[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. [92] Esarhaddon's influential mother, Naqi'a, may have played a role in convincing Sennacherib to choose Esarhaddon as heir. Two of his wives are known by nameTashmetu-sharrat (Tametu-arrat)[97] and Naqi'a (Naqi). [44] While a portion of Sennacherib's troops prepared to blockade Jerusalem, Sennacherib himself marched on the important Judean city of Lachish. The Assyrian king Sennacherib trained eagles for warfare. The vast responsibilities entrusted to Sennacherib suggests a certain degree of trust between the king and the crown prince. Nergal-ushezib was frightened by this development and called on the Elamites for aid. [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. [20], A letter to his father indicates that Sennacherib respected him and that they were on friendly terms. [56] The Assyrians searched the northern marshes of Babylonia in an attempt to find and capture Shuzubu, but they failed. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him." [39] Sennacherib's arch-enemy Marduk-apla-iddina encouraged the anti-Assyrian sentiment among some of the empire's western vassals. Fearing for his life, Marduk-apla-iddina had already fled the battlefield. ", "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. [40] As the Assyrians appeared on the horizon, Babylon opened its gates to him, surrendering without a fight. 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. [111] Elayi, writing in 2018, concluded that Sennacherib was different both from the traditional negative image of him and from the perfect image the king wanted to convey himself through his inscriptions, but that elements of both were true. 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. [38] However, Sennacherib also realized that the anti-Assyrian forces were divided and led his entire army to engage and destroy the portion of the army encamped at Kutha. [50] The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes the operation as an Assyrian failure due to a "multitude of field-mice" descending upon the Assyrian camp, devouring crucial material such as quivers and bowstrings, leaving the Assyrians unarmed and causing them to flee. Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions. [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. [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". [91], The murder of Sennacherib, ruler of one of the world's strongest empires at the time, shocked his contemporaries. [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. [118] The legend of the 4th-century Saints Behnam and Sarah casts Sennacherib, under the name Sinharib, as their royal father. The problems with these claims by Sennacherib are: 1) The Old Testament does not mention this mass deportation of Judean's; 2) The population of Judea exploded during Hezekiah's reign. 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. [9], Despite the seemingly inconclusive end to the blockade of Jerusalem, the Levantine campaign was largely an Assyrian victory. [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. [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. [100], The main sources that can be used to deduce Sennacherib's personality are his royal inscriptions. Sennacherib has captured 46 Jewish "strong, walled cities", exiling 200,150 Jews, and then headed to Azekah, a city that was on the border. [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. To take advantage of the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. 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. Every servant involved with the security of the royal palace at Nineveh was executed. [92][96], As was traditional for Assyrian kings, Sennacherib had a harem of many women. With the aid of surviving Chaldean troops, Hallutash-Inshushinak took the city of Sippar, where he also managed to capture Ashur-nadin-shumi and take him back to Elam. 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. 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). 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. 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. Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on the glory attached to military victories. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. . Any logical movement of troops here . [108], Frahm believes that it is possible that Sennacherib suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder because of the catastrophic fate of his father. He is one of the most famous Assyrian kings owing to the part he plays in narratives in the biblical Old Testament (II Kings, II Chronicles, and Isaiah ). [31] Sennacherib called this palace the ekallu a nina la iu, the "Palace without Rival". [35], SargonII's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across the Assyrian Empire. Sennacherib is remembered as a great builder; he enlarged and embellished Nineveh, built and restored various temples and public buildings all over Assyria, and undertook very important hydraulic works. Part of Tim's prophetic word was: "There is coming a tsunami generation that will ride the wave of my Spirit. Babylonia and the Levant welcomed his death as divine punishment, while the Assyrian heartland probably reacted with resentment and horror. Throughout the history of the Assyrian Empire, Babylon had caused problems and had even been destroyed by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I in c. 1225 BCE. The two fleets then combined into one and continued down to the Persian Gulf. 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. 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. They will be called my War Eagles. These inscriptions were not written by the king, but by his royal scribes. [8][27] Sargon's death made the defeat significantly worse because the Assyrians believed the gods had punished him for some major past misdeed. Sennacherib, Akkadian Sin-akhkheeriba, (died January 681 bce, Nineveh [now in Iraq]), king of Assyria (705/704-681 bce ), son of Sargon II. [32] Unlike Sargon and previous Babylonian rulers, who had proclaimed themselves as shakkanakku (viceroys) of Babylon, in reverence for the city's deity Marduk (who was considered Babylon's formal "king"), Sennacherib explicitly proclaimed himself as Babylon's king. Heads lie in a heap at their feet. 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. 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. 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