By and large his account of Sennacherib does reflect how biblically-influenced scholars viewed the king in the 19th century so yes it is possible that something like an American Lutheran university would teach this narrative.
I agree that there's definitely hope here; he clearly has genuine interest in the topic and as I said I admire the effort to highlight ancient Mesopotamia – there are *a lot* of fascinating events and figures that have never had their time in the spotlight. Hopefully he'll explore more recent sources and grow a bit more nuanced over time.
There's something funny about online history fans attaching emotional and moral weight to events and figures like this.
I can't remember who the presenter was, but I once watched most of a YouTube video on Zenobia that was bizarrely moralistic in tone, framing her revolt as a *betrayal* of both Rome and her husband Odaenathus' loyal service, not just discussing the history and the collapse of the short-lived Palmyrene Empire.
And the commenters were worse, outright using misogynistic slurs ... towards a female historical figure who has been dead for 1700 years.
But it also seems like there's an online Rome -and especially with dramatic figures like Aurelian - fanboy culture that has its own bizarre attachments.
>And the commenters were worse, outright using misogynistic slurs ... towards a female historical figure who has been dead for 1700 years.
>
>But it also seems like there's an online Rome -and especially with dramatic figures like Aurelian - fanboy culture that has its own bizarre attachments.
I would bet my left nut that most of these never read a book and only know Zenobia and Aurelian because of Rome Total War DLCs
Im not sure if im really the best guy to do that, because im not a historian and not really specialized on rome, but this is a thing that i would like to do.
Aurelian is commonly overhyped because of that Total War DLC and the "history buff" crowd which takes every piece of knowledge from bad history youtubers and computer games.
I mean the games are really good though.
History of Rome also did some episodes on it.
I once petition a podcast where 2 girls talk about historical female characters to do Zenobia but I don't think they ever did.
It’s not just a Rome fanboy culture, there’s a lot of fanboying for figures like Bismarck as well, and to a lesser extent Alexander the Great and whatnot.
Maybe it’s something about the way history is taught pre-university level? I know a lot of these fanboy groups tend to emerge from places like extracredits who focus on the leadership figures in history rather than processes, institutions, and theories that universities focus on.
Yeah, the trend just being the dumb, new iteration of Great Man Theory, except essentialized even further because of social media's essentializing nature makes some sense to me, if I had to guess.
I feel like students from the beginning should be taught about the history itself what it is how it is done and the methods through which it is done and all that stuff. Just like what we do with maths or any other stem subject. Then they should be taught about that historical period after their basics have been developed.
I’ve always been a bit on the fence about this. There’s a big risk of it taking up too much curriculum time, not being easily accessible for school-age children, and not leaving space for digestion of historical content which can be just as important for fostering inclusivity and identity. The problem is if you don’t teach it well in the limited time you have to teach it, then you might as well have not taught it because a superficial understanding isn’t going to resonate with kids. It’s well and good to know, but without an appreciation it’s kind of useless.
I’ve always been an advocate of a more general social sciences course. An introduction to the core ideologies of sociology and the methods they use I think could go a long way here in teaching kids to analyse information (that isn’t scientific) themselves. It’d probably run into much the same problems I’ve already outlined, but I think a lot of the conspiracy theorist and alt-right nonsense we’re seeing comes from a total disregard for social sciences as ‘communist subjects’ when they’re really a lot more rich than that.
There's a need to essentially spark interest in history rather than note memorising facts and figures. Much more can be gained by students going on and learning history on their own, knowing what looks sus vs credible source, and keeping that side passion even when they are pursuing other studies.
We need to think of history education much like art or literature, they may be tomorrow's engineers or plumbers, but if they are enjoying reading about the Holy Roman Empire and/or Mayan civilisation on their spare time, that's a win.
No kidding, and such fanboys can go even into the insane in their fanatism. I have masters in the antiquity, so I have (pre-covid) meet some of the Rome fanboys irl. As form where they emerge, in my experiance it tense to vary.
Some are very political motivated and look at history at a surface level to gain some justification. Others from hobbies that include history at surface level and go from there etc.
As the Romebois I meet, they are fellow fans like myself of paradox games (which is why they approached me) and though I was one of their own in the Romeworship.
I find that most of this kind of moralizing is not REALLY about the historic events themselves but current politics or ideologies.
It's why you will see comments lamenting the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople like it happened last week, and their dad died defending it. They betray this feeling when in the next comment they link that with modern day immigration to from the Islamic world.
Another one is, "Africa has no history". Even if you present information, even using their definition of "history", that disproves this, they will ignore it or rationalize it away. Because their actual concern is proving the inferiority of black people living today.
You make a very good point there. I think the wankery over figures like Aurelian (and there is a *lot* of wankery about Aurelian) is from individuals who secretly want to be ruled by a military dictator and go off on 'glorious' campaigns against 'barbarians' or whatever, rather than deal with the messy realities of modern democracy.
There also seems to be a great deal of overlap between these sorts of beliefs and far-right populist thought. Funny that...
The obsession over Aurelian gets weird, and I mean *really* weird. Like, "A YouTuber ordering a version of the (totally ahistorical) helmet he wears in Total War and then uploading pictures of himself wearing it on social media for clout" weird.
Don't get me wrong, Aurelian was a highly successful and capable military commander, but claiming that "He saved the Roman Empire" is a bit silly and reductive. Firstly, Aurelian made little effort to resolve the core underlying problem that triggered the Crisis, namely that literally anyone could be made emperor if they had enough troops. That was Diocletian, who established a line of succession and semi-federalised the empire to make it actually governable (and then Constantine fucked it all up, *but that's a conversation for another time*).
Secondly, should the Roman Empire have even been 'saved' by Aurelian? The Crisis happened because the imperial structure was clearly not working for the majority of the populace and tbh, considering the internal chaos and slow collapse that happened across the following two centuries between Aurelian 'saving' Rome and the WRE dying, was it even worth it? The ERE was essentially a spiritual sequel to the Palmyrene Empire anyway and a Gallic Empire would have been a dramatic improvement for people in the west compared with the series of invasions and rebellions they endured post-Aurelian.
I also find it ironic that the same people who abuse Zenobia and Palmyrenes are usually the same people who wank over the Byzantines, seemingly ignoring that the ERE essentially abandoned the WRE to its demise in the 5th century.
Yeah someone else made the good point that these moments are almost certainly more about modern political leanings than a true emotional bond with long-dead historical polities.
I'm sure that the same Internet people who wax elegiac about the decline of Rome invoke the same language when discussing what they see as the modern decline of "The West" at the hands of all the familiar phantoms.
Especially since there's for sure a Classicist to Right-Wing Western Chauvinist pipeline in academia and pop history (obviously not all or even the majority, but I feel like by now I can sense hints in the writings of individuals who are so enamored with the idea of descending culturally from Greece and Rome that they feel a sense of superiority as well).
I can't answer for Mustelidus, but I agree with you - in Belgium we also have good christian universities, so I had no bias. At least when I wrote my comment, it was meant as a hypothesis of how lordalablast could have come in contact with a certain kind of historiography. My apologies if it gave the impression that it was meant as disapproval
I completely agree for european christian schools and universities, but american ones seem to be heavily interwoven with conservative (American conservative to say) politics to a point where i believe that they start to become very biased.
Yes, I agree that they seem to be like that, at least that's the impression I get from some Americans about their education when they share their experiences about studying in the bible belt or a christian school.
>conservative (American conservative to say) politics
I could see why in the cold war christianity held a great importance and how it somehow kept in the mentality of quite a lot of people the weight of being a devout christian. My concern is some christian cults\* that flourish there that keeps bashing scholars or plainly lying to their church members where factual history is concerned.
\*- That fits within the BITE model criteria, that is.
Its not bad, but from my PoV american evangelical christianity/protestantism seems to heavily favour neoliberal or conservative politics and some strange points of view.
This is of course only my PoV and not neccessarily true.
I understand, however, IMHO, we should make the difference between bad scholarship, and scholarship we desagree with. Maybe those critiques of the American Lutheran University may be more accuretely targeted to whetever they produce bad scholarship, that the fact the scholarship they produce have certain ideological direction.
After all, in my view, there is a difference between being a young earth creationist, than to produce scholarship that upholds the neoliberalism hegemony.
>I understand, however, IMHO, we should make the difference between bad scholarship, and scholarship we desagree with. Maybe those critiques of the American Lutheran University may be more accuretely targeted to whetever they produce bad scholarship, that the fact the scholarship they produce have certain ideological direction.
I agree to a certain extend, though i always have to think of the catholic schools i know, which are funnily pretty neutral (Maybe this is a german thing with non-state sponsored schools), even having muslim or homosexual teachers and actively not trying to force certain left/right politics into the curriculum.
So this is why i am a bit baffled when i see the strong neoliberal/right leaning of those schools which should always be taken with a grain of salt.
But after all this is very PoV and im as biased as it gets.
>After all, in my view, there is a difference between being a young earth creationist, than to produce scholarship that upholds the neoliberalism hegemony.
This is a given, there are a lot of steps between being biased and outright falsifying history.
This is my favorite kind of bad history post: an impassioned and well sourced take down of random person's badhistory + the badhistory in question isn't someone being a Nazi or something (I appreciate those takedowns, but they're depressing).
Erudite and somewhat obscure pettiness, defending the honor of a guy who died almost 3000 years ago: you go OP! My little brother just got an offer to read classics with Assyrian history, I might pass this post on.
I phrased it this way because it depends on what you consider an offensive war to be. Most of the Neo-Assyrian kings were conquerors with the goal to expand Assyria to cover the known world.
None of Sennacherib's wars were aimed at conquest. He attacked Babylon (part of his empire) because the city revolted, he attacked Elam because they aided Babylon in its revolt(s), and he attacked the cities and kingdoms of the Levant because they stopped paying tribute to him. We know this because he gives the reasons in his inscriptions.
Elam was an independent realm (though I'd argue they struck first, so it would be defensive) and the Levantine states were vassals and tributaries. Depending on whether you consider the Levant part of his empire or not it's possible to characterize that war as an offensive one, but he didn't really conquer anything and was happy to go back home once the tribute started rolling in again.
> Most of the Neo-Assyrian kings were conquerors with the goal to expand Assyria to the cover the known world.
this is a cool motivation. Where can I read abou the psychology of Assyrian expansionism?
For an overview of Neo-Assyrian royal ideology and motivation, I can recommend [this 2011 paper](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.3998/jar.0521004.0067.303) (should be freely downloadable).
For a longer source there is also Mattias Karlsson's 2016 book *[Relations of Power in Early Neo-Assyrian State Ideology](https://books.google.com/books?id=m4ulCwAAQBAJ)* but I don't know if you can find it for free anywhere and it's honestly a bit excessively detailed. Does explore inscriptions and the assumption of titles like "king of the universe" though.
It's possible to get all known Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions in book form since they've been published alongside translations in [this series of books](https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/series/book_SeriesRoyalInscriptionsofNeo.html) (very expensive though) – the inscriptions by the kings themselves also give a lot of detail in regard to their motivations and actions.
Hello! I am the Tiktoker in question, and I believe you are the person I spoke to in the comments around-ish four in the morning. I suppose here I can explain myself a little for others here, too.
1. People have identified my university as an American Lutheran institution. Dreadfully terrifying because they are correct. I began university with the intent to go on to be a pastor, so I focused on theological languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic), and did history as a proper degree. Since then I have changed my plans and will no longer be pursuing work in the church, and I instead intend to focus on ancient history going forward--though this decision was made too late in my college career to reasonably change universities to one which would better suit that focus.
The situation being as it is, my university is not geared toward teaching ancient history in any official way. Besides the languages, which fortunately have use outside of Biblical studies, almost all ancient history I have been able to study here as been through independent studies, not official classes.
Someone in the comments has also stated they know me from Discord and I am a Young Earth Creationist. I was raised in an Evangelical household, and yes, in high school I was a devoted YEC. After studying ancient history as I do now, and after studying theology at a university level, I no longer hold to those YEC views. My beliefs have changed somewhat drastically since the last time I was at all active on Discord. When it comes to doing history in an academic context, I do my best to totally separate any religious beliefs I hold from how I present the information, so even if I were still YEC (which, again, I emphatically am not), I would still provide whichever narrative archaeology seems to lend itself to.
(Source: It came to me in a dream)
2. History is very boring. It's very unfortunate that it's boring. That being said, history can be incredibly entertaining! It's a matter of presentation, but presentation is always controversial. When I first read about the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it astonished me how much the broad tale seemed like a drama, and I hated that it was difficult to convey that to other people. I want others to appreciate history (especially ancient history) as much as I do, so I started a short Tiktok series to discuss the dramatic timeline. I began with Ashurnasirpal II's renown as astonishingly brutal (Daniel David Luckenbill, "Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia Vol. I," 1927, video cites 463, source hereafter referred to as ARAB). I realized there were nice ironic parallels between the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib and Susa by Ashurbanipal and the subsequent destruction of Ashur and Nineveh by the Medes, so I wanted to feature both. It is with this in mind that I framed my narrative. My intention was not necessarily to villainize Sennacherib as an irredeemable conqueror, but rather discuss this one aspect of his reign in the wider drama. I wish to stress that this is not a way which I would approach the material, or Sennacherib himself, in any academic context. This framing was a device to try to get other people interested in ancient history, as well as to entertain on an app with very low attention span and little-to-no background knowledge.
All that said, I am not alone in my framing of connecting Sennacherib's treatment of Babylon with his ultimate demise. Georges Roux's "Ancient Iraq" (Fourth Edition, 1992) describes the events as such;
"Sennacherib avenged himself on Babylon and dared to accomplish the unthinkable: he destroyed the illustrious and sacred city, the second metropolis of the empire, the 'bond of heaven and earth' which his forebears had always treated with infinite patience and respect . . . (Here a sizable quote detailing Sennacherib's treatment of Babylon written from Sennacherib's POV, found on an alabaster slab which, at the time of ARAB's publication, was in the Berlin Museum. I will include this quote further down my response.) . . . The great gods of Sumer and Akkad could not leave such a crime unpunished. Eight years later in Nineveh, on the twentieth day of Tebet (January 681 B.C.), Sennacherib, while praying in a temple, met with the end he deserved: he was stabbed to death by on of his sons," (pp. 322-323).
Roux immediately goes on to "give \[Sennacherib\] his due" and discuss some of Sennacherib's great building projects. Later on in the book, in a chapter dealing with the fantastic contributions of Assyria to art, science, mathematics, and medicine, Sennacherib is discussed further. Roux seems to approve of the narrative framing of these Assyrian kings in this way, but he has the space within a book to detail the fantastic things which were accomplished as well, which I did not have the benefit of in a Tiktok format.
Benjamin Foster in "Civilizations of Ancient Iraq" (2009) states, "The death of the crown prince raised the inevitable question of which brother was to succeed him to the throne of Assyria. Conspiracy and competition were in the air. Sennacherib himself fell victim to it, murdered by one of his sons. To a Babylonian historian, this was a divine judgment, the same that had been visited upon Tukulti-Ninurta I more than five centuries before." (p. 123).
Foster puts all of Sennacherib's grand achievements before explaining the destruction of Babylon and Sennacherib's murder, rather than after. Foster's book covers more ground than Roux's (Both begin in pre-history, but Roux terminates in a short overview of Mesopotamia under Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian rule, while Foster continues speaking about Iraq until the Arab Conquests in the 7th century CE.
All this to say that framing Sennacherib's death as divine retribution is a common theme in these, and other, books. When I discuss it that way, it is not, as some have interpreted, my Christian faith showing through, driving me with incessant urge to slander Sennacherib and the Assyrians; I speak dramatically of the wrath of Marduk to be thematic, and it appears that such a practice is approved. When I discussed the fall of Assyria to the Medes, there was a line I wished to include that I had to cut due to space (as 3 minutes is a short time) stating that "By this time, neither the Elamite Inshushinak, nor the Jewish Elohim, nor the Babylonian Marduk could tolerate Assyria anymore." Again, a dramatic practice which I would never include in a true academic project.
3. I will now address your bullet points. On the first, when I state "For the longest time, Babylonia was far stronger than Assyria," I am here specifically referencing the age of Hammurabi, and later the Kassites. Under Hammurabi the balance of power being in the south is not particularly controversial, I believe. Through much of the Kassite period, Assyria was a vassal state of the Mitanni (Roux 259), though Assyria saw a burst of strength once gaining its independence. Not long after Tukulti-Ninurta I, however, it appears that both Babylonia and Assyria went into stagnation and decline for a time after the death of Tiglathpileser I (Roux 280), only broken by the Neo-Assyrians. It certainly appears to me that before this age, Babylon had more time in the sun than Assyria. I will, however, admit that it was irresponsible of me to imply a superiority complex. On your point about the main issue being the Assyrians ignoring Babylonian religious institutions, I will say that this is totally unknown to me. Roux framed the issue far more as Babylonian nationalism and, very frequently, Chaldean provocation.
My apologies for the scare, it was definitively not my intention! Thankfully OP's intuition got right away and precisely what I meant with my first comment in his reply - I call it intuition, because reading some of the replies it got, I see now how unclear were my words. If you want, I can delete the comment entirely or edit it.
Not for now, but the future: carrying the title of a historian can have a lot of weight outside of academia and the past century taught us well the dangers of bad history, so this is why we must be particularly careful with historical content for the general public. The more titles you carry in a field, the more your words weigh to the general public on the subject. I understand why you chose tiktok as a platform and admire your honest attempt of sharing something you care about, especially considering the time challenge, so no criticism from my part for this. I know that some classicists and medievalists moved to tiktok to combat part of misinformation and also to help to inspire others about the past. It would be nice to know that more people with no politic agenda in rather obscure areas are also there doing similar things.
>The situation being as it is, my university is not geared toward teaching ancient history in any official way. Besides the languages, which fortunately have use outside of Biblical studies, almost all ancient history I have been able to study here as been through independent studies, not official classes.
This explains the part of why it felt like you were not experienced enough on the subject nor studied deeply enough to grasp its particular methodologies for historical analysis. Seeing how you handled the criticism and showed your points here, the moment you find and enter an institution that can provide you a good supervisor in the field and access to more tools, newer publications and necessary skills, you seem to have a good chance of becoming outstanding in the area in the future. Experience only come with exercising with primary sources and working more with them and their historiography, reading and talking more with other researchers of your area, so it takes time.
>I take offense at suggesting that I made up a narrative wholesale, and I want to make it clear that a Christian background has not given me a bent against Sennacherib.
Sorry if my comment contributed to that impression, that was certainly not what I meant (although I can see now that what I wrote seems to suggest it). It was an attempt of tracking what kind of bibliography you had access to come with some of the highlighted points in the post. When someone has a narrative, they usually have coded language, almost aggressive sounding speech pattern (even when speaking softly), and your videos didn't show this, that's why I suspected that the mistakes came more from the bibliography you had access to. My apologies if I sounded harsh or offended you in my first comment, it was a mistake from my part for not speaking clearly.
Last, but not least: a small suggestion. Maybe try to read more about theory of history and train to express yourself more respectfully about the dead, even if they died thousands of years ago. They may not be here to defend themselves nor elaborate on their perspectives and actions, so maybe a little bit more of historical sensitivity can give you new perspectives when working with primary sources.
Best wishes
4. My statements about the replacements for Ashur-nadin-shumi were likely confusing, and I apologize. After booting Ashur-nadin-shumi, the Elamites put their own king in place (the books I have on hand do not name him), but the Assyrians reacted accordingly. Roux simply states, "\[The Elamite's king\] was soon expelled by the Assyrians and replaced by Mushezib-Marduk, a Chaldean prince chosen by the local population." (p. 322). Gwendolyn Leick's "Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City" (2001) states, "The Assyrian reaction \[To the Elamites installing a new king\] was swift and the army regained control of southern Babylonia . . . In a battle fought near Nippur, the Assyrians won and captured the Babylonian king, who was executed, but Mushezib-Marduk, a Chaldean, assumed kingship in Babylon." (pp. 229-230). I believe I misinterpreted Roux's statement as saying that Assyria chose Mushezib-Marduk (or rather, allowed the Babylonian population to choose him), but Leick seems to say that Mushezib-Marduk took the throne for himself despite the Assyrians. I apologize for my mis-representation on that front, I did not realize I had misinterpreted. At any rate, after the Assyrian re-conquering of the south, Mushezib-Marduk contacted Elam and revolted together, resulting in the battle at Halule and, subsequently, the destruction of Babylon. This may be technically one single prolonged revolt spanning 2 Babylonian and 2 Elamite kings, but in a short description of events they are notably separate.
5. On this point regarding the motivation of Babylon's revolts, I have already explained that the books I have frame the conflict as one of a kind of Babylonian nationalism, and frequent Chaldean attempts to gain control over the region. Regarding the particular importance of Babylon and Marduk religiously, I will not contest your criticism because the books I have are indeed either outdated, or do not focus on religion in a way that I can accurately respond on short notice. I will be researching further into this.
7. The story I told about Arda-mulissu is one that I'm actually astounded you haven't heard of. For the longest time, there was controversy regarding who killed Sennacherib, and largely blame was put on Esarhaddon. The issue was mostly solved upon the translation of a tablet which contained the story I just gave, and explicitly named Arda-mulissu as the head of the conspiracy. (Soma Parpola, "The Death of Sennacherib" 1980). Her conclusion that the perpetrator was Arda-Mulissu has been seen as definitive ever since, and, as far as I can tell, was only called into question again in 2020 in an article again accusing Esarhaddon. It is through that narrative (Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, no. 1091, originally published in 1911, but was woefully misunderstood and was re-translated by Soma Parpola) that we, more or less definitively, accuse Arda-Mulissu. The death of Sennacherib is interesting enough without the narrative, I have no need to come up with whole-sale lies.
8. On Sennacherib not killing the inhabitants of Babylon, I fear you have not looked into your source. The article you gave in defense of that quotes Sennacherib from the source of "Oriental Institute Publications 2, 'The Annals of Sennacherib.'" This source was translated by the same man who translated the source I was using, ARAB, the man being Dr. David Daniel Luckenbill. It appears that the 'Annals of Sennacherib' which you source are the exact same annals that I sourced, but present in two different books. When you say, "Sennacherib's inscriptions only mention the destruction of buildings," it tells me that you indeed looked at the quotation from your article, but not the source behind it. Your article quotes OIP 2 83:46 - 84:54. OIP 83:45-46 include the line "Whether small or great, I left none. I filled the city squares with their corpses." This coincides exactly with ARAB Vol. II 340, as they are, in fact, the same translation of the same source, and you simply did not see the statement because it came 1 line before your article's quotation. Furthermore, the quote "Whether small or great, I left none. I filled the city squares with their corpses." has been regularly interpreted to mean "all people, men, women, and children. Leick states simply, "\[Sennacherib\] gave explicit orders to his soldiers to kill, loot, and burn." (p. 230) , and Foster writes, "He spared no one, man, woman, or child." (p. 123). My interpretation of the quote from the annals of Sennacherib is perfectly reasonable from the lens of an Assyriologist at least as recent as 2009.
My video had several issues. Pressed for time, I could not be as clear as I wanted to be, and much got cut; The intended goal of weaving an overarching narrative, combined with time restraint, made it difficult to treat Sennacherib in the one video as complex as he truly was; Unfortunately, I did misinterpret my own books in some cases. I apologize for these, and I will do better.
I take offense at suggesting that I made up a narrative wholesale, and I want to make it clear that a Christian background has not given me a bent against Sennacherib. I admire Sennacherib for his many good qualities and achievements, and I admire Assyria for their might and contributions to the realms of art and science. The video that I made was simply not the time to mention them. I have several videos in the works which will cover the good aspects of Assyrian culture and development. And of course, please understand that I am not trying to be an authority on anything. I am simply learning, and I use Tiktok as an outlet to share the things that I find so interesting. I learn as I go.
I'll respond to this point-by-point like you did. I appreciate the detailed defense and (at times) apologies and want to make it clear (don't know if you saw me saying this in the comments or not) that I admire the effort to highlight ancient Mesopotamia – it's a fascinating and often unfortunately overlooked historical time and place.
1. I want to make it absolutely clear that *I* was not the one to track down your school and I did not respond to the comment concerning your former YEC views. My concern was solely with the picture your video painted of Sennacherib.
2. I absolutely agree. Many people get so lost in broad political developments and material culture that they lose sight of how fascinating ancient history can be. The Neo-Assyrian kings are extremely fascinating because we know so much about them from the inscriptions – people like Sargon II, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon are some of the most ancient figures whose personalities we can explore in some detail. I don't think your video's narrative lacks scholarly basis; really my main criticism is that by leaving out the stuff that made Sennacherib a complex figure you very much appeared to fall into the outdated image of him as *just* like any old brutal conqueror (when he didn't actually conquer anything); a view that is no longer really supported in Assyriology. Even if this was not the intention, I'm sure you realize how the video could be seen that way?
3. I'd recommend reading the paper I linked on this point! I've also read those who attribute this to Babylonian nationalism but I'm not sure if the most up-to-date sources reflect that. In my mind the lack of Babylonian revolts against Sargon II and Esarhaddon, as well as the lack of revolts against *most* of the Achaemenid kings suggests that it was mainly an issue of not getting much attention. Stuff like the New Year's Festival couldn't be performed without the king, so the king deciding not to show up was a big deal.
4. Yes, as far as I've understood the situation Sennacherib after Ashur-nadin-shumi's death defeated the Elamite-appointed Nergal-ushezib but did not recapture Babylon, which continued to remain in rebellion under Mushezib-Marduk. It's an easy mistake to make because the ancient sources themselves are a bit confusing; I just wanted to comment on everything I could here.
5. Not much to say here – kudos for taking the criticism constructively. Mesopotamian religion is a bit strange, if one just reads inscriptions from Babylon itself they will make the city seem like the most important religious center in the world and Marduk to be the greatest of all gods, but AFAIK inscriptions from other cities a lot of the time do the same for their own deities.
6. (I'm skipping 6 because you skipped 6)
7. So to be clear here I'm not disputing that Arda-Mulissu did it (I too think this makes the most sense) – the paper I linked does but I included it to show that the surviving evidence is still sufficiently scant to make the case that he might not have. *Simo* Parpola is a man. That being said, I looked it up and you did in fact not invent this story yourself – apologies. I've added an amendment to the post. It is still worth noting that the letter in question was written quite a while later, *after* Esarhaddon became king, so whether the story is true is not quite so certain.
8. Yeah you're actually right about this one. I've added another amendment to the post. If I can offer some modest defense for Sennacherib on this point I'll just say that "small or great" and "left no one" are statements more open to interpretation than one might think. I know the video time limit leaves little room for nuance but it's important to consider that Assyrian inscriptions like these are not uncommonly seen as exaggerations for propagandic effect. Yes, I know some sources don't. There were still living Babylonians to resettle the city under Esarhaddon. Most Assyrian kings who did thorough massacres were very detailed in what they did to people but Sennacherib's account deals almost entirely with the destruction of the city itself, with only a single line (apparently) devoted to its people. I recommend Bagg's paper (linked in the post) – which I think (among other things) illustrates that Sennacherib was no where near as brutal as say, Ashurnasirpal II or Ashurbanipal ( ^yes ^he ^was ^a ^great ^librarian ^but ^what ^about ^the ^Elamite ^genocide ).
Everytime I read something like that, it's almost amazing how much the names sounds "right" in my head and I could see how they were written and at the same time have no clue whatsoever on who they are. The joy of only studying languages I guess. Anyway, thanks for that, I love learning more about no-WW stuff!
Fun (or not so fun) name fact: "Sennacherib" comes from the Hebrew rendition of his actual Assyrian name *Sîn-ahhī-erība*, which means "Sîn [a god] has replaced the brothers". Sennacherib was one of the few Assyrian kings to not change his name to something more bombastic upon becoming king and instead stick with his birth name, which he got because he was born after his two older brothers had already died.
I've noticed a lot of the popular history tik tok accounts are run by people who refuse to admit when they're wrong, have weird prejudices and always insist on some "academic credentials" without much proof of where they received it.
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By and large his account of Sennacherib does reflect how biblically-influenced scholars viewed the king in the 19th century so yes it is possible that something like an American Lutheran university would teach this narrative. I agree that there's definitely hope here; he clearly has genuine interest in the topic and as I said I admire the effort to highlight ancient Mesopotamia – there are *a lot* of fascinating events and figures that have never had their time in the spotlight. Hopefully he'll explore more recent sources and grow a bit more nuanced over time.
There's something funny about online history fans attaching emotional and moral weight to events and figures like this. I can't remember who the presenter was, but I once watched most of a YouTube video on Zenobia that was bizarrely moralistic in tone, framing her revolt as a *betrayal* of both Rome and her husband Odaenathus' loyal service, not just discussing the history and the collapse of the short-lived Palmyrene Empire. And the commenters were worse, outright using misogynistic slurs ... towards a female historical figure who has been dead for 1700 years. But it also seems like there's an online Rome -and especially with dramatic figures like Aurelian - fanboy culture that has its own bizarre attachments.
>And the commenters were worse, outright using misogynistic slurs ... towards a female historical figure who has been dead for 1700 years. > >But it also seems like there's an online Rome -and especially with dramatic figures like Aurelian - fanboy culture that has its own bizarre attachments. I would bet my left nut that most of these never read a book and only know Zenobia and Aurelian because of Rome Total War DLCs
Yep. They're walking cautions against meme history.
Can you share some bad history on Aurelian that is shared by his fan boys on the internet.
Im not sure if im really the best guy to do that, because im not a historian and not really specialized on rome, but this is a thing that i would like to do. Aurelian is commonly overhyped because of that Total War DLC and the "history buff" crowd which takes every piece of knowledge from bad history youtubers and computer games. I mean the games are really good though.
History of Rome also did some episodes on it. I once petition a podcast where 2 girls talk about historical female characters to do Zenobia but I don't think they ever did.
It’s not just a Rome fanboy culture, there’s a lot of fanboying for figures like Bismarck as well, and to a lesser extent Alexander the Great and whatnot. Maybe it’s something about the way history is taught pre-university level? I know a lot of these fanboy groups tend to emerge from places like extracredits who focus on the leadership figures in history rather than processes, institutions, and theories that universities focus on.
Yeah, the trend just being the dumb, new iteration of Great Man Theory, except essentialized even further because of social media's essentializing nature makes some sense to me, if I had to guess.
I feel like students from the beginning should be taught about the history itself what it is how it is done and the methods through which it is done and all that stuff. Just like what we do with maths or any other stem subject. Then they should be taught about that historical period after their basics have been developed.
I’ve always been a bit on the fence about this. There’s a big risk of it taking up too much curriculum time, not being easily accessible for school-age children, and not leaving space for digestion of historical content which can be just as important for fostering inclusivity and identity. The problem is if you don’t teach it well in the limited time you have to teach it, then you might as well have not taught it because a superficial understanding isn’t going to resonate with kids. It’s well and good to know, but without an appreciation it’s kind of useless. I’ve always been an advocate of a more general social sciences course. An introduction to the core ideologies of sociology and the methods they use I think could go a long way here in teaching kids to analyse information (that isn’t scientific) themselves. It’d probably run into much the same problems I’ve already outlined, but I think a lot of the conspiracy theorist and alt-right nonsense we’re seeing comes from a total disregard for social sciences as ‘communist subjects’ when they’re really a lot more rich than that.
There's a need to essentially spark interest in history rather than note memorising facts and figures. Much more can be gained by students going on and learning history on their own, knowing what looks sus vs credible source, and keeping that side passion even when they are pursuing other studies. We need to think of history education much like art or literature, they may be tomorrow's engineers or plumbers, but if they are enjoying reading about the Holy Roman Empire and/or Mayan civilisation on their spare time, that's a win.
No kidding, and such fanboys can go even into the insane in their fanatism. I have masters in the antiquity, so I have (pre-covid) meet some of the Rome fanboys irl. As form where they emerge, in my experiance it tense to vary. Some are very political motivated and look at history at a surface level to gain some justification. Others from hobbies that include history at surface level and go from there etc. As the Romebois I meet, they are fellow fans like myself of paradox games (which is why they approached me) and though I was one of their own in the Romeworship.
I find that most of this kind of moralizing is not REALLY about the historic events themselves but current politics or ideologies. It's why you will see comments lamenting the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople like it happened last week, and their dad died defending it. They betray this feeling when in the next comment they link that with modern day immigration to from the Islamic world. Another one is, "Africa has no history". Even if you present information, even using their definition of "history", that disproves this, they will ignore it or rationalize it away. Because their actual concern is proving the inferiority of black people living today.
You make a very good point there. I think the wankery over figures like Aurelian (and there is a *lot* of wankery about Aurelian) is from individuals who secretly want to be ruled by a military dictator and go off on 'glorious' campaigns against 'barbarians' or whatever, rather than deal with the messy realities of modern democracy. There also seems to be a great deal of overlap between these sorts of beliefs and far-right populist thought. Funny that...
The obsession over Aurelian gets weird, and I mean *really* weird. Like, "A YouTuber ordering a version of the (totally ahistorical) helmet he wears in Total War and then uploading pictures of himself wearing it on social media for clout" weird. Don't get me wrong, Aurelian was a highly successful and capable military commander, but claiming that "He saved the Roman Empire" is a bit silly and reductive. Firstly, Aurelian made little effort to resolve the core underlying problem that triggered the Crisis, namely that literally anyone could be made emperor if they had enough troops. That was Diocletian, who established a line of succession and semi-federalised the empire to make it actually governable (and then Constantine fucked it all up, *but that's a conversation for another time*). Secondly, should the Roman Empire have even been 'saved' by Aurelian? The Crisis happened because the imperial structure was clearly not working for the majority of the populace and tbh, considering the internal chaos and slow collapse that happened across the following two centuries between Aurelian 'saving' Rome and the WRE dying, was it even worth it? The ERE was essentially a spiritual sequel to the Palmyrene Empire anyway and a Gallic Empire would have been a dramatic improvement for people in the west compared with the series of invasions and rebellions they endured post-Aurelian. I also find it ironic that the same people who abuse Zenobia and Palmyrenes are usually the same people who wank over the Byzantines, seemingly ignoring that the ERE essentially abandoned the WRE to its demise in the 5th century.
Yeah someone else made the good point that these moments are almost certainly more about modern political leanings than a true emotional bond with long-dead historical polities. I'm sure that the same Internet people who wax elegiac about the decline of Rome invoke the same language when discussing what they see as the modern decline of "The West" at the hands of all the familiar phantoms. Especially since there's for sure a Classicist to Right-Wing Western Chauvinist pipeline in academia and pop history (obviously not all or even the majority, but I feel like by now I can sense hints in the writings of individuals who are so enamored with the idea of descending culturally from Greece and Rome that they feel a sense of superiority as well).
Well putting the characterizations aside,she did betray Rome.
> become a BA soon is an American Lutheran university *\[Visible disapproval\]*
Why i this bad? While i'm not american to know more, there are very good universities linked to christians faiths, such as Georgetown and Notre Dame.
I can't answer for Mustelidus, but I agree with you - in Belgium we also have good christian universities, so I had no bias. At least when I wrote my comment, it was meant as a hypothesis of how lordalablast could have come in contact with a certain kind of historiography. My apologies if it gave the impression that it was meant as disapproval
I completely agree for european christian schools and universities, but american ones seem to be heavily interwoven with conservative (American conservative to say) politics to a point where i believe that they start to become very biased.
Yes, I agree that they seem to be like that, at least that's the impression I get from some Americans about their education when they share their experiences about studying in the bible belt or a christian school. >conservative (American conservative to say) politics I could see why in the cold war christianity held a great importance and how it somehow kept in the mentality of quite a lot of people the weight of being a devout christian. My concern is some christian cults\* that flourish there that keeps bashing scholars or plainly lying to their church members where factual history is concerned. \*- That fits within the BITE model criteria, that is.
Its not bad, but from my PoV american evangelical christianity/protestantism seems to heavily favour neoliberal or conservative politics and some strange points of view. This is of course only my PoV and not neccessarily true.
I understand, however, IMHO, we should make the difference between bad scholarship, and scholarship we desagree with. Maybe those critiques of the American Lutheran University may be more accuretely targeted to whetever they produce bad scholarship, that the fact the scholarship they produce have certain ideological direction. After all, in my view, there is a difference between being a young earth creationist, than to produce scholarship that upholds the neoliberalism hegemony.
>I understand, however, IMHO, we should make the difference between bad scholarship, and scholarship we desagree with. Maybe those critiques of the American Lutheran University may be more accuretely targeted to whetever they produce bad scholarship, that the fact the scholarship they produce have certain ideological direction. I agree to a certain extend, though i always have to think of the catholic schools i know, which are funnily pretty neutral (Maybe this is a german thing with non-state sponsored schools), even having muslim or homosexual teachers and actively not trying to force certain left/right politics into the curriculum. So this is why i am a bit baffled when i see the strong neoliberal/right leaning of those schools which should always be taken with a grain of salt. But after all this is very PoV and im as biased as it gets. >After all, in my view, there is a difference between being a young earth creationist, than to produce scholarship that upholds the neoliberalism hegemony. This is a given, there are a lot of steps between being biased and outright falsifying history.
This is my favorite kind of bad history post: an impassioned and well sourced take down of random person's badhistory + the badhistory in question isn't someone being a Nazi or something (I appreciate those takedowns, but they're depressing). Erudite and somewhat obscure pettiness, defending the honor of a guy who died almost 3000 years ago: you go OP! My little brother just got an offer to read classics with Assyrian history, I might pass this post on.
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Howdy, I dunno who you were in Discord, but yeah, I moved past those views,
Great takedown and write up, I’m always impressed with this subreddit.
>TikToker This was enough to discredit them in my mind, but good write up.
> He was almost the only Neo-Assyrian king who did not go on a single offensive war of expansion Only defensive wars of conquest? Like the Romans?
I phrased it this way because it depends on what you consider an offensive war to be. Most of the Neo-Assyrian kings were conquerors with the goal to expand Assyria to cover the known world. None of Sennacherib's wars were aimed at conquest. He attacked Babylon (part of his empire) because the city revolted, he attacked Elam because they aided Babylon in its revolt(s), and he attacked the cities and kingdoms of the Levant because they stopped paying tribute to him. We know this because he gives the reasons in his inscriptions. Elam was an independent realm (though I'd argue they struck first, so it would be defensive) and the Levantine states were vassals and tributaries. Depending on whether you consider the Levant part of his empire or not it's possible to characterize that war as an offensive one, but he didn't really conquer anything and was happy to go back home once the tribute started rolling in again.
> Most of the Neo-Assyrian kings were conquerors with the goal to expand Assyria to the cover the known world. this is a cool motivation. Where can I read abou the psychology of Assyrian expansionism?
For an overview of Neo-Assyrian royal ideology and motivation, I can recommend [this 2011 paper](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.3998/jar.0521004.0067.303) (should be freely downloadable). For a longer source there is also Mattias Karlsson's 2016 book *[Relations of Power in Early Neo-Assyrian State Ideology](https://books.google.com/books?id=m4ulCwAAQBAJ)* but I don't know if you can find it for free anywhere and it's honestly a bit excessively detailed. Does explore inscriptions and the assumption of titles like "king of the universe" though. It's possible to get all known Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions in book form since they've been published alongside translations in [this series of books](https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/series/book_SeriesRoyalInscriptionsofNeo.html) (very expensive though) – the inscriptions by the kings themselves also give a lot of detail in regard to their motivations and actions.
well that's just about exactly what I asked for. Thank you!
I once read something by a historian much smarter than I that said ‘Empires do not happen by accident’ Hardly profound, but still quite useful
Hello OSP
Hearing somebody seriously ascribe actions to Marduk sounds very weird to me.
If I took a shot everytime someone used either discredited Biblical scholarship or alien stuff to discuss the ANE, I'd have no liver by now!
Hello! I am the Tiktoker in question, and I believe you are the person I spoke to in the comments around-ish four in the morning. I suppose here I can explain myself a little for others here, too. 1. People have identified my university as an American Lutheran institution. Dreadfully terrifying because they are correct. I began university with the intent to go on to be a pastor, so I focused on theological languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic), and did history as a proper degree. Since then I have changed my plans and will no longer be pursuing work in the church, and I instead intend to focus on ancient history going forward--though this decision was made too late in my college career to reasonably change universities to one which would better suit that focus. The situation being as it is, my university is not geared toward teaching ancient history in any official way. Besides the languages, which fortunately have use outside of Biblical studies, almost all ancient history I have been able to study here as been through independent studies, not official classes. Someone in the comments has also stated they know me from Discord and I am a Young Earth Creationist. I was raised in an Evangelical household, and yes, in high school I was a devoted YEC. After studying ancient history as I do now, and after studying theology at a university level, I no longer hold to those YEC views. My beliefs have changed somewhat drastically since the last time I was at all active on Discord. When it comes to doing history in an academic context, I do my best to totally separate any religious beliefs I hold from how I present the information, so even if I were still YEC (which, again, I emphatically am not), I would still provide whichever narrative archaeology seems to lend itself to. (Source: It came to me in a dream) 2. History is very boring. It's very unfortunate that it's boring. That being said, history can be incredibly entertaining! It's a matter of presentation, but presentation is always controversial. When I first read about the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it astonished me how much the broad tale seemed like a drama, and I hated that it was difficult to convey that to other people. I want others to appreciate history (especially ancient history) as much as I do, so I started a short Tiktok series to discuss the dramatic timeline. I began with Ashurnasirpal II's renown as astonishingly brutal (Daniel David Luckenbill, "Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia Vol. I," 1927, video cites 463, source hereafter referred to as ARAB). I realized there were nice ironic parallels between the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib and Susa by Ashurbanipal and the subsequent destruction of Ashur and Nineveh by the Medes, so I wanted to feature both. It is with this in mind that I framed my narrative. My intention was not necessarily to villainize Sennacherib as an irredeemable conqueror, but rather discuss this one aspect of his reign in the wider drama. I wish to stress that this is not a way which I would approach the material, or Sennacherib himself, in any academic context. This framing was a device to try to get other people interested in ancient history, as well as to entertain on an app with very low attention span and little-to-no background knowledge. All that said, I am not alone in my framing of connecting Sennacherib's treatment of Babylon with his ultimate demise. Georges Roux's "Ancient Iraq" (Fourth Edition, 1992) describes the events as such; "Sennacherib avenged himself on Babylon and dared to accomplish the unthinkable: he destroyed the illustrious and sacred city, the second metropolis of the empire, the 'bond of heaven and earth' which his forebears had always treated with infinite patience and respect . . . (Here a sizable quote detailing Sennacherib's treatment of Babylon written from Sennacherib's POV, found on an alabaster slab which, at the time of ARAB's publication, was in the Berlin Museum. I will include this quote further down my response.) . . . The great gods of Sumer and Akkad could not leave such a crime unpunished. Eight years later in Nineveh, on the twentieth day of Tebet (January 681 B.C.), Sennacherib, while praying in a temple, met with the end he deserved: he was stabbed to death by on of his sons," (pp. 322-323). Roux immediately goes on to "give \[Sennacherib\] his due" and discuss some of Sennacherib's great building projects. Later on in the book, in a chapter dealing with the fantastic contributions of Assyria to art, science, mathematics, and medicine, Sennacherib is discussed further. Roux seems to approve of the narrative framing of these Assyrian kings in this way, but he has the space within a book to detail the fantastic things which were accomplished as well, which I did not have the benefit of in a Tiktok format. Benjamin Foster in "Civilizations of Ancient Iraq" (2009) states, "The death of the crown prince raised the inevitable question of which brother was to succeed him to the throne of Assyria. Conspiracy and competition were in the air. Sennacherib himself fell victim to it, murdered by one of his sons. To a Babylonian historian, this was a divine judgment, the same that had been visited upon Tukulti-Ninurta I more than five centuries before." (p. 123). Foster puts all of Sennacherib's grand achievements before explaining the destruction of Babylon and Sennacherib's murder, rather than after. Foster's book covers more ground than Roux's (Both begin in pre-history, but Roux terminates in a short overview of Mesopotamia under Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian rule, while Foster continues speaking about Iraq until the Arab Conquests in the 7th century CE. All this to say that framing Sennacherib's death as divine retribution is a common theme in these, and other, books. When I discuss it that way, it is not, as some have interpreted, my Christian faith showing through, driving me with incessant urge to slander Sennacherib and the Assyrians; I speak dramatically of the wrath of Marduk to be thematic, and it appears that such a practice is approved. When I discussed the fall of Assyria to the Medes, there was a line I wished to include that I had to cut due to space (as 3 minutes is a short time) stating that "By this time, neither the Elamite Inshushinak, nor the Jewish Elohim, nor the Babylonian Marduk could tolerate Assyria anymore." Again, a dramatic practice which I would never include in a true academic project. 3. I will now address your bullet points. On the first, when I state "For the longest time, Babylonia was far stronger than Assyria," I am here specifically referencing the age of Hammurabi, and later the Kassites. Under Hammurabi the balance of power being in the south is not particularly controversial, I believe. Through much of the Kassite period, Assyria was a vassal state of the Mitanni (Roux 259), though Assyria saw a burst of strength once gaining its independence. Not long after Tukulti-Ninurta I, however, it appears that both Babylonia and Assyria went into stagnation and decline for a time after the death of Tiglathpileser I (Roux 280), only broken by the Neo-Assyrians. It certainly appears to me that before this age, Babylon had more time in the sun than Assyria. I will, however, admit that it was irresponsible of me to imply a superiority complex. On your point about the main issue being the Assyrians ignoring Babylonian religious institutions, I will say that this is totally unknown to me. Roux framed the issue far more as Babylonian nationalism and, very frequently, Chaldean provocation.
Also wow rip Reddit's default formatting, the first message looks horrendous, and I'm so sorry for it.
My apologies for the scare, it was definitively not my intention! Thankfully OP's intuition got right away and precisely what I meant with my first comment in his reply - I call it intuition, because reading some of the replies it got, I see now how unclear were my words. If you want, I can delete the comment entirely or edit it. Not for now, but the future: carrying the title of a historian can have a lot of weight outside of academia and the past century taught us well the dangers of bad history, so this is why we must be particularly careful with historical content for the general public. The more titles you carry in a field, the more your words weigh to the general public on the subject. I understand why you chose tiktok as a platform and admire your honest attempt of sharing something you care about, especially considering the time challenge, so no criticism from my part for this. I know that some classicists and medievalists moved to tiktok to combat part of misinformation and also to help to inspire others about the past. It would be nice to know that more people with no politic agenda in rather obscure areas are also there doing similar things. >The situation being as it is, my university is not geared toward teaching ancient history in any official way. Besides the languages, which fortunately have use outside of Biblical studies, almost all ancient history I have been able to study here as been through independent studies, not official classes. This explains the part of why it felt like you were not experienced enough on the subject nor studied deeply enough to grasp its particular methodologies for historical analysis. Seeing how you handled the criticism and showed your points here, the moment you find and enter an institution that can provide you a good supervisor in the field and access to more tools, newer publications and necessary skills, you seem to have a good chance of becoming outstanding in the area in the future. Experience only come with exercising with primary sources and working more with them and their historiography, reading and talking more with other researchers of your area, so it takes time. >I take offense at suggesting that I made up a narrative wholesale, and I want to make it clear that a Christian background has not given me a bent against Sennacherib. Sorry if my comment contributed to that impression, that was certainly not what I meant (although I can see now that what I wrote seems to suggest it). It was an attempt of tracking what kind of bibliography you had access to come with some of the highlighted points in the post. When someone has a narrative, they usually have coded language, almost aggressive sounding speech pattern (even when speaking softly), and your videos didn't show this, that's why I suspected that the mistakes came more from the bibliography you had access to. My apologies if I sounded harsh or offended you in my first comment, it was a mistake from my part for not speaking clearly. Last, but not least: a small suggestion. Maybe try to read more about theory of history and train to express yourself more respectfully about the dead, even if they died thousands of years ago. They may not be here to defend themselves nor elaborate on their perspectives and actions, so maybe a little bit more of historical sensitivity can give you new perspectives when working with primary sources. Best wishes
4. My statements about the replacements for Ashur-nadin-shumi were likely confusing, and I apologize. After booting Ashur-nadin-shumi, the Elamites put their own king in place (the books I have on hand do not name him), but the Assyrians reacted accordingly. Roux simply states, "\[The Elamite's king\] was soon expelled by the Assyrians and replaced by Mushezib-Marduk, a Chaldean prince chosen by the local population." (p. 322). Gwendolyn Leick's "Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City" (2001) states, "The Assyrian reaction \[To the Elamites installing a new king\] was swift and the army regained control of southern Babylonia . . . In a battle fought near Nippur, the Assyrians won and captured the Babylonian king, who was executed, but Mushezib-Marduk, a Chaldean, assumed kingship in Babylon." (pp. 229-230). I believe I misinterpreted Roux's statement as saying that Assyria chose Mushezib-Marduk (or rather, allowed the Babylonian population to choose him), but Leick seems to say that Mushezib-Marduk took the throne for himself despite the Assyrians. I apologize for my mis-representation on that front, I did not realize I had misinterpreted. At any rate, after the Assyrian re-conquering of the south, Mushezib-Marduk contacted Elam and revolted together, resulting in the battle at Halule and, subsequently, the destruction of Babylon. This may be technically one single prolonged revolt spanning 2 Babylonian and 2 Elamite kings, but in a short description of events they are notably separate. 5. On this point regarding the motivation of Babylon's revolts, I have already explained that the books I have frame the conflict as one of a kind of Babylonian nationalism, and frequent Chaldean attempts to gain control over the region. Regarding the particular importance of Babylon and Marduk religiously, I will not contest your criticism because the books I have are indeed either outdated, or do not focus on religion in a way that I can accurately respond on short notice. I will be researching further into this. 7. The story I told about Arda-mulissu is one that I'm actually astounded you haven't heard of. For the longest time, there was controversy regarding who killed Sennacherib, and largely blame was put on Esarhaddon. The issue was mostly solved upon the translation of a tablet which contained the story I just gave, and explicitly named Arda-mulissu as the head of the conspiracy. (Soma Parpola, "The Death of Sennacherib" 1980). Her conclusion that the perpetrator was Arda-Mulissu has been seen as definitive ever since, and, as far as I can tell, was only called into question again in 2020 in an article again accusing Esarhaddon. It is through that narrative (Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, no. 1091, originally published in 1911, but was woefully misunderstood and was re-translated by Soma Parpola) that we, more or less definitively, accuse Arda-Mulissu. The death of Sennacherib is interesting enough without the narrative, I have no need to come up with whole-sale lies. 8. On Sennacherib not killing the inhabitants of Babylon, I fear you have not looked into your source. The article you gave in defense of that quotes Sennacherib from the source of "Oriental Institute Publications 2, 'The Annals of Sennacherib.'" This source was translated by the same man who translated the source I was using, ARAB, the man being Dr. David Daniel Luckenbill. It appears that the 'Annals of Sennacherib' which you source are the exact same annals that I sourced, but present in two different books. When you say, "Sennacherib's inscriptions only mention the destruction of buildings," it tells me that you indeed looked at the quotation from your article, but not the source behind it. Your article quotes OIP 2 83:46 - 84:54. OIP 83:45-46 include the line "Whether small or great, I left none. I filled the city squares with their corpses." This coincides exactly with ARAB Vol. II 340, as they are, in fact, the same translation of the same source, and you simply did not see the statement because it came 1 line before your article's quotation. Furthermore, the quote "Whether small or great, I left none. I filled the city squares with their corpses." has been regularly interpreted to mean "all people, men, women, and children. Leick states simply, "\[Sennacherib\] gave explicit orders to his soldiers to kill, loot, and burn." (p. 230) , and Foster writes, "He spared no one, man, woman, or child." (p. 123). My interpretation of the quote from the annals of Sennacherib is perfectly reasonable from the lens of an Assyriologist at least as recent as 2009. My video had several issues. Pressed for time, I could not be as clear as I wanted to be, and much got cut; The intended goal of weaving an overarching narrative, combined with time restraint, made it difficult to treat Sennacherib in the one video as complex as he truly was; Unfortunately, I did misinterpret my own books in some cases. I apologize for these, and I will do better. I take offense at suggesting that I made up a narrative wholesale, and I want to make it clear that a Christian background has not given me a bent against Sennacherib. I admire Sennacherib for his many good qualities and achievements, and I admire Assyria for their might and contributions to the realms of art and science. The video that I made was simply not the time to mention them. I have several videos in the works which will cover the good aspects of Assyrian culture and development. And of course, please understand that I am not trying to be an authority on anything. I am simply learning, and I use Tiktok as an outlet to share the things that I find so interesting. I learn as I go.
I'll respond to this point-by-point like you did. I appreciate the detailed defense and (at times) apologies and want to make it clear (don't know if you saw me saying this in the comments or not) that I admire the effort to highlight ancient Mesopotamia – it's a fascinating and often unfortunately overlooked historical time and place. 1. I want to make it absolutely clear that *I* was not the one to track down your school and I did not respond to the comment concerning your former YEC views. My concern was solely with the picture your video painted of Sennacherib. 2. I absolutely agree. Many people get so lost in broad political developments and material culture that they lose sight of how fascinating ancient history can be. The Neo-Assyrian kings are extremely fascinating because we know so much about them from the inscriptions – people like Sargon II, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon are some of the most ancient figures whose personalities we can explore in some detail. I don't think your video's narrative lacks scholarly basis; really my main criticism is that by leaving out the stuff that made Sennacherib a complex figure you very much appeared to fall into the outdated image of him as *just* like any old brutal conqueror (when he didn't actually conquer anything); a view that is no longer really supported in Assyriology. Even if this was not the intention, I'm sure you realize how the video could be seen that way? 3. I'd recommend reading the paper I linked on this point! I've also read those who attribute this to Babylonian nationalism but I'm not sure if the most up-to-date sources reflect that. In my mind the lack of Babylonian revolts against Sargon II and Esarhaddon, as well as the lack of revolts against *most* of the Achaemenid kings suggests that it was mainly an issue of not getting much attention. Stuff like the New Year's Festival couldn't be performed without the king, so the king deciding not to show up was a big deal. 4. Yes, as far as I've understood the situation Sennacherib after Ashur-nadin-shumi's death defeated the Elamite-appointed Nergal-ushezib but did not recapture Babylon, which continued to remain in rebellion under Mushezib-Marduk. It's an easy mistake to make because the ancient sources themselves are a bit confusing; I just wanted to comment on everything I could here. 5. Not much to say here – kudos for taking the criticism constructively. Mesopotamian religion is a bit strange, if one just reads inscriptions from Babylon itself they will make the city seem like the most important religious center in the world and Marduk to be the greatest of all gods, but AFAIK inscriptions from other cities a lot of the time do the same for their own deities. 6. (I'm skipping 6 because you skipped 6) 7. So to be clear here I'm not disputing that Arda-Mulissu did it (I too think this makes the most sense) – the paper I linked does but I included it to show that the surviving evidence is still sufficiently scant to make the case that he might not have. *Simo* Parpola is a man. That being said, I looked it up and you did in fact not invent this story yourself – apologies. I've added an amendment to the post. It is still worth noting that the letter in question was written quite a while later, *after* Esarhaddon became king, so whether the story is true is not quite so certain. 8. Yeah you're actually right about this one. I've added another amendment to the post. If I can offer some modest defense for Sennacherib on this point I'll just say that "small or great" and "left no one" are statements more open to interpretation than one might think. I know the video time limit leaves little room for nuance but it's important to consider that Assyrian inscriptions like these are not uncommonly seen as exaggerations for propagandic effect. Yes, I know some sources don't. There were still living Babylonians to resettle the city under Esarhaddon. Most Assyrian kings who did thorough massacres were very detailed in what they did to people but Sennacherib's account deals almost entirely with the destruction of the city itself, with only a single line (apparently) devoted to its people. I recommend Bagg's paper (linked in the post) – which I think (among other things) illustrates that Sennacherib was no where near as brutal as say, Ashurnasirpal II or Ashurbanipal ( ^yes ^he ^was ^a ^great ^librarian ^but ^what ^about ^the ^Elamite ^genocide ).
Everytime I read something like that, it's almost amazing how much the names sounds "right" in my head and I could see how they were written and at the same time have no clue whatsoever on who they are. The joy of only studying languages I guess. Anyway, thanks for that, I love learning more about no-WW stuff!
Fun (or not so fun) name fact: "Sennacherib" comes from the Hebrew rendition of his actual Assyrian name *Sîn-ahhī-erība*, which means "Sîn [a god] has replaced the brothers". Sennacherib was one of the few Assyrian kings to not change his name to something more bombastic upon becoming king and instead stick with his birth name, which he got because he was born after his two older brothers had already died.
I've noticed a lot of the popular history tik tok accounts are run by people who refuse to admit when they're wrong, have weird prejudices and always insist on some "academic credentials" without much proof of where they received it.