There is hardly any doubt that the later Assyrian kings regarded Babylonia as an integral part of the Assyrian empire, and had perfect faith in the fidelity of the inhabitants. It may reasonably be doubted, however, whether the Babylonians had really forgotten the cruel treatment they had received at the hands of Sennacherib. In addition to this, there must have existed for a considerable period the feeling that they, the Babylonians, were the more ancient people of the two, and that the Assyrians were but a later offshoot of their own stock, owing to them all their civilization, manners, customs, laws, and literature. It will thus be seen that they were sufficiently of the same origin to be regarded as one people, and for this reason, many of the cities of Babylonia were satisfied and happy under Assyrian rule, which they preferred, to all appearance, to that of the Chaldeans, a nation which, though inhabiting their own borders, was in reality more alien to them than the Assyrians in language, manners, and customs, and whom they probably regarded as being only half civilized. The general opinion is, that Nabû-âbla-uṣur (Nabopolassar), the general whom Sin-šarra-iškun (Saracos), the last king of Assyria, sent against his enemies (who seem to have invaded Babylonia by sea at the northern end of the Persian Gulf), was a Chaldean, and this is, in fact, confirmed by the quotation in Eusebius’s Armenian Chronicle (p. 44) from Polyhistor, where it is stated that after Samuges (Šamaš-šum-ukîn, the brother of Aššur-banî-âpli), Sardanapallus (this is a mistake for Nabopollasarus), the Chaldean, reigned for twenty-one years. If this be the case, it is a matter of surprise that Sin-šarra-iškun should have given into the hands of one belonging to a tribe of old hostile to Assyria, the command of his army at such a critical time. In any case, the result was most disastrous for Assyria, as the foregoing chapter has shown. In the opinion of Friedrich Delitzsch, Nabopolassar was not the general of Sin-šarra-iškun, but in all probability a viceroy installed by Aššur-êtil-îlāni-ukinni, and retained by Sin-šarra-iškun, in which case it is to be supposed that he made an alliance with the Medes (as related by Alexander Polyhistor and Abydenus), and cemented it by marrying his son Nebuchadrezzar to Amunhean, Amuhean, or Amytis, daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes; and according to the latter author, it was after this that he marched against Nineveh. Fried. Delitzsch may therefore be regarded as most probably right, for the king of the Medes would hardly have consented to bestow his daughter upon the son of one whom he could not otherwise have regarded as being of royal race.