Sargon II

Neo-Assyrian king (r. 721-705 b.c.e.)

• Born: Second half of eighth century b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Assyria (now in Iraq)
• Died: 705 b.c.e.
• Place of death: North of Assyrian empire

Through incessant, successful warfare and widespread resettlement of conquered populations, Sargon II brought an embattled Assyria to a late zenith of power and reshaped the structure of its empire; the dynasty he founded would last until the fall of Assyria.

Early Life

There exists no known record of his life before Sargon (SAHR-gawn) II assumed the title of king of Assyria from his predecessor, Shalmaneser V, in December, 722, or January, 721. He never followed the royal custom of mentioning his father and grandfather by name in his annals but simply referred to his ancestors as “the kings his fathers.” For this reason historians believe Sargon to have usurped the throne, although some insist that he was a son of the successful king Tukulti-apal-esharra (Tiglath-pileser III). In any case, he must have been born to a noble family of some renown; after surviving infancy—no small achievement in a society plagued by high infant mortality—the young warrior most likely pursued the customary education for his class: archery, horseback riding, and chariot driving and perhaps reading and writing.

From the ninth century b.c.e. on, Sargon’s royal predecessors had worked to reverse the decline of Assyrian power that had begun with the death of the powerful king Tukulti-Ninurta I in 1208. Their expansionist policy had given birth to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, a state that found a most able leader in Tiglath-pileser III from 744 to 727.

During his reign, Egypt in the southwest and Urartu in the northeast were defeated, and Palestine, Syria, and Babylonia were conquered and subjected to political reorganization. Indeed, Tiglath-pileser bequeathed to Assyria a legacy that defined the direction of that country’s interest and armed struggle for more than a century.

During a prolonged punitive mission in Samaria, when the absence of the king paralyzed official life and the work of justice at home, Tiglath-pileser’s successor, Shalmaneser V, lost his throne to Sargon. The name that the young king took for himself at his accession shows some clever political maneuvering and suggests the need to legitimize this succession, or at least to stress its rightfulness. In its original Semitic form, Sharru-kin, Sargon’s name, means “established” or “true and rightful king.” In addition to this literal claim, there is the implicit reference to the Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad, who had reigned more than a thousand years before and whose fame had given rise to popular myths.

Life’s Work

Sargon’s kingship placed him at the helm of an embattled empire to whose expansion he would dedicate his life. Immediately after his succession, Sargon reaped unearned fame abroad when the city of Samaria fell and 27,290 Israelites were captured and resettled eastward in Mesopotamia and Media; this event is well-known because it is mentioned in the biblical book of Isaiah. At home, the new king secured his position by supporting the priesthood and the merchant class. His immediate reestablishment of tax-exempt status for Assyria’s temples was the first demonstration of Sargon’s lifelong policy of supporting the national religion.

During the first year of his reign, Sargon had to face opposition in the recently conquered territories. Sargon’s annals, written in cuneiform on plates at his palace, record how he first marched south against Marduk-apal-iddina II or “Merodachbaladan, the foe, the perverse, who, contrary to the will of the great gods, exercised sovereign power at Babylon,” a city that this local potentate had seized the moment Sargon became king. In league with Ummannish, king of the Elamites to the east of Babylon, the rebel proved able to prevent Sargon’s advance through a battle in which both sides claimed victory. Merodachbaladan remained ruler over the contested city for the next twelve years.

Turning west toward Syria and Palestine, Sargon’s army defeated the usurper Ilu-bi’di, who had led an anti-Assyrian uprising, in the city of Karkar. Sargon’s revenge was rather drastic; he burned the city and flayed Ilu-bi’di before marching against an Egyptian army at Raphia. There, Sargon decisively defeated the Egyptians and reestablished Assyrian might in Palestine. For the next ten years, neither Egypt nor local rebels would contest Assyrian power in the southwestern provinces, and Sargon began to look north toward another battlefield. There, at the northeastern boundary of the Assyrian Empire around the Armenian lakes, King Ursa (Rusas I) of Urartu and King Mita of Mushki (the Midas of Greek legend) habitually supported Sargon’s enemies and destabilized the Assyrian border. For five years, between 719 and 714, Sargon battled various opponents in mountainous territory and waged a war of devastation and destruction on hostile kingdoms and their cities. Once they had overcome their enemies, the Assyrians plundered and burned their cities, led away the indigenous population, hacked down all trees, and destroyed dikes, canals, and other public works. In neighboring territories that Sargon intended to hold, a new population of Assyrians would follow the wave of destruction and deportation and settle in the land, and a new city with an Assyrian name would be founded at the site of the ruined old one.

In 714, Sargon finally defeated King Rusas and, on its ready surrender, plundered the city of Musasir, the riches of which were immense. A year later, a minor campaign against his son-in-law Ambaridi, a northern chieftain, showed the extent of resistance that Assyrian officers and nobles encountered in dealing with their neighbors and the populations of their provinces. The Assyrian response was swift and successful, and after Ambaridi’s defeat and the leading away of his family and supporters, a large number of Assyrians settled in the pacified country, as was the usual pattern by then.

The next year saw a new campaign in the west, where pro-Assyrian rulers had been murdered or replaced with anti-Assyrians, who sometimes commanded considerable local support. In all cases, Sargon proved successful. The siege of Ashdod, where an Egyptian contingent was captured as well, is the second of Sargon’s exploits mentioned in the Bible.

After his successful conquests and campaigns of pacification in the north and the southwest, Sargon prepared himself for a new showdown with his old enemy Merodachbaladan. Marching southward, the Assyrian king wedged the two halves of his army between Babylon and the Elamites; his strategy proved successful when Merodachbaladan left his capital for Elam. In 710-709, Sargon triumphantly entered the open city and became the de facto king of Babylon, where he “took the hand of Bel,” the city’s deity, at the new year’s celebration. Again, Sargon showed himself profoundly sympathetic to the cause of the priesthood and made large donations to the Babylonian temples; in turn, priests and influential citizens celebrated his arrival. Merodachbaladan, in contrast, failed in his attempt at persuading the Elamites to fight Sargon and retreated south to Yakin, close to the Persian Gulf. In April, 709, Sargon defeated him in battle there but let him go in return for a large payment of tribute.

After the fall of Yakin, Sargon ruled over an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the mountains of Armenia and encompassed Mesopotamia up to the Persian Gulf in the east. He left the remaining military missions to his generals, made his son and heir apparent, Sennacherib, commanding general in the north, and dedicated his energy to the building of his palatial city at what is now Khorsabad in Iraq. There, besides commissioning his annals to be written on stone plates, Sargon had his artists create impressive reliefs of the Assyrian king. These reliefs show a strong, muscular man taking part in various royal ceremonies and functions, among which is the blinding of prisoners of war. Sargon’s head is adorned with an elaborately dressed turban and bejeweled headband. As was the fashion among the Assyrians, he wears a golden earring and a long, waved beard that is curled at the end. On his upper arms he wears golden bands, and his wrists sport bracelets. His multilayered garment bears some resemblance to a modern sari; the cloth has a rich pattern of rosettes and ends in tassels that touch the king’s sandals at his ankles.

In 705, Sargon died under circumstances that are as mysterious as is his rise to kingship. Some historians believe that he died in an ambush during a campaign in the north when he led a small reconnaissance unit, as he was wont to do. According to others, he died at the hands of an assassin in his newly built capital, Dur-Sharrukin, a city that was abandoned after his death.

Significance

For all of his aggression against neighboring states, which was the accepted mode of national survival in his times, Sargon showed statesmanship when it came to domestic politics and the treatment of the vast populace of his empire. He was a fair ruler who showed care for the material and spiritual well-being of his subjects. His annals make proud mention of how he paid fair market price for confiscated private land and strove “to fill the store houses of the broad land of Asshur with food and provisions . . . [and] not to let oil, that gives life to man and heals sores, become dear in my land, and regulate the price of sesame as well as of wheat.” Sargon was also well aware of the fact that his nation, in which resettlement of conquered people and colonization by Assyrians eradicated older national structures, possessed no real racial or religious unity. To achieve a sense of national homogeneity and coherence, he employed the Assyrian language. Dur-Sharrukin, his new capital, was the best example of Sargonian domestic policy. His annals record how he populated the new metropolis:

People from the four quarters of the world, of foreign speech, of manifold tongues, who had dwelt in mountains and valleys . . . whom I, in the name of Asshur my lord, by the might of my arms had carried away into captivity, I commanded to speak one language [Assyrian] and settled them therein. Sons of Asshur, of wise insight in all things, I placed over them, to watch over them; learned men and scribes to teach them the fear of God and the King.

Thus, Sargon’s successful wars and domestic policy firmly established the power of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and left behind a great nation that would last for a century and help fight the northeastern barbarians who were beginning to threaten the ancient civilizations of the Middle East.

Bibliography

Kristensen, Anne. K. G. Who Were the Cimmerians, and Where Did They Come From? Sargon II, the Cimmerians, and Rusa I. Translated by Jorgen Laessoe. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1988. Slim volume on the history of western Asia includes bibliography.

Luckenbill, D. D., trans. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. London: Histories & Mysteries of Man, 1989. This work contains a fine translation of Sargon’s letter to the god Ashur, in which the king reports on his northern campaign against Urartu. Sargon’s text, far from dry, reveals a remarkable poetic bent.

Olmstead, Albert T. E. History of Assyria. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Chapters 17 to 23 deal with Sargon in a detailed discussion that closely follows original sources and points out where Sargon’s reign connects with biblical events. Richly illustrated with maps and photographs of Assyrian artifacts, ruins, and the present look of the country.

Olmstead, Albert T. E. Western Asia in the Days of Sargon of Assyria. New York: Holt, 1908. Historically accurate and highly readable book on Sargon and his times that brings alive the Assyrians and their king. Illustrated and with helpful maps.

Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. A treatment of the full sweep of history in ancient Mesopotamia, which places Sargon within the full historical context of the region.

Saggs, H. W. F. The Might That Was Assyria. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984. Pages 92-97 deal directly with Sargon. An account of Assyrian history and culture by an author who enjoys his subject. Relatively short on Sargon, but invaluable for its modern insights into Assyrian life. Has maps and interesting illustrations, including representations of both kings and everyday objects. Very readable.

Sargon II. The Correspondence of Sargon II. Edited by Simo Parpola. Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki University Press, 2001. From the State Archives of Assyria project. Includes map and indexes.

Sargon II. Letters from Assyria and the West. Edited by Simo Parpola. Helsinki, Finland: University of Helsinki Press, 1987. In English and Akkadian.

Sargon II. Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces. Edited by Giovanni B. Lanfrachi and Simo Parpola. Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki University Press, 1990. Includes bibliography and index.