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reign 705-681 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesDebated

Sennacherib Makes Nineveh the Capital of the World

He abandoned his father's unfinished city, rebuilt Nineveh into a metropolis, and may be the true builder behind the legendary Hanging Gardens

On the timeline · around reign 705-681 BCE · The Assyrian EmpireThe Assyrian EmpireNeo-Babylonian Babylon and the Persian ConquestSennacherib Makes Nineveh the Capital of the World850 BCE800 BCE750 BCE700 BCE650 BCE600 BCE

Quick facts

Reign
705-681 BCE
New capital
Nineveh
Major act
Razed Babylon after repeated revolts
Death
Assassinated by his own sons

What happened

Sennacherib, who ruled Assyria from 705 to 681 BCE, abandoned Dur-Sharrukin, the new capital his father Sargon II had built and that Sennacherib himself had been forced to oversee constructing for a decade, and moved the empire's capital to Nineveh instead. He rebuilt Nineveh extensively, adding parks and elaborate gardens, and some modern scholars now argue that the Hanging Gardens traditionally credited to Babylon were actually Sennacherib's creation at Nineveh, since the Greek historian Herodotus, who describes Babylon's walls and irrigation in detail, never once mentions gardens there. Sennacherib's reign was dominated by repeated warfare against Babylon and revolts led by the Chaldean chief Merodach-Baladan; after one such uprising, an enraged Sennacherib ordered Babylon razed to the ground. He was eventually assassinated by his own sons and succeeded by his youngest son, Esarhaddon.

Why it matters

The debate over whether the Hanging Gardens actually stood at Nineveh rather than Babylon shows how much of the ancient world's most famous 'facts' rest on Greek writers working centuries after the fact rather than contemporary Mesopotamian sources, a gap that historians flag honestly rather than paper over. Sennacherib's razing of Babylon also set a precedent for treating the ancient religious capital as fair game for total destruction, a policy his own son Esarhaddon would reverse by rebuilding the city.

How we know

Sennacherib's building projects at Nineveh and his destruction of Babylon are recorded in his own royal inscriptions, including the Taylor Prism; the Hanging Gardens attribution debate rests on the conspicuous silence of Herodotus's detailed account of Babylon compared with archaeological and textual evidence of elaborate garden construction specifically at Nineveh.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Mesopotamia30 events · The land between the rivers where farming villages became cities, cuneiform became writing, and kings first wrote their laws downView all →