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Ubaid Uruk Period Early Dynastic Akkadian Empire Ur III · Neo-Sumerian Old Babylonian Old Assyrian Middle Babylonian Middle Assyrian Neo-Assyrian Neo-Babylonian Achaemenid Persian

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Editorial Sumerian literature Sumerian royal Assyrian royal Assyrian archives

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Page 1351 / 1492

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 017

Sennacherib's self-presentation as cosmic shepherd and lightning-wielding warrior attests the formulaic theology of Assyrian royal legitimacy at the height of the empire, rooting military supremacy in the god Aššur's personal mandate.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-Assyrian

RINAP 3

Sennacherib 018

Attests Sennacherib's receipt of tribute from the official of Ḫararatu — gold, silver, musukkannu-timber, and livestock — documenting the economic extraction that funded Assyria's western campaigns circa 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 020

Describes Sennacherib forcing Phoenician and Ionian captives to build Mediterranean-style ships on the Tigris, then portaging them overland to the Euphrates — a rare record of naval logistics adapted for landlocked riverine warfare against Chaldean Babylonia.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 022

Sennacherib's own account of his kingship frames his authority as divinely mandated by Aššur — a template for how Assyrian royal ideology fused military dominance with cosmic and moral legitimacy around 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 024

Preserves Sennacherib's royal titulary and Aššur theology in formulaic detail, documenting how Neo-Assyrian kings grounded military authority in divine mandate circa 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 026

Chronicles Sennacherib's campaigns against Marduk-apla-iddina II and the Sidon succession — naming Tu-Baʾlu as Assyrian-installed client king, a concrete case of how Nineveh reshaped Levantine rulership circa 701 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 027

Preserves Sennacherib's self-presentation as divinely ordained enforcer of justice and protector of the weak — the ideological scaffolding that legitimised Assyrian imperial rule around 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 028

Chronicles Sennacherib's systematic destruction and looting of enemy cities, adding a datable Assyrian royal voice to the archaeological record of Neo-Assyrian military campaigns ca. 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 029

Records Sennacherib's 701 BCE Levantine campaign — the deportation of Ashkelon's king, his dynastic replacement, and the sack of Philistine coastal cities — corroborating and expanding the biblical account of his western expedition.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 030

Records Lulî of Sidon's flight by sea after Sennacherib's 701 BCE western campaign — one of the few Assyrian royal texts to name a Phoenician king's fate and corroborate the Biblical and classical tradition of that campaign.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 031

Composite royal inscription of Sennacherib (~695 BCE) that pairs the king's epithets as champion of justice and helper of the weak with concrete tallies of captives and livestock — revealing how Assyrian ideology fused divine mandate with systematic plunder.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 032

Records Sennacherib's founding of Kār-Sennacherib and his receipt of tribute from Medes 'of whose land no king, my ancestors, had heard mention' — pushing Assyrian imperial reach into previously undocumented Iranian territory.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 088

A royal palace inscription of Sennacherib (~695 BCE), asserting the twin titles 'king of the world, king of Assyria' — the standard ideological formula projecting universal dominion from the Assyrian heartland.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 089

A royal titulary inscription of Sennacherib (~695 BCE), attesting the layered epithets — great king, strong king, king of the world — through which Assyrian kings projected cosmic authority over a multi-ethnic empire.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 090

A royal palace inscription of Sennacherib, asserting his titulary — great king, mighty king, king of Assyria — and anchoring the ideological grammar by which Sargonid rulers legitimised their authority over the ancient Near East.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 092

Dedicatory inscription for Sennacherib's 'Palace Without a Rival' at Nineveh, attesting the Assyrian royal ideology that monumental construction expressed divine favour and legitimised kingship.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 094

Attests Sennacherib's monumental rebuilding of Nineveh's double circuit of walls, the physical infrastructure that transformed the city into the definitive capital of the late Assyrian empire.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 096

Attests Sennacherib's rebuilding of Nineveh's city wall, situating one phase of the capital's monumental expansion within his broader programme of urban transformation after destroying Babylon in 689 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 098

Records Sennacherib granting his son a house tied to the construction of Nineveh's city wall — linking royal family patronage directly to the great building programme that defined his reign.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 099

Records Sennacherib's grant of a house to his son Aššur-šumu-ušabši, tying a private royal property transfer to the ceremonial founding of Nineveh — evidence that dynastic patronage was embedded in the city's earliest building acts.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 100

Attests Sennacherib's simultaneous founding of a royal residence and the laying of Nineveh's foundations, linking dynastic succession directly to the city's mythologized origins.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1002

One of the surviving royal inscriptions of Sennacherib (RINAP 3, Q004058), preserving — even in fragmentary form — the formulaic titulary through which Assyrian kings legitimised their rule.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1015

Attests Sennacherib's siege of Azekah and tribute exacted from Hezekiah of Judah — the Assyrian royal record that corroborates, and complicates, the biblical account in 2 Kings 18–19.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1016

Records Sennacherib's reshaping of the Assyrian landscape — restoring pasturelands, resettling animals, and erecting white limestone bull colossi at a watercourse gate — documenting the royal ideology that equated hydraulic and architectural mastery with divine order.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1017

A fragmentary royal inscription of Sennacherib attesting his characteristic wilderness rhetoric — onagers and gazelles marking untamed land he claimed to have brought under Assyrian order.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1018

A fragmentary Sennacherib royal inscription invoking the great gods to bind future kings to his legacy — one of several RINAP 3 witnesses documenting how Assyrian rulers embedded dynastic legitimacy in monumental dedications.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1019

Sennacherib's own account of Kudur-Naḫḫunte's role in the removal of Babylonian divine statues — Nabû and Marduk among them — anchors Assyrian justification for intervention in Babylonian cult politics to a named Elamite aggressor.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1021

One of the surviving manuscript witnesses to Sennacherib's royal inscriptions, preserving fragmentary titulary that documents how the king projected his authority in the last decade of his reign.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1022

Survives too fragmentarily to yield a complete reading, but preserves Sennacherib's own scribes likening an enemy — or possibly a rebel — to a gallû-demon, grounding Assyrian royal rhetoric in the underworld mythology of the period.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRIAo

Sennacherib 1023

Invokes the Assyrian divine pantheon — Aššur, Anu, Ea, Enlil, Sîn, Šamaš, Adad — as legitimating witnesses to a royal act, attesting the theological scaffolding Sennacherib deployed to underwrite his authority c. 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1024

Preserves Sennacherib invoking both Marduk and Sîn in a territorial context — fragmentary evidence bearing on the contested question of how he framed divine authority after his sack of Babylon in 689 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 1025

One of Sennacherib's royal inscriptions (RINAP 3, Q004081): too fragmentary to recover its specific campaign or building claim, but preserving the spider-web desolation topos used in Assyrian rhetoric to depict conquered lands.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 135

Attests Sennacherib's claim to have defeated Merodach-baladan on his first campaign, anchoring a key episode in Assyro-Babylonian conflict within the king's own commemorative voice.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 136

Preserves Sennacherib's formal titulary and divine mandate from Aššur, showing how Neo-Assyrian kings encoded cosmic authority — shepherd, warrior, arbiter of justice — directly into the preamble of royal inscriptions.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 137

Sennacherib's own account of his first campaign records the rout of Merodach-baladan II at Kish (~703 BCE), corroborating Biblical notices of Babylonian–Elamite resistance to Assyrian expansion.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 139

Chronicles Sennacherib's campaign against the Ellipi king Ispabāra — destruction of Marubištu and Akkuddu, deportation of populations, seizure of livestock — documenting Assyrian methods of provincial subjugation on the Zagros frontier ca. 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 140

Attests Sennacherib's mountainous campaign against Kassite-region strongholds — Bīt-Kilamzaḫ, Ḫardišpu, Bīt-Kubatti — preserving the royal rhetoric of brutal, methodical conquest in terrain too rugged even for chariots.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 141

Describes Sennacherib's assault on Nagīte-raqqi in the sea-marshes and the dispersal of Chaldean–Elamite booty — one of several royal inscriptions documenting his campaign to extinguish Bīt-Yakīn resistance in the Persian Gulf littoral.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 142

Sennacherib's own account of his 701 BCE western campaign names the kings of Ammon, Moab, and Edom as tribute-payers and records the deportation of Ṣidqâ of Ashkelon — events contemporaneous with the biblical siege tradition in 2 Kings 18–19.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 143

Lists Sennacherib's subjugation of Hezekiah of Judah alongside campaigns in Anatolia and the Zagros, offering Assyrian corroboration for events recorded in 2 Kings 18–19.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 145

Attests Sennacherib's invocation of eight named deities before battle, illustrating how Neo-Assyrian royal ideology wove divine sanction into the very grammar of military command.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 146

Sennacherib frames his destruction of Babylon as justified punishment by casting its king Šūzubu — a runaway Chaldean slave who seized the throne — as a usurper whose illegitimacy condemned the city itself.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 147

Sennacherib frames the rebel Šūzubu's rise from runaway slave to king of Babylon as proof of Babylon's moral disorder — a rare royal justification for the city's destruction in 689 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 148

Preserves Sennacherib's own account of invoking Aššur, Ištar, Bēl, and five other deities before battle, documenting the full divine pantheon a Neo-Assyrian king enlisted to legitimise military campaigns circa 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 149

Sennacherib's own account of campaigning through terrain so harsh 'no other living man had ever pitched a tent there,' recording the flight of Marduk-apla-iddina II — Merodach-baladan of the Hebrew Bible — before Assyrian arms.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 150

Records Merodach-baladan's flight from Babylon before Sennacherib's advance, corroborating the Biblical account (2 Kings 20) while framing the conquest as a joyful royal entry — Assyrian propaganda at its most pointed.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 151

Preserves precise aslu-cubit measurements for Sennacherib's palace terrace beside the Tigris, offering rare metrological data for reconstructing the actual dimensions of a Neo-Assyrian royal building project.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 152

Attests Sennacherib's building activity at the Rear Palace in Nineveh alongside his standard universal-dominion titulary, anchoring both the structure's chronology and the ideological framework Assyrian kings used to legitimise conquest.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 153

Invokes Aššur, Mullissu, Sîn, Šamaš, and Anu in the preamble of a Sennacherib royal inscription, mapping the precise divine hierarchy that legitimated Assyrian kingship around 695 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

~695 BCE·Neo-AssyrianRINAP 3

Sennacherib 154

Preserves Sennacherib's self-presentation as champion of justice and hydraulic engineer — the same ideological pairing of cosmic kingship and canal-building that his annals use to legitimise the destruction of Babylon in 689 BCE.

Writing & Literature·Religion & Myth

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