Assyrian Kings

[ndrthl]

Sargon II, Assyrian King:




"Sargon II (r. 722 BC-705 BC) was an Assyrian king. He took the throne from Shalmanassar V in 722 BC. It is not clear if he was the son of Tiglath-Pileser III or a usurper unrelated to the royal family. In his inscriptions, he styles himself as a new man, rarely referring to his predecessors, and he took the name Sharru-kinu, true king, after Sargon of Akkad, a mighty king who had been found in a wicker basket, a child of a temple prostitute and an unknown father [...] Under his rule the Assyrians completed the defeat of the Kingdom of Israel, capturing Samaria after a siege of three years and dispersing the inhabitants. This became the basis of the legend of the Lost Ten Tribes".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_II_of_Assyria

Shalmaneser, Assyrian King:

www.mesopotamia.co.uk/warfare/explore/04head.html

Sennacherib, Assyrian King:



"Sennacherib (in Akkadian Śïn-ahhe-eriba "(The moon god) Śïn has Replaced (Lost) Brothers for Me") was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria (705 BC–681 BC)".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennacherib



Tiglath Pileser III, powerful Assyrian King:



www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/abc1/abc1_col_i.html

"Tiglath-Pileser III (Akkadian: Tukultī-Apil-Ešarra) was a prominent king of Assyria in the 8th century BC (ruled 745–727 BC) and is widely regarded as the founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He is considered one of the most successful military commanders in world history, conquering most of the world known to the ancient Assyrians before his death".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiglath-Pileser_III

[Bilaad Binti]

Sudanese Rashaida man:

[ndrthl]

Ashurbanipal, Assyrian King:




"Ashurbanipal (ah-shur-BA-neh-pal), Assurbanipal or Sardanapal, in Akkadian Aðður-bâni-apli, (b. 685 BCE – d. 627 BCE) (reigned 669 – ca. 631 BC or 627 BC), the son of Esarhaddon and Naqi'a-Zakutu, was the last great king of ancient Assyria. He is famous as one of the few kings in antiquity who could himself read and write. Assyrian sculpture reached its apogee under his rule (Northern palace and south-western palace at Nineveh, battle of Ulai). The Greeks knew him as Sardanapalos; Latin and other medieval texts refer to him as Sardanapalus. In the Bible he is called As(e)nappar or Osnapper (Ezra 4:10). During his rule, Assyrian splendour was not only visible in its military power, but also its culture and art. Ashurbanipal created "the first systematically collected library" at Nineveh, where he attempted to gather all cuneiform literature available by that time. A library was distinct from an archive: earlier repositories of documents had accumulated passively, in the course of administrative routine".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal

[ndrthl]

Assyrian King Shalmaneser III and Hebrew King Jehu (earliest depiction of an Israelite).

King Jehu of Israel bows before Shalmaneser III of Assyria:



"The "Black Obelisk" of Shalmaneser III (reigned 858-824 BC) is a black limestone Neo-Assyrian bas-relief sculpture from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), in northern Iraq. Height: 197.85 cm. Width: 45.08 cm. Currently displayed in the British Museum.It is the most complete Assyrian obelisk yet discovered, and is historically significant because it displays the earliest ancient depiction of an Israelite. It was erected as a public monument in 825 BCE at a time of civil war. The second register from the top includes the earliest surviving picture of an Israelite: the Biblical Jehu, king of Israel. It describes how Jehu brought or sent his tribute in or around 841 BCE. Jehu severed Israel’s alliances with Phoenicia and Judah, and became subject to Assyria. The caption above the scene, written in Assyrian cuneiform, can be translated:
“The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears." On the top and the bottom of the reliefs there is a long cuneiform inscription recording the annals of Shalmaneser III. It lists the military campaigns which the king and his commander-in-chief headed every year, until the thirty-first year of reign".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Obelisk

[Mike the Jedi]

It's kind of funny how similar they all look. They could be separated by thousands of years and still look like brothers.

Except for the Rashaida, of course. He's just got that cool Mesopotamian hair.

[ndrthl]

Adad Nirari III, Assyrian King:



Babylonian King Marduk and Assyrian King Shalmaneser III enact a peace pact:



Tiglath Pileser II:

[ndrthl]

The Assyrians were known for their military skills.

Assyria and Babylonia contrasted:

"The sister-states of Babylonia and Assyria differed essentially in character. Babylonia was a land of merchants and agriculturists; Assyria was an organized military camp. The Assyrian dynasties were founded by successful generals; in Babylonia it was the priests whom a revolution raised to the throne. The Babylonian king remained a priest to the last, under the control of a powerful hierarchy; the Assyrian king was the autocratic general of an army, at whose side stood in early days a feudal nobility, aided from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III onwards by an elaborate bureaucracy. His palace was more sumptuous than the temples of the gods, from which it was quite separate. The people were soldiers and little else; even the sailor belonged to the state."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria_and_Babylonia_contrasted


*Captives being impaled by Sennacherib's army (as depicted in Sennacherib's Palace):
www.geocities.com/garyweb65/neoassy.html



"The Assyrians
The classical epoch of Assyria is predominantly Semite. The Assyrian became a powerful military race, stronger than its cousin of Babylon. Harsh in war, sensual and pompous after victory, cruel to the vanquished, thus do their inscriptions reveal them to us. From the very beginning of their history about the 13th century B.C., they were a permanent military machine. The first kings of Assyria became the grand-priests of two national deities, Assur and Ishtar, the planet Venus. The Assyrian monarchy, however, never did assume a religious character, like that of Egypt. After a short period of eclipse, it conquered Damascus (732) and Babylon (728). Sargon II (722‑705 B.C.), who built the palace of Khorsabad, destroyed the kingdoms of Israel p17and Urartu. The great king Esarhaddon (680‑668) subjugated Egypt. After the destruction of Elam in 646, Assyria remained master of the Near East, from Iran to Cappadocia, from Ararat and the Caspian Sea to Egypt and the Persian Gulf. Its capital, Nineveh, became the capital of the world.
The Assyrians have been severely judged for their cruelty, which, however, unintentionally served the cause of civilization. Through blood and terror, this imperial race eventually united all the East nations under one yoke; through devastation and death it established peace from Ararat to the Nile. The short and frightful Pax Sargonide, so it is said, heralded the benevolent Pax Achaemenide. The vast political union which the Sargonidae had brought into being was not to disappear entirely. The empire which the Chaldeans, the Achaemenids, the Macedonians, the Sassanids and the Arabs, one after the other, inherited, was destined to preserve until modern times the stamp of the material civilizations of Nineveh and Babylon. The Chaldeo-Assyrian civilization already contained almost the entire Arabo-Persian civilization in the bud. The Sargonid court, with its gorgeous embellishment, its brutality, its mixture of indolence and ferocious energy, was in itself an epitome of the Orient. The king was an army chief, not a god, as in Egypt. "The King of Legions, the great King, the powerful King, the King of the people of Assur" spent half his life on horseback or in his chariot, hunting or fighting. His people threw the lance and the arrow as their soldiers did, and then, in the hour of hallali, with their own hands flayed their prisoners alive, impaled them, gouged out their eyes. The apotheosis of the Ninevite deities, associated with the Sargonid triumphs, was the apotheosis of the very race itself. Their victory over the gods of Egypt, of Judea and Urartu, became a symbol of Assyrian hegemony in the world. The temple dominated the palace; it was the ziggurat, a square tower of seven stories, each story set back from the preceding one, each one consecrated to a star. On the top of the highest level was the chapel of the divinity, Assur, the eponym of the race or Ishtar, the lady of Arbeles. Here the Sargonid kings, surrounded by their diviners and astrologers, came before their departure for hunting or war, to receive the counsel of the all-powerful gods.This ferocious people was, paradoxically enough, also a highly cultivated one. Well versed in Babylonian literature, they gathered from it and transmitted to us its priceless heritage. Assurbanipal (669‑626 B.C.), their last king, collected in Nineveh an enormous library, thousands of tablets of which have been recovered and placed in the British Museum. Through it, the scientific and literary knowledge of those days, the Chaldean legends and the royal Assyrian inscriptions have reached us. The recital of the achievements of Assur-Nazir-Apal II is an impressive example. "I killed one in every two," says he. "I erected a wall in front of the great gate of the city. I flayed the chiefs and covered this wall with their skins. Some of them were walled in alive in the masonry; others were impaled along the wall. I flayed a great number of them in my presence, and I clothed the wall with their skins. I collected their heads in the form of crowns, and their corpses I pierced in the shape of garlands. . . . My figure blooms on the ruins; in the glutting of my rage I find my content." Assyrian art illustrates these texts. The painted bas-reliefs of Nineveh and Khorsabad may be regarded as a royal record, told through stone fresco paintings.º Furthermore, Chaldean and Assyrian art was also derived from the Hittite. The Hittites imparted to the Assyrians the idea of decorating the plinth — the square base of their columns — with mythological or historical cavalcades. Hunting scenes and those of war are parts of such decorations. In the representation of the lion, the Assyrians are considered supreme. Multifarious other pictures represent winged bulls, eagles, and aquiform monsters. Old themes like those of the Sumero-Akkadian cylinders, developed by the Hittites, were recovered by the Assyrians and transmitted to Iran".
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Asia/Armenia/_Texts/KURARM/3*.html

[ndrthl]

The Assyrians (and Babylonians) were preceded by the Akkadians. The Akkadians were the responsible for establishing Semitic dominance in Ancient Mesopotamia.

"The Akkadian Empire was the state that grew up around the city of Akkad north of Sumer, reaching its greatest extent under Sargon of Akkad. Although ascertaining exact dates during this period is subject to significant disagreement, the Akkadian Empire lasted from about 2350 BC to 2150 BC—approximately 200 years. Under Akkadian rule, the Sumerian, and even Elamite languages were marginalized in favour of the Semitic Akkadian language. Rulers with Semitic names had already established themselves at Kish. One of them, contemporary with the last Sumerian ruler, Lugal-Zage-Si, was Alusarsid (or Urumus) who "subdued Elam and Barahs." But the fame of these early establishers of Semitic supremacy was far eclipsed by that of Sargon (Sharru-kin), who defeated and captured Lugal-Zage-Si, conquering his empire. A lengthy inscription of Sargon's son, Manishtushu, was discovered at Susa by J. de Morgan. The date of Sargon is placed by modern scholars around 2300 BC (although the later "archaeologist king" of Babylonia, Nabonidus, calculated it at 3800 BC)".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_Empire

Sargon of Akkad, famous Akkadian King:




"Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great (Akkadian Šarukinu, "the true king", reigned 2334 BC - 2279 BC, short chronology), founder of the Dynasty of Akkad. Sometimes he is referred to as Sargon I. He is only the third king in recorded history to have created an empire, after the Sumerians Lugal-anne-mundu and Lugal-zage-si. He is the first to use it to try to conquer the known world; Alexander III of Macedon followed Sargon's example two thousand years later (336–323 BC). Sargon's vast empire is known to have extended from Elam to the Mediterranean sea, including Mesopotamia and possibly parts of Anatolia. He ruled from a new capital, Akkad (Agade), situated on the left bank of the Euphrates, possibly between Sippar and Kish".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_the_Great