But recent discoveries render it probable that his reign was extended to a much greater length--that, in fact, he is to be identified with the Cinneladanus of Ptolemy's Canon, who held the throne of Babylon from B.C.647 to 626.

If this be so, we must place in the later years of the reign of Asshur-bani-pal the commencement of Assyria's decline--the change whereby she passed from the assailer to the assailed, from the undisputed primacy of Western Asia to a doubtful and precarious position.
This change was owing, in the first instance, to the rise upon her borders of an important military power in the centralized monarchy, established, about B.C.640, in the neighboring territory of Media.
The Medes had, it is probable, been for some time growing in strength, owing to the recent arrival in their country of fresh immigrants from the far East.

Discarding the old system of separate government and village autonomy, they had joined together and placed themselves under a single monarch; and about the year B.C.634, when Asshur-bani-pal had been king for thirty-four years, they felt themselves sufficiently strong to undertake an expedition against Nineveh.

Their first attack, however, failed utterly.

Phraortes, or whoever may have been the real leader of the invading army, was completely defeated by the Assyrians; his forces were cut to pieces, and he himself was among the slain.
Still, the very fact that the Medes could now take the offensive and attack Assyria was novel and alarming; it showed a new condition of things in these parts, and foreboded no good to the power which was evidently on the decline and in danger of losing its preponderance.