In 701 BC, when the great king Hezekiah, ruler of the Israelite kingdom of Judah,

looked out from the ramparts of his heavily fortified city of Jerusalem, what he saw must have filled him with a sense of both horror and awe.

For there, a raid in the fields surrounding him and his great city stood thousands of the most disciplined and highly trained warriors in the known world.

Elite cavalrymen, charioteers, archers, infantry and siege masters, wielding the most cutting-edge

military technology available at the time. They were also reputed to have been fearless as well as infamous

for the lack of mercy that they showed towards their enemies. They were the Assyrians,

and their forces were led by the most powerful man of his day.

King Sinai Heraba, better known to history as Sinakarib.

King Hezekiah must have heard the horrid tales of what the Assyrians did to their vanquished

enemies.

If his city fell, then any survivors, both soldiers and non-combatants alike, could expect

to receive little clemency.

If they weren't executed on the spot, sometimes after brutal, hideous tortures, then they'd most likely be rounded up and

deported to serve as forced laborers in other parts of the vast Assyrian Empire.

In those days, stretching from the Zagros Mountains in Iran to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea,

from the highlands of southeastern Anatolia to the northern deserts of Arabia.

In time, that empire would also include the great and ancient kingdoms of Egypt and Elam,

making the one who sat on the Assyrian throne the wealthiest and most powerful man on earth.

And yet, barely a century later, that same mighty empire would be a distant memory.

Its once magnificent cities of Ashore, Nineveh and Nimrod, all but forgotten and in ruins.

For a good part of a thousand years, Assyria had been not just one of the most powerful

states in the ancient world, but one of the most influential as well. Its legacy carried on for centuries.

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