[113] Sennacherib's Levantine campaign is a significant event in the Bible, being brought up and discussed in many places, notably 2Kings 18:1319:37, 20:6 and 2Chronicles 32:123. [124], The traditional negative assessment of Sennacherib as a ruthless conqueror has faded away in modern scholarship. [56] In the meantime, Sennacherib campaigned elsewhere. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal is unknown, but it is clear from contemporary inscriptions that he was very disappointed. [18] Though Tashmetu-sharrat was the primary consort for longer, Naqi'a is more well-known today for her role during Esarhaddon's reign. Some large objects with Sennacherib's inscriptions remain at Nineveh, where some have even been reburied. [122] Sennacherib's own accounts of his building projects and military campaigns, typically referred to as his "annals", were often copied several times and spread throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire during his reign. For most of Sennacherib's reign, the queen was Tashmetu-sharrat, whose name literally means "Tashmetum is queen". If the battle was a southern victory, the setback faced by the Assyrians would have to have been minor as Babylon was under siege in the late summer of 690 BC (and had apparently been under siege for some time at that point). He never disobeyed his father, and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well and wanted to please him. Victorious, Sennacherib attempted yet another method to govern Babylonia and appointed his son Ashur-nadin-shumi to reign as Babylonian vassal king. [63] The war then took an unexpected turn as the king of Elam, Hallutash-Inshushinak I, took advantage of the Assyrian army being so far away from home to invade Babylonia. By the time Sargon moved to Babylon, Sennacherib, who served as the crown prince and designated heir, had already left Nimrud, living in a residence at Nineveh. In his stead, Sennacherib proclaimed a noble by the name Ethbaal as the new king of Sidon and his vassal and oversaw the submission of many of the surrounding cities to his rule. In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are portrayed in discussion, appearing almost as equals. The King's face has been deliberately slashed, perhaps by an enemy soldier at the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. [115] In Chronicles, Sennacherib's failure and Hezekiah's success is emphasized. Because Sennacherib might have considered a two-front war too risky, Marduk-apla-iddina was left unchallenged for several months. [111], Throughout the millennia following Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. He destroyed Babylon in 689 bc and, with the peace of his empire thus assured, devoted himself to rebuilding his capital, Nineveh. Like many rulers of these cities had done before and would do again, Luli fled rather than face the wrath of the Assyrians, escaping by boat until he was beyond Sennacherib's reach. 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. The son of Sargon II, it's believed Sennacherib became king around 705 when his father was killed in battle. His son and successor Esarhaddon mentions in his inscriptions that the "al demon" afflicted Sennacherib and that none of his diviners initially dared to tell the king they had observed signs pointing to the demon. 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. [28] Sennacherib was about 35 years old when he ascended to the Assyrian throne in August of 705BC. [76], During the destruction of the city, Sennacherib destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, which he took to Assyria. [24] Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-PileserIII in 729BC. [75], Although Sennacherib destroyed the city, he appears to have still been somewhat fearful of Babylon's ancient gods. [63], Successfully landing on the Elamite coast, the Assyrians then hunted and attacked the Chaldean refugees, something that both Babylonian and Assyrian sources hold went well for the Assyrians. Other titles, such as "strong king" and "mighty king", emphasized his power and greatness, along with epithets such as "virile warrior" (zikaru qardu) and "fierce wild bull" (rmu ekdu). To take advantage of the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. [37], Portions of the Assyrian army were away in Tabal in 704BC. Sennacherib's troops seems to have been remembered later, in a greatly mod-ified form, by the Greek historian Herodotus (Histories, 2.141), who recount-ed that: "Sennacherib . In several places, Sennacherib's great intelligence is emphasized, for instance in the passage, "the god Ninshiku gave me wide understanding equal to (that of) the sage Adapu (and) endowed me with broad knowledge". As his name implies Sennacherib was not the eldest son of Sargon II, but was chosen as crown prince and made military governor of the troublesome northern frontier. [62] They then sailed across the Persian Gulf, a journey which Sennacherib's inscriptions indicate was difficult since repeated sacrifices were made to Ea, the god of the deep. He got ready to attack them. In Hebrew, his name was rendered as Snryb and in Aramaic it was nryb. [74] Although the Babylonians were successful initially, that was short-lived, and in the same year, the siege of Babylon was already well underway. Sennacherib's generals led other small campaigns without the king present, including a 698BC expedition against Kirua, an Assyrian governor revolting in Cilicia, and a 695BC campaign against the city of Tegarama. For the first six years of his reign, they were written on clay cylinders, but he later began using clay prisms, probably because they provided a greater surface area. According to the biblical account, the Assyrian envoys to Hezekiah returned to Sennacherib to find him engaged in a struggle with the city of Libnah. [98] Their names were: A small tablet excavated at Nineveh lists the names of mythological Mesopotamian heroes, such as Gilgamesh, and some personal names. They then besieged and took numerous cities. [71] In 1973, the Assyriologist John A. Brinkman wrote that it was likely that the southerners won the battle, though probably suffering many casualties, since both of Sennacherib's enemies still remained on their respective thrones after the fighting. [] 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! [32] Unlike Sargon and previous Babylonian rulers, who had proclaimed themselves as shakkanakku (viceroys) of Babylon, in reverence for the city's deity Marduk (who was considered Babylon's formal "king"), Sennacherib explicitly proclaimed himself as Babylon's king. Heads lie in a heap at their feet. Fearing for his life, Marduk-apla-iddina had already fled the battlefield. When the Philistine city of Ashkelon succumbed, Sennacherib removed the king, his wife, sons, daughters, brothers, and kin, and exiled them back to Assyria. Reade believes that the collapse of the Assyrian Empire within seventy years of Sennacherib's death can be partly attributed to later kings ignoring Sennacherib's policies and reforms. Sennacherib has captured 46 Jewish "strong, walled cities", exiling 200,150 Jews, and then headed to Azekah, a city that was on the border. [26], In 705BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led the Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurd of Tabal in central Anatolia. [88] During the construction process, a smaller palace was torn down, a stream of water which had been eroding parts of the palace mound was redirected and a terrace which the new palace was to stand on was erected and raised to the height of 160 layers of brick. Sennacherib oversaw domestic affairs and often informed Sargon of the progress being made on building projects throughout the empire. These names include Ile''e-bullutu-Aur, Aur-mukkani-ilija, Ana-Aur-taklak, Aur-bani-beli, Sama-andullau (or Sama-salamu) and Aur-akin-liti. He may have been compensating for the way he treated his father's memory. He sits on a throne and watches as prisoners are brought before him and executed. 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]. [117], Though Assyria had more than a hundred kings throughout its long history, Sennacherib (along with his son Esarhaddon and grandsons Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin) is one of the few kings who was remembered and figured in Aramaic and Syriac folklore long after the kingdom had fallen. After the Assyrians had seized many of Judah's most important fortified cities and destroyed several towns and villages, Hezekiah realized that his anti-Assyrian activities had been disastrous military and political miscalculations and accordingly submitted to the Assyrians once more. [30], Frahm and the Assyriologist Julian E. Reade have pondered the idea that Sennacherib could be classified as a feminist. 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. 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. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India. Thankful, Sinharib then converts to Christianity and founds an important monastery near Mosul, called Deir Mar Mattai. Though Sargon's reliefs usually show the king as close to other members of the Assyrian aristocracy, Sennacherib's art usually depicts the king towering above everyone else in his vicinity due to being mounted in a chariot. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480ft) long and 220 metres (720ft) wide. Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. [57], Ashur-nadin-shumi was also titled mru rt, a title that could be interpreted either as the "pre-eminent son" or the "firstborn son". This text is fragmentary, but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense. Though Babylon was respected as the well-spring of civilization, it was expected to remain passive in political matters, something that Assyria's "Babylonian bride" repeatedly refused to be. Although Sennacherib at last got his revenge on Marduk-apla-iddina, his arch-enemy had not lived to see it, having died of natural causes before the Assyrians landed in Elam. [48], The account of the blockade erected around Jerusalem is different from the sieges described in Sennacherib's annals and the massive reliefs in Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, which depict the successful siege of Lachish rather than events at Jerusalem. Historically, the most popular view has been that Sennacherib was the son of Sargon's wife Ataliya, although this is now considered unlikely. [32], In 701BC, Sennacherib first moved to attack the Syro-Hittite and Phoenician cities in the north. The Assyrians often represented men with eagles heads, and frequently portrayed an eagle-headed figure overcoming a lion, or bull, which, as Mr. Layard suggests, "may denote the superiority of intellect over the lower faculties." [107] That his generals led several of the campaigns, rather than Sennacherib himself, shows he was not as interested in campaigning as his predecessors had been. [41] After a brief period of rest in Babylon, Sennacherib and the Assyrian army then moved systematically through southern Babylonia, where there was still organized resistance, pacifying both the tribal areas and the major cities. Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. He built a large second palace at the city's southern mound, which served as an arsenal to store military equipment and as permanent quarters for part of the Assyrian standing army. According to Elayi, Sennacherib was "certainly intelligent, skillful, with an ability of adaptation", but "his sense of piety was contradictory, as, on the one hand, he impiously destroyed the statues of gods and temples of Babylon while, on the other hand, he used to consult the gods before acting and prayed to them". [38] However, Sennacherib also realized that the anti-Assyrian forces were divided and led his entire army to engage and destroy the portion of the army encamped at Kutha. Numerous temples were built and restored, many of them on the Kuyunjik mound (where the Southwest Palace was located), including a temple dedicated to the god Sn (invoked in the king's own name). His army still existed when he conducted campaigns in 702 BCE and from 699 BCE until 697 BCE, when he made several campaigns in the mountains east of Assyria, during one of which he received tribute from the Medes. [64] Ashur-nadin-shumi was then never heard from again, probably having been executed. [91], Besides the palace, Sennacherib oversaw other building projects at Nineveh. His most famous work in the city is the Southwest Palace, which Sennacherib named his "Palace without Rival". An inscription on a stone lion in the quarter associated with Sennacherib's queen, Tashmetu-sharrat, contains hopes that the king and queen would both live healthily and long within the new palace. [125], The following titulature is used by Sennacherib in early accounts of his 703 BC Babylonian campaign:[126], Sennacherib, great king, mighty king, king of Assyria, king without rival, righteous shepherd, favorite of the great gods, prayerful shepherd, who fears the great gods, protector of righteousness, lover of justice, who lends support, who comes to the aid of the cripple and aims to do good deeds, perfect hero, mighty man, first among all kings, neckstock that bends the insubmissive, who strikes the enemy like a thunderbolt, Ashur, the great mountain, has bestowed upon me an unrivalled kingship and has made my weapons mightier than the weapons of all other rulers sitting on daises. [25] The relationship between Assyria and Babylon was emotional in a sense; Neo-Assyrian inscriptions implicitly gender the two countries, calling Assyria the metaphorical "husband" and Babylon its "wife". [93] Despite his dismissal, Arda-Mulissu remained a popular figure, and some vassals secretly supported him as the heir to the throne. [72] It is likely Babylon would have been in a poor position once it fell to Sennacherib in 689BC, having been besieged for over fifteen months. The Assyrians thus invaded Judah. Sennacherib knew that the glowing embers of rebellion might soon flare into a raging conflagration, a fire that might consume his throne. 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. They will be called my War Eagles. 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. As regent, Sennacherib's primary duty was to maintain relations with Assyrian governors and generals and oversee the empire's vast military intelligence network. Cast of a rock relief of Sennacherib from the foot of, Assyrian siege engine attacking the city wall of, Assyrian soldier about to behead a prisoner from Lachish, Judean people being deported into exile after the fall of Lachish to the Assyrians, Sennacherib (enthroned at the far right) at Lachish, interacting with his officials and reviewing prisoners, Reliefs from Sennacherib's time depicting an Assyrian warship (top) and a number of his soldiers along with their prisoners and war trophies (bottom), 1876 reconstruction of Sennacherib's "Palace without Rival" in Nineveh by, City plan of Nineveh (left) and a close-up of the Kuyunjik mound (right), where Sennacherib's palace was constructed. Every servant involved with the security of the royal palace at Nineveh was executed. I dug canals through the midst of that city, I overwhelmed it with water, I made its very foundations disappear, and I destroyed it more completely than a devastating flood. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. Biblical archaeologist Isaac Kalimi and historian Seth Richardson described Sennacherib's 701BC attack against Jerusalem as a "world event" in 2014, noting that it drew together the fates of numerous otherwise disparate groups. 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. The Assyrians defeated the Egyptian expedition in a battle near the city of Eltekeh. The Assyrian campaign (described as an act of aggression rather than as a response to Hezekiah's rebellious activities) is seen as doomed to fail from the start. Mushezib-Marduk ensured Humban-menanu's support by bribing him. Sennacherib prism. [76], After the final war with Babylon, Sennacherib dedicated his time to improving his new capital at Nineveh rather than embarking on large military campaigns. [91], When his eldest son and original crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi, disappeared, presumably executed, Sennacherib selected his eldest surviving son, Arda-Mulissu, as the new crown prince. The denizens of the Levant and Babylonia celebrated the news and proclaimed the act as divine punishment because of Sennacherib's brutal campaigns against them, while in Assyria the reaction was probably resentment and horror. He was assassinated by one of his own sons in a temple of Nineveh. The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. Though old native Babylonians ruled most of the cities, such as Kish, Ur, Uruk, Borsippa, Nippur, and Babylon itself, Chaldean tribes led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other dominated most of the southernmost land. Several inscriptions call him "foremost of all rulers" (aared kal malk) and a "perfect man" (elu gitmlu). [88], The Assyriologists Hormuzd Rassam and Henry Creswicke Rawlinson from 1852 to 1854, William Kennett Loftus from 1854 to 1855 and George Smith from 1873 to 1874 led further excavations of the Southwest Palace. Sennacherib's only known sister, Ahat-abisha, was married off to Ambaris, the king of Tabal, but probably returned to Assyria after Sargon's first successful campaign against Tabal. 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. 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. To take the city, the Assyrians constructed a great siege mound, a ramp made of earth and stone, to reach the top of Lachish's walls. Raising the level of the courtyard made images that Sargon had created at the temple in Assur invisible. [55] One of Sennacherib's first measures was to remove Bel-ibni from the Babylonian throne, either because of incompetence or complicity,[32] and he was brought back to Assyria, whereafter he is not heard of again in the sources. They took the cities of Ekron and Timnah and Judah stood alone, with Sennacherib setting his sights on Jerusalem. [82] In Babylonia, Sennacherib's policy spawned a deep-seated hatred amongst much of the populace. Though many of these early inscriptions talk about the palace as if it were already completed, this was the standard way of writing about building projects in ancient Assyria. [91], The murder of Sennacherib, ruler of one of the world's strongest empires at the time, shocked his contemporaries. [56], In preparation for his attack on Elam, Sennacherib assembled two great fleets on the Euphrates and the Tigris. 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