Sennacherib's Destruction of Babylon (689 BC) and Its Rebuilding

In late 689 BC the Assyrian king Sennacherib captured Babylon after a long siege and set out to wipe the city off the map. His soldiers wrecked its temples, walls and houses, carried off the statue of its patron god Marduk and, according to his own account, flooded the ruins with canal water. The act shocked the Mesopotamian world, because Babylon was the region’s holiest and most respected city. Within a decade Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon was rebuilding it.

Background: a city that would not submit

Babylon on the Euphrates had been a great political and religious centre since the time of Hammurabi, a thousand years earlier. Its god Marduk was worshipped across Mesopotamia, and its temple Esagila and temple tower Etemenanki were famous. Even the Assyrians, who often ruled Babylonia, treated the city with respect.

In practice Babylonia was hard to govern. Chaldean tribal leaders such as Merodach-baladan repeatedly seized the throne with help from Elam, the kingdom to the east. Sennacherib (r. 705–681 BC) tried to rule through a puppet and then, from 700 BC, through his eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi.

In 694 BC the Elamites invaded northern Babylonia and the Babylonians handed Ashur-nadin-shumi over to them. He disappeared, probably killed. For Sennacherib the war was now personal. A Chaldean, Mushezib-Marduk, became king of Babylon in 692 BC and paid Elam for help with temple treasure. At the Battle of Halule in 691 BC Sennacherib fought the Babylonian-Elamite coalition to a bloody result that both sides claimed.

The siege and the destruction

With Elam weakened after its king was struck by paralysis, Sennacherib besieged Babylon. The blockade lasted for many months and the city suffered severe famine. On the first day of the month of Kislimu (November–December) 689 BC the city fell. The Babylonian Chronicle records that Mushezib-Marduk was captured and taken to Assyria.

Sennacherib described his revenge in an inscription carved at Bavian (Khinis), at the head of a canal system he built north of Nineveh. He claims that he filled the city squares with corpses, plundered its wealth, smashed the statues of its gods or carried them off, and destroyed its houses from foundation to roof, burning them. Its walls, temples and temple tower, he says, were torn down and their bricks dumped into the Arahtu canal.

Finally he says he dug channels through the city and let water flood its site, so that it became like a meadow and its place would not be remembered in future days. The statue of Marduk was taken to Assyria.

This account is royal propaganda and should be treated with caution. Archaeologists have found it hard to identify the destruction clearly at Babylon, partly because the city was rebuilt on a grand scale in the following century and partly because the deeper layers lie under the water table. Most historians conclude that the damage was severe and the population largely dispersed, but that the city was not literally erased.

“Kingless years” and Assyrian theology

The Babylonian Chronicle states that for eight years there was no king in Babylon, from 689 to 681 BC. Sennacherib did not take the traditional Babylonian royal title in this period, and the later Ptolemaic Canon of kings also lists these years as without a king.

In Assyria, scholars developed religious justifications. A text known as the Marduk Ordeal, usually dated to this period, presents Marduk as a god put on trial and held captive, and an Assyrian version of the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish replaced Marduk with the Assyrian god Ashur as the hero. Sennacherib also built a New Year festival house at Assur, transferring Babylonian ritual prestige to the Assyrian homeland.

Murder of Sennacherib and the rebuilding

In 681 BC Sennacherib was murdered by one or more of his sons. The Babylonian Chronicle and the Bible both record the killing; modern scholars often identify the main assassin as his son Arda-Mulissu. Another son, Esarhaddon, who had been chosen as heir, defeated his brothers and became king.

Many Babylonians saw the murder as divine justice. More than a century later, the Babylonian king Nabonidus wrote that Marduk’s anger had brought about Sennacherib’s death at the hands of his son.

Esarhaddon (r. 681–669 BC) reversed his father’s policy. From the start of his reign he ordered Babylon to be rebuilt: Esagila was restored, the great city walls were repaired, and deported Babylonians were allowed to return with their property.

His inscriptions offer a careful explanation of the disaster. They never blame Sennacherib. Instead they say that the Babylonians had sinned, that Marduk grew angry and sent a flood, and that the god decreed 70 years of desolation. Then, in his mercy, Marduk turned the tablet upside down. In cuneiform the sign for 70, inverted, reads as 11, so the desolation lasted only 11 years and Esarhaddon could begin restoration. The story was a clever way to reconcile the god’s anger, the Assyrian king’s legitimacy and the rebuilding.

Esarhaddon arranged for his son Shamash-shum-ukin to become king of Babylon and another son, Ashurbanipal, to rule Assyria. In 668 BC, after Esarhaddon’s death, the statue of Marduk was returned to Babylon and Shamash-shum-ukin was crowned there.

Peace did not last. From 652 to 648 BC Shamash-shum-ukin rebelled against his brother Ashurbanipal, and Babylon was again besieged and starved before falling in 648 BC. Yet the city recovered once more. Within a generation the Chaldean leader Nabopolassar drove out the Assyrians, founding the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and his son Nebuchadnezzar II made Babylon the largest and most splendid city in the Near East.

Key people

• Sennacherib (r. 705–681 BC): king of Assyria, builder of a vast new palace at Nineveh, who fought Babylon and Elam for most of his reign and ordered the city’s destruction.
• Ashur-nadin-shumi: Sennacherib’s eldest son, king of Babylon from 700 to 694 BC, whose betrayal to the Elamites turned the conflict into a personal vendetta.
• Mushezib-Marduk (r. 692–689 BC): Chaldean king of Babylon who allied with Elam and was captured when the city fell.
• Esarhaddon (r. 681–669 BC): Sennacherib’s younger son and successor, who rebuilt Babylon and presented himself as Marduk’s chosen restorer.
• Shamash-shum-ukin (r. 668–648 BC): Esarhaddon’s son, crowned in Babylon when Marduk’s statue returned, who later rebelled against his brother Ashurbanipal.

Myths and facts

A common belief is that Babylon was wiped out for ever in 689 BC. In fact it was rebuilt within a few years and reached its greatest size a century later. The famous ruins visited today, including the Ishtar Gate foundations and the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II, belong to that later city, not to the Babylon that Sennacherib attacked.

Timeline

• 700 BC: Sennacherib makes his son Ashur-nadin-shumi king of Babylon.
• 694 BC: Babylonians hand Ashur-nadin-shumi to the Elamites.
• 692 BC: Mushezib-Marduk becomes king of Babylon.
• 691 BC: Battle of Halule between Assyria and the Babylonian-Elamite coalition.
• 689 BC, Kislimu (November–December): Babylon falls; Sennacherib destroys much of the city.
• 681 BC: Sennacherib is murdered; Esarhaddon becomes king and soon begins rebuilding Babylon.
• 668 BC: The statue of Marduk returns to Babylon; Shamash-shum-ukin is crowned king.
• 652–648 BC: Civil war between Shamash-shum-ukin and Ashurbanipal; Babylon is besieged again.

Why it matters

The destruction of Babylon was one of the most extreme acts of Assyrian imperial power and one of its least successful. It did not end Babylonian resistance, it deepened hostility to Assyria, and it forced Sennacherib’s successors to spend heavily on reconciliation. Within 80 years a revived Babylon helped destroy the Assyrian Empire itself.