168 Geoff Emberling
developed a distinctive style of carving stone reliefs and ivory furniture elements, and
they had their own traditions of royal inscriptions written in Aramaic or Luwian. After
the Assyrian conquest, stone carving continued, but more clearly imitating Assyrian
styles, even if imperfectly. One set of reliefs from Tell Tayinat shows Assyrian soldiers
carrying the severed heads of their enemies, but not carved with the care of the imperial
style; rather, it may have been carved by local artisans who were forced under the
Assyrian occupation to render the defeat of their own people. A number of multi-lingual
inscriptions made by local rulers under Assyrian domination show political negotiations
of language and identity (Galter 2004; Millard 2009). A statue found near Fekheriye
in northeastern Syria, for example, depicts a ruler in broadly Neo-Hittite style. The
bilingual inscription is written by Adad Yis’i, who calls himself “governor of Guzana” in
the Assyrian cuneiform inscription, but “king of Guzana” in the Aramaic version.
Similarly, a site known today as Tell Ahmar on the Euphrates River in Syria, near
the Turkish border, had a number of different ancient names: an Aramaic name (Til
Barsip) and a Luwian name (Masuwari), both replaced after Assyrian conquest in the
mid-nineteenth centuryBCwith an Assyrian name (Kar-Shulmanu-ashared). The city
was made a provincial capital. Its governor during the mid-eighth centuryBChad an
Assyrian name (Ninurta-bel-usur), was very likely a eunuch—they served extensively in
the Assyrian bureaucracy and military—but was also from a local elite family (Bunnens
2006: 97ff.). He was thus named in what would have been a foreign tradition, and was
even castrated in order to function within the Assyrian system.
The most evocative account of Assyrian imperialism from the perspective of the con-
quered is undoubtedly the biblical versions of the siege of Jerusalem under the king
Sin-ahhe-eriba in about 701BC(Mitchell 1991). The siege and its aftermath is recorded
as one of a series of Assyrian triumphs in Assyrian royal inscriptions:
As for Hezekiah, the Jew, who had not submitted to my yoke, 46 of his strong, walled
cities...I besieged, I captured, I plundered, as booty I counted them. Him, like a caged
bird, in Jerusalem, his royal city, I shut up...Hezekiah—the terrifying splendor of my royalty
overcame him...with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver and all kinds of treasure from
his palace, he sent his daughters, his palace women, his male and female singers, to Nineveh,
and he dispatched his messengers to pay the tribute (Luckenbill 1927: 143, cf. Frahm 1991).As is typical, the emphasis is on political resistance and the ultimate triumph of Assyria,
expressed here not by conquest of the city (Jerusalem was never captured by the Assyrian
Empire), but in the tribute sent from the city.
The biblical accounts (II Kings 18–19, Isaiah 36–37, II Chronicles 32) are consid-
erably more detailed, depicting the arrival of the Assyrians as a test of Hezekiah’s faith.
One episode reveals a great deal about the politics of language and religion in this impe-
rial interaction (cf. Holloway 2002). Assyrian officials including the Rab-shakeh spoke
to Judean officials as Jerusalemites watched the discussion from the walls of the city.
The Rab-shakeh said the people of Jerusalem could not rely on their god, on Hezekiah,
or on their Egyptian allies to keep the city from being captured. The Judean officials
then asked that the Rab-shakeh speak to them in Aramaic rather than the “language
of Judah” (Hebrew), because the people on the wall would not understand Aramaic.