Sardanapalus - Historicity

Historicity

The story of Sardanapalus seems to be related to some degree to events in the later years of the Assyrian Empire, involving conflict between the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and his brother Shamash-shum-ukin, who controlled Babylon on behalf of his brother. While Sardanapalus has been identified with Ashurbanipal, his alleged death in the flames of his palace is closer to that of his brother Shamash-shum-ukkin, who became infused with Babylonian nationalism and formed an alliance of Babylonians, Chaldeans, Elamites, Arameans, Arabs and Suteans against his master in an attempt to transfer the seat of the vast empire from Nineveh to Babylon.

However, it was Shamash-shum-ukkin in Babylon who was besieged and defeated,and his allies crushed, not Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. After the former's defeat in 648 BC, an inscription of Ashurbanipal's records, "they threw down Shamash-shum-ukkin, enemy brother who attacked me, into the raging conflagration".

The actual Fall of Nineveh occurred in 612 BC after Assyria had been greatly weakened by a bitter series of internal civil wars between rival claimants to the throne. Its former subjects took advantage of these events and freed themselves from the Assyrian yoke. Assyria was attacked in 616 BC by allied forces of Medes, Scythians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians, Cimmerians and Elamites. Nineveh was besieged and sacked in 612 BC. Ashurbanipal's son Sin-shar-ishkun (the third of four kings to rule after Ashurbanipal) was then ruling as king of Assyria. He was probably killed defending his city in the sack, though records are fragmentary. Ashur-uballit II succeeded him as the last king of an independant Assyria, ruling from Harran, the last capital of Assyria until 605 BC.