An Assyrian king and son of Sargon II, Sennacherib spent his rule (705-681) defending the kingdom his father had built. He was renowned for enlarging and building up the capital (Ninevah). He extended the city wall and built an irrigation canal.
In November-December 689 B.C., following a 15-month siege, Sennacherib did almost exactly the opposite of what he did at Ninevah. He sacked and razed Babylon, destroying buildings and temples, and carrying off the king and the statues of the gods they didn't smash (Adad and Shala are named specifically, but probably also Marduk), as was inscribed in the cliffs of the Bavian gorge near Ninevah. The details include filling the Arahtu canal (a branch of the Euphrates that ran through Babylon) with bricks torn from the Babylonian temples and ziggurat, and then digging canals through the city and flooding it.
Marc Van de Mieroop says that the rubble that went down the Euphrates into the Persian Gulf terrified the residents of Bahrain to the point of volunteering submission to Sennacherib.
Sennacherib's son Arda-Mulissi assassinated him. Babylonians reported this as an act of revenge by the god Marduk. In 680, when a different son, Esarhaddon, took the throne, he reversed his father's policy towards Babylon.
Reference: "Revenge, Assyrian Style," by Marc Van de Mieroop Past and Present 2003.
