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187-606: Sennacherib ( Neo-Assyrian Akkadian : 𒀭𒌍𒉽𒈨𒌍𒋢 , romanized:  Sîn-ahhī-erība or Sîn-aḥḥē-erība , meaning " Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705   BC until his assassination in 681   BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty , Sennacherib is one of the most famous Assyrian kings for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible , which describes his campaign in

374-451: A Levantine , Aramean , Arabic or Hebrew name, and Atalia has also variously been identified as Hebrew or Arabic. Since Iaba's funerary inscription includes a curse against anyone who disturbs her tomb, it is possible that she and Atalia were related (as such perhaps circumventing the curse). The bones discovered in the Nimrud tombs have been the subject of paleopathological research since

561-673: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,

748-498: A scribal education , learning arithmetic and how to read and write in Sumerian and Akkadian . Sennacherib had several brothers and at least one sister. In addition to the older brothers who died before his birth, Sennacherib had a number of younger brothers, some of whom are mentioned as being alive as late as 670 BC, then in the service of Sennacherib's son and successor Esarhaddon . Sennacherib's only known sister, Ahat-abisha ,

935-635: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as

1122-580: A "great victory" and list several cities taken and sacked by the Assyrian army. Although Sennacherib at last got his revenge on Marduk-apla-iddina, his arch-enemy had not lived to see it, having died of natural causes before the Assyrians landed in Elam. The war then took an unexpected turn as the king of Elam, Hallutash-Inshushinak I , took advantage of the Assyrian army being so far away from home to invade Babylonia. With

1309-432: A "hunchback". Perhaps this condition was brought on by cancer weakening Atalia's bone structure, osteoporosis , or some unknown infection. Because Atalia's teeth exhibit linear enamel hypoplasia , it is evident that she at some point in her childhood suffered from a severe long-term illness. At some point she also pulled a leg muscle and at another point, she broke one of her toes. Atalia's perhaps most painful condition

1496-492: A Babylonian princess, brought to Assyria as a hostage after Tiglath-Pileser's conquest of Babylon in 729 BC. Atalia's name is inscribed in cuneiform as a-ta-li-a or a-tal-ia-a , depending on the inscription, transliterated as Atalia , Ataliā , Ataliya or Ataliyā . The name is clearly not of Akkadian origin. In 1998, Stephanie Dalley proposed that both Iaba and Atalia were actually names of Hebrew origin and speculated that they were both princesses of

1683-435: A battle near the city of Eltekeh . They took the cities of Ekron and Timnah and Judah stood alone, with Sennacherib setting his sights on Jerusalem. While a portion of Sennacherib's troops prepared to blockade Jerusalem, Sennacherib himself marched on the important Judean city of Lachish . Both the blockade of Jerusalem and the siege of Lachish probably prevented further Egyptian aid from reaching Hezekiah, and intimidated

1870-570: A campaign of religious propaganda. Among the elements of this campaign, he commissioned a myth in which Marduk was put on trial before Ashur , the god of Assyria. This text is fragmentary, but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense. Sennacherib described his defeat of the Babylonian rebels in the language of the Babylonian creation myth , identifying Babylon with the evil demon-goddess Tiamat and himself with Marduk. Ashur replaced Marduk in

2057-548: A capital worthy of his empire, he launched one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history. He expanded the size of the city and constructed great city walls, numerous temples and a royal garden. His most famous work in the city is the Southwest Palace, which Sennacherib named his "Palace without Rival". After the death of his eldest son and crown prince Aššur-nādin-šumi, Sennacherib originally designated his second son Arda-Mulissu heir. He later replaced him with

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2244-517: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If

2431-433: A difficult position as he had reached the height of his popularity but was powerless to do anything to his brother. To take advantage of the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. He concluded a "treaty of rebellion" with another of his younger brothers, Nabu-shar-usur, and on 20 October 681 BC, they attacked and killed their father in one of Nineveh's temples, possibly

2618-643: A family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from

2805-460: A fourth golden bowl) are inscribed with "Banitu, queen of Shalmaneser". There are also numerous objects in the tomb that are not inscribed with any name, including bracelets, bowls and two golden crowns. In total Tomb II contained 26 kilograms (57 lbs) of gold objects. Several of these are marked with a scorpion symbol, often used for royal women, rather than a specific name. The sarcophagus contained two female skeletons, one buried on top of

2992-446: A heart, liver or kidney but it may be a dehydrated brain, of unclear origin. The tomb, clearly originally belonging to Iaba since her name is on the funerary inscription, presents a problem of identification since it contains the inscriptions of three queens but only contains two skeletons. It is generally assumed that the bodies belong to two of the three queens. Several explanations for there only being two bodies, but accompanied by

3179-461: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in

3366-706: A native Babylonian who had grown up at the Assyrian court, Bel-ibni , as his vassal king of the south. Sennacherib described Bel-ibni as "a native of Babylon who grew up in my palace like a young puppy". After the Babylonian war, Sennacherib's second campaign was in the Zagros Mountains . There, he subdued the Yasubigallians , a people from east of the Tigris river, and the Kassites , a people who had ruled Babylonia centuries before. Sennacherib's third campaign, directed against

3553-419: A popular figure, and some vassals secretly supported him as the heir to the throne. Sennacherib forced Arda-Mulissu to swear loyalty to Esarhaddon, but Arda-Mulissu made many appeals to his father to reinstate him as heir. Sennacherib noted the increasing popularity of Arda-Mulissu and came to fear for his designated successor, so he sent Esarhaddon to the western provinces. Esarhaddon's exile put Arda-Mulissu in

3740-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents

3927-438: A stone lion in the quarter associated with Sennacherib's queen, Tashmetu-sharrat, contains hopes that the king and queen would both live healthily and long within the new palace. The text of the inscription, written in an unusually intimate way, reads: And for the queen Tashmetu-sharrat, my beloved wife, whose features Belet-ili has made more beautiful than all other women, I had a palace of love, joy and pleasure built. [...] By

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4114-458: A two-front war too risky, Marduk-apla-iddina was left unchallenged for several months. In 703 BC, after the Tabal expedition had been completed, Sennacherib gathered the Assyrian army at Assur, often used as a mustering spot for campaigns against the south. The Assyrian army, led by Sennacherib's chief commander, launched an unsuccessful attack on the coalition forces near the city of Kish, bolstering

4301-448: A will to avenge his son and tiring of a city well within the borders of his empire repeatedly rebelling against his rule. According to Brinkman, Sennacherib might have lost the affection he once had for Babylon's gods because they had inspired their people to attack him. Sennacherib's own account of the destruction reads: Into my land I carried off alive Mušēzib-Marduk, king of Babylonia, together with his family and officials. I counted out

4488-491: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By

4675-488: A younger son, Esarhaddon , in 684   BC, for unknown reasons. Sennacherib ignored Arda-Mulissu's repeated appeals to be reinstated as heir, and in 681   BC, Arda-Mulissu and his brother Nabu-shar-usur murdered Sennacherib, hoping to seize power for themselves. Babylonia and the Levant welcomed his death as divine punishment , while the Assyrian heartland probably reacted with resentment and horror. Arda-Mulissu's coronation

4862-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates

5049-570: Is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages ,

5236-573: Is clear that the blockade of Jerusalem ended without significant fighting, how it was resolved and what stopped Sennacherib's massive army from overwhelming the city is uncertain. The Biblical account of the end of Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem holds that though Hezekiah's soldiers manned the walls of the city, ready to defend it against the Assyrians, an entity referred to as the destroying angel , sent by Yahweh , annihilated Sennacherib's army, killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in front of Jerusalem's gates. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes

5423-451: Is described as the queen, though the name of her husband is not mentioned. Iaba's name also appears on two golden bowls found in the sarcophagus, where she is explicitly called the "queen of Tiglath-Pileser". Apart from these bowls, five other inscribed objects were also found in the sarcophagus. Three (a rock crystal jar, bronze mirror and another golden bowl) are inscribed with "Atalia, queen of Sargon" and two (a bronze cosmetic container and

5610-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as

5797-477: Is inscribed in cuneiform as ba-ni-ti , transliterated as Banītu , Banîtu , Banêti , Banīti or Banitu . Just like Iaba, Banitu might also mean "beautiful" ( banītu in Akkadian), but it might also be derived from the Akkadian bānītu , which means "(divine) Creatress". Simo Parpola believes the name Banitu to be of Babylonian origin, and as a consequence speculates that Queen Banitu might have been

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5984-589: Is inscribed on these, they likely belonged to Atalia. Around 2002, there were rumors that the bones of the two queens from Tomb II, and the other royal individuals in the tombs, were to be honored with a state funeral and reburied. Any such plans never came to fruition. In 2015, the bones were still stored at the Mosul Museum. That year, the ruins of the Northwest Palace were destroyed by the Islamic State and

6171-497: Is likely Babylon would have been in a poor position once it fell to Sennacherib in 689 BC, having been besieged for over fifteen months. Although Sennacherib had once anxiously considered the implications of Sargon's seizure of Babylon and the role that the city's offended gods may have played in his father's downfall, his attitude towards the city had shifted by 689 BC. Ultimately, Sennacherib decided to destroy Babylon. Brinkman believed that Sennacherib's change in attitude came from

6358-458: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in

6545-502: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.  2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian

6732-519: Is that the blockade of Jerusalem was lifted through the intervention of a Kushite army from Egypt. The battle with the Egyptians is considered unlikely to have been an outright Assyrian defeat, especially because contemporary Babylonian chronicles, otherwise eager to mention Assyrian failures, are silent on the matter. Despite the seemingly inconclusive end to the blockade of Jerusalem, the Levantine campaign

6919-496: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as

7106-479: The Assyrian siege of Jerusalem by destroying the Assyrian army , an outright defeat is unlikely as Hezekiah submitted to Sennacherib at the end of the campaign. Contemporary records, even those written by Assyria's enemies, do not mention the Assyrians being defeated at Jerusalem. Sennacherib transferred the capital of Assyria to Nineveh , where he had spent most of his time as crown prince . To transform Nineveh into

7293-502: The Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II , who had been Babylon's king until Sennacherib's father defeated him. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705   BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites . Though Sennacherib reclaimed the south in 700   BC, Marduk-apla-iddina continued to trouble him, probably instigating Assyrian vassals in

7480-468: The Kingdom of Judah , from the same royal family. Dalley based her argument on the name Atalia being similar, and perhaps etymologically identical, to the name Athaliah (borne by a Judean queen who ruled about a century earlier), that the ending of the name ( i-a or ia-a ) could represent a theophoric element deriving from Yahweh , and that Atalia and Iaba might have been related. Dalley also argued that

7667-685: The Levant to rebel, leading to the Levantine War of 701 BC, and himself warring against Bel-ibni , Sennacherib's vassal king in Babylonia. After the Babylonians and Elamites captured and executed Sennacherib's eldest son Aššur-nādin-šumi , whom Sennacherib had proclaimed as his new vassal king in Babylon, Sennacherib campaigned in both regions, subduing Elam. Because Babylon, well within his own territory, had been

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7854-534: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have

8041-458: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect

8228-641: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from

8415-595: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be

8602-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark

8789-528: The third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad , a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire ( c.  2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in

8976-591: The "Palace without Rival". During the construction process, a smaller palace was torn down, a stream of water which had been eroding parts of the palace mound was redirected and a terrace which the new palace was to stand on was erected and raised to the height of 160 layers of brick. Though many of these early inscriptions talk about the palace as if it were already completed, this was the standard way of writing about building projects in ancient Assyria. The Nineveh described in Sennacherib's earliest accounts of its renovation

9163-461: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as

9350-457: The 1990s, which has made it possible to gain some insight into the lives and health of the ancient queens. Iaba suffered from several health issues, including chronic sinusitis and perhaps neoplastic meningitis . Out of all the queens found in the tombs at Nimrud , Atalia had by far the most health issues. Atalia's bones suggest that the queen suffered from mild arthritis and the early stages of Scheuermann's disease . Her most painful condition

9537-607: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since

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9724-687: The 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after

9911-511: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of

10098-400: The 4th millennium BC and onward it formed an important administrative center in the north. When Sennacherib made the city his new capital it experienced one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history, being completely transformed from the somewhat neglected state it had been in before his reign. Whereas his father's new capital, Dur-Sharrukin, was more or less an imitation of

10285-516: The Anunnaki as a funerary offering any beer, wine or meal. May Ningishzida and the great door-keeper, Bitu , the great gods of the underworld, afflict their corpse and ghost with eternal restlessness! Perhaps the fact that another body was buried in Iaba's tomb later on in direct violation of the inscription demonstrates that whoever was buried was somehow "immune" from this curse. This could be explained by

10472-518: The Assyrian Empire. Sargon had ruled Babylonia since 710 BC, when he defeated the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II , who had taken control of the south in the aftermath of the death of Sargon's predecessor Shalmaneser V in 722 BC. Like his immediate predecessors, Sennacherib took the ruling titles of both Assyria and Babylonia when he became king, but his reign in Babylonia

10659-435: The Assyrian aristocracy, Sennacherib's art usually depicts the king towering above everyone else in his vicinity due to being mounted in a chariot. His reliefs show larger scenes, some almost from a bird's-eye point of view. There are also examples of a more naturalistic approach in the art; where colossal statues of bulls from Sargon's palace depict them with five legs so that four legs could be seen from either side and two from

10846-510: The Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurdî of Tabal in central Anatolia . The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off. Sargon's death made the defeat significantly worse because the Assyrians believed the gods had punished him for some major past misdeed. In Mesopotamian mythology, the afterlife suffered by those who died in battle and were not buried

11033-404: The Assyrian army then moved systematically through southern Babylonia, where there was still organized resistance, pacifying both the tribal areas and the major cities. Sennacherib's inscriptions state that over two hundred thousand prisoners were taken. Because his previous policy of reigning as king of both Assyria and Babylonia had evidently failed, Sennacherib attempted another method, appointing

11220-412: The Babylonian and Elamite forces undetected some months prior and was not present at the final battle, instead probably being on his way from Assyria with additional troops. Once he rejoined his southern army, the war with Babylonia was already won. Soon thereafter, a revolt broke out in Elam which saw the deposition of Hallutash-Inshushinak and the rise of Kutur-Nahhunte to the throne. Determined to end

11407-411: The Babylonian chroniclers as an Assyrian retreat. In 690 BC, Humban-menanu suffered a stroke and his jaw became locked in a way that prevented him from speaking. Taking advantage of the situation, Sennacherib embarked on his final campaign against Babylon. Although the Babylonians were successful initially, that was short-lived, and in the same year, the siege of Babylon was already well underway. It

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11594-551: The Babylonian kings Kurigalzu II and Marduk-zakir-shumi I ). It is even possible that Atalia, after her husband deposed Shalmaneser, took the objects with Banitu's name as trophies. A popular alternative hypothesis, first proposed by Stephanie Dalley in 2008, is that Iaba and Banitu were actually the same person, with Iaba being her name in Hebrew or Aramean and Banitu being her name in Akkadian. There are examples of royal women in Assyria changing their name or using two names, notably

11781-606: The Euphrates and the Tigris. The latter fleet was then used to transport the Assyrian army to the city of Opis , where the ships were then pulled ashore and transported overland to a canal that linked to the Euphrates. The two fleets then combined into one and continued down to the Persian Gulf. At the head of the Persian Gulf, a storm flooded the Assyrian camp and the Assyrian soldiers had to take refuge on their ships. They then sailed across

11968-482: The Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and

12155-436: The Levant . Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689   BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh . Although Sennacherib was one of the most powerful and wide-ranging Assyrian kings, he faced considerable difficulty in controlling Babylonia , which formed the southern portion of his empire. Many of Sennacherib's Babylonian troubles stemmed from

12342-495: The New Year's festival, and in the temple of the festival he placed a symbolic pile of rubble from Babylon. In Babylonia, Sennacherib's policy spawned a deep-seated hatred amongst much of the populace. Sennacherib's goal was the complete eradication of Babylonia as a political entity. Though some northern Babylonian territories became Assyrian provinces, the Assyrians made no effort to rebuild Babylon itself, and southern chronicles from

12529-587: The Nimrud tombs have been the subject of paleopathological research since the 1990s. Across the seventeen different individuals found, common health issues include stiff joints, childhood illness, headaches, allergies and colds. Many of the individuals, though their dental hygiene was good relative to the average ancient Assyrian, suffered from dental problems. In ancient Assyria it was not possible to treat periodontal abscesses , fill dental cavities or to scrape off dental plaque . The lower body, typically identified as Iaba, having been buried decades earlier than

12716-453: The Persian Gulf, a journey which Sennacherib's inscriptions indicate was difficult since repeated sacrifices were made to Ea , the god of the deep. Successfully landing on the Elamite coast, the Assyrians then hunted and attacked the Chaldean refugees, something that both Babylonian and Assyrian sources hold went well for the Assyrians. Sennacherib's account of the campaign describe the affair as

12903-480: The aid of surviving Chaldean troops, Hallutash-Inshushinak took the city of Sippar , where he also managed to capture Ashur-nadin-shumi and take him back to Elam. Ashur-nadin-shumi was then never heard from again, probably having been executed. In Ashur-nadin-shumi's place, a native Babylonian, Nergal-ushezib , became Babylon's king. Babylonian records ascribe Nergal-ushezib's rise to power to being appointed by Hallutash-Inshushinak, whereas Assyrian records state that he

13090-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it

13277-464: The battle was a southern victory, the setback faced by the Assyrians would have to have been minor as Babylon was under siege in the late summer of 690 BC (and had apparently been under siege for some time at that point). The Assyrians had not marched on Babylon immediately, however, as military actions are recorded elsewhere. In 1973, the Assyriologist John A. Brinkman wrote that it was likely that

13464-491: The blame of the fate of the temples not personally on Sennacherib himself, but on the decisions made by the temple personnel and the actions of the Assyrian people. During the destruction of the city, Sennacherib destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, which he took to Assyria. This caused consternation in Assyria itself, where Babylon and its gods were held in high esteem. Sennacherib attempted justifying his actions to his own countrymen through

13651-441: The blockade erected around Jerusalem is different from the sieges described in Sennacherib's annals and the massive reliefs in Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, which depict the successful siege of Lachish rather than events at Jerusalem. Though the blockade of Jerusalem was not a proper siege, it is clear from all available sources that a massive Assyrian army was encamped in the city's vicinity, probably on its northern side. Though it

13838-461: The capital to Nineveh instead. One of Sennacherib's first actions as king was to rebuild a temple dedicated to the god Nergal , associated with death, disaster and war, at the city of Tarbisu. Even with this public denial in mind, Sennacherib was superstitious and spent a great deal of time asking his diviners what kind of sin Sargon could have committed to suffer the fate that he had, perhaps considering

14025-427: The captives taken after the victory was a stepson of Marduk-apla-iddina and brother of an Arab queen, Yatie , who had joined the coalition. Sennacherib then marched on Babylon. As the Assyrians appeared on the horizon, Babylon opened its gates to him, surrendering without a fight. The city was reprimanded, suffering a minor sack, though its citizens were unharmed. After a brief period of rest in Babylon, Sennacherib and

14212-418: The center of government in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with the crown prince taking on significant administrative and political responsibilities. The vast responsibilities entrusted to Sennacherib suggests a certain degree of trust between the king and the crown prince. In reliefs depicting both Sargon and Sennacherib, they are portrayed in discussion, appearing almost as equals. As regent, Sennacherib's primary duty

14399-459: The city of Halule . Humban-menanu and his commander, Humban-undasha , led the Babylonian and Elamite forces. The outcome of the Battle of Halule is unclear since the records of both sides claim a great victory. Sennacherib claims in his annals that Humban-undasha was killed and that the enemy kings fled for their lives whereas the Babylonian chronicles claim that it was the Assyrians who retreated. If

14586-460: The city, he appears to have still been somewhat fearful of Babylon's ancient gods. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. The passage describing the seizure of the property of the gods and the destruction of some of their statues is one of the few where Sennacherib uses "my people" rather than "I". Brinkman interpreted this in 1973 as leaving

14773-508: The city, of the temples, and of the ziggurat; and I dumped these into the Araḫtu canal. I dug canals through the midst of that city, I overwhelmed it with water, I made its very foundations disappear, and I destroyed it more completely than a devastating flood. So that it might be impossible in future days to recognize the site of that city and its temples, I utterly dissolved it with water and made it like inundated land. Although Sennacherib destroyed

14960-479: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered

15147-402: The dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran , the southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian

15334-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing

15521-486: The empire of Sargon's imagery. Raising the level of the courtyard made images that Sargon had created at the temple in Assur invisible. When Sargon's wife Ataliya died, she was buried hastily and in the same coffin as another woman, the queen of the previous king Tiglath-Pileser. Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions. Sargon II's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across

15708-571: The fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout the later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c.  1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in

15895-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative

16082-487: The flight of the Elamites, Babylonia did not surrender to Sennacherib. The rebel Shuzubu, hunted by Sennacherib in his 700 BC invasion of the south, had resurfaced under the name Mushezib-Marduk and, seemingly without foreign support, acceded to the throne of Babylon. As he was king by 692 BC, but not described in Assyrian sources as "revolting" until 691 BC, it is possible that his rule was initially accepted by Sennacherib. There

16269-528: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in

16456-614: The front, Sennacherib's bulls all have four legs. Sennacherib constructed beautiful gardens at his new palace, importing various plants and herbs from throughout his empire and beyond. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India . Some suggest the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , were actually these gardens in Nineveh. Eckhart Frahm considers this idea unlikely on account of

16643-500: The glory attached to military victories. In any event, Sennacherib never took action against Sargon or attempted to usurp the throne despite being more than old enough to become king himself. By the time Sennacherib became king, the Neo-Assyrian Empire had been the dominant power in the Near East for over thirty years, chiefly due to its well-trained and large army, superior to that of any other contemporary kingdom. Though Babylonia to

16830-546: The god by undergoing the traditional Babylonian coronation ritual. In angry response to this disrespect, revolts a month apart in 704 or 703 BC overthrew Sennacherib's rule in the south. First, a Babylonian by the name of Marduk-zakir-shumi II took the throne, but Marduk-apla-iddina, the same Chaldean warlord who had seized control of the city once before and had warred against Sennacherib's father, deposed him after just two or four weeks. Marduk-apla-iddina rallied large portions of Babylonia's people to fight for him, both

17017-463: The impressive royal gardens in Babylon itself. Besides the palace, Sennacherib oversaw other building projects at Nineveh. He built a large second palace at the city's southern mound, which served as an arsenal to store military equipment and as permanent quarters for part of the Assyrian standing army. Numerous temples were built and restored, many of them on the Kuyunjik mound (where the Southwest Palace

17204-465: The inscriptions as being made of precious metals remain missing. The roof of the palace was constructed with cypress and cedar recovered from the mountains in the west, and the palace was illuminated through multiple windows and decorated with silver and bronze pegs on the inside and glazed bricks on the outside. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1,480 ft) long and 220 metres (720 ft) wide. An inscription on

17391-432: The intended heir to the entire Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the years that followed, Babylonia stayed relatively quiet, with no chronicles recording any significant activity. In the meantime, Sennacherib campaigned elsewhere. His fifth campaign in 699 BC involved a series of raids against the villages around the foot of Mount Judi , located to the northeast of Nineveh. Sennacherib's generals led other small campaigns without

17578-403: The inter-marriage of the Assyrian and Judean royal families could help explain why Sargon II's successor Sennacherib ( r.   705–681 BC), who warred against Hezekiah of Judah, in his inscriptions refer to Hezekiah as "strong and mighty", highly unusual epithets for the Assyrians to bestow upon an enemy. Dalley's arguments have met with both support and opposition and the idea that

17765-545: The king of Tyre and Sidon . Sennacherib's arch-enemy Marduk-apla-iddina encouraged the anti-Assyrian sentiment among some of the empire's western vassals. He corresponded with and sent gifts to western rulers like Hezekiah, probably hoping to assemble a vast anti-Assyrian alliance. In 701 BC, Sennacherib first moved to attack the Syro-Hittite and Phoenician cities in the north. Like many rulers of these cities had done before and would do again, Luli fled rather than face

17952-451: The king present, including a 698 BC expedition against Kirua , an Assyrian governor revolting in Cilicia , and a 695 BC campaign against the city of Tegarama . In 694 BC, Sennacherib invaded Elam, with the explicit goal of the campaign being to root out Marduk-apla-iddina and the other Chaldean refugees. In preparation for his attack on Elam, Sennacherib assembled two great fleets on

18139-454: The kingdoms and city-states in the Levant , is very well-documented compared to many other events in the ancient Near East and is the best-documented event in the history of Israel during the First Temple period . In 705 BC, Hezekiah , the king of Judah , had stopped paying his annual tribute to the Assyrians and began pursuing a markedly aggressive foreign policy, probably inspired by

18326-420: The kings of other smaller states in the region. The siege of Lachish, which ended in the city's destruction, was so lengthy that the defenders eventually began using arrowheads made of bone rather than metal, which had run out. To take the city, the Assyrians constructed a great siege mound, a ramp made of earth and stone, to reach the top of Lachish's walls. After they had destroyed the city, the Assyrians deported

18513-647: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian

18700-476: The languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c.  2600 BC . From about the 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By

18887-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which

19074-426: The later queen Naqi'a , who is also known as Zakutû. Dalley also argued that while Banitu's objects could be in the tomb as trophies taken by Atalia, it is unclear why Atalia then would not erase the old queen's name from them and inscribe her own. As explained previously, it is possible to translate both names to mean "beautiful", but that is far from the only possible translation. Shalmaneser V, in this scenario not

19261-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of

19448-425: The left hip joint. The spine shows signs of the early stages of osteoarthritis and further signs of wear was also found in the joints of some of the vertebrae. Iaba also suffered from chronic sinusitis . The upper skeleton in the sarcophagus, smaller than the lower one and typically identified as Atalia, had by far the most health issues of any of the seventeen individuals buried in the tombs at Nimrud. Like

19635-409: The legitimacy of the coalition. However, Sennacherib also realized that the anti-Assyrian forces were divided and led his entire army to engage and destroy the portion of the army encamped at Kutha. Thereafter, he moved to attack the contingent at Kish, winning this second battle as well. Fearing for his life, Marduk-apla-iddina had already fled the battlefield. Sennacherib's inscriptions state that among

19822-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period

20009-465: The meanings of their names since no inscription otherwise designates them as the same and the two names do not appear together on any of the objects. Iaba's funerary inscription contains a curse against disturbing her tomb. In full, the inscription reads: By the name of Shamash , Ereshkigal and the Anunnaki , the great gods of the earth, mortal destiny overtook Iaba, the queen, in death, she went to

20196-402: The names of three queens, have been proposed since the discovery of the tomb. Most scholars assume that the two bodies belong to Iaba, clearly the original occupant of the tomb, and Atalia, the latest name that appears on the inscribed objects. The items inscribed with Banitu's name could then have been buried with Atalia, who was buried alongside items from various other kings as well (such as

20383-433: The names were Hebrew has also been independently forwarded by Simo Parpola. In 2002, K. Lawson Younger pointed out that it was far from certain that i-a or ia-a actually corresponded to Yahweh since there are few analogues in other Neo-Assyrian names and inscriptions. The identification of Atalia as a Hebrew name was also doubted by Nicholas Postgate in 2008, and in that year Ran Zadok alternatively suggested that Atalia

20570-489: The new crown prince. Arda-Mulissu held the position of the heir apparent for several years until 684 BC when Sennacherib suddenly replaced him with his younger brother Esarhaddon. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal is unknown, but it is clear from contemporary inscriptions that he was very disappointed. Esarhaddon's influential mother, Naqi'a , may have played a role in convincing Sennacherib to choose Esarhaddon as heir. Despite his dismissal, Arda-Mulissu remained

20757-448: The northern marshes of Babylonia in an attempt to find and capture Shuzubu, but they failed. Sennacherib then hunted for Marduk-apla-iddina, a hunt so intense the Chaldean escaped on boats with his people across the Persian Gulf, taking refuge in the Elamite city of Nagitu . Victorious, Sennacherib attempted yet another method to govern Babylonia and appointed his son Ashur-nadin-shumi to reign as Babylonian vassal king. Ashur-nadin-shumi

20944-526: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of

21131-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when

21318-410: The one dedicated to Sîn. The murder of Sennacherib, ruler of one of the world's strongest empires at the time, shocked his contemporaries. People throughout the Near East received the news with strong emotions and mixed feelings. The denizens of the Levant and Babylonia celebrated the news and proclaimed the act as divine punishment because of Sennacherib's brutal campaigns against them, while in Assyria

21505-403: The open revolts of two tribal leaders: Shuzubu (who later became Babylonian king under the name Mushezib-Marduk ) and Marduk-apla-iddina, now an elderly man. One of Sennacherib's first measures was to remove Bel-ibni from the Babylonian throne, either because of incompetence or complicity, and he was brought back to Assyria, whereafter he is not heard of again in the sources. The Assyrians searched

21692-458: The operation as an Assyrian failure due to a "multitude of field-mice " descending upon the Assyrian camp, devouring crucial material such as quivers and bowstrings, leaving the Assyrians unarmed and causing them to flee. It is possible that the story of the mice infestation is an allusion to some kind of disease striking the Assyrian camp, possibly the septicemic plague . An alternative hypothesis, first advanced by journalist Henry T. Aubin in 2001,

21879-478: The operation may lead one to believe that Sennacherib was present in person, this is never explicitly stated and reliefs depicting the campaign show Sennacherib seated on a throne in Lachish instead of overseeing the preparations for an assault on Jerusalem. According to the biblical account, the Assyrian envoys to Hezekiah returned to Sennacherib to find him engaged in a struggle with the city of Libnah . The account of

22066-418: The order of Ashur, father of the gods, and heavenly queen Ishtar may we both live long in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy wellbeing to the full! Though probably conceived as a structure like the palace Sargon built at Dur-Sharrukin, Sennacherib's palace, and especially the artwork featured within it, shows some differences. Though Sargon's reliefs usually show the king as close to other members of

22253-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in

22440-494: The other queen, Atalia appears to have died aged approximately 30–35, and her body was after death for unknown reasons roasted or smoked for several hours (at a temperature in the range 150–250 °C; 302–482 °F) before being wrapped in a shroud. Compared to the other queens, Atalia's dental health was notably bad; her first premolar has a cavity and she suffered not only from dental plaque but also from an abscess and from inflammation in her gums. Problems were not limited to

22627-557: The other. The lower skeleton has been designated Body II B and the upper skeleton has been designated Body II A. The skeletons were covered with burnt remains of linen garments. For security reasons, the bones and treasures of the tomb were placed in plastic bags and taken to the Mosul Museum on the same day they were discovered. There were several alabaster jars found in the tomb, one of which included brown and decomposed organic material. Analysis of this material has ruled it out being

22814-457: The path of her ancestors. Whomever, in the future, be it a queen who sits on the throne or a palace lady who is a concubine of the king, removes me from my tomb, or puts anybody else with me, and lays their hand upon my jewelry with evil intent or breaks open the seal of that tomb, above (earth), under the rays of the sun, let their spirit roam outside in thirst, below in the underworld, when libations of water are offered, they must not receive with

23001-463: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation

23188-476: The possibility that he had offended Babylon's deities by taking control of the city. A text, though probably written after Sennacherib's death, says he proclaimed he was investigating the nature of a "sin" committed by his father. A minor 704 BC campaign (unmentioned in Sennacherib's later historical accounts), led by Sennacherib's magnates rather than the king himself, was sent against Gurdî in Tabal to avenge Sargon. Sennacherib spent much time and effort to rid

23375-507: The possibility that the two queens in Tomb II were closely related. Though it has thus in the past been suggested, first by Muayyad Said Damerji in 1999, that Iaba and Atalia were mother and daughter, it would not have been appropriate for Sargon to marry his sister, and there are no other known cases of incestuous marriages in ancient Assyria. Still, it is possible that they were close relatives in some other arrangement. The bones discovered in

23562-432: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Ataliya The names of the queens have aroused some interest since out of the three names, only Banitu appears to be an Akkadian (the language of ancient Assyria) name. Various etymological origins have been proposed for the other names; Iaba has variously been identified as

23749-461: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian

23936-420: The preservation of the skeletons have demonstrated that the two queens were buried at least 20 years (though possibly as much as 50 years) apart and that both died aged approximately 30–35. If Iaba and Banitu were the same person, she would have had to have died during or after Shalmaneser's reign. Atalia, as Sargon's queen cannot have died earlier than 722 BC but was probably dead before 707/706 BC since

24123-419: The previous capital of Nimrud, Sennacherib intended to make Nineveh into a city whose magnificence and size astonished the civilized world. The earliest inscriptions discussing the building project at Nineveh date to 702 BC and concern the construction of the Southwest Palace, a large residence constructed in the southwestern part of the citadel. Sennacherib called this palace the ekallu ša šānina la išu ,

24310-528: The reaction was probably resentment and horror. Many sources recorded the event, including the Bible , where Arda-Mulissu is called Adrammelech . Neo-Assyrian Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) ) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from

24497-440: The recent wave of anti-Assyrian rebellions across the empire. After conspiring with Egypt (then under Kushite rule) and Sidqia , an anti-Assyrian king of the city of Ashkelon , to garner support, Hezekiah attacked Philistine cities loyal to Assyria and captured the Assyrian vassal Padi , king of Ekron , and imprisoned him in his capital, Jerusalem . In the northern Levant, former Assyrian vassal cities rallied around Luli ,

24684-413: The region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe

24871-451: The reign of Sennacherib, 20–50 years after the death of Iaba/Banitu, and was buried in the same tomb. In 2017, Keiko Yamada and Shigeo Yamada questioned this hypothesis by wondering if it was really likely that Sargon's queen would be buried together with the queen of Shalmaneser, whom Sargon had deposed and by pointing out that the hypothesis that Iaba and Banitu were the same person was based solely in one of several possible interpretations of

25058-460: The result of neoplastic meningitis . Analysis of the jaw and teeth showed that Iaba also suffered from a severe inflammation of the gums and dental abscesses which resulted in the loss of two teeth. Although no dental plaque was detected on any of the surviving teeth, it was likely present. Iaba suffered from slight wear to some of her joints; slight signs of wear were found in the right elbow and right knee joints, with stronger signs of wear found in

25245-443: The royal court was in that year moved to the new city Dur-Sharrukin and she is not attested in the reign of Sennacherib. Even if limiting the gap between the two burials to 20 years, Iaba and Banitu could then only be the same person if Atalia died very late in Sargon's reign. Saana Svärd defended Dalley's hypothesis in 2015 by suggesting that Ataliya was "deposed" as queen sometime before the end of Sargon's reign and actually died in

25432-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian

25619-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign

25806-426: The son of Iaba, would thus have married his father's widow to further strengthen his position as king. There are issues with the idea that Iaba and Banitu were the same person, one prominent issue being that the two names are never used interchangeably in the surviving material. In 2013, David Kertai opposed identifying Iaba and Banitu as the same person from a chronological standpoint. Microscopic investigations of

25993-506: The south had also once been a large kingdom, it was typically weaker than its northern neighbor during this period, due to internal divisions and the lack of a well-organized army. The population of Babylonia was divided into various ethnic groups with different priorities and ideals. Though old native Babylonians ruled most of the cities, such as Kish , Ur , Uruk , Borsippa , Nippur , and Babylon itself, Chaldean tribes led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other dominated most of

26180-461: The southern Levant was not as easily suppressed, forcing Sennacherib to invade the region. The Assyrians began by taking Ashkelon and defeating Sidqia. They then besieged and took numerous cities, including Beth-Dagon , Joppa , Banai-Barqa , and Azjuru . As the Assyrians were preparing to retake Ekron, Hezekiah's ally, Egypt, intervened in the conflict. The Assyrians defeated the Egyptian expedition in

26367-493: The southern city of Uruk. Nergal-ushezib was frightened by this development and called on the Elamites for aid. Just seven days after taking Uruk, the Assyrians and Babylonians met in battle at Nippur, where the Assyrians won a decisive victory; routing the Elamite-Babylonian army and capturing Nergal-ushezib, finally free from their entrapped position in the south. Through some unknown means, Sennacherib had managed to slip by

26554-492: The southerners won the battle, though probably suffering many casualties, since both of Sennacherib's enemies still remained on their respective thrones after the fighting. In 1982, Assyriologist Louis D. Levine wrote that the battle was probably an Assyrian victory, though not a decisive one and that though the southerners had been defeated and fled, the Assyrian advance on Babylon itself was temporarily halted. The Assyrian army's diversion from its course could then be interpreted by

26741-422: The southernmost land. The Arameans lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. The two kingdoms had competed since the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, and in the 8th century BC, the Assyrians consistently gained

26928-417: The stone sarcophagus in the chamber designated Tomb II. Iaba, Banitu and Atalia were not known by name prior to the discovery of the tomb. The find of the tombs, which contained other remains and names as well, nearly doubled the number of Neo-Assyrian queens known by name. On an alabaster tablet recording a funerary inscription, found in the alcove of the tomb's antechamber, Iaba's name is recorded and she

27115-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),

27302-459: The survivors to the Assyrian Empire, forcing some of them to work on Sennacherib's building projects, and others to serve in the king's personal guard. Sennacherib's account of what happened at Jerusalem begins with "As for Hezekiah ... like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him." Thus, Jerusalem

27489-406: The target of most of his military campaigns and had caused the death of his son, he destroyed the city in 689   BC. In the Levantine War, the states in the southern Levant, especially the Kingdom of Judah under King Hezekiah , were not subdued as easily as those in the north. The Assyrians thus invaded Judah. Though the biblical narrative holds that divine intervention by an angel ended

27676-404: The teeth; both her frontal sinuses exhibit evidence of inflammation and though she was at most 35 years old at the time of death, several of Atalia's vertebrae, as well as her ankle joints, hips, shoulders and knees show signs of mild arthritis . Atalia's vertebrae show some features that may suggest that she was suffering from the early stages of Scheuermann's disease , which eventually produces

27863-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises

28050-419: The threat of Elam, Sennacherib retook the city of Der, occupied by Elam during the previous conflict, and advanced into northern Elam. Kutur-Nahhunte could not organize an efficient defense against the Assyrians and refused to fight them, instead fleeing to the mountain city of Haidalu . Shortly thereafter, the severe weather forced Sennacherib to retreat and return home. Despite the defeat of Nergal-ushezib and

28237-489: The throne from Tiglath-Pileser's other son Shalmaneser V . Sennacherib was probably born c.   745 BC in Nimrud. If Sargon was the son of Tiglath-Pileser and not a non-dynastic usurper, Sennacherib would have grown up in the royal palace at Nimrud and spent most of his youth there. Sargon continued to live in Nimrud long after he had become king, leaving the city in 710 BC to reside at Babylon , and later at his new capital, Dur-Sharrukin , in 706 BC. By

28424-427: The time Sargon moved to Babylon, Sennacherib, who served as the crown prince and designated heir, had already left Nimrud, living in a residence at Nineveh . Nineveh had been the designated seat of the Assyrian crown prince since the reign of Tiglath-Pileser. As crown prince, Sennacherib also owned an estate at Tarbisu . The royal educator, Hunnî, would have educated Sennacherib and his siblings. They probably received

28611-418: The time refer to the era as the "kingless" period when there was no king in the land. After the final war with Babylon, Sennacherib dedicated his time to improving his new capital at Nineveh rather than embarking on large military campaigns. Nineveh had been an important city in northern Mesopotamia for millennia. The oldest traces of human settlement at its location are from the 7th millennium BC, and from

28798-436: The tombs thereafter was a slow process. Out of the over two dozen individuals found in the tombs many remain unidentified given that inscriptions do not provide identifications for all the bodies and tombs. The many individuals were spread out in four different chambers, buried in three bronze coffins, two clay coffins and three sarcophagi made of stone. The finds relevant to Iaba, Banitu and Atalia were discovered in and around

28985-424: The tribute that he had failed to send to Nineveh from 705 to 701 BC. He was also forced to release the imprisoned king of Ekron, Padi, and Sennacherib granted substantial portions of Judah's land to the neighboring kingdoms of Gaza , Ashdod and Ekron . By 700 BC, the situation in Babylonia had once again deteriorated to such an extent that Sennacherib had to invade and reassert his control. Bel-ibni now faced

29172-400: The upper hand. Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 729 BC. During the expansion of Assyria into a major empire, the Assyrians had conquered various neighboring kingdoms, either annexing them as Assyrian provinces or turning them into vassal states. Because the Assyrians venerated the long history and culture of Babylon, it

29359-570: The upper one is not indicated solely by it being placed furthest down, but also by the bones being in a more advanced stage of decomposition and that it appears to have been damaged when the upper body was placed in the sarcophagus. The bones of Iaba were upon their discovery far more brittle than those of Atalia, perhaps due to the later opening of the tomb or due to heat exposure. Iaba's bones reveal that she suffered from several health issues in her life. The interior of her skulls suggests that she had suffered from several minor brain tumors , probably

29546-456: The urban Babylonians and the tribal Chaldeans, and he also enlisted troops from the neighboring civilization of Elam , in modern-day south-western Iran. Though assembling all these forces took time, Sennacherib reacted slowly to these developments, which allowed Marduk-apla-iddina to station large contingents at the cities of Kutha and Kish. Portions of the Assyrian army were away in Tabal in 704 BC. Because Sennacherib might have considered

29733-409: The wealth of that city—silver, gold, precious stones, property and goods—into the hands of my people; and they took it as their own. The hands of my people laid hold of the gods dwelling there and smashed them; they took their property and goods. I destroyed the city and its houses, from foundation to parapet; I devastated and burned them. I razed the brick and earthenwork of the outer and inner wall of

29920-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form

30107-521: The wrath of the Assyrians, escaping by boat until he was beyond Sennacherib's reach. In his stead, Sennacherib proclaimed a noble by the name Ethbaal as the new king of Sidon and his vassal and oversaw the submission of many of the surrounding cities to his rule. Faced with a massive Assyrian army nearby, many of the Levantine rulers, including Budu-ilu of Ammon , Kamusu-nadbi of Moab , Mitinti of Ashdod and Aya-ramu of Edom , quickly submitted to Sennacherib to avoid retribution. The resistance in

30294-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has

30481-468: Was a city which at that point only existed in his imagination. By 700 BC the walls of the Southwest Palace's throne room were being constructed, followed shortly by the many reliefs to be displayed within it. The final step in the palace's construction was the erection of colossal statues depicting bulls and lions, characteristic of Late Assyrian architecture. Though such stone statues have been excavated at Nineveh, similar colossal statues mentioned in

30668-456: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division

30855-427: Was also a change in rulership in Elam, where Kutur-Nahhunte was deposed in favor of Humban-menanu , who began assembling the anti-Assyrian coalition once more. Mushezib-Marduk ensured Humban-menanu's support by bribing him. The Assyrian records considered Humban-menanu's decision to support Babylonia to be unintelligent, describing him as a "man without any sense or judgement". Sennacherib met his enemies in battle near

31042-439: Was also titled māru rēštû , a title that could be interpreted either as the "pre-eminent son" or the "firstborn son". His appointment as king of Babylon and the new title suggests that Ashur-nadin-shumi was being groomed to succeed Sennacherib as the king of Assyria upon his death. If māru rēštû means "pre-eminent" such a title would befit only the crown prince, and if it means "firstborn", this also suggests that Ashur-nadin-shumi

31229-580: Was an Arabic name. The tomb containing the remains of the queens was uncovered during excavations at the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC) in Nimrud in the late 1980s, by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities . While excavating portions of the residential quarters of the Northwest Palace in 1988, an unevenness of the floor was noted and soon, the chamber of tombs below

31416-400: Was another of Sargon's wives, Ra'īmâ ; a stele from Assur (once the capital of Assyria ), discovered in 1913, specifically refers to her as the "mother of Sennacherib". Ra'īmâ's existence is a recent discovery, based on a 2014 reading of the inscription on the stele. Sargon claimed he was himself the son of the earlier king Tiglath-Pileser III , but this is uncertain as Sargon usurped

31603-518: Was blockaded in some capacity, though the lack of massive military activities and appropriate equipment meant that it was probably not a full siege. According to the Biblical narrative, a senior Assyrian official with the title Rabshakeh stood in front of the city's walls and demanded its surrender, threatening that the Judeans would 'eat feces and drink urine' during the siege. Although the Assyrian account of

31790-423: Was chosen by the Babylonians themselves. The Assyrian army, by now surrounded by the Elamites in southern Babylonia, managed to kill the son of Hallutash-Inshushinak in a skirmish but remained trapped for at least nine months. Wishing to consolidate his position as king, Nergal-ushezib took advantage of the situation and captured and plundered the city of Nippur. Some months later, the Assyrians attacked and captured

31977-449: Was discovered. The tombs were excavated and examined 1988–1990. Tomb II, which contains the finds relevant to Iaba, Banitu and Atalia, was discovered and excavated in 1989. Although the tombs were immediately recognized as extraordinary on account of the great treasures contained within them, their discovery was soon overshadowed by the Gulf War (1991), which meant that scientific study of

32164-594: Was emotional in a sense; Neo-Assyrian inscriptions implicitly gender the two countries, calling Assyria the metaphorical "husband" and Babylon its "wife". In the words of the Assyriologist Eckart Frahm, "the Assyrians were in love with Babylon, but also wished to dominate her". Though Babylon was respected as the well-spring of civilization, it was expected to remain passive in political matters, something that Assyria's "Babylonian bride" repeatedly refused to be. In 705 BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led

32351-623: Was inflammations within her skull, a recurring and incurable affliction which caused immense head pain. The three names of the queens are unusually short and modest compared to the names of some of the other known Assyrian queens, such as Shammuramat and Libbali-sharrat . Iaba's name is inscribed in cuneiform as ia-ba-a , transliterated as Iabâ or Yabâ . The name, clearly not of Akkadian origin, might be of either West Semitic , perhaps Levantine or Aramean , or Arabic origin, with possible roots including yph ("beautiful"), nby ("to name") and yhb ("to give"). Banitu's name

32538-414: Was largely an Assyrian victory. After the Assyrians had seized many of Judah's most important fortified cities and destroyed several towns and villages, Hezekiah realized that his anti-Assyrian activities had been disastrous military and political miscalculations and accordingly submitted to the Assyrians once more. He was forced to pay a heavier tribute than previously, probably along with a heavy penalty and

32725-464: Was less stable. Unlike Sargon and previous Babylonian rulers, who had proclaimed themselves as shakkanakku ( viceroys ) of Babylon, in reverence for the city's deity Marduk (who was considered Babylon's formal "king"), Sennacherib explicitly proclaimed himself as Babylon's king. Furthermore, he did not "take the hand" of the Statue of Marduk , the physical representation of the deity, and thus did not honor

32912-444: Was located), including a temple dedicated to the god Sîn (invoked in the king's own name). Sennacherib also massively expanded the city to the south and erected enormous new city walls, surrounded by a moat, up to 25 metres (82 ft) high and 15 metres (49 ft) thick. When his eldest son and original crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi, disappeared, presumably executed, Sennacherib selected his eldest surviving son, Arda-Mulissu , as

33099-403: Was married off to Ambaris, the king of Tabal , but probably returned to Assyria after Sargon's first successful campaign against Tabal. Sennacherib's name, Sîn-aḥḥē-erība , means " Sîn (the moon-god) has replaced the brothers" in Akkadian. The name probably derives from Sennacherib not being Sargon's first son, but all his older brothers being dead by the time he was born. In Hebrew , his name

33286-482: Was postponed, and Esarhaddon raised an army and seized Nineveh, installing himself as king as intended by Sennacherib. Sennacherib was the son and successor of the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II , who had reigned as king of Assyria from 722 to 705 BC and as king of Babylon from 710 to 705 BC. The identity of Sennacherib's mother is uncertain. Historically, the most popular view has been that Sennacherib

33473-441: Was preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king, or by the Assyrian king in a personal union . The relationship between Assyria and Babylonia was similar to the relationship between Greece and Rome in later centuries; much of Assyria's culture, texts and traditions had been imported from the south. Assyria and Babylonia also shared the same language ( Akkadian ). The relationship between Assyria and Babylon

33660-506: Was rendered as Snḥryb and in Aramaic it was Šnḥ’ryb . According to a 670 BC document, it was illegal to give the name Sennacherib (then the former king) to a commoner in Assyria, as it was considered sacrilege. As crown prince, Sennacherib exercised royal power with his father, or alone as a substitute while Sargon was away campaigning. During Sargon's longer absences from the Assyrian heartland, Sennacherib's residence would have served as

33847-505: Was revealed by the frontal , parietal and occipital bones of her skull being thickened. The inner surfaces of these bones suggest that Atalia, due to her meninges reacting to the thickening, suffered from inflammation within the skull so severe that the swelling blood vessels changed the interior of the skull bones. This recurring and incurable condition would have caused immense pain. A number of stone amulets found in Tomb II contain spells meant to protect against head pain. Though no name

34034-678: Was terrible, being doomed to suffer like beggars for eternity. Sennacherib was about 35 years old when he ascended to the Assyrian throne in August of 705 BC. He had a great deal of experience with how to rule the empire because of his long tenure as crown prince. His reaction to his father's fate was to distance himself from Sargon. Frahm characterized Sennacherib's reaction as "one of almost complete denial", writing that Sennacherib "apparently felt unable to acknowledge and mentally deal with what had happened to Sargon". Sennacherib immediately abandoned Sargon's great new capital city, Dur-Sharrukin, and moved

34221-488: Was the heir. In most cases the Assyrians followed the principle of primogeniture , wherein the oldest son inherits. More evidence in favor of Ashur-nadin-shumi being the crown prince is Sennacherib's construction of a palace for him at the city of Assur, something Sennacherib would also do for the later crown prince Esarhaddon. As an Assyrian king of Babylon, Ashur-nadin-shumi's position was politically important and highly delicate and would have granted him valuable experience as

34408-482: Was the son of Sargon's wife Ataliya , although this is now considered unlikely. To have been Sennacherib's mother, Ataliya would have had to be born around the year 760 BC, at the latest, and lived to at least 692 BC, as a "queen mother" is attested in that year, but Ataliya's grave at Nimrud , which was discovered in the 1980s, indicates she was 35 years old at most when she died. The Assyriologist Josette Elayi considers it more plausible Sennacherib's mother

34595-829: Was to maintain relations with Assyrian governors and generals and oversee the empire's vast military intelligence network. Sennacherib oversaw domestic affairs and often informed Sargon of the progress being made on building projects throughout the empire. Sargon also assigned him to the reception and distribution of audience gifts and tribute. After distributing such financial resources, Sennacherib sent letters to his father to inform him of his decisions. A letter to his father indicates that Sennacherib respected him and that they were on friendly terms. He never disobeyed his father, and his letters indicate he knew Sargon well and wanted to please him. For unknown reasons, Sargon never took him on his military campaigns. Elayi believes that Sennacherib may have resented his father for this as he missed out on

34782-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for

34969-505: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in

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