Nabopolassar

Though the advantage shifted back and forth dramatically several times, Nabopolassar managed to decisively push the Assyrians out of Babylonia after nearly ten years of fighting.

Nabopolassar's own attitude towards Assyria is unclear; in some inscriptions he is careful to ascribe his victory and its aftermath to divine intervention to rid himself of the blame and in others he openly boasts of the destruction.

[7] Several near-contemporary texts, such as the Uruk prophecy, describe Nabopolassar as a "king of the sea", i.e. of southernmost Babylonia, suggesting that his origin was south of Babylon itself.

The Assyrians also ascribed him a southern origin; a letter from the Neo-Assyrian king Sinsharishkun (r. 627–612 BC) describes Nabopolassar as "of the lower sea", i.e. southernmost Mesopotamia.

[16] In Assyrian tradition, the desecration of a dead body showed that the deceased individual and their surviving family were traitors and enemies of the state, and that they had to be completely eradicated.

Though old native Babylonians ruled most of the cities, such as Kish, Ur, Uruk, Borsippa, Nippur, and Babylon itself, the Chaldean tribes, led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other, dominated most of the southernmost land.

Despite the enormous effort spent in keeping the region, Babylonia was seen as too important economically and strategically to allow to secede, but no matter what the Assyrians attempted, rebellion and civil war was the inevitable result each time.

[31] In terms of reconstructing the succession of events in the period of Assyria's downfall, the Babylonian chronicles are the most important source, though they do not cover all of Nabopolassar's reign,[32] only reveal select facts and are written in a terse and objective style.

[1] In the aftermath of the failed Assyrian counterattack, Nabopolassar was formally crowned king of Babylon on 22/23 November 626 BC, restoring Babylonia as an independent kingdom.

[37] Though he had successfully driven out the Assyrian army, pro-Assyrian factions still existed in some Babylonian cities, for instance Ur and Nippur, by 617 BC, making Nabopolassar's full consolidation of control in the south slow.

[38] The fighting in Babylonia in the last stages of the localized conflict turned conditions so desperate in some places that parents sold their children into slavery to avoid them starving to death.

Psamtik had over the last few years campaigned to establish dominance over the small city-states of the Levant and it was in his interests that Assyria survived as a buffer state between his own empire and those of the Babylonians and Medes in the east.

[37] A joint Egyptian-Assyrian campaign to capture the city of Gablinu was undertaken in October of 616 BC, but ended in failure after which the Egyptian allies kept to the west of the Euphrates, only offering limited support.

[19][41] Though the conflict had shifted to Assyria becoming the defender, the war was at this point still being fought according to standard Mesopotamian practice, with attacks, counterattacks and retreats and neither side having the confidence or means to force a decisive confrontation.

[40] Although there are plenty of earlier sources discussing Assyro-Median relations, none are preserved from the period leading up to Cyaxares's invasion and as such, the political context and reasons for the sudden attack are not known.

Even the Babylonian chronicles, hostile to Assyria, speak of the Medes as unnecessarily brutal, stating that they "inflicted a terrible defeat on a great people, pillaged and looted them and robbed them".

[44] In an attempt to keep the enemies out of Assyria, Sinsharishkun went on the offensive in 613 BC, attacking Nabopolassar's forces in the middle Euphrates, occupied at the time with suppressing an Assyrian-supported rebellion of a local tribe.

Cities such as Nimrud, Dur-Sharrukin, Tarbisu, Imgur-Enlil and Khirbet Khatuniyeh were completely destroyed, with only a handful of sites, such as Assur and Arbela, continuing to be populated under later Babylonian and Median rule.

[52] Later Neo-Babylonian rulers, such as Nabonidus (r. 556–539 BC), blamed the destruction solely on the Medes and Cyaxares, maintaining that Nabopolassar had not destroyed any temples[51] and described him as remorseful of the fate that befell Assyria.

In 2003, Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley wrote that two of the modern interpretations in regards to the reason for briefly "ruling" from Nineveh are that Nabopolassar either might have wanted to cement himself as the successor of the Assyrian kings, or that taking residence there was an attempt to save what remained of the city from further sacking by the Medes.

The last king to be crowned at the temple of Ashur at Assur had been Sinsharishkun and with the city's destruction in 614 BC, the traditional Assyrian coronation ritual was now impossible.

[60] After the Babylonians had ruled Harran for three months, Ashur-uballit and a large force of Egyptian soldiers attempted to retake the city, but this campaign failed disastrously.

[59][61] Beginning in July or June 609 BC, Ashur-uballit's siege lasted for two months, until August or September, but he and the Egyptians retreated when Nabopolassar again led his army against them.

According to the Biblical Books of Chronicles, Necho had not intended to do battle with the Judeans and was confused by Josiah's decision to attack him, supposedly sending a letter to him which included the passage "what have we done to each other, king of Judah?

"[62] For much of the period between 609 and 607 BC, Nabopolassar was occupied by a war against the northern Kingdom of Urartu, and in the meantime, the Egyptians took the city of Carchemish in Syria, which Necho established as his base of operations for the course of the campaign.

Nabopolassar was laid in a huge coffin, adorned with ornamented gold plates and fine dresses with golden beads, which was then placed within a small palace he had constructed in Babylon.

In terms of his legacy, archaeologist and historian Rocío Da Riva wrote in 2017 that Nabopolassar's exploits and figure are "inextricably linked to the overthrow of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and to the formation and configuration of the Chaldean kingdom".

[73] During the Hellenistic period, centuries after Nabopolassar's death and the eventual collapse of his empire, Babylonian authors used historical royal figures as the subjects of epics and stories to avoid explicit commentary on their contemporary politics.

[72] Nabopolassar, called Belesys or Bupolasaros by the Hellenistic-era authors,[74] is used in some and is generally cast in a very positive light,[75] described as a pious and just king who, partly through reverence of Marduk, managed to liberate his homeland from the rule of the Assyrian Empire.

Though the entire story has to be seen as unreliable, it is possible that this particular tale can be related to a passage in the Babylonian chronicles that mention Nabopolassar returning statues of gods to that the Assyrians had stolen from Elam and put in Uruk.