Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed from the 21st to the 7th century BCE which conquered and administered most of West Asia from the Assyrian heartland in Upper Mesopotamia. Assyria is called the first true military superpower in human history, and pioneered major inventions and advances in the first libraries and large-scale preservation and accumulation of knowledge, as well as in statecraft, centralised government, bureaucracy, warfare, military organisation, propaganda, art, and architecture.
Assyrian imperial history spans the early Bronze Age to the late Iron Age, from its beginning as small Akkadian settlements in northern Mesopotamia to its zenith and collapse as the largest empire to that time, and is typically divided into the Early Assyrian ( 2600–2025 BCE), Old Assyrian ( 2025–1364 BCE), Middle Assyrian ( 1363–912 BCE), Neo-Assyrian (911–609 BCE), and post-imperial (609 BCE– 240 CE) periods. The Assyrian people survive to this day and continue to live and practice their culture in their ancient heartland and in the diaspora.
Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded 2600 BCE, but there is no evidence that the city was independent until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in the 21st century BCE, when a line of independent kings starting with Puzur-Ashur I began ruling the city. Centered in the Assyrian heartland in northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian power fluctuated over time. The city underwent several periods of foreign rule or domination before Assyria rose under Ashur-uballit I in the early 14th century BCE as the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, Assyria was one of the two major Mesopotamian kingdoms, alongside Babylonia in the south, and at times became the dominant power in the ancient Near East. Assyria was at its strongest in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the Assyrian army was the strongest military power in the world and the Assyrians ruled the largest empire then yet assembled in world history, spanning from parts of modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west.
In the late 7th century BCE the Neo-Assyrian Empire, weakened by a period of civil war, fell, conquered by a coalition of the ethno-linguistically near-identical Babylonians, who for some three centuries had lived under Assyrian rule or domination, and of Assyria's erstwhile vassels, the Medes and Scythians. Though Assyria's core urban territory was extensively devastated in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire and though the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire invested few resources in rebuilding it until the reign of the Assyrian originating Nabonidus, ancient Assyrian culture and traditions survived for centuries through the post-imperial period. Assyria experienced a recovery under the Seleucid and Parthian empires (the latter of which saw a number of Assyrian kingdoms arise between the 2nd century BCE and the mid-3rd century CE), it declined again under the Sasanian Empire centuries later, which sacked numerous cities and semi-independent Assyrian territories in the region, including Assur itself.
The remaining Assyrian people, who had survived and preserved their native culture in northern Mesopotamia, were among the first people to accept Christianity in the 1st century CE, traditionally having been evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, one of the Twelve Disciples of Jesus Christ, and by the disciples St. Addai and St. Mari, went on to develop a unique East Syriac rite and establish the Church of the East (which would go on to spread Christianity throughout western, central, southeastern, and eastern Asia). The Ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted at Assur until Assur's final sack in the 3rd century CE, and at certain other holdouts for centuries thereafter. A number of religious and cultural symbols, practices, customs, and artistic styles and genres from ancient Mesopotamian religion and culture continue to be used and repurposed in Syriac Christianity to this day, such as the star of Shamash and the Easter Monday 'gayasa' (a play in the Sumerian disputation genre).
The triumph of ancient Assyria can be attributed not only to its vigorous warrior-monarchs but also to its adeptness in efficiently assimilating and governing conquered territories, using inventive and advanced administrative mechanisms. The developments in warfare and governance introduced by ancient Assyria continued to be employed by subsequent empires and states for centuries. Ancient Assyria also left a legacy of great cultural significance, particularly through the Neo-Assyrian Empire, making a prominent impression in later Assyrian, Greco-Roman, and Hebrew literary and religious traditions.
Nomenclature In the Old Assyrian period, when Assyria was merely a city-state centered on the city of Assur, the state was typically referred to as ālu Aššur ("the city of Ashur"). From the time of its rise as a territorial state in the 14th century BCE and onward, Assyria was referred to in official documents as māt Aššur ("the land of Ashur"), marking its shift to being a regional polity. The first attested use of the term māt Aššur is during the reign of Ashur-uballit I ( 1363–1328 BCE), who was the first king of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Both ālu Aššur and māt Aššur derive from the name of the Assyrian national deity Ashur. Ashur probably originated in the Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of Assur itself. In the Old Assyrian period the deity was considered the formal king of Assur; the actual rulers only used the style Išši'ak ("governor"). From the time of Assyria's rise as a territorial state, Ashur began to be regarded as an embodiment of the entire land ruled by the Assyrian kings.
The modern name "Assyria" is of Greek origin, derived from Ασσυρία (Assuría). The term's first attested use is during the time of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC). The Greeks called the Levant "Syria" and Mesopotamia "Assyria", even though the local population, both at that time and well into the later Christian period, used both terms interchangeably to refer to the entire region. It is not known whether the Greeks began referring to Mesopotamia as "Assyria" because they equated the region with the Assyrian Empire, long fallen by the time the term is first attested, or because they named the region after the people who lived there, the Assyrians. Because the term is so "similar to Syria", scholars have been examining since the 17th century whether the two terms are connected. And because, in sources predating the Greek ones, the shortened form "Syria" is attested as a synonym for Assyria, notably in Luwian and Aramaic texts from the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, modern scholars overwhelmingly support the conclusion that the names are connected.
Both "Assyria" and the contraction, "Syria," are ultimately derived from the Akkadian Aššur. Following the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the subsequent empires that held dominion over the Assyrian lands adopted distinct appellations for the region, with a significant portion of these names also being rooted in Aššur. The Achaemenid Empire referred to Assyria as Aθūrā ("Athura"). The Sasanian Empire inexplicably referred to Lower Mesopotamia as Asoristan ("land of the Assyrians"), though the northern province of Nōdšīragān, which included much of the old Assyrian heartland, was also sometimes called Atūria or Āthōr. In Syriac, Assyria was and is referred to as ʾĀthor.
History
Early history
Agricultural villages in the region that would later become Assyria are known to have existed by the time of the Hassuna culture, 6300–5800 BC. Though the sites of some nearby cities that would later be incorporated into the Assyrian heartland, such as Nineveh, are known to have been inhabited since the Neolithic, the earliest archaeological evidence from Assur dates to the Early Dynastic Period, 2600 BC. During this time, the surrounding region was already relatively urbanized. There is no evidence that early Assur was an independent settlement, and it might not have been called Assur at all initially, but rather Baltil or Baltila, used in later times to refer to the city's oldest portion.
The name "Assur" is first attested for the site in documents of the Akkadian period in the 24th century BC. Through most of the Early Assyrian period ( 2600–2025 BC), Assur was dominated by states and polities from southern Mesopotamia. Early on, Assur for a time fell under the loose hegemony of the Sumerian city of Kish and it was later occupied by both the Akkadian Empire and then the Third Dynasty of Ur. In 2025 BC, due to the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Assur became an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I.
Under the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, Assur was home to less than 10,000 people and likely held very limited military power; no military institutions at all are known from this time and no political influence was exerted on neighboring cities. The city was still influential in other ways; under Erishum I ( 1974–1934 BC), Assur experimented with free trade, the earliest known such experiment in world history, which left the initiative for trade and large-scale foreign transactions entirely to the populace rather than the state.
Royal encouragement of trade led to Assur quickly establishing itself as a prominent trading city in northern Mesopotamia and soon thereafter establishing an extensive long-distance trade network, the first notable impression Assyria left in the historical record. Among the evidence left from this trade network are large collections of Old Assyrian cuneiform tablets from Assyrian trade colonies, the most notable of which is a set of 22,000 clay tablets found at Kültepe, near the modern city of Kayseri in Turkey.
As trade declined, perhaps due to increased warfare and conflict between the growing states of the Near East, Assur was frequently threatened by larger foreign states and kingdoms. The original Assur city-state, and the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, came to an end 1808 BC when the city was conquered by the Amorite ruler of Ekallatum, Shamshi-Adad I. Shamshi-Adad's extensive conquests in northern Mesopotamia eventually made him the ruler of the entire region, founding what some scholars have termed the "Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia". The survival of this realm relied chiefly on Shamshi-Adad's own strength and charisma and thus collapsed shortly after his death 1776 BC.
After Shamshi-Adad's death, the political situation in northern Mesopotamia was highly volatile, with Assur at times coming under the brief control of Eshnunna, Elam and the Old Babylonian Empire. At some point, the city returned to being an independent city-state, though the politics of Assur itself were volatile as well, with fighting between members of Shamshi-Adad's dynasty, native Assyrians and Hurrians for control. The infighting came to an end after the rise of Bel-bani as king 1700 BC. Bel-bani founded the Adaside dynasty, which after his reign ruled Assyria for about a thousand years.
Assyria's rise as a territorial state in later times was in large part facilitated by two separate invasions of Mesopotamia by the Hittites. An invasion by the Hittite king Mursili I in 1595 BC destroyed the dominant Old Babylonian Empire, allowing the smaller kingdoms of Mitanni and Kassite Babylonia to rise in the north and south, respectively. Around 1430 BC, Assur was subjugated by Mitanni, an arrangement that lasted for about 70 years, until 1360 BC. Another Hittite invasion by Šuppiluliuma I in the 14th century BC effectively crippled the Mitanni kingdom. After his invasion, Assyria succeeded in freeing itself from its suzerain, achieving independence once more under Ashur-uballit I ( 1363–1328 BC) whose rise to power, independence, and conquests of neighboring territory traditionally marks the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire ( 1363–912 BC).
Assyrian Empire