Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, Eckart Frahm, c. 2023.

Having completed these four books over the past couple of weeks, I was led to this book which arrived from Amazon yesterday:

• Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, Eckart Frahm, c. 2023.

The author: a professor of Assyriology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University.

I bought the book specifically to track the interaction and progression of

• hieroglyphics,
• cuneiform,
• the alphabet, and
• written language. 

I have no idea how this will play out; I've not seen reviews of the book, but my first impression: it's gonna be a great book. Comes in at 509 pages including notes to chapters and the index.  

First thing I did: paged through the book to look at author's take on 1177 BC, pages 83 to 89.  Awesome -- fits exactly with the recent books I've read. Amazing.

The Long Road To Glory

Chapter 1: A Small Town on the Tigris

Chapter 2: Birth of a Kingdom

Chapter 3: Disruption and Recovery

Chapter 4: The Crown in Crisis

Empire

Chapter 5: The Great Expansion

Chapter 6: On the Edges of Empire

Chapter 7: A Ghost Story

Chapter 8: At the Gates of Jerusalem

Chapter 9: Sennacherib's Babylonian Problem

Chapter 10: Mother Knows Best

Chapter 11: 671 BCE

Chapter 12: Scholar, Sadist, Hunter, King

Chapter 13: Everyday Life in the Empire

Chapter 14: Imperial Twilight

Afterlife

Chapter 15: Assyria's Legacy on the Ground

Chapter 16: A Model Empire

Chapter 17: Distorted Reflections

Chapter 18: The Second Destruction

Epilogue

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1171 BC

It will take a long time to get through this book, for now, I'm most interested in 1171 BCE.

Eckart Frahm covers this period starting on page 84 and completely ended by the bottom of page 87.

But he says the same thing.

During the late 13th century BC, most people in the Near East saw their communities as unchanging and permanent. There was little to suggest the impending collapse of the political system they were used to.A few large states -- Egypt, the Hittite kingdom, Assyria, Babylonia, and the eastern kingdom of Elam -- and may smaller ones, all organized around palatial centers ruled by more or less powerful kings, coexisted in what must have looked to everyone like a fairly well-balanced equilibrium. But as it turned out, such notions of stability were mistaken. A series of disasters were about to turn the world as people knew it upside-down.

Around 1200 BCE, seemingly out of nowhere, groups of warriors began to attack large and small states in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. The most famous of these groups were the "Sea Peoples," as they have been called in modern times.

Shekeleh
Sherden
possibly originating in Sicily and Sardinia
Peleset --> Philistines and the geographic region of Palestine

Mentions a letter from the coastal city of Ugarit -- same as in the book 1171 by Cline.

Confirms the date: 1177.

Cataclysmic naval battle with Egyptian troops in the Nile Delta. Pharaoh Ramses III claimed to have defeated the intruders -- and Egypt remained a state of considerable power for centuries to come -- but in the course of the events, it lost almost all of its influence in western Asia -- p. 85.

Again, "climate change."

Palace states replaced -- organized along tribal or ethnic lines -- Hebrews and Philistines in Canaan to the Arabs on the Arabian Peninsula; the Neo-Hittite Luwians in Anatolia and northern Syria, and the Semitic Aramaeans farther south in Syria.

Cuneiform, the complex writing system used during the Late Bronze Age by the rulers of the region to communicate with one another was abandoned in the Levant (but not in Mesopotamia) and slowly and haphazardly replaced by simpler and more "democratic" alphabetic writing systems.

When this all began, Assyria was far from the center of the storm -- p. 86. 

********************************
Eras or Periods
Rulers

Third Millennium BCE: 3,000 BC - 2000 BC -- one thousand years; ten centuries

Old Assyrian Period: 2000 BC - 1730 BC -- 270 years

Transition Period: 1730 BC - 1410 BC -- 320 years

Middle Assyrian Period: 1360 BC - 935 BC -- 430 years
Troy: 1200 BC
1177 BC:

Neo-Assyrian Period: 935 BC - 610 BC -- 325 years

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 NOTES ON THE BOOK BEGIN HERE
Chapter One: A Small Town on the Tigris

Notes:

• roots of Assyrian civilization: well into prehistoric times.
• Thomas Mann: Joseph and His Brother, see wiki.
• Mann sets the story in the 14th century BC and makes Akhenaten the pharaoh who appoints Joseph his vice-regent. Joseph is aged 28 at the ascension of Akhenaten, which would mean he was born about 1380 BC in standard Egyptian chronology, and Jacob in the mid-1420s BC. Other contemporary rulers mentioned include Tushratta and Suppiluliuma.
• 14th century BC: the very oldest of the Middle Assyrian Period
• Assyria: Ashur-uballit I, Ada-nirari I
• 10,000 years ago, northern Iraq; agriculture, animal husbandry, but not yet Assyrians
• 2500 - 1700 BCE: a tangible Assyrian identity began
• spoke Assyrian language
• built Assyrian temples
• their god, Ashur, (was) worshipped in the city of the same name: Ashur -- their true king
• three centuries after 2000 BC -- the Old Assyrian period -- flourishing of the first independent "Assyrian" state
• eventually, the core of Assyria: Nineveh in the north, Arbela in the east, and Ashur in the south; northeastern segment of the Fertile Crescent 
• demarcation
• western fringes of the Zagros Mountains in the east
• southern foothills of the Taurus range in the north
• Syrian Desert in the west
• southward-flowing Tigris River and its main eastern tributaries, the Upper and Lower Zab
• downstream from Ashur, toward the Persian Gulf, lay the cradle of another great civilization: Babylonia
• closely intertwined: Nineveh and Assyria to the north; Babylon and Iraq to the south
  
• later: another site -- Nineveh: on the Tigris; not yet "Assyrian" 
• much, much left to read

Chapter 2: Birth of a Kingdom

Notes:

• unlike most kingdoms, just sort of happened (unlike the British Empire, other empires)
  
• 1735 - 1400 BCE, somewhat of the "Dark Ages" for Ashur and Assyria
• between the 17th and 14th centuries, BC -- the Transition Period --> the Middle Assyrian period
  
• Ashur --> god --> city --> now, the name of a land
• the Transition Period becomes the Middle Assyrian period
• 
  

Chapter 3: Disruption and Recover

Notes:

• it appears we are in the fourteenth to twelfth centuries BCE; as the empire begins to develop
• but then by the second paragraph, to 883 - 859 BCE with one of several energetic and ruthless kings, Ashurnasirpal II. (note the first part of that word: "Ashur")
• this chapter discusses the "Sea Peoples" -- page 84 -85 -- around 1177 BCE -- that date is actually used by the author
• why Assyria did not "fall." -- page 89
• rich discussion of military campaigns beginning with the reign of Ashur-Dan II -- page 93 -- again, note the king's name -- Ashur --
• the reign of Tukulti-inurta II's son and successor Ashurnasirpal II, r. 883 - 859, marked a dramatic turning poing both for Assyrian culture and Assyrian politics. So, we need to go back to that time period and see what was going on in Babylon, Israel, Persia at that time.
  

The 9th century BCE in Israel is characterized by the division of the United Monarchy, established by David and Solomon, into the northern Kingdom of Israel (also known as Samaria) and the southern Kingdom of Judah. This period saw the rise of the Omride dynasty in Israel, political maneuvering, and conflicts with neighboring powers like Aram-Damascus.

In the 9th century BCE, Babylon was a city within the larger Neo-Assyrian Empire, experiencing a period of political and social complexity. While Babylon remained a significant cultural and religious center, its political power was largely nominal, with the Assyrian kings often controlling the region. This era saw the rise of Chaldean tribes, who would later play a significant role in Babylonian history, and increased Assyrian involvement in Babylonian affairs

In the 9th century BCE, Persia was inhabited by various Iranian groups, including the Medes and Persians, who were mentioned in Assyrian records as being in the Zagros Mountains region. These groups were not yet a unified empire, but were subjects of Assyrian military campaigns and tribute extractions. The Medes, in particular, were a more prominent group from an Assyrian perspective. The Medes and Persians were part of a larger group of Iranian peoples who migrated into the Iranian Plateau around this time.