Sinsharishkun

Sîn-šar-iškun took the throne in 627 BCE after his brother's death, possibly by force, and immediately confronted a general's revolt that briefly seized much of Babylonia. The chaos let Nabopolassar, a southerner of murky origin, rise in the power vacuum and carve out the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ending over a century of Assyrian rule in the south. Sîn-šar-iškun couldn't stop him despite years of campaigns, and by 614 BCE the Medes - technically still Assyrian vassals - had sacked Assur, the empire's ceremonial heart. In 612 BCE a combined Babylonian-Median force brutally razed Nineveh, the capital, while Sîn-šar-iškun was likely still inside. He fought with the same tactics that had built the empire, but internal revolts had bled the army, no one had planned for defending a heartland untouched for centuries, and the forces arrayed against him wanted annihilation, not submission.