 During the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III introduced an Eastern Aramaic dialect as the lingua franca of his empire in the mid-8th century BCE.As a result of this innovation, in late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian became marginalised, and Mesopotamian Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, including among the Chaldeans.This language in the form of Eastern Aramaic neo-Aramaic dialects still remains the mother-tongue of the now Christian Assyrian people of northern Iraq, north-east Syria, south-eastern Turkey and north-western Iran to this day.