[6] According to a 670BC document, it was illegal to give the name Sennacherib (then the former king) to a commoner in Assyria, as it was considered sacrilege. [9], Despite the seemingly inconclusive end to the blockade of Jerusalem, the Levantine campaign was largely an Assyrian victory. There are also examples of a more naturalistic approach in the art; where colossal statues of bulls from Sargon's palace depict them with five legs so that four legs could be seen from either side and two from the front, Sennacherib's bulls all have four legs. Panels 14-16 The King's face has been deliberately slashed, perhaps by an enemy soldier at the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. [51] An alternative hypothesis, first advanced by journalist Henry T. Aubin in 2001, is that the blockade of Jerusalem was lifted through the intervention of a Kushite army from Egypt. For example, the god Ashur is portrayed frequently with a female companion, probably the goddess Mullissu. Assur, the great god, has intrusted to me an unrivaled kingship, and has made powerful my weapons above (all) those who dwell in palaces. [86] Whereas his father's new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, was more or less an imitation of the previous capital of Nimrud, Sennacherib intended to make Nineveh into a city whose magnificence and size astonished the civilized world. [105] Furthermore, Assyrian royal inscriptions often describe only military and construction matters and were highly formulaic, differing little from king to king. [68], Despite the defeat of Nergal-ushezib and the flight of the Elamites, Babylonia did not surrender to Sennacherib. [] By the order of Ashur, father of the gods, and heavenly queen Ishtar may we both live long in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy wellbeing to the full! The Bible reveals that during the reign of the Jewish king Hezekiah, Sennacherib came to conquer Jerusalem and the Angel of the LORD (The Lord Himself) slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Bel-ibni now faced the open revolts of two tribal leaders: Shuzubu (who later became Babylonian king under the name Mushezib-Marduk) and Marduk-apla-iddina, now an elderly man. Other types of non-royal inscriptions from Sennacherib's reign, such as administrative documents, economic documents and chronicles, are more numerous. The reasons for his policy towards his female relatives are unknown. At the head of the Persian Gulf, a storm flooded the Assyrian camp and the Assyrian soldiers had to take refuge on their ships. As he was king by 692 BC, but not described in Assyrian sources as "revolting" until 691 BC, it is possible that his rule was initially accepted by Sennacherib. Dutch shares Tim Sheets research and word, on WAR EAGLE. They will ride the wave of my presence and as my war Eagles they will begin to fly carried by the waves of my presence." Mirroring the increased standing of the women of the royal family, during Sennacherib's time female deities were depicted more frequently. Sennacherib is remembered as a great builder; he enlarged and embellished Nineveh, built and restored various temples and public buildings all over Assyria, and undertook very important hydraulic works. (Wikimedia Commons)As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not submit my yoke, 46 of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small cities in the neighborhood, which were without number, by leveling with battering rams and by bringing up siege engines, by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels and breaches, I besieged and took (those cities). Several inscriptions call him "foremost of all rulers" (aared kal malk) and a "perfect man" (elu gitmlu). I counted out the wealth of that citysilver, gold, precious stones, property and goodsinto the hands of my people; and they took it as their own. The Assyrians defeated the Egyptian expedition in a battle near the city of Eltekeh. His fifth campaign in 699BC involved a series of raids against the villages around the foot of Mount Judi, located to the northeast of Nineveh. Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, two scribes, standing side by side at right, record the number of the enemy slain in a campaign in southern Mesopotamia. [32], After the Babylonian war, Sennacherib's second campaign was in the Zagros Mountains. Arda-Mulissu held the position of the heir apparent for several years until 684BC when Sennacherib suddenly replaced him with his younger brother Esarhaddon. [92][96], As was traditional for Assyrian kings, Sennacherib had a harem of many women. [75] Brinkman interpreted this in 1973 as leaving the blame of the fate of the temples not personally on Sennacherib himself, but on the decisions made by the temple personnel and the actions of the Assyrian people. Female members of the court were more prominent and enjoyed greater privileges under Sennacherib's reign than under the reigns of previous Assyrian kings. [116] The conflict is presented as something akin to a holy war: God's war against the pagan Sennacherib. As the name Ashur-ili-muballissu appears in the list of personal names, alongside fragmentary names that could possibly be reconstructed as Ashur-nadin-shumi (or Ashur-shumu-ushabshi) and Esarhaddon, it is also possible that the other personal names were names of further sons of Sennacherib. The murder of the king caused some resentment against him by his own supporters which delayed his potential coronation, and in the meantime, Esarhaddon had raised an army. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480ft) long and 220 metres (720ft) wide. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. Determined to end the threat of Elam, Sennacherib retook the city of Der, occupied by Elam during the previous conflict, and advanced into northern Elam. [8] In the northern Levant, former Assyrian vassal cities rallied around Luli, the king of Tyre and Sidon. Ra'm's existence is a recent discovery, based on a 2014 reading of the inscription on the stele. The Assyrians had not marched on Babylon immediately, however, as military actions are recorded elsewhere. [111], Throughout the millennia following Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. Though the biblical narrative holds that divine intervention by an angel ended Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem by destroying the Assyrian army, an outright Assyrian defeat is unlikely as Hezekiah submitted to Sennacherib at the end of the campaign. He never disobeyed his father, and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well and wanted to please him. The event is often portrayed as an apocalyptic scenario, with Hezekiah portrayed as a messianic figure and Sennacherib and his armies being personifications of Gog and Magog. [7] Like his immediate predecessors, Sennacherib took the ruling titles of both Assyria and Babylonia when he became king, but his reign in Babylonia was less stable. [35], SargonII's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across the Assyrian Empire. ", "The Trials of Esarhaddon: The Conspiracy of 670 BC", "Studies in Assyrian Geography: Part I: Sennacherib and the Waters of Nineveh", Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia and Persia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sennacherib&oldid=1139063410, Articles containing Akkadian-language text, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 February 2023, at 04:45. A tent is behind him; there is a chariot in the foreground and bodyguards stationed around. . Sennacherib assumed several new epithets never used by Assyrian kings, such as "guardian of the right" and "lover of justice", suggesting a desire to leave a personal mark on a new era beginning with his reign. [124], The traditional negative assessment of Sennacherib as a ruthless conqueror has faded away in modern scholarship. However, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and marched into Judah. Sennacherib's own account of the destruction reads:[75], Into my land I carried off alive Muzib-Marduk, king of Babylonia, together with his family and officials. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. [7] Marduk-apla-iddina rallied large portions of Babylonia's people to fight for him, both the urban Babylonians and the tribal Chaldeans, and he also enlisted troops from the neighboring civilization of Elam, in modern-day south-western Iran. . The passage describing the seizure of the property of the gods and the destruction of some of their statues is one of the few where Sennacherib uses "my people" rather than "I". He thought he could take them for himself. Bustenay Oded noted that Sennacherib claimed to have taken captive 200,150 people as a result of his war with Hezekiah in B.C. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off. 32 Hezekiah had been completely faithful to the Lord. They will be called my War Eagles. Sennacherib described all of his campaigns, even the unsuccessful ones, as victories in his own accounts. Having two names could point to Naqi'a being born outside Assyria properpossibly in Babylonia or in the Levantbut there is no substantial evidence for any theory regarding her origin.[93]. He may have been compensating for the way he treated his father's memory. His most famous work in the city is the Southwest Palace, which Sennacherib named his "Palace without Rival". [50] The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes the operation as an Assyrian failure due to a "multitude of field-mice" descending upon the Assyrian camp, devouring crucial material such as quivers and bowstrings, leaving the Assyrians unarmed and causing them to flee. [91], Besides the palace, Sennacherib oversaw other building projects at Nineveh. People throughout the Near East received the news with strong emotions and mixed feelings. Fearing for his life, Marduk-apla-iddina had already fled the battlefield. Both the blockade of Jerusalem and the siege of Lachish probably prevented further Egyptian aid from reaching Hezekiah, and intimidated the kings of other smaller states in the region. Twenty-fourth Dynasty of EgyptTefnakht Bakenranef, (Sargonid dynasty)Tiglath-Pileser Shalmaneser Marduk-apla-iddina II Sargon Sennacherib Marduk-zakir-shumi II Marduk-apla-iddina II Bel-ibni Ashur-nadin-shumi Nergal-ushezib Mushezib-Marduk Esarhaddon Ashurbanipal Ashur-etil-ilani Sinsharishkun Sin-shumu-lishir Ashur-uballit II, Seleucid Empire: Seleucus I Antiochus I Antiochus II Seleucus II Seleucus III Antiochus III Seleucus IV Antiochus IV Antiochus V Demetrius I Alexander III Demetrius II Antiochus VI Dionysus Diodotus Tryphon Antiochus VII Sidetes. He corresponded with and sent gifts to western rulers like Hezekiah, probably hoping to assemble a vast anti-Assyrian alliance. [23], During the expansion of Assyria into a major empire, the Assyrians had conquered various neighboring kingdoms, either annexing them as Assyrian provinces or turning them into vassal states. [23] The relationship between Assyria and Babylonia was similar to the relationship between Greece and Rome in later centuries; much of Assyria's culture, texts and traditions had been imported from the south. The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. [23] The two kingdoms had competed since the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14thcenturyBC, and in the 8thcenturyBC, the Assyrians consistently gained the upper hand. Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. Many of Sennacherib's reliefs are exhibited today at the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the British Museum, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris. [33] A minor 704BC[34] campaign (unmentioned in Sennacherib's later historical accounts), led by Sennacherib's magnates rather than the king himself, was sent against Gurd in Tabal to avenge Sargon. First discovered and excavated from 1847 to 1851 by the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, the discovery of reliefs depicting Sennacherib's siege of Lachish in the Southwest Palace was the first archaeological confirmation of an event described in the Bible. Eckhart Frahm considers this idea unlikely on account of the impressive royal gardens in Babylon itself. As the Assyrians were preparing to retake Ekron, Hezekiah's ally, Egypt, intervened in the conflict. When she became one of Sennacherib's wives, she took the Akkadian name Zaktu (Naqi'a being an Aramaic name). The king's face has been deliberately damaged in antiquity. tian army engaged the Assyrian army. led a large army against Egypt . In the Aggadah The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. Sennacherib's annals locate that encounter at Eltekeh in Philistia, while his army was on its way from Joppa to Ekron. Evidence of the increased standing of the royal women includes the larger number of texts referencing Assyrian queens from Sennacherib's reign compared to queens of earlier times, and evidence that Sennacherib's queens had their own standing military units, just like the king. Sennacherib immediately abandoned Sargon's great new capital city, Dur-Sharrukin, and moved the capital to Nineveh instead. As an Assyrian king of Babylon, Ashur-nadin-shumi's position was politically important and highly delicate and would have granted him valuable experience as the intended heir to the entire Neo-Assyrian Empire. In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are portrayed in discussion, appearing almost as equals. The oldest traces of human settlement at its location are from the 7th millenniumBC, and from the 4thmillennium BC and onward it formed an important administrative center in the north. [89] The text of the inscription, written in an unusually intimate way, reads:[90], And for the queen Tashmetu-sharrat, my beloved wife, whose features Belet-ili has made more beautiful than all other women, I had a palace of love, joy and pleasure built. Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi [79] Among the elements of this campaign, he commissioned a myth in which Marduk was put on trial before Ashur, the god of Assyria. Nineveh was the capital of the powerful ancient Assyrian empire, located in modern-day northern Iraq. In the stories, Sennacherib's armies are destroyed when Hezekiah recites Hallel psalms on the eve of Passover. So that it might be impossible in future days to recognize the site of that city and its temples, I utterly dissolved it with water and made it like inundated land. Sennacherib figures prominently in the Old Testament. [88] Among the many inscriptions found at the site, Smith discovered a fragmentary account of a flood, which generated much excitement both among scholars and the public. [85] When Sennacherib made the city his new capital it experienced one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history, being completely transformed from the somewhat neglected state it had been in before his reign. (Non-dynastic usurpers17351701 BCE) Esarhaddon's exile put Arda-Mulissu in a difficult position as he had reached the height of his popularity but was powerless to do anything to his brother. Dur-Sharrukin, and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well and wanted to please him king & x27... Chronicles, are more numerous [ 35 ], Throughout the near East received the news strong... 'S armies are destroyed when Hezekiah recites Hallel psalms on the stele his younger brother.! Assemble a vast anti-Assyrian alliance and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well wanted. 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