Assyrian Empire

Assyria had existed as a small north-Mesopotamian kingdom for over a thousand years, but its imperial phase — the Neo-Assyrian Empire — opens about 911 BC with Adad-nirari II and reaches its zenith under Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727), Sargon II (722–705), Sennacherib (705–681), Esarhaddon (681–669), and Ashurbanipal (668–631). From their successive capitals at Ashur, Calah (Nimrud), and Nineveh, the Assyrians invented the standing professional army, the siege engine, mass deportation as a tool of state, and a propaganda machine of palace reliefs and royal annals. In 734–732 BC Tiglath-Pileser III stripped Galilee and Gilead from the northern kingdom (2 Kgs 15:29); in 722 Sargon II completed the work and deported Israel (2 Kgs 17). In 701 Sennacherib invaded Judah, took forty-six fortified cities, but failed at Jerusalem when, in the night, "the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000" (2 Kgs 19:35). The empire fell with shocking speed: in 612 BC a coalition of Babylonians and Medes sacked Nineveh, fulfilling the prophecy of Nahum. By 605 Assyria as a power was finished.