Dr. H. V. Hilprecht, Professor of Assyrian at the University of Pennsylvania, dreamed that a Babylonian priest, associated with the king Kurigalzu, ( 1300 B.C. ) escorted him to the treasure chamber of the temple of Bel, gave him six novel points of information about a certain broken relic, and corrected an error in its identification.

On those tablets Assyrian traders implored the help of the Akkadian king Sargon.

The last Assyrian city to fall was Harran in south east Anotolia, this city was also the birthplace of the last king of Babylon, the Assyrian Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar.

In later Assyrian and Babylonian texts, the name Akkad, together with Sumer, appears as part of the royal title, as in the Sumerian LUGAL KI. EN. GIR < sup > KI </ sup > URU < sup > KI </ sup > or Akkadian Šar māt Šumeri u Akkadi, translating to " king of Sumer and Akkad ".

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.

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 Deuteronomist author may have used the then-recent 701 BCE campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Judah as his model ; the hanging of the captured kings is in accordance with Assyrian practice of the 8th century ).

Though belonging to the same Semitic ethnic group, they are to be differentiated from the Aramean stock ; and the Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, is careful in his inscriptions to distinguish them.

Marduk-apla-iddina II ( the Biblical Merodach-Baladan ) of Bit-Yâkin, allied himself with the powerful Elamite kingdom and briefly seized control of Babylon in 721 BC after the death of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V who had ruled Babylon directly from Nineveh.

In 703 he briefly regained the throne from a native Akkadian-Babylonian ruler Marduk-zakir-shumi II who had ascended the throne after a revolt in Babylon against the Assyrian king, Sennacherib.

Sennacherib's successor as king of Assyria, Esarhaddon rebuilt Babylon, but for the next 75 years Babylon remained under direct Assyrian control.

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.

However, an Assyrian king Ashur-uballit II held out at the Assyrian city of Harran, resisting until 605 BC, when the remnants of the Assyrian Army and an Egyptian force were defeated at Karchemish.

However, the Kingdom of Israel was eventually destroyed by Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III around 750 BCE.

Israel had clearly emerged by the middle of the 9th century BCE, when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names " Ahab the Israelite " among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar ( 853 ).

Between the death of the Assyrian king Sargon, and the succession of his son Sennacherib, Hezekiah sought to throw off his subservience to the Assyrian kings.

Unlike the Chronicler, the Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the " lost " tribes taken into Assyrian captivity.

Some have claimed that her legends were created so that she could be worshiped as a goddess to further solidify her reign and power, but this is not borne out by the Assyrian documents of the time.

* 722-705 BC-An Assyrian bas-relief found in the ruins at Khorsabad during the excavation of the palace of Sargon II ( Sargon II ) has been claimed to depict falconry.

Afterwards, Innes claimed that he had converted the heathen to Christianity and christened him George Psalmanazar ( in reference to biblical Assyrian king Shalmaneser ).

According to the Australian census of 2006, a total of 5, 956 people claimed that they belong to the Assyrian Church of the East.

One group of note ( that exists up until this day ) were the Samaritans, who adhered to most features of the Jewish rite and claimed to be descendants of the Assyrian Jews.

If Shalmaneser had won a clear victory at Qarqar, it did not immediately lead to further Assyrian conquests in Syria.

In 720 BCE it was the site of the Assyrian king Sargon II's victory over the Egyptians, and in 217 BC the Battle of Raphia was fought between the victorious Ptolemy IV and Antiochus III.

The local town of Kition, now Larnaka, recorded part of the ancient history of Cyprus on a stele that commemorated an Assyrian victory there in 709 BCE.

While traditionally accepted as the genuine words of Moses delivered on the eve of the occupation of Canaan, a broad consensus of modern scholars now see its origins in traditions from Israel ( the northern kingdom ) brought south to the Kingdom of Judah in the wake of the Assyrian destruction of Samaria ( 8th century BCE ) and then adapted to a program of nationalist reform in the time of King Josiah ( late 7th century ), with the final form of the modern book emerging in the milieu of the return from the Babylonian exile during the late 6th century.

The meaning of these name-signs is not clear: Shear-jashub has been variously interpreted to mean that only a remnant of Ephraim and Syria will survive the Assyrian invasion, or that a remnant of Judah will repent and turn to God, while in Isaiah 10: 20-23 it seems to mean that a remnant of Israel will return to the Davidic monarchy.

:* The return of Babylonian Jews increases the schism with the Samaritans, who had remained in the region during the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations.

In early August 1933, more than 1, 000 Assyrian people who had been refused asylum in Syria crossed the border to return to their villages in northern Iraq.

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.

The Medes, reckoned to be his offspring by Josephus and most subsequent writers, were also known as Madai, including in both Assyrian and Hebrew sources.

In a subsequent campaign, the Assyrian forces penetrated into the mountains south of Lake Van and then turned westward to receive the submission of Malatia.

During these expeditions, often in circumstances of great difficulty, Layard despatched to England the splendid specimens which now form the greater part of the collection of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.

These expeditions uncovered substantial remains of the Assyrian and Neo-Hittite periods, including defensive structures, temples, palaces, and numerous basalt statues and reliefs with Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions.

The earliest use of the term " Venad " is found in the Tharisapalli plates of 849 AD, which gifted lands to the Assyrian Metropolitan, Mar Sabor, by Venad king, Iyenadikal Thiruvadikal.

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

One of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.

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.

By the 7th century BC, much of the Assyrian population used Akkadian influenced Eastern Aramaic and not Akkadian itself.

Relief from Assyrian capital of Dur Sharrukin, showing transport of Lebanese cedar ( 8th century BC )

Achaemenid Assyria ( 539 BC – 330 BC ) retained a separate identity ( Athura ), official correspondence being in Imperial Aramaic, and there was even a determined revolt of the two Assyrian provinces of Mada and Athura in 520 BC.

By the 8th – 7th century BC Assyrian cuneiform tablets mention the exploitation of the " copper of the mountains " and this may refer to " natural " brass.

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

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.

File: Dying Lion. R. jpg | Room 55-The Dying Lion, Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian, c. 645 BC ( long considered a masterpiece of Assyrian art )

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.

In 612 BC they destroyed Nineveh, Harran fell in 609 BC, and the last Assyrian army at Carchemish in 605 BC.