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The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an empire in Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 609 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as the most powerful state on earth, successfully eclipsing Babylonia, Egypt, Urartu/Armenia and Elam for dominance of the Near East, Asia Minor, Caucasus, North Africa and east Mediterranean, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC did it become a vast empire. Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th Centuries BC. The earliest Assyrian kings such as Tudiya were relatively minor rulers, and after the founding of the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from 2334 BC to 2154 BC, these kings became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under one rule. Assyria finally succumbed to a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, Scythians, and others at the Fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, and the sacking of its last capital Harran in 608 BC. More than half a century later, Babylonia and Assyria became provinces of the Persian Empire. Though the Assyrians during the reign of Ashurbanipal destroyed the Elamite civilization, the Assyrians' culture did influence the succeeding empires of the Medes and the Persians, Indo-Iranian peoples who had been dominated by Assyria. Neo-Assyrian Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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