ASSURBANIPAL (Aššur-bān-aplu “Assur creates an heir”). — Assyrian king from 669 to 626 B.C., Asarhaddon (v.).
He brought the campaign against Egypt to completion, defeating Tarhaca (Taharqu) at Karbanit in the Delta in 667. After occupying Memphis, he went up the Nile as far as Thebes, which was sacked. On this occasion the indigenous kings, at whose head was Nechao, rebelled against Assyria, but ended up in the hands of A., who led them captive to Nineveh. Nechao later regained sovereignty over Sais.
The successor of Tarhaca, Tandamani, attempted to shake off the Assyrian yoke and initially conquered Thebes and Memphis and killed Nechao. But in 663 A. reconquered and destroyed Thebes and forced the pharaoh to take refuge in Ethiopia. To govern Egypt, in the position previously held by Nechao, his son Psammetico was appointed; but que-
he around 656 definitively wrested Egypt from Assyria. Returning to Assyria, A. captured Tyre and punished the oath-breaking king Baal, who obtained pardon in exchange for the surrender of hostages; he also compelled the kings of Syria and Palestine, including Manasse (Minat), king of Judah, and provided him with assistance.
Long and terrible was the war, which exhausted all Mesopotamia, waged by A. against his brother Samaš-Sum-Ukin, installed by Asarhaddon as king of Babylon; he had rebelled, entering into an alliance with Elam, Accad and “the land of the sea,” with the Arabs (Kedar), with Gyge, king of Lydia, with Psammetico of Egypt, with the Arameans of Bit-Amukanni and Bit-Dakuri, with the Gutians, and with the kings of Syria and Palestine. A. confronted the powerful enemy coalition (652), besieged Babylon for two years, and captured it (648); Samaš-Sum-ukin set fire to his palace and perished in the flames. A. rebuilt Babylon and repopulated it with people from Kuta and Sippar, but refrained from proclaiming himself its king.
He then directed four expeditions against the Elamites, who had taken part in the conspiracy of Samaš-Sum-ukin; in 646 he conquered and destroyed their capital, Susa, and around 640 the Elamite empire was annihilated. He then defeated the Arabs, whose prince Usite I was deported to Nineveh. It was probably A. who deported Manasse, king of Judah, to Babylon (II Par., 33, 11), perhaps because he had joined the uprising of Samaš-Sum-ukin. Eid. 4, 10 attributes to A. (Atenappar) the sending to Samaria of colonists from many peoples.
A. was not warlike by nature, but entrusted warfare to his generals. A man of lofty mind, he regarded himself as the inaugurator of an era of prosperity and salvation. Under A., Assyria reached the summit of its power and culture. His figure was distorted by Greek tradition (A. “Sardanapalus”). He devoted the final years of his reign to building temples (that of Ištar at Nineveh), splendid palaces, and libraries. We owe the greater part of the documents of Assyro-Babylonian literature and culture to A.’s library at Nineveh, discovered by H. Rassam in 1852 (now in the British Museum).
After A.’s death (626), the collapse of Assyria began immediately. His successors could not withstand the pressure of the Medes, led by Cyaxares (v.), all the more because Nabopolassar of Babylon was also threatening from the south: in 612 Nineveh fell and the kingdom of Assyria ceased to exist.
BBL.: B. Meissner, Könige Babyloniens und Assyrien, Leipzig 1926, pp. 230–55; A. Pohl, Historia populi Israel, Rome 1933, pp. 139–42; E. F. Weidner, A. in Assur, in Archiv für Orientforschung, 13 (1940), pp. 204–18.
Giustino Boson-Antonino Romeo