Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Ninus and Semiramis



John R. Salverda has made the following comments, following my article:

Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria
 
 


I have long held a theory that Tiglath-pileser III was a son, or the brother by a different mother, (He was not born to Semiramis. Therefore he was out of favor, and resentfully so, biding his time until he was quite old.) of Adad-nirari (Ninus), the father of the three successive kings Ashur-nirari V, Shalmaneser IV, and...
I have long held a theory that Tiglath-pileser III was a son, or the brother by a different mother, (He was not born to Semiramis. Therefore he was out of favor, and resentfully so, biding his time until he was quite old.) of Adad-nirari (Ninus), the father of the three successive kings Ashur-nirari V, Shalmaneser IV, and Ashur-dan III. He survived all three before he made his move toward the kingship, during a massive natural disaster (the "earthquake" of Uzziah). Once the old royal general was installed his exploits against the Phrygians as a general during the years when his three half brothers (or perhaps they were his nephews) were sovereign, may have been rewritten as his own "royal" accomplishments and, are currently misunderstood to be the deeds of another king, who was thought to have lived 500 years earlier. One obvious discrepancy is the fact that the Phrygians can't be accounted for archaeologically before the 8th century BC.




Interesting as always, John. But you may be making of TP III a very aged man if he was already old at the time of king Uzziah of Judah and reigned on down to, perhaps, early king Hezekiah. Certainly I would date TP III as late as Hezekiah since I have identified him with the much hated (by Sargon) Shalmaneser, given tha...
Interesting as always, John. But you may be making of TP III a very aged man if he was already old at the time of king Uzziah of Judah and reigned on down to, perhaps, early king Hezekiah. Certainly I would date TP III as late as Hezekiah since I have identified him with the much hated (by Sargon) Shalmaneser, given that the Book of Tobit identifies the exile of the Galilean tribes (considered to have been the work of TP III) with "Shalmaneser". The latter is then succeeded by Sennacherib, according to Tobit. No mention of Sargon - which supports my other view that Sargon II was Sennacherib.
 

Yes, I figure Tiglath Pileser to have been about 85 yrs old (certainly not an impossible age to have achieved) when he died in about 727 BC, a little more than a year before Ahaz (I had imagined that the youthful Ahaz was overawed and was being overly respectful of the senior status and majesty of the King in the meeting ...
Yes, I figure Tiglath Pileser to have been about 85 yrs old (certainly not an impossible age to have achieved) when he died in about 727 BC, a little more than a year before Ahaz (I had imagined that the youthful Ahaz was overawed and was being overly respectful of the senior status and majesty of the King in the meeting where the elder Assyrian patriarch's throne was copied for the use and enhancement of the royal trappings of the upstart Ahaz) placing his birth year at about 812 BC.
"Ahaz who was irresolute and impressible yielded readily to the glamour and prestige of the Assyrians in religion as well as in politics In 732 he went to Damascus to swear homage to Tiglath Pileser and his gods and taking a fancy to an altar which he saw there he had one like it made in Jerusalem which with a corresponding change in ritual he made a permanent feature of the Temple worship Changes were also made in the arrangements and furniture of the Temple because of the king of Assyria II Kings xvi 18 Furthermore Ahaz fitted up an astrological observatory with accompanying sacrifices after the fashion of the ruling people In other ways Ahaz lowered the character of the national worship It is recorded that he even offered his son by fire to Moloch" (From "The Jewish Encyclopedia").
Tiglath-Pileser III described himself as a son of Adad-nirari in his inscriptions, but it is uncertain if this is truthful. (If he was the son of Adad-nirari and, sired in the last year of that King's life, he could, I suppose, have been as young as 55 when he died.)
I'm not sure where I got the notion that he may have been the son of Shamshi-adad (I was under a possibly mistaken belief that one of the previous iterations of Tiglath or Tukulti had claimed to be the son of an earlier Shamshi-adad)
Adad-nirari (Ninus, son of Belus according to the Greeks) 811 to 783 BC. was a son and successor of king Shamshi-Adad V, and was apparently quite young at the time of his accession, because for the first five years of his reign, his mother Shammuramat (Semiramis) some have postulated that his mother acted as regent, He was the father of the three successive kings Shalmaneser IV 783–773 BC, Ashur-dan III 772–755 BC, and Ashur-nirari V 755–745 BC.
I had speculated (for what it is worth) that he patiently waited for about 35 years playing second fiddle and faithfully serving the three brothers (his own half brothers, or perhaps his nephews) before making his move for the throne during the last few years of Ashur-nirari's rule. I supposed that during this time the exploits of his campaigns in Asia Minor were recorded and that these accounts, kept separate from his later royal feats, became the source material for the chronicles of his supposedly more ancient alter-ego. I once spent a lot of time and effort looking into the matter, but not so much anymore Thanks for rekindling an old flame with this subject.




Based on Mackenzie's (see below) observation that a highly idiosyncratic form of worship, reminiscent of Atonism, had occurred in Mesopotamia at the time of Queen Sammuramat (Semiramis) and Adad-nirari III, I have been inclined to synchronise the two, as I wrote:
"My tentative identification of Queen Semiramis of Egypt...
Based on Mackenzie's (see below) observation that a highly idiosyncratic form of worship, reminiscent of Atonism, had occurred in Mesopotamia at the time of Queen Sammuramat (Semiramis) and Adad-nirari III, I have been inclined to synchronise the two, as I wrote:
"My tentative identification of Queen Semiramis of Egypt and Babylon with Queen Tiy/ Nefertiti (= biblical Jezebel) seems to find support in the fact that Donald A. Mackenzie, in Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, has identified a similar régime to Akhnaton’s quite unique one in Assyro-Babylonia at the time of Adad-nirari III (or IV: Mackenzie), with the legendary Queen Sammuramat (or Semiramis) then having unique power for a woman - likened (once more, as in the case of the Jezebel seal which has Queen Tiy like symbols) by Mackenzie to the powerful Queen Tiy. The god Nebo whom the ‘Assyrian’ pair worshipped almost exclusively may here substitute for El-Amarna’s Aton god. This now gives me added confidence that the legendary Queen Sammuramat/ Semiramis was Nefertiti/Tiy (= Jezebel) under her guise as a queen of Mesopotamia. This means that her son, Adad-nirari III (and Mackenzie comes close to Velikovsky’s view of royal mother and wife: “Sammurammat may therefore have been his mother. She could have been called his "wife" in the mythological sense, the king having become "husband of his mother".”), was Akhnaton himself. A strange king, indeed, this Akhnaton!"
Does this add anything at all to the Ninus and Semiramis legend as you see it?

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