by
Damien F. Mackey
“The king [against Tabal....] against Ešpai the Kulummaean.
[......]
The king was killed. The camp of the king of Assyria [was
taken......].
On the 12th of Abu, Sennacherib, son [of Sargon, took his
seat on the throne]”.
Eponym Cb6
There are some assumptions here, not all facts - so much
so that this really constitutes something of an Assyriological scandal.
As I
wrote about it in my university thesis (2007), Volume One, pp. 137-138:
….
Another
seemingly compelling evidence in favour of the conventional chronology, but one
that has required heavy restoration work by the Assyriologists, is in regard to
Sennacherib’s supposed accession. According to the usual interpretation of the
eponym for Nashur(a)-bel, (705 BC, conventional dating), known as Eponym Cb6,
Sargon was killed and Sennacherib then sat on the throne:[1]
The
king [against Tabal....] against Ešpai the Kulummaean. [......] The king was
killed. The camp of the king of Assyria [was taken......]. On the 12th of Abu,
Sennacherib, son [of Sargon, took his seat on the throne].
Tadmor
informs us about this passage that: “Winckler and Delitzsch restored: [MU 16
Šarru-ki]n; ana Ta-ba-lu [illik]”. That is, these scholars took the liberty of
adding Sargon’s name.
Jonsson,
who note has included Sargon’s name in his version of the text, gives it more
heavily bracketted than had Tadmor:[2] “[Year
17] Sargon [went] against Tabal [was killed in the war. On the 12th of Abu,
Sennacherib, son of Sargon, sat on the throne]”.
This document will become hugely
significant in the context of this thesis.
And I continued on:
Returning
to Olmstead’s discussion of the cylinders, we might note the degree of
guesswork involved, as evidenced by his thrice successive use of the phrase
“must have”:[3]
In
comparing the texts of A-C and B, we note that in the first part, there seem to
be no important differences, save that B adds an account of the accession. In
the broken part before this, B must have given the introduction and the murder
of Sennacherib.
Computation
of the minimum in each column of B, based on the amount actually preserved in A
and C, will give us some idea of what has been lost. Column II of B must have
been devoted in part to the final defeat of the rebels and in part to the
introduction to the long narrative concerning Nabu zer lishir. As at least four
lines were devoted to this introduction in the usually much shorter D, it must
have been fairly long in B. Why A omitted all this is a question. That these
two events are the first in the reign is made clear by the Babylonian
Chronicle, so that thus far the chronological order has been followed.
What
one cannot help but noticing in every case of what I have deemed primary evidence is that bracketting is
always involved. Prism S, the most formidable testimony, has the word
“(grand)son” in brackets. In Prism A, the entire titulary has been square
bracketted, which would indicate that Assyriologists have added what they have
presumed to have been in the original, now missing. And, in the case of Eponym
Cb6, an un-named king is presumed to have been Sargon.
Luckenbill,
in his introduction of the Khorsabad texts of Sargon II, has discussed the
inadequacies of Winckler’s edition, contrasting it with Lyon’s version:[4]
Lyon’s
work is a model of accurate, painstaking scholarship. Unfortunately, the same
cannot be said of Winckler’s edition of the Sargon texts. With nothing more
than Botta-Flandin for comparison, it was possible to show that Winckler’s
texts are far from what they might have been. When the long text recounting the
events of the eighth campaign (§§ 140 ff.) became available for comparison with
Winckler’s text of the Annals for the
year 8, our complacent belief that we had a text that was “nearly final” was
rudely shattered. A new edition of the Sargon texts is greatly to be desired.
It was
customary for the Assyrian kings to record their titulary back through father
and grandfather. There are ‘two’ notable exceptions in neo-Assyrian history:
interestingly, Sargon II and Sennacherib, who record neither father nor
grandfather. Russell’s explanation for this omission is as follows:[5]
In
nearly every other Assyrian royal titulary, the name of the king was followed
by a brief genealogy of the form “son of PN1, who was son of PN2,” stressing
the legitimacy of the king. As Tadmor has observed, such a statement never
appears in the titulary of Sennacherib. This omission is surprising since
Sennacherib was unquestionably [sic] the legitimate heir of Sargon II. Tadmor
suggests that Sennacherib omitted his father’s name either because of
disapproval of Sargon’s policies or because of the shameful manner of Sargon’s
death ....
This
may be, but it is important to note that Sargon also omitted the genealogy from
his own titulary, presumably because, contrary to this name (Sargon is the
biblical form of Šarru-kên: “the king is legitimate”), he was evidently not
truly the legitimate ruler.
Perhaps
Sennacherib wished to avoid drawing attention to a flawed genealogy: the only
way Sennacherib could credibly have used the standard genealogical formulation
would have been with a statement such as “Sennacherib, son of Sargon, who was
not the son of Shalmaneser”, or “who was son of a nobody”, and this is clearly
worse than nothing at all.
[End of
quotes]
The true historical scenario hidden behind this heavily
bracketed Eponym Cb6 may be one quite different from what
has been so carelessly presented by the Assyriologists.
Let us attempt to re-think this vital document,
Clearing
out assumptions and inaccuracies
Tabal (presuming that it
even figures here) is taken to have been in SE Anatolia:
However, there may have
been more than one Tabal (or Dabal), one in southern Syria:
Due
to the absence of the name Tabal or any other name similar to
it in native Central Anatolian sources of the Iron Age and the lack of its
attestation to designate this area in Old and Middle Assyrian sources, this
name tends to be considered by historians to have been an exonym given to the
region by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. ….
…. The
name Tabal appears to have been a widely used one, since a
location sharing this name is recorded from southern Syria ….
So, the Assyrian campaign
in question may not have been in Anatolia at all, but much further south.
The intriguing
information, “… against Ešpai the Kulummaean”, ought to
focalise it all, geographically, if only we can know about either “Kulummaean” or
“Ešpai”, or both.
Apart from the geographical uncertainties, there is nothing
to indicate that Sargon II was even leading this campaign. “Winckler and
Delitzsch restored: [MU 16 Šarru-ki]n; ana Ta-ba-lu [illik]”. That is, these
scholars took the liberty of adding Sargon’s name”.
We do not know, therefore, who “was killed”, or which
Assyrian commander’s “camp” was taken.
Nor does Sennacherib ever record in his titulary that he was
the son of Sargon II.
In fact, in my thesis I argued in detail for Sargon II and
Sennacherib as being the one and same neo-Assyrian king.
Since then I have written articles such as:
Sargon II and Sennacherib: More than just an overlap
(4) Sargon II and Sennacherib: More than just an
overlap
If this be the
case, then Sargon II definitely was not the Assyrian who “was killed” during
this campaign, the one whose “camp” was taken.
The only certainty in the
whole thing is that it occurred during the time of Sennacherib.
That fact, however,
coupled with Assyria suffering a catastrophic defeat, and actually losing its camp
to an enemy, narrows it all right down.
The only time that
Sennacherib suffered a major defeat was when his army of 185,000 was routed
during its march towards Jerusalem – not Pelusium, in Egypt (Herodotus).
And this happened,
according to the Book of Tobit, not long before Sennacherib’s assassination
(Tobit 1:18, 21):
And if Sennacherib
the king put to death any who came fleeing from Judea, I buried them secretly.
For in his anger he put many to death.
….
But not fifty
… days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they
fled to the mountains of Ararat. ….
Tobit, and the historical
books of the Bible, can tend to telescope Sennacherib’s campaigns against
Israel in such a way that can be, at times, highly confusing.
Sennacherib’s Third
Campaign, when he first came up against Jerusalem, was a total success for
him and for Assyria. The Assyrian king destroyed all the forts of Judah, “he
took away the covering of Judah” (Isaiah 22:8), and he then laid siege to
Jerusalem, forcing King Hezekiah to strip the Temple of its treasures as
tribute (2 Kings 18:16).
Many Jews were taken into
exile:
“Sennacherib’s
prisms—preserved in multiple copies … recount Judah’s devastation and
Hezekiah’s humiliation yet never claim that Jerusalem fell. One representative
edition reads: “As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, I
besieged forty-six of his strong, walled cities and the smaller towns in their
vicinity, conquering them … I shut him up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem,
his royal city. I set up blockades around him and made him dread leaving his
city gate”.”
The King of Assyria would lift
the siege only when he learned that the mighty pharaoh of Ethiopia (Cush),
Tirhakah, was marching against him.
2 Kings 19:9-13:
Now Sennacherib
received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, was marching out to
fight against him. So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah with this
word: ‘Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you
depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into
the hands of the king of Assyria’. Surely you have heard what the kings of
Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will
you be delivered? Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my predecessors
deliver them—the gods of Gozan, Harran, Rezeph and the people of
Eden who were in Tel Assar? Where is the king of Hamath or the king of
Arpad? Where are the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah?’
This was standard military
practice.
King Nebuchednezzar would
likewise temporarily lift the siege of Jerusalem when Egypt was threatening to
intervene (Jeremiah 37:11): “After the Babylonian army had withdrawn from
Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s army …”.
These Great Kings had
other fish to fry, anyway, but they would intend to come back later to finish
the Job – which Sennacherib would fail to achieve, but Nebuchednezzar would
not.
Now, many confuse
Sennacherib’s highly successful Third Campaign for the one when
Jerusalem was mightily delivered by the angel from the 185,00-strong Assyrian
army.
That can be due to the
biblical telescoping as referred to above.
It definitely was not the
same campaign!
How could it have been?
All the things that the
prophet Isaiah proclaimed that the blasphemous Sennacherib would not manage to
do (Isaiah 37:33): “Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of
Assyria: ‘He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come
before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it’,” Sennacherib had so mightily
achieved during his Third Campaign.
Isaiah 1o:5-11:
Ah, Assyria, the
rod of my anger;
the staff in their hands is my fury!
Against a godless nation I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
But he does not so
intend,
and his heart does not so think;
but it is in his heart to destroy,
and to cut off nations not a few;
For he says: ‘Are not my commanders all kings?
Is not Calno like
Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?
As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images were
greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols
as I have done to Samaria and her images?’
Zoning in on the geography
Isaiah as Uzziah, stationed
at “Bethulia” - that is, the northern Bethel (Shechem) - was referring to what
would happen in the future, when the armies of Sennacherib would return for
their second bite at Jerusalem.
Previously I had written
about this great prophet:
Isaiah himself, who was
(as Uzziah in Judith) a prince: “… the prince of Juda[h]” and “the
prince of the people of Israel” (Judith 8:34; 13:23: Douay), must have
been amongst those “captains of war” whom King Hezekiah placed in charge of
Judah’s defences (2 Chronicles 32:6). Isaiah would have well known Shechem
(“Bethulia”) in the north from his father’s sojourn there, and from his own
experience in the northern kingdom as the prophet Hosea.
The story of this
ill-fated Assyrian campaign is fully recounted in the Book of Judith.
The armies of Assyria
would not manage to get past Balbaim and Chelmon in the north.
Jerusalem, this time,
would be untouched – just as Isaiah had promised.
Wait a minute. Did I just
mention a Balbaim and a Chelmon?
This was the Assyrian
army’s last stopping point before Judith’s heroic intervention.
Balbaim is variously
called Belma; whilst Chelmon is variously called Cyamon.
Here are the relevant texts
(Judith 7:3):
[The Assyrians] encamped
in the valley near Bethulia, beside the spring, and they spread out in breadth
over Dothan as far as Balbaim and in length from Bethulia to Cyamon, which
faces Esdraelon.
(Douay version):
All prepared themselves together to the fight against the children of Israel,
and they came by the hill side unto the top, which looketh toward Dothaim, from
the place which is called Belma unto Chelmon, which is against Esdrelon.
Now, don’t these two place
names, Balbaim (Belma) and Chelmon (Cyamon), look somewhat like, respectively, the
Tabal and Kulummaean (especially), of the disputed Assyrian record?
And doesn’t the name Ešpai (the Kulummaean) look very much like that of Israel’s
leader in the region, Uzziah – the great prophet Isaiah himself?
In my thesis (2007), I wrote on this, with an
eye, perhaps, to connecting the Ešpai of the Assyrian record with Uzziah
(Isaiah) of the Book of Judith (Volume Two, p. 83):
Who were the Kulummaeans?
As for the “identification of the Kulummaeans”, the last people against whom the
hapless Assyrian king had marched before his demise, these can be plausibly
identified with the inhabitants of a town that we had previously encountered in
[the Book of Judith] BOJ (Douay
version). I refer to ‘Chelmon’ (7:3) (Cyamon
in the Greek). Chelmon was the
very last place to which the Assyrian host did in fact march before its rout.
The fact that this town (perhaps), and not Bethulia
(or Bethel), is mentioned in the Assyrian records - though the record is
admittedly fragmentary - may be an indication that the Assyrian army was
attacking on a front wider than was now of interest to the author of BOJ.
The name ‘Ešpai’,
given in the Assyrian records as, presumably, the chief of the Kulummaeans (Chelmonians), has a strong
resemblance to Ushpia, which name [Herb]
Storck has equated linguistically with both Ishbak
and Aushpia.[6]
There might even be considered now the possibility - given that Uzziah of BOJ was, as we saw, “the
prince of Judah” and “the prince of the people of Israel” - that Uzziah was this very Ešpai/Ushpia. That is, according to my
reconstruction, the great Isaiah himself!
Compare the name Ush[p]ia
with the name Uzziah.
Thanks to the heroic
Judith, who the Church considers to be a marvellous prefigurement of the
Immaculate Virgin Mary, the haughty Assyria would suffer a spectacular fall - a
warning to the proud and self-sufficient leaders and nations of our own day.
Isaiah 1o:12-19:
When the Lord has
finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech
of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes.
For he says: ‘By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for
I have understanding; I remove the boundaries of peoples, and plunder their
treasures; like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones.
My hand has found like a nest the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers
eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was
none that moved a wing or opened the mouth or chirped’.
Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it,
or the saw boast against the one who uses it?
As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up,
or a club brandish the one who is not wood!
Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy
warriors;
under his pomp a fire will be kindled
like a blazing flame.
The Light of Israel will become a fire,
their Holy One a flame;
in a single day it will burn and consume
his thorns and his briers.
The splendor of his forests and fertile fields
it will completely destroy,
as when a sick person wastes away.
And the remaining trees of his forests will be so few
that a child could write them down.
[1] H. Tadmor, ‘The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur’, p. 97.
[2] ‘The Foundations of the Assyro-Babylonian Chronology’, p. 21.
[3] Op. cit, ibid.
[4] Op. cit, pp. 1-2, with
reference to D. Lyon’s Die
Keilschrifttexte Sargons … (1883).
[5] Sennacherib’s Palace Without
Rival at Nineveh, p. 243.
[6] ‘The Early Assyrian
King List’, p. 69.
