Assyriology

thumb|270x270px|The Mesopotamian god [[Ninurta with his thunderbolts pursues the divine monster Anzû stealing the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil's sanctuary, Austen Henry Layard Monuments of Nineveh, 2nd Series, 1853]] thumb|Reconstruction (architecture)|Reconstruction of the [[Babylonian Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin]] Assyriology (from Greek , Assyriā; and , -logia), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".

The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. The region's—and the world's—first cities and city-states, like Ur, are archaeologically invaluable for studying the growth of urbanization.