Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mike C. Gulay Keren Joani L. Morales
Mike C. Gulay Keren Joani L. Morales
Gulay
Keren Joani L. Morales
Assyria
- the name derived from the city Asshur on
the Tigris, the original capital of the country,
was originally a colony from Babylonia, and
was ruled by viceroys from that kingdom.
Armor - The main armor used by Assyrian soldiers was a shield and helmet.
• Archers had a
shield bearer
who would
cover them
while they
got off shots.
• Archers had a
shield bearer
who would
cover them
while they
got off shots.
Assyrian Warfare
Siege Equipment - The Assyrians invented some of
the first siege equipment to defeat fortified cities.
They used battering rams to break down gates and siege
towers to go over walls. This was the first time that such
complicated siege equipment was used in battle.
Assyrian Warfare
• A phrase oft-repeated by Assyrian kings in their
inscriptions regarding military conquests is. . . .
• Ashur
• Nineveh
Ashur
• The city was an important center of trade, as it lay
squarely on a caravan trade route that ran through
Mesopotamia to Anatolia and down through
the Levant.
• All of the great kings (except for Sargon II, whose body
was lost in battle) were buried at Ashur, from the
earliest days of the Assyrian Empire down to the last,
no matter where the capital city was located.
• A more likely account is that the city was named Ashur
after the deity of that name sometime in the 3rd
millennium BCE; the same god's name is the origin for
'Assyria.
Nineveh
• one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity. The area was
settled as early as 6000 BCE and, by 3000, had become an
important religious centre for worship of the goddess Ishtar
• King Sennacherib built great walls around the city with fifteen
gates, created public parks and gardens, aqueducts, irrigation
ditches, canals, and greatly expanded upon and improved the
structures of the city.
• "Nineveh, with its heterogeneous population of people from
throughout the Assyrian Empire, was one of the most beautiful
cities in the Near East, with its gardens, temples, and splendid
palaces"
• The city was best known through the Christian era (and still is) by
the central role it plays in the Hebrew composition known in
the Bible as The Book of Jonah.
• The Library at Nineveh
The last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, constructed a
great library at the city of Nineveh. He collected clay tablets
from all over Mesopotamia. These included the stories of
Gilgamesh, the Code of Hammurabi, and more.
Much of our knowledge of the Ancient civilizations of
Mesopotamia comes from the remains of this library.
According to the British Museum in London, just over
30,000 tablets have been recovered. These tablets make up
around 10,000 different texts.
.
The destruction of the Assyrian capital Nineveh by a coalition
of Babylonian and Median invaders in
612 B.C.E. which marked the fall of the empire.
Assyrian Declination