What historical event do you wish you could have witnessed?

The tragic downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BCE)

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was not just conquered but was deliberately eradicated by an alliance between the Medes [1], the Babylonians, and other groups, which they had previously invaded.

The accounts relating to the Medes reported by Herodotus [2] have left the image of a powerful people, who would have formed an empire at the beginning of the 7th century BCE that lasted until the 550s BCE, played a determining role in the fall of the Assyrian Empire and competed with the powerful kingdoms of Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire [3].

According to other scholars, Assyria, which had dominated the Near East, came to an end at around 612/09 BCE due to several factors including military pressure by the Medes (a pastoral mountain people, again from the Zagros mountain range), the Babylonians, and possibly also civil war.

While I may understand the anger that triggered extreme hatred, which led to the invasion of Assyria, given the former’s incredible cruelty throughout its three centuries of glory, I shall never condone the invading “alliance’s” radical deeds. Indeed, the Medes obliterated Assyria’s great cities.

In 612 BCE the glorious city of Nineveh was sacked and burned by a coalition of Babylonians, Persians, Medes, and Scythians, among others. The destruction of the palace brought the flaming walls down on the library of Aššurbanipal (reign: 669–631 BCE) and, although it was far from the intention, preserved the great library for posterity, as well as the history of the Assyrians, due to baking hard and burying the clay tablet books. Kriwaczek [4] writes, “Thus did Assyria's enemies ultimately fail to achieve their aim when they razed Ashur and Nineveh in 612 BCE, only fifteen years after Ashurbanipal's death: the wiping out of Assyria's place in history.”

Finally, what I consider the most unforgivable act lies in the total obliteration of the great Assyrian cities, which was so complete that, within two generations of the empire's fall, no one knew where they had been located. The ruins of Nineveh were covered by the sands and lay buried for the next 2,000 years.

[1] The Medes (Akkadian: 𒆳𒈠𒁕𒀀𒀀 Ancient Greek Μῆδοι Mêdoi) were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northwestern Iran.

[2] Herodotus was an ancient Greek writer, geographer, and historian born in the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire. He is known for having written the Histories – a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus was the first writer to do a systematic investigation of historical events.

[3] The Neo-Babylonian Empire was a civilization in Mesopotamia between 626 BCE and 539 BCE. During the preceding three centuries, Babylonia had been ruled by the Akkadians and Assyrians but threw off the yoke of external domination after the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler.

[4] Paul Kriwaczek (1937 - 2011) was a British historian and television producer