[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 (r. 705-681 BCE) was the second king of the Sargonid Dynasty of Assyria (founded by his father Sargon II, r. 722-705 BCE). Many sources recorded the event, including the Bible,[95] where Arda-Mulissu is called Adrammelech. The reasons for his policy towards his female relatives are unknown. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous Assyrian kings for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. The son of Sargon II, it's believed Sennacherib became king around 705 when his father was killed in battle. [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. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. 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. [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. He thought he could take them for himself. 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. [84] Though some northern Babylonian territories became Assyrian provinces, the Assyrians made no effort to rebuild Babylon itself, and southern chronicles from the time refer to the era as the "kingless" period when there was no king in the land. Any logical movement of troops here . 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. 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. Humban-menanu and his commander, Humban-undasha, led the Babylonian and Elamite forces. He later replaced him with a younger son, Esarhaddon, in 684BC, for unknown reasons. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal is unknown, but it is clear from contemporary inscriptions that he was very disappointed. 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". 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. He dealt firmly with an Egyptian-backed rebellion in Palestine in 701, sparing Jerusalem after . 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". [80] Sennacherib described his defeat of the Babylonian rebels in the language of the Babylonian creation myth, identifying Babylon with the evil demon-goddess Tiamat and himself with Marduk. Sennacherib's campaign in Judah was a military conflict in 701 BC between Kingdom of Judah and the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the conflict is part of the greater conflict of Sennacherib's campaigns. 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. 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. Although Sennacherib was successful in conquering Lachish and many other Judahite cities and towns, he did not conquer Jerusalem. [13], As crown prince, Sennacherib exercised royal power with his father, or alone as a substitute while Sargon was away campaigning. [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. 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. They then besieged and took numerous cities. After the death of Sargon II, Sennacherib's father, a number of states in the Levant renounced their allegiance to Assyria. He made Nineveh his capital, building a new palace, extending and beautifying the city, and erecting inner and outer city walls that still stand. 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. He expanded the size of the city and constructed great city walls, numerous temples and a royal garden. 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. [8] Contemporary records, even those written by Assyria's enemies, do not mention the Assyrians being defeated at Jerusalem.[9]. Instead, his inscriptions often portrayed the most important parts of his reign as his large-scale building projects. 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 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. [89] Sennacherib constructed beautiful gardens at his new palace, importing various plants and herbs from throughout his empire and beyond. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . In any event, Sennacherib never took action against Sargon or attempted to usurp the throne despite being more than old enough to become king himself. AbydosDynasty 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." The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. Some large objects with Sennacherib's inscriptions remain at Nineveh, where some have even been reburied. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur survived this purge, escaping as exiles to the northern kingdom of Urartu. Sennacherib. Gypsum wall panel relief; carved in low relief; Sennacherib watches the capture of Lachish. 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. Sennacherib transferred the capital of Assyria to Nineveh, where he had spent most of his time as crown prince. Sennacherib reigned from 720 BC to about 683 BC. 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". Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions. [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. (Non-dynastic usurpers17351701 BCE) When she became one of Sennacherib's wives, she took the Akkadian name Zaktu (Naqi'a being an Aramaic name). [24] Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-PileserIII in 729BC. Tashmetu-sharrat is likely to have been the mother of at least some of them. [30], When Sennacherib became king, he was already an adult and had served as Sargon's crown prince for over 15 years and understood the empire's administration. 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. 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. During Sargon's longer absences from the Assyrian heartland, Sennacherib's residence would have served as the center of government in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with the crown prince taking on significant administrative and political responsibilities. After distributing such financial resources, Sennacherib sent letters to his father to inform him of his decisions. In the Aggadah If Sargon was the son of Tiglath-Pileser and not a non-dynastic usurper, Sennacherib would have grown up in the royal palace at Nimrud and spent most of his youth there. [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. [22] The Arameans lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. [4] In 705BC, Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had stopped paying his annual tribute to the Assyrians and began pursuing a markedly aggressive foreign policy, probably inspired by the recent wave of anti-Assyrian rebellions across the empire. [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. 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. They will be called my War Eagles. Heads lie in a heap at their feet. Arda-Mulissu's coronation was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib. The Assyrian army's diversion from its course could then be interpreted by the Babylonian chroniclers as an Assyrian retreat. Shortly thereafter, the severe weather forced Sennacherib to retreat and return home. [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. 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. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. [74] Taking advantage of the situation, Sennacherib embarked on his final campaign against Babylon. Ultimately, Sennacherib decided to destroy Babylon. Historically, the most popular view has been that Sennacherib was the son of Sargon's wife Ataliya, although this is now considered unlikely. [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. 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. 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. 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. Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689 BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh . After he besieged Jerusalem, Sennacherib was able to give the surrounding towns to Assyrian vassal rulers in Ekron, Gaza and Ashdod. These inscriptions were not written by the king, but by his royal scribes. 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. [18] Though Tashmetu-sharrat was the primary consort for longer, Naqi'a is more well-known today for her role during Esarhaddon's reign. Sennacherib was the king of Assyria from 704-681 BC and was famous for his building projects. Sennacherib was the second king of the Sargonid Dynasty of Assyria, who ruled from 705 B.C. 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. 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. [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. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. 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". The king's face has been deliberately damaged in antiquity. However, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and marched into Judah. The Assyrians thus invaded Judah. Sennacherib described Bel-ibni as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy". [36], In angry response to this disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704[7] or 703BC[32] overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. Though such stone statues have been excavated at Nineveh, similar colossal statues mentioned in the inscriptions as being made of precious metals remain missing. Younger son, Esarhaddon, in 684BC, for unknown reasons a puppy... 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