It was Sennacherib who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city ( c. 700 BC ).

Ever since the time of Revelation, every despot or slave that has attained to power, be he violent or ignoble, has made it his first aim and his final purpose to destroy our law, and to vitiate our religion, by means of the sword, by violence, or by brute force, such as Amalek, Sisera, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, Hadrian, may their bones be ground to dust, and others like them.

The library is an archaeological discovery credited to Austen Henry Layard ; most tablets were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum, but a first discovery was made in late 1849 in the so-called South-West Palace, which was the Royal Palace of king Sennacherib ( 705 – 681 BC ).

But after a brief interval war broke out again, and again Sennacherib led an army into Judah, one detachment of which threatened Jerusalem (; ).

Scholars have identified Taharqa with Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, who waged war against Sennacherib during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah ( 2 Kings 19: 9 ; Isaiah 37: 9 ) and drove him from his intention of destroying Jerusalem and deporting its inhabitants — a critical action that, according to Henry T. Aubin, has shaped the Western world.

Isaiah on that occasion encouraged Hezekiah to resist the Assyrians (), whereupon Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah, which he " spread before the LORD " ().

The first part establishes Isaiah as a prophet of Israel during the reign of Hezekiah ; the second part focuses on Isaiah's actions during the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib ; and the third part is primarily focused upon Isaiah warning the people of coming doom.

Sennacherib ( pronounced ; Akkadian: Sîn-ahhī-erība " Sîn has replaced ( lost ) brothers for me ") was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria ( 705 – 681 BC ).

As the crown prince, Sennacherib was placed in charge of the Assyrian Empire while his father, Sargon II, was on campaign.

Sennacherib tried to solve the problem of the Babylonian rebellion by placing someone loyal to him on the throne, namely his son Ashur-nadin-shumi.

The satirical magazine Punch responded to it by publishing a parody of Byron's poem The Destruction of Sennacherib including a wry commentary on Grace's contribution:

Some commentators, such as Rabbi Hayim Palaggi ( 1788 – 1869 ) argued that Jews had lost the tradition of distinguishing Amalekites from other people, and therefore the commandment of killing them could not practically be applied ("... We can rely on the maxim that in ancient times, Sennacherib confused the lineage of many nations.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire ( 911-605BCE ) was probably the most dominant power on earth between the 10th Century BCE and the late 7th Century BCE, with an empire stretching from Cyprus in the west to central Iran in the east, and from the Caucasus mountains in the north to Nubia, Egypt and Arabia in the south, facilitating the spread of Mesopotamian culture and religion far and wide under emperors such as Ashurbanipal, Tukulti-Ninurta, Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmanesser IV, Sargon II, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon.

He was said to have been captured in the swamps of the Shatt al-Arab ( though, as he seems to have proven a thorn in the side of Sennacherib later on, this might not have been quite true ).

Sennacherib later devoted a whole room in his palace for artistic representations of the siege on stone orthostats now in the British Muesum.

According to Francis Llewellyn Griffith, an attractive hypothesis is to identify the Pharaoh as Taharqa before his succession, and Sethos as his Memphitic priestly title, " supposing that he was then governor of Lower Egypt and high-priest of Ptah, and that in his office of governor he prepared to move on the defensive against a threatened attack by Sennacherib.

A city of Sur-marrati, refounded by Sennacherib in 690 BC according to a stele in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, is insecurely identified with a fortified Assyrian site of Assyrian at al-Huwaysh, on the Tigris opposite to modern Samarra.

The Assyrian dominion over Babylon was underlined by Sargon's son Sennacherib, who defeated the Elamites and Babylonians and dethroned Merodach-baladan for a second time, installing his own son Ashur-nadin-shumi on the Babylonian throne in 700.

**" And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea " ( Lord Byron, " The Destruction of Sennacherib ")

When Esarhaddon unexpectedly died on a campaign against rebellious Egypt in 669, it was only the decisive action of Naqi ' a-Zakutu, widow of Sennacherib, that got Assurbanipal on the throne, in the face of opposition by court officials and parts of the priesthood.

In approximately 701 BCE, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked the fortified cities of Judah, laying siege on Jerusalem, but failed to capture it ( it is the only city mentioned as being besieged on Sennacherib's Stele, of which the capture is not mentioned ).

In response, Sennacherib attacked Judah, laying siege on Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, Sennacherib marched on Jerusalem with a large army.

When Sennacherib saw the destruction wreaked on his army, he withdrew to Nineveh.

LMLK seals were stamped on the handles of large storage jars mostly in and around Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah ( circa 700 BC ) based on several complete jars found in situ buried under a destruction layer caused by Sennacherib at Lachish.

It is based on an event described in the Bible ( 2 Kings 18-19 ) during the campaign by Assyrian king Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem.

In 703 he briefly regained the throne from a native Akkadian-Babylonian ruler Marduk-zakir-shumi II who had ascended the throne after a revolt in Babylon against the Assyrian king, Sennacherib.

However, this was short lived, and Sennacherib sacked Babylon, destroying the city in 689 BC routing the Babylonians, the Chaldeans of Bit-Yâkin and their Elamite backers in the process.

For the unnamed " king of Babylon " a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib, Herbert Wolf held that the " king of Babylon " was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.

According to a recent hypothesis, the Archimedes screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times.

* 689 BC: King Sennacherib of Assyria sacks Babylon.

* Sennacherib, king of Assyria and conqueror of Babylon ( 705 – 681 BC )

* Sennacherib, king of Assyria and conqueror of Babylon ( 705 – 681 BC )

This led to the Assyrian king Sennacherib invading and subjugating Elam and sacking Babylon, laying waste to the city.

* 689 BC — King Sennacherib of Assyria sacks Babylon.

During the last century of Nineveh's existence, Babylon had been greatly devastated, not only at the hands of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, but also as a result of her ever renewed rebellions.

The city of Babylon had been destroyed in 689 BCE by Sennacherib, who claims to have destroyed the Etemenanki.

A recent theory proposes that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib ( reigned 705 – 681 BC ) for his palace at Nineveh.

Sennacherib speaks of one at Tarbisu to the north of Nineveh, but significantly, although Nebuchadnezzar II ( 606 BC-586 BC ), the great temple-builder of the neo-Babylonian monarchy, alludes to his operations at Meslam in Cuthah, he makes no mention of a sanctuary to Nergal in Babylon.

Oracles had named Esarhaddon as the person to free the exiles and rebuild Babylon, the destruction of which by Sennacherib was felt to be sacrilegious.

Both sides claimed the victory in their annals, but Babylon was destroyed by Sennacherib only two years later, and their Elamite allies defeated in the process.

His father, Esarhaddon, youngest son of Sennacherib, had become heir when the crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi, was deposed by rebels from his position as vassal for Babylon.

This time Babylon was not destroyed, as under Sennacherib, but a terrible massacre of the rebels took place, according to the king's inscriptions.

In 1811, Claudius James Rich, an Englishman and a resident for the East India Company in Baghdad, began examining and mapping the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, and collecting numerous inscribed bricks, tablets, boundary stones, and cylinders, including the famous Nebuchadnezzar Cylinder and Sennacherib Cylinder, a collection which formed the nucleus of the Mesopotamian antiquities collection at the British Museum.

From Berossus ' genealogy, it is clear he had access to king-lists in compiling this section of History, particularly in the kings before the Flood ( legendary though they are ), and from the 7th century BC with Senakheirimos ( Sennacherib, who ruled both Assyria and Babylon ).

Mushezib-Marduk lost his ally when the Elamite king Humban-nimena suffered a stroke later that same year, an opportunity King Sennacherib quickly seized by attacking Babylon, and eventually capturing it after a nine-month siege.

To avenge the death of his son, whom the Babylonians had effectively killed when they handed him over to the Elamites in 694 BC, Sennacherib pillaged and burned Babylon, tore down its walls, and even diverted the Euphrates into the city.

According to the assyriologist Dalley, the earliest pump was the Archimedes screw, first used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC.

Note that both periods where no king is listed represent times when Sennacherib, King of Assyria, held effective control over Babylon.