Achaemenid Assyria - Fall of The Assyrian Empire

Fall of The Assyrian Empire

Between the late 10th and 7th centuries BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire dominated the Middle East militarily and politically, and at one point, the Persians and their neighbors the Medes were vassals of Assyria and paid tribute. In the late 7th century BC, however, the Assyrians suffered a number of calamities that led to the sacking of the old capital Assur by the Medes, who then combined forces with Babylon and the Scythians and sacked the new capital Nineveh in 612 BC. The Battle of Nineveh eventually left Assyria destroyed for years to come. The Assyrians continued to fight on, with the aid of Egypt who feared the rise of the Babylonians. Harran, the new Assyrian capital, was eventually taken in 608 BC. Despite this, the Egyptians later sent another force to assist the Assyrians in 605 BC.

A costly but victorious battle at Megiddo against the forces of Judah allowed the Egyptians to advance to the rescue, only to be defeated by the Babylonian-Median alliance. Assyria was conquered by Babylonia. Babylonian rule was unpopular, but did not last long. When the Babylonian King Nabonidus (himself an Assyrian from Harran) made war with Persia, he was defeated by an outnumbered Cyrus the Great at the Battle of Sardis in 546 BC. Cyrus's armies took Babylon and made it, along with Assyria, into provinces of the Persian Empire.