The Kurkh Monoliths are two
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
n
stelae
A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...
that contain a description of the reigns of
Ashurnasirpal II
Ashur-nasir-pal II (transliteration: ''Aššur-nāṣir-apli'', meaning " Ashur is guardian of the heir") was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC.
Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC. During his reign he embarked ...
and his son
Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC.
His long reign was a constant series of campai ...
. The Monoliths were discovered in 1861 by a British archaeologist
John George Taylor
John George Taylor (active 1851–1861; also known as J E Taylor and J G Taylor) was a British official of the Foreign Office, and also an important early archaeologist investigating the antiquities of the Middle East. He was one of the first ar ...
, who was the British Consul-General stationed in the Ottoman
Eyalet of Kurdistan, in a town called Kurkh, which is now known as
Üçtepe, in the district of
Bismil
Bismil ( ku, Bismil) is a district of Diyarbakır Province
Diyarbakır Province ( tr, Diyarbakır ili, Zazaki: Suke Diyarbekır ku, Parêzgeha Amedê) is a Provinces of Turkey, province in southeastern Turkey. The province covers an area of ...
, in the province of
Diyarbakir of Turkey. Both stelae were donated by Taylor to the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in 1863.
The
Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC.
His long reign was a constant series of campai ...
monolith contains a description of the
Battle of Qarqar
The Battle of Qarqar (or Ḳarḳar) was fought in 853 BC when the army of the Neo-Assyrian Empire led by Emperor Shalmaneser III encountered an allied army of eleven kings at Qarqar led by Hadadezer, called in Assyrian ''Adad-idir'' and possibly ...
at the end. This description contains the name "A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a" which is generally accepted to be a reference to
Ahab
Ahab (; akk, 𒀀𒄩𒀊𒁍 ''Aḫâbbu'' 'a-ḫa-ab-bu'' grc-koi, Ἀχαάβ ''Achaáb''; la, Achab) was the seventh king of Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), Israel, the son and successor of King Omri and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, ...
king of
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
,
[The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, NYU Press, 200]
P.11
/ref>[Ancient Canaan and Israel: New Perspectives By Jonathan Michael Golden, ABC-CLIO, 2004]
P.275
/ref> although it is the only reference to the term "Israel" in Assyrian and Babylonian records, which usually refer to the Northern Kingdom as the "House of Omri" in reference to its ruling dynasty, a fact brought up by some scholars who dispute the proposed translation.[Israel in Transition 2: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA, edited by Lester L. Grabbe](_blank)
p56, quote "The single case where "Israel" is mentioned is Shalmaneser's account of his battle with the coalition at Qarqar" It is also one of four known contemporary inscriptions containing the name of Israel, the others being the Merneptah Stele
The Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele or the Victory Stele of Merneptah, is an inscription by Merneptah, a pharaoh in ancient Egypt who reigned from 1213–1203 BCE. Discovered by Flinders Petrie at Thebes in 1896, it is now hous ...
, the Tel Dan Stele, and the Mesha Stele
The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is a stele dated around 840 BCE containing a significant Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tel ...
. This description is also the oldest document that mentions the Arabs
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...
.
According to the inscription Ahab committed a force of 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers to the Assyrian war coalition.
Discovery
The location of the discovery at the town called "Kurkh" was described as
about 14 miles from Diyarbakir...situated at the eastern end of an elevated platform... on the right bank of the Tigris
The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...
, and close to the angle formed by the junction of the Giuk Su with the former, which receives also the waters of the Ambar Su, on the left bank opposite,
then in the Ottoman Eyalet of Kurdistan in Al-Jazira
Jazira or Al-Jazira ( 'island'), or variants, may refer to:
Business
*Jazeera Airways, an airlines company based in Kuwait
Locations
* Al-Jazira, a traditional region known today as Upper Mesopotamia or the smaller region of Cizre
* Al-Jazira ( ...
. The location was also known as Kerh or Kerh-i Dicle and is now known as Üçtepe (in Kurdish: Kerx/Kerkh or Kerxa Kîkan), in the district of Bismil
Bismil ( ku, Bismil) is a district of Diyarbakır Province
Diyarbakır Province ( tr, Diyarbakır ili, Zazaki: Suke Diyarbekır ku, Parêzgeha Amedê) is a Provinces of Turkey, province in southeastern Turkey. The province covers an area of ...
, in the province of Diyarbakir of Turkey.
Kurkh was initially identified by Henry Rawlinson as the ancient city of Tushhan
Tushhan (also Tushan, or Tušhan) is a Kurdish village known as ( ku, Behramki) or ( ku, Tepe-i Barava) by residents. It was an ancient city in Mesopotamia and was a provincial capital in the upper Tigris river valley, on the south bank and inhabi ...
. This identification was challenged by Karlheinz Kessler in 1980, who proposed ancient Tidu.
Taylor described his find as follows:
I had the good fortune to discover a stone slab bearing the effigy of an Assyrian king, and covered on both sides with long inscriptions in the cuneiform character, to within 2 feet of its base, which had purposely been left bare to admit of its being sunk erect in the ground, as a trophy commemorative of its capture by the king, and at the point probably where his legions effected their forced entry into the city. Some little way below it, on the slope of the mound, and nearly entirely concealed by debris, I exhumed another perfect relic of the same description.
Description
The stela depicting Shalmaneser III is made of limestone with a round top. It is 221 centimeters tall, 87 centimeters wide, and 23 centimeters deep.[British Museum]
The Kurkh Stela: Shalmaneser III
Accessed July 5, 2014
The British Museum describes the image as follows:
The king, Shalmaneser III, stands before four divine emblems: (1) the winged disk, the symbol of the god Ashur, or, as some hold, of Shamash; (2) the six-pointed star of Ishtar, goddess of the morning and evening star; (3) the crown of the sky-god Anu, in this instance with three horns, in profile; (4) the disk and crescent of the god Sin as the new and the full moon. On his collar the king wears as amulets (1) the fork, the symbol of the weather-god, Adad; (2) a segment of a circle, of uncertain meaning; (3) an eight-pointed star in a disk, here probably the symbol of Shamash, the sun-god; (4) a winged disk, again of the god Ashur. The gesture of the right hand has been much discussed and variously interpreted, either as the end of the action of throwing a kiss as an act of worship, or as resulting from cracking the fingers with the thumb, as a ritual act which is attributed to the Assyrians by later Greek writers, or as being simply a gesture of authority suitable to the king, with no reference to a particular religious significance. It seems fairly clear that the gesture is described in the phrase 'uban damiqti taraṣu', 'to stretch out a favourable finger', a blessing which corresponds to the reverse action, in which the index finger is not stretched out. There is a cuneiform inscription written across the face and base and around the sides of the stela.
The inscription "describes the military campaigns of his (Shalmaneser III's) reign down to 853 BC."[British Museum.]
Stela of Shalmaneser III
Accessed July 5, 2014
The stela depicting Ashurnasirpal II is made of limestone with a round top. It is 193 centimeters tall, 93 centimeters wide, and 27 centimeters deep. According to the British Museum, the stela "shows Ashurnasirpal II in an attitude of worship, raising his right hand to symbols of the gods" and its inscription "describes the campaign of 879 when Assyrians attacked the lands of the upper Tigris, in the Diyabakir region."[British Museum]
The Kurkh Stela: Ashurnasirpal II
Accessed July 5, 2014
Shalmaneser III Stela inscription
The inscription on the Shalmaneser III Stela deals with campaigns Shalmaneser made in western Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
and Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, fighting extensively with the countries of Bit Adini
Bit Adini, a city or region of Syria, called sometimes ''Bit Adini'' in Assyrian sources, was an Aramaean state that existed as an independent kingdom during the 10th and 9th centuries BC, with its capital at Til Barsib (now Tell Ahmar). The city ...
and Carchemish
Carchemish ( Turkish: ''Karkamış''; or ), also spelled Karkemish ( hit, ; Hieroglyphic Luwian: , /; Akkadian: ; Egyptian: ; Hebrew: ) was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its ...
. At the end of the Monolith comes the account of the Battle of Qarqar
The Battle of Qarqar (or Ḳarḳar) was fought in 853 BC when the army of the Neo-Assyrian Empire led by Emperor Shalmaneser III encountered an allied army of eleven kings at Qarqar led by Hadadezer, called in Assyrian ''Adad-idir'' and possibly ...
, where an alliance of twelve kings fought against Shalmaneser at the Syrian city of Qarqar
Qarqar or Karkar is the name of an ancient town in northwestern Syria, known from Neo-Assyrian sources. It was the site of one of the most important battles of the ancient world, the battle of Qarqar, fought in 853 BC when the army of Assyria, le ...
. This alliance, comprising eleven kings, was led by Irhuleni
Irhuleni (Luwian: ''Urhilina'') was King of Hamath. He led a coalition against the Assyrian expansion under Shalmaneser III, alongside Hadadezer of Damascus. This coalition succeeded in 853 BC in the Battle of Qarqar a victory over the Assyrians, ...
of Hamath
, timezone = EET
, utc_offset = +2
, timezone_DST = EEST
, utc_offset_DST = +3
, postal_code_type =
, postal_code =
, ar ...
and Hadadezer
Hadadezer (; "he god Hadad is help"); also known as Adad-Idri ( akk, 𒀭𒅎𒀉𒊑, dIM-id-ri), and possibly the same as Bar-Hadad II ( Aram.) or Ben-Hadad II ( Heb.), was the king of Aram Damascus between 865 and 842 BC.
The Hebrew Bible st ...
of Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
, describing also a large force led by King Ahab
Ahab (; akk, 𒀀𒄩𒀊𒁍 ''Aḫâbbu'' 'a-ḫa-ab-bu'' grc-koi, Ἀχαάβ ''Achaáb''; la, Achab) was the seventh king of Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), Israel, the son and successor of King Omri and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, ...
of Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
.
The English translation of the end of the Shalmaneser III monolith is as follows:
Year 6 (Col. ll, 78-I02)
610. In the year of Dâian-Assur, in the month of ''Airu'', the fourteenth day, I departed from Nineveh, crossed the Tigris, and drew near to the cities of Giammu, (near) the Balih(?) River. At the fearfulness of my sovereignty, the terror of my frightful weapons, they became afraid; with their own weapons his nobles killed Giammu. Into Kitlala and Til-sha-mâr-ahi, I entered. I had my gods brought into his palaces. In his palaces I spread a banquet. His treasury I opened. I saw his wealth. His goods, his property, I carried off and brought to my city Assur. From Kitlala I departed. To Kâr-Shalmaneser I drew near. In (goat)-skin boats I crossed the Euphrates the second time, at its flood. The tribute of the kings on that side of the Euphrates,---of Sangara of Carchemish, of Kundashpi of Kumuhu (Commagene), of Arame son of Gûzi, of Lalli the Milidean, of Haiani son of Gahari, of Kalparoda of Hattina, of Kalparuda of Gurgum, - silver, gold, lead, copper, vessels of copper, at Ina-Assur-uttir-asbat, on that side of the Euphrates, on the river Sagur, which the people of Hatti call Pitru, there I received (it). From the Euphrates I departed, I drew near to Halman (Aleppo). They were afraid to fight with (me), they seized my feet. Silver, gold, as their tribute I received. I offered sacrifices before the god Adad of Halman. From Halman I departed. To the cities of Irhulêni, the Hamathite, I drew near. The cities of Adennu, Bargâ, Arganâ, his royal cities, I captured. His spoil, his property, the goods of his palaces, I brought out. I set fire to his palaces. From Argana I departed. To Karkar I drew near.
611. Karkar, his royal city, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. 1,200 chariots, I,200 cavalry, 20,000 soldiers, of Hadad-ezer, of Aram (? Damascus); 700 chariots, 700 cavalry, 10,000* soldiers of Irhulêni of Hamath, 2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of Ahab, the Israelite, 500 soldiers of the Gueans, 1,000 soldiers of the Musreans, 10 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of the Irkanateans, 200 soldiers of Matinuba'il, the Arvadite, 200 soldiers of the Usanateans, 30 chariots, 000 soldiers of Adunu-ba'il, the Shianean, 1,000 camels of Gindibu', the Arabian, 000 soldiers f Ba'sa, son of Ruhubi, the Ammonite, - these twelve kings he brought to his support; to offer battle and fight, they came against me. (Trusting) in the exalted might which Assur, the lord, had given (me), in the mighty weapons, which Nergal, who goes before me, had presented (to me), I battled with them. From Karkar, as far as the city of Gilzau, I routed them. 14,000 of their warriors I slew with the sword. Like Adad, I rained destruction upon them. I scattered their corpses far and wide, (and) covered (''lit.''., filled) the face of the desolate plain with their widespreading armies. With (my) weapons I made their blood to flow down the valleys(?) of the land. The plain was too small to let their bodies fall, the wide countryside was used up in burying them. With their bodies I spanned the Arantu) as with a bridge(?). In that battle I took from them their chariots, their cavalry, their horses, broken to the yoke. (*Possibly 20,000).
"Ahab of Israel"
The identification of "A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a" with "Ahab of Israel" was first proposed[ by ]Julius Oppert
Julius (Jules) Oppert (9 July 1825 – 21 August 1905) was a French-German Assyriologist, born in Hamburg of Jewish parents.
Career
After studying at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, he graduated at Kiel in 1847, and the next year went to France, wh ...
in his 1865 ''Histoire des Empires de Chaldée et d'Assyrie''.
Eberhard Schrader
Eberhard Schrader (7 January 1836 – 4 July 1908) was a German orientalist primarily known for his achievements in Assyriology.
Biography
He was born at Braunschweig, and educated at Göttingen under Ewald. In 1858 he won a university prize ...
dealt with parts of the inscription on the Shalmaneser III Monolith in 1872, in his ''Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament'' ("Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament").[Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 1872]
Quotes in German:
p58-59 "Der Name "Israel" selber findet sich und zwar als Name für das "Reich Israel" nur einmal in den Inschriften, nämlich auf dem neuentdeckten Stein Salmanassar's II, wo Ahab von Israel als Sir-'-lai d. i. als "der von Israel" bezeichnet wird (s. die Stelle in der Glosse zu 1 Kon. 16, 29). Es ist nun allerdings unter den Assyriologen Streit darüber, ob dieser Name wirklich mit hebr. ישראל und nicht vielmehr mit יזרעאל d. i. "Jezreel" zu identificiren sei, dieses deshalb, weil das erste Zeichen sonst den Lautwerth "sir" hat. Indess da das Adjectiv das Land-determinativ ("mat") vor sich hat, Jezreel aber kein "Land", denn vielmehr eine "Stadt" war, so wird schon deshalb die letztere Vermuthung aufzugeben sein. Dazu wird gerade bei zusammengesetzten, mit Zischlauten beginnenden Sylben ein so strenger Unterschied in den verschiedenen Zischlauten nicht gemacht, wie denn z. B. mit Bar-zi-pa in den Inschriften auch Bar-sip wechselt, obgleich sonst dem letzten Zeichen sip der andere "sip" fur gewohnlich nicht zukommt."
p99-100 "Der Umstand, dass hier Ahab, der Sir'lit, und Ben-hadad von Damaskus neben einander erscheinen, sowie dass dieser selbe Konig in der spater redigirten Inschrift des Nimrud obelisk's des Jehu ; Sohnes des Omri ; sowie anderseits des Hazael von Damask gedenkt, lässt darüber keinen Zweifel, dass unter diesem Ahab, dem Sir'lit en, der biblische Ahab von Israel gemeint ist. Dass aber Ahab im Bunde mit Damask erscheint; ist durchaus in Uebereinstimmung mit dem biblischen Berichte; wonach Ahab nach der Schlacht bei Aphek mit Benhadad ein Bündniss schloss, selbstverständlich gegen den Erbfeind von Damaskus , gegen Assyrien." The first full translation of the Shalmaneser III Monolith was provided by James Alexander Craig in 1887.
Schrader wrote that the name "Israel" ("Sir-ila-a-a") was unique among Assyrian inscriptions, as the usual Assyrian terms for the Northern Kingdom of Israel
The Kingdom of Israel (), or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The kingdom controlled the areas of Samaria, Galilee and parts of Transjordan (region), Transjordan. Its capi ...
were "The Land of Omri" or Samaria. This fact has been brought up by some scholars who dispute the proposed translation. According to Shigeo Yamada, the designation of a state by two alternative names is not unusual in the inscription of Shalmaneser.
Schrader also noted that whilst Assyriologists such as Fritz Hommel
Fritz Hommel (31 July 1854 – 17 April 1936) was a German Orientalist.
Biography
Hommel was born in Ansbach. He studied in Leipzig and was habilitated in 1877 in Munich, where in 1885, he became an extraordinary professor of Semitic languag ...
had disputed whether the name was "Israel" or "Jezreel",[ because the first character is the phonetic "sir" and the place-determinative "mat". Schrader described the rationale for the reading "Israel", which became the scholarly consensus, as:
]"the fact that here Ahab Sir'lit, and Ben-hadad of Damascus appear next to each other, and that in an inscription of this same king halmanesers Nimrud obelisk appears Jehu, son of Omri, and commemorates the descendant Hazael of Damascus, leaves no doubt that this Ahab Sir'lit is the biblical Ahab of Israel. That Ahab appears in cahoots with Damascus is quite in keeping with the biblical accounts, which Ahab concluded after the Battle of Aphek
The Battle of Aphek is a biblical episode described in the First Book of Samuel of the Hebrew Bible. During this battle the Philistines defeated the Israelite army and captured the Ark of the Covenant. Among biblical scholars, the historicity of t ...
an alliance with Benhadad against their hereditary enemy Assyria."
The identification was challenged by other contemporary scholars such as George Smith and Daniel Henry Haigh
Daniel Henry Haigh (7 August 1819 — 10 May 1879) was a noted Victorian scholar of Anglo-Saxon history and literature, as well as a runologist and numismatist.
Biography
Haigh was born 7 August 1819 at Brinscall Hall in the village of Brinscall ...
.[Assyrian Eponym Canon]
George Smith, 1875, page 188-189, "The first one is called Ahab of Zirhala; and Professor Oppert, who discovered the name, reads Ahab the Israelite; but some ingenious remarks have been made on the name Zirhala by the Rev. D. H. Haigh, who has pointed out that Zir is not the usual reading of the first character, and that the name should be Suhala; and he suggests that the geographical name Samhala, or Savhala, a kingdom near Damascus, is intended in this place, and not the kingdom of Israel. The hypothesis of the Rev. D. H. Haigh may be correct; certainly he is right as to the usual phonetic value of the first character of this geographical name; but on the other hand, we find it certainly used sometimes for the syllable zir. Even if the view of the Rev. D. H. Haigh has to be given up, and if the reading, Ahab the Israelite, has to be accepted, it would be possible that this was not the Ahab of Scripture. The time when this battle took place, BC 854, was, according to the chronology here suggested, during the reign of Jehoahaz, king of Israel, BC 857 to 840; and at this time part of the territory of Israel had been conquered, and was held by the kingdom of Damascus: it is quite possible that the part of the country under the dominion of Damascus a ruler named Ahab may have reigned, and that he may have assisted Ben-hadad with his forces against the Assyrians. It does not seem likely that the Biblical Ahab, who was the foe of the king of Damascus, sent any troops to his aid, at least, such a circumstance is never hinted at in the Bible, and is contrary to the description of his conduct and reign. Under these circumstances I have given up the identification of the Ahab who assisted Ben-hadad at the battle of Qarqar, B.C. 854, with the Ahab, king of Israel, who died, I believe, forty-five years earlier, in BC 899."
The identification as Ahab of Israel has been challenged in more recent years by Werner Gugler and Adam van der Woude, who believe that "Achab from the monolith-inscription should be construed as a king from Northwestern Syria".
According to the inscription, Ahab committed a force of 10,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 chariots to an Assyrian-led war coalition. The size of Ahab's contribution indicates that the Kingdom of Israel was a major military power in the region of Syria-Palestine during the first half of the 9th century BC.[Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography edited by Ada Cohen, Steven E. Kangas P:127] Due to the size of Ahab's army, which was presented as extraordinarily large for ancient times, the translation raised polemics among scholars. Nadav Na'aman proposed a scribal error in regard to the size of Ahab's army and suggested that the army consisted of 200 instead of 2,000 chariots.
Summarizing scholarly works on this subject, Kelle suggests that the evidence "allows one to say that the inscription contains the first designation for the Northern Kingdom. Moreover, the designation "Israel" seems to have represented an entity that included several vassal states." The latter may have included Moab, Edom and Judah.
Scribal errors and disputes
There are a number of issues surrounding the written words contained in the Monolith, mostly surrounding the text of the Battle of Qarqar. For example, the scribe lists one city as ''Gu-a-a'', which some scholars believe refers to Que. However, H. Tadmor believes that this is actually a mistake, with ''Gu-a-a'' being an incorrect spelling for ''Gu-bal-a-a'', that is, Byblos. Other scholars have also pointed out that it would be more logical if Shalmaneser fought Byblos instead of Que, because it would make better geographic sense—since the other kings of the area are polities to the south and west of Assyria, it might be expected that another city-state in that area—Byblos—would fight at Qarqar, rather than Que, which is in Cilicia
Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern coa ...
.
Another issue with regard to spelling is the term ''musri'', which is Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
for "march". Tadmor says that the actual Musri people had been conquered by the Assyrians in the 11th century BC, and thus believes that this reference to ''Musri'' must be "Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
", although some scholars dispute this.
Another major error in the text is the assertion that Assyria fought "twelve kings". Casual readers will note that the Monolith in fact lists eleven, but some scholars have attempted to explain that there really is a missing king, stemming from the description of "Ba'sa the man of Bit-Ruhubi, the Ammonite". One scholar suggests that the two entities be split into "Bit-Ruhubi" Beth-Rehob, a state in southern Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
and "Ammon
Ammon (Ammonite: 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''ʻAmān''; he, עַמּוֹן ''ʻAmmōn''; ar, عمّون, ʻAmmūn) was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in p ...
", a state in Trans-Jordan.
See also
*Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is a black limestone Assyrian sculpture with many scenes in bas-relief and inscriptions. It comes from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), in northern Iraq, and commemorates the deeds of King Shalmaneser III (reigned 858 ...
*Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
*Books of Kings
The Book of Kings (, '' Sēfer Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of Israel also including the books ...
*List of artifacts significant to the Bible
The following is a list of inscribed artifacts, items made or given shape by humans, that are significant to biblical archaeology.
Selected artifacts significant to biblical chronology
These table lists inscriptions which are of particular sign ...
*Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
* Stela of Ashurnasirpal II
Bibliography
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* (editio princeps In classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand.
For ...
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* Gugler, Werner, ''Jehu und seine Revolution'', Kampen, 1996, pages 67–80
* A.S. van der Woude, ''Zacharia'', G.F. Callenbach, Prediking van het Oude Testament, 325 pages, 9026607407
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References
{{British-Museum-object, EA 118884, id=367117
9th-century BC steles
1861 archaeological discoveries
Battles involving Assyria
Akkadian inscriptions
Ancient Israel and Judah
Wars of ancient Israel
Assyrian stelas
Kurkh
Middle Eastern sculptures in the British Museum
Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)