The Assyrian empire collapsed due to a bitter series of civil wars followed by a combined attack by Medes, Persians, Scythians and their own Babylonian relations.

Later during the 6th century BC, most of Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Persians having usurped the Medes as the dominant dynasty in Iran.

Upharsin-Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

He also neglected the rise of powerful new enemies, first the Medes, then the Persians under Cyrus the Great.

In 550 BCE Cyrus defeated the Medes, and had allied himself with the priests of Marduk, and the fall of Babylon to the Persians became a real possibility.

Indeed, based on their previous experience of the Greeks, the Persians might be excused for this ; Herodotus tells us that the Athenians at Marathon were " first to endure looking at Median dress and men wearing it, for up until then just hearing the name of the Medes caused the Hellenes to panic ".

Sensing this weakness, the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians formed a coalition and attacked the Assyrian Empire in 616 BC.

The Median Cyaxares had also recently taken advantage of the anarchy in the Assyrian Empire to free the Iranic peoples, the Medes and Persians, from Assyrian rule.

In the 550s BC the Persians revolted against the Medes and gained control of their empire, and over the next few decades annexed to it the realms of Lydia in Anatolia, Damascus, Babylonia, and Egypt, as well as consolidating their control over the Iranian plateau nearly as far as India.

Jerome identified the four prophetic kingdoms symbolized in Daniel 2 as the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Medes and Persians, Macedon, and Rome.

The Seleucid empire's geographic span, from the Aegean Sea to what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, created a melting pot of various peoples, such as Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Medes, Assyrians, and Jews.

Persians and Medes paid no tax, but, they were liable at any time to serve in the army.

They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians and Medes to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea.

The stalemate ended in 616 BC, when Nabopolassar entered into alliance with Cyaxares, king of the Medes and Persians, ( who had also taken advantage of the anarchy in Assyria to free his peoples from the Assyrian yoke ) and also the Scythians and Cimmerians.

* 737 and 736 BC — King Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria invades Iran, conquering the Medes and Persians and slaughtering, enslaving or deporting many.

The empire fell in 608 BCE with the death of Ashur-uballit II after a period of internal strife followed by an attack by a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, Scythians, Persians and Cimmerians led by Nabopolassar, the Chaldean ruler of Babylon and Cyaxares of Media / Persia.

This and the fact that the Persians and Medes to the east were growing in power now that the might of Assyria that had held them in vassalage for centuries was gone, spelt the death knell for native Mesopotamian power.

Still earlier than these, in the times of the Medes and Persians, there were Solon, Themistocles, Miltiades, and Cimon, Myronides, and Pericles and certain others in Athens, and in Sicily Gelon, son of Deinomenes, and still others.

The original homeland of the Kassites is not well known, but appears to have been located in the Zagros Mountains in Lorestan in what is now modern Iran, although, like the Elamites, Gutians and Manneans, they were unrelated to the later Indo-European / Iranic Medes and Persians who came to dominate the region a thousand years later .< ref >

The despotic rule of Cambyses, coupled with his long absence in Egypt, contributed to the fact that " the whole people, Persians, Medes and all the other nations ," acknowledged the usurper, especially as he granted a remission of taxes for three years.

* Medes: An Asiatic people associated with the Persians, they are said by Cleon to be involved in the sausage-seller's cospiratorial comings and goings in the city at night ( line 478 ).

The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians.

5 and 8 ) – a book of the Tanakh or Old Testament – Belshazzar is the King of Babylon before the advent of the Medes and Persians.

The Iranic Medes and Persians who had been largely subject to Assyria since their arrival in the region circa 1000 BC, took full advantage of the anarchy in Assyria, and in 616 BC freed themselves from Assyrian rule.

The Assyrian Empire was overthrown by the Medes and the Chaldean, or New Babylonian, Empire in 612 BCE.

The Chaldeans now ruled all of Mesopotamia, and the former Assyrian possessions of Aram ( Syria ), Phoenicia, Israel, Cyprus, Edom, Philistia, and parts of Arabia, while the Medes took control of the former Assyrian colonies in Iran, Asia Minor and the Caucasus.

Nabopolassar was followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II, whose reign of 43 years made Babylon once more the mistress of much the civilized world, taking over a fair portion of the former Assyrian Empire once ruled by its Assyrian brethren, the eastern and north eastern portion being taken by the Medes and the far north by the Scythians.

The region was ruled by the Medes before it fell to the Achaemenids.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were a previously unconfirmed legend about a beautiful man-made mountain full of green plants and trees that reportedly were built by King Nebuchadnezzar ( ruled 605 BC-563 BC ) for his homesick wife, Amyitis, who was daughter of the king of the Medes.

For several years he continued the war against Miletus begun by his father, but was obliged to turn his attention towards the Medes and Babylonians.

The destruction of the Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Assur by the Babylonians, Medes and their allies ensured that much of the bilingual elite ( but not all ) were wiped out.

And still others support the idea that the " book of vision " was written shortly before the fall of Nineveh at the hands of the Medes and Babylonians ( 612 BCE ).

In around 627 BC after the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal, the Neo-Assyrian empire began to unravel due to a series of bitter civil wars, and Assyria was attacked by its former vassals, the Babylonians and Medes.

The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between them.

* 625 BC: Medes and Babylonians assert their independence from Assyria and attack Nineveh ( approximate date ).

* 614 BC: Sack of Asshur by the Medes and Babylonians.

* 612 BC: An alliance of Medes, Babylonians and Susianians besiege and conquer Nineveh.

* 614 BC — Sack of Assur by the Medes and Babylonians.

* 625 BC — Medes and Babylonians assert their independence from Assyria and attack Nineveh ( approximate date ).

It was briefly retaken by Ashur-uballit II and his Egyptian allies in 609 BC before it definitely fell to the Medes and Babylonians.

However in 6th BC, Assyria was conquered by a union of Medes, remaining Hurrian-related tribes, and Babylonians.

The successive Persian Empires that followed the Medes after their downfall in 550 BC took these already long-standing military tactics and horse-breeding traditions and infused their centuries of experience and veterancy from conflicts against the Greek city-states, Babylonians, Assyrians, Indo-Scythians, and North Arabian tribes with the significant role cavalry played not only in warfare but everyday life to form a military reliant almost entirely upon armored horses for battle.

Urfa was conquered repeatedly throughout history, and has been dominated by many civilizations, including the Ebla, Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Armenians, Hurri-Mitannis ( Armeno-Aryans ), Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Macedonians ( under Alexander the Great ), Seleucids, Arameans, Osrhoenes, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, and Crusaders.

Whether or not he survived the siege and sack of Nineveh by Chaldeans and Medes, Assyria was soon reduced to a rump state centered around its last capital city of Harran under its last king Ashur-uballit II and then destroyed by the Babylonians.

The city was sacked and largely destroyed during the conquest of Assyria by the Medes, Babylonians and Scythians in 612 BC.

In alliance with Egyptian forces, Ashuruballit's army was able to defend Harran from the combined Babylonian-Mede attack for a brief period following the destruction of Nineveh ; however, when the Egyptian army had to return their homeland in 610 BC, the Babylonians and Medes swept into Harran and sacked it in 609 BC.

An alliance of Medes, Persians and Babylonians challenged the Assyrians.

It was besieged, conquered, and sacked by allied forces of Medes, Scythians, Babylonians and Susianians.

He consolidated the gains made by his father over the neo Hittites, Babylonians and Arameans, and successfully campaigned in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, subjugating the newly arrived Iranic peoples of the area, the Persians and Medes, during his brief reign.

Christian apologists state that the prophecy in Isaiah chapters 13 and 21 could possibly have been directed originally against Assyria whose capital Nineveh was defeated in 612 BC by a combined onslaught of the Medes and Babylonians.