“Ends” in Empires

Abstract

Many studies of the ends of Mesopotamian empires consider the underlying and immediate causes that contributed to the fall of the political state and what happened in its aftermath. While modern scholars have the external perspectives and comparative data needed for these evaluations, the populations living through (and beyond) collapse did not have this vantage point. This study explores what people living in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires considered an “end” and identifies three means of engagement with it: conceptualizing their empires as infallible; collecting and instrumentalizing information about historical kingdoms; and grappling with potential catastrophe in creative spaces.