Assyria

By: George Rawlinson

Narrated by: Laura Orlando

Assyria was a Mesopotamian kingdom which became a brutal empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. This encyclopaedic text covers the lay of the land, the capital, and other cities, plus the language, cuneiform writing, customs, religion, arts, and architecture of Assyria. The city state of Ashur dates back to about the 25th century BCE. The history deals with the Assyrian conquests of Anatolia, Babylonia, the Iranian plateau, and the Levant, until it suffered a series of defeats at the hand of the Medes, Persians, and Babylonians. The empire finally collapsed between 612 and 609 BCE.

Public Domain (P)2018 Museum Audiobooks

great topic but pretty dry

Keep in mind that this book was published a looooong time ago. The format, outline, and language reflect the book's age. It is on a very interesting topic,with lots of great but very outdated information.

Extremely Dated

There's nothing really wrong with the overall content of this audiobook if you're interested in what we knew about the ancient Assyrians during the last decades of the 19th century. The author, the eminent biblical historian George Rawlinson, died in 1902. Unfortunately, the golden age of middle eastern archaeology didn't start until about 20 years after his death. This makes the content extremely dated and ill-informed. The audio book is not helped by the dry narration with numerous mispronunciations.