SEVENTH CENTURY BCE (699-600)
7th C BCE Etruria (land of Etruscans) was at its zenith during the 7-6 century BCE and was comprised of 12 city-states including Veii, Bolsena, Tarquinia, Volterra and Perugia. The Etruscan culture had the same gods as the Greeks who had colonised southern Italy. The Etruscan culture formed the basis of one branch of the Latin civilization. (182)
689 BCE The Assyrians invade and destroy the Babylonian culture.
The Babylonia text MUl Apin is the first known Mesopotamian star catalogue, a copy of which is to be held in the Library of Nineveh. The original probably dates from 1000 BCE. The title is taken from the first line of the text and refers to the ‘star Apin’ which is the constellation Triangulum, together with gamma Andromedae. The text records astronomical events including the heliacal rising, culmination and setting of certain fixed stars. The Assyrians extended this work into the text known as ‘Enuma Anu Enlil’. (46)
Velikovsky said that this is the time that the length of the year changed from 360 days to 365 ¼ days. (344)Previously, according to the ancient Egyptians, there were 360 days in the human year and five days dedicated to the gods.
Triangulum & Andromeda.
[Sky Walk 15.2.24]
675 ESARHADDON (r. 681-68) son of Assyrian King Sargon II, captures the Egyptian capital Memphis, rebuilds Babylon and expands the Assyrian Empire. Egypt becomes a Persian province.
The original Sargon, ‘Sargon the Great’ [c2340 BCE] was the founder of the great nation of Mesopotamia.
650 BCE ASHURBANIPAL II (Ashurbanapal/Asurbanipal) (668 - d.c.627BC) son of Sargon II and last great king of the Assyrian Empire. He runs a lavish court at Nineveh, which will be captured in 612 BCE by the Medes and Babylonians.
ASSYRIA is a large empire based on the city of Ashur or Assur, which is located on the River Tigris of Mesopotamia. The Assyrian Empire came into being in 3rd millennium BCE, to reach its peak in 9-7th centuries BCE. It will eventually be absorbed into what is to become known as the Persian Empire.
Assurbanipal collected contemporary historical records, hymns, poems, scientific and religious texts from the archives of the ancient seats of learning, that is from Babylon, Uruk and Nippur. Copies and translations where also made of the even older Sumerian language of Mesopotamia. All these works were rendered into the contemporary Akkadian Semitic language for Assurbanipal’s library. (188)
The library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh contained most of the Assyrian and Babylonian religious and magical texts collected from ancient temple cities. The Assyrian scribes copied from very ancient texts and the Sumerian language was still largely employed. In the library was a great collection of astrological omens called the ‘Enuma Anu Enlil’. (1)
Assurbanipal’s library contained the last known recension of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, a cycle of poems about Gilgamesh, [see 2,700 BCE] king and hero of the ancient city state of Uruk in Mesopotamia. This mythic cycle probably originates in the time between Abraham and Noah (3rd millennium BCE). The themes are of the human concern with mortality, the search for knowledge and escape from the common lot. The most important elements of this relatively complete work existed as separate poems in the older Sumerian literature. Tradition takes the story back into a preliterate age on the borderline of legend and history, a little later than the Deluge when gods were replaced by mortals on the thrones of the city-states in the age of Archaic Sumerian civilizations. (188. 13.)
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