empire

The history of the ancient Neo-Assyrian Empire, often thought to be a well-documented sequence of orderly father-to-son successions, has been thrown into question. For roughly a century, scholars have relied on the Assyrian King List (AKL) as the definitive record of Assyrian monarchs. However, a groundbreaking new study has revealed evidence for three previously unknown Assyrian kings who ruled for brief periods in the 10th and 8th centuries BC, suggesting the empire's political history was far more turbulent than the official records portray. The research, conducted by Eckart Frahm of Yale University and Alexander Johannes Edmonds of the University of Münster, was published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies. The authors argue that the Assyrian King List is not an