763.
The reign of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), the son and successor of Esarhaddon, which commenced B.C.668, is carried down to B.C.626 on the combined authority of Berosus, Ptolemy, and the monuments.

The monuments show that Asshur-bani-pal proclaimed himself king of Babylon after the death of Saul-mugina whose last year was (according to Ptolemy) B.C.
647: and that from the date of this proclamation he reigned over Babylon at least twenty years.

Polyhistor, who reports Berosus, has left us statements which are in close accordance, and from which we gather that the exact length of the reign of Asshur-bani-pal over Babylon was twenty-one years.

Hence, B.C.626 is obtained as the year of his death.
As Nineveh appears to have been destroyed B.C.625 or 624, two years only are left for Asshur-bani-pal's son and successor, Asshur-emid-illin, the Saracus of Abydenus.
The framework of Assyrian chronology being thus approximately, and, to some extent, provisionally settled, we may proceed to arrange upon it the facts so far as they have come down to us, of Assyrian history.
In the first place, then, if we ask ourselves where the Assyrians came from, and at what time they settled in the country which thenceforth bore their name, we seem to have an answer,at any rate to the former of these two questions, in Scripture.

"Out of that land"-- the land of Shinar--"went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh." The Assyrians, previously to their settlement on the middle Tigris, had dwelt in the lower part of the great valley--the flat alluvial plain towards the mouths of the two streams.