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Updated: May 7, 2025
At times Shamash, or Shamash and Ramman, are added to form a little pantheon whose assistance is invoked in the Babylonian wars. From being used in restricted application to Babylonian affairs, Ashur and Marduk came to be invoked in a general way. Esarhaddon expressly sets up the claim of being the savior of Marduk's honor, as a kind of apology for proceeding against Babylonia with his armies.
By Esarhaddon, or by his successor, Manasseh, king of Judah, was conquered, and carried off as a captive, but afterwards restored to his throne. Assyria was now at the summit of its power. Under him, Assyrian art made its farthest advance. He was the builder of magnificent palaces.
We are told in one case that Nikâ, the mother of Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria, is sick. She sees the hand of the goddess Nanâ of Uruk laid heavily upon her.... Is it ordained that this hand will be lifted off from the sufferer? The occasions, it is evident, were exceedingly numerous when the Assyrian rulers appealed to the priests for oracles.
Sennacherib offered sacrifices to Hoa on the sea-shore after an expedition in the Persian Gulf. Esarhaddon "slew great and costly sacrifices" at Nineveh upon completing his great palace in that capital. Sacrifice was clearly regarded as a duty by the kings generally, and was the ordinary mode by which they propitiated the favor of the national deities.
The dates assigned to the later kings, from Vul-lush II., to Esarhaddon inclusive, are derived from the Assyrian Canon taken in combination with the famous Canon of Ptolemy. The agreement between these documents, and between the latter and the Assyrian records generally, is exact; and a conformation is thus afforded to Ptolemy which is of no small importance.
Shamash might answer that the city will not be captured, with the mental reservation that it will surrender, or he might throw Esarhaddon off his guard by announcing that "not by might nor by strength" will the city be taken, and the king may be surprised some morning to learn that the catastrophe has been brought about through the power residing in the 'word. These precautions were taken, not so much because it was supposed that the gods and priests were tricky, but because all conditions had to be carefully fulfilled in order to ensure an answer, and, if at all possible, of course a favorable answer.
Dating from the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanabal we have an elaborate series of prayers addressed to the sun-god, all dealing with questions of a political import. These prayers, so admirably edited and analyzed by Knudtzon, are all arranged according to a single pattern. Each one opens with a question or series of questions which Shamash, the sun-god, is asked to answer.
The same individual, Kashtariti, and the Gimirrites, Medes, etc., are mentioned in many other prayers prepared in the course of the campaign; and elsewhere other campaigns are introduced. What Esarhaddon did, no doubt his successors also did, as he himself followed the example set by his predecessors.
At any rate, he enjoyed for some time the absolute confidence and high esteem of his suzerain. If we may venture to interpret a mutilated inscription, he furnished Esarhaddon with a fleet, and manned it with his own sailors. Certainly, he received from Esarhaddon a considerable extension of his dominions.
In the sculptures of the son and successor of Esarhaddon, the horses of the cavalry carry not unfrequently, in addition to the ordinary saddle or pad, a large cloth nearly similar to that worn sometimes by chariot-horses, of which a representation has been already given. It is cut square with two drooping lappets, and covers the greater part of the body.
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