Fall of Nineveh

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 conventionally dated between 613 and 611 BC, with 612 BC being the most supported date. 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.