July 11 671 BCE – 22 Tammuz 3090
Memphis, Egypt
Assyrian king Esarhaddon captured Memphis (the biblical Nof ), capital of ancient Egypt, located twenty kilometers south of today’s Cairo. The conquest took place in the tenth year of his reign, three years after a previous attempt. The king he defeated was the black pharaoh Taharqa, king of Nubia and Egypt and veteran of the Egyptian campaign against Esarhaddon’s father Sennacherib in 701 BCE. During that conflict, Taharqa’s intervention probably saved Judea from the same fate as the northern kingdom of Israel, which Sennacherib destroyed. This time, however, Taharqa was forced to retreat to his native Ethiopia but continued to foment rebellion, fatally weakening the Assyrian superpower.