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219-491: For most of the Old Assyrian period, Assur was a minor city-state with little political and military influence. In contrast to Assyrian kings of later periods, the kings in the Old Assyrian period were just one of the prominent leading officials in the city's administration and normally used the style Išši'ak Aššur , which translates to "governor (on behalf) of (the god) Ashur ", rather than šar (king). The kings presided over

438-582: A Semitic language (i.e. related to modern Hebrew and Arabic ) closely related to Babylonian , spoken in southern Mesopotamia. Both Assyrian and Babylonian are generally regarded by modern scholars to be distinct dialects of the Akkadian language. This is a modern convention as contemporary ancient authors considered Assyrian and Babylonian to be two separate languages; only Babylonian was referred to as akkadûm , with Assyrian being referred to as aššurû or aššurāyu . Though both were written with cuneiform script,

657-489: A "descendant of Sargon II", his great-grandfather. More extremely, Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC) calls himself a "descendant of the eternal seed of Bel-bani ", a king who lived more than a thousand years before him. Assyrian royal titularies were often changed depending on where the titles were to be displayed, the titles of the same Assyrian king would have been different in their home country of Assyria and in conquered regions. Those Neo-Assyrian kings who controlled

876-670: A child after being married for two or three years. This woman remained a slave, however, and was never seen as a second wife. Old Assyrian families sometimes hired wet nurses ( mušēniqtum ), who were paid for their work. If a mother died, young children were entrusted to the care of other family members, such as her or her husband's grandparents or aunts and uncles. Male and female children were raised differently. Girls typically lived with their mother, being taught to spin and weave and helping with daily tasks, whereas boys were taught by masters to read and write and then often followed their fathers to Anatolia to learn how to trade. The eldest daughter

1095-426: A complicated and extensive syllabary. A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of

1314-548: A decrease in trade in general. From the 19th century BC until the end of the Old Assyrian period, the Assur city-state frequently came under the control of larger foreign states and empires. The portion of the Old Assyrian period that is best historically attested, chiefly through extensive records found in the ruins of the city of Mari , is the time of Shamshi-Adad I ( c. 1808–1776 BC) and his sons Ishme-Dagan I and Yasmah-Adad . Shamshi-Adad ( Samsi-Addu in his own Amorite language)

1533-404: A foreign conqueror in the eyes of the locals and he placed his capital elsewhere. The reason for making Shubat-Enlil his capital rather than Assur might have been that Assur was seen as formally ruled by the god Ashur, and had a powerful local city assembly, and was thus unattractive as a seat of power. In the 18th century BC, Shamshi-Adad's kingdom became surrounded by competing large kingdoms. In

1752-601: A great empire-builder. The early kings of the Adaside dynasty also several times assumed names from the rulers of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, including Erishum and Puzur-Ashur itself. Though it is not seen as reliable for the decades immediately following Shamshi-Adad's death, the Assyrian King List' s account of the sequence of Assyrian kings and their reigns from Bel-bani onwards, when the rulers were securely based in Assur under

1971-490: A journey, crossing a river, and when arranging meetings with important officials. It is also clear that guards and toll officials were paid not only in money, but were also regularly offered gifts such as beer. Wine appears to have been consumed in some ritualistic contexts, such as when swearing an oath to a deity. The language used to inscribe the Assyrian tablets found in central Anatolia is generally referred to as Old Assyrian,

2190-612: A language of the Zagros possibly related to the Hurro-Urartuan language family , is attested in personal names, rivers and mountains and in various crafts. Akkadian came to be the dominant language during the Akkadian Empire and the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administrative, religious, literary and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until

2409-588: A large rectangular cult room which worshipper entered from the side. The Old Assyrian palace at Assur, dubbed the Urplan Palace by archaeologists, was an enormous structure, measuring 98 by 112 meters (321.5 by 367.5 meters), and included a large central court surrounded by several smaller courts, though it appears to never have been completed. The construction does not seem to have progressed beyond cutting foundation trenches, though some scant evidence suggests that some of these foundation trenches were later reused for

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2628-465: A legitimate ruler over Babylon (Marduk and Sarpanit, the main pair of Babylonian deities). To exemplify an Assyrian royal title from the time Assyria ruled all of Mesopotamia, the titulature preserved in one of Esarhaddon's inscriptions reads as follows: The great king, the mighty king, king of the Universe, king of Assyria, viceroy of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, son of Sennacherib, the great king,

2847-421: A list kept and developed by the ancient Assyrians themselves over the course of several centuries. Though some parts of the list are probably fictional, the list accords well with Hittite , Babylonian and ancient Egyptian king lists and with the archaeological record , and is generally considered reliable for the age. The line of Assyrian kings ended with the defeat of Assyria's final king Ashur-uballit II by

3066-556: A local governor under Rimush. In his inscription, Puzur-Sin prides himself on removing the ruler of "foreign seed" and demolishing their palace, erecting a religious sanctuary in its place. For these construction projects to have taken place, Puzur-Sin must have been able to maintain control over Assur for at least a few years. Perhaps Puzur-Sin was omitted from the king list by mistake, or perhaps his omission reflects changing attitudes towards Shamshi-Adad and his dynasty by later Assyrians. Ashur-dugul, who ruled at some point after Puzur-Sin,

3285-432: A man had died with unpaid debts, his sons became responsible for paying them before receiving their inheritance. Daughters held no responsibility for unpaid debts. Both sons and daughters, though primarily the sons, were responsible for caring for their elderly parents and after they died, were also responsible for organizing and paying for their funerals. After the funeral ceremony, there was an extended period of mourning. It

3504-546: A mixture of Amorite tribal-geographical names with no relation to Assyria at all. It is possible that the 'kings who were ancestors', who are not attested in any other sources as present at Assur, refer to the ancestors of Shamshi-Adad I ( r.   c. 1808–1776 BC), given that other sources claim that his father was named Ilu-kabkabu, and they might thus not have been kings of Assyria, but rather rulers of Terqa , Shamshi-Adad's supposed ancestral home. Including these figures may have served to justify Shamshi-Adad's rise to

3723-482: A patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses . Esagil-kin-apli's Diagnostic Handbook was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease , its aetiology, its future development, and

3942-560: A poorly known construction project during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I. Little evidence survives on non-monumental buildings in Assur. Not a single house has been excavated, nor have any private archives of its citizens been discovered. Over seventy graves are however known from the site, dated to between 2500 and 1500 BC. The graves differ in design and in how many bodies were buried, and include bodies placed in pits, large ceramic vessels and tombs with vaulted roofs built with stone or mudbrick . The vaulted tombs are of particular significance as

4161-549: A precursor to the Socratic method . The Ionian philosopher Thales was influenced by Babylonian cosmological ideas. Ancient Mesopotamians had ceremonies each month. The theme of the rituals and festivals for each month was determined by at least six important factors: Some songs were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings , they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in

4380-512: A prominent trading city in northern Mesopotamia. Erishum earned some money himself through imposing tolls , which was put into expanding Assur itself: the temple of Ashur was rebuilt and expanded and a new temple, dedicated to the god Adad , was also constructed. Erishum's son and successor Ikunum ( c. 1934–1921 BC) rebuilt the fortification wall around Assur, an event which required financial contributions of silver not only from Assur itself but also from its widespread trading colonies. Whether

4599-730: A recent hypothesis, the Archimedes' screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times. Later, during the Parthian or Sasanian periods, the Baghdad Battery , which may have been the world's first battery, was created in Mesopotamia. The Ancient Mesopotamian religion

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4818-550: A sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD. Libraries were extant in towns and temples during the Babylonian Empire. An old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and

5037-402: A sequence of states and empires from southern Mesopotamia . Assur is generally thought to have become an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I , who ruled c. 2025 BC. Little is otherwise known of Puzur-Ashur, and it is unclear how exactly he came to power, though his descendants, Assyria's first royal dynasty, wrote that he had restored the walls around the city. Assur's independence

5256-497: A significant site of copper-mining. According to his inscriptions, Ilu-shuma also constructed wells in Assur, used both as a source of water and to make bricks for the city wall. Ilu-shuma was succeeded by his even more successful son, Erishum I ( c. 1974–1934 BC), the earliest king whose length of reign is recorded in the Assyrian King List , a later document recording the kings of Assyria and their reigns. Erishum initiated

5475-662: A sparsely populated and marginal region under the Neo-Babylonian and later Achaemenid empires. Under the Seleucid and Parthian empires, Assyria experienced a remarkable recovery. Under the last two or so centuries of Parthian rule, archaeological surveys have shown that the region reached a density of settlements that is only comparable to what the region was like under the Neo-Assyrian Empire. A semi-autonomous city-state under Parthian suzerainty appears to have formed around

5694-487: A stable dynastic line, is thought to be reliable due to presumably being based on preserved chronological records. The precise relationships between the rulers might however not be fully reliable, as there is evidence to suggest that the genealogy of the early Adaside dynasty was at least partially reconstructed by later scribes. In large parts, the invasion or raid of Mesopotamia by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1595 BC

5913-415: A table of Pythagorean triples and represents some of the most advanced mathematics prior to Greek mathematics. From Sumerian times, temple priesthoods had attempted to associate current events with certain positions of the planets and stars. This continued to Assyrian times, when Limmu lists were created as a year by year association of events with planetary positions, which, when they have survived to

6132-518: A trade colony, or karum , out of which two levels (Ib, c. 1833–1719 BC, and II, c. 1950–1836 BC) have been archaeologically investigated. Level II is particularly significant since it preserves about 22,000 cuneiform clay tablets that attest to a long-distance and extensive Assyrian trade network. The trade colony at Kültepe was a pivotal node in this network, which was centered in Assur and had extensive lesser trade posts throughout central Anatolia and likely Mesopotamia as well. This trade network

6351-510: A vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000-square-kilometre (5,800 sq mi) region of marshes, lagoons, mudflats, and reed banks in the south. In the extreme south, the Euphrates and

6570-399: A weapon Assyrians had to take oaths on. Women also took oaths on the " tambourine ( huppum ) of Ishtar ". Both of these objects were likely physical divine emblems in Assur. The temples dedicated to Ashur in both Assur and the Assyrian trading colonies evidently included statues of the god and representations of his divine objects since one of the preserved texts describe thieves breaking into

6789-580: Is an-ki , which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki . Their son was Enlil, the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief god of the pantheon . The numerous civilizations of the area influenced the Abrahamic religions , especially the Hebrew Bible . Its cultural values and literary influence are especially evident in the Book of Genesis . Giorgio Buccellati believes that

Old Assyrian period - Misplaced Pages Continue

7008-667: Is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system , in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent . Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq . In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran , Turkey , Syria and Kuwait . Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of

7227-414: Is a composite product, although it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure. Mesopotamian mathematics and science was based on a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system . This is the source of the 60-minute hour, the 24-hour day, and the 360- degree circle. The Sumerian calendar was lunisolar, with three seven-day weeks of a lunar month. This form of mathematics

7446-535: Is accorded a reign of six years by the Assyrian King List , which also states that his rule was challenged by six usurpers: Ashur-apla-idi , Nasir-Sin , Sin-namir , Ipqi-Ishtar , Adad-salulu and Adasi . It is unclear if these figures were actually historical and actually claimed to be kings in opposition to Ashur-dugul. Their names are suspiciously similar to the eponyms (i.e. limmu officials) of Ashur-dugul's reign and they might thus in reality have been his generals and officials, misattributed as rival kings by

7665-464: Is accurate to about six decimal digits, and is the closest possible three-place sexagesimal representation of √ 2 : The Babylonians were not interested in exact solutions, but rather approximations, and so they would commonly use linear interpolation to approximate intermediate values. One of the most famous tablets is the Plimpton 322 tablet , created around 1900–1600 BC, which gives

7884-464: Is clear the Assur experienced a period of prosperity from the late 16th to the early 15th century, as can be gathered from the royal inscriptions of Puzur-Ashur III, his two immediate predecessors Shamshi-Adad III ( c. 1563–1548 BC) and Ashur-nirari I ( c. 1547–1522 BC), and his successor Enlil-nasir I ( c. 1497–1485 BC), the first rulers with known royal inscriptions since Puzur-Sin's time. The inscriptions by these kings demonstrate that many of

8103-526: Is clearly incomplete and does not fully reflect the politically uncertain time that followed, when Shamshi-Adad's Amorite descendants, native Assyrians, and Hurrians appear to have fought one another for control of Assur. According to the standard version of the list, Ishme-Dagan ruled for 40 years and was succeeded at Assur by the native Assyrian usurper Ashur-dugul . Records at Mari establish that Ishme-Dagan only ruled for 11 years after his father's death, dying c. 1765 BC. The king list also does not mention

8322-580: Is compatible with ergodic axioms. Logic was employed to some extent in Babylonian astronomy and medicine. Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy . In particular, the Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the Sophists , the Heraclitean doctrine of dialectic , and the dialogs of Plato , as well as

8541-432: Is described to have convened either in a "sacred precinct" ( ḫamrum ) in the "Step Gate" ( mušlālum ) behind the temple of Ashur. In this sacred place, where oaths were also sworn, there were seven statues of divine judges. At other times, the assembly may have convened in a structure referred to in texts as the "city hall" ( bēt ālim ). The city hall was run by the limmu official and was an important institution that managed

8760-461: Is distinctive when compared to the other seals is that there are no "filler figures" between the four primary figures depicted, making the space between them appear larger and the figures themselves stand out more. In terms of the artwork and the layout, the Puzur-Ashur dynasty seals are reminiscent of the seals of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, though noticeable differences do exist, such as

8979-410: Is easy to decipher the signs, many researchers remain uncomfortable with the language itself. Though it was a more archaic variant of the later Assyrian language, Old Assyrian also contains several words that are not attested in later periods, some being peculiar early forms of words and others being names for commercial terms or various textile and food products from Anatolia. Like the calendars used by

Old Assyrian period - Misplaced Pages Continue

9198-478: Is further corroborated by the absence of certain figures in the list known to have ruled in Assur before the Puzur-Ashur dynasty (the governors under Assur's foreign rulers). The Synchronistic King List diverges from the Assyrian King List and considers Erishum I ( r.   c. 1974–1935 BC), the fourth king of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, to be the first king of Assyria. Though it includes earlier names,

9417-454: Is generally seen as the founder of Assyria as an independent city-state c. 2025 BC. Some historians on the other hand speculate that Puzur-Ashur was not a new dynastic founder, but that his dynasty actually began earlier, perhaps by Sulili. The dynasty has thus also been termed the 'Sulili–Puzur-Ashur dynasty'. The dynasty has also been referred to simply as the 'Old Assyrian dynasty'. These kings, beginning with Puzur-Ashur I, took power in

9636-651: Is in his seal more similar to the rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire than the preceding rulers of Assur. The middle portion of his seal is not known due to the fragmentary nature of all known surviving impressions, which means that it is impossible to determine whether a seated figure was depicted there or not. The distinct burial practices in Old Assyrian Assur suggests that a distinct Assyrian identity formed already in this period. Cultural practices such as burials, dress codes and foods are typically critical to

9855-727: Is known is that Puzur-Ashur and his successors after independence did not actually claim the dignity of being kings ( šar ), as the Akkadian and Sumerian suzerains had done, but instead continued to style themselves as governors ( Išši'ak ), asserting that the Assyrian national god Ashur was king and that the Assyrian rulers therefore were only his representatives on Earth. Assur was during the time of Puzur-Ashur's dynasty home to only about 5,000 to 8,000 people, which means its military power must have been very limited, and there are no sources that indicate any military institutions whatsoever. No surrounding cities were subjected to Assur and there are not even any known records of political interactions with

10074-514: Is likely that most preserved Old Assyrian texts were written by the authors themselves (and not hired scribes). Since some such letters are by women, it is evident that at least some women learned to read and write. Due to the limited number of signs used, Old Assyrian is relatively easier to decipher for modern researchers than later forms of the language, though the limited number of signs also means that there are in cases several possible alternative phonetic values and readings. This means that while it

10293-489: Is possible that the Adaside dynasty originated as outsiders and that the family did not originally hail from Assur. The name of Bel-bani's grandson Shu-Ninua ( c. 1615–1602 BC) might mean "man from Nineveh " and the repetition of the names Shamshi-Adad and Ishme-Dagan among the kings of the dynasty could suggest at least partial descent from Shamshi-Adad's dynasty. The repetition of the names could alternatively be explained by Shamshi-Adad being revered by later generations as

10512-533: Is possible that the seated figure in the Puzur-Ashur dynasty seals should be interpreted as Ashur, with the bald servant being led before him by a goddess being the Assyrian king. Though the seated figure is not given any other visual markers of divinity (such as horns or other non-human body features), the symbolism alone could not theologically be applied by the Old Assyrians to anyone but Ashur. Shamshi-Adad I retained in his more absolute kingship certain aspects of

10731-527: Is the first noticeable impression left by the Assyrians in the historical record. Assur was able to maintain its central position in the trade network despite being relatively small and having no history of military success. After the discovery of the Kültepe tablets in the 20th century, many historians suggested that they were evidence of a large "Old Assyrian Empire", stretching into Anatolia, but this interpretation

10950-452: Is today discredited based on surviving archaeological and literary evidence. It is however possible that the cultural traditions that reached Assur during the time of its early trade network played some role in the rise of the first Assyrian territorial state centuries later. Though an extensive number of Assyrian traders are known to have lived in the Kültepe trade colony, approximately 500 to 800 people, there are no obvious Assyrian elements in

11169-421: Is uncertain. The Babylonian development of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy . The only Greek-Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a heliocentric model of planetary motion was Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC). Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch . He supported Aristarchus of Samos' heliocentric theory where

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11388-504: The Synchronistic History , a later text concerning border disputes between Assyria and Babylonia, suggesting that Assyria first entered into diplomacy and conflict with Babylonia at this time and that Assur at this time ruled a small stretch of territory beyond the city itself. In the first half of the 15th century BC, there is also evidence of gifts for the first time being exchanged between Assyrian kings and Egyptian pharaohs . It

11607-560: The Akkadian Empire ( c. 2334–2154 BC), the Mesopotamian civilization that preceded the later kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon . When the Mesopotamian central government under the Third Dynasty of Ur ( c. 2112–2004 BC) collapsed and polities that had once been vassals to Ur became independent, many of the new sovereign rulers refrained from taking the title of king ( šar ), instead applying that title to their principal deities (in

11826-502: The Akkadian language , several terms were used for slaves, commonly wardum , though this term could confusingly also be used for (free) official servants, retainers and followers, soldiers and subjects of the king. Because many individuals designated as wardum in Old Assyrian texts are described as handling property and carrying out administrative tasks on behalf of their masters, many may have in actuality been free servants and not slaves in

12045-663: The Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun . According to Plutarch , Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used, except that he correctly theorized on tides as a result of the Moon's attraction. Babylonian astronomy served as the basis for much of Greek , classical Indian , Sassanian, Byzantine , Syrian , medieval Islamic , Central Asian , and Western European astronomy. The oldest Babylonian texts on medicine date back to

12264-561: The Hittites and began its transition into a large territorial state under a series of warrior-kings. Through extensive cuneiform records, amounting to over 22,000 clay tablets found at the Old Assyrian trading colony at Kültepe, much information can be gathered about the culture, language and society of the Old Assyrian period. As in other societies of the Ancient Near East, the Old Assyrians practiced slavery, though confusion resulting from

12483-599: The Jazira , is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad . Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation. It is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests , with names like Syria , Jazira , and Iraq being used to describe

12702-473: The Middle Assyrian Empire (reign beginning in c. 1178 BC). After his time, the lists are identical in their contents. The king-lists mostly accord well with Hittite , Babylonian and ancient Egyptian king lists and with the archaeological record , and are generally considered reliable for the age. It is however clear that parts of the list are fictional, as some known kings are not found on

12921-657: The Neo-Assyrian Empire asserted control over much of the ancient Near East. Subsequently, the Babylonians, who had long been overshadowed by Assyria, seized power , dominating the region for a century as the final independent Mesopotamian realm until the modern era. In 539 BC, Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire . The area was next conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. After his death, it became part of

13140-541: The Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Median Empire in 609 BC, after which Assyria disappeared as an independent political unit, never to rise again. The Assyrian people survived the fall of their empire and kept their own cultural and religious traditions (though were Christianized in the 1st–3rd centuries AD). At times, Assur and other Assyrian cities were afforded great deals of autonomy by its foreign rulers after

13359-634: The Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC . The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū , or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa , during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069–1046 BC). Along with contemporary Egyptian medicine , the Babylonians introduced the concepts of diagnosis , prognosis , physical examination , enemas , and prescriptions . The Diagnostic Handbook introduced

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13578-581: The Old Babylonian Empire , Mari and Eshnunna , but also between different Assyrian dynasties and nobles who vied for power over the city. This period culminated in the re-establishment of Assur as an independent city-state under the Adaside dynasty c. 1700 BC. Assur became a vassal of the Mitanni kingdom c. 1430 BC but broke free in the early 14th century after Mitanni suffered a series of defeats by

13797-490: The Zagros Mountains in the east to central Anatolia in the west. During their time as prominent traders the Assyrians founded a number of trading colonies at various sites in the trading network, such as Kültepe . The first Assyrian royal dynasty, founded by Puzur-Ashur I c. 2025 BC came to an end when the city was captured by the foreign Amorite conqueror Shamshi Adad I in c. 1808 BC. Shamshi-Adad ruled from

14016-402: The fall of Babylon in 539 BC. The rise of empires, beginning with Sargon of Akkad around 2350 BC, characterized the subsequent 2,000 years of Mesopotamian history, marked by the succession of kingdoms and empires such as the Akkadian Empire . The early second millennium BC saw the polarization of Mesopotamian society into Assyria in the north and Babylonia in the south. From 900 to 612 BC,

14235-438: The marketplaces . Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations as an oral tradition until writing was more universal. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries highly important information about historical events. Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings. Boxing and wrestling feature frequently in art, and some form of polo

14454-407: The É , a temple dedicated to the goddess Inanna at Uruk, from a building labeled as Temple C by its excavators. The early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus, only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its use. It was not until the widespread use of a syllabic script was adopted under Sargon's rule that significant portions of

14673-403: The "Akkadians [i.e. southerners] and their children" and selling copper. That Ilu-shuma was able to sell copper to kings in the south is significant because it illustrates that Assur at this time was producing enough copper to sustain both itself and others. Where this copper came from is not clear, perhaps Assyrian miners made the long trip to Ergani in the north-west, in later texts described as

14892-629: The (two) rivers") comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος ( mesos , 'middle') and ποταμός ( potamos , 'river') and translates to '(land) between rivers', likely being a calque of the older Aramaic term, with the Aramaic term itself likely being a calque of the Akkadian birit narim . It is used throughout the Greek Septuagint ( c.  250 BC ) to translate the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent Naharaim . An even earlier Greek usage of

15111-406: The 18th century BC and royal inscriptions and archival texts from Assur are very scanty in this time. In any case it is apparent that Assur at some point returned to being an independent city-state. The Assyrian King List , the only real overarching source for the period, presents a continuous sequence of rulers during this time, but its account of at least the decades following Shamshi-Adad's death

15330-813: The 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and the Muslim conquest of the Levant from the Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene , Osroene , and Hatra . The regional toponym Mesopotamia ( / ˌ m ɛ s ə p ə ˈ t eɪ m i ə / , Ancient Greek : Μεσοποταμία '[land] between rivers'; Arabic : بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن Bilād ar-Rāfidayn or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن Bayn an-Nahrayn ; Persian : میان‌رودان miyân rudân ; Syriac : ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ Beth Nahrain "(land) between

15549-496: The 7th century BC, particularly under the Achaemenid and Parthian empires. Incomplete king-lists have been recovered from three of the major ancient Assyrian capitals ( Assur , Dur-Sharrukin and Nineveh ). The three lists are largely consistent with each other, all originally copies of a single original list, and are based on the yearly appointments of limmy -officials (the eponymous officials for each year, appointed by

15768-532: The 8,000-year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany . They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq . The earliest language written in Mesopotamia was Sumerian , an agglutinative language isolate . Along with Sumerian, Semitic languages were also spoken in early Mesopotamia. Subartuan ,

15987-504: The Ashur temple in Kültepe and stealing Assur's dagger and a sun-disc that was placed on his chest. Ashur is frequently alluded to in surviving Old Assyrian texts and inscriptions. Assyrian texts from Kültepe show that Assyrians swore their oaths by "the City and the prince" or "the City and the lord", "prince" and "lord" probably meaning Ashur. In several texts, family members at home in Assur wrote to

16206-566: The Assyrian King List does not list the length of the rule of any king before Erishum I. Given that the earliest rulers are described as "kings who lived in tents", they, if real, may not have ruled Assur at all but rather have been nomadic tribal chieftains somewhere in its vicinity. As in the Sumerian King List , several names may also have belonged to rulers who were contemporaries/rivals, rather than successors and predecessors of one another. Some researchers have dismissed these names as

16425-411: The Assyrian community or between the Assyrian traders and the locals. Non-commercial loans often consisted of small quantities of silver and were given out with interest; this interest amounted to 30% every year for Assyrians, though it was higher for the locals in the trading colonies. Loans usually had to be paid back within a short timespan, typically within a year, and successful repayment was marked by

16644-433: The Assyrian national deity Ashur, who had probably originated in the preceding Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of the city of Assur itself. Modern researchers divide the thousands of years of ancient Assyrian history into several stages based on political events and gradual changes in language. "Old Assyrian" is one of these stages and is thus a chronological label. As defined by Klaas Veenhof in 2008,

16863-410: The Assyrian realm, Assyria itself, was thought to represent a serene and perfect place of order whilst the lands governed by foreign powers were perceived as infested with disorder and chaos. The peoples of these "outer" lands were seen as uncivilized, strange and as speaking strange languages. Because the king was the earthly link to the gods, it was his duty to spread order throughout the world through

17082-419: The Assyrians themselves. Though he would in later centuries be regarded as a god of war, guiding the Assyrian kings on their campaigns, he was in Old Assyrian times seen as a god of death and revival, related to agriculture. One of Ashur's main functions was also justice: it was believed that anyone who gave false testimony or unjust judgement in court would be struck down by "Ashur's dagger" ( Patrum ša Aššur ),

17301-415: The Assyrians viewed themselves as a distinct group. Though Old Assyrian evidence concerning personal lives from Assur itself is limited, consisting of a few marriage contracts and wills, the extensive Old Assyrian cuneiform records found at Kültepe document not only the participation of the traders in the Assyrian trade network, but also their everyday life not only in Kültepe but also at home in Assur. There

17520-435: The Assyrians, the most dangerous animal of all was the lion , used (similarly to foreign powers) as an example of chaos and disorder due to their aggressive nature. To prove themselves worthy of rule and illustrate that they were competent protectors, Assyrian kings engaged in ritual lion hunts . Lion-hunting was reserved for Assyrian royalty and was a public event, staged at parks in or near the Assyrian cities. In some cases,

17739-509: The Four Corners of the World ", by the Assyrian kings served to legitimize their rule and assert their control over Babylon and lower Mesopotamia . Epithets like "chosen by the god Marduk and the goddess Sarpanit " and "favourite of the god Ashur and the goddess Mullissu ", both assumed by Esarhaddon, illustrate that he was both Assyrian (Ashur and Mullissu, the main pair of Assyrian deities) and

17958-778: The Greek Seleucid Empire . Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire . It became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with western parts of the region coming under ephemeral Roman control. In 226 AD, the eastern regions of Mesopotamia fell to the Sassanid Persians . The division of the region between the Roman Byzantine Empire from 395 AD and the Sassanid Empire lasted until

18177-412: The Mesopotamian population became literate. Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC. The exact dating being a matter of debate. Sumerian continued to be used as

18396-519: The Neo-Assyrian Empire was used. Stelae erected by the local rulers of Assur in this time resemble the stelae erected by the Neo-Assyrian kings, though the rulers are depicted in Parthian-style trouser-suits rather than ancient garb. The rulers used the title maryo of Assur ("master of Assur") and appear to have viewed themselves as continuing the old Assyrian royal tradition. These stelae retain

18615-458: The Old Assyrian period is not as detailed as in later periods. The chief deity in Assur in the Old Assyrian period, and in later times as well, was the Assyrian national deity Ashur. Though the deity and the city are commonly distinguished by modern historians through calling the god Ashur and the city Assur, both were inscribed in the exact same way in ancient times ( Aššur ). Because Old Assyrian documents sometimes appear to not differentiate between

18834-464: The Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf . The arid environment ranges from the northern areas of rain-fed agriculture to the south where irrigation of agriculture is essential. This irrigation is aided by a high water table and by melting snows from the high peaks of the northern Zagros Mountains and from the Armenian Highlands, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that give

19053-472: The aftermath of the collapse of the Neo-Sumerian Empire, which had ruled over Assyria. The dynasty founded by Shamshi-Adad I, who deposed the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, is conventionally known as the 'Shamshi-Adad dynasty', after its founder. During the rule of Shamshi-Adad I and his successors, of Amorite descent and originally from the south, a more absolute form of kingship, inspired by that of Babylon,

19272-547: The ancient history of lower Mesopotamia—commenced in the early-third millennium BC with cuneiform records of early dynastic kings. This entire history ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC or with the Muslim conquest and the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, from which point the region came to be known as Iraq . In the long span of this period, Mesopotamia housed some of

19491-451: The assembly was first divided into three groups and if no unamity was reached divided further into seven groups. A smaller group within the assembly, referred to as "the Elders" in a handful of texts, may have been the ones to finally pass verdicts. Assur first experienced a more autocratic form of kingship under Shamshi-Adad I, the earliest ruler of Assur during the Old Assyrian period to assume

19710-422: The assembly's executive officers and chairmen. In documents from Kültepe, it is common to find mentions of "the City" (i.e. the city assembly) passing verdicts in judicial matters. Documents also however attest to rulers often being approached for legal advice, as they were seen as "constitutional experts". Though the Assyrian kings themselves used the style Išši'ak , the citizens of Assur often referred to them with

19929-404: The bride belonged to her, not the husband, and was inherited by her children after her death. After the marriage was complete, wives moved in with their husbands, who were obliged to provide them with garments and food. Marriages were typically monogamous , but husbands were allowed to buy a female slave (sometimes chosen by the wife) in order to produce heirs in case his wife had not given birth to

20148-405: The brief conquests of Assur by outside powers, such as Eshnunna, Elam and Babylon during Ishme-Dagan's time. Documents at Mari and a fragmentary alternate version of the king list also show that Ishme-Dagan was succeeded by his son Mut-Ashkur , who in turn was succeeded by Rimush . It is possible that these kings only ruled Ekallatum, and not Assur, but the Assyrian ruler Puzur-Sin , also absent in

20367-446: The buildings constructed earlier in the Old Assyrian period were repaired, rebuilt and extended under their reigns, including the temples dedicated to Ishtar and Adad, as well as the walls of the city itself. Under Puzur-Ashur III, the city walls were extended to cover a greater tract of land, presumably attesting to a growing population. Later documents also reference the construction of a "new city" ( alu eššu ) during this time, adding to

20586-459: The businesses, particularly through weaving the textiles that their male relatives then sold. The women themselves received the gold or silver payment for these textiles and could in many transactions represent their husbands and brothers. Sons could after their father's deaths either inherit their father's business or choose to start their own enterprises. Some of the most common cuneiform tablets recovered from Kültepe are loan contracts, both within

20805-475: The case of Assyria, Ashur ). For this reason, most of the Assyrian kings of the Old Assyrian period ( c. 2025–1364 BC) used the title Iššiʾak Aššur , translating to "governor of Assyria". In contrast to the titles employed by the Babylonian kings in the south, which typically focused on the protective role and the piety of the king, Assyrian royal inscriptions tend to glorify the strength and power of

21024-410: The chances of the patient's recovery. Esagil-kin-apli discovered a variety of illnesses and diseases and described their symptoms in his Diagnostic Handbook . These include the symptoms for many varieties of epilepsy and related ailments along with their diagnosis and prognosis. Some treatments used were likely based off the known characteristics of the ingredients used. The others were based on

21243-420: The chief deity, Ashur . The Assyrians believed that the king was the link between the gods and the earthly realm. As such, it was the king's primary duty to discover the will of the gods and enact this, often through the construction of temples or waging war. To aid the king with this duty, there was a number of priests at the royal court trained in reading and interpreting signs from the gods. The heartland of

21462-480: The children. Sometimes they had to live with their in-laws, not always successfully. Because the Assyrian traders in Anatolia could be away for long periods of time, they were allowed to take second wives in Anatolia. This arrangement had certain rules, including that the two wives could not be of the same status (one had to be the aššatum , "main wife", and the other the amtum , "second wife"), they could not both live in

21681-540: The city Shubat-Enlil and established a short-lived kingdom, sometimes called the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia, that collapsed after his death in c. 1776 BC. Events after Shamshi-Adad's death until the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period are poorly known, but there appears to initially have been some decades of frequent conflict in Assur and the surrounding region, not only between different states and empires, such as

21900-430: The city and the god, it is believed that Ashur is a deified personification of the city itself. Perhaps the site of the city, originating as a holy site prior to the city's construction and settled due to its strategic location came to gradually be regarded as divine in its own right at some point in the preceding Early Assyrian period. Ashur's role as a deity was flexible and changed with the changing culture and politics of

22119-436: The city as his residence. His wife, Lamassi-Ashur was even named after the god Ashur. In c. 1772 BC, the new king of Eshnunna, Ibal-pi-el II invaded Ishme-Dagan's kingdom, occupying Assur, Ekallatum and Qattare before seizing Shamshi-Adad's old capital at Shubut-Enlil. Ishme-Dagan fled from his realm during this time, taking refuge in southern Mesopotamia, now ruled by the Old Babylonian Empire . Ibal-pi-el II's invasion

22338-590: The city of Eridu , the Akkadian kingdoms, the Third Dynasty of Ur , and the various Assyrian empires. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon of Akkad (who established the Akkadian Empire), Hammurabi (who established the Old Babylonian state), Ashur-uballit I and Tiglath-Pileser I (who established the Assyrian Empire). Scientists analysed DNA from

22557-403: The city of Shubat-Enlil and in c. 1785 BC placed his two sons in control of different parts of the kingdom as his vassals; Yasmah-Adad was granted Mari and the surrounding lands and Ishme-Dagan, the elder son, was granted Ekallatum, Assur and surrounding territories. Under Shamshi-Adad's kingdom, Assur remained a distinct city and might have continued its trading with other cities. Local trade

22776-420: The city of Assur, Assyria's oldest capital, near, or shortly after, the end of the 2nd century BC. In this period, the ancient city flourished, with some old buildings being restored and some new ones, such as a new palace, being constructed. The ancient temple dedicated to the god Ashur was also restored for the second time in the second century AD, and a cultic calendar effectively identical to that used under

22995-409: The city of Babylon used a "hybrid" titulary of sorts in the south, combining aspects of the Assyrian and Babylonian tradition, similar to how the traditional Babylonian deities were promoted in the south alongside the Assyrian main deity of Ashur . The assumption of many traditional southern titles, including the ancient " king of Sumer and Akkad " and the boastful " king of the Universe " and " king of

23214-404: The city's actual administrative body, the Ālum (city assembly), which was made up of prominent and influential members among Assur's populace. Though lacking in military and political might, Assur was an important economic center in northern Mesopotamia. From the time of Erishum I ( c. 1974–1935 BC) until the late 19th century BC, the city was a hub in a large trading network that spanned from

23433-431: The city's finances through collecting taxes and fines and also acted as a public warehouse, selling certain wares, such as barley and precious metals. On some wares, such as lapis lazuli and iron, the city all appears to have had a local monopoly . Documents from Kültepe have shown that the verdicts of the local court, and thus possibly also the city assembly in Assur as well, during this time were reached by majority vote:

23652-399: The city, which left few traces of the original Old Assyrian structures. Surviving finds at Assur include a new phase of the city's Ishtar temple (dubbed Ishtar D), built during the preceding Early Assyrian period , as well as an early palace. The new Ishtar temple measured 34 by 9.5 meters (111.5 by 31.2 feet) and was substantially larger than preceding temples at the site. This temple included

23871-429: The common meaning of the term. A number of wardum are however also recorded as being bought and sold. All other terms used for slaves also had secondary or alternative meanings in other contexts: for instance, the term subrum (used to refer to a collection of slaves) could also mean utensils or livestock and the term amtum (used for female slaves) was the same word as the word used for second wives. Another term that

24090-614: The cultural mix. Periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. The demands for labor has from time to time led to population increases that push the limits of the ecological carrying capacity , and should a period of climatic instability ensue, collapsing central government and declining populations can occur. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and neglect of irrigation systems. Equally, centripetal tendencies amongst city-states have meant that central authority over

24309-421: The cycles of the moon. They divided the year into two seasons: summer and winter. The origins of astronomy as well as astrology date from this time. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This

24528-938: The debts of their parents and sold off into slavery when their parents were unable to pay. Children born to slave women automatically became slaves themselves, unless some other arrangement had been agreed to. Owning several slaves was considered a sign of wealth, similar to owning several houses; on average a male slave cost 30 shekels and a female slave 20 shekels. Typically slaves from Anatolia, where Assur had prominent trading colonies, were less expensive than slaves from Mesopotamia. Slaves were owned by both women and men, with many women being recorded as both purchasing and inheriting slaves of their own. Female slaves were tasked with cleaning, preparing meals and helping their owners in raising their children. At times, men engaged in sexual relations with their female slaves and they were sometimes forced to become pregnant and give birth to children on behalf of infertile owners. Some male slaves worked in

24747-622: The earlier "inner city" ( libbi alī ). Around c. 1430 BC, Assur was subjugated by Mitanni and forced to become a vassal, an arrangement that lasted for about 70 years, until c. 1360 BC. Assur retained some autonomy under the Mitanni kings, as Assyrian kings during this time are attested as commissioning building projects, trading with Egypt and signing boundary agreements with the Kassites in Babylon. Chiefly responsible for bringing an end to Mitanni rule

24966-471: The earliest known experiment in free trade , leaving the initiative for trade and large-scale foreign transactions entirely to his populace. Though large institutions, such as the temples and the king himself, did take part in trade, the financing itself was provided by private bankers, who in turn bore nearly all the risk (but also earned nearly all the profits) of the trading ventures. Through Erishum's efforts, Assur appears to have quickly established itself as

25185-478: The early Egyptians and Arabs, the Old and Middle Assyrian calendar consisted of twelve months, each allotted three constellations (one constellation corresponding to a period of ten days). In Assyria, the months were named Ab sharrāni , Khubur , Ṣippum , Qarrātum , Tanmarta , Ti'inātum (or Sîn ), Kuzallu , Allanātum , Bēlti-ekallim , Narmak Ashur sha sarrātim , Narmak Ashur sha kinātim and Makhur ilī . Several of

25404-413: The early Old Assyrian period, though they are not from Assur or northern Mesopotamia, but rather from central Anatolia . The largest known collection of old Assyrian tablets are from Kültepe , near the modern city of Kayseri . Kültepe, in this time period known by the name Kanesh, was also a city-state ruled by its own line of kings. In the lower city of Kültepe, to the northwest, the Assyrians established

25623-471: The end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Old Aramaic , which had already become common in Mesopotamia, then became the official provincial administration language of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire , and then the Achaemenid Empire : the official lect is called Imperial Aramaic . Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries. The last Akkadian texts date from

25842-401: The form of adding an extra full month every four years. Furthermore, eponym years did not always begin with the change of a year, but instead often coincided with stellar phenomena. If an eponym ended in the middle of a month, the next eponym also started with that month which means that sometimes the same month was repeated. As a result of its issues, the seasons over time moved backwards through

26061-465: The formation and maintenance of ethnic and cultural identities. Perhaps the distinct identity of the early city-state was reinforced by its frequent contact with foreigners through its trade network. A verdict issued under one of the kings of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty decided that "Assyrians can sell gold among each other but, in accordance with the words of the stele, no Assyrian whosoever shall give gold to an Akkadian, Amorite or Subaraean", illustrating that

26280-464: The free citizens there was also a division into rabi ("big") and ṣaher ("small") members of the city assembly. Marriages in Old Assyrian Assur were decided and arranged between the prospective groom or his family and the parents of the prospective bride; usually marriages took place at the time the bride-to-be reached adulthood. Marriage gifts were customary; some texts mention that betrothals were broken off when no gifts were given. The dowry given to

26499-410: The god Ashur to be the true king. From the time of Ashur-uballit I (14th century BC), the rulers instead used king ( šar ). In time, further titles, such as " king of Sumer and Akkad ", " king of the Universe " and " king of the Four Corners of the World ", were added, often to assert their control over all of Mesopotamia. All modern lists of Assyrian kings generally follow the Assyrian King List ,

26718-451: The gods and reminding their husbands of their duties to the gods. In one text, two women wrote the following message to the prominent trader Imdu-ilum: Assyrian kings The king of Assyria ( Akkadian : Iššiʾak Aššur , later šar māt Aššur ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria , which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its early history, Assyria

26937-438: The history, politics, economics, religion, language and distinctive features of Assur and its people from the earliest comprehensive historical records at the site to the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period. Assur was much older than the commonly used beginning date for the Old Assyrian period, though the preceding Early Assyrian period is much more poorly known and Assur was not independent during that time but instead part of

27156-400: The hunt even took place with captive lions in an arena. As opposed to some other ancient monarchies, such as ancient Egypt , the Assyrian king was not believed to be divine himself, but was seen as divinely chosen and uniquely qualified for the royal duties. Most kings stressed their legitimacy through their familial connections to previous kings; a king was legitimate through his relation to

27375-466: The husband and wife and both were allowed to remarry afterwards. If a man grew to dislike his wife, he could return her to her family, but had to pay compensation. If the wife had behaved badly in some way, the husband could strip her of her possessions and chase her away. Divorces with the second wife in Anatolia were more common than divorces in Assur itself, resulting from their husbands retiring from trading and staying in Assur permanently. In these cases,

27594-428: The husband had to decide whether to take his children with him or not, and had to pay certain amounts of money depending on how many of the children he took. If a husband died, his children inherited his goods and had to take care of their mother. If there were no children, the wife kept her dowry for herself and was allowed to remarry. If the husband had written a will, his wife could also inherit his goods and estates. If

27813-428: The international trade as personnel in the trading caravans. The major institutions in Assur, such as the city hall and temple of Ashur, owned slaves which were used for various maintenance duties. Slaves were sometimes sold to pay off debts, and were sometimes taken by force by authorities as security for debts. A major portion of the Old Assyrian population appears to have been involved in the international trade and it

28032-542: The king Ashur-uballit I ( c. 1363–1328 BC) and Ashur-uballit I's conquests of nearby territories, most importantly the fertile region between the Tigris, the foothills of the Taurus Mountains and the Upper Zab , marks the transition between the Old and Middle Assyrian periods, though Assur's transformation into a territorial state appears to have already begun under the last few decades of Mitanni rule. Ashur-uballit I

28251-451: The king list, claims in one of his inscriptions to have deposed a-sí-nim , grandson (or descendant) of Shamshi-Adad and liberated Assur from the Amorites. A-sí-nim is typically interpreted as a proper name, Asinum , in which case he was the last of Shamshi-Adad's dynasty to rule Assur, but it might alternatively have been a title, in which case the man driven away by Puzur-Sin could have been

28470-512: The king of Mari, c. 1792 BC. Shamshi-Adad also went on to conquer cities to the north and east of Assur, such as Arrapha , Nineveh, Qabra and Erbil . The realm founded by Shamshi-Adad eventually came to include most of northern Mesopotamia and has been given various names by modern historians, such as the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia and the North-Mesopotamian Empire. To rule this new realm, Shamshi-Adad established his capital at

28689-433: The king received a royal scepter and was commanded to "broaden the land of Ashur". A similar inscription from the reign of Ashurbanipal ( r.   668–631 BC) commands the king to "extend the land at his feet". The king was also tasked with protecting his own people, often being referred to as a "shepherd". This protection included defending against external enemies and defending citizens from dangerous wild animals. To

28908-450: The king to preside over the celebration of the New Year festival). Because of the consistency between the list and the method through which it was created, modern scholars usually accept the regnal years mentioned as more or less correct. There are some differences between the copies of the list, notably in that they offer somewhat diverging regnal years before the reign of king Ashur-dan I of

29127-530: The king. Assyrian titularies usually also often emphasize the royal genaeology of the king, something Babylonian titularies do not, and also drive home the king's moral and physical qualities while downplaying his role in the judicial system. Assyrian epithets about royal lineage vary in how far they stretch back, most often simply discussing lineage in terms of "son of ..." or "brother of ...". Some cases display lineage stretching back much further, Shamash-shum-ukin ( r.   667–648 BC) describes himself as

29346-411: The kings themselves. In addition to trade, the cuneiform records at Kültepe also provide insight into the family lives of the traders, who often corresponded with their wives back home in Assur. These wives were in many cases responsible for gathering or acquiring the materials sold in the trading colonies. The original trading colony at Kültepe appears to have been burnt down c. 1836 BC, which led to

29565-420: The kings. Only four royal seals from the kings of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty are known, though only from their impressions, coming from Erishum I (two seals), Sargon I and Naram-Sin. With the sole exception of one of the seals of Erishum, found on a ceramic jar from Assur, they are all from the cuneiform tablets found at Kültepe. The known seals of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty kings are highly consistent in content, both in

29784-460: The late 1st century AD. Early in Mesopotamia's history, around the mid-4th millennium BC, cuneiform was invented for the Sumerian language. Cuneiform literally means "wedge-shaped", due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign appears to have been developed from pictograms . The earliest texts, 7 archaic tablets, come from

30003-419: The list and other listed kings are not independently verified. Originally it was assumed that the list was first written in the time of Shamshi-Adad I c. 1800 BC but it now is considered to date from much later, probably from the time of Ashurnasirpal I ( r.   1049–1031 BC). The oldest of the surviving king-lists, List A (8th century BC) stops at Tiglath-Pileser II ( r.   967–935 BC) and

30222-455: The list of kings who lived in tents). Kings named on bricks There are six of them, including three kings that are part of the Old Assyrian empire from Puzur-Ashur I to Ilu-shuma . A handful of early local rulers of Assur under foreign suzerainty are known from contemporary sources from before the time of Puzur-Ashur I . The precise dates of the highly incomplete sequence of figures listed below are unknown and none of them appear among

30441-471: The loan contractor returning the cuneiform tablet recording the loan, sometimes alongside a receipt. Evidence of what the citizens of Assur itself ate during the Old Assyrian period is very limited, consisting only of a few mentions in letters of wives buying barley and preparing bread and beer. By and large, food was prepared by the women. More detailed records of food are available from the cuneiform records at Kültepe, which establish that bread and beer were

30660-466: The main food and drink products (water as well, though this was taken for granted and is thus typically not mentioned in the texts). Two varieties of bread were eaten; sourdough bread and bread made only with water and flour . Animal fat and sesame oil were sometimes used in cooking. To enhance flavors, honey was sometimes added as a sweetener, and common herbs and spices included salt, cumin , coriander and mustard . Meat, often grilled or in stews,

30879-417: The materials sold by Assyrian colonists came from far-away places; the textiles sold by Assyrians in Anatolia were imported from southern Mesopotamia and the tin came from the east in the Zagros Mountains . An Assyrian trader could probably make the 1,000 kilometer (620 mile) distance between Assur and Kültepe in six weeks, travelling through donkey caravans. Though the traders had to pay road taxes and tolls to

31098-425: The matter. Mitanni would in time become the dominant power in northern Mesopotamia, but in the power vacuum left after Mursili I's invasion, Assur also briefly rose to a first period of prominence. Assyrian rulers from c. 1520 to c. 1430 were more politically assertive than their predecessors, both regionally and internationally. Puzur-Ashur III ( c. 1521–1498 BC) is the earliest Assyrian king to appear in

31317-472: The methods of therapy and aetiology and the use of empiricism , logic , and rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis. The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such as bandages , creams and pills . If

31536-413: The mighty king, king of Assyria, grandson of Sargon, the great king, the mighty king, king of Assyria; who under the protection of Assur, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, the great gods, his lords, made his way from the rising to the setting sun, having no rival. Ancient Assyria was an absolute monarchy, with the king believed to be appointed directly through divine right by

31755-454: The military conquest of these strange and chaotic countries. As such, imperial expansion was not just expansion for expansion's sake but was also seen as a process of bringing divine order and destroying chaos to create civilization. There exists several ancient inscriptions in which the god Ashur explicitly orders kings to extend the borders of Assyria. A text from the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r.   c. 1243–1207 BC) states that

31974-456: The months of the Assyrian calendar by the speed of about one month every 120 years. In the 13th century BC, during the Middle Assyrian period, King Shalmaneser I had to adjust and correct the calendar, moving the months back to their original intended position. The Assyrians worshipped the same pantheon of gods as the Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia. As known Old Assyrian texts are concerned mainly with trade, knowledge of Assyrian religion in

32193-462: The most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel , the planting of the first cereal crops , the development of cursive script, mathematics , astronomy , and agriculture ". It is recognised as the cradle of some of the world's earliest civilizations. The Sumerians and Akkadians , each originating from different areas, dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of recorded history ( c.  3100 BC ) to

32412-449: The most powerful families of the city, many of whom were merchants. From the time of Erishum I onwards, a yearly office-holder, a limmu official, was elected from this body of citizens. The limmu official held substantial executive powers and gave their name to the year, which meant that their name appeared in all administrative documents of that year. Kings were usually the limmu officials in their first regnal years. The city assembly

32631-520: The name Mesopotamia is evident from The Anabasis of Alexander , which was written in the late 2nd century AD but specifically refers to sources from the time of Alexander the Great . In the Anabasis , Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria . The Akkadian term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. Later, the term Mesopotamia

32850-465: The names demonstrate the astronomical origin of the calendar. For instance, Tanmarta was also used to refer to the heliacal rising of the star Sirius , Bēlti-ekallim was also the name of a goddess who was represented in the sky by the star Vega , and the name of the final month, Makhur ilī , means "meeting of the gods", probably in reference to conjunction of the moon and the Pleiades star cluster in

33069-451: The only prominent, official in the city's politics. Unlike in later Assyrian periods, the Assyrian kings of the Old Assyrian period are not thought to have been autocrats (i.e. rulers with sole power), but rather they acted as the stewards of the city's god, Ashur, and presided over the meetings of the Ālum (city assembly), Assur's main administrative body in this time. The kings in the Old Assyrian period appears to have mainly functioned as

33288-420: The origins of philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom , which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics , in the forms of dialectic , dialogues , epic poetry , folklore , hymns , lyrics , prose works, and proverbs . Babylonian reason and rationality developed beyond empirical observation. Babylonian thought was also based on an open-systems ontology which

33507-535: The people properly and returned to Assur its benevolent protective spirit". The time between the collapse of Shamshi-Adad's kingdom in the 18th century BC and the rise of Assyria in the 14th century BC is often regarded by modern scholars as an Assyrian "Dark Age" due to the lack of sufficient historical evidence to clearly establish events during this time. The main sources of historical records known from earlier Old Assyrian times; documents kept at other sites in northern Mesopotamia and in central Anatolia, fall silent in

33726-422: The presence of a second goddess behind the seated ruler, a very rare motif in both Ur III seals and in seals of non-royal Assyrians of the Old Assyrian period. In Ur III seals, the seated ruler was the divinely ordained king of Ur, but as the rulers of Assur were not regarded as divine themselves, but rather as servants of Assur's true king, the god Ashur, this connotation would have been ideologically problematic. It

33945-402: The present day, allow accurate associations of relative with absolute dating for establishing the history of Mesopotamia. The Babylonian astronomers were very adept at mathematics and could predict eclipses and solstices . Scholars thought that everything had some purpose in astronomy. Most of these related to religion and omens. Mesopotamian astronomers worked out a 12-month calendar based on

34164-594: The preservation of the thousands of tablets, but it was shortly thereafter rebuilt, as attested by the presence of later Assyrian activity in the second layer. In total, it has been estimated that during just the time of documented trade in Level II of the Kültepe trading colony, about twenty-five tons of Anatolian silver was transported to Assur, and that approximately one hundred tons of tin and 100,000 textiles were transported to Anatolia in return. The Assyrians also sold livestock, processed goods and reed products. In many cases,

34383-619: The previous line of great kings who had been chosen by Ashur. Usurpers who were unrelated to previous kings usually either simply lied about being the son of some previous monarch or claimed that they had been divinely appointed directly by Ashur. Two prominent examples of such usurpers are the kings Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC) and Sargon II ( r.   722–705 BC). The inscriptions of these kings completely lack any familial references to previous kings, instead stressing that Ashur himself had appointed them directly with phrases such as "Ashur called my name", "Ashur placed me on

34602-425: The region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments. Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the neighboring Armenian highlands . Both rivers are fed by numerous tributaries, and the entire river system drains

34821-441: The region its name. The usefulness of irrigation depends upon the ability to mobilize sufficient labor for the construction and maintenance of canals, and this, from the earliest period, has assisted the development of urban settlements and centralized systems of political authority. Agriculture throughout the region has been supplemented by nomadic pastoralism, where tent-dwelling nomads herded sheep and goats (and later camels) from

35040-419: The reigns of his son Puzur-Ashur II ( c. 1880–1873 BC) and grandson Naram-Sin ( c. 1872–1829/1819 BC) saw Assur being threatened by foreign enemies, first by Ipiq-Adad II of Eshnunna and then by the more successful and dangerous Shamshi-Adad I of Ekallatum , a city located near Assur. Though evidence from Assur is scant, there are surviving rich textual records of Assyrian society and activity from

35259-461: The river pastures in the dry summer months, out into seasonal grazing lands on the desert fringe in the wet winter season. The area is generally lacking in building stone, precious metals, and timber, and so historically has relied upon long-distance trade of agricultural products to secure these items from outlying areas. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times and has added to

35478-476: The royal ideology of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty as well and a mix of the traditions can be seen in his royal seals from Assur. The inscription designated him as "Shamshi-Adad, beloved of Ashur, Išši'ak Aššur , son of Ila-kabkabu", similar to the inscriptions of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty kings, but the visual depiction of Shamshi-Adad himself was noticeably different. Depicted with brimmed headgear, a full beard and one raised hand and one hand close to his body, Shamshi-Adad

35697-458: The rulers before Puzur-Ashur I in the king list. Perhaps their absence could be explained by these figures not being considered to be proper kings. Several are however attested with the title "supreme judge" ( waklum ) a title probably equivalent to Iššiʾak Aššur and sometimes used by later kings. The dynasty founded by Puzur-Ashur is conventionally known by modern historians as the 'Puzur-Ashur dynasty' after its founder. Puzur-Ashur I

35916-501: The rulers of the city's immediate neighbors. The earliest known surviving inscription by an Assyrian king was written by Puzur-Ashur's son and successor Shalim-ahum , and records the king having built a temple dedicated to Ashur "for his own life and the life of his city". Shalim-ahum's son and successor Ilu-shuma is the earliest Assyrian king known to have intervened in foreign affairs, campaigning and opening up trade. In one of his inscriptions, Ilu-shuma claims to have opened trade with

36135-601: The same region (one had to live in Assur and the other in Anatolia) and a third wife in one of the trading posts in-between Assur and Anatolia was not allowed. Both wives also had to be provided with food, wood and a house to live in. Children born of the "second wife" may have had less rights in regards to inheritance than those of the "main wife". Most divorces recorded in the surviving texts were consensual and resulted from private discussions and arrangements. The high fines for divorce, up to 5 minas of silver, had to be paid by both

36354-402: The same type of tombs were later used by prominent Assyrian families to bury their dead collectively beneath their houses, illustrating that this was a long-lasting Assyrian tradition. Several of the tombs contain rich funeral gifts, including jewelry, seals, stone objects and weapons. Assur in the Old Assyrian period was in many respects an oligarchy , where the king was a permanent, albeit not

36573-472: The scribe who created the king list. Ashur-dugul was according to the king list succeeded by Bel-bani , c. 1700 BC, apparently the son of Adasi. Bel-bani founded the Adaside dynasty , which went on to rule Assyria for about a thousand years. Later Assyrian monarchs, Bel-bani's descendants, would in times thereafter revere Bel-bani as a restorer of stability and as the founder of their long-lived dynasty. In time, he became an almost mythical ancestor figure. It

36792-463: The settlement itself, apart from the tablets and seals. The houses in the colony can not be differentiated from the houses of the locals, which suggests that the traders lived not as colonists, but as expatriates, using the local artefacts and houses. In all likelihood, the Assyrian community at Kültepe did not live in a separate walled part of the town, but rather simply in their own part of the lower city, also home to local Anatolians. The Assyrian colony

37011-400: The shape, framing and placement (often in city gates) of stelae erected under the ancient kings and also depict the central figure in reverence of the moon and sun, an ever-present motif in the ancient royal stelae. This second period of prominent Assyrian cultural development at Assur came to end with the conquests of the Sasanian Empire in the region, c. 240, whereafter the Ashur temple

37230-584: The signs look quite different and can be distinguished relatively easily. Old Assyrian texts are for the most part limited to the early portion of the period, before the "Dark Age" from the 18th century BC onwards. The signs used in the texts from these times are for the most part less complex than those used during the succeeding Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods and they were fewer in number, amounting to no more than 150–200 unique signs, most of which were syllabic signs (representing syllables). As letters sometimes include awkwardly shaped signs and spelling mistakes, it

37449-493: The sky during this time. The Assyrian calendar must have started in the autumn, at the time when the farmers ploughed the fields, sometime between September 23 (the September equinox ) and December 21 (the winter solstice ). The Old and Middle Assyrian calendar was not without its problems. An extra week, a time-unit referred to as ḫamuštum , had to be added to the twelve thirty-day months. This appears to have normally been done in

37668-460: The south and making a treaty with Eshnunna. When relations quickly thereafter soured again, Ishme-Dagan fled to Babylon once more. Assur and the rest of Ishme-Dagan's realm shortly thereafter came under the, perhaps only brief, control of the Old Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi ( c. 1792–1750 BC), who conquered the region c. 1761 BC and appears to have respected Assur and its institutions since he wrote in one of his inscriptions that "I guided

37887-410: The south, the rulers of Larsa , Babylon and Eshnunna fought with one another to re-unite southern Mesopotamia. In the east, the rulers of Elam increasingly involved themselves in Mesopotamian politics and in the west, new kingdoms arose at Yamhad and Qatna . The success and survival of Shamshi-Adad's kingdom relied chiefly on his own military success, strength and charisma. Increasing conflict with

38106-445: The style rubā’um ("great one"), clearly indicating authority and the status of being a primus inter pares (first among equals). Since the same title was used to refer to the kings in Anatolia, whom the Assyrians traded with, it also shows understanding of their king as a royal (and not simply civic or religious) figure. The composition of the city assembly is not known, but it is generally believed to have been made up of members of

38325-406: The style šarrum (king) and the title ' king of the Universe '. Shamshi-Adad appears to have based his more absolute form of kingship on the rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire. In one of his royal inscriptions at Assur, Shamshi-Adad assumed the full style "king of the Universe, builder of Assur's temple, pacifier of the land between Tigris and Euphrates ". In some inscriptions and seals this style

38544-479: The surrounding kingdoms and Shamshi-Adad's death c. 1776 BC led to the collapse of the kingdom. Local rulers quickly returned to power in many parts of the former realm, including in Mari, where Zimri-Lim ousted Yasmah-Adad from power. Shamshi-Adad's senior heir, Ishme-Dagan, retained control only of Ekallatum, from where he ruled, and Assur. Ishme-Dagan was respectful of Assur's cults and traditions and occasionally used

38763-534: The syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists were drawn up. Many Babylonian literary works are still studied today. One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh , in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sîn-lēqi-unninni , and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh . The whole story

38982-550: The symbolic qualities. Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control , water storage, and irrigation. They were also one of the first Bronze Age societies in the world. They developed from copper, bronze, and gold on to iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also, copper, bronze, and iron were used for armor as well as for different weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, and maces . According to

39201-449: The term applies to "the earliest phase of the culture of ancient Assur that is historically sufficiently recoverable to be called Assyrian", "Assyrian" here meaning the city of Assur and its culture rather than Assyria as a state governing a stretch of territory; Assyria only transitioned from a small city-state to a kingdom governing a larger stretch of territory in the succeeding Middle Assyrian period . As such, "Old Assyrian" refers to

39420-423: The terminology used in the texts might mean that many, but not all, of the supposed slaves were actually free servants. Though men and women had different duties and responsibilities, they had more or less the same legal rights, with both being allowed to inherit property, make wills, initiate divorce proceedings and participate in trade. The chief deity worshipped in the Old Assyrian period was, like in later periods,

39639-471: The text and in the artwork. The inscriptions of the seals all include the name of the king, the title Išši'ak Aššur and further text establishing him as the son of the preceding king. When compared to other seals of non-royal Assyrians in the Old Assyrian period, the motif itself—a goddess who is holding the hand of a bald man and leading him to a seated ruler with brimmed, rounded headgear—is not very distinctive and appears in other seals as well. An aspect that

39858-457: The throne" and "Ashur placed his merciless weapon in my hand". The Assyrian King List includes a long sequence of rulers before Assyria's first confidently attested kings (of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty), though it is suspected by modern scholars that at least portions of this line of rulers are invented since none of the names are attested in contemporary records and many of the names of the earliest rulers rhyme (suggesting an invented pattern). This

40077-463: The throne, either through obscuring his non-Assyrian origins or through inserting his ancestors into the sequence of Assyrian kings. The early portion of the Assyrian King List contains these otherwise historically unverified names: Kings who lived in tents Kings who were ancestors The kings are listed in reverse order in the AKL, starting from Aminu and ending with Apiashal(who is also included in

40296-449: The throne. Additionally, there are some known inconsistencies between the list and actual inscriptions by Assyrian kings, often regarding dynastic relationships. For instance, Ashur-nirari II is stated by the list to be the son of his predecessor Enlil-Nasir II , but from inscriptions it is known that he was actually the son of Ashur-rabi I and brother of Enlil-Nasir. Assyrian royal titles typically followed trends that had begun under

40515-435: The title ' king of the Universe ', though these styles fell into a long period of disuse again after his death. The short-lived realm founded by Shamshi-Adad I is sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia. The dynasty founded by Bel-bani, which ruled Assyria throughout most of its history, is conventionally known as the Adaside or Adasi dynasty, after Bel-bani's father. In Babylonia, this dynasty of kings

40734-434: The trade involved people of many different occupations, including porters, guides, donkey drivers, agents, traders, bakers and bankers. In family-run businesses, the eldest son was typically the one to move to Kültepe and other trading colonies whereas the father stayed at home. The other sons, if there were any, could also be settled in the colonies and often helped with transporting the goods themselves. Women were also part of

40953-448: The traders in Kültepe that they ought to return to Assur and "come and see the eye of Ashur" or "seize Ashur's foot", suggesting that the god disapproved of his subjects leaving his city for too long periods of time only for the sake of monetary gain, even though there were sanctuaries dedicated to Ashur in all of the trading colonies as well. Women were evidently greatly concerned with religion, recorded as making offerings, paying tribute to

41172-429: The various states and rulers in the lands in-between, profits were massive since the Assyrians sold many of their goods at double the price in Mesopotamia, or even more. Assur's importance as a trading center declined in the 19th century BC, whereafter Assyrian traders played a more modest role. This decline might chiefly have resulted from increasing conflict between the states and rulers of the Ancient Near East leading to

41391-418: The volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used π as 25/8 (3.125 instead of 3.14159~). The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about seven modern miles (11 km). This measurement for distances eventually

41610-460: The wall had to be rebuilt due to normal wear or due to having been damaged in war is not known. It is possible that it was damaged during conflict with the southern city-state Eshnunna , which at this time was pursuing an expansionist policy. In any case, repairs were not complete until the long reign of Ikunum's son Sargon I ( c. 1920–1881 BC). Though Sargon's reign appears to have been a prosperous one during which Assyrian trade reached its peak,

41829-679: The whole region, when imposed, has tended to be ephemeral, and localism has fragmented power into tribal or smaller regional units. These trends have continued to the present day in Iraq. The prehistory of the Ancient Near East begins in the Lower Paleolithic period. Therein, writing emerged with a pictographic script, Proto-cuneiform , in the Uruk IV period ( c.  late 4th millennium BC ). The documented record of actual historical events—and

42048-778: The world's most ancient highly developed, and socially complex states. The region was one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented, along with the Nile valley in Ancient Egypt , the Indus Valley civilization in the Indian subcontinent , and the Yellow River in Ancient China . Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk , Nippur , Nineveh , Assur and Babylon , as well as major territorial states such as

42267-399: The youngest, List C, stops at Shalmaneser V ( r.   727–722 BC). One problem that arises with the Assyrian King List is that the creation of the list may have been more motivated by political interest than actual chronological and historical accuracy. In times of civil strife and confusion, the list still adheres to a single royal line of descent, probably ignoring rival claimants to

42486-445: Was also eaten, with records of Assyrians eating sheep, oxen, pork, shrimp and fish. Animals were often killed at home, but it was also possible to purchase pre-cut pieces of meat, either in Assur or by traders along the travel routes. Though beer and water were the primary drinks, the preserved texts also demonstrate a great appreciation for wine, seen as a luxury commodity and called kerānum or, more rarely, karānum in Assyrian. Wine

42705-685: Was an Amorite king, originally ruling the city of Ekallatum, where he had succeeded his father Ila‐kabkabuhu c. 1835 BC. Threatened by Ipiq-Adad II in Eshnunna, Shamshi-Adad sought refuge in southern Mesopotamia for several years but returned to Ekallatum c. 1811 BC and conquered his rival. Three years later, in c. 1808 BC, Shamshi-Adad deposed the last king of Puzur-Ashur I's dynasty, Naram-Sin's son Erishum II ( c. 1828/1818–1809 BC), and took Assur for himself. After conquering both Eshnunna and Assur, Shamshi-Adad began extensive campaigns of conquest which culminated in his victory over Yahdun-Lim ,

42924-478: Was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution. This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy. In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were thoroughly scientific. How much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed

43143-542: Was another Hittite king, Šuppiluliuma I , whose 14th century BC war with Mitanni over control of Syria effectively led to the beginning of the end of the Mitanni kingdom. At the same time as the Mitanni king Tushratta had to fight Šuppiluliuma I, he was also forced to contend with a rival claimant to the throne, Artatama II . After the war with the Hittites relegated Mitanni to a minor kingdom, Assyria managed to free itself from its suzerain. Assyria's independence, achieved under

43362-482: Was believed that the deceased lived on in the Ancient Mesopotamian underworld as ghosts and that they could appear in the dreams of their descendants. Deceased family members were often honored with prayers and offerings, a practice made easier since they were typically buried beneath the houses of their descendants and relatives. Slavery was an important part of nearly every society in the Ancient Near East. In

43581-459: Was called the "Baltil dynasty", Baltil being the oldest portion of the city of Assur. The defeat of Ashur-uballit II at Harran in 609 BC marked the end of the ancient Assyrian monarchy, which was never restored. The territory of the Assyrian Empire was split between the Neo-Babylonian and Median empires. The Assyrian people survived the fall of the empire, though Assyria continued to be

43800-497: Was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time. The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonia who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion. The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 ( c.  1800 –1600 BC) gives an approximation of √ 2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1 24 51 10 , which

44019-516: Was critical to Assyria's later development. This invasion destroyed the then dominant power in Mesopotamia, the Old Babylonian Empire, which created a vacuum of power that led to the formation of the Kassite kingdom of Babylonia in the south and the Hurrian Mitanni state in the north. The Hittite invasion must also directly have impacted Assur in some way, but there are no surviving sources discussing

44238-410: Was destroyed again and the city's people were dispersed. The sequence of local rulers of Assur under the three or four centuries of Parthian suzerainty is poorly known. Only five names are attested and their dates, their precise order and how they relate to each other is not clear. The order used here follows Aggoula (1985). There are large gaps in this sequence. Mesopotamia Mesopotamia

44457-616: Was divine himself, but saw their ruler as the vicar of their principal deity, Ashur , and as his chief representative on Earth. In their worldview, Assyria represented a place of order while lands not governed by the Assyrian king (and by extension, the god Ashur) were seen as places of chaos and disorder. As such it was seen as the king's duty to expand the borders of Assyria and bring order and civilization to lands perceived as uncivilized. As Assyria expanded, its rulers gradually adopted grander and more boastful titles. Early kings used Iššiʾak Aššur (representative/viceroy of Ashur), considering

44676-529: Was eventually pushed back by Zimri-Lim of Mari and around this time, probably with the aid of the Babylonians, Ishme-Dagan returned to power in Ekallatum and Assur. A few years later, northern mesopotamia was again invaded, this time by an army from Elam that also seized Shubut-Enlil and other cities. This invasion was pushed back by an alliance between Mari, Ishme-Dagan and Babylon and in its aftermath, Ishme-Dagan strengthened his position by seizing some territory to

44895-426: Was evidently important for Shamshi-Adad, as there are from his reign records of an official overseeing merchants. Shamshi-Adad renovated the city and rebuilt the temples of Assur, though a sanctuary to the god Enlil also appears to have been added there, and Adad. Referring to the city as a city "full of gods", Shamshi-Adad respected Assur and sometimes stayed there to partake in religious ceremonies, though he remained

45114-412: Was instrumental in early map-making . The Babylonians also had theorems on how to measure the area of several shapes and solids. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if π were fixed at 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the area of the base and the height; however,

45333-462: Was introduced in Assyria. During the preceding Puzur-Ashur dynasty, royal power in Assur had been more limited than in other cities, with inscriptions describing how the king worked in tandem with the city assembly to establish law and order. The earliest use of the term šarrum (king) in Assyrian inscriptions comes from Shamshi-Adad I's reign. Shamshi-Adad I was also the first Assyrian king to assume

45552-585: Was largely organized around family businesses: every family member had specific tasks to perform and many professional relationships were founded in family ties. This is also reflected by the vocabulary used when referring to businesses; the boss, who often stayed at home in Assur and did not travel to the trading colonies, was typically referred to as abum ("father"), partners were called aḫum ("brothers") and employees were called ṣūḫārū (younger family members). Enterprises were often called bētum ("house"). As can be gathered from hiring contracts and other records,

45771-471: Was likely achieved in conjunction with the last Ur III ruler, Ibbi-Sin ( c. 2028–2004 BC), losing his administrative grip on the peripheral regions of his empire. Very little archaeological evidence survives from Assur in the first half of the second millennium BC and as a result, relatively little is known about the city, its people and its rulers during this time. Surviving royal inscriptions from this time deal almost exclusively with building projects. What

45990-570: Was little more than a city-state, centered on the city Assur , but from the 14th century BC onwards, Assyria rose under a series of warrior kings to become one of the major political powers of the Ancient Near East , and in its last few centuries it dominated the region as the largest empire the world had seen thus far. Ancient Assyrian history is typically divided into the Old , Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, all marked by ages of ascendancy and decline. The ancient Assyrians did not believe that their king

46209-530: Was mainly made from grapes grown in Cappadocia , though other sources existed as well, such as southern Anatolia or certain sites alongside the Euphrates river or Taurus Mountains. When they drank beer, Assyrians typically also ate beer bread , made of crushed barley. In certain situations, consumption of beer appears to have been formalized; the cuneiform texts found at Kültepe indicate that Old Assyrian traders bought and consumed beer when buying an animal, completing

46428-560: Was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris , thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and southeastern Turkey . The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia . A further distinction is usually made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia . Upper Mesopotamia, also known as

46647-495: Was no legal distinction between men and women during the Old Assyrian period and they had more or less the same legal rights. Both men and women had to pay the same fines, could inherit property, participated in trade, bought, owned and sold houses and slaves, made their own last wills and were allowed to divorce their partners. Society was instead divided into two main groups: slaves ( subrum ) and free citizens, referred to as awīlum ("men") or DUMU Aššur ("sons of Ashur"). Among

46866-471: Was not only a trading settlement, but also functioned as a center of various craft production activities, such as the production of pottery and metal objects. The preserved cuneiform tablets demonstrate that the Assyrians had their own separate administrative structures and court at Kültepe, and thus were somewhat self-governing. The Assyrian court at Kültepe based its rulings on Assyrian law, and often based its decisions on commands from Assur, sometimes issued by

47085-568: Was preceded by "appointee of Enlil" and/or succeeded by "beloved of Ashur". On inscribed bricks, used in the construction projects, Shamshi-Adad was more modest and assumed the for Assur more traditional style of ensí (the Sumerian version of the Assyrian Išši'ak ) of Ashur. Under Shamshi-Adad, Assyrians also swore their oaths by the king, not just by the god. This practice did not survive beyond his death. In Ancient Mesopotamia, royal seals served as both instruments of office and personal seals for

47304-431: Was sometimes consecrated to a god (presumably Ashur) as priestesses. Consecrated women were not allowed to marry but also became economically independent. During the long trading journeys, the wives of Assyrian traders often stayed home alone in Assur, managing households and raising children. Often they had to, as the heads of the household, oversee gathering food and supplies, repairing the house and providing clothing for

47523-811: Was sometimes used as a synonym for wardum was ṣuḫārum (female version ṣuḫārtum ), though this word could also be used to refer to a child. Though Old Babylonian texts frequently mention the geographical and ethnic origin of slaves, there is only a single known such reference in Old Assyrian texts, a slave girl explicitly being referred to as Subaraean, indicating that these aspects were not seen as very important. There were two main types of slaves: chattel slaves, primarily foreigners who were kidnapped or who were spoils of war, and debt slaves, formerly free men and women who had been unable to pay off their debts. Many chattel slaves were Anatolians who had originated as debt slaves but had lost their right to redemption. In some cases, Assyrian children were seized by authorities due to

47742-527: Was the first native Assyrian ruler to claim the dignity of king (rather than governor). Shortly after achieving independence, he further claimed the dignity of a great king on the level of the pharaohs and the Hittite kings. Little archaeological finds have been discovered dating to the Old Assyrian period other than the trade archives at Kültepe. The lack of substantial finds at Assur is probably attributable to later Assyrian kings expanding and rebuilding portions of

47961-450: Was the first recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc, surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven . They believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that the universe was born from this enormous sea. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic . Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were regional variations. The Sumerian word for universe

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