The Legend of Naram-Sin

An artifact known as the Prism of Sennacherib preserved an historical inscription in which he made mention of the subjugation of Judea and his attack on Jerusalem.

The quarrel Sennacherib had with its king, Hezekiah. was the fact that he held captive Padi, the king of the Philistine city of Ekron, “who was loyal to his solemn oath to his god Ashur.”

Sennacherib wrote: “As to Hezekiah, the Judean who did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to forty-six of his strong cities, walled forts, and to the countless small villages in their vicinity. . . . Hezekiah himself I made captive in Jerusalem, his royal residence; like a bird in a cage I surrounded him with earthworks. . . . His towns which I had plundered I cut off from his land and gave them over to Mitinti, king of Ashdod; Padi. king of Ekron; and Sillibel, king of Gaza. Thus I reduced his country.”

The siege of Jerusalem offers several interesting aspects. It had no direct cause but only an indirect one: the forced holding there of the loyal king of Ekron. The “awe-inspiring Brilliance, the weapon of Ashur,” which was employed to “overwhelm the strong cities” of Phoenicia and Philistia, was not used against Jerusalem. And the customary inscriptional ending—“I fought with them and inflicted defeat upon them”—is missing in the case of Jerusalem; Sennacherib merely reduced the size of Judea by giving its outlying areas to neighboring kings.

Moreover, the usual claim that a land or a city was attacked upon the “trustworthy orders” of the god Ashur was also absent in the case of Jerusalem; one wonders whether all this meant that the attack on the city was an unauthorized attack—a whim of Sennacherib himself but not the wish of his god? This intriguing possibility becomes a convincing probability as we read the other side of the story—for such an other side docs exist in the Old Testament.

While Sennacherib glossed over his failure to capture Jerusalem, the tale in II Kings, chapters 18 and 19, offers the full story. We learn from the biblical report that “in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came upon all the walled cities of Judea and captured them.” He then sent two of his generals with a large army to Jerusalem, the capital. But instead of storming the city, the Assyrian general Rab-Shakeh began a verbal exchange with the city’s leaders—an exchange he insisted on conducting in Hebrew so that the whole populace might understand him.

What did he have to say that the populace ought to have known? As the biblical text makes clear, the verbal exchanges concerned the question of whether the Assyrian invasion of Judea was authorized by the Lord Yahweh! “And Rab-Shakeh said unto them: Speak ye now to Hezekiah: Thus sayeth the great king, the king of Assyria: What confidence is it wherein thou trusteth?” If ye say unto me: “We trust in Yahweh, our God” . . . Now then.

Am I come against this place to destroy it without Yahweh?

Yahweh did say unto me:

“Go up against this land, and destroy it!” The more the ministers of king Hezekiah. standing upon the city’s walls, pleaded with Rab-Shakeh to cease saying these untrue things in Hebrew and to deliver his message in the then language of diplomacy, Aramaic, the more did Rab-Shakeh approach the walls to shout his words in Hebrew for all to hear. Soon he began to use foul language against Hezekiah’s emissaries; then he started to degrade the king himself. Carried away by his own oratory. RabShakeh abandoned his claim to have had Yahweh’s permission to attack Jerusalem and went on to belittle the God himself. When Hezekiah was told of the blasphemy, “he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the House of Yahweh. . . . And he sent word to the Prophet Isaiah, saying:

‘This is a day of trouble, of rebuke, of blasphemy. . . . May Yahweh thy Lord hear all the words of Rab-Shakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria hath sent to scorn the Living God.’ And the word of the Lord Yahweh came back through his Prophet Isaiah:

‘Concerning the king of Assyria . . . the way that he came, he shall return; and unto this city he shall not come in . . . for I shall defend this city to save it.’ " And it came to pass that night, that the angel of Yahweh went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand; and at sunrise, lo and behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria.

departed, and journeyed back and dwelt in Nineveh. According to the Old Testament, after Sennacherib had returned to Nineveh, “it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, that Adrammelech and Sharezzer his sons smote him with a sword; and they escaped unto the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead.”

Assyrian records confirm the biblical statement: Sennacherib was indeed so assassinated, and his younger son Esarhaddon did ascend the throne after him. An inscription of Esarhaddon known as Prism B describes the circumstances more fully. On the command of the great gods, Sennacherib had publicly proclaimed his younger son as successor. “He called together the people of Assyria, young and old, and he made my brothers, the male offspring of my father, take a solemn oath in the presence of the gods of Assyria … in order to secure my succession.” The brothers then broke their oath, killing Sennacherib and seeking to kill Esarhaddon. But the gods snatched him away “and made me stay in a hiding place . . . preserving me for kingship.”

After a period of turmoil Esarhaddon received “a trustworthy command from the gods: ‘Go, do not delay! We will march with you!’ "

The deity who was delegated to accompany Esarhaddon was Ishtar. As his brothers’ forces came out of Nineveh to beat off his attack on the capital, “Ishtar, the Lady of Battle, who wished me to be her high priest, stood at my side. She broke their bows, scattered their orderly battle array.” Once the Ninevite troops were disorganized, Ishtar addressed them in behalf of Esarhaddon. “Upon her lofty command, they went over in masses to me and rallied behind me,” Esarhaddon wrote, “and recognized me as their king.”

Both Esarhaddon and his son and successor Ashurbanipal attempted to advance against Egypt, and both employed Weapons of Brilliance in the battles. “The terror-inspiring Brilliance of Ashur,” Ashurbanipal wrote, “blinded the Pharaoh so that he became a madman.” Other inscriptions of Ashurbanipal suggest that this weapon, which emitted an intense, blinding brightness, was worn by the gods as part of their headgear. In one instance an enemy “was blinded by the brightness from the god-head.” In another, “Ishtar.

who dwells in Arbela, clad in Divine Fire and sporting the Radiant

Headwear, rained flames upon Arabia.”

The Old Testament, too, refers to such a Weapon of Brilliance that could blind. When the Angels (literally, emissaries) of the Lord came to Sodom prior to its destruction, the populace attempted to break down the door of the house in which they were resting. So the Angels “smote the people at the entrance of the house with blindness . . . and they were unable to find the doorway.”

As Assyria rose to supremacy, even extending its rule over Lower Egypt, its kings, in the words of the Lord through his prophet Isaiah, forgot that they were only an instrument of the Lord: “Ho Assyria, the whip of mine anger! My wrath is the rod in their hands; against impious nations I send them; upon people who have crossed me I charge them.” But the Assyrian kings went beyond mere punishment; “rather, it is in its heart to annihilate and wipe out nations not few.” This went beyond the intention of the God; therefore, the Lord Yahweh announced, “I shall hold to account the king of Assyria, on account of the fruits of the growing haughtiness of his heart.”

The biblical prophecies predicting the downfall of Assyria indeed came true: As invaders from the north and cast were joined by rebellious Babylonians from the south, Ashur, the religious capital, fell in 614 B.C., and Nineveh, the royal capital, was captured and sacked two years later. The great Assyria was no more. The disintegration of the Assyrian empire was seized by vassal kings in Egypt and Babylonia as an opportunity to attempt the restoration of their own hegemonies. The lands between them were once again the cherished prize, and the Egyptians, under the Pharaoh Necho, were quicker in invading these territories.

In Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar II—as recorded in his inscriptions—was ordered by the god Marduk to march his army westward. The expedition was made possible because “another god,” the one who held the original sovereignty over the area, “has not desired the cedar land” anymore; and now “a foreign enemy was ruling and robbing it.”

In Jerusalem the word of the Lord Yahweh through his prophet Jeremiah was to side with Babylon, for the Lord Yahweh—calling Nebuchadnezzar “‘my servant”—had decided to make the Babylonian king the instrument of His wrath against the gods of Egypt: Thus sayeth Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel:

“Indeed will I send for and fetch Nebuchadnezzar, my servant. . . . And he shall smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as are for death to death, and such as are for captivity to captivity, and such as are for the sword to the sword. And I will kindle a fire in the house of Egypt’s gods, and he will burn them. . . . And he will break the obelisks of Heliopolis, the one which is in the land of Egypt;

The houses of the gods of Egypt shall he bum with fire.” In the course of this campaign the Lord Yahweh announced that Jerusalem, too. shall be punished on account of its people’s sins, having taken up the worship of the “Queen of Heaven” and of the gods of Egypt: “Mine anger and my fury shall be poured upon this place. . . and it shall burn and shall not be quenched. . . . In the city on which my name has been called, the doom will I begin.” And so it was that in the year 586 B.C. “Nebuzaraddan, captain of the guard of the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem; and he burned the House of Yahweh. and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem . . . and all the walls around Jerusalem were torn down by the army of the Chaldeans.” This desolation, Yahweh promised, however, would last only Seventy years.

The king who was to fulfill this promise and enable the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem was Cyrus. His ancestors, speaking an Indo-European language, are believed to have migrated south from the Caspian Sea area to the province of Anshan along the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf.

There Hakham-Anish (“Wise Man”), the leader of the migrants, began a dynasty we call Achaemenid; his descendants—Cyrus, Darius. Xerxes—made history as rulers of what was to be the Persian empire. When Cyrus ascended the throne of Anshan in 549 B.C., his land was a distant province of Elam and Media. In Babylon, then the center of power, the kingship was held by Nabunaid, who became king under most unusual circumstances: not by the customary choice by the god Marduk. but as a result of a unique pact between a High Priestess (the mother of Nabunaid) and the god The Wars of Man 21 Sin. A partly damaged tablet contains the eventual indictment of Nabunaid: “He set an heretical statue upon a base … he called its name ’the god Sin’. … At the proper time of the New Year Festival, he advised that there be no celebrations. … He confounded the rites and upset the ordinances.” While Cyrus was busy fighting the Greeks of Asia Minor, Marduk—seeking to restore his position as the national god of Babylon—“scanned and looked throughout the countries, searching for a righteous ruler willing to be led. And he called out the name of Cyrus. King of Anshan, and pronounced his name to be ruler of all the lands.”

After the first deeds of Cyrus proved to be in accord with (he god’s wishes. Marduk “ordered him to march against his own city Babylon. He made him [Cyrus) set out on the road to Babylon, going at his side like a real friend.” Thus, literally accompanied by the Babylonian god, Cyrus was able to take Babylon without bloodshed. On a day equivalent to March 20, 538 B.C.. Cyrus “held the hands of Bel [The Lord] Marduk” in Babylon’s sacred precinct. On New Year’s Day his son, Cambyses, officiated at the restored festival honoring Marduk.

Cyrus left his successors an empire that encompassed all the earlier empires and kingdoms but one. Sumer. Akkad. Babylon, and Assyria in Mesopotamia; Elam and Media to the east; the lands to the north; the Hittite and Greek lands in Asia Minor; Phoenicia and Canaan and Philistia—all had now come under one sovereign king and one supreme god. Ahura-Mazda, God of Truth and Light. He was depicted in ancient Persia (Fig. 5a) as a bearded deity roaming the skies within a Winged Disc—very much in the manner in which the Assyrians had depicted their supreme god. Ashur (Fig. 5b).

When Cyrus died in 529 B.C., the only remaining independent land with its independent gods was Egypt. Four years later his son and successor, Cambyses, led his troops along the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai peninsula and defeated the Egyptians at Pelusium; a few months later he entered Memphis, the Egyptian royal capital, and proclaimed himself a Pharaoh.

Despite his victory, Cambyses carefully refrained from employing in his Egyptian inscriptions the usual opening formula “the great god. Ahura-Mazda, chose me.” Egypt, he recognized, did not come within the domains of this god. In deference to the independent gods of Egypt, Cambyses prostrated himself before their statues, accepting their dominion. In return the Egyptian priests legitimized his rule over Egypt by granting him the title “Offspring of Ra.”

The ancient world was now united under one king, chosen by the “great god of truth and light” and accepted by the gods of Egypt. Neither men nor gods had cause left to war with each other. Peace on Earth!

But peace failed to last. Across the Mediterranean Sea. the Greeks were increasing in wealth, power, and ambitions. Asia Minor, the Aegean Sea. and the eastern Mediterranean saw increasing clashes, both local and international. In 490 B.C., Darius I attempted to invade Greece and was defeated at Marathon; nine years later Xerxes I was defeated at Salamis. A century and a half later Alexander of Macedonia crossed over from Europe to launch a campaign of conquest that saw the blood of men flow in all the ancient lands as far as India.

Was he carrying out a “trustworthy command” of the gods? On the contrary. Believing a legend that he was lathered by an Egyptian god. Alexander at first fought his way to Egypt to hear the god’s oracle confirm his semidivine origins. But the oracle also predicted his early death, and Alexander’s travels and conquests were thereafter motivated by a search for the Waters of Life, so that he might drink of them and evade his fate.

He died, in spite of all the carnage, young and in his prime. And ever since, the Wars of Men have been the wars of men alone.