[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. Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi [114] A vast majority of the Biblical accounts of King Hezekiah's reign in 2 Kings is dedicated to Sennacherib's campaign, cementing it as the most important event of Hezekiah's time. [126], This variant of the titulature is used in an inscription from the Southwest Palace at Nineveh written after Sennacherib's 700 BC Babylonian campaign:[127], Sennacherib, the great king, the mighty king, king of the universe, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters (of the world); favorite of the great gods; the wise and crafty one; strong hero, first among all princes; the flame that consumes the insubmissive, who strikes the wicked with the thunderbolt. 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. 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 Assyrians thus invaded Judah. 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. The name probably derives from Sennacherib not being Sargon's first son, but all his older brothers being dead by the time he was born. They will be called my War Eagles. 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." Victorious, Sennacherib attempted yet another method to govern Babylonia and appointed his son Ashur-nadin-shumi to reign as Babylonian vassal king. Except for Esarhaddon, who is known to be Naqi'a's son, which of Sennacherib's wives were his children's mothers is unknown. 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." He sits on a throne and watches as prisoners are brought before him and executed. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. [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". Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. [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. 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. Though Sennacherib reclaimed the south in 700BC, Marduk-apla-iddina continued to trouble him, probably instigating Assyrian vassals in the Levant to rebel, leading to the Levantine War of 701 BC, and himself warring against Bel-ibni, Sennacherib's vassal king in Babylonia. [61] In 694 BC, Sennacherib invaded Elam, with the explicit goal of the campaign being to root out Marduk-apla-iddina and the other Chaldean refugees. [36], In angry response to this disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704[7] or 703BC[32] overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. Any logical movement of troops here . [75] Although Sennacherib had once anxiously considered the implications of Sargon's seizure of Babylon and the role that the city's offended gods may have played in his father's downfall, his attitude towards the city had shifted by 689 BC. [8] Contemporary records, even those written by Assyria's enemies, do not mention the Assyrians being defeated at Jerusalem.[9]. He never disobeyed his father, and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well and wanted to please him. The Biblical account of the end of Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem holds that though Hezekiah's soldiers manned the walls of the city, ready to defend it against the Assyrians, an entity referred to as the destroying angel, sent by Yahweh, annihilated Sennacherib's army, killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in front of Jerusalem's gates. His most famous work in the city is the Southwest Palace, which Sennacherib named his "Palace without Rival". Throughout the history of the Assyrian Empire, Babylon had caused problems and had even been destroyed by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I in c. 1225 BCE. The foreground scribe uses pen and ink on a leather scroll; the other scribe writes with a stylus on a hinged writing-board coated with wax. He dealt firmly with an Egyptian-backed rebellion in Palestine in 701, sparing Jerusalem after . [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. [32], After the Babylonian war, Sennacherib's second campaign was in the Zagros Mountains. The hands of my people laid hold of the gods dwelling there and smashed them; they took their property and goods.I destroyed the city and its houses, from foundation to parapet; I devastated and burned them. 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. Arda-Mulissu held the position of the heir apparent for several years until 684BC when Sennacherib suddenly replaced him with his younger brother Esarhaddon. 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. He got ready to attack them. [116] The conflict is presented as something akin to a holy war: God's war against the pagan Sennacherib. [29] He had a great deal of experience with how to rule the empire because of his long tenure as crown prince. He expanded the size of the city and constructed great city walls, numerous temples and a royal garden. Female members of the court were more prominent and enjoyed greater privileges under Sennacherib's reign than under the reigns of previous Assyrian kings. [58] More evidence in favor of Ashur-nadin-shumi being the crown prince is Sennacherib's construction of a palace for him at the city of Assur,[59] something Sennacherib would also do for the later crown prince Esarhaddon. He made Nineveh his capital, building a new palace, extending and beautifying the city, and erecting inner and outer city walls that still stand. [92] Esarhaddon's influential mother, Naqi'a, may have played a role in convincing Sennacherib to choose Esarhaddon as heir. [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. 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." Rulers with names in italics are considered fictional. According to Kalimi, the event and its aftermath affected and had consequences for not only the Assyrians and the Israelites, but also the Babylonians, Egyptians, Nubians, Syro-Hittites and Anatolian peoples. 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". For most of Sennacherib's reign, the queen was Tashmetu-sharrat, whose name literally means "Tashmetum is queen". 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. I razed the brick and earthenwork of the outer and inner wall of the city, of the temples, and of the ziggurat; and I dumped these into the Aratu canal. The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. The overwhelming majority of scholars accept Arad-Mulissu's guilt as a matter of fact. Sennacherib (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: Sn-ahh-erba[3] or Sn-a-erba,[4] meaning "Sn has replaced the brothers")[5][6][a] was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father SargonII in 705BC to his own death in 681BC. [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. Sennacherib, Akkadian Sin-akhkheeriba, (died January 681 bce, Nineveh [now in Iraq]), king of Assyria (705/704-681 bce ), son of Sargon II. Sennacherib spent much time and effort to rid the empire of Sargon's imagery. There, most of their soldiers deserted and joined Esarhaddon, who then marched on Nineveh without opposition, becoming the new king of Assyria. Elayi believes Sennacherib's greatest flaw was "his irascible, vindictive and impatient character" and that he, when emotional, could be pushed to make irrational decisions. The army raised by Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur met Esarhaddon's forces in Hanigalbat, a region in the western parts of the empire. Sennacherib reigned from 720 BC to about 683 BC. 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. 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. [111], Throughout the millennia following Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. 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. AbydosDynasty [109], Despite the apparent lack of interest in world domination, Sennacherib assumed the traditional Mesopotamian titles that designated rule of the entire world; "king of the universe" and "king of the four corners of the world". [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. [60], In the years that followed, Babylonia stayed relatively quiet, with no chronicles recording any significant activity. 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. However, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and marched into Judah. Thereafter, he moved to attack the contingent at Kish, winning this second battle as well. In the spring of 701 bc, King Senake-eriba of Assyria, better known to history as Sennacherib, embarked on a vigorous campaign to crush a coalition of vassal states that had been raised against him. His name appears in the 'Old Testament' of the 'Bible.'. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. [121], The discovery of Sennacherib's own inscriptions in the 19thcentury, in which brutal and cruel acts such as ordering the throats of his Elamite enemies to be slit, and their hands and lips cut off, amplified his already ferocious reputation. A tent is behind him; there is a chariot in the foreground and bodyguards stationed around. [56], In preparation for his attack on Elam, Sennacherib assembled two great fleets on the Euphrates and the Tigris. [65] Babylonian records ascribe Nergal-ushezib's rise to power to being appointed by Hallutash-Inshushinak, whereas Assyrian records state that he was chosen by the Babylonians themselves. Sennacherib had at least seven sons and one daughter. 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]. [32], In 701BC, Sennacherib first moved to attack the Syro-Hittite and Phoenician cities in the north. Sennacherib's annals locate that encounter at Eltekeh in Philistia, while his army was on its way from Joppa to Ekron. Sargon continued to live in Nimrud long after he had become king, leaving the city in 710BC to reside at Babylon, and later at his new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, in 706 BC. [2] Nineveh had been the designated seat of the Assyrian crown prince since the reign of Tiglath-Pileser. [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. After the Babylonians and Elamites captured and executed Sennacherib's eldest son Ashur-nadin-shumi, whom Sennacherib had proclaimed as his new vassal king in Babylon, Sennacherib campaigned in both regions, subduing Elam. [72] In 1982, Assyriologist Louis D. Levine wrote that the battle was probably an Assyrian victory, though not a decisive one and that though the southerners had been defeated and fled, the Assyrian advance on Babylon itself was temporarily halted. Turning to the east, Sennacherib overwhelmed Philistine Ekron and suspended the bodies of its rebellious leaders on stakes throughout the city. [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. The population of Babylonia was divided into various ethnic groups with different priorities and ideals. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. Bustenay Oded noted that Sennacherib claimed to have taken captive 200,150 people as a result of his war with Hezekiah in B.C. [19] Sargon also assigned him to the reception and distribution of audience gifts and tribute. They often served as propaganda meant to portray the king as better than all other rulers, both contemporary and ancient. [108], Frahm believes that it is possible that Sennacherib suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder because of the catastrophic fate of his father. [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. For example, the god Ashur is portrayed frequently with a female companion, probably the goddess Mullissu. His appointment as king of Babylon and the new title suggests that Ashur-nadin-shumi was being groomed to succeed Sennacherib as the king of Assyria upon his death. 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. Sennacherib (d.681 bc) King of Assyria (704-681 bc). 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). 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. To take advantage of the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. After Behnam converts to Christianity, Sinharib orders his execution, but is later struck by a dangerous disease that is cured through being baptized by Saint Matthew in Assur. Mushezib-Marduk ensured Humban-menanu's support by bribing him. Heads lie in a heap at their feet. 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. 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. In Mesopotamian mythology, the afterlife suffered by those who died in battle and were not buried was terrible, being doomed to suffer like beggars for eternity. The vast responsibilities entrusted to Sennacherib suggests a certain degree of trust between the king and the crown prince. Sennacherib described all of his campaigns, even the unsuccessful ones, as victories in his own accounts. He destroyed Babylon in 689 bc and, with the peace of his empire thus assured, devoted himself to rebuilding his capital, Nineveh. 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