Show notes
In the lowlands of Northern Iraq, a series of enormous cities lies crumbling in ruins.In this episode, find out about one of the most remarkable ancient civilizations: the society known today as the neo-Assyrian Empire. Discover how the Assyrians built their empire out of the ashes of the Bronze Age, and built an empire of iron that lasted for centuries. Explore the extraordinary flourishing of art and technology that they fostered. And finally, discover what happened to cause their final, devastating collapse.
Highlighted moments
At the time when Xenophon stumbled across these ruins nearly two and a half millennia ago, the first stones of the Parthenon in Athens had been laid only 50 years earlier. The Colosseum in Rome would not be built for another 500 years. But the city of Nineveh had already been an ancient ruin for more than two centuries.
“The people of the city of Arpad had fought the Assyrians before, and they knew what to do. They would simply close their gates and hold tight. The Assyrian army may have looked fearsome, but they knew that when the summer came to an end, they would have to go home and harvest their fields, just as they always had. But as autumn came, the people of Arpad must have realized that something was wrong. The Assyrians showed no sign of going home.”
“A lion was caught in the loft of a house in Akaka. My lord should write me whether this lion should remain in that same loft until the arrival of my lord, or whether I should have it brought to my lord. But letters from my lord was slow in coming, and the lion has been in the loft for five days. Although they threw him a dog and a pig, he refused to eat them.”
“In a twist of ironic fate, it was the destruction of Nineveh that ensured that its texts would survive. The fires that tore through the city baked the clay, hardening it and meaning that the writing on these tablets was just as sharp on the day they were unearthed by archaeologists as the day an Assyrian scribe wrote them, 26 centuries in the past.”
Transcript
Transcript not available for this episode yet.