Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled from 911 to 609 BCE and at its peak covered up to 1.4 million square kilometers. Its relay riders carried sealed clay tablets 700 kilometers in under five days, a speed not matched in the region until the Ottoman telegraph. Early kings framed conquest as reclaiming lost land. Ashurnasirpal II rebuilt Nimrud with food depots and water reserves, yet mutilated and impaled the rebels of Tela, terror that served in place of garrisons and punished revolt as a crime against the god Ashur.

After the Age of the Magnates, when figures such as commander Shamshi-ilu and the queen Shammuramat, model for the Greek Semiramis, held real power, Tiglath-Pileser III broke up provinces and resettled conquered peoples on a vast scale, which spread Aramaic until it displaced Akkadian. The Sargonids took Egypt under Esarhaddon in 671 BCE, but Babylon rebelled again and again. After Ashurbanipal died in 627 BCE, Nabopolassar and the Mede Cyaxares tore the empire apart, and Nineveh fell in 612 BCE amid overextension, eunuch officials and drought.

• Shammuramat is the only known Assyrian woman to join a military campaign.
• Paranoid and ill, Esarhaddon relied on his mother Naqi’a to impose loyalty oaths for Ashurbanipal.
• Babylonians required their king to take Marduk’s hand at the Akitu festival in person.
• Sennacherib flooded Babylon’s ruins; Esarhaddon spent a fortune rebuilding it.
• Babylon and Persia later copied Assyria’s provinces and road system.