138-578: Esarhaddon , also spelled Essarhaddon , Assarhaddon and Ashurhaddon ( Neo-Assyrian Akkadian : 𒀭𒊹𒉽𒀸 , also 𒀭𒊹𒉽𒋧𒈾 Aššur-aḫa-iddina , meaning " Ashur has given me a brother"; Biblical Hebrew : אֵסַר־חַדֹּן ʾĒsar-Ḥaddōn ) was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 681 BC to 669 BC. The third king of the Sargonid dynasty , Esarhaddon is most famous for his conquest of Egypt in 671 BC, which made his empire
276-691: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,
414-650: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as
552-517: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If
690-577: A difficult position as he had reached the height of his popularity but was powerless to act with Esarhaddon away. In order to use the opportunity, Arda-Mulissu decided that he needed to act quickly and take the throne by force. Arda-Mulissu concluded a "treaty of rebellion" with another of his younger brothers, Nabu-shar-usur (also known as Sharezer), and on 20 October 681 BC, they attacked and killed their father in one of Nineveh 's (the capital of Assyria during their time) temples. Despite their conspiracy succeeding, Arda-Mulissu could not successfully seize
828-639: A few Assyrian sources discuss, ended in what some scholars have assumed was possibly one of Assyria's worst defeats. The Egyptians had for years sponsored rebels and dissenters in Assyria and Esarhaddon had hoped to storm Egypt and take this rival out in one fell swoop. Because Esarhaddon had marched his army at great speed, the Assyrians were exhausted once they arrived outside the Egyptian-controlled city of Ashkelon , where they were defeated by
966-595: A gathering of my brothers he asked Shamash, "is this my heir?" and the gods answered, "he is your second self". And then my brothers went mad. They drew their swords, godlessly, in the middle of Nineveh. But Ashur, Shamash, Bel, Nabu, Ishtar , all the gods looked with wrath on the deeds of these scoundrels, brought their strength to weakness and humbled them beneath me. Arda-Mulissu was forced to swear loyalty to Esarhaddon by his father, but repeatedly appealed to Sennacherib to again accept him as heir instead. These appeals were not successful, and Sennacherib came to realize that
1104-404: A king who was ill would have been seen as an indication that the gods were not supportive of him. Because of this, Esarhaddon's poor health had to be hidden from his subjects at all costs. That his subjects remained unaware was ensured through the ancient royal Assyrian tradition that anyone who approached the king had to be both on their knees and veiled. Seeing as he himself had only acquired
1242-687: A lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe the languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c. 2600 BC . From about
1380-422: A letter sent to Ashurbanipal after Esarhaddon's death, the prophecy was the following: When Esarhaddon marched to Egypt, a temple of cedar wood was erected at Harran. There, the god Sin was enthroned on a wooden column, two crowns on his head, and standing in front of him was the god Nuska . Esarhaddon entered and placed the crowns onto his head, and the following was proclaimed: 'You shall go forth and conquer
1518-468: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in
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#17327727556651656-481: A major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire ( c. 2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity,
1794-590: A northern campaign in that year, attacking Shupria, but failed to capture his brothers, likely the primary objective of the expedition. The murder of Sennacherib, ruler of the mightiest empire on the planet at his time, was shocking to his contemporaries and was received with strong emotion and mixed feelings throughout Mesopotamia and the rest of the Ancient Near East . In the Levant and in Babylonia
1932-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents
2070-427: A series of contracts, dated to 694 and 693 BC, which title Nergal-shumu-ibni as mār šarri . Mār šarri literally means "son of the king", a correct identification in this case, but was commonly employed as a title only applied to the crown prince. Although Arda-Mulissu held the position of heir apparent for at least ten years, he was replaced by Esarhaddon in 684 BC. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal from
2208-410: A substantial amount of work had been completed. It is likely that Esarhaddon fulfilled most of his restoration goals, including the near complete restoration of Esagila and Etemenanki , with the possible exception of the city walls, which were likely fully restored by his successor. Esarhaddon also sponsored restoration programs in other southern cities. In his first regnal year, Esarhaddon returned
2346-406: A succession crisis. This time, Esarhaddon appointed two crown princes; his eldest living son Shamash-shum-ukin was selected as the heir to Babylon whilst a younger son, Ashurbanipal , was selected as the heir to Assyria. The two princes arrived at the capital of Nineveh together and partook in a celebration with foreign representatives and Assyrian nobles and soldiers. Promoting one of his sons as
2484-555: A vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout
2622-499: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By
2760-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates
2898-403: Is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad ,
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#17327727556653036-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c. 2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as
3174-463: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in
3312-507: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c. 2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian
3450-501: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as
3588-682: The Arabian Peninsula , Anatolia , the Caucasus , and the Levant , defeated the Kushite Empire and conquered Egypt and Libya , enforced a vassal treaty upon the Medes and Persians and ensured a peaceful transition of power to his two sons and heirs Ashurbanipal as ruler of the empire and Šamaš-šuma-ukin as king of Babylonia after his death. Although Esarhaddon had been the crown prince of Assyria for three years and
3726-519: The Assyrian heartland as well, although they were not as civically oriented as those in Babylonia. In Assyria, Esarhaddon constructed and restored temples but also worked on palaces and military fortifications. Possibly in order to reassure the Assyrian people that his projects in the south would be matched with projects of equal proportion in the north, Esarhaddon ensured that repairs were made to
3864-630: The Cimmerians invaded the westernmost provinces of the empire and by 676 they had penetrated further into Esarhaddon's empire, destroying temples and cities on the way. To stop this invasion, Esarhaddon personally led his soldiers in battle in Cilicia and successfully repelled the Cimmerians. In his inscriptions, Esarhaddon claims to personally have killed the Cimmerian king Teušpa . While
4002-519: The Kushite Pharaoh Taharqa . Following this defeat, Esarhaddon abandoned his plan to conquer Egypt for the moment and withdrew back to Nineveh . By the time of Esarhaddon's first failed invasion of Egypt in 673 BC, it had become apparent that the king's health was deteriorating. This presented a problem since one of the chief requirements of being the Assyrian king was that one had perfect mental and physical health. The king
4140-542: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have
4278-465: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect
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4416-595: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from
4554-598: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be
4692-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark
4830-470: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as
4968-561: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since
5106-524: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of
5244-500: The 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering
5382-403: The Assyrian throne with great difficulty, Esarhaddon took several steps in order to ensure that the transition of power following his own death would be a smooth and peaceful one. A treaty concluded between Esarhaddon and his vassal Ramataia , the ruler of a Median kingdom in the east called Urakazabarna in c. 672 BC makes it clear that all of Esarhaddon's sons were still minors at
5520-538: The Cimmerian invasion was underway, one of Esarhaddon's vassals in the Levant , the Phoenician city-state of Sidon , rebelled against his rule. Sidon had only recently been conquered by Assyria, having been made a vassal by Esarhaddon's father in 701. Esarhaddon marched his army down along the Mediterranean coast and captured the rebellious city in 677 but its king, Abdi-Milkutti , escaped by boat. He
5658-562: The Egyptians in two additional battles and successfully seized and plundered the Egyptian capital of Memphis . The Assyrian army was also forced to fight some of their vassals in the Levant , such as Baal of Tyre , who had allied with the Egyptians against Esarhaddon. Neo-Assyrian Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized: Akkadû(m) )
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5796-633: The Elamites and some Chaldean rebels which had fled there. In response to this attack, the Elamites invaded from another route Babylonia in the south of Sennacherib's empire and in 694 successfully captured Ashur-nadin-shumi at the city of Sippar . The prince was taken back to Elam and probably executed, causing Sennacherib to wreak savage revenge on the Elamites, Chaldeans and Babylonians. After Aššur-nādin-šumi's presumed death, Sennacherib elevated his second eldest surviving son, Arda-Mulissu , as crown prince. After several years as crown prince, Arda-Mulissu
5934-472: The Kingdom of Urartu in the north. Arda-Mulissu was the son of Sennacherib , who reigned as king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 BC to 681 BC. Sennacherib had more than one wife, and Arda-Mulissu's mother is not known but it is certain that she was not Naqi'a , the mother of Arda-Mulissu's younger half-brother Esarhaddon . In 700 BC, Sennacherib had appointed his eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi , as
6072-400: The Neo-Assyrian throne. The murder, and Arda-Mulissu's aspirations of becoming king himself, made Esarhaddon's rise to the throne difficult and he first had to defeat his brothers in a six-week long civil war. His brothers' attempted coup had been unexpected and troublesome for Esarhaddon and he would be plagued by paranoia and mistrust for his officials, governors and male family members until
6210-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it
6348-406: The best in Assyria, were perplexed and eventually had to confess that they were powerless to aid him. This is clearly expressed in their letters, such as the following: My lord, the king, keeps telling me: "Why do you not identify the nature of my disease and find a cure?" As I told the king already in person, his symptoms cannot be classified. Because the Assyrians saw illness as divine punishment,
6486-446: The burden from the shoulders of their sickly father. Esarhaddon's mother Naqiʾa ensured that any potential enemies and claimants took an oath to support Ashurbanipal's rise to the Assyrian throne, another step to avoid the bloodshed which had begun Esarhaddon's own reign. In order to ensure the succession of Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin, Esarhaddon himself also concluded succession treaties with at least six independent rulers in
6624-488: The chiefs of the Chaldeans bless the king, saying, "(It is he) who resettled (the people) of Babylon". The rebuilding of the city was not completed during Esarhaddon's lifetime and much work was also done during the reign of his successors. Exactly how much of the reconstruction was done during the reign of Esarhaddon is uncertain, but stones with his inscriptions are found in the ruins of the city's temples, suggesting that
6762-553: The cities of Der , Humhumia and Sippar-aruru . In the years to follow, statues were also returned to the cities of Larsa and Uruk . As he had in Babylon, Esarhaddon also cleared away debris in Uruk and repaired the city's Eanna temple, dedicated to the goddess Ishtar . Similar small-scale restoration projects were undertaken in the cities of Nippur , Borsippa and Akkad . Because of Esarhaddon's extensive building projects in
6900-517: The city of Sippar . The Assyrian army had been away at the time, campaigning in Anatolia , and was forced to abandon this campaign in order to defend the southern provinces. Little is recorded of this conflict and as the fall of Sippar was an embarrassment it is not mentioned by Esarhaddon in any of his inscriptions. Shortly after seizing Sippar, the Elamite king Khumban-khaltash II died, which left
7038-582: The city of Sippar . The prince was taken to Elam and probably executed. Needing to appoint a new heir from among his sons, Sennacherib then elevated his second eldest surviving son, Arda-Mulissu, as crown prince. Assyriologists Simo Parpola and Theodore Kwasman have also suggested an alternative hypothesis, that Ashur-nadin-shumi was intended to succeed Sennacherib only in Babylonia and that Arda-Mulissu could have been appointed significantly earlier, perhaps already in 698 BC. There are no known documents that describe Arda-Mulissu as crown prince prior to 694 BC,
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#17327727556657176-629: The city's destruction, he only refers to himself as a king "ordained by the gods" in his inscriptions in Babylon, only mentioning Sennacherib in his inscriptions in the north and blaming the city's destruction not on his father but on Babylon "offending its gods". Writing of his reconstruction of Babylon, Esarhaddon states the following: Great king, mighty monarch, lord of all, king of the land of Assur, ruler of Babylon, faithful shepherd, beloved of Marduk, lord of lords, dutiful leader, loved by Marduk's Consort Zurpanitum, humble, obedient, full of praise for their strength and awestruck from his earliest days in
7314-423: The crown and the royal garbs and eating the king's food. During these hundred days, the actual king remained hidden and was known only under the alias "the farmer". The goal of the ritual was that any evil intended for the king would instead be focused on the substitute king, who was killed regardless of if anything had happened at the end of the hundred days, keeping the real monarch safe. Whatever omen Esarhaddon
7452-462: The crown prince (designated heir) and gave him rule of Babylonia , which covered the southern Mesopotamian provinces of his empire. Shortly after this appointment, Sennacherib campaigned against Elam (modern day southern Iran) to chase after Chaldean rebels which had fled there. In response to this incursion into their territory, the Elamites invaded the southern parts of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and in 694 BC successfully captured Ashur-nadin-shumi at
7590-444: The designated heir of King Sennacherib , with the entire empire having taken oaths to support him, it was only with great difficulty that he successfully ascended the Assyrian throne. Sennacherib's first choice as successor had been his eldest son, Aššur-nādin-šumi , who he had appointed as the ruler of Babylon in about 700 BC. Shortly thereafter, Sennacherib attacked the land of Elam (modern day southern Iran ) in order to defeat
7728-485: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered
7866-495: The doors of the temple and the pedestal that was to house the statue of Bel was constructed in gold. A report from the governor Esarhaddon installed in Babylon confirms that the reconstruction was very well received by the Babylonians: I have entered Babylon. The Babylonians have received me kindly, and daily they bless the king, saying, "what was taken and plundered from Babylon, he has returned" and from Sippar to Bab-marrat
8004-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing
8142-478: The east and with several of his own governors outside the Assyrian heartland in 672. Perhaps the main motivating factor to create these treaties was the possibility that his brothers, particularly Arda-Mulissu , were still alive and sought to claim the Assyrian throne. Some inscriptions suggest that they were alive and free as late as 673. In the early months of 671 BC, Esarhaddon again marched against Egypt . The army assembled for this second Egytian campaign
8280-509: The end of his reign. As a result of this paranoia, most of the palaces used by Esarhaddon were high-security fortifications located outside of the major population centers of the cities. Also perhaps resulting from his mistrust for his male relatives, Esarhaddon's female relatives, such as his mother Naqiʾa and his daughter Šērūʾa-ēṭirat , were allowed to wield considerably more influence and political power during his reign than women had been allowed in any previous period of Assyrian history, with
8418-540: The enemy generals fled. He then marched on Nineveh without opposition. Six weeks after his father's death he was accepted and recognized as the new Assyrian king at Nineveh. Shortly after taking the throne, Esarhaddon made sure to execute all conspirators and political enemies he could get his hands on, including the families of his brothers. All servants involved with the security of the royal palace at Nineveh were "dismissed" (i.e. executed). Arda-Mulissu and Nabû-šarru-uṣur survived this purge as they had escaped as exiles to
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#17327727556658556-478: The fact that Esarhaddon's grandfather Sargon II had acquired the Assyrian throne through usurpation and may not have been related to any earlier Assyrian king. It is possible that descendants of earlier kings may still have been alive and in a position to press their claims on the Assyrian throne. In order to avoid a civil war upon his death, Esarhaddon appointed his eldest son Sin-nadin-apli as crown prince in 674, but he died just two years later, again threatening
8694-531: The fires had instead spread into Ubumu. The political refugees were captured and executed. Some criminals from Urartu, who the Shuprian king had similarly refused to give up to the king of Urartu, were seized and sent to Urartu, perhaps in order to improve relations. Ubumu was repaired, renamed and annexed, with two eunuchs being appointed as its governors. In 675, the Elamites invaded Babylonia and captured
8832-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative
8970-540: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in
9108-503: The gods they alienated my father's well-disposed heart from me, though in secret his heart was affected with compassion, and he still intended me to exercise kingship. Though Sennacherib had foreseen the danger of keeping Esarhaddon near his ambitious brothers, he had not foreseen the dangers to his own life. On 20 October 681, Arda-Mulissu and another of Sennacherib's sons, Nabû-šarru-uṣur, attacked and killed their father in one of Nineveh 's temples. However, Arda-Mulissu's dreams of claiming
9246-435: The gods, justly preferred me to my other brothers, saying: ‘This is my heir’". Arda-Mulissu was forced to swear loyalty to Esarhaddon by his father, but repeatedly tried to appeal Sennacherib to again accept him as heir instead. Sennacherib noted the increasing popularity of Arda-Mulissu and came to fear for his designated successor, so sent Esarhaddon away to the western provinces. This exile of Esarhaddon put Arda-Mulissu in
9384-499: The guidance of the sun-god Shamash (which was obtained through interpreting what was perceived as signs from the gods) for advice in political and military matters, such as whom to appoint to a certain position or if a planned military campaign would be successful. Queries concerning the possibility of betrayal are known only from Esarhaddon's reign. Most scholars have classified Esarhaddon as paranoid, some going as far as suggesting that he developed paranoid personality disorder after
9522-491: The heir to Assyria and another as the heir to Babylon was a new idea, for in the past decades the Assyrian king had simultaneously been the King of Babylon. The choice to name a younger son as crown prince of Assyria, which was clearly Esarhaddon's primary title, and an older son as crown prince of Babylon might be explained by the mothers of the two sons. While Ashurbanipal's mother was likely Assyrian in origin, Shamash-shum-ukin
9660-415: The king from imminent danger announced by some sort of omen. Esarhaddon had performed the ritual earlier in his reign, but this time it left him unable to command his invasion of Egypt. The "substitute king" ritual involved the Assyrian monarch going into hiding for a hundred days, during which a substitute (preferably one with mental deficiencies) took the king's place by sleeping in the royal bed, wearing
9798-475: The king's chief exorcist Adad-shumu-usur, the man who was chiefly responsible for Esarhaddon's well-being. One such letter reads: As to what the king, my lord, wrote to me: "I am feeling very sad; how did we act that I have become so depressed for this little one of mine?" Had it been curable you would have given away half your kingdom to have it cured! But what can we do? O king, my lord, it is something that cannot be done. Notes and letters preserved from those at
9936-732: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian
10074-457: The large amount of debris left since Sennacherib's destruction of the city, resettlement of the many Babylonians who by this point were either enslaved or scattered across the empire, the reconstruction of most of the buildings, the restoration of the great temple complex dedicated to Bel , known as the Esagila , and the enormous ziggurat complex called Etemenanki as well as the restoration of
10212-493: The largest the world had ever seen, and for his reconstruction of Babylon , which had been destroyed by his father. After Sennacherib's eldest son and heir Aššur-nādin-šumi had been captured and presumably executed in 694, the new heir had originally been the second eldest son, Arda-Mulissu , but in 684, Esarhaddon, a younger son, was appointed instead. Angered by this decision, Arda-Mulissu and another brother, Nabû-šarru-uṣur , murdered their father in 681 and planned to seize
10350-684: The last man and I laid a heavy penalty upon them, I destroyed their seed. As a result of his tumultuous rise to the throne, Esarhaddon was distrustful of his servants, vassals and family members. He frequently sought the advice of oracles and priests on whether any of his relatives or officials wished to harm him. Although highly distrustful of his male relatives, Esarhaddon seems to not have been paranoid in regards to his female relatives. During his reign his wife Ešarra-ḫammat , his mother Naqiʾa and his daughter Šērūʾa-ēṭirat all wielded considerably more influence and political power than women during earlier parts of Assyrian history. Esarhaddon's paranoia
10488-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which
10626-591: The later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c. 1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language
10764-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of
10902-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period
11040-463: The midst of the sea [missing portion] Like a fish I caught him up out of the sea and cut off his head. His wife, his sons, the people of his palace, property and goods, precious stones, garments of colored wool and linen, maple and boxwood, all kinds of treasures of his palace, in great abundance, I carried off. His widespreading peoples – there was no numbering them, cattle, sheep and asses, in great number, I transported to Assyria. After dealing with
11178-569: The mountain kingdom of Shupria , before moving on to the Kingdom of Urartu , an old rival of Assyria. Esarhaddon successfully took the throne six weeks after Sennacherib's death. He then executed all conspirators and political enemies he could get his hands on, including the families of Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur continued to live as exiles in Urartu for several years. Some texts suggest that they were alive and free in Urartu as late as 673 BC. Esarhaddon conducted
11316-458: The murder of his father. Other scholars have refrained from using this label, instead simply characterizing him as "mistrustful" and noting that paranoia is "by definition delusional and irrational" while Esarhaddon is likely to have had many real opponents and enemies. Esarhaddon wished to ensure the support of the inhabitants of Babylonia , the southern part of his empire. To this end, the king sponsored building and restoration projects throughout
11454-441: The new Elamite king, Urtak , in a bad position. To repair relations with Assyria and avoid further conflict, Urtak abandoned the invasion and returned some statues of gods which the Elamites had stolen. The two monarchs entered into an alliance and exchanged children to be raised at each other's courts. Near the end of Esarhaddon's seventh year on the throne, in the winter of 673, the king invaded Egypt . This invasion, which only
11592-501: The new king. Two of the principal threats to Assyria were the Kingdom of Urartu under King Rusa II in the north, a sworn enemy of Assyria which still sheltered his brothers, and the Cimmerians , an iranic nomadic tribe which was harassing his western borders. Esarhaddon allied with the nomadic Scythians , famous for their cavalry, in order to dissuade the Cimmerians from attacking but it doesn't appear to have helped. In 679 BC,
11730-608: The news was celebrated and proclaimed as divine punishment due to Sennacherib's brutal campaigns against these regions while in Assyria, the reaction was probably resentment and horror. The event was recorded in numerous sources and is even mentioned in the Bible ( 2 Kings 19:37 ; Isaiah 37:38 ), wherein Arda-Mulissu is called Adrammelech . A fictive account by the medieval Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (5th century AD) claims that Arda-Mulissu's descendants in Urartu became
11868-412: The north and the complete lack of such projects in the south. Vassals who had hoped to use the unstable political climate in Assyria to free themselves, perhaps believing that the new king hadn't yet consolidated his position well enough to stop them, and foreign powers eager to expand their territory soon realized that (despite Esarhaddon's distrust) the governors and soldiers of Assyria fully supported
12006-511: The northern kingdom of Urartu a vassal state of the Assyrian Empire in Anatolia . The frequent mentions of Arda-Mulissu and Esarhaddon's other brothers in his inscriptions indicates that he was surprised and bothered by their actions. Esarhaddon's own inscription chronicling his entry into Nineveh and his purge of those in support of the conspiracy reads as follows:9 I entered into Nineveh, my royal city, joyfully, and took my seat upon
12144-481: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of
12282-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when
12420-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in
12558-877: The other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages , a family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from
12696-443: The palace was strengthened with its gateways being modified into impregnable fortifications which could seal the entire building off completely from the city. If these entrances were sealed, the only way into the palace would be through a steep and narrow path protected by several strong doors. A similar palace, also located on a separate mound far from the city center, was built at Nineveh . All Assyrian kings are known to have sought
12834-399: The patron deity of the city, had been carried off deep into Assyrian territory. The restoration of the city, announced by Esarhaddon in 680, became one of his most important projects. Throughout Esarhaddon's reign, reports from the officials the king appointed to oversee the reconstruction speak of the great scope of the building project. The ambitious restoration of the city involved removing
12972-437: The position is unknown, but it is clear from contemporary texts that he was very disappointed. Despite his dismissal, Arda-Mulissu remained popular and some vassals secretly supported him as the heir to throne. Esarhaddon's own texts confirm that the dismissal of an older son as heir in favour of a younger one was an extraordinary decision, writing "Although I was younger than my big brothers, my father and begetter, by command of
13110-463: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation
13248-501: The possible exception of Sammuramat in the 8th century BC. Despite a relatively short and difficult reign, and being plagued by paranoia, depression and constant illness, Esarhaddon remains recognized as one of the greatest and most successful Assyrian kings . He quickly defeated his brothers in 681, completed ambitious and large-scale building projects in both Assyria and Babylonia , successfully campaigned in Media , Persia , Elam ,
13386-545: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Arda-Mulissu Arda-Mulissu or Arda-Mulissi ( Neo-Assyrian Akkadian : 𒀴𒁹𒎏𒆤 , romanized: Arda-Mulišši , lit. ' servant of Mullissu ' ), also known as Urdu-Mullissi , Urad-Mullissu and Arad-Ninlil and known in Hebrew writings as Adrammelech ( Hebrew : אַדְרַמֶּלֶךְ ʾAḏrammeleḵ ),
13524-461: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian
13662-448: The presence of their divine greatness [am I, Esarhaddon]. When in the reign of an earlier king there were ill omens, the city offended its gods and was destroyed at their command. It was me, Esarhaddon, whom they chose to restore everything to its rightful place, to calm their anger, to assuage their wrath. You, Marduk, entrusted the protection of the land of Assur to me. The Gods of Babylon meanwhile told me to rebuild their shrines and renew
13800-546: The problems in Sidon and Cilicia , Esarhaddon turned his attention to Urartu . At first, he struck at the Mannaeans , a people allied with Urartu, but by 673 he was openly at war with the kingdom of Urartu itself. As part of this war, Esarhaddon attacked and conquered the kingdom of Shupria , a vassal kingdom to Urartu whose capital Ubumu was located on the shores of Lake Van . The king's casus belli for this invasion
13938-518: The proper religious observances of their palace, Esagila. I called up all my workmen and conscripted all the people of Babylonia. I set them to work, digging up the ground and carrying the earth away in baskets. Esarhaddon successfully rebuilt the city gates, battlements, drains, courtyards, shrines and various other buildings and structures. Great care was taken during rebuilding of the Esagila , depositing precious stones, scented oils and perfumes into its foundations. Precious metals were chosen to cover
14076-426: The region and that he meant to rule Babylon with the same care and generosity as a native Babylonian king. The city of Babylon , which gave its name to Babylonia , had been the political center of southern Mesopotamia for more than a thousand years. In an effort to quell Babylonian aspirations of independence, the city had been razed by Esarhaddon's father in 689 BC, and the statue of Bel (also known as Marduk ),
14214-432: The royal court, including Esarhaddon's physicians, describe his condition in some detail, discussing violent vomiting, constant fever, nosebleeds, dizziness, painful earaches, diarrhea and depression. The king often feared that his death was near, and his condition would have been apparent to anyone who saw him as he was affected by a permanent skin rash which covered most of his body, including his face. The physicians, likely
14352-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian
14490-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign
14628-401: The situation was tense, so he sent Esarhaddon into exile in the western provinces for his own protection. Esarhaddon was unhappy with his exile and blamed his brothers for it, describing it with the following words: Malicious gossip, slander and falsehood they [i.e. Esarhaddon's brothers] wove around me in a godless way, lies and insincerity. They plotted evil behind my back. Against the will of
14766-458: The south and his efforts to link himself to the Babylonian royal tradition, some scholars have described him as the "Babylonian king of Assyria", but such a view might misrepresent the actual efforts of the king. Esarhaddon was king of both Assyria and Babylonia and his military and political base remained in the north, much like his predecessors. While his southern building projects were impressive, ambitious and unprecedented, he completed projects in
14904-489: The south to a far greater extent than any of his predecessors had. Babylonia had only become an inner part of the Assyrian Empire relatively recently, having been ruled by native kings as vassals of the Assyrians until its conquest and annexation by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in the previous century. Through his building program, Esarhaddon likely hoped to show the benefits of continuing Assyrian rule over
15042-461: The southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with
15180-585: The southern parts of his empire instead. Treaties drawn up by Esarhaddon are somewhat unclear as to the relationship he intended his two sons to have. It is clear that Ashurbanipal was the primary heir to the empire and that Shamash-shum-ukin was to swear him an oath of allegiance, but other parts also specify that Ashurbanipal was not to interfere in Shamash-shum-ukin's affairs which indicates a more equal standing. The two crown princes soon became heavily involved with Assyrian politics, which lifted some of
15318-405: The statues of various southern gods that had been captured in wars and held in Assyria. During the time since Sennacherib 's destruction of the city, the statue of Bel had, along with statues of several other traditional Babylonian deities, been kept at the town of Issete in the northeastern parts of Assyria. Although the statue of Bel remained in Assyria, statues of other gods were returned to
15456-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),
15594-510: The temple of Ešarra in Assur , one of the chief temples of northern Mesopotamia . Similar projects were conducted for temples in the Assyrian capital, Nineveh and in the city of Arbela . Though the temple-building projects conducted in the south were matched with temple-building projects in the north, Esarhaddon's prioritizing of Assyria over Babylonia is apparent from the various administrative and military building projects undertaken in
15732-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises
15870-449: The throne of my father in safety. The south wind blew, the breath of Ea , the wind whose blowing is favorable for exercising kingship. There awaited me favorable signs in heaven and on earth, a message of the soothsayers, tidings from the gods and goddesses. Continually [missing portion] and gave my heart courage. The soldiers, the rebels who had fomented the plot to seize the rulership of Assyria for my brothers, their ranks I examined to
16008-400: The throne would be crushed. The murder of Sennacherib had caused some friction between Arda-Mulissu and his supporters which delayed a potential coronation and in the meantime, Esarhaddon had raised an army. With this army at his back he met an army raised by his brothers at Hanigalbat , a region in the western parts of the empire, where most of the soldiers deserted his brothers to join him and
16146-559: The throne. The murder of the king caused some resentment against Arda-Mulissu by his own supporters which delayed his potential coronation. In the meantime, Esarhaddon had raised an army. The army raised by Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur met Esarhaddon's forces in Hanigalbat , a region in the western parts of the empire. There, most of their soldiers deserted and joined Esarhaddon, who then marched on Nineveh without opposition. Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur fled north, probably first to
16284-606: The time, which was problematic. The same treaty also shows that Esarhaddon was worried that there might be several factions who might oppose his successor's rise to the throne after his death, listing potential opposing forces as his successor's brothers, uncles and cousins and even "descendants of former royalty" and "one of the chiefs or governors of Assyria". This indicates that at least some of Esarhaddon's brothers were still alive at this point and that they or their children could possibly represent threats to his own children. The mention of "descendants of former royalty" might allude to
16422-507: The two inner walls of the city. The project was not only important because it illustrated goodwill towards the Babylonian people, but also because it allowed Esarhaddon to assume one of the essential characteristics the Babylonians invested in kingship. While the king of Assyria was generally supposed to be a military figure, the king of Babylon was ideally a builder and restorer, particularly of temples. Careful to not associate himself with
16560-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form
16698-418: The world!' And he went and conquered Egypt. Three months after having received this prophecy, Esarhaddon's forces were victorious in their first battle with the Egyptians. Despite the prophecy and initial success, Esarhaddon was not convinced of his own safety. Just eleven days after he had defeated the Egyptians, he performed the substitute king ritual , an ancient Assyrian method intended to protect and shield
16836-477: The year in which Ashur-nadin-shumi was captured and presumably executed. Kwasman and Parpola also suggested that Sennacherib might have appointed another son, Nergal-shumu-ibni , as crown prince of Babylonia after Ashur-nadin-shumi's death. Nergal-shumu-ibni would then have served as crown prince of Babylonia while Arda-Mulissu was crown prince of Assyria. There are no surviving documents to affirm such an appointment, but Kwasman and Parpola based their hypothesis on
16974-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has
17112-461: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division
17250-450: Was also reflected by where he chose to live. One of his main residences was a palace in the city of Nimrud originally constructed as an armory by his predecessor Shalmaneser III (r. 859–824 BC) almost two hundred years earlier. Rather than occupying a central and visible spot within the cultic and administrative center of the city, this palace was located in its outskirts on a separate mound which made it well-protected. Between 676 and 672,
17388-471: Was an ancient Assyrian prince of the Sargonid dynasty , the son of Sennacherib , king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire , and the older brother of Sennacherib's successor Esarhaddon . Arda-Mulissu served as Sennacherib's crown prince and heir for ten years, from the time of the death of Sennacherib's first crown prince Ashur-nadin-shumi in 694 BC, but was for unknown reasons replaced as heir by Esarhaddon in 684 BC. Disappointed by this demotion, Arda-Mulissu
17526-399: Was captured and executed a year later, the same year that Esarhaddon decisively defeated the Cimmerians. Another rebellious vassal king, Sanduarri of "Kundu and Sissu" (likely locations in Cilicia ), was also defeated and executed. In order to celebrate his victory, Esarhaddon had the heads of the two vassal kings hung around the necks of their nobles, who were paraded around Nineveh . Sidon
17664-407: Was considerably larger than the one Esarhaddon had used in 673 and he marched at a much slower speed in order to avoid the problems that had plagued his previous attempt. On his way he passed through Harran , one of the major cities in the western parts of his empire. Here, a prophecy was revealed to the king, which predicted that Esarhaddon's conquest of Egypt would be a successful one. According to
17802-513: Was constantly suffering from some illness and would often spend days in his sleeping quarters without food, drink and human contact. The death of Esharra-hammat, his beloved wife, in February 672 BC is unlikely to have improved his condition. Surviving court documents overwhelmingly point to Esarhaddon often being sad. The deaths of his wife and their recently born infant child made Esarhaddon depressed. This can clearly be seen in letters written by
17940-451: Was fearing, he survived 671 and would perform the ritual twice during the two years that followed, which left him unable to fulfill his duties as the Assyrian king for a total of almost a year. During this time, most of the civil administration of his empire was overseen by his crown princes and the army in Egypt was likely commanded by his chief eunuch, Ashur-nasir . The Assyrian army defeated
18078-532: Was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and the dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran ,
18216-475: Was reduced to an Assyrian province and two cities which had been under the Sidonian king's control were gifted to another vassal king, Baal of Tyre . Esarhaddon discusses his victory over Sidon in a contemporary inscription: Abdi-milkutti, king of Sidon, who did not fear my majesty, did not heed the word of my lips, who trusted in the fearful sea and cast off my yoke – Sidon, his garrison city, which lies in
18354-424: Was replaced as heir by Esarhaddon in 684. The reason for Arda-Mulissu's sudden dismissal from the prominent position is unknown, but it is clear that he was very disappointed. Esarhaddon described the reaction of his brothers to his appointment as heir in a later inscription: Of my older brothers, the younger brother was I. But by decree of [the gods] Ashur and Shamash , Bel and Nabu , my father exalted me, amid
18492-461: Was the chief orchestrator of a 681 BC conspiracy in which he and one of his younger brothers, Nabu-shar-usur , murdered Sennacherib in the hopes of seizing the throne. Sennacherib's murder turned some of Arda-Mulissu's supporters against him and his coronation was postponed. In the turmoil that followed, Esarhaddon marched on the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and successfully seized the throne. After their failure, Arda-Mulissu and Nabu-shar-usur fled to
18630-415: Was the king of Shupria's refusal to hand over political refugees from Assyria (possibly some of the conspirators behind Sennacherib 's death) and though the Shuprian king had agreed to give up the refugees after a long series of letters, Esarhaddon considered it took him too long to relent. The Assyrians seized and plundered the city after the defenders had attempted to burn down the Assyrian siege weapons and
18768-512: Was the son of a woman from Babylon (though this is uncertain, Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin may have shared the same mother which would probably have had problematic consequences if Shamash-shum-ukin was to ascend to the Assyrian throne). Since Ashurbanipal was the next oldest son, he then was the superior candidate to the throne. Esarhaddon probably surmised that the Babylonians would be content with someone of Babylonian heritage as their king and as such set Shamash-shum-ukin to inherit Babylon and
18906-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for
19044-505: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in
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