The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Seventy Years for Babylon 233
In 616, Nabopolassar attacked the Assyrians and defeated them,
but an Egyptian army led by Psammetichus I came up to assist the
Assyrian king (Sin-shar-ishkun), and Nabopolassar chose to
withdraw to Babylon.
By this time the Medes, too, began to attack Assyria, and in 614
they took Ashur, the ancient Assyrian capital. After the city had
fallen, Nabopolassar, whose army arrived too late to help the
Medes, made a treaty with the Median ruler, Cyaxares.
In 612, the two allies attacked the Assyrian capital, Nineveh,
captured it and destroyed it. The Assyrian king, Sin-shar-ishkun,
perished in the flames. His successor, Ashur-uballit II, fled to the
provincial capital of Harran, where he established his government,
still claiming sovereignty over Assyria.
During the subsequent years Nabopolassar successfully
campaigned in Assyria, and by the end of 610, he marched against
Harran, joined by Median forces. 54 Ashur-uballit fled, and the city
was captured and plundered either late in 610 or early in 609
B.C.E. 55 Late in the summer of 609 Ashur-uballit, supported by a
large Egyptian force headed by Pharaoh Necho, made a last
attempt to recapture Harran, but failed. This definitely put an end
to the Assyrian empire.
That 609 B.C.E. marked the definite end of the Assyrian empire
is the prevailing view among leading authorities today. Some typical
statements are quoted in the following box:
THE FALL OF ASSYRIA — 609 B.C.E.
”In 610 the Babylonians and their allies took Harran, and
Ashur-uballit with the wreckage of his forces fell back across the
Euphrates into the arms of the Egyptians. An attempt (in 609) to
retake Harran failed miserably. Assyria was finished.”— Professor
John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1981), p. 316.
In 609 B.C.E. “Assyria ceased to exist and her territory was
taken over by the Babylonians.”— Professor D. J. Wiseman in The
54 The term used for the Medes in the chronicle, “Umman-manda,” has often been
taken to refer to, or at least include, the Scythian. This hypothesis appears to be
untenable in the light of recent research. See the extensive discussion by Stefan
Zawadzki in The Fall of Assyria and Median-Babylonian Relations in Light of the
Nabopolassar Chronicle (Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 1988), pp. 64–
98.
55 According to the Babylonian chronicle BM 21901 the two armies set out against
Harran in Arahsamnu, the eighth month, which in 610 B.C.E. roughly
corresponded to November in the Julian calendar. After the capture of the city they
returned home in Addaru, the twelfth month, which roughly corresponded to
March in the following year, 609 B.C.E. Most probably, therefore, the city was
captured early in 609 B.C.E.—A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles
(Locust Valley, N.Y.: JJ. Augustin Publisher, 1975), pp. 95–96.