Gypsum wall panel relief; carved in low relief; Sennacherib watches the capture of Lachish. [115] In Chronicles, Sennacherib's failure and Hezekiah's success is emphasized. [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. For example, the god Ashur is portrayed frequently with a female companion, probably the goddess Mullissu. to 681 B.C. [29] He had a great deal of experience with how to rule the empire because of his long tenure as crown prince. tian army engaged the Assyrian army. 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). [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. [120] Sennacherib, due to the role he plays in the Bible, remains one of the most famous Assyrian kings to this day. Unlike many preceding and later Assyrian kings (including his father), Sennacherib did not portray himself as a conqueror or express much desire to conquer the world. The outcome of the Battle of Halule is unclear since the records of both sides claim a great victory. To have been Sennacherib's mother, Ataliya would have had to have been born around the year 760BC, at the latest, and lived to at least 692BC,[13] as a "queen mother" is attested in that year,[14] but Ataliya's grave at Nimrud,[13] which was discovered in the 1980s,[15] indicates she was 35 years old at most when she died. [74] Although the Babylonians were successful initially, that was short-lived, and in the same year, the siege of Babylon was already well underway. 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." [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. [13], As crown prince, Sennacherib exercised royal power with his father, or alone as a substitute while Sargon was away campaigning. These are significant artifacts as they record Sennacherib's campaign into Judah in 701 BC. If the battle was a southern victory, the setback faced by the Assyrians would have to have been minor as Babylon was under siege in the late summer of 690 BC (and had apparently been under siege for some time at that point). However, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and marched into Judah. [30], Frahm and the Assyriologist Julian E. Reade have pondered the idea that Sennacherib could be classified as a feminist. [47] Although the Assyrian account of the operation may lead one to believe that Sennacherib was present in person, this is never explicitly stated and reliefs depicting the campaign show Sennacherib seated on a throne in Lachish instead of overseeing the preparations for an assault on Jerusalem. [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. He thought he could take them for himself. There, he subdued the Yasubigallians, a people from east of the Tigris river, and the Kassites, a people who had ruled Babylonia centuries before. Assur, the great god, has intrusted to me an unrivaled kingship, and has made powerful my weapons above (all) those who dwell in palaces. [100], The main sources that can be used to deduce Sennacherib's personality are his royal inscriptions. 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. [111], Throughout the millennia following Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. [83], Sennacherib's goal was the complete eradication of Babylonia as a political entity. [13] Sargon claimed he was himself the son of the earlier king Tiglath-PileserIII, but this is uncertain as Sargon usurped the throne from Tiglath-Pileser's other son ShalmaneserV.[16], Sennacherib was probably born c. 745BC in Nimrud. [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. 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. ", "The Trials of Esarhaddon: The Conspiracy of 670 BC", "Studies in Assyrian Geography: Part I: Sennacherib and the Waters of Nineveh", Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia and Persia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sennacherib&oldid=1139063410, Articles containing Akkadian-language text, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 February 2023, at 04:45. Once he rejoined his southern army, the war with Babylonia was already won. Sennacherib, on a magnificent throne, watches as prisoners are brought before him and sometimes executed. 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. 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. . 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. 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. 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. 2 Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come . Sennacherib oversaw domestic affairs and often informed Sargon of the progress being made on building projects throughout the empire. 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. 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 was the son and successor of the Neo-Assyrian king SargonII, who had reigned as king of Assyria from 722 to 705BC and as king of Babylon from 710 to 705BC. [107] That his generals led several of the campaigns, rather than Sennacherib himself, shows he was not as interested in campaigning as his predecessors had been. [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. 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). Sennacherib reigned from 720 BC to about 683 BC. Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, when his sons smote him with the sword. [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. They probably received a scribal education, learning arithmetic and how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian. [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". [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. [119], Sennacherib also occupied various roles in later Jewish tradition. Sennacherib then hunted for Marduk-apla-iddina, a hunt so intense the Chaldean escaped on boats with his people across the Persian Gulf, taking refuge in the Elamite city of Nagitu. 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. [57], Ashur-nadin-shumi was also titled mru rt, a title that could be interpreted either as the "pre-eminent son" or the "firstborn son". Sin-a-eriba, "Sin has increased (or replaced) the (lost) brothers."King of Assyria and Babylonia, 705-681 b.c.. 1. 701. Shortly thereafter, the severe weather forced Sennacherib to retreat and return home. The son of Sargon II, it's believed Sennacherib became king around 705 when his father was killed in battle. 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. Sennacherib prism. Eckhart Frahm considers this idea unlikely on account of the impressive royal gardens in Babylon itself. Though Babylon was respected as the well-spring of civilization, it was expected to remain passive in political matters, something that Assyria's "Babylonian bride" repeatedly refused to be. The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. [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. 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. 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. [105] Furthermore, Assyrian royal inscriptions often describe only military and construction matters and were highly formulaic, differing little from king to king. His reliefs show larger scenes, some almost from a bird's-eye point of view. 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. Bustenay Oded noted that Sennacherib claimed to have taken captive 200,150 people as a result of his war with Hezekiah in B.C. [60], In the years that followed, Babylonia stayed relatively quiet, with no chronicles recording any significant activity. [32], After the Babylonian war, Sennacherib's second campaign was in the Zagros Mountains. Ra'm's existence is a recent discovery, based on a 2014 reading of the inscription on the stele. After distributing such financial resources, Sennacherib sent letters to his father to inform him of his decisions. 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. 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. [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. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. An inscription on a stone lion in the quarter associated with Sennacherib's queen, Tashmetu-sharrat, contains hopes that the king and queen would both live healthily and long within the new palace. [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. [] By the order of Ashur, father of the gods, and heavenly queen Ishtar may we both live long in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy wellbeing to the full! The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. [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. 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. Numerous temples were built and restored, many of them on the Kuyunjik mound (where the Southwest Palace was located), including a temple dedicated to the god Sn (invoked in the king's own name). [24] Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-PileserIII in 729BC. [36], In angry response to this disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704[7] or 703BC[32] overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. The relief bears two cuneiform inscription. The two fleets then combined into one and continued down to the Persian Gulf. [98] Their names were: A small tablet excavated at Nineveh lists the names of mythological Mesopotamian heroes, such as Gilgamesh, and some personal names. 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