NABOPOLASSAR

(NABU-APLA-USUR in babylonian; reigned 626–605 B.C.)

   Babylonian king and the first ruler of the so-called Third Dynasty of the Sealand. He was an official appointed by Assyriawhen he began his career, but during the troubled

   A drawing taken from a cylinder seal that shows the Babylonian god Marduk and his dragon-snake (drawing by Takayoshi Oshima).

   The river Euphrates flowing past irrigated fields near the site of Dura-Europos on the Iraqi-Syrian border (photo- graph by Alexander Kessler).

   Remains of a vaulted tomb from the Early Dynastic levels at Mari (photograph by Alexander Kessler).

   The partially restored ziggurat of the moon god Nanna(r) at Ur. The excavated brickwork of the temple precinct in front of the image shows layers of bitumen between the sun-dried bricks that was applied to prevent rising damp (photography by Kurt Jaritz).

   The Processional Way in Babylon had a substructure of unglazed bricks, shown here. The figures represent the bull, emblem of the weather god Adad, and the snakedragon, symbol of the Babylonian national god Marduk (photograph by Kurt Jaritz). An entrance to an Assyrian royal palace at Nineveh is guarded by the colossal stone bull with a human face. The picture also shows how the stone slabs, known as orthostats, were used to face the lower parts of the mudbrick walls. They were frequently decorated with reliefs or, as here, bands of inscribed cuneiform text (photograph by Kurt Jaritz).

   Popular print showing Austen Henry Layard at work on the excavation of an Assyrian palace. A basket in the foreground is filled with cuneiform tablets. period after the death of Ashurbanipal, he declared himself king of the Sealand and rallied Babylonian troops around him to fight off Assyrian control. Having defeated the Mannaeans, allies of Assyria, he made an alliance with the Median king Cyaxares, whose daughter married Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadrezzar (II). When the Assyrian king Sin-sharra-ishkun attacked Nabopolassar, the alliance moved against Nineveh and took the city after a three-month siege in 612 B.C. The allies then pushed on to Harran, the then Assyrian capital, and drove out the last Assyrian government in c. 610. Nabopolassar became king of Babylon. Nabopolassar himself campaigned in east Anatolia, and just before his death in 605 B.C., Nebuchadrezzar defeated an Egyptian army that contested Babylonian control over Syria, thus securing large parts of the former Assyrian empire for Babylonia.