Assyria's Rise to Super Power Status

A History of Mankind (65)

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A series of failed Assyrian campaigns against Babylon between 771 and 767 BC made it clear that the time had come to reassert the great city's independence. In around 769-761 BC, Chaldean King Eriba-Marduk conducted temple and infrastructure restorations as well as punitive raids against nomads and marauders at the margins of Babylonian power.

Nabu-shuma-ishkun, Eriba-Marduk's unrelated successor, appears to have been a tremendous failure who was only remembered for his crimes[1] and gave way in 747 BC to native Babylonian Nabonassar, who kept the throne for thirteen years dominated by civic reconstruction and a return to precise historical records.

Nabonassar was a careful man, seemingly tactful in his dealings with Assyria's Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC). A general who took the throne after a civil war and went on to restore Assyria's empire to its hitherto greatest power and influence, Tiglath-Pileser III also created a permanent, professional military that replaced the previous system of annual levies and became the basis for a real Assyrian empire.

Nabonassar's success in dealing with Tiglath-Pileser III is evident in that Assyrian campaigns near Babylon appear to have had the main effect of subduing Aramean and Chaldean tribes with designs on the city; and on the fact that Nabonassar was succeeded by his son, Nabû-nādin-zēri, the only known hereditary succession in the kingdom between the late Ninth century BC and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 626 BC.