Not so much a mystery as a message
The word “enigmatic” suits these monuments less than it suits some others in this series. Assyrian stelae and inscriptions can be read: the language is Akkadian, the script is cuneiform, and the writing system was deciphered in the nineteenth century. What is uncertain is not what they say but how far the claims can be trusted. They were written by the royal court to present the king as a successful servant of the god Ashur, and historians treat them as valuable, partial evidence.
Forms of royal inscription
Assyrian kings recorded their achievements in several formats, which are collectively known as royal inscriptions.
- Stelae, upright stones set up in cities, at the edges of the empire, or at sites of conquest, usually showing the king in relief with divine symbols and a text beneath.
- Wall slabs and doorway figures in palaces, where inscriptions often cut across the images.
- Annals, which narrate a king’s campaigns year by year, often in the first person.
- Prisms, cylinders and foundation deposits, clay or stone objects buried in building foundations or walls so that future kings would find them.
- Letters to the god, a literary form describing a campaign as a report to Ashur.
Later versions of the annals often compress or reorder earlier ones, adding new campaigns. This means that the same event can look different depending on which edition one reads.
The Black Obelisk
The Black Obelisk is a black limestone monument about two metres high, set up by Shalmaneser III (reigned 858 to 824 BCE). It was found at Nimrud by Austen Henry Layard in 1846 and is now in the British Museum. It has five rows of relief panels on each of four sides, with cuneiform text above, below and between the panels.
The reliefs show tribute-bearers from several lands bringing goods to the king, including exotic animals such as camels, monkeys and an elephant, as well as metals and textiles. The inscription lists the campaigns of the king over thirty-one years. One panel shows a ruler bowing before the king, labelled in the text as Jehu, described as “son of Omri” (the text’s way of referring to the kingdom of Israel). This is often described as the earliest surviving image of an Israelite king, although the Hebrew Bible does not mention such tribute, and the Assyrian description might simplify a more complex diplomatic relation.
Qarqar and the Kurkh Monolith
Another stele, the Kurkh Monolith, was found near Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey and records Shalmaneser III’s campaign in Syria in 853 BCE. It describes the battle of Qarqar against a coalition of western kings. The text includes a list of the opponents’ forces, including “Ahab the Israelite” with large numbers of chariots and soldiers, and the king claims a victory. Yet the Assyrians did not take control of the region at that time, and later campaigns against the same coalition were needed. That mismatch between a claimed triumph and later events is typical, and it is one reason historians compare royal claims with other evidence.
Sennacherib and Jerusalem
A clay prism, known as the Taylor Prism, records Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah in 701 BCE. In it the king claims to have shut up the Judean king Hezekiah in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage” and to have received heavy tribute. The Hebrew Bible gives its own account, and the two accounts differ in tone and details. The Assyrian text does not claim to have captured the city, and the Assyrian reliefs from Nineveh illustrate the earlier siege of Lachish. Historians use the sources together, noting that each has its own aim.
How historians use the evidence
Assyrian inscriptions are especially useful for names of kings, rulers and places, for the sequence of campaigns, for the types and quantities of tribute, and for political and religious ideas. Their weaknesses are equally clear:
- Numbers of enemy dead or captured may be inflated or formulaic.
- Defeats are generally omitted, and setbacks may appear as victories or not at all.
- Royal titles and epithets are repeated across reigns.
- The accounts rarely give the enemy’s point of view, though some can be compared with texts from Egypt, Israel and Babylonia.
For this reason scholars often combine the inscriptions with administrative letters, economic texts and archaeology. Layers of destruction in excavated cities can confirm that a siege happened without confirming the king’s description of it. The Babylonian Chronicles, which are written in a drier style, sometimes provide a check on Assyrian accounts.
Reading the stelae today
Assyrian stelae have been found across the region, including in places such as Cyprus, southern Turkey, Syria and Iran, showing the extent of Assyrian claims. In modern times many monuments are held in museums, and the reading of cuneiform that made them useful depended on the earlier work on cuneiform decipherment by nineteenth-century scholars. They remain an essential record of Assyrian campaigns, also a reminder to ask who wrote history and why. The same questions are central to other Near Eastern monuments, such as the Stele of the Vultures from Sumer or the Babylonian monuments of a later age.