Ancient Civilizations, Empires & Kingdoms of the Arab World

[Saif al-Arab]

As many of you might know, what is now the Arab world is the cradle of civilization and home to the oldest civilizations and longest inhabited cities on the planet.

Cradle of civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of cities by time of continuous habitation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Afro-Asiatic language family is also by far the oldest language family in the world and the speakers of those languages created the first alphabets in the world too.

Afroasiatic languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


For many millenniums this region was not only the center of the world geographically speaking but also culturally, religiously, financially, technology wise and military wise.

I will now cover some of the indigenous ancient Semitic (among them Arab ones), Hamitic and indigenious language isolate civilizations of the Arab world and MENA region.

Let us start.

Sumer (5550 BC - 1700 BC)​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

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Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Kuwait) which is generally considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means “land of the civilized kings”. The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”. In the biblical Book of Genesis Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the cityof Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began.

THE UBAID PERIOD
The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE. This date has been contested in recent years, however, and it now thought that human activity in the area began much earlier. The first settlers were not Sumerians but a people of unknown origin whom archaeologists have termed the Ubaid people (from the excavated mound of al-Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first attested to their existence) or the Proto-Euphrateans (which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River).

MESOPOTAMIANS GENERALLY, AND THE SUMERIANS SPECIFICALLY, BELIEVED THAT CIVILIZATION WAS THE RESULT OF THE GODS’ TRIUMPH OF ORDER OVER CHAOS.
Whoever these people were, they had already moved from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one prior to 5000 BCE. Excavations from al-Ubaid and other sites throughout southern Iraq have uncovered stone tools from the Ubaid people such as hoes, knives, and adzes and clay artifacts which included sickles, bricks, painted pottery, and figurines. These people were the first agents of civilization in the region. At what point the people who came to be known as Sumerians entered the area is not known.

THE SUMERIAN KING LIST
According to the Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, “The first ruler of Sumer, whose deeds are recorded, if only in the briefest kind of statement, is a king by the name of Etana of Kish, who may have come to the throne quite early in the third millennium B.C. In the King List he is described as `he who stabilized all the lands’.” The Sumerian King List is a cuneiform document, written by a scribe of the city of Lagash, sometime around 2100 BCE which lists all of the kings of the region, and their accomplishments, in an attempt to show continuity of order in society dating back to the beginning of civilization.

As the Mesopotamians generally, and the Sumerians specifically, believed that civilization was the result of the gods’ triumph of order over chaos, the King List is thought to have been created to legitimize the reign of a king named Utu-Hegal of Uruk (who ruled c. 2100 BCE) by showing him as the most recent in a long line of rulers of the region. Etana is famous from the myth of the man who ascends to heaven on the back of an eagle and, like other kings mentioned in the list (Dumuzi and Gilgamesh among them) was known for superhuman feats and heroism. Utu-Hegal, it is thought, was trying to link himself to such earlier hero-kings through the creation of the King List. Since the Mesopotamians believed that the gods had set everything in motion, and that human beings were created as co-laborers with the gods to maintain order and hold back chaos, the early writers of history in the region concentrated more on the links between the rulers and their gods. Writing down the history of human accomplishments seems to have been considered a matter of little importance for these writers and, as a result, the early history of Sumer has been deduced from the archaeological and geological record more than a written tradition and much information is still unavailable to modern scholars.

Ruins of Ur​

THE RISE OF CITIES
Whenever the Sumerian civilization was first established in the region, by 3600 BCE they had invented the wheel, writing, the sail boat, agricultural processes such as irrigation, and the concept of the city (though China and Indiaalso lay claim to `the first cities’ in the world). It is generally accepted that the first cities in the world rose in Sumer and, among the most important, were Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Larsa, Isin, Adab, Kullah, Lagash, Nippur, and Kish. The city of Uruk is held to be the first true city in the world. It has been noted, again by Kramer, that these names are not Sumerian but come from the Ubaid people and so were founded, at least as villages, much earlier than c. 5000 BCE. Other cities in Sumer were Sippar, Shuruppak, Bad-tibira, Girsu, Umma, Urukag, Nina, and Kissura. All were of varying size and scope with Uruk the largest and most powerful at its prime.

With the establishment of the cities of Sumer, their history unfolds from approximately 5000 BCE to 1750 BCE when “the Sumerians ceased to exist as a people” (Kramer) after Sumer was invaded by the Elamites and Amorites. After the Ubaid Period (c. 5000-4100 BCE) came the Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE) in which cities began to emerge across the landscape and the city of Uruk rose in prominence. Though the period is named for the `first city’ of Uruk, Eridu was considered the first city by the Sumerians themselves, as previously noted. Trade was firmly established with foreign lands at this time and writing evolved from pictograms to cuneiform script. It is thought that trade was the main motivator in the development of writing as there now had to be some means for accurate, long-distance, communication between the merchants of Sumer and their agents abroad. The kingship also arose at this time and the city-states of Sumer came to be ruled by a single monarch who was assisted by a council of elders (which included both men and women). The kings following Etana were Semites, not Sumerians, as attested to by their names such as Enmebaraggesi of Kish. It is not until after the rule of eight kings passed that Sumerian names begin to appear in the King List.

Map of Sumer and Elam​

THE AKKADIAN EMPIRE IN SUMER
The Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) saw the subtle shift from a priest-king (known as an ensi) to a more modern-day concept of `king’ known as a Lugal (`big man’). The city-states of Sumer during this time fought for control of arable land and water rights until the rise of the First Dynasty of Lagash in 2500 BCE. Under their king Eannutum, Lagash became the centre of a small empire which included most of Sumer and parts of neighboringElam. This empire was still extant under the king Lugal-Zage when a young man, who later claimed to have been the king’s gardener, seized the throne. This was Sargon of Akkad who would go on to found the Akkadian Empire (2234-2218 BCE), the first multi-national empire in the world and, it is thought, based on the model set by Eannutum. The Akkadian Empire ruled over the majority of Mesopotamia, including Sumer, until a people known as the Gutians invaded from the north (the area of modern-day Iran) and destroyed the major cities. The Gutian Period (c. 2218-2047 BCE) is considered a dark age in Sumerian history (and Mesopotamian history overall) and the Gutians were universally reviled by Sumerian writers in later histories, most of which consider them a punishment sent by the gods.

THE SUMERIAN RENAISSANCE
The last period in Sumerian history is known as The Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) so named for the Third Dynasty of the city of Ur. This period is also known as The Sumerian Renaissance due to the remarkable advances in culture – touching upon virtually every single aspect of civilized human life – which were made. The kings of Ur, Ur-Nammuand Shulgi, set cultural advancement as the goal of their administrations and maintained a peace which allowed for art and technology to flourish. Whether invented before or during the Ur III Period, the tools, concepts, and technological innovations in place during the Third Dynasty of Ur solidified the Sumerian’s place in history as the creators of civilization as we know it. In Samuel Noah Kramer’s book History Begins at Sumer he lists 39 “firsts’ in history from the region among which are the first schools, the first proverbs and sayings, the first messiahs, the first Noah and the Flood stories, the first love song, the first aquarium, the first legal precedents in court cases, the first tale of a dying and resurrected god, the first funeral chants, first biblical parallels, and first moral ideas. The Sumerians also essentially invented time in that their sexigesimal system of counting (a system based on the number 60) created the 60-second minute and the 60-minute hour. They also divided the night and day into periods of 12 hours, set a limit on a `work day’ with a time for beginning and ending, and established the concept of `days off’ for holidays. The historian Bertman writes, “The hand of Mesopotamia still determines the hourly length of the traditional workday and even the length of our electronic entertainment (half-hour or hour TV shows) when our workday has stopped” (334). Bertman further notes that the modern day practice of checking one’s horoscope comes from ancient Sumer and that the astrological signs one is born under were first noted and named by the ancient Mesopotamians.

A Sumerian Wall Plaque Showing Libation Scenes​

Ur-Nammu wrote the first legal code in Sumer which became the precedent for the much later, and better known, Code of Hammurabi of Babylon. The historian Paul Kriwaczek writes, “Ur-Nammu’s universal legal pronouncements present a good example of the unifying drive of Ur’s kings: the compulsion to regulate every aspect of life” (149). Sumer, under the unifying force of the Third Dynasty of Ur, became a Patrimonial State (“meaning one constructed on the pattern of the patriarchal family ruled by a father figure”, as Kriwaczek notes) in which the monarch served as the father figure who guided his children along a proper path toward prosperity. Ur-Nammu’s son, Shulgi, is considered the greatest of the Neo-Sumerian kings who continued his father’s policies but went further. In an effort to both impress his people, and distinguish himself from his father, Shulgi ran 100 miles (160.9 kilometres) between the religious centre of Nippur and the capital city of Ur and back again – in one day – in order to officiate at the festivals in both cities. Though some have considered the hymn which recounts his achievement as a kingly boast and highly exaggerated, scholars have determined that he could, in fact, have made his famous run and, further, that it was in keeping with the spirit of Shulgi’s rule. Creating a sense of awe and admiration in their subjects seems to have been central to the governing power of the kings of Ur at this time.

SUMER'S DECLINE & LEGACY
Under Shulgi’s reign, a wall was constructed 155 miles long (250 kilometres) to keep out the Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Martu or Tidnum but better known by their biblical name of Amorites. Shulgi’s son, grandson, and great-grandson all renovated and strengthened the wall to keep those they called `the barbarians’ out of Sumer proper but the barrier proved ineffective. The wall could not be properly manned or maintained and, further, was not anchored to any solid barrier at the end points and so invaders could simply follow the wall on the one side to either end point and then walk around it. The forces of neighboring Elam breached the wall and marched on Ur, sacking it and carrying away the king c. 1750 BCE. The Amorites now established themselves in the land but, with the fall of Ur and a severe famine resulting from climate change and the over-use of the land, many migrated for points south. Among these migrating Amorites, it is thought, was Abraham the patriarch who left Ur to settle in the land of Canaan.

Following the Ur III Period and the fall of Ur, many Sumerians migrated north. Sumerian was no longer spoken as a language (though it was still written), having been largely replaced by the Semitic Akkadian, and the Sumerian culture was ended. Their legacy, however, continues in many aspects of civilization which those in the modern day take for granted as always existing. Even so, something as basic as the twenty-four hour day was invented, once upon a time, in Sumer.

Sumer - Ancient History Encyclopedia

The origin of Sumerians is either thought to be in Northern Mesopotamia (Samarra culture) or the Eastern Arabian Littoral region which was part of the Arabian bifacial culture.

See more below.

Sumer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Akkadian Empire/Akkad circa 2334 B.C. —circa 2154 B.C.
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by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011​

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No one knows where the city of Akkad was located, how it rose to prominence, or how, precisely, it fell; yet once it was the seat of the Akkadian Empire which ruled over a vast expanse of the region of ancient Mesopotamia. It is known that Akkad (also given as Agade) was a city located along the western bank of the Euphrates River possibly between the cities of Sippar and Kish (or, perhaps, between Mari and Babylon or, even, elsewhere along the Euphrates). According to legend, it was built by the king Sargon the Great (who ruled 2334-2279 BCE) who unified Mesopotamia under the rule of his Akkadian Empire and set the standard for future forms of government in Mesopotamia. Sargon(or his scribes) claimed that the Akkadian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf through modern-day Kuwait, Iraq, Northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria (possibly Lebanon) through the lower part of Asia Minor to the Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus(there is also a claim it stretched as far as Crete in the Aegean). While the size and scope of the empire based in Akkad is disputed, there is no doubt that Sargon the Great created the first multi-national empire in the world.​

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THE KING OF URUK & THE RISE OF SARGON
The language of the city, Akkadian, was already in use before the rise of the Akkadian Empire (notably in the wealthy city of Mari where vast cuneiform tablets have helped to define events for later historians) and it is possible that Sargon restored Akkad, rather than built it. It should also be noted that Sargon was not the first ruler to unite the disparate cities and tribes under one rule. The King of Uruk, Lugalzagesi, had already accomplished this, though on a much smaller scale, under his own rule. He was defeated by Sargon who, improving on the model given him by Uruk, made his own dynasty larger and stronger. The historian Gwendolyn Leick writes, "According to his own inscriptions, he [Sargon] campaigned widely beyond Mesopotamia and secured access to all the major trade routes, by sea and by land" (The A-Z of Mesopotamia, 8). While Lugalzagesi had succeeded in subjugating the cities of Sumer, Sargon was intent on conquering the known world. The historian Durant writes, "East and west, north and south, the mighty warrior marched, conquering Elam, washing his weapons in symbolic triumph in the Persian Gulf, crossing western Asia, reaching the Mediterranean, and establishing the first great empire in history" (121-122). This empire stabilized the region of Mesopotamia and allowed for the development of art, literature, science, agricultural advances, andreligion.

THERE WERE FIVE RULERS OF AKKAD: SARGON, RIMUSH, MANISHTUSU,NARAM-SIN AND SHAR-KALI-SHARRI.
According to the Sumerian King List, there were five rulers of Akkad: Sargon, Rimush, Manishtusu, Naram-Sin (also known as Naram-Suen) and Shar-Kali-Sharri who maintained the dynasty for 142 years before it collapsed. In this time Akkadian came to replace Sumerian as the lingua franca except in sacred services and Akkadian dress, writing, and religious practices infiltrated the customs of the conquered in the region. A thorough understanding of the rise and fall of Akkad (relatively speaking) is best gained through an examination of the rulers of the city and the empire they maintained.

SARGON'S RULE
Sargon the Great either founded or restored the city of Akkad and ruled from 2334-2279 BCE. He conquered what he called "the four corners of the universe" and maintained order in his empire through repeated military campaigns. The stability provided by this empire gave rise to the construction of roads, improved irrigation, a wider sphere of influence in trade, as well as the above mentioned developments in arts and sciences. The Akkadian Empire created the first postal system where clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian script were wrapped in outer clay envelopes marked with the name and address of the recipient and the seal of the sender. These letters could not be opened except by the person they were intended for because there was no way to open the clay envelope save by breaking it.

In order to maintain his presence throughout his empire, Sargon strategically placed his best and most trusted men in positions of power in the various cities. The "Citizens of Akkad", as a later Babylonian text calls them, were the governors and administrators in over 65 different cities. Sargon also cleverly placed his daughter, Enheduanna, as High Priestess of Inanna at Ur and, through her, seems to have able to manipulate religious/cultural affairs from afar. Enheduanna is recognized today as the world's first writer known by name and, from what is known of her life, she seems to have been a very able and powerful priestess in addition to creating her impressive Hymns to Inanna.​

Sargon the Great (one of the first Semitic rulers) who ruled c. 2334 BC – 2279 BC​

SARGON'S SUCCESSORS: RIMUSH & MANISHTUSU
Sargon reigned for fifty-six years and after his death was succeeded by his son Rimush (reigned 2279-2271 BCE) who maintained his father's policies closely. The cities rebelled after Sargon's death and Rimush spent the early years of his reign restoring order. He campaigned against Elam, whom he defeated, and claimed in an inscription to bring great wealth back to Akkad. He ruled for only nine years before he died and was succeeded by his brother Manishtusu (reigned 2271-2261 BCE). There is some speculation that Manishtusu brought about his brother's death to gain the throne.

History repeated itself after the death of Rimush and Manishtusu had to quell widespread revolts across the empire before engaging in the business of governing his lands. He increased trade and, according to his inscriptions, engaged in long-distance trade with Magan and Meluhha (thought to be upper Egypt and the Sudan). He also undertook great projects in construction throughout the empire and is thought to have ordered the construction of the Ishtar Temple at Nineveh which was considered a very impressive piece of architecture. Further, he undertook land reform and, from what is known, improved upon the empire of his father and brother. Manishtusu's obelisk, describing the distribution of parcels of land, may be viewed today in the Louvre Museum, Paris. His death is somewhat of a mystery but, according to some scholars, Leick among them, "Manishtusu was killed by his courtiers with their cylinder seals" though no definite motive has been offered for the killing( The A-Z of Mesopotamia, 111).

NARAM-SIN: GREATEST OF THE AKKADIAN KINGS
Manishtusu was succeeded by his son Naram-Sin (also Naram-Suen) who reigned from 2261-2224 BCE. Like his father and uncle before him, Naram-Sin had to suppress rebellions across the empire before he could begin to govern but, once he began, the empire flourished under his reign. In the thirty-six years he ruled, he expanded the boundaries of the empire, kept order within, increased trade, and personally campaigned with his army beyond the Persian Gulf and, possibly, even to Egypt. The Victory Stele of Naram-Sin (presently housed in the Louvre) celebrates the victory of the Akkadian monarch over Satuni, king of the Lullubi (a tribe in the Zagros Mountains) and depicts Naram-Sin ascending the mountain, trampling on the bodies of his enemies, in the image of a god. Like his grandfather, he claimed himself "king of the four quarters of the universe" but, in a bolder move, began writing his name with a sign designating himself a god on equal footing with any in the Mesopotamian pantheon.

In spite of his spectacular reign, considered the height of the Akkadian Empire, later generations would associate him with The Curse of Agade, a literary text ascribed to the Third Dynasty of Ur but which could have been written earlier. It tells the fascinating story of one man's attempt to wrest an answer from the gods by force; and that man is Naram-Sin. According to the text, the great Sumerian god Enlil withdrew his pleasure from the city of Akkad and, in so doing, prohibited the other gods from entering the city and blessing it any longer with their presence. Naram-Sin does not know what he could have done to incur this displeasure and so prays, asks for signs and omens, and falls into a seven-year depression as he waits for an answer from the god. Finally, tired of waiting, he draws up his army and marches on Enlil's temple at the Ekur in the city of Nippur which he destroys. He "sets his spades against its roots, his axes against the foundations until the temple, like a dead soldier, falls prostrate" (Leick, The Invention of the City, 106). This attack, of course, provokes the wrath not only of Enlil but of the other gods who send the Gutium "a people who know no inhibition, with human instincts but canine intelligence and with monkey features" (106) to invade Akkad and lay it waste. There is widespread famine after the invasion of the Gutians, the dead remain rotting in the streets and houses, and the city is in ruin and so, according to the tale, ends the city of Akkad and the Akkadian Empire, a victim of one king's arrogance in the face of the gods.

Stele of the Akkadian king Naram-Sin​

There is, however, no historical record of Naram-Sin ever reducing the Ekur at Nippur by force nor destroying the temple of Enlil and it is thought that "The Curse of Agade" was a much later piece written to express "an ideological concern for the right relationship between the gods and the absolute monarch" (Leick, 107) whose author chose Akkad and Naram-Sin as subjects because of their, by then, legendary status. According to historical record, Naram-Sin honored the gods, had his own image placed beside theirs in the temples, and was succeeded by his son, Shar-Kali-Sharri who reigned from 2223-2198 BCE.

THE DECLINE OF AKKAD
Shar-Kali-Sharri's reign was difficult from the beginning in that he, too, had to expend a great deal of effort in putting down revolts after his father's death but, unlike his predecessors, seemed to lack the ability to maintain order and was unable to prevent further attacks on the empire from without. Leick writes, "Despite his efforts and successful military campaigns, he was not able to protect his state from disintegration and, after his death, written sources dried up in a time of increased anarchy and confusion" (The A-Z of Mesopotamia, 159). Interestingly, it is known that "his most important building project was the reconstruction of the Temple of Enlil at Nippur" and perhaps this event, coupled with the invasion of the Gutians and a widespread famine, gave rise to the later legend which grew into The Curse of Agade. Shar-Kali-Sarri waged almost continual war against the Elamites, the Ammorites and the invading Gutians but it is the Gutian Invasion which has been most commonly credited with the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and the Mesopotamian dark age which ensued. Recent studies, however, claim that it was most likely climate change which caused a famine and, perhaps, disruption in trade, weakening the empire to the point where the type of invasions and rebellions which, in the past, were crushed, could no longer be dealt with so easily. The last two kings of Akkad following the death of Shar-Kali-Sharri, Dudu and his son Shu-Turul, ruled only the area around the city and are rarely mentioned in association with the empire. As with the rise of the city of Akkad, its fall is a mystery and all that is known today is that, once, such a city existed whose kings ruled a vast empire, the first empire in the world, and then passed on into memory and legend.

Akkad - Ancient History Encyclopedia

More information below:

Akkadian Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stele of Naram-Sin,[27] celebrating victory against the Lullubi from Zagros2260 BC.He is wearing a horned helmet, a symbol of divinity, and is also portrayed in a larger scale in comparison to others to emphasize his superiority.[28] Brought back fromSippar to Susa as war prize in the 12th century BC

"Cylinder Seal with King or God and Vanquished Lion" (Old Akkadian).[43]The Walters Art Museum.​

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Babylon​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

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Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern-day Iraq 59 miles (94 kilometres) southwest of Baghdad. The name is thought to derive from bav-il orbav-ilim which, in the Akkadian language of the time, meant ‘Gate of God’ or `Gate of the Gods’ and `Babylon’ coming from Greek. The city owes its fame (or infamy) to the many references the Biblemakes to it; all of which are unfavourable. In the Book of Genesis, chapter 11, Babylon is featured in the story of The Tower of Babeland the Hebrews claimed the city was named for the confusion which ensued after God caused the people to begin speaking in different languages so they would not be able to complete their great tower to the heavens (the Hebrew word bavel means `confusion’).

Babylon also appears prominently in the biblical books of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, among others, and, most notably, The Book of Revelation. It was these biblical references which sparked interest in Mesopotamianarchaeology and the expedition by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey who first excavated the ruins of Babylon in 1899 CE. Outside of the sinful reputation given it by the Bible, the city is known for its impressive walls and buildings, its reputation as a great seat of learning and culture, the formation of a code of law which pre-dates the Mosaic Law, and for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which were man-made terraces of flora and fauna, watered by machinery, which were cited by Herodotus as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

THE OLD CITY & HAMMURABI
Babylon was founded at some point prior to the reign of Sargon of Akkad (also known as Sargon the Great) who ruled from 2334-2279 BCE and claimed to have built temples at Babylon (other ancient sources seem to indicate that Sargon himself founded the city). At that time, Babylon seems to have been a minor city or perhaps a large port town on the Euphrates River at the point where it runs closest to the river Tigris. Whatever early role the city played in the ancient world is lost to modern-day scholars because the water level in the region has risen steadily over the centuries and the ruins of Old Babylon have become inaccessible. The ruins which were excavated by Koldewey, and are visible today, date only to well over one thousand years after the city was founded. The historian Paul Kriwaczek, among other scholars, claims it was established by the Amorites following the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur. This information, and any other pertaining to Old Babylon, comes to us today through artifacts which were carried away from the city after the Persian invasion or those which were created elsewhere.

EVERY ANCIENT WRITER MENTIONS BABYLON WITH A TONE OF AWE AND REVERENCE.
The known history of Babylon, then, begins with its most famous king: Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE). This obscureAmorite prince ascended to the throne upon the abdication of his father, King Sin-Muballit, and fairly quickly transformed the city into one of the most powerful and influential in all of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi’s law codes are well known but are only one example of the policies he implemented to maintain peace and encourage prosperity. He enlarged and heightened the walls of the city, engaged in great public works which included opulent temples and canals, and made diplomacy an integral part of his administration. So successful was he in both diplomacy and war that, by 1755 BCE, he had united all of Mesopotamia under the rule of Babylon which, at this time, was the largest city in the world, and named his realm Babylonia.

THE ASSYRIANS, CHALDEANS, & NEBUCHADNEZZAR II
Following Hammurabi’s death, his empire fell apart and Babylonia dwindled in size and scope until Babylon was easily sacked by the Hittites in 1595 BCE. The Kassites followed the Hittites and re-named the city Karanduniash. The meaning of this name is not clear. The Assyrians then followed the Kassites in dominating the region and, under the reign of the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (reigned 705-681 BCE), Babylon revolted. Sennacherib had the city sacked, razed, and the ruins scattered as a lesson to others. His extreme measures were considered impious by the people generally and Sennacherib’s court specifically and he was soon after assassinated by his sons. His successor,Esarhaddon, re-built Babylon and returned it to its former glory. The city later rose in revolt against Ashurbanipalof Nineveh who besieged and defeated the city but did not damage it to any great extent and, in fact, personally purified Babylon of the evil spirits which were thought to have led to the trouble. The reputation of the city as a center of learning and culture was already well established by this time.

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Babylon at the time of Hammurabi


After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, a Chaldean named Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon and, through careful alliances, created the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BCE), renovated the city so that it covered 900 hectares (2,200 acres) of land and boasted some the most beautiful and impressive structures in all of Mesopotamia. Every ancient writer to make mention of the city of Babylon, outside of those responsible for the stories in the Bible, does so with a tone of awe and reverence. Herodotus, for example, writes:

The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty stadia in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty stadia. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width and two hundred in height.

Although it is generally believed that Herodotus greatly exaggerated the dimensions of the city (and may never have actually visited the place himself) his description echoes the admiration of other writers of the time who recorded the magnificence of Babylon, and especially the great walls, as a wonder of the world. It was under Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are said to have been constructed and the famous Ishtar Gate built. The Hanging gardens are most explicitly described in a passage from Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BCE) in his workBibliotheca Historica Book II.10:

There was also, because the acropolis, the Hanging Garden, as it is called, which was built, not by Semiramis, but by a later Syrian king to please one of his concubines; for she, they say, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her mountains, asked the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden, the distinctive landscape of Persia. The park extended four plethra on each side, and since the approach to the garden sloped like a hillside and the several parts of the structure rose from one another tier on tier, the appearance of the whole resembled that of a theatre. When the ascending terraces had been built, there had been constructed beneath them galleries which carried the entire weight of the planted garden and rose little by little one above the other along the approach; and the uppermost gallery, which was fifty cubits high, bore the highest surface of the park, which was made level with the circuit wall of the battlements of the city. Furthermore, the walls, which had been constructed at great expense, were twenty-two feet thick, while the passage-way between each two walls was ten feet wide. The roofs of the galleries were covered over with beams of stone sixteen feet long, inclusive of the overlap, and four feet wide. The roof above these beams had first a layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen, over this two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and as a third layer a covering of lead, to the end that the moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath. On all this again earth had been piled to a depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground, which was levelled off, was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size or any other charm, could give pleasure to beholder. And since the galleries, each projecting beyond another, all received the light, they contained many royal lodgings of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading from the topmost surface and machines for supplying the garden with water, the machines raising the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside could see it being done. Now this park, as I have said, was a later construction.

This part of Diodorus' work concerns the semi-mythical queen Semiramis (most probably based on the actual Assyrian queen Sammu-Ramat who reigned 811-806 BCE). His reference to "a later Syrian king" follows Herodotus' tendency of referring to Mesopotamia as `Assyria'. Recent scholarship on the subject argues that the Hanging Gardens were never located at Babylon but were instead the creation Sennacherib at his capital of Nineveh. The historian Christopher Scarre writes:

Sennacherib’s palace [at Nineveh] had all the usual accoutrements of a major Assyrian residence: colossal guardian figures and impressively carved stone reliefs (over 2,000 sculptured slabs in 71 rooms). Its gardens, too, were exceptional. Recent research by British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has suggested that these were the famous Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Later writers placed the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, but extensive research has failed to find any trace of them. Sennacherib’s proud account of the palace gardens he created at Nineveh fits that of the Hanging Gardens in several significant details (231).

This period in which the Hanging Gardens were allegedly built was also the time of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews and the period in which the Babylonian Talmud was written. The Euphrates River divided the city in two between an `old’ and a `new’ city with the Temple of Marduk and the great towering ziggurat in the center. Streets and avenues were widened to better accommodate the yearly processional of the statue of the great god Marduk in the journey from his home temple in the city to the New Year Festival Temple outside the Ishtar Gate.

Lion of Babylon Statue, Babylonia​

THE PERSIAN CONQUEST & BABYLON'S DECLINE
The Neo-Babylonian Empire continued after the death of Nebuchadnezzar II and Babylon continued to play an important role in the region under the rule of Nabonidus and his successor Belshazzar (featured in the biblical Book of Daniel). In 539 BCE the empire fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great at the Battle of Opis. Babylon’s walls were impregnable and so the Persians cleverly devised a plan whereby they diverted the course of the Euphrates River so that it fell to a manageable depth. While the residents of the city were distracted by one of their great religious feast days, the Persian army waded the river and marched under the walls of Babylon unnoticed. It was claimed the city was taken without a fight although documents of the time indicate that repairs had to be made to the walls and some sections of the city and so perhaps the action was not as effortless as the Persian account maintained.

Under Persian rule, Babylon flourished as a center of art and education. Cyrus and his successors held the city in great regard and made it the administrative capital of their empire (although at one point the Persian emperorXerxes felt obliged to lay siege to the city after another revolt). Babylonian mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy were highly respected and it is thought that Thales of Miletus (known as the first western philosopher) may have studied there and that Pythagoras developed his famous mathematical theorem based upon a Babylonian model. When, after two hundred years, the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, he also gave great reverence to the city, ordering his men not to damage the buildings nor molest the inhabitants. The historian Stephen Bertman writes, “Before his death, Alexander the Great ordered the superstructure of Babylon’s ziggurat pulled down in order that it might be rebuilt with greater splendor. But he never lived to bring his project to completion. Over the centuries, its scattered bricks have been cannibalized by peasants to fulfill humbler dreams. All that is left of the fabled Tower of Babel is the bed of a swampy pond.”

After Alexander’s death at Babylon, his successors (known as `The Diadochi’, Greek for `successors’) fought over his empire generally and the city specifically to the point where the residents fled for their safety (or, according to one ancient report, were re-located). By the time the Parthian Empire ruled the region in 141 BCE Babylon was deserted and forgotten. The city steadily fell into ruin and, even during a brief revival under the Sassanid Persians, never approached its former greatness. In the Muslim conquest of the land in 650 CE whatever remained of Babylon was swept away and, in time, was buried beneath the sands. In the 17th and 18th centuries CE European travelers began to explore the area and return home with various artifacts. These cuneiform blocks and statues led to an increased interest in the region and, by the 19th century CE, an interest in biblical archaeology drew men like Robert Koldewey who uncovered the ruins of the once great city of the Gate of the Gods.

Babylon - Ancient History Encyclopedia

More information:

Babylon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Babylon (Akkadian: Bābili or Babilim; Arabic: بابل‎, Bābil) was a significant city in ancient Mesopotamia, in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates, and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods.

Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c. 2300 BC. The town attained independence as part of a small city state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Claiming to be the successor of the more ancient Sumero-Akkadian city of Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippuras the "holy city" of Mesopotamia around the time Amorite king Hammurabi created the first short lived Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia.

The empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabi's death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires.

It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c. 1770 to 1670 BC, and again between c. 612 and 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000.[2] Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890[3] to 900 hectares (2,200 acres).[4]

The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris.

Sennacherib of Assyria during his Babylonian war, relief from his palace in Nineveh

Babylonia​

Babylonia (/ˌbæbəˈloʊniə/) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking Semitic state and cultural region based in central-southernMesopotamia (present-day Iraq). A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained at this time the minor city of Babylon. Babylon greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC, becoming a major capital city. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called Mât Akkadî "the country of Akkad" in Akkadian.[1] It was often involved in rivalry with its older fellow Akkadian state of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi (fl. c. 1792 – 1752 BC middle chronology, or c. 1696 – 1654 BC, short chronology) created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Neo-Sumerian Empire, and Old Assyrian Empire; however, the Babylonian empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi.

The Babylonian state retained the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use (the language of its native populace), despite its Amorite founders and Kassite successors not being native Akkadians, and speaking a Northwest SemiticCanaanite language and a Language Isolate respectively. It retained the Sumerian language for religious use (as did Assyria), but by the time Babylon was founded this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in Babylonian (and Assyrian) culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under protracted periods of outside rule.

The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BC), dating back to the 23rd century BC. Babylon was merely a religious and cultural centre at this point and neither an independent state nor a large city; like the rest of Mesopotamia, it was subject to the Akkadian Empire which united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule. After the collapse of the Akkadian empire, the south Mesopotamian region was dominated by the Gutians for a few decades before the rise of the Neo-Sumerian Empire (third dynasty of Ur), which, apart from northern Assyria, encompassed the whole of Mesopotamia, including the city of Babylon.

Babylonia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

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Amorite
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by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

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The Amorites were a Semitic people who seem to have emerged from western Mesopotamia (modern day Syria) at some point prior to the 3rd millennium BCE. In Sumerian they were known as the Martu or the Tidnum (in the Ur III Period), in Akkadian by the name of Amurru, and in Egypt as Amar, all of which mean 'westerners' or 'those of the west', as does the Hebrew nameAmorite. They worshipped their own pantheon of gods with a chief deity named Amurru (also known as Belu Sadi - 'Lord of the Mountains’ whose wife, Belit-Seri was 'Lady of the Desert’), which also became a designation for the people as the Akkadians also referred to them as 'the people of Amurru’ and to the region of Syria as 'Amurru’. There is no record of what the Amorites called themselves. The god Amurru’s association with the mountains and his wife's with the desert suggests that they may have originated in the area of Syria around Mount Hermon but this is unsubstantiated. Their origins are unknown and their precise history, until they settle in cities like Mari, Ebla, and Babylon, is equally mysterious. From their first appearance in the historical record, the Amorites had a profound impact on the history of Mesopotamia and are probably best known for their kingdom of Babylonia under the Amorite king Hammurabi. The span between 2000-1600 BCE in Mesopotamia is known as the Amorite Period, during which their impact on the region can most clearly be discerned, but there is no doubt that they influenced the people of the various cities long before that time and their impact was felt long after.

AMORITE MAY NOT HAVE ORIGINIALLY REFERRED TO A SPECIFIC ETHNIC GROUP BUT TO ANY NOMADIC PEOPLE WHO THREATENED THE STABILITY OF ESTABLISHED COMMUNITIES

EARLY HISTORY
The Amorites first appear in history as nomads who regularly made incursions from the west into established territories and kingdoms. The historian Marc Van de Mieroop writes:

The Amorites were semi-nomadic groups from northern Syria, whom Babylonian literaturedescribed in extremely negative terms:

The Amorite, he is dressed in sheep’s skins;

He lives in tents in wind and rain;

He doesn’t offer sacrifices.

Armed vagabond in the steppe,

He digs up truffles and is restless.

He eats raw meat,

Lives his life without a home,

And, when he dies, he is not buried according to proper rituals (83).

Van de Mieroop and others point out that 'Amorite’ may not have originally referred to a specific ethnic group but to any nomadic people who threatened the stability of established communities. Even if this is so, at some point, 'Amorite’ came to designate a certain tribe of people with a specific culture based on a nomadic lifestyle of living off the land and taking what was needed from the communities they encountered. They grew more powerful as they acquired more land until finally they directly threatened the stability of those in the established cities of the region.

This situation came to crisis during the latter part of the Ur III Period (also known as the Sumerian Renaissance, 2047-1750 BCE), when King Shulgi of the Sumerian city of Ur constructed a wall 155 miles (250 kilometres) long specifically to keep the Amorites out of Sumer. The wall was too long to be properly manned, however, and also presented the problem of not being anchored at either end to any kind of obstacle; an invading force could simply walk around the wall to bypass it and that seems to be precisely what the Amorites did. Amorite incursions led to the weakening of Ur and Sumer as a whole, which encouraged the region of Elam to mount an invasion and break through the wall. The sack of Ur by the Elamites in 1750 BCE ended Sumerian civilization, but this was made possible by the earlier incursions of the Amorites and their migrations throughout the region which undermined the stability and trade of the cities.

THE AMORITES & THE HEBREWS
At this point in history, according to some scholars, the Amorites play a pivotal role in the development of world culture. The biblical Book of Genesis states that the patriarch Terah took his son Abram (later Abraham), daughter-in-law Sarai, and Lot the son of Haran from Ur to dwell in the land of Haran (11:31). The historian Kriwaczek writes:

Terah’s family were not Sumerian. They have long been identified with the very people, the Amurru or Amorites, whom Mesopotamian tradition blamed for Ur’s downfall. William Hallo, Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, confirms that `growing linguistic evidence based chiefly on the recorded personal names of persons identified as Amorites…shows that the new group spoke a variety of Semitic ancestral to later Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician.’ What is more, as depicted in the Bible, the details of the patriarch’s tribal organization, naming conventions, family structure, customs of inheritance and land tenure, genealogical schemes, and other vestiges of nomadic life are too close to the more laconic evidence of the cuneiform records to be dismissed out of hand as late fabrications (163-164).

The Amorites of the Bible are depicted as pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land of Canaan and clearly separate from the Israelites. In the Book of Deuteronomy they are described as the last remnants of the giants who once lived on earth (3:11), and in the Book of Joshua they are the enemies of the Israelites who are destroyed by General Joshua (10:10, 11:8). If modern-day scholarship is accurate about the patriarchs of Israel descending from the Amorites, then there must have been some reason why the Hebrew scribes went to so much trouble to separate their own identity from that of the Amorites. It is thought that Terah, in taking his family from Sumer, retained the tribe’s original ethnic identity and brought that cultural heritage with him to Canaan where Abraham, then Isaac, and then Jacob would establish that culture as `the children of Israel’ (Jacob’s name). The Book of Genesis tells the story of Joseph, Jacob’s youngest son, and his sojourn in Egypt and rise to power there, and the Book of Exodus relates how the Hebrews were later enslaved by the Egyptians and were led from captivity to freedom back in Canaan by Moses. These biblical narratives would have served to separate the Israelites' national identity from their actual ancestors by creating new histories that highlighted their uniqueness among the people of the world. Kriwaczek notes that,

only by leaving Ur would Terah and his little family keep their Amorite identity and their Amorite way of life which was so important to subsequent Hebrew history. Had Terah stayed in Sumer, Abram would have shared in a very different destiny…The Amorites would never leave. They would eventually merge into the general population so thoroughly that after a few decades it would be impossible to distinguish them from their predecessors (165).

The fact that the events related in the Book of Exodus are not substantiated in any other ancient work, or by archaeological evidence of any kind whatsoever, supports the theory that the Hebrew writers of that book created a new narrative to explain their presence in Canaan, one without any connection to the Amorites of Mesopotamia. Throughout the early books of the Old Testament, the Amorites are repeatedly referred to negatively, except for a passage frequently cited from I Samuel 7:14 where some scholars claim that it is written that there was peace between the Amorites and the Children of Israel. But that passage actually says there was peace between the Philistines and the Israelites and does not mention the Amorites at all. This interpretation of the passage comes from the understanding that 'Amorite’ had again come to refer to any nomadic people who interfered with established communities. While this may be true, it seems that 'Amorite’ was even used to reference the early people of the land of Canaan which, according to the Book of Joshua, the Israelites conquered. In virtually every reference, then, the Amorites were considered `the other’ by the Hebrew scribes, and this tradition continued for centuries down to the creation of the Talmud in which Jews are prohibited from engaging in Amorite practices. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia:

To the apocryphal writers of the first and second pre-Christian century [the Amorites] are the main representatives of heathen superstition, loathed as idolaters, in whose ordinances Israelites may not walk (Lev. xviii. 3). A special section of the Talmud (Tosef., Shab. vi.-vii. [vii.-viii.]; Bab. Shab. 67a et seq.) is devoted to the various superstitions called "The Ways of the Amorites." According to the Book of Jubilees (xxix. [9] 11), "the former terrible giants, the Rephaim, gave way to the Amorites, an evil and sinful people whose wickedness surpasses that of any other, and whose life will be cut short on earth." In the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (lx.) they are symbolized by "black water" on account of "their black art, their witchcraft and impure mysteries, by which they contaminated Israel in the time of the Judges".

The theory that the Amorites, through their appropriation and transmission of Mesopotamian myths, would produce the biblical narratives of the Old Testament, has been challenged repeatedly over the years and, no doubt, will continue to be. There seems to be more evidence to support this theory, however, than disprove it.

Amorite pottery juglet​

THE AMORITE PERIOD IN MESOPOTAMIA
Following the sack of Ur in 1750 BCE, the Amorites merged with the Sumerian population in southern Mesopotamia. They had already been established in the cities of Mari and Ebla in Syria since 1900 BCE (Mari) and 1800 BCE (Ebla), and had ruled in Babylon since c. 1984 BCE. The Amorite king Sin-Muballit had assumed the throne in Babylon in 1812 BCE and ruled until 1793 BCE when he abdicated. He was succeeded by his son Ammurapi who is better known by his Akkadian name Hammurabi (reigned 1792-1750 BCE). The fact that an Amorite king ruled in Babylon prior to the fall of Ur supports the claim that not all 'Amorites’ were Amorites and that, as previously mentioned, the term was used rather loosely to refer to any nomadic tribe in the Near East. The Amorites of Babylon seem to have been regarded positively in the region, while the roaming Amorites continued to be a source of instability. The Amorites of Babylon, just as those who inhabited other cities, worshipped Sumerian gods and wrote down Sumerian myths and legends. Hammurabi expanded the old city of Babylon and engaged in a number of successful military campaigns (one being the destruction of rival city Mari in 1761 BCE) that brought the vast region of Mesopotamia from Mari to Ur under Babylon’s rule and established the city as the center of Babylonia (an area of land corresponding to modern-day Syria to the Persian Gulf). Hammurabi’s military, diplomatic, and, political skills served to make Babylon the largest city in the world at the time and the most powerful. He was unable, however, to pass these talents on to his son and, after his death, the kingdom he had built began to fall apart.

Hammurabi’s son, Samsu-Iluna (reigned 1749-1712 BCE) could not continue the policies his father had enacted nor defend the empire against invading forces such as the Hittites and Assyrians. The Assyrians were the first to make incursions and allowed for regions south of Babylon to break away from the empire easily. Hammurabi's conquest of Eshnunna in the north-east had removed a buffer zone and placed the border in direct contact with tribes such as the Kassites. The greatest blow came in 1595 BCE when Mursilli I of the Hittites (1620-1590 BCE) sacked Babylon and carried away the treasures of the city's temples and scattered the population (as he had done five years earlier, in 1600 BCE, at Ebla). The Kassites followed the Hittites in taking Babylon and re-naming it and they, in turn, were followed by the Assyrians. The Amorite Period in Mesopotamia was ended by 1600 BCE, though it is clear through the distinctive Semitic names of individuals on record that Amorites continued to live in the area as part of the general population. Amorites continued to pose problems for the Neo-Assyrian Empire as late as c. 900-800 BCE. Who these 'Amorites’ were, and whether they were culturally Amorite, is unclear. In time, the cultural Amorites came to be referred to as 'Aramaeans’ and the land they came from as Aram, possibly from the old designation of Eber Nari. Following the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in c. 600 BCE, Amorites no longer appear under the name 'Amorite' in the historical record.

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The Amorites (/ˈæməˌraɪts/; Sumerian MAR.TU; AkkadianTidnum or Amurrūm; EgyptianAmar; Hebrew אמורי ʼĔmōrī; Ancient Greek: Ἀμορραῖοι) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people[1] from ancient Syria who also occupied large parts of southern Mesopotamia from the 21st century BC to the end of the 17th century BC, where they established several prominent city states in existing locations, notably Babylon which was raised from a small administrative town to an independent state and major city. The term Amurru in Akkadian and Sumerian texts refers to them, as well as to their principal deity.

Amorites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amorites​

Akkadian: amurru or tidnum
Sumerian: martu
Egyptian: amar
Hebrew: 'emori

Ancient Semitic people of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, emerging as the dominating people around 2000 BCE, controlling the region until disappearing around 1600 BCE.

It is believed that the Amorites originated in Arabia, coming to Mesopotamia as occupants, and within a century or so continuing further into Syria. During the same era, another emigration wave followed the path south of the Syrian desert, the Amorites emerge as the people to the east of the Hebrews, in Canaan.

While Amorite intrusion to Mesopotamia came by the force of the sword, they appear to have entered thinly populated lands in Canaan.

Amorites came to the forefront following the destruction of Ur of Sumer (the main country of Mesopotamia). They did not win over the original rulers of Mesopotamia by their own capabilities only; Sumerian city-states were weakened by continuous attacks from the land of Elam to the east.

Amorites are mentioned in the Old Testament, they were among the first peoples Moses fought upon returning with the Hebrews from Sinai.

Kingdoms
The Amorites appears to have originally been nomadic, but were both willing and capable to embrace city cultures. Small kingdoms emerged at first, replacing the city-states. The change from city-states to kingdoms represented the most important forced by the Amorites upon Sumer: it allowed the emergence of big farmers, it removed the structures that controlled the freedom of the citizens and allowed trade and the development of a merchant class.

Some of the greatest historical kings of Mesopotamia were Amorite, like Hammurabi of Babylon. Of the main Amorite kingdoms in Mesopotamia were those of Babylon, Larsa, Isin and Ashur, in Syria Mari, Yamkhad and Qatna, in Turkey Alalakh.

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Culture
Culturally and politically, the Amorites would merge with the inhabitants of the lands they took control over, and original cultures seem to have survived well.

 

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Amorites continued​

Definitions
Exactly from what and where the term for "amorite" came is impossible to determine, whether it was the people, a region, or a god? It could be what they called themselves, or what other peoples called them, by theory it could well originate in a derogatory term, or in a very positive one.

But at least over time the term came to designate more than just the ethnic group, like the language and the region corresponding to modern Syria and Palestine. Among the longer lasting Amorite strongholds here were Mari, Ebla and Hazor.

With the general decline of the region from around 1600, the Amorite identity was be lost, peoples mixed and migrated and new cultures emerged. In Assyrian inscriptions from about 1100 BCE, the term Amurru still exists, but then only to designate the geographical region of Syria and Palestine.

Religion
It is not clear what religion the Amorites had before becoming lords of Sumer. There seem to have be cults of the moon-god Sin, Amurru and Marduk, their supreme god. In the Enuma Elish an explanation is given for why Marduk was lifted up to the supreme god, replacing Ea and Enlil. With this myth, legitimacy was given for the Amorite conquest and replacement of national kings.

As Amorites settled and merged with the Sumerians, so did the religious structures merge. Sumerian religion seem to have survived this process quite unaltered. Old myths and cults continued, even if limited amount of artistic production during the Amorite period makes it hard to make clear assements.

The Amorites introduced the god, Nabu, to Mesopotamian religions, where he became a powerful, defined as the son of the supreme god, Marduk.

Amorite religion must be considered part of the Babylonian history of religion, it appears that Amorite had a major impact, but it cannot be clearly determined exactly what was introduced them, and what came from other traditions.

Nabu was the most important contribution by the Amorites to Mesopotamian religions. Here his statue from his temple at Calah. British Museum, London, UK.​

History

2300 BCE:Jericho is settled by the Amorites.
21st century BCE: Heavy immigration of Amorites from Arabia, into the lands of Assyria in the north and Canaan and Lebanon in the west.
Around 2017 BCE: An independent dynasty is established in Isin by Amorite chief, Ishbi-Erra.
Around 1900: The Amorites conquer most of Mesopotamia, and establishes its kings in Babylon.
About 1894: Babylon becomes an independent city state, under the Amorite king, Sumu-abum.
Around 1850: Ebla is rebuilt to a major city by the Amorites, but not to reach quite the level as in the 3rd millennium. Ebla would now only continue as a village.
Around 1830: In Northern Syria, the Amorite kingdom, Yamkhad, is established with Aleppo as its capital.
1792-1750: Hammurabi, the most famous Amorite ruler, king of Babylonia.
Ca. 1595: Hittites attack and largely destroys Babylon, ending the Amorite dynasty ruling here.
Around 1100: A people called Amorites conquers Padam-Aram in Harran.

Amorites - LookLex Encyclopaedia

For some reason I could not post the entire article in post 4 as I wanted. There is so much to cover that I think that I have entered enemy territory and now can't find a way out.

 

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Assyria
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Assyria was the region in the Near East which, under the Neo-Assyrian Empire, reached from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) through Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and down through Egypt. The empire began modestly at the city of Ashur (known as Subartu to the Sumerians), located in Mesopotamia north-east of Babylon, where merchants who traded in Anatolia became increasingly wealthy, and that affluence allowed for the growth and prosperity of the city. According to one interpretation of passages in the biblical Book of Genesis, Ashur was founded by a man named Ashur son of Shem, son of Noah, after the Great Flood, who then went on to found the other important Assyrian cities. A more likely account is that the city was named Ashur after the deity of that name sometime in the 3rd millennium BCE; the same god's name is the origin for `Assyria'. The biblical version of the origin of Ashur appears later in the historical record after the Assyrians had accepted Christianity, and so it is thought to be a re-interpretation of their early history which was more in keeping with their belief system. The Assyrians were a Semitic people who originally spoke and wrote Akkadian before the easier to use Aramaic language became more popular. Historians have divided the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire into three periods: The Old Kingdom, The Middle Empire, and The Late Empire (also known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire), although it should be noted that Assyrian history continued on past that point, and there are still Assyrians living in the regions of Iran and Iraq, and elsewhere, in the present day. The Assyrian Empire is considered the greatest of the Mesopotamian empires due to its expanse and the development of the bureaucracy and military strategies which allowed it to grow and flourish.​

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THE OLD KINGDOM
Although the city of Ashur existed from the 3rd millennium BCE, the extant ruins of that city date to 1900 BCE which is now considered the date the city was founded. According to early inscriptions, the first king was Tudiya, and those who followed him were known as “kings who lived in tents” suggesting a pastoral, rather than urban, community. Ashur was certainly an important centre of commerce even at this time, however, even though its precise form and structure is unclear. The king

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE GREAT ASSYRIAN CITIES WAS SO COMPLETE THAT, WITHIN TWO GENERATIONS OF THE EMPIRE’S FALL, NO ONE KNEW WHERE THE CITIES HAD BEEN.

Erishum I built the temple of Ashur on the site in c. 1900/1905 BCE, and this has come to be the accepted date for the founding of an actual city on the site although, obviously, some form of city must have existed there prior to that date. The historian Wolfram von Soden writes,

Because of a dearth of sources, very little is known of Assyria in the third millennium…Assyria did belong to the Empire of Akkad at times, as well as to the Third Dynasty of Ur. Our main sources for this period are the many thousand Assyrian letters and documents from the trade colonies in Cappadocia, foremost of which was Kanesh (modern Kultepe) (49-50).

The trade colony of Karum Kanesh (the Port of Kanesh) was among the most lucrative centres for trade in the ancient Near East and definitely the most important for the city of Ashur. Merchants from Ashur traveled to Kanesh, set up businesses, and then, after placing trusted employees (usually family members) in charge, returned to Ashur and supervised their business dealings from there. The historian Paul Kriwaczek notes:

For several generations the trading houses of Karum Kanesh flourished, and some became extremely wealthy – ancient millionaires. However not all business was kept within the family. Ashur had a sophisticated banking system and some of the capital that financed the Anatolian trade came from long-term investments made by independent speculators in return for a contractually specified proportion of the profits. There is not much about today’s commodity markets that an old Assyrian would not quickly recognize (214-215).​

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THE RISE OF ASHUR
The wealth generated from trade in Karum Kanesh provided the people of Ashur with the stability and security necessary for the expansion of the city and so laid the foundation for the rise of the empire. Trade with Anatolia was equally important in providing the Assyrians with raw materials from which they were able to perfect the craft of ironworking. The iron weapons of the Assyrian military would prove a decisive advantage in the campaigns which wouldconquer the entire region of the Near East. Before that could happen, however, the political landscape needed to change. The people known as the Hurrians and the Hatti held dominance in the region of Anatolia, and Ashur, to the north in Mesopotamia, remained in the shadow of these more powerful civilizations. In addition to the Hatti, there were the people known as the Amorites who were steadily settling in the area and acquiring more land and resources. The Assyrian king Shamashi Adad I (1813-1791 BCE) drove the Amorites out and secured the borders of Assyria, claiming Ashur as the capital of his kingdom. The Hatti continued to remain dominant in the region until they were invaded and assimilated by the Hittites in c. 1700. Long before that time, however, they ceased to prove as major a concern as the city to the southwest which was slowly gaining power: Babylon. The Amorites were a growing power in Babylon for at least 100 years when the Amorite king named Sin Muballit took the throne, and, in c. 1792 BCE, his son King Hammurabi ascended to rule and subjugated the lands of the Assyrians. It is around this same time that trade between Ashur and Karum Kanesh ended, as Babylon now rose to prominence in the region and took control of trade with Assyria.
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King Hammurapi at Worship
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Soon after Hammurabi’s death in 1750 BCE, the Babylonian Empire fell apart. Assyria again attempted to assert control over the region surrounding Ashur, but it seems as though the kings of this period were not up to the task. Civil war broke out in the region, and stability was not regained until the reign of the Assyrian king Adasi (c. 1726-1691 BCE). Adasi was able to secure the region and his successors continued his policies but were unable or unwilling to engage in expansion of the kingdom.

THE MIDDLE EMPIRE
The vast Kingdom of Mitanni rose from the area of eastern Anatolia and now held power in the region of Mesopotamia; Assyria fell under their control. Invasions by the Hittites under King Suppiluliuma I broke Mitanni power and replaced the kings of Mitanni with Hittite rulers at the same time that the Assyrian king Eriba Adad I was able to gain influence at the Mitanni (now mainly Hittite) court. The Assyrians now saw an opportunity to assert their own autonomy and began to expand their kingdom outward from Ashur to the regions previously held by the Mitanni. The Hittites struck back and were able to hold the Assyrians at bay until the king Ashur-Uballit I (c.1353-1318 BCE) defeated the remaining Mitanni forces under the Hittite commanders and took significant portions of the region. He was succeeded by two kings who maintained what had been won, but no further expansion was achieved until the coming of King Adad Nirari I (c. 1307-1275 BCE) who expanded the Assyrian Empire to the north and south, driving out the Hittites and conquering their major strongholds. Adad Nirari I is the first Assyrian king about whom anything is known with certainty, because he left inscriptions of his achievements which have survived mostly intact. Further, letters between the Assyrian king and the Hittite rulers have also survived and make it clear that, initially, the Assyrian rulers were not taken seriously by those of other nations in the region until they proved themselves too powerful to resist. The historian Will Durant comments on the rise of the Assyrian Empire writing:

If we should admit the imperial principle – that it is good, for the sake of spreading law, security, commerce and peace, that many states should be brought, by persuasion or force, under the authority of one government – then we should have to concede to Assyria the distinction of having established in western Asia a larger measure and area of order and prosperity than that region of the earth had ever, to our knowledge, enjoyed before (270).​

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THE ASSYRIAN DEPORTATION POLICY
Adad Nirari I completely conquered the Mitanni and began what would become standard policy under the Assyrian Empire: the deportation of large segments of the population. With Mitanni under Assyrian control, Adad Nirari I decided the best way to prevent any future uprising was to remove the former occupants of the land and replace them with Assyrians. This should not be understood, however, as a cruel treatment of captives. Writing on this, the historian Karen Radner states,

The deportees, their labour and their abilities were extremely valuable to the Assyrian state, and their relocation was carefully planned and organised. We must not imagine treks of destitute fugitives who were easy prey for famine and disease: the deportees were meant to travel as comfortably and safely as possible in order to reach their destination in good physical shape. Whenever deportations are depicted in Assyrian imperial art, men, women and children are shown travelling in groups, often riding on vehicles or animals and never in bonds. There is no reason to doubt these depictions as Assyrian narrative art does not otherwise shy away from the graphic display of extreme violence (1).

Deportees were carefully chosen for their abilities and sent to regions which could make the most of their talents. Not everyone in the conquered populace was chosen for deportation and families were never separated. Those segments of the population that had actively resisted the Assyrians were killed or sold into slavery, but the general populaces became absorbed into the growing empire and were thought of as Assyrians. The historian Gwendolyn Leick writes of Adad Nirari I that, “the prosperity and stability of his reign allowed him to engage in ambitious building projects, building city walls and canals and restoring temples” (3). He also provided a foundation for empire upon which his successors would build.​

Assyrian Archers
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ASSYRIAN CONQUEST OF MITANNI & THE HITTITES
His son and successor Shalmaneser I completed the destruction of the Mitanni and absorbed their culture. Shalmaneser I continued his father’s policies, including the relocation of populations, but his son, Tukulti-Ninurta I(c. 1244-1208 BCE), went even further. According to Leick, Tukulti-Ninurta I “was one of the most famous Assyrian soldier kings who campaigned incessantly to maintain Assyrian possessions and influence. He reacted with spectacular cruelty to any sign of revolt” (177). He was also very interested in acquiring and preserving the knowledge and cultures of the peoples he conquered and developed a more sophisticated method of choosing which sort of individual, or community, would be relocated and to which specific location. Scribes and scholars, for example, were chosen carefully and sent to urban centers where they could help catalogue written works and help with the bureaucracy of the empire. A literate man, he composed the epic poem chronicling his victory over theKassite king of Babylon and subjugation of that city and the areas under its influence and wrote another on his victory over the Elamites. He defeated the Hittites at the Battle of Nihriya in c. 1245 BCE which effectively ended Hittite power in the region and began the decline of their civilization. When Babylon made incursions into Assyrian territory, Tukulti-Ninurta I punished the city severely by sacking it, plundering the sacred temples, and carrying the king and a portion of the populace back to Assur as slaves. With his plundered wealth, he renovated his grand palace in the city he had built across from Assur, which he named Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, to which he seems to have retreated once the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His desecration of the temples of Babylon was seen as an offense against the gods (as the Assyrians and Babylonians shared many of the same deities) and his sons and court officials rebelled against him for putting his hand on the goods of the gods. He was assassinated in his palace, probably by one of his sons, Ashur-Nadin-Apli, who then took the throne.​

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TIGLATH PILESER I & REVITALIZATION
Following the death of Tukulti-Ninurta I, the Assyrian Empire fell into a period of stasis in which it neither expanded nor declined. While the whole of the Near East fell into a 'dark age' following the so-called Bronze Age Collapse of c. 1200 BCE, Ashur and its empire remained relatively intact. Unlike other civilizations in the region which suffered a complete collapse, the Assyrians seem to have experienced something closer to simply a loss of forward momentum. The empire certainly cannot be said to have 'stagnated', because the culture, including the emphasis on military campaign and the value of conquest, continued; however, there was no significant expansion of the empire and civilization as it was under Tukulti-Ninurta I.

This all changed with the rise of Tiglath Pileser I to the throne (reigned c. 1115-1076 BCE). According to Leick:

He was one of the most important Assyrian kings of this period, largely because of his wide-ranging military campaigns, his enthusiasm for building projects, and his interest incuneiform tablet collections. He campaigned widely in Anatolia, where he subjugated numerous peoples, and ventured as far as the Mediterranean Sea. In the capital city, Assur, he built a new palace and established a library, which held numerous tablets on all kinds of scholarly subjects. He also issued a legal decree, the so-called Middle Assyrian Laws, and wrote the first royal annals. He was also one of the first Assyrian kings to commission parks and gardens stocked with foreign and native trees and plants (171).​

Tiglath Pileser I
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Tiglath Pileser I revitalized the economy and the military through his campaigns, adding more resources and skilled populations to the Assyrian Empire. Literacy and the arts flourished, and the preservation initiative the king took regarding cuneiform tablets would serve as the model for the later ruler, Ashurbanipal’s, famous library at Nineveh. Upon Tiglath Pileser I’s death, his son, Asharid-apal-ekur, took the throne and reigned for two years during which time he continued his father’s policies without alteration. He was succeeded by his brother Ashur-bel-Kala who initially reigned successfully until challenged by a usurper who threw the empire into civil war. Although the rebellion was crushed and the participants executed, the turmoil allowed certain regions that had been tightly held by Assyria to break free and among these was the area known as Eber Nari (modern day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel), which had been particularly important to the empire because of the well-established sea ports along the coast. The Aramaeans now held Eber Nari and began making incursions from there into the rest of the empire. At this same time, the Amorites of Babylon and the city of Mari asserted themselves and tried to break the hold of the empire. The kings who followed Ashur-bel-Kala (among them, Shalmaneser II and Tiglath Pileser II) managed to maintain the core of the empire around Ashur but were unsuccessful in re-taking Eber Nari or driving the Aramaeans and Amorites completely from the borders. The empire steadily shrank through repeated attacks from outside and rebellions from within and, with no king strong enough to revitalize the military, Assyria again entered a period of stasis in which they held what they could of the empire together but could do nothing else.

THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
The Late Empire (also known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire) is the one most familiar to students of ancient history as it is the period of the largest expansion of the empire. It is also the era which most decisively gives the Assyrian Empire the reputation it has for ruthlessness and cruelty. The historian Kriwaczek writes:

Assyria must surely have among the worst press notices of any state in history. Babylon may be a byname for corruption, decadence and sin but the Assyrians and their famous rulers, with terrifying names like Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser, Sennacherib,Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, rate in the popular imagination just below Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan for cruelty, violence, and sheer murderous savagery (208).

This reputation is further noted by the historian Simon Anglim and others. Anglim writes:

While historians tend to shy away from analogies, it is tempting to see the Assyrian Empire, which dominated the Middle East from 900-612 BC, as a historical forebear of Nazi Germany: an aggressive, murderously vindictive regime supported by a magnificent and successful war machine. As with the German army of World War II, the Assyrian army was the most technologically and doctrinally advanced of its day and was a model for others for generations afterwards. The Assyrians were the first to make extensive use of iron weaponry [and] not only were iron weapons superior to bronze, but could be mass-produced, allowing the equipping of very large armies indeed (12).

While the reputation for decisive, ruthless, military tactics is understandable, the comparison with the Nazi regime is less so. Unlike the Nazis, the Assyrians treated the conquered people they relocated well (as already addressed above) and considered them Assyrians once they had submitted to central authority. There was no concept of a 'master race' in Assyrian policies; everyone was considered an asset to the empire whether they were born Assyrian or were assimilated into the culture. Kriwaczek notes, “In truth, Assyrian warfare was no more savage than that of other contemporary states. Nor, indeed, were the Assyrians notably crueler than the Romans, who made a point of lining their roads with thousands of victims of crucifixion dying in agony” (209). The only fair comparison between Germany in WWII and the Assyrians, then, is the efficiency of the military and the size of the army, and this same comparison could be made with ancient Rome.

These massive armies still lay in the future, however, when the first king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire came to power. The rise of the king Adad Nirari II (c. 912-891 BCE) brought the kind of revival Assyria needed. Adad Nirari II re-conquered the lands which had been lost, including Eber Nari, and secured the borders. The defeated Aramaeans were executed or deported to regions within the heartland of Assyria. He also conquered Babylon but, learning from the mistakes of the past, refused to plunder the city and, instead, entered into a peace agreement with the king in which they married each other’s daughters and pledged mutual loyalty. Their treaty would secure Babylon as a powerful ally, instead of a perennial problem, for the next 80 years.​

Assyrian Soldiers​

MILITARY EXPANSION & THE NEW VIEW OF THE GOD
The kings who followed Adad Nirari II continued the same policies and military expansion. Tukulti Ninurta II (891-884 BCE) expanded the empire to the north and gained further territory toward the south in Anatolia, whileAshurnasirpal II (884-859 BCE) consolidated rule in the Levant and extended Assyrian rule through Canaan. Their most common method of conquest was through siege warfare which would begin with a brutal assault on the city. Anglim writes:

More than anything else, the Assyrian army excelled at siege warfare, and was probably the first force to carry a separate corps of engineers…Assault was their principal tactic against the heavily fortified cities of the Near East. They developed a great variety of methods for breaching enemy walls: sappers were employed to undermine walls or to light fires underneath wooden gates, and ramps were thrown up to allow men to go over the ramparts or to attempt a breach on the upper section of wall where it was the least thick. Mobile ladders allowed attackers to cross moats and quickly assault any point in defences. These operations were covered by masses of archers, who were the core of the infantry. But the pride of the Assyrian siege train were their engines. These were multistoried wooden towers with four wheels and a turret on top and one, or at times two, battering rams at the base (186).

Advancements in military technology were not the only, or even the primary, contribution of the Assyrians as, during this same time, they made significant progress in medicine, building on the foundation of the Sumerians and drawing on the knowledge and talents of those who had been conquered and assimilated. Ashurnasirpal II made the first systematic lists of plants and animals in the empire and brought scribes with him on campaign to record new finds. Schools were established throughout the empire but were only for the sons of the wealthy and nobility. Women were not allowed to attend school or hold positions of authority even though, earlier in Mesopotamia, women had enjoyed almost equal rights. The decline in women’s rights correlates to the rise of Assyrian monotheism. As the Assyrian armies campaigned throughout the land, their god Ashur went with them but, as Ashur was previously linked with the temple of that city and had only been worshipped there, a new way of imagining the god became necessary in order to continue that worship in other locales. Kriwaczek writes:

One might pray to Ashur not only in his own temple in his own city, but anywhere. As the Assyrian empire expanded its borders, Ashur was encountered in even the most distant places. From faith in an omnipresent god to belief in a single god is not a long step. Since He was everywhere, people came to understand that, in some sense, local divinities were just different manifestations of the same Ashur (231).

This unity of vision of a supreme deity helped to further unify the regions of the empire. The different gods of the conquered peoples, and their various religious practices, became absorbed into the worship of Ashur, who was recognized as the one true god who had been called different names by different people in the past but who now was clearly known and could be properly worshipped as the universal deity. Regarding this, Kriwaczek writes:

Belief in the transcendence rather than immanence of the divine had important consequences. Nature came to be desacralized, deconsecrated. Since the gods were outside and above nature, humanity – according to Mesopotamian belief created in the likeness of the gods and as servant to the gods – must be outside and above nature too. Rather than an integral part of the natural earth, the human race was now her superior and her ruler. The new attitude was later summed up in Genesis 1:26: `And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth’ That is all very well for men, explicitly singled out in that passage. But for women it poses an insurmountable difficulty. While males can delude themselves and each other that they are outside, above, and superior to nature, women cannot so distance themselves, for their physiology makes them clearly and obviously part of the natural world…It is no accident that even today those religions that put most emphasis on God’s utter transcendence and the impossibility even to imagine His reality should relegate women to a lower rung of existence, their participation in public religious worship only grudgingly permitted, if at all (229-230).

The Assyrian culture became increasingly cohesive with the expansion of the empire, the new understanding of the deity, and the assimilation of the people from the conquered regions. Shalmaneser III (859-824 BCE) expanded the empire up through the coast of the Mediterranean and received tribute from the wealthy Phoenician cities of Tyreand Sidon. He also defeated the Armenian kingdom of Urartu which had long proved a significant nuisance to the Assyrians. Following his reign, however, the empire erupted in civil war as the king Shamshi Adad V (824-811 BCE) fought with his brother for control. Although the rebellion was put down, expansion of the empire halted after Shalmaneser III. The regent Shammuramat (also famously known as Semiramis who became the mythical goddess-queen of the Assyrians in later tradition) held the throne for her young son Adad Nirari III from c. 811-806 BCE and, in that time, secured the borders of the empire and organized successful campaigns to put down the Medes and other troublesome populaces in the north. When her son came of age, she was able to hand him a stable and sizeable empire which Adad Nirari III then expanded further. Following his reign, however, his successors preferred to rest on the accomplishments of others and the empire entered another period of stagnation. This was especially detrimental to the military which languished under kings like Ashur Dan III and Ashur Nirari V.

THE GREAT KINGS OF THE NEO-ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
The empire was revitalized by Tiglath Pileser III (745-727 BCE) who reorganized the military and restructured the bureaucracy of the government. According to Anglim, Tiglath Pileser III “carried out extensive reforms of the army, reasserted central control over the empire, reconquered the Mediterranean seaboard, and even subjugated Babylon. He replaced conscription [in the military] with a manpower levy imposed on each province and also demanded contingents from vassal states” (14). He defeated the kingdom of Uratu, which had long troubled Assyrian rulers, and subjugated the region of Syria. Under Tiglath Pileser III’s reign, the Assyrian army became the most effective military force in history up until that time and would provide a model for future armies in organization, tactics, training, and efficiency.

King Tiglath-pileser III​

Tiglath Pileser III was followed by Shalmaneser V (727-722 BCE) who continued the king’s policies, and his successor,Sargon II (722-705 BCE) improved upon them and expanded the empire further. Even though Sargon II's rule was contested by nobles, who claimed he had seized the throne illegally, he maintained the cohesion of the empire. Following Tiglath Pileser III’s lead, Sargon II was able to bring the empire to its greatest height. He was followed by Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) who campaigned widely and ruthlessly, conquering Israel, Judah, and theGreek provinces in Anatolia. His sack of Jerusalem is detailed on the 'Taylor Prism', a cuneiform block describing Sennacherib’s military exploits which was discovered in 1830 CE by Britain’s Colonel Taylor, in which he claims to have captured 46 cities and trapped the people of Jerusalem inside the city until he overwhelmed them. His account is contested, however, by the version of events described in the biblical book of II Kings, chapters 18-19, where it is claimed that Jerusalem was saved by divine intervention and Sennacherib’s army was driven from the field. The biblical account does relate the Assyrian conquest of the region, however.

Sennacherib’s military victories increased the wealth of the empire. He moved the capital to Nineveh and built what was known as “the Palace without a Rival”. He beautified and improved upon the city’s original structure, planting orchards and gardens. The historian Christopher Scarre writes,

Sennacherib’s palace had all the usual accoutrements of a major Assyrian residence: colossal guardian figures and impressively carved stone reliefs (over 2,000 sculptured slabs in 71 rooms). Its gardens, too, were exceptional. Recent research by British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has suggested that these were the famous Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Later writers placed the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, but extensive research has failed to find any trace of them. Sennacherib’s proud account of the palace gardens he created at Nineveh fits that of the Hanging Gardens in several significant details (231).

Ignoring the lessons of the past, however, and not content with his great wealth and the luxury of the city, Sennacherib drove his army against Babylon, sacked it, and looted the temples. As earlier in history, the looting and destruction of the temples of Babylon was seen as the height of sacrilege by the people of the region and also by Sennacherib’s sons who assassinated him in his palace at Nineveh in order to placate the wrath of the gods. Although they certainly would have been motivated to murder their father for the throne (after he chose his youngest son, Esarhaddon, as heir in 683 BCE, snubbing them) they would have needed a legitimate reason to do so; and the destruction of Babylon provided them with one.

Stone Monument of Esarhaddon​

His son Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE) took the throne, and one of his first projects was to rebuild Babylon. He issued an official proclamation which claimed that Babylon had been destroyed by the will of the gods owing to the city’s wickedness and lack of respect for the divine. Nowhere in his proclamation does it mention Sennacherib or his role in the destruction of the city but makes clear that the gods chose Esarhaddon as the divine means for restoration: “Once during a previous ruler’s reign there were bad omens. The city insulted its gods and was destroyed at their command. They chose me, Esarhaddon, to restore everything to its rightful place, to calm their anger, and soothe their rage.” The empire flourished under his reign. He successfully conquered Egypt (which Sennacherib had tried and failed to do) and established the empire’s borders as far north as the Zagros Mountains (modern day Iran) and as far south as Nubia (modern Sudan) with a span from west to east of the Levant (modern day Lebanon to Israel) through Anatolia (Turkey). His successful campaigns, and careful maintenance of the government, provided the stability for advances in medicine, literacy, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, and the arts. Durant writes:

In the field of art, Assyria equaled her preceptor Babylonia and in bas-relief surpassed her. Stimulated by the influx of wealth into Ashur, Kalakh, and Nineveh, artists and artisans began to produce – for nobles and their ladies, for kings and palaces, for priests and temples – jewels of every description, cast metal as skilfully designed and finely wrought as on the great gates at Balawat, and luxurious furniture of richly carved and costly woods strengthened with metal and inlaid with gold, silver, bronze, or precious stones (278).

In order to secure the peace, Esarhaddon's mother, Zakutu (also known as Naqia-Zakutu) entered into vassal treaties with the Persians and the Medes requiring them to submit in advance to his successor. This treaty, known as the Loyalty Treaty of Naqia-Zakutu, ensured the easy transition of power when Esarhaddon died preparing to campaign against the Nubians and rule passed to the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE). Ashurbanipal was the most literate of the Assyrian rulers and is probably best known in the modern day for the vast library he collected at his palace at Nineveh. Though a great patron of the arts and culture, Ashurbanipal could be just as ruthless as his predecessors in securing the empire and intimidating his enemies. Kriwaczek writes, “Which other imperialist would, like Ashurbanipal, have commissioned a sculpture for his palace with decoration showing him and his wife banqueting in their garden, with the struck-off head and severed hand of the King of Elam dangling from trees on either side, like ghastly Christmas baubles or strange fruit?” (208). He decisively defeated the Elamites and expanded the empire further to the east and north. Recognizing the importance of preserving the past, he then sent envoys to every point in the lands under his control and had them retrieve or copy the books of that city or town, bringing all back to Nineveh for the royal library.

Ashurbanipal ruled over the empire for 42 years and, in that time, campaigned successfully and ruled efficiently. The empire had grown too large, however, and the regions were overtaxed. Further, the vastness of the Assyrian domain made it difficult to defend the borders. As great in number as the army remained, there were not enough men to keep garrisoned at every significant fort or outpost. When Ashurbanipal died in 627 BCE, the empire began to fall apart. His successors Ashur-etli-Ilani and Sin-Shar-Ishkun were unable to hold the territories together and regions began to break away. The rule of the Assyrian Empire was seen as overly harsh by its subjects, in spite of whatever advancements and luxuries being an Assyrian citizen may have provided, and former vassal states rose in revolt.

King Ashurbanipal​

In 612 BCE Nineveh was sacked and burned by a coalition of Babylonians, Persians, Medes, and Scythians, among others. The destruction of the palace brought the flaming walls down on the library of Ashurbanipal and, although it was far from the intention, preserved the great library, and the history of the Assyrians, by baking hard and burying the clay tablet books. Kriwaczek writes, “Thus did Assyria’s enemies ultimately fail to achieve their aim when they razed Ashur and Nineveh in 612 BCE, only fifteen years after Ashurbanipal’s death: the wiping out of Assyria’s place in history” (255). Still, the destruction of the great Assyrian cities was so complete that, within two generations of the empire’s fall, no one knew where the cities had been. The ruins of Nineveh were covered by the sands and lay buried for the next 2,000 years.

LEGACY OF ASSYRIA
Thanks to the Greek historian Herodotus, who considered the whole of Mesopotamia 'Assyria', scholars have long known the culture existed (as compared to the Sumerians who were unknown to scholarship until the 19th century CE). Mesopotamian scholarship was traditionally known as Assyriology until relatively recently (though that term is certainly still in use), because the Assyrians were so well known through the primary sources of the Greek andRoman writers. Through the expanse of their empire, the Assyrians spread Mesopotamian culture to the other regions of the world, which have, in turn, impacted cultures world-wide up to the present day. Durant writes:

Through Assyria’s conquest of Babylon, her appropriation of the ancient city’s culture, and her dissemination of that culture throughout her wide empire; through the long Captivity of the Jews, and the great influence upon them of Babylonian life and thought; through the Persian and Greek conquests which then opened with unprecedented fullness and freedom all the roads of communication and trade between Babylon and the rising cities of Ionia, Asia Minor, and Greece – through these and many other ways the civilization of the Land between the Rivers passed down into the cultural endowment of our race. In the end nothing is lost; for good or evil, every event has effects forever (264).

Tiglath Pileser III had introduced Aramaic to replace Akkadian as the lingua franca of the empire and, as Aramaic survived as a written language, this allowed later scholars to decipher Akkadian writings and then Sumerian. The Assyrian conquest of Mesopotamia, and the expansion of the empire throughout the Near East, brought Aramaic to regions as near as Israel and as far as Greece and, in this way, Mesopotamian thought became infused with those cultures and a part of their literary and cultural heritage. Following the decline and rupture of the Assyrian empire, Babylon assumed supremacy in the region from 605-549 BCE. Babylon then fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great who founded the Achaemenid Empire (549-330 BCE) which fell to Alexander the Great and, after his death, was part of the Seleucid Empire.

The region of Mesopotamia corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Syria, and part of Turkey was the area at this time known as Assyria and, when the Seleucids were driven out by the Parthians, the western section of the region, formerly known as Eber Nari and then Aramea, retained the name Syria. The Parthians gained control of the region and held it until the coming of Rome in 115 CE, and then the Sassanid Empire held supremacy in the area from 226-650 CE until, with the rise of Islam and the Arabian conquests of the 7th century CE, Assyria ceased to exist as a national entity. Among the greatest of their achievements, however, was the Aramaic alphabet, imported into the Assyrian government by Tiglath Pileser III from the conquered region of Syria. Aramaean was easier to write than Akkadian and so older documents collected by kings such as Ashurbanipal were translated from Akkadian into Aramaic, while newer ones were written in Aramaic and ignored the Akkadian. The result was that thousands of years of history and culture were preserved for future generations, and this is the greatest of Assyria’s legacies.

Assyria - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic kingdom, and empire, of the Ancient Near East, existing as an independent state for a period of approximately six centuries from c. 1250 BC to 612 BC, spanning the Early Bronze Age through to the lateIron Age. For a further thirteen centuries, from the end of the 7th century BC to the mid-7th century AD, it survived as a geo-political entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers, although a number of small Neo-Assyrian states such as Assur,Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra arose at different times between the 1st century BC and late 3rd century AD.

Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeasternTurkey) the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times.

As a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization" which included Sumer, Akkad and much laterBabylonia, Assyria was at the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. At its peak, the Assyrian empire stretched from Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea to Persia (Iran), and from what is now Armenia to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt.

Assyria is named for its original capital, the ancient city of Aššur (a.k.a. Ashur) which dates to c. 2600 BC (located in what is now the Saladin Province of northern Iraq), originally one of a number of Akkadian city states in Mesopotamia. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders, and from the late 24th century BC became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian Semites and Sumerian-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from c. 2334 BC to 2154 BC. Following the fall of the Akkadian Empire c. 2154 BC,[1] and the short lived succeeding Neo-Sumerian Empire which ruled southern Assyria but not the north, Assyria regained full independence.

The history of Assyria proper is roughly divided into three periods, known as Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian. These terms are in wide use in Assyrology and roughly correspond to the early to Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age andEarly Iron Age, respectively. In the Old Assyrian period, Assyria established colonies in Asia Minor and the Levant and, under king Ilushuma, it asserted itself over southern Mesopotamia. From the mid 18th century BC, Assyria came into conflict with the newly created state of Babylonia, which eventually eclipsed the far older Sumero-Akkadian states in the south, such as Ur, Isin, Larsa and Kish.

Assyria experienced fluctuating fortunes in the Old Assyrian period. Assyria became a regionally powerful nation with the Old Assyrian Empire from the late 21st century to the mid 18th century BC. Following this, it found itself under short periods of Babylonian and Mitanni-Hurrian rule in the 18th and 15th centuries BC respectively, and another period of great power occurred with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire (from 1365 BC to 1056 BC), which included the reigns of great kings, such as Ashur-uballit I, Arik-den-ili, Tukulti-Ninurta I and Tiglath-Pileser I. During this period, Assyria overthrew the Mitanni-Empire and eclipsed the Hittite Empire, Egyptian Empire, Babylonia, Elam and Phrygia in the Near East.

Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II from 911 BC,[2] it again became a great power over the next three centuries, overthrowing the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt and conquering Egypt,[2] Babylonia, Elam, Urartu, Armenia, Media, Persia, Mannea, Gutium, Phoenicia/Canaan, Aramea (Syria), Arabia, Israel, Judah, Edom,Moab, Ammon, Samarra, Cilicia, Cyprus, Chaldea, Nabatea, Commagene, Dilmun, Libya, the Hurrians, Sutu and Neo-Hittites, driving the Ethiopians, Kushites andNubians from Egypt,[2] subjugating the Cimmerians and Scythians and exacting tribute from Phrygia, Magan and Punt[clarification needed] among others.[2]

After its fall (between 612 BC and 605 BC), Assyria remained a province and geo-political entity under the Babylonian, Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian,Roman and Sassanid empires until the Arab Islamic invasion and conquest of Mesopotamia in the mid-7th century AD, when it was finally dissolved, after which the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now almost exclusively Eastern Rite Assyrian Christians) gradually became an ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious minority in the traditional Assyrian homelands, surviving there to this day. (see Assyrian continuity).[3]

Assyria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Assyria continued

History​

Around 6500 BCE: First traces of agriculture in this region.
3rd millennium: Immigration of Semitic nomads, whose language becomes the leading one in the region.
— Strong influence from the Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia.
Around 2300: Assyria is part of the Sumer-Akkadian Empire.
Old Assyria
Around 2000: Heavy immigration of the Amorites, a Semitic people from Arabia. Around this time, the Old Assyrian period is defined to begin.
Around 1850: Assyrian merchants colonize parts of central Anatolia.
Around 1810: The Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad gets control over the territory from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean (from western modern Iran to Syria/Lebanon). He establishes an administrative system, dividing the kingdom into districts with couriers bringing information between the different parts.
1760: Shamshi-Adad's son, Ishme-Dagan, is defeated by King Hammurabi of Babylonia, and Assyria once again becomes a province of another Mesopotamian Empire.
Around 1500: Assyria comes under control of the kingdom of Mitanni.
Middle Assyria
Around 1380: Times and fate of Assyria makes the changes by which the smaller city-state is transferred into kingdom; Old Assyrian period shifts into Middle Assyrian period.
Around 1350: Assyria regains its independence from Mitanni under the ruler Ashur-uballit 1. A period of territorial expansions that stretches over 2 centuries starts.
Neo-Assyria
912: Adad-nirari 2 becomes king, with that the start of the Neo-Assyrian period is defined.
Around 910: Adad-nirari 2 conquers the state Nisibis.
884-859: King Ashurnasirpal 2 conducts several campaigns that extend the territory of Assyria. The campaigns led to heavy destruction in the defeated regions. He also establishes Calah as the new capital.
Around 830: King Shalmaneser 3 gets control over the Mediterranean trade routes.
Around 820: Following a revolt in the royal court, a year long civil war starts. This civil war results in a decline of Assyrian power.
Around 745: King Tiglath-Pileser 3 conquers Syria and Israel, and he becomes king of Babylonia. Under him the power of the king grew stronger and an army was established. He conducted a policy of deporting peoples from their homelands in order to reduce their national identity.
722-705: Under Sargon 2, Assyrian territory is extended to southern Anatolia and thePersian Gulf. He also has the population of Israel deported. In order to get better control over his territory, he has Assyria divided into 70 provinces.
Around 717: King Sargon 2 has Dur-Sharrukin built to become his new capital.
689: King Sennacherib destroys Babylon after several attacks. He later makes Ninevehcapital of Assyria.
Around 680: King Esarhaddon has Babylon rebuilt.
671: Esarhaddon conquers Memphis, the capital of Egypt.
627: With the death of king Ashurbanipal, there is a court revolution, which results in heavy weakening of Assyria's power.
614: The Medes conquer Ashur.
612: The Medes and the Babylonians conquers Nineveh, and the Assyrian Empire comes to its final end.

Assyria - LookLex Encyclopaedia

Middle Assyrian Empire (1392 BC–934 BC)​

Map of the Ancient Near East during the Amarna Period(14th century BC), showing the great powers of the day: Egypt (orange), Hatti (blue), the Kassite kingdom of Babylon (black), Assyria (yellow), and Mitanni (brown). The extent of the Achaean/Mycenaean civilization is shown in purple.
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Scholars variously date the beginning of the "Middle Assyrian period" to either the fall of the Old Assyrian kingdom of Shamshi-Adad I, or to the ascension of Ashur-uballit I to the throne of Assyria.

Middle Assyrian Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​

Neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC–609 BC)

Map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its expansions.
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The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 609 BC.[1] Following the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC, Assyria emerged as the most powerful state of the Ancient Near East, eclipsing Babylonia and Egypt.[2][3] The Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Middle Assyrian period of the Late Bronze Age. During this period, Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.[4]

Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the empire began to disintegrate. In 616 BC, Cyaxares king of the Medesmade an alliance with Nabopolassar agaisnt Assyria. At the battle at Harran (609 BC) the Babylonians and Medes an Assyrian-Egyptian alliance, after which Assyria ceased to exist as an independent state.[5]

Neo-Assyrian Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Neo-Babylonian Empire (626 BC–539 BC)

The Neo-Babylonian Empire at its greatest extent
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The Neo-Babylonian Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 626 BC and ended in 539 BC.[1]During the preceding three centuries, Babylonia had been ruled by their fellow Akkadian speakers and northern neighbours, Assyria. A year after the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Assurbanipal, in 627 BC, the Assyrian empire spiralled into a series of brutal civil wars. Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar, a member of the Chaldean tribe which had migrated from the Levant to south eastern Babylonia in the early 9th century BC. In alliance with the Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians, they sacked the city of Nineveh in 612 BC, and the seat of empire was transferred to Babylonia for the first time since the death of Hammurabi in the mid 18th century BC. This period witnessed a general improvement in economic life and agricultural production, and a great flourishing of architectural projects, the arts and science.

The Neo-Babylonian period ended with the reign of Nabonidus in 539 BC.

Neo-Babylonian Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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King Sennacherib and his crown prince Arda-Mullissi after the battle of Lachish in 701 BC. From the palace at Nineveh.

From the palace gate at Calah, with human-headed winged bull and winged lion. 9th century BCE.


Decorations from royal palace at Nineveh.

Assyria - LookLex Encyclopaedia
​

I will try to cover Arabia, Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Horn of Africa etc. later and the numerous other Semitic peoples and their civilizations including some of the main Hamitic ones. It's a big job to even gather little information as there is so much. You learn something new almost each time as well.

 

[XenoEnsi-14]

As many of you might know, what is now the Arab world is the cradle of civilization and home to the oldest civilizations and longest inhabited cities on the planet.

Cradle of civilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of cities by time of continuous habitation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For many millenniums this region was not only the center of the world geographically speaking but also culturally, religiously, financially, technology wise and military wise.

I will now cover some of the indigenous ancient Semitic (among them Arab ones), Hamitic and indigenious language isolate civilizations of the Arab world and MENA region.

Let us start.

Sumer (5550 BC - 1700 BC)​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

​

Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Kuwait) which is generally considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means “land of the civilized kings”. The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”. In the biblical Book of Genesis Sumer is known as Shinar. According to the Sumerian King List, when the gods first gave human beings the gifts necessary for cultivating society, they did so by establishing the cityof Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began.

THE UBAID PERIOD
The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE. This date has been contested in recent years, however, and it now thought that human activity in the area began much earlier. The first settlers were not Sumerians but a people of unknown origin whom archaeologists have termed the Ubaid people (from the excavated mound of al-Ubaid where the artifacts were uncovered which first attested to their existence) or the Proto-Euphrateans (which designates them as earlier inhabitants of the region of the Euphrates River).

MESOPOTAMIANS GENERALLY, AND THE SUMERIANS SPECIFICALLY, BELIEVED THAT CIVILIZATION WAS THE RESULT OF THE GODS’ TRIUMPH OF ORDER OVER CHAOS.
Whoever these people were, they had already moved from a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian one prior to 5000 BCE. Excavations from al-Ubaid and other sites throughout southern Iraq have uncovered stone tools from the Ubaid people such as hoes, knives, and adzes and clay artifacts which included sickles, bricks, painted pottery, and figurines. These people were the first agents of civilization in the region. At what point the people who came to be known as Sumerians entered the area is not known.

THE SUMERIAN KING LIST
According to the Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, “The first ruler of Sumer, whose deeds are recorded, if only in the briefest kind of statement, is a king by the name of Etana of Kish, who may have come to the throne quite early in the third millennium B.C. In the King List he is described as `he who stabilized all the lands’.” The Sumerian King List is a cuneiform document, written by a scribe of the city of Lagash, sometime around 2100 BCE which lists all of the kings of the region, and their accomplishments, in an attempt to show continuity of order in society dating back to the beginning of civilization.

As the Mesopotamians generally, and the Sumerians specifically, believed that civilization was the result of the gods’ triumph of order over chaos, the King List is thought to have been created to legitimize the reign of a king named Utu-Hegal of Uruk (who ruled c. 2100 BCE) by showing him as the most recent in a long line of rulers of the region. Etana is famous from the myth of the man who ascends to heaven on the back of an eagle and, like other kings mentioned in the list (Dumuzi and Gilgamesh among them) was known for superhuman feats and heroism. Utu-Hegal, it is thought, was trying to link himself to such earlier hero-kings through the creation of the King List. Since the Mesopotamians believed that the gods had set everything in motion, and that human beings were created as co-laborers with the gods to maintain order and hold back chaos, the early writers of history in the region concentrated more on the links between the rulers and their gods. Writing down the history of human accomplishments seems to have been considered a matter of little importance for these writers and, as a result, the early history of Sumer has been deduced from the archaeological and geological record more than a written tradition and much information is still unavailable to modern scholars.

Ruins of Ur​

THE RISE OF CITIES
Whenever the Sumerian civilization was first established in the region, by 3600 BCE they had invented the wheel, writing, the sail boat, agricultural processes such as irrigation, and the concept of the city (though China and Indiaalso lay claim to `the first cities’ in the world). It is generally accepted that the first cities in the world rose in Sumer and, among the most important, were Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Larsa, Isin, Adab, Kullah, Lagash, Nippur, and Kish. The city of Uruk is held to be the first true city in the world. It has been noted, again by Kramer, that these names are not Sumerian but come from the Ubaid people and so were founded, at least as villages, much earlier than c. 5000 BCE. Other cities in Sumer were Sippar, Shuruppak, Bad-tibira, Girsu, Umma, Urukag, Nina, and Kissura. All were of varying size and scope with Uruk the largest and most powerful at its prime.

With the establishment of the cities of Sumer, their history unfolds from approximately 5000 BCE to 1750 BCE when “the Sumerians ceased to exist as a people” (Kramer) after Sumer was invaded by the Elamites and Amorites. After the Ubaid Period (c. 5000-4100 BCE) came the Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE) in which cities began to emerge across the landscape and the city of Uruk rose in prominence. Though the period is named for the `first city’ of Uruk, Eridu was considered the first city by the Sumerians themselves, as previously noted. Trade was firmly established with foreign lands at this time and writing evolved from pictograms to cuneiform script. It is thought that trade was the main motivator in the development of writing as there now had to be some means for accurate, long-distance, communication between the merchants of Sumer and their agents abroad. The kingship also arose at this time and the city-states of Sumer came to be ruled by a single monarch who was assisted by a council of elders (which included both men and women). The kings following Etana were Semites, not Sumerians, as attested to by their names such as Enmebaraggesi of Kish. It is not until after the rule of eight kings passed that Sumerian names begin to appear in the King List.

Map of Sumer and Elam​

THE AKKADIAN EMPIRE IN SUMER
The Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) saw the subtle shift from a priest-king (known as an ensi) to a more modern-day concept of `king’ known as a Lugal (`big man’). The city-states of Sumer during this time fought for control of arable land and water rights until the rise of the First Dynasty of Lagash in 2500 BCE. Under their king Eannutum, Lagash became the centre of a small empire which included most of Sumer and parts of neighboringElam. This empire was still extant under the king Lugal-Zage when a young man, who later claimed to have been the king’s gardener, seized the throne. This was Sargon of Akkad who would go on to found the Akkadian Empire (2234-2218 BCE), the first multi-national empire in the world and, it is thought, based on the model set by Eannutum. The Akkadian Empire ruled over the majority of Mesopotamia, including Sumer, until a people known as the Gutians invaded from the north (the area of modern-day Iran) and destroyed the major cities. The Gutian Period (c. 2218-2047 BCE) is considered a dark age in Sumerian history (and Mesopotamian history overall) and the Gutians were universally reviled by Sumerian writers in later histories, most of which consider them a punishment sent by the gods.

THE SUMERIAN RENAISSANCE
The last period in Sumerian history is known as The Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) so named for the Third Dynasty of the city of Ur. This period is also known as The Sumerian Renaissance due to the remarkable advances in culture – touching upon virtually every single aspect of civilized human life – which were made. The kings of Ur, Ur-Nammuand Shulgi, set cultural advancement as the goal of their administrations and maintained a peace which allowed for art and technology to flourish. Whether invented before or during the Ur III Period, the tools, concepts, and technological innovations in place during the Third Dynasty of Ur solidified the Sumerian’s place in history as the creators of civilization as we know it. In Samuel Noah Kramer’s book History Begins at Sumer he lists 39 “firsts’ in history from the region among which are the first schools, the first proverbs and sayings, the first messiahs, the first Noah and the Flood stories, the first love song, the first aquarium, the first legal precedents in court cases, the first tale of a dying and resurrected god, the first funeral chants, first biblical parallels, and first moral ideas. The Sumerians also essentially invented time in that their sexigesimal system of counting (a system based on the number 60) created the 60-second minute and the 60-minute hour. They also divided the night and day into periods of 12 hours, set a limit on a `work day’ with a time for beginning and ending, and established the concept of `days off’ for holidays. The historian Bertman writes, “The hand of Mesopotamia still determines the hourly length of the traditional workday and even the length of our electronic entertainment (half-hour or hour TV shows) when our workday has stopped” (334). Bertman further notes that the modern day practice of checking one’s horoscope comes from ancient Sumer and that the astrological signs one is born under were first noted and named by the ancient Mesopotamians.

A Sumerian Wall Plaque Showing Libation Scenes​

Ur-Nammu wrote the first legal code in Sumer which became the precedent for the much later, and better known, Code of Hammurabi of Babylon. The historian Paul Kriwaczek writes, “Ur-Nammu’s universal legal pronouncements present a good example of the unifying drive of Ur’s kings: the compulsion to regulate every aspect of life” (149). Sumer, under the unifying force of the Third Dynasty of Ur, became a Patrimonial State (“meaning one constructed on the pattern of the patriarchal family ruled by a father figure”, as Kriwaczek notes) in which the monarch served as the father figure who guided his children along a proper path toward prosperity. Ur-Nammu’s son, Shulgi, is considered the greatest of the Neo-Sumerian kings who continued his father’s policies but went further. In an effort to both impress his people, and distinguish himself from his father, Shulgi ran 100 miles (160.9 kilometres) between the religious centre of Nippur and the capital city of Ur and back again – in one day – in order to officiate at the festivals in both cities. Though some have considered the hymn which recounts his achievement as a kingly boast and highly exaggerated, scholars have determined that he could, in fact, have made his famous run and, further, that it was in keeping with the spirit of Shulgi’s rule. Creating a sense of awe and admiration in their subjects seems to have been central to the governing power of the kings of Ur at this time.

SUMER'S DECLINE & LEGACY
Under Shulgi’s reign, a wall was constructed 155 miles long (250 kilometres) to keep out the Semitic-speaking tribes known as the Martu or Tidnum but better known by their biblical name of Amorites. Shulgi’s son, grandson, and great-grandson all renovated and strengthened the wall to keep those they called `the barbarians’ out of Sumer proper but the barrier proved ineffective. The wall could not be properly manned or maintained and, further, was not anchored to any solid barrier at the end points and so invaders could simply follow the wall on the one side to either end point and then walk around it. The forces of neighboring Elam breached the wall and marched on Ur, sacking it and carrying away the king c. 1750 BCE. The Amorites now established themselves in the land but, with the fall of Ur and a severe famine resulting from climate change and the over-use of the land, many migrated for points south. Among these migrating Amorites, it is thought, was Abraham the patriarch who left Ur to settle in the land of Canaan.

Following the Ur III Period and the fall of Ur, many Sumerians migrated north. Sumerian was no longer spoken as a language (though it was still written), having been largely replaced by the Semitic Akkadian, and the Sumerian culture was ended. Their legacy, however, continues in many aspects of civilization which those in the modern day take for granted as always existing. Even so, something as basic as the twenty-four hour day was invented, once upon a time, in Sumer.

Sumer - Ancient History Encyclopedia

The origin of Sumerians is either thought to be in Northern Mesopotamia (Samarra culture) or the Eastern Arabian Littoral region which was part of the Arabian bifacial culture.

See more below.

Sumer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SUMER! SUMER! SUMER!

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Eblaites (3500 BC - 1600 BC)


Ruins of the outer wall and the "Damascus Gate"
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Ebla (Arabic: إبلا‎, modern: تل مرديخ, Tell Mardikh), was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute atell located about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was an important center throughout the third millennium BC and in the first half of the second millennium BC. Its discovery proved the Levantwas a center of ancient, centralized civilization equal to Egypt and Mesopotamia, and ruled out the view that the latter two were the only important centers in the Near East during the early Bronze Age. Karl Moore described the first Eblaite kingdom as the first recorded world power.[1]

Starting as a small settlement in the early Bronze Age (c. 3500 BC), Ebla developed into a trading empire and later into an expansionist power that imposed its hegemony over much of northern and eastern Syria. Its language, Eblaite, is now considered the earliest attested Semitic language after Akkadian. Ebla was destroyed during the 23rd century BC; it was then rebuilt and was mentioned in the records of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The second Ebla was a continuation of the first, ruled by a new royal dynasty. It was destroyed at the end of the third millennium BC, which paved the way for the Amorite tribes to settle in the city, forming the third Ebla. The third kingdom also flourished as a trade center; it became a subject and an ally of Yamhad (modern-day Aleppo) until its final destruction by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1600 BC.

Ebla maintained its prosperity through a vast trading network. Artifacts from Sumer, Cyprus, Egypt and as far asAfghanistan were recovered from the city's palaces. The political organization of Ebla had features different from the Sumerian model. Women enjoyed a special status and the queen had major influence in the state and religious affairs. The pantheon of gods was mainly north Semitic and included deities exclusive to Ebla. The city was excavated starting in 1964, and became famous for the Ebla tablets, an archive of about 20,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated to around 2350 BC.[note 1] Written in both Sumerian and Eblaite and using the cuneiform, the archive has allowed a better understanding of the Sumerian language and provided important information over the political organization and social customs of the mid third millennium BC's Levant.

History
A possible meaning of the word "Ebla" is "white rock", referring to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built.[2][3] Ebla was first settled around 3500 BC;[4][5] its growth was supported by many satellite agricultural settlements. The city benefited from its role as an entrepôt of growing international trade, which probably began with an increased demand for wool in Sumer.[4] Archaeologists designate this early habitation period "Mardikh I"; it ended around 3000 BC.[6] Mardikh I is followed by the first and second kingdoms era between about 3000 and 2000 BC, designated "Mardikh II".[7] I. J. Gelb consider Ebla as part of the Kish civilization, which was a cultural entity of East Semitic-speaking populations that stretched from the center of Mesopotamia to the western Levant.[8]

First Eblaite Kingdom c. 3000 BC–c. 2300 BC ​

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First kingdom
During the first kingdom period between about 3000 and 2300 BC, Ebla was the most prominent kingdom among the Syrian states, especially during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, which is known as "the age of the archives" after the Ebla tablets.[7]

Second Eblaite Kingdom c. 2300 BC–c. 2000 BC

Approximate borders of the second kingdom​

The second kingdom's period is designated "Mardikh IIB2", and spans the period between 2300-2000 BC.[19] The second kingdom lasted until Ebla's second destruction, which occurred anytime between 2050 and 1950 BC, with the 2000 BC dating being a mere formal date.[64][65] The Akkadians under Sargon and his descendant Naram-Sin invaded the northern borders of Ebla aiming for the forests of the Amanus Mountain; the intrusions were separated by roughly 90 years and the areas attacked were not attached to Akkad.[16]

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A new local dynasty ruled the second kingdom of Ebla,[57] but there was continuity with its first kingdom heritage.[66] Ebla maintained its earliest features, including its architectural style and the sanctity of the first kingdom's religious sites.[67] A new royal palace was built in the lower town,[68] and the transition from the archive period is marked only by the destruction of palace "G".[21] Little is known about the second kingdom because no written material have been discovered aside from one inscription dating to the end of the period.[68]

The second kingdom was attested to in contemporaneous sources; in an inscription, Gudea of Lagash asked for cedars to be brought from Urshu in the mountains of Ebla, indicating Ebla's territory included Urshu north ofCarchemish in modern-day Turkey.[69] Texts that dates to the seventh year of Amar-Sin (c. 2040 BC),[note 9] a ruler of the Ur III empire, mention a messenger of the Ensí ("Megum") of Ebla.[note 10][note 11][76] The second kingdom was considered a vassal by the Ur III government,[77] but the nature of the relation is unknown and it included the payment of tribute.[78] A formal recognition of Ur's overlordship appears to be a condition for the right of trade with that empire.[79]

The second kingdom disintegrated toward the end of the 21st century BC,[32] and ended with the destruction of the city by fire, although evidence for the event has only been found outside of the so called "Temple of the Rock", and in the area around palace "E" on the acropolis.[67] The reason for the destruction is not known;[67]according to Astour, it could have been the result of a Hurrian invasion c. 2030 BC,[80] led by the former Eblaite vassal city of Ikinkalis.[note 12][82] The destruction of Ebla is mentioned in the fragmentary Hurro-Hittite legendary epic "Song of Release" discovered in 1983,[83] which Astour considers as describing the destruction of the second kingdom.[84] In the epic, an Eblaite assembly led by a man called "Zazalla" prevents king Meki from showing mercy to prisoners from Ebla's former vassal Ikinkalis,[81] provoking the wrath of the Hurrian storm god Teshub and causing him to destroy the city.[85]

Third Eblaite Kingdom c. 2000 BC–c. 1600 BC
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The third kingdom is designated "Mardikh III"; it is divided into periods "A" (c. 2000–1800 BC) and "B" (c. 1800–1600 BC).[19] In period "A", Ebla was quickly rebuilt as a planned city.[87] The foundations covered the remains of Mardikh II; new palaces and temples were built, and new fortifications were built in two circles—one for the low city and one for the acropolis.[87] The city was laid out on regular lines and large public buildings were built.[88][89] Further construction took place in period "B".[88]

The first known king of the third kingdom is Ibbit-Lim,[90] who described himself as the Mekim of Ebla.[note 13][73] A basalt votive statue bearing Ibbit-Lim's inscription was discovered in 1968; this helped to identify the site of Tell-Mardikh with the ancient kingdom Ebla.[73][92] The name of the king is Amorite in the view of Pettinato; it is therefore probable the inhabitants of third kingdom Ebla were predominantly Amorites, as were most of the inhabitants of Syria at that time.[93]

By the beginning of the 18th century BC, Ebla had become a vassal of Yamhad, an Amorite kingdom centered in Aleppo.[94][95] Written records are not available for this period, but the city was still a vassal during Yarim-Lim III of Yamhad's reign.[88] One of the known rulers of Ebla during this period was Immeya, who received gifts from the Egyptian Pharaoh Hotepibre, indicating the continuing wide connections and importance of Ebla.[96] The city was mentioned in tablets from the Yamhadite vassal city of Alalakh in modern-day Turkey; an Eblaite princess married a son of King Ammitaqum of Alalakh, who belonged to a branch of the royal Yamhadite dynasty.[97][98]

Ebla was destroyed by the Hittite King Mursili I in about 1600 BC.[99] Indilimma was probably the last king of Ebla;[100] a seal of his crown prince Maratewari was discovered in the western palace "Q".[100][101] According to Archi, the "Song of Release" epic describes the destruction of the third kingdom and preserves older elements.[81]
​

Ebla's landmarks
​

Government
Further information: Vizier (Ebla)
The first kingdom government consisted of the king (styled Malikum) and the grand vizier, who headed a council of elders (Abbu) and the administration.[121] The central administration was located in the acropolis. The queen shared the running of affairs of state with the king,[108] the crown prince was involved in internal matters and the second prince was involved in foreign affairs.[108] Most affairs, including military ones, were handled by the vizier and the administration, which consisted of 13 court dignitaries—each of whom controlled between 400 and 800 men forming a bureaucracy with 11,700 people.[121] Each of the four quarters of the lower city was governed by a chief inspector and many deputies.[108] Smaller cities were governed by governors, each of whom was under the authority of the grand vizier.[122]Women received salaries equal to those of men and could accede to important positions and head government agencies.[123]
The second kingdom was a monarchy[78] but little is known about it because of a lack of written records.[68] The third kingdom was a city-state monarchy with reduced importance under the authority of Yamhad.[124]


Ibbit-Lim statue, dated to the third kingdom c. 2000 BC

Seated ruler, dated to the third kingdom, exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art [125]

Prince Maratewari (left), crown prince of king Indilimma

A tablet from the archive

For much more information:

Ebla - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eblaite language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Any trolling will be reported so don't destroy my thread with idiotic remarks or the usual inferiority complexes displayed by a certain nationality here on PDF. Keep it civil or just don't comment.

To be continued at a later period. I still have not even covered 5% of what I want to cover.​

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Phoenicia (3200 BC–539 BC)
​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 02 September 2009

​

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization composed of independent city-states which lay along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea stretching through what is now Syria, Lebannon and northern Israel. The Phoenicians were a great maritime people, known for their mighty ships adorned with horses’ heads in honor of their god of the sea, Yamm, the brother of Mot, the god of death. The island city of Tyre and the city of Sidon were the most powerful states in Phoenicia with Gebal/Byblos and Baalbek as the most important spiritual/religious centers. Phoenician city-states began to take form c. 3200 BCE and were firmly established by c. 2750 BCE. Phoenicia thrived as a maritime trader and manufacturing center from c.1500-332 BCE and was highly regarded for their skill in ship-building, glass-making, the production of dyes, and an impressive level of skill in the manufacture of luxury and common goods.

THE PURPLE PEOPLE
The purple dye manufactured and used in Tyre for the robes of Mesopotamian royalty gave Phoenicia the name by which we know it today (from the Greek Phoinikes for Tyranian Purple) and also accounts for the Phoenicians being known as 'purple people’ by the Greeks (as the Greek historian Herodotus tells us) because the dye would stain the skin of the workers. Herodotus cites Phoenica as the birthplace of the alphabet, stating that it was brought toGreece by the Phoenician Kadmus (sometime before the 8th century BCE) and that, prior to that, the Greeks had no alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is the basis for most western languages written today and their city of Gebal (called by the Greeks 'Byblos’) gave the Bible its name (from the Greek 'Ta Biblia’, the books) as Gebal was the great exporter of papyrus ('bublos’ to the Greeks) which was the paper used in writing in ancient Egypt and Greece. It is also thought that many of the gods of ancient Greece were imported from Phoenicia as there are certain indisputable similarities in some stories concerning the Phoenician gods Baal and Yamm and the Greek deities of Zeus andPoseidon. It is also notable that the battle between the Christian God and Satan as related in the biblical Book of Revelation seems a much later version of the same conflict, with many of the same details, one finds in the Phoenician myth of Baal and Yamm.

THE CITY-STATES OF PHOENICIA FLOURISHED THROUGH MARITIMETRADE BETWEEN C. 1500-322 BCE.
In its time Phoenicia was known as Canaan and is the land referenced in the Hebrew Scriptures to which Moses led the Israelites from Egypt and which Joshua then conquered (according to the biblical books of Exodus and Joshua but uncorroborated by other ancient texts and unsupported by the physical evidence thus far excavated). According to the historian Richard Miles, the people of the land recognized "a shared ethnic identity as Can'nai, inhabitants of the land of Canaan yet, despite a common linguistic, cultural, and religious inheritance, the region was very rarely politically united, with each city operating as a sovereign state ruled over by a king" (26). The city-states of Phoenicia flourished through maritime trade between c. 1500-322 BCE when the major citieswere conquered by Alexander the Great and, after his death, the region became a battleground in the fight between his generals for succession and empire. Artifacts from the region have been found as far away as Britainand as close as Egypt and it is clear that Phoenician luxury goods were highly prized by the cultures with whom they traded.

MIDDLEMEN OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
The Phoenicians were primarily known as sailors who had developed a high level of skill in ship-building and were able to navigate the often turbulent waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Ship building seems to have been perfected at Byblos where the design of the curved hull was first initiated. Richard Miles notes that "over the following centuries, Byblos and other Phoenician states such as Sidon, Tyre, Arvad, and Beirut created an important niche for themselves by transporting luxury goods and bulk raw materials from overseas markets back to the Near east. These new trade routes took in much of the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus, Rhodes, the Cyclades, mainland Greece,Crete, the Libyan coast, and Egypt" (28) but Phoenician sailors were also known to have traveled to Britain and to Mesopotamian ports. Evidence gathered from Phoenician shipwrecks provide modern day archaeologists with first-hand evidence of some of the cargo these ships carried: "There were ingots of copper and tin, as well as storage vessels which are thought to have contained unguents, wine and oil, glass, gold and silver jewellry, precious objects of faience (glazed earthenware), painted pottery tools, and even scrap metal"(Miles, 28). Because their goods were so highly prized, Phoenica was often spared the kinds of military incursions suffered by other regions of the Near East. For the most part, the great military powers preferred to leave the Phoenicians to their trade but that did not mean there was no envy on the part of their neighbors. The Bible refers to the Phoenicians as the "princes of the sea" in a passage from Ezekiel 26:16 in which the prophet seems to predict the destruction of the city of Tyre and seems to take a certain satisfaction in the humbling of those who had previously been so renowned.

Greek and Phoenician Colonization​

However that may be, there is no doubt regarding the popularity of the goods produced in Phoenicia. So extraordinary was the skill of the artists of Sidon in glass-making that it was thought the Sidonians invented glass. They provided the model for the Egyptian manufacture of faience and set the standard for work in bronze and silver. Further, the Phoenicians seem to have developed the art of mass production in that similar artifacts, fashioned in the same way and in large quantities, have been found in the different regions with which the Phoenicians traded. Miles notes, "Favourite motifs included Egyptian magic symbols such as the eye of Horus, the scarab beetle and the solar crescent, and these were thought to protect their wearers from the evil spirits that prowled the world of the living" (30). The Phoenician purple dye, already mentioned above, became the standard adornment of royalty fromMesopotamia, through Egypt, and up through the Roman Empire. All of this was accomplished through the competition between the city-states of the region, the skill of the sailors who transported the goods, and the high art attained by the craftsmen in manufacture of the goods. The competition was particularly keen between the cities of Sidon and Tyre, arguablly the most famous of the city-states of Phoenicia who, along with the merchants of Byblos, carried and transmitted the cultural beliefs and societal norms of the nations they traded with to each other. The Phoenicians, in fact, have been called the `ancient midddlemen' of culture by many scholars and historians because of their role in cultural transferrence.

SIDON & TYRE
The city of Sidon (modern Sidonia, Lebanon) was initially the most prosperous but steadily lost ground to her sister city of Tyre. Tyre formed an alliance with the newly formed Kingdom of Israel which proved very lucrative and further expanded its wealth by decreasing the power of the clergy and more efficiently distributing the wealth to the citizens of the city. Sidon, hoping to form an equally prosperous trade with Israel, attempted to cement trade and alliance through marriage. Sidon was the birthplace of the princess Jezebel who was married to the King of Israel, Ahab, as chronicled in the biblical books of I and II Kings. Jezebel's refusal to relinquish her religion, dignity, and cultural identity to her husband's culture did not sit well with many of his subjects, most notably the Hebrew prophet Elijah who regularly denounced her. Ahab and Jezebel's rule was ended by a coup, inspired by Elijah, in which the general Jehu took control of the army and usurped the throne. Following this, trade relations between Sidon and Israel ceased. Tyre, however, continued to flourish.

Map of the Mediterranean 550 BC​

THE COMING OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
In 334 BCE Alexander the Great conquered Baalbek (re-naming it Heliopolis) and marched on to subdue the cities of Byblos and Sidon in 332 BCE. Upon his arrival at Tyre, the citizens followed the example set by Sidon and submitted peacefully to Alexander's demand for submission. Alexander then wished to offer a sacrifice in the holy temple ofMelqart at Tyre and this the Tyrians could not allow. The religious beliefs of the Tyrians forbade foreigners from sacrificing, or even attending services, in the temple, and so they offered Alexander a compromise whereby he could offer sacrifice in the old city on the mainland but not in the temple on the island complex of Tyre. Alexander found this proposal unacceptable and sent envoys to Tyre demanding their surrender. The Tyrians killed the envoys and threw their bodies over the walls.

At this point Alexander ordered the siege of Tyre and was so determined to take the city that he built a causeway from the ruins of the old city, debris, and felled trees, from the mainland to the island (which, owing to sediment deposits over the centuries is why Tyre is not an island today), and, after seven months, breached the walls and massacred most of the populace. It is estimated that over 30,000 citizens of Tyre were massacred or sold into slavery and only those wealthy enough to properly bribe Alexander were allowed to escape with their lives (besides those who found a way to escape by stealth). After the fall of Tyre, the other city-states followed surrendered to Alexander's rule, thus ending the Phoenician Civilization and ushering in the Hellenistic Age. By 64 CE the disassembled parts of Phoenicia were annexed by Rome and, by 15 CE were colonies of the Roman Empire with Heliopolis remaining an important pilgrimage site which boasted the grandest religious building (the Temple ofJupiter Baal) in all of the Empire, the ruins of which remain well preserved to this day. The most famous legacy of Phoenicia is undoubtably the alphabet but their contribution to the arts, and their role in disemminating the cultures of the ancient world, is equally impressive.

Phoenicia - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Greek and Phoenician Colonization
​

by Jan van der Crabben
published on 26 April 2012

​

Both the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians extensively colonized vast areas of Europe, along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. In doing so, they spread their culture, which strongly influenced the local tribes. For the Greeks, this is called “Hellenization”.

The Greeks mainly focused their colonization efforts on Italy and the Black Sea. Especially Sicily was a major Greek colony, with the bustling trade port Syracus at its center. Greek influence was also felt in Cyprus, and the northernLevant. As these regions were also targeted by Phoenician colonization, the cultures not always mixed in peace, but direct conflict occurred. The probably least known fact is that Greece set up colonies as far north as the Crimea (in modern-day Ukraine), and expeditions to the Caucasus region were not unknown (Jason and the Argonauts comes to mind, stealing the Golden Fleece of Kolchis).

Phoenician colonization was more focused on the western Mediterranean. The probably most prominent and important Phoenician colony is Carthage. From there, Phoenicians set up colonies all along the north African coast and in modern-day Spain. While the Greek colonization was very much concerned with spreading Hellenic culture, the Phoenicians were traders, and more concerned with making money. While many Phoenician colonies disappeared and were taken over by other cultures after the decline of Phoenicia, Carthage outlasted the Phoenician empire… and rose to become an even stronger power in the western Mediterranean, which would eventually bring fear into the citizens of Rome.

Greek and Phoenician Colonization (Illustration) - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Phoenicia Timeline​

• c. 4000 BCE - c. 3000 BCE
  Trade contact between Byblos and Egypt.
• c. 4000 BCE
  Founding of the city of Sidon.
• c. 2900 BCE - c. 2300 BCE
  First settlement of Baalbek.
• c. 2750 BCE
  The city of Tyre is founded.
• c. 1200 BCE
  Sea Peoples invade the Levant.
• 1115 BCE - 1076 BCE
  Reign of Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria who conquers Phoenicia and revitalizes the empire.
• 1100 BCE
  Phoenician alphabet.
• c. 1000 BCE
  Death of Ahiram (or Ahirom) of Byblos, whose sarcophagus bears the oldest inscription of the Phoenician alphabet.
• 1000 BCE
  Phoenician trading colonies in the western Mediterranean.
• c. 1000 BCE
  Height of Tyre's power.
• 813 BCE
  Carthage is founded by Phoenicians.
• 800 BCE - 600 BCE
  Main period of Phoenician colonization.
• c. 750 BCE
  Phoenicians found the colony of Motya on Sicily.
• c. 700 BCE
  Corinthians adopt the trireme from the Phoenicians.
• 351 BCE
  Artaxerxes III sacks Sidon.
• 334 BCE
  Alexander the Great sacks Baalbek and renames it Heliopolis.
• 333 BCE
  Alexander the Great sacks Sidon.
• 332 BCE
  Alexander the Great besieges and conquers Tyre.
• c. 301 BCE - c. 195 BCE
  Tyre, as all other Phoenician cities, belongs to the Ptolemies, rulers of hellenistic Egypt.
• 274 BCE - 271 BCE
  The first Syrian war, marking the beginning of the contest between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids for Phoeniciaand Coele-Syria.
• c. 195 BCE
  After the battle at Panion, the Seleucids finally take the rule of Phoenicia from the Ptolemies. Tyre and the other Phoenician cities will remain in the Seleucid power until the Roman conquest of Syria.
• 64 BCE
  Tyre becomes a Roman colony.
• 38 BCE
  Parts of Cilicia and Chalcis are given to Cleopatra; later, she is allowed to govern, as vassal, parts of Phoenicia, Judaea (cordial relations with king Herod), Cyrenaica, and Crete.
  
  Phoenicia Timeline - Ancient History Encyclopedia

 

[Saif al-Arab]

The Phoenician Alphabet and Language
​

by Thamis
published on 18 January 2012

Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Very little is known about the Canaanite language, except what can be gathered from the El-Amarna letters written by Canaanite kings to Pharaohs Amenhopis III (1402-1364 BC) and Akhenaton (1364-1347 BC). It appears that Phoenician language, culture, and writing was strongly influenced by Egypt (which controlled Phoenicia for a long time), as king Rib-Adda of Byblos admits in one of his letters to the pharaoh.

Our knowledge of the Phoenician language is based on the few extant written texts in Phoenician. Before circa 1000 BC Phoenician was written using cuneiform symbols that were common across Mesopotamia. The first signs of the Phoenician alphabet found at Byblos are clearly derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and not from cuneiform. The twenty-two Phoenician letters are simplifications of Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols, which took on a standardized form at the end of the 12th century BC. Like Hebrew and Arabic, Phoenician was written from right to left, and vowels were omitted (which makes deciphering Phoenician even harder).

By 1000 BC the Phoenician and Hebrew languages had become distinct from Aramaic, which was spoken in Canaan. To give a few examples, the "ha-" prefix is used in both Phoenician and Hebrew to indicate a determinate noun, while in Aramaic the "-a" suffix is used. The pronoun for the first person is "ānōkī" while in Aramaic it is "anā" (as it is in modern Arabic). The word for "son" is "bar" in Aramaic but "ben" is Phoenician and Hebrew. Nonetheless there are differences between Hebrew and Phoenician: The verbs for "to be" and "to do" differ and the long "a" sound in Hebrew is pronounced "o" in Phoenician, for example.

The Phoenician writing system is, by virtue of being an alphabet, simple and easy to learn, and also very adaptable to other languages, quite unlike cuneiform or hieroglyphics. In the 9th century the Aramaeans had adopted the Phoenician alphabet, added symbols for the initial "aleph" and for long vowels. This Aramaic alphabet eventually turned into modern Arabic. By the 8th century BC, texts written in the Phoenician alphabet whose authors were probably not Phoenician appeared in Cilicia in southern Asia Minor and in northern Syria. Eventually the Greeks, who were in close trading contact with the Levant, adopted the Phoenician alphabet, added vowel sounds, and thus created the Greek alphabet (upon which our modern Latin alphabet is based).​

Phoenician Alphabet
​

The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are consonants, and is described as an abjad,[3] with matres lectionis being used for some vowels in certain late varieties. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia.

The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics [4] and became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was directly derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script. The Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin, the Cyrillic, and the Coptic) was also derived from Phoenician.

As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most of the shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon.

In 2005, UNESCO registered the Phoenician alphabet into the Memory of the World Programme as a heritage of Lebanon.[5]​

Phoenician alphabet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Phoenicia
​

Phoenicia (UK /fɨˈnɪʃə/ or US /fəˈniːʃə/;[2] from the Greek: Φοινίκη, Phoiníkē; Arabic: فينيقية‎, Fīnīqīyah) was an ancient Semitic thalassocratic civilization situated on the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent and centered on the coastline of modern Lebanon. All major Phoenician cities were on the coastline of the Mediterranean, some colonies reaching the Western Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme.[3] They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for the spread of their alphabets, from which almost all modern phonetic alphabets are derived.

Although Egyptian seafaring expeditions had already been made to Byblos to bring back Lebanon Cedars as early as the 3rd millennium BC, continuous contact only occurred in the Egyptian New Empire period. In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani.[4] Much later, in the 6th century BC,Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα (Latinized: khna), a name Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix".[5]

Phoenicia is really a Classical Greek term used to refer to the region of the major Canaanite port towns, and does not correspond exactly to a cultural identity that would have been recognised by the Phoenicians themselves. The term in Greek means 'land of purple', a reference to the valuable murex-shell dye they exported.[6] It is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single ethnicity and nationality. Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to ancient Greece.[7] However, in terms of archaeology, language, life style and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other Semitic cultures of Canaan. As Canaanites, they were unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements.

Each city-state was a politically independent unit. They could come into conflict and one city might be dominated by another city-state, although they would collaborate in leagues or alliances. Though ancient boundaries of such city-centered cultures fluctuated, the city of Tyre seems to have been the southernmost. Sarepta (modern day Sarafand) between Sidon and Tyre is the most thoroughly excavated city of the Phoenician homeland.

The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of alphabets. The Phoenician alphabet is generally held to be the ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. They spoke Phoenician, a Semitic language of theCanaanite subgroup. Its closest living relative is Hebrew, to which it is very similar.[8][9] However, due to the very slight differences in language, and the insufficient records of the time, whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect, or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader language continuum, is unclear. Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to North Africa and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks, who later transmitted it to the Romans.[10] In addition to their many inscriptions, the Phoenicians are believed to have left numerous other types of written sources, but most have not survived.​

Map of Phoenicia and its Mediterranean trade routes


Phoenician sarcophagus at the burial grounds of Antarados, northern Lebanon, 480-450 BC


The Sarcophagus of Ahiram (built 1000 BC) in its current location.


Cadmus fighting the dragon. Side A of a black-figured amphorafrom Eubœa, c. 560 – 550 BC, Louvre.

Phoenicia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Byblos - longest inhabited city in the world

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 02 September 2009
​

Byblos was the ancient Phoenician port city of Gebal (called Byblos by the Greeks) on the coast of the Mediterranean sea in what is, today, Lebanon. According to the historian Durant, “Byblos thought itself the oldest of all cities; the god El had founded it at the beginning of time, and to the end of its history it remained the religious capital of Phoenicia." Because papyrus was one of the principal articles in its trade, the Greeks took the name of the city as their word for book - biblos – and from their word for books named our Bible - ta biblia - which means 'the books’. Byblos is among the cities listed as candidates for the distinction of `oldest city in the world’ as it has been continuously inhabited for over 7,000 years.

ORIGINS
THE EGYPTIANS FLOODED BYBLOS WITH MATERIAL WEALTH BUT ALSO WITH ASPECTS OF THEIR CULTURE AND RELIGION.
The city began as a small fishing village called Gubal or Gebal while the coastal region of the land, which the Greeks named Phoenicia, was known to the inhabitants as Canaan. By 3000 BCE the little village had grown to a prosperous city through trade. The cedars of Lebanon were highly prized by other countries for use in construction and Byblos became the single most important shipping port for timber to Egypt and elsewhere. Byblos was also the first city to perfect ship-building and it is largely due to the craftsmanship of the shipwrights of Byblos that Phoenicians acquired their fame as sailors and "princes of the sea" (as they are referred to in the biblical book of Ezekiel). It was primarily through trade with Egypt that Byblos grew so incredibly wealthy. The Egyptians flooded Byblos with material wealth but also with aspects of their culture and religion.

In the famous Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris, Byblos is cited as the city where Isis located the body of her dead husband in the trunk of a tree which had grown around him after his murder by his brother Set. The Phoenicians of Byblos also exported their own tales concerning religion and it is thought that the stories surrounding war in the heavens and an eternal battle between a great god of good and another deity of evil grew out of the Phoenician myths concerning the eternal war between Baal (god of the sky) and Yamm (god of the sea). This myth may have come from the Egyptian tale of the war between Osiris' son Horus and the dark god Set or transference may have gone from the Phoenicians to the Egyptians. The tale of the war in heaven related in the biblical book of Revelation bears many similarites to both these much older myths in the same way that there are many motifs in the Bible borrowed by the scribes who wrote it from earlier tales of other cultures. So closely knit were the ties between Egypt and Byblos that some historians and scholars have claimed that Byblos was almost an Egyptian colony.​

Map of Phoenicia​

AMORITE, HYKSOS, AND PHOENICIAN BYBLOS
The Amorites burned the city in their invasion of 2150 BCE. After subduing the populace they re-built and settled in the area. Their control of the region ended in 1725 BCE with the invasion of the Hyksos people who ruled until they were driven out by the Egyptians in 1580 BCE. The Egyptians then lay claim to the coast of Canaan.

It is during the period of Egyptian occupation that the Phoenicians developed arguably their most important contribution to the world: their alphabet of 22 characters which replaced cuneiform in written communication. Through trade, the Phoenician alphabet traveled first to Greece around 800 BCE and then spread to other countries through Greek merchants.

DECLINE OF BYBLOS
Between 1100 and 725 BCE Byblos declined in importance as her sister city, Tyre, grew. After the conquest of the region by Alexander the Great, and the destruction of Tyre in 332 BCE, Byblos again prospered and became completely hellenized, adopting Greek culture, dress, and language. During the hellenistic period (330-64 BCE) Byblos became most famous for the production of papyrus which would give it its Greek name. In 64 BCE the region was conquered by the Roman general Pompey the Great and continued as a Roman colony from 64 BCE - 395 CE. The Romans, as usual, improved upon the city they found, ordering the streets and building large temples, baths and civic gardens.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire controlled Byblos from 395-637 CE when the Muslim invaders took the region and drove the Byzantines out. Under Muslim rule, Byblos steadily declined in wealth and importance. Now known as the city of Jbail, the Muslims considered it of so little importance that they did not even bother to re-build the defences they had destroyed in taking the city. The great port was virtually ignored for centuries and provided an easy target for invading Crusaders in 1098 CE. Once the Crusaders had been driven out, the Muslim rulers continued to neglect the city, busying themselves with rule further inland. Byblos was forgotten for centuries until the work of the French historian Ernest Renan brought the city back to light in 1860 CE.

Byblos - Ancient History Encyclopedia
​

Byblos today
Byblos by the sea by Omar Chatriwala, on Flickr​

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Phoenicians and wine


Through their extensive maritime trade network, the Phoenicians played a significant role in spreading viticulture and winemaking throughout the Mediterranean basin.
​

The culture of the ancient Phoenicians was one of the first to have had a significant effect on the history of wine.[1]Phoenicia was a civilization centered in the northern reaches of Canaan along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in what is now Lebanon. Between 1550 BC and 300 BC, the Phoenicians developed amaritime trading culture that expanded their influence from the Levant to North Africa, the Greek Isles, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. Through contact and trade, they spread not only their alphabet but also their knowledge ofviticulture and winemaking, including the propagation of several ancestral varieties of the Vitis vinifera species ofwine grapes.[2]

They either introduced or encouraged the dissemination of wine knowledge to several regions that today continue to produce wine suitable for international consumption. These include modern-day Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.[1] (Though the Phoenicians may have had an indirect effect on the spread of viticulture in France, they are often confused with the Greek Phoceans,[3] founders of the winemaking colony and port of Massilia in 600 BC and conveyors of wine knowledge deeper into the interior.)[1]

The Phoenicians and their Punic descendants of Carthage had a direct influence on the growing winemaking cultures of the ancient Greeks and Romans that would later spread viticulture across Europe.[1] The agricultural treatises of the Carthaginian writer Mago were among the most important early texts in the history of wine to record ancient knowledge of winemaking and viticulture. While no original copies of Mago's or other Phoenician wine writers' works have survived, there is evidence from quotations of Greek and Roman writers such as Columella that the Phoenicians were skilled winemakers and viticulturists.

They were capable of planning vineyards according to favorable climate and topography, such as which side of a slope was most ideal for grape growing, and producing a wide variety of different wine styles ranging from straw wines made from dried grapes to an early example of the modern Greek wine retsina, made with pine resin as an ingredient. The Phoenicians also spread the use of amphoras (often known as the "Canaanite jar") for the transport and storage of wine.[2][4]

Early history in wine trading

The Phoenicians transported wine across the Mediterranean in amphoras, vessels once also known as the "Canaanite jar."​

Historians think it was shortly after the discovery of wine itself, the alcoholic product of fermented grape juice, that cultures realized its value as a trade commodity. Although wild grapes of the Vitis genus could be found throughout the known world and all could be fermented, it took some degree of knowledge and skill to turn these grapes into palatable wine. This knowledge was passed along the trading routes that emerged from the Caucasus and Zagros Mountains down through Mesopotamia and to the Mediterranean, eventually reaching Phoenicia. Specific varieties of grapevines of the V. vinifera species were identified as especially favorable for winemaking, cuttings of which were spread via these trade routes.[2]

In addition to being a valuable trade commodity for personal consumption, wine also began to take on religious and cultural significance. Wine, or chemer as the Phoenicians called it, was associated with various Levantine deities—most notablyEl.[citation needed] Wine was considered an acceptable offering to both gods and kings, increasing its trade value in the ancient world. Around 1000 BC, the Mediterranean wine trade exploded, making the Phoenicians and their extensive maritime trade network prime beneficiaries of the increased demand. The Phoenicians not only traded in wine produced in Canaan but also developed markets for wine produced in colonies and port cities around the Mediterranean Sea.[2]

Expansion and colonization

From their principal settlements in Byblos, Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians began to expand their trade influence to their neighbors and among the first to bring wine to Egypt. From there they expanded from beyond mere trading to establishing colonies of trading cities throughout the Mediterranean. They continued along the southern shores to found Carthage in 814 BC in northern Africa, and from there to the Balearic Islands and the Iberian Peninsula. The Phoenicians were the founders ofMálaga and Cádiz in present-day Spain sometime in the 9th century, though a small outpost may have been established even earlier.[1][5]

The Phoenicians traveled the peninsula's interior, establishing trading routes along the Tagus, Douro, Baetis (Guadalquivir) and Iberus (Ebro) rivers. While it is clear that the Phoenician colonies along the coast had planted vineyards, and the Phoenicians likely traded wine with the tribes along the rivers inland, it is not yet certain how far they took winemaking inland.[1] In Portugal, however, the Phoenicians were known to trade amphoras of wine for local silver and tin.[6]

A recent discovery in the modern-day winemaking region of Valdepeñas in the south central part of what is now Spain, suggests that the Phoenicians brought viticulture further inland. Excavation in Valdepeñas has revealed the remnants of the ancient Iberian town of Cerro de las Cabezas, founded sometime in the 7th century BC. Among the remnants were several examples of Phoenician ceramics, pottery and artifacts, including winemaking equipment.[citation needed]

Ampelographers theorize that the Vitis vinifera pontica vine spread by the Phoenicians across the Mediterranean was an ancestor vine to many of the world's most widely planted white grape varieties.
​

Beyond the Phoenicians' own expansion and colonization, the civilization did much to influence the Greek and Roman civilizations to pursue their own campaigns of expansion. Dealing directly with the Greeks, the Phoenicians taught them not only their knowledge of winemaking and viticulture but also shipbuilding technologies that encouraged the Greeks to expand beyond the Aegean Sea. The wines of Phoenicia had such an enduring presence in the Greek and Roman world that the adjective "Bybline" (from the Phoenician town of Byblos) became a byword denoting wine of high quality.[1]

Spread of grapevines
The most enduring legacy of Phoenicia's era of expansion was the propagation and spread of ancestral grapevines thatampelographers believe eventually gave rise to several modern grape varieties in Europe. One subvariety, known to ampelographers and wine historians as V. vinifera pontica, was brought to Phoenicia from the Caucasus and Anatolia regions. The Phoenicians spread this strain throughout the Mediterranean—most notably to its Iberian colonies. Ampelographers theorize that this vine is the ancestor of many of today's most widely planted white grapes.[1] According to research from the University of California-Davis, the French wine grape Mourvèdre may have been first introduced by the Phoenicians to Barcelona, in the modern-day Spanish wine region of Catalonia, around 500 BC.[7]

Carthage
Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, was the Phoenicians' most successful colony and survived in its Punic form until its destruction in 146 BC by Roman forces at the end of the Punic Wars. The colony shared an indelible association with wine and was described in the 4th century as having countrysides full of grapevines and olives. Carthaginian wine produced from theBagradas river valley was particularly popular.[4]

The city of Carthage also served as a center of knowledge, exemplified by the work of the Punic writer Mago, who consolidated the agricultural and viticultural knowledge of the 3rd- and 2nd-century BC Mediterranean world into a 28-volume set. His writings detailed advanced knowledge of the influence of topography on vineyard production, with recommendations, for example, that the north slope of a hill be planted to shield grapevines from the excessively hot North African sun. The work also discussed winemaking practices, including early examples of "raisin wine" made from dried grapes. Carthage's rival, Rome, indicated the significance of Mago's treatise when the Roman senate issued a decree requesting its translation into Latin. It was among the few works saved from the Carthaginian library when the Romans destroyed the city in 146 BC.[4]

Today there are no surviving remnants of Mago's work or its Latin translation. What is known is documented through quotations of his books by Greek and Roman authors, most notably the Roman Columella.[4]

Phoenicians and wine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sidon​

by Joshua J. Mark

published on 02 September 2009
​

Sidon is the Greek name (meaning 'fishery’) for the ancient Phoenician port city of Sidonia (also known as Saida) in what is, today, Lebannon (located about twenty five miles south of Beirut). Along with the city of Tyre, Sidon was the most powerful city-state of ancient Phoenicia and first manufactured the purple dye which made Tyre famous and was so rare and expensive that the color purple became synonymous with royalty. The area of Sidon was inhabited as early as 4,000 BCE and Homer, in the 8th century, notes the skill of the Sidonians in producing glass. Glass production made Sidon both rich and famous and the city was known for being very cosmopolitan and 'progressive’. The Princess Jezebel, who later would become Queen ofIsrael (as related in the biblical Books of I and II Kings) was the daughter of the King of Sidon, Ethbaal in the 9th century BCE, and married King Ahab of Israel to cement ties between the two kingdoms. The city is mentioned a number of times throughout the Bible and both Jesus and St. Paul are reported to have made visits there. Sidon is considered the 'seat’ of the Phoenician Civilization in that most of the ships which would ply the seas and spread Phoenician culture were launched from this city’s port. Sidon was overthrown during the conquest of Phoenicia byAlexander the Great in 332 BCE and, like the rest of the fractured Phoenician civilization, was eventually absorbed by Rome and, finally, taken by the Arab Muslims.

WEALTH THROUGH TRADE
The city of Sidon grew in wealth through maritime trade. The Phoenicians were known for their skill in ship-building and navigating the wide expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. The historian Richard Miles writes:

As early as the third millenium BC, sailors from the Phoenician city of Byblos had developed ships whose curved hulls were able to meet the challenges of the sea, and were using those craft to deliver cargoes of cederwood to Egypt. Over the following centuries, Byblos and other Phoenician states such as Sidon, Tyre, Arvad, and Beirut created an important niche for themselves by transporting luxury goods and bulk raw materials from overseas markets back to the Near East. (28).

THE POPULARITY OF PHOENICIAN TRADE IS ATTESTED TO BY ARTIFACTS MANUFACTURED AT SIDON WHICH HAVE BEEN FOUND RANGING FROM EGYPT TO BRITAIN.

The popularity of Phoenician trade is attested to by artifacts manufactured at Sidon which have been found ranging from Egypt, throughout Mesopotamia, to Rome and Britain. The Phoenicians have been referred to as the `middlemen' of culture due to the cultural transferrence which accompanied their trade. The goods of Sidon, in particular, were highly prized and the Egyptians are thought to have learned their skill in faience manufacture from the Sidonians. So skillful were the glass makers of Sidon that the invention of glass has been attributed to them. The manufacture of dye, especially the purple dye made from the murex shellfish, produced cloth which was so expensive that only nobility could afford to purchase it and this, of course, contributed greatly to Sidon's wealth. This dye is what gave the Phoenicians their name from the Greeks, Phoinkes, meaning `the purple people' and although it would come to be commonly associated with the city of Tyre, its manufacture was originally at Sidon. Richard Miles states:

The products for which the Phoenician cities would become most renowned were luxuriously embroidered garments and cloth dyed in deepest purple. Their quality would be recognized in ancient literature from the Bible to Homer's Odyssey. The dye was obtained from the hypobranchial glands of two species of mollusc that proliferated in the region. Installations for the production of the dye have been found by archaeologists in a number of Phoenician towns. Although the stench that emanated from the rotting molluscs was so overpowering that the dye factories were located right on the edge of town, production was often on a huge scale, with the mound of discarded mured shells at Sidon measureing over 40 metres [131 feet] high(30).​

LYCIAN SARCOPHAGUS, SIDON
COMPETITION WITH TYRE​

The city flourished as part of a loose confederacy of city-states spread along the coast of the land of Canaan. Although they shared "a common linguistic, cultureal, and religious inheritance, the region was very rarely politically united, with each city operating as a sovereign state ruled over by a king or local dynast" (Miles, 26). This brought Sidon into competition with the other states of Phoenicia for trade and, especially, with the city of Tyre. In the 10th century BCE, the balance of power shifted to Tyre primarily due to the leadership of that city's kings, Abibaal and, after him, his son Hiram. Tyre forged trade agreements with the newly minted kingdom of Israel-Judah and her king David. This agreement made Tyre wealthy and Sidon, trying to compete, entered into their own pacts with the kingdom of Israel including the marriage of the Sidonian princess Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, to King Ahab of Israel (a story famous from the Bible). Jezebel's insistence on maintaining her own religion and personal identity was an affront to a number of Ahab's subjects and, most notably, the prophet Elijah who denounced her. Jezebel and Ahab's rule was ended by a coup by the general Jehu and, with it, Sidonian trade agreements with Israel.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT & SIDON'S DECLINE
Sidon was conquered by a number of different nations, as was the rest of Phoenicia, including the Syrians and the Persians and, finally, Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Having heard of Alexander's exploits, and his campaign to topple Darius of the Persian Empire, the Sidonians surrendered to him without a fight. The historian Worthington writes, "The people in Sidon even went as far as deposing their king, Straton II, because he was Darius's friend" (105). Following Alexander's death, Sidon and the rest of Phoenicia fell under the rule of one of his generals and successors, Seleucus I, founder of the Seleucid Dynasty. The region of Phoenicia, including Sidon of course, became increasingly hellenized during Seleucus' reign and remained so even after 64 BCE when the Roman general Pompey annexed the region to the Roman Empire. When the empire divided, Sidon became part of the eastern half which eventually became the Byzantine Empire. Earthquakes, and other natural disasters, as well as the plague, decimated the region between c. 395 CE and the 7th century CE when the city was taken over by the Muslim Arabs.

Sidon - Ancient History Encyclopedia
​

Tyre​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 02 September 2009​

​

Tyre is an ancient Phoenician port city which, in myth, is known as the birthplace of Europa (who gave Europe its name) and Dido of Carthage (who gave aid to, and fell in love with, Aeneas of Troy). The name means 'rock' and the city consisted of two parts, the main trade centre on an island, and 'old Tyre', about a half mile opposite on the mainland. The old city, known as Ushu, was founded c. 2750 BCE and the trade centre grew up shortly after. In time, the island complex became more prosperous and populated than Ushu and was heavily fortified. The prosperity of Tyre attracted the attention of King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon who lay siege to the city for thirteen years in the 6th century BCE without breaking their defenses. During this siege most of the inhabitants of the mainland city abandoned it for the relative safety of the island city. Ushu became a suburb of Tyre on the mainland and remained so until the coming of Alexander the Great. The Tyrians were known as workers in dye from the shells of the Murex shellfish. This purple dye was highly valued and held royal connotations in the ancient world. It also gave the Phoenicians their name from the Greeks - Phoinikes - which means "purple people". The city-state was the most powerful in all of Phoenicia after surpassing its sister state Sidon. Tyre is referenced in the Bible in the New Testament where it is claimed that both Jesus and St. Paul visited the city and remains famous in military history for Alexander the Great's seige.

TYRE WAS IN ITS GOLDEN AGE AROUND THE 10TH CENTURY BCE AND, IN THE 8TH, COLONIZED OTHER SITES & ENJOYED GREAT PROSPERITY.

TYRE'S GOLDEN AGE
Tyre was in its golden age around the 10th century BCE and, in the 8th, was colonizing other sites in the area and enjoying great wealth and prosperity owing primarily to an allicance withIsrael. The Tyrian alliance and trade agreement with David, King of Israel, was initiated by the King of Tyre, Abibaal who sent the new king timber from the fabled cedars of Lebanon (as Abibaal's son, Hiram, is said to have done for David's son Solomon). This alliance resulted in a very lucrative parternship which benefited both parties. According to the historian Richard Miles, "Commercially, this deal not only gave Tyre privileged access to the valuable markets of Israel, Judaea, and northern Syria, it also provided further opportunities for joint overseas ventures. Indeed, a Tyrian-Israelite expedition travelled to the Sudan and Somalia, and perhaps even as far as the Indian Ocean" (32).

Another development which encouraged the wealth of Tyre seems to have been a religious revolution in the city under the reigns of Abibaal and Hiram which elevated the god known as Melqart (a deified version ofHercules) over the traditional divine couple of the Phoenicians, Baal (also known as El) and Astarte (Asherah). The primacy of Melqart (whose name means `King of the City') drew power away from the priests of the traditionalpantheon of the gods and placed it at the disposal of the palace. Richard Miles notes, "It seems that a desire to bring the temples to heel lay behind the royal decision to replace the traditional chief deities of Tyre with a new god, Melqart"(32). The result was not only an increase in the wealth of the palace but, through a more efficient distribution of that wealth, increased prosperity for the whole of the city.
​

Phoenician Trade Network
​

ALEXANDER THE GREAT & THE SIEGE
The king now, not the priests, was the "bridge between the temporal and celestial worlds, and the needs of the heavenly gods could closely correspond with the political exigencies of the palace" (Miles, 33). This new religious policy encouraged a more closely-knit bond among the people of the city by designating them as set apart from the other city-states of Phoenicia and, so, special in the eyes of their god. Miles writes:

The king even introduced an elaborate new ceremonial to celebrate the annual festival of Melqart. Each spring, in a carefully choreographed festival called the egersis, an effigy of the god was placed on a giant raft before being ritually burnt as it drifted out to sea while hymns were sung by the assembled crowds. For the Tyrians, as for many other ancient Near eastern peoples, the emphasis fell upon the restorative properties of fire, for the god himself was not destroyed but revived by the smoke, and the burning of the effigy thus represented rebirth. To emphasize the importance of the egersis in maintaining the internal cohesion of the Tyrian people, all foreigners had to leave the city for the duration of the ceremony (33-34).

It was this ceremony, and the importance it held for the people, which would bring about Tyre's destruction and the slaughter or enslavement of the populace. In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great arrived at the city, fresh from the subjugation of Sidon, and demanded Tyre's surrender. Following Sidon's lead, the Tyrians acknowledged Alexander's greatness and presented him with gifts. All seemed to be going well and, pleased with their submission, Alexander said he would present a sacrifice in honor of their god in the Temple of Melqart. The Tyrians could not allow this as it would be sacrilegious for a foreigner to present a sacrifice in the holy home of their god and even more so as the ceremony of the egersis was close at hand. The historian Worthington presents what followed: "Azemilk, King of Tyre, proposed a compromise. Tyre would become Alexander's ally, but he should sacrifice on the mainland at Old Tyre, opposite the island. An angry Alexander sent envoys to say this was unacceptable and that the Tyrians had to surrender. They murdered the envoys and threw them off their walls" (105). Alexander then ordered the siege of Tyre.​

Siege of Tyre
​

He dismantled much of the old mainland city of Ushu as well as using fallen debris, rock, and felled trees, filling in the sea between the mainland and the island to create a land bridge for his war machines. Over the centuries since, this caused heavy sedimentation to occur and permanently linked the island to the mainland; which is why Tyre is not an island today. After a siege of seven months, Alexander used his man-made causeway to batter down the walls of Tyre and take the city. Tyre’s 30,000 inhabitants were either massacred or sold into slavery, and the city was destroyed by Alexander in his rage at their having defied him for so long. The fall of Tyre led to the rise of Carthage as the survivors of the siege, who were able to escape Alexander's wrath by bribery or stealth, founded the new city in the north of Africa. Following Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his general Seleucus I took control of the region of Phoenicia, including Tyre, and rebuilt it but the city was again destroyed in 315 BCE by Alexander's rival general Antigonus.

THE COMING OF ROME & TYRE'S DECLINE
The Romans took the ruined city as a colony in 64 BCE, when Pompey annexed the whole of Phoenica to the Roman Empire. Tyre was re-built under the Romans who, ironically, destroyed the city of Carthage the surviving Tyrians had founded. Rome built the roads, monuments, and aquaducts which can still be seen in the modern day and the city flourished under Roman rule but declined after the fall of the empire. It continued on as a port city under the eastern half of Rome, the Byzantine Empire, until the 7th century CE when it was taken in the Muslim Arab conquest of the region.

Tyre - Ancient History Encyclopedia​

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Phoenicia contiued​

Baalbek​

Joshua J. Mark
published on 02 September 2009

​

Baalbek is an ancient Phoenician city located in what is now modern day Lebannon, north of Beirut, in the Beqaa Valley. Inhabited as early as 9000 BCE, Baalbek grew into an important pilgrimage site in the ancient world for the worship of the Phoenician sky-god Baal and his consort Astarte, the Queen of Heaven (the name `Baalbek' means Lord Baal of the Beqaa Valley). The center of the city was a grand temple dedicated to Astarte and Baal and the ruins of this early temple remain today beneath the later Roman Temple of Jupiter Baal.

The cornerstones of the earlier temple have been found to weigh over 100 tons and the retaining wall monoliths weigh, each, 300 tons, leaving present-day archaeologists, scientists and historians mystified as to how the stones were moved, where from, and in what way they could have been manipulated into place. These blocks, and another one mile from Baalbek which weighs over 900 tons, are known today as the Baalbek Stones and have been the subject of much debate, study and conjecture over how they were moved and arranged. Later builders at the site, such as the Romans, used these early stones as the foundations for their own temples but clearly did not move them in any way. The immense weight and mass of these stones has lead to much speculation concerning ancient alien activity at Baalbek and even that the site was an ancient landing pad for spaceships. None of these theories are regarded as substantial by the prevailing scholarly community nor have they ever been.

ALEXANDER THE GREATCONQUERED BAALBEK IN 334 BCE AND RE-NAMED IT HELIOPOLIS, `CITY OF THE SUN'.

Alexander the Great conquered Baalbek in 334 BCE and re-named it Heliopolis, `City of the Sun', the name still in use in 64 BCE when Pompey the Great annexed the region ofPhoenicia for Rome. This was still the designation for the city in 15 BCE when the city became a colony of the Roman Empire. The Romans vastly improved the site with massive building projects, walkways, aqueducts, and roads. Under the reign of the Emperor Septimus Severus (193-211 CE) the grand temple of Jupiter Baal was built and dedicated (the largest and most ornate religious building in the entire history of the Roman Empire) whose impressive ruins may still be seen today.

The Temple Complex at Baalbek​

The city remained an oft-visited pilgrimage site until the legitimization of Christianity in the Roman Empire byConstantine the Great (beginning in 313 CE with the Edict of Milan) after which, avoiding the fate of some pagan sites which were neglected or destroyed, it was Christianized. The Temple of Bacchus, still extant, is larger than theParthenon of Athens and all of the temples of the Roman complex (of Jupiter, Bacchus, Venus, and Mercury) were spared destruction during the rise of Christianity through their use as churches (only the altar of Jupiter was torn down by Theodosius I). The temples continued in their role as Christian places of worship until the coming of the Muslims in 637 CE.

Under Muslim rule (following their victory over the Byzantine forces at the Battle of Yarmouk) the area was re-named Al-Qalaa (the fortress). Walls were strengthened for defense and the temples were fortified. A mosque was built amid the ancient Roman temples while the Christian additions were torn down and destroyed. The Byzantine army sacked the city in 748 CE and, again, in 975 CE but could not hold it and, eventually, having survived the Mongols and further military campaigns, it passed into the Ottoman Empire which largely ignored the city and allowed the ruins to crumble. A series of earthquakes over the centuries further damaged the site and nothing was done in the area of preservation or excavation until 1898 when the German Emperor Wilhelm II visited the area and sent a team of achaeologists to begin work there. Their efforts, along with later international teams, have preserved Baalbeck for future generations.

Bonus info;

According to this list below the Phoenician empire was the 56th biggest empire in the world at its height. 3.4 million km2

List of largest empires - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Carthaginian Empire/Republic 814 BC - 146 BC


Carthage and its dependencies in 264 BC
​

The Carthaginian Republic, also known as the Carthaginian Empire (alternatively "Carthaginian hegemony", or simply "Carthage") was the Phoenician city-state of Carthage and its sphere of influence, which included much of the coast of North Africa as well as substantial parts of coastal Iberia and the islands of the western Mediterranean during the 7th to 3rd centuries BC.[1]

The city, called Qart-ḥadašt (New City)[2] in the Phoenician language, was founded in 814 BC.[3][4] A dependency of the Phoenician state of Tyre at the time, Carthage gained independence around 650 BC and established its political hegemony over other Phoenician settlements throughout the western Mediterranean, this lasting until the end of the 3rd century BC. At the height of the city's prominence, it was a major hub of trade with trading stations extending throughout the region.

For much of its history, Carthage was on hostile terms with the Greeks on Sicily and the Roman Republic, leading to a series of armed conflicts known as the Greek-Punic Wars and Punic Wars. The city also had to deal with the potentially hostile Berbers,[5] the indigenous inhabitants of the area where Carthage was built. In 146 BC, after the third and final Punic War, Carthage was destroyed and then occupied by Roman forces.[6] Nearly all of the other Phoenician city-states and former Carthaginian dependencies subsequently fell into Roman hands.

Ancient Carthage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carthage​

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

​

According to legend, Carthage was founded by the Phoenician Queen Elissa (better known as Dido) sometime around 813 BCE. The city (in modern-day Tunisia, North Africa) was originally known as Kart-hadasht (new city) to distinguish it from the older Phoenician city of Utica nearby. The Greeks called the cityKarchedon and the Romans turned this name into Carthago. Originally a small port on the coast, established only as a stop for Phoenician traders to re-supply or repair their ships, Carthage grew to become the most powerful city in the Mediterranean before the rise of Rome.

A GREAT TRADE CENTRE
After the fall of the great Phoenician city of Tyre to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, those Tyrians who were able to escape fled to Carthage with whatever wealth they had. Since many whom Alexander spared were those rich enough to buy their lives, these refugees landed in the city with considerable means and established Carthage as the new centre of Phoenician trade. The Carthaginians then drove the native Africans from the area, enslaved many of them, and exacted tribute from the rest. From a small town on the coast, the city grew in size and grandeur with enormous estates covering miles of acreage. Not even one hundred years passed before Carthage was the richest city in the Mediterranean. The aristocrats lived in palaces, the less affluent in modest but attractive homes, while tribute and tariffs regularly increased the city’s wealth on top of the lucrative business in trade. The harbour was immense, with 220 docks, gleaming columns which rose around it in a half-circle, and was ornamented with Greek sculpture. The Carthaginian trading ships sailed daily to ports all around the Mediterranean Sea while their navy, supreme in the region, kept them safe and, also, opened new territories for trade and resources through conquest.

Carthage and its Harbour​

CARTHAGE AGAINST ROME
It was this expansion which first brought Carthage into conflict with Rome. When Rome was weaker than Carthage, she posed no threat. The Carthaginian navy had long been able to enforce the treaty which kept Rome from trading in the western Mediterranean. When Carthage took Sicily, however, Rome responded. Though they had no navy and knew nothing of fighting on the sea, Rome built 330 ships which they equipped with clever ramps and gangways (the corvus) which could be lowered onto an enemy ship and secured; thus turning a sea battle into a land battle. The First Punic War (264-241 BCE) had begun. After an initial struggle with military tactics, Rome won a series of victories and finally defeated Carthage in 241 BCE. Carthage was forced to cede Sicily to Rome and pay a heavy war indemnity.

CARTHAGE AGAIN WENT TO WAR WITH ROME WHEN THE GENERAL HANNIBALATTACKED THE CITY OF SAGUNTUM.

Following this war, Carthage became embroiled in what is known as The Mercenary War (241-237 BCE) which started when the Carthaginian army of mercenaries demanded the payment Carthage owed them. This war was finally won by Carthage through the efforts of the general Hamilcar Barca. Carthage suffered greatly from both these conflicts and, when Rome occupied the Carthaginian colonies of Sardinia and Corsica, there was nothing the Carthaginians could do about it. They tried to make the best of their situation by conquering and expanding holdings in Spain but again went to war with Rome when the Carthaginian general Hannibal attacked the city of Saguntum, an ally of Rome. The Second Punic War (218-201 BCE) was fought largely in northern Italy as Hannibal invaded Italy from Spain by marching his forces over the Alps. Hannibal won every engagement against the Romans in Italy. In 216 BCE he won his greatest victory at the Battle of Cannae but, lacking sufficient troops and supplies, could not build on his successes. He was defeated by the Roman general Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama, in North Africa, in 202 BCE and Carthage again sued for peace.

Placed, again, under a heavy war indemnity by Rome, Carthage struggled to pay their debt while also trying to fend off incursions from neighbouring Numidia. Carthage went to war against Numidia and lost. Having only recently paid off their debt to Rome, they now owed a new war debt to Numidia. Rome was not concerned with what Carthage and Numidia were involved with but did not care for the sudden revitalization of the Carthaginian army. Carthage believed that their treaty with Rome was ended when their war debt was paid; Rome disagreed. The Romans felt that Carthage was still obliged to bend to Roman will; so much so that the Roman Senator Cato the Elder ended all of his speeches, no matter what the subject, with the phrase, “Further, I think that Carthage should be destroyed.” In 149 BCE, Rome suggested just that course of action.

Carthage during the Punic Wars​

THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE
A Roman embassy to Carthage made demands to the senate which included the stipulation that Carthage be dismantled and then re-built further inland. The Carthaginians, understandably, refused to do so and the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE) began. The Roman general Scipio Aemilianus besieged Carthage for three years until it fell. After sacking the city, the Romans burned it to the ground, leaving not one stone on top of another. A modern myth has grown up that the Romans forces then sowed the ruins with salt but this story has no basis in fact. It is said that Scipio Aemilianus wept when he ordered the destruction of the city and behaved virtuously toward the survivors.

Utica now became the capital of Rome’s African provinces and Carthage lay in ruin until 122 BCE when Gaius Sepronius Gracchus, the Roman tribune, founded a small colony there. Memory of the Punic wars still being too fresh, however, the colony failed. Julius Caesar proposed and planned the re-building of Carthage and, five years after his death, Carthage rose again. Power now shifted from Utica back to Carthage and it remained an important Roman colony until the fall of the empire.

LATER HISTORY
Carthage rose in prominence as Christianity grew and Augustine of Hippo lived there before coming to Rome. The city continued under Roman influence through the Byzantine Empire (formerly the Eastern Roman Empire) who held it against repeated attacks by the Vandals. In 698 CE, the Muslims defeated the Byzantine forces at the Battle of Carthage, destroyed the city completely, and drove the Byzantines from Africa. They then fortified and developed the neighbouring city of Tunis and established it as the new centre for trade and governorship of the region. Carthage still lies in ruin in modern day Tunisia and remains an important tourist attraction and archaeological site. The outline of the great harbor can still be seen as well as the ruins of the homes and palaces from the time when the city of Carthage ruled the Mediterranean.

Carthage - Ancient History Encyclopedia

The coverage in this thread has just begun so be patient. I will try to cover all the main civilizations, empires, kingdoms etc. in the upcoming weeks. Might even take months depending on my schedule. Other users are of course welcome to contribute.

I will tag the gang once I have covered more ground.

 

[waz]

This is about Arab, Semitic & Hamitic civilizations and ancient kingdoms. All off-topic posts will be deleted."

 

[Bilad al-Haramayn]

Dilmun - Mesopotamian Paradise and Trading Culture on the Persian Gulf​

What Archaeologists and Historians Know of the Ancient Eden of Dilmun​

​

By K. Kris Hirst
Archaeology Expert

Dilmun is the ancient name of a Bronze Age port city and trade center, located in modern-day Bahrain, Tarut Island of Saudi Arabia and Failaka Island in Kuwait. All of these islands hug the Saudi Arabian coastline along the Persian Gulf, an ideal location for international trade connecting Bronze Age Mesopotamia, India and Arabia.

Dilmun is mentioned in some of the earliest Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform records from 3rd millennium BC.

In the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, probably written in the 2nd millennium BC, Dilmun is described as a paradise, where people lived after surviving the Great Flood.

Chronology
While praised for its paradisiacal beauty, Dilmun began its rise in the Mesopotamian trade network during the late 3rd millennium BC, when it expanded to the north.

Dilmun's rise to prominence was as a trading center where travelers could obtain copper, carnelian and ivory which originated in Oman (ancient Magan) and the Indus Valley of Pakistan and India (ancient Meluhha).​

• 2200-2000 BC (Period I) - social elites emerge

• 2150-2050 BC (Ia)- copper industry begins, Qala'at al Bahrain grows to a city with a stone wall

• 2050-2000 (Ib) - emergence of vast mound cemeteries with elite tombs, strong influence from Indus Valley, ~34% population increase in Dilmun

• 2000-1800 (Period II), abandonment of Magan's large central settlements, increase in Barbar temple, large public buildings, city wall around the capital, connection with Amorites (contemporary political power in Mesopotamia)

• 1800-1650 (Period III), Bahrain pretty much abandoned, Failaka in Kuwait continues

Debating Dilmun

Early scholarly debates about Dilmun centered around its location. Cuneiform sources from Mesopotamian and other polities in the region seem to refer to an area of eastern Arabia, including Kuwait, northeastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Howard-Carter has argued that the earliest references to Dilmun point to al-Qurna, near Basrah in Iraq; Kramer believed, at least for a while, that Dilmun referred to the Indus Valley. In 1861, scholar Henry Rawlinson suggested Bahrain. Archaeological and historical evidence has agreed, showing that beginning about 2200 BC, the center of Dilmun was on the island of Bahrain, and its control extended to the adjacent al-Hasa province in what is today Saudi Arabia.

Another debate concerns the complexity of Dilmun. While few scholars would argue that Dilmun was a state, evidence of social stratification is strong, and Dilmun's location as the best port in the Persian Gulf made it an important trading center if nothing more.

Textual References
Dilmun's existence in Mesopotamian cuneiform was identified in the 1880s, by Friedrich Delitzsch and Henry Rawlinson. The earliest records referring to Dilmun are administrative documents in the First Dynasty of Lagash (ca. 2500 BC). They provide evidence that at least some trade existed at the time between Sumer and Dilmun, and that the most important trade item was dates.

Later documents suggest that Dilmun held a key position on trade routes between Magan, Meluhha and other lands: within the Persian Gulf between Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and Magan (present-day Oman) the only suitable harbor is on Bahrain island. Cuneiform texts from southern Mesopotamian rulers from Sargon of Akkad to Nabonidus indicate that they partially or completely controlled Dilmun beginning about 2360 BC.

Copper Industry in Dilmun
Archaeological evidence indicates that there was a substantial copper industry operating on the beaches of Qala'at al-Barhain during Period 1b. Some crucibles held as much as four liters (~4.2 gallons), suggesting the workshop was substantial enough to require an institutional authority operating above the village level. According to historical records, Magan held the copper trade monopoly with Mesopotamia until Dilmun took it over in 2150. In the account of Selmun Ea-nasir, a huge shipment from Dilmun weighed more thann 13,000 minas of copper (~18 metric tonnes, or 18,000 kg, or 40,000 lbs).

There are no copper quarries on Bahrain. Metallurgical analysis showed that some but not all Dilmun's ore came from Oman. Some scholars have suggested the ore originated from the Indus Valley: Dilmun certainly had a connection to them during this period. Cubical weights from the Indus have been found at Qala'at al-Bahrain from the beginning of Period II, and a Dilmun weight standard corresponding to the Indus weights emerged at the same time.

Burials at Dilmun
Early (~2200-2050 BC) Dilmun burial mounds, called Rifa'a type, consist of a pill-box shape, with a crudely built central chamber covered with rock fill forming a low, tabular mound at most 1.5 meters (~5 feet) in height. The mounds are primarily oval in outline, and only vary in that the larger ones had chambers with recesses or alcoves, giving them an L-, T- or H-shape. Grave goods from the early mounds included late Umm an-Nar pottery and Mesopotamian vessels of late Akkadian to Ur III.

Most are located on the central limestone formation of Bahrain and the Dammam dome, and about 17,000 have been mapped to date.

The later (~2050-1800) type of mound is generally conical in form, with a stone-built chamber with capstone slabs covered by a high, conical mound of soil. This type is 2-3 m (~6.5-10 ft) in height and 6-11 m (20-36 ft) in diameter, with a few very large ones.

About 58,000 of the later type of mound have been identified so far, mostly in ten crowded cemeteries containing between 650 to over 11,000 interments. These are spatially restricted, on the western side of the central limestone dome and a rise between the cities of Saar and Janabiyah.

Ring Mounds and Elite Tombs
A small segment of both burial mound types are "ring mounds": mounds encircled by a stone wall. Ring mounds are all limited to the northern slopes of Bahrain's limestone dome. Early types are found alone or in groups of 2-3, located on elevated plateaus in between wadis. Ring mounds increase in size over time between 2200-2050 BC.

The late type of ring mound are only found on the northwestern side of the Aali cemetery.

All of the late mounds with rings are larger than the regular mounds, with mound diameters ranging between 20-52 m (~65-170 ft) and outer ring walls 50-94 m (164-308 ft) in diameter. The original height of the largest known ring mound was 10 m (~33 ft). Several had very large, two-story inner chambers.

Elite tombs are in three separate places, eventually merging into one principal cemetery at Aali. Tombs began to be built higher and higher, with outer ring walls and diameters expanding, reflecting (possibly) growth of a dynastic lineage.

Archaeology
The earliest excavations on Bahrain include those of E.L. Dunnand in 1880, F. B. Prideaux in 1906-1908, and P. B. Cornwall in 1940-1941, among others. The first modern excavations were undertaken at Qala'at al Bahrain by P.V. Glob, Peder Mortensen and Geoffrey Bibby in the 1950s. Recently, Cornwall's collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology have been a focus of study.

Archaeological sites associated with Dilmun include Qala'at al-Bahrain, Saar, Aali Cemetery, all of which are located in Bahrain, and Failaka, Kuwait.

Sources
This Guide to the Dilmun Culture is a part of the About.com guide to Human History, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.

Ashkanani HJ, and Tykot RH. 2013. Interregional Interaction and Dilmun Power in the Bronze Age: A Provenance Study of Ceramics from Bronze Age Sites in Kuwait and Bahrain Using Non-Destructive pXRF Analysis. In: Armitage RA, and Burton JH, editors. Archaeological Chemistry VIII. p 245-267.

Cornwall PB. 1952. Two letters from Dilmun. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 6(4):137-145.

Crawford H. 1997. The site of Saar: Dilmun reconsidered. Antiquity 71(273):701-708.

Eidem J, and Højlund F. 1993. Trade or Diplomacy? Assyria and Dilmun in the Eighteenth Century BC. World Archaeology 24(3):441-448.

Højlund F. 1989. The formation of the Dilmun state and the Amorite tribes. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 19:45-59.

Howard-Carter T. 1981. The tangible evidence for the earliest Dilmun. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 33(3/4):210-223.

Kramer SN. 1944. Dilmun, the Land of the Living. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 96:18-82.

Kramer SN. 1964. The Indus civilization and Dilmun, the Sumerian paradise land. Expedition 6(3):44-52.

Laursen ST. 2009. The decline of Magan and the rise of Dilmun: Umm an-Nar ceramics from the burial mounds of Bahrain, c.2250-2000 BC. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 20(2):134-155.

Lamberg-Karlovsky CC. 1982. Dilmun: Gateway to Immortality. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 41(1):45-50.

Laursen ST. 2008. Early Dilmun and its rulers: new evidence of the burial mounds of the elite and the development of social complexity, c. 2200–1750 BC. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 19(2):156-167.

Morgan CL, Boutin A, Jagani S, and Porter BW. 2010. Old bones, digital narratives: Investigating the Peter B. Cornwall Collection in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum. UC Berkeley Postprints. Berkeley, California: UC Berkeley.

Porter BW, and Boutin AT. 2012. The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project: a first look at the Peter B. Cornwall Collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 23(1):35-49.

Sparavigna AC. 2013. The Symmetries of the Icons on Ancient Seals. International Journal of Sciences 2(08):14-20.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/dterms/qt/Dilmun_2.htm​

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Bahrain Fort by hqasem, on Flickr
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Founded in 2300 BC. It's first foundations were founded by the native and ancient Semitic Dilmun civilization native to Eastern Arabia. It's a World UNESCO Heritage Site today. Other archealogical sites from the Dilmun civilization can be found in Bahrain, KSA and Kuwait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qal'at_al-Bahrain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1192

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22596270


Dilmun Hall - Dilmun's God of Water by Prathap MSK, on Flickr


Plaster/Gypsum painted-Burial Stele- Shakhoura Tylos, 1st cent BC / 1st cent AD. (Courtesy-Sharjah Museums Department) FOR Rym Ghazal story


Gold, fine stones-Necklace-Shakhoura, Tylos, c. 1st Cent.BC. (Courtesy-Sharjah Museums Department) FOR Rym Ghazal story


Chlorite-Stamp Seal-Saar Early Dilmun, c. 2000-1800 BC. (Courtesy-Sharjah Museums Department) FOR Rym Ghazal story

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life...discoveries-from-the-dilmun-graves-in-bahrain
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To be continued later as there is too much information and photos to share. I can only post 8 photos per post.