3090 AM · 671 BCE · world history
The Assyrian Empire at Its Height
Assyria rules from the Persian Gulf to Egypt—the first empire on such a scale.
The Assyrian war machine combined siege engineering, cavalry and calculated terror—palace reliefs show in detail what happened to rebellious cities. Conquered peoples were deported and mixed to break their ties to the land. Yet Ashurbanipal assembled a vast library at Nineveh, to which we owe the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Sources
Documents of the period
- cuneiform chronicles and king lists — the annals of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal on the conquest of Egypt
Scholarship
- archaeology of Mesopotamia — the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh
Basis: documents and evidence.