profoundly affected by the period of Neo-Assyrian rule; numerous Biblical stories appear to draw on earlier Assyrian mythology and history and

8815-605: The largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination , the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. It influenced other empires of the ancient world culturally, administratively, and militarily, including the Neo-Babylonians , the Achaemenids , and the Seleucids . At its height,

9020-438: The marketplaces . Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations as an oral tradition until writing was more universal. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries highly important information about historical events. Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings. Boxing and wrestling feature frequently in art, and some form of polo

9225-416: The name of the year . Though it would be easy to place the blame on Sinsharishkun, there is no evidence to suggest that he was an incompetent ruler. No defensive plan existed for the Assyrian heartland since it had not been invaded for centuries and Sinsharishkun was a capable military leader using well-established Mesopotamian military tactics. In a normal war, Sinsharishkun could have been victorious but he

9430-407: The É , a temple dedicated to the goddess Inanna at Uruk, from a building labeled as Temple C by its excavators. The early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus, only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its use. It was not until the widespread use of a syllabic script was adopted under Sargon's rule that significant portions of

9635-701: The (two) rivers") comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος ( mesos , 'middle') and ποταμός ( potamos , 'river') and translates to '(land) between rivers', likely being a calque of the older Aramaic term, with the Aramaic term itself likely being a calque of the Akkadian birit narim . It is used throughout the Greek Septuagint ( c.  250 BC ) to translate the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent Naharaim . An even earlier Greek usage of

9840-432: The 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene , Osroene , and Hatra . The regional toponym Mesopotamia ( / ˌ m ɛ s ə p ə ˈ t eɪ m i ə / , Ancient Greek : Μεσοποταμία '[land] between rivers'; Arabic : بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن Bilād ar-Rāfidayn or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن Bayn an-Nahrayn ; Persian : میان‌رودان miyân rudân ; Syriac : ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ Beth Nahrain "(land) between

10045-540: The 8,000-year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany . They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq . The earliest language written in Mesopotamia was Sumerian , an agglutinative language isolate . Along with Sumerian, Semitic languages were also spoken in early Mesopotamia. Subartuan ,

10250-610: The Akitu festival. Some later Assyrian kings, such as Sargon's son Sennacherib ( r.   705–681 BC) and grandson Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC), found the extent of Sargon's pro-Babylonian leanings to be somewhat questionable. In 707 BC, Sargon returned to Nimrud and in 706 BC, Dur-Sharrukin was inaugurated as the empire's new capital. Sargon did not get to enjoy his new city for long; in 705 BC he embarked on his final campaign, directed against Tabal in Anatolia. To

10455-623: The Assyrian army marched through the Levant all the way to the Egyptian border, forcing several of the states on the way, such as Ammon , Edom , Moab and Judah , to pay tribute and become Assyrian vassals. In 732 BC, the Assyrians captured Damascus and much of Transjordan and Galilee . Tiglath-Pileser's conquests are, in addition to their extent, also noteworthy because of the large scale in which he undertook resettlement policies ; he settled tens, if not hundreds, of thousand foreigners in both

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10660-404: The Assyrian army under Ashur-nirari was successful against Arpad in northwestern Syria in 754 BC, they were also beaten at an important battle against Sarduri II of Urartu. In 745 BC, Ashur-nirari was succeeded by Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC), probably another son of Adad-nirari III. The nature of Tiglath-Pileser's rise to throne is not clear and the surviving evidence

10865-480: The Assyrian borders during the decline of the Middle Assyrian Empire. The early Neo-Assyrian efforts at reconquest were mostly focused on the region up to the Khabur river in the west. One of the first conquests of Ashur-dan II had been Katmuḫu in this region, which he made a vassal kingdom rather than annexed outright; this suggests that the resources available to the early Neo-Assyrian kings were very limited and that

11070-433: The Assyrian heartland and in far-away underdeveloped provinces. Late in his reign, Tiglath-Pileser turned his eyes towards Babylon. For a long time, the political situation in the south had been highly volatile, with conflict between the traditional urban elites of the cities, Aramean tribes in the countryside and Chaldean warlords in the south. In 732 BC, the Chaldean warlord Nabu-mukin-zeri seized Babylon and became king,

11275-414: The Assyrian impact on early Jewish theology was immense. Although the Neo-Assyrian Empire is prominently remembered today for the supposed excessive brutality of the army , the Assyrians were not excessively brutal when compared to other civilizations throughout history. Imperialism and the ambition of establishing a universal, all-encompassing empire was a long-established aspect of royal ideology in

11480-401: The Assyrian king. However, there is as mentioned no evidence that Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun warred with each other, and other uprisings of Assyrian officials—the unrest upon Ashur-etil-ilani's accession, the rebellion of Sin-shumu-lishir, and the capture of Nineveh by a usurper in 622 BC—were dealt with relatively quickly. Protracted civil war is thus unlikely to have been the reason for

11685-500: The Assyrian kings. The Assyrians also took some inspiration from Urartu. For instance, Assyrian irrigation technology and cavalry units, introduced by Shalmaneser, may have been derived from encounters with Urartu. The imperialist expansionism undertaken by the kings of both Urartu and Assyria led to frequent military clashes between the two, despite being separated by the Taurus Mountains . In 856, Shalmaneser conducted one of

11890-540: The Assyrian response was swift and Nippur was recaptured in October 626. Sinsharishkun's attempts to retake Babylon and Uruk were unsuccessful, however, and in the aftermath Nabopolassar was formally invested as king of Babylon on November 22/23 626 BC, restoring Babylonia as an independent kingdom. In the years that followed Nabopolassar's coronation, Babylonia became a brutal battleground between Assyrian and Babylonian armies. Though cities often repeatedly changed hands,

12095-587: The Assyrians and Sinsharishkun's failure to stop it, despite trying for years, doomed his empire. Despite all of these simultaneous factors, it is possible that the empire could have survived if the unexpected alliance between the Babylonians and Medes had not been sealed. Sennacherib, the great king, the mighty king, king of the Universe , king of Assyria, king of the Four Corners of the World ; favorite of

12300-608: The Assyro-Babylonian border regions. In c.  787 BC , Adad-nirari appointed the new turtanu Shamshi-ilu . Shamshi-ilu would occupy this position for about 40 years and was for most of that time likely the most powerful political actor in Assyria. After Adad-nirari's death in 783, three of his sons ruled in succession: Shalmaneser IV ( r.   783–773 BC), Ashur-dan III ( r.   773–755 BC) and Ashur-nirari V ( r.   755–745 BC). Their reigns collectively form what appears to be

12505-577: The Babylonian king Nabonassar and conquered territories on the eastern side of the Tigris river. In the year after that, Tiglath-Pileser conducted a successful campaign in the region around the Zagros Mountains, where he created two new Assyrian provinces. From 743 to 739 BC, Tiglath-Pileser focused his attention on the still strong Urartu in the north and the ever unsubmissive cities of northern Syria. Campaigns against both targets proved to be resoundingly successful; in 743 BC, Sarduri II of Urartu

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12710-417: The Babylonian national deity Marduk . Control over Babylonia was secured through campaigns against the remaining Chaldean strongholds in the south. By the time of his death in 727 BC, Tiglath-Pileser had more than doubled the territory of the empire. Tiglath-Pileser's policy of direct rule rather than rule through vassal states brought important changes to the Assyrian state and its economy; rather than tribute,

12915-440: The Babylonians might have seen the Assyrian kings, who only sometimes visited the city, as failing to undertake the traditional religious duties of the Babylonian kings. The strong appreciation of Babylonian culture in Assyria sometimes turned to hatred, which led to Babylon suffering several brutal acts of retribution from Assyrian kings after revolts. Nabopolassar's revolt was the last in a long line of Babylonian uprisings against

13120-425: The Babylonians slowly but surely pushed Sinsharishkun's armies out of the south. Under Sinsharishkun's personal leadership, the Assyrian campaigns against Nabopolassar initially looked to be successful: in 625 BC, Sippar was retaken and Nabopolassar failed to take Nippur, in 623 BC the Assyrians recaptured Nabopolassar's ancestral home city Uruk. Sinsharishkun might ultimately have been victorious had it not been for

13325-491: The Elamites, his efforts were initially unsuccessful and in 720 BC the Elamites defeated Sargon's forces at Der . Sargon's early reign was more successful in the west. There, another movement, led by Yau-bi'di of Hamath and supported by Simirra, Damascus, Samaria and Arpad, also sought to regain independence and threatened to destroy the sophisticated provincial system imposed on the region under Tiglath-Pileser. While Sargon

13530-657: The Levant to force the states there to pay tribute again. This conflict is the first Assyrian war to be recorded in great detail not only in Assyrian inscriptions but also in classical sources and in the Hebrew Bible. The Assyrian account diverges somewhat from the Biblical one; whereas the Assyrian inscriptions describes the campaign as a resounding success, in which tribute was regained, some states were annexed outright and Sennacherib even managed to stop Egyptian ambitions in

13735-439: The Medes and inspired a direct intervention. In July or August of 614 BC, the Medes mounted attacks on both Nimrud and Nineveh and captured Assur, leading to the ancient city being brutally plundered and its inhabitants being massacred. Nabopolassar arrived at Assur after the sack and upon his arrival met and allied with Cyaxares. The fall of Assur must have been devastating for Assyrian morale. Just two years later in 612 BC, after

13940-602: The Medieval Arabs) The empire grew even more under Ashurnasirpal II's successor Shalmaneser III ( r.   859–824 BC), though it entered a period of stagnation after his death, referred to as the "age of the magnates". During this time, the chief wielders of political power were prominent generals and officials and central control was unusually weak. This age came to an end with the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC), who re-asserted Assyrian royal power once again and more than doubled

14145-473: The Mesopotamian population became literate. Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC. The exact dating being a matter of debate. Sumerian continued to be used as

14350-464: The Neo-Assyrian Empire, instead leaving it open and undefended. In the following decades, the Persians would migrate into the region and rebuild the ruined Elamite strongholds for their own use. Though Ashurbanipal's inscriptions present Assyria as an uncontested and divinely supported hegemon over all the world, cracks were starting to form in the empire during his reign. At some point after 656 BC,

14555-561: The Neo-Assyrian army would be used in later warfare for millennia. To solve the issue of communicating over vast distances, the empire developed a sophisticated state communication system , using relay stations and well-maintained roads. The communication speed of official messages in the empire was not surpassed in the Middle East until the 19th century. The empire also made use of a resettlement policy , wherein some portions of

14760-498: The Tigris river. In 694, Sennacherib invaded Elam, with the explicit goal to root out Marduk-apla-iddina and his supporters. Sennacherib sailed across the Persian Gulf with a fleet built by Phoenician and Greek shipwrights and captured and sacked countless Elamite cities. He never got his revenge on Marduk-apla-iddina, who died of natural causes before the Assyrian army landed, and the campaign instead significantly escalated

14965-472: The Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf . The arid environment ranges from the northern areas of rain-fed agriculture to the south where irrigation of agriculture is essential. This irrigation is aided by a high water table and by melting snows from the high peaks of the northern Zagros Mountains and from the Armenian Highlands, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that give

15170-421: The age of the magnates has often been characterized as a period of decline. Assyria endured through this period largely unscathed but there was little to no territorial expansion and central power grew unusually weak. Some developments were good for the longevity of the empire, since many magnates took the opportunity to develop stronger military and economic structures and institutions in their own lands throughout

15375-568: The aid of several Elamite kings, he revolted. The war ended disastrously for Shamash-shum-ukin; in 648 BC, Ashurbanipal captured Babylon after a long siege and devastated the city. Shamash-shum-ukin might have died by setting himself on fire in his palace. Ashurbanipal replaced him as king of Babylon with the puppet ruler Kandalanu and then marched on Elam. The Elamite capital of Susa was captured and devastated and large numbers of Elamite prisoners were brought to Nineveh, tortured and humiliated. Ashurbanipal chose to not annex and integrate Elam into

15580-623: The ancient history of lower Mesopotamia—commenced in the early-third millennium BC with cuneiform records of early dynastic kings. This entire history ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC or with the Muslim conquest and the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, from which point the region came to be known as Iraq . In the long span of this period, Mesopotamia housed some of

15785-553: The army and centralize the realm, Tiglath-Pileser is by some regarded as the first true initiator of Assyria's "imperial" phase. Tiglath-Pileser is the earliest Assyrian king mentioned in the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible , and thus the earliest king for which there exists important outside perspectives on his reign. Early on, Tiglath-Pileser reduced the influence of the previously powerful magnates, dividing their territories into smaller provinces under

15990-497: The broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran , Turkey , Syria and Kuwait . Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel , the planting of the first cereal crops ,

16195-410: The chances of the patient's recovery. Esagil-kin-apli discovered a variety of illnesses and diseases and described their symptoms in his Diagnostic Handbook . These include the symptoms for many varieties of epilepsy and related ailments along with their diagnosis and prognosis. Some treatments used were likely based off the known characteristics of the ingredients used. The others were based on

16400-399: The city of Der , close to the border of the southwestern kingdom of Elam . Though Adad-nirari did not manage to incorporate territories so far away from the Assyrian heartland into the empire, he secured the city of Arrapha (modern-day Kirkuk ). Arrapha in later times served as the launching point of innumerable Assyrian campaigns toward lands in the east. A testament to Adad-nirari's power

16605-729: The city of Eridu , the Akkadian kingdoms, the Third Dynasty of Ur , and the various Assyrian empires. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon of Akkad (who established the Akkadian Empire), Hammurabi (who established the Old Babylonian state), Ashur-uballit I and Tiglath-Pileser I (who established the Assyrian Empire). Scientists analysed DNA from

16810-442: The coalition against him collapsed with Hadadezer's death in 841 BC. Assyrian forces thrice tried to capture Damascus itself but were not successful. Shalmaneser's failed attempts to properly impose Assyrian rule in Syria was a result of his energetic campaigns overextending the empire too quickly. In the 830s, his armies reached into Cilicia in Anatolia and in 836 BC, Shalmaneser reached Ḫubušna (near modern-day Ereğli ), one of

17015-459: The coalition in the same year that it was formed. Though Assyrian records claim that he scored a great victory at the subsequent Battle of Qarqar it is more likely that the battle was indecisive since no substantial political or territorial gains were achieved. After Qarqar, Shalmaneser focused much on the south and in 851–850 BC aided the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I to defeat a revolt by his brother Marduk-bel-ushati . After defeating

17220-529: The conflict with the anti-Assyrian faction in Babylonia and with the Elamites. The Elamite king Hallushu-Inshushinak took revenge on Sennacherib by marching on Babylonia while the Assyrians were busy in his lands. During this campaign, Ashur-nadin-shumi was captured through some means and taken to Elam, where he was probably executed. In his place, the Elamites and Babylonians crowned the Babylonian noble Nergal-ushezib as king of Babylon. Though Senacherib just

17425-630: The construction of another new capital of the empire, named Dur-Sharrukin ("Fort Sargon") after himself. Unlike Ashurnasirpal's project at Nimrud more than a century earlier, Sargon was not simply expanding an already existing city, but building a new one from scratch. Perhaps the motivating factor was that Sargon did not feel safe at Nimrud after the early conspiracies against him. As construction work progressed, Sargon continued to go on military campaigns, which ensured that Assyria's geopolitical dominance and influence expanded significantly in his reign. Just between 716 and 713 BC, Sargon fought against Urartu,

17630-614: The cultural mix. Periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. The demands for labor has from time to time led to population increases that push the limits of the ecological carrying capacity , and should a period of climatic instability ensue, collapsing central government and declining populations can occur. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and neglect of irrigation systems. Equally, centripetal tendencies amongst city-states have meant that central authority over

17835-421: The cycles of the moon. They divided the year into two seasons: summer and winter. The origins of astronomy as well as astrology date from this time. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This

18040-536: The deaths of his queen and several of his children. Despite his physical and mental health, Esarhaddon led many successful military campaigns, several of them farther away from the Assyrian heartland than those of any previous king. He defeated the Cimmerians who plagued the northwestern part of the empire, conquered the cities of Kundu and Sissû in Anatolia, and conquered the Phoenician city of Sidon , which

18245-445: The development of cursive script, mathematics , astronomy , and agriculture ". It is recognised as the cradle of some of the world's earliest civilizations. The Sumerians and Akkadians , each originating from different areas, dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of recorded history ( c.  3100 BC ) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. The rise of empires, beginning with Sargon of Akkad around 2350 BC, characterized

18450-510: The dominant force in Mesopotamia, for a time even subjugating Babylonia in the south. After Tukulti-Ninurta's assassination, the Middle Assyrian Empire went into a long period of decline, becoming increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland itself. Though this period of decline was broken up by Tiglath-Pileser I ( r.   1114–1076 BC), who once more expanded Assyrian power, his conquests overstretched Assyria and could not be maintained by his successors. The trend of decline

18655-497: The dominant political power in the Near East, though it would not yet achieve power comparable to that under its complete dominion in later centuries. In terms of personality, Ashurnasirpal was a complex figure; he was a relentless warrior and one of the most brutal kings in Assyrian history, but he also cared about the people, working to increase the prosperity and comfort of his subjects and being recorded as establishing extensive water reserves and food depots in times of crisis. As

18860-406: The east, aimed to strengthen Assyrian control in this direction. Among the lands he defeated were Kirruri , Hubushkia and Gilzanu . In later times, Gilzanu often supplied Assyria with horses. The second phase of the Assyrian reconquista was initiated in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta's son and successor Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC). Under his rule, Assyria rose to become

19065-522: The eclipse could have been interpreted by the Assyrian populace as the gods withdrawing their divine support for Ashur-dan's rule. Though Assyria stabilized again under Ashur-dan's brother Ashur-nirari V, he appears to have been relatively idle. Ashur-nirari campaigned in only three of the ten years of his reign and is not recorded to have conducted any construction projects. The influential Shamshi-ilu died at some point in Ashur-nirari's reign. Though

19270-423: The empire appears to have been largely stable under his rule. Shalmaneser managed to secure some lasting achievements; he was probably the Assyrian king responsible for conquering Samaria and thus bringing an end to the ancient Kingdom of Israel and he also appears to have annexed lands in northern Syria and Cilicia. Shalmaneser was succeeded by Sargon II ( r.   722–705 BC), who in all likelihood

19475-480: The empire came under attack. Further explanations may lie in the actions and policies of the late Assyrian kings themselves. Under Esarhaddon's reign, many experienced and capable officials and generals had been killed as the result of the king's paranoia and under Ashurbanipal, many had lost their positions to eunuchs. Some historians have further deemed Ashurbanipal to have been an "irresponsible and self-indulgent king" since he at one point appointed his chief musician

19680-400: The empire grew more reliant on taxes collected by provincial governors, a development which increased administrative costs but also reduced the need for military intervention. Tiglath-Pileser was succeeded by his son Ululayu, who took the regnal name Shalmaneser V ( r.   727–722 BC). Though little to no royal inscriptions and other sources survive from Shalmaneser's brief reign,

19885-853: The empire lost control of Egypt, which instead fell into the hands of the Pharaoh Psamtik I , founder of Egypt's twenty-sixth dynasty . Egyptian independence was achieved only slowly and relations remained peaceful; Psamtik was originally granted Egypt as a vassal by Ashurbanipal and with the Assyrian army occupied elsewhere, the region slowly receded from Ashurbanipal's grasp. Ashurbanipal went on numerous campaigns against various Arab tribes which failed to consolidate rule over their lands and wasted Assyrian resources. Perhaps most importantly, his devastation of Babylon after defeating Shamash-shum-ukin fanned anti-Assyrian sentiments in southern Mesopotamia, which soon after his death would have disastrous consequences. Ashurbanipal's reign also appears to have seen

20090-407: The empire reached its largest extent through the conquest of Egypt. Despite being at the peak of its power, the empire experienced a swift and violent fall in the late 7th century BC, destroyed by a Babylonian uprising and an invasion by the Medes . The causes behind how Assyria could be destroyed so quickly continue to be debated among scholars. The unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

20295-451: The empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia , the Levant and Egypt, as well as parts of Anatolia , Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia . The early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia, East Anatolia and Levant, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire (1365 - 1050 BC) had been lost during

20500-442: The empire's fall. Another proposed explanation was that Assyrian rule suffered from serious structural vulnerabilities; most importantly, Assyria appears to have had little to offer the regions it conquered other than order and freedom from strife; conquered lands were mostly kept in line through fear and terror, alienating local peoples. As such, people outside of the Assyrian heartland may have had little reason to remain loyal when

20705-562: The empire's southernmost remaining city. Sinsharishkun succeeded in defeating Nabopolassar's assault and, for a time, saving the old city. It is doubtful that Nabopolassar would ever have achieved a lasting victory without the entrance of the Median Empire into the conflict. Long fragmented into several tribes and often targets of Assyrian military campaigns, the Medes had been united under the king Cyaxares . In late 615 or in 614 BC, Cyaxares and his army entered Assyria and conquered

20910-542: The empire, but problems began to arise within the royal court itself. Though Sennacherib's next eldest son, Arda-Mulissu , had replaced Ashur-nadin-shumi as heir after the latter's death, around 684 BC the younger son Esarhaddon was proclaimed heir instead. Perhaps Sennacherib was influenced by Esarhaddon's mother Naqi'a , who in later times became increasingly prominent and powerful. Disappointed, Arda-Mulissu and his supporters pressured Sennacherib to reinstate him as heir. Though they succeeded in forcing Esarhaddon into exile in

21115-402: The empire. Esarhaddon sought to establish a new and lasting balance of power between the northern and southern parts of his empire. Thus, he rebuilt Babylon in the south, viewing Sennacherib's destruction of the city as excessively brutal, but also made sure not to neglect the temples and cults of Assyria. Esarhaddon was a deeply troubled man. As a result of his tumultuous rise to the throne he

21320-467: The empire. Shamshi-Adad's earliest campaigns were against a series of Urartian fortresses and western Iran and quite limited in scope. One of the campaigns was led by the chief eunuch ( rab ša-rēši ), a position created under Shamshi-Adad, and not the king himself. Most of Shamshi-Adad's early reign was relatively unsuccessful; the king's third campaign, against the small states in the Zagros Mountains region, might have been an Assyrian defeat and many of

21525-548: The end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Old Aramaic , which had already become common in Mesopotamia, then became the official provincial administration language of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire , and then the Achaemenid Empire : the official lect is called Imperial Aramaic . Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries. The last Akkadian texts date from

21730-435: The end of the same year, he began warring against Marduk-apla-iddina in the south. After fighting against Babylonia for nearly two years, Sennacherib succeeded in recapturing Babylonia, though Marduk-apla-iddina fled to Elam once again, and Bel-ibni , a Babylonian noble who had been raised at the Assyrian court, was installed as vassal king of Babylon. In 701, Sennacherib undertook the most famous campaign of his reign, invading

21935-422: The eunuch Nergal-eresh . Despite his limited sole authority, Adad-nirari's reign saw some military successes and Assyrian armies campaigned in western Iran at least thirteen times. The western territories, now more or less autonomous, were only attacked four times, though Adad-nirari managed to defeat Aram-Damascus. In 790 BC, Adad-nirari conducted the first Assyrian campaign against the Aramaic tribes now living in

22140-416: The event illustrated that the situation was dire enough for Sinsharishkun's closest ally, Psamtik I of Egypt to enter the conflict on Assyria's side. Psamtik was probably primarily interested in Assyria remaining as a buffer between his own growing empire and the Babylonians and other powers in the east. In May 615 BC, Nabopolassar assaulted Assur, still the religious and ceremonial center of Assyria and by now

22345-479: The families of the town's governors and the janissaries who manned the fortress. Along with the allied garrison at Ma'arat al-Numan , Hisyah played an important role in the pacification of the region between Damascus and Aleppo . Ma'arra aided Hisyah in its campaigns against the Mawali tribes of northern Syria. In 1717 Hisyah's cavalry relieved the city of Hama from a Bedouin assault. The Arab Isma'il Agha al-Azm

22550-475: The food and beverage used, Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions record 10,000 pigeons, 10,000 jugs of beer, and 10,000 skins of wine, among countless other items. Ashurnasirpal's aggressive military politics were continued under his son Shalmaneser III ( r.   859–824 BC), whose reign saw a considerable expansion of Assyrian territory. In Shalmaneser's reign, the lands along the Khabur and Euphrates rivers in

22755-525: The former agha and 18 of his soldiers were killed in an ambush by the local Walid Ali Bedouin tribe. The village was mostly inhabited by Christians . The Suweidan family dominated Hisyah during the French Mandate period. Today, one of the few Syrian road-police stations in the area between Homs and Damascus is located in Hisyah. An industrial city, with a total area of 2,500 hectares was built in

22960-406: The former capital of Assur. Shamshi-Adad acceded to the throne as Shamshi-Adad V, perhaps initially a minor and a puppet of Dayyan-Assur. Though Dayyan-Assur died during the early stages of the civil war, Shamshi-Adad was eventually victorious, apparently due to help from the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi or his successor Marduk-balassu-iqbi . Shamshi-Adad V's accession marked the beginning of

23165-526: The great gods; the wise and crafty one; strong hero, first among all princes; the flame that consumes the insubmissive, who strikes the wicked with the thunderbolt. Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system , in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent . Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq . In

23370-593: The growing problems in Ashurbanipal's early reign were disagreements between Ashurbanipal and his older brother Shamash-shum-ukin. While Esarhaddon's documents suggest that Shamash-shum-ukin was intended to inherit all of Babylonia, it appears that he only controlled the immediate vicinity of Babylon itself since numerous other Babylonian cities apparently ignored him and considered Ashurbanipal to be their king. Over time, it seems that Shamash-shum-ukin grew to resent his brother's overbearing control and in 652 BC, with

23575-559: The heartland who opposed his accession. Several peripheral regions of the empire also revolted and regained their independence. The most significant of the revolts was the successful uprising of the Chaldean warlord Marduk-apla-iddina II , who took control of Babylon, restoring Babylonian independence, and allied with the Elamite king Ḫuban‐nikaš I . Though Sargon tried early on to dislodge Marduk-apla-iddina, attacking Aramean tribes who supported Marduk-apla-iddina and marching out to fight

23780-554: The imperial reconquista project had to begin nearly from scratch. In this context, the successful expansion conducted under the early Neo-Assyrian kings was an extraordinary achievement. The initial phase of the Assyrian reconquista , beginning under Ashur-dan II near the end of the Middle Assyrian period and covering the reigns of the first two Neo-Assyrian kings, Adad-nirari II ( r.   911–891 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta II ( r.   890–884 BC), saw

23985-569: The king suffering from illness could be seen as the gods withdrawing their divine support for his rule. Around the time of the Egyptian campaigns, there were at least three major insurgencies against Esarhaddon within the Assyrian heartland itself; in Nineveh, the chief eunuch Ashur-nasir was prophesied by a Babylonian hostage to replace Esarhaddon as king, a prophetess in Harran proclaimed that Esarhaddon and his lineage would be "destroyed" and that

24190-438: The kingdom of Zamua in the eastern Zagros Mountains , repeated campaigns against Nairi and Urartu in the north, and, most prominently, near continuous conflict with Aramean and Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the west. The Arameans and Neo-Hittites had by the time of Ashurnasirpal's rise to the throne evolved into well-organized kingdoms, possibly in response to pressure from Assyria. One of Ashurnasirpal's most persistent enemies

24395-400: The kings. Shalmaneser's final years became preoccupied by an internal crisis when one of his sons, Ashur-danin-pal , rebelled in an attempt to seize the throne, possibly because the younger son Shamshi-Adad had been designated as heir instead of himself. When Shalmaneser died in 824, Ashur-danin-pal was still in revolt, supported by a significant portion of the country, most notably including

24600-536: The late 11th century BC. Under Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC), Assyria once more became the dominant power of the Near East, ruling the north undisputed. Ashurnasirpal's campaigns reached as far as the Mediterranean and he also oversaw the transfer of the imperial capital from the traditional city of Assur to the more centrally located Kalhu (later known as Calah in the Bible and Nimrud to

24805-465: The late 1st century AD. Early in Mesopotamia's history, around the mid-4th millennium BC, cuneiform was invented for the Sumerian language. Cuneiform literally means "wedge-shaped", due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign appears to have been developed from pictograms . The earliest texts, 7 archaic tablets, come from

25010-648: The latter may mean 'the islands of the Danaans ', or Greece. There are other inscriptions referring to the land of Ia' in Sargon's palace at Khorsabad . Cyprus was thus absorbed into the Assyrian Empire, with the victory commemorated with a stele found near present-day Larnaca . Late in his reign, Sargon again turned his attention to Babylon. The alliance between Babylon and Elam had at this point evaporated away. When Sargon marched south in 710 BC he encountered little resistance. After Marduk-apla-iddina fled to Dur-Yakin ,

25215-534: The legitimate heir to the throne as next-in-line. It is also possible that he was wholly unconnected to the previous royal lineage, in which case Shalmaneser V would be the last king of the nearly thousand-year long Adaside dynasty . It is clear that Sargon's seizure of power, which marked the foundation of the Sargonid dynasty , led to considerable internal unrest. In his own inscriptions, Sargon claims to have deported 6,300 "guilty Assyrians", probably Assyrians from

25420-403: The line of kings being part of the same continuous family line. Another justification for expansion was casting the campaigns as wars of liberation, meant to liberate those Assyrians who no longer lived within Assyrian territory from their new foreign rulers; material evidence from numerous sites reconquered under the early Neo-Assyrian Empire demonstrate an endurance of Assyrian culture outside of

25625-404: The local governors to remain in place, though he left some of his representatives to oversee them. The conquest of Egypt not only placed a land of great cultural prestige under Esarhaddon's rule but also brought the Neo-Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. Though he was among the most successful kings in Assyrian history, Esarhaddon faced numerous conspiracies against his rule, perhaps because

25830-506: The low point of Assyrian royal power since a remarkably small number of royal inscriptions are known from them. In Shalmaneser IV's reign, Shamshi-ilu eventually grew bold enough to stop crediting the king at all in his inscriptions and instead claimed to act completely on his own, more openly flaunting his power. Probably under Shamshi-ilu's leadership, the Assyrian army began to mainly focus on Urartu. In 774 BC, Shamshi-ilu scored an important victory against Argishti I of Urartu, though Urartu

26035-472: The methods of therapy and aetiology and the use of empiricism , logic , and rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis. The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such as bandages , creams and pills . If

26240-486: The most ambitious military campaigns in Assyrian history, marching through mountainous territory to the source of the Euphrates and then attacking Urartu from the west. The Urartian king Arame was forced to flee as Shalmaneser's forces sacked the Urartian capital of Arzashkun , devastated the Urartian heartland, and then marched into what today is western Iran before returning to Arbela in Assyria. Although Shalmaneser's impressive campaign against Urartu compelled many of

26445-582: The name Mesopotamia is evident from The Anabasis of Alexander , which was written in the late 2nd century AD but specifically refers to sources from the time of Alexander the Great . In the Anabasis , Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria . The Akkadian term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. Later, the term Mesopotamia

26650-509: The new capital of the empire and employed thousands of workers to construct new fortifications, palaces and temples in the city. The construction of the new capital left Assur, still the empire's religious center, as a purely ceremonial city. In addition to enormous city walls 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) long, palaces, temples, royal offices and various residential buildings, Ashurnasirpal also established botanical gardens , filled with foreign plants brought back from his wide-ranging campaigns, and

26855-766: The older son Shamash-shum-ukin would rule Babylon. To ensure that the succession to the throne after his own death would go more smoothly than his own accession, Esarhaddon forced everyone in the empire, not only the prominent officials but also far-away vassal rulers and members of the royal family, to swear oaths of allegiance to the successors and respect the arrangement. When Esarhaddon died of an illness while on his way to campaign in Egypt once again in 669 BC, his mother Naqi'a also forced similar oaths of allegiance to Ashurbanipal, who became king without incident. One year later, Ashurbanipal oversaw Shamash-shum-ukin's inauguration as (largely ceremonial) king of Babylon. Ashurbanipal

27060-654: The opportunity to campaign further west than the Euphrates. Ashurnasirpal made use of this opportunity. In his ninth campaign, he marched to Lebanon and then to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea . Though few of them became formally incorporated into the empire at this point, many kingdoms on the way paid tribute to Ashurnasirpal to avoid being attacked, including Carchemish and Patina , as well as Phoenician cities such as Sidon , Byblos , Tyre and Arwad . Ashurnasirpal's royal inscriptions proudly proclaim that he and his army symbolically cleaned their weapons in

27265-420: The origins of philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom , which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics , in the forms of dialectic , dialogues , epic poetry , folklore , hymns , lyrics , prose works, and proverbs . Babylonian reason and rationality developed beyond empirical observation. Babylonian thought was also based on an open-systems ontology which

27470-470: The policies of his father. In 885 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta repeated his father's march along the Euphrates and Khabur, though he went in the opposite direction, beginning in the south at Dur-Kurigalzu and then collecting tribute while he travelled north. Some of the southern cities that sent tribute to Tukulti-Ninurta during this march were historically more closely aligned with Babylon. In terms of military matters, Tukulti-Ninurta also fought against small states in

27675-410: The populations from conquered lands were resettled in the Assyrian heartland and in underdeveloped provinces. This policy served to both disintegrate local identities and to introduce Assyrian-developed agricultural techniques to all parts of the empire. A consequence was the dilution of the cultural diversity of the Near East, forever changing the ethnolinguistic composition of the region and facilitating

27880-402: The present day, allow accurate associations of relative with absolute dating for establishing the history of Mesopotamia. The Babylonian astronomers were very adept at mathematics and could predict eclipses and solstices . Scholars thought that everything had some purpose in astronomy. Most of these related to religion and omens. Mesopotamian astronomers worked out a 12-month calendar based on

28085-612: The rebel, Shalmaneser spent some time visiting cities in Babylon and further helping Marduk-zakir-shumi through fighting against the Chaldeans in the far south of Mesopotamia. As Babylonian culture was greatly appreciated in Assyria, Shalmaneser was proud of his alliance to the Babylonian king; a famous surviving piece of artwork shows the two rulers shaking hands. In the 840s and 830s, Shalmaneser again campaigned in Syria and succeeding in receiving tribute from numerous western states after

28290-425: The region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments. Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the neighboring Armenian highlands . Both rivers are fed by numerous tributaries, and the entire river system drains

28495-404: The region around the city of Arrapha in preparation for a campaign against Sinsharishkun. Although there are plenty of earlier sources discussing Assyro-Median relations, none are preserved from the period leading up to Cyaxares's invasion and as such, the political context and reasons for the sudden attack are not known. Perhaps, the war between Babylonia and Assyria had disrupted the economy of

28700-790: The region coming under ephemeral Roman control. In 226 AD, the eastern regions of Mesopotamia fell to the Sassanid Persians . The division of the region between the Roman Byzantine Empire from 395 AD and the Sassanid Empire lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and the Muslim conquest of the Levant from the Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between

28905-633: The region for a century as the final independent Mesopotamian realm until the modern era. In 539 BC, Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire . The area was next conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. After his death, it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire . Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire . It became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with western parts of

29110-441: The region its name. The usefulness of irrigation depends upon the ability to mobilize sufficient labor for the construction and maintenance of canals, and this, from the earliest period, has assisted the development of urban settlements and centralized systems of political authority. Agriculture throughout the region has been supplemented by nomadic pastoralism, where tent-dwelling nomads herded sheep and goats (and later camels) from

29315-494: The region, Adad-nirari was able to go on a long march along the Khabur river and the Euphrates, collecting tribute from all the local rulers without being met with any military opposition. In addition to his wars, he also conducted important building projects; the city of Apku, located between Nineveh and Sinjar and destroyed c.  1000 BC , was rebuilt and became an important administrative center. Though he reigned only briefly, Adad-nirari's son Tukulti-Ninurta continued

29520-426: The region, the Bible describes Sennacherib suffering a crushing defeat outside Jerusalem . Since Hezekiah , the king of Judah (who ruled Jerusalem), paid a heavy tribute to Sennacherib after the campaign, modern scholars consider it more likely that the Biblical account, motivated by theological concerns, is highly distorted and that Sennacherib succeeded in his goals of the campaign and re-imposed Assyrian authority in

29725-416: The region. Bel-ibni's tenure as Babylonian vassal ruler did not last long and he continually opposed by Marduk-apla-iddina and another Chaldean warlord, Mushezib-Marduk , who hoped to seize power for themselves. In 700 BC, Sennacherib invaded Babylonia again and drove Marduk-apla-iddina and Mushezib-Marduk away. Needing a vassal ruler with stronger authority, he placed his eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi , on

29930-448: The residence of the crown prince. One of the first building projects he undertook was restoring a temple dedicated to the death-god Nergal , likely due to worries concerning his father's fate. It was not only Sennacherib and the elites of Assyria who were unsettled by Sargon's death; the theological implications led some of the conquered regions around the imperial periphery to once more assert their independence. Most prominently, several of

30135-502: The rise of Aramaic as the regional lingua franca , a position the language retained until the 14th century. The Neo-Assyrian Empire left a legacy of great cultural significance. The political structures established by the empire became the model for the later empires that succeeded it and the ideology of universal rule promulgated by the Neo-Assyrian kings inspired, through the concept of translatio imperii , similar ideas of rights to world domination in later empires as late as

30340-506: The rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, previously only having been a city-state centered around the city of Assur . From the time of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari I ( r.   c. 1305–1274 BC) onwards, Assyria became one of the great powers of the ancient Near East and under Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r.   c. 1243–1207 BC), the empire reached its greatest extent and became

30545-461: The river pastures in the dry summer months, out into seasonal grazing lands on the desert fringe in the wet winter season. The area is generally lacking in building stone, precious metals, and timber, and so historically has relied upon long-distance trade of agricultural products to secure these items from outlying areas. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times and has added to

30750-406: The royal ideologies of Mesopotamian kings for thousands of years, bolstered by the memory of the Akkadian Empire and exemplified in titles such as " king of the Universe " or " king of the Four Corners of the World ". This desire was also manifested in the kings of Assyria, who ruled in what had once been the northern part of the Akkadian Empire. Assyria experienced its first period of ascendancy with

30955-423: The rule of royally appointed provincial governors and withdrawing their right to commission official building inscriptions in their own names. Shamshi-ilu appears to have been subjected to a damnatio memoriae , as his name and tiles were erased from some of his inscriptions. During his 18-year reign, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned in all directions. Already in his first year as king, Tiglath-Pileser warred against

31160-566: The seat of the sultanate. Hisyah's isolated location on the edge of the Syrian Desert made it very vulnerable to Bedouin attacks, but it served a dual purpose as a place where negotiations between the government and the Bedouin tribes were held and where military campaigns against the Bedouin were launched. Hisyah was also utilized for controlling the trade of wheat and barley, where the cereals were collected and stored in mills. The area

31365-403: The shock of the Assyrians, Sargon was in this campaign killed in battle with the army being unable to recover his body. Shocked and frightened by the manner of his father's death and its theological implications, Sargon's son Sennacherib distanced himself from him. Sennacherib never mentioned Sargon in his inscriptions and abandoned Dur-Sharrukin, instead moving the capital to Nineveh, previously

31570-416: The size of the empire through wide-ranging conquests. His most notable conquests were Babylonia in the south and large parts of the Levant. Under the Sargonid dynasty , which ruled from 722 BC to the fall of the empire, Assyria reached its apex. Under the Sargonid king Sennacherib ( r.   705–681 BC), the capital was transferred to Nineveh and under Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC)

31775-490: The slow beginning of this project. Ashur-dan's efforts mostly worked to pave the way for the more sustained work under Adad-nirari and Tukulti-Ninurta. Among the conquests of Adad-nirari, the most strategically important campaigns were the wars directed to the southeast, beyond the Little Zab river. These lands had previously been under Babylonian rule. One of Adad-nirari's wars brought the Assyrian army as far south as

31980-404: The small kingdoms in northern Syria ceased to pay tribute to Assyria. In 817 or 816, there was a rebellion against the king at Tillê , within the Assyrian heartland. From 815 BC onward, Shamshi-Adad's luck changed. During the last few years of his reign he directed his efforts mainly against Marduk-balassu-iqbi in Babylonia. In 813 BC, he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi and brought him to Assyria as

32185-445: The small states in northern Syria to pay tribute to him, he was unable to fully utilize the situation. In 853 BC, a massive coalition of western states assembled at Tell Qarqur in Syria to work together against Assyrian expansion. The coalition, included numerous kings of various peoples, including the earliest historically verifiable Israelite and Arab rulers, and was led by Hadadezer , the king of Aram-Damascus . Shalmaneser engaged

32390-433: The sources, his ultimate fate unknown. The remnants of the Assyrian army continued to fight alongside the Egyptian forces against the Babylonians until a crushing defeat at Battle of Carchemish in 605. Though Assyrian culture endured through the subsequent post-imperial period of Assyrian history and beyond, Ashur-uballit's final defeat at Harran in 609 marked the end of the ancient line of Assyrian kings and of Assyria as

32595-595: The stronghold of his Chaldean tribe, the citizens of Babylon willingly opened the gates of Babylon to Sargon. The situation was somewhat uncertain until Sargon made peace with Marduk-apla-iddina after prolonged negotiations, which resulted in Marduk-apla-iddina and his family being given the right to escape to Elam in exchange for Sargon being allowed to dismantle the walls of Dur-Yakin. Between 710 and 707 BC, Sargon resided in Babylon, receiving foreign delegations there and participating in local traditions, such as

32800-465: The subsequent 2,000 years of Mesopotamian history, marked by the succession of kingdoms and empires such as the Akkadian Empire . The early second millennium BC saw the polarization of Mesopotamian society into Assyria in the north and Babylonia in the south. From 900 to 612 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire asserted control over much of the ancient Near East. Subsequently, the Babylonians, who had long been overshadowed by Assyria, seized power , dominating

33005-538: The syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists were drawn up. Many Babylonian literary works are still studied today. One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh , in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sîn-lēqi-unninni , and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh . The whole story

33210-550: The symbolic qualities. Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control , water storage, and irrigation. They were also one of the first Bronze Age societies in the world. They developed from copper, bronze, and gold on to iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also, copper, bronze, and iron were used for armor as well as for different weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, and maces . According to

33415-530: The threat the restored kingdom posed. Unlike the vast majority of Assyrian campaigns, the 830 BC campaign against Urartu was not led by the king, but by the long-serving and prominent turtanu Dayyan-Assur , indicating not only that Shalmaneser might have been very old and no longer properly capable of being a strong leader but also that Dayyan-Assur had grown unprecedently powerful for an Assyrian official, otherwise rarely mentioned by name in documents. In later years, Dayyan-Assur led further campaigns on behalf of

33620-419: The throne from Ashur-nirari. His accession, which is marked by a once more abundant number of sources, ushered in an entirely new era of Neo-Assyrian history. While the conquests of earlier kings were impressive, they contributed little to Assyria's full rise as a consolidated empire. Through campaigns aimed at conquest and not just extraction of seasonal tribute, as well as reforms meant to efficiently organize

33825-502: The throne of Babylon. For a few years, internal peace was restored and Sennacherib kept the army busy with a few minor campaigns. During this time, Sennacherib focused his attention mainly on building projects; between 699 and 695 BC he ambitiously rebuilt and renovated Nineveh, constructing among other works a new gigantic palace, the Southwest Palace , and a great 12 kilometer (7.5-mile) long and 25 meter (82 feet) tall wall. It

34030-487: The throne through any other means than legitimate inheritance after his brother's sudden death. Sinsharishkun's accession did not go unchallenged. Immediately upon his rise to the throne, Sin-shumu-lishir rebelled and attempted to claim the throne for himself, despite the lack of any genealogical claim and as the only eunuch to ever do so in Assyrian history. Sin-shumu-lishir successfully seized several prominent cities in Babylonia, including Nippur and Babylon itself, but

34235-473: The time of Ashurbanipal's death show evidence of fire damage, the plot might have resulted in violence and unrest within the capital itself. In comparison to his predecessors, Ashur-etil-ilani appears to have been a relatively idle ruler; no records of any military campaigns are known and his palace at Nimrud was much smaller than that of previous kings. It is possible that the government was more or less entirely run by Sin-shumu-lishir throughout his reign. After

34440-475: The town by the Syrian government in 2001. Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus , North Africa and East Mediterranean throughout much of the 9th to 7th centuries BC, becoming

34645-505: The traditional Assyrian coronation ritual and as such formally ruled under the title of "crown prince", though Babylonian documents considered him to be the new Assyrian king. Ashur-uballit's rule at Harran lasted until late 610 or early 609 BC, when the city was captured by the Babylonians and the Medes. Three months later, an attempt by Ashur-uballit and the Egyptians to retake the city failed disastrously and Ashur-uballit disappears from

34850-404: The vassal states in the Levant stopped paying tribute and Marduk-apla-iddina, deposed by Sargon, retook Babylon with the aid of the Elamites. Sennacherib was thus faced with numerous enemies almost immediately upon his accession and it took years to defeat them all. In 704 BC, he sent the Assyrian army, led by officials rather than the king himself, to Anatolia to avenge Sargon's death and towards

35055-418: The volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used π as 25/8 (3.125 instead of 3.14159~). The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about seven modern miles (11 km). This measurement for distances eventually

35260-450: The water of the Mediterranean. Through the tribute and booty collected through the campaigns of his predecessors and his own wars, Ashurnasirpal financed several large-scale building projects at cities like Assur, Nineveh and Balawat . The most impressive and important project conducted was the restoration of the ruined town of Nimrud , located on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the Assyrian heartland. In 879 BC, Ashurnasirpal made Nimrud

35465-452: The west for his own protection, Sennacherib never accepted Arda-Mulissu as heir again. In late 681 BC, Arda-Mulissu killed his father in a temple in Nineveh. Because of the regicide, Arda-Mulissu lost some of his previous support and was unable to undergo a coronation before Esarhaddon returned with an army. A mere two months after Sennacherib was murdered, Esarhaddon captured Nineveh and became king, Arda-Mulissu and his supporters fleeing from

35670-423: The west were consolidated under Assyrian control. Ahuni of Bit Adini resisted for several years, but he eventually surrendered to Shalmaneser in the winter of 857/856 BC. When Shalmaneser visited the city in the summer of the next year, he renamed it Kar-Salmanu‐ašared ("fortress of Shalmaneser"), settled a substantial number of Assyrians there, and made it the administrative center of a new province, placed under

35875-401: The west. The prince chose the regnal name Ashur-uballit II , likely a highly conscious choice since its etymology ("Ashur has kept alive") suggested that Assyria would ultimately be victorious and since it evoked the name of Ashur-uballit I , the 14th-century BC Assyrian ruler who had been the first to adopt the title šar ("king"). Due to the loss of Assur, Ashur-uballit could not undergo

36080-455: The westernmost places ever reached by Assyrian forces. Though Shalmaneser's conquests were wide-ranging and inspired fear among the other kings of the Near East, he lacked the means to stabilize and consolidate his new lands and imperial control in many places remained shaky. In the latter years of Shalmaneser's reign, Urartu rose again as a powerful adversary. Though the Assyrians campaigned against them in 830 BC, they failed to fully neutralize

36285-704: The whole region, when imposed, has tended to be ephemeral, and localism has fragmented power into tribal or smaller regional units. These trends have continued to the present day in Iraq. The prehistory of the Ancient Near East begins in the Lower Paleolithic period. Therein, writing emerged with a pictographic script, Proto-cuneiform , in the Uruk IV period ( c.  late 4th millennium BC ). The documented record of actual historical events—and

36490-812: The world's most ancient highly developed, and socially complex states. The region was one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented, along with the Nile valley in Ancient Egypt , the Indus Valley civilization in the Indian subcontinent , and the Yellow River in Ancient China . Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk , Nippur , Nineveh , Assur and Babylon , as well as major territorial states such as

36695-410: Was a significant event and not simply a temporary inconvenience; in previous Babylonian uprisings the Babylonians had at times gained the upper hand temporarily. More alarming was Nabopolassar's first forays into the Assyrian heartland in 616 BC, which amounted to capturing some border cities and defeating local Assyrian garrisons. The Assyrian heartland had not been invaded for five hundred years and

36900-466: Was a usurper who deposed his predecessor in a palace coup . Like Tiglath-Pileser before him, Sargon in his inscriptions made no references to prior kings and instead ascribed his accession purely to divine selection. Though most scholars accept the claim made by the Assyrian King List that Sargon was a son of Tiglath-Pileser and thus Shalmaneser's brother, he is not believed to have been

37105-482: Was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution. This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy. In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were thoroughly scientific. How much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed

37310-411: Was campaigning in the east in 720 BC, his generals defeated Yau-bi'di and the others. Sargon continued to focus on both east and west, successfully warring against Šinuḫtu in Anatolia and Mannaya in western Iran. In 717 BC, Sargon retook the city of Carchemish and secured the city's substantial silver treasury. Perhaps it was the acquisition of these funds which inspired Sargon to in the same year begin

37515-474: Was chief of the garrison at that time and also served as the governor of Hama and Homs. In the mid-19th-century, Western traveler Josias Leslie Porter noted that Hisyah was walled and included a khan . An agha and 150 nominal cavalry troops were stationed there in order to protect regional towns from Bedouin raids, principally launched by clans belonging to the Anizah tribe. A few years prior to Porter's visit,

37720-500: Was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time. The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonia who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion. The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 ( c.  1800 –1600 BC) gives an approximation of √ 2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1 24 51 10 , which

37925-463: Was deeply distrustful of his officials and family members; something which also had the side effect of an increased prominence of women in his reign, whom he trusted more. Esarhaddon's mother Naqi'a, his queen Esharra-hammat and his daughter Serua-eterat were all more powerful and prominent than most women in earlier Assyrian history. The king was also frequently ill and sickly and also appears to have suffered from depression , which intensified after

38130-460: Was defeated and nearly killed in battle and in 740 BC, the strategically placed city of Arpad in Syria was conquered after a three-year long siege. With the nearest threats dealt with, Tiglath-Pileser began to focus on lands that had never been under solid Assyrian rule. In 738 BC, the Neo-Hittite states of Pattin and Hatarikka , and the Phoenician city of Sumur were conquered and in 734 BC,

38335-604: Was defeated by Sinsharishkun after three months. This victory did little to alleviate Sinsharishkun's problems. The long-reigning Babylonian vassal king Kandalanu also died in 627 BC. The swift regime changes and internal unrest bolstered Babylonian hopes to shake off Assyrian rule and regain independence, a movement which swiftly proclaimed Nabopolassar , probably a member of a prominent political family in Uruk , as its leader. Some months after Sin-shumu-lishir's defeat, Nabopolassar and his allies captured both Nippur and Babylon, though

38540-461: Was he, and not the king, who had established tax exemptions for the city. Though little information survives concerning Ashur-dan III's reign, it is clear that it was particularly difficult. Much of his reign was spent putting down revolts. These revolts were perhaps the result of the plague epidemics sweeping Assyria and the Bur-Sagale solar eclipse on 15 June 763 BC; both the epidemics and

38745-453: Was his 671 BC conquest of Egypt . He had tried to conquer Egypt already in 674 BC but had then been driven back. Through logistic support from various Arab tribes, the 671 BC invasion took a difficult route through central Sinai and took the Egyptian armies by surprise. After a series of three large battles against Pharaoh Taharqa , Esarhaddon captured Memphis , the Egyptian capital. Taharqa fled south to Nubia and Esarhaddon allowed most of

38950-412: Was instrumental in early map-making . The Babylonians also had theorems on how to measure the area of several shapes and solids. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if π were fixed at 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the area of the base and the height; however,

39155-466: Was managed by two junior military officials. During Ottoman Empire rule in Syria, particularly in the 18th-century, Hisyah became a fortified garrison town headed by an agha . The garrison served as the dominant military faction in the Homs district and its commanders frequently served as district governors. The town was located on what was known as the "Sultanic Road" which eventually led to Istanbul ,

39360-412: Was marked by abandoned villages and Hisyah itself was described as being "a miserable place" by Pocock who traveled the region in the 1730s. Pocock further mentioned that the town contained a governor's house, a mosque, a khan (" caravansary ") with three houses enclosed within its walls and a few other homes built around it. According to Ottoman history expert Dick Douwes, the inhabitants were most likely

39565-469: Was more centrally located in the empire, or that Ashurnasirpal hoped for greater independence from the influential great families of Assur. To celebrate the completion of his work in Nimrud in 864 BC, Ashurnasirpal hosted a grand celebration, which some scholars have described as perhaps the greatest party in world history; the event hosted 69,574 guests, including 16,000 citizens of the new capital and 5,000 foreign dignitaries, and lasted for ten days. Among

39770-578: Was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris , thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and southeastern Turkey . The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia . A further distinction is usually made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia . Upper Mesopotamia, also known as

39975-463: Was not decisively beaten. There was however some significant successes in the west since Shamshi-ilu captured Damascus in 773 BC and secured tribute from the city to the king. Another official who acted with usually royal privileges in Shalmaneser's time was the palace herald Bel-harran-beli-usur , who founded a city, Dur-Bel-harran-beli-usur (named after himself), and claimed in a stele that it

40180-407: Was not only due to its ability to expand but also, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system. As the first of its scale, the empire saw various military, civic and administrative innovations. In the military, important innovations included a large-scale use of cavalry and new siege warfare techniques. Techniques first adopted by

40385-446: Was one of the most powerful women in Assyrian history and perhaps for a time served as co-regent; she is recorded to have partaken in a military campaign, the only ancient Assyriain woman known to have done so, against Kummuh in Syria and is credited in inscriptions alongside her son for expanding Assyrian territory, usually only a royal privilege. After Shammuramat's death, Adad-nirari continued to be dominated by other figures, such as

40590-404: Was only substantially reversed in the reign of the last Middle Assyrian king, Ashur-dan II ( r.   934–912 BC) who campaigned in the northeast and northwest. Through decades of military conquests, the early Neo-Assyrian kings worked to reverse the long age of decline and retake the former lands of their empire. Though the Neo-Assyrian Empire has sometimes in the past been considered

40795-458: Was renamed Kar-Aššur‐aḫu‐iddina ("fortress of Esarhaddon"). After fighting the Medes in the Zagros Mountains, Esarhaddon campaigned further to the east than any king before him, reaching as far into modern-day Iran as Dasht-e Kavir , in the Assyrian conquest of Elam . Esarhaddon also invaded the eastern Arabian peninsula where he conquered a large number of cities, including Diḫranu (modern Dhahran ). Esarhaddon's greatest military achievement

41000-539: Was sent back to Assyria. In 664 BC, after a prolonged period of peace, the Elamite king Urtak launched a surprise invasion of Babylonia which renewed hostilities. After indecisive campaigns for ten years, the Elamite king Teumman was defeated in 653 BC, captured and executed in a battle by the Ulai river. Teumman's head was brought back to Nineveh and displayed for the public. Elam itself however remained undefeated and continued to work against Assyria for some time. One of

41205-472: Was that he managed to secure a border agreement with the Babylonian king Nabu-shuma-ukin I ( r.   900–887 BC), sealed through both kings marrying a daughter of the other. Adad-nirari also continued Ashur-dan's efforts in the west; in his wars, he defeated numerous small western kingdoms. Several small states, such as Guzana , were made into vassals and others, such as Nisibis , were placed under pro-Assyrian puppet-kings. After his successful wars in

41410-462: Was the Aramean king Ahuni , who ruled the city or region Bit Adini . Ahuni's forces broke through across the Khabur and Euphrates several times and it was only after years of war that he at last accepted Ashurnasirpal as his suzerain . Ahuni's defeat was highly important as it marked the first time since Ashur-bel-kala ( r.   1073–1056 BC), two centuries prior, that Assyrian forces had

41615-450: Was the first recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc, surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven . They believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that the universe was born from this enormous sea. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic . Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were regional variations. The Sumerian word for universe

41820-403: Was unable to fully exploit the victory and the Babylonian throne remained unoccupied for several years. Shamshi-Adad's son Adad-nirari III ( r.   811–783 BC) was probably very young at the time of his father's death in 811, and real political power during his early reign was probably wielded by the turtanu Nergal‐ila'i and by Adad-nirari's mother Shammuramat . Shammuramat

42025-454: Was wholly unprepared to go on the defensive against an enemy that was both numerically superior and that aimed to destroy his country rather than conquer it. Yet another possible factor was environmental issues. The massive rise in population in the Assyrian heartland during the height of the Neo-Assyrian Empire might have led to a period of severe drought that affected Assyria to a much larger extent than nearby territories such as Babylonia. It

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