FROM PRE-HISTORY TO 1200 BCE The period narrated in this chronology covers the linguistic attestation of pre-historic peoples, the Neolitihic, and the rise of civilizations in in the Indus River valley, in Sumer, in the eastern Mediterranean (Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations), in Egypt, and in China. Linguistically, the pre-historic peoples whose past can be distantly glimpsed are: the Afro-Asiatics, the Indo-Europeans, the Indo-Aryans, the Indo-Iranians, the Dravidians, the Austronesians, the Altaics, the Finno-Ugrians, the Austroasiatics, and the Slavs and the Balts (branches of the Indo-Europeans). Cimmerians and Scythians were Indo-Iranian nomads who besieged civilized states in Anatolia and the Middle East. The Hittites were Indo-Europeans who occupied Anatolia, where also the Mitanni (originally Indo-Aryans) flourished. The Jews are a branch of the Afro-Asiatics, but the knowledge of this people goes beyond linguistics to the historicity of the Bible. The presence of Indo-Europeans can be discovered in the Tarim Basin, in an opposite easterly direction to the Indo-European migrations towards Anatolia, the Indian subcontinent, central Asia and Iran, and Europe. Also included in pre-history are the Pre-Columbian Amerindians and the European Hallstatt culture, although in these cases linguistics does not provide much information. Little is known of the Indus River Valley civilization, whose rudimentary writing has not been deciphered. The writing of the Minoans also remains undeciphered, but not that of the Mycenaeans, although little of history can be gathered from remaining inscriptions. The history Sumer flows into the wider history of Mesopotamia. The history of Egypt is divided into distinct periods: the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, and the Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom. The history of Mesopotamia includes the Akkadian Empire, the foundation and rise of Assyria, the Old Babylonian Empire (Hammurabi's empire), and the invasions of the Kassites and the Aramaeans (in this case, more a gradual penetration). Elam was both tributary and predatory towards Mesopotamian states. After archaeological Chinese cultures, there exist the historical but obscure periods of Xia, Shang, and Yin. However, there are precise chronicles for the Zhou period and its two subdivisions: Spring and Autumn and the period of the Warring States. The period closes with the dark ages that enveloped Greece after the year 1200 BCE. ca9000-5000 Afro-Asiatics to the settling of the Nile river valley ca8350-ca700 ca8000-ca2400 Sumer Mesopotamia is the general designation for the territory of central Iraq between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers down to the confluence of the two rivers at Shatt al Arab and into the Persian or Arabic Gulf. It is divided roughly into three parts: southern Mesopotamia, which is the heartland of Sumer or Sumeria; middle Mesopotamia, which is also known as Isin, Akkadia, and Babylonia; and upper Mesopotamia, also inhabited by Akkadians, originally known as Subartu and later as Assyria. Writing was first used in Sumer, a landmark which is considered to be the start of civilization. For civilization to arise, there had to be sedentarization, which entails animal husbandry and agriculture or what is called the Neolithic or the Neolithic Revolution. It is believed that Jericho (north east of Jerusalem) was already a town ca8000 and Abu Hureyra (northern Syria) ca7500. There is evidence of settlement in the area of Mesopotamia as early as 8000 BCE at a place called Alikosh (east of the lower Tigris River). The latter site is the closest one to Sumeria. The culture previous to Sumerian civilization--culture in the sense of certain inferable customs and types and styles of artifacts--is called Ubaid, from the name of a site west of the lower Euphrates river in southern Iraq, which later evolved into one of the cities of Sumerian civilization. Archaeological finds from Ubaid are dated to ca5500. Archaeologists do not relate Alikosh to Ubaid. Sumerian has no known linguistic relatives and is thus considered an isolate. Specialists believe that evidence for written Sumerian can be dated to ca3400 or earlier. Writing also developed later separately in Egypt (hieroglyphs), in Crete (Linear A and Linear B), in the extinct Indus River Valley Civilization, in what today is the Chinese province of Henan (characters), and in the Pre-Columbian Civilizations of Meso-America. The Cretan Linear A and the script of the Indus River Valley Civilization have not been deciphered. Sumer was contemporaneous with Pre-Dynastic Egypt. Some specialists argue for the precedence of writing in Egypt, but this view is not widely accepted and the tendency is to look for the influence of Sumerian writing on its invention in Egypt. Sumerian writing is called cuneiform from the wedge-like marks that were made with a stylus on humid clay tablets to signify Sumerian phonemes or language sounds. Cuneiform evolved like other scripts from pictographs or the attempts to represent things pictorially. Cuneiform writing in its fully developed form (ca3000) combines the use of logograms as signs for meanings and as syllables. Logograms are also called glyphs. This process in China evolved into characters, which represent meanings. The difference between logograms and characters is that Chinese languages, whose basic vocabulary is monosyllabic, are tonal--a syllable can be intoned in between four and six different ways--hence characters are peculiar to spoken Chinese and are clumsy for the transcription of non-Chinese sounds. Cuneiform writing was applicable to other polysyllabic languages. It was adapted to Semitic languages, such as Akkadian; to Elamite, another probable isolate; and to the Indo-European language of the Hittites. Cuneiform was deciphered by the German G.F. Grotefend (1773-1853) and by the Englishman Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895). Rawlinson worked on the tri-lingual Behistun rock inscription (Old Persian, Elamite, Assyrian). The civilization of the Sumerians extended as far north as middle Mesopotamia and overlapped the riverine borders of Mesopotamia. The Akkadians probably arrived in Mesopotamia from the west before the start of Sumerian civilization. The also Semitic Amorites, ancestors of the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Aramaeans, and other Semites, occupied the region originally known as Amurru and later as Canaan and as Palestine. Sumer is an Akkadian designation, for the Sumerians called their land Kiengir as opposed to Kurkur (foreign lands). The influence of Sumer was determinant in all aspects of subsequent Mesopotamian history. Like Latin in Europe long after Rome, Sumerian remained the language of culture in Mesopotamia until at least the Persian conquest. Sumerian was the language of the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk, Ur, Kish, Lagash, and Umma. Other important Sumerian sites were Der, Eridu, Eshnunna, Girsu, Khafaje, Shuruppak, and Sippar. Babylon, though not in the core of Sumeria, and certainly not one of the originators of Mesopotamian civilization, was part of the cluster of cities of northern Sumeria. Eshnunna lies to the north of Babylon. Nippur was a Sumerian religious center, the shrine of the god Enlil, whose worship long outlasted the political hegemony of Sumeria. Because of the remains of its temple architecture (ziggurat), which became the model for all of Mesopotamia and are dated to ca3600, and because of the early evidence of writing there, Uruk (extreme southern Mesopotamia), is considered the birthplace of Sumerian civilization, although there is almost no knowledge of its history. Berossus, a Babylonian priest active ca290 BCE, compiled a list of kings of Babylonia which was the primary source in Antiquity and until archaeology discovered tablets containing other Babylonian kings lists. Berossus' sequential compilation was based on some of these lists. The earliest known Babylonian kings list (ca1800), including Sumeria and before, is also sequential, but in other lists kings and dynasties sometimes overlap or are coetaneous. Separate kings lists have been found for Lagash, for the dynasty of Hammurabi, and for Assyria. All Sumerian and Babylonian kings lists mention legendary, extremely long-lived kings preceding a flood which wiped out all living things but the humans and animals who survived in a large boat, exactly as in the Biblical Noah legend. The first historical figure in Sumerian history is Enmebaragesi, a ruler of Kish (ca2700), a Sumerian city in an area that later was part of Babylonia. It is known that Kish warred with Uruk. But even here history blends with legend for the army of Kish was led by Agga, the son of Enmebaragesi, and these events are part of the epic of Gilgamesh, which like all national epics mixes facts with fancy. As Uruk was Sumerian and mid-Mesopotamia was peopled by Semites, conceivably this legendary struggle occurred between states with different ethnic backgrounds. Kish did not succeeded in its imperial project and its hegemony ended with the first period of Lagash, founded by Ur-Nanshe in the southern heartland of Sumer. Lagash, whose capital was Girsu, did not dominate Sumer. Its rulers were contemporaneous with the Second Dynasty of Ur (ca2400). Ur and Lagash were rivals and their kings both claimed to be rulers of Kish. It is for Lagash that the first reliable Sumerian dynastic sequence has been elaborated. Lagash also warred with Umma, to the north west, and it extended its rule down to the coast. Dilmun, in today's Bahrain, was a likely link of Sumer to the Indus River Valley Civilization. Semitic Akkad created the first unified state in Mesopotamia. The Akkadian Empire was founded by Sargon (ca2340-ca2279). By then Sumer's influence extended far north of Kish to Mari (on the right bank of the Euphrates in Syria), where cuneiform Semitic writing (Akkadian) has been discovered, and to the city of Ebla (south of Aleppo in Syria). The supremacy of Akkad came about during the time that the Amorites, who founded Babylon (Babel or Babilla), were starting to invade and settle Mesopotamia. Tribal Gutians from the Zagros mountains (western Iran) caused the downfall of Akkad (ca2150). Lagash had another period of predominance in the south and reached the height of its power under the rule of Gudea (ca2125-ca2110). By then Akkadian was the regional lingua franca, a pre-eminence it would retain until it was gradually replaced by Aramaic (last millennium BCE). The Third Dynasty of Ur (ca2112-ca2004), founded by Ur-Nammu, conquered Lagash. In mid-Mesopotamia, the disintegration of Akkad permitted the rise of the First Dynasty of Isin (ca2025-ca1793). The first ephemeral Assyrian empire was founded by Shamshi-Adad (ca1813-ca1935). An invasion of eastern Mesopotamia by Elam resulted in the occupation of Lagash and the end of the hegemony of the Third Dynasty of Ur with the defeat and capture of its last king, Ibbi-sin (ca2004). The political demise of the Sumerians is evidenced in that Ur fell to attacks from Elam but also from pressure by the Amorites, who established a stronghold in Larsa (ca1950), a south Mesopotamian city-state across the Euphrates from Ur. ca6500-ca4000 Indo-Europeans In 1796, William Jones, chief justice of British India, indicated the similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, and Persian. This led to the widely accepted theory that there existed a mother tongue designated proto-Indo-European, located ca6500 BCE in a possible homeland north of the Caucasus. The denomination Indo-European derives from the hypothesis that modern European languages might well have derived from a language closer to Sanskrit that to Greek or Latin. It is confusing because in fact European languages evolved independently of Indic languages. The originary Indo-Europeans separated into three branches: the Indo-Aryan, the Indo-Iranian, and the Indo-European proper. The Indo-European branch, which begat most of the languages of Europe and two minor extinct languages in the Tarim Basin, probably separated first, perhaps ca4000, mostly in the direction of the west but also, a smaller group, towards the east. The main groups of the Indo-European branch (in terms of survival, speakers, and influence) are: Greek, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and Italic. Other surviving groups are Armenian, Celtic, and Illyrian (modern Albanian). Indo-European groups and individual languages that have not survived are: Thracian, Phrygian, Anatolian (Hittite and Luwian languages, more properly Nesite), Venetic, and Messapic. From linguistic analysis and from historical hindsight, a possible sequence in which the Indo-European migrations towards the west might have started is as follows (the names are of course ex post facto): Thracians and Nesites or future Hittites (before 3000); Greeks and Illyrians (before 2300); Italics (ca1900); Slavs (ca1750); Balts (ca1500); Armenians, Celts, and Germans (before 1200). (These datings are more for the purpose of sequential tabbing than for indicating accurate times, which anyway no one has. What they indicate is basically the order in which these different peoples might perhaps have begun to emerge in pre-history as the antecessors of historical peoples and languages. There are no correspondences between these speculations and the historical attestations of these peoples.) Because the Celts were occupying western Europe when the Romans subjugated them (1st century BCE), it is assumed that they had been there for many centuries before. This incidentally does not mean that there weren't other peoples in Europe before the proto-Celts. And it doesn't mean either that Celts and Germans, as Julius Caesar apparently believed, were separate ethnic groups. The Basques, who speak a language with no other linguistic relatives, are thought to have inhabited their Pyreneean homeland and far into adjacent lands since "time immemorial". Iberian and Tartessian are known to have been spoken in Spain before the arrival of the Celts. And Ligurian, though Celticized, was not an originally Indo-European language. As opposed to generalized techniques, such as the use of certain tools or pottery-making with basic, primitive decorative variations, advanced cultures are characterized by a set of associated features, such as architecture (albeit primitive), metal-working capability, ceramic-types, and mode of burial. Archaeological research has found evidence for advanced cultures (Urn-Field and Hallstatt) in western Europe as far back as ca1200 BCE or before, so it is natural to associate them with the ancestors of the Celts. In Italy archaeology has found remains of a characteristic culture ca1100. It is known that Italy was occupied by a non-Indo-European-speaking people called Etruscans, who developed a civilization of their own when the Italics (the future Romans among others) were still in a backward tribal stage. This means either of two: (1) that the Italics arrived after 1100 or (2) that they were there before or arrived simultaneously and co-existed with the ancestors of the Etruscans. As there is no evidence of destructive discontinuities in the archaeological record for Italy, the second alternative seem the likelier. The Italics spoke the ancestors of the Latin-derived Romance languages of Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, and Romania. It is believed that the Nesites conquered the native Hatti of Anatolia ca2000. By one of the many ironies in the relations between peoples, the Nesites became known as Hittites. Very little is known of the Hatti. The first written records of the Hittites date from ca1600. If the Nesites entered the Balkans ca3000, then the proto-Greeks, who for various reasons can be assumed to have founded Mycenaean Civilization (dated to ca2000), could have been following them ca2500. As far as history goes, all that can be said of the Illyrians is that they settled north of the Greeks, perhaps with Thracians and Phrygians. In this schematized chronological sequence, the Germans moved into Scandinavia and northern Germany (pivotal date 1200), where they had the Celts to the west and south and the Balts and Slavs to the east. The Armenians migrated into the Balkans, where they lingered (pivotal date between 1200 annd 1000), then followed the Phrygians into Anatolia. After ca1500, the Balts were occupying the Baltic coastline and its hinterland. The Slavs occupied the lands from the Elbe to central Russia. In the steppes south of the Slavs were Indo-Iranians. During the 2nd century BCE, the Germans were on the move displacing the Celts from Germany proper and expanding along the Danube towards the Black sea. The Slavs were pressured to the east on the Elbe frontier and they in turn constrained the Balts. The only records we have for these movements and displacements are what the Romans found out after they occupied the Rhine frontier and during the course of the history of the Roman Empire and its relations with its neighbors along the Danubian limes. Beyond that there are shreds of archaeological finds and what paleolinguistics can reconstruct about the relative geographical location of Balts and Slavs, such as evidence from the names of rivers. At the height of the Roman Empire (2nd century CE) descendants of Indo-Europeans were occupying the lands from central Russia to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal. In much of the empire Latin was superimposed on a variety of other languages, especially those belonging to Afro-Asiatics, a family in which Egyptian and Semitic were principal branches. The smaller branch of the Indo-Europeans that migrated to the east eventually ended up in the Tarim Basin (southern Xinjiang). In 1900, a large cache of manuscripts was spirited out of Dunhuang, a Chinese city on the eastern edge of the Tarim Basin. They were being kept in Buddhist caves in the area. These texts, which contain Buddhist, Manichean, and Nestorian literature, were written from the 6th to the 8th centuries in two different Indo-European languages related to the languages of the Indo-Europeans who migrated to Europe. They are called Turfan and Kuchan and there are considerable dialectical differences between them. When did these Indo-Europeans arrive in the Tarim? There is archaeological evidence for the presence of the ancient Chinese in the Tarim Basin until ca2000 BCE. Therefore, the eastern Indo-Europeans probably arrived there after that time. Assuming these Indo-Europeans separated from the proto-Indo-Europeans at the same time as the western Indo-Europeans (ca4000), then they must have been wandering in the steppes and moving gradually through Transoxiana towards the Tarim ahead of the Indo-Aryans and the Indo-Iranians. There is evidence of an extinct higher culture that existed in the 3rd millennium in the area between Transoxiana and Iran. It has been dubbed BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex). This civilization was abandoned towards ca1500. The eastern Indo-Europeans might or might not have had to do with it. The eastern Indo-Europeans might have entered the Tarim Basin at the time the Indo-Aryans were moving into the Indus River Valley in Pakistan (ca2000) and the Indo-Iranians were in the steppes. In any event, the Tarim Basin, which the Chinese started dominating during the 1st century BCE, by the 6th century CE was being infiltrated by Uigur Turks, who finally gained ascendancy in the region leading to the final extinction of the Indo-European Tarim Basin civilization. An interesting question which has not received much attention from either linguists or archaeologists, is what got the Indo-Europeans on the move in the first place. Population density is one obvious answer. A fascinating possibility lies in the demonstration in recent years that the formation of the Black sea was the result of catastrophic flooding with the breaching by the sea of Marmara of a natural barrier in the Bosporus ca5600 BCE. Submerged farming settlements have been found offshore at levels where one would have expected them to be if the shoreline of the Black sea was much further out than it is today. This flooding, which has been compared to a thousand Niagaras set off at once, would have had immediate repercussions on the peoples occupying the lands of the hypothesized Indo-European homeland. Its is even conceivable that the flooding of the Black Sea might have been the source of the Great Deluge legends common to Mesopotamia and the Levant. One significant Indo-European datum is that in the legends associated with the Indic law-giver Manu there is mention of a flood similar to the deluge. ca6500-ca2000 Indo-Aryans and Indo-Iranians ca6000-ca1700 Egypt: Old Kingdom ca5000-ca500 CE Austronesians to settlement in Easter Island ca4800-after 300 Altaics to appearance of Xiongnu ca4800-ca2205 Finno-Ugrians ca3000-ca1000 Minoan Civilization ca2500-ca1200 Mycenaean Civilization ca2500-ca1000 Jews to the formation of ancient Israel ca2340-1781 In Anatolia, with which Ashur always had political contacts (not normally friendly), Indo-Europeans had become predominant, first with the foundation of the long-lived though politically unimportant Arzawa state (ca1900-ca1400) and then with the much more influential Old Hittite Kingdom (ca1700-ca1500). It was a Hittite king, Marsulis I, who defeated the last king of the Old Babylonian Empire, Samsuditana (ca1626-ca1595), but Babylon itself fell to the Kassites, a war-like people who had been gaining ground towards Mesopotamia from the Zagros, first mentioned during the time of Samsuiluna. The Kassite language is barely known from some words that appear in the inscriptions. The Kassites were culturally assimilated by Babylon but did not entirely lose their ethnic identity. After the fall of Babylon, the Mitanni kingdom, in which an originally Indo-Aryan aristocracy ruled a Hurrian people, arose in eastern Anatolia and was dominant in northern Mesopotamia (ca1595). Other Hurrians inhabited lands as far west as northern Syria. Under a king called Ulamburiash (ca1475), the Kassites conquered southern Mesopotamia (Sealand). The apogee of their kingdom was the reign of Kurigalzu (ca1400-ca1375), eponymous founder of a Kassite capital, Dur Kurigalzu, north of Babylon. From ca1375 to ca1333, Kassite kings Kadashman-Enlil I and Burnaburiash were powerful enough to correspond with the Egyptian kings Amenhotep III and Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV), as evidenced in the Amarna letters from the archives of the capital of Akhenaton. Some authorities attribute to the Kassites the adoption of Akkadian as the diplomatic lingua franca of the Near East. Under Mitanni vassalage, king Ashur-uballit I (ca1354-ca1318) consolidated the territory of Assyria. Ashur began shedding its marginal, untutored reputation. Ashur-uballit forged an offensive alliance with the Hittite king Suppiluliumas against king Tushratta (ca1365-ca1330) of the Mitanni. Even though the Mitanni capital, Washshukanni or Wassukkani, was taken, the kingdom survived, but Assyria became independent and adopted an aggressive foreign policy whose main objective was to subject Babylon and its Kassite rulers. Adad-nirari I (ca1307-ca1275) defeated the Kassites (ca1280), but Babylonia was not subjugated. Tukulti-Ninurta I (ca1244-ca1208) went to war again with Babylon and inflicted another defeat on the Kassites. He attacked Elam who retaliated with a raid on Babylon. Subsequently the power of Assyria declined and Babylon might have become hegemonic in central and southern Mesopotamia. Contemporaneously, the Hittite kingdom and the Hurrian cities of Syria were devastated by attacks from hostile tribes and sea marauders. Both Ashur and Babylon existed independently of each other. Kassite rule in Babylon was terminated by the Elamite invasion (ca1160) of king Shutruk-Nahunte (ca1185-ca1155), although the Kassites were not finished politically. Among the booty taken by the Elamites in Babylon was the complete code of Hammurabi inscribed in a large stone. With the dynasty founded by Ashur-dan (ca1179-ca1134), Assyria rivalled with Babylon as not only a military but a cultural equal. The history of Assyria is better known than that of Babylon. However, even during periods of clear Assyrian predominance, its monarchs, who also worshipped Marduk, tended to respect Babylonian autonomy and the throne of Babylon was often occupied by the Assyrian crown heir. Assyria only used a heavy hand with Babylon when its rebellions threatened to disrupt the integrity of Assyria. The Assyrian capital was established in Nineveh. During this period, Assyria resisted Aramaean attacks from Syria even as Aramaean infiltration of Mesopotamia went on. In southern Mesopotamia, the Aramaeans were known as Kaldhu or Chaldeans. After the consolidation of Assyria, the Second Dynasty of Isin (ca1152-ca1020) ruled from Babylon. Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar or Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudurri-sur) I (ca1126-ca1105) invaded Elam to recover the statue of the god Marduk previously carted off by the Elamites. He neglected to bring back the stone with Hammurabi's code the Elamites had filched, perhaps because there were copies of it in Babylon, although none have been found in the excavations there. Nebuchadnezzar was at war with Tiglath-pileser of Assyria (ca1115-ca1077), who conquered northern Babylonia, although the end result of these wars seems to have been the mutual exhaustion of the two states, both of which faded politically at around the same time. The immediate cause of the fall of Isin was attack by a Kassite king of lower Mesopotamia called Simbar-Shihu (ca1020-ca1003). Egypt ceased being an united kingdom at the start of what is often referred to as the Third Intermediate Period (ca1075). The events in Mesopotamia and Egypt left a vacuum of power in the Levant which was filled with the formation ca1000 and after of Semitic federations and states in Syria, Phoenicia, Philistia, and Israel. The western Semites were never an united political power in early Antiquity. Elam was probably having to defend itself against the Indo-Iranians who where then taking over most of Persia. Aramaean and Luwian statelets were formed in Syria and southeastern Anatolia. In the following centuries, Aramaic became the common tongue of Mesopotamia. It was in that fragmented and unstable situation in the Near East, that Assyria rose again under Ashur-dan II (ca932-ca912), who appears to have put an end to Aramaean raids from Syria. Adad-nirari II (ca912-ca891) conquered Babylonia, then ruled by Shamash-mudammiq (ca930-ca904). He had to face further Aramaean attacks. His successor Tukulti-ninurta II (ca890-ca884) kept up the counter-pressure on the Aramaeans and ruled from Ashur and Nineveh. Assyria became a militaristic kingdom utilizing ranked infantry formations and cavalry. Ashurnasirpal II (883-859) expanded Assyria besieging cities in the Levant and utilizing repressive tactics and terror as a psychological weapon of war. He founded a capital called Kalakh, also known as Nimrud (nothing to do with Nimrod the Biblical hunter), near modern Mosul. The Assyrians moved entire populations about their empire in order to weaken the resistance of their more recalcitrant subjects. Shalmaneser III (858-824) carried on the Assyrian imperialist policies which were directed principally at Syria and the Aramaean states. In 853, a multiple coalition, reportedly involving Aramaeans, Luwians, and Jews, defeated Shalmaneser at Qarqar, also Karkar (northern Syria). Although Assyrian royal propaganda claimed victory, Shalmaneser could not exert a firm authority over Syria. Assyrian records mention Media (ca835), the first Indo-Iranian kingdom in Persia, constituted around the modern city of Esfahan, already encroaching on eastern Anatolia. The first presence of Arabs in Mesopotamia was also first reported by the Assyrians. Notwithstanding its military achievements, Assyrian power declined. Babylonia became independent again. The Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi (855-812) asked for Shalmaneser's help in a dynastic struggle with his brother and was restored. During this intervention the Assyrians first encountered the Chaldeans, who ruled fiefdoms in southern Mesopotamia. Shalmaneser's successor, Shamshi-adad V (823-811), faced a similar internal problem and asked for Marduk-zakir-shumi's help, who provided it. Shamsi then turned against Babylonia where he was resisted by the Chaldeans and Babylon remained independent. Between ca810 and ca806, Nineveh was ruled by the Babylonian regent Sammu-ramat, better known to history by her Greek name of Semiramis. Perhaps for the purpose of dynastic legitimation, a legend was woven according to which she had founded Babylon. It left such a strong impression on the Greeks that this historical absurdity was one of the motivations for the history of Babylonia written by Berossus. The Hurrian kingdom of Urartu was founded around Lake Van in eastern Anatolia by Sarduri I (ca840-830). Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (782-773) warred with Urartu, ruled by Argishti (785-756). There followed another period of Assyrian decadence. Under king Sarduri II (755-735) Urartu reached the acme of its power. It annexed the region known as Kummuhu (the Greek Commagene in southeastern Anatolia) and was overlord of the Aramaean and Luwian states in northern Syrian and Anatolia. What is known in history as the Neo-Assyrian Empire, began with king Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727), who displaced Urartian influence in southeastern Anatolia. To do so he warred with the Aramaeans. He also had to contain attacks by the Medes and in the west he conquered disunited Lebanon and Palestine to the Egyptian frontier. However, he did not reduce the Jews in their hilly kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Babylon must have been a vassal of Assyria because Tiglath-Pileser helped the Babylonian Nabu-nasir (747-734) fend off the Chaldeans. This initial intervention was not very effective, for the Chaldeans shortly afterwards were in power in Babylon (731) and Tiglath-Pileser this time invaded in force and occupied Babylonia, whose direct kingship he assumed. Tiglath-Pileser's subjection of Palestine was not firm and his successor Shalmaneser V (726-721) died besieging Samaria, the capital of Israel. Under Sargon II (721-705), Carchemish in northern Syria was conquered. Israel (but not Judah) was finally reduced to vassalage and there were deportations of Jews. A suspiciously precise figure places the number of deportees within the Neo-Assyrian empire at 1,210,928. A guesstimate for the population of the territories of the former Assyrian empire in the mid-first millennium BCE is 3,000,000, but the deportations were carried out over a period of more than three hundred years. The Egyptians, newly aggressive under the Kushite dynasty (ca780-ca656), were defeated and contained. Sargon broke the power of the Luwians, descendants of the Hittites, who disappeared from history. Sargon named his capital, Dur-Sharru-kin (in modern Khorsabad, near Mosul), after himself. The Chaldean Marduk-apal-idina III rebelled and Babylon had to be reduced again. Crown prince Sennacherib campaigned against Urartu (714), already under pressure from the rampaging Cimmerians, the first of many subsequent incursions from the nomadic Indo-Iranian tribes of the southern Russian steppe. Sargon died campaigning in northwestern Iran against the Medes. During the reign of Sennacherib (705-681) a great palace was built in Nineveh. With Elamite help, Marduk-apal-iddina returned to Babylon (703). His rebellion was put down, but Babylon revolted twice again (700 and 689). The third time Sennacherib sacked the city. New insurrections in Palestine were suppressed although Sennacherib did not take Jerusalem, which resisted under Hezekiah. Sennacherib was killed by two of his sons and was succeeded by another son, Esarhaddon (681-669), who took a conciliatory approach towards Babylon. Assyria was being threatened by the Medes from the east and by the marauding Cimmerians, who had destroyed Phrygia in central Anatolia (696-695). To counter the latter, Esarhaddon made an alliance with the Scythians, who had displaced the Cimmerians from southern Russia in the first place. The Assyrians contained the Cimmerians to Anatolia (679). The Kushites in Egypt were a threat to Assyrian rule in Palestine and Esarhaddon invaded Egypt, drove the Kushite king Taharqa down to Upper Egypt, and captured Memphis (671). Esarhaddon, who was very superstitious, applied the fearsome (for his courtiers) practice of naming substitute kings during moon eclipses, whom he later had executed. Upon Esarhaddon's death, Taharqa mustered his forces and recaptured Memphis (670). Esarhaddon's successor, Ashurbanipal III (669-627), forced Taharqa once again out of Memphis and down to Thebes. Taharqa's successor, Tanutamon, counterattacked, but the Assyrians sacked Thebes and destroyed the power of the Kushites (663), who retired to Napata and Meroe, their homeland in Nubia. The Assyrians left the Egyptian Psamtik (Psammetichos) in charge as governor in Memphis. With the aid of Greek mercenaries and of Gyges, king of Lydia (western Anatolia), Psamtik ejected the Assyrians (ca660) and Egypt became once again independent. These events mark the first Greek intervention in the political affairs of the Near East. The Cimmerians were attacking Lydia, whose king Gyges asked for Assyrian help but was refused because of his alliance with the Egyptians. Gyges was killed in the Cimmerian onslaught but the citadel of Sardis was not taken (652). Meanwhile, Babylon, under the governorship of Shamash-shum-ukin, resentful brother of Ashurbanipal, became fractious again and had to be reduced in 648. Ashurbanipal, who must have suspected Elamite intrigue, marched to the east and sacked Susa (647). Elam became an Assyrian province. The Persians, neighbors of Elam to the south, sent tribute to Assyria in 639. The Cimmerians were finally crushed by the Assyrians (ca630). Lydia recognized Assyrian suzerainty. Assyria reached the height of its power under Ashurbanipal, who also collected the largest library of cuneiform tablets known and prided in his knowledge of the scribe's craft. In other respects he was not especially finicky and he is depicted in a Nineveh bas-relief having dinner al fresco with his queen the head of a defeated Elamite king hanging from a tree. Assyrian art reached a pinnacle with the awesome bas-reliefs of wounded lions which can be seen in the British museum today. However, as often happened in the Near East in Antiquity, Assyria after Ashurbanipal went into decline probably characterized by civil strife. With the help of Media, Nabopolassar (626-605) drove the Assyrians out of Babylon. Babylonia became once again independent and adopted its own anti-Assyrian policy under Chaldean monarchs. In 625, Sin-shar-ishkun was king in Assyria. Under Cyaxares the Medes increased the military pressure. Finally, an alliance of Cyaxares and Nabopolassar besieged and conquered Nineveh (612), which was subjected to the usual ravages in such epochal struggles. The last Assyrian military commander and virtual king, Ashur-uballit II, resisted to the end in Harran (southeastern Anatolia). A supportive Egyptian expedition, led or ordered by Necho II (610-595), was quashed at Carchemish. The renascent Babylonian kingdom inherited and tried to maintain the Assyrian empire. Nabopolassar's son and successor, Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562), the victor at Carchemish, asserted Babylonian authority in the Levant. The records for his reign cease altogether after ten years. Jehoiakim, who had been placed on the throne of Judah by the Egyptian king Necho, submitted to Nebuchadnezzar, but then defied him. His son Joachin surrendered to the Chaldeans who placed Zedekiah on the throne of Judah. When Zedekiah in turn became rebellious, Nebuchadnezzar had Jerusalem besieged. In a probable attempt to organize resistance outside of Jerusalem Zedekiah was captured and blinded. Jerusalem resisted but finally fell. The Temple of Solomon was destroyed and thousands of Jewish captives were taken to Babylonia. It was about the time of Nebuchadnezzar that the Jews began adopting the use of Aramaic, although Bible mentions that during the reign of Hezekiah the people of Jerusalem still spoke Hebrew. (Christ and his disciples spoke a dialect of Aramaic which is still spoken in certain villages in Lebanon and Syria.) Nebuchadnezzar could not reduce Egypt nor retain Elam, which probably by then had become a Persian vassal. Babylonia was also out of the picture in Anatolia where Media and Lydia were fighting for control. Nebuchadnezzar was the builder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, which followed the architectural tradition of Mesopotamia going back to the earliest Sumerian temples at Uruk. He completed the Tower of Babel which was some thirty modern stories high. Judah rebelled again at the end of Nebuchadnezzar's reign and it was made a Babylonian province. Even during the apogee of the Babylonian or Chaldean Empire, there were signs of decomposition in Babylon itself, where Awil-Marduk (561-560) was at odds with the priesthood. He was followed by Neriglisar (Nergal-shar-usur) (560-556). Under Nabodinus (556-539), Babylonia was still imperial enough to defeat Media in Anatolia. Persia, under the rule of the Achaemenid Cyrus II the Great, overthrew the Medes ca550. Nabodinus, who had an alliance with Astyages, the king of Media, saw the luck of the draw and retrenched to a line on the frontier of Mesopotamia with Arabia. He left Belshazzar, he of the writing in the wall, as governor in Babylon (552). Nabodinus made another ill-fated alliance, this time with Croesus of Lydia. Persian armies under Cyrus in 545 defeated Lydia and conquered as far as Ionia (the Greek-settled fringe of Asia Minor), which after many wars had finally succumbed to the Lydians. In 542, Nabodinus went to Babylon to assume command and the fate of his kingdom. Nabonidus surrendered to Cyrus (539) and Babylon fell without a fight, thus ending the imperial rule of the Semites in the ancient Near East, which had lasted from at least the Akkadian Empire, over 1800 years before, undone by the lowly Persians who had previously paid homage to Ashurbanipal (Achaemenid Empire). There were in all six Mesopotamian empires or empire-like states, starting with and including Akkad. The first dynasty of Isin, known as the Old Babylonian Period, was not really an empire but there was a clear political preponderance of Babylonia. The First Assyrian Empire (19th-18th centuries) was brief. The Babylonian empire of Hammurabi (18th-17th centuries) was somewhat unsteady on its feet. The second Assyrian empire (10th-9th centuries), founded by Ashur-dan, was the most oppressive and efficacious of all. However, it too declined until Tiglath-Pileser III created the Neo-Assyrian Empire (8th-7th centuries). The last empire, the Chaldean or Neo-Babylonian empire (late-7th-6th centuries), was the least durable of all, perhaps because empire-building had left Semitic Mesopotamia exhausted and vulnerable to the vigorous Indo-Iranians. Between the 17th and 10th centuries there was a long period during which Mesopotamia was under pressure from Syria, Anatolia, and the Zagros and empire-building was not possible, which may explain why when the Assyrians started expanding again they did it with such tremendous ferocity. ca2340-ca600 Elam Austroasiatics ca2000BCE-550CE Slavs The Slavs were Indo-Europeans who formed Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bulgaria, the vast area sometimes referred to as Slavia. The Indo-European homeland was probably somewhere in southern Russia, possibly north of the Caucasus. By ca2500 BCE, the also Indo-European Balts were occupying western Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic region. The Slavs followed in the wake of the Balts and constrained them to the Baltic region. The time of separation of proto-Slavic is placed between 2000 and 600 BCE. Around 2000, the Germans moved into Scandinavia and northern Germany. By ca1500, the Slavs occupied the lands from central Russia to the Elbe River. South of the Slavs were Indo-Iranians. Around 300, the Slavs occupied territories from the Elbe to the lower Dnieper. The Germans expanded from Scandinavia and Germany into central Europe, displacing the Celts from Germania proper, and moving towards the Black sea. The expansion of the Germans increased their points of contact with the Slavs to the east. The Slavs were driven from the Elbe frontier. The Slavs had the Germans and the Balts to the west and south. Indo-Iranians were south east of the Germans. By 200 CE, the Slavs occupied territories from the upper Volga to the Vistula rivers. The Germans were pushed west from southern Russia by the Indo-Iranian Alans. When the Germans began their large-scale penetrations of the Roman frontiers in the 4th century, the Slavs flowed westwards again to the edges of formerly Germanic lands and south to the Balkans. By 550, they had expanded to the Elbe River again and to the Black Sea. They seized territories which the Goths and other Germanic tribes abandonded lured by the riches of Rome. The Slavs had occupied the territory of Bulgaria, but the first Bulgarian state was founded by Bulgar Turks (681) who arrived from southern Russia and were assimilated by the Slavs. By 700, the Slavs were occupying lands from the Urals to the southern Baltic coast down the Balkans to northern Greece. During Carolingian times (8th-9th centuries), the Slavs began to form proto-states either opposite to or within the German marches. Thus arose Moravia and Bohemia. The Slavs were never displaced from their central Russian homeland, where Kievan Rus was structured starting in the 9th century by Varangian marauders and traders from Sweden. During the 9th century, the Magyars opened space for themselves in the midst of the Slavic lands. With the coronation of Otto I the Great by the pope in 962, Germania became the Holy Roman Empire, which assumed the task of extending German influence further into Slavia. The missionaries Cyril and Methodius (9th century), from Constatinople, made the first efforts to create the Slavic Cyrillic alphabet, based on a previous one known as Glagolithic. See bibliographies under Indo-Europeans and under Russia. Hittites: Old Kingdom ca1500-ca1000 Pre-Columbian Amerindians: from Toltecs to Maya Mitanni 1400-1000 Balts The Balts were Indo-Europeans present today as the Latvians and Lithuanians. The Balts originated in the Indo-European homeland north of the Caucasus. By ca1500 BCE, they were occupying western Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic region. The Slavs followed in the wake of the Balts and constrained them to the Baltic region. Baltic and Slavic languages are closer to each other than to other groups of languages of the larger Indo-European group of languages. Linguists have also found remarkable and puzzling similarities between Baltic languages and the ancient, extinct languages of the Tarim Basin, the so-called Tokharian languages, now referred to as Kuchan and Turfan. From archaeological evidence, it is likely that the Balts in the 12th century BCE neighbored to the west on the Celts, who by the 5th century had been displaced by the Germans. The limit of Balt reach was East Prussia, whose name derives from a Baltic people (the Bruzi or Borussians). The Balts enter history with the expansion eastwards of the Germans. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword were a German military order formed in northern Latvia by bishop Albert of Livonia, who founded Riga in 1201. In 1226, the Teutonic Knights were charged with Christianizing the Baltic lands and by 1231 the Borussians had been Germanized or exterminated. The Balts formed Lithuania ca1250 in opposition to German pressure from the Teutonic Knights in the south and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the north. The Latvians, who included the Kuronians (western Latvia) and the Semigallians (central Latvia), were under German, Swedish, and Russian rule and did not have independent existence until the 20th century. Hittites and Luwians ca1300-ca630 Scythians ca1200-ca1100 Greece: Dark Ages |