The Buried Cities of Assyria
Overview
During the nineteenth century, archaeological discoveries in the Middle East changed the way scholars thought about the history of Western civilization. The translation of the ancient languages of Mesopotamia coincided with the spectacular excavations of the palaces of Assyrian kings and the biblical city of Nineveh. Eventually Mesopotamia was to be recognized as the location of the world's first urban civilization, even more ancient than Egypt. Some of the writings uncovered there parallel accounts found in the earliest sections of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Background
Mesopotamia is the name of an ancient region including parts of what are now Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Its heart was the rich "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, long known as a cradle of civilization. A Mesopotamian city called Ur of the Chaldees is said to be the birthplace of the biblical patriarch Abraham, whom Jews and Arabs regard as their ancestor.
Abraham's people were Semites, nomadic tribes whose remote origins were probably in Arabia. The Sumerians, among whom they lived in Mesopotamia, stood poised at the dawn of history. They built the world's first cities and invented writing, using wedge-shaped symbols called cuneiform, about 5,000 years ago.
This page contains 201 words.
The Buried Cities of Assyria article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,658 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Assyriology Article
