The fire that destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC baked the clay tablets of Ashurbanipal's library — helping them survive to the present day.
The events
- Library of Ashurbanipalc. 650 BC · Nineveh. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal gathered tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets at Nineveh on religion, medicine, omens and literature. They preserved the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest great work of literature.
- Fall of Nineveh612 BC · Nineveh. Babylonian and Median forces under Nabopolassar and Cyaxares captured and destroyed Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. Its fall ended the Assyrian Empire and opened the way for the rise of Neo-Babylonian power.
More amazing facts
- 880 BC · 814 BC Around 880 BC, Lapita seafarers landed on Tonga — at nearly the same time the Phoenicians founded Carthage.
- 776 BC · 753 BC The Olympic Games are older than Rome: the first were held in 776 BC, and by tradition the city was founded only 23 years later.
- 563 BC · 551 BC · 530 BC By traditional dating, the Buddha, Confucius and Pythagoras were contemporaries: all three lived in the 6th century BC.
- 509 BC · 508 BC Rome expelled its last king in 509 BC and Athens got democracy from Cleisthenes in 508: republic and democracy were born almost side by side.
- 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
- 323 BC · 322 BC India's Maurya Empire arose about a year after Alexander the Great died — and its founder, Chandragupta, is said to have met Alexander himself.