Kingdom Come

Unless otherwise referenced the following is taken from CHRONOLOGY OF ASIA MINOR (ANATOLIA) 500.000 BC – 330 AD. See the post Father Abraham for more details.

• 10,000 BC – preflood or even pre-human era, Gobekle Tepe, billed as the oldest temple and astronomical observatory in the world. 
• 3000 BC – preflood era, Troy and Hattusa are established.
• 2500 BC – earliest post flood era, descendants of Heth, son of Canaan son of Ham, settle colonies established by Semite Asshur from home base at Ninevah in Mesopotamia. This is more likely than not following the standard MO of resettling defeated foes to use as slave labor to enrich the empire. Exactly like Europeans resettling Africans on plantations in the Americas or Americans exploiting cheap Asian labor on the cross-continental railroad.
• 2400 BC – territory brought under sphere of influence of the Semitic Akkadian Empire of Sargon I.
• 1750 BC – 1600 BC – hybrid Hittite kingdom becomes leading power in the Middle East.
• 1500 BC – Hittite king Mursilli “went to Babylon and destroyed Babylon. He took the deportees from Babylon and its goods to Hattusa.”
• 1275 BC – Hittites defeats Egyptians at Kadesh, earliest known international peace treaty which requires Egyptian withdrawal from Syria to allow Hittite hegemony in the region.
• 1250 and 1200 BCE the Sea Peoples invaded, further weakening the Hittites, whose giant genealogy had already been lost and corrupted over 500 years of inbreeding.
• 1112 BC – Assyrian king Tiglath Pileser defeats Hittites in Urartu.
• 1000 BC – Greeks settle permanent colonies on the Aegean coastline of Anatolia.
• 717 BC – Assyria captures fortress of Carchemish and gains control of Anatolia
• 550 BC – Persia takes control of Anatolia under Cyrus the Great, pushes into mainland Greece in 490 BCE but repelled at the Battle of Marathon.
• 400 BC – Xenophon, elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies, the Ten Thousand, marched through Anatolia to join Cyrus the Younger’s campaign to claim the Persian throne from Artaxerxes II of Persia.

Although the campaign has gone down in military history as one of, if not the, most spectacularly failed campaign ever, they came close to re-capturing Babylon and Xenophon is still considered a military genius with established precedents for many logistical operations.  His detailed campaigns in Asia Minor and in Babylon outlining both military and political methods was used by Cyrus the Great to conquer the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC and inspired Alexander the Great.

• 331 BC – Alexander the Great reclaims Anatolia for Greece and continues on to conquer Babylon and the Achaemenid Empire in Persia. On his death Alexander’s empire divided up by his four generals who, as well as other kingdoms, engage in constant bloody wars to expand their territory, wealth and power.

• ~300 BC – Antioch just around the bend “in Syria” to distinguish it from the many cities named after her founder throughout Asia, becomes the seat of the head of government of the sixteen provinces of the Seleucid Empire, named for the Alexander’s general whose allotment was the Near East. Its geographical, military, and economic position for the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Royal Road brought power rivaling Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East.
  • At the Seleucid Empire’s height it covered Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and what are now Kuwait, Afghanistan, and parts of Turkmenistan. As happened more recently with English domination, an urban Greek elite formed the political class, and civil and economic investments were reinforced by steady immigration from Greece.
  • The empire’s western territories were repeatedly contested with its rival Hellenized kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt.
  • Conflict with Chandragupta of the Maurya Empire led to a political alliance ruled by a dynasty of Emperors named Antiochus 1 – X1I1.  Who surnamed themselves Soter / Savior, Theos / God, Epiphanes / God Made Manifest.
• 263 – 230 BC – Rise of Pergamum kingdom which becomes strong ally in Rome’s regional interests against the Seleucid Greeks.
• 189 BC – Seleucid hegemony over Asia ended as in battle after battle Rome methodically incorporates the Hellenized city-states of Asia.
  • 130 BC – City-state of Pergamum becomes the first Roman province in Asia Minor.
  • 101 BC – Cilicia (southern Anatolia) becomes a Roman province.
  • 84 BC – Lycia incorporated into Roman province of Asia
  • 81 BC – Pontus annexed into Roman province
  • 74 BC – Bithynia bequeathed to Rome
• 64 BC – the last Seleucid king Antiochus XIII Asiaticus executed by Pompey the Great. The Romans make Antioch the seat of the governor of the province of Syria. Antioch was called “the cradle of Christianity” as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of both Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. The city may have had up to 250,000 people during Augustan times, but declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages because of warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes, which no longer passed through Antioch from the far east.
• 53 BC – 44 BC The Battle of Carrhae (present-day Harran, Turkey), one of the earliest and most important battles between the Roman and Parthian / Persian Empires triggered civil war raging across the Roman world. 
  • Crassus, the richest man in Rome, funded and led the expedition to win military glory and amass the finances needed for a coup against Republican Rome by the “first” triumvirate including himself, Julius Caesar and Pompey.
  • When Crassus was killed and and his legions wiped out, a balance of power could not be maintained between the two remaining powers Julius Caesar and Pompey, and civil war erupted.
  • Julius Caesar won, only to be assassinated in 44 BC for his authoritarian ambitions.

• 43 BC – After Caesar’s assassination Caesar’s grand-nephew and adopted son and heir Octavian and Caesar’s military general Marc Antony openly avenged the assassination of Rome’s populist leader while secretly strategizing to complete his transformation of the chaotic and ineffectual Republic into an efficient and powerful Dictatorship. To most effectively wage civil war, they split the over-extended empire into West ruled by Octavian and East ruled by Antony.

• Not surprisingly, their alliance soon imploded into war between rivals for supreme authority.
  • 37 BC – Antony logically allies with Egypt’s resources to support his bid, meets with Cleopatra at Tarsus in Asia Minor to form an alliance. Yep, as in “Saul of”.
  • 32 BC – Antony the soldier and Cleopatra the queen get married at Antioch, the agreement being that this capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire and the capitol of the Western Roman Empire in Rome would be transferred to Alexandria in Egypt. Rome responds to this outrage by declaring war on Queen Cleopatra’s Egypt.
  • 31 BC – Cleopatra and Antony defeated by Octavian at the battle of Actium.
  • 30 BC – Octavius visits Antioch to flex his muscles, Cleopatra and Antony commit suicide.
• 30 BC – Roman Senate rewards the man of peace who ended a decade of world war by voting him (with a white stone) into a new political position with higher authority and bestowing on him a new name / title of Augustus projecting his new way / power. He was now Augustus / godlike, the first emperor of the new Roman Empire. Previously only applied to Roman deities of the Empire, this ushered in the Roman Imperial cult.
  • A deceased emperor…could be voted a state divinity (divus, plural divi) by the Senate and elevated as such in an act of apotheosis. The granting of apotheosis…allowed living Emperors to associate themselves with a well-regarded lineage of Imperial divi…This proved a useful instrument to Vespasian in his establishment of the Flavian Imperial Dynasty following the death of Nero and civil war, and to Septimius in his consolidation of the Severan dynasty after the assassination of Commodus.
  • The imperial cult was inseparable from that of Rome’s official deities, whose cult was essential to Rome’s survival and whose neglect was therefore treasonous. Traditional cult was a focus of Imperial revivalist legislation under Decius and Diocletian. It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the legalization of Christianity under Constantine I.
• 29 BC – Ephesus replaces Pergamum as capital of the Roman province of Asia.
• 48-58 AD – Paul naturally crossed the same bridge to revolutionize the West with the Eastern Semitic religion of YHVH’s Savior, leaving behind congregations of believers throughout the Roman province of Asia.
• 70 AD – Antioch becomes the main center of Hellenistic Judaism after the Second Temple is destroyed. 
• 379-395 – Theodosius I adopts Christ as the imperial cult figure and Aryan Christianity as Rome’s state religion, anathemizing other Christian doctrine, and perpetuating the Augustinian pagan rites and practices.
• The name Asia Minor (from the Greek Mikra Asia = Little Asia) was first coined by the Christian historian Orosius (l. c. 375-418 CE) in his work Seven Books of History Against the Pagans in 400 CE to differentiate the main of Asia from that region which had been evangelized by Paul the Apostle.