for about a hundred and fifty years after the end of the Late Bronze Age so from around 1155 - 972 ECE small kingdoms came and went in the area of Syria and Mesopotamia to the west of the cuneiform lands the Kingdom of Israel was founded and flourished during this era but other kingdoms left very few records it was also in this period that the small kingdom of Assyria which was limited to a small area around the city of us or never forgot the greatness that it had formerly achieved so around the 10th century BCE its kings began to embark on a campaign to recapture the lands that they perceived as their own land that their ancestors had once in the 9th century King Asher Nasir called the second it was even more ambitious he ventured into areas that had never before been subject to Assyria he used the wealth that flowed in as a result of his conquests to build a new city the city of kaol who also sometimes referred to as it's centerpiece was a sprawling palace that became a model for later kings to imitate the interior walls were covered with stone reliefs and sculptures that were larger than human size the towering over visitors depicting the king at war the king hunting lions and the king surrounded by gods each panel was accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions which praised King Ashura Nasir Paul the second when the palace a caliph was complete Ashur nós appalled the second through what might have been the biggest party certainly up until that point in history sources tell us that he hosted almost 70,000 people from across the entire empire and even beyond the feast lasted for ten days he provided a twenty-seven thousand cattle according to the sources sheep and lambs in addition to ducks geese gazelles doves fish and vegetables all for his guests to feast on and of course he provided untold quantities of beer for everyone to drink at this massive feast asure Nasir Paul and his successors built an empire at least four times larger than any empire which had come before it this was also the only large empire of its kind at the time meaning there were no competitor states the Assyrian Kings control over their empire was also more effective and more brutal and had been true of previous empires their methods included military force to intimidate and terrify their subjects and also their neighbors into submission this shows us something about their brutality their effective organization is evidenced by the fact that they created roads throughout the Empire and they made sure that these roads were well protected to ensure fast movement of troops and of messages the neo-assyrian empire emerged in the 9th century BCE and it quickly became larger than any previous empire but it was also immensely influential both during its heyday and for centuries after decisions made in the imperial capital cities in present-day northern Iraq influenced the lives of people from the Nile River and all the way over to the Caspian Sea at its height the Empire extended over all the areas that are today Iraq Syria Lebanon as well as parts of Egypt Jordan Iran Israel Palestine and Turkey these were almost all the lands that had cuneiform and they were all under Assyrian rule its political administrative and infrastructural heritage shaped subsequent histories of the entire region in some very important ways [Music]