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.

It is from this period that the later Syria Vs Assyria naming controversy arises, the Seleucids applied the name not only to Assyria itself, but also to the lands to the west ( Aram modern Syria ) which had been part of the Assyrian empire.

When they lost control of Assyria itself, the name Syria survived and was applied only to the land of Aramea to the west, that had once been part of the Assyrian empire.

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.

It was remembered that there had been an Assyrian empire predating the Persian one, but all particulars were lost.

Prior to this time, Judah had been a vassal of the Assyrian empire, but the rapid decline of Assyria after c. 630 led Josiah to assert his independence and institute a religious reform stressing loyalty to Yahweh, the national God.

Nineveh — where Jonah preached — was the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, which fell to the Medes in 612 BC.

Micah's career corresponds to the period when, after a long period of peace, Israel, Judah, and the other nations of the region came under increasing pressure from the aggressive and rapidly expanding Assyrian empire.

Between 734 and 727 Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria conducted almost annual campaigns in Palestine, reducing Israel, Judah and the Philistine cities to vassalage, receiving tribute from Ammon, Moab and Edom, and absorbing Damascus ( the kingdom of Aram ) into the Assyrian empire.

The subject of Nahum's prophecy is the approaching complete and final destruction of Nineveh, the capital of the great and at that time flourishing Assyrian empire.

Jonah had already uttered his message of warning, and Nahum was followed by Zephaniah, who also predicted ( Zephaniah 2: 4-15 ) the destruction of the city, predictions which were remarkably fulfilled ( 625 BC ) when Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia.

After the death of Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian king in 627 BC, the Assyrian empire descended into a series of bitter dynastic civil wars.

A rebellious Assyrian general Sin-shumu-lishir briefly set himself up as king in both Assyria and Babylon, but was ousted by Ashur-etil-ilani, the legitimate king of Assyria and its empire.

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

Both the biblical and Assyrian sources speak of a massive deportation of people from Israel and their replacement with settlers from other parts of the empire – such population exchanges were an established part of Assyrian imperial policy, a means of breaking the old power structure-and the former Israel never again became an independent political entity.

The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between them.

Though the Books of Kings and Books of Chronicles talk a great deal about the Assyrian empire, Nineveh itself is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when it is described ( ff ; ) as an " exceedingly great city of three days journey in breadth ".

Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (); and ostensibly was the home of King Sennacherib, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah and the prophetic career of Isaiah.

Before the great archaeological excavations in the 19th century, historical knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank.

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.

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.

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.

Judah prospered as an Assyrian vassal state, despite a disastrous rebellion against Sennacherib ), but in the last half of the 7th century BCE Assyria suddenly collapsed, and the ensuing competition between the Egyptian and Neo-Babylonian empires for control of Palestine led to the destruction of Judah in a series of campaigns between 597 and 582.

Judah at this time was a vassal of Assyria, but Assyrian power collapsed in the 630s, and in around 622 Josiah and the Deuteronomists, as the circle around him are called by modern scholars, launched a bid for independence expressed as loyalty to " Yahweh alone " and the law-code in the book of Deuteronomy, written in the form of a treaty between Judah and Yahweh to replace the vassal-treaty with Assyria.

Some researches try to connect the creation of Kanem-Bornu with exodus from the collapsed Assyrian Empire c. 600 BC to the northeast of Lake Chad.

In the Neo-Assyrian period the Aramaic language became increasingly common, more so than Akkadian — this was thought to be largely due to the mass deportations undertaken by Assyrian kings, in which large Aramaic-speaking populations, conquered by the Assyrians, were relocated to Assyria and interbred with the Assyrians.

However, the family lineages went through traumatic changes beginning in the eighth century due to major social stratification, followed by Assyrian incursions.

Assyrian palaces of the Iron Age, especially at Kalhu / Nimrud, Dur Sharrukin / Khorsabad and Ninuwa / Nineveh, have become famous due to the pictorial and textual narrative programs on their walls, all carved on stone slabs known as orthostats.

A small minority of Assyrians of the above denominations accepted the Protestant Reformation in the 20th century, possibly due to British influences, and is now organized in the Assyrian Evangelical Church, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and other Protestant Assyrian groups.

Today, the Assyrian and Roman Catholic Church view this schism as largely linguistic, due to problems of translating very delicate and precise terminology from Latin to Aramaic and vice-versa ( see Council of Ephesus ).

Later on, due to disorder in Babylonia following the death of the Kassite king Burnaburiash II, Ashur-uballit established Kurigalzu II on the Babylonian throne, in the first of what would become a series of Assyrian interventions in Babylonian affairs.

It does seem certain that upon Ashurbanipal's death, allied hordes of Scythians, Cimmerians, Medes and Persians, taking advantage of Assyria's weakness due to internal strife, crossed the borders of the Assyrian Empire destroying Ashkelon and raiding as far as Egypt.

The validity of Assyrian records is not reliable due to the common Assyrian propaganda of their own invincibility.

In What If ?, a collection of essays on counterfactual history, historian William H. McNeill speculates that the accounts of mass death among the Assyrian army in the Tanakh might be explained by an outbreak of cholera ( or other water-borne diseases ) due to the springs beyond the city walls having been blocked, thus depriving the besieging force of a safe water supply.

In addition, McNeill reasons that the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem holds special historical significance due to the newness ( at the time ) of the monotheistic tradition in Judaism.

Prime factors have been drought and the emigration of Assyrian Christians due to religious and ethnic intolerance.

The Assyrian oppression against the Israelites can be seen in the bitter prophecies of Nahum.

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

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.

It was the first in a series of wars that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and the reduction of the Kingdom of Judah to an Assyrian tributary state.

The Assyrian Tree of Life was represented by a series of nodes and criss-crossing lines.

Following the discovery of a small statue of the demon Pazuzu ( an actual ancient Assyrian demigod ) and a modern-day St. Joseph medal curiously juxtaposed together at the site, a series of omens alerts him to a pending confrontation with a powerful evil, which, unknown to the reader at this point, he has battled before in an exorcism in Africa.

Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class governing a predominately Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite Babylon, and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia.

It started in Georgia in the 6th century, when Assyrian ascetic monks, known as the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers, settled in Kartli and founded a series of monasteries, most notably David Gareja.

In 2008 a series of legal challenges were made against the monastery of Mor Gabriel, reported by the Assyrian International News Agency.