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The choice of two other months immediately following Nisan and Elul cannot be accidental. The interval of thirty-three days between the Nisan and Iyyar festivals and thirty-four days between the Elul and Tishri festivals may represent a sacred period. Tishri, moreover, as has been pointed out, is a sacred month in a peculiar sense.
The festival is described ideographically as Si-gar, but from the fact that the same ideographs are used elsewhere to describe a day sacred to Sin and Shamash, it would appear that Si-gar is not a specific appellation, but a general name again for festival. This month Iyyar and this particular day, as a "favorable one," is chosen by Ashurbanabal for his installation as king of Assyria.
In Ashurbanabal's annals there is an interesting reference to a festival celebrated in honor of the goddess Gula, the goddess of healing, on the twelfth day of Iyyar, the second month.
Assur-nirari, the last of the old dynasty, died or was put to death, and Pulu or Pul, one of his generals, was proclaimed king on the 13th of Iyyar or April under the name of Tiglath-pileser III. Tiglath-pileser III. was the founder of the Second Assyrian empire, which was based on a wholly different principle from that of the first. Occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars.
The same month is selected for a formal pilgrimage to Babylonia for the purpose of restoring to E-Sagila a statue of Marduk that a previous Assyrian king had taken from its place, and Lehmann is probably correct in concluding that this month of Iyyar was a particularly sacred one in Assyria, emphasized with intent perhaps by the kings, as an offset against the sacredness of Nisan in Babylonia.
Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargon's, pp. 52, 124; of Ashurbanabal, the chronicler tells us that he proceeded to Babylonia in the month of Iyyar, but, this not being the proper month, he did not "seize the hands of Bel." See also Winckler, ib. p. xxxvi, note. See pp. 423 and 629 seq. I.e., 'The beginning of the year. See on this subject Karppe's article, Revue Semitique, ii. 146-151.
Esar-haddon followed, and a battle fought near Malatiyeh, on the 12th of Iyyar, or April, B.C. 680, decided the fate of the empire. The veterans of Esar-haddon utterly defeated the conspirators and their Armenian allies, and at the close of the day he was saluted as king. He then returned to Nineveh, and on the 8th of Sivan, or May, formally ascended the throne.
In scarcely half a year they were twice counted, once shortly before the erection of the Tabernacle, and the second time a month after its dedication. On the first day of the month of Iyyar, Moses received instructions to take a census of all men over twenty who were physically fit to go to war.
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