History Globe
Question
When did Nineveh fall?
Nineveh fell in 612 BC to the Babylonians under Nabopolassar and the Medes under Cyaxares, after a siege of about three months, as the Babylonian Chronicle records.
Assyria had ruled the Near East for a century and a half, taking Samaria in 722 BC and besieging Jerusalem in 701. After Ashurbanipal's death its power broke: Nabopolassar made Babylon independent in 626 BC and in alliance with the Medes marched on the Assyrian cities. The Chronicle tells that in the fourteenth year of Nabopolassar the kings came to Nineveh, fought from the month of Simanu to Abu, took the city and turned it into a mound of ruins. The prophets Nahum and Zephaniah had foretold it: "Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her?"
The last Assyrian king, Ashur-uballit II, held out at Harran, which fell in 610 BC; the Egyptian army that marched north to help him in 609 killed King Josiah of Judah at Megiddo on the way, and Egypt's own defeat at Carchemish in 605 BC left the west to Babylon. Nineveh was never rebuilt as a city; only a small settlement lived on at the site, opposite today's Mosul.
Scripture: Nah 1:1; Nah 3:7; Zeph 2:13–15; 2 Kgs 23:29
Sources
- Babylonian Chronicle ABC 3 (Fall of Nineveh Chronicle), years 14, 16 and 17 of Nabopolassar; A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975)
- Babylonian Chronicle ABC 2 (Nabopolassar's accession, 626 BC); ABC 5 (Carchemish, 605 BC)
- History Globe dated events (nineveh-falls, josiah-dies, carchemish) and History Globe place dates (Nineveh, until 612 BC)
- M. Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (3rd ed., 2016)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.