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. When the Philistine city of Ashkelon succumbed, Sennacherib removed the king, his wife, sons, daughters, brothers, and kin, and exiled them back to Assyria. Rulers with names in italics are considered fictional. [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. 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. [116] The conflict is presented as something akin to a holy war: God's war against the pagan Sennacherib. [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. [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. [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. 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. 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. The Assyrians thus invaded Judah. The reasons for his policy towards his female relatives are unknown. In the Aggadah Puzur-Sin Ashur-dugul Ashur-apla-idi Nasir-Sin Sin-namir Ipqi-Ishtar Adad-salulu Adasi Sennacherib 's campaign in the Levant in 701 BCE was a military campaign undertaken by the Neo-Assyrian Empire to bring the region back under control following a rebellion against Assyrian rule in 705 BCE. 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. [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". [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. Sennacherib figures prominently in the Old Testament. [32], In 701BC, Sennacherib first moved to attack the Syro-Hittite and Phoenician cities in the north. [] 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! 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. 32 Hezekiah had been completely faithful to the Lord. [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. Sennacherib reigned from 720 BC to about 683 BC. The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. [49] Gypsum wall panel relief; carved in low relief; Sennacherib watches the capture of Lachish. 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. [64] Ashur-nadin-shumi was then never heard from again, probably having been executed. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him." Sennacherib oversaw domestic affairs and often informed Sargon of the progress being made on building projects throughout the empire. Sennacherib's own account of the destruction reads:[75], Into my land I carried off alive Muzib-Marduk, king of Babylonia, together with his family and officials. For further details see *Mesopotamia. The War. 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). Mirroring the increased standing of the women of the royal family, during Sennacherib's time female deities were depicted more frequently. Sennacherib described Bel-ibni as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy". He may have been compensating for the way he treated his father's memory. [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. He was assassinated by one of his own sons in a temple of 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. [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. They probably received a scribal education, learning arithmetic and how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian. The relief bears two cuneiform inscription. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. 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. His reliefs show larger scenes, some almost from a bird's-eye point of view. 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). [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. List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources, Military history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, "Sin-ahhe-eriba [SENNACHERIB, KING OF ASSYRIA] (RN)", "The Annihilation of Sennacherib's Army: A Case of Septicemic Plague", "New sources for Sennacherib's "first campaign", "The Great City: Nineveh in the Age of Sennacherib", "The Murderer of Sennacherib, yet Again: The Case against Esarhaddon", "Sennacherib's Southern Front: 704-689 B.C. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. [38] The city was reprimanded, suffering a minor sack,[38] though its citizens were unharmed. 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). Nergal-ushezib was frightened by this development and called on the Elamites for aid. Eckhart Frahm considers this idea unlikely on account of the impressive royal gardens in Babylon itself. They then besieged and took numerous cities. Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. 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". A tent is behind him; there is a chariot in the foreground and bodyguards stationed around. . 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. [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. [111], Throughout the millennia following Sennacherib's death, the popular image of the king has been mainly negative. [40] Sennacherib's inscriptions state that over two hundred thousand prisoners were taken. 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. Though assembling all these forces took time, Sennacherib reacted slowly to these developments, which allowed Marduk-apla-iddina to station large contingents at the cities of Kutha and Kish. [85] When Sennacherib made the city his new capital it experienced one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history, being completely transformed from the somewhat neglected state it had been in before his reign. 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". In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are portrayed in discussion, appearing almost as equals. The rebel Shuzubu, hunted by Sennacherib in his 700 BC invasion of the south, had resurfaced under the name Mushezib-Marduk and, seemingly without foreign support, acceded to the throne of Babylon. The overwhelming majority of scholars accept Arad-Mulissu's guilt as a matter of fact. According to Brinkman, Sennacherib might have lost the affection he once had for Babylon's gods because they had inspired their people to attack him. [65][66] In Ashur-nadin-shumi's place, a native Babylonian, Nergal-ushezib, became Babylon's king. 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. . 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