The Assyrian Period

The names of the kings of Assyria who reigned in the great city of Nineveh in the eighth and seventh centuries until its total destruction in 606 B.C. have been made familiar to us through Biblical traditions concerning the wars of Israel and Juda, the siege of Samaria and Jerusalem, and even the prophet Jonah. From the palaces at Calah, Nineveh, Khorsabad, have come monumental sculptures and bas-reliefs, historical records on alabaster slabs and on clay prisms, and the many clay tablets from the royal libraries. Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashur-banipal – the Sardanapalus of the Greeks – carried their wars to Babylonia, to Elam, to the old Sumerian south on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Babylon became a province of the Assyrian Empire under the king’s direct control, or entrusted to the hand of a royal brother or even to a native governor. The temples were restored by their order. Bricks stamped with the names of the foreign rulers have been found at Nippur, Kish, Ur and other Babylonian cities, and may be seen in the Babylonian Section of the University Museum. Sin-balatsu-iqbi was governor of Ur and a devoted servant of Ashurbanipal. The temple of Nannar was a total ruin. He repaired the tower, the enclosing wall, the great gate, the hall of justice, where his inscribed door-socket, in the shape of a green snake, was still in position. Within the wall, on the platform, he rebuilt the shrine of Ningal, and the well attached to it. His foundation cones and inscribed bricks are now in the University Museum.