This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi Writing in 1978, Reade assessed Sennacherib as a king who stands out among Assyrian rulers as open-minded and far-sighted and that he was a man "who not only coped effectively with ordinary crises but even turned them to advantage as he created, or attempted to create, a stable imperial structure immune from traditional problems". Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. Ultimately, Sennacherib decided to destroy Babylon. [22] The Arameans lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. 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. Through some unknown means, Sennacherib had managed to slip by the Babylonian and Elamite forces undetected some months prior and was not present at the final battle, instead probably being on his way from Assyria with additional troops. 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. They typically depict his conquests, sometimes with short pieces of text explaining the scene shown. [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. Historically, the most popular view has been that Sennacherib was the son of Sargon's wife Ataliya, although this is now considered unlikely. Tashmetu-sharrat is likely to have been the mother of at least some of them. This was not necessarily because of personal pride; his subjects would have viewed a failed campaign as a sign that the gods no longer favored his rule. The Assyrians defeated the Egyptian expedition in a battle near the city of Eltekeh. 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. They probably received a scribal education, learning arithmetic and how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian. The Assyriologist Josette Elayi considers it more plausible Sennacherib's mother was another of Sargon's wives, Ra'm; a stele from Assur (once the capital of Assyria), discovered in 1913, specifically refers to her as the "mother of Sennacherib". [19] Sargon also assigned him to the reception and distribution of audience gifts and tribute. SENNACHERIB s nk' r b (, Akkad. 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". [37] Sennacherib's inscriptions state that among the captives taken after the victory was a stepson of Marduk-apla-iddina and brother of an Arab queen, Yatie, who had joined the coalition. (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). In Midrash, examinations of the Old Testament and later stories, the events of 701BC are often explored in detail; many times featuring massive armies deployed by Sennacherib and pointing out how he repeatedly consulted astrologers on his campaign, delaying his actions. [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. [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. Sennacherib. One of Sennacherib's first actions as king was to rebuild a temple dedicated to the god Nergal, associated with death, disaster and war, at the city of Tarbisu. Shortly after taking the throne, Esarhaddon executed all of the conspirators and political enemies within his reach, including his brothers' families. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. 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. 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. He later replaced him with a younger son, Esarhaddon, in 684BC, for unknown reasons. Sennacherib transferred the capital of Assyria to Nineveh, where he had spent most of his time as crown prince. 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. Sennacherib was the king of Assyria from 704-681 BC and was famous for his building projects. 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. The roof of the palace was constructed with cypress and cedar recovered from the mountains in the west, and the palace was illuminated through multiple windows and decorated with silver and bronze pegs on the inside and glazed bricks on the outside. The rooms and courtyards of his Neo-Assyrian Southwest Palace at Nineveh were decorated with a series of detailed carved stone panels. He also claimed that he besieged King Hezekiah of the Judah in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage." [8] [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. 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). Some months later, the Assyrians attacked and captured the southern city of Uruk. There is a tent behind him, his chariot is in the foreground, and his bodyguard are stationed around. [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. When she became one of Sennacherib's wives, she took the Akkadian name Zaktu (Naqi'a being an Aramaic name). 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. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. 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]. Ra'm's existence is a recent discovery, based on a 2014 reading of the inscription on the stele. [8] Sargon had ruled Babylonia since 710BC, when he defeated the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddinaII, who had taken control of the south in the aftermath of the death of Sargon's predecessor ShalmaneserV in 722BC. The latter fleet was then used to transport the Assyrian army to the city of Opis, where the ships were then pulled ashore and transported overland to a canal that linked to the Euphrates. [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. 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. 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. Raising the level of the courtyard made images that Sargon had created at the temple in Assur invisible. [118] The legend of the 4th-century Saints Behnam and Sarah casts Sennacherib, under the name Sinharib, as their royal father. In his annals, Sennacherib claimed that he destroyed 46 fortified cities and towns of Judah and took 200,150 captives, although the number of captives is seen today widely as exaggeration. Sennacherib knew that the glowing embers of rebellion might soon flare into a raging conflagration, a fire that might consume his throne. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. [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". . Turning to the east, Sennacherib overwhelmed Philistine Ekron and suspended the bodies of its rebellious leaders on stakes throughout the city. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur survived this purge, escaping as exiles to the northern kingdom of Urartu. [28] Sennacherib was about 35 years old when he ascended to the Assyrian throne in August of 705BC. [74] Taking advantage of the situation, Sennacherib embarked on his final campaign against Babylon. [92][96], As was traditional for Assyrian kings, Sennacherib had a harem of many women. [39] Because his previous policy of reigning as king of both Assyria and Babylonia had evidently failed, Sennacherib attempted another method, appointing a native Babylonian who had grown up at the Assyrian court, Bel-ibni, as his vassal king of the south. [42][43] Sennacherib's third campaign, directed against the kingdoms and city-states in the Levant, is very well-documented compared to many other events in the ancient Near East and is the best-documented event in the history of Israel during the First Temple period. [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. Sennacherib thus marched first to what is now southern Iraq to face down the wily Babylonian King Merodach-Baladan, who was assisted by warlike Chaldean tribes and a powerful ally in Elam, which is now part of southern Iran. [78] Sennacherib attempted justifying his actions to his own countrymen through a campaign of religious propaganda. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480ft) long and 220 metres (720ft) wide. Just seven days after taking Uruk, the Assyrians and Babylonians met in battle at Nippur, where the Assyrians won a decisive victory; routing the Elamite-Babylonian army and capturing Nergal-ushezib, finally free from their entrapped position in the south. [44] While a portion of Sennacherib's troops prepared to blockade Jerusalem, Sennacherib himself marched on the important Judean city of Lachish. 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. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. Mushezib-Marduk ensured Humban-menanu's support by bribing him. Brinkman believed that Sennacherib's change in attitude came from a will to avenge his son and tiring of a city well within the borders of his empire repeatedly rebelling against his rule. The War. 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." [26], In 705BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led the Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurd of Tabal in central Anatolia. [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. 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 . This text is fragmentary, but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense. 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. 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." Today, many such inscriptions are known, most of them housed in the collections of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London, though many are located throughout the world in other institutions and private collections. In the Aggadah [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. Shortly thereafter, the severe weather forced Sennacherib to retreat and return home. 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