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Assyria - history.

Publié le 26/05/2013

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Assyria - history. I INTRODUCTION Assyria Assyria flourished in the region the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia. An Assyrian king established what was probably the first centrally organized empire in the Middle East, between 1813 and 1780 bc. In defending their territory from nomadic invasions, Assyrians gained a reputation in the ancient Middle East for being relentless and ruthless warriors. © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. - history. Assyria (ancient Ashur, Ashshur, or Assur), ancient country of Asia, extending from about the northern border of present-day Iraq south to the mouth of the Little Zab River, in the northern part of Iraq. About the size of the state of Kansas and roughly triangular in shape, Assyria included the valley of the Tigris River. The western part of the country consisted of steppe land suitable only for a nomadic population. The eastern section, however, was fit for agriculture, with wooded hills and fertile valleys watered by good-size streams. To the east of Assyria lay the Zagros Mountains; to the north, terrace upon terrace led up to the Armenian Massif; the Mesopotamian plain stretched to the west. To the south was the country known first as Sumer, then as Sumer and Akkad, and still later as Babylonia. Mesopotamia is the name that the ancient Greeks gave to the general region in which all these countries, including Assyria, flourished. The best-known cities of Assyria, all situated in the territory of present-day Iraq, were Ashur, now Ash Sharq??; Nineveh, now the excavated mound Kuyunjik; Calah, now Nimrud; and Dur Sharrukin, now Khorsabad. II EARLY SETTLEMENTS Cuneiform The ancient peoples of Western Asia used cuneiform, a system of writing into clay or stone tablets that probably originated in Sumeria. Scholars learned to decipher cuneiform after finding inscriptions on the Behistun Rock, a cliff in western Iran. The Behistun Inscription was written in three languages: Persian, Babylonian and Elamite, all of which used cuneiform as a system of writing. Translation of the inscription was helped by the resemblance of Persian and Babylonian to modern languages, and by the fact that all three inscriptions contain the same text. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE From early Paleolithic times people had lived in the land that came to be known as Assyria, a fact confirmed by two adult Neandertal skulls discovered in a cave on the northeastern fringes of the region. Settled agricultural life did not begin there, however, until about 6500 BC. The ethnic composition of the earliest farming communities of Assyria is unknown; the inhabitants may have been a people known in later days as Subarians, who spoke an agglutinative language rather than an inflected one. Later, probably in the 3rd millennium BC, Semitic nomads conquered the region and made their inflected tongue, which was closely related to Babylonian, the prevailing language of the land. The Assyrian script was a slightly modified version of the Babylonian cuneiform. As early as the 7th millennium BC, the farmers of Assyria cultivated wheat and barley and owned cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. They built their houses, some of which contained as many as four rooms, of compact clay, used round ovens for baking their ground flour, and stored their grain in large, bitumen-covered clay jars. These farming people wove textiles from thread spun with the help of spindle whorls; made knives of obsidian and chert, a flintlike stone; and used celts, ax-shaped implements made of stone, as adzes and hoes. Their pottery was outstanding; much of it was made of skillfully fired clay and painted in attractive patterns. Obsidian and other hard stones were worked into vases, beads, amulets, and stamp seals. Female figurines, for ritua...

« Assyrian ReliefThis Assyrian relief, made of alabaster, was found at the palace of Assyrian king Sargon II at Khorsabad (now in Iraq).

It depictstimber from valuable cedars of Lebanon being shipped by sea.

More than 2,500 years old, the sculpture is now in the Louvre in Paris,France.Giraudon/Art Resource, NY Assyrian culture resembled that of Babylonia in most respects.

Except for the royal annals, for example, Assyrian literature was practically identical with its Babyloniancounterpart, and the more cultured Assyrian kings, notably Ashurbanipal, boasted of stocking their libraries with copies of Babylonian literary documents.

Social or familylife, marriage customs, and property laws all resembled those of Babylonia.

The three Assyrian law collections that have been found thus far all have a marked similarity toSumerian and Babylonian law; the penalties provided for offenders under Assyrian law, however, were often more brutal and barbaric.

Assyrian religious practices andbeliefs were almost identical with those of Babylonia, except that the Assyrian national god, Ashur, was substituted for the Babylonian god Marduk.

The major culturalcontribution of the Assyrians lay in the field of art and architecture. In the 3rd millennium BC, Assyria, like most of the Middle East, came under the influence of the Sumerian civilization to the south.

A temple of this period, excavated in the city of Ashur, contained statues remarkably similar in style and appearance to those found in the temples of Sumer.

Beginning about 2300 BC, Assyria formed part of the empire of Sumer and Akkad.

Following the collapse of that empire about 2000 BC, the Amorites, a nomadic Semitic people from the Arabian Desert, infiltrated and conquered much of Mesopotamia, including Assyria.

By 1850 BC Assyrian merchants had colonized parts of central Anatolia (Asia Minor), where they carried on a thriving trade in copper, silver, gold, tin, and textiles. IV EXPANSION AND DEPENDENCY About 1810 BC an Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad I (reigned 1813?-1780? BC), succeeded in extending the territory of Assyria from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea.

Shamshi-Adad may have been the first ruler to establish a centrally organized empire in the ancient Middle East.

He divided his kingdom into districts under speciallyappointed administrators and councils, instituted a system of couriers, and took a census of the population at regular intervals.

This first Assyrian Empire did not last long,however; Shamshi-Adad’s son, Ishme-Dagan I, (reigned circa 1780-1760 BC),was defeated about 1760 BC by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, and Assyria became part of the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian Empire was also short-lived.

The Kassites, a non-Semitic people, invaded Babylonia in the 16th century BC and seized political power.

Another non-Semitic mountain people, the Hurrians, infiltrated practically all northern Mesopotamia and even reached Palestine to the west.

Close behind the Hurrians, and to some extentintermingling with them, came an Indo-European people whose name is unknown.

As a result of these migrations and wanderings, the 16th century BC was one of turmoil in Mesopotamian history. About 1500 BC Assyria became a dependency of Mitanni, a kingdom of imperial proportions that had extended its sway over all northern Mesopotamia.

Assyria remained in subjection until early in the 14th century, when the Mitanni Kingdom suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the rising empire of the Hittites to the north.

Takingadvantage of the ensuing confusion, the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I (reigned 1364-1328 BC) freed Assyria from the Mitanni yoke and even annexed some of its territory. Ashur-uballit I was succeeded by a series of vigorous rulers, notably Adad-nirari I (reigned 1306-1274 BC), Shalmaneser I (reigned 1274-1244 BC), and Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned 1244-1207 BC).

They were successful in extending the Assyrian boundaries and in keeping at bay their powerful neighbors, the Urartians, the Hittites, the Babylonians, and the Lullubi. V EMPIRE BORN IN STRIFE Tiglath-pileser IIITiglath-pileser III ruled as king of Assyria from 745 to 727 bc.

During his reign he extended his empire to include Syria, Israel, Gaza,the Anatolian Plateau in modern-day Turkey, and, finally, Babylon.Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY Beginning about 1200 BC, a new wave of migrations changed the face of practically all western Asia.

From the Balkan Peninsula, in all probability, came a conglomeration of peoples, known as the Sea Peoples, who put an end to the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and infiltrated Syria and Palestine.

An Indo-European people called Mushki, who settled. »

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