From Here to History
The history podcast where Chris Swanson and Jason Weidert discuss events and people of the past with as much openness, understanding, and fairness as we can muster. Our only agenda is to inform in an entertaining and engaging way.
We teach high school, after all, and that's a tough audience. Our hope is that if we can keep teenagers interested we may be able to pull off a worthwhile podcast, too.
We try to release one episode every month. But we're teachers with busy young families so if we go a little longer than that between episodes, bear with us!
From Here to History
The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Assyrians
The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III inaugurated the golden age of his empire's power between 745 and 727 BC. Just over a century later, Sin-Summu-Ishkin watched as that empire took its dying breaths. It was a meteoric rise and cataclysmic fall for the now largely forgotten Assyrian Empire.
In this episode, Chris and Jason discuss the story arc of the Neo-Assyrians: their kings and armies, their conspiracies and palace coups, and then, ultimately, the enemies who brought them down.
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Notes on sources
One big caveat when it comes to reading material on Assyria is that it is mostly a field for specialists. The academic material is vast, but there are very few 'popular' histories of the Ancient Assyrians. That means much of what is available may be reasonably inaccessible (and a bit pricey) for the reader with a general interest in Assyrian history.
But if you wish to forge ahead, we relied heavily on the following works:
Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire by Eckart Frahm
Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Very Short Introduction Series) by Karen Radner
A Companion to Assyria (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) Ed by Eckart Frahm
The Imperialisation of Assyria: an Archaeological Approach by Bleda During
Happy history hunting!