Assyria

Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed from the 21st to the 7th century BCE which conquered and administered most of West Asia from the Assyrian heartland in Upper Mesopotamia. Assyria is called the first true military superpower in human history, and pioneered major inventions and advances in the first libraries and large-scale preservation and accumulation of knowledge, as well as in statecraft, centralised government, bureaucracy, warfare, military organisation, propaganda, art, and architecture. Assyrian imperial history spans the early Bronze Age to the late Iron Age, from its beginning as small Akkadian settlements in northern Mesopotamia to its zenith and collapse as the largest empire to that time, and is typically divided into the Early Assyrian (c. 2600–2025 BCE), Old Assyrian (c. 2025–1364 BCE), Middle Assyrian (c. 1363–912 BCE), Neo-Assyrian (911–609 BCE), and post-imperial (609 BCE–c. 240 CE) periods. The Assyrian people survive to this day and continue to live and practice their culture in their ancient heartland and in the diaspora. Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded c. 2600 BCE, but there is no evidence that the city was independent until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in the 21st century BCE, when a line of independent kings starting with Puzur-Ashur I began ruling the city. Centered in the Assyrian heartland in northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian power fluctuated over time. The city underwent several periods of foreign rule or domination before Assyria rose under Ashur-uballit I in the early 14th century BCE as the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, Assyria was one of the two major Mesopotamian kingdoms, alongside Babylonia in the south, and at times became the dominant power in the ancient Near East. Assyria was at its strongest in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the Assyrian army was the strongest...