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338-457: The early Neo-Assyrian kings were chiefly concerned with restoring Assyrian control over much of northern Mesopotamia, East Anatolia and Levant, since significant portions of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire (1365 - 1050 BC) had been lost during the late 11th century BC. Under Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC), Assyria once more became the dominant power of the Near East, ruling

676-613: A Jewish Christian sect with Hellenistic influence of Second Temple Judaism . An early Jewish Christian community was founded in Jerusalem under the leadership of the Pillars of the Church , namely James the Just , the brother of Jesus, Peter , and John. Jewish Christianity soon attracted Gentile God-fearers, posing a problem for its Jewish religious outlook , which insisted on close observance of

1014-428: A zoo , perhaps the first large zoo ever constructed. Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions offer no motive for changing the capital. Various explanations have been proposed by modern scholars, including that he might have gotten disenchanted with Assur since there was little room left in the ancient capital to leave a mark, the important position of Nimrud in regard to local trade networks, that Nimrud was more centrally located in

1352-584: A battle in which the Babylonians burned down their own siege engines so that they would not be captured by the Assyrians. Though the Synchronistic History describes Assyria as in danger of Babylonian aggression in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar's father and predecessor Ninurta-nadin-shumi , it casts Ashur-resh-ishi as a savior of the empire, who defeated Nebuchadnezzar in several battles and was able to defend

1690-441: A captive. A year later he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi's successor Baba-aha-iddina and annexed several territories in northern Babylonia. Southern Mesopotamia was left in disarray after Shamshi-Adad's victories. Though Babylonia nominally came under Assyrian control, Shamshi-Adad took the ancient Babylonian title " king of Sumer and Akkad " but not the conventional "king of Babylon". Due to Assyria's perhaps somewhat weakened state he

2028-611: A city assembly made up of influential figures from Assur, the Middle Assyrian kings were autocratic rulers who used the title šar ("king") and sought equal status to the monarchs of other empires. The transition into an empire also led to the development of various necessary systems, such as a sophisticated road system, various administrative divisions of territory and a complex web of royal administrators and officials. Assyria became an independent territorial state under Ashur-uballit I c. 1363 BC, having previously been under

2366-493: A completely new phenomenon only loosely connected to earlier Assyrian history, it is now considered more probable, due to evidence from royal inscriptions and the nature and extent of the campaigns undertaken, that the early Neo-Assyrian kings chiefly sought to re-establish the position of Assyria at the height of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Any notion of the two empires being distinct entities can also be dispelled through

2704-414: A concubine, or someone who was not the primary wife, were lower in status but could still inherit money and property if the "main" marriage remained childless. The status of widowed women depended on whether they were the main or secondary wife and on whether they had children. The Middle Assyrian Laws specify that a woman who lost her husband as a prisoner of war was expected to wait for two years; if she had

3042-485: A desire to restore old glory, later Assyrian documents saw this time as one of painful losses of territory. By 1000 BC, Assyria was at the low point of its power, with many previously large settlements lying in ruins and local rulers battling new tribal chiefs for control of lands that were previously part of the empire. The Assyrian heartland continued to remain intact, however, protected due to its geographical remoteness. The Assyrian kings never ceased to believe that

3380-464: A development Tiglath-Pileser used as an excuse to invade Babylonia. In 729 BC, he succeeded in capturing Babylon and defeating Nabu-mukin-zeri and thus assumed the title "king of Babylon", alongside "king of Assyria". To increase the willingness of the Babyloninan populace to accept him as ruler, Tiglath-Pileser twice partook in the traditional Babylonian Akitu (New Year's) celebrations, held in honor of

3718-419: A father-in-law or a son to support her, she was given no support from the government, but if she was alone and her husband had been a free man, she could appeal for government support by making an application to the "judges" ( da”anū ), royal officials who were obligated to help her. The expansion of the Middle Assyrian Empire, combined with deportations and movements of conquered peoples, led to contact between

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4056-596: A few months later defeated and captured Nergal-ushezib in battle, the war dragged on as the Chaldean warlord Mushezib-Marduk took control of Babylon late in 693 and assembled a large coalition of Chaldeans, Arameans, Arabs and Elamites to resist Assyrian retribution. After a series of battles, Sennacherib finally recaptured Babylon in 689 BC. Mushezib-Marduk was captured and Babylon was destroyed nearly completely in an effort to eradicate Babylonian political identity. The last years of Sennacherib's reign were relatively peaceful in

4394-539: A few scriptures overlapping with the developing orthodox canon, most Gnostic texts and Gnostic gospels were eventually considered heretical and suppressed by mainstream Christians. A gradual splitting off of Gentile Christianity left Jewish Christians continuing to follow the Law of Moses , including practices such as circumcision. By the fifth century, they and the Jewish–Christian gospels would be largely suppressed by

4732-555: A great number of chariots. Though he did not conquer Babylonia, several cities, including Babylon itself, were successfully attacked and looted. He was probably unable to conquer Babylonia since a significant amount of attention needed to be diverted to the Aramean tribes in the west. Though he was one of the most powerful kings of the Middle Assyrian period, succeeding in imposing tribute from as far away as Phoenicia , his achievements were not long-lasting and several territories, especially in

5070-420: A growing disconnect between the king and the traditional elite of the empire; eunuchs grew unprecedently powerful in his time, being granted large tracts of lands and numerous tax exemptions. After Ashurbanipal's death in 631 BC, the throne was inherited by his son Ashur-etil-ilani . Though some historians have forwarded the idea that Ashur-etil-ilani was a minor upon his accession, this is unlikely given that he

5408-493: A guest in c. 1221 BC and make offerings to the Babylonian gods, it is clear that Adad-shuma-iddina enjoyed Assyrian support for his rule. Though this campaign was followed by several years of peace, it is clear that Adad-shuma-iddina eventually stopped acting like a puppet ruler. Though Tukulti-Ninurta forgave him for a revolt in which he seized the city of Lubdi , a second revolt by Adad-shuma-iddina in c. 1217 BC

5746-494: A landowner died or refused their agreed-upon duties, his families could lose the lands they had been given. It is not clear what factors determined the nature of the services, nor what determined how much land a particular individual or family were given. The most high-ranking officials were typically provided with large states, perhaps including entire villages and their people. In theory, the system ensured close links between landowners and their land, but numerous factors destabilized

6084-432: A letter to the pharaoh Akhenaten wherein he falsely claimed that the Assyrians were his vassals. After several years of peaceful co-existence between Assyria and Babylonia, the Babylonian king Kara-hardash , son of Burnaburiash and Muballitat-Serua, was overthrown. Muballitat-Serua was most likely killed at the same time, which prompted Ashur-uballit to march south and restore order. The usurper who had taken Babylonia in

6422-452: A more immediate threat, but conquering southern Mesopotamia would also be more prestigious. Through military focus on Babylonian border towns, such as Lubdi and Rapiqu , it is clear that Adad-nirari's ultimate goal was to subdue the Babylonians and achieve hegemony over all of Mesopotamia. Adad-nirari's temporary occupations of Lubdi and Rapiqu were met with an attack by the Babylonian king Nazi-Maruttash , though Adad-nirari defeated him at

6760-445: A new age of Neo-Assyrian history, sometimes dubbed the "age of the magnates". This time was marked by the number of royal inscriptions being much smaller than in preceding and succeeding times and Assyrian magnates, such as Dayyan-Assur and other prominent generals and officials, being the dominant political actors, with the kings wielding significantly less power and influence. Though the consequences of this shift in power remain debated,

7098-523: A period of resurgence, owing to wide-ranging campaigns and conquests. Tiglath-Pileser's armies marched as far from the Assyrian heartland as the Mediterranean . Though the reconquered and newly conquered lands were held on to for some time, the empire experienced a second and more catastrophic period of decline after the death of Tiglath-Pileser's son Ashur-bel-kala ( r.   1073–1056 BC), which saw

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7436-483: A period of stagnation after his death, referred to as the "age of the magnates". During this time, the chief wielders of political power were prominent generals and officials and central control was unusually weak. This age came to an end with the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC), who re-asserted Assyrian royal power once again and more than doubled the size of the empire through wide-ranging conquests. His most notable conquests were Babylonia in

7774-450: A permanent, but not the only prominent, actor, presiding over the meetings of Assur's main administrative body, the city assembly. Perhaps partly inspired by the period of more autocratic rule when Assur was under the rule of the Amorite conqueror Shamshi-Adad I c. 1808–1776 BC, the influence of the city assembly had disappeared by the time of Ashur-uballit I's accession. Although

8112-717: A prisoner, and assuming the ancient title " king of Sumer and Akkad ". Given that some inscriptions report "Assyrian refugees" from Babylonia and that some soldiers were "starving", it appears that the victory was a costly one. Tukulti-Ninurta's rule over Babylonia, which nominally placed territories as far south as the Persian Gulf under Assyrian rule, lasted for several years and began the apex of Middle Assyrian power, though Assyrian domination appears to have been rather indirect. Tukulti-Ninurta experienced some difficulties in keeping his empire together, particularly in Babylonia. Though

8450-401: A reign of only four years, Ashur-etil-ilani died in unclear circumstances in 627 and was succeeded by his brother Sinsharishkun . It has historically frequently been assumed, without any supporting evidence, that Sinsharishkun fought with Ashur-etil-ilani for the throne. Although the exact circumstances of Ashur-etil-ilani's death are unknown, there is no evidence to suggest Sinsharishkun gaining

8788-568: A representative of the household. The social position of women in the Middle Assyrian Empire can be examined in detail due to the laws concerning them in the Middle Assyrian Laws. These laws include punishment for various crimes, often sexual or marital ones. Women's rights in the Middle Assyrian Empire appear to have decreased somewhat since the Old Assyrian period, when women and men had little difference in legal standing and by and large

9126-612: A result of the successful campaigns of his predecessors, Ashurnasirpal inherited an impressive amount of resources with which he could work to re-establish Assyrian dominance. Ashurnasirpal's first campaign, in 883 BC, was against the revolting cities of Suru and Tela along the northern portion of the Tigris river. At Tela he brutally repressed the citizens, among other punishments cutting off noses, ears, fingers and limbs, gouging out eyes and overseeing impalements and decapitations . Ashurnasirpal's later campaigns included three wars against

9464-515: A royal harem composed of women of lower rank. The life and court politics within the palaces followed strict rules, overseen by a council of appointed office holders closely linked to the royal court. Officials included "provincial governors" ( bēl pāḫete ), "palace administrators" ( rab ekalle ), "palace heralds" ( nāgir ekalle ), "chief supervisors" ( rab zāriqe ) and "physicians of the Inner Quarters" ( asû ša betā nū ). These councilors supervised

9802-484: A separate component of the army. Based on surviving depictions, chariots were crewed by two soldiers: an archer who commanded the chariot ( māru damqu ) and a driver ( ša mugerre ). Chariots were not used extensively before the time of Tiglath-Pileser I, who put particular emphasis on the chariots not just as a combat unit but also as the vehicle to be used by the king. Clear evidence of the special strategic importance of chariots comes from chariots forming their own branch of

10140-568: A settlement located only a day's journey from Assur. Although the Assyrians drove him away, an incursion this deep into the Assyrian heartland left an impression on the Assyrians, who in future conflicts often focused on Babylonian border outposts along the eastern Tigris river as a preventive measure. Under the warrior-kings Adad-nirari I ( r.   c. 1305–1274 BC), Shalmaneser I ( r.   c. 1273–1244 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r.   c. 1243–1207 BC), Assyria began to realize its aspirations of becoming

10478-516: A siege lasting two months, the Medes and Babylonians captured Nineveh , Sinsharishkun dying in the city's defense. The capture of the city was followed by extensive looting and destruction and effectively meant the end of the Assyrian Empire. After the fall of Nineveh, an Assyrian general and prince, possibly Sinsharishkun's son, led the remnants of the Assyrian army and established himself at Harran in

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10816-425: A significant drop in Assyrian power. Even during its period of decline, Middle Assyrian kings continued to be assertive geopolitically; both Ashur-dan I ( r.   c. 1178–1133 BC) and Ashur-resh-ishi I ( r.   1132–1115 BC) campaigned against Babylonia. Under Ashur-resh-ishi I's son and successor Tiglath-Pileser I ( r.   1114–1076 BC), the Middle Assyrian Empire experienced

11154-519: A significant regional power. Though the other powers of the Ancient Near East , such as Egypt, the Hittites and Babylonia, had at first been reluctant to view the new Assyrian kingdom as their equal, from the time of Adad-nirari I onwards, when Assyria grew to take the place of Mitanni, its status as one of the major kingdoms became undeniable. Adad-nirari I was the first Assyrian king to march against

11492-510: A small scale by both Jewish and Roman authorities , with Roman action starting at the time of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. Examples of early executions under Jewish authority reported in the New Testament include the deaths of Saint Stephen and James, son of Zebedee . The Decian persecution was the first empire-wide conflict, when the edict of Decius in 250 AD required everyone in

11830-445: A state. The fall of Assyria was swift, dramatic and unexpected; still today modern scholars continue to grapple with what factors caused the empire's quick and violent downfall. One commonly cited possible explanation is the unrest and the civil wars that immediately preceded Nabopolassar's rise. Such civil conflict could have caused a crisis of legitimacy, and the members of the Assyrian elite may have felt increasingly disconnected from

12168-437: A superior position relative to the other city-states. Eventually, these small conflicts evolved into a general ambition to achieve universal rule. Reaching a position of world domination was not seen as a wholly impossible task in this time since Mesopotamia was believed to correspond to the entire world. One of the earliest Mesopotamian "world conquerors" was Lugalzaggesi , king of Uruk, who conquered all of Lower Mesopotamia in

12506-592: A usurper named Sasî would become king, and in Assur, the local governor instigated a plot after receiving a prophetic dream in which a child rose from a tomb and handed him a staff. Through a well-developed network of spies and informants, Esarhaddon uncovered all of these coup attempts and in 670 had a large number of high-ranking officials put to death. In 672 BC, Esarhaddon decreed that his younger son Ashurbanipal ( r.   669–631 BC) would succeed him in Assyria and that

12844-435: A usurper, whose name is not known, from the empire's western territories rebelling in 622 BC, marching on Nineveh and seizing the capital. Though this usurper was defeated by Sinsharishkun after just 100 days, the absence of the Assyrian army allowed Nabopolassar's forces to capture all of Babylonia in 622–620 BC. Despite this loss, there was little reason for the Assyrians to suspect that Nabopolassar's consolidation of Babylonia

13182-490: A year. Mutakkil-Nusku began a conflict with the Babylonian king Itti-Marduk-balatu over control of the city of Zanqi or Zaqqa, which continued in the reign of his son and successor Ashur-resh-ishi I ( r.   1132–1115 BC). In the Synchronistic History (a later Assyrian document), further tensions at Zanqi are described between Ashur-resh-ishi and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I , which included

13520-402: Is also famous for the most dramatic construction project of the entire Middle Assyrian period: the construction of a new capital city, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta , named after himself (the name meaning "fortress of Tukulti-Ninurta"). Founded in the eleventh year of his reign ( c. 1233 BC), the construction and brief occupation of the city was the only time the Assyrian capital was moved before

13858-515: Is also used by Presbyterians , Methodists , and Congregationalists . This particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator . Each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period . The creed was apparently used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in

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14196-662: Is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and is the Son of God , whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament . It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.4 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of

14534-447: Is attested to have had children during his brief reign. Ashur-etil-ilani, despite being his father's legitimate successor, appears to only have been installed against considerable opposition with the aid of the chief eunuch Sin-shumu-lishir . An Assyrian official by the name of Nabu-rihtu-usur appears to have attempted to usurp the throne but his conspiracy was swiftly crushed by Sin-shumu-lishir. Since excavated ruins at Nineveh from around

14872-429: Is despite Babylon for the most part being treated more leniently than other conquered regions. Babylonia was for instance not annexed directly into Assyria but preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king or by the Assyrian king in a personal union . Despite the privileges the Assyrians saw themselves as extending to the Babylonians, Babylon refused to be passive in political matters, likely because

15210-582: Is impossible to determine the severity of such demographic and climate-related effects. A large reason for Assyrian collapse was the failure to resolve the "Babylonian problem" which had plagued Assyrian kings since Assyria first conquered southern Mesopotamia. Despite the many attempts of the kings of the Sargonid dynasty to resolve the constant rebellions in the south in a variety of different ways; Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon and Esarhaddon's restoration of it, rebellions and insurrections remained common. This

15548-414: Is often regarded to have been the last great king of Assyria. His reign saw the last time Assyrian troops marched in all directions of the Near East. In 667 and 664 BC, Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt in the wake of anti-Assyrian uprisings; both Pharaoh Taharqa and his nephew Tantamani were defeated and Ashurbanipal captured the southern Egyptian capital of Thebes , from which enormous amounts of plundered booty

15886-496: Is possible that a large park constructed near the Southwest Palace served as the inspiration for the later legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon . Sennacherib's choice of making Nineveh capital probably resulted not only from him having long lived in the city as crown prince, but also because of its ideal location, being an important point in the established road and trade systems and also located close to an important ford across

16224-430: Is recorded in the canonical gospels, although infancy gospels were popular in antiquity. In comparison, his adulthood, especially the week before his death, is well documented in the gospels contained within the New Testament , because that part of his life is believed to be most important. The biblical accounts of Jesus's ministry include: his baptism , miracles , preaching, teaching, and deeds. Christians consider

16562-719: Is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will ultimately return to fulfill the rest of the Messianic prophecy , including the resurrection of the dead , the Last Judgment , and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God . According to the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke , Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary . Little of Jesus's childhood

16900-542: Is too scant to come to a certain conclusion. Several pieces of evidence, including that there was a revolt in Nimrud in 746/745 BC, that ancient Assyrian sources give conflicting information in regards to Tiglath-Pileser's lineage, and that Tiglath-Pileser in his inscriptions attributes his rise to the throne solely to divine selection rather than both divine selection and his royal ancestry (typically done by Assyrian kings), have typically been interpreted as indicating that he usurped

17238-466: Is used by modern historians to mark the transition from the Middle Assyrian Empire to the succeeding Neo-Assyrian Empire . Theologically, the Middle Assyrian period saw important transformations of the role of Ashur. Having originated as a deified personification of the city of Assur itself sometime centuries earlier in the Early Assyrian period , Ashur in the Middle Assyrian period became equated with

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17576-523: The turtanu (commander in chief). Shalmaneser also placed other powerful officials, so-called "magnates", in charge of other vulnerable provinces and regions of the empire. The most powerful and threatening enemy of Assyria at this point was Urartu in the north; following in the footsteps of the Assyrians, the Urartian administration, culture, writing system and religion closely followed those of Assyria. The Urartian kings were also autocrats highly similar to

17914-400: The ilku system , not entirely unlike the feudalism of Medieval Europe ; the Assyrian kings had claims to most of the empire's lands, including private property, so in turn for providing attendants and personnel with arable lands to sustain themselves, the kings expected their service in return. The extent and nature of these services varied and was determined by the royal administration. If

18252-516: The Babylonian Chronicles , he was captured and surrendered to the Babylonians by his own people. Ninurta-apal-Ekur then became king, ending the line of rulers who were direct descendants of Tukulti-Ninurta. During his reign, c. 1191–1179 BC, Ninurta-apal-Ekur proved to be, like his immediate predecessors, unable to do much about the collapse of the empire. In the reign of his son, Ashur-dan I ( r.   c. 1178–1133 BC),

18590-529: The Battle of Kār Ištar c. 1280 BC and the Assyro-Babylonian border was redrawn in Assyria's favor. Under Adad-nirari's son Shalmaneser I, Assyrian campaigns against its neighbors and equals intensified. According to his own inscriptions, Shalmaneser conquered eight countries (likely minor states) in the first year of his reign. Among the sites captured was the fortress Arinnu , which Shalmaneser razed to

18928-510: The Bible and sacred traditions on which Christianity is based. Concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds . They began as baptismal formulae and were later expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. " Jesus is Lord " is the earliest creed of Christianity and continues to be used, as with

19266-740: The Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. In the 7th century, Muslims conquered Syria (including Jerusalem ), North Africa, and Spain, converting some of the Christian population to Islam , including some of the Christian populations in pre-Islamic Arabia , and placing the rest under a separate legal status . Part of the Muslims' success was due to the exhaustion of the Byzantine Empire in its decades long conflict with Persia . Beginning in

19604-614: The Celtic , the Baltic and some Slavic peoples . Around 500, Christianity was thoroughly integrated into Byzantine and Kingdom of Italy culture and Benedict of Nursia set out his Monastic Rule , establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries . Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland , Scotland , and Gaul , contributing to

19942-617: The Church of the East (600,000). Smaller church communities number in the thousands despite efforts toward unity ( ecumenism ). In the West , Christianity remains the dominant religion even with a decline in adherence , with about 70% of that population identifying as Christian. Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world's most populous continents. Christians remain greatly persecuted in many regions of

20280-507: The Edict of Worms condemned and excommunicated Luther and his followers, resulting in the schism of the Western Christendom into several branches. Other reformers like Zwingli , Oecolampadius , Calvin , Knox , and Arminius further criticized Catholic teaching and worship. These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism , which repudiated the primacy of the pope ,

20618-474: The Hurrians and Elamites, though many monogamous families are also attested. Censuses and ration lists record members of families by age and sex, chiefly due to this aiding in calculating how much rations should be provided to each family. The head of a household was generally the father, but in the case the father was dead and his eldest son was not yet old enough to take over the role, the mother could also act as

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20956-715: The Inquisition , were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution. The 15th-century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning. During the Reformation , Martin Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses 1517 against the sale of indulgences . Printed copies soon spread throughout Europe. In 1521

21294-590: The Kaskians and Urumeans , tribes who had also settled in the region, voluntarily submitted to him immediately upon the arrival of his army. He also waged war on the Nairi people in the Armenian highlands. Famed for their knowledge of horse breeding, his self-admitted goal of this campaign was to acquire more horses for the Assyrian army. It is clear from his inscriptions that the goal of the campaigns were to instill respect among

21632-536: The Kingdom of Israel . Though cuneiform had previously been the main writing system of these regions, the rise of new peoples and realms led to cuneiform being replaced in the west by more simple alphabetic writing systems. Out of the new players on the scene, the Arameans, through their at times eastward movements, had the most effect on Assyria. Documents as old as from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I demonstrate that even at that early stage, Aramean raids penetrated deep into

21970-563: The Levant . The hostilities reached their zenith under Shalmaneser's son and successor Tukulti-Ninurta I, who defeated the Hittites at the Battle of Nihriya c. 1237 BC. The Hittite defeat at Nihriya marked the beginning of the end of their influence in northern Mesopotamia. Shalmaneser I's son Tukulti-Ninurta I became king c. 1243 BC. He had, according to historian Stefan Jakob, "an unconditional will to create something that would last forever" and his wide-ranging conquests brought

22308-723: The Magisterial Reformation as corrupted. Their activity brought about the Radical Reformation , which gave birth to various Anabaptist denominations. Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Catholic doctrine. During

22646-480: The Medes , Arab tribes, and Ionian pirates in the eastern Mediterranean. A significant victory was the 714 BC campaign against Urartu, in which the Urartian king Rusa I was defeated and much of the Urartian heartland was plundered. In 709 BC, Sargon won against seven kings in the land of Ia', in the district of Iadnana or Atnana. The land of Ia' is assumed to be the Assyrian name for Cyprus, and some scholars suggest that

22984-454: The Neo-Assyrian period, centuries later. After Tukulti-Ninurta's death, the capital was transferred back to Assur. Inscriptions from the late reign of Tukulti-Ninurta showcase increasing internal isolation, as many among the powerful nobility of Assyria grew dissatisfied with his rule, especially after the loss of Babylonia. In some of his own inscriptions, Tukulti-Ninurta appears to lament

23322-420: The Old Testament . The Christian concept of messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept . The core Christian belief is that through belief in and acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus , sinful humans can be reconciled to God, and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life . While there have been many theological disputes over the nature of Jesus over

23660-725: The Oriental Orthodox , taught Christ "to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably": one divine and one human, and that both natures, while perfect in themselves, are nevertheless also perfectly united into one person . The Athanasian Creed , received in the Western Church as having the same status as the Nicene and Chalcedonian, says: "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding

23998-829: The Restoration Movement , such as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) , the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada , and the Churches of Christ . The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah (Christ). Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity and hold that Jesus's coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of

24336-870: The Roman Empire by the Edict of Milan (313), later convening the Council of Nicaea (325) where Early Christianity was consolidated into what would become the state religion of the Roman Empire (380). The Church of the East and Oriental Orthodoxy both split over differences in Christology (5th century), while the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East–West Schism (1054). Protestantism split into numerous denominations from

24674-695: The State church of the Roman Empire . As soon as it became connected to the state, Christianity grew wealthy; the Church solicited donations from the rich and could now own land. Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address Arianism and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by in Catholicism , Eastern Orthodoxy , Lutheranism , Anglicanism , and many other Protestant churches. Nicaea

25012-538: The Tigris , the foothills of the Taurus Mountains and the Upper Zab , which modern historians use to mark the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period. Ashur-uballit was the first native Assyrian ruler to claim the royal title šar ("king"), and the first ruler of Assur to do so since the time of the Amorite conqueror Shamshi-Adad I in the 18th century BC. Shortly after achieving independence, he further claimed

25350-549: The Tukulti-Ninurta epic, he marched south to the Diyala River and began targeting Babylonian cities, including Sippar and Dur-Kurigalzu . Kashtiliash then attacked the Assyrians, confident that he would be victorious, but he was defeated and then avoided conflict himself for the rest of the war. Tukulti-Ninurta eventually emerged as the winner, conquering Babylonia c. 1225 BC, dragging Kashtiliash back to Assyria as

25688-531: The World Council of Churches . The Apostles' Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is used by a number of Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, most visibly by liturgical churches of Western Christian tradition, including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church , Lutheranism , Anglicanism , and Western Rite Orthodoxy . It

26026-871: The dechristianization of France during the French Revolution , the Spanish Civil War , and certain Marxist movements, especially the Russian Revolution and the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union under state atheism . Especially pressing in Europe was the formation of nation states after the Napoleonic era . In all European countries, different Christian denominations found themselves in competition to greater or lesser extents with each other and with

26364-498: The ilku system, engineers or architects ( šalimpāju ), carpenters and religious functionaries. The taxation system of the Middle Assyrian Empire is not yet fully understood. Though tax collectors are known to have existed, records of taxes being collected and what these were are lacking; the only currently confidently attested direct tax paid by individuals was an import tax, levied on imports of goods from foreign states. In at least one case, this tax amounted to about 25 percent of

26702-414: The name of the year . Though it would be easy to place the blame on Sinsharishkun, there is no evidence to suggest that he was an incompetent ruler. No defensive plan existed for the Assyrian heartland since it had not been invaded for centuries and Sinsharishkun was a capable military leader using well-established Mesopotamian military tactics. In a normal war, Sinsharishkun could have been victorious but he

27040-675: The power vacuum left by the Hittites and Egyptians in Anatolia and the Levant allowed various ethno-tribal communities and states to take their place. In northern Anatolia and northern Syria, the Luwians seized power, forming the Syro-Hittite states . In Syria, the Arameans grew increasingly prominent. In Palestine , the Philistines and Israelites carved out realms of their own, eventually coalescing into

27378-597: The state religion in Armenia in the early 4th century AD, making Armenia the first officially Christian state. It was not an entirely new religion in Armenia, having penetrated into the country from at least the third century, but it may have been present even earlier. Constantine I was exposed to Christianity in his youth, and throughout his life his support for the religion grew, culminating in baptism on his deathbed. During his reign, state-sanctioned persecution of Christians

27716-468: The sạ bū ša kakkē ("weapon troops") and the sạ bū ša arâtē ("shield-bearing troops"). Surviving inscriptions do not specify what kind of weaponry these soldiers carried. In lists of the troops in armies, the sạ bū ša kakkē appear opposite the chariots, whereas the sạ bū ša arâtē appear opposite to the archers. It is possible that the sạ bū ša kakkē included ranged troops, such as slingers ( ṣābū ša ušpe ) and archers ( ṣābū ša qalte ). The chariots were

28054-451: The world population . Its adherents, known as Christians , are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories . Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches , and doctrinally diverse concerning justification and the nature of salvation , ecclesiology , ordination , and Christology . The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as

28392-415: The šiluhlu̮ were not considered property of their employers but rather of the Assyrian government. In one instance, royal officials are explicitly recorded to have intervened after the death of an employer of šiluhlu̮ to distribute their contracts among his sons and an apparently unrelated individual. Other members of clearly lower social classes included the "village residents" ( ālāyû ), also depended on

28730-441: The ḫalṣu (fortifications/districts), but these were soon thereafter replaced completely with pāḫutu . The number of provinces changed as the territory of Assyria expanded and contracted, with the highest number of provinces being recorded in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I. Each province was headed by a provincial governor ( bel pāḫete ) who was responsible for the local economy and public safety and order. Another important task of

29068-509: The 1st century , after the death of Jesus, as a Judaic sect with Hellenistic influence in the Roman province of Judaea . The disciples of Jesus spread their faith around the Eastern Mediterranean area, despite significant persecution . The inclusion of Gentiles led Christianity to slowly separate from Judaism (2nd century). Emperor Constantine I decriminalized Christianity in

29406-582: The 24th century BC. The first great Mesopotamian empire is generally regarded to have been the Akkadian Empire , founded c. 2334 BC by Sargon of Akkad . Numerous imperialist states rose and fell in Mesopotamia and the rest of the Near East after the time of the Akkadian Empire. Most early empires and kingdoms were limited to some core territories, with most of their subjects only nominally recognizing

29744-475: The 6th century AD. These new universities expanded the curriculum to include academic programs for clerics, lawyers, civil servants, and physicians. The university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of

30082-707: The 8th century, with the rise of Carolingian leaders, the Papacy sought greater political support in the Frankish Kingdom . The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed the ecclesiastical structure and administration. In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons. In

30420-550: The Akitu festival. Some later Assyrian kings, such as Sargon's son Sennacherib ( r.   705–681 BC) and grandson Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC), found the extent of Sargon's pro-Babylonian leanings to be somewhat questionable. In 707 BC, Sargon returned to Nimrud and in 706 BC, Dur-Sharrukin was inaugurated as the empire's new capital. Sargon did not get to enjoy his new city for long; in 705 BC he embarked on his final campaign, directed against Tabal in Anatolia. To

30758-565: The Assyrian army marched through the Levant all the way to the Egyptian border, forcing several of the states on the way, such as Ammon , Edom , Moab and Judah , to pay tribute and become Assyrian vassals. In 732 BC, the Assyrians captured Damascus and much of Transjordan and Galilee . Tiglath-Pileser's conquests are, in addition to their extent, also noteworthy because of the large scale in which he undertook resettlement policies ; he settled tens, if not hundreds, of thousand foreigners in both

31096-403: The Assyrian army under Ashur-nirari was successful against Arpad in northwestern Syria in 754 BC, they were also beaten at an important battle against Sarduri II of Urartu. In 745 BC, Ashur-nirari was succeeded by Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC), probably another son of Adad-nirari III. The nature of Tiglath-Pileser's rise to throne is not clear and the surviving evidence

31434-474: The Assyrian borders during the decline of the Middle Assyrian Empire. The early Neo-Assyrian efforts at reconquest were mostly focused on the region up to the Khabur river in the west. One of the first conquests of Ashur-dan II had been Katmuḫu in this region, which he made a vassal kingdom rather than annexed outright; this suggests that the resources available to the early Neo-Assyrian kings were very limited and that

31772-432: The Assyrian heartland and in far-away underdeveloped provinces. Late in his reign, Tiglath-Pileser turned his eyes towards Babylon. For a long time, the political situation in the south had been highly volatile, with conflict between the traditional urban elites of the cities, Aramean tribes in the countryside and Chaldean warlords in the south. In 732 BC, the Chaldean warlord Nabu-mukin-zeri seized Babylon and became king,

32110-554: The Assyrian heartland to quell uprisings and soon enough, a Babylonian uprising led by Adad-shuma-usur , perhaps a son of Kashtiliash IV, drove the Assyrians out of Babylonia c. 1216 BC. Tukulti-Ninurta is recorded to have complained to the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma II , at this point an ally of Assyria and expected to cooperate militarily, that he had "remained silent" on the "illegal seizure of power" of Adad-shuma-usur. In addition to his campaigns and conquests, Tukulti-Ninurta

32448-420: The Assyrian heartland, at one point reaching Assur itself. The Arameans were tribal and their attacks were uncoordinated raids carried out by individual groups. As such, Assyrian kings were able to defeat several Aramean groups in battle. The guerilla tactics and ability of the Arameans to quickly withdraw into difficult terrain however prevented Assyrian armies from ever achieving a lasting decisive victory. From

32786-400: The Assyrian king. However, there is as mentioned no evidence that Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun warred with each other, and other uprisings of Assyrian officials—the unrest upon Ashur-etil-ilani's accession, the rebellion of Sin-shumu-lishir, and the capture of Nineveh by a usurper in 622 BC—were dealt with relatively quickly. Protracted civil war is thus unlikely to have been the reason for

33124-433: The Assyrian kings. The Assyrians also took some inspiration from Urartu. For instance, Assyrian irrigation technology and cavalry units, introduced by Shalmaneser, may have been derived from encounters with Urartu. The imperialist expansionism undertaken by the kings of both Urartu and Assyria led to frequent military clashes between the two, despite being separated by the Taurus Mountains . In 856, Shalmaneser conducted one of

33462-516: The Assyrian people, provide offerings to the god. Middle Assyrian kings were also expected to care for all the other gods; Shalmaneser I in his inscriptions mentions that he provided offerings for "all of the gods". From the time of Ashur-resh-ishi I onwards, the religious and cultic duties of the king were pushed somewhat into the background, though they were still prominently mentioned in accounts of building and restoring temples. Assyrian titles and epithets in inscriptions from then on generally emphasize

33800-534: The Assyrian response was swift and Nippur was recaptured in October 626. Sinsharishkun's attempts to retake Babylon and Uruk were unsuccessful, however, and in the aftermath Nabopolassar was formally invested as king of Babylon on November 22/23 626 BC, restoring Babylonia as an independent kingdom. In the years that followed Nabopolassar's coronation, Babylonia became a brutal battleground between Assyrian and Babylonian armies. Though cities often repeatedly changed hands,

34138-570: The Assyrians and Sinsharishkun's failure to stop it, despite trying for years, doomed his empire. Despite all of these simultaneous factors, it is possible that the empire could have survived if the unexpected alliance between the Babylonians and Medes had not been sealed. Sennacherib, the great king, the mighty king, king of the Universe , king of Assyria, king of the Four Corners of the World ; favorite of

34476-404: The Assyrians and instead fought with Enlil-nirari. His treason and betrayal resulted in deep trauma, still referenced in Assyrian writings concerning diplomacy and wars against Babylonia more than a century later; it was seen by many later Assyrians as the starting point of the historical enmity between the two civilizations. At one point, Kurigalzu reached as far into the Assyrian lands as Sugagu ,

34814-495: The Assyrians of the Assyrian heartland and foreign groups growing closer. The most prominent foreign ethnic groups within the Middle Assyrian Empire were the Hurrians (incorporated through conquests in northern Syria), Kassites (descendants of deportees and captives from the Babylonian campaigns) and Arameans. Though many Aramean tribes were fought by the Assyrian kings, others traded with the Assyrians and several Aramean tribes towards

35152-539: The Assyro-Babylonian border regions. In c.  787 BC , Adad-nirari appointed the new turtanu Shamshi-ilu . Shamshi-ilu would occupy this position for about 40 years and was for most of that time likely the most powerful political actor in Assyria. After Adad-nirari's death in 783, three of his sons ruled in succession: Shalmaneser IV ( r.   783–773 BC), Ashur-dan III ( r.   773–755 BC) and Ashur-nirari V ( r.   755–745 BC). Their reigns collectively form what appears to be

35490-618: The Babylonian king Nabonassar and conquered territories on the eastern side of the Tigris river. In the year after that, Tiglath-Pileser conducted a successful campaign in the region around the Zagros Mountains, where he created two new Assyrian provinces. From 743 to 739 BC, Tiglath-Pileser focused his attention on the still strong Urartu in the north and the ever unsubmissive cities of northern Syria. Campaigns against both targets proved to be resoundingly successful; in 743 BC, Sarduri II of Urartu

35828-417: The Babylonian national deity Marduk . Control over Babylonia was secured through campaigns against the remaining Chaldean strongholds in the south. By the time of his death in 727 BC, Tiglath-Pileser had more than doubled the territory of the empire. Tiglath-Pileser's policy of direct rule rather than rule through vassal states brought important changes to the Assyrian state and its economy; rather than tribute,

36166-438: The Babylonians might have seen the Assyrian kings, who only sometimes visited the city, as failing to undertake the traditional religious duties of the Babylonian kings. The strong appreciation of Babylonian culture in Assyria sometimes turned to hatred, which led to Babylon suffering several brutal acts of retribution from Assyrian kings after revolts. Nabopolassar's revolt was the last in a long line of Babylonian uprisings against

36504-423: The Babylonians slowly but surely pushed Sinsharishkun's armies out of the south. Under Sinsharishkun's personal leadership, the Assyrian campaigns against Nabopolassar initially looked to be successful: in 625 BC, Sippar was retaken and Nabopolassar failed to take Nippur, in 623 BC the Assyrians recaptured Nabopolassar's ancestral home city Uruk. Sinsharishkun might ultimately have been victorious had it not been for

36842-539: The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade . The Christian Church experienced internal conflict between the 7th and 13th centuries that resulted in a schism between the Latin Church of Western Christianity branch,

37180-755: The Catholic Church in the Reformation era (16th century). Following the Age of Discovery (15th–17th century), Christianity expanded throughout the world via missionary work , evangelism , immigration and extensive trade. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization , particularly in Europe from late antiquity and the Middle Ages . The six major branches of Christianity are Roman Catholicism (1.3 billion people), Protestantism (625 million-900 million), Eastern Orthodoxy (230 million), Oriental Orthodoxy (60 million), Restorationism (35 million), and

37518-486: The Elamites, his efforts were initially unsuccessful and in 720 BC the Elamites defeated Sargon's forces at Der . Sargon's early reign was more successful in the west. There, another movement, led by Yau-bi'di of Hamath and supported by Simirra, Damascus, Samaria and Arpad, also sought to regain independence and threatened to destroy the sophisticated provincial system imposed on the region under Tiglath-Pileser. While Sargon

37856-616: The Jewish commandments. Paul the Apostle solved this by insisting that salvation by faith in Christ , and participation in his death and resurrection by their baptism, sufficed. At first he persecuted the early Christians, but after a conversion experience he preached to the gentiles , and is regarded as having had a formative effect on the emerging Christian identity as separate from Judaism. Eventually, his departure from Jewish customs would result in

38194-593: The Levant to force the states there to pay tribute again. This conflict is the first Assyrian war to be recorded in great detail not only in Assyrian inscriptions but also in classical sources and in the Hebrew Bible. The Assyrian account diverges somewhat from the Biblical one; whereas the Assyrian inscriptions describes the campaign as a resounding success, in which tribute was regained, some states were annexed outright and Sennacherib even managed to stop Egyptian ambitions in

38532-425: The Levant. Modern researchers tend to varyingly ascribe the collapse to large-scale migrations, invasions by the mysterious Sea Peoples , new warfare technology and its effects, starvation, epidemics, climate change and unsustainable exploitation of the working population. Enlil-kudurri-usur enjoyed a much poorer relationship with the line of vassal rulers of Hanigalbat, perhaps because he might not have supported

38870-437: The Medes and inspired a direct intervention. In July or August of 614 BC, the Medes mounted attacks on both Nimrud and Nineveh and captured Assur, leading to the ancient city being brutally plundered and its inhabitants being massacred. Nabopolassar arrived at Assur after the sack and upon his arrival met and allied with Cyaxares. The fall of Assur must have been devastating for Assyrian morale. Just two years later in 612 BC, after

39208-412: The Middle Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. Even before he became king, neighboring kingdoms had been wary of his accession; when he assumed the throne, the Hittite king Tudḫaliya IV sent him a letter of congratulations but secretly also sent a letter to the Assyrian grand vizier Babu-aha-iddina in which he implored the vizier to dissuade Tukulti-Ninurta from attacking the Hittite territories in

39546-413: The Middle Assyrian civilization given that the line of kings and inhabitation of the Assyrian heartland was continuous. The inscriptions of early Neo-Assyrian kings typically treat their wars of expansions as reconquests of territory lost during the decline of the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the preceding Old Assyrian period , the Assyrian government was in many respects an oligarchy , with the king being

39884-412: The Middle Assyrian period. The earliest Assyrian king known to have explicitly referred to himself as a priest ( šangû ) was Adad-nirari I, who among his titles used the epithet šangû ṣıru ša Enlil ("exalted priest of the god Enlil "). Several sources emphasize the Assyrian king being close to Ashur, and their role as intermediaries between Ashur and mankind. The king was expected to, in conjunction with

40222-494: The Mitanni lands governed by the grand viziers. Under the provincial governors, cities also had their own administrations, headed by mayors ( ḫazi’ānu ), appointed by the kings but representing the local city elite. Similar to the governors, though less important, the mayors were mostly responsible for local economy, including overseeing rations, agriculture and organization of labor. The Assyrians also employed what they referred to as

40560-412: The Mitanni lands. Sometime later, Shattuara's son Wasashatta rebelled against the Assyrians, though was defeated by Adad-nirari who, as punishment, annexed several cities alongside the Khabur river. At Taite , a former Mitanni capital, Adad-nirari constructed a royal palace for himself. The primary focus of Adad-nirari was the conquest and/or pacification of Babylonia. Not only did Babylonia present

40898-459: The Mittani kingdom as different factions vied with each other to depose him. During the wars that followed Tushratta's accession, multiple rivals came to rule Mitanni, such as Artatama II and Shuttarna III . The Assyrians sometimes fought them and sometimes allied with them. Shuttarna III secured Assyrian support, but had to pay heavily for it in silver and gold. Ashur-uballit, doubtlessly watching

41236-485: The Mushki strongholds, the city of Katmuḫu in the northeast, continued to be troublesome for a few years before it was reconquered, looted and its king, Errupi , was deported. Numerous other sites in the northeast were also conquered and incorporated into his empire. Tiglath-Pileser also went on significant campaigns in the west. The cities of northern Syria, which had ceased to pay tribute decades prior, were reconquered and

41574-520: The Neo-Assyrian Empire, instead leaving it open and undefended. In the following decades, the Persians would migrate into the region and rebuild the ruined Elamite strongholds for their own use. Though Ashurbanipal's inscriptions present Assyria as an uncontested and divinely supported hegemon over all the world, cracks were starting to form in the empire during his reign. At some point after 656 BC,

41912-579: The Netherlands and Frisia . Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War , the English Civil War , and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration . In the revival of neoplatonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity; quite

42250-618: The Persons nor dividing the Substance ". Most Christians ( Catholic , Eastern Orthodox , Oriental Orthodox , and Protestant alike) accept the use of creeds and subscribe to at least one of the creeds mentioned above. Certain Evangelical Protestants , though not all of them, reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even while agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in

42588-625: The Republic of Ireland, and Switzerland, all countries with competing denominations. Competition is found in Germany, the Netherlands, and again Switzerland, all countries with minority Catholic populations, which to a greater or lesser extent identified with the nation. Finally, separation between religion (again, specifically Catholicism) and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy, countries where

42926-546: The Roman Empire (except Jews) to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods. The Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303 AD was also particularly severe. Roman persecution ended in 313 AD with the Edict of Milan . While Proto-orthodox Christianity was becoming dominant, heterodox sects also existed at the same time, which held radically different beliefs. Gnostic Christianity developed a duotheistic doctrine based on illusion and enlightenment rather than forgiveness of sin. With only

43264-595: The Son of God —the Logos incarnated —who ministered , suffered , and died on a cross , but rose from the dead for the salvation of humankind; and referred to as the gospel , meaning the "good news". The four canonical gospels of Matthew , Mark , Luke and John describe Jesus's life and teachings as preserved in the early Christian tradition, with the Old Testament as the gospels' respected background. Christianity began in

43602-487: The Tigris river. In 694, Sennacherib invaded Elam, with the explicit goal to root out Marduk-apla-iddina and his supporters. Sennacherib sailed across the Persian Gulf with a fleet built by Phoenician and Greek shipwrights and captured and sacked countless Elamite cities. He never got his revenge on Marduk-apla-iddina, who died of natural causes before the Assyrian army landed, and the campaign instead significantly escalated

43940-663: The West , the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo 's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals . The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. While Arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see the Massacre of Verden , for example), Catholicism also spread among the Hungarians , the Germanic ,

44278-801: The West during this period was enormous and of long-lasting significance. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving in large numbers only the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa and the Nubian Church in the Sudan (Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia). With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in

44616-459: The achievements of individual kings; during the periods of decline, the royal titles used typically grew more simple again, only to grow grander once more as Assyrian power experienced resurgences. In addition to their roles as military leaders, the kings were religiously significant. Already in the Old Assyrian period, the kings were regarded to be the stewards of the Assyrian national deity Ashur, though this began to manifest itself even more in

44954-494: The achievements of their predecessors. The period of decline initiated after Ashur-bel-kala's death was not reversed until the middle of the 10th century BC. Though this period is poorly documented, it is clear that Assyria underwent a major crisis. Although Assyria was only marginally affected by the Late Bronze Age collapse, the collapse caused great changes in the geopolitics of the lands surrounding Assyria. In large part,

45292-420: The age of the magnates has often been characterized as a period of decline. Assyria endured through this period largely unscathed but there was little to no territorial expansion and central power grew unusually weak. Some developments were good for the longevity of the empire, since many magnates took the opportunity to develop stronger military and economic structures and institutions in their own lands throughout

45630-666: The aggressive armies of the Kassites, Qutû , Lullumu , and Šubaru "), šakanki ilāni ("appointee of the gods") and rubā’u ellu ("holy prince"). The development reached its peak under the wide-ranging Tukulti-Ninurta I, who used various styles denoting the size of his domain, such as "king of Assyria and Karduniash ", "king of Sumer and Akkad", "king of the Upper and the Lower Seas" and " king of all peoples ". Royal titles and epithets were often highly reflective of current political developments and

45968-567: The aid of several Elamite kings, he revolted. The war ended disastrously for Shamash-shum-ukin; in 648 BC, Ashurbanipal captured Babylon after a long siege and devastated the city. Shamash-shum-ukin might have died by setting himself on fire in his palace. Ashurbanipal replaced him as king of Babylon with the puppet ruler Kandalanu and then marched on Elam. The Elamite capital of Susa was captured and devastated and large numbers of Elamite prisoners were brought to Nineveh, tortured and humiliated. Ashurbanipal chose to not annex and integrate Elam into

46306-548: The ambition of establishing a universal, all-encompassing empire was a long-established aspect of royal ideology in the ancient Near East prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia ( c.  2900  – c.  2350 BC ), the Sumerian rulers of the various city-states in the region often fought with each other in order to establish small hegemonic empires and to gain

46644-478: The army and centralize the realm, Tiglath-Pileser is by some regarded as the first true initiator of Assyria's "imperial" phase. Tiglath-Pileser is the earliest Assyrian king mentioned in the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible , and thus the earliest king for which there exists important outside perspectives on his reign. Early on, Tiglath-Pileser reduced the influence of the previously powerful magnates, dividing their territories into smaller provinces under

46982-439: The army whereas cavalry ( ša petḫalle ) did not. When used, cavalry was often simply employed for escorting or message deliveries. Further specialized combat roles existed, including the sappers ( ša nēpeše ), particularly useful at sieges. Military officials and generals, included individuals appointed to positions termed sukkallu , sukkallu rabi’u , tartennu and nāgiru . Generals were generally recruited from officials in

47320-448: The assassination of his father. Such a poor relationship was dangerous given that these vassal rulers were also members of the Assyrian royal family, as descendants of Adad-nirari I. At some point during Enlil-kudurri-usur's reign, Ili-ipadda's son Ninurta-apal-Ekur traveled to Babylonia where he met with Adad-shuma-usur. With Babylonian support, Ninurta-apal-Ekur then invaded Assyria and defeated Enlil-kudurri-usur in battle. According to

47658-633: The assassination on his son Ashur-nasir-apli, perhaps a misspelled version of the name of his successor Ashur-nadin-apli ( r.   c. 1206–1203 BC). Another leader of the conspiracy appears to have been the grand vizier and vassal king of Hanigalbat Ili-ipadda , who retained a prominent position at the court for years thereafter. Ashur-nadin-apli was after his short reign succeeded by two of his brothers, Ashur-nirari III ( r.   c. 1202–1197 BC) and Enlil-kudurri-usur ( r.   c. 1196–1192 BC), who also ruled only briefly and were unable to maintain Assyrian power. Though

47996-403: The authority of the central government. 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 Empire and exemplified in titles such as " king of the Universe " or " king of the Four Corners of the World ". This desire was also manifested in the kings of Assyria, who ruled in what had once been

48334-437: The basis of legal obligations and regulations. It is impossible to ascertain from the surviving inscriptions the extent to which Middle Assyrian levies were trained for their tasks, but it is unlikely that the Assyrian army would be able to be as successful as it was in the reigns of figures like Tukulti-Ninurta I and Tiglath-Pileser I without trained soldiers. In addition to the levies, who are called ḫurādu or ṣābū ḫurādātu in

48672-402: The building and repairs of temples being the primary concern, but construction of other works, such as palaces, also being mentioned. When rebuilding or constructing buildings, the kings often laid down foundation deposits with their names. Later rulers were expected to honor the works of their predecessors and anyone who did not was cursed. One of Tukulti-Ninurta's foundation deposits, relating to

49010-414: The churches of Rome. Its points include: The Nicene Creed was formulated, largely in response to Arianism , at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 respectively, and ratified as the universal creed of Christendom by the First Council of Ephesus in 431. The Chalcedonian Definition , or Creed of Chalcedon, developed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, though rejected by

49348-399: The city of Der , close to the border of the southwestern kingdom of Elam . Though Adad-nirari did not manage to incorporate territories so far away from the Assyrian heartland into the empire, he secured the city of Arrapha (modern-day Kirkuk ). Arrapha in later times served as the launching point of innumerable Assyrian campaigns toward lands in the east. A testament to Adad-nirari's power

49686-441: The coalition against him collapsed with Hadadezer's death in 841 BC. Assyrian forces thrice tried to capture Damascus itself but were not successful. Shalmaneser's failed attempts to properly impose Assyrian rule in Syria was a result of his energetic campaigns overextending the empire too quickly. In the 830s, his armies reached into Cilicia in Anatolia and in 836 BC, Shalmaneser reached Ḫubušna (near modern-day Ereğli ), one of

50024-459: The coalition in the same year that it was formed. Though Assyrian records claim that he scored a great victory at the subsequent Battle of Qarqar it is more likely that the battle was indecisive since no substantial political or territorial gains were achieved. After Qarqar, Shalmaneser focused much on the south and in 851–850 BC aided the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I to defeat a revolt by his brother Marduk-bel-ushati . After defeating

50362-403: The conduct of other courtiers, who were divided into ša-rēši and mazzāz pāni . The meaning of these designations are poorly understood, and some individuals are attested with both. It is possible that the ša-rēši were eunuchs , though this is disputed. The mazzāz pāni may have been close friends and confidants of the king. The surviving palace decrees deal with rules and daily lives of

50700-431: The conflict between Mitanni and the Hittites closely out of interest in expanding Assyria, directed much of his attention to the lands south of his realm. Successful campaigns were directed against both Arrapha and Nuzi , which was destroyed by Assyrian troops in the 1330s BC or before. Neither city was formally incorporated into Assyria; the Assyrian army probably withdrew to the Little Zab , allowing Babylonia to conquer

51038-471: The conflict with the anti-Assyrian faction in Babylonia and with the Elamites. The Elamite king Hallushu-Inshushinak took revenge on Sennacherib by marching on Babylonia while the Assyrians were busy in his lands. During this campaign, Ashur-nadin-shumi was captured through some means and taken to Elam, where he was probably executed. In his place, the Elamites and Babylonians crowned the Babylonian noble Nergal-ushezib as king of Babylon. Though Senacherib just

51376-446: The construction of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, included the message "He who destroys that wall, discards my monumental inscriptions and my inscribed name, abandons Kar‐Tukulti‐Ninurta, my capital, and neglects (it): may the god Ashur, my lord, overthrow his sovereignty, smash his weapons, bring about the defeat of his army, diminish his borders, decree the end of his reign, darken his days, vitiate his years (and) destroy his name and his seed from

51714-629: The construction of another new capital of the empire, named Dur-Sharrukin ("Fort Sargon") after himself. Unlike Ashurnasirpal's project at Nimrud more than a century earlier, Sargon was not simply expanding an already existing city, but building a new one from scratch. Perhaps the motivating factor was that Sargon did not feel safe at Nimrud after the early conspiracies against him. As construction work progressed, Sargon continued to go on military campaigns, which ensured that Assyria's geopolitical dominance and influence expanded significantly in his reign. Just between 716 and 713 BC, Sargon fought against Urartu,

52052-570: The contrary, many of the greatest works of the Renaissance were devoted to it, and the Catholic Church patronized many works of Renaissance art . Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church. Some scholars and historians attribute Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution . Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Nicolaus Copernicus , Galileo Galilei , Johannes Kepler , Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle . In

52390-418: The death of Ashur-dan II in 912 BC. The Middle Assyrian Empire was Assyria's first period of ascendancy as an empire . Though the empire experienced successive periods of expansion and decline, it remained the dominant power of northern Mesopotamia throughout the period. In terms of Assyrian history, the Middle Assyrian period was marked by important social, political and religious developments, including

52728-439: The death of Ashurnasirpal I ( r.   1049–1031 BC) to the end of the Middle Assyrian period more than a century later, no surviving Assyrian royal inscriptions describe any military activities whatsoever. Though kings from this time, such as Shalmaneser II ( r.   1030–1019 BC) and Ashur-rabi II ( r.   1012–972 BC), used names that proudly echoed those of earlier successful rulers, suggesting

53066-418: The deaths of his queen and several of his children. Despite his physical and mental health, Esarhaddon led many successful military campaigns, several of them farther away from the Assyrian heartland than those of any previous king. He defeated the Cimmerians who plagued the northwestern part of the empire, conquered the cities of Kundu and Sissû in Anatolia, and conquered the Phoenician city of Sidon , which

53404-448: The decisions, and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches . In the thirteenth century, a new emphasis on Jesus' suffering, exemplified by the Franciscans' preaching, had the consequence of turning worshippers' attention towards Jews, on whom Christians had placed the blame for Jesus' death . Christianity's limited tolerance of Jews

53742-414: The dignity of a great king on the level of the pharaohs and the Hittite kings . Ashur-uballit's claim to be a great king meant that he also embedded himself in the ideological implications of that role; a great king was expected to expand the borders of his realm to incorporate "uncivilized" territories, ideally eventually ruling the entire world. On account of political realism however, the true situation

54080-480: The division caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Europe. Lutheranism spread into the northern, central, and eastern parts of present-day Germany, Livonia , and Scandinavia. Anglicanism was established in England in 1534. Calvinism and its varieties, such as Presbyterianism , were introduced in Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland, and France. Arminianism gained followers in

54418-492: The dominant political power in the Near East, though it would not yet achieve power comparable to that under its complete dominion in later centuries. In terms of personality, Ashurnasirpal was a complex figure; he was a relentless warrior and one of the most brutal kings in Assyrian history, but he also cared about the people, working to increase the prosperity and comfort of his subjects and being recorded as establishing extensive water reserves and food depots in times of crisis. As

54756-417: The dominant sects in both Judaism and Christianity. Christianity spread to Aramaic -speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire , including Mesopotamia , which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires. The presence of Christianity in Africa began in

55094-400: The earliest centuries of Christian history, generally, Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate and " true God and true man " (or both fully divine and fully human). Jesus, having become fully human , suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin . As fully God, he rose to life again. According to the New Testament , he rose from the dead, ascended to heaven,

55432-533: The early 10th century, Western Christian monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny . In the West, from the 11th century onward, some older cathedral schools became universities (see, for example, University of Oxford , University of Paris and University of Bologna ). Previously, higher education had been the domain of Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools ( Scholae monasticae ), led by monks and nuns . Evidence of such schools dates back to

55770-405: The east, aimed to strengthen Assyrian control in this direction. Among the lands he defeated were Kirruri , Hubushkia and Gilzanu . In later times, Gilzanu often supplied Assyria with horses. The second phase of the Assyrian reconquista was initiated in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta's son and successor Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC). Under his rule, Assyria rose to become

56108-458: The eclipse could have been interpreted by the Assyrian populace as the gods withdrawing their divine support for Ashur-dan's rule. Though Assyria stabilized again under Ashur-dan's brother Ashur-nirari V, he appears to have been relatively idle. Ashur-nirari campaigned in only three of the ten years of his reign and is not recorded to have conducted any construction projects. The influential Shamshi-ilu died at some point in Ashur-nirari's reign. Though

56446-418: The efforts of the kings Adad-nirari I ( r.   c. 1305–1274 BC), Shalmaneser I ( r.   c. 1273–1244 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r.   c. 1243–1207 BC), under whom Assyria expanded to for a time become the dominant power in Mesopotamia . The reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I marked the height of the Middle Assyrian Empire and included the subjugation of Babylonia and

56784-421: The empire appears to have been largely stable under his rule. Shalmaneser managed to secure some lasting achievements; he was probably the Assyrian king responsible for conquering Samaria and thus bringing an end to the ancient Kingdom of Israel and he also appears to have annexed lands in northern Syria and Cilicia. Shalmaneser was succeeded by Sargon II ( r.   722–705 BC), who in all likelihood

57122-478: The empire came under attack. Further explanations may lie in the actions and policies of the late Assyrian kings themselves. Under Esarhaddon's reign, many experienced and capable officials and generals had been killed as the result of the king's paranoia and under Ashurbanipal, many had lost their positions to eunuchs. Some historians have further deemed Ashurbanipal to have been an "irresponsible and self-indulgent king" since he at one point appointed his chief musician

57460-399: The empire grew more reliant on taxes collected by provincial governors, a development which increased administrative costs but also reduced the need for military intervention. Tiglath-Pileser was succeeded by his son Ululayu, who took the regnal name Shalmaneser V ( r.   727–722 BC). Though little to no royal inscriptions and other sources survive from Shalmaneser's brief reign,

57798-473: The empire itself; one documents attests that a gift given to Ninurta-tukulti-Ashur while he was still a prince in the reign of his father Ashur-dan I included 914 sheep. There was no standing army in the Middle Assyrian period. Instead, the majority of soldiers used for military engagements were mobilized only when they were needed, such as for civil projects or in the time of campaigns. Large amounts of soldiers could be recruited and mobilized relative quickly on

58136-786: The empire lost control of Egypt, which instead fell into the hands of the Pharaoh Psamtik I , founder of Egypt's twenty-sixth dynasty . Egyptian independence was achieved only slowly and relations remained peaceful; Psamtik was originally granted Egypt as a vassal by Ashurbanipal and with the Assyrian army occupied elsewhere, the region slowly receded from Ashurbanipal's grasp. Ashurbanipal went on numerous campaigns against various Arab tribes which failed to consolidate rule over their lands and wasted Assyrian resources. Perhaps most importantly, his devastation of Babylon after defeating Shamash-shum-ukin fanned anti-Assyrian sentiments in southern Mesopotamia, which soon after his death would have disastrous consequences. Ashurbanipal's reign also appears to have seen

58474-557: The empire reached its greatest extent and became the dominant force in Mesopotamia, for a time even subjugating Babylonia in the south. After Tukulti-Ninurta's assassination, the Middle Assyrian Empire went into a long period of decline, becoming increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland itself. Though this period of decline was broken up by Tiglath-Pileser I ( r.   1114–1076 BC), who once more expanded Assyrian power, his conquests overstretched Assyria and could not be maintained by his successors. The trend of decline

58812-419: The empire was not surpassed in the Middle East until the 19th century. The empire also 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. This policy served to both disintegrate local identities and to introduce Assyrian-developed agricultural techniques to all parts of the empire. A consequence

59150-441: The empire's fall. Another proposed explanation was that Assyrian rule suffered from serious structural vulnerabilities; most importantly, Assyria appears to have had little to offer the regions it conquered other than order and freedom from strife; conquered lands were mostly kept in line through fear and terror, alienating local peoples. As such, people outside of the Assyrian heartland may have had little reason to remain loyal when

59488-495: The empire's southernmost remaining city. Sinsharishkun succeeded in defeating Nabopolassar's assault and, for a time, saving the old city. It is doubtful that Nabopolassar would ever have achieved a lasting victory without the entrance of the Median Empire into the conflict. Long fragmented into several tribes and often targets of Assyrian military campaigns, the Medes had been united under the king Cyaxares . In late 615 or in 614 BC, Cyaxares and his army entered Assyria and conquered

59826-478: The empire's western territories, were local governors and representatives required greater autonomy to deal with local geopolitics and challenges. The most well-known site today that at one point functioned as a dunnu estate is Tell Sabi Abyad . Documents describe the estate as a large agricultural one, comprising about 3,600 hectares and employing around 100 free farmers and their families, as well as 100 unfree ( šiluhlu̮ ) farmers and their families. In order for

60164-542: The empire, but problems began to arise within the royal court itself. Though Sennacherib's next eldest son, Arda-Mulissu , had replaced Ashur-nadin-shumi as heir after the latter's death, around 684 BC the younger son Esarhaddon was proclaimed heir instead. Perhaps Sennacherib was influenced by Esarhaddon's mother Naqi'a , who in later times became increasingly prominent and powerful. Disappointed, Arda-Mulissu and his supporters pressured Sennacherib to reinstate him as heir. Though they succeeded in forcing Esarhaddon into exile in

60502-435: The empire, or that Ashurnasirpal hoped for greater independence from the influential great families of Assur. To celebrate the completion of his work in Nimrud in 864 BC, Ashurnasirpal hosted a grand celebration, which some scholars have described as perhaps the greatest party in world history; the event hosted 69,574 guests, including 16,000 citizens of the new capital and 5,000 foreign dignitaries, and lasted for ten days. Among

60840-400: The empire. Esarhaddon sought to establish a new and lasting balance of power between the northern and southern parts of his empire. Thus, he rebuilt Babylon in the south, viewing Sennacherib's destruction of the city as excessively brutal, but also made sure not to neglect the temples and cults of Assyria. Esarhaddon was a deeply troubled man. As a result of his tumultuous rise to the throne he

61178-466: The empire. Shamshi-Adad's earliest campaigns were against a series of Urartian fortresses and western Iran and quite limited in scope. One of the campaigns was led by the chief eunuch ( rab ša-rēši ), a position created under Shamshi-Adad, and not the king himself. Most of Shamshi-Adad's early reign was relatively unsuccessful; the king's third campaign, against the small states in the Zagros Mountains region, might have been an Assyrian defeat and many of

61516-431: The end of the Middle Assyrian period had begun to settle and become well-established within Assyrian borders. People belonging to foreign ethnic groups often contributed with manpower, being employed in construction projects. Though most of them appear to have held inferior positions in society, they also contributed to Assyrian cultural developments with their own cultural traditions. Christianity Christianity

61854-428: The end of the Mitanni kingdom. It was in this struggle for supremacy and hegemony that Ashur-uballit secured independence. The Mittani-Hittite conflict was preceded by a period of weakness in the Mitanni kingdom; the heir to the Mitanni throne, Artashumara , was murdered in the 14th century BC, which led to the accession of the otherwise minor figure Tushratta . Tushratta's rise to power led to internal conflict within

62192-435: The end of the same year, he began warring against Marduk-apla-iddina in the south. After fighting against Babylonia for nearly two years, Sennacherib succeeded in recapturing Babylonia, though Marduk-apla-iddina fled to Elam once again, and Bel-ibni , a Babylonian noble who had been raised at the Assyrian court, was installed as vassal king of Babylon. In 701, Sennacherib undertook the most famous campaign of his reign, invading

62530-411: The era known as the Great Divergence , when in the West, the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific revolution brought about great societal changes, Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies , such as versions of socialism and liberalism . Events ranged from mere anti-clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity, such as

62868-607: The establishment of Christianity as an independent religion. This formative period was followed by the early bishops , whom Christians consider the successors of Christ's apostles . From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers , and the study of them is called patristics . Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch , Polycarp , Justin Martyr , Irenaeus , Tertullian , Clement of Alexandria and Origen . Persecution of Christians occurred intermittently and on

63206-421: The eunuch Nergal-eresh . Despite his limited sole authority, Adad-nirari's reign saw some military successes and Assyrian armies campaigned in western Iran at least thirteen times. The western territories, now more or less autonomous, were only attacked four times, though Adad-nirari managed to defeat Aram-Damascus. In 790 BC, Adad-nirari conducted the first Assyrian campaign against the Aramaic tribes now living in

63544-415: The event illustrated that the situation was dire enough for Sinsharishkun's closest ally, Psamtik I of Egypt to enter the conflict on Assyria's side. Psamtik was probably primarily interested in Assyria remaining as a buffer between his own growing empire and the Babylonians and other powers in the east. In May 615 BC, Nabopolassar assaulted Assur, still the religious and ceremonial center of Assyria and by now

63882-426: The first Assyrian inscriptions to describe punitive measures against rebelling cities and regions in any detail. A more important innovation was increasing the size of the Assyrian cavalry and introducing war chariots on a grander scale than previous kings. Chariots were also increasingly used by Assyria's enemies. In the final years of his reign, he twice engaged the Babylonian king Marduk-nadin-ahhe in battles with

64220-523: The first of its scale, the empire saw various military, civic and administrative innovations. In the military, important innovations included a large-scale use of cavalry and new siege warfare techniques. Techniques first adopted by the Neo-Assyrian army would be used in later warfare for millennia. To solve the issue of communicating over vast distances, the empire developed a sophisticated state communication system , using relay stations and well-maintained roads. The communication speed of official messages in

64558-468: The following centuries, competition between Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states. Meanwhile, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity. Partly from missionary zeal, but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout Europe,

64896-421: The food and beverage used, Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions record 10,000 pigeons, 10,000 jugs of beer, and 10,000 skins of wine, among countless other items. Ashurnasirpal's aggressive military politics were continued under his son Shalmaneser III ( r.   859–824 BC), whose reign saw a considerable expansion of Assyrian territory. In Shalmaneser's reign, the lands along the Khabur and Euphrates rivers in

65234-405: The former capital of Assur. Shamshi-Adad acceded to the throne as Shamshi-Adad V, perhaps initially a minor and a puppet of Dayyan-Assur. Though Dayyan-Assur died during the early stages of the civil war, Shamshi-Adad was eventually victorious, apparently due to help from the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi or his successor Marduk-balassu-iqbi . Shamshi-Adad V's accession marked the beginning of

65572-422: The foundation of a new capital city, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta , though it was abandoned after his death. Though Assyria was left largely unscathed by the direct effects of the Late Bronze Age collapse of the 12th century BC, the Middle Assyrian Empire began to experience a significant period of decline roughly at the same time. The assassination of Tukulti-Ninurta I c. 1207 BC led to inter-dynastic conflict and

65910-510: The funds granted to them by the government, high officials could generate money in various other ways. They could for instance loan money to private individuals and charge highly unfavorable interests, sometimes amounting to up to 100 percent, in addition to demanding goods such as sheep and vessels. Another source of income was "gifts" ( šulmanū ), i.e. bribes, from private individuals. In exchange for money, many officials are recorded to have paid extra attention to certain requests made to them or to

66248-476: The governors was to store and distribute the goods produced in the province, which were inspected and collected by royal representatives once a year. Through this system, the central government remained informed about current stocks of supplies throughout the empire. The governors also supervised local craftsmen and farmers, organizing their activities and ensuring that they had enough food and other supplies to live. If rations were low, governors requested support from

66586-416: The great gods; the wise and crafty one; strong hero, first among all princes; the flame that consumes the insubmissive, who strikes the wicked with the thunderbolt. Middle Assyrian Empire The Middle Assyrian Empire was the third stage of Assyrian history, covering the history of Assyria from the accession of Ashur-uballit I c. 1363 BC and the rise of Assyria as a territorial kingdom to

66924-406: The ground and turned into dust. Some of the dust from Arinnu was collected and symbolically brought back to Assur. After the new Mitanni king Shattuara II rebelled against Assyrian authority, assisted by the Hittites, further campaigns were conducted against Mitanni in order to suppress the resistance. Shalmaneser's campaign against Mitanni was a great success; the Mitanni capital of Washukanni

67262-529: The growing problems in Ashurbanipal's early reign were disagreements between Ashurbanipal and his older brother Shamash-shum-ukin. While Esarhaddon's documents suggest that Shamash-shum-ukin was intended to inherit all of Babylonia, it appears that he only controlled the immediate vicinity of Babylon itself since numerous other Babylonian cities apparently ignored him and considered Ashurbanipal to be their king. Over time, it seems that Shamash-shum-ukin grew to resent his brother's overbearing control and in 652 BC, with

67600-502: The heartland who opposed his accession. Several peripheral regions of the empire also revolted and regained their independence. The most significant of the revolts was the successful uprising of the Chaldean warlord Marduk-apla-iddina II , who took control of Babylon, restoring Babylonian independence, and allied with the Elamite king Ḫuban‐nikaš I . Though Sargon tried early on to dislodge Marduk-apla-iddina, attacking Aramean tribes who supported Marduk-apla-iddina and marching out to fight

67938-438: The hostile land like a rain storm". In his first year as king, Tiglath-Pileser defeated the Mushki , a tribe who had taken control of various lands in the north fifty years prior. The inscriptions mention that no king had defeated them in battle before and that their 20,000 men strong army, led by five kings, was defeated by Tiglath-Pileser, who however allowed the 6,000 surviving enemies to settle in Assyria as his subjects. One of

68276-465: The ideology of universal rule promulgated by the Neo-Assyrian kings inspired, through the concept of translatio imperii , 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. Judaism , and thus in turn also Christianity and Islam ,

68614-488: The imperial reconquista project had to begin nearly from scratch. In this context, the successful expansion conducted under the early Neo-Assyrian kings was an extraordinary achievement. The initial phase of the Assyrian reconquista , beginning under Ashur-dan II near the end of the Middle Assyrian period and covering the reigns of the first two Neo-Assyrian kings, Adad-nirari II ( r.   911–891 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta II ( r.   890–884 BC), saw

68952-545: The inscriptions, there was also a more experienced class of "professional" soldiers, called the ṣābū kaṣrūtu . It is not clear what exactly separated the ṣābū kaṣrūtu from the other soldiers; perhaps the term included some certain branches of the army, such as archers and charioteers, who required more extensive training than normal foot soldiers , probably part of the ṣābū ḫurādātu . It is also clear from inscriptions that bands of mercenaries were recruited for some campaigns. The foot soldiers appear to have been divided into

69290-419: The intermediary between mankind and the gods, the Assyrian king was the head of the administration of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period. Though there is no evidence that the Middle Assyrian kings had a cabinet of his highest officials, as might have been the case in the succeeding Neo-Assyrian period, the kings did surround themselves with a group of counselors that advised on politics and decisions. Among

69628-474: The king and other governors, and were in turn required to provide such support for others as well. In addition to taxes, provinces had to supply offerings to the god Ashur, marking their affiliation and allegiance to the Assyrian government. The offerings were quite small and mainly symbolic. Some regions of the Assyrian realm were outside of the provincial framework but still subject to the Assyrian kings, these included vassal states ruled by lesser kings, such as

69966-457: The king could intervene at any level at any time, either in person, through a command, by issuing a decree, or by sending a representative. The most powerful officials had representatives of their own, termed qepū . The territory of the Middle Assyrian Empire was divided into a set of provinces or districts ( pāḫutu ), first attested during the reign of Ashur-uballit I. In some 13th-century BC sources there also appears another type of subdivision,

70304-409: The king is described as acting according to divine order against Kashtiliash, who is described as vile ruler, abandoned by the gods. In the text, he is accused of various atrocities, including attacking Assyria, violating temples, and deporting or killing civilians. Though there is no evidence for these accusations, they might well have been based on real events, albeit probably exaggerated. According to

70642-460: The king suffering from illness could be seen as the gods withdrawing their divine support for his rule. Around the time of the Egyptian campaigns, there were at least three major insurgencies against Esarhaddon within the Assyrian heartland itself; in Nineveh, the chief eunuch Ashur-nasir was prophesied by a Babylonian hostage to replace Esarhaddon as king, a prophetess in Harran proclaimed that Esarhaddon and his lineage would be "destroyed" and that

70980-438: The kingdom of Zamua in the eastern Zagros Mountains , repeated campaigns against Nairi and Urartu in the north, and, most prominently, near continuous conflict with Aramean and Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the west. The Arameans and Neo-Hittites had by the time of Ashurnasirpal's rise to the throne evolved into well-organized kingdoms, possibly in response to pressure from Assyria. One of Ashurnasirpal's most persistent enemies

71318-491: The kings as powerful warriors. Middle Assyrian kings were the supreme judicial authority in the empire, though they generally appear to have been less concerned with their role as judges than their predecessors in the Old Assyrian period were. The kings were however expected to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the Assyrian lands and people, often referring to themselves as "shepherds" ( re’û ). Middle Assyrian royal inscriptions also pay special attention to public works, with

71656-399: The kings. Shalmaneser's final years became preoccupied by an internal crisis when one of his sons, Ashur-danin-pal , rebelled in an attempt to seize the throne, possibly because the younger son Shamshi-Adad had been designated as heir instead of himself. When Shalmaneser died in 824, Ashur-danin-pal was still in revolt, supported by a significant portion of the country, most notably including

71994-434: The land". Middle Assyrian royal palaces were prominent symbols of royal power, and the centers and main institutions of the Assyrian government. Though the main palace was located in Assur, kings had palaces at several different sites which they often traveled between. The most important surviving source concerning Middle Assyrian royal palaces are the Middle Assyrian palace decrees, a set of documents composed either late in

72332-405: The large construction projects and military activities of the Middle Assyrian kings to have been possible, the Middle Assyrian Empire employed a sophisticated system of recruiting and administering personnel. To keep track of and administer the diverse people under imperial control, a specific type of waxed tablets, dubbed le’ānū ( le’ū in singular form), were employed. These tablets, attested from

72670-540: The last century have been significant, since 1900, Christianity has spread rapidly in the Global South and Third World countries. The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and the Southern Hemisphere in general, with the West no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity. Approximately 7 to 10% of Arabs are Christians , most prevalent in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon . While Christians worldwide share basic convictions, there are differences of interpretations and opinions of

73008-463: The late 12th century BC onwards to distinguish from stewards of smaller households. The stewards were in charge of the large storage facilities of the palaces, where craftsmen produced various products gathered from raw materials. The stewards also served as organizers of long-distance trade. Their main duty was to provide the palaces with metals, animals, animal skins and luxury goods (such as jewelry, wooden objects, textiles and perfume). Recognized as

73346-539: The latter may mean 'the islands of the Danaans ', or Greece. There are other inscriptions referring to the land of Ia' in Sargon's palace at Khorsabad . Cyprus was thus absorbed into the Assyrian Empire, with the victory commemorated with a stele found near present-day Larnaca . Late in his reign, Sargon again turned his attention to Babylon. The alliance between Babylon and Elam had at this point evaporated away. When Sargon marched south in 710 BC he encountered little resistance. After Marduk-apla-iddina fled to Dur-Yakin ,

73684-477: The legitimate heir to the throne as next-in-line. It is also possible that he was wholly unconnected to the previous royal lineage, in which case Shalmaneser V would be the last king of the nearly thousand-year long Adaside dynasty . It is clear that Sargon's seizure of power, which marked the foundation of the Sargonid dynasty , led to considerable internal unrest. In his own inscriptions, Sargon claims to have deported 6,300 "guilty Assyrians", probably Assyrians from

74022-485: The line of Assyrian kings continued uninterrupted over the course of the decline, Assyria became restricted mostly to just the Assyrian heartland. The decline of the Middle Assyrian Empire broadly coincided with the Late Bronze Age collapse , a time when the Ancient Near East experienced monumental geopolitical changes; within a single generation, the Hittite Empire and the Kassite dynasty of Babylon had fallen, and Egypt had been severely weakened through losing its lands in

74360-402: The line of kings being part of the same continuous family line. Another justification for expansion was casting the campaigns as wars of liberation, meant to liberate those Assyrians who no longer lived within Assyrian territory from their new foreign rulers; material evidence from numerous sites reconquered under the early Neo-Assyrian Empire demonstrate an endurance of Assyrian culture outside of

74698-402: The local governors to remain in place, though he left some of his representatives to oversee them. The conquest of Egypt not only placed a land of great cultural prestige under Esarhaddon's rule but also brought the Neo-Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. Though he was among the most successful kings in Assyrian history, Esarhaddon faced numerous conspiracies against his rule, perhaps because

75036-446: The loss of most of the empire's territories outside of its heartlands, partly due to invasions by Aramean tribes. Assyrian decline began to be reversed again under Ashur-dan II ( r.   934–912 BC), who campaigned extensively in the peripheral regions of the Assyrian heartland. The successes of Ashur-dan II and his immediate successors in restoring Assyrian rule over the empire's former lands, and in time going far beyond them,

75374-448: The losses since his glory days. His long and prosperous reign ended with his assassination, which was followed by inter-dynastic conflict and a significant drop in Assyrian power. Though some historians have attributed the assassination to Tukulti-Ninurta's moving the capital away from Assur, a possibly sacrilegious act, it is more probable that it was the result of the growing dissatisfaction during his late reign. Later chroniclers blame

75712-542: The lost lands would eventually be retaken. In the end, the collapse of the Hittites and the Egyptian lands in the Levant benefitted Assyria; with the old empires shattered, the fragmented territories surrounding the Assyrian heartland would eventually prove to be easy conquests for the Assyrian army. The reign of Ashur-dan II ( r.   934–912 BC) effectively terminated the poorly documented second period of Middle Assyrian decline. Multiple inscriptions survive from Ashur-dan's time, several of which describe campaigns in

76050-505: The low point of Assyrian royal power since a remarkably small number of royal inscriptions are known from them. In Shalmaneser IV's reign, Shamshi-ilu eventually grew bold enough to stop crediting the king at all in his inscriptions and instead claimed to act completely on his own, more openly flaunting his power. Probably under Shamshi-ilu's leadership, the Assyrian army began to mainly focus on Urartu. In 774 BC, Shamshi-ilu scored an important victory against Argishti I of Urartu, though Urartu

76388-470: The meantime, Nazi-Bugash , was overthrown and replaced by the Assyrians with Kurigalzu II , another son of Burnaburiash. Ashur-uballit's successors Enlil-nirari ( r.   c. 1327–1318 BC) and Arik-den-ili ( r.   c. 1317–1306 BC) were less successful than Ashur-uballit in expanding and consolidating Assyrian power, and as such the new kingdom developed somewhat haltingly and remained fragile. Kurigalzu did not remain loyal to

76726-530: The middle of the 1st century in Egypt and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage . Mark the Evangelist is claimed to have started the Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD; various later churches claim this as their own legacy, including the Coptic Orthodox Church . Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity include Tertullian , Clement of Alexandria , Origen of Alexandria , Cyprian , Athanasius , and Augustine of Hippo . King Tiridates III made Christianity

77064-519: The monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans , founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic , respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order was the Cistercians , whose large, isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period, church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in

77402-485: The most ambitious military campaigns in Assyrian history, marching through mountainous territory to the source of the Euphrates and then attacking Urartu from the west. The Urartian king Arame was forced to flee as Shalmaneser's forces sacked the Urartian capital of Arzashkun , devastated the Urartian heartland, and then marched into what today is western Iran before returning to Arbela in Assyria. Although Shalmaneser's impressive campaign against Urartu compelled many of

77740-456: The most prominent such counselors were the viziers ( sukkallu ), who at times involved themselves in diplomatic matters. From at least the time of Shalmaneser I onwards there were also grand viziers ( sukkallu rabi’u ), superior to the ordinary viziers, who often also served as vassal rulers of the lands of the former Mitanni kingdom. The grand viziers were typically members of the royal family. Like many other administrative and bureaucratic offices,

78078-404: The mountains northwest of Assyria and to work on improving relations. Tudḫaliya's letter did little to dissuade him, who saw through the empty flatteries and attacked and conquered the lands in question in his first few years as king. According to his inscriptions, the conquest was widely celebrated as one of his outstanding early achievements. As for his predecessors, Tukulti-Ninurta's main focus

78416-507: The mountains to the northeast and the Levant and is recorded to have received gifts from Egypt. Though political objectives had thus not changed since Tiglath-Pileser's time, Ashur-bel-kala too had to divert significant attention to the Arameans. Due to the Aramean tactics of avoiding open battle and instead attacking the Assyrians in numerous minor skirmishes, the Assyrian army could not take advantage of their technical and numerial superiority. The Arameans were not Ashur-bel-kala's only enemies in

78754-507: The new capital of the empire and employed thousands of workers to construct new fortifications, palaces and temples in the city. The construction of the new capital left Assur, still the empire's religious center, as a purely ceremonial city. In addition to enormous city walls 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) long, palaces, temples, royal offices and various residential buildings, Ashurnasirpal also established botanical gardens , filled with foreign plants brought back from his wide-ranging campaigns, and

79092-418: The north undisputed. Ashurnasirpal's campaigns reached as far as the Mediterranean and he also oversaw the transfer of the imperial capital from the traditional city of Assur to the more centrally located Kalhu (later known as Calah in the Bible and Nimrud to the Medieval Arabs) The empire grew even more under Ashurnasirpal II's successor Shalmaneser III ( r.   859–824 BC), though it entered

79430-477: The northern part of the Akkadian Empire. Assyria experienced its first period of ascendancy with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, previously only having been a city-state centered around the city of Assur . From the time of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari I ( r.   c. 1305–1274 BC) onwards, Assyria became one of the great powers of the ancient Near East and under Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r.   c. 1243–1207 BC),

79768-423: The now-Catholic Church, and an Eastern , largely Greek, branch (the Eastern Orthodox Church ). The two sides disagreed on a number of administrative, liturgical and doctrinal issues, most prominently Eastern Orthodox opposition to papal supremacy . The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases, the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement

80106-408: The old Sumerian head of the pantheon, Enlil , and was as a result of Assyrian expansionism and warfare transformed from a primarily agricultural god into a military one. The transition of Assyria from a city-state into an empire also had important administrative and political consequences. While the Assyrian rulers of the Old Assyrian period had governed with the title iššiak ("governor") jointly with

80444-430: The old traditional royal title iššiak Aššur ("governor [on behalf] of Ashur ") continued to be used at times throughout the period, the Middle Assyrian kings had little in common with their Old Assyrian predecessors and were very much sole rulers. As Assyria's power grew, the kings began to employ an increasingly sophisticated array of royal titles far more autocratic in nature than the old iššiak Aššur . Ashur-uballit I

80782-710: The older son Shamash-shum-ukin would rule Babylon. To ensure that the succession to the throne after his own death would go more smoothly than his own accession, Esarhaddon forced everyone in the empire, not only the prominent officials but also far-away vassal rulers and members of the royal family, to swear oaths of allegiance to the successors and respect the arrangement. When Esarhaddon died of an illness while on his way to campaign in Egypt once again in 669 BC, his mother Naqi'a also forced similar oaths of allegiance to Ashurbanipal, who became king without incident. One year later, Ashurbanipal oversaw Shamash-shum-ukin's inauguration as (largely ceremonial) king of Babylon. Ashurbanipal

81120-584: The opportunity to campaign further west than the Euphrates. Ashurnasirpal made use of this opportunity. In his ninth campaign, he marched to Lebanon and then to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea . Though few of them became formally incorporated into the empire at this point, many kingdoms on the way paid tribute to Ashurnasirpal to avoid being attacked, including Carchemish and Patina , as well as Phoenician cities such as Sidon , Byblos , Tyre and Arwad . Ashurnasirpal's royal inscriptions proudly proclaim that he and his army symbolically cleaned their weapons in

81458-453: The orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals. Christian nationalism emerged during this era in which Christians felt the desire to recover lands in which Christianity had historically flourished. From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II , the First Crusade was launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from

81796-436: The owner of the land they lived on, as well as the ālik ilke (people providing services through the ilku system) and hupšu people, though their position, standing and living standards vis-à-vis each other is not clear. Some information on families and living conditions in the Middle Assyrian Empire can be gathered from the preserved Middle Assyrian Laws , as well as from surviving lists of rations and censuses . The norm

82134-404: The papacy. This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council , and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf . Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own, particularly in the Czech Republic and Estonia , while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Europe. Changes in worldwide Christianity over

82472-493: The peak of its power, the empire experienced a swift and violent fall in the late 7th century BC, destroyed by a Babylonian uprising and an invasion by the Medes . The causes behind how Assyria could be destroyed so quickly continue to be debated among scholars. The unprecedented success of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was not only due to its ability to expand but also, and perhaps more importantly, its ability to efficiently incorporate conquered lands into its administrative system. As

82810-402: The peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization , and Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in size, wealth, and culture. There was a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy , as well as an increase in literary output in vernacular Greek. Byzantine art and literature held a preeminent place in Europe, and the cultural impact of Byzantine art on

83148-459: The people who lived in the palaces. They include texts concerning admission requirements for male personnel and whether they should have access to the harem, the proper behavior of the palace women (both within and outside the palaces), custody of property and dispute resolution. Among the Middle Assyrian kings, Ninurta-apal-Ekur was responsible for a particularly large amount of decrees, perhaps because he wished to restore order after his usurpation of

83486-401: The period after Kashtiliash's deposition is poorly attested in Babylonia, it appears that there was a second Assyrian campaign directed towards the south c. 1222 BC, after the rule of Tukulti-Ninurta's vassal kings Enlil-nadin-shumi and Kadashman-Harbe II , which resulted in the accession of another vassal, Adad-shuma-iddina . Because Tukulti-Ninurta was able to come to Babylon as

83824-490: The peripheries of the Assyrian heartland, illustrating that Assyrian power was beginning to resurge. Ashur-dan's campaigns were mainly focused on the northeast and northwest. Among the victories recorded in his inscriptions was the conquest of Katmuḫu, which once again had gained independence during the decline. According to the inscription, Ashur-dan captured Katmuḫu, razed the city's royal palace, brought its king to Arbela , flayed and executed him, and then displayed his skin on

84162-470: The policies of his father. In 885 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta repeated his father's march along the Euphrates and Khabur, though he went in the opposite direction, beginning in the south at Dur-Kurigalzu and then collecting tribute while he travelled north. Some of the southern cities that sent tribute to Tukulti-Ninurta during this march were historically more closely aligned with Babylon. In terms of military matters, Tukulti-Ninurta also fought against small states in

84500-478: The position was hereditary, with sons succeeding their fathers. Other bureaucrats were drawn from the ša-rēši of the palaces and were tasked with various fields of responsibility to aid the king in keeping contact with various institutions throughout the empire, including keeping track of crop yields and the number of farm animals, allocating royal gifts, certifying private sales of land, and noting down amounts of tribute, prisoners of war and levies. If they so wished,

84838-480: The purchase price. Some documents also mention the ginā’u tax, which had some connection to the provincial governments. Other economically important sources of money for the empire included plundering conquered territories, which reduced the cost of the campaign that had conquered them, continuous tribute ( madattu ) from vassal states, as well as "audience gifts" ( nāmurtu ) from foreign rulers and powerful individuals. These gifts could sometimes be carry large value for

85176-501: The rebel, Shalmaneser spent some time visiting cities in Babylon and further helping Marduk-zakir-shumi through fighting against the Chaldeans in the far south of Mesopotamia. As Babylonian culture was greatly appreciated in Assyria, Shalmaneser was proud of his alliance to the Babylonian king; a famous surviving piece of artwork shows the two rulers shaking hands. In the 840s and 830s, Shalmaneser again campaigned in Syria and succeeding in receiving tribute from numerous western states after

85514-402: The region around the city of Arrapha in preparation for a campaign against Sinsharishkun. Although there are plenty of earlier sources discussing Assyro-Median relations, none are preserved from the period leading up to Cyaxares's invasion and as such, the political context and reasons for the sudden attack are not known. Perhaps, the war between Babylonia and Assyria had disrupted the economy of

85852-493: The region, Adad-nirari was able to go on a long march along the Khabur river and the Euphrates, collecting tribute from all the local rulers without being met with any military opposition. In addition to his wars, he also conducted important building projects; the city of Apku, located between Nineveh and Sinjar and destroyed c.  1000 BC , was rebuilt and became an important administrative center. Though he reigned only briefly, Adad-nirari's son Tukulti-Ninurta continued

86190-426: The region, the Bible describes Sennacherib suffering a crushing defeat outside Jerusalem . Since Hezekiah , the king of Judah (who ruled Jerusalem), paid a heavy tribute to Sennacherib after the campaign, modern scholars consider it more likely that the Biblical account, motivated by theological concerns, is highly distorted and that Sennacherib succeeded in his goals of the campaign and re-imposed Assyrian authority in

86528-415: The region. Bel-ibni's tenure as Babylonian vassal ruler did not last long and he continually opposed by Marduk-apla-iddina and another Chaldean warlord, Mushezib-Marduk , who hoped to seize power for themselves. In 700 BC, Sennacherib invaded Babylonia again and drove Marduk-apla-iddina and Mushezib-Marduk away. Needing a vassal ruler with stronger authority, he placed his eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi , on

86866-404: The reign of Tiglath-Pileser I or in the reigns of his immediate successors. These documents contain a large number of regulations on the personnel of the palaces and their roles and duties, in particular the women. These regulations differentiate between the "wife of the king" ( aššat šarre ), what modern historians would term the "queen", and a group of "palace women" ( sinniltu ša ekalle ), i.e.

87204-461: The remnants of the Mitanni kingdom and the first Assyrian king to include lengthy narratives of his campaigns in his royal inscriptions. Adad-nirari early in his reign defeated Shattuara I of Mitanni and forced him to pay tribute to Assyria as a vassal ruler. Given that the Assyrian army extensively plundered and destroyed portions of Mitanni during this campaign, it is unlikely that there at this point were any plans to outright annex and consolidate

87542-448: The residence of the crown prince. One of the first building projects he undertook was restoring a temple dedicated to the death-god Nergal , likely due to worries concerning his father's fate. It was not only Sennacherib and the elites of Assyria who were unsettled by Sargon's death; the theological implications led some of the conquered regions around the imperial periphery to once more assert their independence. Most prominently, several of

87880-435: The resources provided to them by the Assyrian government to generate private profits, was a large problem. Corruption was viewed as high treason , with officials accused of using royal funds for their own personal gain simultaneously being accused of hating the king. On the other hand, officials were at times expected to provide some of their own personal funds to public institutions if the king commanded them to. In addition to

88218-469: The rising prominence of both the Assyrian king and the Assyrian national deity Ashur . The Middle Assyrian Empire was founded through Assur , a city-state through most of the preceding Old Assyrian period , and the surrounding territories achieving independence from the Mitanni kingdom. Under Ashur-uballit, Assyria began to expand and assert its place as one of the great powers of the Ancient Near East . This aspiration chiefly came into fruition through

88556-417: The role of tradition, the seven sacraments , and other doctrines and practices. The Reformation in England began in 1534, when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England . Beginning in 1536, the monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved . Thomas Müntzer , Andreas Karlstadt and other theologians perceived both the Catholic Church and the confessions of

88894-427: The royal administration, not the common soldiers. Some appointed generals used the title kiṣri ("captain"). The personnel of the baggage train , not partaking in active combat, also included a variety of people with different positions and duties. Because of the limited surviving material, information regarding social life and living conditions of the Middle Assyrian period is generally available in detail only for

89232-493: The royal administration. The majority of the population, who did not belong to the upper class, had a much lower standard of living. The highest group in terms of classes was the free men ( a’ılū ), who like the upper classes could receive land in exchange for performing duties for the government, but who could not live on these lands since they were comparably small. Below them were the šiluhlu̮ , or unfree men. These people were men who had given up their freedom and entered into

89570-422: The rule of royally appointed provincial governors and withdrawing their right to commission official building inscriptions in their own names. Shamshi-ilu appears to have been subjected to a damnatio memoriae , as his name and tiles were erased from some of his inscriptions. During his 18-year reign, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned in all directions. Already in his first year as king, Tiglath-Pileser warred against

89908-518: The rulers of the lands formerly subordinate to Assyria, to reconquer the old Assyrian borders, and to go beyond them; "Altogether, I conquered 42 lands and their rulers from the other side of the Lower Zab in distant mountainous regions to the other side of the Euphrates River, people of Ḫatti, and the Upper Sea in the west – from my accession year to my fifth regnal year. I subdued them to one authority, took hostages from them, (and) imposed upon them tribute and impost". Tiglath-Pileser's inscriptions are

90246-477: The same legal rights. While out in the street, many women, including widows, wives and concubines , were obligated by law to wear veils. It is uncertain whether these laws were ever strongly enforced. Many women were also prohibited from wearing veils. Certain priestesses (identified as qadiltu priestesses) were only allowed to wear veils if they were married. Slave women and prostitutes ( ḫarımtū ) were not allowed to wear veils in any circumstance. Children born of

90584-401: The service (mainly agricultural) of others on their own accord, who were in turn provided with rations and clothes. Many of them likely also originated as prisoners of war and foreign deportees. It was possible for a šiluhlu̮ to regain their freedom by providing a substitute who could then fulfill their obligations. Though not wholly different from slavery , surviving documents demonstrate that

90922-402: The shock of the Assyrians, Sargon was in this campaign killed in battle with the army being unable to recover his body. Shocked and frightened by the manner of his father's death and its theological implications, Sargon's son Sennacherib distanced himself from him. Sennacherib never mentioned Sargon in his inscriptions and abandoned Dur-Sharrukin, instead moving the capital to Nineveh, previously

91260-504: The sites. In the centuries to come, Assyrian kings often found themselves as rivals of the Babylonian kings . Ashur-uballit himself did not wish to engage in long-lasting conflicts with the Babylonians, clearly illustrated since he married his daughter Muballitat-Serua to the Babylonian king Burnaburiash II . Prior to achieving peace, Burnaburiash had been a prominent enemy of the Assyrians. At one point, he had attempted to tarnish Assyrian diplomatic and trade relations with Egypt by sending

91598-493: The situation improved somewhat as can be gathered from a campaign directed by Ashur-dan I against the Babylonian king Zababa-shuma-iddin , illustrating that hopes for gaining control of at least some southern lands and reasserting superiority over Babylonia had not been completely abandoned. After Ashur-dan's death in 1133 BC, his two sons Ninurta-tukulti-Ashur and Mutakkil-Nusku struggled for power, with Mutakkil-Nusku emerging victorious but then only ruling for less than

91936-430: The slow beginning of this project. Ashur-dan's efforts mostly worked to pave the way for the more sustained work under Adad-nirari and Tukulti-Ninurta. Among the conquests of Adad-nirari, the most strategically important campaigns were the wars directed to the southeast, beyond the Little Zab river. These lands had previously been under Babylonian rule. One of Adad-nirari's wars brought the Assyrian army as far south as

92274-403: The small kingdoms in northern Syria ceased to pay tribute to Assyria. In 817 or 816, there was a rebellion against the king at Tillê , within the Assyrian heartland. From 815 BC onward, Shamshi-Adad's luck changed. During the last few years of his reign he directed his efforts mainly against Marduk-balassu-iqbi in Babylonia. In 813 BC, he defeated Marduk-balassu-iqbi and brought him to Assyria as

92612-445: The small states in northern Syria to pay tribute to him, he was unable to fully utilize the situation. In 853 BC, a massive coalition of western states assembled at Tell Qarqur in Syria to work together against Assyrian expansion. The coalition, included numerous kings of various peoples, including the earliest historically verifiable Israelite and Arab rulers, and was led by Hadadezer , the king of Aram-Damascus . Shalmaneser engaged

92950-447: The socio-economic elite and upper classes of society. At the top of Middle Assyrian society were members of long-established and large families, called "houses", who tended to occupy the most important offices within the government. These houses were in many cases the descendants of the most prominent merchant families of the Old Assyrian period. It is clear from surviving documents that corruption among royal officials, who at times used

93288-431: The sources, his ultimate fate unknown. The remnants of the Assyrian army continued to fight alongside the Egyptian forces against the Babylonians until a crushing defeat at Battle of Carchemish in 605. Though Assyrian culture endured through the subsequent post-imperial period of Assyrian history and beyond, Ashur-uballit's final defeat at Harran in 609 marked the end of the ancient line of Assyrian kings and of Assyria as

93626-400: The south and large parts of the Levant. Under the Sargonid dynasty , which ruled from 722 BC to the fall of the empire, Assyria reached its apex. Under the Sargonid king Sennacherib ( r.   705–681 BC), the capital was transferred to Nineveh and under Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC) the empire reached its largest extent through the conquest of Egypt. Despite being at

93964-413: The southern Assyrian border. Ashur-resh-ishi as such began to reverse the decades of Assyrian decline and in his inscriptions claimed the epithet "avenger of Assyria" ( mutēr gimilli māt Aššur ). Ashur-resh-ishi's son and successor Tiglath-Pileser I ( r.   1114–1076 BC) inaugurated a second period of Middle Assyrian ascendancy. Owing to his father's victories against Babylon, Tiglath-Pileser

94302-402: The state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church. The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism , especially in Germany and the Netherlands, but also in England to a much lesser extent, often forced Catholic churches, organizations, and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church, specifically

94640-497: The state. Variables were the relative sizes of the denominations and the religious, political, and ideological orientation of the states. Urs Altermatt of the University of Fribourg , looking specifically at Catholicism in Europe, identifies four models for the European nations. In traditionally Catholic-majority countries such as Belgium, Spain, and Austria, to some extent, religious and national communities are more or less identical. Cultural symbiosis and separation are found in Poland,

94978-525: The stronghold of his Chaldean tribe, the citizens of Babylon willingly opened the gates of Babylon to Sargon. The situation was somewhat uncertain until Sargon made peace with Marduk-apla-iddina after prolonged negotiations, which resulted in Marduk-apla-iddina and his family being given the right to escape to Elam in exchange for Sargon being allowed to dismantle the walls of Dur-Yakin. Between 710 and 707 BC, Sargon resided in Babylon, receiving foreign delegations there and participating in local traditions, such as

95316-421: The sun-god Shamash incarnated, titling himself šamšu kiššat niše ("sun[god] of all people"). This claim was highly unusual for an Assyrian king to make as the Assyrian rulers were generally not regarded to be divine figures themselves. The last Babylonian campaign did not resolve all of Tukulti-Ninurta's problems; the Assyrian army at times had to be deployed to the mountains to the northwest and northeast of

95654-405: The suzerainty of the Mitanni kingdom. Though the transition of Assyria from being merely a city-state around Assur (as it was throughout most of the preceding Old Assyrian period ) had begun already in the last few decades under Mittani suzerainty, it is the independence achieved under Ashur-uballit, as well as Ashur-uballit's conquests of nearby territories, such as the fertile region between

95992-637: The system. These included that the duties did not have to be exercised in person, but could be fulfilled by paying money or by sending a representative, and that lands could be sold to a purchaser, who then had to take on the duties the previous owner had been demanded to undertake. Over long periods of time, this meant that the connection between duties and overseeing the land allotted was severed. Some influential Assyrian officials were as rewards for their services granted dunnu settlements, large estates that functioned as large farmsteads and were exempt from taxation on their produce. Such estates are most common in

96330-530: The threat the restored kingdom posed. Unlike the vast majority of Assyrian campaigns, the 830 BC campaign against Urartu was not led by the king, but by the long-serving and prominent turtanu Dayyan-Assur , indicating not only that Shalmaneser might have been very old and no longer properly capable of being a strong leader but also that Dayyan-Assur had grown unprecedently powerful for an Assyrian official, otherwise rarely mentioned by name in documents. In later years, Dayyan-Assur led further campaigns on behalf of

96668-416: The throne from Ashur-nirari. His accession, which is marked by a once more abundant number of sources, ushered in an entirely new era of Neo-Assyrian history. While the conquests of earlier kings were impressive, they contributed little to Assyria's full rise as a consolidated empire. Through campaigns aimed at conquest and not just extraction of seasonal tribute, as well as reforms meant to efficiently organize

97006-436: The throne of Babylon. For a few years, internal peace was restored and Sennacherib kept the army busy with a few minor campaigns. During this time, Sennacherib focused his attention mainly on building projects; between 699 and 695 BC he ambitiously rebuilt and renovated Nineveh, constructing among other works a new gigantic palace, the Southwest Palace , and a great 12 kilometer (7.5-mile) long and 25 meter (82 feet) tall wall. It

97344-483: The throne through any other means than legitimate inheritance after his brother's sudden death. Sinsharishkun's accession did not go unchallenged. Immediately upon his rise to the throne, Sin-shumu-lishir rebelled and attempted to claim the throne for himself, despite the lack of any genealogical claim and as the only eunuch to ever do so in Assyrian history. Sin-shumu-lishir successfully seized several prominent cities in Babylonia, including Nippur and Babylon itself, but

97682-417: The throne. Curiously, one of his decrees is that any palace woman who "cursed a descendant of Tukulti-Ninurta" should be mutilated; despite Ninurta-apal-Ekur having taken the throne by force from Enlil-kudurri-usur, the last of Tukulti-Ninurta I's descendants to rule Assyria. The chief administrator of the palaces were the stewards ( mašennu ), identified in writings as "great stewards" ( mašennu rabi’u ) from

98020-419: The time of Adad-nirari I onwards, summarized data on the available manpower, calculated required rations and provisions and documented responsibilities and tasks. According to administrative records on construction work at the royal palaces of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta and Assur, these projects were completed with workforces of about 2,000 men, divided into recruits from various cities ( ḫurādu ), mostly gathered through

98358-474: The time of Adad-nirari, Assyrian envoys had been treated poorly at the court of the Hittite king Mursili III . When Mursili's successor Hattusili III reached out to Shalmaneser in an attempt to forge an alliance, probably due to recent losses against Egypt, he was insultingly rejected and called a "substitute of a great king". The strained relations between the two empires sometimes erupted into war; Shalmaneser warred several times against Hittite vassal states in

98696-470: The time of Ashurbanipal's death show evidence of fire damage, the plot might have resulted in violence and unrest within the capital itself. In comparison to his predecessors, Ashur-etil-ilani appears to have been a relatively idle ruler; no records of any military campaigns are known and his palace at Nimrud was much smaller than that of previous kings. It is possible that the government was more or less entirely run by Sin-shumu-lishir throughout his reign. After

99034-446: The traditional Assyrian coronation ritual and as such formally ruled under the title of "crown prince", though Babylonian documents considered him to be the new Assyrian king. Ashur-uballit's rule at Harran lasted until late 610 or early 609 BC, when the city was captured by the Babylonians and the Medes. Three months later, an attempt by Ashur-uballit and the Egyptians to retake the city failed disastrously and Ashur-uballit disappears from

99372-441: The two kingdoms. Though he shared his father's ambition, and claimed the title "lord of all" after his victorious campaigns in Syria, Babylonia and the northeastern mountains, Ashur-bel-kala was ultimately unable to surpass Tiglath-Pileser and his successes were built on shaky foundations. Ashur-bel-kala's son and successor Eriba-Adad II ( r.   1056–1054 BC), and generations of kings thereafter, were unable to maintain

99710-403: The vassal states in the Levant stopped paying tribute and Marduk-apla-iddina, deposed by Sargon, retook Babylon with the aid of the Elamites. Sennacherib was thus faced with numerous enemies almost immediately upon his accession and it took years to defeat them all. In 704 BC, he sent the Assyrian army, led by officials rather than the king himself, to Anatolia to avenge Sargon's death and towards

100048-504: The wall of one of his cities. Assyrian reconquest meant that a high level of threat had to be established in order to keep the vassals in line; an explanation for the brutality and violence of certain acts (such as Ashur-dan's treatment of the defeated king) committed by the Assyrian kings. The descriptions of such acts in inscriptions do not necessarily reflect the truth given that they also served as intimidating tools for propaganda and psychological warfare. The campaigns of Ashur-dan paved

100386-449: The water of the Mediterranean. Through the tribute and booty collected through the campaigns of his predecessors and his own wars, Ashurnasirpal financed several large-scale building projects at cities like Assur, Nineveh and Balawat . The most impressive and important project conducted was the restoration of the ruined town of Nimrud , located on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the Assyrian heartland. In 879 BC, Ashurnasirpal made Nimrud

100724-424: The way of grander efforts to restore and expand Assyrian power, beginning in the reign of his son and successor Adad-nirari II ( r.   911–891 BC), whose accession conventionally marks the beginning of the succeeding Neo-Assyrian Empire. Although historically sometimes treated as a separate and distinct entity from the Middle Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was clearly the direct continuation of

101062-450: The west for his own protection, Sennacherib never accepted Arda-Mulissu as heir again. In late 681 BC, Arda-Mulissu killed his father in a temple in Nineveh. Because of the regicide, Arda-Mulissu lost some of his previous support and was unable to undergo a coronation before Esarhaddon returned with an army. A mere two months after Sennacherib was murdered, Esarhaddon captured Nineveh and became king, Arda-Mulissu and his supporters fleeing from

101400-423: The west were consolidated under Assyrian control. Ahuni of Bit Adini resisted for several years, but he eventually surrendered to Shalmaneser in the winter of 857/856 BC. When Shalmaneser visited the city in the summer of the next year, he renamed it Kar-Salmanu‐ašared ("fortress of Shalmaneser"), settled a substantial number of Assyrians there, and made it the administrative center of a new province, placed under

101738-503: The west, given that he is also recorded to have fought against Tukulti-Mer , king of Mari . The conflict with Marduk-nadin-ahhe in Babylonia continued under Ashur-bel-kala, though it was eventually resolved diplomatically. After the death of Marduk-nadin-ahhe's successor Marduk-shapik-zeri in c. 1065 BC, Ashur-bel-kala was even able to intervene and install the unrelated Adad-apla-iddina as king of Babylon. Adad-apla-iddina's daughter then married Ashur-bel-kala, bringing peace to

102076-489: The west, were likely lost again before his death. As a result of Tiglath-Pileser's campaigns, Assyria became somewhat overstretched and his successors had to adapt to be on the defensive. His son and successor Asharid-apal-Ekur ( r.   1075–1074 BC) ruled too briefly to do anything and his successor Ashur-bel-kala ( r.   1073–1056 BC), another son of Tiglath-Pileser, managed to only briefly follow in his father's footsteps. Ashur-bel-kala campaigned in

102414-399: The west. The prince chose the regnal name Ashur-uballit II , likely a highly conscious choice since its etymology ("Ashur has kept alive") suggested that Assyria would ultimately be victorious and since it evoked the name of Ashur-uballit I , the 14th-century BC Assyrian ruler who had been the first to adopt the title šar ("king"). Due to the loss of Assur, Ashur-uballit could not undergo

102752-454: The westernmost places ever reached by Assyrian forces. Though Shalmaneser's conquests were wide-ranging and inspired fear among the other kings of the Near East, he lacked the means to stabilize and consolidate his new lands and imperial control in many places remained shaky. In the latter years of Shalmaneser's reign, Urartu rose again as a powerful adversary. Though the Assyrians campaigned against them in 830 BC, they failed to fully neutralize

103090-437: The world, particularly in the Middle East , North Africa , East Asia , and South Asia . Early Jewish Christians referred to themselves as 'The Way' ( Koinē Greek : τῆς ὁδοῦ , romanized:  tês hodoû ), probably coming from Isaiah 40:3 , "prepare the way of the Lord". According to Acts 11:26 , the term "Christian" ( Χρῑστῐᾱνός , Khrīstiānós ), meaning "followers of Christ" in reference to Jesus's disciples ,

103428-458: Was Shalmaneser's brother, Ibashi-ili , whose descendants later continued to occupy the position. This arrangement, placing the Mitanni lands under the rule of a lesser branch of the royal family, suggests that the Assyrian elites in the heartland had only a marginal interest in the new conquests. Though Shalmaneser boasted of brutal acts against the defeated Mitanni armies, in one inscription claiming to have blinded over 14,000 prisoners of war, he

103766-407: Was a significant event and not simply a temporary inconvenience; in previous Babylonian uprisings the Babylonians had at times gained the upper hand temporarily. More alarming was Nabopolassar's first forays into the Assyrian heartland in 616 BC, which amounted to capturing some border cities and defeating local Assyrian garrisons. The Assyrian heartland had not been invaded for five hundred years and

104104-399: Was a usurper who deposed his predecessor in a palace coup . Like Tiglath-Pileser before him, Sargon in his inscriptions made no references to prior kings and instead ascribed his accession purely to divine selection. Though most scholars accept the claim made by the Assyrian King List that Sargon was a son of Tiglath-Pileser and thus Shalmaneser's brother, he is not believed to have been

104442-415: Was also one of the first Assyrian kings to take prisoners in the first place instead of simply executing captured enemies. Adad-nirari was also a great builder; among his most significant construction projects was the construction of the city of Nimrud , a highly significant site in later Assyrian history. Under Shalmaneser, the Assyrians also conducted significant campaigns against the Hittites. Already in

104780-411: Was campaigning in the east in 720 BC, his generals defeated Yau-bi'di and the others. Sargon continued to focus on both east and west, successfully warring against Šinuḫtu in Anatolia and Mannaya in western Iran. In 717 BC, Sargon retook the city of Carchemish and secured the city's substantial silver treasury. Perhaps it was the acquisition of these funds which inspired Sargon to in the same year begin

105118-462: Was deeply distrustful of his officials and family members; something which also had the side effect of an increased prominence of women in his reign, whom he trusted more. Esarhaddon's mother Naqi'a, his queen Esharra-hammat and his daughter Serua-eterat were all more powerful and prominent than most women in earlier Assyrian history. The king was also frequently ill and sickly and also appears to have suffered from depression , which intensified after

105456-400: Was defeated and nearly killed in battle and in 740 BC, the strategically placed city of Arpad in Syria was conquered after a three-year long siege. With the nearest threats dealt with, Tiglath-Pileser began to focus on lands that had never been under solid Assyrian rule. In 738 BC, the Neo-Hittite states of Pattin and Hatarikka , and the Phoenician city of Sumur were conquered and in 734 BC,

105794-550: Was defeated by Sinsharishkun after three months. This victory did little to alleviate Sinsharishkun's problems. The long-reigning Babylonian vassal king Kandalanu also died in 627 BC. The swift regime changes and internal unrest bolstered Babylonian hopes to shake off Assyrian rule and regain independence, a movement which swiftly proclaimed Nabopolassar , probably a member of a prominent political family in Uruk , as its leader. Some months after Sin-shumu-lishir's defeat, Nabopolassar and his allies captured both Nippur and Babylon, though

106132-412: Was ended with the Edict of Toleration in 311 and the Edict of Milan in 313. At that point, Christianity was still a minority belief, comprising perhaps only 5% of the Roman population. Influenced by his adviser Mardonius , Constantine's nephew Julian unsuccessfully tried to suppress Christianity. On 27 February 380, Theodosius I , Gratian , and Valentinian II established Nicene Christianity as

106470-407: Was first used in the city of Antioch by the non-Jewish inhabitants there. The earliest recorded use of the term "Christianity/Christianism" ( Χρῑστῐᾱνισμός , Khrīstiānismós ) was by Ignatius of Antioch around 100  AD . The name Jesus comes from Ancient Greek : Ἰησοῦς Iēsous , likely from Hebrew / Aramaic : יֵשׁוּעַ Yēšūaʿ. Christianity developed during the 1st century AD as

106808-399: Was free to divert his attention to other regions and not worry about a southern attack. Texts written already during his first few regnal years demonstrate that Tiglath-Pileser ruled with more confidence than his predecessors, using titles such as "unrivalled king of the universe , king of the four quarters , king of all princes, lord of lords" and epithets such as "splendid flame which covers

107146-402: Was he, and not the king, who had established tax exemptions for the city. Though little information survives concerning Ashur-dan III's reign, it is clear that it was particularly difficult. Much of his reign was spent putting down revolts. These revolts were perhaps the result of the plague epidemics sweeping Assyria and the Bur-Sagale solar eclipse on 15 June 763 BC; both the epidemics and

107484-453: Was his 671 BC conquest of Egypt . He had tried to conquer Egypt already in 674 BC but had then been driven back. Through logistic support from various Arab tribes, the 671 BC invasion took a difficult route through central Sinai and took the Egyptian armies by surprise. After a series of three large battles against Pharaoh Taharqa , Esarhaddon captured Memphis , the Egyptian capital. Taharqa fled south to Nubia and Esarhaddon allowed most of

107822-411: Was intertwined with the decline and collapse of its former suzerain, Mitanni. Assyria was subjugated by Mittani c. 1430 BC, and as such spent about 70 years under Mitanni rule. Chiefly responsible for bringing an end to Mitanni dominance in northern Mesopotamia was the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I , whose 14th century BC war with Mitanni over control of Syria effectively led to the beginning of

108160-484: Was met with a third campaign against Babylon, in which Tukulti-Ninurta looted the city and carried off the religiously important Statue of Marduk ( Marduk being Babylonia's national deity) to Assyria. He assumed the further style "king of the extensive mountains and plains" and claimed to rule from the " Upper Sea to the Lower Sea " and that he received tribute " from the four quarters ". In one of his inscriptions, Tukulti-Ninurta went as far as proclaiming himself to be

108498-431: Was most often diplomacy with adversaries of equal rank, such as Babylonia , and conquest only of smaller and military inferior states in the near vicinity. Ashur-uballit's reign was often regarded by later generations of Assyrians as the true birth of Assyria. The term "land of Ashur " ( māt Aššur ), i.e. designating Assyria as comprising a larger kingdom, is first attested as being used in his time. The rise of Assyria

108836-400: Was not decisively beaten. There was however some significant successes in the west since Shamshi-ilu captured Damascus in 773 BC and secured tribute from the city to the king. Another official who acted with usually royal privileges in Shalmaneser's time was the palace herald Bel-harran-beli-usur , who founded a city, Dur-Bel-harran-beli-usur (named after himself), and claimed in a stele that it

109174-400: Was not new—Augustine of Hippo said that Jews should not be allowed to enjoy the citizenship that Christians took for granted—but the growing antipathy towards Jews was a factor that led to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 , the first of many such expulsions in Europe. Beginning around 1184, following the crusade against Cathar heresy, various institutions, broadly referred to as

109512-412: Was on Babylonia. His first act in regard to his southern neighbor, Kashtiliash IV , was to escalate conflict through claiming "traditionally Assyrian" lands along the eastern Tigris. Tukulti-Ninurta shortly thereafter invaded Babylonia through what modern historians generally regard to be an unprovoked attack. In the contemporary Tukulti-Ninurta Epic , a propaganda epic used to justify his exploits,

109850-444: Was one of the most powerful women in Assyrian history and perhaps for a time served as co-regent; she is recorded to have partaken in a military campaign, the only ancient Assyriain woman known to have done so, against Kummuh in Syria and is credited in inscriptions alongside her son for expanding Assyrian territory, usually only a royal privilege. After Shammuramat's death, Adad-nirari continued to be dominated by other figures, such as

110188-402: Was only substantially reversed in the reign of the last Middle Assyrian king, Ashur-dan II ( r.   934–912 BC) who campaigned in the northeast and northwest. Through decades of military conquests, the early Neo-Assyrian kings worked to reverse the long age of decline and retake the former lands of their empire. Though the Neo-Assyrian Empire has sometimes in the past been considered

110526-440: Was profoundly affected by the period of Neo-Assyrian rule; numerous Biblical stories appear to draw on earlier Assyrian mythology and history and the Assyrian impact on early Jewish theology was immense. Although the Neo-Assyrian Empire is prominently remembered today for the supposed excessive brutality of the army , the Assyrians were not excessively brutal when compared to other civilizations throughout history. Imperialism and

110864-457: Was renamed Kar-Aššur‐aḫu‐iddina ("fortress of Esarhaddon"). After fighting the Medes in the Zagros Mountains, Esarhaddon campaigned further to the east than any king before him, reaching as far into modern-day Iran as Dasht-e Kavir , in the Assyrian conquest of Elam . Esarhaddon also invaded the eastern Arabian peninsula where he conquered a large number of cities, including Diḫranu (modern Dhahran ). Esarhaddon's greatest military achievement

111202-421: Was sacked and, realizing that the Mitanni lands were clearly not controllable through allowing the local rulers to continue to govern as vassals, the kingdom's lands were with some reluctance annexed into the Assyrian kingdom. The lands were not annexed directly into the royal domains, but rather placed under the rule of a viceroy who bore the title of grand vizier and king of Hanigalbat . The first such ruler

111540-488: Was sent back to Assyria. In 664 BC, after a prolonged period of peace, the Elamite king Urtak launched a surprise invasion of Babylonia which renewed hostilities. After indecisive campaigns for ten years, the Elamite king Teumman was defeated in 653 BC, captured and executed in a battle by the Ulai river. Teumman's head was brought back to Nineveh and displayed for the public. Elam itself however remained undefeated and continued to work against Assyria for some time. One of

111878-414: Was that families were relatively small in size. In addition to family members, many households employed various servants. Such servants could be either bought or provided by the Assyrian government. Marriage was rarely decided between the prospective spouses, but instead the result of negotiations between their families. Polygamy was practised by Assyrians, as well as by foreign groups in the empire, such as

112216-472: Was that he managed to secure a border agreement with the Babylonian king Nabu-shuma-ukin I ( r.   900–887 BC), sealed through both kings marrying a daughter of the other. Adad-nirari also continued Ashur-dan's efforts in the west; in his wars, he defeated numerous small western kingdoms. Several small states, such as Guzana , were made into vassals and others, such as Nisibis , were placed under pro-Assyrian puppet-kings. After his successful wars in

112554-407: Was the Aramean king Ahuni , who ruled the city or region Bit Adini . Ahuni's forces broke through across the Khabur and Euphrates several times and it was only after years of war that he at last accepted Ashurnasirpal as his suzerain . Ahuni's defeat was highly important as it marked the first time since Ashur-bel-kala ( r.   1073–1056 BC), two centuries prior, that Assyrian forces had

112892-436: Was the dilution of the cultural diversity of the Near East, forever changing the ethnolinguistic composition of the region and facilitating the rise of Aramaic as the regional lingua franca , a position the language retained until the 14th century. The Neo-Assyrian Empire left a legacy of great cultural significance. The political structures established by the empire became the model for the later empires that succeeded it and

113230-399: Was the first of a series of ecumenical councils , which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church, notably concerning Christology . The Church of the East did not accept the third and following ecumenical councils and is still separate today by its successors ( Assyrian Church of the East ). In terms of prosperity and cultural life, the Byzantine Empire was one of

113568-432: Was the first to assume the style šar māt Aššur ("king of the land of Ashur") and his grandson Arik-den-ili introduced the style šarru dannu ("strong king"). The kings during Assyria's first major phase of expansion accelerated the adoption of new titles. Adad-nirari I's inscriptions required 32 lines to be devoted just to his titles, which included, among others, nêr dapnūti ummān kaššî qutî lullumî u šubarî ("defeater of

113906-400: Was unable to fully exploit the victory and the Babylonian throne remained unoccupied for several years. Shamshi-Adad's son Adad-nirari III ( r.   811–783 BC) was probably very young at the time of his father's death in 811, and real political power during his early reign was probably wielded by the turtanu Nergal‐ila'i and by Adad-nirari's mother Shammuramat . Shammuramat

114244-453: Was wholly unprepared to go on the defensive against an enemy that was both numerically superior and that aimed to destroy his country rather than conquer it. Yet another possible factor was environmental issues. 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. It

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