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Assurbanipal
Assurbanipal or Ashurbanipal , d. 626? BC, king of ancient Assyria (669-633 BC), son and successor of Esar-Haddon . The last of the great kings of Assyria, he drove Taharka out of Egypt and firmly established Necho in power there only to have Necho's son Psamtik revolt in 660 BC and wrest E...
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Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal (d. c.626 bc) (Assurbanipal) Last great king of Assyria (669–633 bc). During his reign, Assyria reached its largest extent, encompassing Upper Egypt, before a rapid decline. Excavations at Nineveh after 1850 revealed an advanced civilization....
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Nineveh
Nineveh , ancient city, capital of the Assyrian Empire, on the Tigris River opposite the site of modern Mosul, Iraq. A shaft dug at Nineveh has yielded a pottery sequence that can be equated with the earliest cultural development in N Mesopotamia. The old capital, Assur, was replaced by Calah, which...
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Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus , in the Persica of Ctesias , an Assyrian monarch who lived in great luxury. He was besieged in Nineveh by the Medes for two years, at the end of which time he set fire to his palace and burned himself and his court to death. Byron wrote a tragedy on the theme. The identity of Sardan...
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Susa
Susa , ancient city, capital of Elam . The site is 15 mi (23 km) SW of modern Dizful, Iran. It is the biblical Shushan, and its inhabitants were called Susanchites. From the 4th millennium BC, Elam was under the cultural influence of Mesopotamia. Excavations at Susa uncovered the stele of Naram-sin...
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Assyria
Assyria , ancient empire of W Asia. It developed around the city of Ashur, or Assur, on the upper Tigris River and south of the later capital, Nineveh.
Assyria's Rise
The nucleus of a Semitic state was forming by the beginning of the 3d millennium BC, but it was overshadowed by the greatne...
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catalog
catalog descriptive list, on cards or in a book, of the contents of a library. Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh was cataloged on shelves of slate. The first known subject catalog was compiled by Callimachus at the Alexandrian Library in the 3d cent. BC The library at Pergamum also had a catalog. E...
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Elam
Elam , ancient country of Asia, N of the Persian Gulf and E of the Tigris, now in W Iran. A civilization seems to have been established there very early, probably in the late 4th millennium BC The capital was Susa , and the country is sometimes called Susiana. The land included a hot, rich plain an...
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Babylonia
Babylonia , ancient empire of Mesopotamia. The name is sometimes given to the whole civilization of S Mesopotamia, including the states established by the city rulers of Lagash, Akkad (or Agade), Uruk, and Ur in the 3d millennium BC Historically it is limited to the first dynasty of Babylon establis...
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book
book The word book has come to have many meanings, e.g., any collection of sheets of paper, wood, or other material sewn or bound together; a division of a written work (books of the Bible, books of Caesar's Gallic War ); and statements of financial accounting (bookkeeping). The primary meaning ...
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