MannaeaMannaea (məˈniːə, sometimes written as Mannea; Akkadian: Mannai, Biblical Hebrew: Minni, (מנּי)) was an ancient kingdom located in northwestern Iran, south of Lake Urmia, around the 10th to 7th centuries BC. It neighbored Assyria and Urartu, as well as other small buffer states between the two, such as Musasir and Zikirta. The name of Mannaea and its earliest recorded ruler Udaki were first mentioned in an inscription from the 30th year of the rule of Shalmaneser III (828 BC).
Book of JudithThe Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to trick and kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith (), meaning "praised" or "Jewess", is the feminine form of Judah.
Hanging Gardens of BabylonThe Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture. They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines, resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks. It was said to have been built in the ancient city of Babylon, near present-day Hillah, Babil province, in Iraq.
BorsippaBorsippa (Sumerian: BAD.SI.(A).AB.BAKI; Akkadian: Barsip and Til-Barsip) or Birs Nimrud (having been identified with Nimrod) is an archeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. The ziggurat is today one of the most vividly identifiable surviving ones, identified in the later Arabic culture with the Tower of Babel. However, modern scholarship concludes that the Babylonian builders of the Ziggurat in reality erected it as a religious edifice in honour of the local god Nabu, called the "son" of Babylon's Marduk, as would be appropriate for Babylon's lesser sister-city.
CyropaediaThe Cyropaedia, sometimes spelled Cyropedia, is a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great, the founder of Persia's Achaemenid Empire. It was written around 370 BC by Xenophon, the Athenian-born soldier, historian, and student of Socrates. The Latinized title Cyropaedia derives from the Greek Kúrou paideía (Κύρου παιδεία), meaning "The Education of Cyrus". Aspects of it would become a model for medieval writers of the genre mirrors for princes.
Sîn-šumu-līširSîn-šumu-līšir or Sîn-šumu-lēšir (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: or , meaning "Sîn, make the name prosper!"), also spelled Sin-shum-lishir, was a usurper king in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, ruling some cities in northern Babylonia for three months in 626 BC during a revolt against the rule of the king Sîn-šar-iškun. He was the only eunuch to ever claim the throne of Assyria. Nothing is known of Sîn-šumu-līšir's background or family and he first appears as a prominent courtier and general in the reign of Aššur-etil-ilāni (631–627 BC).
