A report on Assyria, Achaemenid Empire and Akkadian language

Map showing the ancient Assyrian heartland (red) and the extent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BC (orange)

The Achaemenid Empire at its greatest territorial extent under the rule of Darius I (522 BC–486 BC)

Cuneiform writing (Neoassyrian script)
(1 = Logogram (LG) "mix"/syllabogram (SG) ,
2 = LG "moat",
3 = SG ,
4 = SG ,,, ,
5 = SG kam,
6 = SG im,
7 = SG bir)

Head of a female figure, dating to the Akkadian period (c. undefined 2334–2154 BC), found at Assur

Map of the expansion process of Achaemenid territories

The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian.

Ruins of the Old Assyrian trading colony at Kültepe

Cyrus the Great is said, in the Bible, to have liberated the Hebrew captives in Babylon to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honored place in Judaism.

The first known Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual tablet dates from the reign of Rimush. Louvre Museum AO 5477. The top column is in Sumerian, the bottom column is its translation in Akkadian.

Partial relief of Tiglath-Pileser III ((r. undefined – undefined)745–727 BC), under whom the Neo-Assyrian Empire was consolidated, centralized and significantly expanded

The tomb of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire. At Pasargadae, Iran.

Inscription in Babylonian, in the Xerxes I inscription at Van, 5th century BCE

Detail of a stele in the style of the Neo-Assyrian royal steles erected in Assur in the 2nd century AD (under Parthian rule) by the local ruler Rʻuth-Assor

The Achaemenid Empire at its greatest extent, c. 500 BC

Neo-Babylonian inscription of king Nebuchadnezzar II, 7th century BCE

Line-drawing of a royal seal of the Old Assyrian king Erishum I ((r. undefined – undefined)c. undefined 1974–1934 BC). The seated ruler is thought to represent the god Ashur, with Erishum being the bald figure being led towards him.

The Persian queen Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great, sister-wife of Cambyses II, Darius the Great's wife, and mother of Xerxes the Great

Stele of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II ((r. undefined – undefined)883–859 BC)

Map showing events of the first phases of the Greco-Persian Wars

Ruins of one of the entrances of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud (Assyrian capital 879–706 BC), destroyed by the Islamic State in 2015

Greek hoplite and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient kylix, 5th century BC

Stele of Bel-harran-beli-usur, a palace herald, made in the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV ((r. undefined – undefined)783–773 BC)

Achaemenid king fighting hoplites, seal and seal holder, Cimmerian Bosporus.

Stele of Ili-ittija, governor of Libbi-ali, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, Ekallatum, Itu, and Ruqahu, c. undefined 804 BC

Achaemenid gold ornaments, Brooklyn Museum

20th-century illustration of a Neo-Assyrian spearman

Persian Empire timeline including important events and territorial evolution – 550–323 BC

Neo-Assyrian relief depicting some Assyrian individuals in a procession

Relief showing Darius I offering lettuces to the Egyptian deity Amun-Ra Kamutef, Temple of Hibis

Relief depicting Naqi'a, mother of Esarhaddon ((r. undefined – undefined)681–669 BC) and one of the most influential women in Assyrian history

The 24 countries subject to the Achaemenid Empire at the time of Darius, on the Egyptian statue of Darius I.

Old Assyrian cuneiform tablet from Kültepe recording the repayment of a loan, impressed with four different cylinder seals

The Battle of Issus, between Alexander the Great on horseback to the left, and Darius III in the chariot to the right, represented in a Pompeii mosaic dated 1st century BC – Naples National Archaeological Museum

7th-century BC relief depicting Ashurbanipal ((r. undefined – undefined)669–631 BC) and two royal attendants

Alexander's first victory over Darius, the Persian king depicted in medieval European style in the 15th century romance The History of Alexander's Battles

Old Assyrian cuneiform tablet containing an account of a caravan journey

Frataraka dynasty ruler Vadfradad I (Autophradates I). 3rd century BC. Istakhr (Persepolis) mint.

9th-century AD piece of papyrus with Syriac language writing

Dārēv I (Darios I) used for the first time the title of mlk (King). 2nd century BC.

19th-century reconstruction of Nineveh (Assyrian capital 705–612 BC)

Winged sphinx from the Palace of Darius in Susa, Louvre

20th-century illustration of decorative patterns found in ancient Assyrian reliefs and garments

Tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal containing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Volume of annual tribute per district, in the Achaemenid Empire, according to Herodotus.

Early 20th-century archbishop of the Assyrian Church of the East with entourage

Achaemenid tax collector, calculating on an Abax or Abacus, according to the Darius Vase (340–320 BC).

Statue of a praying woman, 25th century BC

Letter from the Satrap of Bactria to the governor of Khulmi, concerning camel keepers, 353 BC

Wall relief probably depicting Ashur, 21st–16th century BC

Relief of throne-bearing soldiers in their native clothing at the tomb of Xerxes I, demonstrating the satrapies under his rule.

Cylinder seal and impression, 14th–13th century BC

Achaemenid king killing a Greek hoplite. c. 500 BC–475 BC, at the time of Xerxes I. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Temple altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I, 13th century BC

Persian soldiers (left) fighting against Scythians. Cylinder seal impression.

Color reconstruction of Achaemenid infantry on the Alexander Sarcophagus (end of 4th century BC).

Glazed tile depicting a king and attendants, 9th century BC

Seal of Darius the Great hunting in a chariot, reading "I am Darius, the Great King" in Old Persian (𐎠𐎭𐎶𐏐𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁𐎴 𐏋, "adam Dārayavaʰuš xšāyaθiya"), as well as in Elamite and Babylonian. The word "great" only appears in Babylonian. British Museum.

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9th century BC

Achaemenid calvalryman in the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia, Altıkulaç Sarcophagus, early 4th century BC.

Statue of Shalmaneser III, 9th century BC

Armoured cavalry: Achaemenid Dynast of Hellespontine Phrygia attacking a Greek psiloi, Altıkulaç Sarcophagus, early 4th century BC.

Reconstitution of Persian landing ships at the Battle of Marathon.

Greek ships against Achaemenid ships at the Battle of Salamis.

Iconic relief of lion and bull fighting, Apadana of Persepolis

Portion of the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, 7th century BC

Achaemenid golden bowl with lioness imagery of Mazandaran

A section of the Old Persian part of the trilingual Behistun inscription. Other versions are in Babylonian and Elamite.

A copy of the Behistun inscription in Aramaic on a papyrus. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the empire.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven wonders of the ancient world, was built by Greek architects for the local Persian satrap of Caria, Mausolus (Scale model)

Reconstruction of the Palace of Darius at Susa. The palace served as a model for Persepolis.

Lion on a decorative panel from Darius I the Great's palace, Louvre

Apadana Hall, Persian and Median soldiers at Persepolis

Lateral view of tomb of Cambyses II, Pasargadae, Iran

Plaque with horned lion-griffins. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Akkadian (, Akkadian: akkadû) was an East Semitic language, now extinct, that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa and Babylonia) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement by Akkadian-influenced Old Aramaic among Mesopotamians by the 8th century BC.

- Akkadian language

Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria.

- Achaemenid Empire

The Achaemenid Empire referred to Assyria as Aθūrā ("Athura").

- Assyria

Under the Achaemenids, Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline.

- Akkadian language

Towards the end of the 6th century BC, the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language went extinct, having towards the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire already largely been replaced by Aramaic as a vernacular language.

- Assyria

In the grand rock-face inscriptions of the kings, the Elamite texts are always accompanied by Akkadian (Babylonian dialect) and Old Persian inscriptions, and it appears that in these cases, the Elamite texts are translations of the Old Persian ones.

- Achaemenid Empire

5 related topics with Alpha

Mesopotamia

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Historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent.

Mesopotamian Marshes at night, southern Iraq; reed house (Mudhif) and narrow canoe (Mashoof) in the water. Mudhif structures have been one of the traditional types of structures, built by the Marsh people of southern Mesopotamia for at least 5,000 years. A carved elevation of a typical mudhif, dating to around 3,300 BCE was discovered at Uruk.

One of 18 Statues of Gudea, a ruler around 2090 BC

After early starts in Jarmo (red dot, circa 7500 BC), the civilization of Mesopotamia in the 7th–5th millennium BC was centered around the Hassuna culture in the north, the Halaf culture in the northwest, the Samarra culture in central Mesopotamia and the Ubaid culture in the southeast, which later expanded to encompass the whole region.

Overview map in the 15th century BC showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream and the states of Mitanni and Hatti upstream.

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.

Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature.

Clay tablet, mathematical, geometric-algebraic, similar to the Euclidean geometry. From Shaduppum Iraq. 2003-1595 BC. Iraq Museum.

Medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur, Iraq.

The Burney Relief, First Babylonian dynasty, around 1800 BC

King Meli-shipak I (1186–1172 BC) presents his daughter to the goddess Nannaya. The crescent moon represents the god Sin, the sun the Shamash and the star the goddess Ishtar.

The Queen's gold lyre from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. C. 2500 BCE. Iraq Museum

Royal Game of Ur, Ancient Mesopotamian board Game.

The Babylonian marriage market by the 19th-century painter Edwin Long

7th-century BC relief depicting Ashurbanipal ((r. undefined – undefined)669–631 BC) and three royal attendants in a chariot.

Campaign in the Mesopotamian Marshes of southern Babylonia during the reign of Ashurbanipal. Showing Assyrian soldiers on boat chasing enemies trying to run away; some are hiding in the reeds

The Standard of Ur; 2600 BC (the Early Dynastic Period III); shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli on wood; height: 21.7 cm, length: 50.4 cm; discovered at the Royal Cemetery at Ur (Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq)

Bronze head of an Akkadian ruler, discovered in Nineveh in 1931, presumably depicting either Sargon of Akkad or Sargon's grandson Naram-Sin.<ref>M. E. L. Mallowan, "The Bronze Head of the Akkadian Period from Nineveh", Iraq Vol. 3, No. 1 (1936), 104-110.</ref>

Striding lions from the Processional Street of Babylon.

$Lamassu, initially depicted as a goddess in Sumerian times, when it was called Lamma, it was later depicted from Assyrian times as a hybrid of a human, bird, and either a bull or lion—specifically having a human head, the body of a bull or a lion, and bird wings, under the name Lamassu.<ref name="GL109">{{cite book |last1=Leick |first1=Dr Gwendolyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_pqEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA109 |title=A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-64102-4 |pages=109–110 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Livius.org">Livius.org</ref>$

Assyrian ornaments and patterns, illustrated in a book from 1920

alt=|Detail of Nebuchadnezzar II's Building Inscription plaque of the Ishtar Gate, from Babylon

alt=|Artist's impression of a hall in an Assyrian palace from The Monuments of Nineveh by Austen Henry Layard, 1853

alt=|A Neo-Assyrian relief of Ashur as a feather robed archer holding a bow instead of a ring (9th-8th century BC)

alt=|The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. The king, surrounded by his royal attendants and a high-ranking official, receives a tribute from Sua, king of Gilzanu (north-west Iran), who bows and prostrates before the king. From Nimrud

alt=|Contemporary artwork depicting Babylon at the height of its stature.

alt=|"Winged genie", Nimrud c. 870 BC, with inscription running across his midriff.

The Ishtar gate was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Pergamon Museum, Berlin

A suggested reconstruction of the appearance of a Sumerian ziggurat

3100 BC) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire.

The regional toponym Mesopotamia (, '[land] between rivers'; بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن Bilād ar-Rāfidayn or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن Bayn an-Nahrayn; miyân rudân; Beth Nahrain "(land) between the (two) rivers") comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος (mesos, 'middle') and ποταμός (potamos, 'river') and translates to '(land) between rivers', likely being a calque of the older Aramaic term, with the Aramaic term itself likely being a calque of the Akkadian birit narim.

Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, Assur and Babylon, as well as major territorial states such as the city of Eridu, the Akkadian kingdoms, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the various Assyrian empires.

Neo-Assyrian Empire

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Approximate map of the preceding Middle Assyrian Empire at its height in the 13th century BC

Assyrian borders and campaigns under Ashur-dan II ((r. undefined – undefined)934–912 BC), Adad-nirari II ((r. undefined – undefined)911–891 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta II ((r. undefined – undefined)890–884 BC)

Annals of Tukulti-Ninurta II ((r. undefined – undefined)890–884 BC), recounting one of his campaigns

Stele of Ashurnasirpal II ((r. undefined – undefined)883–859 BC)

Depiction of Shalmaneser III (right) shaking hands with the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I (left)

Stele of Shamshi-Adad V ((r. undefined – undefined)824–811 BC)

Stele of Bel-harran-beli-usur, a palace herald, made in the reign of Shalmaneser IV ((r. undefined – undefined)783–773 BC)

Partial relief depicting Tiglath-Pileser III ((r. undefined – undefined)745–727 BC)

20th-century illustration of Tiglath-Pileser III's capture of Damascus

The Neo-Assyrian Empire at the start (purple) and end (blue) of Tiglath-Pileser's reign

Relief depicting Sargon II, founder of the Sargonid dynasty

20th-century reconstruction of Sargon II's palace at Dur-Sharrukin

Line-drawing of a relief depicting Sennacherib ((r. undefined – undefined)705–681 BC) on campaign in a chariot

19th-century reconstruction of Nineveh, made capital under Sennacherib

20th-century illustration of Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon

Esarhaddon ((r. undefined – undefined)681–669 BC), as depicted in his victory stele

20th-century illustration of the Assyrians capturing Memphis, the Egyptian capital

Relief depicting Ashurbanipal ((r. undefined – undefined)669–631 BC) in a chariot, armed with a bow

The Diversion of an Assyrian King (1876) by Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Impression of a seal possibly belonging to the eunuch usurper Sin-shumu-lishir ((r. undefined – undefined)626 BC)

20th-century illustration of the Battle of Carchemish

20th-century illustration of the Fall of Nineveh

Line-drawing of a relief from Nimrud depicting a Neo-Assyrian king

Seal of Hama, queen of Shalmaneser IV ((r. 783 – 773) BC)

Provinces and vassal kingdoms of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at its height in the 7th century BC

Glazed tile from Nimrud depicting a Neo-Assyrian king, accompanied by attendants

Neo-Assyrian relief depicting eunuchs carrying booty from a war

Relief from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh depicting two Assyrian spearmen

Line-drawing of a Neo-Assyrian relief showing soldiers forming a phalanx

Neo-Assyrian relief from Nimrud depicting a tribute-bearer

Line-drawing of a Neo-Assyrian relief depicting a family of deportees leaving a captured Babylonian city in an ox-cart

Relief from the time of Ashurbanipal, depicting Babylonian prisoners under Assyrian guard

Neo-Assyrian cuneiform tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal listing synonyms

Line-drawing of a relief depicting Neo-Assyrian scribes recording the number of enemies slain by soldiers

Line drawing of an Assyrian lion weight once belonging to the king Shalmaneser V ((r. undefined – undefined)727–722 BC). The inscriptions on the weight are in both Akkadian (on the body) and Aramaic (on the base).

Reconstruction of the Library of Ashurbanipal

Relief depicting the gardens of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (left) with a color reconstruction (right). As can be seen on the right side of the relief, the garden featured sophisticated irrigation aqueducts.

A giant lamassu from Sargon II's palace at Dur-Sharrukin

Egyptian papyrus from c. undefined 500 BC containing the Story of Ahikar

Great Semiramis, Queen of Assyria by Cesare Saccaggi

The Defeat of Sennacherib by Peter Paul Rubens

1861 illustration by Eugène Flandin of excavations of the ruins of Dur-Sharrukin

1849 illustration of a relief from Dur-Sharrukin by Eugène Flandin

1852 illustration by Austen Henry Layard of excavations at Nineveh

Portrait of the Assyrian archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam c. undefined 1854

Chart depicting the ideological translatio imperii, i.e. supposed transfer of the right to universal rule, from the Neo-Assyrian Empire to (rival) early modern states claiming the same right

Relief of Sennacherib, depicting an Assyrian soldier beheading a prisoner

Relief of Ashurbanipal, depicting Elamite chiefs having their tongues removed and being flayed alive

Relief of Ashurbanipal, depicting the beheading of the Elamite king Teumman

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state.

The ancient Assyrians primarily spoke and wrote the Assyrian language, a Semitic language (i.e. related to modern Hebrew and Arabic) closely related to Babylonian, spoken in southern Mesopotamia.

Ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus and Ctesias supported a sequence of three world empires and a successive transfer of world domination from the Assyrians to the Medes to the Achaemenids.

Neo-Babylonian Empire

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The last of the Mesopotamian empires to be ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabonidus ((r. undefined – undefined) 556–539 BC)

Map of the Old Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi ((r. undefined – undefined)c. undefined 1792–1750 BC).

Locations of some major Mesopotamian cities.

The so-called "Tower of Babel stele", depicting Nebuchadnezzar II in the top-right and featuring a depiction of Babylon's great ziggurat (the Etemenanki) to his left.

Stele of Nabonidus exhibited in the British Museum. The king is shown praying to the Moon, the Sun and Venus and is depicted as being the closest to the Moon.

Map of the path of Cyrus the Great during his 539 BC invasion of Babylonia.

Illustration of the inhabitants of Babylon deriding the Achaemenid king Darius I during the revolt of Nebuchadnezzar III in 522 BC. From the History of Darius the Great (1900) by Jacob Abbott.

Major cities of Lower Mesopotamia in the 1st century BC.

Partial view of the ruins of Babylon in modern-day Iraq.

9th century BC depiction from a cylinder seal of the Statue of Marduk, Babylon's patron deity Marduk's main cult image in the city.

Cylinder by Nabonidus, commemorating restoration work done on a temple dedicated to the god Sîn in Ur. Exhibited at the British Museum.

Tablet concerning a legal dispute over barley, from Uruk and dated to the reign of Nabonidus (544 BC). Exhibited at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Striding lions from the Processional Street of Babylon. Exhibited at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Neo-Babylonian terracotta figurine depicting a nude woman. Exhibited at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Tablet containing a 6th-century BC Babylonian "map of the world", featuring Babylon at its center. Exhibited at the British Museum.

The Babylonian marriage market, painting by Edwin Long (1875)

Tablet recording a silver payment from the temple dedicated to the god Shamash in Sippar, written during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. Exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Irrigation canal from modern-day Iraq, near Baghdad

Approximate borders of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (red) and neighboring states in the 6th century BC.

Babylonian soldier as represented on the tomb of the Achaemenid king Xerxes I, c. 480 BC.

The Ishtar Gate, one of Babylon's eight inner city gates, was constructed by King Nebuchadnezzar II c. undefined 575 BC. The reconstructed gate is exhibited at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

City plan of Babylon, showcasing the locations of major points of interest. The outer walls and the northern Summer Palace are not shown.

Reconstruction of the Etemenanki, Babylon's great ziggurat.

Mud-brick from the Processional Street of Babylon stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Beginning with Nabopolassar's coronation as King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire and its ruling Chaldean dynasty were short-lived, conquered after less than a century by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC.

Babylonia was founded as an independent state by an Amorite chieftain named Sumu-abum c. undefined 1894 BC. For over a century after its founding, it was a minor and relatively weak state, overshadowed by older and more powerful states such as Isin, Larsa, Assyria and Elam.

This collapse eventually resulted in Babylonia's powerful northern neighbor, the Neo-Assyrian Empire (whose people also spoke Akkadian), intervening militarily in 745 BC and incorporating Babylonia into its empire in 729 BC. The Assyrian conquest began a century-long struggle for Babylonian independence against Assyria.

Aramaic

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Semitic language that originated among the Arameans in the ancient region of Syria.

The Carpentras Stele was the first ancient inscription ever identified as "Aramaic". Although it was first published in 1704, it was not identified as Aramaic until 1821, when Ulrich Friedrich Kopp complained that previous scholars had left everything "to the Phoenicians and nothing to the Arameans, as if they could not have written at all".

Syriac inscription at the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church's Major Archbishop's House in Kerala, India

One of the Bar-Rakib inscriptions from Sam'al. The inscription is in the Samalian language (also considered a dialect).

Coin of Alexander the Great bearing an Aramaic language inscription

The Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription (Greek and Aramaic) by the Indian king Ashoka, 3rd century BC at Kandahar, Afghanistan

11th century Hebrew Bible with Targum intercalated between verses of Hebrew text

9th century Syriac Estrangela manuscript of John Chrysostom's Homily on the Gospel of John

Hebrew (left) and Aramaic (right) in parallel in a 1299 Hebrew Bible held by the Bodleian Library

Territorial distribution of Neo-Aramaic languages in the Near East

The scribes of the Neo-Assyrian bureaucracy had also used Aramaic, and this practice was subsequently inherited by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BC), and later by the Achaemenid Empire (539–330 BC).

During the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, Arameans, the native speakers of Aramaic, began to settle in greater numbers, at first in Babylonia, and later in Assyria (Upper Mesopotamia, modern-day northern Iraq, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, and southeastern Turkey (what was Armenia at the time).

The influx eventually resulted in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) adopting an Akkadian-influenced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of its empire.

Babylonia

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Hammurabi (standing), depicted as receiving his royal insignia from Shamash (or possibly Marduk). Hammurabi holds his hands over his mouth as a sign of prayer (relief on the upper part of the stele of Hammurabi's code of laws).

Cylinder seal, ca. 18th–17th century BC. Babylonia

The extent of the Babylonian Empire during the Kassite dynasty

Prism of Sennacherib (705–681 BC), containing records of his military campaigns, culminating with Babylon's destruction. Exhibited at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Babylonian prisoners under the surveillance of an Assyrian guard, reign of Ashurbanipal 668-630 BC, Nineveh, British Museum ME 124788

Panorama view of the reconstructed Southern Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, 6th century BC, Babylon, Iraq

Babylonian soldier of the Achaemenid army, circa 480 BC. Relief of the tomb of Xerxes I.

Old Babylonian Cylinder Seal, hematite. The king makes an animal offering to Shamash. This seal was probably made in a workshop at Sippar.

Man and woman, Old-Babylonian fired clay plaque from Southern Mesopotamia. Sulaymaniyah museum, Sulaymaniyah. Iraq

Medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur, Iraq, 18th century BC. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul

Babylonia (Akkadian:, māt Akkadī) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and parts of Syria.

It was often involved in rivalry with the older state of Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran.

The Chaldean tribe had lost control of Babylonia decades before the end of the era that sometimes bears their name, and they appear to have blended into the general populace of Babylonia even before this (for example, Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II and their successors always referred to themselves as Shar Akkad and never as Shar Kaldu on inscriptions), and during the Persian Achaemenid Empire the term Chaldean ceased to refer to a race of people, and instead specifically to a social class of priests educated in classical Babylonian literature, particularly Astronomy and Astrology.