Nabopolassar and the Rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire

Nabopolassar was the Babylonian leader who seized the throne of Babylon in 626 BC, broke Babylonia free from the Assyrian Empire and founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Allied with the Medes, he helped bring about the fall of Assyria within two decades. The dynasty he founded, often called the Chaldean dynasty, included his son Nebuchadnezzar II and ruled much of the Near East until 539 BC.

Background: Babylon under Assyria

For more than a century Babylonia, the land of southern Mesopotamia, had been under Assyrian control, either directly or through client kings. Babylon was prestigious but troublesome: it rebelled repeatedly, and in 689 BC the Assyrian king Sennacherib sacked it, diverting water over the ruins according to his own inscriptions.

Later Assyrian kings tried to win Babylon back with rebuilding and gifts. Ashurbanipal installed his brother Shamash-shum-ukin as king there, but Shamash-shum-ukin rebelled in 652 BC. After a long siege Babylon fell in 648 BC, and a ruler called Kandalanu reigned there until 627 BC under Assyrian oversight.

The last years of Ashurbanipal and the period after his death, around 631 BC, are poorly documented. What is clear is that Assyria was weakened by disputes over the succession. A general, Sin-shumu-lishir, briefly seized power, and Ashurbanipal’s son Sin-sharra-ishkun had to fight for the throne.

Who was Nabopolassar?

Nabopolassar’s name in Akkadian is Nabu-apla-usur, meaning “O Nabu, protect the heir”. In his inscriptions he calls himself the “son of a nobody”, a phrase that stresses that he owed his kingship to the gods rather than to royal descent.

Greek writers and the Hebrew Bible call his dynasty “Chaldean”, after the Chaldean tribes of southern Babylonia, and the term is still widely used. However, his own texts never use it. Some historians have argued that he came from a leading family of the city of Uruk, possibly linked to Assyrian-appointed officials there, but this remains a reconstruction.

Seizing Babylon

The main source for these events is the Babylonian Chronicle series, terse year-by-year records written on clay tablets. According to the chronicle covering the early years of Nabopolassar, Assyrian troops marched into Babylonia in 626 BC and were defeated near Babylon. Shortly afterwards, on a date corresponding to late November 626 BC, Nabopolassar “ascended the throne in Babylon”.

Taking Babylon did not end the war. Assyrian garrisons held important cities such as Nippur and, for a time, Uruk. The chronicles describe years of sieges and counter-attacks across Babylonia. Only around 620 BC did Nabopolassar control most of the south.

War against Assyria

In 616 BC Nabopolassar went on the offensive, marching up the Euphrates and defeating an Assyrian army near Gablini. Assyria now relied on help from Egypt, whose pharaoh Psamtik I preferred a weakened Assyria to a powerful Babylon. In 615 BC Nabopolassar attacked the city of Assur, the old religious capital of Assyria, but was driven back.

The decisive change came from the east. In 614 BC the Medes of western Iran, led by Cyaxares, captured and plundered Assur. Nabopolassar arrived after the city had fallen, and the two rulers made an alliance there. The alliance between Babylon and the Medes is described in Cyaxares and the Median Kingdom.

In 612 BC the allies besieged Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and took it after about three months. Sin-sharra-ishkun died, probably in the fall of the city. This is covered in detail in Fall of Nineveh.

Ending the Assyrian Empire

An Assyrian officer, Ashur-uballit II, made himself king at Harran in northern Mesopotamia, near today’s border between Turkey and Syria. In 610 BC the Babylonians and their allies took Harran. An attempt by Ashur-uballit and his Egyptian allies to recapture it in 609 BC failed, and he disappears from the records.

The struggle then became a contest with Egypt for Syria and the Levant. In 605 BC Nabopolassar’s son, the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar, defeated the Egyptian army of Necho II at the Battle of Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Soon afterwards news arrived that Nabopolassar had died in Babylon, in August 605 BC. Nebuchadnezzar hurried back and was crowned within weeks.

Nabopolassar as builder

Like other Mesopotamian kings, Nabopolassar presented himself as a restorer of temples and cities. Clay cylinders buried in the foundations of his buildings record work on the walls of Babylon and on temples in several cities.

His most famous project was the rebuilding of Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Marduk at Babylon. His foundation inscription says that the god Marduk ordered him to ground its base in the underworld and raise its top to the heavens. The work was completed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the tower is often linked to the biblical story discussed in Etemenanki and the Tower of Babel.

How we know: the Babylonian Chronicles

Most of what is known about Nabopolassar’s rise comes from a group of cuneiform tablets in the British Museum known as the Babylonian Chronicles. They record events year by year in a dry, matter-of-fact style: battles, sieges, the movements of armies and the accession and deaths of kings.

Different tablets cover different stretches of the reign. One describes his early struggle for Babylonia, another the years 616–609 BC including the fall of Nineveh, a third his last years from 608 BC, and a fourth the years from 605 BC, beginning with Carchemish and Nebuchadnezzar’s accession. The tablet covering the fall of Nineveh was published by the British scholar C. J. Gadd in 1923 and transformed modern understanding of the end of Assyria.

The chronicles are not complete. Several years are missing, and some passages are broken at crucial points, such as the fate of Sin-sharra-ishkun. Historians therefore combine them with royal inscriptions, business documents dated by regnal years, and later accounts by the Babylonian priest Berossus and Greek writers.

Key people

• Nabopolassar (reigned 626–605 BC): founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty.
• Sin-sharra-ishkun (reigned c. 627–612 BC): king of Assyria during most of the war, who died when Nineveh fell.
• Cyaxares (reigned c. 625–585 BC): king of the Medes and Nabopolassar’s ally.
• Ashur-uballit II (reigned 612–c. 609 BC): last king of Assyria, based at Harran.
• Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 605–562 BC): Nabopolassar’s son and successor, victor at Carchemish.

Consequences

Nabopolassar’s reign transformed the map of the Near East. The Assyrian Empire, which had dominated the region for three centuries, vanished. Its lands were divided between Babylonia, which took Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, and the Medes, who dominated the highlands to the north and east.

Under Nebuchadnezzar II the new empire reached its height. Babylon became one of the largest and most splendid cities of the ancient world, with the Ishtar Gate and its great walls. The empire also conquered Judah, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BC and the Babylonian Exile. After Nebuchadnezzar’s death the dynasty was weakened by short reigns and a palace coup, and its last king, Nabonidus, was not of Nabopolassar’s family. The empire ended when Cyrus the Great of Persia took Babylon in 539 BC.

Timeline

• 627 BC: Death of Kandalanu, ruler of Babylon under Assyrian oversight.
• 626 BC, November: Nabopolassar becomes king in Babylon.
• 626–c. 620 BC: War with Assyria for control of Babylonian cities.
• 616 BC: Nabopolassar defeats an Assyrian army on the Euphrates near Gablini.
• 614 BC: The Medes sack Assur; Nabopolassar and Cyaxares make an alliance.
• 612 BC: Babylonians and Medes capture Nineveh.
• 610 BC: Harran, the last Assyrian base, is taken.
• 605 BC, August: Nabopolassar dies, months after victory at Carchemish; Nebuchadnezzar II succeeds.

Why it matters

Nabopolassar turned a long Babylonian struggle for independence into the founding of an empire. By joining with the Medes he destroyed Assyria and created the Neo-Babylonian state whose capital, conquests and buildings left a deep mark on the Bible, Greek writers and the modern image of Babylon.