1.
Lamassu
–
A lamassu is an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted as having a humans head, a body of an ox or a lion, and birds wings. In some writings, it is portrayed to represent a female deity, a less frequently used name is shedu which refers to the male counterpart of a lamassu. The Lammasu or Lumasi represent the zodiacs, parent-stars or constellations, large lamassu figures up to nearly 5 metres high are spectacular showpieces in Assyrian sculpture, where they are the largest figures known to have been made. In art, lamassu were depicted as hybrids, either winged bulls or lions with the head of a human male, the motif of a winged animal with a human head is common to the Near East, first recorded in Ebla around 3000 BCE. The first distinct lamassu motif appeared in Assyria during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser II as a symbol of power, Assyrian sculpture typically placed prominent pairs of lamassu at entrances in palaces, facing the street and also internal courtyards. They were double-aspect figures on corners, in high relief, from the front they appear to stand, and from the side, walk, and in earlier versions have five legs, as is apparent when viewed obliquely. The colossal entrance way figures were often followed by a hero grasping a wriggling lion, also colossal and they also appear on cylinder seals. Several examples left in situ in northern Iraq have been destroyed in the 2010s by ISIS when they occupied the area, the Lammasu or Lumasi represent the zodiacs, parent-stars, or constellations. They are depicted as protective deities because they encompass all life within them, the motif of the Assyrian-winged-man-bull called Aladlammu and Lamassu interchangeably is not the lamassu or alad of Sumerian origin which were depicted with different iconography. These monumental statues were called aladlammû or lamassu which meant protective spirit, in Hittite, the Sumerian form dLAMMA is used both as a name for the so-called tutelary deity, identified in certain later texts with Inara, and a title given to similar protective gods. The lamassu is a celestial being from ancient Mesopotamian religion bearing a head, bulls body, sometimes with the horns and the ears of a bull. It appears frequently in Mesopotamian art, the lamassu and shedu were household protective spirits of the common Babylonian people, becoming associated later as royal protectors, were placed as sentinels at the entrances. The Akkadians associated the god Papsukkal with lamassu and the god Išum with shedu, to protect houses, the lamassu were engraved in clay tablets, which were then buried under the doors threshold. They were often placed as a pair at the entrance of palaces, the ancient Jewish people were influenced by the iconography of Assyrian culture. The prophet Ezekiel wrote about a fantastic being made up of aspects of a human being, a lion, an eagle, later, in the early Christian period, the four Gospels were ascribed to each of these components. When it was depicted in art, this image was called the Tetramorph, the British 10th Army, which operated in Iraq and Iran in 1942-1943, adopted the Lamassu as its insignia. A winged bull with the head of a man appears on the logo of the United States Forces - Iraq. A bull with a head is found among the creatures that make up Aslans army in The Lion, the Witch
Lamassu
–
The Lamassu in
Persepolis
Lamassu
–
Lamassu at the Louvre.
Lamassu
–
Human-headed winged bull, otherwise known as a Šedu from
Khorsabad.
University of Chicago Oriental Institute. Gypsum (?) Neo-Assyrian Period, c. 721-705 BCE
Lamassu
–
British 10th Army insignia
2.
Ashurnasirpal II
–
Ashur-nasir-pal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC and his harshness prompted a revolt that he crushed decisively in a pitched, two-day battle. According to his monument inscription, while recalling this massacre he says their men young and old I took prisoners. Of some I cut off their feet and hands, of others I cut off the noses and lips, of the young mens ears I made a heap. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their city, the male children and the female children I burned in flames, the city I destroyed, and consumed with fire. Following this victory, he advanced without opposition as far as the Mediterranean, on his return home, he moved his capital to the city of Kalhu. Ashurnasirpal IIs father was Tukulti-Ninurta II and his son and successor was Shalmaneser III. The palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a development of wealth. He was renowned for his brutality, using enslaved captives to build a new Assyrian capital at Kalhu in Mesopotamia where he built many impressive monuments. He was also an administrator, who realized that he could gain greater control over his empire by installing Assyrian governors. Like previous Assyrian monarchs Ashurnasirpal campaigned along the Euphrates against Aramaeans, Ashurnasirpal IIs brutal treatment of rebels ensured that even when his army was not present, there would not be further revolts. Further revolts would see the local monarch replaced with a governor loyal only to the Assyrian monarchy, leading his army, which was typically composed of infantry, heavy & light cavalry and chariots, Ashurnasirpal conquered the Hittites and Aramaean states of northern Syria. Ashurnasirpal II did not destroy the Phoenician/Canaanite cities he conquered and he was unsuccessful in his siege of Tyre, which under Ittobaal settled Kition in Cyprus and opened up trade routes throughout the Aegean, at Rhodes and Miletus. Through tribute they became sources for the raw materials of his armies, iron was needed for weapons, Lebanese cedar for construction and gold and silver for the payment of troops. Ashurnasirpal IIs palace was built and completed in 879 BC in Kalhu, the palace walls were lined with reliefs carved in alabaster. These reliefs bore elaborate carvings, many portraying the king surrounded by winged protective spirits, each also had text inscribed in it. This text was the same or very similar on each relief and is called the Standard Inscription. Ashurnasirpal II also built a gateway at Nimrud
Ashurnasirpal II
–
Ashurnasirpal II, with Akkadian cuneiform inscription
Ashurnasirpal II
–
Ashur-nasir-pal II (centre) meets a high official after a successful battle.
Ashurnasirpal II
–
Campaigns and contemporaries of Ashurnasirpal II
Ashurnasirpal II
–
Pair of
Lamassus,
Nimrud, (Metropolitan Museum)
3.
Nineveh Governorate
–
Nineveh Governorate is a governorate in northern Iraq that contains the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. It was a part of Assyria from the 25th century BC to the 7th century AD, It has an area of 37,323 km2. Its chief city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, Tal Afar is the second-biggest city. Before 1976, it was called Mosul Province and included the present-day Dohuk Governorate, a massive offensive to retake the city, dubbed Operation We Are Coming, Nineveh, began in October 2016. Its two cities endured the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and emerged unscathed, in 2004, Mosul and Tal Afar were fierce between US-led Iraqi insurgency. The insurgents moved to Nineveh after the Battle of Fallujah in 2004, after the invasion, the military of the province was led by David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne Division and later by Carter Ham as the multi-national brigade for Iraq. During the American civil head of the office of the Coalition Provisional Authority was a US Foreign Service Officer and former Kurdish refugee to the States. Mustafa administered her nominees on the council and through members of the Kashmoula family. In June 2004, Osama Kashmoula became the governor of the province. He was succeeded as interim Governor by Duraid Kashmoula, who was elected governor in January 2005, in April 2009, Atheel al-Nujaifi, a hardline Arab nationalist and member of Al-Hadba, became governor. While the Kurdish list proposed Hassan al-Allaf, an Arab affiliated with the Islamic Party, an offensive to retake Mosul from ISIL control began in October 2016, with Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers supported by a U. S. -led coalition of 60 nations. Neighboring Iraqi regions are Dohuk Governorate to the north, Erbil Governorate to the east, Saladin Governorate to the south-east, in the west it shares a border with Syria, mostly Al-Hasakah Governorate, and also Deir ez-Zor Governorate in the south. Now Makhmur District is part of Erbil Governorate, aqrah District and the northern part of Al-Shikhan District are parts of Dohuk Governorate. There are significant numbers of Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens as well as Yazidis both in towns and cities, and in their own villages and regions. There are also numbers of Armenians, Kawliya and Mandeans, Shabaks, in religion, the majority of Arabs are Sunni Muslim while Turkmen are mostly Shiite. Kurds are largely Sunni Muslim, although some follow the native Yarsan religion, Armenians are also exclusively Christian and mostly followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Yazidis, Shabaks and Mandeans follow their own beliefs, Shabakism, Yazidism. However, Arab Sunnis form a majority in the province, the main language spoken is Arabic
Nineveh Governorate
–
Nineveh Province governor
Atheel al-Nujaifi 2014 in the
Yezidian Academy in
Hanover
Nineveh Governorate
–
Nineveh Governorate (formerly Ninawa Province)
Nineveh Governorate
–
Districts of Nineveh
4.
Iraq
–
The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws, the area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and it was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires. Iraqs modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres, Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932, in 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party from 1968 until 2003, after an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Husseins Baath Party was removed from power and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The American presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country, the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name, one dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for city, UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is rooted, well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the south of the Hamrin Mountains. The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ or /ɪˈræk/, the American Heritage Dictionary, the pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in U. S. media. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture where agriculture, the following Neolithic period is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations
Iraq
–
Cylinder Seal, Old Babylonian Period, c.1800 BCE,
hematite. The king makes an animal offering to
Shamash. This seal was probably made in a workshop at
Sippar.
Iraq
–
Flag
Iraq
–
Victory stele of
Naram-Sin of Akkad
Iraq
–
Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in
Shuruppak, Sumerian tablet, circa 2600 BCE
5.
Mesopotamia
–
In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The Sumerians and Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of history to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD226, eastern part of it fell to the Sassanid Persians, division of Mesopotamia between Roman and Sassanid Empires lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and Muslim conquest of the Levant from Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The regional toponym Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος middle and ποταμός river and it is used throughout the Greek Septuagint to translate the Hebrew equivalent Naharaim. In the Anabasis, Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria, the Aramaic term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazira, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation and it is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jazirah, and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments, Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the Armenian Highlands. Both rivers are fed by tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000 square kilometres region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, in the extreme south, the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times, periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and these trends have continued to the present day in Iraq
Mesopotamia
–
Known world of the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures from documentary sources
Mesopotamia
–
Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
–
One of 18
Statues of Gudea, a ruler around 2090 BC
Mesopotamia
–
One of the
Nimrud ivories shows a lion eating a man. Neo-Assyrian period, 9th to 7th centuries BC.
6.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
7.
Arabic language
–
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
Arabic language
–
The Galland Manuscript of
One Thousand and One Nights, 14th century
Arabic language
–
al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic (
Naskh script)
Arabic language
–
Bilingual traffic sign in
Qatar.
Arabic language
–
Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.
8.
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
–
In recent years, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic has spread throughout the Assyrian diaspora. Speakers of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Turoyo are ethnic Assyrians and are descendants of the ancient Assyrian inhabitants of Northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is the largest speaking Neo-Aramaic group, followed by Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Turoyo. Despite the terms Chaldean Neo-Aramaic and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic indicating an ethnic identity. Assyrian is a moderately inflected, fusional language with a two-gender noun system and it is also a null-subject language and it features a pronoun drop to some degree. The word order of modern Assyrian is predominately SVO, although other sentence structures are used too. There is some Akkadian vocabulary and influence in the language, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is written from right to left, and it uses the Madnhāyā version of the Syriac alphabet. To a moderate degree, Assyrian is also intelligible with Senaya, Lishana Deni and it is somewhat partially intelligible with Lishan Didan, Hulaulá and Lishanid Noshan. Its mutual intelligibility with Turoyo is rather limited, the Syriac language had evolved from Imperial Aramaic, an Akkadian infused dialect introduced as the lingua franca of Assyria and the Neo Assyrian Empire by Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC. Aramaic was the language of commerce, trade and communication and became the language of Assyria in classical antiquity. It became the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Parthian Empire, after the conquest of Assyria, Syriac and other Aramaic dialects gradually lost their status as imperial languages but continued to flourish as lingua francas alongside Ancient Greek. By the 1st century AD, Akkadian was extinct, although some loaned vocabulary still survives in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic to this day. The Neo-Aramaic languages are descended from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Neo-Aramaic languages evolved from Middle Aramaic by the 13th century, the Assyrian Empire resorted to a policy of deporting troublesome conquered peoples into the lands of Mesopotamia. Consequently, during the Persian rule of Assyria, Aramaic gradually became the language spoken by the Assyrians. Even before the Empire fell, the Assyrians had made the language the lingua franca of its empire, there is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was led by missionaries. Much literary effort was put into the production of a translation of the Bible into Syriac. At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry, by the 3rd century AD, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship and the language became the literary and liturgical language of many churches in the Fertile Crescent. Syriac was the lingua franca of the Middle East until 900 AD, the differences with the Assyrian Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
–
Inscriptional
Pahlavi text from
Shapur III at
Taq-e Bostan, 4th century. Pahlavi script is derived from the
Aramaic script that was used under the
Achaemenid rule.
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
–
An 11th-century Syriac
manuscript.
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
–
Assyrian people
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
–
"
Amen " in contemporary Syriac script (Madnhāyā).
9.
Assyrian people
–
Assyrian people, or Syriacs, are an ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East. Some of them self-identify as Chaldeans, or as Arameans and they speak modern Aramaic, whose subdivisions include Northeastern, Central, and Western Neo-Aramaic, as well as another language, dependent on the country of residence. The Assyrians are typically Syriac-speaking Christians who claim descent from Assyria, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, the areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria. The majority have migrated to regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia. Assyrians are predominantly Christian, mostly adhering to the East and West Syrian liturgical rites of Christianity, whereas the churches of the West Syrian rite, the Syriac Orthodox Church and Syriac Catholic Church, mostly speak the Central and Western branches. According to a 2013 report by a Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council official, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to Neanderthals such as the remains of those which have been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria belonged to the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the history of Assyria begins with the formation of the city of Assur perhaps as early as the 25th century BC. The Assyrian king list records kings dating from the 25th century BC onwards, the earliest being Tudiya, who was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla. However, many of early kings would have been local rulers. In the traditions of the Assyrian Church of the East, they are descended from Abrahams grandson, however, there is no historical basis for the biblical assertion whatsoever, there is no mention in Assyrian records. The Assyrian people, after the fall of their empire, fell under foreign domination ever since, the Persian Empire was founded, which consumed the entire Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire in 539 BC. Assyrians became front line soldiers for the Persian Empire under Xerxes I, the Assyrian army accounted for three legions of the Roman army, defending the Parthian border. In the 1st century, it was the Assyrian army that enabled Vespasians coup, from the later 2nd century, the Roman Senate included several notable Assyrians, including Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus and Avidius Cassius. From the 1st century BC, Assyria was the theatre of the protracted Roman–Persian Wars and it would become a Roman province from 116 to 363 AD. Despite the influx of foreign elements, the presence of Assyrians is confirmed by the worship of the god Ashur, the Greeks, Parthians, and Romans had a rather low-level of integration with the local population in Mesopotamia, which allowed their cultures to survive. The Assyrians were Christianized in the first to third centuries in Roman Syria, the population of the Sasanian province of Asōristān was a mixed one, composed of Assyrians, Arameans in the far south and the western deserts, and Persians. The Greek element in the cities, still strong during the Parthian Empire, the majority of the population were Eastern Aramaic speakers. Along with the Arameans, Armenians, Greeks, and Nabataeans, the Council of Seleucia of ca.325 dealt with jurisdictional conflicts among the leading bishops
Assyrian people
–
The burning of bodies of Assyrian women
Assyrian people
Assyrian people
–
Assyrian refugees on a wagon moving to a newly constructed village on the
Khabur river in Syria.
Assyrian people
–
Celebration at a Syriac Orthodox monastery in
Mosul,
Ottoman Syria, early 20th century.
10.
Calah
–
It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position 10 kilometres north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab, the city covered an area of 360 hectares. The ruins of the city were found one kilometre of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Province. This is some 30 kilometres southeast of Mosul, archaeological excavations at the site began in 1845, and were conducted at intervals between then and 1879, and then from 1949 onwards. Many important pieces were discovered, with most being moved to museums in Iraq, archaeologists believe that the city was given the name Nimrud in modern times after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero. In 2015, the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced its intention to destroy the site because of its un-Islamic Assyrian nature, in March 2015, the Iraqi government reported that ISIL had used bulldozers to destroy excavated remains of the city. A video released in the month showed a lamassu statue in the city being attacked by a terrorist with a sledgehammer. Another video posted online by the group in April 2015 showed the site being destroyed by bulldozers, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I built up Kalhu into a major city during the Middle Assyrian Empire. However, the ancient city of Assur remained the capital of Assyria, psychologist Julian Jaynes believe that the Biblical figure Nimrod was inspired by the deeds of the real king of Assyria Tukulti-Ninurta I, the son of Shalmaneser I, and a powerful conqueror. Others believe the name derived from the Assyrian god Ninurta, who had a cultic centre at Nimrud. The city gained fame when king Ashurnasirpal II of the Neo Assyrian Empire made it his capital at the expense of Assur. He built a palace and temples in the city that had fallen into a degree of disrepair during the Dark Ages of the mid 11th to mid 10th centuries BC. A grand opening ceremony with festivities and an opulent banquet in 879 BC is described in a stele discovered during archeological excavations. The city of king Ashurnasirpal II housed perhaps as many as 100,000 inhabitants, and contained botanic gardens and his son, Shalmaneser III, built the monument known as the Great Ziggurat, and an associated temple. However, in 706 BC Sargon II moved the capital of the empire to Dur Sharrukin, the Nineveh Province in which the ruins of Nimrud lie, is still the major center of Iraqs indigenous Assyrian population to this day. King Ashurnasirpal II, who reigned from 883 to 859 BC, thousands of men worked to build an 8-kilometre-long wall surrounding the city and a grand palace. Beasts of the mountains and of the seas, of limestone and alabaster I fashioned. The inscriptions also described great feasts he had to celebrate his conquests, however his victims were horrified by his conquests
Calah
–
A
lamassu at the North West Palace of
Ashurnasirpal II
Calah
–
"The Palaces at Nimrud Restored", 1853, imagined by the city's first excavator,
Austen Henry Layard and architectural historian
James Fergusson
Calah
–
A
lamassu at the
British Museum
Calah
–
A
stele in situ at Nimrud
11.
Mosul
–
Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq. Since October 2016 it has been the site of an operation led by the Iraqi Government, under Haider al-Abadi, in an effort to dislodge. The city has been under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant since June 2014, and no westerner has entered the city until the latest initiative. The Battle of Mosul, an offensive to retake the city begun in October 2016, is the largest deployment of Iraqi forces since the 2003 invasion by U. S. Located some 400 km north of Baghdad, Mosul stands on the west bank of the Tigris, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank. The metropolitan area has grown to encompass substantial areas on both the Left Bank and the Right Bank, as the two banks are described by the locals compared to the direction of Tigris. Mosuls population grew rapidly around the turn of the millennium and by 2004 was estimated to be 1,846,500, an estimated half million people fled Mosul in the second half of 2014 when the IS fought with government forces for control of the city. On November 17,2014, ISIS attacked the city of Mosul, ultimately killing seven civilians, while some residents returned, more fled in 2015 as fighting and violence increased, and US bombings pounded the city. Historically, important products of the area include Mosul marble and oil, the city of Mosul is home to the University of Mosul and its renowned Medical College, which together was one of the largest educational and research centers in Iraq and the Middle East. The University has since been closed, the Islamic States leadership in Mosul has kept the Medical College open but it is reported to be barely functional. The name of the city is first mentioned by Xenophon in his expeditionary logs in Achaemenid Assyria of 401 BC, there, he notes a small Assyrian town of Mépsila on the Tigris somewhere about where modern Mosul is today. Be that as it may, the name Mepsila is doubtless the root for the modern name, in its current Arabic form and spelling, the term Mosul, or rather Mawsil, stands for the linking point – or loosely, the Junction City, in Arabic. Mosul should not be confused with the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh and this area is known today as the town of Nebi Yunus and is now populated largely by Kurds. It is the only neighborhood in Mosul. The site contains the tomb of the Biblical Jonah, as he lived and died in the capital of ancient Assyria. Today, this area has been absorbed into the Mosul metropolitan area. The indigenous Assyrians still refer to the city of Mosul as Nineveh. The ancient Nineveh was succeeded by Mepsila after the fall of Assyria between 612-599 BC at the hands of a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians and Sagartians, the Assyrians largely abandoned the city, building new smaller settlements such as Mepsila nearby
Mosul
–
Tigris River and bridge in Mosul
Mosul
–
St. Elijah's Monastery south of Mosul, Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, dating from the 6th century
Mosul
–
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, "Siege of Mosul in 1261–
63 ",
Jami' al-tawarikh, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Mosul
–
A coffee house in Mosul, 1914.
12.
Nineveh plains
–
Nineveh Plains is a region in Iraqs Nineveh Governorate to the north and east of the city Mosul, from which it is also known as the Plain of Mosul. It was formerly known as the Plain of Sanjar or Sinjar from its major medieval settlement and it was the location of al-Khwārizmīs determination of a degree during the reign of the caliph al-Mamun. Nineveh Plains lie to the east, northeast of the city of Mosul in the Iraqi Ninawa Province, the ancient city of Nineveh stood where the eastern outskirts of Mosul are today, on the bank of the Tigris river. The villages on the part of the plains are inhabited by minority religious groups that are non-Muslim. Most of these inhabitants are Assyrian Christians, peutingers map of the inhabited world known to the Roman geographers depicts Singara as located west of the Trogoditi. Persi. who inhabited the territory around Mount Sinjar, by the medieval Arabs, most of the plain was reckoned as part of the province of Diyār Rabīʿa, the abode of the Rabīʿa tribe. The plain was the site of the determination of the degree by al-Khwārizmī, Sinjar also boasted a famous Assyrian cathedral in the 8th century. Schools especially received much attention in this area and in Kurdish areas where Assyrian concentrated population lives, in addition, agriculture and medical clinics received financial help from the Assyrian diaspora. As attacks on Christians increased in Basra, Baghdad, Ramadi, more families turned northward to the extended family holdings in the Nineveh Plain. This place of refuge remains underfunded and gravely lacking in infrastructure to aid the ever-increasing internally displaced people population, in February 2010, the attacks against Assyrians in Mosul forced 4,300 Assyrians to flee to the Nineveh plains where there is an Assyrian-majority population. From 2012, it began receiving influxes of Assyrians from Syria owing to the civil war there. In August 2014 nearly all of the inhabitants of the southern regions of the Plains were driven out by the Islamic State of Iraq. There have been calls by some politicians inside and outside Iraq to create a region for Assyrian Christians in this area. The same article has used to proclaim an autonomous province for the Yezidi people. On January 21,2014, the Iraqi government had declared that Nineveh Plains would become a new province, the Nineveh Plains is the only region in Iraq where a plurality of inhabitants follow Syriac Christianity. Before ISIS invaded Nineveh, Assyrians made up around 40% of the population within the plains, other inhabitants are the Yazidis, Shabaks, Turkmens and Kurds. It is believed that this added incentive for absorption by the KRG of the region may lead to conflict with Sunni Arab tribes in the Mosul region itself. Assyrians claim that without Nineveh Plain autonomous administration, the indigenous Assyrian presence in its ancient homeland could well disappear, there are some oil reserves in Nineveh Plains
Nineveh plains
–
Singara in a detail from
Peutinger's map, a medieval copy of a 4th-century
Roman original.
Nineveh plains
–
Map of the three districts which constitute Nineveh plains overlaid over the
Ninawa Governorate map.
13.
Tigris
–
The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq, the Tigris is 1,850 km long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km southeast of the city of Elazig and about 30 km from the headwaters of the Euphrates. The river then flows for 400 km through Turkish territory before becoming the border between Syria and Turkey and this stretch of 44 km is the only part of the river that is located in Syria. Close to its confluence with the Euphrates, the Tigris splits into several channels, First, the artificial Shatt al-Hayy branches off, to join the Euphrates near Nasiriyah. Second, the Shatt al-Muminah and Majar-al-Kabir branch off to feed the Central Marshes, further downstream, two other distributary channels branch off, which feed the Hawizeh Marshes. The main channel continues southwards and is joined by the Al-Kassarah, finally, the Tigris joins the Euphrates near al-Qurnah to form the Shatt-al-Arab. According to Pliny and other ancient historians, the Euphrates originally had its outlet into the sea separate from that of the Tigris, Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. The port city of Basra straddles the Shatt al-Arab, in ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2400 B. C, the Tigris has long been an important transport route in a largely desert country. Shallow-draft vessels can go as far as Baghdad, but rafts are needed for transport upstream to Mosul, General Francis Rawdon Chesney hauled two steamers overland through Syria in 1836 to explore the possibility of an overland and river route to India. One steamer, the Tigris, was wrecked in a storm which sank, Chesney proved the river navigable to powered craft. Later, the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company was established in 1861 by the Lynch Brothers trading company and they had 2 steamers in service. By 1908 ten steamers were on the river, tourists boarded steam yachts to venture inland as this was the first age of archaeological tourism, and the sites of Ur and Ctesiphon became popular to European travelers. In the First World War, during the British conquest of Ottoman Mesopotamia, Indian, see Siege of Kut and the Fall of Baghdad. The Tigris Flotilla included vessels Clio, Espiegle, Lawrence, Odin, armed tug Comet, armed launches Lewis Pelly, Miner, Shaitan, Sumana, and stern wheelers Muzaffari/Mozaffir. These were joined by Royal Navy Fly-class gunboats Butterfly, Cranefly, Dragonfly, Mayfly, Sawfly, Snakefly, and Mantis, Moth, the Ancient Greek form Tigris was borrowed from Old Persian Tigrā, itself from Elamite Tigra, itself from Sumerian Idigna. The Sumerian form was borrowed into Akkadian as Idiqlat, and from there into the other Semitic languages, another name for the Tigris used in Middle Persian was Arvand Rud, literally swift river. Today, however, Arvand Rud refers to the confluence of the Euphrates, in Kurdish, it is also known as Ava Mezin, the Great Water
Tigris
–
About 100 km from its source, the Tigris enables rich agriculture outside
Diyarbakır,
Turkey.
Tigris
–
Batman River
Tigris
–
Bedoween crossing the river Tigris with plunder (c.1860)
Tigris
–
Outside of
Mosul,
Iraq
14.
Tributary
–
A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean, tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water together, usually refers to the joining of tributaries. The opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from, distributaries are most often found in river deltas. Right tributary and left tributary are terms stating the orientation of the relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream, where tributaries have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks. These are typically designated by compass direction, for example, the American River receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago Rivers North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork, the South Branch has its South Fork, forks are sometimes designated as right or left. Here, the handedness is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream, for instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary which is called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river, the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third, and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary, another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure
Tributary
–
Biała Lądecka, a right tributary of Nysa Kłodzka in Poland, located in the village of
Bielice in
Lower Silesia.
Tributary
–
The
Pfinz, a right tributary of the
Rhine, located in
Baden-Württemberg.
Tributary
–
Walton Creek, a small tributary of the
Lochsa River in
northeastern Idaho, flowing slightly
upstream of its confluence with a larger stream.
Tributary
–
In Norway, the river
Glomma meets its main tributary
Vorma.
15.
Great Zab
–
The Great Zab or Upper Zab is an approximately 400-kilometre long river flowing through Turkey and Iraq. It rises in Turkey near Lake Van and joins the Tigris in Iraq south of Mosul, the drainage basin of the Great Zab covers approximately 40,300 square kilometres, and during its course, the rivers collects the water from many tributaries. The river and its tributaries are fed by rainfall and snowmelt – as a result of which discharge fluctuates highly throughout the year. At least six dams have been planned on the Great Zab and its tributaries, but construction of only one, the Bekhme Dam, has commenced but was halted after the Gulf War. The Zagros Mountains have been occupied since at least the Lower Palaeolithic, historical records for the region are available from the end of the third millennium BCE onward. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the Great Zab provided water for irrigation for the lands around the city of Nimrud. The Battle of the Zab – which ended the Umayyad Caliphate – took place near a tributary of the Great Zab, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Great Zab basin saw frequent uprisings of local Kurdish tribes striving for autonomy. The Great Zab rises in Turkey in the region east of Lake Van at an elevation of approximately 3,000 metres amsl. In Turkey, the Great Zab traverses the provinces of Van and Hakkâri, whereas in Iraq it flows through Duhok Governorate and Erbil Governorate, together with the Tigris, the Great Zab forms the boundary between Erbil Governorate and Ninawa Governorate. In its upper reaches, the Great Zab flows through steep, numerous mountain streams and wadis join the Great Zab on its right and left banks. The Great Zab receives most of its waters from the left-bank tributaries, the length of the Great Zab has been variously estimated at 392 kilometres and 473 kilometres. Approximately 300 kilometres of the course are located within Iraq. The average discharge of the Great Zab is 419 cubic metres per second, the average annual discharge is 13.2 cubic kilometres. Because of its nature, Medieval Arab geographers have described the Great Zab – together with the Little Zab – as demoniacally possessed. Estimates of the basin of the Great Zab vary widely – from a low 25,810 square kilometres to a high figure of 40,300 square kilometres. Approximately 62 percent of the basin is located in Iraq, the remainder is in Turkey, to the south, the Great Zab basin borders on that of the Little Zab while on the east it adjoins the Tigris basin. The Zagros consists of limestone folds rising to elevations of over 3,000 metres amsl. The valleys – including that of the Great Zab – and the foothill zone are filled with gravel, conglomerate, and sandstone
Great Zab
–
Landscape of a section of the Great Zab in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Great Zab
–
The entrance to
Shanidar Cave
16.
Nineveh Province
–
Nineveh Governorate is a governorate in northern Iraq that contains the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. It was a part of Assyria from the 25th century BC to the 7th century AD, It has an area of 37,323 km2. Its chief city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, Tal Afar is the second-biggest city. Before 1976, it was called Mosul Province and included the present-day Dohuk Governorate, a massive offensive to retake the city, dubbed Operation We Are Coming, Nineveh, began in October 2016. Its two cities endured the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and emerged unscathed, in 2004, Mosul and Tal Afar were fierce between US-led Iraqi insurgency. The insurgents moved to Nineveh after the Battle of Fallujah in 2004, after the invasion, the military of the province was led by David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne Division and later by Carter Ham as the multi-national brigade for Iraq. During the American civil head of the office of the Coalition Provisional Authority was a US Foreign Service Officer and former Kurdish refugee to the States. Mustafa administered her nominees on the council and through members of the Kashmoula family. In June 2004, Osama Kashmoula became the governor of the province. He was succeeded as interim Governor by Duraid Kashmoula, who was elected governor in January 2005, in April 2009, Atheel al-Nujaifi, a hardline Arab nationalist and member of Al-Hadba, became governor. While the Kurdish list proposed Hassan al-Allaf, an Arab affiliated with the Islamic Party, an offensive to retake Mosul from ISIL control began in October 2016, with Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers supported by a U. S. -led coalition of 60 nations. Neighboring Iraqi regions are Dohuk Governorate to the north, Erbil Governorate to the east, Saladin Governorate to the south-east, in the west it shares a border with Syria, mostly Al-Hasakah Governorate, and also Deir ez-Zor Governorate in the south. Now Makhmur District is part of Erbil Governorate, aqrah District and the northern part of Al-Shikhan District are parts of Dohuk Governorate. There are significant numbers of Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens as well as Yazidis both in towns and cities, and in their own villages and regions. There are also numbers of Armenians, Kawliya and Mandeans, Shabaks, in religion, the majority of Arabs are Sunni Muslim while Turkmen are mostly Shiite. Kurds are largely Sunni Muslim, although some follow the native Yarsan religion, Armenians are also exclusively Christian and mostly followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Yazidis, Shabaks and Mandeans follow their own beliefs, Shabakism, Yazidism. However, Arab Sunnis form a majority in the province, the main language spoken is Arabic
Nineveh Province
–
Nineveh Province governor
Atheel al-Nujaifi 2014 in the
Yezidian Academy in
Hanover
Nineveh Province
–
Nineveh Governorate (formerly Ninawa Province)
Nineveh Province
–
Districts of Nineveh
17.
Arts and Humanities Research Council
–
In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a five year AHRC-funded archaeological research study interested in the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic. In August 2009 the project discovered a new stone circle, which was named Bluestonehenge by the team, about one mile away from Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The project is run by a consortium of university teams, mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University, with co-directors Dr Josh Pollard, Prof. Julian Thomas, Dr Kate Welham and Dr Colin Richards. The resulting Medieval Soldier online database enables people to search for soldiers by surname, the online database contains 250,000 service records of soldiers who saw active duty in the latter phases of the Hundred Years War. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn, the AHRCs vision is to be a recognised world leader in advancing arts and humanities research. The AHRC receives its funding through the Science and Innovation Group which is part of the Department for Business, Innovation, in 2005 the AHRC replaced the Arts and Humanities Research Board, founded in 1998. The AHRC publish reviews and reports on arts and humanities subjects, Research news and findings are communicated in website features, press releases, and multimedia content such as podcasts. Between 2005 and 2010, the AHRC published a magazine called Podium twice a year, the AHRC is one of seven Research Councils in the UK. Professor Andrew S Thompson is serving as Interim Chief Executive of the AHRC, the previous CE of the AHRC was Professor Rick Rylance who took up the post on 1 September 2009, and was re-appointed in September 2013 to serve until August 2017. The current Council Chair is Sir Drummond Bone, Sir Alan Wilson stepped down in December 2013. AHRC website AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law Research Councils UK Projects funded under AHRCs Resource Enhancement Scheme,2000 -2007
Arts and Humanities Research Council
–
Arts and Humanities Research Council
18.
Nimrod (king)
–
Nimrod, a biblical figure described as a king of Shinar, was, according to the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles, the son of Cush, the great-grandson of Noah. The Bible states that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord, began to be mighty in the earth. Extra-biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to his reputation as a king who was rebellious against God, attempts to match Nimrod with historically attested figures have failed. These include Tukulti-Ninurta I of the Middle Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian god Ninurta, the first biblical mention of Nimrod is in the Table of Nations. He is described as the son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah, and as a mighty one in the earth and a mighty hunter before the Lord. Owing to an ambiguity in the original Hebrew text, it is whether it is he or Ashur who additionally built Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir. Sir Walter Raleigh devoted several pages in his History of the World to reciting past scholarship regarding the question of whether it had been Nimrod or Ashur who built the cities in Assyria. In Hebrew and Christian tradition, Nimrod is considered the leader of those who built the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar, Nimrods kingdom included the cities of Babel, Erech, Accad, and perhaps Calneh, in Shinar. Several of these early Judaic sources also assert that the king Amraphel, since Accad, was destroyed and lost with the destruction of its Empire in the period 2200–2154 BCE, the stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the late Early Bronze Age. The association with Erech, a city that lost its importance around 2,000 BCE as a result of struggles between Isin, Larsa and Elam, also attests the early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. According to some theorists, their placement in the Bible suggests a Babylonian origin—possibly inserted during the Babylonian captivity. Some rabbinic commentators have also connected the name Nimrod with a Hebrew word meaning rebel. In Pseudo-Philo, Nimrod is made leader of the Hamites, while Joktan as leader of the Semites, versions of this story are again picked up in later works such as Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. The Book of Jubilees mentions the name of Nebrod only as being the father of Azurad and this account would thus make him an ancestor of Abraham, and hence of all Hebrews. Josephus wrote, Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and he was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no way of turning men from the fear of God. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again, and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers
Nimrod (king)
–
Nimrod by
Yitzhak Danziger
Nimrod (king)
–
Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel depicts a traditional Nimrod inspecting
stonemasons.
Nimrod (king)
–
Abraham sacrificing his son,
Ishmael.
Abraham cast into fire by Nimrod
Nimrod (king)
–
Inscription of Naram Sin found at the city of
Marad
19.
Generations of Noah
–
The Generations of Noah or Table of Nations is a genealogy of the sons of Noah and their dispersion into many lands after the Flood, focusing on the major societies at the time of its writing. As Christianity took over the Roman world, it adopted the idea all the worlds peoples were descended from Noah. Northern peoples important to the Late Roman and medieval world, such as the Celts, Slavs, Germans and Norsemen were not covered, nor were others of the worlds peoples. A variety of arrangements were devised by scholars, with for example the Scythians, chapters 1–11 of the Book of Genesis are structured around five toledot statements, of which the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, is the fourth. The overall structure of the Table is,1, the date of composition of Genesis 1–11 cannot be fixed with any precision, although it seems likely that an early brief nucleus was later expanded with extra data. Portions of the Table itself may derive from the 10th century, while others reflect the 7th century and its combination of world review, myth and genealogy corresponds to the work of the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus, active c.520 BCE. I Chronicles 1 includes a version of the Table of Nations from Genesis and this is done by condensing various branches to focus on the story of Abraham and his offspring. Most notably, it omits Genesis 10, 9–14, in which Nimrod, the Table of Nations is expanded upon in detail in chapters 8–9 of the Book of Jubilees, sometimes known as the Lesser Genesis, a work from the early Second Temple period. Jubilees is considered Pseudepigraphical by most Christian and Jewish sects but thought to have held in regard by many of the Church Fathers. The Hebrew bible was translated into Greek in Alexandria at the request of Ptolemy II, cainan appears again at the end of the list of the sons of Shem. Obal, Joktans eighth son in the Masoretic text, does not appear, the Flood story tells how Noah and his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with their wives, were saved from the Deluge to repopulate the Earth. Shems name means name or fame, through Eber he became the ancestor of Abraham and thus of the Israelites. In the view of some 17th-century European scholars, the people of China, eastern Persia, both Webb and the French Jesuits belonging to the Figurist school went even further, identifying the legendary Emperor Yao of Chinese history with Noah himself. Ham is the forefather of Cush, Egypt, and Put, the etymology of his name is uncertain, some scholars have linked it to terms connected with divinity, but a divine or semi-divine status for Ham is unlikely. Japheth is apparently the youngest son, although his line is given first and his name is associated with the mythological Greek Titan Iapetos, and his sons include Javan, the Greek-speaking cities of Ionia. In Genesis 9,27 it forms a pun with the Hebrew root yph, May God make room for Japheth, that he may live in Shems tents and Canaan may be his slave. His assignments became the basis for most later authors, and were as follows, Gomer, those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, aschanax, Aschanaxians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians. Thrugramma, Thrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians, Magog, Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians
Generations of Noah
–
This
T and O map, from the first printed version of
Isidoor 's
Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (
Shem), Iafeth (
Japheth) and Cham (
Ham).
Generations of Noah
–
The world according to the Mosaic account (1854 map)
Generations of Noah
–
Noah dividing the world between his sons. Anonymous painter; Russia, 18th century
Generations of Noah
–
1823 map by
Robert Wilkinson. Prior to the mid-19th century, Shem was associated with all of Asia, Ham with all of Africa and Japheth with all of Europe.
20.
Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet
–
Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, GCB, FRS was a British East India Company army officer, politician and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia and he was a strong advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan, and counselled the retention of Kandahar. He argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva and warned they would invade Persia, Rawlinson was born on 5 April 1810 at the place now known as Chadlington, Oxfordshire, England. He was the son of Abram Tyack Rawlinson, and elder brother of the historian George Rawlinson. In 1827, having become proficient in the Persian language, he was sent to Persia in company with other British officers to drill, disagreements between the Persian court and the British government ended in the departure of the British officers. Rawlinson began to study Persian inscriptions, more particularly those in the hitherto undeciphered cuneiform character and he was in the vicinity of the great cuneiform inscription at Behistun, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, for two years. Rawlinson was appointed agent at Kandahar in 1840. Serendipitously, he became known personally to the governor-general, which resulted in his appointment as agent in Ottoman Arabia. Thus he settled in Baghdad, where he devoted himself to cuneiform studies and he was now able, with considerable difficulty and at no small personal risk, to make a complete transcript of the Behistun inscription, which he was also successful in deciphering and interpreting. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in February 1850 on account of being The Discoverer of the key to the Ancient Persian, Babylonian, the Author of various papers on the philology, antiquities, and Geography of Mesopotamia and Central Asia. Rawlinson remained at home for two years, published in 1851 his memoir on the Behistun inscription, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, during 1851 he returned to Baghdad. Rawlinsons greatest contribution to the deciphering of the scripts was the discovery that individual signs had multiple readings depending on their context. While at the British Museum, Rawlinson worked with the younger George Smith, an equestrian accident in 1855 hastened his determination to return to England, and in that year he resigned his post in the East India Company. On his return to England the distinction of K. C. B. was conferred upon him, the remaining forty years of his life were full of activity—political, diplomatic, and scientific—and were spent mainly in London. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the first India Council, the latter post he held for only a year, owing to his dissatisfaction with circumstances concerning his official position there. Previously he had sat in Parliament as Member of Parliament for Reigate from February to September 1858, he was again MP for Frome and he was appointed to the Council of India again in 1868, and continued to serve upon it until his death. He was an advocate of the forward policy in Afghanistan. Rawlinson was one of the most important figures arguing that Britain must check Russian ambitions in South Asia and he argued that Tsarist Russia would attack and absorb Khokand, Bokhara and Khiva and would invade Persia and Afghanistan as springboards to British India
Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet
–
Sir Henry Rawlinson, Bt
Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet
–
Henry C. Rawlinson
21.
Cuneiform
–
Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept
Cuneiform
–
Trilingual cuneiform inscription of
Xerxes at
Van Fortress in Turkey, written in
Old Persian,
Akkadian, and
Elamite
Cuneiform
–
Sumerian inscription in monumental archaic style, c. 26th century B.C.E.
Cuneiform
–
Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of
Lagash (maybe
Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 B.C.E., found in
Telloh (ancient Girsu).
Cuneiform
–
Cuneiform inscriptions, Stela of Iddi-Sin, king of Simurrum.
22.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
–
ISIL gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre. This group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, ISIL originated as Jamaat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, which pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and participated in the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Western forces. The group proclaimed itself a caliphate and began referring to itself as Islamic State or IS in June 2014. As a caliphate, it claims religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims worldwide and its adoption of the name Islamic State and its idea of a caliphate have been widely criticised, with the United Nations, various governments, and mainstream Muslim groups rejecting its statehood. As of 2015, ISIL is estimated to have a budget of more than USD$1 billion. In April 2013, having expanded into Syria, the group adopted the name ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām, while the use of either one or the other acronym has been the subject of debate, the distinction between the two and its relevance has been considered not so great. Of greater relevance is the name Daesh, which is an acronym of ISILs Arabic name al-Dawlah al-Islamīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām. This name has been used by ISILs Arabic-speaking detractors, although – and to a certain extent because – it is considered derogatory, as it resembles the Arabic words Daes. Within areas under its control, ISIL considers use of the name Daesh punishable by flogging or cutting out the tongue, in late June 2014, the group renamed itself ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah, declaring itself a worldwide caliphate. The name Islamic State and the claim to be a caliphate have been widely rejected, with the UN, various governments. Frances Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said This is a terrorist group, I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims, and Islamists. The Arabs call it Daesh and I will be calling them the Daesh cutthroats, the group is very sensitive about its name. They will cut your tongue out even if you call them ISIS – you have to say Islamic State, the Islamic State is mocked on social media websites such as Twitter and YouTube, with the use of hashtags, mock recruiting ads, fake news articles and YouTube videos. ISIL is a theocracy, proto-state and a Salafi or Wahhabi group and it follows an extremist interpretation of Islam, promotes religious violence, and regards Muslims who do not agree with its interpretations as infidels or apostates. According to some observers, ISIL emerged from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and it adheres to global jihadist principles and follows the hard-line ideology of al-Qaeda and many other modern-day jihadist groups. However, other sources trace the roots to Wahhabism. For their guiding principles, the leaders of the Islamic State, are open and clear about their almost exclusive commitment to the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
–
A joint US–
Iraqi Army training exercise
near Ramadi in November 2009. The Islamic State of Iraq had declared the city to be its capital.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
–
Flag
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
–
Yazidi refugees and American aid workers on Mount Sinjar in August 2014
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
–
Coalition airstrike on ISIL position, October 2014
23.
Bulldozer
–
Bulldozers can be found on a wide range of sites, mines and quarries, military bases, heavy industry factories, engineering projects and farms. The term bulldozer correctly refers only to a tractor fitted with a dozer blade, a very small bulldozer is sometimes called a calfdozer, Google search for images. Most often bulldozers are large and powerful tracked heavy equipment, the tracks give them excellent ground holding capability and mobility through very rough terrain. Wide tracks help distribute the weight over a large area. Extra wide tracks are known as tracks or LGP tracks. Bulldozers have transmission systems designed to take advantage of the track system, another type of bulldozer is the wheeled bulldozer, which generally has four wheels driven by a 4-wheel-drive system and has a hydraulic, articulated steering system. The blade is mounted forward of the joint, and is hydraulically actuated. The bulldozers primary tools are the blade and the ripper, the word bulldozer is sometimes used inaccurately for other similar construction vehicles such as a large front loader. The bulldozer blade is a metal plate on the front of the tractor, used to push objects. Dozer blades usually come in three varieties, A straight blade which is short and has no lateral curve and no side wings, a universal blade which is tall and very curved, and has large side wings to carry more material. An S-U combination blade which is shorter, has less curvature and this blade is typically used for pushing piles of large rocks, such as at a quarry. Blades can be fitted straight across the frame, or at an angle, the bottom edge of the blade can be sharpened, e. g. to cut tree stumps. Sometimes a bulldozer is used to push another piece of moving equipment known as a scraper. Many dozer blades have a center section with this purpose in mind. In military use, dozer blades are fixed on combat engineering vehicles and can optionally be fitted on other vehicles, Dozer blades can also be mounted on main battle tanks, where it can be used to clear antitank obstacles, mines, and dig improvised shelters. Combat applications for dozer blades include clearing battlefield obstacles and preparing fire positions, the ripper is the long claw-like device on the back of the bulldozer. Rippers can come as a single or in groups of two or more, usually, a single shank is preferred for heavy ripping. The ripper shank is fitted with a replaceable tungsten steel alloy tip, ripping rock breaks the ground surface rock or pavement into small rubble easy to handle and transport, which can then be removed so grading can take place
Bulldozer
–
A working bulldozer from the
First Tractor Company, on
Xinbu Island, Hainan, China.
Bulldozer
–
A
Caterpillar D10 N bulldozer equipped with a single shank ripper.
Bulldozer
–
Bulldozer blade
Bulldozer
–
Multi-shank ripper
24.
Austen Henry Layard
–
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Niniveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descent. His father, Henry Peter John Layard, of the Ceylon Civil Service, was the son of Charles Peter Layard, Dean of Bristol, through his mother, Marianne, daughter of Nathaniel Austen, banker, of Ramsgate, his English descent was consolidated. His uncle was Benjamin Austen, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s, edgar Leopold Layard the ornithologist was his brother. In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make those explorations among the ruins of Assyria with which his name is chiefly associated, to illustrate the antiquities described in this work he published a large folio volume of Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. After spending a few months in England, and receiving the degree of D. C. L and he is credited with discovering the Library of Ashurbanipal during this period. Layard believed that the native Syriac Christian communities living throughout the Near East were descended from the ancient Assyrians, Layard was an important member of the Arundel Society. During 1866 Layard founded Compagnia Venezia Murano and opened a venetian glass showroom in London at 431 Oxford Street, - Compagnia Venezia Murano is one of the most important brands of venetian art glass production. In 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum and he was present in the Crimea during the war, and was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the conduct of the expedition. After being defeated at Aylesbury in 1857, he visited India to investigate the causes of the Indian Mutiny, the report he gave on his return proved to be controversial, generating negative responses in the Australian press. After the Liberals returned to office in 1868 under William Ewart Gladstone, Layard was made First Commissioner of Works, Layard resigned from office in 1869, on being sent as envoy extraordinary to Madrid. In 1877 he was appointed by Lord Beaconsfield Ambassador at Constantinople, where he remained until Gladstones return to power in 1880, in 1878, on the occasion of the Berlin Congress, he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In Venice he devoted much of his time to collecting pictures of the Venetian school, on this subject he was a disciple of his friend Giovanni Morelli, whose views he embodied in his revision of Franz Kuglers Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools. He wrote also an introduction to Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkess translation of Morellis Italian Painters, in 1887 he published, from notes taken at the time, a record of his first journey to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Layard also from time to time contributed papers to learned societies, including the Huguenot Society. He died in London and is buried in Dorset, Layard, A. H. Inquiry into the Painters and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. Layard, A. H. Nineveh and its Remains, Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon
Austen Henry Layard
–
The Right Honourable Sir Austen Henry Layard
GCB
Austen Henry Layard
–
A. H. Layard at Kuyunjik. Drawing by
Solomon Caesar Malan, 1850
Austen Henry Layard
–
Austen Henry Layard
Austen Henry Layard
–
From a German edition of Austen Layard's A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh.
25.
James Fergusson (architect)
–
James Fergusson FRS was a Scottish architectural historian, mainly remembered for his interest in Indian historical architecture and antiquities. He was an important figure in the 19th century rediscovery of ancient India and he was originally a businessman, and though not formally trained as an architect, designed some buildings and decorative schemes. Fergusson was born at Ayr, the son of William Fergusson an army surgeon, after being educated first at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and then at a private school in Hounslow, he went to Calcutta as a partner in a mercantile house. Here he became interested in the remains of the ancient architecture of India, the successful conduct of an indigo factory, as he states in his own account, enabled him to retire from business after about ten years and settle in London. His observations on Indian architecture were first published in his book on The Rock-cut Temples of India and it was followed in 1862 by one entitled A History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, being a sequel to the Handbook of Architecture. The 1855 work was reissued ten years later in a more extended form in three volumes, under the title of A History of Architecture in all Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. The 1876 work was revised with additions by James Burgess and Richard Phené Spiers in 1910. He received the medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1871. Fergusson died in London on 9 January 1886, attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Fergusson, James. Fergusson, An historical inquiry into the principles of beauty in art, more especially with reference to architecture, London, Longman, Brown, Green. Fergusson, An Essay on a Proposed New System of Fortification, with Hints for its Application to our National Defences, London, Fergusson, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, or Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India, London, rude Stone Monuments in all countries, London, John Murray, Albemarle Street. Fergusson, History of the styles of architecture. History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 2nd Edition, I and Vol. II Fergusson, James. James Fergusson and Indian Architecture James Fergusson, Chronological Table of Writings James Fergusson at arthistoricum. net
James Fergusson (architect)
James Fergusson (architect)
–
James Fergusson
26.
Shalmaneser I
–
Shalmaneser I was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian Empire. Son of Adad-nirari I, he succeeded his father as king in 1265 BC, according to his annals, discovered at Assur, in his first year he conquered eight countries in the northwest and destroyed the fortress of Arinnu, the dust of which he brought to Assur. In his second year he defeated Shattuara, king of Hanilgalbat and he incorporated the remains of the Mittani kingdom as part of one of the Assyrian provinces. Shalmaneser I also claimed to have blinded 14,400 enemy prisoners in one eye and he was one of the first Assyrian kings who was known to deport his defeated enemies to various lands rather than simply slaughtering them all. He conquered the country from Taidu to Irridu, from Mount Kashiar to Eluhat. He built palaces at Assur and Nineveh, restored the world-temple at Assur and he was succeeded by his son Tukulti-Ninurta I. Annual limmu officials beginning with the year of accession of Šulmanu-ašared, the list is partly derived from Freydank and McIntyre. The exact order of the earliest limmus is conjectural but the ordering from Šerriya onwards is essentially fixed
Shalmaneser I
–
King Shalmaneser I, pouring out Dust of a Conquered City in front of an Assyrian Temple after returning victorious.
27.
Kalhu
–
It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position 10 kilometres north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab, the city covered an area of 360 hectares. The ruins of the city were found one kilometre of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Province. This is some 30 kilometres southeast of Mosul, archaeological excavations at the site began in 1845, and were conducted at intervals between then and 1879, and then from 1949 onwards. Many important pieces were discovered, with most being moved to museums in Iraq, archaeologists believe that the city was given the name Nimrud in modern times after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero. In 2015, the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced its intention to destroy the site because of its un-Islamic Assyrian nature, in March 2015, the Iraqi government reported that ISIL had used bulldozers to destroy excavated remains of the city. A video released in the month showed a lamassu statue in the city being attacked by a terrorist with a sledgehammer. Another video posted online by the group in April 2015 showed the site being destroyed by bulldozers, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I built up Kalhu into a major city during the Middle Assyrian Empire. However, the ancient city of Assur remained the capital of Assyria, psychologist Julian Jaynes believe that the Biblical figure Nimrod was inspired by the deeds of the real king of Assyria Tukulti-Ninurta I, the son of Shalmaneser I, and a powerful conqueror. Others believe the name derived from the Assyrian god Ninurta, who had a cultic centre at Nimrud. The city gained fame when king Ashurnasirpal II of the Neo Assyrian Empire made it his capital at the expense of Assur. He built a palace and temples in the city that had fallen into a degree of disrepair during the Dark Ages of the mid 11th to mid 10th centuries BC. A grand opening ceremony with festivities and an opulent banquet in 879 BC is described in a stele discovered during archeological excavations. The city of king Ashurnasirpal II housed perhaps as many as 100,000 inhabitants, and contained botanic gardens and his son, Shalmaneser III, built the monument known as the Great Ziggurat, and an associated temple. However, in 706 BC Sargon II moved the capital of the empire to Dur Sharrukin, the Nineveh Province in which the ruins of Nimrud lie, is still the major center of Iraqs indigenous Assyrian population to this day. King Ashurnasirpal II, who reigned from 883 to 859 BC, thousands of men worked to build an 8-kilometre-long wall surrounding the city and a grand palace. Beasts of the mountains and of the seas, of limestone and alabaster I fashioned. The inscriptions also described great feasts he had to celebrate his conquests, however his victims were horrified by his conquests
Kalhu
–
A
lamassu at the North West Palace of
Ashurnasirpal II
Kalhu
–
"The Palaces at Nimrud Restored", 1853, imagined by the city's first excavator,
Austen Henry Layard and architectural historian
James Fergusson
Kalhu
–
A
lamassu at the
British Museum
Kalhu
–
A
stele in situ at Nimrud
28.
Middle Assyrian Empire
–
By the reign of Eriba-Adad I Mitanni influence over Assyria was on the wane. A pro-Assyria faction appeared at the royal Mitanni court, Eriba-Adad I had thus finally broken Mitanni influence over Assyria, and in turn had now made Assyria an influence over Mitanni affairs. Ashur-uballit I succeeded the throne of Assyria in 1365 BC, and proved to be a fierce, ambitious, Assyrian pressure from the southeast and Hittite pressure from the north-west, enabled Ashur-uballit I to break Mitanni power. This marriage led to results for Babylonia, as the Kassite faction at court murdered the half Assyrian Babylonian king. Assur-uballit I promptly invaded Babylonia to avenge his son-in-law, entering Babylon, Ashur-uballit I then attacked and defeated Mattiwaza, the Mitanni king, despite attempts by the Hittite king Suppiluliumas, now fearful of growing Assyrian power, to help the Mitanni. The lands of the Mitanni and Hurrians were duly appropriated by Assyria, making it a large and he described himself as a Great-King in letters to the Hittite kings. The successor of Enlil-nirari, Arik-den-ili, consolidated Assyrian power, and successfully campaigned in the Zagros Mountains to the east, subjugating the Lullubi, in Syria, he defeated Semitic tribes of the so-called Ahlamu group, who were possibly predecessors of the Arameans or an Aramean tribe. He then moved into north eastern Asia Minor, conquering Shupria, adad-nirari I made further gains to the south, annexing Babylonian territory and forcing the Kassite rulers of Babylon into accepting a new frontier agreement in Assyrias favor. Adad-niraris inscriptions are more detailed than any of his predecessors and he declares that the gods of Mesopotamia called him to war, a statement used by most subsequent Assyrian kings. He referred to himself again as Sharru Rabi and conducted extensive building projects in Ashur, in 1274 BC, Shalmaneser I ascended the throne. He proved to be a warrior king. He then attacked the Mitanni-Hurrians, defeating both King Shattuara and his Hittite and Aramaean allies, finally destroying the Hurri-Mitanni kingdom in the process. Shalmaneser I installed an Assyrian prince, Ilu-ippada as ruler of Mitanni, with Assyrian governors such as Meli-sah, the Hittites, having failed to save Mitanni, allied with Babylon in an unsuccessful economic war against Assyria for many years. Like his father, Shalmaneser was a builder and he further expanded the city of Kalhu at the juncture of the Tigris. Shalmanesers son and successor, Tukulti-Ninurta I, won a victory against the Hittites and their king Tudhaliya IV at the Battle of Nihriya. He then conquered Babylonia, taking Kashtiliash IV as a captive and ruled there himself as king for seven years, taking on the old title King of Sumer and Akkad first used by Sargon of Akkad. Tukulti-Ninurta I thus became the first Akkadian speaking native Mesopotamian to rule the state of Babylonia, its founders having been foreign Amorites, Tukulti-Ninurta petitioned the god Shamash before beginning his counter offensive. He then proclaimed king of Karduniash, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of Sippar and Babylon, king of Tilmun
Middle Assyrian Empire
–
Assyrians skinning or
flaying their prisoners alive
Middle Assyrian Empire
–
Map of the
Ancient Near East during the
Amarna Period (14th century BC), showing the great powers of the day: Assyria (olive green), Egypt (orange),
Hatti (blue), the
Kassite kingdom of Babylon (black), Mitanni (brown), and the
Achaean /
Mycenaean civilization (purple).
29.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
–
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 612 BC. The Assyrians perfected early techniques of imperial rule, many of which became standard in later empires, the Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Old Assyrian Empire, and the Middle Assyrian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. During this period, Aramaic was also made a language of the empire. Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the empire began to due to a brutal. In 616 BC, Cyaxares king of the Medes and Persians made alliances with Nabopolassar ruler of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th centuries BC. The urbanised Akkadian speaking nation of Assyria emerged in the mid 21st century BC, during the 20th century BC, it established colonies in Asia Minor, and under the 20th century BC King Ilushuma, Assyria conducted many successful raids against the states of the south. Ashur-uballit extended Assyrian control over the farming lands of Nineveh. Tiglath-Pileser controlled the caravan routes that crossed the fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Much campaigning by Tiglath-Pileser and succeeding kings was directed against Aramaean pastoralist groups in Syria, by the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Aramaean expansion had resulted in the loss of much Assyrian territory in Upper Mesopotamia. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC, Assyria was in decline for the next 150 years. The period from 1200 BC to 900 BC was an age for the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Mediterranean and Balkan regions, with great upheavals. Adad-nirari II and his successors campaigned on a basis for part of every year with an exceptionally well-organized army. He subjugated the areas previously under only nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting Aramean and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adadinirari II then twice attacked and defeated Shamash-mudammiq of Babylonia, annexing an area of land north of the Diyala river. He made further gains over Babylonia under Nabu-shuma-ukin I later in his reign and he was succeeded by Tukulti-Ninurta II in 891 BC, who further consolidated Assyrias position and expanded northwards into Asia Minor and the Zagros Mountains during his short reign. The next king, Ashurnasirpal II, embarked on a vast program of expansion, during his rule, Assyria recovered much of the territory that it had lost around 1100 BC at the end of the Middle Assyrian period. Ashurnasirpal II also campaigned in the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, repressing a revolt against Assyrian rule by the Lullubi, the Assyrians began boasting in their ruthlessness around this time. Ashurnasirpal II also moved his capital to the city of Kalhu, the palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a considerable development of wealth and art
Neo-Assyrian Empire
–
Map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its expansions.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
–
An Assyrian winged bull, or
lamassu, from Sargon's palace at
Dur-Sharrukin.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
–
Assyrian warship, a
bireme with pointed bow, 700 BC
30.
Stela
–
A stele is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in ancient Western culture as a monument. Grave steles were often used for funerary or commemorative purposes, Stelae as slabs of stone would also be used as ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines. The surface of the stele usually has text, ornamentation, or both, the ornamentation may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted. Traditional Western gravestones may technically be considered the equivalent of ancient stelae. The most famous example of an inscribed stela leading to increased understanding is the Rosetta Stone, an informative stele of Tiglath-Pileser III is preserved in the British Museum. Two steles built into the walls of a church are major documents relating to the Etruscan language, unfinished standing stones, set up without inscriptions from Libya in North Africa to Scotland were monuments of pre-literate Megalithic cultures in the Late Stone Age. The Pictish stones of Scotland, often carved, date from between the 6th and 9th centuries. An obelisk is a kind of stele. The Insular high crosses of Ireland and Britain are specialized steles, totem poles of North and South America that are made out of stone may also be considered a specialized type of stele. Gravestones, typically with inscribed name and often with inscribed epitaph, are among the most common types of stele seen in Western culture. Most recently, in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the memorial is meant to be read not only as the field, but also as an erasure of data that refer to memory of the Holocaust. Steles have been the medium of stone inscription in China since the Tang dynasty. Chinese steles are generally rectangular stone tablets upon which Chinese characters are carved intaglio with a funerary, commemorative and they can commemorate talented writers and officials, inscribe poems, portraits, or maps, and frequently contain the calligraphy of famous historical figures. During the Han dynasty, tomb inscriptions containing biographical information on deceased people began to be written on stone tablets rather than wooden ones, erecting steles at tombs or temples eventually became a widespread social and religious phenomenon. Emperors found it necessary to promulgate laws, regulating the use of funerary steles by the population, Steles are found at nearly every significant mountain and historical site in China. The First Emperor made five tours of his domain in the 3rd century BC and had Li Si make seven stone inscriptions commemorating and praising his work, of which fragments of two survive. One of the most famous mountain steles is the 13 m high stele at Mount Tai with the calligraphy of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang commemorating his imperial sacrifices there in 725. A number of stone monuments have preserved the origin and history of Chinas minority religious communities
Stela
–
Stele N from
Copán,
Honduras, depicting King K'ac Yipyaj Chan K'awiil ("Smoke Shell"), as drawn by
Frederick Catherwood in 1839
Stela
–
The
funerary stele of Thrasea and Euandria, c. 365 BC
Stela
–
Chinese ink rubbings of the 1489 (left) and 1512 (right) steles left by the
Kaifeng Jews.
Stela
–
Grave Stela of Nehemes-Ra-tawy, ca. 760-656 B.C.E.,37.588E,
Brooklyn Museum
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