Babylonian Chronicle 3 (the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle)

Copied c. 550–400 BC; covers 616–609 BC

A cuneiform tablet of the Babylonian court chronicle for the tenth to the seventeenth year of Nabopolassar, 616–609 BC. It records the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC and the Egyptian army’s march to the Euphrates in 609 BC.

This tablet continues the Babylonian chronicle series through the last years of the Assyrian empire. It was first published by C. J. Gadd in 1923. Year by year it follows the Babylonian king Nabopolassar and his Median allies: the capture of Ashur in 614 BC, the three-month siege and sack of Nineveh in the summer of 612 BC, and the last Assyrian king’s attempt to hold out at Harran.

Its entry for Nabopolassar’s seventeenth year (609 BC) says that the Assyrian king crossed the Euphrates with a large Egyptian army to retake Harran and failed. Historians identify this with the march on which Pharaoh Necho II killed King Josiah at Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29), and so date Josiah’s death to 609 BC. The chronicle does not mention Judah.

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