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Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed from the 21st to the 7th century BCE which conquered and administered most of West Asia from the Assyrian heartland in Upper Mesopotamia. Assyria is called the first true military superpower in human history, and pioneered major inventions and advances in the first libraries and large-scale preservation and accumulation of knowledge, as well as in statecraft, centralised government, bureaucracy, warfare, military organisation, propaganda, art, and architecture.
Assyrian imperial history spans the early Bronze Age to the late Iron Age, from its beginning as small Akkadian settlements in northern Mesopotamia to its zenith and collapse as the largest empire to that time, and is typically divided into the Early Assyrian (c. 2600–2025 BCE), Old Assyrian (c. 2025–1364 BCE), Middle Assyrian (c. 1363–912 BCE), Neo-Assyrian (911–609 BCE), and post-imperial (609 BCE–c. 240 CE) periods. The Assyrian people survive to this day and continue to live and practice their culture in their ancient heartland and in the diaspora.
Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded c. 2600 BCE, but there is no evidence that the city was independent until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, in the 21st century BCE, when a line of independent kings starting with Puzur-Ashur I began ruling the city. Centered in the Assyrian heartland in northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian power fluctuated over time. The city underwent several periods of foreign rule or domination before Assyria rose under Ashur-uballit I in the early 14th century BCE as the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, Assyria was one of the two major Mesopotamian kingdoms, alongside Babylonia in the south, and at times became the dominant power in the ancient Near East. Assyria was at its strongest in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the Assyrian army was the strongest military power in the world and the Assyrians ruled the largest empire then yet assembled in world history, spanning from parts of modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west.
In the late 7th century BCE the Neo-Assyrian Empire, weakened by a period of civil war, fell, conquered by a coalition of the ethno-linguistically near-identical Babylonians, who for some three centuries had lived under Assyrian rule or domination, and of Assyria's erstwhile vassels, the Medes and Scythians. Though Assyria's core urban territory was extensively devastated in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire and though the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire invested few resources in rebuilding it until the reign of the Assyrian originating Nabonidus, ancient Assyrian culture and traditions survived for centuries through the post-imperial period. Assyria experienced a recovery under the Seleucid and Parthian empires (the latter of which saw a number of Assyrian kingdoms arise between the 2nd century BCE and the mid-3rd century CE), it declined again under the Sasanian Empire centuries later, which sacked numerous cities and semi-independent Assyrian territories in the region, including Assur itself.
The remaining Assyrian people, who had survived and preserved their native culture in northern Mesopotamia, were among the first people to accept Christianity in the 1st century CE, traditionally having been evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, one of the Twelve Disciples of Jesus Christ, and by the disciples St. Addai and St. Mari, went on to develop a unique East Syriac rite and establish the Church of the East (which would go on to spread Christianity throughout western, central, southeastern, and eastern Asia). The Ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted at Assur until Assur's final sack in the 3rd century CE, and at certain other holdouts for centuries thereafter. A number of religious and cultural symbols, practices, customs, and artistic styles and genres from ancient Mesopotamian religion and culture continue to be used and repurposed in Syriac Christianity to this day, such as the star of Shamash and the Easter Monday 'gayasa' (a play in the Sumerian disputation genre).
The triumph of ancient Assyria can be attributed not only to its vigorous warrior-monarchs but also to its adeptness in efficiently assimilating and governing conquered territories, using inventive and advanced administrative mechanisms. The developments in warfare and governance introduced by ancient Assyria continued to be employed by subsequent empires and states for centuries. Ancient Assyria also left a legacy of great cultural significance, particularly through the Neo-Assyrian Empire, making a prominent impression in later Assyrian, Greco-Roman, and Hebrew literary and religious traditions.
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