Before Sargon’s death, Sennacherib had quarreled with his father, and on ascending the throne, he seemed determined to turn his back on his late father’s memory. He abandoned the half-built city of Dur Sharrukin and, after residing in Ashur for a few years, made Nineveh his capital. In all the many inscriptions of Sennacherib’s reign, there is no mention of Sargon.
Soon after Sennacherib’s accession, there was trouble with Babylon. In 703 BCE, Merodach-baladan attempted to seize the throne again, allying himself
With the city of Elam, Assyria’s age-old enemy. After a nine-month campaign, Sennacherib finally succeeded in defeating this coalition, although Merodach-baladan escaped. In order to reassert control, Sennacherib deported more than 200,000 people from southern Mesopotamia and put an Assyrian puppet king on the Babylonian throne.
Turning his attention to the west, Sennacherib then marched into Syria and Palestine and laid siege to Jerusalem. He was hoping to clear the way for his armies to march on Egypt, but Jerusalem would not yield. Eventually, with his army decimated by sickness, Sennacherib was forced to withdraw.
Meanwhile, in Babylon, Merodach-baladan was stirring up a renewed rebellion. Assyria’s puppet king allied himself with Merodach-baladan, but Sennacherib lost no time in crushing the revolt and putting his own son on the Babylonian throne. The Elamites continued to foment Babylonian rebellions, and when the Babylonians handed over Sennacherib’s
This ancient relief, discovered during excavations of Nineveh, depicts two Assyrian warriors hunting a lion.
A QUEEN’S CURSE
While most of the great archaeological discoveries relating to the Assyrian Empire occurred in the 19th century CE, one happened a lot more recently—in 1989.Workers removing dirt from one of the palaces at Nimrud stumbled across an air vent to a hidden tomb. Further investigation by the Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmoud Hussein revealed the skeleton of Queen Yabahya, the wife of Tiglath-pileser III.
The skeleton had been buried with around 80 gold items, including personal jewelry, a golden bowl bearing the queen’s name, and a number of rosettes that had been sprinkled over her body. However, the tomb also contained a less pleasant surprise—a curse. An inscription on a marble slab warned that anyone who disturbed the queen’s resting place would suffer an eternity of sleeplessness.
Son to the Elamites, Sennacherib acted decisively. In 689 BCE, he inflicted a crushing defeat on both states. He then destroyed the city of Babylon. After plundering and leveling the temples, he had the Euphrates River diverted to flood the ruins. In a symbolic act, statues of the gods of the holy city were taken to Ashur as prisoners. This sacrilege offended even some Assyrians, who feared retribution from the Babylonian god Marduk for the deliberate violation of his temple.
Rebuilding Nineveh and Babylon
Sennacherib chose Nineveh to be his capital city. He carried out extensive renovations there and built himself a mag-
Located on the banks of the Tigris, the city of Nineveh was perfectly situated as a trading center.
Nificent palace with beautiful gardens. To bring water to these gardens, an immense aqueduct was constructed, using around two million limestone blocks. The palace itself was decorated with many reliefs, some of which showed enormous statues of bulls being transported over land and water. Other scenes showed military life, battles, and the mass deportations of conquered peoples. To make the palace of Sennacherib as splendid as possible, Assyrian artists were given a free rein in its design.
In 681 BCE, Sennacherib was suddenly assassinated—widely seen as just retribution for his treatment of the god Marduk. Sennacherib was succeeded by his son Esarhaddon (ruled 680— 669 BCE).
Esarhaddon was not the eldest son, and it is thought that he owed his throne to the influence of his mother, Naqia. She was a princess from western Syria and, for a long time, controlled state affairs from behind the scenes. To appease Marduk, Esarhaddon set about reconstructing Babylon, in particular the temples of Marduk. In the west, Esarhaddon attacked Egypt, capturing Memphis in 671 BCE. This victory was the major military achievement of his reign; he died during a second expedition to Egypt in 669 BCE.
World History
