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 Assyria III: The Alternate Universe

   Tiglath Pileser III claimed to receive tribute from Menahem of Israel. However, as we have seen Menahem was not contemporary with the Assyrian king. Evidently Tiglath or his scribes laid claim to the exploits of his predecessor, Pul.

   Such expropriation by pagan kings was not uncommon in antiquity. If a king did not like or respect his predecessor, then he might take credit for earlier exploits. It was partly state propaganda for the new party in power, and partly self aggrandizement of the ruler. So this is the explanation of Tiglath's claims to collection of tribute from Menahem, whose reign fell completely before that of the Assyrian king.

   The biblical chronology reveals that Assyria is missing year names for 52 years between Shalmaneser III and Tiglath Pileser III. Forty-six year names are lacking between the reigns of Asshur-Nirari V and Tiglath Pileser III, and six more are missing at the beginning of the reign of Shamshi-Adad V.

   We know the number of missing eponym records because the Assyrian kingdom had contacts with Ahab of Israel and Jehu of Israel in the 6th and 18th years of Shalmaneser III. That is the 6th year of Shalmaneser III corresponds to the 22nd year of Ahab, and the 18th year of the same king corresponds to the 1st year of Jehu.

The biblical chronology has the complete number of years. But the Assyrian eponym canon is deficient 52 years.  These missing year names are revealed by the synchronisms between the kings of Judah and those of Israel.

    We have some additional facts that help us figure out where the missing year names are in the Assyrian kingdom. The year name for the 9th year of Ashur-Dan, "Bur-Sagle" records a solar eclipse.

If the eclipse of 763 BC is supposed, then there are no missing year names, but there must be exactly 52 to preserve the Shalmaneser III synchronisms.  By selecting the solar eclipse of 809 BC, we may place 46 of the missing year names into the period between Ashur-Nirari V and Tiglath Pileser III.

The remaining missing six years fall into the revolt at the beginning of Shamshi-Adad V's reign.  This accounting is confirmed by the Tell al-Rimah Stela.  See charts: "Jehoash pays tribute to Assyria, Tell al-Rimah Stela/ Saba'a Stela. See Adad-Nirari III and Jehoash of Israel, William H. Shea. Andrews University. Journal of Cuneiform Studies. Vol. 30, No. 2 (Apr., 1978, pp. 110-113."

The missing year names are not because the records have been lost, or because archaeologists have failed to recover all the existing year names. They are year names that never existed. The years that should have had year names, however, did exist. What happened?

If a revolt or invasion of Assyria was so severe then no eponymous officials could be named to give the year a name. Conditions were suitable for this at the beginning of the reign of Shamshi-Adad V when 27 cities revolted against the new king. This revolt saw six years without names, and also the intervention of the Babylonian king in Assyria's civil war. The Babylonians exacted a high price for their assistance.

Assyria was again torn apart by civil war at the end of the reign of Ashur-Nirari V. If we combine this fact with Pul, mentioned as the predecessor to Tiglath-Pileser III in 1 Chron. 5:26, then we have the logical place for the remaining 46 missing year names.

The parsimonious explanation is that Assyria faced Babylonian intervention in its internal civil war at the end of the reign of Ashur-Nirari V. This was similar to the intervention of the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I in the civil war between Shamshi-Adad V and his brother. Only in the case of the 46 years, the intervention of the Babylonian king turned into an outright invasion of Assyria rather than support of one side or the other and the imposition of virtual vassal status.

The reason Babylonian intervention is parsimonious is that it happened before, and the Babylonians would have wanted to keep Assyria in a position of weakness. As year names were customarily derived from the positions of high court officials with lots of power beside the Assyrian king, the Babylonians would not have permitted these powerful positions.

In fact, is is probably the power of the nobles with the eponymous names that Assyria was plunged into a civil war that was exploited by the Babylonians in the first place.

The final clue is from the name Pul. This name in both Babylonia and Assyria means "heir."  This is a title that would suit both Babylon and Assyria.  It is probable then that Pul was a Babylonian who had seized the throne of Assyria amid the civil chaos. And with superior force he ravaged the country and was able conduct expeditions to even Israel, where he extorted "Dane-geld" so to speak from Menahem of Israel.

This situation would explain why Tiglath-Pileser had the state scribes suppress the disruption of the country while himself expropriating the deeds of Pul.

"From the time of Nabonassar, the Chaldeans accurately recorded the times of the motion of the stars. The polymaths among the Greeks learned from the Chaldeans that - as Alexander (Polyhistor) and Berossus, men versed in Chaldean antiquities, say - Nabonassar gathered together (the accounts of) the deeds of the kings before him and did away with them so that the reckoning of the Chaldean kings would begin with him. (FGrH III C/1 p. 395 no 16 (Pseudo-Berossos of Cos). It is clear from the biblical chronology and the nearly opaque Assyrian Eponym canon that Tiglath Pileser II must have done the same for Assyria shortly afterward" (From the charts).

I should clarify this. While the Babylonian king expunged records, and hence Babylon is in a dark age before Nabonassar, the Assyrian king directed his scribes to eliminate embarrassing episodes of Assyrian history immediately before himself.

     It may be noted that Tiglath-Pileser himself usurped the Babylonian throne, himself taking the name Pulu, again meaning "heir," and by right of conquest his Assyrian god has now favored him as the legitimate heir. This turn of affairs, no doubt, had the ring of poetic justice in the ears of Assyrians, and the taste of revenge in Babylonian ears.  Tiglath Pileser then combined this with directions to his scribes to edit out the lacuna in Assyria caused by the Babylonians, namely by closing the gaps on the eponym canon.  Tiglath's own appointments of eponyms deviate from prior practices by appointing virtual nobodies as eponyms, besides expropriating the last two eponyms of Ashur-Nirari V. Somehow, it worked out so that the eclipse of 809 BC and the collapsed chronology synchronized with the eclipse of 763 BC.  The unusual accession notice of Tiglath-Pileser suggests that he did not come to the throne by an ordinary succession to Ashur-Nirari V, but after a disruption of some sort. So again, there is evidence of something not regular.