[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. [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. [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. For unknown reasons, Sargon never took him on his military campaigns. The siege of Lachish, which ended in the city's destruction, was so lengthy that the defenders eventually began using arrowheads made of bone rather than metal, which had run out. Dutch shares Tim Sheets research and word, on WAR EAGLE. 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. Heads lie in a heap at their feet. The Iraqi Department of Antiquities under the Assyriologist Tariq Madhloom conducted the most recent expeditions from 1965 to 1968. [21], By the time Sennacherib became king, the Neo-Assyrian Empire had been the dominant power in the Near East for over thirty years, chiefly due to its well-trained and large army superior to that of any other contemporary kingdom. [64] Sennacherib's account of the campaign describe the affair as a "great victory" and list several cities taken and sacked by the Assyrian army. Sennacherib , (died January 681 bc), King of Assyria (r. 705/704-681 bc), son and successor of Sargon II.Between 703 and 689 he undertook six campaigns against Elam (southwestern Iran), which was stirring up Chaldean and Aramaean tribes in Babylonia; Babylon was sacked during the last campaign. 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. Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. For most of Sennacherib's reign, the queen was Tashmetu-sharrat, whose name literally means "Tashmetum is queen". The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. 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. [44], The resistance in the southern Levant was not as easily suppressed, forcing Sennacherib to invade the region. 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." On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. They probably received a scribal education, learning arithmetic and how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian. 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. After conspiring with Egypt (then under Kushite rule) and Sidqia, an anti-Assyrian king of the city of Ashkelon, to garner support, Hezekiah attacked Philistine cities loyal to Assyria and captured the Assyrian vassal Padi, king of Ekron, and imprisoned him in his capital, Jerusalem. Furthermore, he did not "take the hand" of the Statue of Marduk, the physical representation of the deity, and thus did not honor the god by undergoing the traditional Babylonian coronation ritual. 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. List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources, Military history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, "Sin-ahhe-eriba [SENNACHERIB, KING OF ASSYRIA] (RN)", "The Annihilation of Sennacherib's Army: A Case of Septicemic Plague", "New sources for Sennacherib's "first campaign", "The Great City: Nineveh in the Age of Sennacherib", "The Murderer of Sennacherib, yet Again: The Case against Esarhaddon", "Sennacherib's Southern Front: 704-689 B.C. [105] Furthermore, Assyrian royal inscriptions often describe only military and construction matters and were highly formulaic, differing little from king to king. [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 claims in his annals that Humban-undasha was killed and that the enemy kings fled for their lives whereas the Babylonian chronicles claim that it was the Assyrians who retreated. The Assyrians had not marched on Babylon immediately, however, as military actions are recorded elsewhere. Thus, Jerusalem was blockaded in some capacity, though the lack of massive military activities and appropriate equipment meant that it was probably not a full siege. Assur, the great god, has intrusted to me an unrivaled kingship, and has made powerful my weapons above (all) those who dwell in palaces. Like the inscriptions of other Assyrian kings, his show pride and high self-esteem, for instance in the passage: "Ashur, father of the gods, looked steadfastly upon me among all the rulers and he made my weapons greater than (those of) all who sit on (royal) daises." Sennacherib 's campaign in the Levant in 701 BCE was a military campaign undertaken by the Neo-Assyrian Empire to bring the region back under control following a rebellion against Assyrian rule in 705 BCE. [18] Inscriptions suggest that Sennacherib and Tashmetu-sharrat had a loving relationship, with the king referring to her as "my beloved wife" and publicly praising her beauty. Many of Sennacherib's Babylonian troubles stemmed from the Chaldean[7] tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddinaII, who had been Babylon's king until Sennacherib's father defeated him. In the Aggadah 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. Since Smith, the site has experienced several periods of intense excavation and study; Rassam returned from 1878 to 1882, the Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge oversaw excavations from 1889 to 1891, the Assyriologist Leonard William King from 1903 to 1904 and the Assyriologist Reginald Campbell Thompson in 1905 and from 1931 to 1932. [64], The Assyrian army, by now surrounded by the Elamites in southern Babylonia, managed to kill the son of Hallutash-Inshushinak in a skirmish but remained trapped for at least nine months. [39], Sennacherib then marched on Babylon. Sennacherib. . 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. [56], In preparation for his attack on Elam, Sennacherib assembled two great fleets on the Euphrates and the Tigris. Shortly after taking the throne, Esarhaddon executed all of the conspirators and political enemies within his reach, including his brothers' families. He might have wanted to shift power away from powerful generals and magnates to his own family, having encountered powerful Arab queens who made their own decisions and led armies. [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. Son and successor of Sargon, he led expeditions to subdue Phoenicia and Palestine in 701 bc, and defeated the Elamite-Chaldean alliance in 691 bc. [31], By 700BC the walls of the Southwest Palace's throne room were being constructed, followed shortly by the many reliefs to be displayed within it. [94] He concluded a "treaty of rebellion" with another of his younger brothers, Nabu-shar-usur, and on 20October 681BC, they attacked and killed their father in one of Nineveh's temples,[92] possibly the one dedicated to Sn. The son of Sargon II, it's believed Sennacherib became king around 705 when his father was killed in battle. The king's face has been deliberately damaged in antiquity. Panels 14-16 Many sources recorded the event, including the Bible,[95] where Arda-Mulissu is called Adrammelech. [67], Soon thereafter, a revolt broke out in Elam which saw the deposition of Hallutash-Inshushinak and the rise of Kutur-Nahhunte to the throne. 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. Arda-Mulissu's coronation was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib. Sennacherib reigned from 720 BC to about 683 BC. They typically depict his conquests, sometimes with short pieces of text explaining the scene shown. [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. When Sargon's wife Ataliya died, she was buried hastily and in the same coffin as another woman, the queen of the previous king Tiglath-Pileser. He got ready to attack them. 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. [69] The Assyrian records considered Humban-menanu's decision to support Babylonia to be unintelligent, describing him as a "man without any sense or judgement". [123] In addition to written sources, many pieces of artwork have also survived from Sennacherib's time, notably the king's reliefs from his palace at Nineveh. [45], Sennacherib's account of what happened at Jerusalem begins with "As for Hezekiah like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city. 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. 32 Hezekiah had been completely faithful to the Lord. [104][105] Sennacherib's decision to keep his birth name when he became king rather than assuming a throne name, something at least 19 of his 21 immediate predecessors had done, suggests self-confidence. The first reason for this is Sennacherib's negative portrayal in the Bible as the evil conqueror who attempted to take Jerusalem; the second is his destruction of Babylon, one of the most prominent cities in the ancient world. When he returned to Assyria his own sons murdered him. [65][66] In Ashur-nadin-shumi's place, a native Babylonian, Nergal-ushezib, became Babylon's king. Sennacherib also massively expanded the city to the south and erected enormous new city walls, surrounded by a moat, up to 25 metres (82ft) high and 15 metres (49ft) thick. [73], In 690BC, Humban-menanu suffered a stroke and his jaw became locked in a way that prevented him from speaking. Instead, his inscriptions often portrayed the most important parts of his reign as his large-scale building projects. 701. He made Nineveh his capital, building a new palace, extending and beautifying the city, and erecting inner and outer city walls that still stand. The Assyrian army's diversion from its course could then be interpreted by the Babylonian chroniclers as an Assyrian retreat. After the death of Sargon II, Sennacherib's father, a number of states in the Levant renounced their allegiance to Assyria. Sennacherib prism. [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. There was also a change in rulership in Elam, where Kutur-Nahhunte was deposed in favor of Humban-menanu, who began assembling the anti-Assyrian coalition once more. 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. 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. Sennacherib is presented as akin to a ruthless predator, attacking Judah as a "wolf on the fold" in the famous 1815 poem The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron:[112]. 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. Except for Esarhaddon, who is known to be Naqi'a's son, which of Sennacherib's wives were his children's mothers is unknown. [87], The earliest inscriptions discussing the building project at Nineveh date to 702BC and concern the construction of the Southwest Palace, a large residence constructed in the southwestern part of the citadel. When the Philistine city of Ashkelon succumbed, Sennacherib removed the king, his wife, sons, daughters, brothers, and kin, and exiled them back to Assyria. 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. In 703BC, after the Tabal expedition had been completed, Sennacherib gathered the Assyrian army at Assur, often used as a mustering spot for campaigns against the south. In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are portrayed in discussion, appearing almost as equals. Because Sennacherib might have considered a two-front war too risky, Marduk-apla-iddina was left unchallenged for several months. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India. Any logical movement of troops here . The rebel Shuzubu, hunted by Sennacherib in his 700 BC invasion of the south, had resurfaced under the name Mushezib-Marduk and, seemingly without foreign support, acceded to the throne of Babylon. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. As regent, Sennacherib's primary duty was to maintain relations with Assyrian governors and generals and oversee the empire's vast military intelligence network. Most of Sennacherib's campaigns were not aimed at conquest, but at suppressing revolts against his rule, restoring lost territories and securing treasure to finance his building projects. In Hebrew, his name was rendered as Snryb and in Aramaic it was nryb. Victorious, Sennacherib attempted yet another method to govern Babylonia and appointed his son Ashur-nadin-shumi to reign as Babylonian vassal king. With the aid of surviving Chaldean troops, Hallutash-Inshushinak took the city of Sippar, where he also managed to capture Ashur-nadin-shumi and take him back to Elam. [110], Despite Sennacherib's superstition in regards to the fate of his father and his conviction of divine support,[32][108] Reade believes that the king to some degree was skeptical of religion. [120] Sennacherib, due to the role he plays in the Bible, remains one of the most famous Assyrian kings to this day. The siege is discussed not only in contemporary sources, but in later folklore and traditions, such as Aramaic folklore, in later Greco-Roman histories of the Near East and in the tales of medieval Syriac Christians and Arabs. The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. [2] Nineveh had been the designated seat of the Assyrian crown prince since the reign of Tiglath-Pileser. 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. 200,150 people, great and . [31] Frahm characterized Sennacherib's reaction as "one of almost complete denial", writing that Sennacherib "apparently felt unable to acknowledge and mentally deal with what had happened to Sargon". According to Brinkman, Sennacherib might have lost the affection he once had for Babylon's gods because they had inspired their people to attack him. Sennacherib recorded his triumphs in his annals, which survive on three nearly identical clay prisms: the Taylor Prism 6, the Oriental Institute Prism 7, and the Jerusalem Prism 8. The ancient Aramaic story of Ahikar portrays Sennacherib as a benevolent patron of the titular character Ahikar, with Esarhaddon portrayed more negatively. [75], Although Sennacherib destroyed the city, he appears to have still been somewhat fearful of Babylon's ancient gods. Medieval Syriac tales characterize Sennacherib as an archetypical pagan king assassinated as part of a family feud, whose children convert to Christianity. Though the blockade of Jerusalem was not a proper siege, it is clear from all available sources that a massive Assyrian army was encamped in the city's vicinity, probably on its northern side. [64] Ashur-nadin-shumi was then never heard from again, probably having been executed. [35], SargonII's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across the Assyrian Empire. Because Babylon, well within his own territory, had been the target of most of his military campaigns and had caused the death of his son, Sennacherib destroyed the city in 689BC. Because the Assyrians venerated the long history and culture of Babylon, it was preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king, or by the Assyrian king in a personal union. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. [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". The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480ft) long and 220 metres (720ft) wide. 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. 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