Nabopolassar
Nabopolassar takes the throne of Babylon during the anti-Assyrian revolt
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗A clay tablet 52 by 60 millimetres preserves the exact day a dynasty began: 26 Arahsamna, converted to 23 November 626 BCE.
A night entry and a day of fighting
The Early Years of Nabopolassar Chronicle, covering the revolt that made him king in 626 BCE, says his troops entered Babylon at night, fought there through the following day, defeated the Assyrians and put Sîn-šarra-iškun's garrison to flight. The month of that entry is lost in a damaged passage.
After further fighting across Babylonia, Babylonians coming out of Babylon inflicted what the chronicle calls a major defeat on an Assyrian army and plundered it.
Only then does the chronicle pause to note that the land had gone one year without a king.
The date is unusually exact
Nabopolassar ascended Babylon's throne on the twenty-sixth day of Arahsamna, which the edition converts to 23 November 626 BCE.
Precision like this is possible because a Babylonian chronicle states the day and the Babylonian calendar can be converted — and because that chronicle survives on a tablet measuring 52 by 60 millimetres.
His origins are far less clear. Nabopolassar's later self-description as a "son of a nobody" is royal rhetoric, not a recoverable genealogy, and the proposed link to Uruk elites is a hypothesis.
A dynasty, not yet an empire
The accession founded the line conventionally called Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean. Calling the polity an empire that day is retrospective: it founded a dynasty and a rival kingship, while territorial consolidation took years.
It did not end the war either. Assyrian forces kept campaigning in Babylonia, and the chronicle records Nabopolassar retreating before them the following year.
The Medes did not create his kingship in 626; their decisive intervention against the Assyrian heartland came much later.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at -626-11-23.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The accession date is unusually precise because it is stated in a Babylonian chronicle and can be converted from the Babylonian calendar.
- The tablet is damaged: the month of Nabopolassar's initial entry into Babylon and portions of several battle notices are missing.
- Nabopolassar's ancestry and ethnic identification remain uncertain. His later self-description as a 'son of a nobody' is genuine royal rhetoric, not a recoverable genealogy.
- Calling the polity an 'empire' on accession day is retrospective; the event securely founded a dynasty and rival kingship, while territorial consolidation took years.