Changes

The gardens of Sennacherib were depicted in both pictorial reliefs and a number of texts. According to one text, the gardens were comprised of “every fruit-bearing tree . . . cypress and mulberry, all kinds of trees” that were home to “the birds of heaven, <i>igiru</i> birds . . . wild swine and beasts of the forests.” <ref> Luckenbill, Daniel David, trans. and ed. <i>Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia.</i> (London: Histories and Mysteries of Man, 1989), p. 177-8</ref> Sennacherib built Nineveh into what was perhaps the greatest city in the world at the time and his successor Ashurbanipal certainly added to that legacy, but a spate of problems both within and outside of the Assyrian heartland manifested to bring the great city to a sudden end.

===Nineveh’s Quick Collapse===