The fall of Nineveh
A coalition of Babylonians and Medes destroys Assyria so completely it is forgotten.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3 years
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Nineveh falls in 612 BCE to Nabopolassar of Babylon and Cyaxares of Media, and within three years the Assyrian state has ceased to exist. The destruction was thorough enough that when Xenophon marched past the mounds two centuries later he did not know what city they had been. Assyria was rediscovered only in the 1840s, when Layard's excavations began pulling colossal winged bulls out of the ground.