The greatness of Nineveh, which had been greatly enlarged by Assyrian ruler Sennacherib in about 700 BCE, is short-lived.
About 633 BCE the Assyrian empire had begun to show signs of weakness, and Nineveh had been attacked by the Medes, who about 625 BCE, joined by the Babylonians and Susianians, again attack it.
Nineveh falls in 612 BCE, and is razed to the ground.
The people in the city who cannot escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the west are either massacred or deported.
(Many unburied skeletons will be found by the archaeologists at the site.)
The Assyrian empire now comes to an end, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them.
