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Adad-Nirari III in Syria: Another Stele Fragment and the Dates of his Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

A. R. Millard  and
H. Tadmor
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Extract

In May 1879 Hormuzd Rassam left Mosul to explore the country around the Khabur river, rich in ancient sites. Among the places he visited was “the mound of Sheikh Hammad” where an Assyrian sculpture was said to lie. Rassam reported “I found the monument to be a representation of an Assyrian king on a black basalt tablet (supposed to be Shalmaneser II), but, unfortunately, the bas-relief had been broken, and only the head and shoulders of the figure were visible. This part of the monolith was covered with arrow-headed characters, which were very much defaced. It had been hurled down the mound by the Arabs … It is believed that the remainder of the tablet is buried on the top of the mound, and I intended, when I went back there on a future occasion, to search for it.” No particular monument in the British Museum's collections is known to be the piece Rassam secured, but it was suggested in a marginal note by the late C. J. Gadd in the copy of Rassam's book owned by the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of the British Museum that BM 131124 might be one Rassam recovered from another mound not far away, mentioned in the succeeding part of his account, “a fragment of black basalt, whereon there were engraved a few hieroglyphic figures”. The description of the stone from Sheikh Hammad fits the fragment BM 131124 so much better that there can be little doubt of its identity and consequently it may be referred to by the name “Sheikh Hammad stele”.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 57 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1973

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References

1 Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897), 311ffGoogle Scholar. Rassam said almost exactly the same in a letter to Layard dated 1: vi: 1879 (Layard Papers XCII, 39022). We are indebted to Dr. R. D. Barnett and Mr. J. D. Hawkins for drawing our attention to these references.

2 The site is marked as Tell Šayḫ Aḥmad on the map given in Iraq 3 (1936), Fig. 1 (after p. 59), and is written aš-Šejḫ Ḥamed by Musil, A., The Middle Euphrates (1972), 83ffGoogle Scholar. In medieval times it was a crossing point on the Khabur, ibid., 136. Horn, S., ZA 34 (1922), 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar, identified it with the town of Usala mentioned in the annals of Tukulti-Ninurta II, rev. 21f. (ARAB I §412Google Scholar; text re-edited by Schramm, W., Bi.Or. 27 (1970), 146–60Google Scholar). This was a part of the province of Laqe, thus falling within the charge of Nergal-ereš, the man who was probably responsible for this stele, see p. 60.

3 Page, S., Iraq 30 (1968), 139–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; discussions by Cazelles, H., CRAIBL 1969, 106–18Google Scholar; Cody, A., CBQ 32 (1970), 325–40Google Scholar; Donner, H., Archäologie und Altes Testament, Festschrift für K. Galling, ed. Kuschke, A., Kutsch, E. (1970), 49–59Google Scholar. See also below, p. 62 footnote 16.

4 Cf. Genge, H., Stelen neuassyrischer Könige I (1965), passimGoogle Scholar.

5 IEJ 19 (1969), 46–8Google Scholar.

6 J. A. Brinkman, PKB, n. 1359; cf. Or NS 39 (1970), 448.

7 As argued by Cazelles, H., CRAIBL 1969, 115, n.15Google Scholar.

8 AfO Beiheft 6, 114 r.11; cf. Deller, K., Or NS 34 (1965), 473–6Google Scholar for Aramaean names in cuneiform sources.

9 Conveniently edited by Fitzmyer, J. A., The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (1967)Google Scholar; translation by Rosenthal, F., ANET3, 659–61Google Scholar.

10 Made known to us by Mr J. D. Hawkins to whose kindness we are indebted.

11 Principal reference: Kurkh Monolith i 37–40, III R 7; ARAB I, § 599Google Scholar.

12 de Vaux, R., RB 43 (1934), 514Google Scholar; Poebel, A., JNES 2 (1943), 84Google Scholar; RLA, s.v.

13 CRAIBL 1969, 115, n. 15; note the existence of Seleucia ad Belum and Chalcis ad Belum in the Roman period, both on the Orontes, see Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie, svv.

14 See Page, S., Iraq 30 (1968), 150fGoogle Scholar. The stele from Nineveh concerning this man has been re-edited by Postgate, J. N., Neo-Assyrian Royal Grants and Decrees (1970), 115–7Google Scholar.

15 The foregoing study is the responsibility of A. R. Millard but has benefitted greatly from discussion with H. Tadmor who has contributed the following section.

16 In addition to those listed above, p. 57 footnote 3, see Jepsen, A., VT 20 (1970), 359–361Google Scholar; J. A. Soggin, ibid., 366–368; Lipiński, E., RB 71 (1971), 84 ff.Google Scholar; AION 30 (1970), 393 ff.Google Scholar; Tadmor, H., Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1969), I, Jerusalem (1972), 163 ff.Google Scholar; and Tadmor, H., Qadmoniot 2 (1969), 136Google Scholar; and IEJ 19 (1969), 46–48Google Scholar.

17 Ungnad, A., RLA II, 428Google Scholar.

18 Luckenbill, D. D., ARAB I, §740Google Scholar.

19 Apparently a general notation represents a year when the report was delayed or not dispatched, When the king stayed at home the year was usually listed as ina māti (an abbreviated form of šarru ina māti = “the king (stayed) in the land.”). This formula was not modified even if the yearly expedition led by the king's generals was successful. An instructive case is the year 712 (“the year when tartān came to Ashdod”) or 706 (the campaign to Karalla). See Tadmor, H., JCS 12 (1958), 85Google Scholar.

20 Tiglath-pileser III relates that he set up his camp at the walls of Damascus and besieged it during 733 for 45 days. (This is the correct reading of Rost, P., Annals, 204Google Scholar [ = Ann. 23: 10Google Scholar in the forthcoming edition of the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser]).

21 ZDPV 46 (1923), 16Google Scholar; Pauly-Wissowa XIV/2 (1930), cols. 2164–5; C. G. Hölscher, ibid., col. 1986. The question is whedier Mansuate was a city or a name of a region. Kuschke, A., ZDPV 74 (1958), 115–120Google Scholar, suggested locating a city of Manṣuate in Masi, about fifty miles northwest of Damascus. The spelling ana Manṣuate in the Ep. Chron., without the determinative of city or land is puzzling. If it is not an error it would seem that the name was treated as a kind of geographical term. All the other known occurances of Mansuate (also written Mannuṣuāte) are preceded by URU (once by KUR). See S. Parpola, N-AT (= AOAT 6), 238. The Aramaic form was apparently mṣwh like ḥdwh, Ḫanduati in Akkadian. (See L. Delaporte, Épigraphes araméens, no. 21).

22 This name is still an enigma. Mari', written Ma-ri-' in all the three documents, is an exact transliteration of the Aramaic mārē', lord, or mār'ī, my lord. The spelling with an aleph indicates that the Assyrian scribe knew exactly what it meant and rendered it carefully in cuneiform. However it is very unlikely that they would refer to a foreign king as “the lord” or “my lord” even if that was the accepted appellative of the Aramaean ruler among his subjects. Also, the famous dedication lmr'n Ḥz'l, “to our lord Hazael” (cf. Iraq 24 (1962), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mallowan, M. E. L., Nimrud and its Remains II (1966), 598)Google Scholar does not prove that “lord,” a regular honorific epithet, could stand by itself, like “pharaoh.” The Assyrian scribes usually used the personal names of the foreign kings, including those of Aram: Adadidri (and not the dynastic name Ben-Hadad), Haza'ilu, Rahianu. In the same fashion, Mari' appears to be the abbreviated form of a personal name, perhaps *Mari-Hadad (Albright, W. F., BASOR 87 (1942), 28 n. 16)Google Scholar. This was most likely the Ben-Hadad (III), of 2 Kings 6, 24; and 13, 24–25, the Bar-Hadad of Zakir's stele. (See now Cross, F. M., BASOR 205 (1972), 42)Google Scholar.

23 Lipiński, E., RB 78 (1971), 88 ffGoogle Scholar. We cannot accept the suggestion that URU Ba'ali stands for KUR Ba'ali(-rāsi), Mt. Carmel according to several opinions. (Cf. also Oded, B., Er. Is. 10 (1971), 193Google Scholar.) The determinatives URU and KUR do indeed interchange, but that happens only when KUR stands for mātu, not for šadû. We have assumed that URU Ba'ali is a name, perhaps abbreviated, of a city. See above, p. 59 and footnote 13.

24 See above, p. 59 and footnote 6.

25 AION 30 (1970), 393–399Google Scholar.

26 See now Greenfield, J. C., “The Zakir Inscription and the Danklied,” Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1969 (1972), 174–191Google Scholar.

27 This is the accepted date, see e.g. Kraeling, E. G., Aram and Israel (1918) 95–104Google Scholar; Noth, M., ZDPV 52 (1929), 124–141Google Scholar; Unger, M. F., Israel and the Aramaeans of Damascus (1957), 85–89Google Scholar. Cf. also Millard, A. R., Iraq 24 (1962), 42–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his forthcoming paper in PEQ.

28 Cf. Dupont-Sommer, A., Les Arameéns (1949), 47Google Scholar; Cazelles, H., CRAIBL 1969, 113Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Tadmor, H., Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 (1961), 241–242Google Scholar; and Mazar, B., JPOS 21 (1948), 124 ff.Google Scholar; idem, Bib Ar 25 (1962), 115.

30 In most current schemes of biblical chronology, the accession of Joash is placed around 800. See the comparative table in the present writer's “Chronology,” Encyclopedia Miqra'it, IV, 261–262Google Scholar.