The Iraqi Department of Antiquities under the Assyriologist Tariq Madhloom conducted the most recent expeditions from 1965 to 1968. 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. Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. 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 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. 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. 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. He was forced to pay a heavier tribute than previously, probably along with a heavy penalty and the tribute that he had failed to send to Nineveh from 705 to 701BC. [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. 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. He may have been compensating for the way he treated his father's memory. Caught in a dreadful quandary, the priest [Sethos, who was also Pharaoh] entered the In most cases the Assyrians followed the principle of primogeniture, wherein the oldest son inherits. [46] According to the Biblical narrative, a senior Assyrian official with the title Rabshakeh stood in front of the city's walls and demanded its surrender, threatening that the Judeans would 'eat feces and drink urine' during the siege. 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. 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. Humban-menanu and his commander, Humban-undasha, led the Babylonian and Elamite forces. 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. [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 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". [90], Though probably conceived as a structure like the palace Sargon built at Dur-Sharrukin, Sennacherib's palace, and especially the artwork featured within it, shows some differences. Sennacherib described Bel-ibni as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy". 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. [70], Sennacherib met his enemies in battle near the city of Halule. [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. [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 northern palace depicted on the map was first built during the reign of Sennacherib's grandson. When the Philistine city of Ashkelon succumbed, Sennacherib removed the king, his wife, sons, daughters, brothers, and kin, and exiled them back to Assyria. [2], Sennacherib had several brothers and at least one sister. 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. [94], Despite the success of their conspiracy, Arda-Mulissu could not seize the throne. He later replaced him with a younger son, Esarhaddon, in 684BC, for unknown reasons. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480ft) long and 220 metres (720ft) wide. For unknown reasons, Sargon never took him on his military campaigns. Sennacherib immediately abandoned Sargon's great new capital city, Dur-Sharrukin, and moved the capital to Nineveh instead. [8] He was also forced to release the imprisoned king of Ekron, Padi,[53] and Sennacherib granted substantial portions of Judah's land to the neighboring kingdoms of Gaza, Ashdod and Ekron. There, he subdued the Yasubigallians, a people from east of the Tigris river, and the Kassites, a people who had ruled Babylonia centuries before. [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. Mushezib-Marduk ensured Humban-menanu's support by bribing him. 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. This text is fragmentary, but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense. Isaiah 40:31 New King James Version (NKJV) 31 But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings. The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. [118] The legend of the 4th-century Saints Behnam and Sarah casts Sennacherib, under the name Sinharib, as their royal father. 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. Ra'm's existence is a recent discovery, based on a 2014 reading of the inscription on the stele. [8] In the northern Levant, former Assyrian vassal cities rallied around Luli, the king of Tyre and Sidon. 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. 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 Assyrians had not marched on Babylon immediately, however, as military actions are recorded elsewhere. [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. Sennacherib had at least seven sons and one daughter. 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. The reasons for this are debated, but it is known that a short time later, Judah was once again paying tribute to the Assyrian Empire. 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. [97], Whether Naqi'a ever held the title of queen is unclear. [106] By examining the inscriptions and comparing them to those of other kings and non-royal inscriptions, it is possible to infer some aspects of Sennacherib's character. [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. Female members of the court were more prominent and enjoyed greater privileges under Sennacherib's reign than under the reigns of previous Assyrian kings. In the biblical account, however, Sennacherib was already at Libnah in Judah when he received the news that the Egyptians were coming (2 Kgs 19:8-9). Nineveh was the capital of the powerful ancient Assyrian empire, located in modern-day northern Iraq. 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. The relief bears two cuneiform inscription. At the head of the Persian Gulf, a storm flooded the Assyrian camp and the Assyrian soldiers had to take refuge on their ships. They typically depict his conquests, sometimes with short pieces of text explaining the scene shown. Arda-Mulissu held the position of the heir apparent for several years until 684BC when Sennacherib suddenly replaced him with his younger brother Esarhaddon. These inscriptions were not written by the king, but by his royal scribes. 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 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. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India. (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). [92] Esarhaddon's influential mother, Naqi'a, may have played a role in convincing Sennacherib to choose Esarhaddon as heir. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. [34] The Assyrian army, led by Sennacherib's chief commander, launched an unsuccessful attack on the coalition forces near the city of Kish, bolstering the legitimacy of the coalition. Shortly after taking the throne, Esarhaddon executed all of the conspirators and political enemies within his reach, including his brothers' families. 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. . [107] Sennacherib was fully convinced that the gods supported him and saw all his wars as just for this reason. 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. 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. He is primarily remembered for his military campaigns in Babylon and Jerusalem. Sennacherib prism. They will be called my War Eagles. [8] Contemporary records, even those written by Assyria's enemies, do not mention the Assyrians being defeated at Jerusalem.[9]. Dutch shares Tim Sheets research and word, on WAR EAGLE. [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. [77] This caused consternation in Assyria itself, where Babylon and its gods were held in high esteem. 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. Turning to the east, Sennacherib overwhelmed Philistine Ekron and suspended the bodies of its rebellious leaders on stakes throughout the city. tian army engaged the Assyrian army. 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. He also claimed that he besieged King Hezekiah of the Judah in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage." [8] [8][27] Sargon's death made the defeat significantly worse because the Assyrians believed the gods had punished him for some major past misdeed. [93] Despite his dismissal, Arda-Mulissu remained a popular figure, and some vassals secretly supported him as the heir to the throne. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur survived this purge, escaping as exiles to the northern kingdom of Urartu. Wishing to consolidate his position as king, Nergal-ushezib took advantage of the situation and captured and plundered the city of Nippur. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions. [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". [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. The outcome of the Battle of Halule is unclear since the records of both sides claim a great victory. . 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. [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. Assur, the great god, has intrusted to me an unrivaled kingship, and has made powerful my weapons above (all) those who dwell in palaces. [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. [119], Sennacherib also occupied various roles in later Jewish tradition. [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. [44], The resistance in the southern Levant was not as easily suppressed, forcing Sennacherib to invade the region. 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. Arda-Mulissu's coronation was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. Nergal-ushezib was frightened by this development and called on the Elamites for aid. [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. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him." Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. [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. Other types of non-royal inscriptions from Sennacherib's reign, such as administrative documents, economic documents and chronicles, are more numerous. 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. Sennacherib's annals locate that encounter at Eltekeh in Philistia, while his army was on its way from Joppa to Ekron. Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, two scribes, standing side by side at right, record the number of the enemy slain in a campaign in southern Mesopotamia. Sennacherib described all of his campaigns, even the unsuccessful ones, as victories in his own accounts. [44] While a portion of Sennacherib's troops prepared to blockade Jerusalem, Sennacherib himself marched on the important Judean city of Lachish. [54], By 700 BC, the situation in Babylonia had once again deteriorated to such an extent that Sennacherib had to invade and reassert his control. Raising the level of the courtyard made images that Sargon had created at the temple in Assur invisible. [38] The city was reprimanded, suffering a minor sack,[38] though its citizens were unharmed. Instead, his inscriptions often portrayed the most important parts of his reign as his large-scale building projects. The identity of Sennacherib's mother is uncertain. Sennacherib, on a magnificent throne, watches as prisoners are brought before him and sometimes executed.