Sennacherib

Sennacherib (died January 681 bce, Nineveh [now in Iraq]) was the king of Assyria (705/704–681 bce), son of Sargon II. He made Nineveh his capital, building a new palace, extending and beautifying the city, and erecting inner and outer city walls that still stand. Sennacherib figures prominently in the Old Testament.

Early career and the Babylonian campaigns

Sennacherib was the son and successor of Sargon II, from whom he inherited an empire that extended from Babylonia to southern Palestine and into Asia Minor. Before his accession he served, with ability demonstrated by his extant reports, as a senior administrator and diplomat in the north and northwest of the empire. The main problem of his reign was in Babylonia, where the growth of the power of the Chaldean and Aramaean tribes seriously disturbed the old urban centres, whose interests in commerce and need for safe trade routes made them usually pro-Assyrian. Political instability was worsened by the interference of Elam (southwestern Iran), so that between 703 and 689 Sennacherib had to undertake six campaigns in that area; his attitude toward the capital city, Babylon, changed from acceptance of native rule to hostility.

The peace was broken in 703 by a tribal insurrection under the Chaldean Merodach-Baladan (Marduk-apal-iddina), with Elamite military assistance. By skillful generalship Sennacherib recovered northern Babylonia and appointed a native Babylonian, Bel-ibni, as subking. His army devastated the tribal areas in southern Babylonia, though he spared major Babylonian cities, except for a few that had gone over to the tribesmen. Elamite interference in Babylonia probably dictated a campaign in 702 against the petty kingdoms of the Zagros Mountains, vassals of Elam, to forestall a possible Elamite thrust by that route toward eastern Assyria.

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In 701 a rebellion, backed by Egypt, though probably instigated by Merodach-Baladan (2 Kings 20:12–18; Isaiah 39:1–7), broke out in Palestine. Sennacherib reacted firmly, supporting loyal vassals and taking the rebel cities, except for Jerusalem, which, though besieged, was spared on payment of a heavy indemnity (2 Kings 18:13–19:36; Isa. 36:1–37:37). The biblical narrative has been interpreted as implying two campaigns against Jerusalem, but this receives no support from Assyrian sources.

Further intrigues by Merodach-Baladan necessitated another Assyrian campaign into the Chaldean area in 700. Merodach-Baladan thereupon took refuge in Elam, where he soon died. Sennacherib’s hardening attitude toward Babylon was marked by the introduction of direct Assyrian rule through the replacement of Bel-ibni by Sennacherib’s son Ashur-nadin-shum. This gave Babylonia a brief period of stability, during which Sennacherib undertook campaigns in Cilicia and the north. But continuing Elamite support for disaffected Chaldean tribesmen led in 694 to a further attack on southern Babylonia, coupled with a seaborne invasion of Elam across the Persian Gulf. Elam reacted by raiding northern Babylonia, capturing Ashur-nadin-shum, and installing a nominee who reigned for 18 months until removed during a fresh Assyrian attack.

Another Chaldean leader, Mushezib-Marduk, now seized Babylon and, by opening the temple treasuries, bought massive military support from Elam. In 691 the Assyrian and Elamite armies met at Halule on the Diyālā, where Sennacherib, though claiming a victory, suffered losses that left him temporarily impotent. In 689 he returned to besiege Babylon, capturing it after nine months. Abandoning attempts to conciliate this great cult centre, Sennacherib systematically sacked Babylon; a text exists that probably represents a theological justification for this impiety.

Building and technological achievements

Sennacherib’s most enduring work was the rebuilding of Nineveh, his official residence as crown prince. On his accession he made it his capital, building a splendid new palace, Shanina-la-ishu (“Nonesuch”). Using prisoners of war for labour, he extended and beautified the city, laying out streets, restoring and extending public buildings, and erecting a great inner wall, nearly 8 miles (13 km) long, which encircled the city, and an outer wall; both walls still stand. Sennacherib also undertook building activities in other cities, particularly Ashur.

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Sennacherib is regarded as taking great interest in the construction of gardens and cultivated land, as well as their systems of irrigation. Around his capital he established plantations of fruit trees and parks of exotic trees and plants; among his introductions was the cotton plant, described as “the wool-bearing tree.” To irrigate the plantations, for which at times the Tigris and Khosr rivers fell too low, Sennacherib sought springs and streams in the hills north of Nineveh and led them by 6 miles (10 km) of canal and a massive stone aqueduct to feed the Khosr.

Sennacherib claimed to be “of clever understanding,” a boast supported by his initiatives in technology. He had surveys undertaken for new sources of alabaster and building stone, and he discovered new stands of giant timber in mountain forests. He devised a new and less laborious method of bronze casting and introduced more convenient equipment for raising water from wells. He showed considerable logistic ability in his seaborne attack on Elam, in which ships built in Nineveh were taken by Phoenician sailors down the Tigris, overland to a canal of the Euphrates, and thence to the Persian Gulf.

Sennacherib died in January 681 by parricide, probably at Nineveh. He was survived by his principal wife Naqia, mother of his heir Esarhaddon; her non-Assyrian name suggests that she was of either Jewish or Aramaean origin.

Because of his attack on Jerusalem, Sennacherib receives prominence in the Bible. Isaiah regarded Sennacherib as God’s instrument (2 Kings 19:23–28; Isa. 37:24–29); the prophet did not condemn the king’s military activities as such, though punishment was decreed for his arrogance in not acknowledging the divine source of his power.

In The Story of Ahikar (a pre-Christian Oriental work), Sennacherib is portrayed as a king of apparently good repute, under whom the sage Ahikar served; where this same story is alluded to in the Old Testament apocryphal book of Tobit, however, the king is cast in an evil role. A similar ambivalence is shown in Jewish Talmudic tradition, where Sennacherib, though called an evil man, is regarded as the ancestor of the teachers of the celebrated Rabbi Hillel.

Classical tradition retained a memory of Sennacherib’s activities not only in Babylonia but also in Cilicia, where the building of Tarsus, on the plan of Babylon, was attributed to him. He was also credited with building a temple at Athens. One theory holds that the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon, of which definite traces have yet to be found, were constructed by Sennacherib at Nineveh. Herodotus’ story of an attempted invasion of Egypt frustrated by mice eating the Assyrian bowstrings and quivers may reflect a plague epidemic during Sennacherib’s Palestinian campaign; this possibly underlay the story (in 2 Kings 19:35; Isa. 37:36) of the decimation of the Assyrian army by God’s destroying angel, which inspired Lord Byron’s poem “The Destruction of Sennacherib.”