Middle Assyrian Empire: A Visual History

The Middle Assyrian period (about 1365-1050 BC) began when Ashur-uballit I threw off Mitannian overlordship and wrote to the pharaoh as a great king. Adad-nirari I and Shalmaneser I conquered Mitanni's remains; Tukulti-Ninurta I defeated the Hittites and captured Babylon around 1225 BC, carrying off the statue of Marduk. After a decline, Tiglath-Pileser I (1114-1076) campaigned to the Mediterranean and Lake Van, hunted lions and elephants, and compiled law codes. Aramaean invasions and famine reduced Assyria to its core by 1050, until the Neo-Assyrian revival.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Middle Assyrian Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Middle Assyrian territory

Timeline of the Middle Assyrian Empire

1. 1,365 BC
   Ashur-uballit I independent of Mitanni
2. 1,300 BC
   Adad-nirari I takes Hanigalbat
3. 1,237 BC
   NihriyaHittites defeated.
4. 1,225 BC
   Babylon captured
5. 1,207 BC
   Tukulti-Ninurta murdered
6. 1,114 BC
   Tiglath-Pileser I
7. 1,076 BC
   Tiglath-Pileser diesAramaean pressure grows.
8. 1,050 BC
   Assyria reduced to its heartland

Independence

For over a century Assyria had been a vassal of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni. As Suppiluliuma's Hittites crushed Mitanni, Ashur-uballit I (about 1365-1330) seized independence, sent gifts to Akhenaten (the Amarna letters preserve the correspondence and the Babylonian king's complaint) and intervened in Babylon's succession. Assyria entered the club of great powers.

Tukulti-Ninurta

Adad-nirari I and Shalmaneser I annexed the Mitannian heartland (Hanigalbat) and deported its people, the beginning of Assyria's deportation policy. Tukulti-Ninurta I (about 1243-1207) defeated the Hittite Tudhaliya IV at Nihriya, then invaded Babylonia, captured the Kassite king and ruled Babylon for seven years, celebrating in the earliest Assyrian epic. He built a new capital, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, and was murdered there by his son.

Tiglath-Pileser and the Aramaeans

After decades of weakness Tiglath-Pileser I campaigned against the Mushki (Phrygians), the Nairi lands around Lake Van and the Aramaean tribes of the Euphrates, reached the Mediterranean and received tribute from Byblos and Sidon, and boasted of killing 920 lions. His annals are the first detailed Assyrian royal inscriptions. After him Aramaean pressure, drought and famine shrank Assyria to the Tigris valley for a century.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Old Assyrian period (2,025 BC to 1,364 BC)
• Neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC to 609 BC)
• Mitanni (1,500 BC to 1,300 BC)
• New Hittite Kingdom (Hittite Empire) (1,400 BC to 1,180 BC)
• First Babylonian Empire (1,894 BC to 1,595 BC)
• New Kingdom of Egypt (1,550 BC to 1,069 BC)
• Second Dynasty of Isin (1,157 BC to 1,026 BC)
• Elamite Empire (2,700 BC to 539 BC)

8 surprising things about the Middle Assyrian Empire

1. The Middle Assyrian laws include the earliest known regulations requiring respectable women to veil and forbidding prostitutes to do so.
2. Tukulti-Ninurta I's capture of Babylon is celebrated in the earliest Assyrian epic poem, and he was later blamed for the sacrilege of taking Marduk's statue.
3. The Amarna letters include a Babylonian king's protest that Assyria was his vassal and should not be dealing with Egypt directly.
4. Tiglath-Pileser I claimed to have killed 4 wild bulls, 10 elephants and 920 lions, 800 of them from his chariot.
5. The deportation of conquered peoples, later an Assyrian trademark, began with Shalmaneser I's treatment of Mitanni.
6. Tiglath-Pileser I received a crocodile and a 'river horse' as gifts from the pharaoh, and planted foreign trees in Assyria.
7. The Middle Assyrian period produced the oldest known dated astronomical text (a list of star risings) and the earliest Assyrian royal library.
8. The Aramaean tribes who overwhelmed late Middle Assyria later gave the Assyrian Empire its administrative language, Aramaic.

Sources

• Assyria: The Middle Assyrian period Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Middle Assyrian Empire Wikipedia
• Assyria World History Encyclopedia
• Eckart Frahm, Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire (2023) Basic Books

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