Sennacherib

SENNACHERIB. - Assyrian king (Assyrian Šin-ahhē-eriba "Sin has given me a substitute for the [dead] little brothers"; Hebrew Sanhērībh), who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 to 681, at the time of its greatest cultural splendor. He appears in a dramatic scene narrated in the Bible three times (II Kings 16, 13-19, 36; Is. 36-37; II Chron. 32, 1-23) and in many cuneiform inscriptions, which delineate his character.

A great politician, S. had passions that might seem modern: a most lively interest in technical inventions, in building art, in literature, especially Sumerian, and in the philology of the various dialects of his Empire (cf. Is. 36-37), in the mountaineering which he added to the hunting so beloved by all Neo-Assyrian kings. His passion, however, for his favorite queen Naqi'a (probably an Aramaic name, from the region of Lahiru south of Babylon, Assyrian Zabāitu "the pure"), a woman of great political ability, caused disturbances that ended with the assassination of S. He, who under his father Sargon II (v.) had held the regency of the Nairi lands and the more difficult one of Babylonia, proved himself always moderate in foreign policy. He even consented to reductions of the vast territory, if its defense proved difficult. But he showed himself an energetic commander when revolts threatened commerce, or the honor of the Empire required it. He aspired more to the internal progress of his kingdom, to making it surpass the splendor of Babylonian civilization, than to military conquests. Having succeeded his father in 705, he spent the first two years doubling and beautifying Nineveh (v.), where he built the "palace without equal," two wider belts of walls, various temples, streets and very broad squares; in the surroundings he had a network of canals built, especially the grandiose aqueduct of Jerwan, described by T. Jacobsen and S. Lloyd. He introduced cotton to Nineveh, creating a new industry for its large population, and myrrh. A botanical and zoological garden was added to the Palace: in the park were all the species of herbs, fruit and wild trees that grew between the Amanus and the Persian Gulf, and a pond surrounded by groves, by tall reeds and by cypresses, in which lived igirru birds, wild boars, deer.

He then neglected, in the first two years of his reign, to go to Babylon to lead the statue of Bäl in procession at the new year, a rite required in order to be considered legitimate king of the throne of Marduk. There followed a division among the Babylonians: some remained faithful to Assyria, considering S. the legitimate king, although he had not ritually begun his reign at Babylon; the others, irritated, took the adventurer Marduk-zākir-šum and inaugurated him as king with the sacred rite. While S. still remained far away, the Elamites and their ally Merodach-Baladan (v.),
deposing the usurper, established themselves once
again in Babylon; but in the campaign
of 703, through a strategic error of Merodach-Baladan, they lost the double battle
of Kutha and Kis. S. entered Babylon in triumph,
received as a friend, and his valiant soldiers plundered only the Palace
of Merodach-Baladan. S. conquered (703-
702) the fortresses of the Chaldean tribes, while
Merodach-Baladan hid in the marshes at the mouths of the Euphrates and the Tigris. When S. returned to his homeland, Bël-ibnî, a servant of the Palace appointed by S. as king of Babylon, was not equal to the delicate task, and another Chaldean chief, Marduk-ušēzib, lorded it over the surroundings of Babylon. S. therefore hurried back also in 700 (probably after the campaign in Judea) and conquered and deported many of the Bît-Jakîn, but the two Chaldean chiefs fled with ships to Nagîtu-Raqqē, beyond the gulf, in Elamite land. S. then made his son Aššur-nādin-šumī king of Babylon, taking the incapable Bël-ibnî with him to the Palace of Nineveh. There was no hope of peace until the Chaldean exiles, led by Merodach-Baladan and by his sons after his death, were dislodged from Nagîtu-Raqqē. S. summoned sailors and shipbuilders
from the Syro-Phoenician coast, and at Nineveh the shipyards were opened
for a fleet capable of transporting a great army;
a level road was also built between Opis and the Euphrates to
transport those ships overland. The advance, begun in 694, was highly successful at the start, although the
Chaldeans flooded the lands by cutting the dikes; but
once the great army had passed to the delta, Ḥallušū king of Elam burst into Babylonia, took Sippar and Babylon, aided
by "fifth columns," took Aššur-nādin-šumī prisoner,
led him to Elam and killed him. Then the anti-Assyrian
party engaged in great purgative massacres; it made Nergal-ušēzib king, who however could maintain himself only in the cities of Babylon, Sippar and Borsippa. S.'s army, although cut
off from the homeland and without supplies, won the battle near
Nippur, took Nergal-ušēzib alive, who was killed at Nineveh.
But another prince of the Chaldeans, Mušēzib-Marduk, made himself king of Babylon; hated by S. more than any other, called by the Assyrians Šuzub ("fugitive"), he at once allied himself with
Umanu-Menanu of Elam. In the bloodiest battle
of Ḥalūlē (693), of which S. gave the best description
of a battle in the ancient East, Šuzub did not succumb.
But when later Umanu-Menanu was struck by nervous paralysis, he remained alone before S., who, following in his father's footsteps, had mobilized even the Arab tribes.
There followed the Assyrian invasion in 690, which ended with the capture, the sack, and the destruction of the marvelous city of Babylon; more than fire, water contributed to it, which, after the
soldiers had blocked the canals and especially the Araḫtu,
invaded the city and made it marshy and uninhabitable. The gods themselves had to emigrate, to Nineveh, where Šuzub was executed. Only 11 years later did Queen Naqī'a, governess of Babylon under her son Esarhaddon (v.), begin to reclaim and then to rebuild that metropolis
of the nations.

In the vast semicircle that runs from Elam to Cilicia, after the devastations of Sargon II (v.) in Urartu
(which was already beginning to recover) there was calm during
the reign of S. Besides rather mountaineering expeditions,
for example, that on the Judhī Dāgh, the famous Mount Nīpur
of the Assyrians, where according to ancient memories the
ark of Utnapištīm had stopped amid the waters of the flood, one is to
remember that of 702 in the land of Elippi, south of
Kirmanšāh, where S. corrected the frontier in his favor
against Elam, founding a small town of his, Kar-sīnahḫa-ribā ("fortress of S."). At the Cilician gates, the generals of S. in 796-95 clashed with Kirun of Illubru,
probably a Greek who, led prisoner to Nineveh,
was flayed as a punishment; the pirates
belonging to that people were also punished. Further north was conquered

(from H. Schäfer-W. Andrae. Die Kunst des Alten Orients. Berlin 1925, par. 23)
SENNACHERIB - Navigation and fishing on the Tigris. Alabaster relief from the palace
of S. at Nineveh.

Til-Garimmu, but a great part of Commagene
and Melitene was lost.

Of greater interest is the third campaign (701-
700) of S., against a coalition led in the north
by Luli king of Sidon and in the south by Hezekiah (v.) king of
Judah, about which three biblical accounts have survived,
differing in literary genre and in several particulars, and, if we choose the most reliable, two complete records in cuneiform inscriptions (the Taylor Prism and
that of the Oriental Institute of Chicago). These
five accounts reflect the genre and the particular intentions of each. The three biblical ones, according to H. Haag,
can be reduced to a single source preserved more
purely in II Chron. 32, 1-23.

The pericope II Kings 18, 13-19, 36 intends to highlight
the piety of Hezekiah and the prophetic gift of Isaiah;
it combines in itself different versions of the facts, as
the addition 18, 14-16 shows: the formal submission of Hezekiah
to S. and the imposition and payment of the burdensome tribute,
of which there is no mention in Is. 36-37, where a
magnificent drama in several episodes is developed, intent on exalting
the man of God who saved Israel; the two embassies from the
Great King, the speeches in Hebrew of the Rabshakeh (v.) who
the second time reads a proclamation of S., the fear and prayer
of Hezekiah, the message that Isaiah receives, his triumphal
song with which the small Judah protected by Yahweh
defies Assyria at its apogee, the intervention of the Angel and the precipitate
flight of the Assyrians. As for the cuneiform records, their authority
is to be admitted with H. Haag (against G. Ricciotti, who proceeding unhistorically presents the
Assyrians according to a cliché of a proud, mendacious,
and above all cruel people). But these documents do not follow
strictly the chronological order; they summarize several distinct
operations in one record around the same city.

From these sources the third campaign of S. can thus be reconstructed. He first conquered the cities belonging
to the Sidonians and to the people of Tyre, and also mainland Tyre.
Luli fled to Cyprus, where the faithful vassals of S. killed him.
The coast as far as Acco had then fallen into the hands of S.,
who placed on the throne of Sidon Ethbaal his vassal. The provinces of Dūru and Samerina having remained
faithful to S., Ammon, Moab and Edom also submitted
to S.; only the Philistine coast and Hezekiah resisted
S. In the south Hezekiah, allied
with the pharaoh Shabaka, dominated the coalition: in fact at
that time he conquered the Philistine city of Gaza, and when
the anti-Assyrian subjects of Ekron dethroned their pro-Assyrian
king Padi, they handed him over in chains to Hezekiah in
Jerusalem. And the coalition held firm: at the arrival of
S. only Mitinti king of Ashdod submitted; the other cities of the plain and the šēphēldh: Beth-dagon, Joppa, Banai-Barqa, Azuru, Timnah, Eltekeh, as well as the fortresses of Judah, e.g., Lachish (reliefs of its capture in Nineveh!) or Libnah, had to be conquered one by one. S. sent troops against Jerusalem. They, with the imminent coming of the Pharaoh, fortified themselves with bastions near the exits of the city. But the main army of S. continued the sieges and the storming of the cities of the plain. At the arrival of the Pharaoh it seems (H. Haag) that S. was forced to withdraw his headquarters from Lachish, already taken, to Libnah. The decisive battle was fought near Eltekeh, where the Pharaoh was defeated, but S. no longer had the strength to invade Egypt, certainly struck by notable losses. In such circumstances the drama of Jerusalem unfolded, where Isaiah prevented total capitulation; there, through the prayers of the King and of the prophet and through the means of human prudence employed by the King, a compromise was reached, accepted by S. Thus the Kingdom of Judah avoided being reduced to an Assyrian province, a thing of the utmost importance for the maintenance of the Yahwistic religion recently reformed. It is very true what the Chronicler narrates, that Hezekiah had to write as a defeated man letters of apology and had to submit to quite harsh conditions of peace, such as the reductions of national territory to the advantage of Padi and other neighbors, and especially the extremely burdensome tribute, which forced the pious King even to strip the roof and the ornaments of the Temple of Jerusalem. And yet, for a king at the head of a rebellion, it was a moral miracle that S. should have come to terms, probably for various reasons: his own losses, diseases in the army, bad news from Babylon where Bēl-ibnī proved incapable, the concern of having to prolong the siege of Jerusalem for years, the rather moderate imperialism of S., and finally the power of God who moves the hearts of kings. For another good century the small Kingdom of Judah had saved the right to live according to its own laws, until Nebuchadnezzar (v.) came.

Not unlike what David did with his son Solomon, younger but born of the favorite consort, S. designated Esarhaddon, son of Naqi'a, as his successor. Therefore S. was assassinated, it seems, by discontented Babylonians joined by the elder sons set aside, probably during a religious function in the temple of Nisroch (Ninurta?) at Nineveh, in the šēbet (Jan.) 681. However, for his son Esarhaddon and the energetic Naqi'a it was not difficult to suppress the revolt, which by March was already quelled. S., deviser of the most splendid Nineveh, killed for love of a queen of incomparable qualities, rebuilder of Babylon the wonder of the world, was a theme that must have impressed the imagination of peoples. There is therefore some probability in the reconstruction that the American Hildegard Lewy makes on the basis of the notices handed down by Ctesias in Diodorus Siculus: the Ninus and Semiramis of Ctesias would be none other than S. and Naqi'a; both would be fused with the memories of other historical figures: Ninus with Shamshi-Adad V (824-812); Naqi'a with Samuramat, also an energetic and highly capable woman, who for 4 years (811-808) governed Assyria for her minor son Adad-nīrārī III. Herodotus however speaks of two queens of great ingenuity: Semiramis and Nitocris wife of Nebuchadnezzar: in him under Nitocris would be hidden the traits of Naqi'a.

Pietro Nober