NABOPOLASSAR. — Founder of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (Babyl. "Nabû-ipal-usur" = "May Nabû protect the heir"), who reigned from 625 to 605. Originally, he was merely a Chaldean prince and frankly admits to having been a "son of nobody," lacking in power, yet he ascended the throne "by the word of Nabû and Marduk... and by the great and irresistible arms of the terrible Girra." When the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and his representative Kandalanu, king of Babylon, died in 626, N. seized the throne of Babylon, probably recognized by the Assyrians, who still held Nippur, Uruk, and all the southern part of the Babylonian kingdom. Thus, in his early years, he ruled over a rather small territory and did not entirely sever relations with the throne of Nineveh. However, when Sin-šar-iškun, in 610, ordered him to subdue the Sealand tribes, he openly rebelled and wrested Nippur, Uruk, and city after city from the Assyrians until he ruled over nearly all of Babylonia.
To defend himself against Assyrian claims, he embarked on the greatest work of his life: the complete overthrow of the Assyrian Empire. To this end, he formed an alliance not with ancient Elam, which Ashurbanipal had destroyed forever, but with Media, a young nation of shepherds and fierce warriors, then the greatest military power in the Near East after Uvakšatra Veretragna (Cyaxares) had reorganized the army along Scythian and Assyrian lines. The Medes were then warriors of unparalleled audacity, striking terror into human civilization and sparing not even the statues of the most venerated deities. All the civilized world, except N., recognized the danger, and Sin-šar-iškun found allies among Assyria’s traditional enemies, such as the Mannaeans (between Lake Van and Lake Urmia), Egypt, and initially the Scythians, before they were defeated by the Medes.
Thus began a long and varied war, as recounted in the Chronicle of N. for the years 616–606. These war reports reveal the superiority of the Medes; for example, in 615, N. attempted to capture the city of Assur but was defeated and withdrew to Takritain, where he was besieged in the fortress. In 614, the Medes captured Assur; N. arrived after the battle, yet Cyaxares confirmed the alliance, and his daughter Amyhia was given in marriage to the heir apparent, Nebuchadnezzar.
The war was not yet over when Sin-šar-iškun, according to Greek accounts, threw himself into the flames of his palace during the fall of Nineveh (612). Part of the Assyrian army escaped, and Ashur-uballit established himself in Harran. The war of annihilation, in which the Babylonian army soon came under the brilliant command of Nebuchadnezzar, lasted until 605, when Pharaoh Necho was decisively defeated at Carchemish. Nebuchadnezzar pursued the Pharaoh step by step to the Brook of Egypt; there he learned of his father’s death in Babylon and, with a small retinue, hastened to return to Babylon as quickly as possible to secure the throne.
It is remarkable that, despite the ongoing war, N. found time for many works of peace. He repaired the outer walls of Babylon, Nimiti-Bel, to ensure the peace of the capital’s inhabitants. A stone bridge he built over the Euphrates, connecting the two halves of the city, was admired by Herodotus. He also restored the Euphrates at Sippar, long called the "river of Sippar." With the splendor of Nineveh fading in 612, Babylon, then the largest city in the world, had to restore its religious splendor. He began rebuilding the Etemenanki, the famous ziggurat of Babylon, and the first bricks were laid by Nebuchadnezzar and Nabû-šum-līšir as mere laborers. He constructed a new temple to Ninurta in Babylon and another to the consort of Šamaš (the sun god) in Sippar. He also endowed the temples with precious gifts, delivered annually. Thus, the Chaldean king won the favor of the Babylonian priests, who wielded such influence throughout the Neo-Babylonian era that they posed a serious internal political problem.
N. achieved all the dreams of freedom and grandeur cherished by the Chaldeans and the city of Babylon, and even more so the desires for vengeance, to the point that he no longer considered Assyria a member of Babylonian culture or a brother nation. His fierce allies, the Medes, were left free to destroy the most famous temples dedicated to Babylonian deities, such as the celebrated temple of Ishtar in Nineveh, founded by his predecessor Manishtushu, king of Akkad. The precious libraries, including the vast collection so zealously amassed by Ashurbanipal (v.), were destroyed and scattered among the ruins of Nineveh. For Babylonian civilization, this was at least a partial cultural suicide. Another Semitic "suicide" occurred in the incredible massacres of human lives, comparable in every respect to those of Jerusalem in 586: slaughter of the upper classes, deportation of skilled craftsmen and even large portions of the agricultural population, leaving only small, impoverished communities, as at Assur.
NABUCHODONOSOR II
(photo Enc. Catt.)