Table Of ContentTiglath-pileser 111, King of Assyria
from the Central Palace at Nimrod (BM 118900)
HAY1M TADMOR
"With my many chariots 1h ave gone up
the heights of mountains"
Historical and Literary Studies
on Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel
Edited by
MORDECHAI COGAN
•
ISRAEL EXPLORATION SOCIETY
Copyright © 2011 by the Israel Exploration Society
All rights reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this bookmay be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any other information storage and retrieval system existing now
or in the future, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-965-221-083-8
Layout: A. Pladot
Typesetting: Marzel A.S. - Jerusalem
Printing: Old City Press
PUBLISHED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
THE LEON LEVY FouNDATION
"AN ADMIRING NEIGHBOR"
Contents
Foreword ...... . xi
Acknowledgements .
XV
List of Abbreviations . xvii
List of Original Publications • XXV
PART I: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ROYAL IDEOLOGY IN ASSYRIA
1 Propaganda, Literature, Historiography: Cracking the Code of the
Assyrian Royal Inscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 History and Ideology in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions . . 25
3 Observations on Assyrian Historiography . . . . . . . . . . 47
4 Sennacherib, King ofJustice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5 Autobiographical Apology in the Royal Assyrian Literature . . . . . . 63
6 World Dominion: The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire . . 87
PART 11: SOCIETY AND INSTITUTIONS IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
7 Temple City and Royal City in Babylonia and Assyria . . . . . . 105
8 Monarchy and the Elite in Assyria and Babylonia: The Question
of Royal Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9 The Role of the Chief Eunuch and the Place of Eunuchs in the
Assyrian Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
10 The Aramaization of Assyria: Aspects of Western Impact . . . . 179
11 Treaty and Oath in the Ancient Near East: A Historian's Approach . 205
PART Ill: TEXTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES
12 The Campaigns ofSargon II of Assur: A Chronological-Historical
Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
13 The Historical Inscriptions of Adad-nirari Ill . . . . 321
14 The urbi of Hezekiah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
15 An Assyrian Victory Chant and Related Matters. . . . 347
16 Observations on Two Inscriptions of Esarhaddon: Prism Nineveh A
and the Letter to the God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
17 Gyges and Ashurbanipal - A Study in Literary Transmission . . . 379
18 Nabopolassar and Sin-shum-lishir in a Literary Perspective .. 405
19 The Inscriptions ofNabunaid: Historical Arrangement . 413
20 Heavenly Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 437
21 Fragments of Clay Liver Models from Hazor . . . 453
22 A Lawsuit from Hazor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 473
23 A Lexicographical Text from Hazor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
24 Fragments of an Assyrian Stela of Sargon 11 . . . 495
25 The Seal ofBel-Asharedu- A Case of"Migration'' . . . 505
PART IV: CHRONOLOGY
26 The Chronology of the Ancient Near East in the Second
Millennium BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
27 The Chronology of the First Temple Period. A Presentation and
Evaluation of the Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
PART V: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
28 Hammurabi and His Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
29 The Decline of Empires in Western Asia ea. 1200 BCE . 617
30 Philistia under Assyrian Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
31 Sennacherib's Campaign to Judah: Historical and
Historiographical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . 653
32 The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib's Last Will . . 677
33 Darius I, Pseudo-Smerdis, and the Magi . . ...... 733
PART VI: THE WORLD OF ANCIENT ISRAEL
34 "The People" and the Kingship in Ancient Israel: The Role of
Political Institutions in the Biblical Period . . . . . . . . . . 759
35 The Historical Background of the Prophecies ofHosea. . . 785
36 The Meunites in the Book of Chronicles in the Light of an
Assyrian Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
37 Ahaz and Tiglath-Pileser in the Book of Kings: Historiographic
Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
38 Some Aspects of the History of Samaria during the Biblical Period . 823
39 The Rise of Cyrus and the Historical Background of His
Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40 "The Appointed Time Has Not Yet Arrived": The Historical
Background of Haggai 1:2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . .
41 The Origins of Israel as Seen in the Exilic and Post-Exilic Ages . .
42 ''And if Given Strength- Eighty Years": The Terms for Longevity
in Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew . . . . . . . .
PART VII: REFLECTIONS
43 Nineveh, Calah and Israel: On Assyriology and the Origins of
Biblical Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 893
44 Thoughts Concerning Assyriology and Its Relationship to the
Study of the Bible and the History of the People of Israel during
the Biblical Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 905
45 The Nascence and Development of the Department of Assyriology
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ................. 919
Foreword
To students of the Ancient Near East, Hayim Tadmor needs no introduc
tion. Hayim Tadmor (1923-2005) was Professor of Assyriology at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the leading historians of Ancient
Mesopotamia and Israel in the second half of the twentieth century. In
addition to a distinguished academic career, he was a member of the Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities (from 1985), and served as its Vice
President (1995-2005); his many achievements were noted in the award of
the Rothschild Prize in Humanities (2ooo).*
Though associated mostly with his groundb reaking studies in the history
of the Assyrian Empire, Tadmor's work spanned several millennia, reach
ing back to Hammurabi of Babylon and forward to the Persian Darius and
beyond, as the present volume amply attests. Still, the title of this volume
evokes the major focus of Tadmor's research interests. It is a citation from
the invective delivered by the prophet Isaiah against Sennacherib, king of
Assyria. On more than one occasion, the late eighth-century Judean visionary
criticized Assyria's kings for their overweening pride. In the present instance,
Isaiah quotes Sennacherib as having said: "With my many chariots I have gone
up the heights of mountains" (2 Kings 19:23; Isaiah 37:24). What a godless
monarch, who does not recognize the true source of his achievements -
the God of Israel! Now upon examination of the Assyrian royal inscriptions,
it becomes clear that this purported quotation and other similar ones (e.g.,
Isaiah 10:5-16) do indeed reflect the rhetoric of those inscriptions. Hayim
Tadmor devoted his prodigious energy for over five decades to the Assyrian
corpus in his endeavor to unravel the rhetorical code of the royal inscrip
tions and to reconstruct their historical and social setting. Tadmor reserved
a special place in his research program for Tiglath-pileser Ill, the founder of
the Neo-Assyrian empire. His royal portrait, which serves as this volume's
* A short biography ofHayim Tadmor can be found in the second of the two festschrifts
published in his honor; see Eretz-Israel27 (Hayim and Miriam Tadmor Volume),
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2003, ix-x.
xi
xii FOREWORD
frontispiece, conjures up this guest who came for a visit and took up residence
in the Tadmor home for years. After exhaustive study, Tadmor re-edited all
of the extant inscriptions ofTiglath-pileser Ill; only then did this guest move
on. And it should not be forgotten that Hayim Tadmor was equally at home
in the world of ancient Israel - indeed it was the point of entry for his later
work - and he contributed much to our understanding of unique features of
Israelite society, especially during the age of the great Mesopotamian empires.
Not long after the appearance of the collection of essays in Hebrew: H.
Tadmor, Assyria, Babylon and ]udah. Studies in the History of the Ancient
Near East (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik and the Israel Exploration Society, 2006),
a number of colleagues and friends organized themselves as a committee to
sponsor the publication of a similar work in English. The committee m em
bers were: Shmuel AQ.ituv, Joseph Aviram, Mordechai Cogan, Israel Eph'al,
Lawrence Stager and Miriam Tadmor. After reviewing Tadmor's entire
oeuvre, ** they determined that the new volume would be expanded to include
many additional research studies as well as literary essays. The undersigned
agreed to coordinate this project and edit the volume, little appreciating how
daunting the task would become. The editing proceeded in measured steps:
the articles were gathered from dozens of academic journals and festschriften
in which they had originally been published; Hebrew articles were translated;
articles that Tadmor himself had revised for the Hebrew collection were coor
dinated with their older English versions; and in all articles, the countless
errors that had inadvertently appeared in the first printing were corrected.
All this preceded the scanning of the material that produced a new corn
puterized working-manuscript. The reader is advised that despite the great
effort that has gone into integrating the citations in the original publications
into a single system, inconsistencies still remain. In many instances, titles of
books and articles have been supplied where deemed relevant; in others, the
citation was left intact as originally given. Editorial clarifications - kept to
a bare minimum - have been enclosed in square brackets. Finally, in order
to facilitate locating a discussion by Tadmor cited in scholarly literature, the
original pagination is given in square brackets in the running headers of each
page in the present volume.
I would like to thank the following persons, without whose work and
assistance this book could not have appeared: Miriam Feinberg-Vamosh,
**A list ofTadmor's publications up to 2003 appears in Eretz-Israel27, 17-22.
FOREWORD xiii
who translated the Hebrew articles with great care and skill; Alan Paris, who
prepared the typescript after the initial scanning of the articles and who was
a constant font of practical advice; Amitai Baruchi-Unna, who fixed the
cross-references to the original publications; and finally, Joseph Aviram, who
followed and facilitated all our work through the good offices of the Israel
Exploration Society.
The support of a number of donors is acknowledged above. To this I would
like to add a personal note: Thank you. Your generosity helped make this
project a reality.
Miriam Tadmor took great interest in the publication of this volume, as
she had in the original publication of the articles during Hayim's lifetime. I
sorely missed her warm smile and wise counsel as we moved into the produc
tion stage and dedicate this volume to her memory and to her many good
works.
MORDECHAI COGAN
