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THE STORY of how the major Assyrian cities were discovered and excavated has been told many times. It was fostered by the archaeologists themselves, who left detailed and fascinating records of their work. Often their accounts reveal considerable story-telling powers, and such accounts as Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains are still an excellent read.

In 1840 Paul Emile Botta was appointed French consular agent in Mosul on the upper Tigris. He began to collect antiquities, which he had heard could be gathered from mounds near the city. Earlier travellers in the area had already guessed that there were Assyrian ruins beneath these mounds, but they had not stayed long enough to find out for certain. Botta, however, was curious enough, and tactful enough with the locals, to set about the task successfully.

He first tried the nearest mound, at Kuyunjik, but after a year had found little. He moved to another site, Khorsabad, some ten miles away, and within a week he made a most important discovery: the massive walls of a palace, the lower part of the walls being covered with splendid reliefs. Botta believed that at last he had discovered Nineveh, but when the inscriptions he found were deciphered it became clear that he had found, not Nineveh, but the palace of Sargon II (721-705 B.C.; Isa. 20:1) at Dur Sharrukin.

It was to be an Englishman, A. H. Layard, who would discover Nineveh. In 1842 he had visited Mosul and met Botta. Three years later he returned and began to dig. He began at a mound called Nimrud, and discovered the Assyrian Calah (Gen. 10:11,12), where he found another palace whose walls were covered with bas-reliefs. This time the palace had been built by Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.). It was not until he returned to Kuyunjik, where Botta had found little of interest, that he finally found the ancient Nineveh in 1849.

The value of the Assyrian finds

There was incredible interest in Layard’s finds in Victorian Britain. Not only were people coming to realise the importance of the history of the ancient Near East, but there was also a lot of interest in the Biblical aspects. But what is the value of the finds for us? First, we now have conclusive proof from archaeology that Nineveh and the Assyrian nation existed, just as the Bible states. That is useful if anyone is inclined to doubt the evidence of both the Bible and the ancient historians (for example Herodotus), whose accounts make the existence of Assyria, Nineveh and so on perfectly clear.

Secondly, the size and complexity of the Assyrian cities make it plain that the Assyrians were in many ways highly civilised and accomplished. It is fascinating to go to a major museum—for example, the British Museum or the Louvre—and look at the bas-reliefs, or at the gigantic winged bulls from one of the palaces. Such artifacts help fill in the background of the times for us, both of the culture and of the associated religious beliefs and practices.

For example, reliefs from the reigns of Assurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III shed some light on an unusual term in Scripture. 2 Kings 7:2 mentions “a lord on whose hand the king [of Israel] leaned”, and 2 Kings 9:25 mentions that Bidkar was Jehu’s “captain”.

The Hebrew word translated “lord” and “captain” in these passages is the normal Hebrew word for ‘third’, and might literally be translated ‘the third man’. From the context it was clear to the translators that the ‘third man’ must have been an official of some sort; but it was not until the Assyrian reliefs were discovered that the nature of this third man became evident. These reliefs show the Assyrian king in a chariot with his driver and a third man—a man who appears to be the king’s personal aide.

The Assyrian king in his chariot with his driver and the “third man”.

But the greatest value in Assyrian archaeology is in the records that they left.

Mythology and religious texts

Assurbanipal succeeded Esarhaddon in 668 B.C. He instructed his servants to collect historical, mythological and ritualistic texts from all over his dominions, and he employed scribes to prepare copies of many of the documents. All of these he kept in a huge library in his royal palace in Nineveh. As a result, Assurbanipal’s library, once rediscovered by Layard, was to provide the key to understanding much of the Assyro-Babylonian civilisation.

It was among texts from this library that George Smith, a banknote engraver from Chelsea, discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh. Part of the Epic is a flood story, told in strikingly similar terms to the Biblical account. But many of the mythological texts in Assurbanipal’s library bear no clear relationship to Scripture.

For example, the creation account, Enuma Elish, is very different from the Divine account in Genesis.(Footnote 1) There are many other myths and legends, and religious texts; for example, a letter from Marduk-shum-usur to Assurbanipal which relates an experience Esarhaddon was said to have had in Egypt: the god Musku prophesied that he would conquer several countries. In fact he did go on to conquer Egypt. Similarly Assurbanipal is said to have had a dream in which the goddess Ishtar had undertaken to defeat his enemies on his behalf. He himself would not need to be involved in the battle. This appears to be intended as a prophecy of his defeat of the Elamites, with whom Ishtar “was angry”.

Such documents tell us of the polytheistic nature of Assyrian religion, and illustrate how different that religion was from Old Testament teaching. It is interesting that, like Yahweh in the Old Testament, the gods mentioned by the Assyrians purport to be in control of nations and battles. But there the resemblance ends.

The Assyrian deities and their ‘prophecies’ are simply prayed to for aid by the Assyrian kings as justification for their militaristic action and imperialist ambitions. The God of the Bible could not be prayed to for aid by Israelite kings to support their worldly ambitions. Quite the reverse; the God of Israel often criticised Israelite kings for precisely the kind of actions which the Assyrian kings claimed their deities encouraged. In truth, these Assyrian religious texts amount to little more than political propaganda.

History

The Assyrian documents dealing with the history of the times are the most interesting to Bible students. There are many points of contact between the Old Testament records and the Assyrian historical texts.

It was in the reign of Shalmaneser III that Assyria’s influence over Israel and Judah began to be felt. Shalmaneser records how first he fought a coalition, including Hadadezer (the Biblical Ben-hadad) of Damascus and Ahab of Israel, at Qarqar in 853 B.C. This presumably occurred after Ahab had himself defeated Ben-hadad in battle and made a treaty with him (1 Kgs. 20:34). The Scriptures record how Hazael, anointed by Elisha, murdered Ben-hadad and usurped the Syrian throne (2 Kgs. 8:7-15). But his supremacy was short-lived; the Black Obelisk (now in the British Museum) records how Shalmaneser subdued him. And although it is not recorded in Scripture, the Obelisk mentions that Jehu king of Israel found it necessary also to give tribute to the Assyrians. The inscription under the picture of the tribute reads: “The tribute of Jehu son of Omri. Silver and gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase, golden cups, golden buckets, tin, a staff for the king, and puruhti-fruits”.

Jehu, of course, was not literally son of Omri; the text simply reflects the Assyrian habit of calling Israel the house or land of Omri.

Detail of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III showing Jehu in submission to the Assyrian king.

British Museum.

After Shalmaneser’s death Assyria was weak. Israel prospered politically and economically under Jeroboam II, but it was only a temporary respite. In the reign of Tiglathpileser III (745-727; also called Pul) the threat from the north again became apparent. In 742 B.C. Tiglath-pileser had to call off a campaign on the Armenian frontier to quell a revolt of Syrian states. Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah was implicated in this, according to the Assyrian records. The annals also mention that, two or three years later, after a further successful Assyrian campaign, Menahem of Israel joined Rezin of Syria in giving tribute. This is in accordance with 2 Kings 15:19. In 732 Tiglathpileser claims to have ousted Pekah from the Israelite throne and installed Hoshea in his place. While Scripture claims that it was Hoshea himself who hatched the plot, the context suggests that the Assyrians may also have been instrumental in it (2 Kgs. 15:29,30).

Tiglath-pileser was succeeded by Shalmaneser V, who reigned for only five years. 2 Kings 17 records that it was he who began the final siege of Samaria. But the text of 2 Kings 17 does not state that it was Shalmaneser who completed the sack of the city; it simply refers in verse 6 to the “king of Assyria” taking it. In fact, it was Shalmaneser’s successor Sargon II who finally captured it and deported the Israelites.

He claims: “At the beginning of my reign . . . I besieged and conquered the city of the Samarians . . .

I carried off prisoner 27,290 inhabitants . . .

I restored the city... I brought into it people from countries which I had conquered”.

Another inscription records that the Egyptians came to help Israel. All of these details are entirely in accord with the Biblical account in 2 Kings 17:3-6,24.

There is an interesting minor detail in Sargon’s accounts of his campaigns. He records that, when he was in eastern Asia Minor, he fought with the Tabali and Mushki. Other Assyrian kings mention the same tribes in the same area. These are almost certainly the Biblical Meshech and Tubal. This placing of these two nations in eastern Turkey is the most reliable evidence we have for their location in Old Testament times, and needs to be taken into account in interpreting Ezekiel 38.

Perhaps the most well-known and most impressive link between the Assyrian historical records and the Scriptures comes from the reign of Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib.

Sennacherib’s annals are recorded in a number of places, of which the best known, the Taylor Prism, is in the British Museum. Sennacherib’s record agrees with the Hebrew account that he captured several fortified towns in Judah, and that Hezekiah paid him tribute, and an Assyrian bas-relief shows the siege of Lachish in graphic detail. All of these details are recorded in 2 Kings 18:13ff. The Assyrian then records how he laid siege to Jerusalem, shutting up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage”. But, whereas Assyrian records of sieges usually employ the formula, “I surrounded, I captured, I carried off the spoil”, no such formula was used of Jerusalem. Sennacherib only claims that he subdued Hezekiah and took tribute from him. It is left to the Scriptures and the Greek historian Herodotus to record the miraculous annihilation of the Assyrian army (2 Kgs. 19:35; Herodotus, The Histories, ii. 141). The Assyrian silence on this point is hardly surprising.

2 Kings 19:37 records how, later, Sennacherib was killed by his sons. The Babylonian Chronicle supports this, though it only mentions that he was killed by his son. There are a number of possible reasons for the Babylonian Chronicle mentioning only one son, not two. But, whatever the reason, it does not actually contradict the record in 2 Kings.

After Sennacherib the Assyrian Empire lasted for less than seventy years, for the Babylonians were in the ascendant. As Zephaniah had prophesied (2:13-15), Nineveh was destroyed in 612 B.C. by a confederacy of Babylonians, Medes and Scythians. The Babylonian Chronicle records the details: ‘They turned the city into a ruin-mound and a heap of debris”. As the prophets had foreseen, Nineveh became a desolation, virtually untouched until Botta and Layard rediscovered it more than two millennia later.

The Taylor Prism. British Museum.

Conclusion

There are dangers in claiming in an uncritical way that archaeology always supports the Bible; some archaeologists believe that their finds contradict the Scriptures. When it comes to dating finds or interpreting flood layers it may end up as a matter of the archaeologists’ word against ours. But we are on much firmer ground when it comes to interpreting ancient records—and particularly historical records—which the archaeologists have unearthed.

What I hope I have been able to show in this article is that the Assyrian records do corroborate Old Testament history, and bear record to the accuracy of the Scriptures of truth.

FOOTNOTES

1. Alexander Heidel’s books. The Babylonian Genesis and The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels are a useful source of information, and a helpful starting point for readers who want to follow up this aspect. In The Babylonian Genesis (pp. 82-140) Heidel argues that there are Biblical parallels with Enuma Elish.

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