Unfortunately, the superstition of the monarch led him to collect more especially books upon omens and dreams, and astrological treatises, but other works were not overlooked, and we owe to him a large number of the syllabaries and lists of words in which the cuneiform characters and the Assyrian vocabulary are explained.
When Assur-bani-pal died the doom of the Assyrian empire had already been pronounced.

The authority of his two successors, Assur-etil-ilani-yukin and Sin-sar-iskun, or Saracos, was still acknowledged both in Syria and in Babylonia, where Kandalanu had been succeeded as viceroy by Nabopolassar.

One of the contract-tablets from the north of Babylonia is dated as late as the seventh year of Sin-sar-iskun.

But not long after this the Babylonian viceroy revolted against his sovereign, and with the help of the Scythian king, who had established himself at Ekbatana, defeated the Assyrian forces and laid siege to Nineveh.

The siege ended in the capture and destruction of the city, the death of its king, and the overthrow of his empire.