An outline, era by era

Assyria (early periods)

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

Assyria was a land on the upper Tigris in what is now northern Iraq, centred on the city of Ashur, with later centres at Nineveh and Nimrud. Its early history runs through the Bronze Age, from small beginnings in the third millennium BCE to the Old Assyrian period (about 2000 to 1750 BCE) and the Middle Assyrian kingdom (about 1400 to 1050 BCE). The people spoke Akkadian, and their city-god was Ashur, who gave his name to both the city and the land.

In the Old Assyrian period, merchants of Ashur ran a trading network that carried tin and textiles to Anatolia, and left thousands of clay tablets at the trading town of Kanesh. Around 1800 BCE Shamshi-Adad I built a kingdom across northern Mesopotamia, but it fell apart after his death. Assyria recovered in the fourteenth century BCE, when kings such as Ashur-uballit I and Tukulti-Ninurta I made it a major power, and it later grew into the great empire of the first millennium BCE.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Ninus and Semiramis, founders of Nineveh

    Origin story

    The legend

    Ninus, the first king of Assyria, conquers Asia and founds the great city of Nineveh. After his death his wife Semiramis takes the throne. She is said to have been raised by doves, and she builds Babylon's walls, raises monuments and leads armies as far as India.

    The rest is history

    The tale comes from Greek writers, above all Ctesias of Cnidus in the fifth century BCE, whose account survives in the later work of Diodorus Siculus. It does not match Assyrian records. No king Ninus is attested in them, and Nineveh was settled long before any such founding. Semiramis may echo the historical queen Shammuramat, wife of Shamshi-Adad V and probably a powerful figure during the minority of her son Adad-nirari III around 810 BCE, though how directly she relates to the legend is debated. That was centuries after the early periods, but it shows how a prominent Assyrian queen could be remembered in a much-changed form.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryDiodorus Siculus. Library of History, Book 2, 1-20, drawing on Ctesias of Cnidus, Persica, 1st century BCE. Loeb Classical Library.
    2. BookDalley, Stephanie. The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Discusses Shammuramat and the Greek Semiramis tradition.

  2. Ashur the Assyrian and the sons of Shem

    Origin story

    The legend

    After the flood, Noah's son Shem has a son named Asshur. In one reading of Genesis, Asshur leaves the land of Shinar and builds Nineveh and other cities in the north. In another reading, it is the hunter Nimrod who founds a kingdom in Babylon and then goes out to Assyria to build those cities.

    The rest is history

    These stories come from the Book of Genesis, chapters 10 and 11, written down in the first millennium BCE. The verse about the building of Nineveh is ambiguous in Hebrew, and scholars and translators disagree over whether Asshur or Nimrod is the subject. Asshur appears as a forefather because the Hebrew name for Assyria matches the name of the city and its god. Assyrian sources themselves know nothing of Noah or Nimrod. The city of Ashur was a real, very old settlement, with temples going back to the third millennium BCE. The usual view is that the land took its name from the city and its god, though the exact relationship among the three names is not fully certain.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBook of Genesis 10:8-12. Hebrew Bible, composed in the first millennium BCE.
    2. BookRadner, Karen. Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

  3. The Assyrian King List and the tent-dwelling kings

    Origin story

    The legend

    The Assyrian King List opens with seventeen kings who lived in tents. Then comes a second group of ancestors, and then the kings of Ashur in a long, continuous succession. Shamshi-Adad I appears within this succession as one more ruler of Ashur.

    The rest is history

    The list was kept by Assyrian scribes, and its surviving copies date to the first millennium BCE, though it draws on much older records. It joins together several dynasties and rulers who were not all related, or even ruling alone, into a single sequence. The Amorite conqueror Shamshi-Adad I seized Ashur around 1800 BCE, yet the list incorporates him into the succession without marking him as an outsider. The tents may preserve a memory of a nomadic past, but this cannot be confirmed. Many scholars think the list helped to present Assyrian kingship as ancient and continuous, though how it was used by particular kings is debated.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAssyrian King List. Akkadian king list, copies from Ashur and Khorsabad, first millennium BCE, drawing on earlier records.
    2. BookGlassner, Jean-Jacques. Mesopotamian Chronicles. Writings from the Ancient World 19. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004.Includes a translation of the Assyrian King List.
    3. BookVeenhof, Klaas R., and Jesper Eidem. Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/5. Fribourg: Academic Press, 2008.

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