Fall of Nineveh

Fall of Nineveh
Part of the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire
Painting titled The Fall of Nineveh by John Martin
Date May–August 10, 612 BCE Location Nineveh 36°21′34″N 43°09′10″E Result Medo-Babylonian victory
Belligerents
Neo-Babylonian Empire Median Kingdom	Neo-Assyrian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Nabopolassar Cyaxares	Sinsharishkun †
Location within Iraq

The Fall of Nineveh, also called the Battle of Nineveh, was a major battle that marked the climax of the Conquest of the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC. After the Assyrian defeat at the Fall of Assur, an allied army which involved the combined forces of Medes and the Babylonians besieged Nineveh (in modern-day Mosul) and took what was, at that time, one of the greatest cities in the world, with the Medes playing a major part in the city's downfall. The fall of Nineveh led to the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the dominant state in the Ancient Near East over the following three years. Archeological records show that the capital of the once-mighty Assyrian Empire was extensively de-urbanized and depopulated in the decades and centuries following the battle. A garbled account of the fall of the city later led to the story of the legendary king Sardanapalus.

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.