*** Welcome to piglix ***

Battle of Nineveh (612 BC)

Battle of Nineveh
Date 612 BC
Location Nineveh
Result Decisive allied victory
Destruction of Assyria's capital
Founding of Neo-Babylonian Empire
Assyrian Empire severely weakened
Belligerents
Assyria

Medes

Babylonians
Commanders and leaders
King Sin-shar-ishkun of Assyria   Cyaxares (Mede)
Nabopolassar (Babylonian)
Casualties and losses
Unknown

Medes

The Battle of Nineveh is conventionally dated between 613 and 611 BC, with 612 BC being the most supported date. An allied army composed of Medes and the Chaldeans, rebelling against the Assyrians, together with Scythians and Cimmerians, besieged it and sacked 750 hectares of what was at that time, the greatest city in the world. This led to the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire over the next three years as the dominant state in the Ancient Near East. After this battle, the archeological record shows that the capital of the once mighty Assyrian Empire was extensively de-urbanized and depopulated.

Babylon became the imperial center of Mesopotamia for the first time in over a thousand years, leading to the Neo-Babylonian Empire, claiming imperial continuity as a new dynasty.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire arose in the 10th century BC and reached its peak in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, succeeding the Middle Assyrian Empire (1366-1074 BC) as the largest empire the world had yet seen. By the reign of Ashurbanipal it controlled or held in vassalage most of the nations and city-states from the Caucasus Mountains (modern Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) in the north to Egypt, Arabia and Nubia in the south, and central Iran/Persia in the east to Cyprus and the Hellenic and Phoenician Mediterranean coasts of Anatolia and the Levant in the west.


...
Wikipedia

...