Assyria

Legacy

Assyria invented much of the machinery of imperial rule later copied by Persia, and Ashurbanipal's library preserved thousands of cuneiform texts, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Timeline of Assyria

1. 911 BCE
   Adad-nirari II becomes king and begins reconquering northern Mesopotamia

   In the late 11th century BCE Assyria had lost most of its earlier empire, and Aramean tribes had settled across northern Mesopotamia. Adad-nirari II, king from 911 BCE, continued a slow reconquest begun by his father. He defeated and deported Arameans after a battle where the Khabur meets the Euphrates in 910, subdued peoples in eastern Anatolia, twice beat the king of Babylonia and annexed land north of the Diyala River. His reign is counted as the start of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as Assyria began to win back the lands it had once ruled.

2. 879 BCE
   Ashurnasirpal II makes Nimrud (Kalhu) his capital

   Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) made Assyria the leading power of the Near East again. His campaigns reached the Mediterranean, where Phoenician cities paid him tribute, and he was notorious for brutality towards rebels. In 879 BCE he made Kalhu (Nimrud), a ruined town on the Tigris, his capital instead of the old city of Assur, using thousands of workers and captives to build walls, temples and a great palace. An inscription claims 69,574 guests attended its inauguration feast. Kalhu stayed the imperial capital until 706 BCE, while Assur remained the religious centre.

3. 853 BCE
   Shalmaneser III fights a Levantine coalition at Qarqar

   Shalmaneser III continued his father's wars and pushed west into Syria. In 853 BCE (854 in some reckonings) he met a coalition of about a dozen rulers at Qarqar on the Orontes River, led by Hadadezer of Damascus and including Ahab of Israel. His own inscription lists tens of thousands of enemy troops and thousands of chariots; the battle also contains the first known mention of Arabs. Shalmaneser claimed a great victory, but it was probably indecisive: the coalition kings kept their thrones and he had to fight them again several times. Assyria could not yet take the Levant.

4. 745 BCE
   Tiglath-Pileser III seizes power after the 'age of the magnates'

   After Shalmaneser III died in 824 BCE, Assyria entered the 'age of the magnates', when powerful generals and officials held real power and the kings were weak. Rivals grew bolder: in 754 BCE Urartu, a kingdom to the north, defeated the Assyrian army at Arpad. In 746/745 a revolt broke out in Kalhu, and Tiglath-Pileser III, most likely a usurper from within the royal family, took the throne. He reformed the army and the provinces, deported conquered peoples on a huge scale, and more than doubled the empire's territory.

5. 729 BCE
   Tiglath-Pileser III takes Babylon

   Babylonia, south of Assyria, was home to old cities and to Chaldean tribes whose chiefs fought over its throne. In 731 BCE the Chaldean chief Nabu-mukin-zeri made himself king of Babylon, which Tiglath-Pileser saw as a threat. After several years of war he captured Babylon in 729 BCE and proclaimed himself king of both Assyria and Babylon. From then on Assyria tried to rule Babylonia directly or through chosen kings, adding the rich south to the empire but also taking on a land that rebelled again and again.

6. 722 BCE
   Samaria falls, ending the Kingdom of Israel; Sargon II takes the throne

   The Kingdom of Israel, with its capital at Samaria, had rebelled against Assyrian overlordship. After a siege of several years, the Assyrians took Samaria in the 720s, ended the kingdom, deported much of its population and made it the province of Samerina. Sargon II later claimed the conquest, but historians think his predecessor Shalmaneser V more likely took the city. In 722 BCE Sargon, probably Shalmaneser's brother, seized the throne, most likely in a palace coup. He founded the Sargonid dynasty, which would rule Assyria at its height.

7. 714 BCE
   Sargon II defeats Rusa I of Urartu near Lake Urmia and sacks Musasir

   Urartu, centred around Lake Van, was Assyria's great rival in the north. In 714 BCE Sargon II marched into the mountains by a long route to surprise King Rusa I, defeated the Urartian army after Rusa tried to drive him back, and on the way home plundered the holy city of Musasir, carrying off enormous spoils. Sargon treated it as one of the great events of his reign and had the sack carved on his palace walls. Urartu stayed powerful and Rusa retook Musasir, but there were no more direct clashes between the two for the rest of Sargon's reign.

8. 705 BCE
   Sennacherib becomes king and makes Nineveh the capital

   In 705 BCE Sargon II was killed fighting in Anatolia and his body was never recovered, which Assyrians took as a sign of divine anger. His son Sennacherib abandoned Sargon's new capital at Dur-Sharrukin and moved the court to Nineveh, where he had lived as crown prince. There he launched one of the most ambitious building projects of the ancient world, with huge walls, temples, gardens and his 'Palace without Rival'. Nineveh remained the capital until the empire's fall. Sargon's death also set off revolts, above all in Babylonia, that Sennacherib spent years putting down.

9. 701 BCE
   Sennacherib invades the Levant and besieges Jerusalem

   Encouraged by Egypt and by the Babylonian rebel Marduk-apla-iddina, vassals in the Levant, including Hezekiah of Judah, stopped paying tribute. In 701 BCE Sennacherib marched west, took Sidon and Ashkelon, defeated an Egyptian army and captured most towns of Judah, including Lachish after a famous siege shown on his palace reliefs. He trapped Hezekiah in Jerusalem but did not take the city. The Bible tells of an angel destroying the Assyrian army, but Assyrian records show Hezekiah submitting, paying heavy tribute and losing land to Assyria's neighbouring vassals. Assyrian control of the Levant was restored.

10. 689 BCE
    Sennacherib destroys Babylon

    Babylon rebelled against Sennacherib repeatedly, often with help from Elam. In 694 BCE the Elamites captured his son Ashur-nadin-shumi, whom he had made king of Babylon, and probably executed him. A new Babylonian king, Mushezib-Marduk, then fought Sennacherib at Halule in 691, a battle both sides claimed to have won. Sennacherib besieged Babylon for over fifteen months and in 689 BCE took it and destroyed it, seizing the property of its gods. The destruction shocked Babylonians, and Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon later rebuilt the city.

11. 671 BCE
    Esarhaddon conquers Egypt: the empire's greatest extent

    Egypt, ruled by Kushite pharaohs, had long encouraged rebels against Assyria. Esarhaddon's first invasion, in 673 BCE, seems to have failed badly. In early 671 he marched again with a larger army, won three battles and captured and plundered Memphis, Egypt's capital. The conquest made the Assyrian Empire the largest the world had yet seen, reaching from the Nile across the Levant and Mesopotamia to the Zagros. It was hard to hold: Egypt rebelled repeatedly, and Psamtik I, at first an Assyrian vassal, had made it fully independent by 656 BCE.

12. 648 BCE
    Babylon falls to Ashurbanipal after his brother's revolt (652–648)

    Esarhaddon arranged that his son Ashurbanipal would rule the empire, while another son, Shamash-shum-ukin, would be king of Babylon. Resenting his younger brother's control, Shamash-shum-ukin revolted in 652 BCE and gathered a coalition of Assyria's enemies against him. Ashurbanipal besieged Babylon for two years; according to his account, the starving citizens even ate their own children. Babylon fell in 648 BCE, Shamash-shum-ukin died during the siege, and the city was plundered. Assyria kept Babylonia, but the war left it bitter towards Assyrian rule.

13. 646 BCE
    Ashurbanipal's army destroys Elam's centres and plunders Susa

    Elam, in south-western Iran, was Assyria's oldest enemy and had backed Babylonian rebels for decades. After earlier wars, Ashurbanipal's armies returned in 646 BCE, chased the Elamite king Humban-haltash into the mountains and crushed all of Elam's main centres. On the way home they plundered the ancient capital, Susa: according to Ashurbanipal's inscriptions they desecrated the royal tombs, looted the temples, carried off the statues of the gods and sowed salt in the ground. Elam's power was broken, and nearby peoples, including the Persians, began paying tribute to Assyria instead.

14. 612 BCE
    Medes and Babylonians sack Nineveh

    After Ashurbanipal died, around 631 BCE, Assyria was weakened by succession struggles, and Nabopolassar made Babylonia independent. The Medes under Cyaxares joined the war, sacking Assur in 614 BCE. In 612 the Medes and Babylonians besieged Nineveh, one of the greatest cities in the world, for about three months, then broke in, plundered and burned it. King Sin-shar-ishkun is assumed to have died in the sack. Assyria's heartland was lost, and only a remnant of the army escaped west under a new king, Ashur-uballit II.

15. 609 BCE
    Ashur-uballit II defeated at Harran: the empire ends

    Ashur-uballit II set himself up at Harran, in the west of the old empire, where he was backed by Egypt, which feared Babylonian power. Because Assur had fallen, he could not be crowned in the traditional way. In late 610 or early 609 BCE the Babylonians and Medes captured Harran, and a few months later an attempt by Ashur-uballit and an Egyptian army to retake it failed disastrously. Ashur-uballit then disappears from the records. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was gone, and its lands were divided between the Babylonians in the west and south and the Medes in the north and east.

Periods and reigns

• Adad-nirari II 911–891 BCE
• Tukulti-Ninurta II 890–884 BCE
• Ashurnasirpal II 884–859 BCE
• Shalmaneser III 859–824 BCE
• Age of the magnates (Shamshi-Adad V to Ashur-nirari V) 824–745 BCE
• Tiglath-Pileser III 745–727 BCE
• Shalmaneser V 727–722 BCE
• Sargon II 722–705 BCE
• Sennacherib 705–681 BCE
• Esarhaddon 681–669 BCE
• Ashurbanipal 669–631 BCE
• Ashur-etil-ilani 631–627 BCE
• Sin-shar-ishkun 627–612 BCE
• Ashur-uballit II 612–609 BCE

Rulers

• Shamshi-Adad I c. 1808 – 1776 BCE

  Built the first large Assyrian kingdom

• Ashur-uballit I c. 1365 – 1330 BCE

  Made Assyria a great power of the Late Bronze Age

• Tiglath-Pileser III 745 – 727 BCE

  Reformed the army and provinces, launching the imperial age

• Sennacherib 705 – 681 BCE

  Made Nineveh a magnificent capital

• Esarhaddon 681 – 669 BCE

  Conquered Egypt

• Ashurbanipal 669 – c. 631 BCE

  Last great king; built the library of Nineveh

Realms on the map

• Assyria 1800–901 BCE
• Neo-Assyrian Empire 900–612 BCE

Chapters

• The world in 1000 BCE: Out of the Collapse
• The world in 700 BCE: The Assyrian Colossus