lengths of the reigns of his successors Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun to match, his rule must have ended in 631 BC, the year of his death. If it had ended in 627 BC, the inscriptions of his successors Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun in Babylon would have been impossible, as the city was seized by Nabopolassar in 626 BC, and never again fell into Assyrian hands. A once popular theory to explain the discrepancy between the 42-year reign claimed in the Harran inscription and the more likely 38-year reign, for instance defended by Polish historian Stefan Zawadski in his book The Fall of Assyria (1988), is that Ashubanipal and Kandalanu were the same person, Kandalanu simply being the name the king used in Babylon. This is considered unlikely for several reasons. No previous Assyrian king is known to have used an alternate name in Babylon. Inscriptions from Babylonia also show a difference in the lengths of the reigns of Ashurbanipal and Kandalanu; Ashurbanipal's reign is counted from his first full year as king (668 BC) and Kandalanu's is counted from his first full year as king (647 BC). All Assyrian kings who personally ruled Babylon used the title "King of Babylon" in their own inscriptions, but it is not used in Ashurbanipal's inscriptions, even those made after 648 BC. Babylonian documents treat them as two different people, with no contemporary Babylonian sources describing Ashurbanipal as king of Babylon. References Sources Further reading 627 BC deaths 7th-century BC Babylonian kings Year of birth unknown