The Collapse of the Assyrian Empire

New research suggests it was climate-related megadroughts in the 7th century BC that built the foundation for the collapse of the Assyrian Empire (whose heartland was based in today’s northern Iraq)–one of the most powerful civilizations in the ancient world. It details how it triggered a decline in Assyria’s way of life that contributed to its ultimate collapse.

In 612 BC, the Median king Cyaxares the Great, the third and most capable king of Media, according to Herodotus, together with Nabopolassar of Babylon and the Scythians conquered Assyria after it had been badly weakened by civil war. The Medes then took over the Urartian capital of Van in 590 BC, effectively ending the sovereignty of Urartu.

According to the Armenian tradition, the Medes helped the Armenians establish the Orontid (Yervanduni) dynasty, a hereditary Armenian dynasty and the rulers of the successor state to the Iron Age kingdom of Urartu (Ararat). It is possible that the last Urartian king, Rusa IV, had connections to the future incoming Armenian Orontids dynasty.

The Armenian king Skayordi Haykazuni was a political foe of Assyria during the reign of Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), which would have been contemporaneous with the rule of Argishti II. Skayordi’s son, Paruyr Haykazuni (also known as Paruyr Skayordi), helped Cyaxares and his allies conquer Assyria, for which Cyaxares recognized him as the king of Armenia.

After the Assyrian Empire fell from power, the greater remaining part of Assyria formed a geopolitical region and province of other empires, although between the mid-2nd century BC and late 3rd century AD a patchwork of small independent Assyrian kingdoms arose in the form of Assur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai and Hatra.

The region of Assyria fell under the successive control of the Median Empire of 678 to 549 BC, the Achaemenid Empire of 550 to 330 BC, the Macedonian Empire (late 4th century BC), the Seleucid Empire of 312 to 63 BC, the Parthian Empire of 247 BC to 224 AD, the Roman Empire (from 116 to 118 AD) and the Sasanian Empire of 224 to 651 AD.

The Arab Islamic conquest of the area in the mid-seventh century finally dissolved Assyria (Assuristan) as a single entity, after which the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now Christians) gradually became an ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious minority in the Assyrian homeland, surviving there to this day as an indigenous people of the region.

Climate may have helped crumble one of the ancient world’s most powerful civilizations