The Fall of Nineveh Ends the Neo-Assyrian Empire
A coalition of Babylonians and Medes destroyed the largest city in the world after a three-month siege
Quick facts
- Fall of Nineveh
- 612 BCE
- Allied forces
- Babylonians under Nabopolassar, Medes under Cyaxares
- Siege length
- About three months
- Result
- End of the Neo-Assyrian Empire within three years
What happened
After Ashurbanipal's death in 631 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire fell into internal civil war, and subject peoples across the empire grew restive while neighboring powers, the Medes, Babylonians, and Chaldeans, grew increasingly hostile to Assyrian dominance. In 612 BCE, the Babylonians under Nabopolassar joined forces with the Median king Cyaxares and laid siege to Nineveh, at that time the largest urban center in the world, ornamented with gardens, statuary, and even a zoo. The siege lasted roughly three months before the allied army broke through the city's defenses in August and began systematically burning and plundering it, an assault so thorough that it toppled the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the region's dominant power within the following three years.
Why it matters
Nineveh's fall ended a Mesopotamian empire that had dominated the ancient Near East for roughly three centuries, and it opened the door for its two main destroyers, Babylon and Media, to divide the former Assyrian territories between them, setting the stage for Nebuchadnezzar II's Neo-Babylonian empire.
How we know
The siege and destruction of Nineveh are recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles, a set of contemporary cuneiform records of major political and military events, and the burned destruction layer at Nineveh's archaeological site independently confirms the scale and violence of the city's fall.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Nineveh · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Nineveh (scale of the city before its fall) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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