Portion of an inscribed late Assyrian relief at the Nebi Yunus excavations, Mosul, Iraq.

Nineveh. Portion of an inscribed late Assyrian relief at the Nebi Yunus excavations, Mosul, Iraq. A eunuch in a procession or ceremony. Late 8th century BCE. 4 June 1990.

It is not certain that the slab was found at Nebi Yunus.

Also, the figure was not originally a eunuch.
_____

As it turns out, this and the previous photo may be the only record of a significant artifact recording an inscription of Assyrian king Sargon II. The current location of the orthostat is unknown.

Yale Assyriologist Eckart Frahm presented a paper based on these photos at the Rencontre Assyriologique in Ghent in 2013.

The following are exerpts from Eckart Frahm's paper:

"The piece has apparently never been published or discussed. The iconography of the
relief suggested to me that the slab was carved at some point during the second half of the 8th century. This dating was confirmed when I took a closer look at the text, which turned out to be a short portion of longer annalistic inscription of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who ruled from 722 to 705 BCE.

The current whereabouts of the slab are unknown to me. It may once have been housed in the Mosul Museum, but Ali Ahmed Yaseen of the University of Mosul has kindly informed me, by email, that the Assyrian artifacts in that museum were all sent to Baghdad shortly before the American invasion in 2003.

The beginning of the text, which must have been written on one or more additional slabs, is lost.The first preserved passage deals with the conclusion of Sargon’s campaign against Elam and Babylonia in 720 BCE.

1[……] (I prayed) to Marduk, … (the/my) lord … 2[…… Marduk] my lord, heard my
prayers, and the Tesa 3-4[and Tu'muna …… I uprooted …] … their people, together with
their possessions [(…) and made them dwell in the land of Ḫatti (i.e., Syria)]. …

The passage describes Sargon’s successful attacks, in 721/720, on Aramaean tribes in northern Babylonia, and their deportation to Syria. Of particular interest, and without parallel in other reports on Sargon’s first Babylonian campaign, is the reference to the god Marduk, an early indication of Sargon’s high esteem for Babylonian religion and culture.

The next passage of the text is better preserved and more significant. It deals with an anti-
Assyrian insurrection in western Syria that was suppressed by an Assyrian army in 720 BCE. Because of the involvement of Samaria and the apparently “Yahwistic” name of the rebel leader, Yaubi'di of Hama, this episode has been, for quite some time, of particular interest to Bible scholars. It has been known from other Sargon inscriptions, but none of these fairly detailed accounts of the Yaubi’di revolt is well preserved, which makes the new Nebi Yunus text a welcome addition to the available corpus of sources.

The episode begins as follows:

4 […… In] my [second] regnal year, Yaubi'di
5 [of Hamath, (who was) not the rightful throneholder, (who was) unfitted for (living in) a palace, and as whose] fate it had not been decreed [that he would (ever) shepherd] the people,
6 [……] came down […] and together with rabble troops
7 […… bearers of] shields and lances he left
8 [……]. In the city of Qarqar, which is on the bank
9-10 [of the Orontes, …] he gathered [the (vast) troops (or: the troops of the vast land of
Amurru)] and [transgressed] the oath (sworn) by the great gods […].
10-11 [He prompted the land of Hamath, from] its upper end to its lower end, [to rebel] against me, [created unanimity (among its citizens), and prepared for battle (…)]. …

Yaubi’di, it seems, was an influential military man with close ties to the former state of Hama. Apparently, his stronghold was not Hama’s homonymous capital city, but the city of Qarqar on the Orontes river, Hama’s second most important urban center. Yaubi’di resented that Hama had become part of an Assyrian province, and the unrest at the beginning of Sargon’s reign gave him a chance to incite the Hamatites to turn against Assyria. He gathered local troops – who might have been pressed into Assyrian service in the preceding years – and concentrated them in the vicinity of Qarqar.

11-12 [……]. Against the land of Assyria and her people he (Yaubi’di) intended (to do) evil, [things that were not good (……)], and he treated them with insolence.
12-14 [He gathered] the cities of Arpad, [(…), —imirra, (…) …]tu, Damascus, and Samaria [and brought them to his side (……)].
14-16 He killed the citizens of Assyria who were present in [Syria ……] altogether
16 [and left no one alive (……)].

This passage tells us two things. First, it discloses that Yaubi’di, as we already knew from other sources, gathered a wide-ranging coalition of allies that included Arpad, —imirra, Damascus, and Samaria. All of them, like Hama, annexed by Assyria during the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V and now eager to regain their independence. The second thing we learn from the passage is that Yaubi’di and his rebels apparently went on a killing spree, finishing off every Assyrian who happened to fall into their hands.

The final text portion preserved on our slab describes Sargon’s immediate reaction to the
uprising, which led to the eventual defeat of the rebels.

16-19 […… I lifted my hands] to Sîn, the king of the gods and lord of the lands, [……, who
vanquishes] the foes and destroys the enemies, my lord, and implored him (to help me) [conquer] the land of Hamath, overthrow [….. and …] the wide land of Amurru.
20 [……] they […]. Because (of) his people (rest lost).

Here the text breaks off, but we know from other inscriptions that Sargon’s generals did indeed defeat the western coalition, and that significant portions of the people of the recalcitrant states were deported to various locations in the Assyrian empire. Sargon’s Display Inscription from Khorsabad reports that from Samaria alone, no fewer than 27,290 people were deported, an event also mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in a passage that became the main source for the numerous speculations on the fate of the “ten lost tribes of Israel.”

The members of the Syro-Palestinian alliance who fought against Sargon’s troops were finished after 720 – Damascus, Israel, and Hama would never regain their independence.

The slab, which is roughly 85 cm high, shows an Assyrian eunuch with a rather peculiar headgear: a kind of turban, headcloth, or bandanna. Julian Reade has recently shown that this type of headgear is attested on Assyrian reliefs from the 9th century reign of Assurnasirpal II to that of Sargon II, and that it was worn by very influential individuals only. This suggests that the eunuch depicted on the relief was a general or some other high official. The person standing to the left of him – of whom only modest traces are preserved – may have been the crown prince, who may have faced the king, as on a comparable depiction on the Black Obelisk.

An email sent to me by Stevan Beverly revealed that when he photographed the slab, it was not in its original place. Beverly writes (and I quote): "I believe the orthostat was brought to the site by Dr. Manhal Jaber [the director of the Mosul Antiquities Office] that day [June 4, 1990] for the benefit of an Iraqi television crew that was there to interview him. So it is not certain that it was actually found at Nebi Yunus. I do not remember seeing any other similar inscribed orthostats there."

Indeed, the slab, as can be seen on the photo, shows signs of restoration efforts that
were probably undertaken in a museum or excavation house, and not in situ at Nebi Yunus. In the late 1980s, Iraqi archaeologists conducted excavations not only at Nebi Yunus but also at Nimrud, and it cannot be completely excluded that the slab came from there. For the time being, one can only hope that those involved in its discovery will eventually help solve the mystery of the slab’s original setting – a mystery of some relevance because it has an important bearing on our knowledge of Sargon’s domestic politics and the history of Assyrian palace culture."

- E. Frahm (Yale University) and G. Frame (University of Pennsylvania). “Some New Discoveries Related to the Inscriptions of Sargon II,” 59e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, “Law and (Dis)order in the Ancient Near East,” Ghent, July 17, 2013.

see also: Eckart Frahm, “A Sculpted Slab with an Inscription of Sargon II Mentioning the Rebellion of Yau-bi’di of Hamath,” Altorientalische Forschungen 40/1 (2013), 42-54.

www.academia.edu/5594577/_A_Sculpted_Slab_with_an_Inscrip...

Taken in: Iraq / Ninawa / موصل / Al Fayşalīyah (show map)

Taken on: June 4, 1990

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Sets appears in: • Nebi Yunus Excavations 1990 • Nineveh Excavations 1989 - 1990

Groups appears in: • Archaeology Travel Photos • Ancient more » • Escultura antigua / Ancient sculpture • Reliefs and Bas-reliefs • Stone Work • Epigraphlings • Archaeology • Mesopotamia • Ancient Near East • Heritage Key • Civilizations of the Ancient Near East « less

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