ADRAMELECH. — Son of the Assyrian king SENNACHERIB (704–681), in Assyrian Adar-malik. Adrammelech and his brother Sharezer, because they were not chosen to succeed him, killed their father while he was praying in the temple of Neskos (read Marduk with Winckler and Dhomre, or with others, Assur) in Babylon (Winckler and Dhomre; according to others in Nineveh; cf. 2 Kgs 19:36–37). In the Babylonian Chronicle and in the inscription of Nabonidus’s column, only one son, unnamed, is the murderer of Sennacherib. But in Asarhaddon’s Prism B, discovered in 1927–28, the king’s murderers are several brothers, as the sacred text states. Adrammelech and Sharezer were then pursued and defeated by the heir Asarhaddon (q.v.) in Ararat (northern Mesopotamia).
ADRAMELECH
BIBL.: P. Dhomre, Les pays bibliques et l'Assyrie, Paris 1911, pp. 82–83; A. Pohl, Historia populi Israel, Rome 1933, pp. 124–125.