Assyrian Timeline

3000 BCE – 2000 CE · 6 sites

All sites in this period

Country Record

Earliest Known Site in Iraq

Babylon

1894 BCE – 539 BCE

Capital of ancient Babylonia, Babylon flourished under Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar II, famed for its Hanging Gardens and Ishtar Gate, before falling to Persia in 539 BCE.

Bronze AgeIron Age

Lachish relief from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, now in the British Museum

Country Record

Known by the Most Names in Iraq

Nineveh

705 BCE – 612 BCE

The greatest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — Sennacherib's "city without rival" on the Tigris across from modern Mosul, with 80 kilometres of walls enclosing palaces, hanging gardens, and the world's first great library: 30,000 clay tablets assembled by Ashurbanipal recording the full scope of Mesopotamian knowledge.

Iron Age

Hatra

100 BCE – 241 CE

A Parthian caravan city in the northern Iraqi desert that withstood sieges by both Trajan and Septimius Severus — its massive circular defensive walls and hybrid Greco-Roman-Mesopotamian temples stood intact for 1,800 years until partial destruction by ISIS in 2015.

HellenisticRomanLate Antique

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Harran

3000 BCE – 2000 CE

One of the oldest continuously inhabited places on Earth, where Abraham paused on his journey to Canaan, where the last pagan temple of the Moon God survived into the Islamic era, and where distinctive beehive houses dot the Mesopotamian plain.

Bronze AgeIron AgeClassical

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Mardin

3000 BCE – 1500 CE

A Mesopotamian cliff city cascading down a rocky escarpment above the Syrian plain, where Artukid Turkish architecture, Syriac Christian monasteries, and Arab influence have created one of the most visually stunning and culturally layered urban landscapes in the world.

Bronze AgeMedieval

Kültepe

3000 BCE – 1500 BCE

Ancient Kanesh — the site of the oldest known Assyrian trading colony (kārum) and the source of the earliest written records found in Anatolia, predating the Hittite Empire.

Bronze Age