Shalmaneser III (reigned ca. 858-824 b. c.)

The son of Ashurnasirpal II and one of the more aggressive of Assyria’s kings during the empire’s third and greatest period of expansion. Shalmaneser led military campaigns on all three of Assyria’s traditional fronts—the Babylonian-Sumerian

A basalt bas-relief dating from the 9th century b. c. depicting Jehu, king of Israel, prostrating himself before King Shalmaneser III of Assyria. Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY

Plains in the south, the Zagros range in the east, and Palestine in the west; however, two factors kept him from adding much new territory to the empire. First, he often failed to follow up on his victories by setting up strong administrative bureaucracies among the peoples he conquered. He fought two Iranian peoples, the Medes and the Persians, for example, and in both cases seemed content just to sack their cities and collect tribute from them. The other factor frustrating Shalmaneser’s efforts at expansion was that he faced much tougher opposition than his father and other ancestors had, especially in the west. In Syria, tough coalitions of small kingdoms formed to fight him. The most formidable of these alliances appeared in 853 B. C. Shalmaneser faced off with the rebels at Qarqar, located on the Orontes River some 120 miles (193km) north of Damascus, in one of the largest battles fought anywhere in the world up to that time. Each of the opposing armies may have numbered more than fifty thousand men; one of Shalmaneser’s annals describes the enemy forces this way:

1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry, 20,000 soldiers, of Hadadezer [Ben-Hadad in the Bible] of Damascus; 700 chariots,

700 cavalry, 10,000 soldiers of Irhu-leni of Hamath; 2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite. . . . battled with them. From Qarqar, as far as the city of Gilzau, I routed them. 14,000 of their warriors I slew with the sword. . . . I scattered their corpses far and wide. ... In that battle I took from them their chariots, their cavalry, their horses, broken to the yoke.

Despite these boasts of victory, in truth, the best Shalmaneser was able to obtain at Qarqar was a draw.

Shalmaneser was perhaps more successful on the domestic front. At Kalhu he erected a fortress, several temples, and a ziggurat. But then, in about 827 b. c., one of his sons, Ashur-dani-napli, rebelled and seized the cities of Ashur and Nineveh. Now a bitter old man, Shalmaneser remained largely in seclusion in his palace at Nimrud and delegated the task of fighting the civil war to another son, Shamshi-Adad V. The conflict was still ongoing when Shalmaneser died in 824 B. C.

See Also: Kalhu; Nimrud; Nineveh