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Assyria
Ancient empire, southwestern Asia . It grew from a small region around Ashur (in modern northern Iraq ) to encompass an area stretching from Egypt to Anatolia. Assyria may have originated in the 2nd millennium BC, but it came to power gradually. Its greatest period began in the 9th century BC, when its conquests reached the Mediterranean Sea under Ashurnasirpal II (883 – 859), and again c. 746 – 609 BC, during the Neo-Assyrian empire, when it conquered much of the Middle East . Its greatest rulers during the latter period were Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal. Famous for their cruelty and fighting prowess, the Assyrians were also monumental builders, as shown by archaeological finds at Nineveh, Ashur, and Calah. The opulence of Ashurbanipal's court at Nineveh became legendary. Artistically, the Assyrians were particularly noted for their stone bas-reliefs. The kingdom was finally vanquished in 612 – 609 BC by a coalition of Media and Babylonia ( Chaldea ).
Assyria (əsĭr'ēə) , ancient empire of W Asia . It developed around the city of Ashur , or Assur, on the upper Tigris River and south of the later capital, Nineveh .
Assyria's Rise
The nucleus of a Semitic state was forming by the beginning of the 3d millennium B.C., but it was overshadowed by the greatness of Sumer and Akkad. Ashur was Assyria 's chief god, but the gods of the Babylonians and Hittites were also honored. In the 17th cent. B.C., Assyria expanded briefly, but it soon relapsed into weakness. The 13th cent. B.C. saw Assyria threatening the surrounding states, and under Tiglathpileser I Assyrian soldiers entered the kingdom centered about Urartu (Ararat; seeArmenia), took Babylonia, and crossed N Syria to reach the Mediterranean . This empire was, however, only ephemeral.
The Ascendancy of Assyria
Assyrian greatness was to wait until the 9th cent., when Ashurnasirpal II came into power. He was not only a vigorous and barbarously cruel conqueror who pushed his conquests N to Urartu and W to Lebanon and the Mediterranean , but he was also a shrewd administrator. Instead of merely making conquered kings pay tribute, he installed Assyrian governors so that he could have more control over the empire.
Shalmaneser III (see under Shalmaneser I) attempted to continue this policy, but, although he exacted heavy tribute from Jehu of Israel and claimed many victories, he failed to establish hegemony over the Hebrews and their Aramaic-speaking allies. The basalt obelisk, called the Black Obelisk (British Mus.), describes the expeditions and conquests of Shalmaneser III. Raids from Urartu were resumed and grew more destructive after the death of Shalmaneser. Calah, the capital of Assyria during the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III, has been excavated.
In the 8th cent. B.C. conquest was pursued by Tiglathpileser III. He subdued Babylonia, defeated the king of Urartu, attacked the Medes, and established control over Syria . As an ally of Ahaz of Judah (who became his vassal), he defeated his Aramaic-speaking enemies centering at Damascus . His successor, Shalmaneser V, besieged Samaria , the capital of Israel , in 722–721B.C., but it was Sargon, his son, who completed the task of capturing Israel . Sargon's victory at Raphia (720 B.C.) and his invasions of Armenia , Arabia, and other lands made Assyria indisputably one of the greatest of ancient empires.
Sargon's son Sennacherib devoted himself to retaining the gains his father had made. He is particularly remembered for his warfare against his rebellious vassal, Hezekiah of Judah. Sennacherib's successor, Esar-Haddon, defeated the Chaldaeans, who threatened Assyria and carried his conquests (673–670) to Egypt , where he deposed Taharka and established Necho in power. Under Assurbanipal, Assyria reached its zenith and approached its fall. When Assurbanipal was fighting against the Chaldaeans and Elamites, an Egyptian revolt under Psamtik I was successful.
Assurbanipal's reign saw the Assyrian capital of Nineveh reach the height of its splendor. The library of cuneiform tablets he collected ultimately proved to be one of the most important historical sources of antiquity. The magnificent Assyrian bas-reliefs reached their peak. The royal court was luxurious. Assyrian culture owed much to earlier Babylonian civilization, and in religion Assyria seems to have taken much from its southern neighbor and subject (see Middle Eastern religions).
Assyria's Decline
Despite the magnificence of Assurbanipal's court, Assyria began a rapid decline during his reign. The military aspect of the empire was its most prominent feature, for Assyria was prepared for conflict from beginning to end. Because of the ever-present need for men to fight the incessant battles, agriculture suffered, and ultimately the Assyrians had to import food. The division of society into a fairly rigid three-class system was not unlike that of other early western Asian peoples (e.g., Babylonia ), but it did not supply a solid base for the overgrown Assyrian state.
The lavish expenditures of Assurbanipal on warfare and building drained the resources of the empire and contributed to its weakness. The king of the Medes, Cyaxares, and the Babylonian ruler Nabopolassar, joined forces and took Nineveh in 612B.C. Under the son of Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonia was renewed in power, and the great-grandson of Cyaxares,Cyrus the Great, was to establish the Persian Empire , which owed much to the earlier Assyrian state.
In the Middle Bronze Age Assyria was a region on the Upper Tigris river, named for its original capital, the ancient city ofAssur (Akkadian: Aššur; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר Aššûr, Aramaic: Aṯûr). Later, as a nation and empire that came to control all of theFertile Crescent, Egypt and much of Anatolia, the term "Assyria proper" referred to roughly the northern half of Mesopotamia(the southern half being Babylonia), with Nineveh as its capital.
The Assyrian kings controlled a large kingdom at three different times in history. These are called the Old (20th to 15th c. BC),Middle (15th to 10th c. BC), and Neo-Assyrian (911–612 B.C.) kingdoms, or periods, of which the last is the most well known and best documented.
The Assyrian homeland was located near a mountainous region, extending along the Tigris as far as the high Gordiaean or Carduchian mountain range of Armenia, sometimes known as the "Mountains of Ashur".
Assyrians invented excavation to undermine city walls, battering rams to knock down walls and gates, concept of a corps of engineers, who bridged rivers with pontoons or provided soldiers with inflatable skins for swimming.[1]
Early history
Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria , little is positively known. According to some Judeo-Christian traditions, the city of Ashur (also spelled Assur or Aššur) was founded by Ashur the son of Shem, who was deified by later generations as the city's patron god.
The upper Tigris River valley seems to have been ruled by Sumer, Akkad, and northern Babylonia in its earliest stages; once a part of Sargon the Great's empire, it was destroyed by barbarians in the Gutian period, then rebuilt, and ended up being governed as part of the Empire of the 3rd dynasty of Ur.
Old Assyrian city-states and kingdoms
The first inscriptions of Assyrian rulers appear after 2000 BC. Assyria then consisted of a number of city states and smallSemitic kingdoms. The foundation of the Assyrian monarchy was traditionally ascribed to Zulilu, who is said to have lived after Bel-kap-kapu (Bel-kapkapi or Belkabi, ca. 1900 BC), the ancestor of Shalmaneser I.
City state of Ashur
The city-state of Ashur had extensive contact with cities on the Anatolian plateau. The Assyrians established "merchant sholonies" in Cappadocia, e.g., at Kanesh (modern Kültepe) circa 1920 BC–1840 BC and 1798 BC–1740 BC. These colonies, called karum, the Akkadian word for 'port', were attached to Anatolian cities, but physically separate, and had special tax status. They must have arisen from a long tradition of trade between Ashur and the Anatolian cities, but no archaeological or written records show this. The trade consisted of metal (perhaps lead or tin; the terminology here is not entirely clear) and textiles from Assyria, that were traded for precious metals in Anatolia .
Kingdom of Shamshi-Adad I
The city of Ashur was conquered by Shamshi-Adad I (1813 BC–1791 BC) in the expansion of Amorite tribes from the Khabur river delta. He put his son Ishme-Dagan on the throne of nearby city Ekallatum, and allowed the former Anatolian trade to continue. Shamshi-Adad I also conquered the kingdom of Mari on the Euphrates and put another of his sons, Yasmah-Adad on the throne there. Shamshi-Adad's kingdom now encompassed the whole of northern Mesopotamia . He himself resided in a new capital city founded in the Khabur valley, called Shubat-Enlil. Ishme-Dagan inherited the kingdom, but Yasmah-Adad was overthrown and Mari was lost. The new king of Mari allied himself with Hammurabi of Babylon. Assyria now faced the rising power of Babylon in the south. Ishme-Dagan responded by making an alliance with the enemies of Babylon , and the power struggle continued for decades.
Assyria was ruled by vassal kings dependent on the Babylonians for a century. After Babylon fell to the Kassites, the Hurriansdominated the northern region, including Assur.
Ashur-uballit I
In the 15th century BC, Saushtatar, king of Hanilgalbat (Hurrians of Mitanni), sacked Ashur and made Assyria a vassal. Assyria paid tribute to Hanilgalbat until Mitanni power collapsed from Hittite pressure from the north-west and Assyrian pressure from the east, enabling Ashur-uballit I (1365 BC–1330 BC) to again make Assyria an independent and conquering power at the expense of Babylonia; and a time came when the Kassite king in Babylon was glad to marry the daughter of Ashur-uballit, whose letters to Akhenaten of Egypt form part of the Amarna letters. This marriage led to disastrous results, as the Kassite faction at court murdered the Babylonian king and placed a pretender on the throne. Assur-uballit promptly marched into Babylonia and avenged his son-in-law, making Kurigalzu of the royal line king there.
Assyrian expansion
Hanilgalbat was finally conquered under Adad-nirari I, who described himself as a "Great-King" (Sharru rabû) in letters to the Hittite rulers. The successor of Adad-nirari I, Shalmaneser I (c. 1300 BC), threw off the pretense of Babylonian suzerainty, made Calah his capital, and continued expansion to the northwest, mainly at the expense of the Hittites, reaching Carchemishand beyond.
Shalmaneser's son and successor, Tukulti-Ninurta I, deposed Kadashman-Buriash of Babylon and ruled there himself as king for seven years, taking on the old title "King of Sumer and Akkad ". Another weak period for Assyria followed when Babylon revolted against Tukulti-Ninurta, and later even made Assyria tributary during the reigns of the Babylonian kings Melishipak II and Marduk-apal-iddin I.
Tiglath-Pileser I reaches the Mediterranean Sea
As the Hittite empire collapsed from onslaught of the Phrygians (called Mushki in Assyrian annals), Babylon and Assyria began to vie for Amorite regions, formerly under firm Hittite control. The Assyrian king Ashur-resh-ishi I defeated Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon in a battle, when their forces encountered one another in this region.
The son of Ashur-resh-ishi's, Tiglath-Pileser I, may be regarded as the founder of the first Assyrian empire. In 1120 BC, he crossed the Euphrates, capturing Carchemish , and defeated the Mushki and the remnants of the Hittites—even claiming to reach the Black Sea. He advanced to the Mediterranean, subjugating Phoenicia, where he hunted wild bulls. He also marched into Babylon twice, assuming the old title "King of Sumer and Akkad", although he was unable to depose the actual king in Babylonia , where the old Kassite dynasty had now succumbed to an Elamite one.
Society in the Middle Assyrian period
Assyria had difficulties with keeping the trade routes open. Unlike the situation in the Old Assyrian period, the Anatolian metal trade was effectively dominated by the Hittites and the Hurrians. These peoples now controlled the Mediterranean ports, while the Kassites controlled the river route south to the Persian Gulf.
The Middle Assyrian kingdom was well organized, and in the firm control of the king, who also functioned as the High Priest ofAshur, the state god. He had certain obligations to fulfill in the cult, and had to provide resources for the temples. The priesthood became a major power in Assyrian society. Conflicts with the priesthood are thought to have been behind the murder of kingTukulti-Ninurta I.
The main Assyrian cities of the middle period were Ashur, Kalhu and Nineveh, all situated in the Tigris River valley. At the end of the Bronze Age, Nineveh was much smaller than Babylon , but still one of the world's major cities (population ca. 33,000). By the end of the Neo-Assyrian period, it had grown to a population of some 120,000, and was possibly the largest city of that time.[2]
All free male citizens were obliged to serve in the army for a time, a system which was called the ilku-service. The Assyrian lawcode, notable for its repressive attitude towards women in their society, was compiled during this period.
Main article: Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire is usually considered to have begun with the accession of Adad-nirari II, in 911 BC, lasting until the fall of Nineveh at the hands of the Babylonians in 612 BC.[3]
In the Middle Assyrian period, Assyria had been a minor kingdom of northern Mesopotamia, competing for dominance withBabylonia to the south. Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II, Assyria became a great regional power, growing to be a serious threat to 25th dynasty Egypt. It began reaching the peak of its power with the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III (ruled745–727 BC)[4][5]. This period, which included the Sargonic dynasty, is well-referenced in several sources, including theAssyro-Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible. Assyria finally succumbed to the rise of the neo-Babylonian Chaldean dynasty with the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC.
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Nineveh is mentioned about 1800 BC as a worship place of Ištar, who was responsible for the city's early importance. The goddess´ cult statue was sent to Pharaoh Amenhotep III of Egypt in the 14th century BC, by orders of the king of Mitanni. The city of Nineveh was one of Mitanni 's vassals until the mid 14th century BC, when the Assyrian kings of Assur seized it. There is no large body of evidence to show that Assyrian monarchs built at all extensively in Nineveh during the 2nd millennium BC. Later monarchs whose inscriptions have appeared on the Acropolis include Shalmaneser I and Tiglath-Pileser I, both of whom were active builders in Assur; the former had founded Calah (Nimrud). Nineveh had to wait for the neo-Assyrian kings, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883-859 BC) onward, for a considerable architectural expansion. Thereafter successive monarchs kept in repair and founded new palaces, temples to Sîn, Nergal, Šamaš, Ištar, and Nabiu of Borsippa.
It was Sennacherib who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city (c. 700 BC). He laid out new streets and squares and built within it the famous "palace without a rival", the plan of which has been mostly recovered and has overall dimensions of about 210 by 200 m (630 by 600 ft). It comprised at least 80 rooms, of which many were lined with sculpture. A large number of tablets were found in the palace. Some of the principal doorways were flanked by human-headed bulls. At this time the total area of Nineveh comprised about 1,800 acres (7 km²), and 15 great gates penetrated its walls. An elaborate system of 18 canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh, and several sections of a magnificently constructed aqueduct erected by the same monarch were discovered at Jerwan, about 40 km (25 miles) distant. The enclosed area had more than 100,000 inhabitants (maybe closer to 150,000), about twice as many as Babylon at the time, placing it among the largest settlements worldwide.[1]
Nineveh 's greatness was short-lived. About 633 BC the Assyrian empire began to show signs of weakness, and Nineveh was attacked by the Medes, who about 625 BC, joined by the Babylonians and Susianians, again attacked it. Nineveh fell in 612 BC, and was razed to the ground. The people in the city who could not escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the west, were either massacred or deported. Many unburied skeletons were found by the archaeologists at the site. The Assyrian empire then came to an end, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them.
Following the defeat in 612 BC, Nineveh faded in importance. The site remained unoccupied for centuries until the Sassanian period. The city is mentioned again in the Battle of Nineveh in 627 AD, which was fought between the Eastern Roman Empireand the Sassanian Empire of Persia near the ancient city. From the Arab conquest 637 AD until modern time the city of Mosulon the opposite bank of the river Tigris became the successor of ancient Nineveh .
Nineveh in classical history
Before the excavations in the 1800s, historical knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank. Vague memories had indeed survived of its power and greatness, but very little was definitely known about it. Other cities which had perished, such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, had left ruins to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to remain, and the very place on which it had stood was only matter of conjecture.
In the days of the Greek historian Herodotus, 400 BC, it had become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon the historian passed the place in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand the very memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight.
Biblical Nineveh
In the Bible, Nineveh is first mentioned in Genesis 10:11: "Ashur left that land, and built Nineveh ."
Though the Books of Kings and Books of Chronicles talk a great deal about the Assyrian empire, Nineveh itself is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when it is described (Jonah 3:3ff; 4:11) as an "exceeding great city of three days' journey", i.e., probably in circuit. This would give a circumference of about 100 km (60 miles). At the four corners of an irregular quadrangle are the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Karamles and Khorsabad. These four great masses of ruins, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as composing the whole ruins of Nineveh .
Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36; Isa. 37:37). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nahum 1:14;3:19, etc.). Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. (Nahum 2:6–11) According to the Bible, it was God's doing, his judgment on Assyria 's pride (Jonah Nah). In fulfilment of prophecy, God made "an utter end of the place". It became a "desolation".Zephaniah also (2:13–15) predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital.
Nineveh 's exemplary pride and fall are recalled in the Gospel of Matthew (12:41) and the Gospel of Luke (11:32).
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CITY OF NIMROD …
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located south of Nineveh on the river Tigris. The city covered an area of around 16 square miles. Ruins of the city are found in modern day Iraq, some 30 km southeast of Mosul. In ancient times the city was calledKalhu. The Arabs called the city Nimrud after Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero.
Nimrud has been identified as the site of the biblical city of Calah or Kalakh . Assyrian king Shalmaneser I made Nimrud , which existed for about a thousand years, the capital in the 13th century BC. The city gained fame when king Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria (c. 880 BC) made it his capital. He built a large palace and temples on the site of an earlier city that had long fallen into ruins.
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Araden (Syriac: ܐܪܕܢ) is a village in the northern Iraqi governorate of Dohuk. It is located 20-30 kilometers (12-19 miles) east of the city of Zakho and lies in a valley. The village of Inishk lies within viewing distance from it. The name Araden means " Land of Eden " in Assyrian Aramaic.
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ASSHUR
A-usar means "well watered region," a most appropriate designation for the river settlements of Assyria . The problem as to the meaning of the name Assur is rendered all the more confusing by the fact that the city and land are also called Assur (as well asA-usar), both by the Hammurabi records and generally in the later Assyrian literature. Furthermore, the god- and country-nameAssur also occurs at a late date in Assyrian literature in the forms An-sar, An-sar (ki), which form was presumably read Assur. The name of the deity is written A-šur or Aš-sùr, and in Neo-assyrian often shortened to Aš; also An-šàr.
In the Creation tablet, the heavens personified collectively were indicated by this term An-sar, "host of heaven," in contradistinction to the earth, Ki-sar, "host of earth." In view of this fact, it seems highly probable that the late writing An-sar forAssur was a more or less conscious attempt on the part of the Assyrian scribes to identify the peculiarly Assyrian deity Asurwith the Creation deity An-sar. On the other hand, there is an epithet Asir or Ashir ("overseer") applied to several gods and particularly to the deity Asur, a fact which introduced a third element of confusion into the discussion of the name Assur. It is probable then that there is a triple popular etymology in the various forms of writing the name Assur; viz. A-usar, An-sar and the stem asdru, all of which is quite in harmony with the methods followed by the ancient Assyro-Babylonian philologists.
Assur in the 3rd Millennium BC
Archaeology reveals the site of the city was occupied by the middle of the third millennium BC. This was still the Sumerian period, before the Assyrian kingdom emerged. The oldest remains of the city were discovered in the foundations of the Ishtartemple, as well as at the Old Palace . In the following Old Akkadian period, the city was ruled by kings from Akkad. During the"Sumerian Renaissance", the city was ruled by a Sumerian governor.
Assur in the Old and Middle Assyrian period
By the time the Neo-Sumerian Ur-III dynasty collapsed at the hands of the Elamites in 2004 BC, the local princes, including in Assur, had shaken off the foreign yoke. Assur developed rapidly into a centre for trade, and trade routes led from the city to Anatolia , where merchants from Assur established trading colonies. These Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor were called kârum, and traded mostly with tin and wool (see Kültepe). In the city of Assur , the first great temples to the city god Assur and the weather god Adad were erected. The first fortifications were also began in this period.
Assur was the capital of the kingdom of Shamshi-Adad I (1813-1781 BC). He expanded the city's power and influence beyond the Tigris river valley. In this period, the Great Royal Palace was built, and the temple of Assur was expanded and enlarged with a ziggurat. This kingdom came to end when Hammurabi of Babylon incorporated the city into his kingdom following the death of Shamshi-Adad. Renewed building activity is known a few centuries later, during the reign of a native king Puzur-Assur III, when the city was refortified and the southern quarters incorporated into the main city defenses. Temples to the moon god Sin (Nanna) and the sun god Shamash were erected in the 15th century BC. The city then became subjugated by the kingdom of Mitanni.
Assyria regained its independence in the 14th century BC, and in the following centuries the old temples and palaces of Assur were restored. Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 BC) also started a new temple to the goddess Ishtar. The Anu-Adad temple was constructed during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1075 BC). The walled area of the city in the Middle Assyrian period made up some 120 ha, or 300 acres.
Assur in the Neo-Assyrian period and later
Parthian temple in Assur.
In the Neo-Assyrian period (912-612 BC), the royal residence was transferred to other Assyrian cities. Ashur-nasir-pal II(884-859 BC) moved the capital from Assur to Kalhu (Nimrud). Yet the city of Assur remained the religious centre of the empire, due to its temple of the national god Ashur. In the reign of Sennacherib (705-682 BC), the House of the New Year,akitu, was built, and the festivities celebrated in the city. Several Assyrian rulers were also buried beneath the Old Palace . The end of the glorious days of Assur came in 614 BC, when the city was sacked and destroyed during the conquest of Assyria by the Medes.
The city was reoccupied some centuries later, in the Parthian period. New administrative buildings were erected to the north of the old city, and a palace to the south. The old Assur temple was also rebuilt. However, the city was destroyed again by theSassanid king Shapur I (241-272 AD). Some settlement at the site is known from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but afterwards only by nomadic Bedouin. Modern Assyrians continue to revere the site.
During the period when they were competing for dominance in Mesopotamia, the neighbouring sister-states of Babylonia andAssyria differed essentially in character. Babylonia was a land of merchants and agriculturists; Assyria became an organized military camp. The Assyrian dynasties were founded by successful generals; in Babylonia it was the priests whom a revolution raised to the throne. The Babylonian king remained a priest to the last, under the control of a powerful hierarchy; the Assyrian king was the autocratic general of an army, at whose side stood in early days a feudal nobility, aided from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III onwards by an elaborate bureaucracy. His palace was more sumptuous than the temples of the gods, from which it was quite separate. The people were soldiers and little else; even the sailor belonged to the state. Hence the sudden collapse of Assyria when drained of its fighting population in the age of Ashurbanipal.
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Arrapha (Syriac: ܐܪܦܗܐ, Arabic: أررابخا ,عرفة) was an ancient Assyrian city[1] that existed in what is today the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. The city was founded around 2000 BC and derived its name from the old Assyrian word Arabkha which was later changed to Arrapha.
The city of Imgur-Enlil was founded by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 BC). It laid 10 km (7 miles) upstream the Derrah river from river Tigris, where the city of Kalhu (see Nimrud) was situated. Imgur-Enlil laid between the city of Ninevehand the province of Arrapha in the southeast along the royal Assyrian road. Ashurnasirpal II had already transferred the capital from Assur to Kalhu, and the foundation of Imgur-Enlil may have been a further step to knit up the Assyrian empire. The city existed for two centuries but was like all Assyrian cities sacked and destroyed by the Medes and Babylonians at the fall of the Assyrian empire 614-612 BC.
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Dur-Sharrukin ("Fortress of Sargon"), present day Khorsabad, was the Assyrian capital in the time of Sargon II of Assyria. Khorsabad is a village in northern Iraq, 15 km northeast of Mosul, which is still today inhabited by Assyrians.
In 713 BC, Sargon ordered the construction of a new palace and town 20 km north of Niniveh at the foot of the Gebel Musri. Land was bought, and the debts of construction workers were nullified in order to attract a sufficient labour force. The land in the environs of the town was taken under cultivation, and olive groves were planted to increase Assyria 's deficient oil-production.
The town was of rectangular layout and measured 1760 * 1635 m. The enclosed area comprised 3 square kilometres, or 700 acres. The length of the walls was 16280 Assyrian units, which corresponded to the numerical value of Sargon's name. The city walls were massive and 157 towers protected its sides. Seven gates entered the city from all directions. A walled terrace contained temples and the royal palace. The main temples were dedicated to the gods Nabu, Shamash and Sin, while Adad,Ningal and Ninurta had smaller shrines. A temple tower, ziqqurat, was also constructed. The palace was adorned with sculptures and wall reliefs, and the gates were flanked with winged bulls shedu statues.
The court moved to Dur-Sharrukin in 706 BC, although it was not completely finished yet. Sargon was killed during a battle in705 BC. His son and successor Sennacherib abandoned the project, and relocated the capital with its administration to the city of Nineveh. The city was never completed and was finally abandoned a century later when the Assyrian empire fell.
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The Assyrian people are descended from the population of the ancient Assyrian Empire, which itself emerged from theAkkadian Empire founded by Sargon of Akkad.[4][5][6] Eventually, Assyrian kings conquered Aramaean tribes and assimilated them into the Assyrian empire,[7][8][9][10] and their language, Aramaic, supplanted the native Akkadian language,[6][11][12] due in part to the mass relocations enforced by Assyrian kings of the Neo-Assyrian period.[13][10] The modern Assyrian identity is therefore believed to be a
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