The existence of the Assyrian ruler Sargon II has long been disputed because, until the 19th century, the only reference to his name was in the Bible:
In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod, sent by king Sargon, and besieged the city and captured it, at that time the Lord spoke to Isaiah the son of Amos, saying, "Go, untie the haircloth from your loins and take off your shoes from your feet." In compliance with this order, the prophet went naked and barefoot. (Isaiah 20:1-2)
However, no archaeological evidence had shown the existence of an Assyrian king named Sargon. But in 1843, the French archaeologist Paul-Emile Botta discovered the ancient city of Dur-Sharrukin whose name means "the fortress of Sargon"! Today it is the city of Khorsabad in Iraq, north of Nineveh. Since this discovery, Sargon has probably become the best-known Assyrian ruler today!
Let's look at the continuation of the historical and biblical chronologies (for earlier dates, refer to the previous articles since Adam):
(858 BCE): beginning of the reign of Shalmaneser III in Assyria
(853 BCE): battle of Qarqar, won by Shalmaneser III king of Assyria
year 2913 (847 BCE): death of Jehoahaz king of Israel; his son Jehoash succeeds him
year 2914 (846 BCE): death of Hazael, king of Aram; his son Ben-Hadad II succeeds him
year 2915 (845 BCE): death of Joash, king of Judea; his son Amaziah succeeds him
year 2929 (831 BCE): death of Jehoash king of Israel; his son Jeroboam II succeeds him
(824 BCE): death of Shalmanazar III
year 2944 (816 BCE): Amaziah flees Jerusalem and takes refuge in Lachish
year 2956 (804 BCE): Amaziah is assassinated in Lachish; reign of his son Azariah
year 2960 (800 BCE): prophecy of Amos
year 3000 (760 BCE): solar eclipse
year 3006 (754 BCE): death of Azariah of Judea, also called Uziah, struck with leprosy
year 3006 (754 BCE): Azariah's son, Yotham, king of Judea
year 3006 (754 BCE): vision of the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos
year 3033 (727 BCE): Tiglath-Pileser III king of Assyria conquers the northern lands of the kingdom of Israel
year 3038 (722 BCE): campaign of Shalmaneser V against the kingdom of Israel; only its capital Samaria remains
year 3042 (718 BCE): Sargon II besieges and takes Samaria; end of the kingdom of Israel
Assyrian rulers of this period often had the problem of establishing their legitimacy. The biblical "Pul" or "Pil" was a nickname that could have applied to another warlike monarch, Tiglath-Pileser III, who added the term Pil, meaning 'heir', to his name. But historians agree that he had usurped the throne of Assyria and was passing himself off as the son of a previous monarch, hence calling himself a "heir". He seized power in 745 BCE by killing all the members of the previous royal family. To avoid rebellion from various parties, he declared himself "Pil", claiming that he was another son of Adad-Nirari III and therefore had a legitimate claim to the throne. He was in fact one of the ruthless but successful military commanders in the history of Assyria. According to Babylonian records, he began campaigning in the Levant in 740 BCE and he inaugurated a policy on conquered territories that consisted of deporting the vanquished populations en masse in order to avoid future rebellions from their lands. This may have been the first policy of ethnic cleansing in History. Thus he deported the tribes from the northern parts of the Kingdom of Israel, including the tribe of Naphtali, to the other extreme side of the Assyrian Empire, to its borders in the east.
His son Shalmaneser V succeeded him in 727 BCE, and he is known for having overthrown the rest of the Kingdom of Israel and deporting, like his father, the conquered tribes. But he was deposed and killed in 722 BCE before he could complete the final phase, namely the siege of the capital Samaria. It was his successor Sargon II who continued the siege and ended the Kingdom of Israel by destroying Samaria.
The name Sargon is Sarru-kin in Assyrian, which means "the rightful king". Because it seems that he was the one who deposed Shalmaneser V to seize power. The verse of Isaiah 20:1 mentions Sargon's campaign against the city of Ashdod which must have taken place after the fall of the kingdom of Israel. Only at that time, Sargon could have been interested in continuing his campaign further south along the coastal plain south of the Levant. Ashdod was then still a Philistine city.
Here again we see that the Bible was right to mention Sargon in Isaiah because this monarch did indeed exist!
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Albert Benhamou
Private tour guide in Israel
February 2025
