The Neo-Assyrian Empire
The first empire to rule the whole Near East, and the most feared.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 302 years
- Known to
- ± 20 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
From around 911 BCE Assyria expands from northern Iraq to control Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia and eventually Egypt — the largest empire the world had yet seen. It runs on a standing professional army, an efficient road and messenger system, provincial governors, and systematic terror: royal inscriptions boast in detail of flaying and impaling, which was policy rather than boasting. It also deports conquered populations wholesale to break their identity.