[37], Portions of the Assyrian army were away in Tabal in 704BC. Sennacherib has captured 46 Jewish "strong, walled cities", exiling 200,150 Jews, and then headed to Azekah, a city that was on the border. [24] Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-PileserIII in 729BC. [61] In 694 BC, Sennacherib invaded Elam, with the explicit goal of the campaign being to root out Marduk-apla-iddina and the other Chaldean refugees. The Assyrian army's diversion from its course could then be interpreted by the Babylonian chroniclers as an Assyrian retreat. This negative view of Sennacherib endured until modern times. [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. These inscriptions were not written by the king, but by his royal scribes. 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. The Assyrians thus invaded Judah. His army still existed when he conducted campaigns in 702 BCE and from 699 BCE until 697 BCE, when he made several campaigns in the mountains east of Assyria, during one of which he received tribute from the Medes. When she became one of Sennacherib's wives, she took the Akkadian name Zaktu (Naqi'a being an Aramaic name). [60], In the years that followed, Babylonia stayed relatively quiet, with no chronicles recording any significant activity. After distributing such financial resources, Sennacherib sent letters to his father to inform him of his decisions. Sennacherib was the second king of the Sargonid Dynasty of Assyria, who ruled from 705 B.C. They typically depict his conquests, sometimes with short pieces of text explaining the scene shown. 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. 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. [108], Frahm believes that it is possible that Sennacherib suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder because of the catastrophic fate of his father. The army raised by Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur met Esarhaddon's forces in Hanigalbat, a region in the western parts of the empire. 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. [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. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, when his sons smote him with the sword. [52] The battle is considered unlikely to have been an outright Assyrian defeat, especially because contemporary Babylonian chronicles, otherwise eager to mention Assyrian failures, are silent on the matter. 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. [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. to 681 B.C. When the Philistine city of Ashkelon succumbed, Sennacherib removed the king, his wife, sons, daughters, brothers, and kin, and exiled them back to Assyria. [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 Iraqi Department of Antiquities under the Assyriologist Tariq Madhloom conducted the most recent expeditions from 1965 to 1968. Sennacherib figures prominently in the Old Testament. [76], During the destruction of the city, Sennacherib destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, which he took to Assyria. 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. [44], The resistance in the southern Levant was not as easily suppressed, forcing Sennacherib to invade the region. 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. So that it might be impossible in future days to recognize the site of that city and its temples, I utterly dissolved it with water and made it like inundated land. The rooms and courtyards of his Neo-Assyrian Southwest Palace at Nineveh were decorated with a series of detailed carved stone panels. Sennacherib, on a magnificent throne, watches as prisoners are brought before him and sometimes executed. Arda-Mulissu's coronation was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib. In most cases the Assyrians followed the principle of primogeniture, wherein the oldest son inherits. [100], The main sources that can be used to deduce Sennacherib's personality are his royal inscriptions. [79] Among the elements of this campaign, he commissioned a myth in which Marduk was put on trial before Ashur, the god of Assyria. [98] Their names were: A small tablet excavated at Nineveh lists the names of mythological Mesopotamian heroes, such as Gilgamesh, and some personal names. Sennacherib described Bel-ibni as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy". Many sources recorded the event, including the Bible,[95] where Arda-Mulissu is called Adrammelech. [36], In angry response to this disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704[7] or 703BC[32] overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. 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. Female members of the court were more prominent and enjoyed greater privileges under Sennacherib's reign than under the reigns of previous Assyrian kings. Arda-Mulissu held the position of the heir apparent for several years until 684BC when Sennacherib suddenly replaced him with his younger brother Esarhaddon. Nergal-ushezib was frightened by this development and called on the Elamites for aid. led a large army against Egypt . [118] The legend of the 4th-century Saints Behnam and Sarah casts Sennacherib, under the name Sinharib, as their royal father. Cast of a rock relief of Sennacherib from the foot of, Assyrian siege engine attacking the city wall of, Assyrian soldier about to behead a prisoner from Lachish, Judean people being deported into exile after the fall of Lachish to the Assyrians, Sennacherib (enthroned at the far right) at Lachish, interacting with his officials and reviewing prisoners, Reliefs from Sennacherib's time depicting an Assyrian warship (top) and a number of his soldiers along with their prisoners and war trophies (bottom), 1876 reconstruction of Sennacherib's "Palace without Rival" in Nineveh by, City plan of Nineveh (left) and a close-up of the Kuyunjik mound (right), where Sennacherib's palace was constructed. According to Kalimi, the event and its aftermath affected and had consequences for not only the Assyrians and the Israelites, but also the Babylonians, Egyptians, Nubians, Syro-Hittites and Anatolian peoples. [30] His reaction to his father's fate was to distance himself from Sargon. 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". [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. Shortly thereafter, the severe weather forced Sennacherib to retreat and return home. Wishing to consolidate his position as king, Nergal-ushezib took advantage of the situation and captured and plundered the city of Nippur. [56] In the meantime, Sennacherib campaigned elsewhere. Many of Sennacherib's reliefs are exhibited today at the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the British Museum, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris. [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. [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. When he returned to Assyria his own sons murdered him. Faced with a massive Assyrian army nearby, many of the Levantine rulers, including Budu-ilu of Ammon, Kamusu-nadbi of Moab, Mitinti of Ashdod and Malik-rammu of Edom, quickly submitted to Sennacherib to avoid retribution. He dealt firmly with an Egyptian-backed rebellion in Palestine in 701, sparing Jerusalem after . [48] It is possible that the story of the mice infestation is an allusion to some kind of disease striking the Assyrian camp, possibly the septicemic plague. Sennacherib ignored Arda-Mulissu's repeated appeals to be reinstated as heir, and in 681BC, Arda-Mulissu and his brother Nabu-shar-usur murdered Sennacherib,[b] hoping to seize power for themselves. Having two names could point to Naqi'a being born outside Assyria properpossibly in Babylonia or in the Levantbut there is no substantial evidence for any theory regarding her origin.[93]. [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. The oldest traces of human settlement at its location are from the 7th millenniumBC, and from the 4thmillennium BC and onward it formed an important administrative center in the north. He destroyed Babylon in 689 bc and, with the peace of his empire thus assured, devoted himself to rebuilding his capital, Nineveh. 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. To take advantage of the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. Though Babylonia to the south had also once been a large kingdom, it was typically weaker than its northern neighbor during this period, due to internal divisions and the lack of a well-organized army. 200,150 people, great and . 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. [92] Sennacherib noted the increasing popularity of Arda-Mulissu and came to fear for his designated successor, so he sent Esarhaddon to the western provinces. 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". [13], As crown prince, Sennacherib exercised royal power with his father, or alone as a substitute while Sargon was away campaigning. After Behnam converts to Christianity, Sinharib orders his execution, but is later struck by a dangerous disease that is cured through being baptized by Saint Matthew in Assur. [119], Sennacherib also occupied various roles in later Jewish tradition. 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. [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. 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. 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. [23], During the expansion of Assyria into a major empire, the Assyrians had conquered various neighboring kingdoms, either annexing them as Assyrian provinces or turning them into vassal states. [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. As regent, Sennacherib's primary duty was to maintain relations with Assyrian governors and generals and oversee the empire's vast military intelligence network. In addition to the older brothers who died before his birth, Sennacherib had a number of younger brothers, some of whom are mentioned as being alive as late as 670BC, then in the service of Sennacherib's son and successor Esarhaddon. 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