The First Campaign Of Sennacherib King Of Assyria B C 705 681

The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 1 (Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1) provides reliable, up-to-date editions of thirty-eight historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. The texts edited in RINAP 3/1, which comprise approximately a sixth of the Sennacherib known corpus of inscriptions, were inscribed on clay cylinders, clay prisms, stone tablets, and stone steles from Nineveh; describe his many victories on the battlefield; and record numerous construction projects at Nineveh, including the city’s walls and the “Palace Without a Rival.” Each text edition (with its English translation) is supplied with a brief introduction containing general information, a catalogue containing basic information about all exemplars, a commentary containing further technical information and notes, and a comprehensive bibliography. RINAP 3/1 also includes: (1) a general introduction to the reign of Sennacherib, his military campaigns, his building activities at Nineveh, the corpus of inscriptions, previous studies, and dating and chronology; (2) translations of the relevant passages of several Mesopotamian chronicles and kinglists; (3) several photographs of objects inscribed with texts of Sennacherib; (4) indices of museum and excavation numbers and selected publications; and (5) indices of proper names (Personal Names; Geographic, Ethnic, and Tribal Names; Divine, Planet, and Star Names; Gate, Palace, Temple, and Wall Names; and Object Names). The RINAP Project is under the direction of G. Frame (University of Pennsylvania) and is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The original cuneiform account transcribed and translated.

The Assyrians have usually been charcterized as the strongmen of the ancient Near East, controlling their empire largely through military force, terror, and intimidatin. The new interpretation of Esarhaddon's reign offered here, hwever, suggests that his success in dealing with conquered Babylonia lay in his masterful use of non-violent tools of government: public works programs, royal public appearnces, and especially the use of documents which presented different images of the king and his policies to different national audiences. Traces of these techniques in the policies of earlier Assyrian kings suggest that the Assyrians had long used such techniques, as well as terror, to control their empire. This study also prposes some new approaches to reading Assyrian royal inscriptions. It suggests, for example, that Assyrian building documents, although often buried in foundaitons, wer first read to contemporary audiences and were primarily designed for them. An analysis of subtle differences in Esarhaddon's Babylon inscriptions suggests that variants may be clues to the identificaiton of different intended audiences for texts which were once thought of as duplicates. This book combines documentary and archeological evidence to propose a new interpretation of Esarhaddon's reign based onc lose reading of texts. it also proposes a new, more complex model of the techniques by which Assyria succeeded in governing her empire.

Traditionally, scholars study ancient Near Eastern royal inscriptions to reconstruct the events they narrate. In recent decades, however, a new approach has analyzed these inscriptions as products of royal ideology and has delineated the way that ideology has shaped their narration of historical events. This ideologically-sensitive approach has focused on kings' accounts of their military campaigns. This study applies this approach to the narration of royal domestic achievements, first in the Neo-Assyrian inscriptional tradition, but especially in nine West Semitic inscriptions from the 10th to 7th centuries B.C.E. and describes how these accounts also function as the products of royal ideology.