by
Damien F. Mackey
The
following section on the necessary folding of Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian
history - king Tiglath-pileser I identified with Tiglath-pileser III - is taken
from Volume 1 of my postgraduate university thesis:
A Revised
History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its
Background
P.
ix
….
Now,
moving on down to king Hezekiah’s own century, my restructuring and shortening of
C8th BC neo-Assyrian history in connection with Hezekiah in Part II, Chapter 6,
by controversially identifying Sargon II with Sennacherib [for more, see: Assyrian King Sargon II, Otherwise Known As
Sennacherib, which can be read at: http://www.academia.edu/6708474/Assyrian_King_Sargon_II_Otherwise_Known_As_Sennacherib], will be an
original contribution, though undoubtedly much assisted by those who have
argued for a more significant than generally accepted period of co-regency
between Sargon II and Sennacherib. I am particularly indebted to Eric Aitchison
in this regard. This basis (Sargon = Sennacherib), allied to the recognition of
a necessary ‘folding’ of ‘Middle’ and ‘Neo’ Babylonian history, will enable for
me to arrive at the radical conclusion that the so-called ‘Middle’ Babylonian
king, Nebuchednezzar I, was in fact this composite neo-Assyrian monarch (Sargon/Sennacherib)
in the latter’s guise as ruler of Babylon (Chapter 7).
Any
such proposed syncretism, however, between a ‘Middle’ and a ‘Neo’ dynasty Assyro-Babylonian
king would have been inconceivable had not Velikovsky, and others, insisted
upon the need for a merging of these two phases of Mesopotamian history. And the
same general comment applies to my proposed merging, still in Chapter 7, of
Tiglathpileser I with Tiglath-pileser III, as being the one king of Assyria.
Though, in this specific case, I am indebted to Emmet Sweeney for his having
argued this identification and for his having also provided a series of useful
comparisons in support of it. And that comment applies yet again in the case of
my identifying the ‘Middle’ Babylonian king, Merodach-baladan I, with
Merodach-baladan II, the latter being the king of Babylon (a late contemporary
of Tiglath-pileser III) who would become allied to Hezekiah against Assyria,
and who will become especially significant in VOLUME TWO of this thesis. ….
P.
7
What
will greatly supplement all of this, however, will be the chronological merging
of the so-called ‘Middle’ Assyrian history into the ‘Neo’ Assyrian period; a
consequence of Velikovsky’s lowering on the timescale by about 500 years
[henceforth VLTF] of what is conventionally late 2nd millennium BC history,
approximately, into the early 1st millennium BC. A significant consequence of
VLTF, when applied to the early part of Hezekiah’s reign, will be that the
‘Middle’ Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser I, will now merge with his namesake –
who I believe to be his alter ego – Tiglath-pileser III. ….
Pp.
181-183
We
saw in our discussion of Assyrian history in Chapter 6 that Tiglath-pileser I
stands out amidst a most poorly documented age of so-called ‘Middle’ Assyrian history
that James has called a ‘Dark Age’. I suspect the reason for this is that the
documents for this period are actually to be found in neo-Assyrian history.
That:
Tiglath-pileser [I], son of Ashur-resh-ishi, grandson of Ashur-dan, is none other than
Tiglath-pileser [III], son of Ashur-nirari (var. Adad-nirari),
grandson of Ashur-dan,
a
contemporary of both Merodach-baladan II - in the latter’s early days - and of
king Hezekiah of Judah.
Common
to Tiglath-pileser I/III were a love of building (especially in honour of
Assur) and hunting, and many conquests, for example: the Aramaeans, with
frequent raids across the Euphrates; the Hittites (with the possibility of a
common foe, Ini-Tešub); Palestine; to
the Mediterranean; the central Zagros tribes; Lake Van, Nairi and Armenia (Urartu);
the conquest of Babylon. Just to name a few of the many similarities. I think that
historians really repeat themselves when discussing these presumably ‘two’
Assyrian ‘kings’. Consider this amazing case of repetition, as I see it, from [S.]
Lloyd [Ancient Turkey. A Traveller’s
History of Anatolia, British Museum Publications, 1989, pp. 68-69]:
The
earliest Assyrian references to the Mushki [Phrygians] suggest that their eastward
thrust into the Taurus and towards the Euphrates had already become a menace.
In about 1100 BC Tiglath-Pileser I defeats a coalition of ‘five Mushkian kings’
and brings back six thousand prisoners. In the ninth century the Mushki are again
[sic] defeated by Ashurnasirpal II, while Shalmaneser III finds himself in conflict
with Tabal …. But when, in the following century, Tiglath-pileser III once more
records a confrontation with ‘five Tabalian kings’, the spelling of their names
reveals the fact that these are no sort of Phrygians [sic], but a semiindigenous
Luwian-speaking people, who must have survived the fall of the Hittite Empire.
I
think that we should now be on safe grounds in presuming that the ‘five
Mushkian kings’ and the ‘five Tabalian kings’ referred to above by Lloyd as
having been defeated by Tiglath-pileser I/III – but presumably separated in
time by more than 3 centuries - were in fact the very same five kings.
To
Tiglath-pileser I there is accredited a reign length of about 38 years, which
is significantly longer than the 17 years normally attributed to
Tiglath-pileser III. However, in Chapter 11 (pp. 356-357) we shall learn that
Tiglath-pileser III was extremely active for at least two decades before he
actually even became the primary ruler of Assyria.
After
Tiglath-pileser [I] had sacked the city of Babylon, he placed on the throne
there one Adad-apla-iddina (c.1067-1046 BC, conventional dates), generally
thought to have been amongst Aramaean newcomers at the time [J. Brinkman, 1968,
A Political History of Post-Kassite
Babylonia, 1158-722 B.C., Analecta Orientalia 43, Pontificium Institutum
Biblicum, Roma, p. 92]:
…
Adad-apla-iddina …. During his reign, the Arameans and Sutians living along the
Euphrates irrupted into the land … fomenting trouble in Babylon itself. Relations
between the Assyrian and Babylonian kings remained friendly for the most part
during this period of changing regimes in the south. Though Assyria may have
assisted Adad-apla-iddina in gaining the throne, he paid the northern country
back by later interfering in the Assyrian royal succession.
This
Adad-apla-iddina has several notable likenesses now to our composite king of Babylon,
Merodach-baladan I/II. Firstly, he came to power in Babylon during the reign of
a Tiglath-pileser.
Secondly,
though established by the ‘Assyrians’, he tended to bite the hand that fed him.
Thirdly,
the name Adad-apla-iddina (var. Rimmon-bal-iddina) … is of identical construct to
Marduk-apla-iddina (Merodach-baladan), though with the Assyrian theophoric in
the former case substituted for the Babylonian theophoric in the latter: our
ADP principle.
Brinkman’s
account of Adad-apla-iddina above could perhaps even be a plausible explanation
of how Merodach-baladan I/II actually came to power in Babylon: namely, with
the assistance of Tiglath-pileser. And his having ‘Assyrian’ support would
account for how he managed to survive for so long. Though, all the time, this
wily king of Babylon apparently had his own agenda that would eventually bring about
his ruin at the hands of his ‘Assyrian’ benefactors.
John Salverda: You may
just as well throw in Tiglath-pileser II as well. He was the son of another
Ashur-resh-ishi (II), the contemporary of another Jeroboam (I) and the father
of another Ashur-Dan (II).
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