Assyria was a political entity centred in what we nowadays call Northern Iraq (Kurdistan). Since the early second millennium BCE it has formed the topographical and political counterpart of its southern neighbour Babylonia. Culturally having much in common, the two countries were in continuous confrontation with each other. In the first half of the 1st millennium BCE Assyria grew to such an extent that scholars usually speak of the Neo-Assyrian Empire which in its heydays also incorporated Babylonia.