Assyrian king list: Did you mean...?

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). When it comes to religion, many people...

Ashurbanipal (r. 668-627 BCE, also known as Assurbanipal) was the last of the great kings of Assyria. His name means "the god Ashur is creator of an heir" and he was the son of King Esarhaddon of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Hebrew Tanakh...

The Sargonid Dynasty was the last ruling house of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 722-612 BCE, beginning with the reign of Sargon II and ending with fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Some of the most famous kings in the history of Assyria come...

The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330 BCE) was the first great Persian political entity in Western and Central Asia which stretched, at its peak, from Asia Minor to the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia through Egypt. It was founded by Cyrus II (the...

Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE) was one of the most important kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as founder of the Sargonid Dynasty which would rule the empire for the next century until its fall. He was a great military leader, tactician, patron...

The Sassanian Empire (224-651) was the greatest expression of Persian culture in the ancient world. It was consciously modeled on the earlier Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330 BCE) which established Persian supremacy in the region and developed...

Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned 1244-1208 BCE) was a king of the Assyrian Empire during the period known as the Middle Empire. He was the son of Shalmaneser I (reigned 1274-1245 BCE) who had completed the work of his father, Adad Nirari I, in...

The Weld-Blundell Prism, the most complete version of the Sumerian King List extant, from Larsa, c. 1827-1817 BCE. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Adad Nirari I (r. 1307-1275 BCE) was the king of the Assyrian Empire who initiated the first major expansion of the Assyrian kingdom from the city of Ashur throughout the region of Mesopotamia. He also instituted what would become standard...

Ashur (also known as Assur) was an Assyrian city located on a plateau above the Tigris River in Mesopotamia (today known as Qal'at Sherqat, al-Shirqat District, northern Iraq). The city was an important center of trade, as it lay squarely...