ABSTRACT
The land of Assyria lay in the north of ancient Mesopotamia, corresponding roughly with the northern part of present-day Iraq. South of Assyria was Babylonia, with its centre in the region of modern Baghdad. The Neo-Assyrian period, with which this paper is primarily concerned, covers approximately the three centuries between 900 and 600 BC. It is the period which saw the growth and decline of the great Assyrian empire. As well as the Neo-Assyrian period, reference is also made to the preceding Middle Assyrian period, which began in the mid-fourteenth century BC, and to certain periods of Babylonian history, in particular the Old Babylonian period, which dates between c. 1894 BC and 1595 BC.
