persisted at Assur until its final sack in the 3rd century AD, and at certain other holdouts for centuries thereafter. The success of ancient Assyria did not derive solely from its energetic warrior-kings, but also from its ability to efficiently incorporate and govern conquered lands through innovative and sophisticated administrative systems. Innovations in warfare and administration pioneered in ancient Assyria were used under later empires and states for millennia thereafter. Ancient Assyria also left a legacy of great cultural significance, particularly through the Neo-Assyrian Empire making a prominent impression in later Assyrian, Greco-Roman and Hebrew literary and religious tradition. Nomenclature In the Old Assyrian period, when Assyria was merely a city-state centered around the city of Assur, the state was typically referred to as ālu Aššur ("city of Ashur"). From the time of its rise as a territorial state in the 14th century BC and onward, Assyria was referred to in official documentation as māt Aššur ("land of Ashur"), marking the shift to being a regional polity. The term māt Aššur is first attested as being used in the reign of Ashur-uballit I ( 1363–1328 BC), the first king of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Both ālu Aššur and māt Aššur derive from the Assyrian national deity Ashur. Ashur probably originated in the Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of Assur itself. In the Old Assyrian period the deity was considered the formal king of Assur, with the actual rulers only using the style Išši'ak ("governor"). From the time of Assyria's rise as a territorial state, Ashur began to be regarded as an embodiment of the entire land ruled by the Assyrian kings. The modern name "Assyria" is of Greek origin, derived from Ασσυρία (Assuría). The term is first attested in the time of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC). The Greeks designated the Levant as "Syria" and Mesopotamia as "Assyria", even though the local population at the time, and well into the later Christian period, used both terms interchangeably for the entire region. Whether the Greeks began referring to Mesopotamia as "Assyria" because they equated the region with the Assyrian Empire, long fallen by the time the term is first attested, or because they named the region after the people who lived there (the Assyrians) is not known. Because the term is so similar to "Syria", the question of whether the two are connected has been examined