…the Medes unsuccessfully attack Nineveh, the fourth…

…the Medes unsuccessfully attack Nineveh, the fourth and most splendid capital of the Assyrian Empire.

At its zenith under Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE), and Ashurbanipal (669-633 BCE), the city has massive walls eight miles in circumference, a water aqueduct, palaces, and a library with twenty thousand clay tablets, including accounts of a creation in Enuma Elish and a flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Nineveh has grown to a population of some one hundred and twenty thousand by the end of the Neo-Assyrian period, and is possibly the largest city in the world at this time.