After 1180 BC, the Hittite empire disintegrated into several independent " Neo-Hittite " states, subsequent to losing much territory to the Middle Assyrian Empire and being finally overrun by the Phrygians, another Indo-European people who are believed to have migrated from The Balkans.

From the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, much of Anatolia ( particularly the east, central, south western and south eastern regions ) fell to the Neo Assyrian Empire, including all of the Neo-Hittite and Syro-Hittite states, Phrygia, Urartu, Nairi, Tabal, Cilicia, Commagene, Caria, Lydia, the Cimmerians and Scythians and swathes of Cappadocia.

By 150 BC, Assyria was under the control of the Parthian Empire as Athura ( the Parthian word for Assyria ) where the Assyrian city of Ashur seems to have gained a degree of autonomy, and temples to the native gods of Assyria were resurrected.

According to a single unsupported piece of recent research, refugees from the collapsed Assyrian Empire claim to have reached the region of Lake Chad and founded the kingdoms of Kanem and Kebbi.

These alleged refugees claimed the ancestry of Sargon of Akkad ( whose dynasty died out some 15 centuries before the fall of Assyria ), they also contradictionally claimed ancestry from Nabopolassar, a Babylonian king of Chaldean extraction who played a major part in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire.

* Nardo, Don ( 1998 ): The Assyrian Empire.

File: BM ; RM6-ANE, Assyrian Sculpture 32-East ( N ), Centre Island + North Wall-~ Assyrian Empire +-Lamassu, Stela's, Statue's, Obelisk's, Relief Panel's ) & Full Projection. 1. JPG | The British Museum, Room 6-Assyrian Sculpture

The Chaldeans, like the rest of Mesopotamia and much of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor, from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, came to be dominated by the vast Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia.

In 626 BC, following the death of Ashurbanipal, a series of bitter wars broke out in the Assyrian Empire over who should rule.

Sensing this weakness, the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians formed a coalition and attacked the Assyrian Empire in 616 BC.

The Median Cyaxares had also recently taken advantage of the anarchy in the Assyrian Empire to free the Iranic peoples, the Medes and Persians, from Assyrian rule.

Nabopolassar and his allies were now in possession of much of the huge Neo Assyrian Empire.

It is believed that when the Assyrian Empire was destroyed Babylon developed as an empire with its very famous hanging gardens.

The Assyrian Empire was overthrown by the Medes and the Chaldean, or New Babylonian, Empire in 612 BCE.

From the 14th to 11th centuries BC Assyria once more became a major power with the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire which dominated the whole of Mesopotamia and much of the Near East and Anatolia.

After an interregnum of a hundred or so years, Assyria began to expand once more with the rise of the Neo Assyrian Empire.

Imperialism has been found in the histories of Japan, the Assyrian Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Roman Empire, Greece, the Byzantine Empire, the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, ancient Egypt, and India.

This appellation continued to exist for about 1500 years till 630 BC, as stated in Assyrian chronicles.

Assyria continued to exist as a geopolitical entity until the Arab-Islamic conquest in the mid 7th century AD, and Assyrian identity, personal names and both spoken and written evolutions of Mesopotamian Aramaic ( which still contain many Akkadian loan words ) have survived among the Assyrian people from ancient times to this day.

Bitter fighting continued in the Babylonian heartlands from 620 to 616 BC, with Assyrian forces encamped in the region in an attempt to eject Nabopolassar.

His successors allied with the Hittites in a failed attempt to stop Assyrian expansion, which continued unchecked.

However Merodach-Baladan and the Elamites continued to agitate against Assyrian rule.

Throughout this entire period both Assyria and Babylonia continued to exist as geo political entities and named regions, and Assyria in particular became a center of a distinctly Mesopotamian Christianity, namely the ancient Eastern Syrian Rite Christianity which was spread all over the near east and as far away as central Asia, India, Mongolia and China by travelling monks and still exists as the religion of the Assyrians to this day in the form of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church and Ancient Church of the East.

Ninus continued to be mentioned by European historians ( e. g. Alfred the Great ), even up until knowledge of cuneiform enabled a more precise reconstruction of Assyrian history in the 19th century.

This was effectively the end of the Assyrian Empire though remnants of the Assyrian army under Ashur-uballit II ( 612 – 609 BC ) continued to resist from Harran.

This appellation continued to exist for about 1500 years until 630 BC, as stated in Assyrian chronicles.

The earliest surviving Hebrew inscription, the Gezer calendar, dates from the 10th century BCE ; it was written in the so-called Paleo-Hebrew alphabet ( ktav ivrit ), which continued to be used through the time of Solomon's Temple until changed to the new " Assyrian lettering " ( ktav ashurit ), the " square-script ", by Ezra the Scribe following the Babylonian Exile.

Although construction in the city abruptly ended after Untash-Napirisha's death, the site was not abandoned, but continued to be occupied until it was destroyed by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 640 BC.

The rebellion lasted until 820 BC, weakening the Assyrian empire and its ruler ; this weakness continued to reverberate in the kingdom until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III.

Adad-nirari II's son was named Tukulti-Ninurta II and Tukulti continued to wage war against Assyrian enemies.

The continued presence in significant quantities of Assyrian goods or copies, alongside objects of local manufacture, attest to continued cultural contact with Assyria at this time ; iron first appears in bulk at Hansanlu at around the same time Assyria seized control of the metal trade in Asia Minor.

The persistent prominence which astrology continued to enjoy down to the border-line of the scientific movement of our own days, and which is directly traceable to the divination methods perfected in the Euphrates valley, is a tribute to the scope and influence attained by the astral theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian priests.

Use of the same standard continued through the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian Empires.

From the Medieval Arabic king lists of both African states, allegedly copied from earlier lists in ancient Near Eastern languages it appears that the state founders claimed to be deportees of the Assyrian empire who had fled from Syria and Samaria after the defeat of the Egyptian-Assyrian army at Carchemish in 605 BCE.

The Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich.

The most recent study on the ante-Aesopic fables or the fables in ancient Near Eastern languages by Akimoto discovers the rich fable traditions in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia ; for example, the Ninurta-uballitsu Assyrian fable collection which is the oldest known fable collection with the compiler's autograph and the completion date 883 BCE, the Hurrian-Hittite bilingual fable collections are embedded in a long myth and the storyteller tells after each fable his / her own moral.

Assyrian palace reliefs of the 9th to 7th centuries BC display sieges of several Near Eastern cities.

The dynasty's interference with the Assyrian sphere of influence in the Near East caused a confrontation between Egypt and the powerful Assyrian Empire, which controlled a vast empire comprising much of the Middle East, Asia Minor, Caucasus and East Mediterannean from their Mesopotamian homeland.

Taharqa ( 688-663 BC ), the last Kushite pharaoh, was defeated and driven out of the Near East by the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib.

The city, along with the rest of southern Mesopotamia and much of the Near East, Asia Minor, North Africa and southern Caucasus, fell to the north Mesopotamian Assyrian Empire from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC.

In the Near East, the first half of this century was dominated by the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean empire, which had risen to power late in the previous century after successfully rebelling against Assyrian rule.

Map of the Ancient Near East during the Amarna Period, showing the great powers of the day: Egypt ( green ), Hittite empire | Hatti ( yellow ), the Kassites | Kassite kingdom of Babylon ( purple ), Middle Assyrian Empire ( grey ), and Mitanni ( red ).

* KR Veenhof, Kanesh: an Old Assyrian colony in Anatolia, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East ed.

Nonetheless the site now contains the only remains of an Assyrian siege ramp in the Near East.

The Assyrian Empire which had been the dominant force in the Near East for much of the period from the 14th Century BC began to unravel after the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, descending into a series of bitter internal civil wars.

The term derives from tablet inscriptions appended by a scribe to the end of an ancient Near East ( e. g., Early / Middle / Late Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite ) text such as a chapter, book, manuscript, or record.

* Article on the Assyrian Church of the East – from the Catholic Near East Welfare Association

" The Assyrian empires, particularly the third one, had a profound and lasting impact on the Near East.

* Arno Poebel, The Assyrian King-List from Khorsabad, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol.

* Arno Poebel, The Assyrian King List from Khorsabad ( Continued ), Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol.

The Arameans were attacked and conquered by Tiglath-Pileser I ( 1115-1077 BC ) of Assyria, and were incorporated into the Middle Assyrian Empire which encompassed much of the Near East.

With the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC and the fall of the Assyrian Empire, both Psamtik and his successors attempted to reassert Egyptian power in the Near East, but were driven back by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II.

Assyrian palace reliefs of the 9th to 7th centuries BC display sieges of several Near Eastern cities.

Because of the existence of full eponym lists from his reign down to the middle of the reign of Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BC, year one of his reign in 911 BC is perhaps the first event in ancient Near Eastern history which can be dated to an exact year, although the Assyrian King List is generally considered to be quite accurate for several centuries before Adad-nirari's reign, and scholars generally agree on a single set of dates back to Ashur-resh-ishi I in the late 12th century BC.