ABSTRACT
Ashurbanipal’s celebrative inscriptions may have ended around 635 bc, but the king had already achieved his greatest accomplishments by 646 bc, with his victory over Elam and the Arabs (ca. 645 bc?). The following years of his reign were spent gaining ceremonial recognition of his authority from the surviving kingdoms in the empire’s periphery: from the Persians in Anshan to the Urartians and the Lydians. In the final years of Ashurbanipal’s reign, however, the first signs of the empire’s crisis began to appear, at least in the western regions, which were devastated by the Scythians, who descended in the Levant. Moreover, the crisis spread throughout the mountains north of Assyria, now controlled by the local populations (especially the Medes).
