by Georges Roux
At the beginning of 710 B.C. Sargon was everywhere victorious. The whole of Syria-Palestine (with the notable exception of Judah) and most of the Zagros range were firmly in Assyrian hands; the Medes were regarded as vassals; Urartu was dressing its wounds; the Egyptians were friendly, the Elamites and Phrygians hostile but peaceful. Yet Babylon under Merodach-Baladan remained as a thorn in the side of Assyria, and in that same year Sargon attacked it for the second time in his reign. The Chaldaean had enlisted the help of all the tribes dwelling in the ancient country of Sumer, and for two years he offered strong resistance to the Assyrian Army. Finally, encircled in Dûr-Iakîn (Tell Lahm) and wounded in the hand, he ‘slipped in through the gate of his city like mice through holes’ and took refuge in Elam. Sargon entered Babylon and, like Tiglathpileser III, ‘took the hand of Bêl. The repercussions of his victory were enormous: Midas the Phrygian offered him his friendship; Upêri, King of Dilmun (Bahrain), ‘heard of the might of Assur and sent him gifts’. Seven kings of Iatnana (Cyprus), ‘whose distant abodes are situated a seven days’ journey in the sea of the setting sun’, sent presents and swore allegiance to the mighty monarch whose stele has actually been found at Larnaka. The repeated efforts made by its enemies to undermine the Assyrian empire had been of no avail; at the end of the reign it was larger and apparently stronger than ever.
As a war-chief Sargon liked to live in Kalhu (Nimrud), the military capital of the empire, where he occupied, restored and modified Ashurnasirpal's palace. But moved by incommensurable pride, he soon decided to have his own palace in his own city. In 717 B.C. were laid the foundations of ‘Sargon's fortress’, Dûr-Sharrukîn, a hitherto virgin site twenty-four kilometres to the north-east of Nineveh, near the modern village of Khorsabad.33 The town was square in plan, each side measuring more than one and a half kilometres, and its wall was pierced by seven fortified gates. In its northern part an inner wall enclosed the citadel, which contained the royal palace, a temple dedicated to Nabû and the sumptuous houses of high-ranking officials, such as Sin-ah-usur, the vizier and king's brother. The palace itself stood on a sixteen-metre-high platform overriding the city wall and comprised more than two hundred rooms and thirty courtyards. Part of it, erroneously called ‘harem’ by the early excavators, was later found to be made of six sanctuaries, and near by rose a ziqqurat of which the seven storeys were painted with different colours and connected by a spiral ramp. A beautiful viaduct of stone linked the palace with the temple of Nabû, for in Assyria the religious and public functions of the king were closely interwoven. As expected, the royal abode was lavishly decorated. Its gates and main doors – as, indeed, the gates of the town and of the citadel – were guarded by colossal bull-men; blue glazed bricks showing divine symbols were used in the sanctuaries, and in most rooms the walls were adorned with frescoes and lined with sculptured and inscribed orthostats, a mile and a half long. Thousands of prisoners of war and hundreds of artists and craftsmen must have worked at Dûr-Sharrukin, since the whole city was built in ten years. In one of his so-called ‘Display Inscriptions’ Sargon says:
The citadel of Dûr-Sharrukîn (Khorsabad). A, ziqqurat; B, Sargon's palace; C, C-E, residences of high officials; F, Nabû's temple; G, outer wall of the town; H, lower town. From G. Loud and Ch. B. Altman, Khorsabad, II, 1938.
‘For me, Sargon, who dwells in this palace, may he (Ashur) decree as my destiny long life, health of body, joy of heart, brightness of soul.’34
But the god hearkened not to his prayer. One year after Dûr-Sharrukin was officially inaugurated Sargon ‘went against Tabal and was killed in the war’ (705 B.C.). His successors preferred Nineveh to the Mesopotamian Brazilia, but Khorsabad remained inhabited by governors and their retinue: until the final collapse of Assyria.35
CHAPTER 20
THE HOUSE OF SARGON
Sargon's descendants – the Sargonids, as they are sometimes called – governed Assyria in unbroken succession for almost a century (704 – 609 B.C.), bringing the Assyrian empire to its farthest limits and the Assyrian civilization to its zenith. Yet the wars of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, which through the inflated language of the royal inscriptions look like glorious wars of conquest, were, at their best, nothing but successful counter-attacks. At the end of Sargon's reign the Assyrians ruled, directly or indirectly, over the entire Fertile Crescent and over parts of Iran and Asia Minor. They had a window on the Mediterranean and a window on the Gulf; they controlled the entire course of the Tigris and the Euphrates as well as the great trade routes crossing the Syrian desert, the Taurus and the Zagros. Supplied with all kinds of goods and commodities by their subjects, vassals and allies, they lived in prosperity and could have lived in peace, had it not been for the increasingly frequent revolts provoked by their oppressive policy and encouraged – at least in Palestine and Babylonia – by Egypt and Elam. The conquest of Egypt by Esarhaddon and the destruction of Elam at the hands of Ashurbanipal were therefore neither long-range razzias in the traditional style nor the fruits of a planned strategy: they were defensive measures taken by these monarchs to put an end to an unbearable situation; they represent the final outcome of long and bitter conflicts more imposed upon Assyria by her enemies than desired by her. In this endless struggle the Assyrians used up their strength, ruined their own possessions and failed to pay sufficient attention to the capital event which was taking place during that time behind the screen of the Zagros: the formation of a powerful Median kingdom, the future instrument of their downfall. About 640 B.C. when total victory seemed at last achieved, when Ashurbanipal rose in triumph over all the foes of Assyria, it suddenly became apparent that the colossus had feet of clay.
Sennacherib
As implied by his name, Sennacherib – Sin-ahhê-eriba, ‘the god Sin has compensated (the death of) the brothers’ – was not Sargon's first-born son, but for some untold reason he was chosen as his legitimate heir, brought up in the ‘House of Succession’ and entrusted early with high administrative and military functions, especially on the northern frontier. He was thus well prepared for his royal duties when in 704 B.C. he ascended the throne of Assyria.1
Throughout his reign the northern and eastern frontiers, once the theatre of so many of his father's wars, were comparatively calm. Sargon's victories in Kurdistan, in Armenia and in the Taurus had struck such damaging blows at Urartu and Phrygia that they were no longer to be feared as potential aggressors. Moreover, these two nations were under attack by a new enemy: the Cimmerians (Assyr. Gimirrai), a warlike people from southern Russia, which at the end of the eighth century had crossed the Caucasus and entered Western Asia.2 Already during the last years of Sargon's reign the Cimmerians, established in what is at present the Republic of Georgia, had risen in revolt against their Urartian suzerain and inflicted upon him a crushing defeat.3 Now they were pushing forward along the southern shore of the Black Sea, in the folds of the Pontic range, harassing both Phrygia and her western neighbour, the young and fabulously rich kingdom of Lydia. At the same time other Cimmerians were penetrating the north-western corner of Iran, making alliance with the Mannai and the Medes. Sennacherib was no doubt informed of these events, but he was unable to intervene in these far-away regions. The four campaigns he launched to the north and the west were of medium scale and medium range; they were directed not against the Cimmerians or the Medes, but against restive vassals: princes of the central Zagros, city-chiefs of Kurdistan, rulers of Cilicia – probably supported by Ionian troops4 – and one of the kings of Tabal.
In reality, the attention of Sennacherib was almost entirely absorbed by the extremely serious rebellions which had broken out in the Mediterranean districts and in Babylonia as soon as the news of Sargon's death was made public. In Phoenicia and Palestine Egyptian propaganda had persuaded Lulê, King of Sidon, Sidka, King of Ascalon, Ezekiah, King of Judah, and the inhabitants of Ekron to sever their links with Nineveh. In his fourth year of reign (701 B.C.) Sennacherib went forth to chastise the rebels. Lulê f
led to Cyprus, Sidka was carried away to Assyria, an Egyptian army sent to the rescue of Ekron was defeated, and in all these cities more friendly rulers were put upon the throne. Then Sennacherib attacked Judah, besieged and captured the strongly fortified town of Lachish5 and sent an army against Jerusalem. Here must be placed the dramatic scene described in the Second Book of Kings.6 Over the wall of the sacred city three of Ezekiah's officials parley ‘in the Jews’ language' with three dignitaries of the Assyrian court – the turtânu, the rab-shaqê and the rab-sharish. The Assyrians mock the Jews, who trust ‘upon the staff of this bruised reed, Egypt’, promise ‘two thousand horses’ if they capitulate and finally resort to threats. But Ezekiah, encouraged by Isaiah the prophet, stubbornly refuses to open the gates of Jerusalem. A compromise is reached; the Assyrians withdraw and the city is spared, but at what price! Ezekiah has to give 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, ‘all kind of valuable treasures as well as his daughters, his harem, his male and female musicians’, not counting several cities cut off from his land and given to the Philistines. It has long been thought that later in his reign Sennacherib had launched a second campaign in Palestine and, from there, planned to invade Egypt. He had already reached Pelusium (Tell el Farama, thirty miles east of the Suez canal) when his camp was ravaged ‘by the angel of the Lord, who went out at night and smote one hundred fourscore and five thousand’, says the Bible, ‘by a legion of rats gnawing everything in the weapons that was made of rope or leather’, says Herodotus, or, as Berossus tells us, ‘by a pestilential sickness’ killing ‘185,000 men with their commanders and officers’.7 However, this episode is very controversial and rejected by most scholars.
In Babylonia the situation was far worse than in Palestine, and the war against the Aramaeans and their Elamite allies went on during most of Sennacherib's reign.8 In 703 B.C. a year after he ascended the throne, Sargon's old rival, Marduk-apal-iddina (Merodach-Baladan), left Elam, where, it will be remembered, he had taken refuge, and assisted by Elamite officers and troops raised the entire Aramaean population of southern Iraq against the Assyrians, entered the capital-city and proclaimed himself King of Babylon. A few weeks later the King of Assyria led his armies against him. Defeated under the walls of Kish, the Chaldaean escaped and hid ‘in the midst of the swamps and marshes’ where he could not be found. Sennacherib plundered his palace, captured innumerable prisoners, deported 208,000 persons to Assyria and gave Babylon a king of his choice, Bêl-ibni, ‘the son of a master-builder’ who had grown up in Nineveh ‘like a young puppy’. But three years later Merodach-Baladan reappeared in Bit-Iakin, his native country, and stirred up enough trouble to provoke a second Assyrian intervention. Bêl-ibni, more than suspect of collusion with the rebels, was taken away and replaced by Sennacherib's own son, Ashur-nadin-shumi. As for Merodach-Baladan, he refused to offer battle:
He gathered together the gods of his whole land in their shrines, and loaded them into ships and fled like a bird to the (Elamite) swampland of Nagite, which is in the midst of the sea.9
Six relatively peaceful years elapsed. Then in 694 B.C., under pretext of capturing the Elamite cities ‘on the other side of the Bitter River, whither the people of Bît-Iakin had scattered before the mighty weapons of Ashur’, Sennacherib organized a formidable combined land and sea operation aimed at securing for the Assyrians an access to the Gulf through the hostile Sea-Land.10 A fleet of ships, built at Nineveh by Syrian craftsmen and manned by Phoenician and Cypriot sailors, was sent down the Tigris as far as Upâ (Opis).11 There it was necessary to change rivers, probably because the Tigris in those days emptied its waters into extensive swamps and its lower course was not navigable. The ships were therefore carried overland to the Arahtu canal and continued their course on the Euphrates, while the army advanced on dry land. The meeting-point was at Bab-Salimeti, near the mouth of the river. The Assyrian troops embarked, crossed the head of the Gulf, landed in Elamite territory, conquered a few cities and returned loaded with spoil. Of Marduk-apal-iddina there is no longer question and we know that he died in exile. But the Elamites immediately retaliated. Hallushu (Halutush-Inshushinak), their king, invaded Mesopotamia, took Sippar. The Babylonians then seized Ashur-nadin-shumi and handed him over to the Elamites, who sent him to Iran where he disappeared, probably murdered.12 Hallushu put on the throne of Babylon one of his favourites, soon expelled by the Assyrians and replaced by Mushezib-Marduk, a Chaldaean prince chosen by the local population. Again, there was a general upheaval of the inhabitants of Babylonia against the Assyrians. In 689 B.C. they used the treasures of Marduk's temple to buy the help of the then new King of Elam, Umman-menanu (Humban-nimena). A great battle took place at Hallulê, on the Tigris. Described as a victory in the Assyrian records, it was in fact a near-defeat.13 Blind with rage, Sennacherib avenged himself on Babylon and dared to accomplish the unthinkable: he destroyed the illustrious and sacred city, the second metropolis of the empire, the ‘bond of heaven and earth’ which his forebears had always treated with infinite patience and respect:
‘As a hurricane proceeds, I attacked it and, like a storm, I overthrew it… Its inhabitants, young and old, I did not spare and with their corpses I filled the streets of the city… The town itself and its houses, from their foundations to their roofs I devastated, I destroyed, by fire I overthrew… In order that in future even the soil of its temples be forgotten, by water I ravaged it, I turned it into pastures.
‘To quiet the heart of Ashur, my lord, that peoples should bow in submission before his exalted might, I removed the dust of Babylon for presents to the (most) distant peoples, and in that Temple of the New Year Festival (in Assur) I stored up (some) in a covered jar.’14
The great gods of Sumer and Akkad could not leave such a crime unpunished. Eight years later in Nineveh, on the twentieth day of Tebet (January 681 B.C.), Sennacherib, while praying in a temple, met with the end he deserved: he was stabbed to death by one of his sons or, according to another version, crushed by the winged bulls that protected the sanctuary.15
Brutal and cowardly – most of his wars were fought by his generals – Sennacherib has been severely judged. Yet let us give him his due: the king who destroyed Babylon did an enormous amount of constructive work in Assyria. Not only were temples and public buildings erected or restored in several towns and colossal hydraulic works undertaken throughout the country, giving a fresh impulsion to agriculture, but the very old city of Nineveh (Ninua), hitherto a simple ‘royal residence’, was enlarged, fortified, embellished and turned into a capital-city worthy of the vast empire it commanded. Within a few years its circumference passed from three to twelve kilometres, embracing two separate boroughs now represented by the mounds of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus, opposite Mosul, on the left bank of the Tigris.16 The outer wall, made of great limestone blocks, was ‘raised mountain high’, while the inner wall was pierced by fifteen gates leading in all directions. The squares of the town were widened; its avenues and streets were paved and ‘caused to shine like the day’. In the northern part of the city (Kuyunjik) stood the old palace, but it had been neglected, and an affluent of the Tigris, the Tebiltu river, had ruined its foundations. The monument was torn down, and on a large terrace thrown over the Tebiltu was built Sennacherib's magnificent abode, the ‘Palace without a Rival’:
‘Beams of cedar, the product of mount Amanus, which they dragged with difficulty out of (these) distant mountains, I stretched across their roofs. Great door-leaves of cypress, whose odour is pleasant as they are opened and closed, I bound with a band of shining copper and set them up in their doors. A portico patterned after a Hittite palace, which they call in the Amorite tongue bit hilâni, I constructed inside for my lordly pleasure.’17
Enormous copper pillars resting on lions of bronze were cast in moulds ‘like half-shekel coins’ – a technique which Sennacherib boasts of having invented – and adorned the palace gates. Protective genii of silver, copper and stone were set ‘towards the four winds’. Huge slabs of lime
stone sculptured with war scenes were dragged through the doors and made to line the walls. Finally, at the side of the palace was opened ‘a great park like unto mount Amanus, wherein were planted all kinds of herbs and fruit-trees’. To increase the vegetation in and around the town, water was brought from far-away districts by means of a canal cut ‘through mountain and lowland’, and the remains of a remarkable aqueduct visible near the village of Jerwan testify to the veracity of the royal annals as well as to the ability of the king's engineer.18 Proud of himself and of his work, Sennacherib liked to be portrayed on the hills of his own country, of this ‘land of Assur’ to which he was fanatically devoted. At Bavian, near Jerwan, at Maltai, near Dohuk, and on the Judi Dagh, on the Turkish-Iraqi frontier,19 can still be seen, carved in the rock, the gigantic image of the ‘mighty king, ruler of widespread peoples’, standing in front of the gods whom he had so gravely offended.
Esarhaddon
The murder of Sennacherib plunged Assyria into a violent, though fortunately short dynastic crisis, and Esarhaddon* had to conquer by the sword the throne he had legally inherited.20 He was Sennacherib's youngest son, borne of his second wife, the very influential Naqi'a/Zakûtu and the fact that he had been chosen as the crown prince aroused the jealousy of his brothers. In the opening chapter of his annals Esarhaddon tells how their slanderous accusations turned his father's heart against him to the point where he was obliged to leave his own country and seek refuge ‘in a hiding place’ – possibly Cilicia or Tabal. The parricide is not mentioned, but it is clear that Sennacherib was dead when his sons ‘butted each other like kids to take over kingship’, thereby losing popular support among the Assyrians themselves. Encouraged by the gods, the exile hastened towards Nineveh, determined to claim his rights to the throne. The usurpers had deployed their army in the steppe to the west of the Tigris, blocking the road to the capital-city; but no sooner did Esarhaddon attack than their soldiers deserted to him, while the people of Assyria came to meet him and kissed his feet. Making his own army ‘jump over the Tigris as if it be a small ditch’, he entered Nineveh, and in March 681 B.C. ‘sat down happily on the throne of his father’. The wicked brothers had fled ‘to an unknown country’, but the officers who had assisted them were put to death, together with their progeny.21
