Assyria

Assyria, a major Mesopotamian East Semitic kingdom and empire of the Ancient Near East, existed as an independent state from perhaps as early as the 25th century BC, until its collapse between 612 BC and 599 BC, spanning the mid to Early Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age. From the end of the 7th century BC to the mid-7th century AD, it survived as a geo-political entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers, although a number of small Neo-Assyrian states such as Assur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Garmai and Hatra arose at different times during the Parthian and early Sassanid eras, between the mid 2nd century BC and late 3rd century AD, a period which also saw Assyria become a major centre of Syriac Christianity and the birthplace of the Church of the East.

Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and the northwestern fringes of Iran), the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Making up a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization", which included Sumer, Akkad and much later Babylonia, Assyria was at the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. At its peak, the Assyrian empire stretched from Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea to Persia, and from what is now Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and eastern Libya.

Achaemenid Assyria

Athura (Old Persian: 𐎠𐎰𐎢𐎼𐎠 Aθurā) was a geographical area within the Persian Achaemenid Empire held by the last nobility of Aššur (Akkadian), known as Athura (Neo-Aramaic) or Atouria (Greek), during the period of 539 BC to 330 BC as a military protectorate state of Persia under the rule of Cyrus the Great. Although sometimes regarded as a satrapy, Achaemenid royal inscriptions list it as a dahyu, a concept generally interpreted as meaning either a group of people or both a country and its people, without any administrative implication.

It mostly incorporated the original Assyrian kingdom, corresponding with modern northern Iraq in the upper Tigris, the middle and upper Euphrates, modern-day north eastern Syria (Eber-Nari) and part of south-east Anatolia (modern Turkey). The Neo-Assyrian Empire collapsed after a period of violent civil wars, followed by an invasion by a coalition of some of its former subject peoples, the Iranian peoples (Medes and Persians), Babylonians, Scythians, and Cimmerians in the late 7th century BC, culminating in the Battle of Nineveh, and Assyria had fallen completely by 605 BC. Between 605 and 559 BC, Assyria was divided between the Median Empire to the east and the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the west. Both parts were subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC, and it has been argued that they constituted the satrapies of Media and Athura, respectively. In Herodotus' account the Ninth Tributary District comprised "Babylonia and the rest of Assyria", and excluded Eber-Nari.

Assur

Aššur (Akkadian) (English | Ashur/Assyria, Assyrian / Aššur; Assyrian Neo-Aramaic / Ātûr ; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר‎ / Aššûr; Arabic: آشور‎ / ALA-LC: Āshūr; Kurdish: Asûr), also known as Ashur, Qal'at Sherqat and Kalah Shergat, is a city from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The remains of the city are situated on the western bank of the river Tigris, north of the confluence with the tributary Little Zab river, in modern-day Iraq, more precisely in the Al-Shirqat District (a small panhandle of the Saladin Governorate).

The city was occupied from the mid-3rd millennium BCE (c. 2600–2500 BCE) to the 14th century, when Timur conducted a massacre of its Assyrian population. The site of Assur is a World Heritage Site and was placed on the list of World Heritage Sites in danger in 2003, in part due to the conflict in that area and also due to a proposed dam that would flood part of the site. It is about 40 miles south of the former Nimrud and 60 miles south of Nineveh.

History of research

Exploration of the site of Assur began in 1898 by German archaeologists. Excavations began in 1900 by Friedrich Delitzsch, and were continued in 1903–1913 by a team from the German Oriental Society led initially by Robert Koldewey and later by Walter Andrae. More than 16,000 tablets with cuneiform texts were discovered. Many of the objects found made their way to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.