Who the Assyrians were, their land on the Tigris, and the god Ashur.
From city-state to the merchant princes and the first Assyrian empires.
The Neo-Assyrian kings who ruled from Egypt to Iran.
Palaces, libraries, the fall of Nineveh, and Assyria's memory.
Assyria's heartland lay along the Tigris in northern Iraq.
Its national god Ashur gave the land, city, and people their name.
Hills, rain-fed farms, and trade routes shaped a hardy people.
Babylon, Elam, Urartu, and mountain foes pressed on every side.
Assyria built arguably the first true multinational empire.
Its army pioneered iron weapons, siege-craft, and cavalry.
Ashurbanipal's library preserved the wisdom of Mesopotamia.
Its carved reliefs are masterpieces of ancient art.
Semitic-speaking people of the upper Tigris in northern Iraq.
Their identity centered on their national god, Ashur.
They spoke a dialect of Akkadian, like the Babylonians.
From a single city they built a vast and lasting empire.
Assyria's core lay along the Tigris in what is now northern Iraq, a land of rolling hills and rain-fed fields around its great cities.
The city of Ashur, on a bluff above the Tigris, was the birthplace of Assyria — its first capital and the earthly home of its god.
Assyria's supreme god, Ashur, was unique — not just a city-god but the divine embodiment of the Assyrian state itself.
Rain-fed fields of grain sustained the northern towns.
Assyrians were famed merchants from very early times.
Military service bound the people to king and god.
Later, Aramaic spread widely alongside Assyrian Akkadian.
Ashur was already a thriving town in the third millennium BCE.
It fell for a time under Akkad and the kings of Ur.
It grew rich as a center of long-distance commerce.
In time its rulers claimed full independence.
In the early second millennium BCE, Ashur's merchants built a remarkable long-distance trade network reaching deep into Anatolia.
Letters and accounts detail caravans, loans, and profits.
Whole families ran the business across vast distances.
They reveal a sophisticated world of commerce and law.
Around 1800 BCE, the ambitious king Shamshi-Adad I forged a short-lived kingdom across northern Mesopotamia, an early taste of Assyrian power.
The ancient religious capital and namesake of the land.
The vast metropolis that became the final great capital.
A royal capital famed for its palaces and reliefs.
An age-old holy city, sacred to the goddess Ishtar.
The Assyrian king was the linchpin of the state - high priest of Ashur, supreme commander in war, and the great builder of cities and temples.
Rain-fed grain and flocks fed the northern towns.
Smiths, weavers, and builders supplied city and army.
A literate class ran records, letters, and the law.
Life centered on the household, land, and kin.
They wrote their dialect of Akkadian in cuneiform.
Wedge-shaped signs on clay recorded all affairs of state.
Later, alphabetic Aramaic spread across the empire.
Scholars preserved the classics of Mesopotamia.
The Assyrians kept a careful King List, tracing their rulers back across the centuries to legitimize each reign as part of an ancient succession.
Northerners rooted in the rain-fed hills of Iraq.
City, god, and land shared one sacred name.
Early Assyrians built trade networks into Anatolia.
From a single city would grow a mighty empire.
From the 14th century BCE, Assyria became a great power.
It threw off the overlordship of the Mitanni kingdom.
A line of strong kings expanded its borders by war.
For the first time, Assyria ruled subject lands.
Ashur-uballit I (c. 1363-1328 BCE) raised Assyria from a vassal state into a kingdom that dealt with Egypt and Babylon as an equal.
He expanded Assyria and crushed its northern rivals.
He shattered the remnants of the Mitanni kingdom.
He even conquered Babylon itself for a time.
Each reign pushed Assyria's borders outward.
Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1233-1197 BCE) was the mightiest Middle Assyrian king, who conquered Babylon and carried off its sacred statue of Marduk.
Around 1200 BCE, empires across the Near East collapsed.
Migrations and raiders upended the old order.
Battered but unbroken, Assyria survived the storm.
It would take centuries to fully rebuild its power.
Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1114-1076 BCE) revived Assyrian power with tireless campaigns, reaching the Mediterranean and beyond.
Aramean tribes spread across the land around Assyria.
For generations they pressed hard on Assyria's frontiers.
Their Aramaic language would spread through the empire.
Assyria held its heartland through these hard centuries.
The Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni once ruled the north.
For a time Ashur paid homage to Mitanni's kings.
Ashur-uballit I threw off Mitanni's overlordship.
Mitanni's fall opened the way for Assyria's rise.
Assyria's relationship with Babylon to the south ran through the whole of its history - a bond of shared culture and a rivalry that ended in war.
Assyrian law was known for severe, physical penalties.
Its tablets set rules for property, debt, and crime.
Its laws bound women under strict male authority.
They reveal the values of the Assyrian world.
Even in its middle age, Assyria was building the military machine that would conquer the world.
Kings led yearly campaigns as a sacred duty.
Each generation honed a stronger, harder army.
Control of routes let armies strike far and fast.
Conquest was framed as service to the god Ashur.
The national god reigned over the Assyrian pantheon.
Kings restored and enriched the shrines of the gods.
The fierce goddess was patron of Assyria's armies.
Kings ruled as the devoted servants of the gods.
Between its middle and its greatest age, Assyria passed through hard centuries of Aramean pressure and shrunken borders before roaring back to life.
Assyria grew from city-state to territorial empire.
Strong kings expanded its borders again and again.
Tukulti-Ninurta I even conquered the ancient south.
Assyria weathered collapse and Aramean pressure.
From the 9th to the 7th century BCE, Assyria built the largest empire the world had yet seen, dominating the entire Near East.
Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) rebuilt Assyria's might through relentless campaigns and moved the capital to a magnificent new city at Nimrud.
Ashurnasirpal II made Nimrud his capital, raising palaces and temples whose carved reliefs are among the treasures of ancient art.
Shalmaneser III campaigned for over thirty years.
His famous obelisk records tribute from many kings.
It even depicts an Israelite king bowing before him.
He fought Syria, Babylon, and the northern lands.
Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BCE) transformed Assyria, reforming its army and government and expanding the empire to new heights.
The Assyrians controlled their vast empire in part by deporting conquered peoples far from home, resettling them across the realm.
He founded the last great Assyrian dynasty.
He crushed rebels and made Nineveh his capital.
He conquered Egypt and rebuilt Babylon.
The scholar-king who ruled Assyria at its peak.
Sargon II (722-705 BCE) took the name of the ancient conqueror and founded the Sargonid line that would rule Assyria at its greatest.
Sargon II built an entirely new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, from the ground up - a vast planned city adorned with palaces and colossal guardian figures.
Adad-nirari II (911-891 BCE) began the great revival, retaking lost lands and setting Assyria on the road to its imperial age.
Conquered lands became provinces under royal governors.
Subject kings paid yearly tribute in silver and goods.
A road network tied the vast empire together.
Spies and officials kept the king informed everywhere.
Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE) rebuilt the Babylon his father had destroyed and achieved what no Assyrian had before - the conquest of Egypt.
Assyrian armies marched into the Nile valley itself.
Esarhaddon seized Egypt's ancient capital.
Ashurbanipal's army later plundered mighty Thebes.
Egypt proved too distant to rule for long.
Beyond the provinces, a ring of client kings served Assyria under strict oaths.
Local rulers kept their thrones as Assyrian vassals.
Binding treaties tied vassals to the Assyrian king.
They sent gold, horses, and goods to the capital.
To break the oath was to invite brutal reprisal.
Royal roads spanned the length of the empire.
Messengers on horseback sped royal orders onward.
Officials wrote constantly to the royal court.
Fast news let the king react to distant events.
Assyria ruled from Egypt to the mountains of Iran.
Reforms and provinces held the empire together.
Whole peoples were moved to secure the realm.
A great dynasty led Assyria to its height.
The Assyrian army was the most advanced and feared military force of its time - a professional, iron-armed war machine that carried Assyria's power across the world.
Mass-produced iron armed a huge and deadly force.
Fast horsemen and chariots struck with speed and shock.
Rams, towers, and ramps broke the strongest walls.
Roads and logistics moved armies with startling speed.
The Assyrians were the ancient world's masters of siege warfare, able to storm fortified cities that had defied every other army.
Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) turned away from his father's city and made Nineveh the greatest capital of the ancient world.
Sennacherib made Nineveh a wonder of the world - a huge city of palaces, gardens, and mighty walls on the banks of the Tigris.
Sennacherib's 'Palace Without Rival' at Nineveh was adorned with kilometers of carved stone reliefs depicting his wars, hunts, and building works.
Great waterworks fed Nineveh's gardens and fields.
A road network sped armies, messengers, and trade.
Kings moved mountains of stone to raise their palaces.
Lush gardens may lie behind the 'hanging gardens' legend.
The Assyrian assault on the Judean city of Lachish in 701 BCE was immortalized in a series of palace reliefs - the most detailed siege in ancient art.
In 701 BCE Sennacherib devastated Judah and besieged King Hezekiah in Jerusalem - a dramatic campaign remembered in both Assyrian and biblical records.
Heavy infantry with spears and tall shields held the line.
Massed archers rained arrows on massed foes.
Mounted archers and lancers gave speed and reach.
Conquered peoples swelled the ranks of the army.
Assyria used fearsome reprisals to deter revolt.
Kings recorded their conquests in vivid, grim detail.
Palace carvings displayed the fate of those who resisted.
Submission, though, could bring protection and peace.
To water his enormous capital, Sennacherib built a vast system of canals and a great stone aqueduct - a marvel of ancient engineering.
Supply trains and roads kept the army moving.
Troops swam on inflated skins or built pontoon bridges.
Sappers and builders cleared the army's path.
Campaigning was an almost annual ritual of the state.
Iron, cavalry, and siege-craft made Assyria supreme.
No city's walls could long hold them out.
Sennacherib built the era's greatest capital.
Carved reliefs recorded the empire's power.
Ashurbanipal (669-631 BCE) ruled Assyria at its zenith and, rare among kings, prided himself on his learning as much as his conquests.
At Nineveh, Ashurbanipal assembled a vast library of clay tablets - the greatest collection of Mesopotamian learning ever found.
It was in Ashurbanipal's library that the Epic of Gilgamesh survived - the ancient world's greatest poem, recovered from Nineveh's ashes.
Carved slabs lined the walls of Assyrian palaces.
They show sieges, battles, and triumphant kings.
Famous reliefs depict the king hunting lions.
They are among the finest art of the ancient world.
The lion-hunt reliefs of Ashurbanipal are the most celebrated of all Assyrian art, portraying the royal hunt with startling power and pathos.
Colossal winged bulls guarded palace gates.
They bore the head of a man and the body of a bull.
Carved so they seemed to stand, then stride, as you passed.
They warded the king's halls against evil.
The supreme national god, above all others.
Goddess of love and war, fierce patron of the army.
The sun-god of justice and divination.
Gods of storm and of writing and wisdom.
The king led the worship of the great gods.
Astrologers watched the heavens for royal omens.
Scholars fought ill fortune with ritual and prayer.
Experts advised the king on the will of the gods.
Behind the throne stood a class of learned scribes and scholars, whose letters and reports to the king survive in their thousands.
Sky-watchers tracked the moon, planets, and eclipses.
Celestial omens guided the decisions of kings.
Healers combined remedies with ritual against disease.
They kept the math and learning of Sumer and Babylon.
Musicians and lavish banquets adorned the palace.
Ivories, jewelry, and metalwork filled royal halls.
The court displayed the wealth of a world empire.
Officials, guards, and servants thronged the king.
One famous relief shows Ashurbanipal reclining with his queen in a lush garden - a rare, serene image amid the empire's scenes of war.
The great temple of Ashur stood at the nation's heart.
Stepped towers rose beside the major temples.
Priests served the gods with offerings day and night.
Ashur and Arbela were revered across the land.
Royal women could wield great influence at court.
This queen-regent later inspired the Semiramis legend.
A formidable queen helped secure the throne's succession.
Queens safeguarded the royal succession itself.
Ashurbanipal saved Mesopotamia's wisdom for us.
Assyrian sculptors created enduring masterpieces.
Winged bulls became the empire's iconic image.
Religion bound the king, army, and state as one.
The empire grew vast, and its wars never ceased.
A ruinous war between brothers split Assyria's strength.
Babylon and others waited for their chance to revolt.
At its height, the empire was closer to ruin than it knew.
Assyria's end came when its old enemy Babylon, under Nabopolassar, joined forces with the rising Medes of Iran to bring the empire down.
In 612 BCE, the combined armies of Babylon and the Medes stormed and destroyed Nineveh, ending the Assyrian Empire with shocking speed.
So complete was the fall that many were amazed by it.
Nineveh and the great capitals were left desolate.
Yet Assyrians lived on in their northern homeland.
Babylon inherited the empire Assyria had built.
Though its empire fell, Assyria left a lasting mark - a model of imperial rule that later empires from Persia to Rome would follow.
For ages the great capitals lay lost beneath mounds.
Excavators uncovered Nimrud and Nineveh's palaces.
Decipherment reopened Assyria's records and epics.
Assyrian art and history astonished modern Europe.
Nineveh, Nimrud, and Ashur lie in northern Iraq.
Some sites suffered grievous damage in recent years.
Assyrians endure today as a distinct community.
Their history is a source of deep pride and identity.
Nineveh looms large in the famous story of Jonah.
Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel.
His attack on Jerusalem is told in the Bible itself.
Prophets cast Assyria as a rod of overwhelming power.
The real Assyrian queen Sammu-ramat grew, in later Greek legend, into Semiramis - a fabled warrior-queen credited with founding Babylon itself.
Long after its fall, Assyria lived on in Greek tales of legendary kings and queens - a hazy memory of a vanished eastern empire.
For ages, no one could read the wedge-shaped signs.
A great cliff inscription helped unlock the script.
In 1872 a tablet revealed a flood story like Noah's.
Decipherment gave back Assyria's own voice.
Though the empire fell, the Assyrian people did not vanish - their descendants have preserved a distinct identity into the present day.
Assyria showed how far organized power could reach.
Its glory rested on relentless, grinding warfare.
Its greatest gift to us was a library, not a conquest.
Even the mightiest empire can collapse with startling speed.
They built the ancient world's first true superpower.
Their army reshaped the art of warfare.
Their library saved Mesopotamia's literature.
Their reliefs remain among history's finest art.