Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, 668–c. 631 BCE

Novotny, Jamie (19. Juli 2023): Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, 668–c. 631 BCE. In: Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press

Abstract

Ashurbanipal, probably the fourth eldest son of Esarhaddon (r. 680–669 BCE), was the last great king of Assyria. When he ascended the throne in late 669 BCE, Ashurbanipal, a ruler who is referred to in classical sources as Sardanapalos, inherited the then-world’s largest empire, whose vast territorial holdings stretched from the Zagros Mountains in the east to the Mediterranean Sea and Cilicia in the west. From his administrative capital Nineveh, he ruled Assyria with the aid of his trusted officials (including more than seventy-one provincial governors) and in close contact with no less than thirty-nine client states, including many important Phoenician port cities in the Levant. However, by the end of his long reign, which ended sometime after the first three months of 631 BCE, the Assyrian Empire’s strength and territorial holdings significantly declined and, if its collapse had not yet been written on the wall, it was at least imaginable, something that would have been unthinkable when Ashurbanipal came to power thirty-eight years earlier. Few contemporary cuneiform sources shed light on his final years as king, including how and exactly when he died and was succeeded by his young son Ashur-etel-ilani (c. 630–627 BCE), although it is abundantly clear that Assyria’s fortunes continued to dwindle. According to a later, semi-fictionalized account of his death by Ctesias of Cnidus, he committed suicide by burning down his palace around him when an army of Babylonians and Medes laid siege to Nineveh.

• Dokumententyp: Lexikon-Artikel
• Keywords: Ashur; Ashurbanipal; Babylon; Esagil; Esarhaddon; Assyria; Harran; inscriptions; Nineveh
• Fakultät: Geschichts- und Kunstwissenschaften > Historisches Seminar > Alte Geschichte ; Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde > Assyriologie und Hethitologie
• Themengebiete: 900 Geschichte und Geografie > 930 Geschichte des Altertums (bis ca. 499), Archäologie
• Sprache: Englisch