Neo-Assyrian Period From the ninth to the seventh centuries B. Beginning in the ninth century B. The city of Ashur continued to be important as the ancient and religious capital, but the Assyrian kings also founded and expanded other cities.
Ashurnasirpal II r. Shalmaneser III r. After a series of kings, Sargon II r. Sargon appears to have seized the throne in a violent coup and, after dealing with resistance inside Assyria, spent much of his rule in battle. He was succeeded on the throne by his son Sennacherib r. After Sennacherib was assassinated by two of his sons, another son, Esarhaddon r. He extended Assyrian activity into Egypt, capturing Memphis in B.
Ashurbanipal r. Assyria was at the height of its power, but persistent difficulties controlling Babylonia would soon develop into a major conflict. At the end of the seventh century, the Assyrian empire collapsed under the assault of Babylonians from southern Mesopotamia and Medes, newcomers who were to establish a kingdom in Iran.
Nimrud was destroyed twice, first in and again in B. Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. A major Semitic kingdom of the Ancient Near East, which existed as an independent state for a period of approximately nineteen centuries from c. It existed as an independent state for a period of approximately 19 centuries from c. For a further 13 centuries, from the end of the 7th century BCE to the mid-7th century CE, it survived as a geo-political entity ruled, for the most part, by foreign powers although a number of small Neo-Assyrian states arose at different times throughout this period.
This map shows the extent of the empires of Egypt orange , Hatti blue , the Kassite kingdom of Babylon black , Assyria yellow , and Mitanni brown. Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia northern Iraq, northeast Syria, and southeastern Turkey , the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times, the last of which grew to be the largest and most powerful empire the world had yet seen.
Ashur was originally one of a number of Akkadian city states in Mesopotamia. Following the fall of the Akkadian Empire, c. The two Jewish kingdoms frequently clashed with each other.
Sargon II said in an inscription that he "conquered and sacked" all the towns and cities in Israel and "led away as booty 27, inhabitants. His successor Sennacherib reign ca. However while accounts from both the Hebrew Bible and Assyrian inscriptions say that the siege took place, it's unclear exactly how the battle ended. The Hebrew Bible said that the siege was a complete failure. It says that the Assyrians had to fight the Egyptians , something that caused the Assyrians to divert some of their forces away from Jerusalem.
The remaining Assyrian forces were supposedly destroyed by divine intervention "the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies! An Assyrian inscription says that Hezekiah , the king of Judah, was trapped in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage. Regardless of what happened, the Assyrians did not conquer Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah continued on. Assyria continued to expand west, invading Egypt during the rule of Esarhaddon reign ca.
The Egyptian pharaoh Taharqa was defeated in B. The Assyrians then tried to govern Egypt using a series of vassal rulers. While the Assyrians had pushed far to the west trouble was brewing in the east. During the 7 th century B. Assyrian rulers had to put down a series of rebellions in Babylonia. Meanwhile a group called the "Medes," based in what is now Iran, also launched attacks on Assyrian forces.
Under attack from two groups, while trying to maintain their holdings in the west, the Assyrian military came under pressure. The Babylonians became fully independent during the reign of the Babylonian King Nabopolassar reign ca. These will have been farmed by unfree workers, whether serfs or slaves. However, the majority of Assyrians themselves seem to have been free peasant farmers, owning their own plots of land.
It was these whose obligation to do military service provided the recruits for the core of the Assyrian army. The towns and cities will have had the usual population of craftsmen and workers, but they also had an elite group of leading citizens, made up of priests, scribes, merchants and leading craftsmen, plus families of those who owned estates nearby. In the vassal kingdoms and provinces, the pre-existing societies continued more or less as before, unless their population had been completely uprooted.
In this case they soon lost their identity and were absorbed into Assyrian society. They will undoubtedly have been second-class citizens, but probably only for a generation or two before being fully absorbed into the society of the Assyrian empire. This must have begun to make farming more productive, as for the first time in world history farmers were able to replace or supplement their implements of wood, bone or stone which their forebears had used since the Stone Age and start using tough but inexpensive iron tools.
However, although the coming of iron would undoubtedly have a huge impact on agriculture and the economy in later times, the generally poor character of the Assyrian level in excavated sites in countries occupied by the Assyrians and the frequent references to spoil, massacre and destruction in the royal annals , points to impoverishment, or at best stagnation.
Clearly, the tribute exacted from the provinces was so high that economic development was stifled. Similarly, the mass deportation of different peoples, and the Aramaization of the Middle East which resulted from this see above , might have been expected to foster higher levels of long-distance trade. Of this there is no evidence during the Assyrian period. Perhaps the deportees were too traumatized or demoralized; perhaps trade was unable to flourish in the atmosphere of constant resistance and rebellion which pervaded the Assyrian empire; perhaps the tribute levied by the Assyrian government was simply too onerous to leave much wealth over for commerce.
In any case, the archaeological record shows no flourishing cities outside Assyria itself. Within the Assyrian homeland, however, the great cities of Nineveh, Harran, Nimrud and Ashur clearly flourished. Kings such as Sennacherib undertook an enormous amount of construction work, erecting temples and other public buildings, restoring towns, and completing great irrigation schemes which boosted agriculture in the country.
Clearly, Assyria was benefitting from the wealth extracted from her subject peoples. In fact, modern scholars have much to be grateful to the Assyrians for, as they collected or commissioned thousands of documents which contain literary myths and legends and other texts from previous periods of Mesopotamian history, and stored them in huge libraries. These documents, written on clay tablets, have been found in the ruins of Assyrian palaces and temples, to be studied in museums and universities around the world.
Many of the Assyrian monarchs were men of culture and refinement, as well as being fearsome warriors. Under Assyrian patronage Mesopotamian artists and craftsmen reached a peak of perfection in their work. The royal tombs of Nineveh and Nimrud have yielded jewels of such quality and quantity to utterly astonish the archaeologists who found them.
It has been estimated that the amount of gold discovered was over 57 kilos; and the skill with which they were fashioned, marrying gold with ivory, alabaster, glass and semi-precious stones, made the hundreds of jewelry items objects of immense beauty. The Assyrian kings also had a passion for building — the mark of all great Mesopotamian monarchs.
They built themselves magnificent palaces, temples and other public buildings, and laid out beautiful royal parks. Some built whole new capital cities, whilst others extended and beautified existing capitals. Unsurprisingly for an imperial power, the Assyrians injected a new scale into Mesopotamian art.
The style of their sculptures and friezes remains faithful to past Mesopotamian norms, but many were far larger than previous examples. This can be clearly seen today by all visitors to the British Museum, in London, where one of the main ground floor halls is dominated by several enormous statues of mythical beasts taken from Assyrian archaeological sites. For the most part, in line with previous Mesopotamian art, the Assyrians did not produce sculpture in the round, but friezes.
Many of these are of superb quality. Lifelike and detailed even when depicting mythical monsters! Some of the reliefs are colossal subjects, to be displayed on the outer walls of palaces; others were designed to appear on interior walls, where they could be viewed close-up.
These were intricate and exact in their workmanship, and would have been brightly painted in their day. The Assyrians seem also to have taken the art of landscape gardening to a new level, laying out vast parks and gardens near their palaces and diverting whole rivers to water them. It seems likely that the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as reported by the Greek writer Herodotus, may actually refer to Assyrian parks. No evidence of such gardens have been found in Babylon, while there is compelling evidence for large-scale, sophisticated landscaping in Nineveh.
As one of the final chapters in the long history of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, the Assyrian empire acted as a conduit of Mesopotamian know-how to later peoples.
It was through them that the Greeks learnt about Mesopotamian science and other knowledge, which had a major impact on their own thought. History of Ancient Assyria. Ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Articles with references to Assyria, showing its impact on different parts of the world, and vice versa:. The History of Ancient Egypt.
The History of Ancient Palestine. Subscribe for more great content — and remove ads. Upgrade to Premium to Remove Ads. Skip to content Home » Encyclopedia » Assyrian Civilization. Geographical Location The ancient kingdom of Assyria was located in present-day northern Iraq. History Assyrian was an integral part of the ancient Mesopotamian world, and had come increasingly under the influence of Sumerian civilization from the 4th millennium onwards.
Click here for more on the history of the Assyrian empire Government and administration As with all Mesopotamian states, Assyria was a monarchy; the king was the divinely-appointed, all-powerful ruler of the Assyrian people. Kingdom and empire The area of the Middle East dominated by Assyria was divided into the Assyrian homeland, the kingdom of Assyria, and a much larger area. The kingdom of Assyria At the center if not geographically, certainly politically and socially stood the Assyrian homeland.
Assyrian soldier standing with Shields Vassal kingdoms Up to the mid-8th century the Assyrian homeland was surrounded by an expanding swathe of territory in Mesopotamia, Syria , eastern Anatolia and western Iran — a significant chunk of the Middle East — composed of vassal kingdoms owing obedience to the Assyrian king, sending troops to fight with the Assyrian army, and paying tribute to the Assyrian court.
Provinces Up to the mid-8th century the Assyrian homeland and the much larger, and expanding, territory occupied by vassal kingdoms, made up the two zones of Assyrian power.
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