Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 801

JOSEF WIESEHÖFER

Kiel University

Herodotus offers little concrete information about the Assyrians, and their relationship with the Babylonians remains relatively vague. What is certain for him is that the Assyrians once ruled a large territory that included BABYLON, and that their empire lasted for about 520 years before the MEDES revolted and the Assyrians lost a large part of their former ALLIES (1.95.2). In the end, the Assyrians were defeated by the Medes under their king CYAXARES, who also conquered the Assyrian capital of Ninus (i.e., NINEVEH). Herodotus knows nothing of the anti‐Assyrian Medo‐Babylonian coalition which destroyed Nineveh in 612 BCE (ABC 3 in Grayson 1975), and for him Babylon is the most important city of the Assyrians and their royal center after the fall of Nineveh. As for the kings of Assyria, he mentions NINUS, whom he considers to be the eponymous founder of the metropolis of the same name, and his son SARDANAPALLUS (2.150). Presumably, Ninus is to be equated with BELUS’ son of the same name, the father of AGRON; Agron was the great‐great‐grandson of HERACLES and founded the Heraclid dynasty of LYDIA (1.7), which would result in all imperial power in ASIA—according to Herodotus—being traced back to Heracles. In the context of Egyptian history, Herodotus mentions the robbery of the treasures of Sardanapallus (2.150), but unlike his contemporaries (such as Aristophanes, Av. 1021) and especially CTESIAS later, there is no mention of an effeminate and scandalous ruler of this name. SENNACHERIB, king of the ARABIANS and Assyrians, is Herodotus’ last Assyrian king. He starts a campaign against king SETHOS of EGYPT, which miraculously fails because field‐mice gnaw the leather parts of the Assyrian soldiers’ weapons (2.141).

SEE ALSO: Cross‐references; Heracleidae; Near Eastern History; Syrians