in the 670s Assyria overran the Nile Valley. Egypt, though, turned out to be a country too far, and by the time the Assyrians withdrew ten years later, problems were plaguing all their frontiers. Destroying Urartu, their main enemy to the north, had exposed them to devastating raids from the Caucasus; sacking Babylon, their main enemy to the south, only generated wars with Elam, farther southeast; and destroying Elam in the 640s BCE merely freed the Medes of the Zagros Mountains to become a threat and allowed Babylon to regain its strength.
