Esarhaddon, also spelled Essarhaddon, Assarhaddon and Ashurhaddon, was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sennacherib in 681 BC to his own death in 669. The third king of the Sargonid dynasty, Esarhaddon is most famous for his conquest of Egypt in 671, which made his empire the largest the world had ever seen, and for his reconstruction of Babylon, which had been destroyed by his father.
After Sennacherib's eldest son and heir Ashur-nadin-shumi had been captured and presumably executed in 694, the new heir had originally been the second eldest son, Arda-Mulissu, but in 684, Esarhaddon, a younger son, was appointed instead. Angered by this decision, Arda-Mulissu and another brother, Nabu-shar-usur, murdered their father in 681 and planned to seize the Assyrian throne. The murder, and Arda-Mulissu's aspirations of becoming king himself, made Esarhaddon's rise to the throne difficult and he first had to defeat his brothers in a six-week long civil war.