ASSYRIA
This river valley was home to Assyria's heartland and its capital, Nineveh.
Tigris / Euphrates / Mesopotamia
This nearly 1,700-mile system of roads connected the far reaches of the Persian Empire to its capital.
Royal Road
This king ruled from Babylon and built the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Nebuchadnezzar
The mistreatment of a group of people because of their religion, ethnicity, or beliefs.
persecution
According to Professor Campbell, the one ingredient every empire has in common.
control
This Assyrian king's own inscriptions boast of destroying 89 cities and 820 villages and ordering most of their people killed.
Sennacherib
Persian kings appointed these regional governors, drawn from the nobility, to oversee each province.
satrap
Considered the founder of the Persian nation, this ruler's empire stretched from the Indus River to Anatolia, and he allowed the Jews of Babylon to return home.
Cyrus (the Great)
The scattering of a people from their homeland to live across other parts of the world.
diaspora
Campbell's term for the heartland of an empire, where political power is concentrated.
The center
Assyrian armies used these soldiers, who dug beneath enemy walls to collapse their foundations during a siege.
sappers
This Persian prophet taught that the universe was a battleground between light and darkness, founding one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions
Zoroaster
This Persian emperor conquered Egypt but broke from his father's reputation for tolerance.
Cambyses
A payment of gold, silver, or goods demanded by a conqueror from a defeated or threatened people.
tribute
Campbell's term for the outer regions of an empire, often home to conquered or loosely controlled peoples.
The periphery
This Assyrian king's library at Nineveh held 20,000 clay tablets gathered from across the Fertile Crescent.
Ashurbanipal
Unlike Assyria, Persia became known for this general policy toward the religion and customs of conquered peoples.
tolerance
This Assyrian king's campaign against Judea in 701 BCE laid waste to multiple cities and laid siege to Jerusalem.
Sennacherib
Battering rams, siege towers, and tunnels used to break into a fortified city.
siege engines or siege weapons
Campbell names the Han and Roman Empires as two powers that struggled with this problem, in which an empire's growing borders become more expensive to defend the longer they get.
overextension
After Assyria's fall, this people, who had helped other oppressed peripheral peoples overthrow the empire, built a new one centered at Babylon.
Chaldeans
This emperor reorganized Persia into provinces and built at Persepolis, but his invasion of mainland Greece failed.
Darius
This king of Judah faced that 701 BCE siege of Jerusalem but kept his throne when the Assyrians withdrew.
Hezekiah
The arc of fertile land stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, home to the earliest civilizations of Southwest Asia.
Fertile Crescent
According to Campbell, this was the primary benefit that drove most ancient empires to expand and conquer despite the high cost of doing so.
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