Sargon II and Sennacherib: More than just an overlap by Damien F. Mackey Sargon II (above); Sennacherib (below): (same King, same eunuch?) Taken from C. Archer’s The Assyrian Empire, p. 66 for Sargon II (“Sargon II and an attendant eunuch. Young boys were made eunuchs when given to the king as tribute. In Assyrian art they are always shown as being both beardless and chubby. Drawing of a bas-relief from Khorsabad”); p. 79 for Sennacherib (“Sennacherib accepting the defeat of the vanquished. Engraving of a bas-relief from Nimrud”). My realisation that Sargon II was the same person as his presumed son, Sennacherib, came to me gradually, after my firstly having considered that there must have been - contrary to the conventional view of things - a fairly substantial co-regency between these supposedly two kings. Whilst I had always considered, under revisionist influence, that neo-Assyrian history, too, would need to undergo a fair degree of alteration, I probably owe it especially to Eric Aitchison’s e-mails and his challenging C and C articles on the neo-Assyrian era (notably, Assyria: Is the Conventional Profile Believable? and Thiele’s Assyrian Reliance) for pressing me into focussing seriously on the problems and especially to questioning the sacrosanct Limmu lists. Eric had also, in e-mails, drawn my attention to the fact that the wording of the accounts of the two ‘Palace[s] Without Rival’ complexes (conventionally attributed to two kings, Sargon II and Sennacherib) were virtually identical, necessitating, as Eric had concluded, that these palaces must have been built very close in time. The respective accounts read:1 Sargon: “Palaces of ivory, maple, Sennacherib: “Thereon I had them build a boxwood, musukkani-wood (mulberry?), palace of ivory, maple, boxwood, mulberry cedar, cypress, juniper, pine and pistachio, (musukannu), cedar, cypress ... pistachio, the “Palace without Rival”, for my royal the “Palace without a Rival”, for my royal abode. abode. .... with great beams of cedar .... Door- Beams of cedar .... Great door-leaves of leaves of cypress ... shining bronze and set cypress ... shining copper and set them up them up in their gates. A portico, patterned in their doors. A portico, patterned after a after a Hittite (Syrian) palace, which in Hittite (Syrian) palace, which they call in the tongue of Amurru they call a bit- the Amorite tongue a bit-hilani ...”. hilanni ...”. Both long accounts of the building constructions, much edited here, conclude with, precisely: “I made them objects of astonishment”. I gradually, though, moved beyond the co-regency view to thinking that this must in fact be the same person recording. That Sargon was, say, the throne name of a king whose personal name was Sennacherib2 and that, as regards the two ‘Palace[s] Without a Rival’, it was the same king, using presumably the same architect(s), doing all of this building. I wish to stress the fact that this conclusion was reached slowly, over a period of time, and as the result of my becoming increasingly aware of the - actually quite striking - likenesses between the activities (building and military) of Sargon II and Sennacherib. Now, the time shrinking involved with this new thesis serves to solve a host of chronologico-historical puzzles and anomalies, including many relating to the troublesome Third Intermediate Period [TIP] of Egyptian history. To give a few immediate examples of why I think Sargon II and Sennacherib were just ‘two sides of the one coin’, consider these peculiarities (the last one dependent on my view that ‘Ashdod’ of Sargon’s records - as distinct from his ‘Ashdod-by-the Sea’ - was actually Lachish): - J. Russell’s statement: 3 “... Nineveh, where there is little evidence of Sargon’s activities”. Now, doesn’t that seem strange? Why would so proud and mighty a king as Sargon II virtually neglect one of Assyria’s most pre-eminent cities, Nineveh? Conversely, why did Sennacherib seemingly avoid completely Sargon’s brand new city of Dur-Sharrukin? 1 These accounts have been taken from D. Luckenbill’s Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia [ARAB], vol. 2, # 73 (for Sargon II) & #’s 366, 367 (for Sennacherib). Italics added to facilitate comparisons. 2 Sin-ahhê-eriba, ‘the god Sin has compensated (the death of) the brothers’. Sharru-kîn, ‘true king’. 3 Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh, p. 243.  - Again, why did Sennacherib record only campaigns, and not his regnal years? Sargon II, by contrast, recorded his regnal years. - Why are Sargon II and Sennacherib the only ‘two’ exceptions amongst the Assyrian kings to reject the custom of recording their titulary back through father and grandfather? 4 - Why did Sennacherib, who “concentrated immense resources and expended tremendous energy in [Lachish’s] capture”, according to Russell in his study of “recent excavations at Lachish”,5 only pictorially, and not in written record, represent this most momentous event? Has Sargon II in fact provided the written account of it (as Ashdod)? Moreover, Sargon II undertook an incursion into Judaean territory as far as Azekah, “not far from Lachish”, 6 yet he is considered not even to have mentioned or acknowledged Lachish. These matters are entirely resolved with the merging of Sargon II with Sennacherib. But even to suggest that there must have been a substantial overlap in the reigns of Sargon II and Sennacherib is already a fairly radical departure from convention which considers co-regencies to be virtually non existent amongst neo-Assyrian kings.7 And convention gives no hint of any co-regency for Sargon II and Sennacherib in particular, who are dated, respectively, to 721-705 BC and 704-681 BC. What had struck me, though, was that Sargon II’s Year 12 and Year 14 campaigns 8, respectively, were worded (and were geographically located) similarly to Sennacherib’s First and Second Campaigns. I have added italics to facilitate comparison: Sargon: “In my twelfth year of reign, Sennacherib: “In my first campaign I Marduk-apal-iddina [Merodach-baladan] accomplished the defeat of Merodach- and Shuturnahundu, the Elamite ... I ... baladan ... together with the army of Elam, smote with the sword, and conquered ...” his ally....”. And: Sargon: “Talta, king of the Ellipi ... Sennacherib: “... I turned and took the reached the appointed limit of life ... road to the land of the Ellipi. ... Ispabara, Ispabara [his son] ... fled into ... the their king, ... fled .... The cities of fortress of Marubishti, ... that fortress they Marubishti and Akkuddu, ... I destroyed .... overwhelmed as with a net. ... people ... I Peoples of the lands my hands had brought up.” conquered I settled therein”. I later made an important correction to this when I realised that Sargon II had recorded, in his Year 14, that he had, “in the course of my former campaign”, subdued Taltâ of Ellipi. Sennacherib’s Second Campaign, against Ellipi, could now be seen as the record of this “former campaign”, mentioned only in passing in Sargon’s most detailed account. Basically - and I have discussed all of this in far more detail in my post-graduate thesis 4 According to Russell, ibid. 5 Ibid, p. 256. 6 Ibid, p. 81. 7 Though M. Anstey did early (1913) propose a co-regency between Sargon II and Sennacherib. See his Romance of Bible Chronology, p. 210. 8 Luckenbill, op. cit., gives it as Year 15 with a question mark.  A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973 - one arrives at this most gratifying comparison (taken from my thesis) between the sequence of campaigns of Sargon II and Sennacherib: A Question By Way of Summary What are the chances of two successive kings having, in such perfect chronological sequence - over a span of some two decades - the same campaigns against the same enemies? 1. Merodach-baladan (Sargon). Merodach-baladan (Sennacherib). 2. Ellipi, Medes and Tumunu (Sargon). Ellipi, Medes and Tumunu (Sennacherib). 3. Egypt-backed Judah/Philistia (Sargon). Egypt-backed Judah/Philistia (Sennacherib) 4. Merodach-baladan and Elam (Sargon). Merodach-baladan and Elam (Sennacherib). 5. (Not fully preserved) (Sargon). (Not fully preserved) (Sennacherib). 6. Babylon, Elam and Bit-Iakin (Sargon). Babylon, Elam and Bit-Iakin (Sennacherib). 7. Elam (Sargon). Elam (Sennacherib). While all of this may look convincing, superficially at least, there are however some very compelling reasons why one might flatly reject my thesis in favour of the conventional view of Sargon II and Sennacherib as, respectively, father and son. Let us note briefly the chief major difficulties that such a thesis would have to confront, before considering some of its advantages further to those already mentioned. (a) Basic Problems I refer especially to the primary sources (as opposed to the Babylonian Chronicle which is a late document), the genealogical sequences that one finds e.g. in Luckenbill’s ARAB. For instance, Esarhaddon’s testimony, in Prism S: “I am Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of Assyria ... son of Sennacherib, king of Assyria; (grand)son of Sargon, king of the universe, king of Assyria”. It should however immediately be noted, regarding this Prism S, that it and Prism B which it is thought to supplement are referred to by Luckenbill as “The Broken Prisms B and S”, and “the fragmentary Prism S”.9 Prism A, in the British Museum, gives the following heavily bracketted sequence:10 [Esarhaddon, the great king, the mighty king, king of the universe, king of Assyria, viceroy of Babylon, king] of [Sumer] and Akkad, [son of Sennacherib, the great king, the mighty king], king of Assyria, [(grand)son of Sargon, the great king, the mighty king], king of Assyria .... 9 Ibid., ch. vii, p. 199, # 499. 10 Ibid, p. 211, # 526. Note also the equally heavy bracketted, supposed reference to Sargon by Ashurbanipal in ibid, # 986. Luckenbill describes this as “the best preserved of the Esarhaddon prisms, only the tops of the columns having suffered slight injury”. 11 Its translation though is noticeably much more heavily bracketted than is that of Prism S, which, though damaged, is better preserved at the top. Regarding the condition of Esarhaddon’s extant documents, Luckenbill has admitted at the start of his chapter on this ruler that: “Owing to the condition in which the documents have come down to us, and to the fact that the scribes did not arrange the events of the king’s reign according to years or campaigns, the modern editor’s task becomes somewhat difficult”. Olmstead seems to me to be rather less optimistic about the fact that, given the scant documentation for the reign of Esarhaddon, we are forced to fall back on the Display Inscriptions which are not a reliable source of documentation, with all their “possibilities for error.12 More modern efforts to reconstruct the chronology of Esarhaddon and his genealogy 13 are still dependent upon the same broken and incomplete sources as were the earlier Assyriologists. Another seemingly compelling evidence in favour of the conventional chronology, but one that has required heavy restoration work by the Assyriologists, is in regard to Sennacherib’s supposed accession. According to the usual interpretation of the eponym for Nashur(a)-bel, (705 BC, conventional dating), known as Eponym Cb6, Sargon was killed and Sennacherib then sat on the throne: 14 “The king [against Tabal....] against Ešpai the Kulummaean. [......] The king was killed. The camp of the king of Assyria [was taken......]. On the 12th of Abu, Sennacherib, son [of Sargon, took his seat on the throne]”. Tadmor informs us about this passage that: “Winckler and Delitzsch restored: [MU 16 Šarru-ki]n; ana Ta-ba-lu [illik]”. That is, these scholars took the liberty of adding Sargon’s name here. Jonsson, who note has included Sargon’s name in his version of the text, gives it more heavily bracketted than had Tadmor:15 “[Year 17] Sargon [went] against Tabal [was killed in the war. On the 12th of Abu, Sennacherib, son of Sargon, sat on the throne]”. This is, I believe, the root of the whole problem, that the Assyriologists have filled in the gaps based upon their presumptions – faulty as I believe – of the neo-Assyrian succession, thereby wreaking havoc with neo-Assyrian history and all that is tied to it, e.g. Egypt’s TIP. Then along came biblical chronologists, like Edwin Thiele, who, tying the contemporaneous biblical history for this period (notably king Hezekiah of Judah) to the Procrustean bed of received neo-Assyrian chronology, began to stretch and hack at it until it perfectly conformed to that bed. And what an array of chronological ‘limbs’ and ‘arms’ got lost in the process! For instance, the most impressive three-way syncretism of (i) the Fall of Samaria, with the (ii) 9th Year of Hoshea and the (iii) 6th year of Hezekiah, as provided by 2 Kings 18:10 - supplemented by (iv) Sargon II’s telling that this occurred in his 1st Year, which he also says was the (v) 12th year of Merodach-baladan of Babylon - gets completely erased in Thiele’s ‘chronological slaughterhouse’. 11 Ibid, p. 199, # 498. 12 In ‘Assyrian Historiography. A Source Study’. Ch. II “The Beginnings of True History”. 13 E.g. the standard work on Esarhaddon by R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien (1967). 14 H. Tadmor, ‘The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur’, p. 97. 15 ‘The Foundations of the Assyro-Babylonian Chronology’, p. 21. Now the conventional system runs into the following mathematical conundrum when faced with the scriptural data; a dilemma, the ‘solution’ to which Thiele was able to provide only by completely ignoring half of its terms. It is this: A mere eight years later than the sixth year of Hezekiah, in that same king’s fourteenth year - which mathematically should be about Year 9 of Sargon II - Sennacherib is found to be the king of Assyria. Thus we read only 3 verses later, in verse 13: “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them”. Sargon, it appears, has disappeared from the Assyrian scene at a point about mid-way through his presumed 17-year reign! That is a real problem for Thiele and his colleagues who, meanwhile, entirely ignore the three-way Fall of Samaria correlation (i)-(iii), which their fixed chronological scheme cannot possibly accommodate. (b) Advantages of my Revised System These (including some already discussed) are too numerous to mention, and new ones I am sure will continue to come to light. But here is a starting list: - Sennacherib’s eponymy occurring “in his eighteenth year” 16 - despite the Eponym Canon indicating that kings regularly held the eponymy in their first regnal year, and certainly in their early years (Shalmaneser V, 4th regnal year; Sargon II, 3rd regnal year) - is a huge departure from Assyrian tradition. Perhaps easier to believe that, in the context of my thesis, this was Sennacherib’s second eponymy, his first being in his (i.e. Sargon’s) Year 3. - My thesis shortens very long reigns or governorships: (a) Deioces of Media no longer has to be hanging around for 55 years, but more like 35; (b) Merodach- baladan does not need to span an extra 12 years beside his alignment with Tiglath- pileser III, Shalmaneser V, and Sargon II; (c). similar scenario for Mitinti/Akhi-miti of Ashdod). - Sennacherib claimed to have employed Mannaeans as slave labourers, even though he is thought never to have campaigned against this people. 17 Russell can only conclude here that “the best [sic] way to account for the captives from Mannea ... this early in Sennacherib’s reign is to assume that they were left over from the reign of Sargon II, who did campaign in these areas”. A better way to account for these captives, in my opinion, would be to recognize that Sennacherib had already in his Second Campaign fought against the Mannaeans and the Medes. Similarly, Sargon II’s action against the Medes can explain Sennacherib’s boast (considered ‘mere bravado’) that he subdued the Medes even though there is supposedly no record of it. 16 Ibid. 17 Thus Russell, op. cit, p. 227.  - Sennacherib, with reference to his Third Campaign in the west, mentions that he had already been receiving tribute from Hezekiah of Judah prior to that. Yet Sennacherib’s two previous campaigns (First and Second) were nowhere near Judah in the west; but were waged in the east.18 So one wonders when had the king of Assyria managed initially to enforce his supremacy over king Hezekiah? - Sennacherib is thought, already by 713 BC, to have been the recipient, as crown prince, of the heavy tribute from Azuri of ‘Ashdod’, who was in fact Sargon’s foe.19 - Disturbing, too, is the following unprecedented situation at ‘Ashdod’ as viewed by Tadmor from the conventional angle:20 Ashdod was then organized [by Sargon] as an Assyrian province. Sennacherib however restored it to its former state as a tributary kingdom. .... Mitinti, the king of Ashdod, is mentioned in the Annals of Sennacherib .... There is no doubt, therefore, that at the time of the campaign of Judah (701) Ashdod had an autonomous king and not an Assyrian governor. The reorganization of Ashdod - from a province back to a vassaldom - has no precedent. .... in the time of Esarhaddon Ashdod was again turned into a province. All this topsy turvy supposedly in the space of a few decades! - The Tang-i Var inscription cannot possibly accommodate the conventional links between Sargon (died 705 BC) and the 25th (Ethiopian) dynasty, since it now reveals that pharaoh Shebitku, thought not to have begun to reign until c. 702 BC, was the Cushite pharaoh who handed over to Sargon the rebel, Iatna-Iamani; an incident currently dated to c. 707 BC. With my thesis also there is no time gap between Tirhakah as king in 2 Kings 19:9 and in 25th dynasty history. - The Book of Tobit (1:15) clearly calls Sennacherib the son of “Shalmaneser”, not “Sargon”. Finally, this thesis solves the Assyrian problem of the Book of Judith, unresolved I believe until this day. The Assyrian king, “Nebuchadnezzar”, of Judith, has likenesses to Sargon II (eastern war in 12th year) and Sennacherib (his 180,000 plus army annihilated).21 There is no longer any problem as this is all one and the same Assyrian king. 18 Sennacherib’s First Campaign was directed against Merodach-baladan in Babylonia; whilst his Second Campaign was against the Kassites also in the east. 19 Tadmor, op. cit, p. 79, n. 211. 20 Ibid, pp. 83-84. 21 I have also identified this “Nebuchadnezzar” with Nebuchednezzar I of Middle Babylonian history.