Mesopotamian King Sargon II Envisioned Ancient City Karkemish as Western Assyrian Capital

Credit: Jastrow / Wikimedia Commons

Marchesi analyzed and translated the total of thirty-eight lines of partially broken Akkadian text, using reference material, academic literature and other inscribed Assyrian artifacts as reference points for filling in the gaps. The lines of text ranged from two-thirds complete to much less, and no line of text was completely intact.

“Even so, we can grasp much of the original text, which turns out to be very informative,” Marchesi writes. “In fact, unlike other Sargon cylinders, which contain relatively standard ‘summary’ inscriptions or annalistic accounts of the events of Sargon’s reign, the Karkemish Cylinder provides us with a completely new inscription, dealing almost exclusively with the newly conquered city on the Euphrates in a highly-elaborated, literary style.”

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In the inscription, Sargon tells of the “betrayal” of Pirisi, the Hittite King of Karkemish who exchanged hostile words about Assyria with its enemy, King Midas of Phrygia. Sargon invades Karkemish, deports Pisiri and his supporters, destroys his palace, seizes his riches as booty and incorporates Pisiri’s army into his own. He resettles the city with Assyrians. Having previously blocked the water supply to Karkemish, the meadows “let go fallow, like a wasteland,” Marchesi translates, he now reactivates the irrigation system, planting orchards and botanical gardens. “I made the scent of the city sweeter than the scent of a cedar forest.”

He also details an inauguration ceremony where he received gifts from Assyrian provinces and sacrifices them to deities. “My lords the gods Karhuha and Kubaba, who dwell in Karkemish, I invited them into my palace,” Marchesi translates. “Strong rams of the stable, geese, ducks and flying birds of the sky I offered before them.”

Marchesi was struck by the attention that Sargon paid to Karkemish, in particular the elaborate inauguration ceremony and construction of botanical gardens, both indicative not of a typical provincial capital but of a royal palace.

“Because of its glorious past and strategic position, Karkemish was fully entitled to become a sort of western capital of the Assyrian Empire: a perfect place in which to display the grandeur of Assyria, and from which to control the western and north-western territories of the empire,” Marchesi writes.

This vision of Karkemish was short-lived, however. Though much care was taken to detail the city’s rise in these texts, the city is not mentioned in any known inscriptions of Sargon’s successors.

“The unthinkable, ominous death of Sargon on the battlefield in Tabal probably prevented this project from being accomplished, and negatively marked the destiny of Karkemish itself, which no longer attracted the interest of Assyrian kings who followed after him,” Marchesi writes.

Contacts and sources:
Tiffany Adams 
University of Chicago Press Journals

Citation: “A New Historical Inscription of Sargon II from Karkemish,” Gianni Marchesi, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 78, no. 1 (April 2019): 1-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/703190