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The Assyrian Empire was severely crippled following the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC — the nation and its empire descending into a prolonged and brutal series of civil wars involving three rival kings, Ashur-etil-ilani, Sin-shumu-lishir and Sin-shar-ishkun. Egypts 26th Dynasty, which had been installed by the Assyrians as vassals, quietly detached itself from Assyria, though were careful to retain friendly relations. Ashur-etil-ilani came to the throne in 626 BC, and was immediately beset by a series of internal civil wars. He was deposed in 623 BC, after four years of bitter fighting by Sin-shumu-lishir, an Assyrian Turtanu (General) who also occupied and claimed the throne of Babylon in that year. In turn, Sin-shumu-lishir was deposed as ruler of Assyria and Babylonia after a year of warfare by Sin-shar-ishkun (622 - 612 BC) — who was then himself faced with constant violent rebellion in the Assyrian homeland. This situation led to wholesale revolution in Babylonia, and during the reign of Sin-shar-ishkun many Assyrian colonies to the west, east and north similarly took advantage and ceased to pay tribute to Assyria, most significantly the Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Chaldeans and Arameans. The Scythians and Cimmerians took advantage of the bitter fighting among the Assyrians to raid Assyrian colonies, with hordes of horse borne marauders ravaging parts of Asia Minor and the Caucasus, where the vassal kings of Urartu and Lydia begged their Assyrian overlord for help in vain. They also raided the Levant, Israel and Judah (where Ashkalon was sacked by the Scythians) and all the way into Egypt whose coasts were ravaged and looted. The Iranic peoples (the Medes, Persians and Parthians), aided by the previous Assyrian destruction of the hitherto dominant Elamites of Ancient Iran, also took advantage of the upheavals in Assyria to coalesce into a powerful Median dominated force which destroyed the pre-Iranic Assyrian vassal kingdom of Mannea and absorbed the remnants of the pre-Iranic Elamites of southern Iran, and the equally pre-Iranic Gutians, Manneans and Kassites of the Zagros Mountains and the Caspian Sea. In Aram (modern Syria), Phoenicia and southern Canaan (modern Israel, Jordan, Sinai and Palestine), the various Aramean, Phoenician and Jewish states quietly reasserted their independence, and in western Asia Minor and eastern Mediterranean, the Lydians, Greeks, Cilicians, Carians, Cappadocian and Luwian states did the same. Armenians, Sarmatians and Colchians (Georgians) also began to establish themselves in parts of the Caucasus. By 620 BC, Nabopolassar, (a previously unknown Malka of the Chaldean tribes who had settled the far southeast of Mesopotamia circa 900 BC) had claimed the city of Babylon and swathes of Babylonia in the confusion. Sin-shar-ishkun amassed a large army to eject Nabopolassar from Babylon, however, yet another massive revolt broke out in Assyria proper, forcing the bulk of his army to turn back, where they promptly joined the rebels in Nineveh. Similarly, Nabopolassar was unable to yet gain control over all of Babylonia, nor make any inroads into Assyria despite its weakened state, being repelled at every attempt, and the next four years saw bitter fighting in the heart of Babylonia itself, as the Assyrians tried to wrest back control.[2] However, Nabopolassar entered into an alliance with the Median king Cyaxares the Great, who had taken advantage of the upheavals in Assyria to free the Iranian peoples from Assyrian vassalage and unite the Iranian Medes, Persians and Parthians, together with the remnants of the pre-Iranian Elamites, Gutians and Manneans, into a powerful Median-dominated force. The Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes and Persians, together with the Scythians and Cimmerians to the north, attacked Assyria in 616 BC, sacking the city of Kalhu. After four years of bitter fighting, Nineveh itself was finally sacked in 612 BC, after a prolonged siege followed by house to house fighting. Sin-shar-ishkun was killed defending his capital. Despite the loss of almost all of its major cities, and in the face of overwhelming odds, Assyrian resistance continued. Ashur-uballit II (612- 605? BC) took the throne amid the street by street fighting in Nineveh, and refused a request to bow in vassalage to Nabopolassar, Cyaxares and their allies. He managed to break out of Nineveh and successfully fight his way to the northern Assyrian city of Harran, he took the city and founded it as a new capital which he managed to hold for five years. However, Harran too was eventually over run in 608 BC. Egypt, itself a former Assyrian colony whose current dynasty had been installed as puppet rulers by the Assyrians, then came to Assyria's aid, possibly in fear that without Assyrian protection they would be next to succumb.[2] Ashur-uballit II and Necho of Egypt made a failed attempt to recapture Harran in 608 BC. The next three years saw the remnants of the Assyrian army and their Egyptian allies vainly attempting to eject the invaders from Assyria. In 605 BC, the Babylonians and Medes defeated the Assyrians and Egyptians at Carchemish, bringing an end to Assyria as an independent political entity, although it was to launch major rebellions against the Achaemenid Empire in 546 BC and 520 BC, and remained a geo-political region and colonised province until the late 7th century AD. The fate of Ashur-uballit II remains unknown, his Limmu Lists end after the fall of Harran, and it is possible he was either killed at this time, at the battle of Carshemish in 605 BC, or simply disappeared into obscurity. Assyria after the empire See also: Achaemenid Assyria Achaemenid Assyria, Athura, Assuristan, Assyria province, Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra Most of Assyria was ruled by Babylon from 605 BC until 539 BC, the northern reaches being ruled first by the Medes and then from 549 BC by their successors, the Persians. In a twist of fate, Nabonidus the last king of Babylon was himself an Assyrian from Harran; however, apart from plans to dedicate religious temples in that city, Nabonidus showed little interest in rebuilding Assyria. Nineveh and Kalhu remained in ruins, conversely a number of towns and cities such as Arrapkha, Guzana and Harran remained intact, and Assur and Arbela were not completely destroyed, as is attested by their later revival. However, Assyria spent much of this period in a degree of devastation following its fall. Achaemenid Assyria (549–330 BC) After this, it was ruled by the Persian Achaemenid Empire (as Athura) from 549 BC to 330 BC (see Achaemenid Assyria). Between 546 and 545 BC, Assyria rebelled against the new Persian Dynasty, which had usurped the previous Median dynasty. The rebellion was eventually quashed by Cyrus the Great. Assyria seems to have recovered dramatically, and flourished during this period. It became a major agricultural and administrative centre of the Achaemenid Empire, and its soldiers were a mainstay of the Persian Army.[39] In fact, Assyria even became powerful enough to raise another full-scale revolt against the Persian empire in 520–519 BC. The Persians had spent centuries under Assyrian domination, and Assyrian influence can be seen in Achaemenid art, infrastructure and administration. Early Persian rulers saw themselves as successors to Ashurbanipal, and Mesopotamian Aramaic was retained as the lingua franca of the empire for over two hundred years.[40] Nineveh was never rebuilt however, and 200 years after it was sacked Xenophon reported only small numbers of Assyrians living amongst its ruins. Seleucid Assyria In 330 BC, Assyria fell to Alexander the Great, the Macedonian Emperor from Greece; it thereafter became part of the Seleucid Empire and was renamed Syria, a Hurrian, Luwian and Greek corruption of Assyria.[41] It is from this period that the later Syria Vs Assyria naming controversy arises, the Seleucids applied the name not only to Assyria itself, but also to the lands to the west (Aram modern Syria), which had been part of the Assyrian empire. When they lost control of Assyria, the name Syria survived and was applied only to the land of Aramea to the west that had once been part of the Assyrian empire. This was to lead to both the Assyrians from Mesopotamia and Arameans and Phoenicians from the Levant being dubbed Syrians in Greco-Roman culture. During Seleucid rule, Assyrians ceased to hold the senior military and civil positions they had enjoyed under the Achaemenids, being largely replaced by Greeks. The Greek language also replaced Mesopotamian East Aramaic as the lingua franca of the empire, although this did not affect the Assyrian population themselves, who were not Hellenised during the Seleucid era. During the Seleucid period in southern Mesopotamia, Babylon was gradually abandoned in favour of a new city named Dura Seleucus, bringing an end to Babylonia. Parthian Assyria (150 BC – 116 AD); Adiabene (69 BC – 117 AD) By 150 BC, Assyria was largely under the control of the Parthian Empire, once more as Athura (the Mesopotamian East Aramaic word for Assyria). The Parthians seem to have exercised only loose control over Assyria. Temples to the native gods of Assyria were resurrected in many towns and cities. A number of independent Neo-Assyrian states arose, the most notable being Adiabene (69 BC - 117 AD). Adiabene was described by historian Georges Roux as a virtual resurrection of Assyria. The Assyrians began to convert to Christianity from Mesopotamian religion (Ashurism) during the period between the early 1st and 3rd centuries AD. Roman Assyria (116 AD – 118 AD) However, in 116 AD, under Trajan, Assyria and its independent states were taken over by Rome as the Roman Province of Assyria. Adiabene was destroyed as an independent state during this period. Roman rule lasted only a few years, and the Parthians once more regained control. Parthian Assyria restored (119 AD – 225 AD), Osroene, Hatra Romans and Parthians fought over Assyria and the rest of Mesopotamia for the next century, allowing a number of other Neo-Assyrian states to arise, namely Osroene (132 BC to AD 244) and Hatra (155–241 AD). Osroene became the first Christian state in history, and a major center of Syriac literature and Syriac Christianity. In addition, the ancient capital city of Ashur again flourished, and appears to have gained independence during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Temples to the Assyrian national gods Ashur, Sin, Hadad, Ishtar and Shamash were once more dedicated throughout Assyria during this period. The noted Assyriologist Simo Parpola has speculated that Assyria may well have once again been fully independent for a while. Sassanid Assyria (Assuristan (226 AD – circa 650 AD) In 226 AD, Assyria was largely taken over by the Sassanid Empire. After driving out the Romans and Parthians, the Sassanid rulers set about destroying the independent states within Assyria; Hatra was dissolved in 241 AD, Osroene in 244 AD and Assur was sacked by Shapur I in 256 AD. It was known as Asuristan (the Sassanid name for Assyria) during this period, and became a main centre of the Church of the East (now the Assyrian Church of the East), with a flourishing Syriac (Assyrian) Christian culture which exists there to this day. Temples were still being dedicated to the national god Ashur in his home city and in Harran during the 4th century, indicating an Assyrian identity was still strong. During the Sassanid period, much of what had once been Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia was incorporated into Assyria. Parts of Assyria appear to have been independent as late as the latter part of the 4th century AD, with a king named Sennacherib II ruling the northern reaches in 370s AD. Assyrians after Assyria See also: Assyrian continuity Centuries of constant warfare between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanid Empire left both empires exhausted, depleted and battle fatigued, allowing the Muslim Arabs to break from the Arabian peninsula and invade territories hitherto held by these empires. After the Arab Islamic conquest in the 7th century, Assyria was dissolved as an entity. Under Arab rule, Mesopotamia as a whole underwent a gradual process of Arabisation and Islamification, and the region saw a gradual large influx of non indigenous Arabs, Kurds and Turkic peoples. However, the indigenous Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia (known as Ashuriyun by the Arabs) resisted this process, retaining their language, religion, culture and identity. The previously basic civilisation of the desert dwelling Arabs was greatly enhanced and enriched by the influence and knowledge of native Mesopotamian scientists, physicians, mathematicians, theologians, astronomers, architects, agriculturalists, artists and astrologers. However, despite this, indigenous Assyrians became second class citizens in a greater Arab Islamic state, and those who resisted Arabisation and conversion to Islam were subject to religious, ethnic and cultural discrimination, and had certain restrictions imposed upon them.[42] They were excluded from specific duties and occupations reserved for Muslims, did not enjoy the same political rights as Muslims, their word was not equal to that of a Muslim in legal matters, as Christians they were subject to payment of a special tax (jizyah), they were banned from spreading their religion further in Muslim ruled lands, but were also expected to adhere to the same laws of property, contract and obligation as the Muslim Arabs.[43] Although predominantly Christian, a minority of Assyrians still held onto their ancient Mesopotamian religion until as late as the 10th century AD.[44] Assyrian people, still retaining the Aramaic language and Church of the East Christianity, remained dominant in the north of Mesopotamia as late as the 14th century AD[45] and the city of Assur was still occupied by Assyrians during the Islamic period until the mid-14th century when the Muslim Turco-Mongol ruler Tamurlane conducted a religiously motivated massacre of indigenous Assyrian Christians. After that, there are no traces of a settlement at Ashur in the archaeological and numismatic record, and from this point the Assyrian population was dramatically reduced in their homeland.[46] A religious schism among the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries AD, when a large number of hitherto Assyrian Church of the East Assyrians entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and after Rome changed the name of this new church from The Church of Assyria and Mosul (named as such in 1553 AD) to the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1681 AD, this group of Assyrians eventually became known as Chaldean Catholics or Chaldo-Assyrians despite having no connection to the long extinct Chaldean tribe of south east Mesopotamia. The Assyrians suffered a number of religiously and ethnically motivated massacres throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries AD,[47] culminating in the large scale Hamidian massacres of unarmed men, women and children by Muslim Turks and Kurds in the late 19th century, further greatly reduced numbers. The burning of bodies of Christian Assyrian women The Assyrians suffered a catastrophic series of massacres known as the Assyrian Genocide, at the hands of the Ottomans and their Kurdish and Arab allies from 1915–1918. The genocide accounted for up to 300,000 unarmed Assyrian civilians, and the forced deportations of many more. The sizeable Assyrian presence in south eastern Asia Minor which had endured for over four millennia was reduced to a few thousand. As a consequence, the surviving Assyrians took up arms, and an Assyrian war of independence was fought during World War I, For a time, the Assyrians fought successfully against overwhelming numbers, scoring a number of victories over the Ottomans and Kurds, and also hostile Arab groups; then their Russian allies left the war following the Russian Revolution, and Armenian resistance broke. The Assyrians were left cut off, surrounded, and without supplies, forcing those in Asia Minor and Northwest Iran to fight their way, with civilians in tow, to the safety of British lines and their fellow Assyrians in northern Iraq. The Assyrian Levies were founded by the British in 1928, with ancient Assyrian military rankings, such as Rab-shakeh, Rab-talia and Tartan, being revived for the first time in millennia for this force. The Assyrians were prized by the British rulers for their fighting qualities, loyalty, bravery and discipline, and were used to help the British put down insurrections among the Arabs and Kurds, guard the borders with Iran and Turkey and protect British military installations.[48] After Iraq was granted independence by the British in 1933, the Assyrians suffered the Simele Massacre, where thousands of unarmed villagers (men, women and children) were slaughtered by joint Arab-Kurdish forces of the Iraqi Army. These massacres followed a clash between Assyrian tribesmen and the Iraqi army, where the Iraqi forces suffered a defeat after trying to disarm the Assyrians, whom they feared would attempt to secede from Iraq. Armed Assyrian Levies were prevented by the British from going to the aid of these civilians. During World War II, Eleven Assyrian companies saw action in Palestine and another four served in Cyprus. The Parachute Company was attached to the Royal Marine Commando and was involved in fighting in Albania, Italy and Greece. Assyrians played a major role in the victory at the Battle of Habbaniya in 1941, when the Iraqi government decided to join WW2 on the side of Nazi Germany. The British presence in Iraq lasted until 1954, and Assyrian Levies remained attached to British forces until this time. The period from the 1940's through to 1963 saw a period of respite for the Assyrians. The regime of President Kassim in particular saw the Assyrians accepted into mainstream society. Many urban Assyrians became successful businessmen, others were well represented in politics and the military, their towns and villages flourished undisturbed, and Assyrians came to excel, and be over represented in sports such as Boxing, Football, Athletics, Wrestling and Swimming. However in 1963, the Ba'ath Party took power by force in Iraq. The Baathists, though secular, were Arab Nationalists, and set about attempting to Arabize the non Arab peoples, including the Assyrians. This policy included refusing to acknowledge the Assyrians as an ethnic group, banning the publication of written material in Eastern Aramaic, and banning its teaching in schools, banning parent giving Assyrian names to their children, taking control of Assyrian churches,attempting to divide Assyrians on denominational lines (eg Assyrian Church of the East vs Chaldean Catholic Church) and forced relocations of Assyrians from their traditional homelands to major cities. These policies have also been mirrored in Turkey, whose government refuses to acknowledge the Assyrians as an ethnic group. Many persecutions have befallen the Assyrians since, such as the Anfal campaign and Baathist, Arab and Kurdish nationalist and Islamist persecutions. In recent years, the Assyrians in Iraq and Syria have taken up arms, alongside other groups (such as the Kurds) in response to attacks by Al Qaeda, ISIS and other Islamic Fundamentalist groups Germany and West Africa theories This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (October 2013) Thus far, the only people who have been attested with a high level of genetic, historical, linguistic and cultural research to be the descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians are the Assyrian Christians of Iraq and its surrounding areas in north west Iran, north east Syria and south eastern Turkey. Assyria continued to exist as a geopolitical entity until the Arab-Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century, and Assyrian identity, personal names and both spoken and written evolutions of Mesopotamian Aramaic (which still contain many Akkadian loan words) have survived among the Assyrian people from ancient times to this day. (see Assyrian people). However, there have been many wild claims of ancient mid eastern ancestry (including Assyrian) throughout Europe, Africa and even the Americas, none of which have been supported by mainstream opinion or strong evidence, let alone proof. The most long standing and popularised theory has been the attempts to link Assyrian ancestry to the ancient Germans. The idea has also some backing in German legend, for example the Gesta Treverorum (a 12th-century German medieval chronicle) makes Trebeta son of Ninus the founder of Trier.[49] This legend of Trebeta as having founded Trier is also found in Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon (1185) and several other German chronicles of the 12th or 13th century, including the works of Sigebert of Gembloux.[50] The legend is also found cited in compendiums of historical sources from later periods, for example Gottfried Leibniz's Scriptures rerum Brunsvicensium (1710) and the Anthologia veterum latinorum epigrammatum et poematum (1835).[51] As with the West Africa theory, this idea does not have the backing of serious historians, nor contemporary written records of the time in the Near East. There have been no studies or records that show such a link, and it must be pointed out that Ninus and Trebeta were fictional figures, and not historically attested. In addition, there are no traces of Akkadian or Mesopotamian Aramaic in any Germanic Language. According to a single unsupported piece of recent research, refugees from the collapsed Assyrian Empire claim to have reached the region of Lake Chad and founded the kingdoms of Kanem and Kebbi. These alleged refugees claimed the ancestry of Sargon of Akkad (whose dynasty died out some fifteen centuries before the fall of Assyria), they also contradictionally claimed ancestry from Nabopolassar, a Babylonian king of Chaldean extraction who played a major part in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire. From the Medieval Arabic king lists of both African states, allegedly copied from earlier lists in ancient Near Eastern languages, it appears that the state founders claimed to be deportees of the Assyrian empire who had fled from Syria and Samaria after the defeat of the Egyptian-Assyrian army at Carchemish in 605 BCE.[52] A counterpoint to this argument would be that neither Samaria nor Syria (the places from where these refugees were claimed to have originated) were actually ever part of Assyria, but were colonies inhabited largely by Hebrews, Nabateans and Arameans respectively. In addition, there is no evidence whatsoever in Assyrian, Babylonian, Median, Persian, Greek or Egyptian records of the time mentioning deportations of Assyrians from their homelands[3][53] Additionally, the claimants to this ancestry also claim descendancy from Sargon of Akkad (whose dynasty died out over 1,500 years before the Assyrian dynasty fell), and from Nabopolassar, who was a Chaldean, politically and militarily opposed to Assyria, and not in fact an Assyrian.[54] Assyrian religion The Assyrians, like the rest of the Mesopotamian peoples, followed the Sumero-Akkadian Mesopotamian Religion, with the national god Ashur having pride of place at the head of the pantheon. This religion survived in Assyria from c. 3500 BC through to its gradual decline in the face of Christianity between the 1st and 10th centuries AD.[44] Other major gods within the pantheon were Anu, Baal, Ea, Enlil, Ishtar (Astarte), Shamash, Tammuz, Adad/Hadad, Sin (Nanna), Dagan, Ninurta, Nisroch, Nergal, Tiamat, Ninlil, Mullissu, Zababa and El. Native religion was still strongly followed at least until the 4th century AD, and survived in pockets until at least the 10th century AD,[44] although Assyrians had begun to adopt Eastern Rite Christianity (as well as for a time Manicheanism and Gnosticism) which, like Syriac literature, had its birthplace in Assyria between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. Assyrians today are exclusively Christian, with most following the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox churches. Language During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism.[7] The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.[7] This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a sprachbund.[7] Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate),[8] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD. In ancient times, Assyrians spoke a dialect of the Akkadian language, an eastern branch of the Semitic languages. The first inscriptions, called Old Assyrian (OA), were made in the Old Assyrian period.[55] In the Neo-Assyrian period the Aramaic language became increasingly common,[56] more so than Akkadian — this was thought to be largely due to the mass deportations undertaken by Assyrian kings,[57] in which large Aramaic-speaking populations, conquered by the Assyrians, were relocated to Assyria and interbred with the Assyrians. The ancient Assyrians also used the Sumerian language in their literature and liturgy,[57] although to a more limited extent in the Middle- and Neo-Assyrian periods, when Akkadian became the main literary language.[57] The destruction of the Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Assur by the Babylonians, Medes and their allies, ensured that much of the bilingual elite (but not all) were wiped out. By the 7th century BC, much of the Assyrian population used Akkadian influenced Eastern Aramaic and not Akkadian itself. The last Akkadian inscriptions in Mesopotamia date from the 1st century AD. However, Eastern Aramaic dialects, as well as Akkadian and Mesopotamian Aramaic personal and family names, still survive to this day among Assyrians in the regions of northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northwest Iran and northeast Syria that constituted old Assyria.[57] After 90 years of effort, the University of Chicago has published an Assyrian Dictionary, whose form is more encyclopedia in style than dictionary.[58] Arts and sciences Main articles: Art of Mesopotamia and Architecture of Mesopotamia Relief from Assyrian capital of Dur Sharrukin, showing transport of Lebanese cedar (8th century BC) Assyrian art preserved to the present day predominantly dates to the Neo-Assyrian period. Art depicting battle scenes, and occasionally the impaling of whole villages in gory detail, was intended to show the power of the emperor, and was generally made for propaganda purposes. These stone reliefs lined the walls in the royal palaces where foreigners were received by the king. Other stone reliefs depict the king with different deities and conducting religious ceremonies. Many stone reliefs were discovered in the royal palaces at Nimrud (Kalhu) and Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin). A rare discovery of metal plates belonging to wooden doors was made at Balawat (Imgur-Enlil). Assyria. Head of winged bull, 9th c. B.C.; Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection Assyrian sculpture reached a high level of refinement in the Neo-Assyrian period. One prominent example is the winged bull Lamassu, or shedu that guard the entrances to the king's court. These were apotropaic meaning they were intended to ward off evil. C. W. Ceram states in The March of Archaeology that lamassi were typically sculpted with five legs so that four legs were always visible, whether the image were viewed frontally or in profile. Although works of precious gems and metals usually do not survive the ravages of time, some fine pieces of Assyrian jewelry were found in royal tombs at Nimrud. There is ongoing discussion among academics over the nature of the Nimrud lens, a piece of quartz unearthed by Austen Henry Layard in 1850, in the Nimrud palace complex in northern Iraq. A small minority believe that it is evidence for the existence of ancient Assyrian telescopes, which could explain the great accuracy of Assyrian astronomy. Other suggestions include its use as a magnifying glass for jewellers, or as a decorative furniture inlay. The Nimrud Lens is held in the British Museum.[59] The Assyrians were also innovative in military technology, with the use of heavy cavalry, sappers, siege engines etc. |
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