45 Facts About Neo-Assyrian Empire

Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state.

Early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia and Syria, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire had been lost during a long period of decline.

Unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not only due to the ability of Assyria to expand but, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system.

The communication speed of official messages in the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not surpassed in the Middle East until the 19th century AD.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire made use of a resettlement policy, wherein some portions of the populations from conquered lands were resettled in the Assyrian heartland and in underdeveloped provinces.

Related searches

The political structures established by the Neo-Assyrian 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, similar ideas of rights to world domination in later empires as late as 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.

Still, the general desire for universal rule dominated the royal ideologies of Mesopotamian kings for thousands of years, bolstered by the memory of the Akkadian Neo-Assyrian Empire and exemplified in titles such as "king of the Universe" or "king of the Four Corners of the World".

One of the first conquests of Ashur-dan II had been Katmuhu in this region, which he made a vassal kingdom rather than annexed outright; this suggests that the resources available to the early Neo-Assyrian Empire kings were very limited and that the imperial project had to begin nearly from scratch.

Neo-Assyrian Empire never got his revenge on Marduk-apla-iddina, who died of natural causes before the Assyrian army landed, and the campaign instead significantly escalated the conflict with the anti-Assyrian faction in Babylonia and with the Elamites.

Neo-Assyrian Empire defeated the Cimmerians who plagued the northwestern part of the empire, conquered the cities of Kundu and Sissu in Anatolia, and conquered the Phoenician city of Sidon, which was renamed Kar-Assur-ahu-iddina.

Neo-Assyrian Empire had tried to conquer Egypt already in 674 BC but had then been driven back.

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.

One of the common methods, which appears to be a new innovation of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was the manipulation and codifying of the king's own personal history in the form of annals.

Queens of the Neo-Assyrian Empire were titled, which could be abbreviated to, both terms meaning "Woman of the Palace".

The difference in terminology does not necessarily mean that foreign queens, who often governed significantly smaller territories than the Neo-Assyrian Empire, were seen as having a higher status than the Assyrian queens.

Unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not only due to the ability of Assyria to expand but, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system.

Inner elite of the Neo-Assyrian Empire included two main groups, the "magnates" and the "scholars".

Such communication speed was unprecedented before the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and was not surpassed in the Middle East until the telegraph was introduced by the Ottoman Empire in 1865, nearly two and a half thousand years after the Neo-Assyrian Empire's fall.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire army was an evolution of the preceding Middle Assyrian army, and inherited the warrior ethic, experience with chariots and levy system of its predecessor.

Neo-Assyrian Empire cavalry used small horses bred in the northern parts of the Assyrian heartland.

The innovative techniques and siege engines in siege warfare used by Neo-Assyrian Empire armies included tunneling, diverting rivers, blockading to ensure starvation, siege towers, ladders, ramps and battering rams.

Neo-Assyrian Empire state valued deportees highly for their labor and abilities.

Consequence of the resettlements, and according to Karen Radner "the most lasting legacy of the Assyrian Neo-Assyrian Empire", was a dilution of the cultural diversity of the Near East, forever changing the region's ethnolinguistic composition and facilitating the rise of Aramaic as the local lingua franca.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the last ever state to sponsor writing traditional Akkadian cuneiform in all levels of its administration.

Related searches

The culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire elite was strongly influenced by Babylonia in the south; in a vein similar to how Greek civilization was respected in, and influenced, ancient Rome, the Assyrians had much respect for Babylon and its ancient culture.

Neo-Assyrian Empire was used in some surviving tablets containing poetry and more prominently in surviving letters of royal correspondence.

Imperialism of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was in some ways different from that of later empires.

The history of Neo-Assyrian Empire scholarship appears to have begun already under Tukulti-Ninurta II in the 9th century BC, since he is the first Assyrian king under which the office of chief scholar is attested.

Texts found in Neo-Assyrian Empire libraries fall into a wide array of genres, including divinatory texts, divination reports, treatments for the sick, ritual texts, incantations, prayers and hymns, school texts and literary texts.

Neo-Assyrian Empire accomplished several complex technical projects, which indicates sophisticated technical knowledge.

All of the Neo-Assyrian Empire capitals were outfitted with great parks, a new innovation of the Neo-Assyrian Empire period.

The most ambitious hydraulic engineering project of the Neo-Assyrian Empire period was undertaken by Sennacherib during his renovation of Nineveh.

The Bible mentions Assyria about 150 times; multiple significant events which involved the Hebrews are mentioned, most prominently Sennacherib's war against Hezekiah, and several Neo-Assyrian Empire kings are mentioned, including Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and possibly Ashurbanipal.

The most important innovation in Hebrew theology during the period roughly corresponding to the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the elevation of Yahweh as the only god and the beginning of the monotheism that would later characterize Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was at its height the largest empire yet to be formed in history, and had ideologically achieved world domination in the sense of ruling most of the entire known world as known to the Assyrians themselves.

Ideologically, the Neo-Assyrian Empire formed an important part in the imperial ideologies of succeeding empires in the Middle East.

Ancient idea of succession of empires did not end with the fall of the Seleucid Neo-Assyrian Empire; traditions were instead adjusted to include later empires in the sequence.

The Roman Neo-Assyrian Empire spawned its own sequences of successor claimants; in the east it was followed by the Byzantine Neo-Assyrian Empire, from which both the Russian and Ottoman empires claimed succession.

Political structures established by the Neo-Assyrian Empire became the model for the later empires that succeeded it.

Additionally, Neo-Babylonian construction projects, such as Nebuchadnezzar II's massive expansion of Babylon, followed Assyrian traditions; as the Neo-Assyrian Empire kings had done in their new capitals, Nebuchadnezzar placed his palace on a raised terrace across the city wall and followed a rectangular plan for the inner city.

Neo-Assyrian Empire is perhaps most prominently remembered for the ferocity and brutality of the Neo-Assyrian army.

Regardless of opinion, modern scholars generally do not believe in "Assyrian brutality" as a distinct phenomenon; sources from other civilizations demonstrate that the Neo-Assyrian Empire was no more brutal than other states and peoples of the ancient Near East, nor particularly brutal in the context of human history as a whole.

War was carried out in roughly the same fashion by all powers in the ancient Near East; standards from Ebla dating to the third millennium BC depict soldiers carrying severed heads, the Bible mentions many atrocities committed by Hebrews and other non-Assyrians, and the Achaemenid Neo-Assyrian Empire is known to have used impalement as one of many methods of torture and execution.

The sole factor for the higher frequency and more vivid descriptions from the Neo-Assyrian Empire is that the Assyrians were more successful than their contemporaries and thus had more opportunities.

Related searches