Annals of Shalmaneser III (Other Copies)
The campaign records of Shalmaneser III of Assyria as written on statues, bulls and slabs at Kalhu and Assur. They date Jehu’s tribute to the king’s eighteenth year, 841 BC, and call Hazael of Damascus a usurper.
See the object at oracc.museum.upenn.edu ↗Statue for Adad of Kurbail, with the campaign of the eighteenth year and Jehu’s tribute (RIAo, Shalmaneser III 12) ↗Statue from Assur, with the accession of Hazael (RIAo, Shalmaneser III 40) ↗Bull colossi from Kalhu, with the campaign of the eighteenth year (RIAo, Shalmaneser III 8) ↗
Shalmaneser III had the record of his campaigns rewritten every few years and inscribed on monuments in his cities. Many versions survive. The two best known, the Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III and the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, have their own entries; this entry covers the others cited in this wiki.
A statue of the king dedicated to the god Adad of Kurbail, found in the arsenal at Kalhu and published in 1962, gives a full account of his eighteenth year. He crossed the Euphrates, defeated Hazael of Damascus at Mount Saniru, shut him up in Damascus and cut down its orchards, marched to the coast, and there received the tribute of Tyre, Sidon and Jehu of Israel (lines 21–30). A statue from Assur says that Hadad-ezer of Damascus died and that Hazael, “son of a nobody”, took the throne (i 25–ii 6). That is the Assyrian way of saying he had no claim by birth, and it agrees with the account of his rise in (2 Kings 8:7–15).
These are royal inscriptions written to glorify the king. Their figures for enemy dead grow from one version to the next, and they never record a defeat. For the order and dates of the campaigns they are contemporary and consistent with each other.
Cited in
- about 930 BC, estimated date
- 853 BC, firm date
- 841 BC, firm date
- about 840 BC, estimated date