region

Assyria

Open on the map →

History

Assyria was the land on the upper Tigris, in what is now northern Iraq, named after the city and god Ashur. Its heartland was a triangle of some 100 km between Ashur on the west bank, Nineveh opposite modern Mosul and Arbela (Erbil), with Calah (Nimrud) and Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) between them. Genesis says that Asshur "builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah". In the twentieth and nineteenth centuries BC Assyrian merchants kept a trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia whose tablets form the richest archive of the Old Assyrian period; in the fourteenth century Ashur-uballit I made Assyria a kingdom among the great powers.

From the ninth century BC Assyria built the largest empire the Near East had seen. Shalmaneser III fought Ahab the Israelite at Qarqar in 853 BC, and his Black Obelisk shows the tribute of Jehu. Tiglath-pileser III, the Pul of Kings, took a thousand talents of silver from Menahem and in 733–732 BC carried off Gilead and Galilee; Shalmaneser V and Sargon II took Samaria in 722 BC and "carried Israel away into Assyria". Sennacherib took the fortified cities of Judah in 701 BC, as his prism and the Lachish reliefs record, but Jerusalem was spared; Kings tells of the angel who "smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand". Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, whose library was found at Nineveh, conquered Egypt.

For the prophets Assyria is "the rod of mine anger", the instrument of judgement that will itself be judged. Jonah is sent to Nineveh, "that great city", and it repents; Nahum and Zephaniah foretell its ruin. The Babylonian Chronicle records how the Medes and Babylonians took Ashur in 614 BC and Nineveh in 612; the last Assyrian king lost Harran in 610, failed to retake it in 609 and then vanishes from the record, and the Egyptians who had come to his aid were driven from Carchemish in 605. Isaiah nevertheless looks to a day when "Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria".

The Assyrian cities were rediscovered in the 1840s by Botta at Khorsabad and Layard at Nimrud and Nineveh; their reliefs and the tablets of Ashurbanipal's library fill the Louvre and the British Museum. Under the Parthians the land became the kingdom of Adiabene, whose royal house converted to Judaism, and later it became a centre of Syriac Christianity. The Assyrian Christians of Iraq, Syria and the diaspora still bear the name. Nineveh and Nimrud were badly damaged by the Islamic State in 2015–2016.

Scripture: Gen 2:14; Gen 10:11–12; 2 Kgs 15:19–20; 2 Kgs 15:29; 2 Kgs 17:5–6; 2 Kgs 18:13; 2 Kgs 19:35–37; Isa 10:5; Isa 19:23–25; Jonah 1:2; Nah 3:7; Zeph 2:13

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (141)

Gen 2:14

And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

Gen 10:11

Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,

Gen 25:18

And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria: and he died in the presence of all his brethren.

2 Kgs 15:19

And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand.

2 Kgs 15:20

And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.

2 Kgs 15:29

In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.

2 Kgs 16:7

So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.

2 Kgs 16:8

And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king’s house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria.

2 Kgs 16:9

And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.

2 Kgs 16:10

And king Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was at Damascus: and king Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the fashion of the altar, and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof.

2 Kgs 16:18

And the covert for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king’s entry without, turned he from the house of the LORD for the king of Assyria.

2 Kgs 17:3

Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.

2 Kgs 17:4

And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.

2 Kgs 17:5

Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.

2 Kgs 17:6

In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

2 Kgs 17:23

Until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.

2 Kgs 17:24

And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.

2 Kgs 17:26

Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.

2 Kgs 17:27

Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

2 Kgs 18:7

And the LORD was with him; and he prospered whithersoever he went forth: and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not.

2 Kgs 18:9

And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it.

2 Kgs 18:11

And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:

2 Kgs 18:13

Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.

2 Kgs 18:14

And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

2 Kgs 18:16

At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

2 Kgs 18:17

And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field.

2 Kgs 18:19

And Rab-shakeh said unto them, Speak ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?

2 Kgs 18:23

Now therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.

2 Kgs 18:28

Then Rab-shakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria:

2 Kgs 18:30

Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

111 more on the map

King James Version