Despite its rapid growth and size, the Assyrian Empire lasted longer than earlier imperial systems, so we should consider the reasons for its success. The Assyrians created a unified government to rule their subjects. In many areas the older governments of subject states were replaced with Assyrian officials who administered them for the king. The Assyrians adopted brutal measures to suppress the opposition and prevent revolt. A good example of their policy was the treatment of Israel. The Assyrians conquered the northern Hebrew kingdom in 722 B.C. Hebrew leaders were exterminated, and many of the people were carried off into slavery to Assyria. Ten of the Hebrew tribes virtually disappeared. They are the famous Lost Tribes of Israel. The Assyrians did not behave toward the Hebrews in this way in response to Hebrew opposition, they did so to avoid future difficulties with the newly conquered Hebrews and as an example to other peoples they controlled. These oppressive policies went far to prevent serious revolts for a long time; but they made Assyrian rule so unpopular that the subjects were bound to rise up if the Empire were ever to weaken for any reason.
After 650 B.C. it did weaken. From 626-612 B.C., there was a great revolt in the Empire. It ended with the total destruction of Assyrian power. With the fall of Assyria, political preeminence in Mesopotamia passed once again to the old imperial city of Babylon, which now enjoyed a brief period of resurgence. From 612-539 B.C., Babylon was ruled by a people known as the Chaldeans. Thus this empire is sometimes called the Second Babylon Empire, or the Chaldean Empire. The Chaldeans had been the chief leaders of the insurrection against the Assyrians, and when the revolt was over, they went on to seize a large part of the old Assyrian Empire for themselves. This was a relatively easy task because the long Assyrian rule had already eliminated or tamed many of the states that might have offered the Chaldeans much opposition.
The greatest of the Chaldean rulers was King Nebuchadrezzar II (ca. 605-560 B.C.). He is famous because he attacked and destroyed the remaining kingdom of the Hebrews (Judah) in 587. He treated the tribes of Judah almost as badly as the Assyrians had treated the Israelites. He drove most of them out of their homeland and forced them to live in Mesopotamia near Babylon. Nebuchadrezzar thought that once the Hebrews were resettled, they would be absorbed into the general population of Mesopotamia, and thus disappear as a cultural group. It might have worked if the Chaldean Empire had lasted longer.
A new power that suddenly burst into the Near East in the 500s B.C. This was the last of the great Near Eastern Empires – the Empire of the Persians – that lasted from 550 to 332 B.C. The Persian Empire had its center in the high arid mountain region east of Mesopotamia. This region is know as the Iranian Plateau, and it corresponds roughly to the modern country of Iran. The region gets its name from the large group of related barbarian tribes that migrated into it from the north in the beginning of the Iron Age (about 1000 B.C.). At first the various Iranian tribes were independent, only tied together by a common language (which is Indo-European) and culture. The Persians were only one of the many Iranian tribes. But the Iranians began to acquire a more civilized way of life because of their contact with Mesopotamia.