Abstract
During the first third of Shalmaneser III’s reign (859-824 BCE), the great Assyrian monarch was mostly preoccupied by the expanding western frontier of his kingdom and to a lesser degree by the northern frontier. While throughout these years he campaigned in either direction or both, in two sequential years, 851-850 BCE, he led his army southward, to Babylonia. Within this ʻquarter of the land’ he peacefully visited Babylonia proper and campaigned to its adjacent eastern neighbors: the Diyāla region in the north, and the land of the Chaldeans in the south. In this article I propose seeing Shalmaneser’s inscription preserved on the bronze edging of the doors of the gate of Imgur-Enlil (Tell Balawat) as the ideological and propagandistic part of the king’s endeavor to keep the south peaceful, so as to free himself to complete his western adventure. Composed in order to convey a special message, this unique inscription was built up of a variety of literary materials carefully organized to meet the expectations of a complex audience. First, I analyze the components of the text, emphasizing their linkage to other texts within and outside the corpus of royal inscriptions, an analysis that suggests that the text appealed to various tastes. Finally, given that the place where the text was eventually displayed in antiquity and later found in modern times is not where it was first presented, I suggest a new geographical, temporal and historical setting for the text.
