Sennacherib

Sennacherib is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: the geography of Assyria and its empire; Assyrian kingship, religion (the god Ashur), the army and the system of provinces and vassal states.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family; his role as crown prince under Sargon II; the circumstances of his accession.
• Career: his military campaigns, especially against Babylonia, the west and Elam; his relations with Babylon; his building program at Nineveh; his family and the succession; his death.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC. He reigned 705–681.

Assyria lay in northern Mesopotamia, along the Tigris, with cities such as Ashur (the religious centre), Kalhu (Nimrud) and Nineveh. By the late 8th century it was the greatest power in the Near East, controlling lands from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.

• Kingship: the king was the earthly agent of the god Ashur, with a duty to expand the god's land and punish those who broke their oaths. Royal inscriptions present every campaign as a victory.
• Empire: conquered lands were either provinces under Assyrian governors or vassal states whose kings swore loyalty and paid tribute. Rebels faced siege, execution and mass deportation, a standard policy for breaking resistance and moving workers.
• Rivals: Babylonia in the south, with its ancient prestige and its Chaldean leaders; Elam in south-west Iran; Urartu in the north; and Egypt, ruled by Kushite kings, in the west.

• Family: son of Sargon II (722–705). His wives included Tashmetu-sharrat and Naqi'a (also called Zakutu), mother of Esarhaddon.
• Crown prince: while his father campaigned, he helped run the government in the heartland. Surviving letters show him sending intelligence reports about Urartu.
• Accession (705): Sargon was killed in battle in Tabal (Anatolia) and his body was never recovered — a terrible omen. Sennacherib distanced himself from his father: he rarely mentions him, abandoned Sargon's new capital Dur-Sharrukin, and a later text, ‘The Sin of Sargon’ (its date is debated), shows him asking diviners what his father's sin had been. Revolts broke out in Babylonia and the west.

His annals number his campaigns. The main ones:

Judah and Lachish (701)

• Assyrian version (annals): 46 walled cities taken by siege ramps, battering rams and tunnels; 200,150 people deported (probably inflated); Hezekiah ‘shut up like a bird in a cage’ in Jerusalem; tribute of 30 talents of gold and 800 of silver sent to Nineveh. The annals do not claim Jerusalem was captured.
• Biblical version (2 Kings 18–19; Isaiah 36–37; 2 Chronicles 32): Hezekiah paid 300 talents of silver and 30 of gold, then the angel of the LORD struck down 185,000 Assyrians and Sennacherib went home.
• Herodotus (2.141): an Egyptian story that mice gnawed the bowstrings of ‘Sanacharib’'s army.
• Lachish: the siege is shown in reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh (now in the British Museum). Excavations, especially those led by David Ussishkin, uncovered the Assyrian siege ramp, a Judaean counter-ramp, hundreds of arrowheads and a destruction layer.
• Outcome: Judah survived as a smaller vassal; Hezekiah kept his throne.

Babylon

Babylon was sacred to all Mesopotamians, but it kept rebelling — first under Merodach-baladan (who had ruled Babylon 721–710 until Sargon expelled him), then, after 694, under the Elamite-backed kings Nergal-ushezib (694–693) and Mushezib-Marduk (692–689). Sennacherib moved from a client king (Bel-ibni) to family rule (his son) to destruction (689) after his son's capture and further revolts. His inscription at Bavian boasts that he made the city like a meadow. Babylon was without a recognised king for eight years. His son Esarhaddon began rebuilding it.

• The Southwest Palace, the ‘Palace without Rival’: dozens of rooms with winged bull colossi and carved reliefs of his campaigns, including the Lachish room.
• The city: greatly enlarged, with walls about 12 km long and many gates (about 15 are known).
• Water: canals reaching about 50 km into the hills, including the canal head at Khinis (Bavian) with royal reliefs, and the stone aqueduct at Jerwan. The water fed parks, orchards and fields.
• Gardens: exotic plants, including cotton (‘trees bearing wool’). The historian Stephanie Dalley (2013) has argued that the famous ‘Hanging Gardens’ were at Nineveh, not Babylon; this is debated.
• Technology: his inscriptions boast of new methods for casting huge bronze statues and of moving colossal stone sculptures.

• His eldest son Ashur-nadin-shumi disappeared in Elam (694). Another son, Urdu-Mullissu, became crown prince, but in about 683 Sennacherib chose a younger son, Esarhaddon, and made the court swear loyalty to him.
• In 681 Sennacherib was murdered. An Assyrian letter points to Urdu-Mullissu; the Bible names Adrammelech and Sharezer; the Babylonian Chronicle says he was killed by his son in a rebellion. Esarhaddon defeated his brothers in a short civil war.
• Babylonian tradition later saw his murder as Marduk's punishment for destroying Babylon (for example an inscription of Nabonidus).

Modern views: Josette Elayi (Sennacherib, King of Assyria) presents him as an energetic, innovative king — builder and engineer as well as general — whose reputation was shaped by his enemies in Judah and Babylon. Eckart Frahm, who has edited and studied his inscriptions, also stresses his ambition and innovation alongside the brutality and ultimate failure of his Babylonian policy.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Achievements: kept the empire together after Sargon's ominous death; won major campaigns; built Nineveh into the greatest city of its time with remarkable water works.
• Failures and limits: Jerusalem was not taken; Babylon could not be controlled and its destruction was seen as sacrilege; the succession crisis ended in his murder.
• Legacy: in Assyria, a capital that lasted until the empire's fall in 612; in the Bible, the arrogant king humbled by God; in Babylon, a destroyer.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on his engineering, not one of our bank questions):

‘Sennacherib's water works show a side of his kingship that the hostile biblical tradition ignores. At Jerwan, a stone aqueduct carried a canal across a valley on its way to Nineveh, and at Khinis he carved reliefs and inscriptions at the canal head, presenting the project as a gift of the gods. These works watered orchards and fields around the capital and supported its growing population. They suggest that he saw kingship as building and providing as well as conquering — though, like his campaigns, they were also designed to display his power.’

• Saying Sennacherib captured Jerusalem. He blockaded it; Hezekiah paid tribute.
• Treating the annals' numbers (such as 200,150 deportees) as exact.
• Linking his murder (681) directly to the campaign of 701 because the Bible places the two events together.
• Mixing up Sargon's capital (Dur-Sharrukin) and Sennacherib's (Nineveh).
• Forgetting a likely personal factor in the destruction of Babylon: the capture of his son.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his campaigns, Judah and Lachish, Babylon, or his building at Nineveh.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess his achievements, his reign or the sources. Compare Assyrian, biblical and archaeological evidence.
• Name the type of source each time: royal annals, palace reliefs, biblical narrative, chronicle.
• Useful terms: vassal, tribute, deportation, siege ramp, annals, propaganda, client king, succession.

• Society in Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria: the background to Hezekiah's Judah and the Assyrian conquest of Israel under Sargon II.
• Xerxes: another Near Eastern ruler seen mainly through the eyes of his enemies.
• Historical skills: comparing royal inscriptions with archaeology applies across the course.