This study is based on an examination of a category of texts referred to as Assyrian royal inscriptions. Discovered over the past one hundred fifty years amid ruins located along or near the Tigris River north of the upper Zab, the Assyrian heartland, and in various locations representing the expansion of Assyrian power in western Asia, the inscriptions cover roughly thirteen centuries of written record culminating in the collapse of the Assyrian Empire at the end of the seventh century B.C.E.