Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • An ancient empire and civilization of western Asia in the upper valley of the Tigris River. In its zenith between the ninth and seventh centuries BC, the empire included all of Mesopotamia and the Levant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (present day northern Iraq), that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an ancient kingdom in northern Mesopotamia which is in present-day Iraq

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin Assyria, from Ancient Greek Ἀσσυρία, from Akkadian 𒀸𒋗𒁺𐎹 (Aššūrāyu), from 𒀸𒋩 (Aššur, "Assur"), its original capital.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Assyria.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.