Sargon II

Sargon was already in adulthood when he came to power.: He must have been at least forty years old, and he had at least one adult son, Sennacherib, who had helped him run the empire as crown prince since the beginning of his father's reign. Since Sargon was the son of Tiglath-Pileser, we might expect him to be mentioned as a prominent military commander or administrator in archival materials from Kalhu dating back to his father's reign, but since we do not know by what name he was known before assuming the crown of Assyria, he has not yet been identified. His throne name means "true king," and one of his inscriptions explains in detail the political agenda behind this choice: "My name, which the great gods gave me to uphold law and justice, help the powerless, and protect the weak." Sargon portrayed himself as a restorer of order, but did he save the country from the lawlessness that reigned under his brother, or was the chaos caused by a coup that he himself organized to gain the crown? The few available sources do not allow us to make a decision on this issue.

The new king faced serious resistance both in the heart of Assyria and on the periphery. The center of the uprising in the west of the Assyrian Empire was the city of Hamat, where a certain Yau-bi-di received wide support: the former kingdoms of Hamat, Arpad, Damascus and Israel rebelled after Sargon came to power, but he managed to suppress the uprising in 720 BC. Hamat was destroyed again, and 6300 "guilty Assyrians", The inhabitants of the central regions, whom Sargon decided to spare, but expelled from the center of the empire in northern Iraq, ended up on its ruins. They repaid their merciful king by rebuilding this once proud city.

When central Assyria and the west rebelled against the new king, Assyria's enemies in the south saw their chance: Merodach-Baladan, leader of the powerful Bit-Yakin tribe and leader of the anti-Assyrian movement in Babylonia, declared the end of Assyrian rule and claimed the throne of Babylon. Sargon responded to this provocation by sending his troops south, and Merodach-Baladan responded by joining forces with the king of Elam, Assyria's longtime rival. Together they gathered a huge army against Sargon's forces. In 720 BC, the armies met in the battle of the city of Der in the plains east of Babylon, on the very field where almost two centuries later (539 BC) Darius the Great defeated the army sent by the last Babylonian king Nabonidus to repel the Persian invasion. Although Merodach-Baladan's troops arrived too late for active hostilities, the Assyrian army was driven back by his Elamite allies, and he retained control of the south and the title of king of Babylon.

The plan of Dur Sharrukin was modeled after Kalhu, but while the last city was built on the site of an existing settlement (which was reflected in its layout), the new capital of Sargon was perfectly symmetrical and did not take into account the surrounding landscape. Two giant platforms, one with a palace and temples, and the other with an arsenal, were built from scratch. Seven monumental city gates were located at regular intervals along the fortress wall, and their location was not dictated by the need for an existing road network. Sargon's new palace has eclipsed all its predecessors in terms of scale and quality of construction. The reliefs that decorated the walls of the palace depicted his conquests, as well as the looting of Musasir, which played a crucial role in financing construction work. Today they can be admired in the Louvre (Paris) and the Iraqi Museum (Baghdad). Just eight years after the start of work, in 706 BC, the yard moved to Dur Sharruken. By that time, the main elements of the project had been completed, although construction work was still underway elsewhere.

Sargon continued the policy of conquest and annexation that had already characterized the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V, but attempts to control territories that were further away from the heart of Assyria became burdensome. Two provinces in the Zagros Mountains were established in 716 BC, but were held only after years of fighting; deportation from this region led to a significant Median population in the city of Assur, which may have played a role in the fall of the city in 614 BC. An attempt to create the province of Tabal in central Anatolia in 713 BC was doomed to failure and was ended after a bloody uprising the following year, the first in the history of Assyrian imperialism. However, the annexation of the Philistine kingdom of Ashdod in 711 BC was successful, as was the conquest and unification of the neo-Hittite states of Gurgum and Cummuhu (Commagene) in the same year and in 708 BC, respectively. But Sargon's most significant triumph occurred in 710 BC, when he finally succeeded in overthrowing Merodach-Baladan from the Babylonian throne and occupying it himself. While his crown Prince Sennacherib ruled in Calhoun, Sargon spent the next three years in Babylon, receiving honors and gifts from the rulers of countries as far away as Cyprus and Bahrain. He returned to central Assyria only when the court was ready to move to Dur Sharrukin.

In 705 BC, Sargon returned to Tabal, trying to restore the region to its former status as an Assyrian province. His army faced fierce resistance, and surprisingly, the king died in battle, and his body was captured by the enemy. This catastrophic event led to the fact that Dur Sharrukin ceased to be a royal residence, and, as it was later believed, became the cause of the misfortunes of his heirs: Sennacherib was killed, and during the reign of Esarhaddon he was plagued by conspiracies and diseases.